The Litter Box

By John O'Neill

SO HERE'S THE deal on writing a column: the story develops from the ether, goes to the gray matter for some minor polishing, and goes out the fingertips into the Gateway keyboard. The piece is filed, and then comes the thrill-of-victory adrenaline rush, followed closely by the (self-)congratulatory post-filing stuffing c/o Andy's Excellent Chinese Cuisine, followed by a couple more weeks of waiting around until the last possible second to pick a subject and do it all over again.

The key to making all of this happen is, of course, music. Namely the disc I slip into my computer in order to have something to listen to as the next-to-last gun is fired, so that I may have something to expound upon when the moment of truth flashes its fangs and pounces at final deadline. The former is integral to the success of the latter. If the music stopped spinning the entire system would come to a screeching halt.

It has happened before.

There was the time the much-loved Boo Boo the Cat and her 18 pounds of kitty force sent the boom box sailing off the mantel and into early retirement after I grew weary of gaffer-taping the open/close hatch down in order to listen to a disc.

And there was the time I attempted to go "high-tech" and invested in a real stereo system. Unfortunately, after the long cross-country ride, I unpacked and realized that (a) I forgot to lock down the tone arm of the turntable, much to the disadvantage of the needle and the album I also forgot to remove before tossing the thing in a box, and (b) apparently CD players have this thing on the bottom that locks the laser. The technical term is "laser lock," and you're supposed to lock the player before moving it over vast distances. Or maybe any distance. But you get the drift. The point is, for my first year out here I was forced to listen to any and all music via a cheap DVD player fed through a 10-year-old Zenith TV with speakers the size of Oreo Double Stufs.

Then one great and memorable tax day, I sprung for the Gateway computer, and a whole new world of listening to music was open to me. It was called stereo. I had forgotten how good it really was. Man, was I in business.

So, as you can imagine, there was a certain amount of anxiety in my voice when I let loose the initial reaction of "No fucking waaaaaaaaay," upon learning that my computer had chosen to no longer recognize the compact disc format as a viable source of encoded digitalized information. Once there was a beautiful symmetry in the "process." Today all that remains is a sharp crackle that sounds a lot like Rice Krispies cereal as played through FM static.

I tried everything I know from a technical perspective to alleviate the problem here at mission control. I turned the volume knob of the speaker to the left and then to the right. The treble was then employed this way and that way, and then back again. Yet the hissing pop remained. I attempted to call up the radio preprograms to see if it was just the disc in question. The BBC World Services remained mute, and the only voice coming from Village Voice Radio was the serpent-like "sssssssssss" that I was getting from every other source. Not even the Ministry of Sound Radio came through. No God for you today, Johnny – only the death rattle of your career. After turning the monitor on and off a couple times in a last-ditch effort to regain control, I gave up and went off to drink a two-liter bottle of Coke and contemplate life after writing over a box of peanut brittle.

The topic of discussion was to have been Mark McKay's Live from the Memory Hotel (Dren). A Chicago native who for some reason decided to relocate to Virginia, McKay is one of those guys who seem poised on the cusp of bigger things. A solid contribution to an Uncle Tupelo tribute disc, a standout version of "Who'll Stop the Rain" on Chooglin': A Tribute to the Songs of John Fogerty (Dren), and the fact that he attracted the attention of NYC alt-country production king Eric Ambel (Ryan Adams, Bottle Rockets, Marshall Crenshaw) made McKay the easy pick.

All I can really tell you now that is 100 percent for sure beyond that is the album jacket was designed by New York artist Steve Keene (www.stevekeene.com). Steve likes to use a lot of lively colors in his work, so while you wouldn't recognize his deer as a deer if not for the antlers thrown in the package, it sure is a bright deer. Or moose. Also, McKay has a song called "Nashville," which would raise a red flag under normal circumstances because it's most likely a song taking potshots at the tired, old country music capital. That's like shooting your larger variety gaming fish in a very small barrel. But now I'll never know the truth. The system has broken down, and all is lost.