Band Tales 2: SteelyGnot



A picture of guy playing drums.

Band Tales 2: SteelyGnot
Original Young Adult Fiction

Written by Jimmy H.


Dream Theater is on the stereo.

The album has just begun, and a journey is started. A story that begins simple, and grows into an intricate web of...complexities.

A tale of scandal, deception, treachery, sex, murder, reincarnation, and terrifying hypnotic regression is unfurled. All the while, it is accompanied and tied in vitally with awesome music.

The tale of my adventures with SteelyGnot has in common three and two halves ingredients to the story.

For one, the music was only mediocre. Also, I count terrifying hypnotic regression as half because it never actually happened to me, but if it did, I’m sure it would be more than terrifying... and then some.

Why, you ask? Well, read on...

I had been in Typical Lamesters for several months and I was becoming more and more desperate to get out, however I didn’t want to let anyone down, and it was also the only group of people I could play music with in a band format, as horrible as it was.

It was about this time that I met MeanDude. I had known MeanDude from before, when I was in my first “band” (I don’t consider it an actual band. It was in the sixth grade, and I was just learning how to play. We did like five practices, which sucked. We only played crappy surf rock jams and stupid crap like that. It was more of a “play time” of sorts. Pathetic, really.)

MeanDude was a huge (and I mean 6’3 in sixth grade), huge fellow. Both tall and stocky. He played bass in the school jazz band.

After two years of nothing but just jamming on my own, and having nothing but “ideas for bands”, I had found the Typical Lamesters. And, in the start of eighth grade, came to know MeanDude.

He sat behind me in Spanish, a class where the teacher hated MeanDude, a boy by the name of Timmy (who I may be telling you about in a future story), and, of course, me.

She was always harassing me about my hair, my lack of shaving, and about the fact that I was always daydreaming in her class.

I would have tried a bit harder not to daydream had she not been a total b*tch, and not given me the need to somehow make more bearable the tedious ticking minutes of her vexing, horrible class.

For example, she would announce, “We’ll, let’s see, I wonder who got an F on their quiz!”

Then she would proceed to stare at me until everyone in the entire class noticed who she was talking about.

Well, MeanDude and I had a common love of music. In specific, it was heavy metal I was into heavily (no pun intended...well, maybe) at that time, as well as he.

He had band patches on his book bag that I would bring up in conversation, and we’d begin discussing great bands such as Tool, White Zombie, Deftones, Rob Zombie, and the like.

I knew he still had a band together with the guitar player from my first (non)band, and that they had another drummer. Since I desperately wanted out from the Typical Lamesters situation, I finally just asked MeanDude if his band needed a second guitar player. He said I needed to ask Slacker.

Enter Slacker (you fellas here at RIA probably know him as Joey M, by the way). He was the current and only guitar player in SteelyGnot, and he had known me for a while back into sixth grade, when we were in the (non)band together. He and I had grown apart as friends for about a year, and now I was about to be reunited with my old pal.

So, after failing to ask Slacker due to nervousness (I had grown to feel he didn’t like me very much in the past year for some reason or another), MeanDude asked him.

He said that perhaps I could come down to one of their practices, and audition, sort of. So, one Friday, I went on down with my little crappy Crate amplifier, and my trusty road dog guitar.

MeanDude and Slacker were there in the house, and they let me in. This, my friends, was when I smelled it. The thick smell that has, to me at least, become the official SteelyGnot smell. It was like a thick wave that I had just been enveloped in, and it disgusted me.

Anyway, they led me to a room in the front of the house, a medium sized room made extremely tiny due to the two couches, the drum set, the PA, the smaller, more broken PA, the bass amplifier, the TV, the stereo, the desk the stereo was on, the desk the TV was on, the cables, the miscellaneous gadgets scattered about the floor, and about a hundred other things that I cannot recall right now.

I put my puny yet semi trusty amp on top of one of the PA speakers. I never once used it with SteelyGnot.

The drummer wasn’t going to show up until right about the time that I was leaving, so Slacker hopped on them drums, and told me to just jam with him and MeanDude.

I think that the first thing we jammed on was the main riff to “Sleep Now in the Fire,” by Rage Against the Machine.

Then, we did a blues thing, and then Slacker and MeanDude showed me a riff that they liked to jam on. It was simple and kind of bad, but I played it anyway.

Slacker wasn’t that great on the drums, however he was better than Espresso from Typical Lamesters, who could only play one beat. Slacker, too, actually could only play one beat, but it was much more “jammable” than Espresso’s.

