Eric James, ever the professional guitarist, has always relished good work, largely in service to music written by hapless individuals saddled with the burden of leadership and the duties of writing music and fronting and booking a band, Such a charmed life--to never suffer the indignities associated with putting together shows and paying (or not paying) the musicians. So it was with particularly acute interest that I listened as he proposed putting together an 80s cover band. He even christened this project with a name: "The Leg Warmers." Inspired.

His wife, Jenny, teaches dramatics at a local high school, and a statewide Thespian convention was coming to town on the 4th of January at a hotel near the airport. He put together a setlist, got sound and lights together, and recruited Drummer Steve and myself to form a power trio to perform music recorded before the audience was born.

I was intrigued for several reasons: First, I was asked to play bass, which I love to do. Second, I was informed that I wouldn't have to sing, which is great, because I can't play bass and sing at the same time. Third, I loved the idea of playing music for high schoolers that was popular when I was in high school.

The "venue" was described as a heated tent, but nothing prepared me for the huge, carpeted, well-lit place that was much nicer than my apartment. We had rehearsed at Steve's house deep in Suburbia (very fitting) for a month, running through tunes that are now "oldies," like "Melt With You," And She Was," "Mexican Radio," and a host of other three or four chord chestnuts. We were ready to go. I promptly started the evening by spilling super glue all over my hands while trying to fix the strap holders on my bass.

After a few overpriced drinks at the hotel bar, we returned to our largely empty tent for the gig, assured by the organizers that it would soon be filled with 1500 kids. They were right. Apparently the 80s milleu is very popular with the young folks these days, and despite my harrowing realization that there wasn't a soul on the dance floor who was born before 1990, everybody had a great time.

So great, in fact, that we had to ask them to stop body surfing. Not exactly in line with the rebellious spirit of rock and roll, since such behavior at our own gigs would make us giddy. I felt like the guy at Woodstock who said, "Please get off those towers! Don't eat the brown acid!" They really enjoyed it, and we were all laughing our heads off as they danced to songs I thought might be on the endangered list. Eric did a great job singing his little heart out. He had even dyed his hair blond and made it all Sting-y spikey just for the occasion. And now he has the satisfaction of knowing what it's like to lead a new group from start to finish. Or maybe not! Need the Leg Warmers for your next teenage sock hop? Let's talk...

But the best part was the fact that I have a huge blood blister on my right middle finger. I played the set with my hands caked with super glue and managed to bust a blood vessel in the course of a set. Drawing blood in performance can be a real thrill, and I've done it more than once, but I really relished the ritual offering I gave to those kids, and in so doing, cast myself as a positive role model for dedication to craft and a wee bit of masochistic glee.

Now, if we can just get that kind of youthful enthusiasm going consistently for the KKG, we'll really have something.

Happy New Year, everyone. Keep your hearts pure and your legs warm.

Here's the setlist:

Message of Love--Pretenders
Hungry Like the Wolf--Duran Duran
I Want Candy--Bow Wow Wow
Stray Cat Strut--Stray Cats
Melt with You--Modern English
Blister in the Sun--Violent Femmes
Rock-nRoll High School--Ramones
Whip It--Devo
What I Like About You--Romantics
Tainted Love--Soft Cell
Desire--U2
Should I Stay--Clash
And She Was--Talking Heads
Mexican Radio--Wall of Voodoo
Runnin' Down a Dream--Tom Petty
Don't You Forget About Me--Simple Minds
Safety Dance--Men Without Hats

In most of the nation, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a Walgreen's anymore. They are the Starbuck's of the drug and toilet paper industries, taking over street corners all over the country. At one point, I lived in a part of St. Louis where I counted six of them in a five mile radius. I lived by one myself, and when I moved to another part of the city, I saw that I had moved in next to another one. Multiple Walgreen's are now a part of the American landscape, occupying the position once held by Burma Shave signs or giant halogen searchlights in the lots of newly-opened used car dealers.

Not that I'm complaining--it sure is handy, and the folks are nice. You can always go back when you forget something, or stop in for mints, money, or any sundry item on your way out for an evening on the town. I don't go to the local bar much anymore like I did when I moved into the neighborhood, but it's kind of like that. They recognize me at ol' Wag's. They attend to my needs. And they must think I really like it there, because they see me all the time. When the local drug store is "where everybody knows your name," then maybe you need to reappraise your life and how it's going so far. But I've learned that the drugstore is now supplanting the need for bars and pubs, as they increasingly become a forum for the drama and details of our personal lives. They must think that like for me consists of figuring out new things I need from the Walgreen's. Little do they know...

