Category Archives: Nostalgias

Nostalgias

1989

            As a young adolescent I wasn’t cool enough to know about anything cool.  The year 1989 was a breakout time for me – both in my interests and in terms of my acne.  Prior to that year it was all Weird Al and whatever I heard on pop radio.  Before 1989 all I wanted was to keep my toe in the water so that I didn’t fall completely behind in youth culture and wind up asking “What’s a Fresh Prince?” or not understanding that ‘bad’ was ‘good’ and ‘rad’ was radically better.

            What people don’t know these days is that the 80s didn’t end until 1992, so in 1989 we were definitely still into hair metal, hair spray, leather and denim jackets, hockey player and mullet haircuts, Paula Abdul and the mall.  The big event that year was Tim Burton’s Batman film, which had a soundtrack performed by Prince.  Every publication slammed this album, suggesting that he had lost his golden touch.  I was into everything Batman that year but Prince gave me a weird feeling.  I really liked “Batdance,” the lead single from the soundtrack.  I hated what that might mean.  As funny as I think this is today, I thought that liking Prince meant you were gay.  I was a fan of Guns and Roses, Poison, Van Halen and Mötley Crüe, all of whom flirted with or fully committed to androgyny, but Prince was a step over the line to me.  In my twenties, after Prince changed his name from a symbol back to being Prince again, I decided at long last that I could begin buying Prince albums.  In defiance of my 13 year old biases I remain a straight Prince fan to this day.  And I really like the Batman soundtrack.

            I entered junior high school in the fall of 1989.  My history teacher was the type of person who wanted the students to think he was still cool.  It got annoying.  A former athlete, he teased students like a jock does, pointing out things about their appearance they had little control over.  But he allowed one cool moment to happen:  he found out that a girl from Jamaica was an aspiring rapper, so he let her rap one day.  Somebody pounded a beat on a desk for her and she went for it, mixing in Jamaican patois with American slang.  Hip-hop was not used to sell laundry detergent like it is today, and you didn’t hear it in Disney movies or on Broadway.  This was possibly a first – a freestyle rap asked for and condoned by an authority figure in a public school.  I still remember how this normally quiet girl came to life as she rapped in front of the blackboard.

            I also remember that, for some reason, there was a collection of plastic WWF pro wrestling figures hanging from the ceiling over the students’ heads.  I had to take a standardized test under the watchful, cocked eye of one of the Bushwhackers*.

            The other unforgettable item in this classroom was an enviable hi-fi stereo and speakers, and most days while we completed worksheets we were allowed to listen to the rock station.  This is where I got to hear the B-52s’ “Love Shack” every day (like my Prince dilemma, it took me a few decades to admit that this is my all time favorite song).

            The other song that played every day that autumn was called “Love in an Elevator” by some new band called Aerosmith.  In the song, the singer seemed to be advocating the joys of making love inside the confines of an elevator.  I was fascinated.  After watching the music video, I confirmed that indeed this band was very fond of using this manner of conveyance in their love making.  It was then that I decided I needed to buy this cassette tape.

            This wasn’t just any other purchase.  This would mark the first time I would buy a tape with my own money, the first time outside of my comfort zone. 

            But I’d have to sneak it past my parents.  They were not very restrictive over content.  If they thought I’d enjoy a critically acclaimed movie I could watch it no matter what the rating.  No books were ever off limits.  On the other hand, they seemed to believe Tipper Gore and the PMRC** when she said that children needed protection from certain records.  One time, after reading a Newsweek exposé on the rowdy Beastie Boys and their degenerate fans, my father came to me inquiring if I too felt the need to fight for my right to party.  And he was serious.

            Now, as a parent, I understand the concern.  You don’t want your son to get any weird ideas.  And at 13 I was completely in the dark about sex.  I didn’t know what it meant when Steven Tyler sang “go-ing dooowwwnnn” suggestively on “Love in an Elevator,” but I knew enough from context clues that it was A) something I needed to know more about and B) something I needed to hide. 

            One Saturday morning I talked him into taking me to the record store.  I found the Aerosmith cassette tapes, but since I didn’t know they were around since the early seventies I had trouble locating the one I wanted.  I couldn’t ask the clerk – what if he and my dad were in cahoots?  I found the album Pump, saw that it had the track I heard in class, and bought it. 

