Few things make you feel more out of place than being smack in
the middle of a music scene you just don’t belong in. Such
was the case last Friday, when I found myself in an auditorium of
high schoolers moshing like possessed animals to heavy metal. The
event was a local band showcase featuring, for the most part, hard
rock in all its various belligerent forms. I stuck out worse than
some real emotion on a Bright Eyes record (or, I would be willing
to bet, a good song on the new Weezer album).
Just as the set started heating up, and the kids started beating
up on each other like fourth graders over a Crayola 24-pack, I
headed for the exit. But I wasn’t bailing. As someone once
related to me, you gotta try everything once, except for incest and
heroin. Instead, I went around back with seven or eight other
friends and began loading up equipment ““ several bongo drums,
cowbells, rhythm sticks, a tambourine and a guitar to make weird
noises with. Because, you see, we were on next.
Not that we were a real band or anything. Or that any of us,
with the possible exception of one or two, were particularly
proficient with any instruments. Or that we had really practiced.
The idea was to get on stage in front of this bunch of hooligans,
bang on stuff for a good while, and walk off ““ that is, if we
didn’t get booed off first, as I was fully expecting. Sounds
lame, but either way, it was going to be more fun than going to see
“House of Wax.” And what can I say, I get a kick out of
this sort of thing. This is the same core group of people
I’ve mentioned before, with whom I’ve enjoyed many a
late-night jam session in the park or along a cliff side, including
our infamous Rick James tribute session.
We weren’t there to crash the party either. My buddy Mike
had gotten a slot, after much badgering, through his brother, who
plays bass for Helken, a rising death metal band in the L.A.
underground scene, which pulls a lot of weight around those parts.
When the organizer turned to us and said, with as straight a face
as he could, “I’m looking forward to hearing what
forest jazz sounds like,” it became apparent he had probably
consented only as a favor.
I wondered what Mike had said to him. “John Coltrane meets
a bear in the woods,” I overhead him explain to another
friend he had brought down from Long Beach to film the performance
for posterity. It was then that I knew, instinctively, exactly what
it must have felt like to be in the cast of an Ed Wood film. And
that was before he brought out the ghost puppet and the costumes,
which I politely declined, tempted as I was by the forest spirit
costume he had worn for Halloween, or the Polynesian dance outfit,
or the bright red, full-body leotard which was supposed to
represent Satan (as a nod to the crowd, I guess).
I turned, as a last resort, to my friend Brian for some sanity.
“We’re going to rock the petty bourgeoisie,” he
declared. He may or may not have been inebriated.
By a twist of fate, we were on the same bill as Helken.
“We’re brothers now, man,” said one of the band
members out back as he prepared to slay the crowd with choruses
such as, “My axe will split your skull in two/ Taking your
life, your soul/ My minions begin to feast/ Death Pit
Offering.”
So the kids were going to hate us, and ringleader Mike was kind
of out of his mind, but I was still pumped to play, and morbidly
curious to see what would happen. As long as no one physically
assaulted us, I told myself, this was going to be well worth
it.
“This is death metal,” one of us said into the
microphone once we were on stage, which broke the ice well enough
with the audience. I hardly remember the rest of it ““ just
settling into a groove, having a blast, and hitting the djembe drum
so hard, I’d still be icing my hand down two days later.
I do remember precisely how the crowd reacted. To my shock, they
didn’t boo us. Nor did they walk out. In fact, the crowd
milling outside waiting for Helken began to filter in. Some kids
jokingly began to mosh. And, hard as it still is for me to believe,
by the end they were cheering us on.
It wasn’t exactly because we were good, per se ““
more like the reaction to those dancers in Fatboy Slim’s
“Praise You” video. They were responding to the
outrageousness of it all, and how much fun we were having
embarrassing ourselves. In our own, amateur forest jazz kind of
way, we rocked it. Plus, the ghost puppet fell apart and
essentially became a head on a stick, much to their delight. I
realized that, hey, these metal-heads aren’t so bad. The more
I follow music, the more I’m convinced just how arbitrary
genre constructions are.
“Everything is everything,” as Lauryn Hill once
said. So, metal fans, count me in.
E-mail Lee at alee2@media.ucla.edu.