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After trying my hardest to not suck, they told me I was in the band, on lead guitar. This got me happy. Even though the songs weren’t really organized, and some of the stuff was mediocre, it was still better than Typical Lamesters. So I dug it. Sort of.

After our little jam, we went to MeanDude’s room, where we sat and he showed us cyber p**n. This sort of weirded me out a little, because then I wasn’t totally used to the whole sort of “raunch” thing that I was going to unfortunately see a lot of in the future.

About an hour or so after just going on the computer a little, and listening to some music in MeanDude’s room, the drummer arrived. Bigbeats.

Enter Bigbeats. I had known of Bigbeats as being a sort of ghetto-rappish type fellow, who had sort of hung with that crowd in the sixth grade. I barely knew him at all through the seventh grade. Now, apparently, he had transformed into a rocker.

He was a peculiar type fellow, with a slight speech impediment (which only gave him character) and an energy about him that was just awesome. Good for a drummer.

We were about to jam with Bigbeats on drums, but I had to go home just as we were about to. I had yet to see the great Bigbeats unleashed.

The next practice we had, I was able to witness Bigbeats do his thing. As I jammed, I thought, “...damn!” Bigbeats was and is one of the greatest drummers I’ve ever played with.

At our second practice, we wrote a simple, crappy song called “Make Up a Mind.” You see, you must understand something about MeanDude. He is a person that has trouble not exploding into doing something very crappy.

If he didn’t like something, he would either flail his arms about making abnormal noises, yell “An*s”, “C*ck”, totally cuss you out, or just plain smack you in the nuts.

So, as you would imagine, any lyrics coming from MeanDude were sure to be quite comical, whether they were meant to be that way or not.

“Make Up a Mind” was basically a bunch of untastefully placed and overused cuss words, and a bunch of BS meant to be “deep.”

Basically, this was a good portion out of the song:

You’re speaking
I think we need some time
This whole thing was a waste
I need my f*cking space
Make up a Mind
(Not wanted, not needed)
Make up a f*cking mind

You get the picture, right?

Not to mention, MeanDude tried to sing. It sounded like a dying rat.

Well, anyhoo, we did a couple more practices, and wrote some stuff just to jam on.

Then, we figured we were ready for a gig. That was good, because New Years Eve was coming up, and Bigbeats’s mom was planning on throwing a New Year’s Eve party.

Bigbeats invited a few buddies, MeanDude invited his, and I didn’t really have any that would want to come except for, well, the band.

We turned up, set up, and were ready to go.

A few hours. No one came. A few more. No one came.

Finally, Bigbeats’ little brother’s friends showed up, and they all ran directly to the swimming pool. Oh well.

We started playing our set. We finished our set. No one. Oh well. That’s rock and roll, I figured. Bigbeats’ mom paid us all like $150 or something, which I dug.

I went to a party at my grandparents’ house. Then went home and went to sleep. New Years Eve ’00. Hallelujah. We didn’t die.

After a couple months, the band started to develop, and write (slightly) better, and more organized songs.

During this time period, I also met some of MeanDude’s friends. Quite interesting people. I met Rancid, a p**n-watching anime computer dude, who liked to watch disgusting things downloaded off the internet.

I would describe them to you, but I won’t because I’m considerate and don’t want you to puke all over your computer so that you can’t read the rest of the story.

I also met Sycotic, a nutcase whose driving I’m surprised hasn’t gotten him killed or in jail by now. Not to mention a few others, like RyoG, who I’ll get to later.

Anyway, after developing some songs, we recorded a crappy cheap demo of an instrumental song, and another tune called “Ghetto Cool.” It was poking fun at all the ghetto-rap fellows at our school who were constantly harassing us. It contains memorable lyrics such as the following:

When it’s my day, I’ll tell you what to do
When it’s my day, I’ll make you clean my f*cking shoes

...Aw, hell! It’s just so funny (in the sense that it is crap, that is), I’ll write out a whole bunch for you. Enjoy:

Laugh your ass off now
It’s only high school
Wear your f*cking wife-beaters
You’re so ghetto f*cking cool
(I forget some of the lyrics)
Fifty bucks to go to my concert
You won’t have the dough
You’ll be standing there in line, saying
“Hey, I knew that guy!”
Then I’ll laugh my ass off
What a f*cking lie
When it’s...

And so on.

I recall the recording quality was so crappy, all the music just sort of melded together into a big ugly lump of crap. Then, the lyrics, which were bad already, came in loud as hell over it. It was a bloody disaster.

