Street Savvy

Where to begin, this morning?

We played a gig last night in Clarksville, TN, and it was kind of a disaster. As soon after the first dude started playing, (he was a solo acoustic act) there were suddenly a bunch of people hanging around the stage and what not. I was optimistic about this, as this was early and there were actually people here. Well, as soon as he got off stage and exited the building, his crowd followed him out. When we started playing, there were about 15 people on this like, bench thingy, on the side of the "floor" just chillin'. They were listening, but quite frankly, I doubt they liked what they heard. We screwed up a few times. There were tuning issues, you couldn't hear the violin, and we had to stop in the middle of the fucking song. It was awful. I fucked up a lot, but tried to play it cool. It sucks, because we're better than that.

We got some nice applause, and in all reality, they probably dug it. We're just hard on ourselves.

After we got done playing, most of the band did our usual thing of bailing immediately afterwards like a dog with it's tail between it's legs. That's perfectly acceptable after that show. Again, I'm not saying it was a totally disaster, but we've felt better after other shows, for sure. Well, Sean, Bethany and I stuck around for a minute to check out the next band. They were called The Savvy, and I don't know where they were from but they were FUCKING RAWKSTARZ DEWD! The had their merch table set up, with a TV painted with their little logo on it, so when it was on, the static was a background with the paint over it. It was pretty sweet, actually. They had CDs and T-shirts and blah blah blah. They had a van, and all their gear had their name stenciled on it, like a real band! The guitarist and bassist had their synchronized head bang moves down-pat. The singer had his skinny ass flailing around stage, swinging his mic around like every other band he's ever seen, ever. The drummer was doing this little stick twirl/wave thingy, like he's so cool. The singer was drinking/spitting water all over the place. The guitar player jumped up on his amp to play his little effect-laden solo.

It was all bullshit. It was all a big show. Fuck those guys, man. They really didn't have any talent, they just acted like they did. It didn't matter what they played or what words they sang. It was all about how they looked. They tried so hard to look like a real band, that has a record contract and goes on a stage in front of thousands of adoring fans. But in reality, they were four dudes in an all-ages venue in Clarksville, TN, with FIVE people watching them, not including me, Sean or Bethany. C'mon, dudes. You're not fooling anyone, partly because there was no one to fool. I will hand it to them that they have a lot of energy, and what they lacked in real talent, they made up for in showmanship. But when you step back and look at it, you could just tell these guys had seen these moves pulled off by their musical heros, and said, "Hey man, I could do that, too!"

Some people/bands bring it when they play live. Some bands just look like they're copying what those bands did. These guys were trying to fool people into believeing they were legit, when they weren't. Like James Dean Wells once said, "If you sound like every other band, do the world a favor and break up immediately." I say that goes for looking like every other band out there, too.

I'm looking at you, The Savvy.

Whoever the fuck you are.

Whoever the fuck you think you are.