When I was a young child, I used to hum myself to sleep. My favourite music was movie themes. Whether it be Superman, Indiana Jones or Star Wars, soundtracks were 99% of what I liked to listen to. And 99% of those soundtracks were John Williams. Come bedtime, mom or dad would tuck me in, and I’d hum a favourite theme until I was asleep.
As I entered the pre-teen years, my parents bought me my first ghetto blaster. It was a Sanyo, built solid like a Brinks truck. The Sanyo brought music back to bed time, only now I didn’t have to hum!
By the time I had the Sanyo, I was getting in to rock and roll really seriously. Kiss tapes were great for falling asleep to. They were just the right length, and I loved each and every album. Sure, you’d have to get up halfway through to flip sides (no auto-reverse on my first Sanyo), but suddenly I had a new bedtime routine. I’d literally rock myself to sleep.
This nightly habit soon became nightly necessity. It was hard to fall asleep without music! If we were away from home, I’d bring a Walkman, but falling asleep with earphones on was uncomfortable to say the least. Cheap 1980s earphones were not designed with comfort (or sound quality) in mind.
The bedtime music habit continued through highschool and into university. Sometimes I worried, “What happens when I get married? Is my wife going to want to fall asleep to Kiss Alive with me?”
No, no she wouldn’t. But I did manage to start falling asleep without music. When I got my own place, I’d stay up a little later and go to bed when I was exhausted. If I tossed and turned, then I would throw on a CD to help me fall asleep like the old days.
Have you ever needed musical accompaniment to fall asleep? What tunes did you like?
2017 is the year of Purple. Witness: We have not just their awesome new album InFinite, but also a new live album included with the deluxe box set version. There is a Classic Rock magazine CD called Limitless including an exclusive version of “Black Night”. There have been two CD singles (“Time for Bedlam” and “All I Got is You“) each with their own exclusives. Now, Deep Purple have released their third single from InFinite, called “Johnny’s Band”. More exclusives abound, making this quite a fun year for Deep Purple fans and collectors. Have you been keeping up?
If you bought InFinite (and you should, what are you waiting for?), then you know “Johnny’s Band” is one of the most instantly catchy songs on it. Upbeat and danceable, “Johnny’s Band” is a hoot. Gillan’s lyrics are witty and honest, and did you notice the musical segue into “Louie Louie”? “Johnny’s Band” is a much more obvious single than the first two they released, so let’s be glad that somebody thought Deep Purple needed three singles for InFinite. The lyrics tell the story of a band who hit it big, fell down hard, but keep slogging away in the bars anyway. In the end, Gillan gives it a positive conclusion. It is, after all, all about the music.
But hey, it’s Johnny’s Band, Playing all those wonderful songs, Making the rounds with that old fashioned sound, And here we are singing along.
Perhaps there’s a little slice of life in there.
Track 2 is an unreleased studio jam. “In & Out Jam” focuses on a low key guitar riff as its base, but spreads in other musical directions from there. The bottom line is this: Steve Morse, Don Airey, Roger Glover and Ian Paice jamming together is always going to produce something of value. “In & Out Jam” isn’t a song and probably wasn’t likely to ever become one, but these are ideas from the best brains in rock and enough to make the musician in you weep in sorrowful inadequacy.
Live tracks from Gaelve, Sweden finish off this single. There are now three different live versions of “Strange Kind of Woman” released this year. My Deep Purple folder has 27 different versions of “Strange Kind of Woman”! How much is too much? Who cares. “The Mule” is played far more rarely, but there is still another version of it on the deluxe boxed InFinite set. It’s a thunderous showcase for drummer Ian Paice, who is still one of the greats at age 69. The years take their toll on everyone, but Paicey does not sound 69 years old here!
The last of the live songs is the newest, “Hell to Pay” from 2013’s Now What?! This is only the third live version of the song ever released. It’s a short blast of guitar and keyboard mania, with a chorus on top. Its most interesting feature is the organ solo in the middle, something you don’t hear on many singles (which “Hell to Pay” was).
Purple are currently on tour with Alice Cooper. Both artists have put out remarkably strong albums in 2017. Will wonders never cease?
