Monday, September 20, 2004

Happiness Is A Warm Gun

Here's a story from the musical trenches, the Beatles couldn't have come up with a better title for this one...(bang bang, shoot shoot). I was about 8 months into this hybrid band that had formed after Data, the band I came up to Alaska with originally, dissolved partially. There were two Alaskans, John and Scott, then Kiki and I. Roger, our Napoleon-like bassist/singer developed nodes singing too much Zeppelin in Ketchikan, a town in "southeast"AK. We arrived for a 10 week long gig in Kenai and his voice gave out the second night. So....the burden of singing all the songs, except four, fell on me. It was quite a challenge, but I was hellbent to get it done no matter what...this is "road mentality", persevere through whatever it is. As long as you get plenty of sleep, your voice will be alright, generally. Kiki, our beautiful keyboardist and designated "little sister" told me that she would pick a number of tunes to do to help carry the load. After repeated friendly reminders, she never came through. It began to drive a wedge between us and there was resentment on my part.

Being a babe in the woods as far as serious coke abuse, I didn't recognize the signs. She was sleeping until 7 at night, and spending considerable time with John and the members of his band partying. He was plying her with copious lines of the stuff and filling her head with visions of sugarplums, better money etc. One night he and his mates came into our club completely hammered, sloppy coked-to-the-gills drunk. Lets just say I wasn't real impressed with John's aggressive, know it all 'tude from the start. I was even less impressed when he threw a beer bottle at us and--missed! This sowed a seed that would erupt out of the shadows in the future. He just laughed it off...So Kiki was spending alot of time with John and getting along badly with Roger. They had had an affair during the beginning months of the band without my knowledge. It was a fantastic example of why one doesn't break the rule of "Don't sleep with the help"...
John ended up joining our band due to the fact that Kiki was loyal to me and wouldn't join his. Roger had decided to fly back to California and have surgery. It was a blessing and a curse,
he was not allowed to even whisper! I had heard many insane rants out of him and didn't miss those...We hit Anchorage for the first time, and our drummer was gradually phased out and sent home to California as a result of Scott, one of John's friends joining. So this band was formed, appropriately called "Lost and Found", considerably more lost than the latter...I had just lost my girlfriend in California and was heartbroken, drinking like a fish. I had called her up, heard the rustling of grocery bags and a baby's cry in the background. The child was not mine...it was so over! I had been away for 10 months and even though we agreed it was ok to see other people, I was in shock when I heard the news she was pregnant and had a new boyfriend. Yet another relationship down the tubes due to music.

So things didn't exactly start off well. This line-up gigging various towns for 6 months or so and it was a scene involving lots of booze, coke, and weed. Alcohol remained my drug of choice, but being the unapologetic hedonist I would do the others if offered. I was never much into pot, the strains up here were way to potent and it would reduce me to a lichen like state...I was increasingly resentful towards John because he'd just taken the reins of the band and was supposedly the "band leader". Communication was nil, and I made a few requests for a band meeting where everybody was sober and straight. It never happened. I heard rumors that Kiki was now "freebasing", smoking coke and her behavior was really out there. I never knew what to expect. She and John were a couple and fought 90% of the time...it was a competely hideous experience. I never knew from one week to the next whether the band would even be together, I'd be fired or who knows...
So we flew up to Nome, way up north and I had no idea what to expect. As it turned out, this was a town where the professional drinkers congregated. It was possible to be a full-blown alcoholic and barely noticed as having a problem. It was truly like the Old West. On Front Street, there were 8 bars, once after another. Two had live music. It's heritage was one of the Gold Rush of 1898, people from all over the world came to seek their fortune. Wyatt Earp was one of them. Many of the streets were still unpaved and there was usually 3 inches of mud to deal with. Kiss any nice footwear goodbye. I had my first experience of real winter-winds in the 70 mph, wind chill -50 degrees, snow blowing sideways...

