No. 857 – Dickeye

Performer: Jerry Cantrell

Songwriter: Jerry Cantrell

Original Release: Boggy Depot

Year: 1998

Definitive Version: None

When the Business department moved to the fourth floor, that meant I needed a new place to hide out to lay out BT on Thursday nights, and the perfect spot was the old stomping grounds—the second floor.

Actually, that’s not entirely true. By this time, we had dispensed with the ATEX design machines. (We still used ATEX to edit stories and write headlines and cutlines.) Instead we did the layouts via Quark on Macs. Business had two Macs—one for the stock pages and one for news pages—and I certainly could have used one of those at various times on a Thursday.

But Thursday nights had become my alone time, when I could get away from the Business department to listen to music or put a ballgame on TV while I worked, and I wasn’t about to give that up.

Business was moved to the fourth floor with Sports and Features, and the Editorial department took over the second-floor space, although I never understood why it was moved about as far away as possible from upper management; i.e., the top editors, who were all on the fifth floor, but then there were a lot of things about The Dispatch that I never understood.

Anyway, it was a good hideout spot, and I liked it there better than when I would go up to the fourth floor. There never was anyone there—editorial would be gone by 5:30—so I had the whole floor to myself. I had my own bathroom and was closer to the vending machines in the basement, and I could close the door, so I could play CDs on the Mac without needing my headphones.

I have a clear vision of listening to Boggy Depot—and this song in particular—for the first time at work in the Editorial office. In fact, when I bought it, I saved it particularly for that time, because I wanted to have something new to listen to. I closed the door and cranked it up, reveling in my fortress of solitude in an increasingly hostile environment.