Fat Riker

I have transcribed the following journal entries from their original, handwritten forms in the Fat Riker notebook.  There were many more, both before and after, but I felt these particular entries told a concise enough story to warrant being released grouped together.

***

March 11, 1998

I don’t even know what’s happening with this band anymore. Stuggy’s gone, we lost him around Bovina back on Highway 60. Not that Stuggy could keep a beat to save his life but he was usually good for splitting a bag of frozen crinkle fries with.

Hartford’s got us all running scared.  When I joined up it was just him, Stuggy, Jakey P and me.  A real four piece rock group.  Sure we didn’t have a bassist and I only played tambourine and acoustic chimes but I thought it was a pretty good group considering.  Now Hart seems to be replacing us one by one.

Jakey P was the only guy left from the previous incarnation of Fat Riker, and Hartford got rid of him first.  Poor guy didn’t even know what was happening.  Hart called for a vote on the toppings we were gonna order on our pizza that night.  He said “Raise your hand if you want pepperoni,” and them mumbled something else under his breath.  Of course we all voted for pepperoni but then Hartford laughed and said he had also said that the vote was to kick JP out of the band.  He said we hadn’t paid close enough attention to what we were voting for.

I felt ashamed.

We left him standing in that Super 8 motel parking lot in Oklahoma City, mouth open, cradling his guitar like a baby.  It was a terrible sight to behold, but we had voted I guess.  What were we supposed to say?

Hartford said he knew some guys just down the road we could pick up to replace him with.

These guys turned out to be a trio of brass players; a trumpet guy named Keith, a trombonist named Eddie and a sax man that wouldn’t tell me his name no matter how many times I asked him. He’d just push his sunglasses up further on his face and smile.

I’ll write more later.

March 13, 1998

Yeah so anyway I didn’t really see what these brass guys had to do with being a rock outfit.  They dressed like they were from the twenties or something and kept calling people “Daddio.”  Hartford said it was all the rage to replace lead guitarists with brass instruments but I don’t know.  We practiced a little while we were driving, but they didn’t know the songs and kept doing “freestyle” things.  I already had a pretty tough time trying to play bass tambourine, but now things sounded particularly offbeat.

Stuggy sort of made up for it by playing extra hard but I could tell he wasn’t happy.  He kept shooting Hartford looks from the backseat of the Fat Riker van where he had his drums wedged in, but Hartford just kept screaming along with the songs at the top of his lungs.  By that point, Hart was already starting to talk like those other guys.  I think they had gotten in his head with their fedoras and piano neckties.

That night, Hartford sat all of us down and told us the band was going in a new direction and was going to take advantage of the recent surge of interest in swing dancing.  Stuggy and I were welcome to stay, but we’d have to learn a bunch of new songs that the three brass guys had brought along.  Considering we were right in the middle of the empty vastness of northern Texas, I didn’t see we had much choice.  I just kept thinking about Jakey P, hundreds of miles from anywhere he knew and totally abandoned.

March 15, 1998

We were filling up on gas around Bovina when Stuggy started unloading his gear.  The swing trio were busy using spray paint to modify the band name on the side of the van.  By the time they were done, it read, “Fat Riker’s Swing Extravaganza”.

I saw Stuggs dragging his drums toward the gas station and rolled down my window to ask him what he was doing.  As soon as Hartford noticed he was out of the van, however, he yelled at the swing guys to jump in and cranked the engine.  We sped off, throwing up a mess of dust and gravel.  Stuggy didn’t look back.  I think he knew it was coming.

The other guys couldn’t contain their smiles.  I slunk down in the backseat.  I had a feeling I was next.

March 16, 1998

We made a bee line for Albuquerque, pushing the van hard.  I overheard Hartford and the others talking about a swing group that had just broken up near there.  I think they were hoping to pick up some stragglers to bolster the ranks.  The only times they talked to me were when we would stop for gas or whatever, they would ask if I’d jump out and grab some drinks or something.

I knew they just wanted to leave me behind, so I said no.  I dug into the backseat, pulling my luggage around me.  I took to urinating out of the window whenever I needed to and scrounging in the cracks of the seat for stale cheese puffs to eat.  Things were going to get worse before they got better, but at least Jakey P had left me the notebook to write in.

