That's a theme song. You gonna sing a little bit of it? I'm a little nervous. Okay, yeah me too.
Give me all your impressions. Your thoughts, your words, your time. It's all about communication. Well I don't know, this could actually be the night or the day for me to tell my big story about being on stage when I was younger.
I was a musician when I was young. I played violin and I learned the Suzuki method. Right? That's by ear.
What is that? I was playing by ear. I just didn't know how to read any music so I'm assuming it's by ear. That's like me.
Yeah, is it? I've learned by ear. Okay, so I played violin when I was in elementary school and for our big holiday concert I think I was in second or third grade. And I didn't know how to tune my violin and my violin teacher's daughter was also going to be performing in the big holiday concert.
Okay, so let me make you back up a little bit. Okay. You were talented. I guess I liked it.
I was a child prodigy. I don't know if I was. I was good though, yeah. She describes it as that she was good at it and she liked it.
Yeah. She really enjoyed the violin. Yep. And so she and you were meant to play?
I was solo. Yes. At the big like school. Big public school, a couple hundred kids jammed in there.
Parents were invited, teachers, etc. With an evening performance? I think it was during the day. Okay.
But like the high school choir had come over to sing with us and everything. And so in the choir was the daughter of my violin teacher. And my violin teacher couldn't be there that day. It was he assigned his daughter a job which was to tune my violin for me.
Okay, the teacher, the person that had led you by hand. Yes. Through the method. Mr.
Brown. I mean he was probably very important to you. He was probably, you know, he meant probably meant everything to you as a young performer and learning the violin. I don't know if he meant everything to me.
It's not that far. But he was okay. I don't know. I relied on him to tune my violin basically.
He was part of the tapestry of supporting your life. Correct. I thought, and I, and I, like I had this feeling I just knew in my little body I was like, oh no, don't make your daughter do this. This isn't going to work.
He's not a part of this performance. He couldn't be there that day. Why? I don't know.
He just couldn't be there that day. I didn't ask him. It was then as the 80s. Why couldn't you be there?
So I didn't ask him. But I showed up there and I remember his daughter kind of like, regurgently comes over to me. She's like, I don't know. She's like fiddling with it.
And I just knew. I just knew. I was like, this is so, I'm not. So you didn't know how to make, I'm going to reiterate this just myself.
You did not know how to tune your violin. No. Fair enough. Of course not.
When they announce they say, oh, and it's a Del Adkinson going to play Silent Night Holy Night all by myself. I like trot out there with my violin. Were you feeling fairly confident? I actually was.
Okay. It's nuts. Yeah. And back in my mind going, what did she do to that violin?
Am I going to be okay? But as far as playing the song in front of people, I actually did feel like that wouldn't have been the problem because I could play. So but the very first note I took, it was like the most horrific screeching sound just erupted through this huge auditorium and everyone went this collective like, oh, like gasping and screaming and the sound was horrible. And I'm like, oh, shit.
This is so wildly out of tune. And what the fuck do I do? I don't know. So as I sat there, just kind of taking a beat like, okay, this is really bad.
And everyone, there was actually a little girl in front of me. I'll never forget. She was like, oh, like screaming and she had her hands and her ears just like an image. I'll never forget.
And then I thought, fuck it. I'm going to keep playing. So then I just played the entire song so completely out of tune and everyone the whole time. They didn't even try to hide their disdain or discuss.
They were like, Jesus Christ. If this were doing this at home, I would take this afterwards. I would recreate this screeching violin. Because the screeching violin.
It's truly horrific. It's like nails on a chalkboard. It's one of the worst sounds ever. I wish I could, I can't do it with my voice.
I can't. I'm going to try. Yeah. See, I can't even get high enough.
It was horrible. It was so horrible. But for some reason, I just plowed all the way through it. Silent Night Holy Night in a wildly out of tune violin.
And then when I stopped, it was like no clapping. Obviously no applause. Everyone was just like, oh my God. Why did this girl do that to us?
She just did the whole thing. And then I trotted off. And I remember thinking like, is this the worst moment of my life? And it was horrible.
And then the next day I went to school feeling so, so embarrassed. And even in my young body, I knew that this would be one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. I just had this knowing. I thought, wow, that was really, that was pretty wild.
And then kids would come up to me in the lunch line. They're like, what was that? Exactly. I'm like, I don't know.
My violin was out of tune. And I just was so embarrassed. And I felt like it further cemented my very shy childhood where I went inward then and sort of moved throughout school, just feeling like, yeah, I'm the girl who played the terrible version of Silent Night Holy Night in front of everyone. You just tore apart the most.
And I never got to know that I could play, which was kind of wild. And did you not quit, except shortly? I quit then like three years later because I was just bullied relentlessly on the school bus for carrying my violin case. People were like, yeah, do that big dumb case.
I was like, I can't take it. So I wrote a very dramatic note to my parents. And I taped it to the outside of my door. And then I laid on the floor with my feet to the door to lock it shut so they couldn't come in.
