Occasionally I have been known to lay down a track or two when I have time. Here’s a clip of my unfinished work called “Say Goodbye.” I am looking for a singer to do the lead vocals. Know anyone? Call this funky techno. It’s my attempt at pop music, or at least how I imagine what pop should be. Dig the 1985 photo of me playing in my music studio I built in my Army barracks room at Fort Benning. A long time ago in my life, I wanted to be a music producer. That I became an automation engineer later in life was a result of the painstaking process making music through automation those many years ago. Now I want to return to my roots and give it a try in earnest this time. I quit Facebook and all other social media except this blog, where I’ll update how my progress is going. Here’s the first sample of my first music project, the song “Say Goodbye.” This file has all the backing tracks: bass, drums, synths, electric piano, etc.

Suicide Requiem

A short story

©1988 Matthew C. Scheck

I had that goddamned dream again. You’re standing on the edge of a cliff looking back at me. “Catch me, you coward!” you scream. Then you jump.

It’s obvious I’m too far away to grab you before you fall, so when you implore me to catch you, what do you really mean? Do you want me to jump after you so I can catch up to you? I was never your hero so I assume you wanted me to suffer your fate too.

I can hear you call me a coward again as you vanish into the unknown; you know I won’t follow you into the abyss, ever.

I run to the edge: Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck! But you’ve vanished.

Once again you torture me. Seventeen years of this, goddamn you. It hasn’t been easy maintaining a normal life with your fucking voice screaming in my head all the time. Twice I cracked and everything fell apart. Twice I had breakdowns like a whimpering child; I am sure you enjoyed watching me crash and burn both times; how you cackled with glee as my shaking hand reached for my bottle of Ativan and I popped several of them until I passed out. But both breakdowns were long ago. Now I merely suffer in silence. Age brings wisdom and wisdom means coping without breaking. That which does not kill me makes me stronger; you’re a cruel cunt for teaching me this lesson the way you did.

You were the coward, Petra Stein; you killed yourself and blamed me. I was an untrustworthy prick and a cheating asshole, sure, but I wasn’t worth your life. What a shitty trade you made. Worse: I would never kill myself over you. And I loved you more than anyone in this entire world. Did it occur to you I was unworthy of your self-sacrifice?

So do I have to spend eternity apologizing for your self-destruction?

Did it ever occur to you I hated myself and loved you, but hating myself made it impossible to love anyone very well? My hating myself led me into the arms of others; my hating myself destroyed your love for me; my hating myself certainly wasn’t your problem, and your solution sucked ass; you correctly blamed me but punished yourself, you idiot. Leaving me wasn’t enough; you had to punish me by leaving everyone. You were supposed to be the strong one, you coward.

And always in my head I hear you sing that miserable Talk Talk song, “Talk Talk,” like you’re serenading me from hell; it’s your suicide requiem:

Well did I tell you before
When I was up
Anxiety was bringing me down
I’m tired of listening to you
Talking in rhymes
Twisting ‘round to make me think
You’re straight down the line

All you do to me is talk talk
Talk talk talk talk
All you do to me is talk talk
Talk talk talk talk
All you do to me is talk talk.

How ironic that your suicide requiem was the song playing when I first saw you; what a harbinger of doom, that song. When I first saw you the club was packed and yet I could only see you on the dance floor, long, flowing red hair, pale skin, blue eyes, full red lips, freckles, perfect body; you looked so fierce, passionate, and intense; my Teutonic tiger. You were hottest piece of ass within 1000 kilometers and everyone knew it, especially me.

Self-hating coward that I was, I couldn’t just walk up to you and introduce myself, even though you looked right at me and beckoned me with your sparkling eyes; no, I just stood there hyperventilating and convinced myself that there’s no way this goddess wants me nearly as much as I want her. How many times had my cowardice denied me love? Would my courage fail me again?

