Does Playing Music Actually Get You Sex?

I'm sure you've heard that musicians are magnets for sexual activity. For as long as anyone can remember, the idea has been that as long as you aren't a bassist, you'll get laid just for being in a band. Plenty of “Rockstars” have said that the only reason they even joined a band in the first place was to increase their odds of getting a bit of action. This has been going on for as long as recorded music has made non-musicians rich and to this day, some people still think that playing music is your ticket to pansexual conquest or anything else you may desire. While this may have been true at some point in time, technology has made it so easy to make music that virtually everyone is working on an album and anyone with a mp3 player can call themselves a DJ. No one cares if you're a musician because odds are, the person you're flirting with after the show makes music too. What's worse, they didn't even pay attention during your set, they're just obeying the social order and hoping you'll pay for the next round of drinks.

However, that doesn't mean that you are completely hopeless; if the Internet has taught us anything it's that if you can imagine it, someone has a fetish for it. Rest assured that somewhere in this world, someone wants nothing more than to crawl into bed with a wispy, soft-spoken guy that croons about his undying love for cats and pizza. There are people out there who could die happy after spending the night with a buck-toothed girl that has a bald spot and an annoying laugh, to each their own and may they all live happily ever after.

Personally, I never gave much thought to attaining groupies, I was always too busy trying to fashion decent recordings out of sub-par equipment and write the next great Heavy Metal album. I remember when I was convinced to go out to an uppity jazz club by a friend, he thought he'd pick up the waitress by mentioning we were in a band. He said we were on tour, passing through town with the rest of our band, Satyricon (yes, THAT Satyricon) because he knew the waitress had no idea who they were and he may have been right. In spite of that being a correct assumption in all likelihood, I knew damn well that this woman was just doing her job and wishing she was at home, like most people. Never mind the fact that she probably got hit on several dozen times a day by people dressed much nicer than he or I, but I really couldn't say because I never looked at her, it was too embarrassing.

“Dude, she doesn't care.” I said, exasperated by my friend's insistence on this futile ruse and the atmosphere that we clearly didn't belong in; the Dom Deluise look-alike in the fur coat made that clear upon our entrance. “So, two *plural form of a word that GLAAD might sue me for typing* walk into a bar” he said as we sat down at the table. The rest of his group chortled at their leader's lame joke as my friend said, “You know, if I was gay, I'd probably go over there and punch the shit out of that motherfucker.” A sudden hush fell over that part of the room and in spite of laughing my ass off on the inside, my outward appearance was, as always at the time, guarded and slightly nervous. Those people wound up leaving immediately, proving yet again that a white fur coat and a few lackeys do not make you a bad-ass. You at least need a Tiger at your feet or a pit of Alligators to drop people into; really, anything other than coke-whores and yes-men.

Another favorite “instance of indifference” that I experienced was a few years later at a much better bar. This time, I was the one on the receiving end of the flirtation. Shocking, I know. The band I was in at the time had just completed an audition for a better show at that venue, aka “open mic night” (never let anyone convince you that's not what those are) and in all honesty, we killed. We had an ongoing competition amongst the members to out-perform each other on stage. What that meant for me was throwing myself around the stage, playing with my teeth whenever possible and slamming the guitar into my head at the end of the last song in an attempt at dramatic effect.

I was fortunate enough to be playing on the same night that the one woman with a thing for self-destructive fat guys who play guitar happened to be in attendance. I sat quietly in a corner after our set, recuperating and nursing a beer when a tall, tan woman approached me to chat. There were normal conversation starters in that situation like “I really liked your music” etc. which quickly moved on to her asking all kinds of questions about my personal life and my “Free The West Memphis Three” T-shirt that is thankfully obsolete now. “Yeah, I hate injustice.” she slurred as her friend called her to leave with their group. Not saying she was unattractive, I really don't remember, but she was clearly drunk and this is coming from someone who had ingested enough alcohol to... cause physical harm to themselves in a public forum.

Needless to say, that encounter was a bit of a shock to me. Anyone who has done their time playing open mics and opening for touring bands has known for a long time that getting laid on the strength of your music alone, is nothing more than a myth. Our singer however, always got big responses when he took off his shirt, but I imagine his abdominal muscles were a bigger part of that reaction than his guttural vocals. My advice for anyone trying to rack up more notches on their bedpost than an 80s Glam Rock band would be to go start an 80s Glam Rock band. Play the State Fair and the Bike Rally and get used to the idea of overly-tanned, drunk women fawning all over you because the only musicians who actually date models are the ones who look like models themselves or have lots of money.