Frog Eyes in Fargo #1

1. One time I was playing guitar in Fargo, or actually Moorhead, Minnesota, and I was pulling on the whammy bar and stomping on my rat pedal or whatever, and when I looked up I saw a giant wisp of a man looming over Melanie. She was trying to play her drums and trying to ignore this skinny shadow that had fallen on her.

I thought, 'This is a new addition to our band. How unheralded!'

He had a white plastic jacket on. He was eight feet tall. He had the well-trimmed brown beard of an insane man. He looked a bit like Michael Gross. His ears were covered in orange fuzzy-foam headphones. He was like some giant Tallahassee swamp plant, all stalk and no trunk, and he was looming over Mel. He had a proprietary look on his face.

We, being professionals, finished the song. I played with my back to the audience though: I was keeping an eye on this intruder.

He was a close kin to the strange anthropomorphic tube creatures that car dealers rope to their lots, thinking that this fluttering mascot will attract potential customers. He moved and swayed as if only the wind of creation filled him. He had his own beauty.

When the song ended (this was a Destroyer concert), the room was filled with a general silence (as there often is between songs at a Destroyer concert, unless Dan is wasted enough to try and crack a joke about polar bears caged in Stanley Park, or...actually that is the only joke, or semblance of olive branch, that I have ever seen extended).

Anyways: the silence. It was broken. The raving insane man was pointing at Mel. He was babbling. He was screaming at her: "You were in my pack! I know you...I do know you!"

He was rocking on his feet, and cradling his headphones to his head, as if in the middle of a transmission.

"You danced under my whip!"

At this point I considered interceding. But Mel is strong and I don't play the part of protective husband very well. And this last statement seized my pre-adolescent, pre-sexual imagination: a whip: one could whip all kinds of enemies with a whip.

And I could see through his plastic jacket, and I saw no concealed whip.

"You were part of my pack! My dog pack! You were a husky, and I made you mush!"

"In your past life! You were a dog, in my pack of dogs! Now Mush! Mush! Mush!"

He seemed quite sure about this.

Peter, our large roadie, jumped up and was like "Hey you freak! Get away from her!"

I guess I should have done something like this, something similar.

But then a really wonderful thing happened, wonderful for everyone but Peter and, perhaps, Mel. The whole audience came down on Peter.

"Hey, don't speak to crazy Herman like that!'

"That guy fought in Vietnam, dude!"

"He does that at all the shows!"

"Sit the fuck down!"

"Who yells at a crazy person? These people need compassion, not accusations!"

"Yeah Peter!"

This last comment was from me.

Peter looked around in confusion, as if he had just gone to his girlfriend's family's house for dinner, and he had yelled at Grandpa for peeing on the toilet-seat. He slunk back to his post.



2. This was at a place called Ralph's, across the river from Fargo. Ralph's was great, because it was free. So, "crazy Herman" and "wasted Pedro" (the most drunken individual I have ever witnessed) could waltz in and out of the jamz. And so could the music lovers. And so could the frat boys, who might eventually, after repeated exposures, become music lovers themselves.

Pedro might lie, like a starfish, on the floor, drumming on his chest or moaning along to the band, a full three beats behind (it took more than a few seconds for any sound to penetrate his cloud of unknowing) without the fear of "cover charge".

Crazy Herman can strut in and out, depending on whether or not he recognized any of his old mush squad now re-incarnated in human form, without fear of "cover charge".

So, in a society of niche, and codes, and fractured but (alas) ultimately homogenous gathering spaces, it was wonderful to be in a real free space.

But people need to charge money for things, and Ralph's closed down.

This essay is about two things:
A. The experience of returning to a place, and how sad it is when places that we love close down.
B. More importantly: Fargo as the ultimate model for a scene.




3. I took a page out of Pedro's book that night, and I drank and drank and drank. I got so lost in my stupor, and I forgot that my "job" was to play guitar (a job that, night after night, I performed with little skill or ability, but with an endless cache of gusto). I forgot about Dan's songs, and I looked at wasted Pedro with love and respect. I could "see" him.

