I’m interrupting my explanation of the ladder of success because I imagine that the two or three of you who’ve actually taken the time to read and reflect upon it are wondering “why can’t I seem to make it past the second rung?” (In my experience, that’s where most bands stop.)

I don’t want to underemphasize the importance of networking, self-motivation, and all of those things that they tell you in those “how to become a rock star” books. And sure, taste is subjective. (I’ll never convince a Journey fan that they sucked, hard. I’ll never convince a Clapton fan that Jimmy Page is better.) You might be ahead of your time, or too eclectic/smart/talented for Seattle/The Stranger’s music staff/John Richards.

But have you ever considered the possibility that you suck?

I’m not trying to be rude, here, but seriously. It’s a possibility that you should take into account now, before you waste any more time trying this music thing, so you can put your spare energy into writing your novel or taking accounting classes or starting that hair salon you always dreamed about. Not everybody’s a musician. Desire does not equal talent. Impeccable taste does not equal skill. Practice does not equal perfect. I’ve seen plenty of bands with drive, motivation, taste, fashion sense, good looks, and no musical ability. It’s immediately obvious to everybody in the room, except for the people in the band.

There are levels of suckiness. In some cases, the band is just Not Very Good. They sound OK for a few minutes, but they’re doing nothing new, or there’s some fundamental flaw with the way they write, sing, or play. But for purposes of this post, let’s say that NVG=suck. After all, you have a lot of competition, and the NVGs are never going to get much further than the truly awful musicians, so…

The trouble is, nobody but the rudest, drunkest loudmouths are going to tell you to your face that you flat-out suck. And if they do, you’ll assume they’re idiots, or drunks, or mean. This can make it hard to tell whether you suck or not.

So: recognize the warning signs!

1. You don’t get invited back. Wasn’t that a great gig at that one place? So why aren’t they returning your e-mails or phone calls? Sometimes it’s simply because you didn’t draw the last time. But other times, it’s because you suck.

2. You have no fans. Do you know the difference between friends and fans? Friends are people who you know and like and hang out with separately from your musical life. Fans are people who come to see you play music. Sometimes fans become friends, and occasionally a friend is a true fan as well. But when all the people in the audience are your friends, you have no fans. Which is OK for your first few gigs, but after that…well. Maybe you suck.

3. You can’t convince your friends to come back. Your friends don’t have to share your musical tastes, and some of them probably aren’t into music all that much and never really go to shows anyway. But if each of your friends come exactly once, then are miraculously busy every single other time you play…could you suck? It’s possible.

4. Your friends word their compliments carefully. “You guys are really tight.” “You must rehearse an awful lot.” “I can imagine how hard it is to play that kind of music.” Hint: if they really liked it, they will be excited. They’ll dance and get flushed, and you’ll see it in their eyes, and they will not have to choose their words carefully, and they will tell their friends, and they will come back multiple times. If none of these things happen, ever, then chances are you suck.

5. Your friends make ambiguous statements that might be insults. “So how’d you get this gig?” “Did you ever take voice lessons?” “Where’d you learn to play like that?” Take solace: they still want to be your friend, otherwise they’d just come out and tell you that you suck.

6. People who don’t know you’re in the band insult it. One time, I was talking to a girl I didn’t know, a friend of a friend. I asked her how she liked the band on stage. She said “they’re alright, but they’re sure a hell of a lot better than that first band!” I was the bass player in the first band. Due to dim lighting and unfamiliarity—you don’t really study bands you hate—she didn’t know. She was embarrassed when I told her, but she gave me some worthwhile feedback which I nonetheless ignored. Another time, I was watching a gig by a band that had recently fired me. An audience member made a snarky comment comparing the band’s music to the Twin Peaks soundtrack. I took it as a compliment, and when I told the other guys, they took it as a compliment. But it wasn’t meant that way. It was meant as a way of saying “I heard this ten years ago, ergo, NVG.” If you hear lots of comments like this, you might suck.

7. The soundguy makes the exact same comment to you as he did to the last band. There was one burnout dude who worked this dive in San Francisco I used to play. If he didn’t like the band, he always told the drummer that he or she had “great kick action.” Translation: you suck. (I don’t play drums, but I was in a band who heard the news. We figured it out after he said the exact same thing to the other bands…and to us the next time we played.)

8. Everybody keeps quitting. Can’t keep a drummer/bassist/lead guitarist in the band? Personality clashes are possible. Musical differences, perhaps. Differing tolerance for drug abuse/flakiness/demanding work schedules—definite possibility. Or they realized, after the gig in which you never figured out that your guitar was out of tune, that you suck.

9. You don’t know what they’re talking about. Do you know the names of the notes and their corresponding positions on the fretboard? Do you know what the guitarist means when she says she’s playing a B-minor-seventh? When the singer tells you to play a G-major chord, can you find the keys? Do terms like slap-back leave you blank? If everybody in your band’s at the same level of comfort with these things, and the other signs of suckiness aren’t there, OK—Paul McCartney never read music, and I know amazing guitar players who still get their As and Es confused. But if the musicians you’re working with every day seem strangely advanced, and you can’t seem to keep them in the band for more than a few months, well. You guessed it.

10. You suck on purpose. There’s nothing wrong with joke bands, as long as the joke’s not on you.