Yes, he assured her, five tickets for the David Bowie/Nine Inch Nails concert.
Clouser and his wife, Mel were there in Hershey last night to see, for the first time, their son Charlie perform with Nine Inch Nails.
Clouser knew what he was in for - a huge dose of loud, dark, provocative music. Before the show, the professor of medical ethics at Hershey Medical Center warned his student, "Now, next week, I may not be able to hear."
Clouser was especially thankful for one thing last night: His son brought him a handful of earplugs just before the show.
"I wouldn't be here if my son wasn't in the band," he said.
Clouser jokes that his usual excuse for missing the shows is that it's too far to drive.
Nine Inch Nails' stop in Hershey last night was part of a six-week North American tour with Bowie. Since Nails' 1989 debut, "Pretty Hate Machine," went double platinum, the band has made its mark on popular music.
Its 1992 follow-up, "Broken," won a Grammy and helped establish NIN as a leader of "industrial" music, a genre that's a bit harder, tougher and uses more distorted vocals than traditional rock 'n' roll.
Lead vcalist Trent Reznor, a native of Mercer, has an edge-of-madness-approach. He's known for lyrics such as: "Head like a hole/Black as your soul/I'd rather die/Than give you control."
Heavy stuff for the professor, whose last concert was a Boston Pops show in the 1950s. But the proud father was adventurous enough to invite three friends -- a brain surgeon, a critical-care practitioner and an otolaryngologist -- to the show.
Charlie Clouser, 32, began touring with Reznor about a year ago.
He attended Middletown High School until the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, when the family moved to its second home, in Vermont.
Mel Clouser and her husband had grown up in Middletown, and they soon returned. Charlie stayed in New England, graduating from Hampshire College.
After graduation, he left for New York in search of stage work and editing projects. Charlie's credits include co-editing the soundtrack of Oliver Stone's movie "Natural Born Killers" and White Zombie's album "Astro Creep: 2000," a top seller.
Eventually, Reznor invited him to perform keyboards on stage. "They understand one another musically," said Mel Clouser.
The substitute teacher doesn't worry about the band's reputation for the bizarre. "We know our son," she said. "We think he's a fascinating person. He has always been the sort that was going to do what he was going to do."
In the classroom, she emphasizes to her students that her son worked hard, finished college and put in the extra time to gain experience in his field.
"He still calls his parents every weekend," she points out.
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