This story is mostly true. Put it this way: The events are true. Ian's name is actually Ian. Jim's name is actually Jim. We three were music directors at KAOS Radio in Olympia in 1994 and 1995. I've changed the anti-hero's name to MC Equal. Some of the dialogue is made up because I really want to sell the film rights. Facts that some might find debatable but which are, in fact, absolutely true will be designated as follows: (absolutely true).
Take your mind back to late 1994. Let's say November though I'm not totally sure. Dim the lamps. If you wouldn't mind crushing a Schmidt's Ice can with your forehead it'll help set the mood.
I'm in the music director's office at KAOS. It's a thin room filled with a bunch of new CDs. As music directors we have to preview, classify, and label the CDs we get before we shove them out to the new release bin for our DJs to play on the air. So I'm pulling preview duty with a bunch of new CDs. In this particular batch is the newest CD by Rusted Root, a band out of Pittsburgh, entitled When I Woke.
I put it on. I listen to it. I find my impressionable young interning self settling into a jam-band groove, with lots of bongos, a pennywhistle or two, gently funky rhythms, and songs like "Ecstasy," "Send Me On My Way," "Beautiful People," "Food and Creative Love," "Infinite Tamboura," and "Back To the Earth." A Caucasian guy singing lyrics like "Pick me up with golden hand/I may see you, I may tell you to run/You know what they say about the young." And "Get me off this backwards ride/Take away your fictitious books of fact." It's perky music. The singer sings. The pennywhistle whistles. The bongo bongs. Music swirling like a multicultural dervish in a musk-scented room trimmed with votive candles and armpit hair. The music is calling you to join the limber parade of harlequins and furry tambourines.
I hate this fuckin' album.
I cut the music off and label the CD: "Major Label" (we use a red magic-marker stripe to designate this) - "Rock/Pop - Rec'd 11/94 - How to set your parents' trust fund on fire." I file it away with the hopes nobody will play it. With a couple of exceptions - most notably the nice hippies who hosted late-night shows and actually had much better taste than Rusted Root but took a chance on it anyway - that eventually proves to be the case.
But then Ian, who despite being seven years my junior is technically my superior, walks into the office carrying a black briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. "Pearson," he levels at me.
"Hi, Ian."
Ian just stands there and glowers for a second. "What was that noise I heard coming from this room? It sounded like dachshunds tearing a Hawaiian to bits."
"That? Oh... that was the new Rusted Root album."
Ian scoffs, but he's not being funny. "Rusted Root? That sounds like something they found at your colonoscopy last week."
"They're a band from Pittsburgh."
"If I ever hear Rusted Root in this godforsaken Commie hellhole ever again I'm turning you over to the feds. And you know what they do? They drug test you."
"I don't do drugs, Ian."
"Where are those KAOS key chains I asked you to forge from the burning fires of hot coals with your bare hands last week?"
"On the way."
"Don't outsmart me, rookie." Ian leaves.
Not long after this ordeal, I meet MC Equal. He comes into the office. He's a new programmer. Fairly nondescript guy, inoffensive. He drops by to introduce himself and asks me about KAOS's independent music policy.
Put in force sometime during the 80s, I believe, KAOS's policy stipulates that programmers, especially the rock ones, follow a ratio of 80 to 20 independent label music to major labels (absolutely true). This is something I agree with wholeheartedly, considering KAOS's status as the unofficial station of one of the nation's most visible indie-rock scenes. MC Equal asks me to clarify what made an album "indie" as opposed to not.
"Well, for our purposes, an indie release is something not being put out by the big corporate conglomerates, like Sony, BMG, EMI, Universal, WEA and PolyGram." (Somewhere in the office we had a big poster-sized reprint of the legendary June 1994 article Steve Albini wrote for Maximum Rock & Roll, which had a handy chart detailing all the major distributors and their subsidiary labels. In those days there were six majors. After that they all started merging - Sony with BMG, PolyGram with Universal, etc. Now I believe the number of distribution corporations is a negative integer.)
"And anyway," I continue in this version of the story, "people like K and Kill Rock Stars don't depend on those huge networks, they deal with the distribution houses themselves, or set up accounts with locally based mom-and-pop distributors. They don't have massive staffs - they do all the marketing and production in-house, usually in one office. They have to work radio themselves, and many don't have a relationship with commercial radio. They have a harder time getting airplay because of this, so that's why we prefer to focus on their music."
