Travis Flatt

Do You Want to Build a Screamo Band?

Were you there the night the Pilot Light closed down? Like, 2006? No–we just booked it. Matt broke his dumbass arm on a halfpipe, two weeks before the show.   

It’s all these kids in black, denim jackets and jeans with patches. Cheap face tattoos before they were cool. And dreadlocks, lots of white kids with dreadlocks. This scummy pond of black-clad kids with tattoos and filthy dreadlocks. Before the show even started, everyone’s shoving inward, thronging the band. There was maybe an inch of space for them to set up, the guitar players (they had at least ten), the bassist, and singer. Vocalist. And they’re just bathed in B.O. and beer breath. No stage. The band just set up on the floor. I bet they slept there. 

My back’s jacked from sleeping on the couch in my man cave. Anne hates it when I snore. With some coaxing, Anne drove me to the chiropractor. I read this thing about a guy getting paralyzed by a chiropractor snapping a nerve in his neck. I went, though; that shit works. Not the next day, but two days later, after he cracked me around, it stopped hurting. Like magic. If we went on the road, I could probably sleep in a car for a few nights, maybe sitting in the passenger seat.  

The vocalist–I always thought that sounded goofy– was wearing a black knit hat with his hair shoved in his eyes, mumbles all shy into the mic,  “We’re Remedia Amoris,” and then, “from Chicago.”  This big, drunken howl bursts out of the kids, who can’t wait to bash each other. One of the guitar players lit the fuse with this sick little lead lick: “deedly dee, deedly dee.” 

I figured out how to play that, here–check it out.

All hell erupted. The drummer bashed away in that jazzy, off-time crashing, thing Matt could do–like “Bap, bap, buh, bap.”

We should call Matt. Have you talked to him? I Face-timed him when they were tearing the statues down two years ago. He was smoking a blunt, blacked out, wandering around downtown Charleston.  

 All those guitarists had their volumes perfectly set to drown each other out, though the drums cut right through. Always. Those drums clanged directly into your eardrums. I always heard the drums until I passed out. Like 3 a.m. and my skull’s going “eeeeeeeee.” 

You know, bands have these headphones now where they can hear every instrument specifically. With computers or something. They’re not that expensive. I don’t think I could play with rolled-up toilet paper anymore. 

The screamer hunched over his microphone, red-faced, inaudible, but giving his best. He looked like he was shitting a baby. The front line of sweaty, black-clad dudes bounced him off the drums. Some big, meaty tall guy bent down and lifted him to his feet, then the poor guy pretended that that hadn’t hurt like a motherfucker. The last twenty seconds passed, and the screamer, already horse, coughed “Thank you” into the mic, announcing which song–some Kant or Nietzsche quote–came next. Wild cheers erupted from the crowd.

Don’t you miss that shit? Come here. It’s on YouTube. That show is. I watch it all the time. There we are in the back. Look how smoking; they still let you smoke inside then. And you never moshed. You were too cool for that. I guess someone recorded this with their phone? It sounds like the inside of a beehive. 

I played the EP on  Bandcamp for Anne. She said, well, she was nice about it. I got embarrassed, and we had a fight–I need to stop doing that. But, when I’m alone, and the house is empty, I crank it. She hates it when I turn the music up loud, but she’s still got her hearing–right? 

Do you think the cavemen longed to be twelve again? 

“Hey, Oog, remember when we ripped the wings off that eight-foot butterfly?” 

Oog smiles all wistfully and acts like he doesn’t really remember, and the first caveman, Dook, tells the story. They have this same conversation every time they hang out. They’re, like, twenty, which is middle-aged for cavemen, I read. 

 The halcyon days. 

Anyway, you want to start a band, man? I have this sick riff in my head. Listen, it’s like, “Rugga rugga dow-ow-ow, chon-chon-chon…”