Occupation, or Not
I found myself last year at what might be termed a crossroads. I made the decision to pull back from a teaching job where I had taught for a decade, so I was down to one class at one college. I also let my band mates know that I wasn’t interested in booking shows beyond the really special ones. It’s not like i don’t like work or playing gigs, I do, but at what point do you stop, or even slow down? EDD had just played Solid Sound, and I thought it was a good time to bask in that glow. And I could be spending more of my time working out, riding my bike and staying healthy, and going to the store to find something to cook for the family.
So, I set forth to figure it out, a deep retrospective into my engagement with occupation. I thought I would write quickly, but ha, that didn’t happen. Here it is, a work in progress. Not work, though; let’s call it an unhurried rumination.
Part One:
Delivering the Pioneer Press paper
Ten years old, rolled up papers stuffed into my official paper boy sack, I pedaled away from Marcee Lane, the cul-de-sac haven of my youth, and across Waukegan road toward unfamiliar homes. Strange lawns, few dandelions and no clover—the manicured part of town. I’ve been over here only once, on Halloween because we heard that WGN’s Ray Rayner gave away whole Hershey bars.
Instead of carefully laying the papers on the stoop, I toss them from the street over the fairway and onto the greens. It was ok, but weird. Nobody was ever out, no interaction, and that was fine by me. I was scared of people. Which led to me quitting before my first paycheck. Part of my responsibility was to collect money at the end of the month. Thing was, it was optional to pay for the delivery. This was not the Tribune, just a suburban rag with mostly classified ads in the back along with a few photos of a garden club or the occasional kid with a bunch of puppies (my sister once). I knocked on the first door, waited ten seconds, then thought, “Guess nobody is home” and scurried away. A voice behind me called out, but I was long gone. If I turned back I would be a salesman, and that slow death would never be mine. < one month. Quit.
Lawn Cutting
Middle school/ freshman year. Lawn Boy. Hard work and sweat, cutting grass supporting my baseball card collection and record albums (proud member of Record Club of America). My dad headed up the Marcee Lane block club, so he gave me the plum center island job for $5/week. Also had two neighbors at $10 per—they had big sprawling yards that took forever. Ran over a hornet nest once, but other than that, easy-peasy. The last summer I teamed up with a friend and formed a “business.” Expansion. Enterprise. He saved money and ended up going to Europe and the Munich Olympics. I bought more records. One thing I have to own up to is that a family at the end of the block hired us to cut the grass while they were away for a couple of weeks. We only cut once, but accepted two cut money. I think they knew. Haunts me to this day. 3 summers. Retired.
Jewel bagger, grocery clerk
As soon as I turned 16, I became a bagger at Jewel, and worked there all the way up to college. Starting salary was the minimum wage at the time—$1.80, eventually making $4.80 as a shelf-stocker. Somehow I saved enough from this job (minus my budgeted 3 records per week) to pay for half of my college education. I had a blast. I kind of left any chance of a high school social life behind, but I made all new friends at Jewel. Gary 1 had a ’69 GTO convertible and we would “cruise” on the weekends in Waukegan where they had a classic drag in the town center. He only listened to the Beach Boys, and it was perfect for cruisin’. Two Fonzie thumbs up on that. Gary 2 was a year older and quite a card. Loved Jimi Hendrix. My first concert was Frank Zappa/Captain Beefheart at the International Amphitheater with Gary 2. I don’t think I went to a single high school party. Even though I was friendly with sportos, geeks, and freaks alike, I was paralyzed with shyness when it came to advanced socialization, so my social life revolved around work. My first experience with drinking was at a party thrown by a checker who was a couple years older. Vodka/OJ’s just kept appearing. I got dizzy, and ended up making out with checker, Betty. First kiss with tongue. It’s alive! Got a ride home from a Gary and spun in my bed, the taste of strawberry lip gloss melding with urp, vomit. First time bed spin. Stop this crazy thing!
The most fun was my night crew experience. A group of four of us worked overnight for two weeks while the “Lifers” were on summer vacation. We would eat whatever we wanted and had races on the pallet lifters, often taking out some end stands in the process. “Clean up on aisle five!” We had the radio blasting through the intercom—taped the microphone to “on” and put it up to the transistor speaker.
By the end of the summer I was pretty checked out and ready for college. I was caddying for my favorite teacher who was playing in a Ladies Amateur tournament, and when I told the manager I needed that day off, he wouldn’t give it to me. He had me down for a two hour shift, and when I pointed out how bull shit that was, he fired me on the spot. Three years. Fired.
Wyler Foods: traffic dept. accounting
This was a patronage job. My dad owned a trucking company and I got a job doing books in the transportation department of Wyler Foods following my freshman and sophomore years of college. Nine to five. Office girls. The department boss was a real jag—short guy, Joe, with a foul mouth and a limp. I resented that he made it clear that he was doing my dad a favor. I hated to think that my dad owed him. He was nice to me though, and I worked all day under the supervision of the head accountant, Lorraine, who was a nice, older Italian lady, like a very sweet aunt. She showed me the ropes, and I rocked it. I was fast and reliable, tallying the shipping account receivables against whatever the opposite of that is. I had to reconcile to the penny, or figure out why it was off. She felt sorry for me because I was a total pizza face those two summers. My face was a mess and she was convinced that I need to take zinc supplements to clear it up. To make the zinc effective, she said I needed this, that, and the other thing. In all, I took sixteen pills a day. Didn’t help. I loved the job. I think it was the adding machine, an old Olivetti with a crank that you pulled down to get the total. Peck, peck, peck, peck, crank. The keys had the perfect amount of give. I loved the feel of that machine. If video killed the radio star, electric typewriters killed office machines. I rode my Shwinn nine to five, Monday through Friday, May through August. My bike’s brakes didn’t work. My Converse high tops worn to holes. Two summers. Retired.
