Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself Read online

  I didn’t like drug songs and anti-war songs, and I didn’t like songs that were often downright explicit. Even The Beatles just wanted to hold somebody’s hand. The new groups, however, wanted to take off all their clothes, get in the bed, smoke a bunch of dope, and do all sorts of French things that have no business being watched, discussed, or sung about outside a porno flick on the sleazy side of town.

  The only piece of raw rock ’n’ roll we ever knew about before The Beatles came along was a song by The Kings-men called “Louie, Louie,” and we really weren’t certain that what they were saying about “Louie, Louie” wasn’t just a rumor.

  It was basically impossible to understand the words, except the part which went, “Louie, Lou-eye, Ohhhhh, baby, we gotta go.” After that, it sounded like, “Evahni ettin, Ah fackon nin.”

  The smart money had it, however, that if you slowed the record down from 45 RPM to 33 RPM, you could make out some of the words and that the song was really about doing something quite filthy. Naturally, we all rushed home to slow down the record. I still couldn’t make out any of the words. It simply sounded like I was hearing the bass portion of “Evahni ettin, Ah fackon nin.”

  I made myself a vow never to spend money on any of this new music. But as naive as I was concerning what was taking place in my once placid, sensible world, I was bound to break my vow. I did so by attending an Elton John concert... completely by mistake.

  I was dating a girl who was several years younger than me. I was in my late twenties at the time, but she could still remember where everybody sat in her high school algebra class.

  “What do you want to do Friday night?” I vividly recall asking this young woman.

  “Elton John is in town,” she said.

  “He’s somebody you went to school with?” I asked, in all honesty.

  “You’ve never heard of Elton John?” she said, an unmistakable tinge of amazement in her voice.

  “Well, I’ve been working pretty hard and....”

  “Elton John is a wonderful entertainer. You would love him.”

  She was a lovely child and had big blue eyes, so I managed to purchase excellent tickets for the Elton John concert — third row from the stage.

  I had never been to a concert by anybody even remotely connected with modern rock music. As a matter of fact, the only concert I had been to in years was one that Jerry Lee Lewis gave. “The Killer” came out and did all his hits, and everybody drank beer and had a great time. I didn’t see more than a dozen fights break out the entire night.

  What I didn’t know about attending an Elton John concert was that Elton didn’t come on stage until his warm-up group had finished its act. I don’t remember the name of the group that opened the show, but I do remember that they were louder than a train wreck.

  When I was able to catch a word here and there in one of their songs, it sounded like the singer was screaming (as in pain) in an English accent. One man beat on a drum; another, who wasn’t wearing a shirt, played guitar. They were very pale-looking individuals.

  “What’s the name of this group?” I tried to ask my date over the commotion. I heard her say, “Stark Naked and the Car Thieves.” I thought that was a strange name, even for an English rock group, so between numbers I asked her again. Turned out I had misunderstood her; their real name was “Clark Dead Boy and the Bereaved.”

  “So what was the name of that song?” I pursued.

  ‘“Kick Me Out of My Rut’,” she answered. I was having trouble hearing, however; my eardrums had gone into my abdomen to get away from the noise. I thought she said, “Kick Me Out on My Butt.”

  After the next number, I asked her to name that tune, too.

  “It’s called ‘I Can Smell Your Love on Your Breath’.”

  That’s what she said, but what I heard was, “Your Breath Smells Like a Dog Died in Your Mouth,” which sounded a great deal like “Kick Me Out on My Butt.”

  Finally, Elton John came out. He wore an Uncle Sam suit and large sunglasses.

  “Is this man homosexual?” I asked my date.

  “Bisexual,” she answered.

  That must come in handy when he has to go to the bathroom, I thought to myself. If there’s a line in one, he can simply walk across to the other.

  I had no idea what Elton John was singing about, but at least he didn’t sing it as loudly as did Stark Naked and the Car Thieves.

  As the concert wore on, I began to smell a strange aroma.

