Why Your Band Sucks

1: You have little or no connection with the audience. You don't talk to them, or if you do, you're not funny, compelling or even very good at making sentences.

What you don't seem to know is that you're not enigmatic enough to be like Bob Dylan, who, even in his suck ass old age-give me the money -I'm only phoning this concert in and I can't sing half as well as Tom Waits after throat surgery phase, can still manage to be compelling. You wanna be a rock star, learn how to at least act like one.

2: Clutter! Your band has too damn many people in it. Six or seven? Please, motherfucker, all you're doing is confusing a wall of bland mushy noise for a full tone.
Get rid of the string section. All they do is goo things up, filling the corners of every song with bland and toothless crap, You're just pumping the audio equivalent of corn syrup into the mix, and it's covering up what little you have to offer. If they can't get in, play something moving and then back the hell out, they're just musical wood ticks. Parasites along for the ride, pull them off and smash them so they don't suck on anybody else and move on.



4: That Harmonica! Dude, learn how to play it with some feeling. My dead beloved grandmother's corpse made more interesting noises out gassing than that thing around your neck.
And the only thing worse is sampling it, or getting somebody else to play it on the keyboards, or playing it on some other lame instrument like the melodica. It's a tool, not a fucking safety net to make you feel less naked. And besides, you're on stage singing your guts out about things you cared enough to turn into songs, so you should be naked, dangling on a rope of burning conviction and mad energy.



5: Plug a big old vibrating egg into that bass player's ass with the remote connected to your drummer's kick drum. Maybe then he'd do something more than take up space and push out passionless bottom end. He's never on the edge of anything interesting.
He is like some heavily sedated mental patient, drugged out on Thorazine. On second thought, maybe he's not like a heavily sedated mental patient. I think maybe he's been lobotomized, had his ability to feel anything strongly severed with an ice pick. Either way, he's committed to making your band a nice, safe place where Nothing Is Ever Interesting Or On The Edge.
God forbid somebody should actually be on fire, to want to rock out. It would harsh the mellow.
Music should be seriously high energy stuff, even when it's a dark acoustic number. It's about touching the cosmic throb and screaming out to the universe, hey, dambitt, I got something to say.


6: Kill the keyboard madness! For Christ sake, how many people do you need playing keys? And how goddamn many fingers have to be pounding away at any one time when there's already a small mob of bland middle aged wanna be rockers up there on stage?
Go listen to some Talking Heads. Those freaks did more with one hand and four or five notes than all those busy things I'm hearing from your midlife crisis masquerading as a band.


7: Turn that Drummer loose. You have one of the best drummers in the damn state, but when do you let things rip and let the drummer get some good rhythm freak on? The rhythm method you use is about as exciting as the one the Pope recommends, and your music is all bland missionary style crap and no doggie style goodness



8: Play your instruments less. A lot less. You got enough people up there to be a goddamn wedding party and the band, too, but you all play all the time, and nobody's playing half a chord, or a simple melodic line. You're all just up there sawing away, nobody listening to anybody else's mojo, and even if they had stumbled upon some chewy nut of musical goodness, that bunch of busy fingered squirrels wouldn't hear it.
Then again, if they did hear somebody doing something interesting, they'd more than likely plot to get rid of them. Gotta keep control, make sure nobody goes off script or does something loud and fun. Never mind.

9: Just say Fuck You to Yes men and women. Maybe if your leadership skills didn't suck, and you actually had an interest in being an real artist instead of a rock star, you could speak up, but no, you'll just go along to get along, and all that nicey nice crap your social club masquerading as a band tells you isn't going to make you any better as a singer or a performer. It's just passionless masturbation without somebody to push you, prod you and light it up. Might as well be in a fucking bridge club or book club, because as an artist, all you're doing is circling the toilet.

10: Knock off the prima donna crap. Don't go into the green room before hand and sit around like you're Eric Clapton snorting blow off your pole greaser's belly waiting for the chant of the crowd to pull you out. You have people out there, and talking to folks who come to see you play connects you to them.
And don't vanish while the other bands are playing, then sweep back in right before your show starts. It's rude and ego centric for somebody who plays out as little as you do. Maybe if you were on tour and were burned out, but the odds of you ever leaving your safe day job and being serious about this make that as likely as me losing 40 pounds tonight and waking up looking like Kate Hudson.
And for god's sake, don't assume that retreating to the green room means you're going to get an encore. It's really pathetic, even more so when your whole set had about as much energy as a road killed possum frozen in the ditch.

Not that my writing any of this matters. I didn't put your name in it, so you won't find it when you're googling yourself and your band of middle aged wannabes. But seriously dude, your band really does suck.