Herbie's

While partying at Dove's one Friday night as per the regular protocol with all the regular thrashers, someone mentioned we were going to a party. Apparently some friend of theirs named "Herbie" whom I had mysteriously never heard of or met, was having a party in the vicinity of Dove's place in the "H" section, a small cluster of even smaller houses, all on streets beginning with the letter H. We used to refer to the houses in the H section as "chicken coops" due to how small and crammed they were. Brampton was definitely the suburbs, and the H section was the closest thing to a "ghetto" with the exception of a small neighbourhood known as "Fleetwood" & "475 Bramalea" where Pooh and his family lived.

We partook in the usual consumption of alcohol in abundance at Dove's, and then headed out around nine o'clock pm. Herbie's place was only a few streets over, maybe a five minute walk at that, yet it took us about 20 minutes to get there as we had to get our fill of weed smoke in the lungs since we couldn't blaze in Dove's house.

When we arrived at Herbie's we were greeted at the door by one of his friends. The friend brought us in to the house where we found Herbie and another friend chilling on the couch. We exchanged formalities, then Herbie told us "the party is in the basement, head on down" When we got downstairs there wasn't even anybody there. We had our usual crew of 10-20 guys, so I guess we brought the party to the party. We were the party! For the time being...

My mind was somewhat blown when we got down to the basement. It was a large, empty, rectangular room with absolutely no furnishing. The only thing in the room was an abundance of speakers. To put it bluntly, Herbie literally had a wall of speakers. They spanned from one end of the room to the other, against the longer wall of the rectangular room. The speakers were also stacked right up to the ceiling.
I don't think I had ever heard music this loud in my life in someone's home and not in an auditorium. There was a door that went into what would have been the laundry room, but it had been converted into a DJ booth, with turntables, mixers, and more crates of vinyl than your local used record store.

We were having a grand old time, drinking, smoking, and grooving away to tunes. I noticed an unknown black guy stick his head around the wall at the bottom of the basement stairs, he looked at us all quickly, let out a giggle, and then ran up the stairs. The next thing I knew it sounded like a herd of elephants were rampaging through the house. In the blink of an eye the basement was packed with people...and they were all black! We were the only white people here now and we definitely didn't fit in. Ends up there was a school dance at North Peel Highschool and they all decided to come to Herbie's party after the dance ended.

I was feeling a little uncomfortable and paranoid to say the least, and the new party guests weren't helping my anxiety, as they walked around the room trying to demand beer and weed from us. "Who the fuck comes to a party with no party favours?" I thought to myself. Perhaps if they had asked politely someone may have obliged, but they were just being downright ignorant. We were clearly outnumbered but we stood our ground and didn't share our good with them.

At one point the ring leader of the bunch started talking to Dove, and surprisingly the guy was super nice all of a sudden. As they shot the breeze, one of the guys friends snuck up behind Dove and ripped a hole in the plastic bag full of beer Dove was holding. As the beer cans crashed and bounced off of the carpeted floor, all the black guys started scrambling around the floor grabbing them. I was utterly disgusted by what I had just witnessed, they were acting like straight up savages.
We ended up taking refuge in the DJ booth just to get away from the madness. After awhile tempers were flaring and the tension in the air was so thick you could cut it with a knife. We decided to get the fuck out of there and head back to Dove's.

Trying to get out of the house was a chore in itself, as the place was packed full of people, who were still trying to snatch our beers right out of our hands as we were leaving. It seemed like things were going to turn into a full blown brawl, and I was literally in fear of my life. Herbie managed to smooth things over and get us out of the house in one piece, apologizing for his people the whole while.

We made it back to Dove's alive, and we were all still dumbfounded and in shock over what had just happened. I'd been struggling with racial issues for years with my close minded friends, and now I was starting to question myself over it. Why was I so quick to defend a race of people I didn't belong to? Since Highschool started I had engaged in more negative situations than positive ones when it came to people of colour. Why was I so quick to defend people who would easily steal from me, threaten me, and stick a knife in me the first chance they got? I couldn't answer that question to myself.

You could have easily mistaken my kindness for weakness, but I am not a weak person. I was however starting to realize that my kindness could be the death of me...

