Rockin' the SLP Part 2

Rockin' the SLP Park 2

Carlos Figueroa and co-host Mike Hammer chat on Park Bench Perspectives about how music and pets mark life’s timeline while reminiscing about growing up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. They joke about their limited musical talent, Carlos’s LaBelle’s electric guitar that Mike borrowed for lessons, and invite listeners to submit a jingle for the podcast. Memories include hearing “Come Sail Away” at the Piccadilly Circus arcade at Ridgedale, bus adventures to Southdale and skipping school for a Twins opening day at Met Stadium, and Mike bringing home a puppy from 31 Flavors in an ice-cream pail. They discuss Walkmans, punk/new wave, a signed Ramones “End of the Century” cover from cousin Susie, Neil Young’s Live Rust, changing attitudes toward alcohol and marijuana, house parties and bands, and the Zenith house era with dogs Cosmo and Windsor, then close with listener feedback requests and Mike’s insole business plug.

00:00 Welcome to the Bench
01:12 Guitar Dreams and Lessons
02:23 Need a New Theme Song
02:53 Music and Memory Triggers
04:31 Arcade Days at Ridgedale
05:25 Bus Adventures and Mischief
06:54 Puppies at 31 Flavors
10:11 Moped Plant Caper
13:00 Headphones Punk and Mr Baum
14:09 Ramones Devo and Cousin Susie
15:37 Babysitting Chaos and Apple Tossing
17:11 Big Kid Pranks and Chubby Checker
17:39 Pickup Game Memories
18:09 Neil Young Tape Era
19:49 Reefer Madness Talk
20:45 Stoner vs Drinker Labels
24:30 Ride Shares and Cabs
25:27 Band Names and Trivia
26:54 Local Venues and Bandshell
28:42 House Shows and Parties
30:31 Zenith House Stories
32:07 Wrap Up and Thanks

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

And today's Park Bench Perspective. My co-host, Mike Hammer, and I talk music, house parties, and growing up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. So grab a seat on the bench and join us. Fancy meeting you on the bench again. It's great to be here on the bench sharing perspectives. We're gonna talk some more about music today.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

The park bench perspective.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

On the park bench perspectives, absolutely. That's what we're gonna do. Cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

I like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Yeah, music.

SPEAKER_02 1:09

We don't play music. We're not instrumental.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

I like I talked, so I try. I'm not a quitter, but I try. But well, I you know, I in high school bought an electric guitar. Now it was not a very good electrical guitar. I got it at a place called LaBelle's. If you remember Labell's, it was a catalog store. LaBelle's had a fancy catalog, and you could go to the shelves and you could see the stuff, but then you would get like a little tag, and you would go up and you would pay for it, and then it would come down this conveyor belt and these little buckets, and then you would get your stuff. And so it was it was a LaBelle's guitar. I did not have the ear or the physical ability. My my my fingers hurt. I was like 14. My fingers hurt, and that was the end. I never took a lesson. But you you said, hey Carlos, that guitar is gathering dust. Would you let me part with it so I can learn? Or will you part with it so I can learn to be a musician? And I think you you took some lessons with that bad boy. A lot of lessons.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

I took a lot of lessons from people, uh, friends of ours, Dean Giedlah, Brian Berg, a few others. No, could you actually play anything? I could play, so I got uh I got decent. I would have been good rhythm one, just strum this over and over again.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

And I got decent enough, and then I don't know. Do you do you think that you might want to write, you know, a new jingle for Parkbench Perspectives?

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Writing one and having people willing to listen to it, which are two different things. But you know what? We'll let the public decide. We'll we'll we'll write something and we'll do it.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Not um and actually, um, the reality is neither of us have very much musical talent, if any at all. So if you have musical talent and would like to put together something for the Parkbench Perspectives podcast, we will gladly accept your song. Put it on there and run it. But yeah, that uh Mike, you know, for me, we've always we've discussed kind of like in in our lives, you know, I've said I've had a soundtrack of my life, and you've said you've had one as well, and then also that you use pets as something that you think of a pet and you think uh and it brings you back to that moment, just like think of a song and it brings you exit back to that moment.

