{"id":48475,"date":"2005-12-12T09:23:59","date_gmt":"2005-12-12T15:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48475"},"modified":"2014-10-24T09:34:23","modified_gmt":"2014-10-24T14:34:23","slug":"it-was-twenty-years-ago-today-121205","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=48475","title":{"rendered":"It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, Part XVIII"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/em> job, no matter how crappy, just to pay the bills, if I didn’t have something else by New Years.<\/p>\n

I also resolved that I was going to go back to Jamestown for a long weekend, starting tomorrow, December 13.<\/p>\n

But first things first; the interview.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

I drove out to KSTP; successfully, this time. I was ushered into the kitchen area – same as my previous interview<\/a>. 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<\/em> was better than nothing.<\/p>\n

Then, I met with David Elvin, the producer for a guy named Don Vogel.<\/p>\n

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”.<\/p>\n

That brightened Dave up a bit. “Cool! I kind of suck on guitar…”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Where “paydirt” is $3.35 an hour.<\/p>\n

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<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

It was fading, but still there.<\/p>\n

It was getting cold out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 – […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twenty-years-ago-today"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48475"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48512,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48475\/revisions\/48512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}