ATTN: BEWARE OF DICKHEADS ON CRAIGSLIST
God, I hate it when people reveal themselves to be utter assholes. It's best when they do it sooner rather than later.
So I sometimes look at the Musicians section on Craigslist to see if I can find a good band to join, and I found someone who wanted a girl bass player and didn't care about experience. I figured I could try and LEARN bass if they were willing to teach me, so I replied. Here's the series of e-mails:
Me: Hello. I'm a 24-year-old girl and I'm looking to immerse myself in music somehow. I saw your ad and I thought I'd see if you had anyone yet or if you still need someone to thump some strings. I've had a guitar for years and was never much good at it, but I've played it enough that I could probably fudge my way with bass. Adam Clayton of U2 couldn't play a whit when he started, after all. I was curious to know more about your project--are you an all-girl band?
Derek: jess,
thanks for getting back to me and no we haven't found anyone at all. we are not an all girl group but hopefully that doesn't matter too much. if you can play guitar you can play bass no prob. i've placed a few different ads so i'm not exactly sure which one you responded to but our band name is Mint Wad Willy. we're on myspace, just myspace.com/mintwadwilly. we have a live recording that we did this past thanksgiving in iowa city, ia. we practice about 3 times a week and don't really have any set days or times, we just get together and take it day to day. so please check us out and let me know if you'd like to give it a go.
I wasn't a big fan of the music, but I found it kind of amusing in a whimsical sort of way and was willing to at least check it out at this point. Before I could reply, he did:
Derek: just wondering if you've had a chance to look into the band at all and what ya think? we'd like to get together sooner than later with someone mainly because we're working on booking shows and wanna have a bass player. i don't wanna sound desperate but we are. and i hate pestering you with emails but you are one of first people to respond so i feel obligated.
just curious,
derek(mww)
Okay, he's desperate, but he seems apologetic? So I replied:
I did get around to listening to the music just now. It's very odd, but amusing. It reminds me of a British friend's band that was all wacky songs with arcane lyrics. You'd have to be desperate to want me on bass because I really can't play guitar that well. I can hold one and I can find chords on it and strum them. I feel you should know how crap I am at anything musical that's not playing percussion instruments and singing before you get too excited. I'd probably be doing this only out of sheer boredom and despair at the fact my musical ambitions up til now have gone absolutely nowhere, too. So yeah, you might wanna hold out for someone better.
Can you explain to me why it is you want a female bass player specifically?
I was honest and I also wanted to know if they were just going to exploit my hot tits because I'm A Girl.
it's honestly up to you if you wanna try it out or not. we're not looking for anything fancy just simple basic bass lines. if it doesn't work out or we don't like it we'll let you know. we're not asking for any solos or nuthin' and if you can sing harmonies that's always welcome. as far as holding out for someone "better", we don't really like musicians. all of us are self taught with really no technical knowledge of this shit but we do it to have fun. we've been "holding" out for months and have found no one so...
as far as why we want a girl, it's not so much that we want a girl but like i said we've been looking since august and honestly thought we'd have more luck if we asked specifically for a girl. it's worked to some extent but mostly teenage girls which doesn't really fly with us. i am 26, married and live with my wife and room/bandmate nick who is 27. we have four cats and practice at our house so if you're allergic to cats you'll prolly not have much fun. anyways like i said it's up to you, we'd love you to come try some things out.
CATS. I DO LOVE MEETING CATS. And he was still, at this point, not worried if things didn't work out. We sent a few short mails back about when to meet up and about our amounts of cats, then he didn't respond for a while and I assumed he was waiting on his drummer to get back from a trip to Indiana. Then he said:
our drummer is back and we're are practicing tomorrow evening. i work til 2 and nick works til 5 so it would be after that. prolly like 6ish til whenever. our address is 3162 Curtis Ave. it's in north omaha but our neighborhood is not bad(we're on the good side of miller park!), we've been here since august and not had one problem. most people we've met from here are afraid of this area but we like it for some reason. if tomorrow doesn't work for you i'll let when we get together next week asap. i hate to throw all this at you now but if you're up to it and comfortable we have a show on st. paddy's day and another one on april 2nd that we'd really like to have bass for(especially the 4/2!!) sorry i didn't back to you sooner but i got sick early this week and then the whole house caught it. but we're all better and should be safe:)
Okay, I don't find North Omaha scary at all, so that didn't bother me. HOWEVER, I WAS alarmed that he wanted me for two shows coming up nearly INSTANTLY. I decided that he should definitely go after someone else because not only am I not comfortable with muddling through songs I don't know on an instrument I've never played, I ALSO wouldn't be available for those shows. So I said,
I'm going to be abroad from the 15th on for two weeks, so I wouldn't be able to make those two shows, unfortunately. And to be honest, I'm really uncomfortable with the idea of going up on a stage with an instrument I've never played for songs I don't know! I'm sorry. I don't think it'd work. I don't want to disappoint you, but I probably won't work for your project from what I can tell. I hope you find what you're looking for, though!
And I got online tonight to see this:
fuck yourself. i hate nothing more than people wasting my time. don't bother responding to this because as far as i'm concerned you can catch aids and die.
...........................................
UM. OKAY.
PRETTY SURE THAT WAS UNCALLED FOR, ASSHOLE.
So if you're on Omaha's Craigslist and Derek Levasseur wants you to play bass for his band, DON'T BOTHER because he's an arrogant fuckhead who probably just drives all his bass players away.
