(intro)
Theme music begins:
“When I was young, my Dad used to say,
‘Son, we’re all going to die one day.
Why don’t you take a little time to do some good along the way …
Take a little time …
(music fades going into chorus.)
Gregor: Welcome to the Old Rockers podcast …
Del: Where a couple of old, white dudes try to recapture some of the magic of their squandered youths.
Gregor: I’m your host, Gregor Brewster, and I am joined by my partner in crime, the one and only Del Watson. That was quite an eye-opening interview we had last week with our agent, Gwen Saperstein. What were your takeaways?
Del: That it’s all about data, timing, and luck, and that talent has little to nothing to do with success.
Gregor: That’s fortunate, because neither of us are especially talented.
Del: But we do have an “unfair advantage.”
Gregor: To use a technical marketing term, we have unfair advantage up-the-gazunk. Who’s our guest today, Del?
Del: A very special guest will be joining us here in the studio today, none other than the beautiful, wise, all-knowing and all-talented Cassandra Brewster, your lovely wife.
Gregor: I’m surprised we’re all here today, given the shit-show that’s going on outside.
Del: What? 16 inches of wet snow on March 30th is nothing.
Gregor: I have news for you. In Rhode Island this will be just a little rain. And all our roads are paved, not quagmires. You’re living in a Third World country, my friend.
Del: And gratefully so. It keeps the creeps out.
Gregor: It keeps progress out, too. I read that the population of Vermont is the same today as in 1826.
Del: Progress is oversold. It does as much harm as good. Hey, I have a question for you … when was the moment or what was the event when pop music crossed over from being entertainment to being “art.”
Gregor: Good question Would you care to define the difference?
Del: I’m not really the right person to define it, but I’ll give it my best shot. Pop music is like a craft. It’s slick, it’s catchy, the themes are not very deep, but it’s pleasant and fun. Art, on the other hand, has all the important aspects of Pop, but more importantly, it has roots that connects it to other realms of the culture. It has all the craft, but it’s got something extra … something that speaks at a different level.
Gregor: That’s about the most profound things I’ve ever heard you say.
Del: I won’t let it happen again.
Gregor: You’ll blow your image.
Del: Let’s introduce our guest. Cassandra, are you up to joining this verbal witfest?
Cassandra: I’ll try my best to keep up.
(Cassandra is trim, white-haired, and delicately lined. She has made no attempt to artificially delay the passage of time, nor has she needed to. She radiates good health, good aura, and good spirit. She is beautiful.)
Gregor: I met this lady when she was 17 and recently returned from a year studying in Menton, France. I was 18, and already a rock ‘n roll star. It was at the Quinnaponsett Country Club. We were both there with out respective families. Cassandra, were you intimidated at meeting a rock star?
Del: (starts laughing hysterically) I remember you calling me the next morning. You could barely put together a coherent sentence. Finally I gathered that you met a girl and that she was going to meet us at Scarborough Beach the next day. Cassandra, he was a babbling idiot. Give your take on this fateful happenstance.
Cassandra: First of all, I’m not exactly sure it was entirely happenstance. I could never get anyone to admit to anything, but I think there was an element of parental manipulation. But I didn’t object. Gregor was good-looking and nice, a bit tongue-tied, however.
Del: Plus, he had some amazing friends.
Cassandra: I didn’t know that until the next day.
Del: Tell us about … what was it? Menton?
Cassandra: It’s a small town on the French Riviera, just over the border from Italy. My parents insisted that I do there for my junior year in high school. I didn’t want any part of it, but they weren’t to be denied. I was pretty miserable for the first semester. Then the weirdest thing happened to me. (silence)
Del: Cassandra, you realize that silence is the death of a podcast …
Cassandra: I GREW BOOBS! By the time it was time to come home, I was a completely transformed individual. I dressed French, I ate French, I even spoke English with a French accent. Gawd!… I was so pretentious.
Gregor: It worked on us.
Cassandra: I wanted to show everyone how grown-up and sophisticated I was. You should have seen my father the first time he saw me in a bikini.
Del: You looked pretty damn good in a bikini.
Cassandra: And reading Le Petit Prince aloud at the beach? How ridiculous was that?
