In the English language, there are one or two phrases guaranteed to shock even the most stoic of listeners. "Boo," for example. "President Falwell," perhaps. "Hey guys, it's karaoke time," even. But not one of these measures up to the pants-wetting terror of "How'd you like to judge a battle of the bands?"
Ha! Made you jump! Few tasks outside the high school A/V squad are as thankless as a battle judge. Unfortunately, four weeks ago the owner of the Plantation Restaurant and Club, a local bar up here in Boston, grabbed tight to my BVDs and asked me the dreaded question.
How'd I like to judge a battle of the bands? How'd I like to listen to five guys jump around on stage attempting to scratch out the ten-thousandth version of "Brown-Eyed Girl?" How'd I like to be booed and threatened by fans of losing bands? Man o man, sign me up!
I arrived early on the first night, and I still don't know what tipped me off that this was going to be a much more painful experience than I expected. Was it the cheesy background music? The hatchet-faced waitress with the ceiling-scraping hair and exposed, Orson Wellesian midriff? No, I think it was the high school-surplus chairs scattered around the room. Granted, at a "restaurant and club," you shouldn't expect miracles, but the thought of listening to bad music in what was essentially a K&W Cafeteria was one notch worse than appalling to me.
There was another judge, a kinda big, kinda dim, kinda smelly guy named ...oh, I don't know, probably Tony (everyone else in this fucking town is named Tony, he might as well be, too). We were briefed on the rules (don't score too low, watch out for the girlfriends, no negative scores) and found our seats in the empty hall.
The first act, the Five Skins (hee hee hee ha hah Hah Hah HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH! Boy, them college boys is clever. We woulda never thunk o' sumpin like that) were terrible, the worst mix of warmed-over Little Feat spiced (if that's the word) with the lamest funk riffs imaginable. They wrote songs with lyrics like "My girl, she got a great big butt, I like it when she shake that thang, she go ooh, ah, ooh, ah ah ah." It was about this time I began regretting a) agreeing to this, and b) my basic humanity.
After that, I was ready for anything. Except Big Jim. A truly unfortunate fact since that particular combo took the stage after a bit of half-hearted guitar strumming, beating on the bass drum (it's important to practice that particularly difficult move a lot), and bass-dropping (at least twice. Here's $5. Buy a rope). The lead singer tried to appeal to fans of INXS's Michael Hutchence, Eddie Vedder, and Jim Morrison (maybe he wanted to be all things to all losers) but came off as a third-rate Weiland with an over-ambitious guitar player (memo to the lead singer: tripping over the mic stand and mumbling "sorry" does not count as either stage presence or witty between-song banter).
To be nice, I'll say they sucked dog penises. No, that's cutting them too much slack. They opened with a five-plus minute version of "Paint it Black" (the Stones did it in half the time and remembered all the words) then progressed onto the slowest version of "Cocaine" ever played. They followed this up with a Grateful Dead-ish version of "Sultans of Swing" (just what I wanted to hear: the Dead wanking through Mark Knopfler. Pass the arsenic, please) and an almost recognizable Stones medley.
(Memo to Big Jim: if you can't be bothered to memorize the words to songs, cover old R.E.M. when Stipe was still mumbling. Nobody knows the correct words to "Gardening at Night," but most people know that "Sympathy for the Devil" doesn't include the lines "I drove a tank through the General's rank, when we blitzed the place and thought it stank.")
We turned in our scores (the Five Skins won in true 1984 presidential election/lesser-of-two-evils style), braved the hostile girlfriends ("You guys shoulda voted for Big Jim 'cause, they're like local and all. The other guys are from Lowell." [Editorial note: Lowell is all of 30 minutes away.]) and sped home.
The second night began on much the same note as the first -- that note being the sound of me begging friends, co-workers, children, dogs, strangers to fill in for me. Not being stupid, no one bit, and I was back slumping uncomfortably at the back of the bar. Even fewer people showed up for this one, so when the first band (named Connie Chung -- o will the hilarity ever end) took the stage, they were playing to a teeming audience of five -- two waitresses, two judges, and this irritated-looking woman in her mid-'40s.
"OK, it's time to begin," said Chet, the owner, over the P.A. "Up first, we have a special treat. Taking time off from her news duties, Connie Chung!" Dead silence. "Connie Chung, from NBC," Chet tried again. One of the waitresses clapped. "Fucking assholes," he grumbled as he snapped off the mic.
After that, any band would sound good. Sure, Connie Chung tried, pumping out truly generic post-Nirvana pop-punk. To be honest, I remember this band much like I do the early 80s: I'm sure there was some music, some people dressed funny, and total destruction seemed close at hand, but I don't really feel one way or the other about it.
After a mercifully short set, the drummer fell off his chair and the bassist started hacking phlegm all over the place. Well, that did it for the older lady. Too bad for her, cuz she missed For Chameleon.
To say For Chameleon was simply "bad" is akin to saying Greg Dulli is only "kind of pompous." They were that, too. Before the show, one of the members asked me and another judge, Don, if we were musicians. Apparently, us apelike civilians couldn't handle the diverse, complicated sounds they'd be making. Fuck 'em, I was going to score them low no matter how good they were.