I thought 'What would Pedro really want me to do right now?'

So I walked up to Dan, who was in mid-acapella "figure-skating sluts", and I elbowed him in the neck, thus incapacitating him and ruining both his Chicago and Minneapolis shows due to a bruised windpipe. I grabbed the microphone, and started skanking around the stage, singing, in my best hobo-thrash voice, my own acapella rendition of "Holiday in Cambodia".

Surely this was that Pedro wanted from me!

Pedro was actually taking a time-out to the right of the stage. He was slumped over a table that had three fresh pitchers of beer on it. He had his mouth and face in one frothy pitcher, and he was gurgling and kind of half-drinking, half-spitting, breathing and blowing. His hair was creating scuzzy oil pools in the beer. Since he was slumped over, he also had to put his hands somewhere, so he put them in the other two pitchers on the table. So Pedro, who had been cut off at the bar, had now laid a sovereign claim to all three pitchers of beer.

Pedro was the filthiest human I have ever seen: a roofer that works 8 days without washing, falls in a ditch, and rolls around in some dumpster juice before coming to the show. He had tar caked underneath his fingernails. His bare arms had so many dirt splotches they looked like camouflage.

The owners of the beer were just coming back to the table after a nice urination, or a quick dance, or a rousing game of pull-tabs. They emitted that nervous and unbearable air of "first date", but with one female tag-along friend to make sure that Brad didn't, you know, get any naughty ideas on Debbie. They did not share my immediate love for this man. They sadly surrendered both their beer and their table to Pedro.

After about five seconds of my hoarse acapella singing, Pedro's head snapped up, spraying frothy Coors Light all over this trinity of bummed out Fargo-ites. He started flopping around like a scarecrow drenched in coors light. He clearly approved! I'd gotten through to him! I knew I could...


...good for me...

...but this is the end of the night for me...I'm falling...into darkness...



4. In the morning, when I woke up, I had some predictable apologizing to do:

"I'm so sorry that I let that crazy man just bark at you, and let him say that you used to be one of his dogs in a mushing sleigh team. I shouldn't have just stood there laughing, giving him a thumbs up".

"I'm so sorry that I elbowed you in the neck. No, don't speak, it only makes it worse. I'm sure your voice will be better by Minneapolis or Chicago, I'm absolutely sure of it."

"I should never have tried to be like Pedro, or communicate with him in anyway whatsoever!"

And various other apologies...

One immediate mystery was: "Where are we?"

We were in Dilworth, Minnesota. We were staying at the Dilworth Inn, across from a culinary establishment called "Illegal Burrito".

I found out that we had driven just a touch out of Fargo, just a few minutes, and found a very cheap but clean motel. This combination of cheap and clean is a treasured rarity (for a counter-point, see: "the Quarry Inn" just outside of Washington, D.C.: beast urine, crack pipes, semen stains everywhere...but 5 dollars cheaper than the motel 6).

The premise of the establishment was that the burritoes were so big, they were practically illegal. But in America, a country that prides itself on its great freedoms and the individual's right to choose what ever seems appealing to him or her, this seemed like a contradiction. It should read "Illegal...everywhere BUT in freedom-loving U.S.A.".

I am still a hungry child, so the idea of "so big it's illegal" gets me excited. Poor Dan: he could barely squeak out his order for one super illegal burrito. It was fun, and good, or at least okay, and then we left Fargo/Dilworth full of mirth. That was, in many ways, the most positive show on that tour. We should have cherished that mirth.



5. So, a few years later, Frog Eyes pulled into a show in Fargo, returning to find Ralph's demolished. We searched for some semblance of "that which had been". All of our favourite haunts had suffered greatly since our virgin voyage.

Pizza Commando was but a toothless yawn in the mouth of a strip mall.
Ralph's was a pit with the wrecking ball of Damacles swaying over it.

But what about Dilworth? What was happening out there? The locals feigned no knowledge of Dilworth, so they were not much help. And I kept badgering them about it, as I thought it was odd. I thought it was odd how their Norwegian faces twitched when I mentioned Dilworth, and their cheeks burned with shame.

