In the spring of 2007, I moved to Seattle along with the other three devastatingly good-looking members of my band. A year and a half later, after endless months of cripplingly horrible shows, desperate attempts to cobble together part-time jobs, and Oasis-worthy internecine squabbling, one of us finally broke.

“Guys,” our guitarist said one night at a band meeting, “I’m gonna play out the shows we have booked, and then I’m done. I can’t keep going on like this.”

We had thought that moving to a bigger city might help actualize our dream, never mind the fact that we knew exactly one person in Seattle. Emboldened by a blissfully naive confidence, laughing off the idea of vitamin D deficiency with quips about Flintstone vitamins, we had disentangled ourselves from our sleepy California town, packed our minivan, and driven north into the
leprous arms of impending doom.

We played our Seattle debut the week we arrived, a show I’d booked from out of state. Our ignorance as to which clubs (not) to play was profound. On that first night, we found ourselves unloading a trailer full of gear into the friendly confines of the Central Saloon in the teeth of a driving rain. An hour and a half later, we’d performed a full set of contemplative indie rock for the bartender and our single friend, been blasted with jock metal for every second of the experience we weren’t actually playing, and seen our group morale sink to previously unimaginable depths.

You’d think this holocaust of a coming-out party would have led to a tempering of my freewheeling booking strategy. Fool me once, and all that. Instead, I continued to engage in shameless, ill-fated MySpace binges, hitting up reputable bands (Thao with the Get Down Stay Down, the Cave Singers, even—oh, good grief—Fleet Foxes), none of which I ever heard back from. I imagined them lazily scrolling through their inboxes while eating oysters purchased with the sort of royalty checks I would never see, skimming my pleas while thinking, Who’re these assholes? They only have two plays today.

So it went. Playing a community center in Kirkland for a crowd with an average age of 12? Check. Agreeing to play a “festival” that turned out to be a Mennonite farmers market in Central Washington at 11 in the morning? Double check. Having the bartender at the Comet Tavern put on an extreme grind record in the middle of our final song because he didn’t even realize we were still playing? If it hadn’t happened to me, I wouldn’t believe the story.

Ours were trials robust enough to shake the faith of even the most committed troubadours. Which we weren’t.

After a while, I had to wonder: Was this the dream for which I’d given up my job, the comfort of my mother’s green-bean salad, a chance at making out with Genevieve Flaversham? In hindsight… I guess it was. Nobody had guaranteed us anything. True, people had told us we had a spark, a great live show, a facility for interesting arrangements. Who cares if half those people were our parents? Who were we to argue?! We believed in the pot of PBR-soaked gold at the end of the Sub Pop rainbow. We had been drunk on the idea of making it as a band.

They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. If there is some fantastic mathematics through which debt, relational strain, public humiliation, and endless frustration may be transmuted into strength, then I’m Hulk Hogan. That may be. But for a long time—and I say this with real regret—I got a bitter pinch in my stomach every time I heard about the buzz springing up around local bands we’d played with or that I thought we were at least as good as, whatever that means.

I can still remember a party I attended in the fall of 2004 at my friend’s Orange County ranch house. I was milling among a throng in the backyard, when a group of four young men emerged from the house and picked up some instruments leaning against the toolshed. Unbeknownst to me, I’d shown up at what turned out to be the first show ever put on by my soon-to-be-famous schoolmates Cold War Kids.

Over the next several years, I fawned over the band publicly while whining in private. Why did the Cold War Kids of the world get to strut like beautiful flamingos across David Letterman’s stage while I was trying to convince the bartender at Chop Suey to let me have a bottled water? Hadn’t we worked our asses off? Weren’t we paying our dues? The deck was stacked against us! I mean, how could we make connections when we were locked in the basement four nights a week writing songs with hooks so dreamy Ben Gibbard could only fantasize about them? He had Zooey to comfort him. I only had bandmates I’d grown tired of seeing, a house with no central heating, and a hamper full of dirty clothes the smell of which permeated my bedroom so profoundly that I was often kept awake at night—as much by the smell of moldering long johns as by my endless second-guessing of our decision to leave Santa Cruz.