Hey, sometimes you have to leave the house and buy things. It's a bit boring and normal, but I can live without the kind of excitement that comes with being out of toilet paper and put up with a little drudgery in the hopes of having a smooth running household. Hardly a rock and roll attitude, I grant you, but that's life when you work for a living.

It was on one such night when I had to leave the house that the following series of events took place. I had to buy condoms. there. I said it. Lots of people do. Part of life, nothing to be weirded out by. But one doesn't purchase contraceptives boisterously, without regard for one's own dignity or the considerations of others.
I entered quietly.

I was immediately confronted by a woman who was stocking shelves. She asked if I needed help, and I said no. Why draw her into the sordid details of my personal life? I sought the hanging display of jimmies and preferred to be discreet. I was a big boy, after all. But when I found them, I noticed that there were security locks that prevented me from grabbing what I wanted without supervision. I cringed, because I now realized that I had to go find the woman I had politely dismissed and sheepishly admit that she was right after all--I certainly did need help--the kind of help that only a qualified Walgreen's employee with keys could provide. But she was nowhere in sight.

I walked back to the display, and noticed a sign with a button on it. It said that if I pressed the button, someone would come to help me. I envisioned a soft, discreet buzzer in the back room that would gently alert someone to the fact that Ken needed rubbers. I felt comforted for a moment, like everything would be fine. I pressed the button.

"DING-DONG--CUSTOMER NEEDS ASSISTANCE IN PERSONAL CARE!!!!!!!"

An impossibly cheerful and attentive female voice came blasting over the overhead speakers, interrupting the song by The Turtles that was playing, and announcing to the entire store that I needed help buying prophylactics. A less cheerful woman showed up and unceremoniously unlocked the display.

"I can check you out in cosmetics," she said plainly. Apparently my shopping trip was over.

"I have a prescription to pick up," I said.

"Oh, I can walk you over there," she replied.

So now my condoms and I had to be escorted across the store to the prescription counter. Dreams of discretion were shattered. "Sorry," she said. "We get a lot of thieves."

"Well, it is a little freaked out," I said.

They say it's a lot easier to ask for forgiveness than to get permission. I was once a terrible allergy sufferer, and just had to have some Sudafed now and then when my sinuses began to cave in on me. But due to the rise of meth production in the Midwest and the South, I stopped bothering when you had to show your license and actually sign for a product that was perfectly legal. One would like to attend to one's own needs without feeling conspiratorial or devious, and without being treated as a child. My shit-eating grin notwithstanding, I understood thoroughly how times have changed. You can pretty much justify everything, and sooner or later, restrictions on the sale of condoms and allergy medicine and talcum powder will be justified in the name of national security.


I can roll with it to the extent that it's possible for me to get what I need. I just can't keep myself from asking questions about stuff like this.

I'm SO pleased to announce that I'm the featured guest this week on the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (CCLaP) podcast, hosted by my old high school chum, director and founder Jason Pettus. He's involved in an exciting project devoted to promoting the arts in Chicago and was generous enough to invite me to be on his program.

In addition to me blabbing away in an in-depth interview, there are also two performances included you can't hear anywhere else, so be sure to check it out. I'm attempting to enclose this special podcast in this blog, but in case it doesn't work, go here:

Visit The CCLaP Podcast Page

Download the file directly!

Or listen right here!





Enjoy, everyone!

--kk

So you think you're addicted, do you? Can't go ten minutes without checking your email or playing with your toes? Really been into Tetris for twenty years with no end in sight? All hopped up on crank? Pul-eeeeze! If you've managed to do all that stuff without smoking for twenty five years, then your most intense struggles are behind you. Nothing on earth comes close to the ball-and-chain relationship between Man and Marlboros. Quitting smoking is every bit as difficult as you've heard. I've tried at least a half dozen times, so I know.

I actually succeeded once in not smoking for a year. so I do have a vague idea of what life is like without smoking all the time. The nicotine patch mollifies the ravenous Beast to an extent, but the Beast still slobbers, festering in a hole somewhere next to Hunger. He spends a little less time convincing me to smoke and a little more time trying to convince hunger to convince me to eat. Thus, the battle for Ken to Quit Smoking is waged on multiple physical and psychological fronts.

