…..and I’m done with college! Just like that. No problem. A few papers, projects, presentations… and it’s all over. It’s a very weird feeling to be done with school forever, but my third and final quarter of senior year college consisted one class (Advanced Studio Recording) and some internship hours working in the recording studio. The rest of the time, I was at my new job in downtown Denver at the Remy Corporation. So, the transition was really easy, because I’ve had one foot out the door for months now.
My new job is great – a few months ago I got an email out of nowhere from my friend Parrott – he said he worked at this sweet office downtown and they were looking for a new IT guy. I was the first person he thought of, and I’m glad! I work in a really modern, cool office right above an italian restaurant and connected to the most famous and snazzy-expensize hotel in Denver – the Oxford. My boss Andrew told me that whenever celebrities/musicians/etc come to Denver, they stay in the Oxford so he’s randomly gotten to meet Bam Margera, Eminem, Harrison Ford, etc. Remy is an IT staffing firm – which means that when big companies like AOL Time Warner need a new VP of Internal Communications or whatever, they contact Remy and the people here (there are about 10 salespeople) search our candidate lists and current resume sites (Monster, Jobing, etc) for people that would fit the bill. I am currently the IT guy, but I’m gonna slowly become a salesperson if I want to. The best part is, the people here are really goofy – we all have huge wars every day in which we throw little Nerf footballs at each other as hard as we can. We break things, knock pictures off the wall, it’s crazy. People get hurt.
“But Peet, a new job? What happened to Blacktop Mourning, that band in Chicago that you were gonna join?”
Good question, you curious and up-to-date Gee. The whole situation seemed too good to be true, and it turns out it was. They took pretty much as long as they could to get back to me with any email, phone call, anything. Totally unprofessional and disrespectful of how much time and effort I was putting into the whole thing. Everything still seemed pretty cool until I played a show with them in Iowa. I flew home to Chicago and practiced with them for most of the week, and that’s when I started seeing how things worked over there. Max, the lead guitarist, while being a very talented musician, is 17 and therefore pretty immature. It’s expected at that age. No big deal. The thing is, Max’s mom Sharon is the self-appointed manager and boss of the band. Up goes a red flag. That’s not the end of the world if she were a capable, smart, responsible woman… but she isn’t really any of those things. She was 
self-important, overcontrolling, and just plain obnoxious. During our rehearsals leading up to the show, she did her best to try to choreograph all the “moves” that I would do on stage – how to hold the mic, how to bend my knees when I sing, what to say and not say between songs… it was nuts. I thought this was a rock band, not Backstreet Boys. Up goes another red flag. Off to the show. Sharon makes sure that Max has his laptop so that he’s entertained during the 5 hour trip to Iowa. On the way to the show, she asks me 3000 times if I know the words to the songs – yes, yes, I know them all, yes, I’m very capable of memorizing the songs. The 5 hour trip ends up taking about 7 hours because in between Sharon making wrong after wrong turn (sometimes into service exits and places the car was definitely not supposed to be), she hit a parked car that was getting gas. “Sharon, there’s a car behind us… stop stop STOP STOP!” shouted all 9 of us in the car. Bam. Right into the headlights of a Jeep Cherokee.
So we finally get to the venue and play the show, and not that many people know who Blacktop Mourning is. A small handful, and the rest of the kids are there to see Index Case, the local metal band. Well, we play the show and it goes perfectly. We completely win over the crowd and become the favorite performance of the day – and this is my first show ever with them. I worked the crowd in between songs and got huge laughs, got everyone singing along, it was great. Afterwards, we sign autographs, take pictures, everything. The guys (and Sharon) all tell me how great the show was and how well I did.
On the way home, after hitting and killing a goose with the car, Sharon decides to take the long way home because, you know, it’s not like I have to catch a flight back to Denver. I was on the phone in the back seat talking to the guy who was taking care of my ticket reservations, and as soon as I said “Ok man, thanks… call me when you know about the flight time.” and Sharon whips around and says “Have him call ME instead.” Red flag again! What, I’m not capable of figuring out a flight on my own? The moment I showed the slightest bit of independence or responsibility, Sharon would kind of freak out and do whatever she could to try to take control of the sitation. Weird, freaky stage mother type stuff. Shawn, Joe, and Jon all separately expressed how much they dislike her and how obnoxious and moronic she is. Joe even said that he frequently wants to quit the band because of the immaturity and irresponsibility of Max and Sharon.
So once I get home, I don’t hear from them for a week, and then they finally email me telling me that they watched the video of the performance and they started picking out little problems that had nothing to do with the actual performance. “When you told everyone to sing along, and everyone went ‘wooo!’ and you said “You guys, the words are not ‘woo!’, the audience was insulted.” Are you kidding me? That got a huge huge laugh and I got a bunch of emails on Myspace about how much they loved it. These nitpicky emails went on for a while until I finally told them that even if they did want me to be their new singer, I’m out. I don’t want my musical career in the hands of Max or his mom. I suppose I wish them good luck – they’re going to need it.
Alden and I have been fixing up the Julian house a lot, and I should have some new pictures of the place soon. New exterior paint, new (crappy) furniture, I decorated my room a bit, we bought an inflatable pool, the place is getting nice quickly. Rock!
Listening to: Hit The Lights – Bodybag
