Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto Read online

  Perhaps this is why I can’t see Billy Joel as cool. Perhaps it’s because all he makes me see is me.

  1. “Close to the Borderline” was also the inadvertent cause of the funniest thing anyone has ever said to me. I was playing Glass Houses at college—this was like 1991—and my roommate Mike Schauer walked into our dorm room at the exact moment Joel was singing the lines, “Another night I fought the good fight / But I’m getting closer to the borderline.” Mike made a very strange face and said, “Is this Stryper unplugged?”

  2. It just now occurred to me that—if Billy Joel were to actually read this—he must hate how every attempt at advocating his genius is prefaced with a reminder of how cool he isn’t.

  3. Actually, it turns out I was completely wrong about this: When I eventually had the opportunity to interview Joel (months after the completion of this essay) I asked him about “Laura,” and he said it was about a family member. He noted, “There’s a complete giveaway line where I sing, ‘How can she hold an umbilical cord so long.’ Now, who the hell could that be about?” Obviously, I can’t argue about the meaning of a song with the person who wrote it. But I still think my interpretation is more interesting than his truth.

  Last year I had to go to one of those “adult” parties. I think you know the kind of party I mean: People brought their screaming children and someone inexplicably served fresh cornbread, and half the house stood around and watched the local news affiliate when it came on at 11:00 P.M. I spent the whole evening in the kitchen with the two guys I came with; we tried to have an exclusionary conversation despite the fact that we consciously drove to this party in order to be social. Most of the guests began to exit at around midnight, which is the same time some odd fellow I’d never seen before suddenly appeared next to the refrigerator and pulled out a Zippo lighter and a little wooden box.

  The gathering took a decidedly different turn.

  Ten minutes later, I found it necessary to mention that Journey was rock’s version of the TV show Dynasty. This prompted a spirited debate we dubbed “Monkees = Monkees.” The goal is to figure out which television show is the closest philosophical analogy to a specific rock ’n’ roll band, and the criteria is mind-blowingly complex: It’s a combination of longevity, era, critical acclaim, commercial success, and—most important—the aesthetic soul of each artistic entity. For example, the Rolling Stones are Gunsmoke. The Strokes are Kiefer Sutherland’s 24. Jimi Hendrix was The Twilight Zone. Devo was Fern-wood 2-Night. Lynyrd Skynyrd was The Beverly Hillbillies, which makes Molly Hatchet Petticoat Junction. The Black Crowes are That ’70s Show. Hall & Oates were Bosom Buddies. U2 is M*A*S*H (both got preachy at the end). Dokken was Jason Bateman’s short-lived sitcom It’s Your Move. Eurythmics were Mork & Mindy. We even deduced comparisons for solo projects, which can only be made to series that were spawned as spin-offs. The four Beatles are as follows: John = Maude, Paul = Frasier, George = The Jeffersons, and Ringo = Flo. David Lee Roth’s solo period was Knots Landing.

  So there’s proof: Marijuana makes you smarter.

  5 Appetite for Replication 0:56

  She is not a beautiful woman.

  She is not necessarily repulsive, I suppose, but no one is going to suspect this woman is an upstart actress or an aspiring model. One assumes there aren’t a lot of actresses or models in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, and one assumes even fewer would be working in a roadside café at 5:55 A.M. on Saturday morning. But for the next ten minutes, this aging red-haired woman is being treated like the foxiest rock chick in Appalachia. For a few post-dawn moments on this particular Saturday, she might as well be Tawny Kitaen.

  “Do you like Guns N’ Roses?” asks Randy Trask, the be spectacled twenty-eight-year-old who talks more than the other five people at the table combined. “We’re a Guns N’ Roses tribute band. I’m Axl. We’re doing a show tonight in Harrisonburg. You gotta come. It’s only like four hours away. Bring all your girlfriends. It’s going to be insane. They love us in Harrisonburg. But I need to see you there. I’m the singer. I play Axl.”

  The waitress blushes like a middle-school crossing guard and calls Trask a sweetheart. She tells us that she can’t come to the show because her grandfather is dying, and you can tell she’s not lying. In a weird way, this might be flirting. When she leaves to fetch our pancakes, Trask glows like the MTV logo, circa 1988. Before we leave the restaurant, he will give this not-so-anorexic waitress a hug and aggressively declare that we will stop back to see her on our way home tomorrow afternoon.

