Gary Gerloff

Gary Gerloff was one of my telephone buddies back in ’93, ’94 when I first started the Richmond Music Journal. I don’t recall if we ever actually met in person and talked, and I’ve only seen him play a time or two.

He was delighted with the newspaper and would call and tell me stories about the Richmond music scene of years ago, most of which I could not use because they were racy and I didn’t know if they were even true. He knew all the wild women of the scene, the groupies, the local girls that went on to become regional and national groupies, all the stunts they used to get into the band buses parked outside the venues. He wanted me to do stories on them, but I declined since I think they had moved on and probably didn't want to be reminded.

He often told me the paper kept him connected to the music scene, the new local bands coming up that he would never have heard of otherwise. Our stories often tickled him and he would call to laugh and comment about them. And one time he took me to task quite sternly for being lovesick over a musician he did not think was worthy of my time. He called him Pie Face and that shook some reality back into me.

I had the feeling he wasn’t working because he would call me during the day and could talk for hours. Later I heard he was a Mr. Mom who kept the kids while his wife worked and then played music at night. I don't know if that was true although his obituary didn't list any job history. It seemed like a good arrangement, if true. The running joke about him was, obviously, how much he physically resembled Jerry Garcia.

He died this past weekend at age 58.

Morality in Chesterfield County

Many years ago, there was a man living on the Southside who decided the Richmond Music Journal was offensive to his children, although I think he was actually divorced and not living with his children at the time. He would go into places like Plan 9 on Midlothian Turnpike and the Barnes & Noble on Huguenot (both locations are gone now), and complain that the paper was obscene and needed to be removed. They ignored him at Plan 9 since they knew him and knew he was a complainer, and at Barnes & Noble, they removed the papers from the box in the front foyer, but then put them back after he left. After all, they were a book store and all about free speech.

I think it all boiled down to the word cocksucker used as an adjective on the front page and a photograph of a band that dressed up in fat, naked people costumes.

The guy went to the Chesterfield Commonwealth Attorney's Office. I think the attorney who was assigned the case thought I was a kid and scaring me would solve the problem. He would try to convince me I had to report to his office for a tongue lashing from him and a "Chesterfield County detective" (oooh, scary!), and terrified, I would behave after that. I knew he couldn't actually make me visit him legally.

I was really annoyed when he called, too. Back then, I wasn't working anywhere, living on food stamps and temp jobs, and didn't care if a dozen Keystone Kops pulled up and put me in jail. When you've got nothing to lose, even this kind of notoriety is helpful. When you have family, a mortgage, and all that stability stuff to protect, being a renegade or a rebel isn't so easy. So I was ready to go. Bring on the handcuffs, Chesterfield County! The newspaper The State, a start-up that couldn't decide if it wanted to compete against Style Weekly or the Times-Dispatch, already had the ACLU on speed dial on my behalf.

The tape recorder attached to my phone to record band interviews was on autopilot to cut on whenever I answered the phone. It recorded the whole crazy conversation.

I’m an assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Chesterfield county. I was wondering if you’d be willing to sit down and talk with me and a detective from the Chesterfield County police department, and I’ll tell you what this is about. You probably already know. We have received complaints involving the Music Journal, and I have been assigned to investigate it along with the Chesterfield County police department. And I have looked into it and I wanted to discuss it with you. It is not our intent at this time to bring any charges. But I would like to sit with you and discuss with you what the complaints are about and whether or not they can be resolved.

Are you aware of Rolling Stone?

Yes, ma’m.

Are you aware of the language in that publication?

Yes, ma’m.

Are you aware that publication is available in Chesterfield County?

I’m sure it is. Yes, ma’m.

Has this parent picked up a Rolling Stone?

Well, I don’t think they’re giving them away, are they?

I don’t give them away. I don’t give them to this man’s children.

I understand that. And believe me, if you sit down and talk with me, I think we can come to an understanding.

Are you aware of Redbook magazine? Cosmopolitan?

If you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine. You can tell me that and then we can do this the hard way.

I am perfectly willing to take this magazine completely out of Chesterfield County. I do not want people like this reading my publication. It’s not to my advantage at all to have this man or his children reading it. I do not want his children reading it.

Right.

All I need to know is where his children saw it and I will deal with that outlet and pull it out of there.

I don’t even know the person who made the complaint.

Well, that’s what we need to find out, where this parent found this magazine so I can remove it from his sight.

