the last time i saw the judge, my uncle, was at my mother's funeral. a sad affair but sadder still was seeing the judge in a state of near incapacitation. all those years of living w/the genetically defective jones heart, all the surgeries, all the hospitalizations had rendered him a shell of his former self. don't get me wrong; bill was no bobo. he'd actually gotten his law degree & ultimately became a judge. but there was in him that bobo trait of near childish mischief, the dirty little boy.
we were loading the judge into a van, his walker & oxygen tank making it an awkward excerise. there had been the long goodbyes(i hadn't seen any of these people in years.) & it was time to leave. bill had finally gotten settled in the passenger side front seat, when he said to no one in particular, " you know what i miss?" there was a long silence & everyone stopped doing whatever they were doing when he continued, " i miss the outrigger."
activity quickly resumed. no one addressed his wistful observation. no one WANTED to address it. the outrigger was familial thin ice. a funeral wasn't the time to go skating.
i've thought about that moment on & off for a while now. how many other people there "missed the outrigger" i wondered. i'm not sure that anything worthwhile came out of all the years of the outrigger. i will say that there are a few things i do miss, things of no real significance, moments of fun, embarrassing moments. i may write about some of them but i've been thinking of one thing in particular lately: music.
specifically, the music i was lucky enough to be exposed to during the outrigger years. this exposure prevented me from developing the "bradley syndrome," the goofy belief that great music stopped being produced sometime in the late 70s. this exposure ran the gamut of "underground" music of the time. rem, husker du, nirvana, firehose, jesus and mary chain & a lot more. the band that's stuck w/me longest, the band i still return to from that time, the band that represents in my mind that time, the locus of outrigger hijinks & shame is the replacements.
the 'mats(as their rabid fans call them)were out of minneapolis & formed in 1979. they came crashing to an ugly smashup in 1991: the perfect 80s band. the first album of theirs that i heard was "don't tell a soul." i was hooked from the first song & it's reference to "lipsync chicks."the raucous nearly ferocious rock beat & the heavily fuzzed out guitars drew me in but it was the lyrics that floored me: naive & cynical, self-referential & self-denying, downright hilarious & sometimes sad. they summed up the brains of the outfit(westerburg). of course, the stinsons & cris mars were the heartbeat of the band. i didn't know until later that this album was the beginning of the end, that it's very thin of veneer of quality production was seen as a "sell out." all i knew was that i was looking forward to their next album, "all shook down."
the 'mats seemed to sum up the outrigger. their craziness just seemed like the soundtrack to a day in the life at the outrigger. i saw them live at the saenger theater. they had quite a rep for crazy live shows. i suppose they lived up to that rep. westerberg staggered around drunk & ended up throwing his mic into the stage lights where it remained dangling worthlessly. the show was pretty worthless too. having a rep is one thing; actually seeing the behavior that lead to the rep is another thing altogether. kind of like the outrigger. hearing the outrigger stories is far more entertaining than having lived through them.
"all shook down" came out in 1990. i thought it was a terrific album. most of their fans hated it. it will still evoke strong negative emotions from the band's fans. they got a grammy nomination, the kiss of death(at the time)for an underground band. i was happily oblivious to all that. the songs hit home just as accurately as before. "one wink at a time" reminded me of jayne. "attitude" was all dona.
the songs were even uncanny. there was a huge new orleans outrigger trip sometime in the late 80s. by some odd(& probably evil)coincidence, the grateful dead(w/jerry)& george michael(w/o talent)were scheduled to play on the same weekend. i got tickets to george michael for nat's b'day present & the outrigger kids all bought tickets for the dead. a lot happened on this trip: couples got together, others broke up. lots of drugs &, of course, a lot of booze. i remember standing in the outrigger parking lot. everyone had left but nat & angie & me. suddenly, the beautiful susan s. pulled into the parking lot, wrecklessly swerving her vw bug up to where we were. "where's katie?," she demanded. "already gone," i replied. she gassed the bug & swerved away laughing & honking her horn. "see you in new orleans," she screamed hilariously. i'm not sure if sue was still dancing at the green frog down in destin but she was the first of the girls to supplement her earnings by dancing. it endeared her to me. the 'mats "sadly beautiful" takes it from there:
"from the very last time you waved & honked your horn
to a face that turned away pale & worn
i had no chance at all to let you know
you left me sadly, beautiful"
sue didn't get to new orleans. she somehow flipped her bug on a straight flat stretch of I-10 in mississippi. not wearing her seatbelt, she was thrown from the car. from what i hear, she didn't have a scratch on her. just a broken neck. uncanny.
amazingly the outrigger jukebox had a single by the replacements," i'll be you." it was their one & only single to ever make the charts. this was before we commandeered the jukebox & filled it w/our odd collection of 45s. i remember one bright weekend day, standing in front of the jukebox, listening to the 'mats:
"a dream too tired to come true
left a rebel w/o a clue
won't you tell me what i should do?
& if it's just a lull
why'm i bored right outta of my skull
keep me from feeling so dull"
the judge wandered up to me, "what's that song about?" he asked in his inimitable accusatory way. he always sounded like he KNEW you were withholding information from him. "i don't know, bill," i said, "walk a mile in my shoes...something like that maybe?" he frowned. this was not a satisfactory answer for the judge. his face suddenly brightened. "you know what i miss?" he asked. before he could get it out, a young woman walked by in a bright bikini. his eyes got wider & you could almost hear his brain gears whirring. "what, bill, what do you miss?" his eyes came back to me, unfocussed; his mouth was slack. " i forget," & then he suddenly smiled. he was visibly happy.
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