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"Oh...so you're gonna peanut, huh?"

"Yeah."

--lyrical excerpt from "I Guess I'll Peanut", track 10 of "Sluggo!"

Finally, it's done.

"It", in this case, could mean several things, all noteworthy in their own respects. "It" could mean the new Mike Keneally and Beer For Dolphins album "Sluggo!", which was mastered for the second and final time on September 23rd, 1997. Or, "it" could mean the first draft of my novel, "Eleven Is A Magic Number", which, as you know from Act 24 1/2's AddEndDumb (yet another genius Chatfield title), was completed on September 21st.

Yes, "it" could be either of those things. But for me, I think that the "it" in "it's done" most accurately refers to this abortion of a summer that I just endured. I know, I know--I did say in the last semi-Act that I wouldn't be bitching and moaning about how awful this particular smog-season was over here in Bellerland, but I changed my mind. Why? Because now, now that "it's done", I can look back on it with a bit of humor. So before I go into what is sure to be a properly-lengthed LOB (we've got a lot of ground to cover, folks), I think I'll lay out a little timeline-of-events for you all. Remember to laugh somewhere along the way.

June 6: I'm promoted to Customer Service Manager at SWR.

Approximately June 15: Sexpot roomie Joanne announces that, on 9/1/97, she's moving in with a friend of hers coming out from Boston.

Approximately June 20: Discussions begin between me and The Executive Producer of the LOB, Robert Beller (Dad), concerning the fate of our joint venture--a 1993 Eagle Summit Wagon DL which we leased starting 9/93. The term of the lease expires 9/1/97. Options include the following: buyout of lease and keep; buyout of lease and sell privately; trade-in towards newer car; return to dealer and pay overmileage penalty.

Early July: Unable to find a roommate among my friends, I enlist the service of Roommate Matchers. I receive one solid call, from a guy named Len. He sounds cool. We meet and make preliminary financial arrangements.

July 8: I record "Christmas Time Is Here" for Steve Vai's track on the upcoming G3 Christmas album, "Merry Axe-mas" (nice title, guys). More on this later.

Approximately July 10: The Eagle Summit goes in for a checkup. Mechanic sez: "This transmission has about ten to fifteen thousand miles left on it, tops." After further consultation with the Executive Producer, the decision is made: buyout of lease, trade-in towards newer car.

Approximately July 15: Roommate-to-be Len and I make formal arrangements to live together. Money from him is due by July 31.

Approximately July 16: Sexpot roomie Joanne informs me that her friend from Boston will not be joining her in LA. I ask her if she now wants to stay in the apartment. She says no.

July 20: After further consultation with the Executive Producer, another automotive decision is made: buyout of lease, sell privately.

July 22: My Compaq Presario contracts the Monkey B Virus. All data not backed up (everything but the book) is lost.

July 23: Mike Keneally comes over to my apartment with the "finished" master of "Sluggo!". We listen to it together. We are not thrilled. Then we compare it to tapes of rough mixes and decide that, for lack of better phrasing, a good deal of it sounds like shit and it needs to be remixed.

July 24: I ship my computer off to a virus expert in Colorado to see if he can retrieve any data. He ultimately cannot, but he reformats it all bitchin' cool and hooks me up with some groovy new software.

July 25: I get paid by Sony Records for the Vai session.

July 26: After further consultation with the Executive Producer, another automotive decision is made: buyout of lease, trade-in towards newer car.

July 31: New roommate-to-be Len misses payment deadline. He sends half of the agreed-upon amount, promises to send the remaining money by August 15.

August 1: UPS goes on strike. This is not a good thing for the Customer Service Manager of a company that does nothing but ship both repaired and new amps to bassists across the country.

August 8: After further consultation with the Executive Producer, another automotive decision is reached: buyout of lease, sell privately. Classified ads are placed. Thinking towards the future, I begin to visit car dealerships throughout LA in search of an actual human being as opposed to the subhuman slime that I keep running into at said establishments.

August 9: Len has disappeared. His phone number is now a fax machine. I have half of his security deposit. A new potential roommate appears on the scene--Lance, an acquaintance of mine from back in the Berklee days. I want to dump Len, but I try to be ethical and wait until August 15 to do anything.

August 12: Still no word from Len. Still a fax machine. I go the extra mile and fax him a message asking of his whereabouts. Still no response.

August 15: UPS strike ends.

August 16, 10:30 AM: I tell Lance that I want him to move in with me, Len be damned. He brings money, we sign lease together.