Northbrook Park District - landscaping
Summer of my junior year, Wylers was closing, and I worked for the park district cutting grass. It was me on a crew with a few Mexican guys. Language barrier. It was fun to drive the cart, with a shift on the steering column, not the floor. I did the mowing around trees and shrubs to trim (the trimmer hadn’t been invented yet) while the Mexican guys cleaned up on the riding mowers. On lunch break they would empty thermoses of Mexican food (it was the 70’s—I don’t know what that entailed) onto tortillas. I had my pb and j under the shade of an old oak. Jealous. One day I was told I would be painting a chain link fence at the pool. I don’t know if I had ever painted a single thing in my life. They gave me a few gallons of metallic silver paint. I am sure it was toxic. It was meant to cover up the rust of the neglected fence. It was an extremely hot and windy day—the kind that precedes a big storm. As I brushed on the paint in grand strokes, I had no idea how much was blowing back on me. I remember going home and realizing I looked like the tin man from Wizard of Oz. Every inch of skin and and clothes, plus hair was silver. I eventually cleaned it all off with turpentine. It was lead paint. And yet I live to type. One summer. Retired.
Blanding Hall U of Kentucky- front desk midnight shift
This was maybe the worst job I ever had—sit at the front desk of the dorm every Friday night from midnight to 8 a.m. I simply had to make sure that anybody who came past the desk lived in the dorm. Problem was, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open. I tried to read (the smart phone was thirty years away), but that just made it worse. I did wake up when the door swung open. There was one night however, that changed all our lives. I’m not sure what time it was, and I was for sure drifting off, but when a team of paramedics came hustling through the door, I was shocked awake. And then the shock turned to horror when they came back through the lobby, and on the gurney was my best friend, bloody gauze wrapped around both wrists. Our eyes met for the only split second possible, and then I was stuck there the rest of the night. In the coming hours, the rumors started to circulate. He slit his wrists. He came on to T.
T. freaked out. My friend tried to kill himself.
Nobody knew he was gay. Everybody thought he was weird. I knew he was gay, although he had never told me. I liked that he was weird. He introduced me to music that would change the rest of my life. Velvet Underground. Iggy. Patti. I knew he was gay early on freshman year. He seemed infatuated with T., a small-town Kentucky boy with dark, thick-lashed eyes and brown mustache. We all played cards together, watched season one of SNL every week on a tiny black and white t.v., went to UK basketball together. But, at Christmas break, they went to Louisville together to see Bruce Springsteen. They didn’t invite me they said, because I was in Chicago. Of course, they raved about the show. Bruce was skyrocketing to fame based on his amazing shows. I could never quite muster enthusiasm for him after that, even as Born to Run came out.
At the end of that first year, as we made plans to move into one of the Blanding dorms, my friend and T. made plans to room together. I was a bit hurt, this stacked on the Bruce thing, and I sensed they were closer, but I had no idea what that entailed. Things seemed the same. I had a crappy roommate first semester, but after the winter break I moved in with Fred, a guitar player who shared my love of Tangerine Dream, Todd Rundgren, and Monty Python. We could run whole skits together “It took me four hours to bury the cat.” “Four hours to bury the cat?!? We were both wide receivers on our champion flag football team. I was enjoying myself and spending less time with my former best friend and T. And then that winter night.
He did worse than come on to T. He professed his love. T. did freak out. He raised bloody hell. He moved to another dorm. My friend had tried to kill himself. He now had no roommate and nobody in the dorm supported him. This was a time when gay people were harassed at UK (and beyond) and my friend never did come out of the closet. Everybody kept their distance. When my friend came back from the hospital I went to see him. He told me what happened. He gave me the truth. We wondered what would happen. Would he stay in the dorm? Would he be ostracized? And then, the most heroic thing ever happened. One of the guys in our friend group from freshman year, and my best friend’s roommate that year volunteered to move from his dorm (the other Blanding) to be his new roommate. He had heard what happened and also knew the full story. Thing was, B. was the last person who you would think to do this. He was a classic jock, former high school basketball player from Louisville. The rest of the year carried on without incident. I ended up moving into an apartment with my friend and another guy he knew from western Ky., a guitar player who I joined as bass player (learning on the fly) to form The Pods. As for the job, I got some sleep in every Friday through the end of the year.
One semester. Retired.
U of Kentucky basketball referee
This will be the shortest entry. I got paid $5 a game to referee intramural basketball. Mind you that $5 bought a new record album back then. Aside from having to deal with asshole frat boys who didn’t like my offensive charge calls, the only thing I remember was a game that featured members of the Kentucky Wildcat football team. Art Still, who went on to star in the NFL as a defensive end with the Chiefs, threw down some fierce hang-on-the-rim dunks. Dunks were against the intramural rules, so I had to “T” him up. He just laughed—Art was always a happy guy. One semester. Retired.
Construction crew
’Twas summer of ’78 following my junior year at UK, and I decided to stay in Lexington to work. I had a couple of roommates, both of whom I mentioned in a previous post. We lived in an apartment in the back of a typically split up college town house. My room was in the attic—small, but cozy, unless I stood up too quickly and hit my head on the slanted ceiling. It was a magical summer, really, unhurried and surrounded by my friends. We drove all over the place in Chris’s classic Red VW bus—to the Smoky Mountains, High Bridge/Kentucky River, and concerts in Cincinnati and Louisville. The job was a trip. Chris was a licensed electrician who worked for a small company that did rehab construction and room additions. I was going to be assistant to Chris at $5 an hour and do any other jobs asked of me.
