I hung this flyer in a practice/rehearsal space in Brooklyn with my contact info on it:
One morning while in my writing/sculpture class I received a text from a Larry, one of the members of Hopeless Otis. He told me that their drummer just dropped out, and they needed someone to fill in for two short long-weekend tours. He sent me a link to their music. I listened to the songs briefly and felt a fun project in the works. The music was punk, and also positive in tone. On their website it says "from New York City. Aiming to bring back positivity to punk rock." Larry invited me to one of their shows in a public park. I went, and saw a bunch of red flags in the way of day-drunk forty-year-olds and circle-jerk music-making. I thought I was going to flake. The scene was the thing I didn't like about being in bands and this scene looked terrible. I took a short walk to weigh out the dialectic. Really, the whole thing was about adventure. The adventure would not really be on my terms- the cities, the destinations, etc., but did I want to do it at all? Yes, is the best I could come up with, or maybe with a curiosity to find out. I knew this would make a good story- almost too good- like, "what did you do this summer?", "Oh I joined a punk rock band in New York for a tour". Pretty swag. Anyways, they hadn't even played yet and I was over a few blocks away and talking myself into joining this band, so I came back and saw them near the stage, Larry, Joe, and the flaky drummer Eddie, loading in their equipment. I watched their show, and knew some of the songs from listening to them in preparation for playing with them. The show suffered from a disinterested drummer, Eddie. I guess the band had been together for about seven years by this point, and I would not be their first fill-in for Eddie's flakiness. Yeah, he just played through the tunes (flawlessly) with seemingly zero interest. I can kind-of relate- I'd been in bands where I was done with the song before it started- but in these instances you've really got to pull it up from its bootstraps, not check out and autopilot the set. I mean, what do I know? After their set, I gave them their space, and let them pack up. Part of me was still on the fence as to whether or not to speak with them and come-out as the interested potential fill-in drummer from the text message thread. I thought about class a bunch. These boys were working men, and they wrote songs about it, and about minimum wage, and they lived in Queens, and all tis stuff. Wouldn't it be better to turn this down and wait out for a freakier arrangement of more likeminded intellectuals to respond to my inquiry. It's like I dropped a lure into a pond and hooked a catfish. So I walk up to Larry (who I perceive, rightly, as Larry, tall thick with a big little beard and crooked warm smile), and introduce myself. I walk parole with the band back to the mini-van, where they are loading-out. I tell them that it seems do-able, and that it was nice to meet them. I went somewhere else at that point, maybe a figure drawing session, as I was in SoHo, or maybe the korean barbecue spot, where I became a known regular, always ordering a taro smoothie and an order of straw mushrooms that were prepared spicy. I would always sit alone at a table nearby the reception counter.
I practiced the songs like crazy- Hopeless Otis's songs.
