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We all have that one dream. You know the one I'm talking about. The one you've had since you were a child, one that you still hold in the back of your mind no matter where your life has taken you. Some of us get to live out that dream. Others must entertain it as a fantasy as they do what other people demand that they do. And yet some of us, like myself, have been in the cracks in between. This is the story of my life as both a rock star and the child of stage parents, an entertainer and a victim. As per urging by my fellow goons last year in the excellent "Tell us stories about people bad with money" thread, I have decided to document my experiences and entertain the curious minds of the Something Awful forums with the craziness I have lived through. Some of it will be humorous, some of it will be depressing, and some of it will sound like the ramblings of a madman, but all of it is true. A little background - I grew up as the oldest in a semi-strict religious household, and, along with my brothers, was homeschooled from grades six through twelve (although not a lot of schooling beyond music went on). I played in a pop/rock band with my brothers for five years, met some of the scummiest people imaginable, learned how NOT to manage money, and somehow made it out (mostly) alive. My parents were convinced we would be the next Beatles, and would become vitriolic to anyone who didn't agree. They controlled pretty much every aspect of my life during those five years, from what I would write songs about to how we dressed and presented ourselves as a band to my entire lifelong career. Before we start, I feel the need to urge you all not to do any internet detectiving of my family as well as the band I was in (you wouldn't have heard of us anyway). I now have a semi-good relationship with them, with healthy boundaries in place, and I would appreciate it if this A/T didn't affect them at all, whether good or bad. Also, if you grew up with controlling, manipulative, and/or stage parents, GET HELP. Most cities and towns have free or low-cost counseling services, and I implore you to take advantage of them! There is also a phenomenal book called If You Had Controlling Parents by Dr. Dan Neuharth that helped me along the way, and you should definitely read it as soon as possible! Alright goons and goonettes, ask away!
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Jul 9, 2014 01:59
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This sounds really interesting but I have no idea what to ask, so uh, could you tell us some stories about your life? 
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Jul 9, 2014 06:10
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Awesome, I enjoyed your posts before and would love to hear more-- - I know you're trying to be vague here, but what kind of music was this? I sort of imagined it being somewhere between the Shaggs and Hanson. - What are your parents like now, and what is your relationship with the rest of your family like? (I have to admit that I can imagine either of my parents doing something similar to this, and I would sever completely with them if they did.) - Did you enjoy performing at all, and do you do it today?
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Jul 9, 2014 06:38
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Tell us about the scummiest scumbags  Were there any 'highlights' though? Like fond memories?
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Jul 9, 2014 06:56
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Tiggum posted:This sounds really interesting but I have no idea what to ask, so uh, could you tell us some stories about your life? Well, let's start at the beginning... Hey, hey, Dad wants you to be a rock star Growing up, I always knew I wanted to play music; my mother used VH1 as a babysitter, my favorite toy was a plastic guitar, and I would sing for anyone who would listen (or begrudgingly humor the toddler babbling incoherently in a made up melody), so it's no surprise that I gravitated towards playing an instrument. As a preteen my next-oldest brother was a musical prodigy (he knows how to get what he wants from my parents and always has - this was and is a running theme in my family), and I had been teaching myself various instruments, so we started jamming together. This is when I imagine my father thought up his retirement plan. Throughout our teen years we wanted to join bands and play gigs. This was met with a lot of coercive remarks from my parents about how we should wait until our other siblings were older, and then we could be in a band together! Wouldn't that be wonderful?! Not quite. From the get-go my parents always told us we sounded so good, and that our music would take us to the top of the charts, but honestly looking back we weren't all that great, even with (expensive) studio magic behind us. At the same time, I was singled out and told that I wasn't playing well enough/practicing enough/writing enough songs and that I needed to work harder (this was a theme all through my life though; my parents pushed me hard to excel at academic pursuits while I was in school and even after becoming homeschooled, and guilt trip me if I didn't live up to their expectations). My father assumed the role of manager and producer, despite having no business sense at all (something I have heard him say himself about his own previous work pursuits). Our first gigs were awful cover shows where we played songs by Simple Plan and Sugar Ray to razor-thin crowds there to hear classic rock or metal. We spent months self-recording originals, some of which my father had written, and attempted to get them on college radio. The band consumed more and more of my time, and it became all my parents ever talked about. I was thinking things would fizzle out, eventually giving me more freedom and allow me to go to college. But then we got signed to a record label. Oops. RapturesoftheDeep posted:Awesome, I enjoyed your posts before and would love to hear more-- Thanks, Raptures -We played pop-punk/powerpop type stuff that was always evolving. At one point we were playing ska, mostly because that's what I wanted to play in the first place. I would say we were very much like an even less edgy Simple Plan, and turned into an even less edgy Less Than Jake. -My parents and I live in different states. I spent a lot of time barely talking to them after leaving the band and moving out; we were still friends on Facebook and I would get the occasional message or call, but I would go without replying for a while, especially if all they had to talk about was the band. Now that I am successful in my own right with a big boy job they've let up a bit, and we get along to a point. I see them for a few days to a week at a time, and occasionally talk over Facebook, but in all honesty they are not a really big part of my life and if they started trying to exert control over me again I would have no problem severing ties. It seems like now they are more concerned with finding ways to reconnect with me, giving me more control in the relationship. -I absolutely love performing. It is my lifeblood and dream, even if I don't make money at it. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to in a long while. I will do music or standup at the occasional open mic night, and still play and write music during my free time, but it's been a long time since I've actually performed an actual booked gig (next month makes two years, I just realized...), and even longer since I've played in a band. I have some emotional stuff to work through if I am going to dedicate myself to music, or acting, or comedy, or any of the things I am truly passionate about, but I am getting better every day  Cat Plant posted:Tell us about the scummiest scumbags These guys will come up in later stories, but I will give you a list of the major players: -The Jailbird - an ex-con on probation who thought it would be great to open a hip hop label. We were on that label for some reason. -The Genius - A man who is an utter failure at life. Created a huge record label full of artists who never actually got any label support. A lot of stories I want to post aren't music industry-related, they're just his previous fuckups. -The Player - Slimy music industry veteran so stereotypical he could send race relations with Jews back to the time of passion plays. My father may still be in business with him. I sure hope not. -The Dark Lord - a booking agent who I don't believe I actually met, but is apparently a Satanic priest (my overly religious parents didn't know this at the time, obviously) I'm sure there are more, and I will remember them as I go along. As far as highlights, well, I absolutely love performing, as long as it is to the right crowd. The shows we played to our intended audience were phenomenal. VFW halls filled to the brim with high school kids. Playing backyard parties. Giving kids somewhere positive to go after school or on the weekend. Being treated like a rockstar by fans. Meeting my (now ex-)fiance at a show. And most of all, the socialization aspect. Being homeschooled and then doing the band instead of college meant that I didn't have a lot of friends; there were especially none that I would interact with outside of a computer screen. Going to shows and getting to know the other bands was a huge step in the right direction for me. It wasn't often that I wasn't around someone in my family (my mother was a homemaker, and my father worked from home) so we spent every second together. Getting to go hang out with another one of the bands, crack open a beer, and actually socialize was phenomenal. The Banana Pee fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Jul 9, 2014 |
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Jul 9, 2014 15:24
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I'm curious about the groupie situation with family bands. A lot of the Behind the Music about the Partridges, Monkees, Leif Garret, etc tended to dance around it, but I've read that J-pop record companies will straight up hire prostitutes for their boy bands. Did you reach the level where you had groupies going nuts backstage, or was it pretty G rated because of your religious/homeschooled upbringing?
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Jul 23, 2014 09:00
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How did songwriting credits work? Did you attribute to the group as a whole or if you wrote a song individually would you get credit? Did your dad take a cut?
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Jul 23, 2014 21:18
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red19fire posted:I'm curious about the groupie situation with family bands. A lot of the Behind the Music about the Partridges, Monkees, Leif Garret, etc tended to dance around it, but I've read that J-pop record companies will straight up hire prostitutes for their boy bands. Did you reach the level where you had groupies going nuts backstage, or was it pretty G rated because of your religious/homeschooled upbringing? Oh, there were groupies, and I never got to do much of anything with them. My family was such a self-contained unit that traveled and spent most every second together that there weren't many times when I got to do much of anything after a show besides load my gear back in and drive off. Also, I wasn't exactly approachable, since I had both my parents and all of my younger brothers with me, so despite us having a lot of female fans I'm pretty sure they were scared off. So yeah, backstage (if we played somewhere with a backstage) was always extremely G-rated. My parents got quite a bit, shall we say, concerned when I started drinking at 21 and having a beer after the show, so I shudder to think of how they would react to something less innocent. I did meet my ex-fiance at a show, though, which is one of only three real "groupie" (if you want to call it that) stories I have. Andy Cancer posted:How did songwriting credits work? Did you attribute to the group as a whole or if you wrote a song individually would you get credit? Did your dad take a cut? We tended to write our songs on our own. My brothers were a bit hard to work with, so not a lot of collaboration happened. In fact, most of the time I would have sheet music in front of me while recording, since I'd never played or even heard the song before. If a song was a collaborative effort then yes, we would register the song with BMI under the names of who helped write it, with an equal share of percentages. If I wrote a song alone (I can only think of one or two songs I truly "collaborated" on instead of writing it myself) I would get full credit when it was registered and published. As far as royalties, well, I've barely seen a dime from this band in all honesty. We were losing so much money on the band and "getting us out there" that it was eating into my dad's salary (my family's only source of income at that point). When we had a good night and we sold some CDs I would get a cut of about $10 or so, but that was only if we actually made money on the gig or broke even (considering gas, food, and hotel room if needed). That's a big reason why I have been in such dire financial straits later in my life, since my parents coerced me into using my credit cards to pay for a lot of band-related expenses in return for them paying the minimum payments on them. I think it bears noting that, rather than be smart about finances when it came to the band, we just went all out, not caring if we made money because my parents were convinced that someday a huge record label would see us, swoop in, and "put us in front of everybody" and we'd be the biggest band ever and wouldn't have to worry about money ever again. We could have made money off of the band, but poor choices at every turn hindered it. I barely saw any money from CD sales or gigs, and even then that's horribly offset by the debt I still am in. I wouldn't be surprised if the same thing has happened to a lot of other bands with stage parents.
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Jul 27, 2014 17:38
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The Banana Pee posted:my parents coerced me into using my credit cards to pay for a lot of band-related expenses in return for them paying the minimum payments on them. That's loving criminal, gambling your kid's financial future in the hope that you'll be able to leech off them the rest of their lives should be a caning offence.
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Jul 27, 2014 18:22
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