What happened to the music? What have we become? Johnny Logo® and the Trademarks™ used to be about car commercial guitar riffs and personal injury lawyer jingles, man. Now Johnny Logo® fears he’s the front man of a band that’s forgotten its soul, and is instead making harmonious art that expresses emotion.
Well guess what: Fuck that noise. Unless we get back to our roots, Johnny Logo® is going it alone.
Maybe you guys lack perspective. Think back to tenth grade, when it all started. We made a sacred pact in Mark’s stepdad’s financial advisor’s garage to identify the quickest route to—to what? Am I the only one who remembers? To consistent taxable income, is what. Hell, we were up night-after-night brainstorming. We were dead tired and beaten down. That’s when Alex started humming the Altmeyer Weiner Dogs ditty, and it hit me. I’m going to be Johnny Logo®, and you guys are my Trademarks™. The next day we ordered instruments from the Sears Roebuck & Co. Catalog and never looked back!
Ya’ll forget the early struggles. We were just four minimally musically-inclined teenagers who dared to daydream about bi-weekly paychecks adorned with a company watermark with federal FICA and Medicare payroll deductions. And then came the nay-sayers, right?
“You will fail,” they said. “No fully-bonded LLC will hire you,” they said; “I just don’t hear that funky groove played behind the pitchman for pet stain removal products,” they said. Shit, Johnny Logo® was starting to think people were right. He considered giving up the dream, like all the other schmucks who became graffiti artists or Beat poets after graduation. Add the bombshell—Marla left her drum kit behind to pursue her lifelong fantasy of joining an insurance company as a claims adjuster–and I thought Johnny Logo® and the Trademarks™ were dead.
We all did, remember?
Then it happened: the Potter County Battle of the Bands. Johnny Logo® and the Trademarks™ took top prize with a rippin’ rendition of our first single, Crabgrass Death Rattle (Grass Masters…The Happy Lawn Folk). So what if all the other bands had to cancel due to the shingles outbreak? The rest, as they say, is, like, historical. UNTIL NOW.
Because let’s face it: success has nearly killed Johnny Logo® and the Trademarks™.
Biff, I’m sorry to say it, but I’m ashamed to sing your new lyrics. Not long ago, raging typhoons swirled in my loins whenever my falsetto crooning punctuated your brilliantly conceived choruses about Black Friday door-buster sales, or financing at 5% interest rates for well-qualified buyers or lessees. Classic stuff! Remember the bitchin’ tune we dropped to promote Lanky Pete’s Mattress Presidents Day Sale? I got to rap and break dance as Martin van fuckin’ Buren on public access television. Dude, you rhymed “coil count” with “mohel dismount.” That shit played on rotation in Jewish markets until fucking Yom Kippur two years later. What about your badass punk version of “Dreamin’ of Granny Gertrude’s Pot Pie & Fixin’s” that introduced the Oakland underground to the classic refrain, “piping hot chicken under the crust…stab the queen in her buttocks”? Who cares what it meant? Reports of stinky ruffians in grocery store frozen food sections increased 337% that year.
But now? Man, tbh, ever since your divorce and separation from your children all your lyrics are, like, introspective and shit. After our private gig at the Brandon Textile Corporation summer retreat, one soccer mom told me that she could viscerally feel herself succumbing to both the heartache of loneliness and the everlasting hangover of the bottomless bottle of cheap vodka…through the music. Lame!!! A middle-age actuary told me that our song “Empty Bed” helped him cope with the loss of his daughter. But when I asked him if our killer encore made him want to take advantage of the low, low advertised price of $89.99 for a full-house ductwork cleaning from Hard Hat Bob’s HVAC Enterprises, he just shrugged and said he’d maybe consider someday. “Maybe consider someday”??? In our heyday, our fans wouldn’t think twice about paying triple that for up-to-three duct cleanings.
It’s not just Biff. Alex—I hear you plucked a sitar in a motor lodge, and engaged in sexual congress in positions besides the sleepy shift-manager and reverse lumbar-supported receptionist. What are you thinking??
And you, Mark—not long ago you sported a bejeweled cummerbund and wailed on the keyboard for a half hour straight like a damn virtuoso during the live 4:00 am infomercial for the Infant Launcher from Baby-B-Gone Inc. You were Mozart to Rick Wakeman’s Salieri. These days, bro…well, heed my words: Your solo gigs sans The As-Seen-On TV Backup Dancers will go nowhere.
It’s, like, how the mighty are fallen. Now I bet neither of you are dedicated enough artists to sell a whole truckload of Handy Hank’s Swiss Army Chainsaws for the price of a refurbished Mr. Paperweight.
Johnny Logo® and the Trademarks™ are dead without Johnny Logo® at the helm.
But I’m sorry. That’s it. I’m out. I’ve got out-of-town sales crews to wow with splits and high leg-kicks while sporting this year’s Cuddlie Sleeveless Body Sheath. Excuse me, but I’ve got an appointment to fly above a live studio audience, suspended merely by the “the mega awesome power strength” of Madam Teeth’s Alligator Pelt Floss.
If the Trademarks™ finally get their shit together and realize that pitching goods and/or services is the lifeblood of their souls, Johnny Logo® is listening. If not, as soon as you heal from your divorce, or contract herpes simplex VII from a yet-unnamed coitus position, or get your lunch eaten by the next corporate Keith Emerson, you’ll look up at that stage where Johnny Logo® and the Redesigned Trademarks™™ are dodging heaps of BOGO Belinda’s Redaction fall line of crotchless lingerie tossed from the Posh Pit. And believe Johnny Logo®: You’ll feel like an expired coupon.
HAWK ON, MAN!!!
Daniel Oines
http://tinyurl.com/n82nz6c