SPEAKER_02 3:14

Yeah, the great thing about living in experience is you only learn things that experience can offer. Yep. And even though as a parent, as a friend, you want to like curve the short shorten the learning curve, yeah. There's some knocks on the the shin that people just have to. You can't you can't you gotta gotta flinch when you watch them do it, but you gotta you gotta do this, and and um and so what then we try to remember times as we get up, you know, in our our what are we middle-aged now?

SPEAKER_01 3:45

Yeah. Well, I don't know if I got a 120-year life expectancy, sure we'll go with middle.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

But uh, so you tend to think back on things, and for me and and the people I've talked to, it seems a good consensus that music and pets can help you discover the timeline you're talking about. Because you know, with your family, or you like remember we did it with that dog? Yeah, or we had those dogs. I was in fifth grade when we had him, or you know, fifth or eighth or something. We went to that concert, yeah. That was oh, we went and did this, and that song came out, and this is the timeline.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

And and um for for me, you know, and I've shared this story numerous times, I don't know if I have on the podcast, but for me, when I hear the song Come Sail Away by Sticks, yeah, I am magically transformed. I'm at the Piccadilly Circus uh arcade at Ridgedale. I'm with you and I'm with Kenny. One of our Saturday rituals. If we if we had a dime, we'd go out to the arc uh to the Ridgedale and never talk to girls but follow them. But we'd spend some time at the uh at the arcade, and they had this I don't know how to describe it, an X is an O's football game with the with a wheel.

SPEAKER_03 5:01

Oh school, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Yeah, and so I hear that song, and boom, I am back in the Piccadilly Circus with that song blaring on the radio or the the music that they had playing there, and uh, and I'm with you and Kenny, and we're you know 10, 11 years old, and and life has never been, nor will it ever be better than that moment.

SPEAKER_02 5:20

Keeping the bus schedule in our pocket to we can catch it to get back home.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

I don't we really asked for permission to go there. I remember one time distinctly we we uh we we sojourned all the way to Southdale.

SPEAKER_03 5:32

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

And we didn't budget our money. I I think I think we had a little bit of an Orange Julius run that took up our bus money, and so I think we had to call. And I think if we had to choose between my parents, Kenny's parents, and your parents, Judy is the one we called.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

Judy came up okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 5:49

Be right there.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

How'd you get to Southdale? But okay. There was transfers. Another time I'll tell the story about when we skipped eighth grade class and went to the twins opening day by bus. Dave Schmidt, Dean Hila, and Todd Newgin and myself. But that's another story. How we ever found three transfers on buses to show up there, and then the way the sun went, we were burnt on one side of our face and not on the other. But um funny story about So eighth grade, that would have been to Met Stadium.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

Met Stadium outside. It was a word, you know why. For a million dollars, if you asked me how you can get to Met Stadium from St. Louis Park via the MTCs, I would have said no way, and you managed it, huh?

SPEAKER_02 6:31

I don't know who brought up the idea of taking a bus and then who was diligent enough to say, let's see these two. I know when you used to go to the bus stops, you could see all the routes. Yeah, they'd fold up, you know, put it behind pexiglass, whatever, and go here to here to here. But I don't know, because you couldn't Google, I want to get to the old Met Stadium, and they'll tell you there was no um uh no AI. But funny, I'll tell one story about the pets where it put me back. I know it put me back in it, put me back in Bridgeman's.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

