#47/1214
February 14 1986
My Dad is Dead
…And He’s Not Going to Take it Anymore
Genre: Indie
3.5 out of 5
In 1999 I was living alone in a little apartment in West Hollywood. “Haven Villa”, it was called. It still is. Some of the residents of that rent controlled place still live there, paying depressed rents for the last 20+ years, hanging out by the pool, no idea how great they have it. Or they do and they are soaking it in.
I was newly divorced, my daughter was back in my life, everything laid out before me. And I lucked in to a booking. I was cast as one of the characters in a series of spots for 1-800-COLLECT with Damon Wayans and Ed O’Neill. We did 2 spots and they ran all the freaking time. My mailbox would overflow with residual checks. This was right at the end of that era and I think I had earned six figures in the first 4 months the commercial was on the air.
One of the first things I did was buy some music equipment. Not the best stuff because, I was also bad at investing my money and I had my identity stolen and couldn’t recoup the money…it was a long story. But one you hear about all the time. I bought a new guitar. A red Hoehner. It was gorgeous. My son would eventually break the neck on it and then again after it was repaired. But I did get a good 10 years out of that thing. And an amp. Which would be stolen out of the car of one of my back up singers when I lent it to her…Ah well. I didn’t use it much anyway once the band told me that I should stop playing since I was terrible.
But before all that, I bought a 4 track recorder. Not an expensive one. And a shitty mic. Not a good one.
And I would record in the dining space of that little apartment, to the dismay of my neighbors who stayed home during the day. One of them would go on to sell an unproduced Wonder Woman screenplay but he really didn’t mind my warbling. And the upstairs neighbor hate any noise that wasn’t created by or for him so he would eventually take me to Dispute Resolution Services who told him, “Seriously, if you don’t want noise during regular hours, you should move ti Iowa.”
To which he responded. “I’m from Iowa.”
He was an asshole.
I wrote a bunch of the early Throttle Back Sparky songs in that room on that 4-track. It was great.
None of them as dark or weird or nihilist sounding as My Dad is Dead. But, with that name, what could you expect.
I love stuff like this. Daniel Johnston. Mark Edwards. John Darnielle. They just HAD to write and record stuff. It’s in them. It had to come out.
I wrote all of my songs between 1998 and 2004. The darkest time of my life up until the best times of my life. It’s appropriate that much of it came in the shadow of my divorce, custody battles, and then, at the end of all that, the love songs and paeans I wrote for my new wife and daughter.
That’s what 4 tracks are for.
And shitty rent controlled apartments.
There’s a ton of stuff here. From Joy Division to Indie Rock to Sonic Youth. It’s an amalgamation of sounds bubbling in the mid 80s.
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