He is not your concern. He himself is not going to bring any action. None that I know of. All I can tell you is I have been assigned by the Commonwealth Attorney of Chesterfield County to look into this. I have done that. I’ve talked to police officers. If I can meet with you and tell you what the concern is, then it probably can be resolved that way.

You can tell me right now. What is the concern and I will remove the paper from Chesterfield County.

All right. Well, I’m not asking you to do that. I looked through a number of back articles. I don’t see anything at all wrong with a number of articles, but the complaints were based on the December and January magazines, and that was based on both language and some pictures that were published. I know you’re familiar with the areas I’m familiar with. The cocksucking article.

That article was not about cocksucking per se. Are you aware that Redbook and Cosmopolitan magazine, which are available in Chesterfield County, instruct women on how to do that? While in my magazine it was only used as a derisive expression for toadying to people.

I read the article and I agree with you.

He has more danger from Good Housekeeping as far as his children learning some procedure he doesn’t like than he does from my magazine.

I’m not arguing with you about that.

I can walk into your office with a load of magazines I’ll purchase at a 7-11 in Chesterfield County, magazines that the cover headlines are visible to children. If you’re buying candy at the counter of the 7-11, all the headlines are right there in front of you.

The point is this...

You don’t have to buy the magazines, they’re right there in front of you.

I think it is right on the borderline as far as the type of information. The type of magazines you’re referring to are basically magazines for sale. Yours is not for sale.

Since it’s not for sale, is the problem that children are seeing it?

They can pick up your magazine and take it home for nothing. And I don’t know what your opinion is, whether or not you would want your 12 or 13-year-old child to see it.

Where is it available in the county where a kid could come on a bicycle alone, get it, and go home? They would have to be with their parents. If their parents don’t see what they’ve got, I can’t supervise every child in Chesterfield County. But if there is an outlet that children are rushing to so they can read this magazine and learn dirty words that aren’t already in any publications in their parents’ homes, I’ll be happy to remove it. Like I said, I don’t want people like this reading it, people who are going to go to all this trouble, to call detectives and commonwealth attorneys and report stuff that’s already out there. You know I’m not breaking any new ground here. I’m way behind.

I don’t think you are, either. The question is as to access for young people, whether or not certain portions of these two issues I’ve seen approach going over the line.

What’s the other complaint other than cocksucker that isn’t even used in a sexual context? What photograph are we talking about? The little band Donkey Balls who dressed up like naked fat people?

Right, that one.

They look like Cabbage Patch dolls.

That’s your opinion, but other people are going to look at it different. I agree that it’s close. My intent in calling you is saying this. We are getting a number of complaints on it. It can be toned down. I’m not telling you to change your magazine or change your style, but I think more discretion can be used as to what pictures are displayed.

My magazine, as you can see, is only about local music. It is very seldom...not every single band that plays music in this town dresses up in naked fat people costumes. So it’s not a usual thing that happens. But you find out where the outlet is, and I’ll be extraordinarily happy to withdraw this paper from that outlet. I don’t really care who reads it. It’s for musicians only. It’s not for children. I will be very happy to put on the front cover of every issue that this is not for children, that parents have a responsibility to make sure their children do not pick this up.

I think in reality we’re talking about 13 and 14-year-olds. They’re not by their mom’s and dad’s side every minute of every day.

Well, they should be! I can’t be responsible for these children. They’re going to find stuff all over the place.

But you are responsible for distributing this magazine.

And I will be very happy to pull it from wherever I’m banned.

I’m not asking you to do that.

Well, you should be. You should be banning it, because I can’t change my editorial policy for one parent in one county. So what we need to do is keep it away from these people. Understand? You realize this is a freedom of speech issue. I've already heard from the Times-Dispatch about doing a story on it.

I’ve learned a little about that in law school.

You realize if you go through with this, the press will pick it up, there’ll be stories, the parents who filed this claim will be ridiculed, just like the people trying to stop Howard Stern.

I don’t know about that. This isn’t New York City! This is Chesterfield County!

That’s right. It’s the same thing. How far are they getting with that? How about the parents who protested the XL-102 billboard?

I don’t recall that.

The XL-102 billboard that looks like a woman having an orgasm. Remember that?

Oh yeah.

Then you know how it goes. These things go nowhere. They create a lot of paperwork. It gets your name in the paper. It produces a lot of notoriety and publicity for the paper, it’s a big, ugly mess, but in the end, it goes down on First Amendment rights. You can’t keep something from publishing.