March 17, 1998

We picked up five of the disbanded swing group members and stuffed them into the van.  We found a used pull-behind trailer to store the gear in, but it was obvious we weren’t all going to fit into seats even with that.  I figured the less they thought about me, the less likely they were to leave me behind, so I opted to ride in the trailer with the gear.

It was dark and hot and I got powerfully thirsty, but I was worried that if I got out of the trailer that would be it for me.  So I stayed inside and took to licking the walls for the moisture that would condense at night.  Occasionally some member of the band would open the door to get an instrument or something and I would hiss at them until they closed it.  Eventually they stopped opening the door.

I’ll show them!  I’ll stay in Fat Riker until things got right again!

March 22, 1998

Big Daddy Hartford jawing at you mugs now.  I noticed that palooka Franky had been writing in here and thought it would rate to finish up the story for the future posterities and whatnots.  Yesterday, after driving around for two days without opening the trailer, we heard him go dormy and the fellas felt we should investigate.

Inside, we found him collapsed on the floor in a state of severe dehydration.  I thought he might be grifting us, but he seemed to be delirious and kept yelling about crinkle fries.  The shmuck didn’t move much.

We dropped him off at the nearest hospital and high-tailed it out of there.  It was a real clean sneak!  When we had time, we took stock of the trailer and found two interesting discoveries.  One was this notebook.  The other was that Franky had apparently been defecating in Tom’s saxophone.

We’ll have to replace it real swift like.  We’ve got a gig in Flagstaff and there’s swinging to be done!

The following clipping was found in the Fat Riker notebook, but no notations of the name of the publication or the original date were included.  From clues included in the story, the article was likely published in July or August, 2003.

***

Unknown Publication

Circa July or August, 2003

Review of “Fat Riker Controls the Universe”

It is always a loathsome day when my editor leaves a new Fat Riker album in my “Review” pile.  I think perhaps he hates me; maybe I have offended him in some grievous way and this is my penance.

I cry out as he walks away, the dreaded disc freshly deposited on my desk: “Oh great George!  Perhaps you will smile upon your poor servant soon and cease this constant torture!  Oh woeful heavens, pour thy rain upon me so I may stand shivering within the deluge to prove my sincerest apologies to my vengeful editor!”

But all is for naught, dear reader, for the great editor George is a spiteful and cruel man who delights in my anguish.  My tears fall upon the carpet, and I am spared even the dignity of them nourishing the Earth.  I am a pitiful wreck.

If Fat Riker produced albums at a reasonable rate, perhaps one a year like many other bands, my torment would be lessened.  Unfortunately, this group of madmen has released five albums so far this year, and it is only July.

Long ago have I abandoned trying to understand their “creative process”.  For instance, their third album this year, “Turntable Time Machine 2” was a spectacularly baleful record that appeared, after my editor-mandated three listenings, to be little more than an impromptu jam session about a time travelling Victrola.  Or maybe someone was sitting on a record table, spinning around, screaming about the Valanginian Age.  I’m still a little up in the air about that one.  I tried to reference “Turntable Time Machine 1” for orientation, but it appeared that no such album was ever produced.

Their newest effort, if it can be called that, is even more erratic and slapdash than the previous, and that is saying something. Apparently titled “Fat Riker Controls the Universe”, its sensory assault on one’s person begins before the shrink wrap is even broken. The cover is an ugly piece of work, well deserving entry into the club of “Record covers most likely to cause one to quit their job as a music critic and take up some kind of less painful work, for instance, a human guinea pig for an experimental dental drilling equipment company”, because I nearly did.

While I am no graphic designer, the cover appears to be a poorly framed photograph of the title card for the recently-cancelled “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” television show, with a giant, purple FAT RIKER logo mostly obscuring the “Andy Richter” bit.  I can only assume that the group somehow wanted to pay homage to the show.  That may not be true; such a logical line of thinking rarely fits in with Fat Riker’s modus operandi.  It is equally likely the group simply took a photograph of a random object, opened it in Photoshop, typed “FAT RIKER” in the default font and called it a day.