"Okay," MC Equal says, "so, let me get this straight... so, something like... U2?"
"Yes?"
"Would we consider U2 indie?" (He asks this, absolutely true.)
I have become a professional in my brief time as an intern, so I've learned to control my impulse towards hysterical laughter. "No. No, we wouldn't. U2's on Island Records, who are distributed by PolyGram, so... yeeeeah, that would mean they're on a major label. In fact, U2's a pretty good example of the ultimate major-label band, seeing as how they're... pretty much the... you know... biggest band in the world, except for Pearl Jam."
"So you're saying U2 is bad?"
"No, no, I'm not. It's not a value judgment. It's an economic distinction."
"But I can't play U2 on my show."
"No, you can. It's just... if you can squeeze them in your 20%, then that's fine. It's your show."
"What if I played one really long U2 song that lasted forty minutes and thirty seconds?"
"What?"
"Let's say there's a U2 song out there that's forty minutes and thirty seconds. My show's two hours. So if I played that one song, it would comprise 21% of my show. I'd be breaking the policy, wouldn't I?"
"Well... MC, you know, it's not like we're bean counters here..."
"But technically I'd be breaking the policy."
"Technically you'd be breaking a guideline, expressed as a policy."
"But I'd still be breaking it."
"But what's for me to... listen, dude..."
"I'd be in violation."
"Man, I..."
"What would you do? Take my show away?"
"No, man, of course not, I don't make those...."
"What would you do? Shoot me?"
We're at an impasse. I have to pause.
"Yes, MC. We would shoot you."
"Okay! Thanks, then!" He bounces out. I roll my eyes and go back to sleep.
Later on that week I'm walking in the halls outside the office. I hear the sound of Rusted Root coming from the door. I go into the office and see Jim, sitting alone at the desk, his head in his hands.
"Jim?" I walk over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. "Jim, are you all right, man?"
Jim slowly lifts his head up. "Paul, I have to ask you something."
"Yeah?"
"Do you believe deferred gratification is more often reactive, or premeditated?"
"Uh..."
"It's a straight-up question. Oh, I have a follow-up: If there's a conscious entity out there that metes out reward and punishment, as we here at (The) Evergreen (State College) have been dissuaded from believing, does the entity in question conduct an analysis and qualify our actions, based on their inherent reactive or premeditated qualities?"
"Jim, I hate to do this to you, but I'm afraid you'll have to illustrate your question for me."
"Well, I was just thinking. Let's say this Rusted Root album fills me with... oh, I don't know... let's say a very developed and full-fledged sensation of rage."
"All right."
"Now, if I were to leave this place, right now, and get in my car, go downtown, get out of my car and start walking the streets, I'd be willing to bet - just humor me here - that I would be lunging forward in steps of disjointed, unequal rhythm, prepared to commit some sort of unspeakably violent act I had no intention of committing when I woke up this morning..."
"Uh-huh."
"In my walking I come upon a person, of somewhat more fragile stature than myself. With these new voices I've just found ringing in my ears, I swing this person around by his neck, until his orbit falls limp in my hands, and it turns out I've killed him."
"Right."
"Then I'm shot by police and I die."
"Right."
"And immediately I'm whisked to that adjudication station where they decide where you spend the afterlife. Now, I've probably talked myself out of outright placement in heaven, because I've just killed a guy, and even if I am slated to go the heaven route, they're probably gonna have to run some diagnostics and give me one hankin' long waiting period before I even think of going to heaven. Or they could just send me straight to hell without the diagnostics, which I have to admit I'd have a hard time arguing. And do you know what happens when I go to hell, Paul?"
"I'm afraid I don't."
"Want me to tell you?"
"Yeah."
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
Jim bolts up out of his chair, knocks over a pile of CDs, and points angrily at the stereo. "They play this shit all the fucking time!"
"I see. Uh-huh."
"Now, getting back to my first question..."
Ian appears at the door, dressed in chapped leather, smoking something out of a cigarette holder, petting a small monkey. "What the fuck - it's that Hawaiian dog torture music again! I thought I told you..."
"It's Jim, Ian. He didn't know we're not supposed to play it."
