Nurse the Hate: My Mortals Scheme

 

Well, we finally have a show in a couple of weeks.  It has been so long since I have played a show, 13 months and counting, that I am not 100% sure how to do it.  My fear is that I will come off like some guy at a wedding that had a high school band with the wedding party two decades ago.  “C’mon!  You guys play one!”  I awkwardly climb on stage in an ill-fitting plaid suit coat and try to sing as the band struggles through “Brown Eyed Girl”.  The assembled crowd feels embarrassed for me as I die a hundred deaths as I sing that “tra-al-la-la-la” part off-key.  Later a drunk comes up to me and puts his arm on my shoulder in unearned intimacy.  “You guys didn’t suck as bad as people are saying.  You guys think about getting back together?”  He stares at me expectedly slurping on his Coors Light.   

I wince as I think about not remembering how to handle the time on stage when I am not singing.  That’s the hardest part of being a singer, much harder than hitting the actual notes.  What do you do with your hands when the guitar player decides to take a second solo?  You ever see those rap shows?  None of those guys knows what the fuck to do when they aren’t yelling in the mic.  It’s been over a year since I tried to come up with stupid shit to do when I’m not required to do anything.  I can practice I suppose, but it would be very embarrassing to get spotted doing exaggerated Elvis moves in front of a mirror.  I am going to have to rely on muscle memory.

I was thinking about this gig coming up with The Mortals.  We haven’t played with those guys since probably 1996.  I have seen photos circulating around a manuscript being written about Estrus Records and The Great Garage Rock Gold Rush of the mid 90s-early 2000s.  See above.  That's me in 1994 watching Jack O Fire.  I seem to recall being an established adult male in the mid 1990s, but photos are presenting a group of very young guys that maybe weren’t as cool as they thought they were at the time.  It is very odd to be on the fringes of a scene that is having a book written about it.  It must be how members of the Voidoids feel about the CBGBs days.  A book about the 1990s underground garage rock scene.  Huh.  We were just excited that some other dipshits had the same ideas about what cool music sounded like as we did.  It was a fun time to play music with an honest to God scene that swirled around it.  We were always a bit on the outside looking in, but we knew the guys at “the cool lunch table” and were invited to the same parties.    

Here we are today.  It’s all the same guys in The Mortals as in the mid 90s.  It’s incredible that so much time has passed and we are all still doing the same stupid shit to essentially amuse ourselves and a small group of enthusiastic believers.  The Mortals are without one key member though, Steve the Tongue, their lead singer.  Steve was a wonderfully eccentric guy in a band of other sweet eccentric guys.  He came back to do a reunion gig but spun out again after the rest of the guys decided to keep at it.  Steve had some 1971 Elvis in his presentation.  If you steal, steal from the best.  I do the same thing.  It will be odd to see the band onstage without Steve, but early online reports are that it is working.

It hit me that there is a real opportunity here.  Much like Van Halen and their ill-advised venture with singer Gary Cherone, we should purposely make an awful record with me fronting The Mortals called “Mortals III”.  Sure, it’s a tough break for those guys to have missed a big cash cow like touring with a Sammie Hagar type singer, in our low budget rock world, perhaps someone like Evan Dando or the guy from Reigning Sound.  Let’s just agree that they missed their sports arena touring days strictly because of bad timing on their lengthy break.  Now, they’re back!  And what do they need?  A terrible record with a shitty new lead singer (ME!) to remind people how much they loved the old band.   Stay with me here.  I changed only a few key details from a Van Halen 3 review I found online, and as you can see it fits like a glove.

The "III" in the title of Mortals III refers to the unveiling of the third incarnation of The Mortals, the post-Steve the Tongue lineup featuring former Whiskey Daredevils vocalist Greg Miller as lead singer. According to the party line, The Mortals ditched Steve the Tongue because they wanted to try new musical and lyrical approaches that The Tongue was reluctant to pursue. And it is true that Mortals III makes a slight break from The Mortals dunderheaded party rock, but that's a difference that only hardcore fans will be able to hear. Less tired but no more inspired than Bulletproof, Mortals III suffers from the same problems as Miller-era Whiskey Daredevils -- limp riffs, weak melodies, and plodding, colorless rhythms. On top of that, there are layers of pretensions, from portentous lyrics to segmented song structures that don't sound all that different from "Trucker Bomb".  That would be a shame if Bill Grapes had a clear idea of where he wanted to take the band, but he seems content to wallow in the big arena rock he has long since exhausted, churning out faceless riffs and technically proficient guitar solos that never expand the vocabulary he established 20 years ago. Mortals III may showcase a new version of The Mortals, but that doesn't make it a new beginning.

This, of course, creates a scenario where they have to go crawling back to Steve, cave into some absurd demands he makes up on the spot because HE CAN, and unhappily go back out on the road not wanting to be there in the first place.  I like the idea of those guys traveling in two separate vans, everyone pissed off and no one excited about playing songs from 1992s “Ritual of Sound”.  It’s how all rock and roll stories end anyway.  Guys that were thrown together by circumstance and chance while in their 20s are shackled together in their 50s to play soulless sets at Street Fairs and Package Tours.  Fuck yes!  It’s like Weezer without the hits.  All I have to do is help write 10 shitty songs (which I can do in my sleep) and go on a painful Mortals III tour where everyone hates me.  After being mercifully cast off, I can enjoy watching footage on my iPad of a sullen Mortals performance on a socially distant side stage at Bonaroo 2023. 

We all need dreams.