High School Bands are as integral to the cultural makeup of America as professional sports or finance. For many Americans, forming or participating in a High School Band — or, in some cases, simply listening to one — marks their first engagement with culture on their own terms. However, as of this moment, no one has undertaken the monumental task of recording the exploits and the output of America’s High School Bands. In fact, few of us consider them at all and, when we do, the exercise is unfortunately often dismissed as simple nostalgia tourism. But their importance is more than nostalgic. Their value transcends narcissism. More than a series of transitional moments in the lives of individual kids, High School Bands tell the story of what it means to be young in the USA.

Alex Shephard and Scott Beauchamp are currently writing the definitive history of High School Bands in America. Every other week we will be publishing excerpts from the first volume of their forthcoming work, tentatively titled Teenage Kicks: High School Bands in America 1998-2005.

The Seven Deadlies (2002-2004)
John H. Hendrix High, Richmond, Virginia

Charles Horten – keyboard
James Franklin – guitar
Mel Gant – Drums/drum machine/percussion

After a box of albums by Caberet Voltaire, The Damned, and The Horrors appeared on then freshman Charles Horten’s doorstep, his life changed. “I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know who left it there. But it was just amazing. I mean, how I listened to music, how I existed in the world, was never the same.” Sharing a penchant for the dark and Gothic with neighborhood friend James Franklin, the two eventually took to expressing themselves in the same style as the music they loved. “We played in dark, dark rooms — I mean, we’d either play at night or we’d paint whatever room we were pitch black — so we couldn’t really see what we were doing.  We had to play really really slow. That became our style, “ said Franklin. Starting off calling themselves “Kids Don’t Care”, the duo played a few shows at coffee houses and independent record stores. “We weren’t well received,” said Horton, in his typically understated way.

The two were actually booed off of stage quite a few times while appearing as “Kids Don’t Care.” “I can’t believe they actually booed us. But I guess we should have expected it. We were wearing dark makeup and playing slow, lush stuff. Really droney. And that’s not something teenage kids like,” said Franklin. After adding Mel Gant to the lineup as a percussionist, they changed their name and doubled down on the drone. “It’s funny. After we added a beat, even a really minimalist one, we started getting fans,” Horten told us. “Mostly girls. Mostly they just wanted to look at us and cry.” With Gant in the lineup playing a disassembled drum kit he would set up horizontally on a table, the band began playing more shows, at venues more suited to their style. They eventually garnered such a following at school that they came in third in battle of the bands their junior year. “The band that won was a Tool cover band,” smirked Gant.

The band reached its creative apex the summer between its members’ junior and senior years. After saving up money from part time jobs, they bought enough time in a local studio, “Patomic Rehearsal Spaces”, to record demo versions of five songs. The highlight of the session was the sprawling, erotic, “She’s Beautiful, She’s Crazy”, a nearly ten minute song about the breakup of Franklin and his girlfriend Suzanne Demartino. “The song was supposed to make her sad, make her regret the breakup. It worked, but I didn’t really want her anymore,” said Franklin. The Seven Deadlies played a few shows after recording, but broke up before senior year was over. “Things move really fast when you’re that age, and we all had to move on to other stuff,” explained Gant. After the band broke up, Horten repacked the box of albums he had mysteriously received and left it on the porch of an incoming freshman, Max Welch.

Jillian Wittzcomb (1999-2000)
Saint Catherine Academy For Girls, Bristol, Connecticut

Jillian Wittzcomb – acoustic guitar

Jillian woke up panting, haunted by a vision of herself on a lit stage playing to an empty house. She was ten the first time she had the dream, and her grades suffered noticeably afterwards. “We at Saint Catherine’s suggest an outlet, preferably in music, since that seems to be the source of her fascination,” Sister Ruth told her parents. They bought her a nylon-stringed guitar to learn to play classically.

She learned slowly and methodically, only leaving the house to attend school or church. Her mother didn’t mind Jillian doing anything that kept her away from the boys. Jillian didn’t dream of anyone but herself and the spectral hum of an empty concert venue.

So she wrote songs. She learned a few on her own: Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, Peter, Paul, and Mary. But mostly, she spent her time learning how to build something. She understood the structure of it implicitly — just like a building everything must be perfect or it collapses. Without being able to fully articulate it to herself, she understood that not playing the dream songs would result in her own “Total Death.” “Total Death” was the word she had made up to describe the doom her existence would be led to if she didn’t write the song and perform it for no one.

Her first live performance was in the coffee shop Hallowed Grounds. She played mostly Joni Mitchell and Kath Bloom covers, with a few of her own songs thrown in, the most notable of which was a piece called “If He Should Dare To Meet Me”, an awkwardly sincere ballad about forbidden medieval love. People applauded, less because of the performance and more just to throw their moral support behind the fragile, ghost-like musician.

She continued playing live. During performances she blew through covers of the entire Joni Mitchell album “Blue” with an innocence so brash and so obvious that most of the people listening thought the songs were hers. She had completely internalized them. They were a library of blueprints that she drew from to craft her own material, which was also coming along. She had written maybe six songs that would have been considered ‘professional quality’. All of them were love songs set in the past.

And then one night in the winter of 1999, Lizzie wrote her dream song. It wasn’t about love, and it took place outside of time. “Sleepwalker” was a two and a half minute finely polished gem, a confessional tale of a woman who learns through the interpretation of dream symbols that she’s been in a coma for twenty years. In her coma, her waking dream state, she has built empires, fallen in love, spoken with the dead, run from monsters, and lived in a valley on the moon. She’s been, to tell it like it is, a god, trapped in her own world. And she finds the loneliness exhilarating.

Lizzie’s friend Samantha helped her sneak into the performance area at Hallowed Grounds after hours, opening the door for her before leaving. Lizzie focused one single light onto a stool in the center of the stage that was such a contrast to the surrounding dark, it looked like only the stool and a small circle of stage had any corporeal reality. Lizzie sat down on the stool and played all of her songs to an audience that wasn’t there.

All images courtesy of noted High School Band archivist Kelly Schmader.


 
 
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