Made of Thin Glass (PART 2 of 2 - continuation)

And so...

The problems basically started after the first couple of shows.

At some point, the guitarist seemed to decide (without announcing it to anyone, or maybe he told the others and not me, since the bass player would often relate to me things he'd told her in private, things that would have been rather helpful for me to have known about beforehand!) that he would arrange, or rearrange, all of my compositions in a fashion in which they ended up sounding as if they were, and had always been, his songs, or perhaps they ended up being the kinds of songs he had wanted to do in the band from the beginning, though they sounded nothing like my original demos in terms of atmosphere or style. Increasingly, over time, he started completely ignoring what I'd arranged, sometimes even changing the chords/chord structures, time signatures, etc., and "my songs" started sounding like '80s-esque hair rock anthems, or else prog rock-ish songs with long solos and lots of instrumental breaks. 

One reason he had perhaps felt so emboldened to freely and openly mangle my songs over time (I can only guess at the actual reason or reasons, but this is a hypothesis) was that, after our first couple of performances, people started to constantly gush and rave to me, as well as to the bassist and drummer, about how great the guitarist of my "new band" was. Once, even, someone who had watched us perform said to me right after the show, quite rudely, I'd thought, that I'd better practice guitar harder, since, as the lead singer of my own unit, I was no match for my guitarist’s "totally amazing" guitar-smithery. Undoubtedly he had caught wind of many of these comments, not to mention that the other members of the band continually praised his “brilliant” arrangements of my skeletal acoustic demos whenever he presented them to us during rehearsals. In other words, he had all of the outside encouragement he could ever have asked for or wanted.

Of course, I was still very much at the time a total beginner, technically and otherwise, when it came to the guitar, and I also had no experience arranging songs for an ensemble either; all of my songs were presented to the guitarist as basic acoustic demos with vocals, and I had depended on him to add the additional spice: the intros, the outros, the breaks, and those flashy, technical guitar solos, too... He, without question, had devoted years to learning fast "licks" and complicated chord structures, and he also, unlike myself at the time, could do basic song arrangements, recording them in LOGIC (before I knew the first thing about how to use it, though his mixes, frankly, did not sound very professional, either to me or to the other members, who agreed with my assessment privately; this is one reason we never attempted to record an album, or even any EPs or singles, as a band). It is therefore not difficult for me to now imagine how he must have viewed himself as an expert, the expert, or certainly at least the most knowledgeable and able member of our group, since the other two members knew nothing about "DAW," and as I was then primarily concentrated on learning to play the guitar and writing new songs for us, and wouldn't begin exploring the basics of recording and mixing (at first via GarageBand, later LOGIC) until some months later. 

Whatever the reason, or reasons, there was always one person -- and one person alone -- who was not pleased with the way the songs ended up being arranged, rehearsed, and, eventually, performed by the band. Can you guess who it was?

Let’s take the song "The Day I Cried” as an example of what I am talking about.

This was originally a slow, emotionally-sung, minor-chord gothic ballad I had written. In what became “our version,” a heavy rock riff the guitarist had apparently saved "for something" over the years -- this was how he had put it when he presented his new arrangement to us for the first time during a rehearsal -- was rather, I'd thought, haphazardly inserted, turning my melancholic dirge into an uptempo rocker. The emotion I had invested into the original could no longer be expressed vocally, and I had to practice hard to be able to do the chord changes as quickly as the guitarist had pushed them in the band arrangement of the song (wang-chung-wang-chung), not to mention that the acoustic sound I had wanted to emphasize in this piece had been electrified, the song essentially become a heavy metal/hard rock number…

Here’s another example.

"Box Man," in my original arrangement, was (and still is, in the versions I have since arranged and performed, both solo and with other projects) a funky, uptempo piece with lyrics inspired by Kobo Abe that instead became a showcase for our lead instrumentalist’s guitar riffing. The "Gecko version," as I'll call it here, had excessively long instrumental breaks, with a time change early on in the song reminiscent of the one that comes in the middle section of King Crimson's "21st Century Schizoid Man," in which he and the other members could show off their chops, whilst I, during rehearsals, could have taken lengthy smoking breaks between singing my few vocal lines -- that is, had I been a smoker.*

*Actually, this was a running joke I made to the other band members when the guitarist wasn't around, as a way of expressing my dislike for the song's arrangement; I also, toward the end of our days as a barely-four member unit, began referring to his arrangements of my songs as his "remixes."

