This Nostalgic Life #44

High School Memories

This Nostalgic Life is a free weekly publication rich with nostalgia brought to you by co-creators Eric Vardeman and Mick Lee. If this is your first time reading, you can subscribe using the button below so you don’t miss receiving any future issues delivered straight to your inbox.

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Welcome to the latest issue of This Nostalgic Life where the usual suspects, Eric and Mick, talk about days gone by. While Mick is still taking time off to tend to family matters, you’re stuck with yours truly (Eric) for a while. Before we go any further, lets take a minute and appreciate the three individuals staring at the camera in our main picture above. I have no idea who they are, I found this image on Reddit under r/OldSchoolCool. A comment on the image somehow knew this was in Austin, TX, in the late 80’s. They had absolutely no clue that this picture would end up on the internet (the inter-wut?) THIRTY FIVE years later, used as cover art by some nostalgia blog. I would love to be able to find these guys, ask them if they remember this and find out where they are now. But I digress. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

The month of May always makes me think of things coming to an end where high school is concerned. So, this month, we’re going to talk about prom, graduation, after high school plans and the like. Today we’re going to start with “favorite high school memories” and, for me, no memory is better than my high school band, Lost Cause.

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As I’ve probably mentioned before, I started playing guitar when I was fifteen. During the spring of my sophomore year, I met a guy at school named Johnny. He overheard me telling someone that I played guitar and struck up a conversation with me. He was the lead singer in a band and they happened to be looking for another guitar player, a rhythm player as they already had a lead player. That was fine with me because, at the time, I really only knew four or five songs but I lied and said I had more experience than I did. He invited me to their next practice to meet the other guys and I said “sure”.

When I showed up to practice and walked up to the door, I heard them inside playing though “Aint Talkin’ ‘Bout Love” by Van Halen and I immediately knew I was out of my depth. Way out of my depth. I liked them though, they were fun guys, and when they asked if I was interested in jamming there was no way I was saying “no”. We picked a couple of songs to work up and I worked my ass off for the next week to make sure I knew how to play them so I wouldn’t look or sound stupid when we got together again. I pulled it off and drove home that night feeling higher than a kite. I was in a band. A fringe benefit that didn’t take long for me to learn was saying you played guitar AND were in a band garnered a good amount of attention from the opposite sex…

Like any band that’s ever existed, we had turnover. The original drummer left but our bass player said he knew a guy. Enter Kevin. Then the original bass player up and left because he didn’t like our music selections. Never fear…I knew a guy that played bass. Enter Jeff and our lineup was set. Four of us - Jeff, Johnny, Dave and myself - were all seniors in 1988. Kevin was the lone junior.

Our repertoire included several Van Halen songs (Dave was a huge VH fan), a couple of Judas Priest songs (Johnny couldn’t really sing them but we loved the Priest double live album), “There’s Only One Way To Rock” by Sammy Hagar, “Wild Side” by Motley Crue (minus the sexy background singers) and “Living On A Prayer” by Bon Jovi (I had access to a talk box via my guitar teacher). We practiced at Kevin’s house a lot because he didn’t want to lug his drums around. His dad let him turn the attic into his rehearsal space which meant we had to lug our amps and instruments up the ladder to the attic which was a total pain in the ass. Eventually, we took over his garage.

We had an eventful senior year, to say the least. There was group of juniors who were in a band, as well, and a rivalry quickly developed on the level of the Jets and the Sharks. However, we were much more willing to take our torment to the next level no matter the occasion. So much so that several of us got called into the principle’s office for one stunt that we pulled. They had circumstantial evidence and could never pin anything directly on us but it was memorable (someone at our 20th reunion brought it up, in fact). Our crowning achievement, however, was playing the senior talent show. We were the last act on stage and ripped through a rendition of “There’s Only One Way To Rock”. Dave and I both procured large amps to make our setup look cooler and we created the banner below to be lowered from the ceiling near the end of our song. All the seniors in the crowd went bananas when they saw it but hey…they could just as easily been going bananas for us all the same, right?

My biggest regret, without a doubt, is the fact that we have no surviving pictures of us at practice or performing or just hanging out. Unlike high schoolers of today, we didn’t have a camera ready at a moments notice to document day to day life. Nobody in the band has any surviving pictures and I asked several other people if they had any but nothing turned up. I just happened to stumble across the banner several years ago as I was cleaning some things out of my parents attic. I even contacted the journalism teacher at my high school (who was, by the way, the journalism teacher when I was there) if she had ANYTHING from that year. She said there was a good possibility that she did at one time but several years ago a vice principle made her get rid of all her archives because they needed the space for something else. What a jerk.

I’m still in pretty regular contact with three of the four guys in the band. In fact, Dave (the other guitar player) and I use Marco Polo to video chat almost every day. We talk more now than we did in high school! He lives in Austin, TX, and is a tour guide which fits him to a “T”. Kevin, the drummer, lives in the Kansas City area and plays more guitar now than drums. We chat on occasion. John, the singer, also lives in Austin, TX, with his soon to be wife (going to their wedding in November) and we talk pretty regularly. Jeff, the bass player, disappeared for a long time. I finally found him on LinkedIn a number of years ago but there wasn’t much conversation. He works in IT in the Atlanta metro the last I knew.

It was a short time that we were together as a band but it was a fun time full of memories and stories that I will carry with me forever.

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Thank you for joining me for this issue. Drop us a comment and share your favorite high school memory. Until next time, remember there’s only one way to rock!