Let Me Roll It #2 - Cheap Trick

In February of 1964, my Mom saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. As with so many other people around the world (including Davy Jones who appeared on stage just before The Fabs), her life was changed forever.

I didn't get to have the shock and awe that was Beatlemania. I wasn't even born yet. But I got the next best thing stuck in Atlanta traffic while on summer vacation in 1977; Cheap motherfuckin' Trick!

A FM station decided on the hottest of days, in the most polluted city I've ever been in, to play In Color in it's 32 minute entirety. From the opening notes of "Hello There," through the head bopping catchy ride that is "I Want You to Want Me," and well into the brilliance and sheer perfection of "Southern Girls," I just kept nudging myself closer to the dash of the Volare trying to get all the sound in my ear hole that I could. I was simultaneously bummed and over the damn moon when the album ended but to my shock the DJ put Cheap Trick on! I had never heard any of this! None. "Elo Kiddies"?! "He's a Whore"?! And to think that a DJ would take it upon his all powerful and amphetamine fueled head to spin whatever in the hell he wanted... that's just insane.

So that was it. I was already the head of the KISS Army in my junior high but I was mixing my enthusiasm for Ace Frehley (which my mother would soon destroy) with my increasingly more grown up/adolescent mania for Zander and Nielsen.

In the summer of 1978, free from the emotional dishwater of Oklahoma and relaxed in the record store nirvana of Missouri, I was free to do whatever my Rock n' Roll heart desired. That was to see Cheap Trick. And I did many, many times over. Since they were a regional act they played support to any fucking band that came through town. It was like being in Liverpool after all only with a lot of beards and hot pants. I wore my black Cheap Trick shirt with its repeated and brilliant logo everywhere. I wore my 1978 tour baseball sleeve T to every school function, teen blowout, and to work at the record shop. Heaven Tonight was a masterpiece. It was on that tour that my friend and mentor, Cathy Stevens (who turned me on to Tom Petty and Reggae over one stony week at the store in the fall of 1978), not only took me to a show with a front row seat but managed to get me back stage to meet the band. Her designs were to make-out with Robin Zander but with me in tow she had to do something other than say that I was in fact NOT her kid. She stuck me in front of Rick Nielsen and went to do her business. Rick talked to me about playing the guitar and he gave me a handful of picks with his comic face stamped on each one. He gave me something like 50 of them, I ended up taking the picks to school and scored a date with a cheerleader just because of one Rick's little presents. You were awesome until I had chicken pox, Connie Grogan.

1979 saw the release of Dream Police, another tour, three more shows for me to see, and my favorite Cheap Trick track, "Way of the World." That school year ended with the annual talent show. At one end of the Parkview High School Gym, some upper-class longhairs took ten painful minutes to grind out "Freebird." It was laced with bandannas and a huge confederate flag motif. I was reminded of the 1977 talent show in Oklahoma when some cool 8th graders smoked "More Than a Feeling" and how that was a way better song than this piece of shit. When they were done the lights turned on over the stage that I was in front of and Greg Frazier's band kicked into "Surrender." I was with my people. My crowd. My friends. United in a high school gym singing how our mamas were alright and our daddies were alright but they just seemed a little weird.

We're all alright! We're all alright!

ap - 2009

Let Me Roll It #1 - Queen

Let Me Roll It is a new item within the friendly confines of The Queen City Roller. Let Me Roll It is a series of essays, a memoir if you will, of Rock and Roll experiences, brushes with greatness, and defining moments that have shaped a little life.

I spent a lot of time grounded in 1975. Banished to my upstairs room. Left alone to beat myself at Monopoly, Sorry, to dress up like the Green Goblin (I mean I made the whole outfit), or to just listen constantly to the radio. I had one of those all in one stereo set-ups. Turntable folds down, speakers fold out, big tuning knobs to the right. On a good cloudy night, I could pick up Chicago stations. Chicago seemed like a continent away. Really, it was just 10 hours but I was ten so what did I know? I was grounded for a lot of infractions. Flashing the neighborhood girls, peeing on their playhouse, tearing up the neighbor's tree, crapping in their yard, jumping off the television set, lying, being lazy, and really just having a good time being a kid. What else was I going to do?

The radio was always on. Tuned to local FM stations in the day, tuned to them secretly at night while I lie in bed with ginormous, Keith Moon headphones on my head. In 1975, all I really wanted to hear was Queen. I had LP copies of Queen II and Sheer Heart Attack. I played the crap out of them. I pranced around my room dressed in my self fashioned harlequin leotard to "Killer Queen" all the damn time. I had no idea what the hell Moet Chandon was but I really didn't give a shit. I should have taken the act on the road to fifth grade show and tell. By late 1975, the FM dial began playing a new Queen song, "Bohemian Rhapsody." It was the most brilliant thing I had ever heard. Theatrical, expressive, odd, freaky, gigantic.

I was probably the only kid my age who had a subscription to Rolling Stone and I plowed through every issue. I hung pictures and covers on my wall, like any dedicated follower of fandom. I knew everything there was to know about Brian May, Roger Taylor, John Deacon, and Freddie Mercury. My idol. Freddie. I had a pool cue that screwed together and I used the top half as my half-mic stand. Just like Freddie. I wore mom's ballet leotards and fashioned different outfits, just like Freddie. My dad, who owned a record store a few hours away, hadn't sent me my requested copy of Night At The Opera yet so all I did was sit, wait, and flip the fuck out when my song came on. One particular grounded day, it came in spades.

Up in my room I waited. The DJ would spin all the FM hits. I sat on the end of the bed, at my desk, at the window, on the bed, in full Freddie regalia, waiting for my song. It came on, I performed it like a god. Later, it came on again. I freaked out again. A third time later, exhausted from a long, full day of rocking out, I sat on my floor in front of the speakers, my head as far into them as I could go and listened... "Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?" I rocked back and forth to the light introduction, paying close attention to the tale of a guilty man. "Mama, life had just begun, but now I've gone and thrown it alllllll awayyyy."

During the big, monstrous, operatic bit I would do as many of the harmonies as I could. I acted out roles. Accuser, bailiff, judge, murderer, Galileo, Figaro. Thunderbolts and lighting were very, very, frightening to me. But I knew what was coming up. I knew that snare crack and the guitar solo were on the horizon. I could feel the surge coming from inside the carpet, into my feet, up to my ass and up my back. I stood up. I grimaced, made a proud peacock pose, and ran to my desk. I opened the drawer, I pulled out my matches, and just as Brian May was well into his solo, I set my bedroom on fire.

Any way the wind blows.

Gong.

ap - 2009