Nuns and their habits

They are not usually squeaky

Back in the 1990s I was a member of countless bands. Sure. We never practiced. We never played a gig. We didn't record anything or even have songs to speak of.

You don’t need instruments, or songs or even music to be in a band.

All you need is a name.

From there, it’s not difficult to come up with a ‘theme’ for the band and all of the narrative pieces.

Who’s the ‘John’?

Who’s the Ringo?

Who do we imagine that we know could serve as our Yoko?

Instant band, right there, that is. Sure, we’d come up with song titles, reunion tours, assassination attempts and overdoses but the most important was merely the band name.

For many of our bands we’d work out their whole trajectory together. 

We lived in a constant game of Spinal Tap without the cameras.

Lists of possible cover songs would fall out of us as we hung around doing dishes or walking to a bar.

One of my favourite bands was back in theatre school in California.

This one included Anthony and Bird. 

We found our name on a bread bag:

Big Loaf.

We were j…