Suck and Blow by John Popper Read Free Book Online

“Man, we were so uptight back then,” and he responded, “You know, I’ve been waiting for decades for you to say that.” Even with all that happened in the Spin Doctors, hewanted me to acknowledge that we were too uptight when he joined Blues Band. And yes, we were. It was true.
    After Brendan’s brother graduated from high school in 1985, my friend Felicia, who played violin in the orchestra, became our bass player. She was the little sister of our friend Ben and was well on her way to Yale, but she agreed to do us a favor, thinking it would be kind of fun. She gave it hell, and we all liked her, but she really was not a good bass player. She took a bass solo in our demo that . . . well . . . let me just say that every bass solo Felicia played was a testimony to her friendship and loyalty to us.
    Both Felicia and Brendan agreed we needed to get rid of Mr. Y. Whenever he would start to solo, he would drool uncontrollably, and I can’t stress this enough— uncontrollably, because there was no method to his drooling. The drool would come of its own volition and wouldn’t stop until well after he was done. It was an odd nervous tic, and I’ve never seen anything like it before or since. He would start going, and Felicia couldn’t stop laughing. Brendan had seen this guy Chan Kinchla playing in the practice booth at school and said we had to get him. So Brendan asked him, and when Chan showed up, he was pretty sloppy. But he was also the first guitarist we had who actually could make a phrase, a confident loud phrase, and when he’d do his spiel he’d keep going. That became the final lineup for Blues Band—Brendan, Chan, Felicia, and myself.
    When we replaced Mr. Y with Chan, having found a real guitar player so we could become the band that we now are, Mr. Y became so despondent that he decided to kill himself. He ate an entire box of Clorox bleach powder, figuring he would die after beating Chan in a guitar duel at the Spring Fling that we were playing at our high school. So he came up to us in his cool Stevie Ray Vaughan hat and said, “Mind if I sit in?” We were late setting up our gear so we said, “No, we’re really busy.” So because he couldn’t sit in, he had to go throw up the Clorox he ate, so we inadvertently saved his life. We ignored him into a suicidal state and then we ignored him back to life.
    We played a few actual gigs as Blues Band. Some of them were in school or at parties, but our first professional gig was at John and Peter’s in New Hope, Pennsylvania. We got $200 and six people showedup. Those six people were our parents. It wasn’t even our friends—it was our parents. My parents couldn’t make it because they were working, but the other six parents were there. I have a tape of the show, and you can hear them all laughing. They were the only ones in the room as we played.
    Chan was the first person in the band I couldn’t physically intimidate, and there were plenty of alpha-male moments when he would just be contradictory, but he could play. It became so much more fun with him—he was a real student of Jimmy Page. He came in, and at first he had no control, but because we all had way too much control, that was the perfect balance.
    As soon as he started ripping I immediately began thinking, How am I going to control this guy? because I was such a control freak. The good news is that when it came to the music, he was starved for information—all he wanted to do was play better. He never wanted to slack when it came to playing music. He did like drinking beer, though, and he kept bringing it to rehearsal and eventually got us all in trouble with Brendan’s mom.
    All of our parents were really helpful, although Brendan’s parents bore the brunt of having the band there because that’s just how it is for the drummer’s parents. Brendan was born in London of Irish parents, and his