For What It's Worth

by Janet Tashjian

  I decide to walk over and see if Caroline wants to give it yet another listen. On the way over, I run into Sonya at the Canyon Store. She’s been in my class since sixth grade and is the only person I know who wears contact lenses—these hard disks you actually put in your eyes. The whole thing sounds scary, but I have to admit Sonya looks great without her wire glasses. We talk about Mr. Woodrow, our latest substitute teacher, and how he’s giving us too much homework. I hang out with her for a while before heading up the hill to Caroline’s house.

  Caroline’s mother waves me through the sunny kitchen. She’s on the phone, slicing a mound of mushrooms on the wooden counter. Between the embroidered dress she got at my mom’s store and the bucolic surroundings, she should be the picture of happiness. But she looks tired, and I wonder if she’s still worried about Caroline’s brother in boot camp. I look around the kitchen for any sign of Caroline and finally spot her outside.

  With Ryan.

  “What are you guys doing?” I ask.

  “High-low-jack,” Caroline says. “Want to play?”

  “I mean why are you hanging out—without me?”

  Ryan pretends to rearrange his cards and barely looks up.

  Caroline jumps out of her chair. “We ran into each other at the store and I invited Ryan over. What’s the big deal?”

  “No big deal,” I backpedal. “I was just at the store too—with Sonya. Thought I’d stop by since I was already out.” I feel bad for name-dropping a pretty girl in our class but not THAT bad.

  “I’ve invited Sonya over twice,” Caroline says. “I don’t think she likes me.”

  Ryan finally decides to speak. “Don’t take it personally. Sonya can be a real snob.”

  As if Ryan is the expert on every girl in our class.

  Ryan—who I just started a band with.

  Ryan—who’s had girls hanging all over him since kindergarten.

  Ryan—who has a black bedroom!

  Caroline shuffles the deck and starts to deal me in, but I tell her I have to go. Almost embarrassed, I wave the new album in the air. “Just thought you might want to hear this again.”

  “You’re so funny,” she says. “You’re obsessed with that album.”

  Ryan throws in his two cents. “It’s okay.”

  When Caroline’s mother calls her inside, I plop on the chair next to Ryan. “Zeppelin IV is OKAY? Are you kidding?”

  “Look, don’t make a big deal out of me being here. Caroline’s your girlfriend—you of all people know how friendly she is. She invited me over and I said yes.”

  My mind tries to make sense of the situation. Does Caroline already have one foot out the door?

  Caroline returns and pulls out all the stops—the tilted head, the scrunched-up nose. “Ryan brought over American Beauty. Do you want to hear it?”

  “You mean MY American Beauty?” What is going on with my best friend?

  “Mine was at my father’s—I just got it back. Here.” He tosses me the album as if it’s a Frisbee, and I have to dive across the chair to catch it. I can’t get out of here fast enough, and tell them I have to go.

  Caroline practically runs down the driveway after me. “Are you mad? We were just hanging out.”

  I hold up the album like a visor to block the sun. “It’s not a problem. I’ll talk to you tonight.” When I look back at Ryan, he waves goodbye over his head without glancing up from his cards. Did I miss something? I walked home from school with him today. We talked about how well Marvin is doing in the band; he didn’t mention anything about Caroline. I guess since she traded in wool skirts for bell-bottoms, he’s changed his mind about her. And what about Caroline wearing earrings I gave her—okay, technically they’re from my mom—while she lounges in the yard with Ryan? Or am I the problem, especially in these open-door, open-minded times? Maybe nothing is going on at all and I’m being ridiculous.

  Back at my house, I drag out the Ouija board. I check the other rooms to make sure my mother’s not home.

  “What’s wrong with me?” I ask. “What’s going on?”

  Both questions are too vague to play the game properly, but the planchette starts to move anyway. I have to scramble to remember all the letters but I do. W-E T-H-I-N-K Y-O-U-R-E L-O-S-I-N-G H-E-R.

