GL said something that was totally untrue. He was trying to divide people up into categories, and was dividing people up into “people who have business being on stage”, and “people who have no business being on stage”. I find this division to be totally untrue.
Now this may seem like a silly example but I want you to imagine that your decision to come to Russia or the FSU to look for a wife is very much like deciding that you want to be on American Idol.
You either understand that you are a REAL SINGER who has a legitimate shot at success..
OR
You are just trying to mimic your way through and hope to not screw up too badly when in fact everyone in the audience can spot you out for the nervous newbie that you are. And they all make the conclusion that you have no business being on stage.
Well guess what, when my power metal band first started, we tried to find a singer, but we couldn’t find one, so I myself had to sing for the band for the entire year. So in short I probably have no business being on stage, either.
And the drummer didn’t/doesn’t have any business being on stage either because when the drummer first started drumming for the band, the drummer had only been drumming for about 1 month. (But when he hears power metal, he launches into this mode that really brings out the best in him, and makes him sound a lot like Thomen Stauch when Stauch was his age.) But still, he has no business being on stage.
And the guitarist doesn’t have any business being on stage, because the guitarist is a blues guitarist who never had even heard of power metal in his entire life when he first started with us, so he has no business being on stage.
And the bass guitarist has no business being on stage, because the bass guitarist is a blues guitarist, not a power metal guitarist, and he had never even heard of power metal either, so he has no business being on stage.
And the keyboardist has no business being on stage because the keyboardist is a classical pianist, not a power metal keyboardist, and he had never even heard of power metal, either.
And there’s one other singer who I’m going to have be a backup singer, and I’ve worked with him before so he’s sung power metal before, but when you listen to him, it sounds like he might be mimicking Tony Kakko / me, so therefore he’s “mimicking his way through”, so he has no business being on stage. Besides, he’s only been singing for about 8 months. He has no business being on stage.
So in summa, the entire band has no business being on stage.
But even though we have no business being on stage, we somehow lucked out and did well enough for the band to gain a lot of renown throughout the school, so in GL-speak we ended up being in that percentage of people that was “probably going to be extremely disappointed” but for whom that “probably” just didn’t translate into “actually”.
Anyway now I finally do have a real singer who is an excellent singer and has sung his whole life, and while I’m happy that he’s now going to be singing, some of my fans aren’t, and have openly complained to me about the switch. I reassure them that I’m still going to be playing the electric violin as always, and that calms them down a little bit.
Come to think of it, the new singer doesn’t have any business being on stage either, because the singer is a rhythm & soul singer, and hadn’t ever heard of power metal in his entire life until about two months ago, and hasn’t rehearsed with us yet, so he’s never sung power metal in his life, and has never sung in a band in his life, so he has no business being on stage.
But now that I think about it, he’s going to have to wait till the second concert to sing this semester.
I’m going to sing one last time, and I’m going to start out the concert by saying:
I am ______ __________, and I have ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS BEING ON THIS STAGE.
So to any aspiring power metal band, or any power metal band at all, I would hope that you would do it because that’s what you feel, rather than whether you did or didn’t have “business being on stage”. And I would hope that would be true whether you were Mr. Analytical, Mr. Socially Unacceptable, Mr. Money, Mr. Prozac, or any other category anybody can possibly come up with.
