C

It's been a long time since I've shamelessly promoted my kids' art, but I see Patti has posted a link to Vincent's new record, so I think it's fair that I also be allowed to subject you, my unsuspecting social media acquaintance, to similar tortures.

Because it's not torture. Unless you don't like good rocking tonight, or maybe if you don't like subtly-cured melody tucked discreetly into short songs with one chorus. The first Boston record this aint. So if you like to be hit to death over the head with repetition or if you prefer polished production with glossy auto-harmonizered vocals, then maybe this not for you is.

Because 'C' was (almost) entirely made on 4-track cassette by someone without the formal training to know better-- quite intentionally on purpose. You can certainly make a record on your phone these days that sounds more conventionally professional than this, but the idea here was to build something that did not sound as if it had been crafted with the same tools available to everyone else for free. A lot of effort went in to making this album sound as shitty as it does.

Because it doesn't sound shitty. Hiss and hum and fart and the tones of discarded tracks that have been erased many sessions ago peeking out from under the final mix are the stuff that give recorded music some real DNA and that are often missing from modern music precisely because they're so easy to mute. There's a greasy, re-gifted thread that runs through this album, banding it together like a forcefield around the weird kids' lunch table in the corner of the cafeteria. They have all the secrets. They always have had.

And there are some secrets on this record. But you gotta listen to learn 'em. You might even have to listen twice. There isn't a note or chord out of place here. Some of it may sound a little rando at first casual pass, but I assure you that this is a very intentional work. The lyrics are insightful and bottomlessly clever. The melodies are sublime. And the atmosphere of the production gets more comfortable with each listen until you eventually can't imagine hearing it any other way.

But that's coming from a big fan who's listened to this a lot already. Several of these songs have been kicking around for years by now and these are merely the most-recent arrangements. Bandcamp isn't necessarily the most-familiar platform and that's no accident either. But it works perfectly fine, and I think you can pay for it if you want. However, I think Vincent would be more stoked if you listened to it without paying as opposed to the other way around. Go ahead, take a chance. On headphones if possible. And while you're there, 'B' aint bad neither...

(mastered by a real recording engineer, Evan Schiller)

(Try: Tell Yourself It's Good, Kick Down the Golden Door, Her Earlier Stuff)

Metalfest

I don't need FaceBook to remember me today's date. I always wake up on August 29th knowing exactly what day it is.

And today happens to be the 40th anniversary of August 29, 1982-- a day that changed my life forever.

The event was a heavy metal jamboree at a roller rink in Bellevue called Lake Hills Arena. I'd just graduated from high school and had been to plenty of arena hard rock shows. But the concept of local music was an entirely unfamiliar one to me. I'd read about Culprit in The Rocket and saw they were playing with 8 other bands starting at noon on Saturday. So I put on my leather jacket-- even though it was August-- and pointed my '71 Impala in the direction of Bellevue.

I didn't know anyone. My metalgeek buddy Andy was supposed to come with me, but in the end buckled to the pressure of having dinner with his parents, it being his 18th birthday (remind me to phone Andy later). So I went alone. I didn't 'meet' anyone that day, but this was the first time I saw a lot of dudes who would become close friends later. They all seemed to know each other, and I was a little intimidated by their killer studded belts and spiked wrist bands-- not because I was afraid of studs & spikes, rather because I didn't have any of my own. These guys had a considerable headstart on me. Hartman, James, Layton.

By the time Bad Brad Sinsel and TKO came on after midnight, my mind (not to mention my ears) were in rubble. I'd had no idea it could be like this. At the arena shows I'd been to, there'd been a huge stage with barricades. Way up on top of the stage were the British rock stars and then down on the concrete floor in a pool of sweat & bile were we fans. But at the roller rink, there was no such divide between the performers and the audience. I distinctly remember arriving at the the dizzying realization that these kids were all from the same tribe-- that the dudes in the crowd were only the dudes in the next band. They were all just taking turns being the rock star. I had not previously understood this to be a possibility.

The first guy I observed grinning and winking at his friends in the crowd was Glen Logan from Overlord. In that tattered Levi's jacket and the Capezios, whirling around hockin' loogies and bangin' on that trashed V, I thought he was the coolest. So many cats impressed me deeply that day. Van Leiw. Matt McCourt. The Friels. Scott Earl and the Germ.

It didn't take me too long to get my turn on the stage. But I'm not sure that ever would've happened had it not been for Metalfest II. I always liked having the mic in my hand, but never got tired of being in the crowd either.

Long Live Crotchroads! Forty years...

Metal Machine Music

Insomnia is a rude bedfellow. I've been sleeping (or rather NOT sleeping) with it for most of my life, some periods worse than others. Thanks to the latest in a succession of Little Yellow Pills, these past few years have shown me some of the best sleep of my adult life. But once in a while my old adversary squeezes in between Patti and me, and I just have to get up and go to the guestroom and read it out.

What has worked a little bit lately, though, is Lou Reed's 1975 outrage, Metal Machine Music. Coming at the twilight of one his most-inspired creative periods which included Berlin and Transformer, MMM is an intentionally unlistenable brocade of feedback and tape effects, mixed at various speeds and pitches. True noise. There is no melody, rhythm, vocal or structure of any kind. And as if offering it at a time when the critic's spotlight was upon him was not wry enough for Blue Lou, Metal Machine Music is audaciously a 2-record set. Side A1 entirely indistinguishable from side A4.

I've tried white noise and mountain stream loops against insomnia and they've only served to wake me further thru sheer frustration. Metal Machine Music, though-- this might be 'just the thing...'

(if you try this at home, don't use Spotify. Because if MMM does its job and you're sleeping, you might just be jolted awake by "Uranium" by Kraftwerk, which Spotify assumes you want to listen to next. And the beginning of this song sounds much like the Emergency Broadcast System alert tone that we've all only ever heard as 'a test'. And that's not good for sleeping.)

Burn Out Loud

I stopped being conventionally 'proud' of Vincent's musical accomplishments once he became an adult. But I'm still a fan, and am really jazzed about his new album 'Burn Out Loud.' A year in the making, it's a technicolor departure from the lower-fi 4-track cassette recordings of the past three years. I had the rare treat of previewing it last week in Brooklyn and I can tell you it is a rich and prismatic tapestry with lots of surprises tucked into its pleats. Like a rubber duck piñata filled with nips, nails and chocolate caviar, all you have to do is hit it hard and gifts start flowing...

Professionally recorded in Boston, pre-mixed in New York and glazed in West Seattle, 'BoL' is a filling art rock meal of a record. It is being pre-released today, with the World Premier coming at 6pm PDT. You probably don't have Bandcamp already, but that's the only reason you don't. It's free and easy to download and there really is some stuff on there that you won't find on other screaming services. 'BoL' will be on Spotify next week, but if you want to be first on your block, meet me on Bandcamp tonight and we'll rock together.

Robert Blake

Don’t worry, I remember what I was saying last June about my record player.

In case you don’t, it got exploded in an electrical accident and didn’t work for five years. We finally got around to replacing it, but then that one didn’t work either-- so we had to take it to a specialist in Seattle who eventually fixed it up like new.

I was anxious to listen to some of the records that had piled up during those quiet years, but the repair shop was in Ravenna. Luckily Robert was in the neighborhood and offered to pick it up on his way home.

When I went to his house in the York District to collect it later that day, Robert slid a nice 180-gram copy of his latest album RECITATIVE on top.

“For your listening party,” he said with a wink.

