I’ve played in bands since I was 14 or 15 and I don’t think
any of us had any delusions of grander in the sense that we really believed
that we’d be huge rock stars. That being
said, I was definitely of the mindset of what I’d imagine a baseball prospect
goes through. There are steps you have
to take to advance to the next stage or level.
On labor day of 1995, we had recorded a demo tape in a
professional studio, (remember tapes?) of something like 7 songs in 8 hours and
excited played it for all of our friends and family. For some sense of perspective, in punk rock a
session of 7 songs should take somewhere between three and four times as
long. Figure a few hours to get sounds,
about 8 hours to get basic tracks done, a few hours for overdubbing mistakes
and extra guitars, between 4 and 8 hours for vocals, a few more hours for
axillary percussion and keyboards and about an hour and a half to mix each
song. Now that’s a middle of the road estimate. Obviously 7 songs can be done in 8 hours and
7 songs can take an entire month if you have the time and money. The point being here is that doing 7 songs in
8 hours when you are 15 and have been a band for about a year or so means the
recording is going to straight up suck.
My test for how good a recording is how long does it take to notice
things that bother you about it. A few
months is a sign of a pretty good recording.
A month isn’t bad. In the case of
these songs it was the drive home.
There was a bbq brewing when I got home and I immediately
popped the tape in for everyone to hear.
One of my uncle’s friends who was there, unbeknownst to me had just
started a music management company with a partner and she told me that we have
potential and that she’d manage us.
Looking back it’s all pretty ridiculous but at the time when most of our
ideas about how the music industry works came from tv and movies, it seemed par
for the course. Obviously after you
record for the first time you get a management deal. We knew we weren’t great but being insulated
from other bands and having incredibly supportive friends, we thought we were
pretty good.
After a couple of meetings with our new managers and some
orders of diner French Fries, they were eager to book us at some places outside
of Queens. The first and come to think
of it, only show they got us was at a pretty divey bar in the Lower East Side
called the Pyramid. The beauty of
booking us at the Pyramid was that it was 18+ for entry and it was a weeknight
so none of our “fans” (read friends) could come. The highlight at the time for us, and the
impetus for me writing this, was that we weren’t opening the show. We were playing second out of four or five bands. Now this might seem like a small or
insignificant event but in entertainment there’s a hierarchy. The later you are on, the bigger you
are. Playing second was yet another step
towards our goal of getting bigger and more popular as a band. I love looking back on it and seeing how
skewed the little things in our lives are when you are removed from them on a
day-to-day basis. The band that opened
for us, Bottom, was a group of thirty something year old guys who were
legitimately good. They could play circles around us and seemed like they just
enjoyed playing music. I think back to
what those guys thought of us while they stood there with some of our parents,
our manager and the sound guy watching us play what my cloudy memory says was a
good set. Were they thinking, what is
this shit and why did we open for these teenagers? Or were they thinking, good for these kids
getting into music and feeling elated for playing in Manhattan and not opening?
I got more involved in music and went to more and more shows
but I never saw Bottom’s name again.
Similarly after months of phone calls and messages, we got back in touch
with our manager who famously said, “Oh, we don’t do those things anymore.”
