It was at this time, when I was in community college, that I’d answered an ad for a band seeking a bassist, a handwritten band ad I found hanging on a wall in one of the college’s bathrooms.
The band ad mentioned similar tastes as I had, 80s rock, metal, that type of sound, so I decided to throw my hat in the ring, see if I could join their cause.
When I got to the audition, the singer/guitarist, Cyrus, had a tight-looking setup going.
Cyrus lived with his folks, and their house was pretty spacious, not a mansion, but big, with plenty of room for the band to rehearse. In his basement, he had a spiffy little makeshift home studio equipped with an 8-track recording module and a wide assortment of pedals, amps, drum kit, and tech gadgets.
Cyrus’s dad, who looked sort of like a leprechaun, short, Irish, with flaming red hair and flush red cheeks, had a successful home renovation business, and bred horses. They lived well outside Miami, past West Palm Beach, and had a tiny farm, stable, riding track, next to their house, with a few horses they rode, bred, and sold.
Cyrus introduced his dad as the group’s manager.
Manager? I was impressed. It sounded so professional! So serious! So adult! I’d never been in a band with a manager. I’d only played in shitty garage bands, mostly with rich pothead kids in high school.
The whole having a manager thing was a new world to me. Plus, his band was playing shows. Lots of shows, they’d said. At local bars, restaurants.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent The band played mostly originals too, that Cyrus wrote. They were catchy tunes, got stuck in your head, his riffs and hooks. Very 80s rock, hair metal, mid-tempo vibe. Cyrus was an excellent guitarist, could rip fantastic solos, and really did have premium gear, Ibanez axes, pro-quality EQs, amps, speakers.
His singing was a tad freaky, though. I was never a big fan of it. Sounded like a constipated Dave Mustaine crossed with Neil Young on a bad acid trip.
But his tunes, guitar-playing were enough, for me, to look past it. He’d had singers before but had wanted to handle the vocal duties himself because singers often left the group, completely changing the sound, ala Van Halen, Black Sabbath, to name a few, so he wanted to maintain the group’s style, dynamic.
(It wouldn’t be until later that I discovered why so many left his group…) The drummer of the band, Chris, was slightly older than us, and was a stocky, hairy Italian American guy, with dark features, who, in his late 20s, lived at home with his parents. He drove a white corvette, I remember, and was the manager of a grocery store.
Chris and I never connected. Usually bassists and drummers should be tight, forming the rhythm section, the backbone, the spine of the band, but it wasn’t so with him. From the beginning, he didn’t like anything about me, the way I moved, played, dressed, nothing.
(Can’t say I’d like him much, either. I found him sort of a douche bag. He’d speak openly about having a bathroom fetish with women. Not that I care much what people do in their private lives, but that’s one I’m not sure should be shared with people you barely know. Like, maybe, pass me a questionnaire first, dude…) During my bass solos he’d purposely hit his drums louder in an attempt to drown me out. He also complained to Cyrus about me.
But Cyrus, and I, weren’t entirely happy with him either. He’d be off tempo, at times, and was flaky, missing practices, and then got involved with this girl who he seemed more into than the band.
Cyrus and I had become close friends, hanging outside the band, drinking, smoking, talking on the phone. We’d talk for hours about rock. He was into all the same bands and was a hair metal historian like me. He’d been a bro, too, and
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent introduced me to his girlfriend’s little sister, who I started to casually date. And she was one smoking hot little Cuban number!
Tiring of Chris, we began auditioning other drummers, one of them being a police officer, at least ten years older than us. But we decided against him since he could bust us for weed and once threaten that he’d have to bust anyone he saw doing drugs at a concert. That was going way too far. That wasn’t rock and roll.
We also experimented with using a drum machine, but it wasn’t the same as having a live drummer.
Ultimately, we stuck with Chris, and I saw why he didn’t want to leave. While bowling, with our girlfriends, Chris brought up something about us getting a record deal.
I asked Cyrus about this, and he told me that his dad “knew people” in the music business and that they were interested in signing us to a major label record deal.
Here I was, joining this band, and so far, we played only a couple shows at tiny bars, but it looked like we had the chance to get a “deal” and maybe make it big.
