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4/2/02 Dinner and a Lizard You may not drive a great big Cadillac Best beloveds. Mr. Pain informed me last issue's opening words came from the immortal Mr. Cooper, as in Alice, as in Welcome to My Nightmare. Very cool, and as I told Mr. Pain in my reply, maybe I quit on Alice too quickly, he was getting a lot of negative press back at that time for firing his band (a bunch of motherfuckers, for sure, and I mean that as a compliment- RIP Glen Buxton) and going Hollywood. Not to start off on a downer note, but there's couple of obits you may have missed (Lonesome Dave's got past you, I'll bet), the first being Stuart Adamson, guitarist/singer for Big Country, I remember Doug used to like them a lot, or at least we played it a lot over at your Roxalana Hills apartment, maybe because it was the only half decent album you had, I don't know. The first obit I read said he died from "complications from alcoholism and depression"- jeez, imagine that killing someone, the second obit said it was suicide, which I guess is what the first one said as well. I've praised the British press in this rag before for their wonderful, witty writings, but they're also known to be some of the worst shitty cruel sons of bitches who ever put pen to paper, very happy to make you just to break you, and apparently they hounded Stuart badly the past few years for being a washed up has been etc. I personally think he should've wiped his ass with hundred pound notes and mailed them to his journalist friends, but he decided to get real drunk and take a bunch of pills instead- which still would've been fine, if he was doing it to get up his nerve to go shotgun the fucking lot of 'em, but instead he lay down and died. The other obit is Mikhail Karoli, and if anybody besides me knows who he is or gives a shit, let me know, I'll tell you what happened to him. (And in the fantasy world I sometimes retreat to, one day they're going to pull this sheet back off of a corpse and strong men are going to physically recoil, revulsion etched across each face at the devastation inflicted upon this lump of human clay, oh my fucking god, what HAPPENED to him?, and there'll be a beat, and then the head cop, played by a young Lee Marvin, will take the cigarette out of his mouth and look cross field of the camera and say, Bill Bitner happened to him.) I think I'm getting my second wind on this traveling to Beckley gig. Of course, the fact that I've started doing 3 times the recommended dosage of Xenadrine (which is only twice the lethal dose) may have something to do with it. The original plan, as you recall, was for two months, which would have me already quit, then I thought I'd try to hang through May, which I still think I can do, and there's talk we may go to a per diem system of getting paid (our secretary in Beckley is a lovely soul, but every time she say "per denim" it's like sandpaper across my fucking teeth), which is like the easiest job in the world because you just do the fucking work, you don't spend 80% of your time writing about it and lying about how long it took you. So I may hang even after May, I just don't know yet. Besides, I've also got unfinished personal business in Beckley. Faint heart never won fair maid, and all that rot. This artificial energy thing usually ends in tears, I know, but it's working for me right now. I've got energy to burn, I'm even back lifting hard again, or at least I am until my nose starts bleeding too badly and my vision blurs out. Getting my six-pack back, tell 'em Tom, he checked it out last night when I was out at my mom's. What's Bill drinking? Just green tea, beloveds. It's a work night, and I was roaming around in the hinterlands of Summers County most of the day, so I'm pretty tired, ma huang or no ma huang. And now that I think of it, there's been no alcohol since- hold on, I'm going to check a calendar (used to be I could check a watch) since 3/23, damn, no wonder I feel funny. What's Bill listening to? Brownsville Station. Yeah, yeah, I can hear you all laughing from here, even (maybe especially) you out-of-staters. But listen up, I'm going to tell you why Brownsville Station were a fucking great band. I got their Greatest Hits (along with 2 other CDs and 4 DVDs the other day while killing time at the mall waiting for Sarah while she auditioned for the latest Kahde/Scarpelli play, which she found out today she made, let's hear it for my girl, I mean it, I'm SOO fucking proud of her, anyway, 3 CDS, 4 DVDs < $50. Smart shoppers shop like Bill), where the fuck was I? Oh yeah, BS