Den Meeting

Monday night’s den meeting went pretty well, but it kind of broke down at the end. We got off to a great start: everyone did well on the drink of the week, which was as expected since it was a very easy drink: gin and tonic. Since they are only in second grade, I had given them a drink where the proportions did not matter all that much. When you start your own clubs in junior high, I explained, or when you pledge a frat, or get into law school or medical school, you’ll probably want to go with my personal preference, a one-to-one blend. Use a lot of ice, and it melts quickly, so one-to-one makes a nice gin and tonic. If you get a job bartending, however, the house will tell you how to mix them. A few kids forgot the lime, or went for the lemon instead, but overall I was very pleased. Then we went over the basics of five card stud. We have not discussed strategy yet at all, just trying to establish the hierarchy of hands. There was some confusion over whether a flush beat a straight, but we cleared it up quickly and moved on.

I was so pleased with what the guys had retained from the last meeting, I decided to go ahead and plug in the guitars. But before we warmed up, we went over my special punk rock catechism, which, to my astonishment, they had down cold.

Who are the godfathers of punk? Iggy and the Stooges, Patti Smith, The New York Dolls.

Who were the first punk bands? The Ramones, The Clash, The Sex Pistols.

When did punk die? 1987.

What killed punk rock? Appetite For Destruction.

Our den has a policy of not playing any punk rock recorded before 1981. We call the 70s punk rock albums “untouchables.” I tell them that if they get really really good at 1980s punk, we might try a few of them. Last week we worked on “I Saw Your Mommy And Your Mommy’s Dead,” by Suicidal Tendancies. Those of you (one, maybe two) who remember this song know that it appeals to the eight-year-old that lives inside every sixteen-year-old punk rocker’s heart. I did not have much confidence that we would be able to pull it off without getting totally silly. Little Dewey started that loopy bass line, Dakwon came in on the drums and Tommy Junior started the lyrics:

Yesterday, as I went out of the house,
I saw a body lying quiet as a mouse.
Lying face down in the sewer,
I got up closer and realized that I knew her.

Well, they made it through the whole song without cutting up and getting all silly about it, and I complemented them on their serious approach to the material. I was so confident that we had something that would be a big big smash hit at the pack meeting in Camp Seminole in October, that I introduced them to what I believe is perhaps the greatest post-1980 punk rock song of them all, Black Flag’s “Rise Above.”

At first the kids were a little rattled by the heavy feedback as the song opens, but I just kept pushing them to turn it up higher. As the guitars come in, it’s their job to tame that feedback. Before I knew it, they were full bore into the song. They ate it up. They were so good, I could do little more than sit back in amazement, trying to imagine what the other parents would think when they saw this going down a month from now. Dear god, I thought, oh dear God…

Then I noticed something was not quite right. With “I Saw Your Mommy,” I had been worried that the boys would not be able to bring off a serious delivery. Here, with Rise Above, it became obvious very quickly that the lads were taking it TOO seriously. I looked into Tommy Junior’s eyes as he screamed: WE…ARE TIRED…OF YOUR…ABUSE…TRY AND STOP US…IT’S…NO USE! Clearly, he was in another world. The stifling, suffocating miasma that is Starkville Mississippi in 2007 had suddenly become manifest, and he was stirring the caldron of his lambic rage to break it apart and, Moses-like, lead his people out. I had been there, once, long ago, and what came forth from his gone, solid gone brown eyes took me back to the heady kingdoms of my own mis-spent youth, of too much coffee, my ridiculous adolescent scribbling, the tobacco roads, the glass-eyed skeletal apparition, cocky and indolent, slouched in the driver’s seat of my soul…

STOP STOP STOP, I cried. I unplugged the amps and put the guitars away. I tried to bring the lads down to earth, especially Tommy Junior, by telling them that it was just a song, just noise, basically, just an arrangement of cacophonic squawking, but they weren’t buying it. The whole time I pled my case, TJ looked off at something just over my right shoulder, something he wanted more than anything to destroy.

OK, Chill out time, I thought. We tried a little I spy, then resorted to dodge ball in the parking lot till the parents came to pick them up. At home, I got out the banjo, and started working on “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round The Mountain.”