 My first exposure to performing in public came when I was in the 10th grade. I’d signed up for a school talent show. I performed a version of The Cure’s, Pictures Of You on a piano with a female vocalist. After one of the rehearsals, I was approached by another student who liked my piano playing. He explained to me that his father owned a television commercial production company and that he had access to a professional music studio and so he asked me if I would I like to come over and play with it. I was pretty excited about it, so I went to check it out. Over the next 6 months or so, he and I composed songs, and with the help of his father, we produced music that was used in many of his father’s television commercial projects. Most of the music was cheesy synthesizer polyphonic nonsense, but it was an awesome experience to be working in a studio by age 15.
It was during my junior year of High School that my family moved to Denton, Texas. The city of Denton has an eclectic bohemian-like music scene. The Fry Street Fair was hosted by one of the local fraternities and was a platform for the success of Eddie Brickell and the New Bohemians back in the late ‘80’s. Of course, they were just known as ‘The New Bohemians’ back then. When they got their record deal, and music executives gave her name top billing, it was a source of controversy for the folks in the Denton music scene, but their success had given other bands in Denton inspiration that they might be ‘discovered’. It was during this time that I became involved with a talented guitarist who was really into Led Zeppelin. He convinced me to get a bass guitar. I purchased a 1983 Fender Squire Bullet Bass. A friend of his played the drums and we became an official garage band. I started learning the bass lines to older progressive‘70’s songs from groups like Yes, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Rush, Cream, Pink Floyd. My band mate shunned the ‘Alternative’ rock groups that were popular at the time, leaning toward a traditional ‘rock’ sound. But, I do credit him as the person who convinced me to pick up the bass guitar in the first place.
There were a number of small clubs in Denton that would let ‘garage bands’ perform on the weekdays. We couldn’t play on the weekends. That was reserved for the money-making bands. Our guitarist would love to play these 15 minute guitar solos which got on my nerves after a while, which is probably one of the reasons why I tend to avoid guitar solos in my music today. I’m not exactly a virtuoso lead guitarist either. One day, I was approached by the guitarist from another band. They needed a bass player. He was involved with one of the ‘weekend’ bands, so there was more money involved, and I jumped at the chance of playing with them. I auditioned and we started playing live gigs after a couple of weeks of practicing with them. We covered much of the alternative rock stuff that was popular at the time. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins, Jane’s Addition, etc.
After High School, The drummer and I became roommates. We rented a couple of rooms in an old turn of the century carriage house which was nicknamed ‘The Gone House’, after a popular Dallas Band, The Gone Men, because they used to practice there before we moved in. Our apartment was basically a two story barn that used to house the carriages. We turned the downstairs into our band practicing studio and the upstairs had our bedrooms. We developed a small following of groupies playing in the small Denton clubs. Many parties were hosted from The Gone House. At one such party, we created flyers and posted them around campus. We wanted to have the biggest house party Denton had ever seen. We played two sets on the front porch. The first set was performed around 9:00 and we had a manageable crowd of approximately 200 people all having a pretty good time. By the time we’d started our second set the crowd had grown to probably 600 people and it was beginning to get out of control. Folks were slam dancing, throwing beer bottles at each other, starting fights, rushing the front porch. At one point, some drunk had stumbled into me and I swung the neck of my bass guitar at him and he stumbled back into the crowd. Someone else had climbed onto the overhang of the porch above the band and had fallen from the roof and was knocked unconscious. At that point, we ended our set. Someone had called the police. An ambulance arrived, and the crowd dissipated. The party was over. We moved our equipment into the carriage barn, which was behind the main house and avoided the police and ended up crashing over at the guitarist’s girlfriend’s house. The next morning the landlord of the property came over because he’d heard about the event. He was pretty upset because of all the damage that had been done. Cigarette burns were all over the carpet in the foyer, the toilets were all stopped up, a few windows were shattered, beer bottles and cans were everywhere. There were a few places where the drywall had been kicked in. When we went back to our apartment behind The Gone House, we’d discovered that all of our musical equipment was gone. At first we thought it was stolen. We shortly found out that the landlord had confiscated our equipment with the expectation that we would pay for the damage done to his property. The guitarist and I managed to get our equipment back by performing various sundry odd jobs for the landlord. We also helped to repair a lot of the damage done to The Gone House. The drummer had owed the landlord three months of back rent. I wasn’t aware that he hadn’t been paying his rent until then. The carriage barn was actually two units. I was paying for the downstairs studio and he was supposed to be paying for the unit upstairs. So, the drummer had a more difficult time getting his kit back from the landlord. Without a drummer the band had disintegrated.
Another guitarist and I formed a different band with a different drummer and with another guy who was a lead vocalist/songwriter. We did a number of covers, but we attempted to write our own material as well. The vocalist was really into Bauhaus, Love & Rockets, Tones On Tale, The Bolshoi, Gene Loves Jezebel, Killing Joke, and our original music reflected that. We quickly developed a following of groupies, who would also tagalong to our Dallas gigs. The vocalist would dress totally in black, while the guitarist, drummer and I would perform shirtless, which in my opinion was part of our appeal. The vocalist was a moody S.O.B. and wanted to give the band a more sophisticated look. The drummer and I fought it because we enjoyed the reactions of our female fans during our stage antics. It created some tension in the band dynamics. It was also around this time that I started to introduce my own original material to the band. The guitarist and drummer liked my ideas, but the vocalist hated the idea of someone else writing the lyrics. I suggested that he use my melody lines and create his own lyrics, if he didn’t like my lyrics. It just created more tension in the band, so I basically kept my material to myself for a while. We performed for a little over two years together until the boyfriend of the vocalist was diagnosed with AIDS which completely shattered our vocalist and he quit the band. After the vocalist quit, the guitarist and I tried to continue the band with ourselves trading off on vocals. It worked for a bit, but eventually the guitarist decided that he was going to get married and the band slowly died.
I kind of took a break from gigging for a year, and then a friend told me about a Dallas band that needed a bass player and suggested that I get in contact with them. They were called Dorian Grey, and they were a relatively successful act in Dallas and Austin. They performed all original tunes and their sound might be described as post-Nirvana danceable grunge. I auditioned and played with them for about a year and a half, but I never really fit in with them socially very well. The vocalist was into LSD and Ecstasy. The drummer was a speed freak. The guitarist was a pothead. I was starting to become an alcoholic. It was fun for a bit, and I fell into that loony bin for a while, but I had to break free of it after spending some time in a jail cell. It scared me enough to get out of the Dallas music scene altogether. I haven’t played live since.
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