My Brief Songwriting Career, Such As It Was

This morning, as I got comfortable with my rental car -- some kind of midsized Dodge ("Avenger," I think it's called. Weird name for a car.) -- I did what I always do in that situation: hit the "Scan" button on the radio, listening for halfway decent stations. Upon hearing a familiar riff, I left it on 100.3, KJKK, "Jack FM." I began to sing along with Chrissie Hynde, approximating the lyrics, "Middle of the road/It's the common thing/I'm standing in a middle life cry with my pants behind me..."

Wait a minute, I thought, I know that riff. And then I remembered: Jem Aswad and I sat in the basement hallway of our freshman year dormitory, the Robert Shaw Living/Learning Center, well after hours, Jem on the guitar, me straining to make my voice sound anywhere near acceptable. I don't remember what drugs we were on, but I have to believe they were good; either that, or Jem was a serious masochist.

We "wrote" a number of songs, the worst of which may have been "I'm Rotting," a touching tune about life equalling continual decay. (We were so deep.) In our defense, the A-G-E riff heard on "Middle of the Road" was ours first. Sadly, we did not record "I'm Rotting" to provide proof of this.

(Whoa, man, I just thought of something: We wrote a song about the decay of growing old, and the chords were A, G, E, man! Too bad those were the only chords. In the whole song.)

Okay, so we never became the rock stars we aimed to be. To his credit, Jem has come much closer, writing for Rolling Stone, MTV and Billboard. And he still plays guitar quite well, often appearing at PS 321 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, playing for his daughter's rapt class.

Me, I've made something of a name for myself as a vocalist in certain exclusive Karaoke circles. Due to blogging guidelines, I am not at liberty to repeat that name here, unfortunately.

Hey listen, the way I like to think of it is this: We may not have written any good songs down there is the bowels of Shaw Hall in the small wee hours of the morning.

But we did create one hell of a friendship.

Thank God it's lasted longer than "I'm Rotting."