"But I banished it to the basement last week! I stepped on it myself!"
Jim holds up a copy of HITS magazine. "Ian, it came included in this magazine. It's a sample disc. It's by these guys."
Jim turns to a full-page ad of Rusted Root, which contains a picture of the band. There are six of them, posed as if they're walking towards the camera. They're all either gleeful or about to be. One of them - I believe the lead singer - is posing in a really pathetic tough guy stance, bottom lip jutted out, holding up his fist to signify he's attained power over some nebulous state of inertia, and that he's not to be trifled with. It's galling.
I rip the magazine from Jim's hands and tear out the full-page ad. I grab a nearby ball-point and scrawl across the top of the page,
********THIS IS THE WORST BAND IN AMERICA********
(absolutely true)
I then grab the Scotch tape, march to the door, and stick the picture up on the wall, so that all passers-by can see it. I go back in the office.
"That takes care of..."
"Excuse me, rookie," Ian says, lowering his aviator sunglasses. "But that piece of shit's still playing."
"Paul," Jim begs, "please push the pause button on this. I'm too weak. I need nourishment."
"Fuck it," Ian yelps. "I'll take care of this for good." He then walks to the CD player, presses eject, takes out the Rusted Root CD and tosses it into the air. In a split-second he whips a revolver from his breast pocket and fires six .44 cartridges at the Rusted Root CD, which of course explodes and falls to the floor in pieces. Ian takes the protective covering off his boots and stamps on each individual shard of CD, 23 times each. It's been broken into literally dozens of small pieces so this takes Ian quite some time to accomplish. Each piece is ground into dust.
(My publisher would like me to clarify: Although all these events are true, some of them are presented as metaphors. Film rights. The bidding's on, Weinstein Brothers.)
Stamping the last piece with particular vigor, Ian collapses against the side wall, smoke rising from the heels of his boots. He gasps repeatedly for air, heaving his torso to and fro, unable to speak. A single bead of sweat descends his cheekbone.
Still breathing hard, he turns his head slowly to acknowledge Jim and me. "What would Elvis do?" he finally says. "Every day - every single minute you're in here - that's what you ask yourself. Do you understand me? Do you get me, rookies?"
"Yes," Jim and I say in unison.
Ian goes back to the wall, still breathing heavily. "Daddy wants vodka. Daddy wants a fuckin' vodka. Daddy wants you to get it. Daddy has fluffy cake for you. But you have to get Daddy a vodka."
"Paul," Jim asks, "where's the vodka?"
"DADDY DID NOT SAY YOU COULD SPEAK!"
"Sorry."
"Now Daddy wants pie."
"Yes, sir."
"You have to watch Daddy eat his pie. Then you will see what Daddy has seen, but you won't comprehend it. Vodka and pie, my little baggage. And that would be now, please."
A couple of days later I'm back at the office, when I stop and notice that someone has added their own message to my already-defaced Rusted Root ad, scrawled across the bottom of the page in heavy black ink:
******SUCK OFF INDIE SNOBS******
(absolutely true)
Ian stares at the defaced Rusted Root advertisement, with the admonition "Suck Off Indie Snobs," mouth pried open in shock.
"A... a... a criticism??" he gulps.
"That's what it looks like," Jim says.
"I've never seen one before," I add.
"We've been criticized??" Ian restates.
"'Suck Off'?" Jim says. "That's just precious! I mean, that's adorable!"
"Note the heavy ink concentration at the beginning of each stroke," I point out. "This was a very deliberate, emotionally intense act. Whoever did this was in unbearable psychic pain."
"It's as if he was being watched," Jim says. "Who says 'suck off' instead of 'fuck off'? Everyone knows when you want to make a big point, you say 'fuck off.' You never say 'suck off' in this type of application. This guy's been way too mothered in his life. I say Oedipus. Does he look Oedipal to you, Paul?"
I put my nose up to the advertisement and smell the message. "The ink's lost its acidity, but it's still pungent. This was done within the last 36 hours, tops. I should test the pH."
"A criticism???" Ian clutches his heart. "But.... But I'm only twelve years old! I had so much to live for, so much promise..."
"Ian!" I grab onto his shoulders. "Get a hold of yourself! We can take care of this!"
