Musicians hate journalists. They're born with a cognitive mechanism that makes the fact that writers aren't publicists go in one sound-weary, semi-deaf ear and sail out the other. Scientific lies aside, I've been around performers my whole life, and that's probably why I wanted to be William Miller. My dad drums. My mom sings. And my roommate plays piano and needs a change of pants whenever he hears synthesis. Seven years ago, Cameron Crowe made a movie called Almost Famous. Miller, a bumbling, barely-attractive teen journalist, is offered to follow a band around and write a Rolling Stone article about them. They call him the "enemy." That's a bit meager, but you get the point. If The Office's Michael Scott has taught me anything, it's that you can't be a boss and a friend. Only in this case, you can't be a writer and a pal. The two are as compatible as cats and being thrown out of a 10th-story window. Only the Darwin-approved land on all fours. I became the enemy in high school. A wise-within-her-years messenger bag-sporting wide-eyed teen, I was sent to interview the big dogs: Something Corporate. I put on my best (dirtiest) pair of Converses and waited to interview Andrew McMahon, the lead singer/pianist god. Naturally, I was an idiot and liked their music. Sitting in the back of their frigid bus, I took some poor notes, wrote up an article and was envied came publishing day. Fast forward a few years to an All-American Rejects concert. That's right. America's baby-faced rejects. Although my interview was canceled because the lead singer needed to preserve his voice, my name was still supposed to occupy space on the guest list. Naturally this would be too convenient. "I'm not on the list?" "No." "They said I'd be on the list." "You're not on the list." I was officially William Miller - the Tiger Beat version. I even had a Lester Bangs who told me how to be cool albeit him being a near-loser. There was no love interest named after a Beatles song, but I was on my way to being a full-fledged enemy of all musicians and the one person they shouldn't tell secrets to. Then my friend's band came along. They're four guys, all a year younger than me, nice except for the occasional tomfoolery, and are obsessed with space and squids. My roommate, the keyboard player always needing a change of pants, asked me to write their biography, so I complied. It was lewd and probably offended at least one small third world country. After a show at the Metro and making the front page of the Daily Northwestern, The band decided they wanted nothing to do with their old biography and asked me for a rewrite. But that's when I noticed it. Musicians really do hate journalists. Nothing I wrote appeased them. I eventually got flustered and threw in the biography towel in a fit of grumbling. And that's my point. Musicians are so self-contained that even experts are wrong. "This article makes me sound so bad," said my roommate, flipping through the PLAY section of The Daily. "It's verbatim. It's everything you said." "Yeah, but still. Why couldn't she make us look good?" "That's not our job. We're not your PR." "Why not?" He had a point about poorly chosen dialogue. But journalists have a problem. Between class and rehearsals and girls and whatever crowds frontal lobes these days, people aren't willing to dedicate more than 15 to 20 minutes for an interview. We're expected to have some sort of epiphanic revelation about them in that narrow time slot. Of course we'll write about the basics. A savvy journalist knows all of these and builds on it. A crappy writer is like that fish at the dentist's that won't budge no matter how fervently you tap the glass. They eat what's tossed to them and they don't get along with the snails that do all the clean-up. I had another band interview lined up that week, but this time I was terrified. The band had asked for a copy of it, and I knew I couldn't write anything that would be a verbal toe stomp. I wanted to be their buddy, not their enemy. After all, I had aspired to have "Groupie" as my description in at least one VH1 Behind the Music before I died. Some people wish for happiness. I wished for groupie status with my dignity intact and my figurative chastity belt's key nowhere to be found. I didn't want to be William Miller anymore. I went along and wrote the piece. It was short, mindless and probably didn't waste more than 3 minutes of someone's life. But I didn't get anything except a "thanks for writing about us," which roughly translates to either, "You spelled my name wrong, scorpion woman" or "Yeah, keep the restraining order in mind." Or maybe it just wasn't praising them like the 88 other articles I pulled up on Google did. I guess you can't be someone's friend and writer. But I wouldn't mind landing on my feet once in a while, just to see if I can. If you want Kasia to be your groupie, contact her at k-galazka@northwestern.edu .