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GRETA BRINKMAN, Bass Goddess

Greta Brinkman onstage with Atomizer.

"I know it's not very popular right now," says Brinkman, "but I am still all about rock or the rock, if you prefer."

Bassist Greta Brinkman (aka Bass Goddess Greta) has rocked the low-end all around the world, recording and touring with everyone from the Toilet Boys to L7, from to Deborah Harry to Moby — and she has most definitely paid her road dues. What has she learned along the way? All sorts of practical wisdom about keeping the mind and body from turning to mush in some hotel room in Boston or Brunei. Her essay here focuses on one particularly key aspect of road life. If you're traveling with a band now, or planning to do so sometime soon, read on. I can tell you, from first-hand experience, that the Bass Goddess is right on the money. Ring the bell. School's in session....

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SHUT YOUR PIE HOLE. That's right, I'm talking to you. If you are reading Adam Levy's website, chances are you're a musician, and most likely you have to work and travel with other people, sometimes for weeks or months, or even (God/dess forbid!) YEARS on end! If you haven't gotten to that stage yet, of being a touring musician, you may have a few ideas of what life on the road is like. Perhaps you imagine limousines and cocaine, and being knee-deep in underage groupies (worked REAL well for R. Kelly!). Or you envision yourself and your bandmates frolicking in Australian surf, laughing as you dodge traffic in Saõ Paolo, or sharing glances of amusement at movie subtitles in Tokyo. Everything is in soft focus, and suffused with love, for the music you are making, and for each other, sharing this unique experience together. What a rare and wonderful thing it is, to be a musician, bringing people of all races and creeds together with this divine language we call music.

Now, let me introduce you to the reality. OK, you DO get to see the world. And get free stuff. And it actually is pretty great to be onstage in front of 30 or 300 or 30,000 people who are digging what you're doing. But that's only for an hour or two a day, and the rest of the time, you are trapped on a moving bus with 7 or 10 or 15 other people, with NO ESCAPE but death, or your bunk. I was there for almost the whole of the last 4 years, and am now permanently twisted and scarred, forever unable to relate normally to others (or make my own bed, but that's another story). Yes it is incredibly lonely and other people's feet do smell nauseating, but all that can be made bearable, with enough class-A narcotics (but that, too, is another story). What I'm really here to moan about is the MOANING! Which word I'm using in the British sense, as a synonym for WHINEING.

Sadly, there seems to always be one person in every camp who is never happy, and who complains from the moment they wake up until they go to bed, making the road manager's life a living hell, and really, really harshing everyone's mellow. If it's not the heat, it's the AC. Or the aftershow pizzas were cold, or there weren't enough towels in the dressing room, or there was no lock on the bathroom door, or someone was smoking a cigarette within a 50-mile radius of the dressing room, or the wheel of the airport luggage cart was sticky, or the caterers were being mean, or their food was too rich, or there weren't any porters, and these are all guaranteed 100% real complaints, and just the ones that spring to mind off the top of my head! I can tell you this: If you're the one whining, you may get the extra attention, but at what a price! It is no exaggeration to say that EVERYONE will come to hate you. They won't even want to be in the same room with you, and maybe you don't care about that, but they will never, ever — and this is the most important reason you should pay attention to what I'm saying — they will never, ever recommend you for any other gig that they are doing!

Think about it. Every person on your tour is suffering more or less the same hardships (and yes, there are real ones, like having your legs feel like hams made of cellulite for the next 3 days after flying to Japan). Imagine if EVERYONE in your camp let their misery and displeasure be known to the world at large (and how the rest of the world appreciates it when we Americans start in, too!). Snide comments about each others' luggage. Disparaging remarks about the driver, the city, the hotel, the food (Paris, OK, you really kind of can't help it). But now, what if everyone decided to SHUT IT and act like grownups? What a world! The most professional monitor guy I ever had the pleasure to work with, Drew Consalvo, has been through HELL. In-ear monitors not working. Grounding problems. French local crews. Yet he never (well, almost never) has a bad word to say about ANYBODY and is unfailingly pleasant to everyone. And who is now getting the free publicity, as you're reading this (assuming you hung in this far)? That's right — the professional non-baby. Think it over, consider these words of enlightenment and wisdom and experience, and then SHUT YOUR PIE HOLE!

—Greta Brinkman
January 2003

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To jump to the official Web site of Greta Brinkman, click here.

To jump to the official Web site of Greta's band Atomizer, click here.

To hear Atomizer's "Trinity" (from the band's epnoymous CD-EP), click here.