Monday, September 1, 2014

If I Knew Then...


I liked her immediately.

My band was looking for a singer and she responded to my ad on Craigslist. She sent a link to her Facebook page and I could tell she was pretty, but had no idea if she could sing; I hoped she could. The situation with our singer had gotten to the point where I could tell she didn’t want to be there anymore and she was dropping hints that she wanted to try different styles that were just not in our scope as a band. Plus she was arriving late to practice very consistently and her general attitude just needed a tweak. Enter the ad online and the short list of singers I was going to tryout on my own and then see who was worth bringing to the band. Looking back on it, that was a pretty ballsy move; I don’t even remember if I even told my best friend what I was doing. So I listened to a bunch of really not great singers and either didn’t respond to their emails or found a nice way to say that they weren’t going to fit with our style. But she didn’t have anything online, so we had to meet and figure it out in person.

We agreed to meet at my place north of Hollywood because we had the garage all soundproofed and set up for practice and it was only going to be the two of us anyway. I don’t remember having any sort of specific plan in mind other than hearing her sing by herself and then depending on how that went, having her try to sing to a couple tracks that I had sent her. So she drove up and called when she parked; the way our complex was set up, parking inside was pretty much always hosed, and if you weren’t familiar with the layout, you were going to get lost. I went out to meet her and I think I went brain neutral for a minute. I can still see her walking up: she had dark brown/black hair with a couple red streaks in it, she was wearing a black tank top and jeans and Chucks and had aviator sunglasses on. By the way, that look STILL fits in my top three. I remember hoping for a split second that she couldn’t sing and then I could just ask her out…cuz in my twisted mind that would somehow work out; hey you can’t sing, but I totally want to be inside you so it’s ok, you shouldn’t feel bad about it. Anyway, I tried to play it cool.

We went into the garage and made small talk; I wanted to know what kind of music she was into, why she wanted to be in a band, blah blah blah. I really stopped caring about all of that and just wanted to touch her face with my face. She had this air about her: she was confident and had this vibe like she was happy to be there, but she definitely didn’t need this band in her life. She was going to be fine without it, no question. We made it through a few more minutes of bullshit small talk until I felt like I absolutely had to get down to business and find out if this girl could sing…and subsequently if I’d have to be in a band with her and pretend that I wasn’t insanely attracted to her on a regular basis…and watch other guys hit on her all the time…and have to see her in some crazy sexy rock outfits that she was absolutely the kind of girl to wear if she were a lead singer in a band. All of that happened in my head; my imagination is rarely short of material to work with.
So I finally asked if she had anything prepared or if she just wanted to sing something off the cuff, whatever she was feeling at the moment. She said she had something in mind, it was a band I either hadn’t heard of or seriously didn’t care about because my brain was embroiled in this stupid battle: if she could sing, we’d definitely get more heads through the door at shows, she had some connections that could definitely help us out, so things might start looking up for the band: if she couldn’t, I might get to see her naked in the near future. There were obviously other scenarios in play, but those were the ends of the spectrum and that’s all I could see.

We were together off and on for five years. She broke up three of my relationships and I temporarily broke up her engagement. So, yeah, not a strong singer…

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