beautiful, funny, sad & true

Back in the day, I used to be very clever with the outgoing messages on my answering machine.  It was the kind with the two micro-cassettes in it, and the sound quality was great.  That may sound like a ridiculous or trivial detail to mention in the context of an answering machine, but it was the only one I ever had in which you could have background music, or sound effects, or whatever you wanted.  The other advantage of the tapes is that you could create messages that were huge in length; only limited by the length of the tape. I used to hold the machine up next to the speaker of my stereo and play sound effects or music behind things I would say.  Sometimes they were long, rambling messages, but other times they were miniscule, nonsensical ones, like, “I’m going to play a guitar solo for you now,” followed by five seconds of a blazing, 80’s metal scale.  One of my favorites was simply me saying, “Hello?” and then I left a long pause, followed by the beep.  People would invariably start talking, only to have the beep interrupt them, which would completely derail their trains of thought.  Friends would sometimes call my number when they knew I was at work, just to hear what I’d put on the machine that week.

The various roommates I had back then not only didn’t mind the weird outgoing messages, they actively encouraged them, and occasionally participated themselves.  The all-time best one, which I kept up for quite a while, was one that my friend and I directly quoted from a phone-sex line.  We used to dial random things like 1-800-SEX-4-YOU, or any combination we could think of, and one of the ones we stumbled upon had a hilariously detailed introduction, which we promptly wrote down and adapted, almost verbatim, into our own message.  I’ll transcribe it like a script, since that’s how it’ll make the most sense.

ME [reading in a low, seductive voice]:  Thank you for calling Yakima’s Little Secret.  Straight men and women, press ‘1.’

ROOMMATE [in an even lower, more seductive voice]:  Gay men and women, press ‘2.’  For the man-to-man Cruise Line, press ‘3.’  For the Tool Line (and he put a funny emphasis on the word ‘tool’), press ‘4.’

ME:  Please have your credit card information handy, and thank you again for calling Yakima’s Little Secret.

BEEP.

Coincidentally enough, less than a week after we had created this message, ClassicRockRadioStation’s morning show announced a contest for the best outgoing answering machine messages, the best of which would be played on the air.  I worked nights at the time, so I never listened to the show, which meant that I woke up to find a bunch of messages, starting with one from a friend.  “Dude!  [RadioStation] is doing an answering machine message contest, so I called in your number for the show.  You’re totally gonna win.  See ya!”

The next couple of messages were blank, followed by laughter, which meant that the station had called, listened, and hung up.  The final message was, “This is Scott and Dave from RadioStationMorningShow, and your message has been selected as our favorite, so you can expect to hear it on the air.  Congratulations!”

Naturally, I had slept through all of the hoopla, since I don’t like mornings and I REALLY don’t like those cloying morning radio shows, but a few friends heard it, and the show’s hosts played it a number of times on the air.  “How about that Tool Line, Dave?  I think I want to call it.”  “Yakima’s Little Secret, indeed.”  That evening, when I arrived to work at CrazyVideoStore, a bunch of people told me that they’d heard it too.

For the record, my dad hated every single one of those messages.  Each of his calls would start with a variation on the theme of, “Do I have the right number?  I don’t even know, because there’s no name or anything, and I guess I’ll have to hope that this is correct.  Anyway, if it IS correct, please blahblahwhateverblahblah.”

After a number of years of faithful service, that answering machine finally gave up the ghost.  The digital ones that replaced it limited you to something like ten or fifteen seconds’ worth of a message, which was too short a time to really hit my stride.  I felt that I’d lost a tiny but important creative outlet.

The other factor in the death of the weird messages was the natural human process of aging.  After many years of creating strange or funny messages, it got to be hard to keep improving on the art form.  I’d always try to one-up myself, without repeating, and it’s more difficult than you might think.  Also, that kind of stuff is funny when you’re nineteen, but by the time you get to be twenty-four or twenty-five, it becomes a bit juvenile, and you look for more productive outlets for your creativity.  At some point it’s an issue of Trying To Be Clever, rather than simple fun, and the charm of doing it wears off.

These days, my message is totally generic and lame.  In fact, I don’t even remember what it says, because I never hear it.  I do realize, of course, that I could punch it up on EyePhone and listen, but I’m content to keep that little mystery unsolved.  Incidentally, I’m still friends with the person who made Yakima’s Little Secret with me, and we have plenty of fun leaving each other funny voice mails, instead of worrying about what our outgoing messages are.

I do occasionally toy with the idea of making weird messages again.  Technology has come so far, with ringtones and all that, I could easily turn my boring message into a big production, but what would that accomplish?  Hardly anybody uses a phone as a phone anymore.  I use mine as more of a miniature laptop computer than as a phone.  Everybody texts and Skypes, and e-mails, or (dare I even say it) hangs out in person.

