Saturday, July 10, 2010

Heavy Metal Mama

Jeremy and two friends formed a metal band. Neil plays drums, Katie sings, and Jeremy plays guitar and writes their songs. Yes, I’m proud. I’m also worried about potential hearing loss - for the band members.

They used to practice at Neil’s house because he has a super-fancy drum set and a finished basement. Neil also has four cats, and unfortunately Katie is allergic.

Sigh.

So, much of the summer has been devoted to converting our unfinished, extremely cluttered basement into a practice space. They cleaned out one corner and hung old blankets to form a room. I contributed dorm room carpet from Home Depot, and we’re still discussing economical sound proofing options for the remaining two walls. They installed a mini-fridge for soft drinks and even plugged in my old metronome.

Still, our new sound stage isn’t perfect.

Jeremy: We have ants down here.
Me: Are they the big ones or the little ones?
Jeremy: I don’t know. Medium.
Me: It makes a difference. The little ants love ant traps. They rush right in and eat the poison. The big ones are carpenter ants, and they don’t like traps so much.
Jeremy: There’s a dead one in the corner. Wanna see?
Neil: Wow. Maybe we could write a song about ants called Poison.

2 comments:

Wyman Stewart said...

Ants being some of my favorite characters in life, may I suggest AntHead as a name for the band or AntDead, as a tribute to the dead ant that was found. Not to mention the metaphor in "ant dead" and "ain't dead." "Ain't Eatin' Yor Poison No Mor" might serve as a nice myrmecological heavy metal title for a song about a guy and gal at odds with one another.

Would you like my address so you will know where to send royalty checks when they go gold with my band name and song title suggestions?

On a more mundane level, I suggest listening to Blue Cheer's version of "Summertime Blues", Electric Prunes "I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night), both Slade's and Quiet Riot's versions of "Cum Feel The Noize" (hope I spelled that right), and Wendy O. Williams / Plasmatics (don't even try to be them), before they move on to Led Zeppelin, AC/DC and others.

Best wishes to your and their Metal Health. I suggest earplugs for all. As I live in stereo, hearing aid in each ear, they're not something you want to have to keep track of in your early life, then there are the batteries you must carry with you, and how dying batteries are like going deaf over and over again.

Nope, music had little or nothing to do with my deaf-head experience.

Ann Finkelstein said...

Wyman, you crack me up. I hope hearing aids are better now then when my dad wore them.