Songs People Somebody ‘Caught’ Me Singing—as Well as Songs I ‘Caught’ Other People Singing

by MIKE MCPADDEN

*

SUMMER 1985

Between junior and senior years of high school, I worked as an elevator operator in a high-rise apartment building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Upon answering a call on the 37^th floor, I opened the elevator car’s doors just in time to blast waiting tenants with:

“ROCKY MOUNTAIN HIGH!

COLLL-UH-RAHHHHH-DOUGH!”

I offered no explanation, and they asked for none. If pressed, I’d have said: “John Denver rules,” and I would NOT have been lying.

*

DECEMBER 1986

As I wrapped up my first semester at college, unrequited affection dominated my every moment of existence.

I tried to play it cool, but I betrayed myself one morning as I—maybe semi-tearfully—sang along in my dorm room to one of the gloppiest pop hits of the moment.

“AND I’LL BE YOUR FRIEND
AND I’LL BE YOUR LOVER

WELL, I KNOW IN OUR HEARTS WE AGREE
WE DON’T HAVE TO BE ONE OR THE OTHER…”

Just then into my room bopped Dottie—the daffy ballerina nicknamed “The Girl From Mars.” She was EXACTLY who I was thinking about as I was bellowing and almost bawling.

Fortunately, Dottie was whistling along to the whistle part of “Walk Like an Egyptian” so maybe she wasn’t really paying attention.

Regardless I tried to cover by saying I was paying tribute to the song’s composer and co-singer—soap opera star Gloria Loring—based on the stupendous TV sitcom music she’d done in the past in collaboration with her ex-husband Allan Thicke. Together, that powerhouse duo wrote and performed the themes to both Diff’rent Strokes AND The Facts of Life.

Then I showed off to Dottie how I had memorized the words to the almost never heard CLOSING theme of The Facts of Life:

“You’ll avoid a lot of damage
and avoid the fun of managin’
The Facts of Life

They shed a lot of light

If you hear them from your brother
Better clear them with your mother
Better get ’em right

Call her late at night

You got the future in the palm of your hands
All you gotta do to get through
Is understand
You think you’d rather do without
You’ll never make it through without the truth
The Facts of Life is all about YOU!”

Dottie ultimately decided—perhaps at that very moments—that

[SING:]

We would STAAAAAAAY friends
And NOOOOOT be lov-uhs

And I can’t really blame her for choosing that one OH-ver the UHHHHH-ther

*

WINTER 1988

Make no mistake, fellow babies: I am repulsed by the notion of ANY kind of ethnic, national, or racial quote-unquote PRIDE.

In fact, I might be repulsed by the notion of “pride,” period.

That stated, “White Minority” by Black Flag is a song that plays in my head a lot.

And since most of the songs I suddenly sing out loud are the ones that just sort of run on my internal jukebox, “White Minority” is one I make a conscious effort to NOT unconsciously give voice to.

Now, I’m sure I don’t have to clarify that “White Minority,” particularly as sung by Puerto Rican vocalist Ron Reyes, is an ANTI-racist song, but the lyrics, heard at face value, could very well get a cracker violently incapacitated.

So one swell afternoon, I was tooling around the campus of Brooklyn’s decidedly minority-minority-heavy Kingsborough Community College with “White Minority” just blaring on a loop in my skull.

I spend a great deal of every day spontaneously bursting into song but, again, I concentrated on NOT doing that with “White Minority.”

My main strategy, when I felt “White Minority” slip out of my mouth, was to instantly switch it to “White Bird,” an obscure 1968 pop hit by the hilariously monikered hippie ensemble, It’s a Beautiful Day.

So it would sound like:

WE’RE GONNA BE A
… WHITE BIRRRRRD
IN A GOLDEN CAGE

ON A WINTER’S DAY
IN THE RAIN….

But for whatever reason, on that day, on the Kingsborough Campus, I sang:

“WE’RE GONNA BE A

WHITE POWER!

FOR ENGLAND

WHITE POWER!

TODAY!

