A 13 year olds dream come true!
At 41, I am ready to rock the house, tear the roof off, slam, thrash, mosh and shred; a dream come true really. Ever since I was in 8th grade I wanted to be a singer in a band. Like many 13 year olds, I used to close my bedroom door, turn on my boom box and pretend I was a rock star. While young girls would grab a hair brush and pretend they were Olivia Newton Jon, or Belinda Carlisle of the GoGos, young boys would air guitar pretending they were Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page or Pete Townsend. Myself, I used to air guitar to the live version of Free Bird, off the Lynyrd Skynyrd, “One More From The Road” album. Either that or pretend I was Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, or that I was Peter Tosh; wishing I was black with long natty dreads, instead of just a kid from the burbs.
What do Brahms and the Ramones have in common?
And now I am the lead singer of a power chord punk band in Oslo, Norway. Our first gig is at a place called the Fun House in downtown Oslo, opening for an 80s punk cover band. How the heck did this come about, you may ask. Over a year ago I joined the San Francisco Choral Society and had a great time. And so, when I moved to Oslo, my first order of business was to find a chorus. One evening I was out with Nils and he had a friend along named John-Åge (Pronounced yoon oh guh.) John-Åge was the drummer of a punk band who was pretty well connected to the Oslo music scene. So I asked him if he knew of any choirs about. His face lit up and he said that his band was looking for a lead singer. The band had been around for years, and while the musicians are all quite good in his band they have been having a hard time finding a singer who can come up with good material, sing well, and show up for rehearsals. He asked me if I would like to audition. 
Dead Cow
Before coming to the audition, I listened to a few of the tracks of the original band with the old singer. (You can hear these clips on the Kong Familien “Myspace” page.) The band sounded incredible with fantastic bone crunching power-chords, however, John-Åge, was right about the singer. He basically growled through the songs unsure of what to sing. An example is the song, “Dead Cow”; the first verse, goes like this, “You ain’t nothin’ but a cow, You ain’t nothin’ but a dead cow baby, You ain’t nothin’ but a cow, You ain’t nothin’ but a dead cow baby, You ain’t nothin’ but a cow, You ain’t nothin’ but a dead cow baby.” The chorus is an exact repeat, except in this case the last line goes, “You ain’t nothin’ but a cow baby YEAH.” So the Yeah makes it different. The other songs have the same kind of lyrical depth. Songs about getting too wasted, impotence, and other subversive topics, reserved for artist like Frank Zappa, who can throw some amazing arrangements behind them. Having never written lyrics down, I knew it would be a challenge but I figured I could at least improve on the previous content. Right?
We could jam in Joe’s Garage
A few weeks later I prepared some rock standards and came to the audition ready to rock. The rehearsal space looks exactly like the kind of picture you would find in next to dictionary definition of "garage rock rehearsal space." It was in a back alley lot, all the broken windows boarded up. I walked into the small beer soaked studio with carpet on the walls. And saw the practice equipment shared by all the other bands that fill time slot rent on the space. In walked Glen, with his guitar on his back, followed by Frøde the base player. The guys had not preformed in months and were glad to have the excuse to get together and jam even to just audition some guy they had never met and hope for the best. I did a few vocal warm-ups while the band plugged in, John-Åge taped his drum stick to his fingerless right-hand, and did a few loud flourishes and fills. I threw out a few song suggestions of stuff I knew. Glen wasn’t sure of the punk covers I suggested. The LA scene is very different then what caught on in Europe. It turned out the band knew the Elvis version of the Little Willie John standard, “Fever”.
Not really a song I associate with punk, the band kicked off a speedy power chord version of the song. I tried to sing very tentatively, and hit the right notes, but my energy wasn’t where the band was. I felt like a timid karaoke singer. Suddenly something came over me, and I started wailing out the lyrics, the band responded and we were off. After a thundering finish, they all looked at each other gleefully, Frøde exclaimed, “YA DA MATT!” (Norwegian for f*** yeah!) I felt very good. That was it I was their new singer. Now I just had to write some new material on top of the old songs and sing it. I will talk more about my experience with trying to write punk tunes in the next installment. As it stands now; we have written a total of 12 new songs together, and have rehearsed for two months now. I am so happy with the results and the energy with the band is fantastic. We have yet to post any of the songs with me singing on the myspace page. Stay tuned we will be in the studio soon enough. Meanwhile if you are in Oslo on the 17th of October, come and see us. You WILL be entertained, we will show you a great time.
Stay tuned...
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