mtpolitics.net

Live Music

January 2nd, 2004 | by mtpolitics |

So, what’s better: Live music, or a disc jockey?

I am of the same mind as the proprietor of the Rest Stop by the Parkway. Live music is, hands down, the best entertainment there is, music-wise.

<rambling reminiscence mode: on>

Back in the day, (Tuesday, to be exact), I used to be an ax-wielder of some local repute. Which isn’t saying a heck of a lot, given where I grew up.

I think every teenage boy has pipe dreams of being a rock-n-roll hero, and I was no different. So, in the summer of ‘85, I took the plunge and bought my first electric guitar – a Stratocaster knockoff – and a cheap amp, and went to town.

I can only imagine the torture inflicted on my parents’ ears as I doggedly taught myself, beginning with open chords, and moving on to the barre chords. There were hours and hours of inadvertently muted strings, as my fingers gained the strength needed to make a good barre. Finally, the day came when I could switch from an E barre, to an A barre – major and minor.

Having mastered that, I was on my way.

All I needed now was a subscription to Guitar: For the Practicing Musician and I would be unstoppable.

So, for the next few months, instead of hearing tortured barre chords, my family got to listen to tortured pentatonic scales, bends that just couldn’t reach pitch, and plenty of gratuitous tremolo bar usage.

But as time and practice allowed, I began to be able to actually play the thing. After learning a few songs with the aid of tablature, I began to be able to learn songs by ear. The jangling sound of an open G was as distinct as a spoken word.

Now, all I needed was a band.

My first opportunity to play in front of an audience came rather unexpectedly. It was New Year’s Eve, and I was hanging out at a friend’s house, watching movies. The phone rang, and it was someone from one of the watering holes in town looking for me. They had a band lined up, but a snowstorm had stranded the guitar player in Whitehall. Could I fill in?

Could I?! Would I?!? I’m on my way! Ummm, I’m only 16, is that OK?

Sure, just don’t drink.

So, with guitar and amp in hand, I showed up at the bar, only to find two guys that knew two kinds of music: Country and Western. This was a genre I hadn’t studied, but I figured knowing most open chords would get me by.

Oh how wrong I was. By the end of the evening, the only thing we’d managed to accomplish was to piece together a halfway decent version of “Amarillo by Morning.” For most of the night, I just stared at the bass player trying to anticipate chord changes.

They offered to give me my cut at the end of the night, but I couldn’t take their money. All in all, I figured I’d probably done more harm than good!

Having a taste of it though, I knew I needed to get in a band.

A cousin of mine had taken up the guitar at roughly the same time, and we had progressed at a more or less equal pace. My brother also had a guitar, but being the youngest of all of us, he was relegated to playing bass.

The three of us would get together and practice every chance we got. We’d practice in one of two barns, at my grandparents’ place, or at my cousin’s ranch. In the middle of winter, we stayed in the barns, with a little wood stove that was able to radiate heat for up to 3 feet. (It was the only place we were allowed to practice!)

About 2 years into this ordeal, our parents got my brother and me a little electronic drum machine. That way we could sort of have a real band, but with a fake drummer. It did little more than keep the beat, and reinforce the fact that a band just wasn’t a band without a drummer.

We knew kids who played the drums, but none of them had their own drum kit. We had the ear of a sympathetic music teacher who would, at times, let us sneak the drum kit out of school and have an actual rehearsal with one drummer or another.

We got to the point where we thought we had one or two songs we could play in public, so we got permission to play at a school pep rally.

We stunk on ice.

We couldn’t sing in tune, our drummer got nervous and rushed through the whole thing, and the acoustics in a gymnasium are horrible at best. We became something of a school joke.

But, being either dense or committed, we were undeterred. After all, we could only get better.

The following spring, I heard of a guy who knew this kid that had a friend who was a drummer. More importantly, he had his own kit, and a place to practice. He lived in a couple towns over, and we eventually got together at a track meet. We hit it off and decided that some “jamming” was in order.

By this time, my cousin had gone off to college, so it was just my brother and me and our drummer.

We worked and worked and worked and worked, and got together a little bit of a set list. Our drummer knew one of the higher-ups at the Fair Board, and got us our first paying gig. He also knew a young lady who would like to sing for us. She had a marvelous voice, and we worked in some numbers tailored just for her. We would be paid $75 whole dollars for playing for an hour. We were so jazzed. We had to come up with a band name. It had to be cool, yet hip, yet not corporate.

I can’t remember what we came up with, and in the end, it didn’t matter. In the fair program were the words: “Live Music: 1:00-2:00.”

Live Music, indeed.

So, as we scrambled to make the gig come together, it turned out that our drummer knew a guy in Butte who did sound, so he contacted him, and the guy agreed to come down and run our sound for us.

For $100.

That didn’t bother us. If it costs us $25, so what? There’s no such thing as bad publicity, and it’s a chance to finally play our music in front of an appreciative audience.

We tried to tailor our set to appeal to a wide range of folks, but it was geared toward the younger crowd. We started off with “Wipe Out,” a great tune and an easy warm-up.

So, to set the scene for you: It’s the middle of August, and we’re wearing the garish Hawaiian-type clothes that were all the rage in the mid 80’s. Our stage consists of spare pallets, and the drum riser is a trailer. The crowd has gathered around, curious as to what is going on.

So, we started into the first few bars of “Wipe Out.” It’s going well. We’re on time, together, not rushing. We’ve got a groove going, and then…

…ploink…

no sound is coming out of anywhere.

Mystified, we looked at each other, then behind us. The fair manager found our power cord, and unplugged us.

“Turn it down!” we were ordered.

So we did. But, we couldn’t get the mix right at that volume, and the vocals didn’t sound good in the lower mix, and the whole gig was an unmitigated disaster.

Did we quit?

Of course not. Did we learn anything?

Well, for one, we learned that Madison County was not ready for Kiss, Cinderella and Judas Priest.

We also learned that we still needed some practice before we hit the big time.

(cont…)