Mitch Departs

Well, tonight Planet X was supposed to be playing a gig at Scratch 8, which is a Bar and Billards place located in the Old Sacramento area, but that's not gonna happen. (Although I do plan to play it solo with Bob (bass) and Chris (drums) from Mindphyx backing me up)

Planet X itself, no longer has a drummer.

I feel compelled to explain why, because I've found the process leading us to this point strange, frustrating and educational. The entire thing has brought questions to mind about the entire viability of being in a "professional" Rock Band, when the odds of actually turning Rock music from a hobby to your primary source of income is quite slim - and maybe a few answers.

But, first things first. Why did Mitch leave? Well, there are several reasons.

1) Playing

I think there were issues coming from both sides which had simmered for a very long time and we'd all tried to resolve. I know Darryl (guitar) was frustrated with Mitch about the way he played the songs, which was "too intricate" for what he felt was needed. It took a long time for Darryl to convince the rest of us of that because Mitch is an excellent player - but eventually, he did. There was a lot of ad-libbing in his playing - which was usally really really good, and interesting stuff - but sometimes it threw the other guys off. This became quite apparent, at least to me, at the Smoke Shop show in May. That gig was a mess.

I think Mitch felt that he should be allowed the freedom to play what he felt was appropriate and that we should trust his judgement since the drums were *his* instrument. And that's true, except where what he was playing didn't work with what the rest of us were doing. He should have noticed when that was happening. I'm sure If you listen to this live sample and pay close attention to how busy the drums are - you'll see what I mean.

2) Scheduling

Mitch is a family man, with a wife and five kids. (Ron and I are also married and have children - although my stepson is 20 and fairly self-sufficient) The demands of his family simply made it hard for him to meet our gigging and practice schedule consistently. It's hard on Ron too, especially since he's now going to school in Chico - a two hour drive away. Plus, on many occasions as is well documented on previous starlog entires - we wound up playing late night slots on weekdays. That can be very rough on everyone and usually nobody wants to be the last band because the audience frequently leaves before the last band gets a chance to go. It was particular hard on Mitch, and as I later expressed - particularly hard on his road crew who also had 9-5 jobs, wives and families, etc.

Everybody wants to play on the weekend - preferrably at 10-11pm. But nobody gets to *start* playing on the weekend until they can prove to the particular club that they can cut it on a weekday. That means playing well, but it also means bringing in *PEOPLE* to the club. You have to publicize and promote your ass off - which most of the time I handle, then the band has to deliver the goods. It's tough, but it *can* be done - I see it happen all the time.

Nearly every club we've played with the exception of Cafe Paris, requires you to go through this "audition" period. But Cafe Paris doesn't have live music anymore. We had gotten through the audition successfully at Big Shots, one of the best clubs in town with a capacity of about 400, but they were closed down by the city of Roseville due to noise complaints. We did well at Club 65, but they were closed down by Landlord issues. We do fine in Woodland at Crossroads, but that doesn't really help us in Sacramento. Our last gig, at the Press Club finally got us through the audition period there on the third try... we now have plenty of weekend gigs lined up there if we want them and can do do them.

But we can't. Not without a drummer.

3) Attitude

The stress of all the above - outside life concerns & musical differences vs. internal band level of effort - was so great it was having an impact on the quality of our performances. It was clearly obvious at our G Street Pub show, and as a result we haven't been invited back. We played lousy.

Honestly, we did.

Our last Press Club show was good - but the tension was pretty high. Both Mitch and his roadie Rob were upset that we we're playing at 1am on a weekday again, when we had all expected to play earlier. Actually, we were all upset about that. I nearly had a nervous breakdown over it -- really -- because i had booked all the bands and felt responsible to honor my commitments to them, all except for the one that threw a spanner in the works, that is. Jay - the main booker had made promises to them and told *me* and consquently all the other bands something different. It sucked. Mitch and Rob both walked out at the end of the show without saying a word to the rest of us. It was at that point that Darryl said - "I'm not playing with that guy, again - ever".

