guns n’ roses

When I was about 12 or 13, Guns N’ Roses were quite popular, having seen both the successes of “Appetite For Destruction” and “Use Your Illusion” a couple of years apart. I had incidentally just started playing guitar because I had some immature fantasy of being a rock star (or maybe it was because of GNR and they were so cool) and I decided to show off my fretboard skills at a middle school talent show. This was not only to prove that I was a bad-ass, but also to piss off my sister who had a huge crush on Axl Rose and thought she was the foremost expert on all things GNR.

It was kind of funny. A bunch of long-haired goofs from the 6th grade (below mine) and I decided to do a cover of “Don’t Cry” with three guitars, drums, and no bass player OR vocals. I was ostensibly the leader of the group but I think we decided against the vocals because our voices were still squeaky and I had too much stagefright. We also performed a strangely truncated version of the song, which essentially was an entire verse, part of a chorus, the bridge, then a discombobulated ending chorus. Sort of like a retarded American Idol version, chopped and badly planned. We didn’t have the vocals or the patience to play the entire thing. The place was packed. The preceding act was two 6th grade girls that had decided to choreograph some dance moves to “Two Princes”, played out of a boombox. Their dance started with them both up against each other back to back, and they started walking away from each other, in time with that ragged Spin Doctor Spanish yodeler’s singing about princes with a princely racquet. Clad in tight jeans, converse, and flannel. What a great fashion era that was.

The school for some reason had a bunch of amps that were lying around and we used them to make noise. I think those were pretty nice tube amps, but I had no idea what I was doing since all I had at home was a small Squier solid state amp that I used to piss off my sister and neighbors. Needless to say, our song structure worked and everybody really dug it (except my guitar teacher, who told me I should have been singing, and was probably right). All the 8th grade girls were impressed by the distortion and the volume. I think that really gets people when they are exposed to their first electric guitar experience. I felt like I owned the place and made some silly Kurt Cobain – like gestures at the end of the performance, signaling the intermission.

The reason I wrote this is because I am in my apartment trying to study the anterior compartments of the arm and upper limb, and I cannot concentrate. The words are bouncing off my retinas. So I went back in time. 14 years.