TIME TO FACE MY MUSIC♫
BY COREY LEVITAN
"Hi! I play in a local band," the phone call to my desk usually begins. "Maybe you've heard of us."
The name draws a blank.
"Oh, well, you WILL hear of us," says the artiste, usually a thirtysomething male who thinks that anything can be accomplished in life with sufficient tenacity and a dial tone.
"We're the hottest act in town and we want you to do an article. You can have the exclusive."
After the caller begins to realize that my conversion to his logic requires more than a glowing recommendation of himself, he gives up and agrees to send a CD or tape. On rare occasions, though, desperation forces his immediate honesty.
"You have no idea what it's like," I've heard, "to have to sweat it out in bars with nobody giving a (expletive)."
When I began my job here as pop music writer, I wanted to believe every guy like this who called. So I devoted numerous weekend evenings to watching them play their slightly modified "Freebirds" in bars around the South Bay. What if I was ignoring the next Jim Morrison or Perry Farrell, after all?
I wasn't.
They were right about one thing, though: I had no idea what it's like to sweat it out in a bar, offering my art to an unappreciative public.
I've made my living bandying criticism about. Why couldn't this disher see if he could take it for a change? I began prepping to perform my first rock concert.
It wasn't like I was a novice. Like most rock critics, I once entertained musical aspirations. I've played guitar and sang since eighth grade and in 1988 belonged to an original band in New York, where I grew up. But we never played out; the main thing we ended up rehearsing in rehearsal was how to break up.
In the years since, I'd written a batch of songs -- mostly as relationship revenge. After girlfriends broke up with me, I had a habit of mailing them cassettes in envelopes with no return address. Suffice to say that "their song" was not typically a love ballad.
There's the one I wrote about Kelly, the one I wrote about Kristen and, of course, "You Ungrateful Whore" -- pretty much a blanket tribute to all of them.
I often wonder how life would have gone had I pursued music instead of journalism. Dave Robyn provides something of an answer. He's a multitalented singer who has been crushed by the system into a humbling musical living. He's had some success placing songs in TV shows. But for rent these days he plays cover songs in bars, passing around slips of paper listing the requests he's equipped to take. It pays about $200 a night, which he splits with his guitarist, Scot Lange.
It was Robyn, who has a CD of his own songs he's trying to promote, who offered me an hour chunk of his gig on May 19 at Lounge at the Beach, the bar adjacent to the Comedy & Magic Club in Hermosa Beach.
Originally I had intended this column to prove to local acts that even I, a nonmusician, could do their job as well as them. It's easy to fill a room with eager friends and curious strangers, I reasoned, then get the audience going with songs they've never heard.
I even fantasized a record scout or two in my audience, since I e-mailed what I considered an hysterical flyer to all my music-industry acquaintances. "Criticize the critic," it read.
"Sorry, but I can't give up my writing career," I turned down their offers to record in my head. "But I'm flattered by your interest."
By now where I'm steering this column should seem about as mysterious as George Clooney's course in "The Perfect Storm." And just as hopeful.
Here's what happened...
Of the 200 close friends and industry V.I.P.'s I flyered then nagged for two months prior to show time, only 12 bothered to show up. That includes Dave Robyn and a whopping two of my co-workers from the Daily Breeze -- count 'em, two, from a team of 437 I interact with every day, not three miles from the venue. But that's not what stung the most.
In the 12 years we've known each other, I have trudged out to see Stefan Adika perform about 50 times -- with every ragtag piece-of-dung band he's ever plugged into (and dung isn't the word I meant). Why? Because that's what friends do, that's why.
In fact, it was me who first encouraged, then taught, Stefan to play bass in New York. Yet he was a no-show, just like Marc Grossmann, my alleged best friend since fifth grade on Long Island. Both of them live in L.A. now, and I have no idea why they weren't there, since they haven't called to explain themselves.
Oops, did I inadvertently mention their actual names in print? Well, good. This is much less time-consuming than writing nasty songs then mailing them with no return address.
Julie Spector, one of the rare ex-girlfriends I didn't end up sending a cassette to, was at least considerate enough to inform me beforehand exactly what was more important than supporting her still-loyal friend on the only night he would probably ever bare his soul to a live audience.
"Sorry, but I have hockey practice," Julie told me.
Facing my card game of a crowd at show time, I noticed a birthday party of about five girls ringing a table in the dining area. I suppose I should have been glad for the extra bodies, female at that, but they were very loud and refused to look up at the stage.
I began my set at about 8:30 p.m., joined for a couple of songs by guitarist Jason Giordano, late of Tangerene, my favorite local band. The bad thing about Giordano taking the stage was that my audience was now 11 people.
I could tell you that I sounded great, flubbing only one chord on my acoustic guitar and nailing every high note. I could use adjectives like quirky, laconic and searing to describe my Elvis Costello-meets-Green Day songwriting. But that wouldn't make me any better than the bozos who call me to recommend their own music, would it? My plan was to leave it to my fellow rock critics to tell you how I fared.
Only none of them showed up, either.
Before I launched into my Kristen tune, ebullient laughter erupted from the nightclub audience. Smiling, I looked over to see who was appreciating my witty story about sending the song to her without a return address.
It was the birthday partiers, sharing a joke amongst themselves as they continued to ignore everything I did on stage.
The dictionary definition of an applause smattering greeted what I intended to be my big finale, a cover of John Mellencamp's 1985 hit, "Pink Houses." Afterward, nobody inquired as to where and when I might be playing next. That's because it was basically understood by the friends of mine who did bother attending: they performed their duty and would never have to do it again.
The final cost of the evening: $92 in rounds of beer (the Lounge doesn't comp its entertainers), one backburnered musical dream and some of my most cherished relationships in life.
I know what it's like to be a struggling musician now, guys.
I still may not write about your bands, but I officially feel for you.
Note: I haven't played music in public since. -- CL, 12/02