Avatar

April 15, 2004

I was talking to my brother recently about how my hearing is messed up, which somehow led to him reminiscing about a band we were in together called Avatar. It's a subject that comes up fairly often between the two of us. The band had a long history as far as high school bands go. My brother started off playing bass in the band a year or two before I was old enough to be either cool enough or good enough to be asked to join. The first time I played with them was at a party at the house of the drummer's girlfriend. Her parents were divorced, and her dad was considered cool by all the kids because he smoked pot. I never met the guy, but I did see the big bag of weed that he kept in the freezer.

At the time of the party, my wrist was broken and in a cast. My playing was, needless to say, limited. But I did okay.

At the time, I was only fourteen, and the other guitar player was 20. His name was Mike. The drinking age was eighteen at the time, and he was also the de facto beer connection.

"Remember the Battle of the Bands?" asked my brother, "At Orphan Annie's?"

"Barely."

Orphan Annie's was (and still is) a bar in Sterling, New Jersey. They had a Battle of the Bands contest, and Avatar was entered. The details are sketchy, but I remember we lost. We had a lot of friends in the audience who'd come to support us, and when we didn’t win, they were pissed. A minor rumble broke out, and everyone got booted out of the joint. We loaded up my parents’ station wagon and split as things exploded into the parking lot.

The band went through several more permutations until it was just three of us: Mike, my brother, and me. My brother moved from bass to drums, and I went from guitar to bass. Eventually, my brother graduated from high school and joined the Navy. Mike was distraught over it and tried to get me to convince my brother not to go.

"What do you want me to do?" I said. "You know how he is. If he wants to go, he's gonna go."

"The fuckin' Navy!" said Mike. "Can you imagine your brother in the fuckin' Navy?"

Actually, no, I couldn't. But once you sign up, you're pretty well fucked.

The band was falling apart in front of Mike's eyes. He had few things in his life that meant anything to him aside from the band: a severe coke habit, a 15-year-old girlfriend, and a job at a sandwich shop. His boss got arrested once for paddling one of the girls that worked for him with a wooden paddle, and Mike used that fact to justify embezzling the place into oblivion.

"We gotta keep the band together," he said.

I was all for it, but by then, there were only the two of us left. He went on a search and found a drummer from a neighboring town, and we started playing shows at the local teen center. More than once, I remember Mike ducking behind his amplifier during an instrumental break to puke. He used to have rails of coke lined up on a mirror behind his amp, too. If he wasn't snorting, he was puking. Lots of action behind the amp.

The last gig I remember ever performing with that band was at the Our Lady of Peace church fair. The church asked us to stop playing because everyone was watching us and not spending money on rides and refreshments, so Mike decided we should play the song Money -- but he changed the lyrics: "The church wants money..." et cetera.

The next thing we knew, the sound went out. A guy came to tell us we blew a fuse. It wasn't a total lie. I mean, we definitely blew a fuse in the guy's head.

Once again, we piled the equipment into the back of my parents’ station wagon, in defeat. Mike got into his white Mach I Mustang with his 15-year-old girlfriend while the drummer and I followed behind in the station wagon. As he peeled out of the parking lot, blasting AC/DC from his car stereo, he reached his arm out of the car window and flipped the church the bird.

Last I heard, Mike was working at The Olive Garden, where he performs a magic act.