Categories > Celebrities > Fall Out Boy > The Bass Files
You say punk, I say poser
6 reviewsIn this very first chapter you will find a not too punk Sheena who tries out for the position of bassist, four to five bitchy punk poser girls, one drumming Andy (if you can actually stand to read ...
1Original
1. You say punk, I say poser
"Hi, I´m Sheena. We, ah, talked on the phone earlier today, I believe.", I said when the door opened. I was looking at a young woman, about my age, with dramatic make-up. She nodded and then smiled.
"Hey. Come on in.", she said and motioned for me to enter the house. "The rest of the band´s waiting in the garage." And that´s where she led me to. I was carrying my bass on my back as I followed her, checking out her punky outfit.
She was wearing heavy boots, tight jeans with a studded belt and a torn t-shirt through whose holes one could clearly see that her bra was pink. Her hair was short, black with various strands of red, purple and blue in them. It looked pretty neat, at least if you were the kind of person who appreciates trying to clearly state what type of youth culture you belonged to by wearing a certain outfit.
Alright, I´ll admit it - She looked pretty hot and I´d be lying if I said I didn´t wish I could pull the cool punk princess look off like her sometimes. But let´s face it, I just wasn´t the right type of girl to dress and wear make-up like that. When it comes to punky hair styles, I loved to blame it on my thick all-hair product-resisting brown curls but, as a matter of fact, I just didn´t want people to look at me that much. If you´re walking around like Jimmy Rotten´s female doppelgänger it´s kinda hard to keep a low profile and fly under the radar of the public eyes... So I chose to dress in a way that would make me blend with most people in a (non-punk, duh!) crowd. The only thing pierced on me was my ears and the farest I´ve gone crazy with hair color was a slight mahogany tint when I was in 11th grade. Yup, "daredevil" was not really a word to describe Sheena O. Scully. (And no, I will not tell you what the "O." stands for... it´s too embarrassing.)
The punk princess opened the a rusty metal door and ushered me into the garage. "Yo, guys!", she clapped to get everyone´s attention in the room. Three female heads turned towards us and it was easy to see that in this crowd, I did stand out. I swallowed.
"This is Sheena, she´s trying out for the position of our bassist." Silence.
"Hi.", I said, being my creative and talkative self. (Did I mention sarcasm was my steady companion...) Silence. Ah, this was going to be swell.
"Guys?", the punk princess said. "What do we say when we meet someone new?", her voice had an angry tone clinging to it, like a mother admonishing her teenage son to at least have the decency to try to hide the porn on the family computer. (Did I mention I have a younger brother that doesn´t have the decency to try to hide the porn on the family computer?)
"Wassup." - "grunt" - "mumble" It´s hard to spell out the last two um, sounds that were produced by the garage gang but I figured I´d take them as greetings. I noticed two girls checking out my outfit. Five years out of high school, one year out of college but you can never seem to escape being judged by your appearance. Ironically (isn´t it a pleasure to see the word used actually correctly for a change? Wait, you´ll see at the end of the sentence), I was being judged by my cover by members of a social clique who usually claimed to have to fight prejudice based on how they looked on the outside.
"Alright, enough with the chit-chat already.", the punk princess rolled her eyes, obviously a bit embarrassed for her friends´ lack of manners. "Let´s get to work. That´s Fox, Nadine and Jordan, by the way." She introduced the others and pointed at them respectively. "And we covered that I´m Joyce on the phone this morning." I nodded. (Too bad, I was gonna stick with "punk princess", just for the alliteration of it.)
The girl with the long blonde hair, Fox, stirred and got up from the floor that was covered with pillows. She pointed at a bass amp in the corner, "You can hook yourself up over there." Wow, can it be that someone was warming up to me?
Then she took a seat behind a humble drum set. In the meantime Joyce and Nadine had slung guitars around themselves and turned their amps on. Jordan was obviously just around to look pretty - excuse me, to look punk and add to the alternative atmosphere.
When I was done with adjusting myself, I turned to the rest of females, holding my bass´ neck in my left hand. Nadine was saying something to Fox and I could hear her whispering, "Well, at least she´s got no dick." (Ah, a girly punk band. How rebel.)
I sighed loudly. "Oh, damn. You´ve found me out.", I said. The two eyed me suspiciously. Note to self: Don´t try to be funny when in fact, you´re not. Joyce gave me a sympathetic grin. I bet inside she was cursing herself for inviting me over. I was seriously damaging their status as social outcasts by being the outcast amongst them.