We started at 7 a.m. each day and worked until five. Growing up, I had not done too much in the way of “handy” work. In fact, I was pretty bad at most everything having to do with construction. With instructions to get myself a hammer, I showed up at our first job site which was to be a room addition on a house. When the boss, Paul, saw me and my hammer he just laughed and said, “I need you to tear down that wall over there.” Earnestly, I went over and started hacking at the brick, Paul and the rest of the crew, Saul and Jimmy laughing hysterically. The head of the hammer I had bought at Sears snapped off on the third hit. It was basically a toy and he knew it when he assigned the job. Humiliated, I took the sledge he gave me and got to work.
There was no job I did very well other than tuning the radio to the classic rock station. That summer I heard “Miss You” a thousand times. We were a bit peeved that the Stones had gone disco, but the song did worm its way into my heart. We saw the tour at Rupp Arena that year.
Every day on the job was slightly different, mostly helping Chris with electric stuff. Early on, he did this thing where he said, “Hold my hand,” then grabbed a live wire. He wanted to show me how he could be the conductor while I got jolted. Funny joke. Shocking lesson to never trust Chris. I was the guy that had to crawl under houses with wiring to pull across to where Chris would pull it up. I was always cleaning the dirt and spider webs out of my hair. Once, I had to drag something in the unfinished attic. We had laid insulation after putting up the dry wall ceiling, and as I navigated the beams, I lost my balance. Somehow, as I headed downward, I managed to land my forearm on the beam to catch myself. If I had fallen through that ceiling, Paul might have killed me. As I tried to shower that night, realizing that insulation was really shards of glass and that it was embedded, I questioned whether I could return the next day. I did finish out the summer, only one more bad incident ahead (I fell off the roof into a hedge while trying to shingle), but I did live to tell the story. May through August. Retired.
Walgreens assistant manager
Hey, hey, college grad with a bachelor of business from University of Kentucky. 1979, okay? Unemployment at 7%. Inflation12%. Recession looming. The job fair toward the end of senior year was a bust. White shirt IBM Lexington clean-cut scooped up local legacy frat boys. No scraps for you. I returned to Northbrook and opened the local paper to the classifieds. Ew. Interviewed with Sears because my uncle worked as a lawyer for them. Nothing. Interviews with medical sales company. Nothing. Interviews with Walgreens. You’re hired. $9,800 to start as an assistant manager. I went to school for this? It was okay. I knew retail from my Jewel experience, and now I was doing managerial things like checking in all the cash registers and closing the store. There was no challenge. Someday, if I played my cards right, I could be a manager, or even a district manager! My store manager got caught by corporate security walking out with a six pack of beer and assorted snacks. Busted! There goes your dream, buddy! Three months into my training, I resigned. This won’t look good on your permanent record, kid. Thing is, my girlfriend, who was still in Lexington, was trying to convince me to come back. I do not know why. She was my first girlfriend in four years of college, coming into my life at the very end of my final semester and kept me on a string, like a yo-yo, confusing the hell out of me, but she wanted me back. Hey Walgreens—see ya’ suckers! 3 months. Quit.
UPS loading dock
Back in Lexington for the fall of 1979, now a college graduate in a college town. I documented my first day back in the song, Life On a String. “All my records packed in the trunk”. When I pulled up to a party at my old roommate’s house, it was very exciting. Everybody was so happy to see me, and my girlfriend would soon show up and we would go to her new house where I would share her space along with three other roomies. When she got there, it was immediately weird. She hugged me warmly, but she had shown up with a young woman in a leather jacket and short spiky hair who seemed to be hovering a bit too close. When we got back to her place, and we went up to our bedroom, she dropped the bomb. “I should have told you sooner”, but things had “changed.” She was very attracted to this new person, and it was hard to describe, etc, etc, etc, but we were going to have to be “just friends.” I bolted out of there angry and confused, but mostly hurt. Ok, devastated. I drove back over to the party which was dying down, told the story, and was given a place to sleep until I could find something new. I couldn’t go back to Chicago. That would have been even more humiliating. So, I found a studio apartment near campus, and set out for a new job. First, I tried to convince the local Walgreens that I had management skills, but they could only put me on as a cashier. I found a seasonal job at UPS on the loading dock, unloading boxes. Good thing I had that degree. The most memorable thing there was the crew I was with. A few of the guys were members of the UK football team. Season now over. These were not the starters, those guys, I learned, got ghost jobs on horse farms, a way to get kick-backs in style. They could come out, glad hand with the alumni, and collect a check. I schlepped boxes, four hours a day, for two months. November/December. Let go.
Porter Paints assistant manager
After seeing in the new year and new decade, and playing bass in a punk rock band, I found myself leaving it all for Florida. Really long story how I got there, (told in my story/song, North of Wasteland) but I was back with the girlfriend that had convinced me to move to Lexington. We had gotten back together in the spring of 1980, and now she was headed to where her parents lived inland a ways from West Palm Beach with designs on an acting career, and encouraged me to join her. Florida was not my bag, really, and job prospects still were not good anywhere in America, and who was I fooling, Sherri was my only occupation.
After the local papers turned up squat, I went to a job recruiter. The pickings were extremely slim, but they got me a starting management position at a Porter Paint store in Delray Beach, on A1A, just across the street from the beach. My job to start was to run the register and make up the gallons of paint, and eventually do the books. It was a small operation and there were only three of us in the store. On weekdays, there was a huge rush by the contractors picking up what they needed for their days’ work, and the rest of the day devoted to housewives and small projects. If you go to a Home Depot today with a project in mind, you can show the employee the card and number of what you want, they program it in and let the computer do the rest. Back in 1980, they had the cards and numbers, but the rest was done by hand, and I had to manually squirt a prescribed combination of colors into the gallon of base and put in on the mixer. The real fun was when somebody brought in a sample of something they wanted to match. I had to use my limited experience and intuition to get it close to what’s they wanted. It was a challenge, but it was really the best part of the job.
