I told you about some of my exploits when I was younger revolving around me making a fool of myself with regards to the perpetual matters of the heart, also known as chasing girls. The memory that started this thread had nothing to do with chasing girls although it did involve a girl and her bra...more on that later. How I ended up in that place at that time did have to do with chasing girls...let's see if this dot connecting exercise works.
Back in grade 11, my friend Humberto, an older brother of Paula...the I want to get engaged at 15 Paula I wrote about in Piri Piri, desperately wanted to be in a band. He was an amazing self taught drummer with no one to play with. I'm a music aficionado in my own way but couldn't read music or play any instruments, and my few attempts at lessons were halfhearted at best and never lasted longer then a few months. And then one day in moves a new kid on the block, Mike was his name and he was in so many ways one of the weirdest guys I have ever met, and that folks is saying something. He was Mr Heavy Metal before metal was passably cool. In the heat of the summer he had on cowboy boots, a leather jacket and obligatory white t shirt, long stringy blonde hair and a way about him that made you wonder who drew him for what comic book. While his back ground was Polish he was pure mangiacake, as the Italians would say, and he probably would have faded out of our collective had he not opened his garage door to play some guitar with his amp on 15. Like the guy that wants to get a ball hockey game going by standing in front of his house shooting tennis balls at the garage door, Mike wanted to see if there were any 'musicians' in the area...so instead of smoke signals he played Smoke on the Water, literally.
Of course we needed to see where this noise was coming from so we strolled over to say hi. I may not be a musician but I did know he played like shit. But he had a guitar and leather jacket so he was going to get attention. In what seemed like record time, Humberto had Mike over and they were jamming. It was fun to watch in Humberto's cramped bedroom, actually, when I come to think of it there is a picture of me somewhere holding Mike's guitar pretending to play and me with a cheesy moustache...I'll need to find that. Bit by bit they started to pester me to join the "band"...a band? Really? "Chicks man" was Mike's reply. I think I had a bass guitar within the week...all guys want to be in a band for the glamour, for the art and for the girls. Period. And this is the beginning of the journey to the incident with the bra.
Purchasing that bass, that I knew not how to play, was the starting point for eventually being in a band with Danny, Dom and various drummers and singers over the next few years. We would jam at my place a lot, Danny and Dom helping me with my bass lines as we covered songs by Van Halen, The Cars, Genesis, Marillion and Huey Lewis and the News and others I am sure. We played live three times in our lives...two battle of the bands at our school and the last party of the summer at a friends house before his parents got back from Italy. That party will get it's own post eventually...what a messed up night. Humberto had left the band to get married, he was older if you recall, and Mike had faded away on his own at some point. So we had a collection of school friends playing together. It was a lot of fun and eventually it led to Danny and I joining the school musical band. We were part of Chalk Board Grease, a few teachers and a few students playing variety shows and the yearly school musical. I still didn't know what the hell I was doing but I was having fun not getting chicks...nobody loves the bass player. To be quite honest I have no idea how we ended up in the production...it didn't seem like us but I'm sure somewhere along the way it had to do with a girl or two, I just don't recall it.
So now I was playing in two bands and still couldn't read any music, or it would seem tune my bass very well either....one of the variety shows we played I mangled Heart Break Hotel with an out of tune guitar. Although that may have been someone screwing around with my instrument beforehand...I learned after that it was common practice to mess around with guitars and keyboards left in the open. Which led to a somewhat disgusting episode of Dom and I walking around the school, guitars in hand to prevent de-tuning before our performance in Battle of the Bands 2.0, looking for an open bathroom to use. We found one, but the damn lights were off....so we did what any 17 year old would do...we peed on the floor. Gross.
Along the way, our band had won the second battle, which was pretty freaking cool actually. What a great night for us and our crew of friends to celebrate. I guess ageing musicians need a fall back so Danny and I had joined the back stage crew for some productions as well. Somehow I got to be a stage manager for variety shows and talent shows while also playing as a member of Chalk Board Grease. Danny worked up in the sound and lighting booth while I took turns shepherding people to their proper places and looking for ways to shock and amuse my friends and myself. A guy like me can get into all kinds of trouble back stage...a back stage that served as the alter for mass celebrations once a month mind you. Remember, Catholic high school. While I may have pretended to pray to an upside down cross for the amusement and shock of the 15 or so members of one troop that were going to be running through back stage left while Danny was yelling in my ear set that the barn doors had blown...go away son, you're bothering me and what the fuck are barn doors anyway? I did not insert the Playboy centre fold pictures in the diary that our hobo main character read during the final night of our production of "Dear Diary" It was pretty funny to watch Melissa hold it together while having to stare at a spread eagle blonde pasted over her lines...she was a trooper, which leads me to that memory in the first place. You see, Melissa is Melissa DiMarco of "Out There with Melissa DiMarco" fame. She was a year younger than me as I recall and she was always involved with school productions...a very gregarious and well, out there personality. Now I know where that memory came from, her face is plastered all over my Facebook because of TIFF.
In one of my stints as stage manager, probably my last actually, I was having a grand old time directing traffic, helping people get to where they needed to be and generally making a nuisance of myself, much like my cat would. Striking up a conversation with a girl that looked like she wanted to hurl from fear as she was about to go on stage, talking about the Leafs or the last beer blast we had...the look she gave me was pure malice before she went on stage but you know what, she found me after to say thanks for taking her mind off of screwing up her number. I wasn't doing this for altruistic reasons just to be clear, but hey I'll take the credit. In any event, I was forever looking for people to be standing in the places they needed to be standing in and letting the stage hands know what was going on...and I needed to find Melissa pronto. I knew she had just gotten off stage and I needed to get her to her next spot. I knew she had to be off stage left somewhere because my powers of deduction lead me to believe that since she exited stage left she should be in the vicinity of stage left. She was not, she was stage right...and as I threw open the door to a small room and got a nice view of her in her bra while changing, I remembered that her next entrance was from stage right....uhm...sorry about that Melissa. She was a pro, she could care less...completely shrugged it off. And that was the memory.
I don't think I would have gotten involved with stage management if I hadn't been playing in Chalk Board Grease. And Chalk Board Grease wouldn't have been on my to do list had it not been for being in Battle of the Bands 1.0...which was a direct result of joining the original band in the hopes of meeting girls. Point A....Point B. Within those two points are hundreds of stories and anecdotes, many strands woven into the tapestry of my life...there's that word again. When I take the time to actually think about how my life as evolved and contemplate how a series of choices and events have played out it is quite fascinating...at least to me it is. Life is grand.
Ciao
D
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