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! 

London 2019

I woke up in the middle of the night in the guestroom of my own house with absolutely no idea where I was. Groping around the bed, I eventually felt my phone on the nightstand. Squinting, I was able to turn on the flashlight, illuminating the framed Austin Hotel photograph on the far wall. Only then did I remember I was home…

Heck, I’d only been gone 17 days.

Maybe that’s what Europe does to an American’s brain– erases it. I sighed heavy and set the phone down, falling back into the pillow. I was asleep again immediately.

To be fair, it had been a long day– starting with a subway ride to the Barcelona airport before a flight to JFK, another to SeaTac and finally the punishing drive home to Bellingham, arriving just after 2am. I tried to stay alert on the last 20 minutes of that drive by calculating what time my body really thought it was, but that only proved to make me sleepier. I eventually made it, and tiptoed into the guestroom so as not to wake Patti– only to startle awake two hours later completely disoriented.

It was a killer trip. Like a dream, really.

SeaTac-O’Hare-Heathrow seems like a long time ago now. Longer than 18 days, that’s for sure. SeaTac was like a morgue with airplanes at 11:30 Sunday night with not only no open bars but not even a Hudson News awake. Dropping in to Chicago at dawn was a different story– O’Hare felt like Mardi Gras by comparison, with people jostling through with open cocktails and goosing each other in that godawful accent, the brilliant Monday morning light pouring in through the huge east-facing windows. The SkyScraper Bar was like a neighborhood tavern, seating about a dozen. Solid spot for a 2-hour layover.

“Pretty decent night in London,” the pilot said in his pilot voice as we began our final descent into Heathrow. I wondered what that meant and found out 90 minutes later after clearing customs and catching the Heathrow Express to Paddington Station. Stepping onto Chilworth Street– my first time on European soil– I was greeted by a steady rain. “Pretty decent?” I asked aloud. “Huh…”

Didn’t matter. More authentic, if anything. I was excited to be on the ground finally, and anxious to explore Ye Olde Londontowne. It was midnight, though, and the real conquest was going to have to wait till the morning. What I could use at the moment, though, was a drink. The bars were dark, so I ducked into a small market.

“Is it possible to buy a bottle of wine?” I asked the shopkeep, not noticing any alcohol of any kind in the store.

I don’t really know exactly what he said, but I did get the gist that it was too late to buy takeaway booze and that even the rest of the pubs would be closed soon. It was my first introduction to British English and the fact that just because you technically speak the language, you’re not guaranteed to comprehend through dialect.

People around me started breaking in to a trot as I was nearing the Tube transfer to Royal Oak, and I instinctively began to run also. The last thing I needed on this first night was to be marooned after the Tube stopped running. I made it onto the empty train, though, and rode the few stops to Maida Hill, which would be my home base for the next five nights.

Nearing the AirB, I happened upon the open London Food & Wine. Couldn’t hurt to ask again, I thought, and stepped up into the small, bright shop. Like in the other one, I didn’t see any wine– but asked the Punjabi gentleman who seemed to be the boss whether it was possible to purchase a bottle.

“Wine, yes,” he said, “only for you!”

He nodded to his colleague behind the counter and colleague asked me ‘red or vite?’ I said ‘red’ and he said ‘eight euro.’ I handed him a tenner, he changed me, then raised the metal roll-up door behind the counter just high enough to pull out a bottle of Jacob’s Creek red blend. He motioned for me to open my bag and then slid the bottle in.

“What do you do?” asked the bootlegger boss.

I turned back to face him, amazed at my good fortune.

“I’m travelling,” I said.

“I can see that,” he answered, eyeing my pack. “But what do you do?”

“Oh,” I said, laughing. “I’m… a real estate agent.”

“Oh yes, very good,” he said. “Market here very down. Much worry over Brexit. Where you from?”

I was delighted to have the opportunity to deliver my rehearsed response to this question so early in my trip. Little did I know I wouldn’t be asked again for a week, and never again after that. I looked left, then right, lowered my chin and whispered conspiratorially, ‘America.’

And that was it. He wasn’t impressed one way or the other that I was from the U.S. He didn’t make a grossed-out face, or roll his eyes or say anything about Trump. He didn’t pull an American flag out of his sleeve and wave it or light a string of firecrackers. He couldn’t care one way or the other– he was just making conversation.

