It's the late 1980's and my first wife and I were finally making enough money between us to afford a house. We were buying it contract for deed and it was a nice Cape Cod on a corner lot in Bellevue. One one side of our one acre yard was basically a junk yard which still causes me grief even today. On the other side, lived a nice couple who looked a little older than us but we usually kept to ourself and hadn't actually met them in our first few months of living in the house. I was still working in the Electronics Department of Famous Barr in the Northwoods Mall and playing music on the weekends in a band called Dressed To Kill.
On weekends that we did not have a gig booked, we would often practice in our basement and to be sure....WE WERE LOUD but we usually knocked it off before 10:00 PM. We didn't have central air conditioning in those days, so our windows were always wide open and the sound could carry far down the street!!! This brings me to my story on how I was introduced to our neighbor Gary. Now, Gary was a sweet guy and actually quite a music lover. I found this out much later though.
One weekend, not long after we had moved in, my wife took one of her trips to Missouri to visit her parents. She had originally come from Missouri and was homesick often. I would accompany her on frequent visits but on this particular weekend I may have stayed home because my acoustic band, The Flying D'Ritos were playing at the Sky Harbor. That would explain why the band gear was set up in the downstairs of our house. For a period, I was playing in two bands. I was in my late 20's and often could and would burn the candle at both ends.
At some point on the Saturday evening of this weekend, I ran into a couple of partying dudes who were single and knew no time restrictions. Perhaps we met at the Sky Harbor and continued after hours partying after my gig was over. That part is a bit foggy. What I do remember is sometime in the wee hours of the morning, we ended up in my basement and one of the guys strapped on my black Les Paul and the other took his position at the microphone stand. Power was switched on and I sat behind our drummer drum kit and with a hearty one,two,three, four.....we kicked into some mad cacophony of noise and electric pollution. It must have been awful. The sound came in sheets of paint peeling shrieks....and in sound waves of death.... as if someone was recreating the apocalypse with sound!!!!
I was behind the drum kit with my head down and my chin resting on my chest when I thought I was hearing my name!!! At first, it was distant....like an oral hallucination. Then as I was beginning to rip into another cymbal crash, I thought I heard it again! This time it was louder and more pronounced!!!! DAAAARREN!!!! My eyes were still closed and I was riding the carpet of sound!!!! The third time I heard my name, the voice was angry and menacing!!!! DAAAAAAARREN!!!!! I managed to slowly open one drunken eye lid and thought I was witnessing
a bearded man in a bright blue terrycloth robe yelling at me!!!!! DAAAAAARREN!!!!! But surely I was only hallucinating right? I didn't know this guy and how did he know my name? Then suddenly, I momentarily, snapped too!!!! Was it my neighbor????
I stopped my drumming and had to yell at the other two to grind to a halt!!!! The man in the blue terrycloth robe began to speak. He was almost sobbing as he continued.....Darren, it's 4:30 in the morning !!!! I have to be at work in a few hours!!!!! Turn that shit off !!!! Then, he mounted my basement steps and walked back home across the dew drenched lawn that separated his house from mine. OMG!!!! He knew my name!!!! But I didn't know his!!!
We laughed about it once I finally officially met him. He was Gary Carlson of Carlsons Jewelers and a hell of a nice guy!!!! But one morning, When Days Were Psychedelic, Gary had come to the end of his rope and probably wanted to strangle me with it. That terrible racket must have been horrible to have to endure at that hour. I've apologized several times since then. Just another tales from the ORANGE ROOM.
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