A Burst Of Reality

A Burst Of Reality

09.07.05 (5:14 pm)   [edit]
Written last Thursday:


Holy fuck.

Tonight I was expecting a very strange phone conversation, and it turned out crazier than I ever imagined. I thought I was going to be doing an interview about a really shitty album I played on seven years ago, and it turns out that two guys I played in a band with THIRTEEN YEARS AGO (fuck, I feel old) have been reading this blog for three weeks and pulled a fast one on me just to hook up and talk again for the first time in over a decade. I'm so glad they did.

One of the first bands I ever played in (in fact, I think the first band I got paid more than three cans of beer for being in) was Burst Of Reality in Muncie, Indiana. I met our guitarist Larry and tried to start something with him for a few months. Then Marty, our singer came in, and we actually played a couple times just the three of us with a drum machine. I'm listening now to a tape labelled July '92 from this time.

Later we added a drummer and keyboardist and went on to make no money whatsoever, having lots of fun in Central Indiana. I remember the week I went to my manager at Dominos Pizza and told him I needed a week off, because my band was going off to Rock Island, Illinois. A SHITHOLE we played in for a whole week, staying in some grimy stick-to-the-floor apartment above the bar. I remember doing my laundry one day with the stripper who lived across the hall. She thought I looked like Eddie Haskell. Fucking strippers.

Shit, these guys got me onstage with a stripper for my 23rd birthday. Pulled my shirt off and....I don't remember much other than the tits, to be honest.

I can't believe these guys called. I've really missed them. I've been so goddamn nostalgic for ANY time I played music with other people, and these were the guys I had my first real experiences with playing out.

I just listened to my favorite original song we did. Larry and Marty wrote it before we got the drummer and keyboardist and I had to come up with a bass line for it. It's called Shred Of Evidence. And I TOTALLY ripped off Jack Bruce's bass line from White Room towards the end. I remember one night at practice, somehow fitting the riff from Sunshine Of Your Love into the space normally occupied by that low chromatic stuff Jack does, and Larry about shit himself. I love making guitar players shit themselves. In fact, I think it's really what I get paid for. If I can play some stupid shit that makes a guitarist have to scrape poop out of his pants later, my job is done.

I remember (weird how the brain works) driving around Rock Island listening to the radio. Blind Melon's No Rain was just becoming a huge hit at the time, and I heard it on the radio seventeen thousand times that week. Why is THAT such a strong memory?

ET's in Muncie. Which no longer exists. I would put my bass tone in that room up against anyone in the history of the instrument. I sounded goddamn HUGE in there. Living Colour had put out Stain around this time, and if I played my fucking ass off, it was because I had the massive trebly crunch of Doug Wimbish's tone on that album. It never happened outside that room. Dammit.

June '93 with the full five-piece. My tape has two versions of one of Marty's songs called Feel the Peace. Somewhere, I've got a shitty tape of us putting this song together in rehearsal. Fast rockin' shit. Fun as fuck to play.

But ya know, a lot of my memories with these guys aren't musical. I remember walking through a graveyard one night. They were on acid. I had smoked pot for the second time in my life. We heard another group of people on the other side of the cemetery, freaked out and ran off. Six months later, Larry finds out who the other people were Somebody he worked with, also high out of their minds. I believe we went to see Lollapalooza the next day. Primus headlining. Alice In Chains, Dinosaur Jr., Arrested Development. Holy fuck I remember that pretty well now that I think about it. It was Larry that got me into Primus, and I did a lot of Claypool-worship in those days.

We all went to see Spinal Tap together. I've got a terrible recording of it. We laughed our balls off.

Now the tape has another original. Reality Kills. I seem to remember trying to be funky in a John Paul Jones kinda way. I also remember Larry being the single greatest rhythm guitarist on the goddamn planet. Fuck, I miss these guys.

Gotta stop and listen to this...

