A Dream About Lightning Bugs

by Ben Folds

  Clothing with words printed on it and bumper stickers weren’t so common until the 1960s and, in our case, of course, the 1970s. And when that trend reached our parts, many went way overboard just to prove we were up on the times. The bumpers and often entire rear panels of the boy girls’ vans were plastered with funny stickers that looked as though they’d all been purchased at the same place and applied on the same day. There were some really good ones, like NORTH CAROLINA, FIRST IN PAVEMENT—LAST IN EDUCATION (a play on our state motto on license tags, FIRST IN FLIGHT). VISUALIZE WHIRLED PEAS. And who could forget the classic EAT A BEAVER, SAVE A TREE. I actually didn’t know what was meant by that, but I laughed along with my parents anyway.

  Soon a natural-food store appeared, which attracted pale, thin, unhealthy-looking ladies with long, braided gray hair, oozing of garlic. It was like a self-conscious Southern theme park version of Haight-Ashbury. I never saw these types outside of this particular shop. Did they change back into their street clothes in the bathroom when they left? There were buckets of oats, roots, and little glass tinctures with handwritten scribble. The word “mucus” was used. A lot. And I once heard a friend’s father introduce my friend’s mother to someone in the natural-food store as his “lover.” Were they trying to be gross?

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  The hippiest of hippies was an art teacher who knew that I was into music. She was kind enough to invite me to a party where she would be singing backup in a real live rock band! And so, at twelve years old, I was dropped off into this bizarre scene where teachers I’d known as Ms. or Mr. So-’n’-So by day were transformed into extras on I Dream of Jeannie or Warren Beatty in Shampoo, stumbling with their drinks through loud music and thick cigarette smoke. The backup-singer chicks for this real live rock band, who all seemed to be Forsyth County public school teachers, were swaying in a sort of lazy belly-dance type movement, staring into space, and singing nasal out-of-tune harmonies into the same mic behind a shirtless man who looked like he’d been rubbed down with baby oil, sporting a massive Afro and bandana. I later found out he was the principal of a neighboring school. A few of the female teachers I knew from school disappeared behind doors and later resurfaced, hair and clothes disheveled and giggling, on the arms of dudes with long hair and leather vests, no shirts beneath. The only male teacher I recognized was a driver’s ed teacher in the upper school. The smell of skunk swirled while the band played a song called “Stormy Is Force.” It was definitely their “hit.” The band was called…you guessed it, Stormy.

  Stormy is force!

  Stormy is force and thunder!!

  All the while, nothing that could be seen through the heavy fog of this fake-wood-paneling home soirée would have indicated it was 1979 or that “My Sharona” could be heard playing from every corner on the rest of the planet. In this groovy pad it was the “Summer of Love,” and not in a masquerade party kind of way. It all seemed very new to them, and to me. And I didn’t see much of Mrs. So-’n’-So that night at that swinging teachers’ party, but I did learn she was a damn awful singer. As Stormy’s thunder squeaked through a Peavey tower all night, I borrowed the phone to call for rescue, by airlift if necessary. I waited for my mother at least an hour outside on the cul-de-sac. Had I known then that the literal translation for the French “cul-de-sac” was “the ass or bottom of the bag,” it would have given form to what I suspected Mrs. So-’n’-So was seeing up close at that very moment “backstage,” behind a thin bedroom door. I’d had my fill of the sixties that night. I was done with the Summer of Love. I wanted to go back to the future and watch Welcome Back, Kotter with the rest of the seventies.

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  Obviously, the internet has closed the geographic gap, and we all get the memo about current trends more or less at the same time now. But we still pass around mannerisms, symbols, and styles from one side of our culture and globe to the other, adopting them at varying rates, and applying our own interpretations. The music and style of the 1960s in San Francisco was all about rebellion. In 1970s’ North Carolina, we were finally just conforming to what had already been established. We were saying, It’s okay. We get it now and we’ll get on board.

  I try not to jump to conclusions about anything I feel I’ve seen or heard before. I try not to write off music my kids play me as “throwback” even if it closely resembles something that I thought was new when I was a kid. Sure, I want to put on the seventies’ English band the Jam and say, See! Your new little punk bands are just shiny versions of this! But I’d be wrong. To diminish the new as nothing more than a rehash is a mistake. I’m reminded of Gertrude Stein’s belief that “There is no such thing as repetition. Only insistence.” Meaning: You can do or say something a second and third time, but it will not be the same experience again. Because the first occurrence, utterance, or expression of an idea has now altered the environment. So you can’t repeat, not literally, but you can insist: A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose…The youth might co-opt a symbol, but it will likely have a different meaning the next time around, one that probably flies over the heads of the older generation. Hell, it was my generation who decided it would be fun if “bad” meant “good.” As in, “that’s one bad motherfucker.”

