Part V: New Beginnings
Chapter Thirty-Four
After I moved to Charlottesville in April of 1996, I needed some new musical friends. Danny knew this guy named Andy, who was a guitarist. He was a very intense and hyper kind of person, with a voice like Beavis and a laugh that was no different. He was an okay guitar player, and he had lots of equipment.
There was also a drummer named Aaron that came into the picture. We all got together in August, four months after I moved.
Kelly and I were married on her 30th birthday on July 27.
Chapter Thirty-Five
August of 1996 marked my musical beginnings in Charlottesville. Danny continued with the bass guitar, and I was on guitar finally. Andy played guitar, and Aaron was the drummer. We jammed for the first time in a studio that was being built and worked on. We couldn’t find any songs we all knew though. So we just picked a few chords and ran with them to see what happened.
The night before this jam, I had a dream that my Dad was in a heavy metal band. We were all in the kitchen of the old house back home, and my Mom, who had died in March, was there too. He had a T-shirt on that had a review of his band’s album on the back. The only thing I remember being able to read was the line “…’Alien’ is a song about self-awareness…”
Aaron and I finally got to jam one-on-one for a little bit that day while the others were hanging out outside. I started playing this riff that came from out of the blue, and we played it through like it already existed and we were just practicing it. It basically wrote itself, and when we finished I told him ‘This one is called ‘Alien’.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
We decided to find another place to play when the owner decided that he was going to charge about $100 per month for us to use the studio. We rented a self-storage unit for about $40, and played there for awhile. Most of the songs at first were Danny’s. He was into the whole tragic death of love kind of thing, kind of Goth stuff and immortality, which I never really bought into. The music was decent. Driving riffs and cool changes, but they all kind of sounded the same. Plus, I hated the lyrics.
I had also written some new songs that summer, and they mostly dealt with the self. “Mankind” was sort of along the lines of “Alien”, meaning it was also about self-awareness and society’s hatred of individuality.
There was also “Parental Guidance” which has never seen the light of day in a full band. I hope to change that someday, though. It was the first song I wrote about my parents and what I learned from my experiences with them, especially since Mom’s death.
Another song was called “Mind On The Run”, which was basically about this guy who is a bad-ass, doesn’t care about anyone but himself, then wonders why everyone hates him and will not help him. The protagonist of the song was modeled after Danny, but he didn’t know it at the time.
There was also “Senile”, which was about forty seconds long and full of energy. Danny helped inspire the song one day by saying “I think I’m losin’ my fuckin’ mind!” and then he said, “I’m goin’ senile!” That was basically all the words to it, besides “Can’t remember shit”. It was probably the most fun to play.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
After having been in the storage unit for about three months, we were evicted. Danny and I had raced out of there one day, going a little too fast for the owner’s taste. He put a note up on the door saying that if it happened again, we were out of there. I never did it again, but Danny did.
On top of that, Danny and Andy just couldn’t seem to get along for more than a half-hour at a time. Each one thought the other was an asshole. Despite the differences, we continued on, and moved the band into the basement of Andy’s house. We still needed a name, because we had never picked one. We ended up settling on Candelabra. I don’t remember how or why, but it was a name.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Things continued to worsen between Danny and Andy. Danny was always threatening to shove Andy’s guitar up his ass, and Andy was threatening to kick him out. It put a massive strain on the group, because we couldn’t go through a song without bickering between the two. It came to a head in December, I think it was. Andy showed up at our door to talk to us about Danny. They had been out at a bar and Danny wanted Andy to buy his drinks. Andy’s nice but he’s not the type of guy to let someone mooch off of him. Danny was always broke because he wouldn’t work. Andy bought Danny a beer and told him that was all he was buying for him. Danny got pissed off and invited him outside and kicked his ass. So Andy left him there and came to us.
Later, after he had left, Danny came home and told us what happened. Except it was his side of it, and that it was all Andy’s fault for being an asshole. He wanted to know if I wanted to kick Andy out and we continue without him. I suggested we continue, but without Danny. He was out.
Andy seemed a lot happier that he didn’t have to fear persecution anymore. He knew a guy named Cass who played guitar, so we brought him in to jam. I moved to bass. We worked for a little while, but we all had jobs that interfered with our practice. Nobody was off at the same time. So we just kinda dissolved.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Candelabra’s flames burned out by January of 1997. Nobody had the time or the ambition to make it work. Danny moved out of the apartment in February and Kelly and I began trying to live like a normal couple for once. I have seen Andy only a couple times since then, but it was not the last time Aaron and I crossed paths. We would play together again almost a year and a half later.
To Part VI
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