So effectively, Mitch was fired as soon as we finished that show.

I suspect the feeling was mutual.

We didn't hear from or contact Mitch again for over 3 weeks, as he had scheduled to go on vacation to Colorado with his family during that time. In the meanwhile we started putting up ads and auditioning for a replacement. The first notification we received that he was back was an email from him tendering his resignation.

4) The Aftermath

Now this is where things turn surreal.

A day or so after we recieved Mitch's resignation email - I started getting these really scathing emails from Rob, Mitch's primary tech, saying he didn't want to be further associated with us in any way. That wasn't really a big surprise, but the level of vehemence was. We then began an email (near) flame war that lasted for a couple days, which is the reason I'm writing such a detailed starlog about all of this - to air both sides of the issues as I understand them and cut through any rumors or speculation - which i'm sure will arise.

Those emails shocked me, but also helped me understand his position a lot better and what has been going on in his mind - and probably Mitch's mind (although I can't confirm that because Mitch declined to give a detailed answer when I asked him why he resigned).

Basically he felt we - and I suppose particuarly me - were "unprofessional, gullible and inconsiderate (to him and the other members of the road crew)" because we scheduled gigs on the weekdays, and (sometimes) let other bands and bookers "shaft us" by sticking us in the suicide slot - after 11pm.

Admittedly, there's some truth to that complaint - and if you go back and read through all the Starlogs I've written so far, you can see that *I* had the exact same concern and it was pissing me off too. I had only booked and controlled the schedules for our Downtown Sacramento shows - but we were getting jerked around nearly everywhere no matter who booked it - and to a large extent we shouldn't let that happen. But until your a "name" - that's what's gonna happen, or at least that's what people are gonna try a do to you. It helps though, when you play with other bands that aren't jerks to start with.

Actually, I've seen a lot of backstage/soundcheck/scheduling stuff with "name" bands first hand, and they get jerked around all the time too. Dokken is getting jerked around right now on the "Power to the People" tour with Poison, Cinderella and Slaughter, they're the only band that doesn't get a soundcheck. It practically never stops until *your* the Headliner and running the whole show. Then you can jerk everybody else around, if you want.

I'm basically a nice guy and yes, I will let people take some advantage of me (or think they have) - if I think that's it'll gain me something in the future. Being nice usually pays off in the long run. I'm a very patient person, but I do have my limits and when I finally do blow my stack -- I don't think most people would want to be around, because I've been storing it up for a long long while...and I can get pretty intense when I want to. If you've read some of my RANTS in the starlog, or heard some of my shows when I hosted SacLive - you probably know what I'm talking about.

The basic problem with the scheduling complaint though - is what I mentioned earlier - IMO taking some bad gigs is what we have to do in order to move to the next level, from being a good but relatively unknown and unseen band - to a major draw, at least locally. And hopefully - to became a national draw. Even at a national level, the same issues apply. Time and effort is required, as is taking *weak* gigs in order to get better gigs down the line. That's always been the plan, and frankly - albiet painfully - it was working. Right now - we've had two weekend shows offered to us at the Press Club and I was able to set us up as headliners on a Friday at Capital Garage. Now I have to give that gig away.

I certainly understood that this was a physical and mental hardship, particularly for Mitch. But I had no idea how angry Rob was about the hardship it was putting on *him*. After emailing with him some things that had happened in the past vis-a-vis certain gigs and cancellations, it all began to make more sense to me from *their* perspective.

We had played three shows to basically no-one at Lindee's in Concord, CA which is a couple hours drive away in the Bay Area. The first was weak, the second was good - the soundguy loved us and started promoting us and playing our CD in the club regularly - I remember the bartender running up and asking if she could *buy* a CD, but we didn't have them available yet - the third was a near disaster. We haven't played in the Bay Area since - although we did get offered a gig at Paradise Lounge in San Francisco from one of the other bands that played with us in Concord, Moodstack. But since it was on a weekday - tuesday - and it was relatively far away - Mitch vetoed it not only because of the hardship it would have put on him (and us), but also because the hardship it would have put on his 3 ROADIES.