Or not Bridgemans, 31 flavors. 31 flavors, yep, yep, yep, up there. And that's a lot of flavors, you know. You you you tried a few, but you had your favorites. You're like, like right now, people, how about this? And I'm always like, I'll just go with the Cherry Garcia. There you go, because it's it's it's really good. And so somebody came there with a dog full of or a car full uh a car full of puppies, and was like letting them out in the parking lot and basically said, We need to get rid of these puppies now, or else they're gonna go to humane stores. Oh my god, that's horrible. They're just killing her. So um this is a horrible story. I was 13, we were up there on 10 speeds on bikes, and I'm like, we're playing with the puppies, and of course, in my mind, this one was like just wanted to be my dog. And I'm like, how am I gonna do this? At that time, it was just me at home with my sister, my brother, and my mom, just the four of us, and uh we were uh one day at a timing it, like the show, you know, getting by. And I'm like, I want one of these dogs. I'm like, how am I gonna carry it home on uh on my bike? And then somebody from that worked at 31 Flavors says, Well, when the ice creams um when we we empty them and they're all out of ice cream, we rinse them out, and there's the big brown circular container that the ice cream came in. Because I can give you one of those with a top, and I'm like, Alright, well, we're we're figuring out things here. And then uh I did remember going to the phone booth back when you had to go to the phone booth to have a dime and calling. I got a surprise for you. Don't be mad at me when I get home.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

And she's like, Okay. Okay, I'm gonna go Cliff Clavin on you, and we're not talking anything about music, as you may have noticed, but that's okay. There's this phrase. I actually wanted to do, I thought of doing a podcast on like the origin of phrases, and then I found out there's like 50 million brocasts on the origin of phrases, but you just did one of my favorites, which nobody born in the last 35, 40 years knows, which is I'll drop a dime on you. Which was I will I will snitch on you because I will put 10 cents in the phone and call the authorities and snitch on you. So I'll drop a dime on you. And that does not work for people who thought phone calls were a quarter, and it certainly does not work with people who don't realize that we had little metal booths that people would sit in and make phone calls from. And it doesn't hold the same meaning to a dime bag, but it does not. But speaking of musicians, I'm a big fan of Dimebag Daryl. Dimebag Daryl.

SPEAKER_02 9:42

I like it. Oh we'll get to the end of it. So I'm riding my bike with this puppy. It was a black mix between an Irish setter and a black lab. And in this little ice cream pail, riding it home. And uh I know there. That was, I don't know why I thought at 13 with life and school and sports, I could um take care of a dog, but you took it on, you did what you had to do.

SPEAKER_01 10:11

Well, you actually now are making me want to talk about transportation, and one of my favorite my camera stories, and we can cut it if you do not want to uh have it out there, but there came a time when um you were into um botany, and you were very much into plants, and and you were you know on the uh extreme west side of St. Louis Park, and there was this big tall plant, and you wanted to liberate this plant.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

And it was it was a tall plant and a planter, and at the time it was before you had your license, and so you were on your moped.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

It was one of those Menard's five-gallon pails.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Yes, big. And so it was you, it was your uh uh uh co-conspirator who shall remain nameless sitting on the back of your moped holding the big tall plant going down Cedar Lake Road to your house. Yeah, and he kind of had it on one thigh on the side, so it was like sitting down, like somebody's just sitting there with just you know and then I recall that your mom's boyfriend at the time said, Hey, I noticed you have that plant down in the basement. Yeah, you know if you put it in the shower, it might grow better because it has more of a tropical feel to it. Yeah, we got all kinds of help on that plant. Um but you know what? You know, you've always been into gardening.

SPEAKER_02 11:28

We uh we furthered that plant to a stream of plants, but once again, we'll Statue of Limitations is gone, and right now it's legal for everybody to do that.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

It's perfectly legal to have a garden. I don't know what you're talking about. We had a garden, and um, yeah, that was uh But I mean, I just you know, I mean I I think I told the story already, or it may have hit the cutting room floor when we were 14, and our a guy who was our baseball coach said uh hey, go to the store, and he was hitting on this girl. He's like, hey, go take my car, go to the store and get some whatever and the candy. Okay. We came back, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:05

The whole we do we went on a bit of a joy ride in his car, and it was um, yeah, we were 14. And we came back and we're laughing. He's like, What's what's going on? What's he goes? I can't believe we didn't get caught because we drove over to Tyson. He's like, How old are you guys? We drove over to Todd. So, Todd, we got a car. He's like, What? You want to go with the call?