So chalk this up to a funny memory of antiquated technology, I guess, and how for some things, there’s just no substitute for tapes.  I wish I’d kept the tapes, at least.  One of them got eaten (which was always a problem with tapes, micro- or otherwise), but the other one would have been a nice souvenir to have from that time.  I have a couple others floating around, including the one that my friend made by smuggling his micro-cassette recorder down his pants to get it into the Paul McCartney concert (in 1990, at the Kingdome in Seattle, on Paul’s first ‘comeback’ tour since his days in Wings), but all you can hear on the tape is me singing along.  You can hardly hear Paul at all.  That would be a pointless funny thing to try and record onto my computer someday when I have absolutely nothing better to do.

Thank you for reading all of this, and thank you for calling Yakima’s Little Secret.  Vive le micro-cassette!

If you’ve spent any significant amount of time around this blog, you know that occasionally I get too busy to write, but then I rebound with a huge entry, often about either musicology or childhood.  This entry manages to include both, which means—naturally—that it will be a very long entry.  Don’t let that deter you, though; you also know by now that I would never steer you wrong or share things with you that I didn’t think were important or interesting enough to share.

I recently started reading Chuck Klosterman’s book Fargo Rock City, about heavy metal from the 1980’s, to which time has not been kind. He takes the position that while it may look a little strange from the outside, particularly with almost thirty years of hindsight, those who loved that music—including Chuck and myself—feel that it did a lot for us back then, but that it hasn’t received the respect that it deserves. The book is also autobiographical, about a disaffected kid growing up in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, who connected deeply with a style of music that offered glimpses of a strange new world and a completely different lifestyle. I can definitely relate.

Klosterman’s obsessive knowledge of the bands has made me nostalgic for that music, and I’ve gone back recently and reconnected with some of the stuff I used to love. My personal favorites were Kiss, Dokken, Ratt, Triumph, Dio, and Ozzy Osbourne. I should admit that some of them have held up better over time than others have. The first cassette I bought was Shout at the Devil by Mötley Crüe (umlauts intentional) in 1983, and the last was All Systems Go by Vinnie Vincent in 1989. Much has been written about Mötley Crüe, but precious little has been written about Vinnie Vincent, whose story is extremely interesting, even if (and possibly especially if) you know absolutely nothing about either him or heavy metal.

Vinnie became an instant celebrity when he replaced Kiss’s original and longtime lead guitarist, but I think a little bit of context is in order. Kiss was in trouble in 1982. They had sold millions of records throughout the 1970’s, but times—as well as musical tastes—were changing. Kiss had also jumped the shark with a couple of strange (pronounced “crappy”) albums in a row; a disco one and their famous flop Music From “The Elder,” which is a bizarre cross between Pete Townshend, David Bowie, and a Broadway musical. It was seriously weird, and their fans didn’t know what to do with it, but they DID know not to buy it.  The band needed to find their way back, and in doing so, a couple of painful changes were necessary.

The original drummer, Peter Criss, was the first to go. He had been suffering from the excesses of the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle for quite some time, and was injured in a car crash which left him out of commission for a while. The band had to postpone or cancel much of their subsequent tour, and Peter’s drinking and drug use had become a problem, so he was fired on May 18, 1980. I had to look up that date, but you can understand why I might have overlooked that tidbit in the news of the day, because I was too busy paying attention to Mount St. Helens, which erupted early that morning and buried Yakima (the town in which I grew up, and the nearest big town in the path of the eruption) under an inch or two of ash. So we had bigger things to deal with than some drummer being fired in New York City.

But I digress.

Next to be handed his walking papers was the original guitarist, Ace Frehley. He, like Peter Criss, had spent many years drinking heavily, even going so far as to bring cases of Dom Perignon champagne with him when he was on tour.  He was constantly drunk onstage and in interviews, and the other band members had had enough. Ace, like the public, was also frustrated with the musical direction the band had taken, and was tired of always being outvoted by the band’s leaders, Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons.

