Two Boneheads 1989

This one started when I asked friends on Facebook if they had any ideas for a song. My friend Eric immediately went back to a night we shared in 1989 and suggested, basically, “Do a song about two boneheads going to a Beat Farmers show.”

I had just graduated from high school and was working in sales at a Kawasaki shop. Eric was a few years older than me and worked there as a jet ski mechanic. I was the young sales guy hanging around a group of mechanics who were pretty memorable characters. I can still picture their little jet ski garage filling up with two-stroke smoke. I remember them intentionally smoking the place up, although the exact mechanics of what they were doing have become fuzzy after all these years.

Eric and I had some Southern California background in common, and one night that summer we headed to The Edge in Palo Alto. The Beat Farmers were playing with Cadillac Tramps. I remember the Beat Farmers singer onstage with a beer bottle, swinging it around, drinking from it, and making a huge mess. What surprised us was how good Cadillac Tramps were live. Eric later remembered the same thing, even though he admitted he does not remember much else about the night.

That imperfect memory is part of what makes the story work for me. This is based on a real friendship, a real workplace, and a real concert, but it is not meant as a documentary reconstruction of every detail. Some of the connective tissue has been compressed into a punk song. What remains completely real is the feeling of being young, getting out of work, going somewhere loud with a friend, and having one ordinary night survive for decades as a story.