The next show we did was in MeanDude’s living room to a bunch of kids in the school Jazz band. His mother was throwing a big party for them, and we played for it. The set sucked, and MeanDude’s bass broke partway through. Dammit.

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It was about this time that I had begun to write lyrics and music for the band. My words were very dark, and a bit gothic at the time. Looking back on them, they sucked hard, but were probably the best lyrics that SteelyGnot ever had. Soon enough, we were ready to record a real demo.

The summer had passed, and the first year of high school had begun. It was a few weeks into it that we recorded. Slacker got his guitar teacher to come on over and record us. What resulted was something that is bad.

Here are a few reasons why.

What took two hours to set up should’ve taken many more. What should’ve been done in a recording studio was done in MeanDude’s front room. What should’ve been rehearsed so much that it was impossible not to mess up was only gone over once or twice that morning.

MeanDude’s screaming sucked (as always) so he had to put an effect on his voice that dropped it down low and made him sound like the man with the largest testicles in the universe. I sang for the first time ever because MeanDude finally realized he just couldn’t do it. And I’d never sung the song before. Slacker tried to semi-rap but instead sounded like a rambling moron with a megaphone effect on his voice.

That’s probably about one fourth of it.

After the recording was done, and that fiasco was through, we embarked on our next journey as a band.

At this time, MeanDude revealed to us that underneath his house was a bomb shelter. He took me down to see it.

Basically, there was a tiny cavern, leading to a door that opened into a room about the size of an average sized dining room.

MeanDude and Slacker had plans to renovate, and call the new hangout the “Voodoo Panda Lounge.”

I thought this was a damn fine idea. But the place was a mess, with dead and living tiny creatures permeating it, and the cavernous area was used as a storage space for working / building material.

Luckily, before they told me, they had cleared out most of the dead animals.

According to Slacker, they had literally garbage bags full of dead creatures such as frogs, lizards, crabs, etc.

The main job now was to get all the crap out of there to begin renovation.

It was going to be tedious and sweaty, but we had to do it. This went on for quite a few days. We found more crabs (dead and alive) and other assorted creatures, we got splinters, bruises, and cuts, but finally that job was finished.

Next was cleaning. We got Bigbeats’s mom to let us bring her industrial vacuum down there to clean the half-inch layer of dust off the floor of the cavern.

I did a lot of the easy stuff in the cleaning out process. So I was of course obligated to do a majority of the vacuuming, which hurt my back like hell.

I forget what Slacker and Bigbeats did, but it was something useful.

MeanDude, being the lazy mean fellow that he was, sat around doing nothing, and yelled at us when we did something he didn’t like.

It was on one of these such working days that I was left in a state of such shock, I’ve been trying to mentally block it ever since.

We’d been working quite hard, you see, and after a long day we had plans for Bigbeats’s mom to take us out to the Outback restaurant, and then go to see the film X-Men. However, we were sweaty as swine, and so we decided to all take showers.

Bigbeats went home to his own shower. And seeing as that MeanDude’s house had three showers, we figured there would be no problem.

Of course, MeanDude and Slacker got the best showers, and I was left with the one where you had to do something with the water heater to get it hot.

I certainly didn’t know what the hell to do, and I figured MeanDude’s mom did, so I went looking for her. I checked all over the house, and found no one.

Then, I came upon MeanDude’s door, and it was ajar. Through the small crack formed, I saw MeanDude’s mother. Great! Now I could finally get all this damn sweat off me.

I opened the door fully, and, to my terror, saw MeanDude, naked, with a washcloth hung down over his genitalia.

As you would expect, he was surprised to see me, and the look on his face made that quite clear indeed.

I immediately swung around and ran out as fast as I could, slamming the door behind me.

The rest of the night was spent in shocked and confused disorientation. I mean, hell, his mother was in there!

After much more renovation, we moved our equipment down there, and began rehearsals once again.

Soon enough, we put a show on down in the Voodoo Panda, serving as a grand opening of sorts.

Opening for SteelyGnot was a band called Six Plus One, which featured a guitar player named RyoG. He had a unique style. He studied classical guitar, and applied it in a rock format.

They played an instrumental set, because their singer wasn’t there (she sucked, anyway). It was awesome, and then SteelyGnot played a set that seemed benign compared to what went down before it.

Also, Slacker ate too many Slim Jims, pieces of candy, and pieces of pizza, and had to run out in the middle of the set to vomit.

Not to mention, only about six people showed up (including the other band).

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After that, Slacker somehow had it scheduled for us to play a pep rally at our school during spirit week.

I didn’t like the idea, but had no real choice. The band was getting harder to deal with as people.

