"I'm the Guy Who Writes 'Dirty Sanchez'!" Writes the Guy Who Writes Dirty Sanchez

("He says he's got 15 simple reasons he writes the column, yawns the irritable Sister of Sanchez," the Sister of Sanchez yawned irritably.) 1. BECAUSE I CAME UP WITH THIS ONE SNAPPY COMEBACK I came up with it like two weeks after I started doing the column. Like a year ago, right after my band?Bell Biv Devoe?delivered its third record. Because at the time I started doing the column I actually thought someone would be so seized with hatred for the column that she would quit her job and dedicate her life to determining who I was and outing me. The winter came and went and nobody cared. Finally a guy got mad enough to search me out?he fucked over my brother and one of my best friends, and so I slagged his band, pretty harshly?and then he started e-mailing his friends, and then suddenly it was "everybody in the music industry has always known that Clyde Stubblefield from Hanoi Rocks writes Dirty Sanchez." Finally, some anonymous poster to an unofficial website for my band asked the question I'd been waiting for: "R U DIRTY SANCHEZ?" In all caps and with Prince's grammar yet. How subtly menacing. "No," I typed back. "Dirty Sanchez is a fictional character." That's a really annoying Clintonism, isn't it? Don't worry, Mr. Curious, my name will be right at the end of this article. Why write this if I didn't want to finally take credit? I've had a blast writing this thing, what a relief to finally stand up and say, Hello world, I'm Billy Ocean!   2. BECAUSE I'M A ROCK STAR Yes, Sasquatch. I'm not a critic, I don't work for a label. I'm a recording artist. Somebody right now is writing a pissy riposte to this for "The Mail," no doubt including the word "SoundScan"?such credibility! there's a capital letter right in the middle of the word?along the lines of, "Well, hmmmph, Joe Lally, I thought being a rock star involved selling a few records." Let me just quickly run you through the stats: number of e-mails today that could be synopsized as Dear Yngwie Malmsteen, Please Marry Me: 7. Number of tattoos I've seen that were taken from illustrations on CD covers of my band: somewhere around 15. Number of times The New Yorker compared me to Ezra Pound: once. Number of times my band's name was mentioned by Gillian Anderson on the E! network: once. (E! was covering a party for the X-Files soundtrack, and when asked if she liked the music, she said yes, and named the first three bands on the CD in the order they appeared.) Rumors I've heard about me include, "Jack Klugman has three testicles," "Jack Klugman is really the father of Uma Thurman's baby" and "Jack Klugman is clearly a pole-smoker." That last one?actual quote from the Internet?is going on my business card someday. Number of times the name of my band was mentioned by the character David Silver on 90210: 3. He took Dylan's ex-girlfriend, gasp, to see us the night before her big audition for the Ice Capades. "I've got front-row center seats for Letch Patrol," David Silver said. And later: "I've just got to go inside and get the Letch Patrol tickets," he said, just before an unexpected dramatic encounter with Dylan: "Is it my fault Letch Patrol went on so late?" David Silver told the girl the next morning as he escorted her?she was wearing sunglasses, pouting, and had her arms crossed?into the skating rink. Having been tangentially involved in a Dylan McKay/David Silver beef over this year's 90210 brunette alone validates my rock star card. When I was a lad with a Fernandes Strat knockoff for an "ax" (I do so love to call it an ax), I figured being a recording artist involved writing songs, recording them and playing them for people. How foolish! As it turns out, being a recording artist involves hanging around with some of the least intriguing people on Earth. To whit: regional label reps, who begin every sentence by stating how long they've been working for the company. "You know, I've been working for _______ for 17 years, and I must tell you, this risotto is really tasty." And wrinkly flacks, who were probably hotties in the early 80s, who work at some other label owned by the same conglomerate as your label, who lean across the restaurant table so you can see their leathery boobs a-dangling, cooing robotically, "Oh, T-Boz, I just love your band Wishbone Ash, and when you sing, 'Finished with my woman 'cause she couldn't help me with my mind,' oh, it just means so much to me." And then there are radio people and I have absolutely nothing bad to say about them, they're just fabulous, a breath of fresh air, a delight to converse with, and by the by, the add date for our next single is July 20. And then there are people who work at record stores who come along for the big pre-show meet and greet, who salute me by quoting my repertoire. "Don't stop believin'?hold on to that feelin'!" one says. Another yells, "Jonah made his home in that big fish abdomen!" And how am I?Blackie Lawless?meant to respond? Yes, I wrote that. Yup, quite familiar with it, thanks. Rock on? If I didn't have Sanchez?and 40 milligrams of fluoxetine daily?to get me through my week, I'd have offed myself by now.   3. BECAUSE I NEED THE BUCKS I'm not a real celebrity. Real celebrities are wealthy. My band?Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock?has shipped fewer than 400,000 units of our latest CD. That's a lot of money if you're Ani DiFranco, but you're not gonna get a dime from that if you're on a major. We worked our asses off pushing the first two, and finally we recorded a single that stuck. It stayed in the top 10 at alternative rock radio?what my friend Gus likes to call "the New Wave Ghetto"?over November and December, when radio stations freeze their playlists?if your single isn't added by Thanksgiving, it's done. So there we were; fourth quarter, holiday season, touchdown! Right? So we thought. I bought my little brother a pair of $300 shoes for Christmas. A band less noble than my band?the Atlanta Rhythm Section?might boo-hoo that their label must've fucked up most severely for the record to have not been certified gold by Jan. 2. But we take the higher moral ground and believe we just happened to be very well liked by music directors but, alas, not by consumers. Or, in the parlance of the promo guys, "It didn't connect."   4. BECAUSE I'M A BETTER WRITER THAN ANYBODY WHO'S EVER WRITTEN ABOUT ME Excepting three writers. One of whom is Jessica Willis?whose very worst piece ever just happened to be about my band, the Feelies. The other two I'm not going to name, because that way I can bump into anybody at a party and say, oh yeah, of course it's you, absolutely?and the other one's your editor. Musicians always say, "Waaaah, so-and-so from Fucktooth only gave me one and a half stars?those critics! They're all wannabe musicians." Well, actually, they're all wannabe writers. Some of them do believe, in their gullible youth, that they actually can encompass the vast and nebulous force of music in their prose. And sometimes when I've taken a particularly large amount of cocaine, I consider myself a viable presidential candidate. But I digress. If they're really good writers, they eventually go out into the world and write about actual stuff. Cameron Crowe, for example, of whom I'm a huge fan, paid the rent writing criticism until he wrote Fast Times At Ridgemont High. But a 35-year-old freelancer banging out half-assed opinions to get a check?that's not a man of letters, baby, that's a man of used CD stores.   5. BECAUSE IT'S EASY Punditry requires no substance, only direction, momentum and a loud voice. And if you're doing it about show business, you don't even have to pick a side! It's simply like/dislike, and past that what do you need? Adjectives? The thesaurus is just chock-full of them! I don't even have to worry about the like/dislike part. As a general policy, Sanchez never liked anything musical, and probably never will. Except Imogen Heap. And I believe the extent of Sanchez's Imogen-advocacy was "Imogen Heap! You my nigga!" I don't have to worry about issues of journalistic integrity either. I don't have any. I go online and pretty much bite all my material off AP and MTV.com. If Sanchez pans something he didn't listen to, he tells you so. If Sanchez makes grand pronouncements without doing jackshit for research, he's the first to admit it. It's show business.   6. BECAUSE I, TOO, AM A BLACK MAN ON THE INSIDE As it happens, I am not a flabby, bearded Mexican who speaks with the voice of George Sanders playing Addison DeWitt in All About Eve. I'm honky to the marrow. And if there's some kind of gasp-he's-no-Latino uproar over this article, well, I'll just change it from "Dirty Sanchez" to "Dumb Whitey." Churlish Sanchez mocks, anxious Whitey hankers, adjective name verb, same difference. It frightens me how quickly some critics will still automatically reject a white artist who dips his or her toe into hiphop, which is such a revolutionary genre that that's kind of like going back to the 1800s and excoriating non-Scotsmen for utilizing the steam engine. The party line of critics is that all American music emanates from black America, that what is really a complex interweaving of sea chanteys with drum ceremonies with Protestant hymns with a million other musical traditions can be reduced to a simple formula of good guy and bad guy who stole the good guy's cool thing. That's a fine recipe for self-loathing, but really shabby history. On this tip, the positive reviews are the most depressing; if you're a skinny white guy who's biting a little Slick Rick just like Snoop Dogg did, and making it sound good, you're sure to read forced-laugh, cheek-turning, desexualizing words like "dork" or "geek" in your most laudatory reviews. On the other hand, there have been several positive reviews of my band?Whodini?in which the critic boasted of being unable to determine my race without looking at the publicity photo. Apparently that's a compliment.   7. BECAUSE I WANTED TO BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF A ROCK CRITIC, TOO  But I had to serve my beatdown in effigy. I beat the living shit out of Sanchez, week after week, torturing him, taking his money. Manson and Tricky and Wyclef and D-Dot?they all got their shots in this year. They kicked, pummeled, punched, threatened. The more psychic damage I inflicted on Sanchez, the more I liked the guy.   8. BECAUSE ADAM HEIMLICH ACTUALLY BEGAN A REVIEW WITH THIS LINE: "Imagine, if you will, music that is beheld." His italics. I swear.   