Thorns of Life – My First Time

A friend of mine asked me if I could figure out some chords for him for the song “My First Time” by Thorns of Life.  I’m not really into doing that kinda stuff anymore, but I actually really like this song so I went ahead and did it for him.  Most people know I love Jawbreaker and in my opinion, any Jawbreaker-related favor MUST be done.  I didn’t want to keep it to just me and him so I’ll post it here for all to enjoy.

C F C G
C F C G

C          F       C      G
I met her in the eleventh grade.
C        F      C       G      Am
She was already on some secret probation
 F
A mother's nightmare
 C
Father's dream
 G        C
She was Egyptian to me.

C           F            C          G
Took me an hour just to get myself brave
C            F             C     G                    Am
I called her up at her mother's house, my voice was shaking.
 F
We were suspended
 C
on the line
 G        C
Til she said "OK fine."

 F      C
It was my first time.
 G               Am
Being the one to choose.
 F       C
It was the hardest thing
F       G     C
I ever had to do.

C         F           C     G
We drove around Santa Monica
C              F       C            G              Am
Too young and broke to go into the places we could go to.
 F
Not much was open
 C
At 9 PM
 G               C
I took her home and we hung out.

C           F        C            G
She knew a lot more about it than me
C        F        C        G
Took my hand and showed me things
 Am
It wasn't guilty
 F
Or dirty
 C
It was tender
 G
A little awkward
 C
And I came.

 F    C
It was my first time
G           Am
It was her third.
 F       C
I think we both did fine
F           G            C
But it got better after that

G                          C
The Velvet Underground was playing
F   C
Heroin
G                 C
That might sound inappropriate
 F        C       G
But it's such a beautiful song
 F          G
And we weren't doing
F        G
Anything wrong
F          G
Or maybe we were
F             G
That turned us on

 F      C
It was my first time
G               Am
Think she could tell
 F        C
But she kept me on
F         G       C
And she taught me well

Something Fierce’s Tour Kick-Off Party at the Marshall Law House

College orientation on Friday really sucked the life out of me.  I took the bus there at 7 in the morning.  I skipped lunch that day because I paid my good pal, Dale, a visit at the copy center where I gave him my original Jawbreaker promo poster to duplicate.  On the bus ride home I decided to call it a day and stay home to rest.  That didn’t work out too well.

Aaron Danger called me up and somehow convinced me to go to the Marshall Law house for Something Fierce’s tour kick-off.  We stopped at the Valero by my house to fill up on gas.  I walked into the station to pay and on the way out, I a quite fetching girl come out of her car.  She had tattoos peeking out the bottome of her t-shirt sleeve.  This blew my mind.  You see, at the Eastwood Valero station the only people that go there are cops and creepsters.  I was so enthralled by this girl that I didn’t see a car coming my way as I crossed the street.   Luckily, the car quickly braked and spared me my life.  Looking back at that moment, I almost wish the car did hit me, that way the mysteriously keen looking girl would come running my way to make sure I wasn’t dead.

We pulled up to the house and the porchlight shining on a group of cupholders on the front lawn was pretty inconspicuous.  Seeing Something Fierce cram their gear (and themselves) into an upstairs bedroom with a bunch of goodhearted troublemakers to play a set really brings me back to my youth.  The night was going pretty great.  A keg of Shiner stuffed in the closet and a strict NO RANDOS policy never seemed to fail in the past, now that I think about it.

Stewart and his friend from Mexico City, Moises, DJ’ed later that night.  Too bad dancing scares the hell out of me…

The party spilled out onto the sidewalk.

Darcy and Alex stopped by, but not for long.  Before I knew it, I was out of there.  Everyone crammed in the car and headed to Late Nite Pie.

Jacob Calle’s first stand-up appearance, Neil Hamburger, & what punk looks like from an outsider’s perspective

I woke up at 6 in the afternoon yesterday.  I would’ve slept longer but a phone call from Darcy acted like my alarm for the day.  “There’s a party at Alex’s warehouse tonight.  It starts at 8!”  she told me.  I agreed to go, but told her I was heading to her house first so we can carpool because I didn’t wanna ride my moped home in such conditions.  I packed my bag, hopped on my moped, and sped off out of my neighborhood.  I wasn’t even out of my block when I thought my steering was kinda sluggish.  I checked my front tire and it was good.  I checked my back tire and it was flat!  I went to the gas station a few blocks away and filled up on air.  A half-mile down the road, my tire went flat again so I decided to just push the bike home and call it night.

I got home and parked my bike and went inside.  I looked back at what I was doing, and for some reason got really disappointed at myself.  I thought about how I pretty much forfeited my entire night because of ONE little flat tire.  Fuck that!  I hopped on the bus and headed towards Alex’s unnamed warehouse, but it used to be the old Todo Moto clubhouse.

