STEVE'S BIOGRAPHY

Until the day I met Dave Ritter at Pleasing Acres rehabilitation clinic, where I was recovering from another amphetamine summer, I felt so alone. I wrote a song about that summer. It’s called, ‘November.’ You should listen to it.

Dave had volunteered as a counsellor, and was the first to break through the wall of depression that inevitably ensues after four solid months of believing, with all your soul, that you can see through light. He took my child-like hand in his own and said, just quietly enough so the all-male Confessions, Okay! circle couldn’t hear:

“Someday, little brother. Someday.”

And from that day forth, my addiction would be to rock. And Diazepam. And rock.

How was I to know that I would be one of two busily orbiting hydrogen molecules that, when combined with rock’s life-giving oxygen, was to form a sea of kick ass? A sea as in panties. As in around my ankles on stage.

I wasn’t to know. Was I? I don’t know. Listen to ‘November,’ it’s all in there.

Since that day, many important things have happened that I can no longer remember. I woke up to find that I am now playing guitar and not the drums as I last recall, and we have three new members, some of which, quite frankly, I don’t like. Sure, we sound better, but I have my doubts. It used to be just Dave and I. Like Wilma and Betty, if they had been lesbians and the prehistoric ages had been socially progressive, which they weren’t, and that’s a shame.

And when those doubts arise, I know I only need look up from my diary for but a moment, to look, as always, to Dave - as I know Dave looks to me in his darkest hours. Which can’t be many because, as far as I know, he doesn’t work or anything.

And there, twinkle-in-eye, I can expect him to mouth silently…’Someday.’

And that’s how I learned to read.

– by Conrad