A Hell of a Band

This post is about a song by The Right­eous Broth­ers. I don’t know if they real­ly were right­eous, but I do know they weren’t broth­ers, so I guess I report, you decide. If you’re the churl­ish tl;dr type who can’t wait till the end of this post to hear the song, it’s down at the bot­tom, but if you skip the whole post like that you can’t be my friend or come up in my tree fort any­more.

If you’re under 45, chances are the only time you’ve been exposed to the Right­eous Broth­ers was in the movie Ghost, or pos­si­bly in Top Gun.

In Ghost, The Right­eous Broth­ers’ “Unchained Melody” plays while Demi Moore is sculpt­ing a vozz, and Patrick Swayze sits down behind her and the vozz gets ruined and they get slimy wet clay all over them­selves.

In Top Gun, The Right­eous Broth­ers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feel­ing” plays on a juke­box once or twice, along with the fight­er pilots singing “Great Balls of Fire” and Ken­ny Log­gins singing “Dan­ger Zone” and the pilots play­ing half-naked vol­ley­ball and fly­ing around real­ly fast and in gen­er­al slosh­ing buck­ets of sweat and testos­terone off the screen and all over the audi­ence.

The Right­eous Broth­ers were were a huge­ly suc­cess­ful white crooner/extremely white doo-wop duet in the late ‘50s and ear­ly ‘60s. And since this post is about The Right­eous Broth­ers, I’d like to talk about The Par­tridge Fam­i­ly.

The Par­tridge Fam­i­ly was a TV show about a fic­tion­al musi­cal fam­i­ly loose­ly based on the real musi­cal fam­i­ly The Cowsills, who not only had a hit with the song “Hair,” from the musi­cal with the same name, but also got me very con­fused when was a kid, because it seemed to me that if a cow has sills, it should also have win­dows.

So any­way, The Par­tridge Fam­i­ly was nei­ther a fam­i­ly nor a band. It was a TV show with a bunch of actors pre­tend­ing to be a band that didn’t exist, except they did kind of exist because you could go to Wool­co or Sears and buy 45 RPM sin­gles labeled The Par­tridge Fam­i­ly, even though the songs were per­formed by David Cas­sidy with a band of gener­ic musi­cians, which con­spic­u­ous­ly lacked a 10-year-old bassist and a 7‑year-old drum­mer.

My dad hat­ed The Par­tridge Fam­i­ly. He also hat­ed The Jack­son 5, The Osmond Broth­ers, The Car­pen­ters, the Mon­kees, The Right­eous Broth­ers, and Bob­by Sher­man (who, on a side note, orig­i­nal­ly leased the cus­tom-built 747 that Led Zep­pelin used and was seen in the 1976 film The Song Remains the Same, which was about a Led Zep­pelin con­cert in New York City in 1973).

Dad did not hate any of these musi­cians for their music. As far as he was con­cerned, they were just noise. Dad was like Bob’s wife, who worked at Bob’s Coun­try Bunker in The Blues Broth­ers and who, when asked about what kind of music she liked, replied, “Both kinds: coun­try AND west­ern!”

What Dad hat­ed was their faces. He also hat­ed 3M, the com­pa­ny that pro­duced Scotch Tape, and the mag­a­zine Tiger Beat.

Cowsills and God?

Tiger Beat pro­filed young musi­cians and actors as long as they were safe-look­ing rel­a­tive­ly short-haired guys (which is why Led Zep­pelin and Alice Coop­er and The Doors nev­er appeared there­in).

Scotch Tape sold the tape my sis­ters used when they scis­sored Tiger Beat into con­fet­ti once a month in order to tape head­shots of that month’s dreami­est teen idols all over their bed­room doors, then rip them all off to tape up the head shots from the next month’s issue, which was rapid­ly strip­ping the fin­ish off the doors.

After school one day my mom asked me to go fetch her cig­a­rettes from her room. The cig­a­rettes were on her night­stand; as I picked them up I glanced at a 45 RPM sin­gle next to the cig­a­rettes. It was a sin­gle by The Par­tridge Fam­i­ly titled “One Night Stand.”

I was 9 and not too sharp on the sub­tler nuances of gram­mar and spelling, so when I saw the sin­gle “One Night Stand” on the night­stand, my first thought was Why would any­one sing a song about a piece of fur­ni­ture? 1

So I grabbed the sin­gle, along with the cig­a­rettes, and asked Mom why The Par­tridge Fam­i­ly had a song about a night­stand, which led to an awk­ward, unsat­is­fy­ing expla­na­tion about how a one night stand was when two peo­ple went to go see a movie togeth­er, but then decid­ed not to see any more movies togeth­er.

