Michael, after reading, "Noize from the editor," in the September edition, I thought you might appreciate this story. Years ago I auditioned for a lead guitar gig with a signed metal band in California. I spent a week or so preparing some leads I felt fit the groove of the 3 songs I was auditioning with. I showed up the night of the audition with my rack & a half stack ready to do my thing. As in your case the existing members of this band,(omitting the name to protect the innocent,) were much younger than I, in their early 20's. The rhythm guitarist was running a Boogie triple rectifier via a full stack, and the bassist had a wall of speakers, both nice rigs, but way overkill for the room we were playing in. Needless to say I was driving my Randall RG100 rack unit as hard as I was willing to push it & couldn't hear a thing. I may as well been playing air guitar. My point is this...with age comes maturity, and that doesn't mean your a "cranky old guitar dude," it just means you have learned a few things over the years. Just because you have a Marshall that goes to "eleven," doesn't mean you have to play it at that ungodly volume in an environment when you actually want to hear what the heck is going on around you, and in comparison to your situation, just because you are "good enough," to freelance/improvise does not mean you should substitute that skill for actually learning a song. Let's face it, well planned songs with well thought out 2 guitar interlocking melodies sound much better than, "hey that scale fit's, gee..I wonder when I should end this thing." Improvising & free jamming is a lot of fun, and I as well as you I'm sure love it, but if you are trying to tailor a rhythm section & it's melodies to make a stand out singer/songwriter shine they need to be well orchestrated, but what do I know, I'm just an old guy that plays metal still! In my case all those guys needed to do was turn down a bit to be able to hear what I had to offer them, in your case all the rhythm section needs to do is play the song the way it was written, but with age comes wisdom, and I personally wouldn,t trade it for all the tea in china! Good luck bro.

Here, here! Damn straight! I heartily concur!

I wouldn't think that anybody actually still does that "louder than Blue Cheer" think but clearly I'm outta touch.
Part of what being a "rebellious ne'er-do-well imitating what's been done 20 zillion times" is not paying attention, I know (been there myself) but the fact is that regardless of the damage that stuff does to oner's ears, how can anybody even pretend they hear what's being played when their ears are both shutting down & simply overpowered by the SPLs?

I suggest two words: "micro...phone".

On still yet another hand, you didn't tell us what they thought of your audition. Did they act surprised, asking, 'Oh, were you playing?"