The contents of the album itself are little better.  The sound is still distinctively Fat Riker, with its unmelodic choruses and rough, synthy bass lines that strike the eardrum like a Scud missile.  The tracks are littered with “experimental” pieces that do nothing for the record as a whole and often call into the question whether the group reviewed any of what they recorded.

Please note that all song titles mentioned in this review are inferred as the CD came with no track listings or liner notes.

Track 1 – “You Have to Pay for That Pizza” – 5:37

The album gets off to a bizarre start as this track consists mostly of a repeated, muffled cry of “You have to pay for that pizza!” followed by intense knocking as if on a door.  Not a great track by any means, but one of the more solid pieces on this album.  I believe Fat Riker may have stiffed a pizza delivery guy and decided to record his attempts to get them to open the door and pay for the pizza.  Cruel snickers and the sounds of high fives can be heard in the background, along with sounds similar to the consumption of pizza.

Track 2 – “Fat Riker Controls the Universe” – 0:15

The previous track cuts off abruptly and the CD launches immediately into the titular song of the album.  Unfortunately, this song is a blatant rip-off of the fifteen second “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” theme with new lyrics that somehow manage to squeeze in the words “Fat Riker Controls the Universe.”

It is painful, but over quickly.

Track 3 – “Fat Riker Controls the Universe” – 0:15

I am sad to report that the third track is another cover of the “Andy Richter” theme, but with slightly different words than the first instance.  The group may have come to a disagreement over the new lyrics and, rather than working it out, decided to record two different versions.

Try not to listen to this track.

Track 4 – “Shower Songs” – 18:06

This song begins with four and a half minutes of white noise cut with an occasional wet “plunk”.  Eventually a man begins to sing a song about teeth accompanied by a flat sounding acoustic guitar.  I listened raptly for some time, and finally concluded that some member of Fat Riker had realized that he liked to sing in the shower and was doing just that.  The guitar was an unexpected touch for a showering man, and seemed to get more and more out of tune as the bath lingered on.

Subsequent songs on this track include a rousing little ditty about rebuilding a transmission, a love song to scotch tape and a seemingly in-progress version of “Fat Riker Controls the Universe” revision 2.  This one was repeated a number of times and included an all-gargling version.

Track 5 – “Arguing About Shoe Laces” – 3:22

The band seems to be preparing for an upcoming show, and are arguing about what kind of shoelaces to wear.  It is a point of contention, but all agree that their shoelaces should match.  I’m not sure why.

Track 6 – “The Sixth Track” – 4:10

An instrumental piece.  Low, nearly rhythmic drumming begins until a cacophony of keyboard noises crash headlong into it, playing a tune somewhat reminiscent of Beethoven’s Fifth by way of Willie Nelson.  As one’s pain receptors begin to shut down near the 2:45 mark, the track trends toward listenable.  During the last thirty seconds, the keyboards stop abruptly and the drumming takes the forefront again.  The drummer coughs occasionally; a deep, dangerous sounding cough that I can appreciate.

Track 7 – “Ramifications” – :0:53

A poorly recorded telephone conversation.  The band appears to be trying to order a pizza, but are repeatedly told that they cannot as they did not pay for their last one.  Someone warms up on a bass in the background.

Track 8 – “Fat Riker Controls the Universe” – 9:58

Apparently unhappy with their previous attempts at making a Fat Riker themed version of the “Andy Richter Controls the Universe” theme song, the band expand on the original fifteen second melody with poor results.   Possibly in a bid to keep everybody happy, there seems to be little editing done to this song; no suggestion was turned down.  Lyrics stretch out before the listener like parallel lines, no end in sight, but vague assurances by scientists afar tell us they must meet and end at some point.

Gems include:

“Fat Riker likes popcorn,
so give us all you got,
yes we really like that hot corn,
we like it a lot.”

“Controlling the universe,
is not as easy as it seems,
if we didn’t have our space crowns,
you’d really see us mean.”

Track 9 – “Who is Better at Soccer?” – 2:31

The band is not sure who is better at soccer and argues about it over an enjoyable jazzy beat.  I think the music may have come from a radio accidently left on in the background.

Track 10 – “Final Track” – 0:04

A male voice instructs us that this is the final track.  I was not inclined to believe him at first, but it is.