"Let´s cut the crap." You could tell Joyce wrote the lyrics. She had this special way with words. She turned towards me, "What can you play?"
I tried to be cool and slided up my E string, "You name it, I play it." (Ah, what the heck. I already lost them when I said "Hi.")
"Know any Clash?", Nadine asked. I played the intro of ´London Calling´. Joyce smiled. I bet she thought, "Maybe this is not going to be such a disaster after all."
_ _ _ _ _
Twenty mintues later we had covered various songs by The Clash, The Ramones, Social Distortion and The Descendents. (You know it´s punk when the CD stops and the total running time is 15 mins 31 secs.) Frankly, those bands had some neat tunes but it was not really very demanding.
The girls gathered around to decide whether to try it with the un-punk gal or not. I hadn´t said anything during our set. One of them had called the next song and I had just played along. I had listened to some of the stuff during high school the last time but I had a pretty good memory when it comes to music and I could play random songs that I´ve heard only once or twice in my head at will. (This could explain the voices I swear I sometimes heard inside of my head...)
I excused myself and went for the restroom while the band was discussing matters among each other. I didn´t wish to hear them talking about me. If I got in, then I had something to do after work, if not, I could still play along with my stereo in my apartment on my own. As I was on my way back to the garage I heard the drums being played. I opened the door and spied a guy with redish brown hair and glasses behind the drum set. He stopped playing as I entered and looked at me.
"Hi, I´m Andy.", he introduced himself and smiled. Surprised by the occurrence of true friendliness in this environment, I hesitated for a second and then smiled slightly and said, "I´m Sheena."
"She´s trying out for bass.", Joyce told him.
"Oh, ´Sheena is a punk rocker´?", the guy joked.
"Ha ha, yeah.", I faked a laugh. I decided not to start a battle of the wit with an unarmed man.
"So, are you any good?", Andy pointed at my bass leaning against the amp.
"She´s alright.", Fox answered for me.
"She can play Clash, Ramones, Descendents.", Nadine rattled off.
Andy produced a drum roll and said, "Neato."
Everyone was looking at me. I felt my face getting hot. "Thanks...", I said and sat down on the bass amp.
"Hi, I´m Sheena. We, ah, talked on the phone earlier today, I believe.", I said when the door opened. I was looking at a young woman, about my age, with dramatic make-up. She nodded and then smiled.
"Hey. Come on in.", she said and motioned for me to enter the house. "The rest of the band´s waiting in the garage." And that´s where she led me to. I was carrying my bass on my back as I followed her, checking out her punky outfit.
She was wearing heavy boots, tight jeans with a studded belt and a torn t-shirt through whose holes one could clearly see that her bra was pink. Her hair was short, black with various strands of red, purple and blue in them. It looked pretty neat, at least if you were the kind of person who appreciates trying to clearly state what type of youth culture you belonged to by wearing a certain outfit.
Alright, I´ll admit it - She looked pretty hot and I´d be lying if I said I didn´t wish I could pull the cool punk princess look off like her sometimes. But let´s face it, I just wasn´t the right type of girl to dress and wear make-up like that. When it comes to punky hair styles, I loved to blame it on my thick all-hair product-resisting brown curls but, as a matter of fact, I just didn´t want people to look at me that much. If you´re walking around like Jimmy Rotten´s female doppelgänger it´s kinda hard to keep a low profile and fly under the radar of the public eyes... So I chose to dress in a way that would make me blend with most people in a (non-punk, duh!) crowd. The only thing pierced on me was my ears and the farest I´ve gone crazy with hair color was a slight mahogany tint when I was in 11th grade. Yup, "daredevil" was not really a word to describe Sheena O. Scully. (And no, I will not tell you what the "O." stands for... it´s too embarrassing.)
The punk princess opened the a rusty metal door and ushered me into the garage. "Yo, guys!", she clapped to get everyone´s attention in the room. Three female heads turned towards us and it was easy to see that in this crowd, I did stand out. I swallowed.
"This is Sheena, she´s trying out for the position of our bassist." Silence.
"Hi.", I said, being my creative and talkative self. (Did I mention sarcasm was my steady companion...) Silence. Ah, this was going to be swell.
