Now, don't get me wrong: in the age of rap and hip-hop, it does my heart good to see a group of teenagers who want to play rock n' roll.
Or whatever it is they call that racket.
And don't start telling me I've become my father, one of those hopeless Dinah Shore dinosaurs over whom we rolled our eyeballs in such paroxyms of despair at their response to our music. Remember? We would play the Beatles and the Stones, and they would roll their eyeballs while hastening to crank up Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw on the old General Electric console to try and drown our music out.
I'm not one of them. Honestly. Hey, I grew up listening to rock. I know what good rock n' roll sounds like.
The stuff coming out of my across-the-street neighbor's garage ain't it.
Yes, we have a garage band in our neighborhood. Oh lucky us. From what I'm able to see (and hear) from over here across the street, they have a guitar, a bass, a set of drums and about 12,000 amplifiers. They don't have a vocalist (yet), nor do they have a keyboard player. Nor do they have any talent. The only thing they have in abundance is volume.
These three kids get together three or four times a week, stand around making weird noises at the level of nuclear testing for about two hours, and then disperse. I've been listening to them for over two months now, and I'll give their lead guitarist credit for one thing: he's trying to learn how to play a song. So far I've heard "Happy Birthday" and something that sounded like Beethoven's "Fuer Elise" (no kidding!) But so far, as a "band," they have yet to play anything that sounds even remotely like a song. The noise comes in bursts, and seldom do the three of them even sound like they're trying to do the same thing. It's like someone just says "Go!" and everyone tries to make as much noise as they can for ten or fifteen seconds. Then silence, until the next barrage. The drummer truly marches to a different drummer--I can only charitably assume he's listening on headphones to someone other than his buddies. Good for him, it shows some taste anyway.
How bad are these kids? Most bands get better with more practice. The more these guys practice, the worse they get. But don't take my word for it, check with their public: when I was a kid, any time a garage band started playing, no matter how bad they may have been, a small crowd of neighborhood kids would gather around to stand in the driveway and listen, especially if it was during vacation time. We just came off Christmas vacation, (no, I'm not going to call it "Winter break," and you can't make me, you can't make me) and although these guys duly got together for their thrice-weekly noisefests right through the break, and although our neighborhood is located right between two schools, which presumably would assure plenty of kids to come around and gawk, I have yet to see one kid standing in that driveway listening. To quote one of my favorite showbiz legends, Daffy Duck, these guys couldn't draw flies if they were covered with sorghum.
I don't know what they call themselves, but Coldplay they definitely are not. They're much colder than that. Just for shorthand purposes, so I'll have something to alert my wife with when it's time to slam the windows shut, get out the headphones and hide behind something--anything--more euphonious, I've taken to calling them "The Electric Prunes." Remember The Electric Prunes? Well, if you don't, or you're too young, they were a one-hit phenom of the in-your-face (read: druggy) nineteen-sixties. Their only hit record that I ever heard was I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night, a 1966 earsplitter that prompted any number of station-wagon-backseat panel discussions as to just what that hook line actually said. Was it "I had too much to dream last night?" Or was it "I had too much to DRINK last night?" I took part in at least one of these across-town debates in the back seat of the old Plymouth. (My poor mother.)
The original Prunes no doubt thought they were pulling the public's leg with that moniker, and indeed the mid-sixties were an age of aggressively off-the-wall band names (sure, with all that LSD flowing around.) One also recalls (hopefully not often) such groups as The Fugs, Harper's Bizarre, Strawberry Alarm Clock and Peanut Butter Conspiracy. But these neighborhood lads really deserve the name--anyone having their picture taken with this group playing in the background would be more likely to say "prunes" than "cheese," believe me.
Come to think of it, "cheesy" does come to mind.
Again, I don't want to discourage these kids. I'm glad they're spending their time with guitars and not methamphetamine. And atrocious as they are, forming a band is a more constructive activity for a bunch of 15 year-olds than sitting slack-jawed in front of a video monitor, playing games called Grand Theft Gang Rape IV and Captain Genocide.
But do yourselves and everybody else a favor, guys: go take some guitar lessons. And when you're practicing, leave the amplifiers off. Believe me, you're not ready for the Greek Theater yet. You're not even ready for J Street.
And you, the drummer: may I recommend an empty Quaker Oats box, just for now?
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