PEOPLE IN BANDS: Do you own your musicians?

I find it curious when people in bands refer to other members as theirs. Example, "My drummer is going to graduate school" or "My bassist's sister is pretty good looking". Why is it ok to say this? I think that perhaps it is ok for, say, Morrissey to say this, as the band is his name and the group of people are backing him up, but when you're in a band situation, isn't it odd? Can Meg White refer to Jack White as her singer?

I probably shouldn't really care about this, but I also find it strange when I'm looking for an item at a department store and the person helping replies, "I don't have that right now". Because the item doesn't belong to them, it belongs to the store.

I am annoyed when people use "there" instead of "their" in there speech.

haha i am pretty conscious of this and it totally depends on the band and person in question. i'm more likely to say "our trumpet player..." though.

What is it with people who say "my wife" or "my husband"? Like, you can't own a spouse, maaan.

My drummer. I think I'll keep him.

Yeah I'm aware of this weirdness and say things like, "R, who plays guitar in the band I play in."

I honestly haven't known many people to say "my" (instead of "our") unless they think of themselves -- or are trying to get you to think of them -- as the foremost member of the act.

^ I.e., happens mostly with (a) singer-songwriters who went out and collected what they think of as a "backing band" even though those people might disagree with this assessment, and (b) guitar players who respect your contributions but will always fundamentally consider themselves possessors of the core musical vision the band is based on.

I hear it all the time from members in crummy local bands. You know, just like, 1/3 of a band. I think it's like saying: I'M THE JOHN, YOU'RE THE RINGO.

(Actually a lot of the guitar players in (b) would probably just say, like, "Kevin" instead of "my bassist," but in this way that makes it clear that Kevin, while a bro, is a liability and insufficiently cooperative with where things are supposed to be going -- e.g. kinda the way I imagine Dick Cheney would once have said "Powell.")

I think of it more as equivalent to calling someone my friend

Yeah I'm aware of this weirdness and say things like, "R, who plays guitar in the band I play in."

yeah cause that isn't cumbersome at all

I SO know what you mean! I had the same thing, last week in a store called Media Market. Dude said: "I don't that for ya right now". And I thought í don't??? Any idea how big that store is?

"I think of it more as equivalent to calling someone my friend."

Hm, I never thought about this. It makes sense.

I say "my", and it's probably because I write and sing all our songs.

i say "my" but i keep trying to use "our" more

this whole thing is fucking stupid, the term "my" does not denote ownership. I do not own my friends, my boss, my coworkers, my hometown, etc.

get one english

like i said, i have consciously said cumbersome things like "the guy who plays piano for my band" rather than sound risk sounding like a dick or that i have some ownership over a dude who happens to lead bands of his own, and has a lot more musicianship & experience than me.

maybe this is more common in rock scenes where people are more likely to just play in one band?

I agree with Shakey here, but there's something else going on. It's not so much "ownership" as a problem of incomplete reference. When you say "my hometown", you mean "the town I call my home" or something like that. When you say "my band", you mean "the band with which I play". But when you say "my guitarist", you don't quite mean "the guitarist with whom I play", more like "the guitarist who is the band with which I play". So there's a shorthand, and I think it's linguistically acceptable, but I can also see where there's a disconnect.

http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/88/catguitarfl8.jpg

I say 'my' a lot, but have realised I usually say it when talking to people who don't know the band, or the band members. So it is pretty similar to 'my friend' - you wouldn't say 'my friend Jim' to someone who already knows Jim, and I don't think I'd say 'my singer' to someone who a)would know the band I'm in (in this case I'd say 'our'), or b)would know the person (in this case I'd say 'Steve').

I also find it strange when I'm looking for an item at a department store and the person helping replies, "I don't have that right now"

This seems somewhat related to people telling restaurant servers, "I'll have your eggplant parmesan."

(Whenever I hear people say that, I always imagine them inserting the word "finest" after "your.")

Yeah, it's not an issue of the possessive, but seriously: the singer and main songwriter in a band is going to be many times more likely to say "my bassist" than the guy who plays maracas and sings backing vocals on two song, and rarely is the subbed-in bassist in a solo-type act going to say "my singer," etc. etc.

In other words, there does seem to be some stuff contained there about power dynamics and people's various levels of importance in a group, I think.

Haha I'm thinking of the last time I sang in a band, a long time ago, and it was started by the guitar and bass players, and we'd have talked like this:

guitar/bass - "our singer," "our drummer"
me - "our drummer," "the guitar/bass player"
drummer - "the guitar/bass player," "the singer"

Yeah I'm aware of this weirdness and say things like, "R, who plays guitar in the band I play in."

yeah cause that isn't cumbersome at all

yeah that was my point; these are the lengths to which I go to avoid such weirdness

"our singer/songwriter"

Do you say "my boss" or "the person who is the boss of me"?

If the first, does it imply that you own your boss, or is it simply describing relationship?

"My local bar" or "our neighborhood grocery store" equally can imply relationship without implying ownership.

...or for that matter "my sister," "my cousin," "my mother," "my neighbor."

Somehow this is reminding of how in many non-English languages, at least the few I am familiar with, they don't say "he hurt his arm" but "he hurt the arm" because who else's arm would it be? Or they might refer to somebody's- including their own- sibling as "the sister" or "the brother."

how do any of you get through the day

how do any of you get through the day

― i like to fart and i am crazy

How do you get through YOUR day?

i agree that it's a different situation than saying "my friend" or "my sister". like say there was an assistant at work who did a lot of things around the office, it would be weird to say "my assistant".

This is all very interesting. I might have to have a word to the musicians with whom I comprise a band about the implications of this. I may even have to talk to the shrink I employ to assist me with my mental problems about his opinion. The goodness, it makes the head attached to the body speaking to you spin! The, the, the, what shall I do with the self speaking to you?

How do you get through YOUR day?

― ilx chilton (James Redd and the Blecchs)

Yes Bob

I'm with Shakey. A band is like a family.

The only one that sounded odd was "My singer", and that made me laugh, so I used it all the time.