Getting The Band Back Together Forty Years Later

This past weekend was a weird one by all accounts. I think I already mentioned the nasty business of being unable to post anything here for 48 hours as the good old folks at Blogger sicced their spam robots on this blog for suspicion of being a "spam blog."

That was the sucky part of the weekend. But let's talk about the other thing that happened this weekend -- the "cool part."

You see, when I was in junior high school I actually briefly sang in a band. We weren't very good, but what we lacked in actual musical talent, we more than made up for with attitude.

Our guitar player was famous for knowing only half of most of the songs we played, so as a singer I often had to improvise a chorus with out a bridge anywhere to be found. But "Roy" was a tough-guy who'd just as soon kick my ass if I voiced so much as a peep of protest about his playing. Besides he owned the amps, and his Mom let us use his basement for rehearsal space.

Briefly, we also had a bass player with the self-explanatory name of "One Riff Billy."

The one guy who was any good--the drummer--cost me my original job in the band, because he was so much better than I was on the skins.

Fortunately, the band needed a singer and I was the only guy in the band goofy enough to get out there and make an ass out of myself by fronting the band. Plus, I owned the drum kit.

We went through a variety of names, before we decided on the name "Blast Furnace," and then finally settled on just "Furnace." Good name, we thought. And certainly one that summoned a number of cool things like "metal" and "hot."

There are so many stories associated with my junior high psychedelic heavy metal band Furnace I couldn't begin to recount them all.

There was the time we played the YMCA and I almost got my ass kicked because for some ungodly reason I decided to wear a Nazi Flag as a cape (basically I thought it looked cool--kind of like Mick Jagger at Altamont--and I was too young and stupid to understand that a Christian organization like the "Y" might be offended, to say nothing of any Jewish folk in attendance).

Then there was the time we did a "gig" in a neighbour kid's backyard, where his father got drunk and stole my microphone. Which led to our first "original" band composition -- which the world has since come to know and love as the world wide number one smash, "Please Give Me My Mike Back." Yeah, baby!

Anyway, I lost contact with my bandmates in the mighty "Furnace" over the years, but I did hear stories. "Roy," that mean ol' guitar playing tough guy of mine, got throat cancer and survived it. Another one-time guitar player of ours went to prison when he killed a guy he caught in bed with his wife. "Leon" our keyboard player was found dead under circuimstances that best remain unsaid.

In fact, about the only guy who played in Furnace and survived--other than me anyway--that I heard was still living a more or less normal life was my old drummer Huey.

Huey was also my best friend as a kid, and probably one of the best friends I ever had truth be told.

So Huey did what normal people do. He got married to a nice girl, and had a boatload of kids at about the same time that the only thing I was married to was the music business. We've been out of touch for something like thirty, maybe even forty years.

I don't have any pictures of Huey, and the one you see here is about the closest thing I could find on the internet to what he looks like behind a drum kit. So for now, it'll have to do.

So anyway, imagine my shock when out of a clear blue sky, Huey calls me this weekend. The circuimstances weren't the best --the call was to invite me to a memorial service for his Mom (who I was loved as a kid growing up). So we went to the memorial service, and the years just melted away as we got caught up on all that's happened in our lives, while reliving some of our best memories as kids.

Most of which revolved around that damn junior high rock band of ours. You remember, "Blast Furnace" which later became "Furnace."

So, as it turns out Huey never stopped playing. After the memorial, Huey then revealed his real reason for calling. He asked me if I still wrote songs. I did I replied, adding that they are even a little more sophisticated these days then "Give Me My Mike Back" was back when I was thrirteen years old.

So one thing led to another, and I soon found myself in a rather nice rehearsal studio built by Huey's brother Steve (who also is a very decent guitarist) with a mike in front of me. I guess I finally got that damn mike back after all.

Over the course of several hours--and several more beers--our makeshift band with Huey and his two brothers knocked out two pretty good original songs. One of which we wrote right there, with the other being one of mine that I brought along to the jam for the other guys to try. And to my absolute surprise the other guys picked up pretty quickly (bare in mind I'm not really a musician so I had to kind of sing it to them).

Huey has become a monster drummer, and his brothers Arnie and Steve aren't half bad either.

I never was that great a singer, and still don't claim to be now. But I can carry a tune, I write good songs, and know something about how the music business works. Plus it's great to be reunited with Huey, who was always such a great friend. Huey himself said that he had been planning to contact me for awhile because the "band" needs a singer, a writer, and some direction.

So don't look now, but I think we just might be getting the band back together.

I doubt very much that we will be keeping the name "Furnace," but whatever happens I'll keep ya posted right here.