GETTING MORE TALE #590: Hipster Moustache Cassette Player
As expressed in Getting More Tale #423: The Tyranny of Cassette in the 80s, I am not a fan (at all) of the cassette tape format. As cassettes have picked up traction this year, it is an opinion that I have been sharing more frequently on social media. I feel we need a refresher.
Some fans (such as fellow writer and tech-head Boppin) have made good arguments for tapes in the past, explaining that if you have the right equipment, you can make a tape sound so good that you won’t know it’s a cassette. That may be so, but I:
don’t have said equipment nor any desire to get a new tape deck.
no longer have the need to play cassettes, having upgraded 99% of my collection to more permanent formats like CD and LP.
The subject of cassette tapes was recently revived with the announcement that the hit Netflix series Stranger Things will be receiving a deluxe cassette soundtrack. The cassettes will be packaged to look like miniature VHS tapes…just like the 1980s.
I’m a fan of the show, so I get it. Stranger Things celebrates so much about the 80s: the culture, the style, the music, and yes, even the technology. If you are also a fan, owning a cassette soundtrack version in retro packaging would be quite a collectible treat. Not as cool as the 80s-style Stranger Things action figures, but still neat.
Fans of the music of Stranger Things would be well advised to get the excellent soundtrack, but if you get it on cassette, why bother to play it? It won’t even sound as good as a Youtube stream. Unless you’re one of the few who has great cassette equipment, why not just buy the CD, or the absolutely gorgeous LP editions, and play those? They’ll last longer while the cassette will wear out the fastest.
Would you open it? Would you play it?
This brings us back to a short bit that I recorded for Sausagefest 2017, which was received with agreement by those in attendance. Here’s the relevant portion below. I call it “Hipster Moustache Cassette Player”. What do you think?
When we last met our heroes, they were a fractured bunch with differing priorities. Gene Simmons cut his hair and went to Hollywood. Paul Stanley was steering the Kiss ship singlehandedly. They were down a guitar player (Mark St. John) but were fortunate to find his replacement in Bruce Kulick. Not only was Bruce an old acquaintance (his brother Bob played on a number of Kiss tracks) but he was also just what the band needed. He added a shot of stability and wrote good material. He has three writing credits on his first album Asylum, and that was just the beginning.
Paul and Gene produced Asylum, in a similar way to how Animalize was recorded. As had become routine, Gene wasn’t around to record some of the bass parts in Paul’s songs. Jean Beauvoir returned to fill in, while Paul also played some bass. Without Gene fully committed, Asylum was the second Kiss album in a row hobbled by his reduced participation. Animalize was a huge selling album for Kiss having gone platinum. Asylum sounds like Paul wanted to duplicate that record.
Eric Carr opens the album with a thunderously memorable drum intro. Carr didn’t have to try to impress anybody; his drumming brought Kiss to a higher level musically. His double bass work on “King of the Mountain” would make Lars poo his pants. For Carr fans, “King of the Mountain” surely must be considered one of his brightest moments. Fortunately the song also kicks ass. As one of the Kulick co-writes, the new guitarist impresses immediately. His soloing style was so much smoother than his predecessor Mark St. John. He had similar speed and ability but better composition when it comes to solos. Meanwhile, Paul takes this high octane speed rocker and turns it into a rallying call of encouragement.
I’m gonna climb the mountain, I’m gonna hit the top, I wanna go where nobody’s ever been, I’m never gonna stop.
Who needs Shakespeare when you just need a good shake? “King of the Mountain” is fuel injection for the bloodstream.
Over to Gene. “Any Way You Slice It” kicks ass. He had a habit of barking out his lyrics in the 80s, and “Any Way You Slice It” is very bark-y. The riff really catches air and takes off. Back to Paul, and a big single. “Who Wants to Be Lonely” has a chug and a plaintive chorus. Paul’s vocal abilities were at a peak, but it sounds like Gene was nowhere near the studio when it was recorded.