I nervously joke with people that the patch is in fact, a step up from the standard delivery method. I could smoke continuously from morning until night and never equal the unimaginable heights of having a steady supply of nicotine flowing through my body 24 hours a day. The experienced smoker's first instinct is to rip the 21 mg patch from its stern protective envelope, stick it right on the heart, and wait for the last twenty-five minutes of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey to begin. But calmer heads prevailed, and the patch is now relegated to the arm. The instructions say you should hold it down and rub it a little so the nicotine can start to flow and euphoria can set in, and so it is that I begin each day by nervously rubbing my arm like a baboon junkie. There's a tingly, itching feeling that let's you know it's not a dud, and you can begin your day.

Remember that smoking is not only fun, it is also its own Pavlovian reward with practical applications. It provides the ultimate dessert after a meal. It provides the ultimate appetizer before any meal. It provides the ultimate palette cleanser when the courses don't come quite as quickly as they should. The first cup of coffee in the morning with a smoke is the only plausible hint I've found in my thirty-eight years for the existence of a benevolent God. The smoke after sex, especially shared, is exquisite. A weighted glass filled with ice and the most delicious single-malt scotch on the planet goes well with a hearty smoke. I certainly have much to gain, but there are worldly pleasures that human beings respond to that reach deeply within our makeup on some primal level. Tobacco fills vast existential voids. These are the pleasures that I am willingly giving up, like a deranged smokeless ascetic.

It is also a means by which one can exit unpleasant personal situations, drab and boring work conditions, family squabbles, looming unsavory tasks or just people you don't like. It allows stolen moments of reflection and quiet meditation, refuge from the storm. But these side benefits pale in comparison to the very real sensation of smoke nestling in the lungs, soaking into the spongy tissue and distributing the Junk through the bloodstream.

The most intriguing benefit of patching myself has been the incredible dreams I've been having--fantastic, vivid, incredibly real dreams that have a level of sensuousness and aural saturation that goes well beyond real life. Without nicotine-fueled amplification, dreams are difficult to recall, fleeting, elusive. The patch brings things up close to dizzying degrees. They've been very good dreams so far, and I cringe at the thought of when they're not so nice, because man, they'll be doozies. That might be the Beast's next method of recourse--a conference call with the unconscious during which instructions are issued to unleash childhood traumas and existential ennui in a dire attempt to get me to remove the patch and start smoking again. See how complicated this gets?

My home is slowly beginning to let go of the gripping stench, and my taste buds are beginning to taste things again, which is a bit of a double-edged sword because not everything tastes great. It's the stench part that I'm most happy about, because that really was starting to bug me a lot. Those are very practical concerns that are part and parcel of the rationalization that has to take place when one makes the decision to quit. It's the many intangible benefits and perks of smoking that make it so difficult to let go.

Smoking is a useful affectation, loaded with ritual and drama, punctuating conversational points and revealing, in its own language, nuances and emotions with nonverbal cues not found in nature. Smoke may be blown ambivalently, ashes flicked ruefully, smoke rings contently and smugly formed, long trails of smoky remnants made as an extension of the hand from a balanced and deliberate point between the index and middle finger. Smoking is a communicative practice, not merely habit. In order to quite successfully, one must find a way to recast one's capacity for communicating with the outside world and devise a new schema for expressing subtle things once taken for granted. Far preferable to going through a similar but far more involved process as the result of a stroke, I grant you.

So a bit of physical and mental anguish seems fitting punishment for twenty five years of self abuse. I've had some great times in my life that were largely predicated on the practice of smoking. Writing this down proves that I can compose without smoking, so that's a good sign. And now, when somebody asks me for a smoke while waiting for the bus, I won't have to lie anymore. Optimism and nihilism are kissing cousins, so please don't write blog comments congratulating me on my decision to quit because frankly, such comments usually come from people who have never smoked. Please just shut the fuck up. This might all end tomorrow. I have no desire to make decisions for other people about what they can or cannot do in a public place. I have my own agenda, but I know it'll be something I miss. I am a junkie bastard, and I'm trying to kick. But being one was fun in its way.

Cousin Kevin

I haven't been to Carbondale, PA in years. It's a place near Scranton where my father was born in 1926, and this mountain town was built by the once-booming coal and railroad industries. After serving in WWII and getting his business degree, he left his hometown in 1951. But three or four times a year, we drove from Connecticut to North Eastern PA to see family.

