I was lying on my bed, listening to music Allison had given me when Dave and Micah showed up. The music had captured me; it was totally unlike the metal I usually listened to. One entire side of the cassette was a song by Brian Eno – thirty minutes of drifting synths. Just drifting. I lay on my bed and stared at the ceiling drifting. Almost floating even.
I thought about her – Allison. Since the event at the hospital she hadn’t been allowed to drive Beth’s car anymore. She was grounded, but not really in trouble. Her parents – all of our parents – were so relieved that we were safe that they implemented only token punishments for our poor choices. But still, she wasn’t allowed to drive anymore. Not till she actually got her license anyway. We hung out at school more often since the hospital. Walked the halls between classes together. That’s when she’d given me the mix tape.
“You should expand your experiences,” she said.
So I was listening to this music of nothing, this melody of air and moonlight through the headphones. I didn’t know how to hear it but there was something profound there.
And that’s when the guys came in. We were at my place instead of the unfinished attic above Dave’s family’s apartment, but we were at my place almost as often as Dave’s. They kicked open the door and Dave yanked the headphone cable from the stereo. The sustained lilting of the airy melody flowed into the room.
“What’s this shit?” Dave asked.
“It’s a mix-tape Allison gave me.” I tossed him the cassette case with her handwritten titles.
“Brian Eno?” he read. “Never heard of him. Sugar Cubes? Mississippi John Hurt? Carter USM?” he looked up from the list. “Are these songs or bands or what?” He continued reading. “Herman’s Hermits? Herman’s Shitting Hermits? Don’t your parents listen to that crap?”
Micah pushed the stop and eject button on the cassette player, removed the tape and handed it back to me. He shook his head, “No.”
Dave pulled out one of my This Corpse Alive albums. We were really into them. I still listen to them. The percussive pounding began immediately:
Creeping in
unnoticed
The ungodly! The
ungodly!
Creeping from
the remotest
The ungodly! The
ungodly!
“No.
Not that one” I objected. I was still feeling the ambient drift of
the Eno song and I couldn’t handle the throbbing metal just yet.
“Play the next track.” Dave moved the needle and suddenly the
distorted guitars and drums were replaced with somber, if somewhat
dissonant strings layered with gravel voiced mournful vocals.
The
righteous dies and no one cares
In these evil
days. These evil days.
That song moves me. Even still. I can’t hear it without trembling a little. But back then, back in 1987 when we were fifteen, we were smart kids doing dumb things. Or dumb kids listening to good music and watching bad movies. That wasn’t the plan for this Friday night though. No. We’d planned that dumbest of teenage pranks – the prank phone call.
In preparation I’d gone back to the University library and found a copy of Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible. The librarian at the desk wouldn’t let me check it out though. “Stolen too often,” she told me. So I had to make xerox copies of the pages I wanted. The librarian eyeballed me the entire time to make sure I returned the infamous text before I left.
Don’t get me wrong though. We weren’t satanists or anything. We just thought all that occult stuff was interesting. We read some of Aleister Crowley’s ceremonial magik, we looked up ancient summoning spells. We tried some of those, but never had any luck with them. And I read some of Anton LaVey’s books. Some called him “The Black Pope,” others called him the “evilest man in the world,” but to me he just sounded like Ayn Rand with pentagrams and black candles. Boring really.
But armed with these devilish provocations we were going to call Bob Larson’s Talk Back radio program. Larson was one of those televangelists – though he was on the radio, not television in those days. His show was a crack up. Talking to teens about Satanism and ritual Satanic abuse and all that hype. He was a showman, always asking for people to donate money to his ministry and pitching his books and tapes. He was loud. He was abrasive and abusive, often shouting down his guests, telling them to shut up so he could rail against them. His voice was high pitched and pinched, and even more so as he became riled up. We turned off the record player and turned on the radio and tuned in the program just in time to hear the beginning of his show.
“Good evening, America. Welcome to Talk Back with Bob Larson. I’ll be here for the next hour talking about what’s on my mind and hearing from you about what’s on your mind. Tonight we’re talking about teenage satanists. If you’re a teenager and you’re involved in Satanism or the occult dial me at 1-800-821-TALK. Call me. Maybe you’re into witchcraft. Maybe you’ve been involved in some sort of ritual sacrifice. Maybe you’re a member of a black metal, death metal band. Or maybe you want out. Maybe you want to be set free. Call me.”
Dave was already dialing and talking to the call screener. Trying to get us in to the show as Bob continued on the radio.
“Satan promises power. Power over parents. Power over school authorities. And even power over God. Is it a passing phase? Or are these teens committing to the rituals and a lifestyle that will take over and consume them? Do they have the devil in them? Is it Lucifer or Belial, or Leviathan in them? Why are teenagers turning to Satan? Call me. Talk to me. We’ve got a young man from Bloomington, Indiana on the phone.”
“We’re on! We’re on!” Dave said thrusting the phone at me.
“So you’re a teenage satanist?” I heard Larson say in the phone earpiece and on the radio and I was momentarily confused. “How long have you been duped by the devil?” Dave thrust the xerox LaVey quotes at me. Micah turned down the volume on the radio a little.
“Do you kiss the ring of Satan? Hello? Are you there, caller?”
I suddenly found my voice – not my regular voice, but the mewling, growling voice I used to crack up Dave and Micah as we read Crowley and LaVey. “Gather around me, Oh! Ye death-defiant, and the earth itself shall be thine, to have and to hold!”
“My, what a lovely singing voice you must have,” Larson quipped. “So you’re a teenage satanist. You’ve obviously read The Satanic Bible…”
I interrupted his spiel, “Too long the dead hand has been permitted to sterilize living thought. Life is the great indulgence – death, the great abstinence. Therefore, make the most of life, here and now!”
“Caller, what’s your name? And how old are you?”
We’d prepared for this. “Call me Liber Samekh,” I said, not dropping the voice. “And my minions, Cernunnos and Draugor are here with me.”
“Are those your witch names? Your ritual names?”
“Yes,” I answered and kicked at Micah who was wheezing with laughter on the floor.
“And do you and your minions listen to heavy metal, black or death metal music?”
“We do. We follow This Corpse Alive. They’re the greatest.” I was getting off track a little. Dave shoved another page in front of me, jabbing his finger at a highlighted quote. I read it, putting all the menace I could into my cracking, teenage voice. “Behold the crucifix; what does it symbolize? Pallid incompetence hanging on a tree.”
Larson was incensed. “Liber Samekh, Listen to me. Liber Samekh, I won’t allow blasphemy on my show. This is my show. Listen to me! Listen you’re getting into something that you can’t control. You don’t know…”
I interrupted him again, louder and more forcibly. “Say unto thine own heart, ‘I am mine own redeemer.’”
“Begone, Satan” Larson started shouting. “I bind and cast you out of this boy. I bind and cast you out of this child. I bind and cast you out in the name of Jesus…”
He probably went on like that for some time, but we were laughing too hard to hear him. It was dumb and childish, of course. Puerile. But it was fun and funny. We were reading Crowley and LaVey and all that other rot, but we never bought into the “Satanic Panic” of those years. Bob Larson was a carnival barker. Anton LaVey was little more than an egoist. But one thing still stands out from those years – that song by This Corpse Alive still haunts me.
The
righteous dies and no one cares
these evil
days. These evil days.
Rituali de Sangue - Friday, 1987
Twilight at Saint Gerald's - Another Friday, 1987
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