I recently heard that yet another pirate band had fallen by the wayside. I have seen a lot of them come and go over the years and often wonder how my band has been together in various forms for the last 30 years.<\/p>\n
No, we haven’t made it big (yet!). There are other “pirate” bands that have tried over the years. They have become the flavor of the day, then drift away in the tides eventually, largely because it is a bitch to keep a band together.<\/p>\n
By their very nature, bands are dysfunctional families. Every member brings something to the group. Many are terrific instrumentalists with so-so voices. Others are great people, but not great performers. Still others are total drama queens and want to be the cock of the walk, even though they don’t have the chops or the talent to be the lead.<\/p>\n
I have seen it all. No, not in my current band. Rather, I’m talking about my first band, The Second City Slickers. Uhm, wait, that’s not quite right. The Second City Snickers is far more accurate.<\/p>\n
This is the only other band I’ve been in. I won’t bore you with the Dan D. Dodd part, our former lead singer who sounded like a two-stroke engine when he sang, using so much vibrato that you couldn’t really understand a single word.<\/p>\n
Instead, I will focus on the most dysfunctional form of band around – the family band.<\/p>\n
After Dan. D. left in a huff (or was it a minute and a huff), it was time to find a new singer. That task fell to me, as I am the only one of the three boys who could sing a note, at least one that was in key.<\/p>\n
My brothers from another mother (lord knows they couldn’t have shared one with me), played washtub and washboard. Yes, the odds were already stacked against us from the very start. I had just started to learn banjo so you can imagine what we sounded like. If you can’t, imagine cats being skinned alive. That comes close.<\/p>\n
Still, we would get lots of gigs. Every week we seemed to be out and about in South King County, playing in local bars for beer and tips, gaining a bit of a following of groupies, and having a pretty good time.<\/p>\n
At least in public it was a good time. As the lead singer, I eventually thought we should expand our repertoire beyond novelty songs. That’s all we did. Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport<\/em> and Does Your Chewing Gum Lost Its Flavor<\/em> doesn’t exactly hold an audience for an entire evening.<\/p>\n If you’re wincing in pain, join the club. I was the one who had to hear these songs all the time. Worse, I had to sing them. You could simply finish a drink and walk out of the bar. I was stuck there, not only during a performance but during our rehearsals.<\/p>\n It was about this time that I started to gain confidence in being a performer. Notice that I didn’t say singer. I was and still am a great performer. Give me a guitar and an audience and I will charm the socks off of them. I don’t even really need a guitar to do it, in fact. But as a singer, I am middle of the road.<\/p>\n That’s O.K., by the way. I came to terms with that long ago. But still, I have a fairly decent voice and I can sell a song. Check that. I can sell a song that I like.<\/p>\n This is where The Second City Slickers’ focus on novelty songs was falling short. As I said, people didn’t want to listen to two or three hours of obscure novelty songs. \u00a0I mean, who remembers the Loving Spoonful’s rendition of Bald Headed Lena<\/em>? And I certainly didn’t want to be singing them. Sure, an occasional novelty song was fine, but I wanted to do something a bit more substantial, something that others might have actually heard before.<\/p>\n So I offered up a few suggestions. One of them was Lead Balloon<\/em>, because that’s how it was received by my two brothers. The other was Dead On Arrival <\/em>because that’s what it was at the moment I suggested it.\u00a0<\/em>I was told in very clear terms\u00a0by my oldest brother that we weren’t a real band but a novelty band. He was the creative director, a position he appointed himself to, even though I have more creativity in my little finger than he has in his entire body.<\/p>\n And so the drama began. I was not allowed to do any of the songs I knew. If I did, the rest of the band would walk offstage, mid number. I admit that I didn’t want to rock the boat, so I fell in line.<\/p>\n For a time, that is. As we all know, I am not one to follow rules very well, certainly not those imposed by others.<\/p>\n I can still remember the day. We were at Parker’s on Aurora, a big old dance hall. It was a fundraiser for the Variety Club. Our band was one of the acts on the bill. We went out on stage and I introduced our first number. It was not on an ANA (Approved Novelty Act) song. Instead,<\/p>\n My brother glared at me and shook his head, warning me of the consequence. I looked at him, nodded in acknowledgement and charged off on the first song, Margaritaville.<\/em><\/p>\n True to their promise, my two brothers walked off stage and I temporarily became a solo act. It was terribly freeing, being in control of the music and doing what the audience loved rather than what my two brothers loved.<\/p>\n The Second City Snickers never played together again. Our time together had mercifully come to an end and the novelty genre sank back to its rightful place of obscurity.<\/p>\n Me? I’m still playing around as you all know. Whether I’m performing solo or as part of my wonderful band, in the words bandmate Reuben, “It’s all good,” largely because I am no longer a Snicker. A guffaw yes, but a Snicker, no.<\/p>\n In the Emerald City, stringing everyone along as always,<\/p>\n – Robb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently heard that yet another pirate band had fallen by the wayside. I have seen a lot of them come and go over the years and often wonder how my band has been together in various forms for the last 30 years. No, we haven’t made it big (yet!). 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