In Which We Jumped In The Fire

Part One (Rebecca Wiener) Part Two (John Gruen)

Part Three (Tess Lynch) Part Four (Jessica Grose)

Part Five (Molly Young) Part Six (Lucas Stangl)

Part Seven (Andrew Zornoza) Part Eight (Rachel B. Glaser)

Part Nine (Andrew Lasken) Part Ten (Kevin Porter)

Part Eleven (Jamie Galen) Part Twelve (Anna Dever-Scanlon)

Part Thirteen (Will Hubbard) Part Fourteen (Kara Wentworth)

Part Fifteen

Ground Zero

by George Ducker

I started a band with my friend Kirk in Sixth grade. He bought a red Peavey guitar and I wanted one instantly. He told me we couldn’t be in a band with two guitarists. That it would be weird.

He also told me how much his guitar cost. He said it cost him two thousand dollars.

"In the Meantime" - Helmet: mp3

Kirk lived out near Furman and his house was often mistaken for the Green Valley Country Club. There was a small lake in his backyard. Old ladies would show up at his doorstep at two in the afternoon asking about the garden party. His dining room walls bore a wraparound mural of medieval knights taking to the field.

I told my parents I wanted a guitar and my dad asked me how much it would cost. I told him it would cost two thousand dollars. He told me there was no way I was getting a guitar. My older cousin Jeffrey offered me his drumset for one hundred dollars. I paid him off in installments.

Igor Cavalera

"Propaganda" - Sepultura: mp3

I told Kirk about the drumset. That we could be a real band. Maybe that was his plan all along. We spent a whole weekend learning ‘Sweet Leaf’ in his parents’ basement. My drumset was an MX-1000 with an old Slingerland bass pedal and tom heads that looked like they were made out of straw. There was only a hi-hat, so I took it apart. Two cymbals, I figured, were better than one: a ride and a crash, both fourteen inches.

We learned ‘Sweet Leaf,’ ‘War Pigs,’ and ‘I Hate Everything About You’ by Ugly Kid Joe. We had band practice twice a month on Friday nights. We would play from five in the afternoon until ten or eleven at night with pizza and Coke breaks distributed accordingly. This is where I give instant, nontransferable credit to both Kirk’s parents and my own.

In seventh grade, a new kid named Dennis transferred to our school. He lived in Mauldin. We asked him to be in our band. Dennis learned how to play bass almost overnight. It was uncanny. He could play ‘Long View’ almost note for note within a week of taking bass lessons. By eighth grade he could play ‘Anesthesia.’

Cliff Burton

"Anesthesia - Pulling Teeth" - Metallica: mp3

By freshman year his dad was the basketball coach for our school. Dennis was on the JV team as a matter of course. He would work out before first period at a gym. Dennis grew muscles on his arms and shaved the underside of his head like Cliff Burton. He could tie his hair back in a small ponytail. Dennis told us his dad beat the hell out of him with a belt. We were the only ones that knew.

I don’t remember if Dennis started smoking before Kirk and I did, but I know we were all smoking by then.

When we practiced at Dennis’s house, kids from neighboring Mauldin High would come over and hang out and listen to us play and smoke cigarettes and headbang. Our hair was long. Girls would come over sometimes. They seemed to like Dennis. The guys knew how to do things like steal bikes and sneak into pools. We played Mortal Kombat because Dennis had the Sega Genesis and there was so much more blood on that system.

"Hammer Smashed Face" - Cannibal Corpse: mp3

Guys would try and play my drums and never be any good and I remember specifically throwing a drumstick really hard at this one kid’s head, and then being very happy when he ducked.

We knew seven or eight Metallica songs. The long epic ones like ‘Sanitarium,’ ‘Fade to Black,’ and ‘Harvester of Sorrow.’ We learned Pantera songs and Sepultura songs and one or two songs by White Zombie.

"Fucking Hostile" - Pantera: mp3

Kirk could do the death growl just like Max Cavalera and the guy from Cannibal Corpse. We learned ‘Man in a Box.’ Even though I could play the double-bass machine-gun blast from ‘One,’ my appreciation for Automatic for the People was met with instant ridicule.

"Milquetoast" - Helmet: mp3

We drank Zima like bandits. We waited outside this one store at a five-corners in Traveler’s Rest and convince old timers to buy it for us. It worked most of the time. We squatted by the ice machine and watched for pickup trucks. If they drove a pickup we were set.

How the hell did we get all the way to Traveler’s Rest? It must have been in Kirk’s car. Sure. He was the first one to get a license. Dennis never drove anywhere. His mother was a pretty, mousy woman who we all assumed was emotionally terrorized by Dennis’s dad.

"Jump In The Fire" - Metallica: mp3

One afternoon, Dennis managed to jam seven bottles of Zima into his Ibanez’s softcase. He rode to my house with me and Kirk after school and we went out to the power line fields behind my house and got so drunk we could barely stand up. We probably drank two beers apiece or something. We fell over in the tall grass and threw empty bottles at the power lines. My parents were at work. It was barely six o’clock. When we got back to the house, there was a car at the top of the driveway. Oh shit oh shit oh shit, Dennis said.

His mom was standing next to the car. Some minor emergency. She’d been waiting for half an hour. She’d driven from Mauldin to bring him home.

There was no emergency. According to Dennis, his dad didn’t want him to be happy. He wanted him to play basketball. He might have started to cry. Kirk and I crossed our arms like we were trying to make some point, but we were really just trying to keep our balance. Dennis’s mother yelled in her tiny voice without looking directly at anyone.

Dennis left his bass in my room. It was still there when Kirk and I made it back into the house. There was still beer too, but we both fell asleep on my floor. The next day, Kirk drove over to Dennis’s house and propped the bass against the back screen door. He knocked and rang the bell, but no one ever answered.

George Ducker is the senior contributor to This Recording.

"Everything About You" - Ugly Kid Joe : mp3

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Comments

[chadhartigan]

No "Two Minutes to Midnight"?

[George]

Haaaaa! We did give "Fear of the Dark" a shot, I think.