and wander over to this thread for a moment or two, I have a question specifically for you:
Ever played in a garage band?
You know, where you got together with your coolest friends after high school, probably about a quarter of a century ago (or maybe last week), and jammed with those three bitchin’ chords everybody could manage, with the bass player’s one fancy riff for the bridge?
And you usually tried to meet over at Pete Chaveski’s house because if you played at home in the basement your mom insisted that you let your whiny, no-talent little sister come down and sing?
I’m collecting garage band reminiscences. I’ll buy you a drink with a frilly parasol in it if you’ll tell me yours.
My garage band experiences weren’t even that formal. Usually I would leach onto an established band I knew and sit in once a month or two. I joined a few, but, hey, I’m a loner, I gotta be me.
My latest “garage band” type experience was while I was visiting my in-laws in Vermont. My brother-in-law has this standing jam night with a buddy of his, and he took me along. Now my brother-in-law doesn’t really play anything, but he has got rhythm and a truly groovin’ soul to work with. So he’s whappin’ away on the bongos, his buddy is playing some mean riffs, and there I am trying to keep up.
We had a blast though. We put down some pretty cool tracks, the most memorable being: Our own version of The Beatles - Rocky Raccoon, complete with our own lyrics because we kept forgetting the real words. And a 25 minute reggae version of Louie-Louie (talk about three-chord heaven).
I tell ya, just jammin’ like that is a hundred times more fun than being in a band and actually having to rehearse something.
Yes, I was in something like a garage band once. Buncha Socialists who played any number of different instruments (fiddles, coupla drums, bass guitar, regular ol’ guitar) and a couple singers/poets. We’d get together, have a buncha beer, inhale heavily, and jam for the hell of it. The poets in the group would lay down their works and we’d just riff off of that - some of the stuff sounded pretty good, actually!
That was at least a year ago now anyway, and I haven’t been in anything else. Would love to find some swing jazz folks, but I want to pick up some improv skills first.
my most classic garage band experience? Was with the current band I’m with, we were jamming for the first time,
and the Guitarist, (who is completely blind) started playing “Albatross” by Fleetwood Mac.
It was beautiful.
Also, the first time I picked up a Bass and realised it was what I wanted to play…
This may not be what you’re looking for, but I’m into more mellow music and involved in church so some of my college buddies would come up with me on weekends and we would do mini tours. Mark (a guitarist), Phil the thrill (nerdy but awsome bass player), Brian (extremely talented pianist), and myself (lead singer and saxophone soloist) would pile into my 84 Toyota Supra and drive from Nashville to Richmond, IN, with all our equipment and luggage stuffed into the hatchback. We would get to where ever it was we were staying late Friday night and set up our gear at the church and practice and play around on Saturday night. On Sunday, we led the worship service and played a few songs. Some were originals and some were just different versions of songs everyone knew. Our drummer was a friend of mine who was still in High School. We shocked some of the older crowd, but when it was all done, I just think they were glad that we were worshipping God through our music, and not out getting drunk and stoned. Nothing wrong with that (in moderation). Anyway we were more like a homeless band than a garage band. Gosh, I miss those days…
ChrisP (et al), yep that’s exactly the sort of thing I’m looking for.
I started asking around about pickup bands maybe six months ago when I wanted some background for a character in a story. I quickly discovered a couple of things – the damnedest people will admit to having played in a band (e.g., the very suave Mercedes mechanic who used to work on my old Chevy) … and most of them remember jammin’ with the band as some of the best times of their lives.
Makes me feel like I really missed out. (Can you still join a band if you’re 42 and have no particular musical talent? I can play the kazoo.)
John, I love bass. I’ve warned my husband it might not be prudent to introduce me to his bass-playing friend because I happen to find the instrument very sexy.
Jack, how did you record your stuff? CD? Tape? Still got it? Sounds like something you should be sharing with dopers far and wide.
The guy whose house we were at, had his own recording set-up, (eight tracks, if I’m not mistaken). Just laid down on a regular old tape. We had miked acoustics and some directly patched eletcrics. No, I didn’t get a copy of it, I’m still kicking myself. I just forgot to ask for a copy when we left, and we left town the next day, so I couldn’t go back for a dupe. My brother-in-law has promised me he will get one for me, but he promises a lot of things so I’m not holding my breath.
BTW, I’m 6 days short of 35. You’re never too old to jam.
Exactly, you’re never too old to Jam. My dad sang with us once, and it was a lot of fun. Besides, you could always play the Tambourine(sp?). You’ve heard the joke right? The Tambourine was invented so that the lead singer’s girlfriend could be onstage too!
ChrisP, no I hadn’t heard the joke, but I like it.
BTW, is it true what they say about drummers? I think next time around if I’m not a gecko or something I’d like to be a drummer, but I’d hate to have my friends making jokes behind my back through my entire garage band career.
Oh, and happy-almost-birthday, Jack!
Thank ye.
But I lied a little, I’m actually 7 days short of 35. It’s next Friday. Email me and I’ll give you an address to send the gifts. Cash accepted (nothing under $500, please).
Yeah, when I was in high school in the 70s I was in a band with a bunch of my friends. The difference, though, is that we were all trained musicians, and pretty good outside of the garage band milieu. We performed original songs (which, in retrospect, were probably pretty awful, but hey, we were prolific) at school concerts and talent nights.
Hey, it kept us off the streets.
Dave, that puts you smack in my own era. Did your band ever make a stab at going professional? Cutting a single? Bar gigs?
