The City Veins

Last night we hit another milestone. In every band’s early days there is one event that makes all of their efforts pay off and solidifies their existence as a formidable force: when a neighbor or passerby threatens to call the police because of “all that horrible noise”. Last night, on May 14th, 2007, we popped our cherry.

Luckily, we had pretty much finished up practicing for the night, with only one more song on the schedule. A new song, “Oh, Backwards,” had gone well and will be ready for the 24th, and we had played through another new one, as well as all the “older” stuff which allowed us to get the lead out after a week of not practicing. Near the ending notes of 16 Buzzing,(around 8:50 pm) we heard this horrid and shrill shriek from upstairs–seemingly from an extremely upset woman-sounding thing. Immediately, all of us thought either someone was being violently raped in our living room (unlikely), or that my dog, Beam, had somehow broken free of the confines of our house and been unceremoniously run over by a car (rather likely). We assumed the later, crossed our fingers for Beam, and rushed upstairs to determine the origin of, and reason for, this ridiculously loud and emotional outcry.

Much to our relief, the culprit was none other than our disgruntled old curmudgeon of a neighbor, we’ll call her Mrs. Potter. That moniker sounds good for a really nasty old woman with too much time on her hands. She immediately began yelling at us and saying she was going to call the cops and it was absolutely offensive and ridiculous that we were making that much noise. We explained to her that we had probably practiced 30 times in that basement, and she had never heard us, and that both the neighbors on either side of us said they not only were ok with the music, but they actually liked hearing it. Mrs. Potter, however, lives 3 doors down and apparently doesn’t care for our brand of music. Her main concern, however, was that “this poor dog (Beam) had to listen to such horrible music.” Aaron then replied, “It’s not horrible,” and she said: “It IS horrible. You should be ashamed of yourselves.” Aaron then responded, “Well, that’s a matter of opinion.” She then left the scene of her crime (breaking and entering and trespassing) muttering that next time she was going to call the cops and not even warn us.

I stood there like an idiot, thankful that Beam was alive and busy running trying to scrounge for food, prescription medication bottles, or nicotine products, as usual. Aaron took the lead in telling this woman to go fuck herself, while Charles and Spencer slowly emerged from the basement, not wanting to meddle in our neighborly discussions. Unfortunately, that event signaled the end of a pretty solid practice and the beginning of our plan to seek revenge on Mrs. Potter. Aaron and I are thinking a nice flaming bag of poo (Beam’s probably, Aaron’s maybe) is definitely on tap before our June 30th move out date.

Any other possible suggestions for solutions to this are welcomed. The City Veins have their first nemesis. We will win this battle, and there will be flaming poo.