The Litter Box

MY OWN PERSONAL hurricane blew in from Atlanta via Sacramento nearly 14 hours early, rolling across the breezeway and into the living room at exactly 2:20 a.m. Not that it really mattered. Having the Forty-Fives ensconced in my apartment has become a half-assed rite of spring that I actually find myself looking forward to. Each visit is generally a 72-hour bacchanal in which things like good judgment and responsible social drinking go right out the window. While their early appearance threw a bit of a wrench into the whole things-to-get-done-before-the-boys-arrive battle plan, seeing them always makes me feel a lot like how I imagine that fellow in the Bible did when welcoming his prodigal son back into the fold. Sure, they may be fuckups, but they are my fuckups, and I love them. So, I did the next best thing to slaughtering the fatted calf: I opened the fridge to crack some beer. And just like that, the sun was coming up, and all was right in my rock 'n' roll world.

It's a well-established fact that the Forty-Fives are my boys, and have been from the beginning when I first laid eyes on them. It was a Sunday night, and if memory serves, there were nine people in the room if you counted the soundperson and bartender. They walked in 40 minutes before their set time looking like they had been dragged behind a bus for a distance or maybe rolled in the side alley. Of course, they were just colossally hungover from the previous evening because, as I later came to understand, they're the type of guys who do considerable damage wherever they land. New York City never had a chance. Neither did Worcester, Mass., on this particular night. To make a long story short, they played like there was a packed house. It was tight and tough and raw and everything I love about music, so I was immediately flying the flag and blathering about the band's superior firing power and ass-stomping capacity to anyone and everyone as often as I could.

That was four years ago, and I'm happy to report that I'm still very much in love. A lot has happened in that time. I moved across the country. They were jerked around by the morons at Artemis Records, dropped, signed to a smaller indie, passed over by the Great Garage Rock Explosion in favor of far lesser bands, championed by Steven Van Zandt, and finally managed by the same guy who broke Oasis in America. And they still got out on the road something between 200 to 230 days a year, always playing a bigger venue each swing through the Bay Area. This last time it was the Fillmore, where they made the Datsuns and the Star Spangles, both well-funded acts, look horrible by comparison. For me, it was just another Forty-Fives show, as I'm convinced there's no one they can't put a pasting to. There's an innate comfort that comes with life's certainties, and I was comfortable with the fact that my boys can kick your boys' asses because they're genetically hardwired to do so. It's automatic. Just like I would always be able to count on them brightening my usually humdrum little life once a year. They would always be around, I would always be around, and someday we'd end up at the top of our respective heaps despite ourselves. They would continue on, the indestructible, rock 'n' roll killing machine, and I would write thinly veiled blow-job pieces about Atlanta's number-one men of action whenever the situation allowed. Or so I thought.

The first crack in the armor came on day number two when the bass player, Mark, a guy who generally rolls with the punches, gave a weary sigh and talked about all his stuff – jacket, bass, shoes – falling apart and not having the money to replace them. And that their big-deal manager-savior was down to sending them company spam every couple of weeks. And that they have no idea how the album is doing. And while nobody was going to come right out and say it, it finally occurred to me that driving 10,000 miles in a month and a half for $250 a night, divided by four guys, might wear on your soul after five years. So might watching bands that are lesser-to-sucky getting the big deal, the lucky break, while you're stuck in Tucson, Ariz., with a blown head gasket and the sinking feeling that the van might not finish the stretch home.

So it's off to see my boys waste another band and slay another audience at their "secret" club show. But tonight, everything feels different. There's a palpable feeling of melancholy, not only because I'm not certain if this will be my last show and my last nitwit spree with the fellas, but also because I've just had the stunning revelation that I'm not even sure I'm gonna make it. I'd like to think we're all in this music thing as lifers, but the reality of it is, most bands have a finite shelf life and so do music writers. In the case of the band, you become old, irrelevant, maybe even a punch line. As a writer, you run the risk of becoming Joel Selvin. Neither case is very pretty. But by the same token, if the Forty-Fives do cash out, it would be one less not-shitty band for me in an art form that's getting shittier by the moment. And I don't think I'd like to prop up shit for a living.

So tonight I'm hoping it was just the Klonopin talking and that the crazy four-man storm from Atlanta keeps right on blowing – for my sake even more than theirs.