Blink of an eye

Within the blink of an eye everything was starting to change around me. A lot of my white b-boy friends were converting from hip hop over to yet another new form of music known as "House Music" which to me was just another form of dance music. They all started dressing differently. The Nike and British Knight shoes were replaced by "Creepers" and 3 hole Doc Martens. The stylish J.B. track suits they once wore were now replaced by straight leg bell bottom dress pants/jeans. Up top they were wearing very colourful long sleeve button up dress shirts, which were generally adorned with very loud floral and filagree designs. They were getting both ears pierced with gold hoops, and all of them were now sporting slicked back undercut hairdos. They pretty much stopped D.J.ing and were now attending rave parties all the time and partaking in a new drug known as "E" (ecstasy) I wanted no part of this scene, and more importantly it would now be up to me to discover new rap music on my own since they wouldn't be record shopping every week now.

Our band pretty much fizzled out right before my eyes too. Ryan had started hanging around a group of douchey older jock types who were affiliated with my new circle of trouble maker friends, and with that came a new rotten attitude he developed that I was quickly growing tired of. Jerry had made really good friends with two guys from his high school known as "Gilpin" & "Hooker" and in turn he was now spending more time with them as opposed to us. Craig had started hanging around this guy Phil I introduced him to, he was apart of the punk crew. Phil was a great guy and I enjoyed hanging out with him, but all he did was sit in his room and smoke dope, which was fine with me once in awhile but I couldn't just sit there and do that everyday. I wanted to get out, goto parties, meet girls, and enjoy life! Craig and Phil became close buddies and Craig was content to hang out there 24/7 and do nothing, so I only ever saw him now when I went to Phil's place.

I felt somewhat responsible for the division of our band as far as Craig & Ryan were concerned, as I was the one who had introduced them to these circles of friends to begin with. So where did this leave me now? An anti social, yet social butterfly who was desperately trying to balance out his time amongst the many factions of friends he had. I enjoyed each group of friends for certain reasons, and a lot of the time I was hard pressed to decide who I wanted to hang out with.

Most of my older thrasher pals were now graduated, as most of them were two years older than me. Thankfully a few of them were still around due to the fact they weren't the most scholastic of characters. Most of them I only saw on weekends now throughout the party scene.

I was left to wonder where things were going for myself and my friends, and I really had no clue how things were going to pan out over the course of the school year...

Hate Rap Reprised

Apologies as I am a day late with this post, I've been doing fairly well with keeping on top of the new schedule thus far, but as we all know, we can't always control our lives on a daily basis.
Today however, I am taking a break from the story to bring you up to speed on current events regarding my latest effort "What's below remains below"

For a project that literally just started this year, I've already knocked quite a lot of it out so far. I've completed seven or eight songs now, and I have at least 10 more in the workings. As per usual I've been taking notes anywhere and everywhere so that ideas are never lost and I am able to truly bring my newest vision to life.

This week alone I managed to hammer out two tracks. The first is the intro to the album, it also serves as the title track. You can hear it by following this link:

http://kabal.bandcamp.com/track/intro-whats-below-remains-below

The second track is actually a reprise of "hate rap" the first rap I ever wrote back in 1988. I used an amalgamation of the same instrumentals I originally did the rap over, but they are arranged much differently than the original version, which was just a DJ friend of mine beat mixing records. Of all the lyrics I've written over the past 25 years, the lyrics to this song are virtually the only ones I don't have on paper somewhere.

I did remember my opening line to the song, which was enough to get me started. Once the ink began to flow from my pen and the music played repeatedly, it enabled me to unlock some more ancient lyrical script from the vault in my mind. I ended up having to take liberties with some of the lyrics, but it definitely captures the essence of what I was hating on back when I originally wrote it.

When everything was said and done I ended up with a song that was 36 tracks in total, yet just over 2 minutes long. Amazing how 7 hours of hard work results in two minutes of musical bliss. The lyrics are somewhat controversial, and they may even be offensive to some. I would just like to state that this is a reprise of thoughts and beliefs I had as a teenager, and it doesn't necessarily reflect the views and opinions I have in this present day....or does it?

With that said, get your hate on haters!

http://kabal.bandcamp.com/track/hate-rap-88-reprise

Rebirth of a Band

After the positive feedback we received at the 2nd annual cat shit party, we decided to carry on as a band, regardless of the fact we no longer had a bass player. Somehow I managed to get my hands on a bass guitar, so I decided I would now sing and play bass. I quickly learned that this was no easy task. I'd practically spend all day in my room after school learning to play our songs. After the first week I had two songs learned and under my belt. When it came time to jam however, I was struggling with the double duty. I could play a song on bass, I could sing a song, but trying to do both simultaneously took a lot of hand/mind co-ordination.

