The Oldie

Dewey Drake sat comfortably staring into the fire. It crackled and popped. The wooden beams of the cabin ceiling creaked. At last solitude. At least for a few minutes until his travel companion, Chad Conroy, came back from gathering kindling. Ah, silence. How he had craved it, and now it caressed him gently. No distractions, no nagging girlfriend, no business calls, no dinging of elevators to pester him.

Suddenly a song popped into his head.“We Built This City on Rock and Roll” by Jefferson Starship. The chorus pounded in his brain and it wouldn’t let up, “Marconi plays the mamba, listen to the radio, don't you remember? We built this city..built this city...”

He hadn’t heard the song for over twenty-five years. He first heard it over the loudspeaker during a pep rally at his middle school, Braintrump MS, Home of the Badgers.

At the time, he leaned over to his best buddy Chad and commented, “That song sucks.” Chad agreed. From that moment on the song, its lead singer Grace Slick, and its thrashing 1980s synthesizers faded into oblivion.

Dewey paced around the room as the song grew louder in his head. Now the percussion and synthesizers came to the forefront—like they were trapped in his frontal lobe. He hit his head, trying to disperse the sound. He clasped his hands around his ears. It became louder.

Chad opened the door followed by a swift frigid wind. He threw down a pack of branches into the fire.

“You all right?” he asked Dewey, sensing something was awry. “You look like you just got off a rollercoaster.”

“Weird,” said Dewey. I can’t get that song by Jefferson Starship out of my head.

“You’ve been drinking?” asked Chad.

“No, just sitting right here. Mind was blank. Then bam. It hit me.”

“Which song?” said Chad, pouring himself a Michelob light.

“We Built This City on Rock and Roll.”

“That’s tough,” said Chad, sinking into the cushions of an armchair. “Couldn’t you pick something more contemporary, less brashy?”

“I didn’t pick it. It bombarded me,” said Dewey as he plugged his ears and started singing “Happy Birthday to Me” to drown out The Starship.

Chad headed for bed. “Look, just listen to this.” He rummaged through his burlap satchel and pulled out a CD, The Best and Not So Best of the ‘60s. “If you listen to this, one of these tunes will take control of your brain.”

Dewey put on his earphones and began listening. He gazed at the rising embers while hearing Johnny Cash’s “Burning Ring of Fire,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by the Beach Boys (the best) and “The Face from Outer Space” (the not so best) by Jeff Barry. He dozed off, hoping to absorb the melodies of the familiar and obscure, but awoke to the chorus of Jefferson Starship, “Marconi plays the mamba. Marconi plays the mamba. Don’t you remember?We built this city on rock and roll...” It was in a continual loop, a figure eight into infinity.

He got himself tipsy on hard lemonade; it didn’t change the outcome. Morning came and the song swelled in crescendos with the lyric, “Someone's always playing corporation games. Who cares, they're always changing corporation names,” He caught himself screaming, “Stop, leave me alone,” while showering. He shouted at Chad, “It must mean something. It’s a hidden message.”

Chad brainstormed several scenarios of meaning—an attack on Dewey’s corporate job? Nostalgia for middle school pep rallies? A career change as in construction and real estate or an urban planner who builds new cities? A secret desire to play electric guitar and wear tight pants?

“Ridiculous,” yelled Dewey as he slammed the door, got in his car and sped down an icy hill. He turned on the radio and there it was blaring loud as ever, “Don’t you remember…? We built this city on rock and roll...” He swerved to avoid a collision with a school bus.

Next stop was the emergency room. For his insurance to cover “an ‘80s song stuck in the brain,” he claimed it was an excruciating headache, like his head was in a vice.

Dr. Caligari examined his ears, prodded a tool up his nose and took x-rays of his head. Nothing. He referred Dewey to a specialist, a neuropsychiatric specialist. Dewey waited for the specialist and distracted himself by memorizing a Shakespearian sonnet, but soon music flowed from the speakers in the waiting room. “We built this city… built this city. Don’t you remember?”

“Why?” He begged the neuropsychiatric specialist for answers. “Why couldn’t it be something pleasurable like ‘Over the Rainbow’ or ‘Fly Me to the Moon?’”

“I can’t tell you that,” said the specialist as he reviewed Dewey’s brain scans. “Even those songs in a loop would drive anyone bonkers. In my own research, I found an article from GQ magazine, claiming that the song, “We Built This City” was declared, and I quote, ‘the most detested’ song in human history.”

“I’m aware of that,” said Dewey holding his head in place, as if it would roll off. “It’s a curse.”

The specialist’s face glowed eerily with white light from the brain scans. “You may be cursed. In that case, go to a spiritual advisor or hypnotist.”

Dewey didn’t practice organized religion and any thought of God or a higher source was now clouded by the chorus of “We Built This City on Rock and Roll.” Every impulse, every idea was a fight to be free from the least-liked pop-rock song in history.

Dewey chose the hypnotist.

She was an elderly woman, a cross between a hippie grandmother and a bargain-basement fortune teller. She gave him jasmine tea, helped him relax, and soon had him in a sleep-like state. Her voice was cool and cascading.

“Tell me your earliest memory,” she said as her voice floated above him. Dewey paused. He opened his mouth.

“Yes, tell me,” said the hypnotist.

“Marconi played the mamba...don’t you remember? We built this city,” said Dewey.

He opened his eyes, stared at her greying pupils. “Hopeless,” he said. He stood up, gave her thirty dollars and left.

The next few months were the toughest. Pedestrians spotted Dewey standing at the corner in front of a discount store reciting the lyrics over and over. He sang off-key. The saddest part, he was laid off from his corporate job. No one could tolerate his fixation. But he found a way around his predicament; instead of cursing the darkness, he tried to find light. As the song continued pulsating through his brain day in and day out, he paid close attention to the melody, the chord progressions, the instruments (which were mostly fake and synthesizers). He found something pleasant. It actually had merit. He started to harmonize with it, to find new rhythms, new tempos. He argued with others, “It doesn’t deserve to be the worst song. Just listen. Please!” But others just walked away, shaking their heads.

Then one Thursday morning in March, Dewey woke up to the sound of tapping rain on his window. He only heard the rain. Jefferson Starship’s masterpiece was silent. No thoughts, no nothing. The song was gone. He slapped his head to jump start his brain. Nothing but the sound of rain. This continued throughout the day, the week, the month. The year. He was free.

But every night as he closed his eyes, he tried to imagine the song with its repetitious notes and its hokey lyrics. He couldn’t remember even one note, not one word.

He missed it, like a lost penpal from a war zone.

“Come back, just once for old times,” he said. But there was no answer and all he wanted to do was cry.