The posted flyer in the cafe in the mission district said "hard edged groove driven band" - they wanted a lead singer, and they sounded like my type of band - in five words. I called, and talked to Tito, and made an appoinment for a wednesday evening tryout.method
7 November, 1994
I arrived at the bart stop and tried to get a splendid looking blonde woman to make eye contact with me, to no avail. Tito arrived in his truck, we immediately sighted eachother. He was a proto-rocker - long black hair, scrawny skinny body, earrings, heavy metal t-shirt.
We arrived at the single story ranch style house in the distant eastern suburbs of San Francisco - Pleasant Hill/Walnut Creek. There was a dog, excitable and mistreated, and three other tall scrawny dudes with long black hair.
They had me look over some of their lyrics, and sing along with their dat player.
I only remember part of one song, "Sympathy":
Sympathy, take a look at me,with a slegehammer beat and guitars wail.
the way you wanna be
a fight to the finish
and we'll take some
and we'll get noneWe took the jam into their heavily padded garage warm up space. I sang their lyrics, and finally started a beefheart-esque riff on Nebraska.
I think they were a little put off, they didn't talk to me for a while after they stopped played mid-scream.
They said I was real intelligent, and witty, and I was good, just not for them.
After the tryout, we were going to smoke this great joint I'd brought with me. We hard the hardest time finding it, on the table where I'd left it. The dog was actin' mighty weird, turns out she has quite a thing for pot.
We smoked some resin bong hits and I beat two out of three of them in Mortal Kombat.
I rode back on bart, and had somewhat of a conversion.
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