I'm in a Band, We Just Don't Play Music
It was a mixture of mutual angst and a question of ‘how hard could it be?’ that nudged my two pals, Megan, Kate and I to create our band Oxytocin. A group of self-proclaimed pariahs with limited musical talent forming a band; how hard could it be?
The truth is, we were well aware of the improbability of success based on our lack of commitment, self-belief and, well…talent. But would that hold us back from the opportunity to tell people we were in a band? Of course not. At the age of fifteen, nothing is cooler than being in a band.
The three of us were self-aware oddballs who were content floating in our little musical bubbles. Admittedly, we weren’t rejected by our high school peers, but we never quite fit into the ‘cool kids’ template; and we were never quite bothered by this fact. We were happily uncool and always grateful of each other’s company.
When forming a band, there are plenty of crucial elements that deserve a reasonable amount of consideration. A catchy name, a group of musos and a unique sound are the base ingredients for a successful band. There was an unspoken agreement between my friends and I that the latter, despite being the most essential element of the entire project, was the furthest from our reach. As a result of this—being the ambitious self-obsessed teenagers we were—we put all of our energy into crafting our image. And so came the creation of our name: Oxytocin.
The word Oxytocin first graced our ears as we were seated in a high school science class discussing chemicals. It was loosely described to us by the teacher as ‘the feeling you get before attending a concert.’ At the mention of the word ‘concert,’ our attention piqued and we scribbled the word down in our notebooks and joked about how fitting it would be for a band name. Perfect, we thought, as we took to social media and snatched up all the usernames containing the words ‘oxytocin’ and ‘band’, without first verifying the actual meaning. It was a few days later when we discovered it was more accurately defined as a hormone involved with childbirth and the ejection of milk to the ducts of the breasts…that’s okay, we thought. Our fans will be the kind to find it amusing. We were destined to be our only fans, and that was okay with us.
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There was a feeling of freedom that came with the thought of creating a band. As a fifteen-year-old, there were a lot of things around me constantly changing, many of which were out of my control. I was entering senior school which meant a change of routine. A lot of my peers were experimenting with things fifteen-year-old me didn’t even know about, and there were a lot of parties that people like Megan, Kate and I just didn’t get invited to. To claim this band as our own was our way of taking control during a time we had very little.
Even though we were proud of our little creation, Oxytocin wasn’t something we were interested in sharing with people we knew. It was a project we believed the people around us wouldn’t understand, and so it remained our secret. We knew we were being stupid, and our fear was to be taken too seriously.
We found particular comfort in bands that were authentic fun lovers, bands that prioritised music and enjoyment over fame. This is why we had a keen interest in alternative rock and indie bands, where their stage presence and energy filled the room despite however many people were there to witness it. Megan, Kate and I were the only three people who ever got to witness the greatness of Oxytocin.
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We identified with our favourite indie band Haim, as they were a group of three sisters. We each adopted an edgy persona by choosing our favourite Haim sister, and spent the rest of our band-focused days ignoring a universally acclaimed piece of advice to ‘always be yourself,’ by dreaming of being them. I decided I was the closest thing to a bass player that we had, and so with my head held high and pride glimmering in my eyes, I took on the role of the Haim band member, Este Haim. In the end, having pride and a highly strung head didn’t equate to much, for I’ve always remained an awful bass player. Kate was the closest we had to a Danielle Haim, as she played guitar and was tall with dark hair. However, we quickly found out that you need more than height, dark hair and the basic chords on the guitar to be a successful Danielle Haim. Megan was the smallest of us all despite being the oldest, and so she resonated more as the baby of the group, much like Alana Haim. Both of them played keys, and that was good enough for us. So there we had the basis of our group, the three Oxytocin band members (or the home brand Haim).
The process of creating our image was the most memorable part of the experience. We were each in our respective homes, sending messages to each other back and forth with different logo design ideas. We decided on a random emoji we found and went on to Photoshop it onto the shirts of various different musicians we so dearly admired.
An important part of reinforcing our image was to take several pictures of each other, some of which became fake album covers for the music we never wrote. We had mini-photoshoots and relied on self-timers to capture all three of us in the same frame. We took fashion inspiration from our beloved indie rock bands and dressed in what was probably too much denim. In hindsight, we were better photographers than we were musicians.
We used most of the popular social media platforms to their fullest potential (except, of course, SoundCloud), and there were certainly points to be handed out for creativity. On Instagram, we were able to post the photos from our mini photoshoots, and with the creation of our Twitter, we found ourselves spending more time tweeting satirical posts about our non-existent music and whether our fans will be called ‘Oxes’, or ‘Toe Sins’, than actually taking part in musical activities.
However, there were some occasions we attempted to be musical. With overwhelming anticipation, my two friends were dropped off at my house by their parents. They came clad in denim jackets, with instruments in hands and unrealistically high hopes that were ready to go crashing back into whatever hole they crawled out of. It was then when we realised our talents consisted solely of self-taught tunes on the piano, the basic chords on the guitar, and the B flat scale on the flute from grade seven band.
Each band practice ended in frustration at our terrible coordination, both with the instruments and with each other. In order to ease our minds and freshen the heavy, talentless air, we would come together and lie on the floor, blasting our much-loved tunes and singing despite the sound we’d hear leaving our mouths. We would often set ourselves homework, not to practice music, but to spend hours watching band interviews and concerts of people who inspired us to enter their world.
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All three of us have well moved on since our teen angst days—or, at the very least, are better at hiding it—but there’s no denying the yearning I feel for the simplicity of the friendship we shared. Oxytocin wasn’t created to look cool in front of our nine followers (three of which were us) on Twitter, but to share a unique bond with each other that we so often saw among the bands we adored and followed. Oxytocin was about the moments in between; it was about the jokes we made, not the songs we didn’t. We shared a love for music and made that the basis of our friendship, and there was nothing wrong or out of place about that.
An unfortunate element of growing up is feeling as though you’ve lost the right to take part in activities deemed ‘odd’ or ‘weird’ by society. For Kate, Megan and I, growing up meant feeling as though we had lost the right to start a band for the sake of having a band. It is something I never would have questioned in high school, but now look upon with careful (and boring) reasoning.
Too often I am faced with the question of ‘why’ rather than ‘why not’. Had the conversation of starting a band happened now rather than when I was fifteen, I no doubt would have listed several reasons off the top of my head as to why that would be ridiculous: I can’t play music, I don’t have time for that sort of commitment, what would that ultimately achieve? Of course, these are valid reasons, but in hindsight, they were the motive behind creating this band in the first place, and why it became so enjoyable. We didn’t know how to play music, but that made it all the more interesting because how many bands don’t actually make music? Despite the absolute absurdity behind such a thought, it made us unique, which was something we craved as teenagers. What we achieved was rich and fulfilling, but it was also simplistic. We had this new-found bond with each other, and that was simply that.
Despite everything we discovered we were appalling at, something we were damn well good at was listening to music. Our appreciation for music outweighed our (short-lived) passion for making it and to us, that was the most valuable reminder. We didn’t want to lose trust in music’s influence on our lives as a result of our own awful music. Despite having moved on from the creation of Oxytocin, I still find a pinch of comfort in knowing our band never officially broke up, and that I can still technically say “I am in a band.” We just don’t play music.