Nic Brown - Bang Bang Crash

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR

Bang Bang Crash

Bang Bang Crash is irresistible, a sly memoir that comes on like a great pop songcatchy, fast paced, wittyonly to deepen into a meditation on creativity and the search for meaning. Music fans will, of course, devour the book. Anyone who has struggled to find their way as an artist will discover something deeper in Nic Browns wise, compassionate voice: a true companion.

Steve Almond, author of Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life

What happens when you discover that youre a grown man, living out the dreams of a boy? Nic Brown asks a good questionparticularly if youre a drummer. Some cant or wont wake up from those dreams, but Brown found a new one. Through ill-fated yet redemptive forays into everything from rapping to tennis, our hero narrates the birth, by turns amusing and a little heartbreaking, of an inspiring second act of a very American life.

Michael Azerrad, author of Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana and Our Band Could Be Your Life

Theres Jean-Paul Sartres Being and Nothingness, and then theres Nic Browns Bang Bang Crash. Ive never read a more satisfactory memoir that concerned what shouldve been and what should be. This is a journey that we all take, whether we like it or not. I loved this story completely, and although I might say I wish Id taken this path, Im glad I didnt. What a great memoir, the best Ive read in years.

George Singleton, author of You Want More: Selected Stories

Most rock memoirs are about excess. But Nic Browns Bang Bang Crash is about ambivalence. It asks, What happens if you get everything you ever wanted and discover that you should have wanted something else? What should you do next? Well, in Nic Browns case, he put down his drumsticks and wrote this charming, funny, rueful, wise book about the rock and roll life, and the life after the rock and roll life. An essential addition to the long, ongoing American story of second chances, second acts.

Brock Clarke, author of Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?

ALSO BY NIC BROWN

Floodmarkers

Doubles: A Novel

In Every Way: A Novel

For Mark

CONTENTS

Lets say it comes up at a dinner party. Were at a friends house and the food is moving around the table. Theres potato salad. Cheap beer. Its a potluck. Everything is very relaxed. Someone is talking about their son who is learning to play the drums.

Oh, Nic was in a band, someone says.

A few heads turn. Most people here know me, but a few dont.

Well, a lot of bands, actually, I say, as if to fracture their focus. I take the pasta. Its clear Im trying to move away from the subject. But yeah, I used to play the drums.

No no, but whats the band? they say. Then to the table, Nic had a hit song.

The mood changes at this, like an interesting and unexpected animal has just entered the room. Fascinating and exciting to some, uncomfortable and out of place to me.

Well, I say. Yeah. But there are a lot of hit songs. And it wasnt a big hit.

Wait, what was it? somebody says, someone who doesnt know me. Do I know it?

I tell them they dont. That there are twenty different charts with twenty different top twenty songs today, right now, at this very moment, and likely none of us know number twenty on any of them. Or fourteen. Thats what we got to, I think, on Billboards alternative rock chart in the summer of 1998. It was many years ago now. I name the song, the band. Maybe I mention a few other groups that I played with. They dont know any of them. Most people dont anymore. I tell them that my first record deal was with a band that I formed to play my eighth-grade dance. That right after high school we signed a contract with Atlantic Records. That I did that for a few years and then moved on to play with other acts, some bigger, some better, before finally calling it quits.

Well, Ill have to look you up, they say.

I make a joke about the internet. That things are maybe better left in the nineties. Because if they do look me up, they wont recognize anything that I did. I was like a baseball player who gets called up for a few seasons on a subpar team. I made it to the majors, but you dont remember me. I wasnt one of the greats. I was just good enough.

I reach for the bread. The conversation moves on. The topic of my past as a musician lingers, though, like a mist. It clouds my vision for a whilemaybe even until I get home that night, trailing vapors of it into the bed with me.

Elizabeth Bishop said once that theres nothing more embarrassing than being a poet. To which I thought, when I read it: try being a drummer. How can you tell if the stage is level? The drummer is drooling out of both sides of his mouth. Whats the last thing a drummer says to his band? Lets try one of my songs. Whos the guy who always hangs around with musicians? A drummer. My profession is a literal punch line. As a child the dream of drumming was gilded with romance and the promise of thrill. As an adult, though, I have learned, your childhood dream can become something else entirely, especially if it comes true.

At the grocery store in Greensboro, sometimes I see people I knew growing up.

Nic! Still playing the drums? theyll say, dropping a box of cereal into their cart.

Not really, I say.

No?

We move out of the way of someone passing by, talk about our children. Sometimes I feel bad for having said that I dont still play, as if Im letting these people down.

Well, I do teach my daughter sometimes, I might add.

But the truth is I never do play the drums. Thats only if Im talking about hitting a drum with a stick, though. The real answer, the one that is more accurate, is that I am always playing the drums. That rhythms and songs and patterns are dancing constantly through my mind, twirling in and around the beat of the windshield wipers, the thud of my footsteps, or the click of my grocery cart as I wheel it away.

Every day and everywhere I go I tap complicated patterns out on my teeth. Ive done this for years. Am doing it right now, as I type. Each cusp is a different tone. The side of a molar on my upper right is the hi-hat cymbal. The bass drum is just a tooth back. My snare is a touch of the bottom incisors against the back of the top ones. Fills happen by sliding my jaw to the left and the right, clicking my teeth together in a quick succession of eighth notes like Im gently swishing wine. The sound is incredible inside my head: resonant, deep, and totally mine.

You must grind your teeth, the dentist keeps saying, as he prods deeply into my mouth. Do you grind your teeth?

No, I say, with difficulty, as he squeaks a latex-covered thumb on a molar.

You have serious wear patterns, he says. This happens every time I go to him. He digs his metal poker into an actual pit that has opened up in one tooth on my bottom left side. Your wife ever say you grind your teeth at night?

No.

He keeps prodding as I stare into the light.

I cant bring myself to explain to him what it is that Ive done. That Ive tapped actual holes into my teeth. That I play them like a secret drum set inside my mouth. Part of me is afraid the dentist will think I am crazy. Another part is afraid that hell tell me to stop.