Remember when you were in 8th grade and you and two other buddies got the great idea of starting a rock band? You pooled your allowance money and bought a cheap guitar and amp and started writing 8th-grade-angst-ridden songs? Aren’t you glad that grew up before you had the chance to record that junk?!

For me it was “The Shady Denizens”. Galyn, Marks, and I were going to be a grim metal-ish band with poignant, Christian lyrics. We had stage names picked, album covers drawn, the whole nine. I was going to play keyboards, and can still plink out a couple of the songs we worked up in Galyn’s parent’s spare room between games of Double Dragon and Castlevania. Ahh to be young and stupid again.

The reason I bring this up is that my favorite web cartoon, PVP, has a rant on the web site about a garage band that should never have left the garage. They were booth-neighbors at a recent comic convention here in Dallas and butted heads all weekend because the band, Court Jester, was blasting their music (The term is used loosely.) the whole time. The band’s web site is hilarious. You can download their music, with thought provoking lyrics like:

I’ll be a good boy, that’s no lie.
I’ll be a good boy as long as I don’t die.

I literally laughed out loud when I listened to their tribute to Mike Meyers (ala Halloween slasher movies). It’s got this ridiculous audio effect voice that interjects little gems between the lyrics, like “the emperor of evil” and “the devil’s son”. It eventually breaks out in some ooh-so-scary back masking.

I swear I’m not making this up:

Sweet little sister I saw her smile.
Right away I knew her dark desire.

Umm… Smile doesn’t rhyme with desire and please do not tell me what your little sister’s “dark desire” was. Seriously, I beg you.

It would be funny if these guys were teenagers, but a visit to the band’s bio page reveals just how sad the truth is. They don’t give their ages, but from the pictures, I’m guessing these guys are in their late 30s. One of them has a master’s degree, though it doesn’t say what discipline. (I’m guessing Automotive Repair.) I’m still wondering who’s ex-girlfriend was blackmailed into posing for the album cover.

Now you can see how this reminded me of those pubescent rock-star dreams. What can I say, some people follow their dreams, even when they really really really shouldn’t.