Gregor: You seem to forget that we were pretty damn full of ourselves at that time, too, being in a band, writing songs, wooing you. It added up to a heady summer.
Cassandra: So much fun! It was so much fun, the three of us!
Del: I don’t know how you chose between us?
Cassandra: I didn’t! You chose, and you inflicted your choice on us!
Del: Now’s a great time for a short break to hear from our proud sponsor of the Old Rockers Podcast.
Gregor: Gee, I’d kind of like to hear your response to Cassandra! (More silence) Ohhhh-kayyyyyy … moving right along. Today’s podcast is supported by Size Matters, the Little Yellow Pill that’s full of big surprises. How’s your love life, Del?
Del: None of your damn business.
Gregor: Of course it’s none of my damn business, but your happiness is my damn business, and I know that robust, virile Old Rockers like you and I are happiest when the groupies are lining up at the stage door.
Del: Whoever wrote this ad copy should be shot.
Gregor: It gets worse … You know, you’re not getting any younger, and—let’s be honest, neither is she–
Cassandra (interrupts): Stop! Why are men such cliches?
Gregor: You realize, I hope, that we didn’t write this ad copy.
Del: We’re just paid zillions of dollars to read it. Supposedly, this is what appeals to the target audience.
Cassandra: Who is the target audience? Eighth graders??
Del: That sounds about right. I may seem all sophisticated and mature on the outside, but all men still have that horny eighth grader living inside.
Cassandra: And have you used this product?
Del: (casually) Oh yeh …
Cassandra: And how did it work?
Del: It didn’t turn me into the chest-thumping beast I was hoping for, but it seemed to help. Gregor, you received the same sample kit I did. Did you try it?
Gregor: (quietly) um-hmmmm.
Cassandra: What did you say?
Gregor: I said “um-hmm”
Cassandra: Is that “YES!?”
Gregor: I guess so.
Cassandra: (incredulous) You used this product without telling me?
Gregor: I didn’t want to say anything in case it didn’t work.
Cassandra: And did it work?
Gregor: Let’s just say there weren’t any complaints. Let’s take this conversation off-line.
Cassandra: You bet we will.
Del: Old Rockers is proudly supported by Size Matters, the little yellow pill that is full of big surprises.
Del: Back to our guest, Cassandra Brewster. You and Gregor have been married, what? 43 years?
Cassandra: Don’t try to change the subject. We had an unbelievably great summer, then, BOOM, one day you break it to us that you’re leaving. Leaving the band, leaving your friends, leaving the state. What was happening in your mind?
Del: Too much. Too much was happening in my mind. That’s the problem. It was everything all mushed together. I was humiliated.
Gregor: Humiliated? By whom.
Del: Plus … I was in love with you, Cassandra.
Gregor: Should I leave the room?
Cassandra: Of course you were. And I was in love with you, but only in love the way you can be when you’re sixteen.
Del: It wasn’t just you. It was Gregor …
Gregor: What’d I do?
Del: It was nothing either of you did. You were nothing but nice to me, which was part of the problem. It was your father, it was Obediah Brown, it was Trudy, it was college, it was the apartment, it was Gloria …
Cassandra: Who was Gloria?
Del: Long story for another time. You go through life and you maintain a certain image. Then something happens … or a bunch of things happen … and you don’t have that image any more. For me that image was as equal of Greg’s in the band, a friendly rival for the hand of the beautiful Cassandra, a musician … suddenly the wheels fell off of that bus.
Cassandra: I guess I see it to some extent now, with decades of hindsight and a lifetime of accumulated wisdom.
Gregor: I took it very personally. I interpreted everything as a rejection of me– a teammate, a bandmate, a songwriting partner, a friends.
Del: It never was a rejection of you. It was confronting the failure of me.
Cassandra: Well, look. We’ve all had years to reflect on this. Let’s move forward!
Gregor: Here, here!
Del: I second that emotion. How does the view look from here, some fifty-odd years in the future.
Cassandra: At this moment things look pretty damn sweet. It’s like you wrote in that rap “thingy” … “The kids are grown and doing fine, from here I see the finish line …” There were all those years when you were incommunicado that I could never have foreseen this situation. It’s not that this has been the storybook romance that it looks like on the surface.
