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Getting The Band Back Together (Sort Of)

As some of you know, I sang in a band called Skeptic Slang in the early 1990s. I’ve also been playing guitar religiously for the past year. A former bandmate has decided to start playing again as well, which can mean only one thing: The band is back together.

Mood music:

Well, sort of.

We don’t plan to go in a studio and record an album, or line up a bunch of gigs. This will be something more laid back: Jamming in each others’ living rooms, writing songs and recording them on my laptop recording software. We’ll upload MP3s to Soundcloud, where you’ll be able to hear them.

Though I sang with these guys last time, I’ll just be playing guitar now, mostly holding down the rhythm while the other guys — Chris Casey and Elias Andrinopoulos — do the fancier melodies and lead.

Some have suggested we make more ambitious plans. After all, we have plenty of friends with kids and busy careers who still manage to put out CDs and gig on a regular basis. A good example of that: My friends in the band Pop Gun (see my review of their new album “American Soul” here). I don’t want to speak for the other guys, but my schedule is way too crazy for that — at least at this point in time.

My overriding need in doing this is simple. I have music in me and a good friend told me last year that no one should go to the grave with their music still inside them. My playing is still amateur, but I’ve learned several songs — The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bell’s, Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” etc. — and I’ve come up with a whole bunch of original riffs. I say original with half a grin, because no riff is truly original. We’re always drawing off our influences.

I regularly use mood music in my blog posts. I figure why not have some of my own music to use as well?

Above all, we want to have fun and burn off steam. I can picture us rotating to each other’s living rooms, playing while our kids roughhouse in the back ground and our wives critique our work. It seems like some good family fun to me.

Stay tuned to hear what happens next.

Below: The younger, thinner and long-haired version of Skeptic Slang

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Time to Make Music Again

When asked what I want for my birthday, I usually say nothing. I don’t want people spending money on me, and I don’t want to be greedy. But this time, with my 42nd birthday only days away, I asked the family for something specific: an acoustic-electric guitar.

Mood music:

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I used to play guitar, though I was never very good at it. When I had a band and was writing music, I sang and wrote lyrics. I couldn’t really sing, mind you, but I could write lyrics, and that’s all that mattered. With the guitar, I’d stand in the middle of the basement in the old house in Revere and make noise — out of tune, no attention whatsoever to proper technique. I just made sounds that spoke to what I was feeling. I had an Ibanez strat model Sean Marley gave me one Christmas. Desperate for money to pay bills one year, I sold it. That remains one of the biggest regrets of my life.

So here I am, 20 years later, about to turn 42, and I want to play again. This time I want to learn how to play the instrument properly and write music that goes with the written words I hammer out daily.

There are several reasons the desire has returned. The biggest is that one day a few months ago, my therapist told me that no man should die with his music still inside of him. That line hit me more than anything he’s said to me in the last year, because unlike his suggestions that I quit coffee and do yoga every morning, something deep within me knew he was right on this one.

Though I stopped being in a band and singing in the mid-1990s, my passion for music has never abated. I write a lot about my love of metal music, but I like a lot of folk, too. That’s Erin’s influence for sure. On our wedding anniversary three years ago, we went to the Newport Folks Festival, and I walked away as a fan of the Avett Brothers, The Decemberists and Gillian Welch. It was one of those life-changing days.

I also approach the posts in this blog like songs. They’re meant to be timeless and stike an emotional chord. I put older posts on my Facebook and Twitter streams every day because to me it’s kind of like being a DJ. I’m playing a collection of songs repeatedly, like any good DJ does.

I also think making music would be another effective tool to fight my addictive behavior. If a guitar were lying around, there are many days where I’d pick it up instead of my laptop.

Call it a midlife crisis urge, if you will. To me, it’s just part of my never-ending push to become a better man than I am now.