I’d already worn out a copy of the CD, but was jazzed to have a vinyl copy—even if it did say LARRY on the back…

DAY #4: Recitative, Robt Sarazin Blake. Gift from the artist, 2023. Favorite side: Act I side A

If there’s a harder-working man in Bellingham show business than Robert Blake, I guess don’t know that dude. A Pacific Northwest native who’s called Bellingham home for more than 25 years, Blake is seemingly everywhere where there’s a PA, particularly in the summer. For more than 20 years, he has hosted and booked the wildly popular season-long Thursday night Happy Hour series in the garden at Boundary Bay Brewery. He’s toured extensively in North America and Northern Europe, playing small stages and house shows for fiercely loyal audiences of friends. He hosts and books the pandemic-born but surprisingly durable traveling livestream From the Kitchen Table. And of course, he is the founder and ringmaster of Whatcom’s favorite summer festival, the 21-year-old Subdued Stringband Jamboree.

And honestly, he doesn’t always even need a PA. He’ll play your wedding or your funeral, your porch or your pantry. All he needs is an acoustic guitar and some friends.

Robert will bring the songs. How he has time to write all these songs—let alone record and release them, usually on his own Same Room Records—is beyond me. This is his 11th album.

His father was a real live folk musician when he was growing up, so folk music is in Robert’s blood and bones. But his music aint really folk music, any more than all music is essentially folk music. You could call it Americana. You could call it roots. You could call it ‘singer-songwriter’ if you wanted to piss me off.

In the end it’s not all that important what you call it—neither he nor I will even have any way of knowing. Of greater urgency is what’s it sound like?

Like most rootsy Americana singer-songwriter folk troubadours, Robert Blake is a great poet and his songs need words to develop. Lots and lots of words. His streamy singing style is often as conversational as it is melodic, and some songs take on an accompanied monolog format. This works particularly well when the performer is introducing the band or reminding punters to tip their bartenders. The references to Dylan are handy (even though he’s not really-- or at least not only-- a folk singer) but there’s also a lot of Lou (Reed), Prine (John) and Todd (Snider) in his delivery and intent. He’s a storyteller.

And the stories on RECITATIVE are diverse and intriguing. Robert allows the occasional good-time up-tempo no-foul ramble like “Single Women” but also doesn’t shy away from a piercing purpose piece like “Own House, Own Guns” or “19 Shot.” His characters are inked around the edges with suggestion rather than description. You recognize that dude in “The Other Side of Fck it” without being spoonfed his vitals, and the utter hopelessness of his grim situation rings true as punch.

There's lots of humor here, like on the politically-perfect "Keeping Track." Lots of wonderfully wordy wordplay, too-- see: "Couples" and "Work." Other songs are just plain nice to listen to, and I can’t usually walk away from a spin through this record without the melancholy “Sketches” stuck in my head. Often for a week.

The images pile up and so do the reflections. Blake tucks references into verses where you might not expect to find them: same-sex marriage; gun violence; the collateral risks of war; imbeciles being President of the United States. It’s all here if you listen.

Professional musicians these days need to be flexible, and Robert Blake is indeed limber and well-hatted, never seeming to play the same song the same way twice. I’ve seen him do these songs a lot live, and it’s always a different experience. Sometimes it’s him playing solo, or maybe Jan’s to his left. David & Aaron are usually there in a combo of more than three, but not always. Sometimes it’s the whole High, Wide & Handsome Band. But not always.

The backing band on RECITATIVE is a group of friends from the Hudson Valley met on the road and courted into the studio on their turf, way back in 2015. Compared to other sparser Robert Blake recordings it’s practically an orchestra-- featuring keys, pedal steel, rich supporting vocals and the staggeringly lyrical horn interplay of Thomas Deakin.

It’s worth noting that this whole band returned the favor three years later, traveling the opposite direction to back Robert at the 2018 Jamboree, a show that eventually surfaced as the live album ONE SUMMER NIGHT. True to their words, the songs take on new life and dimension in a live setting, culminating with a humbling 13-minute version of the last song on RECIATATIVE, “Really Hard.” It was powerful live, and the recording does a faithful job of capturing some rare Saturday night magic.

The packaging of RECITATIVE is top-shelf. From the Michael Costelloe painting on the front to Larry’s name on the back, this is a heavy and handsome package—beautifully designed and produced. Lots of photos in the gatefold + melodious liner notes by the artist. The 2-record set is actually 360 grams and fully 85 minutes of music—an ambitious project fully realized. A triumph.

It occurred to me that I’ve always wondered what RECITATIVE meant, and that I’d never looked it up. I just now did, and it’s fitting. I won’t spoil it for you. Look it up for yourself (it’s on the internet) and pull it up on Bandcamp if you don’t own a copy of your own. Enjoy!

Devotchka

I don’t collect records the way I used to. With a few freakish exceptions (YKWYA) nobody does.

To be fair, I was never an obsessive—even in the 1980s. I anticipated and purchased the new records by my favorite bands on their release dates—but I was no completist. Some of my friends had problems, though. Bret had to have every available version and format. When WASP released a 12” picture disc single of “I Wanna Be Somebody,” he’d buy one (sometimes two) even though he already had the white vinyl, the gold vinyl, the clear vinyl, the splatter vinyl, the die cut 7” and the Japanese import.

That first WASP may have been my favorite record of the entire era. But one domestic copy of the LP was sufficient for me. I still have it.

But sometimes we buy records we don’t need. That’s why there’s Record Store Day.

Week #6: DeVotchKa, A Mad and Faithful Telling. Purchased at Avalon Records in Bellingham on Record Store Day, 2019. Favorite side: I honestly can’t tell them apart…

Like many people, I initially became aware of DeVotchKa via the alternate art form of film. It is still impossible for me to separate the plot & performance of LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE from the music of DeVotchKa. They are one and the same, and I fell hard for both of them in 2006.

By the time I got hip, though, it would be impossible to see the band in a venue appropriate to their makeup. Between Nick Urata’s emotive crooning and the band’s array of subtle acoustic instrumentation, DeVotchKa demands to be seen in an intimate, comfortable venue. Preferably one with a round stage, velvet curtains, strong cocktails and maybe even a cigarette girl.

Imagine our disappointment seeing them for the first time in 2008 at the hellish SoDo Showbox, a concrete cooler that seemed too base even for Motorhead when I saw them there (on my birthday) several years later.

No. The days of being able to see DeVotchKa at the Triple Door or the Neptune, or busking on a sidewalk are done gone. They have been for decades.

So what’s a casual fan to do other than stir one up, slip into the smoking jacket and listen to DeVotchKa’s records at home? A MAD AND FAITHFUL TELLING is a perfectly good choice, because it sounds exactly like every other Devotchka record.

Not that I own or have even heard ‘every other DeVotchKa record’ but when I cracked the cellophane on this one after staring at it for five years, I was struck by how much it reminded me not only of the LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE soundtrack, but in fact everything I’d ever heard by the band, both live and on record.

For kicks, I whipped out my streamer and punched up the band’s latest album, 2018’s THIS NIGHT FALLS FOREVER. And I’ll be damned if it might as well have been the same clutch of songs.

All of which begs another hysterical, historical question: when a band puts out 12 records in 20 years and they all sound exactly the same—is the artist to be praised for consistency or derided for lack of growth?

