One down and the mood lightened considerably. After that, we thought of dynamics, and an arrangement happened really quickly, despite the democratic nature of the thing. And before too long a melody was written. I was reluctant to go too punk, knowing that every Happenstance band was more than likely to go this route, but there I was starting off with an uptempo E drone. The Earl, white boys who were 1990s kids, Tone Deaf Pig Dogs… clearly, rock was our unifier. The next path probably should have been our first. Who doesn’t like soul? But liking soul and playing soul are two separate things, and so our soul song was cast away along with our Outkast. I have always thought of soul as the great unifier. The song choice was a bust, and so in order to keep momentum going, we scrapped that cover and moved on to originals. First, the cover song of choice was Outkast’s Bombs Over Baghdad, a local favorite that would have been sure to bring the house down… if only any of us could rap half as fast as Andre 3000. Prog rock, Electronica, Indie-flavored rock and the undefined genre of a band called Tone Deaf Pig Dogs were mentioned in our first thirty minutes of conversation.ġ1:30 – We started down two dead end paths. Even though this group was composed entirely of late twenties-early thirties white boys, the diversity quickly became palpable. My greatest fear going into Happenstance was not being able to find the common ground between the five strangers that were just forced into a 14’x14′ practice suite. We met back up about an hour later and started writing. The following is a loose recount of events and my reflections on these events:ġ0:30 – My group quickly assembled, made a few minutes of small talk, and then disassembled to pick up the equipment we planned on using. The creative pacing and stamina is brutal. Any songwriters reading this, of course, know that this is a ridiculous amount of material to come up with in such a short amount of time. The set is to be performed the very same night at 9:00PM. After the bands divide up, each go their separate ways to their respective drummers’ practice spaces where they are required to come up with a set of four songs, three originals and one cover. The spirit of randomness is taken seriously, and no two musicians who have played together prior to the proceedings are allowed to play together for The Happenstance. Six band leaders are chosen and each of them randomly pick musicians from a hat: a guitar player, a bass player, a drummer, and a grab bag player. The musicians meet at The Earl (the hippest venue in town) at 10:00AM. The Happenstance is an annual event held in Atlanta where 30 local musicians are chosen to perform in 6 randomly selected bands. Last Saturday night I had the good fortune of performing music for The Happenstance at The Earl in East Atlanta.
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