OK…
so you haven’t heard from me in awhile…
Some
people I know would consider that a blessing.
Still,
I haven’t come forth with any road tidbits for quite a long stretch, and there’s
a reason or two for that… one of which is that I’m lazy - and to be honest,
that‘s the main reason - but also, I don’t feel the need to sit here on the
computer babbling about my day anymore if there’s nothing truly out of the
ordinary to report… such bland public expositions of Joe Next-Door’s “Dear Diary”-like day can be found by the
hundreds-of-thousands on the Internet now… it’s called a “Blog”, apparently,
and writing one is all the rage… it’s
cool to tell strangers about how you hate the subway or you “did sushi” for the
first time or you slaughtered a small animal in the name of the Faceless Ones
may they rise again, oh great masters of the Nether Realms which hide, leering
in the shadows with cataract-covered eyes, howling ravenously for the souls of
men…
…
MMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm-Hm… yeeeeeeeee-aaaaahhh…
Like
we haven’t all “been there/ done that” before, right?
Borrrrr-ing.
And
yet writing about your daily life and sharing it with strangers via the
Internet is hip to do now I guess, even if it concerns things like, uh, sushi being “done” …
…
and I just can’t hang with hipsters. Watch me dance sometime.
No…
Seriously, my actual problem is with the
term “Blog” (Side Note: Would that then be called a “blog-lem” ?), and so I
have refrained from writing for the electronic medium lately… someone’s got to
take a stand against this ill-named license for arm-chair authors and semi-pro
pen jockeys to bore the yank out of their unsuspecting readers, and I feel that
I’m just the writer to do it… by, uh…
not writing…
…
and I’m lazy, I said that already, right?
Oh,
plus my Windows laptop which I have been writing on for the last year or so
crashed hard and took everything with it… which is a completely different
story, and yes I’m ashamed I didn’t back any of my work up on CD, and yes I
lost a lot of time and effort due to expert idiotry…
(NOTE
TO THE ED-ITOR: Don’t bother looking it up, Eddie… I’ll tell you for free that
“idiotry” is not a word, but it should be, so I made it up.
Please leave it as-is though, because no one will ever call me on it. Oh, and
please remember to remove this note before putting it up on the site OK?
Thanks! ~CB~)
(NOTE
FROM THE ED-ITOR: Yeah, right! But I will say that RoadRash was started in 1998 and represents the first real "blog" that I can recall (i.e. a widely read internet posting delving into the personal details of someone's boring life, in this case, our illustrious soundman extraordinaire. -ED)
…
I’m just not very technically minded, you see… I tend to get confused easily
and/or entirely forget to do things these days… like turning vocal mic channels
on before the singing starts, say… and I place that character flaw squarely on
the shoulders of my Dead show days… but how’s about we just focus on the refusal to be a part of a trend called
“Blogging” instead of the laziness… I’d so rather be viewed as a thinker and
iconoclast than a lazy, forgetful stooge…
…
anyway… for cryin’ out loud… heh heh…
…
“Blogging”…
…
it sounds like British slang for masturbation, doesn’t it? Like something from Monty Python? “I caught
‘im in the ‘loo, I did, guv’ner… bloggin’ ‘imself like there was no tomorrow,
‘ee was…”
Dammit,
sorry… I’m getting distracted, and I swore to myself that I would try not to
ramble… my point is, I’m back here on the website because I actually have
something to tell you about. When I sit down to write for these pages, I write
because I have something informative… or humorous… to relate. Reading about me
almost swallowing my toothbrush because the bus hit an off-ramp too fast might
be a little funny, but honestly I respect you as a reader more than that… I
don’t want to waste your time with such mundane crap, y’know? You don’t need to
turn here to read about the average… nowadays you can do that ANYWHERE on the
‘Net. I want you to come here for something of a unique nature… so now,
finally… I’ve got something truly special to tell you about:
Playing
with Rob Barraco.
As
just about everyone in the DSO fan base knows by now, we lost our brother Scott
Larned recently to a heart attack. Some day, I’ll tell you all a few stories
about him that I’ve been saving… but for right now it’s far too painful to
think or talk about him, and I wouldn’t even say this much about his death
except that I’m here to talk about his fill-in Rob and of course it needs that
set-up… the first time I heard Rob
Barraco play, I -
…
oh…
…
speaking of hearing… I don’t mean to digress but that reminds me… for the last
couple of months, occasionally, there would be mornings when I woke up and I
couldn’t hear out of the right side of my head, which, as you can imagine, is
not good for a sound engineer… but usually after I had taken a shower it would
open up and I could hear pretty well again, and being the admittedly lazy guy
that I am I never really thought too much about it… after all, that’s what you
do when you’re terrified of doctors and the whole health thing; You avoid it
and therefore it’s not important, keep it out of sight…out of sight is, after
all, out of mind… and folks if there’s anything you should have figured out
about me by now, it’s that most of the time I manage quite well at the “out of
mind” thing… I live there. The diploma’s on the wall. I’m the bloody president
of the club. I’ve got my membership card and DECODER RING…
*cough*
Sorry.
