By Gray Bushnell
Well, i started playing guitar when i was like 11, on an acoustic, but i wanted to play with an electric. I didn't have one, but i intended on getting one when i had the money. Well, in 6th grade i got together with charly, and I played my friends Memphis guitar, with a hot cabs amp, that thing sucked worse than anything i've ever seen. Anyways, we got together for a little show our class was putting together. We did an act playing happy birthday, and then i solo'd and play twinkle twinkle little star in front of the whole skool, it was pretty stupid.
A year later, there was a school talent show, and we were'nt in it cuase we didn't even know we were a band. But there was a band called cafe 405 that my brother was in that played there, that really inspired me. I bought my friend's crappy memphis, and his amp and told charly that we are gonna be in the next talent show and he said ok cool. So that was our big goal, to find a drummer, and get in the next talent show. Well, we asked Ryan to be in our band, and he said yeah sure, so we all went in my garage and practiced in mid-march.
On June 20th there was another Talent show. I used my brother's Fernandez guitar, and some dude's amp that i didn't know. Ryan used the drummer of cafe 405's band's Y amaha set, and Charly used his fender precision, and his 4 1/2 foot fender amp.We practiced, and practiced and practiced, and finally we were in it! We played a song called Breed, by Nirvana. It was a very good success! We were happy, and it was cool.
So later, we had been practicing some, We had played a couple shows at party's and stuff, it was the beginning of 8th grade. I saw a banner on the wall that said TALENT SHOW. I mean, what's with this skool and talent shows?! So we all signed up, and about 2 months before it, Ryan calls me and says, i quit the band. I was like uhhh, ok then, and he hung up. I was seriously PISSED OFF. The talent show was in December So me and charly played a duo in the Talent Show and people acually thought it was cool! We played Brain Stew by Green Day, and Louie Louie by well, the kinsons, but we spiced it up.
So it was pretty cool, we played a nice Talent Show. But right before the talent show a cool guy who was kinda a jock asked if he could be in it, I thought he had potensial. So i said yeah, and charly said whatever, cuase we really needed one. We have really punked him up since then. He had never played a trap set in his life. His dad bought him some sunlite drums for christmas, and we practiced. IT WAS FRUSTERATING having someone who never played the drums try to keep a beat, but by 5 months we could play good. I wrote some pretty cool songs too while he has been with us.
Anyways, there was another end of school year talent show packed with boring acts where teachers were singing with students, and had like 3 acts each, it was so screwed up. So we easily got into it, and everyone liked us having a drummer, and were interested in us. So we were at the Talent show, skool got out at 2:40, and it was 2:34 and we were the last act! I was so up tight at pissed off cuase so many people got to do 2 different acts, and a play was like 20 minutes long. The teacher in charge, was really up tight too, and told us she's sorry if we didn't get to play, but we said screw it, and got up with like 4 minutes left.
We played Smells like teen spirit by Nirvana. I hadn't even tuned with charly yet, and so we just started to play, i jumped around, and people were yellin and stuff. It was cool, but then where i started singing, my guitar was WAY out of tune. I was yet pissed off again, and so i said screw it again, and tuned it on stage, while my band was playing the background music, i finally got it tuned, but everytime i jumped it went out of tune. My voice was screwed up cuase i was kinda nervous, and i was thinking about my guitar mostely. So my singing was crappy, but we played pretty good. During the solo it sounded reallllllly good.
I was proud of matt, he did a really good job, and didn't mess up under pressure. From there we played at the bonfire, it was rad. We played louie louie, drink drank punk, anarchy, and nothing. it was really fun and we did good. Matt also did a great job playing.
After this we had to kick matt out, due to his lack or practicing, and he was really starting to be a jock, and play baseball. He is a cool guy, but we didn't really need him in our band, so we let him go do his sports.
Then we were out of a drummer, and were in a pit of dispair. We tried to get ryan back in our band, but that didn't really work out. So we didn't know what to do. We heard about the battle of the bands coming up in march, and we were gettin scared, until Chris Mintiens, from cafe405, asked if he could play with us for it. Of course, we said yeah! So we've been practicing regularly, and it is really fun playing with an extremely good drummer. And that's about it until now, we are trying to get money to record. send us some, or else.
~Gray