Thu, 19 May 2005

Day Ten
“The tour is over!” screamed Fast Eddie Satan, throwing his guitar at the amp (which sounded super-cool) and stomping off-stage. Merle hung out and looked out at the crowd of six, who were impatiently waiting for headliners Mark Clarise Is A Creep (apparently, from talking to these two orange-haired kids in green jumpsuits who looked like the Lucky Charms factory racing team, Mark Clarise really is a jerk, he likes to pee in peoples cars if they leave their windows down and give taffy to babies and stage seances in order to get chicks because apparently chicks dig seances but anyway) and eventually wandered offstage himself, leaving the drum machine belting out the same 5/7 beat for the next ten minutes, until one of the kids kicked a hole in the amp, which pretty much meant that the tour really was over, and having not found anything even kinda looking like the World’s Most Depressing Circus the boys wired home for cash and waited for good fortune to find them. Which, of course, it did.

“Local youth Mark Clarise was found dead earlier this evening after attempting to flee an irate mob and running into [sound lost to cheering and hollering by the audience and the six-piece MCIAC, who ended up playing for like five hours that night and probably even longer but Ana had showed up to get the boys and drive the twelve miles back home]”, said the television. “Dude, I think it’s time to start up a new band.” “Nuts to that, Ed. We’ve been broken up for not even half an hour yet, and besides, I think that lead singer dick peed on the drum machine.” “No drum machine, my man, we’re gonna have to get us a real drummer. And a new name.” MCIAC stumbled into a sing-a-long cover of “I Am The Walrus”, at which point Ed and Merle looked at each other, and the answer was obvious. All they needed now was a drummer.

“Hey! It’s the Megadeth Dude!”

The Megadeth Dude’s real name is Mitch, but not even his friends (well, his friend) calls him that anymore. Apparently, so the urban legend goes, Dave Mustaine had a coke-fueled vision that if he could get twelve people in twelve diffferent towns to constantly wear Megadeth shirts that the band’s street cred would just shoot through the roof. This was back in the “Killing Is My Business…” days, just after Dave was kicked out of Metallica, and so there wasn’t much money to go around, so the twelve lucky winners of Rip Magazine’s “Clean Dave Mustaine’s Kitchen” contest also got hooked up with free shirts and white promos of new Megadeth albums for life if they agreed to wear Megadeth t-shirts every day for the next ten years. They all agreed. Unfortunately, Mitch’s dad lost his job in Cincinatti and the family moved here, which is a considerably diminished population base in comparison. Metal not being quite the subculture here, the Megadeth Dude kinda stood out in a crowd, increasingly so as the years went on and he graduated high school and became something of an adult. The Megadeth Dude has a wife now, and they have a baby on the way, the worn and ratty “Peace Sells” shirt she wears to the market warping around the mound of her belly. Everybody knows the Megadeth Dude. But practically nobody, including Ed and Merle, knew he was a drummer.

“So let me see if I got this straight. Your kit consists of a tom, a cowbell, and a gong. And that’s it.”

“Well, it’s like I used to have a couple snares? But I figure why sound like everybody else when I can strip my setup down to the bare skeleton? And do something unique?”

“Um, okay. So you do realize that we tour, and so how do you expect to get that big-ass gong around?”

“Dude, that’s not even a concern because I built this frame for the top of my van that holds the bottom part and the actual gong I can fit in the back, right? I mean, I totally take responsibility, I’m the keeper of the gong, man.”

“Okay, but do you know anything besides “Highway Star”? I mean, you’re the Megadeth Dude, don’t you know “Wake Up Dead” or something?”

“Hey listen, man, fuck Megadeth anyway six ways from Sunday. You know how hard it is to get a job in a shirt like this?”

“Hey, sorry, dude. We’re gonna go talk it over and we’ll be right back.”

While the Megadeth Dude practiced his drumstick twirls, Ed and Merle went into the Rumpus Room and talked over their options.

“It’s either him, or Josef, or your mailman.”

“Hey, my mailman rocks, and you know it. You’re just against him because he likes the Beatles, which I think is taking the name thing just way too far.”

“It’s not just that, it’s also his whole hippie demeanor. We let him in the band, we’re gonna start having 20-minute “drums/space” sections where everybody noodles. You can forget that, man.”