WHITE POWER!

FOR BRITAIN!

BEFORE IT GETS TO LAAAAATE!”

Instead of turning “White Minority” by Black Flag into “White Bird” by It’s a Beautiful Day, I turned into “White Power” by overtly racist skinhead band Skrewdriver.

It was NOT a beautiful day for me then on the Kingsborough Campus, as I immediately walked backward to the parking lot, hopped in my car, and drove off—quickly checking the tape deck to make sure it was clear of any Skrewdriver cassettes.

*

FALL 1995

One that’s not me.

My beloved cousin and, yes, my actual officially baptized Catholic godson Johnnie was a eleven-year-old football star and general moose of a kid, in addition to being quite hilarious and a lifelong devotee of foul humor.

I snuck up on Johnny one afternoon and caught him absent-mindedly crooning:

“And it sounds like CHURCH bells
Or the whistle of a train…”

I recognized the line as coming from the pop love smash “As I Lay Me Down” by Sophie B. Hawkins.

Naturally, I kidded him a bit, but then—being the cool godfather I was, an am—I told him that the nonsensical backup vocals at the end that sort of sound like “TOO-TAH TAH-TAH” were actually saying “TOO-NAH TAH-CO” and that it was code for vagina because Sophie B. Hawkins was into chicks.

I even said that the B. in her name stood for “bisexual.”

Johnny laughed, incredulously, and then said. “Wait—really?”

I just responded: “Ask around at school.”

*

SPRING 1998

I hate rap music. All of it. One hundred percent of hip-hop could—and should—be removed from human history, and I’d be a happier citizen of the world.

Whatever example you want to spray at me as a possible exception that NOBODY could hate—I hate that, too. I promise you. Whitey. AND I’m also right about hating all rap music. But that’s a different tangent.

Now, in general, given my 70s Brooklyn upbringing and my general anarcho-fascist disposition and the first two supremely stupid letters of my last name, I like and tend to be automatically sympathetic to cops out working a beat.

One night, I went out to grab a slice of pizza in Bay Ridge and I passed a parked police car and, inexplicably, I blurted out, full gangsta styleee:

“FUCK DA POE-LEESE!”

And I don’t even miss Eazy-E, despite his Republican sympathies. Which is some achievement.

The cops whose car it was were IN the pizzeria I was headed to, so for fear being subject to a wholly justified nightsticking, I kept moseying up the block and got a roast beef hero.

FUCK DA PEETZ-UH!

*

SUMMER 2005

As I watched the soap drain off my upper appendages in a motel shower, I blurted out:

“YOU WASH YOU HAAHNDS CLEAN OF THIS!”

The line came from an adult contemporary hit that, at that precise juncture, was not even particularly contemporary.

Outside, I heard my waiting companions laugh and somebody yelled, “Hurry up in there, I gotta piss… ALANIS!”

The occasion was an overnight stop while on tour with Gays in the Military, a volcanically obnoxious—and, I might add, AWE-fucking-SOME—psychedelic noise ensemble for whom I abused a rhythm guitar.

And, yes, my fellow avant-garde acid-skronk musicians had busted me singing—while naked—a number titled “Hands Clean” by Alanis Morissette.

And yet I KNEW that the haranguing would never get TOO severe as Gays in the Military frontman Sir Lord Brian Puberty—a Roky-Erickson-type whose vocal technique rumbled somewhere between death metal and death by infectious throat disease—was so huge and so sincere an Alanis Morissette devotee that he took ANY razzing of Ms. Jagged Little Pill as a personal assault.

And so Gays in the Military WAHHSHED THEIR HAAHNDS CLEAN of the entire incident.

*

SOME TIME IN THE EARLY 90s

Another one that’s not me.

During one boozy wee-hour fumble session, I found myself leaning back in bed while a lady fair headed south to attend to the pointed business at gland there.

And to be sure, this lady was quite fair, but she was even more than that completely batso-bugso insane—as evidenced, foremost, by the fact that she happily shared a sleep chamber with me at the Neanderthal height/nadir of my drug and alcohol subhumanism.

