QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

SONG OF THE WEEK: “The Pretender”
— Jackson Browne

There were less than 200 kids in my elementary school. Most of ‘em, like me, lived out in the sticks, and rode the bus in. Moose, bears and wolves grazed, foraged and hunted in a shaky, tremulous truce with dog and man on the fringes of town. Grand, glorious bald eagles shared airspace with dare-devil bush pilots, foul, free-soaring seagulls and clean, cold Arctic air. Real hippies still staggered through the dirt streets. Shit, a whole tribe of ‘em built a gigantic plastic dome and freaked, fucked and fried their ways into the local consciousness while weed was still legal in the Land Of The Midnight Sun. And a couple o’ country miles down the road from my folk’s place, future pop singer Jewel’s family was busy setting up long-hair homesteads, folkie havens and great big gleaming greenhouses.

Some guys were still comin’ home from ‘Nam in black body bags. And back then, they actually showed the footage of those bodies comin’ in to Los Angeles (and New York and Washington and Seattle and ...) on your friendly Nightly News programs. I wasn’t too concerned about it, although I knew there was a big discrepancy between what happened when I set up my plastic army men and fought a war, and the horrific, bloody images I saw beamed into the living room every evening. But like I said, I was a stupid, spoiled little ’70s American kid, and like a lot of my peers, I thought my myopic little world was far more important than those heavy trips.

My family (and just about every family I knew) was imploding. My mom and dad were on the verge of divorce, I was six thousand miles from my cousins, my Native American schoolmates from the Northern Minnesota reservation I was raised on, and good ol’ Grandma. All my babysitters smoked dope and fucked on the floor. When the folks weren’t out working, squatting on bar stools or cultivating their own peculiar little social strata, booze, weepy country music and loud arguments were the order of the day around the house.

And why not? We were living in the fallout of the ruined sixties dreams that my parents hadn’t even bought into in the first place, the echos of Hendrix and Dylan fading obscenely into the soul-numbing strains of Terry Jacks, Frankie Valli and B.J. Thomas. The Wonder Years, my ass. No, my dad and mom never jumped on board the Love Train, but they sure got sucked into the aftermath, as did most of the country, enduring a (has it ever ended?) sick and blasphemous hangover the likes of which no proper civilization had seen since pig-eyed, pompous Emperor Nero gazed upon the flickering flames flattening Rome before him.

But did I—or any of my equally clueless, fifth-grade, cartoon-headed little buddies—give a good fat flying fuck about any of that? Nawww. Not really. Come on, man, were were NINE. Girls still had cooties—but ya secretly dug ’em. Cigarettes tasted like shit but ya smoked ’em anyway. One beer was like a night in Bangkok. Pain was fun. Blood, scabs and bruises were badges of courage and honor. Night was EXCITING. Movies still scared you, thrilled you, brought you to hidden tears in the dark. Music sliced through your ears and into your guts like a searing, shrieking sword from heaven.

That close to the womb, death was still larger than life. You’d never admit it to your tough-guy friends or your shithead older brothers, but there was still a faint hope somewhere deep inside your feathery little chest that Jesus, Santa, the Kennedys, Old Yeller and Evel Kneivel were real, and not just some flim-flam, jive-ass chicanery cooked up by your eternally irate (and always frantic) ’rents. It was almost spring, the snow was gone, and the thaw wreaked olfactory havoc on our virginal little senses—the scents of the ocean, the endless forests and fresh dogshit co-mingling in our noses like a raw, heaven-sent potpourri. And best of all, the whole gang had new pairs of black rubber fishing boots with that groovy red stripe around the top. We were ready to kick some ass.

Of course, when it all came down, nobody showed up. We’d agreed to meet—six or seven of us—on the mud flats across from Beluga Bay, a lake where float planes landed in the summer and gashed-out, and home-made hot-rods raced for fake trophies and cases of cheap beer on an egg-shaped track on the ice in the winter. Mom raced Powder-Puff. One year Charlie Williams was flag man, and his son-in-law won the race but his brakes went out and he plowed into Charlie, the flag and the hot dog stand sure as shit an’ grease. Charlie lived—some of the float plane pilots who caught the wind just wrong in the summer didn’t. The place was no stranger to Death. Our purported meeting place was directly across the road, where the ocean crept in like clockwork at high tide and licked the harsh, rocky beaches, then slyly retreated at low tide, leaving behind a mile or two of slick, dark brown mud. Which we, in our infinite, 9-year-old wisdom, were convinced was full of treasure.

