Mister Sensitive

The Mister Sensitive Songbook is a real piece of work, in the literal sense. It exists, is what I mean.

It was registered with the United States Copyright Office on Jan. 7, 1997 , # PAu 2-157-675, and it has my name all over it. I'm holding the form at the moment- whoah-Flashback City, dude:

In 1997 I was Mr. Sensitive, which was also the name of my band. It started as a four-piece: two guitars, bass, drums - me on vocals. There was a lot of animosity between the other guitarist and myself-we are territorial, we guitarists- so he quit after a while, as did the first drummer...eventually we found a steady drummer and kept going as a trio- five years maybe, on/off...it's kinda fuzzy.
I was taking a lot of drugs back then, I think.

In 1997 I actually took the time to submit my compositions to the Copyright Office, which indicates that I must have believed that my songs had some commercial potential- how serious I was!
I really thought I was gonna 'make it', whatever that means.
How stupid.

Still, it was fun. We once had a show on Easter Sunday- I played Easter Egg Roulette with the audience- I had 12 eggs to hand out, but only 11 of them were hard-boiled- CATCH! SPLAT! oops
That was one of my 'schticks'- pelt the audience before they could pelt us. We were a pretty good live band- you have to be good to throw food at the audience and get away with it.
We were rewarded with pizza and beer - people actually ordered -and paid for- pizza delivered to us on stage-that's the Big Time by my current standards.
(I wish someone would buy me a fuckin' pizza today...or a muffin)

Then there was the Drunken Santa show...I wore a Santa Suit and drank an entire fifth of Cuervo Gold during a 60 minute set.
On stage. Christmas Eve.
So I am told.
I don't precisely remember it, but I think the costume rental shop kept my deposit.

My memory is keyed by musical notes. Some are sour.

How about Gulf War 1? I was on stage with a different band when the Scuds started landing in Israel- the bartender asked us to stop playing so everyone could hear the TV's...we did. We wanted to see the news too- nobody knew what might happen.

Then there were the bands that were asked to stop playing for aesthetic reasons.
In one such band, at a very crowded gig, our drummer removed one of his cymbals from it's stand and flung it at his girlfriend, who dodged it and responded by smashing her bass guitar on his drumkit. Then she punched him in the face.
Three hundred people saw this.

We never played again after that. I did, however, date the bassist for a couple months.