Though I can find little to say positive about the auditory contents of this disc, it is a pleasure to see that Fat Riker continues to recognize CDs are meant to be round.  This is, perhaps, a success for them.

Rating: 0.5 / 10.

Milwaukee Arts & Times – September 7, 1991

An Interview with Fat Riker

Raymond Johnson

Fat Riker is a five piece rock group that has northern Milwaukee talking, but not in a good way.  In fact, if I were asked to sum up the conversation surrounding the band, it would have to be something along the lines of “Fat Riker, go far far away and never even consider coming back.  Not even if you accidently leave your wallet – just call us and we will mail it to you. So, you know, you don’t come back for it. Because we don’t want you to come back.”

The group crept into the local music scene like a friendless college freshman slipping into his old high school’s prom the year after he graduated; an awkwardly unwelcome presence that puts everyone on edge.  When my editor dropped the assignment to interview Sam “Plinky” Greer, the group’s singer and lead bassist (they field upwards of three for any given show), I was both excited and dreadful.  There is something wrong with these men who call themselves Fat Riker, and while I was hungry to find out what their deal was, I was also nervous to be seen in any kind of proximity to them.

I sat down with Plinky over some fries at the Northridge Mall food court while he was between shows. He is a tired looking man; rail thin and with dark eyes that stare somewhere in the mid-distance.  He affects a faux-British accident perhaps a third of the time; likely only when he remembers.  His tight zebra-stripe pants and permed hair have seen better days.

Q: Thank you for meeting with me.  To begin, can we get a rundown of who plays with you in Fat Riker?

Sam Greer: Oh yeah, of course.  Naturally, there’s me.  The heart and soul of Fat Riker.  I speak from the heart about the soul, yeah?  With my bass and my voice.  My bass is my heart and my voice is my soul.  And that’s why I do what I do, yeah?

Q: Of course.  And what of the other members?

SG: Wankers, all of them.  I hate them.  I wish they weren’t necessary, but no one takes a one-voice, one-bass show seriously.  I tried. Did you hear about my solo shows in Akron?

Q: Uhm, no.

SG: Unfortunate for you mate! I took music to places it ain’t never been before!

Q: I’m sure you did.  You and Fat Riker play here in the Northridge Mall food court, right?

SG: Yes, we play from 9am – 9pm every day.

Q: A twelve hour show every day?

SG: Well, we gotta take breaks some times, don’t we? But yeah, apart from breaks, a twelve hour show every day.  Except on Sundays, mall hours are shorter.  They’re only from 10 – 4.  Six hours.  Our day off.

Q: Please explain this setup to our readers who are unfamiliar with your place here.

SG: Well, Northridge used to have a Chinese food place here in the foodcourt, yeah?  But the health inspector closed it down and nothing had moved into its spot for a while. We stopped in here on our way up to Fond Du Lac for a show and we had an idea.  What if we set up a permanent home for Fat Riker, here in the food court?  So we talked to the mall manager and worked out a deal.

Q: And what was that deal?

SG: Well, we’d take over the spot where the Chinese place used to be and play all day long.  And since we’re playing, the mall doesn’t need to run the intercom music anymore does it?  So the mall saves money.  We get to half of whatever we reduce the mall’s electric bill by.

Q: I suppose that makes a kind of sense.  Still, I’m surprised you have enough material to fill a twelve hour show.

SG: Oh, we only got five songs.  Well, five and a half if you count that thing Steve’s working on, but I don’t.  So we usually loop those five songs in random order for most of the day.

Q: Doesn’t that get old for the people in the food court?

SG: Oh yeah, they hate it.  Sometimes, when they’re getting really upset, we’ll sort of egg ‘em on by playing “Bleeper and the Sleeper” over and over which is probably the worst song we have.  We’re real provocative you see.

Q: I have heard reports of violence against the band being fairly common.  You might want to take it easy on the customers – I know a lot of people had their hearts set on an Orange Julius opening up where you guys are playing now.

SG: Forget ‘em! Fat Riker is here to stay. Them blokes what kicked in the drum set is the real problem here.  Ever since then, Greg’s had to drum on upside down trash cans which definitely don’t help with acoustics let me tell you.

