We practiced six long hours the first day, and at the end, Al Kooper called us together for an inspirational talk.

“When we started this morning, we stunk,” he said. “But by this afternoon, we stunk much better. Maybe eventually we can be just a faint odor.”

In the evenings we engaged in literary activities such as going to see the movie Alien . I was concerned about this, because when I watch horror movies I tend to whimper and clutch the person sitting next to me, who in this particular case was Stephen King. But as it turned out, the alien didn’t scare me at all; I live in Miami, and we have cockroaches that are at least that size, but more aggressive. The only scary part was when Sigourney Weaver got injected with a hypodermic needle, which on the movie screen was approximately 27 feet long. This caused me to whimper and clutch Stephen King, but I was pleased to note that he was whimpering and clutching his wife, Tabitha.

But the real thrill came when our band finished practicing and actually played. The performance was in a big dance hall called the Cowboy Boogie, where hundreds of booksellers and publishing-industry people had drunk themselves into a highly literary mood. The show went great. The audience whooped and screamed and threw underwear. Granted, some of it was extra-large men’s Jockey briefs, but underwear is underwear. We belted out our songs, singing, with deep concern for literacy in our voices, such lyrics as:

You got to do the Mammer Jammer If you want my love.

Also a group of rock critics got up with us and sang a version of “Louie Louie” so dirty that the U.S. Constitution should, in my opinion, be modified specifically to prohibit it.

Also—so far this is the highlight of my life—I got to play a lead-guitar solo while dancing the Butt Dance with Al Kooper. To get an idea how my solo sounded, press the following paragraph up against your ear:

BWEEEOOOOOAAAAPPPPPP

Ha ha! Isn’t that great? Your ear is bleeding.

Recently, I was chosen to serve as a musical consultant to the radio industry.

Actually, it wasn’t the entire industry; it was a woman named Marcy, who called me up at random one morning while I was picking my teeth with a business card as part of an ongoing effort to produce a column.

“I’m not selling anything,” Marcy said.

Of course when callers say this, they usually mean that they ARE selling something, so I was about to say “No thank you” in a polite voice, then bang the receiver down with sufficient force to drive phone shards deep into Marcy’s brain, when she said she was doing a survey for the radio industry about what songs should be played on the air.

That got my attention, because radio music is an issue I care deeply about. I do a lot of singing in the car. You should hear Aretha Franklin and me perform our version of “I Say a little Prayer for You,” especially when our voices swoop way up high for the ending part that goes, “My darling BELIEVE me, for me there is nooo WAHHHHHAAANNNN.” My technique is to grip the steering wheel with both hands and lift myself halfway out of the seat so that I can give full vocal expression to the emotion that Aretha and I are feeling, which is a mixture of joyous hope and bittersweet longing and the horror of realizing that the driver of the cement truck three feet away is staring at me, at which point I pretend that I am having a coughing seizure while Aretha finishes the song on her own.

I think they should play that song more often on the radio, along with “Brown-Eyed Girl,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” and of course the Isley Brothers’ version of “Twist and Shout,” which, if you turn it up loud enough, can propel you beyond mere singing into the stage where you have to get out of the car and dance with tollbooth attendants.

On the other hand, it would not trouble me if the radio totally ceased playing ballad-style songs by Neil Diamond. I realize that many of you are huge Neil Diamond fans, so let me stress that in matters of musical taste, everybody is entitled to an opinion, and yours is wrong. Consider the song “I Am, I Said,” wherein Neil, with great emotion, sings:

I am, I said To no one there And no one heard at all Not even the chair.

What kind of line is that? Is Neil telling us he’s surprised that the chair didn’t hear him? Maybe he expected the chair to say, “Whoa, I heard THAT.” My guess is that Neil was really desperate to come up with something to rhyme with “there,” and he had already rejected “So I ate a pear,” “Like Smokey the Bear,” and “There were nits in my hair.”

So we could do without this song. I also believe that we should use whatever means are necessary—and I do not exclude tactical nuclear weapons—to prevent radio stations from ever playing “Honey,” “My Way,” “I Write the Songs,” “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,” and “Watchin’ Scottie Grow.” I have holes in my car radio from stabbing the station-changing button when these songs come on. Again, you may disagree with me, but if you know so much, how come the radio industry didn’t randomly survey you?

The way the survey worked was, Marcy played two-second snippets from about two dozen songs; after each snippet I was supposed to say whether I liked the song or not. She’d play, for example, “Don’t Worry, Baby” by the Beach Boys and I’d shout “YES! PLAY THE WHOLE THING!” and she’d say, “OK, that’s a ‘like.’ Or she’d play “Don’t You Care” by the Buckinghams, and I’d make a noise like a person barfing up four feet of intestine, and Marcy would say, “OK, that’s a ‘don’t like.’”

The problem was that I wasn’t allowed to suggest songs. I could only react to the generally mediocre candidates that were presented. It was just like the presidential elections. This is too bad, because there are a lot of good songs that never get played. My wife and I are constantly remarking on this. I’ll say, “Do you remember a song called ‘Boys’?” And Beth, instantly, will respond, “Bop shoo-bop, boppa boppa SHOO-bop.” Then both of us, with a depth of emotion that we rarely exhibit when discussing world events, will say, “They NEVER play that!”

I tried suggesting a couple of songs to Marcy. For example, after she played the “Don’t Worry, Baby” snippet, I said, “You know there’s a great Beach Boys song that never gets played called “Custom Machine.” The chorus goes:

Step on the gas, she goes WAA-AAA-AAHH I’ll let you look But don’t touch my custom machine!

I did a good version of this, but Marcy just went “Huh” and played her next snippet, which was “I Go to Pieces” by a group that I believe is called Two British Weenies. I don’t care for that song, and I told Marcy as much, but I still keep hearing it on the radio. Whereas I have yet to hear “Custom Machine.” It makes me wonder if the radio industry really cares what I think,

or if I’m just a lonely voice crying out, and nobody hears me at all. Not even the chair.