Thu, 19 May 2005

Hope
Fast Eddie Satan’s dad used to be a bandleader; well, he used to lead two bartenders who kinda knew sax and a shoeshine boy who played harmonica at the Velvet Room of Jim Hagen’s Bar and Greyhound Station, Dekalb, Illinois. Sometimes Slim the Butcher would come in, and people in the audience (some winos, a couple conned by the doorman into thinking there were strippers involved in the show) would whisper “so what, is he a hitman or something?” and Slim would turn to ‘em, say “no, I’m the butcher” and sit in on drums for the band’s rendition of ‘house of the rising sun’ which went on, at times, all night. People hated that.

Fast Eddie Satan’s dad was one of the first people to buy a theremin and was convinced that it would be his means to success, the way bach thought the glass harmonica was going to take the orchestral world by storm. . thus, every song he ever wrote (as well as every cover the band performed) featured an extended theremin solo smack dab in the middle. This “exploration of new directions in music”, as he called it, resulted in hour after hour of…theremin soloing. You ever listen to a theremin for hours after hours? add to that the fact that after three or so hours of this, you realize it’s been a “reworking” of various Laurie Anderson songs when Slim and his junk butcher friends would murmur “this is the hand…the hand that takes…” and come kinda close, but not close enough, to a rhythm. And back to the theremin.

Fast Eddie Satan’s dad came THIS close to getting an NEA grant when Philip Glass, traveling through the bus station, heard the band and recommended them for the screening process. The band realized, at this point, the band didn’t have an official name, and this bugged the hell out of ‘em. After seven hours of heated debate, they dubbed themselves “The Velvet Room Necromancers with Slim The Butcher as A Side-Dish Of O.G. Funk”. NEA ate that shit up with a shovel. Alas, one of the waiters had his gun (always unloaded, like his hero barney fife) on him and set off an alarm on the way to an interview, and was so embarrassed he refused to go back, and Fast Eddie Satan’s dad, with the kind of quick thinking and lack of decorum his son would later be famous for, said “fuck ‘em, money would just corrupt our sound anyway” and threw the application away. They were back in the Velvet Room that night with a new sign behind ‘em-“The Crystal Blue Sounds of the Velvet Room Necromancers”-and did their Sun Ra medley. “interplanetray…interplanetary…interplanetary music…” murmured the band as Fast Eddie Satan said a silent prayer to Richard Moog and whoever looks over him and his trials.

As you may know if you were keeping an ear to the news around ‘82, it all went downhill from there — Fast Eddie Satan’s dad going into debt building “the Therechamber — the ultimate in perfect sound…”, Slim the Butcher getting blacklisted throughout Dekalb for comments about “the good old days in El Salvador”, the waiters getting better paying jobs at a Burger King across the street. But that night they were ON, if only once, and even now they still call each other, drunk, and talk about “getting the band back together”.

Fast Eddie Satan was three at the time. He tells me he’s sure he remembers that night. It’s pathetic, the way I can’t help but go digging through someone’s life looking for explanations and reasons, but maybe this time, maybe this time, I’m right, and that one night explains everything.

Maybe.
(12:07.05.19.2005) [/alpha/edsatan] #