I'm With The Band

Recent postings on my friend Terry's blog and several conversations with my friend/former roommate Chris over fantasy baseball have led me to finally share this little known fact about myself: When I was in college, I was in a band. Our name was Used Paint. Used Paint consisted of myself, my aforementioned roommate Chris, one of my other roommates, tad, and my older brother Steve. We had an album named "When In Rome. . ." We had several hit songs. We had a feature interview in Rolling Stone. We even had one member trendily spend a stint in rehab. Now many of you are probably asking (especially you, Mom), "Why don't I remember hearing about Used Paint in the early to mid-90s?" or "Why don't I remember you being in a band?" It's simple really, Used Paint didn't really exist. What follows is a brief albeit strange, history of the mega-hyped, super-powered sound explosion known as Used Paint. . .


At some point when you're studying education at Kansas State University, you're required to take a class called Human Growth and Development. The semester I enrolled in this class, Chris took it too and we coincidentally ended up in the same class. The class consisted of two parts -- lecture and recitation. The lecture part was incredibly boring, and you were informed that you could buy all the class notes pre-bound at CopyCo, but it happened to fall in-between two classes I actually needed, so Chris and I ended up attending regularly. The first couple classes we entertained ourselves by scribbling notes and drawing pictures about one of our roommates we referred to as Binky (that is a whole other blog people).

Somehow or other, we got on the topic of the Steven Wright bit about going to the used hardware store. He says, "I bought some used paint. It was in the shape of a house." I don't remember all the details, but I do remember Chris saying, "Used Paint. That would be a great name for a band." And he was right. So we set about creating Used Paint: The Band.
Human Growth and Development lecture time became our time to create Used Paint. We started by assigning roles: Chris played drums, I was on vocals, Roommate Tad was on bass, and my brother, Steve, played the guitar. We did not include Binky, though we worked him in as a peripheral character who was a former band member like all of Spinal Tap's deceased drummers. The band members were funny to us for several reasons. First, Chris couldn't play drums, nor did he own any. Two, I don't sing particularly well, and my area of musical expertise was the bassoon (no lie). Third, Roommate Tad actually could play the bass real well -- the stand up kind you play in high school orchestra. (Tad was always pictured as playing the stand up bass in Used Paint, rather than an electric one). Our saviour was Steve, who does play the guitar (and bass) very well, and actually did move on to join a real, live, good band in Austin.


Once we had that part down, it was time to create some music. Not real music, mind you, just album and song titles. We sat in lecture jotting down titles and placing them in lists for albums. Our first album, "When In Rome. . ." was a hit. If I remember correctly, the break out song from that album was entitled "Pope in a Can." Every weird thing we heard someone say, or that just popped into our head became a song title. In these days prior to Denis Leary hitting it big, we actually had a song titled, "You're an A**hole." And then felt grievously offended when Leary came out with his song by the same title.

This thing we created, Used Paint, began to grow and take on a life of its own. We told Steve and Roommate Tad about it, and they were on board, too. I spent way too much time devoting time better spent studying to creating my fake band. Sitting around the apartment, it inevitably worked it's way into every conversation, which led to us brainstorming more and more ideas for our band that didn't exist. We began working on our second album "Muck," which came together much faster. We followed "Muck" with a special album called "Used Paint's The Wide Album." It was much like The Beatles "White Album" with a white cover...but it was extra wide so it stuck out from all the other DVDs on the rack. Not only could we fake play in a band successfully, we were marketing geniuses!!! The band took a short hiatus while Roommate Tad went to rehab for fast food addiction. In all seriousness, and he was a great roommate mind you, he did eat a lot of fast food. Especially McDonald's.


With Roommate Tad back from rehab, and the semester of human Growth and Development coming to an end, Used Paint made one last grasp for glory. The band returned with a new album, "Songs from 1215 Bertrand #4," that we claimed was live stuff, unreleased tracks, B-Sides, and one new song. This isn't a new concept, since bands like Aerosmith and Def Leppard do this all the time -- usually to create just enough interest to have a mildly successful tri-state tour.

It was during this time that the Rolling Stone interview began to take shape. Inane questions were written down, followed by inane answers that played on the quirks of every band member. For example, Steve, a man of few words, answered questions several lines long with responses like "yep" and "mhmm." Roommate Tad, who overused the F-word, was censored out of most of the interview (though I did put the Beetle Bailey staple &%$#@! in place of the swear words). When I look back now, I think it was the notoriety of a completely untrue Rolling Stone interview that tore Used Paint apart. Maybe it was all the fake fame that went to our heads. Or maybe, just maybe, it was that we all started looking at graduation and stuff. I know one of us got a serious girlfriend, one of us broke up with a serious a girlfriend (not the same person), we got a new roommate who not only shared his VCR (unlike Binky) but also brought along a collection of adult films on VHS, and the semester dwindled to an end. Used Paint ended not with a bang, but a whimper. I can say for a fact that somewhere out there in cyber space is a file from one of my computers with a half-typed version of "Used Paint: The Rolling Stone Interview" -- hand to God, it's true.


I don't usually wax nostalgic, but it was fun thinking back on those times that seem so long ago. I guess eventually we all have to "grow up" and "be responsible," but maybe as we get older we take ourselves too seriously. I was watching "Step Brothers" the other day, which is really a pretty ridiculous movie, and I kind of got caught by the scene where Dale's dad tells the two matured man-child characters to never lose sight of that inner child, and to let it shine. Even though I still read comic books against my wife's wishes, and I watch cartoons with my kids--a lot, I miss my band. I am calling now for the Used Paint Fake Reunion Tour 2010. We need a bassist, so if anyone knows where Roommate tad is, let him know we getting back together.

By the way, the previous paragraph should be read as a voice over using the voice of that guy who narrated The Wonder Years. Peace out. . . . Used Paint Fake Rocks!!!!