I worked six days a week (on Saturday’s we closed at noon), and rode my bike home for lunch every day. You could set your watch to the daily downpour of rain, where the humidity demanded the skies release twenty minutes of water. I wasn’t paid much and had to pay the agency back, so I didn’t save any money, but I was living with my girlfriend and acting in a summer stock theater production of Moliere’s The Miser at South Atlantic University.
Back at the paint store, there are two days that stand out. The first was the busiest of my tenure, the day of an approaching hurricane, and droves of people coming for painters tape to mitigate against window damage. All day long we had the transistor radio on, which would give coordinates for the path of the hurricane. We plotted the hurricane on a map, and you could directly see and predict where this thing was headed. It ended up swinging north. Like the old days of using a road atlas, the tactile experience and problem solving was a thrill. I do love GPS and how it has made life so easy, but I have to think our brains are changing without having to solve things anymore.
My other memory was accidentally spilling an entire five gallon container of white primer into the cavernous trunk of a brand new Cadillac. I tried to clean it up, but made an even bigger mess. I’ll never forget the kindness of the woman who owned the car. I was profusely apologetic and frantic, and was making an even bigger mess. She actually said to not worry, she would take it somewhere to get cleaned. I’m sure she felt sorry for me.
By the end of the summer, I realized that my future was not in Florida. Porter Paints was offering me a raise and my own store to manage in Boca Raton. I was intrigued because Boca had something of a punk scene and a cool record store, but I just couldn’t see my life there. For the first time, I was the one to break up a relationship before getting my heart broken.
Six months. Quit.
A.C. Nielsen marketing researcher
This would be my first real post college work. Soon after getting back to Chicago, I found out from a Kentucky friend that he was working for A.C. Nielsen in my hometown of Northbrook—and they were hiring. I was ready to get serious and work for a company for the rest of my life until I could put my feet up with a gold watch and nest egg. That was still the reasonable expectation in 1980. Nielsen was legendary in my mind—t.v. ratings people—who didn’t know The Nielsen Ratings? The job I would be doing, however, had little to do with television. Nielsen also did high quality market research for the grocery/drug store world. Clients paid for information compiled by scores of field reps assigned across the country.
Training took place on the then modern corporate campus, and I was one of a couple dozen of new recruits. There was a fake store with products on the shelves, and our job, once in the field would be to take inventories by hand with pencil and binder, noting promotional and positional product placement.
At the end of the training, the whole U.S. was possible for an assignment destination. My one request was to please, please assign me to a major city. Anywhere. Just be major.
I was assigned to Horseheads, New York. This was the smallest possible place to be assigned. Really? I guess they figured they needed somebody in that region, and I was most likely to stick it out. So, on Easter weekend of 1981, I checked into a hotel ready to work.
My assignments would take me all over central New York. I had a number of stores to inventory on my own, and I would meet crews in places like Binghamton and Ithaca. I drove my new Fiat Strada all over the place. Got an apartment in a classic old house with creaky wood floors. Neighbors were nice enough, but not really in the same age/interests category. It didn’t take long for the loneliness to build. I could get my work done in less than forty hours a week, with half of it possible to do from home. I’d package up my work to send to Fond Du Lac for processing. I had tons of free time. I had a Pentax camera, no television, a stereo, and my old roommate’s ‘67 Telecaster. I’d wander the town, alone with the voice in my head sounding more desperate by the day. I had a tic where I would touch each of my fingertips to my thumb as I walked. Over and over. I can still see myself walking through the park, wondering why I was doing that. I felt invisible, yet intensely self-conscious. In retrospect, I think I was close to a breakdown.
Every night, I’d dive into my Neil Young Zuma songbook where it showed how to make the chords. I read a lot. I felt desperate a lot. I had to get out. One weekend, I decided to make the drive to New York City for a first time visit. I had no plan. I drove down from the north of course, and I figured I would head to Times Square, park, and look around. I came in through what I thought might be Harlem, but who knows. I finally made it through the traffic to Times Square and parked. Twenty bucks? You gotta be kidding! It was mid-day when I stepped out of the garage and went to cross the street. Looked up, because, New York, and just avoided getting hit by a taxi. I found myself outside of Bond’s International Casino. I recognized it because I had been picking up the Village Voice in Elmira and knew the Clash had a sold out run there. Thing was, I didn’t know, was that they added a matinee show. A guy asked if I wanted to buy a ticket. It wasn’t even being scalped, and it was dirt cheap. It felt like a ripoff, but when I walked in, quickly found how real it was. The Brattles opened and the Clash ripped the roof off the joint. Sandinista! After the show, I got back in my car and drove back to Elmira.
I ended up making many trips to NY after that, always hitting Bleeker Bob’s for a stack of post punk imports. I saw a couple of shows, both at the Ritz. The first was Gang of Four with a very young, pre-Chronic Town R.E.M opening. I bought the Radio Free Europe 7”. Go4 was my favorite band at the time, and it was an amazing show. I danced the whole time, alone, together with everybody else. These trips saved me from losing it.
In the meantime, work was easy, too easy, but I enrolled in a photography class at the art museum and learned to develop my own photos. I don’t think my technique was all that good, but I had an eye for framing things. There was a show of the classes’ work and I felt excited to be part of something. Still, I had my sights set elsewhere. I had to get home to Chicago, but you couldn’t ask for a transfer until you put in a full year. So, I moved to Ithaca.
