…Or, for the non-French speaking among us, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.” Aside from being used in a somewhat obscure Rush song, this phrase has always stuck with me because it seems that you can almost always find some way it’s true, no matter where you are in life.

My friends in high school used to tell me that this is a “bummer of a way to look at life, dude”, but I’ve never thought so. I’ve always interpreted it as a positive – no matter what upheaval you go through, at the end of the day, you’ll go back to the things that anchor you to who you are in life.

As usual, this is pretty relevant to Division. In this case, the return of Scott as our vocalist was the catalyst for a conversation that, quite frankly, surprised the crap out of me. The culmination of that conversation is as big of a surprise to me as it will be to some of you:

Division would like to announce the return of Dan Plunkett as our bassist. Dan was originally with us from 1997 through 2005, and he appears on the “Ascension to Eternity” and “Trinity” CDs. He left for health reasons, and as those issues are behind him now, we’re glad to have him back. We should be debuting the new band configuration at shows this summer, and have some new music downloadable for you, as well.

Of course, this just adds to the conundrum we’ve been facing since Scott’s return – who actually is the “new guy”. This is more important than you think, since the “new guy” is the one that traditionally gets all the verbal harassment at rehearsal…

I guess I’ll just have to harass them all!

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As most of you know, Division has been putting a lot of time and effort into auditioning people lately, since the departure of Nick and Tim back in February. While the auditions have been successful in filling both roles – more on that next week – we learned something sort of unsavory in the process:

Musicians suck more than ever as people.

Seriously. I know we do this out of passion (after all, it’s not like there’s any money in it), but apparently courtesy and even something resembling a sense of obligation don’t exist in this community anymore. Nearly two-thirds of the people we sent audition materials to simply stopped answering emails, without a word. All you need is a simple “Hey, I checked it out, and it’s not working for me.” (Yes, I know this is actually eliminating people I don’t want to work with, but bear with me.) That’s it – it’s not like there has to be some drama-filled showdown.

What was even worse were the many people who actually scheduled auditions and simply didn’t show up. No contact, no email saying “hey, I had something come up, I can’t make it”, no text message saying anything, just a no-show.

I’ve been doing this for a long time. (Cue the “old” jokes in 3…2…1) At the risk of sounding like I want the young whippersnappers to get off my lawn, people – hell, even musicians – used to behave better than this. We’ve had our share of no-shows over the years as we’ve replaced people, but this time MOST of the people who scheduled auditions didn’t bow out after taking a swing at a couple of songs, they didn’t cancel at the last second, they just went to the trouble of working out an audition time with me and then simply didn’t show up. It was much worse this time around than when we were auditioning people when Tim joined 2 years ago.

Is this the new norm? I hope not. However, my conclusions from discussions with friends in other bands are pretty discouraging…

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On the passing of Rob Doherty

From Bravewords.com:
“Former INTO ETERNITY guitarist and “ambassador of Saskatchewan metal” Rob Doherty has suddenly passed. He played on the band’s 2004 album Buried In Oblivion. Into Eternity mainman Tim Roth says that “he was a special part of our band. Our condolences go out to all of Rob’s family and friends, and to all those, who Rob’s music touched.”

http://www.bravewords.com/news/182997

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