There are a lot of contributions from outside songwriters on Asylum, from people such as Desmond Child and Jean Beauvoir. One of the few songs without them is “Trial By Fire” by Gene and Bruce. Once again the rhythm is a chug, but this simple little rocker is appealing. There’s nothing wrong with the chorus, but it has never been played live. Nor has Paul’s “I’m Alive” which just takes the speed thing to an absurd level for this band. Kiss isn’t a speed metal band and “I’m Alive” isn’t a memorable song. “I’m hot enough to give you chills.” I’ll take your word for it, Paul!
Flip the album and you’ll hear “Love’s a Deadly Weapon”, which both Gene and Paul have a credit on. This is noteworthy, because the pair hadn’t written anything together on Animalize and only one track on Lick it Up and The Elder each. That’s all the co-writing credits they had together after the infamous Kiss solo albums. However, “Love’s a Deadly Weapon” isn’t really a co-write. It’s one of Gene’s songs, with a title and some words taken from a Paul Stanley demo called “Deadly Weapons”. Again, Kiss takes the speed level to the absurd. This ironically renders the song powerless.
Fortunately Paul’s big single “Tears are Falling” brings back the quality. It was one of the few songs from this era to continue to be played live. It was kept in the set on the Revenge tour, and had been brought back periodically by the current lineup of the band, even appearing on their last album Kiss Rocks Vegas. That’s because it has a chorus that goes on for days and days. Bruce’s guitar solo is one his most memorable, which doesn’t hurt either.
Gene’s “Secretly Cruel” shows off his sleazy side, on a likeable but forgettable album track. He wrote this one solo, just as Paul did for “Tears are Falling”. And it’s sleazy from there in. “Radar for Love” is a Paul/Desmond composition with a groove and a chorus that nails it.
And then it’s “Uh! All Night”. Yes, “Uh! All Night” is the name of a song.
I’ll confess that when I first heard “Uh! All Night” in 1985, I didn’t know what “Uh!” meant. I figured it meant “partying” or something. And there was a period when I really liked this song, but that was over 30 years ago and it sure has worn out its welcome.
Kiss went on tour again, never leaving home territory except for one date in Toronto. This was a step backwards for the so-called “Hottest Band in the World”. Asylum wasn’t the hit album that Animalize was. Money was becoming a problem. These are problems they aimed to solve next time.
The irony is, although Asylum wasn’t as big as Animalize, song for song it’s probably a better album.
GETTING MORE TALE #589: Metal 101 – Learning the Basics in the Original School of Rock (Circa 1984-86)
I started getting really serious about rock and roll in the mid-80s. I was 12. Much Music had arrived. I had instant access to so many great bands. Thanks to the Power Hour, I had an hour dedicated to heavy metal every week. I also had friends like Bob and George who were willing to let me tape things from their collections. I started buying rock magazines. But there was a learning curve.
Take Van Halen, for example. All I knew of them were a couple singles from 1984. I had seen the video for “Jump”. I had also learned from my friends that Eddie Van Halen was the greatest guitar player alive. Since I didn’t know the difference between a guitar and a bass, I assumed Michael Anthony was Eddie Van Halen. I don’t know why I assumed that, except I probably liked Michael’s beard. Bob and George corrected me, but I wondered, “How can you tell a guitar from a bass guitar?”
“A bass only has four strings”, they told me. And you could tell the number of strings by the tuning pegs. I got it! Soon I was able to start piecing the rest together. George bought a bass a few months later. There is a local musical legend that lived on our street named Rob Szabo. He is a very talented player, singer and songwriter. He was starting to put together his own band, and all he needed was a bassist. George was adamant that he was that bassist. He decided this before he even bought a bass. Rob was too nice a guy to tell George that they wanted someone else with more experience. He didn’t expect George to buy a bass because of the vacancy in the band. To his horror, that is exactly what George did. I think he jammed with them once or twice before they let him go. Maybe not even once.
Undeterred, George learned the instrument by playing along to records. He put together a couple bands of his own, like Asylum and Zephyr. His singing was shit, but his bass playing wasn’t bad at all. He got pretty good at it. But sadly, in our neighborhood, George might be best remembered for his attempts at singing.
