My Boyfriend's Terrible Band
We’ve all had someone we know who has tried to start a band that turns out to be terrible. Scott Jones is someone that has been in that position, at one point he even referred to a local band as ‘My Friend’s Terrible Band’. Later, when Scott decided to start his own band, he called it that because he found it funny. This soon changed to become My Boyfriend’s Terrible Band, because a coworker insisted that it would be funnier. This is where the name for this iconic band was formed. Scott had been looking for people to get his idea off the ground and met drummer Anthony Mariano through Scott’s coworker and Anthony’s sister, Autumn Mariano. As they began to play together, it became apparent that they needed more members. At this point, Anthony realized that Autumn had been teaching herself how to play the bass and the guitar and that her boyfriend, Christian Shephard, knew how to play the guitar. Seeing that all of them had a love for music and, with the exception of Autumn, had been jumping from band to band to find their place, it was an obvious decision to invite them into the band as well. As they played together, it soon became apparent that My Boyfriend’s Terrible Band was the perfect place for them.
Scott describes the band as “...trying to be like Prince Daddy and the Hyena or Mom Jeans.” The music fits “...along the lines of pop-punk and weed emo.” They also describe it as “...shitty on purpose…”. The music that they have already released is mostly written by Scott, who essentially uses music as a way to express his emotions. After a bad day or situation, Jones comes home and writes about the event and his feelings through song lyrics, and then takes those lyrics in to be worked through during band practice. His style is very introspectively sad as he is clearly portraying negative emotions through the lyrics, but rather than being angry or blaming others, he takes the unique approach of analyzing why he is having these emotions and where they came from. The lyrics that he writes are sorrowful, but they are counteracted by the brighter, louder music that embraces the lyrics.
They are currently doing a split with a band on the east coast and are presenting two of their songs. The first, “Tahiti Kid”, written by Scott and in the band’s usual style with a little bit more of a beachy, surfy vibe. The second song is a bit different as it is written by Autumn who is getting more and more involved in the writing process. The song, “Drowning and Droning” is more angry and political with greater involvement in the outside world. This directly contrasts with Scott’s writing style of involvement within yourself, adding depth to the track.
As they continue to evolve as a band, they want to have more of a mixture between these two styles to have more energy and anger, but still retain the angst that Scott’s writing brings to the table. Scott explains that “... the purpose of the band is …[that]... I want people to have fun on the dance floor while we’re there and I want to tell them the saddest stories in the most entertaining way”. Anthony continues this train of thought by saying, “I feel like the experimentation is just going to be mostly focused on keeping Scott’s sound....and branching out with a combination of Scott’s sound wherever we want to go with it, and that way we can still keep our central theme of ‘sad’”.
Something that sets this band apart from the many others is their aspirations for the future. Many bands start out like this and say that they want to do things like arena tours in the next five years or that they want to get big and famous; however, the members of this band have a much different idea of what they want to do: the band members are all at an age where they all have jobs outside of the band and have to pay their bills and taxes, so they recognize that any type of fame would involve taking a huge leap of faith and would be years in the future. Their current main goal is to gain a presence locally within the next five years. They have already started to do that within the Salt Lake City area as they currently get numerous opportunities to perform live. As a more tentative goal, they’d also like to increase their presence on Spotify.
As most of the members have a background in other bands and music styles, they make the band well balanced. Some of the members spoke about how they were in bands where they hated the other members, or where there wasn’t any type of structured, serious practice, or that people within these other bands were afraid of making mistakes and trying new things. This band, on the other hand, was very different as they had learned from those mistakes and gained more maturity. Because of this, it allows the band and its members more of an opportunity to grow, as is seen by their currently evolving style. Anthony, for example, actually doesn’t listen to the style of music that he plays for this band, and in fact, had never played this style before. He said, “It’s not my jam”. While he does talk about how this is a huge struggle for him as part of the band, he also says that “it’s made playing in this band really interesting and makes me learn...”. The band has been a learning experience for all the members, and that is what makes the music so unique and interesting.
The most important aspect of their music is authenticity. They aim to play about their experiences and about things that others can relate to, while still keeping the audience pumped. They push themselves out of their comfort zones and encourage us to do the same, which helps us as a community to learn how to appreciate things that we may not understand. They force us to reevaluate what kind of music styles we like and gain a new respect for things we don’t necessarily like or understand because of the energy and time that goes into those things. They relate to common problems that we all have such as societal pressure and how we deal with it. They play their music because they genuinely like each other outside the bounds of financial success and name recognition-- to give us music that is absolutely real in a way that can’t usually be achieved otherwise. To get a taste, go visit one of their live concerts, their Instagram page or stream their music on Spotify.
