..we had scheduled what i thought would be the last of the auditions for this past tuesday, and the guy came in and we had just hammered through a couple of songs when karen (far and away the biggest protagonist of the doomed guitarist who we were trying to replace) came in and handed darryl the phone, who then called me out to the garage and handed me the phone, at which point it became obvious what had happened here…
…we’re in the rehearsal room, blaring away, and he calls on the phone and hears us in the other room.
the irony is that we were gonna discuss, after we’d sent this guy on his way, whether or not to fire him before this weekends’ gig or not, but he managed to beat us to the punch.
but i had a call from him on my machine when i got home, as did quin, and he had called darryl twice that day asking for directions to a gig that he already had the address for – i don’t know what that was about, but he usually doesn’t make that kind of effort to track people down…strange.
anyway, i tried to get a few words in, but from the point that i told him that we were auditioning guitar players, he didn’t hear a word i said. he was too busy venting and making sure i knew that none of us were anywhere near as good as we seemed to think we were.
i’d beg to differ, personally, but that’s me.
there’s tons of derogatory shit i could say, but i’ll simplify it to this…to just try and relay the experience…
playing in a band with him was like taking a shower every day and putting on the same pair of shit-stained underwear…no matter how much work you put into keeping the rest of your body clean and presentable, you’re always gonna smell like ass, because that component of your hygiene never changes, so all the other effort you put into not smelling like ass is wasted.
anyway, that incident kinda put a hamper on the rest of the audition, which didn’t go particularly well, and we spent some time talking about the events of the day afterward, to include a little mini-tirade from karen about how we should feel bad about how things went down…karen was shawns’ most staunch defender through this whole thing, which i attribute to the fact that she’s usually three sheets to the wind by the time soundcheck is done, so her perception of things might be a little slanted.
i do think, however, that everyone in the room who is actually in the band was relieved when it was over. i know i was. quin and darryl didn’t show it outwardly, but i think they’ve been waiting for the bleeding to stop for a while now. barry requires no real discussion – he’s had shawns’ number for some time. i think that for a long time i had faith that he’d get inspired, motivated, that something would spark him to putting forth some effort not to suck, but he had more than ample time to show us something, and he chose not to.
darryl called him prior to last weekends’ gig and confronted him about a lot of the stuff that we’ve tried to deal with, and his response was to come out on saturday and suck more than ever.
so i refuse to carry guilt over a fate that he bought and paid for.
plus, he has shit that belongs to me that i’ll never see again, so i’m in the red here.
i gotta stop yakkin’ about this, though.
i’ve been asked to learn a shitload of aunt pat songs on bass in less than a week…i don’t see that happening quite the way i would have liked for it to. i have two separate rehearsals scheduled for tomorrow night, and one of them has to go. i don’t know what i’m gonna do about that, and i’m kinda on the fence about whether or not i even wanna do this aunt pat thing this weekend anyway…
that band has enough baggage to carry Elton John’s 1974 tour wardrobe.
but they’re fuckin’ brilliant…when they’re diggin’ each other.
let’s see, what else…i have a video editing project that i really, really need to get done tomorrow, i have michelle nagy tracks on my adat upstairs that i need to work on, and i have a visit scheduled with keith amos this weekend to do the musical necks project on my two telecasters….
and it’s after midnight, and time for me to grab some ZZZ’s….