Story by Hung One On – Mystery Digital Mischievist

Hi, Hung here.

Don’t you just love it h,h,h, anyway me and young hph (another h, all I need is Helvi or Huffed Holive J) have been talking about music over at The Muse page here at the Arms, the page I originally set up for music as The Dot was starting to slow down. At the time me and Mikey thought it may be due to all the links we were all posting so I set up The Clip, The Muse, The Comma and The Link to take our posts into categories.

Hph was interested to know that I was musical so I thought you may want to know about what is was like to be in a “band”.

When I was a kid growing up in Austinmer, as you know from my Christmas story, I didn’t mention one of my real sisters. Her name is Clare. Clare’s boyfriend now husband was a drummer and he taught me how to play the drums. I then went to the guitar and then finally to the bass guitar. Now I was good but never great, although some said I was a fantastic blues guitarist and the last band I played in was called Ambush. We played pub rock seventies music. Heres out first bracket, not in any real order and I am struggling to remember them all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbG6M28UkFg

Tom Petty – Breakdown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lFxGBB4UGU

Van Morrison – Moondance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2Fs5GrUBwI

Steely Dan – Do it Again

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRufMP1HCS8

Dire Straits – Down to the Waterline

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCLXy-vSu3o

ZZ Top – Tush

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fafCCsb6jzc

Roy Buchanan  – Further on up the Road

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3JsuWz4xWc

Jimi Hendrix- Hey Joe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTwsbKYaoY0

Rolling Stones – Sympathy for the Devil

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B0Y3LUqr1Q

Rolling Stones – Brown Sugar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGBuQoDt4G8

Jimi Hendrix – Fire

Now let me tell you. Being in a band is crap. We got $85 each a gig. I would leave home at four in the afternoon and get home at two in the morning. This is sweatshop wages. Rehearse Friday nights and one big lesson I learnt. Never introduce a song to the band that you really like. The reason is by the time you have perfected it you will hate it. Play songs for the audience not yourself. In my song list there are several examples of this. More later.

Groupies – Not when you are big, fat, married.

Drugs – heaps and heaps but you couldn’t take any and any way apart from a few whiskeys to settle the nerves you couldn’t afford to take drugs, you have to stay alert, you need to know how to play around 50 songs, people would steal your equipment and you had to drive home.

So why did I do it? – Simple, you can sit at home and play Stairway to Heaven perfectly to the cat, dog and TV set however playing in a band made you play to a certain level. The song had to be right, as close as to the original that you could get. When I retired from the band scene I found it really difficult to play a song out on the back patio as I would need to get it right. From time to time I pick the guitar up but honestly I really can’t get into it any more.