            In the car, my dad told me to play the tape in the tape deck.  I was nobody’s fool.  This wasn’t a question.  I couldn’t say, “I can wait until I get home.”  This was an inspection and I wanted to pass.  I quickly scanned the names on side A to find a few tunes for the short ride home.  First side, first track:  “Young Lust.”  As a regular attendee of Catholic mass, I knew the definition of lust and assumed Mr. Tyler wasn’t going to be subtle on that track.  Further on that side I had to face “Love in an Elevator” and “Janie’s Got a Gun,” two tracks I had no way of defending on the spot.  The third single, “The Other Side,” started side B and it was an innocuous jam, catchy and empty headed.  My play was to fast forward the tape to side two and let the chips fall where they may.

            My father’s tape deck had a convenient technological advancement that allowed you to seek the gaps between songs.  Thus, hitting the fast forward button once would only get you to the next song, not all the way to the end of the side.  I had to pretend I didn’t understand how this fast forward button worked and press it five times while my father looked at me like I was one of the apes at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

            Aerosmith became my new obsession.  I quickly realized that in my attempt to become cool I had become a fan of a very cool band.  I learned about their longevity, the drugs, the breakup and the comeback.  Every time I saved $7.99 I would buy a new cassette tape, starting with Toys in the Attic (because I had heard “Walk this Way” somewhere), then Permanent Vacation (because you couldn’t escape “Dude Looks Like a Lady”) and on and on until I had all of their output.  “Walk This Way” is one of the best rock and roll songs ever recorded, a perennial favorite for inclusion on my mixtapes.  I remember listening to their self-titled debut album on the bus one morning.  Imagine hearing “Dream On” for the first time and having to process that at 7 am.  It struck me at once as moving and profound yet depressing, as if life was already over.  In essence, if you think you’re going to be anything you had better dream on.

            Once I had obtained every studio and live recording released between 1973 and 1989 I had my opinion of what was the best.  The first four albums – Aerosmith, Get Your Wings, Toys in the Attic and Rocks – and Pump were the absolute best.  I could find no fault in them.  They swung harder than any band, the riffs were dirty and dynamic, and the sexual innuendo, from what I could understand, made me feel bad, as in good.

            But then came the nineties.  You know the story – Nirvana, Seattle, grunge, alternative.  Hair metal died a quick death.  Did that matter to my favorite rock and roll band?  Not really.  Pearl Jam was just as inspired by Aerosmith as Guns n Roses was, even though Eddie Vedder only wanted to talk about Neil Young and the Who.  Aerosmith still got love on MTV and from younger artists, like the Black Crowes. 

            My love for the band was tempered when they released a single called “Livin’ on the Edge” from their 1993 album Get a Grip.  I watched the video for this tune and immediately my heart sank.  “There’s something wrong with the world today/ I don’t know what it is …”

            Oh, no.  Steven Tyler, the man who told me about his young lust only a few years prior, was turning into an old man.  As a teenager, all you hear from older generations is that “kids don’t know anything,” “back in my day …,” “the country is going to hell,” etc.  The song was comfortably delivering curmudgeonnish tripe like this, and I hated it.  It didn’t help that the record’s three huge singles, “Amazing,” “Crying” and “Crazy,” were the same song rewritten three different ways with varying amounts of country music affectations.  At least “Eat the Rich” was cool, but in pre-iTunes times one did not simply walk into Sam Goody and obtain a record on the strength of one song.  That album was a hard pass for me.

            I did pay attention to the band, though.  Their MTV unplugged set was revelatory – proof that a band that played together for two decades had the chops.  A three disc box set, Pandora’s Box, revealed many treasures, including a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Rattlesnake Shake” that has to be heard to be believed.  A late career album, the awfully titled Honkin’ on Bobo, was exactly what I needed – proof positive that Aerosmith could still do it.

            Then again, you had to see Steven Tyler as a judge on American Idol.  Was that okay?  What about the band cutting back on touring and instead serving a residency in Las Vegas?  What are they, the rock and roll Rat Pack?  And how much longer did I want to see Tyler sassafrassin’ around on stage, singing about getting laid like he was still a teenager? 

            Meanwhile, I had gotten serious.  I had a corporate job (sadly, only a one story building, so no elevator).  I had begun listening to Radiohead.  I began denying that I was an Aerosmith fan.  Hiding it.  As I became more sophisticated they became synonymous with beer bellies, fireworks and monster trucks.  Aerosmith was dirtbag music.

