Seven Things I Learned From Being in Garage Bands
I was in a few bands throughout my early twenties. Not good bands — combined, we played a grand total of one show, and it was a friend’s graduation party — but bands nonetheless. Obviously, they didn’t bring me fame or money. If they made me a better musician, it’s only marginally. Yet, like most things we try in our twenties, I learned quite a bit from them, be it about drama, about my friends, about making art, or even about myself. Here’s the seven greatest lessons I learned from my time as a musician.
1. It’s Hard to Invest When You’re Not Contributing
Okay, maybe calling myself a musician is being generous. I can play a little bass, but I learned to play in the first place because my friend Dave wanted to start a band and didn’t have enough friends who played instruments, so he decided to make some. He started out teaching me guitar, but I was having trouble learning chords, so we swapped me over to an instrument where I only had to worry about one string at a time (this, of course, did wonders for my confidence).
Throughout my time playing music I got fairly decent on my bass. I finally developed a sense of rhythm for the first time in my very, very white life. I learned to read basic tab, meaning I could look up songs I loved on the internet and learn to play along, as well as tab out our own original songs to help remember them. But I’m not someone who can just listen to a song and figure out the notes. I have almost no understanding of any kind of music theory. And worst of all, I never figured out how to write a song.
Instead, Dave wrote my bass parts for me (Dave on guitar and myself on bass were the constant in every band I was in). Often this would mean separate band practices just for the two of us so I could learn a song before we went in to hash the rest of it out with everyone else, and then things grinding to a halt so Dave could revise my parts and teach the changes to me as the song evolved throughout the process. I would try to join in when the rest of the band would just jam, trying to improvise a song, but I never had the skill to keep up, and often just sat down until they figured out what the song was actually going to be.
It isn’t fun being the band’s weak link, being the performing member of the band who doesn’t actually have a hand in shaping the songs. Don't get me wrong, being able to play an instrument at all made me ecstatic, and I had a blast playing music with my friends. But I didn’t get to be a part of putting them together like everyone else was, and I didn’t have the personal investment in our original songs I could have if I had been involved in the songwriting. They weren’t mine. I think I missed out on one of the most artistically fulfilling parts of the whole process.
2. You’re Never Going to Be Happy With Your Band Name
There are very few good band names out there. I’m looking at my record collection and am, frankly, shocked by how many are complete nonsense (What does Jimmy Eat World even mean?). Others made sense at one point, but couldn’t grow with the band (The Wonder Years didn’t initially plan to be a “serious” band, and naming yourself after a sitcom reflects that; The Get Up Kids is cute when you’re 17 but not in your forties). A name like Weezer is silly, but at least it’s a kind of silly that fits the band’s style, for better or for worse.
I think most of us don’t tend to notice this, or at least put it out of our heads rather quickly, cause we often encounter these bands when they’re already established and have given the name a reputation, a life of its own. Having to come up with a name from scratch, though, and then be good enough to make up for it if it’s a dumb one, is an intense kind of pressure.
Both bands I was in probably spent as much time trying to think of good names as we did actually playing music, and out of the dozens of band names we had, I hated just about every single one of them. My first band eventually settled on “My Pet Rock,” which I remember actively cringing at every time I heard it. Our second’s final name ended up being “Better Off Nameless,” and if that sounds like we just got sick of trying to find a name we all liked, well, that’s because that’s exactly what happened. The only name we used that I could tolerate was “My Apology,” which we stole from a Get Up Kids song and eventually abandoned because it sounded very slow and “emo,” and at the time we were playing faster pop-punk stuff.
Anyway, whenever it came time to choose a band name I agreed to the least objectionable option just to move things along (just like the American political system, heyo!).
3. Playing Music Is Much More Fun Than Writing Music
The most fun I had as part of a band was late in the My Pet Rock days, after we had put together a five song set we could play through with little to no trouble, one we would kick off and end our practices with. Those were the moments I lived for, when we could just play music, song after song, without having to worry about anything else.
