It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XVIII
By Mitch Berg
Wednesday, December 12, 1985. I’d turned 23 the day before. Winter had struck, a warmish October yielding to a wet, chilly, snowy November that included a bit of a blizzard the previous weekend. I’d driven to a band audition in White Bear Lake, from an ad in the City Pages. The ad said they – a bass player and a drummer – wanted to start a good rock and roll band with some room for originals. The ad didn’t say they were a couple of high school kids playing in their mom’s basement. As the blizzard formed, I drove out to White Bear – it might as well have been Wisconsin – slogged through “Immigrant Song” and “Sweet Emotion” and a little very uninspired jamming, and then picked my way home through near-zero visibility (my car nearly bottomed out – in the middle of 35W!), cold, tired, crabby, and out a couple of bucks on gas that needn’t have been burned in the first place.
I’d been in the Twin Cities almost two months, and with the exception of Wednesday (today!) and my interview at KSTP-AM, I really didn’t have a thing going on. My resolution was to find a job – any job, no matter how crappy, just to pay the bills, if I didn’t have something else by New Years.
I also resolved that I was going to go back to Jamestown for a long weekend, starting tomorrow, December 13.
But first things first; the interview.
I drove out to KSTP; successfully, this time. I was ushered into the kitchen area – same as my previous interview. I met Rob Pendelton, the “Executive Producer”, at the time a 31 year old guy who looked like he’d be more comfortable in sandals and shorts, with a laid-back attitude to match; we went through the basics of the job (I’d be a call screener; minimum wage; three hours a day plus the two-hour production meeting; no guarantees of going anywhere). I nodded enthusiastically, smiled, and kept my eye contact without flinching; I’d learned! By this point, I didn’t care; anything was better than nothing.
Then, I met with David Elvin, the producer for a guy named Don Vogel.
We chatted for a bit. The cast of the Vogel Show had just had a minor local “hit” in the novelty song market, “Like A Roving Coach”; I’d caught it on the show the previous week as I was doing my “research”, listening to the program; it was Don’s take on Lou Holtz scramming for Notre Dame (done in Don’s impeccable Bob Dylan impression). “Yep, I heard it”, I allowed. “I do a lot of music; I play guitar”.
That brightened Dave up a bit. “Cool! I kind of suck on guitar…”
The interview went uphill fast from there – and for the first time since I’d moved to the city, after umpteen interviews, I was finally starting to smell paydirt.
Where “paydirt” is $3.35 an hour.
But no matter. I drove home feeling an exhilaration that had long deserted me, at least on the job-hunting front. Maybe this can work after all.
I got home and started thinking about the trip back to North Dakota. Or as I put it in my mind as I thought about it, “home”. I was acutely aware that NoDak was still the home base.
It was fading, but still there.
It was getting cold out.
