The Great Abilene String Theory

Growing up in Abilene does not afford one the chance to reflect on their past as one that might be described as “Culturally diverse.” We were pretty much in the middle of no-fucking-place and absolutely-no-fucking-where. And when you live in spots like Abilene, you know it. And we didn’t really get the internet until I was much too old to shit my pants over stuff like that. That’s the sort of thing that might make Abilene okay for guys like me, but I guess it just wasn’t in the cards. Just as well, I guess, because I used my Abilene time to discover the joys of metal.

We could sort of pick up this AM station out of Dallas that had a metal show on Sunday nights, and that was the greatest shit ever as far as I was concerned. Usually, as long as the air was dry enough (which was damn near ever day), and if you were maybe a little lucky, you could probably pick up about half of that show. I’d hang out in my room, huddled around the radio, running to the bathroom to take hits off of my toilet-paper-roll pot pipe, trying to miss as little of the music as possible. Also, Barry, the kid next door, had a brother who was like the Abilene metal ambassador. The guy was in college, and when he would come home for holidays he would always leave a bunch of tapes with Barry. Dude turned us on to Dio, Rising Force, Raven, Krokus, Saxon, Maiden . . . seriously, the list was fucking endless. Once he even took us to Dallas to catch the Scorpions over at Reunion Arena. I don’t remember much, other than kissing some fucking dog on a dare as we walked back to the car.

Outside of sports there really wasn’t much to do growing up in Abilene. Personally, I never really wanted to play sports anyway. Those guys were apes as far as I was concerned. Real knuckle draggers. Fuck ‘em. Not for me.

Barry got a Hondo Les Paul copy one year for his birthday, and after that he was like off to the races wanting to start his own band and shit. Somehow Barry conned this Mexican kid from school to play drums. I guess his dad was like a Tejano star or some such shit, which meant the dude had a killer kit. He also had a weed connection that never never dried up, even in the winter, and despite the fact that he was a shitty-ass drummer, there was no way Barry would get rid of the guy. And I was the bassist.

Thing is, I didn’t have a bass. I had an ichigenkin.

Yeah, I had a fucking 1 silk stringed, wooden plank looking Japanese motherfucking ichigenkin. Real pussy magnet. I could have had “Panty Dropper” tattooed on my forehead if was gonna go and lug a fucking ichigenkin around.

And I didn’t even pick the thing up in some sort of badass foreign exchange fairy tale wherein I am carried through the Japanese countryside on the backs of peasants who walk upon the petals of roses thrown before them to lighten their step as the West’s greatest ichigenkin player is carried amongst them. Nah, my grandfather gave it to me. He was in the big war, over in the Pacific, and the guy was given the thing on his way off of some fucking island over there. Fucking people probably wanted to get rid of it so they tossed it to the guy they’d never see again. Ever play an ichigenkin? No? Wow, what a fucking shock. Ever heard of one? No again? Total shocker. Why’d I take it? It’s just that my grandpa overheard me wrangling with my dad for a bass and basically guilted me into taking the damn thing. I love the guy, though he is a bit goofy. He’s done a lot for me. I felt obligated.

Barry laughed so hard when I walked into practice with that thing that he sort of shit himself just a little bit. I still think I’d rather carry an ichigenkin to a metal band practice any day than shit my pants, even amongst friends.

At first what pretty much happened was Barry played guitar, the Mexican dude played drums, I sang, and nobody touched the ichigenkin. It’s one string was broken, and oddly enough, nobody in Abilene was selling any. Sure, I told grandpa I used it, but when you have songs called shit like Thunder Sorceror and Blood River, rocking an ichigenkin really is less than ideal.

We learned a few songs. Uh, as in, we learned to fake a few riffs, and then we got our first (and only) gig playing at this girl’s birthday party. She was pretty popular, Barry’s brother used to date her or something. Either way, it was pretty cool getting our first gig.

I should have known that Barry’s brother would tell everyone at the damn party about the ichigenkin. Of course, he brought the fucking thing on top of that. I tried to play it cool, tried to act like the fact that I would never speak to another chick in the entire city of Abilene again didn’t bother me at all. I pled my case. “No string, man. What the fuck. Can’t play it, can I?”

Barry’s brother is a real resourceful guy. He had already strung the thing with a low E guitar string. Then, he taped a contact mike to the thing. This was happening. We ran the thing through some stomp boxes, and eventually we were able to get something other than feedback out of it.

The guys went into Cat Scratch Fever by the Nuge, and when it came time for the solo, I free-styled the motherfucking ichigenkin through a distortion pedal, through a wah, through a phaser, and directly into Abilene metal history.

I’d show you the ichigenkin if you wanted to see it, but the truth of the matter is, after grandpa died, I ended up using the thing as a cleaning table for the fish I caught up at Lake Fort Phantom Hill one summer.

They say that if you go just east of town, over in Stevenson Park, you can still head down to the paved area beneath the railroad tracks and see it, painted on the cement in badly faded letters. It’s still there, Im told. And it reads — “METAL NINJA RULES!!”

I hear Barry’s brother drowned in a diving accident in Belize a few years ago. I often wonder if he heard the sound of the single wailing string as he struggled for air, as the last of his life was swept away in the warm Caribbean Sea.

Fucker.