This Dave Barry column was originally published Monday, September 4, 1995 in The Miami Herald

I have many memories of the historic opening weekend of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but what I'll remember the longest is getting into an argument with Bruce Springsteen's guitar player.

To understand how this happened, you need to know that I belong to a rock band called the Rock Bottom Remainders, which consists mostly of authors. The other members include (in alphabetical order) sports columnist Mitch Albom, humor writer Roy Blount Jr., media escort and singer Kathi Goldmark, Simpsons creator Matt Groening, rock-book author Dave Marsh, thriller writer Ridley Pearson, one-person horror industry Stephen King, rock critic Joel Selvin and actual literary person Amy Tan.

If I had to describe, in one phrase, the type of band we are, the phrase I would select is: "A pretty bad type of band." I'm not saying that we are 100 percent totally horrible all the time. Sometimes, when people hear us, they give us compliments such as, "Hey, you didn't suck so bad on that one song." But mostly people tell us, "Don't quit your day jobs!" I would venture to say that we hear that particular phrase more than any other band in history.

That is why I am still baffled by the fact that the Rock Bottom Remainders were invited to perform as part of the ceremonies surrounding the opening of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. Specifically, we were asked to perform at the big gala Friday-night dinner party to benefit the Hall. This made no sense. Having the Rock Bottom Remainders perform on behalf of music is like having Mike Tyson teach a course on dating etiquette.

But we did get invited, and since we have very little talent and play only about once per year, we thought it would be a good idea to rehearse. Band members started arriving in Cleveland on Wednesday, and that night some of us went to watch the Indians play the Blue Jays in Cleveland's beautiful new baseball stadium. As it happened, TV actor David Birney was sitting two rows in front of us. A woman sitting directly behind him recognized Birney; she wanted to get his autograph, but didn't have a pen, so she turned to us and asked if anybody had one. One of us handed her a pen; she got the autograph, then turned around and handed the pen back. She was so excited about getting David Birney's autograph that she failed to notice that the person she was returning the pen to was: Stephen King.

I started to feel like a real rock musician on Wednesday night, when we rode back from the ballpark to the hotel in a limo. The driver informed me -- I swear I am not making this up -- that I was sitting in the exact same seat where Courtney Love once threw up.

The Rock Bottom Remainders spent most of Thursday rehearsing our repertoire, which consists mostly of "classic oldies rock" songs, defined as "songs that contain three or fewer chords and reached the zenith of their popularity before Kurt Cobain was even born." We also spent a lot of time getting nervous as various people reminded us, repeatedly, that (a) our audience was going to contain many heavy hitters in the music industry, not to mention performers such as Elton John; and (b) the tickets cost $1,000 apiece.

And so we practiced relentlessly, whacking away at our instruments hour after hour until finally, magically, it started to happen: We stopped sounding lame and sloppy, and we started sounding lame, sloppy and exhausted. So we quit.