Unca Paul's Story Time
Wordy, White, and Pretentious
April 2nd, 2007 by paul
InSoc.org Archive Portal
With the help of two loans, one from Kristie's dad, and one from the father of a friend of Pam's (what was he thinking?!), we were able to scrape together enough money to record and press our first record, which we titled, aptly enough, "The Information Society." The recording cost around $600.00, and the manufacturing of 1000 copies cost around $1000.00 more. It was the first time we'd ever been in a recording studio, and we felt very important and groovy.
Since we didn't have enough material to fill an album, we decided upon our five best songs, which were called, respectively: Bacchanale, Fall in Line, Growing Up with Shiva, Get Up Away From That Thing, and Can You Live (as Fast as Me?). We were still very pretentious. Bacchanale was an instrumental which I'd written in my "electronic-music-as-Dionysiac-tribal-experience" phase. This was a full ten years before the rave kids, with the assistance of Ecstasy, began climbing on that band wagon, I might add. I can remember fantasizing about huge concerts in which the first few drumbeats of Bacchanale were enough to send the vast crowd into an ecstatic sufi-like whirling trance.
Fall in Line was a rudimentary pop song with lyrics that addressed our Bohemian disapproval of television and tie-in marketing. Sample lyrics: "I read the book / I saw the film / I heard the song / Now I live the life." Since neither Kurt nor I could really complete an entire song at this point, I turned the bridges over to him, and this is what he came up with: "You come from across the Sea / And you shudder when you listen to me." For some reason, it never occurred to us that these lyrics were perhaps more true than we knew.
Growing Up with Shiva was our anti-nuke song, equating The Bomb with the Hindu god of destruction. It also included the one and only time I actually attempted to rap. Keep in mind, this was 1983, when even early rap stars like Grandmaster Flash and Kurtis Blow were just getting started. However, that doesn't change the fact that my rapping was absolutely awful–wordy, white, and pretentious. Growing Up with Shiva was our first little hit, though, and as we sat in a pizza joint in downtown Minneapolis we had the first experience of hearing our music on the radio when KFAI, the low-power public radio station played it on a Friday night.
Get Up Away From That Thing was another anti-television diatribe, based loosely on James Brown's Get Up Offa That Thing. It's funny–for a group of kids who frequently stayed up until 3:00 AM to catch reruns of Kung Fu, we certainly affected a distaste for pop culture. But the simultaneous immersion in, and disgust with, popular culture was a theme that would be played out pretty much non-stop throughout our short career. Towards the end, though, all the affectations were gone, and we really did despise the monster we'd helped create and were wallowing in. In the end section of the song, where JB did his standard trick of listing all his best cities and saying, "I'm coming!", we used the occasion to list all the shopping malls in Minneapolis. We also made some snide comments about "partying" and "drinking beer," which helped to further endear us to the local music scene.
Can You Live (As Fast As Me) was yet another modern-life-in-the-information-age-type screed. Sample lyrics: "I believe in the power of rock and roll / And I believe that Exxon will save my soul." That's a pretty good line, actually.
On the back of the record I included a small essay that perfectly encapsulates the hilariously sincere, adolescent nature of the undertaking. Here it is in full:
"In an age of video wallpaper and aural anesthesia, music has become a prostitute. No longer is it a gift from the gods; it has become a pacifier, a tranquilizer, and a tool. A tool to protect us from loneliness, to entice us to buy, and to keep us from seeing how bad things have really become. At one time, music was a vital experience. It was physical, emotional, almost religious. But today music is just one more device used by the Sun King called civilization to control itself."
Oh my. Can you tell I was a Humanities major? What I forgot to add was, "And so we're gonna register our extreme anti-consumerist tendencies by trying really hard to make lots of money in the music business." At least I had the decency to give a "Special Thanks" to my bank-robbing buddy Todd on the back cover. Of course the mysterious Erich Zahn is listed as Executive Producer.
One local paper reviewed the disc with two words: "Wordy much?"
Out of the thousand copies that we pressed, we sold maybe a hundred. We sent off consignments to big name indie distributors like Important and Dutch East Indies, and never heard from them again. One local distributor, when we were coming to retrieve our unsold stock, actually said: "Yeah, I'd appreciate it if you would get ââ?¬Ë?em the hell outta here."