"Guys?", the punk princess said. "What do we say when we meet someone new?", her voice had an angry tone clinging to it, like a mother admonishing her teenage son to at least have the decency to try to hide the porn on the family computer. (Did I mention I have a younger brother that doesn´t have the decency to try to hide the porn on the family computer?)
"Wassup." - "grunt" - "mumble" It´s hard to spell out the last two um, sounds that were produced by the garage gang but I figured I´d take them as greetings. I noticed two girls checking out my outfit. Five years out of high school, one year out of college but you can never seem to escape being judged by your appearance. Ironically (isn´t it a pleasure to see the word used actually correctly for a change? Wait, you´ll see at the end of the sentence), I was being judged by my cover by members of a social clique who usually claimed to have to fight prejudice based on how they looked on the outside.
"Alright, enough with the chit-chat already.", the punk princess rolled her eyes, obviously a bit embarrassed for her friends´ lack of manners. "Let´s get to work. That´s Fox, Nadine and Jordan, by the way." She introduced the others and pointed at them respectively. "And we covered that I´m Joyce on the phone this morning." I nodded. (Too bad, I was gonna stick with "punk princess", just for the alliteration of it.)
The girl with the long blonde hair, Fox, stirred and got up from the floor that was covered with pillows. She pointed at a bass amp in the corner, "You can hook yourself up over there." Wow, can it be that someone was warming up to me?
Then she took a seat behind a humble drum set. In the meantime Joyce and Nadine had slung guitars around themselves and turned their amps on. Jordan was obviously just around to look pretty - excuse me, to look punk and add to the alternative atmosphere.
When I was done with adjusting myself, I turned to the rest of females, holding my bass´ neck in my left hand. Nadine was saying something to Fox and I could hear her whispering, "Well, at least she´s got no dick." (Ah, a girly punk band. How rebel.)
I sighed loudly. "Oh, damn. You´ve found me out.", I said. The two eyed me suspiciously. Note to self: Don´t try to be funny when in fact, you´re not. Joyce gave me a sympathetic grin. I bet inside she was cursing herself for inviting me over. I was seriously damaging their status as social outcasts by being the outcast amongst them.
"Let´s cut the crap." You could tell Joyce wrote the lyrics. She had this special way with words. She turned towards me, "What can you play?"
I tried to be cool and slided up my E string, "You name it, I play it." (Ah, what the heck. I already lost them when I said "Hi.")
"Know any Clash?", Nadine asked. I played the intro of ´London Calling´. Joyce smiled. I bet she thought, "Maybe this is not going to be such a disaster after all."
_ _ _ _ _
Twenty mintues later we had covered various songs by The Clash, The Ramones, Social Distortion and The Descendents. (You know it´s punk when the CD stops and the total running time is 15 mins 31 secs.) Frankly, those bands had some neat tunes but it was not really very demanding.
The girls gathered around to decide whether to try it with the un-punk gal or not. I hadn´t said anything during our set. One of them had called the next song and I had just played along. I had listened to some of the stuff during high school the last time but I had a pretty good memory when it comes to music and I could play random songs that I´ve heard only once or twice in my head at will. (This could explain the voices I swear I sometimes heard inside of my head...)
I excused myself and went for the restroom while the band was discussing matters among each other. I didn´t wish to hear them talking about me. If I got in, then I had something to do after work, if not, I could still play along with my stereo in my apartment on my own. As I was on my way back to the garage I heard the drums being played. I opened the door and spied a guy with redish brown hair and glasses behind the drum set. He stopped playing as I entered and looked at me.
"Hi, I´m Andy.", he introduced himself and smiled. Surprised by the occurrence of true friendliness in this environment, I hesitated for a second and then smiled slightly and said, "I´m Sheena."
"She´s trying out for bass.", Joyce told him.
"Oh, ´Sheena is a punk rocker´?", the guy joked.
"Ha ha, yeah.", I faked a laugh. I decided not to start a battle of the wit with an unarmed man.
"So, are you any good?", Andy pointed at my bass leaning against the amp.
"She´s alright.", Fox answered for me.
"She can play Clash, Ramones, Descendents.", Nadine rattled off.
Andy produced a drum roll and said, "Neato."
Everyone was looking at me. I felt my face getting hot. "Thanks...", I said and sat down on the bass amp.
Sign up to rate and review this story