We arrived in the summer, the weather was actually very nice except for the wind...lots of dust at times. The tension in the band was really getting to a fever pitch I was getting extremely tired of the constant arguing. We were doing fine as far as playing a night of cover music, lots of classic rock Steppenwolf, Zeppelin, ZZ Top, Fleetwood Mac (both old and new),
along with the current stuff; Huey Lewis, Heart, Tom Petty...No disco to speak of, thank God. But I wanted to start doing originals and we hardly had formal rehearsals at this time. We were talented enough that John and Kiki could pull their parts together, and Scott and I always spent serious time with the tapes and dissected things. As far as originals, it required some sobriety and formal practice...

So it was one Saturday night, John and Kiki were extremely coked up and drunk. He had a tendency to get really mouthy and obnoxious (surprise...ha ha!). I went to an after hours party with some friends and started drinking heavily. Our host had some lines. Then many more. I was getting more and more agitated and had it in my fucked up head that I was going to beat the living hell out of John and get this overwith. I think our host was getting a kick out of this and kept stuffing our noses with the insidious stuff. And as anyone who's experienced the high, 7 AM came and went. We were still awake. I may have slept some, but left his house in mid afternoon. I then hit the bars, continuing to "talk shit" and apparently some of this got around to John. It was Sunday jam night and I poured myself into the bar. I'm not particulary proud of this, but I did know that my buddy Rob could play the night if I was too drunk to play. This was a first for me. I plugged in and it was obvious I was too inebriated to get through it. I was moving in and out of moods at this point, since the coke had worn off I was considerably more drunk...not pretty. I repaired to the bar. I watched them play a few tunes and then the rage came back again. I'd been wanting to do this for ages...remember the beer bottle he threw at us in Kenai? Well, I intentionally skated a bottle across the dance floor in front of them and flipped the double "birds" ( aka I love you sign in Borneo!) yelling at the top of my lungs to John "you suck!". How poetic, eh? Unfortunately, Scott, Kiki and Rob all thought I meant them as well. It took a few years to clear this up...brother! So "partyboy/Mr. assassin" (me) went next door to the band house and passed out....slept like a baby...

Then I hear this raving voice from downstairs, it's John. "Hey asshole, you want to fight? "Come on down bitch" or something to that effect. Lets just say I was very bleary at this point and wasn't thinking clearly. For some damn reason I went downstairs. John is more wrecked than I've ever seen him waving a GUN around...a LOADED gun around! "You want some of this asshole?" he asked. My demeanor softened considerably. Fortunately Rob was standing in the area between us. I have no recollection of what transpired conversationally after this really. John points his gun towards the ceiling and fires a shot!!! I'm now a little frightened...I'm whispering to Rob "do whatever you have to do, can you get him upstairs or out of this room?" John was still waving the .22 around and was really agitated, just glaring viciously at me. He was standing in front of the only door out of the place. I thought to myself, I'm going to get shot while in a lame Top 40 band? (As if a touring, recording act would be better? Now that's logical!)
I'm wondering if he'd hit anything or ANYONE (Kiki and Scott) were upstairs. Rob, bless his heart, even though he still owes me over 300 bucks, somehow managed to talk him down some and turned him away from me. I still have no recollection of how in the hell I got out of that house-but I managed to grab a few beers out of the fridge on the way out! Simply unbelieveable, well, alcoholics have priorities. Sure, add more risk to getting shot for 3 Budweisers...I was shaking as I hightailed it out of there to basically hide on the seawall all night until he'd passed out and/or sobered up. We managed to play out the last week without any problems, I quit/was fired depending on who you talk to. The most ridiculous thing about the adventure? Guess what he hit with the shot through the ceiling? His bass guitar case!!!!!!!!! (ha ha ha ha.....) Missed the actual bass though....just desserts for assholes. And I managed to complete revenge on the all important beer bottle throwing incident. Oh to be young and dumb. In retrospect I'm glad that no one died that night. Years later, he came into a gig Scott and I were playing with Kiki and apologized. What a long weird, trip indeed...

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