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or two about songwriting and stagecraft. Chris was convinced this project would work, based on our brief stint in our “art band.” I figured I possessed enough charisma to make a go of it, but I was also pretty sure that even if I bombed as a front man, I’d be switched over to guitar and I could hide behind an amp or turn my back to the audience. That was my Plan B. The second guitar player in the group was the late William “Bill” Stobaugh. Why he was a guitar player was a mystery since Bill could barely tune his instrument. Still, he was a completely weird, crazy, and artistic guy. Bill had an unusual background. He had been born in Bahrain, the son of a man who worked for an American oil company, but grew up in suburban Massachusetts. He had come to Los Angeles to attend school, where he received both bachelor’s and master’s degrees at CalArts. He was skilled as a filmmaker. Parts of his shot-on-film master’s thesis were used in the Disney movie Tron . He would eventually make film his career, doing a lot of rock videos, including “Higher Ground” for the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He died in 1996 from complications that followed heart surgery. He was only forty-two. On bass we had a boom operator named Jon Huck and, for good measure, we had a third guitar played by K. K. Barrett, another film-world refugee who worked as an art director.
    But back then, we all wanted to be a rock band. The Replacements were our inspiration, but once we started to rehearse, we found we couldn’t do anything but be ourselves. We tried to play some cover songs. It was a disaster.
    “Hey, man, let’s try to play ‘American Woman,’ said Chris at our first rehearsal, and launched into the main riff. Pete fell in behind him and the rest of us tried to follow. It was a god-awful racket, and I couldn’t remember the lyrics even though I had heard the song forever on classic rock radio.
    “Hold up, hold up,” said Chris as he called the jam to a halt. “This doesn’t work.” Everybody took a break to smoke cigarettes and crack open fresh beers.
    “You know what sounded okay?” I asked as I poured some vodka into my brew. “When we were just fucking around with those chords before we tried to play an actual song. I think if you guys just start doing that, we can come up with some lyrics. At least it’d be our own thing. And I think we sounded pretty good.”
    “It can’t be any worse than ‘American Woman,’ ” said Chris.
    We started to jam and fell straight into a groove. It felt right. We definitely had something. We wrote four songs at that first rehearsal that sprang to life straight out of our riffs and jams. “Yes Yes No” and “Positive Train” were collaborative efforts with the whole band. Jon and Pete came up with something they called “Thelonious Monster” and Jon and I wrote “Life’s a Groove.” It was a productive first rehearsal. We also discussed what to call ourselves. My thought was to use the name the F.T.W. Experience—“F.T.W.,” of course, standing in for “Fuck the World” and “Experience” tacked on as a nod to the Jimi Hendrix Experience. Pete wanted to name the band after the song he and Jon wrote. Somebody noted, “If we call the band Thelonious Monster, we’ll have a theme song like the Monkees did.” It made sense, and I had to admit, it was a good name.
    We rehearsed like that for four months, nearly every night, rough jams and hooky riffs crystallizing into actual songs. I had connections with the bookers at the various clubs where I DJ’ed, so getting gigs wasn’t a problem. Keeping them coherent was. I was usually drunk, high, or a combination of the two for our shows, and I know it bugged Pete. I’d rant from the stage about Reagan or religion or something I had seen in the newspaper earlier in the day as I’d introduce a song. Drunks and addicts almost always think they’re being witty and charming when, mostly, they’re just obnoxious.
    “Fuck Ronald