Love Song of the Meth Cicadas

Travels in Massachusetts, West Virginia & Virginia

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind since the last edition of Message from the Underworld. I’ve taken two flights, two ferry rides, and one bus trip while spending time in three states. So fasten your seatbelts, secure your tray tables, and bust out the hand sanitizer because we’re going places…

Cape Cod & Martha’s Vineyard

It started with a repeat of last month’s trip to Martha’s Vineyard. I spent the night in Yarmouth with Mike and Rebecca Fournier and the following morning we went to Jack’s Out Back, the spot where Edward Gorey dined nearly every day when he was in Cape Cod (for the last 20-odd years of his life he spent half the year there). Here he is at the spot:  

Photo from the Historical Society of Old Yarmouth Image Collection

Mike drove me to Woods Hole where I caught the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard. Woods Hole was once a whaling port and continues its rich maritime tradition as a hub of marine science institutes. I don’t really care for the Massachusetts accent, but the ferry skipper’s announcement that we would “disembaak off the staahboard side” was totally charming. 

This time I stayed in Oaks Bluff, a few miles from Vineyard Haven. I got a room at a place called the Pequot Hotel, which has a mermaid theme that I quite enjoyed. After two days of travel, I made sure to spend some quality time on the porch swing. Evan Dando came by and we walked along Inkwell Beach into town to get some pizza and then worked for a couple hours on his book.  

Wash your fins

It was a quick trip and the following morning I headed back across the water to Woods Hole and caught the bus to Logan Airport, a two hour ride, and then flew to Dulles, an airport named after Eisenhower’s Secretary of State and not the first civilian director of the CIA, which seems like an important distinction. 

Haymarket & Shepherdstown

My visit was kept short due to a surprise 80th birthday party held in my father’s honor in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. My father has a career military officer’s mania for organization so I thought for sure he would figure it out, but he didn’t. He was genuinely surprised, which was very cool. I had the honor of traveling the longest distance for the party but unless someone came from Hawaii or Alaska, San Diego by way of Martha’s Vineyard would be pretty hard to beat. 

While I enjoyed the party and everyone was very nice, it was easily the largest gathering of Republicans I’ve been around since that time I crashed a famous crime writer’s party during a coke bender and the place was full of cops and they all knew. But that’s a story for another day…

As for the gathering in West Virginia, let’s just say that one time I was at this establishment I heard the manager say something disparaging about a group of Democrats that had rented out the place the previous day and I will hold on to that memory until the appropriate time. 

Since then I’ve been hanging out at my brother’s house in Haymarket, Virginia, with my mother, my sister-in-law, and my two nephews. My mother has her own granny flat and that’s where I’ve been spending most of my time. The television is almost always on with nonstop murder shows. Law & Order, Criminal Minds, Major Crimes, Killer Couples, and on it goes. 

One show I’ve really enjoyed (that has nothing to do with nonstop murder) is Mom, a sitcom that ran for eight seasons on CBS. In fact, it ended this month. The show is about a woman who is a recovering addict and alcoholic with a daughter who is a recovering addict and alcoholic with a daughter who is going through some things. I haven’t watched network television with any regularity since the original runs of Seinfeld and Friends, but Mom is wildly irreverent and shows a side of recovery that I’ve never seen on television before. 

What makes it so edgy? Families are the engines that drive sitcom dynamics. Mom’s protagonists are flawed as people and parents, which is a place that sitcom television has always been reluctant to go. (There are exceptions of course; I’m not trying to make exclusivity claims here.) Bad parenting is something that every addict with children has to come to terms with: I used to be a terrible person but I’m trying to be a better person now. The show’s scenes often take place before and after AA meetings. In one episode I watched, one of the characters spent the first half lashing out at people and the second half apologizing. These scenes were milked for their comedic potential, but it was still a great example of someone striving to be better and working their program even though it was never framed that way.   

False Church

Yesterday, my brother and I went for a walk around False Church, Virginia, the town where I grew up. Here’s what you need to know about False Church:

The cicadas are out. False Church has a lot of trees: tall, towering trees and the cicadas weren’t exactly swarming but they were singing their necrotic asses off. That’s right, the meth cicadas have arrived.

