"You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet"

There was always a push for More Gas. If you wanted to go cruisin' with Jay in the Impala, you had to pony up some cash for More Gas. Any girls who went riding around with Jay would be asked to contribute to the Gas Fund. I tossed in the lunch money I got from Mom and Dad. Jay dropped out after three days in high school, and had a job for a few weeks as a car-detailer, but after he quit that job it was a constant scramble for More Gas Money.
And there were other ways to get gas for the car....
During our aimless drives around west Boise, we started looking for gas cans. We'd grab jerry-cans off the sides of Jeeps or out of the backs of boats. If Jay found a car without a locking gas-cap on a dark side-street, he'd get out and try to siphon some gas out of it with his "Oklahoma credit card" -- a beat-up hunk of old garden hose. This was back when locking gas-caps were still pretty uncommon. I'm sure we boosted the sales of them through our efforts.
If the little needle was pointing to "E" on the gas gauge, sometimes we got more desperate. We'd cruise around looking for open garage doors, and would slow down while looking for gas cans to grab.
This may sound kind of desperate -- it actually wasn't that bad a time. The radio was always going, playing great '70s stuff like BTO's "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet," the J. Geils Band's "I Musta Got Lost," Eric Burdon's "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood/Nina's School," Mike McGear's "Leave It," Wings's "Junior's Farm," various Al Green hits, and lots more. There were almost always girls around, who wanted to go cruising with the outlaw with the long black hair and the hot car. They were always charming, even if they were hanging all over my brother.
Sometimes Jay sent me to investigate the gas-can situation a little more closely. Hey, I had to do something -- I wasn't old enough to drive.
Cruising slowly through a subdivision, we spotted a five-gallon gas can sitting right at the front of a dark, open garage. There was only one light on in the house. Seemed pretty quiet here, so Jay sent me to grab the gas can. He rolled the car slowly down the street, saying he'd circle back to pick me up.
I tiptoed up across the lawn to the side of the garage, grabbed the gas-can by the handle on top, and lifted. And I started laughing uncontrollably when I realized how heavy it was. The can was FULL. This was going to make Jay so happy. I'd done something worthwhile, for once.
Turning away from the garage, I thought I heard a low growl behind me....
Laughing out loud, heavy gas can in hand, I ran across the front yard to the street. I couldn't stop laughing. Jay was gonna be so proud of me! Maybe he'd get off my back for awhile....
I didn't know it, but behind me lights were coming on in the house.
The street was empty as I made my way across the lawn, but suddenly the Impala pulled up in front of me with a SCREECH.
Jay was leaning across the front seat and opening the passenger-side door.
"GET IN THE CAR!!!" he yelled.
Laughing, the gas can clanging and sloshing against my legs, I climbed in the car and we screeched down the street.
We all screamed and laughed as Jay tore through the subdivision, much faster than usual. A few blocks away, he turned a corner, pulled over, shut off the car and turned off the headlights.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Ssssh," he said. "I'm listening for the sirens."
There weren't any.
"Jesus," he said, turning to me. "You scared the SHIT out of me. Right as I pulled up in front of the house, a light came on in the garage and some BIG GUY came out.... And there was a BIG DOG in the garage...."
I started laughing hysterically. "I didn't see any of that."
"I KNOW," he said. "You were just tip-toein' across the lawn like you were walkin' in the park, everything's cool ... ya fuckin' dumbass. But you done good."
That full five-gallon gas can would fuel cruising sessions for at least the next couple of nights.
Later on, things would get a lot uglier. Jay would stop coming home -- and when he did come home, when no one else was around, he'd steal money from our folks. Then he started breaking into our friends' houses, looking for more gas money....

"Overnight Sensation"

There I was, 15-year-old me, knocking on 15-year-old Debbie's front door again for my 18-year-old brother Jay. Making sure it was "safe" so Jay and Debbie could get together.
I hated this, and it had gone wrong before. One night Debbie had invited Jay over to her house, and instead her father had answered the door when I knocked.
"Who the hell are YOU?" he grumbled.
"Is Debbie here?" I asked shakily.
"Get off my porch you fuckin' long-haired little SHIT!" he roared.
"I'm sorry," I said, always polite. "I must have the wrong house." And I freakin' disappeared.
