It's humbling and terrifying that I'm neigh on eighteen years removed from this indignity, but so it is, and so it must be told. Fuck You Lisbon High School 1990, Fuck You.
Fabulous Disasters
Yes, I was in a metal band in high school, during my
mullet days. Even back then, I instinctively knew that metal was a pitiful cartoon and I could feel my R.E.M., Smiths and Smithereens influences taking over. But my band, Rampage, needed one final talent show salvo. And so came the 1990 Spring Fling.
We auditioned with one of the Metallica songs in our repertoire, Master of Puppets. Extremely difficult song to play for a bunch of high schoolers, and the faculty brass on the panel, although suitably impressed, still gave us shit about being too loud and etc. But they let us on the bill. Three songs, and we could keep playing while the crowd left and the janitors cleaned up. Fine.
Cue up a snowy night in March 1990, Lisbon, ME. Cue up the same high school gym that inspired Carrie. Because that’s where we were playing.
Throughout the entire talent show, which consisted of bell ringers, clog dancers and a father and son team that, for no discernable reason, danced a duet in matching mouse costumes, the doors to the gym were locked. (Fire hazard? Huh?) Rampage was scheduled dead last, but we dug being the underdogs. First song: “You Will Never Be Forgotten.” Our drummer wrote the lyrics about a ‘nam vet from our school. I wrote the music and totally and completely ripped off the bass line from the Smithereens “Blood and Roses”. My brother, the bass player, forgot the bass line and we had to start over again. Not a good sign.
Midway through our second song (the years have erased what we played from my memory bank), I noticed that the gym was becoming slowly but noticeably brighter. Toward the end of said song, I noticed that the gym doors, which oh-by-the-way had been hitherto locked, were open, and a steady stream of the gym populace was exiting through those doors.
By the third song, “Stand Our Ground”, which was, ironically enough, written as a fuck-you to the faculty brass that gave us shit about being too loud and etc., the head janitor, practically the only soul left in the gym, parked himself in front of the stage, waved a huge “cut it!” arc and yelled “That’s it!”.
Thus we were lied to by the 1990 faculty of Lisbon ME High School, and had to hump the gear out and shuffle home in defeat. My bro walked the entire four miles home in disgust. I went to an after-party to try to get laid, and failed miserably.
Eighteen years after the fact, I'm still a wee bit unsettled.
