Chatting with a freshman at a high school in an agricultural area of Northern California the other day, this column learned a lot of real interesting stuff about how the students there perceive themselves as belonging to different groups on the basis of their clothes. The hick, or farmer, clique wears tobaccojuice-stained Levis, cowboy boots, and flannel shirts, the rockers, or stoners, black concert T-shirts, parachute pants, motorcycle jackets, and long hair (and, presumably, sullen, menacing expressions) and her own group, the “freak shows,” Esprit and like sportswear. The preppies (hundreds of years ago, Southern California high school kids used to call ’em “socs”—pronounced “SOshez”—or “little rich assholes”) wear shirts with alligators or polo players on the breasts, the jocks letter jackets, and the goobs, or dorks (we used to call ’em “dipshits”) stuff that their mothers (we used to call ’em “moms”) bought on sale in department store (we used to call ’em “Sears” or “Penney’s”) basements.

To this column’s astonishment and dismay, the Northern California freshman’s school has no dress code. Which strikes this column as a real partypooping policy on the school administration’s part—how can a kid there break the rules if there aren’t any? Yea, verily. Do you imagine for a minute that Boy George would bother with all that eyeliner and lipliner and thisliner and thatliner if they didn’t inspire Barbara Walters to fly all the way over to London to ask him in a hushed, timorous tone if he’s really bisexual? What fun is looking scandalous, that is to wonder, if no one’s scandalized?

In any event, Eleganza wants to hear from other young readers from all around the country regarding what various groups wear at their schools, and about their dress code experiences, assuming their schools have dress codes.

Share some of its own with you? All right, by golly, this column will! Several hundred years ago, when this column was in the fifth grade and rock ’n’ roll was in its first flower, the cool, tough boys at Loyola Village School, in the shadow of Los Angeles International Airport, got it into their heads that it would be very Elvislike to wear no belt, but instead to allow their jeans to ride low on their little hips.

Naturally, our vice principal, a Mr. What-Was-His-Name, was absolutely aghast. Thinking that he would kill the fashion off by humiliating its fomenters in front of their tiny classmates, he began tying twine around the waist of any boy he found beltless at recess. Within about a day and a half, not having a length of twine around one’s waist was approximately equivalent to wearing a sign that read, “I’m an irredeemable dipshit.” Later, when this column was in high school and rock ’n’ roll was in its second flower, girls whose skirts ended more than two inches north of the center of their kneecaps, as perceived by our unmistakably lesbian girls vice principal, were compelled to enroll in Home Economics and learn to sew so that they could affix large scarlet S’s (for slut) to their blouses. In this column’s senior yearbook, there’s a terrific picture of a young woman who’d later go on to become the girlfriend of one of the Byrds (the fat one) in just such a skirt and just such a scarlet S! Every few years this column looks at it and wonders where she is today. It wonders if she’s the mother of teenage boys who think that W.A.S.P. and Ozzy are really awesome acts and blinks back the tears.

Later still, when this column was in college and rock ’n’ roll was going through that horrible stage during which everybody got real pretentious and either wrote concept albums about their navels or jammed for 45 minutes at a stretch because they’d taken methedrine and become convinced that they were just as heavy as Cream or Hendrix, this column led two lives. Four days of five it wore its Thom McAn Beatle boots and the ultra-wide-wale corduroy hiphuggers and paisley and polka dot shirts it bought in the mod section of the local department store, while on the fifth it was required to dress as an officer of the United States Air Force and salute other members of ROTC who outranked it when they passed on campus. This column had never been so embarrassed in its life. It doubts that it ever will be again.

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As it continues to, this column got away with as much as it could. It let its hair and sideburns grow so long that those who outranked it— and no one in the, uh, program didn’t—were forever sneaking up behind it and bellowing, “Let’s get that hair cut, mister!” One day this column even wore its Beatle boots with its uniform. Those in charge were conspicuously unamused. May they all be missing in action. (This column, to its infinite relief, was found emotionally unfit for military service.)

The first meeting of the I Can’t Stand David Lee Roth Club will now come to order. We are united by our perception of him after whom we’re named as a witless buffoon with too much hair and no perceptible talent, as the Mel Brooks of rock ’n’ roll, if you will—as one who’s notable only for the relentlessness with which he demands attention. We find him slightly less obnoxious as a clown than we found him as a heavy metal would-be sexpot, but we still find him considerably more obnoxious than we can bear. The only five things we’ve ever liked about him have been his having named his adventurers’ group the Jungle Studs, his two midget, and then his two female, bodybuilder bodyguards. We are conspicuously unamused by MTV’s having given him carte blanche to mug and preen for the entire Memorial Day weekend. Have they no shame, we ask, no sense of decorum? Are they ignorant of the events of the evening of July 22, 1977?

This column was performing at the worldfamous Whiskey A-Go-Go that evening with the ill-fated (dnd admittedly ill-conceived) group whose guitarist Rudy Sarzo, not yet of Quiet Riot disrepute, eventually induced to run off with him. Roth sat up in the anonymity of the balcony bellowing calumny—droll stuff along the lines of “You suck!” Unbeknownst to those of us onstage (I’d never have let her!), this column’s girlfriend, who weighed about 105 pounds at the time, went up there and politely suggested that Diamond Dave keep his perceptions to himself. The zany guy replied, “Fuck off, bitch,” and made a threatening gesture. Now was that class, or what?

This column can’t forget. But it will never forgive. This column disagreed with David Lee Roth’s assessment of its musical gifts in 1977, and it disagrees with ’em now. Find out whom you side with. Write to Chinese Food Music (half an hour after you hear it, you want to hear it again), P.0. Box 651, Kenwood, CA 95452 for information on how to obtain this column’s long-unawaited 14-song solo (literally!) cassette album, Masturpieces. This means you too, Dr. Krieger. ^