The End?

Pardon the shitty photography, they don't allow proper cameras into the Sprint Center, and honestly as far back from the stage as I was there's a limited amount of damage I could do even with my D7000—especially with the glass I have. Maybe with a D3 or D4 and a 400mm on a monopod I'd have something going. And while I covet that gear, I wouldn't really want to drag it into a concert I've been looking forward to so long. I really just took a few iPhone shots because I could.

Black Sabbath has been a favorite of mine since I think age 12 or thereabouts. My first was Kiss, and I took a lot of grief from my peers in grade school for being a Kiss fan (me and Frank Blank were the whole South Park Elementary Kiss Army). Then Kiss came out with the universally wretched 'solo' albums and the almost as bad Dynasty, and I was fishing around for new music. Black Sabbath, both the Ozzy and Dio lineups, came into heavy rotation for me. Van Halen, Rush, Jimi Hendrix, too, but I listened to a ton of Sabbath (and then the Ozzy solo stuff when it came along). Eventually I branched out into punk, jazz, bluegrass, classical, I really have an eclectic palate.

But I'd never seen Black Sabbath live (for that matter, haven't been to a Kiss show, either). Kiss seems to be gearing toward a Ringling Brothers model of perpetual tours with eventually all four members being hired impersonators, but Sabbath seems to be taking a different approach. Rather than become their own tribute band, they say they're hanging it up after this one. The only O.G. member who's not on this tour is Bill Ward, who might not be healthy enough to even do it, and apparently has had a serious falling out with Ozzy.

And of course, Ozzy has claimed to be retiring more than once, I remember seeing posters for a 'Retirement Sucks Tour' about twenty years ago. So maybe they'll get to the 50 year mark and decide to have another go, but it seems like this might be the time they really mean it. It's got to be exhausting getting into character and putting on a show like this. And a show it was.

I'd gotten some birthday money right around the time The End tickets went on sale, and I decided not to settle for nosebleed seats. By the time you've talked yourself into $70 including Ticket Bastard fees, you might as well pop for $100 and sit downstairs. Floor tickets were too steep for me, but I was lower level at the opposite end from the stage, a very decent vantage point.

Maybe I look at these prices differently than other folks: I won't buy $40 t-shirts, I don't give a shit what band is on it. I don't really wear t-shirts much except as a base layer anyway, if I'm going to pop $40, that Hawaiian shirt had better rock. Likewise, I'm unwilling to buy enough $9 beers to get to the impulse threshold of buying a $30 CD. The End is only being sold at Sabbath dates on this tour, not online or in stores they said. Well, I say, not yet. These guys should be financially pretty well set at this point, but I see no evidence that once this tour is over they have any inclination to not sell more of their stuff. I'm betting I can pick that album up in a year or two for less than ten bucks. I could almost see the $100 autographed copies they were selling if I was enough of a nerd to want a signed CD. But I think for me, I'd need to meet the band in the process of getting the autographs for that to be worth it.

The opening band, Rival Sons, was solid. I'd say they were as logical a fit for a Sabbath opener as Deal's Gone Bad was for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. If you like the one, you'll probably like the other. And thank God they didn't do the asshole move of putting a 'merchandising' act as the opener. I hate that, when they actually inflict a band they know you'll hate on the theory that you'll go buy shirts while the opening act is playing.

I couldn't bring my Nikon in, but the Sprint Center was very gracious when it came to my CPAP. I'd spent the night before at a friend's house because I had a beer judging session right by my work, and it let me ride my bike and get a full nights sleep instead of choosing one or the other. Which meant I had the CPAP with me on the bike. And while I don't mind locking up outside Sprint, I didn't want to leave the CPAP bag on the rack for fear that a wino would take chance that it was something he could fence. A low risk in the Power & White District but not a zero chance. I'd been looking for a locker or a hotel that would let me use their baggage check nearby without getting a room, but when I called Sprint they said to just bring it and leave a few extra minutes for getting escorted to guest services.