I had a store that I inventoried in Ithaca at the top of the hill leading to campus from downtown, so I appreciated what it was. Ithaca is a beautiful town, for sure. I got an apartment on State Street in the heart of the area closed to traffic. I had acquired the Moosewood cookbook when I still lived in Northbrook where I had become a vegetarian. And now the Moosewood was just a couple of blocks away. I used to open my windows to the foot traffic of the street mall, blasting P.I.L. Metal Box and Mission of Burma just hoping someone would notice, knock on my door, and be my friend. No luck. I attended a weekly reggae night at a local club. Saw Peter Tosh there. Didn’t make any friends. Still lonely. That soon changed.
My friend from the U of Kentucky dorms, who had moved to San Diego, had a friend he was going to set me up with—a blind date. She was from Wayne, New Jersey and was home for the holidays and I would meet her at her brother’s house and drive into the city for a date. We had plans to go to the infamous Mudd Club.
Susan was cool, and we hit it off right away. I had been so freaking lonely, and it was really nice to meet somebody who shared my musical tastes. Driving to the Mudd Club was not so easy. In my head, I remember White Street, and I don’t know if that is the street it was on, but in any regard it was difficult to find. And Susan, who I thought knew the city a bit, got totally lost and took us over the Brooklyn Bridge. We finally found the club. Wall of Voodoo played. Fun night. And we hit it off. Saw New Order at Peppermint Lounge. Susan moved across the country to Ithaca with her cat, Aurora, and I was lonely no more. Eventually, I got the transfer back to Chicago, cat in tow, with Susan to follow after I found an apartment. Got a place near the tracks on the south side of Lunt. Renamed the cat, Pigeon, because he would sit in the window stalking the flock of grey city doves in the eaves just feet away from him through the glass. And Aurora was a crappy name for this wild boy who must have had mountain lion in his blood.
Starting back with Nielsen soon had me thinking maybe I should have been more careful with what I wished for. Where the upstate New York assignment was pretty much a breeze, Chicago was a slog, and the work week often got up to 60 hours. We worked on a “flex” contract which meant you got paid the same whether you worked 30 hours (as I had in Ithaca) or 60. Sixty became the norm. I did enjoy driving all over the city, and we got reimbursed by the mile at a decent rate. My assignments would take me to just about every neighborhood in the city and suburbs. I knew every hot dog joint there was. There were no bad ones in Chicago.
The places I worked at were often unpleasant. Sometimes, where I went through boxes, rats would scurry around. I had to go through shipping and receiving records too, and I could tell from their dirty looks, which stores cooked the books.
I liked going into the Northbrook hq again, and it was nice to be closer to my parents again. Something was missing though. I had played bass in a punk band during my post college Lexington year, and I wanted to find a band to join. I scoured the Reader for opportunities and failed the one audition I went to. I was trying out as a guitar player, which I barely knew how to play. I had spirit though.
It turns out my relationship wasn’t the same, and it was evident it had been born more out of loneliness than love. Overworked, not in love, and looking for something more as a musician, changes would be coming.
Exit Susan, enter Janet Bean. Spring 1983. I wish it had been as easy as that sounds. But within a few months, Janet would be moving to Chicago to attend Columbia College. She set up in an apartment in a Boho building across the street from me w/ the train tracks and Heartland Cafe a block away. Before long, Janet and I were jamming. She got a job at the Heartland where she worked with Shu Shubat, an artistic woman with similarly undeveloped musical aspirations, who filled out the band using my bass and amp. We came up with the name, Eleventh Dream Day which Shu warned must be spelled out for karmic reasons.
I continued to work, the band made a demo which got into the hands of some people who spread the word, and we made a very quick climb into the Chicago music scene and onto WNUR college radio where the buzz put us on the main stage at the Armadillo Day spring festival in 1984.
On weekends, we would pile into my tiny Fiat with our amps, and even friend Raoul Stober, and travel to Lexington, Louisville and Cincinnati. Janet and I wanted a bigger, more aggressive sound for the band and Shu quit when we started auditioning guitar players. Baird Figi, who we had met at Round Records, eventually joined the band (we also auditioned a young Jim Ellison), and he brought in Doug McCombs who also worked at the store and could replace a fleeing Shu on bass. The band that you know today truly formed then in 1985, and with the momentum we had already achieved at home and in the English fanzine world, we rapidly climbed the ladder. Sue Miller started throwing us $50 opening slots at West End and then Cubby Bear. We opened for The Feelies, Replacements, Slickee Boys, and The Wipers. Then Joe Shanahan brought us to the Metro stage to open for The Long Ryders. This one, and the opening slot for the Meat Puppets really got our name out there, and our first ep plus Prairie School Freakout got international attention.
Back at work, I was only thinking about the band really, but I was good at my job. In fact, I don’t think there was anybody as fast or as accurate as me. I was extremely reliable. And although I might play a gig in Minneapolis at the Uptown on a Sunday night, I’d be there at the inventory in the morning, shirt changed, with tie attached while we got gas. In all fairness, I should have been offered a job in client services. That was the pinnacle in terms of money and prestige at Nielsen, and I kept getting passed over. Perhaps it was my look. I did stick out a bit in hair style and I preferred skinny new wavy ties over the double wides of the day. I also got leap-frogged by a couple of less experienced women, because Nielsen, like many other companies of that era had zero females in the upper echelons of the company and they need to catch up. It was affirmative action for sure, but I got it, and agree with it to this day. (It was all white back then too!) The thing that really got my goat though was the Reagan era changes that seeped in. I found myself having to train part-timers to do my job. These part-timers didn’t have to go through the same process that we went through and were thrown into the fire, They dragged down our teams and were incompetent and unreliable. But Nielsen didn’t have to give them benefits or profit sharing like I had. That’s when the fabric of America changed, my friends, under Ronald Reagan, who shifted the paradigm toward unrestrained corporate profit and trickle down economics. The loyal, company man would be no more. David Byrne would ask the musical question, “How did we get here?” Ronnie effing Reagan.
