BREAKING NEWS :

Right from the start it became very clear that the kids were alright and I was at least half wrong. I was –and am- still writing, recording, and performing my little heart out, but through the years of mean club owners not wanting me around, door guys who seem like they never learned to smile and think of patrons as the bloodsucking parasites that cause them to have to go to a job they clearly despise, and all the drunks who’ve loved my band until they found out we don’t know their favorite Molly Hatchet song, at which time my band becomes the worst band ever and they leave, presumably to drive off drunk in to the night swerving and killing all the way home, I may have become a slight bit cynical.

The kids were alright. In fact, they were better than alright, they were great. First up to be judged was a band to which Simon Cowell would have been mean. I think Simon Cowell is a dolt, however, and that he makes a great living by doing mean things that were probably done to him as a child – things that will probably get cleared up after some time in therapy, and I think that the earnestness of the two lead singers was great and that just like everyone at the beginning, with some practice, the talent will come to match the desire. The rest of the band, who ably backed up the leaders were like flies on the wall, so in the comments field of the judging form I was dutifully filling out as if they would be given to the bands later as a helpful bit of critique, I wrote something that I tell myself and my band members and anyone else who’ll listen all the time because I have faith in its validity. “There is seldom much difference between an audience’s reaction to you and its reflection of you.”

One down, five to go. I was becoming more comfortable with my lot and eager to hear what the future of the evening had in store.

A band came up with a couple members I’d known before. They had once been part of Rock ‘n’ More’s Rockology class and, after a few quarters, decided to go out on their own. I can’t blame anyone for that. That’s our goal at the school. I’m sure it’s much more difficult but, hopefully, more rewarding to know that you can book a gig without Dace’s help.

This particular band had its earnestness knob up to ten. The singer sang songs about love gone bad and about love gone right and about cruising the strip with his buddies looking to pick up on chicks. I didn’t know there was a strip around Maple Valley where a group of friends could drive and pick up on chicks, but then again, I didn’t grow up around here. I grew up on the Eastside where cruising down the street adjacent to Lake Washington had been outlawed. I had heard that the rule was that if a cop saw your car on that street more than twice in one night, you’d get a ticket. It was all pure hearsay, but I believed it. I only went cruising once. I went with my friends Pat and Geoff in Pat’s 60-something-or-other Chevy muscle car. There were so many cars that it felt like we were stuck in a traffic jam. I thought it was boring. Didn’t pick up on a single chick. The singer of this band clearly did not share a history of cruising with me. Whether or not there was a strip to cruise; that he did or did not cruise it; or that he did or did not pick up on chicks simply did not matter. When he threw his mic wielding arm high above himself and cocked his head to the left where the guitar player was throwing down sermons on his Les Paul, I believed that he believed it, and that made the audience believe it, and who was I to do anything but to believe it myself?

To be continued next week…