I got a hankering today to maybe start auditioning again. I had stopped after a string of rejections and a crisis of confidence. So I pulled out Fiction's demo to see how I felt about my playing.

I listened to the demo once in March and thought the drumming was horrible, unlistenable except to review how poor my feel is. Months removed, however, the drumming on this demo is . . . still not a confidence builder.

The engineer had minimal experience recording drums, and it shows. He didn't compress the snare enough or put reverb on it so it sounds like shit. There's no bigger dampener on a young man's ardor than a wimpy snare, the backbone of the beat. What should sound like a pile driver on rock in a cavern, sounds like a pencil hitting cardboard in an office cube.

The engineering didn't capture how I sound at all, but the playing itself reveals how bad my "feel" is. Instead of feeling as steady as a confident walk down the street wearing hobnail boots, the feel is more like trying to walk across a ship deck in the middle of a storm. If my feel is so lacking as it is on this demo, then it's no wonder I've been rejected so many times.

Why am I writing about how much I suck?

Wish that I could leave my room tonight
The fast attack on my compressor's way too bright
Think I got the threshold on too tight
Just restart and hope that everything will be alright
"Offline P.K." - Pinback