Nurse the Hate: The First Show

The first show I ever played was at Mother’s Junction in Kent.  That was 28 years ago.  I had no clue that I would still be playing, much less writing and recording music all these years later.  I think I had a vague idea that I would do “age appropriate” things in 2018, which I assumed to be golf, dinners at chain restaurants, and fiddling around in my "work shop".  As I don’t do any of those things, and had no interest in those things at any point in my life, it’s hard to pinpoint why I thought I would sprout this sudden interest.  Perhaps I felt that the need to dive into woodworking was a natural evolution.  It was something Dads did.  I don’t know.  I had a lot of fucked up ideas then.

Mother’s Junction was the bar upstairs above Ray’s Place in Kent.  I spent many very drunken nights dancing around to The Walking Clampets in that room.  I would even go to the reggae shows there, though at that point I thought all reggae songs sounded exactly the same, which even now is a somewhat debatable point.  First Light and I-tal were the two big bands, and if I really felt like slumming it I would go see Satta.  It was generally acknowledged that of the three regular reggae bands that played Mothers, Satta was definitely #3.  It was just good to hear bands.  I would normally drink 200 beers and strike out with hippie girls.  Hippie girls liked reggae.  They did not like me.

When we got the band going, this was an obvious place for our first gig.  It was one of the only venues where we knew anybody.  We played our first show the week school let out for winter break.  Everyone left town after the semester break.   Everyone.  It was a ghost town.  I think the club had to decide between “jukebox” and “some kids have a weird sounding rockabilly band”.  Even with those options, I think we had to lobby hard to get the show.  We finally got the OK about a month beforehand.  It was set.  We were going to play an actual gig.  To us it was like headlining Coachella.

Allow me to preface that we were painfully green.  I was under the impression that because the other guys in the band had rock and roll clothes and radical haircuts, that they were real pros.  This was not the case.  They were amateurs with rock and roll clothes and radical haircuts.  Still, their appearance gave them an advantage over me in that I had never done this before.  Not only hadn’t I played out before, I had never sung in public.  The closest exception was in 4^th grade where I mouthed like I was singing Christmas carols in our school mandated Christmas Pageant.  I was so worried about looking foolish that I wouldn’t dare sing. 

As I recall there were open trials for parts in the play.  As was the way in 4^th grade, all the girls tried out and almost none of the boys.  The word in the hallways of Manchester School was that “only fags” were in plays.  A line had been drawn in the sand.  Our teacher caught wind of this widespread agreement amongst the boys and forced all of us into a room where we were A) berated and threatened and then B) forced to audition in front of all of the girls.  Generally the best theater performances are not garnered at gunpoint, though perhaps Japanese POW camps did amazing yet undocumented performances of Othello.  I am not enough of an expert to offer a concrete opinion on that.  What I do know is that I was not very comfortable singing for literally the first time in my life in front of the entire fourth grade.

I did not grow up in a musical household.  The Millers did not burst into song.  I had somehow never even tried to sing before this "audition".  Not even in the shower.  The Millers did not suffer foolishness.  Singing was something done by professional entertainers.  At this time, I was under the impression that a good vocal was accomplished by singing in falsetto.  I am not sure why I thought this.  Perhaps I thought that I was supposed to emulate the Vienna Boys Choir, which was my only real example of a boy my age singing carols.  Maybe I thought that I was supposed to sound like the kids in the Charlie Brown Christmas Special.  It’s hard to put it together now.  I do recall with vivid clarity my epic flame out as I struggled to sing falsetto to a crescendo of snickers and my own reddening face.  It went very poorly.  This was not a good time or place to try to figure out how singing worked.  The entire fourth grade was not an empathetic group. 

I was waved off the stage in disgust by the teacher.  After my failure I was relegated to “the chorus”.  This is where all the students without talent went to “participate” in the play.  After this spectacular embarrassing episode, I would not risk sounding foolish again, certainly not in front of the girls to my right and left.  I was very worried about public failure as a kid.  I just wanted to fit in with the crowd.  Standing out in any way was extremely risky.

The teacher made the chorus go boy/girl/boy/girl, either an attempt to prevent the boys from screwing around or to spread the students out that were going to try to sing "O Tannenbaum".  We had a few painful weeks of rehearsals and then performed one night in front of our parents and anyone else that had been forced to watch this debacle.  A girl named Karen leaned in after our first song and whispered "I can tell that you are just pretending to sing."  I denied it with false anger to hide my embarrassment.  The entire thing was torture.

Now all these years later I was going to willingly walk out on a stage and sing.  I still had almost no idea of what I was doing.  I had even written about half of the set.  My goal was to do this once, just to say I had.  I was amazed that I was going to get to play a show on the stage at Mothers, which to me was Carnegie Hall.  I figured it would be something cool to say I had done once.  "Oh, do you know that Greg sang in a rock band once?"  Then we'd all have a nice little laugh.

I don't remember much about that first show.  I remember carrying all the gear up the brutal staircase.  I remember being really nervous, this despite the fact that there were about six people there and I knew four of them.  I think we had eight songs.  I could effectively sing about four of them.  It must have been a painful experience for anyone in that room.  If a video existed of that show, there is no way in hell I could watch it without leaping out of my skin.  I do remember that we did it, and how good it felt afterward just the feeling of having been able to do it.  It was like becoming a member of some type of brotherhood.

All of these years later, I am still excited about being able to do it.  Playing and writing your own rock and roll songs is really fun. I have had so many great and terrible experiences just because I made myself walk out there on that dirty little stage at Mothers to try it once.  The secret of life is really just showing up and trying.  Good things can happen if you just try.  I wish I could pull that scared little fourth grade version of me over and tell him to go out there and not worry about failing.  You can be as good as any of them.  Well, as long as you don't try to sing in falsetto.  That was just a terrible idea.