We'll start this where I came in. Crofton, Maryland. A suburb of
Annapolis. The autumn of 1992. I was a recent freshman in Arundel
High School, sporting long hair (which since has thinned considerably,
sniff sniff) and a voracious appetite for the world. A buddy of
mine (Ben) had a brother, well, he still has the same brother. Duncan
was this brother, and he and I dug the same sort of off-the-beaten-track
music, and he saw my prodigious yet awful guitar playing a decided
to let me in the band he was in at the time.
The band, consisting of Dave on guitar and Justin on drums as well
as Duncan on the mike, had yet to be christened The Loafers but
was shortly to become just that. A little bird had told one of us
a completely laughable rumor that after the consumption of ten pieces
of wheat bread, the onset of a hallucinogenic experience would occur.
Ridiculous, right? Well I can tell you now, without shame, nothing
happened. We just got very very full, and that in itself was disorienting.
The Loafers were born.
I was siked, being in a band with all juniors and I was just a
freshman. What a status symbol! I had truly arrived. The music was
sort of jazzy and poppy with an obvious hint of mediocrity and inexperience.
I think at our first practice we tried to cover "Porch"
by Pearl Jam, off their first record, aided by Duncan looking and
sounding like Eddie Vedder. He did not appreciate the comparison.
Over the next month or so, we decided on bringing in a bassist,
Aric, who had been trained strictly in reading staff music, which
made for an interesting blend in sound as well as an involved band
practice. He could play cello too, which was so totally geeky and
square that we insisted he play cello in our rock band.
We made it a routine to try and get a recorded version of each
of our songs. We would take a cheapo cheapo tape recorder and do
sound checks around the room to get the best mixed sound possible
(pre-honing our recording skills). I was told clips of those session
recordings were played on the University of Maryland College Park
radio station. To our dismay, they were not received with thunderous
applause. Even though we recorded like crazy, I think very few of
these tapes still exist. We listened to one of these lost tapes
recently, however, and we decided that at least that particular
tape would remain lost, if you know what I mean...
We had all of our practices in Justin's house, upstairs in this
kind of loft thing. A truly great space to make music, very private
and comfortable. We would slip out on the roof and I would watch
them be rebellious and smoke cigarettes, not really looking cool
or anything because no girls were around. We've never recorded for
real at Justin's, though I'm not sure why. I'm confident that the
Great Blue Owl album has its roots in that loft. Oh well…
I think we finished only about three songs total. We had like five
or so others, but they just had an intro, verse, body, and chorus
thing, but as far as ending, well, they sort of fell off into nothingness.
That really bothered me. I was never really much into that whole
just-jam-out-until-you-just-don't-got-it-anymore-dude thing. I prefer
clear structure and direction, still do. I guess I was never really
that good at it, and even the guitar solos I did were planned out
and were played the same every time.
Fast forward to me leaving the band. I got really sick of starting
the writing of a song with these guys only to have it turn into
nothing. Besides, I was involved in really sewing my grunge oats
with another band, and I don't really know if The Loafers ever knew
about that, my musical infidelity. I really had it in me to play
loud and fast music, I was fourteen years old for crying out loud!
Off I went, to play that youthful distorted music in Broken Garden
(that's the name of the band if you can believe that) with folks
from the other side of the tracks. To our credit we did perform
live (using The Loafers' PA system) and put on a hell of a show.
Actually, some of that music didn't really suck that bad. To this
day, Duncan insists we ripped the case of his precious precious
speaker at that show. To that I say to him…Rock and Roll hurts. |