“So we’re going with the Megadeth Dude? Are we gonna have to heavy everything up?”

“Just…just listen. He’s moldable. and once we convince him to get a real drum set like a human being he’ll be okay.”

“Ahhhh…fine. Fine. He can play this weekend, at Trent’s birthday party. We’ll see how he goes.”

“MEGADETH DUDE! YOU’RE IN THE BAND!” yelled Ed.

The Megadeth Dude replied “Kick Ass!” just before Merle’s dad came out to the garage to tell him to get his fucking gong off the lawn.

The birthday party:

“Creative differences.”

“Listen, I’m just sayin’…”

“You mean to stand there and look me in the eye and tell me we can’t do you the favor of playing your crappy backyard birthday party because you and Merle are having ‘creative differences’?”

“Listen, I’m trying to work around this, I really am, I think this is like something we can still make work and you know I want this to work, but…it’s my mom, man, you know how it is…”

“How what is, little man?”

“My mom is, she’ll be okay with maybe a couple cuss words, but, c’mon, ‘Coochie Hat’, that doesn’t even make sense!”

“I’ll have you know I wrote that song, motherfucker, and if you expect me to stand here and explain the inner meaning of each song before I ‘get’ to play it then you’re sorely mistaken, Trent.”

“Dude, okay, but then your crazy drummer guy does NOT have to take off his pants and run around the stage like a pervo during that guitar solo in ‘Invisible Sin Girls’ and you know that.”

“Okay, I’ll concede that point because you’re a friend and because your mom is supplying the beer and because it kinda is creepy. I’ll talk to him, we’ll work this out, okay? But don’t you EVER question my authority when I’m on stage, understood? I own that stage! I own every last damn inch of it!”

“Cool, man, we’re cool.”

“Solid. And if your sister bugs me even one more time I’m gonna sic the dogs on her ass. So you know.”

Everybody had to keep the noise down because it was the second Wednesday of the month, which meant Ed’s dad was hosting that week’s Meeting Of Loyal Evansdale Satanists And Librarians #281, which meant no rehearsal, techinically, only Ed had recently gotten the notion that Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays were ALWAYS rehearsal night even if the band couldn’t actually play that night, so it was Ed, Merle, the Megadeth Dude and Kali The Destroyer (whose real name was Kelly Moyahan, who was only over because her father was one of the MOLESAL’s upstairs trying to figure out the secret numerological meaning of the Dewey Decimal System), working on t-shirt designs.

“We can’t design the shirts until we know the name of the first album, dudes. That’s all there is to it. And that’s the reason why ‘Climbing The Rope Of Skinned Penises’ is such a killer name!”

“First, you and I and everybody here know that’s not gonna happen, Ed. Second, it does us no good to have t-shirts if nobody can wear ‘em because they’re too putrilicious. And C, that has nothing to do with our sound, and if we don’t give the people an idea of our sound, I mean, it’s just like we’re totally lost.”

“But the name has! to! rock!”

“ROOOOOOCK!”

“Dude, shut up, my dad’s gonna come down here.”

“I think you boys are all missing the essential element, in that none of you can actually draw anything, which seriously limits what you can even do graphically. Y’know?”

“Who votes Kelly The Consumer spends the rest of this rehearsal in the Closet of Silence?”

“Aye!”

“Aye!”

“C’mon, guys, stop being all like that. That’s a good point.”

“HA! That’s a draw, dingus, I’m staying!”

“I don’t know how anybody expects this band to last considering you don’t even, it’s like nobody even appreciates the, hell, I’ll say it, the vision I have, because—”

“Merle has a crush. I’m going to be ill.”

“Fuck you, man. That’s my amp you’re dicking with.”

“Kelly and Merley, sittin’ in a tree—”

“F! U! C! K! I—”

At which point what can best be described as a ‘ruckus’ erupted upstairs as MOLESAL discovered that 666 was the DDS code for ceramics, which led to an extensive argument/fight as to whether or not the Hobby Hutch could qualify as a “hidden temple of the horned beast”. At last report, the crucial album cover negotiations were still undecided, with Kali (who sits in ront of me in Chem) telling me there “might not even be an album jacket, even, becaus Merle is all like ‘Art compromises us at every fucking turn!’, right, so who even knows?”.
(12:07.05.19.2005) [/alpha/edsatan] #