ROSE MELBERG

AJ and I are seeing ROSE MELBERG (formerly of TIGER TRAP GO SAILOR and THE SOFTIES) tomorrow. I'm extra excited, because she use to be friends with my friend RENEE back in St. Louis and i have this fantasy that I will be able to go up to her before or after the show and tell her that i am friends with RENEE and she'll get all excited, and ask how she is, and i'll give her RENEE's phone number and they end up talking, and it will instigate RENEE into writing songs again.

see RENEE use to be in this band called BUNNYGRUNT. she was the bass guitarist and she was what made the band interesting - she was never afraid of crunching on the distortion pedal or a little feedback. Her bandmates however were always trying to stick to the four on the floor pop structure formula. okay so i have a bit of bias, as i'm friends with her, and not with the other bandmates.

regardless, she was kicked out of the band and they went ahead and released an album of music that she recorded with them and was an integral part of (she played bass on all the tracks, wrote or contributed to writing all the songs and sang back up on everything on the CD), even though she never saw any of the royalty or got any credit. to this day i have never heard any of it because she was so upset about being kicked out of the band that I couldn't bring myself to buy it. which I don't blame her.

I was heartbroken to hear that she took her car and ran over the only remaining copy of the full complete album (with the tracks that she sang lead on, but were pulled from the official release of the CD). i still hope that somewhere, in the back of her closet, she has another copy and she'll hand it over to me. but probably not.

anyway i've been in and out of contact with RENEE since moving away from the midwest. she's a sweetheart that has had a lot of hard times but like The Jefferson, she's moving on up....

She's married and has a beautiful baby. which is SHOCKING to me, as the last time i talked to she was still living in CHICAGO with her potential fiance (i can't remember if they actually were engaged or not at that moment). the baby is 6 months old and RENEE is sounding pretty happy nowadays.

i do miss RENEE. and everytime i hear ROSE MELBERG i think of her. SO i'm excited about the show. But i know in my heart of hearts, RENEE will probably never write another song again - as the band experience was so traumatic for her, and she's closed that chapter of her life. which makes me sad. sadder than any song that ROSE can sing.

But i look foward to seeing ROSE in person. even if i don't get a chance to talk to her. even if she never calls RENEE, and even if RENEE doesn't ever sing or write another note. ROSE reminds me of sweeter, gentler, more innocent times. of hanging out with RENEE and going to the thrift stores, and listening to a lot of soft indie pop. of a time when there were infinite possiblities of what we could do with our lives.