The Curse Of Hercules

Cursed band

The Curse Of Hercules

In Case You Ever Thought,

'I Wonder What Ever Happened

To Those Purveyors of Evil, Held Under?'

I know many of you will find this hard to believe, but once upon a time, before age and having my head bashed in, I was a pentagrammer, a Devil's child, the vocalist for a tragic band that followed closely in the footsteps of another cursed famous band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, except for the being famous, selling a s**t-load of albums, having hit songs played on the radio, having ANY songs played on the radio, other than 'The Darkest Hour,' played at 2.30 am on a tiny college radio station by a friend/D. J., having several band and crew members killed in a plane crash (at least so far), and playing in front of an audience that numbered in triple digits, our stories are identical.

I sort of fell into singing, as I had no talent for playing an instrument, at least a musical one, but that's a story for a never time. My brother Patrick and I used to come home from school and make an 'album' on an old reel-to-reel recorder. My brother played guitar, and, as it was either the triangle, like the Martin Short character, or vocals, I decided on tying to sing. A friend of my brother heard it, and said he thought I should give singing for real. I though he was bat s**t crazy, as it was a big joke to me, but I said okay, so one night, in an informal jam session, I plugged a mic into an old under powered amplifier, and let 'er rip. I thought it was awful, but everyone agreed I had potential. So, still not believing it myself, my brother and I formed a band, Discovery, with several of his friends, then later, Held Under, with a friend of mine from work. We recorded a 'demo' in both bands, and at the time of each, I had a complete lack of confidence, but listening to them know, they were pretty good.

Anyway, to make a long story longer, one day, during the Held Under days, I couldn't be at practice for some reason, and when I got home, my brother informed me that our drummer, Steve Oliver, had suffered a heart attack while playing and had been revived by paramedics; turned out he had a previously unknown heart defect that eventually, a few years ago, required a heart transplant. That was the end of Held Under, at least in its original form. Patrick, Bob, and I carried on with a slimmed down, less technical version of Held Under, but looking back now, we should have come up with a new name. We wrote some new songs, and were slowly recording them, which we were right in the middle of doing, when the lights went out for me, literally, for thirteen days. I was hit head-on on my way home from my bank, been airlifted to the trauma center, which is where I awoke to a nightmare thirteen days later; one that I'm still trying to overcome to this day.

After Steve received his new heart, the other band members messed around with playing, (Steve can play normally now). Then, Bob Shook, our other guitarist, got in touch with Phil Collier, our old bass player, and in my humble opinion, both he and our drummer, Steve, were world-class fantastic, and they made plans to get together to work on new material for Held Under. Soon after making those plans, Phil, who now lived in Florida, decided to go to a nearby grocery store to buy some milk, and on the way back he was hit by a car and killed.

So, as you can see, we were cursed, by Hercules, or someone. Kids, let our terrible story be a cautionary lesson to you, if your thinking of being in a hard-rocking, hard-drinking, hard living demonic heavy metal band, you maybe should get a job as a dishwasher at an all night greasy spoon instead. Forget dreams of untold riches, Hercules may have other ideas!*

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*stereotype making fun of-we never played that type of metal. Hated it, lazy man's idea of topics, right up there with 'Tight Pants and Loose Morals'