Was I Asking Too Much?
QUADRATIC FORMULA: THE WORST BAND IN THE WORLD
Written by George Yonemori
All eyes were on me. My feet were planted on a bolt of lightning. I was making my guitar scream in electric ecstasy with friends surrounding me. We sold our souls to the noise. No longer were we individuals but one being united on a mission. I finished my tornado of a guitar solo. Curtains closed, and the crowd cheered. I fell back to Earth. I wanna do this every day for the rest of my life, thought my dopamine-soaked sixteen-year-old brain. We were Quadratic Formula, the greatest band in the world.
More realistically, we were the greatest band at our high school’s 2019 winter talent show, which had only one band audition. However, even my cynical self was ecstatic at realizing the dream of every teenager living in the 90s. Starting a band has been my dream since ninth grade, and it only took two years for it to come true. Even if it was just covers at this point, I was able to tell everyone I met that I played guitar in a rock band, and they’d go, “Yeah, you look like one of those guys.”
For the longest time, I was the guy with long messy hair pressed underneath his blaring headphones—a portrait of the disenfranchised youth who wanted to free the minds of those around him through music. This made me stand out among the sea of sleep-deprived, imaginationless honour students. In the band, I played lead guitar. My friends Victor and Nadine were on rhythm and bass guitar, respectively. Alex was the singer, and Kevin played drums. They all followed me enthusiastically, their eyes beaming. As the sun rose over 2020, we knew this would be the year we made our mark on the world. Everybody would know Quadratic Formula…
…and then someone at the other side of the planet coughed.
A two-week school closure after March break became six months. The time that should’ve been spent jamming was dedicated to consuming mindless entertainment. The ash-coloured Scarborough sky and isolation sucked my creativity away. My brain was once a fat juicy grape, now a dropped raisin left in the sun. I tried setting up a Google Meet in April, and the band all said they’d show up, but only Victor did. That was quality foreshadowing for what was to come.
It was not until the summer that I found my groove again. Alone in the basement, I wrote riff after riff, lyric after lyric. I wrote about consumerism in a song called “Insert and Consume”. I must’ve thought I was clever with that one. For the first time that year, I had hope. A facemask couldn’t suppress my rockstar vision, but it had to be postponed. Welcome back to school. They couldn’t mask how happy they were to have us back.
Fortunately, grade 12 ended and on an optimistic note, too. The time was here to pick up where we left off. I invited the band over for our first jam session since 2019. They all said they would love to. They all managed to be late, but it was the most fun I had had in over a year. I needed this, and I needed them. Instruments in hand, we returned to who we were under those spotlights two years ago. We made plans to do this again. We were going to record the songs I’d written over the last year. I watched them put it in their calendars. This was everything I’d been dreaming about for the past year and a half.
I texted Kevin a few minutes before the next session to remind him. Turns out he hadn’t selected his courses yet, and the deadline was soon. Course selection was open for weeks. He would’ve just not shown up without a word had I not reminded him. I tolerated tardiness. I reluctantly accepted that Singer Alex was making anime waifu tier lists and writing pages of erotic Overwatch fanfiction instead of lyrics or music, but not showing without warning is where I drew the line. I invited another drummer I knew named Jeff. He said we were very talented and my songs were great. I believed him. I believed in myself.
We recorded our first EP, Water on the Brain. Being named after the only song I’d written in 2021. University started, and I learned that they call it U of Tears for a reason. Water on the Brain came out on Spotify in October. I didn’t care about anything else. I promoted it and told the band to do the same. They all agreed. It took ten whole days for Victor and Singer Alex to post anything. Nadine took nineteen days. With her plastic voice, she told me she loved the band. Jeff never posted anything, even though he said he would.
My parents gave them food at every jam session. They get to tell everyone they meet that they just put out an album on Spotify. Was I crazy? Was I asking too much? Take a minute to promote the music they had invested their own time into making; the music they told me was great? Guess so. I watched our monthly listeners count drop from 55 to 5. I got lonely and depressed from online school. Victor suggested a meeting. We all agreed. I was too tired to message them individually to remind them to show up, so none did. Nobody said anything. Part of me died as I sat alone, waiting for them to surprise me.
Even though it meant everything to me, I picked the name Quadratic Formula as a joke. I can’t be too surprised that’s how my bandmates treated it. Life is a series of lessons learned. I learned the depths of human insincerity and the depths of time management skills. Most importantly, I learned you should never ever trust anyone who writes erotic Overwatch fanfiction.
George Yonemori is in his first year of studies at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. He's been writing creatively for three years and has been published a handful of times.
