The Story of DANOTI (Do Anything Not on the Internet) - Part II

The Gin Blossoms

Start at the beginning of the Story of DANOTI here.

In January 1990, I moved to Phoenix, AZ, to live with my friend Randy, who’d offered me a place to sleep if I split rent with him. A.S.U. was in nearby Tempe, where I could finish college, and my friend assured me there was a music scene in Tempe that featured bands playing original music. Those were the two ingredients I needed. Phoenix became the place.

As luck would have it, the Tempe original music scene was just getting hot when I arrived. The Gin Blossoms had signed a record contract after a year or two of playing clubs in town, and rumor had it that each member made $200 per local show. One show per week meant $800 per month. I could live on that. Here was another avenue to make a living playing original music, and a way accomplished in very close proximity to where I now lived. The right original band could play gigs in Tempe and scrape by.

Importantly, the guys in the Blossoms weren’t overly glamorous like the guys in Van Halen, and they also weren’t overly artistic like the guys in R.E.M. They wore band T-shirts and flannel and blue jeans. Maybe one or two would wear a cowboy hat, but no one mistook them for country. They were more like me. The world of the professional local musician was moving away from TV and closer to me, and I did what I could to move closer to it.

During my prime live-music-attending window—1990-1992—I saw the Blossoms as often as possible. In fact, for my 21^st birthday, I saw at the Asylum a double bill of Dead Hot Workshop leading off for the Gin Blossoms. At that show, I drunkenly declared my new Tempe band the Solemines better than both Dead Hot and the Blossoms. I was drunken fool. Dead Hot had a genuine songwriting genius, and the Gin Blossoms were the best band in Tempe to the vast majority of those who cared about such things.

The Blossoms were the band the Solemines watched, admired, tried to emulate. They’d released a local album Dusted, which Solemines lead singer Jim owned but was out of print by the time I got to Tempe. Also around the time I got to Tempe, the Blossoms signed their national record deal with A&M Records. They were going to make a big-time album, tour the country, make a living, maybe even be on TV. They had a shot at being like KISS, Van Halen, or R.E.M. In short, the Solemines—myself included—wanted to follow the path of the Gin Blossoms.

Despite the tortured nature of much of their material, from my vantage as a guy who was trying to succeed, there was nothing difficult about being in the Gin Blossoms. Every time they played Long Wong’s or the Sun Club or Chuy’s, it was like an early 90s Phoenix version of what going to the Cavern Club in Liverpool must’ve been like in the early 60s. The five Blossoms played tunes that made you want to dance and drink and sing along. They knew how to entertain, mixing in songs like “Theme from The Jeffersons” with their original music. They seemed completely within their element onstage, banging out their infectious pop rock for the throng with a certain insouciance, like they could screw up at any moment and somehow it wouldn’t matter. Even after the Refreshments signed with Mercury Records and toured as the Blossoms’ leadoff act, I remained a in awe of them. For me, to be young and drunk and in love meant going to see the Gin Blossoms on Friday night and trying not to get pulled over on the way home.

By 1991, the entire rock world got turned on its head by grunge music. Bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam were everyman types who made loud, angry music that was also very popular. More jeans, more flannel, more rock T-shirts. MTV featured these guys acting like themselves, and I saw a world in which I could fit. You didn’t have to be six feet tall, have teased hair, and wear spandex, but you also didn’t have to dress like an artist. You could just be you, by which I meant me.

If in 1991 the Solemines could draw 100 people as a headliner on a weekend night, the Gin Blossoms could draw 300. We wanted to lead off for the Blossoms as much as possible. We didn’t make as much money as their leadoff act ($75), but their shows always felt more alive.

I was amazed by the penchant of the Blossoms’ audience to dance. Every song of the Blossoms’ set featured a full dance floor where people drank beer and gave it their all.

Despite this penchant, they crowd meticulously avoided the dance floor during Solemines’ opening sets. When we led off for the Blossoms—which tended to be at the Sun Club—the mass of attendees were like ants, scurrying around the bar and tables, milling in an unconscious way but in a way seemingly instinctually known to them, and this instinct kept them deliberately from that 15- by 20-foot square of hardwood right in front of us. It was embarrassing. Our girlfriends would eventually grace this portion of the room, which made the starkness less noticeable, but it rarely prompted others to join. We played our grooviest 45 minute set, doing everything we could to get people to come forward and shake their hips, but it never happened. After we finished our set, the Blossoms hit the stage and the dance floor filled from the first note. It was simple: they had it, and we didn’t. Something had to change. In mid-1991, the Solemines broke up.

In their working-class Arizona way, the Gin Blossoms strutted around town like rock stars, and their biggest star—though I was in awe of all of them—was Doug Hopkins.

