C’mon Everybody, Get Down, Get With It: My Possibly Freudian Preschool Obsession Shaun Cassidy

by Rachel McPadden

From 1976-1978, I was 3, 4, and 5 years old and in pre-sexuality love with Shaun Cassidy. The first non-Sesame Street records I ever owned were Shaun Cassidy and I played them all by myself on a frighteningly psychedelic portable Raggedy Ann & Andy record player.

1970’s Raggedy Ann & Andy as a whole were a horrific acid trip. The 1977 cartoon musical depicted untrustworthy hippie ragdolls who the second you leave, come to life, gobble benzos and drink mushroom tea until everything’s a melted 30s cartoon and they meet a fucking camel. Don’t ever show it to any kids. Raggedy Andy’s like, “I’m freaking out because I’m a BOY doll, but I’m a GIRL’s toy…” Drink some milk, take a bath, and SHUT UP. No one has fun doing drugs around you.

So, anyway: Shaun Cassidy. He would be my first in a long line of obsessions with celebrity offspring. My ultimate at one point being Campbell Scott, a gene combo of Canadian-American off-Broadway queen Colleen Dewhurst and grandpa-sexual extraordinaire George C. Scott. But Campbell’s really a dud, right? Dying Young, Julia Roberts. Be a man. 

Which again brings me back to Shaun Cassidy. Mother, Shirley Jones, a Partridge, brother, David Cassidy, a Partridge, father Jack Cassidy, a bipolar alcoholic proto-Ted Baxter who passed out with a lit cigarette and died in the resulting apartment fire at the exact moment Shaun was becoming the Justin Bieber of 1976.

Of course, none of the father stuff I knew as a preschooler, but I do find it VERY attractive as an adult.

To look at old pictures of Shaun Cassidy now: he’s asymmetrical, has too gummy of a smile, has zero of the sexuality of David Cassidy (not that he was my taste, but I can see how got laid en masse and that near-nude 1972 Rolling Stone cover if you’ve ever seen it, it’s a little outrageous. You can see what the fuss was about). Shaun Cassidy best resembled a hypothetical childhood sketch combining my own young golden hippie dad and a droopy-eyed basset hound puppy. And most likely a plush version of that puppy and not even an actual dog.

That’s some Freud shit right there. Was my first romantic ideal a hybrid of my own hot dad and a vaguely dimwitted appearing stuffed dog? My imaginary friend around the time himself was a shape-shifting teenage boy/convertible sports car/homeless dog that seems now to have so transparently come from my pre-K merging of Shaun Cassidy/my father, Herbie the Love Bug and Benji. Though Herbie could only DREAM of being a convertible.

Christmas Eve, right before I turned 5, I unwrapped a Shaun Cassidy nightgown under my grandparents silver tinsel tree that became my first favorite piece of clothing. I wore to bed, in public, with overalls, tap shoes, cowboy and sailor hats, I slept with it ON TOP of my pillow, I slept with it UNDER my pillow, I snuggled it like Linus’ blanky. I’ve had a lifetime of favorite t-shirts, dresses, shoes, sweaters and jeans since, but none affected me like that little girls short-sleeve ruffle-hem nightgown with that poor half-orphan asymmetrical fuck’s face on it.

I should talk about the music.

‘Born Late’ is the only good record, and it’s mind-numbingly horrible and only slightly less un-revisit-able than the other two (I don’t count anything after ‘Under Wraps’, the album that had Shaun trying to push his way out from behind plastic wrap and legitimately terrified me as a kid because I had somewhat recently made the mistake of putting a dry cleaning bag over my head as a joke and the hippies freaked out on me so thoroughly I believed Shaun Cassidy was sure to suffocate under the packaging of his own record. Not that I was dumb, just acutely anxiety-ridden, the same tendency that would start my road to vegetarianism at age 8, not because I gave a shit about animals, but because a raw chicken had the same translucent skin and blue veins as me).

