Til Two, Berkeley, CA 1987

We could not think of a name to save ourselves. For a while, I was liking The Courtney's Ready, which was a reference to a tabloid column about Courtney Cox and her "readiness" to play sluttier roles after Family Ties. But I think it was brought up meekly and quickly self-shotdown. There was a bar called Til Two in Berkeley back then, right next to the original Flints Ribs and right across the street from the Starry Plow club. On Tuesday nights, it was pick-up night...anyone could play. We decided that Til Two sounded like a good enough name for the band (we drank there all the time) and we could hit the joint on that Tuesday as the house band (a joke, in the ironic college way).

When we played, I wore the most psychedelic shirt in my possession. Paisley = supercool. I was trying to follow in the historical precedent set by Hendrix on the Are You Experienced cover. No one else seemed to care about what they were wearing at all. We got to the bar and waited for the right time to pounce on the stage and claim the instruments that were being played by the other master musicians who had shown up (biding our time by doing shots, eating the ribs we had brought in from Flints, and trying to convince our lead singer that he would be able to keep both down.) Finally our moment came. We hit the stage and started playing, in a very blurry deer-in-the-headlights fashion. To this day, I could not tell you what song we ended up playing... although my money would be down with Bo Diddley's I'm a Man. Our singer was so nervous that he remained behind myself and the guitarist the whole time (in the picture, you can see his shoes). I kept it steady, feeling the shots that had been taken earlier...and had a blast inside the rock and roll moment....one of the only two stage moments of my teens. And then it was over.

The shock of actually playing live was too much for our band could bear. It is with great sadness that i report, Til Two never played again. The facts were faced: we were Literature majors, reading between the lines of James Joyce and Beowolf...not reinterpreting Robert Johnson or Pere Ubu. The bands that played at Til Two...even on the pick-up nights...had more right to be there, in our opinion, than we ever would--no matter how much we practiced or how much we talked about our practically fictitious band. While I loved music I was in no way an artist, and since being a failed musician, I did what anyone else would do: I entered the BUSINESS side of the Music Business.