Jeannie, you owe me an album. Scott, I’ll never be as bald as you, no matter how much hair I lose. Pete, I gotta say, the Harley fits you like a glove. And Dave, well, I see you all the time.
That’s my old band. (Or “the band you used to be in”, as my hypercorrect brother insists on reminding me, over and over and over again.) We all got together for dinner this past week. Well, not actually all of us; Wayne, the trombonist, vanished after declaring bankruptcy and stiffing me on a loan; Eric, the sax player, moved to NYC and melted into the avant garde something scene; and both of our trumpet players (sequentially, not in parallel) may or may not be on the same planet as we are. But the rest of us are all still here.
It’s hard to believe it’s been twenty years since Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. 1987. I answered an ad in the Phoenix (ah, those were the days: “Retro pop-metal band seeks bazouki player. Influences include Motorhead and The Loving Spoonful. Must have car. No posers.”), and Pete picked me up at the Red Line stop in Southie and drove me to our practice space in an abandoned warehouse. It took me a year to decide whether I was staying – I’m pretty sure this is how Scott lost his hair. Dave came along a few months later; Jeannie, a few years later, after we decided that no, we really can’t sing.
So what’s everybody doing now? Well, Dave is my percussionist (“the percussionist you play with”, says my brother), as well as the drummer for The Hyphens. Jeannie just recorded an album. Pete does local side man gigs for touring musicians, cruise ships – recently had the chance to back up some fancy folks at the Montreal Jazz Fest. And me, well, presumably you know all about that.
What about Scott, you say? Scott, the drill sergeant? Scott, the guy who was going to die with a bass in his hands? Not playing. Hasn’t played in years. Happily married, lovely daughter, same outrageous, engaging personality. But he’s done, apparently. I think if you had told him that 20 years later, I’d be a solo performer and he’d be a dad, he would have laughed you out of the room.
We don’t see each other nearly enough. It’s a lot like my reunion with my songwriting buddies in England. The faces really don’t seem like they’ve changed, and neither does the energy – we really could still be in that giant hole of a rehearsal space in Southie, with the lightless bathroom and no heat, arguing again about whether we really need background vocals in the chorus and trying to figure out how to get Scott to sing a different harmony line than the one he’s sunk his teeth into like a guard dog.
But that was then. Jeannie likes to reminisce, and it kind of sets my teeth on edge (sorry, Jeannie) – we already did that stuff. Time for more, different stuff.
Rock’n’roll.