It’s been almost three years since we broke up and no answer to my questions has been forthcoming, unless of course you count my growing awareness of how grotesque my sense of entitlement was. Part of me seems to have assumed that I had the right to be paid to play music. Turns out that’s not how life works.

I still find myself occasionally pining for the sour-beer smell of a club before it opens, a greenroom fridge full of skunky Heinekens, and a 40-minute time slot. Alas, our bass player moved back to California, where he now works nights in the vast walk-in refrigerator of the local Safeway. Sometimes I imagine him stocking gallons of 2 percent milk in that freezing, dark cavern that smells like a mausoleum, and I wonder how big a cemetery you would need to inter the savaged hopes, burned-out dreams, and low-quality merch of all the forgotten bands that’ve ever played the High Dive on a Monday night. recommended

Ben Bishop is the former pianist and singer in Caravel.

136 replies on “The Life and Times of a Mediocre Band”

  1. Good article, understandable disappointment. Ten years ago you could have gotten a job on the record label side of things and taken all that disappointment out on younger, up and coming bands. You’d become drunk on their tears I tell you!

  2. what a whiney little b*tch. Either your music sucks or you didn’t try hard enough. why don’t you blame everyone in washington for your problems so you can be a poor victim? this article irritated me.

  4. Wow. Based on the comments, it appears Seattle’s music scene is awash with jaded assholes. You’re all just pissed off that you didn’t write this article, which I found quite enjoyable.

  5. #54, totally right.

    And furthermore, I agree, your band was full of devastatingly good-looking guys.

    Not to worry, Seattle will get over their obsession with The Head and The Heart soon enough and another lame band will capture their attention with nothing new or creative.

    Keep writing music.

    Most that commented totally missed the point and need to up their Vitamin D supplements, the moody fucks.

  6. Actually Seattle is full of hard-working, driven and smart musicians that are looking to get their hustle on.

    It’s called the music business for a reason. If you want it handed to you on a silver platter you are S.O.L.

    Look at the Spits. That band wrote the book on how not to be a shitty local band. They work their asses off, tour relentlessly and are bigger out of Seattle then they are here.

    Want something? Work for it. Ben, I’m sorry you gave up so easily. That says more about you than the rest of Seattle’s local music scene.

  7. As someone who has been a musician for a good long while, and has done so in a couple different places, I can assure you that seattle is a terrible place to try to make a living playing music. It is a fine place to be a hobby musician.

    The only way to get ahead is to capture the attention of a taste-maker. Some bands play 3 times in a basement and get ‘the deal’, others play relentlessly for 10 years and get nothing but the satisfaction of a job well done. Some folks have the finances and/or wherwithal to keep plugging away with zero return, others chose to invest that energy and expense elsewhere.

  9. Easy summary: you sucked, had no idea how to get better, and had no idea how to try to tap into an audience that would appreciate your shitty music — and there are tons of people in Seattle and elsewhere who appreciate shitty music. Not bad as a writer, but only time will tell if you’re a one-trick pony.

    There have been a few great bands who have moved to Seattle and done well, but they are vastly outweighed by the mediocre shitstorm that started around 1991. If this is your announcement to the world that you are done trying to play music for other people, then it’s welcome. Maybe if you played music for yourself from now on you might get somewhere.

  10. The article was really funny, and would make a good longer piece too, I’d think. And may I just say some of you are making me think twice about visiting Seattle, at least until I can find some kevlar underthings…

  13. First, why Seattle? It had literally 1000+ bands BEFORE the recession started – probably twice that now. How many of them will ‘make it’ in the Dick-Clark biblical sense you allude to?

