The Meadowblasters

So I was going through some old photos the other day and I ran into this picture. It was taken in 1983. This is the band I was in at the time, The Meadowblasters. We stole the name from a Bloom County comic, but thought it was particularly apt because we practiced (and I lived) in a community called Laurel Meadows. Anyway, the Charleston Daily Mail had supplement sections for the various communities and this one ran in ours with a story about our band playing at Herbert Hoover High which was where our bass player, my cousin Steve, attended. The rest of the band went to Sissonville High. So that was me, Mike Derrick (drums) and Dave Hart (guitar). They didn't run this picture in the paper, opting instead for a shot taken during the performance. The reporter was kind enough to send us an 8x10 of this one though.

We did two performances that day, playing for half of the school each time. The crowd was insane. We felt like the Beatles. I swear to you, it's the only time in my life that I had girls shoving phone numbers into my pocket. It was awesome. We thought we had made it at last!

It all came crashing down when Dave and I listened to the tape of the performance afterwards. It turned out that the bass was slightly out of tune. It was just enough that everything else sounded sour. And it seemed to get worse each time we listened to it. Oh well, you would never have been able to tell from the crowd.