It’s getting late now, the evening shadows spilling into the storefront, a lot of the crowd already gone.
But we’re still up there playing; nobody wants to call it.
It’s been an exhilarating day, filled with moments of reunion and laughter, friends and family gathered together to celebrate something I’ve long dreamed of.
My book release party.
I say aloud these four words I’ve just typed, then again.
Unbelievable as a desperate prayer to a god you are not quite convinced is listening.
It’s the old fellas up there with me and Kimm, the original lads from the 1983 Lights Out lineup.
Jack’s been playing with a dozen other bands since we last saw him,when? 1983?
Larry’s kept up the bass but hasn’t had this much stage time in years.
I turn and look at him while we play.
He concentrates hard, but can’t lose the grin on his face.
It’s like we’re back, back there in the garage on Cortner Ave, playing the music that drew us together in the first place.
We got together for one brief practice, spending most of the evening catching up: wives and kids, the path we’ve each traveled to return to this same place.
We laugh at the gray hair, turn silent when we recall those who didn’t make it.
We go through the usual CH3 songs, sure.
But then it only takes one of us to play a familiar riff.
The siren intro to Police on my Back, say, or the climbing bass line of 999’s Titanic Reaction.
And then we are those kids in the garage once again, winging it, playing the songs of our heroes.
Hoping to finish one more song before Mom—-Mrs. Magrann the guys would call her–flicks the lights on and off, signalling the end of practice.
Oh sure, I’ve thought of writing a book before.
I mean, who hasn’t?
Perhaps a collection of these whimsy little blog posts?
Written as accompaniment to a satisfying bowel movement, really, wouldn’t a book of these things make for a fitting bathroom book?
Or maybe sprawling memoir, our days in the garage to the hardcore fests that infested the shuttered roller rinks of the 80’s.
A story that everyone already knows: They lived it too.
I soon realized the story of the band is not all that compelling, on paper at least.
I mean, Kimm and I were good kids in high school, long before nerd chic was a thing.
The band never suffered the thrilling tragedies that makes for good pulp:
No drug overdoses, no dramatic breakups.
And as far as successes, we never quite made it out of the “worthy supporting band” classification.
Underrated, that’s the word they often use to describe CH3.
A term not unlike a good sportsmanship trophy handed out to the last kid picked for the team.
The reward for being unremarkable.
But still, there was a story in there somewhere, if I could only find a way to tell it.
To express what these years, what this band has meant to me.
So i turned to the past, took up a worn journal that has sat upon various desks for four decades.
Unread for years, yet always within an arm’s reach.
It was a journal I kept of one long Summer, back in 1983.
And so I took a moment, and I read.
Then I wrote.