For some reason, it never occurred to us to use the records as demos. In fact, the whole idea of getting "signed" to a record label seemed never to have appeared in our brains at all at this point. We kept playing shows every month or two, somehow expecting to be "discovered," like in the old movies.
After our first show 1982, we continued playing live dates every month or so and building a largish following, much to the consternation of the local guitar bands. We played anyplace we could, including the renowned Walker Art Center, local colleges, fashion shows, the gay pride block party, and the infamous stomping ground for hard-core punk bands, Goofy's Upper Deck, where we once played to an audience of eight. We began to get a reputation as a band that would play almost anywhere and do almost anything to get an audience worked up.
We also started manufacturing and covering the city with a vast series of self-promoting posters, with pseudo-advertising slogans like: "Insoc makes life better�For You!" and "Alive with Pleasure: Insoc!" and "Insoc & You: a Great Combination!"
After our second show at First Avenue, the manager of the club, a legendary figure in the local music scene, and a notorious cokehead and drunk, called us upstairs to his office for a meeting. He proceeded to ramble on at length about our potential, and how to "work" the music business, in a completely incoherent way. "I'm a man who likes confrontation," he said, "whether it's in the back room at Moby's or here in my office." Moby Dick's was a serious drinker's bar wedged between two strip joints on Hennepin Avenue that none of us ever would have gone near for fear of being killed. We really had no clue what he was trying to say. It seemed that he was excited by our new sound, and by the fact that we were drawing a new crowd into the club. I only realized this in retrospect though, because at the time none of us had any idea what he was talking about. It felt good to be noticed, though.
The remainder of the already-famous Minneapolis music scene was also noticing us, though in a not-so-charitable light. Already known as clumsy geeks and pretentious nerds, we were also being revealed as tee totaling know-it-alls, who seemed to despise almost everything about the then-ascendant beer-swilling, guitar-slinging punk scene, which was true.
To them, we were Art Twats. We never hung around before or after our shows to drink and socialize with the other bands; we were usually too worried about transporting and setting up our giant rickety piles of synthesizers and drum machines. We also didn't wear the requisite jeans-and-flannel uniform that was already de rigeur among bands; instead, we wore custom-made two-tone fluorescent-colored jumpsuits! Just the thing that punk bands with names like Ground Zero and Final Conflict and the Warheads were rebelling against.
We often found ourselves in radio interviews and local articles talking about how much better synthesizers were than guitars. And worst of all, as far as the other local bands were concerned, was the fact that we played disco. In the early ‘80's, the whole disco-sucks thing was still a big issue, and any band that used drum machines and synthesizers was immediately considered the Enemy. It didn't help matters when we started performing huge multi-part opuses with titles like Disco's Not Dead (It's Only Sleeping), and when Kurt started spicing his monologues with rhetorical questions like: "Who dares to say that Insoc doesn't rawk?"
We did have a few champions in the local scene, however. Tim Holmes, the Director of Performing Arts at the Walker Art Center was one of early supporters, and arranged several concerts under the highly credible auspices of the Walker. He was obviously a man with very refined tastes, because he later went on to write a groundbreaking biography of John Cougar Mellencamp.
Roy Freedom, the head DJ at First Avenue was also a big fan of ours, and helped see to it that we got some choice slots on the stages at the club. He also attempted to keep me informed of new trends in the dance music scene. Once he came back from a trip to New York, and excitedly told me about "a new kind of rap music."
"They call it Hip Hop," he said. "It's much faster than old rap music, and it uses a lot of live instrumentation." I'm not sure about the live instrumentation part, but it's true that new producers were starting to appear like Afrika Bambaata and Arthur Baker, who made rap music fast enough to be played in the white dance clubs. Even in clubs in Minneapolis. In my opinion, this was an important early step in the mainstreaming of rap music which took place long before groups like Run DMC and the Beastie Boys had their big crossover hits. Roy Freedom later quit the music business to become a mailman.
