this is actually a long excerpt from a very long email conversionation between me and "Alice Crowley", a.k.a. elysse duncan.
kentucky does this thing called the governor's scholars program. they look at tht top whatever percent of the junior classes statewide, and of those, the students with PSAT scores of whatever (tho' they never told us the PSAT was important... i almost put a fake name on mine), then have a group of teachers from each school select who they think should go, so it gets very policitcal even though it's not supposed to. for example, the primary candidate from my school was my friend david, even though i was supposedly better qualified -- they wanted to make sure he went so he had the chance to break out of his social cocoon. no matter, i was an alternate, and the state board picked me anyway. so, they collected six hundred of the state's "best and birghtest" high school juniors-who-will-be-seniors-when-summer-is-over on two small college campuses (i was at centre college in danville, and david was at murray state in murray) for five weeks, with no access to parents or the outside world.
you picka major course of study and the rest of the curriculum determines your minor. every day you have some sort of a colloquium, staggered like at a real college. there are set meal times, set class times, and set `lights-out' times, you have to be in attendance at all activities, and you can't call home. that's it -- those were the only rules. the whole five weeks was mostly free time. free time to be spent on a beautiful college campus with 299 other really smart and very weird high school students. at on e point we even hooked up for a day with the other 300 GSPers at the arts center in louisville... i have a picture, me with the black nail polish and hair put up and flanked by two strange women. i never showed that one to my family.
my major at GSP was visual arts. it was incredible. our colloquium was led by the head art prof from owensboro college. he was crazy, and excellent, and gave me all the right hints. i'd never been able to do likenesses before, i just created things. then he told me to draw what i see, not what i think i see, or what my brain reconstructs --- only the lines that i see. in this way, the viewer's brain also performs the same reconstruction... and my friend carrie campbell (who later went into architecture at uk and lived downstairs from me and did my hair on a daily basis for a while) was modelling for us, sitting in a chair on a platform in the center of the room, and i was in a corner with my back to the window, and i made two more charcoal strokes on the paper and damned if she didn't jump out of the paper at me. it was almost a religious experience. i remember it vividly, and the picture hangs next to the door in my room at home...
i also was in the theater club and the improv comedy group. i've told you about that...
GSP changed my life. it chagned the lives of most people who went through it. basically it proved to me that the world did /not/ consist of the ugly and stupid status quo that comprised the population of my inbred hometown. it helped me survive my senior year with the knowledge that i'd be going on to a better life as soon as i graduated.
that, and i met tons and tons and tons and tons of people from across the state who i have continued to run into since then, at college, when travelling, et cetera.
i live with one of them.
kristian and neal met on the first day of GSP. they lived together in room 222 in nevin hall, the room right above the from door. there were five people in that room, whch kinda sucked. neal went to central high school in lousiville, as ghetto as it gets. he was originally from chicago, and has never lost the chicago accent. he's also very stoic, and was already a big stones fan in '92, and had been playing drums for a while already as well. he brought the drums with him, and had commandeered one of the practice rooms in the basement of the fine arts building. (there were three or four guys who brought drumkits, maybe twenty people who brought guitars, and five bassists, tho' only two brought their basses with them.) kristian was borna nd raised in edgewood, a suburb of covington, which is the city in KY across the river from cincinnatti. he had been playing guitar for about a year, cutting his teeth on iron maiden and other cheese. he and neal hit it off really well, and became really best friends. they still are, pretty much. kk met mary ann at gsp, and they started dating about six months later. they're still dating. they don't intend to break up (but they don't intend to get married either... she has philosphical objects with the religious and social marriage thing... long story).
anyway, that's the background on this whole GSP thing, i keep mentioning. i remember it vividly, neal can't remember anything other than the fact that he went.
oh, and we had a bush patrol, too -- an RA that went around with a flashlight trying to bust people for making out in the bushes.
thomas kidd and i wrote "purple mescaline" on the steps of the girls' dorm. we performed it at a talent show. i jumped off of a four-foot high stage.... with my guitar... like a complete idiot.
anyway, i was walking out of my dorm one day to go meet jodi (the girl on whom i had an incredibly huge crush) and saw kristian and neal and their roommates hanging out by their room... on the roof of the little shelter over thri dorm's front door. they'd dragged a bed out thru their room's window and set it up out there. kk was standing on top of the bed, playing his black squier. later on, i was walking around the basement of the fine arts building and heard someone playing drums with the rolling stones. i opned the door to one of the practice rooms and there was a bright red pearl drumkit with this tall-lanky motherfucker behind it, and kk standing next to it with his squier, which i could barely hear over the drums and the stereo because his randall amp was so weak. so i just came in a sat down and watched for a while, and shot the shit with them. they were pretty cool. neal was playing something from sheet music he'd fastened under the screw-down on his ride cymbal. that was pretty cool.