It doesn’t really make much nevermind to me. I happen to like DeVotchKa’s tangos and timbre, their embrace of non-traditional instrumentation and the fact that they often sing in a language I don’t understand. But you don’t really need to own every record they’ve made. In fact, you really only need one. It doesn’t much matter which…

Coming in March: Oscar Snubs

(Cynic’s note: As if to spite me, DeVotchKa will be playing in town between the velvet curtains of the unspeakably luxurious and inviting Mt. Baker Theater on Thursday. The last time Patti and I saw them, we actually had to walk out because the sound was so bad at the first Tune-Up festival two years ago. But presumably all the microphones will actually be working indoors at the acoustically-perfect MBT. We probably should go…)

The Snubs

With the 96th Academy Awards ceremony coming up Sunday night, my attention turns as always to the stack of records accumulated during the five years my record player was broken.

The refrigerator got traumatically bashed apart at that same time-- also the stove, hotwater heater and CD player. Those were all replaced lickety split-- but the turntable gathered dust, must and disgust until recently.

By way of perspective, the academy awards for best actress and best actor that year (they’re called Oscars) went to two actors (we can just call them both actors) who portrayed actual historical figures. We call them biopics (it’s OK to call them bi AH pix. I do).

Green Book winning the Oscar for Best Picture that year was an outrage, particularly ironically since it was Black Panther that got most conspicuously beat. In early March, that’s something we call THE SNUBS.

Equally ironical, then, that there was a record waiting for me by a band of that very name.

Week #7: The Snubs. Gift from Hartman, 2021. Favorite side: B

If the Dead Kennedys had a recessive Dead Moon gene and wore disguises like Deadmau5, that band would be The Snubs.

Fast and funny, The Snubs don’t get cheated when it comes to content. When you’re getting 15 songs on a 20-minute record, you are not getting cheated. Or snubbed for that matter. It’s impressive what you can accomplish when you play fast and don’t solo.

OK, there is a guitar solo on “Washed Up Diying [sic] Fish” but it doesn’t exactly bog the song down. “Dump Run” crams 200 words into a 45-second song. Some of those words are “… found a bloody knife in an old leather pouch.”

Singer/guitarist Tommy De Nyd’s lyrics are quite hilarious and are in fact printed in unredacted form on the insert. Pearls like “Fake Mustache,” “Growing a Tail (True Tale of a SWM)” and of course “My ‘Punk Rock’ Parents Raised a Republican Kid” explore themes of isolation, neighborhood contempt and generally low aspirations-- just like their heroes. Or at least as much as any theme can be explored in 1:15. “We Suck at Partying Now” has a Monday Night Football reference, which I particularly appreciated.

It looks like The Snubs are from Seattle. They made this record in 2016 at Egg with Conrad and there appear to be several subsequent releases at least on BandCamp. I’ve never heard of them playing at Daryl’s, though, so maybe they gave up.

If they felt like they weren’t getting the respect they deserved, they’d be in good March company. Just ask Greta, Scarlett or Sofia. Shit’s tough all over. Happy National Women’s Day!

(Coming this spring: Growing up Jeff)

KISS ‘77

We interrupt the regularly-scheduled coverage of the collapse of civilization to bring you this Extreme TBT: Forty years ago tonight: KISS at the Seattle Center Coliseum...

Not surprisingly, this concert was the first for a lot of dudes I’ve known. Like for so many white middle-aged men of middle-class upbringing, KISS was my introduction to rock music and my dominant social and artistic reference until I got to college and discovered how much more there was.

I’d barely missed them on the ‘77 tour. But the subsequent years’ biding, while agonizing, had given me a chance to immerse in the band-- to really go to school. By November 1979, I not only knew every song and lyric, but all the members’ birthdays & birthnames, favorite foods, musical influences and accent colors. I could draw pictures of KISS all day and often did. I could forge their autographs and I practiced drawing what they’d look like without their makeup.

There was no way for me to have known that the band was already well beyond its creative peak by the time I arrived at the party. I didn’t have a crystal ball, get off my fucking back already. It is amusing to consider now, however, that this Dynasty tour was billed at the time as The Return of KISS. It was still the ‘70s! No way could I have been expected to know the band would spend most of the next four decades returning. I did recognize-- in my own soft, pink heart late at night in the solitude of my own bed-- that this new record wasn’t as good as Love Gun. But I wore it out just the same…

In a creative outburst considered productive even by the busy standards of the day, KISS had produced seven studio records, two live double records, a sprawling greatest hits collection and the ambitious set of four coordinated solo albums between 1974 and the turn of the decade. Add to this the made-for-TV movie, the Marvel comic book and all the lunchboxes and action figures, model kits, wastebaskets, sleeping bags, transistor radios and pinball machines—and this was one hard-working, high-grossing act. Rock bands these days (whatever that term even means in the modern entertainment economy) aren’t usually allowed to make even two records in six years. This was a different era. The vinyl only weighed 90 grams and it cost $6. The concert tickets were only 8.

We were just kids, we didn’t know how it was supposed to work. Dennis Gregory (not a flying toy) and I camped out overnight at Mervyn’s in Burien to buy tickets to a festival seating show that would never even sell out. Then we waited, listening to Dressed to Kill as summer slouched away unnoticed.

At last the day of the show arrived. Instead of driving us to school in the station wagon, Dennis’ mom (with my own parents’ reluctant blessing) dropped us off at Seattle Center, near the Jetsonesque arena originally constructed for the 1962 World’s Fair (what is now Key Arena was less than 20 years old at the time).

The crowd we encountered once reaching the Coliseum was a bit unsettling. Dennis & I were reasonably sheltered suburban orchestra geeks in the very early stages of exploring any semblance of independence. We weren’t tripping balls and weren’t even drinking vodka and orrrange juice. What I remember about this particularly sunny late-autumn morning is that most of the other kids milling around were.

We got in line. There were only about 50 people in front of us, but by the time the doors opened a couple of hours after dark, we were several hundred deep-- back closer to the fountain. Some of our line-mates didn’t start moving once the traffic finally did, sprawled out in puddles of barf in the mulch beneath the great Elms. Those guys will have their own versions of the day’s events, surely posting on social media tonight as well, in observance of this important anniversary.

Again—we didn’t know what we were supposed to do. No one had briefed us. Once inside the arena, we ran directly to the stage which as it turns out WAS the exact correct thing to do. We were two rows from the fence. But being so green, we quickly second-guessed our position. Maybe we should get a killer seat instead. We just didn’t know! Eventually we began ebbing backward against the fierce tide rushing in from the front doors, the vomitty Southern Comfort breath of the each new wave washing over us until eventually we were standing in the middle of the main floor, out of the thick and closer to the sound board. We went to the souvenir table.

The Rockets were a band from Detroit. They spent the 1970s serving at the pleasure of a variety of headliners, kind of the equivalent of a career minor league baseball player. I vividly recall during their opener, with the sound up loud, and the stage lights pulsing down that this is what it’s really like. This is how live music looks and sounds. How perfectly shitty it was! The sound was muddy and sightlines were poor and the band looked tired and the whole huge building smelled like burning soap on a rope. I looked at Dennis trying to figure out if he was feeling the same disappointment. I tried asking, but he couldn’t hear me. The Rockets closed with Fleetwood Mac’s “Oh Well” and left the stage to deafening indifference, most of the 12,000 kids having come to see something else entirely.

My eyes burned. The houselights between bands were harsh, the air sticky with smoke. We didn’t know what to do in between acts. We’d forfeited our squares of concrete in the pit and all the decent seats were taken by now too. We didn’t smoke or drink and we didn’t know how to pick up chicks. We went back to the souvenirs.

