Despite not liking any of Dolly Parton's other stuff, Jolene is one of my favorite songs. Ever. Here is a great article about the history behind the classic song.

This is kind of the sequential time line of my tenure in the band scene.

Looking back maybe you can say we were pushed aside by the building wave of Grunge but at the time it didn’t dawn on me that it was happening. Aerosmith, The Rolling Stones, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Ozzy, Kiss, etc, were established acts that were surviving fine in spite of the new Grunge sound. The last band I was in, Ballistic, wasn’t really a “hair-band” like Dokken, Ratt, Cinderella and Poison. The early 90's was the dethroning period of these hair bands specifically due to Grunge. I thought we were more like Ozzy+Lynyrd Skynyrd+Led Zeppelin, etc. I hoped that we would be some kind of hybrid heavy/rock/metal with an original musical component, since original songs were my goal... and of the people who went through the revolving door of the band.

It was hard to keep a band together as people/musicians were very unreliable. Drugs (pot, crack, alcohol) had a major part in it as we lost a couple of good singers and a guitarist to booze and crack. One singer brandished a gun in a bar and went to jail — well guess what — no more singer! A week later Atlantic Records called me at our house and I talked with an A&R guy who wanted to come and see our next show. Imagine the disappointment when I had to tell him we had just lost our singer! Another singer got mouthy while drunk, with his girlfriend's ex-husband, and got the crap badly kicked out of him which put him in the hospital. And youth was another problem, as one guitarist couldn’t hold a job which meant he couldn’t afford a car to get to practice. He even at times hocked his guitar for money just to get by. Other members quit because they thought they’d have a better chance in another band that was more popular, or had a demo CD or was playing more shows. Yet, in another band, we lost two members at once because the bassist and female singer had a drunken one-night-stand. The bassist was “in love” after that night but she (the singer) regretted it and didn’t want anything to do with him. She quit first to avoid him and then he quit because he felt like a jerk and had his heart broken.

It was a big pain loading up all our gear from our practice shed, then driving to the gig site, unloading it all, setting it all up just to play 30 minutes (maybe an hour) if we were lucky. If our gig was in Seattle we had to deal with parking and the possibility of getting our cars broken into. The biggest name we ever played with is when we opened for Eric Burdon (of The Animals) at the Ballard Firehouse. Also notable was when we played a couple private parties that were fairly large. But 90% of our gigs were on week nights for small crowds of 15–30 people. When going through all the effort to get yourself up there on stage and then to only play for a few people, I seriously started asking myself if this was really worth it?

About the last two years of playing in bands during the “Seattle Feeding Frenzy”, the clubs starting charging money from the bands to play in their club, which became known as “Pay to Play”. This was because the “Seattle Sound” had already launched and clubs knew that people would come out to see all the new Seattle band hopefuls. So why not charge the bands since there was a hungry, craving audience and a gluten of bands wanting to ride the Seattle scene and hopefully get discovered? The clubs (and bands) knew many record companies were coming to Seattle to set up offices in order to scout the scene for “Seattle Fodder”. “Pay to Play” was executed by two different methods, 1) Getting charged by the club anywhere from $50–$250 and 2) Having to sell your own tickets. The first method was when the club would give you X amount of branded tix worth... say $100. If you wanted to break even you had to sell about 80% of those tix to your friends and anybody else who would come. The last 20% you were able to sell would be your profit. The tix you didn’t sell were the ones you essentially “bought” yourself. So if you only sold $65 dollars worth of tix, then you had to pay the difference of $35 dollars to play. The second method wasn’t as bad. Here you'd get a bunch of tix, for example for $5 dollars each and if you sold 20 then you made $100. The cheap clubs let you do method #2 because if you brought in the audience, the club hoped to sell them a lot of drinks.

These two methods got old very fast if you didn’t have a promotional manager or friends who would spread your poster all over town because you can only get the same 30 or 40 friends to come to your gigs so many times every other week before they get tired of your songs!

