Adult Problems - Quit Your Band and Stay in School

There are too many bands and not enough nurses. If you are in school and you’re a decent person and reasonably intelligent and in a band, please quit your band and, for the love of God, stay in school.

Look, I don’t know where it started. Probably Steely Dan. And I love Steely Dan, but, if I’m honest, it probably started there. Smart dudes in expensive colleges making palatable music for other smart and well-to-do dudes. And God bless them.  Neither they, nor the Walkmen, could know what the result would be—a deluge of smart, witty guys in untucked button downs making fine music, but ignoring their true calling. A million variations on Vampire Weekend, Grizzly Bear and MGMT making up a historical glut of pretty good bands making pretty good music by totally decent guys who would otherwise be AMAZING nurses. I don’t blame the bands I’ve mentioned. Though they aren’t my thing, I know, objectively (whatever that means) speaking, that they are good bands, and I’ve always said that every generation gets the Talking Heads they deserve, but enough. It must stop. And it must stop with you, guy with slightly disheveled hair and no future of track marks. Only you can steer our culture correct. Put down the guitar. Become a nurse.

You don’t want to hear this. Oberlin is a drag and biology is hard. Want to know how I know this? Because this is no way in hell I could EVER get into Oberlin or pass a biology course. Not because I’m lazy (though I am) or because I lack ambition; it is because I AM NOT SMART ENOUGH. There was never an option for me. I can’t fix a car, I can’t pass a class, I can barely get CDs to play on my computer without multiple attempts. I am a complete fuck up. I have to be in a band. No other organization would have me. Well, Noisey does, but it’s not like they let me roam the halls or anything. I have reached this destination in my life because all other paths were closed to me. This is not true of you though. You can save a life. Other than your own. Stop being so goddamned selfish and go to nursing school.

There’s the famous Flannery O’Conner quote “Everywhere I go, I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” But in tune with my desire to be a beacon of positivity on the internet, while her quote is certainly completely fucking true and could easily be applied to most of the arts, let’s not have that particular line of reasoning be our focus. I don’t doubt that your band would be perfectly terrific. But it doesn’t need to exist, and your smarts and kind heart would most likely be better served elsewhere. Please just consider it. If I could manipulate a sewing needle without puncturing a lung, I’d do it myself, but fate and strong genes has left you, the superior caste, with the responsibility of doing the right thing at the expense of Swing Lo Magellan Two: Acoustic Boogaloo. 

I won’t lie to you, it won’t be easy. My mom was a nurse for many years before she became a nurse practioner and it was certainly a struggle even with my father helping at home. But you need to look at both sides. We eventually reached upper middle class, just in time for me to form my sense of entitlement, self loathing, and to discover the Cows, thus sealing my fate as socially useless. So you can always live vicariously through your jerk-ass kids. More importantly, according to New York Magazine, if you form a Grizzly Bear-esque band, THERE IS A 100% CHANCE THAT YOU WILL DIE IN POVERTY. And die young, too. Is that how you want to go out? Of course not. Mind you, I wouldn’t be caught dead reading New York Magazine, but I’m pretty sure those numbers are accurate. I’m not just looking out for my own career; I have your long term interests at heart.

I know this isn’t fair. Why should you be punished for being nice and having good parents? Well, Sebastian (which, times being what they are, is probably your name), life is not fair. Never has been and, according to my Black Box Recordings records, it never will be. But I’ve done what rudimentary math I can, and we can’t afford any more art pop boy bands. The center cannot hold, and if you get that reference, then that’s exactly why you don’t need to be playing music professionally. The dim and the damaged, however, need to do something. There’s only so many barback shifts to go around, and a volunteer army is full of religious types, (fuck that), so bands it is.  As cruel as it may seem, we actually can handle a few more EYEHATEGODs and Weedeaters. I wouldn’t trust my girl or my drugs in a room with any one of those dudes, but that’s exactly the point. Those guys, I’ll see at the emergency room at 4 AM, but it’s you I want operating on me.

@zacharylipez