But this night it was safe. We'd scoped the house out for 15 minutes just to make sure there were no parents lurking. Debbie answered the door. "It's OK, come on in," she said, and I turned and waved at Jay to come inside.
Debbie was babysitting some toddler who'd already been put to bed. Debbie was trying to relax -- the smell of pot was in the air.
I didn't like Debbie, but that was OK because she didn't like me either. She just wanted to see Jay, and I understood that. I was the third wheel here for other reasons.
Lots of girls liked Jay, and even an antisocial virginal dummy like me could figure out why. With his long wavy black hair reaching down below his shoulders, his big virile nose, the pack of Marlboros rolled up in his black short-sleeve T-shirt, leaning back against his black '62 Impala SS with the big wide tires on the back ... LOTS of girls fell in love as soon as they saw him. His appearance just screamed BAD BOY. I got that.
Debbie had been one of them. Debbie had long wiry brown hair and was a little big on top. She'd been in some sort of accident that messed up her neck, and she'd had to wear some kind of complicated neck brace for awhile -- and she was grateful that "the cage" didn't keep Jay from talking with her. Though I'm not sure how long they talked. I was the guy who got tossed out of the car whenever they wanted to "talk."
The cage was gone now. But the only time I saw Debbie was when she wanted to pass on the message that she wanted to see Jay -- that her folks would be gone or that she was babysitting somewhere else and she hoped he'd come over. I hated being the go-between for them. And it got to the point where if I ran into her in the crowded hallways at school, I wouldn't meet her eyes, I'd just keep walking. And I'd hear her yell "STUCK UP!" from somewhere behind me.
The only time Jay would see Debbie was when we had no gas money for the Impala and there was nowhere else to go.
That's why I was there. While Jay and Debbie were kissing or Whatever back in the bedroom, I'd be ransacking the rest of the house. Under orders from my brother.
I received these orders early. The first time he and Debbie got together while she was babysitting and started breathing heavily and grabbing at each other, then disappeared to the bedroom, I LEFT. Twenty minutes later, Jay appeared at the front porch at our house, where I was waiting, not wanting to go back inside and face our parents without him.
"Man, don't DO that anymore," he said. "Don't leave me ALONE with her like that."
I started laughing. "Why not?" I asked. "You didn't seem to be in any trouble."
"But man, I WAS," he said. "She wanted to FUCK! ... But I figure while I'm busy with her, you can dig around in stuff, maybe find us some money or something we could sell."
Jay was always desperate for money to fill the gas tank. So if I wanted to go cruising with him, I had to help find ways to put gas in the car. And I didn't have a job. I was still in 10th grade.
So since then, I'd been helping Jay steal gas cans, and looking through cabinets and drawers in the houses where Debbie baby-sat. I'd found a few dollars and some small change, nothing too big. And nobody ever complained about stuff being taken. At least that we heard about.
On this night, Jay and Debbie vanished almost immediately, so I started snooping. I found a few dollars rolled up in one drawer, and some pocket change inside an old incense burner. There wasn't much else, so I started looking at their album collection. The full catalog of Moody Blues albums, a few records by Spooky Tooth (knew nothing about them), some Jefferson Airplane, some Allman Brothers, the Beatles of course.
By this point, I felt kind of distracted, a little airy. I wondered if it was caused by the leftover pot fumes in the air. I wasn't happy to be there, and I was nervous about Debbie's folks coming home unexpectedly -- but suddenly I was relaxed and nothing seemed to matter too much. Strange -- pot had only given me a headache before.
The radio was playing, Casey Kasem's "American Top 40." The Raspberries' great "Overnight Sensation" was playing at Number 29 -- I was confident it'd sell millions. It was the best thing I'd heard in ages. How could it miss?
I drifted into the kitchen, started looking for snacks. Was it The Munchies? Started opening cabinets. Didn't find much. What, no snacks here? These people only eat Real Food?
Jay and Debbie reappeared at some point, quicker than I expected. Jay sat in the living room where I'd found the cash, and lit up a cigarette. I was still looking through cabinets.
Slowly, Debbie crept up behind me and put her arms around my waist. I REALLY hadn't expected THIS.
"Hello," I said falteringly.