  We pass the same symbols down from generation to generation, and they migrate from place to place, as the meaning morphs along the way. We’ve all witnessed the journey of an artistic innovation that originates with a hip-hop group, before the idea is eaten by the indie rockers five years later, soon to be aped and sanitized by the corporate rockers, and ultimately wrung of its irony by Christian bands, a year ahead of its hipster revival. What used to be an embarrassing hole in the jeans of someone who couldn’t afford new ones is now being marketed to rich people who are willing to pay big bucks for that hole. A hole is a hole is a hole is a hole.

  I believe that when a piece of music (or any art) has been set free and released into the world, it doesn’t matter if it was dressed in bell-bottoms or a jumpsuit. If its aim is true, if its heart is in the right place, if it’s chock full of meaning, feeling, and intent, it might—just might—survive the journey over decades and cultural fault lines. Just not for the reasons anyone might have predicted. Writers, like parents, must accept that their creations will take on lives of their own.

  BUT FOR THE GRACE OF MY MUSIC TEACHERS

  A FEW YEARS AGO, I volunteered to be a substitute teacher for my kids’ seventh-grade music class. Just for a day. That’s all I had to do. I knew most of the kids in the class anyway. It should have been a breeze.

  It wasn’t.

  If I didn’t fully appreciate the public school music teachers of my youth before 11 A.M. that day, by noon I damn well did. As I stood before the class, a lifetime of experience performing in front of people went straight out the window. The forty-five-minute affair was absolutely exhausting. Kids, 1–Folds, 0. Animals, every one of them! I am no music teacher and I bow to each and every man and woman who is. I especially bow to the ones who can see that these children are not animals and recognize which ones could use a push, or a hand, like I did when I was younger.

  Teaching school is by nature a one-size-fits-all sort of thing—that’s just necessity. It’s not “man-to-man defense,” as they say in basketball. It’s zone—there’s only one of you defending against God knows how many rat bags. What strikes me looking back at my own childhood is how many of my teachers still managed to take on each student one at a time. How many of them managed to make it feel like one-on-one. These teachers that knew my name out of a school full of kids recognized that I loved music, encouraged and inspired me, reprimanded me when necessary, and kept me on a path that led me to a career in music.

  I don’t think most rock musicians appreciate the impact their music teachers had on their artistry. At least in my day, it just wasn’t cool for a rock star to shout out to his music teacher. Rockers were supposed to be completel
y self-taught, rolling out of bed one day with messy hair and a bong, and suddenly—boom—they were the shit. I tore through music magazines at the 7-Eleven when I was a teenager to see if Gene Simmons of Kiss might give me some clue as to how he became Gene Simmons, or, more important, how he became a musician. Did he attend band camp? I did—was that okay? Should I not admit that? Did he know what key “Calling Dr. Love” was in? I did! Was that okay?

  Tenth-grade disciplinary slips (one of many). Apologies to my teachers.

  I urge my recording-artist homies to have their own music-teacher appreciation week. Go to bat for the teachers, for their programs, their pay, and music education in general. Unless you really believe you learned nothing from them. In which case, go to bat for marijuana laws.

  This is my thank-you to the music teachers who made a difference in my life. Not all of my teachers were good, of course, but we’ll ignore the handful of shitty and mean ones. To the shitty and mean ones, I’d say, “You know who you are,” but the problem is you probably don’t.

  All of my K–6 teachers at Moore Laboratory School. The teachers at my elementary school would regularly give us a break from our studies to teach us how to clap in rhythm, showing us musical notes on the chalkboard. Even though they were just regular teachers, not music teachers, they would turn the classroom into a music lesson for a few minutes. For some of us, it taught us the joy of making music in unison with other kids. For others, it was just a brain rest, like playtime. And we all learned basic rhythmic notation:

  Tah = half note (or, for us, long)

  Tee = quarter note (or, for us, short)

  The teacher would write the actual note, as a rhythm, on the chalkboard, along with “Tah” or “Tee.” We would clap along on the floor:

  “Tah Tee-Tee / Tah Tah / Tee-Tee Tah / Tah Tah /”

  That’s 4/4 time—always adds up. Easy. Great music program, seriously. It required no more than a floor to sit on and a chalkboard and, most important, a teacher who knew just enough music to lead it.

  Mrs. Rushing, elementary school band teacher. My first school music teacher was Mrs. Rushing. She noticed that this skinny-ass kid was definitely in need of something to sink his teeth into. She pulled me aside in third grade and suggested I take up an instrument, even though band didn’t normally start until fifth grade. She encouraged me to study at home with a book she’d provided, and she said she’d check up on my progress periodically after school. If I practiced the whole year, I might be able to join the school concert band in fourth grade! She even drove me to the local music store with a broken snare drum, where I got to help the music-store man fix the instrument in the back room. The snare stayed at school, so I practiced at home with two sticks and a basketball. I got through a year’s worth of Mrs. Rushing’s tests in less than a month, came in one afternoon and performed a perfect buzz roll on the snare drum. She put me in the concert band in third grade. My other studies improved, and I felt way better about myself. Yay for Mrs. Rushing. She didn’t have to take the time to get a little jackass on track.

