As a kid, rock & roll was my safe place.
The minute I got home from school, I would disappear into a glamorous world inside my album jackets. To my young mind, the only thing more fun to do than listen to music was to read about music while listening to music.
If only I could have channeled that interest into reading my school books.
Instead, Rolling Stone, Creem, and Trouser Press magazine became my school and writers like Bill Holdship, Lester Bangs, and Ira Robbins (no relation) were the professors tasked with the responsibility of making sure I knew as much about Patti Smith, the Stooges, and Paul Westerberg as possible.
Needless to say, with that sort of education, about the only thing you're cut out to do is sweep floors or start your own band. I chose the latter.
Making this way more difficult than it had to be, my parents first made sure to stick me in the fucking middle of nowhere, hoping I'd grow up to be a dirt farmer or something. Instead, I found the two other guys in town who played instruments I did not already play (drums) and whose musical taste was not a deal breaker.
We started out playing restaurants. Busy waitresses would tell us to set up next to the coffee pot and then we'd watch as the place mutated from a homey family restaurant into an after-hours beer hall with a band that is more than happy to freshen up your coffee for you.
Then we invaded as many Top 40 clubs as would give us a shot, hit them with as many originals as we could squeeze in between the Bryan Adams and Romantics covers, and kept our fingers crossed that we'd get invited back.
After that, we made the local paper after qualifying for a regional battle of the bands.
Of all the bands that performed that day, we were the only one whose set was marred by P.A. troubles. At one point, I was forced to tell my favorite Pee Wee Herman joke (punch line: "he's a dead ringer for the last guy") while the sound crew tried to solder the remains of a gigantic Peavey speaker back together.
Needless to say, we did not win the battle of the bands, but we filed the experience away for future reference: "Do not rely on anyone else for your band's sound if at all possible."
When I wasn't pulling straight C's at college, I was firing off demo tapes to any record label, management company, or concert promoter with a street address. The amount of cash spent on blank tapes, glossy 8" x 10"'s, padded envelopes, and postage would have financially crippled a lesser band, but I knew no other way.
Months later, my phone rang.
In the middle of an otherwise uneventful evening, a local promoter I had been pestering for months to give us one shot, any shot, called out of the blue to ask if my band could get our asses to the Morris Civic Auditorium to open for Stevie Ray Vaughan because the scheduled opening act's van had broken down en route to the show.
This was the make or break moment we'd been waiting for and now all I had to do was call the rest of the band.
Had this been 2018, getting a hold of them would have been easy, but in the pre-iPhone, pre-internet days of the late '80s, finding your guitarist or bass player was next to impossible when nobody at their respective households seemed to know where they went or when they'll be back.
It was the sickest feeling I've ever felt in my life because, not only did we lose out on a major opportunity that could have potentially jettisoned us into the next chapter of our career, but I now knew that I was the only fucker in this band taking it seriously.
It sure as hell wasn't as glamorous as taking your lady to see "Top Gun" or going bowling with your friends, but somebody had to be there to answer the call when opportunity rang and, let me tell you, for the ten months when that phone NEVER rang, it was a lonely existence, but I never wavered.
When the band broke up, I was shattered. We'd gone to all this trouble to create something from nothing and then to get people interested in us that my jaw still hits the floor at how easily others could walk away from that.
At that point, I could have walked away, too. After all, they're only songs, fuck 'em.
But I didn't.
No, I re-pledged my allegiance to rock & roll and succeeded in finding a label that loved the songs as much as I did. They gave me enough cash to record more songs with musicians I considered heroes.
By sheer force of will, I'd gone from making music in my garage with two guys from high school to hearing those same songs played by guys straight off of the backs of my albums covers.
Even back then, when it was a helluva lot harder to be a band, I knew I was just one of thousands trying to make it big in this world. Getting heard would take a miracle that no amount of hard work could replace.
Or could it?
In addition to putting my own live band together, I'd agreed to pitch in with promotion for the album, which meant that every waking moment that I wasn't at work or rehearsing was spent sending out promo packs and hitting the phones to drum up press, book the gigs, and make some money.
Trust me, back in those days, you could grow mighty old and hungry waiting for folks to respond to an unsolicited promo CD. Even in your best scenario, it could take months for a review of your album to appear, if at all.
So I just kept grinding away, expecting nothing, and powering through the self-doubt, until...one day...
Thanks for the kind words, Darren. Hope you're doing well.
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