Then you walked up behind me and pinched my butt. Your fingernails dug into my ass cheeks until I looked into your eyes; even a fool like me could take a hint. You smiled; I nearly fainted. We realized right away neither of us spoke the other’s language well enough to communicate, yet it didn’t matter—we communicated with lust and touching and the anxiety of knowing now was not soon enough for both of us. I was so in love with you the moment I met you that I had a horrific panic attack; I panicked because I realized how empty my life would be if I couldn’t have you. I had to have you.

And had you I did—for a while. And in that while, we had a torrid love affair. We were two young, beautiful, absolutely hot beings; when you touched me I felt as if I was being electrocuted.

And then one night you saw me walking out of the Kino with another girl.

You never asked me why I cheated; you just blamed yourself and punished me by denying me the chance for your forgiveness. I remember your Aunt Claudia warning me that you loved me too much and I must be careful; I never imagined she meant that much.

You made your decision without consulting anyone; boy were we all surprised when you killed yourself! Not only that, but your family wouldn’t let me anywhere near your funeral; I might as well have slashed your fucking wrists, they blamed me so much. You were dead and the dead make lousy villains. So naturally I became their villain. I let them blame me because I blamed myself.

Seventeen years have passed. You’d be thirty-five now; you’d be Frau Petra, your boobs would sag a little, and there’d be lines on your beautiful face, and yet I’m sure you’d still be the hottest piece of ass within 1000 kilometers. Our kids would be bilingual wunderkinden. You’d be a doctor just like your parents. You’d never miss Germany because you always wanted to live in America. You’d be here to love me and protect me from myself.

But you’re not here. I don’t even have photographs of you; someone I dated after you died burned them because she hated competing with your memory. It didn’t matter; she lost to you anyhow. When she left me she wrote “Fuck you and fuck that dead Kraut bitch” on my bedroom wall with a magic marker.

Seventeen years.

You made it clear you’d never forgive me the moment you opened your arteries with a #10 surgical scalpel blade. What a melodramatic little ceremony, your suicide; you waited for your parents to leave for their shift at the Krankenhaus; then you filled the bathroom with dozens of lit candles like a Catholic alter during Easter; you filled the tub with hot water and bubble bath like we used to do when we bathed each other and then fucked; “Talk Talk”—your goodbye note to me—was playing on your tape deck; a framed black-and-white photograph of me in my Army uniform was perched on the sink so you could look at me as you mutilated your arms and then slowly bled to death. How clinical; how dramatic; you stupid fucking cunt.

Your family never spoke to me afterwards, so your best friend, Heike, related all the gruesome details about a year later when we ran into each other by chance in Saarbrücken at Club Gloria. Her grief over your suicide equaled mine, and we hated you so much for what you’d done that we fucked all night in your memory. In the morning Heike cried and left without saying goodbye. Did she cry out of guilt or because I called her Petra while I fucked her?

You knew I’d never love anyone ever again; you knew they’d all be mediocre compared to you; you knew I’d never let go of you; you knew I’d fall apart; you knew I’d hear your voice for eternity; you knew the emptiness I’d face without you. What were you thinking as you sat in that tub full of bubbles, bleeding profusely? Was I worth dying over?

Guess what? You killed me too, you hacked my wrists that night with that scalpel—I’m just taking longer to bleed to death than you.

See you in hell. I hate you, Petra Stein.

8/5/2005

I was a little late catching on to The Smiths. They broke out like a wildfire in Britain in 1983, ruling the UK charts (and emotions of the kingdom’s youthful denizens) as the new lords of pop music. They were huge in the UK for the next two years before they found their way to me, a 22-year-old Army medic stationed at Fort Benning, Georgia, which was a world as far away from Steven Morrissey’s Manchester as could be found. You had to be a serious music seeker to discover the Smiths in America in 1985; they didn’t make videos for MTV and they got no airplay on American radio. Therefore, in America they didn’t exist.

