how do you know you've made it big?

1. you totally fuck up a song in the first 10 seconds and the crowd cheers in adulation

2. you notice that you are getting high during the break before your encore every night

3. some dude is wearing your shirt and you don't know who it is

4. some dude is wearing your shirt and staring at you

5. your biological father contacts you after 17 years of silence

6. you open up a taco stand on a whim and there's a really long line at 9am

someone tunes one of your 6+ guitars between songs

8. an underground condom is named after you

9. children's puppet shows are doing parodies of your songs

10. you have an inside joke with the guy who hands you the gold record

11. first website dedicated to your bootlegs

12. media outlets and devastated parents have accused your music of causing suicides

13. graduate thesis includes your name in the title

14. you are getting letters from kids born during this century thanking you for saving their lives

15. your music actually causes a suicide

i'm wearing a Mike Watt shirt right now, so i guess he's made it. congrats, Watt!

16. number of genuinely disturbing stalker-related incidents keeps piling up

17. you think about your interview strategy

18. Groupie paternity suits.

17. acts that used to be more successful than you score comeback hits by covering one of your early album tracks

18. they play one of your songs in-between periods at a hockey game, and it gets a bigger reaction from the crowd than any of the goals scored

19. you are fucking a girl with a shark

20. you are using the shark with the girl, it's not just that the girl owns a shark

Whiney G spends at least a few hours one week exasperating over your existence

21. your wikipedia entry is a maze of fan community jargon and abbreviations

22. polka version of your hit song

23. weeks since last time you paid for a drink

24. tattoo artists and cosmetic dentists have grown weary of inscribing your name on people's parts

25. the live album your manager approved while you were on a bender debuts at #1, you receive several congratulatory phone calls before getting the slightest idea what they're in reference to

26. an unknown band gets a major label deal off of a novelty song with your name in the title

27. your unauthorized biography contains anecdotes that ruin a friendship

28. you have a bit role in a movie and your role requires you to hold a guitar

29. you show up on google autocomplete

30. you're a shelf on the bookshelf

30. Your band has a Wikipedia entry, obviously written by someone who doesn't know you or any of your bandmates and gets significant portions of your story 'wrong' by merely conjecturing.

31. you have a beef with an otherwise unknown producer on Entertainment Tonight

32. you have a beef with Nicole Kidman, and by that I mean you have a child with Nicole Kidman

33. you know Nicole Kidman

34. display names about you in ppls vaginas

35. The guy who puts bottled water on your piano before your set gets an ovation from the crowd.

(this actually happened to me)

36. you're in a math equation somehow

37. youre in a band full-time and can afford anything ever

Whiney G spends at least a few hours one week exasperating over your existence

―  (gr8080), Thursday, August 25, 2011 3:28 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

lol

eh i fucked mine up. someone redo it for me

you have to post as 'underrated aerosmith bootlegs i have owned' on a message board

38. someone divides a number by zero and the answer is your band's name, lol

I liked "you can afford anything ever" a lot actually

39. your first internal thought of the 'little people'

40. kanye west throws a hissy fit about you winning an award, later apologies, later still throws another hissy fit about your ungracious response to his apology

41. what, you're standing on gold?

42. put pussy in a sarcophagus

43. 0.0 on pitchfork

^^ srsly

44. it's a new decade a few years ago, news to you

42. put pussy in a sarcophagus

underrated kool keith lines u have penned

45. the lex has heard of you

46. you're drunkenly rambling about a bass guitar that goes another octave lower and someone is intently listening

47. you have met robert plant, but he was barfing

45. lex knows who you are (if you're a rock band)
46. geir knows who you are (if you're not a rock band)

haha xpost goddammit

48. your youtube account name ends in VEVO

49. ?uestlove has a story about you

50. you hit 51

nobody is allowed in the building while you do soundcheck

51. action figures

52. Drew Barrymore somehow

53. very expensive Aleister Crowley dildo

54. you can't stay at the regular Holiday Inn anymore - they've made a special wing constructed of Crowley dildos just for you

55. People in your home town have gone from not caring about your music, to liking your music because it is successful elsewhere, to hating you because you are too successful elsewhere.

56. People feel bad for you, and wonder what you are going to do with the rest of your life because you have become as successful as anyone can possibly be in the music business by your late 20's.

57. People consistently copy what you did two years ago.

58. The people you associate with and consider peers have already made it big.

59. you have advanced to dating supermodel lily cole after a few dalliances with c-list tv actresses who were once almost a thing a few years ago. also, you couldn't possibly be more bored with nailing lily cole and have taken to fucking random barmaids and waitresses every chance you get.

60. apparently your net worth is sufficient for someone to live comfortably for the rest of his days in say, sao paulo or marseilles or maybe even sydney. they're not really exactly sure where your manager absconded off to with your money but those are the best guesses right now.

You finally meet a rock god you've worshipped all your life, and he asks you to sign one of your albums.

(61. ^^^ )

61 = vg.

62. that bass line in "new religion" was a big part of your getting into the instrument, and you've told john taylor as much the couple of times you keep bumping into him backstage after your shows, weirdly enough.

eventually it occurs to you to ask someone who your opening act is.

kind of a corollary to 61, i suppose.

Could 62 get a remix? I'm not getting it.