  “Exit 175. Remember that. This restaurant is off Exit 175,” he says when we crawl back into the pickup. “What did I tell you? There’s just something about me and redheads.”

  In truth, Mr. Trask should be a redhead. His overt blondness—along with the fact that he’s six-foot-four—makes him look more like David Lee Roth than W. Axl Rose, and he knows it. “I am going to dye my hair red. That is definitely in the works,” he says. “It’s just that the last time I tried, it turned sort of pink. And for some reason, people get scared of you when you have red hair. I don’t know why that it is, but it’s true. They just don’t warm up to you the way they do if you’re blond.”

  Trask tells me this at ten minutes to midnight while we sit in his 1997 extended-cab Ford Ranger pickup, which we will drive from Cincinnati to northern Virginia for tomorrow night’s rock show. It’s roughly a ten-hour drive, so leaving in the middle of the night should get us to town just in time to check into the Hampton Inn for an afternoon nap. There is some concern about this, because the last time Trask and his band mates in Paradise City were in Harrisonburg they were banned for life from the Econo Lodge. This weekend, they need to make sure things go smoothly at the Hampton; there just aren’t that many hotels in Harrisonburg.

  Our pickup is sitting outside the home of Paul Dischner, and the engine is idling. Like Trask, Dischner is striving to be someone else; he’s supposed to be Izzy Stradlin, Guns N’ Roses original rhythm guitar player. In the band Paradise City, everybody is supposed to be someone else. That’s the idea.

  “I initially had a problem with the idea of doing a Guns N’ Roses tribute, because I didn’t want anyone to think I was discrediting Axl. That was always my main concern. If Axl was somehow against this, I’d straight up quit. I would never do this if he disapproved,” Trask says. “But I really think we can do his songs justice. People constantly tell me, ‘You sound better than Axl,’ but I always say, ‘Whoa now, slow down.’ Because I like the way I sing Axl’s songs, but I love the way Axl sings them. That’s the main thing I’m concerned about with this article: I do not want this to say anything negative about Guns N’ Roses. That’s all I ask.”

  I am the first reporter who has ever done a story on Paradise City. This is less a commentary on Paradise City and more a commentary on the tribute band phenomenon, arguably the most universally maligned sector of rock ’n’ roll. These are bands mired in obscurity and engaged in a bizarrely postmodern zero-sum game: If a tribute band were to completely succeed, its members would no longer have personalities. They would have no character whatsoever, beyond the qualities of whomever they tried to emulate. The goal is not to be somebody; the goal is be somebody else.

  Though the Beatles and Elvis Presley were the first artists to spawn impersonators, the modern tribute template was mostly set by groups like Strutter, Hotter than Hell, and Cold Gin, all of whom toured in the early nineties by looking, acting, and singing like the 1978 version of KISS. It worked a little better than anyone could have expected: People would sooner pay $10 to see four guys pretending to be KISS than $5 to see four guys playing original songs nobody had ever heard before. And club owners understand money. There are now hundreds—probably thousands—of rock bands who make a living by method acting. There’s the Atomic Punks, a Van Halen tribute that celebrates the band’s Roth era. Battery is a tribute to Metallica. Planet Earth are L.A. based Duran Duran clones. Bjorn Again claims to be Australia’s finest ABBA tribute. AC/DShe is a
n all-female AC/DC cover group from San Francisco. There are tributes to groups who never seemed that popular to begin with (Badfinger, Thin Lizzy, Dream Theater), and there are tributes to bands who are not altogether difficult to see for real (The Dave Matthews Band, Creed). And though rock critics deride Stone Temple Pilots and Oasis for ripping off other artists, drunk people in rural bars pay good money to see tribute bands rip off Stone Temple Pilots and Oasis as accurately as possible.

  And being consciously derivative is not easy.

