WATTS vs Brazil Pt. II

Following is the second in correspondent Callous French’s chronicling of WATTS’s two-week pratfall across Brazil. When we last saw our heroes, they were dragging ass off the last in a grueling series of flights and into the loving arms of their sponsor, Fabricio Nobre, in the city of Goiania.

“Mayn,” said Fabricio laughing, kind of. “What happened?”

He was referring, of course, to why we hadn’t gotten off the first plane he’d arrived to greet that day, six hours earlier. We had accidentally disembarked that flight at a layover, costing us six extra hours, and there had been no way to notify Fabricio.

Naturally, we all started answering at once, simultaneously inquiring about whether the guitars had arrived while lighting cigarettes, excited to be in yet another airport where we could smoke. I could see in the eyes of Fabricio Nobre that he wasn’t hearing anything we were saying, rather that he was caught up in wondering exactly what he’d gotten himself into here. He’d been working his ass off for six months putting this trip together—hounding advertisers, booking venues & hotels, negotiating at every turn. He was familiar with the Mono Men-- of course-- and Estrus & (king of America) Dave Crider. But this WATTS monster was a relatively unknown entity. He liked the record enough to release it in Brazil, but it was three years old by now. The band hadn’t toured extensively. For all he knew, he could have brought down DustBlair, and with the way he’d had to promote this thing in advance, a poor showing could easily cost him his reputation, if not his life. I watched as Fabricio Nobre contemplated this.

We were, after all, a collective fucking mess-- excited to be here, finally, but very wrinkled & greasy, three-quarters drunk and otherwise rummy from 40 hours with only the fleeting travel nap.

Fabricio seemed to be in control of this situation like he would for the duration of the trip. Tall & plump (“I am a vatt bastard!”) and in his 20s, he was dressed in jeans and a tight red t-shirt baring the name of his own band, MQN. It had been easy to identify him as we’d stepped off the plane, because he was the first rock ‘n’ roller we’d seen in any of the several Brazilian airports we’d been in thus far. He was accompanied by Marco, the monkey-like leader of Thee Butcher’s Orchestra, another band with whom we would play often and bond perpetually. We followed our guides to the TAM Airlines office, smoking and asking for the name of the cow, to claim our luggage.

It was obvious from the first moments in the hotel that They were expecting us. Goiania is 800 miles to the interior of Brazil, 800 miles from the attractions of Rio or Sao Paulo, and it’s not every day that Van Halen comes through town. The event in Goiania was the annual three-day festival of La Bananada, which Fabricio had coordinated. Most of the bands were staying at the hotel, and WATTS was the only non-Brazilian band on the bill. It is true, in fact, that we would not see another American for the entirety of our stay in the country, but rolling into the Villa Rica Hotel at 10 o’clock Friday night, we did not expect to be such a novelty.

Lounging in the lobby were all manner of Brazilian hipsters, and it didn’t take Dog & fuckin’Braimes.com long to strike up a crippled conversation with a few and hail a cab to the site of the festival. As tempting as my own twin bed and game3 of the  Kings/Mavericks series was (major American sporting events via ESPN were common, but SportsCenter was generally pre-empted by soccer), I jumped in the taxi.

The festival was being held in an old reservoir which had two beautiful, round, contemporary theatres on-site. While one band performed in one theater, the next would soundcheck, and the kids would race back-and-forth in between. Others lingered in the treed concrete courtyard eating & drinking or shopping for CDs & merchandise from the dozens of vendors set up around the grounds. The weather was warm and the atmosphere was quite pleasant.

Again, it was obvious They were expecting us. The crowd didn’t look all that ‘Brazilian’ to us, but it was clear that we appeared very American to them. Many spoke English and were eager to approach us and interpret for their non-English speaking friends. As the evening wore on, handshakes gave way to hugs, souvenier photos were snapped, CDs autographed and beers poured over heads. Any language barrier that may have existed was crushed underfoot like a retarded neighbor.

But perhaps the most important discovery of the night was Pinga. American culture has no equivalent to Pinga. The closest thing is probably Kentucky bourbon, but Pinga is far more central to Brazilian culture than even that. If you’d told me that we would see fewer than a half-dozen bottles of Jim Beam during our entire tour of Brazil, I don’t think I’d have gone. But the fact that Pinga is available everywhere helps with the loneliness. We measured the Pinga—a sugarcane derivative not unlike agave-less tequila-- heavily that first night and left the grounds at 4am with a girl named Camelia in her Hyundai, playing the first Violent Femmes record as loud as her stereo would play it.     

Man cannot exist on cigarettes and alcohol alone. Seven hour’s sleep while actually lying down did wonders for our composition, and in the early afternoon we checked out of the Villa Rica after more embracing and high-fiving with the loitering Brazilian counter culture, piling in a van bound for our first show in the capitol of Brasilia, 300 kilometers away. El Morto had been up early, hunkered down at the hotel internet station doing Thinkatron business and checking Mariners scores. He informed us on the way out of Goiania as the road deteriorated into a 20-foot wide swath of concrete winding through green fields dotted with brushfires, that we had taken two from the Blue Jays and one from Boston since leaving the northwest. Badgering El Morto for news from home would be a prevailing theme for the tour, as technology is this man’s vice. Often, while many of the entourage were off tinkering with their comas, El Morto could be found linked to the civilized world via the internet or photoshopping the day’s digital images on his 17” laptop screen. Evening slide shows of the day’s events would become a ritual, and it was always nice to know what was going on in the world of Major League Baseball.

By the time we reached Brasilia, we’d been in South America for over 24 hours, and the band was definitely ready for 45 minute’s rocking. The Pinga was flowing at the over-sold Gates Pub, a dark & narrow nightclub with impossibly small doorways and landings. The stage, too, was tiny & crowded, and by the time WATTS hit it after 2am, it seemed even smaller, like a plastic wading pool at the bottom a hundred-foot-high diving platform. WATTS climbed the ladder and the crowd roared. The show really was amazing-- better than any I’ve seen at home. Working without a setlist, the band tore through most of the record plus a few favored covers, delivering a performance that was crisp & violent. Crider reeled off a rousing rendition of the “Cold Gin” rap from KISSAlive! and shotglasses exploded against the brick wall adjacent to the stage. Good evening, Brazil…

After more sub-verbal bonding with Thee Butcher’s Orchestra (who had since re-dressed after their underpants-only set) and Sao Paulo punk rockers The Forgotten Boys (with whom Braimes had performed “Chinese Rocks”), the party moved across town to what appeared to be Don Johnson’s house-- a sprawling salmon-colored villa with a wide stone staircase and swimming pool gracing the park-like grounds. “The host’s parents are in Bali,” explained Marco, leading us past a bouncer and through the ornate iron gates. A beer table was set up on the patio and the garage had been turned into a visquine  discotheque. The house itself was off-limits, though King of America tried at several junctures to gain access.  Furious drinking and smoking carried on until the early morning, when Dog & Braimes got cooled in the pool, fully clothed.

The next night, back in Goiania, was equally riotous. Along with the Butchers, Forgotten Boys and MQN, WATTS closed down the 28-band La Bananada to a most enthusiastic & appreciative crowd of one thousand. MTV Brazil was there with cameras and microphones and the band was draped in beads. Penises were photographed and bass guitars mercilessly detuned. Braimes got up with the Forgotten Boys for a rousing version of “Jumping Jack Flash” and Chris Watts lost his fool mind such that he actually sustained a pogoing injury. And Fabricio Nobre, spent & sweaty from his own set, smiled broadly, relieved that his personal future again seemed bright.

Next month: Sao Paulo—population 16,999,997

Garage Shock Memorial Day weekend 1999

There are a lot of adjectives one might employ in describing Garage Shock ’99. Deafening, dizzying, drunk and disorderly are a few that come to mind. I don’t know that I would call it shocking, however.

I kind of knew what to expect, after all. I was keenly aware of what Garage Shock was all about and what it could mean to a man’s liver. I’d also seen most of the 18 scheduled bands at one point or another over the years. But the beauty of an event like Garage Shock is that it’s all there at one time, just daring you to take it all, like that ill-advised late night double shot of Jaegermiester.

It was a fine, sunny, late spring Friday afternoon, and I rode from Seattle in the open back of a pick-up truck, landing in Bellingham in time to pitch my tent in the backyard of Garage Shock mastermind Dave Crider’s home in the Lettered Streets. Offering me a cold can of Budweiser beer, Dave Crider appeared remarkably calm as he relayed news of the kook perched on top of a rolled motor home on I-5, shooting into rush hour traffic with an assault rifle, wearing nothing but a pair of bath slippers and a flesh-colored moneybelt. Well, you know how stories get exaggerated as they’re passed, but in the end the guy had at least stolen a car and driven it wildly on the interstate, shooting at other motorists before abandoning the car and fleeing into a residential neighborhood to break into an elderly couple’s home and hold them hostage. Accurate details were difficult to come by in the calm Bellingham afternoon, but one thing was certain— holiday weekend traffic was stopped dead, and only two of the evening’s six bands had yet arrived.

Unnerving calm from Dave Crider: “Maybe the Coyote Men will have to learn some covers,” he said.

What sense was there in struggling? By this time, the work was done and matters were in the merciful hands of the Garage Gods. Plenty of people were here already—the band entourages alone numbered almost 100, and that didn’t include the zealots from parts flung who would sooner lose a digit than miss Garage Shock. From here on out, it was nothing but a furious gauntlet of handshaking and high-fiving, bearhugs and heart punches for Dave Crider and his Garage Shock partner, Aaron Roeder, owner of the 3B.

In the end, of course, traffic cleared and everyone was present and accounted for when the festival officially kicked off at 9pm sharp with France’s Thundercrack. Bassless and blue, the trio set a fine tone for the weekend, giving way to the Von Zippers, from Calgary. Hard to tell which was sharper—their big hooks or the pointy hats. But they rocked. 

Having worked up a powerful thirst during the first two bands, I missed a portion of the Coyote Men’s set in favor of a taste of alcohol at the Ranch Room. When you feature six bands in a night-- even with a shared backline-- sets have to be short, and changes quick, and forty minutes is barely enough time to cross Holly for two doubles. I got back in time to absorb the essence of the Coyote Men—Mexican wrestling masks on British dudes playing straightforward funnyguy punk.

The two doubles came in handy in the next forty minutes when the Monkey Wrench fucking brought their heels down on the toe and broke the bone. If there was a theme to this Garage Shock, it would have to be the Tim Kerr angle. With two of his own bands performing and a third with which he had long-standing spiritual ties, His stamp was pressed deeply into the palm of this weekend, starting with the last-minute addition of the dusty Monkey Wrench project, subbing for the awol Makers. Comprised of veterans from Mudhoney, Gas Huffer and Lubricated Goat, the Wrench needed only an impromptu rehearsal to get tight enough. Slinging their greasy brand of contemporized delta blooze around the 3B, they seemed like a touring band just playin’ another shit hot show.

It takes a tough act to follow the proverbial tough act to follow, but San Francisco’s Zen Guerrilla was up to it. I’d seen these noisepushers on a number of occasions, but this night they really brought it all to the hardwoods, ending with a totally ridiculous version of “Mob Rules” that made me goddamned thirsty.

Having only one double at the Ranch Room allowed me to catch the last half of Man or Astroman’s set. What can you say about MoAM? They’re like the Grateful Dead of garage rock. Shock veterans, they dialed and laid it down, leaving a panting throng to ponder Saturday’s promise.

That promise was fulfilled the next night with the Northern European spotlight of the weekend. Garage Shocks of the past had often featured geographical themes of one kind or another, and Saturday’s flair was decidedly Scandinavian, right down to the bottle of absinthe Dave Crider kept deep in his coat pocket. He poured me a tall green one upon my arrival at the venue, just prior to the start of the Flaming Sideburns set. These guys killed me—tough glitter punk from Finland, the singer Eduardo could be seen frequently throughout the weekend, elbow upon the paper towel dispenser in the men’s room of the 3-B in sunglasses and a pimpy leopard skin hat. Next were the Sewergrooves, the dark Swedish trio featuring Robert, the drummer of the Hellacopters.