August 16, 12:30 PM: Len calls, says that money order is in the mail for the amount he promised. I awkwardly tell him that he is no longer my roommate-to-be, and that I will be sending him back all of his money. This is not a fun conversation, people.

August 20: The Executive Producer calls and says he is coming to visit on the weekend of August 31 to settle our joint automotive venture. This is the same weekend that Joanne will be moving out and Lance will be moving in. I say OK.

August 30: The Executive Producer arrives in LA. After further consultation, another automotive decision is made: buyout of lease and keep the car. This decision is based on the resale value of the Eagle Summit, the ridiculous prices of new cars in LA, and other more complicated financial matters.

August 31: As Joanne moves out and Lance moves in, I write the climactic scene of my novel.

September 4: I receive another check from Sony Records for the Vai session. I question nothing and deposit it.

September 7: On short notice, BFD plays a benefit for ailing drummer Marc Craney. After waiting three hours to go onstage, our set is cut after ten minutes--two songs. Much more on this later.

September 9: I receive paperwork from the state of California indicating that I now possess sole title of the car.

September 11: On my way to work, the transmission of the Eagle Summit suffers a catastrophic failure. Repair estimate: $1600.

September 12: A representative from Steve Vai's office calls to inform me that Sony has discovered a clerical error, and that I was paid twice for the same work. She says that Sony wants their money back. I pretend not to hear her and quickly forget that the phone call ever took place.

September 20: As I write the final chapter of the first draft of "Eleven Is A Magic Number", my Compaq Presario crashes hard. The system registry must be restored. Some data is lost, as well as the custom re-format done by the kid from Colorado, but most of the important material is retrieved from Zip disk.

September 21: The first draft of my novel is completed.

September 22: My car gets out of the transmission shop. New roommate Lance finally completes the process of moving in by hanging the last of his many framed pictures on the living room wall.

September 23: Mike Keneally brings the re-mixed and re-mastered version of "Sluggo!" over to my apartment for another listen. We agree that it sounds a million times better than the original version.

There. Now, let's talk about some cool stuff.

"Sluggo!" is magnificent. The songs are great, the artwork is fantastic, the sound is even better than past Keneally efforts, and I can't fucking wait for you all to hear it. It should be available by the end of October. The Act following this one (which I hereby declare will NOT take me three months to complete) will include an Act 18-style track-by-track rundown of the CD (a la "Music For Pets"), including inside-scoop details on how each song was recorded, favorite moments, mix revisions, etc. etc. But I want you to actually have the CD in hand before I do such a thing. I can only say that I'm more proud to be a part of it than anything I've done musically to date. News flash: MK is a fucking genius.

More MK/BFD news...if you haven't been over to the MK website, then maybe you haven't heard about the availability of "The Tar Tapes: Volume 1", a collection of pre-Hat Keneally material recorded throughout the 1980's. It will be a limited pressing of 500 copies, each one personally signed by the fucking genius himself. And, in a moving tribute to Willy Wonka, one lucky soul will find a magic ticket in their CD. Mike Keneally will apparently write a song in the magic-ticket-holder's honor. I've never heard most of the "Tar Tapes" material, so I'll be just as curious as you are to hear what sonic "diamonds in the rough" lay in store for me upon first listen. I'm also a greedy bastard--I hope to win the magic ticket and have yet another MK tune with my name in the title, even if that title is "Bryan Is A Greedy Bastard". I'll take it any way I can get it.

Even more MK/BFD news...I may have been a bit premature in announcing a West Coast "mini-tour" for late October. The usual logistical bugs have gotten in the way of this event, and it probably will be reduced to just two shows, one in LA and one in San Diego. This isn't a catastrophe--it'll be better to have the album out for a bit before we hit the road for real anyway. Hopefully, this will soothe the anger and jealousy of some of the East Coasters I've received e-mail from concerning this matter.

Yet even more MK/BFD news...on October 25, we will be playing The Troubadour in LA. People who attend this show will notice something new and unusual on stage--a fourth person. This person will be Marc Ziegenhagen, keyboardist and fellow Berklee alum. Joe Travers (who will occupy the drum chair for this show and possibly other shows in the future) and Marc Ziegenhagen go way back as fellow Zappa freaks and Berklee musical partners. Some more background--Joe and Marc performed together in a Frank Zappa tribute show at Berklee (a videotape of which secured Joe's relationship with MK back in '92, by the way) long before I was playing with Mr. Travers on a regular basis. And, as you may or may not know, Ziegenhagen was a part of the "Zappa's Universe" band (second keyboards). More importantly, he's a Keneally maniac, intimately familiar with MK's live vibe and more than talented enough to both cop the parts and solo his ass off. When we do eventually tour behind "Sluggo!", you'll wonder how we ever got along without this guy.

