Week 1, Firsts

The problem is obvious. Where ever shall we start? An overall theme could be carved from the naked slab of marble right way. On the other hand, a sense of purpose could be stumbled upon like plumbers at Democratic Party headquarters; home grown.

So it is with an honest heart that I propose the good natured – or more accurately described as “well meaning” – idea of five day-long segments. A series of short series. Lasting the length of a work week, a premise is built and torn down before it becomes old or redundant. For the first week's segment perhaps it is a selection which natural to some, corny to others, or as unimpressive as any other to the majority. For the first couple of days we shall subsist on reviews of musical firsts.

And for the first “first?”

The choice was never in doubt: the exploration of a band whose bassist once told me, and this is a paraphrase, that I have always been exceptional at lying about. It seems organic at best; GMO at worst. The first band - and pardon the similarity to the the title of a book I have never read – that could have been my life. Had I, in my slightly more youthful youth, taken the oath of becoming a roadie for any band it would have this one. Hell, I once was even part of a gag that involved convincing the drummer I was the quartet's new death metal vocalist from a private school.

Afghan Banana Stand was the first band I made human contact with. Music all of a sudden seemed less like a sphere occupied by aural super heroes and more like a sanitarium with amiable characters and self-prescribed medication. A band whose heyday terrorized Central Maine while I resided in leftward Arizona. A story too improbable to be false and not too uneventful to be forgotten.

So now is as good of a time as any to clarify my bias; feel free to can adjust your understanding accordingly. A very good friend of mine for a number of years, Paul, was the masterful guitarist for this band and its sole surviving founding member. A true student of the six strings, a neck masseuse that would make a small Taiwanese woman blush. Tender but firm – shockingly, not the band's motto. And the guitar, the guitar, in ABS perpetually serving, perhaps symbolically, as the colonial foundation for the group.

Alas, I will say with that the source of muse-y-ness arises from a most peculiar angle. Afghan Banana Stands could have been any band. This band was the any man if any man could turn the world into a circus and the circus into a world its own. Myanmar is still called Burma. Or something.

Plus, their motto was more akin to, “Leaving you soaked and satisfied, not moist and wanting”