| Article 130 of clari.feature.dave_barry:
Path: nntpd.lkg.dec.com!news.crl.dec.com!deccrl!bloom-beacon!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!wupost!uunet!looking!clarinews
From: clarinews@clarinet.com (Dave Barry)
Newsgroups: clari.feature.dave_barry
Subject: THE GREAT LITERARY BAND TAKES CENTER STAGE
Message-ID: <FbarryUR98f_2l5@clarinet.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Jul 92 3:46:54 PDT
ACategory: lifestyle
Slugword: barry
Priority: advance
ANPA: Wc: 817; Id: z0383; Sel: tw--q; Adate: 07/05-N/A
Approved: clarinews@clarinet.com
Codes: //tw--q/, tw--q
Lines: 78
DAVE BARRY
Recently I played lead guitar in a rock band, and the rhythm
guitarist was -- not that I wish to drop names -- Stephen King. This
actually happened. It was the idea of a woman named Kathi Goldmark, who
formed a band consisting mostly of writers to raise money for literacy
by putting on a concert at the American Booksellers Association
convention in Anaheim, Calif.
So she called a bunch of writers who were sincerely interested in
literacy and making an unbelievable amount of noise. Among the others
who agreed to be in the band were Tad Bartimus, Roy Blount Jr., Michael
Dorris, Robert Fulghum, Matt Groening, Barbara Kingsolver, Ridley
Pearson and Amy Tan.
I think we all said yes for the same reason. If you're a writer, you
sit all day alone in a quiet room trying to craft sentences on a word
processor, which makes weenie little clickety-click sounds. After years
and years of crafting and clicking, you are naturally attracted to the
idea of arming yourself with an amplified instrument powerful enough to
be used for building demolition, then getting up on a stage with other
authors and screaming out songs such as ``Land of 1,000 Dances,'' the
lyrics to which express the following literary theme:
``Na, na na na na, na na na na
Na na na, na na na, na na na na''
So we all met in Anaheim, and for three days we rehearsed in a secret
location under the strict supervision of our musical director, the
legendary rock musician Al Kooper. This was a major thrill for me,
because Kooper had been my idol when I was at Haverford College in the
late '60s. Back then I played guitar in a band called the Federal Duck,
and we tried very hard to sound like a band Al Kooper was in called The
Blues Project. Eventually the Federal Duck actually made a record album,
which was so bad that many stereo systems chose to explode rather than
play it.
Anyway, I could not quite believe that, 25 years later, I was really
and truly in a band with AL KOOPER, and that he was actually asking for
MY OPINION on musical issues. ``Do you think,'' he would ask, ``that you
could play in the same key as the rest of us?''
So, OK, skillwise I'm not Eric Clapton. But I was LOUDER than Eric
Clapton, as well as many nuclear tests. I had an amplifier large enough
to serve as public housing. It had a little foot switch, and when I
pressed it, I was able to generate sound waves that will affect the
global climate for years to come. We can only hope that Saddam Hussein
is not secretly developing a foot switch like this.
We practiced six long hours the first day, and at the end, Al Kooper
called us together for an inspirational talk.
``When we started this morning, we stunk,'' he said. ``But by this
afternoon, we stunk much better. Maybe eventually we can be just a faint
odor.''
In the evenings we engaged in literary activities such as going to
see the movie ``Alien 3.'' I was concerned about this, because when I
watch horror movies I tend to whimper and clutch the person sitting next
to me, who in this particular case was Stephen King. But as it turned
out, the alien didn't scare me at all; I live in Miami, and we have
cockroaches that are at least that size, but more aggressive. The only
scary part was when Sigourney Weaver got injected with a hypodermic
needle, which on the movie screen was approximately 27 feet long. This
caused me to whimper and clutch Stephen King, but I was pleased to note
that HE was whimpering and clutching his wife, Tabitha.
But the real thrill came when our band finished practicing and
actually played. The performance was in a big dance hall called the
Cowboy Boogie, where hundreds of booksellers and publishing-industry
people had drunk themselves into a highly literary mood. The show went
great. The audience whooped and screamed and threw underwear. Granted,
some of it was extra-large men's jockey briefs, but underwear is
underwear. We belted out our songs, singing, with deep concern for
literacy in our voices, such lyrics as:
``You got to do the mammer jammer
If you want my love.''
Also a group of rock critics got up with us and sang a version of
``Louie Louie'' so dirty that the U.S. Constitution should, in my
opinion, be modified specifically to prohibit it.
Also -- so far this is the highlight of my life -- I got to play a
lead-guitar solo while dancing the Butt Dance WITH AL KOOPER. To get an
idea how my solo sounded, press the following paragraph up against your
ear:
``BWEEEOOOOOAAAAPPPPPP''
Ha ha! Isn't that GREAT? Your ear is bleeding.
(C) 1992 THE MIAMI HERALD
DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
|