Christ. So yeah, screw that!
J.
So I sometimes look at the Musicians section on Craigslist to see if I can find a good band to join, and I found someone who wanted a girl bass player and didn't care about experience. I figured I could try and LEARN bass if they were willing to teach me, so I replied. Here's the series of e-mails:
Me: Hello. I'm a 24-year-old girl and I'm looking to immerse myself in music somehow. I saw your ad and I thought I'd see if you had anyone yet or if you still need someone to thump some strings. I've had a guitar for years and was never much good at it, but I've played it enough that I could probably fudge my way with bass. Adam Clayton of U2 couldn't play a whit when he started, after all. I was curious to know more about your project--are you an all-girl band?
Derek: jess,
thanks for getting back to me and no we haven't found anyone at all. we are not an all girl group but hopefully that doesn't matter too much. if you can play guitar you can play bass no prob. i've placed a few different ads so i'm not exactly sure which one you responded to but our band name is Mint Wad Willy. we're on myspace, just myspace.com/mintwadwilly. we have a live recording that we did this past thanksgiving in iowa city, ia. we practice about 3 times a week and don't really have any set days or times, we just get together and take it day to day. so please check us out and let me know if you'd like to give it a go.
I wasn't a big fan of the music, but I found it kind of amusing in a whimsical sort of way and was willing to at least check it out at this point. Before I could reply, he did:
Derek: just wondering if you've had a chance to look into the band at all and what ya think? we'd like to get together sooner than later with someone mainly because we're working on booking shows and wanna have a bass player. i don't wanna sound desperate but we are. and i hate pestering you with emails but you are one of first people to respond so i feel obligated.
just curious,
derek(mww)
Okay, he's desperate, but he seems apologetic? So I replied:
I did get around to listening to the music just now. It's very odd, but amusing. It reminds me of a British friend's band that was all wacky songs with arcane lyrics. You'd have to be desperate to want me on bass because I really can't play guitar that well. I can hold one and I can find chords on it and strum them. I feel you should know how crap I am at anything musical that's not playing percussion instruments and singing before you get too excited. I'd probably be doing this only out of sheer boredom and despair at the fact my musical ambitions up til now have gone absolutely nowhere, too. So yeah, you might wanna hold out for someone better.
Can you explain to me why it is you want a female bass player specifically?
I was honest and I also wanted to know if they were just going to exploit my hot tits because I'm A Girl.
it's honestly up to you if you wanna try it out or not. we're not looking for anything fancy just simple basic bass lines. if it doesn't work out or we don't like it we'll let you know. we're not asking for any solos or nuthin' and if you can sing harmonies that's always welcome. as far as holding out for someone "better", we don't really like musicians. all of us are self taught with really no technical knowledge of this shit but we do it to have fun. we've been "holding" out for months and have found no one so...
as far as why we want a girl, it's not so much that we want a girl but like i said we've been looking since august and honestly thought we'd have more luck if we asked specifically for a girl. it's worked to some extent but mostly teenage girls which doesn't really fly with us. i am 26, married and live with my wife and room/bandmate nick who is 27. we have four cats and practice at our house so if you're allergic to cats you'll prolly not have much fun. anyways like i said it's up to you, we'd love you to come try some things out.
CATS. I DO LOVE MEETING CATS. And he was still, at this point, not worried if things didn't work out. We sent a few short mails back about when to meet up and about our amounts of cats, then he didn't respond for a while and I assumed he was waiting on his drummer to get back from a trip to Indiana. Then he said:
our drummer is back and we're are practicing tomorrow evening. i work til 2 and nick works til 5 so it would be after that. prolly like 6ish til whenever. our address is 3162 Curtis Ave. it's in north omaha but our neighborhood is not bad(we're on the good side of miller park!), we've been here since august and not had one problem. most people we've met from here are afraid of this area but we like it for some reason. if tomorrow doesn't work for you i'll let when we get together next week asap. i hate to throw all this at you now but if you're up to it and comfortable we have a show on st. paddy's day and another one on april 2nd that we'd really like to have bass for(especially the 4/2!!) sorry i didn't back to you sooner but i got sick early this week and then the whole house caught it. but we're all better and should be safe:)
Okay, I don't find North Omaha scary at all, so that didn't bother me. HOWEVER, I WAS alarmed that he wanted me for two shows coming up nearly INSTANTLY. I decided that he should definitely go after someone else because not only am I not comfortable with muddling through songs I don't know on an instrument I've never played, I ALSO wouldn't be available for those shows. So I said,
I'm going to be abroad from the 15th on for two weeks, so I wouldn't be able to make those two shows, unfortunately. And to be honest, I'm really uncomfortable with the idea of going up on a stage with an instrument I've never played for songs I don't know! I'm sorry. I don't think it'd work. I don't want to disappoint you, but I probably won't work for your project from what I can tell. I hope you find what you're looking for, though!
And I got online tonight to see this:
fuck yourself. i hate nothing more than people wasting my time. don't bother responding to this because as far as i'm concerned you can catch aids and die.
...........................................
UM. OKAY.
PRETTY SURE THAT WAS UNCALLED FOR, ASSHOLE.
So if you're on Omaha's Craigslist and Derek Levasseur wants you to play bass for his band, DON'T BOTHER because he's an arrogant fuckhead who probably just drives all his bass players away.
Christ. So yeah, screw that!
J.