Lost Joy

by Camden Joy

Just past Emporia we slowed for a hitch-hiker, a blind trumpet player late for a gig in Wichita. His name, I can’t recall. Tender Tinderbox, Robert Nestor, something. This was Highway 35 in a blizzard. We were junked so incredibly bad as to be beyond words. Our minds were tin-foil, tin-foil hats, they were paper cans, our hearts were on anti-freeze, our radiator. We promised to drive him everywhere from now on. He stuck his horn out the window where the blue snow whistled in and he blew nothing we’d ever heard before. The capillaries in our legs went numb with the clarity of his tone, his notes cleared a path through the ice and smoke. Tiny shut-up houses appeared on the horizon, made entirely out of wood, they grew bigger, they shot past and vanished like how we wanted to. This was some time ago, a while back, who knows. We promised to meet a set of new friends, good friends this time, reliable ones, and they would form the nucleus of his fan club. There’d be talk shows and gossip columns, a classy clientele. The chains on our tires clobbered the road. Ga-chunk, ga-chunk, ga-chunk, they said all the way to Wichita. He was blind but he could see a little, fuzzy shapes mostly, a sense of light peeking through gloom, our party hats. He hadn’t completely worked out his name. Carlton Cadbury, Bloozy Barry, I don’t know. He was perhaps the greatest trumpet player who ever lived. Our wings were folded-up, useless in this weather, huge leaves stuck wetly to our sides, limp and burdensome. No one had ever been so brave as to attempt driving after doing this much medicine, as we called it, medicine, crud, garbage. We promised him a recording contract.

  Dear CMJ,

  Were someone in early March of 1989 to’ve dialed the phone number (307) 482-1065 and asked for the youngest in the household, they would’ve been handed to me, eternally the baby of the family. They would’ve interrupted me listening to cassette tapes sent to me by my sister, who had fled the backwoods of Natrona for a new-age hippie university in California. On my cassette player, Pitch-a-Tent bands would’ve been playing. My sister had started dating a guitarist named Jerome. Pitch-a-Tent was a small record label distributed through Rough Trade. It lasted a few years, then went somewhere. Jerome was in a band that recorded for Pitch-a-Tent. Unfortunately, I did not learn the name of his band. It was either River Roses, Wrestling Worms, Ten Foot Faces, Donner Party, or Spot 1019, which were the Pitch-a-Tent bands I heard via my sister. These excellent bands—unavailable everywhere, not even in cut-out bins—I am unclear what became of them. If I was still acquainted with Jerome I would ask; unfortunately, my sister married a guy in the Engineering School, and Jerome is a name that no longer gets spoken.

  Dear CMJ,

  My middle son used to practice up near Port Authority, renting space in a rehearsal warehouse called Big Top. He and his bandmates spent $15/hour to rent a room with a PA.

  I’d go uptown sometimes to meet him after rehearsal and help carry home his equipment. As I emerged from the subway I’d hear all the Big Top bands going, big salsa outfits, longhair guitar bands, country swing bands, gospel jazz bands. The source of the cacophony was invisible, all of it blasting seemingly from nowhere, because Big Top was a building that looked like any other. I’d worry momentarily if I wouldn’t be sure which of these particular bands belonged to my son. I remembered the time my son told me his band’s name was in the newspaper, in the club listings. I slowly turned every page of the club listings and looked at thousands upon thousands of band names, thinking how for each four-piece listed that meant eight parents were in the city right now somewhere trying to pick out the name of their kid’s band. Of course I didn’t tell my son how strangely sad this made me. I told him I was very, very proud.

  Eventually, my son would emerge from Big Top sweating, his face puffy and red, his voice hoarse, as if he was in training, which I guess in a sense he was. I’d ask him how it went and he’d shrug, discouraged. His descriptions would take me into rooms where the soundproofing hung off loose tacks, the rugs were thick and matted with filth, the PA was impossible and the mikes shocked you. Apparently, getting a good “mix” of all the instruments at Big Top was difficult as it seemed you couldn’t hear one another no matter how loud you turned up. My son said that whenever his group wasn’t making music they’d be blasted by a variety of musical styles from the bands above, the bands below, the bands to either side, and these bands always sounded tighter and more polished and better than his own.

