I’m still not really up for much of anything, and frankly, I’m a bit surprised as to how much this is affecting me. I mean it is expected to feel something when someone close to you dies, but in recent years, we weren’t that close. I guess part of it is reminiscing on all the things we did in the past, and that nostalgia partially reignites that feeling of closeness.
I remembered the last time we were in Hawaii and running around together. We had both been there many times, but we thought it would be a fun change-up to do some of the tourist things. I believe we were both 19 or 20, but we bullshitted our way into one of those party bus bar-hopping tours. By the third stop we were already pretty drunk, and at the fourth stop, there was a cover band playing.
Now I’m not exactly proud of what we did, but we ended up heckling the band a bit. The band was pretty decent for a local cover band, but the singer wasn’t that great. A few songs later they launched into a cover of White Zombie’s More Human Than Human and when he started singing, I sorta groaned and rolled my eyes prompting the singer to stop and say if I thought I could do better to get up there and try.
So I did.
Now I’m a bassist, not a lead singer, but I can hold my own, especially on a song that is mostly keeping a cadence and vocal effects. I tweaked the settings on his vocal effects processor a bit and jumped right in. I won’t say that I floored everyone with my performance, but I was three sheets to the wind already and gave a dynamic performance. I know at least the tourists from the bar-crawl enjoyed it, though the locals that came to see their friend’s cover band didn’t seem as much into it. Thankfully though, the singer seemed to get into it a bit and was grinning and even participated in the chorus. (Really, I didn’t think he was a bad singer, he just had a higher range and they were playing songs that didn’t compliment his range.)
We still had two more bars to stop at, but frankly I don’t remember much from either of the last two stops. I do remember at the end of the night, my cousin and I debating how we were going to get home and that we chose a pretty reckless method. But we got home in one piece, puked all over our grandparent’s bushes, and passed out in the living room. I even remember at one point racing outside to evacuate my stomach again… because my cousin was monopolizing the bathroom doing just the same.
We had also made plans to go on one of those booze-cruises, but I ended up needing to fly back early. I don’t exactly remember the reason why, but I remember it had something to do with my girlfriend at the time (the gal we met at the Queensrÿche concert) and the house we were renting. I always have had a bit of regret and guilt for bailing on him on what was our last planned summer out there, but seeing how the bar-crawl turned out, we probably would have both ended up overboard.
Song of the day: More Human Than Human by White Zombie