MeanDude was an arsehole. Slacker got rather annoying at times. And they all took out a lot of their anger on Bigbeats, with whom I had become pretty good friends with.

Also, the music was pretty awful, and now they wanted to play cover tunes at a pep rally?

But, I didn’t want to let anyone down, so I did the pep rally with them. It was at one of the rehearsals for this pep rally that MeanDude proved his ability to be a genuine arsehole.

We had finished practicing down in the Voodoo Panda, and were relaxing in MeanDude’s room listening to music.

Everyone was a little on nerves. We were having a conversation, when I said something I suppose MeanDude didn’t like.

Instead of telling me so in a civilized manner, he turned around, and sneezed directly into my face.

The sight before me called upon to mind the scene in “Die Hard with a Vengeance” when the good guy is in the water duct, and the water is coming straight at him, no holds-barred.

MeanDude’s spit and snot got all in my mouth, up my nose, all over my glasses, on my shirt, everywhere.

The first thing I did was spit out a huge glob of his snot right onto his floor.

What did hey say?

“Hey, man! You spit on my floor!”

I went straight to the bathroom to wash myself, and from then on knew that I was getting out.

Too many things were going not well, and the sneezing incident just drove me over the brink and far away.

We played the pep rally, which was almost a disaster because MeanDude’s bass broke.

Lucky a buddy of ours, Ivan, soldered some pieces back together and it worked for the featured tune.

It was the obvious and overplayed “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and on that occasion, Slacker proved to the world that he, in fact, could NOT SING.

I had plans to start up a band with Bigbeats, on our own, and he was pretty into it, until one day we were just sitting there in English class, having a conversation.

We spoke about music, anything.

Then, he just said it nonchalantly. He was moving to Connecticut.

It took me totally by surprise, and I thought he was just messing around at first, but he was really going.

We played one more gig down in the Voodoo Panda with Bigbeats, on MeanDude’s birthday.

Six Plus One opened up again, but this time with their singer, which is why it was still better than SteelyGnot, but not nearly as good as the first time I saw them.

We had much more of a turnout that time, and we had a better time in general. Since Bigbeats was leaving us, we all set aside our differences and got along pretty damn well for one night.

Much like always in SteelyGnot, another interesting event took place.

MeanDude had invited down to the Voodoo Panda a girl named Trashbag

I don’t usually call people ugly, and don’t usually like to call people ugly, but Trashbag was so annoying, I have no problem at all with it.

So you can understand why I was disgusted when I heard that she offered to Slacker and MeanDude to strip for us.

Overall, though, the night was pretty good, and I jammed with Bigbeats basically for about an hour after it was over. I gave him a ride home, then Slacker, and then I went home.

SteelyGnot only played once more with Bigbeats when he came down from Connecticut to visit.

It was in the band room at school, and even though it wasn’t that good at all, it was sort of uplifting in a way. The last battle cry of SteelyGnot.

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MeanDude
MeanDude is just being his usual self, annoying and a lot of the time, mean. We go to the same school, so we’re still in touch.

Slacker
I just started up a band with Slacker, himself using the pseudonym “Joey M.” However, the music is pretty horrible and it’s not looking that good for the band after our second practice. Nevertheless, we are still very good friends, with a common love of music and hacky sack.

Bigbeats
He went up to Connecticut to live with his dad, but fortunately, he comes down to visit about once or twice each month, usually. He is planning on coming back down junior year and we are going to start writing new material for then during his visits. We want to start up an awesome group one of these days. We’re still great friends.

SteelyGnot
MeanDude, Slacker, and I played once more with a different drummer at a school basketball game, and then called it quits. Slacker, the drummer and I started the band we’re in now that doesn’t look very good.

I guess the SteelyGnot situation burned me a little and an ostrich or two, and now I am looking forward to starting a jam band with RyoG and some of his buddies, and writing some stuff with Bigbeats.

My main, full time band is coming along well (Slacker and Jake Huge are in it), not to mention, I can’t wait to jam with RIA.

Stay tuned for the next story, which YOU, my readers, can decide which one it is.

Here are the choices:

The Adventure of the Infamous Club Nightmare Gig

Jazz Band Swing Dance Fiasco
(How to NOT Light Things on Fire and Then Run Away Like a Nutcase)

My Week in a Place Very Close to Hell

A Night Out to See AC/DC and Getting into a Redneck Fight, Too

The Concert Chronicles

Well, please do respond on the message board with which one you wanna read next.

I hope you enjoyed the story.

I’ll be postin’ again soon!


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