Edit.

I chose the simple one-word title for this blog because it seems to be all people want these days. Society screams for exploitation, yet shies away when specific names are mentioned unless the people representing those names have cast themselves into the public eye, available for all to scrutinize, glorify, and make a dollar off of. People always want a name to blame, but cry foul when one is finally cast upon the chopping block.

My topic today is the discontent I have with the current status of my band, focuspoint. We still have not practiced as a full band since February. I have written blogs blaming members for this (which have been pulled down), I have written e-mails and texts describing my dissatisfaction with the commitment level of certain members of the band at certain times (and have been either expected or asked to apologize for my rants and accusations), and now I am forced to submit this neutered shitstain of a blog entry because no one wants to accept responsibility for the fact that THIS FUCKING BAND IS FAILING FOR NO GODDAMN REASON. Or that's what I'm going to lamely try to get you to believe, since I'm not allowed to blame this on anyone.

I've been playing guitar for over 14 years, which already equates to over half my life. Since then I have been in the same band, albeit with personnel changes over the years. Suffice it to say that I am the original founder of the band you now know as focuspoint. I started it as the Brane Donerz back in 1994 with my friend Luc Snider, who played bass. We jammed with and 'recruited' a couple drummers which we never played with again. I finally met Jeremy Olson through a mutual friend in summer 1996, and we started playing as a three-piece called the Skalternapunks. We changed our name to Faceplant in 1998 just before our first public live show, and carried that name through mid-2002 (in the process losing Luc and Jeremy, and gaining Paolo Mottola and Danny Woodward as our bassist and drummer, respectively), when we were slapped with a cease-and-desist order by some asshole lawyer in California representing some piece-of-shit band from Texas called Faceplant who not only stripped us of our name, but openly stole the 'faceplant' logo I had tagged (read: graffiti) and we had been using for quite some time. Yeah, they posted a copy of it on their website and for all I know may still be using a variant of it to this day. Their music sucks, they're a bunch of mouth-breathing inbreds, and if I ever knowingly meet a member of that band.....well, I'll get in a nice, civilized discussion with them about that. Or something.

To continue: so around the same time, we hook up with a management company. A member of said company comes to a practice of ours and afterwards makes it known that they want to represent us. "Sure, I'd love to play with Gatsby's American Dream." The next day, Paolo tells Danny and I that since he's headed off to Western Washington University (in Bellingham, 2 hours from Federal Way, for reference), he's not interested in driving down to practice on a regular basis. Can't blame him now in retrospect, but back then, in a fit of rage (only slightly overreacting, considering the recent turn of events), I fire him over the phone, and the band as we know it basically goes into hibernation.

E-x-t-e-n-d-e-d hibernation. Musically, the only thing we do for the next three years is what we (and our friends) affectionately refer to as 'drunken karaoke,' where Jeremy and I would bust out guitars and sing whatever covers we knew, while sprinkling these sessions with occasional fp songs. Danny left for Arizona to go to MMI about halfway through this period, after which we were really put on life support.

Well, I met this girl named Allie during that time, and for some crazy reason she decided to start dating me, and what do you know....we got engaged and started planning our wedding! I had always planned on having whatever band I was in perform during my wedding reception, and thankfully Allie was receptive to that idea, so I started putting that plan in motion. I got ahold of Paolo (we had finally started talking to each other again recently), called up Danny in AZ, and got the shit going. We practiced a couple times in the week prior to the wedding, and did the damn thing quite admirably! Afterwards, we played a couple shows at Shakabrah on 6th Ave in Tacoma (our old stomping grounds), and, somewhat begrudgingly at first, decided to reform and start some shit again.

This is where the http://www.myspace.com/focuspoint history picks up. Reading our show history will basically tell you where we've been during that time to the present. During said time, we recorded our Lost in the Sound LP and the Alright EP and have moved units with our own hands, including having tracks available on CD Baby, iTunes, through Snocap, and on our myspace page.

Aaaaaaand here's finally where my gripe comes to fruition. But I'm going to leave you hanging with that sentence in mind, as it has gotten far too late to get to where I'm going. My next post will get into the meat of why I am so displeased with the way my musical career is going, taking GREAT pains not to blame anyone in particular, only to passively lament the slow, agonizing demise of my musical dream.

Stay tuned.