Sure enough, when I got to security, he peaked in the bag briefly and asked another red blazer, 'You want to walk him up?' I was escorted quickly up to Guest Services, given a ticket for the bag and boom, done. So much better than when I was in junior high and went to Eric Clapton at Sandstone. My Dad dropped us off with lawn chairs that turned out not to be allowable. There were no cell phones in 1983, I was simply told to leave the chairs by the gate or stay out of the show I'd paid to see. Me and my date left my Dad's chairs and of course they were gone when we came out. Surely they had an office of some sort at Sandstone, they were just lazy and cost my Dad two pretty nice lawn chairs (and got me chewed on pretty good, too).

All in all, I think I got my hundred bucks worth. My voice is hoarse and raspy today and I still have a touch of tinnitus. I know, I should have worn ear plugs. I thought about it, I did, but I didn't end up doing it. I enjoy the loud, honestly. And I have enough accumulated hearing loss, I guess I figured one more concert unimpeded wasn't going to add that much. And I was comfortable until about Children of the Grave. I don't know if it's the amount of time I'd been subjected to the decibels or if the sound actually gets turned up as the concert builds to climax—maybe both—but that song was the point at which I had an inkling that I'd screwed up not plugging.

Oh, the Bill Ward absence. It was a subject of discussion among fans sitting near me. And I should say the crowd was a middle aged sausage-fest for the most part. There were wives and girlfriends. There was what I took to be a gay pair of 50-ish librarian women in the row in front of me. But a good 75% of the crowd was guys about my age with long hair in concert shirts. And the talk of why couldn't they patch the fence with Bill Ward came up a few times in my hearing.

I did a bit of reading (really the Sabbath and Bill Ward Wikipedia pages), and here's the thing: I already mentioned he might not have been physically capable of doing this tour. Sure the replacement player is a far better percussionist, he's fucking amazing. But he's not O.G. Black Sabbath. I would have preferred Bill Ward, not because I think he's better but because he's original to the band. Steve Vai is a more proficient guitarist than Tony Iommi, but if he'd been the guitarist on this tour I might have spent my $100 of birthday money on something else. I personally know people who play these instruments at an arguably higher level if you're just talking technical chops, but they're not Black Sabbath.

But in that reading, I came across a section on 'pranks' played on Bill Ward. Apparently Tony has set Bill on fire a couple of times. Bill has also been painted gold while drunk and passed out, resulting in a clogging of his pores that led to a seizure and hospitalization and could have easily killed him. You say prank, I say attempted murder, talk about your hostile work environments. Yet it's apparently money, trademarks and glory that actually motivate these guys to hire lawyers and fight stuff out.

Reminded me of Axl Rose and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame a few years back. Here the band was voted in, and I guess Axl won the legal battle for the band name, and the rest of the band won the rights to perform the songs they helped write or something like that. And right when it was about to happen, Axl sends a letter saying he doesn't want to be inducted. And he owns the name. As much as I love Appetite for Destruction as an album, I have no respect for the guy. As far as I can tell, he did that basically to screw the people who helped make him famous out of their place in the Hall just because he owns the name and could therefore do it. I don't know if that's the biggest dick move of all time but it's gotta be top three.

So here are four guys who apparently drink heavily (among other things), and three of the four are still able to work together after 46 years. Well played, Black Sabbath.

Pie Party

Another year, another pie party. Last year it was 'we're getting the band back together,' though the four of us had never really been in the same band. Three of us had been in bands together, but only two at a time.



This year, I brought back the loaned Boss GT-5 I was using for band purposes, and being asked for it back underscored and dotted the dissolution of 'the band.' Whatever we were going to be called.



Me and Dan would still like to continue, but for the moment we're down a bassist, a singer (I can do some, but I'm not sure I want to be the only singer in a band, not really my strong suit), a PA and a rehearsal venue. We're up a killer band name, I guess, but all those other things are harder to come by than clever names.



The pie party was great, though. I had a bowl of elk stew and I don't know how many kinds of pie. I didn't have room to try all of them, I think I was only good for a half dozen or so, and most of those were half slices.