It was 1988. The band had done self-booked tours West and East, and Prairie School Freakout was hitting the college charts with New Rose getting us distributed in Europe. Janet and I decided to get married. We had a show booked at Metro with a honeymoon jaunt to Europe to hunt down all those people who had sent us fan mail to see if they would host us on their futons as we back-packed and Euro-railed across the continent. The only way to make this possible; resign my job of eight years.
I called my boss, who I really liked, to set up a meeting to tell him the news. He told me that the company wanted a meeting with me to give me some news. Hmmmm. So, I sat down with Art and somebody way up the food chain from him. They explained that I was being offered a new opportunity and a massive raise that would almost double my salary. It wasn’t the client service job I had sought—it was something brand spanking new. A new technology using scanners at grocery checkouts was rolling out in the area, and so that Nielsen would be on top of the technological shift, I was being offered a job where I would have an integral part of it moving forward with the electronic developments. We had already moved away from doing our work on paper in favor of hand held computing and this was a logical next step.
Ummm, thanks, I sputtered. I appreciate that you thought of me for this, I sputtered. But I, sputter, sputter, am resigning. Pffft. I quit. Gathered up my profit sharing pile that had accrued and quit. Eight years. No gold watch.
Next;
Act 2:
“Rock star”
Obviously, this title is a joke. Doug used to say in his fake Mafioso voice, “Hey, Mr. Rock Star.” in a way that reminded us that while we were on Atlantic Records, home of some of the most famous, that we were somewhere else on the ladder. There are different levels of stardom in this world. Superstar. You hear Aretha, you know who that is. Madonna. Prince. Even Bob or Neil or Van. People who can’t walk anywhere without being noticed and surrounded by fans. Then you have that level of stardom where you rake in the cash, but maybe you can go to the store. We were the stars somewhere below that.
I remember when I first started playing gigs, for $50 opening slots at the Cubby Bear. Uncles at family gatherings would say, “There he is, the rock star.” Because I was doing it, baby. Living the dream. There may have been a bit of mockery there, but lots of respect and maybe a bit of awe. I was playing on stages. For people. They weren’t. Ever notice how many middle- aged lawyers are in a “band”? It’s got cachet, baby.
As Eleventh Dream Day started getting airplay, and we had a record out on tiny Amoeba records, I became aware that when I went to shows, some people were whispering to each while looking in my direction. Hey, isn’t that the guy…from that band. And then sometimes at the grocery store in line. “Hey, I like your band.”
When we got signed to Atlantic I knew it was a big deal, but I had a hard time feeling it. Life didn’t seem different. I still wore my genuinely ripped jeans (before they manufactured them that way) and tee. I was still not rich and certainly not famous. I tried to convince myself it was something. I remember telling my parents, who had no clue what it meant, that, you know Dad, it’s kind of like if I was a baseball player, and I got signed to the Cubs. The majors.
On Atlantic, we did all kinds of things that were much higher profile. We were at the top of the college radio charts for a long while which meant airplay on MTV 120 Minutes each week, and eventually a tv interview. Rolling up to Atlantic h.q. at 75 Rockefeller like the Beverly Hillbillies was a thrill. Hey, there’s Ahmut’s office. I think I saw the back of his head. No, he’s not here today. The folks we worked with at Atlantic on the whole made us feel like stars, although some of the older satin jacket vets seemed skeptical. Playing a show in NYC, getting out of the van, professional autograph seekers hedging on the bet that we’d someday make their hour wait worth it, felt good.
Our first time playing in London we had a fancy ass photo shoot. We were set up in a posh hotel just to hang out in to wait and do a couple of pressers. We got to the photo studio where they did our hair and makeup. I pretty much looked like me. Janet, on the other hand, was in the hands of a stylist with a vision. She got a hairdo. She forgot a certain top back at the hotel that she wanted to wear. “Rick, can you go back to get it?” Sure. Get me out of there for awhile. We had been driven in a Bentley limousine with tinted windows, keep the meter running, Jeeves. I got spirited back to the hotel for the retrieval, and if there was one day I felt like a bonafide R.S. it was that day. I could see out at all the people gawking to figure out which star was in the Bentley. Rick, bitches.
Touring, of course, is a grind. The shows were the treat. I wrote a piece called, The Tick, where I detail a day in the life. It’s mundane. It’s zen.
Looking back, the best of the best, the starriest of all, was living at Prince and Mott in Little Italy for a month while recording El Moodio. We had three floors next to Ray”s Pizza. Initially, we were offered Keith Richard’s NYC apartment above Tower Records, but management was worried because there was a spiral staircase and we had a toddler. Rock star plus baby equals not rock star. I assure you.
And finally, Doug, lest you think yourself a star, put us all in our places, when before a glorious show at 1st Avenue in Minneapolis, at a meet ‘n greet with radio and record store and label folks, asked the waitress what the most expensive beer on the menu was, and when she brought a Belgian raspberry Lambic, he took a deep inhale on his Drum, rolled cigarette, and with pinky out, dropped it hissing down the long beautiful neck of that bottle. Mr. Rock Star.
Atlantic Records November 1989-1993, retired.
Kaleidoscope Records shipping department 1988-1990
I held a number of part time jobs during the Atlantic run. I think it was the poorest I’d ever been on my own. The band lived really well while on tour, but when home, funds dried up in a hurry. Tour support with twenty dollar per diems was the only income. There were no royalties and we were forbidden to sell our own music at concerts. T-shirt sales were on the razor’s edge of the profit/loss line. So, a $5 an hour job at a record distributor was not too little to ignore.
