Snuckafoo Year's Eve (In Three Parts)

The Words

I sat at a table adrift in tiaras, plastic horns, and leis and sipped a Bombay Sapphire and tonic. The tonic, lime wedge, and translucent plastic cup bored me. While gin and tonic is fine on a hot India day spent in a rocking chair swatting flies and watching the malaria victims float down the Ganges, the basement of a Wrigleyville tavern on New Year's Eve demanded something stronger. I slid up to the bar and made good strong eye contact with the bartender, some dude.

“Gin and ice in a real glass, please,” I said.

“No,” he said.

A burst of cold rushed from the door. I fingered my sixty-dollar yellow wristband, which was supposed to give me whatever I wanted. I guess I can't always get what I want. “I'll have a Heineken.” Just what I needed.

“Good yuppie,” he said.

I wore a diamond checkered sweater and a charcoal collared shirt. These were gifts from my mother, who dresses me from a distance. However, I chose my own accessory: a pair of Walgreen's reading glasses that hung from the collar of my sweater, turning me into a shy professor. My body, wrapped as well as any Christmas gift, stood at a table with one hand unoccupied. This hand found the jeans pocket, felt my keys, jingled them, and then jingled something else.

Set back in a black garage ringed with white Christmas lights, Snuckafoo began to play, and I heard wild animal voices.

I had hoped for an emotional rejuvenation to begin the new year, but my heart pumped the same old desires: To love, to fuck, to drink. To achieve the former two, I needed to talk to some girl, but I was not yet interested in what she would say in reply, unless it was “Yes.”

I could always begin by explaining to her that the bulletin board in my kitchen is nothing fancy, not even a black designer one, just regular cork for regular people, like us, and it contains a map of my mind with a baby's head in the center.

Then she would say “Not a real baby's head?” Such a nice lilt to her voice.

“No, a photograph of a baby's head.”

She would brush her hair back from her face. “I'd like to see that.”

“There's a small price,” I would say, but she would walk away after I explained that the price was well-groomed, disease-free, but not small at all.

Still no one talked to me. Because of my closed body language or because I'm a goddamn weirdo? (The answer is always both). Only able to fix one of these things, I took my hand out of my pocket, palm open. I felt Dave's drums in my palm, then up my sleek, pale, hairless hands to the nails. Such nice cymbals. Tap tap tap. I bounced in place. Tap tap tap. I stretched my free arm out as if ready to hug. I stood tall. I smiled. I waited.

I went to the bar to get another Heineken. The problem was that I hadn't been writing. The words, not flushed out onto paper, churned around, brown in my head, louder and louder. Stuff like, “A misanthropist is a racist and misogynist out of convenience,” but never stuff like, “She's got a super pooper.” They drowned out even Rod Stewart's “Stay with Me.”

The damn thoughts were ruining my night, the opening bar of my year.

The Detachment

People danced.

I am unwilling to dance with my body, so my mind, disembodied, floated in gray pieces. It hovered and swept, wove in and out of the bumpy cracks where the black radiator hung, and then up on the silver ceiling with the pressed tin twigs and berries, it mingled with the balloons.

It wandered around the stage, squeezed between bass and guitar strings, hopped across the keys, and snuck inside the big drum until “Foom!” That was loud.

From above, I considered myself. The truth lies in the body. The mind cannot touch. God I looked uncomfortable, a stiff among loose red girls, whose flesh cools the touch and warms the press, and whose navels fill with moist beads from gyrating.

How would I fix this detachment and return my mind to the service of my body, my cock? I would listen to the music, first the drums, then the bass...

Then the keys hummed. The guitar whined. It was “Mr. James White.”

And soon came midnight. I didn't feel like kissing myself, tongue tickling the inside of my elbow, so I just toasted “Happy New Year” with my clear plastic cup. The champagne bubbles rose, then fell into my stomach to “Auld Lang Syne.” I don't even know the words to that song.