What I needed right now after a tall glass of absinthe and several beers was some mushrooms. Luckily Bob & Tammy from Stanwood were holding, so we crossed State Street to their room at the Bellingham Inn for a chaw. Fortunately, they also had a bottle of Patron and a big bag of weed, and by the time we got back to the bar for the last couple of songs of the Insomniac’s modpop set, I had forgotten I’d ever stolen that car in the first place. The infinitely-fun and Tim Kerr-produced Sugar Shack, from Houston, was next and they were terrific. Just ask me. The dancefloor was vertical and the temperature was rising rapidly.

What happened for the next 200 minutes was a blur of pure rock. Dave Crider stumbled to the mic at center stage for an introduction.

“This is the band that changed my life and saved my life!” he shouted, and Stockholm’s Nomads launched into a set that proved why they’ve been such an important act over the course of the past 25 years. If MoAM is like the Grateful Dead of garage rock, these guys are like the Replacements of garage rock, so rock, godDAMN! What a gratifying performance!

In a perfect world, the Nomads set and the Hellacopters set would have been reversed, since the Nomads basically are the Hellacopters’mother, and since on this night the grizzled vets overshined the upstarts. The Copters’ sets the last time they were through the northwest, the previous April (their first time in the States) were more inspired than at Garage Shock ’99. But for anyone who might’ve missed those early gigs, the show at Garage Shock was still pretty hot, and the throngs poured into the warm spring night on State Street.  

The party afterward in the Fireballs of Freedom suite at the Bellingham Inn was a lot like the show itself, with beer and bodies flying. Lurching north on James Street just before dawn, I was delighted to be picked up by none other than Dave Crider, and we heartily proceeded to the 24-hour Taco Bell drive-in for some deferred Mexisludge. I came up early the next afternoon in a twist of taco wrappers, the interior of my tent its own weather system of toxic condensation. For the past month, I’d been concealing a poison tooth beneath a blanket of ibuprofen, and this particular “morning” the pain was excruciating, overshadowing a headache that in its own right was quite profound. I grabbed the cigarette cellophane containing the last of my 222s and stumbled up the back porch, through the kitchen and into the bathroom, just in time to find Bekki Crider standing up in the bathtub, reaching for her towel. Confused, embarrassed, dizzy and thirsty, I excused myself and stumbled back into the kitchen. A tall glass of water and some coffee later, I was ready for a beer and some rays before settling down for a long pre-show nap.

The crowd at Sunday night’s show was a little lighter than the previous two nights, as a few dozen lame fuckin’ pussies had taken road to get a jump on their recoveries. But that only left more oxygen and shorter beer lines for the healthy and hungry crowd that remained, and both came in handy during the glorious finale.

Dave Crider and Aaron’s band Watts kicked things off, filing an imperfect yet passionate set. This was the first Garage Shock at which their former band the Mono Men had not played, and the Watts set was clearly a release of energy for the two who had worked so hard putting this historic event together. Brian Teasly of MoAM gave Aaron the last few songs off, and the Garage Gods smiled.

Estrella 20/20 followed, kicking up the fuzz a notch, lonely in their representation of the Far East. Next came the Gimmicks from Seattle with their sassy junk rock act, singer Mark Starr thrashing about the stage like a goldfish in a dry handsink.

Despite my afternoon snooze, I realized toward the end of the Gimmick’s set that I was starting to wear down just a little. Fifteen bands in, I was beginning to feel the effects of the various cruel tricks I had subjected my innocent self to over the course of the preceding 48 hours. My legs ached, my eyes burned and my tooth was fucking killing me. There was a steady drip of grey paste coming from my left ear. But there was no turning back now. Indeed, with the end in sight, I resolved to stare unflinching into the yellow eyes of the balance of the weekend and endure whatever it had to dish out. Right after two shots of tequila and a Budweiser at the Ranch Room.

Good goddamned thing, too. The Fireballs of Freedom were that and more, stomping through their unique, whacked out brand of freedom fusion, setting a perfect tone for the certifiably-insane guitar army from Alabama, the Quadrajets. Sporting new members since their last visit to Bellingham, the Jets cranked up their spicy orange-and-blues machine well past its recommended capacity and let ‘er rip. The Quadrajets live on any ordinary Tuesday night are more than your pedestrian rock fan can handle, and at midnight on the last night of Garage Shock, they were pretty much out of their bodies.

Everyone was, really. It had been an amazing weekend. The distinction between old and new friends had become blurred, and it was like one big, drunken family. That’s the way it is at Garage Shock—bands generally leave their egos at home and come for the party. Instruments are shared, all door proceeds are split evenly and completely between all participating bands, and the hospitality of the bar is unmatched. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em and start reserving a sofa for next year, that’s the idea.

But first, Tim Kerr had a little business to take care of. Swinging dreads and grinnin’ broadly, he countered perfectly the crazed vocals of Mike Carrol, coaxing sounds unnatural from his guitar as he led the Lord High Fixers through a beery set of skwak rawk to the Promised Land of Garage Shock Heaven. The crowd called out for more, and they got more, until there was no more to give by either side. And then my lips fell off.

                                                                                           --Callous French  

Great Escapes: Bellingham

Sometimes concessions are made by invaders of paradise. Visitors to Todos Santos in Bobby Bortolo’s Great Escapes entry in PMA 001 were encouraged learn and speak Spanish. In his guide to Kawai in 002, Jon Letman admonishes guests to listen more and talk less.

Modern conquerors of the former milltown of Bellingham, WA are harder to spot from the sidewalk than more conventional invaders of paradise-- basically new whites crowding the established ones. Europeans began arriving in what is now Bellingham in the mid-19th century to the surprise of the Nooksack and Lummi tribes who’d already set up shop here and were doing just fine. Nowadays folks who’ve been here since longer than about the Reagan era consider themselves practically ‘native,’ rolling eyes in the direction of the coachloads of bearded pioneers landing downtown every day.

It’s kinda hard to fault generations of the curious. Located conveniently between the international power centers of Seattle and VCBC, Bellingham offers peace and whimsy not seen in either of those venues for decades. At 90,000 people, the smart yet lazy village once known for the acrid stench of the Georgia Pacific pulpmill is waking up and finding that much has changed while it was anap.

The line on Bellingham used to be that there were no jobs here. Graduates of Western Washington University lulled to passivity couldn’t find work at any anthropology or history firms in town, and there seemed to be ten qualified applicants for every vacant teaching job (WWU churns out a lot of teachers from its 15,000 undergrad population). Still, they’d fallen in love with the pace, price and endless recreational opportunities of Bellingham and just never got around to leaving. So they stayed. Now they’re rolling their eyes.

To be super clear, there are still no traditional jobs here. When GP began shutting down in 2001, the first of 2,000+ working wage industrial jobs perished with it. Hi-tech (whatever that is) has decade and again passed on Bellingham as a host. The current local economy is precariously represented in public sector jobs: health care, local government, education-- plus a rainbow of non-profits and a small army of Realtors. And now instead of ten applicants for every teaching job, there are 50. And they all have PhDs-- though not usually from WWU…

But unlike during the 20th century, folks don’t need an old-fashioned job to live in a city that doesn’t have any. Thanks to something called telecommuting or something, people can live anywhere. And they are.

During the Great Inward Migration of 2004-2007, a lot of the new faces in town had liver spots and wore trifocals. Sunset and Forbes had fallen for Bellingham in the hardest promotional way, and Whatcom County was consistently rated as the #2 retirement destination in the US (behind Fort Collins, CO). Much early Bay Area Boomer money was pouring into town and the median price of a home in Bellingham proper was suddenly $345,000 rising as rapidly as the average age.

The you-know-what of 2007-2012 reset the table. The retirees who’d been able to sell in their previous markets were cozy in their new one-level Bellingham charmers—but the moat was full of alligators and a number of fledgling businesses closed, abruptly deprived of a projected infusion of new blood and money. The overextended lost their homes and the ‘natives’ scowled, if gloating a tiny bit maybe…

Then, like a record player whirring back to life after a power outage, Happy Days returned. The getting being again good in neighboring markets, those weary of big city wallop were invited to exit stage north to Bellingham, where the median home price has re-risen to a pornographic                   $460,000 with little relief in-sight.

But this time the average age is falling. Unlike 2006, the inbound profile is the young couple or new family from Seattle. Refugees not able to get out of King County fast enough are kicking in doors in Bellingham. Families of 3.1 (plus pets) are parachuting into town every day while scrolling listings on Zillow.

Without a job market, it’s an effort to move to Bellingham. No one ends up here on accident (except students). A percentage of the well-meaning new-in-town grownups actually have or find traditional work here, though most of them telecommute. A few of them hard commute. But another segment senses this is their chance to realize the dream of opening that restaurant or starting a non-profit. Or brewery. Bellingham is startlingly over-represented in craft breweries, its thirst seemingly knowing no limits.                            

It wasn’t always this way. Janet Lightner, co-owner of Bellingham’s revered Boundary Bay Brewery, remembers when the landmark opened in 1995.

“Bellingham felt more like a small town then,” Lightner says, recalling a version of the old days. “People wondered why Ed (Bennett, husband and co-owner) would choose that scary end of Railroad Avenue for his new business. There were no condos and no permanent home for the Farmers Market. It was dark down there!”   

These days—thanks in part to the fearless homesteading of BB-- that south end of downtown is lit any time of day or night. Plenty of residential, combined with food & drink, the BAAY children’s theater and Depot Square (permanent home of the Bellingham Farmers Market) translate to a healthy mix—one that includes students from nearby WWU. And right in the middle of it is the Boundary Bay ‘campus’ which now consists of three live music venues spread across 15,000sqft on two levels. The taproom, bistro, deck, garden and events-only Mountain Room employ 130 people pouring, cooking, serving, brewing and canning.

“We strongly believe in Buy Local Be Local,” Lightner says, smiling (she’s always smiling). “Bellingham will always be home to us!”  

Boundary Bay’s undying commitment to community is a shining example of the spirit that defines this town. Buy Local is not just a campaign slogan in Bellingham—it’s a way of life. (Although it is also a campaign slogan…)

Buying local works here. A 100-mile diet is possible here. Bellinghamsters are willing to put their money where their mouths are, supporting independent merchants even if it costs more to do so. This noble localism is a source of great consternation to the Chains, who struggle here. Sure, there are some recognizable logos in Bellingham. But in general, the scrappy, locally-sourced merchant is held close and fiercely defended.

Perhaps no single organization embodies the notion of localism more than the business networking cooperative Sustainable Connections. Wrangling the foundational values of green building, sustainable fooding, waste stream reduction and buying local under one living roof, the 17-year old non-profit is a kind of ideological mascot of Bellingham. With a growing staff and 400 dues-paying members, SC is headquarters for awesome ideas in Bellingham.

“In my experience, Bellingham is extraordinary in that business owners often see localism as a mindset that creatively integrates business, community and the environment,” says Executive Director Derek Long, outlining the organizational tenet of the triple bottom line. “They tend to see and act on the connections in an effort to add value to all. This kind of local business leadership helps inspire all our community members to do the same.” 

Unlike a lot of other Western Washington municipalities its size, Bellingham is a true Place—a small city rather than a large suburb. Built around the protected shores of Bellingham Bay, the town features an actual working waterfront bordering a thriving downtown business district surrounded by dense gridded residential neighborhoods. Eventually the flow is interrupted by Interstate 5 to the east, beyond which the more modern neighborhoods feature less of the character found in the older core. These subdivisions from the 1970s-2000s act almost as suburbs on a scale relative to the size of downtown—even though they are well within the city’s proper limits and greater UGA. There are plenty of pleasant neighborhoods and recreational attractions east of the freeway. But Bellingham really is all about downtown—even if it hasn’t always been that way.

Nearly choked out entirely in the late ‘80s by the opening of Bellis Fair Mall, downtown suffered in silence for a decade. Longtime downtown anchors moved to the mall or closed down altogether and tumbleweeds blew down the deserted corridor of once-bustling Cornwall Avenue. But by the early aughts the new-mall smell had faded, and a romantic re-discovering of downtown began drawing merchants back. Bold tax incentives helped spur aggressive redevelopment, with shuttered taverns and blighted crack hotels being replaced with mixed-use mid-rises and expanded public spaces. But still, downtown seemed tentative-- not yet ready to seize its day.

