I Used to be a Wombat

We were a band in need of a drummer. Somehow Tom had convinced Roger that he would be better off in life if he concentrated on his art school studies and left all this silly rock and roll stuff behind.  So with Roger gone, we were in need of a drummer. Luckily Tom had someone in mind, Bill.

When Kevin joined Protest and  I wanted to play out. Tom wasn’t as enthusiastic. He always seemed to have a reason to not book a gig. We weren't ready. Or we hadn’t practiced enough. But maybe those weren’t the real reasons. You see, Tom wasn’t very enthusiastic about Roger.

The one thing I would say about Protest, when Tom would play lead and Roger and I had to hold the rhythm together without a rhythm guitarist, it got a little thin. But Tom must have been thinking the same thing because he had a plan for that.

With Roger joining the band, Protest was born. The songs we played were a mixed bag of Tom’s rock/blues originals, and a few out dated 70’s songs like Whole Lotta Love, All Along the Watch Tower, and Wild Thing. Actually we never really played the cover songs correctly. It more like our interpretation of how we thought the song should go.

Playing with Tom was fun because the songs were originals written by Tom. I didn’t have to learn how to play the bass line, I got to make them up. The one thing we were missing was a drummer. And being an art student, I knew where to find one.

One day, a guy named Rob, whom I had been friends with since middle school, started talking to me about a friend he had named Tom. Supposedly, Tom was an outstanding guitar player. He also wrote songs. I wasn’t really interested at first but Rob was rather persistent. He talked to me every day about Tom, his guitar playing abilities and all the antics that happened at the carriage house. Finally Rob convinced me to come to the carriage house one day after school. And that story might just be worth a listen.

In high school, one of the guys in my art class played drums. He invited me to his house to jam. The drummer then convinced one of our other art class musicians, John, to join our band. John was a guitarist phenomenon. He could play Eruption like Eddie Van Halen. Meanwhile, I was lucky if I could play the bass line to an AC/DC song.  We practiced a few metal songs. We named our band SilverFish, a name I obtained while reading a can of bug spray that I found under the art class sink.  The drummer and I had our hearts set on performing at our school's Gong Show, the 80's high school equivalent of a talent show. To our amazement, John agreed.