Pride and Prejudice
The Thoughts and Words of Brian Pride

The Day the Music Died
copyright 2001 Pride
 

Here in lies the true story of the day I saw the weeping Madonna - the material girl not the epiphany,

        David and I in our former lives as Beavis and Butthead met in Boston where we used to produce art and music.   Deciding that there must be more to life than Kenmore Square's Rathskeller (The Rat - where we used to perform as "Free Beer" - the name drew more of a crowd than we did), we laid plans to move to The Big Apple. Settling into New York on Ludlow Street subsisting on a diet of bagels and pizza we soon learned that we weren't going to get booked anywhere unless we knew some of the trendy Night Club Promoters.   After meeting a few we decided they were all scum and formed our own production team - "The Jell-O-Boys".   We had big hair and wore makeup dressed ourselves in "Antique" apparel from the used clothes bins.  One may think we were the inspiration for Beavis and Buthead or worse yet, Wayne's World.
        Somehow we stumbled into the trendy New York Night Life when we were asked to help introduce a little girl and her gang called "Bow Wow Wow" at a spot called "The Mudd Club". Silly how it all came about the night before we went to the Mudd Club as Dave and Brian and the bouncers picked us up by our shirt tails and tossed us into the dumpster in the alley but the next night when we showed up as the Jell-O Boys the same guy parted the crowd , pulled back the ropes and covered us in drink tickets.   Since neither of us drank we became very popular very fast. Learning this might be just the "ticket" for meeting babes we decided to make the Jell-O Boys a NY Institution. Almost overnight we had set up office at Kamikaze, Limelight, The Cat Club, and Danceteria. The Mudd Club didn't last too long - but recognizing a formula for success we started vying for positions in a somewhat seedy multilevel night spot with a liquor license. As replacements we found either the Pyramid or this new spot Danceteria. We ended up getting the ground floor at Danceteria.This was the Main Stage for any up and coming acts hitting the streets of NYC.  At the time it was the only medium sized stage available to unknown acts. It was the early eighties and something strange was happening in Music "New Wave" - the drum machine was replacing Rock-n-Roll and the synthesizer killing off musicians left and right. The Jell-O Boys made it a policy - no track acts.
        One day as we were setting the stage for a fashion show... Yes we got into fashion after meeting a number of models and deciding they were Hot Babes and if we wanted to get in their pants we could let them walk the plank. The doors swung open and in walked a bevy of big hared bubble gum chewing babes. I was busy with a fitting, this bimbo with buck teeth and bad breath was all over me to get her in the show. Dave grabbed my arm and pulled me aside panting and covered in sweat.   Babe Alert! It seems there was this hot babe who just so happened to walk in with a bunch of her friends. Yikes Stripes. And get this so she walks in with this tape and she wants us to book her. I asked Dave if this was love at first site - his palms were sweaty.   Don't know about that - but I think I might want to pork her. I definitely want to pork her. OK I'll check her out but on one condition - you take the bimbo with buck teeth and bad breath. Buck teeth and bad breath no problem I'll stick a bag over her head.
        So I meet this girl and she hands me her tape - but I didn't take it in my hands.  There was the drill you see - you had to grill them first, make them sweat a little - see what they were made of.  I looked up from the tape in her hands to her face and then I saw them. The most amazing pair of eyes ever to grace a human face. Was she an angel, why was she so blessed.   They were the kind of eyes few possessed those that can see in as well as out. Dave was right we should do something with her but Porking wasn't on my agenda. I asked her about her music - so was it rock-n-roll. She said it was a new kind of dance music... OK so I'll buy that - we only did rock-n-roll on the main stage but I might squeeze her in on an off night. So what about her band - how many instruments, where were they what were they like. She didn't have a band she said. So is this techno-pop New Wave did she use a drum machine and a synth.   No she just had this tape and she sung to the tape. Ah, the kiss of death. We had just turned down They Might Be Giants and The Pop Tarts for pulling this same kind of crap. Not like we were the Musicians Union but we had standards to uphold. (We later became friends with the Pop Tarts and set them up on the fifth floor as hosts of the VIP lounge - they were weird and for sure we liked weird people - made us feel, well, somewhat normal) I said I'm sorry but we only do rock-n-roll on this stage and only with live bands. I'm sorry but I'm going to have to say No. I knew Dave would kill me - but at the same time I felt I was protecting her from his sweaty paws. Something about those eyes - I had to keep her away from him. Later he moved in with buck-teeth and bad breath and shacked up for a few years.
