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solstice: Tricky the Cosmonaut | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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›comments[17] ›all comments ›post #47 ›bio: kristen ›perma-link ›3/17/2005 ›00:11 ›archives ›first post ›that week
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I love Tricky the Cosmonaut. They were a band in Wilmington that were one of the 'looked down upon' bands for a while - back when brickbat and waxing myrna and rodeo boy ruled and analog and some other bands.... At first, it was just Dave Bjorkbatt and Detleff Riebold. Dave was drums and Detleff (whom chuck always liked calling Mark to take the piss out of him - it was his first name) was guitar. Then, Bob. (As a big aside, I should explain Bob. Robert Eugene Wall, Jr. He was the only boy I tortured who always loved me. He likely still does. OK, dig if you will the picture... I'm pissed at my buddies. (( in wilmington, for a time - it was quite acceptable for me to go out to bars on my own. I could always count on running into someone I knew, and I didn't have any boyfriend - at the time - who could possibly care (((just my tangled relationship with kent - and we were in our 'not-on' phase)))...)) I venture into Barbary Coast. I know the bartender. Do you remember Chris wilmingtonians? that long-haired super nice guy? At the bar, there were three guys. One had bushy afro hair, but was white (mark nanna - for those that remember him)... One had red hair and was nice but not super cute. One was a hot looking red head. As is my method, I talked to the non-cute redhead to get at the cute redhead - gathering information - (so fun to regal my early twenties!) I ended up closing the bar with this non-cute red-head. His name was Bob. We drank our Miller High Life's and talked in the booth all night. He liked the Replacements. Unlike others, he could talk the replacements as well as I could - if not better. The Replacements used to be (and hell, still are to some extent) the secret code to me. Bob was also a music major from UNCW who worked at school kids records (it is now closed, but was at the time - the cool record store on Kerr Avenue)... As Chuck and Steve had just moved to town (at my pleading and begging and manipulating) and were looking for a bass player, I asked bob if he played bass. He said he did, but that guitar was his love. He had a master's in classical guitar, but he liked to rock (or was classical guitar just part of what he had to learn for the masters... who cares)... I totally arranged a set-up for steve and chuck. They were shy, but I brokered the deal. Before that happened, I did a follow-up visit to bob at school kids. He had asked me to. I felt there was no danger of him not realizing it was platonic - for chissakes I had stated it point blank that I was interested in Allen (the cute redhead). Bob didn't seem to mind. I was in the store. He was working. We had said our hellos... and as record store employees can do this - he put on "boy" by U2. This proved that he had listened to me. This proved that he liked me. This made me love bob. Sooooooooooooo, the practice session where steven and check "tried bob out"... as I had told them what bob told me... that he played bass as a second instrument. This didn't matter to them that much I figured - if he sucked but could play. Matt, their bass player in athens, sucked, and they made do. I was on tenterhooks... waiting at steve and chuck's pad on orange street. When they came home, I thought they would tell me how it went. Chuck went to take a shower. I looked to Steven. He was coy. I finally asked him. HOW WAS HE? (I had sponsored him for goodness sakes). Steven looked me in the eye and said: Bob is the best musician we have ever played with. Kristen, we would be lucky if he played with us. I can't explain it to you, but he's intuitive. He could shadow chuck (drums) and anticipate things.... it was awesome. So Bob was in Waxing Myrna (another beautiful story in itself - the name brings images of a beautiful girl from new orleans who passed through and once sang on the roof at one of craig roger's parties).... Well, now bob was branded a bass player). Tricky the Cosmonaut was sick of the ribbing and helpful suggestions and decided to ask bob to join them. He did. Tricky rocks. I caught every show I could. I was half in love - or whole infatuated - with Detleff. If it weren't for Greg W., I may have had a shot... tomorrow never knows. (detleff is now a literature professor and dave is a performer and health food store manager married to one of bob's ex-girlfriends). I got together with mark at a tricky show that jungle opened for... I love them. The schtick is that Detleff gets in an astronaut suit to play "she's out there" and gets a long cord for his guitar and goes out to the audience. The energy. I miss it all, but getting older and having them as memories is cool too. Yep. 
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