Twelfth of Never – GRKN

During high school I was in a band called the Twelfth of Never. The core group was me on guitar and vocals, Rhett McCaughey on bass, Dave Updike on guitar, and Chris Wilson on drums. 

We practiced in Chris’ basement pretty much every single day, only pausing long enough to jump on the trampoline in the backyard or eat frozen Lynn Wilson burritos (Chris’ grandpa was Lynn Wilson himself). 

In 1996, we saved up $300 bucks to record our debut album. Our friend’s dad had a recording studio and gave us the friends and family rate. He mostly recorded the kind of stuff you’d hear on an EFY soundtrack and I’m not sure he knew what do with a bunch of teenage rock kids like us. So he just threw a bunch of reverb on the vocals to try to cover up the fact that we couldn’t sing in tune. 

We pounded out our 11 songs in about a day. We pressed 300 copies of the album on cassette, printed the covers on cardstock at Kinko’s, and started selling them to our friends. (There’s still about 270 of them in a box in my basement.)

Twenty-plus years later, I decided it was finally time to drag the box out of the basement, give the album a listen, and — thanks to the Walkman with a USB cable I bought on Amazon — digitize the songs. 

So here it is, in all its mid-90s glory. Plus a bit of track-by-track commentary. 

1. James Comas — When we first started the Twelfth of Never, we were basically just a Nirvana cover band. One day in ninth grade, a kid named James Comas came up to me in the junior high cafeteria and told me he was in a band, too. He said they wrote their own songs. I didn’t even know that was possible. “How do you do it?” I asked incredulously. “You know, you just write them.” I went home that night and wrote my first song. About James Comas.

    

2. Interference — At this point, we hadn’t really discovered punk rock (that would happen until the next summer). But I’d heard Disconnected by Face to Face on the radio. Interference was me trying to write a song like that — and failing miserably.

    

3. Tonite we die — This was probably the second or third song we wrote and we definitely thought it was going to be our big breakout hit. With lyrics about a party where all the kids hang themselves, how could it not be?

    

4. Nobody Home — Rhett wrote this one. There’s lots of overdramatic teenage angst here. “Lonely playground/Nothing left to swing on but a cage/I’ve been lost so many times/I’m surprised that I’m still alive.” In my mind, I see the music video we would’ve made for this song. Rhett, with his long red hair, walking through an empty playground, somberly pushing a rusty swing — all in black of white, of course.

    

5. Master Sensei Opens Wide — Chris wrote the music (and the nonsensical title) in the vein of his favorite band at the time, Silverchair. (They were 17, we were 16, we looked up to them.) I wrote the lyrics, which were totally over the top. “I grabbed an angel by the wings/I tied her up and took her home/I played guitar, I made her sing/Untied the rope and let her go.” I have no idea where they came from. We played “Today” by Smashing Pumpkins a lot. Maybe it was inspired by the part where Billy Corgan sings “My angel wings were bruised and restrained/My belly stings.” But who knows.

    

6. Everyone — Joey Plott was the original Twelfth of Never drummer (and the lead singer of our first band, Pet Virus), but quit to spend more time in the high school jazz band. He wrote this before he left and we hung onto it.

    

7. El Vampire — The title? It’s a combination of Weezer’s “El Scorcho” and a vampire, I guess. (Maybe because the song was heavy like a vampire. Or because it sucked like a vampire.) The teenage angst is in full display on this one. “Well I’ve made up my mind/To break free/I hate me/And my stupid self.”

    

8. Ben McLelland — After I wrote a song about James Comas, I named the next one after his best friend, Ben McLelland. But it wasn’t about him, it was more about hating yourself — as was the style of the time. (Nirvana was our all-time favorite band.) More heavy-handed lyrics on this one: “Could’ve been something/Should’ve been something/Settled for anything/Now I’m nothing.”

    

9. Let me Go — This was our most “90s rock radio” song. In other words, it sounds like Seven Mary Three. One day we were playing this in the basement (for the millionth time) and Chris’ mom burst through the door and shouted, “Are you singing God, let me go?” “Um, no. We’re singing just let me go.” “Okay, good.” I guess she thought it was a song about killing yourself. Apparently, she’d never paid much attention to “Tonite We Die.”

    

10. Leaving — The only song I vividly remember writing. I was sitting on my bed with on a Friday night because my dad grounded me again. I took it out on my friend Mark Maughan’s blue spaceman guitar (He bought it because it looked like one James Iha used to play). “Think I’m leaving/Stop believing/In everything you said was true/Stop obeying/The things you’re saying/That I need to do.” That’s teenage rebellion right there. This is the most punk rock song on the album and one of only about three I wouldn’t be embarrassed to play in Johnny Tightlips. Plus I love Chris’ drum solo in the middle.

     

11. Smile — The working title was “Slowy” for obvious reasons. When we were in the studio, Mark the producer added the synth strings. We thought they were embarrassing but not embarrassing enough to take them out. I’ve always to be a rockstar, but I would totally settle for having people — even if it’s just a few people — love one of our songs. As far as I can tell, the only person who ever loved a Twelfth of Never song was my friend Anjuli. She used to rewind this one and listen to it over and over. Thank you, Anjuli, for making me feel like a rockstar.

Bonus! 

As a special treat, here’s the soundboard recording of the Twelfth of Never’s first live performance. (Not sure why none of the guitars show up on the first track.)

We played at a battle of the bands at a now-defunct music store called Starsmith Music. There were a million heavy metal bands in Metallica shirts and just one group of kids wearing their love of Nirvana on their sleeves. 

We didn’t win. 

But we should have.