In the past I’ve played in a few bands. Some were good, some were awful. It’s always been a derivative of the same thing: “Classic Rock”. Cause I grew up in the midst of “sex drug and rock and roll, man.” “Is that freedom rock? Well, then turn it up.” It’s always been very easy to find other musicians that have the same depth of knowledge in this overplayed genre of music. Classic rock is to genres as the guitar is to instruments. I love easy.
There was a time when I had long curly hair, and a full beard, smoked a lot of weed, ate a ton of mushrooms, and drank a lot of dark beers. I never wore patchouli, ‘cause I took regular showers. But I wore Birkenstocks with socks and corduroy pants. I avoided going to class, and instead played hacky-sack and Frisbee. I used the words “schwag” and “dank” to describe everything. I didn’t just listen to the Grateful Dead, I studied it. I spent so much time with their music that I can still, 10 years later, tell you the date and venue of a show, just by listening to a single song (most of the time). I’ll always have a soft spot in my ear for the sounds of Jerry Garcia.
So, in college I put together a band, called Exit 118. (I thought it was ironic that UVA and VT had the same exit number.) We were your typical “jam band”, covering mostly Dead, Allman Brothers, and anything else that we could drag out into a 10-minute song. We were able to get a weekly Wednesday night gig at this dark, dirty, dungeonous bar named Pedro’s because the manager was our bass player’s frat brother. Every week the room would fill with of a spectrum of “hippies” at various levels of intoxication. Also, we, the band, got drunk. REEEAAALLLY F’in drunk. And really high, too. The bass player once hid a bottle of Jack Daniels behind the speaker and took pulls off of it between songs. He passed out in the middle of the show, but somehow kept playing. We would sneak joints on stage. We tried playing a show on mushrooms. Bad idea. There were acid episodes. And coke episodes. Sometimes the manager would lock the front door – no one in, no one out – and completely open the bar – no bartenders, help-yourself kinda of house party. It was an awesome party every week. It was easy and lots of fun… but honestly, the music was pretty terrible. Trust me, I have tapes to prove it.
Playing music is a precision skill that takes a lot of practice. It’s a lot like driving a car. When you first start doing it, you have to think about it a lot. Then, after many years of it, it really becomes second nature. Drinking can help you relax, but drinking a lot makes it impossible. Smoking pot makes it scary at first, but eventually makes it seem like it’s not really happening at all, or that nothing else is happening. Regardless of how the drugs make you feel, when you lack the level of experience that makes it second nature (which we did), drugs and alcohol make it bad. It may sound good to you, but you’re on drugs. And we were on drugs. And everyone listening was on drugs, so it was okay. But the tape recorder was not on drugs. I wish it had been.
We didn’t care at the time. All we cared about was that one show every week. We had a lock on that. We all knew that when graduation came, it was over. There was no future for Exit 118, just the present. So we took chances, had fun, and never looked back or forwards, just down, and sometimes up at the spinning swirling ceiling.
Music and drugs have always gone together, going way back to tribal days where a good medicine man and a drum circle could work a whole tribe into a frenzie. And today, kids are making big bucks selling God knows what at festivals. What’s your take on the whole drugs and music issue?
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Newman, it sounds like we knew a lot of the same people back in the day…actually it almost sounds as if we were the same people back in the day…the exception being that instead of Exit 118 it was Exit 245 (JMU) and I didn’t play in a band…but I lived with one. And I went to all their shows…fraternity houses, basement parties, backyard afternoon block parties…and I actually just found one of those “taped shows” you were talking about…the set list includes “Eyes of the World”, “Fluffhead”, “Comfortably Numb”, and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed”. Sound familiar? And yes the tape recorder was not high, but as for the band and those in attendance, that’s another story. How bad was it? If I remember correctly, the bass player at most of those shows was the bass player in description only…usually he had his bass strapped around him, with one hand holding a beer and one hand reaching for some girl. And during the set breaks there was always a band room, which contained all the pharmaceutical items a band could possibly need (which when loosely translated means that the second set was usually worse than first). But I was merely a rock star by association. As for drugs in music, it’s sort of the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The Good: Dylan turning “on” the Beatles…that seemed to work out from a musical standpoint
The Bad: Too many to list (i.e.-Hendrix, Cobain, Joplin, and on and on and on)
The Ugly: Keith Richards
Yes. That set list is all too familiar. Shaun, I think it is best that we never meet. We may actually be the same person, which means only one of us is real, and I’m not willing to take the chance that it’s not me, although I have my suspicions.
What was that movie with Edward Norton?
i usually like to not be on drugs while i’m learning tunes and playing them live (with exceptions every now and then), but it’s good to be on them i think when you need a second perspective when recording. you can sometimes get in a rut of playing the same thing over and over and i think getting a little irie and taking a second look at something could lead to a better take (or worse of course). you just have to be sure to use the drugs as a “tool” and not as a permanent fixture. unless you want “not being on drugs” to be your tool, and “being on drugs” to be your permanent fixture. but that might get expensive, and lead to hendrix/cobain/joplin shit.
and as far as listening to tunes on drugs - well, isn’t that what music is for?
Oh yeah. Turns out it was a John Cusak movie called Identity. Slowly I will kill you all off, one by one.
i spent almost every wednesday night of my freshman year at the exit 118/pedro’s parties. thanks newman, you helped define my entire first year of college… maybe that’s why i had five of them.
Newman,
I was there for a lot of those shows, and I also established a similar connection to the dead right before you guys started playing those shows. I will always have a similar soft spot for Garcia, although I can’t listen to anything past the mid 70’s with them. Garcia really started “chasing the dragon” towards the early 80’s and completely ruined his fragile voice, but thats a whole nother topic. I was there for the Phish show in Va Beach in 98 when they encored with Terrapin Station and people freaked out. I actually hadn’t heard the song at that point, so I didn’t realize why everyone was freaking out. I was also on powerful mushrooms.
The shows you guys did might not have been great, but they served their purpose. As you stated, we were all messed up, but you guys played the hits and gave us what we wanted. A rendition of songs we loved in a crazy atmosphere. Sure it would have been better if you were all sober, but the crowd wouldn’t have appreciated it anyways. No reason to look back on those shows with anything but fond memories, I haven’t gotten buzzed and rocked out at a show like that in years.
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