“Bellingham’s always been kind of like the pretty girl who doesn’t really realize she’s pretty,” says Downtown Bellingham Partnership Executive Director Alice Clark, gazing out the window at the very pretty young lady downtown has grown into. “At some point she started thinking maybe she ought to start wearing makeup and actually talk to people.” Call it tourism.

Clark has been one of that shy girl’s most enthusiastic cheerleaders for decades, having kicked a lot of boulders down the hill. In 1998 she co-founded the beloved Pickford Cinema which is now the regionally-renowned Pickford Film Center featuring top-shelf first-run independent film on three screens around town. In 2009, she launched the hysterically-successful summertime neighborhood artwalk the Sunnyland Stomp. There was the Bellingham Wigout and Alice’s Pies, and now a percolating brainchild that could be her wiliest challenge yet: a 30,000sqft all-hands-on-art interactive museum on the re-developing waterfront. BOOM!

For a city built on a bay, Bellingham has historically had surprisingly little public access to the water because of GP’s dominance of the flats. Converted from a cannery in the early 20th century, the mill covered 130+ acres of the central waterfront, a staggering 4,300 square feet of shoreline. With its demise came an opportunity for repurposing of a waterfront that had been enclosed in chainlink and steeped in mercury & chlorine as long as anyone alive could remember.

The Port of Bellingham swapped GP the land for the environmental hot potato responsibility in 2006 and entered into a partnership with the City to much fanfare. Citizen steering groups were formed. The Department of Ecology got involved. Babies were born at St. Joseph’s Hospital and matured to puberty, but still—no new waterfront.

It’s a pretty big project, to be fair. By presstime, there is a thru street that crosses the site. The Granary Building, one of the few salvageable structures from the old mill, has been renovated and is partially occupied by optimistic new lessees. There is a parkish park with a beachish beach and an expensive centerpiece of industrial art. The waterfront redevelopment is happening, but the process has been slow and at times contentious-- and some residents have lost patience/interest. In the future it will be a jewel with a healthy mixture of residential, commercial (including legitimate maritime trade) and public land. Stay tuned…

Further south along the Bay shore from what will eventually be a brand new waterfront district is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, the historic district of Fairhaven. This photogenic commercial center was once its own municipality, back when what is now Bellingham was actually four separate towns. Today it is a very dear brick shopping district with its own identity, its own Village Green and its own pricing structure. Posh by Whatcom County standards, Fairhaven is home to the landmark Village Books, a number of slick new tippling houses, and Tony’s Coffee House—proudly caffeinating hippies since 1971. The paper doll definition of what a ‘hippy’ looks like has changed, but the location and coffee haven’t.

Residential Fairhaven features a rich mix of architectural styles. Bordered by modern mansionettes & sprawling mid-century moderns in Edgemore to the south; the grand, registered Craftsmans and Tudors of South Hill to the north; and the dusty Folk Victorians and student-soaked 70s multi-family of Happy Valley to the east, south Bellingham is           .  The village itself is home to one of the larger concentrations of condominiums in the city also--much of it modern construction-- built of brick and well-integrated into the existing character of the district. 

Leaning in to the future

Lots of times condos are bedeviled in cranky gentrification rants like this story. But it would actually be great if there were some new condominiums built in Bellingham. Developers can’t build apartments fast enough right now, with vacancy rates hovering around one percent. With the median home price rocketing toward $450k, Bellingham could use some affordable home ownership options, and condominiums traditionally help fill that need. But developers have shied away from the risks associated with building condos, widening the gap.

Housing has been highlighted as a marquee issue in a closely-contested Mayoral race coming down to the wire at presstime. Like everywhere else on the West Coast, Bellingham is struggling with a homeless dilemma. With housing costs rising disproportionate to wages, more and more working residents are finding themselves unsheltered. There are solutions baking, but they’re not quite done yet. The City and the Lighthouse Mission Ministries have been working together to find a site for a new shelter. Further upstream, The Bellingham Housing Authority is working toward redeveloping the site of the formerly blighted Aloha Motel to provide 150 affordable rental units. Another rung up, Kulshan Community Land Trust is partnering with Habitat for Humanity to build 50+ townhomes on the city’s northern boundary that will be owner-occupied and remain affordable in perpetuity.

But it’s a drop in the Bay. Bellingham’s creatives and working families are finding it harder and harder to live here— whether owning or renting. And that’s not good for anybody.

Still, Bellingham WA is a nice place to visit. You can still put a nickel in an analog parking meter, and if you don’t mind bussing your own table, there’s plenty of good meals to be had. Stop by and sit a spell. They don’t call it The City of Subdued Excitement for nothing…

Dear brother

Hey Sean,

Sorry it took me so long to get this in the mail. It has been more hectic here than usual lately, trying to squeeze a Christmas season into half the normal time…

I have some other stuff somewhere that I can’t put my hands on right now. I did a lot of shuffling of shit this past year when Julie’s and my Mom was dying. I rented some cold storage and cycled some of my own stuff out that I didn’t need every day so I could absorb half of Mom’s stuff to sort & settle. I know I have some files and albums of various pictures somewhere, and they must be in storage. Not a ton of stuff, but there is one particular stash that has some Marlin fishing photos from Mexico that are pretty rad. I’ll get to that stuff before we get together in 2014.

There are a few things in here, though. Some hilights:

• Keys, cuffs and tie tacks. I would give about anything to know what these keys went to. Keys are weird that way. These are cool—one has a lion on it and one has an eagle. They don’t make keys with animals on them anymore. A couple of cool pair of cufflinks and a brass tiebar with a seal I can’t quite make out—looks like ANA with a flying bird it. Some kind of bird-hunting thing, I’d guess

• Crest—I don’t know what this medal is from. It certainly aint a war medal

• Powerful Pete pocket screwdriver—for your Irish

• Silver Cross—for your Catholicism. I am stoked to have found this, it wasn’t with the rest of this stuff and I had to dig for it because I knew I wanted you to have it when you told me about your Christian faith. This was in a box of my stuff, because I used to wear this, on a chain around my wrist. Lost it several times—once at an Iron Maiden concert—and it came back to me every time. Blessings…

• Luger buckle—I remember this piece. I never saw Danny wear a cross, but I do remember him wearing this. I researched it and it looks like it’s only from the ‘70s or late ‘60s, but it’s bitchin’

• Ferrari patch—it’s a Ferrari patch

• Ticklish Boys—this is the original newspaper clipping of the dynamite incident. Again—it seems like this should be yours  J

• Silver spoon—I honestly don’t know if this was Danny’s or just Maggie’s. It belonged to one of them. Probably not old enough to be Maggie’s baby spoon, and I don’t think it was his baby spoon, either. But it’s old and it’s significant

• Giants pennant—for your box of SF sports memorabilia. This was mine and it has to be from the very early ‘70s if not the late ‘60s

• WATTS—this was my band later, after the metal band PANIC. Still pretty heavy and great guitar work on this. I don’t know if you have a turntable

Anyway, it’s been good getting to know you this year, Sean. I realize you have not only a tall mountain to climb, but a slippery summit to stay atop once you do get up there. I am pulling for you and am willing to help as I can. I’m grateful that you’ve been able to give me the space I need to get started on this relationship. As you know, I have overfilled my own life and struggle to stay balanced. I’m working on it.

Julie & I will get down to the Bay in the first half of 2014. Until then, stay clean and stay free. Have a good holiday season-- there is much to be thankful for, always.

Yours,

Jeff

Broken Teeth— Bulldozer

OK so I guess my post from the other day somehow led people to believe our house exploded or something. And that’s not exactly true.

What happened was this:

It was actually only our electrical service that exploded. But it did totally explode. In the middle of the night. Woke Patti and I up from a dead sleep. Vincent was home from college for the summer, and I ran down to his space in the basement, hoping he hadn’t exploded something. I didn’t know if he was home or not. I flipped on the light and was relieved to find that he was in fact not there. But the overhead light glowed unnaturally bright before the light bulb exploded with a loud POP. My own adrenalin surging, I ran back upstairs and met Patti in the kitchen. The light in the rangehood was glowing super bright, too, and just as I reached it that bulb exploded too. There was smoke hanging in the air and the house smelled like an electrical fire. I ran outside to the garage where the exterior mounted light was shining freakishly bright and as soon as I reached it, that bulb exploded. I was beginning to think it was me...

“We gotta get out of the house,” Patti yelled, her eyes flashing. I was relieved when they didn’t explode. We ran out to the front yard to see if the whole neighborhood was pulsating. But things on the street looked normal, with the streetlight and the neighbors’ porch lights operating seemingly at regular power.

We phoned PSE and they said they didn’t see anything weird going on the neighborhood. “You need to turn electricity off to your house,” they said, “as soon as possible.”

I wasn’t stoked about going back into the house, let alone touching the electrical panel. But I found a rubber garden glove, and after psyching myself into it, I hit the main shutoff and the house went dark.

When the PSE tech got there around dawn, he lowered himself in his remote control basket and showed me the tree limb that had been rubbing on my main drop presumably for years.

“That was a pretty big explosion…” he said, examining the discoloration on the limb. “You’re lucky no one was hurt.”

And we were lucky, of course-- unless you consider your refrigerator, stove, fancy tankless water heater, microwave, garage door opener and hi-fi getting fried to be bad luck. Because all those items had been cooked by the reverse polarity generated when the casing had finally worn off the cable, exposing wires that weren’t supposed to touch. Toggling back to the unexplainable good luck-- the dishwasher, laundry machines, amplifiers, computers, television and light fixtures were all spared.

I didn’t really understand it then and still don’t now.

Anyway, it took 5 years to replace the turntable and now I have a bunch of old new records to listen to!

DAY#2: Broken Teeth, Bulldozer. Birthday gift from Matt 2016. Favorite side: A

Jason McMaster is a hard rock warrior. Not necessarily a household name-- at least in my household-- but rocking a Goog on his consecrated ass conjures a resume impressive in its perseverance alone. The most recognizable bullet is Texas-based identity crisis rockers Dangerous Toys from the very late 1980s. But this guy has not stopped working the hard rock room since first picking up the bass for Rampage as a teenager in the late ‘70s. Broken Teeth is among his most consistent and longest-running platforms, but it’s also true that he’s fronted tribute projects of the likes of Van Halen, Priest, Bon AC/DC, Rush, KISS and The Cult-- among others. Jason McMaster is a case study in rolling stones not gathering no mold. He’s a Lifer.

He's also an ordained minister in the Church of Disaster. But—you know—who aint?

The music itself has a distinct NWoBHM cast to it, reminding me immediately of ALL FOR ONE era Raven, maybe with slightly less whack vocals. Only slightly though. The musical performances are average, the production listenable. Standard issue hard rock lyrics about flamethrowers, cloven hoof and holes in the sky. Jason McMaster’s singing is fine. The whole record is just fine.

There isn’t much to set the original songs apart from each other but side A is definitely my favorite because side B has not one but in fact two fairly uninspired covers on it. On a record of seven songs, it seems a tic lazy to include two covers-- especially when one of them is a super straight rendition of Aerosmith’s “Lightening Strikes.” Who doesn’t love this song, but I already have ROCK IN A HARD PLACE and don’t need another true version of this hit. If you’re going to record a cover, pick something off-road like “The Hammer,” the closer of Motorhead’s landmark ACE OF SPADES. To Broken Teeth’s credit they did just this; to their corresponding discredit, they didn’t do a particularly interesting version of it. There was a Seattle band who played a super smokin’ version of this song in the early ‘90s.

Unlike the disappointing packaging of AMERICAN DREAM by LCD Soundsystem, BULLDOZER features a beautiful seablue splatter platter and hi-quality full-color jacket. Very tasteful.

One interesting note: being a 12” record, it did not occur to me that it might be a 45rpm spin. I hadn’t noticed there were only 7 songs on it, and put on side A. I listened through the intro of the lead song “Raining Fire” thinking what an unusual guitar tone it was. Even when the singing started, I wasn’t immediately certain that I was playing the record on the wrong speed. Maybe I’ll leave the setting at 45 and do a single next.

