_____ SPACE KITTY BLUES _____ pat mAcdonald Copyright © 1999-2012 by pat mAcdonald All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Printed in the United States of America Fifth Printing, 2013 ISBN 978-X-XX-XXXXXX-X Cover art, book design & inside photos by pat mAcdonald Front cover image: video still from “Of Light” by Hector Morgan Purgatory Hill Holiday Music Motel 30 N. 1st Ave. Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235 For more information go to: www.spacekittyblues.com Contents vii…..……….Preface 1……………..Intro 12……………A Tall Tale (Chapters 1-33) 198………….Epilogue (Chapter 33 1/3) 202………….Lyrics Calle Pelayo, facing Plaza Cataluña (left) and Las Ramblas (right) Preface n early 1999 I was living in Barcelona, writing and recording songs for the album Begging Her Graces, Ischeduled for releas e later that year on the German indie label, Ulftone. “Space Kitty Blues” was track ten. I hadn’t envisioned it as material for a book or as a retro 80s “hit” by a band called FutureX. It was just a quirky little ditty about the elusiveness of inspiration. The track didn’t scream “eighties”—I had to add sampled eighties- sounding drum hits later to retro-ize the production and make this book’s premise plausible. Back then, I was signed to Miles Copeland’s publishing company, Illegal Songs. The deal not only paid monthly advances but also granted me the right to refuse the use of my songs in commercials. This was an unusual contract provision for a relatively minor songwriter. Aside from “The Future’s So Bright…” my song catalog was not a big mover, so I didn’t have much clout. The right-of-refusal was hard won, requiring certain royalty concessions on my end. It was also painful to enforce. I refused offers routinely—a hundred thousand here, a half million there—and the reaction was never pretty. In turning down this “easy” money, it seemed my little aversion to advertisements was taking food from the mouths of all the children of the entire music industry. It was as if music itself, like all media, had grown wholly dependent on ad dollars for sustenance and the only way to keep it alive was to sell my soul—or at least a chunk of it. Two meetings that took place in 1998 played key roles in the motivation behind this book. One of them was with a publisher who was interested in signing me as soon as my contract with Illegal ran out. Ulf Zick, the head of Ulftone set it up. The publisher flew to Barcelona and paid for lunch, ostensibly to court me as a prospective signee but all he ended up talking about was how great commercials could be for an artist’s career. I tried to keep it lighthearted. Needless to say, after the guy left I never heard from him again. The other meeting was with a writer from U.S. News & World Report. He was researching for a piece called “Shake, Rattle, and Please Buy My Product!” about songs in advertising. (It’s searchable online.) He’d heard of this “vagabond” who refused large sums of money and wanted to find out why. Actually, in 1972, I had written a couple of one-minute radio jingles for a local (Madison, WI) clothing store in exchange for clothes, but after hearing them played over and over again on the local station I regretted doing it. Later, when I saw Lou Reed and his “Walk On The Wild Side” in a TV spot for Honda, I swore if I ever had a hit song it would never be used in a commercial. But I knew I couldn’t answer the journalist’s questions without sounding judgmental toward those who do allow their songs to be used in commercials, so I just complained, "I'm constantly feeling like somehow I have to justify my choice to people." Space Kitty Blues is, among other things, an attempt to find that justification, to articulate a plausible answer to “why”—at least for myself—and perhaps to provide some thought provoking amusement for others. Intro utobiographical fiction can be a slippery slope. Down near the bottom one might find a comfy Aplace to wallow. If I’ve found it, I hope I haven’t lingered there too long. My real goal was not to paint a disguised or glamorized version of my life but rather to imagine what might have happened if certain things had been different. Space Kitty Blues is, at its heart, a big “What if…?” Without indulging or denying the ego, I can honestly say this story sprang more from morbid curio- sity than from self-infatuation. I tried to make it easy to follow but it might be kind of confusing at first without some supplemental info. In the earlier stages of the writing I assumed readers would already know certain things about me. This arrogance can be attributed to occupational narcissism, egged on by a brief brush with notoriety. My five minutes in the pop spotlight were more recent at the time. Barely five years had passed since Timbuk3 appeared on Late Night with Conan O’Brian (1995) so I saw no need for an intro. Haha. Twelve years later, having achieved a far greater degree of anonymity, I see the need. In Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin where I live, people in bars still ask me, “Aren’t you the guy who did that song, I Wear My Sunglasses at Night?” “Uh… no, that’s Corey Hart...” Even some close acquaintances know little of my past. They—and closer friends too—might assume by surface resemblance that this book is a thinly veiled memoir. It’s more the opposite: a thickly memoired veil. 1 To eliminate confusion—or at least to illuminate places where mystery serves no purpose—I should point out that it’s the similarities between me and my protagonist that gave him life, but it’s the differences that make him interesting. Without ruining the story, a few of these similarities and differences can be spelled out here. We’re both children of the space age who grew up in Green Bay, Wisconsin, went to Catholic grade school and caught the “mad scientist” bug early on (we were nerds). Religious skeptics, fascinated with cause & effect yet lacking the discipline for hard science, we found our true calling in the mad science of music and art. Our baby brother suffered spinal meningitis. We became song- writers who fronted bands that had one radio hit in the eighties. We moved to Spain after our respective bands broke up and American solo projects proved problematic. During a trip back home to Wisconsin, we met a girl named Katherine… A few noteworthy differences: I’ve always used my given name; Matt apparently changed his at some point. My experience in Spain centered around music; Matt’s, not so much. My preferred writing tools are pen, paper, and computer; Matt’s is a portable typewriter. Matt’s hit song became a TV commercial; mine did not. Matt’s brother died in infancy; mine at age 36 (the year before I began writing this book). Other differences are seen as the story unfolds. Some are matters of degree—he’s a little lazier, definitely more of an asshole (or so I like to believe). Another difference probably worth mentioning is that Matt’s band, FutureX, seems to have had a shorter run of recording than Timbuk3. There’s no clear mention of a follow-up album. Apparently they never made one. Timbuk3 made a bunch of albums and I’ve done nine since the breakup (seven solo and two as Purgatory 2 Hill). Matt’s story is more the classic “chew ‘em up, spit ‘em out” record biz cliché—with a little twist. Matt lives in an alternate universe, an offshoot of mine, shot from a life-or-death moment in our shared distant past. That moment is touched upon in the book but not delved into. Equally sloughed over is the issue of anorexia, a disorder Matt seems to believe is akin to spiritual enlightenment. Although the story is mostly fiction, most of the characters are based on people I’ve known. Some scenes and conversations are taken near- ly verbatim from life—I made them fit the story—but most are complete fabrications. Please assume that any- thing one might see as libelous or self incriminating is totally made up. I can’t recall exactly when the idea for this story hit me but I remember how the air smelled in Barcelona at the time—like super-concentrated life with a hint of de- cay. Near the turn of the millennium, everything felt like history in the making. Even the most trivial details of my largely inconsequential existence seemed important. I was continually amazed at the toxic beauty of my sur- roundings and wanted to document everything. A good hangover in a foreign town does wonders for ones work ethic. Previously I’d written nothing longer than a song lyric. Suddenly I was hell-bent on writing a novel. Following the end of a mostly successful 18-year mar- riage and a subsequent series of brief flings, I think I was trying to prove I could still handle commitment. My post- Timbuk3 solo career was floundering—in Europe there was some interest but the U.S.