Category Archives: Legends

Narratives about belief.

Questlove Meets Prince

Nationality: American
Age: 23
Occupation: Musician/Workplace Administrator
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/24/17
Primary Language: English

My informant is a 23 year old drummer from the suburbs of Cincinnati. He is a drummer in a band as well as an employee at one of the three major record labels left in America today.

“Okay, so I am going to tell you a story that isn’t actually my story – this didn’t happen to me, it happened to Questlove. And it is my favorite Questlove story because he’s led an incredibly interesting life and has lived more life than I’ve lived in like – will ever live. So one of Questlove’s biggest musical influences, as is the case for every right-thinking person, is Prince. And ever since he got his first Prince record, Questlove has always wanted to meet Prince. And the day it happened, he gets a text, not from Prince, but from Prince’s manager… out of nowhere. This was how Prince communicates with everybody. Um, out of nowhere, with no explanation of how he got Questlove’s number, he gets a text saying ‘Hey, Prince wants to hang out with you tonight. Meet at this place,” you know he’s in Minneapolis. It says “Come to Paisley Park. Bring cool people.” So Questlove rolls up at Paisley Park, brings most of the Roots, brings every cool person he knows. He brings like Jill Scott, a bunch of other people, a bunch of the Soulquarians. He gets to the place and Prince isn’t there. And they wait around for like two hours. This is also classic Prince. And Questlove gets another text being like, “Yo, Prince is ten minutes away. Be ready.” And then, Prince rolls up. It’s important to remember at this point, that like, Prince is like half Questlove’s size. Prince was a tiny, tiny man. And Questlove is a very, very large man. Questlove is huge – which I didn’t know until I saw him like, step away from a drumset. He is a giant man. Uh, but, um Prince rolls up. And the first thing he says is “Everyone give me your cell phones.” He collects everybody’s phone and he walks up to Questlove and the first words that Questlove hears from his idol, his lifelong musical hero, is like “Gimme your phone, I know you have it on you.” And Questlove gives him his phone. And then he’s like “Okay, come with me” and they all go together into the basement of Paisley Park … and there’s a roller rink. And Prince is like “Alright, we’re gonna rollerskate.” And Prince walks over to the jukebox, it’s like the perfect playlist, and they go rollerskating until five in the morning. And Prince had disco ball roller skates that lit up – it was the coolest shit ever.”

My informant learned this story from his father. It would be performed during a band practice or in conversation with fellow musicians or non-musician friends to prove his knowledge of musicians – particularly drummers.

Analysis:

Questlove is a modern-day legend when it comes to drumming. He is well-known and well-loved. It makes sense that a drummer who is aspiring success would tell legendary stories of a legendary drummer meeting his idol. It also makes sense that the informant told the story in a way to make Prince appear mysterious and aloof.

The “Beat”les

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Musician/Music Teacher
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/5/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Portuguese

My informant is a 22 year old musician. He is a bass-playing vocalist who plays in a  band while running his own youth-oriented music school in Los Angeles.

“So the legend goes that Paul McCartney suggested after they had been had been Johnny and the Moondogs and The Silverbeatles for awhile, basically Paul McCartney suggested that they were, they call themselves just The Beetles as a play on Buddy Holly and the Crickets. But then John, uh, Lennon, apparently because he was just a funny guy and liked puns, he decided to, he suggested that they change the ‘e’ to an ‘a,’ being Beatles so that it would be a play on beat music.”

This informant learned this story from his uncle, who is also a musician. It would be performed during band practice or in conversation to prove knowledge of musical legends and to delineate himself from non-musicians.

Analysis:

The Beatles were and are one of the most popular bands to ever grace the face of this earth. They completely altered the course of main-stream music forever and the echoes of their influence can still be heard in today’s music. It makes sense that a musician who currently plays in a small, local band would discuss the legend of The Beatles whenever possible. It also shows the importance musicians place on naming their bands. The Beatles had two unsuccessful names before changing their name and making it big. Musicians often talk of changing their bands name in the hope that it will finally make them successful.

The House with the Blue Gate

Nationality: American/Filipino
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: San Diego
Performance Date: 2/17/19
Primary Language: English

My informant is a 19 year old student studying neuroscience at USC.

“Um okay so, my first story is about this house on my street growing up that always was like a little bit – I just always had a weird feeling about it because…um. Basically my neighborhood has like, four, not four, maybe like, six different like basic housing plans and then like each house in the neighborhood is just like some variation or mirrored design of those different options. But there is one house on my street that was just like, looked very different than the rest and had this very ornate gate that led into their courtyard. It was like very, I don’t even know how to explain it. It was like this iron-cast gate that had very swirly-like type metal, uh. I don’t know like Medieval looking, but not Medieval. And it was painted royal blue. And basically never saw anyone going in or out of the house. And, even on Halloween, all the houses, you know, they usually leave their porch-light if they’re home and want people to trick-or-treat. This house never, uh, had the porch-light on and never had anyone home for trick-or-treating. And so it was always just this very mysterious house, uh, I just – we didn’t really know actually who lived in it. Um… except for one year, on Halloween the porch-light was on. And so I figured, okay, this..this is interesting because now we can trick-or-treat there. Um, and so, we go, and we trick-or-treat and then the people that answer the door – it’s like kind of this maybe twenty something year old guy with like his girlfriend, um. And so, yeah, they give us the candy, whatever, we leave. Um, and that was the only time that I ever saw anyone in that house. And I lived in my house like my whole life, so this is like, you, ten years that I’d never seen anyone in the house before. Basically then, so in middle school, so fast-forward like two or three years or whatever, um. There – I’m driving home from school, and, or my mom is, and the entire street is like, coned off. There’s police cars and caution tape across the road. Um, you can only get to my house by going, like, this opposite way, ‘cause we’re on the other end of the street. And basically what happened was I guess a woman was actually – an older woman – was the one who owned the house and she had been murdered … by her son – who, now, retrospectively, looking back, I think, was the guy that was there that one night for Halloween trick-or-treating. And basically, he killed his mom, who was living at the house alone. And killed her and cut her into pieces and put her in the freezer – in the fridge, of like her refrigerator – very gross. Um, so yeah, I feel like that house is like scary, and always got weird vibes from it, and then very bad stuff happened there. And that’s that. And obviously the house was foreclosed, and someone else bought it, and they redid the entire house and took out the gate and now it’s like a young family living there so. Hopefully, it’s like not … scary.”

