March 12, 2008
The Letter
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So many people tonight . . . five or six hundred, someone said, though we still only made fifty bucks. And they didn’t want to give me that. In the back office at settlement, one of the club guys put a gun on the desk between us and asked if I really expected him to give me fifty dollars. Obviously, he hadn’t watched our set, which, if not quite the musical equivalent of yelling “shoot me,” definitely creates the impression that my survival instinct is not what it could be.
I didn’t think a question like that deserved a response, so I just waited for him to count out the goddamn gas money. Which he eventually did. Jerk.
. . .
That fucking guy with the gun must think I’m an idiot. It isn’t complicated math: a few hundred people at ten dollars a head, everybody drinking five dollar beers, and they don’t wanna give us a lousy fifty bucks?
I was pretty pissed-off about this, walking to the back alley for load out, thinking that I’d have to sleep on Napoleon’s floor tonight and that loser’s going home to his house, when I saw an enormous and hairy man crossing the room, grinning like a crazy person. He was . . . a Mexican biker? I couldn’t quite pinpoint the look, but he was walking towards me, both fists in the air. “That song!” he shouted.
“Which one?” I yelled back.
“It has two chords and a million words!” Now he was in my face. Yep, Mexican biker, very cool accent, even bigger up close. He towered over me; his smile was as big as my whole head.
I looked up at him. “Oh god, ‘The Letter’? That’s a terrible song.”
“No, it’s beautiful.” This is a truly happy man, I thought. “And you play it crazy. I thought your head was gonna start spinning around!”
“That’s a bad thing.”
He shook his head as we stepped outside together. “You play that for me next time, okay? Promise? I’ll come to every show if you promise to play that song.” He held out his hand for me to shake. I looked at it.
“Geez, can’t you just play it yourself?” He shook his head as I reluctantly shook his hand. “I’ll teach you the chords; there’re only two of ‘em . . .”
He laughed and walked away, yelled “Promise!” one more time. I laughed too and grabbed the other side of an amp my drummer was loading into the back of our shitty car, the Silver Bullet.
“Promise what?” he asked, grimacing over the top of the amp. Together, we shoved it in, crushing the kick drum head and narrowly missing an unprotected guitar neck.
“He likes The Letter.”
“Really?” he asked, confused, then stretched his hands over his head. “Are you driving?”
“Did you bring your glasses?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“I’ll drive.”
. . .
As people, Dave and I are disconcertingly similar. We look like children and are often treated as such, which makes us . . . ineffectual. We’re both spacey, nearsighted, we get lost a lot and we’ve had a hard time with glasses and coats. For some reason, we never incorporated these things into our lives and so have spent a lot of time blind and cold.
A few months ago, Dave showed up at the practice space wearing both a coat and glasses. I felt betrayed, but he was transformed: “Trees have individual leaves, even when they’re far away!” he insisted, his eyes and new glasses shining. Then he unzipped his coat to show me how it worked. “See? We can still wear t-shirts, but if we wear our t-shirts underneath coats, winter won’t hurt!”
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Far be it from me to tell you what to do, but if you’re not subscribing to Kristin Hersh’s mailing list yet, despite my previous utterly persuasive endorsement, you’re a goddamn idiot. It doesn’t matter if you’ve never heard of her, or if you hate her music; she’s a great storyteller. Don’t make me have to tell you this again.
There’s no place to read back issues of these e-mails on the Web, as far as I know, so if you want me to send you the two that I have, leave a comment below.
There’s also the blog, and the new songs (of which “Slippershell” is my favorite, so far). Also, you should give her all your money.
* I’m boycotting the blockquote tag until our stylesheet is changed. [Back to top]
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You will not have to tell me again, India. I did what you said, mostly because I like what I’ve read but also because I would hate to be a goddamn idiot. It’s hard enough being me.
Fuck, I am a goddamn idiot.
Slippershell is fantastic.
Also, I think I change the code you wanted. The line number you gave me didn’t sink up with my copy for some reason, so I took an educated guess.