Fat Riker

By Aaron Littleton

Fat Riker may be the worst band on the planet. With thirty years of bizarre shows, puzzling albums and countless lineup changes, their history is almost impenetrable. When one man inherits the band by answering a mysterious classified ad, he finds himself with the unenviable task of sorting it all out.

His guide is the Fat Riker scrapbook, a battered and unsorted history of the group. Its pages are comprised of news clippings, journal entries and more than a few receipts for bulk rate corn chips. Sometimes Fat Riker is an unstoppable creative force. Uncaring to the plight of others, they push music critic Thomas Alanson to the brink. A stream of barely listenable Fat Riker albums flow endlessly into his review pile. Can he escape the musical assault with his sanity and good taste intact?

At other times the band is only barely functional, like when it is headed by hapless accountant Chris Guldan. On indefinite faked sick leave, Chris has little idea of how to run a band. Will Fat Riker fall apart if the band's latest cassette doesn't sell well enough to pay his bills? Worse yet, might Chris have to return to work?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aaron Littleton
• Release date: Jul 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311221537

Aaron Littleton

Aaron Littleton is a humorist and blogger whose works have been featured on The Ellen Show, BBC News and more. His writing has appeared on 1up.com and Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine.

Book preview

Prologue

I never should have answered that ad.

I guess it's too late now. Since I've got this notebook, I suppose it's my responsibility. No one else is going to do this. I've got to understand what it all means.

Flipping through the pages, it has become clear to me that something out there has been growing and changing through the last three decades; something that is completely unlike anything I've seen before. This something was new and alien and almost certainly destined to pass me by.

That was, until I saw that classified.

Band members needed, it read. Fat Riker. Free chips? Maybe. Then there was a phone number.

It wasn't a thing I would normally do, calling that number to try and join a band. I didn't even play an instrument. In fact, I was quite possibly the least likely person to respond to an ad like that.

You hear these stories, I suppose, about how the universe is expanding and how the stars are all speeding away from each other as quickly as they can. It's called entropy. It's basically a means of expressing how many ways a particular system can be arranged. Eventually, they say, entropy will cause galaxies to rip themselves apart and force the suns to spiral into the void and shred themselves into their component pieces. By the time that happens, entropy will measure exactly one single way the universe could be arranged and nothing unexpected or strange will ever happen again.

Looking out my window at the night sky, through the most reasonable amount of light pollution one could expect while still living in an area with broadband internet access, I imagined all of those stars winking out. I wouldn't stand for it. Not tonight. Tonight I would show entropy who was boss.

I polished off my whiskey and sat the glass down. Have I mentioned I was drunk? I was; impressively so. Nevertheless, I boldly dialed the phone.

It rang once.

An unbidden thought flitted through my brain that told me to check the time.

It rang again.

I moved to where I could see the clock. 2:17AM. Drat. I would be waking whoever this was up. They'd never want me in their band.

The phone rang for a third time.

I nearly panicked. Should I hang up? Call back tomorrow at some reasonable hour?

The fourth ring was interrupted by the soft click of the line being answered.

Whoever it was didn't speak, but I could hear soft breathing on the other end.

Hello? I said, already cringing at the thought of how angry this person would be that I had woken them up.

Fat Riker? A male voice hesitantly asked through the phone.

Yes, uhm, I was calling about the ad. For some reason, that sounded stupid as I said it.

120 Walnut Lane. Apartment 6. Be here at exactly 11:35 tomorrow. With another click, he hung up the line.

I was left staring at my silent phone. Was that supposed to have been some kind of interview? Who was this guy? This was throwing up all kinds of red flags. I should never go out to that address. I should err on the side of caution and just forget this whole thing. Entropy would surely win in the end anyway.

***

At exactly 11:47 the next day, I swung my car into a parking spot at the address. My head pounded in the wake of the solitary late-night bender, making my reasons for coming out here dance away tantalizingly upon attempting to remember them. It was something about physics, right? Either way, caution had been thrown to the wind.

The building was a dingy little affair that hunkered just off the highway behind a stand of trees. It wasn't very large, but finding apartment 6 took some small amount of effort. When I couldn't locate it immediately, I knocked at apartment 3 to see if the resident there could help. The old man that opened the door asked me if I was a pizza man, yelled at me for not being the pizza man and then asked me if I would go get him a pizza, all in that order.

Out of desperation and concern of my increasing tardiness, I tried looking around behind the building for the correct entrance. Fighting through bushes that looked like they were responsible for the death of whoever was supposed to be trimming them, I located a narrow set of downward stairs wedged between a deafeningly loud array of HVAC units. At the landing a short distance below, a rusting metal door stood with a sticky note taped to the front marked 6.

This was ominous.

I walked down and knocked on the door. No one answered. I waited a while and knocked again. Still nothing. My hangover lurked with me in the dank alcove, making every grimy detail seem that much more lurid and surreal.

As I waited for a response, I attempted to calculate the exact likelihood that someone would open the door and give me some aspirin for my head. Each second that ticked by without a response make the possibility seem to shrink.

I was just about to turn away when I thought to try the handle. To my surprise, it turned and the door swung open, revealing a decrepit room beyond. How many more bad decisions could I make today?

I walked in.

Inside was a narrow, one bedroom apartment empty of furniture. Scattered around on the floor were dozens of empty corn chip bags and a grungy blanket lying in one corner. A nearly overpowering smell of ranch dip permeated the place. It felt more like an animal’s nest than a human home.

Hello? I called out down the hall. I was not expecting an answer and I didn’t get one. I was too late. The mysterious man had been serious when he told me to be here at 11:35. Now I'd never know about the band. Now entropy really would win. Entropy! Yes, that's why I had come. To save the world. I kicked the blanket in futile frustration.