The firing of Ace Frehley was undoubtedly a great opportunity for any guitarist.  Kiss knew they had to deliver the goods as they finished their next record, Creatures of the Night, and they spent months auditioning players. Ace was pictured on the cover of Creatures, but he only played on a couple of the songs. Rick Derringer (you may know him from this song) supposedly played on one, as well as the guitarist from Mister Mister (you may know them from this song), but Paul and Gene wanted someone who could write songs as well, and they gave the nod to Vincent Cusano, who had been a studio guitarist and songwriter kicking around the New York scene of the 1970’s.  Gene Simmons rechristened him Vinnie Vincent, and his place in rock history was secured.  He’s third from left in this picture:

Vinnie landed one of the biggest gigs in rock and roll. The album was the strongest Kiss had created in quite a few years (it remains my favorite of their albums), and it even spawned a couple of hits on the then-fledgling MTV.  The band was back on top, with a great new drummer and a fiery lead guitarist. But Vinnie was a tough sell for the fans. Replacing an original band member is no easy task, and Vinnie never felt like a ‘true’ member of Kiss.  Even his stage persona, the Ankh Warrior, didn’t quite rise to the mythological status of Gene’s Demon or Paul’s Star Child, and Vinnie seemed a bit amorphous or strange compared to them.

His playing, however, was stellar, and he also brought tremendous songwriting skills to the band. After the success of the Creatures album and tour, the band decided it was time for another big change, and decided to appear without their makeup for the first time. The album Lick It Up was a huge and instant success, thanks in no small part to Vinnie’s contributions.  The band went on an extensive world tour and prepared for their next steps. Vinnie’s on the left in this picture:

But by this time—1984—the cracks were beginning to show. Vinnie didn’t fit in with the other guys, and they weren’t getting along very well. He also didn’t feel that he was being fairly compensated for his songwriting. The royalties for some of their biggest hits of the time went to Gene and Paul, who kept Vinnie and drummer Eric Carr on salary as ‘for hire’ sidemen, rather than full-fledged band members. This rubbed Vinnie the wrong way, because he felt he had contributed much more than the somewhat low status of a sideman would take into account.  It was decided that he should leave the band. He sued Kiss for royalties, but was unsuccessful.

Still very much in the limelight, he took some time to write more songs and put together his own band, called the Vinnie Vincent Invasion, the intent of which was to be bigger-than-life in every way.  I couldn’t wait to hear it. I eagerly awaited its arrival in the record store, and bought it before I’d ever heard a note of it. I’d been reading in the magazines like Circus and Hit Parader that he used a gigantic number of amps on stage, he dressed more flashily, and could shred like nobody else. The drummer played crazy fills, and the singer sang higher than anyone else. It was completely over the top.  Here’s their biggest hit song, “Boyz Are Gonna Rock.”

I’m not gonna lie; this song is dumb.  I thought so when the fifteen-year-old version of me first bought the tape, and I still think so today.  The first time I saw the video, I probably thought—in my addled teenage way—something eloquent like, “What the fuck was that?” They all looked ridiculously feminine, even in comparison to the other bands at the time, which is serious competition indeed.  To wit:

Cinderella. . .

. . .and Vinnie Vincent Invasion:

See what I mean?  He and the band just seemed like used-up gay prostitutes compared to other bands, which didn’t match the aggressiveness of the music. People didn’t know what to make of Vinnie.  He did have some great songs on that first album, but it didn’t sell particularly well, and the over-the-top nature of his guitar playing left a bit to be desired. Even on a slow, bluesy song, he tried to cram as many notes as possible into the guitar solo, with hilarious results.

Great riff, great song, horrendous guitar solo.  Even as a kid, when I was learning to play the guitar, I felt like if he could just settle down for thirty seconds and play tastefully—the way he did in Kiss—he’d really be onto something.

He seemed to have read my mind with his second and final album, All Systems Go. The songs were better, the sound quality of the album was better, and he played much more tastefully.  One of the songs, Love Kills, was written for one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, and he had a couple of other hits from the album as well.  My favorite song of his, “That Time of Year,” is on this album.

But if Vinnie was a hard sell for metal fans, he was an even more difficult one for the general public, whose metal tastes could only allow enough room for the likes of Def Leppard.  People couldn’t really get past his strange looks and over-the-top style. Add all that to the fact that by 1990, metal was on its way out.  Nirvana would put the final nail in its coffin in less than a year, and Vinnie and his compatriots would be relegated to the bargain bins of the record stores.

Like I said before, time has not been kind to 80’s metal, and Vinnie has become one of the de facto elder statesmen of the genre.  But his story is far from over, and it gets super weird, so this seems like a good place for a cliffhanger.

To be continued. . .

checker:  Hey, were you in here earlier tonight?

me:  Nope.

checker:  Hunh. . .’cause there’s someone who looks just like you.

me:  I’ve heard that before, actually.

checker:  You have a doppul—what’s that word?

me:  Doppelganger.

checker:  Oh, yeah. . .’doppelganger.’  He looks exactly like you, but he was wearing a blue shirt.

me (wearing a multi-colored striped shirt):  Crazy!  But yeah, I’ve heard that I have at least one in town.  My main doppelganger is from Massachusetts, though.

checker:  (long, awkward pause) Well, Mr. [my last name], you saved six dollars and forty-nine cents.

me:  Excellent.

checker:  Have a good evening.

me:  Thanks, you too.