Anyway, as she approached to do her spew diligence, I heard her unthinkingly intone:

“MY FAV-OR-ITE VEDGE-UH-TUH-BULLS!”

Now, it was amusing enough that, confronted with the genital reality of the moment, she gave voice to affection for produce. But more amazing is that she was singing the song “Vegetables” from the Beach Boys then-bootleg-only Smile album.

I shall end this vignette by quoting the title of a book on the creation of Brian Wilson’s famously abandoned teenage symphony to God:

LOOK! LISTEN! VIBRATE! SMILE!

INTERPLANETARY HOLIDAY

by ANDY SLATER

In third grade, right about the time I was becoming a “bad kid,” my school put together some holiday musical.

It was called “Interplanetary Holiday.”

It was a non-denominational play about space travelers who come to earth on December 25th. They were visiting to spread JOY.

My whole class knew this attempt at appeasing the parents was dumb, so some of us “bad kids” decided we were going to fuck up the opening night by signing the wrong lyrics at the wrong times.

“On 12-25 we come alive, and we spin away for a holiday. We are bound for fun, come on everyone. Come and join us in our planetary play.”

It’s still in my head after almost 30 years. I can’t for the life of me remember our alternative lyrics, but I imagine they had something to do with being a faggot.

I am still convinced that our music teacher, Mr. Mark Kasmin, wrote this Yule log of dung. He tried to play it off like it was something cool and cutting edge that all the other schools in our city were doing. No one liked him.

He sang parodies of the Beatles’ songs every week. “Yesterday” was now “Leprosy”. “Hello, Goodbye” was now “Goodbye, Hello.”

Like I said, no one liked him.

We joked that he had a plastic toupee because his hair was always perfect.
But then my friend’s older brother said that he was good looking because he is gay.

That made no sense to me. I didn’t really know what being gay really was but I know that being a fag was bad, or at least it was to everyone at the schoolyard.

The day before the play’s debut I had lost my voice. I sounded like a frog and after pointing that out, all the kids called me Croaker.

It was nothing new for me to be teased; I was the kid who couldn’t see. I was the kid who had to wear yellow tinted glasses, deeming me “piss glasses.”

The kids I went to school with were so pleasant.

In order to steer the unwelcome trash talk from my froggy self, I started ripping on Mr. Kasmin.

“He has perfect hair because he is gay.” I said with a croak.

“What’s that Croaker? Huh, Froggy?” said the kids pushing me around.
“I said, he always looks good because he is gay!” I shouted.

All the boys stopped spinning and shoving me. They all pointed and yelled at once,
“FAGGOT! Froggy is a FAG! Faggy frog, froggy fag! Ha Ha Ha!”

Well I certainly walked into that one didn’t I? Being called a fag was horrible, even though I’m sure half of the kids didn’t know what it meant.

I ran home and hid in my closet.
There’s nothing better to do after being called all kinds of homo-hating words than to go hide in a closet. Good lord.

I sat in the closet and practiced my song for the Interplanetary Holiday I was about to embark on.

“On 12-25 we come alive, and we spin away for a holiday. We are bound for fun, come on everyone. Come and join us in our planetary play.”
“Shout hooray this is our day. Shout hooray we’re on our way. Cuz we just can’t stay away for our inter plan, for our inter plan, for our interplanetary holiday.”
“HOORAY!”

It was that final “HOORAY” that would make me cringe for years to come.

And here’s why.

The next day I had no voice at all. My parents told me I didn’t have to be in the play if I didn’t want to. Losing your voice is common when you’re nervous.
I wasn’t nervous; I was hoarse from defending my nonexistent manhood on the playground the day before.

I decided I would be in the play and just mouth the words and hope I didn’t get caught. Lord knows I’d get blamed for every problem the play had if they could pin one little thing on me.

On opening night we sat in decorated folding chairs in the dark gym. It was full of parents and grandparents and bratty little brothers and creepy scoutmasters.

