When I first got to LA in 1987 I had a girlfriend named Nina. Her mom worked in the advertising department at a Jewish newspaper and got me a free ad. I advertised for Piano and Voice Lessons — first lesson free. I only got one call. It was from Riff Mic Stand. It’s true; his name really and truly was Riff Mic Stand. Or, at least that’s what he called himself.

Riff came over to my apartment in Hollywood for his first-lesson-free deal. Little did I know that my life would never be the same.

For the worse, that is.

Riff came over, wearing black leather pants, a black t- shirt, a black leather jacket, and a headband (a very ’80s look I might add). He had beady little ratfink eyes and a big, Jewish nose. I later found out his real name was Mark Lemming and that he would troll up and down Hollywood Boulevard, slingin’ his acoustic guitar and singing poorly written songs out of pitch. He really was just a high-pressure phone sales creep from Bumfuck, America with less than no talent.

I shook his hand and said, “Nice to meet you Riff. Come on in and let’s get started with your first free voice lesson.”

He was a real piece of work, but you know Hollywood, it’s the weirdo epicenter of the world with more per square mile than any other place on earth. I figured I’d give it a shot with Riff Mic Stand, and after our first free lesson, I thought I could make a couple bucks showing him how to sing some songs and maybe play some stuff on the piano, here and there.

Riff started telling me he was going to be the best rasper who ever lived. I later found out from Riff’s twisted mind that a rasper is someone who sings with a raspy voice, like Bonnie Tyler, Joe Cocker or Janis Joplin. He said he wanted to walk down the street and have people go, “There’s Riff Mic Stand, he’s the best rasper who ever lived.” He wanted people to call him a “Bitch.” He said his favorite song was Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart.

So he started singin’ it right there. “Turn around, every now and then I get a little bit…” and I stopped him a second and I said, “Hang on Riff, let me close my windows so we don’t disturb my neighbors.” The real reason was because he was so tone deaf, and so horribly terrible that I didn’t want my neighbors to complain and get me kicked out for attempting to teach an insane Hollywood Boulevard freak with bulged out, Marty Feldman eyes how to sing on pitch! Listening to this off-pitch, eccentric-beyond- belief, no talent of a schmuck nitwit gave me monumental physical pain in my ears and a terrible spiritual pain in my soul. Once we got started I said, “Okay, Riff, let’s do some “La la la la LLLAAAHHHH…”

He was so bad, so friggin crappy that it made my very sensitive little ears start to feel really awful. I graduated Berklee College of Music in Boston and was a trained, professional musician! Ear training and many other highly developed skills were part of my core curriculum so to sit there and listen to such a nightmarish wacko was just too much to take!

I said calmly to Riff, “Hey listen man, I’ll be right back, I have to go do something in the back room, hang on a sec.” So I sprinted into my bedroom and screamed into a pillow as hard as I could, because listening to Riff Mic Stand attempt to sing was so deafeningly painful that I just about almost lost my mind! It was that bad; I mean it, man, this guy was by far the biggest freak I had ever met in my entire life!

I came back from my little scream fest feeling a little bit better. So I said in my best attempt at faking a calm tone, “Okay, Riff, now let’s try it again.”

This insanity went on for about another half hour and then Riff said, “Thanks for the FREE voice lesson.”

He might have been insane, but he wasn’t stupid. In fact, he was just smart enough to be dangerous. (There’s a fine line between insanity and idiocy.) The only real reason that I didn’t just tell Riff to walk out my door and never return was that I had this fascination with odd characters. I have since learned to have more discretion when it came to picking new clients, but at the time I hadn’t yet learned that lesson. I guess you could say that my people picker was broken. I think a lot of people have broken people pickers. Like maybe Peter Piper picked a peck of broken people pickers…

Unfortunately, Riff continued to study music with me and I was stuck with him for a while. During his lessons, I had a few conversations with him and he told me some pretty bizarre stuff.

One time, he was telling me a little about his life and he said that he was a great football star back in high school. He’d tell me all about his glory days as the football star who saved the big game and how much of a local hero he was.

He went on and on about how great he was and that he was really a tough guy. He bragged about how he was a member of the Jewish Defense League and that he was by nature a very non-violent person, but if you ever, and he said EVER, wanted to fight him then you would be sorry. He showed me how quick he was and did a series of rabbit punches in the air really fast like a total spazz. I guess that was to show me that he could punch really fast, like in cartoons or something, and that I was supposed to be somehow impressed. I just went along with it to humor him; I knew I was in the presence of an escaped mental patient.

Actually, I was mildly amused by his ridiculous behavior and I needed the money, so I sort of had to trick myself into being nice.