SPEAKER_01 12:23

You're gonna go to jail. Were you gonna go with us? No. So we don't I remember you were like chill, and then Todd got in your head and it was like, oh, you're gonna go to jail, and then you were nervous on the way back.

SPEAKER_02 12:32

We gotta drive back. But I remember telling Bryce, like, well, I thought at least you had your permits, which still illegal, still not legal to do it, regardless.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

When we were little kids, like 11, 12, I recall being in the car with you and Judy, and then it was like, Can I steer? No, I asked you. And so you're you're steering and she's driving. And I'm like, you know, I normally don't wear my belt in the back seat, but I think I might put it on. Do you guys still have them back here? Seat belts. Oh. Let me ask you this, because I like I like I like asking you questions off the cuff, not to test your memory, but I think I get better answers. Did you were you ever a headphone guy? Like, did you ever like um have like a uh uh beats? A walkman?

SPEAKER_02 13:15

Yes, I do remember at times I had it so like there was just one more thing to have to remember to bring and have it work, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

So I just I you know I I listen to a lot of music. I so when I was 14, eighth grade, I was about the weirdest kid you'll ever meet. And that was my weirdest time of a weird guy who was particularly weird back then, and I was into my punk rock music, and there was like an AM station that would play New Wave, and so I had my little transistor radio and the little single-ear white thing that I would have go up through the sleeve of my jacket and up and into my ear, and I'd listen to New Wave music all day long in eighth grade, and I'm sitting there, and we were gonna talk about our some of our favorite teachers, but I think at Westwood Junior High, my favorite teacher was Mr. Bomb. Mr. Bomb was the bomb. He taught I had him for geography. So I'm sitting in geography class, and all of a sudden I look out and I see my cousin Susie and one of her friends sitting out there. And she hands me a signed cover of the Ramones, the liner to the Ramones End of the Century album, signed by all the band members, and uh uh a pick that came from Dee Dee. Now I still have the signed cover framed, but I lost the the Ramones pick. But this is this is I was exposed, I think, to some really quality non-standard fare very young.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

Yeah, no, you were, and it was interesting because she was she was older and she was pretty, and she was in the school, and you're like going, wow. And then you know, you find out it's your cousin, and I I I knew that, so I I was like not getting uh weird family thing going on, but I'm always like she's just a very pretty girl. And uh she showed up and I'm like, wow, you are a celebrity.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Well, you know, you mentioned in our prior episode, Devo. Um I recall one Thanksgiving being over at the Garcia house for family meal, and Susie was showing off her unopened Devo suit that she had gifted to them by the band when they played at back then it was Uncle Sam's, not even not even uh first half, it was Uncle Sam's. So shout out to Susie if you're out there somewhere. I appreciate you gave me some really good guidance uh when it came to music early on. It's funny, I could segue real quick on and you you can give me the kill button, but your aunt Maria used to babysit me a lot. Actually, so yeah, you know what, there are a lot of Maria's in my family, but Susie's mom was Isabel. Oh Isabel.

