December 24, 2003

The CD Review Guy's Christmas

    To be honest, it didn't look like it would be much of a Christmas.  It may sound all glamorous and exciting to be the CD review writer for The Red City Times, but the fact is that aside from the free CDs, the job only pays seventy-five dollars a week.  Then the bastards at Barnes and Noble cut my hours back to just three shifts a week.

    Ever since my girlfriend Yvette moved out a couple of months ago, it has been harder and harder to make the rent.  Not that our one bedroom apartment is luxurious.  At least it is tidier now that she's gone and I don't have to tiptoe around all the empty vodka bottles rolling around on the floor anymore.  She moved back to live with her parents in Denham Springs.  I suppose the excitement of living with an underemployed thirty-eight year old part time rock critic was too much for her.  That and being so sad after her cat died.

    Anyway, with my family gone out of town for the week to Pensacola and me stuck working the last Christmas Eve shift at Barnes and Noble, it didn't look like things would be too festive.  Not that I would be lonely.  Waiting at home for me was my new roommate, a very special lady.  No, it's not Deena the tattooed and pierced punkette who works at the cafe at Barnes and Noble.  For awhile, I thought I might put the moves on her, but we are officially "just friends."  She's great and funny and cool, but she's just twenty years old and way too much work.  No, my new roommate for the last two weeks has been Aunt Connie, and she's not even my Aunt Connie.  You see, Yvette's Aunt Connie broke her hip three weeks ago.  She fell at the Wal-Mart during a tussle with some college kid over a twenty dollar microwave during a big sale.  Well, they ambulanced her to Baton Rouge General and hammered a new hip replacement in.  The doctors discharged her after a week, but she still needed four weeks of rehab.  My apartment just happens to be half a block down the street from The General.  I still run into Yvette's brother every now and then at the store.  He told me about how even though she's eighty-six Aunt Connie is still pretty spry but that she had to do daily physical therapy sessions for her hip at The General and there was nobody in town who lived nearby and could put her up.  I know they didn't have much money so when Roger asked me if she could crash at my place for a few weeks I couldn't say no as long as she didn't mind the cramped quarters.

    Actually, it has worked  out pretty well.  She kicks in some cash for groceries, and she's not a bad cook if you don't mind casseroles every night.  After two weeks, she's made herself right at home.  She gets around on her new metal hip with one of those walkers with the little wheels and the tennis balls on the bottom.  She's worn a track in the carpet from the couch to the refrigerator, and let me tell you I now know where Yvette gets her taste for the booze from.  Basically, the Christmas season means that Aunt Connie mixes a teaspoon of eggnog in with her big tall glass of Early Times bourbon on the rocks.  Come to think of it, she watches The Weather Channel  all the time just like Yvette, too.

    Anyway, back to Christmas Eve.  So there I am closing up the Barnes and Noble at ten.  Instead of visions of sugarplums and candlelight by the tree, I was on my way to Katie's Katerie to see some indie band punk rock show.  I know, I know, nothing says Christmas quite like seeing Rank Spittle live at a dinky deli/sometimes night club, but I promised Deena I would go.  The three guys in the band all went to high school with her in Norman, Oklahoma before she moved here.  Deena, of course, was not driving through the freezing rain to a deli.  She was somewhere in the Bahamas on one of those family Christmas cruises that her parents were paying for.  I can vividly picture rail thin, black-dyed hair, multiple piercings Deena off chilling in the sun in a deck chair or lounging poolside in a chain mail bikini.  Anyway, she's out in the sun, I'm in the rain, and I promised her I would go to the show since her friends in Rank Spittle didn't know anyone else in Baton Rouge.  Hell, they aren't even old enough to buy booze.  I figured I would pop for a couple of six packs of beer and send them on their way. 

    By the time I parked at Katie's across from the Citgo station on Essen Lane, they were already deep into their set.  I'd like to say that these three unknown kids from nowhere set that tiny stage on fire and rocked the crowd, but I would be lying.  First, there was no crowd.  There was the guy working the bar and his girlfriend who seemed more like the Sheryl Crow type.  Then there were three guys eating po-boys in the back who looked like they were workers on break from the nitrogen plant down the road.  Still Rank Spittle played there hearts out, and they weren't bad, bashing out their three chords over and over punctuated by a lot of passionate screaming.  Ten minutes after I got there, the bartender and the cook were turning out the lights and bolting the door, and I found myself face to face with Rank Spittle in the rain on the street. 

