Being in a Band: In General

It's a pretty standard thing to dream of being in a band, of some description or other. It seems like it must be a great idea, especially when you don't realise how much work it is; a perfect means of stating to the world who you are and what you stand for, a gang with your own shared language, in-jokes and (secret) base (the studio!), and a means to travel the world and see all sorts of wonderful places. These are all things that I have at times wanted, and my friends Dan and John have written a comic that expresses these desires and others a whole lot better than I ever could. You should get hold of a copy.

Whether or not you can actually succeed at embodying any of these desires, of course, is only even a question if you can get to the point where it's worth trying. In my next post I intend to write about the specifics of the one band I was ever in, but before I get to that point it's worth talking about the general reasons behind why this is one of those things that for me should remain adolescent fantasy.

Actually, there's not that many reasons beyond the fact that I can't play guitar, or sing really. And I don't like getting up on stage. And it's actually an awful lot of work, which you need to be dedicated enough to put in during your spare time, instead of playing computer games and writing comics and books that no-one wants to read.

Having said that, I did manage to teach myself enough to play power chords and I can do a passable black metal vocal, which in the end leads to me doing this. [All guitars and vocals are me, the drums are programmed and ripped from the punk-o-matic] And while Black Metal has a long and distinguished tradition of one-man bands, Mortiis I am not.