the one about having an eckert complex

Little ever seemed known about George M. Eckert (M for Mandrill, I later discovered), whose brief biography said he was originally from somewhere out east and had attended some college whose name began with a V. Vanderbilt? Villanova? Vatterott? I don’t remember. An English professor by trade, he came to Grandville in the mid-1920s and reportedly left town in five years for bigger and better pastures; one assumes this position at GU was just one in a series of small steps leading to bigger and better things for Mr. Eckert. But that too is a bit unclear.

George Eckert must have been held in high esteem by the colleagues that remained in Grandville because his name seems to have been evoked for years. An occasional dip into the yearbooks of the time indicate he was well-liked and, from those volumes immediately following his departure, much-missed. Looking sort of like a poor man’s John Updike, George Eckert’s name was finally etched on the face of the university in the 1950s with the construction of the Eckert English Building. As I noted years later, I can’t think of a more interesting honor for someone whose only association with the school is five years of teaching English.

The three-story Eckert English Building was a proud looking structure of grayish-cream colored stone whose short end opened out onto the main quadrangle. Its front doors, and the two-story windows directly above the door, were framed by a multi-colored brick façade that ran the height of the building; from a distance it appeared as jagged cut stone, something perhaps to give it the resemblance of a little texture.

Next to the Eckert Building was the band hall. In the 1980s the administration decided to not knock down the English and band buildings but to combine the two structures into one. This wasn’t something entirely new on campus as a few dormitories had been structurally fused together in years past and went from being known as X Hall and Y Hall to the X-Y Complex. After the newly built section between the English and band buildings – which mostly contained an open and windowed walkway and staircase – was complete, the combined structure became known as the Eckert Complex.

Somewhere along the way another complex developed, this one speaking to the fact that the original two buildings did not stand on equal footing. This meant that when you entered the front doors of the original English building on the first floor and walked up the staircase in the new windowed walkway, you found yourself on the first floor of the original band building. It could be a confusing mess if, for example, a class schedule said to meet in room 105 and you entered at the wrong door – if you’re told something is on the first floor, and you’re fairly sure you’re on the first floor, then you don’t usually go up flights of stairs in pursuit of a misplaced classroom. All this perceived confusion could have been avoided through signage but there was none during that school year I frequented the building (maybe there was some years prior or later but I don’t know). So in GU-speak, having an eckert complex meant you were prone to getting lost in the English building.

Ms. Getnam’s English Composition I class met in what was the basement of the original English Building. For English Composition II, I walked upstairs to the first floor, up another set of stairs to the first floor, and then down a long hall to an auditorium that was badly undersized for the number of students in the class.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Complex
(Edwards, Unruh)
Unruh
From the album Setting Fire to Sinking Ships
1999

the one about why we should wait more than thirty minutes for dr. blanc

Behind the Media, Culture, and Society course was a man named Dr. Fredrick Blanc, a middle-aged army brat that had never married, never had kids, and never seemed to like anyone or anything. He wasn’t as rough around the edges as that may sound, but he didn’t take a lot of crap from people for too long. He did take his work seriously, be that teaching, mentoring, or researching, which he did for hours on end (weekday or weekends) in his office. He did, after all, have one of the few Ph.D.s in the department at the time and therefore found little interest in the operation of the radio and television stations that attracted so many students to the program.

Blanc was a native of Massachusetts and had never lost his accent, but had tried, he said, during his childhood years moving with his dad from state to state and from army base to army base. From this way of life must surely have developed his well-known demeanor and temperament. This attitude wasn’t meant to scare off students, though. Far from it; in fact, more often than not students found they came to have a better appreciation for both Blanc and the course in later years. And that seems to be the core reason why Blanc taught the communication history, theory, and law courses – what the students learned would be with them long after the “button pushing” in the radio and television stations had faded.

So what of this famous Blanc attitude? Everything boiled down to respect: don’t interrupt him, don’t aggravate him, and don’t belittle him of anyone else. If you could manage that, and if you participated in class discussions, then you could probably get an A or B – depending on how well you did on his tests. But the surefire way to piss him off…the fastest way, the easiest way, as if was nine o’clock in the morning…was to yawn. Honestly, if you covered your mouth and didn’t make it obvious you might still get a glare from the hyperactive guy teaching at the front of the class. But God forbid – don’t let loose with a loud, long sigh…ouch! “Hey!” he snapped in his unmistakable New England accent, “I don’t teach in your bed, don’t sleep in my class! Stop it!”

