Posted May 5th 2003
Hello again my friends. I've been wracking what's left of my already well wracked
brain this past week in an effort to come up with this weeks' message. Ever
since I first committed myself to the task of a weekly babble I've tried to
take the responsibility seriously. And, as the man said who was waving his penis
at a group of passing nuns, I've tried to entertain as well as educate. In an
effort to continue in that vein this weeks' message will concern the lives of
us Fools before we were in a rock band. Kind of a 'Before They Were Stars' edition
that will shine a light on the early years of each band member. In some cases
that light will reveal some never before revealed revelations the nature of
which are frankly...well, revealing. So sit back, take the phone off the hook,
put your feet up, close the window shades, bring in the dog and put out the
cat because here we go with our own version of [drum roll, music, cue announcer]
"Before They Were Stars".
We see an old photo of a young Rich Bartlett, probably taken just after he quit
high school in the 10th grade. Unlike the man we know today, his hair is very
short and there is a penetrating [some would say scary] gaze in eyes as if he's
upset at whoever's taking the picture. And according to one of his few high
school friends willing to talk, Chester 'Cheesy' Stilton, that probably wasn't
far from the truth. "Rich was always pissed off about something, he didn't
like school, he didn't like sports, he didn't like cars and to tell you the
truth, I don't think he liked me that much either," said Stilton recently
on the condition that we wouldn't mention his name or whereabouts. "The
only two things he really liked were girls and anything loud; trains, lawnmowers,
jackhammers, if it was loud he liked it- I mean the guy was nuts. But please
don't tell him I said that," said the fearful Stilton who lives in Salem,
Ma. But others tell a different story; of a young truth seeker so fed up with
society that for a time he lived homeless in the streets.
Because they were warm [and loud] he often slept in subway stations. And in
summer months [to keep from being bothered by police] he slept in front of TicketMaster.
Who knows how many times he was first in line for a show he had no intention
of going to. But it was in one of these ticket lines, one day, that young Rich
had a life-changing moment. Deafeningly loud rock music was playing and there
were countless pretty women standing in line. "I must learn what this thing
called rock n' roll is all about," thought Rich. And he did. And the rest
[as they say] is guitar history. But what of the other talented guitar player
in the band, Stacey Pedrock. Well around the same time that Rich was scaring
his classmates, Stacey was having some problems of his own. A cheerful yet complicated
lad, his early years are filled with confusing tales of boundless energy aimed
at misguided ventures. When told, as a ten year old, of the concept of a rock
garden young Pedrock spent countless hours tending to a rocky patch in his back
yard. Weeding, watering, adjusting the rocks 'just so' to get the proper light,
he worked diligently for a full year until his measurements told him the awful
truth: the rocks were the same size as when he started. It was not long after
this that he was diagnosed as a dyslexic with paranoid tendencies. Perhaps this
explained why he always had the uncomfortable feeling that he was following
someone. But, as is the case with so many, Stacey began to find expression in
the arts. The Fools in fact was not his first brush with fame. In his late teens
he became quite a well known painter. Some may remember him as 'the guy who
painted squashes' because it was his obsession with painting this vegetable
that set him apart from other artists. His 'squashes by the pond' won him an
award and his 'squashes at sunset' is considered a classic of the genre. Unfortunately,
as time went on, he began to run out of appropriate settings in which to place
his beloved vegetable and his work got more bizarre. 'Squash on a Ferris wheel'
and 'squash in a boat' did little to capture the public fancy and soon it was
time to move on. Some say it was the sight of an orange colored guitar in a
store window that started him on his rock journey, but whatever the reason,
he had finally found a home. Joe Holadays path to fame took an altogether different
route. Blessed at an early age with great athletic ability, Holaday excelled
at sports. Not just football or basketball [where he was known as jumpin' Joe]
but hockey, volleyball, tennis, lacrosse, horseshoes, badminton, marbles, bocci
ball, and kick-the-can. Of all these the sport he most liked was baseball and
it's the one he might have ridden to the big leagues had not an unforeseen series
of events sidetracked him. Having led the North Coast League [.366] his first
season in pro ball, Holaday made the move up to AAA ball and the Shore Country
Day League; one step away from the big leagues! His team, the Grover Gamecocks,
were the perennial class of the league and Holaday, the 'Cocks right fielder,
got off to a fast start hitting nearly .400 the first month of the season. It
was around this time that young Joes' sporting future began to crumble. Having
seen the great baseball movie 'The Natural' in the off season, Holaday eagerly
awaited his next shipment of bats upon which he had asked the company to place
the word WONDERBOY. Whether it was fate or, more likely, the evil sense of humor
of someone at the bat company is unknown. What is known is that instead of WONDERBOY
his bats said WONDERBRA. The sportspages had a field day and although Joe continued
to hit, the headlines became more embarrassing with each game. "HOLADAY
UNLEASHES WONDERBRA" and "HOLADAYS' WONDERBRA PACKS THEM IN"
and "WONDERBRA LIFTS 'COCKS" screamed the headlines. Perhaps Joe could
have skated through this period had his play in the field not undergone a bizarre
transformation as well. It seems that Holaday had become a fan of the 'positive
visualization' approach to sports. That is he would picture an event prior to
it happening and imagine himself performing it successfully. And while this
process seemed to help his hitting, his fielding became the stuff of nightmares.
Unless a ball was hit directly at him, he refused to make a play on it. "I
didn't picture it landing there," he would say at which time he would often
point at the ball and shout obscenities as if to deride it for its' errant ways.
The press of course was delighted not only in Holadays' strange habits but in
the losing streak that soon followed. "WONDERBRA CAN'T HELP DROOPING 'COCKS"
and "'COCKS' HOLADAY PULLS BONER IN RIGHT" they bellowed. And so it
was that only halfway through his 2nd pro season young Joe was done as a ballplayer.
Depressed he wandered the south spending time at a series of odd jobs until
one day a friend bet him that, while Joe might be a great athlete, he couldn't
play the bass guitar. Joe lost the bet but won the war as within days his life
changed and within months he was joining the Fools. Well that's all for this
weeks' installment of "Before They Were Stars" but tune in next week
when we'll tell you what Leo and Mike were doing prior to there rock days------bye
bye for now, Mike
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