"HI," she said warmly. "How are YOU doing out here?"
"Uh ... I'm kind of woozy. Really relaxed, you know? Not quite here."
Debbie laughed. "Could be the pot. You ever been high before? Could be a contact high."
"He usually doesn't toke," Jay told her.
The music was still playing, something else now. I couldn't focus on it. Debbie was swaying against me now, in time with the music. I liked it, even though it was Debbie. I turned to face her. Her arms were still around me.
"That's nice," I said.
"...You know what, you're a LOT NICER when you're stoned," she said. "...Do you want to come to the bedroom with me?"
"What?" I asked. I could NOT be hearing this.
"Do you want to come to the bedroom with me?" she repeated. "I think you might be a lot of fun."
"You SHOULD, man," Jay said helpfully. "It's pretty good." That must have made Debbie happy.
I did think about it for a second. But I'd never been anywhere NEAR bed. I had no idea what to do, what to expect. And I was pretty sure Debbie DID.
"...Uh... I don't really think I could HANDLE that right now...," I murmured, sort of drifting away from all this.
"That's too bad," she said. "Because I think you're really nice right now...."
I was still drifting. But I knew how I felt about Debbie. I still didn't like her.
"...But you're still a slut," I murmured.
"What?" she said, as if from a thousand miles away. She turned to Jay. "Do you think he meant that?"
"Probably not," Jay said. "You said yourself he's stoned. Look at him. He doesn't even know where he's at right now."
Debbie kept her arms around my waist until Jay finished his smoke, then pulled her away for a return trip to the bedroom.
I went and sat in the living room, the radio still playing, I couldn't tell what. I thought about what she'd offered, and I knew I wasn't ready for it. I hadn't even kissed a girl yet. I had NO IDEA what would happen if I went to the bedroom with Debbie, and it scared me. Besides, what if Something Happened and Debbie got pregnant? I knew she'd never blame Jay, and I didn't want to be the fall-guy for any accidents.
I don't think the idea of following my brother yet again ever occurred to me. It was buried by the idea that a girl -- no matter how stoned -- had said I was nice and expressed an interest in going to bed with me. That was an absolute first.
But I was certain that if I was ever going to go to bed with a girl, I wanted it to be someone I was in love with, someone I cared about -- not someone I could barely stand to see
After about half an hour, Jay reappeared and we left. On the walk home, Jay asked me "Were you really that stoned?" I didn't know. But it wore off after we left Debbie's house. And Debbie never got close to me again. And I didn't mind.
It was more than two years later before any other girl got that close.

#738: Outtakes

I've mentioned here before, and I went on at some length in GUARANTEED GREAT MUSIC!, about how the Pretenders' first album helped get me through 1980 alive, about what a stress-reducer it was for me at the end of what I thought then were some pretty stressful workdays.
I was an idiot about the stress -- I didn't even know what stress WAS, back then. But the Pretenders' album helped de-stress me. It worked every time.
I failed to mention that their follow-up singles were a pretty big deal to me, too.
I'd bought the imported picture-sleeve release of their gorgeous second single "Kid" while making my mind up to buy the album. And as the follow-up imported singles came out after the album, I bought them too: The gorgeous, dreamy "Talk of the Town"; the guitar brashness of "Message of Love," with that loud, trebly, immediate mix that jumped right out of the speakers at me. And Chrissie Hynde's whispery voice from the heavens at the end: "Talk to me, darlin'...."
Then those two singles appeared on EXTENDED PLAY, a stopgap while we all waited for their next album. I don't remember much about the other songs -- "Porcelain" might have been OK; "Cuban Slide" was some kind of dance number; wasn't there a live version of "Brass in Pocket"? Or was that "Precious"?
When the album finally arrived, it was a minor disappointment -- just because it didn't change my life like the first one had. Along with the earlier singles, PRETENDERS II included the gorgeous "Birds of Paradise" and the dreamy "I Go to Sleep," and the hilarious "Pack it Up." "The Adulteress" wasn't bad, neither was "Louie Louie" and "English Roses." But it was a step down from the first album.
