When a Band Isn't Really a Band

Back in 1986 there was a day I tore the plastic from my new copy of Journey's album "Raised on Radio," then put the record on and pulled out the album sleeve to start learning all of the important details: What the lyrics were, who wrote which songs together, etc. I got a huge shock when I saw the obligatory band photo of three guys: the singer, the guitar player, and the keyboardist. What the...

I was taken aback. What happened to the bass player, or the drummer? Did they quit? Were they fired? There was no Internet for me to scour, so I had no idea and didn't learn for a long time what had happened. The credits had some side musicians I'd never heard of before playing drums and bass, and not even the same guys for each song. I was at a loss. I correctly took this as the beginning of the end for one of my high school favorite bands.

I've got a pretty tight definition for a band. You need a singer, a guitarist, a bass player, and a drummer. Simple as that. The singer can also play bass or guitar, or in rare cases drum, but usually you're talking about four people when you think "band," or at least when I do. If you throw keyboards into the mix, it's a common variation to have five people, and if the singer in a 5-piece is able to also play an instrument, all the better for the musical layering. Then you've got some bands out there with two guitarists, or three, or two keyboards, or a sax, or a percussionist, or some other less common instrument, and all of that can be for the better. But to be a BAND, you need the basics. Any professional rock band that doesn't have those four anchors locked down is cheating, just like Journey did. And in the end, they paid the price.

Bon Jovi is kind of pulling this too, where they claim to be a four piece band without a bass player as a member, even if they've had the same guy playing bass on their albums and live shows for close to 20 years. They've just never made him an official member. Genesis? They recorded everything on their own, but they needed more people to tour. Rush? Now there's a band. Only three guys, playing everything, and in concert sometimes they're each playing eighteen or nineteen instruments at a time. Trios can be the exception.

Why am I all fired up about this? Today I downloaded the new album by Train, "California 37." After one play through, I mostly like it, but I have some big problems with it too, not the least of which is that Train is no longer a band.

One thing I've always loved about Train is how they work some moments of clever word play into their lyrics, and there's a lot of that here. There's a good amount of unabashed romanticism, which, believe it or not, can really work for me when it's done well. There are several catchy songs that will be good car songs for the summer, without a doubt. But this isn't an album put together by a band. It's full-on corporate product. I enjoy it, but I don't think I'm ever going to love it.

"Hey Soul Sister" came out of nowhere a few years ago, and I loved it -- I loved seeing this huge resurgence for a band I liked that was on the verge of fading away. But it also scared me a little, because it was almost a novelty song, which is never a good thing for a band looking for staying power. The rest of the album, "Save Me, San Francisco" was one of my favorites for a long time; I have a LOT of personal history with Train tied to my sisters, and you only have to look as far as clicking here for some of that proof.

Here's my problem with this: "Hey Soul Sister" was a huge pop hit, so guess what there are a lot of on this new album? Yes - songs engineered to someday be potential huge pop hits. Normally this wouldn't bother me. I won't begrudge musicians I like to do something I enjoy hearing them do if it will give them continued success and allow me to enjoy more music from them. But this album isn't really from them. Train has pulled a huge Journey here -- the band, once made up of six guys, is now down to three: the singer, the drummer, and the guitar player. No bass, no keys, and a bus load of "additional musicians" showing up in the liner notes. Time was Train was a band that could handle playing all of their own music because they had enough people to do it. And to make matters worse? Outside songwriters. Hired guns brought in to help craft the potential pop hits. When a band doesn't write or play all of it's own music... this crosses a line for me. Train is no longer a band -- it's a corporation.

I'll still learn the album, and play it, and I'll probably enjoy it a great deal someday. They just aren't making it easy.

The Homestretch (?)

