Lost Bands

I can still remember the smell of the carpet in the studio we used to go to, a  pleasant yet not very present smell. Now that I think about it, it must have been one hell of a task to clean up that carpet after people walked on that with their shoes on. It's been closed for a long time now since I visited it last time. I used to play the bass guitar back in those days, maybe I can still do that?...

... No chance, my hands are way too messed up for that, should've never gone mountaineering, that stupid cold makes you lose all feel in your fingers. Or in my case it wasn't exactly the cold that broke my hand bones but a loose stone that made me fall down the stupid fucking mountain. That was 23 years ago and I've finally decided to share a part of my youth.

It was a normal winter's day in November, about the last few days of that month when I fell in love with the bass guitar. A friend of mine invited me over to his house and put a vinyl on the record player. It was of a band called Casiopea, a Japanese band I think. Halfway through the B side of the Vinyl I started to realise how cool the bass sounds in there. And I still know that it was the B side cause I would always ask for it after that day, even bought it for myself and listened to it until the needle shaved off enough of that stupid black frisbee to not be audible anymore. After I fell in love with this bass, something I never noticed before, I started to hear it in places I never knew it existed. It brought about something sincere, calm and safe. I noticed it in the pop music my mother listened to and the light jazz my father would resort to when he was with his friends. So when my parents asked me if I wanted anything for Christmas my first response was "I want a bass guitar!" Of course my parents didn't know where to get one or how it's different from a normal guitar but they cared about me enough to do some asking and somehow I got an amp and a bass guitar, I also got a book with tips, tricks and techniques for the bass on Christmas. That was the day I decided to search for a band or create one from scratch because what would I do with a bass guitar without sharing my sound with others.

At first I was confused as to how it worked, the only contact I had with instruments as of that moment was when we had music classes in middle school and our teacher had us play something on the piano. But there were no black and white keys on this instruments, only some strings and a few metal spacers I'd learn to call frets a few days later. I think you can imagine that the beginning was a bit complicated to say the least. I made simple bass lines that sounded cool. If you know something about basses or tabs then something like this should be relatable or funny for you '0-3-5-0-0' for people who don't get it, it's an easy bassline that sounds good written for any one string in tabs. Any bass player probably played something like this once in their life. Those who say, they didn't are liars.
After I was done messing around with my instrument I decided to finally get serious about it. Took that book out of my drawer, that drawer was a bit broken by the way, always had to fight with it to get it to open, and started reading. It was already late and the book wasn't all that short, so that was my first all-night learning experience. The fatigue in school after that was not funny, fell asleep in my English class and woke up to some jerk who goes by the name of Justin, drawing dicks all over my desk and worksheets. I didn't really care though because he didn't hurt me. But I think the fatigue was a fair price for the amount of knowledge I memorised in one night. I mean nearly nothing really stayed in my head and I read the book multiple times but I think it helped me to break the ice you know?
Later that day I would go to the library to read about something with music and basses, I don't really remember what it was exactly I wanted to do, I just remember that I met a guy with shoulder long, black hair who had his eyes fixed upon a book that was lying on a desk infront of him and his hands positioned as though he was holding a guitar, grinding away at the strings. His name was Connor, one of the weirdest people I'd ever meet and one of my best friends I think. After I met him we talked about music and he taught me everything he knew at that point. Even then, he always used to say: "If it isn't music I won't bother" and one would really notice this.
I came over to his house sometimes to jam with him. Jamming is when you play with another person without really planning ahead. Of course I still had my other friends but none of them made music or wanted a band, so we kept on playing and jamming.