This story is a follow on from another story I wrote named Marion's story. I wanted to build on the story but to allow that to happen I had to go back and tell a little of the back story of the other members in the band. This story picks up Mel's life before the band and talks a little about how the band was formed.
I need to say a big thank you to my friend and fellow writer and friend Marina Kelly who helped with the editing and gave me direction and guidance. Thanks Marina, great work as always.
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Hi my name is Melody, an apt name for a musician right?
Sounds sweet and innocent doesn't it? Well fuck that I'm grumpy, well that's what others say, me I think I just don't suffer fools.
I'm the front person for a band named Our Dirty Kissable Lips. The band is my love, my life, my family and I love it with a passion far greater than life itself.
Growing up in Lawrence in the Midwest of America, which is a small city that owes its existence to one thing and one thing only, the University, It's easy to just get sucked into academic life. You sort of forget that there are other things in life aside from college. My parents both worked there. My mother as an administrator and my father a professor.
Music wasn't big in our house, my parents weren't the sort to have music playing or go to concerts. My father only had one passion in life and that was drinking and he was never happy unless he had one in his hand. Drunk yeah he was a drunk an angry mean-spirited drunken bastard who used to love nothing more than beating my mother, yeah I was wrong he was pretty passionate about beating mom as well, he certainly loved that and if she wasn't around us his children filled the bill.
Mom put up with it for years until the day she snapped. I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later, he made her life a living hell. I guess she could have just walked out and left him but no she decided enough is enough and killed the mangy prick with a tyre lever because that's what he had beaten her with the night before. His unfortunate demise came about after taking to her again except this time he was that hammered he collapsed and mom decided fuck it, his time was up. She didn't just kill the mongrel she beat him to a bloody pulp. How did it affect me you ask? Well I just wish she did it earlier so she could've had some peace.
She was the saving grace in our life keeping me and my brother safe.
The downside for Mom was going to jail, at least the jury accepted that it wasn't murder but even manslaughter brings a jail sentence. That you hope would have been it for mom but she sort of went off the deep end, she hated being locked up, she wasn't a damn criminal, she was just defending herself. Anyway she got transferred to the nut house I tried to see her but she has gone off to her happy place and has pushed me and Jimmy out of her memory. She seems happy by all accounts helping in the gardens and looking after other patients. She is more like a helper than an inmate. I guess she got the peace she wanted all be it in a strange way.
Me and my little brother got shipped off to foster homes, at first we were together but Jimmy was a handful. Me, I was surly and bad tempered, but he rebelled, he ran right off the rails and got involved with gangs and drugs, which led to a life of crime and incarceration. It started off in Juve but as soon as he was of age he went into the slammer which is where he is today. We sort of lost touch.
I bounced from foster home to foster home, I was bad tempered and hard to deal with, I had anger issues and I was hardly a good student. People tried but because of my attitude I got moved on pretty quick. It wasn't until I went to school that I fell in love with what became the burning passion of my life, 'music.' I remember the day I walked past the hall where the school orchestra was busily rehearsing and I was mesmerised. Don't get me wrong I listened to music, but this was different, it was live, it was real and it was right there in my face.
I walked in and found a seat, the sounds...oh my god. I'm not into that genre or form of music it's to regimented for me but the sounds, the vibrations the intensity and joy on their faces...I was hooked.
Of course I had no way to move it forward I had no talent no ability and didn't fit the requirements of the orchestra. I returned every chance I got to listen, I never went to the live performances I just loved to watch them rehearse. But life changed for me after that, music became an obsession. I didn't have a lot of spare cash but what I did have I spent on CD's and gradually my preferences started to evolve. I hated mainstream pop culture trash. It all sounded the same it was like a computer generated meme different artists singing different words to the same songs.
The orchestra wasn't the only group of musicians using the rehearsal room. The school was full of musicians, I mean the University is widely respected for its music courses. I found there were lots of other bands playing around the school. I found ways to make friends and sneak into studio's and rehearsal rooms.
I loved it and the more I listened the deeper the obsession grew, it festered inside me like an open wound afflicted with gangrene.
My preferences began to evolve, more than anything I loved punk and the more raucous it was the better I liked it. Locked in my room I danced and sang along to my favourite bands. Of course, it meant I wasn't that popular with the family I lived with at the time. They were good people but were elderly and they hated anything loud.
Me listening to the Ramones was never going to work.
I had been working my ass off trying to get a scholarship I wanted to study computer science but my marks weren't that good. Rejection letter after rejection letter flooded our mailbox and it put a dent in my plans to me the next Steve Jobs. I was smart just not smart enough I suppose.
Life at home was painful, the folks I lived with were running out of patience, not that I blamed them. Trying to raise a rebellious big mouth wasn't their idea of helping out. Looking back, they were wonderful really. I was a handful; I pierced my own ears, wore safety pins as ear rings shaved off my hair and of course scrounged through thrift stores for the scruffiest old clothes. I used the old scruffy clothes to emulate my rock god idols. Punk was the king man, I wanted to be like them, look like them...I wanted to be like them.
