Once I knew a janitor, a janitor who would have loved the Bella Fayes

NOTE FROM THE WRITER: There’s something that eats at me when I get new records that sound so damn good that I can only figure that the people who made it were thinking all along, "Damn, this is the sound…this is the one they won’t be able to get by. They’ll be hooked."

I, of course, refuse to fall into their lame trap. I am, after all, a punk at heart, and no sweet sound will knock me off my perch I’ll tell ya. I ain’t having it. Who do these people think they are, trying to slip crafty rock’n’pop noises past my first impressions and plant them into my psyche? Ha! I’m better than that people. I am, after all is said and done, a PROFESSIONAL by trade. Time, as it were, is on MY side, not yours. I’ll see through your games. I’ll fish out your points of reference. I’ll be the King Critic. And I WILL pass judgment.

You might sound good to me from the get go, but I’ll turn the critical burners up high so as to bring my rockroll cynicism to a vicious boil. No matter how damn good you sound, I’m not your fool. I’m a vicious, cynical, hipper-than-thou bastard. I like the Mekons.

ADDENDUM: Okay, so you can slip one by me with a coupla sugar sweet cover girls on your disc…I’ll admit that much. I am a sucker for beauty. And maybe, as I’ve done before, I’ll slide your disc in and give her a whirl while I gaze at your fanciful artwork. And there is a chance I’ll hear your cleverly sequenced best-songs-up-front disc go through some nifty motions for, of, eight-to-ten minutes…but I know this game well. You won’t get much farther than…

APOLOGY: Okay, yeah, I apologize. But ONLY to these cats called The Bella Fayes (from, oh hell I don’t recall, I think Portland, Oregon? Wher-ever…just wish it was somewhere near you). I do like the Mekons. But I’m not hipper than anyone. I am hardly vicious (in fact I have been called a cowering sissy before – but those guys were BIG, and wearing leather, and had tattoo’s and piercing’s). And have grown so fed up of this rockwrite thing because of the pervasive cynicism that runs so rampant in its confines that I’m about to call it quits. I know, I know…no great loss. Keep it to yourself.

I love…no I LOVE this record by The Bella Fayes. They call it The Truth in a Beautiful Lie – which, as a pretend writer, is something that I feel very comfortable with. Lying that is – and the small truths in every gigantic lie I spew.

But I’m being honest when I say that this thing gets me all giddy when I listen to it (yeah, you’re taking your chances with me now – I know that). In fact, when I got the thing I was opening it up and explaining to my good friend Lucas that most of the music that comes my way these days don’t do all that much for my aging spirit. I held the pretty girls on the Bella Faye disc up for emphasis.

"Here goes another waste of time," I said. I pressed ‘play’ and…well I heard this guy groaning "feel like I wanna feel" over and over while some cats in the background cooed "ahhhlll-right", and I smiled.

"Christ man," said Lucas. "That’s healthy."

I smiled, "Very healthy."

"They can’t keep it up can they?" Lucas wondered aloud. I was about to admit that they probably couldn’t and that I was just glad to hear a good rockroll song, even if it were the only one, when these crazy fuckers from Oregon, or Washington, or wherever they hail from, cross faded into a track two that featured a whole mess of very unfashionable "Hey!…Hey now!" chanting over a buzz and scream of guitar racket.

"Shit." It’s all Lucas could muster up.

"Yeah," I said, "shit indeed."

I was sweating.

I like that word: Unfashionable. I, in fact, love the word and consider it to be my highest possible compliment to any given rockroll band. Well, probably the second highest compliment…the first and foremost rockroll praiseworthiness being how much I enjoy drinking a beer to their music, and Lucas and I savored a dozen or so while playing this stuff to death that night.

"They look like a bunch of fucking janitor’s," Lucas said, looking at the innards of the accompanying CD booklet.

"Who?" I asked boozily oblivious.

"These guys," he snapped, waving the booklet around like he was shooing flies away.

"Oh, this band?"

"Christ man, yes, this fucking band! These guys look like janitors."

I smiled. I grabbed another beer from the cooler and tossed it to Lucas.

"When I was in high school," I said as I fished the icy waters for my own beer. "The janitor was he guy who sold everyone pot."

Lucas raised his beer gesturing a toast. I snapped mine open, took a swig, and rose my own beer.

"To janitors," he said. "The most unfashionable people in the world."

"To janitors," I repeated. "And the rock and roll you damn well know they’d love."

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