George’s bedroom window was right next to our front step where I hung out a lot as a kid. Bob and I would be up there listening to music, or even playing GI Joes on the lawn. Sometimes we’d sit there in just listen to George. You’d hear him put on a record, start playing along on bass, and when he got singing you’d think a cat was being tortured up there. It was horrendous, but he seemed to have no idea how awful his singing really was.
George worked at Long John Silver’s which was about a 20 or 30 minute walk. In the early hours of the morning, I saw George walking down the street alone with his headphones on, heading for work. Suddenly he burst out: “ALRIGHT! LOVE GUN!” Then came the barely recognizable chorus of one of my favourite Kiss songs. It was the kind of scene that you’d make sure you got on video today. Another time, he was singing Judas Priest. We ran into him that time and asked him what’s up? “It’s Priest Week,” he answered. He was only listening to Judas Priest that week, it seems.
One time George was over playing his bass, and he asked me if I knew how to pick out a bass line in a song. I actually did, and I learned it by hearing him play bass along with his records.
Besides Kiss, Priest, and Van Halen, I was learning about bands such as Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath. Bob had a Black Sabbath tape with a baby devil on the cover. He brought it over one time, raving about a song called “Zero the Hero”. We listened to it and it was cool. I especially liked the spooky music between songs. That was my first taste of Black Sabbath. I knew who Ozzy Osbourne was, but I didn’t know he was in Black Sabbath before. All I knew was the singer of Black Sabbath had long black hair and looked really evil. Ian Gillan was my first Black Sabbath singer.
George was really cool about letting me tape his stuff, to the point that he’d bring his VCR over so I could even record his videos. We did this on about two or three occasions, as he had quite a collection of taped videos. I was interested in getting some more Dio. I had heard “Holy Diver” and wanted some more, so I got the video for “The Last in Line”. The clip was a trip to a hellish underworld of monsters and musical vigilantes. A bit later, we got to a Black Sabbath video for “Neon Nights”. I recognized the two moustache guys. But who was that singer?
I timidly asked George, “Hey…did Dio ever have anything to do with Black Sabbath?”
“Yeah, that’s him.”
No way! My brain expanded about six levels that afternoon.
Sabbath had a singer before the long black haired guy. Unreal. George told me that guy (Ian Gillan) was the singer from Deep Purple. Holy shit!
A few months after that, we were in the park listening to Sabbath’s Paranoid on cassette. “That’s Ozzy singing!” shouted Bob above the music. I simply could not believe it. And not long after that, I was watching Much Music again when they debuted a brand new Sabbath video with yet another singer! A bearded guy! Some guy named Glenn Hughes? Never heard of him before. He had a beard and a suit. Not really very rock and roll. Could you imagine my reaction if I knew at that time that Glenn Hughes was also a singer in Deep Purple?
The circle was becoming complete. This kind of trivia was like candy to me. I ate it up, every last morsel that I could absorb. Band “A” led me to Band “B” and Band “C” via these kinds of connections. Ozzy even connected back to Quiet Riot, the first “metal” tape I ever bought, via original guitarist Randy Rhoads. He was about the only guy who could rival Eddie Van Halen in the guitar stakes, according to my friends. But there was a new up-and-comer that Much Music kept talking about, named Yngwie Malmsteen.
Much was an advantage my neighbors didn’t have. Neither Bob, nor George, nor Rob Szabo had the channel. I began growing and developing tastes of my own, though still heavily influenced by my friends. On my own, I found White Wolf, Sammy Hagar, Savatage, Queensryche, Aerosmith…and Spinal Tap.
Yes, Spinal Tap. “Hell Hole” became one of my favourite songs during the summer of ’86. My sister liked it. She hated her Catholic school, and as we’d drive by, she’d sing “Don’t wanna stay in this Hell Hole!” That school was a indeed a “hell hole”. Shitty teachers and shittier bullies who did not like heavy metal.