If I Only Had a Band

We haven't rehearsed as a band since October, partly scheduling partly those pesky 'artistic differences.' Anyway, I hate to admit it, but I'd gotten kinda slack about practicing my own part the past month or so not having band practice to look forward to.

I hit it hard this weekend, though. Two hours yesterday and another two tonight working on some of the 'set' and some stuff I'd like to add to it whether with the the original crew or with a new bassist. And hopefully a new singer, too, because I'm getting better at singing and playing guitar at the same time but it's limiting both in terms of what material could be done and what material I'm capable of doing in a trio format.

Crazy Train really pushes the envelope on that score, it's a pretty busy guitar part and since I'm not a tenor, it's also hard for me to sing. And Streetcar by Funeral for a Friend, forget about it. I can handle the vocals and one of the guitar parts, but you definitely need two guitarists for that one.


Jacknife to a Swan works, to my surprise, since the Mighty Mighty Bosstones is a large group. Not the same without the horns and harmony vocals of course, but I think it could work as a trio number. Same with Mississipi, though I have to sing the chorus an octave below Sheryl Crow. I don't have the quality of voice she has, of course, but if I do say so myself I sing better than Bob Dylan who wrote that song.

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out definitely loses texture as a trio number, but at least Morrissey sings in my range. Same with Jill Sobule (Love is Never Equal).

I should probably try and ad some Green Day into the mix, it's not like I would be trying to reduce their material to a trio format, it's already there.

Code Monkey is no problem, but Vertigo is a hard one for me to sing, too, and harder because there are parts where what's going on vocally and what's going on on the guitar are pat-your-head-rub-your-tummy different.

The good news is these practice sessions were very therapeutic in terms of the funk I've been in since digesting the Haitian earthquake. The bad news is they also feel somewhat pointless in the absence of a 'rest of the band' to play them with.

Anyone play bass out there? Bonus points if you have a little PA equipment and are free on Thursday evenings...

The Brave Unknown

I thought the band that's not called Foolkiller was coming apart. Half the band, apparently, was disinterested in continuing. That left me and the drummer going, 'But we were having fun!'

To keep going, we'd need a bassist, for sure. A singer? Well, with grown up schedules and commitments, the more people, the harder it is to find a rehearsal time that works. What if I expanded the human rights atrocity that is my singing on Code Monkey and started trying to sing some other stuff? A trio, that's about as small as a rock band gets.

We'd also need to find some PA equipment and a place to rehearse. Or maybe not: the bassist is maybe less disenchanted than she was exhausted, but it still might be that we're a trio.

Thing is, I think I suck balls at singing, but I don't know that it has to be a permanent condition. Some guys I went to school with have a great cover band, Perpetual Change. I actually went to junior high with the bassist/singer and drummer and high school with their lead guitarist.

I remember in junior high, they weren't Perpetual Change, they called themselves 'ATB' which, if memory serves, stood for 'Anything Better.' As in they couldn't come up with anything better for a name. But I think on fliers, people took it as To Be Announced, so they changed it. This is strictly speculation on my part: I witnessed these changes from afar, and the band certainly didn't discuss it with that weird metal head who is always wanting to join the band.

So anyway, at one of the 'battle of the bands' events I remember from high school, Mike (the bassist/singer) sang. It was the first time I'd heard him do so; the band had been through innumerable vocalists. They went through a couple lead guitarists before Bill joined, but I remember thinking you never knew who was going to sing for them.

The first time I heard Mike sing, honestly, I thought he was horrible. Very pitchy. But a time or two after that, I was like, 'Hey he's pretty good.' When I saw them at the Brooksider a few months back, I was impressed with everyone, not the least Mike's vocals.

So that makes me think, maybe I can learn to sing. I think, and again, this is strictly outsider speculation, that Mike started singing for the band because he knew at least he would show up for the damn rehearsal. Maybe it's just a matter of being cocky enough to act like I can sing and the next thing you know...

