SLOWLY, AND NOT AT ALL SURELY

Hey, it's been a minute.

But what was I gonna do? Post copies of the e-mails upon e-mails upon e-mails that I sent to Hamlet (all of them with a cheesy-corny subject line along the lines of "LINKS: u beta check these, there's someone special in here, i feel it")?

(Obviously, there never was anyone special on there.) (I mean, there surely was, just not that special match.) (But then again, maybe I was right the first time? Craigslist is FULL of morons. Which might be why Hamlet refuses to post himself up on there.) (Anyways.)

I could've posted copies of those e-mails, I guess, or of some of the better ads out there. But that's about all the action there'da been to report for a few months.

That's because Angel, the cool, quiet drummer with whom Hamlet had been having productive, weekly jam sessions with for a few weeks, managed to break his hand, which sidelined him and left us wondering what was next, who was next and when, if ever?

All while Hamlet dropped $300-some a month to pay for his side of the now deserted lockout, which is being shared with another as-yet-incomplete band who used the spot as often as Hamlet did: None at all.

Sad, about that room. It used to be so full of life (read: drama). It used to boast two of the loudest bands on that whole damn second floor, in the alchemist element and The Cobras/Blood on the Stereo.

Now it sits lonely -- and clean.

How strange.

But what can you do when you have no one to play with? And nowhere to stash your PA, amps and other equipment?

Usually, Hamlet would like between none and five of the candidates behind the batches of six-to-20 links I sent his way. On average, I think he'd respond to two of the ads -- which were for drummers, singers, bassists, nearly full bands and avant garde multi-instrumentalists -- a week.

Here's the weird part. The odd, disillusioning, worrisome part.

He heard back from none of them.

Never a "Thanks, but not thanks, we already found our guy" lie.

No "I don't think you'd be right for us."

Not a single, "Dude, give me your number and we'll set up a jam session (so I can flake on you later)."

Nothing.

It was as if Hamlet were sending e-mails directly into a black hole. Or sending them straight to these cats' ever-unchecked junk mail folders. (People: if you've got an ad up, CHECK YOUR JUNK FOLDER EVERY NOW AND THEN!)

But maybe that's all good, because Angel called a couple weeks ago to find out when Hamlet wanted to play again.

And, again, the expensive lockout went unused.

That's because the dudes played -- picking up just about where they left off on their live-programmed experiment, I hear -- at Angel's folks' house, which features a soundproofed room that's reportedly accomodated full band practice without complaint till 2 in the a.m.

The craziest part, Hamlet marveled, was that the joint was AIR CONDITIONED.

"I had no idea it was hot outside," Hamlet said when he got home Saturday afternoon, as I begged for details and analysis of the session.

For the record: The world felt right-er, suddenly, that day, all day, to me.

And it will feel right-er still, if Downtown Rehearsal's Room No. 282 gets to see some action again soon. Like, if perhaps Hamlet checks out and moves on, making space for the latest, greatest, scaled-back, stripped-down, trendy-assed indie band to step in and bring, you know, one-tenth of the sound back.

But we'll see. Gotta get Angel The Cool Drummer to keep his fists off the fridge first.

Please do wish us luck. You'll want to hear what comes of it.

rock on be well peace

(I'll add photos 'n shit next time -- and there will be a next time.)

And a one, and a two, and a ....

I've got my reasons.

Two of them, in fact.

For calling this thing "Married to the Muzik," firstly.

1. MUZIK, borrowed from my husband's e-mail address: heavymuzik@dadada.
2. MUZIK because "marriedtotheMUSIC.com" wasn't available as a blogspot addy.

Two reasons for writing here, too.

1. To pimp my man. (Oh, calm down. You'll see what I mean.)
2. To do a better job with the running tally I intended and wished I were keeping last band around.

(As both a stereotypical band chick of the supportive variety and a long-time fan of the season-in-the-life story, I've always wanted to read something about the drama of an up-and-coming band trying to make it.

