Suitably Twisted, the best rock and roll parody band made up of Hallmark writers and editors in the whole, wide world, grew from humble beginnings.
There is a Hallmark event every year called Word Week, a sort of party that the writers and editors throw for the written word. One of the events is the coffeehouse readings, when frustrated poets get to read their frustrated poetry. It’s always a fun event with lots of laughter peppered with pleasant surprise at the quality of the writing. I mean, we all know the folks we work next to everyday are adept at writing greeting cards, but it’s nice to be reminded that they’re also just plain good writers.
He said modestly.
A few years back a Hallmark editor named Jamie had a parody rock song he wanted to share as part of Word Week. Jamie’s a sharp guy, so he realized pretty quickly that background music would be required.
He didn’t have to look far. Turns out he wasn’t the only ex-rock and roller working the cubicles at Hallmark.
He gathered a few other garage band heroes and they headed to his basement to figure out how to back his song. They called themselves Suitably Twisted.
It was huge hit. There is just something inherently fun about watching your co-workers live out their kid dreams. It’s made even more entertaining by the fact that they’re all approximately the same age, and that age is “too old for rock and roll, and old enough to not care about being too old for rock and roll.”
In the years since that initial outing the concept has grown. Now the band solicits parody lyrics from other Hallmarkers and plays them during an hour-long concert during Word Week.
I got in on the act a couple of years ago when Terry, the original drummer, hung up his sticks.
Hallmark gives us a room to rehearse where the noise won’t disturb the folks doing actual work, and we practice once a week or so for the six months or so leading up to Word Week.
Last year the band was asked to play a half-hour set at the annual conference during which Hallmark shop owners come in for several days of meetings about what’s what and what’s new. At one of the evening events, after they stood in line for autographs by Hallmark artists, the retailers got to watch the six of us pretend we were teenagers. It was way cool for us of course, to play on a real stage with a sound guy who miked the drums and balanced the sound. The retailers seemed to enjoy themselves, and many of them reverted to their own youths by jumping up to dance.
We figured it was a one-nighter, and that this year we’d be back to our once a year gig at Word Week.
So we were a little surprised when we got Jamie’s e-mail early in the year.
“Twisted is going to Vegas.”
This year’s conference was to be at the brand new Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas, and Hallmark was going to fly us all out to play.
We were to play for an hour and a half, and we knew just about half an hour’s worth of stuff. And some of those songs were such inside-Hallmark jokes as to be incomprehensible to people who don’t write greeting cards.
We used our weekly practices to learn new parodies, and to do something we’d never done: Learn some actual songs with the original lyrics. We’re all plain, if slightly wrinkled, rock and rollers, so most of the tunes were familiar to most of the band. Several, in fact, were songs I’d played when I was a teen-ager rocking the sock hops of various tiny Pennsylvania towns in various tiny Pennsylvania garage bands all those years ago.
Vegas approached. I think we all figured there would be an e-mail any time along the lines of, “Oh, you thought we were serious about that? Joke’s on you, huh?”
But it didn’t come, and the five of us found ourselves wandering around a huge, gaudy hotel in Vegas, trying not to look like a bunch of Goober Pyle’s.
The fun started at the afternoon sound check. They had rented a cool, sparkly, blue set of drums and hooked microphones all over them. There were sound guys setting up the drums, treating me like a real musician until I let them in on the joke.
When they finished I made a few adjustments to make the drumkit look more like Ringo’s in 1964, then sat with my legs wrapped around the snare. I picked up the sticks. When I tapped the amplified tom-toms, I joined Thor in the ability to create thunder. The snare drum reported with a rifle crack, which I gleefully turned fully automatic with a drum roll. I truly felt in that moment that the drummer’s throne earned its name.
I’m sure the rest of the lads were feeling the same sense of power.
Later we sat in the green room (burnt Siena, actually) off the huge stage in the huge ballroom where 1,000 people were waiting to hear us play. I think we were all trying our best to pretend it wasn’t a completely weird place for us to be, resisting the urge to just laugh out loud. I sensed the ghost of Allen Funt in the room.