Actually writing the songs, though, was a lot less fun. Admittedly, yes, part of that was because I was less involved in the process than everyone else. But tinkering with the songs always means downtime for someone. If Dave was helping me with a bassline, it meant our drummer was sitting around doing nothing. If Dave and our drummer were trying to compromise on a drumbeat, it meant I was sitting around doing nothing. But I couldn’t just wander off or turn to another activity during that downtime, because I needed to be ready to give my opinion on what everyone else was doing at a moment’s notice. I spent more time at band practice in a state of limbo than I did doing anything else, and that was excruciating.
I guess I’m just not a fine detail kind of guy (except for when it comes to writing, or at least I hope). I didn’t want to sit around and spend 45 minutes trying to figure out if this one snare hit should be a half second faster or not, I just wanted to play the damn song already! My impatience wasn’t new information, but I did learn through this process how much work actually goes into a song, an album, a live show — not just thought and effort, but the sheer amount of time sunk into it, by each member of the band even if they often aren’t directly doing anything. I hope that’s a perspective I can always keep in mind.
4. Band Practice Isn’t Interesting For Anyone Outside the Band. Sometimes It’s Even Scary!
Our second band was able to practice regularly at our drummer’s house; he was older than Dave and I, with his own place, without too many neighbors, with plenty of space, and his wife was an old friend of mine, so she didn’t mind us hanging around. Our first band, though, wasn’t as fortunate. That drummer lived in a townhouse, so no practice there; we could play at Dave’s, but didn’t have space to leave our gear, and hauling a drum kit over there every week just wasn’t an option. Enter: the storage unit.
I had grand dreams for a big ol’ storage unit hangout pad with a couch, like something out of a 90s Nickelodeon sitcom, but our combined funds could barely afford the smallest unit that could just hold our gear and nothing else. The lady running the place was incredibly kind to us, though, and essentially gave us free reign of the facility, allowing us to set up our gear in big open areas in the facility hallways and practice whenever we felt like it. It was, quite honestly, a fantastic experience. Random people would wander into our practice and have fun conversations with us. We’d have races through the hallways on the pushcarts. We were still pretty young, none of us living on our own, so it became our own private place where we could just be ourselves, one of those magical coming of age kind of moments I’m always chasing with every essence of my being.
Because of that we ended up bringing quite a few friends there, and they had fun running around the storage unit, but band practice was an afterthought. Most would watch us play a song or two, then wander off or read or, worst of all, get frustrated that we weren’t focusing solely on them. Nobody wanted to watch us sit there and argue about songs or re-do the same verse thirty times in an hour, and they shouldn’t have! We always wanted to show off that we were in a band, but practice isn’t a spectator sport, shows are, and the pressure to keep guests entertained while also trying to work on our set wasn’t productive for anyone. I’m not saying practices should be strictly closed door, but I don’t think they work as parties.
One time the storage facility straight-up scared a friend away. A younger friend of mine I considered like a little sister (her parents were friends with mine) wanted to come see us play, so her parents came to drop her off, but upon walking into the storage facility essentially had a coronary and refused to let her stay; I guess because it was just a big empty semi-public place with no “adult” presence? Her mother was apologetic to the point of embarrassment as she tried to explain herself, but I cut her off and just let her go. Dave was frustrated, I think taking it personally; I thought it was hilarious.
5. Conflict Resolution Skills Are More Important Than Musical Skills
If you’re in a band you’ll spend a lot of time playing music. You’ll spend far more time, though, arguing and/or debating with your bandmates. Our second band got along fairly well, but we still spent more time debating with each other about band names, song titles, or trying to hash out details of our songs than we actually did playing; it’s just the nature of the beast when you’ve got a bunch of different people trying to create something together. The first band, though, was a true teeming hotbed of drama that pushed our underdeveloped conflict resolution skills far past their limits.