My introduction to The Smiths came in late 1985 via a young nerdy kid who worked at record shop in Athens, Georgia. If the actor Andy Dick could mate with Michael Stipe of R.E.M., their love child would look like this kid. He was allergic to every element on the Periodic Chart, which caused him to spend his entire life immersed in a tepid pool of snot and slime and soggy, used kleenex. When many people talk, they often include a few “umms” every now and then to help collect thoughts before saying the next thing. With this kid after every three words he either sniffled or sneezed, and the timbre of his voice was always muffled by his snot-filled airways and nasal cavities. His breath was as foul as the air inside an old outhouse in summertime.

However, this kid, this Boris Snotbreath, as I called him, was cool. The coolest. Beyond cool; he was the cool avatar. This cool kid introduced me to The Smiths. They have been my favorite band since that day and have remained in the top spot twenty years later. They were the band that changed everything. So obviously Boris Snotbreath had to be the coolest human ever.

Snotbreath’s first rule to me: the first America-released record by The Smiths was crap. Total crap. Well, not total crap, but certainly they could do better. Instead, he said, if you want to know The Smiths, first listen to Hatful of Hollow, which contained alternate—better—versions of songs on their first record, plus it contained a few new singles they released after the record the Smiths came out in 1984.

Hatful of Hollow is a masterpiece. The Smiths sounded best playing live in a studio, with no overdubs or multi-tacking, just the lads kicking ass in unison, in one take, as if playing at their favorite gig on a Saturday night. Their tracks for John Peel’s BBC show, recorded live in the studio, are simple, direct, tense, and brilliantly vibrant, and were so refreshing in 1985 that I felt honored to have found them. This, I knew immediately, was going to be my favorite band.

The opening tracks, “William, It Was Really Nothing,” “What Difference Does It Make,” “Handsome Devil,” “This Charming Man,” and “These Things Take Time,” display The Smiths at their snotty best, so utterly brilliant, clever, and cocky, simply knowing they are the Next Big Thing; you feel their magnificence and forget every band or song you ever heard previously. On future records they would sound brilliant in many different ways, but they never got better or worse than those first blasts from Hatful of Hollow.

The Smiths, you see, were always great and were never—not once—bad on any record (Boris was wrong: their first record was brilliant; Hatful was simply better). They started out as the best band of their generation and they never retreated from that lofty post until they broke up in 1987. Every record was a masterpiece. Every single they released was as vital as the previous or next one. And when they broke up, they did so while Strangeways, Here We Come topped the charts in Europe and was fairly popular—reaching 55 on Billboard’s album charts—in America; not bad for a British band with little MTV exposure or radio airplay outside of college towns.

The Smiths weren’t Punks or Mod-Revivalists or New Romantics or some other Punk/New Wave hybrid; they were just an English rock band in the tradition of the Beatles and Stones and Who. They were not part of any silly movement or ephemeral style. In America they’d get tossed into the “alternative” bins at record stores, but they were not an alternative rock band.

These four lads from Manchester were something new and something necessary, the next logical step in the evolution of pop and rock. Forget the silly hairdos and slick New Wave fashion of their peers in the UK; that was thrown out the window after the opening bars of “Hand in Glove.” Forget the phony folk heroism of U2 or Springsteen or Mellencamp; Morrissey killed all that feel-good Live Aid idealism with his first ironic ditty sung into a microphone while backed by Johnny Marr’s masterful guitar licks; Morrissey knew rock stars were not saints or saviors; they were just rock singers—pop stars—which was all they needed to be; they were the Lord Byrons and Oscar Wildes in tight trousers—they were not Joan of Arc or Jesus Christ. Forget the macho posturing and campy glam of Metal; Morrissey may have been gay (not that we fans gave a fuck), but he made Metal stars look like the silly, narcissistic fags that they were. Forget videos too; the Smiths never really embraced that medium, yet became the first band in the MTV era to sell records in America despite not getting airplay on MTV.

The Smiths were the band that changed everything.

