| A certain band I hate |
| Dear Friends, at Ye Olde Watering Hole JOHNNYLEEN often has the opportunity to hear local bands that hope one day to make it big. Most of these bands are blues or rhythm and blues type bands, so the potential audience may be somewhat limited anyway. Nevertheless, those bands wishing to succeed should heed JOHNNYLEEN's advice and hire a decent lead singer. That leads me to my topic; a band that I absolutely cannot stand. I will call them TANGENT since I desperately wish to avoid slander charges (although I can't see why I would be sued for telling the honest-to-God truth); suffice it to say that their real name has something to do with algebra or trigonometry; something I've totally forgotten due to my math-o-phobia. Now, when playing an instrumental piece, TANGENT is fine, but let the lead singer open her mouth and it's like the Andrea Doria blissfully headed for disaster. First of all, she can't stay in tune; wait, I take that back, she doesn't even start off in tune so there's no need to stay in tune. If the band is playing in F major then she's singing in D minor and occasionally E flat major. The whole time she's singing though she thinks she's really got the blues, bobbing her head up and down to the music, toying with the microphone. Oh, yes, Stella's got her groove back; sing it to me, Baby! To distract you from her lack of musical talent, she wears outfits that even Britney Spears might look askance at. The first one I saw on her was a fire engine red mini-dress with the stomach removed, so that we got a great view of her navel. (You could tell by the shape of her tummy she's had at least one child.) Her "dress" had two straps of what I'll call "material" across her perky breasts. Well, the outfit alone told me she didn't get the lead singer position based on her operatic training! The second time I saw her she had on an orangish mini-dress with two large sunflowers embroidered over her breasts. And in the middle of the sunflowers, right over the nipples, were two gigantic, plastic, glistening, red jewels! Well, if I had begun to doubt how she got her position, my doubts were swept away with that. Now, OK, I've told you that the band was alright when she wasn't singing, but from the very beginning I had a bone to pick with them, because they did something so egotistical, I couldn't believe it. Was it the camera girl with a video camera there? No, even though that adds to it. Was it the "membership" list they wanted all of us to sign? No, but that added extra hate points. "What was it then?" you ask. Well, Dear Friends, it was the idiotic bio of the band that they handed out. Now JOHNNYLEEN is used to receiving flyers at musical venues in which the band says something like "Our group has been together for 5 years. Our lead singer is Jennifer Lopez. Our next concert is going to be on May 5. Hope to see you there!" But this flyer was more like a playbill for a Broadway play. We read in excruciating detail all about the drummer's boyhood in a music-filled household. Every dive the bass player had performed in was listed and what drinks he had between sets. But what took the cake was the bio of the hoochie lead singer that ran something like this, "Miss Hoochie's lilting tones have often been described by audiences as being like the dulcet voice of a young Lena Horne. Her mellow voice has attracted critical acclaim among blues lovers everywhere with her inspired interpretations of various blues classics." Can I just say "Puh-leeze"? Well, just between you and me, Dear Friends, I heard through the grapevine that so many people complained about her "interpretations of various blues classics", that Brad, the owner of Ye Olde Watering Hole, told the band that he wouldn't hire them again until they got rid of Miss Hoochie. They haven't been back since, so I guess she must have other, non-musical "interpretive" skills that we weren't told about. Boy, this diary sure is cathartic! Go to important matters Go back home |