Originally Posted by
NPYYZ
Thanks for the input guys. Here's how it went this weekend. We got together and had about a dozen songs to run through. To be honest I was amazed at how good we sounded. Having never played before it was impressive. The bass player was right , the singer was excellent , he has Bono's style and sound down. So Saturday went well and I left the session feeling good but in the back of my mind I was already having concerns. Then I got home and my wife asked how it went , I said good but she sensed I wasn't as excited as I should be. So she said ok what's up? I said we sounded great but I just don't think I can do this , everything went well and sounded good , turns out I just don't really like U2's music enough to play it every gig.
So we got together again Sunday Morning , we were going to run through the songs again but I decided instead of wasting the morning I'd just tell them rght then i was not interested in taking the gig. The singer and guitar player got a bit pissed off with me when i explained that i just wasn't into the music enough to make the commitment. The bass player understood. So I packed up my kit and off I went.
It's funny guys, driving to the rehearsal space on Saturday I was so psyched , thinking how cool it wold be to play out again , especially opening for some national acts , big crowds you know. But after playing covers again all the excitement went away. I played covers for 14 years pretty much 4 nights a week 48 weeks a year. I got so sick of it I quit at the age of 31 in my prime. At that time I could play just about anything I wanted to effortlessly but I hung it up because I was sick of playing other peoples music.
I guess I figured after this long I'd be ok with it , plus the fact I never played any U2 stuff before (now I know why lol)
So that's it , unless some established band that plays all original stuff contacts me I'm officially retired from playing out. One thing though , learning these songs has got me back behind my kit on a more frequent basis , and the stretching exercises the Doc gave me to do before playing have helped with the joint pain, so I'm good just playing in my basement until I can no longer play. I'll probably throw some videos up in the near future. I'm going to just turn on my iPhone camera and just play whatever pops into my head. Should be fun.
Side Bar: Please to you drummers that are in cover bands , please don't take offense to my crapping on playing covers. I did it for years and made a decent living , I just got over saturated with the whole top 40 popular radio stuff that it put a very bad taste in my mouth so to speak. I applaud you guys that are still gigging , I wish i could do it , I really do.