Beer Frame

I just got back from the Joey Ramone Birthday Bash and it was a blast. I’ll be doing a photoblog of it soon.

It was held at the Fillmore NY which used to be called Irving Plaza. I always think of that place when I attended Spin magazine’s 10th anniversary party there, years ago. I wrote about this in my book, The Boy Who Would Be A Fire Truck and I thought I’d excerpt the chapter in three installments in the next three beer frames. And so, here we go!

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Spin Magazine’s Tenth-Anniversary Party, a Telephone Call and a Missed Opportunity From Moon Zappa (Hey, Bob Guccione Jr., Would It Have Killed You to Have Given Me a VIP Pass?) (Part One in a series of Three)

I bought my first Frank Zappa album in the summer of 1969 when I was eleven years old. Actually it was Zappa’s band, the Mothers of Invention, and the album was We’re Only In It for the Money. I bought it in the town I grew up in, Peoria, Illinois, at a discount store called Arlens, from the 99-cent cutout bin. I took it home, opened it up and discovered the cover was a backwards parody of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. I thought (and still do) that that was a genius album cover. I played it and fell in love with Zappa’s hysterical lyrics and a quirky rock and roll meets classical musical style that was the most unique sound I had ever heard. I played that album over and over that day. Little did I realize at the time that, twenty-six years later, I would be making plans to meet Zappa’s daughter, Moon Unit, at the tenth-year anniversary party for Spin magazine.

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The year was 1995, and I had lived in New York for two years. I moved to the city to try and get a full-time writing job at a magazine or newspaper and ended up freelancing when I could for various newspapers and magazines, working a night job at a pre-press printing service bureau and publishing my own magazine, fishwrap. One of the first people I had met when I moved to New York was Bob Guccione Jr., the creator and founding editor of Spin magazine. But I had made some connections with people from Spin before I even moved to New York.

In 1992, I was still living in Peoria and was publishing and editing a local publication, POP magazine. POP was one part local People magazine, two parts National Lampoon and a touch of Mad magazine thrown in for good measure. In addition to the magazine, that year I had written a book called Elvis Presley Is a Wormfeast which I billed as a “celebration of the death of Elvis.” Buoyed by some local press I had gotten, and Kurt Loder mentioning the book on MTV’s “The Week In Rock,” I took a trip out to New York to try to drum up some publicity for the book. I spent three days running around the city calling magazines, newspapers, TV shows and dropping off books at any place that would let me in the door. I found out it’s easier getting press in Peoria than in New York, but my efforts paid off with a review in the New York Daily News. Writer Bill Bell reviewed the book and called it “weird fun.” One of the last places I called was Spin magazine. I dialed the general number and a woman with a British accent answered, saying: “Spin magazine, how can I help you?”

“Hi, I’ve written a book and I was wondering if I could speak to an editor or writer who might have an interest in writing about the book,” I asked almost by rote, since I had asked this question probably a hundred times since venturing to the Big Apple.

“Well what’s the name of your book then?” she asked in her cheeky British voice.

“It’s a humorous, satirical book called, Elvis Presley Is a Wormfeast,” I explained.

“Oh, my God, get in a cab and get here, right now!” she shrieked into the phone.

“Huh?” I curiously asked back.

“We’re at 6 West 18th Street, my name’s Susie, take the elevator to the third floor and I’ll be seated behind a desk facing the reception area, waiting for you! Get over here, right now!” she ordered.

Well, I have to confess that women ordering me to come to them have been few and far between in my life, so I grabbed my bag containing a stash of the books, ran out to Broadway, hailed a cab and in less than five minutes was standing in front of 6 West 18th Street, the offices of Spin magazine.

I walked inside and did as I’d been told. I dutifully boarded the elevators, hit the third-floor key, zoomed up and got out and walked into a waiting room with chairs and a table displaying several copies of Spin magazine. The room was encased in a glass wall; I looked beyond the wall and there behind a large wooden desk set in a reception area, with a phone cocked to her ear, was a pixie-cute girl with long chestnut-brown hair. When our eyes met, she grinned a cockeyed grin and waved me in. I walked through the door, she put the phone down and said, “Elvis?”

“Susie?” I asked back in a dueling-banjos fashion.

“Look at the book I was reading when you called,” she said while slowly raising the book, How Elvis Really Died.

“Holy shit!” I said loudly.

Susie just laughed and said, “So what’s your real name, Elvis?”

I glanced away from the book, looked at her and said, “Oh, I’m sorry. My name’s Marty. Marty Wombacher,” and then I stuck out my hand.

“Hello Marty, I’m Susie,” she told me as we shook hands. We briefly discussed how weird it was she was reading a book about Elvis’ death when I had called, then Susie abruptly cut into the conversation and said, “Now, let’s see this book of yours.”

I pulled one out of my bag. Susie took one look at the cover—a caricature of Elvis as a worm, drawn by my friend Jim Kelton—and let out a loud, whooping laugh. She quickly perused the book, a collection of essays, fake entries from a diary, top-ten dead Elvis lists—basically a mishmash of Dead Elvis humor—and said, “Oh, Mark’s got to see this,” as she picked up the phone and dialed an extension.

After a few seconds, she was talking into the phone: “Get out here, you’ve got to see this book and meet this guy that just showed up.” Then she hung up. “I called Mark Blackwell, a writer here,” she explained. “He’ll love this.”

Soon a skinny guy with stringy long black hair and a Southern accent came up to the desk. Susie introduced us and he started looking at the book, laughing at what he saw. We all chatted for a few minutes, but then I sensed they had to get back to work, so I told them I had to run. I left half a dozen books, Mark promised to write about it and Susie told me to keep in touch.

Mark never did write about the book, but I sent both him and Susie copies of POP magazine and about half a year after our meeting, Mark wrote about POP on an editors’ picks page in Spin. An editor from the Chicago Tribune saw the Spin piece and they did a full front-page Metro Section story on POP magazine, written by their star feature writer, Wes Smith. Advertising Age saw that and they did an article on POP. The only problem with all this press is I was broke and I had decided to cash in my pension plan at work and move to New York. I didn’t tell anybody this as they asked me questions for their articles. I thought, might as well get all the press you can. So I did. Then I folded POP, cashed in my pension plan and moved to New York in the summer of 1993 to pursue a writing career.

I had kept in touch with Susie, and on my second day in New York—July 9th, 1993—I was going to have lunch with her. I made my way to Spin’s offices and picked up Susie. We were standing at the elevators when Bob Guccione Jr. walked by.

“Bob,” Susie called out, “come here, you’ve got to meet Marty, he’s the guy from Peoria who was the editor and writer from that POP magazine that we featured.

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Stay tuned for part II in tomorrow’s Beer Frame!

Cheers,
Marty

Comments

[biff]

i can't believe you lived on broadway! did you know george benson?