Oops! All Failure!
by Adam J Galanski-De León
WE NEED LESS ARTISTS AND MORE BANKERS!!!!!
Plug in. Drop the E string down to D.
Was this what you wanted when you would sneak into your brother’s closet and steal his guitar to learn power chords and licks to David Bowie songs? He locked the door but you figured out how to open it up with a bent paperclip. You each had an air vent in the floor of your bed room and you found you could talk to each other this way, speaking through the walls. When he wasn’t there, you knew it was your chance to learn.
Was this what you thought it would be when you came up with a band name with your two best friends in middle school, and you thought the name you suggested sounded edgy and emo, and they laughed when you told them you wanted to name the band DOWN SYNDROME? How you all shot hoops in the park and talked about how you would be on TRL together playing live for our music video debut. Friend G was making jokes about all the stupid ways you would all spend the money.
I’ll spend it all on a nose job, he joked.
And I’ll spend all mine on handjobs! You told them. Just like you didn’t know what down syndrome was, you didn’t know what a handjob was yet, so you were wondering why Friend G and Friend S were laughing so hard at what you said. You were a Catholic boy…
How did this come so far and go nowhere at all? From basement shows in woodland homes, afterwards fighting each other with sticks and bats and balls in the backyard and walking into town a few miles, and on Main Street the tire shop right across from the fire department was burning down, and these kids who used to bully you were there, but you both found it so funny that you hi-fived and laughed and set aside your differences for five minutes.
So far from the blocks down the street where you used to set up shows in the basement of Jesse Lee Church. Like the benefit show for pancreatic cancer.
THE BLOOD-CHICKEN MASSACRE!
The day before you and your friends broke into an abandoned mansion in Wilton. The doors and windows were boarded up, but you climbed to the second story and busted one in. Inside everything was disheveled and pitch black where there weren’t cracks for light between the windows. You smashed tube lightbulbs on each other and trashed old electronics. You pulled your hunting knife out and walked ahead of the rest in case there were any squatters or serial killers hiding out. When you got to the second story of the home you all entered the bedrooms. Two of the bedrooms were pretty much empty. But the third had a prom dress sprawled across the dusty floor. Papers were scattered everywhere. The light came through the windows just eerily enough to illuminate the letters. A girl named Swan had written these as a diary. She wrote of being in school and being bullied and being depressed and of her prom. And here her dress was on the floor; the whole house empty. You decided it had to be a ghost.
Naturally, Friend I wore the prom dress to the benefit show the next night. You strapped a rotisserie chicken from Stop and Shop on his head with a leather belt and you all began chugging 5-hour Energy Drinks and doing that stupid game where you stab the knife in a row across the spaces between your spread-out fingers. When you needed to make the belt tighter around his skull, you gripped it and started poking a hole straight through with the tip of your blade.
The first band was a rock cover band from your high school. They covered a Rage Against the Machine song, but the singer’s parents were there so he didn’t want to swear.
Screw you I won’t do what you tell me! Frick you I won’t do what you tell me! He chanted with anarchist rage.
Then you guys were up and you thrashed around on the stage and screamed into the mic and sang offensive, goofy, angry songs, and stage-dived off stacked PA speakers into the crowd. A kid, Classmate T, slipped in the mosh pit and cracked his head open on the tile floor. The adult in charge of the pancreatic cancer benefit called an ambulance and tried to call the show off. Friend (Enemy/Douchebag) M was pissed off about this, and rubbed his hands all over Classmate T’s head and smeared the blood all over his own face, and began goose-stepping all around, sig-heiling in the air, and calling the man raising money for pancreatic cancer research a NAZI for cancelling the show. Other kids started rubbing the boy’s blood all over their faces as well, yelling like idiots and dancing around. You and Friend I watched this jabberwocky, him with a rotisserie chicken strapped to his head, wearing a dead girl’s prom dress.
Friend G looked out into the crowd. His dad was there, for some reason with the family lawyer???? He watched them look at each other. The lawyer shook his head, and patted his dad’s shoulder and walked away. We’re not speaking of this to mom, his dad told him on the way home. After watching VHS footage of the show, Friend G quit the band. But you still made music with him. You recorded the sounds of balloons rubbing together to make a song called CLOWNSEX!