It’s true that the teachers gave me hell for wearing a Judas Priest T-shirt. It is also true that we went to a retreat for a week, where music T-shirts and players were forbidden. I have always been drawn to music since my earliest memories. What did these teachers have against music? I knew. It was the old myth that these groups were “Satanic” and would drive us to all do drugs and die. What those teachers didn’t know was that the music made me feel good without drugs. I was even expanding my vocabulary. Bands like Judas Priest and Black Sabbath were not simplistic with their lyrics. I learned words such as “pyre” and “pneumatic”. Through Iron Maiden, I was learning about literature and history. I knew stuff that they weren’t even teaching in school, about Alexander the Great, the Gordian Knot, and the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. How could that be bad?
Fuck ’em. I trusted myself. I was smart enough to know better than they did.
I look back at these early days, and I’m not surprised that it’s these bands that the core of my tastes are built around today. Long live rock and roll.
GETTING MORE TALE #588: Broken Hearts are for Assholes
What music do you seek out most when your soul needs soothing?
I remember my first “real” breakup in 1994. Upset and confused, I sought solace in music. I had just ordered a new release from Columbia House. The Alice in Chains Jar of Flies EP hit me right where it hurt. Why music resonates the way it does with certain feelings in specific people, nobody knows for sure. If they did, there would be a perfect formula for writing perfect songs, but there is not.
It wasn’t the lyrics on Jar of Flies that affected me. I didn’t consider “Hey ah na na, innocence is over, over,” to be particularly revelatory. It was the music that got me. While soft, Jar of Flies was also very dark and soaked with emotions. Perhaps a lot of this had to do with new bassist Mike Inez. Jar of Flies was one of the first things they wrote with Inez. According to guitarist Jerry Cantrell, “He plays the nastiest, darkest shit but he’s got the sweetest heart in the world.” Both the weird darkness and the heart can be heard on Jar of Flies. That EP stuck to me like glue. Play it once, flip it over, play it again.
We got back together and broke up again a couple months later. This time it was final. I remember trying music again to feel better. I put on “Love Song” by Tesla. This time, this music only made me feel worse. The line “Love will find the way,” didn’t seem real to me anymore. So I put on something angrier. In 1994, I was very much into Motley Crue. I put on “Primal Scream”. I felt the tension; I felt the frustration, and the seething.
Broke dick dog, My head slung low, Tail knocked in the dirt. Time and time, Of being told, Trash is all I’m worth. When I was just a young boy, Had to take a little grief, Now that I’m much older, Don’t put that shit on me.
This had nothing to do with the breakup, but digging into my anger brought with it a lot of baggage from being bullied as a kid at school. “Primal Scream” helped bring that to the fore. It was the beginning of a long period of self-discovery and realizing that trauma as a kid can carry forward.
Breakup #3 happened in November of 1995. Different girl this time. I didn’t want to get angry anymore. I decided to try to re-ground myself and get back to who I was before this. I started hanging out with my family more. I was listening to more old music like the Beatles. The Anthology had just come out. Via the Beatles (and co-worker T-Rev) I discovered Oasis (see: Getting More Tale #561: (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?). These new bands like Oasis weren’t that much different from the old ones.
What really clicked with me this time were bands from the extensive Deep Purple family tree. (See: Record Store Tales Part 141: When We Rock, We Rock and When We Roll, We Roll). I was playing British bands with a blues base. Whitesnake, Purple, Rainbow and so on. Why these bands resonated with me during this breakup, I don’t know. Maybe it was the male posturing and testosterone. Whatever the reason was, for a little while Deep Purple and Whitesnake really helped me put the pain out of mind. I felt more or less normal and I think the tunes had a lot to do with it. This kicked off a huge Purple obsession with me.
It’s strange but every breakup had its own music. There was a girl named Jasmine in the year 2000, and the music for her breakup was Marillion. “So here I am once more, in the playground of the broken hearts.” Both Fish (first singer) and Steve Hogarth (second singer) are real poets. With Marillion, both the music and lyrics seemed to fit. I was becoming a little bit of a broken-hearted douche bag, but I had to do what I had to do to get by.
Perhaps what I really needed was some Frank Zappa.
Some of you might not agree, ‘Cause you probably likes a lot of misery, But think a while and you will see… Broken hearts are for assholes, Broken hearts are for assholes.
