I put a lot of passion and sweat into my basketball. Other than that, I felt kinda lost at school, though I’m not sure why. It wasn’t the rigor of the courses because my terrible grades were mostly due to inattention. The truth is that I could have done most of the work without batting an eye, but I hated the shit and did only enough to continue playing. Some of it was that I didn’t have a girlfriend (I have no idea what I’d have done with one if any poor girl had been stupid enough to have me), and I’m not really sure what the rest of it was.
Some of my distress was because my best friend, Brillo, and I were no longer in the same homeroom, so a lot of the support for my anarchy had been removed. That didn’t stop us. Brillo was a teammate in basketball, and a fellow music lover. We loved most of the same things (and girls) from the year before, so the authorities really couldn’t keep a lid on that pot. We spread our madness as often as we could.
As basketball season wound down, Brillo and I began to explore the possibility of joining forces in a musical venture. Brillo already had a band of sorts in that he and another of my classmates, Eric Wolf (mostly not his real name), had been singing and playing guitars accompanied by a device called a Rhythm Master, which produced a variety of thin, tinny beats. Brillo and Eric had played a couple of parties, but I had not witnessed them at work and play. In fact, I only vaguely remember them playing a command performance for me in Brillo’s basement, and do not remember a single title from their playlist. I was, however, impressed enough to say that I was in if they wanted to put together a band.
Brillo had been playing a rather ragged Epiphone guitar for awhile, but he got a new Gretsch Country Gentleman and the same Toby amp that The Heroes had owned. Eric, the brother of The Hero’s lead guitarist, got a 12 string guitar for Christmas. One of Brillo’s neighbors, Crazy Crowbar, a fan of The Beatles, bought a Hofner bass and a mismatched Supra amp and Baldwin cabinet. A friend of ours from school, the same guy who got me into Cub Scouts, and with whom I participated in my first jam, who owned a set of drums, came on as the drummer. Brillo’s family provided a spare section of their basement as practice space and we were off.
It’s difficult for me to remember most of the early practices. Our routine was that we met at Brillo’s after school and played basketball (part of Brillo’s driveway served as a court, with goal attached to the front porch roof) until everyone showed up. The practice got cranked up around 4:15 or so. After an hour or more Brillo’s family had dinner, and the lot of us usually ate there. That must have cost a bundle. After dinner we played for an hour or so before everyone went home.
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