How It All Begin Part Dos

Bubba was always creative. He was always coming up with funny ideas and songs. Over the next couple of years, Bubba recorded more music by himself on that four-track recording machine in-between recording with various bands. When he had his down-time, he would fool with the recording machine and come up with funny stuff for us to listen to.

I remember the first Christmas after high school graduation, we were still living around South Portland. Neither one of us attended college right after high school. Hell no, we'd had enough schooling for a while. It was time to live life for a little bit. So that meant we stayed in our hometown (well sort of, we were staying at an apartment in Cape Elizabeth - no big deal, it's just one town over) and did as much partying as we could. It was probably one of the funniest times in my life!

Anyway, none of us had much money (I think we were both working at Pizza Hut at the time) and it's not like we ever really bought each other Christmas gifts (though one year Bubba did give me an autographed picture of himself - which is up on the Facebook page) so I was surprised when Bubba gave me a wrapped audio tape present for Christmas. The audio cassette contained all of his funny songs up to that point in time. It was friggin' hilarious! Pardon my French.

The photo Bubba gave me!

I told you about a couple of the songs on the audio cassette already but by the time he made the compilation, Bubba had picked up a keyboard to play with. He wasn't very good at the keyboard at the time. He didn't even try to be good at it and that was what made it so funny! The best song on the tape was a Chinese version of a Christmas carol sung by Bubba and accompanied by Bubba on the keyboard. It started off like this, "Qua chi key qua/Qua chi key quo." Holy shit.

Up until that point in my life, I don't think I ever laughed as hard as I did listening to that audio cassette he gave to me for Christmas. My stomach hurt and I was crying because I laughed so hard. If only I still had that tape today! You know I would put it up on YouTube for sure! Hell, Bubba would probably even film videos for them!

It's too bad that audio cassette is lost. We can't go back and recreate that sound no matter how hard we tried. It was too spontaneous and original. To this day I haven't heard anything like those songs!

Incidentally, we've been talking about doing some Christmas music and maybe even a special with Bubba and the Government Cheeze. It's not anything we could have ready for this year but there's always next year! Can you imagine seeing "Bubba Claus" hosting his own Christmas special or singing heavy-metal Christmas tunes?

Back in 1993, Bubba appeared as Bubba Claus on a Public Access television show hosted by one of our high school classmates. The name of the show was Rob's Room. Anyway, Rob asked Bubba if he would play Santa Claus on his TV show one day at school. Bubba thought Rob was joking around but he was serious and asked him again.

"What do you want me to do? I'm not an actor, man," said Bubba. "I'm a musician."

"You can do whatever you want," replied Rob. "I just want you to dress up in a Santa suit and be yourself."

When Bubba walked out on stage dressed in the Santa outfit, the first thing he yelled was "Ho, ho, ho motherfuckers!"

He was the rock 'n' roll Santa and it was funny as hell. I was standing in the studio watching the whole thing.

Apparently before the filming of the show, Bubba asked what the deal was with profanities.

"What do you mean?" asked Rob.

"Can I swear? You said you wanted me to be myself and, well, Santa's got a bit of the potty-mouth."

"Swearing is okay. If you slip up and say a bad word, we can always go in a edit it out. Don't worry about it. You will be fine," Rob assured him.

The only time on the show that Rob tried to censor Bubba was when one of the studio audience was chosen to go up to Santa, sit on his lap and tell him what he wanted for Christmas. Rob picks this kid that we've never met from Portland who was a bit of a punk. He was a weird-looking dude and he sat on Bubba's lap and Rob asked him what he wanted Santa to bring him.

"I don't know," said the kid.

"Do you want Santa to bring you a bag of pot?" asked Bubba.

"Yeah! Yeah!" said the kid.

"No! No!" said Rob. "Santa doesn't smoke dope!"

"Yes I do," said Bubba Claus.

"No you don't," said Rob ending the discussion of whether or not Santa is a pot-head.

That was Rob's last show on Public Access television (apparently the content was not to their liking). I watched the first and only broadcast of that show. It was hilarious! I wished I recorded it on my VCR but like that audio cassette, that show is gone forever too.

To be continued...

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