One of my dad's sisters, Aunt Alberta, was one of my favorite relatives. She and her family lived in The Bronx for many years and wound up back in Carbondale in the early eighties. She had this great sense of fun and a fabulous wit, and she gave generously of her time and attention. She died about six weeks ago.

I was in Chicago this past weekend, and as I made the long L journey from Andersonville to Midway, I decided to call my mom to help pass the time. She told me something that didn't register right away. Indeed, it didn't surprise me. Alberta's son, my cousin Kevin, had committed suicide. He had relied on her for so much that he just couldn't take the empty space she left behind.

Kevin wasn't able to take care of himself, and the demons in him contrived to keep him in a state of paralysis. He stayed in his room for years on end, writing a mystery novel and watching movies from a huge, ever-growing stack of videotapes that got bigger every time I saw him. He was sick. He had trouble communicating with people and stayed by himself all the time. When Alberta died, he was in a profound state of fear and anxiety as the garbage piled up in his home. His link to the world was suddenly gone. I imagined him in that private hell, gripped by impossible terror and despair, unable to communicate or function. Such a sad state of affairs for such a bright man.

In 1982, I went to visit Carbondale. I had never met Kevin before, and I had heard about how weird he supposedly was and about how he treated other people with suspicion fueled by fear--the very engines that drove his mental illness. He had his own room and rarely left it. Funny thing was, when I met him, we started talking immediately. I knew he was damaged, even at thirteen. But he was smart and I liked him.

While all the relatives were talking downstairs, I would go see him. I could sneak up for a smoke and not be bugged about it. Kevin treated me like an intelligent person despite my age. He really needed someone to talk to--someone who he could trust and who wouldn't judge him. I guess I fit the bill.

He told me stories about New York--about parties in the sixties, concerts he had seen, people he met, tales of roving lesbian gangs in the subway, crazy times in the Bronx. He told me about books he had read and his desire to write a mystery story. He showed me his notebooks, of which there were many in a teetering stack in cryptic scrawl. He talked to me about music, my favorite subject, and he was surprised at the knowledge I had about the music of his growing up years.

All through my life, friends, relatives and neighbors were always giving me records. "Hey, the kid likes music. Let's give him our old records." I had quite a collection of old vinyl, and working at the local free-form radio station WPKN whetted my appetite for any new (old) music that might come my way. He had a stack of old albums he handed to me. there was the soundtrack to "Hair," an Outsiders LP (remember "Time Won't Let Me"?), a Ritchie Havens LP I really liked, and an original copy of The Who Sell Out.

It had each of the band members on the cover pitching a different product--Townshend with a giant roll-on deodorant, Daltrey in a tub full of baked beans, Entwhistle plugging Charles Atlas and Keith Moon with a giant bottle of pimple cream against his face. The album had unusual songs interspersed with radio commercials. I knew "I Can See for Miles" from compilations, but I didn't know the other songs. I wore out that album, listening to it over and over again. I thought it was one of the best albums I had ever heard.

I don't know if Kevin ever knew how much that off-handed gift meant to me or the profound effect it would have on my songwriting. As I got older, I met other music people who were also ecstatic in their praise of that album, and eventually I started to see that the music press had re-appraised the merits of that incredible work. Kevin and I were ahead of our time. I started singing "Odorono" on stage. When they gave the album a new mix and much-needed facelift in 1995, I grabbed my copy of the remastered version with glee, always remembering who was responsible for turning me on to it. I fell in love with it all over again. The Who Sell Out has remained one of my most beloved of musical touchstones.

In the moments we shared, Kevin wasn't all that crazy. He was articulate and sensitive. I knew he had problems, but I saw something in him that was special. He was remarkably intelligent, but frustrated because I think he was frightened of what the world would think of his ideas and didn't know how to communicate what he thought to the outside world. He smiled when I was around. And when I went home, I would imagine him in that little room. Time moved on for me, but not for Kevin.

I didn't keep in touch with him. I didn't tell him how grateful I was for the inspiration he unwittingly gave me. I saw a spark in him forever contained, as though it were our secret--a coherence and communicativeness he only showed to certain people, a refuge from the fear that destroyed his ability to interact with the world. As the train labored from State to Midway, I felt a profound shock, and I couldn't talk about it for a few days.

