JW - 3/24/2012

I missed the session last week because of house issues, but received an e-mail telling me that the group had added "Substitute" and "We've Got to Get Out of This Place" officially, but also Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69" and "Cuts Like a Knife", Guess Who's "American Woman", and the Who's "Pinball Wizard". I was mildly annoyed that they'd added several songs without my having any say in the matter, but figured I'm still the new guy and had missed practice to boot, so couldn't say much. So I came prepared for all of the above, and naturally we didn't play "Place", "Knife", or "American Woman".

We did, however, play "Born Under a Bad Sign", "Jean Genie", and "Suffragette City", none of which had even been mentioned before. WTF? And the bandleader indicated we'll probably drop "Bring It On Home", the most vocal-heavy song we do because he thinks it's not really working, when to my mind, we've barely touched it. Very frustrating for me, since we'll put 30 minutes of practice time into working on some subtlety of getting everybody on the same page re: some guitar riff I barely notice is in the song, but we won't put any time into getting a vocal harmony right that an audience would certainly notice. That's just where the priorities of most of this group are, and I'm not going to be able to change that. I think singer Bill would do it, but the others won't. The problem is that having three voices requires some coordination, where with two, you can just have the lead singer do his thing and the backing singer just sings whatever other parts he can.

Again, there was some discussion of having gotten into contact with management at a place they used to play, but still nothing definite lined up.

"Substitute" is now part of a medley, preceded by "Pinball Wizard", which is fine, but they've cut the bass solo part out because it isn't in the Live at Leeds version. It's not as though I can't play it, and adding to the length of a song is generally considered a Good Thing in cover band circles. No reason given, even when I brought this up. Again, annoying, but not a huge deal.

On a more positive note, the bandleader at least noted that we need to play the easier songs we've been skipping more regularly, if only to tighten them up, which is something I've been saying for the last two sessions. This was prompted by our playing some of the easier songs we haven't touched for a while, and they just didn't sound that good.

I'd thought we were going to have a lot of songs on our list, since we're over 60 songs or so now, which would give us flexibility, but apparently the idea is that we'll drop a bunch of the ones that aren't working as well rather than try to improve them. Not really on board with that, either, since anything vocally oriented hasn't had much of a chance.

I'm very frustrated at the moment, but leaving the band so soon isn't something I'd want to do. Some of this is on me, because I knew from the outset that they weren't vocally oriented; I just saw that as an opportunity for me to step up and add to the band, as I did in my old band Mirage, when it appears it's something most of them don't really want. Still, I'm not going anywhere at this point unless they kick me out. We're still at a relatively early stage, and I want to see how the situation ultimately stabilizes. I may do better just to get my vocal "charge" from recording at home or having some sort of side project. I'd consider going back to Splunge on a once/month basis if I thought I had the time for it.