Record companies would “sign” 100 bands. Each band would get some money to put together a demo. The band may not be aware but they are charged for the engineer, producer and studio time and fees, etc. The record company will then listen and do “test market analysis” on some of them to find the five or ten with star-power that they want to keep and they cut the other 90 or 95 of them loose. The bands have to pay back all the money the record company fronted them even though they don't stay signed. They sometimes can shop the demo and get picked up by another label. And of course, with the internet just coming on board back then, some were starting to sell their records themselves. They gathered up all the groups they think have, then after more analysis they keep only those they want.

As noted above, working with so many flakes and slackers, I was the one who played referee when band fights broke out, did most of the band bookings, sent out the demo tapes to record labels, arranged band practice days, and called the members when they didn't show up. All this really wore me out but it did give me a lot of experience in the semi-pro side of the business!

Lastly, but not least, all this experience helped me survive, learn and flourish in my recent 4-year stint in a prison ministry and worship band. I'm now interviewing for another new ministry band that will do music geared for a wider spectrum of youth. We'll be doing stuff like Staind, Trapt, Three Days Grace, and Breaking Benjamin. All the ear-training I've had has made it possible to listen to and learn this modern rock sound of today (and I “like” it). I'm looking forward to the future and wouldn't be able to do it without all of my past musical experience!

P.S. I think my interest in music rubbed off on Randy a bit as he started building his music library fairly young (about eight or nine years old) while I was doing the same and playing in bands.

EZO baby!!!

Jonathan Chase (Oort Kuiper) is combining two of my favorite things: science and hip-hop. This interesting article gives you a little scoop of what he's up to. Here you can view his rap about astrobiology. Enjoy.

Last Saturday I saw Big Business open up for The Melvins at Grumpy's in downtown. I was psyched for this show weeks before I even went and I'm happy to say that I wasn't let down the slightest.

I'll admit, I went to the show solely for Big Business. I've never been a big Melvins fan — not for any particular reason — I just don't really listen to them. It might be worthwhile to note that I have seen The Melvins live once before when they opened for Tool on their Ænima tour at Seattle's KeyArena. If I remember correctly, they didn't survive the hostility of those Tool fans and were subsequently booed off-stage (or possibly left prematurely and bitterly on their own accord) while people shouted "GO HOME, SIDESHOW BOB MOTHERFUCKER" — of course referring to King Buzzo's hair. Either way, obscenities were flying from both on- and off-stage. I don't remember much of the music they played.

Anyways, last night was so much more enlightening and enjoyable than before. I came out interested in hearing more of The Melvins. I think I'll start with the past two albums, Nude With Boots and (A) Senile Animal, since those ones mark the beginning of Jared Warren and Coady Willis of Big Business becoming sustaining members of The Melvins.

As for the show, Big Business pummeled noise into my brain so sweetly that I didn't even care I was setting my ears up for a three-day ringing session as I stood next to the speakers. They played a lot of songs I was hoping to hear, opening with Hands Up which I felt was a smart choice to get the crowd excited. They also played Start Your Digging, Grounds For Divorce, Easter Romantic, The Drift, and others. The only song they failed to play from my list was O.G. But it didn't matter what song they played, I couldn't take my eyes off of Coady Willis' drumsticks. He drums with such ferocity that it's hard not to be in awe — especially when he's drumming next to Dale Crover as part of The Melvins.

I've never seen a band with two drummers but it was nothing but awesome! The drum sets were positioned so the toms faced each other which allowed Coady and Dale to make eye contact with the other and feed from each other. At times they were banging the same beats and it was like looking at a mirror. Other times they alternated and taunted one another sparking friendly mini-drum-duels. Definitely the highlight of the entire show for me.

So, I guess I don't have to rely on shoddy memories from the last time I saw The Melvins anymore because both bands played extremely well and gave me my $16 worth.

I'll write a new review and get back on track.
I promise. [See]