    Secondly, read the news. In Seattle, you will only get respect as an original and unforgettable act if you suicide/murder/OD on heroin. That’s because the taste-trenders here have incredibly immature POVs, and Seattle is very largely a repressed, parochial depression hole. (There used to be a great music magazine here called The Rocket. It died for lack of income. The trendy-posers couldn’t read it.)

    Feel better? Now: suppose you’re actually good. Try Idaho or Utah or Oregon. When you’ve been recognized for greatness someplace like that (like Eliot Smith), get in touch with Bumbershoot. Play there and with that imprimatur you’re gold at any of the moss-monkey shithole of your choice.

    Or, you could start a record label. That worked for a couple people. Try to put out records by people likely to OD or suicide in a few years. It’s even better if they sleep under freeway bridges.

  14. P.S. Still think Seattle’s The Place? Turn on a radio and listen to the music they play. That will teach you more about what a bitchin’ music scene this is than any words.

    Ever notice no venues here have chairs? People don’t go to listen, they go to get laid. When people in Seattle start getting laid (and monkeys … etc.), there won’t be any more “music” venues.

  16. Wow, there are lots of tightly wound people commenting on this thread. I thought the article was hilarious, sounds like he’s making fun of himself more than complaining. Apparently all the haters getting mad on here thought the Stranger actually wanted to help some guy plead his case for why his band should have made it big- oh wait, they would never do that, it’s a fucking joke, Genevieve Flaversham?! No one has had a name like that since
    Dickens. This made me laugh twice, once for how much it sucks to be a mediocre band, and twice for hard it is for anybody in Seattle to relax and have a laugh, you guys need to get laid. And I didnt notice this sad sap ever mention getting blown for being in the band, I bet he was jerking off into all that dirty laundry the whole time, poor guy.

  20. Oh no! You had to move equipment in the rain? You shouldn’t have to do that to play music!

    Sounds like you were in it for the wrong reasons. Probably better that you hung it up. In the very least, you’ll save the music scene from having to deal with yet another overpriveleged, pompous bunch of wannabe shitheads with a disproportionate sense of entitlement.

  22. When you’re in a scene like Seattle’s it can sometimes distort your vision. You play shows with bands that sometimes get amazing press, local radio support and a lot of “buzz” while many other bands (including yours) don’t get that attention. And it makes you wonder why them and not you. Sometimes it as easy as “Band X is far more talented/prettier than you”. Sometimes it’s not so easy to put your finger on it. You can either go on doing what you do or you can let it consume you, and then ultimately consume your band. I think the author Ben’s story is universal regardless of the scene.

    @25. Don’t send bands to Austin! Austin’s local music scene is completely shitty. Try Houston. Much more DIY and less pretentious.

  23. Yeesh. Count me among those defending Ben. This is called a confessional piece, people.

    That said, I think there is a pretty important lesson implied by this – that an all-or-nothing attitude about your music career is likely to lead to disappointment. It’s much better to gig locally and concentrate on what’s important – making the very best record you can. Fame doesn’t always result from good songwriting and clever arrangements, but you’ve sure got a better shot – especially when you’re mining low-energy territory like Caravel did.

  25. The art for this article reminds me of David Brent looking at the camera after telling his secretary Dawn that she is being fired for stealing post-its.

  26. Um, when somebody writed a self-deprecating piece about their naive and unrealistic expectations and “grotesque sense of entitlement”, what kind of jerk feels the need to pile on and say “HEY! YOU WERE BEING NAIVE AND HAD UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS AND A GROTESQUE SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT!”?

    The whole thrust of the article is how ill-advised and poorly-executed this effort was. You don’t need to explain that to the person who wrote the damn thing, for fuck’s sake.

    I liked the piece. *shrug*

  27. I have to agree with what someone else said: most of you on this string are a bunch of jaded assholes. No doubt a bunch of wanna-be indie hipsters whose bands sucked, and therefore wished they had at least written this article. It’s so easy to be a critic and hide behind a comment board, but really, that just makes you a sorry-ass pussy.

    Sometimes you have to just take an article for what it is, and not throw your own personal failings into it.