I can’t speak for the others, but I used to think I would someday be playing rock and roll in Vegas. When I was a kid, I didn’t so much think it as plan for it. I was that certain that rock and roll stardom was out there waiting for me with open arms holding lighters aloft. Eventually the sledgehammer of time beat that notion out of me. Instead of rock and roll and world tours and screaming fans I have greeting cards and school functions and pets who seem to like me. I’m a happy guy, with no time for regrets.
Playing drums is something I do for fun now. I gotta tell you, friends, it’s never been as much fun as it was backing the boys in Vegas.
Bill was on the far left, smoking leads out of his guitar. Bill is the only actual working musician in the pack. He plays in a Kansas City blues band called Four Fried Chickens and a Coke. Audiences might think Suitably Twisted is OK for a bunch of old guys, but when Bill takes a lead their mouths fall open. At Hallmark he writes for several humor lines.
Next was Dave, who plays rhythm. Dave is almost as big a Beatle fan as I am, and knows more Beatle trivia, but don’t tell him I said so. Dave and I used to be in that other band Dave and I used to be in, playing acoustic versions of songs from the 60s and 70s. He’s an editor for Hallmark’s humor line.
Ben plays keyboards. If we were all castaways on Gilligan’s Island, Ben would be the professor. Jamie always introduces him as the only band member who knows how to read music. That’s not all he knows. Ask him the title to his thesis sometime.
Ben is also a Hallmark editor, for the Classics line.
Jim, on bass guitar, is the Baby Beatle. His red hair tops a boyish face, and he’s the band member who moves around the stage the most. There’s a touch of George M. Cohan in Jim. He didn’t pick up the bass until the day Suitably Twisted started. After that, he picked it up fast.
Jamie is out front, singing. In addition to fronting the band, he keeps us all informed of where we need to be when, and always has a fresh, typed list of what we’re playing, in what order. He also notes what key the song is in, even though he doesn’t play an instrument that needs to be in any key. Jamie is both our leader and our cheerleader. He is the soul of Suitably Twisted.
“I’d like to take a moment to introduce the band,” Jamie says every time we play. Then he turns and says, “Bill, this is Dave. Dave, this is Jim. Jim, this is Ben…”
Ba-dump-bump.
And I’m in the back, hitting things and getting away with it.
After being nervous all day, we all reached a point where we just wanted to get on with it. Maybe it would be great. Maybe it would be a disaster. Either way, we just wanted to know. So the last half hour took a week or so to pass until finally, we walked to our appointed positions. I remembered how to count to four, and we started playing.
The nerves were gone by the end of that first song. After that, it was just fun. I experimented on the strange set of drums, finding the right accents, locating all the sweet spots. After a few parodies we started playing the old rock and roll songs, and the Hallmark store owners in the ballroom began to dance.
I watched from my unique vantage point on risers at the rear of the stage, and thought about how much they looked like older versions of the crowds I used to play for at high school dances when I was a kid.
There were the ones who danced like everyone was watching, with complete abandon, constantly motioning towards those on the sidelines to get up and join them. There were the really good dancers who looked great on the dance floor, and really not-so-good dancers, who just thought they did. There were the shy, hesitant folks who finally let the music loose their inner Travoltas. There were the ones too cool to dance, who sat at their tables pretending the glasses weren’t being rattled by the chords and crashes.
For some of those dancers it was 20 years since high school, for others 25 or, like me, 35. For a few loud minutes, it didn’t matter. They were past their prom, but they weren’t past their prime.
Couples would move back towards their tables as a song ended, then Ben would hammer the first few chords to “Old Time Rock and Roll” or Bill would rip into “Johnny B. Goode” or the guitars would fire up “Satisfaction” and the dancers would claim the floor again.