And You KNOW the only tolerable Shaun Cassidy songs because they were written by Bubblegum Pop supergenius Eric Carmen of The Raspberries. ‘That’s Rock & Roll’ and ‘Hey Deanie.’ A case could be made for ‘Do You Believe in Magic?’ originally by the Lovin’ Spoonful, but it’s had a never-ending career in commercials so I feel it’s always selling me something and not anything I actually want, like ice cream.  ‘That’s Rock & Roll’ with the chorus ‘c’mon everybody, get down, get with it’ I really associate with my grandma at that time. ‘Get down’ because she was a wacky, cut loose kind of lady and ‘get with it’ makes me think of her collection of go-go boots, like ‘heeeyy, I’m with it, look at my go-go boots!’ which I guess was what was going on while we listened to those Shaun Cassidy records on my creepy Raggedy Ann & Andy record player, just rolling around on the floor in go-go boots. THAT IS rock and roll.

In 1978, People Magazine had Shaun Cassidy on the cover and a multi-page feature inside with tons of concert photos. One image moved me then and has stayed with me all my life: he’s mid-song, kind of jump-squatting with his back mainly to the camera with his head turned over his shoulder making a fffffffffftttttt face. I mean, cutting a fart was my personal favorite go-to modeling pose, too, and I knew then we had a real soul-deep kinship.

The Hardy Boys TV show should be mentioned. Naturally I loved it and it kind of explains my attraction to prep school gay-for-pay porn. Of course, the big small screen moment for me was when Shaun Cassidy starred as Roger in Like Normal People, a TV movie about two differently-abled young adults determined to get married against everyone’s objections.

His whole characterization is based around the ‘I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee’ voice and it’s sound bite after sound bite of utter unbelievability.

Fall 1978 I started kindergarten and those kids were stupid babies that didn’t even seem to LIKE music. That was a let down. But then my dad went to see the Ramones and the Runaways at Ricco’s, a tiny dive bar that would soon become my town’s first cable TV office and within 6 months, my next pop crush was Blondie.

My records got better (and at times infinitely worse), but I’ll always be grateful for my first dum-dum farty face asymmetrical moderate-charisma mentally defective Hardy Boy.  

The Death of the Central Scrutinizer: Love and Loss (of Frank Zappa) to the age 14

by CPO Sinkhole

She looked me right in the eyes as she tore long spools of audio tape from its casing. She wanted me to know how furious she was with me, her little boy. In the eyes of most parents, my track record would be considered spotless. But in this household, this…this was unacceptable.

I need to give you a little background. I was raised strictly in the Lutheran faith, and attended Lutheran grade and middle school. For my high school years, I attended a Lutheran seminary in my hometown. The upside: I was able, for a time, to sight-translate Latin classics like “The Anaeid.” and the orations of Cicero. The downside: two years of school-sanctioned, round the clock hazing. “Zexing,” it was called, and all freshmen and sophomores lived under its boot at all times. It happened in public, too…an event called “Freshman Welcoming Party” was attended by our families, watching from the bleachers as seniors rubbed ketchup, mustard and syrup in my hair, and made other kids eat fake candy apples that were really peanut butter-covered onions. In hindsight, it was like a two-year version of the first 30 minutes of “Dazed & Confused,” minus the weed, booze, fistfights, bitchin’ haircuts, or excellent soundtrack.

One of the first things I remember declaring to my dad around age 10 was, “from now on, I only want to listen to the most powerful, heavy, crazy music there is.” I believed it, too. Of course, because of my Lutheran upbringing (and my fear of Real Hell), this couldn’t include Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, or any other “idolatrous” (and therefore actually heavy) music. Pure sonic self-negation was still a few years off. Because every incoming record was strictly monitored to make sure that it was blasphemy-free, I stuck to the canon. The canon of 25 years previous. The Who, Yes, Focus, and that one Beatles song where they guy yells about his fingers.