SPEAKER_02 15:50

Isabel, I'm sorry. Maria was my grandma, but Isabel. Um Isabel, I should remember that she babysat me a lot, but I I remember sometimes she would uh have to go to the store. Yeah, Aaron.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

And rice would be a child and rice, let's see, Nelson was couple years older than us and rice or like like four or five, and rice was like six or seven years older than us, seven or eight.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

And so I was five, six, seven at the time, and so kind of like uh Isabel would go to the store and and tell us to keep an eye on Rice so we said friends over. He had that basement room with the separate entrance down there. And uh his friends would sit there, and there was an apple tree in the front yard, that was right on Cedar Lake Road. Yep. And I'm not gonna name other names in this, but uh Rice's friends. Rice's friends would throw apples at cars, and the ones that would stop a coming to the door, here's five, six-year-old Mike Hammer. Hi, I'm just here alone, or Nelson sitting back to them. Just it's just the two of us, we couldn't do that. Or when they wanted to leave, yeah, and they didn't want us to get in trouble, yeah. So they tied me and Nelson back to back on two chairs, they tied us up so they could leave. And you guys wouldn't get in trouble. We wouldn't get in trouble, couldn't we?

SPEAKER_01 17:08

I mean, you you can't argue with the logic.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

It was very good logic, it was interesting.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

I did not have, you know, I'm an only child, but I did not have big brothers to torture me, but I did have Rice and Nelson, you know. I remember them uh kneeling on me and down on me and grabbing my cheeks and saying, say chubby checker. Say chubby checker, and they wouldn't let me up until I said chubby checker, and they thought it was the funniest thing in the world, and I thought it was terrible, but they were the coolest guys in the world, so I wanted them to like me.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

So we played football, and when Nelson would come over, yes, it was Nelson and Doug, Kenny's little brother. Yeah, again, you and Kenny, and we'd always lose still because it was so fun.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Oh my god. It was honestly some of the greatest times of my life. We're just playing that silly game, and he'd always do they do the Doug between his legs play. Yep. And uh and it was just it was that little, it wasn't even really a park back then. They added the park part, but it was like this field of uh before a bunch of developments came in.

SPEAKER_02 18:01

Yeah, by the swamp, kind of, and uh yeah, that uh we just the places we we learned to play, and that was um fun. But okay, so we're back to the music. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

And that was um what I mean, what other is there like a song that makes you think of a girl, or is there a song that makes you think about it?

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Well, I remember this, I remember it comes a time.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

Comes a time. We got we were just I want to say ninth grade, just getting into our license, tenth grade, and and live rust, and it came out a few years before that, but we got that tape that we were playing tapes, yeah, and we seemed to play that tape. It it it kind of somehow followed either there was more than one tape, which it could have been, or that tape just followed from car to car to to boom box to uh let me ask you this because the answer for me to this question is yes, but uh the Columbia Record and Tape Club ever send a hitman out after you for all the music you got for a penny that you never paid for? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

I know that I did, and then you could put like, oh, I moved one Gonzalez, yes. And they'll send it to you. They didn't really check addresses.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

No, they were still making money because I think they're all sitting good, but yeah. Comes a time was just kind of that early it was. You're talking Neil Young, Live Russ. Neil Young, Live Rust Comes of Time, because that that the tape would play Sugar Mountain started. It's just born to and right away that and the whole tape played. Yeah, every song on on the tape played, but we we um you're not gonna play anything because you can't. No, but we just that lyrics from Comes a Time, and it was kind of that anthem of where we were with our experimentals and this, and you know, lying in a burned out basement, a rage against uh going against the war. And you know, I mean, and and he says I felt like felt like getting high. Yeah, and uh if you were on the Ed Sullivan show, you'd probably say felt like felt like getting by. Um, but it was one of those parents seemed to play that off as like the commercials from the 50s, how they made it sound like this is the most worst thing you can put in your body.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

And you're like, we we we went to school on the tail reefer madness was still the thing, you know. It'll cause you to become a juvenile delinquent and this and that. And you know, when we're in high school, you know, it was just saying no. It was just it was very, it was very uh quaint. If you ask me, thinking back to some of those uh messages, because uh you have you really did have people believing that if you smoked one marijuana, yeah, you would go into a mental hospital.

