• Gibbons On A Squareback, 2011

I spent a lot of time on the phone last week, catching up with relatives and old friends. It turns out that one of these friends now has a job with a music agency in Los Angeles. After talking a bit about his job duties, he casually mentioned that he could give me the telephone number of nearly any musician that I could think of. My brain immediately returned to a moment late last summer, when Ruben, Lacey & I were driving somewhere in Montana. We were listening to the radio and the "Joker" by Steve Miller Band came on. We started a rather long conversation about the guitar noise that comes after the line, “Some people call me Maurice,” which is basically a “wolf whistle” like you would hear from construction workers to a girl in a romper. We discussed if that riff was Steve Miller’s idea, or perhaps the producer or a series of other people involved with the song. We talked about how great it would be to write a 33 1/3 book about this exact detail, agreeing that most of the books in that series would be no more an exercise in irksome. There certainly had to be more people in the world who wondered about the origin of that riff.

“Could you get me Steve Miller’s phone number?” I asked. My friend answered that he most likely could, and within five minutes I had ten digits that could unlock the great mystery. I immediately hung up and dialed the number and the conversation was exactly this:

WOMAN: Hello?
CAPERIN’: Good afternoon. I would like to talk to Steve Miller if he is available.
WOMAN: Can I ask who this is and what it’s regarding?
CAPERIN’: (thinking quickly) Well, my name is Derek Erdman and I’m calling from a radio show called This American Wife. (Hoping that she would think I was talking about the other radio show)
WOMAN: This American Wife? (oh dag)
CAPERIN’: Yes, it’s a radio show about brides and bridal music.
WOMAN: Hold on one second.
CAPERIN’: (whoa)
STEVE MILLER: Hello?
CAPERIN’: Hello, Mr. Miller! My name is Derek Erdman and I’m calling from This American Wife and I have some questions about the wolf whistle guitar riff in your song called the Joker.
STEVE MILLER: (hangs up)

DID YOU KNOW that murder victim Meredith Kercher starred in an eerie music video just weeks before being killed in Perugia, Italy? Either way, I am publicly proclaiming Amanda Knox to be absolutely innocent.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Mick Jones of monster AOR band Foreigner. Despite being 87 years old today, Jones still wants to know what love is and he wants me to show him. "Head Games" > "Double Vision" (in song as well as real life).

• Urgent! Emergency! Urgent Urgent Urgent! Emergency!

REST IN PEACE to Lady Tee, AKA Teena Marie. “Lovergirl” was the soundtrack to my first teenaged fumblings at the Moonglow Roller Rink in Parma, Ohio when I was 11 years old. WAIT THAT’S NOT TEENAGED! THAT’S GROSS! On a somewhat related side-note, Wikipedia reports, “In a recent television interview, Teen Marie noted she drove a Chevy Vega during the mid-70s."

• "Coffee tea or me baby, touche ole."

A MINUTE WITH BREE (BASS PLAYER FOR TACOCAT):
Listen & read along here:

BREE: Hello?
CAPERIN': Hello, Bree?
BREE: Derek, you're not going to let me just go on some shit-talk tangent and embarrass me, are you?
CAPERIN': How was your Christmas, Bree?
BREE: It was good. How was yours?
CAPERIN': What did you do?
BREE: Um, I played a show at the Funhouse, and then...
CAPERIN': That was Christmas Eve.
BREE: That was Christmas Eve.
CAPERIN': You're pretty tight with the drummer for Pony Time, aren't you?
BREE: What's that? Yeah! I hung out with Stacey from Pony Time...
CAPERIN': She got wasted that night.
BREE: She sure was.
CAPERIN': What, uh, why was she so wasted?
BREE: (laughs) She, um, had a million shots before she started playing. Which I've never seen her do. She got “drunk uncle” annihilated. And then, yeah.
CAPERIN': Do you condone that kind of behavior?
BREE: No, absolutely not. She got an earful.
CAPERIN': When's your birthday?
BREE: What?
CAPERIN': When's your birthday?
BREE: It's October, I'm a Libra.
CAPERIN': Oh, a Libra!
BREE: Yeah!
(end interview) - (begin shout-out)
BREE: Hi, I just want to give a quick Merry Christmas shout-out to my dad, Dave Mustaine.

• "I think I wanna end up like Ouiser from Steel Magnolias." - Bree 2010

TOP FIVE CAPERS FOR THE LAST WEEK:
#5: Live At The Whitehouse by the Exploited
#4: Dolly Parton - Hard Candy Christmas
#3: Unnatural Helpers, the Intelligence, Dancer and Prancer @ the Crocodile (WHOA).
#2: Tacocat & Pony Time (+snacks) @ the Funhouse
#1: Stab Grab / Dawn Shredder — Ghost Walk