The pile of fabric flopped over without protest, but my foot struck something a little more solid in its folds. I pushed the blanket aside with the toe of my shoe and uncovered the edge of what looked like a battered spiral-bound notebook. Hesitant to touch it, but still too intrigued by the whole situation to turn down a potential clue, I fished the binder out of its filthy surroundings. I made a mental note to wash my hands really well later.

The book looked old, its cover battered and stained. The words Fat Riker were blocked out in thick marker along the top. A sticky note, the same color as that on the door, was stuck below the title.

It read, This is yours now.

Did it mean me? I flipped the book open and caught a glimpse of a congested glut of information: newspaper clippings, journal entries, liner notes and more. It seemed like a kind of scrapbook detailing the history of the band. Now I was intrigued and wanted nothing more than to read the whole thing. The sudden excitement did a serviceable job of clearing my head. I had already begun scanning an article when a gust of wind banged the open door against the wall, startling me. I snapped the cover shut.

This was not the time or place to read the book. Looking around, I became conscious of the fact that from a strictly legal point of view, I was trespassing. If I took the journal with me when I left, theft would almost certainly be added to that. But didn't I have a moral obligation to take it, if only to stave off the heat death of the universe?

I almost flipped a coin to decide, but then I just ran out of the apartment and stole the damn thing.

***

When I got home, I tried to pull up the ad again to call the man back, but the listing had been removed. Luckily, I was able to dig through my browser’s cache and recover a copy. The line rang and rang, but no one ever answered.

I locked myself away and spent the rest of the day flipping through the notebook before deciding that an informal study would be futile to understanding this band. The journal was in no kind of order. It was easy to imagine the authors taking a kind of perverse pleasure in obfuscating the efforts of future researchers.

While such malicious intent would make for a good story to explain the disarray, the more likely reality is that the scrapbook had been written and collected by countless people over the last three or four decades. This fact was one of the few of which there was no questioning. Fat Riker had been in constant operation since the mid-1970s, but had seen such a rotating door on membership that the name of the band and the notebook were the only constants to be found. Whole lineup changes were common and shifting the genre of music was something to be done before breakfast.

No, understanding this story was not something to approach haphazardly. An in-depth study was in order, else I would get lost in the disorder and never finish. I would need to find some threads to follow; some themes to dig out of the chaos. Some selection of materials from this cluttered book would reveal the true nature of Fat Riker.

Whoever that mysterious man on the phone was, he clearly wanted out. He needed someone to take over but all he could get was me. It certainly does not fill me with hope about what I might find.

If Fat Riker continues to exist, it's going to be up to me. I'm not sure what I'll discover buried in this history, but it will have to show me some quality worth saving if the band is to have a hope. Could anything worthwhile actually be hiding between these two ratty covers?

I guess we'll see.

Chapter 1

An Interview with Fat Riker

Milwaukee Arts & Times, September 7, 1991

By: Raymond Johnson

Fat Riker is a five piece rock group that has Milwaukee's east side talking, but not in a good way. In fact, if I were to sum up the conversation surrounding the band, it would have to be something along the lines of: Fat Riker, go far far away and never even consider coming back. Not even if you accidentally leave your wallet. Just call us and we will mail it to you. So, you know, you don’t come back for it. Because we really don’t want you to come back.

The group crept into the local music scene like a friendless college freshman slipping into his former high school’s prom the year after he graduated. They are an awkwardly unwelcome presence that puts everyone on edge. When my editor handed me the assignment to interview Sam Plinky Greer, the group’s singer and lead bassist (they field upwards of three for any given show), I was both excited and dreadful. Excited because there is clearly something wrong with these men who call themselves Fat Riker and I was hungry to plumb their mental depths to discover just what made them tick. Dreadful because being seen in close proximity to them could leave a dangerous social stigma that may be hard to shake. I felt a growing undercurrent of mob mentality amongst the dissatisfied residents toward Fat Riker and I did not want to be seen as a sympathizer.

My sick sense of curiosity undermined my better judgment and in short order I sat down with Plinky over some fries at the Northridge Mall food court while he was between shows. By any measure a tired looking man, he is rail thin with dark eyes that stare somewhere in the mid-distance. He affects a faux-British accent perhaps a third of the time, likely only when he remembers. His tight zebra-stripe pants and permed hair have seen better days.

Q: Thank you for meeting with me. To begin, can we get a rundown of who plays with you in Fat Riker?

Sam Greer: Oh yeah, of course. Naturally, there’s me. The heart and soul of Fat Riker. I speak from the heart about the soul, yeah? With my bass and my voice. My bass is my heart and my voice is my soul. And that’s why I do what I do, yeah?

Q: Um, sure, of course. And what of the other members?

SG: Wankers, all of them. I hate them. I wish they weren’t necessary, but no one takes a one-voice, one-bass show seriously. I tried. Did you hear about my solo shows in Akron?

Q: Uhm, no.

SG: Unfortunate for you mate! I took music to places it ain’t never been before!

Q: I’m sure you did. You and Fat Riker play here in the Northridge Mall food court, right?

SG: Yes, we play from 9a.m. to 9p.m. every day.

Q: A twelve hour show every day?

SG: Well, we gotta take breaks some times, don’t we? But yeah, apart from breaks, a twelve hour show every day of the week. Except on Sundays, mall hours are shorter. The place is only open from 10a.m. to 4p.m. Six hours. Our day off.

Q: Please explain this setup to our readers who are unfamiliar with your place here.

SG: Well, Northridge used to have a Chinese place here in the food court, yeah? But the health inspector closed it down and nothing had moved into its spot for a while. We stopped in here on our way up to Fond Du Lac for