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Mother Lode!

“This tasteless cover is a good indication of the lack of musical invention within. The musical growth of this band cannot even be charted. They are treading water in a sea of retarded sexuality and bad poetry.” — from a review of Spinal Tap’s Intravenus de Milo

If you’ve talked to me at all over the last few weeks, you’ll know I’m in the process of either selling or destroying the majority of my worldly possessions. Why? Don’t need ‘em, don’t want ‘em, sick of looking at ‘em. So there they go, out the door or through the window, until I’m left only with objects of vital importance, such as my copy of A Confederacy of Dunces and the Bruce Springsteen Born to Run 30th anniversary box set.

But some things I just can’t let go. Sure, I don’t need it; I don’t even want it, but I feel like I have to keep it. It’s not often that I get nostalgiac, but I am a big fan of record-keeping. I’m also a big believer that I could, probably will, and possibly should, die at any moment. So I’d like to keep a nice, vaguely chronological record of my existence. It’s sort of the same reason why I keep this blog going, even though I don’t update much anymore and I’ve also deleted, tweaked, and edited things so that, really, it in no way resembles my actual life. Kind of disappointing as far as journals go, but deal with it, assholes.

In addition to this stupid blog, today I found a bunch of old notebooks, papers, and writings that I just can’t give up. Yes, they’re truly awful — but one, in particular, takes the cake. It was a spiralbound notebook that I carried with me through most of 1995, a collections of terrible drawings and the world’s worst poetry.

Here are the front and back covers, loaded with doodles, references to TOTALLY RAWKIN’ BANDS, and games of Tic-Tac-Toe that were undoubtedly played during Spanish class:

Click on the images to enlarge

I’ve also taken the liberty of scanning a drawing of one of my most popular (among me and my sad, sad group of drugged-out metalhead friends) characters, a pathetic bordertown drunk called Pepé Tequila:

Click on the image to enlarge

Pepé Tequila lasted from the start of junior high through most of high school, when I worked continuously on a cartoon series (a cross between Beavis & Butt-Head and Touch of Evil, if you can fathom that) involving a disparate cast of characters living on either side of the border in this tiny, crime-ridden cesspool.

And here is a drawing not done by me. It was done by my best friend at the time, who was a much better artist (you’ll note, for example, that the drawing doesn’t totally suck):

Click on the image to enlarge

That’s right, we were in a band. It went through many changes. We started, in seventh grade, as the Big Peckers. We soon graduated to the Sweaty Peckers, followed by the Hemophagics, Umbra Void, Tainted Meat, and Habeas Corpus (which we firmly believed had something to do with dead bodies), before we settled for awhile on Purple Iodine, our longest-running name. But here’s the thing: we didn’t make any music. At all. We made up fake song titles and drew fake album art and t-shirt designs. Mostly it was a long series of attempts at making each other laugh, hence starting out as the Big Peckers and having every song and album cover have something to do with genitalia. I have tons of these concept drawings, but I won’t waste my time scanning them unless there is a strong demand.

Around the time of Umbra Void, we started playing actual songs (mostly poorly rendered covers), and by the time we became Purple Iodine we were actually taking this whole band thing seriously. We were about as good as Wyld Stallyns, but there was a noticeable shift from the pointless bawdiness of “You Can Touch It for a Quarter” and the “Underground Beings.” For example, unliked “You Can Touch It for a Quarter,” which is just a song title, “Underground Beings” had actual lyrics (which are not in my handwriting, though I recall having some input). It goes a little something like this:

Face down

into the water.
Point of No Return.
Unbearable Tension
Suffucating [sic]…
Respirating…
Suffering…

Here come the underground beings!
Ravaging..
Suffering..
Underground Beings!

(Drums)

Back to the Underground!

(Guitar & Drums)

Back to the Underground!
(Back-up singers) Look at the thing, I just found!

Wow! That’s pretty intense, man. Sadly, though, Purple Iodine broke up shortly after eighth grade began, and I formed a new band with a few people mentioned here, here, and here, which as I point out was only taken seriously by me and Steve. I started writing lyrics and actual music, with Steve’s input (even though he didn’t even have an instrument until Christmas of 1995, and even then he didn’t know how to play it), for our new band, which I seem to remember being called Draft first, then Curmudgeon, but apparently at one time we settled on the name “Ashtray.” I have a few more fake album mock-ups and a horribly written bio under that name. So here we go, guys, it’s the poetry explosion!