Greatest Hits. The CD is about evenly divided between oldies covers (their version of Roadrunner starts out, "I'm a Roadrunner honey, don't fuck with me"- how'd that one get by us, Joe, we were the swearingest band that ever lived, we swore in Beach Boys songs- "Fuckin' HELP me Rhonda," we swore in instrumentals, "We're gonna play fucking Pipeline!") and those talky intro sort of novelty songs from the pretty good "Smokin' In the Boys Room," to the downright embarrassing "Martian Boogie", which does contain the line "I wanna be a Martian cos they don't have to work", man, I'm with that, and of course, "Kings Of The Party", which goes, in part, "10,000 eyes watching Brownsville leave the floor/10,000 tongues screaming for more"- you do the math, they obviously couldn't). This guy we went to high school with, Torch, loved to "boogie", as we used to say when it was current, to "KOTP". HAVE MERCY, was he a mess, Joe can tell ya, on the dance floor (or rec room floor, more like) Torch made Frankenstein look like goddamn Michael Jackson, he'd get all drunked up on Pabst Blue Ribbon and start this stiff "boogie" thing he used to do, which was bad enough, but he also had this recent colostomy- hey, I wouldn't make this stuff up- that didn't fit too well, and he'd start doing that seizure activity he called dancing and I'd try to warn him, Hey, Torch, chill, you're gonna shake that damn, oh jesus christ, this party's over, I'm going home- So, I mean, musically, this is not much when you consider that it's the recorded best of a band's ten year career. Add to this, front man Cub Koda was the absolute nerd king of front men, about 4 feet talk, horrible Prince Valiant hair, big round black glasses, usually wore a striped referee's shirt-oh my. He did play a plexiglass Dan Armstrong tho, a majorly cool guitar, one of which you can get for only $1250 through Elderly Instruments (thanks for the catalogs Dave, were you giving or loaning me those videotapes?- I'll talk to you private, never mind). While we're on the subject of their dress code, I missed the chance to see Brownsville Station, along with Redbone- hey, in '74 that was considered a decent bill-I, on the other hand, have never been considered one- because I didn't go on my senior class trip to King's Island where they were playing. I didn't go, I'm embarrassed to admit, because I was quite severely pussy whipped at the time by this little blond sophomore, who had one of the most ungodly fine bubble butts I've ever seen, before or since, and who kept me on a string for six months by dangling the promise of someday letting me take up position behind and palming those milky white cheeks and I guess that's about enough of that, we're about to go beyond the bounds of even this rag's definition of good taste. Anyway, I didn't go, because she asked/told me not to "And we'll do something special that night" oh yeah, watching Mannix with her mom and dad was special as all hell. For those of you wanting to know how Miss Sophomore days turned out, I did and I didn't, I'll explain in detail in the very long upcoming essay, "On Cooking My Own Puke, And Other Golden Memories," for those of you going "WHAT ABOUT BROWNSVILLE STATION'S DRESS CODE!", well, all the girls came back scandalized because the bass player had unzipped his jumpsuit (very big in '74) down so you could see his pubic hair. I thought that was a hoot then, and I think it's a hoot now. Brownville Station were so ungodly cool because they weren't. They didn't give a rat's ass about looking cool, fucking hell, they knew they were hideous, unlike Foghat, god bless 'em, who used to smile at the photographer and then go, 'ere now, I think is bleedin' lens 'as cracked, so they dressed however the goofy shit they wanted to, and played what they fucking loved, not what they thought would make them popular. They loved fucking rock and roll, the songs they played may have been simple, but by god they ROCKED. There's a picture in the booklet accompanying the CD that sums them up wonderfully. They're playing some dive, guitar guys all hunched up into each other making Guitar Face and their drummer, this big husky lunk of a guy, is playing his drums while standing on them. One foot on the floor tom, one on the side of the kick, he's not just standing there posing, he's fucking PLAYING, pounding the shit out of them, this engaging idiot grin all over his mug. To me, that's what it's all about, I don't give a good goddamn how well you can play the drums, it's down to, will you jump up on the fuckers. Jimi Hendrix, whom as all Billheads know, I