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Now that was rock 'n' roll. I would end up naming a kitten I'd adopted around the time Don passed away Bongo, in his honor.
I could produce a laundry list the length of Oderus Urungus' erstwhile member of moments sublime and surreal that stand out in my mind as significant during my tenure at Creative Loafing. Come to think of it, I already did, in the April 18, 1992, fifth anniversary issue.
But overall, what the experience meant to me was being able to treat music and music culture with the kind of respect, passion, and yeah, adolescent irreverence that I thought it deserved. I mean, what could be more pointless yet life-affirming than spending weeks debating behind closed doors with Grooms, then proudly writing a cover story called "The 100 Greatest Intro Guitar Riffs Of All Time"? Or heading south to the Gaffney Peachoid with Swan and Grooms, to help break the record for most people playing the three chords from "Louie Louie" over and over?
When I surrendered my duties at this paper in '92 to move to Tucson I received two retirement gifts. One was a lifetime (theoretically) gratis subscription to Creative Loafing. Reading it from afar, I'm proud to have watched it grow in size, scope, and just plain huevos.
The other gift was a colorful T-shirt custom-designed by none other than Rene Escarcha, aka Renelvis, aka the only known Charlotte-based Filipino Elvis impersonator. Displayed on the back of the shirt is the music column I wrote in which CL "discovered" Renelvis during his residency as the floor show of a local Chinese eatery -- clearly, in tone and texture, one of the paper's singular defining moments.
I can't think of a more appropriate way to sum up five years worth of rock 'n' roll memories. See the concert, get the T-shirt.
More from CL's past