  28. @16 is so right. I thought it was a funny, charming little piece. I think it was supposed to be funny.

    @9 Ron, you are not *allowed* to make the rules.

  31. If you wanna be a star of stage and screen
    Look out! It’s rough and mean!
    It’s a long way to the top
    If you wanna rock ‘n’ roll.

    Channel some of that disappointment/anger into a good song. Next to love, being pissed off about the “unfairness” of the world is one of the most fertile grounds for art.

  32. SORRY BUT THIS GUY STILL DOESN’T GET IT.
    he saw his hometown peers get famous. he admits to thinking ‘me too’.

    FACT IS, YOUR NUMBER ONE REASON FOR PLAYING MUSIC IS BECAUSE YOU LOVE TO PLAY!! (just like anything else)

    i hope this guy is writing now because he loves to write, not because he needs to be a famous writer.

  33. I’m with 16. I don’t think I would have liked Caravel, but it seems pretty clear to ME at least that the first 2/3rds of the article were purposefully overplaying the sympathy card. He’s clearly setting up some laughs at his own expense.

    Yeah, moving to a city unprepared expecting you’re going to make it is silly; but that’s. exactly. the point. of this article.

  34. The challenges are what make this an interesting story. It’s a bit unfortunate/depressing if this column is the end of the struggle. Maybe we could have a quarterly check in on how it’s going. Keep at it. 80+ comments means something.

  36. @64 has some very good and very true points.

    Seriously, don’t come to Seattle to start a band. We can’t even keep tracks of the ones here already.

    You are way better off staying in whatever hell hole you live in, and touring nearby, and maybe dropping in to Seattle once in a while, before you ever MOVE here.

    For fuck’s sake.

  37. I’m really confused on why someone would move away from Orange County to “make it” as a largely unoriginal band. Orange County is the nexus of unoriginality, look through any issue of Alternative Press and you’ll see a bunch of SoCal dudes dressed in their closest approximation of My Chemical Romance in order to “make it”. Seattle really isn’t the place for musicians who go into rock simply to be adored – I can’t think of one successful person from Seattle’s music history that has followed this path.

    Also, you kind of parred yourself by naming your band a name very close to the name of an ice cream shop. Was the name “Baskim Robbins” taken already?

  39. Sometimes i think “the only reason i write music is because it makes me feel good” is just as trendy as “i write music because it’s the only thing i know how to do. it’s either write music or starve”

    if you claim to not have any ego in your work and vision then you’re pretty much a liar. it’s only human to have hopes of leading the pack. in fact, it’s more than human, it’s survival of the fittest.

  42. If your not willing to believe in the dream till your still believing when everyone else has quit (aka … you) then you never believed it at all. band members quit or your band breaks up? get a new one! get dicked over at a gig? book another one! don’t like the weather? too fucking bad move then! as a matter of fact if the weather were nice here i’da quit playing years ago to hang out in the sunshine … but every winter that rolls around I hole up in a sound cave and remind myself of how tough you really have to be to continue playing music in Seattle. mediocre music apathy, non-paying gigs, passive-aggressive attitudes, cynical crowds and partly cloudy with a strong chance of rain is daily routine here. and if you take the easy way out and quit … then thats exactly what every asshole that every told you that you’d fail wanted, cuz as long as your not successful at anything you love … then they don’t have to be either. get back on the horse and write music YOU want to hear and fuck what everybody else thinks. Lionel Hampton toured internationally till age 93 with his jazz fest one year before he died. mind you he was more “successful” … but thats because he loved it and NEVER quit! would you rather hear “nice article maybe you should just be a music writer?”

  43. You left Santa Cruz? That place within an easy drive to 6+ million folks (the pop. of WA), and another 30+ million within 8 hours. We all make mistakes, but not usually that big.

    Good writing though.