Their later classic "Back on the Chain Gang" got me through the last days of Air Force basic training -- and then I heard "My City Was Gone" at journalism school. They still Had It. When LEARNING TO CRAWL finally showed up, it added "Time the Avenger" and "2000 Miles" and maybe "Middle of the Road" to my list of their unforgettables.
I cherry-picked their later stuff: "Don't Get Me Wrong," "Hymn to Her." I'm still doing it, after finally hearing "Human" off their GREATEST HITS -- I resisted it at first, but the verse-lyrics are too good. I don't play "I'll Stand by You" much, but I still find Chrissie's softer side to be pretty great.
Likewise, The Who was a big deal when I was at the record store. My Manager Gary was a HUGE Who fan, and we played all their releases to death -- THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT, QUADROPHENIA soundtrack, FACE DANCES, HOOLIGANS best-of. KIDS had some OK oddities and live or rare cuts on it -- I just thought it was a great excuse to crank up "I Can See for Miles." The movie was even better.
I didn't need to be convinced to play the remixed songs on QUADROPHENIA -- I'd loved them since junior high school in late 1973. "Love, Reign O'er Me" and "Bell Boy" rocked my world back then, and I couldn't understand why they weren't bigger hits.
But "5:15" was all new to me, along with "Doctor Jimmy" and "I'm One." We ended up playing the entire album in-store.
FACE DANCES was a half-great comeback. It got played practically 24/7 in the store as soon as Gary pulled it out of the box. I loved the hit "You Better, You Bet" -- but after "The Quiet One" on Side 1, I thought it got kind of thin.
Side 2, though, should have been minted in gold. "How Can You Do it Alone?" was another of Pete Townshend's funny sex-as-physical-torment songs (like the underrated "Dreaming from the Waist" on WHO BY NUMBERS), "Daily Records" was a gorgeous, timeless reel that should have been a hit, "You" was an angry blaster from John Entwistle, and "Another Tricky Day" seemed to sum up the times. Except for the weak last half of Side 1, a triumph.
HOOLIGANS was one of MCA's 9-million Who best-of repackages, a 2-disc set of mostly pretty obvious stuff with a scattering of surprises. I think the high-tech-but-driving overlooked 1972 single "The Relay" might have been included here, but I didn't notice it at the time -- it would make a perfect release today, in these times of omnipresent government surveillance.
Basically, I thought HOOLIGANS was a really good excuse to crank-up a side of greats from WHO'S NEXT ... along with "Who Are You?," "Music Must Change," etc.
...I also failed to note in the book that my Manager Gary wasn't always lurking over my shoulder watching for me to mess up. He was also the first person I ever heard mention what a great memory-trigger the best music can be.
"Nothing else can rekindle a memory for you like music can," I once heard him tell a customer. "It can take you back to where you were, what you were doing, how old you were, where you were at, what you were feeling. And it can do it all instantly. There's nothing else like it to conjure up old memories."
He was right. Kind of a commonplace, now, but he was the first guy I ever heard express it. And I should have included this in my record-store book. But I didn't remember it until this past week.
Naturally, it was a piece of music I heard off the radio a few days ago that brought THIS memory back to me. And naturally, I can't remember what the song was....

97 crazy people took a chance and downloaded my newspaper-career memoir THE CONFESSOR when it was available for free at Amazon.com's Kindle Store a couple of weeks ago. Ghod bless you all, and I hope to hear what some of you thought of it. More giveaways of my e-books will be coming in the future -- I promise to keep you posted.
...I'm 25,000 words into THE GAS NAZI BOOK!, which is coming along MUCH easier and faster than anything else I've tried to write since Christmas. It should be done and available in a few weeks! In it, I promise you'll find WAY MORE unbelievable outrageous stories about dealing with The Public....
My memoir about growing up fast in Idaho, BROTHERS, is cooling off right now, because I'm disappointed with it. It definitely has all the teenage heartbreak and angst I expected, but it Needs Something. Perhaps a phonecall to my step-brother in Michigan -- who I haven't talked to since 1975 -- will help pull it all together. I'll keep you posted.
...And then there's LISTEN TO THIS!: TAD'S GUIDE TO STRANGE MUSIC, which remains on hold while I get this other stuff done. Hey, I gotta write the stuff that WANTS to come out.
...And if all else fails, there's always that Rock Group Novel....