In the meantime I had taken a job at First Avenue working as a stagehand and VJ (video jockey). I often arrived at the club at 11:00 AM, and didn't leave until 2:00 or 2:30 AM the next day, but since the headline acts rarely arrived before 5:00, I spent many hours sitting around the club fantasizing about someday playing on the big stage. And since as the club manager helpfully pointed out, "we pay for hours worked not hours in attendance," most of these hours were unremunerated, except in the currency of dreams. And yes it was the same guy who had been so effusively, if incoherently, praising us a few months before.
Since I didn't have a car at this point, I would usually walk across the Mississippi River bridge after work and crash at the apartment Kurt shared with his dad. I often found myself sleeping in the same bed with Kurt.
First Avenue was somewhat unique (at that time) in incorporating live video of concerts which they would project on the large screens throughout the club. (Just the thing us TV generation kids reveled in: pay big bucks to go see a live show, then watch it on TV!) During concert nights I usually got to be the guy who sat on top of the speaker stacks with the video camera, which allowed me to study all the rock stars of the era in close-up. On one occasion I was chewed out by Grant Hart of Husker Du for not using the video system during their show (his bandmate Bob Mould had told us not to). And this was the same guy who had gotten us our first show at First Avenue a couple of years earlier. He didn't realize that I was so low on the totem pole that no amount of browbeating would have changed anything.
The video thing was cool, and sometimes I got lucky enough to hang out in the DJ booth and run the lights, but mostly I just carried road cases.
My budding career as a professional case-carrier was, alas, cut short when I injured my back helping lug the Ramones' archaic and massive sound system into the club. The one good thing to come out of working at the club was the exposure to all the new records that the DJ's played, and I often found myself worming my way into the DJ booth, even on my off-nights, to catch the names of the records as they spun on the turntables. I abandoned and restarted my college education several times during this period, each time vowing this would be the final decision.
We also acquired a fifth member, James Cassidy, who started out as our volunteer lighting man, graduated to playing banjo solos during our infamous mangling of James Brown's "Get Up Offa That Thing," and eventually was invited to join the band as a full member, mostly because he was so eager and fun to be around. He also usually took my side in arguments with Kurt, which was reason enough in itself as far as I was concerned. We announced his joining the band with a full-scale press release, billing him as "the well-known conceptual artist and rabble-rouser James Richter," which brought our histrionic pretentiousness to such a delightfully crass level that even some of the local music papers started to write good things about us.
During this period we rehearsed in a rented room on the second floor of an antique hall, a sort of permanent flea-market. The second floor also contained, incongruously enough, a large auditorium, and as we rehearsed in our little room, we could hear echoing from the auditorium across the hall the alarming shrieks and sobs of the all-woman primal scream therapy class that invariably seemed to be scheduled at the same time as our rehearsals.
It is midnight Tuesday night, the summer of 1990. My best buddy and bandmate Jim Cassidy and I are ensconced at our usual center-of-the-room table at the Temple Bar, the unmarked Soho gathering place of the downtown upper crust cognoscenti of this particular period of time. With us is Eddie the Weasel, functional alcoholic, East Village art scene knockaround guy, and the drummer on our most recent tour. Also at the table are two girls whose names I do not recall.
"I really feel like wailing tonight. This would be an excellent night to just really get out there and—I mean, fuck! There's three great reasons we should really have a good time tonight. Number one, we are fucking gods. Secondly, we own this place," says Eddie the Weasel. He gestures around him at the gorgeous hardwood bars, the narrow-focus spotlights illuminating every table, the thick velvet drapes covering the windows, the unbelievably dense crowd of models, Wall Street players, and beautiful people surrounding us. "And secondly, er…I mean, we should really get out and do some wailing tonight." By this he means he really wants to continue drinking and socializing.
It's not as if we hadn't done some wailing already. We had originally assembled in the dark, luxurious confines of the Temple Bar in the early evening to celebrate the release of our second album, secure in the knowledge that we had at least one surefire single to work in the coming months. Our first record had gone gold almost overnight a year and a half before, and our position in the pop firmament seemed assured.
Our manager had just departed with his entire entourage (brothers and sister, girlfriend/assistant and assorted hangers-on), after leading us in a two or three hour-long martini and champagne drinking binge that culminated in the purchase of a three-hundred dollar magnum of Veuve Clicquot, which had been spilled across the table before anyone had a chance to pour from it.
