Dear Friends,
It’s been strange being here in Maine without having alcohol playing a huge roll in my day to day. I am realizing how much of the experience for the last few years has revolved around booze. Thinking about and finding good beer, then drinking said beer, was an almost constant pursuit for my attention.
I can’t really say that I’m struggling with this change, because I’m not. I’m still very comfortable with my decision not to drink. The other night, Doug offered me some 18-year-old Highland Park Scotch and that was hard, but only for an instant. For a second there, I thought about it, but it was only a second.
This trip, so far, has given me a lot of realizations about my relationship with substances. From long conversations with Brian in Rockford that made me think long and hard about what I am actually up to here, this year, and moving forward, to the hypnotic power of the road, music, and a sleeping teenager next to me that I desperately want to see grow into a man, husband, and father as time ticks on.
I had a long time to think and ponder. I was able to take an inventory of my decisions and behavior that helped me embrace, again, that I am an addict. I am addicted to alcohol and marijuana and that’s the fact, Jack.
My addiction likes to fuck with me, too.
It says, “Compare yourself” to this person or that person or different situations. It says, “Ignore that bullshit. Get back on the train! You got it. You can control it. You can do it differently.”
The thing is, I can do that whole ‘functioning addict’ act. I can bob and weave and avoid any real damage (or the illusion thereof), but for how long? What I don’t know how to share when I talk about this with people in my life is this:
I am getting tired. The fight to not just say “fuck it” and let go of the semblance of control is exhausting and I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t have the energy.
Fuck, I’m not ‘getting’ tired. I was tired of it all. That’s why I am where I am today.
Here I am, though, up here in Maine and I’m surrounded by temptation. I know what happens, though, if I give into it. With booze, it’s easy. I have my near beers (and damn if some of them aren’t really good these days, which makes it easier), but when it comes to the weed, that one is difficult right now.
After forty plus years now of having it my life, I know where that road takes me, too. It’s not dissimilar to where the search for the elusive greatest beer in the world takes me. It’s a lie.
The addict brain has told me, “Just enjoy it in Maine. When you get home, you can stop again.”
That’s a lie.
I mean, I can stop again, sure, but then I can start again, too. Maybe I don’t use it as a crutch to deal with the fact that when I get home, I won’t have my other half with me for almost three solid months. That’s just another addict brain thought, anyway.
The only real choice is to not smoke or eat any weed. The addict brain wants me to write something passive now, too. It wants me to say that I ‘may make a different decision.’ For those of you who don’t have this part of your brain, that’s how this shit works. Your brain fucks with you incessantly if you let it.
The only way for it not to fuck with you is to just not use the drug and even then, it’s always there. It’s just not as loud and its arguments are not nearly as convincing. I’m six months in. I know I have a long way to go before the voice is pretty darn quiet when it comes to weed. I’m so glad I can’t smell it.
The thing is, I know that many people love to smoke and drink and don’t have a problem with it. I get that and I’m not even bitter about it. I don’t begrudge anyone doing their thing and having fun. I don’t mind being around it, either, but sometimes it is hard.
Sometimes it is really hard. I ask of those of you in my life that you accept that when I struggle, I might need a little space. I might need a little empathy. I hid my real feelings about this for so long that it is probably surprising that I feel this way, based on my previous actions, but internally, I always knew I was dancing with the devil when I was drinking and smoking. I just didn’t say anything about it.
I look back at my behavior, too, and I think that most people who are close to me, if they think about it now, can see where I was struggling and the losses were really starting to mount. I used to feel like, most of the time, I was coming out on top and controlling this stuff, but the last couple of years, I don’t think I was doing that at all.
This is who I am and where I am at.
*****
So, I am standing there in the Nile Theater in Mesa, Arizona in the early 1990s. I don’t remember the exact date, but it was 1994, I think, maybe 1995. Brainiac had just played and absolutely killed it, as usual, but I was even more excited about the next band. They had captured my attention in a major way in the previous few years and they were actually in my town.
