Ruling The School

Well, this kid should be getting laid like eggs in high school. He's pretty good for his age, but he needs more showmanship to really win over the ladies. That being said, in the crowd watching is the QB of the football team going "oh shit!" knowing that he now has to compete with Eddie Van Halen for dates on Friday night. I will never forget when our high school jazz band practiced for our concert by putting on an assembly for the entire high school. At the time I was in a garage band called Meltdown. Everyone in the band was in Jazz Band. Our drummer (me), bass and lead guitar player all played the same instruments for Jazz Band. Our singer blew trumpet. We played a song with a Latin feel to it for the Jazz Ensemble. In the middle there was a guitar solo that Rio had specific instructions for to sound "Latin". No shredding please. The solo started by everyone in the band hitting count one, then I filled on drums for two, three and four. Rio was then supposed to play the solo while the bass player and I laid down a funky salsa type groove. The night before the concert Meltdown practiced at Rio's house and afterwards we watched a concert on tape - Van Halen, Live Without a Net. In the video Eddie was making elephant noises with his guitar. We hatched a little plan that during the assembly the next day - when everyone hit ONE on the song with the solo - instead of me filling out two, three and four - Rio would crank up the amp and make the elephant noise leading into the solo. We played a our groove with a little more flair than usual while Rio went ape shit on the solo instead of playing the Latin feel that we rehearsed so many times before. The kids in the assembly ate it up. We didn't even look at the conductor as we knew he wasn't going to be very thrilled. After the song (which drew HUGE applause) I snuck a glance and he was still staring at us like his eyes were daggers. After the show the lot of us (minus our singer who stood outside the glass window office wall making fun of us) were called into his office. He proceeded to tell us had we asked to spice it up for the student body he would have allowed it, but since we didn't, we were up the famous creek without a paddle. I can't even remember what the punishment was...it may have been a letter grade drop that term and Jazz Ensemble is usually a guaranteed "A". Was it worth it? Hell yes. We got complimented and "High Fived" the rest of the day and when we see each other these days, it still gets mentioned, and that was 20 years ago.