Between 2001 and 2010, I played bass, sang backing and some lead vocals and wrote around half the songs of a band that I will not call by name, partially because it’s embarrassing, but mostly because it is very litigious. While I was only threatened to be sued once by the drummer, and for IP I owned, at least six other targets of civil actions weren’t as lucky.
I played bass like I was in a goth band. The guitarist played like an ’80s LA rocker doing punk covers. The lead singer for the first several years had a B.A. in poetry and kind of sounded like Jello Biafra.
Songs were about two minutes long. Some bands only play three chords; most of our songs only had two. None of them had a real bridge or a guitar solo. A few had a bass solo.
We recorded with a two-time Grammy nominated reggae artist. We played shows throughout the Northeast USA. We toured Japan. We played at a laundromat, a marina, a skate park, a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a completely empty 20,000 seat amphitheatre, and of course, numerous bars. We played three shows in three different area codes, in two states, within 24 hours – twice.
I also made most of the fliers and t-shirts, designed the logo and CDs, booked a bulk of the shows, and created and wrote the exhaustive blog for the website that had 3D animations and an SEO strategy that made it one of the most visited, purely indie band sites on the web at the time, receiving an average 700-1000 visitors a day for most of its nine-year existence.