Of course, being young, I didn’t understand the music business, so any talk of a record deal, to me, equated instant fame.
We started playing more shows at local bars. Some were packed and went off well. We’d have the place erupting in cheers and headbanging, playing covers of 80s metal songs and Cyrus’s originals. We’d bring down the house, on certain nights. There were other nights, too, when we played to five people. Sure, it was better to play a raucous, packed bar, but as long as we played, and played loud, we had fun. We just loved to play. We loved rock and roll...
Here and there we’d play restaurants, which was always a hit or miss. There’d be families there eating, and upon hearing Judas Priest covers, they’d up and leave rather quickly. (But once a family’s five-year-old son was dancing around and rocking to us, which made my night!)
There was another band we connected with, befriended, at an open mic night, and we started playing shows with them; they had a small local following and played mostly alternative covers of the day, Green Day, “Sex and Candy,” Third Eye Blind. But, strangely, their friends, fans, liked us too.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Out of the several shows we did with them, most came off well, until later, when the guitarist of that band and the singer started to argue a lot, getting into a fistfight on stage one night. Which, to be honest, was the highlight of the show.
Shortly we were joined by an electric violinist, a tall, lanky Haitian fellow, who absolutely rocked. He and Cyrus played dueling solos to GNR cover songs. It was dazzling.
But things unraveled, and fast.
There was to be a big rock festival up in Polk County, with L.A. Guns (or at least an iteration of L.A. Guns) and we were to open for them. Holy shit! We would be opening for a band, well, at least three members of the original band, but still, a band I grew up loving and to this day love. “Rip and Tear,” “Electric Gypsy,” their first two records, through and through 80s metal classics!
It somehow fell through, with Cyrus saying we’d have to be on a side stage, near a pile of pig shit. Which, I must say, was okay with me. I’d have stood IN pig shit if it meant playing on the same bill as L.A. Guns. Hell, even if it was only ONE original member of L.A. Guns- preferably Traci Guns- but who-the-fuck-ever!
Anyways, Cyrus didn’t want to do it, which puzzled me. Why give up any opportunity to rock with a band that legendary?
Cyrus said there was to be a bigger gig later. But before that, at a bar gig we played, Cyrus got bitched out by the bar owner because Cyrus had stood up on a speaker and jumped from it, doing a flying air kick, during a guitar solo.
Apparently, the bar owner had warned him not to jump off anything, wary of lawsuits, I guess. But Cyrus did it anyway.
Afterwards, we got into a heated argument with the bar owner. The angry bald New York guy cursing us out, his every other word being “fuck” or “fucking” and he fucking banned us from the fucking bar. Then after we were ejected from the premises, we had another flare-up. This one with a creepy little cock-eyed security guard, a guy with a probable Napoleon complex. Napoleon didn’t like us standing outside the bar, smoking and talking. Cyrus’s dad, not a large man himself, and Napoleon nearly got into a physical altercation, which we had to break apart.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Collecting our things, we left in a hurry.
The next night, we drove out to Vero Beach, a somewhat long haul up the coast, to play an 80s rock bar, where we’d been promised a gig. Entering the place, it was like a time warp. Dudes with big hair, tight leather pants.
But, and I don’t know why, there was no gig. Driving back home, we stopped for a late-night dinner, at a redneck diner. Over pancakes, Cyrus bragged about an upcoming show, where there’d be a record label executive or two to see us play.
Cyrus said the label had been waiting for hard rock “to come back” before they could sign us and were hoping for the right time to release our debut album.
Cyrus continued going on about the record label, the deal we’d sign, the things he’d request in the record contract, like unlimited supplies of Marlboro cigs and cases of ice-cold coca colas available at any time.
His dad shushed him, said “Cyrus!” in a castigating way, as if he knew something.
We didn’t have any other gigs for a couple weeks, and during this time, this run-up to the “big” gig where the record executive would be present, the gig got talked up more and more by Cyrus, and his dad also. His dad telling us after practice that there’d be “very important” people there, although, when he said this, his eyes were fixed to the floor and he’d spoken in a wavering voice, like he didn’t believe it, which struck me as odd…
Cyrus said the place would be the biggest venue we’d ever played. That there’d be around five hundred people. Cyrus and I plastered fliers for the gig, too, around town, local schools, hang out spots.