I was a troubled youth, and although i couldn't articulate it, I know now that I was searching for that non-judgmental contact Kevin so craved in his life. When I see bright, creative people in a state of stasis, it drives me crazy. I realize now that I have spent my life reaching out to various degrees of Kevin in other people, trying to pull out that part of themselves they're most afraid to show. That which we most fear is often the part of ourselves we need to make work for us, and the loneliness and fear that we all face that has the potential to keep us still and silent can be the very key to making life wonderful. Some of us never find that, and some, like Kevin, only saw glimpses of it. But without leaving his room, he gave me a spark of inspiration that has stayed with me after twenty-five years.

Good bye, Kevin.

After weeks at the keyboard
my synapses are now fully trained
to think in small pieces--
catch phrases
melodic hooks
sound bites
easily digestible strands of distorted fact--
so that consciousness is broken up
into digital dust
daunting to reconstruct
under the implausible demands of real time

I want to think in flowing streams
to make the world whole again
to reform sentences
from grammatical remains
and speak complete thoughts
to follow the outlines of objects on the horizon
to their natural resolution
free of the tyranny of binary constraint

I want to put strings of ones and zeros together again
to mold them into something I can hold
to piece together abstracts
from the firmament of boiling silicon
and remember what it's like
to live again

My friend Bryan was in the army a long time ago, and he had a psychotic drill sergeant who went crazy and made Bryan's life a living hell. One of the things this looney did was make Bryan go on fire duty for five straight weeks, which is against regulations. Fire duty is like a night watch. In addition to his daily duties, he had to stay up all night to watch for fires on the base. After awhile, he went a little nuts. That's how I felt for the last week. I've had to commute and teach an enormous number of hours this past week, and then come home and do my freelance writing job all night long. I averaged about two or three hours of sleep a night because i absolutely had to.

The onset of sleep deprivation-induced psychosis can be quite a rush. Bryan held out for five weeks. After eight days, I was in terrible danger of beginning to suck my thumb, which, I suppose, says something about how useful I'd be in a war. As Woody Allen said, "I was classified 4-P; in the event of war, I'm a hostage." Hear, hear. If disaster strikes, my options are to either perform in the USO or spearhead a government propaganda initiative that uses sarcastic essays as a weapon. I can write pointed prose to make the enemy cry.

In such a heightened state, small things become major events. i lost my glasses for about an hour and seriously considered packing up my shit and moving to Montana to start a new life rather than face the uncertainty that existence without marginally improved vision would surely bring. Running out of coffee filters made me question man's place in the universe. The mailman's arrival inspired me to write a symphony, and the satisfaction of doing the dishes made me weep with joy in the sincere hope that all the dirty dishes in the world should be so fortunate as those that reside in my kitchen cupboard.

Such are the circumstances that can turn a fairly reasonable man into a slobbering beast. The inverted perspective and unhinging of inhibitions can delude one into behaving as though one has nothing to lose. This is how crazy people operate, and you have to admire their pluck and ambition. My accidental sleep deprivation experiment has given me insight into the joys and benefits of lunacy. Of course, that joy is best appreciated from a vantage point of relative sanity and the wisdom to know the difference between temporary surrender to biological inevitability and full-blown nutzery.

But there is a clarity in wide-eyed disillusion that can't be found anywhere else, and very few get to peer through that lens and remain unscathed. The Medusa who wields her stony smile through the eyepiece winks and cajoles, tempts and corrupts, and mocks the established order of things, making the ludicrous plausible. Maybe you can fly. Maybe you can figure everything out. Hey, maybe your refrigerator magnets might start talking to you, but maybe it'll be more entertaining than the party line of order and rationality.

As adrenalin soaks the tissue and alters the chemical balance that makes us productive, credit-card-swiping citizens, a delicious seduction takes place wherein possibility beams bright and resignation seems like so much foolishness. Folly to be sure, but foolishness was never so sweet, and abandon never so logical.

Fortunately, I never got to the point where my refrigerator magnets started reciting the stock report, but what an amazing thing it would have been had they began their litany of ledgers. Perhaps the numerous possible combinations of endorphins and seratonin exist to show us the difference between the drudgery of normalcy and the possibility that there exists another path we might travel on the road to being who we need to be. And maybe that person might turn out to be markedly different than who we think we are.

