I feel that I'm long past due for a full-out frontal attack on one of the most reprehensible things in the music business – the 'Family Band'. You know, like the Partridge Family, and even worse, the Brady Kids, to name the two best known examples of this horrid pseudo-musical phenomenon. I'll even go over the really obvious reasons, just in case some of you aren't in tune with the World of Music, but only a quick look at those as they are too painfully obvious to the rest of us.

First off, you live with your family, see them every single day, and the time you get to actually spend alone (the 'me' time) is not a plentiful commodity. A working band spends a ridiculous amount of time together, writing, rehearsing, and generally tightening up all aspects of The Show. It gets worse when the group is on tour, as all that together time is often spent crammed in a tour bus, or worse, a couple of old vans.

Families also don't always see eye to eye, which can lead to frequent fighting and tense situations. Many working band find that the only time they don't fight is on stage, the rest of the tour time can be quite the nightmare. So, the question arises, why on earth would anyone want to take those two situations and mash them together into one huge, volatile mess just waiting to explode in a maelstrom of potential fratricide, infanticide and suicide? I have no answers for you as to who would want this (inbred Ozark Mountain clans excluded) as a long term lifestyle.

Those, however, are not my reason for disliking the 'Family Band' format. My reason is simply this: not every person in every family is musically inclined or even remotely talented, so we always end up with one or two useless tits who just stand on stage wiggling, shaking a bloody tambourine, pinging away on a triangle or rattling those god-awful fucking maracas. Really, who the fuck, when faced with the decision to play an instrument, goes with the 'triangle' option? When I was a kid, the only triangle players in the school band were the three kids from the 'special ed' class. Mind you, if memory serves, one of them was pretty damn good at it – I often wonder if he went on to play triangle professionally with some Philharmonic Orchestra or other. Yah! Right! I lost a lot of sleep wondering about that one!! But back to that family member who is busy shaking, pinging or rattling their way through everyone else's hard work. They're a waste of space, a source of complete crap noise, but they have to be included because “They're a part of this family, too!”. If the same reasoning were used by surgeons or nuclear power plant workers … well, you see where I'm going with this. That's all I can say without getting angry right now, so as always, be safe.

TRS