That’s not true. I can keep something I’ve seen from publishing!

So I won’t go into Chesterfield County! I don’t care about Chesterfield County! I’ll pull it out.

Well, that’s fine. If you tell me you’re going to remove it from Chesterfield County, then I don’t have any further business.

Just tell me which outlets are causing the problem. I’ll tell the owners of those businesses about people with unsupervised children coming in, and I can no longer be there because of you. And we’ll have no problem. So I need two things from you, your name, title, telephone number, and what outlets were cited. You mind if I tape this conversation?

No, ma’m.

Where was the paper found?

The complaint lists Peaches and Digits. Those are the two listed on my complaint.

Okay, I’ll talk to the managers there and tell them, and when people come in asking for it, they can tell them to come in to the city or somewhere else.

Okay. That’s fine.

So it’s settled? So you can call that parent and tell them I’m not bringing it to Peaches. His kids can come to Peaches and buy music and don’t worry about anything.

All right, ma’m. I’m sorry it worked out like this.

I have no problem with this at all because I don’t want people in Chesterfield County reading this paper. It’s not for people like that.

****end of call

This is the same Chesterfield banning dancing in clubs now, isn't it? Anyway, I don't think Peaches or Digits really cared that much about the cranky customer and I continued to leave the paper there after a month or so. Like I told the attorney, not too many bands performed in naked costumes.

Both Digits and Peaches are gone now, too. I can't take the credit. Napster and Wal-Mart had more to do with that than me. Eventually I found out who the complainer was because he started sending me threatening faxes, and I traced the telephone number back to him. He was surprised when I called him. We had a long rambling talk, almost two hours, and there was a lot more going on in his life than my newspaper, but complaining about the paper was one area where he felt like he could make a difference. After that phone call, the situation ended. Maybe he just needed to talk to someone.

And oddly enough, at the time, a Chesterfield County police detective was one of my music reviewers, writing under his real name.

Am I to blame now for all that's happened since, the sextexting in schools, the coaches and policeman who are making dates with underaged girls on the Internet and cell phone text messages? Did the Richmond Music Journal destroy the moral fabric of a generation of Chesterfield County children?

As far as bad language goes, Brick has outdone me since then and they're a free distribution paper. How come the commonwealth's attorney's office isn't summoning Media General down to sit down with a detective and work things out? This all seems so quaint now, as if from a time where I wore a hoopskirt and had the vapors.

My Holiday Video to You

A Few Thoughts at 9 p.m.

My theory, and a good one it is, had always been that the music scene catered to one core audience -- mall and restaurant workers. There was no other theory to account for why the crowd didn't arrive until nearly midnight. Think about it. If you work in suburban retail or at a restaurant, you were closing at 10 p.m., cleaning up by 11 p.m., and ready to socialize and have a few drinks at midnight. You didn't have to report for your next shift until late the next afternoon. How else were these people closing the bars down at 2 a.m., even on week nights?

So any band scheduled to start at 9 p.m., or even 10 p.m., was playing to crickets. The after-work happy hour crowd was clearing out; the mall and restaurant people were still at work. Nobody wanted to be the opening band in that dead slot, so the opening band would delay as long as possible before taking the stage. The drummer-is-missing ploy was a popular one. I used to hate these delays when I was on a tight schedule to try to see a half dozen bands in one night and every band was ditzing around, trying to get closer to an 11 p.m. start. That, of course, inevitably pushed the headliner back to 1 a.m., which I really hated.

Anyway, I don't know where the mall and restaurant workers go to chill out until last call these days. The action has progressively moved out to the far corners of the suburbs where people seem to keep more traditional hours. Out in the 'burbs, the situation is reversed. People are working, or tired, even on weekends, so the action is most intense around 9 p.m. It's the prime of the evening for suburban bars. The place is packed, and when a band takes their first break around 10:15, they come back at 10:45 to much less than before. By midnight, it's crickets and usually it's all over by 1 a.m. No need to turn up the lights at 2 and literally grab drinks out of people's hands (ah, the good old days of Last Call...after being attractively cloaked in bar darkness most of the night, when you are the most soused and scary looking, they turn up the lights and hover over you, desperately demanding you hand over your bottles and glasses as ABC agents lurk).