SPEAKER_02 20:45

It's funny because uh somebody just asked me yesterday about you know, people at small pile, they're called stoners. Yeah. And the people who drink are called drinkers, yeah, and then if they drink too much are called drunks. But stoner seems to always they and it's the drinkers that don't like to smoke, like you stoners are like, yeah, well, you're a drinker. Well, drinking is not that bad. Come on, it's the same freaking thing, but it's just a well, you know what?

SPEAKER_01 21:10

I honestly I would argue that there are far, far, far, far, far, far, far, far more dead people in the world due to alcohol than marijuana. True.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

Because you don't get a shot of I mean, if you get into an accident when you're high, you're probably going 22 miles an hour.

SPEAKER_03 21:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:25

The the old you're just taking a shot of courage, you're going to do stupid stuff. Yeah. I got plenty of stupid stuff stories. Um, and and did end up in a hospital, but not to the to my demise evident by being on this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 21:36

But you just totally logic the crap out of that. I was awesome. I you just proved I'm alive. That was very you know, I paid a lot of money for undergraduate philosophy classes that took months to explain.

SPEAKER_02 21:48

Do what you just do, did so the we were talking about the the word stoner has said people go you're a stoner. Yeah. Well, you're a drinker. Well, drinker, like, yeah, I drink, you know, but it was uh it's been social and that's what we get it. But you're like, I don't know, the worst case scenario is maybe you ate too many chips, or I you did not clean up your room because you got high.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

One of the things that kids did do is they try on different personalities. As they're growing up, they try on different personalities as they try to figure out it's a natural part of growing up. And I, I think earlier than some of my peers that were athletes, my friends from athletics, I kind of got to the dark side sooner than them. And I remember being a freshman in high school, and I brought in a high copy of High Times magazine. And I recall a mutual friend of ours who thought it was funny as hell to say, Hey Carlos, you got your magazine? And less than three months after, I was like, Hey Carlos, do you think you know where I can get some pot? So it was very interesting how people did that. And no, I was not a drug dealer. I I I experimented as did most of my classmates. I just tell the story because I I find, you know, of the of the problems that existed then and exist now in the world, I would not put kids smoking pot on occasion in the top 1,000.

SPEAKER_02 23:08

And getting it for more like an older sibling getting their younger sibling booze.

SPEAKER_01 23:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:13

It's like we're not going to kill it.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Well, we see we talked about, I mean, our graduation party, we had kegs purchased by our parents because that's what people did, and it was no big deal. And once again, yes, should you know, as a lawyer, should a parent provide alcohol to minors? No, that's really stupid. I would advise you not to do it. But we didn't think like that back then. And there was still a lot of drop your keys, you're not going anywhere. And uh, if you did, you stole your keys back in the dam it. I mean, I you know, I won't. I mean, I I joked in a prior episode about that new amphitheater in uh Shakapee. Yeah. And you know, I said, I really want to know what the parking and and and driving and traffic situation is because honestly, I have more fun if I get a hotel and I don't if I don't have to worry about how I'm getting home. Shows on the road are always so much more fun because you don't got the Because you don't have to think you've you totally break away from your responsibilities. You don't have to get back into I need to be a now if you got a show on a weekday and you gotta work the next day, it kinda uh kills is a is a bit of a buzz kill.

SPEAKER_02 24:15

But wait, I gotta get home, I gotta get up in the morning. And you're like, ah, but I have but yeah, that uh and that's actually something that changed.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

I mean, how I was probably in my 30s before I have to work tomorrow was a factor.

SPEAKER_03 24:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Well, you know what's funny because so we grew up oh you say we grew up where we grew up, but with Uber Lyft, yeah, these ride shares.

SPEAKER_02 24:42

Even though we were a first rung suburb, yeah, we never got into the taxi. Like when you watch Seinfeld, your friend, or anything from New York, Chicago, Philadelphia. Yeah, getting a hailing a cab, you never hailed a cab. You're like, how do you think?

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Listen, when I grew up when I grew up, uh pardon my French, but cabs was rich people shit. Yeah, you know, that was not we didn't do rich people shit.