My class was singing the intro to the play. I was looking forward to getting it over with.
The song started and I was doing great lip-syncing to the bullshit.

I must have gotten into it and caught the HOLY GHOST because I started singing along. I sounded like Popeye the Sailor or Buster Poindexter. I sounded like an old man.

I was satisfied.
But then I missed a cue.
I yelled the final HOORAY in the wrong place. Everyone laughed.
I could feel the heat on my neck and my face turn red. I hung my head until my teacher pulled me into the hall.

“How dare you sing in a funny voice? This is Christmas!” she yelled. I’m sure everyone in the gym could hear her garlic and Virginia Slims breath shout in my face.

I had to sit in the hall until intermission. At that point I was dragged in by my collar and sat down in my chair. I was blushing.
The kids were whispering and laughing at me.
“Good job, Froggy!”

I couldn’t decide what was worse: fucking up the song because I have no timing, or having everyone think that I was being a clown and goofing off.

The curtains drew open and there was Brian DeBiasie. He stood there looking like Spanky from Our Gang holding a trumpet.

He was getting ready to play the fanfare introduction for the arrival of space alien queen.

He blew into the trumpet and there was a gurgle instead of a triumphant burst.

He had puked into his trumpet!

The vomit dripped down his face and out of the bell of his horn.
He began to cry and everyone laughed, even the parents.

He then opened the spit valve and released even more bile.
The curtains drew and the play was cancelled.

My ass was saved.

THE TRILOGY OF TRAUMA

by Bob Goblin

 

 

Trilogy One: Arrested

Mr. Miller was known for his droning monotone lectures during 8th period history class. I think he got off on his students falling asleep and purposely conducted his lectures in this manner. Actually I know he did. If you were caught sleeping in Mr. Miller’s class he would take his pre-class, pre-filled cup of water and pour it onto your crotch. Girls, boys, it didn’t matter. If you had a sleepy crotch…you were susceptible.

This happened to me once in his class and I recall waking up angered already overflowing with the typical teen angst and I threw my history book at him. It was that foggy time when being abruptly wakened and the fight or flight reflex lashed out. Surprisingly nothing came of my textbook assault to his back. I think he knew that the assault to my crotch squared things up and we were even. I guess his technique worked because I never fell asleep in his class again.

Mr. Miller was also rumored to have taken many of the star student and athlete jocks to his home to smoke pot and watch Jeopardy. This to be some type of reward. This rumor was never confirmed during my tenure a Taft Junior high but many believed it to be true.

Now this particular chapter in the trilogy actually occurred in the latter half of 1989. One afternoon during a Mr. Miller lecture, something or someone in the hallway interrupted him to his left. He paused the class lecture and exited the room. A few moments later he came in and exclaimed to the class, “Mr. Conlin, there is a gentlemen in the hallway who would like to speak to you.”

When I exited the hallway it was the principle and another man I had never seen. He asked me how I was doing and if everything was going well. He also pointed to my arms and asked what had happened to them…you see I was a cutter. I started cutting when I was 11 and it carried on into my late teens with an occasional reappearance into my 20’s. I explained that it was an accident with the belt sander in woodshop and that I was ok.

He then stated that the other man was a detective from the Crown Point police department and that we were going to go to a room at the end of the hall and have a talk. I could feel the adrenaline pumping and the anger churning, what did I do, what did I do? From day one in this school the administration was after me.

You see I was a 6ft, longhaired, very adult looking metal head in a mostly conservative god fearing town. I was an outcast, a bad boy, the kid your parents told you not to hang out with… and honestly I wasn’t a bad kid but my looks gave many of the fucks the impression that I was.

As we walked to the end of the hall I noticed two police officers near the room and they each grabbed an arm of mine and escorted me in. Robert, this is just a formality but we need to search and handcuff you. What the fuck is going on, I exclaimed!!!