            Then I figured out something that I had a hard time comprehending at first.  Steven Tyler and my father are the same age, born within months of each other in 1948***.  When the band released its first record, my dad was a newlywed.  The same year that Aerosmith had their first big tour, I was born.  And when Mr. Tyler was boogie-footin’ around in 1989 my dad was going to work.  As they aged in the new millennia, both were prone to embarrassing themselves, but Tyler was rewarded for it.  Nobody ever seemed to say, “Christ, you’re in your seventies now!  Stop singing songs about chasing women!”

            Then I reached my early forties, the same age as Tyler during the period of time between Pump and Get a Grip.  What am I like now?  I’m not a former athlete trying to look cool around seventh graders.  I’m also not some legendary musician that exudes coolness.  But you know what?  I’d like a little young lust back in my life.  I’d like to feel F-I-N-E fine once in a while.  And if somebody copped a feel in an elevator now and then, what’s the harm?

            Looks like I’m a dirtbag after all!

*The Bushwackers were a tag team from New Zealand that licked each other’s cheeks.  It seemed that the WWF were implying that they were inbred hillbillies.

**Out of touch Boomer organization that created Parental Advisory labels for albums with explicit language.

***Same year as Billy Crystal.

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Nostalgias

Closing Time

Rating: 10 out of 10.

               It was the late 90s.  The chain restaurant in town, the one that claimed to serve authentic Italian cuisine, was hiring for all positions.  I applied to be a waiter, but they told me I could only be a host.  A job where all you do is tell people where to sit.  I had trained my dog to do that, so I figured I would do just fine.

               The place was so big you needed a map.  On my first day I got confused and sat too many people in one server’s section.  Sure, I got a lecture.  It was one of those places where the server is only expected to handle three tables in total, and by seating two in her section rather than evenly spacing them out, I had caused much stress, which was against company policy.  I cared as much about it as you probably do, but I told them it would never happen again.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

               There were Doric, Corinthian, Tuscan and Ionic columns in the dining rooms that, while providing no structural support, offered plenty of cover for employees seeking to avoid customers or management.

               On many occasions I would see a train of employees who were clapping their hands as they followed a server carrying a cupcake with a lit candle in its center.  As the caravan of minimum wage workers filed by, I was wrist-grabbed into the procession.  I clapped and followed as the band of merry makers started up the company-penned birthday song.  (They had to sing a corporate song because if they sang “Happy Birthday to You,” Warner Brothers would sue.)  ((Apparently, the country of Italy never thought of suing this restaurant chain for defamation.)) 

               Before long, the snake would curve near a column, allowing me the opportunity to slip out of sight.  No one noticed, as they were all too busy clapping and singing lyrics like “happy happy birthday/ happy happy you/ your meal is fee at our house/ it’s what we like to do.”  I never, ever sang the song.  Not to one birthday boy or girl.  Can you blame me? 

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

               I had to take a 500 question personality test in order to get the job.  I heard it was to weed out any thieves or psychos.   A 500 question Scantron card, like the SATs.  For a minimum wage job.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

               I was written up once by the assistant manager, Duncan, for being five minutes late.  At least two other hosts were there to tell people where to sit during those five minutes, but whatever. 

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

               Once, Duncan sent me out of the restaurant with five dollars to buy a gallon of milk.  I got in my own car (not a company car) and drove to the nearest convenience store to buy a gallon of milk, which cost $2.49 plus tax.  In the late nineties this was higher than normal, but it was because you were paying for the convenience.  See, I assumed that this manager, who was so invested in me showing up to work on time and was willing to make an issue out of five missed minutes, wanted me to return as soon as my own personal vehicle could carry me.

               When I returned, Duncan wasn’t happy.  “Where’s the rest of my change?”  He couldn’t believe that milk could ever cost that much.  “You could’ve gone down to one of the supermarkets, where I know it’s only $1.69, $1.99 at most.” 

               I thought, Do some comparison shopping while I’m on the clock here?  Got it.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

               In retaliation, whenever a manager sent me on an errand, I deliberately took more time than the task could possibly require.  If my immediate supervisor, Todd, sent me to buy an accounting calculator for the office, I went to all of the stores that sold electronics so that I could comparison shop.  Each electronics store also offered media, so naturally I browsed the movie and music selections.  Obviously, I had to compare prices on those items too.  Media Play, Nobody Beats the Wiz, Sam Goody, Circuit City and the Wall.  At some point during this ninety minute journey that should have been about 20 minutes, I purchased a nice calculator along with a healthy stack of CDs and DVDs. 