At a certain point earlier in the evening, one of our managers' friends had looked around the table and said: "I just realized that we live in one of the most expensive cities in the world, and no one I know has a real job."
"What happened to the Beak, anyway?" asks the weasel. By this he means that he is already too drunk to notice that Cassidy has left the table to go to the restroom.
"He's in the bathroom," I say. "Let's just stay here for awhile. I just ordered a MacAllen Eighteen Year Old, and I think I'm starting to hear the bagpipes." By this I mean that I am entering what Jim Cassidy calls "the lovely mood," i.e. the early, contented, all-is-right-with-the-world stage of drunkenness.
"Let's get some cognac," sassy Unremembered Girl Number One, as Cassidy returns to the table.
Soon we are all sipping from huge snifters of Hennessey, and Cassidy and I are working on a new trick I had recently seen in a movie. I would take a puff of my Macanudo (you could still smoke in bars in those days, even cigars, if you were obnoxious enough), blow the smoke into the snifter, and cover the top with my hand, trapping the smoke inside, allowing it to become infused with the scent of the cognac. Then I would stick my nose into the snifter, inhale the smoke, and exhale it once again through my mouth. We're talking high class all the way, here. And did I mention that all three of the men are wearing sunglasses?
Soon the cognac has given way to Drambuie, then Chartreuse, then more martinis. The din is deafening; everyone in the tiny, cramped room is shouting to be heard above the general racket of fabulousness.
"Those people at the next table," says Unremembered Girl Number Two slurringly, "are bitching about your cigars, you guys."
"Fuck them," I say. "Fuck everybody! We own them!" By this I mean that we were young, successful, relatively rich, and we didn't have to pay much attention to anybody.
"You are a God!" say Eddie the Weasel, looking at me with admiration.
Unremembered Girl Number One suddenly gets up from the table. "I think I'm gonna be sick," she announces. She hurries to the women's restroom. Finding it locked, she detours into the men's to throw up.
"Shot, shot, shot!" shouts Cassidy, slapping his hand on the table three times for emphasis. By this he means, "I'm really fucking drunk, and even though I don't want any more, I'm going to force everyone else to drink more, because I know I can, and I know they will."
Before the shots can be ordered, Cassidy too has run to the bathroom, and finding the men's already occupied by the puking Unremembered Girl Number One, repairs to the women's to do the same thing.
At this point the waitress arrives at our table to take our order. I turn to face her as she perkily asks, "What can I get you?" I then see her face cloud over as her gaze drifts from my face to the table. I follow the direction of her eyes, and see that our table is covered in vomit.
"What the Hell?" I ask myself dully. "Who threw up on our table?" I look around. Cassidy is gone. Unremembered Girls Numbers One and Two are both gone, and Eddie the Weasel, a much more experienced drunk than I, is sitting back in his chair in his bright blue sport coat over his white turtleneck and trademark Czechoslovakia medallion looking amusedly back at me.
Only after several more seconds of slo-mo cogitation do I realize it was actually I who had barfed all over the table, unnoticed by myself, and by the dozens of beautiful people who crowded around us on all sides! The toxic melange of a multiplicity of fine liqueurs and strong cigars had finally gotten the best of my system.
"The young lady had a little problem," says the Weasel, motioning vaguely in the direction of the restrooms where the rest of our party seemed to be encamped.
"I see," says the waitress understandingly, as she begins to wipe up the vomit with her bar towel. I am still sitting dumbly, trying to come to grips with my own degeneracy.
"You are a God!" repeats the Weasel after she leaves. "Buddy, you just puked all over our table. You really have taken glamour to a whole new level."
Outside, a few minutes later, Cassidy and the Weasel decide with Unremembered Girls Numbers One and Two to take a cab to Ludlow Street to continue wailing, while I opt for home and bed.
How does one get to such an exalted level of fabulousness, you may ask? Well, I wasn't always one of the beautiful people. It took years of hard work, brains, talent, and a little luck. Not everyone is lucky enough to puke up a couple hundred dollars worth of fine liquor at one of New York's most exclusive nightspots. I struggled for years to reach that pinnacle, and it goes a little something like this…
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