Pat: The Magazine for Guys

So you want to be an underground rock sensation and tour the world, playing to hundreds of fans, selling up to 1,000 albums, a handful of t-shirts, several stickers and one sew-on patch, but it all seems so complicated. Does using a wireless microphone make you a sellout? How popular do you have to get before you can refuse an interview? Are you allowed to smile onstage? Being a member of Yodeling Fishbait, the only band that was defunct from its inception, I have valuable experience in how to make your band as awesome as possible, yet keep it completely un-embraced by your target fan base, thus attaining perfect cult status and achieving cred so street that it's hard to parallel park on. In just a few short installments of this "cyber-seminar" I will teach you how to get the upper-hand on the underground, high-fly the D.I.Y., and become the lean, mean, dean of the freak scene.

Your Name R.E.M. chose their moniker by flipping open a dictionary* with their eyes closed and sticking their finger on a word at random. This sounds cool at first, but there are only so many words in the dictionary, and most of them are taken.** That's why my friend Fred devised a similar, yet different, method: he replaced the dictionary with anything written by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and single words with sentences (or even entire pages). Consider these possible band names:

"It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most."--Crime and Punishment

"Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also."--The Idiot

"I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness."--The Brothers Karamazov

See? Any of those is a way better name than Kraftwerk or Modest Mouse.

Choosing your record label Shellac's Steve Albini once said, "90% of indie companies are just as bad as major labels, but if I had my choice, I know which group I'd obliterate from the face of the planet." Because of this, it doesn't matter what label you sign too, really. If there's a really hip one in your city that refuses to sign you, just tell people, "Pffft, Thrill Jockey's not even indie anymore anyway." Then maybe you could roll your eyes. If you do somehow sign with a major, you can still retain your coolness like Matt Talbot from Hum, by saying there wasn't a single other label that could give you enough money to fix your van. That quote may have been paraphrased or completely skewed, but anything having to do with the van is automatically forgiven.

Band members No one in your band should ever be conventionally attractive unless seen through beer goggles, because that is the only way they will be seen anyways. Bands with genuinely handsome frontmen/women are never taken seriously, just look at Bush or the Cardigans, no one even knew that girl's name. The exceptions to this rule are Jon Spencer from the Blues Explosion, who never reached mainstream success, and Veruca Salt, who ended up dissolving under the weight of a fight over Dave Grohl, who still enjoys critical and commercial success because he follows this rule by having a jacked-up face, which he accentuates with different styles of off-putting facial hair, as well as writing the same song over and over.

You can also include one or both of the following, an Asian or a vaguely attractive girl. Smashing Pumpkins are a perfect example of this. Guitarist James Iha was from some foreign land, which gives the band a visually exotic appeal, and proves Billy Corgan wasn't racist. Bassist D'arcy may never have even played a note, but served the purpose of providing hours of wondering whether or not she was hot if you tired of watching Billy. To this day, no one really knows whether or not D'arcy was cute.

You should not get along with everyone in your band. In fact, great things can be achieved when band members actually come to blows onstage like the brothers Gallagher from Oasis, or if you've seen the documentary Dig!, you know that Brian Jonestown Massacre singer Anton Newcombe was prone to literally kicking (with his foot) out band members while performing. Lou Barlow was once cited as saying he had a plan that if Dinosaur Jr. ever got big enough to play on "Saturday Night Live," he was going to hit J Mascis over the skull with his bass and walk off during the taping. It's threats like these that create the tension needed to craft albums like You're Living All Over Me. The only way socially harmonious band dynamics can create good music is if the members are actually married to each other, such as in the case of Sonic Youth or Yo La Tengo. The White Stripes will always be a band you can't decide whether you really like or not. Think about it. Do you like them? You don't know. This is because of the secrecy surrounding Jack and Meg White's true relationship. Are they married, brother and sister, or the same person?*** You don't know, therefore, you don't know if they're any good. If they hated each other, and Meg threw hot coffee in Jack's face during "Seven Nation Army" for it being so repetitive, you would blog that that show was definitely in your top five all-time.

In the next installment We'll learn how to put on a memorable live show, talk about how to write lyrics, and discover a type of fuzz-box that you can't buy at a sex-toy shop. Click here for Part 2.

*The 1980 edition of Merriam-Webster, to be precise.

**If you don't believe me, go to the music section of myspace and type in any word in the "search" box, you will immediately be given access to no fewer than 17 bands all with that name, each one shittier than the previous.

***I theorize that if Jack White can play both rhythm and lead guitar simultaneously, who's to say he couldn't also play the drums at the same time? I mean it's the same beat for every song, people.