Q: So what’s the plan for the future of Fat Riker?

SG: We keep hoping for a snow day or a bomb threat or something to close down the mall for the day.  If we had that kind of time, we could write some new songs and visit the doctor and whatnot.  Apparently, sleeping on the floor of the food court every night has done a number on our spines.  Not to mention all the ammonia-based floor cleaner we inhale.

Apart from that, when we get our first check from the mall we’ll probably replace Greg’s drums and get an apartment.  That should be pretty soon I guess.

Q: And how much do you expect that to be?

SG: Hard to say.  It’s minus the rent on the food court area and that’s about a grand.  I’m guessing not running the intercom is probably saving somewhere between five hundred and two thousand dollars a day, yeah?  Electricity ain’t cheap you know.

Q: I’m – I’m not sure how accurate those figures are.  Have you ever paid an electric bill?

SG: I have not.

Q: Thank you for your time.

About two weeks after I conducted this interview, Fat Riker disappeared from their position in Northridge.  I phoned the mall manager and he explained to me that the group could not pay the $984 dollar bill for use of their area in the food court and defaulted on their contract.

As the contract was between the Northidge Mall and the band Fat Riker, not the individual members, the shopping center seized control of all property, real and intellectual, owned by the group.  This included the rights to five and a half songs, a notebook, the name “Fat Riker” and a set of kicked-in drums.

The mall is currently deliberating what to do with the assets, including a possible auction for the creative rights.

Sam Greer and the rest of the band left no forwarding address.

The following clipping was found in the Fat Riker notebook.  Written in the margins was the note “Valley Music eXaminer – 1984”.  I did a few google searches for that publication, but couldn’t find anything I believed relevant.  I’m sort of thinking it was a local ‘zine; just a small, photocopied magazine with a print run of probably a dozen or so.

***

Fat Riker Curdles Milk, Bores Ears

Ansel Rogers

When I saw the poorly written flyer stapled to the power pole advertising a show for Fat Riker, I knew I had to go.  Not because I was any great fan of the band, indeed, I had attended their show two years ago at the Ten Mile Lounge and found their music little more than sufferable. I knew I had to go because of her – a raven haired vixen whose name I never caught as she flitted between groups of uninterested musical patrons at that same show.

It was infatuation at first sight and I’m not too proud to admit it.  While Fat Riker ground through their set like they were chewing a gristly bit of sausage, I tried without success to strike up a conversation with this girl.  It was like we were opposite ends of a magnet – our very natures produced a powerful attraction, yet somehow we were never going to touch.  Unless the magnet broke or something.  That’s probably not the best analogy.

Good imagery or not, I was dead set on trying my best to break that magnet, so I made plans on being at the upcoming show.  Despite my possibly creepy, but definitely passive, search that lasted nearly two years, I had never managed to lay eyes on that beauty again.  Maybe she was a Fat Riker fan?  It seemed unlikely.  I couldn’t imagine anyone being a Fat Riker fan, but maybe she’d be there.

On the night of the concert, I parked the AMC at the edge of the World’s Fair grounds because I felt it was a little safer there than outside of the venue, a joint called Patrick Sullivan’s.  It was a bit of a walk, but my excitement at the thought of finally meeting this mystery woman left me with energy to spare.

Big Mick was hanging around out front of the place, bouncing the skeezes.  Big Mick was big and his name was Mick, but that didn’t mean he was dumb.  He knew I was a skeeze, but I knew something about him too.  Micky had an old lady that liked to go out and eat places besides Bob’s Burgers from time to time, and bouncing didn’t pay so well.  I flipped the giant a folded-up five spot and cruised on in.

Fat Riker was playing on the third floor, but I didn’t jet up there immediately. I took my time, ordered a Guiness at the bar, and took myself a good look around.  A smoky haze hung in the air, and it seemed like a decent crowd for a Thursday night.  Some punks were being loud over by the restrooms, yodelin’ their best “oys” and slapping the cigarette machine around.  Girls were sprinkled around here and there with the rest of the crowd, but none of them the one I was looking for.

