GEORGE HOOK
The Spring Ahead
Because April was freezing raw of late, I chose The Rite of Spring. The
Adoration of the Earth, the Dances of the Young Girls, the Mysterious Circles of the
Young Girls, the Glorification of the Chosen Victim ... fit my mood.
I cherish returning home with a vintage sealed record, then slowly cutting it
open with a penknife, thinking nobody has touched this record since someone slid it
into its cover at the manufacturing plant decades ago. So, instead of looking around
the record store as usual, I went straight to the counter to buy it.
The girl behind the counter gave me a quick smile and took my record. Her
long hair was amazing: waves of yellow and white curls like the fur coat of a dancer.
“This record is awesome,” she said. “As the book says, ‘It’s intensely compelling
in its cumulative drive, seismic power and irreproachable precision.’ ”
I’m never very good at chitchatting with the staff at a record store (as I’m
distracted by the music playing in the background), but this girl was obviously
exceptional.
“I figured it might be,” I said. “I mean, it is Pierre Boulez with the Cleveland
Orchestra in 1969.”
“1969,” she said, then something no other clerk behind a record store counter
ever asked me before: “What’s your name?”
I stuttered as I told her. “And what’s your name?” I then said.
“Lassie Young.”
Exceptional, I thought. I wondered about asking her about what she and her
generation thought about a group seriously on my mind these days.
“Tell me what you think of when I say Monkees,” I said.
“The group from the Sixties,” she said. “They had a television show. We used
to watch the old reruns every week when I was in college.”
“So you like them?”
Sure. We had a stack of their records come in last week, and they were gone in
two days.”
“See, I have this friend who’s been throwing me shade about The Monkees
lately.”
“What’s his problem?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s posing attitude against them all of a sudden.”
Lassie Young made a scrunched-up face. “How could you not like Mickey,
Mike, Davey and Peter,” she said. “That’s like not liking Santa Claus or the Easter
Bunny.”
“And it’s getting personal too. A couple of years ago, he gave me a vintage
Monkees souvenir, this big stuffed vinyl guitar-shaped pillow with The Monkees spelled
out on the side.”
“How cool is that?”
“Then, the other day, he all of a sudden accuses me of sleeping with it.”
She moaned a bit and shook her head with the long, flowing hair. “Where did he
get that idea?” she said. “Maybe he was the one sleeping with it before he gave it to
you.”
“That’s what I thought after he said it. So I put it in the closet.”
“That’s too bad.”
“He might be a closeted pillow case.”
“So he didn’t always hate the Monkees.”
“No. One time, he gave his girlfriend the very first Davy Jones solo record ...”
“Cool.”
“... and he gave me a sealed double record of their greatest hits.”
“Now he hates them,” she said.
“Well, he lost his job, so he’s been moody and sour about everything lately ...
but he really keeps going on about the Monkees.”
“Then he should be listening to more Monkees. They would make him smile.”
I sighed and shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe it isn’t the Monkees. Maybe he’s
just mad at me because I have a job. He’s not the only one these days. You think if I
quit my job, he’d be happier?”
“No, no, don’t do that,” said Lassie Young. “Then you’d stop listening to the
Monkees.”
“Good point. So what should I do?”
“This should help him,” she said, as she bent down beneath the counter and
began rummaging underneath. She came up to show me an impeccably sealed
record with Mickey, Davey, Mike and Peter in psychedelic swirling clothes, all smiling
like they were bathing in the graces of universal karma.
“Pleasant Valley Sunday,” she said, with a smile. “The original 45 single mix and
14 alternate versions, in mono and stereo.”
“One of their best songs,” I said.
“Nobody can’t smile after hearing Pleasant Valley Sunday. Especially when the
song ends, heading ‘for a vanishing point somewhere on the sound-horizon and rather
than simply fade on the repetitions of the title, the sound is instead overdriven to the
point where everything is louder than everything else’, like the book says.”
“I must have it. How much?”
She handed it to me. “Free,” she said. “We Monkees fans are a rare breed.”
I thanked Lassie Young and, after paying for my record, touched my right hand
to my forehead in a gesture of a salute, and headed outside.
What with the weather still stuck in black and white, I could think of nothing but
the rerun of a two-part TV episode of a favorite show I watched in the sixties. Believing
he has lost his dog forever, a boy named Timmy weeps as he buries dog toys at the
bottom of a green hill. All of a sudden, he hears the old familiar barking in the
distance: he leaps to feet to see his handsome collie springing from out of the horizon
down the slope toward him, coming home.
Timmy, opening his arms to the faithful.
For Peter Erickson
Because April was freezing raw of late, I chose The Rite of Spring. The
Adoration of the Earth, the Dances of the Young Girls, the Mysterious Circles of the
Young Girls, the Glorification of the Chosen Victim ... fit my mood.
I cherish returning home with a vintage sealed record, then slowly cutting it
open with a penknife, thinking nobody has touched this record since someone slid it
into its cover at the manufacturing plant decades ago. So, instead of looking around
the record store as usual, I went straight to the counter to buy it.
