Performance Anxiety

With this post I will combine two themes that have already been prevalent with many of my posts. I will combine the subject of music with a self-depreciating tale of mishap and farce. Here we go.

In my first freshman year in college (I say first freshman year because there were two, or maybe three, so we’ll split the difference and just say 2.5), I was still a bass player. I owned a six-string guitar, and had played six-string for a couple of years, but I was still being recruited by slick guitar players to be the dork of the band because I also owned, and was relatively proficient on,the bass guitar.

My roommate was a friend from Clemmons named Joey. He had a set of Ludwigs and could do a pretty mean Charlie Watts. A bass player and a drummer who were comfortable playing with each other was a pretty good selling point. We were recruited not long after the semester started.

The guy who put the band together was named Lorenzo. He was rumored to be the son of a famous professional musician, but, if he was, he guarded this secret well and I never found out who. I always thought it was George Benson for some reason.

He came to our room one morning with a guy named Keith, who donned a mullet. (The mullet was a stigma-free hairstyle in those days.) Keith was to be the lead guitarist. Both Lorenzo and Keith brought their guitars with them and we sat on the beds and worked a few songs up. By the end of that session we had agreed to become a foursome and enter the UNCG talent show. Joey on drums, Keith on lead guitar, Lorenzo as vocalist and rhythm guitar, and yours truly, holding down the original instrument of love, the bass guitar.

Lorenzo came up with the name. Actually, Lorenzo came up with everything about the band. He called us The Phillips Heads. Phillips was the name of our dorm, and I think the “heads” part was a loose reference to drug use, which possibly meant Joey, Keith and myself because as far as I could tell, Lorenzo didn’t even take aspirin.

We started practicing in the rec-hall in the basement of the dorm. Joey and I were less than thrilled with the set list. The two of us were beginning the habit of meeting after class, getting to the dorm room, meeting our friends Michael and Eric, (Eric was only seventeen and had already been to dozens of Dead shows), putting a towel under the door, cranking the Velvets and—well let’s just say, imbibing. A set list that included Tommy Two Tone’s 867-5309 and Brian Adam’s song about the six-string (that I don’t want to waste time trying to remember the name of) was definitely not cool man. It’s possible that there was an Eagles number on the list too, and I think its one of those psychosomatic situations where the trauma of actually covering an Eagles song has been erased from my recall because it is simply too painful to remember. At times, during practice, Joey would just stop playing and scream, “Noooooooo” at the top of his lungs. The trauma was getting to my compatriot. But Lorenzo wanted to win this thing, and a twenty minute version of Walk on the Wild Side wasn’t going to get us there. It would have to be Brian Adams. I think Lorenzo even picked out what clothes we wore.

I don’t really remember the talent show, although I think it was in Ackock Auditorium and that friends had had the foresight to stock a cooler of beer backstage. My parents came—and seemed genuinely impressed, but I don’t remember winning or not winning. Maybe it was just the idea of playing those bad songs. Maybe by the end of it, I was just happy to have it over with.


All during this time we were aware that there was a sort of local celebrity, a rising star, in our midst. He was a guy from Winston-Salem who had played drums in a local band and was making noise around Greensboro and Winston and even Chapel Hill by this time. He lived down the hall from us, and as we passed on the way to the cafeteria or somewhere he would look up and nod, somewhat shyly, as if embarrassed to be noted and revered. He was really looked on as a prodigy. This is the only time that I can recall where a local musician seemed to wear the look of someone who was really going to make it. Not just make a scene large enough for the country to take notice of our area, but someone who was going to go outside and really make it. To New York or Nashville. You know, the real thing.

His name was Ben Folds. And he did make it for a time in the 90’s. His band, Ben Folds Five, scored a great deal of radio airplay during the alt-rock avalanche. But at that time, our time, he already seemed to be being pulled apart from the rank and file, the flat-footed running up and down the dorm hall, the towel whipping, the gatherings for A Nightmare on Elm Street viewings, the hooting and hollering. Folds wasn't into it. He was a pretty serious dude.

I believe it was Michael, who had gone to high school with him, who set up a meeting where I would get a chance to play bass for him. The whole thing felt like an audition. I really felt pressure about this for some reason. I mean sure, the guy looked like he was destined for greatness, but it hadn’t happened yet, and this couldn’t be any worse than playing for a hundred or more dizzy undergrads who had nothing better to do than go to a college talent show. The guy had such a rep though, he was always playing gigs. Best drummer in Winston. Pressure, pressure, pressure…

I wanted to play my best thing for him. I had a blues run that was pretty good. It was about sixteen bars or something, and I had made it up out of some tab pieces from a Jimi Hendrix bass-for-morons book. I would start with this one, and, if it went well, I would get into other runs I knew.

What I can recall is that I went to his room and he played a couple of demo tapes for me. He seemed very bored. I couldn’t tell if it was because he thought I was boring or because he was just bored generally. Maybe he was stoned. Maybe I was stoned. I looked at the box he was getting tapes from and it seemed like it was filled with literally hundreds of demos. I could not believe this. I think I must have started to get a deer in the headlights look because he abruptly said, “well we can listen to demos all day long.” The way he said it made me feel like he was saying “I’ve shown you what I can do, now what can you do?”

I sat on his roommate’s bed, and was literally shaking. This guy had gotten—excuse the cliché—in my head. I picked up my bass and it felt extremely awkward and heavy in my hands. I played the first note, then the second, and maybe the third and then, I completely choked. I mean, it was as if I had never even heard of the concept of the bass guitar before. I started the run again and the same thing happened. And again. By the third time he was saying, “That’s alright man, that’s alright.” “No, I’ve got it this time,” I would say, and try again, and again—nothing.

I left his room humiliated and embarrassed. Just like I don’t remember the results of the talent contest, I don’t remember his attitude when I left his room. But I try to remember this instance whenever I’m suffering from stage fright. Just don’t, I tell myself, fuck up like you did with Ben Folds.

At some point after this occurrence I was playing guitar in our room. I might have been playing one of those complicated compositions I had made up when in walked Ben Folds. He said what I was playing was good, and it helped a little to know that. He seemed less bored, more open, maybe he felt bad about something. Anyway, I’m glad he had his success.

Post Script: I have to add an ammendment to this post. This post was meant to be semi-intentionally allegorical, as the title implies.But the more I read it, the more Freud seems to apply to almost every word, and I am almost at the point of embarrasment over it. Oh why did I ever take that postmodern lit. class? Go easy on me you armchair psychologists.