Declassified

Over the course of my years in metro NYC, I spent the better part of my time trying to find a band. I posted various ads and listings online and in the free weeklies, put up fliers, and even created a brochure. Some of these gems are lost to the memory hole, but a few I copied, as if they would become historical once a superstar band emerged from them, or because I was that concerned about the wording and needed to make several drafts. hrumpht! Now they serve as artifacts for your snide amusement or curiosity. Maybe you've done worse. You may have even eyed a few of these suspiciously when you were looking around yourself.

These have been cleaned up for legibility, but not to save me from the embarassment of their purple prose and delusions of grandeur, as tongue-in-buttcheek they may be. I took out all the various phone numbers and email address so you don't get confused and try to contact me through them. And as a courtesy, I am reprinting only the ads I produced, not the ones I responded to. I got a few doozies there, let me tell you.

While the release of this material follows the blog-ish standard of moaning and complaining about how miserable life has been to a supergenius such as myself, it might also give you a hint towards my ideal band. And yes, I'm in two bands right now, so all's well that ends well.

To begin, I put the following notice on USENET six years ago in anticipation for my move to NYC Metro, optimistic that I would find my niche in a city of eight million people:

Flame on, Johnny Storm! I guess the guy's brain fried on the word "megalomania" before he got to the phrase "jam and collaborate". And I'm sure he cried when Wetlands closed down, too.

Trying to get anything going, I used various ploys and schemes at different stages of my bandmate search. Sometimes I thought I would just start with a rock duo, very k-records stylee, and then flesh out membership as our sound developed. This is the copy from a flier I put up at Funkadelic early on which took this tact ("Copy" is fancy advertising lingo for "the text in an ad" as if you din't know)

I had a guy get back to me about it. We dully played together once and said we would get back in touch. We didn't.

Sure I can play guitar, I have to play guitar nowadays, but I like having guitar heroes around. So I would put out ads like this, thinking I could find another artist to help take up the charge of starting a whole band.

That wasn't the royal We, by the way, just another attempt to make it sound like there was more than me involved. There never was, especially not after this ad.

People can smell a lack of confidence a mile away, so I would occasionally play up my strengths or ego to lure people into my web, like a million other musician ads out there. That was the idea behind a cheeky brochure I printed up and dropped off at various hipster stores in Manhattan.

You Might Already Be Our Guitarist!(or bassist!)

ATTENTION MUSICIANS! The former singer of the Wynona Riders (Lookout Records) and the former drummer of [identifying bands removed, as this guy proved to be a FLUH-ACHE!] seek a guitarist and bassist for a new and exciting ROCK BAND.

It could very well be you!

We possess the songs, skill and sense of humor thought to make such a group viable. We would like to find others disciplined in practice, tempered in celebrity, and personable in manner. Your friends probably think of you as someone who is creative, committed, intelligent, and eclectic. We will call you comrade.

As an full member with all rights and privileges therewithin, you would be encouraged to contribute to a collaborative and organic songwriting process while learning existing material. We are looking to practice 2-3 times a week as our schedules will allow, either in Williamsburg, Greater Brooklyn, or Manhattan.

Our present goals are to record in various media, play local clubs, and convince people to listen to us. Playing live would be seen as the full-bodied contact sport it is. We are a wee bit internet geeky, so yes, there would be a big ugly bandwidth-draining website full of useless information and gimmickry, allegedly designed to put us on the cutting edge. Instead, our own MP3 directory could put us out of business.

What is the sound are we going after?

Occasionally fast and furious, sometimes plaintive and obscure, our tunes encompass a music that is catchy, poetic, unexpected, kinetic, and pliant. The kind of band both Lester Bangs and Janeane Garafolo would be more than proud to have in their record collections.

Some call this music "postpunk" while others have called it "emo". Critics and scholars will recognize elements of noisepop and No Wave. We will call this music home.

You've waited long enough for the bizarre set of circumstances that has placed this flyer in your sweaty little hands. It's now time to take your first step towards joining the band of your dreams. Call 212.555.1212 and see if you got what it takes to play in our little combo. FNORD!

Obligatory listing of Bands and Musical Artists we are known to borrow judiciously from:

Naked Raygun, Juliana Hatfield, Husker Du, Jawbreaker, Drives Like Jehu, Throwing Muses, Pixies, Breeders, Bikini Kill, Nation of Ulysses, Jonathan Richman, Ramones, Sonic Youth, Archers of Loaf, Pinhead Gunpowder, PeeChees, Texas is the Reason, Jets to Brazil, Charles Mingus, Kurt Weill, and Meredith Monk.

What if you were already our guitarist (or bassist), and didn't even know it? You would be remiss to pass up an opportunity that you knew you were right for. None of us can predict the future, but we too often find ourselves reliving the past when we realize we could have done something differently…

Remember:
"It is better to regret something you have done, then to regret something you haven't done!"

Adventure awaits! CALL NOW!

A grand total of one (1) person got back to me on the two-hundred (200) fliers I distributed. He scared me.

I went as far as developing a list of potential cover tunes to send to people who responded

(Come to think of it, 200 Proof, who I now play with, is supposed to be on this dope tip, but for some reason, we're becoming too punk for our own good.)

This one I believe was for the Starkweather Conspiracy, the gothmetal band I practiced with for about three months, until we all had a moment of clarity.

Our only response was some kid into P.O.D. and Sanctamonious (or some name like that). We were simply not meant to be.

One kind of band I had always wanted to do was an "Inverse Blondie", with a male singer and female musicians, and I made several attempts to get one going. My intent was always a collaborative effort that would recognize its gimmickry and playfully confront the gender issues it would raise, but I had to be subtle in order not to come off like a slick Svengali. Sometimes I would straight up say I wanted female musicians. Other times I would say "Women Encouraged", (evidenced in one of the previous ads), while my most subtle strategy was to just name a bunch of bands with dames in them and see if anyone would take the hint.

Strangely, whenever I put up such ads, similar ones from other dudes would appear. I will allow that this was a form of Morphic Resonance rather than these other guys trying to make like Prometheus.

gaak! so when someone finally does respond to any of the SOS signals I pop off, I feel a need to write back and let the verbage dribble out of my mouth until interest turns to zero. Read it and weep:

The other fine example of blathering below may have [also] been the result of an ad for the alleged band that chose to name itself Rope Trick, except that all of us involved like to think the band never existed or that we ever even knew each other...Also, I may have put the ad out earlier, but gotten the response quite a while later while said band was in an fetal stage. For informational purposes, the ad is also reprinted here

Back and forth between the good and the bad, it's indecision time.That correspondence died out after about three volleys.

Worse than that ever hopeful mess, I had resorted to being convinced by others that the Wynona Riders should reform, even if I was the only original member; thus, we end up with even more sorry tripe like this:

Well, some of it was true. The response was underwhelming, to say the least. When anyone responded to this one, I had to let it all out, didn't I? By this point, I was losing cohesion, and just wanted to play, *weep*, as Exibit A demonstrates:

... and what exactly is the sound of one hand clapping? The same as the reply back.

Had I mentioned that most of these ads went nowhere, to say nothing of the rare jam session that may have resulted, only to fall flat against the white noise of a Funkadelic practice room? It got to a point where I was just amusing myself to test the community of flakes that populated musician classifieds:

The response was exactly what you would expect, and I got more replies to this one than any of the others.