               Nobody seemed to notice that I was gone.

               I began bragging to anyone who would listen that I had a job where I could screw off.  Before this job, I was jealous of a friend who did maintenance for the board of education, a job where you never had to lift a finger after your lunch hour.  He always had great screw off stories and now I finally had mine.

               On my last day of work before I returned to college for the new school year, Todd sent me to buy a weed wacker and a few bags of mulch.  He expected me to fit these items in the trunk of my frigging Nissan Sentra.  Let me remind you that my job description was to say “right this way” and “your server will be with you in a moment.”

               I basically farted around town for two hours.  I could’ve seen a movie or done my Christmas shopping early.  I think I bought something for my girlfriend, then more CDs.  Nothing important, really.  It didn’t matter as long as I knew I was wasting time on the restaurant’s dime. 

               I returned with the weed wacker and mulch two hours and forty five minutes after I was tasked with the mission.  Todd, muttering under his breath, said, “I didn’t think you were coming back …”

               And, in a way, I didn’t.  I walked back into the place the following spring to see if I could get work for the summer.  None of the managers managed to recognize me, neither the cool ones nor the dickheads. 

               I guess all that slacking off and farting around made (a lack of) an impression?

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

                I was invited out for drinks after work on many occasions.  The usual place was a disused authentic Mexican joint.  The pitchers of margaritas flowed.

               I learned about another manager, Fabrizio, who had worked there for years and was part of this regular crew and their shenanigans.  He began the past time of taking breaks in the back alley/loading dock area, breaks that would turn into epic slack-off sessions for anyone who joined him.  Soon, the football came out and was tossed around.  Frisbee, unicycle … don’t ask me how the customers never caught on. 

               Fabrizio started the ritual of after work drinks.  He liked to bar hop with them, speeding though the center of town late at night past the strip malls.  The reason I never met him was he died the year before I started working at the restaurant.  While driving drunk, he crashed his car and killed himself.  Thankfully, no one else was hurt.  But his wife and newborn son suffered.  If his coworkers felt anything for him, they didn’t learn anything from him.  The bar hopping and drunk driving was still going strong a year after his demise.

Rating: 2 out of 5.

               When I worked at cheaper restaurants, I found that the clientele would become enraged if they thought the staff wasn’t paying attention to their every whim.  Thus, there was no time to sit, and no time to chit chat in the back. 

               But at classier establishments it is clear that customers are less likely to complain.  If they couldn’t get more breadsticks (likely because their waiter was in the midst of scoring a touchdown in the back), they simply waited.  If you’re spending a small amount of money, deep down you think the food is cheap and the people who deliver it to you aren’t worth your respect.  Once you put higher price tags throughout the menu and update the décor, you can expect more understanding from the customers.  Why?  Because to complain about something of high quality is to negate the experience of spending a lot of money, the kind of spending you do when you want to feel good or show off.  Nobody seriously refers to their Ferrari as “that old jalopy.”

               Whatever.  You know what?  If that’s your attitude, then don’t believe me.  This is a free blog so you probably think I’m a shithead.  Should I start charging $99 a month to get some classier treatment, maybe to test my theory?

               Just kidding.  I know nobody reads this.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5.

               Nobody worked at this Italian restaurant, not like I did when I busted my ass at the cheap places.  I never saw one bead of sweat break out across woman or man’s brow, unless they were standing over a hot stove.  Lazy cooking, too, if you want my opinion.  The pasta simmered in large pots ahead of time, and they had a method of banking breadsticks before the dinner rush. 

               I was once asked to prepare desserts in a cooler early in my shift so that they would be ready for dinner.  I loved that job.  I’m great when I’m asked to focus on details, so getting the dessert decorated just like the picture was fun.  There was a district manager who was in the building pumping me up and my dessert making skills to the regular, shithead managers.  Once the district manager left to go to the next link in the restaurant chain, Duncan, while watching the nice district boy drive out of the parking lot, told me in no uncertain terms that I was no longer the dessert prepper.

Rating: 1 out of 5.

