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Chapter II

Local Band and Punk Rock Era

          High school did not take much time to get used to.  In a matter of minutes, Mr. Lassen’s desks smelled like flowers.  All I really needed now was to hang out somewhere each weekend so heighten my social spirit.  My best friend at school was a person named AJ and he knew people who would play music every Friday at a place called The Nile.  I had not really experienced local music before and I already stereotyped it as being cacophonic.
          On a hot August day, I journeyed to The Nile for my first local band concert.  I mysteriously was able to get into the place free, but I stepped out.  And when I tried to reenter, I had to pay the fee.  The first band set up their equipment and stared to play.  Personally, it really was not good music, but I had to act like everything was pleasing to the ear.  After the first band stopped playing, AJ and I took a trip to the back end of the place.  We saw a hanger sticking to a wall by means of masking tape.  I found this quite hilarious, but AJ did not at all.  I uselessly wasted my time fooling around with the hanger, while AJ watched the next band play.  I caught up with him soon enough to enjoy the music portrayed by a band from Mountain Pointe, the school I attended at the time.
          The bands kept playing, the music kept on rolling, and I realized that I would probably be doing this every weekend.  In fact, I came back here on three consecutive weekends to just listen to people play.  What I did not know was that this would lead me into a whole new lifestyle.  It would evolve my duties into much more than it was now.  I was destined to make music myself.
          My drums had not been used for a while and that was because I did not have a motive to play them.  After listening to local bands, which most of them were punk rock, I felt the need to play my drums.  I was only interested in playing fast music because of all the fast stuff I heard other people play.  I soon found myself getting punk songs on my computer and listening to them frequently.  Ironically, I had always been a criticizer of punk music because it was “untalented crap.”  Indeed, it was meant to be that way, but when I called it that, it sounded very harsh.  I found myself in a hypocritical situation.
          Soon enough, I gathered my friends and we started trying to record sounds.  The noise we conjured does not classify as music because it was distasteful.  We learned from our experiences, and that was to not play again for a while.  In that time, I started taking drum lessons after an eight month hiatus, and I gradually improved.  As drums started to influence me more and more, I went to local band concerts less and less.  I completely stopped going to them only about two months after I started.
          On the flip side of the punk rock trend that was passing me by, I had heard my favorite band, Rage Against the Machine, was going to come out with another album in November, which was in a few months.  As that day approached, the influence of punk rock started to decline.  I did not completely do away with the whole idea of becoming a punk drummer until January of the next year, but the thought had dramatically decreased to the point that I did not even listen to punk music or have the urge to play it.  The punk rock era quickly changed to a reform Rage era that would continue well into the next year.