Status: Updates every Sunday and Wednesday!
We're Not Listening
Spit Shine - Hooligans!, pt. 2
The truth is, you can be a band regardless of what you’re made of. Stage names can give a solo artist the illusion of having a full-on band, exquisite backing instruments in the studio can make a band of three guys seem like a complete orchestra, and if you play loud enough, two young guys can sound like an actual act rather than someone shouting incomprehensible lyrics with a louder-than-shit backbeat.
Well, okay, neither Rai nor Kenny thought their little project was going too well. There was something missing, and the answer was obvious – what’s a rock band without a guitarist?
Apparently, a rock band without a guitarist was exemplified in a Green Cove Springs-based quartet that went by the name Stars X Stripes, due to the fact that their guitarist was a raging alcoholic and had gotten kicked out the day before his twenty-first birthday.
It was humiliating, really. It happened onstage at Freebird Live when the kid – Damon Hirsch was his name – had passed out after their third song. The rest of the band threw him offstage and the singer took the liberty of bidding him farewell with a long string of creative swears and insults, and that was that. Nobody saw the danger in leaving somebody passed out to the side of the stage.
Nobody except for Rai and Kenny, standing in the front. They barely just glanced at each other before deciding that the right thing to do was scramble up, ignore the warnings from security guys, and collect the drunkard from his spot on the cold ground. It doesn’t matter how you end up unconscious – nobody deserves to get kicked aside because of it.
And they were well on their way to the hospital when Damon woke up in tears in the backseat, whining about a splitting headache and wondering where the hell he was, asking if Kenny and Rai were kidnapping him.
“We’re taking you to the hospital, man,” Rai tried to soothe him.
Damon’s eyes just shot wide open before he muttered, “No, no you can’t. I can’t go there.”
Kenny gave him a perplexed look. “It was a safer thing to do than to leave you there.”
“You fucking fucktards, you’re gonna get me locked up in rehab again!”
That was all it took for Rai to pull his truck over and for a collective effort to start. Damon was a mess in more ways than one. Neither Rai nor Kenny were sure how appropriate they were acting, given the fact that they had never even met the kid before. He kept crying and holding his head and his sides, whimpering about losing his life, speculating about the possibility of suicide before he was talked out of it.
It may have taken four hours to talk him down, and in the cramped backseat of an old pickup truck it sure was stuffy and smelled like hell, but in the end, a sort of pact was made.
Damon had been shrugged off for years by everybody – his family, his so-called friends, his bandmates, and that night was the final straw. He was going to turn over a new leaf. And he didn’t know these Rai and Kenny dudes for a hole in the ground, but they were treating him better than he’d ever been treated before, and it was all in just one night.
And while you’re at your lowest and you meet two other guys looking to make music, why not kill two birds with one stone and make a band out of it?
Well, okay, neither Rai nor Kenny thought their little project was going too well. There was something missing, and the answer was obvious – what’s a rock band without a guitarist?
Apparently, a rock band without a guitarist was exemplified in a Green Cove Springs-based quartet that went by the name Stars X Stripes, due to the fact that their guitarist was a raging alcoholic and had gotten kicked out the day before his twenty-first birthday.
It was humiliating, really. It happened onstage at Freebird Live when the kid – Damon Hirsch was his name – had passed out after their third song. The rest of the band threw him offstage and the singer took the liberty of bidding him farewell with a long string of creative swears and insults, and that was that. Nobody saw the danger in leaving somebody passed out to the side of the stage.
Nobody except for Rai and Kenny, standing in the front. They barely just glanced at each other before deciding that the right thing to do was scramble up, ignore the warnings from security guys, and collect the drunkard from his spot on the cold ground. It doesn’t matter how you end up unconscious – nobody deserves to get kicked aside because of it.
And they were well on their way to the hospital when Damon woke up in tears in the backseat, whining about a splitting headache and wondering where the hell he was, asking if Kenny and Rai were kidnapping him.
“We’re taking you to the hospital, man,” Rai tried to soothe him.
Damon’s eyes just shot wide open before he muttered, “No, no you can’t. I can’t go there.”
Kenny gave him a perplexed look. “It was a safer thing to do than to leave you there.”
“You fucking fucktards, you’re gonna get me locked up in rehab again!”
That was all it took for Rai to pull his truck over and for a collective effort to start. Damon was a mess in more ways than one. Neither Rai nor Kenny were sure how appropriate they were acting, given the fact that they had never even met the kid before. He kept crying and holding his head and his sides, whimpering about losing his life, speculating about the possibility of suicide before he was talked out of it.
It may have taken four hours to talk him down, and in the cramped backseat of an old pickup truck it sure was stuffy and smelled like hell, but in the end, a sort of pact was made.
Damon had been shrugged off for years by everybody – his family, his so-called friends, his bandmates, and that night was the final straw. He was going to turn over a new leaf. And he didn’t know these Rai and Kenny dudes for a hole in the ground, but they were treating him better than he’d ever been treated before, and it was all in just one night.
And while you’re at your lowest and you meet two other guys looking to make music, why not kill two birds with one stone and make a band out of it?