We look back once more at our 2003 tour with the Clean, though in fact I have nothing to say about the Clean today. On this date 11 years ago, at Portland’s Crystal Ballroom, we invited the great Richard Meltzer to open the show by reading some of his poetry. And when he accepted, we decided to go for broke and ask him to sing the Vom classic “I’m in Love with Your Mom” with us, and he said yes to that too. In the days leading up to the show, we diligently went about mastering the arrangement from the 25-year-old Live at Surf City 7″, and the idea that we ever considered that Richard Meltzer was doing anything remotely similar is one of the enduring mysteries of the last 30 years. Instead, one song into our encore, we brought him on stage. Meltzer took hold of the microphone with his right hand, placed his left hand authoritatively on the stand, planted one foot in front of the other, and hollered, “I’M IN LOVE WITH YOUR MOM!” We launched into the introduction and waited for the first line “I’m in love for the first time” . . . and waited. We’re still waiting. Never deviating from his rock stance, every once in a while Meltzer would yell “I’M IN LOVE WITH YOUR MOM!” and one of the other enduring mysteries of our career is how long it took us to embrace the moment. (Four-plus years later, during Hanukkah, with the help of Mark Arm, we played a more faithful rendition of Vom’s “Too Animalistic.”)
