Maybe its cuz Im feeling snowed in but Ive been dreaming about LA the past couple of nights. It got me thinking about my role as a drummer over the years in different projects and how I sometimes miss the hustle and bustle of living near Hollywood and Vine. So I admit this is going to be a little self indulgent/nostalgic and I will be name dropping. Get out now while you still can LOL Here we go: July 19th, 2002; Hollywood, CA. I was jamming with the band Alan Smithee. We were a pop rock band with fun, catchy tunes and we got a chance to play a showcase for Capitol Records on March 6, 2003. I remember that date because I also met Nikki Sixx since he was hanging out in the studio where we played our showcase. But I digress! Back to July 19th (which is also my sisters bday so it made it easy to remember). Alan Smithee had a show at the Coconut Teaser on the Sunset Strip that night. If I remember right, my singer had a horrible monitor mix but that wasnt the show I wanna talk about. At the time I was jamming with Dave Silva, a singer/songwriter/guitarist out of San Francisco. His band My Head was signed to Capitol Records for a little bit before his singer quit and joined (wait for it...) a freaking cover band! LOL I thought that was pure craziness but back then I thought cover bands were....I dont know. I didnt even consider them to be real bands. I was very opinionated, OK?! Even though Alan Smithee was my real band, meaning I would put their shows first and we were actually trying to get signed, I was still jamming and filling in with four other projects. One of the other bands was this band with Dave Silva. Dave also used to be in Bad Radio with Eddie Vedder before he joined Pearl Jam, so I was very excited/hopeful that something would happen with his connections after seeing his home videos of him on stage with Eddie, playing Better Man. Anyway! On that July 19th, I played my show with Alan Smithee and then headed out to play with Dave. In bigger cities, your sets are 45 minutes and youre on the bill with like 5 other bands a night. So after I played my set with Alan Smithee I headed over to some suburb of LA, I dont remember exactly where, to play a showcase for an indie label with Dave and his band. Now, heres the thing; we rehearsed and I knew the songs. And as a drummer I gotta say I remember playing them well AND with passion that night. Well, the indie label passed and I was talking to Dave about it a few days later. If I remember right, he kinda blamed my playing on them passing over us. Now! I am not delusional, Ill effing tell you when and where I make mistakes. My tempos sometimes get off, Im realistic. But I was very aware of how important this showcase was and to this day I feel like I played the hell out of that gig, OK?! Now, your first reaction is going to probably be Dude, get over it, its been 12 effing years! and I would agree! LOL I guess Im just saying that since Dave was the leader of the band, if he didnt like the way I played the songs during rehearsal, he should have said something. Because I play the songs the way I rehearse them and even now when we rehearse, I try to even put the same fills in the same spots so the rest of the band knows whats coming and it helps us to be tighter as a band. Drummers will understand this; like, if youre going from a chorus back to a verse or whatever, I feel like one of our jobs as a drummer is to kinda announce there is a change approaching, at least that is my theory. Its funny how I would hear about bands rehearsing a Poison song and I would think Why the EFF are they playing Poison?! and then I would think You suck that bad that you have to effing practice Poison?! LOL Now-a-days Im more like Lets make sure we have the ending down to Nothing but a Good Time. Any freaking way! I admit this is a long-winded blog and I warned you that it was self indulgent, so you only have yourself to blame if you read this whole thing and feel like youve wasted 5 minutes of your life! See you tomorrow night at Mickeys! Well be playing 3 Poison songs (that we practiced for hours) by the way!
Posted on: Sat, 05 Apr 2014 03:45:37 +0000
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