The band was into “Stoned to the Bone.” James Brown knew that music is the language of the body. My arms felt like wet paper towels, my feet, buckets of water. A girl in a little black dress twirled. A girl in white threw her arms up and arched her back. The bar had warmed.

The Collective

The beer was working. I donned my glasses, blurring my vision and magnifying everything within reading range one and a quarter times. I tried to focus on Pat Reilley. Maybe he could see me, and think it funny for me to be wearing glasses, like him, but cross-eyed. Maybe he was busy playing “Advice for Neddy.” Regardless, I decided that Snuckafoo and I, as artists, must stand together. The product of their pain rocks the house, while the product of mine sings twenty-six notes.

The glasses blurred my vision further, and everything was close and hot, unfamiliar. George's keys cried “monkey” in a lush jungle of sound. Dave's drums signaled the sacrifice of the natives. Hondo's bass thundered the approaching storm. Pat guitar screamed against order outwardly imposed. This, I realized, is why I came. Not to grind on some flabby ass hugged in soft fabric that reeks of wet flowers (although...).

The reason I came is to observe the way that Snuckafoo creates their own order from disorder. From them: a chord here, a lyric there, a perfectly placed song. From me: a word here, a sentence there, a perfectly placed paragraph. They impose their order upon the crowd as I impose mine upon the reader.

Nauseous, I removed my glasses. A sweaty man with an afro and a stained white shirt swayed in front of me to “Down with Disease,” and I knew that he was thinking “Yes, yes, yes!” And then the hippie girl to the side, we three thought “Yes, yes, yes!” And then Hondo, George, and Pat, all “Yes!” but not Dave, who thought, “Beware the milky pirate.”

The thoughts, the collective hum of minds, hovered on the ceiling like confetti suspended in mid-air, and it occurred to me that my mind had never been alone up there, that I had just mistaken the others for balloons. The crowd's thoughts streamed into my own and then back out, a cloud absorbing even the socially inept and the rhythmically challenged. A guitar-flare shot up, and the collective energy exploded. Confetti fell.

“So what if I can't dance,” thought everyone. And everyone danced.

***

Listen to Snuckafoo.

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An Episode at The Bird's Nest

I fingered the cold pop top on my PBR, served with a napkin, as if the back room bartender thought me a sloppy drooling rube. Just because I dribbled before. Just because I asked him if he sold pork rinds. Although they agreed to host this Snuckafoo show, The Bird's Nest at 2500 N. Southport could not contain both “Pete's Dilemma” and the low rumble of imminent class-warfare. When the uprising came, maybe I would be gentle. Probably not.

I uncrossed my arms and took a seat at the bar. The fifth beer had unlocked a cell in my mind and out crept my inner friend Shame, who I call Shane. “Who's up for making mischief tonight?” he whispered. I ignored him and smoked to “Light Up or Leave Me Alone.” My orders came from Steve Winwood via Pat Reilly, who drowned out Shane's quiet insistence that all rules are “just social constructs.” Shane likes anarchy. He laughs constantly and is fond of urinating for arc. It would be several beers before Shane had any real power.

With face alight, George sung “Feel Like Dynamite.” I did not feel like dynamite, but rather black powder. If ignited, I could make a startling noise and a bright flash in the dimness. I could split the bar in half and turn glasses to shrapnel, which would whirl in the air and melt into bass clefs before piercing any flesh. If the drinks were too expensive for some, looting would follow. The song ended to whoops and applause.

With no thoughts coming from the microphone during “D-Cell,” I looked around the bar. A bald man danced, head red with exertion. A big girl smiled with big red lips. A chick in red frills pecked at her vodka tonic. Cigarette smoke drifted around the band, and the black curtains behind the stage gained a reddish tint. Soon they would turn crimson, and the uprising would begin.

In a sudden blurry rush came a bluegrass version of “Fast August Nights,” an explosive drum-filled “Let's Spend the Night Together,” and “Mr. James White,” leaving no room in my head for discontent, just pleasure. As the last note struck, I went to chat with friends, knowing I had another full set to foment.