At age 9, fifth grade give or take, I discovered Frank Zappa through an unlikely channel — a video game magazine called Joystik. He and his daughter Moon Unit were talking about video games. Neither were fans, but Frank strongly opposed any control over them. I decided he was badass, and I must know more. My mom immediately nixed the idea. “That man is a pervert,” she would say, “a real low-life.” She wouldn’t elaborate. She may as well have said, “you’re dying of Leukemia, and this person has the only remaining bottle of elixir that will cure you. But stay away from him.” I couldn’t have beat a faster path to his door.

My days were spent on my bike, but my nights were spent poring over the Rolling Stone Record Guide the way teenage baseball fanatics probably pored over stats books, and the way well-adjusted kids interacted with the opposite sex and whatever. Because I got like 5 bucks every couple of weeks for an allowance, every tape purchase was planned as deliberately as the Battle of Agincourt. Of all the early records, Uncle Meat got the fivest of all five star ratings, so against the wishes of my family/community/god, I bought it. I bought it!

You wouldn’t think an album that starts with a xylophone-led instrumental would cut it for a kid who wanted all heavy, all the time. But you’d be wrong. The rat-a-tat snare drumming, the harpsichord riffs, Art Tripp’s wild malleting. It made NO SENSE. But it made perfect no-sense.

My obsession deepened from there, and soon, I was the proud possessor of four Zappa tapes — Uncle Meat, Freak Out!, Absolutely Free, and 200 Motels. For fuck’s sake, I even dressed as Frank Zappa for Halloween once, at a most embarrassing age — 14!! I should have been egging, not begging!

Other events at the time started making my mom suspicious. She found some dirty pictures ripped from the pages of Easyriders magazine in the pocket of my jeans. She let it go, giving me my first of one warnings. When another set emerged, months later, the results were more vibrant. “If I catch you with naked pictures again, there’s gonna be a HOLY WAR,” she bellowed. I knew what she meant, but maybe it’s worse than I thought! Was I really causing jihad across the middle east by tearing out lesbian spreads from Penthouse? Do I owe the Gaza Strip an apology?

My dad, who I visited every other weekend, also caught me, but he was more understanding, even though he had less reason to be. Since I didn’t have a safe place to stash them at his apartment, I took to flushing them down his toilet every Sunday. “I found your glossy photos,” my Dad began. I like that he couldn’t say “dirty pictures,” he called them “glossy photos.” Turns out he’d had to have his pipes roto-rooted at a considerable fee. He didn’t even tell me not to do it any more. “If you need to get rid of them, just throw them away.”

Actually, let’s back up. My dad knew about my proclivities long before a Jiffy Root had to get involved.

The day I started fifth grade, my cousin and I came up with this ingenious strategy for looking at my dad’s Playboys, Gallerys, Ouis, and Geneses. One of us would go into the front room and distract my dad…say, by asking him a question, telling him about a thing we saw the other day, or singing a song we made up.

There was a cartoon of The Little Rascals on TV at the time, and Eddie Murphy’s Buckwheat character was still popular, so I remember us coming up with this song, which one of us sang for him. At least twice. Each:

Here comes Buckwheat
He’s running down the street
Who’s he goin’ after?
Who’s he gonna meet?

Where is Darla?
She’s in bed
Alfalfa’s with her
and Spanky’s by the bed

Lookin’ like a sped tonight
to-ni-i-i-i-i-i-i-ight

Here comes Buckwheat
He’s runnin’ down the street
Who’s he goin’ after?
Who’s he gonna meet?

Where is Porky
He’s eating blueberry pies
Why is Darla crying?
Because Alfalfa lies
He Li-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ies!