I’d spent the past two years of my life imagining this moment, the moment when I finally would get to not only see and hear the only rock group I liked, but to actually commune with KISS—to wordlessly discourse semi-personally with Ace, Gene, Peter and Paul. I’d spent so much time manifesting what this experience would be like—finally witnessing their movements in three dimensions and actually seeing them see me. I wanted to be more than a spectator-- I wanted to be an acknowledged participant. I had gained admission to the Temple and it was finally time to at least worship, if not partake in an unholy sacrifice at the altar of disposable, self-conscious increasingly commercially processed rock and roll.

The show, of course, was just okay. Gene flew and Paul called us See-a-tal. But Ace looked bored and Peter very tired. Since I knew all the songs, my mind could color in the voids left by a bassy PA booming in a concrete sports arena. Since I knew the faces and the costumes, my mind could sharpen what detail was blurred from a distance of 300’. Since I’d come this far and invested so much, my mind could clean up in post what the actual moment lacked. In all, though, it was a fairly disappointing realization. It’s never as good as you imagine, if you imagine it too much. Romanticism is romantic-- unless you at some point are forced to face down True Reality, in which case a good stiff drink really does come in handy…

But not that night. Not on Wednesday November 21, 1979. That night we settled for a weird setlist and an overpriced program, a handful of confetti and a poignant memory. Patrick McDonald trashed the show in the next day’s Seattle Times and I don’t even remember who came to Thanksgiving dinner. I got better at enjoying rock concerts as I grew older, and in fact got to be something of an expert eventually. I’ve attended hundreds of shows by now, maybe a thousand. I’ve even seen KISS another half-dozen times, although they would never be as authentic as they were that night, with all-original members and five weeks remaining in the 1970s. I was there, of that much I can be certain. The time—where does it go?

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Schenkerfest

  “The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world be

                                          doing on Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war.”    

                                              Hunter Thompson, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas–  1971

In a month when Steve Van Liew sang Overlord songs with Palooka and Udo Dirkschneider’s son backed him on drums, Michael Schenker knew he’d have to throw down to even make the winner’s bracket. And on a rainy night at the bejeweled Neptune Theater, Michael did indeed rise up and throw down hard.

This was the most-bizarre spectacle I’ve ever seen set to rock music. Nostalgia is king these days– everyone knows that. Any used up piece of spent jet trash 80s ‘metal’ band can make rent by getting at least a couple of originalish members together and booking a tour. Whether it’s a sad comment on the state of contemporary heavy music that we’d rather go see the remains of Judas Priest again let alone a Mother Love Bone tribute is a secondary issue. Let’s just say there’s always money in the banana stand.

But this was different. It wasn’t just a rock show. This was a high-stepping retrospective musical revue of the strangest order.

 I didn’t know what to expect. Word was that all the main-era singers were going to be there, but I couldn’t imagine how it would be presented. The show was to begin at 8pm and there was no opener. Punctuality is very German. The houselights were hardly out when Michael stepped to the mic from the wings of stage left.

“I am Michael Schenker,” he proclaimed in his familiar accent. “Lead guitar! Welcome to Schenkerfest!”

Very direct. So German. He continued.

“On bass Chris Glen!” No Flight of the Bumblebee recorded intro. No scurrying roadies with penlights. No dry ice. He was going to introduce the band under plain white stage lights before ever playing a note. Like a recital.

“On drums Ted McKenna!” he continued, to wild applause from his loyal crowd. “On rhythm guitar and keyboards Steve Mann!”

And then without further posing or wording, he grasped the neck of his great ax.

“Into the Arena!”

 And with that he was off and running. If Michael had known when writing this instrumental for his debut solo album in 1980 how powerful a set opener it would make nearly 40 years later, he wasn’t letting on. Instead there he was, grinning from his signature crouch, the wings of his Flying V straddling his right thigh, winding his way  to the end of the opener before announcing Gary Barden.

Gary Fuckin’ Barden! One of my favorite pre-metal hard rock singers and by far my favorite of Michael’s solo partners. He strode out from stage right in pointy boots and a gambler pulled down tight over his eyes to the opening strains of the gentle “Let Sleeping Dogs Lie.” My hopes were high, but my expectations realistic.

Very unfortunately, Barden’s voice was totally cindered. Whether it’s permanent or just abad night is impossible to say from one show, of course– but his performance caused me to grab my own throat and gasp for breath. He muscled through four songs and did his best to appear relevant. But it was fairly painful to watch, and though I wouldn’t have thought it possible, I was actually relieved to see Michael throw his right arm around Barden’s shoulders, pose momentarily for the iphones, and dispatch him back to stage right before Chris Glen introduced “Captain Nemo.”

The instrumental served as a sorbet between singers, Michael alone at center stage effortlessly shredding as a god. And as Nemo reigned in, suddenly there was Graham Bonnet, all 70 years of him, emerging from the same wings into which Barden had disappeared–to the opening refrain of “Desert Song.”

Graham Bonnet is a freak of fucking nature. I thought he was 70 when I saw him and his new sidekick Yngwie from the front row of the Paramount on the first Alcatrazz tour in probably ’83. That was a long time ago, but it appears to have been nothing more than an afternoon for the timeless Bonnet. He still looks like he always has—slicked back hair, dark aviators, leather jacket with the sleeves pushed up. But his voice is so powerful, he just sings so hard he shakes the theater. Fully amazing. His one album’s worth of songs with Michael are not my favorites, but Bonnet turned in a spirited performance and looked as comfortable in the role as any of the singers all night.

And after four songs, Michael threw his right arm around the shoulders of Graham Bonnet, posed for the photos, and dispatched him back into the black void where I pictured Gary Barden moving down one folding chair so Graham could sit down in the proper order.

Michael stepped to the mic.

“It has been 40 years since I recorded Love Drive with the Scorpions,” he explained, rather academically. “I wrote this song for my brother Rudolph and I gave it to him.”

Dig Michael the stage rapper. No how you people doin’ tonight?! No it’s great to be back in See-a-tal! No let me see your cigarette LIGHTERS!!  Just the facts from Michael. Straight and to the point. Sleek and lean. He wrote “Coast to Coast” for his older brother, but he was going to play it for us right now.

Absolutely magical. The instrumentals woven into the set served a critical role in the construction of the evening—the engineering was magnificent. But to hear these gilded melodies coming live out of Michael Schenker’s guitar without any singer jockeying for favor was extra special. And I’m not a guitar player! Normally I need singing to be interested in music, but I found myself wishing my way through the verses to get to the solos and in particular enjoying the instrumentals.

And then of course, out pranced Robin McAuley.

The mid-80s McAuley-Schenker period was an uninteresting one for me, and the songs of McAuley’s set re-enforced that. We all know what the mid-80s were about, and that was on-display in all its tinfoil glory with dangling chains and lots of Bedazzler during McAuley’s set. His voice was fine if you like that kind of dreck, but there’s something very untrustworthy about that cat if you ask me. He looks like a Realtor they plucked off the golf course and dressed in pleather and a black wig. A very thick veneer. His tattoos and biker patches don’t fool me– he’s not very heavy metal…

Lucky for me he was only up there for four songs before Michael threw his right arm around his shoulders and paused, smiling, before sending him back to henhouse where Barden & Bonnet both moved down a seat.

From there shit got weird.

