Song Memories

I hastily wrote the following memories associated with songs in 2007 for a social networking startup site; they are mostly fictional.

1. Heart of Glass, Blondie

My first job was awful—bagging groceries at a filthy grocery store, but my second job was amazing: I sold organs to old people. Not anatomical organs like lungs and livers, but musical organs with keyboards and pedals. I was only 17, and although I felt that I had an amazingly advanced sense of style, I really had no concept of professional dress, so when I showed up at the mall (yes, the organ store was in a mall) for the interview, I wore a second-hand three-piece pin striped suit and two-toned wing tip shoes. The mall-walkers looked at me like I had three heads as I made my way to the organ store for the interview, and I distinctly remember hearing a musak version of Heart of Glass broadcast over the mall’s speakers. Blondie ala musak is the sort of surreal anachronism that marks itself in memory.

I was the worst organ salesman that had ever worked there: two months employment and zero organ sales. One hundred percent of the store’s clientele was retired and over 60; maybe my gaudy mobster dress scared them away. My official job description dictated that I loiter around the mall, locate some unsuspecting old folks, and lure them back to my store to purchase an overpriced, poorly produced organ. I did loiter throughout the mall, and there with me every day—seven or eight times per day—was musak Heart of Glass. I looked forward to hearing it because it would get stuck in my head when I wasn’t at work, and I always hoped that hearing it again would free the melody from my memory.

I hardly ever talked to any old folks; they creeped me out just as much as I probably scared them with my second-hand mobster suits. I did, however, associate myself with many of the female employees who worked in neighboring stores—the pin stripes served me well with this task. I became friends (really, just friends) with about a dozen girls from throughout the mall and would eat lunch in the food court with one or several of them each day.

One day as I was waiting in line for the mall version of an Asian food restaurant (it was walled Asian Chao, but I always thought it sounded funny to add an “s” and call it Asian Chaos), I noticed two guys sitting at a nearby table staring at me ominously. They were about my age and were dressed like thugs—excessively baggy clothing, over-sized jewelry, etc. Musak Heart of Glass just started playing and my female companions and I were discussing what to order, so I didn’t pay these guys much attention. My friends got their food and went to find a table. As I picked up my order and turned to follow them, one of the staring guys called out to me, “hey!” I looked around thinking there must have been someone behind me he knew. “No, you” he said “come here.” I was a little embarrassed because he sounded so serious and angry and here I was having a good time on my lunch break. There was an eerie moment of silence as we eyed one another like two cats crouching to pounce. “Why are you cutting in on our business?” My mouth fell open to give an answer, but I really had no idea what he was talking about; I think I just mumbled incoherently and shook my head to indicate my bewilderment. The other guy at the table spoke up, “Yeah, we see you in here every day with a different girl and with your pinstripes and vests; what are you trying to do?” I squinted my eyes as my brain attempted to reconcile the situation when finally, I arrived at a solution and involuntarily let out an “Ohhh.” I had realized that these gentlemen were apparently some sort of mall pimps, and they interpreted my behavior of daily eating lunch with different girls and wearing three piece suits with cufflinks as being mall pimp behavior. I kindly and professionally explained to them that I worked at the organ store just over there and that these girls are my friends, and that I would never even consider…you know; then, I turned and, to the tune of musak Heart of Glass, walked to the table where my friends were waiting for me, and enjoyed my lunch.

2. War Pigs, Black Sabbath

I played drums for a horrible band called Officer Flossie. We got the name from a character in a children’s book; the character was a fox police officer who chased a dog-criminal throughout the book. We weren’t very good musicians, but our songs were decent, and we were all weird enough to come up with crazy ideas for stage antics, so the live shows were usually entertaining, if nothing else. During one practice, we all decided to cover the song Black Sabbath’s War Pigs—it is a shocking and insane sounding song, and we thought it would give us instant cred with any metal heads in the crowd, sort of like when the Blues Brothers played Rawhide at Bob’s Country Bunker to appease the rowdy cowboys. As I mentioned, we were not skilled musicians, so it took us a while to learn the song, but we eventually got it down perfectly.

I happened to be friends with a very crazy man named Daryl who used to be a Satanist (he is an insane Christian now), which means he was also a metal-head. Daryl was one of the most maniacal looking people I had ever met: long goatee, shaved head, sharp-blue piercing eyes, and an devastatingly loud, harmfully violent sounding voice. His voice was so loud it would hurt your ears when he whispered to you from across the room. In addition to the sheer volume of his voice, he was also professionally trained to sing opera even though he had grown up singing Ozzy, so needless to say that when Daryl told us he was coming down from Michigan to visit, we asked him to sing War Pigs at our next show.

We were scheduled to play second out of three bands. It was a Friday night and the first band was really boring, some kind of acoustic-punk, but a lot of people came out to see them, so after they finished, we set up quickly so the crowd wouldn’t leave when we started our set. Once we set up the amps and drums, I went out side to the trailer to get the livestock. A friend of ours worked on his family’s prize-winning goat farm—they made cheese and milk, and he allowed us to use two goats for the evenings show. So I led them into the club, tied the animals to two of the amps onstage with a loose leash, and put little earmuffs over their ears so the music wouldn’t disturb them. David the bassist and Donnie the singer then carried a Christmas tree onstage and set it up at center stage inside of a kiddy pool filled with water. It was a small tree and the club had large ceilings. Donnie lit the tree on fire right before we started our first song, War Pigs. Everything was going okay until the bridge when Donnie opened a large coffee can and released the 500 or so angry bees that were inside. My girlfriend worked for a local beekeeper, and she was able to get me the bees—they were male bees, so they didn’t sting. By this point the crowd had enough, and most of them ran outside once the bees were released; the sound guy wasn’t happy either because he cut the power, and the tree fire was getting somewhat out of control. Apparently someone had called the fire department because they were just arriving as we were coming off the stage. We were never allowed to play at that club again, but it was a fantastic night

3. Wonderwall, Oasis

I used to be obsessed with Oasis. My fan-ship went farther than just learning all the song lyrics and knowing the names of the band members. I read books about them, watched all the videos and TV shows, read all the news articles, listened to all the interviews, and collected pictures of the band. I was 16 at the time, and it all seemed very regular. Well, I was so obsessed with the lead singer, Liam Gallagher, that I would try to dress like him and try to emulate his movements—I think I actually got pretty good at being Liam Gallagher.

