Good Things

And I say
No, no, no, don't pass me over No, no, no, don't pass me by
See I can see good things for you and I
Yeah, good things for you

The year is 1992 (or thereabouts) and the place is a basement of a rental house that is somewhere in the vicinity of campus but is just far enough away that you have to find somebody with a car to take you there. There are five of us in the basement, and we are trying to learn songs with only three chords. For a brief period we consider naming the band DAG, but then Tommy convinces us to go with Oresteia. This turns out to be an interesting choice, considering that the only gigs we ever play are in crappy hick bars in semi-rural Wisconsin. For the most part, they call us Ortega, and then are fairly hostile when we don't play salsa music. Actually, that's not true. They are VERY hostile, when we don't know Freebird. FREEBIRD!! SKYNYRD!! DAMN, this band SUCKS!

So back to the basement. We feel like rock and rolls superstars in the basement. It's smoky and poorly ventilated, which proves to be good practice for me at putting up with the aforementioned crappy hick bars. I only have a couple allergy attacks, which is amazing considering the length of time we spend in the basement. Ray, although a great guy and pretty good contact with the crappy hick bars, has some trouble with the DAG songs. As they say in the South, bless his heart. It probably didn't help that he's deaf in one ear.

I know that leaving the band was the right thing to do for my college career. My week-ends were better spent practicing piano than pounding out DAG in a smoky basement. Still, for a brief while it was fun to be a rock and roll superstar, even if it was only in my own mind. I attempted to join a smaller band later on, sort of a Hootie wannabe, but it wasn't the same. Maybe because he didn't smoke.