Which bag, you say? Well, the one I couldn’t sing my way out of when I was in my band, of course.
Now, this is incredibly solipsistic of me – my band, at its peak, had 8 people in it, and I barely touched a microphone, and with good reason. But I’ve been listening to our old tapes, and I’m sticking out like a sore, well, bag.
See, our bass player, Scott, called me a while back and told me that he and his wife are downsizing and he needed to get rid of a bunch of old Agent 13 stuff (that was the band) – either I took it or it went in the dumpster. So, naturally, I dashed up to his home and rescued these precious artifacts. And some of them are pretty odd. Remember 2-inch reel-to-reel tape, for 24-track analog studio recording? Nope, didn’t think you did. Now I’ve got three of these reels, from our three demos, and I was going to throw them out, but my brother, the jazz bass player, tells me that they’re worth real money because nobody makes 2-inch tape anymore. But I digress.
Agent 13 existed for about six years. The core of the band was the rhythm section – me on keys and a bit of rhythm guitar, our drummer Dave (who still plays with me), Scott, our bassist, and our guitarist, Pete. In the beginning we had Jimmy the sax player, and eventually he left and we realized we needed a real singer and we found Jeannie, and then we realized we needed a full horn section and got Eric, Wayne and Rich. And eventually Rich flaked and we replaced him with James, and then Eric decided he wasn’t having fun anymore and quit, and then Dave decided that he wasn’t having fun anymore and quit, and then Scott and I blew up the rest of it, and here we are, 30 (gulp) years later, with a bunch of tapes and our golden memories.
After Jeannie and the horn section joined, we were mostly a ska band, with a bit of new wave and rock and roll. But before them, we were a little bit of everything: new wave, ska, blues, loud pop, and heaven knows what else. The rule in that early period seemed to be, if you wrote the song, you sang it, and so there are these tapes – which I’ve put up on Bandcamp, because I’m a glutton for punishment – of me, singing my heart out.
Well, some internal organ, certainly.
When I listen to this stuff, I think of my singing teacher, Ruth Harcovitz, and how it might be played over and over to her in some Siberian detention camp, if the guards are feeling particularly malevolent that day. You name it, I’m doing it wrong. Poor enunciation? Check. Pitch approximation? Check. Timbre that sound like it’s deep underwater? Check, check, check. And the sad thing is, some of this stuff is really good. I wrote a song called “You Go Your Way, I Go Mine”, which is a pure 1990’s loud pop song, hokey and clever and in your face, and the band is having an absolute blast, and there I am, singing the lead like a walrus with a missing tusk.
Such a long time ago that was. I had hair and no voice; now, better voice, worse hair.
In any case. We were a good band, sometimes a great band, an enormous lot of fun, and I can’t think of a batch of people I’d rather run a deficit of $3K a year with, just for the privilege of performing. Check us out at https://agent13-boston.bandcamp.com, and admire my hair. Because the voice ain’t anything to write home about.