First Show

Counting the new one with N and Slappa, I've now been in ten bands where I considered myself a full-time member. There have also been a number of fill-ins, one-offs and side projects, but ten bands that I paid serious attention to. Is it pretentious to talk about this? Maybe, but no more that writing in a blog at all. I'm 35, so ten serious bands is not a stretch.

The latest one is close to playing live. We've jammed about ten times and it's been going really well. We used to write a song a practice but now that we sort of have a "set", there's less time to mess around after doing the older material. I've got to say, this it going to be one of the most ready-for-our-first-show bands I've ever been in. Which is odd considering we all treat it as a lark. This made me think back to other first shows as a comparison.

0) Grindcore Band
(Oct 1991)

Grindcore Band was not one of the ten, but I include them here because this was my first time playing for people who had paid to see a band I was in. I played bass. I can't remember if I was replacing someone or if they just didn't have a bassist before. The other guys in the band were clearly "metal", except perhaps for d_r0¢k, who was at least ambiguously so. I had long bangs that I threw back under a baseball hat and wore paid shirts and chucks with rolled up jeans. So, not metal. The other guys were really cool though, and we got along well.

I joined GB in the summer, so we had a few months to prepare. I guess I was fairly ready for that show. We didn't have a lot of songs, but they were at least as "technical" as BB's, if not moreso. We covered a Sabbath tune, which was probably my favorite song we did. I rocked the Dee Dee Ramone moves. I remember the set being sloppy, but we were tuned pretty low so... y'know.

The coolest thing about that show was a comment d_r0¢k received from a listener afterward:

"You guys were awesome. I dunno about that bass player though. He's just not metal."

1) Really Old Band
(Aug 1992)

This was the main band I was in between 1990 and 1993. The first two years were spent exclusively in the basement. We had no idea how to go about getting a show. I was super cynical about scene people ("ooo, they think they're sooo coool"), and more than a little concerned with the possibility of being literally beaten off the stage (not out of the question in those days).

You'd think playing the same bunch of three-chord songs for two years we'd be well-honed for our live debut... but you'd be wrong! We hardly jammed because we had nowhere to do so, and I refused to jam at my house while my parents were around (I was still in a hate-my-parents phase that most people are out of by that age).

There were lineup issues. I REALLY wanted to play guitar but filling the other positions was way harder, so I started out on bass. Then, our drummer quit because he felt he was holding us back (from what? humiliation?). We were lucky enough to find this older (mid 20s) guy who would drum for us, but that didn't work out. He couldn't learn the songs because he felt they all sounded the same. His favourite band was Bad Religion, so I knew his excuse was a crock.

By this time we had a decent set, but not enough people to play it. I had only ever seen d_r0¢k front in bands but I knew he could play bass, so we added him and I switched to drums. I was singing the whole time, which really sucked. But at least we had a lineup. A couple of open mics happened as a 3-piece but I wanted no part of being a singing drummer. An eager young friend of our guitarist expressed an interest in singing, so I handed him my lyrics like a hot potato.

"And by the way, we're recording next week".

Somehow, we'd secured a show the SUB in a spot that is now a cafeteria. Some good bands were on the bill and all ages punk shows were very rare then. We might as well have something to sell. Mike was really in a tough spot with learning all the lyrics so quickly and it sometimes shows on our demo... the aptly named "We Suck" cassette. I take my hat off to him though, he processed it all somehow. But we were not ready to play live.

I remember walking around by myself for like an hour before playing. Would the older punks kill me? Would we be horrible? Amazingly, I have our entire set on a tape in the storage room (I won't be posting excerpts). The guitar was out of tune for almost the whole show. It was fun though. I played so hard. There had to be 200 people there, and some even danced for us. But we really did sound like absolute ass.