The search began and I still had no idea why or what was happening. I had a pack of Marlboro reds crotched and a lighter in my front pocket. When the officer felt the lighter he told the other officer, “WE HAVE A KNIFE”. Hands clinched my arms tighter…” OH it’s just a lighter.” What is going on, I didn’t do anything!!! Robert your mom has asked us to escort you to the Southlake Center for the Mental Health. What??? For what??? What the fuck!!!

Handcuffed hands behind my back, outlining Vic Rattlehead looming above Megadeth’s Peace Sells concert schedule, with police escort we exited the room and moments later the end of 8th period bell rang and the entire hallway filled with students. I remember thinking,” AWESOME”!!! This is going to do wonderful things for my metal cred!

I was put in a squad car and could see my step dad’s car just behind. My mother was crying, I screamed at her, “What are you doing!” The confusion and thoughts of what I possibly did or what I was got caught before doing filled my mind.

When we arrived after about a 20-minute car ride I was escorted to the front door. I caught a glimpse of my mother behind me and I jerked free from the cops and ran up to her. What is going on!!! What are you doing!!! My mother crying exclaimed, I read your note!!! What note??? What are you talking about??? The cops quickly took control of me and we walked in the building. I stole a glance in the mirror and thought how awesome I looked cuffed and escorted.

A few weeks prior, my mother and I got into a fight (which was pretty typical). This time because she found my stash of porn and cigarettes. After the heated argument and her failed attempts to ground/punish me I sat down to write my girlfriend Michelle.

Michelle was my best friend Chad’s cousin, (if you recall from the first rock trauma, Chad and I would spit up Ketchup pretending to be Gene Simmons during God of Thunder’s live bass solo) Michelle was my first girlfriend, the first girl I opened mouth kissed, my first long distance relationship, and the person to introduce me to Erasure who I still pretend to not like… Oh L’amour…

I wrote in the letter, and I quote… that my mom, more like the fucking bitch I want to kill. Was driving me crazy and how I wished that you (Michelle) and I could just run away together… Blah blah blah. So apparently my mother found this letter and was alarmed for some reason and began to search my room.

She found my collection of knifes and black candles… and oh… my Anton LaVey Satanic Bible. She got kinda spooked so she had me arrested. I guess putting the pieces together could justify her behavior.

 

I was escorted into an emergency crisis therapy session for 6 hours and it was deemed that, “I didn’t look like a Satanist, I wasn’t going to kill my mother and that I should probably get back in therapy.” We left as a happy family in a long car ride home with an apologetic mother. Still to this day I don’t know how they didn’t find my stash of weed but it sure felt nice getting high when I got home.

Trilogy Two: Virginity-less

I had been carrying around this lambskin rubber in my pocket for at least 6 months.

One of my older friends John gave it to me one night when I was going to meet up with Jennifer. I wanted to be ready when Jennifer finally agreed to have sex so I always had it with me. This rubber had been washed at least a dozen times in the laundry and dried about a half dozen but I figured it would still be ok. I knew lambskin condoms were actually lamb intestine and figured it to prove durable. 

We were both virgins, freshmen in high school and had been together for over a year. We had been busted once by her little brother going down on each other so getting anytime alone with her was very difficult after that little fucker snitched to her parents.

There was always a lie, an ambushed sleep over, or parental night on the town that would allow us to be together. My parents were on vacation in Mexico when Jennifer came over this time. We went upstairs, we put our album on Pink Floyd the wall and began making out when things got heavy.

 I asked her what she wanted to do, and she said, “You”. What? I want to have sex she said. OMG it’s going to happen. As I went to my Levi’s to pull the plastic encased condom container out of my pocket, it started.

“Bobby? Bobby? What are you doing?” It was my older brother Patrick. “Nothing!” I yelled back.

My brother and I never got along growing up and things were even a little more awkward (if that’s the word for it) since he recently outed himself from the closet. I always had a suspicion my brother was different and the “Fight Queer bashing, Queers bash back now” sticker on his Ford escort did much to affirm my assumptions but I was still in denial.

I remember asking him once if he could just try it with a girl… He said sure if I just tried it with a guy. I also asked him how long he had been gay; he said, “I have always been gay.”

