Did You Know...
...that I very nearly was in a band?
I guess if we're being completely honest I should mention that I was in a three-man outfit in high school named Ominivore (don't ask) with myself on guitar, Keith on drums and Anthony on... guitar. Except I turned the tone knob all the way down on my guitar so it came out very low-sounding and rumbly, so I was technically the "six-string bassist." Once again, don't ask. What? Oh, fine; Anthony was a better guitar player than I was and we had no bassist. We played a Halloween party at Keith's, got horrifically drunk and the less said about the short and inglorious career of Omnivore, the better.
No, the one I'm talking about for the purposes of this entry was in Chico, during what would have been my third year of college. I was a very big fan of a local group called The Tuboriffic Space Pimps and after I had seen them a few times live, I knew this was my favorite group in town. Loud, aggressive riffing with maximum crunch on the guitar, slap-pop bass work that got your feet moving, funk-inspired thrash drumming and rapid-fire speed rapping vocals delivered by a guy wearing aviator goggles. They rocked. I made it a point to go to every show of theirs I could, and frequently put them over in the magazine I wrote for, which most likely amounted to little more than a very minor hill of beans, but good press is good press, right?
I heard through the grapevine that the band was in the process of auditioning new guitarists; I don't know what the story was with their old one, but I remember the split was a fairly amicable one. Most likely a graduation, and with one less pimp, the rest of the merry crew was determined to carry on. This was how the drummer and bass player ended up at my student apartment one night, sitting down across from me with some oh-very-serious expressions and saying, "Well, what do you got?"
"Original stuff?" I asked, hoping my voice wouldn't crack.
"Sure. Show us the kind of stuff you like to play."
As it so happened I did have a few original songs, a medley of riffs I hadn't put together into finished tunes yet and nothing even remotely resembling a guitar hero-type lead lick. A rhythm hog I was then, and I strongly suspect to a large extent I will always be. Turning the distortion on my Peavey Bandit 112 (a great amplifier) to maximum and grabbing my trusty Ibanez RG 550 (told you we've been through a lot together), I began sliding, power-chording and palm muting my way across the lower end of the guitar--
"Okay, I've heard enough," the drummer said, looking to his companion after about two minutes while, startled by the speed of the decision, I hit a bad chord and winced, morally sure I had given the pooch a screwing for the entire year. "What do you think?"
The bassist thought about this for all of two seconds. "Yeah. He's in."
"Definitely in," the drummer asserted.
"I'm in?" I asked, stunned.
My favorite local band wanted me? What, did all the other axe-slingers developed Lou Gherig's Disease or something? Sure, I was pretty decent in chords and riffs, but if you needed a guitar solo... yeah, don't even think about looking at me. As it turned out, the Tuboriffic Space Pimps didn't give two hoots in hell if I was Angus Young, Kirk Hammett or Yngwie J. Malmsteen in terms of lead guitar ability. They wanted somebody who was going to throw down snap-your-fingers, snap-your-neck type crunch on top of their psycho rhythm section. They wanted James Hetfield, not Stevie Ray Vaughn. My tritone-inspired doom riffing was exactly what they wanted.
Of course, then a problem reared its head. "I'm in," I said after they left, having left me with a tape containing about a dozen songs they wanted me to learn... or at least, approximate. In three weeks.
My problem was that we weren't using the rotation of Venus as our calendar to mark how many hours were in a day... a Venutian day being 243 of our own Earth days long, if you're interested. With only 24 hours in a day, my time was already spoken for by the following categories:
1) School
2) Work
3) Writing
4) Pathetic attempts at dating
Since I was at Chico to go to college, the idea of calling up my parents (m y primary source of financial assistance) and saying I was dropping out of school to join a funk-metal thrash band was the worst idea since Custer decided he didn't need any help running off those pesky Indians. At this point I still really liked working at the magazine I worked for (more on that death-spiral some other time) and the idea of giving up my weekly column and such made me fall back into a defensive crouch. Theoretically if I joined the band, my lame and self-destructive attempts with the opposite sex would suddenly be much improved (ha!) and I wouldn't need to devote any time to it at all, which was about what I was doing now.
That left writing. If I stopped working on stuff like Diablos, Suspiria and Violet World, I could make this happen. I'd still be in school, I'd be getting laid non-stop (ha, again!) and... and...
That pretty much sealed the deal. The Space Pimps, as they were subsequently renamed, took the news gracefully and got another guy to be their axe-slinger, who was much better than I was. Ironically, once we had hung out a few times and put down a jam or two, he really wanted me to be in a band with him. He would be Kirk Hammett to my James Hetfield, and all would be conquered in the metal world.