I thought about this as I ate a basket of tasty pig sliders at Grandpa Eddie's and watched the Harrison Deane Band play to a full, attentive room, clapping and cheering, and it was barely 10 p.m. But after their break, most of those people were gone. Including me. I slipped out a few songs into the second set because even on a Friday night, 11:30 is teddy bear time for my ancient, weary bones. My recommendation is if you're playing in suburbia and find yourself with a very good crowd at the very beginning don't assume they're there for the duration: Play as long as you can stand it before you take that first break. The bar might do another strong 30 minutes or so of business and love you for it, and the audience will probably hang in until you give them an excuse to duck out by putting your guitars down.

Suzanne Rathburn 1962-2008

When Suzanne called last August, she knew something most of us don't know, how much time she had left to live. Two months to a year. Fate compromised and gave her five months.

At the time I wanted to believe the doctors were wrong. "They're so often wrong."

"I know," she said, but I could tell she was resigned to it. This was her third encounter with cancer and she was choosing chemotherapy again to buy time, even though ultimately it would be painful, uncomfortable time. "I can't possibly get my affairs in order in two months."

I never saw Suzanne during the bad times. When she'd show up again, she always had her hair back and was in high spirits. She would come by to record a song in my husband's studio or swim in my pool. She was always happy. She laughed a lot, almost as a punctuation to every sentence. Even when she talked about her bad relationships -- some that were Lifetime movie of the week bad and some that just fizzed out quietly -- she did it in an offhand, casual way. Those bad relationships were 90 percent of what we talked about because we didn't have much else in common except a few mutual acquaintances. I hope that wasn't an all-consuming part of her life.

She considered everyone a good friend. We could and did go a year or more without seeing or talking to each other, and yet she considered me a good friend. My cell phone number was in the book of people to call at the end. How could that be? She was just that way. She embraced people. She was full of gratitude and appreciation for any little thing you did for her and she expressed it. I felt overpaid in appreciation, truly undeserving.

She was a people-person. If I sent her an email, I'd get a call back in seconds, not a return email. So when I heard the news back in August and sent her an email offering whatever I could do, I wasn't surprised when the phone rang the moment I hit "Send."

I listened, as usual. That was all I was ever able to do, listen. She was saying good-bye even though the battle was just beginning. She loved all her friends. She would miss them. She said it was hard to breathe, hard to speak, although except for one coughing spell, she sounded fine on the phone. I don't think she was religious, yet she conjured up a death where she still existed with human emotions.

"I'm going to miss you guys so much!"

As fall progressed and the holidays passed, no news was good news. Then right after the holidays, I got another call. She sounded great and was positive and upbeat. She had even gone back to work part-time. She alluded to being in crushing pain, and yet she was picking up her life again. The doctors were telling her there were fewer tumors. "I'm going to beat this, Mariane, I really think I'm going to beat this."

"Well, then, I'll see you in the summer when we open the pool."

"Oh, I can't go in the sun anymore because of the chemotherapy."

"Okay, we'll swim at night."

But it wasn't a turning point. It was the view from the top of the sliding board, because within a week, the slide began. In mid-January we heard she was in hospice care. I dutifully carried the phone number around in my purse, with all intentions to go by, but instantly a chain of minor problems consumed me for two weeks, and the moment I dispatched the last one, the cell phone rang in my pocket.

"We found your telephone number in a book Suzanne kept."

The summer she was recording her album, she paid for one session in flowers. She brought a carload of flowers over and planted them in the two giant pots on either side of my front steps. That summer the front of the house looked great, an explosion of color and beauty that multiplied throughout the season. Then winter came and they all died and didn't come back. They were flowers for a single season, a temporary burst of vibrant life, and then they were gone.

So Much Music in So Little Time

By spring of 1994, I was a curious bystander to the meteoric rise of The Ernies, based on their ska appeal and following in Boy O Boy’s big footsteps. They went from gigs at Crazy Charlie’s and Buffalo Joe’s to opening for the Screaming Cheetah Wheelies at the Flood Zone in just nine months, covering everything currently popular with an overtone of ska. I was doubly curious because the lead singer, Will Hummel, had been in my Cub Scout troop when he was a sprout. Would one of my former Cubs become a rock star? Could I sell my story to the National Enquirer?

Now they were back at the Zone, opening for their mentors, Boy O Boy, packing them in, much to the dismay of the FZ bouncers who warned me alcohol-fueled fights always broke out. (Boy O Boy, if you don’t know, became Fighting Gravity. As far as I can tell, only two of the guys have hung in and for some reason, I would always get anonymous hate mail whenever we wrote about them, usually directed at the lead singer, Schiavone McGee.)