I was now unable even to hold my guitar when we performed “Box Man” on stage, as the chord progression I had created had been incinerated, and also since I could not play like Jake E. Lee on the acoustic (nor on the Telecaster, for that matter) to keep up with the parts he had made for it. And so, in rebellion, the one (and only) time we performed his slow-then-fast drop-tuned Iron Man-era Black Sabbath-meets-Court of the Crimson King-era KC arrangement of my originally shorter, funkier, in fact rather uptempo (!) and also vocal-centric (now guitar/bass/drum-centric) song together live -- a performance which was captured on video and posted to YouTube by an audience member, by the bye -- I picked up a large cardboard box from the side of the road on the way to the livehouse, carefully folded it up and stashed it backstage before the soundcheck (it was a surprise for both the guitarist -- who had missed soundcheck, due to his work schedule -- and the audience alike), and then sang (with mic in hand) onstage from inside the box, moving to and fro while inside of it during the intro, popping my head out of it during the short vocal sections, then retreating back inside during the longer instrumental sections whilst the band did their thing. (At one point I shook a tambourine, which had been my "instrument" when I was the vocalist for Chattering Man, influenced more by '90s Nine Inch Nails than by "Tambourine Man," for the record.) Though it is true that my little stunt evoked a lot of oohs and aahs from the audience, I was seething the entire time…inside of the box. It was hot in there, too, I can assure you, and not easy to sing in full voice either!

And so, perhaps you can surmise what began to happen to the relationship between myself and the other three members of my beloved reptilian band over a relatively short span of time? Our interpersonal problems were exacerbated also by the fact that the other two members tended to agree with the guitarist at our "meetings" about most things, and so overturned my suggestions and opinions about the songs’ arrangements, our live setlists, the artwork for flyers, etc., time and time again. Not only this, but the guitarist was ever tight-lipped around me, only expressing himself openly to the others when I wasn't around, so I tended to hear his opinions about things, and about me, "second hand," either from the bassist or from the drummer privately, both of whom were generally always in agreement with him when it came to the band, tending to show their unanimity whenever we were all four together. This made me feel that my position as a member of my own band, and as the so-called “band leader,” which was what the bassist always used to call me (I began increasingly to resent this appellation, as it seemed perversely euphemistic, a sort of repeated slap in the face), more and more tenuous.

There was one significant instance I shall never forget, however, when the drummer and bassist had readily agreed with me, albeit only outside of earshot of the guitarist.

I had created a vocal melody line for one of the guitarist's then-new demos on which, for the first time, he had unexpectedly added "bell sounds" to indicate how he had wanted me to sing it melodically. (Before he had left it up to me to determine the vocal melody lines along with the lyrics, which I always wrote and sang in English.) As it felt totally unnatural and wrong to me when trying to do it his way, I ignored the bells (and for whom they were tolling) and came up with my own melody for the instrumental song, just as I had always done before, and always with everyone's full approval. When I shared the result with him and the others in the usual fashion this time, however, he was outraged, saying that I had ignored his suggestions and therefore did not "respect (him) as a songwriter." 

After the other two members insisted I give it another shot, apparently because they just wanted to "keep the peace," I reluctantly but sincerely tried to redo the demo "his way," following the awkward bell sounds like Hansel trying to follow a trail of crumbs through a dark forest. Once again, it came out totally unnatural, awkward, the lyrics having to be almost completely rewritten (also rather awkwardly) to fit into the pattern he insisted I follow, as if trying to complete a "connect the dots" diagram that would only result in a bunch of incoherent scribbles. I did finish it somehow, though I myself was not very fond of the results, and eventually presented it to everyone. Well...this "new version" -- and I had stuck rather rigorously to the constrictions he had so strongly set for it, had honestly done the best I could with it, though it still felt totally wrong to me -- was met with quiet nods and a sort of, "Ahh, mm, I see..." look of thinly-veiled disappointment on the faces of the other members, though I don't actually remember exactly what the guitarist's reaction was. I think he maybe said something like "Let me think about it some more," or something vaguely along these lines...

In any case, afterwards no one again mentioned the song/demo during rehearsals or meetings, no one suggested we try the second version (nor the first, for that matter), and I certainly wasn't about to bring it up again either, since by then I couldn’t have cared less about the damn song if the author of it didn't like the first version I had offered and wasn't even willing to realize that it was more natural than the "bell demo" style version he had insisted on, not to mention that his bandmates liked the first version better, too, and that he was acting like a stubborn ass (donkey’s ass). The drummer, in particular, had been very fond of the first version I had proffered, and expressed to me in private (as well as to the bassist) on more than one occasion -- and always with a look of utter disappointment on his face -- that he wished we could try playing the vocal version together the way it had originally been presented. All I could do was shrug and tell him to discuss it with the songwriter, the one I had apparently "disrespected" by so presumptuously messing with his awkward tinkling melody line without first getting his approval.