I nev­er did find out why the sin­gle was on Mom’s night stand.

Fast for­ward two years to the sum­mer of ’74. I was 11 and had vague­ly fig­ured out that a one night stand was a very brief romance, and the rea­son the guy and the girl didn’t want to see any more movies togeth­er was because they didn’t like kiss­ing. Pre­pu­bes­cent me under­stood that, because girls were yucky and kiss­ing was stu­pid.

We were vaca­tion­ing in Galve­ston, Texas, that sum­mer. The Right­eous Broth­ers had just released a song titled “Rock and Roll Heav­en,” and it was get­ting heavy air­play, at least once an hour all the way there, all day every day we were there, and all the way back.

If you’ve nev­er heard “Rock and Roll Heav­en,” it’s a trib­ute to the lega­cy of musi­cians who had passed on, includ­ing Jimi Hen­drix, Janis Joplin, Jim Mor­ri­son, Jim Croce, Bob­by Darin, and Otis Red­ding.

I did­n’t get most of the ref­er­ences oth­er than Jim Croce and Janis Joplin; “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” had been a big hit the pre­vi­ous year. Joplin had appeared on the Tom Jones vari­ety show, which my mom loved (and I snick­er a lit­tle bit now, but at least she did­n’t throw panties at the TV).2

I also rec­og­nized the ref­er­ence to “Light My Fire,” but I’d seen Antho­ny New­ley singing it on a vari­ety show and I thought it was his song.

I loved “Rock and Roll Heav­en” on its own mer­its; still do. But what made it so cool at the time was the cho­rus:

If you believe in for­ev­er
Then life is just a one night stand.
If there’s a rock and roll heav­en
Well you know they got a hell of a band!

Part of it was the puerile thrill of some­one on the radio singing the word “hell,” which was still mild­ly naughty, but what made the biggest impres­sion was that for the first time I can remem­ber, I con­nect­ed with lyrics that used a sim­i­le to touch on a much deep­er truth: Com­pared to eter­ni­ty, life is short. Blink-and-you’ll-miss-it short. And maybe some­day those who touched our lives but have since passed on—well, maybe some­day we’ll see them again. And in the mean­time we can remem­ber them by cel­e­brat­ing their lives and lega­cies.

MTV didn’t exist in 1974, but thanks to Mid­night Spe­cial and Amer­i­can Band­stand, you could occa­sion­al­ly see a music video or live per­for­mance of hit songs.3

I didn’t know “Rock and Roll Heav­en” had a music video until the oth­er day, when I stum­bled across it on YouTube. And just like that, a song I hadn’t thought of for more than 40 years was back, with all the influ­ence and emo­tion it gen­er­at­ed back then.

So I now present to you, all the way back from 1974, The Right­eous Broth­ers’ “Rock and Roll Heav­en.”

Time trav­el can be bru­tal, though: In this case, try not to think about how unbut­toned shirts and bell-bot­tomed leisure suits and lapels wider than your shoul­ders were once unbear­ably cool.

Dur­ing our ’74 sum­mer vaca­tion, Dad found “Rock and Roll Heav­en” annoy­ing, even though The Right­eous Broth­ers weren’t Tiger Beat mate­r­i­al, and he kept tun­ing to some­thing else when it came on. I would yell, “Turn it back on! I love that song!” from the back seat.

Made him grouchy but it was worth it.

Sasha the Rez Dog

Our dogs got into a fight Mon­day. They say not to break up a dog fight, but I’m not gonna sit and watch them fight­ing in the liv­ing room.

Sasha pro­voked a num­ber of fights with Pep­per over the last year; Pep­per would grab Sasha by the scruff of her neck and just pin her down while Sasha snapped and snarled. We’d grab a tow­el or blan­ket and cov­er Sasha’s head, then grab their col­lars and pull them apart when they start­ed to calm down.

We’d been dither­ing about Sasha’s behav­ior and what to do. She’s total­ly sweet and lov­ing with peo­ple, but for some rea­son she turns the nor­mal play fights dogs have into real fights.

I looked into no-kill or res­cue shel­ters in the area, but no one want­ed to rehome a dog with the stip­u­la­tion that she had to be an only pet. They all had lengthy wait­ing lists any­way.

Pep­per’s our big­ger dog; she’s a Cata­houla Leop­ard Hound and she’s insane­ly pow­er­ful. Sasha’s a Black Lab/mumblesomething mix. If Pep­per want­ed to hurt Sasha she could have ripped her to pieces, but all she ever did when Sasha attacked her was pin her down like Sasha was a pup­py.