“My name is Gulu,” he said instead. “G-U-L-U.”

I told him I was very charmed to meet him (I was) and asked if I could give him my business card, since he had asked about my profession. He accepted it and drew a six of clubs. He seemed pleased.

I found the apartment, opened the wine, drank half a glass, and fell hard asleep.

Every day is garbage day in London. But Tuesday is the morning they drag a dumpster the approximate size of Westminster Abbey itself across the ancient cobblestone courtyard behind my Maida Hill flat at 7am. It was a sound and volume I had never heard anything like. The beeping truck accepted the contents and made its way down the lane– but by then I was awake, after a mere four hours’ sleep. I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall back. I closed my eyes and prepared to rise. Then I woke up at noon.

Oh well, I’d needed the rest. I hadn’t slept since Saturday night in Bellingham, because I don’t sleep on airplanes. I hadn’t showered since Bellingham, either, or eaten since Seattle. So I showered and made myself a cup of tea to start my first day in the UK. I turned on the telly (that’s what they call television in England!) and opened the London Times that I’d bought from Gulu. I tried the crossword but couldn’t get more than a couple of answers. Cultural bias up the ass…

Teeth brushed and a pocket full of pounds, I descended the stairs to the street. I looked down the street, then up before turning down and then left at the corner. I had no plan, and every intention of getting as lost as possible today. Edie would be arriving tomorrow afternoon from Croatia, but today was all mine. I had no agenda whatsoever.

Eventually I struggled through ordering a cup of coffee in Bayswater and, after skirting Hyde Park, some fish ‘n’ chips in Mayfair. A pint in Paddington where there was actually Cricket on the telly. It rained lightly through the mid-afternoon, but by the time I’d looped round back to Little Venice, the setting sun was peeking out and the water on the canal was sparkling, sort of. It was quite a lovely scene.

After walking six hours, I was close enough to the flat to pop in for a glass of Gulu and a few more layers for my evening adventure. I got on the Tube a few stops to Soho, where I tried running down a bar called CroBar. Never did find the damned place. I wandered a few more hours, eventually grabbing another basket of fried fish and potatoes, not terribly much better than the first.

If it sounds like a fairly dull and uneventful first day in Europe, hardly worth writing down let alone reading through, that’s because it was. I had held high hopes for this day, unique in that I’d be solo and free to go where my whims took me. Unfortunately, my whims weren’t very skilled at navigating Google Maps and were generally unlucky when guessing in which direction to turn. Inevitably when emerging from a tube station, I would turn left only to discover later that the cool stuff I’d have hoped to stumble upon was mere meters to the right. This left/right guessing game would in fact be a theme for the entire trip.

So after more than 38,000 steps, I had little to show for my first day in London. Luckily every single other day of the entire trip was wikked awesome…

I didn’t sleep nearly as well that second night, but still rose optimistic about day 2. I’d be seeing Edie in a matter of hours after two months apart. She’d been having her own bitchin’ adventure: two weeks in Ireland, two in Northern Italy during Carnival, three on the Island of Sardinia working on a farm, and a week in Croatia. I wondered whether I’d even recognize my little girl after all her worldly experiences.

As I waited in the cavernous Victoria Station for Edie’s arrival, a lone busker worked over a menu of melancholy classics creating a perfectly bittersweet traveling soundtrack. “Stand by Me” on any day brings a tear to my eye, but on this particular occasion, in a strange land, preparing to meet my wandering daughter, maybe still a little sleep-deprived/jetlagged– the lone tear brought along its mates and I had a pretty decent little mid-day cry, standing alone in a bustling London train station, travelers whizzzing past me dragging luggage and looking down at their phones. When dude got to the call on me brother breakdown in “Lean on Me” I heard myself clapping in the right spot and I enjoyed a discrete giggle only an inside joke can bring.