To this point, things had seemed very linear: chronological singers performing the songs of their respective eras, broken up by tasty instrumentals between courses. But once McAuley was finished, it turned into a real floorshow. All three came out at once and proceeded to swap verses on some songs from the recently released Resurrection album. The Neptune stage is not huge, and with three singers posting up, things got a little crowded. The three MSG ‘frontmen’ shouldered up together, each doing their own period-appropriate dance moves and winking at the crowd & each other. With their own cordless microphones, they reminded me of the Beastie Boys, taking turns on verses. One would step forward while the other two would fill in behind. Then they’d all come together for an endless chorus before Michael ripped off a double solo and they had to comp even more time, working those dance steps and winking up a lather. As much as I admired the concept, the manifestation of it made me feel kind of funny deep inside. I couldn’t tell if they were more like the 3 Stooges, the Witches of Eastwick or the Golden Girls– each with their own distinct costume, accessories and, presumably– superpower.

And then as if matters couldn’t have been more awkward, out came something called Doogie White, apparently the current ‘lead’ singer. He took his shift on what were presumably songs from the new record, brandishing the Sign of Rock and Roll at the audience, paying his tribute to DIO which included a song for the Master called “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead.” Doogie’s kicked around this circuit for a while, but I failed to see his value in this setup. His voice was strained and his antics tiresome. If they needed a fourth hand to round out the singer’s cribbage tournament, then alright. But by that time the focus on the stage was getting a little fuzzy and the block of new material fairly monotonous.

But through it all, there was Michael Schenker just doing his thing. Chris Glen was definitely driving the band, and Michael had no responsibilities whatsoever beyond killing every single note and just being Michael. He’s really got that little crouching shuffle perfected, and he inches from one end of his sector to the other, just grinning up a storm– adorbs! Schenker’s personal problems of the 90s have been ponderously documented, but by all accounts he is clean and driven. He looks awesome in his uniform of (really) skinny jeans, patched vest and beanie w/ goggles. But it’s his playing that testifies to his clarity. The overall sound was pretty muddy, including Michael’s rhythm tone. But his solos were like drawn butter, sinfully rich and creamy.

Michael is 63 years old, but he looks like he could do this forever. He played almost three hours without taking a breather. He’s an energy star, that’s for sure– not a wasted word or movement. Economy is the name of the game. No empty audience banter and not a solitary wasted movement. His right hand hardly moves at all while his left is like a tarantula effortlessly wandering the neck of his Flying V.

“Do you want to hear some more?” he asked at the end of the Resurrection set. Naturally, the crowd wanted to hear some more. There was no secret as to what most of us had come to hear…

And Michael didn’t hold back. We’d pumped our fists in the air to some mixed material for more than two hours now, and there was no reason not to reward us with the UFO songs we’d hoped for. I thought maybe he’d do “Doctor Doctor” and bow out, but I’ll be damned if he didn’t offer up five classics including the obligatory extended middle solo section of “Rock Bottom” which was other worldly. The place went nuts as the singers racked up verses, each seemingly vying for Michael’s favor. They really kind of reminded me of a bunch of ex-wives who discovered that they really enjoyed hanging out together. 

I don’t know how long they’ll be able to keep that bus on the road, but I’m glad it made it as far as Seattle. It was a really big show…

PHOTOS by ROCKFISH! 

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  

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.

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.’

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…

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.

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!

you wanted the best but you missed it

Well– is that all there is to a fire?

Tonight, in the midtown temple where in many respects it began, the journey comes to a merciful end for the most-important rock band of my life.

I won’t be there. Not because I couldn’t be– although tickets are pretty spendy (starting at $500 and ranging up to more than $10,000). Rather, I guess I just don’t really want to be. After all, I didn’t bother attending when the remains of KISS lurched to within a hundred miles of my house three weeks ago, when I could have gotten in for a paltry C-note.

No, I believe I’ll sit this one out.  Plus, I already saw KISS on their ‘Farewell’ Tour almost 25 years ago. Fool me once…

Nothing I’ve observed of this self-congratulatory ‘End of the Road’ Tour has made me second guess my decision to not get involved. The advance social media hype has been forced and banal. The merch is shit. The VIP Packages are an outrage. And that’s just the stuff the band can control! Not till you drill down to the overlit and underfiltered cellphone fan footage do you really get even the faintest whiff of just how bad things have really gotten…

It hasn’t always been this way, of course. There was a time when KISS was everything they still claim to be—the Greatest Show on Earth. The window was brief, but still — four years is a long time to be The Best. But when you borrow against four great years for the next 46, then you risk ending up in default, don’t you?

It’s a long story.

Christmas Day 1977. L-R: Jimmy D, the author, Colin K and Sean K

I personally was late to the party. By my own math, I climbed aboard the KISS float exactly one week before the end of that golden age of relevance. It was Christmas Day 1977 and Santa had brought me my first record player. My parents, in reluctant coordination, gifted me the latest studio KISS album, Love Gun. There’s a lot more to the Christmas morning story, but I’ve told it (published it, even) so many times by now it’s starting to get on even my nerves. Surely it is boring you as well. So I’ll skip the tired details other than to say that from that day forward, I was as dedicated a KISS fan as there was– a completely different person than I had been previously. Like as in during the 32 minutes it took to play the album, I had undertaken a complete and wholesale transformation. (29 minutes if you excuse “Then She Kissed Me.”) For a month I listened only to the two sides of Love Gun until I got Alive II at which point I had six sides to rotate through. The 2-record greatest hits set Double Platinum came out in March and my collection grew to 10 sides. Mind you, not only did I not bother with records by any other artists– but I didn’t even listen to the radio unless it was waking me up for school. It was all KISS every single day of 1978 for our young Braimes.

Autumn brought the long-anticipated release of the solo albums– an ambitious project designed to extend the life of KISS Mach I. The scheme worked beautifully[1] as the four KISS-branded records were released simultaneously on September 18. Not having the bread to buy all four records at once, I struggled over which to acquire first. I chose Gene’s and was fairly confused by it. (I still am to a degree, although I listened to it intentionally this past summer and will say it makes a lot more sense in 2023 than it did in 1978). I saved my allowance and bought Paul’s record next. I loved it, and still do—probably the truest of the four to the established KISS formula. Ace’s record followed, and though it is universally considered the best of the four, it frightened me at the time with its references to drug use and general ne’er-do-wellism. I got Peter’s record last and though I have grown to recognize his as the best voice in the band (if not necessarily the best singer), I didn’t have capacity in my rotation for a jazz record at the time.

What I did have space for was more of KISS’ back catalog which I picked up one at-a-time, whenever I had the coins. I wasn’t hip to the concept of the used record store, so these albums were purchased new, usually at the music store in Sea-Tac Mall– the Brass Ear. My October birthday and Christmas were both good for an album or two and by the spring of 1979, I was about caught up. Just fucking swimming in KISS sides…

May 23, 1979 Federal Way, WA

On May 23rd I had four teeth pulled to make room inside my skull for my upcoming orthodontic braces. As I lay on my twin bed afterward with a mouthful of gauze and a headful of local, my mom walked into my room with Dynasty, released that day. It was the first album of new material that had been released during my almost 18-month tenure as a KISS fan. My mind raced with possibilities: nine brand new songs, written and recorded especially for me! I couldn’t get off the bed, so mom put the record on and left me alone with “I Was Made for Lovin’ You.”

