The greatest feeling ever
When you're a musician, it always seems to a certain extent that you want to share your skills and your artisticism (that's totally a word from now on) with other like-minded and like-arted individuals. I'm of course talking about starting a band, possibly the coolest thing that a person can do at our age or even younger. See, when you're a kid, you don't need to worry about the restrictions that come with being in a band that people older than ourselves face. It doesn't become so much about money when you're a kid (and if it does, it'll lead to your downfall, which I'll explain later), so you're just worried about being with good musicians and making good music. And if that's not the case, then it's still a great experience.
It's something that I can't explain that well, since you really need to experience it to feel it. I guess that this being the greatest feeling ever (as is implied by the title) is only applicalbe when you enjoy being in that band. It may come if you can capture the magic early on and keep that going. I'll give you an example of that going horribly wrong, which is something that most people in our grade seemed to witness during the 7th and 8th grade years of the class of 2007.
As many know, I was once in a band known as "Tagg". It was started in the latter part of 2002, my seventh-grade year, with another person in our grade named Scott Warner (hopefully he won't kill me for putting his name here). I'll basically be explaining more or less what happened through my perspective from this point onwards, so if you want a less biased perspective (but still written with my skillfull hands), go to www.geocities.com/taggrocks and click on the biography link. Anyways, we started out, having to do changes with musicians who either weren't dedicated or sucked, until we got Ross Madsen to play with us. Ross, being a great bassist and my best friend, was a perfect fit for this new trio. We played three covers at a talent show a few weeks later and, in a few ways, burned that motha' down. I don't think it was so great now, but apparently it was. So, if we'd have stayed that way but continued to write our own songs, I think we would've been fine. Unfortunately, egos began to run high within the band, and all of a sudden we began having clashing ideas. Scott let in one of the other people who were in it before Ross, who was not good at all (see biograpy for his name), and we played another show and sucked horrendously. After dropping that kid, we trudged on into 8th grade, and it was now that the tensions ran high, since I wanted to take a break from playing shows and actually write good songs, while Scott wanted instead to play a lot of shows and make a lot of money no matter how good our songs were. There's more to the story, including the part where we suck at another show, get two more members, suck again, and eventually diffuse. The point is, we were a band that didn't have a lot of skills to start with, and it didn't hurt us until we started letting it get to the point where the ambitions and our attitude exceeded our skills, and digressing opinions led to eventual loss of communication and diffuse...ment. Tagg is now a newer band, featuring Scott and one of the latter two members of the old Tagg Sean Fahey, as well as two other guys. They're better than we were, and you can listen to some of their tunes on their purevolume page.
I guess the moral here is, don't get caught up in disagreeing with people (if you can avoid it) and just play with the people you love playing with. Don't let whatever happens in a band destroy who you are or who you're friends with, since usually bands are just groups with people to fill every position. If you manage to get to that point where you have a tight bond with the people in the band, then that's great, but until then, don't worry too much about where your band goes, just making sure it sounds the way you like it. Only then will being in a band be the greatest feeling ever. I highly suggest that you all start bands (or learn to play an instrument other than guitar, which everyone plays today, and then form a band when you're good) just so you can experience what I have and, then, understand that it is truly a great feeling.
P.S. If you're into local bands, check out Kings in the Back Row @ purevolume when you're done with Tagg. They're a friend's band from Canton and, despite pretty bad recording quality, they're great. If you need to get to purevolume, click the link on the top of my page that says "Sick Music". Before leaving comments about the content of this entry, do this, and then also leave comments about the two bands.
It's something that I can't explain that well, since you really need to experience it to feel it. I guess that this being the greatest feeling ever (as is implied by the title) is only applicalbe when you enjoy being in that band. It may come if you can capture the magic early on and keep that going. I'll give you an example of that going horribly wrong, which is something that most people in our grade seemed to witness during the 7th and 8th grade years of the class of 2007.
As many know, I was once in a band known as "Tagg". It was started in the latter part of 2002, my seventh-grade year, with another person in our grade named Scott Warner (hopefully he won't kill me for putting his name here). I'll basically be explaining more or less what happened through my perspective from this point onwards, so if you want a less biased perspective (but still written with my skillfull hands), go to www.geocities.com/taggrocks and click on the biography link. Anyways, we started out, having to do changes with musicians who either weren't dedicated or sucked, until we got Ross Madsen to play with us. Ross, being a great bassist and my best friend, was a perfect fit for this new trio. We played three covers at a talent show a few weeks later and, in a few ways, burned that motha' down. I don't think it was so great now, but apparently it was. So, if we'd have stayed that way but continued to write our own songs, I think we would've been fine. Unfortunately, egos began to run high within the band, and all of a sudden we began having clashing ideas. Scott let in one of the other people who were in it before Ross, who was not good at all (see biograpy for his name), and we played another show and sucked horrendously. After dropping that kid, we trudged on into 8th grade, and it was now that the tensions ran high, since I wanted to take a break from playing shows and actually write good songs, while Scott wanted instead to play a lot of shows and make a lot of money no matter how good our songs were. There's more to the story, including the part where we suck at another show, get two more members, suck again, and eventually diffuse. The point is, we were a band that didn't have a lot of skills to start with, and it didn't hurt us until we started letting it get to the point where the ambitions and our attitude exceeded our skills, and digressing opinions led to eventual loss of communication and diffuse...ment. Tagg is now a newer band, featuring Scott and one of the latter two members of the old Tagg Sean Fahey, as well as two other guys. They're better than we were, and you can listen to some of their tunes on their purevolume page.
I guess the moral here is, don't get caught up in disagreeing with people (if you can avoid it) and just play with the people you love playing with. Don't let whatever happens in a band destroy who you are or who you're friends with, since usually bands are just groups with people to fill every position. If you manage to get to that point where you have a tight bond with the people in the band, then that's great, but until then, don't worry too much about where your band goes, just making sure it sounds the way you like it. Only then will being in a band be the greatest feeling ever. I highly suggest that you all start bands (or learn to play an instrument other than guitar, which everyone plays today, and then form a band when you're good) just so you can experience what I have and, then, understand that it is truly a great feeling.
P.S. If you're into local bands, check out Kings in the Back Row @ purevolume when you're done with Tagg. They're a friend's band from Canton and, despite pretty bad recording quality, they're great. If you need to get to purevolume, click the link on the top of my page that says "Sick Music". Before leaving comments about the content of this entry, do this, and then also leave comments about the two bands.