by Timothy Lord

In the early days of punk rock I auditioned for a band in an empty bank vault beneath a Taco Bell near the corner of 7th and Hennepin in downtown Minneapolis. I doubt the bank vault and the Taco Bell, which shared an outer entrance from the street, are still there. The block next to them, Hennepin Avenue between 6th and 7th Streets—E block, it’s called— was demolished and redeveloped. Before it was razed it was the city’s sleaze street. The American Empress peep show palace, Hot Licks record store, the Rifle Sport arcade, Moby Dick’s bar, all bookended by the two Shinders newsstands with everything from classic literature to porn. Out on the sidewalk the homeless idled, dealers loitered, and hookers paraded in acrid cigarette smoke. I loved the drama in the evening when the street preachers arrived, foretelling the end times. The band I tried out for was called The Sensational SOBs.

         Before The SOBs I auditioned on bass guitar for a bunch of other bands. I drove up to the northern suburbs in a foot of dirty snow, some awful 60s subdivision with about a million split levels, to try out for a group that was playing Damned covers with no singer, just blasting away instrumentally. Then I played with a singer/guitarist who thought he was the next mod superstar, but didn’t have the voice, guitar chops, looks, or clothes to pull it off. My tastes tended toward punkier music, and I succeeded in putting together a hardcore trio with a guitarist and drummer. They proved more interested in smoking pot, though, than writing or learning songs. I wrote a few short, fast, thrashy things, but gave up because we could never get past the pot smoking to the song learning. Then I messed around with a few different guitarists. One later sang for a band named Also Sprach. Another, an indigenous guy from Bemidji, made a name in record production after a short stint playing second guitar for King-Sized Condom Ripper. All these endeavors burned out and died like an aging punk rocker.

         I felt like a real failure and was wondering if I should move back to the small town I came from. I had a job, but a lousy one. It was draining my energy, and I didn’t know how long I could stick with it. I had thought of hunting for a better one, but jobs were scarce. Unemployment was in double digits, the highest it had been since the Great Depression. So when the guitarist of The Sensational SOBs, Sam, told me they thought I might be a good fit, I was ecstatic. He didn’t tell me where they rehearsed. He just set a day and time and told me to meet him at the Taco Bell near the corner of 7th and Hennepin.

         The Sensational SOBs had previously been called The Posers, and their set contained both revved up 60s classics and a similar type of original music. I wasn’t excited about performing a lot of covers, and I really wanted to play the kind of hardcore punk that I was going out regularly to listen to in the clubs. Thus, I had some misgivings about committing to this kind of band. Would I feel like a money-grubbing sell-out? Still, like a lot of my friends in the scene, I was not keen on having to work a day job. The SOBs had a huge following and gigged around town a lot, and if I landed the spot I thought it was possible I might be able to quit the little café where I was doing food prep.

         On the Saturday of the audition, all tense and on edge from nerves, I bussed downtown to the IDS tower and trudged through snow and slush to Hennepin. I browsed the books and magazines at the two Shinders newsstands and riffled through records at Hot Licks, but I couldn’t concentrate on much of anything. If I’d had more time, I might have tried to relax by playing a little pinball at the arcade.

         Near the appointed time I drifted down to the Taco Bell to wait for Sam. It was cold, but the air was calm. He arrived, with his jacket collar up, no coat, and smoking. He was dark and swarthy, but not in a tough guy kind of way, looking more like a librarian or an accountant. We entered a long, broad hallway and tramped icy shoes toward some stairs at the end of it. Sam led me down the stairs and around a couple corners where we arrived at the door of a bank vault. Its door was open, and I could hear a drummer warming up inside.

         As torn and conflicted as I was about the audition, I was also agitated as hell about it. I had showed up to make an impression, and my heart was thumping far faster than the drum beats coming from the vault. When I saw the thick door of the bank vault and realized that’s where the SOBs practiced, I swear it must have zoomed up to coronary levels. I’m claustrophobic, and I’d never considered they’d be rehearsing underground in some airtight space. I was unsure what to think about this development.

         Inside the vault the walls were bare, the space tight. I said hello to the drummer, Johnny, with his fedora, who I saw regularly at punk shows. He was a friendly guy, and I loved the Union Jack shirt he often wore.  But he had this fetish for women’s hair he was always too willing to carry on about. I can understand the sexual attraction for women’s hair, especially back in that blow-dried, glamor hair era, but he just got too graphic for my comfort.

         The singer, Ed, introduced himself and we started right away, real businesslike. He was really something else, with the stature of a pro wrestler rather than a rock n’ roll singer. He had a long floppy cowlick and would pick up the mic stand and slam it into the floor now and then. When he really belted out the lyrics his stomach rippled up and down like ocean waves. Every time Sam began a solo, Big Ed would take the mic off the mic stand and swing it like a lasso. We were tearing through a hepped-up cover of “Just Like Me” by Paul Revere & the Raiders when the mic whizzed by me just two inches over my head. I had to keep one eye on him all the time. Given the band whose song we were playing, I couldn’t help thinking that if that mic hit me it was going to feel like getting walloped by the butt of a Redcoat’s musket. And then there was the mic stand bashing into the floor, which startled the hell out of me. But mainly there was the bank vault, and I felt like I always had to watch that heavy door of the vault. I couldn’t concentrate on my fretboard. I imagined a pissed off ex-band member, the old bass player maybe, coming along to shut us in till we all suffocated.

         We banged through a couple more covers and they taught me one of the more straightforward SOB tunes. They said they liked my playing and Ed seemed to like me well enough. He tore a large bite out of a pungent bean burrito and pushed his cowlick out of his eyes. With his hands on his considerable hips, he said he’d call me soon if they wanted me.

         I wondered how much money used to be stored in that bank vault. I asked Ed if it was their permanent practice space.

         He said, yeah, they loved it for its central location and the weirdness of it.

         “Oh, and if you don’t mind me asking, what happened to your old bass player?” I asked this in an offhand manner as I was packing up my gear, trying to make it sound as natural as I could.

         “Drugs. He got unpredictable. We had to boot him.”

         Oh, great.

         Day by day I became more panicked about being an SOB. Sometimes I found myself short of breath for no apparent reason. I started to think about looking for a new job, maybe placing an ad—Bass Player Looking for Punk Band—in the newspaper. When I answered the telephone a couple weeks later and heard Big Ed’s voice, I almost dropped the phone. My legs buckled, and I sank down to the floor.

         He said The SOBs had finally hired a bass player. “I’m sorry it wasn’t you, but I wanted you to know that you were a close second choice. It was a tough call.”

         Up to that point, I hadn’t been a very competitive musician. Yet I realized I was miffed that they’d found a better bassist than I. After hanging up I wondered why they’d picked someone else, and why I had come up short. Was I too erratic? Tended to rush things? Not flashy enough? I thought about being onstage in the clubs, my amplifier’s booming rumble, the affirming applause from the crowd. Perhaps grabbing a check at the end of the night.

        Then the bank vault reappeared in my mind’s eye, the constricted space with its massive bulky door. I dropped onto my back and took a few deep gulps of air. Gradually I relaxed and was content for the first time since the audition.