The music worked its restorative magic on us as well. I pounded the drums like a guy half my age playing like a guy half his age. Bill duck-walked his guitar to the middle of the dance floor. Jim, always the most animated of the band, kicked it into Vegas-drive. Even Ben, behind the piano, seemed at one point to be tapping his foot.
I watched with a touch of sadness as we moved through the song list, like I was 10 again and the lights were going off at the county fair, one ride at a time. The last song crashed and wailed to its climax. We did the encore. The sound crew, who had been anxiously waiting for us old guys to shuffle off the stage, ran on and began tearing equipment down. They had lives to get back to, and we were barring the door.
Sticks were laid down. Amps were turned off. People wandered away. After that there was little to do but bask in the electricity that seemed to still be crackling around the stage.
The six of us formed a circle and took part in a ritual as old as music itself: Confessing our mistakes to each other.
“Did you hear me start that one song out of key?”
“And how about when I was supposed to play that guitar riff at the end and didn’t come in, and the song just hung there?”
“I must have hit a dozen wrong notes.”
“You hit notes? Man, I didn’t know we were supposed to play notes.”
“Well, at least I played flawlessly.”
That last one was me. I was kidding. Big time kidding.
Nobody wanted the evening to end. We chatted with the Hallmarkers from Ireland who had flown into Vegas earlier in the day. We accepted congratulations from people who may or may not have been sincere. Dave’s wife took some pictures.
Finally, just to have something to say, I asked if anyone had gambled.
We answered around the circle, and it turned out that not one of us had wagered anything in Vegas.
But boy did we feel like winners.
So, here’s the thing about Vegas. If you didn’t rent a car and you need to get someplace that isn’t on the Strip, you lose.
My son has recently decided he needs a Hard Rock t-shirt from every town we visit as a family, or every town his mom or I visit on business.
Since I got to come to Vegas on an airplane and stay in a big, fancy hotel while he had to start his first week of grade 5, this seemed fair.
I’m a walker, and I will remain one until I need a walker. After that I’ll be a shuffler. I’ve walked the entire Vegas Strip before. On the internet map, it looked like the Hard Rock Hotel was just a couple of short blocks off the Strip. I decided to hoof it. I’d get the t-shirt for my son and get my day’s exercise. Two birds. One stone. Stuffed squab.
The first time we went to get the boy a Hard Rock t-shirt was in Salt Lake City. It was 104 that day.
So I suppose I shouldn’t even mention the autumnal 101-degree heat in Vegas.
I had waited until the sun burned down behind Ceasar’s Palace to set out. By then it had plummeted to 100. Trying to breathe was like trying to throw oatmeal through a screen door.
The sidewalks were stuffed with sweaty visitors moving from casino to casino, crabbing at their traveling companions to keep up. Every few feet an enthusiastic young man or woman would try to get me to accept a little baseball card. Except the cards didn’t feature ball players wearing uniforms, but young women wearing not much. You could quickly put together a deck of these cards, walking down the Vegas strip, and the deck would be stacked.
First-timers to Vegas accept the cards with a grin, then look at them and drop them to the sidewalk. Which makes me sad. Not only are the poor girls being exploited, they’re actually being stepped on. Probably not what they planned when they answered the “Professional Modeling Agency Seeks Eager, Attractive Young Women” advertisement.
Many of the folks parting around me on the congested Strip had the same expression. It seemed to me they were thinking, “There’s supposed to be something fun here? Where is it?”
I’m of an age where I still think Vegas is supposed to be a hip, swingin’ town, where Frank and Sammy would sip martinis and dress in open tuxedo shirts with untied ties. Instead, it’s the people who used to come into my little town for the fair every summer, riding their kids in the back of the truck. There are too many of them in Vegas all the time, tattooed and unbuttoned and pushed-up, dragging bored kids behind them. Some will go home with more money than they came with, but not many.
Still, they afford the Strip a kind of safety. I’m still enough of a rube that I keep a hand on my wallet all the time in strange cities, but I don’t worry if I’m walking on the Strip. There are no dark places there, thanks to the millions of light bulbs, and no deserted spots, thanks to gamblers and gawkers.