  Trask and Dischner can talk for hours about the complexity of feeding their appetite for replication. Unlike starting a garage band, there are countless caveats that must be fulfilled when auditioning potential members for a tribute. This was especially obvious when Paradise City had to find a new person to play Slash, GNR’s signature lead guitarist. It is not enough to find a guy who plays the guitar well; your Slash needs to sound like Slash. He needs to play a Les Paul, and he needs to tune it like Slash. He needs to have long black hair that hangs in his face and a $75 top hat. Preferably, he should have a dark complexion, an emaciated physique, and a willingness to play shirtless. And if possible, he should drink Jack Daniel’s on stage.

  The Slash in Paradise City fulfills about half of those requirements.

  “Bobby is on thin ice right now, and he knows he’s on thin ice,” says Trask, referring to lead guitarist Bobby Young. “I mean, he’s an okay guy, and he’s a good guitar player. But we have ads out right now for a new Slash, and he knows that. I want someone who is transfixed with being Slash. We want someone who is as sick about Slash as I am about Axl.”

  What’s ironic about Young’s shortcomings as Slash is that—in a traditional band—his job would likely be the most secure: He is clearly the most skilled musician in Paradise City, having received a degree from Cincinnati’s Conservatory of Music in 1987 (that was the same year GNR debuted with the album Appetite for Destruction). “I was classically trained, so I’m used to everything being built around minor chords,” he tells me. “But Slash plays almost everything in a major chord, and his soloing is very different than mine. It’s not in chromatic keys. I really thought I could learn all of these Guns N’ Roses songs in two days, but it took me almost two weeks.”

  Unfortunately, Young can’t learn how to look like a mulatto ex-heroin addict, and this is the only occupation in America for which that is a job requirement. He only vaguely resembles Slash, and his band mates tease him about being akin to an Oompa Loompa from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. There’s a similar problem with Paradise City’s bassist; he’s portrayed by an affable, laidback blond named Spike, but Spike is built a little too much like a farmer. His shoulders are broad, and he actually looks more like Larry Bird than Duff McKagan. Amazingly, Spike is also partially deaf from playing heavy metal for so many years (he can’t hear certain frequencies, including feedback), but—somehow—that doesn’t pose a problem.

  Visually, the rest of Paradise City succeeds at varying degrees. Drummer Rob “The Monster” Pohlman could pass for Steven Adler if Pohlman hadn’t just shaved his head and dyed his remaining locks orange, a move that completely baffles Dischner.1 The fact that he hides behind a drum kit, however, substantially mitigates this problem. Trask is eight inches too tall, but he has the voice and—more importantly—the desire. He wills himself into Axlocity.

  Dischner is the only Paradise City member who naturally looks like a GNR doppelgänger. He’s also the guy who makes the trains run on time; he handles the money, coordinates the schedules, and generally keeps his bandmates from killing each other. All of these guys are friendly, but Dischner is the most relentlessly nice. He’s also mind-blowingly idiosyncratic. Prior to Paradise City, Dischner played in an Yngwie Malmsteen–influenced band called Premonition, a group whose entire existence was based on the premise that the Antichrist is Juan Carlos, the King of Spain.2 To this day, Dischner adheres to this theory and claims it can be proven through biblical prophecy. He lives with his wife (an aspiring vampire novelist) in a small suburb of Cincinnati, and he peppers his conversation with a high-pitched, two-note laugh that sounds like “Wee Hee!” Over the next thirty-six hours, he will make that sound approximately four hundred times.

  When we leave from Dischner’s house at 12:30 A.M., it has already been an incredibly long day for Trask. He awoke Friday morning at 2:00 A.M. at his home in Ravenna, Ohio, and immediately drove four hours to the outskirts of Cincinnati, where he spent the day cutting down a troublesome tree in Dischner’s front yard; Trask’s father runs a tree service in Northeast Ohio, so his son knows how to handle a chainsaw. After a brief afternoon nap, the band hooked up for a few hours of rehearsal before supper. Now it’s midnight, and Trask is preparing to drive the entire way to Virginia, nonstop. I have never met anyone who needs sleep less. Trask once drove twenty-two hours straight to Hayes, Kansas, and played a show immediately upon arrival. If the real Axl Rose had this kind of focus, Guns N’ Roses would have released fifteen albums by now.

