At one point in my illustrious career, I managed a talented rock band. The venture turned out to be a disastrous failure (the fault being completely my own), but it was a fact at one point nonetheless. During this managerial debacle, a cool night happened. Here it is...
Dick Melons, of the wildly-successful Dick Melons Band, called Adam and asked him to lay down some backing vocals on his new project. Adam asked me to go along. I agreed. After walking through a maze of an underground mall at Cortland Street off the N line, I met Adam at the PATH train entrance. He was into his second beer. I was completely sober. It sucked; the world is so much more entertaining when you're drunk, or getting there. We eventually found ourselves at Casey Jones' bar in Long Branch, NJ. Dick (not one to "watch his speed") picked us up from the bar after we had managed to down a few. We stopped off for some more beer. We got 24 Honey Brown bottles. The recording studio was across the street. We met the engineer, a low-keyed middle-aged smoker named Tom. Dick had said he had some kind of connection with BMG, with distribution through Sam Goody. There were platinum records of various artists from the hair-band-'80s era on the walls. This "engineer," the name of Tom, he did little more than press record and rewind when Dick told him to. He didn't even want to tell Adam when he was late on one of the songs. He looked at me funny, and I told him I thought Adam was late. He asked me if I wanted to go in there and talk to him about it, as if Adam wouldn't be able to handle such harsh criticism from an outsider. Like I needed to counsel the guy for Christ's sake. "Can he hear me right now?" I said, setting down my beer. "Yeah," Tom the engineer said. "Adam," I said loudly. "You're late." I took a swig of beer. "O.K.," said Adam. "Let's do it again." "Rewind the tape and do it again," instructed Dick. "O.K.," said Tom the engineer. We went to Dick's house afterwards to listen to the tune Tom the engineer had taped for us. For $75 an hour, you'd think he'd be happy to tape all the tracks he'd ever recorded for us, not just one. But he didn't - he had someone else to rob blind coming in to use the studio. "Don't you get sick of the songs after hearing them 100 times in a row?" I had asked him. "I would think that to be an occupational hazard." "Naah, you get conditioned to it," he told me. This was the kind of guy who could get used to an eternity of being flogged by a flounder while scorpions snapped away at his crotch. "It's not that bad," I could hear him say. "You get conditioned to it."
So, we were sitting there, the three of us plus Eve, Dick's girlfriend, feeling pretty relaxed, staring at the MUTED television and listening to that tune, "Time" it's called, and this dude stopped by the house. He had a cell phone walkie talkie and he was picking up a quarter somewhere in the neighborhood, I think. He stopped by to retrieve a video camera he had loaned Dick. He made a joke about taping himself and his 300-pound wife making love. Dick said he was a pig. It sounded like his partner was trying to get him to wherever the partner was, on his cell phone walkie talkie. Something about an Irish kid in the hospital after an incident at some bar in Staten Island (SEE SUBSEQUENT KARLUS TRAPP/BURRITO STORY.) The pig didn't stay long. But he did invite us to some party on Saturday that he didn't know about, theoretically. It was supposed to be a surprise party, but Eve had somehow let the secret slip. She didn't exactly seem like the kind of girl you would trust with the launch codes. But she had a nice smile, and she was in pretty good shape. I thought she had a pedicure. She herself didn't have any of the beer, but she seemed high enough already when we showed up. Dick at one point said he could have anything delivered to his house within thirty minutes. I thought that was about the extent of the happiness I myself could ever dream of. The importance of the Delivery Man in modern-day society is well understood. Having the connections and power to have Delivery Men besides the pizza guy arrive at your door with whatever you need to get by, however, that level of satisfaction and assurance is solely reserved for society's underground overlords. Dick had mentioned to us in the car that the Rock-N-Roll Hall of Fame had nominated Bruce Springsteen for induction, but not the E Street Band. We expressed outrage at the notion of his dad and the other bandmates not getting in. He started some sort of e-mail campaign and got over 10,000 responses. The E Street Band should definitely get in.
Eventually, we drained all the beer. We tried to cut through the heavy buzz and figure out when the next train was leaving from the Matawan station. It was leaving in eight minutes. Dick said he could get us there in two. We missed the train, although Dick drove 200 miles an hour. He dropped us off at some Malaysian joint near the station. We ordered up some beers and just one combination platter, and the waiter was in stunned disbelief. I think he spit in our General Tso's chicken, but that would turn out to be the most normal circumstance we had to deal with in the next few hours.
Next Issue: Part Two of this Engaging Saga, in which we witness a FIGHT! (almost) among other entertaining events and travesties...