  John “Chick” Shelton, junior high jazz-band director. My next amazing music teacher was Mr. Shelton, but even the students called him “Chick.” The music building of Wiley Magnet Middle School in Winston-Salem is now named after him. Chick was a round and rosy ball of energy, who probably had gone gray in his twenties. He had played trumpet in the U.S. Army Field Band years ago, before touring professionally in big bands. He was a straight-up jazzer with some street cred, having seen all kinds of crazy shit on the road, and he had an awesome sense of humor. He took approximately zero shit.

  His Wiley Junior High Jazz Band was famous. He had this bunch trained within an inch of their lives. They rocked The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson theme song and the James Bond theme too. You have to understand, this was off the chain back in this era. A student band performance was always some Sousa and out-of-tune children’s wind ensemble adaptations of Dvorˇák or Tchaikovsky. Not that interesting to a kid.

  The finale of Chick’s student jazz-band show, which I first saw in fifth grade, when they toured our elementary school, was the drum-set solo. It was the greatest thing I’d ever seen. The drummer froke out (past tense of “frokar,” v.: “to freak”). Fireworks on the toms! We grade-schoolers also froke, like we were seeing the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. I was determined to be the Drum-Set God too when I finally got to seventh grade.

  But unfortunately I would have to audition against the heavyweight champion of all Wiley Jazz Band history. Wade Culbreath, the incumbent eighth-grade drumming legend, was the best kit player that Chick had ever seen come through the school. Damn him and all his talent and hard work! At thirteen years old, he was already as good as most pros. His dad led the local professional working big band, and Wade had probably learned to crawl with sticks in his tiny hands. Wade is now the principal timpanist for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and taught for years at UCLA. So, in seventh grade, I stepped up to audition against the master, got my ass kicked, and went home with my tail between my legs.

  But Chick encouraged me all year as I sat on the sidelines. He gave me listening lists, things to practice, and let me come to some rehearsals, even letting me fill in for Wade when he was absent. I learned a thing or two watching a prodigy such as Wade up close. And at rehearsals Chick didn’t give Wade a free pass. He made him work for it. Kindly. He called Wade “Dumbhead!” He threatened to throw things at him, busted him for rushing, and so on—but always with a smile. Witnessing this, I actually felt a little relieved I had a year to prepare for my turn in jazz band. I wasn’t ready in seventh grade.

  The next year, I’d improved quite a bit, and that Wade bastard moved on to the next school to terrorize his senior competition. I became the Wiley Jazz Band drummer, and the first rehearsal began with “Ben Folds, you dumbhead—you’re slowing the whole outfit down with your damn sock cymbal!” Chick used antiquated words like “sock cymbal” instead of calling them “hi-hats” like everyone else in the twentieth century. If it was the sixties in most of North Carolina, in Chick’s band room it was the fifties. Hi-hats/sock cymbals are that pair of cymbals next to the snare, which can be operated with a foot pedal. He also called the drum set a “trap kit.” “Dumbhead! If you’re gonna play the trap kit southpaw, get here early enough to turn it around!” I still use “trap kit” and “southpaw.”

  Chick retired after my eighth-grade year, and later, when I was in high school, he called on me to write horn arrangements for the Tony DiBianca Band, a professional local jazz group he was in, built around an electric accordion. Certainly they couldn’t actually have used the garbage I wrote for them. It wasn’t very good. But I had to copy each part by hand, transpositions and all, and get it in on time. Chick paid me for my time and went through the charts to show me what wasn’t working. He was still teaching in retirement. He couldn’t help it.

  Years later, in 2011, Chick attended my induction into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame. He and his wonderful wife had kept up with my every career move. The ceremony was delayed so that Chick, in his declining health, could make the trip one step at a time from the parking lot to his seat, smiling the whole way. It is not hyperbole to say that I wouldn’t have been there if it hadn’t been for him. He passed away in 2014.

  Chuck Burns, senior high school music director. Chuck was one hip band teacher. We’d listen to my cassettes of new music after school and he would provide some really great perspective on the current music I loved. He taught me to listen to music for more than its fashion sense, by recognizing the connection between all the different eras and styles. If I’d introduce him to, say, the Clash, he’d point me to some Bob Marley, or even some gospel jazz to show me how much more similar these styles were than I’d thought. He facilitated my application to the University of Miami after I played him an album by the Dixie Dregs, a sort of Sou
thern fusion jazz outfit who’d graduated from Miami’s jazz program.

  Minnie Lou Raper, senior high school orchestra director. Yes, that’s her name—get used to it. Even I was able to. Mrs. Raper took our high school orchestra out of town constantly for competitions and concerts and insisted our high school take orchestra seriously. The marching band had always gotten the most attention, but Mrs. Raper encouraged me to focus on the orchestra instead. She also suggested that I audition for as many things outside of my high school as I could, so that if I wanted to apply for music school one day, I’d have a solid résumé. I followed her advice and piled on loads of first-chair regional orchestral percussionist positions, competition ribbons, and so forth. And, yes, it did come in handy.