rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

Ghosts in the Answering Machine: Something Creaky This Way Comes

    1st off I was wrong, as usual. The Tension Envelopes reunion will not take place in January, but in April. All other previous info still applies.

     So, who are these Envelopes, and why are they so tense? I was talking to guitarist Rick Neblung the other day and he commented that bassist Carl Simmons has' a memory like a steel trap' and I agree. His historical reminiscences re: Tension Envelopes on burninglight and elsewhere are likely yards more accurate than anything I might vaguely remember beyond feeling.

      But, oh, what a feeling.

     Anyway, it was 197something and I was like 6 months away from my second divorce, alcoholism was a comin' to git me, I was working as a receiveing clerk for a Great Metropolitan Communications company and playing 'Sweet Jane' in one lousy barband after another.

     Enter Rick Neblung. Introduced to me by a female guitarist friend Allison Ruta(who helped me realize I had no business being married and for which has never been properly thanked or apologized to). It was this introduction that set the stage for Tension Envelopes.

     The start, of course, was false. Rick and I and Allison and Tom Fraunberger (remeber Tom?) made our cbgb debut under the Envelope name and were rickety, drunk and split down the middle between my and Allison's songs. We also turned into kinda a punkdrunk Fleetwood Mac as Tom hooked up w/my not-yet-ex-wife and Itried, pathetically and unsuccessfully to hook up w/Allison.

     Allison, if yr reading this I am sooooooooooooo sorry. Truly.

     Anyway that version imploded. Rick and I hooked up w/drummer Don Gunning for essentially 6 months of power trio basement jams. A great 'woodshed' period but Don wanted different thinbgs than Rick and I and we all realized it and that band split up as amicably as pie making room for the ACTUAL Tension Envelopes.

     Enter Carl Simmons and Mike Hegger. Carl plays bass so Rick moves to guitar. Here's what I remember.......

     The 4 of us 1st set up as strangers in Neblung's loft. I'd just written a 3 chord slice of psychodrama called 'Danny Miller', a death ballad for a fictional idiot who snorted a boatload of heroin 'cause he thought it was coke and, as a result, died. It starts...

'i think you better sit down, Ii got some news, Marie

About the man you loved and I wish you didn't have to

Hear this from me.....'

     The riff, in Rick and Carl's hands was suddenly huge and commanding, like a giant stepping down a mountain in the silverain of Mike's cymbals and the thunder of his toms. Electric blood flooded the room. I crouched my best Johnny Rotten and continued to the chorus, which swung it's song of doom

 '.... someone sold pure smack to Danny Miller

Thought it was cocaine..... but he was wrong.....'

     Each powerchord accent became the tinsel explosion of the punch to the eye. I grew a backbone and believed the words I was singing as never before......

' Stoned celebrities urging kids DON'T DO DRUGS!!!!!

Someone's dealing death out by the playground swingset

Someone's turning our children into ghosts.....'

     Everything got louder and taller and smarter and hipper and finely tuned just right. Guitar chords crashed like jetfighters, the drums generated a freakin' magnetic field and I started swinging that mic stand, guitar forgotten. I'm a singer now, dammit, trying to dress up empathy as sympathy.....

'Somewhere somebody's visiting theoir own private heaven

Huddled in the cold w/a needle in their arm

And maybe for 20 minutes thay ain't got no problems

Finall, sleeping like a kitten in some kitchen

Comfortable ........... and warm.'

    At this lull w/no prearrangement other than knowing it had to be this way,m the 4 of us crashed on the downbeat, ponding that riff like we were nailing it to a cross. It was that perfect and important. I improvised the lyrics we ended the song w/ever after....

'If you can love me black I just might love you back

Love me back, mommy.'

    Crashburn, slow cymbal dissolve. Neblung picks up the riff in a ticktock rhythm. Carl's bass slides across sympathy notes like grace on skates, Mikes rolling down an endless flight of stairs while my guitar speaks in tongues of flame and feedback. It ends w/a crash that echoes in the vast space like waves on a beach.

     Mike looks up w/that 100000 watt smile and, as Rick reported elsewhere, asked 'Well, am I an Envelope?!' Truth is, in that moment we were all of us, finally Tension Envelopes.

     We've lost Mike Hegger and it truly breaks what heart I have that he and I never got the chance to know each other sober, to talk as men and perhaps settle differences; to forgive and be forgiven. I was a mess and yes, made messes, may of which I still regret (sorry again, Allison, you deserved better) but I wouldn't trade a day becausee there was such glory in the noise.

     It's that noise that kicks the ass of the James Taylor/Confessional crap that soaks the spirit in self-pity, sending it sounth towards self-destruction. It's that noise, those songs (and new somgs) played by those people that right now signals if not redemption, then a pretty funky form of vindication.

     A second chance. To not just do what we do best but, I daresay, to be who we are best.

     The beast is awakening. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 18:57 | link | comments (5)

Comments:

#1  25 June 2008 - 19:16

 

Damn, that was fun to read. And felt right, too. But what's all this about grace and tongues of fire? Even *I* was quite the pagan in those days.

Maybe it was just a prophetic word I hadn't heard yet. :P

And as I commented to Rick -- at least in regards to the Envelopes catalog -- I don't so much have a memory like a steel trap (although being "wassle-free" for 20 years HAS helped :P) as I do a fairly comprehensive CD collection. :D

burninglight

#2  27 June 2008 - 17:12

 

Tim here. Grace and tongues of fire are, to me, metaphors only and are used to spruce up the rather pedestrian activity of 4 drunks banging out 3 chords in the past. Hey, 7 1/2 years of catholic education is gonna leave a heathen w/a pretty over the top vocabulary as well as a stunted social life.

Oh, and you forgot glory in the noise. I can't help it, Biblical imagery's in my blood and rock and roll is how I spar w/good (not a typo) and even the adjectives of a rejected faith come in handy when attemting to write about something bigger than myself. Yes, I realize there are things bigger than me. I just don't care.
tb

timbyrnes

#3  27 June 2008 - 18:16

 

Heck, for that matter I forgot "pounding that riff like we were nailing it to a cross." But who's counting? :P

burninglight

#4  06 July 2008 - 08:37

 

I remember Tom - lol - Tim, Doing good here finally, sorry about spring 2006 (I think yhou know what I mean) Thanks again for your help though - I needed the wakeup.

Anonymous

#5  30 July 2008 - 19:02

 

Tim here. Yr welcome. And, no I insist, thank you.

Anonymous

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