On this night McGee, without the band, started the show singing one line. “All I need is a holiday,” and then went silent. The audience sang the rest back to him. They were good at taking directions. Hands in the air! Jump! Bounce! You could tell they were in college. I almost expected McGee to sing, “Close your bluebooks and pass them to the front.”

(2007 aside: Do colleges still give exams in bluebooks?) Anyway, The Ernies just seemed destined to make it. They were signed almost immediately, yet like Boy O Boy, the style that established them was a passing fad and they didn't sound like themselves once the record company finished with them.

We went to the 1708 Social Gallery in the Bottom, a club I described as looking like a stage set from “Brideshead Revisited.” We sat on white sofas and drank Dinosaurs: Long Island Iced Teas turned green by a dose of Midori. “They were so strong, we attracted Jurassic narcs.”

(“Jurassic Park” was big then. Was that clever or was I still high on Dinosaurs when I wrote it? In any case, the Social Gallery hosted bands like Lovesake which featured civilized instruments like upright basses and violins. Then it became something like a goth disco.)

On a Sunday night, we endured an unusual opening act at the Hole in the Wall, a poet whose poem consisted almost entirely of “Daddy’s going to take out the Harley. Want to go for a ride on the Harley?” The band was Gibbon Hick, with Marty McCavitt on keyboards and baritone sax, Pippin Barnett on drums, Paul Watson on cornet and guitar, and Steve Williams on bass and vocals. I sold an old telephone to Watson once and he seemed very glad to get it. He was in a lot of bands.

“Jazz audiences are attentive. No talking, no wandering around. They really listen as if their collective concentration is another instrument in the band. After the set, they literally passed a hat. ‘Feel free to contribute to the deconstruction of music,’ and the audience willingly did. It was jazz church of the holiest kind.”

At the Sunset Grill, we saw the band that all the other bands hated because they got all the gigs, The Fredds. They were the Sunday night house band at Mulligan’s in Innsbrook and always got the big money shows, the bachelor auctions and chili cook-offs.

“They play progress dance music! They’re a cover band, but they cover, like, the new stuff on the radio, the stuff you can dance to,” I was told, as I tried to imagine people dancing to Beck’s’ Loser’ or Counting Crow’s ‘Mr. Jones.’”

One night, I saw five bands in five hours in five different places. We caught up with No Small Feet, another big cover band, at Lightfoot’s, a hotel lounge where “bank secretaries go to meet insurance salesmen.” Lee Covington was playing behind a rack of three keyboards and the band tried to resist the pleas from women who just wanted to dance to songs they knew.

“Guess what, we’re going to play another original song and you might not be able to dance to this one either,” Andy Edmunds chided them over the microphone.

It isn’t always easy being a dance band, although don’t tell that to Bio Ritmo. Even in ’94 at the Metro, they had everyone dancing, at the same time declaring the Metro had the worst PA in town. A block down Grace Street, we watched Rocket 69, “New York-style, ‘70’s punk a la The Heartbreakers” drown out their lead singer Dan-o; then we joined the preppy people packed into the Flood Zone for NRBQ. Across the street, BS&M were playing the outside patio at the Sunset Grill, but we opted to stay warm and go inside Scarlett’s for the last three songs in The Useless Playboys set. The stage was decorated in glittered moons and stars that vocalist Mike Geir had made from cardboard he salvaged from Marvin’s basement.

We finished the night at an after-hours downtown place called Casablanca’s and had pancakes smothered in peaches and cream. How did I do it? I didn't pay covers. I had a little press pass I made and laminated at Kinko's.

(I was startled when I arrived at the BS&M website. This band has sure changed, although it still seems to belong to Dave Barton, another hated guy in '94 because he got all the good gigs.)

A private Rites-o-Spring party at Peter Headley’s house on W. Cary was better attended than most club shows, and even advertised on the Rock Line. Headley wisely nailed his bedroom door shut for the duration. White Cross, with the reunited line up of Crispy Cramner, Mike Rodriguez, Joel Benson and Rob Mosby, opened for the Vapor Rhinos. Stuffed animals bounced all over the house until the stuffing was literally beat out of them.

