As I mentioned in an earlier column some musicians play purely for personal satisfaction. They are not interested in any external rewards such as money, sex or invitations to cool parties. That sounds like a noble and artistic ideal, doesn't it?

The reality, though, is not great. I quit one band recently because personal satisfaction was the only incentive which mattered to them and this led them to make some bad decisions. They were musically competent, easy to work with, not egomaniacal, and just about everything else you could ask for. They were not at all concerned with money, popularity, success, status or any of the other things that, as we are told by everyone from art history professors to MTV, true artists are supposed to ignore. Because of this they were willing to lose quite a bit of their own money and not interested in doing anything to improve or strengthen the impression they made on audiences. It's not just that they weren't interested in what I had to say, either. They sometimes asked me for advice on how to end songs, for example. They were just not interested in anything except for playing music they really liked.

The real problems came about when they needed to replace their vocalist. They found an excellent one who worked very quickly and efficiently and sounded very good. Could have started gigging in 2-3 weeks but no - they decided they can't compromise their vision and must have a specific kind of vocalist which happens to be rare here. The odds of them finding one who's got a decent voice, is easy to work with and does not have any offers from better-paying bands are close to zero. The likely outcome is that it will take them several months to find someone who is barely tolerable. So I bailed and now they're looking for a bassist as well. Replacing me should be very easy but again the quest for personal satisfaction gets in the way. One of the guitarists could take over the bass job but prefers guitar - so they insist on looking for a bassist. Bassists are in short supply around here and the decent ones generally have better things to do than joining bands with no vocalist.

This isn't the only case that I've been involved in, but it is the most recent and probably the clearest. I wish them well and I hope the drummer didn't quit next but I can't help wondering why things turned out this way. Why does being dedicated to making music for "the right reasons" render them unable to play any music at all or able to play music only with a bad singer? Musicians interested in money or groupies or respectability generally make fairly rational decisions which increase their odds of getting those things. Yet the ones after personal satisfaction often make bizarre and irrational decisions which leave them in the decidedly unsatisfying position of having no band at all and playing in their bedroom. At best they end up making music extremely inefficiently and have serious problems attracting quality bandmates.

Are inefficiency and frustration merely the price of making music for "the right reasons," or in other words the price of integrity? Or are a lot of musicians following a harmful and absurd set of rules because they believe that not following these rules would be a terrible sin against Art? There is certainly harm being done to their quest for personal satisfaction and there is also harm to audiences because there is less music and inferior music made than there would otherwise be. We need to take a long hard look at how our society defines integrity in music (and the arts in general) and whether something's gone wrong with that definition somewhere along the way.