Doug was the band’s lead guitarist, chief songwriter, most iconic member. Doug was tall and lean, wore an old flannel shirt and jeans, and had rock star charisma. Anybody who saw the Blossoms back then were struck by Doug’s stage presence, which included his distinctive way of strutting from the back of the stage to the front, swaying like a boat on the wave of music, playing licks on his Les Paul, and reacting during accents with a trademark arm fling and Townsend-esque kick. Doug was not a shoe-gazer—a monicker we in the Solemines took great pains to avoid. He didn’t just stand there and play. He made a spectacle. Doug was an entertainer in the sense that you immediately noticed him from the time he walked onstage.

Doug was also the Blossom’s most outspoken wit. Despite not singing himself, he was notorious for grabbing the mic in between songs and offering a rejoinder to something one of the other members might’ve said or in response to an audience member. His nasally voice—running somewhat contrary to his tall frame—was the perfect vehicle for his sardonic comments, his lovable grouchiness.

One of his most famous vocal contributions occurred when the band broke into an impromptu version of “Why Must I be a Teenager in Love?” The band slowed down in the middle of the song, creating a quiet, jazzy exploration. Doug took the opportunity to grab the mic: “Would someone in the name of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph tell why I must be a fucking teenager in love?” I weirdly admired his jaundiced outlook; his well-spoken, oddly unmusical cadence. Such seemingly ad-libbed moments were a highlight of any Blossoms show.

By 1992, the Gin Blossoms had thrown out Hopkins, whose depression and addiction threatened to hamstring the band as its debut album New Miserable Experience was set for nationwide release. The album was fueled by Doug’s songs such as “Hey Jealousy” and “Found Out About You,” what would become their two biggest hits. It wouldn’t be long before Doug was permanently perched on a bar stool at Long Wong’s, complaining to anyone who would listen about his treatment by the band.

Every once in a while, old Solemines lead singer Jim and I met at Long Wong’s for beer and wings. Once, we even scared up the courage to approach Doug.

Doug had taken to sitting on the wooden box positioned just outside the main door, smoking a cigarette and drinking a longneck. The Blossoms’ tunes were just starting to surface on the radio, and it was known that Doug was surly about it. There was a quote or two in the local alt weekly the New Times about his inability to listen to his own songs when they came on the radio. After a few beers, Jim and I started a conversation with him, and as closing time approached, the three of us hiked back to former Solemine Tim’s and my apartment to jam.

Jim and I exchanged glances of delight as we strolled with our hero to our drunken jam session. Would the three of us start a band together? I didn’t know, and drunk as I was, I didn’t care. I was just enjoying this brush with Tempe music greatness and the chance to play a little with him.

“Do you have a guitar?” Doug asked.

“No,” I said, “but my roommate Tim does.”

Doug seemed to flinch. “I’m not sure he likes me.”

This astounded me. Tim adored Doug. He was a hero to all of us. How could Doug not know that? “Tim’s at his girlfriend’s,” I said, though if he’d been there, he’d have likely joined in.

Once at my place, the three of us congregated in the living room. We broke out Tim’s Les Paul, and Doug played us a song he’d been working on. It was song about a girl named Bobbi who was “already two weeks late.” The tune seemed more serious than his Blossoms songs, but I was excited to get to hear it. Jim, however, passed out, leaving our ersatz threesome singer-less.

I grabbed a pen and pad and proceeded to come up with the quickest second verse I could, playing off the idea of Bobbi’s pregnancy. When I finished, I handed Doug the pad.

Doug glanced over the lyrics, shrugged and said, “That’s cool. I could go with that.” I knew the guys in the Blossoms typically wrote songs by themselves. Co-writing wasn’t necessarily something Doug was open to, but I guess I didn’t give him a choice.

We hung out some more, played a record or two. Jim snored on the couch. With nothing else to do, Doug left, and that was that.

Shortly after Doug’s visit, in the spring of 1992, I moved out of Tim’s and my apartment to live with my future wife Kel in her one-bedroom by the railroad tracks. Her place was a short bike ride from A.S.U., where we both attended classes. A truckload of musical equipment and CDs from my apartment made it official. We spent the next two years working bad jobs, writing essays for English classes, and going to the occasional Gin Blossoms or Dead Hot show.

The move also represented a clean break from my past in the Solemines. No longer Tim’s roommate, if I were going to find a way forward in the Tempe scene, now was the time. Despite being a free agent, my participation in band life was sporadic. I knew other musicians in town, but they were either in bands or I wasn’t really that interested in playing with them. I had to make something happen, but I didn’t know how.

Almost as a cosmic answer to this question, I found on the ground a pair of tickets to the Dead Milkman show at After the Gold Rush that night—a 1,000-seater close to Kel’s and my apartment on Apache. I’m making this sound more magical then it was. There were a lot of these tickets on the ground in front of the venue. I suspected the club owners, not satisfied by the number of tickets sold, scattered them as a way to fill the room.

I recruited Randy, my old roommate, and the two of us made a night of going to see the Dead Milkmen. We’d both always liked the band. I had a few of their cassettes and listened to them as I threw newspapers, which was my day job at the time.

