Pub bands? People who force you to endure their hobby.
A pal of mine said that about amateur dramatics nuts some years back but it's just as applicable to those desperate, sad wannabes who murder The Beatles, The Stones and their like before closing with Wild Rover in boozers up and down this land.
Now, I have to say at the outset that I have two friends who play regularly with bands. Their outfits, however, are professional, the music their perform is original and excellent and the venues they play in are LARGE. These are NOT pub bands.
Pub bands are exemplified by the shambolic shower of shit which aurally assaulted me last night.
There are two basic kinds of PBs. Firstly, there are the teen-to-twenty-somethings who are so desperate to become "rock stars" they have by-passed the tedious step of learning to play some kind of musical instrument, relying instead on a £300 haircut, torn jeans and frequent grabbing of their crotches to get them to the top, post haste. Secondly, there are the collections of 40-something teachers, council officers and other assorted white collar workers who are desperate to prove to the world, but most importantly to themselves, that they've still got "it", could have been famous and are not, in fact, pathetic wastes of space.
It was a four-piece, Category Two outfit which made most of us in the pub last night suffer for their art.
Don't get me wrong, about 10 per cent of the customers sang, danced and whooped their way through every number. Members of that group, however, were so gassed off their tits they would have cheered a bus timetable!
No, I was among the 90 per cent whose collective memory of rock standards was irrevocably shattered. Either every record I've ever bought is warped or the lead singer was tone deaf! He was TW - the worst, if you can remember the Gong Show? I don't definitely know what he does when he's not putting the "sic" in music, but I am prepared to wager my house on this guess - HE'S A FUCKING TEACHER!!
He had grown his sideboards and then whittled them down to a fine point stretching out to within an inch of his mouth either side - kinda like two bookcase brackets. That, I assume, made him feel he was "in the groove, down with the kids and one cool cat". He was balder than me, and that takes some doing, but to hide this irrefutable evidence of middle age (from audience, if not from himself) he shaved his pate down to a Grade 0.5 to make it look as though he always had his locks shawn, like Becks used to. In case anybody saw through this wheeze, he had a back-up - he wore a baseball cap! The whole "look" was topped off by a pair of jet black, skiing-type sunglasses. The fact that it was dark didn't appear to bother him - maybe it explained his music reading skills?
This guy fancied himself to death. He was, in fact, almost criminally AWFUL. His voice sounded like that of Hilda Ogden sitting knickerless astride a lit Aga. His sense of mood was completely off as well - I didn't think "We Didn't Start the Fire" was a weepy ballad. He also had no sense of decency whatsoever. While mashing to pieces the theme from Mash, he warbled the emotive "suicide is painless" but singularly failed to heed the advice.
The bassist was a baby-faced, evident serial killer who probably only ever got out of his dimly lit, bedsit twice a week, once to tend his elderly, domineering mother in the bed-sit downstairs and again to hook up with this truly motley crew.
The drummer was...well....a drummer. You know, those talentless personality vacuums who hang around with bands, good and bad.
Last in the line was the only idiot on show with any modicum of talent. He played electric ukulele, and played it moderately well. He was obviously the band's selling point - Christ knows, they didn't have another one. He was also the consummate, ultra trendy, cool dude, despite the tone deaf teacher's ambitions, and so spent the evening strumming and smiling broadly at all the women, winking every so often. For one horrible moment I thought he was OK, not bad, a real human being. Then I did the maths, as they say. If he was "normal", what the fucking hell was he doing with that band of social outcasts? I concluded that, despite the outward signs of talent and mental development, he was probably out on bail from somewhere, tagged, or, worse, he had escaped and was hiding somewhere he thought no-one would find him.
Point any of the above out to the holier than thou types and they always chime in with "Well, you couldn't do any better". True, I couldn't - so that's why I don't stand up and attempt to, thereby ruining an otherwise decent night out. I'm not a brain surgeon either. That's why I don't sign up for amateur night at the local neurosurgical hospital, putting down the patients' weeping families with "well, you couldn't do any better".
Nope, if you're shit at something, keep it to yourself, eh? Don't feel you have to prove it to the world. Relying on others being so pissed they can hardly stand is no way of judging whether or not you have anything to offer others.
I hate pub bands.
P.S. The ubiquitous coven of ragged and ageing harpies who always accompany these bands - because they failed to shag Axel Rose when they were younger and so have lowered their sights a bit - are even worse than the melody murderers they worship from the front table. I hate them as well.
