For more than three years I was a member of Angry Flannel, which, according to sources such as our website, was "Boston’s best early 90’s cover band". Our band was the brainchild of two MIT fraternity brothers who believed that playing in a 90’s cover band would attract more women than would living an apartment with several guys who were playing video games or starting software companies. The name was supposed to capture the spirit of our genre of music, which was Early 90's Grunge.  The name was Drew's idea and since he was the Band Leader, we let it slide, even though it was weird. Drew became Band Leader when he moved to an apartment that contained a basement large enough to set up a five piece band, as long as everyone didn't mind slouching and I didn't mind having the drum set behind the stairs completely out of view of the rest of the band.

Our lead guitarist was Rusty, a prematurely bald guy from Orlando who worked as a valet, and, apparently, played the guitar at all other times. Rusty was an amazing guitar player, which, at times was a burden as it drew attention to the play of other, less talented band members such as myself, Drew, Will and whoever happened to be singing at the time.

We had a hard time nailing down a singer and like lots of bands before us, we lost our share before landing a winner. The first singer we auditioned informed us that he was hoping to make “about $1,500 a month” from his participation in the band.  This fact alone was kind of a deal-breaker since the rest of the band had the intention of occasionally playing for free beer and mostly playing in Drew's basement, but he signed his official release when he informed us that he would prefer if we practiced one day a week without him so that he didn't have to waste his time watching us screw up the opening bars of “Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots where I was supposed to play ba, ba, brrra bup bup bup, and I frequently played ba, braaa, bup bup bup.  Also, he might have been a rapist.

For nearly two years we had a singer named Jeff, who was pretty fat but could really sing and who had some kind of a job selling things to teachers, possibly vacations.  On the eve of one of our biggest shows, Jeff gathered the band together to let us know that the show would be his last, he blamed his departure in small part on the fact that the band “wasn't going anywhere” and that it “felt like we are always playing the same handful of songs” and in large part, on having developed “vocal polyps”, which I assumed was just a different name for Isaac, Drew, Will and Rusty.

After Jeff left us, we were joined by a guy named Justin, who was always studying for exams and spent much of our rehearsal time telling us about his girlfriend had been on "The Fresh Price of Bel-Air" in some kind of a bit role and then acting annoyed by our reaction, even though we all said we believed him.

When Rusty returned to Orlando, we were joined by a guy named Andres, who had hair that looked like a buzz cut even though it was 4 inches long.  Andres was an o.k. guitar player, but he missed approximately every rehearsal because he was always moving, or installing a floor.  Andres was the kind of a guy whose demeanor never changed. He would have the same half-baked look if you kicked him in the shin, or told him the woman of his dreams was going to fall from the sky to help him install tile.  On the very few occasions when he was at rehearsal, he would always have to go upstairs to join a conference call about his job, which had something to do with trying to make sure every child in the Third World had a laptop.

Our bass player's name was Will and he was about as good at the bass as any person who had never heard of the bass could be if you showed them how to play a bass and gave them twenty minutes to practice. 

Amazingly, all of our personnel setbacks didn't stop Angry Flannel from being a success.  We played many shows at lots of venues, including Drew's living room (where my drums had to be set up in the dining room) an all-girls school on-campus bar, and an MIT graduate school dorm, where the residents mostly tried to walk through the lobby to go do their laundry without it looking like they were watching us play.  By the end of our run, we had established a fairly regular semi-monthly gig at a couple of bars in the area and had developed a following among our friends, and people Drew sort of knew from MIT.  Unfortunately, Drew got a real job and moved to San Francisco, making the use of his basement unlikely.  I like to think that if he hadn't, we'd still be rocking, polyps and all.