Quite a lot of changes had bed going on in my life as well. I had started working midnights for Shayne's mom at one of her Shell gas station franchises in Woodbridge. I had also officially moved out of my parents house at twenty years old. My other friend Shane aka Foxy Bano, had told us about his new neighbor he had met. This fellow was looking to rent his house out and Shane suggested that to us. Myself, Mike C, Shayne & Noel, ended up moving into 15 Homer square, and we were now Bano's next door neighbors.
It was very rewarding to be out on my own in the real world living the way I wanted to live and enjoying my life. I really have my parents to thank for raising me as such an independent person, as I feel if it wasn't for them I may have ended up one of those sorry cases still living in their parents basement at age 40. Our place quickly became the local flop house, as the majority of our friends still lived at home. It wasn't uncommon for 6-10 guys to be sitting around on our three couches at any given time.
Unfortunately some of our friends couldn't be trusted. We threw a big moving in party and it was a blast, but in the morning Noel discovered that our first and last months rent, which he was holding on to, had disappeared. We all had questions and we replayed the evening in our minds. Noel claimed he had the money in his pocket when he went to bed, and only two friends were still in attendance and awake, a guy named Rob and his girlfriend Sharon. To me it was a no brainer, one or both of them clearly took the money. Noel refused to agree with this theory as he felt they were his good friends. Shortly after this Rob mysteriously left to British Columbia, and it was obviously on our dime, in my opinion.
We set up a big jar on our coffee table in the living room with a note on it explaining what had happened. It was a donation jar in hopes that our real friends would help us out in this situation. Lots of friends, including us guys who lived there, would throw our pocket change in it at any given chance. We ended up raising a couple of hundred dollars, but it wasn't even close to the $2000+ that was stolen.
Despite the negative setback we dealt with right after moving in, we made the best of our situation and had a blast living together. Mike C had set up his DJ equipment in the basement, so we were always spinning records and working on mix tapes. Mike and myself still had our radio gig at CHRY with Myers, so it was nice to be able to commute together to and from home. My good friend Jerry ended up scoring me a ball python and cage for free, so I now had a new pet snake. Noel had gotten a cat named Generic, and Tara and I got a new kitten named Dakota. We were all one big happy family.
Black Belt Jones was kind of on hold at the moment, but Pauly didn't want the project to die, so he started saving up to buy a drum machine to replace Gregg. Living in this house brought all of our circles of friends together. Greg Dawson would stop by quite a bit and hang out. He was currently still playing in a band called Sweet Grass, but he had mentioned wanting to start a rap metal project once again, just like our Psycho Puffs conversation when I had met him a few years prior. We were both really stoked on the idea, and we weren't going to let it just be an idea. Greg got together with Sweetgrass drummer Frank Barone, and they started making songs. We decided to use "Dead Homiez" as a band name.
Our house didn't really have much space to jam, so Greg would have me over to his place to record vocals. We ended up doing four songs: Fuck 175, Todd B, HipHop 4 Da Herbz, & U Wanna Test? The tunes were very cool in my opinion, infusing rap, metal, jazz, and hardcore all into one. We never played shows or anything like that, as this was just more of a fun side project.
All in all the house was great for my creativeness, everything around me, my friends included, were very inspiring to my artistic side. I was also making new friends through other friends who would come to visit. Our clique was growing in numbers rapidly, and I felt as though we were all inspiring each other. Before I knew it the winter had passed and spring was in the air. As they say "time flies when you're having fun" but the fun was really just beginning...
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