It had been awhile since I had had my ears
professionally cleaned - yes, I’m not making that up, you can get it done…
there’s all manner of crazy crap out there - but it’s not like you can
specialize in just ear cleaning… at least, I can‘t see making a living at it…
you’ve usually got to have some other medical credentials I believe, or at the
very least a second job… it’s just not that popular yet, unlike “Blogging” …
but perhaps things will pick up for the service now that I’m writing about it…
… I
was meaning to get around to it, honestly… but I just never got on the phone to
schedule an appointment… you can read all about it in the book I’m writing
about procrastination…
…
oh wait, that was lost in the Great Windows crash of ‘05... I’ll have to start
that project again… someday…
…
but anyway, we get out on the road, and around the first of June I noticed that
my plugged hearing problem had become a daily thing instead of every once in
awhile, and also that when I did manage to get it to open up, it was never
quite fully restored which was starting to bug me… there was no pain from the
increasingly frequent blockages, but my hearing is sensitive and I am aware of
every subtle difference in my left or right ear; It’s that ability to zero in
on said differences and change them with my magical electronic gizmos that
translates into listening pleasure for you… and if my ears are even the
slightest bit out of whack, I’m useless for doin’ what I do. I can mix with a
fever, broken bones, I can mix while having to throw up in a bucket (sorry mom,
I know you hate it when I talk about such things in my writing… it has
happened though), but give me your common everyday house-variety rhino
virus-driven head cold and it takes me right out of the game. If I can’t hear
correctly, I can’t work.
So
I’m kinda concerned.
But
we do the show at Lupo’s, and just before the show, my ear pops and HEY! I get
the mix off just fine… the next morning, it’s even worse… I go all day trying
to open my ear, not really telling anyone that I’ve got this problem, and again
in the late afternoon it opens up… but, so… now I’m thinking… y’know?
It’s on my mind that if this thing was a problem for the last two mornings, it
takes longer and longer to open and doesn’t sound very good anyway…
…
well-sir, I’d best maybe think about making a plan to get around to a doctor
and eventually get it looked at… sometime… soon, really… I promise…
By
the morning of the 3rd of June, I was stone deaf on the right side
of my head. No sound whatsoever. After the gig last night, the bus stopped at
an all-night super mart (they might get a buck or two my money from time to
time, but I refuse to print the name here) for various sundries like paper towels,
garbage bags, and water (all of which twelve people can go through quite a lot
of), so I skulked off to the pharmacy section and got myself one of those ear
cleaning kits… not that I’m AVOIDING the doctor, mind you… nooooooooo… but I
thought it was worth a try first. After
I took my morning shower, I read the directions (several drops in the ear, hold
head sideways for an eternity, flush it out with the little blue bulb-syringe
provided… easy enough) and used the stuff. It didn’t help… in fact, it pretty
much made it worse.
SCENE:
EXTERIOR - Load-in at the Count Bassie Theater, Redbank NJ. 1pm - Weather:
Sunny
Conversation
between DSO crew members R. Williams - Road Manager / C.
Blietz - Sound Engineer
-
Blietz approaches Williams with a worried expression. -
“Robbie?”
“Yeah-bud.”
“I
need to see a doctor or something.”
“Dude.”
“No,
not the Dude, me.”
“But…
no… ok… dude. What’s wrong?”
“I
can’t hear out of the right side of my head.”
“That’s
a problem.”
“Huh?”
“A
PROBLEM.”
“Tell
me about it.”
“OK…
gimme a minute to get settled here and I’ll see what our options are.”
“What?”
“I
said GIVE ME A MINUTE.”
“Oh…
alright.”
After
consulting with the theater staff, Robbie found me a clinic that was “really
close” and they took walk-ins, all I had to do was get a ride over there… one
of the theater people would even draw me a map, he said…
Perfect.
So
we got our gear loaded in, and the band had decided to do an original set list
for the evening so of course they set up every little bell, whistle, and gadget
they own… but while the instruments and monitor gear were being set up, Ron
Herd (aka ‘Herdy Gerdy’) a good friend of the band’s, offered to be my ride…
after all, nothing was going to get done for sound check if I couldn’t hear
correctly. I got my wallet off the bus and went back into the theater to
collect the map, which ended up being a bunch of lines with not much in the way
of labeling, and absolutely no orientation whatsoever…
…
so in other words, not much of a map…
“This
is us here (points to a spot on one of the lines) and the clinic is up over
here… you need to take this road here until you see the Dunkin Donuts and then
there will be this huge clown statue… right after the clown you’re going to
have to circle up and around to the left, don’t cross the bridge or pass the
lamp post though because then you’ve gone to far… got it?”
No.
No I didn’t.
But
being a man, I figured if we just started driving all would become clear. Stop
laughing, the funny stuff is yet to come. After all, how many huge clowns could
there be in the Redbank NJ area?
I
got into Ron’s truck, and we looked at the paper with all of the lines on it
(I’m tempted to invoke the ‘circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of
each one’ from Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant”… but I won’t) and Ron being
equally man-ish, started driving… Ron is a great guy, and one of those fans who
has been around so often and is such a quality individual that he’s just sort
of been adopted by the band as family…
So
we’re driving, right? And after about five minutes we ate our pride and called
back to the theater to see if we were following the “map” properly.
I
know I don’t have to tell you this but again, I’m not proud, so I will; We were
headed in the ass-end opposite direction from where we needed to be…
Of
course.
“Have
you passed the huge clown yet?”
“No.”
“How
‘bout the Dunkin Donuts?”
“Nope.”
“Then
you’re going the wrong way.”
“Noooooo
Sh-”
“Turn
around and head the other direction… it’s real easy.”
I
hung up my cell phone and looked at Herdy.
“Turn
around.”
“A-a-alllirighty.”
We
drove for another five minutes in the opposite direction, but we still managed
to avoid the given landmarks. The map we have has no street names listed, but coincidentally,
Redbank has no street SIGNS… at least none which Herdy or I could see… so
beginning to fume a bit, thinking about all of the instruments and stuff I had
waiting for me not to mention a full mix position to wire, etc. etc., I reached
again for my cell phone…
“Still
no Dunkin Donuts, man?”
My
eyes rolled up and my teeth clenched.
“No…
still no Dunkin Donuts, and you’re talking to the only huge clown in sight.”
“”Pardon?”
“Nothing…
forget it.”
“You
should have seen a clow-”
I
hung up my phone and turned to Herdy again.
“Turn
around.”