From Dream Theater’s acclaimed self-released series of covers albums, we have before us Master of Puppets. This was recorded in Barcelona back in 2002. Just as advertised, it’s Dream Theater doing the whole album live, in sequence, and pretty authentically too.
Dream Theater are a very different band from Metallica. This is bound to be interesting.
The most obvious difference is that Metallica have two guitar players, while Dream Theater has one and a keyboard player. On this, Jordan Rudess does aggressive keyboard solos where Kirk Hammett may have laid down one with his axe. He also plays the acoustic parts on keys. From time to time, you forget it’s a keyboard. In short, Rudess turns the prospect of Metallica with keyboards into a lesson on forgetting your assumptions about keyboards!
James LaBrie fits the silhouette of a young James Hetfield. He sings a convincing Metallica cover indeed! He cuts loose and goes for it. Metallica requires a gritty singer, going for it 110%. LaBrie handles it. For Dream Theater, doing these cover albums (from a wide variety of bands in fact) must be a lot of fun. They would have the chance to sing and play in a way that isn’t the usual for them. Guitarist John Petrucci does not often get to riff on something for five minutes straight like Metallica do.
Lars haters are naturally going to ask “What do Metallica songs sound like with a real drummer?” Hey, I’m no Lars hater. (He can play better than I can…) But in answer to that question I can only respond “fucking awesome”.
Dream Theater cover Master of Puppets without drawing attention to themselves. Mike Portnoy does not grandstand and overplay. Nobody does. If the effort was to do an authentic version of Puppets, as close to note for note as possible, then I say mission accomplished. Beat for beat, this is stunningly true to the original album. The keyboards are the most obvious deviation, and that’s minor. In anything, Dream Theater draw attention to the fact that these are great heavy metal songs. Are they Metallica’s best-ever set of songs? Some prefer Kill ‘Em All, some Ride the Lightning. Any way you slice it, Puppets is metal immortal, a very important record in anyone’s collection. Dream Theater painstakingly learned the album front to back so they could play it live for a few thousand people. They did that because it’s a great album on any day.
Dream Theater’s live covers albums (and many, many other releases) can be found on their own Ytse Jam Records website. Check out the multitude of stuff available (though some are out of print now) and try not to drain your bank accounts.
What happens when an experimental avante-garde multi-instrumentalist goes punk? You get Amherst Drive. Derek Kortepeter is best known for his multi-genre solo music in which he plays all the instruments. Naturally with Amherst Drive, he also plays and sings everything himself.
Like all of Derek’s music, Amherst Drive is memorable but challenging. Punk rock? Sure, but “Breakdown”, the first track on his new single, has none of the traditional punk rock melody. Derek has taken his unusual stylings and amped them up. “Better Way” is a ballad, but not an easy pill to swallow. Neither of these songs are easy to digest. Derek may have simplified some things and punked them up, but he has still fucked things up just enough to keep them edgy. Unusual rhythms and melodies are mixed together in very un-punk-like fashion.
Good little debut punk single here from Amherst Drive. Hopefully Derek will assemble a band and give these tunes a stretch live and see where they can go.
Someone bugging you on Facebook? Block! How about Twitter? Block! Go ahead and try it. The President does it all the time!
In the pre-Record Store 1980s, it was not this easy.
In late 1987 and early 1988, a kid from school named Bobby was getting a bit too clingy. He was even a bigger nerd than I was. Way bigger nerd. His prized possession was a massive multi-volume copy of the Oxford English Dictionary. His stalking didn’t begin until grade 10 French class. I was never very good at French. I can’t really explain why I took it again in grade 10 when I didn’t have to. It was my worst class. Bobby and I would study together over the phone. It helped so we continued our phone studies. That’s how it started.
Soon after, Bobby began calling for non-school related reasons, which was still OK, but it picked up speed. The calls became very regular. First, they were every other day. Then they were daily. Then twice a night, and more. He started inviting me to go to church with him.