At the time, we went - "Ok, point taken". But looking back after this email-war where Rob is saying we don't have the "Right" to make last minutes schedule changes - I'm kinda like "WHAT-THE-FUCK??" Since when do the roadies dictate our gigging schedule?

My attitude has always been - I'm glad if they can make it and help out, they are volunteering their time after all and I always appreciated it a lot, honestly - but as far as I'm concerned they're not *REQUIRED* to be there - especially since we aren't *paying* them. I certainly was not gonna pitch a fit if they aren't there because they have other things going on in they're lives.

That's life and that's cool with me.

(The one time that I know we put Rob (and everybody else) through hell - was during the video shoot for the MTV TRL Big Deal contest, which the local band Severance one. We definately needed him then and everything was last minute. I was glad he was there. Some of the audio from that video shoot is available on our new Mp3.com CD "Live 2K".)

I remember having several conversations with Ed, one of the other techs, about how difficult it would be for him to help us out if we went on a full scale national tour - he'd basically have to quit his job and he really couldn't afford to do that. And I echoed his concern because I wasn't entirely sure how *I* could do it either, at least not yet - I knew I could play in the Bay Area or Reno or even L.A. every once in a while - but that's about it. I told him if that came up and he couldn't "hang" - that was cool, do what you gotta do. But apparently Rob - and now that I'm going back and re-reading our email conversations, Mitch too - felt really put-out about out of town shows playing to almost noone - and being stuck in the "suicide slot".

So again, I can understand that frustration and I share it - but that's sometimes what you have to do in order to get a) the better gig and b) *Somebody* to see you and later come back again. We actually have had a far better response in some of the out-of-town places like Chico and Woodland, than we have in Sacto.

So yes, the ends justify the means folks.

To me, each show is an investment, and I don't expect real returns for very long time. This is the Price - this is how you Pay your Dues. it's not a coincidence that we have songs written about this subject.

That being said however, you should do your best - short of becoming a raging asshole like the guitar player in DH did at Cheerleaders - not to get shafted.

Bottom line: I had always suspected it, but it has became blaringly apparent that our (Ron, Darryl and my) expectations and their (Mitch, Rob, and maybe Ed & Chuck's) expectations in regards to Planet X were quite radically different.

Fine - that's the way it goes.

We have to admit to ourselves, that stylistically as a band - we are not doing the "flavor of the month" thing. There really isn't a crowd of people already sitting someplace in Sacramento (although we did find them in Chico, Woodland - and Club 65, but it's closed) who are already gathered and seeking the style of music we're making. We're not doing Blink 182 stuff, or Korn or Deftones or Tool. We're being *US*, and trying to build an audience that right now...doesn't exist here.

This is going to take time, a lot of effort and it's going to hurt. Frequently. For us, this is a Crusade, and those not ready to shed blood, should step aside.

When Korn started - there weren't any other bands around like them. Same thing with Tool and Nirvana. They all had to eat crow for a while. I had the band Sedona in the SacLive studio with me, they've been unsigned and still at it for 10 YEARS now with the same lineup, making the music they want to make and ignoring the trends. People might think they're crazy and that they have "no chance" in the industry - but those guys are HAPPY and totally energized still. They have a song called "Wrong" that pretty much sums their attitude up. "So long I've tried to put up with this town - they're always putting you down - but they're WRONG!" It's one of my favorites by them.

So, for us the only other options besides doing what we're already doing are to a) quit b) copy other popular bands and their style - as if people won't notice c) throw a fit when things don't go our way - cry like babies and piss off everybody until we have nowhere left to play or d) quit.

We ain't doing that.

So as a result, we're looking for a new drummer - and I guess, a new tech crew. A manager to play the "bad guy" would be nice too.

SERIOUS applicants only please. :)

Maybe after we get new people on board we might be playing in a town near *YOU*.

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