5 Things I Like About this Article from My High School Newspaper About My Old Band
I’m volunteering this week at Colorado AMP spring music camp, where kids ages 9–12 are spending their week off from school learning what it’s like to be in a band. So far it’s cool because the people running it clearly know that there are lots of amazing things about being in a band beyond just learning and playing music, and you can tell because they build time in to pick names, design a logo, make t-shirts, and do a scavenger hunt to find money that’s split up equally in a lesson about how bands share money from gigs.
It got me thinking about my first band. Luckily, my mom kept the edition of The Dedham Mirror where we got our first press, so we all can read about it:
Here are 5 things I like about reading this article:
1. It is quality music journalism
I was on the staff of the Dedham Mirror, and I think Matt Campbell did a fantastic job reporting facts, gathering quotes, and sounding like you’re complimenting someone without saying anything nice about them. We were the “best live band he’d seen in a while,” which could have been true whether he thought we were any good or not depending on the time frame in question. He noticed while listening that we have “a unique sound that has not been duplicated by any other band,” which can be just as true if he thinks we’re good as if he thinks we suck. Even the way he attributes John D’Amico’s quote as being “the only word he can think of” makes it sound like asking D’Amico about our band made him lose his mind, or that he just wanted to talk about a Nas album, not necessarily that he thought we were ill-matic. I think the only compliment is that our CD would make “a great Christmas gift for your loved one,” which displays questionable journalistic ethics on my part as one of the editors—I’m glad we snuck that by Ms. Ziemian because I bet we sold a ton of $5 CDs (and if you happen to still have one hiding somewhere, let me know).
2. It makes me grateful for the Hughes family
That photo was taken in our practice space, which was Brendan’s parents’ basement, which must have been a pretty big pain in the ass for them. We practiced at my house once and my mom actually brought it up the other day in conversation because it was so loud that she was just randomly thinking about it. And the Hughes’s let us practice there for years! I’m glad they did, because I was watching these kids learn how to be in a band in a supervised camp and it was cool, but also not as cool as learning unsupervised in a basement. Thank you Walter, thank you Patricia.
3. It makes me wonder if I should have been the drummer
Bob Lapsley was the drummer of our band. If you’re not from Dedham, Bob is the guy in the middle, the high school senior flexing while wearing the t-shirt of infamous local strip club The Foxy Lady. Bob had the most star quality in the band (the photo, obviously, and also notice that they list him first in the band roster), but not necessarily from a musical perspective—he just kinda had drums, so he was the drummer. Brendan had a guitar, and he could actually really play it, so he was the guitar player, and we decided to start a band, which meant that I had to get a bass guitar since that was the only instrument left.
And so, I became a bass player for the past 25 years. A year or so ago I thought that was a pretty arbitrary way to decide what kind of musician I would be, so I started taking drum lessons from School of Rock, another place that focuses on giving kids the experience of being in a real band while learning music. Every class, from third graders up to adults, gets to play in front of a crowd at an end-of-semester show in a real venue:
Turns out I absolutely love playing the drums, and now every week or so I rent a drum studio to keep playing. Given my drum progress so far I think I could at least have been as good as Bob, and I think putting Bob front and center would have been a huge upgrade from a stage presence perspective, giving us a secret weapon like Flea in the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
4. It reminded me of all the things that band got to do
In high school we started playing at school talent shows and things like that, and then there was a way to record an album for basically free if you played live on the air at a weird hour, so we did that and we actually had a CD of our own songs. Then a friend said we should busk on the street in Harvard Square and we went and got permits and a boat battery and a power inverter and we actually started busking on the street in Harvard Square like we were in the movie Once except that movie hadn’t come out yet and it was kind of a nuts thing for us to do. We took the money we earned from a summer of that and bought a drum set in $1 bills, which took an hour for the guy at Guitar Center to count (he did not like us). But people from Dedham liked us enough that we were booked for political fundraisers, family parties, and all kinds of backyard shows. Then we all went to college near each other so we kept the band going and played parties at dorms and woods and hauses all over the Pioneer Valley. At the end of it all we had a farewell show at our local community movie theater like a real band. I am very glad my mom bought me that bass guitar.
5. It made me happier to teach these kids some music
I’m sorry, I have to go, I have a deadline. I’ve got to go and teach Ring of Death, a self-named band of 9 year olds, how to play a few Bruno Mars tunes. Rock on.
Do you need a not-great drummer in your band? jed@kindandfunny.com.