Tomorrow: Walking Papers, I Belong to You b/w Trophy Wives

I Was There Janes Addiction spring 1988

JANE’S ADDICTION-- MOORE THEATRE, APRIL 17, 1989

“Fuck dude, you shoulda seen it,” blurted Screwdriver into the phone. I held the receiver away from my ear. I’d been at work at the printing plant in Georgetown for several hours on this particular Monday morning by the time he called, but I knew he’d just become conscious in Ravenna, sprawled out on a futon beneath a shadeless window, fully-clothed, the smoke still lazily curling from the bigmouth of his wake’n’bake. “Perry had the fire engine-red dreds, dude, it was INSANE…”

Screwdriver had been talking up Jane’s Addiction to me for more than a year now, since their first trip to Seattle opening for Love & Rockets, Perkins sitting on the floor and all the crazy vocal effects. He’d talked that first record to death, and I’d listened to it as a courtesy, but never quite caught his enthusiasm for the band. But that was normal—Screw was the kind of guy who talked incessantly, and you could never really buy into everything he went on about, because a portion of what he talked was all shit. 

But not Jane’s Addiction. By the time this particular Monday morning rolled around, I was fully on the bus and eagerly awaiting the second show of their two-night engagement at the Moore Theater. They were touring in support of their stunning sophomore offering Nothing’s Shocking, and they had come a long way from the group who’d warmed up for Love & Rockets a year earlier. They’d even been through Seattle just a few months prior, headlining a show at the more uptown Paramount as part of FM100’s self-conscious Rising Star series. But now they were back with a two-show set in a smaller, nastier room where they could shake their shit without any coked-up radio promoters prompting them as to the call-letters and the sponsors. Now was the time to write history.

I finally clocked out at the print shop and drove directly to the liquor store to purchase a fifth of Pancho Villa, silver. Relishing the first portion of it in the fine Seattle spring afternoon, I drove to my apartment on Capitol Hill where I changed into my punk rock threads and took a few bonghits of my own, awaiting Screwdriver’s call. When it came from Belltown, Poncho & I saddled back up and headed downtown.

Now, you gotta dig Screwdriver. He has more aliases than he has fingers, but the one I’ve chosen to identify him in this column comes from a spin on his last name, which is the same as a prominent manufacturer of hand tools, and I’ll tell you it aint Craftsman. His other knicknames are considerably more vulgar, and I will spare you them this time around, though I will not promise that one of Screw’s other personas will not make their garlicpussy-breathed way to the pages of ’sup! Magazine in the future, ‘cause we had some wicked cool times together, and we’re brothers.  But even in April 1989 the guy was a fucking trainwreck, and I’ve just rolled up to him on 2nd Avenue with a zip of the kill and a bottle of horrible tequila.

So what’ya think we did? We drove around for an hour, drinkin’ and smokin’ and lookin’ for a parking place, Screwdriver all the time telling me about how bitchin’ the show the night before was. We’re listening to the record, the sun’s goin’ down, we’re gettin’ drunk and stoned-- it’s great. Eventually it’s time to think about goin’ into the theatre, so we pull in sideways to a parking spot on 3rd and head toward the Moore.

The show, of course, was fucking amazing. After pausing briefly at the merch counter to admire the tokens we couldn’t afford, we headed directly into the pit just in time for the houselights to flash, twice. The energy in the room was incredible— high like the band, but also strangely reserved, kind of like slow-motion, even after the lights went down…

Things went completely nuts immediately after, naturally, but I’ll never forget the opener, Perry Farrell holding high in a elbow-length velvet glove a bottle of Dom Perignon, the opening refrains of “The Mountain Song” cascading down upon him, pupils like Frisbees and Joker Green dreds after coming out bright red 24 hours earlier. Then the ultra-violence, punishing volume, idiots rule…

(author’s note: several weeks later, Martin & I ventured over to Jerry’s house @ 3 am after watching the Soul Kiss video to try and score some weeds. I had, 12 hours earlier, been forced to make the rather difficult decision to either shatter my wrist on the refrigerator or knock my fucking asshole girlfriend’s teeth down her face, and had opted for the former. So after having my ‘boxer’s wrist’ set at the walk-in clinic, Martin & I proceeded to take all of my pain medicine with a half-case of Schmidt. If we’d known there was tall swallow left in the bottle of Poncho Villa underneath the passenger seat of my car, we probably would have drank that, too-- before setting off in the direction of Jerry’s. As it turned out, the 500 police officers that greeted us in Jerry’s culdesac with their blue lights flashing and their guns waving were “looking for someone else” and not only could not arrest us for an open container (which we weren’t even aware of) or for being grossly impaired (which we were totally aware of), but they actually had to apologize to Jerry’s parents for the disturbance.

Jerry’s folks weren’t holding, but we considered this a pretty decent outing, nonetheless. We even got a nightcap out of the deal.)

-- Callous French 

LCD Soundstystem American Dream

Five years ago when our house exploded, losing the turntable was mostly an afterthought. Our more immediate concerns were replacing the refrigerator, stove, water heater, all the light bulbs and eventually even the CD player. It wasn’t difficult getting used to not having a record player because we hadn’t exactly been using it every day to begin with. Eventually I took the records downstairs, and the turntable gathered coins and mail like a ping pong table gathers laundry.

A friend gave us an old Kenwood KD-2000 that needed a new belt. After replacing the belt, it seemed clear it needed a new motor. So after another year of dust-gathering, we took it to the nearest broken turntable repair shop, which was all the way down in Seattle (Washington). They fixed it up like new and I brought it home and got the records back out of the basement.

I’m not a freak like some people I know, but I romanticize vinyl records as much as the next agnostic. I love how records feel and smell, how they flip. One’s own personal history with a particular record is much more acutely delighted in with an LP than with a CD or some dumb playlist. Records are for reals.

But until I started droppin’ the stylus, I didn’t realize how much I’d missed the ritual of playing vinyl. Selecting one, de-sleeving the wax, examining the label on the actual record to see which side is which, putting your favorite face-up on the platter and starting the motor. Then-- with your own human flesh hand-- moving the needle over and dropping it softly on the edge. The brief crackle of imperfection followed by song one.

Then twenty minutes later picking the needle back up and starting the whole process over. A side in time…

But just because I was between working turntables didn’t mean I stopped accumulating records. And after five years, there was a little stack of strange. I’d had these new records for years without listening to them! Some of the stuff we’d already owned on other formats and others probably got streamed. But a lot of it was virgin, much of it still sealed. It’s been fun catching up, like a month of Christmases…

DAY#1:  LCD Soundsystem, American Dream. Christmas gift from the kids, 2021. Favorite side: a

If you’d played me this record in 1983 and told me I’d love it in 40 years, I’d have come at you. Hell, 10 years ago. But I’m not the least bit hesitant to say I love LCD Soundsystem.

I don’t really think of LCD Soundsystem as a band—even though they have a very consistent historical membership that plays actual musical instruments. To me, it’s James Murphy and beats—stuff I used to call disco. Until very recently, I recklessly grouped anything that didn’t have a distorted electric guitar as the predominant instrument into the category of ‘disco.’ I know better now. But really not all that much better...

I’m a vocal-centric music appreciator. If I don’t like the singing, I can’t like the band. See: Neil Young, the Police, Hüsker Dü, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Ozzy Sabbath. If I like the singing, I can get into most anything. Including disco.

American Dream was a comeback record for LCD Soundsytem in 2017. I’d be lying if I said I could tell it apart from ‘their earlier stuff’ but now that I have my own copy of one of their albums maybe that changes. It’s an ambitious work, clocking in at more than 68 minutes spread over two discs. It would have made a great single album.

There’s a lot of variety here—especially for disco. There’s even some guitar, like on the hard-driving “Emotional Haircut.” There’s also some of that stretched out percussion mural trance jamming (Murphy on lead cowbell) reminiscent of the Talking Heads’ “Cross-eyed and Painless” which feels like when you open your eyes at a party with a guitar in your hands and realize that awful noise is coming from you.

The nicest moments, though, are the sparsest ones—patiently developing vocal melodies set against a brocade of pastel tones that takes on more definition with each listening. The first track “Oh Baby” is dreamy and aptly named; the title track finds the band auditioning for Angelo Badalamenti’s recently-vacated position.

One thing I’ve always valued about LCD Soundsystem is Murphy’s rye humor. It’s here on American Dream, but you have to dig a little harder for it. There’s no “Daft Punk is Playing at my House” on this record...

Of course, one of the great joys of LPs is the large format artwork. We got pretty accustomed to squinting at photos and liner notes in the ‘90s, but returning to the acreage of the vinyl sleeve is easy on the retinas. American Dream itself is kind of a disappointment in this category, though, with minimalist packaging that looks and feels like it was produced at the community college printshop.

I’m not the least bit hesitant to say I love LCD Soundsystem. They’d probably be my favorite band if I’d been at those first Suicide practices. Instead, I grew up on hard rock.

Tomorrow: Broken Teeth, Bulldozer

Bring a picture of Malcolm Young to Dave’s

Sandwiched in-between iphone reminders to Choke the Chicken was one to remember to bring a picture of Malcolm Young next time I visited Crider’s. I’m not sure how we ever remembered anything before we could just dictate reminders into our phones. I swear most days I wouldn’t even remember to pull down my pants before going poop if it wasn’t for my lucky iphone and its bulletproof memory.

I think the other reminders as input were actually to Check the Chicken because if I don’t set a reminder I usually end up overcooking it. But bringing a picture of Malcolm Young to Dave’s was as it was intended. Malcolm was still living at the time, but I don’t remember why else we were collecting paper pictures of him. I found one in an old Kerrang! and tore it out, folding it up in my shirt pocket. And out the door I went.

Dave accepted it graciously as though he had any idea why I was delivering him a picture of Malcolm Young. It had no-doubt made perfect and indeed urgent sense when the reminder was initially filed, sitting on Dave’s back porch with a bottle of brown liquor. But in the end, I think it was just great to have a picture of Malcolm Young to put on the fridge—and that is plenty.

Dear The Bellingham Herald

McClatchy

1601 Alhambra Blvd., Suite 100

Sacramento, CA 95816

                                                                                        Thursday June 9, 2022

To whom it may—

Publishing a daily newspaper looks hard these days. But I don’t think I can continue to pay a thousand dollars a year for the privilege of proofreading The Bellingham Herald.

Bellingham is a town of just fewer than 100,000 about 100 miles north of Seattle. You guys acquired the paper along with the other Knight-Ridder books in 2006. Fyi.

It’s never been a great paper, but it’s been our paper and that’s historically been worth the delivery price. Even when it didn’t show up for a few days and even when it began appearing on the parking strip and not the porch—there’s just something comforting about a morning paper where you may know someone in the obituary section.

But at $3.14 per issue, I cry uncle.

Maybe I’m reading this invoice incorrectly. I don’t feel like it was half this expensive last time I renewed. Maybe it was and I just didn’t notice because I was so rich at the time and now I’m so poor.

Either way, I think I’m out.

Regrets,

Jeff Braimes, Bellingham WA

Rick Sands 1964-2024

After 60 years of making everything he did look easy, Rick Sands slipped peacefully from this plane Friday August 23rd after a lingering pulmonary illness.

Rick was born in Puyallup on April 8, 1964 and grew up in Pierce County. He attended Puyallup High School where he lettered in baseball, starting at third base and hitting for both power & average.  He graduated in 1982 before enrolling at Green River Community College where he majored in pointy shoes, charming the ladies silly, and rock & roll radio at the college’s 100-watt FM station KGRG. Rick quickly earned a drive-time slot, inviting listeners to sink in to the Quick Sands while spinning not only the hits of the day but also whatever he personally felt like listening to at the moment. The entire Kent/Auburn Valley was obliged to listen along.

When college life wasn’t quick enough, Rick packed up his rock & roll and took over iconic Tower Records, managing stores in Tacoma & Seattle. He was a natural for ‘the business’ with its hype & glamour. When retail no longer thrilled him, Rick left to get ever nearer to the source, taking a job at Polygram Group Distribution in San Francisco. Now instead of letting Ozzy in the back door for an in-store at Tower Mercer, he was driving Bob Stinson to Flint’s Barbeque in Oakland in his red Karmann Ghia.

