the price of fame

It was around my junior year in college when my friend Jim went through his ‘I want to be a musician’ phase. Previously, Jim had gone through several different majors, including business, communications, 19th century English literature, and an ill-fated attempt at chemistry. Thus, music as a major…being one of the few academic courses as of yet unexplored…seemed a good choice. His decision was also swayed by the fact that grunge music, which was in vogue at the time, didn’t require a whole lot of those annoying barriers that other genres of music required, barriers such as ‘skill’ and ‘knowing how to actually play an instrument’. Jim figured that with minimal musical talent, backed by loud drums and generous amounts of feedback, he could be the next rock superstar.

He quickly formed a band from students in his various music classes and, having known the owner of a nearby college dive bar, secured a gig before one single instrument was actually played by anyone in the group.

Their first performance was to be held in this little dive bar two months later, and the band began a rigid practice schedule which consisted of Wednesday evenings in one of the open music classrooms, and Thursday afternoons until five, the official opening of Happy Hour festivities. None of the band members had scheduled any classes on Friday, thus giving them a healthy dose of weekend to enjoy.

Jim decided that his band would be called ‘Free Beer’, and having spent a semester in an introductory advertising class during his ‘business major’ period, went on a whirlwind marketing blitz for his upcoming debut. His fliers, taped and stapled to virtually every signpost and bulletin board within the entire campus community, exclaimed in an extra large font, “Saturday at The Hole, Free Beer from 11-12pm!”

He chose the band’s name for precisely this reason, he told me. While, technically speaking, there was a certain amount of truth to his advertising, he felt that possible misconceptions would draw extra people into the bar, thus giving him a much larger audience than normally would appear for a group of minimally talented musicians who had only been practicing together for a few short weeks.

And his strategy proved correct, because that Saturday, the bar was packed by 10:30. I venture out to watch Jim’s debut performance with some friends of mine. Unfortunately, by 11:00 the already drunk and rowdy college crowd, upon finding out that the promised ‘Free Beer’ wasn’t the same free beer that they were expecting, got even rowdier and uglier in the process. I slipped out the door with my other friends at 11:05, which was the exact moment that the first beer bottle was thrown in the direction of the stage.

I later found out from Jim that his band’s first concert lasted exactly 12 minutes. It took this long for the owner of the bar to kick his band off the stage, followed quickly by them all slipping out the back door. Jim’s first performance ended up costing his band over $500…the amount of damage that a crowd of rowdy college kids expecting free beer can produce in 12 minutes worth of time. The band broke up after that.

Jim told me later, though, that he truly felt he could make it as a musician…in his opinion he had the passion, drive, and talent. “I just don’t know if I can afford it, man!” But the following semester Jim switched to yet another major…thus ending what could have been the next big revolution in music.