My writer Kami Godbey was no slouch at descriptive prose. I could picture her night at the Metro with Sliang Laos and “a crowd as diverse as a family-sized pack of General Mills cereals. Grunge kids, goth chicks, skinheads, punks and freaks were all jammin’, or maybe all that motion was just everyone trying to unstick their shoes from the tacky gook that layers Metro’s floors. I kept getting stuck to the wall.”

Kami also discovered the Trip Thugs at the Metro and she was enthralled enough to seek them out at the “Thug house” on the 2400 block of West Main. They were Patrick Corregan, John Ekermeyer, Kelly Turner, and Mark Young. They even had a staff “manager and artist” Russell A. Duerr, and soundman, Mike Brady. They had been together five months and were already clocking in seven or eight gigs a month at places like the Metro and Crazy Charlie’s.

They were from Northern Virginia except Young, who was from Salem, and Turner, from Los Angeles. Inspired by Avail, they come to Richmond to seek their fortune, although it ultimately didn't help. Kami got creative with my recommended questions and asked things like when was the last time they were naked, could they tell the difference between different brands of toilet paper, and if they ever had that “not so fresh feeling.” Maybe that’s why the serious music writer guys in town hated the Journal and still do. All they blog about is how great Punchline used to be. Still, I give the girl props, and she took photos, too. After a year or so, she disappeared on me.

For reasons I can’t remember now, we had to Photoshop the band photo Kami took of the Trip Thugs, even though we didn’t have Photoshop. Photoshop may not have been invented then. We took two different photos and pasted them together into one, and it worked perfectly. It was Scissorshop.

The 1995 Musician Quiz

We ran a variation of this quiz in a 1995 issue. All the girls I met who had dated musicians had the same stories about how these guys lived, and a pattern developed.

You have seen every episode of “Ren & Stimpy.” +15
You have seen every episode of “Southpark.” +10
You can quote from memory the entire movie “Spinal Tap.” +5

You are in a committed relationship. +5
You were in a relationship, but she was committed. +10

You own a house. -5
You rent an apartment. +5
You rent a room in someone else’s apartment. +10
You never know whose sofa you’ll be sleeping on tonight. +15

You have gone to an all-night drug store to buy Kwell. +5

You are half deaf. +5

You have more than 500 records. +10
You play on half of them. +20

You have a futon mattress and you’ve been saving up for the frame for the past five years. +10

Your wardrobe is black, gray, black, and gray. +5
Your underwear is just gray. +10.
You don’t have any underwear. +15.

You play in another band. +5
You play in two other bands. +10
You’re John Leedes. +15. (The 1994 15 point answer was You’re Charlie Kilpatrick.)

You have lived in the Fan District. +5
You have lived in The Ritz. +10
You have lived in the Ellwood Sweat. +15
You have lived on the Spine. +20.

You never have a condom when you need one, but you always have a guitar pick. +5
You can make a girl come with a guitar pick. +10

The best time you ever had, you were drunk. +5
The best time you ever had, you were stoned. +5
The best time you ever had, you were drunk and stoned. +10
You don’t remember the best time you ever had, but people tell you it was great. +15

You have a full-time job that has nothing to do with music. -5
You have a part-time job that has nothing to do with music. +5
You work part-time as a bartender. +15
You work part-time as a restaurant cook. +20
You work part-time washing dishes. +25
Your girlfriend has a job. You play music. +30

You have more stereo equipment, amps and instruments than furniture +5
You have dishes, but you use them as ashtrays +10
You have an ashtray you use for a dish +15

You have never owned a car newer than 10 years old +5
You have never owned a car. +15
Your dream is to own a van. +5
You are living in a van. +20
You and your entire band are living in a van. +25

Your girlfriend has dated another guy in your band. +5
Your girlfriend has dated every guy in your band. +10
Your girlfriend is dating you only to get to another guy in your band. +15
You wouldn’t even have a girlfriend if you weren’t in a band. +20

To you, the major food groups are the Village, Joe’s, Third Street Diner, and Denny’s. +10

You can name every band you’ve played in and the set lists for each, but not the last five girls you dated. +5

Your wife/girlfriend has never been with you on New Year’s Eve because you’ve always been working. +10

Bonus points:

You have worked at more than 20 Richmond restaurants. +20
Your bar tab is more than you made playing. +15
Your girlfriend's bar tab is more than you made playing. +20

175-200 points: You are a real Richmond musician!
75-170 points: You’re a musician.
0-70 points: You’re not a musician. Why did you even take this test?