O, what hare-brained, glory-blinded little fools we were. Only my cousin Bobby and I showed for the meeting—the rest probably gathered in the thick woods behind Mark St. Michell’s place to pass around a stolen Camel straight, or maybe over by the school, at that little shack where some hippie kids had left a stack of old girlie mags and some incomprehensible (to us) anti-war graffiti scrawled across the bottom of five or six ancient trees. Frankly, we didn’t care. We were goin’ out on them flats in our new, kick-ass rubber boots, and we were gonna find some long-lost gold, or a couple of half-buried chests full of old toys, or maybe just some cool, sea-polished chunks of driftwood we could whittle away at later while we bragged to those chickenshits about how we’d braved the ‘flats and got the goods. Fuckers. Pussies. Sigh. Smart kids.

Bobby marched out ahead of me; I was a couple inches shorter, hadda pump my legs a little harder to keep up, the mud getting goopier and more insistent with each sloppy, idiotic plunge of my new rubber boots. On we trod, though, until we were at least a quarter of a mile from shore. And the mud just got thicker, and darker, and thirstier. Up to my ankles ... the mid-calf ... finally turning the black to matted brown and overlapping the sweet red stripe at the top, flowing up and over and inside and down my pants and on my socks and then it happened. I saw Bobby stop short, I mean fucking short, man. His boots went down, first the left, then the right, into the slime. And then they stopped. But Bobby didn’t. Carried by his own momentum, he literally flew out of the boots and landed, face-first, a couple feet ahead of himself. I would’ve gaped and shouted, but at that very moment, my own boots decided to become one forever with the Homer Mud Flats.

I, however, didn’t fly right outta my boots. No sir, no such luck for ol’ Tommy. Me, I just STOPPED. And kinda twanged like a straight arrow shot into a fresh baby elm—I mean, the skin on my jaw was literally flapping. By then, Bobby had rolled over and commenced to howling—huge, bellowing guffaws of moronic, innocent little kid laughter. Though, from what I recall, he was quite a sight himself, with the entire front of his body perfectly stained brown and dripping; his back fresh, clean and spotless. But it was the sight of me—his scrawny, dorky little cousin, frozen in mid-stride like some freak-factory children’s mannequin—that caused his momentary lapse of sanity. For I was not only immobile and twanging on my feet, but I was quite clearly and very rapidly sinking into the mire I’d so longed to frolic in only moments before.

Long gone were dreams of lost treasure, hidden toys and fantastic beach-comber booty—I was no stranger to the dangers of the ’Flats, and I knew we were in for some shit. It was still a half-hour or so off, but there was no mistaking the smells, sights and sounds surrounding us; the shrieks of the picking, plucking, ravenous gulls; the shift in the wind that brought a sigh of salt to the brow; that slight ache you got in your knees and elbows when the barometric pressure suddenly shifted. The tide was coming in—fast. There it was. I was 9 years old, and I was sinking (up to my knees by this point, the suction only getting stronger with each fruitless tug I gave) quickly into who knows how many feet of thick, briny goo, my only possible hope for salvation the laughter-stricken hyena of a boy lying curled in that same mud a few feet away from me. Did I mention that we were a good quarter of a mile from actual land? Uh-huh. Can you say fucked? Sure, I knew ya could.

What happened? Well, obviously, I lived. I’m here to tell the tale. Bobby survived without a scratch, other than the good hide-tanning we both got from our pops later that afternoon. Mom rescued us. It wasn’t the first time she’d come dashing out of who knows where, breathless and half-hooting, “What the hell do you little piss-ants think you’re doing? Jesus!” Ah, but never did a string of nerve-wracked expletives sound so sweet upon the ear, my friends. Salvation. Hot cocoa. Mild finger-wagging. Eye-rolling. Forgiveness. That was mom. Later, the pain would come, once dad got home. But ya know, you almost welcomed that thick leather belt across your skinny, puckered little ass—it meant you were alive. Living. Loved. Human.

The black boots? Those shiny, red-striped little status symbols we were so stupidly proud of for six hours of one day, one spring in 1975, before fucked-up, greedy old white guys dictated children’s fashion, musical tastes and social behavior? Wellsir, as you might have suspected, they’re still there, or what’s left of ‘em (they were made of good ol’ fashioned American rubber imported from some country where rubber trees actually grow, ya know), anyway. Two pairs of black rubber boots with groovy red stripes at the top, stiffened and hardened and buried two feet deep in the mud, forever a physical part of the Homer Mud Flats themselves. Four tiny, rotting shards of lost youth, innocence and invincibility the only mute witnesses to the day I realized life’s too fucking short for bullshit. Oh, I’ve forgotten it a few times since—hell, even recently. But I guess that’s why I told ya’ll this long-winded, self-serving little tale.

