christ666's Diaryland Diary

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Imposter Syndrome

A couple of months back, Eric had invited me out for beers with his old roommate, Neil, to talk about a gig the latter had been thinking about putting together the last few years. Neil is an accomplished drummer, and his idea was basically to form a cover band that would play one show a year, performing a significant album in music history in its entirety, and to donate the proceeds to charity. Each year, the group picks a new album to perform and a new charity to donate to. Oh, and the name of the cover band?

Imposter Syndrome. Brilliant :)

Neil's first pick was Rage Against The Machine's debut album, with the charity benefiting Black Lives Matter, and he thought I might be a good fit for guitar. To be considered to play with such talented musicians is beyond flattering, but call it my own sense of imposter syndrome, or just good old fashioned low self-esteem, the offer is distressingly intimidating.

For one, with everyone's busy schedules, rehearsals are once a month for the next eight months, which means having to do our homework, and coming to practice with the material memorized. Almost like true session players, we're showing up not to learn how to play the songs, but how to play together. That in itself wouldn't be too scary if I didn't have all these god damned plates spinning in the air, but panic sets in when I think about trying to learn these songs in the midst of parenting, work, and all of these other projects.

For two, I'm not just memorizing tablature and jamming some pop rock riffs and solos. I'm learning how to play like Tom Morello. Not only is he a technically gifted player in a traditional sense, but the dude has such an outside-the-box approach to playing guitar. He emulates hip hop and dj sounds with his specific pedal board setup and his percussive attack on the strings, and he creates unique tones and melodies from his use of a toggle killswitch, and his pickup fuckery. What hope do I have trying to mimic a Harvard grad and one of the most influential guitar players of all time? For fucks sake, I still keep fucking up the theme to Fraggle Rock.

Still, it's not often that I get an invite to play with quality musicians, and when am I ever going to get the chance to perform some of my favorite songs of all time? So, after a couple pitchers of beers and a lot of ruminations on my ineptitude, I told him I'm in, despite my inner self screaming about the mistake I'm making.

So far, we've had one rehearsal, and wouldn't you know it... I didn't fuck things up. It's helpful that a few of these tracks I've been playing since I was 13, and rehearsals are blocked out so that we're only working on a couple at each practice. This jam was Killing In The Name Of, and Take the Power Back, next jam will be Bombtrack, Settle For Nothing, and Know Your Enemy.

I think I can do this.

There's so much I'm doing at the same time though....I've really bitten off more than I can chew. I've gotta finish editing MSA's music video as we're wrapping up post production on the album and producing cds by March, I've got to finish editing Mortal's tenth anniversary show video to throw on YouTube, Mortal is in the studio in June to record our next lp, the release and your of which occurs in September, which leaves the Imposter Syndrome concert in October.

....I think I can do this...

2:09 p.m. - 2022-02-04

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