Exit Only, Columbus, OH, 1991

Tom Kersey writes: This video is the sole remaining evidence of our band Exit Only, named after one of the many viable options for the existential angst often experienced by the American teenager. We never played a gig but shot this video confidently believing that once we had become stars, we could sell the footage of our early, underground days.

We originally came together to perform at our high school's Battle of the Bands to show our schoolmates what authentic rockers behaved as opposed to posers who wore Iron Maiden and Guns N' Roses t-shirts. Our plan was scuppered when the talent show that originally inspired us proved to be a one time thing. Yet another moment of glory was robbed from us by the man.

The idea with the video was to shoot a bunch of footage that we'd edit later (which obviously never happened) to use as promotional material or as a "behind the scenes" video to sell once we had fans. One of my favorite parts of the video is when you hear me asking the guys if we'll "edit [something] out later" and they laugh. It's so funny how deluded we were, but at the time I really believed we'd be able to make a go of it.

We're in Chris' room near downtown Columbus, Ohio. Chris is the skinny kid in the black t-shirt on the left of the bed and he was to be one of the guitarists. He's a nurse now but back then, he was serious enough to purchase a bow so he could play Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused in true Jimmy Page fashion . The other members are Pete (drums, now deceased), Scott (bass, now a systems administrator), and Tom (rhythm and lead guitar, now a teacher). Our lead singer Rob was selected later based not on his talent, but on his willingness to make a fool of himself with the rest of us.

We played no gigs and our only performance for other people was a public practice for our girlfriends where we proceeded to play a just portion of our only original song "I Just Don't Know Where I Am Going," followed by as much of the four cover songs as we were able to remember. We spent the rest of the afternoon drinking Coca Cola and listening to Led Zeppelin. After realizing that Rob, our singer, had no actual singing talent, and that our guitarists knew only three chords between them (and not the same chords), we slowly let the dream die after scheduling and, wisely, canceling our only scheduled performance at a party.