Meanwhile, the other person would sneak in my dad’s room, grab three or four mags, and run back to my room and shut the door. The singer or skit performer would re-join, we’d thumb through them furiously, then lather, rinse, repeat for the entire afternoon. It was working perfectly, but like a squirrel, I got tagged because I went back one too many times. Long after my cousin tired of the ruse, I was still in squirrel-brain mode. Just one more, just a little closer to the tires. I can do this. Just one more issue. This next naked woman is SURE to come to life and hug me with her naked boobs!

Despite my love of dirty pictures, I didn’t gravitate to Zappa for the dirty words. I’d rather SEE the titties get wet than hear about ’em! Besides, I needed to hear Frank tell the whole truth about all the things that are TRULY important to a 12 year old in mid-Michigan. Topics like:

– The conformity of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society

– The Watts Riots

– Car culture from the perspective of the Pachuco

– The mindless decadence of swimming pool culture in California

THESE were the things I needed to know more about. I also ate my lunch in the bathroom until about two years into high school. Duh.

I listened to those tapes everywhere I went. I even cranked my walkman as loud as it would go and listened to impressions of the tape over the roar of a lawnmower.

I was able to keep the ruse going for a while — my mom would glance at the back covers of the tapes and see nothing offending. Who could worry for their son’s spiritual destiny in the era of Reign in Blood when the worst thing he’s listening to is something called “The Voice of Cheese”? She never stopped quipping about the way my beloved Frank was “a dirtbag,” and looked perturbed each time I came out of Tape World with a new title, but for now, the law was on my side.

Until: Joe’s Garage.

I decided that my next Zappa purchase was going to be <i>Joe’s Garage</i>, an epic rock opera (double tape!) set in a dystopian future. Blah blah blah, music is outlawed, blah blah blah sex robots/L. Ron Hubbard/thought crimes, blah blah blah, whatever. You get the idea.

My mom feigned interest upon purchase, knowing damn well who I bought. “What’d you get?” she said, pulling the tape out of my hand and looking at the titles. I breathed in, took a beat, as if that was enough time for her to read the track titles, and then pulled the tape back. “Just another tape, y’know. It’s about a science fiction future where rock music is outlawed.” “Mmm hmmm,” she said. Close call. Wish I’d learned from it.

Like the others, Joe’s Garage stayed in my walkman a long time. I selectively fast-forwarded as needed to get to the songs I wanted to hear, especially side four. By this point in the story, Joe has been imprisoned for *several* crimes, ranging from playing rock music to getting his dick caught in a sex robot. Or…something. It’s been a while. As he’s left to rot in his cell, sodomized endlessly by his bunkmates, he thinks about his girlfriend, his old band, his dream of music, and as Zappa’s narrator “The Central Scrutinizer” says, he “goes into his mind and imagines one last guitar solo.” It’s the soaring, beautiful track called “Watermelon in Easter Hay.” The song’s still pretty OK, but at the time, it was a flight through the gates of paradise. Tender, sad, defiant, majestic…exactly what my religiously conflicted, screamingly horny, impressively repressed ass had been petitioning the heavens for all this time.

But this was not what my mom noticed when she finally got a good long look at the track titles. She didn’t notice “Watermelon In Easter Hay.” Nope, she was more focused on “Crew Slut” and “Fembot in a Wet T-Shirt” and “Why Does It Hurt When I Pee.” I was in my room, playing some sort of crude RPG game on my Commodore 64.

“I don’t think I approve of some of the titles on this tape,” she said, somewhat lower than a scream but well above the volume where you’d speak to a dog that won’t stop eating its own poop.

My vital organs turned to lava. Game over.

I powered down the computer and sat on the bed with her. I worked up some tears — real ones — and told her that I had been caught in a double-bind. I loved the melodies, the weird aura of those early records, but in some cases, the songs had swears in them and dirty stories. “But that’s just a small minority!” I sad, somewhat unconvincingly. I told her about “Watermelon in Easter Hay,” and about Southern California swimming pools, the Watts riots, and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, and begged her not to take my tapes away.