Of course, we don't know yet how he'll handle the intense pressure of the BFD audience. Back in April of 1996, when we played The Bottom Line in NYC, Frank Briggs was a tiny bit late on one of the post-solo hits-on-cue in "Uglytown". An audience member then screamed out the following admonition: "Wake up, Frank!" What I didn't realize at the time was just how prescient the fan's reminder would come to be (see page 5 of Act 17 for the meaning of this reference).

Now let's follow up on some of the stuff in that timeline. I mentioned that I played on Steve Vai's track for the G3 Christmas compilation album, "Merry Axe-mas" (God, that title hurts more and more every time I write it). I brought this up because, when the CD is released, bass credit on this track will go to both me and Phil Bynoe, creating yet another interesting situation between us. While I won't go into detail about how it all went down, I will say that parts of both of our tracks ended up on the final version. Maybe Phil and I should just get it over with and make crazy love to each other. On second thought, I think just hugging him in Act 21 (Part 4) was probably enough.

Keneally brought over an advance copy of "Merry Axe-mas" (OUCH!!) for me to check out. There's some great stuff on there, as well as some not-so-great stuff. The great includes Eric Johnson's track (which sounds as if it was engineered by The Almighty Himself), Brian Setzer's track (a reworking of his big band version of "Jingle Bells" from the movie "Jingle All The Way"), and Steve Vai's track (he did an extraordinary job with the Peanuts classic--you'll see what I mean). The not-so-great includes Kenny Wayne Shepphard's version of "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" (he plays the melody incorrectly!), Joe Perry's track (nothing against Aerosmith, but this cut sounds like it was done in ten minutes in someone's garage), and Richie Sambora's track (overproduced, and as Keneally put it, "he's just in way over his head"). Somewhere in between were Satriani's "Silent Night" (the melody once, then a seven-minute Satch jam) and Alex Lifeson's "Little Drummer Boy", which, after creating a joyful, Rush-like texture, suddenly ends without warning or reason. I suppose you should check this CD out for yourself and compare notes.

Speaking of Vai, I had an Alternate Reality flashback recently. In late August, the Boston-based funk-rock band "Two Ton Shoe" came to LA for a show at the Roxy. Their bassist, Jeff Gilman, is a real motherfucker, and their drummer, Dave DiCenzo (Jon Finn's drummer--we became friends on the April '96 tour) is no slouch either. So I go to the show, and who do I see sitting in the audience but Phil Bynoe, Mike Mangini, and Mangini's drum tech Magee (pornographic artist and prankster deluxe from the Vai tour). The first thing Magee says to me is "how's Special Ed?" He was referring to our man Ed Lucas, last seen in the back of a San Diego Police patrol car in handcuffs on suspicion of publicly revealing and stroking his "specialness" in front of several local ladies. I told Magee the story, along with the ending that you folks never heard--Ed was released after police figured out that, although he does kind of look the type, Ed Lucas was not the San Diego Stroker in question. Too bad--it would've made for a great story had it been true. The LOB could have done an exclusive interview with Ed. I could have asked him about Marv Albert, or something. In any event, it was good to see the Vai guys again. And, just so you know, Two Ton Shoe rocked the Roxy to its very core. If you live in Boston, go see them.

Then we have the story of the benefit concert for Marc Craney. Craney was widely known and respected in LA circles, and so when he came down with a near-crippling medical affliction (I'm sorry to say that I don't know exactly what that affliction is), Jethro Tull drummer Doane Perry decided to organize a benefit concert. It took place in the parking lot of the Guitar Center in Hollywood, and the lineup of drummers (and other musicians) was impressive: Peter Erskine, Steve Smith, Gregg Bissonette, Myron Grombacher, Luis Conte, Aynsley Dunbar, Doane Perry (of course) and plenty of others. Headlining was none other Terry Bozzio. Keneally got a call three days before the concert asking if BFD would play a thirty-minute set. He agreed. We rehearsed once (the first time the three of us had played together in over a year) and said "fuck it--we're ready".

