LUNKHEADED

Part One.

Maybe I shoulda set my goals a little higher. Maybe I should have placed “make lots of money”, or “play on Lettermen” amongst them. But I didn’t and we didn’t, and I wouldn’t give a fucking second of it back.
Making money playing music was never even a consideration, let a lone a goal. The list I’d mentally written when I decided to start a band consisted of four items:
1. Start band.
2. Play at least one show.
3. Record something.
4. Tour.
I remember lying on the smelly hot floor of our green Econoline with Pete as we drove home to Chicago after the last show of the first tour. I said that I guessed we were now legitimite. He agreed, we were officially a real band now.


The first practice was unlike anything the world had ever heard. A lot of Rock Dudes will say things like that, “It was unlike anything you’ve ever HEARD, MAAAAN!”, but that’s bullshit. This was, in fact, unlike anything you’ve ever heard before-it was the most repugnant, horrifying excuse for rock and roll ever to defile God’s green Earth.
We had no equipment at all and we played in this local dude Kev’s garage. His dad had been in some local country bands and had a pretty good selection of gear. I played guitar (I’d never played before in my life and wouldn’t again for years, but more on that later), Mark sang, Kev played bass, and Kev’s semi-retarded younger brother Jamie played drums. Jamie wasn’t Jamie’s real name. I don’t know what his real name is, we all called him Jamie because he looked EXACTLY like Jamie, the older brother on SMALL WONDER, that TV show about the robot girl and her adolescent brother; except that our Jamie was big. Really big. Not like, big-boned-this cat was pro-wrestler big. I heard that in later years his freakish size would alienate him from his peers (it certainly did from us) and he would turn to a life of ill-repute. Jamie was in the band because he could supposedly really play drums, and besides, that drum machine we found in the garage turned out to just be a metronome. Bummer.
We didn’t have any songs yet, so we all agreed to start with a cover tune. Something easy. Kev’s dad recommended “Wild Thing”, saying it was about as easy as it got.
Five hours later, my hopes for rock and roll were smashed. We never even got CLOSE. Hell, it never even sounded like MUSIC. You ever heard that band, THE SHAGGS? It’s a bunch of five and six year old girls who were given a day of recording as a gift. They weren’t a band before that, and they weren’t a band after that, and they were little girls and they FUCKING BLEW US AWAY! It SUCKED! Even with just power chords and that fucking encephalapod just tapping the snare drums we couldn’t play it. I had no idea how hard playing music was. Or how bad I was at it. Whichever.


So we gave up on that pretty quick and went back to skateboarding, shitty community college, and trying to avoid our parents nagging about getting jobs. We’d mostly all been out of high school a year or so, and were having the times of our lives. None of us wanted college or a real job fucking that up.
One day several weeks later, we were all over at Pete’s smoking weed and listening to SCREECHING WEASEL records when I decided we needed to try that band thing again. After all, I said to John, you know how to play the fucking guitar! Kev has a bass. I should be a singer. Hell, I AM a fucking singer! But what about drums, John asked.
Hmmm, what ABOUT drums…? We pondered the question as the bong made a few more lazy passes.
“I got it. Pete’ll play drums.” I said, trying to sound convincing.
“Whaaaat?!?!” said Pete.
But it was idea we were all firmly behind. Pete HAD to be iin the band, and it was the only slot left, so it was pretty logical. After a few more bong rounds we had a lineup, a practice space (Kev’s garage), some equipment (Kev’s garage), and a song John had written called ‘She’s a Dyke’ about his lesbian, cab-driving aunt Michelle. We did, however, keep the name Mark had come up with a few weeks prior, LUNKHEAD. One word, two syllables and easy to spell. The perfect band name.
That Saturday, we tried it again. This time, it worked. It was still incredibly sketchy and probably still worse than THE SHAGGS, but at least you could tell we were playing SONGS. We also figured out “Wild Thing”. That ruled.