Day 15 – A song that describes you

Song: "One Chord Wonders" - The Adverts, Crossing The Red Sea With The Adverts (1978)

"I wonder how we'll answer when you say,
'We don't like you, go away,
Come back when you learn to play'"

I'm tremendously proud of being a self-taught musician. Aside from three extremely rudimentary bass guitar lessons in tenth grade, everything I know on both bass and guitar has been picked up through trial, error and a hell of a lot of time listening to music. I idolize figures like Brian Eno, who championed the concept of the "non-musician" while his contemporaries worked to incorporate complex chord progressions and musical theory to overblown rock 'n' roll. Yet, for all my talk about pride in my untutored musical abilities, performing live has always been a stressful ordeal for me. I've never hid my love for unexpected and conventionally "bad" playing, but audiences are not always the most accepting. "One Chord Wonders" does a superb job of capturing that terror. There's always that moment right before you go on stage where you wonder if the songs you're about to play are just going to piss everyone off. The songs are too sad, too angry, too chaotic, too calm, too emotional...it's always something. Without the shield of some "classically trained" bullshit to hid behind, self-taught musicians can only keep playing, or, as TV Smith sings, "The Wonders don't care, we don't give a damn."

(30 Days List)