I've had a lot of hobbies in my life and one of them was playing various instruments. It started out as me just doing some vocals and realizing that I was the only one of my friends that had the pipes to hit Axel Rose's range in some (definitely not all) of their popular songs. Later in life a friend gifted me a guitar and I bought an amp. Even later in life a group of people asked me to join their band because of my look and I did so. That band stayed together for 4 years and we even went on a tour of sorts.
During all of this I was never very good at what I did, but I knew my role and I stuck with it and that made me a useful member of the group. I think this is where a lot of musicians screw up when they try to be the frontman when they don't really have the talent for it.
When I became the bass player in this band, I knew very little about playing bass or really about playing any stringed instrument, but I did know where the notes were and I could also follow anyone who used bar chords or power chords without them even telling me the notes. Bass is easier in that regard, especially if you have a good "ear" and you also have rhythm: I have both.
I never got involved in song-writing but I did practice the songs so that I would never make a mistake. I was also perfectly content to remain in the background and not really stand out. I wasn't trying to do backup vocals or be a standout like Flea is with the RHCP. I was a team player and the band worked because of this. When too many people are competing for the spotlight, there is no spotlight anymore.
We had a drummer in that band that was likely the best drummer I have ever seen in my life but because of that talent and his desire to always showcase it, he actually ended up ruining a lot of the songs and making it quite difficult for the rest of us to remain playing a cohesive sounding song. I can keep time (rhythm) in my head without a 1,2,3,4 but he didn't make it easy, that is for sure.
The thing is the crowd, other than other drummers, didn't appreciate this either. It sounded to them like a lot of noise. Think about AC/DC for example... do you really think that the drummer is not capable of more than what he does in those songs? Of course he is... but there is a rule in music called KISS which means, keep it simple, stupid.
I kept it simple out of necessity, I was not capable of doing a bass solo and I never even tried. Even though I played bass I hated Primus, if you know what that is, because it just sounds like noise.
Another bass player that I knew was constantly trying to get in the limelight so he bought a used stand-up bass that is usually used in Rockabilly music. It was beat up, un-amplified, and had no frets. You could barely hear the guy at gigs and when you did hear him, the notes were often wrong. What's the point of all that?
This band in college never really went anywhere but we did play a lot of local gigs and I managed something that isn't often accomplished by bass players in college bands: I got kicked out of the club that we were playing at during a break. A friend of mine offered me some cocaine in the bathroom and we got busted. I don't do stuff like that anymore but I did at the time.
Anyway, when the set break was over I was standing outside and could hear the singer asking "has anyone seen our bass player?" on the microphone. I'm standing outside telling the bouncer that it's me they are looking for. He reluctantly had to let me back in.
Let's move forward a bunch of years after I had already graduated and was living in Thailand.
not gonna show my face, but that sweaty and fat ass belongs to me
I hadn't been in a band in years but one day at a party some karaoke was going on and I did "Have you ever seen the Rain" by CCR on the microphone and some members of an already existing band were in the crowd. They approached me and asked me if I wanted to try out for their band.
As it turned out they needed a bass player as well and I said "well, I do that also.... kind of"
I ended up being in that band for a couple of years and played about 10 gigs in Thailand which were completely illegal. Illegal in the sense that you are not allowed to play for money without a work permit.
We played a lot of gigs because if there is one thing that Thai bands love more than anything else it is to have an all foreigner band open up for them. Our largest gig was in Krabi and we opened up for one of the biggest (at the time) punk-ish bands in the country called "Mummy Daddy." It was a sold out show of around 600 people in attendance and we got the crowd so warmed up that the jerks in Mummy Daddy tried to cut us off before we finished our set. I could see the club manager heading our direction and shouted at the band to ignore him and to quickly play our biggest "hit."
The band was unhappy about that but I wasn't going to leave the stage before playing our biggest "hit." It was a hit in the sense that something like 50 people knew the words to it.
Here's Mummy Daddy if you care... but just like most punk rock bands including my own at the time, they are a lot better live.
Those were absolutely fantastic times but also filled with trials and tribulations especially the time that the police mass raided one of the clubs we were playing at and the French guitar player, who had already been arrested once for playing illegally, fled the stage in the middle of a song and just ran off. The police were not there for us, they didn't even care.
That's where I will stop this story because it is already dangerously long. I will do a part two of this story because it gets even better.