The informant would perform this in a setting where everyone is telling some sort of strange or scary story.

Analysis:

People are afraid of the strange or unknown and assign these things supernatural or paranormal powers. My informant, as a young child, noticed something out of the ordinary and naturally labeled it as a bad thing. This time, she was right.

The Wheelbarrow

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Orange County
Performance Date: 4/5/17
Primary Language: English
Language: French

My informant is a 19 year old student who enjoys reading and acting. She grew up in a predominantly homogenous neighborhood.

“So, in elementary school, we had really short fences. You could see- our elementary school was in a neighborhood, so through the short little fences you could see all the surrounding houses. Most of them were pretty normal, you know. Not all picket-fence houses, but like they were like pretty well-groomed lawns, just like, normal, normal little houses. Except for this one… on the corner. It was on the corner of .. *laughs* except for this one! It was on the corner of, I think, Agette and Clearbrooke, I wanna say but I’m not quite sure. So this one house on the corner had a dead lawn, and this was before the drought – they could’ve watered it. It was a completely- it had crabgrass all over it, it was brown and unwatered, unkempt. The house had chipping paint and one of the, the window panes was knocked out, there was only a screen in it. So, naturally we were all creeped out by it. In first grade, I think this was, we were terrified by this house because it threatened our sense of first-grade normalcy. And so we made up all these stories about it. We said that the house was owned by an old man that knocks the window pane out so that he could look at the school more easily and like spy on us. We said that like wild dogs lived in the house and, like, they came out at night and like ran the school. Um, and then, this one day, like after all these stories that we had like, you know, we were sharing them. This one day, this giant wheelbarrow like appeared on the lawn. We don’t know where it came from. And we assumed that the house was abandoned, ya know, we don’t really believe that like wild dogs ran it. So we were so confused as to what happened to it. You know, like who brought the wheelbarrow in, why they put it there, what was in it – that was the biggest question. So more rumors spread, you know, like that the old man was getting ready to go on some hunt or like harvest and he was going to put all his reapings in the wheelbarrow whether that be human heads, or like, wheat, or whatever it would be. *laughs* So, we got really excited, even though we were scared, you know. Um, and like our imaginations were just runnin’ wild. This wheelbarrow, this simple wheelbarrow like had caused all this, right. And I hadn’t thought of this before, but I just asked my mom like if she knew who lived in the house. And she was like “Oh yeah, um, the person that lived there was really old and he passed away but his daughter owns it now and they’re gonna renovate it. And they were just, they’re clearing out the house.” Something really simple and boring. And it just goes to show that your imagination is always better than reality.”

This story would be performed when sharing tales of childhood and stories about things out of the ordinary.

Analysis:

As children, we are most often taught that things that are different are bad. Seeing a house that was out of the ordinary did not fit into the schema of my informant and her friends of their neighborhood. Therefore, they assigned bizarre tales to this house and theorized as to why it was so different. In the end, she realized that it really was not that different at all.

Summer Camp Haunted House

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Orange County
Performance Date: 4/10/17
Primary Language: English

My informant is a 19 year old student who enjoys creating films.

“Alright, so when I went to summer camp as a kid, we – there was, uh, we went to camp on this, um, sort of reserve in Costa Mesa. And there was this old adobe building that stood there. And it’s probably about a hundred years old. And, uh, it was real dark inside, you know, uh – when you first got to camp, you noticed it, but you didn’t really pay much attention to it… until storytime, when uh, some of the older kids would tell stories about the house. And they would talk about how old it was and how people were murdered on the property and how there were ghosts inside of the house, and that there was one ooold man living inside the house. There were days where me and a couple other kids would go up to the house, and you’d be full of nerves, and you’d just be like really, really… you know – just scared of the house. Um, and uh, one time, one kid was looking in the window, and he, he *laughs* he felt his legs go numb and fell while looking at the house. That freaked the shit outta everybody. And we all ran away. Me and another kid picked him up and carried him away. We were screaming and, um, so for the longest time, you know, I used to think that house had paranormal…connections. Until I worked there as a counselor. And um, I, one day we were outside and I notice a tour group going inside of the house. And um, it turns out that the bodies that we saw inside of the house were just a bunch of mannequins. Yeah, there were like creepy mannequins. It just turned out to be an old historic site. It was like on of the first adobes built in Costa Mesa. The mannequins were just there to be kind of like “this is how they dressed back in the time” you know. But those mannequins, like, it was just silhouettes ‘cause of the light, and sometimes you think they would move. But of course, that was just children’s imagination.”

This story would be performed when sharing scary or strange stories.

Analysis:

My informant, like most children, was taught by his peers to fear things that were out of the ordinary. As humans, we put people and things into groups to better understand and process the world around us. But when we are young, we fear the things we do not understand or do not know how to label. Therefore, we end up assigning paranormal or fantastical stories to the strange. My informant realized this and understood it when he grew older.