Sophomore Stories Part XXI "Under The Sea"

My Freshman year, my roommate, K-Mac, bought a guitar at the end of the first semester. My grade point average plummeted a full grade point that spring. By the beginning of my sophomore year, I was fully engrossed in the pursuit of guitar playing excellence (still on that pursuit by the way)
This was awesome, because both myself, and my roommate, James, had guitars. I spent the first semester really honing my sound, finding that brand of special music that in the early nineties people called grunge, but it's really just rock-n-roll evolved.
Somewhere along the way, I came across a piece of sheet music I had purchased back in high school. It was "Under the Sea" from the Disney animated classic "The Little Mermaid" (currently unavailable for purchase on DVD...another topic for another post)
For fun, I started to play "Under the Sea" with my guitar plugged into James' amp, but on a setting that provided a clean sound. Then, I switched the setting to give the guitar a very distorted, rock sound. Right around then is when James walked in on me...
fast forward a couple of months...

Enter The Ellsworth Hall Gong Show! Win Prizes!

I'm pretty sure it was James' idea to enter...but whatever the case, we quickly got Eric the Bassist from down the hall to join our conceptual band, a band that would cover "Under The Sea" in the Ellsworth Hall Gong Show.

We held various rehearsals in many distinguished places...our dorm room, my parents basement (my parents dog still has nightmares I'm sure), the sanctuary of Morning Star Church...and working together, not unlike the three rocks in 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' James on drums, Eric on bass and me on guitar and 'vocals,' we forged a unique, wildly entertaining version of the Ariel classic.

We officially entered under the name 'Spilt Meniscus' which is the greatest unknown band name, guaranteed to be mispronounced by every RA posing as an emcee. Then the anticipation set it...

For the record, here's a lyrical breakdown of what we came up with...

Slow, intense grunge sound, like Eddie Vedder
The seaweed is always greener
In somebody else's lake
You dream about going up there
But that is a big mistake
Just look at the world around you
Right here on the ocean floor
Such wonderful things surround you
What more is you lookin' for?

we paused at the end of this verse, waiting for all the instruments to resolve before I erupted with

UNDER THE SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEA! in a voice like Steven Tyler at the end of 'Dream On' we picked up the tempo with a hard rock distortion sound while I screamed the next verse and chorus...
under the sea
Darling it's better down where it's wetter
Take it from me
Up on the shore they work all day
Out in the sun they slave away
While we're devoting full time to floating
Under the sea

Down here all the fish is happy
As after the waves they roll
The fish on the land ain't happy
They sad 'cause they in the bowl!
But fish in the bowl is lucky
They in for a worser fate
One day when the boss get hungry
Guess who goin' be on the plaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate

'plate' was held out, screaming as loud as I could while James did a massive drum fill, then when all seemed quiet again, I came back with another...

Under the SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEA!
Under the sea
Nobody beat us, fry us and eat us
In frickazee
We what the land folks loves to cook
Under the sea we off the hook
We've got no troubles, life is the bubbles
Under the SEA! SEA! SEA! SEA! SEA! SEA! SEA! SEA! With James and Eric hitting their instruments hard with each 'sea' Then James broke it down into a hip hop beat while I rapped the bridge like Chuck D

The lute play the flute
The carp play the harp
The plaice play the bass and they soundin' sharp
The bass play the brass
The chub play the tub
The fluke is the duke of soul (Boyeeeeee by Eric here)
The ray, he can play the lings on the strings
The trout acting out
The blackfish he sings
The smelt and the sprat
They know where it's at
And oh, that blowfish blow!

Here we broke back into the up-tempo hard rock distortion sound from before and took it to the end

Yeah, under the sea
Under the sea
When the sardine begin the beguine
It's music to me
What do they got, a lot of sand?
We've got a hot crustacean band
Each little clam here know how to jam here
Under the sea
Each little slug here cutting a rug here
Under the sea
Each little snail here know how to wail here
That's why it's hotter under the water
Yeah, we in luck here down under the muck here
Under the sea


At just under 3 minutes, we were hoping just to get to the first chorus without getting gonged, which would be a real possibility if you hadn't heard our version before and thought we were going to do the entire song like a Nirvana unplugged song.

I skipped class the day of the show, which was at 7pm. I ran to my parents house to get an area rug and a small acoustic guitar I got when I was 7 but never touched.

We made our way to the assembly hall in the main floor of the dorm where we set up James' drum set on the area rug and Eric and I placed our amps and guitars on it too so that when it was our turn, we could just drag everything out.

The show soon got underway and luckily, we were near the end. As the various acts went, I got more and more nervous but the judges seemed slow to gong people which was comforting. By the time we were to perform, the initial crowd of 50 or so had ballooned to at least 200. People were standing in the back and everyone was desperate for entertainment.

As the act before us ended, we quickly grabbed the area rug and made our way on stage. Trying desperately to set up quickly, the emcee had to tell a stall joke or two while we plugged everything in.

Finally, James counted us off and we were in musical heaven. The first verse went along ok, but I saw a judge reach for the gong just as we were going to burst into the chorus. Then, WHAMMO! Here comes the craziest version of a Disney tune you'll ever hear.
Some performance highlights...

**Somewhere in the first chorus, James hit a symbol so hard it fell over, right on my guitar chord so that when I went away from the mic after the bridge, it came right out of my guitar...I had to scramble to get it plugged back in.

**I didn't set the mic to the proper height, so the entire performance, I'm singing on my toes. That is until the last chorus when the mic slowly dipped lower and lower, causing me to follow it down as I belted the lyrics. When I caught a break in the singing, I adjusted it only to have it dip down again so I jammed it up as high as it would go, and I was looking at the ceiling as I sang the last line or two.

**My childhood guitar was smashed at the end causing a rush of people to fight for pieces of it.

**We got a standing ovation.

When we were finished, we huddled with our bruised instruments off stage and just couldn't stop smiling. We waited for the next act to go then made our way to our seats to more applause.

To noone's surprise, we won first prize and collected the $100 gift certificate to a local music store.

This was BY FAR the greatest moment in all the crazy things that happened that year. Today is the anniversary of that great event. I remember because Jim from our floor made commemerative T-Shirts.

James, Eric and I took that song, and one other poorly written original, to a few other venues and even recorded it on a four-track cassette recorder. It exists somewhere...lost like the Sankara Stones.