And I don't know, talk to me or be near me. And I just said, like, I quit no matter what. And they were very sad. I have a really good school performance story.
You do. Yes, tell yours. So the first time I played guitar in front of people, it was also for an assembly of parents. My mother was there at that time only like three or four months old.
Sister, anyway, they were all in the master. There was three of us playing guitar. And we were meant to play my hat and it has three corners. It has three corners.
We're just playing it. And so we're playing it. And off to the side of the stage, one of my classmates is he can't be seen by the audience. He's making faces of me while I'm playing.
And then I was also very nervous to be playing in front of this. I don't think I fully shed this experience. I agree. We were making our way through my hat.
It has three corners. I picked up my guitar and I threw it. I threw my guitar across the stage and screamed, I can't do it. I can't do it.
Like reading my fucking little fists in the air. I threw it across and people are just like looking at me and I ran straight. Like just ran right across the stage. Right out the fucking swinging doors of the auditorium.
Down the hallway and there was like a little set of three stairs. And I sat on the stairs just crying. Oh my god. How are you?
How are you? I'm probably the same age. Yeah, interesting. Yeah, and I'm just doing that.
And then I look behind me and my mother is approaching me to come like, Louie, what's wrong? And my little sister was just crawling at the time. I was crawling in the middle of the hallway. This big empty hallway.
I just remember my infant sister crawling in the middle of the hallway. And my mother, Louie, Louie, what's wrong? And then coming and putting her arm around me and telling me everything was going to be okay. But then I did approximately the same thing in front of about 30,000 people at the Reading Festival.
There you go. In 1994. Wow, it's like a full circle moment. Yeah.
This is for a little Louie. Yeah, I've done a line of speed this is my index finger. I've never done speed before. It's a great time to do it right before.
Yeah, I got it. Performing and writing. Before that, we were at a signing tent. We were signing things for people and we were there with pavement.
So it was pavement. We were all sitting side by side and drinking very large beers. And then when I realized that we had to plan an hour, I was like, oh, I'm fucking intoxicated. So yeah, I was very drunk.
And then a member of the touring Australia band at the time said, I have just a thing for you. Are you going to tell us who it is? Should I? Yeah.
Tom Morgan of Smudge. He's wildly handsome, very tall, dark-haired. He said it would straighten me out if I did a bunch of speed. Wow, and did it?
No. No. No. The funny thing is that it's not funny.
It was actually why I was there. And Courtney Love was there because Kurt Cobain had recently passed away. And she was at the side of the stage screaming because I freaked out. I grabbed my guitar and I was like, I had so much superhuman strength from this drug that I had never done before.
I snapped the guitar and half. I snapped. And then I was handed another guitar and I snapped that one in half too. And I raised it over my head.
And it took out a piece of my back of my head. So I'm bleeding. Oh my God. I'm bleeding.
And I'm looking at it for all these people. And Courtney Love is yelling at me from the corner of the stage. And then I then I told the whole audience the story that I just told. What?
Yeah. And then I told the story. I was like, this reminds me of the time I was seven years old. Wow.
And I threw my guitar across the stage. Did they just stare at you? They just stare at me. It was terrible.
It sort of in a way ruined my career. Oh, honey. Okay, let's bring it down. I know.
Bring it down. It's like a whole conversation. Take it easy. Put the brakes on.
The spheropy now. I'm just going to say that it did like, but then Tom Morgan and I, we were fast friends at that point. So we spent the rest of the night bouncing around between, we went to tour bus with Courtney Love and and Dan and they were like, Evan and Courtney were very together at that point. I think he was carrying around Kurt's ashes.
It was intense. I decided that it would be a really good idea if we follow the guitar player from RIDE and make him play songs with us. It's just an Andy Bell, I believe. And Andy Bell had this, he was with his girlfriend and really didn't want anything to do with us.
Yeah, he was like, who are these crazy guys? Like, can we come back? We went up there because we wanted to add and dandow him. Like, we're just like, just pulling down and I can play songs.
Like, here, we play a song and start passing the guitar around. So we were basically ended up in Andy Bell's bedroom while he was like, just in... They were trying to have a moment with his girlfriend. Oh my God.
His girlfriend is like staring at us like, when the fuck are you two going to win? The fuck out of here. We have like, no filter. Like, I, what, you're just not picking up on key social cues or anything, just high and drunk and...
This is pre-social cues. Yeah. Yeah. Can't get away with that now.
Yeah. Wow. Well, yours has a much more interesting ending than mine. I don't know.
I love the Silent Night story with the violin and I really wish I could have recreated this screeching. I know. I know. Well, Ben's recording this right now.
So, you know. This is kind of a fun post. One of the first things I asked when we got here was like, do you have a violin anywhere in the house? Oh God.
Oh no. It's a good of a good of a good of a good on that. Thank you for listening to Raw Impressions. Yes.
Thank you so much for coming. And letting us do this awkwardly in front of you. It's good.