Rick returned to the Seattle area in the early ‘90s, ready to settle down. He married a high school sweetheart and the couple bought their first home in Des Moines into which they welcomed the two daughters who would become the greatest among Rick’s many joys. He took out his earrings and slipped into a sweater vest and got his real estate license, quickly becoming a top producer in Southwest King County. He sold luxury Sands Castles to the elite of Normandy Park and Three Tree Point, joining their ranks eventually. The vanity plates on his black BMWs read SOLDOUT.

Ultimately even the hype & glamour of the real estate business lost its sparkle, and Rick quit the life to pursue a decades-long passion for food. He instantly established himself as a force to be reckoned in the Olde Burien food & drink corridor-- chopping at 909, pouring at 913 and curating a wildly-successful film series at the Tin Room’s jewelbox Tin Theater. He was the toast of 152nd and still is.

Even a long life is too short. Rick never got to see his Mariners in a World Series, and he was never (officially) elected Mayor of Burien. But Rick packed a startling amount of living into his 60 years. He was larger (and louder) than life: when Rick Sands arrived at the party, everyone knew it. He loved a large #1 Phó. He loved extra innings and pocket aces. He loved seeing a young British band breaking on their first tour of the U.S. He loved his dogs. But most of all, he loved his girls.

Rick is preceded in death by his mother Quick Jean Sands; his father Richard Henry Sands; Hopkinz & Rocco. He is survived by daughters Olivia Jean Sands and Sophie Sands; brother Willard Thomas (Diane); sister Mary Thomas Anderson; niece Gwen; nephew Charles and niece Alicia; girlfriend Vanessa Raney; and Red the toothless cockapoo.

Rick Sands could talk to any one about any thing and often did—always leading with those pale blue eyes. And not just waitresses and ticket scalpers. Not just rock stars and real estate developers. He could make the old lady ushers at the ballpark blush, and older men often called him Ricky. He could win over the fans of the other team. He was a fast talker, a slow pitcher and a generous charity auctioneer. He could make his hair do the impossible, always. He embraced sarcasm but was also infinitely sensitive & sentimental—a real softy. He made others feel good, and people just wanted to be around him. Rick Sands came from a small family, but he had a ton of friends across many circles. Some of those circles venned over; others didn’t. But no one who knew him ever met anyone else quite like him.

One thing Rick did not much care for (besides tomatoes on his sandwich) was a funeral. In consideration of this, a joyous celebration of life will be planned for 2025. Like as in the entire year: 2025 will be the Year of Rick Sands. It will be filled with story & song, laughter & libation. Stay tuned for dress code.

The family would like to acknowledge the excellence of care Rick received at Swedish Medical Center—First Hill during his final days. The staff—from the specialists to the custodians—were flush with grace and empathy, comforting both Rick and his loved ones during the most trying of times. Through it all, Rick kept his dignity and his humor. His laugh will be missed by many.

Wooden Nickels

I bought stereo speakers from a guy in a white van long before doing so was a punchline. Talk about your wooden nickels!

To be fair, I think they were pretty good speakers. I couldn’t say for sure, though, because I never plugged them in to my stereo. I couldn’t bring them home because I was supposed to be saving money for college and my mom would have hit the roof.

I drove from the Winchell’s parking lot to the bank and withdrew $200. I had to walk inside a branch of Rainier Bank because the ATM had not been invented yet. This was 1981.

The guy was waiting outside and he took the speakers out of the back of his van and set them in the parking lot. He counted the money like a pro and then without another word, he got back in the white van and drove away.

They were new, still wrapped in plastic. I don’t remember the brand. He said his boss at the stereo store had ordered too many pair and he had to get rid of them so he was selling them for way less than what they cost on the floor. I don’t recall that price. But $200 was a lot of bread in 1981. Of course they were hot, duh.

I put them in the backseat of my ‘71 Impala and drove to Larry’s house. He wasn’t saving money for college and his parents may not even have realized he was still living there at the time. Larry was the youngest of five kids and his folks were pretty much done hitting the roof about much of anything by the time he was in high school. We agreed that he would be merely fostering the speakers, but of course I’d never get any closer to plugging them in to my own stereo than I was right then, leaving Larry’s parents’ house in Redondo.

I used to set my beer down on them whenever I’d go over to Larry’s apartment years later. He had a nice stereo that sounded great with the speakers. They made good end tables for setting your beer on or else the white gnome-shaped ceramic bong that we referred to simply as ‘the gnome.’

We listened to a lot of Rush through those speakers, but Larry & Scott were into reggae too, and also the second Peter Gabriel record with ‘Shock the Monkey’ on it. That song sounded really good coming out of my speakers after an hour with the gnome.

Larry moved a lot. Like pretty much every year he would just move, seemingly for the sake of moving. His job never changed, nor did his roommates. He wasn’t moving up or down, rather he just seemed to be moving. I’d usually help him move and I guess I must have carried those speakers up some flights of south King County apartment stairs a few times while Larry was setting up his waterbed. I don’t think they let you have waterbeds in apartments these days, but this was the 1980s. Ed smoked tobacco inside, too-- it was like the wild west…

I don’t know why I bought the speakers. I obviously got sold hard by some slick fencer, but in my secondary ring of logic I don’t know what the fuck I thought I was going to do with the speakers. I had another year of high school and then planned to do two years at Green River Community College earning an AA before transferring to Western Washington University. I’d be living at home during the first two years and just because I was in college and just because I was an adult and just because I had worked in restaurants since age 15 and had my own money didn’t mean I could buy a $200 set of stereo speakers! It was just out of the question-- an unwritten rule. It was like a household code, and I knew it wasn’t worth the shrill hassle even though my regular speakers were so shitty. Nothing was more important to me at that time in my life than music, yet I suffered with my shitty stereo almost as pre-penance for some future sin I was certain to commit once I finally saved up all my tips and got to college. How perfectly Calvinist.

The home speakers I had in my car were so shitty they made the speakers in my room sound like the speakers at Larry’s. They took up pretty much the whole back window, these shoebox sized grocery store speakers, mounted to the rear deck behind the backseat. I’m sure it’s illegal to block your back window with home stereo speakers these days, just like sleeping in a waterbed on the 2nd floor or smoking inside. But again—a different time...

The top of that back deck was also covered in gold shag carpet just like every other surface in the car that wasn’t a seat or a dashboard or a headliner (though I did try to get it overhead). The carpet had come out of the living room when my mom had new berber installed, and during the 3-night simulcast of the Rolling Stones October run at the Kingdome, I pulled the seats out and laid the shag carpet in the Impala. The car had been sitting in the driveway for a year before I got my license and there were mushrooms growing in it. So I pulled the seats and peeled the stock carpet and scrubbed every inch of the metal chassis with bleach before cutting in the gold shag and bolting the seats back in. I thought I was going to be like a white Cholo, but ’71 was too late a model for hydraulics and my mom wouldn’t let me buy mag wheels or tires with raised white lettering anyway. So I just put the used house carpet in instead.

I didn’t care much for the Rolling Stones at the time and remember thinking that they were so old and irrelevant. Some friends were going to the show and I thought about it for about a minute before deciding to stay home and work on my car. But I did listen to KISW’s simulcast, in the garage with a bottle of bleach and a toothbrush. Of course I was wrong about the Stones and dearly would like to go back and confront that decision again. The Tattoo You tour, fucking god. But even Lester Bangs famously proclaimed them dead after Let it Bleed, so I suppose everyone guesses wrong sometimes…

Larry helped me move a lot, too, once I finally did get that Associate’s degree and transfer to Western-- right on schedule. So even though my moves were of a less recreational variety, they were still moves. And they weren’t two-milers, either-- rather grueling marches up-and-down I5, usually capered in the middle of the night after several hours of load ‘n’ gnome. I had a waterbed, too, and in those days it was still legal to sleep in it on the top floor of a 100-year old 4-story house on a hill in Bellingham. So Larry and I were both moving yearly, breaking down and subsequently re-assembling waterbeds each time.

What I did have that Larry didn’t were dozens of ticket stubs and 2” square pictures of Nikki Sixx and Phil Taylor clipped from pages of Kerrang! magazine taped all over the walls of my room, filling in the gutters between posters and record flats. And sometimes Larry would arrive to load me out and not only would I not have drained my bed yet, but I wouldn’t even have started taking down the wallpaper. Carefully, I would start to peel off the scotchtape loops on the back of the thin paper squares so that I could put the pictures up again in my next room. No wonder it was midnight before we ever got on the road.

Larry drove a little red Mitsubishi pickup. Many years later—at the beginning of a real move, from Washington to California—he would drag the truck all the way from Kirkland to Federal Way, ‘towing’ it behind the U-Haul but with the parking brake on. So, you know, new tires in FW! But long before that, on one of our midnight drives south from Bellingham, my knee itched. Larry and Scott are big guys, each 6’+, so I was always stuck in the middle of the bench seat when the three of us rolled in the Mitsu which was fairly often. We were listening to Peter Tosh and smoking pot like it was going out of style, which, as it turns out it wasn’t-- but we couldn’t have known that at the time. Here we were, these three honkies car-trodding down I5 in the middle of the night with all my stuff in the open bed of the pickup and my right knee is still itching even though I had already scratched it. I’d scratch it and then forget about it but then eventually it would occur to me that it still itched. I started to worry that I had smoked so much ganja that I was becoming paralyzed, so I wiggled my toes and was relieved to find they still worked. I tried scratching my knee again.

“Why do you keep scratching my knee?” Scott laughed, and I looked down to see myself scratching Scott’s left knee. This is something we used to call stoney baloney.

I don’t know if I thought the speakers were a good investment or what. Even if they were a screamin’ deal (I’m sure they weren’t) it wasn’t like they were going to appreciate in value like a traditional investment. Like if I paid $200 for them on a Wednesday afternoon and by the time I got them to Larry’s they were worth $207? If Larry kept them long enough and we didn’t spill too much bongwater on them I’d be able to sell them someday for half-a-million bucks? Unlikely. While it’s true that with the escalating wealth disparity in this country, the ponderously rich are buying wine they don’t intend to drink and comic books they have no interest in reading as ‘investments’ because they’re so fucking bored trying to spend their money conventionally—these speakers would likely never be seen as conventionally collectible.  

Talk about your wooden nickels…

Walking Papers — I Belong to You b/w Trophy Wives

Of course whenever your house explodes, it’s always on a Friday night when plumbers and appliance repair dudes charge double. Not that we could have just walked in to the water heater store and brought one home and hooked it up before taking a hot shower, even on Monday. Those things take weeks to order and schedule.

Luckily, we had another house at the time that had not even exploded. We had just finished moving the last of our stuff into our new 98225 house, and were still working on our old 98229 house—getting it ready for a renter who was on her way to Bellingham from Ohio. So we actually had a cold refrigerator to move our perishables to and place to shower.

It worked out pretty good.

Within two weeks we’d replaced the fridge and stove and the fancy gas tankless water heater in 98225. Eventually the garage door opener and microwave. Finally, we got a new (used) tuner and CD player.

But it was 5 years before the turntable was returned to its rightful place at the top of the component tower. And there’s been some catching up to do…

DAY#3: Walking Papers, I Belong to You b/w Trophy Wives. Spiff from Evan who mixed it, 2019. Favorite side: A

Jeff Angell and Ben Anderson are hit makers. Not necessarily in the conventional sense where you are given money and record player trophies. But I swear everything they do is solid gold TNT.

Their musical collaboration goes back to 2009 when they accidentally named their 2-piece act (Angell on guitar/vocals; Anderson on keys) The Missionary Position. Recruiting a studio backing band, they made DIAMONDS IN A DEAD SKY themselves. As in they recorded and mixed it themselves and put it out on their own label, The Boredom Killing Business.

Then three years later they released my favorite album of all times* CONSEQUENCES.

They haven’t as much as paused since then, toggling between Mish Pozish, the Staticland project, and the current and presumably permanent handle Walking Papers. They are constantly working. These two do not look to the side.