Crazy enough, at my community college, where I plastered fliers, the next day I got to school, someone had torn them all down. Every single one!
It turned out to be a former bassist in the band, who’d now wanted to fight Cyrus.
The guy had left Cyrus an angry voicemail saying he’d torn down the fliers and would kick Cyrus’s ass.
Cyrus said it was because he had stolen the dude’s girlfriend and kicked him out of the band. (Although later I suspected otherwise.)
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent I asked Cyrus if he feared the guy, because he sounded totally nuts on the phone, and Cyrus was a scrawny, short guy (who sort of looked like a cross between Tom Petty, a Florida Cracker, and a leprechaun). Cyrus said that he wasn’t afraid, because his dad had taught him “Star,” a secret Israeli form of martial arts.
Getting to our big show that night, I was excited as I’d ever been. I expected a huge crowd, though was kinda scared for Cyrus, scared that freak ex-bassist might show up with a gun or at least kick Cyrus’s ass. I wasn’t convinced of Cyrus’s proficiency in Israeli martial arts, “Star” or whatever, but who knows. There’d be bouncers at the bar, I figured.
Arriving at the bar, I was massively disappointed. There was nowhere near five hundred people.
The place was more of a pool hall, and the crowd, of maybe fifty or so scattered folks, weren’t interested at all in our music.
Cyrus’s dad, our manager, sensing the apathy, ran over to us, after only our first or second song, and pushed us to play our strongest song, our closer, “Paradise City” by Guns N’ Roses, but that didn’t garner more than an awkward stare or two.
We finished our set early and left. I was unspeakably disappointed but managed to ask Cyrus if the record executive had shown up. He told me that he’d been there and was a fat guy in a fancy suit, with a long-braided ponytail and an attractive lady in a black dress at his side.
I wondered why I hadn’t noticed a character that conspicuous. Why it was that the guy hadn’t stopped to say hello or talked with Cyrus’s dad. Surely he’d have wanted to have a few words if he’d been there to scout us.
A week later we played a pizza parlor we’d played a few times before, in front of five or six people, and a guy, who looked like one of my community college professors, a fiftyish, wiry, bearded, tweed jacket, corduroy pants wearing gentleman (who just looked like a college professor, like he smoked a pipe and performed, or at least read, Shakespeare) had a word with Cyrus’s dad.
Cyrus told me the guy was from a local independent label and that he was interested in signing us to a deal.
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent With the guy not too far away, I blurted out, “Why would we sign with an independent label if a major label wants to sign us?”
The guy overheard us and gave us a funny look.
A few days later, I asked Cyrus about it, if anything came from the local record label, and he said we hadn’t heard back from him yet.
Cyrus also said the major label that wanted us couldn’t sign us because we weren’t yet twenty-one, and they couldn’t sign anyone under twenty-one.
That sounded fishy to me, especially seeing all the popular boy bands of the day, who were likely younger than us.
Then Cyrus, a couple days later, showed his hand. In the car, coming back from an Aerosmith concert we’d gone to, with a couple girls, he, drunkenly, let slip something about how we needed to tell our drummer that there’d be another record label wanting to sign us.
I asked if it was true. Cyrus said no. I asked why we’d tell him that. Cyrus replied, saying that we needed to make it “sound like more things are going on so people won’t leave.”
That, immediately, didn’t sit well with me. I saw floaters for a second. My stomach sank. Then I told him, angrily, only the lowest piece of shit in the world would lie about record deals, such things, and that I hoped he was joking. We were both drunk, and I thought maybe he was kidding. He laughed nervously and probably forgot about it by the next day. But I didn’t. I wasn’t that drunk.
So I told a friend, a dude I’d gone to high school with, about the situation.
The guy had gotten a huge settlement, shit-ton of cash from an airline after his parents died in a plane crash and was living between New York and Miami. I scored weed from him, occasionally, as he’d been buying seriously chronic weed.
Shit from the same guy who sold weed to Quintin Tarantino. It was, as you’d expect, killer bud, the Tarantino weed. And my friend had even met Tarantino, once, at a party, and ripped bong hits with him.
