Smooth Jazz at the Hard Rock

I guess our first clue that this wasn't exactly "our crowd" should've been the fact that we were the only ones in the room not sporting some form of exotic piercing, primary-colored hair, or black Godsmack T-shirt.  Of course, the original plan had been to gig our way out to New Orleans and spend a whole weekend there, and had that plan not fallen through, it wouldn't have been such a great disappointment to discover that the music showcase that was billed as the "New Orleans version of South by Southwest" was actually more along the lines of the "Shreveport version of 'Star Search'"-- but with a decidedly heavy metal focus.  As it stood, we arrived late Saturday night due to a Saturday morning fiasco that I won't even get into, so we barely had enough time to drink a requisite hurricane and watch our rhythm guitar player throw the dice a few times at Harrah's before hitting the sack.

We were supposed to play at around 12:30 PM on Sunday, but the showcase was running way behind.  It was virtually guaranteed that we wouldn't play until 2:00, after which we had to turn right around and drive 9 hours back to Austin.  In a nutshell, our chances of getting anything productive out of this event were about the same as the odds of the Saints winning the Super Bowl (editor's note: remember when this was written.)  I can say one positive thing, though, which is that the college-aged headbangers in the audience responded well to our two songs-- surprisingly well.

But then we got to meet the alleged reps from the alleged label, all of whom looked to be younger than the pair of socks I was wearing at the time.  The first was at least trying to be helpful, but his comment was something to the effect of, "hey, have you guys ever heard of a band called Phish?  You should maybe model yourselves after them."  He had no way of knowing that we had been there, done that, printed the T-shirt, and were now trying desperately to break out of the mold and be taken seriously as a jazz fusion ensemble.  From our point of view, however, it was one of those moments in which you're imagining the worst thing that anyone could possibly say, and then someone actually says it.   He then proceeded to criticize us for having "two rhythm guitars and no lead."  Apparently in the metal world, if a guitar plays separate and distinguishable notes, it's not considered a lead guitar.  The second rep (who looked to be the oldest of the three, a woman of maybe 25) had one useful piece of advice, which was that we all needed to quit our jobs and tour a lot if we ever wanted to make it big.  True, and perhaps if we were playing any other genre, we would have some hope of doing that while avoiding starvation.  The third rep got straight to the point:

Him:  "I guess I'm just wondering why you're here."
Us:  "Because ... you invited us?"
Him:  "All you have to do is turn on MTV to see the type of acts we're looking for."
Us:  "You mean 'The Real World?'"
Him:  "Do you have some idea of who your target audience is?"
Us:  "Your ... parents?"