Grilled Veggies Poolside, with an Extra Helping of Melodramatic Bullshit

I haven't been posting about things in band land lately, because, well, putting the album together, in some ways, brought out the worst in certain members of the group.

And the damned thing is so close to being finished, I do wish certain parties had tried harder to work out their differences and keep things together. As if, in the "real world" of day jobs we all have, we'd ever get away with A) making excuses about getting a top priority project done week after week after week, B) letting individual egos sabotage team projects, and C) getting revenge on the person who fucked up your work in a way that fucks up everyone else's, too.

Long story short, here's what's happened over the last few months: As of early December, Sound Engineer/Bass Player had recorded all parts for all songs, except vocals, and had begun to work on mixing. Singer/Songwriter was supposed to record vocals by the end of December, early January, so that Sound Engineer/Bass Player could finish the mixing and get the thing mastered before ze got busy with a bunch of other paid projects that were coming up later in the month. But Singer/Songwriter, dealing with a series of misfortunes (getting sick and losing hir voice for a week -- thus unable to record, losing hir job, possibly getting kicked out of hir apartment) was unable to live up to this commitment.

Now, Sound Engineer/Bass Player, along with Drummer (who put up a bunch of money for studio time, since we didn't have much in the show fund), might have been able to deal better with the delay if Singer/Songwriter hadn't pissed them off in other ways, like talking shit about multi-city tours and Grammy nominations before the album was even finished -- even as ze kept making excuses about not recording vocals.

Eventually, Singer/Songwriter did finish the vocals, but by that time, Sound Engineer/Bass Player had other commitments -- paying commitments -- and couldn't put in the time to finish mixing and mastering

What really pushed them over the edge, though, was when Singer/Songwriter, who also hadn't been producing any new material (because, of course, the album wasn't finished!), unequivocally vetoed the prospect of the band learning new songs that Drummer and Sound Engineer/Bass Player were working on.

I suppose this was when I started to get frustrated, too, because it really is hard to keep a group together when everybody is tired of the same old songs.

A badly publicized daytime show in April was the last straw. The group split, technically unofficially, but Drummer and Sound Engineer/Bass Player are convinced Singer/Songwriter is mentally unstable and want nothing more to do with hir.

Plus, they actually have been writing music.

And so, last night, at Drummer's rich parents' McMansion out in the suburbs, a smaller group of us got together to play through some new material.

Finally.

All instrumental. No vocals. And it was good, although, personally, I do miss the people who weren't there, including Singer/Songwriter.

Then, after we played, we had beer and grilled veggies and roasted corn and potatoes and hot dogs (well, I didn't have any hot dogs, being a vegetarian) by the ridiculously large pool in the ridiculously large backyard, as we tried to convince Sound Engineer/Bass Player that ze should finish mixing and mastering the album for us, for all the hard work we'd put into it, and forget about Singer/Songwriter.

The veggie skewers before they went on the grill.

But all ze kept saying was how Singer/Songwriter would take all the credit -- and that, at this point, ze was so sick of Singer/Songwriter's voice that ze didn't think ze could stand listening to it long enough to finish what needed to be done.

Ze did mellow a little with beer and food.

I suppose we'll just have to keep working on hir with more combo rehearsals/pool parties.

And who could complain about that?