No. 850 – X-Ray Mind

Performer: Mad Season

Songwriters: Barrett Martin, Mike McCready, John Baker Saunders, Layne Staley

Original Release: Above

Year: 1995

Definitive Version: None

Although Mad Season’s only album came out well before Debbie and I made our big move to Gahanna, it was in heavy rotation at the time.

Debbie’s workplace scheduled its annual retreat to Boston in August of every year, and as luck would have it, it was scheduled in 1995 the same weekend that we were going to move to our apartment in Gahanna. Actually, that wasn’t so bad, because Debbie wanted to take her time to properly wrap up and box her china and kitchen stuff—and she wanted to move it herself.

So that produced a complicated two-step process. We’d move everything from my apartment over to Gahanna and then go and get Debbie’s furniture. This necessitated me spending the night at Debbie’s, so as soon as I got up, I could disassemble the bed, take out all of the drawers from her dresser and stack them in her closet with the rest of her clothes—basically get everything she wanted to handle personally out of the way. Then I went and got the U-Haul.

Now that I was home and back in good with my crew, I had a wealth of ready-made movers: Mike, Steve, Tom and my friend Matt from Wabash, who was living in Delaware, Ohio, by this time. We wasted no time in wiping out my apartment, particularly because of my preferred moving strategy.

I’m a firm believer that if you have the wherewithal to do so and you move within the same city, it makes sense to stagger your leases or pay an extra month’s rent on your old place. This is so you don’t have to move in one day. I had already moved most of my boxes in my car, so really all we had to deal with at my place was the furniture. Then I would go back and clean the place out the next week. We only had one casualty, when Steve nearly got crushed behind my fold-up sofa bed coming down the stairs.

Tom bailed after the first round, but four guys were plenty to take care of Debbie’s furniture, and we were done just before dinner time. As is typical with me, if someone helps me move, they get a dinner out of the deal. it’s literally the very least I could do. So, after separating to shower up, Steve, Matt and I met up at the Damon’s near campus (Mike dropped out to have dinner with his family) for ribs, beer and trivia.

Back in the day, I was a pretty fair trivia whiz—playing mostly with Scott—and with Steve, Matt and I as a team, we were untouchable. Our team name was Haulrz, and we lapped the local field. There really was only one question we sort of botched (we must have been playing Countdown) and another that we didn’t get the right answer immediately. Everything else was a perfect score. Out total was something close to 14,000, and I couldn’t wait to see how our score would fair systemwide.

And there it was—on the worldwide board—listed as the No. 8 score out of 10,000 or so playing. It remains the only time I’ve ever made the big board. When I spoke with Debbie that night, the big news wasn’t the successful move.