Personal

Sometimes I listen to that song, and my head explodes a little. In a good way.

So, for those of you just tuning in, or who haven’t been paying attention, I am in a band. I know, I know, it’s a total douche thing to say. “Dude, I’m in a fuckin’ BAND!” (and much throwing up of the horns. Not, like, vomiting horns. That would hurt. I mean like the hand gesture. Do Catholics throw up a halo?).

But it’s true. A while ago, a musically obsessed friend of mine got a group of his buddies together, each having a vague musical inkling, and formed a garage band. That played in his basement, because he had no garage. He was desperate to get us into full-on rock and/or roll status, mostly because his wife was clearly cheating on him with Collective Soul. True story.

I had grown up with a smidgeon of musical talent. My Dad was one of those people you want to smack who can effortlessly play any song he hears on his guitar, by ear, with no ability to read music. He would actually improvise Spanish guitar solos in the middle of playing Led Zepplin, so you can see what I mean. I never really had his ability (if it was genetic, I should point out he’s my step-father. So I didn’t get it in the blood.), and I never picked up the knack of finger-plucking. So I was a passable rhythm guitarist, and by “passable”, I mean that my friends were nice enough to not inform me of how much we all knew I sucked.

Other than that, I had played trumpet in high school, which doesn’t translate well to the rock milieu. Which I don’t know if anyone has ever referred to by those specific words, so in a way, I’m a pioneer. At least, according to my daughter’s definition, which is simply “doing something first”.

So, my music-obsessed friend made a suggestion. In much better language then I’m going to use here, he suggested I try bass guitar, because the field of bass players is strewn with half-assed guitarists who were never going to get any better.

Obviously, it was a perfect fit.

Now, I’m not that much better than I was at rhythm guitar, but the beauty of bass is that with the right song, you really don’t have to be. There’s a lot of camouflage in rock music. Provided the lead vocals and lead guitarist are decent, you tend not to notice bass fuck ups.

Shortly after that, that band broke up, because my music-obsessed friend was trying to use the band to heal his marriage, which, hey, nice try bud. But that ship had sailed, with “Gel” blaring loudly from the speakers.

And we formed a new band, which has morphed through a couple of iterations and names, and finally settled on “The Finger Guns” (Don’t click on the link, as there’s no page there yet. We just wanted to keep the domain.), which is all kinds of awesome, and once more I try to hide my bass inadequacy behind the lead guitarist, and the lead singer.

Of course, bear in mind that I am also the lead singer. Yeah, I’m a little confused on that one too.

We do have a little problem that I’m not sure how most bands overcome. Y’see, we’re a group of geek dudes who find toilet humour funny, and snicker at emo rock. So we’re finding it difficult to write original songs that aren’t flat out comedies. So far, we’ve written a song about his wife destroying Japan (“Matron of Honour”) and a thinly disguised bowling-metaphor-for-sex song (“Three Fingers Deep”). We’re working on songs about cannibalistic babies, and one simply called “Awesome Sauce”. And we improvise stuff about pubic hair and evil clowns.

Which begs the question: How the hell do guys write meaningful lyrics? Seriously? If I busted out a love song, about how beautiful and angelic my wife was, I would be laughed out of the room. And yet, rock stars write deep songs all the time. How do you stop the fucking giggles from ruining the song creation process?

And this isn’t idle speculation. Any input would be welcomed.

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On a side note, I’m thinking about trying a little experiment with my other domain, MrJones.ca. Since I’m basically abandoning that blog, I thought a nice way to get some use out of it was to make it a link blog. For photos or videos or podcasts on the go, using the Posterous service. Once I get it set up, it should update in my Twitter feed, on Facebook, and everywhere else. We’ll see how it works.