        Suddenly her pals got all animated chirping and bouncing around - trying to convince me how great she was. I looked at the girl shrugged my shoulders and said I'm sorry. Wanting to steel just one last glimpse at those eyes, thinking I may never see such beauty again I looked back. I noticed she was crying. Wary of crocodile tears and alligator hair clips I looked deeper. It was real - I had hurt her. Knowing I could never forgive myself for letting those beautiful eyes shed tears I gently took her arm and pulled her aside. No pity no sympathy no empathy - just a moment - our moment. Wiping away her tears I decided to step over the bounds and take a chance with her. Taking her arm I asked her to follow me. Just like Beavis this little cartoon lightbuld kept flashing in my head. I wanted to swing a bat at it or something.... yeah right, as if I knew what I was doing.   Breaking the first rule I led her into the Bat Cave, just an old back fire exit. Not really a secret but we liked to think of it that way so if the bands really sucked or the babes had buck teeth and bad breath we could cut a quick escape. We went up to the second floor. My palms started to sweat as I reached for the door, (I was getting more and more like David still I didn’t even once think of porking her, a little foreplay maybe, perhaps a stolen kiss, but porking, well perhaps just a hint of temptation crossed my mind).
        What was I doing - this was crazy - this was suicide... finding our way to an unmarked door on the second floor… It was the entrance to the disco. Our Gang of Rat Boys from Boston's Kenmore Square vowed that to step foot in a Disco was the kiss of death. Quite expecting a bolt of lightning to strike me down I grabbed the door and yanked it open. Holding my breath and closing my eyes I grabbed miss Angel Eyes and took a leap of faith onto the second floor. Inside I looked down at myself to make sure that I wasn’t covered in sequence or that my body wasn't convulsing like Travolta in Saturday Night Fever... So, this is Disco... I wondered.   The club was closed so there weren't any people in the room. No flashing lights - no thumping sound, just a large gray empty room, with a warn down wood floor and a small runway along one wall of powder puff blue.   I didn't dare start breathing in case the room was full of noxious gasses or something.  I looked up at the powder blue wall as my lips turned blue thinking that of course she had Angel Eyes - she was in fact the Angel of Death come to collect my soul. Or some fallen Angel who had tricked me into joining her in hell, painted up in mockery of Heaven. We had left everyone else down stairs - just me and her alone in this big empty space. Maybe I should have just let David pork her! Too late to turn back now I had sinned against my faith, I half expected to start bleeding from my pores. Hoping to get this over with before the floor opened up exposing a fiery pit and she started growing snakes in her hair I led her into a small back room.
        Sure enough there he was, a humble man, a mere mortal - sacrifice to the goddess. A mortal soul the incubus could nurse its self on until after it sprouted wings. It was a young man of some ethnic descent - but I couldn't tell which - black or Hispanic - perhaps even Italian. He was sitting there in the gray mist tinkering with some technical device that brainwashed all the bridge and tunnel people into thinking they were cool so they would empty their wallets and give up their souls. But I could see he was a good man - one to be trusted. So I spelled it out for him, introducing miss Angel Eyes - could he help us out here - after all she has this dance thingy on this tape thingy and you work up here in the Disco and Disco is more of a dance thingy done with tape thingies... so, like, perhaps you might check her out and see if you two hit it off. We exchanged a passive glance and he said sure he would love to - I could tell from his eyes he wasn't going to just pork her and erase her tape so he could dub demo's on it.   This was going to work out after all. So I asked him what he did at the Club. He said he was the DJ, (poor fellow), well, then fine just perhaps he could play her little cassette some time and let her dance around on the powder puff runway, (hey, maybe he was going to pork her after all). We all shook hands and said it was done. I never saw the girl again but I quite often thought about those Angel Eyes. Sometimes I wondered if I had missed my chance to really get to know her.   There was something special about her, I knew right away when I first saw her face, I'd go as far as too say I knew what it was... but in this world did it really matter... weren't you better off never knowing. Then one day I saw them again; those Angel Eyes.  Glowing out at me from the front page of some magazine. Hey, she had finally done it - good for her. It was too bad I wasn't able to help her but as it turned out it didn't matter much anyway - she got through the gauntlet and had found a little niche for herself.   It would still be years before I would ever pick up one of those magazines and learn that Our Little Lady of The Weeping Madonna was none other than that Material Girl herself - Madonna.
Epilogue:
        Moved by her tears or moved by her pain... I can only say I'm sorry I ever hurt her. I watched her bubble burst and her Ice Palace melt in that instant after I had rejected her - and it broke my heart as well. Aren't we all just dreamers after all. Isn't life just one long sequence of dreams and the desire to keep on dreaming. Sometimes you wake up with tears in your eyes and even might wonder why you were crying.  Yet in the end it might be just a little heart ache and a trickle of tears that can bring so much joy into the lives of millions.  You go Girl!