These yawns usually came on the tail end of his “screenings” – essentially a chance to watch television in class for ten or twenty minutes. I actually think he called them “screenings” to get by with showing them in class, because I remember someone asking if we were going to “watch TV” one morning and this sort of set him off. We weren’t watching television, he’d explain, we were collectively screening a culturally significant program via television. And then he’d sort of give a half-tooth wise-ass smirk. (Yes, he did smile – he was generally well-deposed.)

Another good way to piss off Dr. Blanc was call him “Freddie,” his first name. “Hey, I’m your teachah, not your friend!” he’d snap, going as far to call it impolite and rude.

One of Blanc’s memorable moments happened a few weeks into the semester. Blanc’s class met in the same room that Propel’s Introduction class had met the previous semester and since both were geared toward freshmen the room was filled with a lot of the same people. The room was abuzz of chatter that morning in the minutes before class started and, without any interruption, we continued taking until someone pointed out it was ten minutes after the hour. Dr. Blanc was tardy. Soon the talk turned to the fifteen-minute rule: how long did students have to wait for a tardy teacher? Everyone was quoting something different: was it ten minutes for an MA or ten minutes for a Ph.D.? Maybe it was twenty minutes for a Ph.D. No one could quote the rule because there was no rule anywhere to quote. And that’s when people started leaving.

I remember being torn at what I should do? It was obvious he was late and I didn’t like wasting my time. On the other hand, Dr. Blanc did say this morning we were to expect a quiz – would he postpone it for the next class? About midway through the hour someone went to the department secretary and had her call Dr. Blanc at his house. He was not happy. Less than ten minutes later Dr. Blanc stormed into the room in one of the most memorable and unfashionably uncomfortable outfits I ever saw: a gray-yellow windbreaker thrown over a T-shirt, acid-washed jeans of some color between red and blue, and tennis shoes chewed through by Cerberus. He was pissed off because of his own tardiness and more so because more than half the class had bailed on his planned quiz.

Those of us that stayed took an abbreviated version of the quiz and, I believe, we all aced it. The next time class met the remainder of the students were told they should not ever again, under no circumstances, without penalty of death or a swift kick in the arse, desert one of Dr. Blanc’s classes.

Diligently silencing all protesters, he proceeded to dump a lengthier and more difficult quiz on those that walked out and let those that already took the first quiz go for the day.

We never saw that “outfit” again, by the way.

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Tardy
(John Shiurba)
Eskimo
From the album Some Prefer Cake
1999

Some don't last for much too long and some leave us tragically

Talk about incoherency in America.

Some of my fellow undergraduates followed the escapades of the Music Television Network a bit too closely back in 1998. Apparently the network felt viewers were not as attentive as they had been in the past (back in those Martha Quinn days) and decided that instead of letting the bigwigs behind the scenes hire the next round of talking heads that we Americans could do it for them. A contest! You know, for kids! Everyone who had given up on their MTV would return and collectively we could pluck some cool walking, hip talking schmuck out of obscurity and make him or her popular. By popular, that meant they got to by a Veejay on the cable network for a year. This appealed to the masses for some reason and boys and girls across the county submitted their résumés and their funniest home videos and applications so they could say proudly announce that they had – finally – gotten their MTV.

Closer to home, because some of the DJs needed something to talk about during their breaks, it should come then as little surprise then that this national contest of merit was an easy conversation piece. Some rooted for the blond, others chimed in for the surfer dude, and some liked to think this would all pass as quickly as possible. Oddly enough there were three or four student DJs who really went all out on this, following the statistics and votes and vying for their candidate in the same way they weren’t for the 1998 midterm elections. I mean, more people could name the scarecrow lookin’ kid than any governor or senator.

The scarecrow looking kid for those who have forgotten was Jesse Camp, the one with the ear ring and makeup (and yeah – that’s his own hair).

I’ll freely admit to sacrificing some moments of my life to watch some of the shenanigans unfold and I seem to recall there was some sort of collective “Huh?” from me and others at the radio station when it was announced that the “normal” looking guy (with a “normal” sounding name, no less: Dave) had lost out to...well, the other guy (the other guy who didn’t always appear to get “it,” the guy who seldom seemed to know where he was, the guy who probably was not the poster child example that the bigwigs originally had in mind). But so goes viewer voting. In the end, Jesse was America’s sweetheart, Dave was left scratching his head, MTV had found ratings gold, the radio station promptly forgot the entire ordeal, I prepared to graduate, and everyone who didn’t vote for Jesse learned they would have to put up with him for a year or so.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise then when it was announced Jesse was releasing an album. By this time I was off to graduate school, but I know that during my year as station manager that radio station didn’t get a copy of Jesse & The 8th Street Kidz. Knowing some of the people I worked with, they would have probably sent the album back.

