Week 2 - The Missing Stair
Back when I was in college, I played bass for a couple years in a band called Girlilla. Yes, that was our real name.
Girlilla was just a fun thing for me and my two good friends Hailey and Kat. Hailey was the most serious of the three of us. She wrote our songs, played guitar and sang. Kat had an older brother who had taught her to play drums a little when she was younger, and also loaned her whatever drum equipment she needed to play on, so she was the drummer by default.
As for me, I only started learning to play bass when Hailey decided we should start a band. The whole time Girlilla was together, I never even owned my own bass. I just borrowed one from one of my other friends. I don't know why he even had a bass, he didn't actually play it and didn't seem to need it back any time soon.
Hailey knew enough people at the local cool-kid indyrock club to get us a show there every once in a while. Playing the "Dirty Bird" (no, that's not its real name) seemed like a big deal for us. When we played, we were always the very first band on a quiet weeknight, and we'd be lucky if we had fifteen people in the audience.
It was still a lot of fun, even thouhg I was always nervous when we played. It was so loud when we played up there, with all of the Dirty Bird's sound equipment and Kat on her brother's big, loud real drums that we could never have set up for our rehearsals in the dorm. It all made you feel like you were a real rock band. \m/
The club really was a dirty, run-down dive, though, which is why am I calling it the Dirty Bird. The band stage was on the second floor, and to get your equipment up there, you had to bring it up these steep, treacherous, half broken metal steps out in the beer garden. The third time we played the Dirty Bird, Kat tripped and fell halfway down the scary stairs while we were taking our stuff back out to the car. The fall looked HORRIBLE. Somehow, though, she brushed herself off and was perfectly OK after that.
If we weren't scared enough of the Bird's stairs in the first place, this incident didn't help. But the Dirty Birds stairs weren't through with Girlilla just yet, oh no. And actually, those stairs were what sort of broke up the band!
We had a show at the Bird one January, right after the start of classes AND a nasty winter storm. The club hadn't done much to clear the snow and ice, so the steep steps were SUPER-slick. I didn't want to go up and down those awful stairs any more than I had to. So when we had to bring up our equipment, I decided I'd save a trip and carry my bass - ok, my friend's bass slung over my shoulder while I was helping Hailey get her big guitar amp up there. Big mistake.
Hailey and I had made it almost all the way up to the back stage catwalk. Then Hailey's foot slipped. This dominoed through the big amp we were both carrying so I started slipping too. I grabbed the railing, heard a BANG, and realized I'd hit the bass against the railing. And now the strap holding it to my shoulder had detached from the impact. So the bass had begun to fall backwards down the steps! I tried everything to grab the bass without sacrificing myself, but physics won out quick. The bass was permanently broken in two by the time it reached the ground.
We got through the show by borrowing one of the other band's bass. They weren't happy about it. I wasn't happy either, because the bass they loaned us was huge and really heavy and played a lot harder than the bass I was used to. A couple times I had to take a break mid-song because my cramping hands just kinda quit on me. Between this weird evil bass that was more like an instrument of torture than a musical instrument, and obsessing over how I was going to break it to my friend who owned the bass I'd just smashed to pieces, it was all I could do to make it through our set without breaking down and crying.
My friend who'd owned the bass was really upset. It had been a family heirloom for him, which I really wish he'd told me before. The guitar shop said it was unfixable for playing, but since it had sentimental value, they could put it back together for cosmetic / decorative purposes... kinda like preparing a body for an open-casket funeral. But even the funeral makeover was $350! And as a college student, I just couldn't afford to buy another bass for the band while working toward the $350 I now owed my friend.
So Girlilla had to stop rehearsing for a while. "A while" turned into "a long while," and then into "never again." Hailey got impatient and started playing coffeehouse gigs by herself. I can't blame her, and when we went to go see her perform, Kat and I both instantly realized she was better off without us.
All I can say is - if you're ever in a band, watch out for those icy Yoko-stairs!
Girlilla was just a fun thing for me and my two good friends Hailey and Kat. Hailey was the most serious of the three of us. She wrote our songs, played guitar and sang. Kat had an older brother who had taught her to play drums a little when she was younger, and also loaned her whatever drum equipment she needed to play on, so she was the drummer by default.
As for me, I only started learning to play bass when Hailey decided we should start a band. The whole time Girlilla was together, I never even owned my own bass. I just borrowed one from one of my other friends. I don't know why he even had a bass, he didn't actually play it and didn't seem to need it back any time soon.
Hailey knew enough people at the local cool-kid indyrock club to get us a show there every once in a while. Playing the "Dirty Bird" (no, that's not its real name) seemed like a big deal for us. When we played, we were always the very first band on a quiet weeknight, and we'd be lucky if we had fifteen people in the audience.
It was still a lot of fun, even thouhg I was always nervous when we played. It was so loud when we played up there, with all of the Dirty Bird's sound equipment and Kat on her brother's big, loud real drums that we could never have set up for our rehearsals in the dorm. It all made you feel like you were a real rock band. \m/
The club really was a dirty, run-down dive, though, which is why am I calling it the Dirty Bird. The band stage was on the second floor, and to get your equipment up there, you had to bring it up these steep, treacherous, half broken metal steps out in the beer garden. The third time we played the Dirty Bird, Kat tripped and fell halfway down the scary stairs while we were taking our stuff back out to the car. The fall looked HORRIBLE. Somehow, though, she brushed herself off and was perfectly OK after that.
If we weren't scared enough of the Bird's stairs in the first place, this incident didn't help. But the Dirty Birds stairs weren't through with Girlilla just yet, oh no. And actually, those stairs were what sort of broke up the band!
We had a show at the Bird one January, right after the start of classes AND a nasty winter storm. The club hadn't done much to clear the snow and ice, so the steep steps were SUPER-slick. I didn't want to go up and down those awful stairs any more than I had to. So when we had to bring up our equipment, I decided I'd save a trip and carry my bass - ok, my friend's bass slung over my shoulder while I was helping Hailey get her big guitar amp up there. Big mistake.
Hailey and I had made it almost all the way up to the back stage catwalk. Then Hailey's foot slipped. This dominoed through the big amp we were both carrying so I started slipping too. I grabbed the railing, heard a BANG, and realized I'd hit the bass against the railing. And now the strap holding it to my shoulder had detached from the impact. So the bass had begun to fall backwards down the steps! I tried everything to grab the bass without sacrificing myself, but physics won out quick. The bass was permanently broken in two by the time it reached the ground.
We got through the show by borrowing one of the other band's bass. They weren't happy about it. I wasn't happy either, because the bass they loaned us was huge and really heavy and played a lot harder than the bass I was used to. A couple times I had to take a break mid-song because my cramping hands just kinda quit on me. Between this weird evil bass that was more like an instrument of torture than a musical instrument, and obsessing over how I was going to break it to my friend who owned the bass I'd just smashed to pieces, it was all I could do to make it through our set without breaking down and crying.
My friend who'd owned the bass was really upset. It had been a family heirloom for him, which I really wish he'd told me before. The guitar shop said it was unfixable for playing, but since it had sentimental value, they could put it back together for cosmetic / decorative purposes... kinda like preparing a body for an open-casket funeral. But even the funeral makeover was $350! And as a college student, I just couldn't afford to buy another bass for the band while working toward the $350 I now owed my friend.
So Girlilla had to stop rehearsing for a while. "A while" turned into "a long while," and then into "never again." Hailey got impatient and started playing coffeehouse gigs by herself. I can't blame her, and when we went to go see her perform, Kat and I both instantly realized she was better off without us.
All I can say is - if you're ever in a band, watch out for those icy Yoko-stairs!