The Next Seattle: Memoir of a Music Scene

by Neal A. Yeager

Remember I said right from the start that my career had been just one successful scam.

  “So, are you still in school?” I asked.

  “I’m a freshman,” she said.

  “Okay.”

  “At ISU,” she added.

  “ISU. Of course,” I said, “and what’s your major there?”

  “I’m undeclared so far,” she said. “Any suggestions?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve always been fond of plastics fabrication myself.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “You know, I couldn’t really recommend any course for you to study. I wouldn’t want to do that. What if I suggested something, you did it and then it turned out to be completely wrong for you? A few years from now you might come hunting me down with a shotgun.”

  “But what did you major in?”

  “I didn’t major in anything. Like I said, I started in this when I was a teenager. Assignments and bars just kind of bled together until I ended up where I am now. I never had the time to go to college. I was too busy working.”

  "How can that be?"

  “Be? I’m a music journalist. If I were a real journalist then yes, I’m sure that lack of education would probably make it hard for me to get anywhere, but I write about the music industry. So the entrance requirements are a bit more lax.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “I’ll tell you what though. I’m collecting stories about Terre Haute,” I said as I picked up a pen from atop the bar. “Why don’t you tell me a story, then you can see how a professional writes it up.”

  “No. No, I don’t know any stories,” she said.

  “You don’t really have to ‘know stories.’ Just tell me a bit about yourself. Tell me something interesting that has happened to you.”

  She blushed a deep crimson blush and said, “No. I couldn’t”

  "Sure you could."

  “No. No, I couldn’t” she stammered, “I’ve gotta go. Thanks for talking to me.”

  Then she sheepishly turned away and walked back to her group. I shrugged, dropped the pen back on the table and settled into my buzz.

  As I sat there, just me and my buzz, Steve the non-bartender and another man came up to me. The man with Steve had the BA/BG Syndrome—he had both big arms and a big gut. His upper body strength was immediately obvious, yet so was his protruding belly. I’ve never understood these guys. I mean, why spend all that time building up your arms if you’ve still got the gut thing going? Why not sacrifice some of your arm workout time in trade for treadmill time? At any rate, the man with Steve had that look. He was not very tall and the lack of height made his stoutness seem even more pronounced. Steve introduced this BA/BG man as John. Steve then went on to tell me that John was the guitarist for his favorite band, Insomniac Trash. This surprised me a bit because John looked as though he was probably closer to my age than the college age of most of the other musicians I had seen here.

  John smiled as we shook hands, his big meaty one practically swallowing my stick-figure hand. He said, “Steve here tells me that you and me got something in common.”

  “Is that right?” I asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Come on out to my truck and I’ll show you.”

  Now, “come on out to my truck” is not a phrase that one hears very often in New York. So I chuckled to myself at what, no doubt, no one else in the room would have found funny. “Out to your truck?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Come on.”

  So, I got up and followed John out to the parking lot. As I followed, I could see that John’s close-cropped brown hair was starting to go there at the back of his crown. Luckily, that pain hasn’t yet come to me, but I dread the day that it does. My heart always goes out to any man who has been its victim. Other than impotence, I can’t think of a worse thing that could happen to a man. And at least impotence is a private thing. Hair loss is right out there in the open for all the world to see.

  We arrived at a shiny blue van. John reached up and opened the unlocked door. The van had that “well-kept-vehicle” look. I’m sure that it was not a new van, but it sure did look like a new van.

  “Wait,” I said, “this is a van.”

  "And?"

  “In my mind there’s a difference between a van and a truck.”

  “That’s funny,” he said, “my wife says that to me all the time. ‘It’s a vaaaan,’ she says.”

  John then climbed into the van, which actually bounced a bit from the weight of his entry. I could see that John was headed toward a small refrigerator in the back.

  He stopped before the refrigerator, then said to me, “Um, you’re gonna have to step in.”

  So I stepped into the van, which did not move an inch when I did so, and closed the door behind me.” When I turned back toward John he held a bottle of beer in each hand. I looked at the little drops of condensation sparkling on the outside of the bottle and, I have to say, I loved the man.