Eventually Edie & found each other outside the station, and when I saw her I started running– almost getting creamed by a red double-decker. “The red ones don’t stop!” I shouted as I finally reacher her, and we shared a series of deep hugs with tears on both sides. She looked radiant– maybe a little sunburnt. Her voice was hoarse and she actually seemed taller. Her shoes were trashed. She’d been on the road…

Abbey Road

I shouldered her pack and we wandered toward Chelsea, starting up a lively, tangential conversation that did not let up until we parted in Barcelona two weeks later. On this first afternoon, though, we both just wanted something to eat, maybe a glass. A number of places were closed for that British siesta between lunch and dinner, so we eventually just slipped into one of London’s one beelion pubs and had a perfectly serviceable meal that fully took backseat to our animated discourse. After some browsing, we Tubed back to headquarters where I introduced Edie to her couch. She showered and though she was tired, I convinced her to rally for one more outing. It was a pretty long walk to Abbey Road, but totally worth it. We had the most famous crosswalk in history all to ourselves.

On the way back to the flat, we picked up some supplies and saw a fox. A real honest-to-goodness urban fox. Who’d have thought? I did not know London foxes were a thing.

Portobello Road

Quality sleep for both of us that night, and we got a decent start the next morning toward Portobello Road. Saturday is the big day on the Road, of course, but there are ample vintage shops on any old Thursday morning, plus the mind-bending Red Lion antique mall. We had a quaint brunch experience and eventually grabbed the front top seat on a double-decker bus to the British Museum in Bloomsbury. There was some cool scale historical art in there– huge, noseless Greek sculptures and Egyptian sarcophagus’ plus the Rosetta Stone and an interesting exhibit of ancient money.

We were pretty thirsty after that hibrow shit, so we walked up to King’s Cross in search of a refresco. The pubs in this neighborhood were overflowing with white-collar Londoners just getting off work. It was a completely mad scene, with punters (that’s what they call people drinking in a pub in England!) spilling into the streets– cigarette in one hand, pint in the other. Pub after pub, block after block. We’d been on our feet most of the day and at this point wanted to sit a spell. So we settled on a Mexican place which was also super busy but that did have two seats at the corner of the bar. Absolutely perfect.

Londoners:

• smoke

• drink beer

• when not drinking beer generally prefer gin to vodka and scotch to bourbon

• wear black

• … except the businessmen who wear high ‘n’ tight navy blue suits with brown shoes

• prefer cricket to baseball of course, but when supporting baseball they prefer the Red Sox to the Yankees

• really do say “cheers, mate” at every conceivable opportunity and sometimes even when it’s not seemingly appropriate

• don’t generally smile at strangers

Of course the main thing in London is not getting hit by a car. It seems simple to remind oneself  ‘they drive on the other side of the street’  but until you’ve walked 23 miles in two days, you don’t realize how deep your American bias really is and that it absolutely does endanger you as a pedestrian. I’m a jaywalker. I generally cross any street at any point if there’s not a car coming. But in England, your instincts can deceive you– especially if you’re jetlagged or maybe a little drunk. The streets are narrow and heavily parked and everyone drives a thousand KpH. I am actually very surprised more foreigners aren’t hit and dragged by tiny British cars more frequently. At first I thought it was kind of silly that painted on the ground at each intersection were the words LOOK RIGHT or LOOK LEFT. But, you know– that stuff did actually turn out to be useful…

Lots of Indian food in Mayfair, so we headed back down there after our Modello’s for some dinner. It was alright. London has not been traditionally known for its food, though it seems that’s changing. It is known for its healthy Indian population of course, and the curry houses that come with. There are tons of excellent Indian restaurants in London, apparently– we just didn’t choose one of them this night. We didn’t eat great in London in general, to be honest. The best meal I had was a bowl of Bulgogi from a street vendor in Soho on my way to Victoria Station to pick up Edie. Walking around that neighborhood on a sunny weekday morning, the delivery trucks double-parked and merchants jockeying for position was a very cool experience. Plus Bulgogi!

Edie pumping down the volume in Brixton

Almost any community looks diverse (less white) when compared with Bellingham. Most of the people vacuuming SeaTac Airport after hours on Sunday night were brown. Likewise the mix in Chicago was deeper than what I am accustomed to at home. And even the most-touristy neighborhoods in Northwest London feature startling diversity, not even including Chinatown or Golders Green.

But then we went to Brixton.