I passed the folks waiting for the fountains to erupt at the Bellagio, then passed the little Eiffel Tower at the Paris. All of my clothes were sweat-damp and I had gone through a liter of water. I was hot, but I was getting there.
I reached the point in the Strip where I needed to turn and head off towards the Hard Rock.
As I mentioned, it looked on the map like a short distance. I look like a guy with common sense too. Things aren’t always what they seem.
The further I panted and wheezed and perspired down the road, the darker and weirder it got. When I got past the first block, it seemed as though the safety of the Strip was miles behind. I began mentally weighing my son’s desire to have a t-shirt against his desire to have a dad. Still, I touristed on. I had come this far, sweated this much. Plus, there was only one block to go, probably. It wasn’t looking much like the map.
I reached the end of what I thought was the second block. No Hard Rock. It was too dark to tell if it was just up ahead, past where the sidewalk had been dug up and the path went past the big, dark construction site.
I stood for a moment, trying to suck in liquid air, and squinted through the night down the street. I saw a couple of staggering forms. The scales tipped.
I decided to go the following day instead, and to make the entire trip in dry, hot daylight.
Next day at 4 a.m. I headed into the blast furnace. I thought the trip would take about an hour. I decided to save my sweat for those final two blocks off the Strip, so I took the monorail. It’s fun, but it’s not fast. To a large extent, that’s because of where they put the stops. To exit the Vegas monorail and get back onto the Vegas Strip, you have to walk through a corn maze of carpet that leads to and through some hotel’s casino. It’s vital that Vegas remind you at every turn that – Guess what friends? – you can gamble here! Look to the right! Look to the left! Look up into the mirrored ceilings! See all those happy, slot-coaxing folks? Join in the fun!
And as bemused as I was by the ploy, I was still at least a little relieved by it. I was still in air-conditioning, after all, and I knew the devil’s hot breath was waiting just outside the doors.
I stumbled down the first block towards a searing sun. Then the second block. I still hadn’t come to the cross street for the Hard Rock, so I kept going. Past the big construction site. Through the hot dust where there was no sidewalk. Finally, still a ways off in the distance, I saw the familiar neon circle. Hard Rock dead ahead. Me almost dead behind. I was pretty sure it wasn’t a mirage since, well, that was back on the Strip.
They had a shirt in my son’s size, which I bought. And Hard Rock drumsticks, which he collects. Then, the miracle. They had a free shuttle out front that would take me and a herd of other aging hippies back to the Strip.
I made my way back via shuttle, down the Strip, through yet another casino to the monorail station, across a frying street to the shuttle for the Wynn, and into blessed air conditioning again.
I had been gone three hours and had a sun headache thundering in my skull.
But I had my son’s shirt.
Jackpot.
I’m not a Vegas kind of guy.
Vegas is all about the gambling, the glitz, the gals in the topless ice skating review.
I don’t often gamble, unless you count some of the puns I dare to say out loud. Sitting in front of a smirking slot machine isn’t my cup of tokens. I always find myself thinking about the Beatle CDs or World War II books or multi-grain pancakes I could have bought with the money I just spit down a rathole.
As for glitz, my aversion to it is well known by all who well know me. It’s one of the many reasons I hated disco. Sure, I wouldn’t mind owning a piece of the light bulb concession on the Strip. I’m sure some very good fellows take care of it.
And I always think those poor girls at the ice-skating review must get awfully chilly.
So, I’m not a Vegas kind’a cat. This bright light city doesn’t set my soul, set my soul on fire.
Having said that, I must add that sitting on the 18th floor of a brand new hotel, staring through a floor-to-ceiling window with a view down the Strip as the sun goes down and the lights come up, is a truly fine way to spend an evening.
I’ve often said that one of the great things about being a greeting card writer at Hallmark is that if I just keep my head down and write the little jokes, interesting things happen. This is one of those things in the spades they’re dealing at the omni-present casinos along the strip.