I got tired of the racket and hit the third floor.  The room was long and thin with a little stage at the far end and groups of people clustered here and there.  A band was playing, but it wasn’t Fat Riker.  A few inquiries later I found out they were some local group called Bronze Falcon that nobody had ever heard of.  I never discovered if they were the planned opening act, or just took the stage guerilla style when no one was looking.  In any case, they cleared out soon enough and that was the best thing you could say about them.

I took a stool at the bar, choosing a cheap can of suds this time.  The best thing about drinking cans of beer at a concert is nobody can tell when you’re empty, so you can still hold onto it to give you something to do with your hands.  The Pabst tasted like piss but I had other things to occupy my mind.

Fat Riker finally climbed on stage, a motley rock quartet if I had ever seen one.  The drummer’s kit was patched together with duct tape and I think he might have been blind.  The rest of the band blinked at the meager stage lights like they had never seen the sun.  One of them dressed kind of like a cowboy.  I honestly didn’t recognize any of them from the other show.  Had they had a complete line-up change?  Was this seriously the same band?

Without warning, and there should have been one, they launched into a song called “Wind-Up Beaver” that mostly consisted of screechy yelling and flat bass beats.  The guitarist didn’t play and he might have cried a little.

One song in and the crowd was already turning hostile.  The bartender moved fast, somehow yelling over the band for half-priced drinks. The crowd took the hint and proceeded to inebriate themselves in a speedier manner.  I moved to the side of the room to avoid the crush at the bar, all the while keeping my eyes open for the girl.  Nothing yet.

“Wind-Up Beaver” ended, if anything, more abruptly than it had begun, but the soft sobbing of the guitarist lingered an uncomfortable few moments more.  Maybe his guitar was powered by tears?  I don’t know.

Another unfamiliar number started, seemingly in the middle of the song instead of the more traditional beginning.  Marks for originality, but the crowd did not like this at all.  I didn’t catch the name of this song and I’m not sure it had a chorus.

The probably-blind drummer kept missing the heads of his kit, sending his arms flailing in impressive arcs similar to erratic asteroids making irregular orbits around a far distant sun.  Anytime he wouldn’t connect, he’d simply rocket it back around in a full circle, crashing into whatever happened to get in his way. I think he considered a beat that was twice as loud but a few seconds late to be just as good as a regular note played on time.  I can assure you this was not the case.

Anyway, I missed a lot of this song as I asked around about the raven haired girl, if anyone had seen her.  No one had.  I was beginning to think the night might be a bust, when the singer yelled out that the next song was called “Backwards Song” and then proceeded to chant in some unknown language.

This caught the crowd’s attention briefly, and the music started with a crash of sound.  The tune sounded vaguely familiar, and I abandoned my search for the moment to pay attention.   I don’t know how but I somehow pieced together that this was a backward version of one of the songs I had heard two years ago.  The band warbled along hesitantly, acting like aliens come to Earth, so totally ignorant of our society that they did things they did not understand just to please us.  The crowd started to file out halfway through and I couldn’t help but imagine being the only one left in the room with these musical madmen, trying to act like I cared.

My heart pounded madly, nowhere close to in rhythm with Fat Riker, as I scanned the departing mob for any sign of my dream girl.  When I realized that she simply wasn’t there, the bottom fell out of my soul.  I turned around and stared dumbfounded at the stage. Fat Riker crashed on with their song; barreling forward with all of the blind intensity of a force of nature.  My search was over, and all I had to show for it were ears that would ring from this dreadful noise for two days.

Disgusted, I crunched the PBR can and tossed it in the floor.  I shuffled down the stairs with the rest of the dissidents, and exited via the front.  I burned a cig with Big Mick while trying to work myself up for the hike back to my car.  Clamorous sounds echoed down from the room above while we smoked, the group seemingly oblivious to their dwindling audience.

I couldn’t fault their energy, but I sure as hell wasn’t going back up.

I started this blog because I’m not entirely sure what I’ve gotten myself into, but apparently I am now the sole member of the band known as “Fat Riker”.

It’s a bit of a strange story how this happened.

