Diary of a Portland Musician

M iso M/F for friendship, maybe more?

by Mr. Indie

As I contemplate the difficulties I've had finding musical collaborators in P-town, I'm reminded of a word problem I once encountered: "In Mary's sock drawer there are some black socks, some white socks, and some yellow socks. How many socks must Mary pull from her drawer to be sure she has a matching pair?" The answer, of course (although it eluded my ten-year-old mind), is four, as the fourth one's bound to match one of the previous three. Well then, if there are approximately 5,000 types of musicians in Portland… I think you get my point.

I've spent a ridiculous amount of energy in my life trying to find musicians with whom to play and have been largely unsuccessful. Although I have been in plenty of bands, when you consider the ratio of how many people I've "jammed" with to how many of them actually became my bandmates, it's pretty clear how disastrous the whole musician-seeking process can be.

A while back a thought occurred to me. "Since I don't have a real job any more and I'm supposed to be focusing on music, I should probably start another band", was about how this thought went. So began the hunt. And what does one do when seeking collaborators? Let's consider our options, shall we?

How about checking out the local talent by going to shows?

Benefits:

1. You get to meet people.

2. You get to drink.

Drawbacks:

1. You'll probably have to sit through a whole lot of shitty music.

2. About $5 to get in and $5-$50 on drinks.

3. The musicians you're seeing are already in bands.

You could hang out at Guitar Center and jam with the bros!

Benefits:

1. You get to try out lots of equipment.

2. Maybe if you get real friendly with Tad in the drum department he'll give you a good deal on an egg shaker or a Steve Smith instructional video.

Drawbacks:

1. It's Guitar Center.

Well, there's always the Classifieds section.

Benefits:

1. Often free for musicians.

2. You can do it from your home.

3. Reaches lots of people who are also seeking fellow musicians.

4. You can target your specific audience with the good ol' Influences List (IL).

Drawbacks:

1. You're putting yourself at risk of having to wade through an endless sea of incompetence.

Here's where I bitch for a while: Fucking classifieds. Actually no, I take that back. Fucking people who respond to classifieds. It never ceases to amaze me, the utter lack of consideration that typically goes into the decision to respond to an ad.

As you may have guessed, I decided to go with the classifieds. From what I remember, the ad went something like, "Ex-Captain Powell/Doohicky/Biology seeks keys/bass/? for experimental but not pretentious, high energy, orchestral new band. Jehu, Melvins, Philip Glass, Steve Reich. If interested please email or call".

I included the "Ex-Captain Powell/Doohicky/Biology" line not because I wanted to brag about what bands I'd been in or because this new project was going to sound anything like those bands, but because I hoped that if some dude who had been playing guitar for a year saw the ad, he would realize that, having been in those bands, I'm probably at a level that he is not yet at, and would therefore be discouraged from contacting me to say, "Hey man, I'm mainly a guitar player but I've been concentrating on playing drums for the past five or six months, so you know, whatever". But who am I to assume that anybody in this town has an anywhere near accurate self-image? I mean, I like to think of Portland as a pretty down to earth place, what with our liberal politics, our ahead-of-its-time health care system, and all the bicycles and health food stores everywhere. But evidently, nobody here has the slightest insight into there own artistic merit. I've had this happen in other cities but I expected more from Portland. Okay, enough with the weird motherly guilt trip. Onto the next line…

"seeks keys/bass/?". I can't fault all those kazoo players for this one, since there's that "?" indicating that anything's fair game.

Next, we go to the "for experimental but not pretentious, high energy, orchestral" descriptors. Granted, one can't expect people to be able to grasp just what sound one has in one's head by simply reading a few adjectives, so I'll cut the peeps some slack on this one as well. Let me just say though, that when any ad contains the word "experimental", it should be understood that the forty-five year-old guy who is "into blues and classic rock tunes" need not apply.

Okay, "new band". A simple two-word phrase. How is it so difficult to get this one? I can't count how many, "hey, I dig your band The Plural Males; so you guys lookin' for a keyboardist or something?" responses I got. I hate to be an asshole, because I know sometimes people just overlook stuff, but come on! If you're going to the trouble of responding to an ad, at least read the whole thing. NEW BAND!