So I've been working on this with some of the songs from the band's existing set, and some other material. I asked Mo if Daddy was a good singer of if he sucked and she said, 'Sucked...Oreos?'

I gave her the Oreos, she ate her dinner after all, and she was honest to boot.

Some stuff I've wanted the band to do, like Funeral For a Friend's Streetcar, I don't think would work as a trio number. There's some other stuff that I've been wanting to do that might be possible. And then there's Green Day, which I hadn't even considered, but their tunes do appear to be trio friendly...

If It's Too Loud?

I was practicing a bit, get ready for band practice tomorrow night, and Em came down to tell me to turn it down. She was trying to do her homework, and I was playing way, way too loud according to her.

What does it mean when your teenager is telling you to turn that noise down? Mid-life crisis? Arrested development? My teenager is 'too old?'

Code Monkey

Code Monkey (rehearsed by the band not called Foolkiller) from Chixulub on Vimeo.

Against my better judgment, you can almost hear me sing on this one. I know, I'm violating your human rights subjecting you to that.

For good measure, I'm posting (again) the YouTube video that brought me this tune. Not only do I love this song, but its so obscure, if I wouldn't keep telling people it's a Jonathan Coulton song, they'd probably assume it was an original.

Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce...

Not Foolkiller rehearsing Vertigo from Chixulub on Vimeo.

One, Two, Three, Fourteen... Not sure what it is about great rock songs that they're so often loaded with nonsense.

Caveat emptor (would make a band name itself): This video is taken with a Canon Powershot set on Jamie's computer monitor. It's a crappy condenser mic and the monitors for the vocals are pointed back at the band so you can barely hear the vocals. Dan taped the drums to mute them but the whole mess is still louder than a roadside bomb.

People keep asking me what kind of band and where do we play, so maybe this answers those questions. I'm highly self-critical so I tend to hear only the flaws, especially the ones made by the fat guy in the Hawaiian shirt, but here it is. On the plus side, we're much better than we once were, but maybe that's also in the minus column.

Didn't Suck That Hard

I was ambivalent as I drove an hour and fifteen minutes from Waldo to Independence for band practice tonight. The rain and traffic were demoralizing enough, but our last rehearsal was a month ago and it went about as well as a Chiefs game this season. It'd been a few weeks (maybe a month) before that one, we'd all kinda gotten busy and/or sick and whatnot and band practice just wasn't happening every week like it used to.

So I really wanted to get back into the groove, had even made a point of practicing along with the CD of our set several times this week, but I feared that this would be the execution style murder of rock & roll.



I don't know if my band mates also practiced extra in anticipation of this or not, but the whole thing wasn't the disaster I feared. Even on Code Monkey, where we have tempo issues, at least on our first run through we were speeding up and slowing down together. And the second time went reasonably well.

We even managed to resuscitate the God Song. And after last practice, I thought that was a goner. Last time, it seemed like even the song's author had forgotten the entire thing.

Don't get the wrong idea: we're still very half-assed in a lot of respects. Don't be looking to hear us in a bar somewhere, because we don't have that much material and even if we did, it's no longer fashionable to get smashed and drive home, and especially with my singing and guitar solos, you'd need quite a bit of alcohol to enjoy the show.

But it wasn't the train wreck I feared. It was actually as if we'd just rehearsed last Thursday.




And Jamie's son came down and played a song he's written. Honest, I thought it'd be lame, but this kid needs to find him a coffee house, he'll be beating the chicks off with a stick. It was really quite good. After, he played all modest like his singing was pitchy, and I'm thinking, 'You hear me belt out Code Monkey? I can't even make fun of Bob Dylan and Tom Waits after that.'

Still haven't gotten on to Crazy Train or Streetcar, two songs I'm dying to get into the rotation, and didn't get to a couple songs we've done in the set, but a good band practice. Great for a month off.

Speaking of Band Practice...

Sandy asked me on Facebook when the band is going to start playing gigs.

