So the success of my childhood friends taught me that nothing was impossible. Becoming a singer was a matter of wanting it badly enough. Spending my days doing other things was a matter of just deciding other life priorities matter more to me. It sounds so simple, but it was very hard to digest this idea because I had always figured that someone else was going to come along and save me...But there I was in New York City, suspended above 9th avenue in a grimy rehearsal space that may or may not have once belonged to The Strokes. Fred was writing meandering songs that never resolved, that went in maddening circles until they droned to a slow and dreary halt. But hey, I figured it was easier than trying to play guitar myself on stage, while singing and still managing not to throw up from stagefright. It's hard to do three things at once. On a whim, I stuck a flyer on the bulletin board at Maxwell's in Hoboken and a week later we had ourselves a cellist. Jenny was classically trained and had never played in a rock band before, but someone had told her that it would be a good way for her to relieve stress. Then in the space of two weeks Fred developed a crush on Jenny, got in an e-mail-based fight with our new drummer, Chris (an eloquent exchange which involved Fred calling Chris "Gwyneth" and culminated in the classy phrase "Go Fuck Yourself") and generally became more insistent that we drain every shred of passion or energy from all of our songs. It was a far cry from stress relief...We played our first show at the Acme Underground and I still have some polaroid pictures documenting that day. It was raining, as they say in Texas, harder than cow piss on a tin roof, and we were frizzy-haired and over-dressed. Fred insisted on playing his electric guitar sitting on his amp with his legs crossed. This was his physical way of conveying to the audience: This is NOT rock and roll, people. THIS is music reminiscent of that wave of lo-fi indie rock from the mid-nineties that sloshes about with no discernible conclusion. The thought bubble over his head read "I am fundamentally opposed to music as catharsis."We considered the show a success because no one (1) fainted or fell down (2) made such a terrible mistake that we had to stop a song and start over and because (3) more than nine people showed up. Which isn't to say that we actually SOUNDED good. We knew that wouldn't happen until we kicked Fred out of the band...