It was a helpless feeling to be trapped inside my own drugged body, unable to reach the record player and lift the needle. Without the internet to provide endless advance scouting, I’d had no idea what to expect from the new album. It was being billed as The Return of KISS. Of course I had no way of knowing in that tender spring that KISS would spend the next 45 years ‘returning.’ It had not occurred to me in my wildest dreams that my favorite band would go disco. But here it was—the hard and truthful wax. Ace’s detached rendition of “2000 Man” followed, and I became even more disoriented. I didn’t realize it was a cover of a bad old Rolling Stones song, and thought it was just a bad new KISS song[2]. My head spun. I would come to appreciate “Sure Know Something” in later years, but on first listen I dismissed it as soft (it is) and Peter’s “Dirty Livin’” didn’t help matters any, finishing side 1. Having swallowed too much of my own blood, I barfed. The needle lifted automatically off the record, the tonearm reseating on its cradle– and my room went quiet once again.

From these challenged beginnings, my relationship with Dynasty has grown even more complicated over the years. It’s not a terrible record. But timing is everything, and the album’s arrival in my life was poor on both a micro (quadruple extraction) and a macro (disco sucks) level. At a time when older kids in my same grade were abandoning KISS, I was forced to stay home and defend them. Mostly to myself, but still: there was some heavy inner-negotiation going on in the summer of 1979. I was a long way from quitting The Life. But I also bought Live at Budakon.

Don’t worry: I’m not going to spend 500 words on every post-peak KISS album. There’s really no need. With a few notable exceptions[3], the work moving forward would represent an increasingly desperate attempt to re-capture the black magic of the 1970s. With each New Low, the band’s place in history complex would become more evident and shrill– all leading up to tonight’s drymax in front of 20,000 middle-to-late aged white monied yessers who wouldn’t be anywhere else…

II

Mervyn’s box, Burien. L-R Dennis G (in red), the author (Raiders coat)

My braces had been on a full year by the time KISS released the follow-up to Dynasty, the punchless Unmasked. In the meantime they’d been touring in support of Dynasty and a Seattle date was announced for November 21, near the end of the US leg. Dennis Gregg and I camped out in front of Mervyn’s in Burien to buy tickets when the box office opened in the morning– for a festival seating show that never even sold out.

We’d never been to a rock concert and had little idea how to prepare or behave once there. Mrs. Gregg had an uneasy look in her eye as she dropped us off at Seattle Center on the morning of the show, and we fell in line with a group of other kids outside the angular Coliseum. We were only 35 people deep, but by the time the doors opened at 6pm, we were several hundred heads back, closer to the fountain. The line crowd had grown older and increasingly unsafe over the course of the day and we were relieved to finally get out of it. We ran to the stage along with everyone else, but lost ground quickly there too. After shivering outside all day, it was suddenly very warm and smoky inside the arena, with red-eyed bile-breathed rockers pressing in closer than what we were comfortable with. Eventually we found ourselves practically back at the sound board. Scanning the tiered seats, it appeared all the good ones were by now occupied as well. Not knowing what else to do, we went and looked at the merch.

First concert. I had never seen a rock band play live. Not in an arena or at a harvest days festival or in a neighbor’s basement. My entire pre-conception of what I was about to experience was based on nine KISS albums and the live sequences from their made-for-TV movie KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park, the multi-camera high-def Hanna Barbara puff piece from mid-1978. I’d spent a lot of hours dreaming of what it was going to be like to finally see KISS live– time I might otherwise have spent sleeping or studying or at least trying harder to kiss Michelle Buckley[4]. But I imagined a KISS who were in-tune, wide awake, and puckering for me personally.

What I got, of course, was a stark disappointment. I’ve become quite skilled at enjoying rock concerts in the years since that cold November evening in the pre-Bezos arena. But that night, standing on my tip-toes at the back of the hall with contact cottonmouth, barely able to see Paul’s hair– let alone his boots– was a hard dose of rock and roll reality, augmented by my towering expectations. The shitty stadium sound bounced and farted, and the only member I could clearly see was Peter. He looked half asleep and in fact would be out of the band within weeks. I can boast that I got to see the original lineup with makeup in the 1970s—but barely. The dream was coming apart at the time, and though I didn’t yet have the vernacular to articulate it, I believe now that I sensed it even then…

III

by Jeff Braimes

I was still drawing pictures of the band[5] and collecting bubble gum cards as the new decade dawned. But my attention was beginning to drift. I bought Dream Police and even sidled up to my (younger) sister’s copy of Van Halen II (the first VH had been too strong for me when I heard it in a neighbor’s basement two years earlier– also an oft-related account that I won’t re-torture you with here…). I bought Unmasked on its release date in May with guarded hopes, but the record confirmed my darkest fears and was a sweeping disappointment. The band spent the year touring outside the country. Peter’s replacement Eric Carr had been confirmed and masked and it just seemed like things weren’t the same. They weren’t.

Nor would they ever be again. To be fair, it wasn’t all KISS’ fault. Yes: of course the band should bear partial responsibility for going as soft as it did. They deserve to be discredited for writing empty songs and recording them without any guitar, and for adding too much color to something that had worked so well in black, white and silver. But KISS didn’t invent capitalism. As much as they embraced it, the system for bleeding artists dry had been in-place for centuries before it voided KISS. Regressing commercially simply is not a viable design in show business, and with too much advice and too much coke and too much promise of even bigger payday, most mercurial artists do eventually shred the envelope before losing ground and being abandoned– first by casual fans and ultimately by their true bases. Some recover eventually, surviving to reinvent themselves and return to making good art that is self-satisfying and occasionally even commercially sustainable. But as often as not, the sensitive creative is cast aside to root in its own past until the money runs out and they’re forced to hit the fair and casino circuit. KISS took a third route, which was to forge ahead, subtly adapting to prevailing trends while still pretending to be who they’d always been. Occasionally it worked[6]; more often it didn’t. Mostly it felt hollow and cheap to those who knew better.

Finally, I’ll accept my share of the blame for KISS sucking as bad as they have for the past 45 years. Arriving as late as I had, with the band’s creative peak already eclipsed, I probably yearned too fiercely for my own glory era. The signs were everywhere for me to disembark and cut my personal losses, but I couldn’t help myself. Instead, I sat on my bed listening to Dressed to Kill as summers slouched away unnoticed. I refused to take any version of no for an answer. I believed (at least at first) that there was still something left in the tank for me and I did not look to the side. I wanted the best. But the cruel truth was that I’d missed it.

IV

I oughtn’t be so cynical. KISS Rules—I hope that much is clear. The essence of the band still burns in my heart and in the hearts of so many I call brother. Alive! still sounds menacing turned up loud. Page 98 of the coffee table book still gives me chills. And I could watch the Winterland footage[7] all day and often do.

Gene at Winterland, 1975

That’s probably what I’ll do tonight, actually—watch Winterland. The B/W BGP footage from early 1975 captures the band at its apex, playing every show like the Garden. The hung-up cartoons that would squat in the personas later have not yet been born– and it’s just the hungry, unvarnished KISS in all its sinister, stainless glory.

No, I don’t think I’ll watch the pay-per-view simulcast of tonight’s finale. Live footage of the gaudy facade the band has been dragging around on this 5-year hospice victory lap has become increasingly painful for me to look at: the video poker aesthetic of the pyro and sound; Gene’s jowls soaking up more and more makeup; Paul’s increasingly self-righteous raps[8] and withering voice. It just makes me feel gross.

