Not a lot of people know this about me, but I dated an actual rock star, and not your garden-variety, mass market, "American Idol" pop star, either. No, "Kunte Kente" was (and is) a bona fide punk rocker with impressive music credentials. I met him at the recording studio I worked at, just as my marriage was breaking up, which was perfect timing. I needed a big head-of-steam to exit a poorly-made marriage, and punk rock gave me the edge I needed to punch my way out of a bad situation. That, and my new boyfriend threatened to kill my ex if he ever tried to contact me again, with a solid 6'1, 265 lb., ex-football player's frame to back it up. It was the perfect ending to a volatile relationship.
Kent had toured as a replacement guitarist for a skater band from Southern California called "Agression", led by frontman Mark Hickey. After that gig went bust, Mark moved back to Colorado to start a band called "Mark Hickey's Blues", and after that band broke up (Mark died from cirrhosis, like old rockers so often do), Kent and another singer created the band "Praise G-d And Pass The Ammunition" named after an old military song, that retained the sense of humor and spirit with which the previous bands were formed.
They were (like most native Coloradans) violently anti-hippie, what with the massive migration of tech transplants from Southern California fanning the flames of their homeland aggression. It was easy to see why. In less than five years, the landscape had totally changed. What was once gently rolling foothills leading to the massive Rockies grew almost overnight into generically suburban homes built in haste and poor taste, in ugly cul-de-sac after ugly cul-de-sac.
So much for the Western frontier. It was so bad that the state allocated their lottery proceeds for buying land in the foothills that will never be developed, creating an "open space" park system rife with obnoxious weekend warriors. In short, there was a lot to be angry about. The building boom that had given my ex and my new boyfriend so much work also crowded out the wildlife we loved so much. C'est la vie. Kent told me that being in a band was like juggling five girlfriends at the same time, because the interpersonal dynamics are so challenging.
Soon after we met and the band played a few gigs, Kent started grumbling about the "Yoko Ono" of their group: a tall, plain, skinny girl called "Precious". She'd broken up the lead singer's marriage to be the youngest of us all, and in the heat of that breakup, she lashed out at me as an uneasy target for their growing tensions, but it was too hard a sell, given the fact that I'd art directed their only CD, which made her hate me even more, since I had genuine work-related credentials. She wore a dog collar with a dog tag of her name around her neck proudly, even though Kent bought it as a snarky joke for her utter lack of a true identity, because he used tags in his line work as a master electrician.
Anyway, their interests were waning. Mike, the lead singer, and the drummer were both in their 40s, and Kent and I had moved in together with our own careers to look after. The only thing the 20-something girlfriend had to cling to was that group, which was naturally moving on, as she looked for someone to blame. But, touring gets old and so do the mean drunks throwing cans at the stage, which means most punk rock bands (fueled by youth) die a natural death, like it did for "Praise G-d". Still, every now and again, when I'm moving stuff around the house, I find those old CD's with their photos to remind me of our hardcore punk past, and it was a blast. Hang in there, rockers. Aging gracefully is never easy.
