Subtle Hint: Denouement

The next step. Hmmm. What would be the next step? If we truly wanted to take it to the next level, what would we have to do?

The answer seemed obvious, at least to me and Rich. Replace the weakest link.

Ah, pride, foolish pride. Hubris. Inflated ego. Scourge of the artist who feels certain he needs to compromise to bring his work to the masses. But perhaps I am being too hard on myself, on ourselves. Steve was our weakest link, no question about that. In hindsight, though, the way we handled it ultimately led to the band’s demise.

You can be an uncompromising artist and be a bastard. You can be a nice guy and have fun doing those things that you have fun doing. But you can’t be both. And we tried to be both, to walk that dotted yellow line down the median lane, to further careers as artists and try not to be loathed by anyone.

It turned out our careers vanished and we were loathed by quite a few people.

Rob the Rush fan, the dude who drummed for me off and on all those years but was not part of Subtle Hint, had a motto: “Business is business.” Whenever he was kicked out of a band, he smiled, said that there was no hard feelings, call me when you need a drummer. Business is business.

The case against Steve went something like this - Exhibit A: a weak voice with little range, coupled with absolutely no efforts made to improve it through exercises or coaching. Exhibit B: a willful disregard of said weak voice through active abuse and, shall we say, the enthusiastic abandon to harmful habits. Exhibit C: failure to show up to band practices, scattered here and there, at first, and then much more frequent as summer gave way to fall. Exhibit D: a marked failure to write new material, and especially to branch out at the band’s request from lyrics focusing on getting kicked in the face by backstabbing lonely girls.

To be fair, Steve had some good points. He was a crazy front man. He loved being in front of a crowd. But we figured any lead singer we approached would have those qualities. Steve also had the fortune to live on the property where we built our rehearsal studio the year before. This problem could be circumvented by simply explaining the situation to his mother, and then dangle those regular rent checks to her.

We gave Steve warning. A couple of times, in fact, and we made him aware of all those problems we felt were getting out of hand and holding us back. I don’t know; I don’t know people, but I do know that instead of enlightening Steve and making him say, “Gee, fellas, you’re right, help me to change!” he got more moody and withdrew from the band, disappearing more frequently.

The third week of September Steve failed to show for a gig. We canceled, and then booted him out of the band.

We thought we could land on our feet, probably in a month or so of downtime and rehearsals. You see, we had a replacement in mind, a friend of Mike’s and an acquaintance of my girlfriend at the time. He had everything: the image, the desire, the charisma. Only problem was, we learned kinda late, was that he couldn’t sing. Or got stage fright, or shy in front of the rest of the band. He crashed and burned, as they say, and October came to a close. We cursed ourselves for not auditioning him while Steve was in the band, but we fashioned ourselves nice guys and decided we would not do such a thing.

Panic mode kicked in. Ads in the local music trade papers. Asking friends of friends of friends if they were interested. Visiting and chatting area music shop clerks. We did get response. In fact, by the end of the year I think we auditioned close to twenty dudes for lead singer. Usually Rich screened them with a phone call, and if they passed that muster we’d meet him, sometimes at a club, sometimes at a parking lot, play him our songs, chat music philosophy. Then, he’d come in to the rehearsal studio and, more often than not, the audition was terrible. Absolutely terrible.

A couple of guys we liked but didn’t like us. A few actually made it to two or three auditions, but just didn’t fit in, and either we or they just stopped calling. It got very wearying, and very depressing. That loss of momentum was devastating. It crept into our souls like hypothermia, sapping our drive, killing our desire. Rehearsals became a chore. Auditions became a necessary evil. And eventually, just in to the new year, John quit the band.

Rich, Mike and I continued the search over the next couple of months. Prospective singers grew scarcer and rarer as the weeks flew by. Mike got itchy; he always had side projects and people begging him to play bass for them; we told him it was okay if he wanted to pursue side work, just as long as he was there for us if we needed him. Soon Mike was playing in a full band playing out (ironically, the singer of the new band was that Dylan-esque balladeer we played with on “Town Day” two years prior).

And then there were two little Indians: Me and Rich. This time we looked to join an established band, but still, the jinx, the curse continued. To tell the truth, my heart kinda went out of it around this time. I went back to school, full time, for physics, pursuing another childhood dream, and jamming with Rich became like a hobby, like watching football games with your buddy. We still wrote songs, still bought new equipment, even jammed out at rehearsal studios with Mike and a drummer pal every now and then. Then, a drunken argument, and me and Rich were splitsville.

One day a few months later, out of the blue, Rob the Rush fan called me. He was drumming in a band, a full band, doing contemporary covers (STP, Alice In Chains, Pearl Jam, etc), and they were ready to start gigging. They just wanted a second guitar to fatten out the sound, someone who had live experience – would I be interested? Sure, I said, not sure why. So I played with them for a couple of weeks. I never clicked with them, though, never bonded. After a while, they stopped calling me to rehearse. Hey, business is business, right?

So, that’s the saga of Subtle Hint, and it’s also the tale of my life in music. It spanned a little over ten years, from those first shaky barre chords to that final grunge cover band. There were too many good times to write about, too many crazy things I’m embarrassed to tell you about but would never trade away those experiences for anything.

I have a new set of friends now, and have not seen any of the old guys in over a decade. My wife met only one Subtle Hint member, Mike, once, and that was when we went to see him play in a bar during one of our early first dates. Mike sat and chatted with us briefly for a few minutes between sets, and all these memories I’ve been writing about flowed back into me, as they do almost every single day, aching, unresolved, a strange mixture of ambivalence and sadness and an overpowering desire to joyfully shout it out from the rooftops.