The Pro's and Cons of Anonymous Internet Communities
One of the reasons I haven't posted anything in three weeks is that I've been spending way too much time on craigslist, an online community that started in Frisco, but is now worldwide (to varying degrees). I wile away the hours in the musician's forum, looking for cheap gear, selling my extra gear, looking for musical collaborators, and generally marvelling at the level of stupidity exhibited by my fellow musicians. (The best of craiglist is also good for hours and hours of fun and laffs.)
So anyway, on Friday afternoon, I'm busily not working and surfing CL instead. I come across this ad:
Fun partying Female musician wanted
Reply to: anon-12665983@craigslist.org
Hi looking for a fun female musician that wants to party and lay down some tracks on my home studio .
We can just jam around or work towards getting your track done .
Fucking creepy, right?? So I email the guy. Our exchange went as follows.
Subject: your CL post
From: "Ian Miller"
To: anon-12665983@craigslist.org
think yr in the wrong forum. try casual encounters instead.
http://www.craigslist.org/sfo/cas/
-ian
Subject: Re: your CL post
From: Anon A. Mouse (anon5150@yahoo.com)
To: ian@blawg.com
for which post?
Subject: Re: your CL post
From: "Ian Miller"
To: Anon A. Mouse (anon5150@yahoo.com)
http://www.craigslist.org/eby/muc/12665983.html
that one. get real.
Subject: Re: your CL post
From: Anon A. Mouse (anon5150@yahoo.com)
To: ian@blawg.com
Get real? STFU that stays in musician , I want to jam with a female musican and lay tracks . Its no diff from people wanting to jam with 420 friendly musicians . Now go back and do your homework mr CL hall monitor christ you need a life .
Subject: Re: your CL post
From: "Ian Miller"
To: Anon A. Mouse (anon5150@yahoo.com)
look, if i was a pussy CL hall monitor, i would've just called you out on the board (like other people undoubtedly will). look at the text of your ad: "fun female musician" who "wants to party." it's pretty clear you're not out to make great music, dude. you may as well have posted "creepy old guy wants to drug and date-rape naive female musician."
bitch, please.
Subject: Re: your CL post
From: Anon A. Mouse (anon5150@yahoo.com)
To: ian@blawg.com
oh I see , it should read I want to keep talking to a wierd dumbass on yahoo about things I could give a shit about .
Ian blow goats go away .
I think it's significant that he didn't deny he was a creepy old guy who wants to drug and date-rape naive female musicians, don't you? ßßß
Worst. Audition. Ever. Redux.
So Tracy reminded me that, in fact, the audition I wrote about below was not the worst one ever. There was once a worser one, if you can believe that.
It was several years ago, so details are hazy, but it did involve a Led Zeppelin cover band. Now before you start laughing so hard at that bit of information that you can't continue reading, let me remind you that, before they became a symbol of everything that was wrong with '70s rock n' roll, Led Zeppelin were one of the greatest rock n' roll bands of all time, and featured one of the greatest rock bassists of all time, one John Paul Jones.
I'd spoken to the guitarist-slash-bandleader on the phone a couple of times, and he'd sounded incredibly knowledgeable. Plus, I learned to play bass by throwing on Led Zeppelin records and trying to cop JPJ's oh-so-tasty basslines, so the prospect of playing them in front of people (and maybe even for a little money) was enticing. So it was with some, but not much, trepidation that I drove out to the now-defunct Downtown Rehearsals.
When I got to the rehearsal room, though, it was clear that I'd made a horrible mistake. Everything about the scene was wrong. Bandleader man was at least 1,000 years old, and looked every day of it. He had a Jimmy Page Les Paul and duplicates of Jimmy's pedals and backline, but he was playing with fingerpicks. Fingerpicks, people. Like a blugrass flatpicker or a banjo player. Just like there's no crying in baseball, there are no fingerpicks in rock. I mean, even Lindasay Buckingham doesn't use fingerpicks, fercrissakes. Anyway, when the old guy tried to play the songs, it sounded like someone was falling down the stairs while a Led Zeppelin record was on in the background. Like he was approximating playing the song, but there was so much godawful click-clackety racket from the fingerpicks that it was practically unrecognizable.
The rest of the band was not much better. There was an overweight goofy drummer (i think "overweight" and "goofy" are more or less redundant when talking about drummers, but I thought I'd mention it all the same) who played some Neil Peartesque kit with way too many drums, but was at least competent, and a singer who was like a bizarro Robert Plant, i.e., Mr. Plant's polar opposite: short, portly, and untalented.
So I knew within 30 seconds that this was a huge no bro, but this was before I knew the beauty of the honest response. They were completely into me (I knew the songs already and had for years), had "pro gear" (all musicians wanted ads require pro gear, whatever that is), and felt constrained by social convention and common decency not to tell them what I actually thought: that I'd rather be eaten by a bear than join their embarrassingly inept Zeppelin cover band.
So I did the only thing I knew how to do at the time: sneak off to the bathroom and call Tracy on the cell. Unfortunately I can't remember the conversation, but I imagine it went something like this.
Me: Hey, it's me.
Tracy: Hi, honey! How's the audition going?
Me: This may go down in history as the worst audition ever.
Tracy: Oh no! That's terrible! What's wrong?
Me: Well, the guy's playing with fingerpicks, for one thing. And he's like a million years old.
Tracy: Oh, poor baby. Are you gonna tell them that you're not into it?
Me: Ha! How could I possibly do that? I mean, I'd rather be eaten by bears than actually join this band, but I can't actually tell them the truth, can I??
Tracy: Well, you could. ...
Me: (dreamily) Maybe someday ...
Actually, that's probably not at all how that conversation went, but you get the idea. The audition was so bad that my only recourse was to escape to the bathroom and covertly call Tracy and whine to her. That's pretty goddamned bad. ßßß
Don't miss last month's brilliant insight.
