In the kitchen at Fado Irish Pub, we had the radio, always.
Corridos on weekday mornings for the prep cooks, metal at close, NPR for a brunch rush hangover. Whoever controlled that radio had power and cachet. They were definitionally a leader, someone with the earned respect of their sweaty peers. Nobody changed the channel unless they were that person, not unless they wanted to find a new gig, and quickly. There is no more hostile place in a bar or restaurant than a kitchen with a collective grudge, and grudges grew at Fado like salmonella in room-temperature shrimp.
Unless, of course, it was the start of a Friday or Saturday evening shift. Then anyone was allowed–expected, even–to turn the dial to 103.5 The Fox. Because it was time for the Classic Rock Game.
I suppose it was a piece of service industry folklore. I know we didn’t invent it. My fellow cook Ryan McAndrews, who was many things but at least, for a while, the guy who controlled the radio, claimed it was old when he worked at the Fort Collins Rio in the early ’90s. Though its origins were unknown and unknowable, like any decent myth it was simple and resonant at its core: anyone who wanted to play could, only a five-dollar bill and basic knowledge of ’60s/’70s album rock required. Players would each pick five bands and the first person whose five bands played over the course of an evening won.
Simple. But not easy. We’d have a lottery to determine draft order, which also usually determined the winner. If you got one of the first two picks and snagged one of the whales, say Led Zeppelin or the Eagles, you were halfway to victory and pints paid for with your friends’ money. Not so much if you went last and found yourself scraping Steppenwolf off the bottom of the barrel. Newbies would come in and confidently pick all the wrong bands–the Doors? The fucking Beatles? Not a chance. Winners had to have the soul of a Camaro, a heart full of trucker pills and Blue Nun.
Once everyone had made their picks, the volume went up and it was on.
Servers hiding from angry 12-tops, bartenders who should have been changing kegs, all lurking by the expo station waiting for the next song. Who the hell sings “Green Grass and High Tides”? Anyone here pick Warren Zevon? Is this Free or Bad Company? We’d wait for the DJ to identify them, but we didn’t always catch it, so sometimes we just guessed. Sure sounds like Robert Plant to me, right?
The game almost always took the whole night. Even for a station as ossified and predictable as The Fox, there was enough odd dross–it was The Outlaws, by the way, who sung “Green Grass and High Tides”–to keep things interesting until shift’s end. Sometimes, it would be down to two people, and we’d have closed the kitchen, but the radio was still blasting and we’d sprint from the bar to the line every few minutes to make sure no one missed the tune that paid out. It always paid out. No sweeter victory than one claimed on your eight millionth painful listen to “Locomotive Breath,” my friends.
It’s been a long time. Everyone has a phone now. Terrestrial radio might as well be in a diorama at the Natural History Museum. But myths don’t ever really die, so I can’t help but think that the Classic Rock Game yet lives, somehow, somewhere, in a greasy spoon in Gallup, in a Vegan bakery in Ojai. There will always be a group of young friends hiding from their customers, failing to drop fries for that burger, breathlessly waiting for the chance to talk that precious shit and scoop their buddy’s dollar.
But let’s be honest. Wherever it is, it probably involves Taylor Swift.
#TaylorSwift #TheEagles #LedZeppelin #Youth #Memory #Gambling #1035TheFox
Brilliant.
Love it, buddy.
Thank you!!!