There's this one lady who I work with. She's a lady that watches Dances with the Stars, American Idol, and wants to talk about it ALL. THE. TIME.
She knows I am in a band and starts conversations with me about the most random things.
Today it was a singer that she had heard of and she asked me if I liked her. The conversation quickly took a left turn into "If you studied Opera in high school how could you switch to Metal?" That last word she said with a menacing grimace like I had switched from Dr. Pepper to Mr. Pibb and liked it.
I gave her the best rushed answer I could since I feel like if she stands near me too long I might say things that will make her ears bleed.
The real answer is this:
While in high school I may have been going to class to learn opera, concert choir, and Italian arias, but at home, in the shower and on Fridays in front of my class I was singing lots of Sublime, Bloodhound Gang, and Pearl Jam.
I was mostly into punk when Brian and I met in 1999. He was into metal. He had a drum set in his closet collecting dust and awesome stories of all the bands he had been in.
I had a zine and a drive to learn how to write music.
I had been driving him to jam with his bass player friend for a few months by the time we moved into our first apartment together in Sacramento. I had asked Brian and his friend if they would consider trying me out as a singer once they found a guitar player.
That apparently fell on deaf ears. A month later he answered an ad for a guitar player and a singer looking for a drummer and bass player. I was really hurt and he acted like he had totally forgotten that I had asked.
Brian told me that I couldn't be a singer without my own p.a. So being the determined person I am, I went to Skips music and bought an entire p.a. setup. Don't dare tell me I can't do something especially when it only requires a purchase. I am a woman who shops.
I set it up in our extra room and told him that if he didn't want to try me out, I would get good and find a band who did.
Brian went and played with them and I didn't care much for any of it. A lot of things upset me about the situation but mostly I came to the conclusion that I couldn't be the drummers girlfriend. I'm just not capable of it.
At this point we had been together for 6 months and was ready to call it quits.
Then about a few weeks later after a few practices where their singer didn't show up and I made up shit on his microphone the guitar player Steve called Brian. He told him he couldn't play with the singer anymore and he really wanted to give me a shot. Brian talked to me about it and we figured we'd give it a chance even though we knew we'd hear No Doubt jokes for days.
So that's how I became a metal singer.
Well there was a lot of bad ad-libbed punk lyrics over metal guitar riffs and double bass drums that slowly evolved into metal. Then lots of drunk shows, practicing in a steel storage unit in the really cold winters, having to use the same microphone after another female singer masturbated on stage with it, puking into velvet curtains on stage after being stuck in the xtracab of a truck for 4 hours in traffic, practicing in the same hall from one of my favorite bands ever, and a bunch of other stuff I won't bore you with now at least.
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