They also were a bit puzzled by all of this talk of "Pedro" and "Illegal Burritoes". No one knew where Pedro was, or even who he was. We did hook up with Herman, but he seemed kind of distant, kind of distracted by something on the horizon.

Who's that guy: Herodotus? Yes, Herodotus. Herodotus watches a random worker roll some boulder down a dusty path and describes this with great feeling and detail. The worker knows nothing of Herodotus, of his aims and hopes for his "history". But Herodotus writes and immortalizes this one worker. Isn't that cool?

But what do we mean by immortalizing? Do the worker's descendants rooster around their workplaces, reading out p. 345 of the Histories, and claim loudly that "this was my ancestor!" Who even reads the Histories? Who reads the Histories and stops and really ponders the lived life of the worker? What did he eat? Who did he love? Where and when did his dreams die?


6. We played our second show in Fargo and it was fun, not so revelatory, but still quite fun. A rowdy woman became convinced/converted by our music, if only for a short time, and she bought us a tray of shots. This is always a nice move, especially if there are no social strings attached.

Of course, the large shot glasses were full of strawberry blush wine.

There is a temporal purity to these conversions: though we are her favourite band for 45 minutes, we will never see her again, and upon waking in the morning she will have no recollection of anything remotely musical. She will look at the unopened CD with detached puzzlement, and throw it into the garbage. She will put her signed T-shirt into the donation bin at the Sally Ann. And then they will put it on the racks, and someone with vague familiarity of the band will scoff and shake their head and wonder why we don't just give it all up. Cruelty abounds.

But for that single hour there is no questioning her fealty to the music.



7. Anyways, after the show we drove out to Dilworth. We drove out with high hopes for the comfort and cleanliness of a certain Inn, and a certain breaking of the fast with a certain illegal cone of spice and shredded pork. Mirth was palatable. Strawberry wine was in our bellies!

Predictably, and tragically: The Illegal Burrito was not only closed, but no restaurant had taken its place, so it was a preserved but decaying mausoleum of what had once been.

The Dilworth Inn was in the process of being converted from an Inn into a jail. It was in the in-between stage of construction, its gaping holes illuminated by our headlights. It was not quite Inn and not quite jail. We sobbed. We pulled our hair and thrashed our breasts. Not quite Inn and not quite jail. Somehow this all felt very familiar.

We went across the street. It looked quarry-ish. I went in to the tiny lobby with one-hundred dirty crumpled one dollar bills in my hand. I don't need to describe the lobby.

When I play music, I sweat. I cannot help it. Sometimes after a show I have the appearance of a man who has just stepped out a lake, but fully-clothed. So, from the motel owner's perspective, a dirty and crazed man holding a green egg of money had just walked into his office, drenched to the bone. Mysteries abound.

I really had to urinate. I try to drink a lot of water after our shows so I can re-hydrate. All of this water was now demanding freedom from my near-bursting bladder. The old man behind the counter saw me wincing, and squeezing my legs, and doing the "touchdown dance", and hopping from one foot to the next, while he, as slow as possible, so as to get a good read on what kind of moral character I possessed, checked the room availability. His eyebrows arched thoughtfully as he painstakingly went through his register.

There was not one car parked in the motel parking lot. Every single key to all 25 rooms hung from their pegs. I was trembling in pain. I had to pee so bad. This was it. I had to go. His pencil went slowly down the columns of his checked-in book. I had to act.

"Sir, please excuse me for but one second, I have one important but neglected piece of urgent business I must simply attend to!" And I bolted out the door and around the back of his little lodge, sprinting and hopping and yelping. I was illuminated for one quick second by the headlights of our van. I ran around the corner and found only complete darkness. I was in a field. This was the last structure before the farms began. I let it all out.

After this brief interlude, I waltzed back into his little den. I whistled. I was calm. Nothing weird had just occurred. And, of course, no explanation was given to anyone waiting in the van who just witnessed me bolt out of the motel lobby in a panicked sprint.

"Hi there...I was just in here a minute ago? About a room? Yep, that was me?"

