![]() ![]() ![]() That's important to know from a scientific standpoint. The other speaker was busted and for some reason never replaced. This "sound system" primarily consisted of the oldest tape deck known to mankind and one speaker. The real lynchpin in this talent show caper was the school's sound system, which is hard to type without using air quotes. In the hours before the performance we had all applied generous amounts of brain-cell-killing yellow paint to the contraption, which was more like an overly-painted, cardboard Hindenburg.Įxcept the only thing about to go down in flames was me. Once my music started my two friends, Brad and Shane, agreed to carry a gigantic cardboard submarine across the stage behind me as I played. I needed something bigger, better - something extremely large, extremely flamboyant and extremely yellow! The simple dynamics of school popularity would not allow it. I was decked out in some totally awesome, bejeweled turquoise jacket, which matched the colors of my blue electric guitar. ![]() My performance, however, had all the glitz and glamour that you would come to expect from a middle school talent show. It was just an empty school gymnasium stage with some weird-looking kid sitting on a metal folding chair and jamming away to a song that now dates the two of us. His execution was flawless, but I felt his pageantry left little to the imagination. Puterbaugh went first that day and encountered nary a problem as he played "Runaway Train" by Soul Asylum. We each picked a song to play at the talent show and decided we would play along to the music as opposed to playing and singing ourselves. Two years later Puterbaugh and I decided to enter our school talent show as separate participants and ply our trade as teenagers who believed they were excellent guitar players because they knew a few songs and had a few hundred church hymns committed to memory. I guess you call something like that a "pray-to-play" arrangement. However, we made a pact with the pastor that once we were able to play, we would perform during every church service strumming church hymns in order to continue receiving lessons from him. My good friend William Andrew Puterbaugh and I began playing guitar at age 13 when a new man of the cloth took over the local church and agreed to teach us. Even as I write this I started playing the song "Yellow Submarine" by The Beatles in the background (on a constant loop) as I tell this tale of teenage angst and embarrassment. The haunting ramifications of my abysmal performance during the 1994 Milton-Union Middle School talent show remains branded into my brainpan to this day. ![]()
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