Let’s see…for me, it was around 1977, 1978…my last years of high school. My buddies and I were musical types, and did pretty much everything you could do that was musical and was available to us. School band, marching and concert…chamber music…jazz band…we had a Renaissance Musick Ensemble that we put together…a New Orleans jazz combo…Vocal Ensemble…barbershop quartet. We actually had a pretty good music theory class in our high school, too, where we learned how to do our own arranging.
One problem was that two members of our clique played trumpet and trombone. They were damn GOOD on trumpet and trombone, but didn’t play anything else (they were able to handle the soprano and tenor recorder parts in the Renaissance group, though).
So Roger the Bass Player (who also played bassoon, and tenor saxophone in the New Orleans group) and I tried to figure out how to arrange music for Garage Band which included a trumpet and a trombone. We ended up giving vocal lines to the two horns while the rhythm section (me on one of those incredibly cheesy Yamaha electric pianos they had back in the '70s, Rog on electric bass, a guy we didn’t like very much on drums, and this shithead named Cramer on electric guitar…I was really against having a guitar at all, but everyone else seemed to think that a guitar was necessary in a garage band) comped behind. MY idea was to do old bebop stuff…lay out “Chasing the Bird” for two brass rather than for alto sax and trumpet…but I was voted down in favor of standard sleaze rock. I recall that one of my contributions as an arranger was George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass.” (!)
It was…interesting music. And it was actually rehearsed in Rog’s dad’s garage. I believe we had one public performance, which was fairly well-received.
No, we didn’t make any attempt to go professional.
I have played professionally (classical guitar and lute) and with several garage bands. I will stick with the op here though.
The first garage band that I performed in was called Chaotic Pencils. I was around 12 years old or so and my friend Chris played pencils on the microphone and sang. It was awful but too much fun. I think I may use the name if I ever form another band like that. It was basically a punk type of band with less talent.
The next band I was in was just a Jam band. We did cover tunes of Slayer, Celtic Frost, Metallica, Broken Bones, and the Mucky Pups. Oh, and a couple original pieces that were repetitive and basically sucked. It was fun but got to be boring. This was at 14.
Later after years of practicing (I was 15 and Chris was 16) We formed another band called Afterbirth. It was a cross between punk, grindcore, and speed metal. You can imagine the Cacophony from that one. We had a real set of drums by then and two guitarists. I actually played the bass in that band since I was the only one who had enough hand strength to play it at that time. This was one of two stints I took playing the bass. We had a song about Heidi Seamen who was a little girl who was kidnapped, raped, and murdered in San Antonio. It wasn’t very nice.
Afterbirth later went the way of Death Metal and we changed our name to Diabolus. Note, the name is not Diabolos which I believe is the Spanish word for devil. We were roleplaying game nerds and took our name off of a cute little monster from a roleplaying game called Talislanta. We also had our drummer doing stupid things to increase the noise but maintain a beat like playing 5 against 8 (for no real reason since the guitars all played to counts of 8 for the most part) and then just basically being wild. By this time we had drop tuned all the instruments a fifth. We didn’t have good enough instruments to actually maintain a lower drop or we would have done that too. We had some nice instrumental introductions and a moderate sized audience. Skater Punks seemed to like us. Anyway, we produced a demo and played around town a little and then disbanded. Woohoo.
I had also played as a singer/songwriter by myself on stage too. I had a decent following of regulars who would show up when I woudl play around town. I moved shortly thereafter. It was pretty nice since I played a modified folk/classical/rennaissance/jazz fusion. It worked somehow and was actually pretty technical overall but maintained a simplicity that was appealing. I would really like to do that some more up here but haven’t quite gotten a place to set my footings in.
Oh well.
HUGS!
Sqrl
These are some really eclectic groups. Mr. Ike, with a name like ukulele, did you never introduce that noble instrument to the mix? (Geez, can’t even spell the word. TGIF.)
SqrlCub, I love the Chaotic Pencils story and must respectfully insist that you exhume both the name and the concept. But can you clear up a technical point for me? Why do you drop tune the instruments? This is probably a stupid question, but not being musical myself the logic isn’t at all obvious to me, unless it has to do with finding a key everyone can sing, and somehow I don’t think that’s it.
Oh, and before I forget – everyone please remember to drop by the bar and order a colorful, high-octane drink on me before you head back to the brawl. And thanks for playing.
My husband is a musician. He’s been in many, many garage bands. He’s not home at the moment, but when he returns, I will beg him for a story.
I have encouraged anyone who plays an instrument and will be attending the Dopefest at Persephone’s House to bring their gear along, for a Doper Jam. I promise to let you know how it goes. I can’t wait! Dopers, jamming in my backyard. It don’t git no cooler than that!
Persephone, I’ll hold you to that promise. Don’t forget.
The Dopefest Jam sounds like the event of the new millenium. Um…I hope you have really tolerant neighbors.
Sorry, no. I just picked “Ukulele Ike” as a UserName because it’s fun to say (especially five times in a row, fast).
I am, while bloody fabulous on woodwinds, brass, and keys (and percussion, but ANYBODY can play percussion), actually hopeless with stringed musical instruments, and I’ve tried to teach myself several…banjo, fiddle, mandolin. Although I could play a mean “Mr. Tambourine Man” on my roommate’s acoustic guitar when I was a college freshman.
{croaky Dylan voice} Ohhhh taaake me disapeeeeearing down the smoooookerings of my mind, past the foggggggy rOOOOOns of time, far past the frozen leaves, the haunted frIIIIIIghtened trees, out to the windy beach, far from the twisted rEEEach of craaaaazy sorroooooow…{/croaky Dylan voice}