ghouls

I keep asking myself lately what ever happened to Ghouls' Night Out. Admittedly, that's a strange question to ponder, especially since if anyone should know, it's me.

Ghouls' Night Out was a Misfits tribute band I played guitar in one summer. We probably practiced only six or eight times, and never came close to having an actual gig. While we enjoyed getting together, drinking beer and banging out our heartfelt renditions of horror-punk classics "Skulls" and "I Turned Into a Martian," we were probably best at getting together, drinking beer and talking about how cool our band was going to be.

We also spent a good deal of time talking about what our stage show was going to be like. A typical meeting of the minds went something like this: "OK, right in the middle of ‘Devilock,' just when I yell, ‘huh!' I'll reach into your shirt, where you'll have hidden a big-ass juicy tomato. I'll pull it out, crush it and shake it at you, and it'll look like I ripped your heart out. This will add a dramatic edge to the lyric, ‘I'll rip your heart out.'"

"Cool!" another of us would add.

Alas, we never got to pull off any such maneuvers on-stage. I don't really know what happened to our band – we just kind of fizzled out and stopped practicing. Perhaps we realized we were ahead of our time and out of our element. Clearly, 1992 Starkville wasn't ready for us. One good heart extraction and we'd have been blacklisted.

More likely, a lack of talent doomed Ghouls' Night Out from the start. Our drummer was actually fairly decent, but the bass player and I were limited to the Misfits' simpler compositions, such as "London Dungeon" and "Last Caress." More involved arrangements such as "Green Hell" and "Death Comes Ripping" were beyond us.

It's too bad that I'm cursed with this almost total lack of musical ability, because I still have good ideas for bands. I'm always thinking of great band names or album titles. (I think they're great, anyway). I'm often heard making strange exclamations, such as: "Chronic Spasm! Now there's a name for a band!"

"‘What Makes a God Anticoagulant?' Man, I have to name an album that one day."

"I've got it! The Afrodisiacs! Hey, you wanna be in my band, the Afrodisiacs?"

Yes, if I could play my instrument at all, I'd be a superstar many times over by now. My numerous bands, such as Special Ed and the Remedials, the Funk Wizards and Dry Heave would rule the airwaves. Instead, I'm left here in graduate school while my true ambitions go unrealized. My beloved "mosh fiddle" sports a layer of dust six inches thick. I'm too busy wrestling with "Bleak House" to consider trying to remember the chord changes to "Astro Zombies."

Oh, it's not so bad, I suppose. Honestly, I'm enjoying my studies, which provide me with a good amount of intellectual stimulation, if not the visceral excitement of playing music. While I'm generally content with my life as it is now, sometimes I still get a certain feeling when I hear songs like Black Sabbath's "War Pigs," the Dicks' "Hate the Police" and Rick James' "Super Freak" which makes me nostalgic for the days when I was a no-talent guitar player in a spirited but inept garage cover band.

Hey, anybody want to start a band with me? I've got this killer idea for a stage act involving a goat and a flamethrower . . .