Not only were the Smiths the most brilliant and original band to enter the scene in years, they refused to play the rock star game and triumphed magnificently despite this. They didn’t cuddle up to the BBC, MTV or the rock press. They didn’t just replace New Wave—they assassinated it with glee and began something newer and better, more honest and cool, and certainly more human. They rocked. They rolled. They made you laugh. They made you dance. They matured and yet never lost their DIY spirit. They were as much Elvis as they were The Who, Small Faces, Ziggy Stardust, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, and Joy Division. They were what the Jam should have been—as popular in America as they were in the UK. Morrissey and Marr were the 80’s John and Paul, Mick and Keith, Bowie and Ronson, Tyler and Perry, Eno and Ferry, Mick and Joe; without the one you cannot have the other; a creative symbiosis that generates greatness.

After The Smiths, fans would demand integrity, honesty, and sincerity—and not phony rock god posing or outlandish fashion statements—from their favorite rock bands. Rock stars didn’t need to be sex gods wearing codpieces who swaggered on stage in ugly spandex trousers and poofie hairdos like burlesque queens. Maybe rock music wasn’t just about sex, drugs, glamour, and partying. Maybe it didn’t need to be about hero worship. Maybe image wasn’t everything. Maybe the music should matter the most, not the stars or their stupid fucking style or image. Once the Smiths debunked the rock star myth, every cool band that followed could be themselves and not have to worry about their hairstyle, clothes, or public image. No more silly costumes or gimmicks were needed. Just play music, be cool, and be yourself. When you think of the Pixies, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Blur, Radiohead, Oasis, Coldplay, or Interpol, you probably know their music much better than their faces.

The Smiths were—are—my favorite band. By 1986 the world was divided into those who got the Smiths and those who didn’t. If you liked Bon Jovi, Metallica, Whitesnake, Ratt, Poison, Motley Crue, or Guns n Roses, you were not a Smiths fan, nor were you welcome in our world with your girlie hair, spandex, sock-stuffed undies, and god-awful “Metal” ballads. If you went to a show and let out a rebel whoop every time the lead singer shouted, “Let’s Party, Cleveland/Milwaukee/Skokie/Denver/Indianapolis!” then you were not a Smiths fan. If you cried while listening to an Ozzy-Lita Ford duet or at the end of Top Gun, you were definitely not a Smiths fan. If you didn’t read books you weren’t a Smiths fan. If you had a mullet you weren’t a Smiths fan. If you thought Ronald Reagan was a great President or Maggie Thatcher was a great Prime Minister you were not a Smiths fan. If you thought Kenny G was a jazz artist you were not a Smiths fan. If you did the “Electric Slide” you were not a Smiths fan. If you referred to women as “pussy” you were not a Smiths fan.

All the seminal 80’s bands like the Jam, Hüsker Dü, R.E.M., Undertones, XTC, Violent Femmes, The Church, Replacements, Pixies, and Sonic Youth, but first and foremost by The Smiths, who were clearly the best band of that era, head and shoulders above their peers; anyhow, what these great bands had was intelligence and passion, and they loved rock and roll as much as any long-haired stadium rocker; they just loved it differently. And so did we.

When The Smiths broke up in 1987 I was already starting to get bored with them, so it was a perfect time to part ways. I was sad, of course, but not as devastated or angry as when The Clash split. For the next 18 years I would store Smiths records away for years and then for no real reason pull them out, and for the next few years they were back in favor. And then it was back to the closet for another few years. It’s gone in cycles like that since the breakup, but my love for their music has never waned. They will always be my favorite band.

 The Clash – London Calling (1979)

When I was a freshman in college there was a music war between the rock traditionalists who clung to The Rolling Stones, Hendrix, Who, Led Zeppelin, Rush, Ozzy, el al., opposed by the modernists who championed Punk and New Wave bands like Talking Heads, Dead Kennedys, Ramones, Buzzcocks, Joy Division, and this band, The Clash, labeled by its most passionate fans as “The Only Band That Matters.” I loved “Classic Rock” but this new music out of New York City, London, and Manchester won me over by the sheer excellence and excitement of the music; it was my generation finding a voice and sound to call its own, and here it was in all its glory on London Calling, the greatest Punk/Post-Punk/New Wave record by the best band.

