Brian Jones of the week, 7/6/03
This week's Brian Jones of the week is someone I've never met, but who affected my life a great deal.
One day in the early '90's, I received a telephone call at my home, an apartment on Roswell Road here in Atlanta. The man on the line asked if I was Brian Jones; I said yes. Did I live on Roswell Road? Yes. He then read a social security number to me: was it mine? Nope. He read another one: mine? I confirmed that it was mine. The man proceeded to tell me that I owed his collection company over $1,000 for a Bally Health Clubs account. I informed him, truthfully, that I had never had an account at Bally. He responded quite reasonably, asking me to keep in touch about the account.
Now, I'm the first to admit that my credit history has been somewhat spotty. I'm not ashamed of it; I've cleaned up my act a good bit since that time and even have a home of my own and a credit card. But back then I was in a constant state of worry over my credit, so I thought that cooperating with this fellow was a good idea. So I gave him my work phone number.
Next day he called me back. If I couldn't prove I wasn't that Brian Jones on the account, I would owe him the money. I went through hell, including numerous increasingly abusive calls from the collector, doing just that, and it was all wasted time.
People. Do what I did after that. Learn the federal collection laws and the law in your state. You could save yourself a good bit of embarrassment and wasted effort.
It turned out that the fellow on the line did indeed know my name and social security number, but not from any credit application. No, he had a list of Brian Joneses and their social security numbers (legally obtained) and was using them to collect on the Bally account. He didn't care that I was a different Brian Jones. He was going to hassle me for the money until I told him to leave me alone. I could have done that on the first phone call but I didn't know it. Instead, I contacted Bally and went through their customer service Hell to get a copy of the application which I used to demonstrate that a different Brian Jones, in a different place on Roswell Road, had defaulted on the account.
I encounter this person every now and then when I'm opening accounts etc. He seems to be a real piece of work. So, Brian Jones, who used to live on Roswell Road and defaulted on Bally Health Clubs, dude, you low-life sack of decadent crap: You're our Brian Jones of the week!
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That's funny (in retrospect, of course - I'm sure it was a major pain in the ass at the time). I have a namesake who was (until his imprisonment) a mafia don in Philladelphia. I recently opened a bank account, and when the branch manager called the credit agency to make sure I'm not notorious for kiting checks, looked up from the phone and asked me "You didn't ever live in Pennsylvania did you?" It's never really caused me a problem, although I'm curious to find out what kind of reaction I might get trying to reserve a table at a restaurant in Philly.
Posted by: Guy Smilee | July 6, 2003 07:33 PM
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Either I just realized who you are, or you're the second mafia don's namesake of my acquaintance.
If the former, where's my MP3's? If the latter, welcome aboard!
Posted by: Brian Jones | July 7, 2003 08:19 AM
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The former.
http://www.nigiri.org/mp3
The stuff that's up there now isn't the best from us, performance wise, but my recording and production chops are looking pretty good on 'em. I'll find some better stuff for you later.
Posted by: Guy Smilee | July 7, 2003 08:40 AM
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That huge hit your monthly bandwidth just took was me sucking up your mp3's.
Me, I'm in the market for a cheap dreadnought. I think I told you I got a nice electric-acoustic Takamine, the EF261 SAN. Absolutely smashing tone but no volume for unplugged gigs, which I play a lot at my church.
I played a Garrison this weekend - have you seen those? Solid wood, so they're very very solid and heavy. It was like playing a nightstand.
I don't exactly mean that in a bad way, and the price was right. I'm going to keep looking, though.
Posted by: Brian Jones | July 7, 2003 09:29 AM
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I'm not real up on what's hot in acoustics these days. I have an old Ovation that I never play, but in the past, both the neck and the bridge have become detached from the body, and now the tone sucks. I've been told that this is a problem with Ovations generally, and for this reason, I wouldn't recommend one, but one thing it did have going for it was projection. The curved back makes all the sound go forward.
A buddy of mine had a beautiful Guild dreadnought that had great tone and was pretty loud, so you might want to look at those.
Are you sure using an amp is out? They make these tiny little battery powered amps that are pretty unobtrusive. The subway buskers all use them around here. I don't know the brand but I could probably find out.
BTW - I'm going to be in Georgia next month. The missus is finally graduating, so we'll be heading down for that. If you've got the time, I'd love to get together - whether for a round of golf or just to hang out. I'm probably gonna try to get ahold of R&B too.
Posted by: Guy Smilee | July 7, 2003 09:44 AM