The Brief, Tragic Story of Overnight Meat Thaw and Gizmo Wahoo

“Some people get rich and others eat sh** and die.” -Hunter S. Thompson

The mood on the patio was hot, getting hotter by the moment.

“You listen to me and, listen good, Alton, man! ‘Overnight Meat Thaw’ is a stupid name for a band! Stupid, man! Like, really idiotic! I mean, like, what the effin’ ef, man? You cannot be serious!”

Gizmo Wahoo, the 47-year-old bass player and co-founder of the Freakerman-Wahoo Exponentials, was livid. He used his chipped Budweiser key chain to open another bottle of expensive imported beer, procured from Alton’s refrigerator.

Gizmo had not paid for any beer in the two months he’d known Alton Freakerman and the other guys in the band. He did buy one round the night they met at a dive bar in Venice Beach, but only because an old friend had unexpectedly sent him a hundred dollars in the mail after he’d won $500 on an Illinois lottery scratcher. Gizmo had been feeling uncharacteristically hopeful and social during that episode of drunkenness.

But that seemed like so long ago. The hopefulness was gone. Alton Rapscallion Freakerman, the 24-year-old lead vocalist and visionary co-founder behind the Freakerman-Wahoo Exponentials, was as serious as he ever got, which was serious enough to make his point as often and directly as needed to get it across.

“Look, Gizmo,” he said, trying to remain calm, “it’s not as if the Freakerman-Wahoo Exponentials were going anywhere. We’ve had, like, a couple of dozen practice sessions and have maybe three good takes of one original song, plus a whole lot of Zeppelin covers. It ain’t what the times call for.”

“You don’t know sh-t, Alton! Robert Plant is back, man!” Gizmo, all five-foot-three of him, seethed emphatically before taking a long pull from the green bottle.

“Robert Plant never left,” Alton replied, “but you have to go. I and the rest of the Exponentials have been talking it over. We’re working on a concept album about how thawing meat is kind of a metaphor for life itself, dude, and I don’t think you are capable of comprehending it.”

“A concept album? Thawing meat? And renaming the band to fit the concept? Christ on a bike, Alton!” Gizmo laughed and finished his beer. He walked into the kitchen to get another one before Alton told him not to.

He re-emerged from the poolside apartment with a fresh bottle and a know-it-all grin on his unshaven face. He opened the beer and downed about half before speaking again.

“Yeah, sure. That’ll work. Overnight Meat Thaw sounds about as exciting as Three-Week Mold Growth, ya moron,” Gizmo mimicked Stork from “Animal House” as he spoke the words “ya moron.” He had made this sardonic expression his own as a sort of signature put-down. But he had been doing this for decades, often after a few beers, and he did not always consciously realize where these words originated — nor did he much care.

Alton had heard enough.

“You just don’t get it, Gizmo. It’s final. Reg is in at bass, you’re out. You can leave my apartment now, Gizmo, and you’re not welcome at my parents’ recording studio in Malibu anymore, either. It was a mistake bringing you over there in the first place.”

Gizmo Wahoo was stunned, but not quite speechless.

“What the tuckfuddle, Freakerman dude?” he said, switching to a somewhat practiced quasi-tortured artist persona. “Oh man, oh man. We’ve known each other for, like, two months, man. We’ve practiced together, like, two or three times a week. We’ve effin’ grooved, Brah. We’ve grooved. And you want to throw all that away? I mean, it’s like, you know, what gives, man? What gives?”

“What gives is what goes, and that what is you. We’re done Gizmo. And good luck with the Zeppelin retro stuff. I hope you can make it work for you, but it just isn’t where my head is at now.”

“Screw you, Alton! I don’t need this disrespect, man! ‘Overnight Meat Thaw’ is just plain stupid! You’ll see!” Gizmo downed his beer, realized he was dry and looked at Alton with pleading eyes.

“Go ahead,” Alton said. “One last beer.”

Gizmo went back inside for a beer. He opened it, took a long drink, and began a booze-addled attempt to articulate his final thoughts on the matter at hand.

“I hope you realize what you’re doin’, Alton. You’re not thinking this through, man. All I’ve got to say is don’t bother calling ol’ Gizmo Wahoo when you come to your senses. Because I am so effing out of here that you won’t know what hit you when I go!”

With that nonsensical outburst of raw emotion at the moment, tainted by the pain of lifelong failure, rejection, and soul-consuming loneliness, the diminutive bassist chugged the rest of the beer and began walking the two miles back to the flophouse where he’d been staying for the past few months. Once he was back on the sidewalk, unwelcome but not unfamiliar tears began streaming down his face. He cursed under his breath and, knowing that he was lying to himself, promised he would make it big someday.

Within 72 hours of being booted from the band, Gizmo had boarded a Greyhound bound for Phoenix, with only the clothes he was wearing, two battered suitcases, his bass, and the well-worn case he’d kept it in for more than two decades.

Gizmo used to have a cousin in Phoenix before she moved to Nashville to become a songwriter and — unbeknownst to her as she departed Phoenix with high hopes for her upcoming future in country music — to work full-time at a Denny’s in Fairview after the Nashville dream failed to materialize. Gizmo knew about a residential hotel in Phoenix where he could live cheaper than he had been living in L.A.

“I can’t take it anymore, it’s just getting too crazy,” Gizmo Wahoo thought before settling into a troubled sleep en route to his new home in the desert heat.

Meanwhile, back in the City of Angels, Alton brought Reg in at bass. But Reg didn’t quite get the concept of Overnight Meat Thaw, either.

After a few days of deep depression, Alton decided that Gizmo Wahoo had been right about the new band name. But instead of stopping by the flophouse and inviting him back into the band — a thought that never even occurred to him — he just changed the band name to Freakerman Brothers 101, because Reg’s last name was also Freakerman. Geno Parlance, who never really liked Gizmo Wahoo, remained as lead guitarist, and Geno’s cousin Chuck “Bucky” Landis kept banging away at drums.

By the time their album “Sagebrush Wagon Hot Links” peaked at #128 on Billboard 200 album chart and they began playing outdoor rock festivals up and down the West Coast, members of Freakerman Brothers 101 rarely if ever discussed the conceptual ramifications of thawing meat. They just took it out of the freezer, let room temperature work its magic, and threw it on the grill once it was ready to go.

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