Like all their material, this single is dark. With his lyrics and voice, Angell creates atmosphere that has dimension and perceptible vertical drop. You can smell the secondhand smoke and feel the coarse texture of the scar tissue. Nothing good ever happens to the characters in Walking Papers songs. Corrupt, disloyal, rueful, addicted—these are deeply flawed meanies & victims who come and go via the fire escape and the alley. No welcome mats, no high-fives or warm meals. At once layered and stark, sepia yet contemporary Angell’s subjects live and wheeze as he sings them like a puppeteer.

“I Belong to You” is kind of a love song, I guess. But again—not going to make any Top 10 lists. A Seconal dirge with a distant, loose-string guitar tone and just the right dose of Anderson’s brooding organ laid gently over to stir the mood. “Trophy Wives” finds the keys more prominent, carrying the melody while the guitar slouches along the perimeter. Goddamn trophy wives…

One thing I do miss in these two great songs is the sax. These pieces don’t really call for it, but Gregor Lothian’s reeds are in the room on my favorite Angell/Anderson stuff. I don’t always dig horns in hard rock, but this shit works, believe me.

Like the songs themselves, the package is an apt reflection of the dynamic of the partnership between Jeff and Ben. Stark b/w photographs of their respective hands at work, front and back. The record itself is a murky translucent kiwi w/ black label. And a regular centre hole as opposed to the 1.5” of many singles.

Fun Fact: Unlike most singles, the record is a 33rpm spin. When I put it on initially, I instinctively toggled to 45 and the result was as comical as when I tried listening to Broken Teeth at 33 yesterday. The juxtaposition of the error only served to make “I Belong to You” sound bleaker and more spare once corrected.

Any music appreciator who claims to have a ‘favorite album’ is either a liar or a fool. There’s just too much music and we people have too many moods. Selecting a ‘favorite’ simply can’t be done. So obviously CONSEQUENCES isn’t my favorite record of all times. It’s lyrical profundity and sonic perfection is difficult to overstate, however. It is definitely ‘one of my favorite records of all time.’

Karate Church

We didn’t really give a fuck about shit in autumn of 1986. We were college students in the pre-internet age. Ronald Reagan was in the White House, but we felt like we were in charge in Bellingham, and in a lot of respects we were.

It was easy to find your way home drunk when you lived at 1111 High Street. Plus right next door was the sub-iconic Karate Church, home to the Bellingham Karate Academy. We named our band Karate Church and tapped the keg. Eight of us lived there (John slept in a walk-in closet) along with a drape-climbing tabby named Fuckstick. We took out what the University called ‘institutional loans’ and bought half-ounces, which we grammed out. It was a good system.

Karate Church had some original tunes but mostly we played junk rock covers and may have been the only band ever to cover Zeppelin and the Misfits equally straight of face. We played ‘Nice Boys’ by Rose Tattoo before Guns ‘n’ Roses, and could go Dead Boys to Beastie Boys in the matter of a half-set.

I invited my future wife to a party at 1111 the first time I ever talked to her. I’d been waiting to meet her for a year already and finally just approached her to tell her who the fuck I was. She knew who I was. She did not attend the party.

Anyway, most of the windows in the house were broken at that party and we were evicted the following week. Incredibly, I was able to find a room in a house up the street and moved my waterbed and all my records up there for the last quarter before I graduated. I was already in Panic and pretty anxious to get to Seattle and start doing some serious headbanging-- but Karate Church was a very pleasurable & socially profitable way to pass the spring of 1987.

Karate Church still stands. I get cottonmouth every time I drive by it, feeling a bit like someone in witness protection. You can’t go back…

Twisted Sister Y&T & Q5 Seattle Center Coliseum, spring 1985

Once an SMF, always an SMF.

That’s how Dee Snider signed an autograph for me when I finally met him in 1992. It was appropriate--perhaps even necessary--as there was hipper music being made at the time than the kind he had popularized during the previous decade. But in the crisp springtime of 1985, Dee and the rest of Twisted Sister were enjoying being Sick Muther Fuckers for the very first time.

Their commercially-explosive Stay Hungry was still selling on the strength of its cartoonish singles, and the grueling tour in support of the record was stretching well into its second year. Their Saturday afternoon show in Seattle, in fact, was the third time they’d been through town insisting every rivethead in King County purchase a copy.

I had mine. So did everyone else on the staff of Denim & Leather, the Seattle metal fanzine to which I was contributing at the time. Its publisher O.T.T. had turned me on to Twisted Sister a couple of years earlier, and I cruised down to his Northgate apartment on Friday night in my girlfriend’s ’73 Mustang Mach1 so we could get an early start on our buzzes for the show. Why Amanda ever gave me the keys to that thing to speed up and down I-5 drinking and drugging with O.T.T. was beyond me—she didn’t even like heavy metal. But it was handy, as neither O.T.T. nor myself had cars of our own, and we needed a real fast one to squeal around in once we got drunk and stoned enough.

Winding up for the show early Saturday afternoon, I discovered two caps of MDA in the change pocket of my leather jacket. I had no idea where they had come from. The concept of “spare drugs” was not a common one to us in those days. With the exception of weed, which you always purchased in bulk, there was no such thing as extra drugs. You scored what you needed (well, maybe a tiny bit more than you actually needed) for a particular event, then hit them and hit them until they were gone. Coming up the next day to face a doggie bag of what you’d tried to kill yourself with the night before was not appealing.

But a hit of mid-‘80s MDA and a sunny drive to the Twisted Fuckin’Sister show certainly was! We washed the red caps down with Moosehead and saddled up the Mach1. We were due to meet the entire staff of Denim & Leather at the fountain at 4:30 for a group photo that was to appear in the upcoming anniversary issue of the magazine.

(While we’re waiting for the drug to take, let me just make one thing perfectly clear: Twisted Sister was a great band. The unfortunate representation through the aforementioned “hits” and the gross exploitation of the band by way of the faggy music video is not worth arguing against, but none of that shit was what TS was all about. Studio records are studio records; hits are hits. The great rock and roll band excels live,

and Twisted Sister was an amazing live act. Take a listen to the B side of the I Am, I’m Me 12” recorded live at the Marquee in London in 1983. It’s fucking animal. Dig the hopped-up eleven-minute version of “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll” with Dee going out of his damn mind down on the floor. Like Rodney Dangerfield meets the Nuge in make-up, this is one of the most inspired and compelling vocal performances ever recorded. Solid rock…)

So we’re crossing the ship canal bridge, and I think O.T.T. is going out the window on me. Dude used to eat acid like popcorn, but this MDA was workin’ him over. Twisting in the passenger seat of the Mach1, he was a heap of sweats and deep breaths, darting eyes and lots of faces in the vanity mirror, but finally we got parked and smoked a bowl and by the time we reached the fountain, that real bad part of that drug was gone and it was just a lot of whoa & giggle, touching friend’s faces. It was still pretty zoomy—the Denim & Leather staff all snarling and pasty and hollering about Twisted. Eventually we escaped the group to wig on the outer rim of the fountain, soaking in its mist and trying to catch the space needle.

The show, of course, was surreal. Local doods Q5, featuring TKO originals Evan Sheeley and Rick Pierce, were great, and the Belushish Y&T drummer Leonard Haze came out from behind his kit in baseball pants to say comedy jokes. But it was Twisted Sister, all 800’ of them, who made the lasting impression this night. During the climax, amidst a show-ending medley built around “You Can’t Stop Rock ‘n’ Roll” Dee called for the houselights so he “could see all the sick muthahfuckahs.” And there, at the very top of the Coliseum, sat my old friend Skip Galvin, his back to the concrete wall of the arena. From the stage, Dee Snider screamed at Skip to get on his feet—one guy in a crowd of 12,000 caught shirking like the little imp in Horton Hears a Who. And I stood there on the floor, fist in the air, staring up at Skip, suddenly the anti-star of the evening, dilated and wondering just what were the odds?

There are probably better drugs to enjoy Twisted Sister on. And when they come around this summer on their Reunion tour (true) I’ll make use of this hard-earned knowledge.

Once an SMF, always an SMF…

NYY

We don’t have to like it, and most of us don’t. But the New York Yankees are the biggest dog in baseball and always have been. In fact they’re the biggest dog in all of professional sports. Exactly because of this, most of us automatically don’t like them. But there’s no denying it. Especially in October.

It’s not that they win the World Series every season. There are other competitive teams in the sport. They didn’t make it to the playoffs at all last year in fact, and much is being made this week of them not having been to the Series since 2009. But the Yankees have more titles than any other team in North American spectator sports and more than twice as many as the next baseball team. They had to build a new Stadium because they ran out of storage for their rusty trophies in the old one.

When the Los Angeles Lakers and the Montreal Canadiens are hanging out at the bar and the Yankees walk in, those two teams just have to finish their drinks and go home. Or to a different bar.

“We should go.” It’s embarrassing.

And it’s not just the raw numbers-- statistics are boring. The Yankees have the legends and historic edge, adding even more patina. They have the logo and the lore and the players. It’s beyond me how they can even field a team with the numbers they have left-- 22 having been retired. That’s why a guy like Aaron Judge wears 99. There’s no numbers left!

There are more NYY references in literature and music and pop culture than all the other sports combined. They come from the fucking Bronx. And no, it aint 1961 anymore. And it’s true that the ‘new’ Yankee Stadium lacks the authenticity of the old park. Vincent and I went there last summer cheering for the visiting Mariners and didn’t even get sneered at, let alone knifed. There’s definitely more avocado toast & Bombay Sapphire than there once was, but it’s still a deep, generational fan base of educated baseball people who are at this moment going out of their damn minds in anticipation of tonight’s 5:08 (pdt) first pitch of the 120th World Series.  

Sports fanatics are dangerously weird. Brad and his Packers; Jason and his Saints. Julie and her Sounders. My whack cousins from Boston and their ‘City of Champions’ routine. All my suffering fellow Mariner fans. But Yankee fans are a breed apart. They can afford to be, of course, with all their pennants & gaudy hardware. They can offer a fake conciliatory wink, suggesting that we’re all just fans of the game and that we just hope the best team wins in 7 games. But that’s a bunch of baloney. At the end of the day—at the end of the season, every season—they’re as greedy and seedy as any zealot. 

The Yankees don’t always win the World Series. The late ‘70s were good years for them (see: Mr October) and they went to three straight, winning the last two. But that first series was a tough one, being swept quite insensitively by arguably the best baseball team ever assembled in the 76BRM. It had been 12 seasons without an appearance before that run, and it would be an even longer wait till the next one. But seemingly before anyone could say Yogi Bera it was the late ‘90s.

I don’t have any particular love for the Los Angeles Dodgers and Evan’s the only one I know for sure is rooting for them tonight (as opposed to merely rooting against the Yankees). But I hope they win. In seven…

It’s the series everyone wanted all along even though we all said we’d love to see the impossible Mets or uppity Royals. But it isn’t just Boris and Stone and Mitch willing the Yankees to the Fall Classic. We’re all suckers for nostalgia, and between the Yankees and the Dodgers, this Series will be nostalgic AF.

Play Ball…

Read more about the 1976 World Series here, in Chapter 9 of my novella ‘Like a Nepenthe.’

Odd Ones Out

It always works, dressing children up as adults. Like those greeting cards from the '90s with the 8-year-old couple dressed in pearls & oversized porkpies, kissing on a parkbench. Cute! Or talking animals— it works every time. 

But about halfway through the second verse of any Odd Ones Out song, a listener realizes these kids can actually play. Whoa. They can actually play really good...

 Comprised entirely of middle school students, a couple kids in this band aren’t even technically teenagers yet. When Callous French was 12, he was still eating dirt. These boys are playing regular paying gigs and getting ready to make an album. And sometimes they even dress up like rock stars.

Readers of this magazine may remember Vinnie Blackshadow, the kooky 9-year-old who wore self-styled KISS makeup and his mother’s platform boots in 2006, spitting fake blood during his solo sets opening for the DTs, the Trucks and No-Fi Soul Rebellion. The kid stayed odd, but eventually got bored playing solo shows for grown-ups, yearning for homies of his own.