Dated 12/1/95:

“Cyclone Fence”

Rudimentary square
Lost its pubic shiny hair.
Didn’t use conditioner.
Friday’s spatial disorienter.*
Sitting in the garden.
Daughter has a hard-on.
“A” of retribution.
Give a revolution.

Living in the cyclone fence,
Never minding burning pence.*
Living in the cyclone fence,
Kissin [sic] cousins have good sex.

Rudimentary square
Lost its armpoit hair.
Spiral-bound notebook.
Didn’t admit what they took.
Twenty-five after.
Hide fromrising [sic] laughter.
Eat corn with chop suey.
Saturday’s “Life with Louie.”**
Endocrine is gooey.

Living in the cyclone fence
Big dumb jocks don’t make no sense.
Living in the cyclone fence
Wimpy Pansy boys have good some friends.

Well, that was weird. Especially the Life with Louie reference. Imagine most of the verse being the melody of the first two lines of Nirvana’s “In Bloom,” repeated over and over again. I think that’s pretty much how I wrote it. Now it’s time for the second set of lyrics, entitled “Alienated Youth Clique,” also dated 12/1/95 (as you’ll see, I was busy that day). Years later, I took the riff of this song, which pretty much repeated over and over and over and over again ad nauseam, and rewrote it as “College Girls,” (this time with a chorus) the third song on disc two of The Hedge.

“Alienated Youth Clique”

Publicist hangover
Yuppies drive Land Rovers
Double chili cheesedog
Kill the slacker ball-hog.

Chocolate danish w/pickles on the side.
Tic-tac man’s at school w/no one to confide.
Living of nucleonic acetate*
Far too much to palpetate [sic]

Living in the ’90s jetlag
Microwave tower gig bag
Monterey jack on rye
House a massive pig sty.

Revolution int he air
Retribution: AIDS scare.
Crush them with some limestone
Prom queen’s made of skin and bone.

Amplitude modulation
Saves renaissance from a nation.*
Misguided clique on the bedroom floor.
Cousins knocking athe [sic]door.

Honestly? No idea what any of this is supposed to be about. My explanation for the rampant food references: it must have been fourth period, right before lunch. I was hungry, man, and math sucks. Next song, dated 12/2/95. All I remember about the music was that it was very flanger-intensive.

“Science Fiction”

Fade jeans
Attitude
Looking mean
Brain is stewed
Dodge Reliant’s
Bastard child
Attorney client
Picante Spicy mild

Brother is an oxymoron.
Sister is a chunk of boron.*
Doctor doesn’t have a schlong.
Pediatry [sic; I assume I meant “podiatry,” but maybe I meant “pediatrics”] school is really long.

Custom shirt
Designer
Maen alert
Protractor.
Death rearsits [sic] ugly head
Shit-stained orthodontist
Beating hearts are on the bed
I think I need a psychiatrist

Not sure what it has to do with science fiction, although admittedly a shit-stained orthodontist anywhere near a bed littered with bleeding hearts is not exactly un-sciency. Neither is a doctor without a schlong, unless it’s a female doctor. Also, sisters made of boron are not exactly common.

12/3/95:

“Chocolate’s Uniform Righteousness”*

Gargantuan species of insect
Rise above to intercept
The drab militia planes
Containing leaders so vain.
Six feet of prudent agriculture.
Hepped up on goofballs.
Pelted with mothballs.
Looming over to dominate
A burning nation’s requisite.*
Youthful Viril [sic] insects on the hunt
To burn the shows with Alan Funt.
Pie-inspired aneurysm
Long and fruitful rheumatism.
Exstensive [sic] feature’s matte painting.
Short-lived sit-com’s Fox-inspired dwelling.
Dirt-encrusted funkified dive.
Kre Need canned meals just to survive.

Well, it kinda starts out as more overtly sci-fi than “Science Fiction,” but I’ll never understand what the title of this song means. Or the lyrics. Seriously? Insects invade us just to annihilate bad television? Don’t they have better things to do?

Also 12/3/95:

“Nucleus Blues”

Down east
There’s a beast
I killed it
With a drill-bit.
Anal repression
No taxation without representation.
Elephant man.
Sewer slam.***
Bye-bye birdie
Don’t lay a turdie.

Short, sweet, but not to any point that I can see. There’s a really weird free-association vibe to this that seems to me like more of a comment on my horrible, horrible brain than my horrible, horrible writing.

