Hello, again! Smokey Goretooth here bringing you a new “Do I Suck?,” MetalSucks’ version of “Am I The Asshole?” where we take real life horror stories and bring them to our readers to decide if the OP sucks for some bullshit they may or may not have done.
This week’s submission comes from someone calling themselves “jail_band_buggin,” who’s wondering if a jail stint means the band is really over. Let’s see what they’re talking about…
Do I think he did it? Most definitely, which is why I don’t feel bad. He didn’t do any harm to people or animals or anything, but he tried to come up on some quick money and got very quickly caught. I don’t think that the rest of us should have to face his longterm consequences, but maybe I’m wrong?
So my bandmate/friend started this band like four years ago, but started getting some “real” attention for it a couple years ago, a little bit before I joined. We’ve got a few shows lined up for the rest of the year, including a Halloween show we’re SUPER excited to play, but since he’s the singer and one of the guitarists, him being locked up obviously takes the air out of our goddamn tires. It’s not like he’s in the back on keys or something.
I was talking with the other dudes about what we should do, and they all looked at me sort of confused, since I guess they thought we would break up or go on hiatus until he gets out. I think that’s really fucking stupid, because some of those shows are paying gigs, and we’ve all worked so hard to get to this point that throwing it away seems like dumber than the crime old boy committed in the first place. I suggested we try to find a replacement, or that maybe one of us tries to do vocals and we play to a track of his parts. Really, anything just to keep what we’ve got, going. They seem to think it’d be disrespectful for us to do that, since our jailbird is the one who started the band in the first place, so immediately turning around and replacing him goes against some “band bro code.” Get the fuck outta here with that.
Look, I love the dude as my friend and all that, but I don’t think it’s fair to just drop everything because he wanted to do some dumb shit. This is the first band I’ve been in that’s actually getting somewhere, even though it’s not anywhere very far yet, but look at how many things are started by one person just for someone else to take over? That’s literally how this whole dumbfuck country works, so I don’t see why it’d be a problem for our little slice of insignificance on Earth. Like, Dio‘s Black Sabbath was obviously much different than Ozzy‘s, but deserves some respect in its own right.
I don’t think I suck for this, but the other dudes are still mad at me that I even brought it up and now they don’t even want to have practice or hang out or anything. Am I a sucky asshole for this?
Well, well, well, jail_band_buggin, it seems like y’all are in quite the prison pickle, amirite? But, as they say, if you do the crime, you gotta do the time (not playing with your band). What should jail_band_buggin do, suckers?