Kaleidoscope Records, Des Plaines, Illinois. Nick, the Greek Tony Soprano boss who hired me on Bettina’s (?) recommendation. Not always happy eyes, but frequent goofy grin. Answered to his silent partner and money source, Shirley (only saw her a few times). What I remember in the next paragraphs may be spotty. What happened at Kaleidoscope stayed at Kaleidoscope. No written records exist other than the essential read, You’re With Stupid, in which Bruce Adams recounts his experience.
I arrived on day knowing no one. Looking back all these years, I can see how most of my favorite lasting friends are from that short period of time. Dan Koretzky was head of shipping and after meeting Nick (“You’re my favorite guitarist”), I reported as the new shipping clerk. Dan, who in a few years would co-found Drag City records, was the guy who he would always be. Driest of wit, cuttingest of wit, wittiest of wit, who would generally pose a question before giving a directive, Dan was extremely competent and a perfect manager. He got shit done and everybody pulled toward his goals. The goal was to have everything the salesmen sold that day picked and packed in a box for the end of day U.P.S. pickup. Late salesmen (the enemy) orders were mocked and scoffed at, but we got them out. The price was the shipping department’s wrath. We were like the modern IT department snobs. Ultimately, the rest of the universe needed us. And like I said, the pay was $5/hour.
I can’t remember the order of who came into shipping when, but I know Garrett and George were there before me. Garrett was a good-natured well meaning dance clubby kind of guy. Hip in his crowd maybe, but this was not his crowd. Got the brunt of George’s “jokes.” George was just out of the local high school, knew Shirley, and loudly announced on his arrival, “Halsted!” Halsted, as in the street, Halsted as in Boys-Town. George was letting us know we were all “fags.” Music nerds and fags. George was the kind of asshole jock who may or may not have ridden up and down Halsted for fun, looking to kick somebody’s ass. George’s yearbook might have predicted “most likely to be at a J-6 riot”. But somehow, we worked together, and laughed off most of what he said. We mocked him back.
Business got very brisk. Grunge and Sub Pop were taking off, still pre-Nevermind. Distributors like ours were cutting into major label dollars. We hired a ton of people. Dave Marr, Brendan Murphy and Alex Iko (we called him “Axel”) were Lincoln Park High friends of Dan’s. We had a blast together. We played the music loud back there and the jokes and insults greased the day. Alex had a crush on one of the girls who worked near the front offices, Suzy. And then the Texans arrived. Originally from the band, Scratch Acid, new arrivals at Kaleidoscope were singer David Yow and bassist David Sims. They were in the nascent stages of Jesus Lizard and we got Yow in shipping while Sims went to accounting. That 100 yard stare that D Wm. Sims possesses on stage also seems to work on numbers. Yow was a riot and quite possible the sweetest, kitty-cat loving pussy cat I’ve ever known. I still want to just hug him. One time he came rushing up to me holding a box he was packing, brimming with white packing peanuts, holding it in front of him and pleading with me to find a c.d. he was looking for. “C’mon, David, I thought, as I reached deep into the box, scraping aside the peanuts only to discover that David had made a hole in the box and had inserted his penis for some sap to find. Good one, David. Long before Timeberlake/Samberg. I’ve seen David’s genitals far more than seems reasonable. The “bloomin’rose” of Texas. David also handled the grill at my very wild 33rd birthday party. His skirt steak tacos will never be matched.
We were hard on Sales. The two Texans, Patrick and John, were all over Wax Trax, which made the most money, and were really good at their jobs. They got the most shit from shipping. I must apologize. While I did not directly partake in the crap thrown their way, I feel complicit. And sorry. The aforementioned Bruce was there (Dan called him Gomez for some reason), he had a healthy sales niche carved out and then there was Charlie. Nobody would give Charlie shit, Charlie was a guru. On his last day, soon to open The Quaker Goes Deaf store in Wicker Park, Charlie stripped naked and took a couple laps throughout the building. Dan moved up to sales at some point with Garrison and I ran the packing tape. I got bumped to sales at the end, but my heart was forever in shipping.
By the end, Janet Bean was also there with Diane working with David in accounting. Nick had Janet sit where he could leer at her. One time, he plopped a clothes catalogue on her desk and told her to pick out a nice bathing suit. She was eating lunch, prompting him to comment, “Never eat a banana in front of a Greek man.”
The one tragedy that occurred in my time there happened after David’s arrival. Axel’s crush, Suzy, and Yow hit it off. Eventually married. Axel broke. He was despondent. I wrote a song. And that should help with the timeline of this chapter.
Two years. Retired.
Drag City, shipping department
With momentum from his sales experience at Kaleidoscope, Dan created Drag City records with then film editor, Dan Osborne. The label existed at Dan K’s third floor apartment on Erie Street, a few blocks east of Ashland, two doors down from the house my dad grew up in. I lived on Huron a couple blocks away, and would help Dan when he got product and supply shipments. Dan had good taste. Understatement. Dan was a visionary. Not only did he put out records by Palace Brothers, Gastr Del Sol, and King Kong, all from Louisville before it was on the indie map, he took a chance on a quirky band named, Pavement. Smog? Bands would just send him tapes, and he would say to me, “Rose, reach in and grab one out.” I don’t know how he did it, but he had a unique sense of low-fi brilliance. Split with the bands fifty-fifty. Handshake. Pavement left for Matador, but look who stayed. None of them had to. I started coming over once a week to take care of mail orders. Beginnings of computerized data base. Shipping label stickers. If you got a package from Drag City in the nineties, I packed it, put the label on it and took it to the post office. Hardest job was assembling the Shellac 7” with physical photo attached photo album style. Very labor intensive. Neil and Jennifer Trux stayed with Dan for a week or three. Dan was growing as quickly as his decisions turned into the best records of the year. Operations moved to Peoria Street loft. Thank god, a freight elevator. It got to be too much for me. I was in school trying to get a teaching certificate and new career, working late at the Rainbo Club, and raising a baby. Once I got my first teaching job, I stayed on a while, but had to break it to Dan that I was leaving. Initially he looked at me like a mob boss who knew he would have to have me killed, but he understood.
