The Band

When I was in high school, my friend Story and I decided to start a band.  She knew one Nirvana song on the guitar and at least three songs on the keyboard.  Most importantly, she could read music.  I could clap, play kazoo, and would sing and write music.  I suppose Story’s ability to read music would have come in more handy had I known how to write music.  Since we’re optimists, though, we never let minor setbacks like this bring us down.  And besides, we had more pressing things on the agenda, like finding a drummer.  We held tryouts and by “tryouts” I mean that on one of the sleepovers at my house, our other best friend Breath and my 11-year old sister threw caution to the wind and played their hearts out on an overturned laundry hamper using two pencils for drumsticks.  After a few moments deliberation, Story and I agreed that Breath had no rhythm and furthermore wasn’t giving the tryouts the seriousness that it deserved.  So Breath was out, and Mini-Bottom was in.  Breath responded in typical 16-year old girl fashion by calling us names, throwing the “drumsticks” at us, and sulking while we congratulated my sister and welcomed her to the band.  I think we may have offered to let Breath manage us, but I don’t recall what, if any, her response was.  I’m guessing she was probably less than thrilled, though, based on the aforementioned drumstick throwing.  In any case, we had our band.  We didn’t have many instruments or any musical talent, but we had a lot of heart.  I went on to write a few songs (lyrics only but for the “ba da da a da dum”s and “ohhhh oh ohhhh”s and a lot of arrows indicating how it was to be played and sung).  We talked about practicing; we tossed around ideas.  We talked about “the Band” quite a bit, for a while.  And we never actually did or played anything, as it turns out, which is probably a good thing, because I can’t see anything groundbreaking coming out of the keyboard/kazoo/hamper combination. 

I'm still proud of all of it, though.  I mean, how many of you were ever in a band?  At least now I can have “We’re thinking about getting the band back together” conversations, and it means something.  And Story has kids these days, so it says to me we’ve got ourselves a maraca player and some backup vocals for the "One Night Only" Reunion tour.  That is, if Breath ever takes her managerial duties with more than a modicum of seriousness and actually books some gigs. 

Moral of the story: Breath does not react well when she does not get her way, and as such, Breath should never be told bad news while holding projectiles.  I'll keep this in mind when I tell her we're reducing her manager cut from 15 to 10%.