63. shitty signature edition guitar that YouTube reviewers complain has only a vaguely cosmetic similarity to your favourite axe

64. You buy a big flashy car, and a house for your ma.

you're so used to seeing big names now backstage after your shows that you're kind of blase about it; you exchange pleasantries with them and do a few lines and so forth. however, you keep seeing duran duran around a bit more than you would think was normal for this kind of thing, which strikes you as rather odd but whatever. apparently, though, they're your opening act, which would explain their continuing presence, but it's a bit of a surprise to you, since you are now in a position where you are completely unaware of quotidian details like what city you're in or who your opening act is or the names of any of the stage crew and whatnot.

i should have just said "your childhood idols are now your opening act"

x-post

Gotcha, ta.

65. you own furniture you've never seen

66. your band is successful enough now that people finally stop referring to you as "jordan catalano" in print but you almost rather prefer that to your new nickname, "douchbag."

sorry, "douchebag."

67. you're considering taking a long break from the music biz for a while

68. fans come to the airport to cheer you when you get into town

69. You're sick and tired of approving all of the riders

70. you've completed the Kama Sutra in every major U.S. city

71. You hate one of your fan clubs

72. Multiple honorary degrees in the same field

73. there's a slashfic site with a section dedicated to your band

74. you show up to interviews three hours late

75. you don't write your own tweets

76. you realize you'll never properly "move in" anywhere ever again

77. You have your own ilx board

78. whenever you say 'I' your voice becomes hushed and reverent.

I know his band were awesome but not sure Chaki ever made it 'big' exactly xp

79. You get the shit kicked out of you at the Gathering of the Juggalos

80. Parts of your rider have appeared on "The Smoking Gun".

81. All the brown M&M's you've had removed could be used to pebbledash a house.

64. You buy a big flashy car, and a house for your ma.

I thought it was "a house a mile long"?

82. Pitchfork gives all of your new releases a 5.9 and spends half the review talking about an album you released ten years ago

This is the best ILM thread in years

83. You treat the support act as shit, who treated you as shit when you supported them.

84. your life would be an endless maury "you are NOT the father" episode without that army of lawyers you hired to handle just those particular cases

85. Timbaland shows up on your record in some capacity

86. a prominent director makes a critically acclaimed film that's basically just you stumbling around a house and staring out windows

87. VH1 starts tapping you for their inevitable "I Love the 90s" series despite the fact that you did nothing but blow in the 90's

88. ILM starts a thread about you in 2003 where everyone says that you're overrated and then someone revives it years later to make fun of the people upthread.

89. multiple tumblrs devoted to paparazzi photos of you doing stupid things

90. you're finally free to pursue your true love: ACTING

91. Guest role on the Simpsons 35th season opener

92. whenever you play a guitar solo, the audience starts to smell like bob marley

93. there's a perfume named after you that costs less than $15 a bottle

93. sushi roll named after you at guy fieri's tex wasabi's restaurant

jinx!

lol right?

94a. sushi roll contains bacon, fried plantains, pepper jack, and a dollop of sriracha-infused miracle whip

95. Kids on a TV show talked about going to your concert, but you don't actually appear on the show.

talk

96. you've had a glass of chardonnay at paul simon's house, sitting around an immaculate white coffee table with steve martin and burt bachrach's son

97. you and diddy can laugh about those proactiv commercials now

98. you feel bad about never using that personal gym

99. on the other hand you are "totally going to get" that pilot's license you've been talking about

100. you are really REALLY sick of bono subtly guilting you when you run into him at events

94a. sushi roll contains bacon, fried plantains, pepper jack, and a dollop of sriracha-infused miracle whip

― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Thursday, August 25, 2011 7:42 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

woiuld actually eat this.

*would*

then brother have i got a restaurant for you

there is no cuisine god but dr. strongo, and guy fieri is his prophet

Let me rephrase: Would actually eat once. On a dare.

(95) There is a brostep version of a song you made

96. Hipsters and a handful of diehards all insist your early output was much better than the sellout crap you do nowadays.

94 even

118. you have the fleeting thought that you could probably record yourself farting and sell it on eBay for hundreds of dollars

119. you're on BBC 2 now telling Terry Wogan how you've made it and what you've made is unclear now, but his deference is and his laughter is

120. Signature line of clothing

121. finally acquired a jasper johns from the corporate collection of hiradaki electronics international after outbidding a dutch finance consortium and an unnamed private buyer from la whom you suspect to be jack nicholson. objective: archery practice.

Was there any truth to that rumour that Dylan used a Warhol painting of Elvis as a dartboard?

i did not know that! it just seemed like the thing to do if you've got the means.

122. you don't have to tour all the time now and you're content just staying at home being a loving husband to your wife and devoted father to your twin two-year old daughters.

this really pisses off your first family no end, especially your teenage son who has no childhood memories of you that weren't from seeing you on television and who will only call you "david" and not "dad" when you call him once a year on his birthday.

Well what happened was that Warhol gave Dylan the painting, then later heard the rumour that it was being used as a dartboard.

In a similar vein...

123. Local electrical retailer delivers a new TV to your house once a week, because you'll have thrown the last one out of the window, or blown it up with a shotgun, or something.

124. you insist on your own monogrammed bottles of poppers

125. On Halloween you see strange versions of yourself walking around

126. You've completely forgotten coke's illegal

unless it's with JD.

85. Timbaland shows up on your record in some capacity

This is a sign that you have $10K, not that you've "made it"

Rather, that you had 10K. Now it belongs to Timbo

at this point earning 10K in the record industry IS "making it"

127. your lyrics are a top-ranked strain on leafly

there's a trending song called "I Wanna Believe" with a homemade video featuring your uncredited home movies

you're casually hanging out with jeff goldblum