And that's exactly how me mummy pronounces it. She can roll the R, but she's a stubborn lovely focking Geordie at heart.
Cue some smartass posting the Lady Gaga gif
But I digress,
Scene Five: Frontman Tragedy Two Morons and Two Morons.
We made it to 1997, folks, and the view ain't pretty.
I was completely out of my personal hard rock / heavy metalish phase by then. Snobby posh choice? Like fock. The reason was sad'n'simple: hard rock and heavy metal WERE out of their hard rock / heavy metalish phases.
I'm sparing you the gory details, but the scene was comparable to Waterloo's battlefield the morning after the clash. The old glories were DONE, leaving the stage to bland palliatives as the Brit Poppers, passing shoes too big to fill to impostors as Pantera, and don't even get me started on the most overrated band in rock history. Hint: it starts with radio and rhymes with dickhead.
As five years before, I was alone with Dream Theater, praying for a new release that seemed to never come. Correction, I wasn't actually alone. I had befriended a musical moron like me, a partner in crime sharing too many ambitious dreams and sucky bands.
Enter P, drummer extraordinaire, graduated near TAC (ironically as Mangini's student) and currently living the jazzman life in the Big Apple. But long before that he was my friend, my DM, and my drummer in my 10 Labors of Young Frontman Still Undecided Between Guitar And Vocals Hence Focking Up Both Indiscipline, transpired between Baby Derek and the album we will call Two Morons. (C'mon, what else are they supposed to be?)
1. Santana Tribute. Guest stars: 60 years old church organist, Girlfriend#1 and P's Girlfriend improvised background wailers and arseshakers, random week-to-week bassist. Mild catastrophe, mainly because you don't mix an old church organist with two young arseshakers.
2. Jethro Tull Tribute. Guest stars: flutist and piano man, my conservatory buddies. Random vagrant on acoustic, repented punk rocker on bass. Utter tragedy, mainly because you don't mix young snotty classical students with, um, anyone really. The following statement was uttered during rehearsals: I'm not asking for the same tempo. I'm not even asking for the same tonality, but may I ask we play the same focking song?
3. Toto Tribute. Guest stars: same piano man surviving fisticuffs, jazzhead bassman (a keeper), the return of the arse shaking girlfriends. Abortion. Never launched because everybody focking despised Toto but me. The savages.
4. Original Songs Band. Same line-up as above. I will never talk about anything related to that project. Too much shame, plagiarism, and shame. WE HAD TO STICK WITH TOTO! Sorry, better now.
5. Deep Purple Tribute. Guest stars: a couple of 50 years olds who played competently I must admit Purple tunes in their youth. Nuclear winter. Everything went bananas because I wouldn't relinquish both guitar AND vocals duties. A bit of a cunt, wasn't I?
6. Generic Pub Rock Cover Band. Guest stars: fock me if I remember. Boring as hell. How many times you can play Mississippi Queen before losing your shite and starting glassing drunks all around you? Fun fact: during a gig, while reading at the mic the mandatory note about cars parked wrong people needed to move (it actually happened back then), I performed this beauty: ... A white Mazda plated
Oh crap, it's mine! Be right back ...
7. Videogames OST Band. Guest star: same piano man on keyboards, same jazzman bassman. You are reading that well, and I don't have words to justify myself. It seemed a nice idea.
8. Vai/Satriani Tentative Tribute. Let's just say P could, I couldn't. Fock.
9. Dire Straits Tribute. Guest stars: same as Toto Band plus a sax man from a folk dance ensemble and a very improvised pedal steel guitarist. Unadulterated shite. I played it nice, but how can you sing Mark at 18 years without being focking ludicrous?
10. Jesus Christ Superstar Project. Guest stars: every focking buddy from conservatory willing to accept bribes. Never actually realised, but life altering nonetheless. We spent a couple months arranging and memorising the thing musically, then it came the moment to bring in the role singers (I was keeping out of that, too busy arranging and conducting while playing). We played the whole score before the singers and I istinctively began to sing the whole focking shebang. Every line, every role, every note.
At the end everybody was looking me as you may look a baboon successfully knitting a scarf. In that single moment I took a life decision, but we'll talk about that in the next chapter.
In such turmoil and exhilarating mixture of frustration and anticipation, the Big Banging Bro shout out to the focker, he's gonna be 48 in a month and I will get to see him bought me the Two Morons. (C'mon, what else the two of us are supposed to be?)
Coming Next: Falling into Infinity Running Diary (Great Album until the Internet came up)
Topic: Scenes From My Memory v. Honor Thy Father (Read 136910 times)
