In fourth grade, my class sat in on a presentation by the orchestra, chorus and band leaders. Fifth grade was when we'd have the option to take one of those classes or Music Appreciation.
Orchestra came first and I fell in love with the Viola. I have no idea why, but I wanted to play it so bad.
Going home that day with the letter from the orchestra director indicating my interest, I was met with "no" from my mother.
Growing up in poverty, there was just no money for instrument rental.
Band's presentation was next. I wanted so badly to play the trombone after watching many many Badger hockey games on television Friday and Saturday nights.
Nope. Still no money for instrument rental, but a compromise was in store.
The school owned several snare drums, so rental of one wasn't necessary, so long as we all had practice pads and a pair of drum sticks. My grandparents bought me both and I became a drummer.
Avoiding a desired switch to tuba in sixth grade (still no money for rental) I was a drummer all through my school career. My grandparents finally bought me a snare drum when I was in seventh grade, but my parents never let me play it since we always lived in duplexes with non-understanding neighbors on the other side of the wall.
Not being able to decide on a career, I decided to study music in college and needed a drum set, so I spent most of my graduation money on a kit. I bought everything but the snare, using the old, mostly-unused one that had been in the basement.
I absolutely needed to learn to play this thing since I'd be in college ensemble classes within a few months, so I played along with the crappy slow Metallica that was being produced then and a really awful punk band we started that summer, the Rejeckts. The Rejeckts only had two song fragments before I stopped hanging with them.
College zipped by with my primary gigs being the ensemble and combo classes and a weekend jam session I'd have with two guitarists in Menominee Falls.
Towards the end of my school career, I learned that one of my favourite punk bands needed a new drummer. I went to St. Paul twice to "try out" for the position and eventually was invited to move up there to be Ferd Mert's new drummer.
I played nine shows with Ferd, several of those were headlining shows, but we did open for some pretty amazing bands, such as Cadillac Blindside, The Stereo and Pezz. We had an offer to open for the Ataris in Mankato, Minn., but had to turn that down when our bass player decided to see the Cranberries that night instead.
Ferd enabled me to travel throughout the great state of Minnesota, where I got to see places like Waseca, Owatonna (where our show was cancelled and we just played rollar hockey before driving home), Mankato, St. Cloud, Winona, Northridge, Minneapolis of course, and Duluth en route to Ironwood, Mich.
After I was no longer needed in that band, I moved to California where after a brief drum hiatus, I formed a band called Ogilthorpe. We played just a few shows, mostly in the Central Valley. We practiced in Gustine, which was on the west side of Merced County, kinda in the middle of nowhere. Our first show, however, was at a Gustine High School talent show, where we played two covers, one of California Sun and Bikeage.
Our first proper show was at Gustine Middle School, where we learned that we were too old and the punk too raw and old-school to win over the kids. The bands that played after us were mostly lalala pop-punk, emo and that grind-core crap. We sounded more like Black Flag and Naked Raygun.
One of our biggest problems was that we were four athiest/agnostics and finding a show in California's bible-belt meant cow-towing to the churches. Modesto has no all-ages venue, so all the punk bands around here were mostly Christian and would have shows in conjuction with local churches. We were once dropped from a bill because we had the f-word on our website. We were finally booked at that place after I removed it.
We did a few outdoor shows in the scalding summer heat. My cymbals were often too hot to touch when it was time to pack up.
That photo was from a show in Escalon at some church. It was a mega-outdoor fest where we were the first of many bands to play that day. It was hella windy and dust clouds were blowing across us. Not only that, but there were trains passing alongside the church property, which gave me something to watch while playing.
The highlight of Ogilthorpe's existance was probably the show we did in Oakland.
It was a late Wednesday night at the Stork Club on Telegraph Ave. in a nasty section of town. My brand new Lancer was parked across the street from the club and homeless people passed it constantly while shopping at the liquor store right next to it.
But we just tore that joint down.
We opened and our singer's new schtick was to completely freak out, tossing himself onto the floor and acting like a total spazz. The crowd ate it up. Despite being the opening act, we were begged for an encore. We eventually ran out of songs and had to leave the stage to wild applause.
We played just one more show after that and called it quits. I'd have loved to keep that band going, but I got burned out on the 30 minute drive to practice. To change things up, we changed instruments. Me on guitar and our singer on drums. Then, two of my bandmates moved to Lake Havasu and we were officially history.
I had been flirting with the Gutterballs for a while, initially, I was going to become a second-guitarist, but then their drummer moved to North Carolina and their singer/guitarist got hospitalized. A year later or so, drummer was back and things were satisfactory with their singer, so I was brought on as drummer and their drummer was "promoted" to rhythm guitar.
Practice at first was at our new guitarists' remote farmhouse in Clarksburg, which was a town about an hour away from Modesto, where the rest of us lived.
When he moved from that house, practice relocated to a friend's garage in Denair... it was absolutely sweltering and we got out of there as soon as we could, deciding to practice in our singer's apartment in Modesto. In the ghetto, I should add. No one minded, apparently.
We played precious few shows, but managed to record a CD at a studio that no longer exists.
Our bass player, who has been friends with our singer/guitarist for so many years, had moved to San Rafael and basically, moved on with his life, prompting us to disband.
That was two years ago and now I have no band. My drums are in our cellar... my hi-hat stand is whereever the rest of the Gutterballs equipment is.
I've decided to write music, specifically classical compositions with MIDI, though I miss performing and would love to reform the Gutterballs. Not likely to happen, though.
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