When grandpa Viv kicked back in ’86 on my sister’s birthday there turned out to be some money left over from the moonshining great-grandpa Viv had done to the federales during the Manhattan Science Project. So pa Viv decided it was time to liberate me from the ’77 Volkswagon van I’d inherited from my drunk aunt Katrina. This liberation came years too late to prevent me from the self-same thing pa Viv’s attempt to prevent me from with another chapter of the embraces had caused the detonation of the family Five local.

Still, a deal is a deal.

Pa Viv drove me about ’Burque and Fantase to see cars and make sure I didn’t agree to any of those salesmen tricks being just a baby spending a couple dead men’s cash. Boy, can my old man turn his back on someone who costs more than he’s there to pay. Boy.

One shop was a Mazda place and I got to drive a really sporty thing with one of the salesmen who was dressed like Hitler’s moustache if Hitler’s moustache was rich, had great taste in wool suits, and wasn’t attached to a genocidal maniac’s upper lip.

We were driving—well, I was driving, he was making sure I didn’t crash or steal the car—and talking. I was so into music then; trying to break into it, as well you know. And he asked me about music.

It was the blooming red tide of rock between the all but simultaneously deaths of John Bonham/Lennon and the slight return heralded by Guns N’Roses, Jane’s Addiction, and Nirvana. There were a few flickers of hope from Grand Master Flash, Van Halen, and AC/DC between, but only one band that wasn’t writing shite better suited for Broadway than a 24-piece Tama kit in a concrete arena: Living Colour.

The natty as nailpolish car salesman in his $750 china tea wool suit told me he liked jazz. I told him how much I loved Living Colour.

Fuck Living Colour for being black and embarrassing me in front of that nice car salesman who was also black.

And fuck Michael Dorn’s cousin for embarrassing me for asking her if she was related to him. She was.