I got off the bus on the corner of Westheimer & Taft and noticed some ruckus coming from Mango’s.  I walk over and remembered that my old ice cream scooper coworker and self-proclaimed “stuntman” Jacob Calle was opening for Neil Hamburger.  For some reason I knew the night wasn’t going to be good for Jacob and I wanted to see what would happen but considering I just quit my job without getting a new one, I couldn’t afford the $10 cover.  I ran into my friend Seth and his buddy Eddie and we walked in together.  I decided to walk in with them and talk, but planned on leaving after they paid.  Well to my surprise upon walking into Mango’s, I was on the guestlist!  I don’t know how or why but I don’t really care because it was perfect.  I had a few hours before Darcy came by so we could go to the party and I could definately kill some time by watching Jacob and Neil Hamburger for free.

It wouldn’t be fair to say Jacob completely bombed because I distinctly remember hearing laughter from the audience.  But to be honest, most of the noise coming out of people’s mouths were heckles.  I had to feel bad for the kid when he muttered into the microphone, “Aww man…come on guys…this is my first time doing this, I don’t wanna do it anymore…”  Total fucking heartbreak.  However, his primary heckler was kicked out for being totally fucking drunk and throwing beer bottles at the ground.  I watched him swallow an inflated balloon-animal style balloon and display his various drawings.  Then he made us watch videos of him and his friends doing stuff like drinking a cup of his own blood.  After his act, Katie Menowsky came by and I found out she was moving back to Sugarland to study for her LSATs and then she’s moving somewhere to go to law school.  Aww shucks I’m gonna miss her.

Neil Hamburger came on and it was pretty much how you’d imagine it.

Darcy came by to Mango’s and we went off to the party.  We parked our car in front of the old Todo Moto warehouse that shares a building with a local Alcholics Anonymous chapter.  When we walked out of the car, this young kid in a polo shirt, khaki shorts, and sandals comes up to us and asks, “Are you guys going to the party or AA?”  I didn’t wanna answer because I was afraid he’d tell us we can’t get plastered in the presence of a bunch of recovering alcoholics, but Darcy went ahead and told him we were going to the party.  It turns out that all he wanted to do was party with us, but he was afraid he wouldn’t fit in because he didn’t look punk enough.  And to tell the truth, he wasn’t really punk enough.  If he walked into the warehouse, it would be the reverse of having a punk walk into a country club.

There’s never a reason to not party so we told him he could tag along with us and if anyone gives him any attitude, Darcy and I would stand up for him.  He told us his name was Jordan.  The party was to celebrate this girl Rachel’s 21st birthday.  I recognized her because she was my waitress at a diner once, I never knew she was punk.  Darcy and I said hi to everyone and went to the makeshift living room to hang out.

Khaki-shorts Jordan was absolutely amazed with everything at the party because he’d never seen anything like it before.  He grew up in the suburbs and I guess that really limits what you can be exposed to.  Darcy and I were pretty amused with this.  He was asking questions like, “So, they live here? And this is a warehouse?”  Some trainhoppers came by and we asked them to tell us some train stories.  Well, Polo-shirt Jordan started asking questions like, “So you just hop on the freight trains?  And that’s how you get places? And other people do that?”  To my surprise, Beau Beasley made an appearance and walked through living room doors.  He sat down next to me and we started talking about a neighborhood gay country bar.  After he left I started telling Jordan about the bands I’ve seen Beau play in and he started asking even more questions, fascinated and excited.  Oh man Darcy and I were getting a kick out of this kid.  He was great.  He even offered to drive to the liquor store to get beer before midnight struck.

The party was dying down so me, Darcy, Alex, and Sandal-wearing Jordan decided to go to Chapultepec.  Jordan had never heard of this place before and seemed to really enjoy the idea of a 24 hour Mexican restaurant.  We told him it was some of the best Mexican food in Houston, the fact it was 24 hours is just a plus. When we were eating, everyone started to talk about the different tattoos we had, except Jordan because he was the only person that didn’t have tattoos.

After dinner, we headed back to the warehouse but everyone was gone and Jason was mopping the floor.  Alex decided to call it a night so we said our goodbyes.  Me and Darcy decided to show our new friend Jordan the sacred art of dumpster diving pizzas.  We all walked to the late night pizza joint and on the way there, we were telling Jordan that pizza shops everywhere throw away perfectly good pizzas at the end of the night and its up for grabs to the first person to claim them.  Then came his questions again.  “So they just throw the pizzas away?  And you pull them out the dumpster and eat them?”  I told him, “Well that’s how most people do it, if you go out there and just wait, they’ll hand you the pizzas.”  For some reason it seemed like he didn’t believe us and this “free pizza” we talked about was a complete fabrication.  Well we show up to the pizza place, walk around back, and saw that there was nothing.  I told everyone to wait a few minutes and someone will come out. Well one of the employees came out and threw away a giant bag.  Darcy told this employee we were waiting for old pizzas.  Well the thoughtful employee came out and handed us a box of pizza, still warm!  We gave Jordan a big slice and he was pretty amazed that this “free pizza” does in fact exist.

On the way back to the car, some guy came up to me and asked, “Can you spare a slice?”