I needn't have worried. Imagine a scrawnier Mick Jones impersonating Geddy Lee in front of the Mighty Mighty Bosstones sans horns. Add Les Claypool on bass and Page Hamilton on guitar. Now riddle them with bullets. Then beat them with PVC pipes, then...Hmm, I think I lost my point, but it's a nice mental picture anyway. How lame were these people? At one point the lead singer called out "hey, let's really boogie now!" as they lurched into "Yellow Submarine." After the song, the lead singer looked up at heaven and said "keep fighting the fight, John." Only quick action from Don kept me from jabbing my pen into my intestines in a sort of Scripto hari kari.
Sure, they both sucked, but the first band kept it short, so Connie Chung was the winner and we were safe for another week, when Toy Truck would take on Tapioca (have we totally run out of band names or what?)
My third week in hell began with Tapioca. Tapioca. No other band name would do to describe their boring, unoriginal, tapiocal sound. Oh wait, there is one: the Shit Merchants.
When they took the stage, Don and I looked at one another and said, in unison: "Shit. Bongos." It only got worse. Tapioca is the reason god gave us beer cans -- to throw at shitty bands who think that since Pavement doesn't tune their guitars, learning to play is optional. This trio of angst-filled pseudointellectuals made me long for the days of Big Jim. After a quick run through five or six soundalike songs, they stripped down to a duo (translation: the bassist announced "I gotta pee" and ran off). For a full ten minutes they just stood there as the crowd (such as it was), assuming the show was over, left. I tried to bolt, but the owner tackled me just as I was clearing the transom.
When the bassist and I returned, the Shit Mer... uh, Tapioca was a changed band. Unfortunately, the band they changed into was Poison. So, for the next 30 minutes we all took a little field trip back...
Just as I'd lost all hope, along came salvation: Toy Truck. Sure they specialize in generic Van Halen-esque metal, but they wrote all their own songs, had a sense of humor about things, and called the club owner a "royal prick." Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!
The highlight of the fourth night (aside from the vicious girl-fight in the parking lot) was the rush of adrenaline I got fleeing large crowds of acid-washed jeans and high heels. Once again I voted against the home crowd, but this time they were armed. That is to say, I chose G.F.Y., a wanna-be Helmet five-piece, over Azrael Chuck, a truly shitty AC/DC cover band.
But let's begin at 9 p.m. Once again I dragged myself away from things I'd much rather do (like watching "Wings" or stabbing my palm with a pencil) to sacrifice yet more hearing on the altar of "Stairway to Heaven." As I idly wondered whether beer-can aluminum could slice through skin, the sound guy wandered over to tell me this was the last night of the fest. My heart soared as he told me that, instead of giving away one cheap trophy, the owner'd sprung for four. He said he wanted to "support a wide variety of bands instead of crowning an overall king of Worcester rock and roll." Of course, his bullshit story wouldn't fool anyone who'd seen the 50+ people who walked in, looked at the bands, and then left. But who cares, after tonight, I was off the hook. How bad could one night be?
Well, it could be bad, G.F.Y.-level bad. After taking nearly an hour tuning up (translation: the guitarist strummed his guitar while the drummer hit every one of his 9,876 drums -- including TWO bass drums, for crissakes -- at least once to make sure we'd be able to enjoy every element of his playing). And then they began. Halfway into the fourth song, Don looked at me and said "Hey, I think they may be starting." By that time I'd scored them and was ready for the second band; at that rate I'd be back to civilization by 10 p.m. Tragically, they seemed set on using all of their 45 minutes, the bastards.
"I don't know how to describe this sound," Don bellowed into my ear. I don't know how you couldn't describe them. Two words came to mind: "Henry Rollins." These two were quickly followed by 37 more: "is already doing this hardcore poet/angry-young-Ken-doll shit, so why don't you drop the instruments, unplug the amps, walk slowly and quietly to the nearest farm, and lie down in front of a combine." But they persevered, finishing their set with a Velvet Underground cover that should be re-titled "Heroin Lite."
As Azrael Chuck warmed up, I pondered a trio of realizations: 1) If I had a band, under no circumstances would I name it Azrael Chuck. I mean, hello, it is your name, let's try putting a little thought into it. 2) There's a lot more interest in heavy metal retreads than I ever would have guessed. 3) If I start a fight between two or more of these tightly wound hicks, I could probably escape during the melee.
I was having such a good time making snotty mental comments and planning the escape, I missed the first two songs (OK, I was really in the bathroom, so sue me). When I got out, the band was screeching through the most pathetic version of "Paranoid" I'd ever heard. Too slow, wrong key, and, if I'm not mistaken, the bass player didn't stop in the middle to let Ozzy and Co. catch back up.
When they shuddered mercifully to a halt, I passed in my ballot and strolled off. Bad decision. Better to have passed in my ballot, and bolted, cuz when the scores were read, I watched an ugly crowd grow uglier.
"You fucker," one fan posited. "Dickless asshole," another, more physiologically creative goon, parried before shoving Don. Chet waded into the fray and, seeing my chance, I squeaked past a 350-lb. Prong shirt-wearing, tight-jeans, gut-exposing drain-on-society and hoofed it for the car. On the way out, I saw Don sprinting across the street for the (relative) safety of one of the city's most notorious housing projects. And as the sight of no less than three fistfights faded from my rear-view mirror, I basked in the glow of a job well-done and the hope that the fans would do at least $100 worth of damage to the club.