At my band’s weekly practices, things usually start out slowly. Assuming we’re all on time – and that’s assuming a lot – it takes a while for everyone to get their gear set up, get in the mood, get a beer started and so on. But after 15 minutes or so, you can count on five guys standing around holding instruments, frowning, looking down at a list of songs and saying, “um, so, what should we play?”

Being overly polite, nobody wants to saddle everyone else with his song choices. And since we follow the he-who-wrote-it-sings-it rule, no one wants to look like an egomaniac by suggesting one of their own songs. Usually, we end up flipping bottle caps onto the song list to randomly pick what to play.

There’s one situation where we (sort of) ditch the group decision-making process: onstage. Our typical setup is to come up with a set list a little too long for the time slot we’re going to play, with three or four optional songs poised towards the end, just in case things go more quickly than we expect. When we get to that part of the set list, someone has to play point guard, keeping one eye on the clock and the other on the set list, and make snap calls about which of the optional songs we’ll play.

We’ve tried the full-on democratic model at a show here and there and it’s not a pretty sight. Breaks of two or three minutes between songs, while we dithered over what to play, were the order of the day, ultimately boring the hell out of the people who’d come to see us play. Although I suppose the people who just happened to be in the bar probably appreciated the chance to get a little bit of conversation in.

It goes without saying that many bands aren’t so egalitarian. I’d even go so far as to say, if you’re shooting for the big time, you probably need to come up with a more defined pecking order. I recently got done reading “Learning to Die,” Greg Kot’s book about Wilco, and it was sort of a case study in band dynamics. Actually, it was a case study in four or five other music issues, too – I recommend it pretty highly, even if Wilco does nothing for you. The main thing I got from the book, is Wilco doesn’t stand around at practice asking each other what to do next.

Jeff Tweedy has come out a couple of times as a proponent of the benevolent dictator model of band operation. Exhibit A would be the much-publicized episode, wherein guitarist Jay Bennett, after a creative argument, got the boot and a lecture from Tweedy about how “a circle can only have one center.” Exhibit B, much murkier, but still plain as day, would be Wilco’s constant, Spinal Tap-esque lineup shifts. It’s clear that, as Wilco goes, it’s Tweedy’s way or the highway.

That doesn’t sound fun to me. I want to be in a band in which I can express myself, have fun and work with equals. I want to be able to contribute to every song, no matter which of us wrote it, instead of having parts dictated to me. I want to know if I have a crazy idea for a really weird guitar sound, I can just bust it out without some self-styled bandleader telling me to keep things tight. I’ve been in situations like that and hated them. I love making music, but when I’ve been in strong leader-type bands, I’ve always ended up getting all anxious before practice because I don’t want to go and I think of an excuse to ditch.

But, on the other hand, dictatorship seems to work for Wilco – they’re just a shade more successful than my band (if we go six months without a show, it’s because we couldn’t get in anywhere; if they go six months without a show, someone’s in rehab). My guess is democracy in a band is a hell of a lot more enjoyable, more suitable for your band, if you’re just out to have fun. More accurately, I think bands that are on the fast track probably gravitate towards a strong leader setup. Getting anywhere takes persistence and determination and these aren’t qualities you develop when you’re all standing around deferring decisions to each other.

When I was younger and starry-eyed, I thought it would be the coolest thing in the world to be in a band with Jeff Tweedy. I even went so far as to work out the sequence of events required to get the 24-year-old incarnation of me named as Wilco’s bass player.

These days, I don’t think I’d take the job if it was offered. I’d much rather stick with the gang of yahoos I’m playing with now. We’re never going to play Coachella, but we have a lot of fun drinking beer as equals.