The girl behind the counter gave me a quick smile and took my record. Her
long hair was amazing: waves of yellow and white curls like the fur coat of a dancer.
“This record is awesome,” she said. “As the book says, ‘It’s intensely compelling
in its cumulative drive, seismic power and irreproachable precision.’ ”
I’m never very good at chitchatting with the staff at a record store (as I’m
distracted by the music playing in the background), but this girl was obviously
exceptional.
“I figured it might be,” I said. “I mean, it is Pierre Boulez with the Cleveland
Orchestra in 1969.”
“1969,” she said, then something no other clerk behind a record store counter
ever asked me before: “What’s your name?”
I stuttered as I told her. “And what’s your name?” I then said.
“Lassie Young.”
Exceptional, I thought. I wondered about asking her about what she and her
generation thought about a group seriously on my mind these days.
“Tell me what you think of when I say Monkees,” I said.
“The group from the Sixties,” she said. “They had a television show. We used
to watch the old reruns every week when I was in college.”
“So you like them?”
Sure. We had a stack of their records come in last week, and they were gone in
two days.”
“See, I have this friend who’s been throwing me shade about The Monkees
lately.”
“What’s his problem?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. He’s posing attitude against them all of a sudden.”
Lassie Young made a scrunched-up face. “How could you not like Mickey,
Mike, Davey and Peter,” she said. “That’s like not liking Santa Claus or the Easter
Bunny.”
“And it’s getting personal too. A couple of years ago, he gave me a vintage
Monkees souvenir, this big stuffed vinyl guitar-shaped pillow with The Monkees spelled
out on the side.”
“How cool is that?”
“Then, the other day, he all of a sudden accuses me of sleeping with it.”
She moaned a bit and shook her head with the long, flowing hair. “Where did he
get that idea?” she said. “Maybe he was the one sleeping with it before he gave it to
you.”
“That’s what I thought after he said it. So I put it in the closet.”
“That’s too bad.”
“He might be a closeted pillow case.”
“So he didn’t always hate the Monkees.”
“No. One time, he gave his girlfriend the very first Davy Jones solo record ...”
“Cool.”
“... and he gave me a sealed double record of their greatest hits.”
“Now he hates them,” she said.
“Well, he lost his job, so he’s been moody and sour about everything lately ...
but he really keeps going on about the Monkees.”
“Then he should be listening to more Monkees. They would make him smile.”
I sighed and shrugged my shoulders. “Maybe it isn’t the Monkees. Maybe he’s
just mad at me because I have a job. He’s not the only one these days. You think if I
quit my job, he’d be happier?”
“No, no, don’t do that,” said Lassie Young. “Then you’d stop listening to the
Monkees.”
“Good point. So what should I do?”
“This should help him,” she said, as she bent down beneath the counter and
began rummaging underneath. She came up to show me an impeccably sealed
record with Mickey, Davey, Mike and Peter in psychedelic swirling clothes, all smiling
like they were bathing in the graces of universal karma.
“Pleasant Valley Sunday,” she said, with a smile. “The original 45 single mix and
14 alternate versions, in mono and stereo.”
“One of their best songs,” I said.
“Nobody can’t smile after hearing Pleasant Valley Sunday. Especially when the
song ends, heading ‘for a vanishing point somewhere on the sound-horizon and rather
than simply fade on the repetitions of the title, the sound is instead overdriven to the
point where everything is louder than everything else’, like the book says.”
“I must have it. How much?”
She handed it to me. “Free,” she said. “We Monkees fans are a rare breed.”
I thanked Lassie Young and, after paying for my record, touched my right hand
to my forehead in a gesture of a salute, and headed outside.
What with the weather still stuck in black and white, I could think of nothing but
the rerun of a two-part TV episode of a favorite show I watched in the sixties. Believing
he has lost his dog forever, a boy named Timmy weeps as he buries dog toys at the
bottom of a green hill. All of a sudden, he hears the old familiar barking in the
distance: he leaps to feet to see his handsome collie springing from out of the horizon
down the slope toward him, coming home.
Timmy, opening his arms to the faithful.
For Peter Erickson
George Hook is an enigmatically haunted writer and poet known among his peers as “the Pope of Pop,” regularly holding council in Chicago coffeehouses to shoot the papal bull on topics like “Green Acres: No Exit for Arnold”, “Do Osmonds Breed on Planet Kolob?” and “The Last Ascension of The Flying Nun”. He has slaved out a career as a copy editor and proofreader, occasionally subverting the system such as when, as Arts and Letters editor of The Wall Street Journal/Europe, he convinced his warmonger chief to finance a trip to cover the annual fan convention of the TV show The Prisoner in Portmeirion, North Wales, where it was filmed. The Spring Ahead marks the first publication of his fiction (besides a vanity publishing effort for his sexistentialist novel Private Showings).