“You know what my career goal is, Master Race?”
“Get away from me.”
“My goal is to work at this newspaper long enough to write your obituary. Wouldn’t that be something?”
17
From the Rolling Stone interview with Jimmy Stoma, dated September 20, 1991:
RS: Are you happy with the way Stomatose turned out?
JS: Oh, yeah. The more I listen to it, the creamier it gets.
RS: Some of the cuts sound a lot like the Slut Puppies. “All Humped Out,” for example, blows the doors down—
JS: Sure, because I had Jay on grand piano and Tito on bass. Even though it’s a solo album I’m not gonna turn my back on the band. We still make great fucking music together and I’d be a jackass not to take advantage of that chemistry on my own projects. I just don’t want to tour as a group anymore. No way.
RS: Do you have a favorite cut on the new album?
JS: No, I dig ’em all.
RS: Oh, come on. “Derelict Sea” is a cool number, and very different from anything you did with the Slut Puppies.
JS (laughing): Okay, you busted me. That one is definitely at the top of the list.
RS: What inspired you to try the acoustic?
JS: Hey, I love acoustic. Always did. And I love to sing without screamin’ at the top of my frigging lungs, but when you’re up onstage with not one but two bass guitars, you’ve gotta howl like a witch.
RS: Do you plan on writing more songs like that?
JS: For sure. My next project is a whole folk-rock kind of thing—not all acoustic but thematic, you know, where the pieces weave together into a story. Maybe it’ll even be a double album, only this time I’m gonna produce it myself.
RS: All right, what’s your least favorite cut on Stomatose?
JS (shaking his head): Nuh-uh. I ain’t fallin’for that.
RS: Don’t wimp out on us now. Even Lennon didn’t like every song he wrote.
JS: The only track that sort of got away from me was “Momma’s Marinated Monkfish.” A bit too much partying, I’m afraid. The original idea was this real sophisticated, Phil Spector kind of mix. You know, overdub the piss out of the guitars and the keyboards. But somehow it ended up as some ungodly hypermetal… headache.
RS: Twelve and a half fun-filled minutes. JS: Yeah, and I don’t even remember laying down the vocals, I was so bent.
I’m summoned by Juan to the Sports department, where he hunches like a safecracker over his PC.
“I got that external hard drive hooked up,” he says, “but I can’t read what’s on it. I don’t have the software.” He taps a finger on the screen. “The best I can come up with is a directory, but take a look.”
It’s line after line of coded abbreviations, beginning with:
V7oyst10.all
B17oyst10.copy
BV22oyst7
LEADoyst.all
G1deal22
G2deal22.all
ALT.Vtitle22…
“Computer lingo?” I ask.
“Nope. Abbreviated file names that were keypunched in by whoever was running the program.”
“What kind of files?”
“I don’t know, but they’re massive,” Juan says. “The whole thing is, like, 400-plus megabytes. That’s got to be more than text, Jack, to eat up so much memory. I’m guessing there’s audio or video on here.”
“Where can we get the software?”
Juan looks up ruefully from the screen. “Man, I can’t even identify the software.”
“Oh swell.”
“But I know who can.”
“Juan, I can’t afford a hacker.” It will be a miracle if I pay off the Bahamas trip by Christmas.
“He’s not a hacker, he’s just a whiz kid. And this isn’t hacking. Hacking is when you go online—”
“Point is, I can’t pay your man anything right now. I’m broke and Emma’s got no expense money for the Death page. Her whole budget is basically me.”
Juan rocks back and laughs. “The guy I use is twelve years old. Usually I just give him a couple of passes to a ball game.”
“Twelve years old.”
“Yep. And his room looks like the NASA command center.”
“When I was twelve, I could barely change the tire on my bicycle.”
“I’ll drop the hard drive off with him later,” Juan says, “before his bedtime.”