  “I think somebody’s jeans are on fire,” I said. “Do you smell that?”

  “It’s marijuana,” said my date. “Everybody has a hit when they come to an Elton John concert.”

  I looked around me. My fellow concert-goers, some of whom weren’t as old as my socks, were staring bleary-eyed at the stage. Down each row, handmade cigarettes were passed back and forth. Even when the cigarettes became very short, the people continued to drag on them.

  Suddenly, down my row came one of the funny cigarettes. My date took it in hand, took a deep puff, held in the smoke, then passed it to me.

  “No thanks,” I said. “I think I’ll go to the concession stand and get a beer.”

  “Go ahead,” said my date. “It’ll loosen you up.”

  This was my moment of decision. I had never tried marijuana before. I had never even seen any up close, but now here I sat holding some, listening to a bisexual Englishman wearing an Uncle Sam suit sing songs I didn’t understand. I was completely lost in this maze and wanted to bolt from the concert hall and go immediately to where there was a jukebox, buy myself a longneck beer, and play a truck-driving son by Dave Dudley — something I could understand.

  I looked at the marijuana cigarette again. Would I have an irresistible urge to rape and pillage if I took a drag?

  It was very short. “You need a roach clip,” said my date.

  “There’re bugs in this stuff?” I asked.

  “When a joint is short like that, it’s called a roach,” she explained, pulling a bobby pin from her purse. “Hold it with this.”

  I took the pin in one hand and clipped it on the cigarette I was holding in the other.

  “Take a good deep drag and hold it in,” said my date.

  “Suck it or send it down,” said somebody at the end of my row.

  I continued to look at the roach. The smoke got into my eyes and they began to burn. Suddenly, to my horror, I noticed the fire at the end of the roach was missing. It had become dislodged from the clip and had rolled down between my legs. I quickly reached between my rear and the seat cushion to find it, lest I set the entire arena aflame.

  “Hey, man,” yelled the insistent one down the row, “where’s that joint?”

  “It’s down here,” I said, stooping over like a fool with my hand between my legs, searching for what was left of the marijuana.

  “Groovy, man,” he said. “I never thought of sticking it there.”

  Mercifully, Elton John finally completed his concert and I was free to leave.

  “Well,” said my date when we were in the car, “wasn’t he great?”

  “Save the fact that I burned a hole in the seat of my pants, burned my eyes from all the smoke, and lost partial hearing in both ears from attempting to listen to a nuclear explosion from the third row back, I suppose it wasn’t all that bad.”

  “Good,” she answered. “Let’s go hear Reggae next. What do you think of Reggae?”

  “I think he’s the most overpaid outfielder in baseball,” I answered.

  That was our last date.

  * * *

  I honestly didn’t think that the music and the people who made it could get worse than it was during the seventies, but again my naiveté was showing. What currently is regarded as “rock” is totally beyond me, especially when I’m switching around on my cable TV and come across one of those music video things.

  In the first place, I don’t understand what anybody is singing about. I heard a song on a video channel that was, appropriately eno
ugh, entitled “Radio.”

  The lyrics went like this:

  “Radio. Radio. Radio.

  Radio. Radio. Radio.

  Radio. Radio. Radio.”

  An eleven-year-old child with a stuttering problem, I’m convinced, wrote that song.

  Secondly, I do not understand what these people are doing when they’re singing their songs on videos. I see people dressed like chickens, people singing while standing on their heads, and people — perhaps I’m using that term too loosely — diving into swimming pools filled with green Jell-O while they’re still singing those songs. Every video I’ve ever seen has reminded me of the nightmares I have after eating too much Mexican food. It’s music to throw-up by, I suppose.

  I thought the names of the groups and the names of the songs were strange in the seventies, but the eighties have brought total insanity to popular music.

