Last year, I couldn't wait to build an empire. I had a building picked out and everything. It's the ugliest building in St. Paul, Minnesota, and it has everything that I could ever want in a structure. It has yellow flowers growing in the planters outside, so if I ever need to impersonate Bruce Dickinson jumping out of flowers like he does in the video for Holy Smoke, I can. (This was a huge selling point for the Pirate and me.)
It has a restaurant that could be gutted and turned into an employee lounge. It has a parking ramp. (The Pirate and I had renamed each level after a member of Queen.) I had plans for a helicopter landing pad on the top level, so I could be just like Edina from Absolutely Fabulous. On one side of the ramp, there is a street that is only one block long, and it is pretty much there to act as a driveway for the parking ramp. The street is named after the building, but we figured that after I bought the building, we could petition the city to change the street name to something Queen-related.
Of course, I wanted to own the building some day, because then I wouldn't have to pay rent. If the building was turning a profit, I could have an office rent-free. But what if I had zero vacancies and someone really wanted the space? I might just kick myself out of the office and work out of my kitchen instead.
I still think I want the building, but I no longer want the overhead of an office. Why should I pay for a space that really only needs to hold me and LCG, plus two computers, a television tuned to ESPN, the Playstation, and a fridge full of Dr. Pepper? I assume there would be a pile of cassettes heaped in a corner, for review and mockery purposes. Anyway, why would I invest in an office when all I really need is a small living room? I wouldn't!
But I used to envision a world where I had an actual staff, and held excellent afternoon meetings that involved my pals lounging on couches while I barked out orders. "You! Read the new issue of Rolling Stone, get mad about something and write it up. You! Listen to the new Vince Neil album and give me five hundred words about how drunk he is. You two! Go have a beer and talk about how much you hate Radiohead. I'm going to see KC and the Sunshine Band. Meet back here at two o'clock tomorrow afternoon."
Due to the fact that I don't want unnecessary expenses, I don't see this ever happening. That, and my friends tend to not want to actually sit down and write something for me. "I'm more an idea guy," says LCG. "I'm good for a sentence or two, you can just take it and run." (Heave sigh here.) But even though I don't have a staff, I do have readers. Every now and then, a reader sends in a report from the field, and I get all giddy.
Please enjoy a selection of reader reports covering Vince Neil, Fleetwood Mac, and what could possibly be the greatest Chubby Checker story I have ever heard.
Item One: The Vince Neil Email.
Hey, I just read your review on Vince's performance's last summer. This specific concert review must have been for his drunken performance at The House of Blues in Myrtle Beach, SC. I am a huge Motley/Vince fan, but Wow was he bad! What a bad way for Vince's awesome rock career to come to an eventual end.
My Vince Neil experience was in Minneapolis, but it warmed my heart to know that Vince was consistently drunk for the entire tour. (I think Minnesota and South Carolina is enough of a random sample to assume that every show was a spectacle of inebriation.) When I wrote requesting permission to post this, I got this response:
When I said he was drunk it was an understatement. It was a rainy day in Myrtle Beach and the bands arrived real early. They must have started pounding them as soon as they got here. Skid Row and Tesla appeared pretty lit, but it didn't affect their performances. When Vince came out you could tell he was smashed right away. It looked like he hadn't showered in days.
During his show he stumbled around the stage, he couldn't remember some of the words to his songs, so he held the mike out to us in the crowd pretty often to do the singing for him. In addition, Vince was real moody, he would kick stage equipment after he tripped over it. At one point he was right in front of me and his foot was wrapped around a wire of some sort. I was just waiting for his fat drunk ass to fall on me and others beside me.
Wonderful, just wonderful.
Item Two: The Fleetwood Mac Phone Call.
One of the great things about my roving readers, you just never know where they are going to turn up! Sure, Joejung went to see Fleetwood Mac on their reunion tour several years back, but I didn't know that anyone I knew was going this year! I had just finished a great evening seeing Cedric the Entertainer and was meandering down the street with my Italian Friend (Who Is So Into Being Italian-American He Is An Adorable Caricature) when my phone rang. It was a pal weighing in with a Fleetwood Mac report! "Hey. Stevie Nicks is the female Vince Neil." "Was she drunk and bloated?" "No. She couldn't remember song lyrics."
(Some time later I recounted the story to the Mustachioed Drummer, and he was surprised to hear that she couldn't remember lyrics that she had written. "I just thought maybe she was singing Christine McVie's songs and hadn't done her homework.")
Item Three: The Fleetwood Mac Email Discussion.
Obviously, I had to start a Stevie Nicks chat with CEB, and he quickly provided me with links to a couple of very unflattering concert reviews. One of them said she seemed to be making up a whole new set of lyrics for Rhiannon and that the big screens showed off how bored she was.
Excellent.
Item Four: From damnitkage, Possibly The Greatest Reader Mail I Have Ever Gotten.
After the Chubby Checker recap was posted, but before the concert was reviewed, I received the most wonderful of all anecdotes.
I was shopping at the local grocery store last year, I think, and to what did my wandering eyes appear but Chubby himself hawking some product or another. It was so horribly sad, they were having some kind of Twist contest. Chubby looked horrible with a really bad dye job and some clothing that, well, quite frankly he shouldn't have had on.
The really, really sad part was that they were having trouble getting people interested. Several announcements were made over the store intercom. "Hey you filthy lazy shoppers, dammit Chubby Checker is here! Yeah, really it's Chubby Checker!" and so on. Suffice it to say that the excitement was somewhat underwhelming.
Finally, they rounded up some kids and some doofus parents and the group of eight or nine people danced with Chubby. Some of the employees were also obviously forced to dance and I'm sure that they all committed suicide en masse right after.
As you can well imagine, I wiped the tears of laughter from my eyes, thanked damnitkage profusely for the hearty laugh, and immediately asked if I could please, please post this. I declared it to be an essential report from the field, and my helpful reader seemed a little baffled, because it wasn't about a rock show.
Item Five: The Follow-Up Response.
Best I can do is offer anecdotes about aging singers in the Hy-Vee.
I couldn't ask for anything more. Lots of my readers have concert stories, but how many have had a close call with Chubby Checker at the grocery store?