***

Pat, George, and Dave, with eyebrows raised, made my eyes well with their a-capella introduction to “You Never Give Me Your Money.” Then came drums and bass and keys and guitar, and I laughed. Where had the money gone? I'd spent it on booze. Was there nowhere to go? There was the bathroom. Why was the bathroom filled with people talking on their cell phones instead of pissing? Because of rich assholes.

Upon returning, in front of the stage stood a man in a gray cardigan sweater with permed hair. I could have never imagined a perm could look attractive on a man, but it did. His friend, a tall and sculpted pussy, wore jeans faded not by time, but by the rural youth of Singapore. Their friends, two girls (how I love two girls), sipped Ketel One and Red Bull. The bar was quiet for one moment, and then “Advice for Neddy” blew in great hot waves out of the speakers, and I thought that these four would surely catch fire beneath the wrath of Pat's guitar. I would put them out with gin. I would have trouble with the bottle pourer.

During “Good Times/Bad Times” I sauntered through twirling homemade clothes toward the wall to the left of the stage. There were two windows, and where a third window should be, a mirror: two windows to the outside and one to the inside. I could see Hondo in the mirror. His bass thrummed in my head. I couldn't help but wonder what I looked like in that mirror. Would I have a halo or great horns? Would there be tiny orange flames in the black of my eyes? I stepped over some cords and almost reached the mirror before a hand reached out and pulled me back. I had obstructed the microphone that was recording the show.

Brought back into the outer world, I behaved in accordance with “Sexx Laws.” The idea of uprising faded into general good feeling. I picked up my feet and put them down, not really in time with the music, but who could see my feet? Cardigan and crew still flaunted their wealth in my field of vision, but perhaps the comforts of goods and services were not necessarily at odds with the dangerous joy of drinks and music, Snuckabooze. Perhaps when I got home, I would buy a Roomba on eBay. Perhaps I would stop squandering my social capital by taking my pants off in public to show everyone my haircut.

“Hey,” said someone.

No one had spoken to me. The voice had come from within. Shane.

“Weren't you proud of your haircut?” he asked.

“Well, yes.”

“Well who are these fuckers to tell you when you can and can't take your pants off?”

Shane was right. I bought another PBR with napkin. It was cold. The band played “Tonic.” The Yuppies were looking at me funny, and I didn't like the lack of fear in their eyes. Something would happen soon. I sat down on a barstool to wait.

The was a rumble from beneath the bar. I stood up and made my way to the crowd on the left side of the stage. The ground rumbled again, and the air filled with rainbow pixels like after a blow to the head. The first chords of “Mr. Brownstone” flew from Pat's guitar, and the pixels multiplied a thousandfold. Bright needles shot from Dave's drums. The curtain behind the stage was blood red. Wild eyes shined in the half light. The crowd became hysterical, jumping up and down. A tall ball of flesh colored flame obscured George's keyboard, and Hondo's bass was a giant syringe full of sweet painkiller. It passed through my ears and into my brain. The plunger depressed, and there was no more brain, just red like a sunset. Echoes of laughter reverberated through my head, and it was my own laughter, and I was holding my pen out like a knife and slithering toward the right side of the stage, toward my enemies, and Pat called out...

It's your thing. Do what you wanna do...I can't tell you who to sock it to.

My shirt wet with sweat, I stood directly in front of the man in the cardigan sweater. The convulsive laughter had vanished, replaced by a feel-good groove from the Isley Brothers. My mouth stretched tight in a dazed grin, but my head felt clear and clean. I slipped my pen back into my pocket. The man smiled.

“I really like your sweater man,” I said.

“Thanks.”

I turned around and did the locomotion back to the ecstatic pack.

For information, pictures, and Snuckafoo tunes, click here.

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Soup at the Goose

I have often told myself to avoid copious consumption of alcohol in public because it embarrasses me to stumble, slur, and offer too-candid observations of those sitting near me. However, this Mother’s Day Eve I decided to risk an exception. I could afford to do this because Snuckafoo usually provides an energy that will carry me through a reckless binge, constantly reinforcing the joy of being alive, the goodness of my fellow man, the attractiveness of my fellow woman, and my legs. For this experiment in positivism, there is no better venue than The Wild Goose, and Snuckafoo did not disappoint.

