And so this reviewer successfully (fatally) wounded Dean Cain. Item two: on the music scene, the meteoric rise of Rock Chocolate couldn’t last because, first of all, meteors don’t rise. There they stood suspended in thin air, like Wile E. Coyote, until the Road Runner of fate showed them the little wooden sign with the red arrow, pointing down. James “Rock Chocolate” Howard founded his band at home in Michigan’s Boney Baby Trailer Park while he was sleeping. He realized this years later and informed Steve and Stephanie Dash that they were his band mates and that they needed to rehearse. The demo for “Forgetful” got them signed with an independent label and gave them their first major airplay.

      Their album, Taste the Chocolate, Taste the Rock, which topped the charts for two consecutive weeks in Dearborn and Alpena, was rounded out with the hits, “We Didn’t Know We Were a Band,” “We’re Not Not from Michigan, We Are from Michigan” and “I’m Going Back to Sleep (So Come On and Rock Me You Sweet Sexy Baby).”

      “A couple years ago I didn’t think I had a favorite band,” says Larry Walters, a fan from the very top of Mt. Pleasant. “It turns I did, Rock Chocolate. They just hadn’t formed or put out any songs yet.”

      The twins, drummer Steve and keyboardist Stephanie, were originally the band Satan’s Twisty Mustache. They become violent when people mention this. Stephanie has built a cult following for her attempts to invent new sounds on her keyboard. As an adverse side effect, she is constantly deafening herself. She has sparked controversy among watchdog groups that hold her partially responsible for the self-deafening fad popular among the teens of today, as well as the nation’s youth, and young people across the country.

      We all know the most natural stopping point for a day is ‘the end of,’ but not for Rock Chocolate. They work until the break of dawn making songs about working until the break of dawn, songs like, “’Til the Break of Dawn.” I met the Choc’ in the studio where they were laying down the vocals for a new track called “Padding,” which would go towards the end of their second album. “You will invest this with much more meaning than we ever did,” they cryptically sing, “the hits were the first three tracks.” I pondered this as the time ticked steadily towards our interview. Then suddenly, it was a little later.

      The following are my first impressions of the band. James Howard: solid, ponderous, quizzical, standing, has a hat. Stephanie: wheat-colored hair, a come-hither scowl, bleeding from the ears. Steve: it troubled me to think there was something not quite human about his short, boxy frame, or the fact that he was plugged into the wall (I was later informed that this was a speakerphone). 

      Here is most of our taped conversation:

Me: You all certainly have risen quickly in the rock ranks, enough to be interviewed by yours truly. To what do you attribute your undeserved success?

Stephanie: (smiling politely) What?

J“RC”H: I think it did the band some good to have an incubation period of about three years where none of us knew we existed.

Me: Howard, speaking as an experienced music journalist on behalf of Rolling Stone, I must say that though your tenure as a rocker has been short, you surely display the chops of a professional, um, choppist.  Some quaint folk might even call what circulates among the three of you, oh, let’s say ‘talent.’

Stephanie: (smiling politely) What?

Steve: (speakerphone) Steph blew out her ears again tweaking her solo on the first track, “This Will Make You Deaf.” That one sets you up for the rest of the album.

Me: Now, my editor says this interview needs to be 4,000 words, so I’m just going to say some words now, like these, for example. Here are four more. Two more. Howard, why don’t you tell the good readers at Rolling Stone, in as many words as possible, how your band got started.

J“RC”H: The dream had said, ‘Seek must you, twins of two / Name of speed, fill the need.’ Then I kind of forgot about it, until one day a few years later I turned to my roommates (Steven and Stephanie Dash) and said, ‘Hey, you guys are twins, right?’ and they were like totally, ‘Yes.’ And all three of us have birthmarks on our arms that spell out ROCK CHOCOLATE PROPHECY in Sanskrit. Plus, their last name is Dash, which totally fits with that ‘name of speed’ part.