  It occurred to me to comfort him by suggesting that these other Big Top bands could not be better because if they’d achieved great prominence they would have been practicing in nicer spots. But you know, I’ve read that there are Big Tops in every American city, a building where twenty or thirty musical outfits practice round the clock, and again, strangely, it makes me sad to consider the number of bands that never make it. Because I know my middle son, and I know he’s talented.

  Dear CMJ,

  On tour the good feelings persisted from San Diego to Tucson, but then in Texas the opening bands started . . . well, sucking. After Dallas, we didn’t leave the dressing room until we had to go on, we couldn’t stand it, we got so sad watching these uninspired glamor-seeking sad-boy opening bands. Same with Austin and Houston. Baton Rouge was sweet, friendly, but still we were paired up with someone who . . . sucked. And on and on, Florida, Georgia, &c. Warily I emerged once—this was the concluding show, actually—this was Chapel Hill—we ran out of beer backstage—accidentally I overheard the opening band—Wow! Fantastic! I remembered, suddenly, my best friend had described this very band to me: brilliant, tight, Minutemen attributes with country western flavorings. After the set I started to tell them how good they were, told them that my best friend really dug them. Then—wow! Suddenly—whoops!—I remembered something else. The band my best friend described, they were called Wampum. This band was Uncle something . . . Uncle Tupelo.

  Uncle Tupelo later got some notice and then split into two outfits, a haunting one and a silly one. But I still think of Uncle Tupelo as the opening band that wasn’t Wampum. Wampum never got to Chapel Hill or anywhere as far as can be determined. I never heard them. My best friend still raves about Wampum.

  Dear CMJ,

  What was so terribly good about the Alleycats, you ask, and as an adult it’s a bit hard to put into words. Partly it was the innocence of those pre-MTV days. The Alleycats were good like music is good when you’re young and everyone’s in it for meaningful reasons like sex and smarts. Once you learn words like “demographic” what remains of the Alleycats freezes and falls out of your bloodstream, never to return, and someone slaps you on the back and says, ‘Welcome aboard, grown-up. Here’s your nametag.’

  The Alleycats had a barely available LP out on a small label when they appeared at the community center of my hometown. They were a trio, with a female lead singer bassist and a guitarist songwriter I always assumed to be her husband who had coordination lacking like a hard drug user. Somebody played drums. Their record was okay but live—well, it was the difference between kissing with your mouth shut and your mouth open. Two groups of kids came to the comunity center show: 1) the teen moshers and 2) my friend Melvin Toff and me. After one song, the teen moshers were led out by security because they began to dance, which everyone knew was against community center rules. The lights stayed down. The band could not see that only two audience members were left, Melvin and myself. They continued playing like it mattered.

  After remaining significant unknowns for years, the Alleycats renamed themselves something ridiculous like Zegon & the Planetoids, like their name was the reason they’d never gotten noticed by powerful people—but I’ll say right here that I’d put the song “Today” by the Alleycats up against just about anything, NYC, the Bill of Rights, Mike Scioscia, my Mom, watermelon, it’s that good.

  Sometimes in Los Angeles I used to see the Alleycats open for X. It was no competition. X would meekly come on afterwards but that’s about all they would do—make a reluctant appearance, like Spinks did against Tyson—they knew they could not compare. X wanted to just pack up their stuff and go home. And look now who
got remembered—X!—look who owns homes and stuff—X!—look who at least gets gigs nowadays—X! And try to find the Alleycats anymore, just try, I’m sure they’re out of music—dead or gone away—and Melvin Toff, well, he and I don’t even talk anymore.

  Dear CMJ,

  It’s hard to remember all the names of all the great bands that have been. I would like to list them here for you but if all I heard from them was a 45 or a demo cassette, they never got that first foothold and their names won’t even come to mind anymore. They are gone, as if they’d never bothered to do anything at all. Why did they bother? Do you know how hard it is to write a song, much less a good song, much less one you’d be happy to play once a night for the rest of your life? Plus it’s hard enough to find musicians you can stand to be around, much less enjoy. Then you have to make music with them (always difficult) and travel with them (impossible). Soon there’s a girlfriend squabble or someone goes nuts, their focus gets a little derailed, and they have no more money to go into the studio and record (that’s so expensive, really), and then there’s the high costs of manufacturing and distributing their own product. I’m getting far off the subject. I mean simply to say that, for the last several decades, bands of youths have been disappearing by the vanload, faster than helium balloons fading from view in the upper atmosphere after some big champagne-filled day of public addresses and released balloons.

