Brendan Dude

There’s a reason music is said to soothe the savage beast.

I’m a beast.

Because of this, I’m also a drummer.

Yeah, it’s not the most elaborate instrument, I know. I think I’ve heard it from my grandma a million freakin’ times. Why deed you not peeck up de clareenet or violeen and sound more deegnified? Italian grandmas, man.

But when you’re the “baby” of your family, you gotta have a way to let it out, right?

Years ago, ever since I discovered the magical wonders of AC/DC, I was hooked to my CD player. I’d found away to calm myself down when I was wound up, and it all came together from there.

And ever since my neighbor threw out his drum set, I also found a way to create the very same sound waves I cherish. He didn’t even care when I stole them straight from the edge of his driveway.

So I bought a couple instructional tapes and before long, I had a way to soothe that savage beast.

And as I said before, I had two older brothers where this part of the story begins. Pretty annoying ones, too. David was 17, and Joey was 16. They were mommy’s little monsters, always partying late and skipping school.

Alright, I’m not saying I’m perfect either, but I was a lot easier to manage than they are.

And lucky me! I was the youngest - 13. There was a reason why it’s considered an unlucky number.

I’m not saying I hated David and Joey. I guess I didn’t know them well enough since they almost never just talked to me. David was never home, and Joey just liked to torture the living crap out of me. Forget the myths you’ve heard about school bullies who smoked in the boy’s bathroom - he was the real nightmare.

So why didn’t I just tell Mom and Dad, you ask. Well, they knew fully well that they’re bad kids. Just like me, they’d come to terms with the fact that they couldn’t be taught a lesson in behavior.

I didn’t mind too much, anyway. I looked better compared to them. On the yearly Christmas cards, I was the little angel sitting in the front when David and Joey were sitting behind me with bloodshot eyes and half-assed grins.

And school? Heh…I kinda liked it.

Because unlike at home, I was one of four top dogs.

Yep. Me and the rest of Plaster Caster, my band.

Thanks to our performance at the Claymore Middle talent show when we were mere seventh graders, we were highly respected among our peers. We got our photo in the yearbook (actually, an entire page dedicated to our victory), and I just can’t help but smile thinking about it.

And the coolest part was, we didn’t even do a cover. Our lead guitarist, Soria, wrote most of our songs. She was kind of a genius, to put it simply. Anyways, she came up with the original song we did at the talent show – “Anonymous.” It’s the song we kind of got famous for, and it’s what all of us used to be.

So let me clarify - I’ve been labeled as kind of an idiot rather than a nobody. I talk crap, and then I get myself into crap. It was that simple.

Still, there was one kid who I knew since we were both seven years old. He was an orphan who lost his parents and home to a fire. Not only that, but he was separated from his little brother and had to go into a foster home that he wasn’t even related to. We grew up together because our dads work together and are the best of friends, but we went to different elementary schools. Only from junior high on did we unite and go to Claymore Middle.

And this kid is like the brother I never got to have. He’s the chillest dude I know, always cool and calm. You never see him freak out or cuss, and his faith in God is immense. His role models are guys like Desmond Dekker and Dickey Barrett.

Who is that kid?

That’s Luke Ragan, my best buddy.

He always stuck by me when David and Joey got me mad. He wound me down when I was riled up. He plays bass guitar, and all through fifth and sixth grade (when I got interested in music), he jammed out with me when I was bored and our dads were doing something together. It was neat making music with him since he got me into genres, like ska and reggae, that I wasn’t too familiar with. Thanks to him, I could sound like a vaguely smart person when I talked about music.

When we began seventh grade, he came from Claymore Elementary, like the majority of our peers. I came from a rinky-dink little school called Fireside Elementary. Only a few other kids came from there. It sucked because I really didn’t know anyone other than Luke, but he stood by me still, and that was cool.

Luke knew this kid Ren Hawker, and Ren knew this girl Soria. Ren’s a real shy guy, but he’s got a heart of gold. He always smiled at Soria like they knew each other before, but she moved from Santa Monica that summer. It made me wonder how they met since he was so quiet.

He sings really well, too. At first, I kind of thought he was gay because of that, but a series of events (which I’ll explain later) led me to rethink. What threw me is how silent he is. I mean, he can go an entire day without saying a single word, and nobody would give him any trouble. Yet over time, he opened up to us, and now it’s like I’ve known him my whole life.

Soria Atkinson was like my little sister. Actually, she’s kinda like that for everyone in the band. She always had a few self-esteem issues, though. Probably the assholes at our school.

She plays the guitar pretty good for a kid her age, too, unlike a lot of people in music, she can do more than just do scales and play power chords. She also wrote our lyrics. Every time she came up with something new, Luke, Ren, and me were eager to play it.

So a couple weeks into seventh grade, Luke got word of Ren and Soria playing as a twosome. He became their bassist pretty quickly, I assumed. Then, I got to be their drummer in a freak event involving me falling into a bush. Soria fell out of a tree one day when we were discussing names - she broke her wrist, and we came up with the name Plaster Caster…!

It sounds like it went real fast, but it did. A lot of things can happen in just a few months.

And then a bunch of other weird random shit happened, like Luke and Soria going out for about two weeks. Man, it came out of nowhere. That’s, like, something you do not mention. It’s an unspoken rule. It never happened. Forget it ever came about. Forget I said it.

Well anyways, we performed at the Claymore Middle talent show, playing “Anonymous” - our signature song. We won, I guessed, since we definitely got the biggest ovation.

Then, the summer before eighth grade, Soria moved back to Santa Monica. She was gone for the entire summer and a good chunk of the first semester of school, but her dad flipped and decided to move back after retiring. That was when we knew there was a little more than “friendship” between her and Ren.

Luke and I caught them kissing in the hallway of her house when she moved back! Neither of us minded, though, and they were kind of granted the permission to be officially boyfriend and girlfriend.

We knew them well enough to know that they’re too close to let romance ruin their bond. If they broke up, it’d be okay because their alliance is stronger than superglue.

Plaster Caster wasn’t the only thing dominating my life. My brothers started acting really weird at around the beginning of the second semester of eighth grade, and that’s when my priorities started to twist.

To be honest, I really didn’t pay much attention to what went on in David and Joey’s lives. It’s their business, and I’d rather not know. Those two dipshits hated each other’s guts for some odd reason (my guess was girl problems), and they were always at each other’s throats, fighting, cussing each other out. It’s insane and I sometimes wished I knew or could remember what made them like that, but I had a feeling that if I got too involved with them, disaster would strike.

It’s funny how those things were brought up when I least expected it.