The stream is only $40– a drop in the bucket compared to the fortune I’ve spent on KISS in my lifetime. Not only me, but also my loved ones. My parents at first of course, but later my sibling and girlfriends, eventually my wife and even my children have spent unimaginable sums of American money supporting my KISS habit. And not just on records and concert tickets. Not just posters and magazines and t-shirts and belt buckles. But all of the lunchboxes and comic books and wastebaskets and transistor radios and field guides, the sleeping bags, knee socks, Colorforms, electric toothbrushes, Halloween masks and non-alcoholic wines. The action figures, good Christ—all ofthe action figures! I wanted them all, and for entire decades I endeavored to keep up.

the Vincent Blackshadow, Christmas morning 2000

But shortly aftetr at the turn of the century I made a vow to stop paying Gene. I wrote him a letter on real paper telling him so! And with the exception of purchasing one copy of Sonic Boom, I’ve honored that vow. The record was being exclusively marketed by Walmart (another reason to ignore its release) and the owner our boutique record store refused to poach a copy for us, despite my offering a large premium. So ten minutes before closing time, Vincent and I literally ran to the back of the Walmart (the only time he has ever been in one, to my knowledge) and plucked a copy. We were back in the car in six minutes.

Of course it wasn’t really worth it.

the Vincent Blackshadow, November 15, 2009– Seattle Center

It was interesting to watch Vincent wrestle with Sonic Boom, the first album of original material released during his tenure as a fan– indeed during his lifetime. At age 11 he had already mastered not only KISS’ entire body of work but had in fact had already stomped through a Van Halen phase, an AC/DC phase, and even the first of several Alice Cooper phases. He was a deep, rounded hard rocker already– but KISS still held a special place for him, as it had for me. Sonic Boom was in some respects his Dynasty, although I believe it is safe to say that not only were his expectations more realistic, but also that his safety net was more accommodating. He could always turn to Thin Lizzy and Cheap Trick whereas I had no such safe harbor in 1979. His risk paled by comparison, and it was comparatively easy for him to roll his eyes and move on.

Generally speaking, my son has shown far greater resilience and good humor regarding the curdling of KISS than I have. Like me, he’s long since lost interest in the regrettable current condition of the band, but was genuinely gleeful in his embrace of nostalgia when we attended the Alive 35 show in 2009 (with free tickets—in case Gene is reading). In preparation, we listened to all the early records and watched the Houston 77 tape[9], and we both climbed into makeup day-of-show. Secretly I worried whether he would have a bad trip like I had my first time which incidentally was in the same building 30 years earlier to the week[10]. He knew Santa Claus wasn’t real; he knew Paul was wearing a wig and that Tommy Thayer was playing lead guitar. But I’ll be damned if he didn’t sing along with every song and clap his hands. Because that’s what rock and roll is all about. I doubt Vincent is writing a spiteful 5000-word essay tonight berating the band he would gladly have died for most of his life.

What he is doing tonight, hopefully, is taking the L-train from his pad in Brooklyn to Mid-town to make December’s rent busking for the variously intoxicated pilgrims marching to MSG, anxious to memorialize the occasion by spending as much money as they can on this night of nights. Vincent can play and sing pretty much any ‘70s KISS song, and in many respects has spent his life preparing for the opportunity to be part of this story– a modest but mighty dust spec on the great, garish clover that is the legend of KISS.

V

I imagine there’s a growing part of both Gene Simmons & Paul Stanley that can’t get this night over with soon enough. Despite modest historical side projects– in and outside of music– KISS has been the duo’s identity for 50 years. It will surely be bittersweet to say “KISS loves you GOODNIGHT” for the last time. But between being forced to cancel three of the final six shows due to Starchild Flu and the unflattering press surrounding his puzzling trans comments plus Gene’s complaining about cell phones– the bitter might just well be eclipsing the sweet as the painted wagon limps ever closer to the finish line.

Without much historical regard from critics, KISS has always held its fanbase aloft. “We serve at the pleasure of our bosses,” Gene is fond of saying, “the people in the seats.” Those bosses are in-turn fond of believing that people who don’t like KISS simply don’t understand KISS. But even at $1,000/head, this endless gauntlet of meet ‘n’ greets has got to be wearing on the two co-founders.  Tommy Thayer & Eric Singer have been over it for a long time– those two just want to pick up their final paychecks and clock out. No one wants a photo with them anyway. But Gene and Paul are obliged to pause and pose with every fool with enough money to buy a package. And it kind of sounds like it’s starting to get to them.

They are in their 70s now, and there’s certainly something to be said for the level of commitment necessary to continue being KISS for this long. I guess the grown-up in me questions the motivation. They’ve made the money. They’ve unmasked, re-masked, re-united and broken back up so many times even a fan like me has kind of lost track. They’re in the motherfucking Hall of Fame. What more is there to prove? Every person in the developed world has been offered the opportunity to see KISS and they’ve either done so or else opted out. The band was never designed to be for everybody[11], yet it seems like they haven’t been content to hang it up until we’ve all cried Uncle.

I’m generally not big on extending credit for merely ‘still doing it.’ There was a lot of that patronizing jive last month when the Stones released Hackneyed Diamonds. “They’re 80!” Fuck that. As far as I’m concerned, you either play good and look cool doing it[12] or else you invite scorn. I actually kind of like the new Stones record, and it’s probably easier to be the Stones in their 80s than KISS in their 70s. Plus pull-dates are soft. Best if used by Christmas Day 1977 is merely a suggestion. I’ve eaten well-expired canned goods without getting botulism and I bought every KISS record up to Asylum. But enough is enough…

Is it, though? Is tonights’s 2 1/2- hour blowout really the end? They have bid us adieu before, remember– more than once. Will we learn later that this is merely the final tour and that one-offs or even residencies are fair game? Will Gene and/or Paul finally retire from the band, to be replaced by younger mortals who will step into the makeup ala Singer & Thayer? Gene & Paul have been threatening this for years, after all. And even I have to admit that an immortal KISS with re-perpetuating members isn’t a horrible idea. It’s worked for 007. And getting some new creative blood into roles of influence might just be the trick. It seems obvious that the current regime is out of fresh ideas. But there are kids out there who are still full of songs. KISS as a brand need not be dependent upon its biological fathers to continue to propagate.

I don’t know. I probably wouldn’t be so hard on them if they weren’t so damned easy on themselves. Now that I’ve gotten some of these grudges off my chest, I guess I do kind of do wish I was there tonight. The anticipation in the air. The curtain falling. The actual heat from the actual fire. The green light and red blood of “God of Thunder.” A broken guitar. One last melancholy blast through the pulsing solo section at the back of “Black Diamond.” The confetti. The encores. The gratitude.

Let me go. Rock and Roll…

June 23, 2004– Shoreline. Gene cancelled White River Amphitheater this night

Reunion Tour Party, August 31 1996– Hell’s Half Acre, Tukwila. L-R: Sophie, Patti, the author & Ramone

KISS Rules

Daytrippin’, Bellingham 2004

Alive 35 afterparty, West Seattle

the Vincent Blackshadow, photo courtesy of the Bellingham Herald

First Vincent Blackshadow show w/ the Trucks and Coconut Coolouts, Bellingham 2006

Halloween 2000, Bellingham

Less makeup is required for rubber masks

From the short film ‘A True Fan,’ Bellingham, 2000

Starchild, 2000

Halloween 2014, Bellingham

Taking it off (the makeup) 2006

Halloween 2008. The author (L) dressed as his son (R), Bellingham

the Vincent Blackshadow, live in Seattle– 2007

Halloween 1994, Seattle. L-R: Dare Bulmonk and the author

Reunion Pre-party, Hell’s Half Acre– Tukwila 1996. L-R: unknown, Paul Larkin, Rock Star Matt, Edgy 59 (he did everyone’s makeup), Pinky, Jesse, unknown, the author, Bekki Crider, Cynthia’s dog Sid

Bein’ Alice requires less makeup

Reunion Tour afterparty w/ Rockstar Matt. August 31, 1996– 3:10 a.m.