  John said, “see, I told ya we had something in common.”

  “First time we played here I drove my car. I didn’t know this place was dry. Hell, I’m used to playing weddings and parties and shit where the booze just flows. That first gig here about drove me crazy. So from then on I always make sure that I bring the truck and that the fridge is full of beer.”

  “Resourceful,” I said as I took a nice cold swig of beer.

  “Damn straight,” he replied, “But hey, don’t tell that girl who runs this place, okay? I don’t think she’d take it too good.”

  “You have my solemn word John. I won’t tell on you if you won’t tell on me,” I said as I pulled the little flask from my pocket.

  “Ha!” exclaimed John as he slapped his knee, “I knew we was the same. I just knew it.”

  So there we were, me and my newfound friend John, sipping beer in the back of a van like two teenagers hoping not to get caught.

  My new friend...

  After a few beers John and I made our way back into Seattle. John went off to find his bandmates, as they were up next, and I sat watching a band called Egregious. Now, if you don’t know, "egregious" is a fancy word which is defined as describing something that is bad in a very remarkable way.

  Turns out, this band was aptly named. They were obviously going for something different — the pedal steel guitar run through distortion and layers of effects was certainly interesting... but it was also pretty bad.

  Next up was Insomniac Trash. My new friend John slapped me on the back as he passed me on the way to the stage. I’ve already mentioned both his strength and my weakness, so when he slapped me, I was damned near thrown to the ground.

  Well, I hate to say this about my new good friend John’s band, but Insomniac Trash was your typical, generic blues bar band. Now, like most blues bar bands, they were all very good musicians and their playing was incredibly tight. It was just something that I’d heard a hundred million times before. I mean, honestly, once you’ve heard one 10-minute electric blues guitar solo you’ve heard them all, haven’t you? Yet your blues bar bands keep on playing them over and over, and I would imagine that they will continue to do so until the end of time.

  Personally, I prefer to hear a bunch of talentless yahoos who sound absolutely terrible but are at least attempting to do something unique, rather than hear just one more generic blues lick. Case in point: Although I thought that Egregious was bad, I preferred listening to their train wreck rather than being bored by the talented but generic Insomniac Trash.

  When, after two seemingly endless encores, Insomniac Trash finally left the stage, my new friend John slapped me on the back again and invited me to come have another look at his truck.

  My first look at his truck had not yet worn off, so I respectfully declined his offer. It would look bad, I think, if Samantha found me passed out in her parking lot

  The King is dead...

  Samantha had told me about this man Phil D. — the guy who had played the cello at Elvis’ last concert — and he was
the headliner for tonight. Okay, cool. But when I saw him approach the stage I thought it must be some kind of a joke. The man looked to be near death. Turns out that he was in his 60s, but when I had first seen him in the club a few nights prior, I would have placed his age in the 80s. He was actually younger than my dad, but looked a hell of a lot older.

  I don’t suppose that I have to tell you that someone like that is not someone you usually see mounting the stage at a club. As he hobbled toward the stage, I looked down at Samantha’s written program and read that in addition to the Elvis thing, Phil D. had played for many years in the Indianapolis Philharmonic and that he was a music professor at the university.

  What?

  There was obviously some sort of joke going on here.

  But then it happened: he started to play. You see, while getting up to the stage he looked as if he was about to collapse, but once he started playing that cello it was as if someone else had taken over that frail body. And damn, I have never seen anything quite like it, and I’ve seen a lot.

  So Samantha had been right about this. Phil D. was an artist worth watching. I couldn’t imagine anyone in the music industry actually even attempting to sell something like this. But again, damn.

  Phil’s backing band rocked (and he probably had grandchildren their age) and jammed out some tunes that would have been pretty darned good on their own, but atop the guitar and drums were these amazing, swooping cello parts. Just amazing parts. The kind of cello parts that give you chills.

  And atop that, to my amazement, some fantastic tortured vocals. Hell,