I was like, “Wow, you must be a really good fighter, I’ll certainly make sure that I never piss you off.” Riff had this really annoying whiny, Ratzo Rizzo nagging sort of voice and he was just awful to be around.

To think that I had spent the better part of a decade of my life in an out of control socio-behaviorist personal study of nut jobs was quite honestly one of the stupidest things I had ever done. Why I wasted so much of my time being fascinated by eccentric, bizarre, worthless no talent losers like Riff Mic Stand is beyond me.

Just think, this guy actually sat down and worked on coming up with a stage name and finally came to the conclusion that Riff Mic Stand was THE name for him. Of all the possible combinations of interesting permutations of names that any sane individual could have come up with, that was the best he could do.

People would instantly get who he was and understand what Riff Mic Stand was all about. It was catchy, and it had a ring to it. Anyone with half a brain at all certainly could understand that Riff was a musical term and that a Mic Stand only met one thing: a singer with a raspy voice who wanted to publicly be called a Bitch! Riff thought it was cool to be called a Bitch- hmmmmm, I wonder about the subtle undertones of what might have been going on in his twisted subconscious.

Over the next few months working with Riff I learned that he was also a con man, and not just a rasper. His real job was working as a phone sales creep, doing cold calls and harassing enough people where one in, say, 100 finally breaks down and lets him con them into something, just so he’ll leave them alone.

Basically, here’s how he conned me: he paid me for a bunch of lessons up front and built up my confidence and trust in him. Then, he talked me into recording some demos for him, telling me how he was going to be a big star and how much money I would make later, blah blah blah.

I knew he sucked and wouldn’t make a dime, ever, not in a million years, but since he was paying me $30 an hour for studio time, I didn’t give a rat’s ass what he said.

The thing was, after a few sessions, he started “forgetting” his checkbook and saying he’d pay me later, etc. I stupidly just went along with it and then out of nowhere we had a tab build up. It kept growing, and then he’d pay me some of it and then it would keep growing. Since, I was an idiot back then and a terrible businessman and a total loser and stoner, I just let it slide more and more.

Somehow, he’d built up a $1,700 tab, and then he pulled an incredible stunt.

One day, he just freaked out on me on the phone and told me that if I didn’t give him the tapes we made he was going to drop a dime on me and call the cops on me for selling weed. It was good old fashioned blackmail, at its finest.

I told him he was a motherfucker and that I was going to erase his fucked-up tapes. He got all crazy and tried to use reverse psychology on me and pretended to be all calm and tried to talk me out of it. He was going on and on about his music being genius and how it would be a crime against church and state and all of humanity if I were to act all crazy and erase his incredible music. He kept building up the pressure and escalating the freak show by warning me that he didn’t want to have to call the police if I was going to threaten him with erasing his beloved music and that I better keep my head.

He told me that I didn’t know who I was dealing with and that he was going to call the fuckin’ cops on me and get me busted.

I said if he even dared I would shoot him in the face with my target pistol.

He screamed at me, “don’t you threaten me, I’m a member of the J.D.L. and I got my back covered with my boys and I’ll fuckin’ kill you first!”

The screaming match continued and got worse and then I just hung up on his unworthy, scumbag ass. He called me right back and we fought some more. The threats went back and forth but I didn’t want to push him too hard because he was crazy and was ready to fuckin’ call the cops and nark on me.

Over and over he threatened me and, after a while, I just gave in.

Riff had me totally figured out. I was in a vulnerable position. He knew it, I knew it, and he knew I knew it. That scumbag freak had me by the balls.

I couldn’t afford to stop selling pot and I couldn’t afford the thought of having Riff Mic Stand blackmail me and call the cops. It was cheaper for me to give him his fucked-up, shitty-ass tapes and get rid of him than to try and risk going to jail and get butt-raped. Plus, the amount of money it would take to undo the mental damage he caused me would cost me way more in therapy than his stupid $1,700. Remember now, I was and still am, a very sensitive person and not very fond of conflict.

So, Riff Mic Stand got the better of me and after I gave him his horrible tapes, I told him to fuck off and die and to get the fuck out of my life forever. He was such a scumbag and fucked-up human being with no talent – and I mean NO talent, whatsoever. I just let him walk away with God knows how many hours worth of my work, but it was better than risking a bust and ruining my perfect police record and good credit score. Not to mention the embarrassment and humiliation I would feel from my family.

I guess if I ever give up music and writing, I can always go into something safe and easy, like stand-up comedy maybe. I can do a whole bit about Riff Mic Stand. I can dress up all in black leather and wear a cheesy, ’80′s hair band wig, and put on a Groucho Marx nose. It would look funny and BE funny.

The name alone is funny. Riff Mic Stand. What a total scumbag of the earth loser. If I ever see that ratfink again in person, I’ll take a crowbar and bash in his skull.