Dennis and his band’s experience with the “pretendian”
All this talk about Buffy Sainte-Marie’s true identity reminded me of the first band I was ever in. Me and my buddies had a hairball idea to approach the manager of a bar called The Trading Post, in Inuvik, and tell him that we had a band and would play for free if he let us. He agreed. He told us we could do the Saturday-afternoon jam and if someone actually danced and no one threw any beer bottles at us, he’d hire us on the spot.
I only knew two songs all the way through, “Bobby McGee” and “Johnny B. Goode,” and my cousin Derek knew a couple of tear-jerkers. The third stooge, Eddy, knew one or two and we figured we could bullshit our way through the jam with what we knew.
When the owner asked us what the name of our band was, Eddy blurted out, “Indian Pride!” If you did the DNA on three of us, you’d be hard-pressed to find a big toe, between the three of us, that was full-blooded Indian. He tore off a flap from a case of Five Star Whiskey and scribbled “Saturday Jamboree with Indian Pride” and thumbtacked it to the front door.
I had an electric guitar that was missing one string, but I plugged it in, anyway, into the house amplifier and damned near fried myself from all the loose wiring. Derek borrowed a bass from the church. It had a neck more crooked than the preacher’s. Eddie taped the words, “Indian Pride” on the front of the house drum kit, with hockey tape, and our band was official.
Derek had the bright idea to smoke a joint before we went onstage, and we spent the first half-hour trying to figure out how to get the sound system working and then untangling our feet from all the wires. He was testing the mic and standing in front of the speaker when Eddy turned the volume to ten and almost made Derek’s ears bleed from the feedback. The owner came running up from behind the bar and threatened to throw us out if we didn’t get the damned jam going.
When we finally figured it out, I started singing. Derek was playing bass in the wrong key and wrong time signature, and Eddy was playing a beat that, to this day, I’ve still never heard of. There were only a few people in the bar and, as drunk as they were, even they couldn’t make sense of our version of “Bobby McGee.” I could have kissed Eddy for finally playing an outro to indicate the song was done.
Derek cleared his throat and called out, “‘Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain.’”
“What key?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he replied.
“Well, sing it so I can find the key.”
It took us five minutes of me leaning in to hear him sing while I tried to find out what key he was singing in. This drunk guy walked up to the stage and told us our guitars were out of tune. “Do you know how to tune it?” I asked him. He stepped onstage but fell backwards onto the drums. The owner came running up and was fuming. In the meantime, the “R” and the “D” in the word Pride had peeled off and the words read “Indian P i e.”
Somebody yelled out, “Who the (expletive) is Indian Pie?”
The owner growled at us through gritted teeth, “Sing a (expletive) song or get the (expletive) off the stage.” (If looks could kill, they’d of been embalming us on the spot.)
Derek cleared his throat again and started singing. He forgot the second verse and ended up humming it and making up the words to the chorus. I don’t believe in miracles, but when this couple got up and waltzed all the way through the song, I changed my mind … so, the next time you meet a “pretendian,” think of Indian Pie.