Here's the fun one: the IL. "Jehu [as in "Drive Like"], Melvins, Philip Glass, Steve Reich." If you've never placed this kind of ad, let me just tell you that the IL is about the most important thing you'll ever write. It takes hours of brainstorming to come up with a well-balanced IL; one mistake and you've blown the whole deal. Name something too obscure and nobody replies. Go with someone too mainstream and you have every Creed fan who's heard Every Breath You Take a couple times on the 80's station knocking on your door. I thought I did a pretty good job by throwing in a couple of the more obvious modern classical guys. Most responses I got didn't mention my IF, as is typically the case with classifieds, so there's really no way of judging people on this one, but I have a feeling 90% of them had no idea who Steve Reich is.

"If interested please email or call", and did they ever. I got quite an impressive response, I think mostly due to the Captain Powell part. Some of the "applicants" were pretty decent musicians but just not a good fit, like the guy who played keys/sax/clarinet/all kinds of other stuff, who, strangely enough, ended up joining my friend's band, False Manners, a couple weeks later.

Some, although they weren't totally incompetent, were pretty far below what I was hoping for, like the guy whose previous band's demo sounded like a slight re-imagining of Double Nickels on the Dime. Don't get me wrong, ain't nothin' wrong with the Minutemen; there is, however, something wrong with completely ripping off the Minutemen.

Then there were the people who were just from a different planet, like the guy who called me at 3:00AM and left the creepiest message I've ever heard, half of which I couldn't even understand, or the aforementioned forty-five year-old blues dude.

It took Darrin (my roommate and by then second guitarist) and I two or three months to find Pepe, the dreadlocked, chain-smoking guitar player who was just passable on bass. We played with him pretty steadily for a month or so before coming to terms with the sad fact that we weren't satisfied. In the meantime, I had talked my brother Rod into playing drums, so even after dismissing Pepe we still had a three-piece.

Then came Arnold, and everything changed. After playing with him for the first time I think we were all a little stunned. Not only was he a super nice guy and seemingly into doing the same type of music we were, he was actually a real bass player! I don't know if any of you realize the rarity of this species, but trust me, most people who tell you that they're "bass players" are in reality guitar players who think playing bass is the same thing. WRONG. That's one of my biggest pet peeves in the music world--not quite as bad as the opening band who thinks they're the headliner so they play for an hour syndrome, but pretty close. It takes a completely different approach to play bass well because--guess what?…it's a different instrument with a totally different function! And this guy Arnold was perfect. Everything he played fit superbly, his bass tone was actually good (a huge breath of fresh air after playing with Pepe), and his technique was obviously not just a modified guitar technique. The funny thing is that Arnold and I had emailed at the beginning of my search and I'd decided to pass because I wasn't into his solo bass mp3's. Oops, chalk one up to cynicism I guess.

After finally discovering our bass player, we looked for a keyboardist briefly before ultimately deciding we could do just about everything we needed to do with the current lineup. Since then we've been practicing and gearing up for our upcoming shows, and the music has come together swimmingly. The truth is, I'm amazed that I found three people with whom I'm really excited to play music at all here in Portland. Sometimes this place seems to suffer from a watered down talent pool--there are a billion and a half bands, maybe one or two of them decent--so I consider myself extremely lucky to be working with these fellas.

As for the success of the classifieds, I guess it served its purpose, right? Like I said, I've had similar experiences in other cities, having to sift through a few hundred pounds of garbage in order to find the one or two jewels at the bottom of the heap. It's definitely not the most efficient or even enjoyable way to find collaborators, but if you're a non-socialite like I am, it's pretty much all you've got. Unless, of course, you end up hitting it off and starting a POD cover band with Tad from Guitar Center.

-Mr Indie

Most names have been altered to protect the privacy of persons/entities involved. Any similarities to actual persons or events are probably pretty accurate, but you can't prove anything.