  There was a time when Paradise City had a tour bus, but they lost it last summer. This is not a euphemism; they literally can’t find it. It broke down on a trip to Kansas City, and they had to leave it in a Missouri garage to make it to the club on time. Somehow, they lost the business card of the garage and have never been able to recall its location. Dischner tells me this story three times before I realize he’s not joking.

  “We drove back through Missouri a bunch of times, we put up a picture on our Web site, and we even called the Highway Patrol,” Dischner says. “But we lost the bus. And I guess there’s some law that states you only have thirty days to find your bus.”

  As it is, the band is now traveling in two vehicles. Axl/Randy will pull the Haulmark trailer that contains their gear; he’ll drive the truck, I’ll ride shotgun, and Izzy/Paul will curl up in the extended cab. A friend of the band—some dude named Teddy—will follow in his Ford Mustang, which will also hold Slash/Bobby and Steven/Rob. The pickup box is covered with a topper, so Duff/Spike will lay back in the truck bed with Punky.

  Trask and Dischner do not know who Punky is.

  They’ve only met Punky a few times, and they don’t know his last name (or his real first name). They are told that Punky is friends with Teddy and Young, all of whom are evidently longtime running buddies. Young is thirty-six, which is a little older than Trask (twenty-eight), Dischner (thirty-one), and Pohlman (twenty-nine). Nobody knows how old Spike is and he refuses to say; a good guess might be forty.

  Our last stop before hitting the highway is Spike’s home in Clifton, Ohio, a few scant miles from the site of Cincinnati’s recent race riots. Spike’s house is terrifying. It appears completely dilapidated, but—supposedly—it’s actually being renovated. The home contains a python, several large birds, two alligators in the bathtub, and the most bloodthirsty Rottweiler in North America (Dischner gives me four full minutes of instruction about how to safely walk past this animal). Spike deals exotic animals in his spare time; nobody but me seems to find this unusual.

  At departure time, only 40 percent of the band is not under the influence of some kind of chemical. Twenty minutes into the trip, that percentage will fall to zero. Even before we get on the road, this Punky character looks drunk enough to die; amazingly, he’s just getting started. They’re all just getting started. Everyone is smoking pot, and it’s the second-strongest dope I’ve ever inhaled: I keep looking through the windshield, and the vehicle seems to be moving much faster than it should be. It feels like we’re driving down an extremely steep incline, but the earth remains flat. I am not the type who normally gets paranoid, but this is a bit disturbing. I’m trying very hard to act cool, but I start thinking too much; in order to relax, I smoke another half joint, which (of course) never works. I start imaging that we’re going to crash and that my death is going to be reported as some sort of predictable irony—I will forever be remembered as the guy who wrote a book about heavy metal bands who were mostly fake and then died w
hile touring with a heavy metal band that was completely fake. I start having hallucinations of elk running out in front of the vehicle, and I notice that Trask isn’t even watching the road when he talks to me. Finally, I can’t take it anymore. I politely turn to Trask and Dischner and make the following announcement: “Okay—now, don’t take this the wrong way, because I’m probably just nuts, and I’m probably just too fucked up to know what’s going on, and I’m probably overreacting for no valid reason, and I hate to sound unreasonable or immature, and I don’t want to sound pretentious, but elks are prevalent. And perhaps this is out of line and I’m certainly open to debate on this issue, but I need to go on record and say that I am not 100 percent comfortable with the situation regarding this truck at the moment, because I have a feeling that we are all going to die.”

  “Dude,” Trask tells me. “I totally wish I could trade bodies with you right now.”

  It remains to be seen if these guys can sound like Guns N’ Roses, but they clearly have their self-destructive aspirations deftly mastered.

  Our vehicles barrel into the darkness of Kentucky, loaded like a freight train and flyin’ like an aero-plane. Spike and Punky are freezing in the box of the pickup, and they try to stay warm by drinking more Bud Lite. Inside the toasty cab, faux-Axl and faux-Izzy have straightened up (slightly), and we’re discussing the question most people have about tribute bands, which is “Why do you possibly do this?” It seems antithetical to the whole concept of art; the notion of creativity has been completely removed from the equation. Wouldn’t the members of Paradise City be happier if they could write their own songs, dress however they want, and—quite simply—be themselves?