“Are
we still going the wrong way?”
“I
don’t know… but I need to get back to the theater and get to work…”
“How
are you going to mix with half your hearing?”
I
turned and looked out the window.
“I
guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
I
snuck a glance at Herdy, and he was looking at me and shrugging as if to say
“you’re the boss”… I’m sure though, that he was thinking the same thing I was -
“This oughta be good”.
That
was one of the more foolish moments of bravado I’ve had in a long time… I think
the last doozey I can remember is not studying for my Constitution test in high
school… ask my mom about that one next time you spot her at a show… but
to be truthful I was frustrated with the map and my own incompetence… and
seriously, the show isn’t going to wait for me to get my ears straight, the
clock is ALWAYS ticking… at the appointed time, those doors are going to open
and people are gonna come flooding in wanting to rock out…
…
and it’s my job to make sure that happens, whether I can hear correctly or not.
I
walked through the back door of the theater like a man on a mission… boots
covering ground fast, clomping along, “Get-Outa-My-Way” stenciled across my
face in the dark, nasty script of a scowl…
“How’s
the ear?” Robbie asked me as I blasted past him.
“Grrrrrrr…”
was all I could manage. I got to the house door on the side of the stage,
whipped it open, stepped through-
***BANG!!!***
Pretty
stars began to dance in front of my eyes as the blinding lightning bolt faded
into my frontal lobe and became a dull spasm of white-hot pain about the size
of a golf ball, somewhere just in back of my ears and about an inch into the
center of my skull… and I could swear I heard someone playing that annoying
album with the little girl in the bee costume on the cover somewhere… there was
a low ceiling on the other side of the door, and no sign on or near the door
giving warning of any kind, and I had walked full-speed ahead into it (Bryan
our 7ft+ tall lighting designer did the same thing and similarly gave himself a
concussion, I kid you not!)
I
felt my brain slosh around and settle back into position, and then the bubbling
cauldron of my agitation boiled over… it spilled forth in a torrent of foul
language and condemnation of everything and everyone from present day on back
to the settling of Redbank NJ., inclusive…
…
as I approached the mix position rubbing my forehead and cursing a blue streak,
the house sound techs began to shrink into the darkest corners of the theater
they could find, anxious to avoid my wrath…
“F-
this F-ing F-stick two-bit po-dunk no-sign-posting- F-ing eF eF eF (and so on,
and so on)…”
…
and just to drop a cherry on my Sunday, as I blustered into the mix position I
managed to trip over my laptop bag… which is black… in the shadow of the house
racks… I had stashed it there because I figured I would remember, and of
course, I’m USUALLY more careful around the mix position…
I’m…
uh…
Folks,
I’m an idiot.
Now,
if I had been one of the local techs, and I had been in the flight path of some
freak who was snarling like a sailor and questioning my community’s possible
recent ancestral decent from the chimpanzee, and that freak suddenly took a
major stumble and became more infuriated…
…
well…
…
I’d just have to bust a gut laughin’.
Yep,
I surely would.
And I sincerely hope, in my heart of hearts, that
that is what happened… because I owe the local techs a laugh at my expense… Jah
knows I was owed every bit of that karmic payback for my ridiculously
over-ramped tongue. To anyone who was in earshot that day (which probably
should include Pleasant Plains NJ., Beachwood, Whiting, Lakehurst, at least
half of Lakewood, and the greater Tom’s River basin), I apologize. Any
hard-case who acts the way I did deserves to be made to look like Jerry Lewis
on idiot pills, all trippy-stumbles and uncoordinated…
…
y’know…
…
like my dancing.
Anyway,
I commenced to cablin’ and pluggin’ and UN-pluggin’ (more swearing, this time
directed at inanimate objects - I’m seeking therapy)… and before I knew it the
band was onstage and warming up…
I
was not ready.
“Cam,
‘re you ready?” Eaton called from the stage.
“Absolutely.”
As
we went along through the sound check, I got all of my difficulties of a
technical nature somewhat straightened out, but at that point I had still
really not gotten anything roughed out to my satisfaction artistically, and the
fact remained that I STILL couldn’t hear jack-squat out of the right side of my
head.
Now,
I have talked to you in the past about the procedures we go through before you,
the audience, walk through the doors and get to the erstwhile “Rocking Out”… I
need to get individual instrument and vocal sounds, tuning each sound as it
goes through the strip of controls on the console to approximate a natural
timbre, then I need to make all of the channels play nice with each other
(which can sometimes become dicey business when there‘s over thirty-eight of
them, vying for attention), and then I need to make all of the sounds that are
mashed together sound coherent and natural through a set of speakers I’ve
sometimes never seen before that day (same with the console, and don‘t get me
started on the state of repair some of them are in… we just don‘t have time
right now)… all of this in a sometimes - no, make that USUALLY - acoustically
hostile environment…
…
and on this particular evening, I’m working with half my tools and no net…
(Cotter,
what I would have given to have you hanging around that show at the Bassie
Theater as you had been at Irving Plaza and Toad’s Place - for those of you out
of the loop, Cotter Michaels is Dark Star Orchestra’s sound engineering bullpen
mixer and he generously put his schedule on hold last year to cover me while I
was off the road resting a bad back.)
…
anyway, I still can’t hear anywhere NEAR the way I am supposed to, the band is
done with sound check, and I’m wondering just what I’ve done to the PA… and was
any of it good? Regardless, there’s about to be well over twelve hundred people who’ll come to my desk and read me the
riot act, or at the very least not get off… if what I’ve managed to eek out of
the day’s sound check isn’t up to the proverbial snuff…
…
still want my job?
Didn’t
think so.
The
doors opened, people did indeed come streaming in, and at the end of the night
one guy who was walking past me told me that he had lived in the area all his
life and had been coming to the Count Bassie theater since he was ten years old…
and that the place had never sounded better. Take that for what you will, and
if you were in the audience that night you probably have your own opinions of
whether or not I deserved to get paid for the evening… but there you have it, a
little fact-oid you probably never would have known, and possibly could care
less about…
I
mixed the Count Bassie with only one ear.
As
an experiment, try putting one of those foam roll-up ear plugs in to your right
ear before you go to sleep one night, and then wake up and leave it in the
whole day long… see how long it takes you to go bonkers trying to listen to
music on your stereo, or drive your car once one side of your head is dulled
out… you will be amazed at how much it effects your performance… my bet is, you
can’t make it through the entire day. Drop me an email, and tell me how it pans
out for you…
The
next day we woke up in Philly, and again I couldn’t hear a thing… I had gotten
away with it once, but I wasn’t about to let my hearing go another night...
Nay, another MINUTE… without being seen by a doctor. The house manager of the
Electric Factory got on his phone and arranged a visit with the local Rock Doc
(this is the term for physicians who’re somewhat on-call by a venue for any
sort of medical needs by us, the travelin’ set) and unlike the day before, they
even had a guy who was local to drive me to the appointment which made me feel
instantly better about the whole thing (no offense to Herdy or of course the
folks at the Bassie Theater who had tried their level-best, I’m sure… they
couldn‘t have known they were trying to help such a moron).
After
about a ten minute run up the highway, my driver Shaun dropped me at the Doc’s
office and I went into an examination room he led me to…
“I
was very sorry to hear about your keyboard player…”
This
statement instantly puts me on guard lately. As I’ve said before, Scott is
still a very painful subject… but I didn’t want to seem rude.
“Thanks…
I… uh… thanks” was all I could manage. I really didn’t want to talk about him.
“Take
off your shirt, please.”
“But
it’s… my problem is in my head.”
“I
know… but Scott just passed away. Let’s do this too.”
He
had a point, and look at what happened when I let my ear go…
So,
it bein’ Summer, I took off my shirt. *snicker*
The
Doc proceeded to take my blood pressure and listen to my lungs and heart with a
stethoscope.
“Breathe.”
“All
the time.”
“Yes,
but breathe normally.”
I
realized that I couldn’t quite manage to do what I was asked… it was like a
test, and I was desperate to pass… it was the Constitution test all over again…
but this time, there was no crib sheet I could refer to. My paranoia started
getting the better of me… and with the one side of my head plugged up, the
sound of my own breathing was already accentuated…
I
came in here to get my hearing straightened out… why was he poking around in
other corners?
…
what if… (my heartbeat - it’s so loud)
…
what if he finds something else? The stethoscope continued it’s tour around my
back and chest…
…
breathe in… (he’s taking a long time)
…
was that congestion? Did my lungs just make a hitch? Man, my heart is racing…
this won’t be g-
“Your
blood pressure is excellent.”
“It
is? Maybe you oughta come take that again, say during sound check… you might
get different results.”
…
heart rate decreasing…
“Yes,
it all sounds pretty good. You need to quit smoking, though… I tell everyone
that.”
“And
you’d be correct in doing so… filthy habit. But with all the other filthy
habits I’ve given up in my lifetime, Doc, that’s the last vice I have and my
addict’s brain is holding on with the tenacity of a pit bull. That’s certainly
no excuse, I know… but…”
“Y’know…
I treated Jerry… and what’s the keyboard player’s name for the Dead?”
“Vince?”
“No.”
“Brent?”
“Yeah,
that was the guy… great guy… but he had his… troubles… too.”
I
felt a tightness in my stomach, my throat suddenly clenched and went dry, and
my heart began to beat hard again… must we talk about this, I thought to
myself… not Scott, not now (“not ever” said another, smaller voice in my head)…
don’t think about that day, please don‘t take me back there… my ear, doc… my ear…
please just-
“Well,
let me just get a look at that ear of yours, now…”
He
took one of those light-thingies and probed my ear with it, then he looked into
the other side.
“Hmmm…
yeah… you’ve got quite a wax build-up in there… both of them, actually… but the
right side is sealed up pretty good…”
He
disappeared into another room for a moment, and came back with a steel basin
and a large chrome syringe which almost looked more like a cake decorating tool
than a medical instrument except that it was impossibly shiny in a medical way…
he had me hold the steel basin under my right ear and then said those immortal
medical words:
“You
might feel a slight pressure.”
Suddenly,
there was a great rushing sound in my ear, like a raging river heard through a
pillow or two… and then, as the syringe neared the end of it’s travel, the
rushing subsided and with a “ssshhhmoomptzzz” sound (seriously, that’s the
sound it made… I can’t make that up… if I did, don’t you think I would have
made it sound cooler in some way? Somethin’ the chicks would dig?) I could hear
again.
MAN…
could I HEAR again!!!
I
couldn’t stop smiling! All of the subtleties that I so love about the sense of
hearing were there for my feeble brain to process! I felt like I was back at
the height of my powers, like Superman with the Kryptonite taken away, like
Bruce Lee with the restraints broken… sonically I was fifty feet tall with
waffle soles and I was back to tread the Earth… if you try my little ear plug
challenge and make it through an entire twenty-four hour period, when you take
that plug out you’ll have an idea of the effect. I could hear, first of all…
which is good. But over the next minute or so as the doctor was preparing
another gusher for my left ear, I noticed all of the little sonic reflections off the walls… I could hear the
HVAC (ventilation) blowing through the room… I was amazed and in love with the
sensation of hearing all over again! But also, as I held the steel basin under
my left ear and the procedure was repeated, I could only think one thing over
and over:
I
had let this go for FAR too long.