Dated 12/4/95:

“Table Mesa”

Fall Equinox approaches
Drastically affecting rain roaches
Summer cheese melting
Golf balls pelting.
What do you want?
You look so gaunt.
Whip out your chocolate schlong
Hit the strawberry gong.
Bye, bye, hobo.
Tomorrow eat los huevos.

What? No, I’m not kidding: what?! I think this is notable for being probably the first attempt I’ve made to rhyme consistently. I think this drastically affected the lyrics (seriously, replacing “rain” with “roaches” to keep the rhyme scheme? What is that?).

Also 12/4/95:

“Lacadasically [sic] Slurred”

Egotistic notions
Spare no emotions.
Psychopathic liars.
Swim in deep friers.
Sister lost her contact lens
Liver too deep; it got the bends.
I like it When [sic] it’s green,
Not when it’s blue.

Diving into vital energy
Not sn quite caring who’s my enemy.
Dramatically lucid recall
Alluding to precision catch-all.

You know what that is there, the last two lines of the last stanza, where, after three couplets, I just totally drop the rhyme? That’s art. Art, man. “Love Switch” level.

Once again dated 12/4/95:

“Hello, Goodbye, Illinois”
Walking down the interstate
Approaching a massive gate
Inside of which are plastic explosives
Nonmetal devices, anti-corrosives.
Many numerical intergers [sic]
Cannot count the pain in her
Starlit face as it brings down the hous [sic]Even the mouse.

Was this…finished? I don’t know. What’s weird is, I actually like the “starlit face” image. I must have stolen it from something significantly better than me.

Dated 12/7/95:

“The Congo”

Congo, Congo, Con-go.
Congo, congo, con-go. (contin. b.g.)
(English accent): Deep in the African jungle, the Congo, the fiercest being ever to be created on Earth, stalks his prey
Congo, congo, con-go.
Congo, congo, con-go.

Yeah, so there actually is an explanation for this. There was some guy who looked vaguely simian that my friend Mark started referring to as “the Congo.” Then, as I recall, Art came up with the basic “Congo” chant, and Jeff came up with the “African jungle” bit. In retrospect, it’s really pretty horrible and offensive. Man, I miss junior high.

Dated 12/15/95:

“Sinatra Is a Buddhist”

Secretive pain kills the weepers
Why is no one watching the brain-dead leapers.
Big zit on the middle of my forehead
By the time I get home I’ll be dead.
In this constipated world of sin
Even my dad can be thin.
Hold me back from the muzzle of restraint
Forgo your strength for the mandetory [sic] faint
Dead with a Pepsi in his hand
Lack of Without love, there is no promise [sic] land.
Studious pain, envious wisdom.
Castritated magistrate cannot come.
Death is a four-letter word
And it creeps upon the lonely ones.
Lonely like me…

Excedrated buttfucker sitting on a weiner [sic; as we all know, thanks to Martin Prince, the preferred spelling is “w-I-E-n-e-r”]I know about thirty guys wh are quite a bit keener
Bored Cuban, Puerto Rican Jew
God is Satan, where the hell are you?
Living on an island with a seasick fisherman
Hey, asshole, get the fuck off the can!

So, um, I don’t really get 90% of this (surprise, surprise), but I notice it’s starting to tackle actual recurring issues in my life: the horrible acne that plagued me through junior high and some of high school, loneliness, fear of death and pain, “daddy” issues, et cetera.

Dated 12/22/95:

“La La Land (Boston, 1689)”

During the

Huh. Was I going through some weird minimalist phase in my “poetry”? Answer: no. As they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words, so I apparently decided to express myself with a comic-book-style drawing rather than song lyrics:

Click on the image to enlarge

So there you have it: one of my early, hilariously misguided attempts to get political by brashly taking on such outdated civil rights issues as Injun affairs. The hell?

Sadly, the poetry/lyrics come to an end with this last one, dated 1/21/96:

“Poofy-Haired Competition”

(Verse) Got my Kramer guitar,
Pink hair, and lookin bizarre.
Got my Guns N’ Roses lunchbox,
Whitesnake dolls that really talk.
’80s metal is on the move;
Competitions in the groove.

