2006-04-21 - 12:41 p.m.
I�m so disappointed. Last night Nya and I hung out with the lead singer of Fat Day and his wife and I asked him if Fat Day could play at our wedding reception. Although Nya was a little wary this might mean that the first song we dance to as a couple would be artsy hardcore, I kind of liked the idea of having a live musical guest at our party.
Matt said they wouldn�t play because they weren�t really a going concern anymore. When I wrote that encomium to Fat Day here saying how sad I was that they were breaking up, they weren�t actually breaking up. But now they really are. A main reason for this is that the bassist wants to focus on the circus music he plays with another band.
This is especially upsetting because it means the bassist is letting me down on something I admired about him. At one point I sought to emulate some quality of each member of Fat Day. Although the singer already blew his admirableness many years ago, there was still a little part of me that wanted to still look up to the band.
The drummer (despite having grown up in car-dependent Atlanta) couldn�t drive. Yet he was still perfectly able to lead a complete life and tour extensively across the country with the band. I also don�t drive (it�s not that uncommon for people who grew up in New York) and thought hey, there�s a role model to follow to be a good non-driver!
The guitarist (corporate lawyer by day, hardcore musician by night) had lost most of his hair by the time I knew him. Yet he was quite gracefully bald. He hadn�t even gone the preemptive route by shaving his head entirely. He just unapologetically embraced his baldness. As someone also (if not quite so extremely) losing his hair, I thought, gee, I could learn a thing or two about how to do it with style from that man.
Although he isn�t at all now, back then the singer was quite the stoner. He smoked an awful lot of weed. And yet, he was a perfectly functional stoner. He owned and ran a record store and always played great, energetic stage shows. I didn�t toke up nearly as much, but I did sometimes. Hmm, I thought. Perhaps I should strive to be more like him and smoke up but still be responsible.
Alas, he was the first to disillusion me from this image as an idol. I rented his bedroom one summer (1998?) while they were away on tour. When I left, I still had a bunch of laundry in the drier in the basement. I came back a few days later to collect it. I was told that the guitarist had taken them out of the drier and bagged them up down there. But when I went down to the basement, they were gone.
Much to my dismay, I found that the singer, in some bit of stoned dementia, had decided that the clothes were actually garbage and thrown them out. This was depressing, not just because I�d lost a pile of clothes, but because I�d lost a role model for responsible stoniness. Apparently, he wasn�t actually a functional pothead. �Responsible�, my ass. He was responsible for trashing my favorite shirts.
And now the bassist has followed suit. He�d always been something of a more extreme radical than the rest. Yet along with his involvement with militant groups like Food not Bombs and Bikes not Bombs, he maintained a job as a technician in a research lab and could interact perfectly well with the world of squares.
Again, I wasn�t as extreme as he but I certainly had my radical tendencies. I felt I should look to him for a good example of how to channel righteous indignation into useful advocacy and change rather than just angry blathering. Plus he understood how to negotiate a broader life. Many militants get lost in an environment (like the world at large) where they�re not surrounded by similarly-minded radicals.
But now he seems to have totally lost touch with reality. He�s apparently quit his day job to become some sort of fulltime advocate for Bikes not Bombs. I was afraid to ask where he lives now, fearing I�d find out he�s a grown man in some gutterpunk squat (well, I guess I�ve been there myself). And Fat Day � too artsy for most punks, too raucous for most artistes � wasn�t obscure enough. He has to play circus music.
Yes, circus music. There was once another band in Boston called Jumbo that played circus music. But they were a jokey side project � an ever-shifting (and quite large) ensemble of musicians from other bands who thought it might be fun to blare away on trombones for a bit. The bassist�s new band however takes its music quite seriously. Circus music is no laughing matter to them.
Anyway, Fat Day will not be playing at my wedding because now there really is no more Fat Day. The singer�s here in Chicago, the drummer (who�s graduating from his doctoral program at Brown next month) is moving to Cincinnati, and the bassist� Well, you get the idea.
They�re apparently releasing a final, posthumous album. I�ll let you know when it comes out. For now, if you want to buy something from another band I�m friends with, Bishop Allen is doing a new EP every month this year. Check it out.
� 2006 Geoff Gladstone
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