Emerging from the tube station stairs, it was if if we’d travelled to another country altogether. Though more than 100 languages are commonly spoken in Brixton, it is definitely the Caribbean capitol of London, with lots of reggae, lots of dreadlock tams, and lots of da kine. We had a delicious brunch at a jerk joint and wandered through Brixton Village and Market Row, a rich omni-cultural outdoor marketplace not seemingly expecting many tourists. Brixton Village featured small eateries, merchants of every kind, and a range of food markets including fruit stands, spice carts and live butchers selling still-dripping chickens. The browsers were shopping for dinner here, not souvenirs.

But we couldn’t hang around Brixton all day. We had to beat it back north of the river and check out the MEGA motorcycle rally in the shadow of Westminster Abbey!

To be fair, we didn’t realize that’s what we were walking in to. But clearing the doors of that Westminster Station, with Big Ben looming just outside, we were overwhelmed by the roar of motorcycles echoing through the corridor. Parliament was expected to again extend the Brexit decision that very day, and this rally– best we could tell– was a Veterans-for-Brexit motorcycle parade, with literally thousands of two-wheeled vehicles of every kind, from 50cc Italian scooters to Japanese crotch rockets to American Harleys. They were all cruising across the River Thames from the south, revving up their engines past Ben, curling around Abbey and through St. James’s Park. The route was lined with flag-wavers who looked vaguely familiar. Elizabeth Tower, which houses Big Ben, was entirely covered in scaffolding, undergoing four years of restoration work, and we weren’t going to wait in-queue (that’s what they call ‘waiting in line’ in England!) to go inside Westminster Abbey. So we decided to flee the red hat scene and make it down to the Ecuadorian Embassy to see if Julian Assange was home. We thought he was always home– that was exactly the point! But as it turned out, we’d just missed him…

If Londoners were very concerned about Brexit, it wasn’t obvious. Of course, the longest conversation I had during the whole visit was the one with Gulu after I’d been in-town for 45 minutes, and he did actually mention it. So maybe I just didn’t go deep enough with people. Most bartenders didn’t broach the subject in the course of pouring me a drink, and the red bus drivers were generally pretty busy driving the big red busses. I really had hoped to get into some conversations while in London, but the truth is that unless you strike one up, you’re not likely to get there. I’m generally a pretty good at chatting up strangers, but London seemed indifferent unless I really wanted to be that guy, which I didn’t.

London is cool. You certainly can’t do everything in four days. But the Tube works so great– it really helps to make a big city smaller. The weather wasn’t bad for us once Edie got there, and actually the lilacs and cherry blossoms on-display were the nicest blooms we’d see the whole trip. Crowds weren’t bad, and with the exception of the larger-profile tourist attractions, we didn’t wait in a queue the whole time. And other than a handfull of peace-keepers at the bike rally (real live Bobbies!) there was almost no police presence, which was quite refreshing.

I don’t know where London keeps its homeless, but they were not visible in the neighborhoods we were in. We didn’t go everywhere, of course, and we were certainly in some touristy locations– though not exclusively. But London’s core is a mix of commercial and residential uses. I don’t know if there is such a thing as ‘zoning.’ There are no vast commercial blocks without residences, and likewise there are no dense residential areas without commercial. It’s all very finely integrated. You can’t be more than a block from a corner market or a pub– it’s impossible, at least in the core. We saw a tent here and there and there was some old-school begging (different from American panhandling) but not much. In a want/want-not capitalist economy similar to what we have in the U.S., there’s got to be some people outdoors. But they’re not hanging around downtown…

On Saturday morning, we packed up and caught the Tube to St. Pancras Station to make our chunnel train to Paris. In the movies, it seems like Americans always board trains in Europe at the last minute, running down a platform and jumping onto a moving coach– blowing kisses to some weeping Euro Strange, waving from the platform. In reality it’s as gummy and chaotic as any American airport and we missed our train by a mile. No matter– there was another one 90 minutes later for a 30-Euro penalty. Paris has been there a long time. It will wait for us another 90 minutes. See you there…

France 2019

Notre Dame

It’s impossible (pronounced impossible) to say whether I’d be a total dick if I were French. But I recently met every French person living in France and they were all total dicks.

Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. I really only met about six French people, and half of them were actually pretty nice. The other half were at least fair. But I saw a lot of French people being total dicks. Tons of them!

