"i'm in a band"

As a lover of music, this one often gets me. I remember being in high school and having a crush on the kinda dorky but cute guy that played in the band that covered Rush. Then in college it was the dreadlocked guitar player whose (ex?) girlfriend, now wife, started stalking me. ("He told me that you guys broke up -- I think it is him you have a problem with, not me!" Yikes, that was scary.) Various crushes from a distance -- Eddie Vedder to Ben Harper to Pete Yorn. But lately I've met a few guys over 30 who advertise the fact that they are in bands and I think, that's cool, he has a day job and is in a band. Well, not so fast. One guy who I recently met was in a band and proud of it. "What kind of music do you play," I ask innocently. "Well, we are an REM cover band. Strictly the first two albums." What?!? You are in a band that self-limits to a total of like 17 songs? That struck me as odd, but not as odd as the fact that this very same individual was once a "fruitatarian." I'm not kidding.

Then on a very low-key "date" in San Francisco, I met another one of these guys with a day job and a band (and a diversified portfolio, he described in his profile). We had pretty significant overlap in our tastes in music, which I always take as a good sign. He enlightened me to the bounty of music samples available on MySpace and told me the name of his band, I should check it out. "I'm not sure how much we'll be playing in the near future, though," he warned. "The lead singer is thinking about taking a break. We've gotten some pretty crappy reviews lately." Uh-oh, that doesn't sound good. Sure enough, when I get back to San Diego and check out the band, I can't believe my ears. The total resurgence of bad 80's big hair metal, without a hint of irony. Yi-ikes! That was a little scary. He was a nice guy though. But lives in San Francisco, so whatever.

Someday my Jeff Tweedy will come....