Once at the show, we both drank beer on the middle concourse—at roughly eye level with the Milkmen but a ways back. The pit churned with slam dancers in front of us, aggressive young men making weirdly deliberate movements and occasionally throwing themselves at each other. I knew this was where my musclemen friends from high school would’ve congregated had they been at the show. Despite my love of punk music, I’d never had the courage to slam dance. I just plain wasn’t tough enough.

That was my problem, I decided. I needed to scare up some courage. The Blossoms, while hardly slam dance types, seemed braver, more devil-may-care, than me. I needed to break out of myself. I would never get to where I wanted to go otherwise.

I turned, and just on the other side of the concourse was Doug Hopkins.

He stood smoking a cigarette and holding a longneck, and he had one boot flat against the wall behind him. I took this fortuitous sighting as a new chance to impress him. Before I could talk myself out of it, I walked right up to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

“I’m your new bass player,” I yelled above the din.

He looked at me incredulously, then seemed to recognize me as seriousness. I didn’t know if I was. With no other band on the horizon, I’m sure I was just trying the idea on. With a few beers in me, it felt like the right thing to say.

He motioned with his head for me to follow him. He led me to the lobby and stopped briefly next to a roped-off stairwell leading up. People milled about. The bar teemed with a few people apparently not interested in the band. Doug looked both ways, threw a leg over the rope, and scurried up the stairwell. I threw a leg over, followed him.

We found ourselves in a dark catbird’s seat. A window was cut into one wall, which looked down towards the stage. It was the perfect place to watch the show. No doubt club employees hung out up here. I wondered if Doug knew of this place or if he’d just gotten lucky.

Doug squatted, sat against a wall, and I did the same. He took a swig from his longneck.

“What do you think of the band?” I said. The Milkmen blared away below us.

He blinked a few times. “They’re fine, I guess. Frankly, you’d think after ten years they’d learn how to play.”

I laughed.

“So, we’re playing an E chord, right,” he said, “and you slide up to the G sharp.”

“The third,” I said.

“What?” he said. The band was loud.

“A third to the E.”

“Motherfucker,” Doug said. “Jesse wouldn’t know a third if it came cascading out of his ass.”

I laughed again. Jesse was Jesse Valenzuela, the Blossoms’ rhythm guitarist and another songwriter. I’d always liked Jesse and his songs, but I also liked hearing Doug complain about him.

The encounter wound down from there. I gave Doug my phone number, and he agreed to keep me posted if he ever needed a bass player.

Within a month or two, I got a call from him. “I’m starting something with the Zubia Brothers,” he said. “Are you interested?” The Zubia brothers were Lawrence (lead singer) and Mark (guitarist, background singer) Zubia. I knew both. The pair had started in the Tempe scene roughly at the same time as the Solemines.

I knew this new band was going to be a big deal in Tempe, Doug Hopkins’s first new act after the Blossoms. There would be Friday night gigs at places like Long Wong’s, the Sun Club, Chuy’s—maybe even Hayden Square, the outdoor area that served as a kind of open space between some clubs and other businesses in town. When bands played Hayden Square, as many as a thousand people could attend. If I joined this band, I would be starting back in the Tempe scene at a level higher than the Solemines had ever ascended. If I wanted a new opportunity, here it was.

Instead, I mumbled something about my full schedule at A.S.U., how if I didn’t buckle down I’d never finish college, how it might not be the right time for me.

Why did I turn him down?

My main aversion to the idea of joining Doug’s band centered the thought of how difficult it would’ve been to have any kind of impact. As far back as Illinois, I never felt like a secondary member of any band in which I played. I was always involved in songwriting, recording, coming up with band concepts. I admired egalitarian bands like R.E.M., where it seemed every member received the dignity of being a songwriter and important contributor. I knew there were plenty of bands led by one person, and this idea never sat well with me. In any band I committed to, it was necessary for me to have some kind of voice, and in Doug’s new band, I couldn’t imagine that. I’d just wind up as Doug’s bass player, and that wasn’t enough. I had no plan, but I had ambitions that extended beyond that.

After a long pause, Doug said, “Well, if it means anything to you, this group of guys wanted to call you first.”

“It does.”

And he hung up.

With no hope for another band on the horizon, I needed help paying the rent. I tried and failed at many jobs. Over the course of 1993, in the midst of a recession, I acquired and gave up six different jobs. I was a telemarketer for three different companies. I assisted some guy in his carpet cleaning business. I proofread Who’s Who books. I didn’t hold any of these jobs for long—I wasn’t fired from any of them, I just eventually found them intolerable and quit. I felt certain that the world couldn’t be so cruel as to expect me to go to one of these places and perform these tasks every day for the rest of my life.

Despite my interest in books and my pursuit of an English degree, I couldn’t really envision a path as a writer. I didn’t expect to go into teaching. I don’t know what I expected to do. Finishing college—which was approaching that December—was the end of my plan.

During the latter half of 1993, with the help of local and national scenes that found down-to-earth types appealing, I helped form a band that did more or less the same thing as the Gin Blossoms in Tempe.

Tune in later for Part III.