My tastes do tend to be a bit retro, though. I’m really into the Who, the Kinks, the Merseyside/British Invasion sort of thing. And like I said, I also like a lot of seventies stuff, which I find myself listening to more and more often. 1975 was a great year for rock and roll, and don’t believe anyone who tells you different. But I can find something to appreciate about most pop music—it’s all part of rock and roll history, which I’m trying to know everything about. I have a pretty big record collection of mostly old stuff, and I’m totally proud of how schizophrenic it is. I even kind of like Wishbone Ash.
And I’m not even exaggerating all that much. But for some reason I’m not necessarily too interested in very much of what was recorded after I was born. And, as a matter of prin-ciple, I don’t dig whatever mindless, soulless crap all the normal people are into at any given time, because what would be the point of that?
My personal ultimate in art rock will probably always be, well, either the Who or the Sweet. Or Foghat. But I’m also really into Bubblegum, and that’s probably what confuses people most.
Bubblegum is this music they had in the seventies, created and marketed for little kids, and, apparently, not taken 83
very seriously by anyone involved. But it somehow ended up being brilliant by accident without anyone realizing. I love that. I have a pretty big collection of Bubblegum records.
Now, I admit, maybe I got into it at first because it was so clearly the opposite of what everyone else liked. But whatever: it’s some of the best rock and roll music there ever was.
I think normal people think it sounds corny or wimpy, not realizing that there would have been no Ramones without
“Yummy, Yummy, Yummy.” But I’m quite confident that when we’re all dead, history will clearly conclude that my retro rock revival was years ahead of everybody else’s retro rock revival.
Sometimes, when I’m trying to cheer up Little Big Tom by finding some interest we can temporarily pretend to share, I’ll ask him about the music of the sixties and seventies, which was his era. Back then, he and all his friends didn’t pay attention to most of my favorite music from the time. They thought it was childish, not serious, meaningful music like, say, Led Zeppelin. Now, Led Zeppelin is all right (good drums and guitar, anyway, though that singer should have been silenced or muzzled or something—frankly, I prefer it in Yardbird form to be honest). But Little Big Tom’s example of how serious and important and adult it all was? “Stairway to Heaven.” I kid you not. Don’t get me wrong: I like hobbits and unicorns and wizards and hemp ice cream as much as the next guy. And I suppose it’s the antimaterialist message that seemed so sophisticated and meaningful to those guys—
no one does antimaterialism better than multigazillionaire rock stars. But my view is that there’s something seriously wrong with a subculture that would prefer “Stairway to Heaven” to “Wig Wam Bam.” Come on: go listen to “Wig Wam Bam” and tell me I’m wrong.
I was thinking about all this, and kind of counting the 84
ways in which the Sweet ruled Led Zeppelin’s relatively sorry ass, when I returned home from the first post- Fiona school day. On my way in through the patio, I noticed Little Big Tom using a sledgehammer to break big pieces of concrete into little pieces that would fit in his wheelbarrow. (He was trying to turn the backyard into Spaceship Earth by reversing the paving process and planting ferns and vegetables so that one day they might be able to film a margarine commercial there.) I heard him whistling a tune I recognized from my own record collection: “My Baby Loves Lovin’ ” by White Plains, originally recorded as a demo in their previous incarnation as the arguably superior Flowerpot Men. It is the perfect pop song, more or less. I had just been playing it pretty loudly the previous day. So—here I was, influencing Little Big Tom with an unjustly rejected gem from his own era. Kinda neat.
So I went over and started singing “My Baby Loves Lovin’ ” and doing this little Greg Brady/Jackson Five dance—well, not a dance, exactly. It’s more like genuflecting and using your knees to move your whole body up and down while smiling like an idiot. There is simply no bait that Little Big Tom will leave on the hook. He broke into a big smile as well and faced me and started singing “My Baby Loves Lovin’ ” and doing the Greg Brady/Jackson Five genuflect dance, too, though I suspect he may not have been aware that it was the G.B./J.F. g. d. So there we were, rising and descending, facing each other, singing “My Baby Loves Lovin’.”
Amanda came through the back door, stared for a few seconds, and then turned on her heel and walked back in. I really couldn’t blame her.
It got old quickly. But Little Big Tom was having such a great time that I hated to pull the plug, so I continued doing it for a while, looking at him with a frozen yet fading smile that gained and lost altitude while I tried to figure out a way 85
to end the baby-loves-love-a-thon gracefully. He couldn’t take a hint, though. Finally, I just had to say:
“Hey, you know: I’ve got some things to do.”
Probably not the best way to handle it, but I was desperate. I went into the house, hearing his trademark sigh and eventually his sledgehammer-on-concrete sound.
WOM E N G ETTI NG I N TH E WAY
Maybe it was more or less predictable that the whole Fiona situation would eventually start to affect the band. It’s well known that that has been the downfall of all the great bands of the world: women getting in the way.
Sam Hellerman had a weird attitude. At first I thought he was mad at me for leaving the party without him, but it turns out he didn’t care about that at all. It was Fiona.
When I told him what had happened, at our first post-Fiona band practice—and then told him again, presumably so he could pay attention once he realized I hadn’t been making it up—he said: “Fucking bitch.”
Now, you have to understand something about Sam Hellerman. He never swears. I don’t swear much, either, out loud, but that’s mostly because I never say more than a couple of words at a time. I keep it to myself, but in my head, I’m like a late-night cable comedy special. Everyone would be shocked if they had access to a transcript from my head. I don’t know about Sam Hellerman’s head’s transcript, but he talks out loud all the time, and as he’s talking you can almost see him struggling to avoid saying swear words. Like, he’ll always say have sex instead of fuck, or boobies instead of tits.
The first works sometimes, though it can sound awkward; the second is pretty much inexcusable and reflects poorly on 86
him. Once he said crotch instead of nuts when he was describing where Matt Lynch had been trying to kick him during a recess scuffle. That alone was good for a couple more beatings. I think his parents are Seventh-Day