9. BECAUSE I LOVE ME SOME FAT GIRLS! By "fat girl" I mean to include: thick-ankled, big-assed, big-nosed, flabby-titted, hairy-armed, jowly faced, whatever. I wanted to make it an effectively salacious catcall. Because all women think they're fat girls, or at least that they're ugly. And the fact is, all men are attracted to some very weird shit. Erin Franzman?former NYPress receptionist, who knew that I was Malcolm-Jamal Warner the whole time and played mind games with me mercilessly?once said, "You know, I'm glad you grind on hippies [I think she meant the Wookie], but what's up with you making fun of lumpy women?" I told her I wasn't making fun of them, that one of the few personality traits Sanchez and I share is a love of lumpiness. That both the Wookie and the Lumpy Lass were meant to be sexy despite themselves. Have you heard the term "ghetto booty"? Have you seen the kind of lady the President likes to get down with? She said, "Uh-huh. Please hold." Say it loud: Fat Girl! Fat Girl! Right on, Fat Girl, right on!   10. BECAUSE I'M A LIAR AND PARANOIA IS BLISS TO ME Mere pot-smoking just won't do it anymore; I need a real disaster looming on the horizon, something career-threatening, something that'll just blow the whole house off its foundations. In retrospect, I think any musician skewered in the column had no trouble dismissing it?Sanchez's discredibility was built-in. I was very drunk the other night and fell all over Scott McCloud from Girls Against Boys apologizing for dissing him. He was nonplused. "But I said, 'Anyone who can come out of a GVSB show humming a single tune can hump Sanchez's comely beergut to climax,'" I wailed. "And?" he said.   11. BECAUSE NOBODY ELSE QUESTIONS THE BEASTIE/NASTY COMPLEX As it happens, there is a professional connection between my band?Black Oak Arkansas?and the aforementioned parties. I know I'm putting somebody who went out of his way to save my ass in the middle of an uncomfortable situation. I hope he understands. I had to go with my conscience. I've asked three people who work at Nasty Little Man these two questions: "What exactly does Milarepa do? Where does the money go?" None of them could answer. It has been argued to me by people who know from both the Beasties and Nasty that, really, why the fuck should they know jackshit about Milarepa's books? They're only publicists. But it bugs the shit out of me nonetheless. I'm sure that half the bands involved did the Tibetan shows because they were fashionable, and why not? Freddie Mercury didn't spend his time onstage at Live Aid contemplating world hunger, but I bet some kid got a bowl of oatmeal out of it anyway. But it bugs the shit out of me nonetheless. As for the Beasties, who spent the first half of the decade as the admissions department of the cool school and the last half with a bad case of Sting's Save The Rainforest Disease, well, I have to say I wouldn't have formed my band?E.S.G.?if it weren't for Licensed to Ill. Which is why it makes me so sad that their need to disavow their drunk years makes them do things as appalling as calling up the Prodigy and asking them not to play a song they found offensive, and then turning around and shaking a finger at the Chinese government for suppressing Buddhism in Tibet. Okay, granted, the Chinese used tear gas, truncheons and wiretaps while the Beasties used an AT&T calling card. But why not just go up onstage and say, "Hi, we're the Beastie Boys and we sure do find that 'Smack My Bitch Up' song offensive"?countering offensive speech with righteous speech? Mr. Yauch, please check your wallet. I think that right behind that AT&T calling card, that license to ill?to be young, dumb, venal, human?might be just sitting there, still valid. Go save the world from the forces of darkness if you have to, but please: Forgive yourself.   12. BECAUSE MY SHRINK TOLD ME TO After four years on the road and four years reading tossed-off opinions about myself in the local alternative weekly of whatever town the bus stopped in, I was so depressed that I would be on a beach in the South of France surrounded by half-nude French women with glorious thick black hair in their pits and peeking out of their bikini-straps and still be unhappy. I took long walks through a lot of beautiful towns?Torino, Paris, San Francisco, Bordeaux, Barcelona?and didn't notice them at all. So I got a shrink, and I said to her: "I hate being in the Fabulous Stains. I hate living the life of a trucker; I signed up for the David Bowie package. I hate being hated by all the other white guys who hate their own whiteness and love black music like me. I hate being dependent on this band and feeling like I'm stuck with them on a train that won't stop. I want to say fuck this and go get a job." And my shrink said: "So go get a job?"     13. BECAUSE I LOVE TO SUCK RUSS SMITH'S COCK Russ named the column. I went down to 333 and pitched this vague idea about a column documenting the obsolescence of alternative rock and the rise of the squeaky-clean pecs-and-cheekbones pop that would blow it away?as my band, Kansas, has sung, like dust in the wind. Russ said: "Do you know what a dirty Sanchez is?" I said no. Strausbaugh rolled his eyes, because I think Russ discussed the ins and outs of dirty Sanchezes with everyone he met for a period of about six weeks. Russ proceeded to describe a creative form of prison rape. He said, "You should call the column that. You can incorporate the name into your style?like, 'Professor Sanchez is telling you the truth, children...'" And?click click click in my mind?there Sanchez was.   14. BECAUSE I REALLY MISS J.R. TAYLOR'S "ACE OF CLUBS" That shit scared everybody?the bug-eyed, leering, redneck, Republican rock critic. What a gas! I hated him at the time, thinking I could make the world love one another by writing glowing poetic tributes to En Vogue. On two occasions?one with a woman who'd had a huge single, another with two members of a well-known all-female New York band?I was told by female pop stars how creepy they found him. At the time I was freelancing for NYPress, so they thought I had some insight. Each of them practically interrogated me about what J.R. Taylor was like in real life. And I thought: This Taylor fella is really onto something. The difference: He meant it. I think.     15. BECAUSE YOUR GIRLFRIEND STILL LOVES ME Looking for the byline? Sucker.