               There were things that I can never forget.  It was generally known that most of the cooks were ex convicts.  One of the hosts, Maurice, who had both nipples pierced, was a fan of “dancing up on” girls at clubs and showing them off.  Quite an ice breaker.

               There was a rumor that three of the servers, one woman and two men, once had a threesome in the supply closet.  I never could figure out if this was true or intended to smear the woman’s name, as she was a nose-up-in-the-air type.

               I wish I didn’t remember these things.  But I figure if I have to know about them, so do you.

Rating: 0.5 out of 5.

               Other things happened, but just once.  I suggested that the staff have an ugly tie day and it took off.  I wore a brown plaid tie that was handsome in its ugliness.  My coworkers really outdid themselves:  piano key patterns, a dead fish tie and a neon paisley explosion come to mind.

               Once, after closing time, Todd and Maurice strapped on rollerblades and did zoomies around the parking lot.  I sat and watched with a few others who were smoking cigarettes.  We were listening to the first Beastie Boys album, Licensed to Ill.  I quickly learned by how adept my coworkers were at reciting the lyrics that all of them were massive fans.  I asked Maurice if he had the Beastie Boys’ latest album, Hello Nasty, and if it was any good.  He said, “Of course.”  I could tell by his intense stare that he was answering both of my questions with one response.  I made a mental note to buy that one the next time a manager sent me on an errand.

Rating: 0 out of 5.

                There was a soundtrack to working at this Italian restaurant.  As you paced the halls and dining rooms you were guaranteed to hear solid hits of yesteryear sung by Italian singers.  You would hear Rosemary Clooney’s “Mambo Italiano,” Dean Martin’s “That’s Amore,” and Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon.”  I think I began to hear it as a pleasant soundtrack that matched all that I saw around me:  overdone Italianness.  But I certainly didn’t mind, and eventually I liked hearing the tunes.

               I liked having a job where there was a closing time; prior to this, I worked at a 24 hour diner, which I believe led to a recurring nightmare where I would look at a table and realize I never put in their order, which then would expand to an entire room of customers in the same predicament.  Terrifying.

               I also liked telling people that we were closed.  “Yeah, but it’s …”  Customer checks watch.  “When do you close?”  “Ten p.m.”  “Yeah, but there are people still eating.  I can see them!”  “Sir, we stop letting in customers at ten, but patrons who are already in the restaurant can finish their meals.”  And you know where guys like this probably went?  The all-night diner where I used to work!

               Management let us know that it was time to close by changing from Italian American standards to modern rock, and the song that began the playlist was always Semisonic’s “Closing Time.”  A little on the nose?  That’s the kind of place it was.  I was a music snob, so had I been with my friends on campus, Semisonic would have been mentioned by me in my ongoing litany of “bands that all sound the same, volume 9.”  But, being in my home town with no other music snobs to impress, I had to admit there was something charming about passing my coworkers in the halls as we all sang or hummed this tune.  It truly is my only fond memory of working there.

Rating: 0 out of 10.

               At Olive Garden.  It was an Olive Garden.  You thought I wasn’t going to say it, to protect the innocent or something, right?  My coworkers referred to it as the “OG” like they were gangster rappers and every time I heard that I wanted to spit in their Pasta Fagioli.

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Nostalgias

Man, What Are You Doing Here?

Not Zogby’s Material

            My first real job was at the Orange County Fair in Middletown, New York working for a guy named Zogby who ran a bunch of food stands.  I had been sent out into the world by my parents to make my fortune; the job I landed paid minimum wage, lasted two weeks, and consisted of a four hour shift every other day.  I was fifteen years old.

            An older kid, Gerry, showed me around the area where I would be working, which was a sausage and peppers stand.  The stand functioned as a hub for the Zogby’s empire, with satellite ice cream stands nearby.  I would not be allowed anywhere near food, I learned, and my interactions with the public would be minimal.  I would only do the following:  wipe down counters and picnic benches, wash dishes and run errands. 