We spent the first jam merely working on one song, and even after a full day of rehearsal I still wasn't nailing my tasks as I had hoped to. I could make it through the song, just barely, but it seemed like we were getting somewhere, and we now had a sense of re-birth amongst us. It was as if our band had been given a new life or a second chance.

With all of us feeling that magical moment, we decided to document the jam via photography. I'm not quite sure why, but we had a black wig that was floating around, probably from Halloween that had just passed. For some unknown reason we decided to take turns wearing the wig during the photo shoot. I guess we thought there was something comical about it, I'm not really sure. That wig would go on to be nipped by Steve Waller at a party I had, who later turned it into a dreadlock wig that he would wear around for fun while doing his best Rastafarian impression.

We also decided to go down to one of the local cemeteries to take some more snaps for our photo shoot. Sanjai accompanied us so he could play photographer for the day. I don't know why we chose the graveyard, I guess it seemed like a cool, hardcore place to take some photos in an otherwise uninteresting small suburban town.

We got the photos developed ASAP and we threw together a flyer with individual photos as well as a group photo. This would be our new advertisement per say, even though we still had a butt load of business cards that still had Scott's name on them.

We had a new arrangement now, we had new life, we had a new attitude, and we had a new outlook on the future of our band. This seemed like the beginning of something amazing with incredible potential, little did we know we couldn't be any closer to the end of our existence...

The Infamous Cat Shit Party # 2

Fall had arrived quick as per usual, and with it came multi coloured leaves scattered about and the type of weather I'm most fond of. There hadn't been too many memorable parties yet this school year, until I caught wind of one. The guy who was responsible for the infamous cat shit party was having a second party. Although I didn't like the guy, there was no way I was going to miss this!

The strange part was, I didn't talk to the kid, I didn't like him and he didn't like me, yet he approached me none the less and asked if we'd be interested in playing his party. But of course we would! Even though we were minus a bass player now, we were still all pumped up and ready to trash out.

When the big day arrived we showed up to the party quite early with our gear, and surprisingly there were already a lot of people there. The scent of cat shit was in the air and furry felines roamed the premises. Shannon came with us as well as our usual entourage of friends. For a guy who had supposedly quit smoking weed, I managed to puff a shit load behind her back over the course of the evening. Any chance I got, I'd make my way out to the garage and blaze up with whomever was in there at the time.

The owner of the house came up to me and informed me his band would be opening since they were a cover band, and Social Disorder would headline. Sounded like a fair deal to me. His band finally started playing around nine o'clock pm, and I was somewhat dumbfounded by the fact that they didn't even have a vocalist! They were a 3 piece act consisting of a drummer, bassist and guitarist. Claiming to be a cover band was one thing, but these guys didn't even have a singer! All they played were half assed renditions of Metallica songs, some not even in their entirety due to the fact these guys didn't have the chops to play such talented, intricate music.

It felt like they played forever, and when I finally checked the time it had been well over an hour since they started playing. Eventually they ran out of songs, so they resorted to playing the same songs all over again. Fed up by this point, I approached them and asked when we were going to get to play. "One more song" I was told. They played one song, and another, and another..... songs we had already heard them attempt to play multiple times. Eventually the crowd got wise to what was happening, and they all started booing and telling the band to pack it in, thank god!

It was finally our time to play, we set the gear up as fast as possible and started off with a cover of our own, "the bag lady song" by The Accused. I was higher than a kite, three sheets to the wind, and an intense ball of energy, giving my best delivery and performance to date. When the song ended the crowd went crazy, personally I think they were just relieved to hear some vocals finally, and a song that wasn't written by Metallica.

Next we busted into "Will-Nots" one of our more solid tracks, at least in my mind. Halfway through the song I happened to notice two old people come downstairs and start watching us. Once we finished the song, cat shit kid came up to me and informed me his parents were now home and we'd have to pack it up. "Are you fucking kidding me? We got to play two songs!" I proclaimed. We had been bamboozled. I was almost certain that his band kept dragging things on because he knew his parents were coming home, so they stalled things out hoping we wouldn't have the chance to perform. It was as if he had us jump through hoops and cart all of our gear around, just for his amusement.
A sick personal joke if you will.

I was absolutely stoked however by the amount of people who approached us afterwards to give us props, that was a great feeling. Although we only did two songs a lot of people got to see us and hear us, and looking back this would be our best live show we ever did. I just had absolutely no clue at the time that it would be our last show...

New Girl

With all my circles of friends rapidly expanding, I was constantly trying to balance my time amongst the various factions. Limey had started hanging around a group of guys who were lots of laughs, fun to hang out with, but they also had "trouble" written all over them.