SPEAKER_02 25:04

Why would you get in a cab? There's I mean the bus was easy enough to figure out, and then you just you get home. Yeah. Hitchhiking was more I I I have never hitchhiked. Oh, we used to do that a lot. Hitchhiking was more seemed more sensible than getting a that that doesn't seem like that's really a thing anymore.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

It's been replaced by panhandling.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

Oh, signs, signs, signs, everywhere. Sign. Name the band. Come on, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. Oh, oh, oh, not Grand. One hit wonders. One hit Grand. Um it is the five-man electrical band. Five man electric band. That's catching it. Listen, if you've got a bar trivia team, you want Carlos on your team because I am my head is full of useless information.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

And some chore listeners, if you want to DM, what band has the most send us a message about a band whose name came from one of the more obscure people don't know how that name came from. Oh wow. Send us a note on that. We'll talk about.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

I've got a few good ones there.

SPEAKER_02 26:05

Like, how did this band get the name?

SPEAKER_01 26:06

And you're like, I never would have thought that makes sense, but didn't make never would have thought. And any of our friends that are in uh bands, you know, I'm thinking Mike Schultz. You know, I know you joined Uncle Chunk after it was an established band, but uh, you know, uh ground control, I think, is pretty clear where it came from, but we're involved in uh naming Paragon, you know. It would be uh it would be fun to hear the story of band names. I know that I've seen interviews with Motley Crew and their band before Motley Crew, the name that they were gonna use was Christmas. That would not have been that's not a hardcore name, man. Yeah you know, you throw Motley Crue, you throw a little umlaut over the U, and everybody's like, well, this is hardcore. This is hardcore. Are you in my camera? Well, we we we were all over the place today, as we are wont to do. We've talked about a lot of fun things, music and not music related. Quick question.

SPEAKER_02 26:55

You know, there was kind of a little band show off Minnetonka Boulevard in St. Louis Park, like between Jersey and Idaho. On it'd be on the north side of, and it wasn't very they never really did things there because you know now towns have a lot of more um they do have things that Dan Israel brings up. They do stuff in the park, yeah, and there's these smaller concerts where they're kind of free or they're whatever. But I remember, if somebody can remember this too, that lived in the neighborhood, it was on the north side, about a block off of Minataka Boulevard, between I want to say, like Jersey and Idaho or Hampshire or whatever. I don't remember this at all. Maybe the size of the old one down at Lake Harriet. Oh wow. Very big, they could probably fit eight, ten band members up there, whatever. And it was like in a in a one-block.

SPEAKER_01 27:41

We'll do some research, but if listeners remember it, uh let us know because I zero recollection of that.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

Could we really in the NS Park have a great music venue? But Minneapolis is closed, that's why you just go down to Minneapolis.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

There was there was a place in Challard Park called the Hippodrome or Hippogriff. Yeah. And it was it it was music, cocktail loungy kind of a place. Yeah, I remember that. That was um other than that, I mean, live was there live music at the Ambassador Hotel ever? Oh, I want to think in the main dining room they had people in there.

SPEAKER_02 28:14

Um that was a that was I did definitely.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

I did remember seeing back in the day many moons ago, our classmate Steven C. Anderson playing the piano at Byerley's there in St. Louis Park. Dayton's, Byerley's. Yeah, yeah. But not exactly what one would consider a fine music venue. And of course, there was the uh the uh aborted uh concert at our uh graduation party that was stopped by the neighbors.

