GOOD ADVICE FROM LOWELL GEORGE

  I had a vision for a band, and tried to enforce that vision on people I thought shared the vision, at least to some degree. Rather than be a Simon Legree, I am stepping back, partly because I feel every member of the band needs to feel that there is something of themselves, or their tastes represented in the band. Maybe just a song here or there, but something. So now what I get is that they want to drop my favorite songs, the songs we founded the band on, like Brother John, and Meet the Boys on the Battlefront, the Wild Tchoupitoulas songs that were a large part of the original vision for the band, and they want to add things like Mississippi Quesn, Black Betty, and Play that Funky Music White Boy. Oh, not to mention Led Zeppelin's Kashmir. I am aghast. What am I doing in the same room with people with such musical tatses. The bass player's stepfather plays drunken harmonica from  the audience the whole night. I just know I'm going to stop the show in midset next gig and go out and tell him to shut the fuck up. It disrepects both the band and audience, and is an unwanted distraction to everyone. If he wants a band, he can go start a band.  I'm really enjoying playing the electric guitar again, and exploring sonic possibilities with an array of pedals, and exposing myself to new (to me) bands that I am coming to love, like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Galactic. But after I said, hey, let's just add a bunch of songs you guys want to do, I was horrified, stufpified. Chicken Fried, and fit to be tied. Tonight I want to run, to quit, to try to find people with more similar tastes, who might need a guitar player. I may well change my mind. I really like the guys in the band (even though Stan was an hour late to practice last week, and an hour and a half late tonight), but we have, shall we say, conflicting tastes. I wanted to do light, nimble, rhythmic music, and the songs I'm hearing tossed about now, are not at all what I had in mind, and songs that I would be embarrassed to tell my friends we are playing. I have often been accused of being a musical elitist, and to that I can only reply, you''re right , I am a musical elitist. And that's because I'm right. I have taste. I have exposed myself to a wide range of music my whole life, and tired to learn (from the late great San Francisco Chronicle music reviewer Ralph Gleason) the fine art of separating the wheat from the chaff. Some music is just crap. Some music is not quite crap, but overplayed, or adopted as an anthem by people you would chew your arm off to get away from or be associated with. I wanted to play obscure covers, or songs no one had heard at all, but songs we could put our own stamp on and give the band a personality of it's own. It seems they want to do the neanderthal top ten of the last 20 years. If it were tonight, I would quit the band, and look for someone who wants a guitar player, or someone who genuinely has similar interests, not someone who feigns similar  interests until they're ensconced in the band and bring up an entirely different oeuvre of songs they want the band to do. Maybe I'm just tired tonight. Maybe I'll feel better about it tomorrow, or the next day, but right now I'm toying with the idea of waiting till the end of our next gig, when they all have their equipment out of my house, and closing the night with, "Thank you ladies and gentlemen", then turning to the band and saying, "I quit."  The song's they want to do are songs I don't want to do, and I don't want to be the iron fisted asshole (just for halloween... you should see it, it's a really interesting costume... a little uncomfortable, though).  So that's how I feel tonight. They don't read this anyway, so I'm sure it will come as a surprise.  Or not. But that's how I feel tonight. Lowell George was right. A band needs a leader.