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[usernamenumber]

I've recommended theferrett's writing before. He tends to post often and with verbosity, so I don't read everything he writes nowadays, but this piece really caught my eye today. It's the best entry I ever wrote about playing in high school punk bands, only I didn't write it. Really, though, the similarities are striking, right down to the band doing one glorious show at the hidden punk club with no signage amd then fading back into (even further) obscurity.

Man, how many times did I go through that cycle? And I enjoyed the hell out of it, too. Playing in bands was a social thing. If I wanted to get to know someone better I invited them over to my place (blessed with extremely longsuffering parents) to jam. Don't know an instrument? It's punk rock, man! You'll figure it out! And if you can't then you can always sing! By then end of the session, we'd have a name, and maybe even a logo, even if we never wrote more than one song, let alone actually played a show.

Those were good times. =:)

Comments

[lmpshd.livejournal.com]

Your description makes me envious... my own experience playing in a band was sadly less satisfying. The people were nice enough, in fact two of them were among my best friends, but the drummer was kind of an asshole and -- on top of that -- had no sense of rhythm. This became clear when our guitarist (one of those talented but untrained types) tried to teach us a song he'd written, and though he didn't realize this it was in 7/4 time. Which I thought was pretty neat, but the drummer was incapable of any beat other than 4/4... we tried to tell him to alternate 4/4 bars with 3/4, and he said "What's 3/4?". Unfortunately all we could think of to answer to that was, "You know, like a waltz", so he started playing OOM PAH PAH OOM PAH PAH and it went downhill from there. Never even got through one song.

[usernamenumber.livejournal.com]

Hehe. Well, As a drummer I couldn't do much more than 4/4 myself, though one of my bands, The Hope Bombs (which actually got recorded on a compilation for a local label-- the height of my musical career), did have a waltz called "Food in the House" that got rather popular. If you've never seen punkers mosh in 3/4, you haven't fully lived. =:)

...holy crap! I was trying to find an mp3 of the song and found out that we have a wikipedia page! I'm famous! Well, famous inasmuch as I'm listed among the endless cavalcade of drummers that band had. It seems the author of the article didn't know my last name, so I'm listed as "Brad from Walnut Creek". For some reason this makes me downright giddy.

Hey, this bout of nostalgia has proven fruitful. I actually found our guitarist, Eric's, website and he's got a ton of old recordings up. This may be singularly uninteresting to others, but it makes me happy, though none of the recordings he has actually have me playing.

Anyway, the Hope Bombs were an exception in that there was some genuine talent there. Ben and Eric, who did guitar/keyboard/vocals and guitar/vocals, respectively, met at Harvard studying CS. When I met them, Ben was going to UC Davis for grad work in music and Eric was going to UC Berkeley for math. Then there was Robert Eggplant, who had been part of one of the most seminal underground Berkeley bands in recent years, Blatz (yes, named after the beer).

...and then there was me. I think I had just started my senior year in high school. And I was a crappy drummer. I was told that what I lacked in talent I made up for with my unique sartorial tastes. =:) *makes mental note to dig up some pictures from back then*.

Blargh. I could ramble on and on, but sadly I've got to get back to work. The point I was making was that what talent the Hope Bombs had (which may not be evident from the recordings-- for all his skill at piano and classical composition, Ben's singing was once described by a friend as "like an asthmatic weasel desperately grasping for its inhaler"-- was more of an exception than a rule in the bands I played with. At least for me, that scene was much more about an empathic connection to the music and the players, if you will, than technical skill. Raw energy as opposed to technique.

[heiligekuh.livejournal.com]

How do the Hope Bombs have a Wikipedia page but Bobby Joe Ebola (mentioned extensively in the SPAM/geekfest articles) don't? Crazy.

ummm

[(Anonymous)]

remember the band "I Hate Andy Kaufman"? Nothing like distorted bass clarinet, trumpet, and drums playing dk covers.