Suburban Dammit

We didn't call ourselves a punk outfit during the days of Firebase Musket. I guess a 'rock band' comes as close as it gets.

Nirvana's songs were simple enough to play. No surprise that grunge guitarists were called two-finger musicians. Once we figured out the 4-powerchord verse followed by chorus and repeat then bridge-chorus-shouting/smashing guitar standard template, we were off making our own songs.

My first song was called Premanath's Black Ice-cream. Of course I can't remember how to play it now, but if I concentrate hard enough, I can hear its tune in the back of my head. I combined new words and phrases like 'premalogical' and 'prema-black' for this song. I don't even remember what ice-cream has got to do with this.

Prem was our classmate. Tall, curly-haired and the blur-blur type.

We didn't know it was called Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder at our age but we thought Prem had some disturbing problems. He literally did not believe his own eyes. All of us used to leave textbooks under the space of our old-school desks. Some of us never took them home.

Not Prem. At the end of each day, despite having peered into the space to make sure he didn't leave any books there, he had to stretch his hand into the crevice to feel around just to be sure. He would sweep his hands to and fro in that empty void several times to make sure he was not feeling what he thought he should not feel.

Aaron noticed this daily ritual and one evening we hid behind the class door to catch him in the act. As he swept his hands underneath the desk, we sprang out screaming "Prem! Prem! You siao ah??! Are you crazy or what!"

Obviously embarrassed, Prem stopped doing this every evening. What he would do, was walk off with the rest of us and after some lengthy distance, make a U-turn back to class to check his desk again! We caught him at it. Anyway that was Prem's story and Aaron liked the song.

We started pumping out Nirvana-like formats and lyrics that revolved around girls we like and guys we hate. Obviously, being in an all-boys' school meant that there were more hate songs than crush. The crush/love songs we had, were often of unknown girls we caught a glimpse of at bustops and shopping malls.

Although we all enjoyed jamming together, our songs and the covers we played were not challenging enough for Josh. He was technically very competent and always tries to introduce licks and other complicated stuff into our compositions. I don't particularly enjoy long-drawn 2-minute solos.

I guess he got bored using only 2 fingers. Besides, Josh has always been the balladsy type. My songs make me want to stand and scream, while his makes my hair stand and teenage girls scream.

Aaron and I always thought that the song itself was the most important. Technicality, once competent, is optional.

This fissure in ideology grew larger and larger and by the time we graduated from secondary school, our ideas were so different that it was Firehouse and Screeching Weasel in the same band. We must come off kind of retarded when we scream idiocy and irritation in one song and become hopeless romantic love-smitten butercups the next.

The inevitable came. After 3 years together, lemowreck/band 97/Firebase Musket broke up.

P/s:
The final straw that broke our backs was the controversy of selling some songs on our demo to a record company.