Pick the A string, turn the volume knob up. See the meter on the tuning pedal swing back and forth around the letter. Tune down a little to get it right. Then always end by tuning the peg up a little bit, so it doesn’t unwind so easily when you start playing.
Was this why you started going to the Empress Ballroom? Where the inside was clouded with smoke from the barroom to the bathroom to the stage and up into the rafters? Where outside the alleyway and parking lot was filled with smokers and weed and booze and kids in spiky leather jackets throwing rocks at each other and learning how to socialize?
Far From Finished came down from Boston to play. The singer had half an arm on his right side and held the microphone in his nub. Some adult tried to beat you up during their set and the singer jumped off the stage into the crowd and saved you. Then there was the Webster Theatre in Hartford where you played with The Misfits and all their shirts had the Sobe Lizard logo on the back. Or the El N Gee playing CT Punk Fest with Abrasive Wheels down by the sea in New London. Going to CBGB’s watching bottles broken in the pit, and people finger fucking each other at the bar. Watching Graeme from Wednesday Night Heroes do handstands on the edge of the stage at the Knitting Factory when it was still in Manhattan. Death Before Dishonor at The Chance in Poughkeepsie, and the bouncers were beating people up in the alley, and then some crew affiliated dudes started beating up the bouncers.
Get the D string in line. You down tuned your E so make sure these two match in tone. Play a power chord see how it sounds. Feel the distortion. Hear it carry through the club. Feel the speakers shake.
Then there was the time you took the ferry from Bridgeport to Port Jefferson on Long Island, and you played a little bar by the ocean, and the punks were all dancing with glued up mohawks and pock marked faces, and some kid on the back patio told you he sold GG Allin the heroin that killed him (which didn’t check out age-wise) and then during your set a team of GIANT rugby players with shaved heads, full uniform, came in, and they liked your music so much that they started kicking the shit out of EVERYBODY, and the punks scattered and were afraid to pit, and the set was over but they were still at it, and they went in the back patio and started stomping and breaking all the picnic tables to bits, and they were just getting started!!!! You thought this was the start of something cool for your band, but like most things, it went nowhere from there.
You tried out for the high school battle of the bands, and no one told you you had to bring your own PA system, and you didn’t even have one, so you borrowed someone else’s, and the mic kept going out so you threw it up like twenty feet in the air above you, and made it seem to the crowd like you were going to catch it in your mouth and as soon as it was about to break your teeth you caught it in your fist and started screaming until the speakers and cable blew out. By this time a crowd was forming around your group. The volunteer teacher judges stared wide eyed at you, as you went to the table and shouted the lyrics right in their faces to make up for the broken microphone. The Spanish teacher curled herself up into a little ball. When the set was over your band was mad at you. The whole room was clapping, though you were disqualified.
But what set you different from high school bands was that you were playing out at real clubs with real bands in different states and venues. And there were good shows and there were bad shows. And one night at eighteen you found yourself playing Don Pedro’s in Brooklyn with a band called The AIDS, and the singer was dressed up as Jesus and was eating pages of the bible and shoving the microphone up his ass, and they played for like an hour when their set was supposed to be 20 minutes, and when they finished the singer handed you the microphone like you were supposed to sing into that poop covered piece of shit, and he smirked and walked away.
The crowd had dispersed and you played to five people. And the bartender was this older hipster girl who liked you and brought you into the basement and you drank whiskey together alone and talked and she gave you her phone number. And a week later The AIDS played New Haven, and the singer dressed up as Hitler to be funny, and the whole crowd beat him senseless and then they made a huff on Myspace not understanding why he would be attacked. YO!!!!
You were back in school and your music class teacher pulled you aside and said, I heard what happened at the tryouts the other day. I just want you to know that what you play isn’t real music. It’s pathetic. It’s a disgrace to real music. It’s just terrible noise. It’s embarrassing. And then you wore your Dead Kennedys shirt to History class and the teacher said, That’s not funny, I used to know one of the Kennedys. You think that’s edgy? What if I called my band the Drunk-Stoned-Galanskis?????? And you and your friends burst out laughing at how fucking dumb all your teachers were. And how much they hated kids. Or at least hated themselves and their jobs.
The G string is the hardest fucking string to tune. That shit is always out of tune. Do your best. After the first song, double check on it. Or don’t. It’s all about the energy.
