Seacrest Out

I have officially retired from music. It is over.

When League of Evil "broke up" (or flaked out), I told friends that I was done performing on stage. The last few shows with the boys were total nightmares; we didn't get along anymore, I didn't want to see them or hear their problems, and I am sure that they felt likewise. I noticed the last six months of the band, I was trying to find subtle ways of covering thinning hair lines: comb over, hats, shaved heads in rock all equate to BALD... so what is the point.

I saw myself recording on my own from there on out. I bought some laptop music software and wrote about 15 songs, named them, recorded them to MP3 format, made a MySpace page, posted one song, let that song sit for a while, put it on a few mix CDs for people whose musical taste I trusted -- none knowing it was mine (some highlighted it as a favorite, others called it boring), stopped logging into MySpace, forgot how to use the software, and finally just plain gave up. I put an email to a friend, asking him if he wanted to get together and play some music but never got a response.

Today, when I was walking around Decatur, dodging students and pondering Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Transcendental Movement (for a class, mostly I think about girls), I got a text message from a different friend reading: HEY! CALL ME IF U WANNA MAKE MUSIC. NEW BAND 4MING! The guy still plays in a great local band, and I know that if I joined we would immediately dive into the cool club of Atlanta's clique oriented rock scene.

I deleted the text.

I retired, right there. I didn't have it in me anymore. I remember a time in my life when everything that I had in life was riding on a band: Chin Ho!. I remember believing that if the band didn't succeed, I would be destined for a barstool in Burlington for my remaining years: serving coffee or conducting telephone surveys for the rest of my life. Chin Ho! toured the country, played every major bar in the country, recorded music for labels, had songs that charted across the country and even overseas, released music used on MTV, Dawson's Creek, and numerous movies. I was able to quit my job briefly and be a touring professional musician.

It wasn't enough. I remember sitting on the set of Dawson's Creek, wondering if we would ever be successful. I remember sitting in the Elektra Records offices in NYC, awkwardly rocking back and forth in my chair, wondering what was being said on the other side of that glass door. Nothing was good enough. Nothing we did was big enough. Nothing satisfied the emptiness that I felt and the nagging feeling of total, utter failure on the horizon. I was never able to step back, look at where I was, and say: "We are doing all right."

It took me almost 6 years to stop and realize that that band was really, really good. And that we should be proud of our accomplishments. Chin Ho!'s music is in my iPod now, it makes its way to mix CDs now and again, and I find myself singng along and enjoying something that used to aggravate me to no end (I never listened to our CDs after recording them). For Christ's sake, I got to stand in a group of people with BOWIE once!!!

So, today, I officially retired from music, not just live performance, but from the whole thing, I will write and play only for my own enjoyment. My last stage performance will be at the potential Chin Ho! reunion show next year. I am not retiring because I am too old, or because I feel that I would be puting on some charade, but because I don't have to do that anymore. I accept what Chin Ho! did. I accept that what we did was good and successful. I no longer view those 5 years of my life as "wasted time" or think of us as "what should have been." Instead, it is "what we did."

And what we did was pretty good, and there is little else needed to be done.