It's A Man's World

"I'm with the band" is as good as it gets for some girls. They spend their time trying to somehow fit into the circle, where I'm assuming the ultimate coolios are the guys in the band. Life's never been like that for me. I've never been a groupie for someone else. I am the band, bitch.

It felt strange to be back at Someplace Else after all this time, as though we were finishing what we'd started three years back on the exact same stage. I was possessed. It was unreal.
I have been told so many times by so many people that I'm just another pretty face, that my band will not last. I can't sing. I have mediocre talent. Last night was a slap in the face for those people. The satisfaction in proving your haters wrong and giving them absolutely no reason to criticize you can be such a high.

I'm not an arrogant prick who can't stand criticism, don't get me wrong. I welcome constructive criticism because it helps me grow. I was once told that I sing awfully live and that I should quit. I did not let that break me, I've spent the last year trying to work on better singing and that remains my priority in every gig. I'm fortunate because I've had help coming my way from some of the best there is, those who try to tweak me to become better, to realise my potential.

When the lights are on, the stage is set, everything happens in a flash. I'm in a trance. It doesn't matter who is in the audience, it's me and three people who are extensions of my soul versus the entire world. I love being in a band because it's like a brotherhood, but only better.

The relationship between bandmates is strange, quite undescribeable. I love them so much that it hurts and yet sometimes I want to punch them in the face. They've seen me during my best and my worst. They are my friends, siblings, parents, colleagues all rolled into one.

I could always go solo, play my music through a laptop and a few instruments. But where is the fun in that? Everybody can do that. Would the Beatles be The Beatles if the four of them tried to make it work by going solo?

But being in a band is not always rainbows and butterflies, it teaches you to be tolerant of those with beliefs different from yours, it also teaches you to put others before yourself sometimes. It's a lot of hard work to spend all your time with people who are completely different from you, things get tense sometimes, everybody reaches their boiling points, but the good thing is that in such situations, one person always becomes the peace-maker, the mediator.
I would much rather die than give up on my band. We may not make money, we may not be famous. However, every time we hit the stage, I feel protected, I feel at one with the three and at the end of the day, we feel the exact same things-the reason I play music in the first place.


The biggest compliment I received last night was probably from M who in his drunken stupor said that I have balls of steel. Songwriters need to have some balls, they need to have an opinion, it can't be about love songs and romances all the time. Even if it is, then you really need to feel what you say, fucking someone and writing a song about them is cheating, it's being lazy. Also we're living in an era where romance is essentially dead, this is not the 60s and the 70s. The acid we drop is not pure. The ecstasy we abuse is to get us to fuck, not make love. Despite what others may think of it, I enjoy industrial rock, it is dirty like the crack the world is on. It is grotesque and it is on you to find the beauty in it.
M once said something very profound on the lines of musicians either playing with their cocks or their assholes, which I find to be quite true. But maybe instead of cock and asshole, I'd say heart/mind and body. I don't want to be the latter. It's okay if I can't sing like Freddie Mercury, I can however, be the best damn Suyasha there is. So many people start playing music for such wrong reasons, the most obvious one being to get laid. Or to be famous and make money. But what they don't realise is that if you have nothing to say, you're not going to be able to achieve any of those things.
Women, or rather girls, in particular are even worse at these things. So many girls I know start singing (because hello, just about anybody can sing, it's the easiest thing to do in a band!) because they want to be a famous model or an actress. They obviously can't hold on to the spotlight and when the audience is bored of what they see, they move on to other things. If there's anything I'd hate to be, that would be to be a fad and nothing more. I don't want to be known for the way I look and the way I sing, I want to be known for what I have to say.

Live music is a time-bomb and not every woman has the strength of Aunty J. I desperately want to be as strong, wise and elegant as she is when I'm her age. I've seen too many skanks around and I know, I just know, that twenty years down the line, none of them will remain. They will get married to rich men and have their babies, that will be their career. I'm not envious of those around me because some may have more popularity, more money than I do. But I'm not here for those things, I am here because this is the only thing I can do, I don't have a choice. Music is my life.

So going back to the whole "I'm with the band" sentence, sometimes girls need to find their own scene and not become the hellwoman from This Is Spinal Tap. It's frankly quite embarrassing because no one takes groupies seriously, they're just fuck and throw. If I were to meet Kurt Cobain in a hypothetical situation, I still wouldn't be his groupie, I'd just be a musician talking to another, perhaps a more experienced one.



PS-If you think about it, Kurt Cobain ultimately fell for a musician (whether you like her or not is not the point!), not one of this groupies. There's your example.