  I speak to you of this as a short man who is conscious at all times of his dissatisfying height and repulsive appearance. It took the Christians centuries to undo the barbaric standards of beauty put into place by the Greeks—how have these standards suddenly returned to us?—and now what holy and compassionate force, sacrosanct and inviolate, can emerge to undo our culture’s addiction to disposability, to superstition and superficiality, to the ignorant charm of the instant, a fixation on tall people who everywhere cruelly stand in our way and pollute the rivers and tell their dumb tall tales and wreck scientific inquiry and run up the debt and without apology brainwash us with the same bands over and over rather than allowing genuine alternatives to step to the fore. An alternative music festival—ha! Give me a break. Let’s see some repulsive short people up there, rocking out, godammit.

  Dear CMJ,

  Sitting in the bucket seat beside my young neighbor, while her bones throbbed and the car stereo played (in her words) “the one song” that helped her “through all this agony,” a bad song from Heart, a bad band, this taught me a great deal; I was moved by the details of her horrifyingly impossible-to-diagnose ailment, I was grossed out by this song and by how my neighbor swiveled in the seat to the rhythms and sang along with eyes shut. Her teeth, they had to replace them with piano keys, her gums were black with rot, her body hated her, her brain was sick. It hurt to comb her hair, to turn on a light, to dial a phone. Heart, though, was totally excellent, Heart helped. What am I gonna say, I’m gonna complain that she lacked taste? I heard her puttering around all night long, she never slept from the migraines and the aching joints. I think she was dying.

  Dear CMJ,

  In the summer of 1988 I saw a flyer on Bleecker Street advertising a musical performance by Memorial Garage. I did not attend the performance and subsequently never saw flyers or any mention of this group again. A reward is hereby announced for anyone able to provide me with information leading to Memorial Garage. With a name that good, it seems a shame they never got heard.

  Dear CMJ,

  Many are the crimes committed against ambitious youth in these days but none seem to me more egregiously unredressed at this very moment than that Bob Wiseman—for all his tumult of talent, his ear, his voice, his hand, his eye, his sense, his drive—remains everyday a nobody, shackled and jeered as was Rembrandt by the bankers on the cigar box. Too big-hearted to fit underground, too big-pictured to grovel for your crumbly cashews, Bob Wiseman by any other name (in any other time) would be a rose, he would’ve arose, a hero of protest, a celebrated conscience, our wise man. Even his precise number of releases has been rendered tough to pinpoint—In Her Dream (sorta on Warner Bros.), Lake Michigan Soda and City of Wood (available in Canada), In By Of (a compromised greatest hits collection), countless instrumental CDS (maybe available somewhere), a new release already recorded (will it never arrive?). Thanks to my friend Mark—and to Wif Stenger—for showing me Bob Wiseman, but now the work begins, we must see him to the top of the charts or it is all in vain.

  Dear CMJ,

  When I worked the arts and entertainment beat at the Pascagoula newspaper (not a difficult assignment, you wouldn’t think) we were often hand-delivered seven-inch vinyl from a small local label called Mississippi Sound. It was roots stuff, old-timers from Petit Bois and Chandeleur Islands playing gut-stringed things and banging on silverware and tins, younger folk from upriver performing hand-me-down historical laments, genuine and haunting. Each seven-inch was not just fantastic but fantastically different. We did all we could to promote both the acts and the label, wrote them up with big headlines and whatnot, but I guess it sure wasn’t enough. Bad luck prevailed. The label suffered a power boilover in their manufacturing plant, which ignited their entire back catalog. Even worse, in seeking to contain the blaze, the fire department flooded the basement, which ruined all the reel-to-reel master tapes. Nothing whatsoever was salvaged. Mississippi Sound folded.

  These good people who churn out such incredible music . . . who can say what becomes of them? They go back to their families, to their jobs at the tire factory, they lock their instruments in the closet and try to shake off their dreams.

  I often think that many more people get away with bad things than we ever realize, sinners everywhere walk these hills, schemers and molesters, and I even think how we pass murderers probably every day without knowing it, and all the while we’re thinking how pleasant and charming they seem.

