Gotta Start Somewhere Local H's Scott Lucas

No matter how successful entertainers become, they’ll inevitably always remember the first gig—whether it was disastrous, wonderful, or absurdly strange. Gotta Start Somewhere embraces these nostalgic moments by asking established entertainers to recall the first times they ever graced a stage. In this edition, The A.V. Club had Zion native Scott Lucas wax nostalgic about two of his first bands as he as he prepared for the release of albums by his two current bands. Local H’s Awesome Mixtape #1 and Scott Lucas And The Married Men’s The Absolute Beginners EP are both due out Oct. 19, and Lucas is fronting Local H Oct. 16 at the Cubby Bear in Lincolnshire.

Scott Lucas: My first show was in 1987, when I was in high school. For a long time it was just house parties playing, like, metal covers, but then we had this band called Rude Awakening and we played our first real show, a talent show.

We had two songs, and one of the songs I had written was about going out with this 7-foot-tall, 500-pound woman, and for the other song we covered [Eric Clapton’s] “Cocaine.” So we’re in high school, and we’re playing “Cocaine” in front of the whole school.

We were in the gym on the gym floor, and the microphone wasn’t properly grounded, so I kept getting crazy fucking shocks every time I went up to the microphone. I’ve never been shocked like that in my life and, to this day, if the microphone isn’t grounded at a club I freak out because it totally reminds me of that show.

AVC: Was there any fallout for playing “Cocaine”?

SL: I think I made some kind of bullshit speech about how it was actually an anti-drug song, and that seemed to kind of placate everyone. But it was a pretty lame speech, and I honestly don’t know how we got away with it.

AVC: Was the song about hanging out with the 7-foot woman based on a real experience?

SL: No, it was totally just about this girl named Brutus Betty, and she was a giant. I guess the lyrics were something about how I needed her protection because somebody wanted to beat me up. That was a song that I had written with this punk band I had called the Family Cruisers, named after this car that our drummer’s dad allowed us to drive around town.

AVC: The Family Cruisers didn’t get to play out?

SL: We just played house parties, and it was always really hostile parties where no one really wanted us there. And I always had this great idea that I would play with a gasmask on, and it worked in a cold garage, but once you got to a house party, it was really hot and I couldn’t see anything that was going on. It would fog up. 

AVC: How would you describe your punk band? Hardcore? Pop-punk?

SL: We were like The Dead Milkmen or The Ramones. We had a couple of hardcore songs, but all the lyrics were just about stuff, all taken from that punk movie that Penelope Spheeris did where that punk kid gets her head run over by a car…

AVC: Suburbia.      

SL: Yeah, Suburbia. All the other songs were about food. The singer of the band was like Weird Al Yankovic—he just had a thing for food.

AVC: How did those bands end up influencing what you decided to do for the rest of your life?

SL: I don’t know; it’s hard to say. Neither of those bands took themselves too seriously, and I think that was probably the thing I still try to take from all of that: to have a sense of humor about what you’re doing.

AVC: You’re probably never going to incorporate Brutus Betty into your set list again, though?

SL: You know, I’ve tried. I tried to look at that song every few years, but it’s just not very good, and there’s just nothing I can do with it.

AVC: But you’re still proud of it?

SL: I mean it was a three-chord song, and after the show kids were walking down the hall singing it. It was nice that they heard it once and remembered the hook. That was a feeling I wanted to experience again.