Working with Dan, and then Rian Murphy was the most fun I’ve ever had on a job. Those two are the smartest, funniest people I know. To this day. Being in the D.C. orbit got me some interesting gigs too. I toured the states with Will and Palace in 1997, and a group of shows with Smog in 2000. I played on a Smog record and a Plush single. I recorded twice with Edith Frost, finding myself playing bass surrounded by Jim O’Rourke, David Grubbs and Sean O’Hagan. What? I was a heckler at the Drag City Invitational. I played in Chestnut Station, best party band of all-time. Our pinnacle was the NYE Y2K party where we covered Prince’s 1999 at least three times. Met David Berman that night. What a label in a city of great labels. Well done Drag City.
1991-2001, retired
Rainbo Club bartender 1989-2002
I’ve written about my history with the Rainbo Club before, so I’m going to simply describe the actual job. I had been a customer for some years, but after returning from a long post-Nielsen trip to Europe, I needed to make money. Dee Taira, who pretty much only hired artists, gave me my first shift as a bar back on Friday nights. As the next baker’s dozen years unfolded, Dee would always let me come back from any length of tour to my Friday nights. Best. Boss. Ever. Eventually, I would bar back with Ken Ellis, he of the iron fist and quilting, on Sunday nights. I got my own night, Tuesdays where I got to spin records, ultimately the best job at the Rainbo because you could control the pulse of the room.
As the Eighties ended, the Rainbo became the epicenter of Wicker Park. My co-workers were musicians (Johnny and John) and label heads (Bettina), filmermakers (Braden and Stephen) and painters (Gary). The layout of the bar was like theater-in-the-round and the bartenders were on stage. It could be packed like sardines (and on Friday after ten it always was), but we had room to roam. Customers, also artists, musicians and restauranteurs, crowded three or four deep to get your attention for a one dollar tap of Leinenkugel. So many wonderful customers over the years. Mwah. I love you. I would someday meet my wife, Mary, who would come in with a group of film industry folks. Mary was a teacher. We got a lot of teachers. We called one group of beautiful ladies, “the Marms” (as in school marms). Kenny’s crew showed up for him when he was working. Occasionally, we’d host a concert on the original tiny stage behind the bar. Yo La Tengo, High Llamas, Mike Watt and Kira, my band, Palace Brothers, Smog, Neil Hamburger, etc. In the earlier years the old timers would be there at 4 p.m. and guys like Phil would hold court. These were legit contemporaries of Nelson Algren. Eventually, the nineties saw them fade, especially as the neighborhood became gentrification ground point zero. The Billboard article blew the place up. Urge Overkill and Liz Phair frequented the section of bar stage right, and their rocket to stardom brought a spotlight to the bar and neighborhood. Movie stars and luminaries were the norm. Cusack, Piven, Flea, Penn (sans Teller) were given the same rude bartender treatment as anybody else. For the record, I was nice to everyone. Unless, you tried “too hard” to get my attention or held your money in my face.
I loved this job. You had to hustle. There was not a spare moment. Sure, there were pre-rush opportunities to lean over the bar to chat up a crush, but as it got busy, your co-workers gave you the stink eye if you flirted too much. There were too many drinks to pour and ring up on that classic cha-ching register, too many dishes to wash, and too many kegs to change. To do the job well, you had to keep moving. The adrenaline made the hours pass like minutes. The air was stifling back then. Cigarette smoke filled the room like San Francisco fog. If secondhand smoke is a killer, ya missed me!
Eventually, as my teacher career started, I had to give it all up. I unplugged from the scene. I was going to miss the people and the money, but Wicker Park was quickly becoming overrun by yahoos. Go into the Rainbo Club today and it is exactly the same place. Dee is still hiring musicians and artists. It’s more than a bar, it’s a Chicago historical treasure
As a side bar, I also held down the Thursday nights for a few years at Rainbo satellite, The Bluebird. Much different vibe. Slower. One night that stood out: During the Bulls championship era, two guys came in who started chatting up two nurses at the bar. These guys quickly let it be known that they were bodyguards for Dennis Rodman. Classic “deez and doze, so he sez, he sez to me” guys flirting hard. “Nurses are da real heroes. Fuck firemen. Hey, I wouldn’t actually fuck a fireman, you know what I mean.” Rodman anecdotes got them nowhere.
Thirteen years, Bartender, retired
Empire Records part time clerk, Sundays
I have a letter I wrote to my mom in the early eighties where I tell her my best bud from childhood, Pat Daly, had plans to open a record store. At the time it was my dream job and I hoped that maybe I could work for him. Be careful what you wish for. The “rock star” years were over and I needed to supplement the Rainbo income. I was trying to put myself through school to become a teacher. Pat hired me to work Sundays at the Cicero Avenue shop. Although Empire had a heyday with the Wilmette store and great rock crit monthly, Sunday’s on Cicero sucked. There was one day when nobody came in. Usually a smattering of people, mostly wanting to browse and get warm before they got on the bus at the stop just outside the door. I mostly listened to records and read. I did have some memorable days of buying records. Vintage Buck Owens and Webb Pierce. A guy came in with a box of seventies Krautrock. This was an era when some people would sell their vinyl for nothing because they had either recorded their records to cassettes or they were replacing their collections with cds. Those records never made it to the shelves. Neu, Cluster, and Aamon Dul didn’t make it past the middle man.
One or two years of Sunday’s, retired.
Next: Act 3. Mr. Rizzo, teacher, professor.
Chicago Public Schools 1998-2012
Columbia College Chicago professor 2010-2024
North Park University professor 2012-2022