Slopping the pigs. Across from the Giant supermarket where we did our shopping was a Volvo dealership and in front of that dealership was a statue of a farmer feeding his pigs. Why is that remarkable? In False Church the cops drove Volvos. That’s probably a coincidence, right? All I know for sure is that when you saw those rectangular headlights in the rearview you knew you were in the shit. 

Officers on patrol

Henry Rollins isn’t the only one who gets sentimental about 7-11. They tore down my 7-11, man. 7-11 is 7-11 but that particular 7-11 is where so many milestones of my juvenile delinquency took place. When I was supposed to be collecting money from my newspaper subscribers I’d camp out in front of the Ms. Pacman, Gorf, and Dragon’s Lair machines with a Big Gulp and a bag of a Cheetos. It’s where I would hide out when I wanted to skip church. (It’s also where I got caught.) I bought so many late-night snacks here either because I had the munchies or was trying to cover my beer breath with a Watchamacallit. Now it’s gone.

Pour out a Slurpee for this 7-11 RIP

False Church isn’t really its name. Falls Church was settled in 1699, which used to blow my tiny little mind when I was kid. It’s named for a church that, wait for it, sat by the falls. Maybe I’ll bring False Church back when I write my autobiographical paper boy revenge novel. 

Proximity to Punk Rock History. I grew up five miles away from the Dischord House in nearby Arlington, Virginia, but didn’t discover Minor Threat until I moved to California. Recently I learned that Falls Church has its own punk rock connection that’s directly related to my book. In fact, I went there yesterday. That means it’s the return of…

PssSST… (Hometown Edition)

When Paul Hudson aka Joseph I aka H.R. of the mighty Bad Brains set out to record a solo album he didn’t do it in the District of Columbia, but across the Potomac River at a place called Cue Recording Studios in sleepy Falls Church. 

Cue started off in 1982 in the basement of Jeff Jeffrey’s parents’ house. Most sites say this was in Falls Church but the studio manager I spoke with yesterday, Dusty Rose, told me it was “just across the line” in Arlington. (In a place as small as Falls Church the boundaries are a constant source of debate; Falls Church High School, for example, isn’t located in the city of Falls Church but in Fairfax County.)

In 1987, Jeffrey leased a space on Park Avenue above a janky knock-off 7-11 called 7 Stars, which was the closest convenience store to Mary Riley Stiles Public Library and the Falls Church Recreation Center in Cherry Hill Park, two places where my siblings and I spent countless hours.

Photos of Cue Recording Studios’ original location

H.R. had a long, strange relationship with SST that I describe in great detail in Corporate Rock Sucks, but Keep Out of Reach (SST 177) and It’s About Luv (SST 179) were originally released by H.R.’s own label Olive Tree Records and subsequently reissued by SST. However, Charge (SST 256) was recorded at Cue for SST. (For more details about the studio’s history, check out the You Don’t Know Mojack podcast Now You Say episode #173 with Jim Ebert, a former engineer with the studio.)

I mentioned to Rose I was writing a book about SST Records and he told me that back in the day some mornings they’d come into the office and there would be long rambling messages from H.R. on the answering machine about his upcoming plans to make a new record or tour Egypt. The only other SST artist who recorded at Cue was Ras Michael who made his record Zion Train (SST 168), not to be confused with Zion Train the band, another H.R. project that put out a record for Olive Tree. The D.C. band Beefeater, who also had an Olive Tree connection, recorded at Cue as well. 

Cue Recording Studios wall of fame: 1) Zion Train (the band) 2 H.R.’s It’s About Luv 3) H.R.’s Charge 4) Beefeater

We’d popped in unannounced so we didn’t stay long, but in the music store on the ground floor an unusual-looking guitar caught my eye. Is that what I think it is? 

Is it? Could it be?

No, it’s not a Dan Armstrong but a Fender Strat with an acrylic body. What a strange coincidene that would have been, right? 

This is not a guitar

Thanks for exploring my home town with me. Next week’s edition of Message from the Underworld will be sent from Brooklyn, New York.