Look at this picture and you tell me who is having fun:

Outside of this bus we are all losers.

We were getting carted away from paradise and back to the Las Vegas McCarran Airport. This picture was taken just after filming the pilot episode of The Next Great American Band in 2007.  The bus overheated, in the middle of the desert, and we had to wait for an hour before a new bus could come along to pick us up. Hot, sweaty, hungry, unshowered, and told that our band didn’t have the creativity or mass appeal to succeed, we were expected to stand around quietly in the desert for at least an hour.

The band on the left (I now forget their name) was totally bummed about how things turned out. They performed their audition for judges Sheila E, Johnny Rzeznick, and Ian “Dicko” Dickson and, in turn, were ridiculed in front of an entire camera crew, and tons of other competing bands, and possibly the entire TV-watching nation.  I seem to remember them telling us that they were going to call it quits. It seemed like such an unnecessary reaction.

The band on the right, The Dirty Marmaduke Flute Squad, did the exact same thing. We played our crazy music in the scorching desert sun, hammed it up for the cameras, took orders from nutty self-important production assistants, and were ridiculed by the judges.  Our reaction, on the other hand, was definitely not the same. We knew that being flown out to a Las Vegas resort for a long weekend on a national broadcast corporation’s dime was a rare and unique experience, and we decided to have a fucking blast no matter what happened.  So we laughed along with (and at) the judges, got a free 50 pack of Cheetos, made some great connections with other bands, spent a day gambling and sipping drinks poolside, and immediately started thinking of ways to scam similar large entities into giving us free trips to exotic resorts.

So next time your band gets the disappointment of a lifetime, considers calling it quits, and is stuck out in the hot desert sun with no water or bathroom for at least 25 miles, ask yourself: Why The Fuck Are We In A Band, Anyway?

If your answer is to make boatloads of cash while hanging out in comfortable mansions with tons of celebrities who tell you that you are a deeply impacting and meaningful artist, you should probably give up now.  The chances of that shit happening are next to none, and you’ll just be constantly disappointed.  But if you’re in it to play good music, have fun, hang out with friends, and have new and interesting life experiences, you won’t mind it so much when the figurative bus breaks down in the desert every once in a while.

(To his credit, “Some Dude” in the pic above was having a pretty good time with us too. He’s in Band LeGrand now.)