i think the balkan issue is tricky,mainly i'm saying that becaanduse of that beirut guy getting all kinds of positive publicity and people saying he sounds like insane gypsy wedding in russia

russians don't make music anything like south europeans, nor does beirut.

i think the only reason it bothers is because as a balkanian i would never get anything but a dirty look playing a trumpet at cool indie girls, but beirut says he does it, while playing dancey rhythms slowly in 4/4 with no ornamentation, and he's like, in tune with cultures nobody cares about and that makes him hot.

i think maybe that's the patronising part , because people who don't know what they're talking about have success with appropriation, while a foreigner who actually travels to places and knows how to play the music, leads to a lifetime of nobody giving a fuck.

is venezuela cool? i'm actually broke and pulling a beirut might work out, i'm sure, at least my friend said they have the most exotic music ever so i'm sure i could simplify a line and make it seem cool to people who will never willingly listen to anything that's not in english

also most people in the balkans who aren't musicians(these people rarely care unless they were indoctrinated by nationalist-communist music schools.) will actually threaten to kill you or insult yr intelligence(you can watch a documentary if you like where some professional musicians speak intelligently, and lots of hillbillies react to cultural questions with violence) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18t0yNFWAWY


it's actually pretty hilarious how the musicians will learn stuff from others and generally not care where people are from

but people arguing about music they don't listen to can cause a hate crime in a second, i don't know of a more begrudgingly incestuous group of cultures beyond the ottoman part of europe exists, i kinda hope not although they would probably be equally funny in small doses


actually jamaicans have told me many times that soca is the music of devil so maybe that's an equivalent

who isn't?

One time - when I was playin' drums in a band - my two guitarists starting arguing - then one started choking the other one . . .

. . . that was soooo cool.

I kept playin'

Yeah - at that moment *I* was the "star"

Oh, baby - my moment had arrived.

Sweet, sweet memories!

I tried to be in a band once but i realised that 1) I am not very musically dextrous, and 2) Despite this, I would likely turn into the biggest arsehole this side of Mussolini.

So i kinda gave up on bands...

I played in a band once and practiced in a huge warehouse filled with toilet paper. The only person who could play an instrument was this girl who had a state of the art synth. The bass player was such a spazz, when he concentrated on a line a streak of saliva would appear out of his mouth.

I played in a band.
We were kinda slow making "serious" things.
I love those guys.
But I had to "leave", the practice space was 50km from my town, a bit too much of a commitment when the actual "reharsal" became drinking beer outside the practice space haha.
I still love those guys.
Now I'm alone and I'm even slower.
The joke's on me.
I find it hard to think as a "band member" nowadays.
Lots of people (all bands from the shared practice space) say we should "reunite".
I had fun playing live back then.

Nope, no one in bands, not even the girl (drummer) who's with a guy who has 2 or 3 bands..not sure if he does play "for herself" from time to time, though.
The guitarist sill plays (with another guy who played guitar with us for a while + a drummer) from time to time.
The singer doesn't sing, but is part of the organization of events with the guys from the reharsal space (kind of a "community" going on there).
I DID stay there on saturday nights (we had reharsals saturday night, 10pm and sunday 3pm)...but travels+food+drinks etc (we went out together every saturday night, plus for logistic reasons I had dinner out before getting there) made that a bit of a problem wallet-wise in the long run. But it was goooood anyway.
Ha ha a fun thing is that one of our biggest "fans" is a guy who plays the drums in a black metal band who reharsed in our same practice space.

nah

yah

whatever i don't give a damn, I'm listening to Castlemania and it is ripping....

best shit i've heard in awhile.

being in bands is like trying to date five people at once, and then if you try to play in other bands concurrently, its like trying to carry on an affair with four or five more people at once. Lots of politics, lots of drama, but just like all relationships lots of fun too ;)

which is why an anarchist model should be used when it comes to both bands and relationships.

i used to be in a band that played sonicyouthy things. it was fun and the egos didnt get too much in the way, be we did fight a lot and there was a lot of tension. i now play drums in an activist samba band\collective. its a really interesting working experience since, people are always changing, and also we work in an unhierarchal way, which ive found out that once there is no hierarchy, nobody tries to take control. the main factor that maintains this is communication. after every rehearsal and every demo we talk, everybody has a chance to say what bothered them and what they like about the way we played and dealt with our surroundings. its very important especially since we have played in some pretty dangerous places.

as can be seen here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLLpdn-0SeY
you can see me (blue flanel shirt, hat and kafiyee on my face) and there rest of us playing at 5:17. there was also a really cool italian brass band that we jammed with during that day.
unbeknown to us, there was a woman, during that demo who passed out from tear gas inhalation and died later that night.....

what the talking does, in my opinion, is makes a much more open environment where it is a lot easier to criticize and accept criticism without feeling threatened. i think that a similar model could work on a rock band, whose shows are probably safer, but a lot of emotions run pretty high. i feel that could probably save a lot of bands and calm their dynamics, it just takes a bit of getting used to.