Making the Cut with a Punk Rock Band

By Alex Romanelli

I interviewed my father who used to be a bass player for the semi-famous punk band the Plasmatics, about a memorable experience he had when he was sixteen. He saw an ad in the local music newspaper, the Village Voice, to audition for a punk rock band. He brought a beat up bass to their rehearsal space in Tribeca; he still remembered the address, 84 Thomas Street.

Back then he couldn't drive, so he took the subway. When he went there, the band was holding auditions. He sat and watched as every other bass player there played before him. He guessed that there were probably 80 people there.  But all the other people who auditioned would only play for like five seconds and then the band would throw them out of the room.

While he was waiting to audition he saw one of his friends, who was normally a guitar player but had his heart set on auditioning for this band’s bass position because he was a big fan of their music; his bass was even garbagier than my father’s. So while they waited, he asked him if he could borrow my Dad’s because he was going first.  He let him borrow it and his friend played for about 20 seconds and then they threw him out and said that he sounded terrible. 

Then it was my Dad’s turn; he got up and they were kind of surprised because they saw “a fat, chubby, 16-year-old kid with broken teeth.” As they started to chuckle he picked up the bass, adjusted a few settings and started playing. It really sounded good, and at the end they told him it sounded sort of like John Entwistle from The Who.  The people holding the audition showed him one song, which he caught onto right away. My father and the band started playing and after grooving for a few minutes, the manager of the band came in and turned the lights off, took a look around and said "you stay."