I would have agreed. Send it back, man, send it back.

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Wasted Youth
(Jesse Camp/Share Ross/Alex Kniepkamp/Bam Ross/Jo Almeida/Ric Browde)
Jesse Camp
From the album Jesse & The 8th Street Kidz
1999

Skunked out into the night
Splitting home to go dig on the street
Sick of all the same ole hassles + drills & copz on their bullshit beats
But with my virgin veins
And all my growing pains
The myths of street kid living
Didn't match the shit I was givin'
Ain't no noddin' off on dreams
Sleepin' in reality

Wasted youth
It ain't wasted on me
Set me free
You are my destiny

Taken in by all the older kidz
Who lived it all way before me
Some don't last for much too long
And some leave us tragically
Cause when you're gettin too old
And your habit takes hold
You start to lose your twinkling smile
You know it's all the same trap
I wanna hear your dumb rap
You live in the same shit as we do
I don't need your denial

Wasted youth
You ain't wasted on me
Set me free
You are my destiny

Feelin so slow
Feelin so small
Guess they were right
We were destined to fall

We're fallin' lower + lower + lower till we ain't nowhere at all
You know I think we lost our minds out there
Fallen face down into their dirt
Cause it's too easy too (sic) shut yourself on down
Succomb to all their pain and hurt
But I was born a free man
Won't slam no cuffz on my hands
And I ain't gonna turn on the kidz that helped me out
Cause we ain't your victims no more
Without your spike slammin sore
Wasted youth?
That ain't us thatz your own damn miss

Wasted youth
You ain't wasted on me
You ain't our destiny
Set us free

Flyin' high

- - - - - - - - - - - -

We’d like to acknowledge http://discog.fleetwoodmac.net/ as the source of this week’s album information and lyrics. Those details are usually easy to come by but this week’s entry proved a worthwhile chore. Thankfully, the site that bills itself as “Everything Fleetwood Mac” has a special place for the 8th Street Kidz, if only because Stevie Nicks contributes vocals on portions of the album.

Ouch.

There are no box seats in the library

Due south of the Communication Building was a tiny, architectural wonder called College Memorial Library. With such a generic name came the assumption that it was a generic building. Those beliefs were not far from the truth, as during my time on campus it did little to attract attention. It actually was a very interesting structure, though it did look like a miniature sandstone-colored gumdrop, composed of a rotunda with some wistfully unfinished appendages.

It was famously built in 1899, with “modest additions” hurriedly completed over the next two years. These additions were necessities because the then-president (an odd duck named Caldwell) realized that the century would be over shortly and he wished for another building on his fledgling campus; in short, what would end up as the last building built in the nineteenth century. Why not a separate library, he asked? Why not, was the reply. Plans were scraped together in the tenth hour and a wandering artist – some sort of woodcarver, sculptor, or what have you – was engaged to cobble together Caldwell’s wishes. Old tales were told that this nameless artist (later called “Quistopher” in unofficial texts) used some sort of black magic to complete his project, but these are conjecture and no one believes in magic anyway (let us not be silly). In actuality, Quis only completed the shell of the new library, thus fulfilling Caldwell’s wish to have “another building on his fledgling campus” before the end of the year. It was officially dedicated in 1899, though Caldwell vehemently denied the governing board access inside, claiming it was not “a public facility.”

Following the ceremony, the early months of 1900 were spent figuring out how to construct an interior to match the grandiose exterior. When through, College Library re-opened in 1901 and continued in its designated role until the early 1920s, when the larger replacement library opened on the north end of the quadrangle. Maintaining the name “College Library” on the outer wall of the building, the original college library went through a series of uses that had little to do with Caldwell's intended use: general classroom space, random administrative offices, unwanted equipment storage, unsavory dining hall, improperly-ventilated science laboratory, undersized performance space for the newly created drama department, over-sized gallery space for the uninspired art department, and, by the 1970s, the first broadcast studio space for the campus radio and television stations.

Purportedly the rotunda room of the library had great acoustics to make for studio space. I don’t know: I only visited the library a few times during a history tour, long after the Communication Building had been built and the library building had somehow returned to its original usage, now a "special collections" holding area. It was hard envisioning the building as anything other than a library, much like President Caldwell would have had he lived that long.

One of the undergraduate instructors, a scatterbrained woman named Mrs. Mavis Ganslape, had taught some of the ancestral communication courses in the library, back when the courses were part of some other curriculum (like drama or theater or...). This was odd, since some people said she looked older than the library. I kid, but so went the criticisms of my peers. Back in her heydays, the radio station she supposedly help staff was nothing more than a low-watt studio stuck in mere closet-sized space. Student DJs reportedly sat in bucket seats and played nothing more than scratchy warped pieces of vinyl featuring classical, jazz, and prototypical rock...and it’s anyone’s guess how the audience took to it. Evidently Ganslape thought little of the jazz, rock, and other popular styles back then, based on her annoyed reactions to the current jaw-weary shams in all the different varieties during my time on campus.