I’m a big fan of Craigslist.  This is not because of any particular merits of the site itself, I’m more of a fan of the postings that one can find there.  It’s free to post ads for just about anything on Craigslist, so you often find this sort of base level of humanity there – a raw, unfiltered stream of buying and selling items and lives.  It’s sort of like a fantastic, visible tool for achieving capitalistic equilibrium.

I spend a bit of time on Craigslist each night, browsing the latest attic hoards and missed connections.  It was late one night where I found a listing titled “band member needed”.  It had been posted only a few minutes before I saw it.  It read:

“need band member. fat riker. call now. free chips? maybe”

I, being in some kind of adventurous mood, decided to call simply because the ad was so strange.  I’m no kind of musician; I’ve failed at learning a number of different instruments in my time, to say nothing of music theory.  Still, I sort of wanted to see what this person had to say.  The phone barely rang a single time before someone answered – a raspy male voice.  I don’t have a proper record of the conversation, but I’ll post it as closely as I can recall.

Him: “Fat Riker?”

Me: “Hello?  I’m calling about the band member ad?”

Him: “Yes, Fat Riker.  Come here tomorrow – 11:37 am.  Exactly!”

Then he gave me an address and hung up.  I guess I would do.

***

The next day was Saturday, so I didn’t have any particularly conflicting plans.  I slept in and then drove over to the address.  I arrived at the place, a dodgy looking apartment building in the town where they enriched the plutonium for the first nuclear bomb – Oak Ridge.  It wasn’t 11:37 exactly, but I figured it was close enough.  I found the apartment number and knocked, but no one answered.  I knocked again and waited, but still no answer.

In frustration, I tried the handle, and the door swung open.  Inside was a narrow, one bedroom apartment empty of furniture.  Scattered around on the floor were dozens of empty Doritos bags.  There was a grungy blanket in one corner.  If someone did live here, it looked more like an animal’s nest than a human home.  The place seemed empty.

Apart from the general disarray, the most striking feature about the room was the scrawl of words on the wall.  They read: “YOU ARE FAT RIKER”.  At the time, I wasn’t really sure what they meant, though I had an inkling that “Fat Riker” was the band name.  I scrounged around a bit to see what I could see.

Some of the empty chip bags on the floor had been ripped open to form crude writing surfaces.  Someone had written on them in smeary marker and collected them in a large pile.  I tried to decipher their meaning, but they were very rambling and incoherent.  I think they may have been song lyrics.

Kicking the blanket over revealed my best find of the day, a battered spiral-bound notebook. Flipping through it, I found it full of writing and drawings.  There were faded, yellowed clippings from newspapers and magazines taped to some of the pages.  A number of these were pretty old – I saw at least one or two from the 1970s.  I skimmed it for maybe five minutes before realizing this notebook was something of a chronicle of the band Fat Riker.  From the variation in the styles of the handwriting, I guessed maybe dozens of people had worked on this book.

I stood there for a minute in the silence, smelling old Doritos and dust, trying to decide what to do.  I finally decided this was too weird of a thing to ignore.  The words on the wall were telling me I was now in charge of Fat Riker, and I chose to believe them.  That meant the notebook was mine.  It was the only link I had to the band’s history.  I resolved to take it with me.

I waited for a while in my car, thumbing through the pages of the notebook, to see if anyone showed up at the apartment.  No one did, and eventually I got hungry and left.

That night, I tried to pull up the ad again to call the man back, to let him know I had been there, but the listing had been removed.  Luckily, I was able to dig through my browser’s cache and pull a copy.  The line rang and rang, but no one ever answered.  I tried back several times over the next two days but there was never a response.  On the third day, the line didn’t ring at all; it had been disconnected.

***

And that’s where I am with this right now.  I’ve spent some time going through the notebook, and I think there’s a really complex story to tell here.  I don’t know if it’s a good story, but there are definitely things that have happened with this band Fat Riker.

The records in the journal are particularly patchy, though.  I think I’m going to have to do some digging elsewhere if I want to know everything.  If there’s one thing that’s for certain, it’s definitely nothing new for the group to see line-up changes.  Even though I don’t really have any strong connection to the myriad of former incarnations of this band, I still feel like I’m following some kind of grand tradition.

This next number is called “Fat Riker: A History!”  Count us in, drum machine!