Rock ‘n’ Roll High School 45: What a Sister Must Do To Make a Scary Guy Pee His Pants

Fellow Ellora’s Cave author Sidney Bristol shares her teenage music memories with us today, full of bands I know little about. I mean, I know about Limp Bizkit, I’m not that out of it, but some of the other artists, like Demon Hunter, are outside my scope of familiarity. That doesn’t happen very often but is one of the coolest thing about doing this blog–seeing the breadth of music and experiences that make up my contributors’ stories.  Sidney has a brand new book out today (!), titled Flirting With Rescue. Be sure to check it out!

Sidney Bristol

Grandview High School, Class of ’03, Currently: Author and IT Education, Administrator

Band and/or song that reminds you the most of high school: Reliant K. If I never hear another Reliant K song, it will be too soon. As the only person among my friends with a car, I did all the driving and they did all the picking of music. I would have preferred some grunge or metal – anything except pop Christian rock! Don’t get me wrong, like any good teen in the Bible Belt I had a thing for talented Christian rock, but that only went so far.

Favorite piece of music memorabilia (poster, t-shirt, etc.) in high school: Oh! This is a hard pick. There are two, but one of them I got the summer after I graduated, which leaves the other. It was a drum stick I caught standing front and center at one of the Triptych tour shows from Demon Hunter, a melodic metal band. I still have it. Every time my brother sees it he smirks and asks me if I remember the guy who peed his pants. The story goes that we were some of the first people in line and got prime spots right up near where the singer stood. One moment I’m really into the music, the crowd pushes and I get lifted halfway onto the stage. The singer bent down and sang, sharing the mic with me. The moment passes, the crowd recedes and I can slip back down, only there’s this huge goth guy behind us that grabs my little brother by his throat and shoves him down on the ground. Keep in mind that around this time he was rail skinny and tall, super long hair and glasses. Not threatening at all. The goth guy? Kinda scary. But scary never seems to show up on my radar until after the moment has passed. I grabbed this guy by the collar of his shirt and yanked him around and started yelling and getting up in his face. That was my brother he was trying to stomp the brains out of, and if anyone was getting to brain him, it would be me. He left, and moments later I caught the drumstick. We later found out from a friend of a friend of a friend that the guy peed his pants.

Band that you hated that everyone else at school seemed to love: Oh god, any of the boy bands. They were more popular when I was in jr high, but they somehow managed to hang on and terrorize me in high school as well.

Best show or concert you saw in high school: I think the best ones were back in my early high school days. There was a really active local scene as far as the venues went. There were two groups that were really awesome to see, Animal Couch and Travail. AC was kind of a heavy rock, industrial female fronted group and Travail was about as metal as you could get. There was one really big show that was a ten hour event. There were so many acts involved. The venue was really special too. It had a concert venue, and then several side rooms to hang out in and whatnot. It was loads of fun.

Best high school make-out song: I think the only boyfriend I made out with we were listening to Limp Bizkit at the time. Yeah, real classy I know! If I were to pick one, maybe The Road Goes on Forever (and the Party Never Ends), which was the theme song of my graduating class. Yes, we really were that country.

You can learn more about Sidney Bristol, the self-described recovering roller derby queen, former missionary, and tattoo addict at sidneybristol.com. Flirting With Rescue is out now!