PART ONE: FORMING

“…and the drummer, he’s so shattered…trying to keep up time.”

- The Rolling Stones

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

I sat out there on the diving board for a long time, looking at the stars and drinking foamy Buck Urine Lite keg beer from a red plastic cup. Mosquitos drained my arms. Tiny lizards scurried around my feet. Hundreds of frogs and crickets droned the adult-contemporary hit Sometimes When We Touch. I didn’t care where the other Enchanters were hiding. I just wanted to be alone with my recurring thought: Why bother playing drums for these assholes?

Soon the screened porch, the “Florida room,” was packed with emasculated indie-rock kids in nerd glasses and facetious thrift-store tees. There were twelve of them. I was far enough in the darkness of the back patio to observe without being seen. While the magical beer cured me of my ahhhhngsty yearnings for Renee, it didn’t give me insight enough to see how these kids were on the verge of reinventing themselves and our town—however briefly—into something exciting.

There they were, just moments before The Enchanters inspired them to start their own bands. Some paced around the green and white vinyl lawn furniture. Some just sat around. Others stood staring at the wine bottles reserved for The Enchanters.

“How the fuck are you supposed to open this fuckin’ wine?” said a nice girl with a stinky clove cigarette and black eye makeup fashioned intentionally like two black eyes. Her dress was long and black, and she had short whitish yellow hair and skin like a bowl of cream with pieces of burnt pepperoni floating in it. She stood in the middle of the room holding one of The Enchanters’ wine bottles, inspecting it for any secret to its opening. How was anybody to know this Gothic Faerie Princess would be the same Melissa who taught herself guitar and formed the legendary neo-no-new-old wave group Chloroform? Sure, she’s always said The Enchanters were a huge influence on her frenetic, kinetic, spasmodic songwriting, but we were none of those adjectives, and to say we were, just because we had traces of that stuff, would be like saying your favorite cereal tastes like rodent poo since there’s probably traces of it inside every box you buy.

“Fuckin’, I think you need a corkscrew and shit,” said the unwashed fat kid with the torn, black Exploited t-shirt sitting in the corner staring at Melissa’s almost nonexistent ass. That was Red Head Ted, who became Ted Pungent, the driving force behind Verdant Iceberg. It’s boring shit if you ask me, but lots of people—twelve-year-old mall rats mainly—enjoyed their “stark Teutonic depression.” Ted always mentioned The Enchanters as a “major influence,” but that’s nonsense.

“I’ll just get a knife and force the cork down the hole,” said blond, long-legged Cathy as she rose from her slouch in a lawn chair by the back door. My only thought about her, then, as she poked the wine bottle—in her black miniskirt and fishnet stockings—was if she maybe had a thing for drummers, and, if so, was she legal? I certainly wasn’t predicting she would change her name to Mia Culpa and play the lead bass guitar for everybody’s favorite art-damaged four-guitar, three-bass, two-drumset assault noise ensemble The Picnic.

None of the bands these and the other nine went on to form after we gave them the little shove they needed were very “high concept,” especially at the beginning. Some were content just using “rock” like the verb it is, like the effusively pensive Bryan, seated across from Cathy, mumbling worries about what the night would bring. “I’m wearing my favorite pants, and I don’t wanna shit in ‘em,” he whined in his cracking, prepubescent voice. “I heard that’s what The Enchanters make you do. Shit.”

It was hard to believe that this was the same schmuck who became the guitarist and singer for The Sherilyns, whose song Sweaty Hands somehow made it onto volume #72 of Thrilled by Death, a serial compilation of hard-to-find Moron Rock. Regardless, Bryan always credited us for getting him started, but we were never the punk rock/classic rock hybrid they were. Not only that, but we definitely weren’t a “garage” band like the Smoking Corvairs, formed by Jonathan, the lanky guy in a black-and-white–striped cartoon criminal shirt, looking wide-eyed at all the girls, pacing, running his hands through his short black hair, talking to himself all like, “Nugget! Renee! She’s such a nugget, dude!” Jonathan even claimed a song he wrote called I Love Renee But She’s So Reclusive was about Renee Eisner of The Enchanters, and I believe him.

There was a boom box playing the Buzzcocks’ Singles Going Steady, and hirsute Sally danced by herself next to the keg to the left of the room, singing “reality’s a dream/a game in which I seem/to never find out just who I am….” This was the same Sally who started the hardcore militant feminist band Castration Nation. She too said we influenced her, but we weren’t political, and Renee never screamed like Sally screamed. Renee never screamed.

“That wine’s not for us anyway. It’s for The Enchanters. Leave it alone. I’m sticking with the keg,” said Tommy, whose big moussed-up hair was a desperate attempt at looking like, of all people, Morrissey.

“I’ll pump it for you,” giggled Andy. He wore black eye shadow, a black Bauhaus T-shirt and black pants with black boots. Andy and Tommy would pair up and start the gay folksinging duo Adam and Steve. In interviews around town, they always spoke of the “profound influence” of The Enchanters, but we never used acoustic guitars, we weren’t gay, and we didn’t convey an aggressive heterosexual stance either, so I don’t know what they’re talking about.