  As soon as I realize what the letters spell, the opening riff to Rod Stewart’s “(I Know) I’m Losing You” fills my head. I flip through my albums, find Every Picture Tells a Story, and put it on the turntable. Is the Ouija right? Am I losing Caroline? Is it a hard-and-fast rule that being in a group means losing your girlfriend to one of your bandmates? Are we already playing out a Brian Jones/Anita Pallenberg/Keith Richards love triangle? We haven’t even had a gig yet! Since no one’s home, I crank the song up loud, wallowing in the fact that my best friend is no longer acting like my best friend. Or am I just overanalyzing again?

  It might sound crazy, but I still can’t get over the Ouija using the word we. I remember other kids talking about the different voices and personalities their Ouija boards picked up—like changing channels on the radio. Just last year, one of Soosie’s friends swore she channeled some crazy demon from Scandinavia.

  When the song’s done, I lower the volume and ask the Ouija another question. “Who are you?” As the Ouija responds, I say the letters out loud in an attempt to remember them all.

  J-I-M-I J-A-N-I-S J-I-M.

  My hand jumps off the planchette as if it’s on fire. My mother has always insisted that the Ouija isn’t a game, that evil spirits can find their way into the innocent questions people ask. Jimi, Janis, Jim? I’ve either tapped into a group of people whose names begin with the letter J or I’ve stumbled into the underground world of Club 27.

  I know what you’re thinking—why are some of the biggest names in rock-and-roll history offering advice to a scrawny kid from Bancroft Junior High?

  THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO KNOW.

  This whole thing scares the snot out of me, yet I have to admit I’m intrigued. Is this some kind of hoax or is it real? And how can I tell the difference?

  FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

  11/71

  Jimmy Page often uses a violin bow to play his Fender Telecaster and Les Paul guitars. He learned the trick from another session musician, David McCallum, Sr.--a member of the Royal Philharmonic who played on one of my favorite Beatles songs, “A Day in the Life.” McCallum’s son plays Russian secret agent Illya Kuryakin on The Man from U.N.C.L.E., a show I never miss in reruns. The father of a Scottish actor who plays a Russian spy teaches musical innovations to a British guitar god--why isn’t my life full of random connections like that?

  Songs About Ghosts and Death

  “All Things Must Pass”—George Harrison

  “Spirit in the Sky”—Norman Greenbaum

  “Black Sabbath”—Black Sabbath

  “Wicked Annabella”—The Kinks

  “Gallows Pole”—Led Zeppelin

  “Black Magic Woman”—Santana

  “Sympathy for the Devil”—The Rolling Stones

  “Spooky”—Classics IV

  “Battle of Evermore”—Led Zeppelin

  “Break on Through to the Other Side”—The Doors

  “A Day in the Life”—The Beatles

  “Children of the Grave”—Black Sabbath

  “Something in the Air”—Thunderclap Newman, a one-hit wonder band created by Pete Townshend for his longtime chauffeur and roadie, Speedy Keen. The group disbanded soon after, but I still love this song.

  I can tell by Caroline’s expression she’s come over to apologize. (That and the conciliatory plate of still-warm peanut butter cookies.) Betty Crocker offering or not, I’m still pretty bummed out.

  “I ran into Ryan at the store,” she begins. “He’s in your band—I was being nice.”

  The fact that she says MY band helps me take a mini step in forgiving her.

  “We were just playing cards. You should’ve stayed.”

  My voice sounds pathetic and vulnerabl
e even to me. “But why didn’t you call me?”

  “My mother was on the phone! I asked her ten times to get off, but she wouldn’t.”

  I have to admit that part of the story is undeniably true.

  “She’s so upset about my brother—she calls him all the time.”

  Her logical argument and cookie #2 go a long way to assuage my anger. I pull Caroline toward me, and all is right with the world.

  “Besides,” she says. “I know Ryan’s your best friend, but he’s so in love with himself.”

  Bashing Ryan’s eternal confidence locks in 100 percent of my forgiveness. I decide to tell Caroline about my secret new discovery, but NOT what Club 27 said about losing her.

  She bursts into laughter when I explain the ghosts now inhabiting my Ouija board. “Club 27! That can’t possibly be true.”

  I lead her by the hand to find out for herself.

  “I don’t trust you with this thing. Besides, you know too much about music—you could skew every answer.”

