Melatonin is for Pussies: The Raw Dog Dream Diaries — Vol. 3
A new occasional series, writing my dreams down before they drift away…
Conan O’Brien was performing live in Wellington, NZ. He was doing a free show in Civic Square for New Year’s Eve. But it wasn’t Conan the TV host, nor comedy writer, although those are attributes to his character of course. This was Conan O’Brien guitarist with a bedroom competence. He played generic rock songs with a pickup band and it was startlingly mediocre, just phenomenally average, the whole thing. People were pumped though — Conan O’Brien in town! I wrote a review and posted it to my Substack, saying it woulda been nice to hear a joke or travel story, or something about the Simpsons, or a live version of his podcast; anything other than Conan playing Down On The Corner by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Saturday In The Park by Chicago, with keyboard horns!
People shared it widely and were almost irrationally hostile. The comments piled and most of them shared my address, and photos of my family — and aerial shots of me walking to my car, someone had even created a sequence of these photos scored to Harry Nilsson’s Jump Into The Fire, one wag had added underneath, “yeah but he’s no Goodfella!”
All of this got back to Conan O’Brien — and he invited me to a special taping of his podcast to take place on New Year’s Day in Civic Square. I didn’t want to do it but was told by his producers that Conan’s whole trip had been underwritten by The Ministry of Tourism and Creative NZ and there’d be an appearance fee. I liked the idea that Creative NZ was finally getting behind reviews. Albeit in this backhand way.
I turned up and this hungover audience booed as soon as I walked on. Someone in an ear-piece told me to really play up to this and to do a thumbs-down and swagger across the stage as if I was a guest on Jerry Springer. But I didn’t. I just walked out and sat down.
Conan said, “So it really is true, you don’t know what good music is!” And the entire audience laughed. Then Tory Whanau, Mayor of Wellington City, drove out onto the stage on a Flamingo scooter. Everyone chaired. She circled around me and then pulled a cream pie from thin air and launched it right into my face. Six60’s Don’t Forget Your Roots started playing, and Conan picked up a gold-plated Les Paul and started trying to play along. He reached up and wiped some cream from my face and said “you’re a good sport”. And I said “you’re still a pretty shitty guitarist, you’re better than me but you’re still shit”. And he said, “Yeah, but I wrote the Monorail episode of The Simpsons”. I said, “that’s one of my favourites!” Then I woke up.
