When I was seven, I promoted a fake rock concert

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I just remembered something I hadn't thought about for year this morning. When I was seven (I think), I promoted a fake rock concert. My partners in the venture were named Chad and Corey Carpenter. They were identical twins. They used to have t-shirts with pointing fingers on them that read, "I'm Corey, He's Chad" and "I'm Chad, He's Corey" on them which I thought were very, very cool for some reason.

In any case, we somehow cooked up this scheme to stage a rock concert in the playground. Our band was called 1000 Volts. We didn't have any songs, but we did have a logo (a lightbulb and two lightning bolts arranged like the skull-and-crossbones of a Jolly Roger).

We sold tickets to our classmates for a quarter a piece. We actually managed to raise quite a bit of money, by first-grade standards. Later on, our teacher found out and, realizing that there was no fucking way we were holding a concert during lunch on the playground, made us refund the tickets. We had already squandered all the money on candy at the grocery store, so I remember my Mom had to pay for it and I didn't get an allowance for a long time as a result. She was not pleased.

The wierd thing is that we – on some level – didn't even think we were ripping people off. Corey (the alpha of the twins) claimed that we could turn my grandmother's acoustic guitar into an electric by connecting it to one of his Mom's stereo speaker with two nails and a piece of wire. I think we all operating under the group delusion that we were actually going to go through with it.

I guess I have no point other than that I remembered this and wanted to get it down while it was in my head.....also, perhaps to ask any of you if you did any other similar stunts that seemed to point you towards a life of being perhaps a wee bit too obsessed with music.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Monday, 15 March 2004 19:53 (twenty-two years ago)

omg, the logo sound sooooo fantastic. are you currently in branding?

― JaXoN (JasonD), Monday, 15 March 2004 19:57 (twenty-two years ago)

when i was six, there was a concert performance by some dude my mom was friends with and i came on stage and pretended i was him at age six and banged around on the keyboard until my "mom" called for me offstage and then when i left the guy came on and started his performance

― JaXoN (JasonD), Monday, 15 March 2004 19:58 (twenty-two years ago)

i recall our family getting a video camera in about '83 and my friends and i staging a few concert videos. naturally, the videos devolved into Cabbage Patch doll pornos. yeah, parents were *real* impressed with our creative use of the video equipment.

― ken taylrr, Monday, 15 March 2004 20:01 (twenty-two years ago)

omg, the logo sound sooooo fantastic. are you currently in branding?

haha no...i fear my talents are being wasted! I remember us thinking it was quite clever at the time.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Monday, 15 March 2004 20:03 (twenty-two years ago)

I was a little older, like 11, and my band was called 'Anthrax - Why Me?' with my best friend Steve. At one point we were also called Azaria and the Dingos. We just yelled abuse into a microphone whihc fed into one of those little tape recorders every kid had at the time, and there was also a lot of recording stuff of TV and radio and slowing it down. Hey, we were a prepubescent Whitehouse!

― the music mole (colin s barrow), Monday, 15 March 2004 22:07 (twenty-two years ago)

mingering mike to thread

― autovac (autovac), Monday, 15 March 2004 23:08 (twenty-two years ago)

xpost: or Raunchy Young Lepers.

― jack cole (jackcole), Monday, 15 March 2004 23:37 (twenty-two years ago)

OLD SKULL (!!!)

― dean! (deangulberry), Monday, 15 March 2004 23:45 (twenty-two years ago)

This doesn't involve my performing, but this thread has brought back horrible memories of a middle school talent show:

Teachers (singing): "YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE A NATURAL... TEACHER!!!"
Me (in audience): "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Tuesday, 16 March 2004 01:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Ah, the Lepers.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 01:47 (twenty-two years ago)

we used to put on these fake rock shows every year when my family would get together with this other family and stay at their cottage in new hampshire! there was this big rock there and we'd stand on it and use tennis rackets as guitars and lipsync/air guitar along to "ball of confusion" and other great hits!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 02:12 (twenty-two years ago)

At the age of 5, I jammed with the guy who lived on the top floor of our duplex, an Ontario Provincial Police officer. He played guitar (first 'live' electric I'd seen/heard) and I banged my trusty bongos. We played "Wipe Out". I probably sucked. Tho I might've been able to join Öld Sküll (or [even] the Shaggs or Godz or Half Japanese) if I worked at it for a year or three...

― Myonga Von Bontee (Myonga Von Bontee), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 06:25 (twenty-two years ago)

In the infants, I was co-opted to be the singer in a band consisting of three other boys playing drums, and one playing the triangle. The repertoire (that I can remember) consisted of Pickettywich's "I get the same old feeling", "It's like a sad old movie (which I had the words for but sang the same tune as the former)", "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", and "Pensylvania 6-5000" (Which I had never heared of, so announced it as "Written by David Farmer" who had formed the band in the first place. Gig list: 1 performance for the class.

