positioned my mouth about an inch from the karaoke mic (so I wouldn’t get shocked too bad) and—well, I think right up to the end I had intended to say, “hi, we’re Balls Deep.” But instead, what came out of my mouth was:
“Hi, we’re the Chi-Mos.” Then I didn’t know what to say.
Sam Hellerman stared at me, but he quickly recovered.
“Yeah!” he yelled in a high-pitched Paul Stanley voice, with a surprising degree of (devil-head) bravado, under the circumstances. “All right! We’re the Chi-Mos! That’s the Reverend Chi-Mo on guitar! And I’m your Assistant Principal Chi-Mo on bass and being aware of my own mortality, and back there we have Chi-Mo Panchowski on percussion and counting to four! Well, close enough, anyway! This song’s 254
called ‘I Saw Mr. Teone Checking Out Kyrsten Blakeney’s Ass’!”
Now, what was supposed to happen next was that Todd Panchowski would count off with four stick clicks and we would launch into the song. And that would have been pretty cool. But what actually happened was that Todd Panchowski just sat there for a while. Then he took his little towel and wiped off his face. Then he stood up and adjusted his drum seat. Then he raised his sticks in the air and twirled them around. Then he bent down to pick up the stick he had dropped. Then, around four hours later, he finally did the count-in, except that he did only three not-quite-regular clicks and started a beat ahead of the rest of us. Well, he always did have a hard time remembering what comes after three. And here’s a valuable lesson I learned that I will share with anybody who may want to try to have a band one day: the fewer songs you have the drummer start, the more chance you’ll have of getting to do more than a couple of them in twenty minutes. Have them start with the guitar instead. Trust me.
I have to admit, our “music” was, in its own way, no less abominable than the white rap thing had been. Most of what we had accomplished in all those practices just evaporated under the pressure of the “gig.” The Hillmont student body were unimpressed, and not even moved enough to join in the
“you suck!” chant that a few optimistic psycho normals kept trying to start. I think the crowd had realized that the most disheartening thing they could do in this situation was to gape in silent, stunned bemusement. They weren’t wrong about that, either. I don’t know how real bands manage to have three or more people all play the same thing at the same time—it was clearly beyond our capabilities. I kept getting shocked by the mic, so around half of the lyrics were lost, 255
though without the PA I doubt anyone could tell one way or another. Meanwhile, we had these long, uncomfortable pauses between songs because of Todd Panchowski’s misguided attempts at reverse showmanship. It was a disaster.
“Yeah, I hear somebody say keep on rockin’?” said Sam Hellerman after we had finished the first tune. Now, this world is vast and complex, full of ambiguity and uncertainty.
But if there was one thing in this muddled, crazy universe that was absolutely clear and beyond debate at that particular moment, it was this: Sam Hellerman had not heard anybody say keep on rockin’.
The best thing we had going for us was the song titles, many of which got a laugh when Sam Hellerman announced them. We did “Mr. Teone Likes ’em Young” and “Are There Hippies in Heaven (and If So, Can We at Least Confiscate Their Patchouli, ’Cause Otherwise I’m Definitely Going to Hell)?” We also did “I Wanna Ramone You,” which only I knew was in honor of Deanna Schumacher, and “Glad All Over,” which Sam Hellerman introduced by saying, “This song is about the face of God.”
Fortunately, our songs were very short. But we still had to cut quite a few because of Todd Panchowski’s delays, which were driving Sam Hellerman off the deep end. He kept looking back at the drum set, begging him with his eyes to start the song already. Plus, while Sam Hellerman was trying to introduce the songs with his clever little shrieked speeches, Todd Panchowski would just hit drums randomly, or practice his paradiddles on the snare. It was distracting, and I didn’t blame Sam Hellerman for being annoyed.
Our big finale was supposed to be “The Guy I Accidentally Beat Up,” the lyrics of which were just Paul Krebs’s name repeated over and over, ending in a wall of instrumental psychedelia during which we were supposed to 256
chant “Freak out, freak out. . . . ” Sam Hellerman announced the song as best he could, trying to shout over the paradiddles, and waited for Todd Panchowski’s irregular count-in.
He looked back after a while and saw TP standing on the drum seat with his arms raised for some reason. He’d had enough. He gave Todd Panchowski the most intense, most devastating eye-ray treatment the world had yet seen. Todd Panchowski flipped Sam Hellerman off, threw his sticks at him and stormed off the stage. Oh, well, it really wasn’t working out between us anyway.
So we did “The Guy I Accidentally Beat Up” without drums, but we skipped the actual song and started from the outro because we were running out of time and the audience was leaving. Sam Hellerman started bleeding from his nose, making sure that he thoroughly soaked the rented microphone. I put my guitar against the amp and turned it up all the way to cause as much feedback as possible, and then we knocked the drums over and tore the Magnavox apart by hitting it with the drum hardware. Sam Hellerman was on the speakers, jumping up and down, blood flying, hitting the Magnavox with a cymbal stand till it stopped making noise and was in several pieces. I was kicking the drum set, which soon was little more than a pile of rubbish. We were definitely going to have to find a new drummer after this. Todd Panchowski’s main qualification had been that he’d had a drum set. And he certainly didn’t have one of those anymore.
The set, and the Festival of Lights, finally ended when
“Chet” and a few others pulled us away from the wreckage and switched off the Polytone. Sam Hellerman, who had been rolling in his own blood screaming what sounded like
“yay-uss” over and over, had to be physically restrained by no fewer than three thoroughly confused goons. The students, who had been hurrying toward the exits when the destruc-257
tion began, had all stopped dead in their tracks to stare and remained frozen for some time. They didn’t know what to say—even “you suck!” must have seemed inadequate. There was total silence, and for probably the first time in my Hillmont High School career I could hear myself think. It was nice, though the thoughts weren’t.
TOTALLY CALLAB LE
We didn’t win the battle of—I mean, the Festival of Lights. The
“yo mama” guy did. Everyone had hated the Chi-Mos. But we had made an impression, albeit a negative one, and it was the kind of thing people talked about, which is what everyone did for the rest of the day and well into the following week.