(Photo by Rich Lewis)

I get there and of course it's a fucking mess. I have to pay fifteen dollars to get in--I would not have been allowed entrance otherwise--which I do, because it's a benefit and I don't want to be a prick about not contributing to the kitty. The temperature outside is nearly 100 degrees. They're an hour behind schedule, and this is before the bass rig goes down. I try to offer my assistance (it was an SWR rig), but the offer is declined. We are informed that our set has to be cut down to 20 minutes. Reasonable enough--it's a benefit, and we don't want to bitch about set times. We go on two hours later than we're supposed to (I inspect the bass rig--it's still hooked up improperly, a condition which I remedy immediately), and we play "I Can't Stop" and "'Cause Of Breakfast". The crowd digs it. We're about to do our last tune, "The Cowlogy" (eight minutes) when the stage manager comes up to the mike and says "that's it!" Hot and extremely bothered, I packed up my bass and left five minutes later without saying a word to anyone but Keneally, and that word was "Goodbye!" After all, I didn't want to be a prick, and anything I said at that point would have been extremely prick-like in nature. I considered the whole event a karmic down-payment and left it at that.

Several days later, I got a phone call from Doane Perry, who profusely apologized for the way the stage manager treated us and for the disorganization in general. He also informed me that Terry Bozzio was treated even worse than we were--as a penalty for the event running behind schedule, Guitar Center cut the power to the stage during Terry's set. Unbelievable. Doane was just the nicest guy you could possibly imagine about the whole thing, and it made me glad that I left without saying a word to anyone. Plus, the benefit was a financial success, if not a musical one, so at least some good came out of it.

So it seems I've talked about everything but the book. Let me tell you what it felt like to punch the last few keys of page 648 of the first draft...YESSS!! (My apologies to Marv Albert.) I had cool-new-roomie Lance drive me over to the liquor store (my car was still in pieces at this point) so I could grab some Absolut Vodka and orange juice. Two hours later, I was even happier.

It's hard to describe what it's been like working on this thing for over a year. One thing I can describe, however, is how this book has affected my life. I may have said this before, but it bears repeating--being a musician is the ultimate social profession. Every time you gig, it's like going out. You get dressed up, you have a couple of drinks, you talk to other human beings. But writing is the complete opposite--it's the ultimate solitary profession. Lots of room for self-exploration, be it discovery or insecurity. Plenty of meals by yourself during breaks. It's hard to keep in contact with your friends, because you must protect your private time so that you can write in peace. I don't know what will eventually come of this book--I obviously hope to get it published--but one thing's for sure: Next year, I'm going out more often. Maybe I'll also try to lose the ten pounds I put on this year as well. It's safe to say that, if I were to take a current picture similar to the "Bryan by the poolside" shot on the title page, it would not be a pretty sight.

I've been asked repeatedly in e-mails why I haven't posted a preview of the book on this here page. Here's my answer: It's not ready yet. I don't feel like shoving it out there until I'm happy with the completed version. It's hard enough fielding questions from my family and friends, such as "what's it about? Is it based on you? Am I in it? What does 'Eleven Is A Magic Number' mean?" Please don't think I'm a petulant artist for not posting it up on the web. I have my insecurities about it, and I will continue to have them until the day I complete my final draft. That having been said, I will admit that I like what I've got so far. It just needs some fine-tuning, that's all. The next step is to revise the first draft. This involves tightening up the boring sections, fixing holes in the story, making sure a character isn't pissed off and happy about the same thing in two different scenes--you know what I mean. Then, once I finish that draft, it goes down to literary confidant Martha C. Lawrence for a "professional story edit". Then I revise again, and at that point, it will be done. Once I get there, I'll revisit the issue of posting a preview on the web with a more open mind. Thanks to the Monkey B Virus episode, I'm exactly one month behind my original EDC (estimated date of completion), which was Thanksgiving. One way or the other, I'll be done with this thing by the end of the year. Hopefully sooner.

That about does it. There's a lot of information to chew on here, and I'm bracing for an e-mail onslaught when "Sluggo!" comes out, so bear with me in the e-mail response-time department. I know all seven of you have been waiting patiently for a new, full-lengthed LOB to arrive on Moosenet. Hopefully, this beast of an Act will do for a month or so. Then we'll talk about "Sluggo!" in detail.

Now I know I should be above taking cheap shots at Marv Albert, but I can't help it. After all, he's giving us cross-dressing sodomizers a bad name. So, I'll leave you with this for now...

"Beller takes the pass from Keneally...for three...YESSS!!"

Thank God for the autumnal equinox,

The Bassboy Number Sixty-Nine