PLAYLIST: Shake The Sheets by Ted Leo & The Pharmacists
BUCK FUSH!!!
Shake The Sheets turns 20 this year so I wrote a little stuff about it. Here’s the playlist which is just the album.
I was gonna write stuff about him but whoops! Wrote about me again!
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists “Me & Mia”
This album was big for me. Ted Leo just released the demos for Shake The Sheets, which turns 20 this year, which makes me feel bad! But the album, makes me feel good—I can’t remember an album I had on repeat more than this one when it came out. Or a band I saw do songs from this record more—maybe with the exception of Screaming Females, who were just around when I was (and also frequently opened for Ted).
This song is about anorexia & bulimia, btw. That’s the Mia in the song! I think, I’m not great at figuring out what words mean! Ted’s an incredible lyricist and for my money has some of the funniest between-song banter.
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists “Counting Down The Hours”
My friend I call Mister Benson I believe got me into this record, which is funny because we had wildly different tastes in music, he was the kind of guy who listened to full Dave Matthews Band concert bootlegs when he’d give me rides to and from school (nice guy).
A lot of it spoke to me as a burgeoningly political teen. You have to understand, 2004 was a politically divisive time and people were dying in wars. There was a lot of protesting and anger. You’d need to put yourself in 2004 to understand!!! BUCK FUSH!!! But this was the first music I got into that addressed that head on. (I was not so into [warbly voice] “WHEN THE PRESIDENT TALKS TO GAAD”)
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists “Little Dawn”
Actually, my first live concert I ever saw—not counting seeing Mike Love’s Beach Boys as a small boy—was sneaking off with Mister Benson to see “TLRx” at Irving Plaza with openers Radio 4, who I liked despite the lead singer’s hat.
This trip demystified “going to the city” which seemed insane despite living about an hour away in New Jersey. It also happened to be the same day of the pride parade which was a wild scene back then before Target bought it or whatever, which was very exciting. I saw a man’s bottom!
That kicked off regular sneak-aways to see UCB shows and concerts at Warsaw and Bowery Ballroom and the like.
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists “Bleeding Powers”
A funny part of this time, was that I got good at sneakily inserting myself into things I dug, but felt really out of reach. At that time, I was getting into The Best Show with Tom Scharpling—the show I work on. I started calling in as Steinberg, a random name I said when prompted.
There wasn’t a point to the calls besides the excitement of calling into a radio show—which was exhilarating as the most bored teenager in the world. who was challenged to have a “point” and ironically, that day in school I had written a parody of “Aaron’s Party (Come Get It)” by the late great Aaron Carter (rest in power) called “My Parents Ain’t Home (So It’s Time To Partay)” and I grabbed the lyrics. Suddenly Steinberg was MC Steinberg and was encouraged to call into the show and show off more of his raps.
Little did I know another fan of the show was Ted Leo himself, and when he called the show I immediately lept to action, calling in to challenge Ted to a rap battle.
This was built up big, with Jon Wurster appearing as three separate judges and all the pomp and circumstance available to a freeform radio show, with extra listeners tuning in after reading about it on message boards and blogs—including fellow classmates of mine who had no idea about my extracurricular activities until now. My mom also discovered my weird hobby that night, too.
I will remind everyone I won this rap battle—via forefit, as Ted used his third verse to cover “The Ballad of El Goodo” by Big Star to honor Tom “El Goodo” Scharpling. It’s still a song that still kinda gets me emotional because in my little world this was a bit of a “coming out of my shell” moment. The kids in school and my mom kinda knew who I was and what I did.
MC Steinberg continued to live, calling into Jake Fogelnest’s KRock show and hosting NYCTV’s New York Noise on occasion. I also made videos and performed live shows with backing tracks made on the MTV Music Generator Playstation game I made with Mister Benson, and wrote his “Steinblog” on MySpace—that Ted Leo himself would comment on!
Since then, I’ve gotten to meet and become friendly with Ted, seeing him live numerous times—even in the tiny New Brunswick, NJ basements I’d perform in as MC Steinberg, because he’s a for-real punker. And now I work on The Best Show, in a weird, unplanned, full-circle end to this story.
But when I listen to Shake The Sheets, I still think back to that feeling of being a teenager, excited by the promise of a bigger world, mad at the government for the first (but not last) time and having littlest bits of excitement feel like the biggest things in my life.