You Can’t Fix Meathead

I’ve been playing the drums since I was five years old. I was mostly self-taught, jamming with headphones and sometimes with my older brother and some iteration of his band, and then in fourth grade I started taking some lessons for a couple of years. One of my instructors was a jazz drummer from a couple of towns away named Lenny Scaletti. He drove a tiny Volkswagen Type 3 Squareback wagon which had just enough room for his drums, gear and monitor when he had a gig. We were in the market for a drum set and he sold my father a classic vintage Rogers drum kit in white pearl finish for me. I would still have it today – I have actually dreamed about that setup – if I’d just gone up one size with the U-Haul that I towed to Colorado with most of my belongings decades ago. Lenny’s drills and methodology helped me tighten up my tendency to do too many fills and rolls. He taught me to ride a steady groove and then accent and fill with a stark, sparkly rimshot flurry which – to his ear and jazz sensibilities – carried a lot more weight. I started playing in bands (not “school band,” horns and woodwinds, but garage bands) in fifth grade and paying gigs started in eighth grade – playing bar mitzvahs and sweet sixteen parties and other events. I still play today – occasional gigs but mostly just banging away with the headphones, the same as when I started.

In ninth grade I switched schools and promptly did what musicians always do – find other musicians. There was no MySpace, no Craigslist. We somehow found each other organically. You might hear someone playing a bass or piano in one of Mr. Tino’s music rooms and poke your head in, and the next thing you know you’re playing The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and Billy Joel’s “Angry Young Man” in front of the school at morning meeting. I switched back and forth, sometimes jamming with friends from my former school and other times with new bands that came together at Newark Academy. It was a blast for a couple of years when Bill, John, Peter and I played a recurring series of morning meetings. We would promise Mr. Parlin that we would limit the show to two songs and routinely sneak in a third in a way where we rolled right into it – making it seem like one extended song to the adults (think a mashup of Neal Young’s “Like a Hurricane” straight into “Cinnamon Girl”). Mr. Parlin knew the drill and we all risked Saturday detention by delaying the first period, but generally the school loved these mini concerts, and we got little more than a firm scolding when we ran long. One time I shattered a drumstick during 38 Special’s “Hold on Loosely,” and the pieces bounced off the edge of the stage, and my girlfriend Maria and some other cheerleaders sprinted up the aisle and grabbed the splintered hickory like it had belonged to Keith Moon.

Bill and John played bass and piano, respectively. They were a year ahead of the guitarist Peter and me – the class of 1981. We also had a revolving door of students and faculty who would fill in on vocals, saxophone, flute and banjo. During the spring of their senior year someone lined up a gig for us at a classic rustic bar in the heart of What Are You Looking At, New Jersey called the Jersey Devil. If you were an inmate released from Rahway State Prison – the notorious correctional facility where the Scared Straight program for at-risk troublemakers originated (convicted murderers would bark at teens and warn them to change their ways) – the Devil was among the first bars where you could wet your whistle with something other than cellblock-fermented pruno. We had two solid sets of songs, heavy on Van Morrison, America and Tom Petty. The proprietor paid us $20 apiece for the evening – and a couple Rolling Rocks on the house. It was a rush playing in a real bar as 16- and 17-year-olds. The drinking age was raised to 19 that year, making all upperclassmen feel certain that God was specifically punishing them, and there would never be any fun. Playing on Thursday nights for a couple weeks, we quietly told our best school friends to come in, assuring them nobody was checking proof of age. There wasn’t the plethora of fake IDs like today – if you had an older sibling, you would take their paper license and pay for them to get a replacement, and keep it stashed in your wallet.

We felt like actual rock stars for putting together such a legendary hookup. The proprietor was thrilled that carloads of friends were dropping in for wings and beers, and the occasional pickled egg fished from a jar of glowing green brine that some of the boys would eat to show their mettle. It was pure fun, like a weekly dress rehearsal for the role we would all soon play when we went off to schools like Skidmore or Hamilton or Lafayette. Everyone played it cool; somehow the administration never caught wind of it. My bandmates and I imagined playing gigs at that bar all spring and summer. And then Andreas ruined everything.

Andreas was Mr. Football/Hockey/Hammer Throw guy – not that there’s anything wrong with any of that. He was a classmate of Bill and John’s, and he was all meathead all the time. Remember the older brother, Buzz, in the Home Alone classics? Imagine if he and Ben Affleck’s O’Bannion character from Dazed and Confused had a baby and you’ll be in the neighborhood of Andreas. We never found out who decided it was a good idea to let him in on the 411 about the bar – nobody would ever cop to it after such a spectacular lapse of cranial function. It was April, the trees were leafing out, and the nights were warmer and longer. Andreas, a ticking bomb with the address of the bar and the crumpled New Jersey map we all kept in our glove boxes, parked his Camaro down the block and checked his Brillo-like hair in the mirror and entered the bar, yanking the door so hard that it smashed against the outside wall and shook the historic building. It was loud enough that the four of us heard it over our amps and drums and the din of people being happy and glasses being clinked. Bill looked over his shoulder at me and we both started laughing. It wasn’t the testosterone-fueled entrance that proved fatal to the Best Month Ever; it was the fact that Andreas was wearing his red and black Newark Varsity 1981 jacket that forced the proprietor to card him – and then do the same to the 23 other students enjoying themselves. We played out our set while watching the booths and tables clear out of everyone except a few salty regulars, after which the owner asked to see our ID cards and paid us for what would be our final gig together. Like a pratfall delivering bad news instead of laughter, Andreas shit the bed once again.