            It occurs to me now that I could have been tapped for a more prestigious role in the company had I not botched my first task.  Gerry took me to a food delivery truck to unload boxes of frozen food.  He climbed into the truck while I waited on the ground to take the boxes from him and load them onto a hand truck.  Easy.  Gerry grabbed the first box from a tall stack and dropped it at the lip of the truck.  For some reason, I decided that I had to catch the box in the air and then place it on the hand truck rather than let it fall to the floor of the bed first.  I think this was my attempt to appear hard working and conscientious.  Well, I did not catch the box so much as allow it to pin my fingers underneath it as it crashed to the floor.  I can still feel the iced-over box and floor jabbing and scraping my skin.  Gerry saw what happened and later examined my rapidly swelling, purple middle finger.  I spent the rest of that shift soaking my possibly broken finger in dirty water while washing dishes in the sweltering kitchen of the sausage and peppers hub.

            After my first day the only thing I was entrusted with was a soapy bucket of water and a few dish rags.  My task was to clean every counter surface and picnic table around the sausage and peppers hub in between customers.  This territory included a pavilion behind the hub with picnic benches shared by nearby Zogby food eateries and ice cream stands.  During my two-week stint the pavilion was where I worked most often, and I was thankful for the shade.

            In one corner of the pavilion near the back of the sausage and peppers stand there was a small bar similar to the kind you would set up for a house party.  It had just enough room for the bartender to set up a few spirits for mixed drinks and taps for a few beers.  Occasionally a musician would set up a keyboard, a microphone and amplification in the opposite corner.  I only remember seeing this piano player there once, but that one time was enough to leave an indelible mark in the shifting sands of my memories.

The Piano Man

            My mom is a fan of Billy Joel.  I grew up in an era when you would hear his songs on the radio often.  We’re talking about that radio station that played “the hits of the 70s, 80s and today!”  Mom played An Innocent Man on cassette in the car until we had committed it to memory.  I found The Stranger, 52nd Street and Turnstiles in my parents’ record collection and played those frequently.  I still like that music because it brings me back to that era.  “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song)” is one of my favorite tunes of all time.

            But I’m not a Billy Joel fan when that nostalgic connection isn’t there.  I’m not sure when I first heard the song “Piano Man” but it wasn’t something we played in the house.  I typically heard it played in my school in the band room.  A young man who was forced to take piano lessons would one day discover the awesome power he had (a power Mr. Joel certainly found too):  when you play the piano, chicks dig you.  You have to play a current pop song or an old standard that has just the right appeal.  Classical can work – Moonlight Sonata does pretty well.  The young man would soon discover that “Piano Man” magnetized the female population.  It satisfied the need for complexity and sincerity, demonstrating the player’s technical prowess and sensitivity.

            I saw this work so well I wasn’t sure whether I should punch him or take lessons.

            The song has a weird stream of consciousness that you rarely if ever hear in pop music.  Released in 1973 as a single, it was written from Joel’s point of view as a former piano player in a lounge in Los Angeles.  The characters mentioned in the song are based on real people and his encounters with them.  I think the music sounds just fine.  My issue is with the supposed sincerity.  Yes, it certainly sounds heartfelt.  Could it be, however, that his chord progression is tugging at your heartstrings and distracting you from the lyrics?  The characters in the song – the old man, Paul ‘the real estate novelist,’ John the bartender, Davy in the Navy, the waitress practicing politics – are very distant from the ‘Piano Man’ and he seems to sing about them like he is better than they are, as if he too isn’t “sharing the drink they call loneliness,” as if there wasn’t “someplace he’d rather be.”  For me, the worst line is near the end, where it is implied, via the line “man, what are you doing here,” that he is better than this scene and everyone in the bar knows it.

            I’m a big fan of Tom Waits.  He wrote songs about getting drunk in bars with strangers and employed the same setting:  early 70s Los Angeles.  But his early stuff was appealing because he was in the thick of it, singing from the gutter looking up, not looking down from a piano bench.  Billy Joel treated his subjects like Edward Hopper, while Waits was more like Reginald Marsh. 

The Eye Roll Heard ‘Round the World

            I was in the middle of cleaning a melty glob of raspberry ice cream off of the hot brown surface of a picnic table when I heard a conversation between the Piano Man and the bartender in the corner of the pavilion.  “What’s your name, man?”  I didn’t quite hear the response, but I assume the bartender’s name didn’t fit the meter of the song, because the Piano Man then said, “Can I just call you ‘Mike?’” 

            I looked up to see the bartender shrug his shoulders and go back to cleaning the shelves under his bar.  “That’s great!” said the Piano Man.  “Mike it is!”  I watched as the musician crossed the pavilion to his keyboard and got his sheet music ready. 

