I’m posting this in honor of the nice sandwich I had at Bar 145 last night.
As a kid I was fascinated by AM radio. I loved the Big 89 and Super CFL. And I loved the hits they played like “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)” by Looking Glass, “Rock Me Gently” by Andy Kim, and “Shannon” by Henry Gross. When I became a teenager I was a real classic rock guy (although we didn’t call it “classic rock” at the time.) I listened to The Loop and WMET constantly. Mitch Michaels, Patti Haze, and Sky Daniels, playing the Stones, Sabbath, and Zeppelin. If my family hadn’t left the City, I’m sure my tastes would be just like Mac FM’s. But we moved to Evanston. I learned punk rock in Evanston.
In the early ‘80s, my friend Karl dropped out of Evanston Township High School to work full-time at Hi Neighbor Foods on Howard Street. He got an apartment with a guy from Waterloo, Iowa named Jimmy above this shitty bar called Frank’s Oasis. (It’s still there, but they’ve dropped Frank from the name.) Karl had left Hi Neighbor and was working with Jimmy at the White Hen on the corner of Pratt & Sheridan. The Maggots were just getting started and Karl used to let us set up in his living room and play. This annoyed Jimmy as well as the neighbors, but nobody said much. It was East Rogers Park and everybody was more fucked up than we were. Sometimes we would sneak into Frank’s to drink. We got to know the bartenders that would serve us. I was seventeen years old.
I’m not exactly sure how this song came to be, but there were several circumstances that informed it. We liked to play video games at Dennis’ Place for Games and Silver Sue’s on Clark Street. Afterward we would often hang out at the Golden-Nugget on the corner of Devon and Clark late into the night. My go-to meal there was the patty melt. Also around this time, I was hanging around with a guy named Steve Hendrix and we were in this phase where we were fucking around with psychedelic drugs. You can read about one of our experiences here:
viewtopic.php?f=84&t=7537&start=84I was working at Cas & Lou Restaurant at the time. One of the guys I worked with was a Mexican-American named Hugo who I got to be pretty good friends with. Hugo was in his early twenties and he would sometimes refer to me as “Today’s Tom Sawyer.” I’m not sure it was a compliment.
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
Anyway, I think I was messing around trying to play “My Girl” one day and, of course I couldn’t really sing it. Somehow it morphed into this guitar riff. At first it was just the chorus:
Patty Melt’s made of beef and cheese
Onions and bread, that’s all you need
I like mine on whole dark rye
If I don’t get it I’m gonna cryDuring the verses, which were pretty much just the chorus played slower, I would say a bunch of crazy shit, most of it at least based on my own experiences and stuff that had actually occurred. Occasionally I would throw in licks and lyrics from other pop or classic rock songs. I guess I was trying to give it a psychedelic feel. I also listened to a lot of blues at the time. I was familiar with talking blues, well I suppose you could call this “talking metal”. One day I put in the verse about dropping acid at a Rush concert. Geddy Lee’s nose turned into a patty melt before my very eyes. That was a keeper.
Here’s a version of the Maggots doing the song some time in the early ‘80s:
https://soundcloud.com/joe-orr-road-rod ... patty-meltThis is a Hazardous Youth version from later in the decade. I’ll say one thing, the only two guys in rock and roll who can say “boo hoo” without sounding like a pussy are Iggy Pop and my man Casey West.
https://soundcloud.com/joe-orr-road-rod ... patty-melt