GRRRRR! I wrote this in April before rehearsals began and I didn't mean to repost it, folks--I was trying to make corrections to this entry (see my comments below) and it reposted it--and I still couldn't fix the errors. Fuck you very much, MySpace! So you can ignore this unless you haven't read it before.--kk

April 17th is the first day of rehearsals scheduled for the new lineup.
Part of my duties is to prepare lead sheets for those folks who haven't seen this material before. So I have to sit down and write chord progressions from a decade ago by memory. I can do this with the radio on because it's such an unmusical process--all math, so you can listen to Terry Gross while you try to remember the chords to your own songs. Using standard notation at this stage is a waste of time, unless you're writing parts for the horn section (which will come later). Until then, my little songs are nothing but letters and symbols.

It's a strange feeling seeing your catalog laid out like that. I forget that these songs are not "normal" and that an unsuspecting, well-meaning musician approaching this stuff for the first time might find it a little weird. So I try to editorialize the content with written words to get the desired musical result from the musicians. So for those who wish to play along at home, the "chart" to "Insincere Apology" looks like this:

Insincere Apology(with enough tri-tones to get us burned at the stake in the 14th century)

Intro:
[D7][Dflat7]

Verse
You can do this part. I'll go over the finer points in person. Basically, the tritone chords imply similar interval jumps in the bassline.

Cho: ("It's a Living Thing", ELO memorial chord changes played fast)
[C ][Amin ][Aflat ][Bflat ]
[C ][Amin ][Aflat ][Fmin7]
[D7][Dflat7]

bridge: (girl group section—tease your hair, retard tempo and pick up tempo at bar 15)
[Dmaj7][Bmin7][Fmin7/][Fmin9/Fmin7]
[Dmaj7][Bmin7][Fmin7][Gmaj7]
[Dmaj7][Bmin7][Fmin7][Fmin9?Fmin7]
[Dmaj7][Bmin7][Fmin / A][C ]
[E ][E (rest three beats)}

I once heard a piece by Hindemith that used tritones in a very neat way. A tritone is a harmonic interval designated by the augmented fourth. It was once considered so dissonant that the Catholic church actually banned it from public performance, lest it herald the forthcoming of the Devil. They really used to believe that notes could hurt people in those days. A lot like now. Play a bunch of augmented fourths in a club and it will cause tension. We loved the recording of this song, but audiences hated it when we played it live. But we're still gonna play it anyway.

Hearing the Hindemith piece gave me the idea to use tritones in a funky way. And the song's lyrics were comprised of terms used in threatening letters from collection agencies and lenders at a time of great financial distress. so I intentionally created this feeling of dis-ease like when you open a letter with bad news. The intention was to invoke dread.

We regret to inform you
May we please kindly implore you
Take care, take care, we adore you
Clean up that spot on the floor, you

There must be something about me
That just can't live without me
That kind of circular logic
Could become something tragic
so please accept my insincere apology

Nearly all of the songs on Stereophonic Nervous Breakdown are intentionally loaded with rock and roll cliches. I included them because everyone knows the stock vocabulary of rock and roll and I wanted to use the vernacular in a way that would make people chuckle--those who bothered to listen, anyway. Kind of a neo-classical approach to modern rock songwriting, except I was trying to be funny rather than pretentious. So that's why I mentioned the "ELO memorial chord changes..." and all that.

So there's a little something that might be of interest to you about how this stuff gets made. More later.

The words and music for Insincere Apology are by Ken Kase and bear the copyright 2000 Wabash Triangle Music. All rights are reserved.

I've met Chuck Berry three or four times since I've lived in St. Louis. The last time was at Blueberry Hill about twelve years ago, and he was decked out in a gold lamee jacket, looking cleaner than hell. He was standing next to me at the bar, and I shook his hand. He was very nice to me and my lovely date for the evening, and we exchanged a few pleasantries. The girl I was with thought it was fantastic.

Looking at the astonishing contributions he has made to music, he looms as a gargantuan figure. He did more to help define American music than any other figure in rock and roll. Elvis may be synonymous with rock and roll in the eyes of most of the world, but his contributions were largely in image and attitude, Chuck Berry helped define the genre and constructed the engine that makes it run. In my mind, they don't get any bigger than that.

