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4. Teenagers Have Problems
But get me away from Sixteenth Street. Scrote had scheduled us to play with Everdown at another strip joint the next night, but two bites into the tenderloins we decided we'd be calling in for that one. Life on tour is rough, and two nearby shows over the course of a week had almost burned us out. I called the place and told some guy I'd gotten kicked by a horse. He seemed relieved. So with the evening cleared we gathered at Tim's apartment in Crawfordsville before going to watch a band, now called Ambitious Career Woman, play at a local ill-fated coffee house. It's a shame, too, because the place had REALLY REALLY good iced tea. The set was fun but they had to play on a sort of loft, so we had to stand on the stairs against the wall for most of it. The place was busy, mostly local sophistication aspiring to the life and times of Purdue University. Otherwise the place reeked of Western Boone High School alumni. Now I didn't even attend Western Boone High School and I didn't even know these people. And it's not that being a high school graduate is bad, and there is certainly nothing wrong with supporting a local band and/or having a nice evening out at a nice local establishment. But I say "reeked" because there are types of people who seem to remind you how far out of the loop you are. Henry Rollins once wrote about distance, how once it's there, it never goes away. He used a story about eating at the same hamburger place every day, and how every day the same people would stare at him like they'd never seen him before. It's that sort of thing. Not to single out the high school crowd. The university crowd is far worse, for instance. Did I go to college? And so here they are, scared to death of becoming their parents, the next generation to sparkle and fade into augmented forms of beauty parlors and big country breakfasts. They've managed to live out the only bitter advice their parents have really ever offered, which is don't get married until you're at least 35 because marriage and children ruin your life. So they run in a safe pack and they have high-dollar pets. "Why don't you ever come to my parties," some girl asked Jason. "I think Steve's having one later. You guys should show up. People are starting to think you're antisocial or something." Jason nodded overanxiously while drinking some sort of ridiculous expresso-sugar bomb over ice: "Oh yeah, oh yeah, you knot it." He set down his bomb, then picked it up for another drink: "And are you sure I wasn't at your last party? Because I'm pretty sure I totally remember being there." It's like Abraha Lincoln once said via Bob Odenkirk: "Don't dis my homies." So no dice as usual, Elvira. We instead returned to Tim's apartment, where we used Tim's karayoke machine to record "Apartment 3", not even a song, just the ramblings of a drunk ex-con looking for his girlfriend in the wrong apartment complex. We also covered the Public Enemy/Anthrax collaboration "Bring Tha Noize". This wouldn't be our last encounter with Western Boone alumni. Two shows later we'd run in to them again, almost exclusively, at a party thrown by "some guy" Scrote knew from Taco Bell at the condemned Dover gymnasium. Now for those who don't know, the Dover gymnasium is the sit of Shag Bark Hickory's first and only previous live performance in 1994 or maybe 1995. I wasn't present, I think I was at a truck stop in Elizabethton, Tennessee at the time. But I've seen video footage, and from what I've been told by numerous journalists, this is exactly the same as participating in the event. Nonetheless, since I wasn't there for the first show, we though it only fitting I not be there for the triumphant return at this Taco Bell clerk's party. So with show number three forgone and show number four (which I'll probably hit in the next chapter) nearly getting us arrested for no real reason, we decided to insulate ourselves with heavy layers of idiocy while forging through this culture of depression. We made up some flyers with the tour's official name: "Everdown and Shag Bark Hickory in the Thor Vs. She-Hulk In Compton (Sponsored by Radio Shack)" Mile of Smiles Tour (comma) Nineteen Naughty-Seven". In retrospect, it was probably too long a title to market, but at the time we really couldn't justify parting with any of it. The flyer featured a wily young spikey-haired boy urinating on an extended middle finger being eaten by a Darwinized Jesus fish walking on a big "3" with a halo. It was Jason's sketch. It might have been a little confusing. It was just a big, somewhat lame party. A condemned gym isn't a good place to throw a party. Or play music, at least that's what I heard. I was only there a few minutes before slipping out, but from what the guys told me they played after five other bands. That's right, five. They began the show by telling everyone I wouldn't be playing because I had a prior engagement at a watermelon eating contest at the Red Dog Tavern in North Salem, Indiana. In truth, I went home, put on my "Pray For Frank Thomas" hat, ate a potato, and watched the White Sox lose. The guys said they made up for my absence by standing a cardboard cutout of A.J. Foyt on the stage and hanging a bass around it.
"We started the show with a weird version of 'Devin Rogers'," Michael later told me. "It never really worked, but most of the people there were passed out anyway. After that we did "His Own Pants" and "London Carpet". by then it was like two thirty, so we just palyed video game music while Tim tried to hypnotize people in the crowd."
Apparently that was when the party fizzled out. I'm not sure how the couch got there. We would, of course, later devote a song to this incident. Someone stole the A.J. Foyt cutout, believe it or not. Jason and I paid seventy damn dollars for that thing at some stupid antique mall. We haven't seen it since.
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