| Part
One
Manhattan Transfer, Air Supply, REO Speedwagon, the names are now
lost in the all consuming vortex of pop culture. But for a brief
time, these very different bands shared the airwaves of late 1970s
Top 40 radio stations and became my first true obsession. Having
an affinity for Top 40 bands would remain a source of embarrassment
for me well into my teens, as most kids I grew up with tended to
define themselves by the music they listened to. There is nothing
cool or edgy about Top 40 music; it's the bleached white bread of
the musical bakery. Subsequently, I was seen by my peers, who were
discovering early Van Halen and Iron Maiden, as a sheep, an innocuous
follower of inane fashion. But no one can blame you for having crappy
taste in music when you're nine years old. Especially when you fall
asleep every night transfixed by the syrupy genius of pop songs
because the only access to music you can call your own is the handheld,
single speaker, black plastic radio that only receives one clear
station when adequate amounts of tinfoil are wrapped around its
broken antenna that your grandpa gave you as an afterthought when
he found it in his garage under a stack of rusty license plates.
In this case no one can hold you morally
responsible for having the lyrics to Christopher Cross's "Don't
Pay the Ferryman" engrained in your head and quoting them from the
sidelines of heated tetherball matches like a playground Socrates
spewing the truth of competition. They can't even blame you when
you finally smoke enough pot in seventh grade to erase all but the
chorus and then take it upon yourself to begin performing soliloquies
of Jethro Tull songs during the Chess Team finals. Nope, no one
can blame you for having a hell bent passion for music, for being
obsessed with bands, for being able to name and list the preferred
equipment of every bass player of every major rock band of the 1970s
with the same zeal as Howard Cosell reeling off the college stats
of the Colt's third string place kicker. After all, it's music were
talking about, the heavenly chorus of inspiration.
Yet, not everyone appreciates music,
much less lives life blindly compelled to understand and embrace
it. There is one among us who finds music to be no more than something
to fill the air in the station wagon, allowing him to avoid conversations
with his own progeny on family trips. There exists one who rushes
out to purchase a Keeping Up With the Jones's™, 100% oak cabinet,
eight-track, Hi-Fi system for the family room and then relegates
it to playing only "Richard Pryor: Live in Concert" when the rest
of said family was gone. The stereo would see no musical service
until the eight-track proved obsolete roughly three weeks later,
and the whole unit was banished to the basement where it would be
employed as no more than a fancy radio during girl-scout sleepovers
and little league mixers. Such a person, so devoid of passion, so
resentful of beauty, so spiteful of the muses could no longer remain
human. An aberration of the human spirit, a jagged, saw-toothed
wave running through the song of the world, he would draw all aggression
and hatred to himself like a black hole in the fabric of human harmony
sucking in the dreams of the world. He would become The Ogre.
The Ogre's earliest incarnation manifested
itself when I, his only son, approached, eyes down cast and hat
in hand, begging, "Please sir, can I play music?" The Ogre checked
his resolve and considered the expanse of his domain--everything
within earshot of the Lay-Z-Boy lair overlooking the family room
of his modest ranch house, as well as the distant baronies of Basement
and Garage and the frontier territories of both Front and Back Yard.
Assured of his power and security, he cast his thoughts about the
query. With eyes too narrow to see beyond his own selfish heart
and ears too choked with the wax of his own ego, he began to flush
with exertion. Mottled patches formed on his cheeks as steam rose
from his temples, the heat igniting the old growth underbrush of
his ear hair, sending flames licking at his last gasp, white jumpsuit
era Elvis sideburns. Incapable of securing an answer based on any
reality outside his own perception, he surveyed the breadth of his
own existence. Satisfied with the sight, he turned to deliver his
answer. "Men play sports. Women play music." The Ogre had spoken.
The decree had been handed down. I would not play music. I would
instead spend evenings at little league or junior football practice,
longing for the end of the day when I could pour myself into bed
and get lost in the heady arrangements of Electric Light Orchestra
and primal backbeats of The Knack until I fell asleep, or the Ogre
became aware of music invading the oppressively securing silence
of his realm and came to put a stop to it.
Part Two
The soft, worn cotton of the blanket my mom crafted from old racecar
curtains lies like cool velvet against my cheek as I search for
a pocket of comfort between the lumps in my bed, my restlessness
assuaged by the late evening strains of top 40 radio. Lying there
in the darkness of my room, straining to make sense of Elton John's
lyrics (and sexuality), this night is reminiscent of all before
it as my mind drinks deeply the music I hear, and my hands ignorantly
fake their way through the bass lines I presume. The music opening
a doorway to a world of freedom and expression devoid in my daily
life. I close my eyes and envision myself on MTV with Elton, thumping
a bass somewhere in the background of his video, breathing the groove,
making the music, owning my soul. My dream dissolves as the creaking
leather of the Ogre's Lay-Z-Boy overpowers the canned laughter of
M.A.S.H. coming from the family room. The Ogre sleeps uneasy tonight.