Any­way, when they fought on Mon­day I pulled the blan­ket over Sasha’s head and Best Half grabbed Pep­per’s col­lar; as we start­ed to gen­tly pull them apart, Sasha pulled her­self loose from Pep­per’s grip and tried to lunge at Pep­per again. My left arm got in her way as I was try­ing to pull the blan­ket around her, and she bit my fore­arm.

Pep­per pushed for­ward and pinned Sasha back down again, but much hard­er this time. I pulled Sasha away again and she howled.

I got her in a bear hug and held her while Best Half put Pep­per in her ken­nel; Sasha stopped strug­gling, so I moved the blan­ket to see if she was hurt.

She had a super­fi­cial cut on the back of her neck, but as I tried to exam­ine it I real­ized she had­n’t just nipped me; she’d bit­ten me three times. I had two good chomps on my fore­arm with five or six punc­tures, and then a real­ly nasty punc­ture between my index and mid­dle fin­ger knuck­les.

We cleaned the punc­tures and I would have been okay with ban­dag­ing them up, but the punc­ture on my hand was too deep. I tried to approx­i­mate the edges and see if but­ter­fly tape could close it, but no good.

So we went to the ER. They sutured me up and sent me home.

Ani­mal Con­trol called Tues­day morn­ing, as I expect­ed. The offi­cer said he need­ed to come assess the sit­u­a­tion and that Sasha would have to be quar­an­tined for 10 days, but he thought we could prob­a­bly do that at home.

I told him about their pre­vi­ous fights; I’d got­ten a minor nip dur­ing a pre­vi­ous one; Best Half got a nip and a jammed fin­ger in a dif­fer­ent one; Pep­per had got­ten a lit­tle tear on her ear in yet anoth­er one. The lit­tle nips here and there had pro­gressed into more seri­ous injuries. We were heart­bro­ken, but it was just too risky to keep Sasha any­more.

I said I did­n’t know what to do; we were seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing putting her to sleep since we could­n’t rehome her or get her into a no-kill shel­ter.

Turns out the Prescott Val­ley Humane Soci­ety is a no-kill shel­ter, and Ani­mal Con­trol could take her there with the con­di­tion that she need­ed to be placed with a fam­i­ly as an only pet.

Sasha was already a res­cue dog; we’d adopt­ed her from the Coconi­no Coun­ty Humane Soci­ety. She’d been found liv­ing fer­al­ly on reser­va­tion land (I found out that hap­pens so often they actu­al­ly have “Rez Dog” list­ed as a breed in Ani­mal Con­trol’s data­base). She was in rough shape; she had a nasty case of demod­ec­tic mange and seem­ing­ly every species of worm there is.

When we adopt­ed her, she’d been spayed, dipped and dewormed, and she just need­ed TLC, rest and food. She was 7 months old but she did­n’t have pup­py breath; her breath smelled like feces and gaso­line from the worm meds. Her fur was brit­tle and greasy, she was still skin­ny, and she was afraid of every­thing. The dogs sleep on my bed, but for the first few months Sasha slept under the bed where Pep­per and I could­n’t reach her.

I want­ed to name her Dob­by, after the house elf in the Har­ry Pot­ter movies. She had big flop­py ears and looked per­pet­u­al­ly ner­vous. I was vot­ed down.

We gave her a nice gen­tle oat­meal bath and just let her rest in her ken­nel as much as she want­ed; she seemed to feel safer in it. She did­n’t take long to blos­som into a won­der­ful dog, crammed with ener­gy and per­son­al­i­ty and the goofi­ness all dogs have. She’s one of those dogs who talk at you when they’re excit­ed, the way Huskies are famous for. She liked stick­ing her nose under the water in her water bowl and blow­ing bub­bles.

Until cou­ple of months ago, we were enjoy­ing her and look­ing for­ward to a long, hap­py life with her.

So the offi­cer came to the house and I signed the paper­work sur­ren­der­ing her to the Humane Soci­ety. I gave him Sasha, her med­ical records, the info on her chip and her favorite blan­ket.

And then she was gone.

We’ve been wrestling with the feel­ing that we made a bad choice, or that we failed her or gave up on her.

When you adopt a dog, though, you’re tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty not only to pro­vide for her, but also to do right by her when it’s time to make tough deci­sions on her behalf.

She’s only 3; I thought those tough deci­sions would be years away when she was old and the time had come to free her from suf­fer­ing at the end of a long, hap­py life. I nev­er imag­ined the tough choice would be to pick her up, put her in a cage in an ani­mal con­trol van, and close the door on her puz­zled-but-trust­ing face.

All I can do is believe we adopt­ed her when she need­ed it, and we nursed her to health and enjoyed her for a time, but that time drew to a close, and we had to send her on to be some­one else’s beau­ti­ful, goofy, lov­ing dog.

I hope they let her keep the blan­ket.