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But even that got a little boring after a while. The music wasn’t really catching on and I didn’t get the feeling like we were cranking the gears of change. One night I came up with the idea that we should call ourselves Teen Spirit and tell clubs we were a Nirvana cover band, that was sure to get us booked. Then, when we got up on stage we would just rip through sped-up Elton John covers.
We dwelled on that entertaining notion for a while, but it didn’t seem shocking or absurd enough.
One day we were driving around in Charlie’s van with all the instruments conveniently in there (Charlie’s mom had finally thrown us out of her house) when one of us (probably me) yelled “PULL OVER!” The van screeched to a stop and pulled up on the sidewalk of some busy downtown street.
“What the hell?” asked Charlie.
“Let’s kick out the jams!”
“What, here?”
“We said we were gonna take it to the streets!”
In that moment, this seemed like the most brilliant idea ever conceived. What better way to send our message to the people?
Within minutes we had all our gear set up, amps humming and ready to blast noise. I had decided to take over the mic because I felt in my soul that I knew how to talk to the people, how to provoke them to anger.
Feedback blasts through the speakers, then Charlie lets out a mean drum fill.
Inspired brilliance.
HEY you in that CAR!
Why don’t you get out and join the WAR
We’re gonna TEAR this mother down
We’re settin’ fire to the goddamn TOWN
The guy in the car tried to ignore me and floored the gas as soon as the light turned green.
People on the street were coming out of their stores and staring, and I felt like some **** was about to go down.
Come on people don’t just stand around
Grab an axe and tear **** down
Bite the hand that’s been screwin’ you
C’mon dirtbags you know what to do!
At this point it looked like people were yelling at us, but we couldn’t hear them above our own cacophony. Good, let them get worked up, I thought. This is something to get worked up about.
Surprisingly, nobody from the crowd worked up the nerve to attack us, but somebody called the cops and they showed up pretty quickly. I’d really gotten worked up so as they got out of their squad car and ran up to us I made pig noises like in Deliverance. They ended up hauling us down to the station. Even though they didn’t charge us with anything that was more or less the end of the band. We were all pretty satisfied that we’d left our mark on the world.
[End of Step 1]
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