  But you could just as easily think, and I have begun to do this (although I must remember to do it more often!), how many of these anonymous ones might be musicians with no place to play, they probably had divine songs going on inside them once long ago, and, you know, who knows, maybe even some of them were responsible for the magic which, for that briefest of times, was Mississippi Sound.

  Dear CMJ,

  You are indeed right, possibly the most intriguing—if not the most virulent—of alleged rock-and-roll conspiracies concerns the single by the Lopez Beatles which was said to’ve been snuck aboard the first of NASA’s Voyager space probes. The Voyagers, you will recall, were outer-space time capsules. They contained carefully accumulated cultural remnants intended to convey humankind’s essence, perhaps billions of years from now, to whatever alien civilization ultimately retrieved them. Everything that went into the Voyager was documented in a content catalog (available free of charge from the GAO as #4A-VOYAG-567ESD.4). But the story goes that a few insiders sabotaged, or, at least, supplemented, NASA’s time capsule efforts by ensuring that in addition to indisputable classics like Bach, Mozart, and others deservant of eternal memory, the space probe carried our grittier stuff too. Recently making the rounds on the web is a parallel content catalog (#4A-VOYAG-567ESD.5), purportedly dug out of a government vault and containing the space probe’s actual contents, as opposed to the catalog (ESD.4) released to the public. The highly suspect ESD.5 indicates angel dust, billfolds, pornographic magazines, and parking tickets were also sent into space, as well as a piece of seven-inch vinyl by the band the Lopez Beatles. (The Lopez Beatles appear to have become the focus for such persistent rumors due mainly to their own mysterious disappearance; some lucky ones have heard their classic single “Bitchen Party,” but few know where they came from or went to subsequently. Scientology is mentioned.) Those that have seen the original ESD.5 swear by its authenticity. They point out the Treasury Department’s own intricate watermark (which cannot be counterfeited), and that ESD.5 was printed on official rare-fibered State Department paper and stamped “High Access” in so-called Pentagon ink.

  NASA officials thusfar ref
use to comment on this story.

  Dear CMJ,

  There was a band I saw once I greatly enjoyed but I never learned their name. Does that count? Of course it counts. My circumstances were unusual. The Indy 500 had concluded, the tented pageantry all folded up, but I couldn’t seem to quit town. A local invited me to see the sights. “The sights?” I choked, remembering—naturally—that Tyson had offered the same to Desiree Washington—“come over, you and me, we’ll go see the sights of Indianapolis”—before he raped her. Was I afraid? Of course not, with what I’d already been through, of course not. I mean, they called my cousin up before Congress and called him a liar, they put my parents in prison. What more could they do to me? Nothing, so far as I could figure. So I went and we ended up at some motel lounge, watching this great band, the one I’ve been trying to tell you about, if you would just take off your Walkman long enough to hear me speak. Forget it. Just forget it. I will tell you about how intensely the guitarist played, fueled and focused, how she was better than Hendrix by as much as Hendrix was better than everybody else, and you will ask me about her measurements, her build. I will speak of lyrics which reverberated with the galvanized fragility of Mary Oliver’s poems and you will ask if she seemed raunchy, hot, babe-ilicious, if we couldn’t find a spot for her on one of your TV’s supermodel programs. You can’t see—can you, CMJ?—that to be petrified as I was in Indiana is to be lost, adrift, capable of anything, and this great motel band, whoever they were, they were telling me: “adrift,” well that’s just another name for “alive,” my friend.

  Dear CMJ,

  Naturally you cannot know how hard it is to make music—whatever it is you call yourselves you’re bankers and businessmen, not musicians—but I’m willing to give you the chance to hear this quote and pretend you are somebody who can genuinely appreciate it, even though the quote is about the process of painting, because the same quote applies to the struggle of music-making, and music after all is how all you people pay your bills: “Just before his death, when I informed him that I had given up painting because I just couldn’t paint, Richard Diebenkorn gave me an incredulous glance: ‘Of course you can’t paint. Nobody can paint. I can’t paint. You just go ahead and do it anyway. It is the marvel of this enterprise that you set out to do something utterly impossible. You must forget about time, money, fame, loved ones and all the rest and just stand there putting it on and scraping it off until you achieve the impossible. That’s how it works.’” Do you understand now why I weep for those who braved the treacherous waters only to lose their way? I just want to see all these bands receive the rewards they deserve, that’s all.