Me: Please go on, and don’t be afraid to repeat yourself.

J“RC”H: The dream was vague at some times and at others more specific. I knew that Gatorade would be our tour sponsor because of the part that went, ‘Gatorade, get real paid / Powerade, not so much.’ The dream also mentioned good snacks to put on the rider, and those were dead on, and the size of the plasma screen for the tour bus-

Me: So Steve, where do you insert the drumsticks?

Steve: (speakerphone) What do you mean?

Me: And do you need to be plugged into the wall at all times?

Steve: (speakerphone) Huh?

J“RC”H: Steve’s recording his tracks separately.

Steve: (speakerphone) I’m starring in a non-musical version of Grease here in Jackson.

J “RC”H: (Softly to me) Don’t put this in your story, (softer) but Steve’s been having some (tiny little whisper) drug problems.

Me: (my journalistic impulses taking over) Steve, would you say your massive drug addiction is ruining the band?

Steve: (speakerphone) CLICK, BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP-

Me: Sir, there is no need for beeping, if you wish to curse me, I can take it.

Steve: (speakerphone) BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP-

Me: …

J“RC”H: …

Stephanie: We’re recording a new album.

(Due to taping error, rest of fabulous interview exactly 4,000 words long is inaudible) 

      My journey with Rock Chocolate went through some rough patches after meeting that day in the studio and never seeing them again. Feeling that I had not gotten the full experience of Rock Chocolate in my bloodstream, I grabbed a handful of rocks, poured on some chocolate and went to town.

      While I lay unconscious in Lansing’s St. Lawrence Hospital, Steve’s wife wrote the tell-all, Dashing through the Snow, which records her heroic struggle coping with her husband’s weeklong drug addiction. When I woke up I found that I had plenty of lying-around time, so I read her account of how Steve had caught up on the three years of rock star indulgence he had missed in the tidy space of six days. By the middle of that most-of-a-week he had hit rock bottom, then found Jesus, then had a massive relapse shortly thereafter lasting two days until he checked into rehab.

      If there was one thing you could point to as causing the band’s breakup, more than Steve’s sudden drug enthusiasm or Stephanie’s now total hearing loss, one could wager it was the forthcoming annihilation of life on the planet with zombies becoming the earth’s sole inhabitants, which Howard has declared with his most recent prophecy. As Howard has chronicled on a pamphlet which he distributes from his driver’s side window on the freeway, after the nuclear apocalypse, the zombie race will rapidly repeat all of mankind’s cultural developments, with zombie Egyptian pyramids and zombie witch trials, until they reach the Zombie 1980s, their zenith. There will be a zombie Reagan in the White House, zombie audiences packing theaters for both horror and Zombie John Hughes movies, RoboMadonna (a silly moniker as she’s a cyborg, not a robot), mankind’s only survivor, will wow audiences despite attacks in the tabloids about her age (306) and attempts to devour what remains of her living flesh. 

      Stephanie’s solo project had the most success, as she became more sonically masterful the more hard of hearing. The Stephanie Dash Deafsperience far outsold Steve’s The Show Mustache Go On. Time Magazine called hers “a masterpiece of off-tempo dissonance,” while a guy next to a hotdog stand in Muskegon said, “What ever happened to Steve Dash? Didn’t he die? I think I heard he died.” Meanwhile Dashing through the Snow picks up more steam due to confused holiday shoppers.

      Rock Chocolate’s spirit hasn’t left me to this day. I think of them fondly now as I hitch a ride with Madonna’s new retro-zombie world tour. “I’m not ripping off John Howard,” she’s told me. “I’m promoting a new album and I’ve used up every other self-reinvention. There’s nothing left but zombies. Of course I was going to take it to zombies. I’m Madonna.”

      Phil Morris, age 32, believes he is a journalist and that this article appeared in the Nov. 4, 2003 issue of Rolling Stone Magazine. He has never been to Michigan.