Remember that Chuck was one of a handful of performers who wrote his own songs, and that the lyrics he penned were clever and literate--far in excess of requirements when you look at the work of his contemporaries. He was rock's first poet lauriate. So pervasive was his style that he even went to court when the next generation of rock and roll bands appropriated portions of his work to create big hits. The Beach Boys' "Surfin' U.S.A." came a little too close to "Sweet Little Sixteen," and The Beatles' "Come Together" actually leads off with two lines from "You Can't Catch Me." No wonder that he's a little leery when it comes to matters of business. When you begin your career working for the Chess brothers and Alan Freed, it's best to keep your eyes open for infractions on your catalog and your pocketbook. Legend has it that he even tried to patent the term "rock and roll." That may have been a bit of a stretch, but you can't blame a guy for trying!

Joe Edwards, the club's owner, found us before the show and handed me an envelope with our money for the evening. I laughed out loud, because in all of my years as a musician, I have NEVER been paid before performing. That was a damned good omen.

The night we played with the master was amazing. The crowd that had gathered at the Duck Room (one of two music rooms at the legendary Blueberry Hill in St. Louis and a club named for his signature strut on stage) had no idea who we were. We were excited to play on the same bill with him and played our little hearts out. They responded in kind, and the end of the set was greeted with a palpable roar followed by a flurry of CD sales.

After the set, we gathered around Gabs and Valerie at the merchandizing table, signing autographs and having a great time listening to Chuck loosely run through songs we all knew. Gabs, who hails from the UK, was particularly keen on getting photos for friends and family back home. She even managed to nab an autograph.

As we sat drinking beer and talking and listening, I looked out on the crowd. I was really glad to be there. This was a moment that was quintessentially St. Louis--our hometown hero was on stage, and a packed house let him know how glad they were to be with him, drinking and dancing and having a great time. Chuck belongs to us, and the feeling in the room was one of great affection.

I left my capo onstage. It's the little device you put on a guitar neck to change keys and still play open string chords. I use it on "Your Calendar," "Pauline," and "Philosophy Machine." I left it hanging on the mic stand, and in the middle of his set, he smiled and picked it up. John said, "He's got your capo there, Ken." At the end of the set, his son made a joke from the stage about it and handed it over. I went back to the table and said, "There! Chuck Berry touched my capo!" and we all had a good laugh.

When one of the last living legends in all of music lives in your hometown, it's easy to take him for granted. He's been playing that room once a month for years now, and I've never seen him play. In fact, that's what I hear more than anything else about him in this city: "Gee, I really should go to see him, but I never have..." I'm one of those people, too.

But I'm glad I waited, because opening the show for him was a great honor. It was probably one of the best playing experiences of my life, and I'm so glad we did it. I've met and even played with many famous people before, but nothing compares to this. I didn't bug him for a handshake and a photo afterwards. We gave the best tribute to him a band ever could. We played our own rock and roll music the best we possibly could. Hey--without him and the incredible ground work he laid fifty years ago, we wouldn't even exist. That's a humbling thought, and it cannot be overstated. Thanks, Chuck--for your incredible musical gifts and for making it possible for musicians like us to do what we do.

By the time I was in eighth grade, my social status was at an all-time low, and the onset of puberty only served to heighten my dilemma. I was born and raised in a very pristine and picturesque Connecticut town with huge trees and old world colonial charm. This was the domain of Norman Rockwell, with rolling hills and well-fed childish smiles that were as far removed from my formative experiences as hunting kangaroos in the outback or hiking thorough the Amazon rain forest.

Such genteel suburban surroundings contrasted sharply with the difficulties I faced. I had lived there all my life, and as "the blind kid who everybody knew," there really wasn't a lot one could do about changing people's perceptions. While my achromatopsia now goes largely unnoticed by other people I meet today, back then my aversion to sunlight, and my use of magnifiers and large print books made me a conspicuous and vulnerable target for the kind of cruelty that only children can dish out. I was not well liked and had few friends. The dream of suburbia as a place for families to raise their children in safety, away from the brutal realities of the less fortunate is largely a myth--or at least it was to me, as childhood teasing sometimes turned violent and left scars as deep as the crevasses of bedrock upon which the town was built.

But aside from the humiliation and often painful shunning I went through, I had a different life away from all that. I had a very musical family, and my talents were encouraged and nurtured. I studied music at the local university, and even worked at their free-form indie radio station, learning audio production, getting a little mic time and plundering the treasures of their 30,000-title record library. I appointed myself as librarian, since some sections of their collection were in organizational disarray. I soaked in massive amounts of all kinds of music after school and on weekends. This parallel life was a part of my world that my tormentors knew nothing of, and the constant head-first immersion in music gave me something to think about outside of that dark place.

