About crisis. Not financial, not economical.Band crisis…

These last days we (the band) got to a very interesting point…Costin, the lead singer told us that he would want to quit making music (not just the band). WTF?! Why? What happened? After all your life so far singing, making music, all of a sudden you decide to just stop. It doesn’t work like that, man!

So, I (given the wisdom I am gifted with, of course) tried to grasp WTF is actually going on. One of my beliefs is that most of the issues in life when it comes to people is that their (unshared) expectations don’t meet. So, could it be that?

We had a discussion, me and Costin (after all we are like 10 m away all day long, I have the office right on the flour above him and we have a long history behind us), to see what’s going on. Indeed, he felt like we are not heading anywhere, the band doesn’t have a clear direction, this kind of things. I should have seen it…

Given that, I tried to confront the rest of the guys, so everybody speak his mind about what each one expects from the band, where we see the band, what we should do, where we should go from here, why everybody is in the band at this point, this kind of things, to try to come to a common conclusion everybody should agree with.

The fact is that now, that I have spoken to them, it’s me the one that is a bit confused…

I mean:

• 2 (out of 5) go for the big scene(they say no reserve), same style, rock, pop-rock, recordings, video, etc
• 1 (myself) go for the big scene also, same things as above, but with the reserve that if it would happen (which usually doesn’t without a big and maintained effort from the band(!!!)) none of us would probably be able to live up to it (given the fact that it would imply a total change of lifestyle). I love to play, study, learn what I don’t know and I realize the music is so damn huge that I know so little of it and I discover each and every day new grounds that I love to explore. That’s my reason for playing…
• 1 sees it a s a hobby, which is not a bad thing as long as you treat it with responsibility. I mean from my point of view, seeing it as a hobby is at least as important as a business because you invest the best you can in yourself, so you should study because you love it, you should buy gears because you love it, you should spend time playing because you love it and not think about the return on your investment.
• 1 needs a change. He asks for playing at the weddings, a totally different kind of music that none of the others enjoy, no overdrive, no rock, something that would put us out of the direction we once had (the one where we were heading for the big scene) and I don’t agree with that. And the others think the same. He goes for the money, for an extra job playing at weddings, music that none of us like, know or want to learn. It’s just a different musical universe that none of us like to explore.

Now it is a difficult situation since we are long time friends, play together since 12-13 years and with some of the guys even longer, but the situation put us in a position where we don’t know where to go to from here, since it seems we don’t have a common goal anymore and we clearly need to find that goal if we want to continue.

At this point I am trying to define some common goal from all I could get from them, to define some guiding lines that i would like to present to the guys, to try to define our way to get there, in order to find the our way again.

And most of all, we would need to find our pleasure of playing music for the sake of it, because this is the reason we all started this, isn’t it?

Did you experienced such a situation? How did you handle it?

Please share!

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