"How? How? This isn't just an off-hand remark! This isn't a drive-thru order we're talking about here! It's not a polite rejoinder! It's not even a light-hearted barb! It's a criticism! It's like someone disagrees with us!"
"I know! It's tough, man, real tough. But I know what we can do."
"What? What are we going to do? This is a criticism!"
"Settle down, Ian," Jim says. "I think he knows what he's talking about."
"I do, I do," I assure him. "Just think it through. When someone writes a criticism, what do we do?"
Ian stops shuddering and thinks. "Chemical warfare?"
"No. Just hear me out, man... we..." I look left and right to make sure we're alone. "We write a response."
Ian's eyes widen. "A response?" He gently tips his head upward, obviously thinking the situation out. "Why... why yes. A response! That way, we're using his own mastery of penmanship against him!"
"It's simple," Jim says, "It's crazy... so crazy that it just might work."
"Who writes it?" Ian asks.
"Well, why don't we all try writing it together? Right now! I'll make some suggestions, you make some suggestions, Jim makes some suggestions, and we graft a response together."
"So what you're saying is, I dictate it and you write it down?"
"No, Ian," I say. "We all collaborate, each one of us bringing our sensibility to the table, and we come up with a unified statement based on each of our contributions."
"That sounds complicated. It sounds like salad."
"Jim," I ask, "what do you think?"
"About what?"
"This collaborative response idea."
"Well, that sounds good. I have some words I've been trying to use in a sentence lately, and I can't find an opening. This might be a good idea."
"But we'll all edit it together, craft it into something whole."
"Naaah, I insist on using some of these words. Actually, I have some sentences left over as well. Don't mean to be a dick about it."
"You're not being a dick, but I'm just saying..."
"I know. We'll each come up with a sentence, and alternate throughout the response. I do a sentence, you do a sentence, Jim does a sentence, and we string them all together. That's called writing!"
"Well, that's more like a daisy chain, not actual writing..."
"Look, you old raisin. I had this idea so it must be good. We alternate sentences! Ian sentence, Paul sentence, Jim sentence! No discussion!"
"Who are you, Idi Amin?"
"Leave my godfather out of this!"
"C'mon, guys," Jim says. "Let's go sit down and just do this Ian's way, Paul."
"Oh, all right," I concede.
We go back into the office and craft our response, in alternating sentences. There is much sighing from my end but Ian pretends it's the heater. After about an hour and a half we're done:
WORSHIP THE HORN OF DEATH! Dude, what's with you? Your antagonism regales us. HELLHOUND ON YOUR TRAIL, FUCKSTAR! Gosh, we didn't mean to scrape your brain. How is life on the plebian flatlands? INTERNAL BLEEDING'S A BLAST! I mean, you really sound insecure. Neurasthenia is wasted on the sandbaggers. A-HOWWW-HOWWW-HOWWW-HOWWWW! If you had a problem with us, you could just stop by instead and show your face instead of writing an anonymous put-down. Wenn ich Ihre Risse sehe, glaube ich meinem Zahnlachen. BLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAH GO HOME AND LISTEN TO EDDIE VEDDER MAMA'S BOY! But I hope you feel better after your eloquent response to our harmless little joke. When the toboggan sleds, a crystal cries. AAKLJSDHVDFAEWRYGUDSACAL'; MUDDAFUCKKKKKA! Love, The Music Dept. P.S. We need steaks.
We post our response right under the Rusted Root poster, figuring we'll hear from him sooner or later.
The next day I arrive at the office early. The door opens with a little more effort than usual. I pry it open, and the scene in the music director's office shocks me. The entire room is stuffed with approximately 16 inflatable dolls, all covered in petroleum jelly and ketchup. One is pinned to the wall, crucifixion style. In the upper-right hand corner of the room I notice someone's attached a hamster wheel and lined the insides of it with human excrement. I can't get to the desk, but I can see someone's shuffled the papers. I turn around and notice for the first time a note taped to the wall:
PEARL JAM. GOOD BAND. PERIOD. Go puke on your own shoes INDIE SNOBZ.
Just because a band iz on a major label doesn't mean they SUCK.
In fact sometimes THEY DON'T SUCK.
Occasionally they aspire to being QUITE PLEASANT.
Sometimes they sound good in the SHOWER.
And situations of even LESS INTIMACY AS WELL.