Anyway, I first encountered this mysterious blue-haired woman my freshman year and was admittedly somewhat nervous of her omnipresent wrinkly scowl, pointed features, and prickled voice. I didn’t know what she did in the Communication Building, other than appear out of nowhere at the most inopportune times – such as stepping out of her shadowy office at one end of a darkened hall just as I entered from the opposite end. Her saggy eyes, vividly shown through her crystal clear glasses, crossly examined me as our paths briefly crossed. When I asked around, I was told she taught the Media Presentation course, a second-year class that was more known for being outlandishly outdated than anything else.

Outdated and outlandish as the library where she originally taught, no doubt. So that was what I had to look forward to. I couldn’t wait....

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Library Nation
(the evil tambourines/Al Larsen)
The Evil Tambourines
From the album Library Nation
1999

Maybe it’s a fashion, maybe it’s a trend

Uh...so, okay – this guy, Chris Gaines, evidently confused a lot of people back in September 1999 when Capitol Records announced they were releasing the greatest hits album of this supposed Grammy Award winning artist. I seem to recall thinking it might have been fun to go trick-or-treating as Gaines that year – must have been a fleeting thought because I'm fairly sure I didn’t. Just as strange, I didn't recall him winning a Grammy in 1989. The only thing fake that came out of 1989 the best I can recall was Milli Vanilli and we all know what happened there. Would anyone protest if someone "discovered" a popular pop-country artist was performing Gaines' voice? Even though Gaines' bio says he's been doing "something" since 1967, back in '99 he was a relative newcomer to the world of music and possibly the world of reality.

All right: long story short (an epically narcissistic story short), Gaines is the alternative rock persona of country artist Garth Brooks, which may have been immediately apparent at the time, I don't recall. I remember wondering why we needed made-up "local boy makes good" stories when there were plenty of sorrow-drenched lives out there already making real music for their just-as-real fans. Maybe all of this would have made more sense had the associated movie gotten the green light (yippy…). This Gaines CD was to double as the soundtrack to The Lamb: the life and times of Chris Gaines but because of time, money, or interest (or a combination of all three) the film never made it to the big screen. Digging around the Backsells archives I found this quote of The Artist Formerly Known As Garth identifying with the Gaines character:

"To me, the character ... hasn't been a 6"1', 225-pound guy. If I do play it, I'm gonna need to lose an ass and a half.''

I guess if you are at a slum in your career you go off to dark corner and make something, or someone, up.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
Right Now
(Chester Powers/Cheryl Wheeler )
Chris Gaines
From the album In the Life of Chris Gaines
1999

Maybe it’s the movies, maybe it’s the books
Maybe it’s the government and all the other crooks
Maybe it’s the drugs, maybe it’s the parents
Maybe it’s the gangs, or the colors that we’re wearin'
Maybe it’s the high schools, maybe it’s the teachers
Tattoos, pipe bombs underneath the bleachers
Maybe it’s the music, maybe it’s the crack
Maybe it’s the bible, or could it be the lack

Come on people, now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another, right now...right now

Okay, maybe it’s the papers, maybe it’s the family
Maybe it’s the internet, radio, TV
Maybe it’s the president, maybe it’s the last one
Maybe it’s the one before that
Maybe it’s the athletes, maybe it’s the dads
Maybe it’s the sports fans, agents, fads
Maybe it’s the homeless, aliens, immigrants
Maybe it’s life, don’t tell me that it’s imminent

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now
You gotta love one another

Maybe it’s the fallout, maybe it’s the ozone
Maybe it’s the chemicals, the radiation, cell phones
Maybe it’s the magazines, maybe it the next page
Lotteries, fast food, bad news, road rage
Maybe it the unions, big business
Maybe it’s the KKK and the skinheads
Maybe it’s the daughters, maybe it’s the sons
Maybe it’s the brothers of the mothers or the guns

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

Come on people now
Smile on your brother
Everybody get together
Try to love one another right now

(You know, if we don’t talk about it
It ain’t gonna get better)

We gotta love one another

(So, whadda say, let’s talk)

Maybe it’s the parks, maybe it’s the sex
Maybe it’s the talk shows, maybe it’s a reflex
Maybe it’s the taxes, maybe it’s the system
Judges, lawyers, prisons
Maybe it’s the Catholics, maybe it’s the Protestants
Maybe it’s the addicts, and the hippies and communists
Maybe it’s a fashion, maybe it’s a trend
Maybe it’s the future... maybe it’s the end

The Six 45 Episode

Just as Soda Sandwich (see Everyone is so angry and nobody fits) was the lackluster local band at my undergrad college radio station, the high school sounds of Six 45 were the mind-numbing musicians at station when I was in grad school – and the fast favorite for the "All Around Worst" award. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not dissing them for their efforts. I respect them for trying to get their hands wet with music. It was their less-than-professional manner of gaining promotion and respect that I think drove others to dislike them so much.

