Band of Apes

When you form a rock band, regardless of your age, you get an interesting lesson in group dynamics. Group dynamics is a favorite of academic, management and psychological researchers, but I think the most useful work is being done by primate researchers, particuarly as it applies to the male dominance hierarchy. KDOG is an all-male rock band, which is typical. A lot of what happens is colored, not by muscial factors, but by primitive struggles for power: who dominates? Guys are used to sorting out the male dominance hierarchy. It's so much a part of life for us, we hardly notice it. It's like the end of your nose. It starts on the play ground. Games of of king of the hill are the most obvious example. Boys spend most of their time in the company of other boys through junior high school. In any gathering of friends, there's always a leader and a rank of lesser males around him. I remember those days well. Who's the leader? Who controls the most desireable toys? Who goads the other boys into risky activities such a BB gun fights, throwing snowballs at cars or shoplifting dirty magazines? After your grow up, these issues get transferred into the office, church and society at large. Who gets to tell the other apes what to do? Who gets the good toys? Of course, there's the added complication of sexual access to the most desireable females, too.
Once you get this idea, it changes your thinking. I no longer see KDOG as a musical entertainment entity, but as group of chimps with $20,000 worth of sound equipment.
I have been larboriously piecing together an oral history of The Bittermen Blues Band - the band whose leftover fragments birthed KDOG. What killed the Bittermen? Power struggles. Who calls the shots? It's interesting. A lot of the same conflicts are now being played out in KDOG. Two apes are fighting over power. Those apes are myself and Kenton.
It's Kenton's band now, of course. KDOG is his nickname and the name of the band. He gets the gigs, organizes the set lists, fights with club owners over money and so on. He runs the show. Except when it comes to the music. Then he runs into me. Kenton is a skilled drummer, but I think he's got a lot of issues when it comes to deploying those chops in a musical way. I bristle when he starts telling other people what and how to play. I reserve that privlidge for myself. The hierachy clarifies at these moments: I yell at Kenton, Kenton yells at Nick. Then Nick has chest pains, followed by open heart surgery.
At Monday's rehearsal, we had another one of our "head monkey" fights over the deployment of the tambourine. Kenton is always after Nick to play more percussion: shakers, bongoes etc. Kenton even bought Nick an expensive, pro-level tambourine. Then, whenever Nick picks up the tambourine, Kenton screams at Nick. Nick's not doing it right. It messing with the beat. The part doesn't work. Whatever. But Kenton never actually works with Nick to fix the problem. So I started screaming at Kenton whenever this came up. It happened again on Monday. As I stood, screaming at Kenton about "fucking show him the fucking right fucking part or keep your mouth shut," I couldnt help but picture an angry chimp jumping up and down, sheiking, baring his fangs and gums, pounding his chest and perhaps even hurling handfuls of feces, all in an attempt to establish dominance.
In his book, Our Inner Ape, the distinguished primatologist Frans De Waal, provides some interesting insights:
..."men check each other out by picking something - anything - to fight over, often getting worked up about a topic they normally don't care about. They adopt threatening body postures - legs apart and chests pushed out - make expansive gestures, speak with booming voices, utter veiled insults, make risque jokes and so on. They desperately want to find out where they stand relative to one another. They hope to impress the others sufficiently that the outcome will be in our favor."
I was startled at how accurately this describes the scene at the Mojo Dojo Rehearsal Studio and Hair Care Products Storage Facility on a typical "band night."
Waals' research and observations on primate political manuvering even explain Kenton's devotion to 15 minute drum solos and the increasingly large, complex and magificently gleaming drum kits he hauls around. To wit:
..."What chimpanzees do with charging displays - with their hair on end, drumming on anything that amplifies sound, uprooting little trees as they go...this diplay both draws attention to the male and impresses his audience. One alpha male in the Mahale Mountains National Park in Tanzania developed the habit of dislodging enormous boulders so he could roll them down a dry river bed, producing a thunderous noise. One can imagine the awe with which others watched a spectacle that they couldn't match. The performer would then sit down, waiting for his audience to approach."
Then there's this, which could be a descirption of KDOG sitting at his drum set: "I once visited the Forbidden City in Bejing - four times the size of Versailles, then times that of Buckingham Palance - with its beautifully decorated buildings surrounded by gardens and vast squares. It wasn't hard to imagine Chinese emperors ruling from elaborate thrones designed to overlook enormous squatting masses, intimidating them with their splendor."
Once you start seeing yourself as a primate, life makes a lot more sense. My "stage act," which includes big amps, loud soloing, jumping around and the singing of dirty lyrics ("I just wanna play with your poodle."), is obviously a berserk mating and dominance display. I sometimes feel sad when I contemplate this image of myself. On the other hand, it's a great way to totally embaress your teenaged children!
Waal notes that chimp politics and power struggles are often violent. He describes two chimps turning on a former comrade, beating and biting him to death. The coupe de grace: they squeezed the poor devil's scrotal sac so hard, the testicles popped out like grapes and landed in the straw on the floor. Anyone who has had a meeting with Dick Cheney or Karl Rove knows the feeling.
The point of being the dominant male is to control the food supply and access to desireable females. ("You want a banana, baby? Just come see me sometime.") Alpha males in primate societies sometimes mount the lesser males, just to let them know who's "on top." Human males don't do this. They say "fuck you." The message is the same: "I can mount you if I feel like it and you can't do anything about it."
The band needs a clear hierarchy. Everyone knows their place and their role, without righting about it, just like in rigid social caste systems. The band can function comfortably. Many bands suffer death by democracy. The constant fighting and voting tears them apart. Like any smart chimp, Kenton and I know that you can't rule alone. You need alliances. Between us, Kenton and I control all apects of band life, from money to music. I think we understand that there will be no single alpha male in KDOG, since the others would soon topple him. So we have an alliance. An uneasy one, at times.
If it came down to a fight, Kenton could tear me apart. He's short, but solid and strong as, yes, an ape. I sometimes think those robust, rib crushing hugs he dispenses whenever we meet or part company are a way of reminding me who is physically stronger. I realize they're also a display of Kentons personal warmth and affection, which are in great supply. But I never forget that we're just a couple of primates.
It's been a productive struggle. The band is growing musically. I've learned a lot about the concept of "letting it rip" from Kenton. Kenton knows what it means to be a friend, too - something one or two people in my life have forgotten.
©2007 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.