I might not have blown Diet Dew out my nose seeing that after our last practice. That was the practice when I heard the sickening sound of my recorded voice, but it was also the practice where Jamie started playing an original piece he'd been working on, and we all kind of jumped in and winged it. And it worked. It was a sublime moment of creativity, and I drove home with that song running around in my head and thinking if I could learn how to carry a tune myself, we might be able to play outside the basement someday.



Bolstered by the memory of this, I'd even done some sheet music research and burned a couple discs of two songs I want to add to the lineup. Challenging songs, at that. Including another that will call on me to sing even if I do make Bob Dylan and Tom Waits sound like silver-throated crooners.

But that was over a month ago, one thing and another, life happens. And a month without band practice was too much. We struggled, especially with Jamie's 'God Song.'



So gigs...maybe if they bring back the Gong Show.

Not Quite Band Practice

Our drummer cancelled a few minutes after I departed for band practice, so when I got there, me and Jamie worked on the parts to Streetcar (it has two semi-tricky guitar parts, so we both have to play, and it has two vocal parts, so we'll both have to play these things confidently enough to sing while playing).

Jamie has been busy upgrading his basement studio, trying to fix the feedback issues and get a monitoring system fully operational. That, and he wants to record us, dubious notion that might be.

Square Peggy

Well, one of my band-name ideas was Chicken Suit For the Soul, but somehow I don't see our bassist going for that.

Then in church today, I had a vision. So I humbly submit my latest band name for my band mates to shoot down.

A New Kind of Suck

I'm not so delusional as to think I'm wildly talented. I'm well aware of my musical deficiencies: poor sense of time, an uncanny ability to get lost in the changes of the simplest standard when soloing, tendency to play too loud, etc.

And despite how it seems from how much I talk, I'm not in love with the sound of my voice. If I was to be the voice of a Muppet, I'd have to name the character Dork.

I've been having fun being in a band and all, and I loved the song Code Monkey so much I wanted to sing it. I've never learned to sing and play at the same time before this, so it's been a fun challenge. Very hard to sing while chewing your tongue...

Anyway, at band practice tonight, we did Code Monkey and once again I felt like the tempo was all over the place. This is a chronic complaint from me, I feel like we speed up and slow down an awful lot playing this number. Melissa thought maybe it was my nerves affecting my perception, so we recorded a run-through to see...

I'm not sure about the tempo issue listening to the playback because I was not prepared for the horror of hearing my tone-deaf vocals. The skin on my neck and head crawled, and I got a little nauseous. I'm not exaggerating.

If pitchy singing were an Olympic event, I'd have more gold medals than Michael Phelps. It was so bad I spent the whole drive from Independence trying to think of something horrible enough to compare it to and came up blank. Kim Jong-il, school shootings, the fuss over Michael Jackson's funeral, nothing I came up with was bad enough.

To take a line from Tim Wilson, it's like being too old for Lawrence Welk or not old enough for Mickey Mouse, too steppen to Steppenwolf and to greasy for the Waffle House. Too dirty for Larry Flynt, too ugly for the Rolling Stones...

My band mates were very encouraging. Offering to, for instance, post this recording on the internet. Jamie insists its because without in-ear monitors, I can't really hear myself sing over the drums and my too-loud guitar, and I pray he has a point. Because hearing this, I think 'a guy who can't sing any better than that should know to stay away from the microphone.' The way a fat man should know not to wear a Speedo.

The real horror was realizing I'd sung this badly in front of friends a few weeks back. And I have to say, I'm grateful to have such good friends that they'll still talk to me even after they sat through what can only be described as a musical terrorist attack.

On the plus side, Jamie's 'God Song' (whatever that means, I can't hear his vocals either when we play, so I don't have any idea what the lyrics are) turned out to be pretty fun. I found some sounds that worked with it and with one of the covers we're doing. Had so much fun with that it almost made up for being physically ill at the sound of my own voice.

High Point of the Week?