The hardcore crew was expanding as well, mainly the skinheads, who were rapidly recruiting loners and outcasts who generally got bullied. The skins were giving them a sense of pride and belonging which resulted in them finding a new attitude and outlook, they weren't going to take it anymore. Of course their minds were also being pumped full of racist propaganda.

Jerry was also expanding our crew as he went to a different high school, so he too was branching out and making new friends since he couldn't always spend his time with us. In turn, his new friends also became our new friends.

Jeff, Eggman, and the white b-boy crew were also hanging around a new circle of friends, who were somewhat connected to Limey's new circle of friends, mainly older brothers, friends, and or relatives. Sometimes the two circles would join as one, creating a cluster fuck of nonsense and carrying on. It was on such an occasion as the above mentioned that I met my new "love" interest.

Her name was Shannon and she was 3 years younger than me, in fact she was still in grade 8! I felt somewhat guilty about being interested in a girl who hadn't even hit high school yet, but she was exceptionally beautiful, mature for her age, and she was blessed with a body that most women would kill to have. My friends would give me a hard time about her being 13 going on 14 and me being 16 going on 17, but once they laid eyes on her for the first time the jokes came to an abrupt stop.

I'd go over to her house almost daily in the evenings after dinner, it was about a good 20-30 minute walk from my place, but it was well worth the walk, except on the way home. Have you ever walked for 30 minutes with blue balls? Shannon's parents were quite nice and friendly and they accepted me into their home despite my unconventional appearance and our age difference, which seemed so drastic to me at the time.

One day after we'd only been dating a couple of weeks, Shannon came to me with a concern she had, she didn't like the fact that I partook in recreational marijuana use on occasion. She basically gave me an ultimatum, quit smoking weed or we wouldn't be together. I liked this girl a lot, but did I like her enough to bow down to her requests so early into the relationship? Was it fair of her to come at me with this? I agreed to her terms but I knew deep down in my heart and my mind that I wasn't going to quit smoking dope, I just wouldn't do it in her presence while duping her into believing I had quit. Out of sight out of mind seemed like a logical explanation to me.

Had I known anything about the values of a relationship and the true meaning of love at that age, I would have clearly known that what I was doing was the wrong way to go about it, as no true romance can be built on lies and secrets. But as a teenager it seemed like a great idea. Now the question was how long could I carry on with this straight edge lie?

I'm Your Pusher

Early into the year Limey brought to my attention that some of his fellow "minor niners" were looking for marijuana and other narcotics. He proceeded to tell me how they were all rookies with no clue about anything. We started a racket where he would collect their money, bring it to me, then I'd go but the stuff on lunch. We would only give them half the weight of what they paid for and pocket the rest of the money/dope. Needless to say they were supporting our habits. There were days where we would collect enough money from them to buy an ounce, which resulted in us getting a half ounce for free, which we would smoke with no regard. When we couldn't get any pot, we went as far as to sell them oregano and parsley, the funny part was that they kept coming back for more.

One day Limey found some tar like substance that resembled hashish. We were making a killing off the grade nines, but Limey, who was becoming more of a greedy fiend by the minute, decided to sell some to a guy in grade 12. The next thing I knew there was this guy in my face demanding his money back. The guy was ready to fight Limey over the situation, but I managed to talk him down and smooth things out. I freaked out on Limey after and told him if he's going to keep running these scams he can't try pulling them on older people or he's going to end up in a world of hurt.

We continued running the game on the grade nines and it worked like a charm. I always had money and I always had dope. As the weeks passed on the niners decided they wanted to try some harder drugs, so naturally we took common household items and sold them as something they weren't. Flour for cocaine, herbal diet pills for magic mushrooms, paper or thinly sliced spaghetti for LSD, non prescription pills for ecstasy, etc. etc. I learned just how powerful the will of thought could be, as these kids kept on buying the stuff and raved to us about how great the products were. The mind is an amazing thing, as is the power of placebo.

One day while selling a pill in a school stairwell, a teacher saw the exchange and grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to the office. The principal eagerly accused me of selling drugs but I simply told him I was giving an aspirin to my friend. He held up my bag of assorted goodies claiming he had all the evidence he needed to expel me from school. I told him there wasn't one illegal substance in the bag. The principal told me he was handing it over to the police for them to analyze it, from there he would have the nails for my coffin. I told him to go right ahead but informed him that they would be wasting their time and resources, to which he replied "We'll see about that". "Yes we will" I thought to myself. I left school knowing in my mind that time would tell, and I knew I was in the clear...or was I?