I'm sick of your snobbery and your SNOBBERY.
Have you heard some of the bands from OLYMPIA?
Some of them can't even PLAY.
Some of them don't even understand ADVANCED PRODUCTION VALUES.
And very few of them use a CHOIR.
You and your stupid attitudes OFFEND ME.
I hope you rot in your own CONSIGNMENT STORE.
You will PAY.
Your FRIEND,
MC EQUAL.
Behind me, Ian appears, his lipstick smeared. He surveys the scene. "Pearson, did you spend the night here again?"
"I know who's doing this!" I grab the note and show it to him. "It's MC Equal!"
"The fuck is MC Equal?"
"That new guy who asked me if U2 was indie!"
"Really? He asked you that?"
"He did all this. Actually, I have to hand it to him, it's pretty impressive. Such attention to detail. Look at the girl doll over there in the corner, she's reading Sartre."
"This provocation calls for another response!" Ian says triumphantly.
"I agree, but I don't think another note is gonna do the trick."
"Yes, you're right... but another note won't do the trick."
"I just said that."
"Yes, but you're an intern."
"We need something more demonstrative, more like an installation - an even more diseased work of art than our jaundiced friend is apparently so capable of."
"Radio play."
"What?"
"Radio play."
"Of course!"
This isn't outside our realm of expertise. Earlier in the year, the KAOS Music Department was asked to provide the British Broadcasting Company with a taped feature describing the Olympia music scene for a radio show in the UK featuring Kennedy, the former MTV VJ (absolutely true). We did a fake advertisement for a "K-Tel" album that contained splices of songs performed by Olympia-area artists (absolutely true).
It was sent off to the BBC, who sent us back the finished product with Kennedy announcing and back-announcing the piece. Ian took this tape back to the editing studio, where he spliced in obscene messages to Kennedy, cutting back to her pre-taped responses (absolutely true). It sort of went like this:
KENNEDY: And now, here's KAOS Music Director Ian! IAN (growling voice): I want you to blow me, Kennedy!
KENNEDY: Thank you, Ian!
IAN: I want to lay you down in a field of green and lick all your crevasses!
KENNEDY: Thank you, Ian!
IAN: What did you say when I presented my fifteen-pound testicles on a plate for you to suck on, Kennedy!?
KENNEDY: And now, here's KAOS Music Director Ian!
IAN: Touch me where it throbs, you foxy Republican bitch!
KENNEDY: Thank you, Ian! This is Kennedy for the BBC!
IAN: Say my name! SAY MY NAME!
KENNEDY: And now, here's KAOS Music Director Ian! Thank you, Ian!
Ian is a brilliant, well-spoken English lit major (absolutely true).
So we craft the radio play. I write the script. A million of our friends help out. The title is "Attack Of the Indie Snobs" (absolutely true). The premise is that a trio of effete indie snobs - played by myself, Ian, and our associate Virginia, who has since disappeared - overtake the music industry with ill-informed elitism, rash decision-making and weapons made of smoke.
Jim plays a record industry type named Sherm. It has been a fancy of Jim's to play a record executive named Sherm, speaking on the phone and telling someone he'll send a demo tape over to see if it "floats your boat." Jim does this with relish. We also get local musician and friend Arrington De Dionyso, who is just starting his band Old Time Relijun, to play a chain record store lackey who is defeated by a bug spray the snobs have in our possession. Arrington's single line: "Oh, no! It's the Steve Albini Head Cleaner of Death! Ooooh... ooooh... ooooh!" (absolutely true)
This radio play is replayed on a couple of KAOS shows. It gets wild acclaim. And it changes music forever. And it changes all of our lives forever. Jim rigs an election in Idaho and serves as governor for six terms. Ian emerges from rehab a changed man and becomes known as the King of Auto Parts. Kennedy marries Henry Rollins. Sherm is promoted to head of the Cassette Development Department.
And little ole me, Paul Pearson, becomes a trusted and eloquent music expert whose opinions are invaluable to all in the private and public sector. College semesters are devoted to my work and I order several custom-made brass nameplates which I can easily afford. I become an important, highly paid, regularly employed resource, and not a single artistic movement can be said to initiate until I have given it my personal blessing. Yeah, that's it.
MC Equal buys Oahu and has friends and family who love him.
THE END.
