When band dynamics effect the status quo.
There was a time when a concert took place in this back corner of a small coffee shop where guests were often regular customers and your mom. Perhaps a friend turned up to show their support and purchase some god-awful concoction of hazelnut and caramel whip only to spill it on you after a set was done. You, of course, had to smile and hug them anyway as that was just the way it was done. You want to please and be found pleasing to the eye even with that horrid stain on your too-expensive silk shirt.
Mum was right. Buying new clothes for shows is useless until you can afford to pay for a backup.
Time passes and suddenly you start getting a little more attention. Booking in smaller clubs becomes easier and suddenly you can start to actually charge for a ticket or two and make a few thousand in profit –Woo Hoo!–. Then you realize, “I need a drummer” or “I need another string for this set” and soon you are advertising for more to join your little solo act or begging a friend to get over their stage fright to join you on the stage for a cut of that thousand.
Now, let me tell you this. Never, ever, assume that stage fright will hinder an exhibitionist from showing their true colours. Perhaps I was being a little naive in all this as even I still get butterflies before, during, and after doing a set in front of a few hundred people. However, it hardly stopped my band-mates from taking a little show a tad bit further than I could have planned. And by a ‘tad’, I mean it in the best of ways –like Jimmy and his simple little pranks.– Annoyance no longer seems to cut it.
I should have been happy. Ticket sales jumped and news about Unhinged was starting to get around, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to even talk to the press about it let alone the lustrously happy couple I call mates. The funny part –and it really isn’t all that funny at all– was that at the beginning I did have a little ‘affair’ with my drummer. The man kept a great beat and it was something to do. When we took on a guitarist and the sparks started to fly that way I decided it was best to lay off the drums and strum my own chords. This went along very well as Phil (drummer) was enthralled with the guitarist and I had a shopping partner when all my other female friends were off touring the world.
I should have been happy for them, but somehow the little religious girl in me was oddly put off by such a display on stage. It wasn’t just the fact that some how along the road snuggling on stage was an okay idea but that I was rather hurt by it, and not by Phil’s actions –as any man couldn’t help it should his love tackle him on stage– but by Maddy. Perhaps a part of me was jealous –Just a little, mind you. It’s not like I spend my nights wallowing over the fact I’m still single– but a part of me seemed to have forgotten that Maddy was Phils and not mine.
The question now was what could I do about it?
Aside from telling Phil that if he didn’t propose to the woman before the end of the tour I’d do horrible things to his drums –his drum set! Not his person! Yeesh.– I decided that it was time to step back a little. I truly don’t know what sort of effect this will have on the band as a whole. I’m hoping that we aren’t going to kill each other by the time we get back to Melbourne, and if that is the case then perhaps Unhinged isn’t for me anymore. I still wanted to stay friends with my mates, but I didn’t want to risk my career over some quirks from my mates that bother me enough to actually walk off stage.
Stay with the band and lose your friends, or stick it out and hate each other when they are all that you will have to talk to on those long road trips? Something worth pondering on.
Published in Issue 228 of the Amsterdam Edition.
