Bambi Edlund

I've talked a little bit about rock-and-roll lifers, but there are many different types, and I should probably define my terms. The rock lifers of song and story, the ones we admire the most, are perpetual teenagers not good for anything else. They don't have a "backup plan," they don't ever quit playing music to "get serious," and they don't change their style to suit the fashion. They smell like cigarettes. Most of these rock lifers have day jobs, because playing music pays for shit, but their job is just a transparent formality. Music is their entire identity. Bear this in mind if you're considering getting married to this type of rock lifer.

Another kind is the lucky lifer. They had bands in high school and college like a thousand other punters, but somewhere along the way they hit the numbers and became rock stars. The overwhelming majority of young bands imagine that this fate awaits them, a dream which in most cases will slowly shrivel and die covered in disappointment and agony. (But keep practicing, kids!) Brian May of Queen was working on his Ph.D. in physics when his band took off; Tom Scholz of Boston has a master's degree in mechanical engineering from MIT; Dexter Holland of the Offspring has a master's in molecular biology; and so forth. These guys clearly didn't intend to be rock stars; they were anticipating a lifetime of sodomizing bacteria before their rock dreams came true. Wankers.

As I've said before, I fall into the category of accidental, or loafing, lifers. I wasn't born into it, and I never hit the numbers. Rather, my life has been a steady process of elimination, as one career path after another fell by the wayside. Every normal pursuit represented too much acquiescence, too much surrender of independence, and I sat strumming my guitar until there was nothing left for me to do. I lived on birdseed and brotherly love. I schlepped, skimped, scrounged, and scavenged. I proudly moved back in with Mom, and I shopped exclusively at thrift stores until, well, until now. I concentrated my attention on music not for the money, nor love of fame or sex, nor passion for denim or MDMA, but almost completely from a desire never to have to watch soap operas during lunch in the employee cafeteria.

With that in mind, I'll finish my little saga. Fall of 1997, I was working with a sarcastic and unearned air of entitlement three days a week at Broadway News and living in an unfinished and monstrous warehouse apartment between Pike and Pine with my hipster friends, and besides that had almost nothing to show for myself. The Bun Family Players played a few last shows, and at one of them I was captivated by the girl singer of one of the opening bands. She was a charismatic front person and a good guitar player, and we exchanged numbers after the show, as you do. A month or so later, out of the blue, she calls and suggests we get together and "play some songs." I was resigned to being a washed-up ex-singer from the Bun Family Players, but this invitation seemed fortuitous. I invited her over.

I'll confess here that I found her attractive. She looked like the assistant librarian at the David Lee Roth College of Intoxicated Underwear Models, and she was a guitar player to boot. When she arrived at my apartment, we sat on the couch with our guitars and chatted flirtatiously, counting the buttons on each other's shirts. It was looking like we were going to dispense with the formalities and throw our guitars on the floor when she suggested, giggling, that we "at least play a song." So we started to sing together, and in an instant everything was different. She took an effortless harmony, and we sang our fool hearts out. Far from propelling us into bed together, it chased the sex right out of the room. We spent all afternoon playing and singing, just having a blast, and by the time she left it was clear we could never have an affair. It would ruin everything.

I didn't expect this. Suddenly I had a reason to want to make music: a foxy singing partner who could play guitar. Unfortunately she was committed to her other band, but she agreed to help me record some of my songs, to make a "demo tape," in order to find some bandmates or maybe get a "label deal." It was a bit of a wet blanket, but we convened with a drummer friend of mine and his bass-playing buddy to run through some songs together. The bassist was in a fairly successful band called Severna Park, so this rehearsal was just for fun, to flesh out the songs.

But as we started to play, a strange electricity came over us. By the end of the first song it was clear we were a band, and we were the best band any of us had known. Whatever reservations we had were swept aside, and we set about scheduling rehearsals and booking shows almost immediately. Our first show was a sellout, opening for the fabulous Sycophant, and within a week we were already a "buzz band." In our first month the local newspapers wrote more glowing articles about us than had been written about any of our previous bands combined. Then The Stranger's new music editor, the sclerotic and scabby Everett True, decided that he hated us, doubling our fame instantly. Every week he wrote another hackneyed, walleyed diatribe against us, and every show our audience increased.