The first half of this story happened one evening after class.

As station manager, I would often stop in and take a listen of how things were going, answer questions and make an overall effort to be visible and approachable. I was a grad student and the staff running this station consisted of sophomores through seniors – undergrads like I had been the year before. It was approachng 7:30 and in the booth were the on-air DJ, the music director, another DJ pulling music for his shift that started at the top of the hour, and myself. There was a knock at the front door of the station. Someone jumped up and was gone for a few minutes. When he returned he had two young kids with him – freshmen, maybe.

If the kids introduced themselves by name, I don’t know, but they did say they were with the local band Six 45 and wanted their disc played on the station and, more so, to be included in our weekly show of local and regional bands. To solidify this request they produced a copy of what they called "their new CD," which everyone in the room thought meant “another, possibly a second, album.” The music director accepted the disc, saying he’d have to check the lyrics and that while we’d give it a spin or two sometime, the listeners would be the real test as to how good it was and how much future airtime it received. And so the kids went their way.

They hadn’t been gone ten minutes when the phone rang. The DJ on duty answered and after a short pause – and a sarcastic snort – said, “I’ll see what I can do,” which in disc jockey lingo is the standard response when asked for a request, roughly translated as, “Sure – maybe when Hell freezes over.” With a laugh, the DJ told us the caller was a girl who had “heard” that the station had just gotten the “new” Six 45 record and her request was to hear a track or two.

The rest of us in the studio groaned, realizing the pawns we had just become. The DJ who started in thirty minutes said he’d play it next hour but wanted to preview it in a nearby production room first. His review was something short, like “not good.” First he had discovered the disc was nothing more than a cheap read/write disc, not known for the best sound quality. Second, the five or six tracks sounded sludgy and undecipherable; in short, not enjoyable. Third, he found out from the album credits that the kids were in high school. He joked at the thought of the band throwing their music together after school that day and unable to think of a name. We all laughed as we pictured the kids finishing the recording of the disc at a quarter to 7pm and using that time designation as the band's name (6:45...).

It was playable nonetheless and the DJ made good on his promise of playing a track. The next day he somewhat bitterly revealed that his only requests all night were for “new” Six 45 tracks. And it got worse from there: other DJs were getting calls for it, too – regardless of format. Even the jazz shift, whose DJs didn’t even know what a Six 45 was.  When it wasn’t played during the nightly rock shifts, I was told, members of the band called and complained, saying they didn’t bring a copy of their disc to our station to have it sit and collect dust. Obviously attitudes like this didn’t win over any fans at the station. 

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The second part of the Six 45 story came a number of months later, when the DJ for the weekly local music show came by the music office and Six 45 was station lingo for "local joke."

He worked at Hastings part-time and said Six 45 had been in many weeks ago, trying to make a deal so they could sell their music to whatever fan base they had in the community. Hastings agreed and the discs were set alongside the other albums. During the proceeding week, however, Hastings management had discovered the Six 45 albums were getting moved from the "general sale" bins to prime areas at the end of the aisles. The student who worked at Hastings reported the store had called the band members a couple of days prior and reportedly said one night after checking their stock that all the Six 45 albums had apparently been stolen, as they came up missing from the bins. The band then reportedly all but confessed their true actions, saying that when they were in the store the day before, they had "seen" their discs in the display at the end of the aisle.

This clinched it for Hastings: the store claimed to receive money from record companies to have certain albums prominently featured in special displays and Six 45 had jeopardized Hastings’ trust. As a result the store told the band they had 24 hours to come remove all their albums or the store would throw them out. The student telling the story said he had just come from his workplace, where Six 45 had arrived a bit too late. I don’t know how much airtime Six 45 got on the station after this. If anything, we didn’t play the disc since it was probably the only copy left in town. And you know how rare treasures like this can be. So rare, in fact, that we don’t know any song title nor have any lyrics. No giant loss. - - 

- - - - - - - - - -

unknown title (unknown writer)
Six 45
From the independently self-released album
c. 1999

[Lyrics not known]