SPEAKER_02 28:42

I wonder too, here's another thing. People maybe RAs could see if their kids do it or the younger generation. We'd go and we'd listen to bands at houses a lot. Yes, and it was usually in the the the houses I just looked up because a little trivia for all you that didn't know that the inventor of the game Twister is from St. Louis Park, which throw random things out there, but in most of the houses in St. Louis Park, like 65% of them were built in the 40s and 50s, post-World War II. So they're not that big. You know the footprint, we all know the design going, yeah, okay, that's the same exact house. There's stupas on this side or the stupas on that side. But they weren't that big. But I wonder if people still go to houses to listen to bands.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

I don't know or do they have house parties even anymore. Because you said the kids don't drink anymore. They don't drink as much and they don't, whatever, and they don't, they yeah, they don't. They don't ask they don't they don't ask people out on dates and they don't drink. Well, you know what? If they drank and they had social lubricant, maybe they could ask women out on dates.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

I will say college still does that. Yeah, especially good college sounds. But uh, you know, you're not hearing it around town where you at our age, when we were young, there was people who are now our age neighbors that would be mad at the party because there would be keg glasses on up and down the street. I had some legendary parties at the old 2031 Hampshire. We'll talk about those. Legendary. And we'll talk about those another time. But yeah, the um it doesn't seem like there's where you go.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Do you never had a band at your house set up or play or no?

SPEAKER_02 30:17

I would say uh times people came with somebody at a guitar and sort of playing.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

Do you guys ever do anything like that at the Zenith House?

SPEAKER_02 30:23

Or yeah, we had a band uh a couple times out on the deck in the garage on the deck, the zenith house.

SPEAKER_01 30:31

So that was dealing that that is that may be a series in and of itself. If you know, you know. If not, we will share it uh kind of a post-college home for uh several of our high school friends.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

It was uh John Lionel bought the house basically two or three years out of high school. Yeah, we ran there until 93, which was uh had a good run.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

It was great spot too, Linden Hills area. Beautiful, and and it would have been a tremendous investment to buy that house. I I know I wanted to, and uh ex-wife number one didn't, but uh it is what it is. Oh right there, how is it like five blocks from the lakes?

SPEAKER_02 31:08

Well, it was like four blocks from Harriet and about five or six blocks from Calhoun. Yeah, it's right, yeah. Depending on which way the dogs got out and ran. We found them Cosmo and Windsor. Anybody that came to those parties knew who Cosmo and Windsor were, but they'd uh every once in a while Cosmo was the male big black lab, and he'd like bend the gate to work, and somehow Windsor would get out, and somehow Cosmo would get out too. And and if I got home and that we got home, the dogs weren't there, we knew they were at one of the lakes swimming, chasing the birds, chasing the dogs.

SPEAKER_01 31:42

Which is what you do if you're a Labrador.

SPEAKER_02 31:44

Yeah, you're the swimming.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

I mean, that's what you do is you find water and you swim.

SPEAKER_02 31:49

I'll tell my story about later on another show about rollerblading with the dogs, basically chariots of fire without the chariot. Oh my god. And uh having friends that would come and want to take one of the dogs. That's another story. We'll talk about that. All right, Mike Hammer. Uh, where can people get a hold of you? Well, they can listen to this podcast over and over again and and spread it to amongst the masses of the people. Yeah, they can also, if they want to make uh every step a little better in their day, we got the world's best and thinnest massaging insoles. When your feet feel great, the world looks better. And um yeah, you know, and you uh you know what?

SPEAKER_01 32:34

I'm actually not really not gonna promote any of my writing. I'm just gonna say, hey, thank you to everybody that's been listening and giving us feedback. I, you know, I mean, we are probably in the next day or two, we'll get to you know our thousandth listener, and and that's beyond our wildest dreams. We're having fun. We want to make sure that we tell stories that are meaningful to you. So please send us messages, comment, ideas, send us ideas. We've got plenty of them, but we we don't want to just talk about ourselves, we want to talk about our community and we want to talk about what life was like. When we hit stop, you can talk all you want about yourself, okay? All right, with that, I think it's time to get up off the bench.

SPEAKER_02 33:16

Yeah, um, my coffee's run dry, the day's getting long. Carlos and Hammer out What in the world?

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Spinning slow. Another Jimmy Starting inch after glove.