Left to my own devices, I probably wouldn’t ever come to Vegas unless my wife wanted to visit sometime. I’d much rather spend a week in the woods or on a cruise ship. I’m hopeful that eventually someone will figure out how to get a cruise ship into the woods.
So the three times I’ve been to Sin City so far have all been work-related, but probably not the way you think. Most likely not much about writing Shoebox cards for a living is the way you think. Sorry.
The first time I came to the land of loose slots and fake breasts was about 16 years ago, during my first few years as a Shoebox writer. My boss thought that since the cards were selling like funny little hotcakes, we should also try writing funny little joke books. We were writing lots of jokes anyway, so we wondered if we couldn’t just repackage them and achieve the American dream of making additional money with little additional work.
So I got to come to Vegas to attend a big national book convention and find out what was happening in humor books.
Here’s what I remember about that trip: It was hot. Over 100. Every day. And you know how everybody says, “Yeah, but it’s a dry heat?” That’s crap. Hot crap. 100 is hot.
I never went to the Strip. Not once. I had one day off from walking around looking at books, so I rented a car and drove in the desert for a while. There was a horse there. I didn’t know what to call him.
I got out of my car at one point and listened to the wind blowing across the nothing. Desert wind is impressive and not a little scary. I could understand why artists move there to paint. The combination of lights and subtle shades is stunning. I saw a snakeskin withering by the side of the road.
Then I drove to Hoover Dam and managed not to fall or jump in.
As a matter of pure stubbornness, I never put a single penny, nickel, dime, quarter or silver dollar into a slot.
Hallmark sent me to Vegas again about a year ago as part of the Writers on Tour program. A couple of writers go to a city with a couple of Hallmark handlers who make sure we don’t get too full of ourselves and start saying really dumb stuff. My “business” on this second business trip, then, was to talk to groups of people in coffee shops and libraries about how lucky I am to get to write greeting cards for a living. The other writer and I got to watch an entire hour-long live TV show being produced, just so we could be around to be on camera during the last couple of minutes.
We stayed at the Paris, a very cool hotel on the Strip with a big, fake Eiffel Tower in front of it.
Interesting thing about Vegas: Either people are embarrassed to be here, or the town itself is embarrassed to be here. I can’t think of any other explanation for the way they always try to make you think you’re someplace else. In Vegas, the rule seems to be, “No matter where you go, there you aren’t.”
You’re not in Vegas pumping the kids’ college funds down a slot. You’re in Paris! See! There’s that big tower thing! You’re in Rome! Look! It’s the Coliseum! You’re at the Circus! Circus! No, wait…you’re on a pirate ship! No, wait…you’re at the Pyramids!
I’m not nearly as sanctimonious about gambling as I used to be, so I dropped a couple of coins in a couple of machines. Of course, saying you “dropped a couple of coins” is like saying you “bought a new album.” The slots mostly use credit cards now, which is better because it’s not like real money.
My son was 10 when I came to Vegas that time. I thought about bringing him because one of the hotels has an aquarium with sharks. (You’re not in Vegas! You’re at a coral reef!)
Really glad I didn’t. Most of the kids I saw in Vegas were too hot, too tired and too bored.
Still, I though maybe I’d teach him a little something about gambling.
I told him I was taking 10 bucks with his name on it, and whatever I won from it at the slots was his to keep. After I lost nine dollars in less than three minutes, I called him on the phone.
“OK, Pal,” I said. “It’s your choice. I’ll put this last buck in the machine and let ‘er spin, or I’ll bring it home and you’ll be guaranteed a buck.”
He chose the spin. I don’t blame him. For one thin dollar he bought a full four seconds as a millionaire.
And now Hallmark has sent me to Vegas again, this time to the sparkling new Wynn casino and hotel.
My, you should pardon the expression, “business trip” this time is for an even more unbelievable reason. I know I still don’t believe it.
Don’t worry. I’ll get to it in a little while.