As John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans."
I guess if we're being completely honest I should mention that I was in a three-man outfit in high school named Ominivore (don't ask) with myself on guitar, Keith on drums and Anthony on... guitar. Except I turned the tone knob all the way down on my guitar so it came out very low-sounding and rumbly, so I was technically the "six-string bassist." Once again, don't ask. What? Oh, fine; Anthony was a better guitar player than I was and we had no bassist. We played a Halloween party at Keith's, got horrifically drunk and the less said about the short and inglorious career of Omnivore, the better.
No, the one I'm talking about for the purposes of this entry was in Chico, during what would have been my third year of college. I was a very big fan of a local group called The Tuboriffic Space Pimps and after I had seen them a few times live, I knew this was my favorite group in town. Loud, aggressive riffing with maximum crunch on the guitar, slap-pop bass work that got your feet moving, funk-inspired thrash drumming and rapid-fire speed rapping vocals delivered by a guy wearing aviator goggles. They rocked. I made it a point to go to every show of theirs I could, and frequently put them over in the magazine I wrote for, which most likely amounted to little more than a very minor hill of beans, but good press is good press, right?
I heard through the grapevine that the band was in the process of auditioning new guitarists; I don't know what the story was with their old one, but I remember the split was a fairly amicable one. Most likely a graduation, and with one less pimp, the rest of the merry crew was determined to carry on. This was how the drummer and bass player ended up at my student apartment one night, sitting down across from me with some oh-very-serious expressions and saying, "Well, what do you got?"
"Original stuff?" I asked, hoping my voice wouldn't crack.
"Sure. Show us the kind of stuff you like to play."
As it so happened I did have a few original songs, a medley of riffs I hadn't put together into finished tunes yet and nothing even remotely resembling a guitar hero-type lead lick. A rhythm hog I was then, and I strongly suspect to a large extent I will always be. Turning the distortion on my Peavey Bandit 112 (a great amplifier) to maximum and grabbing my trusty Ibanez RG 550 (told you we've been through a lot together), I began sliding, power-chording and palm muting my way across the lower end of the guitar--
"Okay, I've heard enough," the drummer said, looking to his companion after about two minutes while, startled by the speed of the decision, I hit a bad chord and winced, morally sure I had given the pooch a screwing for the entire year. "What do you think?"
The bassist thought about this for all of two seconds. "Yeah. He's in."
"Definitely in," the drummer asserted.
"I'm in?" I asked, stunned.
My favorite local band wanted me? What, did all the other axe-slingers developed Lou Gherig's Disease or something? Sure, I was pretty decent in chords and riffs, but if you needed a guitar solo... yeah, don't even think about looking at me. As it turned out, the Tuboriffic Space Pimps didn't give two hoots in hell if I was Angus Young, Kirk Hammett or Yngwie J. Malmsteen in terms of lead guitar ability. They wanted somebody who was going to throw down snap-your-fingers, snap-your-neck type crunch on top of their psycho rhythm section. They wanted James Hetfield, not Stevie Ray Vaughn. My tritone-inspired doom riffing was exactly what they wanted.
Of course, then a problem reared its head. "I'm in," I said after they left, having left me with a tape containing about a dozen songs they wanted me to learn... or at least, approximate. In three weeks.
My problem was that we weren't using the rotation of Venus as our calendar to mark how many hours were in a day... a Venutian day being 243 of our own Earth days long, if you're interested. With only 24 hours in a day, my time was already spoken for by the following categories:
1) School
2) Work
3) Writing
4) Pathetic attempts at dating
Since I was at Chico to go to college, the idea of calling up my parents (m y primary source of financial assistance) and saying I was dropping out of school to join a funk-metal thrash band was the worst idea since Custer decided he didn't need any help running off those pesky Indians. At this point I still really liked working at the magazine I worked for (more on that death-spiral some other time) and the idea of giving up my weekly column and such made me fall back into a defensive crouch. Theoretically if I joined the band, my lame and self-destructive attempts with the opposite sex would suddenly be much improved (ha!) and I wouldn't need to devote any time to it at all, which was about what I was doing now.
That left writing. If I stopped working on stuff like Diablos, Suspiria and Violet World, I could make this happen. I'd still be in school, I'd be getting laid non-stop (ha, again!) and... and...
That pretty much sealed the deal. The Space Pimps, as they were subsequently renamed, took the news gracefully and got another guy to be their axe-slinger, who was much better than I was. Ironically, once we had hung out a few times and put down a jam or two, he really wanted me to be in a band with him. He would be Kirk Hammett to my James Hetfield, and all would be conquered in the metal world.
As John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans."