Being a Serial in Four Parts
To the readers of this chronicle I must apologize for my recent silence, but if they have perused the headlines, I suspect they have some knowledge of my misfortunes; and if retellings of the horrors that have beset me have, somehow escaped them--I hope that the following document will enlighten them whilst providing some clarification to those who have studied the relevant recent events as well.
It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my old friend, and yet I hope to shew by this statement that I am not his murderer. At first I shall be called a madman—or a burn-out. Later some of my readers will weigh each statement, correlate it with the known facts, and ask themselves how I could have believed otherwise than I did after facing the evidence of that final horror…
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here is how it all began:
We were sitting on a dilapidated sofa that had been manufactured in the mid-70s, in the light of a TV screen, on which an episode of Cheaters oozed, and speculating about the role of feedback. Looking around the giant, pock-marked coffee table in the centre of my friend’s living room, whose legs engulfed stacks of dog-eared, long-abandoned vinyl records, I had made a made a strange and vaguely incoherent remark about how cool those albums might sound if you played them now, scratched, long ago, as they were, not to mention weirdly warped and dirtied in their trackless somnolence. And now my friend chided me for such bullshit, since jacketed as they were, the albums could have been brushed only with the most ethereal coating of dust, and further, since they were stacked in a perfectly straight vertical manner, only the minute and inescapable warping caused by climactic shifting could have influenced their enduring disc-like shape.
“Besides,” he added, “you’re always talking about ‘noise’ and how cool it is. It’s really lame. What ever happened to music?”
“I’m talking about music. Noisy music. I mean, usually it’s music. With noise in it.”
“See, you just prefer noise because you can’t appreciate well-written, well-played music. I’d say you were tone deaf, but you do have a lotta decent records. Not that you ever play ‘em.”
“Sometimes I do!”
“Nope. You don’t listen to anything that’s got a discernable melody or lyrics.”
“Yeah I do!”
“If it’s Elizabeth Elmore.”
“Pant pant. No wait, I listen to other stuff sometimes—like Scratch Perry or Iggy or Mingus.”
“Not much you don’t. Not these days. And but the thing is that that’s all there is in good music: melody, harmony, rhythm, and how you put ‘em together through performance. I mean, you know me—I’m not a pop music fan or classical music fan or whatever. I’m a rockist. Diehard.”
“Yeah—I know—and Skynyrd is cool and alla that—and Drive-by Truckers are even better. But I’m tellin’ ya. You gotta embrace the noise. It’s part of where all that classic rock came from.”
“The fuck it is. At least Skynyrd could play their instruments. Take those jerkoffs you’re always goin’ on and on about. Whass their faces? Spaceship Z?”
“Spacemen 3.”
“Right. Those assholes can’t even play their instruments—beyond the most rudimentary 4 or 5 notes.”
“I know. Isn’t it cool?”
“Gaah. And since they can’t play or sing, they have to rely on squealing feedback, tinny little 3 note riffs, fuzz pedals and long droning instrumentals to make themselves seem like a real band.”
“But feedback, 3 note riffs, fuzz pedals and long droning instrumentals do make them a band. One of the coolest bands ever.”
“They suck.”
“No. They don’t.”
“No. They do.”
“Know what yer problem is? You just don’t give ‘em a chance. Five seconds and you turn the shit off. I bet if you listened to them enough, you’d see how much ass they kicked.”
“Bullshit. I could listen to them for a month straight—if I could stand it—and I’d still think they sucked.”
“Wanna bet?”
“OK asshole. Let’s do this. If I listen to ‘em every day for a month… you gotta give me your Stratocaster.”
“My strat?”
“It’s a fair deal. And besides, I’ll be rescuing it from your cheap amp, shitty effects pedals and general ineptitude.”
“It’s not a fair, fucking deal.”
“OK. How ‘bout this? I’ll listen to every Spacemen 3 album once a day for a month and I won’t listen to anything else. No music, no radio, muted TV. Whadda ya say?”
“Hmmm. Ida know.”
“I’ll throw in an Elizabeth Elmore flavored popsicle.”
“An Elizabeth Elmore flavored popsicle. That’s fuckin’ stupid. They don’t exist.”
“Look in the freezer.”
I wandered through hallways damnably suggestive of nighted caverns and finally crossed the threshold of a walnut arch that had stood since long before the previous tenants’ habitation. Within the cool air of the freezer lay a popsicle draped in a flimsy paper wrapper that bore the enchanting form of Elizabeth Elmore.
From the lugubrious shadows behind my shoulder, my friend spoke: “Found that on eBay. Been waiting to use it on you for a while.”
“That’s so hot. I’m gonna suck on Elizabeth Elmore. Finally.” Thus it became vitally imperative that I win this wager.
He smiled—sardonically it seemed—and said, “Don’t count yer Elmores till they’re hatched.”
The terms of the wager were soon agreed upon. As stated, my friend would expose himself daily to the alien strains of the group Spacemen 3, whose airs had opened awesome cosmic vistas before me in the past—though I wondered what effect listening to all of their albums daily for a month would have—even I had never done that. Should 30 days pass for him without a glimpse of such wonders, then my beloved Stratocaster, itself a more constant companion to me than any of flesh and blood, would be forfeit. It would be a heavy price to pay, if my luck should fail me, but it seemed necessary to assert this truth—that Spacemen 3 kick ass—once and for all.