I have accepted him ever since and never asked him to just try it with a girl. Now it was my time to try it with a girl.

Anyway, when I opened the condom container, my assumptions were right and the sheep intestine had survived through the washings, dryings, and over the clothes many dry humpings. I was shaking as I unrolled the condom and was so nervous I lost my erection. All this time and this had to happen now.

“Bobby! Come down here now.”

“No! What do you want?”

“Bobby, come down here and get your laundry out of the dryer.”

 

 Mounting her, she gently stroked my flaccid penis to full erection.

 

“Bobby, come down her now and fold these towels.”

“No!” I said.

 

I slid the intestine over my penis and as I entered her I couldn’t believe it was finally happening! I couldn’t wait to tell my friends that it finally happened. There were 2 or 3 girls hounding me in my circle that had threatened on many occasions that they were going to take my virginity if I didn’t lose it. Wow does this feel…

“Bobby, come down here NOW!”

“NO, shut up!!!”

“Bobby I’m coming up there!!!”

“SHUT UP PATRICK, FUCK OFF”

 

OMG this is amazing, I’m a man! Oh… this is awesome… Wow….

 

“Bobby!!! Bobby!!! Bobby!!!”

 

Oh man I’m coming… 

 

Trilogy Three: Caught in the Act

The Merrillville roller rink would have metal shows on the weekend, and me and my group were so fuckin’ excited to see MACABRE this weekend. The anticipation during the week of the weekend was almost intolerable. I had been coughing a lot during the week and had felt that I was getting sick.

The night of the show I had a hard time keeping up in the mosh pit and my excitement for the event nearly diminished as I became increasingly short of breath. I tried to smoke through the shortness of breath but to no avail.

The next morning I was awoke in full audible stridor… with stabbing chest pains. I told my mother something was wrong and she yelled at me…”you probably broke one of your ribs slamming into to people at your concert last night.”

She rushed me to the ER and I was admitted with pneumonia and Pleurisy. Pleurisy is inflammation of the lining of the lungs and chest that leads to chest pain (usually sharp) when you take a breath or cough. It was awful and so painful. I was in the hospital for a week and pumped full of antibiotics. I was instructed to quit smoking…that sucked.

I hadn’t seen Jennifer in almost two weeks. As my mother was leaving to run errands (one of which to get me some gum) I informed her that Jennifer was coming over. She turned her head with a raised eyebrow and said…”oh really.” My mother left before Jennifer arrived.

Within minutes of Jennifer getting to my house we were upstairs having sex. I was panting away as it was still very difficult to breathe. I really liked this new pastime of ours and Jennifer would really get into it. She would moan loudly and call my name and all sorts of things like…”yeah, fuck me, it feels so good,” etc.

Minutes went by and when we were done fucking and Jennifer quieted down we heard from the hallway outside my room… “Yous two done yet in there?” It was my mom, back early from her errands with my chewing gum to help me stop smoking.

My heart sank, I pulled off the rubber and threw it at the wall…Jennifer’s hands went to her mouth… tapping her lips… oh my god oh my god.

 

“Huh, yous two done…” bellowed the hallway.

“Yeah, hang on.”

As we exited, Jennifer’s head hung low my mother yelled to her, “you sound like one of the bimbos in those porno movies.”

I snapped back…. “Don’t you talk to her like that!”

My Mom said,” fine,” looking at Jennifer,” I’m going to your house to tell your mother!”

 

Getting caught was a good thing because our parents now knew we were having sex and with sex comes responsibility. They knew we wouldn’t stop, and that I would now always need money for condoms. Even though I drank and smoked most of my condom money this trauma had been particularly awful because our parents even more now tried to keep us from one another.

About 3 years later, my new girlfriend Molly and I came home from a date. Molly ran in to show my Mom a present I had bought for her and stumbled into my parents fucking on the couch. As I walked in Molly ran into my arms and buried her head into my chest.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

I looked over to see my parents on the couch, and my mom exclaimed from across the living room, “I guess we’re even now!”

Eew.