A Random Act Of Blandness

I remember the first show I ever played, I filled in on bass for my cousins school band, they played the most horrible music ever. It was a rock band with a female singer, I was only 14 at the time and having dial up Internet on a very limited plan and living in a red neck town with no one else around me for the same passion I was extremely sheltered from the world of music, I did however know what I liked. Anything fast and heavy, the faster and heavier the better. I would spend every single dollar I had, which in a poor family was not many, on cd's. I would go to the local music store and spend hours searching through the cd's to find what looked to be fast and loud. Punk Rock was my first love, bands like Black Flag, The Dead Kennedy's, Suicidal Tendencies, Bad Religion and The Exploited. So naturally when asked to join the band I was distressed about playing such weak music. Then I found out we got time out of class to play music, so I was in. We practised very often and got very tight, even though I loathed the music I found it comforting to hang around with other musicians. They were very good, for what they were playing. The guitarist was into old blues bands, so me and him got along because I found anything different then what was on the radio exciting. No one in the band seemed to thrilled about my style of music though. Being a punk when it come time to play the battle of the bands we were entered in at the local basketball arena to a pretty big crowd, I was decked out in boots and spiky hair. Even though I hated the music once on stage I had a blast, I got the band in trouble for inciting my friends to stage dive and for getting carried away and swearing into the microphone. Even though I hated the music I realised how much I loved being on stage, this was it I thought, this is what I need to do with my life. After the band broke up I sort out to start my own band, a punk band. After a few failed starts I finally found like minded guys a few years later. We started the worst band in the history of bands, we tried to pick the most offensive name we could without sounding like idiots. The band played a small handful of gigs and gained local infamy for getting banned from every venue in the town we lived in, and banned for life from attending all ages shows. Our singer was a mad man, he was a punk rock dream, he could not sing for shit but was the greatest front man known to man. The first show we played he crowd surfed, made fun of other bands and went psycho on stage. The crowd ate it up. We came last in the battle of bands on the judges score cards. They more or less told us to give up playing music, however, we won a free recording due to being voted crowd favourite. We went into the studio, the engineer looked at us like we were homeless in our ripped clothes, shabby mohawks and boots. They put away the good equipment as soon as we got their and were extremely rude to us. We may have been snot nosed punks but we were also extremely polite and well mannered, we didn't really think you had to be a jerk to be a punk. We got our shitty cd and went home, so excited because it was the first cd we had ever recorded. Me and the singer went straight to a party and marched up to the cd player and put it on. Then we both took a hit of acid each. After playing the cd until everyone asked us to turn it off, and then a little bit more, we decided that this party was no longer fun. We made our way to another party, once again hijacking the cd player and out wearing our welcome. We then moved on to the singers girlfriend house, were we layed there tripping listening to the horrible music we had created that day. We knew how bad it was, but we didn't care. The worse the better we thought, it was fast and angry, and that is all that mattered to us. After that we got another AA show, due to us all being under age at the time. It was a punk VS emo show at a big hall out at a school, we took it very personally that we were flying the banner for the punks against these emo scene kids, who we thought didn't even deserve to be on the same bill as us due to there weakness. With hair done up and guitars tuned we made our way on stage, after slaying the first 2 songs and the singer demanding people bleed in the pit, to which the kids were quite happy to oblige too the singer produced a bottle of yellow liquid. He drank a bit and then threw it all over the crowd, informing them after we stopped that it was his urine. Then we asked everyone who was friends with a good friend of ours who had recently killed herself to get up on stage as we did a rendition of her favourite song, Blitzgreig Bop. I knew for a fact 90% of the people who got up had no idea who she was, but none the less a barrage of people flooded the stage. Security's head nearly exploded. They turned all the lights off on us and cut the power. After I worked some magic on the gig organizer we quickly convinced them to turn the power back on for one more song, they agreed although I am still not sure why. The singer decided this was the perfect moment, I quickly noticed all the lights cut out and wondering what had happened I turned to him to see if he had noticed. There he was, in all his glory, completely nude. After we finished playing the singers girlfriend beat up the poor girl who had organized the show. We made our escape in our older friends cars and were never allowed back (Although a few years later we convinced them to let us in to a show, that ended up in us getting arrested but that's another story) We had already built up a reputation for being an amazing live show, so people were keen to get to see us again, the only problem was we had nowhere to play. Enter the pub scene. We got our first gig with a fellow punk band, they were far better then us, been around for a lot longer and were very serious about there music. We knew we could not out do them with our songs, but we could out do them on stage. At this time in the band we had recruited another singer, he was almost as crazy as the first one and could sing much better, so we knew he was perfect. We decided that singer A would get a bottle smashed over his head by singer B as the finale to the show. The small crowd went ballistic, we knew we were onto something. Our poor friends band had to follow us, the crowd found them boring and ended up sitting down for their entire set. We got asked to play a promo for a local magazine, we got a full 2 page write up in the magazine and had songs printed on a compilation for the night. We were still so horrible at playing music that we were surprised how late they had put us on. The bands we were playing with were professional bands who we had to sneak in too see many times before, we were very nervous and felt a little silly. By the time we were ready to go on stage we had cured the nerves the only way you can, by drinking, and drinking heavily. Just before we went on stage the singers were fiddling around in a nap sack, I wondered what they had in there but was occupied tuning my guitar, because I was so drunk I could not see the tuner lights properly, I just hoped for the best. We opened the set with our fastest song, I turned to singer A and noticed he had a cheese grater in his hand. "What the hell is that for?" I wondered to myself. Then he started rubbing against his head, sending grated flesh everywhere and bleeding. Some people in the audience ran out of the room, others screamed, others cheered and others just looked in amazement. He then started smashing it into his face in time with the music, splitting his head open. The crowd was evil, everyone turned into an animal, people were bleeding in the pit, smashing there glasses on stage and head banging. Singer B produced a fork, and started ramming it into his forehead. The people who were bewildered were now either gone or cheering like a money who had just discovered his penis. Pots were smashed and blood was everywhere, by the time we got off stage the crowd were coming up to us and congratulating us. "fuckin brutal boys!" "you cunts are insane!" "what the fuck is wrong with you guys" We were extremely proud we not only held our own with the other bands, we completely blew them off stage. After that we got banned from the venue, we found it hard to book gigs, people wanted us to play but no one was willing to have it at there house or venue. The drummer was not very into it from the start, he liked scene music and was unhappy playing our brand of childish hyper punk. He decided it would be best if he left and we found a new drummer, the only problem was we didn't know any other drummers. We decided to disbanded the band after that. I still am best friends with all the guys in the band and talk to them very often. I still play in a band with singer A. I am still proud of what we did, even though it wasn't much. People still talk about the band in our town, we will never play again however.