  I’m insulted by her lack of trust. Yes, I know, another double standard after I just accused her of fooling around with my best friend. Cheating at Ouija would be just as wrong, believe me.

  “Okay,” she says. “But I’ll ask the questions.”

  As happy as I am to share this crazy find with Caroline, I’m just as thrilled that we’ve so easily overcome our first relationship hurdle. Just for good measure, I initiate a quick make-out session. After a while, she laughs and pushes me away. “You’re keeping me from Club 27. Come on!”

  Out of all the questions you could ask the notorious singer who changed the way white women sang the blues, Caroline asks who took the photograph on the front cover of Pearl. Really? That’s what you want to ask Janis Joplin? I lower my head as the planchette begins to move so Caroline doesn’t see me smile.

  “B-A-R-R-Y,” Caroline reads aloud.

  I stare at the letters in disbelief, then rush to my albums and flip through the J’s until I find Pearl and scan the liner notes.

  “Barry Feinstein,” I read. “I wouldn’t have known that with a gun to my head.”

  Caroline’s eyes shine like a toddler on her first pony ride. “Let’s do it again.”

  Her next question also refers to an album cover—she asks who drew the cartoons on Cheap Thrills.

  “C-R-U-M-B.” She looks across the board at me, our faces just inches apart. “What does that mean?”

  This time I DO know the answer. “R. Crumb. He’s an underground comic artist—his stuff is wild.” I pull out the album and show it to her.

  “Do you want to ask anything about music?” I ask. “Or talk to Jim or Jimi?”

  “Are you kidding? I want to go home and call half the kids in our class.”

  I have no idea what she’s talking about.

  “This is a gold mine! We have to line up customers, start charging for this.”

  This new side to my girlfriend is intriguing and a little devious.

  “Back in Hartford, my friend Kim and I used to come up with different ways to make money. I took pictures of people’s kids, then she made collages, we tie-dyed T-shirts, organized birthday parties—all kinds of things. Our friends will pay to talk to Janis, Jimi, and Jim, don’t you think?”

  As much as I’m always scrounging around the neighborhood for odd jobs to earn extra money, I never once thought of this portal to Club 27 as a means to extra cash. But if some kid in my class said HE was talking to Hendrix, you better believe I’d be first in line to check it out.

  “Okay,” I finally answer. “But you’re in charge of bringing people in. We split the proceeds fifty-fifty.”

  “Call me tonight and we’ll put together our plan.”

  Sure, I’m excited about a new idea to improve my cash flow—TRANSLATION: BUY MORE ALBUMS—but what I focus on now are Caroline’s pronouns. WE have to line up customers. OUR plan. The relationship seems firmly back on track. I pour myself a celebratory glass of milk to go along with cookie #3 and grab the phone on the first ring.

  “Is this Quinn?” a low voice asks. I take a huge swallow before answering, but the voice doesn’t wait. “I saw your sign at the Guitar Center. You transcribe music?”

  I’d almost forgotten about the other ad that I posted several weeks ago.

  “How about if I give you a piece to try? What do you charge?”

  It’s a question I haven’t given any thought to and blurt out the first number that comes to mind. “Ten dollars?”

  “You sure that’s not too much?”

  “Eight?”

  “I’m just kidding. Ten is fine.”

  I tell him I live in the Canyon and he asks me to meet him in the parking lot of the store in ten minutes. An actual paying job! Between this and Caroline’s new Ouija idea, I’m suddenly golden.

  I skid my bike into the dusty parking lot of the Canyon Store and wait for my new employer to arrive. I try not to be nervous but can’t help it—this is my first professional job in the music business. Sure, I’ve transcribed pieces for Cass for fun, but never as a real gig.

  When a guy with curly dark hair, skinny striped bell-bottoms, and a long mustache walks toward me, my bike falls out of my hand and clatters to the pavement.

  “You must be Quinn,” the man says. “I’m Frank Zappa.”

