Dan, Thanks for the September issue of Mind Full of Bread. I am going to take your advice and find a copy of that issue of Look. I agree with your comments on Bark and Long John Silver. I got my first copy of Bark when I was fifteen in 1975. I remember when I first heard "Never Argue With a German or, European Song," I was amazed. I thought, what fun Grace must have had composing it. Scary.
You thought up uses for "Thunk." For "Sticken-In," as my friends and I affectionately re-named it, we actually found many uses. In the 70's, we used to aim the stereo speakers out the window, and play it as loud as we could at people campaigning for elections, or Jehovah Witnesses, as they went door to door. My brother had a CB in his Pinto with a loudspeaker for the microphone in his grill. We'd play it over the loudspeaker, driving up and down streets, like a demented ice-cream truck.
In the 80's I became a DJ in three of Detroit's top punk/underground clubs. I always played "Sticken-In," and everybody loved it, especially the "Goths." In 1992, an underground newspaper approached me in the club one night, inquiring about it. They ended up blowing up the lyrics from the Bark lyric sheet, into a full page (just the lyrics, not the title or credits), and we made 10 000 stickers, in a German-style font, that went out with the issue, no explanation offered. For about five years, you would see "Sticken-In" stickers in the oddest places in and around Detroit, where you'd least expect.
In the early 90's I became a DJ at an "alternative" commercial radio station, here in Detroit. On Tuesdays, I would do live broadcasts of my retro punk/new wave dance night from the club, where I was the head DJ/promoter. (I played mostly underground new wave, and classic imports.) The station gave me the freedom to program the entire broadcast, including "Sticken-In." By now "Sticken-In" was my trademark, and pretty well known. I had mixed a Mega-Sticken-In, and DJ Cristina, my co-conspirator, took this sample, and used it on the air on her daytime show, "Stickening-In" songs she hated, but had to play. We began to use it as a sort of game-show buzzer. Friends would tell me they'd be driving with the radio on and a loud "Sticken-In" would come out over the song, and they'd almost crash their cars.
A dance floor full of 1 000 awful people on the club's disco night spelling out Y M C A would get "Stickened-In," while the club bartenders and security cheered. By the mid-nineties, as music kept getting worse, and unbearable, I had to leave the station, and traded Club-DJ for a management position.
"Sticken-In" stickers found their way onto the club's Christmas Tree, the balloon drops on New Year's Eve, and onto the lace-trimmed hearts decorating the club for Valentine's Day, constantly confusing our customers. We always kept a copy of "Sticken-In" in the DJ booth. I would teach the DJ's to "Sticken-In" accordingly. We "Stickened-In" the Tramps reunion concert during "Burn Baby Burn". We "Sticken-In" fashion shows. We "Stickened-In" the "Macarena Contest" my insane boss forced us to do with a Top 40 station. The club had around 1 500 people in it, and there was a herd of 20 bachelorettes in front of the DJ booth in line, doing the Macarena. When the break-beat came up, we Stickened them-In repeatedly, extremely loud, and could hear one of the bachelorette party exclaiming to her dancemates, "What's that? It's messing me up!"
It's sad Grace won't come back out. Take care,
Tom Zito
Detroit MI