Pointless College Stories Week 2, Episode 1: Opening Act
It's been a year, and it's time for Pointless College Stories week again. If you've forgotten, you can find my contribution to last year's event starting here, and if you want to find laddical's post where the idea was dreamed up (in the comments), that's here. For this year's initial story, I'm going to cheat and relate an event that actually happened shortly after I graduated, but takes place in my college apartment, featuring characters from PSU, so I think that's certainly good enough.
For this story, you need to understand that for all of my college career, captain_squid and elwood11a were the headline performers, musically. They both played guitar and sang, often in public places, to the delight of hundreds, perhaps more, over the course of four years. I was usually there too, but since I didn’t play, I was pretty much a glorified groupie. I like to think I have a pleasant voice, but I’ve never been trained, so I was at best an unnecessary backing vocalist. Except for once.
In the summer of 1994, Elwood and I had actually already graduated, but the lease on the apartment we shared with Squid didn’t run out until August, so we hadn’t removed our furniture yet. Although I was working back home in Philly, I came up to campus in July for Arts Fest, at which I met piratelemur for the first time, heard Trout Fishing in America for the first time, and lots of other fun things that feel best when you’re still college age, in your college town, without any of college’s actual responsibilities.
One evening during the Fest, Elwood and I were alone in the apartment after dinner. He took his guitar out on the balcony and started noodling with something. I went out too, and after listening for a bit, asked him if he was practicing “Mr. Jones,” by Counting Crows. I’d been listening to August and Everything After pretty much non-stop that summer, so I recognized it easily. Elwood said he had the chords pretty well down, but he hadn’t learned the words yet. I told him I could handle that part, if he wanted. He invited me to give it a shot.
I should mention that our apartment was on the sixth floor of a rather large complex, and our balcony overlooked the parking lot, so when the guys played out there, they were clearly audible to anyone who happened to be in lot, and anybody in the complex who happened to have their windows open (and it was a fine night in July). However, I have no shame, and it was the first time in four years that Elwood had invited me to sing lead, so I did. I can’t claim the performance was actually good, since Elwood had the chords “pretty well” down, and as for me, well, Adam Duritz isn’t very melodic, so even if I’d done it perfectly right, it might have sounded lousy.
We stumbled through the end of the song, and gave each other thumbs up on a nice rehearsal...and then we heard the applause. After staring around wildly for a bit, we realized that our fans were on the balcony immediately below us. We stuck our heads over, saw a couple of girls; they said we sounded awesome, and did we want to come downstairs? A couple of girls said they liked my singing? Of course we’ll come downstairs! Didn’t matter that we had no idea who they were; I ended up in strangers’ apartments more times than I’d care to admit, in college.
We went down there, they welcomed us inside, and immediately offered us beers. I declined, as usual. Well, how about a joint, then? Er...no thanks, I’m trying to cut back. They’d been out on the balcony, so I couldn’t say for sure, but I guessed they’d been smoking for some time. My admiration of their taste in music took an abrupt dip. I imagine we tried to converse politely, but it’s not easy when you’re sober, trying to exchange witty remarks with someone who’s stoned. After a few minutes of this, a guy burst in with a small bottle of...something...that he told the girls they just had to try, and held it out for them to sniff. They took a few tentative whiffs, and the guy said, “No, not like that! You have to really snort it, like you do with coke, you know.” Yeah. I suddenly turned and asked Elwood -- I swear this is exactly what I said -- if we’d forgotten to feed the cat. He faked astonishment quite well, agreed that we hadn’t fed the cat, that we should certainly do so right away, and that it would take two of us to accomplish that task (perhaps it was a very large illusory cat). I honestly don’t think they noticed when we left.
So that was my big public singing premiere. I still maintain that I’m perfectly happy to sing in public, so long as the audience is stoned out of their minds.
For this story, you need to understand that for all of my college career, captain_squid and elwood11a were the headline performers, musically. They both played guitar and sang, often in public places, to the delight of hundreds, perhaps more, over the course of four years. I was usually there too, but since I didn’t play, I was pretty much a glorified groupie. I like to think I have a pleasant voice, but I’ve never been trained, so I was at best an unnecessary backing vocalist. Except for once.
In the summer of 1994, Elwood and I had actually already graduated, but the lease on the apartment we shared with Squid didn’t run out until August, so we hadn’t removed our furniture yet. Although I was working back home in Philly, I came up to campus in July for Arts Fest, at which I met piratelemur for the first time, heard Trout Fishing in America for the first time, and lots of other fun things that feel best when you’re still college age, in your college town, without any of college’s actual responsibilities.
One evening during the Fest, Elwood and I were alone in the apartment after dinner. He took his guitar out on the balcony and started noodling with something. I went out too, and after listening for a bit, asked him if he was practicing “Mr. Jones,” by Counting Crows. I’d been listening to August and Everything After pretty much non-stop that summer, so I recognized it easily. Elwood said he had the chords pretty well down, but he hadn’t learned the words yet. I told him I could handle that part, if he wanted. He invited me to give it a shot.
I should mention that our apartment was on the sixth floor of a rather large complex, and our balcony overlooked the parking lot, so when the guys played out there, they were clearly audible to anyone who happened to be in lot, and anybody in the complex who happened to have their windows open (and it was a fine night in July). However, I have no shame, and it was the first time in four years that Elwood had invited me to sing lead, so I did. I can’t claim the performance was actually good, since Elwood had the chords “pretty well” down, and as for me, well, Adam Duritz isn’t very melodic, so even if I’d done it perfectly right, it might have sounded lousy.
We stumbled through the end of the song, and gave each other thumbs up on a nice rehearsal...and then we heard the applause. After staring around wildly for a bit, we realized that our fans were on the balcony immediately below us. We stuck our heads over, saw a couple of girls; they said we sounded awesome, and did we want to come downstairs? A couple of girls said they liked my singing? Of course we’ll come downstairs! Didn’t matter that we had no idea who they were; I ended up in strangers’ apartments more times than I’d care to admit, in college.
We went down there, they welcomed us inside, and immediately offered us beers. I declined, as usual. Well, how about a joint, then? Er...no thanks, I’m trying to cut back. They’d been out on the balcony, so I couldn’t say for sure, but I guessed they’d been smoking for some time. My admiration of their taste in music took an abrupt dip. I imagine we tried to converse politely, but it’s not easy when you’re sober, trying to exchange witty remarks with someone who’s stoned. After a few minutes of this, a guy burst in with a small bottle of...something...that he told the girls they just had to try, and held it out for them to sniff. They took a few tentative whiffs, and the guy said, “No, not like that! You have to really snort it, like you do with coke, you know.” Yeah. I suddenly turned and asked Elwood -- I swear this is exactly what I said -- if we’d forgotten to feed the cat. He faked astonishment quite well, agreed that we hadn’t fed the cat, that we should certainly do so right away, and that it would take two of us to accomplish that task (perhaps it was a very large illusory cat). I honestly don’t think they noticed when we left.
So that was my big public singing premiere. I still maintain that I’m perfectly happy to sing in public, so long as the audience is stoned out of their minds.