Of course, an impartial third party would have to be commissioned. At first, it seemed that this might be difficult, as we suspected that very few would agree to expose themselves to such arguable “crap.” In the end, however, procuring the services of such a party proved rather easy. So easy, in fact, that I remember wondering if this was a sign that certain outside forces might be providing a positive momentum to our undertaking. At the time this was sheer whimsy, almost without a trace of ominousness. Now I fear that this accursed thought was all too accurate.
The maintenance supervisor for my friend’s apartment building lived on site. He was of Slavic extraction, though from which specific nation he hailed was impossible to guess, due to my lack of familiarity with Eastern European accents. A grizzled man of many years, he was perpetually unshaved and the dim white shirt he wore, which bore a cloth patch, reading “Abe,” highlighted his morose obsequiousness. Though he was always courteous, I found his watery eyes and satyr-like face to be vaguely unpleasant.
It so happened that on this ill-starred day—would that I could drive the memory from my mind—I left my friend’s apartment briefly to purchase a six-pack of beer. We had, it seems, run out of alcoholic beverages and had a craving for a little more. When I returned, I encountered the slouched, wheezing form of the “super” on the building staircase. It was an ancient tottering structure with rotten red carpet lining its hallways, and this gloomy fellow was often found poking at this stuff with a similarly aged vacuum that, sadly, seemed to do little good.
Abe was known to be ever interested in acquiring more money. In addition to the duties his occupation demanded of him, he could often be found walking the dogs owned by working tenants, watering the plants of vacationeers, or running small errands for the building’s invalids. (Once or twice we’d sent him for beer because we were too intoxicated to want to go ourselves. We quickly let discontinued this practice when he started demanding additional payment in beer—20% of whatever variety we were drinking.) He seemed to be a fine candidate for moderator of our wager.
Once I had attracted his attention—not an easy task given the damnable whirring of that blasted machine—a wage and a description of the requisite tasks were put into place. Abe was surprisingly astute when it came to negotiations—so much so that one wondered how he could still be merely a building “super.”
Abe would visit my friend six times daily—at unspecified hours. He would check first to make sure that he heard Spacemen 3 playing by listening at the door. In order for it to be audible in this way, my friend would have to play the music at cyclopean decibel levels, but this would only work in my favor, I reasoned, since Spacemen 3 really kick ass when they are loud. Then Abe would knock at the door to visibly establish my friend’s presence and verify that the daily circulation all of the Spacemen 3 albums.
I myself, of course, could visit as I liked, though my friend expected, he said with more than a little sarcasm, to be so deeply transfixed by his immersion into the group’s weird cacophony as to be unable to recognize me if I appeared at his door.
“My consciousness will be so altered that I, like, probably won’t even realize you’re there. Wait…” He extended the palm of his hand in front of me. His eyes stared as though blind. “Are you there?”
“Fuck off.”
“You are. Though I guess that doesn’t prove that you exist.”
“Blow me.”
“Now that ya mention it, you seem kinda cheaply theatrical.”
“Cheaply? Is that even a word?”
Without a glance, he pointed to a bookshelf, where many a moldering paperback lay. Amongst these ancient volumes rested an even more antiquated dictionary. I flipped open its threadbare clothbound cover and read.
“See,” my friend said, “there’s a lot more of grave than gravy to you.”
“It’s the other way around.”
“Cheaply? What do you mean?”
“No. Scrooge.”
“Oh.”
“And you were right.”
“Wait. But you said I was wrong.”
“About cheaply. It’s a word.”
“Told ya. Not that any of this dialogue proves that you’re real. ‘Cuz like methinks I see you Horatio. In my mind’s eye. Come to think of it ‘tho, you’re about dull enough to be real.”
Which remark led me to improvise a series of poetical images all centering upon the allure of his mother. Then I took my leave of him.
3 days passed, in which certain professional obligations claimed the bulk of my attention. The practice that I maintain as a private detective had been profusely busy, making it difficult for me to meet with my friend. I did, however, receive a number of e- and voice mails, the latter of which were often marked by a wholly unconvincing cockney accent, that purported to be communiqués left by either, or both, though always in identical tones of voice, “Sonic Boom” or Jason Pierce, the mad visionaries behind the shrieking gulf of sound that is the music of Spacemen 3. (Even more distressing were certain messages left by former Spacemen 3 drummer, Stewart “Rosco” Roswell, which scarcely deserve mention due to their utter silliness.) All of these missives concerned purported amorous habits of the group that are (and were) so obscene as to be best left undescribed.
In the 5 days that followed, my workload was lightened, however I saw little of my friend. My calls to him went unanswered. E-mailed messages were more successful, but the replies I received were strangely terse. Any invitations to visit or otherwise get together were politely declined, which I found quite strange, as my friend was never, ordinarily, polite. Through Abe, I was able to stay apprised of the status of our wager. The elder Slav proved surprisingly conscientious, though I still could not bring myself to enjoy his company. Daily he would call me from his cell phone to inform me of the influence of Spacemen 3 upon my friend. Doubtlessly the glee that I felt on hearing of the groanings, kicking of the walls that heralded my friend’s distress prior to Abe’s admittance as a visitor to the apartment discomfited Abe. Yet while these signs did not herald success in the current wager, they were, nevertheless, pretty fuckin’ funny.
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