1. By the end of 1977, the band was on the brink of imploding after four years of constant touring while recording six studio albums and two live albums. Natural incompatibilities were aggravated by the amount of sheer time spent shoulder-to-shoulder, and Peter & Ace were starting to lose interest in the band. The solo album project was designed to give the members some time away from each other while not necessarily taking a vacation from KISS at a time when the dice were hot. Each member was able to spread his own creative seed and the result was 4X the record sales. The scheme worked beautifully and surely extended the life of the the first lineup by 18 months.

2. I have certainly grown to appreciate “2000 Man” especially after it became a staple in the young Vincent Blackshadow sets of 2006 & 2007. It became, in fact, the title track from his first solo album. But at the time of my initial exposure to the song, it didn’t make any sense to me. It didn’t sound like a KISS song, and coming after “I Was Made For Lovin’ You” I just felt lost. The best KISS version of this song is probably on Unplugged, actually, which was an all-around positive moment even without the reunion component.

3. It’s not like there hasn’t been one good thing named KISS since 1980. There just aint been many. Creatures of the Night of course, is probably the best of the rest. Released in 1982 after the unqualified disaster of Music from the Elder, it saw the band hitching a ride on the emerging metal bandwagon. Though Ace was pictured on the cover of the record, he had in fact been replaced by the the flashy yet tuneless Vinnie Vincent, the last new member of KISS to wear makeup. The songs are heavy, driven by the power of Eric Carr’s drums, captured masterfully by producer Michael James Jackson. A year later, they would play the make-up card, beginning their descent into the MTv hair metal mud wrestling pit, vying for minutes with bands who grew up listening to their ’70s music. Two guitarists and five forgettable albums later came the inevitable reunion with Peter & Ace and the re-application of the makeup. This was truly thrilling, for a minute. Opening night at Tiger Stadium was festive and promising. But like most things KISS, it was milked too long and by the time the reunion album Psycho Circus came out 2 1/2 years later, things had again gone flat. The title track is solid and there are a couple of interesting Gene compositions on the record. But mostly it’s more desperate attempt to coax the lightening back in the bottle. From there it’s been cruises and re-packages. Super Bowl halftimes and Olympic Games, American Idol and Family Guy. Big paydays, but not exactly what you’d call creative triumphs.

4. I never did get in Michelle Buckley’s pants.

5. Like most awkward teenaged boys (NO?!) I would spend hours sitting at my desk drawing pictures of KISS. My sessions were interrupted only every 20 minutes when it was time to turn the record over. I favored the Love Gun era uni’s, but would occasionally venture backward or even design my own new costumes. I even spent time trying to draw their faces without makeup, desperate for a peek at what they may look like unmasked.

6. It is impossible to deny the influence KISS has had on generations of rock music artists. For this reason, it’s been extra painful to observe them folding into the trends that have come and gone during their tenure: disco on Dynasty, powder pop on Unmasked; Heavy Metal on Creatures giving way to Hair Metal for five records after that. The toughest one for me to swallow, probably due to my own proximity to the dominant imprint, was the Carnival of Souls experiment which actually saw KISS aping grunge– an aesthetic they had always held up as an example of what they existed in opposition to. This album was not released for several years after its original recording, but bootlegs were widely available in the Seattle KISS underground, largely thanks to James.

7. Oh my Fuck– Winterland. Had I access to this footage in the 1980s while I was wandering, I just might still be the fan I was as a kid. It’s such a perfect document. The set is composed of songs from the first two records, and though much of the material for Dressed to Kill must have been written or at least forming, the songs do not appear in the set. Somehow the band found time that spring to record Dressed to Kill before capturing Alive! that summer. Those would be bigger venues, but the communion in the 5500 seat San Francisco theater is unnerving. Bill Graham Presents filmed all these shows, but without the internet to bleed boots, this footage was rare in the ’90s when I got a VHS copy from someone who worked at BGP. (She also slipped us a copy of the last Sex Pistols show ever, shot at the same venue. Equally mind-bending, but that’s another essay entirely…). Multiple cameras, great sound, honest performance. It’s not a perfect show, but what it lacks in precision it more than makes up for in base sentiment. Gene with his early Kabuki leer, wild eyes and tipping topknot. Paul overworking, still figuring out his raps– but you can see the future. Ace is undershot on the off-side of the stage, but turns in a sparkling performance in the triangle bib. And Peter F. Criss, the most under-rated drummer in rock and certainly the most under-appreciated member of KISS just killing bugs dead behind the single bass drum. The dissolving edits of the candelabra. Glen sometimes says about stuff “I would like to go there.” And if you handed me a pass to go anywhere at any time in history– I just might redeem a trip to the Winterland Arena on January 31, 1975

8. Poor Paul Stanley from KISS. More than anyone, he should have quit while he was ahead. He likes to portray himself as a gambler in his lyrics, but tempting fate as long as he has finds him bumming a dime for the payphone at dawn, his chips in the hands of the house. The more he’s had to use his voice to oversing and make retarded statements about how great KISS is, the less he’s been able to muster a noddable version of “Love Gun” let alone “Makin’ Love.” And it aint just Best of Paul Stanley Raps on YouTube. The guy just seems to say something regrettable every time he opens his mouth. If he’d quit after Creatures he’d have gone down in history as one of the greatest hard rock singers of all time. As it stands, he’ll be remembered for lip-syncing and I am Cool, I am the Breeze… 

9. Houston 77 is Vincent’s Winterland. He has been into KISS since before he was 3. Here’s what happened: I was going to see the Farewell tour with Bret and Jason in July 2000, and I accidentally left this tape out after watching it while getting my KISS on before seeing the band for the first time since the Reunion Tour (the first one). Vincent was old enough to operate the VCR by this age and had access to the usual Schoolhouse Rock and TeleTubbies tapes. He must have popped in the unmarked cartridge, and by the time I returned from the Gorge, he was singing “Shout it out Loud.” The tape (1st night) remains a favorite and shows the band in refined form shortly after the release of Love Gun. This tape got us through a lot of the less-pleasant moments of Vincent’s childhood, including a series of ear infections in about 2002 or 2003.

10. It’s so crazy that I saw KISS for the first time in the Seattle Center Coliseum on November 29, 1979 and that Vincent saw them there for the first time on November 15, 2009. I guess it’s actually two full weeks to the day, thirty years earlier. The apple, indeed, may not often rot too far from the tree…

11. It was more fun being a KISS fan before they were quite as universally acknowledged as they are now. Usually when I see someone my age wearing a KISS shirt, I think they don’t look like my tribe. I shouldn’t be so exclusive, but I can’t usually help it…

12. Most people believe entertainers should be allowed to continue working as long as it makes them happy. I reject this notion. As soon as it starts making me unhappy they should retire. Or at least re-invent themselves in order to make me feel less awkward. The Stones have grown into their older selves fairly gracefully. Mick doesn’t age, and Keith has seemed comfortable in his withering skin. But lately I think they seem less confident and I can’t endorse that. There hasn’t been any reinvention for KISS for decades, as they’ve humped the dream dry, cementing their legacy. But it’s been increasingly hard to watch and I believe they have long overstayed their welcome.