This little project of mine started last summer, when I was packing to move. I’d been considering doing a couple posts about Chris Scarpino and the band, maybe a two- or three-part story describing our rehearsals at the store. Really, it was an experiment — I wanted to try writing in a longer format, without trying to be funny and without saying “shit” quite so often.

As I packed my stuff into boxes, I kept looking around for the paper. I knew it was around somewhere, my copy of The New Hampshire with the article about Chris. When I ran out of stuff to pack, it occurred to me that I must have discarded it at some point.

(Actually that’s a lie, I ran out of boxes way before I ran out of stuff to pack.)

I never get rid of anything by accident, so there must have been a moment when I decided I didn’t want to hang onto the paper anymore. Maybe it was while packing for a previous move, one of those moments when you stand around your apartment thinking, “Okay seriously, how much of this can I toss?” At some point, I guess it made sense to just recycle the paper. It’s not like I ever looked at it.

Well, great. Years later, I finally wanted the damn thing.

Rather than just go ahead without the article, I got it in my craw that the posts would be much better if I tracked it down. When I visited my sister’s family to spend some time on New Hampshire’s forty-five yards of coastline, she & I took a quick trip to Durham so I could hit the library.

That it grew into seven posts spanning some eight thousand words was a bit of a surprise, and a little worrisome. It was never my intention to drone on and on, in fact I cut it short as much as I could. So if you happen to have read the whole thing:

ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED ~ Unusually Patient

By the way, Will Edwards never stopped writing songs. He’s out in San Diego, and has released a couple solo albums that you can listen to at his website. The San Diego Troubadour did a pretty in-depth profile of him in 2008.

Steve Knecht is out there somewhere, though I haven’t managed to find any info about him. Search results are dominated by a songwriter of that name, but he’s much younger.

And just so that we’re 100% clear, I’m not the Chris Keating from Yeasayer.

Oh, before I forget — there’s a fantastic series of articles on The Onion’s AV Club called “Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation,” written by a guy named Steven Hyden. It’s all about the rise and subsequent stagnation of alternative music in the 90s. Reading it while working on this was a nice little piece of kismet.

Finally, I wanted to send some shouts-out to Julie Perron at The New Hampshire and the staff at UNH’s Dimond Library for helping me find that old article. That’s not a typo, it’s spelled Dimond.

Okay. That’s about it.

Continued from Part VI

Track 12: “Jimmy” (3:30) Jesus Clip · Self-Titled EP · Internal Groove Records

It was a tragic car accident that took the life of UNH student Christopher Scarpino over this past summer. The musician, noted for his incredible dedication and inspiring humor, will live on through his music and the memories he has left imprinted on the hearts and minds of his best friends. Scarpino, 19, died August 12 in a head-on collision with a Winnebago on U.S. Route 1 in Machias, Maine.

Excerpted from “Student-Musician Dies In Auto Accident,” The New Hampshire, September 8, 1995

There it was, on the first page of the very first issue on the pile. I gave the librarian a dollar for some photocopies, and headed back out into the August heat. It was starting to rain.

Jennie O’Keefe told me by accident. Poor girl, she thought everybody knew. She was just trying to get rehearsal underway. The play was a one act, Edward Albee’s “The Sandbox,” and was part of a show being put on for the incoming freshman class. If there’s one thing eighteen-year-olds want to do during their first weekend of college, it’s take in a heavily metaphoric examination of aging and mortality. Two weeks before the start of the semester, the cast convened in the empty theater building to rehearse. Jennie was the director and organizer, because she was good at that sort of thing. Kind of a bizarro Charlie Brown.

It was to be my very first speaking role.

I played the angel of death. Look it up if you don’t believe me.

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Continued from Part V

Track 10: “My Wave” (5:12) Soundgarden · Superunknown · A&M Records
Track 11: “Again” (4:05) Alice in Chains · Alice in Chains · Columbia Records

Spring in New England is a thing that has to claw its way to the surface. It has to push apart its shell piece by piece, crawl into the light of day, and stand up on its own four legs. Gray skies cling to the landscape through February and well into March. Melting ice keeps the ground soggy for weeks, so that even if it happens to be reasonably nice out, you still can’t go throw the ball around without running in muck. The crusted, dirty remnants of snowbanks linger along the sidewalks for what seems like eternity, well after logic dictates that winter be gone.

Then it snows one more time.

Finally, there’s always one particular weekend when the temperature hits 70, the grass feels good under bare feet, and the sun actually shines all day — this is the day that campus practically explodes. Everyone goes outside, even geeks like myself. Music blares from dorm windows, girls debut the cut-off jeans. By then, there’s precious little left of the semester. This is when UNH used to hold Spring Fling.

Spring Fling was a series of campus events that ranged from not-quite-bacchanalian to actually-pretty-bacchanalian, depending on what time they started. Stages sprouted in the quads and parking lots, to host whatever entertainment students could clear with the university. Later in the afternoon, the main event closed down Main Street, where the headlining bands would put on shows between Smitty’s Bar and the Durham House of Pizza. Come nightfall, the fraternities would try to out-party each other. Or so I’m told. Honestly, it was kind of hard to hear them over the sound of our Magic: The Gathering decks.

(Spring Fling was canceled for good after 2001, when the festivities resulted in 163 arrests — more evidence that the Millennials would quit ruining everything if they just wore a few layers of flannel and listened to significantly more depressing music.)

That morning I woke up early, and woke up nervous. The longer you imagine something, the less your vision resembles the real thing. And I had been imagining what it would be like to play live since I was a child. Somehow my imagination had not conjured so much … sunshine.

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Continued from Part IV

Track 8: “Down by the Water” (3:14) PJ Harvey · To Bring You My Love · Island Records
Track 9: “Whisper” (3:29) Morphine · Yes · Rykodisc

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”
-Elvis Costello, or Thelonius Monk, or Martin Mull, or Lester Bangs, or Clara Schumann, depending on whom you ask

There’s no real way around it. We looked like we were headed for a sleepover. Three freshmen and a sophomore, bundled against the cold, trudging along the salted ice on the sidewalk, waiting at the bus stop at eight on a Wednesday evening. Too young to buy booze, too old to ask a grown-up for a ride. Laden with backpacks, and guitar cases, and blankets, and pillows.

Yeah. We pretty much looked like we were headed for a sleepover. And I’d have a comeback for that, were it not for the fact that we were absolutely headed for a sleepover. Thanks to Empire Beauty School’s complaints, this was how Jesus Clip marched to war. We rode the bus to a rented storefront, and stayed there until the sun came up. If we timed it right, we got there at nine o’clock on the knuckle, when the landlord’s noise curfew expired. Frankly, we needed every second of practice we could muster.

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