Big milestone in the development of the manuscript today. I switched out my black ink cartridge and hit print, marking the completion of the second revision of this version and the beginning of the third. This go-round will be quite a bit different, and I'm kind of nervous about it. While I've done all of my editing on the actual document so far, reading from a hard copy really makes me look at it differently. I have specific things I'm looking for that will have me rereading each chapter, one by one, seven or eight times with painstaking attention. I anticipate it taking a good amount of time to get through. Once I'm done, all that will be left will be finishing the query, and that job is no ride around the lake itself.

I'm also a little nervous about getting this close to what I've always told myself would be the end of the writing. The plan, back at the beginning of the school year, was to spend the fall prewriting, then drafting the manuscript for NaNoWriMo 2011, then knocking through a couple of revision passes, researching agents that might be good fits for the eventual pitch, putting together a force-of-nature query letter, and doing one last check of everything to make sure the manuscript stands as perfect as I can make it. There will be ups and downs in this last push; some days I'll feel buzzed about how much I like it and dejected about how much I don't. I've had several beta readers finish the book and get back to me with their opinions, and the responses have been overwhelmingly positive so far. In fact, if I can find an agent who likes it half as much as my most recent reader LOVED it, the whole thing will be a lock for me. And there's still a copy or two floating around out there, so maybe as more people read it along the way it will bolster me up.

But this last stage will be pretty lonely and full of self-doubt. It's a lot more fun to play with the optimism of trying to sell the book when you're still writing it and watching it become something. It's another thing altogether to reach the point where you feel like you're done and the goal is met, and then put your story out into the world and discover if your best is good enough or not.

I'm thinking back to a song I heard on the iPod this weekend while driving around, particularly one line from it: "No one gets to their heaven without a fight." I see this as a good metaphor for the effort that serves as background for that ridiculous platitude of how anyone can make their dreams come true if they just work hard enough. It might be a counterproductive thing for me to think as a teacher, but I've never believed that. Sometimes dreams don't come true, and they just never will, no matter what the dreamers do about it.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to roll over and give up, either. If it takes a fight to do this, I'm ready to bring one.

Ernie, You're A Fool

Have you ever noticed the URL in this link before? There's a story behind it. And it all starts with PBS....

A few years back I had a class that ironically loved watching Sesame Street video podcasts during dismissal at the end of the school day. It was a great way to keep them calm (somewhat) until it was time to leave. Many of the podcasts we found in the iTunes library were pretty amusing; one of our favorites had Jack Black and Elmo teaching us about octagons.

During the lunch break on each Track and Field Day there are usually several videos playing on different closed-circuit channels for the classes to watch while they eat. On this particular year, none of the educationally-themed video choices caught the interest of my class, so they all but demanded that instead of watching National Geographic or "Arthur" or whatever, I should turn on the Promethean board so we could watch some podcasts. One by one we played through the downloaded library, including several we'd never had the chance to watch before. One of these was about our TV pals Bert and Ernie. Ernie had just received a brand new disguise kit in the mail and was excited to try it out on his ol' buddy Bert. As it happened, Bert was in no mood for such shenanigans; he was actually reading from a book that said "Boring Stories" on the cover (don't you love how subversive the Children's Television Workshop was back in the old days?) and was pretty involved in it. Ernie excused himself, did one of his nasally Ernie laughs before sneaking outside, then knocked on the door. Bert answered it and saw Ernie with an eye patch and a skull and crossbones hat, pretending he was a pirate. Bert looked right at the camera with a classic lost-for-words expression that would have made Jim Halpert proud, then turned back to Ernie and said very plainly, "Ernie, you're a fool."

Cut back to Track and Field Day. Bert delivers his line and I absolutely explode with laughter at how perfectly plainspoken and unexpected it was. Sitting in the room at this moment: Me at my desk, all of my students, and probably about ten parents visiting for the day, who were now all looking at me as if perhaps I had been out in the Track and Field Day sun a little too long.

When I started up "Summer Vacation" almost three years ago and needed to come up with a URL to assign the page, I wanted something that would have a bit of significance for me, but would also be obscure enough to get anyone who noticed it wondering about what it was supposed to mean.

Well, now you know. I'm a sucker for Bert's comedic delivery.