They started their set. It was fucking incredible. “Incendiary” is a word that I want to use but, because of the circumstances, cannot bring myself to actually consider attaching any real feeling to at this moment. About six songs into their set, some idiot brought a fire extinguisher into the pit and started spraying it around.
Show over.
Six songs in and the band I had been wanting to see for a few solid years had to leave the stage. It was New York City’s Cop Shoot Cop and that was my only chance to see them. Fuck that stupid dude who thought the fire extinguisher would be fun. Fuck him right in the B.
How could you not be interested in a band called Cop Shoot Cop? As a punk rocker, you almost have to like them right off the bat. I have nothing against police officers, for the most part, but they represent a level of authority that, at best, can’t truly be trusted. I’m glad the good ones are there, and I’ve met a lot of good ones over the years, either professionally in my old violence prevention days or when I needed some help myself.
The name, though, catches your eye and attention.
Cop Shoot Cop put out four records, I believe, but I’m partial to their 1993 release, Ask Questions Later. I like all the others, but when I looked inward, this is the one I wanted to write about today. Maybe it is because I like the song “Room 429,” but that’s probably not it. As I type this, I realize that I could also just as easily be writing about the other records.
The cover of Ask Questions Later is striking. There is a young person with a gun to their head. I look at that image and it makes me want to help this young person. Why do they have the gun at their head? (This reminds me that I haven’t worked on the site in quite some time. I need to do that)
The music contained within the record (I have it on CD) is urgent and powerful and fits the cover really well. It is desperate, in a way, and while it is also apparent this is a band that wants to bust out of the underground a bit and be seen, they are struggling to maintain their identity as one of the “cool NY bands.” The tension this creates is palpable. It also gives birth to some excellent music.
There is no guitar on the record. I like that. Two bassists, percussion, samplers, and piano. Cop Shoot Cop would later add a guitar, but unlike some folks who hated it, I didn’t mind. Bands are allowed to evolve.
Ask Questions Later has all that tension and release because the band was evolving. Putting “Surprise, Surprise” as the first song was kind of brilliant, just as the line, “Surprise, surprise, the government lies” echoes a lot of my own feelings about our leaders. It’s a slap in the face right off the bat, with a tremendous outro part, and leads into “Room 429.”
Songs about scoring drugs will always make my skin crawl a bit. If you’ve ever been in the situation where you were waiting for someone to bring the drugs, you know what I mean. I’ve always interpreted this song as being about deciding whether or not to cop that next dose of something that makes you feel like you are all by yourself.
That’s what drugs do, really. They make you feel alone. I don’t know why, maybe it is something I knew about the band thirty years ago, but there are a lot of drug references in Cop Shoot Cop’s music. I think they probably struggled with addiction, but again, that’s just a hunch, and I digress.
“Nowhere” is big and swirling and removes a bit of residue that is left over from “Room 429.” Good call, here, to whoever decided on the song order. Tod Ashley, aka Tod A, comes from the same vocal neighborhood as the late Mark Sandman of Morphine. Not so much in how they sound, but how they deliver the lyrics in a song that moves a little quicker than they are used to doing. There is a cadence that reminds me of each of them in their songs.
“$10 Bill” is another song that is possibly about needing money for drugs that I really like. It moves really well, too, and I’ve put it on a lot of mixed tapes and CDs over the years. It’s like an old, comfortable friend that I can always come back to when I need them.
It’s odd to me that my two favorite songs off of Ask Questions Later are the two most popular in terms of the amount of plays they have on Spotify. This kind of bums me out, but also is gratifying in a way. I’m glad others dig these songs, too.
“Furnace” is another favorite. I love the bass sound on the whole album, with two it’s just huge, but “Furnace” is particularly powerful. As a gateway to the rest of the album, in a way, it sets a nice tone.
As Ask Questions Later wraps itself up, the noisiness and anger become more apparent across the last five or six tracks. This is why it is a record that you can’t really ignore as it goes on. It gets into your head and stays there.
It’ll be in my head for a while, I think.
*****
See you tomorrow.
This is fucking crazy. AI, I am overwhelmed by what you did with "Sober as a judge who asks questions later."