Dropping out of school was the last straw for my foster parents, they never kicked me out but it was obvious I wasn't welcome. Luckily, I had finally found a friend and she said I could move in with her. It was a shitty little apartment on top of a fast-food restaurant but she was a punk and loved most of the bands I did. Nights were full of screaming, supposedly singing along and dancing.
I worked as a waitress at the restaurant and made enough to get by (Just)
My personal style didn't really attract a lot of interest from boys, but I didn't care sex wasn't a driver for me. I was depressed and angry that my chosen path had been closed off and self-harm was my escape and method of showing the world TAKE THAT FUCKERS....
Lynette my roommate was wild, really wild and was right into drugs, she smoked a lot of pot and loved Meth. She was quite happy to trade sexual favours for drugs. Seeing her out of it really scared me. I wanted to be tough and tell the world to sit on it but I hated drugs. I saw what it did to her. I decided there and then to take a different path.
Sharing an apartment with Lynette opened my eyes sexually. Listening to her fuck guy's horrible disgusting guys horrified me. The noises that came out of her room appalled me. The names they called her, the things they did to her all in the name of sex, I knew straight away that wasn't for me. I started to develop an aversion to guys, they certainly didn't interest me, not that they ever really did, but now it manifested as revulsion, even open hostility, I pushed them away.
I guess I didn't have to try that hard, the way I dressed hardly made me seem interested or attractive. My appearance was my attempt to show the world I didn't care but that's bullshit, I know that now.
One of Lynette's lovers, god it's hard to call it that did one favour, before being locked up for aggravated robbery he left his guitar and amp at our place. I loved the look of it, OK it was only a cheap replica but I loved it. I started to play with it and the moment I picked it up I loved the feel of it in my hands so tactile. I found an old how to learn guitar tutorial book at the thrift store and I learned it word for word, every spare moment I practiced, maybe not until my fingers bled but they sure as hell were sore.
It didn't happen overnight but spending six hours a day playing meant I learned quickly. The book was full of old classics, I guess they're there because they're easy, but without too much effort I could play Green sleeves and the old folk songs in the book. That drove me to you tube and of course there are millions of tutorials in there. Learning the guitar opened avenues I didn't even know existed. The more I played the deeper the obsession bit. I came to the realisation I didn't want to play other people's music I wanted to play my own and being the rebel I was, I thought I had something to say. So with that I started to write songs, at first I just used existing songs and changed them using my own lyrics. Yeah, I know that's cheating but with no formal training it taught me enough about musical theory to understand how songs were structured, how to make them work.
Life isn't one dimensional, I wasn't just learning guitar. I was learning about life and choices and consequences. Let's face it a bald headed waitress who looks like a poor man's Joan Jett doesn't make a lot from tips.
I softened my approach a little, I knew I was hard work, my attitude scared most people away. The friends I did make though started to drive my growth. Most were alternate lifestyler's, gay, lesbian, people who lived outside the norm. They were like me rebellious and cynical. Being around a few girls who were openly gay meant my opinions on lifestyles and my acceptance of it was evolving as well. With my new found ability on the guitar came a new confidence in myself as a person. The music I was primarily listening to pushed me in a direction that at first was uncomfortable and confronting but oh so damn intriguing and enticing, it fascinated me. The runaways and Joan Jett, Babes in Toyland, The Donnas, Patti Smith was a big influence, Soiuxsie and the Banshees and of course my favourite the slits... The embodiment of pretty slutty rock. I loved the costumes and the fuck you attitude. This was my world and I wanted in.
Hanging around at the University, talking to real musicians and listening to them play also opened my ears and mind to other genres. I loved some of the newer indie bands. The rhythms were different, more open and less driven but still powerful. Strangely I became a little fascinated with bluegrass. I loved the foot stomping.
Of course, there was another element to the punk bands I loved, there was a huge lesbian movement around these bands and that affected me without me really knowing or understanding it.
My sexuality never took off. All my other friends already had boyfriends or girlfriends depending on their leaning, but me, I had never experienced a desire or an attraction.
Living with a prostitute may have driven me away from men, I'm not sure but I think I had always had an attraction to girls, pretty girls, girly girls. Not the dungaree wearing feminists who dressed like men, but real women. Sexy long legged gorgeous creatures.
OK it sort of took a while for me to get my head around the fact I was a lesbian...The word made me laugh, although when you say it slowly it is so erotic and sensual if sort of rolls off your tongue.
Being an alternative sort of girl I didn't care what other people thought. I was however worried about why I felt this way, the questions I couldn't answer, all I knew was boys just didn't do it for me, I had yet to meet one that made my heart beat faster, or my hands go clammy.
