After years of trying to be nice and fair and a good sport in relation to my fellow other musicians I have finally decided that a little bit of meaness and bitterness is A-OK.

I mentioned it to my roomie the other day (he's a musician too) and his instant response was: "Well, yeah, of course, bitterness and jealousy are great motivators". (He and I were even talking about including liner-note "thank yous" and "no thank yous". Heh heh.)

Anyone else a proponent of negative-motivaton in life? e.g. laughing at the bad fortune of those who have been mean to you.

I'm not preaching all-out random meaness to sweet people here, just a little bit of harmless meanness back at those who have been mean to me.

Um... Exhibit A:

A smile of glee as I look at my ex-band's new MySpace testimonials and realize the most gushing ones are from 19 year-olds who's musicial interests include:

Michael Buble, Phil Collins, Hootie and the Blowfish, and Ricky Martin.

I'm right to find this amazingly poetic, aren't I?


Is it really so strange?

I don't think so. I think harboring this meanness can create bitterness and then it can lead to cynicism which has its benefit but I don't think is a good thing to live with.

But, poetic justice is a sweet sweet taste in the right moments.

Yeah, I agree.

It sometimes feels mean even to smile at poetic justice---I guess what I was getting at is that I've realized it's okay to give yourself permission to smile at poetic justice.

Ironically, it reminds me of why I try to treat everyone nicely and fairly... karma does have a way of working its magic.

the list of seemingly nice guy rockers who can write songs is pretty much Tom Petty, and his biggest album came when he ditched his life long friends/band.

The Cap'n and I played in a band in high school called Opus Fairgrounds. When we put our little tape, in the the thank you's we included the name of this guy who "managed" another local band like this because we had done a show with them and the guy was a jagoff.

The dude (who was like a 35 or 40 years old) calls my 17 year old ass at my parents house demanding to know why I had done this, etc. Incensed. This tape had maybe a distribution of 100-200 confined mostly to our freaking high school.

Take it easy there Andrew Loog Oldham.

So yes Polly, I say openly call people out.

i.e. meanness is part of my musical "heritage"?

but the key point here, I think, was 'high school'

I was just thinking it might be funny to include people like the art teach in college who made me cry in class, etc.

"we would like extend a special fuck you to Mr. Pintrasky for always knowing the right thing to say to ruin your day and offer wonderful fodder for angsty teenage tunes"

If I was to ever put out anything big time, I would most definitely include an enemies list.

its safe to say, Dr Freud, that we would do that at any point in our lives.

Exactly. I guess in my old age I've discovered the power and hilarity of this.

Yeah. Dude was PISSED. Bare in mind, people, the guy puts together a high school band show, calls the bands to his house, says he's bringing a stage and lights and PR people (?!), then hands us all 100 tickets, and says "any you don't sell, you owe me $ for." Uhhh, no.

Did any of the other bands actually pay the dude?

and you are proud of this ?

You know, I don't know. I wanna say No, though. We sure as shit didn't. "WHAT money?"

THis situation always reminds me of the only Beavis and Butthead that I ever really laughed at.

They decide to sell the chocolate bars for their school. One borrows a dollar from the other so he has 2 bucks then gives the two bucks to the other for a candy bar. Then the other gives that same two bucks back to the original one and they continue to do this until all the candy bars are gone. Leaving them with 2 dollars total and zero candy bars.


Don't ask my why it reminds me of it. It just does. And it cracks me the hell up.

The guy's "lights" consisted of one raggedyass old red can light on a pole. We looked like gay cabaret, I'm sure.