There was a clash of egos between Dave and our drummer, who was the 17-year-old younger brother of a friend of ours. He was also a musical prodigy, incredibly talented at drums, guitar, bass, piano, and singing (and probably more). He was clearly the most talented person in the band. He also hated punk of any kind, which under any other circumstance would be perfectly fine; the problem is that he was in a pop-punk band with us, so the clashing started quickly. Dave recruited him to play drums solely because we didn’t know any other drummers; I think our drummer only joined because he had nobody else to play with at the time, despite, I think, viewing himself a bit above us and the kind of music we were writing. He wanted to do much more than just drum (despite being terrific at it, it wasn't his greatest passion); in our five song set we put together for our one live show he came out from behind the drums to sing lead on one acoustic song, with Dave backing him. It was the most peaceful of our compromises.
I’m not trying to take either side here, really. I think Dave is also a pretty talented musician in his own right, especially good at improvising new riffs on the fly, and his voice is perfect for punk; He could occasionally be bossy, but I don’t fault him for having a certain vision for the band he put together and feeling threatened when another member tries to take control with a totally opposite vision. But I also understand our drummer just joining for a chance to play music with other people and ultimately feeling unfulfilled and underutilized, even if he often expressed this in condescending ways. Looking back at it, I don't think there was ever going to be any compromise that would satisfy everyone; the break-up was inevitable, and we shouldn’t have fought it for so long. Instead, though, we fought it tooth and nail (in fact, this drummer even briefly joined our second band as a keyboardist, and the same exact problems began again), which just meant that Dave and our drummer spent most of our practices arguing over the dumbest things; the band truly wasn’t big enough for the both of them.
As the third member it was theoretically my job to resolve these arguments, but I was so terrified of confrontation that I refused and usually wandered off when they started fighting until they finally tired each other out. Even if conflict wasn’t my Kryptonite, all I wanted to do was play music, and I resented them spending all their time fighting with each other instead. In retrospect, we were all young and dumb, but like most things that happen in our teens and twenties, I learned a lot from it. Confrontation and conflict sucks, but it will continue on indefinitely unless someone speaks up. Sometimes failure or walking away is the only option, and that’s not inherently a bad thing. Working as a group will always mean disagreements and compromises, but if you can put together a group with similar goals, who enjoy each other’s company, then your disagreements should at least be pleasant, and you’ll create an environment where people feel comfortable speaking up both when they have an issue and when they have an idea or opinion on how to resolve it.
6. Recording Is A Major Step — Take Your Time and Do Your Research
I forget why our first band was so eager to record. I think our goal was to have an EP to sell online and when we played shows — cause we were ready to sell out from the start, man — but I also think we knew that with our ages it would be harder to find places we could even play (no bars), and thought we needed to have recorded music to get our name out there. Regardless, this meant that our focus for a long time was on recording, a process that can be arduous for even big bands, but which was doubly so for us.
We tracked down some guy who had built a professional recording studio onto the front of his house and charged rates that, while stretching our budget, we could afford if we only recorded one song at a time over a period of months. For me, it was a fun process at first simply because it was something different and new; it felt like stepping into the big leagues. That also made it incredibly intimidating, though. I definitely felt a bit judged by the guy who ran the studio — although to be fair, I felt judged by everyone most of my life — and I think we as a unit had difficulty explaining to him our “vision” and exactly how we wanted our songs to sound, and struggled to compromise between that and his ideas for the songs. The finished products were also never what we were hoping for just production and quality-wise; while far better than anything we could have done on our own, the final mastered songs still didn’t sound like the ones you’d hear on the radio or a real album. I don’t think we quite realized how much money it takes to get songs that sound so crisp; we were getting exactly what we paid for, but that difference between our dreams and reality made recording more and more frustrating the longer we tried.