I was in rough shape at thirteen--depressed and nihilistic, dangerously cynical for a child, and on some level, ready and willing to play the victim since I figured no one would ever really give me a chance anyway. And that's when I met Matt.

He had just moved there from Medford Lakes, New Jersey. I met him in the school band. I was a drummer then, and our teacher was a very bitter and unhappy man who made my life hell for the most part. I remember playing "Looking Through the Eyes of Love," which was the hit theme from a really sappy (very pre-Tonya Harding) movie about figure skating called "Ice Castles" that was popular at the time. Compared to studying jazz drumming in my private lessons, it was all pretty easy stuff to me. But I was a band geek, and I figured I was where I belonged.

Matt was a nice kid. He noticed that I could play a few instruments and that I had memories all the drum section parts as well as other parts of the scores. I showed him some of the stuff I had learned from my private studies and he was pretty impressed. I was learning a lot about music then, and I showed him a few things I could do on piano and guitar and bass. I could hear a melody and play it back on the spot, which was pretty cool. But best of all, he didn't know me from a hole in the ground. He didn't have the prejudices of those who had known me my whole life and sized me up according to who I was and what I could do.

I could see he was a good drummer, too, and he got better and better. And Matt was into metal--Quiet Riot, Scorpions, Ozzy, Iron Maiden, Rush--the works. So was his brother Greg, who was a hot-shit guitarist at sixteen--practically a grownup to us. I was leaning about tons of very diverse music at the time. I loved jazz and classical, the Beatles and the Stones, and the new music that was coming up at the time like The Jam, The Ramones, R.E.M. and the Talking Heads--in 1982-junior-high terms, music that sat at the polar opposite of what ninety percent of my peers were listening to. I was aware of the music he liked, but I didn't listen to those records much. But I saw those bands on the then-brand new MTV.

When he found out I could play bass a little, he invited me over to his house to jam with him and his brother. I'll never forget that double-bass kit he had. It was an obscure brand called U.S. Mercury, and he loved those bass pedals! We piped his dad's bass through their Sears P.A. and his brother suggested something easy like "Johnny B. Goode." I knew the song--a twelve-bar rocker. The reference point I had for that sort of thing was Paul McCartney's bass line from the Beatles' recording of "Dizzy Miss Lizzy," which had the same changes. It was kind of a walking eighth note thing I always liked (you can hear it on the "Help" album). When Greg tore into the opening riff and I came in on cue, we played it straight through. When we were finished, I saw that I had surpassed all expectations, and they were really happy with me.

To put this into context, you have to understand that NOBODY grows up wanting to be the bass player in a metal band. They are largely frustrated guitarists, relegated to the bottom end where they can do no real harm. I, too had no such aspirations, but I also didn't want to be Eddie Van Halen, either, which made me a perfect fit. Over the next few years, we were joined by our friend Chris, who had recently taken up guitar, and our friend Bill, who was really showing an aptitude for guitar playing. We tore through "Rock You Like A Hurricane," "Cum On Feel The Noize," "Crazy Train," and all the other staples that basement bands across the country were doing. We even tackled Rush, and I can still play the bass lines to "Free Will" and "YYZ." We weren't bad for a bunch of kids.

I've gotten in touch with Matt again recently. In fact, I talk to him almost every day. We talk about music and life and our time growing up together. It's been twenty five years now, but you wouldn't know it by the way we chat on and on. I told him that even though it wasn't the music I was into at the time, it was a great experience. They were the only guys I knew in my town who had a little band thing going, and it was good experience for an aspiring professional musician to be able to play music in a variety of settings. Great training ground for those years later when I played in a myriad of cover bands. It was an ideal way to learn about music that my formal lessons couldn't give me.

But it was important to me for another reason that has had a much more profound effect on me than any of Geddy Lee's lingering bass lines. Matt and my new friends treated me with respect. They took me in as a friend and as an equal in a way that very few had before. I was a tremendously sad and beaten-down and I certainly had a long way to go after that. Although I can't exactly say that my problems magically disappeared as the result of the acceptance of Matt and my new friends, I can say that it made things a little more bearable. It was a ray of hope in darkness, an escape from the clouds that hung over me. They took me in, stood up for me when confronted by other kids and even teachers, and treated me with dignity, even though I hadn't fully realized that I was fully deserving of it. Reconnecting with Matt has made me realize how profoundly different my life would have been had we never met, and how crucial their kindness was to a troubled kid like me.