Goddamn we rocked. I'm almost ready to cry hearing this stuff again. And now, a song called Or A Guy Named Doug. Written about somebody else, not me. But I took it on myself to come up with a good groovin' bass line (where did I come up with this shit? I was a lot more interesting when I was younger), and I even played a solo. Melodic. Chordal. Excellent. Shit. I don't play like this anymore. At least not with this kind of balls and who-gives-a-fuck attitude,. I came close to it last week in Cincy, doing my Jack Bruce thing on a Trower tune watching some skinny blonde crackwhore dancing around in leather pants. That's as close as I've been in years.

I don't know why I let life beat me down like I did, until I stopped playing and feeling like this. Oh, I have more musical SENSE now than I did then. I don't throw quintuplets into ballads anymore. Or spend as long above the 12th fret. But something's missing. Something I want back. Something that I felt natural with playing with Larry and Marty. Probably also in the short-lived band with my friend Dan playing Zappa covers and 15-minute versions of The Thrill Is Gone. I did it with my current band for a while too, and I hope I can recapture it in the next few weeks with them. But somewhere around 2000, it went on vacation for a long time. I'm not sure why. I think I took far too many things on myself at once, more than my limited brain capacity could handle, and I went from doing 2 or 3 things very well to doing 70 things really badly. The only thing I had felt really GOOD about was playing bass. And it became painful to even touch the fucking thing.

We were young Lots of energy. Hardly a perfect band (rhythmic irregularities abounded), but we had a ton of fun, and I loved them. I hated myself when I left. I don't remember the reason I gave (my job?), and I'm sure it was legitimate, but mostly I was burned out and not having so much fun anymore. I missed the days when it was just the three of us with a drum machine. It felt like there was Marty and Larry on one side, the other guys on the other, and I was in the middle wanting to get along with everyone, but mostly wanting to hang out eating deer burgers with Larry and Marty while they got fucked up on acid and listened to the first Mr. Bungle album. I was only drinking Rolling Rock, but everything they said MADE SENSE.

We once did this bizarre atonal jam, which Marty has a recording of and I haven't heard in years. We called it My Pussy Hurts. And we never played it the same way again once we got the recording. I was doing some weird John Wetton shit. (Keneally once told me I sounded like John Wetton, which has to be about as incredible of a musical compliment as I've ever recieved.) It as about as good as improv got for me.

We played Cop Killer. We played it at a frat party in Muncie. Everyone had disappeared, gone upstairs to fuck each other. but when we started Cop Killer, the room was wall-to-wall human flesh within about 12 seconds. Some girl came up to me afterwards and told me I was "really cool" playing the bass line to Ozzy's No More Tears. Never saw her again after that. I never got laid ONCE being in that band. Fuck it, we had fun anyway.

Getting stoned in Rock Island. (Somebody jumps up onstage in the middle of Paranoid trying to sing with us, I knock him off the stage with my bass; a guy tells me I sound a lot like Geddy Lee; two guys come up and we do the most unspeakably heavy three-guitar version of Man in The Box ever conceived of; the drummer is shredding sticks and breaking cymbals and somewhere in the middle of a really hot version of Evenflow, I get a piece of cymbal the size of the lid off a can of tuna fish right in the side of my head; later I sing Damn Blue Collar Tweakers, really badly.) Going back upstairs and listening to Dream Theater's Images And Words. Falling asleep and having the weirdest dream about being in the Marsh supermarket in Marion and my aunt trying to sell me several cases of Jolt soda.

I felt guilty for months after leaving. I'd played with Larry for a couple months before Marty came in. I loved Marty. But I felt really attached to Larry, both as a musician, and as a person. I loved the guy. I loved them both. And even now, all these years later, I don't think I've ever forgiven myself for leaving the way I did, just losing interest and faking some shit to move onto the next whatever-it-was. We made no money. We played shitholes. I spent more money paying for towing and a new timing chain on the way back from Rock Island (the car died half an hour from Muncie) than I made playing there a whole week. But I loved them. Like the acid-dropping brothers I never had.

So here's to Burst Of Reality. I'm glad you fuckers called. You made my night. Hell, you made my WEEK. (Damn, Jenny, that sounds familiar...) Someday we'll get together again.

Love,
Dougie