Recording also exaggerated and heightened the problems and tensions that already existed for us in the band. With only one member recording at a time, it played out like an even longer, duller band practice; I wasn’t playing but needed to be there to give my opinion once or twice an hour, even though after the sixtieth take on the same verse I honestly just didn’t have an opinion anymore, and by that point every take sounded the same to me anyway, in fact, all sound had begun to blend together and swim through my bleary brain like an aural phantom. Recording, for me, meant sitting around bored for hours, and I came to dread it. Our drummer insisted on bringing friends to our recording sessions even though we knew how bored they got at practice, and without the fun of the storage park, they got restless far faster. Bringing our own money into the equation raised the stakes, leading to even grander arguments between our drummer and Dave, often in front of the producer. It was a bad scene all around.
Our second band ended up recording two songs in the basement studio of a friend of that drummer’s, and while both the process and the final product were better, it was still excruciatingly long and boring; I brought books that time. Our first band never did finish our EP, and I don’t even know if copies of the songs we did finish still exist. Perhaps on an old hard drive somewhere? Clearly, money well spent.
7. You Have To Be Able To Stand Behind Your Material
Dave’s favorite band is blink-182. Apparently, he’d been dreaming all his life of having a band structured the same as theirs, with two lead singers who both wrote and sang their own songs and occasionally provided harmony or contrasting vocals on the other singer’s tracks. Somehow, this meant that I got recruited into being the band’s second lead singer. I didn’t mind it — I like singing and can carry a tune okay, as long as it’s within a certain limited range — but I don’t exactly exude frontman charisma. I also had difficulty learning how to sing and play at the same time. (All this added to our drummer’s frustrations at feeling underused as well, knowing he’s a better singer than either of us and was the only one not singing, which was true but still insulting.) The most difficult aspect of all this, though, was the fact that, as we discussed, I can’t write a song to save my life.
It isn’t just the musical aspect; despite being a pretty decent writer, all things considered, I’ve never been able to wrap my brain around the art of writing poetry or lyrics. I just don't think my brain is built that way. So Dave would write my lead songs too, and I really didn’t like the lyrics he wrote for me. I couldn’t relate to most of them, and some were downright embarrassing (I think there was one about underwear I straight-up refused to sing?). It showed in my delivery — I couldn’t commit to these songs — but I was so afraid of hurting Dave’s feelings that I couldn’t admit it until he straight up forced me to. To his credit as both a musician and a friend, from that point on he started writing songs from a perspective he thought I’d better understand, and it worked; he found lyrics I could relate to, and I was able to sing them with conviction.
Of course, I still wasn’t a natural frontman, and in our second band I gladly took a step back to just contributing some back-up and harmonies. Moreover, I was always slightly embarrassed by some of our lyrics, to the point where it held me back from advertising our band on my social media or telling new friends about it. If I was in a band I should’ve been gushing about it, not introducing it with qualifiers.
Ultimately, this experience helped form and solidify many of the opinions about music, and even life, that I still hold. I think the key to good music — nay, the key to good art — is sincerity and conviction. If you’re going to bring a piece of art to life and put it out into this world, make sure it’s something you can stand behind. It’s hard enough already to be an artist, a worker, a human being — don’t make it harder by trying to sell things or ideas you don’t believe in.
AND SINCE YOU HAD TO SIT THROUGH ALL THAT TALK OF MY BAND…
…as a reward, you get our second band’s one and only music video.
Okay, “reward” might be a bit much, but it’s not self-promotion if the band hasn’t existed for eight years, right? Honestly I think this one strikes a good balance between “actually maybe a little bit fun to listen to and watch” but also “definitely very much embarrassing for Spencer to share,” which I know is what I would want if I were you guys. (As far as I know, no audio or video from my first band have survived on the internet, not that I’d share them even if they had. It would just be painful for us all.)
Anyway, this is a song called “Hometown Hero” from the period when we were named “My Apology.” We recorded this song and filmed the video in the basement recording studio belonging to a friend of our drummer, and created it for a school project of Dave’s. Revisiting it for the first time in a while, it actually got stuck in my head for a few days, so take that as you will.
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin about his relationship with the stories he loves. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!