This
build-up didn’t happen over night. It took a few months, or even years to get
to the point where it was that morning when I woke up and couldn’t hear a
thing… prevention would have taken a minimum amount of time out of my day, but
I was far too busy with important things like sound systems and music and
watching re-runs of “Seinfeld” to take a
minute and wash my ears with that home kit I picked up at the Wally World… and
now, in addition to feeling relief that border lined on the orgasmic… I also
felt like the world’s biggest idiot (a condition you‘d think I would be used to
by now). Feelings of immortality are for the young and the foolish, and while I
am probably always going to be the former, I am most certainly NOT the latter…
…
uh…
…
and because I sometimes have trouble with those terms too, and I’m not trying
to insult your intelligence but rather mask the faults in my own, by “former” I
mean the “foolish” part.
So
that night, I mixed the band at the Electric Factory in Philly… with both my
ears completely back up to speed… so to speak…
OH!
… and
speaking of speed, something else happened right after I got my ears unplugged…
I went to my first-ever live in-person “Dang That’s Loud” NASCAR race in
Delaware with Robbie our road manager and Prescott Carter, another good friend
of the band who had secured the tickets from his employers…
… …
I’m not going to spend a lot of time describing our day at the track because I
know you don’t get it (the whole “NASCAR Thing”) and really, I don’t blame you…
but suffice it to say that getting up after about four hours of sleep to make
the drive to Dover from Philly was WELL worth it and we had a brilliant day off
in the sun, watching cars go fast and turn left, eating hot dogs and drinking
Budweiser beers (there ya go, Prescott; You probably thought I wasn’t going to
plug your company, huh?) with the toothless masses…
…
well, I drank a Pepsi… someone had to drive home…
…
but speaking of the Toothless Masses… the next day in Teaneck NJ. we’re back
with the band, and right after sound check the first night around 7pm, I bit
into my burger sitting at the bar of Mexicali Blues and I heard a “Crack-Runch”
like I had bitten into something hard… I shifted the food around in my mouth
but couldn’t find anything one might classify as foreign to a cheeseburger… and then I felt something
very, VERY wrong…
In
my travels and studies I have found out that lots of people have dreams, or
rather nightmares, about their teeth… they dream of getting punched in the
mouth, they grind their teeth to dust, or the teeth just fall out… have you
ever had a dream where your teeth fall out? Sure you have…
…
well, much like other dreams that have come true since I joined this band, I
was now living a nightmare that we have all apparently had at one time or
another; My front right tooth between the middle and the canine was not only
loose… no, loose would imply that it moved a little… this one was doin’ a garage
door number… y’know… where it rolls up and sorta out before tucking back
into the ceiling? Uh…
I
freaked.
Immediately,
my hand went up in front of my mouth and my tongue flipped up in back of the
now dangling tooth in a silly attempt to somehow fortify it’s position… I
turned to the rest of the band who were all seated around a few tables which
had been pushed together for our dinner…
“Havz-Ani-vhone-Sheen-Wrobhee?”
I tried to articulate through my hand and floppy tooth.
“What?”
“Hil’v
Arni Bobby THEEN WHRAHH-BEE?”
“…
he wants to know if anyone’s seen Robbie… what’s the matter now, Cameron?”
asked Lisa.
My
head felt light and the room went a shade dim as my mind tried to get around
what had just gone down… the simple answer of course, was that this wasn’t
happening… there is just no WAY… huh-uh… this is just a bad dream… I’m in
Teaneck NJ. and it’s just a BAD DREAM…
…
not, uh, being in Teaneck… that’s not a nightmare or anything… but I just got
my hearing back… I can’t lose a tooth NOW…
…
Hell, I had just gotten back from the NASCAR race… this had definitely
come too late.
A
day late, in fact… and I didn’t have any dental insurance…
…
so what do you wanna bet I’m gonna come up a dollar short?
“A
Day Late And A Dollar Short”
It’s
almost a Blietz Family Axiom, y’know… I’ve seen it woven into the family crest,
of course there it’s written in Latin (“Diei Tardus Argentum Desum”) and hence
much more impressive, but really that’s the gist of the translation…
Where
was I?
Oh
yeah… seven o’clock on a Friday night with a floppy tooth and in dire need of a
dental professional’s attentions.
“Ahiie
‘roke-a-thooth” I said to Lisa.
“He
what?” asked Eaton.
“Broke
a tooth” translated Lisa, who’s hand had risen involuntarily to the side of her
cheek, no doubt remembering her similar episode not too many tours back where
she ended up having to hunt down a dentist in the middle of the night or
something because the pain eventually got so bad…
“That
Sucks.”
(Lisa has this great way of enunciating her
words when she knows she‘s working with the obvious - it almost sounds like
it’s coming from an Army drill instructor - quick, to the point, and sharp as…
uh… well, a really sharp pointy thing.)
“I
think Robbie is in the band room, Cameron… do you want ice?”
“Ndoh..
Ndoh… Than-Hue Lee-tha” I said through my hand, and hurried off to the door of
the band’s green room… inside, I found Robbie printing up the night’s guest
list… he looked up at me “What‘s going on bud?”, and I said -
“Dood…
ahee need a henthist.”
His
face fell. “Aw ya gotta be kidding me… what NOW?”
“A-’roke-a-thooth.”
“Broke
a tooth?”
HEY!
I was getting better at articulating through my tongue and hand! How ‘bout
that, huh?
