Songs That Broke Up My Band

It wasn’t the songs, it was me. I broke up the band, with my inability to bond, my demands, and my failure to capitalize on and to realize our potential. Bitching that the guys who played some forty-plus of my songs didn’t play everything I wanted is petulant, but it makes for a good name for the show. When I started putting together the set for tonight’s show, I naturally went for songs I hadn’t played in while, the ones we’d dropped from the band’s sets. The new songs I was writing addressed the break-up on certain levels (that’s right! I’m an artist, working multiple levels! Grasp the complexity!) so now I had songs the band dropped, and songs about the breakup, as well as songs the band simply refused to do. Throw in a couple songs the band struggled with, draining much emotional capital from all sides, but eventually did play, and you’ve got “Songs That Broke Up My Band.” The name’s a lie, but then so are the songs. I turn my problems into teenage girls, and I turned the typical tale of a band felled by petty grievances and the hazards of failure into a battle over creative differences, because rock and roll is about mythmaking, not biography. The truth is that if I could take things lighter and if we could generate a fan base we’d have been fine. Only success could have ruined us then. Of course, we did succeed on some level. We performed and recorded the songs well, sometimes. Ultimately it does come back to the songs. Early on, we skipped some that “weren’t us” or just weren’t being included in the set list, that weren’t missed, by anyone but me. As we approach the later period (I know the idea that some failed band has a “later period” is more mythmaking, in a book of lore only I will read.) the resentments grow more recent, until you might guess that some of these did contribute to our problems. Oh aren’t I eating my cake and trying to keep it too! I can’t bitch about these guys, but I still do. I love those guys, but I love my songs as well. The Ks are gone, all I’ve got is the songs. Got to figure out a way to keep them alive. Thanks for coming out tonight.

This is the text from the program of the show titled: Songs That Broke Up My Band. We recorded it and I liked the results, hence this blog of free songs. Enjoy!

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