The dumbest thing I ever heard
This has truly haunted me for years and sometimes I’ll think about it and stare into space and imagine a world in which this never happened.
About 4 years ago, during my first year of college, I very briefly joined a band. I had always wanted to front a band, and of course I thought college was when I was going to be able to meet some like minded people. A second year in the program I was in at the time ended up advertising on the first year facebook page for either a guitarist, lead or chord, or a drummer, and I jumped at the opportunity and messaged her. She had already declared herself the front women but was open to backup singers and I was like “yeah, ok, whatever.”
Of course, singing has always been more my strong suit, but I play guitar and we all have to start somewhere.
So we have our first sort of meet and greet/jam session in this girls basement apartment that weekend. Its just her and I and our bassist who has been in several bands and was honestly just a fantastic musician, so this was getting me excited. Previously to this jam session she had told me the kind of genre they were already thinking of doing and told me some of the songs she wanted to cover and I quickly learned them so we could play them all together. One of these songs was My Immortal by Evanescence. I’m all set up and ready to play, the bassist and I start and...
She is really not a good singer.
This has nothing to do with the dumb thing she would later say to me the next week, but it does provide good context into the situation.
Anyway yes, she was very pitchy, and she had no sense of rhythm. I had to sing under her just so she knew where in the song we actually were. She also just could not do harmonies, I tried to take the alto but if I chimed in on anything that wasn’t the melody she would get confused so I had to stop.
This of course really discouraged me because I had always wanted to front and here I was playing backup to someone who could not sing. But I wanted to stick with it selfishly thinking maybe I could pull a Brendan Urie and slowly push her out of her own band.
The next week we get together for a second time to do more jamming and to interview for a drummer.
Our bassist asks for her wifi password so he can look up some sheet music and of course her password is just a random jumble of numbers and letters. The conversation goes thusly:
Her:.... zero... or I guess I should say zedro.
Her: Zedro. Beacuse we live in Canada.
Me: But... The pronunciation of the number has nothing to do with the pronunciation of the word...
Her: Yeah, but in Canada we say “zed” not “zee”.
Me: That has nothing to do with it
The next day I messaged her and told her I couldn’t be in the band anymore because I was focusing on school.
That concludes the vivid life event that I will probably remember forever, thank you, goodnight.
