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Luckily enough, at present I'm grounded. This thought encircles me as we pull into the heavily cracked concrete parking lot that later on tonight will be ears to the kids most extensive vocabulary's in dismissing our performance and singing hail to the contrived act which follows us. Despite this, we won't conform, we can't, this is our sound, it's who we are, we can't attempt to fit in, I fathom our efforts at being like everyone else would only come up lame anyway. That complaint struck from nowhere on me, but its not irregular of late, this seems to be our most legitimate problem since our conception, building a fan base in large proportions, besides we aren't exactly the best promoters. We'd rather spend an extra minute perfecting a song than spend that time informing people of where they can hear it. For our benefit important ears in the eyes of the industry had heard it and knew we were heading in only one direction with it and that was longevity, instead of a quick punch with no muscle to back it up. Unfortunately, at the moment, the kids were all stuck with the present and so their search was fixated on the excitement of a flashy 1-2 combination, but that shit wasn't about to knock us out.
And as if a higher spirit heard my metaphor I walked out of the noon heat and into the faces of my fired up bandmates. We speedily readied our gear and kicked into a few numbers for soundcheck. Things were dynamic, the boys were electrifying, there was one of countless vibes felt that we were at a whole new level, spot on and no one could grasp or overtake our sonic superiority as a unit. Soundcheck to us was to this point always a pinpoint indication of how the actual gig was going to go, so tonight was going to unveil us at the top of our game.
Without the need to make adjustments our time became vacant as usual until the show. Tonight we were on at 9:30pm and it was just past 4pm now. In knowing we wouldn't be playing for the next 5 hours, I turned my attention to my other interests, listening and/or talking about music. My good buddy (and our drummer) 'Jay' was all for heading to the nearest record shops, so we kicked our feet towards the back door of the dark and hollow club. As we hit the now clouded Beantown sky, Jay reinforced the sentiment felt in our playing "that was something else in there, eh man?" A remark mentioned in need of clarification or confirmation on my part. This band is always looking to me for answers like my word is bond. I'm an equal part, it was what you felt it to be, my word brings no more to the performance. In hindsight, attempting to categorize what happened has more to do with personal perception than with reality. "you know 'Nevermind' is viewed as one of the best albums of all time, but when it comes down to it, its synonomous with one song, ask a typical music fan to name a song other than the mistakenly interchangeable name of that disc 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' and I bet 9 times out of 10 it will be a struggle. Now the reason for there sustained notoriety has a lot more to do with the mystery and tortured soul that was Kurt Cobain, leave that song and take him out of the mix and you've got nothing. But, the reason they won't ever be remembered as a one hit wonder like Blind Melon per say after Shannon's passing is because outside of 'Nevermind', Nirvana messed with that sound and created quality and value in whole different fields than the one they invented on 'Nevermind'". That was my personal perception. "so, what your getting at is by not looking to fill everyone else's hunger, they inevitably filled everyone else's hunger through creation?" Christ, like usual, I have no idea what the hell I was getting at, I was just stating something I saw as intriguing dialogue to get off hammering on about our soundcheck. "Yeah, they played by their own rules and it killed them at the same time as it made them more alive than ever before". We strolled up to Wes's Lost Records Shop. A place to find the rare and independent in Boston.