Tanner Wallace was a new kid in town, and the two boys quickly found common ground on a fretboard, spending hours learning and writing songs while their peers played violent video games. The duo was invited to perform at school, but knew that in order to take this thing to the next level, they would need to flesh out a proper band. Still, finding kids their age who could actually play ( and who wanted to rock ) proved no easy task.

Through BAAY the boys fell in with keyboard & utility wiz Kaleb Harrison. Another kid at school they’d been pressuring to join—bass player Gus Danielson—reluctantly agreed. And in the spring, the last piece of the odd puzzle was added when Vinnie & Tanner arranged a donught meeting at LeFeen’s with Toby Bruce, an 11-year-old blue-eyed drummer from Australia. It was all settled…

With personnel in-place, the marvels realized they needed songs, gigs & better gear—and an arms race broke out. Piece-by-piece, the ante was raised: tube amps started showing up; bass rigs; keyboards with seemingly infinite numbers of keys & sounds; road cases; Fenders, Gibsons & Gretches—oh, my!

The songs flowed. Vinnie had a pretty good backlog of material from his solo days, much of which was adaptable for OOO. He & Tanner continued working on original material while the band learned a gang of covers that by Halloween would enable them to play an impressive two hours if necessary. They did-- and more gigs followed.

Like I said, the first time you see the band you can’t help but cock your head and say “Aww-- look at that little fella behind that huge drum kit. The bass player’s wearing mirrored sunglasses indoors, how cute. Whoa—is that Moby Dick they’re playing?” It totally is. Including the drum solo. They play a couple of Zeppelin songs, actually. But don’t call them classic rock unless you want a headstock in the junk.

“We’re more like vintage rock,” the band texted me, “You don’t hear our songs on the radio. Not Yet.”

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of this band, though, is its versatility. Cellos, violins, ukeles, shoulder-mounted harmonicas. Kaleb doubles on sax ( see ya later, Alligator ). Bellingham Youth Jazz Band, Mt. Baker Youth Symphony, busking regimen, BAAY, tutors—all of it. They’re like a middle-school hard rock Devotchka, passing instruments around and singing harmonies. They read, but they still rock. It’s actually pretty fucked up.

After their homework is finished, they plan to make a record at Binary and a viral-friendly video with HandCrank. They intend to lie to some more motel desk clerks and stay up super late. They’re Odd Ones Out.

Melody Way

“How much does the melody weigh?”  

Rachel Cinders asked herself the question again as she stepped off the 74 into a deep puddle at the corner of 43rd and Densmore. It had been one of those days.

“How much does the melody weigh?” she continued asking as she walked the final six blocks of her 45-minute commute in a steady rain, the guitar case in her hand growing heavier with each step.

“How much does the melody weigh?”

By the time she reached the apartment, Rachel still hadn’t arrived at an answer. But she was tired of trying and tired of asking. Rachel was just plain tired. All she wanted right now was a drink.

Before she could get her key in the lock, the door swung open and there was Dominic with that very drink held over his head. On his face was a euphoric grin that traditionally had meant trouble for Rachel.

“You did it, baby!” he exclaimed, handing her the wine and picking up the guitar. “Congratulations!”

Rachel had no idea what he was talking about, but she was so grateful for the glass in her hand and for not having to carry the guitar another step that she collapsed back against the wall of the corridor and closed her eyes.

“I did it,” she repeated. “Awesome…”

Dominic kissed her cold cheek and disappeared into the apartment. Rachel was surprised to find him home at all, let alone with dinner started. The apartment smelled like Bangaluru. From the kitchen counter Dominic picked up his own drink and spun to face her, again raising a glass of red wine over his head. 

“To American Idol,” he said triumphantly, pointing his chin in her direction.

Rachel stood in the entryway of the apartment and stared at her lover. He had got to be kidding.

“Oh, wow—great,” she said, summoning as much enthusiasm as possible, which wasn’t much. “Did they call or something?”

“I got the email this afternoon,” Dominic said, taking a sip of his wine. Rachel could see one empty bottle on the counter behind him, next to an open second. Dominic had been home for some time, preparing a celebration.

Bless his heart, she thought, hanging up her coat and scarf in the hall closet. Auditioning for reality TV shows had been Dominic’s idea. And though she knew exposure was a key element in the career of a singer-songwriter, she held a much different view of the genre’s integrity. Rachel’s tepid reaction to the news that she’d cleared the final round of auditions and would actually be cast as a contestant in the upcoming season of the popular television series was not lost on Dominic.

He set his wine down on the dining room table and took Rachel in his arms. “I know it’s not your favorite, Rae” he said softly, kissing her first on the lips and then down her long neck. She wrapped her free arm around his shoulders and closed her eyes. It was, in fact, among her least favorites.

Pulling suddenly away, Dominic went to the stove and stirred the curry. “But you gotta trust me on this, babe” he said, pointing a wooden spoon in her direction. “This is going to be really good for you.” His head tipped back. “American fucking idol!” 

What was agreed between them was that Rachel had the stuff to make it. Though she had only been writing music since grad school, she was a gifted songstress. Unlike the other musicians in the couple’s social circle, Rachel didn’t have a weak leg. She could sing, play, write and perform—a four-tool natural who stopped people in their steps with her songs, whether on a stage or when busking on the sidewalks of Seattle’s trendy neighborhoods. She was tall and beautiful which didn’t hurt. But she was also smart and funny, educated and poised. She was meant to be a star. But it’s a long way to the top if you want to folk and roll—something Rachel’d been finding out since forsaking her career in academic administration in order to pursue music full-time.

She sat wearily on the edge of the couch and pulled off her long leather boots. The couple’s black cat Cicely jumped into her lap as Rachel settled back into the cushions and reached for the iPad on the end table. Dominic watched her as he shook the broccoli from the colander. He’d learned that continuing to drill down into the details of the today’s email would only serve to cool his artist girlfriend on the idea further. He poured himself another glass of wine instead.

Initially it had been them. A handsome, harmonizing couple with acoustic guitars, they had worked hard for three years gigging and recording under the name Blue Wind. Unlike Rachel, Dominic had been playing music his entire life and had never known another passion. But also unlike her, he was an average player with a nasally singing voice. His songs betrayed his desperation to be relevant; his talent did not match his desire. Where Rachel’s music sounded effortless, Dominic’s strained. It was obvious to everyone-- including Dominic-- that he was holding her back. And though they still played an occasional open mic together, their emphasis was now on Rachel’s solo act—she as the star, he as the producer.

When the rice was done, the couple dined by candlelight, opening a third bottle of wine and carefully avoiding the topic of American Idol. They ended up in bed early, in a twist of sheets, discarded clothing scattered in a path from the dining room. Through the half-open bedroom window, the sound of tires swishing down the wet pavement of Wallingford’s backstreets provided a soundtrack to their curried lovemaking. Afterward, as Rachel lay purring across Dominic’s chest, her red hair spread out like fire, a tune formed in her mind and she climbed aboard it, humming along.

“How much does the melody weigh” she sang in a whisper as they slid to sleep in the quieting dark of the room.

Rachel could not have known that the Wednesday night vegetarian dinner in February would be the last one she’d enjoy unspoiled by American Idol for nearly a year.  Dominic weaned her onto the process as gradually as he could, but there wasn’t much time for romancing the details, with conference calls and emails, pre-press interviews and psychiatric screenings cueing up almost immediately. And contracts! So many contracts Rachel’s red head spun. Dominic dealt on as much of it as possible while she was away in an effort to keep the apartment an American Idol Free Zone. But each day seemed to bring some new corporate requirement-- another legal meeting, another set of documents to sign. Indifference gave way to regret and quickly to resentment, as Rachel found herself being asked to devote more and more focus to an idea she hadn’t loved in the first place. Her outlook on the business darkened. Her sleep was disrupted. And worst of all, the songs that used to flow from her so easily stopped coming altogether.

“If they want me on their stupid show so bad,” she asked again, in a meeting at the home office of their attorney Neil Stussman, “why can’t I do it the way I want?” Stussman and Dominic exchanged a here-we-go-again look as the lawyer set down his pen.

“Rae, we’ve been through this,” said Dominic patiently, reaching for her hand. “The rules for the first three rounds are clear: you have to do a cover song. Please let’s not work backwards on this...” Rachel withdrew her hand and shoved it in her coat pocket, glowering. Dominic glanced at Stussman. “Anyway, I thought we decided you’d sing ‘Because the Night.’”

They had. Rachel’s haunting version of the Patti Smith song was part of her regular repertoire and the network producers had already signed off on it. In Dominic’s mind it represented the minimal artistic concession. Rachel wanted to perform one of her own compositions. However, it was—as they say in the business— a non-negotiable.

The days passed slowly for Rachel as Dominic deftly prepared for their final descent into Los Angeles. He trained the temporary replacement for his position at the downtown marketing firm where he was a junior partner. He booked the flights and ground transportation and briefed the cat sitter. He stopped the newspaper and mail.

He didn’t know how long they’d be away. If things went “well” by Dominic’s standards, they could be in Los Angeles as long as ten weeks. If things worked out the way Rachel secretly hoped, they’d be home eating sushi in a bubble bath together by the weekend. Dominic packed for his version.

“You think the beige lace top or the black silk blazer with these fire tights?” he asked, holding all three garments up for Rachel’s consideration. “I figured you’d wear the suede boots with this outfit either way. Maybe the pashmina scarf...”

Rachel was lying on the bed dressed in cut-off sweats and a stretched-out FBI Academy t-shirt. At the moment, she didn’t care if she ever changed clothes again.

“That’s fine, dude,” she said vacantly, scrolling through texts with one hand while stroking Cicely’s smooth back with the other. “I told you whatever you think is fine...”

Dominic tossed all three pieces into the open suitcase. Though he was starting to get a little stressed out himself, the excitement of the trip was still driving him. He was living vicariously through Rachel, he knew that. They referred to this opportunity as “theirs” but Dominic knew the score and was fine with it. Still, it hadn’t stopped him from undertaking a makeover of his own, including a hip new pair of eyeglasses and a bold haircut, going short for the first time in decades. He agonized over his own wardrobe as much as Rachel’s as he packed for two. He wanted to do her proud. Dominic cast a tender glance at her from across the room as he matched her loose socks.  He wanted this so badly for her...

Rachel sat on a moulded plastic chair in the makeshift greenroom of the American Idol set on a Thursday in October, lightly strumming her tobacco Gibson Hummingbird. She was not watching the previous contestant sing Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” on the wall-mounted monitor. She didn’t need to. Rachel had a secret.

Dominic paced in the aisle behind the chair, filling and refilling a crumpled plastic cup from the water cooler in the corner. Occasionally he offered Rachel a cup, and she would only use her eyes to point to the one she had already accepted from him, sitting on the table next to her. He was a nervous wreck.

She was not. Since shortly after arriving in LA, a warm calm had descended over Rachel. Had Dominic not been so preoccupied with his own anxiety, he might have been comforted by her contentment. Rachel had a secret…

As “Respect” gave way to applause, Brenna the intern entered the room and told Dominic it would be three minutes. His eyes widened. Rachel continued lightly strumming her guitar.

“Baby, it’s time,” said Dominic as if she were about to be led to the gallows. He came around in front of the chair and squatted down before her. He drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“Now-- don’t forget on the second chorus, the empha—“

Rachel stopped strumming and placed her right index finger against Dominic’s dry lips. She held it there long enough for him to realize she had something to say. He settled to his knees and listened.

“Baby,” she said leaning in toward him, “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”

Dominic smiled and attempted to proceed with his coaching. “That second chorus…”

Again Rachel’s shush.

“Dominic I love you so much,” she continued. “All I want is to be with you. I’m so grateful for everything you’ve done for me here and at home, and I plan to go out on that fake stage in 90 seconds and make you proud of me.”

She stared into his dark eyes and smiled—the first genuine smile he’d noticed since February.

“Be here when I get done, OK?” she said. And with that, she kissed him and stood up from the chair. Brenna led her through a series of doors, talking into her headset as they drew nearer to the sound stage. The cool shadows of the wings gave way to the blare of the set lights as Rachel stepped confidently through the curtain and toward the television cameras that were about to record the most obscene violation of “Because the Night” ever performed.