And I've convinced myself that the band chicks like me have a good perspective of this. We're invested enough to share the alternate senses of frustration, accomplishment and all the crazy shit that happens in between. We're insiders with some semblance of perspective, discolored as it may be. We're paying attention. And we're in love enough to appreciate the beauty of it.)

So OK. Now that I've explained to no one and for no reason, let's go already.

Hamlet, my husband, used to be the guitarist and unofficial captain of the alchemist element (all lower case; don't ask.)

It was, to me, a surprisingly inglorious, though, no, not peaceful end for theAE (as we called 'em on myspace, as they came to be known a little on The Scene).

I always expected a nuclear meltdown of some sort. Instead, Hamlet hadn't even realized it happened until it had happened: What appeared to be a nothing squabble at rehearsal one day turned out to be a continental fracture the next. And there was a little political pork in there, too. (The Singer had a great line once, "Oh, that's just my ulterior motive, don't pay any attention to that." And it was kind of like that.)

Nutshell: Drummer on his third (fourth?) stint with the band decided he was through with Singer. Drummer's Other Band also happened to need a Bassist. And just like that, nearly four years of quite literal sweat, blood, tears; thousands of stickers; a few hundred shirts; 800 billion keystrokes toward myspace; almost as many yellow flyers and at least -- at least -- 50 hours spent copying and slicing at the Kinkos on Brand; something like $7,000 in pay-to-play ticket money handed over; one last gig before tots and teenyboppers at something called The Watermelon Festival and, yes, 13 eclectic, heavy-rooted great songs later... peace.

OG Drummer might've called it "charma." But mostly it was inevitability at work.

And so, inevitably, Hamlet's back at it.

He started by asking his manager to find him a new band... and so I scoured craigslist.com and sent him links to anything with even a whiff of potential.

Yes, he took the obvious leads: The good-looking aspiring actor and bassist buddy who are here from Indiana hoping to make it big; the paint-by-numbers, female-fronted metal band that fits so well in the box it has a legitimate shot at gettin' signed; the drummer who boasted of his eclectic taste and chops, but was looking mostly just to jam... and you may read something of those cats yet.

But Hamlet also surprised me with what he pursued hardest, skipping out on his religious, fantasy-driven NFL-worshipping to spend almost every Sunday the past couple months jamming with a drummer who's training him to play Afro-Cuban music, and then bringing the lessons back, practicing his homework here, where our 1-year-old daughter twirls and twirls and twirls merrily to what she's hearing.

He also set up something with a young woman who claimed to be responsible for the drumming on the tracks belonging to a local death metal band we hadn't heard of before. There was no reason to doubt the claim, and Hamlet didn't, but we both had to admit that while there's no reason a woman couldn't drum like that, considering drumming is all about technique and rhythm and nothing about how hard you hit, we'd never heard a female do it. We'd never heard of a female doing it. We wondered why and we wondered if this drummer was legit -- like we wonder, after the 50-some potential drummers who sat with theAE, if every drummer is.

But Hamlet had talked with the girl and he seemed uncharacteristically, weirdly optimistic. She'd expressed similar goals, in terms of musical ambition, and ambition-ambition. She was looking for someone like Hamlet; he was looking for someone like her.

The feminist in me was intrigued; the underground publicist in me was excited. But the band chick in me was wary. Mostly, the drummers I'm most initially interested in have been the drummers who left the least impression.

So, while Hamlet was off jamming with her last night, I tried not to think about it. Until I did.

Until our daughter, Izzo, brought me two CDs she found who-knows-where -- CDs featuring the work of Haro, Hamlet's good drummer buddy.

Until MSNBC's Rachel Maddow featured a segment on the first heavy metal show in Iraq in years -- a segment that quoted one fan and one fan only, one fan who happened to be an 18-year-old girl in glasses and a head scarf, who reportedly stood raising devil horns while listening to a cover of Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" and who was quoted, most adroitly, as saying, "There's nothing wrong with wearing a veil and listening to metal."

I'm not really an into-signs type gal, but amen to THAT. And to Hamlet coming home with a smile.

Stay tuned.