Last night marked the end of an era. We held our last Fooled By April rehearsal and from this point on we shall enter my dank, dark, crappy basement no more.
I certainly won't miss the smells and the air that always makes me allergic. I also won't miss the complete lack of heat which required us to wear parkas and ski hats and crowd around an electric heater like a bunch of bums at all our winter rehearsals.
I won't miss the total lack of acoustics nor the spiders. I won't miss the sketchy electrical wiring and the blown fuses. I won't miss the bickering. I won't miss humping the gear up the most rickety flight of stairs in the universe and I certainly won't miss the neighbors' bitching.
But then again, I will miss every one of those things. These are the things that make a band, a real band. Why do supergroups of successful musicians always break up after an album or two? Simple; they never had the basement experience together. They never tried to make a shitty practice bass amp work as a PA speaker or were suddenly left in total darkness around a bunch of dangerous equipment during a summer blackout.
We did a lot in that basement - wrote two records, practiced for the gigs that were our greatest triumphs as well as for the gigs like the Halloween bash at Westfield State where we played for one retarded guy and Jordan's sister, we wrote songs that became a national TV commercial and forever will be stamped into the DVDs of some of the WB's greatest shows. Most importantly, we spent a good chunk of four years of our lives down in the dank working towards a dream together. That counts for something.
And so, strange as it is, I think I will always remember that nasty place with a great deal of fondness.
These are indeed sad times..an end of an era. While those of us in the periphery certainly can't imagine what it's like to have been in the band for so long, I think each of us feel something. Whether we attended every live show...or maybe we played in the band for a brief period of time in its early stages..or whether we had a evening of homo-erotic curiosity with Jordan Siegel... Each of us, have been touched by Fooled By April, in some way. "..but don't take it from me, let my Telecaster talk."
In two hours I'll be leaving my house to catch the train to the last ever FxA show. I will get drunk. Cry. Shout "Yoko!!" at various women. And end up on my knees garking in the men's room. Oh how I will miss these sweet days of my youth.
And to answer the unasked question:
Yes, it is very very hard to be where nobody is home.