a few days later, i ran into kk again out by the student center. there was this obnoxious guy named josh whit who'd cornered kk and a couple of other known guitar players, and was challenging them. "ah bet ah kin play better'n yew!" (even thought it wassupposed to be the best and brightest, there were some real idiots there.) he had a crappy white washburn and one of those tiny tiny marshall half-stack battery-operated belt-clip amps, and was playing "crazy train." kristian points at me as i walk up, and says, "hey josh, /this/ guy can play pretty well!" so the guy gets the fire in his eyes, and hands me the guitar. he didn't know i'd played crazy train for the sophomore talent show i my high school. he didn't know i'd been playing for four years solid. he didn't know i was in a band. i ripped through it the best i could on his crappy guitar, and when i looked up, he had that look on his face... he knew he'd been beaten. (he was actually a terrible guitarist, no shit, and this was back in the day when i had superman chops.) he took back his guitar and pouted and sulked away quickly. it was quite funny, like a movie moment.
and the last night there, they threw a lock-in. everyone on this campus, all the student, teachers, RAs, and even the admins, gathered in the student center and locked the doors. no one came in or out from 9 pm until 9 am. it was a great big all-night party. (the next day, at the closing ceremonies, the head admin said, "okay, parents --- no matter what your kid tell you, /don't/ let your kid drive home!") there were bands (four bands had formed at GSP... i somehow missed out on all of them, that somehow being called chaing-after-jodi-madison), a long dance, several movies, and all sorts of crazy shit happening all at once. this is the night i had the suspenseful kiss that almost didn't happen.... but that was at about 5am.
kk and neal were in a band called 222 blues revue. there was this piano-playing gospel singer who led the band, and their bassist was one of the RAs, but he sucked. they also switched off singers with another RA who broke the girls' hearts (and wigged out the guys) by being gay, but couldn't really sing. they did old blues tunes and pearl jam songs. near the end of their set, the terrible singer had driven most of the audience out fo the main dance hall. i wandred in to see what was going on, and they were trying to teach "immigrant song" to the bassist --- the pianist had already given up and left. they saw me down front and said, "hey, scott, do you know the bassline to 'the immigrant song'? wanna play it?" so i hopped up on the stage and played the tune and it kicked ass. and i gave the bass back to the bassist, and neal said, do you know any other zeppelin tunes?" and the bassist said, "i know 'the ocean'!" kk said, "i don't know how to play it..." then they offered me the guitar. wow. neal and i both remarked that it was the first time we'd met someone else who got the odd time signature parts right. it completely rocked. so they wanted to do one more... "how 'bout 'purple haze'?" i said... neal nodded, and i took off. and i sang. and we completely ripped it up. i mean, it was just too much rock and roll, a revved up version of the tune, with me and my metal-wanker guitar lead on the end. and then it was over, and i looked at the dark space in front of the stage and there were fifty screaming people. where did they come from? and i handed the guitar back to kk... and it was like that scene in _back_to_the_future_, where marty hadns the guitar back to the guy and he holds it out like a dangerous animal, looking at the thing like it's some kind of alien. and i tried to hand him back the pick, and he looked at it and said, "that thing's too chewed up for me to use, keep it."
i still have that pick in a little white box in my dresser.
that december there was a GSP reunion at heritage hall here in lexington, essentually another all-night lock-in, this time for all six hundred from both campuses. only about 400 showed up. 222 blues revue made another appearance. by popular demand, geoff sebesta and i (since thomas kidd was awol) made a repeat of the cabaret performance of "purple mescaline"... kk loaned me his guitar again, and this time neal joined us on drums, playing the exact drum line to "yellow submarine" (this is the performance that prompted me to record the four-track version that february).
so, now maaybe you see why i'm so sentimental about playing with these guys, and why i was so happy to run into kk and neal at uk. neal actually went to bellarmine college his first year, and transferred to uk the sophomore year. about six weeks into that semester, he and kk wrote "pasta pizzazz," and a couple of days later kk and i wrote "the one we wrote in the hall" out in the hall outside my room (310). the rest is history.
Sun Jul 4 12:33:06 1999