Because life’s too short to just stand by and watch stupid people fuck good shit up, and not say anything about it. Life’s too short to wank off while your friends and neighbors and families and beautiful strangers are dying the dark deaths of their souls and screaming silent screams for help, respite, love, peace, truth, honesty. Sure, people TALK about telling the truth, but they don’t mean the Truth, capital “T.” Sigh. So I’m gonna. Fuck the dumb shit, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, the throttle is stuck on that “T,” boyos, and I’d be more than happy to be the one who throws a spanner in all these stinky works.

It’s not a long list, but I think it’s time somebody addresses it. And I’m not gonna spout off all day about it, or lay it on too thick. I’m just gonna point out the obvious, hope people can take some constructive criticism, and let the chips fall where they may. What the hell do I have to lose? You think you can throw somethin’ bigger than the Homer Mud Flats my way? Bring it on, man. Here’s my local snipes-n-gripes for this week:

THREE LITTLE THINGS THAT HAVE REALLY BEEN PISSING ME OFF:

1) There’s a new radio station in town. The Current, left of the dial there in St. Paul. Cool stuff. Cool people. Sure, they needed some help from the community and some Public Radio suits to get the shit off the ground. Sure, the DJ’s pretty much play whatever the hell they want, and sure, their on-air catalog is “only” hovering around several thousand songs. I can see why people are bitching. I mean, that totally SUCKS compared to one year ago, right? WHEN THERE WAS NO FULL-TIME FM ROCK RADIO STATION WORTH A GOOD PISS IN THE WIND FOR FIVE STATES OR MORE AROUND YOU!! Jesus Christ. Some people are never happy. Quit whining. Get a life. Don’t like it? Turn the dial. It’s all over now, baby blue. If you really wanna hear lame, over-produced, Top 40 teeny-bopper singles on the radio—shhh .... listen now, it’s really simple: Just get in your car, point it either North or South, and turn your tunes on. Now, as you skip and roll over various state lines, turn the knob, little buddy. You hear that? Yep, it’s the same song, that one you like. Over, and fucking over, and fucking over. You deserve it. We don’t. And we don’t deserve you, either. Kudos to The Current.

2) Local writers who think a great band breaking up, or a cool artist dying, or a scene disappearing, or a much-loved local club closing is a really fucking cool thing to “break” in the news. Remember when a great band getting—or staying—together was good news? When a cool new album was worth giving all your ink space to? When the opening—or the salvation—of a much-loved venue was something to crow about? Ah, yes. Those were the days, my friends. Here’s my take, and I think it’s pretty fair: There’s a reason why people still hearken to that ancient adage, “Cursed is the bearer of bad news.” Not that bad news shouldn’t be reported. That’s life. And sometimes life really sucks. But you know what? It sucks even more when you feel like the person reporting that bad news is actually getting some kind of perverted charge out of being the first motherfucker on the block to shout “Rock is Dead!” Hey, I’m no Jimmy Olson, never claimed to be. But you, folks (you know who you are), you can keep the title “SCOOP” for yourselves. Yuck.

3) Bad Local Music Writing, Part 256: It’s getting to be a pattern. And I don’t like it. Why do “rock journalists” think they have to be smarmy, condescending and (shudder) “collegiate” when they’re talking about a fucking rock and roll record? I gotta say it—these are the same kind of pretentious twits who were around making fun of Little Richard in 1956 because the words to “Tutti Frutti” (A-wop-bop-a-lula-a-lop-bam-boom!!) were utterly, gloriously and jubilantly STOOPID. Yeah, hey—they call it ROCK AND ROLL, man. Sometimes it’s OK to just have FUN with it. Alas, some folks just can’t seem to do that. To wit: a recent, 500-plus word article in another local rag about an up-and-coming national band that reads like a bitter, jealous, post-break-up letter from a somebody who used to know Music as a friend and lover but now sees her only as a reminder of lost hope, wasted opportunities and someone else’s mistress. How sad, stupid and utterly wasteful. You have nothing better to say about music than that? Jesus, at least attack a big-time corporate tit-sucker band/artist that people should know you know sucks. I know it, and you know it. Blah!

That’s it for me this week, kids. My apologies to no one but you, dear readers, who’ve been subjected to my windy ranting and wanton raving once again. Next time out—CD reviews, local news and my personal recipe for an affordable rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. Until then—make yer own damned-to-eternal-hell news. ||

If you have local music news/gigs/events/CDs you’d like to see mentioned in this column, or you’ve just got an extra pair of circa-1975 black rubber boots with a red stripe on top you wanna part with, send replies to: (temporary e-mail) jamescrouch_1@juno.com.