It’s a rare gift to be able to measure friendships in decades. While I’ve had many friends, bandmates, and roommates through the years, there are very few that have been all of these, simultaneously. And then, there is only one Aaron Faulls.
Today is not the anniversary of when we met. That was a few weeks back. This is the anniversary of WHY we met. This day, 20 years ago, the band Primus was playing at the Orpheum Theatre in Boston as part of their Pork Soda tour. I had heard about the show because I happened to overhear Aaron talking about it in the Gordon College Snack Shop in a group of people. Aaron and I hadn’t met yet, but everyone knew him as the kid that wore the ostentatious green shades at orientation. I was thinking to myself “Man, does this guy have a Bono complex or what?”
So, without provocation, I lit upon Aaron, and from the way he describes it, frightened the hell out of him. “Primus?!?!? Where?!” He shared the details, and we made a plan to go and purchase tickets. Being a newly-minted college freshman and having a new mainland sense of freedom that this island kid never had, a concert in Boston sounded just about perfect.
So, if memory serves me correctly, we hitched a ride down to Boston with some other new friends that were catching a different show.
Around this time, an idea was forming in our friend Joseph’s mind that involved getting all of these crazy characters to get together and make post-art rock music of his very literary design. Aaron and I found ourselves in this crew of 5, not surprised that we were already getting to make music together after having just met so “accidentally.”
Things all changed right around this time.
Happy some-kind-of-anniversary, pal.