  Okay, you have to understand what it means to meet this guy in person. I LOVE Zappa, have every Mothers of Invention LP, as well as every solo album. I have records he just produced, like Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica. (On the list of the top ten best album covers EVER.) Zappa’s “Peaches en Regalia” on Hot Rats is my #1 instrumental OF ALL TIME, and is even in the top ten of my list of desert island songs—an instrumental—THAT’S how good it is. I’ve seen Frank and his crazy entourage around the Canyon but have never spoken to him face-to-face. Transcribing his complicated, unwieldy, beautiful music note by note is something I’d do for free.

  FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH

  12/71

  Frank Zappa’s father was a chemist who worked at several chemical plants. Because of nearby mustard gas arsenals, Frank grew up with gas masks all around the house. He started playing with sound at an early age, began composing orchestral pieces in high school, even conducting the school band in one of his original arrangements. For his 15th birthday, he asked to make a long-distance phone call to the French composer Edgard Varèse. When he was 22, he went on The Steve Allen Show playing a bicycle with drumsticks and a bow. The musicians in his band were shocked to discover he expected them each to read and play his sheet music note for note, an unusual practice in rock and roll. His songs are full of dark humor, as are his album covers. We’re Only in It for the Money features Frank and the Mothers of Invention in a parody of the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper.

  Mr. Woodrow is trying way too hard to be voted most popular substitute teacher. He hurries us through the section on figures of speech, then gets to what he REALLY wants to talk about today: Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water. It’s a record I liked until Soosie played it nonstop when it came out last year. After a few months, I wanted to send the disk hurling out the window.

  “Paul Simon is a poet,” Mr. Woodrow begins. “Let’s listen to a few of these songs, then discuss the lyrics.” He goes to the closet in the back of the room and brings the battered turntable to his desk.

  I’m all for listening to music in class—especially if it’ll get us out of talking about similes and metaphors—but somehow analyzing a song’s lyrics with a teacher takes the fun out of listening. When Simon wrote sail on, silver girl, who was he referring to—a woman he knew? These are the kind of questions I might ask myself as I lie on the floor of my room with my headphones on, but it feels almost blasphemous to be talking about them in class with a guy whose pants are pulled up to his armpits. Private, personal—both for Paul Simon and for me. I spend most of the class slouching lower in my seat so Mr. Woodrow doesn’t call on me.

  Caroline raises her hand. �
��The song’s about comforting someone in need, a friend.”

  Ryan’s hand shoots up right behind her. “It’s dramatic, building up to a big finale.”

  The thing is, Ryan HATES this song, used to call it “Bilge over Dirty Water” whenever Soosie had it on. The fact that he’s using it as a way to suck up to Caroline makes me raise my hand too.

  “It’s one of the only songs that Garfunkel sang alone,” I continue. “Simon really regretted it. It was a monster hit, but they broke up right after.” I could tell Woodrow lots of other info about the song—that the engineer got that drum sound in the middle by placing a snare at the bottom of an elevator shaft and miking it from above—but I’ve succeeded in my mission, switching Caroline’s attention from Ryan to me.

  I take it in stride when Caroline loops her arm through mine in the hall. “You know so much about music,” she says. “Let me help you with one of your columns so I can learn.”

  All I can think about is what a mess Two Virgins was when John and Yoko tried to collaborate.

  “I know it’s your thing,” Caroline says. “I’m not trying to interfere. I just thought it would be cool to do something together. But if you don’t want to, we can just concentrate on the Ouija business.”

  “No, let’s do it over break. It’ll be fun.”

  “Hey, I saw you on your porch last night,” she continues. “You were with your Dad—I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “What were you doing out so late?”

  She shrugs as if the answer is not important, but inside I’m screaming, WERE YOU WITH RYAN AGAIN?

  Caroline unfastens herself from my arm to catch up with Lindy and Willy, leaving me enveloped by my imagination’s worst-case scenarios. I thought we were good? I thought you wanted to do a column together?

  As I meet Ryan outside school to walk home, I decide not to ask him about his plans last night. But I can’t resist busting his chops about English class. “For somebody who doesn’t like Simon and Garfunkel, you had a lot to say today.”

  “I’ve got a C in that class. I figure it’s easier to participate in a discussion about music than talking about stupid spoonerisms, whatever they are.” He changes the subject by making me tell him yet again about my meeting with Zappa.