yeah comma back when i was in a band dot dot dot.

I don't readily drop the band info into conversation, you know. Some folks seem to think that bandliness is next to godliness, and I really don't want to be mistaken for one of those people, you know. There's more to me than just my talent, you know. There's so much more. Honestly, you think you know, but you have no idea.

The first band was called Street Beat. We were alternately known in some circles as Street Beet, depending on who assembled the press package. We had a brisk, poppy sound, and our lyrics were replete with references to the toys we wanted for Christmas (I was hoping for my two front teeth; my cousin Brian just wanted a harmonica), the power of love and how we desperately needed to get back in time. Yes, we were a cover band, and our instruments might have just been old wood from my uncle's garage, but we painted frets on those boards and decorated them with sequins and yarn from my grandmother's sewing box. As you may have deduced, we had only two records to lip sync to, but my cousin's house had an outdoor power outlet and we would blast those two records far and wide, set up staging out near the street and wait for "traffic" to drive past. Once, a driver threw a tennis ball at us as he passed. We fought over that ball for three hours.

Next there was the Bloomingdale Bombers, actually just the next generation of Street Beat, formed when Brian and his sister Kristy moved further down the street and decided they didn't want to play with me or my brother any longer. Our sound was lighter, more "easy listening." This was because my cousin owned the record player and all Matt and I had was a battery-powered radio with the dial stuck on my parents' station.

I left the Bloomingdale Bombers for personal reasons. I won't get into them here, but I will mention that there are no lingering feelings of animosity among former members of either the Bombers or the Beat. In fact, we look back on those years fondly, except for the question of who ultimately wound up taking the tennis ball home. My musical career wandered a bit, through years of piano lessons and a brief, embarrassing stint with an actual guitar, crafted in Korea of the finest polycarbonate/ABS blend. Then there were the H years, and my time spent with Alternachiquita (AKA Big Ass Funky Girl Band, a name we dropped after noticing the ambiguity regarding the actual sizes of our asses), a band crafted from the "hype first, play later" school of music. I don't remember much about the 'chiquita, or maybe I'm just blocking out that cover of Rock Lobster.