2) Old Band
(Aug 1993)

I quit Really Old Band and started Old Band with some other friends in 1993. I thought R.O.B.'s songs were all really stupid. I did rejoin for one show around 93 or 94 when this legendary 90s punk band came to town and we opened. By the time I quit R.O.B. a new all-ages club had opened up and I was extremely eager to land us a gig there. People: extreme eagerness + new band = recipe for disaster. We scraped together just barely enough minute-long, shitty punk rock songs to justify being on a bill opening for a better local band. Man, we were horrible! Thankfully, we went out more gracefully than we went in. (*footage is from Old Band's third-last show... look at yours truly crowd surfing at the end! Yes, I was that skinny once...)

3) Pop Band #1
(Dec 1994)

This was the first band I was in where I actually wanted to sound poppy. I listened to that sort of music, so why not. I had a lot of ideas, and the 90s were the right time for Ramones-idolatry-rock (which we were). This band ended up writing a ton, but we just couldn't wait for that first gig. We did a 4-song set using time donated by our friends' band. We played decently, but what a shitty way to jones onto a show! Not a shining moment for that band, and not something I'd try again.

4) Pop Band #2
(1996)

This one was easy. They already had a set, all I did was step in on guitar. I knew every song from listening to their demo tape a lot. Pretty seamless, but those were ideal conditions for me. You don't often get that.

5) Surf Band
(1996)

A familiar story: short on material, short on patience. At the time, we felt there was an intrinsic connection between instrumental surf-rock and punk. So, naturally, we got ourselves booked with punk bands. This didn't work out so well. The audience didn't like our twangy guitars or our ironic "undercover spy" image. They kept yelling stuff like "play some Misfits". I can't even remember if we played well. It was like Fear on that late-night comedy show, but without the warm reception. Nobody ever got into SB. I think we may have been the most hated band in the city at the time. It felt that way.

6) Pop Band #3
(1997)

I guess we did alright, I don't remember any huge disasters. I remember that band's songs pretty well, but not the shows. We were about equally tight/loose at every show, owning to I and K being veritable metronomes of punk rock.

7) Youth Crew Band
(summer 2000)

This was another situation where I stepped into a band with a pre-existing set. I have to admit, I joined the band because I was friends with the members, as opposed to really getting behind the music. I had recently moved back from out West and I really missed the social aspects of playing music. I recall being pretty sloppy the first time I played with them, but I was once told by the singer that playing well was less important than doing a lot of crazy jumping onstage. One torn ACL later...

8) GS
(Sept 2004)

We really raced to get a set together at first because we wanted to debut at the going-away party of a mutual friend. Getting banned from jamming at Ube's place took the wind out of our sails a little, so we did a pre-RF$ Monday night open mic instead. I recall the track with the bass synth/drum machine didn't work well. Also, it seems to me we sounded like a band that could barely play their instruments. We managed to do this without deliberately playing badly. So in a sense, this was exactly what I was hoping for out of that band at first: deliberate, yet earnest, shittiness. We ended up growing from that into something more serious, something I'm very proud of to this day.

9) BB
(May 2005)

This is the only band I've been in whose debut happened outside of H_x: it happened an hour up the 102, in lil' T.O., where BB's precursor band had achieved success (note the awesome comments on that clip, BTW). This band also took a while to get it going. I'd been jamming with Eb and WE since January of 2004. Tobe (re-)joined in November of that year for an improv jam on the radio, and we went from there. One thing I'll say about BB is that we never do anything fast (except perhaps, playing itself). The T.O. show went reasonably well, but we could not duplicate that success at our local debut, where we sort of stunk. I think it took a long time for that band to convince people that we had actual songs, and were not just blasting randomly onstage. In any case, a long wait before a first show builds a certain tension that can cause a band to make bad decisions.

10) No Need For A Fake Name Since We Have None Yet
(~Feb 2008)

We'll be rock solid by that time. We jam weekly; our songs are simple; our drummer is a machine (literally).

NOTHING CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG!!!!!!!!!

What self-indulgent crap this blog can be!!