Some silence between words.

He wets the side of his lips. He looks at me with not-quite disdain, but with the forefront of disgust.

'How many people?"

"Four, good sir!' Four weary travelers!" I said, wringing out my sweat covered shirt onto his floor.

"Four? How many rooms?" This was more curt and automatic.

"Well...hmmm...One or two? Two or three? I think...I think..."

"Hmmm...What would we favor on this blessed night?"

"...I think tonight we'll just go with one room. Yes, one room for the four of us."

And with my intention laid bare, he launched into a well-worn statement. His eyes narrowed, and the spittle at the side of his mouth seemed to foam and bubble:

"Well, you can take your money and march out that door, 'sir'! I will no longer play host to any college sex parties!"

I felt my soul whimper.

"I know what the four of you will be doing all night, carousing in ________, and _________ while the one watches, and dual _______ and _________ while the three sleep! No! Never! Go back to..." And at this point he made a spitting sound. He did not actually spit on his own floor, but he did make a spitting sound.

"..Go back to Fargo!"

Quickly suppressing my shock, I put my palms down on his register, as if to send back to the fiery depths all of his insinuations and presumptions.

He continued:

" Go back to Fargo! And spread the news! No more college-style sex parties in Dilworth!"

I stopped my ensuing retort and thought about this. Getting a bullhorn. Spreading the news. Driving slowly down sleeping residential streets. Spreading the news: "To repeat! That's right: breaking news! No more College sex parties in Dilworth! Plan accordingly! Do not attempt a college sex party in Dilworth! Under no circumstances should you attempt this! Whereas in the past it was tolerated, even perhaps encouraged, it is now officially forbidden" and so on.

I was tired. I didn't want to pay for two rooms--this act would decimate my green dollar egg.

I looked into his eyes. I made my own trademark "kind eyes" at the man.

I said, "Sir. Kind sir. Please understand me. And please know that I understand you. For we have just been in Fargo. And it is nothing if not a pit of sin and gluttony and sexual corruption."

"That, sir," And I raised my arms to vaunt the lobby, to celebrate this space as the last bastion of purity, in a world gone horny, "that is why we ventured out to Dilworth, so as to sleep a restful sleep and escape the wild hootering and hollering of Fargo."

"Sir, I assure you, we are not even in College. It is just I, and my wife, a nurse [for some reason I always bring this truth up, in times where I need to prove my moral sanctity], and her two male cousins. We are Canadians, sir. Just a few Canadians, two legally married, and two traveling cousins, trying to find a bit of peace and safety in this wicked world."

And then I peeled 40 one dollar bills off of my egg.

"Now, sir. Given that we understand each other, I'd like to offer you 40 dollars for one of your fine rooms, given that it's 3 in the morning and we will just be sleeping, and that is a discount from the advertised price of 55.00$, but, still sir, I think the fact that we understand each other should account for some kind of discount."

And then I gave him some more nice eyes. He turned around. He had his back to me. He took one key off of the key rack. He handed it to me. His actions were smooth, like a reassured cat.

I put the money on his guest register.

The money was so sweaty from being in my pocket that it was making the blue ink on his guest register squiggle and distort.



8. The thing that I wanted to accomplish in this essay, which I have not even grazed, is how much Fargo means to me.

In my house we have beautiful silkscreened posters from Fargo, printed on thick card, beautiful Sigmar Polke-style layering and juxtapositions, beautiful advertisements for our shows.

They are always working on their sound system--this is important for both the audience and the performers. The kick drum has an authority and a solemn weight in Fargo. The sound person is kind, always helping with the set-up.

The promoter comes to the show, and watches the bands, and claps and dances and drinks strawberry blush wine and claps some more. This is enormously important.

I cannot properly accomplish what I set out to do in this essay, so I think I will stop writing. Otherwise, my essay will turn into syrupy gushing about independent-music scenes, and collectives, and kids making spaces that conform to their idea of how art and artists should be both consumed and treated. I could gush about that stuff. But all writing needs conflict and tension, and I have nothing more to add in this regard.