“Yeeeah,”
I said, finally relaxing a bit because I know that Robbie will do his best to
get all of this crap worked out… he’ll find me a dentist…
…
that or hopefully wake me from this horrible dream, I’ll have been sleeping in
my bunk and Robbie will wake me up any minute now…
…
aaaaa-a-a-a-a-aaaaaaany minute now… yep…
… I
know it sounds cliché, but it really did seem to take a lifetime for someone to
come up with a local dentist office… in reality it was probably three minutes…
but when your tooth is hanging out of your head like the coyote hanging off the
cliff in a Road Runner cartoon, you get a bit antsy for action… and also I
still for some reason had the presence of mind to keep the perspective of it
being now AFTER 7pm on a Friday night in the quaint little New Jersey town of
Teaneck… I mean, c’mon… what are the odds that we’re going to find a dentist
who’s still around? Who are we fooling here? I’m going to have to go to the
hospital for this crap, and that’s REALLY gonna run me a shekel or two… what
the @%#$! is Robbie doing? He’s chasing Eli the club owner around… Eli’s a
great guy but not even he is going to be able to finesse this rabbit out of the
hat…
…
this SUCKS…
…
where the HELL am I going to find a dentist right now?
“OK
I got it”, says Eli from behind the bar “There’s a dentist in his office across
the street, he’s finishing with a patient right now and he says he can see you
as soon as you get over th-”
The
club door wasn’t even finished closing on it’s hinge before I was knocking on
the dentist’s door across the street… I don’t really remember my feet hitting
the pavement about every third step I was moving so fast, hand-to-mouth like I
had just attempted a six-can beer bong and was trying desperately not to spew.
(I
see some of you out there with the knowing smile… college was fun, wasn’t it?)
Anyway…
here’s another installment of the original Reality Show you all know and love…
(even though it might seem at times that I’m bloggin’
off)
… a
little incite into how we live our lives and a direction that, as usual, you
probably hadn’t considered…
Put
yourself in our shoes for a minute… well, don’t put yourself in Koritz’s shoes,
‘cuz then we might have to really quick go get a hack saw an’ amputate… but
step on in here to the Reality Show place I call:
“As
The Hippie Turns” aka “Who Wants To Be A Thousand-aire”… depending on your
district of syndication, o’course…
Imagine
if you will, that you are a roadie working for a band… THIS band, and suddenly
you have a mid-range to serious health problem crop up. A distinct disadvantage
to working in this business is that when things like this happen (and they
do/did/will… look at Lil’ Lisa’s tooth thing a couple of tours ago, or my ear
thing just a day or two before… or in the most horrible and extreme case, what
happened to our old monitor engineer Glen “Chub” Carrier or Scott), statistics dictate that in all probability
you will be as far away from your familiar circle of physicians and support
groups as would seem physically possible, leaving you at the luck of the draw a
lot of the time as to who you can see about your problem, what time of the day
you can see them (because as I said before, those doors are gonna open and the
people wanna rock out), and subsequently what they are going to charge you for
you visit… or even what level of quality care you will receive…
…
now I would like to say at this point (because you never know who’s reading
this stuff) that the medical treatment I received from the doctor in Philly and
the two different dental offices was top-notch and I am extremely grateful to
all of them for keeping me up and running…
…
but as any of these professionals will probably tell you in a relaxed minute
over beers, there are as many idiots in the health care field as there are in
any other business- scary thought, I know - but it’s true.
That
disclaimer made, back to our story…
When
I got into the dentist’s office, a hygienist handed me the usual paperwork to
fill out and then disappeared into one of the torture chamb- I mean, uh…
chair-rooms ostensibly to help with the aforementioned patient they were
finishing up with… as I sat down to fill out the forms, I couldn’t help but
wonder -
Is
this dentist any good?
Is
this going to hurt a lot?
Is
this going to COST a lot (not that I have a choice at this point)?
Is…
is…
…
is that a copy of Relix Magazine I see over there on the coffee table?
We-e-e-ell… I’ll-be…
This
dentist is gonna be just fine!
“Is
it true that a member of Dark Star Orchestra is out in my waiting room?” the
dentist called from the other room… I just had to smile… which, at this particular
point in my life, is literally the LAST thing I want to do in front of ANYONE…
“Well
Doc, it’s not like you’ve got one of the stars here… I’m just your average
garden-variety sound engineer…”
“That’s
OK… we’ll still bring you in, see what can be done… oh, and hey… I was sorry to
hear about your keyboard player.”
“I…
uh… me too.” (oh yeah, that sounded good! Fancy yourself a writer, do ya
boy???)
“C’mon…
right this way.”
So
I sat down in the house of pain.
I
suppose, kind of like the dreams people have about teeth, I’m not alone in
confessing a major phobia about dental offices… and it’s not so much the
offices but what tends to go on there… as I stated earlier, I’m really in tune
with my ears…
…
and the sound of that *shudder*…
…
the *shiver*…
…
the DRILL…
*cringe*
…
nobody likes that sound… that high-RPM whine…
…
you’re picturing it in your mind’s ear right now, aren’t you?
Nobody
likes that sound… it’s the aural equivalent of a yanked nose hair mixed with a
naked slide down a forty-foot razor blade into a pool of lemon juice…
…
while someone plays that irritating record with the Bee Girl on the cover in
the background…
…
and to hear THAT sound with THESE ears… newly cleaned and hearing ALL the
high-end…
I
also have an extreme problem with needles… I used to reassure my mother when
she worried about my experimentation with drugs as a youth by saying “Don’t
worry, at least you know I’ll never shoot smack”…
…
for some odd reason, this never seemed to calm her down…
…
anyway, when you go to the dentist the odds are pretty high that they’re gonna
use the drills and the needles, am I right? So I’m not saying that I don’t
practice good oral hygiene with all of this, by the way - I brush twice a day
and I floss at least three times a week, and I even consent to the odd cleaning
here or there… but what I AM saying is that I generally avoid the dentist’s
chair at all cost, and perhaps if I had been getting more regular X-rays of
this particular tooth, I might have had some warning that this was going to
happen… but X-rays and lack of insurance don’t really mix.
“So
have you had any trauma recently?”
