I can remember hearing “Revolver” for the first time. I stole my dad’s guitar off the wall and tried to play along. He walked by and asked, “Is that The Monkees?” I’ve always wanted to play like my heroes. I just never could.
I started my first band in middle school. All we wanted to do was play sick Clapton licks. And we kind of did—at quarter speed. I figured I’d speed it up eventually, but by the time our first show arrived, still no luck. Instead, we just cranked our gain to ten so no one could tell what we were playing. As a slow, sludgy sound rang through the room, not a soul knew it was a cover. Not even a young Tony Iommi who stood in the back, wide-eyed.
I played in dozens of rock bands in the decades to follow but eventually, I moved on to a jazz quartet. I should have known four arrhythmic white guys wasn’t a great idea. Every practice was a cacophony of random time signatures and abrupt tempo changes. One day I just couldn’t take it anymore, so I started screaming over the noise. As I shouted, a man wandered by our space. “What do you call this new sound?” he asked. I didn’t have an answer. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard. Can you even count to four? You had math in your core curriculum, right? Hey, that’s got a ring to it. Anyway, my name’s Marvin.” He rushed to a payphone to call his cousin Chuck Dillinger to tell him about this ‘mathcore.’
We had a good run, but I got tired of failing so publicly. Eventually, I gave up bands altogether and began my ambient solo career. I figured my first show would be easy—just play MP3s from my laptop. What could go wrong? I plugged in my MacBook, but I couldn’t stop it from buzzing through the sound system. As the volume went up, I froze as the harsh wall of noise washed over the audience. I just wanted to hide my face. And yet, somehow people liked it. So they just kept booking me.
It’s still embarrassing, so I’ve started wearing a bag over my head. Even the audience started doing it too. You’d think eventually I’d figure out the USB cables, but no luck yet. At least ticket sales aren’t bad.