I had a band.

We’d had one gig – and now, another.

It was Saturday, January 3, 1987, and what we didn’t have was a guitar player.

After our gig at Williams Uptown, two of the three brothers I was playing with seemed interested in progressing with things. The other – the eldest of the three, the other guitar player – on the other hand, was not interested. My Houserockers-Via-Clash vibe rankled his Prince-like sensibilities; he wanted to play dance music that’d reel in the babes; I wanted to create a loud, angry wall of sound.

It wasn’t going to work out.

The other two brothers, the bass and drum players, huddled in the basement the previous night, Friday, and tried to figure out what we were going to do. We had a gig in about two weeks. Our options were:

1. Go as a “power trio”; guitar, bass and drums. I didn’t want to do that; I wanted a bigger sound, plus I was really enjoying doubling on keys.
2. Bag the gig. Not a chance; I wanted to play.
3. Find another guitar player, fast – someone who could learn three sets of material in like two weeks.

If you have known me for any time at all, you know that there was only one option for me; #3 it was.

I dug back through the lists of guys who’d contacted me when I took out my ad in the City Pages. There was one – a guy from Jamestown we’ll just call “Casey” (I’m changing the names, since the story gets a little dicey in the next year or so).  He’d contacted me just after I’d settled on the other guys, a little over a month earlier.

And yes, he was still available.

So it was tonight, January 3, that we all got together and started learning our stuff.  We had three sets to fill at McCready’s – three hours of playing.  And the other three of us – the bass and drummer and I – were closing in on having enough stuff, most of it originals.

We got together at five o’clock Saturday afternoon and played for about five hours, until the noise ordinance said we had to shut down.     then, we sat in the filthy living room of the ratty house and drank Carlings Black Label until about 2AM talking music and musicians.

We were going to do it again, five days a week until we had all four of us ready to go.

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007 at 7:23 am and is filed under Twenty Years Ago Today. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.