WARNING: This is a real-life tale of SEX, DRUGS, & ROCK N' ROLL recommended for people over the age of 18. If you are likely to find that offensive, we suggest you move on the the next article...
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Still here? OK, here's Alex's tale, exclusive to GNW...

My first band, where I could play the least, was possibly the most successful I've ever been in. It got me laid, it got me friends, it got me on the radio and it got me playing shows. I can't claim to have been totally dedicated to music, nor can I claim to have been intoxicated with dreams of being a star - if anything, it was a kid's fantasy that somehow managed to get out of the garage and down the pub on a Saturday night. It was an accident. But it was a load of fun. Pity it didn't last more than several months once we started playing gigs.

So where did it all go wrong? Well, firstly I had Danielle, the soundman's girlfriend. Then Phil had one of his ex-girlfriends who'd tagged along. It was unavoidable, I guess. We were all drunk, barely 20 and recording in an old farm house one weekend in 1990. There was a vibe going down. It was exciting. It was like what being in the Rolling Stones could've been like. There was women, pot and pop all in one place at the same time. I don't know about Phil, but I'd never had a chick come onto me in the way Danielle did. I'd basically never had a chick come onto me at all.

I now realise she was being manipulative and had severe personal flaws, but I didn't see it at the time. I saw an attractive, sexy, little sexmachine. Let's be honest. The Beatles had Yoko Ono. Spinal Tap had that annoying chick. 'Shipwrecked' had that fat chick. And our band had Danielle. She'd do anything for attention, including trying to have one of my mates. A guy called 'Scum' had her a few months ago, apparently.

But my sexual behaviour needs to be contextualized in order to make sense. I'm actually a decent guy nowadays. But back then, I hadn't gotten to first base in high school and hadn't done much better at uni. I was bitter. Life was essentially one long look at lingerie junkmail.

I basically lacked the all-important confidence that one needs to pick up the birds. Hence, I was often drunk at parties and I'd usually sit around drooling or end up disappearing into the night with alcohol-induced depression. I mean, a woman is a hard animal to spark a relationship with but beer is always ready for you at the bar.

And so, given the chance, there was no way I was going to miss out on what was on offer. I mean, she did say she'd broken up with her boyfriend for good 'this time'.

Yeah, I was that dumb.

Strangely enough, despite the interpersonal dramas, we played our guts out that weekend and got a recording decent enough to get gigs with. Our soundman Morris seemed to just barely keep it together, despite me having his 'ex' girlfriend every hour or so. And to make matters worse, I was hungover and covered in lovebites for the last morning of recording. I don't think the guys were too impressed with me.

Then, as we were winding up the 'farmhouse sessions', things got worse. In a bizarre occurance, Phil accidentally ran over the four track recorder with his van as we were packing up to leave . It was with that that we had no recording gear. We took it easy on Phil. It was his recorder anyway.

And, for some reason, Morris the soundman still stuck with us. He even let us record in his house. But, of course, I had to go and have his 'ex-girlfriend', once again. This time in his bed. I was seriously stuffed up.

There's no way I could've hacked that if I were Morris. I'm not speaking lowly of him, but quite the contrary. I'm pretty sure he was having her too and I ended up getting dumped by Danielle once I lost any amusement value to her. He played a smart game when you think about it. He didn't crash and burn.

I did.

Still, I was single once again and the band rolled on. We were preparing for real-life gigs. Practices regularly consisted of half the band staying sober and the other half consuming a fair quantity of pot and cheap wine. Like I've already said, I wasn't serious about the music. I 'thought' I was, but I didn't have the drive or dedication. I was too busy consuming life (read 'cones' and alcohol).

I'd generally been a tolerable enough teenager. I didn't smoke. I didn't go to many parties. I played sport. I usually did my homework and put in an effort to get good marks. I was even happy to hang out with my parents! I was that kind of kid. My idea of musical experimentation when I was 17 was Genesis and Sting. In that order. Sting was dangerous. He played jazz.

So, not surprisingly, the band ended up becoming a partially self-indulgent trip for me. After starting uni, reading the works of Burroughs and Bukowski and realising there was more to life than doing the 'right thing by society', I was trying to find out who I was and didn't mind living a pretend lifestyle for a while. To some degree I'd swallowed the 'rock star' myth that you can get wasted and produce a masterpiece. I was off on my own trip, but I was a kid, after all.

What did it matter anyway? Millions of serious musicians go nowhere and I was happy to live the 'rock' life even if my band only played garages. And so was Brad of guitars.

But Phil (guitar) and Derrick (bass) were made of more serious stuff. They wanted to write songs, goddamit! That, combined with the fact that we were basically all gradually getting into different music, meant that the band's days were numbered. The positive vibe that was originally around the band had ebbed away as people got bored, frustrated, distracted and drunk. And the vicious grind of about a dozen inner-city gigs in less than a year had worn us all out. Plus Yoko had caused trouble for the group by trying to have other band members. And members of the general public.

Someone was going to have to pull the pin on our general malaise.

Looking back on it, it was a tough situation. When you're all mates and someone wants to jump ship for an entirely plausible reason, it seems strangely plausible to take it as being an implausible act. Emotions get in the way. As does the pot, the wine and the shagging of anything whatsover.

And then there's the music. You can always get a new guitarist or bassist if they both leave, but you can't always 'acquire' a vibe. If you don't have intimacy with each other, you lack something. Losing that intimacy is like leaving a relationship. It can be full-on, even for the most unknown band.

Phil basically let it all get to a point where he said 'I quit'. That kinda blew things apart. And then Derrick decided a week or so later that he was out too. Brad and I were quite upset about the way everything happened so suddenly.

