dislocated tres

When last we left my old band, The Dislocated, we were preparing to play our first gig – we now join the story in progress:

It was with lots of relief that our first show wasn’t going to be in front of the entire Riverdale student body (probably around 2,000 kids), but instead at local dive bar Jabbs. Jabbs was located right next to MTSU and it catered to the college crowd with one dollar keg nights and live music. It made a big splash when it initially opened, but by the time we played there it was on the downhill slide. That was great for us – the punks were taking over. We got asked to play on a bill featuring Speed Metal Mania and jack (who’ve since become Murfreesboro legends). We figured we’d open the show, but we found out we were to be the last band to play since most of the young crowd would undoubtedly have left. Markey Dave and I waited outside with Tim’s father who had brought a case of beer. We would step in to check out Speed Metal Mania and jack occasionally, but mainly we just slammed back the brew nervously waiting for our turn to take the stage. Finally after the jack show disintegrated into their usual scuffle, it was our turn. Our friend Toby urged the crowd to stick around. The band didn’t match my complete vision, but it was all I had so we launched into show opener “Desperate People” just hoping that the audience wouldn’t take us for just another run of the mill cover band. I was literally shaking with fear as I started singing the tune. I figured my shaking was visible, but I guess it went unnoticed. We made it through that one and then launched into Black Flag’s “Jealous Again”. My fear vanished and the slam dancing on the floor began with poor old Toby getting mauled. We ran through punk classics by D.O.A. and the Descendents and then tore through some speed metal covers of Megadeth and S.O.D. before heading back toward the classic rock that Mark preferred. The crowd started to thin out, but when we hit the heavy, heavy “Hand of Doom” the people who had been heading toward the door came back to front of the stage. I was running around stage barefoot since two girls had untied my shoelaces of my Chuck Taylor’s early in the show. We hit our peak on a cover of Danzig’s “Mother” with the slamming getting out of control. One of the members of local act Word Uprising jumped up on stage to sing along and the kids in the crowd were all rushing the stage looking to shake my hand as I flashed the metal sign. We did our first original, “Work Sucks”, and the show was over around 2 AM, but the rush lasted for hours. I drove home with my head through the clouds and into other planets’ orbits. The only thing I could compare it to at that time was to when I got my first kiss at a junior high basketball game and afterwards rode home on my bicycle and it felt like I was flying. I later wrote a song called “Rock And Roll World” and one of the lines says “in love with rock and roll ever since I could dream” (it sound cheesy, but the songs actually great power pop) and that first gig at Jabbs will always be one of the biggest moments in my life, beyond incredible and into some pure adrenalin epiphany of noise, motion, and feel. Now with that show behind us and all of us considering it a big success, it was time for the show at Riverdale High.

 

We knew we couldn’t play many of our punk faves, so we fell back on many of Mark’s picks – imagine having to sing old ZZ Top songs, but still we included “Jealous Again”, “Silly Girl”, and “Mother”. Years later I would run into kids that had seen that show and the Danzig cover would always be remembered. My only regret about that show is that I dressed like a complete dork for the show with cutoff fatigues, a tie-dyed JFA shirt, and a Chicago Cubs hat. I had seen many groups play center court at Riverdale and here I was doing it – it wasn’t surreal, it was some kind of hyper reality; we even did a football huddle before the gig with a big “let’s go!” to psyche ourselves up as the crowd started cheering. 2,000 kids can make a lot of noise in a gym. The show itself was a blur with so many faces in front of us. Everybody was in the bleachers or in the seats above them, except for a group of about twenty kids who were all a member of something I had helped inspire: ZUD. The ZUD story goes way back to when Mark worked at the Giant Food store in Murfreesboro. He was stocking the shelves one day and the industrial cleaner Zud just leaped out at him as being funny. After he got an old no name bass guitar at a pawn shop, it was dubbed Zud. Years went by and I started hanging around Mark and his brother Mike again. One day Mike was talking about the local high school fraternities and how they were such jerks, so I suggested he should form an alternative fraternity and call it Zeta Upsilon Delta – ZUD. Darn if he didn’t take my advice and make it a reality. Soon, ZUD was creating a sensation at the school. The best ZUD story Mike told me was when a rival fraternity member asked Mike how ZUD was raising money – were they doing things like a car wash? – and Mike gave the classic deadpan reply – we’re stealing car radios (no truth to that of course) – and the rival believed him. All of the members of ZUD were waiting for our last song which would be an instrumental trash tune titled “Mosh and Slam” which began with the Riverdale High Marching Band cowbell tune. Once we cranked that baby up, those kids went absolutely nuts; the teachers had to have thought a riot had broken out. I was whirling around and I could see this huge mosh pit forming. I whirled again and when I saw the pit again somebody was completely upside down in the middle of it only a pair of legs visible above the kids. We were having the show videotaped and later I got to see the guy run the length of the court and dive into the pit, plus there was footage of another small guy getting his shirt just shredded. The teachers got the kids to disperse and that was it. Oddly we never heard anything about the incident from the folks at Riverdale. I guess the show raised lots of money for the band so the slam dancing was forgiven. We spent the rest of the day over at Tim’s house skateboarding. A week later we were back to practicing because our next big show was going to be a battle of the bands. That’s where we’ll meet bassist extraordinaire and all-around great guy Shrub in The Dislocated Part Four.