That friend, Anthony, because of the NYC party circles he ran in, knew a couple people from Jive Records, and talked to them about the whole thing, and the Jive
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent guys said it was bullshit. There was no minimum age for signing artists. Also, if they’d wanted to sign a group or singer, they’d just sign them, before anyone else could.
Even worse, too, was that Jive was one of the major labels that Cyrus said before were “interested” in signing him. He also said he’d worked as a songwriter for them, sold a few tunes to them.
But that also wasn’t the case. The Jive guys had never heard of Cyrus. He’d made the whole thing up.
The way he told it, too, was so convincing. It made me wonder if he really believed it. Was he mentally ill? Or a pathological liar? Or was it that maybe he’d missed his true calling, as an actor? Isn’t that what an actor is, anyway, a very effective liar?
After receiving the news from my pal, a haze of heat ran up my neck. I was devastated and immediately decided to quit the band, cut ties with Cyrus. I didn’t call Cyrus, either, just hopped in my car and went by Cyrus’s house, got my gear, but didn’t say much to him.
As I was lifting my bass and amp into the trunk of my car, he asked, sheepishly, if I’d be bringing back the gear.
I slapped the trunk shut and replied, sternly, that my friend talked to Jive. They had no rules about being twenty-one to sign a deal. He then got angry at me; said I shouldn’t have asked about it, implying it was my fault.
His attempt to shift the blame for the situation enraged me. For a split second, I was about to deck him, see how well he really knew Israeli martial arts. But, my anger again subsided into more of a hurt, a disappointment. He was a bro, or I thought he was. Finding him to be so full of shit was a terrible stab in the back.
My face tightened and I asked him if he thought I was retarded or something like that.
(This was before that was a slur.)
He said no, and he took a step back, his brows furrowed, and lips pursed. My voice raised, but not straining, I pointedly disclosed that my friend knew people at
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent Jive and that my friend asked if Cyrus had been a songwriter for them or if they were interested in signing us, and that Jive said neither were true. They’d never even heard of him or us.
I told Cyrus he was either living in a fantasy world, had mental problems, or was a total lying sack of shit.
He stood frozen, staring at me, his jaw dangling. He had no response. I’m not sure anyone had called him out or exposed him like that, but I imagine that perhaps a similar tale was why the previous bassist and others had left. It probably was the reason the bassist had wanted to kick Cyrus’s ass.
I got in my car and drove off. I had to pull over, though, because I began hyperventilating. I was so amped up. My heart beating so fast and hard it battered my ribcage.
It was a combination of anger, sadness. I mean, basically he and his dad had been using my childhood dream and youthful naïveté to manipulate me, fool me into believing a fairytale.
What’s worse about it, was that I did in fact know people who knew people. Had Cyrus not lied, we could have had my friend from NYC bring people to see us, actually have our demo heard by someone.
Maybe it would have worked. Maybe it wouldn’t have. Maybe we’d have gotten a deal and never gone anywhere. Our style of music had died, commercially, by that time, the late 90s, but it could have been an honest shot, way better than what transpired. Worst of all, it was a stab in the back, and the loss of a person I genuinely considered a friend.
It was a tough pill to swallow.
(While I never got along with Chris, I believed he had a right to know about Cyrus’s dishonesty. I didn’t have his number, but I knew where he worked, and so a couple days later, I went by his grocery store. He was off that day, and I left a note for him, telling him everything. I hope he read it. But if not, I’m sure that like everyone else, he probably figured out the truth eventually…) ((Cyrus never realized his rock and roll dream. I never heard of his band playing any live shows after that, nor did I see any of his music online. Out of curiosity,
Buffalo Bangkok: Juvenile Delinquent writing this book, I googled him, found him to have carried on, taken over his family’s home renovation company. I don’t know if he still plays guitar or not.)) Cyrus didn’t make it. He didn’t become a rock star. And his band didn’t catapult me to fame, either…
So, yes, Mr. Chuck Palahniuk, Mr. Pitt, Mr. Norton, I’m not a rock star. But I’m not as pissed about that as I am pissed Cyrus and his asshole father lied to me and untold others. That pissed me off far, far worse. But it was an important life lesson, and taught me a thing or two about trusting people too easily…