We came to an agreement. A weird one, to be sure. I could keep my Zappa, but I had to do some White House Tapes-style selective editing. I would have to, of my own volition, tape over the dirty songs, somehow. With what, I don’t know. Silence? Duplicates of non-dirty Zappa songs? Readings from Luther’s Catechism? This was not stipulated in the contract. Just get rid of the offending songs. Until then, the tapes would go in her room. I would then have to tell her when I was ready to put on my Jigsaw mask and Saw-movie-franchise the fuck out of my naughty children.

Weeks passed. I knew I wouldn’t get the tunes I liked back if I didn’t do some chopping, but I just couldn’t get myself to desecrate these classics. I was trapped, and time was running out.

Then….*she* entered the picture.

Mom picked me up on a rainy afternoon near the end of my Freshman year of seminary. Car conversation was at a minimum. I could tell something was up. I stuttered, under my breath, “I, uh, think after dinner tonight, I’ll tape over the songs….”

“I don’t think so,” she said, again in the same loud-but-not-screaming voice. “I had a chance to listen to those tapes today, and we need to have a talk.”

Stunned. Numb. That vague relief that a criminal feels when he’s been caught. At last, there’s no more running. Time to take the medicine.

But why today? Those tapes had sat on her dresser for weeks. What made her take action all of a sudden? What had she heard? Who ratted me out?

OOOOOOOPRAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Guess what? My mom, like *all* moms, watches Oprah and takes her advice with humorless acceptance. And guess what Oprah was warning about today? HEAVY METAL MUSIC. The lyrics, the lyrics, what are the lyrics going to make your child do? Look out, it’s the Judas Priest face-shooter! To my mom, evil was lurking everywhere, even in…oh hey, what about these tapes?

“You think you can fool me with all this shit about beautiful music? I didn’t hear any beautiful music! All I heart was that sleazeball with his low muttering…what’s he call himself [looks at tape] the Central Scrutinizer. Please! All I heard was lots of songs that young Christian men shouldn’t be listening to. Fembot in a Wet T-Shirt? Who do you think you’re fooling, beautiful music? And that ‘200 Motels’ tape…”

Oh shit. Here’s where I really started breathing heavy. Had she made it all the way to side two, where Eddie from Flo & Eddie starts ranting like a psychopath about taking a groupie home and “doing a wee-wee in your hair” before beating her with a pair of Jeff Beck’s tennis shoes? But no, it was so much more lame than that! “And that ‘200 Motels’ tape….it was sounds SO WEIRD.” Weird! Yeah, no shit it’s weird! You’ve got a weird kid! Seniors rubbed ketchup and syrup in my hair in front of 200 people! I had a 6’4″ stepdad whose bellow sounded like an air-raid drill. My mom told me if I kept masturbating, I’d break the fragile peace accords between Israel and Palestine! What the fuck am I supposed to find interesting……A Prairie Home Companion?

She grabbed hold of 200 Motels and ripped the tape out of the case in rough handfuls while staring me right in the eyes. Joe’s Garage, of course, got the same fate. She even snapped it in half. The others were spared. She had made her point. She left with the tapes in hand, and I was sent to my room. As to what happened to the other tapes, I have no idea. I checked the wastebaskets for days afterwards to try to salvage what was left, but there were no artifacts. For all I know, she ground them into powder and served them to me in my Sloppy Joe’s.

Fortunately, I did learn some lessons from this humiliating moment. Pretty sure they were the right lessons, too:

1. Do not trust your family, EVER. All they want to do is take away the Central Scrutinizer.

2. When you’re told that your interests are too freaky, look for something even freakier; that’s when it really gets good. The jump from “Crew Slut” to “Hamburger Lady” was only a few years away.

3. Drink beer, smoke pot, talk to girls, and stop listening to Frank Zappa and masturbating all the time

4. Get the living fuck out of your hometown

5. Don’t eat the yellow snow.