This will be the last post about snakes. I promise. Well...I expect. 

So 2018 is over and the lurid details of The East Coast Percussion Syndrome have been already been mentioned. This post is about another snake I met in 2018 and is closely related to some other similar snakes I have met in the past, (poor snakes; they get such a bad rep when people like those I will detail are compared to them).

 Way back in 1991 or so, I was in a band called the Barbara Lynch Band. We were all full-time musicians with a pretty good management contract so we were able to rehearse daily and hone the band's sound and stage show pretty well. We did a ton of show-cases, and like any band who works hard and has even moderately good players and material, we were able to attract a fairly large following and generate a lot of buzz. Eventually we came to the notice of the Toronto press and for about a year or two, were the darlings of the King Street scene. We won a ton of press accolades (like best band in Toronto etc.) and were featured on Much Music's The New Music (along with Keith Richards) and on CITY-TV's music shows. In fact, I think there are some very bad copies of  a few of our performances at CITY-TV on Youtube.

The band eventually started to be wooed by labels and booking agents. We were offered quite a few tours overseas, and several pretty good deals with small independent labels. Our manager refused them all and was waiting for interest from the American majors. Given that he had just signed two of his acts to similar deals it made sense to follow his advice. The only problem was that we weren't really all that fashionable as far as commercial music went. We were more like Sword-Fish Trombone era Tom Waits meets Weather Report. Nevertheless a parade of deals crossed the table.

Quite a few producers offered us demo deals and we ended up in quite a few major studios in Toronto. Eventually we settled with Metalworks studio and recorded an EP with Roxy Music producer John Punter and Rush engineer Rick Andersen. It was a delightful time and something which I will detail in a a post about amazingly good experiences. This post is about the opposite.

So. Before we ended up at Metalworks with the amazing aforementioned production team, we did quite a bit of demo recording with other producers. One of them took us to a great facility. Back then it was all SSL boards and 24 track Studers coupled up via Adam-Smith synch units. It was all very impressive so we were awe-struck to be in the studio recording with this one producer. He was super friendly and kept telling us how great we were and how unique. All he wanted to do he said, was choose the best two songs we had and produce them up for a more radio friendly sound. We had a song that had this very cool drum intro we loved (think of I Mother Earth's Used To Be Alright, a wholly appropriate choice given that we shared management and a ton of stages...in fact I am sure that intro to their song was inspired by ours).

Anyway....the song chosen was one of our stronger pieces so we totally understood why the producer wanted to start with it. So we started tracking. We got about 40 seconds in and the producer called us to a halt. He wanted to iron out something in the drums he said. So we went over the intro with a fine tooth comb. Maybe not so many clicky rim sounds was the first directive, so Jim Casson the drummer began voicing the pattern on just the heads. None of us liked it as much, but we were doing our best to be professional and follow the producer. We started recording again. Forty seconds later we stopped again. Hmmm, maybe a snare hit on three would be better, was the next directive. Ok. Snare hit on three it was. On with the tune. Ten seconds later we stopped again. Maybe the snare should hit on 2 and 4 instead. Ok.

This went on until the intro had NONE of the flavour it originally had, but instead, sounded like every other drum part from that era. The producer was beaming; "see how much I have improved your sound in so short a time?" was what his face radiated. We spent the next 12 hours trimming off every unique burr we had laboriously inserted over several years of performing, writing and rehearsing. We took a wholly unique band song and trimmed sections off and idiosyncrasies away until we had just another mediocre pop pap piece.

Our manager was delighted: our producer was delighted: we were totally deflated. This was NOT how we envisioned the band. In the end we dropped the producer and convinced the manager to go with John Punter instead and we ended up with the songs the way we had arranged them only with a far superior sonic thumbprint and of course, world class production.

I now know that the demo producer was just another snake. He figured he knew how to make us better when he absolutely no idea what we were. I understand trying to be radio friendly. I understand wanting fame and fortune. What he didn't understand was that we wanted our music to be our music first and foremost. All of us made fairly good livings as musicians already (I was writing for TV's Nature of Things and 5th Estate etc. so was doing VERY well and the other lads were first call session guys) and wanted this project to reflect our musical tastes, not our need to be rich. But there will always be that guy who shows up and starts directing everybody, smilingly telling them how good they are, but all the while forcing their own weak aesthetic into the room. Behind the smile lies a conceit that their mediocre vision of music is real and that the band's is charmingly naive.

Fast forward to 2018 and a band I had been in for several years. We played the folk rock Tara and I had written and produced and were called The Rapids

We had just started doing gigs and in a attempt to incorporate more tunes in our set-list we asked a local top 40 guitar player to join our band. As most of the songs featured two guitars, I was excited about having another player involved. It meant we could perform the album with the same arrangements we had recorded originally, plus we could supplement our set list with some covers. Both Tara and I knew we wanted NOT to be a cover band, so we decided early on that we would approach the covers from a unique point of view.

So in came the local hero. Smiling. Complimentary. Humble. At the first rehearsal he started out quite amiable but by the end was making lots of faces. This went on for a few weeks until about the third rehearsal when he stopped the band and said that something didn't sound right and that he thought we should focus on the drums. So we focused on the drums. How about we play the song VERY slowly so we can put the drummer on the spot? Once we allowed him to do that we had opened the flood gates. How about we excise this whole guitar part so we can make the material more "radio friendly"? Let's lose these tunes from the set-list because they are downers. After half of our songs he played a country riff and laughed saying he thought of that every time he heard "songs like these", without thinking that his association revealed more about his lack of imagination than any real plagiarizing on our part, which was what he was really getting at. We were all good sports and let this guy have his way, but none of us were having any fun anymore and felt like we were being given some kind of "master class" by a moron.

We decided to change gears and just worry about covers instead. So we did a few the way we wanted to. The local hero was quick with his comments; "Oh we can't play "These Boots Were Made For Walking" like that! To begin with, it is a swing type song, sung by a woman, not a head banger sung by a man. And what is with the extended guitar solo? No-one wants to hear that!".

The truth is we had already played that version of the song and it went over like gang-busters. It was good that we had, because for me, my growing suspicions became confirmed. What we really had in our midst, was a conceited, mediocre cover tune musician who had never worked in an original band in his entire life, treating us like we were rank amateurs who needed his expert guidance.

He was able to derail our project for a long time with his antics and his bullshit. The fact he never learned a tune properly (he simply hadn't the chops to actually perform ANY of the guitar parts, preferring instead to strum campfire chords on his expensive 12 string, smirk and generally dis the material) and refused to gig with us (his "professional" top 40 reputation was liable to be sullied by our "amateur hour" take on covers) did him in in the end, but not before he brought us to a grinding halt.

That was a year ago and we are back up again, but just like that other snake on the East Coast mini-tour, not without a bitter taste and certainly not without some other far-reaching and actually gut-wrenching consequences. Just like in the studio 20 years ago and on stage in the spring, one should always be on guard for the people who not only don't understand creativity, but who are also consumed with a smug satisfaction in themselves and what can only be described as their overwhelming mediocrity.