I realized something in early 1982 as I absorbed the ethos inspiring this new, radical, cool music: It was time to move on from the music and ideas from the 60s and 70s. It was time to change. It was time to grow. It changed my life in how I viewed everything, not just music, but also politics, society, culture, and my role in the greater world. Mainly it forced me to look at myself and change who I was—indeed, inspired by this new music and new ideas, I looked within myself to find what I could change, and change I did in radicals ways that I’d been previously frightened to even consider.

In 1981-82 I felt trapped in a life I felt I was living for others; I was a fat, miserable, decadent, substance-abusing mope wandering around without feeling or purpose. I felt myself wasting away in college, bored and throughly uninterested in the path it was taking me. One morning I woke up and decided to take control of my life, change myself, even reinvent who I was to the very core of my being. And I did–I dropped out of college, joined the Army, and got as far away from my previously miserable life as I possibly could. It was my act of rebellion on the one hand and a cleansing of all my previous sins on the other, a chance to reinvent myself as the person I wanted to be, not who I was.

London Calling is now, oddly enough, played on Classic Rock radio, and of course it’s classic Rock & Roll as much as The Who or Stones or Zeppelin or Rush. But in the early 80s it was a revolution of sound, style, and attitude, a new generation taking the music of Elvis, Chuck Berry, The Stones, Beatles, Who, Zeppelin, Bowie, etc. and taking it elsewhere, to different, newer directions. The Clash played a diverse melange of styles on this record, from Ska and Reggae to Punk and traditional English Rock, and even a little Blues and Country, all filtered through Joe Strummer’s unique voice and vision. It wasn’t Punk any more in the way Tommy wasn’t a Mod record by The Who. It was just Rock & Roll. GREAT Rock & Roll. It was rebellious. Cool. Intelligent. And of course it kicked butt. It was the defining work of my generation.

 AC/DC – TNT (1976)

The summer of 1978 between 9th grade and our sophomore year of high school, my little clique—Chip Johnston, Doug Russell, Chip’s girlfriend Robin Overhoff, Doug’s girlfriend Robin Dalzell, and whatever other assorted fools, party fiends, and hangers-on we collected along the way—would rally at Chip’s house at 3 pm every day, as his parents worked second shift at CBS records, giving us free reign of Chip’s house, his step-dad Jim Keefer’s awesome stereo system and fantastic weed stash from which we pinched “juuust a taste” every day, and of course Chip’s Mom, Betty, always stocked the fridge knowing her sweet baby boy and his gang needed sustenance! We’d crank on the black lights and lava lamps, blast music so loud we’d be deaf by the end of the night, and flop around Chip’s house like idiots dancing to Boston, Ted Nugent, Rush, AC/DC, Earth, Wind & Fire, Aerosmith, Sly and the Family Stone, Zeppelin, Kiss and so much more.

Chip’s old man had every great record ever made that he bought super cheap from all the great employee sales at CBS, so we hardly ever wasted our own money on music or weed that summer; Jim was cool in that he knew we were pilfering his stash, but we never abused his benevolence, so he’d just snarl at us to make Betty happy, but you could see him wink as he snarled. Jim was in a biker gang but was a cool, kind man who’d served in the Korean War. I guess he figured it was better Chip kept his wild ways at home than on the streets. Like I said, it was the 1970s—the rules were ambiguous at best.

Perhaps, in hindsight some 36 years later, it’s a horrifying thought remembering the unbridled licentious lifestyle we original latchkey kids lived back in the late 70s, but we all turned out fine, thank you very much. Well, maybe it took me a while to reach that point…whatever. And maybe it aged my poor Mom. Be we have all those super cool memories from that crazy summer.