By Luke Sick

            Hey, kids!  You wanna be in a rock band, dontcha?  Damn right!  It’s only just your god-given right as a goshdarn American.  Yeah!  But for now, it’s best if you let me do all the thinking.  Remember: I know what I’m talking about, and I’m on your side.  I’ll pull your coat to how it’s done, youngblood, step-by-step:

            First of all, don’t bother begging your mom to buy you a guitar.  You and I both know that will only result in her saving up Marlboro miles for a plastic red kazoo that she’ll try to pass off as a harmonica that won’t get here till well into the first phase of your chemotherapy treatment.  Besides, instruments are for lame people who want to try and have integrity and want to spend all their time practicing, and you just want to get chicks.  Right?  Of course, so instead promise your mom you won’t torch the shed again if she lets you purchase and download the program GarageBand for your silly iMac.  It’ll work.  Go do that right fucking now!

Got it?

Okay.

Now noodle around on that sucker for about an hour until you’ve mastered it (clinical tests, conducted by Steve Jobs himself, have shown that silverback gorillas held in captivity have produced records comparable to the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds only hours after being passively introduced to the program—just imagine, what you, a fully-driven human, will be able to achieve?).  So how does your track sound?  Pretty fucking awesome?  I thought so.

Okay, now you gotta call all your friends over.  The bigger and stupider your band, the better.  Get completely torked on your dad’s stash of domestic light beer and let everybody have a chance on the mike; even Jeff’s creepy fat 30-year-old babysitter who always wants to hang out and doesn’t mind that you guys smoke pot and do whip-its in front of her.  Ask her to flash tit.

What are you going to sing?

I’m glad you asked that.  I don’t have enough room here to write out all the lyrics, so I’ll just give you the titles which should be shouted as the choruses and you can just mumble your way through the verses:

The first song you record should be called Only Rich People Know What Love Is, quickly followed by the barn dance ballad, Rich People Have Better Sex, and then drop the stadium anthem, Rich People Are Having More Fun Than You Right Now.  Do you notice a theme developing?  Here are four more titles to round out your demo: Rich People Don’t Die, You Get More Stoned If You’re Rich, Rich People Always Win When They Gamble, and Rich Tit Don’t Sag; oh yeah, and my personal favorite, Rich People In England Say Shagged If They Fucked Another Rich Person.  Make that five, eight total.

Are you done mixing your opus yet?

You are?  Then get that shit up on MySpace, homey!  Which brings us to an ever so crucial question:  What are we going to call the band?  Step aside son, let daddy handle this one.  Well… cheering for the rich is a classy marketing ploy (that’s hot right now and has been since the turn of the millennium and doesn’t look like it’s gonna get cold anytime soon), and I like the demographic we’ve pinpointed, but we gotta keep it street, we gotta cater and desperately stay connected to the cultural roots that you cryptically claim subconsciously nurtured your raw and untainted genius.  So, we need a subversive moniker that contradicts our corporate intentions and looks kick ass in white on a black shirt.  I’d go with OF INFERIOR BIRTH, ‘cause, dude, it just sounds like hardcore cred.  Say it with me: OF INFERIOR BIRTH.  The title of your major label debut will be: Heir Apparent.  Feel me?  The eternal chiming of your dark and twisted internal dichotomy (which comes through so lucidly in your lyrics) is the sound of motherfuckin’ cash registers, cousin!  Feel me?

The only pictures of the band on the MySpace page should be exclusively of the members’ genitalia to spark controversy and a sexy edge from the jump.  Which brings us to performing live—

Don’t sweat it.  Just bring your iPod to the club, plug it in to the P.A., and lip-sync your songs, and don’t even try to fake it with mikes and instruments in your hands.  Just stand up there with your iPod in your hands and play all your songs in a row while you and your friends walk around, get drunk, trip on acid, act stupid, and yell at people.  It’s always good to know that a bitchin’ cover song is only a light massage of the click wheel away.  Whenever anybody tries to denounce you for lip-syncing, repeat this exact response immediately everytime (note: don’t forget the Huck Finn-style aints, it’s important that you sound uneducated), “Fuck you, everybody that was on The Ed Sullivan Show, American Bandstand, Soul Train, and Solid Gold lip-synced, and you can’t tell me those people ain’t straight up legends.  Now what, bitch?  Who wants to get up there and do all that archaic sweating and concentrating anyway?  Fuck that, that ain’t punk rock.  Rock ‘n’ roll isn’t about workin’ hard, it’s about looking good while you ain’t doing shit.”

And say it with conviction, ‘cause you are one hundred percent, absolutely correct.  Now put on your white belt and get to rockin’, ya little suburban half-dick.