['On the Boarderline' is an ongoing segment on the Movies About Girls Show, in which I talk about my high school/post-high school band Doctor Rock. As the intro goes, it's done 'song by song', meaning there's probably around 100 episodes to come eventually. What follows is the script of the segment, as well as the .MP3 of the episode's featured song.]

Tschüß, listeners! Welcome to the momentous episode ten of the documentary the world can’t stop talking about, ‘On the Boarderline: A Doctor Rock-umentary’. Over the coming weeks, months, maybe even years and possibly even decades, we’ll be working our way through the back catalogue of these sand kickin’ bullies of the Ballarat, Victoria music scene, song by song by song by song by song.

We have just one more original to go, and then [a medley of] two more covers, before we’re done with ’45 Minutes of Rock’. It seems like just yesterday that we started, I know, but time does fly when you’re having fun and all that. This week, it’s Abasid. We talked about this one back in episode two of the Rock-umentary – it a lengthy middle eastern jam performed by completely incapable teenagers. And boy is this version lengthy. The first thing I thought when I started listening to it was, ‘Man this goes on fucking forever’. And it really does.

I can only imagine what the people subjected to ’45 Minutes of Rock’ thought. As I mentioned previously, the tape was played not only to my father and sister in the car on multiple trips to school, but also to members of my year level in the senior common room. We had a tape player that would be used for mix tapes (generally stopped after two songs before someone else took over). Doctor Rock managed to play the entire demo right through, start to finish, ’45 Minutes of Forcibly Having to Listen to Doctor Rock’, on a number of occasions.

Let’s play the song in the background here so you can picture it. A little theatre of the mind.

You’re a spunky 18 year old girl named Jess. You’re sitting there trying to eat your sandwich and hang out with your boyfriend, Sam Falkinder. One day, he’ll be your ex-boyfriend, an unfortunate case of high school sweethearts drifting inevitably apart. One day, he’ll be an IT consultant and home owner. But you don’t know that yet.

You’re tired. You’ve just finished an essay based learning outcome on Camus’ ‘The Ousider’ in English, and those fucking Doctor Rock jerks are playing their shitty demo tape again, blasting it so that everyone has no choice but to hear it. Almost a third of it is taken up with some strung out, eye wateringly uncoordinated jam they seem really enthusiastic about. ‘Check out how fucking awesome this is,’ their loudmouthed guitarist, Clemo, shouts at you, silencing attempts at conversation and demanding focus on the tape player.

‘This, uh, this is my band,’ you hear the bespectacled bass player say awkwardly to some red headed girl over by the sink. It’s awful, and you want it to stop, and yet you’re only 3 minutes in. there’s still 10 to go, and the band show no sign of locking into that groove.

To former and current friends who had to deal with that, I’m sorry. Also to the red head in question I’m sorry for later telling you not to flatter yourself when you accused me of treating you like a trophy girlfriend. that was kind of a jerk move. but anyway.

Unable, as I am, to hear the first performed and practised versions of Abasid – by the drummer- and singer-less doctor rock, with second guitarist Jake playing or at least standing stoically next to the band – I can’t tell how different this is. I can hear a lot of what the song became, in little elements that would eventually be given proper structure – maybe some were played for the first time this day, and through our literally hundreds of listens to the tape, we incorporated them into the final song. I gather maybe that is what some proper bands do but I’m not sure because I have never been in a proper band.

Enjoy the mercifully short clip of Abasid, then look for the MP3 below. And then after you’ve done that, please join us next time for another episode of ‘On the Boarderline: A Doctor Rock-umentary’.

Download Abasid