Bye-Bye Band

When I was in college (the first time) I was in a band. We called ourselves Eleanor Blushes and played a hard-to-peg brand of music that was all over the joint -- blues, rock, butt-rock, grunge, disco, jazz. You name it, we played it. (Badly at first, but we got pretty decent by the end.)

Part of the reason we blew so much in the beginning is because we cluttered the sonic landscape with three guitar players, a bass player and three "lead" singers. Dude! At the most we should have had two guitar players and one singer. In a word, we lacked focus. (Okay that's three words, and that's my point.) Compounding matters, at times I fancied myself a "tortured musician" and wanted our lyrics and songs to be dark and artistic. The reality was if we wanted to play gigs in Provo (Utah, not Spain) we had to be a college house party band. That meant uptempo crowd pleasers that "had a good beat and that people could dance to." In retrospect, we probably should have called the band "Eleanor Schizophrenic."

Reason two: our first drummer couldn't keep time. Please note that this is not a good quality in a drummer. When he got married and moved to Texas, we all secretly rejoiced. Wherever he is, I hope he's doing well (in a steady 4/4 kind of way).

Finally, we had some creative differences. As the lead singer and rhythm guitarist, I was the de facto leader and made the song choices (hey, I had to sing them). The lead guitarist never really got what I was aiming for, sonically speaking. I tired of telling him that he wouldn't be playing that "Freebird-esque" solo for eight minutes. And he tired of me bossing him around. Eventually, he started another band in SLC that was heavy duty butt-rock. I heard him play a couple shows. Not bad if you're into Poison, Aerosmith, crap, etc.

So it went. EB eventually evolved into a three piece, then back to a four piece. We changed our name to Kent, then to Vaughn, then to Spartacus (turns out the Swedes have the corner on Kent and Vaughn, damn them)! Spartacus stuck, although I got the feeling the bass player never really dug it.

We started playing less frequently. Then we only played on special occasions. Now we don't play at all. Kind of sad, but that's what should happen to college bands, I think. At least really unfocused ones with drummers who can't keep time. Hey, we can't all be the Rolling Stones, who will probably be coming out on stage soon with the help of walkers, can we?