the New Pantagruel

My Faith Is In The Rock And My Name Is On The Roll

by John Paul Davis

friend of mine has a habit of inviting me to accompany him on what he advertises as “a quick run over to” a given merchant we both frequent; the “quick run;” always morphs into a Mammoth Shopping Expedition which lasts hours and usually involves a meal. I rarely make any purchases on such trips; in general, I’m no good at shopping for shopping’s sake, since I most often only buy something when I know what I want and where to get it. I will, at times, carry a few items for potential purchase around the store with me, watching my friend try on, taste, smell, or listen to the various products he’s sampling, but I almost always return the items to their shelves before we leave.

Crucifixion at Barton Creek Mall by Jim Janknegt

Sometimes, though, I’m wise enough to remember I won’t buy anything, and I spend my time browsing or proposing to my friend that he buy something absurd or wholly unsuited for him. This is always much more fun than buying anything for myself; I have made quite an art of it, and will spend considerable energy finding the most useless or offensive products for my friend.

It was such a quest that led me to the soft-edged, bulging cardboard box of cassette tapes in the Village Outlet (a thrift store). I was hoping for an old Vanilla Ice cassingle or perhaps an entire album by Debbie Gibson, but for the most part I found blank cassettes onto which had been recorded various pop rappers; there were many, many copies of Puff Daddy albums from that distant time before he changed his name to P. Diddy, and albums by various “original gangstas,” but little that was not dubbed from something else. The Scott Wesley Brown album was in the bottom of the box, flanked on all sides by sucka MCs enshrined by Maxell.

The cassette itself was a sort of overeager electric blue color chosen without regard (or with blatant disregard) for the fact that it clashed with the queasy royal blue of the cover which, in the minimalist fashion of the 70s, contained no information at all save for the artist’s name, the album name, and the song listing. Who played on the album, where it was recorded, who Mr. Wesley Brown would like to acknowledge and thank, who produced the album, or who was responsible for the photo of Mr. Wesley Brown standing on a beach in a Hawaiian shirt and bug-eyed spectacles is all information lost to the ages. This was most definitely a record from the mid seventies; Mr. Wesley Brown sports, in the cover photo, a white man’s afro and a watch larger than some cell phones. I admit envy of his Hawaiian shirt. The album’s name is “I’m Not Religious, I Just Love The Lord.” I am certain I have seen bumper stickers expressing the same sentiment.

My friend, on being presented with the cassette, whoops with delight; the find even elicits celebratory swearing. He calls the cassette “hot,” like so: “That is HOT, man.” He is not being ironic. He really likes it. It is worth sixty cents to him, which in the economy of thrift store shopping, amounts to high praise. He pops it into his car’s tape deck when we leave. The cassette’s previous owner was kind enough to rewind the tape before making a gift of it to Village Outlet. It starts, however, on side two, so we miss the title track and instead are treated to “Dance,” which expresses SWB’s determination to “dance like David.” I have to explain the metaphor to my friend, who knows who King David is, but wasn’t familiar with the dancing.

“Like” is an adverb of sweeping scope; I deflate my friend’s astonishment at the thought of SWB dancing in the streets wearing nothing but thick-rimmed glasses and a bulky watch by pointing out that I think he probably intends “like” to mean “just as.” We agree, however, that it would be far, far cooler if SWB would indeed have danced naked in the streets, but my friend observes that if he were going to, he’d need a different soundtrack.

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