    I know they are young and proud and they have a message in their music and they're dedicated and ready to face down adversity for their art.  However, I couldn't help but feel sorry for them as the three skinny, wet twenty year olds loaded their old, crappy gear into an even older, crappier Plymouth minivan.  I suspect that when it came off the assembly line in Detroit in 1987 it may have been gold or tan or white, but now it was a colorless mess of stickers, dents, gashes, and scraped off paint.

    Well, we hopped across the street to the Citgo station, and I bought them a couple of sixers of Bud. Though they looked like the typical Goth-punk-serial killers from an episode of "Law and Order," they were all really nice kids.  They told me all kinds of embarrassing stories about how super cool Deena was once the class nerd and was on the chess team and had horrible braces.  By the way, isn't it hilarious that the same people who at age fourteen are completely mortified to have braces at age twenty are walking around with tongue studs. nose rings, and nipple piercings? 

    Anyway, it became clear as the last of the beers was drained that Scruff (the drummer), Zack (the bass player), and Johnny Spittle (the singer/guitarist) had no place to stay, no money for a hotel, and barely enough gas and cash to make it to their next gig Christmas night in San Marcos, Texas.

    I must confess that contrary to my expectations, the mood in the apartment was quite festive when Rank Spittle and I tiptoed in.  Aunt Connie, who lives a twilight existence where day and night blur together in an unending series of highballs and forecasts on The Weather Channel, had decorated for Christmas to surprise me.  Judging from the Christmas tree shaped air fresheners, the battery powered disco Santa statue, and the plastic candy cane lights she must have hobbled down the block to the Circle K on her walker, loaded up all the Christmas novelties she could find including a little tin foil tree she put on the coffee table on top of a pile of CDs, and staggered back powered by eggnog and Christmas cheer.  In the kitchenette, a fresh new gallon bottle of Early Times and a gallon of eggnog were laid out along with a huge pile of Hershey's kisses, Snickers bars, and M&Ms.  I have never had much of a sweet tooth - that was always Yvette's favorite part of Christmas -  but Rank Spittle were in heaven.  In minutes, my little living room had been transformed into a refugee camp for indie punk rock boys.  Bodies, sleeping bags, and wet clothes were everywhere as the lads merrily scarfed down candy and eggnog.  I could tell they were impressed by Aunt Connie's heavy hand on the bourbon bottle as she staggered about on her walker freshening up their drinks.

    I don't know if it was the booze, the sugar buzz, or the spirit of Christmas but by one in the morning I had dragged Yvette's old harmonium out of  the closet.  She used to pound on the little keyboard a couple of years ago when she was going through her Nico/Marianne Faithful phase.  Turns out Scruff plays piano beautifully and Zack and Jimmy much to their chagrin confessed to having been in the stage choir in high school.  Soon they were harmonizing on "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" as Scruff pumped on the harmonium.  Aunt Connie, a bit wobbly by this point, was up on her walker pounding it up and down on the floor for a good, solid backbeat.  Being a rock critic, I am genetically incapable of producing any kind of music.  Still, sitting back and listening to the racket as they worked their way through "Good King Wenceslas" and "Silent Night," I couldn't help but smile.  With no family, no Yvette, and no money Christmas had looked pretty bleak, but I felt a warm glow - maybe it was Aunt Connie's eggnog.

    I could say we were lost in a reverie of Christmas spirit, but roaring drunk is closer to the truth.  Around two-thirty in the morning, the jam session on "Merry Christmas Baby" was interrupted by some energetic pounding on the front door.  I just knew that my neighbors must have finked me out to the police, and it was cops coming to shut us down.  When I opened the door, it was Yvette.  She was dressed all in black, too thin, and just a week out of detox, but she looked wonderful.  In her arms was a little blob of gray fur, a kitten we later named J. Spittle after she curled up and made a cozy little nest in the spiky green hair of her punk rock guitarist namesake who was crashed out on our floor.

Merry Christmas from eSLASHculture.com!