Blak Sabloon
Thursday, June 6, 2013 at 8:51AM 
In high school, my twin brother, myself, and our good buddy formed a mock rock band called “Blak Sabloon”. I forget exactly how we came up with the name. But it had something to do with our buddy being into Black Sabbath, and both Mike and I detesting them.
When we formed, or more accurately, invented, this fictional group, we did it all the way. We each created our own character within the band, who were alter egos of ourselves, and even came up with their back stories. We took old clothing, jewelry, some of it that even belonged to dad....or mom....and ripped it, colored it, used it creatively, and made our stage costumes.
We knew how to play music, so we taped our performances (totally Old School, using cassette tape) and created a unified recording out of those tapes. Just like you would with a “real” album. We created a body of work. A sonically obscene body of work, but a body of work nonetheless.
The true mayhem of it all was that, even though we could all play instruments, we took our musical ability and completely fucked around with it. For example, I was the lead singer. And I really can’t sing. On top of that, we would deliberately choose songs that were out of my key (if I even had a key), just so that the vocals would sound even more horrific. There was lots of screaming, made up lyrics, and improvisation. We would switch instruments. We would take songs we knew and turn them on their heads. Sometimes my brother Mike, aka AcidHead Glasscock, would start playing another song in the middle of the one we were playing, without telling the rest of the band. Sometimes we would play songs we didn’t know, just to see what would happen. It was gloriously creative and ridiculously fun.
The band was supposed to sound bad. Awful, in fact. The worse it sounded, the funnier it was. Being decent musicians, we played the music well enough so that you knew what song it was and could identify with it and the musicianship involved. With that foundation, we knew how to push the song into the plane of the absurd, then pull it back just as it got completely out of control. It was barely controlled insane musical madness.
The band would sometimes invite friends over for a “concert”. Throw in a few beers and bodies, and it was just a good fuckin‘ time by a bunch of hyper-creative high school kids looking for an outlet with no rules, no boundaries, and the the wide open imaginative space to go wherever the hell we wanted. And we did. Often. During these shows, some of our buddies would get up and do guest vocal appearances, which were always a gas. My brother Mike was the only one of us who could sing well, and he never sang. That says everything about what the band was about right there.
Not only did we record all of this sonic mayhem, but we took it a step further; we created the physical album itself. We took a Mary Poppins double album and glued construction paper to it so we could write and draw whatever the hell we wanted on it. This was inventive and resourceful action in a time of zero personal computers.
The three of us were way ahead of our time. This was Spinal Tap, years before there even was a Spinal Tap.
The resulting labor of love, “Black Sabloon: Wasted Live! (at the Inforium)” looked like a real album. It was complete with graphic design, photos, song descriptions, and band and crew information. We even came up with “critics reviews” of the band. All terrible, of course. My character, BoneHead Glasscock (twin brother of guitarist AcidHead), was described as having a voice that sounded like “a cross between a malfunctioning chainsaw and a rhinoceros in labor”. We used “Kiss: Alive!” as our design template and created a double live album, which were very popular at the time.
The creation of Blak Sabloon says more about me than it may appear. More than just the silly play of a bunch of high school musicians, it allowed me to bring so much of what I love, so much of what I’m good at, to create something that was different, unique, one of a kind - qualities that many people use to describe me. I got to create a whole world, with a team of people I loved, and bring all the imagination, creativity, and unbridled self expression that I could muster. It was refreshingly raw, marvelously irreverent, passionately youthful, and incredibly fun. As somebody close to me brought up, many people lose a lot of those qualities as they get older, but I have somehow managed to buck that trend and bring all of that, and more, on a new level, to my life today. And that will always be so. Because that’s such an integral part of what makes me....me.
The picture above is from the back of the album. It is our Officially Unofficial “Band Publicity Shot”. Of all the pictures of me and my friends during high school, this ranks as one of my all time favorites. It sums up our collective Blak Sabloon experience perfectly. There is attitude, camaraderie, youth, a fuck all sense of humor, and the implied presence of illicit substances. All crucial elements in the makings of a great Rock N’ Roll photo.
We were sixteen.
And the more things change, the more they stay the same.......
©2013 Clint Piatelli, MuscleHeart, and Red F Publishing. All rights reserved.
Being Yourself, Humor, Music 
Reader Comments (2)
Clint/John That was fuckin AWESOME!
Bean, my old friend! Thank you for your kind words. As a True Rocker Extraordinaire of The Highest Caliber, I know you appreciate this story. And I know you relate to it. Grateful and blessed to have you back in my life again. Your wisdom and love is priceless....
Your nickname for me....SuperFoot (acknowledging my extremely powerful bass drum presence...)