love, played the guitar with his teeth, and that's very cool, but I'm more with a guy who will pull all the strings off the guitar with his teeth, at high decibel amplification, the neat thing about that being that when you pull electrified metal strings off a piece of wood with your teeth you never know from one time to the next whether you're going to be biting into good electricity (which gives you this indescribably wonderful blue/white Super Magic Fingers vibration all through your body- makes your thingie hard as a brick, too) or bad electricity, which gives this nauseating tin foil on your fillings vibe all through you, or else very bad electricity, which will fry you like a toad on a griddle, and which, fortunately, has so far not found me, though you remember that time at Greg's, Joe, when that spark came out of my nose, I think it was just a flaming nose hair, but still, it was pretty cool. A very sad addendum, the height and sartorially challenged Cub, who wrote a very well written and informative column for Goldmine these past few, and I'm sure was just a hell of a guy by BB standards, passed last year due to complications from diabetes. Anyway, Brownsville Station were motherfuckers cos they played R&R because they LOVED R&R, not because they wanted to get on fucking MTV. And boy, did we go on a piece about them. I haven't heard back from the Gazette about whether I'm their new music review guy (any guesses?), my dear nephew Tom should've gone in and fronted for me, he's written quite a bit of stuff this year for Flipside and had it printed, for like real money and everything, I'm actually pretty proud of him but I don't want to say too much because I know he gets this, and Bitners and our kin are bigheaded enough, you don't want to praise us, it's sort of like throwing water on a gremlin. Speaking of Tom, he's just back from spring break in Texas, where he deliberately wore a Cubs shirt into a Houston sports bar, which got him a half hour delay in getting served, and the wrong order when he did. Where'd you get that obnoxious streak, boy, and when we going back to fuck them Texas yahoos up? Tell you what, we're gonna wear our Terry Funk, "Funk U." t-shirts to Abdullah's, get him all pissed, he'll jab that goddamn fork right through Joe's head. Or so we can hope. Won't do anything about your Texas situation, but I bet it'll be a sight. Went to the library as well the other day while waiting on Sarah, got a Bachrach/David fakebook, been spending the last few days crooning stuff like "Wishing And Hoping," just like the feyest thing you've ever seen. I like a lot of their stuff, though, I really do. I do a real nice solo version of "Walk On By," it's got a couple of those numbered chords that usually piss me off (Gm7, what the fuck, isn't just plain G good enough for ya?- actually, in this case, no) but I worked through it, and sing it in my high girly voice, which is very precious for about two times through the song, and then it becomes my high Popeye voice, and at that point we're done. We'll throw a version down on the Infernex (what I'm currently call my recorder from hell) next time you're out, Joe. Now that Japan's out, my big travel plans are to go to Scandinavia within the next year. Got turned on to the idea by this guy I was talking to in the library, who'd just come back from there. He said it's cheap, the beer's wonderful, the food is great if you like raw and or pickled fish (I do!) and the women are uniformly beautiful. I've heard all of the above before, even about the women, from some women I know who've been there, Greg's wife Diane, and Jean V. among them, so it's sounds like a nice place to visit. Of course, there's still the language problem, and I'll probably end up telling some stunner that she's got a clitoris as big as an umbrella, and getting my ass head butted through a plate glass window. At least she won't pull my hair. Stopped on my way home to get Bushisima some mealworms, he was all out, all they had were giant mealworms, I figured, how giant can they be? Well, pretty damn giant, actually, I felt positively inadequate when I pulled one out for him. Dropped it in his terrarium, man, it was like watching Baragon versus Mothra (larval Mothra, Caterpillera, although they never called her that in the movies). Pretty neat. Well, I'm going to go drink a beer, shit, my liver's going to think my throat has been cut, and then I'm going to bed. God love all of you who e-mail me regularly, fie on thee who don't. Diamond in the back, sunroof top Bill 
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