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 09:32 (twenty-two years ago)

My brother was into surf music and had this Norma guitar and amp that was red pearl. He joined the navy and left his guitar with me to "take care of". This led to me writing my first instrumental, "Don't Pick On My Guitar". Haha! True story! The real humor is that I had no idea how to play anything, so "Don't Pick On My Guitar" was a memorized pattern of picked open strings. RAWK!
I have many other stupid kid musician stories, including the one where I talked my cousins into busting open their piggie bank, and hiding the resulting pennys in a drainage culvert, so we could buy Silvertones from the Sears catalog and become the NEW MONKEES.

― Speedy (Speedy Gonzalas), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 09:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I had a friend who had a band as a kid named Dark Black. Greatest band name ever.

― Sym (shmuel), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 09:57 (twenty-two years ago)

I went through most of 9th and 10th grade playing my so-called demos to friends, which were in fact 'Trout Mask Replica'... I got away with it, but then when it was time for the 'difficult' second batch of songs I usurped Fields of the Nephilim songs and that didn't work out as well...

― Baaderoni (Fabfunk), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 10:02 (twenty-two years ago)

when i was a youngster in the mid to late 70s, and i would get kinda whiney, my cousins would make me scream "KISS POWER!!," stick out my tongue and make the rockandroll devil hands. they thought this would make me stop crying.

\m/ \m/

― JaXoN (JasonD), Tuesday, 16 March 2004 17:56 (twenty-two years ago)

five years pass...

http://www.playit1auctions.com/pictures/lyceum_repro.jpg

― Bob Six, Sunday, 18 October 2009 08:15 (sixteen years ago)

one year passes...

Re. my story up there - I guess I might've clarified that the guy's wife babysat me often and knew that I enjoyed listening to my records and playing my bongos, and thought that a little jam session would be fun. Otherwise it sounds kinda creepy, a fullgrown man hanging out with a 5-year old non-relation, even if he WAS a cop.

― boring wank about Linda's pies and Denny Laine's tunings (Myonga Vön Bontee), Friday, 24 June 2011 05:08 (fourteen years ago)

when i was idk 11 maybe me and my friend bert decided to start a band so of course the first step was to record an album, which consisted of taking an early prog-rock yanni tape my dad had from when he worked with him back in the day and duping it in little stuttered chunks while we sorta yell sang a bunch of crap in between and then did impressions of famous sportscasters of the day, which was tough for me since i didnt actually know who any of them were, but according to bert i did a really ace frank gifford to his howard cosell. we made 50 copies using his dads high speed dubbing machine and then decided that we needed a name and an album title that was really cool, so we decided on the album title "Playing Punk Rock" by all star band "Complexion Blue". Handmade our tape sleeves, and then sold them to gullible kids at school for $5 a pop! so i guess i owe yanni some money. i spent all my money on 45s and bert bought a sims flagship skateboard and the worlds biggest supply of zotz pops.

― lemon kerrang! (jjjusten), Friday, 24 June 2011 05:31 (fourteen years ago)

1000 Volts, Complexion Blue, Dark Black, and especially Anthrax - Why Me? are all pretty excellent names!

― bentelec, Friday, 24 June 2011 05:53 (fourteen years ago)

This is one of the most adorable threads ever.

― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, Friday, 24 June 2011 06:52 (fourteen years ago)

man i would kill for one of those tapes. we didnt save any! prob the desire for 5 dollars of loot outweighed archival tendencies at that point.

― lemon kerrang! (jjjusten), Friday, 24 June 2011 07:17 (fourteen years ago)

My first band was called RBU, short for 'rock by us.' Myself & a couple of neighbor kids. We were in fifth grade. Our instrument arsenal consisted of a cheap electric guitar & battery-powered Gorilla amp, a low-end Casio synth & a pair of Hit Stix© . For vox, I think we had a cheap mic connected to a boombox.

The only songs I can remember were called "Electric Lips" & "Batman Saves the Day."

― Heady Snobbin (Pillbox), Friday, 24 June 2011 07:45 (fourteen years ago)

two years pass...

lyrics from first band's only song:

The pine trees are coming
The pine trees are coming
Hide your peanut butter
Hide your dog
Hide your microphone
London Fog
The pine trees are coming
The pine trees are coming

Our sole influence was The Cure. Don't remember our band name.

― how's life, Wednesday, 23 October 2013 19:32 (twelve years ago)

Ha my friend and I had a band called the Dinosaurs. We were heavily Monkees-influenced so of course our one song was a theme song because the Monkees had a theme song.

― Immediate Follower (NA), Wednesday, 23 October 2013 19:34 (twelve years ago)

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When I was seven, I promoted a fake rock concert - goofy childhood music stories