The thing that really got to me about the whole thing, to be honest, was not that we didn't end up doing the song that I had taken the time to work out a melody and lyrics for (I actually didn't particularly like the song in the first place, but I always did put my all into making the vocal arrangements for his songs -- our songs -- the best I could, as I was still nominally the "leader" of the band, and as I would be singing them during rehearsals as well as live); it was that neither the drummer nor the bassist had the guts to tell the guitarist that they liked my version better, which is why we ended up not doing the song in the end at all. If the drummer, in particular, loved the first version so much, why couldn't he just say so directly to the guitarist? Why couldn't the bass player? Or, if not that, then why not do so at a meeting, with all four members present? Power in numbers, right? Majority wins, no? Heck, why not take a vote on it, as they essentially always did with the arrangements of my songs all of the time?* How about rock-paper-scissors instead, maybe, to ensure complete and total fairness?** No way...I wasn't going to be the one to do it, because then it would be assumed that I was being egotistical, as he had already accused me of "disrespecting" him "as a songwriter." I no longer cared about the song at all after this incident, but the experience left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

*My suggestions for the arrangements of my own songs were invariably always shot down by the other three. And indeed, we did end up doing his arrangement of "Box Man," which I hated more than any of the other arrangements I also disliked, yet still put up with, and I expressed this rather openly (and strongly) on any number of occasions during our rehearsals and meetings. Could it have been, I wonder, that the street here was a bit one-way after all, perhaps?

**石拳、両拳、雀拳 or "Janken" (ジャンケン) is often used in Japan to determine who goes first or last in a match, who has to do something everyone else either wants or doesn't want to do, etc. It's a bit like flipping a coin, or "letting chance decide" when the members of a group cannot work out how to do things in any other way. How the game works is simple: If you open your fingers into "scissors" and your partner holds out a straight hand, or "paper," then scissors wins, since scissors "cut" the paper. But "paper" wins over "rock" (a fist), since paper will "envelop" it, and "rock" over "scissors," since a rock can smash the scissors, but scissors cannot cut through stone. Perhaps had I realized at the time that this might have been an effective, democratic, non-violent option, we could have resolved some of our larger disagreements about song arrangements, whose flyer design to use for promoting our shows, which songs to put into our setlists and which to cut, etc. this way. Am I being ironic here? Do lizards sometimes have love affairs with toadstools?

"The Day I Cried" was sped up in the guitarist's rock arrangement because, apparently, my version was "too slow and depressing," as the members had so kindly explained to me when I questioned why my song had become an uptempo, '80s-sounding rock number, and so, eventually, was "Never Change," another of my songs that we'd earlier done in a different, more moderate-tempo arrangement, one that was much closer to the original feel I had wanted in terms of how the song might be approached as an ensemble, and which, I felt, therefore, did not need to be “fixed." In the case of “Never Change,” the guitarist apparently suddenly decided on his own one day -- or perhaps one evening after his day-job ended and he was at home, fondling his guitar in front of his amplifier -- to come up with a new “alternate” arrangement of my song, one he'd also decided -- without ever asking me what I thought about it -- we would now perform this “alternate” way during all future rehearsals and shows, a decision/action he took, let me say again, on his own, the other members only too-thrilled to jump on board with his idea, since they never questioned his arrangements or ability to “improve” my songs. This, essentially, made clear to me his intention not only to destroy any future arrangements of any future songs I might write and propose to him/the unit, but also that he could and would all but too-gladly take the ones he'd already arranged, and that we had already practiced and performed together, and further toy around with them so that they ended up sounding more like retro electric hair-rock with longer guitar solos and instrumental breaks.

And so, well, yes. Did you not see this coming...?

The band finally splintered in the summer of 2016, our last show followed by an emotional shouting match between myself and the bassist a couple of blocks down the street from the venue where we had performed earlier that night, the bassist promptly running back to tell the other two members (as well as all of our other guests/friends who were in attendance; I heard about this after-the-fact from an “insider source”) what a horrible person I was, setting the rumor mill spinning and ensuring that "my band" would come to a rather messy end. And so, that was that.

Or was it?

