I cranked out loud, fast pop songs and I gave it my all every night, no matter the audience reaction. I knew given the platform/venue (whether it was an open mic in a pizza joint or playing covers for bar background music) it was uncool to publicly admit and display your unvarnished passion and that it was unseemly to try, to give the appearance of trying, particularly when by society’s standards you were not and would never be successful/famous. But fuck it, I did it anyway, and on most nights, it felt right. Yeah, I missed the rush and the camaraderie of playing in a band. The shared-obsession thing used to get me out of bed most mornings. I didn’t miss the interpersonal dramas, politics, hurt feelings, and the inevitable failures. Because the failures were shared, they felt amplified.

For my last show (October 2, 2014), Mercy Tavern was packed. Not because of me. I was not that delusional. October was Halloween season in Salem, and during that month tens of thousands of tourists poured into the town to kitschily celebrate the horrific, state-sanctioned deaths of nineteen innocent people. After setting up my equipment, I had a quick beer at the bar, then I strode (less athletically than the word implied) onto the stage (a minimally elevated square of plywood) wearing my blue leather moto jacket (purchased in early 2008; I admittedly look even more ridiculous in this jacket than the prior one, but that was the point of the purchase, and I like blue). There was a smattering of applause. I do get a few regulars at the shows; not people who follow me per se, but people who go to the same bar each week and I was the equivalent of their favorite booth or stool.

I strummed a ringing E chord, which turned a few heads in my direction, and I said, “I’m the Pallbearers Club,” and I launched into a crowd-pleaser, “Luka” by Suzanne Vega, arranged at twice the tempo and using suspended chords with heavy distortion. Why a song about child abuse was a crowd-pleaser I couldn’t say, but I had to give the people some of what they wanted. I played the usual ’90s standards from Nirvana, Pixies, Belly, Neutral Milk Hotel, Sugar, Social Distortion’s version of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” and some deeper cuts, including Bob Mould’s “I Hate Alternative Rock.” After the Bob tune, I paused and told the bar crowd the title of the song. It elicited a few laughs, head nods, and smirks. Oh, you jaded Gen-Xers, acting as though some of you hadn’t become some of the worst, most entitled assholes on the planet. At this point in the set, I had a full sweat going, so I shed my blue jacket and guzzled some water. Time for some banter.