Notes
Let me tell you about my high school rock band.
I just found a CD. It’s about an hour long, and it contains the only recorded evidence that I was in a band in high school.
The choice performance that I’ve chosen to share with you is a cover of blink-182’s “Dammit.” Please, don’t expect a good music-listening experience going into this.
From an engineering perspective, it’s bad — the single mic we had was misplaced in the room, so the drums are way loud and the vocals are barely audible. From a musical-proficiency perspective, it’s even worse — we sucked. Ignoring my friend’s one-beat-off fuck-up at about 1:10, I was into year two, maybe three, of playing drums. My musical influences ranged from older Lars Ulrich to Travis Barker to newer Lars Ulrich. My playing wasn’t exactly nuanced.
Still, I wanted to publish this, if only so that I could chronicle how great we weren’t. Were any high school bands great?
Some other smash hits from the CD:
- the first few minutes of Metallica’s “Seek & Destroy,” as well as the opening minute of “Enter Sandman”
- approximately three Ramones songs
- Green Day’s “Hitchin’ a Ride”
- the obligatory “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
- about twenty-five minutes of dicking around
I guess this is growing up.