Then you were in Greenpoint, about to play with Gang Green at Club Europa, and you were walking by the offtrack betting facility and all these drunken polish dudes were betting on horse races and one followed you down the street and started trying to kiss your face and grab at you, and you ran into the venue and washed your face over and over, and when soundcheck started you heard Gang Green got arrested on their drive from Boston, and the whole show was kind of a sham.
Then you moved to Brooklyn, and the couple on the garden level apartment below you were always arguing. The woman was always SCREAMING at the man and abusing him, and he would often play little reggae tunes on bass in the basement and one day one of your shows fell through so you asked if your hardcore band could play a few songs down there, and the woman came home to a house show of Pratt Institute students watching your band play in her home, and her man frantically trying to understand what was going on, and instead of being mad at you guys she started ripping into him, and the show dispersed, and soon after that you moved out, and you always wondered what happened to that guy.
Later that year you found yourself in Montclair, NJ looking for the venue. These were the days before everyone had GPS on their phone. MapQuest only did so much good. Hey, do you know where The Meat Locker is? You asked a passerby.
Fuck you, guy!
You found the venue downtown. It was an abandoned meat locker under the street that you entered through a grate. The second you got down there the sound guy was on acid. He wanted to buy your piss. Your guitar player sold him his urine for twenty bucks. The walls were covered in band stickers and graffiti. The whole place smelled like ass. You sat there drinking a coke and heard the keys to a piano being smashed. To your right was a drugged up old man with a cast on either arm slamming his wrists into a caved-in upright piano, grunting. You looked around and everyone had left to go outside. It was just you and that man. You decided to join your friends.
Squint your eyes at your pedal as you tune the B string. Feel the tension when you turn the peg. The string only has so much life left in it. That’s why you brought a backup guitar. Noone wants to be the dude restringing his guitar on stage. Or asking for a new guitar strap. That’s why you have strap locks. You always got to be prepared.
Then there you were. You had moved to Chicago and you met Friend K from the suburbs out by Joliet and you went down there once a week by train and stayed the night writing songs in his parents’ basement, getting drunk off Admiral Nelson Rum and eating extra-large pizzas from Casey’s gas station. Life started picking up. You played as a two piece for years, then found a third member, then lost them, then found another, then lost them, then gained two, and by that time you had really learned how to play and really learned how to record an album and you had learned how to tour DIY style, and you were out there, and your first marriage was over, and you were angry and sad, and music was your whole life, so you went for broke, and put everything into it, and worked three jobs at once, every day of the week, only taking time off for shows, and this is how you helped fund your band’s records, and your drinking addiction!!!!
Playing Liar’s Club, the sound guy was on heroin and would disappear thirty minutes into the show. And then he was replaced with another guy who died shortly after. And it was a revolving door. You went up to Madison, WI and played a warehouse in some industrial section and some guys got into it with their girlfriends and another dude pulled out a switchblade, and this is a dude who drove a limo for work and was a deadbeat dad who admitted to smoking crack and thought it was funny, and kept getting called out by his brother-in-law on Facebook for being a shitty dad and the son of a multi-millionaire, which is why he went by a made up stage name.
You drove 30 hours to LA to play a punk fest and the promoter dodged you afterward so he didn’t have to pay you. You drove to Detroit and stayed up all night in a roach motel to play Warped Tour and they gave you the farthest smallest stage in the back of the festival and people only came up to your merch table to ask where other bands’ merch tables were.
You toured Canada. In London, Ontario you stayed at some old punk guy’s house. While you were sleeping him and his friend tore down a telephone pole and lugged it into a bar parking lot to prevent cars from leaving. You guys spent the week heading east, puking and pissing on the side of the highway. In Montreal you came out of the venue into a riot. Police were pepper spraying people and the crowd was pouring milk in their eyes and crying. The bartender of the club took you to her after hours bar, and you started bartending and pouring yourself booze behind the counter, and everyone thought it was funny until they realized you hadn’t rung anything in, and were just pocketing all the money and they threw you out into the street. Then you were walking by a homeless man and he asked for money and you said, We’re a long way from home, like he would even give a shit or know what the fuck you were talking about. Then you guys made your way down the block to get pizza and ended up accidentally having a romantic dinner at a candlelit fine Italian restaurant.
On the way back to the states, customs asked where you were coming from.
Uh…Canada? Your guitarist laughed.
Okay everyone, out of the car.
Your hair was half spiked and sagging and your eyes were bloodshot and your voice was destroyed to gravel and you all smelled like shit and looked like shit and the customs guards were accusing you all of being on drugs, and you were there showing them your crappy music videos on YouTube and they sent you back to the USA where you slept on a sidewalk in Albany, NY trying not to die.
In Boston your local music friend walked down the block doing coke off a knife. He took you to a house in Billerica and him and his buddy were fist fighting each other and yelling and doing coke until 8am when they realized they had to go to work, and they left together for their construction job, and you and your band were just in some random house in some random town and a pig was just walking around the living room snorting.
There was the venue in Akron that double booked you with a book club so they had you play on a tiny stage and gave the book club the big room. And to say sorry the owner gave you a huge bucket of beer which you shared with the members of the Taco Bell drive thru staff before getting a motel for the night.
Then what about Cleveland? Where a guy pulled a gun out on the crowd and the punks ripped him and shoved him out the door and beat him in the street. Then they were shooting fireworks off inside the venue.
Or Toledo, when the show ended with a bunch of skinheads fighting in the street and you guys left and were bummed out and you showed up at a hot dog place laughing, and you caught a glimpse of the cook, this dirty old man, cutting meat with a knife and sneering then pointing the knife at your face and cursing and you decided to go to Waffle Haus instead.
Tune the E string. Tune the fucking E string. Let’s get this over with.
Drumming on a southwest tour as the token white boy in a friend’s Mexican punk band, the friend hid his cocaine in your drum kit without telling you. Later you got pulled over by the police but IT’S ALL GOOD! In Seattle a group of radical Christians chased you and your friends down the street yelling into megaphones and threatening you. Down in California the first motel you pulled into, the cops were outside arresting prostitutes. Guys drank out of brown bags down the street. Roaches scattered when you entered your room.
After the next show, the singer of the band had been outed for going on a racist rant using the N-word online ten years prior. You told the other guys you needed to kick him out of the band. None of them wanted to, but you made the executive decision. You took him to an airport and walked him down to ticketing as he cursed and talked shit to you and you put up money to send him back to Chicago, and you all finished the tour without him.
All these years it took you to realize what losers punks really were…
Your now wife was your then girlfriend and it was her birthday in a day, so you drove 30 hours straight from LA, just stopping for pee and gas, and made it to her birthday party in time to kiss her. The tour was a failure and you dropped out of music for a bit. But you still remembered good things like your birthday show being attacked by a crowd wielding cans of silly string. Or playing the L and L and running down the bar pouring shots of cream booze into people’s mouths, watching them try not to throw up. You remember when a dude punched another dude out of his shoes at one of your shows. He flipped around and his teeth knocked out on the ground. Or playing the indoor soccer stadium in Pilsen. Or the Jurassic Park house venue where six-year-old sons of gang bangers walked around with trays of coke for sale and had their friends bust in and steal the bands’ equipment while they weren’t looking.
There were nights in the banquet hall in the back of a Mexican restaurant where kids were laying concrete to build a skatepark and a trash can roared with flames. There was the practice space in an old factory building where you watched the lights of the city glow from a rusty fire escape, drinking malt liquor, wondering what could possibly come next, yearning, hoping, dreaming, praying for something to come and blow all this routine out of the water.
YOU WERE THE KINGS OF NOTHING.
It was romantic. And depressing.
You put your life all on black. The roulette never ends.
Adjust the microphone. Check it a couple times. Get your levels. Sip a glass of water. Ring out a chord. Introduce yourself. Show what you are all about. Soak it up because tomorrow is back to work. You gave your life for the half hour set. This is it. Look past the stage lights out into the crowd where no one is there waiting for you to play.
Adam J. Galanski-De León is tired and his back and knees hurt. He has been in the service industry for 15 years. Most of that has been late night and after hours shifts. He likes to drive around Chicago and point at businesses and tell his wife what they used to be back in the day and what weird things used to go down there. His life is greatly shaped by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. One time he got to sit next to Pepa in the audience on the Maury Show. He maintains a website at http://www.adamjgalanskideleon.com.