I was a young kid with no idea how to handle the discomfort I was experiencing. Talking on the phone was fine, but every night? I was getting smothered, except I didn’t know that was the word for it. I wasn’t sure if this was weird or not, or how to deal with it, and I didn’t want to confront him. I decided the best strategy was to start avoiding his phone calls. There were two problems with this:
In 1987 there wasn’t an easy way to “block” Bobby’s number.
My mom outright refused to lie and tell Bobby I wasn’t home.
I made sure my mom knew that Bobby was calling too much and annoying me, but she wouldn’t play ball! “I won’t lie for you!” she said. I can remember her answering the phone, while I’m telling her “I’m not home!” only for her to hand the phone over to me. I was furious but she wouldn’t budge on her lying policy. New techniques had to be invented.
The easiest was taking the phone off the receiver. Leaving it “off the hook” would give any caller a busy signal. No such thing as voicemail. I began taking the phone off the hook during Bobby’s usual calling hours without telling my parents. The only problem was that the handset then started making a very loud beeping sound when you left it off the hook. So I buried the receiver under blankets and pillows so it could not be heard. Of course we wouldn’t be getting any calls at all from anyone, but I figured that was the price my mom had to pay for refusing to lie! Later on, I learned how to remove the ear piece so that it wouldn’t make any noise.
The other method of Bobby-blocking required the help of my best friend Bob, not to be confused with Bobby. One night my parents were out and Bob was over, when the phone rang.
“That’s Bobby calling,” I said. “Answer the phone and tell him he has the wrong number?” Bob obliged me. He was willing to lie for me! He answered and told Bobby he had the wrong number, but it was a little more complicated than that. Bobby said, “But I have this number programmed in my phone!” It was 1987. Nobody had numbers programmed into phones…except Bobby. Bob insisted that he still had the wrong number and hung up. Sure enough the phone rang again as Bobby called back. This time we didn’t answer.
Things with Bobby came to a head twice. The first time was over the phone, one of those nights he called multiple times. He asked me to go to church with him again and I said “No” very firmly. I said we had our own church to go to and I just didn’t want to go to his. To my shock he started bawling on the phone and hung up on me. He then called back, apologized and asked if I’d go to church with him again. I accepted his apology but declined church again. He started crying again and hung up again. He was Lutheran, in case you’re wondering if he was evangelical or something more obscure. Nope, just Lutheran. Pretty mainstream.
Bobby and I patched up the friendship and boundaries were re-established. There was another incident towards the end of 1988 and it was the final one.
I had 11th grade math class with Bobby and the year started fine. He sat next to me. One morning in class he took my pencil case and wouldn’t give it back. I had been drawing band logos on it, so Bobby took it upon himself to take it (and all the pens, pencils and erasers it contained) away, as if he was a parent and I was a child. I was getting more and more angry and when he finally returned it after class, I was furious. He acted like it was funny, but I wasn’t laughing. I was really pissed off. I went to the cafeteria at lunch, and I told Bob what happened. He said, “Well we just won’t let him sit with us at lunch.”
I met Bob and our group in the cafeteria for lunch, and we made sure to take up all the bench space. When Bobby arrived, Bob informed him he’d have to sit somewhere else because I was still mad at him for taking the pencil case and not giving it back until after class. That was pretty much it. Bobby and I stopped speaking completely after that, even though we sat next to each other in class. It was awkward but a certain amount of peace and quiet returned to my life.
I remember shortly after that, I caught a ride home from school with Bob. He drove a shit-brown Chevette. We were driving home when I spotted Bobby up ahead. Bob slowed down his car and followed Bobby without saying anything. He just slowly, slowly followed, at walking speed, in his car. This time it was me who found it funny, but Bobby was not amused and yelled at his neighbors to call the police! (They didn’t.)
Bobby changed schools the next year, and a mutual acquaintance told me that he “hated” me now. I accept the part that I had to play in it, but I would also suggest that where I was concerned, Bobby was obsessed. He was not gay, he was just fixated. It wasn’t going to end well no matter how it ended. One thing for certain though, the obsession had to end, because if it didn’t, my wits would.
I can’t help but wonder if much of this could have been avoided if only my mom would have played along and told Bobby I wasn’t home! We’ll never know now. Thanks, mom.
mikeladano.com 