“Of course! Go ahead and pick one out!” I said as I opened the box.  He told me thanks and grabbed a slice and went on his way.

Jordan asked me, “So how do you know that guy?”

“Oh, I have no idea who that was.  I’ve never seen him in my life!”

Jordan responded, “And you just gave him some pizza? Wow!”

Haha oh man me and Darcy got a kick out of this kid.  Darcy and I do this kind of stuff all the time because it’s our normal life, but this kid was amazed by everything.  So if you’re reading this right now and you plan on having kids, please don’t raise them in the suburbs.

Darcy and I went back to her place.  I didn’t want to wake up early so we stayed up until 5 in the morning and I took a bus home.

Buxton’s 7″ release show, being the door-guy, & 6 freezepops for breakfast

Last night was Buxton’s 7″ release show at Mango’s.  When I showed up, I saw Buxton’s bassist, Young Christopher, preparing for the duties of a doorman.  I walked over to ask him what he was doing and I learned that he was going to run the door for the first few hours of the show.  I thought this was horrible because he’d have to go through the troubles of counting money and X’ing hands and checking IDs and wristbanding and ripping tickets, only to play a complete set at the end of the night! I offered to help him and before I knew it, I was helping out running the door.  What sucked though is I missed the opening band, Ghost Mountain.  The music they played was awesome but I wasn’t able to see all the visual stuff they had going on.  Over the tops of people’s heads I saw the upper tips of some awesome projections of puppets and bugs.

A few people think that’s kind of an odd thing about me.  I mean, the fact that I like running the door at shows.  Most people hate it.  People try to slip in for free and you have to stop them, they claim they “lost their ID” and make pouty faces when you X their hands and tell them that they can’t drink, they get mad when you tell them it’s state law that they can’t walk out and then came back if they’re under 21, anyone running the door misses the show, and countless other shortcomings that I can’t think of.  All in all, running the door SUCKS but I love it.  I really like acting like a jerk when I tell people “HEY MAN YOU CAN’T BRING THAT DRINK OUTSIDE” or “PUT THAT OUT! THERE’S NO SMOKING HERE, WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, ABILENE?!”  I really like being the nice guy when I tell people “Hey, this is the last band so I’ll let you both in for the price of one.” It’s good times all around, for me.

My favorite time running the door was at Walter’s when I was helping at a Teenage Kicks show and I was doing a moneycount in between bands.  A drunk gay guy came up to me and said “ME AND MY BOYFRIEND…WE LOVE YOU. WE LOVE YOU SO MUCH CAN I GET A PICTURE?!” and I waved him off saying “Yeah yeah whatever sure” and he put his arm around me while I counted $20s and his boyfriend took a picture.

The worst thing that ever happened when I was running the door, though, was when I was at the Mink for a Casiotone for the Painfully Alone show and I lost the guest list, a sharpie, miscounted the number of the clicker, and then did a money count to see I was around $200 off my mark. Everything worked out in the end, though.

After the Buxton release show, I went to Chapultapec.  I went to a friend’s house and I fell asleep and when I woke up I did someone else’s dishes and ate 6 freezepops for breakfast.

Seeing Howlies at the Mink and simultaneously being underage

I’d never heard Howlies before but, judging by their name, I thought they were going to be a noisy, overly wild, overly hip hipster band that drank PBR.  I was wrong.  I way WAY off the mark.  They sounded more like the Trashmen, the Sonics, or Otis Redding than the Monotonix-type band in my head.  They played straight up dirty rock ‘n roll music your mom wouldn’t let you buy.  They were even produced by Kim Fowley, the filthy genius behind the Runaways and Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers.  The song they played that really hit me, though, was down-tempo R&B ballad called Aluminum Baseball Bat.  In my mind, the only way they could have written that song was by spending countless hours of their lives listening to Stax Record singles.

On the way back home I began to think about the kids that couldn’t make it to the show.  Sometimes I’ll be looking at calendars and I’ll see a band I’d like to see (the Riverboat Gamblers) but then I’ll see that they’re playing at a 21+ bar that I can’t get into (Rudyard’s) and a feeling of disappointment takes over me.  I can’t help but imagine that there’s another underage kid in this city that’ll see someone is playing at the Mink and feels disappointed because he or she can’t get in.

I’ve been going to shows for a pretty long time and I’d NEVER been to 21+ bars until the Mink came along.  I remember back in 8th grade and the early years of high school being turned away from Rudyard’s and the Proletariat for being under 21, but those situations were pretty rare.   I always thought they were doing it because they were trying to create an exclusive atmosphere or they hate kids, but in reality it’s a simple insurance issue.  All-ages places like Walter’s that have a full-service bar have to pay for a MUCH higher insurance package than the Mink who is 21+ and have multiple full service bars.  It may not sound fair but bars aren’t just immobile physical buildings; they’re run by real living and breathing people with wives and kids who work their way from stockboy at Soundwaves up to manager and then finally they save enough money to live their dreams and buy a bar.  Well, that’s at least how the Mink is.