“Are
you kidding? There’s a boat-load of it on the bus nightly, Doc… where do I
begin-”
“I
meant to the tooth.”
“Riiight.
No, not recently… I had a root canal on it years ago… like, when I was in high
school…”
“Sports
injury?”
“Sports?
Heh… nooooo… I mean, look at me Doc… The most exercise I got in high school was
pullin’ tubes and doin’ twelve-ounce curls of Old Style, if you take my
meaning.”
(DISCLAIMER:
I never wanted to be a role model, spare me your irate mail because your kid
read this and thought “if it worked for him, it can work for me”… and if you’re
a kid reading this, the injury which brought me to a root canal all those years
ago was due to a fight I lost which was caused in no small part by my… uh…
“work-out regimen”… so in other words it didn‘t really work all that well for
me. Eat your greens, stay in school. Register to vote.)
With
a raised eyebrow, the dentist went to work… he hit me with a few shots of
Novocain (needles! YEA!), and then he took out the remainder of the broken
tooth and put in a temporary bond which he said would hold me over until the
end of tour when I could get home to my own dentist… at the end of the
procedure, he and I both heard another “Crack” as he was testing the tensile
nature of his work… I questioned it, but he tested it further (tug, push, tug)
and we both became satisfied that the bond had indeed, uh, bonded. With fake tooth in place and little
more than an hour to show time, I jetted out of the office after paying my
bill, back to Mexicali Blues…
After
the second night there in Teaneck, we packed up our stuff and hit the bus for
our ride to Clifton Park, NY. to play Northern Lights… as usual after a show, I
was sort of hungry… so I foraged through the bus and found some cheese and
bread for a sandwich… a great smoked Gouda, some Romaine lettuce, a little
peppercorn mustard… DANG was this gonna be good… and as I bit into it the
second or third time, the bond fell out.
It fell out.
I
was pissed… not so much about the tooth falling out, or feelings that I had
been taken for a ride by the dentist… but mostly because this was the second
decent sandwich in twenty-four hours which I had lost to this whole
fiasco. I threw the sandwich away having
completely lost my appetite, and I headed for my bunk.
…
what?
No,
I didn’t put the tooth under my pillow… sheesh!
The next morning I woke up as the bus was
pulling into Clifton Park… it’s like an alarm clock for me some days, the way
the bus hits an exit ramp and the shifting gears and stop’n’go of local street
driving changes the rhythm of things, alerting you to immanent arrival at your
day’s destination…
I
went up front to the rumble seat next to the Dude and began scanning the
businesses and office plazas for signs of a dentist, and to my surprise I saw
about six or seven different dentally oriented establishments… now if the venue
isn’t too far away, I thought, I can maybe walk to one of these places out here
after sound check or something…
A
couple of miles later we pulled into the strip mall that houses Northern
Lights, and we were early… so I went into the club and asked the first employee
I saw, “Y’know those dentist offices I saw about a mile or two up the road?”
“If
you say so.”
“Well…
uh… do you know what I’m talking about or don’t you?”
“No.”
“But
you work here.”
“Yeah
but I don’t LIVE here… there’s a difference, guy…”
“Yes
and I’m sure that the community is all the worse off because of that fact…”
“What?”
“Nothing… So you can’t tell me what some of those dental places are or where I
might find a phone number?”
“Fer’
what? You got a problem?”
This
sort of callous treatment I didn’t need… it was obvious to me that all I was
going to receive from this gentleman was veiled abuse, and for the record, I
can’t STAND being called “Guy” or “Champ” or “Sport”… it instantly puts you on
a very bad footing as far as I’m concerned… footing which will quickly get you
dumped into a world of shit… and that feeling of impotent rage wasn’t going to
get my tooth fixed.
…
No Sir…
…
more likely, it would land me right in the same spot that CAUSED the whole root
canal thing in the first place, lo those many years ago…
So
I grabbed my phone, told Robbie I was walking to find a dentist, and hit the
door a-runnin’, as they say. It was sunny, hot as Hell out, and of course I was
wearing a black polo shirt (as I often do on a gig day)… by about the first
quarter-mile I was beginning to sweat… by the time I got to one of the dental
offices I had seen on the way to the venue from the highway, I was more than
likely a bit ripe, shall we say… after all I had just rolled out of my bunk, there
hadn’t been time to visit the shower facilities yet…
…
this is all a bit on the embarrassing side, but true… and I tell you these
truths because very few folks on this side of the laminate will share those
sorts of information with you, the public… people in our business don’t want
you to see this job for what it really is, otherwise you’d all stop envying us
our rock‘n‘roll lifestyles…
*cough*
Where
was I? Where am I? Who are you?
…
don’tcha hate when that happens?
At
the first dental office I came upon, I walked in and told them my story…
although it didn’t take nearly as long as you’ve been sitting here reading
this, mind you… the receptionist has a job to do and she doesn’t have all day
to sit around the office hearing about my misadventures on the road…
…
which reminds me… don’t you have something you should be doing now? Oh well…
you’ll get to it… this can’t go on very much longer I don’t imagine…
…
but this office didn’t have an opening for the day, is my point… they DID,
however, furnish me with two other phone numbers of places that were “very
close” …
(Side
Note: People from out in the sticks or the suburbs have drastically different
understandings of the term “Very Close” from us city-folk, by the way; Those
other offices ended up being another mile and a half down the road… which, in a
black polo shirt on a hot-ass BLINDINGLY sunny day, can seem to stretch on
forever.)
