The other nyte Taytyme was rocking out something fierce, as per usual. Hard rocking. You know that old joke, "Rockin' hard, or hardly rockin'?" If you say that shit to Taytyme, your quipping days are over, brother. There's only one aswer to that question, and it is poking some sucker in the fucking eye! Better is the saying, "When the rocking is hard, the hard get rocked." You better believe it! One of the hardest of all is Mr. Dean "Jungle Fever" Bratcher, as many of you already know. In fact, you were probably already thinking of him before you read his name here on Taytyme. When I said that thing about the rocking being hard enough to rock the hard, you probably went, "oh yeah, like Dean for instance."

So I caught up with the old man and he wanted to know if I'd seen the big dude in the straw top hat at the previous weekend's rock show. "Straw hat?" I asked. "Like a barbershop quartet?"

"No," Dean said, "like Slash, but straw though." I had not seen the gentleman in question. I was told that I should have. "He was wearing a harmonica belt. Like that holds twelve harmonicas." As I pictured an amalgam of Wavy Gravy and Rambo, the story began to play out.

So Dean eyes the guy, goes up to the bar, sits down beside him, and says, "You play harmonica?" The guy looks at him and then down at his harmonicas, referencing them with a wave of his hand. Dean goes, "Yeah, I kinda figured you blew. You got a chromatic in there?" After the guy explains that he doesn't do chromatic, Dean tells him that he really should get a chromatic because it would be a lot easier for him. Again, the guy says, "I don't do chromatic." Again, Dean says, "Well, you should."

The guy tells Dean that he just puts three harmonicas in his mouth at once, which obviates the need for him to learn to play the chromatic harmonica, and Dean goes, "Oh, like that Guiness Book dude that can smoke a hundred cigarettes at once."

Wavy Gravy stared.

Dean said, "You always wear those out?" Uncle Meat told him that the thing was that you never knew when somebody was gonna up and ask you to play harmonica, and Dean readily concurred. "I guess when people see you in that get-up, they figure they might as well ask, huh?"

At this point in the story, Dean paused. He asked me if I'd ever heard of "Magic Dick." "Is it a guy or a maneuver?" I asked. Dean said exactly. But then he told me that Magic Dick was the harmonica player for the J. Giles Band, and that his claim to fame was a song called "Whammer Jammer," whose name was derived from the whammy-bar characteristics of Mr. Dick's chromatic harmonica stylings.

As suddenly as it began, intermission was over and Dean was back in the middle of the story. Still at the bar with the dude in the straw top hat, Dean says, "You know how to play 'Whammer Jammer?'"

The guy goes, "I can play 'Whammer Jammer.'"

Dean replied, "I thought you might have a little Magic Dick in you. Listen, I manage this band called Ole Mossy Face, and they want to play 'Whammer Jammer' but the trouble is they can't find a harp player who can keep up with them. You think you might be able to hang with these boys?"

Numbers were exchanged, and it looks like Mason's already being shooed out the door! Can you believe it? Just remember where you were when you heard it first, ladies. On Taytyme!