In the following days and weeks, having quickly written and recorded a new song, "Fragile Reptile," about the dissolution of my band, primarily as a way to process just what the hell had happened after that last show (note that, although the guitarist had already by then expressed to us that he had decided to leave the band and form his own instrumental unit eventually, the ending had come more swiftly and “violently” than any of us had expected), I begin (shifting back to present tense now) focusing more and more on my own acoustic solo performances, which already I had been doing “on the side” while we had still been together as a four-piece unit, having learned from my previous band experience that, if I wanted to do something, to get something done, I had to do it by myself and not depend on or wait for anyone else. I also start playing the electric Telecaster solo live, sometimes with distortion and using a drum machine I had purchased to accompany myself sans drummer. Additionally, I start learning how to make my own home recordings sound better, how to add programmed drums and other, additional sounds or instrumentation to the acoustic and vocals I’d been recording and later re-recording at home. Eventually, I would use these elements, sans guitar and voice, as backing tracks, run through an iPad Mini, in lieu of the drum machine.

And here, then, is the tail of the tale, or at least a (dis)section of it...

Several weeks after the band split up I discover "through the grapevine” (or the “sour grapevine,” perhaps -- as not even my drummer, with whom I was still at this time collaborating in a separate unit [as I will discuss in the next section of the essay] has the nerve to tell me about it, saying, when I learn of it via another channel, quite sheepishly, "You know, I didn't want to hurt your feelings...") that the remaining three members -- i.e. the guitarist, the bassist, and also the aforementioned drummer himself -- have reformed as a trio, sans me, sans vocals, even, doing the guitarist's original songs as instrumentals, which was apparently what he'd really wanted to do in the first place, to have “his own band” where he was the legitimate “leader” and could focus on his own instrumental compositions without need of a pesky, complaining, non-Japanese vocalist who couldn’t play guitar like a rock star or even do a single solo, who wrote too-dark songs, used chords that weren’t specified on the standard "rock" chord chart, who refused to learn to write songs in a more "J-pop" style of songwriting (he once told me, point blank: "You should learn how to write Japanese pop songs. It's for your own good!), and who was (me) at times moody and outspoken and difficult. Now, he (the guitarist) had two willing “yes-yes” instrumentalists to aid him in his mission. Good for him/them! I had thought to myself at the time. Now they have their own band. I'm free of it! I'm released...

Sour grapes, indeed.

The truth be told, I was extremely heartbroken and depressed by this news, feeling that I had been betrayed, even backstabbed, to put it more bluntly. This was the proverbial rubbing of salt in my wounds, especially since they had even tried to hide it from me at first, the three members I had introduced to each other with the intention -- though obviously it was to have been a collaboration, and that compromise and mutual respect would also need to be a necessary part of the equation from the get-go -- that this band or unit or project would essentially be, in theory, at least, “my band/project/concept” rather than, again, in theory, “the guitarist’s band/project/concept,” but that this was exactly how things had turned out in the end… 

Or, well, this was how I had viewed it at the time, through the lens of my own fragile emotions, as fragile as the band itself had been, ultimately, as I had not yet at that time developed either the maturity or the ability to take a few steps back and reflect on my own rather poor behavior at times, should I focus the laser on myself now for a moment, so many years later, with a much cooler head (and, too, a hopefully more balanced, if not completely objective, perspective). Indeed I had, in retrospect, overreacted to many things I should have calmly considered instead, taken some deep breaths before speaking or getting overheated, kept my own ego in check a bit and maybe even have walked away from the situation much earlier on, before things got so out of control, my frustration and feelings of drifting further outside of the circle I had myself initially formed growing exponentially stronger with each subsequent rehearsal and performance. Much conflict would have been averted had I not overreacted so much; that much is for sure. The band, for a time, really devoured me from the inside, both while I was in it and also for at least a year or more afterwards, particularly when I could see, via friends' SNS feeds (all of the members blocked me on FB, and many of their closest friends followed suit, as well, but there were still some "friends of friends" with whom I was still connected for a time afterwards, and news travels oh-so-quickly...) that the other three were performing in their fine feline unit at livehouses around town, at outdoor summer festivals, and so forth, and also that the people who had at first started coming to our shows to check out my new band -- many having known me as the “vocalist for CM” -- were now following them, but had “abandoned” me and my solo or collaborative activities...

It was not an easy time for me. I wrote a lot of songs to try and deal with my unresolved feelings, resentment, regret, and anger during the end of 2016 and through 2017. It was another of life’s difficult, but important, lessons to be learned.

And there were more such lessons to come. 

Many more.

They were waiting, in fact, just around the corner...