…
as I walked, I called each of these offices… one was closed but the third one
(I know this is getting to sound like “Goldie Locks & The Three Bears”, but
I‘m actually a redhead and there are usually a lot more than three furry beasts
giving me attitude on that stage) came up with a spot in their books for me,
but only if I could make it there in ten minutes…
Ten
minutes to walk a mile and a half? I can do that… sure I can…
… I
can do it, that is, if the place were easy to FIND, of course…
…
but in the words of the immortal Tina Turner…
“…
we never do anything nice… and easy…”
I
walked and walked and walked, and in the end after about three or four phone
calls to the office I finally found the place… by the time I got there and
started filling out the requisite forms, I was already a good fifteen minutes
over the time limit the receptionist had put on me, but bless their souls, they
decided to wedge me in anyway… perhaps there was a last minute
cancellation, but more than likely they
probably took pity on me in my sweaty, stinky, long-way-from-home toothless state…
…
but whatever their motivations, in a very few minutes I was in a chair and
getting more X-rays (bless the blocking powers of the lead bib!)… after which
the technician offered to turn the TV on, but I declined:
“Thanks,
but I’ve been exposed to enough harmful waves this morning.”
“What?”
“Nothing…
I’m just not into watching TV right now.”
“So
you mean I can’t use you to watch a little Golf Channel?”
The
look on my face must have said it all. “Not now”, it said, this face I was
wearing “And if you ask me some sh*t like that again, I’m going to… uh…
(Suddenly,
a little Voice in my head - “Hey tough guy, remember what brought on that root
canal?”)
…
yeah, well… lucky for him, he left the room… ‘cuz I was about to… I… um… I can
get pretty mean…
(“Sure…
ask the techs in Redbank…”)
…
but c’mon, dude…
The
Golf Channel? And here I thought that going to the dentist couldn’t get any
more painful…
(“Alright,
alright… just do us all a favor and stop having conversations with yourself,
OK? Just tell the story…”)
It’s
a deal… but I do need to add that after the X-ray tech was gone I thought about
it, and if they had the Golf Channel, then they might have had the Speed
Channel…
(“DANG!
You mean tah tell me I coulda been a-sittin’ there watchin’ them fast cars jes’
goin’ around and around? DANG!!!” )
…
look, if I can’t have a conversation then you can’t interrupt…
(“Deal.”)
Eventually
a dentist came in and we reviewed the whole business again, and then she asked
“Did you keep the tooth?”
“Yeah.
And the bond that fell out, got ‘em right here.”
“Did
you put the broken tooth in milk after this happened?”
“No,
should I have?”
“Yes.”
“Huh…
imagine that. Makes sense, though…”
So
there you have it folks, if you ever break a tooth, put it in milk and head for
your friendly family dentist… there’s that “informative” part of this journal
entry, in case you were looking for it.
“We
may be able to get the bond back in, though there’s no guaranteeing it’s
strength, or we could start the post and crowning procedure today, and then you
can get it finished when you get home… when do you head back to-o-o…”
“Chicago.”
“Yes…
when are you headed home? Are you here on vacation?”
“No…
I won’t be headed home for weeks.”
“Hmmm…
well, let me see the tooth and the bond.”
I
produced a small envelope which contained my tooth and the bond fake, and she
inspected them, after which she left to consult with another doctor in the
office about possibly starting the crown… they weren’t sure if they had the
time it would take to get the entire procedure done due to sneaking me into the
schedule, but in the end they resolved to do whatever I wanted them to do and
of course whatever my wallet could swing, but then add into all of this the
schedule that I need to keep for all of YOU who expect a show at a certain time
(not to mention the six guys and one girl who technically sign my pay check)…
the mind began to boggle. When the doctor returned again, she had the easy
demeanor of a bar tender, which I appreciated for some odd reason… it made me
feel at home, somehow…
“Well?
What’ll it be? If we’re going to start this crown it’s gonna have to be soon.”
“Y’know
what, Doc? I certainly appreciate all the time you’ve spent on this, but at
this point I think if you can just cement that temp back into my head, I can
save us all a lot of time, because I really need to be getting back.”
“Not
a problem.”
*Splat*
went the cement… *Jam* went the tooth, *Zip* went the debit card (they barely
charged me, by the way… sweet people!) and out into the blazing sunshine I
went… only another two miles’ walk and I would be back at Northern Lights… I
tried to call Robbie to see if there was anyone who could come an pick me up so
as to expedite my return…
…
and not because I’m lazy…
…
but the entire strip mall which Northern Lights is attached to is in a shallow
valley of sorts, and cellular waves couldn’t seem to bounce down in there to
reach anyone’s phone… so hoof it I must. As I walked along, suddenly I heard a
car honk at me and I saw another good friend of ours Teacher Matt drive by in
his Honda… Matt had been following us in his car for several shows out East,
caravanning with the likes of Prescott and Herdy Gerdy here and there and even
helping pack and load the gear at the end of the night… Matt was headed to the
club in order to hook up with us for the day, and hot on his trail was Herdy’s
truck… I saw the brake lights go on, and Ron pulled his pick-up over so that I
could catch up…
“Hey,
dude!”
“Yo
Herdy!”
“Where
the Hell are you coming from? Isn’t the club up here a ways?”
“Yeah
it is.”
“What
gives?”
So
I ran the whole thing down for him as we drove the rest of the way back to
Northern Lights… and again, I shortened it up significantly because we didn’t
have that kind of time-
…
wow…
…
what time is it, anyway?
Oh
man… look at that, as usual I’ve kept you here too long… and I got way off the
path I started out on… got lost in the Story Woods without a Topic Compass
again…
… I
never told you what Rob Barraco was like, I guess I had better do that before
you go…
Having
Rob play with the band was great.
OK…
I’m done now… see you later… the band is done playing “Saint Stephen” and John
has just kicked into one of my favorite songs, “Visions of Johanna” … I’m
gonna enjoy it if you don’t mind… when I
have something new for you, I’ll be back… and until that time you all know
where to find me.
See
you around the playground!
~Cameron~
Martyrs’
- Chicago IL. 7/13/05