  44. what a bunch of cynical curmudgeon assholes!
    most of the comments on here must have been typed by penis fingers because they are DICK.
    the guy tries on a little humility & admits that the endeavor was more than he could stomach & you see it fit to shit in the open wounds.

    it is sad to read that there are so many people who are aroused by the naivete of others & only took their hands out of their pants to type something shitty (& then i get all riled up & act like an asshole too).

    what is wrong with trying, being an ass & failing if you can admit it, learn from it & laugh at yourself?

  47. Ben, thank you for an honest article that reflects your painful growth as an artist and a person.
    My hat is off to you.
    Never mind the cynical barbs that others on this thread have aimed at you; they identify with your dreams and disappointments and are ashamed of them. With that shame comes anger, and then comes the desire to bury their anger and shame with you.
    You’re an artist: never forget that. I ask you to take your anger and sadness and get back up there on that stage and do it anyway. I know it feels like nobody’s watching, and it hurts that no one is watching, but let it out anyway. Let your COMPLAINT be your ANSWER. Do it again, in spite of, because.
    Those of you who delight in stomping on this guy’s piece, I pity each and every one of you, because you’re beyond the point of wanting to help yourselves, and can only delight in dumping on others.
    Keep at it Ben. Thanks.

  48. I’ve been playing out for 30 years. I did a bunch of the stuff Ben did. He’s right, it’s a really stupid way to go.

    Somebody said something about playing music because you love to play it, but even more important is to make music because you have something to say with it that people need to hear.

    If you’re making art, you need to find an audience. They’re not at the bars. I’ve been the asshole in the corner with a guitar and a PA while people re-enact their volley ball spikes on the table in front of me. It’s kind of your job to get them to listen, but if they’re not there to listen, you’re likely wasting your time.

    We stopped playing clubs in 1997. We started doing small house concerts (this after two records) and defined success as playing to 11 people who were there to listen and having them enjoy it.

    We kept doing house concerts and then moved up to renting the Sunset Hill Community Club, and putting out another record and being able rent out and almost fill 400 seat MOHI – ONCE A YEAR – and Meydenbauer, and some other places and eventually a few festivals where we played in front of 4,000 – 6,000 people.

    But it took us eight years to get there and eventually you do something wrong, or people decide your music sucks, or the economy goes into the toilet and the highlights mostly illustrate how small the margins really are.

    And once you’ve played in front of a crowd that roars like that, well, unless someone is buying you into major market radio, that’s what you get.

    Good on ya Ben, for being able to write a piece about what it’s like to dip your toes into it and learn that it’s not the glamour life the major labels want people to believe it is. If you can get that lesson over quickly, you might be able to find a framework that gets you past the disappointment of the numbers and into a place where you make some music that people might hear and love.

    But if the music and the writing isn’t driving *you* – find a passion that feeds your body and regardless do something that will put a roof over your head. The music isn’t doing that for people with names these days.

  49. @PRETTYMUCHEVERYONE

    Is it just me or is this article quite light-hearted and self-deprecating and entirely aware of the inherent humour in its vainglorious, frustrated struggle? And that most people, in their criticisms, appear like humorless blowhard assholes?

    No, it isn’t. Good article Ben. Chunklet ran a piece a few years ago about how much it sucks to go on tour; this does a great job of dismantling the ideas that come before that.

  50. There’s nothing more worth doing than music. Before recording, composers (including many famous now) wrote music all their lives, never get it performed. Some of them took 50 years for the world to discover.

    It’s not like that any more. You can perform it, record it, and using some software put it somewhere for free where people all over the world can find it. Almost anything you can do (with some competence) will find someone who digs it. They can share it easily.

    You don’t need to grovel or get ripped off to find an audience any more. 15 YEARS ago I read about a guy in Edina, MN that nobody in the US knew about, because … well it’s the US. But in Europe he was BIG NEWS. (P.S. Europe has grown-up tastes. Phil Dick was right: the U.S. is still stuck in Roman times.)

    Anyway, If you love music, there’s nothing more worth doing. Do it. Let nothing stop you. Route around the damage. All You Need is Love.

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