  There are groups now like ZZ Top, The Cars, The Dead Kennedys, the B-52’s, Run D.M.C., Duke Jupiter, Blond Ambition, Wall of Voodoo, The Cramps, The Razors, The Swimming Pool Q’s, Modern Mannequins, Future Reference, The Divorcees, The Pigs, The Fabulous Knobs, Outa Hand, Late Bronze Age, Go Van Go, Riff-Raff, St. Vitus Dance, Kodac Harrison and Contraband, Subterraneans, Corn, and Wee-Wee Pole.

  Wee-Wee Pole? Now, somebody had to think of that name, and my imagination runs in all sorts of directions considering what prompted such a title for an alleged musical group. What comes to my mind first is this scene: There are a few guys snorting airplane glue or something in the back of their van, and one of ’em says, “Hey, why don’t we start a band?”, sort of a modern-day version of Mickey Rooney’s Andy Hardy saying to Judy Garland and the gang, “Hey, why don’t we give a show?”

  Two other guys think this is a terrific idea, despite the fact that none of them has any musical talent whatsoever, which is no longer important if you want to start a band. The first order of business is to figure out what to call yourselves.

  Before they can decide on a name, one of the guys indicates he needs to go to the bathroom, which reminds the others they need to do the same. So the entire group goes outside the van and begins to wee-wee on the first thing they see, which happens to be a telephone pole. The rest is history.

  I seem to notice a pattern in names for rock groups today. The names usually either have to do with some sort of animal (The Pigs), something that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever (Run D.M.C.) or something totally distasteful or vulgar (The Dead Kennedys and The Cramps).

  If this is such a hot item, I would like to get into the business of naming rock groups myself. I likely could make a lot of money doing it, perhaps even start some sort of service. You send me twenty bucks, and I’ll come up with a name for your rock group that will embarrass your parents to the point that they’ll wish they’d come along when birth control was more widely accepted.

  For groups that wanted animal names, I’d have Hog Wild and the Pork Bellies, Rabid Raccoon, Dead Dog and the Bloated Five, and Squid.

  For names of rock groups that didn’t make any sense whatsoever, the selection would include Oshkosh Ice Cream, Polished Cement, Snarknavel, and MDC Gravel.

  In the totally disgusting and vulgar category, you could select from Umbilical Dan and the Chords, Potato Poothead, Battery Acid, Rat Poison, Willie and the Warts, and The Dingleberry Five.

  You don’t think things could ever get that weird with modern music? Of course, they can. Of course, they will. We’ve already got Michael Jackson, who sings a lot higher than Mahalia and probably lost his other glove doing something strange with Brooke Shields. (I once opined in another forum that if they ever made a remake of Gone With the Wind, Michael Jackson would make a perfect Butterfly McQueen’s “Prissy.”)

  And then there’s Boy George and Culture Club, of course. I’ve seen more culture on buttermilk.

  Recently I heard a great curse: “May the next skirt you chase be worn by Boy George.” What I want to know is, Does he shave his legs and have a period?

  I have a theory about where all these people who make today’s rock music came from. Remember when you were in high school and there were always a bunch of kids who were really thin and wormy, back when “punk” meant somebody who had a lot of zits and hung around playing pinball machines and never got asked to parties and never had dates and never played sports?

  Well, they all grew up to be rock stars. That’s what happened to them. It’s the revenge of the nerds.

  As much as I despise today’s rock music, I must admit that it is even more popular with today’s youth than Elvis’s music was with my generation. I base this statement on the fact that I could go fifteen minutes to eat or to take a bath or to walk to school or to ride a bus without listening to my music. Kids today can’t do that, so they have given the term portable radio an entirely new meaning. I’m talking about, of course, the Sony Walkman and the Ghetto Blaster Age that we are presently living through.

  The Sony Walkman, I can take. Some adults even use these machines (which mercifully include earphones so nobody else will be disturbed) to listen to educational tapes and soft music that will put them to sleep in airplanes. I cannot resist the urge, however, when I see somebody tuned out of the regular world and tuned in to a taped version to ask, “What’s the score?”