She took her place on the 3-legged stool in front of the microphone stand, smiling easily as she answered the scripted questions from the judge’s panel. Everything went as it had been rehearsed through the intro of the song. But when the singing began, it was clear that Rachel Cinders from Seattle had a secret and that she intended to tell it.

Some critics say lyrics aren’t an important part of contemporary music—that people don’t really listen to them. But even if most people don’t know what the words to a song are supposed to say, they usually do know what they’re not supposed to. And Rachel was singing a version of this song that you weren’t supposed to—especially on TV.

The lyrical reference to “need” in the first verse became greed. “Stand” became banned, “disguise” disgust, and-- of course-- “undercover” was reborn as motherfucker.

Uncomfortable looks were exchanged between the judges and floor director as she approached the chorus:

Because the night belongs to lovers

Because the night belongs to us

Don’t give a damn ‘bout American Idol

Please Dominic, just take me home

Discomfort behind the cameras gave way to horror.

 “They can’t touch us now,” Rachel sang passionately as the song rounded the last verse, headed for home. “Now we know what a melody weighs…”

When it was over, the audience applauded because that’s what it is programmed to do. But it was clear the judges were not amused, and as Rachel strode purposefully through the backstage peeling off clip mics and deflecting the disbelieving stares of the crew, she smiled a knowing smile-- no longer burdened with her secret. She’d told it. And though her confession would never be shown on television, she’d told it just the same. Her version.

Through the labyrinth and beyond the greenroom where the next contestant sat gawking, Rachel made her way, guitar in-hand, two uniformed security guards following at a safe & silent distance. And at the end of hall, under a green EXIT sign at the door to freedom waited Dominic, smiling widely, the tears still in his eyes. He pushed open the metal door that read emergency exit only and as the alarms began to ring, the lovers stepped out together into the brilliant sunlight of the Southern California afternoon.

Water too Wet

It was OK I guess. 

The beds were comfortable but I didn’t sleep very well. The towels seemed brand new, but they were blue and I like white towels best in vacation rentals. The weather was hot and the pool felt good to swim in but your hair always looks bad later after it dries. Plus going inside to get more beer in wet shorts always makes you cold because the air conditioning worked pretty strong. There was plenty of propane in the barbecue, but we didn’t get enough oysters so we had to cook some of those frozen hamburger patties and I always eat too many of those because they’re so small. The patio was cracked and Auntie Patti stubbed her toe twice. Also the can opener didn’t work!!!

The house was pretty big and there were lots of board games— not that we played any, instead sitting around drinking beer and talking about the people that weren’t there. I’d rather play board games. 

Kim & Caleb were nice, and he came right over to fix the stereo but he was wearing a black cowboy hat and I don’t know if he’s an antifa or not.

But yeah, it was OK I guess. Lots of parking. Two stars.

Joe the Barker

Just in time for the holidays, this happened. 

A Papa Murphy's pizza restaurant in Bellingham, WA teamed up with a local job placement service to re-assign and elevate a popular disabled neighborhood panhandler, creating a win-win-win situation for the ages. 

Joe B. made a decent supplemental living for years working the southeast corner of James and Alabama Streets in Bellingham's up-and-coming Sunnyland neighborhood with a cardboard sign that read NO DRUGS. In October, thanks to the creativity of a forward-thinking caseworker, Joe was handed a W2 and issued a uniform and a foamcore arrow sign advertising Papa's famous pizza dough  (baked fresh daily). Joe’s territory hadn't changed-- but everything else had.

"It seemed like an obvious application," said Isaac Fornettes, Joe's case manager at Service Alternatives a social service that specializes in job placement for the disabled. "I approached Papa Murphy’s and they were very receptive. The rest was easy." 

Haven Cole, manager of the Papa store in Sunnyland Square hired Joe on the spot, after an hour-long interview.

"Joe had a lot of questions," explained Haven smiling, suggesting Joe was as much interviewing her as the other way around. If she is trying to conceal her pride in having Joe on her staff, she's doing a terrible job of it. With deep, expressive eyebrows, a medusa, and earlobes stretched from tapers, Haven beams when talking about her star barker. “Joe’s got a big heart,” she said, shrugging. “Why wouldn’t you hire him?”

For his part, Joe is very committed to what he’s doing, putting that big heart on display every shift. Throwing himself into his work with seemingly little regard for his rotator cuffs, his curb crackles with energy. Crouching and leaping, Joe cycles through a routine of moves, but favors one he calls steering wheel-- a vigorous side-to-side shimmy guaranteed to grab the attention of even the most distracted driver. Sometimes he dances. Often he waves. Occasionally he sings, changing the words of folk songs to incorporate pizza, signs and cars. But mostly, it’s steering wheel for up to four hours at a time.

“As long as it works,” he says, punctuating the statement with a finger in the air.

Originally from Arizona, Joe moved to Washington State ten years ago in search of better healthcare. He is very open in discussing the automobile accident and the resulting brain injury that has stunted his physical and non-physical development. Joe was two years old at the time of the accident. He’s now 35.

Relaxing in the subsidized apartment where he lives alone, Joe indeed has questions. He wonders why people would be interested in reading his story. The drapes in his  apartment are drawn against the late afternoon sun shining over the traffic on I-5 just outside the window. It is the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and the windchill outside makes it feel like it’s about zero degrees. The heat in the apartment is turned up very high.

To go with his questions, Joe has plenty of answers, and he doesn’t mind being asked stuff. His responses generally start out low, then crescendo in the middle as his engagement in the topic builds, before tapering down and concluding where they started, almost in a whisper. His favorite pizza is the 5-meat, which he takes with Diet Pepsi. The smore dessert pie is pretty good, too, for $5. Plus he gets half-off after his shift, so it’s only $2.50. Even I can easily divide $5 in-half, but Joe is very good with numbers, quickly recounting to the minute his last four shifts and effortlessly calculating their corresponding gross pay. He also has a deep knowledge of the WTA bus system and can tell you most any stop on most any route.

Joe doesn’t drive. He “tricks” traffic by walking King Street under Alabama. He’s well-known in Sunnyland and can be seen on his way to work or the bank. His previous straight job, before he was with Service Alternatives, was filling soap bottles at Brambleberry Soaps, also in Sunnyland. Joe likes his current position better, saying the soap job was “boring, after all.”

And while he admits the Papa Murphy’s job pays better than panhandling (a term he & Isaac both use freely), he does not look back on it as a negative chapter in his life. In fact, he may actually still keep it as a hobby, though not in Bellingham.

“It’s been rewarding to watch this transformation in Joe,” says Isaac. “But he was a bit reluctant at first to give up panhandling. He knows he has a presence in the community now, though, and that he can’t have both.”

Joe explains how he apprenticed under an experienced panhandler who still works Sunset Square. At the time, Joe would wander the sidewalks in front of the smaller shops flanking what was then Cost Cutter. But The Master taught Joe how to design a sign, always being careful to include NO DRUGS and/or ALCOHOL. Joe also learned to take a perch on the corner, where the automobile traffic was. But since the Sunset corners were crowded, Joe struck out on his own, staking his claim on James Street, where he stayed until falling in with Isaac & Haven late this summer.

Next time you pass Joe on the corner give him a wave or a shimmy with your wheel. Better yet, pull in to Papa Murph’s and grab a pie. Tell ‘em Joe sent you!

Dio is God

DIO-- Dreamers Never Die

Directed by Don Argot and Demian Fenton

Starring Ronnie James Dio

2hrs 7minutes

Fuckin’ Dio, man…

Mark Maron said he couldn’t afford to watch any more documentaries because he ‘didn’t know how much time he had left.’ It’s true—some documentaries rob us of precious moments that we might otherwise have been present for. Hours we won’t get back. But others are worth the minutes, especially when Ronnie James Dio is the subject.

We’ve all seen this movie before. The format was boilerplate and even a little Burnsian at times. (Yes, that is a word. Normally I don’t take such brazen liberties with the language, but today being my birthday, I feel emboldened to make up the word Burnsian).

We’ve all seen these same talking heads head-talking in other docs about how much the subject influenced them and blew their mind when they were making a sandwich when they were 11. And they’re all in this film, too, with a notable exception: no Slash or Grohl. (DG does make an unfilmed cameo in the extra features after the credits. But his absence in the film proper is quite refreshing, and with only a couple of predictable exceptions, the interviews are killer.)

Like This is Spinal Tap (ironically and yes genuinely ironically) the best stuff is in the movie and the outs are not that interesting, except for the story of how Ronnie’s left thumb got cut off by a garden gnome and he picked it up (the thumb) and took it to the hospital to have re-attached, only they put it on backwards so much later he went back and had it re-detached and subsequently re-re-attached correctly. That was just Ronnie being Ronnie!

The schematics of his career were super interesting to see developed. He actually was a doo-wop singer in the actual 1950s, and he played bass too. My favorite Dio quote did not find its way into the film, but it is relevant considering his own complicated relationship with the bass guitar and with bass guitar players. “I was a bass player once,” he famously said. “But I got out of it.”

Absent from the movie entirely was any evidence to support the myth of Dio as tyrant. He was involved, for sure—the first one to arrive at a session and the last to leave. But he is portrayed in his own estate-commissioned epic—and rightly so—as a mere perfectionist and not an egoctopus or even particularly megalomaniacal. Frequently he is offered up as the victim, the earnest team player let down by the pitiful mortality of others.

A huge focus of the film’s message is on Dio the human. His breathtaking body of work precedes this film, of course-- and it is adequately represented in the footage. But the story RJD INC wished told was the story of what a great fucking guy Ronnie was. He would stand in the rain outside the bus and talk to fans until he was late to the next gig. He greeted them by name and remembered the names of the parents and pets. He genuinely cared about the people who cared about him.

Part of it was probably that he wanted to be Ronnie James Dio for as many minutes of the day as possible. I guess once you get on the bus there are fewer people to talk to about Ronnie James Dio. Dio liked being Dio.

There were some surprises. I always thought of Dio as the rock star who was far above such earthly delights as drugs and alcohol. But there are a lot of images of him not only drinking but actually smoking. And I know he liked grass, because Sheila Rene told me so. But he wore it well. So many of the testimonials referenced the ‘miles’ on his voice. He sang hard his entire adult life, from his teens practically until the morning of his death. One of my favorite passages from the film is with a recording engineer who made some of the later records. No, I can’t remember his name—thanks for asking. Anyway, he was talking about getting basics and Ronnie would be in the room singing while the band tracked. The engineer said ‘you know, Ronnie, we can just use your scratch vocal. You don’t have to keep doing the take.’ And Ronnie was like ‘fuck that, I’m Ronnie James Dio.’

Those years were hard ones for Ronnie, the ‘90s. The film is a bit clumsy with the portrayal of the historic transition between metal and grunge, but the point is made. One day the unsustainable and quite mad Frankenstein monster of Metal that MtV had created was King, just eating and fucking everything in sight. Then the Teen Spirit video came on and metal was outlawed, like that same day. The film actually shows the tapes being tossed into cardboard boxes for archiving at a secret underground lab in asthenosphere.

But through it all, Ronnie never flinched. He got dropped from his label and shuffled backup players. His marriage wasn’t amazing. Record sales plummeted relative to metal’s anti-relevance. But he took it for the team-- no one was ever more proudful or more metal than Dio. He’d come this far without writing a pop song and there was no reason to start now. Murray and the mechanical dragon might have shrunk as the ‘90s wore on, squeezing into smaller and smaller venues. But it was always RJD slaying the dragon with laser sword (literally) at the end of every show and there were always geeks in the alley to catch up with afterward.

I’m glad they made this film if only to remind me of what an important role Ronnie James Dio played in my own development. There was a time there right after Holy Diver came out that I listened to little else. I just toggled between that and the Sab & Rainbow records. I had a homemade pin that said Dio is God and Ronnie and I were very close. Ultimately we drifted apart and eventually I wasn’t even aware of the records he was releasing every five years, right on schedule-- each just as lovingly crafted as the last. Even if I wasn’t buying or even listening. Ronnie wasn’t doing anything different than he ever had, rather it was I who had changed. And that’s on me. Can’t say the same for Sebastian Bach.

By all means see this movie and don’t forget to turn it up!