Del: Hum a few more bars of that tune …
Cassandra: We broke up a million times during college.
Gregor: You had all those creepy boyfriends.
Cassandra: What about Anita?
Del: Who’s Anita?
Cassandra: Some little whore he became fascinated with in his Junior year.
Gregor: Cassandra! She was not a little whore!
Cassandra: OK, a big whore–
Gregor: That’s not fair of you …
Del: Now children …
Cassandra: She didn’t look so good when we looked her up on Facebook a while ago.
Gregor: So? She gained a few pounds … And what about Randolph What’s-his-face?
Cassandra: (snorts) That was nothing!
Gregor: Mardi Gras was … nothing?
Del: STOP! Is this something you really want to share with thousands of strangers.
Gregor: She started it!
Del: STOP! (breaking character) Hey, Shep, are we going to be able to edit this out?
(Sal “Shep” Shepard, also wearing headphones, is the podcast engineer): Sure, why don’t we break for five.
(back on set)
Del: You ready? You going to be able to do this?
Gregor: Yeah … that Anita thing still triggers me.
Del: (to Cassandra) How about you?
Cassandra: Yes, the adult Cassandra has re-entered the room. I bet ‘Sythia would never go off like that.
Del: (laughs) She’s pretty laid back, but the girl can have her moments. Actually, it was good for me to see your immature and bitchy side. I’ve gone through life thinking that you and Gregor were both perfect.
Gregor: Cassandra’s much better than perfect.
Del: OK, let’s go. Let’s pick it up from when I ask you how things look from here, fifty years later. Shep … all good? (Shep gives a thumbs-up.) Del: How does the view look from here, some fifty-odd years in the future.
Cassandra: Gregor … as you know all too well… is the world’s most loyal, most dutiful, bestest husband, friend, father, son …
Del (interrupts): In other words … Motherfucker is too good to be true!
Cassandra: Exactly, but being perfect takes its toll. Things catch up to you. There were years when Gregor was a lawyer at this father’s firm, running for public office, and trying to cope with three teenage adolescents when I was afraid he would implode, taking our marriage along with it. That music connection that the two of you maintained was a lifeline.
Gregor: And an inspiration. It saved my life when I chucked the politics, picked up the guitar, and hung out the shingle. I couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t seen you do it at 18. I may have been hurt and frustrated with you, but on the other hand, you were my hero.
Del: You never saw me at my worst.
Gregor: Even when the music thing backfired and you joined the Marines, at least you were doing something with your life, not just drifting with the current like I was.
Gregor: I was no one’s hero, especially not my own.
Cassandra: (changing into a more reflective mode) And now, seeing what’s happened with the whole Old Rockers phenomenon, it’s biblical in terms of its irony and sense of justification.
Gregor: Biblical?
Cassandra: “Biblical” with a small “b.”
Del: We’ve pretty much covered our personal summer of love, then it’s no secret that I shook everyone’s world by turning everything upside down. How did it affect you, personally?
Cassandra: I was shocked, like everyone else, but I wasn’t devastated like Gregor, Billy and Joey Cranston. They had to re-invent themselves … and they did. Gregor just had to go to school, lick his wounds and take a deep breath.
Gregor: As I remember, you barely missed a beat. You even started learning how to play the guitar!
Cassandra: I was 17 … I was just beginning my senior year in high school … I had boobs, and everyone was looking at me differently … I had a boy friend, a college boy, no less … I had a second boy friend off in New York to become a star. This is not the time in life to crawl into your shell.
Gregor: Watching you shine only made my dilemma worse. So did the letters from Del, which seemed like you were rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous. Meanwhile I’m dragging my ass to Freshman lit and bringing my laundry home to Mom on the weekends
Del: Then I came home for the holidays.
Gregor: Yeah … in a Marine uniform!
Del: This was my meteoric trip to the bottom. The only one who knew I was coming was Cassandra.
Cassandra: I knew you were coming home for a few days … I didn’t know you had signed up for the Marines.
Del: Tell us what you remember.
