The Back Line

      

        In the vernacular of live rock ‘n’ roll, the row of instruments and amplifiers behind the band is called “The Back Line”. To a gigging musician, there are few sights more joyously heart thumping than a selection of drums, guitars, and various electronics at the back of a stage. Especially if it’s the stage that you’re soon going to take.
        Iconic logos and names from companies like Marshall, Gibson, Fender, Tama, Zildjian, Ampeg, Shure, and Alesis brandish the equipment. Lights of all colors twinkle and blink, barely hinting at the amount of raw electric power that’s corralled within a plethora of circuits, tubes, wires, magnets, transistors, and computer chips. All that power focused through dozens, sometimes hundreds, of speakers for one objective: the creation of loud, passionate, emotional, body shaking music. Made by people, but delivered through machines both primitive and complicated.
        It’s simple. Without the back line, there’s no show.
        This particular photo is what the Back Line typically looked like at my house when I threw a party and asked my band to play. In addition to the music equipment, I have a good friend, the same guy who took this picture, who’s absolutely brilliant with interior space. He’s responsible for all the lighting and set design. Having a live band at a party always adds something special, making the evening an “Event”. But having the room the band plays in transformed into a rock club for the night, complete with colored, flashing lights and a disco ball, made these Events legendary. People would talk about them for months, often years, afterward, and always inquire about the next one.
        Throughout the years, I’ve thrown over fifty of these parties, far more than anybody else I know. I’ve been blessed with the physical space needed to host these shindigs, as well as all the necessary resources; including helpful, talented, and generous friends without whom I could never have pulled these off. I was also given the gift of knowing how to throw a party. A combination of ability, skill, sense of humor, instinct, talent, desire, and luck. Some of it in my very DNA, and some of it acquired through the lessons of life.
        Hopefully, one of the legacies I leave will be the parties I threw. And not just because they were lots of fun. I look at a party as a special gathering of my tribe. A ritualistic and somewhat sacred event that brings out not only the best in me but the best in other people. I try to impart that philosophy, that vibe, that energy, into every party I throw. If I’m successful, the event is not only a rip-roaring blast but also possesses that je ne sais quoi that transforms such events into truly magical gatherings where life long memories are born. Like a World Series game that you went to, or the first time you got laid.
        I know that’s shooting for the stars, especially when we’re talking about something as potentially perfunctory as a Halloween party, but if my reach exceeds my grasp, so be it. I’ll die with a smile on my face, knowing that I threw some of the best parties anybody whoever attended one had ever been to.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a Back Line of Wrongs) Reserved.

Growl

        One of the things I love to do when I’m with a woman is growl. Like an animal. What you do is suck air in through your nose, kind of like you’re snoring while awake, and let the incoming air reverberate against the back roof of your mouth. Then you manipulate the noise with your mouth, changing the pitch so that it sounds like a growl. That’s the best I can do in describing the process. I’ve been doing it since I was a kid, although back then, it’s application was in an entirely different context. I learned to do it as a way to imitate imaginary dinosaurs or tigers when I played. Girls were still the enemy then, and I never dreamed that one day I’d use the sound as a sort of mating call.
        Actually, there’s a specific application of the growl that’s most effective. I’ve always found a woman’s neck to be a beautiful, smooth, soft, sweet smelling landscape upon which to orally explore. Lots of guys dig a girl’s neck. And most woman I know love it when a man pays attention to it. Maybe because it’s so close to the mouth but yet is an entirely different erotic canvas. There are lots of nerve endings in the area, just below the ears, under the chin, and all along it’s sinewy curves. And since it’s right near the ears, a woman can hear your heavy breathing and the sounds your mouth makes when you’re going to town there. The audible dimension of eroticism is sometimes overlooked, but it’s a gorgeous and powerful stimulus that can have a huge impact on the quality of a sexual relationship.
        Lots of guys love kissing a woman’s neck. Very softly. Or more aggressively, breaking out the turbo tongue. I like to bite it, gently but with a little force, like a benign vampire, then nibble. Licking is always fun, like a yummy flesh lollipop. And I’m constantly inhaling as much of her scent as I can during all of this, because smell is very evocative. And there are few, if any, places on a woman’s body that carry as much of her natural scent as her neck. And I don’t even have to mention how much most men love the smell of a woman’s hair. Plenty of those sexy fumes are dancing around her neck as well. It’s a schmorgasborg.
        Once you’ve perfected the growl, the best place to use it is on a woman’s neck. What you do is stick your whole face right into a soft fleshy area; your open mouth gently but firmly engulfing a patch of skin, your nose resting there as well. Then growl. The act of placing your mouth against all that soft skin lowers the fundamental pitch, making it sound even more like a growl; more bassy, more animalistic, more playfully sinister. And you’re doing it right under her ear, so she can hear this loud and clear. In fact, that could be all she can hear, which is even better.
        The vibrations caused by the growling reverberate against her skin, creating a sensual rapid fire caress. And it lightly tickles her. Nine times out of ten, she’ll start to laugh. But not the type of laugh that says “What the hell are you doing buddy?”, but the kind of laugh that says “This feels really good, it tickles, it’s fun, it’s different, it’s passionate and wild, it’s turning me on”.
        The growl is playful and passionate. It’s fun and sexy. It’s primitive, reminding our modern DNA’s that we were once much more animalistic. It evokes a primal lust that’s completely non-threatening, and completely natural. Remember the old Esso (now called Exxon) ad that said “Put a tiger in your tank”? Well I say “Put A Tiger In Her Neck”. Wearing loin clothes and animal pelts is optional.


©2009 Clint Piatelli. All Rights (and a Serengeti plain of Wrongs) Reserved.