  But ghetto blasters — which generally are about the size of a five-hundred-watt radio station — are something else entirely. Young people should be allowed to listen to any sort of music they like, but I shouldn’t have to listen to it with them.

  When I hear indecipherable music played two decibels above the sound the 4:15 flight to Cleveland makes when it takes off, it makes me nervous, unable to concentrate. And it eventually makes me angry enough to take the ghetto blaster from which the noise is emanating and stomp on it, even if doing so might mean having to defend my life against the owner, who suddenly has been deprived of something to get down on the street and dance on his head to.

  Young people play their ghetto blasters on city streets where people with jobs are trying to have nervous breakdowns in peace. They play them on various forms of public transportation. They play them in fast-food restaurants or any time there is somebody else around to offend and render deaf.

  There are laws against cursing in public, against spitting in public, against wee-weeing on telephone poles in public, and there should be laws against playing ghetto blasters in public.

  * * *

  This calamitous change in music, that began in the late sixties and has continued to the point of today’s strange lyrics and stranger people, left me with a choice: Either I could totally change my tastes and my way of thinking and follow this metamorphosis, or I could look elsewhere and hope to find musical solace for the soul in another area.

  I was lucky, in retrospect, to have had that second choice. The rock ’n’ roll I knew was gone; I had absolutely no taste for music sung by fat ladies with high voices in a language I didn’t understand; I have never liked any music where any part of it was made by an oboe or flute; I didn’t mind a little Big Band now and then, and I could enjoy Sinatra on occasion, but that was my parents’ music. Were it not for yet another choice, I might easily have become a musical orphan.

  The war in Vietnam and the war against it at home were raging, and Americans had to pick a side. There were doves and flower children on one side and hawks and the guys at the VFW on the other. One kind of music raged against the war, while another kind was saying, “Love it or leave it.”

  It was Merle Haggard who gave me my new musical direction. They used to say of Merle Haggard that he did all the things Johnny Cash was supposed to have done, such as serve time in prison.

  It really didn’t matter. Merle sang it sweet and from the heart, not to mention through the nose. He sang, “When you’re runnin’ down my country, Hoss, you’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me.” And he sang, “We don’t smoke marijuana in Muscogee,” and what I heard, I was drawn to. Now, pop open a longneck and let me tell you the rest of th
e story ... the best of the story.

  6

  They Call It Blue-Eyed Soul

  IAM QUITE proud of the fact that I heard of Willie Nelson before most other Americans. This is sort of like being a style-setter and being one of the first people to know when white socks went out.

  I’m not certain of the exact date when I first heard Willie sing and attached voice and song to name, but it was sometime during the late sixties after I had made the decision to abandon rock ’n’ roll and place my musical interests elsewhere.

  What eventually led me to country — before country was cool, if you’ll allow me to steal a line from Barbara Mandrell — was, first, an Atlanta radio station changing its format. The station, WPLO-AM, had been a rock ’n’ roll station during my youth, but when rock changed, so did WPLO. It went country.

  It wasn’t just that WPLO began playing country music, it was the way they played it that caught my ear. They avoided the cornball, which had been SOP for all country stations.

  Remember the old country disc-jockeys back before country started washing its feet more than once a week?

  “Hello there, friends and neighbors, this is your old Cuzzin Cholly, brangin you some good ol’ pickin’ and fiddlin’. Yessiree, Bob, we gone have us a good time this here afternoon, and jist remember this here is all brought to you by Lon and Randy’s Feed Store on the Pickett Road, yore hog pellet headquarters, and by them good folks over at the Piggly-Wiggly — my of Uncle Peahead calls that the Hoggly-Woggly — featuring bargains this week on neck bones, Cardui tablets, and septic tank aroma bars. Now, let’s jist sit back and enjoy some good ol’ country music. Here’s a new’un by Nubbin Straker entitled ‘I’m a Floatin’ Corncob in the Slopjar of Love.’”