busybody

so we're getting ourselves settled in our new house, and now we have an actual room dedicated to practicing.

we have yet to soundproof the "party room", as we've dubbed it, and the music gets a little loud outside the house, so we thought it would be a good idea to introduce ourselves to the neighbors.

turns out our neighbors on one side play the guitar and bass, and the neighbors on the other have a christian band. so not much to worry about there. and we were standing on one of my neighbors' porch when the rest of the band was practicing, and the noise wasn't at a level that i would've even considered to be an annoyance.

so that night we practiced, full band, loud, for like three hours. god, it was nice. there's room for me to jump around, we can all move freely, and i don't have to be standing directly in front of my amp to hear my bass.

the next day, at four in the afternoon, p is downstairs plucking a little on his guitar, not even that loud, and without distortion, and we get a knock at the door.

it's some loudmouthed motherfucker who lives like four houses down the street. he happened to be in the street outside our house when he heard p playing. so he's going on and on to my wife about how the landlord shouldn't have told us we could do whatever we want, and the homeowner's association won't allow us, how proud he was that he and some others pressured the last renters to move, and how he works for a living, and at the end of the day all he wants to do is come home and have some peace and quiet.

for fucking fuck's sake, man! so my wife asks him if we bothered him the other night when we were practicing? he gives her a blank look, and then asks what time we were practicing. round 5 to about 8, 8:30. now he has nothing to say, cause he has just ranted and raved for twenty minutes about how the loud music is going to be unacceptable when in fact we had been louder for longer the night before, and because he was in his house, he didn't even know.

and we all work for a living. (apparently he thinks we're the rolling stones and all we do is sit around having orgies and doing drugs and playing music, dipshit) and when i come home from a bad day at work, i want to whale the fuck out of my bass as loudly as possible.

and no one can tell me what i can and can't do in the privacy of my own home. there are some noise ordinances in place, and we are following them to the letter. and we're not trying to piss anybody off. it would be different if we were purposefully trying to annoy people on the street. as a matter of fact, one of our neighbors was home sick the day of p's solo stuff that caused such an uproar, and she didn't hear anything.

so we gave the guy our number, told him to call us if we were bothering him again.

then last night we had another practice. i had the phone right by me. we beat bloody hell out of our instruments, including a ten-minute, insanely noisy slap bass solo.

and nothing. no angry neighbors, no cops, no calls.

but i've got a feeling that this particular busybody is going to be trouble. well, i got one thing to say to him: we're not leaving, and if you try to rout us out, the cops will be visiting you for harassment.

have a nice day!

darth sardonic