I've had better weeks. This week started with the workstation on my desk at work not wanting to wake up. I learned today, at long last, that it's either the motherboard or the CPU or both. In any case, more money than can be justified to resuscitate a computer that was, on it's best days, ready for the Antiques Road Show.

Anyway, meanwhile I'm making things work on an eMac of similar vintage. It's gotten busy at work, plus the new Xerox machine is sucking harder than the old Xerox machine, and that eats up time I could be using making our customers happy.

Band practice, we hadn't had that in weeks. Three weeks?

I hadn't practiced on my own since the 40 miler that numbed my fingers out a couple weeks ago. But getting to band practice, I wanted to leave straight up at 4:30 to account for traffic, and it turned out 5:15 was the new 4:30. The fact that I still have a glimmer of numbness in the skin of my ring finger, not so significant.

I was late, our singer had to leave early for work (night shift), and it all ran more smoothly than I would have expected. Even me, I still sucked but not as hard as I expected to. My pitchy singing, my misplaced chords, these are apparently the high point of this week..

Fridge Letters

My Dad's fridge spells out the names of all the grandchildren. Who often rearrange these letters. I decided to rearrange them myself, and Em had an apoplectic fit.



So I made sure to come up with combos she'd like in a special way.



And some potential band names...

Musicale (Getting Reacquainted With Stage Fright)

This was the usual dinner party at Melissa's except she had this idea that Foolkiller's first performance should be part of it.



Okay, she says the band will never be called Foolkiller. Seems really dead set against it. But if I pretend otherwise, maybe she'll come around. She hates all my other suggestions even more (such as Camel Toe, Split Wet Beaver, A Confederacy of Dunces, Three Rails of Blow & A Hooker, etc.) It seems I can't come up with an alternative so bad it makes Foolkiller look good enough by comparison.



Anyway, Rachel & Meghan were our merchandizing act, our opening band. They played Mozart, The Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E-flat major, K. 364 (320d). Well, not all of it, and they didn't have an orchestra, so humming and laughter tended to fill those roles.



Well, that and the occasional daughter wrapping herself around Mommy's leg.



I saw Rachel cringe every time she made a mistake, but dude, this is a piece neither had played in over twenty years. They were sight-reading it. I started to video them, and Rachel told me to knock it off. So I found this on YouTube: it was more or less like this but with Melissa's furnace where the orchestra should be:



So anyway, I realized listening to them that not only did they have balls to do this, but any slight mis-steps were perfectly understandable given they were reading it cold. Such things are unavoidable, even by the most accomplished musicians.

Suzuki Bow from Chixulub on Vimeo.

Whereas the band Melissa says can't possibly be called Foolkiller, we've been working for months on this handful of songs. And rehearsed as recently as yesterday. So all my self-critical interior voices were saying to me, Self, what's your excuse?



It's the interior voices that give me the nerves. Mostly, anyway. It crossed my mind that Meghan did go to Julliard, which is about as elite as it gets. But Melissa's done (if I recall) a Berklee summer program and graduated from Eastman, and I don't get nerves loading my gear into her basement to play with her.



Really my nerves weren't bad for Weenie with a Tragic Cramp and Vertigo. Well, there was an aborted run at Vertigo, where Em came running downstairs to get me (she was being paid a bit to keep an eye on her sister while I participated in the musicale, with the understanding that she come get me if I was needed. Needed as in a seizure, or really egregious behaviors. I almost dropped my guitar trying to get it off and get upstairs before finding out all it was, Mo had asked to go home. She was bored.



So anyway, those first two songs weren't total train wrecks. I've played better guitar solos, but we started and ended more or less together.



Then it came to Code Monkey, the number I sing. My knees went a bit wobbly and my mouth went dry. I realized in mid-phrase that I was running out of breath because I hadn't inhaled when I should. We started out fast (because I start us off and I was having a little anxiety attack) but by the first chorus we were slower. But at least we were together, so I guess that means we were listening to each other enough to speed up and slow down in unison.



