I’ve written many an article about my young and foolish days as a working musician. They are usually the stories of fun and weird experiences that I feel you might get a chuckle over.

But those tales are small slices of the pie, with a long slog in between filled with aggravation, physically draining hours of hard work, occasional terror and yes, sometimes boredom.

First you have to run the gauntlet of exasperation and pain to FIND a band.

If you are fortunate to be invited to join an existing band, you can bypass some of the rough spots but even that has its own problems, which I’ll get to later.

If you’re not joining an existing band, you will have to create one from thin air.

Musicians, as a group, are well… emotionally challenged at the very least.

Neurotic, egotistical, easily distracted, undependable, sometimes bordering on mentally disturbed. The more talented, the worse they are.

And that’s the top notch and most pleasant ones.

I’ve often referred to running a band as “herding cats.” Sometimes cats on crack. Actually, that’s an understatement.

When you put together a group of strangers and make them spend hours, days and nights together in relatively small spaces, it’s going to be a rough ride.

In every band or potential band, there are always two guys who can’t stand the sight of each other from minute one.

Usually, there’s no particular reason. It’s almost organic, just in their genetic makeup, sort of like when a dog growls and bares its teeth at someone they just met. Making it even harder, they are frequently the most skilled players.

The people you’re in a band with will affect your everyday life in a big way.

If they call in sick, it’s you who misses work with them. If they get divorced, you will ride the whole thing out with them. If they hang themselves, you have to put the obituary in the paper AND an ad for their replacement.

Just kidding… a little left over anger from the music days.

Oh, and the wives and girlfriends. Here. We. Go. Stepping on landmines.

It’s hard enough to get four or five who don’t know each other to get along in a forced situation. But at least they have the music to bond over.

Women often don’t like to be in a closed environment for long periods of time with other women they don’t know. Trouble ahead on the tracks.

Good luck telling them to “get along.”

Then you have what I call “the Siamese twin,” the wife or girlfriend who is never more than two feet away from her musician. Ever heard of Yoko Ono?

I had one of these several years ago. She somehow would squeeze into the small studio with all of us, practically sitting at her man’s feet for hours.

Every now and then she would answer if someone asked him a question.

At the performance the woman would go to the sound tech and tell him to turn up hubby’s mike and while there, would climb onto the stage to make sure he had enough lighting on him.

He finally lost his job when she started making musical suggestions (and was not a player) about songs or arrangements. If she didn’t like a song, he would balk at working on it.

Now this is not always the case. My last band that I retired from after 2020, Red Eye, was very different, mainly because I took into account everything l had learned from decades when picking musicians. And put lots of effort into having everyone bond and not kill each other.

We recreated together like a family, shared good times and bad, and became good friends.

Part two next week…

Thom Caraccio ([email protected]) is a retired musician and retired motion picture scenic artist living in West Palm Beach, Florida who hails from Columbus. He graduated from S.D. Lee High in 1968 and still considers Columbus his real hometown.