I spin the volume wheel on my little radio to a spot where the booming
waves of the bass and drums are lost, yet Elton's last verse is
still discernable. Too late, the Ogre approaches. My music has awoken
him. The wooden floorboards of the house groan their displeasure
under the weight of the great beast traversing her halls, their
agony distinct as he reaches my door.
As the opening notes of Blue Oyster
Cult's "Godzilla" begin to distort my tiny speaker, I hear a mighty
hand clench my doorknob. I imagine the knob suffocating between
the meaty pads of the Ogre's big sausage fingers. With a purposeful
grimace and a terrible sound He pulls the spitting high tension
wires down. A shaft of dull yellow hallway light falls through the
opening door, and I can see the hulking mass of the Ogre silhouetted
against it. I feign sleep, tucking my eyes under the satin edge
of my racecar blanket. Helpless people on a subway train Scream
bug-eyed as he looks in on them. Through the sheerness of the weathered
cotton I watch the Ogre take one long stride into my room and come
up short with a curse and a snort, his big back paw falling squarely
on the Hotwheels littering my floor. Undaunted, the Ogre gives them
a kick out of his way and forges on, rounding the corner of my bed.
He picks up a bus and he throws it back down As he wades through
the buildings toward the center of town. I can hear his breathing
above me now, the scratchy guttural huff of overworked plural sacks,
the creaky bellows of his massive diaphragm, the gale force of air
being shoved out of his hairy nostrils. Oh no, they say he's got
to go;Go go Godzilla, we-ooh-ooh-ooh. The shadow of his long arm
stretches over me, falling on the blanket that covers my face, distinctly
now as it passes over the cotton, imagined now as it passes the
satin. I hear the great paw lay hold of my radio, the music swallowed
by the several metric tons of callused flesh that make up the Ogre's
palm. Oh no, there goes Tokyo...Go go Godzilla, we-ooh-ooh-ooh.
Then the music is no more. The Ogre turns on his powerful haunches
and strides out of my little room, taking with him his lugubriousness,
his malice. He leaves me with only his smell, his ideology, his
fears.
I lay in the awful silence of my dark
room. Contrary to the belief proffered by new-age yoyos and return
to fairer time reactionaries, the silence is not golden; it's the
tarnished brass, clanging gong of those with nothing to say. The
gong screams out truth, laying bare all that I try to hide in the
recesses of my mind. The loudness of it is deafening. The soft cotton
of racecar blankets no longer solacing my mind, I search my memory
for a snippet of song to silence the gong, and I find the redeeming
grace of Top 40 radio. Hearing the same songs every night carves
them into your psyche like grooves on a fat, black record. As I
hunt for a verse, I hear the squeaking springs of the Lay-Z-Boy
accepting the weight of the Ogre settling in. He will not return
tonight.
History shows again and again How
nature points out the folly of men. Godzilla!
Epilogue
All this talk of the Ogre has got me thinking that I should call
him; after all it's been three years since we last spoke, and it
was another three before that. But, I know how difficult it is for
him to use the phone. I mean, he's an Ogre; they don't really make
phones specifically for humanoids of his magnitude. You know those
huge gag sunglasses people wear at football games? The Ogre had
to have a pair fitted with prescription lenses for everyday wear.
Then he ripped a pair of tinted rear passenger windows out of a
'68 Chevelle and fastened them to those big ol' glasses for a giant
flip-shade.
His massive paws can't really handle
a phone, unless it's one of those old heavy black numbers from the
'40s with a receiver the size of a dumbbell. And cell phones are
right out. What a sight, watching him pinch them between his big
kielbasa thumb and forefinger like a little boy inspecting a beetle
he found in the yard while digging for the buried treasure his dad
assured him was out there, even though he was instructed to dig
horizontally, not vertically, and the next week the trenches were
filled with tomato plants, and he was no longer allowed to search
there for booty.
Also troublesome are the upward thrust
lower fangs stretching up to the Ogre's snout, which prevent him
from pronouncing "p" and consonant "y" sounds. Therefore, he can't
say the words "please" and "thank you" without forcing so much spit
through his mouth that the phone's electronics invariably become
corroded by the venom inherent in his DNA. Because he wants to avoid
appearing impolite, as well as destroying yet another antique phone,
the Ogre refuses to call people-that and because he's an emotionally
stunted, selfish ass.
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