Alison, with long black hair and a red thrift-store t-shirt emblazoned with the fuzzy white-lettered slogan “I’M PRETENDING TO LIKE SOMETHING I DON’T REALLY LIKE” across the front was there, the same Alison who started the band Noon Wine. “So how did Scott get The Enchanters to play his house?” she asked, sitting on the plastic green outdoor carpeted Florida room floor and holding her boyfriend Norman’s hand.

“Donald’s his boss at Good Time America Family Restaurant World, and Donald kept bugging him and begging until Scott finally gave in,” said balding Norman, who, at 18, was already losing his thin blond hair. He started the band Rubber Gone Bouncy Bounce.

I laughed when I heard Bald Norman say that. Donald was the only person to respond to the handwritten fliers I taped all over town that read:

DRUMMER LOOKING FOR BAND

INFLUENCES: GERMS, MINUTEMEN, THE WHO, STOOGES, BUTTHOLE SURFERS (OLD SHIT), AND NOTHING ELSE.

I’M GOOD. CALL SHAQUILLE AT…

When I picked up the phone, this pushy, curt, and arrogant voice barked, “Hey. Drummer. We want you to play with us for a concert tomorrow. We like the same bands you do. Just meet us at our house to load up the shit.”

“But I don’t think I can play the songs without any practice.”

“That’s for us to decide, drummer. You drum, we’ll think. Here’s how to get to our house…”

Things moved fast with The Enchanters. One moment, you’re sitting in your living room after work laughing at a rerun of Sanford and Son, the next you’re playing songs you’ve never heard at a concert in some suburban living room for disaffected teenagers.

“It’s very important we play this show,” Donald told me on the phone. “It’s a golden opportunity we cannot pass up. Promoters are begging to give us this shot.” What a tool, I thought as I stared at the underwater lights stretching back and forth over the spleen-shaped pool’s turquoise waves, breathing in the humid air while the pool-cleaning machine floated around like a plastic octopus. I bet he’s a shitty guitar player. What does Renee see in him?

“Well I just hope they’re good. I have a calculus test on Monday I need to study for,” said Mark, with the big brown afroed hair and silver sequined shirt, who became the progenitor of the Sprawlburg Springs’ neo-glam-boogie movement. Mark even acknowledged me as the one who inspired his spaced-out rhythms, but that’s something Mickey, Donald, and Renee found laughable. My drumming was never something they admitted—at least not for a long time—as being anything but unpredictable at best, careening at worst.

I enjoyed sitting outside and watching this dumb scene unfold, and maybe I would have stayed all night if frizzy-haired Scott, the concert’s host and our self-proclaimed biggest fan, hadn’t stumbled into the Florida room in his white Minutemen t-shirt and red pants, yelling, “Hey, is the drummer still out by the diving board?”

Twelve pairs of eyes stopped what they were doing to look my way. I waved with my red plastic beer cup and yelled, “I’m over here.”

They just stared at me. Finally, hirsute Sally said, “I thought he moved to Atlanta.”

“That was their old drummer,” Scott answered, pulling up his red pants only to have them fall again. “This is the new one. He joined yesterday.” He then yelled across to me, “They’re waiting backstage for you!”

“Backstage?” I asked, stumbling toward the screen door.

“It’s my room, “ Scott said. “They wanted a backstage before the show, but since I don’t live in a house with a backstage, my room’s the best I could do.”

I laughed, and nobody else did. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, and everybody else in the room just accepted this “backstage” horseshit as a matter of course. When I walked through the clangy screen door, twelve jaws went slack, and twelve pairs of eyes stared in shock. It was a little awkward. I mean, I made my living as a Squid Cutting Technician for Cleveland Steamerz Good Time Bar and Grille World. I came from humble peasant stock. Just folks, really.

Despite my vocation, all this attention was a little flattering. My bad mood from before wore off, especially when blond Cathy looked at me, eyes sparkling, cheeks flushed, long fishnetted legs shifting and crossing toward me. “You’re the new drummer?” she asked.

“Yup,” I smiled, extending my hand. “I’m Shaquille Callahan.” Oh good: Cathy does have a thing for drummers, I thought. Renee, shmenee.

“Oh, um, Shaq?” Scott stammered like a personal assistant, left hand on my back. “The…the…other Enchanters? Um, they wanna see you man, um, backstage? In my room? They say it’s real important that you’re back there with them, man…really.”

“Nope,” I said, pumping the keg and filling my cup with more ice-brewed Buck Urine Lite. “I’ll be in your room—oh, I mean, backstage, sorry—in a minute.” I said “backstage” with all the sarcasm I could muster in my voice, all the sarcasm I thought the word deserved. “I wanna stay here and, fuckin’, meet some folks.” I turned to blond Cathy and smiled like a horny idiot…