My one semester playing guitar with Mike Chaney resulted in a total of three taped recordings, each song lasting at least fifteen minutes, and one attempt at playing guitar on Royal Street in the French Quarter. We made three dollars and fifty cents each. That didn't pay the tax on the parking ticket we got. The final blow of the day came as we were strumming our fingers to death on a slightly reggea version of U2's "Where the Street's Have no Name". A bloke walked past, continued along his path, as though deaf to our cacophonic noise-making, suddenly turned, almost half a block away, and shouted "strummers are bummers, man!"In the immortal lyrics of the Talking Heads, "and we were." Mike and I didn't play together much after Royal Street. I was ultimately asked to leave Loyola since I wasn't really participating in any of the classes in which I was enrolled, and the school frowned upon my desire to stay in the dorms for the excellent amenities and the cheap rent. At the close of my second semester in college I was officially out of school, out of work, and out of options. I had to find an apartment and, worse yet, a job. Unfortunately, the rock and roll star thing wasn't panning out as I'd hoped, or anticipated. I'd have to turn to the old standby - geekdom. I started a little company called "Intelligent Computer Solutions". I marketed myself to the booming law trade in New Orleans. It was 1989 and the massive New Orleans legal establishment was still doing all its record-keeping and documentation manually. ICS was formed to make this insanity stop. And pay for my rent, food, continuing computer habit, and guitar gear.
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