We took it personally and felt like we'd been cast into some kind of reject bin. I got the impression they thought I was a bit of a drugged loser. Both of us knew full well we weren't the best musicians but we had a lot of mindless enthusiasm - and that was a positive on our part.

Still, the band wasn't totally over, despite Phil's departure. By putting our tape around town and getting our demo played on the local indie radio station we somehow scored some gigs in the weeks before the breakup and were scheduled to play them. God knows how we got the shows. I've got a copy of the demo we sent around town and it's bloody awful. No one can sing. Barely anyone can play. And the lyrics are, at best, laughable. Still, back then, there weren't many bands on the scene and we had somehow managed to get it together long enough to complete the first part of the 100-piece puzzle that is the music industry.

I don't know how you'd describe the RinTinTins to people. There were clearly four different minds at work. Often fewer. We were raw, poppy, sometimes sloppy and had a lot to learn about dynamics and structure. And while an open mind or four can lead to really cool ideas, there's more chance that people will just make an indifferent noise. I know we did. We played some good songs but we had a few dodgy efforts in the mix. We could play whole songs but would generally make a mistake along the way.

Still, we were enthusiastic and doing it. Plus we were getting one of our songs played on the local indie radio station from time to time without requesting it ourselves. It all counted.

And so it was that we got to play our last gig to a crowd of people in a park. It was the gig we'd wanted to play because we'd been to these gigs ourselves and had a great time. Derrick and Phil were admittedly playing more out of duty than anything else, while Brad and I were doing it for a pure hoot. It was the most memorable gig I've ever played. And I've played at least 20 (that I can remember).

Now where did it all go wrong? For my part, it was drinking until 5am that morning and getting three hours sleep. The only way to prepare for the gig was to drink more. I couldn't risk getting tired. Brad, on the other hand, had a more sedate night. He merely showed up stoned with a bottle of amyl nitrate.

So, with that, we began setting up on the back of a flatbed truck in a virtually empty park. It was a hot day, which made it quite painful to deal with thanks to a hangover which was slowly kicking in. But we got it together and were ready to play. Thankfully, the organisers of the gig put a large piece of canvass over the stage so we could play in the shade.

And off we went. Ramshackle and barely all playing the same song. Phil and Derrick moved to one side of the stage while Brad and I were on the other. It was symbolic of what happens when a band starts to implode.

As I hit the drums roughly in time with the rest of the band, I looked out at the small crowd that was starting to gather. At it's peak it would be 5,000, but we were lucky if there were 500 present. They were mostly all doing something else, like drinking or looking at the tshirts and record stalls. Certainly, no one was interested in our racket.

And then it was time for an almighty disaster. The canvass that hung over the band collapsed right on top of us. It came down on us mid-song. We were totally covered in this thing and it weighed a ton. You couldn't move. I couldn't but help try to play regardless and a wierd cacophony ensued for the next minute or so as we all worked out what exactly had happened. And then there was silence.

We stopped to remove the canvass. It was hilarious. Or at least I thought so at the time. In reality, it was an embarrassment and I suspect sabotage in the hope that we'd get off sooner. But, if anything, on a personal level, it improved the show. It was pure Spinal Tap.

And with the exception of a clearly mentally-retarded guy who madly clapped his hands at the foot of the stage, no one paid any attention to us at all. After all, we were hopeless. Half the band didn't want to be there and the other half simply weren't there. The whole lot ended with a version of The Stooges '1970'.

It, too, was sloppily played, as Iggy would have wanted. As we reached the end of the song, the gig reached its peak. Brad decided to play a solo. That wasn't the best idea at the best of times, but he took a large snort of amyl and stood next to his amp in a daze. He obviously couldn't have afforded coke at the time. The amp began to feedback madly, but not in an arty manner. Oh, no, this was an abysmal noise.

He was self-combusting and committing arson on the band.

I knew that we were on our last song and decided to lend some glory to the proceedings before Brad embarrassed himself any further. Shortly after losing all timing on my kick pedal, I knocked my kit over in mock rage. Mics went flying around and I staggered out onto the stage. I made my way to a wasted Brad who didn't react when I grabbed his guitar off him. My plan was to smash it.

His plan was to keep it.

Or it was when he saw what I was going to do. I held it above my head in pre-smash mode just like Townshend would and he ripped it out of my hands before I could slam it into the stage. It was then that a moment of clarity hit me and I looked around to see real, sober human beings just staring at what had just occured. Two of them were Derek and Phil. Everyone else either laughed at a bad Who move or they were just dumbfounded or uninterested.

Luckily the song had been quickly ended by Derrick and Phil while Brad and I were busy making made tools of ourselves. We all began to pack our gear up. There wasn't much of a vibe going down between the four of us, not surprisingly.

As I was taking my kit off the stage, the drummer for the next band decided to give me some helpful advice as he was lugging his $4000 Premier kit.

"You're a disgrace to drumming!," he whined like a big girl. There was sheer disgust and contempt in his self-affirming, bitchy manner.

I looked at him, then his drum kit and gave his comments some consideration before delivering my verdict.

"@*$#% off!"

And do you know what? His band never went anywhere either.

Footnote:
I had Danielle after the gig. I was drunk, your honor. Ultimately, it would be a while before I would be in a band again. But Brad and I met up with a keyboardist chick a few months after the 'last gig'. Our 'get to know you' session consisted of us telling her our demo was no good, getting drunk, getting stoned on lame weed and me stealing a large red paper-mache duck from the pub. I still hadn't worked out who I was so I tried kleptomania. She politely took our demo tape and didn't call us back. I have no idea why...

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