(Chorus)Livin on the edge of life
Crossroads ahead cut like a knife
Livin in the crow’s nest with Erik and “Spunky”
Lovin and losin deep in L.A. is funky

(Pansy-ass Bridge)But still
I think of you.
Living in the capitalist’s [sic] capital,
I still know that I love you (Robert Plant falsetto)

(Verse) Got my Gremlin guitar,
Bottled hair, gonna be a star.
Got my official Poison clocks,
Kip Winger’s old, dirty socks.
Barhopping by night, playing pool by dad
I suck somuch [sic] I can’t get laid.

(Chorus) Livin on the edge of life
Crossroads ahead cut like a knife,
Livin in the crow’s nest with Erik and “Spunky”
Lovin and losin in L.A. is funky.

(Guitar Solo)

(Repeat chorus) Livin on the edge of life
Crossroads ahead cut like a knife.
Livin on the edge of life.

I’ll argue this was my first attempt at satire. And what an attempt it was! You might be wondering — what was my obsession with mocking low-quality guitars? It was spurred by my obsession with high-grade guitars. From another page, here is a description of my dream guitar:

“Epigibder & L-iphone Lampshade Deluxe SG”

Specs & Features
Scale Length: 25.5” (647.7mm)
Fingerboard: Rosewood
Neck Radius: 12” (304.8mm)
Width @ Nut: 1.63” (41.3mm)
Bridge: Floyd Rose Licensed Locking or G&L Vibrato
Nut Material: Graphite
Tuning Keys: Sperzel Locking Keys
Pickups:

• 1 Humbucking
• 1 DualBlade
• 1 Gold 1957 Gibson Humbucking

Pickup Selector: 5-way
Controls: Volume & P.T.B. Controls
Finish:

• Clear Forest Green
• Blueburst

The first thing I want most in the world is a custom-made guitar for [sic] a good guitar company. It would take all the components from my two favorite guitars, the Gibson SG and the G&L Legacy Special. It would have a vintage 1957 Gibson humbucking pickup, a custom G&L DualBlade single-coil pickup, and a Fender humbucker. It would have a Floyd Rose floating bridge or a G&L fixed bridge, which ever [sic] the buyer wants. It would have Gbson knob controls, G&L switches, a combo SG-Strat black pickguard, and a Gibson togle switch.

I have to say, there was a time where I both knew and cared what all of that meant. That time is long past; I know some of it, because I do still play guitar and occasionally take interest in new models, but the Ralphie Parker-like glee and attention to detail is a little disturbing. The only thing this guitar is missing is a compass on the stock and this thing which tells time.

A final note:

There are more songs. In the back of this notebook, I found a tracklist of songs that don’t appear here. I recall writing them, I recall the titles, but I haven’t found the notebooks that contain their precious, awful lyrics (yet!). Unlike the fake albums we used to manufacture, these songs did exist. There are even, on this tracklist, parantheses with wide gaps so I could write in the length of the song once we recorded our demo-tape using a four-track reel-to-reel I bought for $5 at a church sale (it didn’t work, and we never recorded a thing in any form). The list:

1. Petrified Leafblower
2. Hello, Goodbye, Illinois
3. Cyclone Fence
4. Arizona
5. Elgin Suntan
6. Orange El Rey Pick
7. George Likes His Chicken Spicy
8. Pumpkinhead
9. Science Fiction
10. Chocolate’s Uniform Righteousness
11. Peppermint Guy
12. Japanimation
13. Congo [Hidden Track]

There’s another list (which may have been a setlist for a concert that never remotely happened) featuring most of the same songs, but adding “Alienated Youth Clique,” a cover of “In Bloom” by Nirvana, and two songs I don’t remember at all, “Abrupt Eruption” and “Fred Mertz.” If I find any of these, I will make them public as soon as possible.

I hope you enjoyed this stumble down memory lane as much as I did.

Don’t say I never gave you nothing.

Edit: I just realized, I had never expected to find this notebook (and was disappointed about that) because I thought I had loaned it in high school to an ex-girlfriend who was working with me on a comedy sketch about bad poetry. She never gave it back, for whatever reason, and I never really cared until after we broke up, so basically I never got it back. But now I’ve realized that was probably the notebook that has those other songs. I’m still digging through my shit, and I may stumble across it, but I don’t hold out much hope.

*I don’t know what this means, either.

**I just wish I was making this up.

***I don’t know what this means either, but it sure sounds like a euphemism for anal sex.

Posted by Stan on June 13, 2006 3:01 PM  | Permalink | Stories of Pain and Humiliation | Digg It