The true test came when two friends and I went to see the band perform in West Palm Beach. We listened to Oasis in the car the whole way to the show and actually arrived about 5 hours early to the venue—we were such super-fans. I had Wonderwall stuck in my head from listening to it on the car ride. I was dressed-up like Liam and my friends were both dressed in black. They were 16 too, but they both were pretty big guys. As we walked up to the venue there were about 8 young teenage fans sitting on the ground outside the door waiting to get inside—it was, in fact, five hours before the show was scheduled to start. My friends and I walked right towards the sitting fans, and one of them shouted, “Look, it’s Liam!” They all stood up, and my large friends held some of them back, but one of the girls held out a book and a marker, so I grabbed it and as I quietly hummed the melody to Wonderwall signed “Liam Gallagher.”

4. Yellow Submarine, The Beatles

When I was in high school, my dad took me to see one of those Beatle cover bands that dresses up like the Beatles, and looks just like them, and talks with the accents and all. I didn’t really want to go, but after I saw them, I decided that I loved the Beatles. A friend of mine also loved the Beatles and we taught ourselves to play guitars, found a drummer and bassist and started our own Beatles cover band. We were remarkably less talented than the band that I saw, but we did actually get a gig a thirty-year class reunion at our high school.

We showed up at the reunion that was held at the house of the former class president. The crowd of about fifty people was made up of a bunch of old people who had been out of high school for thirty years, and was not very lively at all. That is, however, until the keg was opened. By our third song, most of the people there were ripping drunk. There was one guy in particular who especially enjoyed our poor renditions of Beatle songs. The fourth song we played that night was Yellow Submarine, and the guy in particular decided to come up on stage and sing it along with us. We didn’t mind because it was our first show, and we were a little scared because he was kind of a big guy. Well, this guy loved Yellow Submarine so much, he demanded we play it again, and again. I think we played it about 10 times before the police showed up and shut us down since it was getting late and we were playing outside. I would probably call the cops too if I heard Yellow Submarine 10 times in a row—no matter how much I loved the Beatles.

SIKE! article

I wrote the following article for the forthcoming, Gainesville, FL-based SIKE! magazine (expected publication 9/2009).

“I grow old…I grow old…

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled”

--T. S. Eliot

“…they’ll do anything if someone cool do it,

but they won't do it first…”

--The Cool Kids

Why so many Gainesville social divisions demarcated with elements of physical appearance? I would hate to delve even inches into any serious discussion of sociology here, so if you’re a social scientist—won’t you turn the page? Perhaps bars and restaurants downtown have started enforcing a wildly strict social dress code: Did everyone drinking agua fresca outside of Volta ride there on a fixie? Are all the hookah-smoking guys at Sharab wearing brightly colored, well-ironed, half-buttoned club shirts? Have all the Guinness drinkers at Durty Nelly’s smoked a pack of cigarettes on the way from their cars to the pub’s door?

Certainly no! Actually, those establishments do a fantastically efficient job of cultivating diversity within their clientele. But how can I explain the enormous amount of money I just won by observing only what clothes people were wearing downtown and then betting on where they were going to get a drink? (I’m sorry; it was me who was following you.) These are just humble observations; placing blame is not the point here (were you expecting a point to this article anyway?). Somewhere within our community’s social constructs lurk influential centers that determine, for example, that it is okay to convert an old Giant road bike into a fixed gear, but it is not okay to order one online from Urban Outfitters. I get the impression that groups either become jealous of their “unique” style and, in an effort to keep it safe, render exclusionary meaning or perceived depth to a trend (e.g., I grease my rockabilly pompadour with a the same brand of pomade that Gene Vincent used, so you Wal-Mart hair-gelers are losers), or maybe there are some older (or just more influential) members of society who act outside of the temptation to blend in with peers and are free from aspirations to attain a fashion-based social status. Perhaps it is these individuals who are lifted as examples by others seeking acceptance or membership. (Wow, when did this article turn into an anthropology graduate seminar?) I’m just guessing here; of course, I don’t have the answer, and to quote everyone’s favorite absurdist playwright, “It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.”

What, I think, would be more beneficial for everyone involved is a far-reaching, communal handshake/hug of agreement that it’s a waste of time for us to be obsessed about defining someone’s personhood by what he or she wears, where his or her bike was purchased, etc. In the same way, please don’t seek to be defined by how awesome your hair looks, how your tattoo peeks-out just perfectly from underneath a rolled shirtsleeve, how you were listening to Passion Pit in middle school way before your friends were, or how you read only the coolest zines in Gainesville.

Previously published work

I wrote the following articles while working for the Honey Bee Research and Extension Lab at the University of Florida. Stylistically, they are somewhat bland but are intended to have a concise and professional tone:

African Honey Bee Information for School Administrators

Bee Proofing for Florida Citizens

Frequently Asked Questions about the African Honey Bee in Florida

Living with African Bees in Florida's Outdoor Workplace

Removal of Swarms and Colonies for Pest Control Operators

What to do about African Honey Bees: A Consumer Guide