The Wild Goose at 4265 N. Lincoln Ave. is a cozy neighborhood tavern in North Center. The stage rises at the front of the bar, and high and low tables stretch to the back with the exception of ten feet cleared out in front of the stage to accommodate those whose inhibitions have melted away into a dancing frenzy sometimes with lots of elbows and thumbs.

Snuckafoo set the table with their original Bluegrass favorite, “Aloha Mexico.” Heads nodded, and shouts rang out, though no one hit the floor. Late arriving fans were treated to a steaming helping of rapid-fire lyrics in Pat Reilley’s faux-Kentucky drawl and tender high harmonies from the rest of the band.

After a jam-proper unification of their original “Miller’s Fury” and Neil Young’s “Come on Baby Let’s Go Downtown,” they treated the crowd to some Blues Image with “Ride, Captain Ride.”

Snuckafoo and the crowd settled into synergy. The beginning of one of their signature songs, “Advice for Neddy,” brought squeals of “I have this on my MySpace profile.” These succumbed to the roar of Snuckafoo’s engine, Hondo’s bass. Thanks to Jagermeister, I had begun to use my imagination, and Hondo’s right arm became a four-beaked goose pecking a steady rhythm. This goose would not eat stale bread, as I discovered by inadvisably tossing old baguette chunks at the stage.

The band ended the first set with “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” Wildlife still roamed my mind, and keyboardist George’s hands became Daddy Longlegs, strutting and prancing about the keys. Then they were tarantulas: hairy, poisonous, and misunderstood. If I were to rub them against my face, I would find them soft and kind. To rousing applause, Snuckafoo left the stage, jarring me back to reality. Rub George’s hands against my face? I went out for some air.

Having recovered most of my sanity, I threw it out the door like an unruly drunk when to open the second set, George took the lead vocals for the Talking Heads cover, “Found a Job.” As if by magic, three couples appeared in front of the stage laughing, stumbling, and doing some type of waltz. Within minutes, all six people lay in a pile, but the tone was set. They found their job and did it. Now anyone could dance without fear of shame.

Dance people did to the whirlwind circular guitar of the Snuckafoo original, “Trippin’ Dub.” Pat pushed up his glasses, and smoothly delivered his classic lines, “You no good dirty gigolo/who do you think you is?” I found myself laughing, ensconced alone in a corner. A mustachioed fat man stared at me. Minutes later, the fat man heard the first two bars of “Let It Bleed” and began chortling to himself in obvious enjoyment. I stared at him.

Having found my way out of the corner and up near the stage, I noticed that drummer Dave Schmitt had executed a costume change into a T-Shirt reading “Sexual Dynamo.” During “Swank,” he pounded in steady, rhythmic anger, each drum perhaps the high-school quarterback’s face yelling “Short-stuff” or “Shrimp-o.” My therapist has warned me against projecting, but still the drum-face bled to the beat of the song.

Toward the end of the second set, the room seemed to fill with a soup of music, smoke, and sweat. Pat’s guitar and “Shakedown Street” added noodles to the soup, and perhaps my vision and temporal awareness had blurred, but Pat and Jerry became one and the same. I swam in the warm liquid environment, soul floating euphoric.

Then it was over. Oh, no, it was over. I felt cold. Who would get me a towel? Who would buoy my legs now?

Panicked, I implored Jesus Christ and the band for an encore. The band took the stage, but was it just to get their equipment? They whispered to each other, and Pat picked up his guitar. The doors and windows opened, and I was carried off on a wave of Snuckasoup and the sweet college memories of Jane’s Addiction’s “Been Caught Stealing.”

Beyond the stage, the Heineken star rose red in the window and beckoned me to further joy.

Please visit Snuckafoo.com.
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(I think) their shows are good

Though I have only remembered the end of one or two and usually dance foolishly, please visit:

www.snuckafoo.com
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