Monday, March 6, 2006
I'm Floyd, I Blow Bass

Recently, my friend Dan called me and asked me if I could cover bass for his band, Rockmachine.  I replied that I had never attempted to play bass, and reminded him of the fact that I couldn’t actually play guitar, so the question of whether or not those skills are interchangeable was moot. He said that was perfect. 

Rockmachine has been a “joke-band” project of his for several years in which he gets his musician friends to play instruments that they don’t really know how to play.  The key difference between the previous Rockmachine members and me is that they are actually musicians, while I am someone who enjoys playing the first few power chords of Iron Man on my cheesy red guitar.  If others are in the room whilst I rock out, my virtuosity is usually met with disdainful winces.  What the heck though, right?  It’d just be goofing around with Dan and his friend Jen.  I’d never hung out with her before and she seemed really cool. They had been recording stuff for his other band recently, and I assumed that he just wanted to record some Rockmachine songs as well. I’d go have fun at a couple of practice sessions and then smile knowingly and say “I told you so,” when they realized that I had no actual musical ability and kicked me out in favor of someone else.  I’m an adult.  I can deal with a little rejection; besides, the whole being in a band thing seems to be mostly about hanging out and drinking beer, and I’m pretty accomplished with a 12 oz bottle, if not with a 12 string.

I grabbed the dusty no name bass that years ago, someone had given to Ani, and I headed to Zac’s house, the home of The Wax Models (and Rockmachine’s) basement practice space.  Hip kids with British accents were hangin’ out upstairs (Zac’s such a rockstar), but Dan and I descended to set up and wait for Jen.  Jen is a great bass and guitar player, but um… she was going to play drums.  Go figure. 

I was a little nervous, but that slowly transformed into sheer panic and genuine anger as Dan slowly revealed to me that this practice was actually not just to goof around and possibly record on his computer someday, but, instead, was for a live show that was coming up in a week. A very crowded show... Rockmachine would open for a couple other bands from L. A.  Zac was promoting it pretty hard.  Zac is a Myspace monster.

Oh yeah, Dan had forgot to mention until half way through the practice that we also had to wear fuzzy bunny suits onstage… in front of lots of people.  I wasn’t supposed to worry about it however, because we might be able to get together and practice once more before the show. 

I was panicked, and I couldn’t concentrate.  I was acutely aware of the fact that I was spending the entire practice worrying about standing in a bunny suit on stage in front of a drunken crowd when I should have been concentrating on learning the songs.  They weren’t what anyone (even me) would call complicated, but it still would be a good idea to figure them out if I was going to play them.

Our set was to consist of six songs with a total of six chords between them.  Three songs were Dan originals about three different red-haired girls (or maybe the same one, it's kind of hard to tell) and their respective dancing ability. These strange fun pop songs, inspired by the Casiotone-esque rock beat of the Yamaha Rockmachine, were to be followed by the bubblegum pop trifecta of Chewy Chewy, Sugar Sugar, and Yummy Yummy Yummy-I’ve Got Love in My Tummy. Um... yeah. I know. Dan loves those songs. What can you say to that?

Long story a little less long: We did practice one more time.  I did sort of figure out the songs.  Dan called me before the show and asked if I had crapped my pants or puked yet.  Apparently that’s a common effect of the pre-show jitters, and as a matter of fact, my stomach was noticeably disturbed.  We set up and did sound checks as the bar filled to capacity.  The people there didn’t seem like the kind of geeky pop lovin’ indie-kid crowd I had expected, but instead consisted of 40 year old Sun Valley tweakers smoking crank in the corner and frat guys with bro-hawks crowding the stage.  We nervously shuffled out to the the parking lot and donned fuzzy brightly colored bunny suits and watched Dan drink corn syrup based fake blood.  He looked kind of sick when he told us that the taste was  “um… not good…”

We stormed in and started to play.  It started kind of rough, we missed some cues and had to stop and adjust the tempo on the first song.  “Chewy Chewy Chewy Chewy…”  We moved into the second song and Dan kept drinking and drooling the fake blood.  Apparently he was spitting it directly into his guitar’s pickups, because they kept shorting out.  I lost the melody (which is ridiculous because there were only three chords per song with three root notes for me to follow) and the crowd stared at us with confused disbelief.  We tried several times to get it back together, but Dan’s guitar wasn’t playing at all.  After that… well, I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.  Dan is a rock star. A ROCKMACHINE star.

The band that followed us was a straight-forward edgy neopunk band that appeased the disappointed and confused tweakers and fratboys who didn’t know how to process the fuzzy bunnies that bled into their instruments and botched “Sugar Sugar”.  Then came Dragonfire.   Ahhh Dragonfire.  I don’t know how to describe them, except to say that there was lots of silly string and Kiss and Journey songs for all.  There’s a lot more to say about them, but I’ll save that for another time.

I’m pretty sure that Dan won’t ask me to play again, so I’ll say now that I had a great time, and even though I milked the “I can’t believe you made me do this” udder for all it was worth, and I was terrified at first and disappointed later that we didn’t rock the whole set, I had a great time.  I loved getting to know Jen. It was fun hanging out in the practice basement, and I got to tell the doorman that I was with the band.  Someone told me I looked exactly like Nipples the Bear from Diesel Sweeties. No one asked me if I wanted to yiff. (Google "yiff" at your own risk.) Most importantly, I’ve got a bloody-bunny-suit-Rockstar-story in the bank for future use. If Ruby doesn't believe me, I've got pictures to prove it. If you have the time and the bunny suits, I highly recommend it.