It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XVII
By Mitch Berg
December 4, 1985. A Wednesday.
I was closing in on two months in the Twin Cities. No job yet – no real nibbles, really.
A job as a technical writer at a local defense-related contractor flared briefly in November – and flamed out as the company imposed a hiring freeze that lasted the better part of a decade. I ended up working in tech writing – starting in 1993. But that would wait.
And wait.
And wait.
I’d been to a bunch of band auditions. I figured the best way to get into the music scene was to get into a band that was sort of, kind of, like what I wanted to do.
My first audition was sometime in mid-November, after I’d moved into my apartment in South Minneapolis. It was in a warehouse on and Washington Avenue North. I parked my car in a trash-strewn dirt lot abutting a railroad track, and hauled my gear – my guitar and amp – up a cement stairway onto a ratty loading dock that smelled of grease and urine. A bum was passed out in a neighboring doorway. I took a ricket freight elevator up to a drafty room that smelled like rodent droppings with a couple of hanging 110 volt outlets and fist holes in the wallboard, in a warren of similar little spaces housing small bands and wheezing artists. The audition? A couple of synth-pop dweebs from Woodbury-via-The Wedge. Dreadful music, worse “audition”. Hated it. I only bring it up, really, as a way of noting that I walked by that same building about a year ago. It’s been renovated into lofts that start around $375,000; the building next door where the drunk was passed out is a chi-chi office block. I barely recognized the place.
The other event was “Today”, Wednesday. After a bunch of tries, I got a hold of Rob Pendelton at KSTP-AM. “Sorry, I’ve been so busy – but we have a job working as a screener for the…” I didn’t catch the host’s name. “We’d like you to come in for an interview next Wednesday”.
I accepted, naturally. The bank account was in free fall. My goal; if I didn’t have a job I actually wanted by New Years, I was going to take the first security job that I could get.