If you cannot understand my argument, and declare, “It’s Greek to me,” you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger, if your wish is father to the thought, if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool’s paradise—why, be that as it may, the more fool you, for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then—to give the devil his due—if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then—by Jove!  O Lord!  Tut, tut!  For goodness’ sake!  What the dickens!  But me no buts—it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.

–English journalist Barry Levin, quoted in “The Story of English.” by McCrum, Cran and MacNeil

 

I had a perfectly normal dream just now. Nothing special, unusual or funny about it whatsoever.

* * * * *

I’m my present adult age, and I’m riding my bike around Eisenhower High School in Yakima, looking for either an English teacher or a football coach because I’ve recently enrolled there. My friends B and C are riding around with me. No one seems to be on campus, but there are these two older guys who are trying to get in too, so they join our little group. We see a secretary through the window, but once we realize that there are no faculty members on campus, the two other guys go their separate ways.

B, C and I ride to the parking lot and see a personalized curb that says, “Don ‘Five Pumps’ Smith” (referring to the number of ‘pumps’ before he had an orgasm) on it in red, white and blue.  His last name isn’t really Smith, but I’m obscuring it because it’s someone—not a friend, incidentally—from my real-life high school class.  Anyway, the three of us laugh at it and continue to ride around. Before long, a blue and white Chevrolet four-wheel-drive pickup pulls into the space, and we ride over to investigate. Donnie ‘Smith’ opens the door, jumps out, and reaches back in to turn off the engine.

“We were wondering whose spot that was,” I say. By way of a response, he removes the gas cap and an extremely loud song starts playing. He replaces the gas cap, which stops the music, but the key is still in the ignition, so that makes a different loud noise. He reaches into the truck, removes the keys from the ignition, puts them in his pocket, and turns back to the three of us.

“What’re you guys doing at the school?” he asks.

“I’m enrolling here to play football,” I tell him, which in real life I never did, outside of our neighborhood.

“Can he do it?” Donnie asks my friend J, who suddenly appears behind me.

“I don’t know,” J says.

“How many goals have you scored?” Donnie asks me. I don’t know why he’s suddenly asking me about soccer rather than football, so I don’t say anything. A somewhat awkward silence follows.

“Well,” J pipes up, “he may not be very strong, but he can go up the middle.”

This bizarre answer seems to satisfy Donnie, who asks J, “Yeah, but how many goals has he scored? Hey, you guys want a ride?” We drop our bikes and eagerly jump in the back of his truck. “I heard your CD,” Donnie says, and I didn’t think you guys’d be into this.” He climbs in, starts the truck, and drives away with us in the back. In less than two minutes’ time, we’re out of town and barreling down a steep, wooded fire road at around seventy miles per hour. The truck is so heavy, and the suspension so high, that the ride is completely smooth, no matter what huge rocks or potholes we encounter along the way. A railroad trestle that crosses over the road forces us to stop and get out of the truck, so we climb up the trestle to continue our journey and find out where the tracks lead. We run along the tracks until they meet with the dirt road again, at which point we climb back down and continue on foot, since we ditched the truck and left our bikes.

We jog along the road until we come to a green and white one-story ranch house next to the point at which the road suddenly comes to a dead end. There are no signs or anything, the road just stops. A woman walks out of the house, talking on a land-line phone attached to the end of a very stretched handset cable. She covers the receiver with her hand and yells to us, in a Southern accent, “Y’all had plenty of warning this was a dead end.”

“We didn’t, actually,” I tell her. “Sorry about that.”

“Well, you might as well come in,” she says. “Y’all want something to eat? I was just having dinner.”

Each of the four of us mumbles his own variation on the theme of, “Well, sure, but we don’t want to put you out,” as she leads us, single-file, to the kitchen and says,”Y’all can figure out some way to pay me later.”

We aren’t quite sure what she means by that, and B and I exchange furtive glances after a quick search of our empty pockets. We slowly file into the kitchen, and I say I need to wash my hands. The woman instantly passes me a bottle of dish soap. I squirt some in my hand and pass the bottle back to her. I reach to turn on the faucet and notice that both sinks are full; one with a dirty pan and the other with hot grease a foot deep, in which are cooking a bunch of fried chicken, some potatoes and carrots, and some doughnuts underneath. I turn to B and say, “This is gonna be amazing,” then turn back to the woman and ask, “Wow, you use real oil to deep-fry all this stuff?”

“That’s right,” she replies. We all stare aimlessly at the sink full of food for a while, and that’s when I wake up.