A New Kind of Suck

I'm not so delusional as to think I'm wildly talented. I'm well aware of my musical deficiencies: poor sense of time, an uncanny ability to get lost in the changes of the simplest standard when soloing, tendency to play too loud, etc.

And despite how it seems from how much I talk, I'm not in love with the sound of my voice. If I was to be the voice of a Muppet, I'd have to name the character Dork.

I've been having fun being in a band and all, and I loved the song Code Monkey so much I wanted to sing it. I've never learned to sing and play at the same time before this, so it's been a fun challenge. Very hard to sing while chewing your tongue...

Anyway, at band practice tonight, we did Code Monkey and once again I felt like the tempo was all over the place. This is a chronic complaint from me, I feel like we speed up and slow down an awful lot playing this number. Melissa thought maybe it was my nerves affecting my perception, so we recorded a run-through to see...

I'm not sure about the tempo issue listening to the playback because I was not prepared for the horror of hearing my tone-deaf vocals. The skin on my neck and head crawled, and I got a little nauseous. I'm not exaggerating.

If pitchy singing were an Olympic event, I'd have more gold medals than Michael Phelps. It was so bad I spent the whole drive from Independence trying to think of something horrible enough to compare it to and came up blank. Kim Jong-il, school shootings, the fuss over Michael Jackson's funeral, nothing I came up with was bad enough.

To take a line from Tim Wilson, it's like being too old for Lawrence Welk or not old enough for Mickey Mouse, too steppen to Steppenwolf and to greasy for the Waffle House. Too dirty for Larry Flynt, too ugly for the Rolling Stones...

My band mates were very encouraging. Offering to, for instance, post this recording on the internet. Jamie insists its because without in-ear monitors, I can't really hear myself sing over the drums and my too-loud guitar, and I pray he has a point. Because hearing this, I think 'a guy who can't sing any better than that should know to stay away from the microphone.' The way a fat man should know not to wear a Speedo.

The real horror was realizing I'd sung this badly in front of friends a few weeks back. And I have to say, I'm grateful to have such good friends that they'll still talk to me even after they sat through what can only be described as a musical terrorist attack.

On the plus side, Jamie's 'God Song' (whatever that means, I can't hear his vocals either when we play, so I don't have any idea what the lyrics are) turned out to be pretty fun. I found some sounds that worked with it and with one of the covers we're doing. Had so much fun with that it almost made up for being physically ill at the sound of my own voice.