            The air in the tent was hot and stagnant, the smell of sausage and peppers ubiquitous and the crowd, always pausing briefly at a table before moving on, was disinterested.  Yet the Piano Man maintained his pep.  I tried to catch the eye of the bartender to see if he too thought the man was goofy, but ‘Mike’ saved his energy to exchange pleasantries with his customers and was dead-eyed otherwise.

            At some point in his set, the Piano Man began to play Billy Joel’s “Piano Man.”  This was it, his big moment.  Families brushing past pushing strollers may have been oblivious but he had my attention.  And then the lyric, the one he had carefully set up with the bartender beforehand, came:  “Now ‘Mike’ at the bar is a friend of mine/ He gets me my drinks for free.”  He verily shouted it while gesturing with one hand to ‘Mike’ in the other corner of the pavilion.  But when ‘Mike’ heard this line he did not play along.  He wasn’t show biz about it.  Oh, no.  I watched ‘Mike’s’ eyes roll so hard to the left and down I thought they’d roll out of his head.  In my mind I feel like there should have been a sound effect for this story when this happened, like maybe a bowling ball slamming into a gutter as soon as it was released from the bowler’s hand, the pins collecting dust in the distance.  ‘Mike’ turned his back on the Piano Man and went about his business.

Coda

            I pitied the Piano Man.  While I might have been holding a slop bucket and a rag, I knew I wasn’t coming back the following year.  He was an adult who could be playing any music he wanted, anywhere he wanted, and he ended up in this place.  The Piano Man, who had probably been the guy in high school getting chicks with his piano playing, was having a good time and it was crazy.  I had been playing trumpet for several years at that point and had done small concerts for faculty parties and board of education events via the jazz band.  I know, pretty fancy.  What I’m saying is, at fifteen the glitz and glamour of ‘show business’ had worn off.  Here was a guy twice my age acting like he was playing the Garden.

            But did the Piano Man quit?  Did he lose confidence?  Quite the opposite.  He sang the shit out of that song until the last line, which is “Man, what are you doing here?”  But while Billy Joel was destined to put out much better material in the years that followed “Piano Man,” this Piano Man was never asked that question.  Why?  No one doubted that this performer belonged in a stuffy hot pavilion behind a sausage and peppers stand for two weeks every summer.

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Nostalgias

The Feeling Came Upon Me

A nostalgic look at my early twenties in which I attempt to determine for whom Meat Loaf was intended.

During the summer of ’97, while I was still working at the chain restaurant that shall not be named (one of the many that end with an apostrophe and an “s”), I met a man and a woman, Eric and Joanna, who would make me feel something I had never felt before.  They were not a couple; from what I recall, they met at the restaurant that summer as new hires.  I had been working there since my high school days, and I was back for a summer between my sophomore and junior year of college.

Restaurant work at the level just above fast food was chaotic fun, equal measures of drudgery and drama.  The mundane tasks were plentiful:  filling salt and pepper shakers, “marrying” ketchups (pouring half-used bottles into one bottle to make a good one), cleaning syrup and other stains off of the plastic menus, and degreasing the grimy walls.  This was balanced by the fun melee that ensued whenever a rush of customers showed up:  dishes breaking, silverware dropping, cooks yelling, servers jockeying for computer terminals to punch in orders, and everyone mishandling equipment and one another while attempting to stay out of the weeds.

Joanna, Eric and I were servers.  She was a very capable saleswoman, the right amount of personable and flirty.  Eric was one of the guys who never had to write anything down and got it mostly right.  It wouldn’t matter if he made a mistake because nothing seemed to faze him.  I was the worst server.  I faked a friendly tone of voice, one that I copied from one of the many training videos we were forced to watch, that dissipated completely by the end of my shift.  I never remembered the specials, thus I never attempted to push them.  My final pitch before I dropped the check:  “I’m guessing you don’t want dessert, right?” 

Joanna and Eric were in their mid twenties and I had just turned twenty.  Hanging out after work happened occasionally, and when drinks were involved I was typically not invited because I was underage.  Sometimes a bunch of us would reconvene at a shittier restaurant down the street, another chain place that we could look down on (yes, restaurant workers do this, and though I won’t spill the name of where we worked I can tell you that the people who worked at the Olive Garden and Outback would come to our place to look down their noses at us).  All we did was talk shit and spread rumors about the managers, the customers and our coworkers.  We trashed the quality of food at the place we chose, yet we ordered the unique food that our restaurant didn’t carry, as if to say the only reason we’d ever come to this shithole is for the waffle fries.