There's a level of stage fright that actually improves my performances. This was about 16 levels above that, a fight or flight response that could have gotten someone killed, at least if pitchy singing were a gun. I was having fun, don't get me wrong, so much so I suggested we go ahead and inflict Modern Love on our audience. And as we started it, I noticed my middle, ring and pinky fingers on my right hand quivering. My thumb and index were holding the pick, which kept them steady, but the other three were having a full-blown nervous breakdown.



I know I need to practice a lot more, and we need, as a group, many more hours of rehearsal. The part I have trouble figuring out is why I want to go do it again, given that performing in front of even the smallest and friendliest audience possible made such a credible attempt at scaring me to death.

Perpetual Change @ The Brooksider

This was the band I wanted to be in when I was a teenager. I went to junior high with the bassist and drummer, who remained the constants as the band perpetually changed singers and guitarists. Actually, they were called ATB before they came up with Perpetual Change, I believe because they couldn't think of 'Any Thing Better.' I think that name worked against them because it looked like a dyslexic was listing them as 'TBA.'



Anyway, a good bassist is essential to a rock & roll band, and since everybody plays guitar, they're hard to come by. A good drummer is in close second on the hard-to-fill roles for a high school garage band, and Mike & Andrew were both very good as well as being very good friends.




I managed to insinuate myself into their rehearsal once, and rendered myself totally obnoxious. I wanted to be in the band that got gigs and chicks, but I wanted that band to be too cool to play a song just because it was popular. There was a wide swath of 80s rock I was, at that age, unwilling to embrace, and it was probably 70% of the band's repertoire.



Plus, I was thinking 'jam session,' and they were thinking 'rehearsal.' Mike was teaching (I think Jim Parker, though it may have been the guitarist before that) parts to I forget what song, probably something by the Police, and my ADHD was in high gear. I tried to steer them into playing some Black Sabbath, Van Halen and Rush, and they did include those bands in their covers, but these kids were too well adjusted to be exclusively heavy metal or exclusively prog rock. And in the Rush case, they probably also noticed that band is pretty much only loved by guys, so a Rush tribute band is a bad idea from a chick-attracting standpoint.



I remember several times being told, 'You're killing my ears.' I didn't think I was playing that loudly, and maybe I wasn't. Maybe what was killing ears was my attempts to make their rehearsal into my Black Sabbath Festival. I wasn't invited back, and I think my social skills were more to blame than my chops.



All of which set me up, once I got to high school, to decide I was too cool to play any sort of rock & roll. When I got into jazz I got seriously snotty about rock & roll, and honestly that was partly because I had made friends with a bassist and drummer who were into jazz. It's not that my affection for jazz was insincere, it's still easily 3/4 of my CD collection, but my hatred of rock & roll was a lie I made up, told myself and mostly believed for a few years.



Once I grew up a bit and quit trying to figure out what I should and shouldn't like and just went with what I actually responded to, I found out those first two Ozzy solo albums really are awesome. And a lot of that 80s rock that I shunned in junior high has its virtues.




Anyway, 20 years out, these guys have started playing together again. I think Andrew's a dentist these days, not sure what the others do for a living. But they play the Brooksider from time to time.



And they still sound great. They're obviously having a blast, and still have to beat the chicks off with a stick. The same chicks, in fact, the place was like a high school reunion.



Good show. They were joined by the singer for KC/DC for 'You Shook Me All Night Long' and by the guitarist for Rattle & Hum for a couple of U2 numbers. Good stuff, and two more bands I'd like to catch at the Brooksider sometime.

Practice (Hasn't Made Perfect Yet)

Band practice on a Saturday. We've missed a couple weeks, but to my pleasant surprise we didn't seem to forget everything.



Still have tempo struggles on some numbers, still haven't mastered that first nine-song list as a group. Many hundreds of rehearsals to go before we're in any danger of playing the Brooksider...



But potential is there. Even though my band-mates don't all seem to like the name FoolKiller at the same time. And they really, really hated my idea that we all put on clown makeup and dress as clowns on stage. My image was of a sinister clown with a tommy gun as 'fool' and 'killer.'