Cassandra: You wrote a letter. You said things had not gone well in New York. Lou Reed told you to fuck yourself. And that was the highlight of your time in New York! You didn’t have anywhere to stay in Providence, because your Mom had married some guy you’d never even met, and had moved to Florida. You only had a few days. You wanted the visit to be a surprise. I talked to Gregor’s mom and dad, and they were glad to offer you a room.
Del: So much happened so quickly. Getting humiliated in New York, the draft letter, the talk with the recruitment officer who offered the choice of two years as cannon fodder versus three years in the nation’s elite fighting corps.
Gregor: I’m coaching Cassandra to do her very first open mike at the Tete a Tete, and who shows up in full regalia, requesting “Soldier Boy.” You could have knocked me over with a feather.
Del: Hit the “Pause” button, please. For the sake of our listeners, can we back up a step. Gregor?
Gregor: Here’s the Cliff Notes version. Two teenagers start playing music. The British Invasion happens. They form a band. Just as they are having a little success, one guy takes off on his own, supposedly to become a star.
Del: Guy fucks up royally, ends up a Marine. Goes to Vietnam and gets traumatized along with millions of other you men. Guy decides to drop out and disappear.
Gregor: Other guy spends years trying to reconnect. Finally does …
Cassandra: Stop! Right there! That’s the natural end-point of this story. Two guys reconcile, bridges are created, and everyone lives happily ever after, right? But that’s not what happens.
Del: What does happen?
Gregor: I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, but I either blame-it-on, or attribute-it-to Cassandra.
Cassandra: Me!! What did I do?
Gregor: You were the one who connected us to the Trinity Square Playhouse.
Cassandra: But what about Drama Dude? Without him there’s no Trinity Square! What about Gwen? Without her there’s no book, no play, no commercials, no … nothing.
Gregor: You’re still the lynch-pin …
Cassandra: You’re going to be the “lynchee” if you …
Del: Now kids … let’s calm down. We’re on the same team here. However, unlikely it was that recognition and commercial happened … it did. And you, Cassandra have witnessed the entire journey … the good, the bad …
Cassandra: … the tedious, the frustrating, the ridiculous …
Del: And, the absurd. As someone who’s seen it all, what does it say to you?
Cassandra: It says that most of us spend our lives chasing the wrong dreams and given the choice between talent and hard work, and good timing and luck, you should always go for the timing and luck. Beware of answered prayers.
Del: But, and here’s the hooker. You never get the choice.
Cassandra: That’s right. You don’t get to choose timing or luck.
Del: You do get to choose lovers, however, and you chose the wrong one.
Gregor: Hello. It’s Gregor. I’m still here.
Cassandra: Shut up. Del and I are having a moment here.
Del: (Moment of silence) And today’s episode is supported by SmallTown USA, the nation’s largest retirement community, located in Yuma, Arizona. Gregor, have you and Cassandra made a retirement plan?
Gregor: Not yet. We’re leaving that for when we get old.
Del: Then you better get going. Have you looked in the mirror recently? Let me ask you a few leading questions. Do you like sunshine? Of course you do. Everyone likes sunshine. Do you still like to party, because cocktail hour starts at 3 pm in SmallTown?
Gregor: Best of all ranchettes and RV lots start at $20,000, with only $1500, that’s hundred, not thousand due at signing. With E-Z payment plans to suit everyone.
Del: What if someone’s credit is not-too-good? I’m asking for a friend. Gregor and I will be playing a week in SmallTown … what is it? Next December, is it?
Gregor: And it won’t be just the two of us. We’re going to be joined by some of the biggest stars of thee 60s and 70s, members of bands like the Left Banke, the Strawberry Alarm Clock, and the Rob Roys.
Del: You can get a FREE PLANNING KIT by calling 1-800-Big-Plan or signing up a SmallTown.com.
Gregor: SmallTown USA, a project of the Del Webb Company.
Del: Thank you to today’s guest, Cassandra Brewster, who’s been an integral part of the Old Rockers team since the Old Rockers were the young rockers.
Cassandra: Little boys, really.
Del: We’ve grown up together.
Cassandra: If not “up” then “old.”
Del: We can leave it at that. Join us next week when out guest is … someone.
Gregor: Let’s just slink off into the sunset.
Cassandra: Sounds like a plan.