One night Eric and Joanna invited me to a bar.  “I can’t get into a bar!” I gasped, clutching my pearls.  Actually I had been drunk many times and had made an ass of myself many times over, but that was up at college.  Now in my home town, could I risk the same debauchery?  No, I thought.  Local cops wouldn’t be as lenient as college town cops, I reasoned.

I decided that I would go with them but not drink.  The bar they chose was a quasi-legit converted basement in a residential home that still had the feel of a real bar:  real bartender, real drinks, real dance floor, real jukebox and real pool table.  Eric bought a round – two beers for them and one coke for me – while Joanna selected the music on the jukebox. 

Joana and Eric started a game of pool while I sat on the sidelines, waiting to play the winner.  Eric broke the balls as the first song that Joanna picked began to play.  A guitar riff led into a rollicking pattern from the rhythm section.  A smile of recognition spread across Eric’s face.  They bopped to the music as they played pool, and as the song progressed they grew more interested in singing and dancing than in playing the game.

The song was “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” by Jim Steinman, performed by Meat Loaf and Ellen Foley, and with baseball commentary from Phil Rizzuto.  I had never heard it before.  I was a nineties kid who only knew the single “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” a Meat Loaf hit with a video that reminded me of the ‘80s Beauty and the Beast TV series that starred Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton.  I thought the song was sorta cool, but I had a hard time figuring out who this music was for.  Was Wagnerian rock supposed to appeal to me?  Was the whole album smothered in symphonic balladry juxtaposed with hard(ly) rock?  Was it an adult contemporary album, something my mom would buy?  Was it chick music? 

Being that I was a music obsessive, I had to find someone who had purchased the album in question, Bat Out of Hell II:  Back Into Hell, and ask them what it was all about.  My guy friends had the same reaction as I did – shoulder shrugs all around.  My girl friends were into the drama and sexiness of the video, but found Meat Loaf incredibly unappealing.  No one took the record company’s bait.

Long before the conservative politics and before his name was Robert Paulson, Meat Loaf released many albums involving Hell and the bats that fly out.  His album covers displayed heavy metal imagery as if he was America’s answer to Iron Maiden, which he obviously wasn’t.  A man with a jokey stage name putting out gothic love songs dressed up as heavy metal?  Pass.

Therefore, considering my lack of context, you must appreciate my confusion as I gingerly sipped my non-alcoholic beverage, sitting on a bar stool near the wall of some guy’s converted basement bar waiting for my turn to play pool.  At that moment, I didn’t realize that the song I was hearing for the first time was a Meat Loaf product.  I heard an old fashioned sounding rock and roll number with oohs and ahhs from backup vocalists, and a man singing lyrics about making out with his girlfriend in his car with no one else around.  The subject matter was all very standard fare for rock and roll, from Chuck Berry to Nickelback.

What blew my mind was the musical theater I was witnessing from my coworkers.  I watched as pool cues became microphones.  I saw them point fingers at one another in mock lustful accusatory jabs.

Then came the height of the mid-song crescendo:  Joanna turned to Eric, placed her upturned hand in his face and sang, “Stop right there!  I gotta know right now …”  You may know the rest, but I didn’t.  I sat in rapture, watching my two minimum-wage comrades pantomime the tale we all recognize in some form:  the battle of the sexes waged in a back seat lit only by dashboard light.  The “let me sleep on its” followed by the “I wanna know right nows.”  Then, Eric as Meat Loaf relented and gave Joanna his answer, that he would love her until the end of time.  By the denouement filled with acrimony and loathing, I was emotionally spent.  They had me feeling something I had never felt before:  a love for musical theater.

As an older adult I bought the original Bat Out of Hell album, which has this tune on it.  (I still ask the question, Who is this for?  Kids like Eric and Joanna, older Generation Xers who fell under its spell as young teens searching for any sexually explicit media?)  I find that I play it for a laugh now and then.  I use “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” to trigger the nostalgia I feel for those days.  What I wouldn’t give to go back in time and play along now that I know the words and understand the show-tune performances.  Maybe I could play Phil Rizzuto?

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