Shucks. To be honest, I probably would be a mass dick if I were French. I’d be slender and fashionable and I’d hold my cigarette just so. I’d be drinking a champagne cocktail and clutching my perfect baguette, even though I would be out of hands by now. The afternoon sun would cast a fanciful glow around me and my highly-evolved crew at our sidewalk table as a blind accordion player in striped shirt and pencil-thin mustache squeezed sublimely nearby.

And then I’d speak…

It wouldn’t matter what I said. I could say ‘come with me to the Casbah’ or even merely  ‘I just saved a ton of money on my car insurance by switching toGeico‘– andit would sound the same. French is such a moist, lyrical language– you just sound more fashionable and sexy speaking it. Read the phonebook. Please, read it again. Je taime…

We arrived in Paris at that golden hour late Saturday afternoon from our chunnel journey from London. The train had been a very pleasant and civilized experience with WiFi and a bar. It’s possible my guard was down a notch as we emerged from the soaring Gare du Nord station into the lap of Paris.

That light. Those smells. The tension and magic. The chaos of Paris!

Edie whirled a whirl and we high-fived our being in Paris. I remember that we were standing still and that everything else was moving fluidly around us, as if animated.

Edie punched up our destination.

We learned in London that I was a useless navigator and a generally more agreeable traveling companion if my phone was deep in my bag and my credit card was near the top. We had efficiently crafted an arrangement that enabled us move about without me having to switch from wifi to data to google maps to translation. Sunglasses off, readers on. Battery half-charged. Where are my safety pins?!

It was definitely in Paris that I decided my phone was at half-full battery, not half empty. The ability to read a Lonely Planet guide book or negotiate a paper map has been evolved out of us. But we don’t have to let reliance on our devices define or distract us! I felt after two days in London that my deference to my phone as travel agent was fouling my experience. So I put it away. Of course by that time, my 19-year-old daughter was there to navigate and empty my drool buckets.

Edie deftly guided us to our AirB and we cracked the code of the front door. We ascended the 107 spiralling steps to our top-floor apartment overlooking the magnificent Church of Saint-Bernard de la Chapelle to the east. The apartment had a sufficiently-appointed kitchenette and a brilliant library of European coffee table books & American classics translated to French. The linens were soft and there were plenty of pillows. But there wasn’t a square of toilet paper in the place!

No matter. We hadn’t come all the way to Paris, France to hang out inside. We hit the streets looking for soul food.

The lower Pigalle- Saint-Georges’ district was alive and buzzing with Parisians smoking, drinking and French kissing. Cafe after cafe was swamped with beautiful young people socializing on a pleasant early spring Saturday at dusk, spilling out of the doors and onto the patios. We were hungry– but the idea of having to order a meal in a crowded bistro in our broken French at the top of our lungs kept us moving along until we found a quieter little sushi place with an empty table. Hamachi in French is Hamachi; sake means sake.

Strolling back toward the pad afterward showed us more colorful doorways, more ornate wrought iron rails and more handsome locals. We were able to purchase toilet paper instead of paper towels (no bolsa) and we lucked into a very French experience in the tiny Rouge Bar only a few blocks away from our home base. A dozen regulars were seated around a large table in the back, singing folk songs and banging on various percussion instruments. One guy was plucking away on a kind of 1-string washtub bass type thing, and the group was taking turns on verses, joining in on the choruses. We had no idea whatsoever what the songs were about, of course– but we enjoyed a glass and the good vibes before collecting our TP and climbing the stairs to the apartment.

I’m not a great sleeper. Never have been. And when I get into a groove of insomnia, not much can wreck my flow. I had had some luck in London, and the bed in our Paris AirB was comfortable and the apartment quiet. I was exhausted. But still– sleep would not show itself to me on that first night.

At 4, I offered Edie the bed and took to the couch. I figured one of us might as well get some quality rest. At 6, I quietly dressed and slipped out into the hall. Shoes in-hand, I tiptoed down the winding oak staircase so as not to wake the neighbors.

Dawn was just starting to stir as I hit the sidewalk, turning north. The only sound was the gentle cooing of the pigeons, possibly startled to see me. It was clear and cold. (I’d checked the weather on my phone before leaving the 6th floor and learned it was 35 degrees on the street). Perfect weather for a morning hike in Paris. For some reason, “Looking Glass” by the La’s was playing in my head.

It was a fairly surreal experience to be alone in a city as normally abuzz as Paris: just me, my gradually shortening shadow and last night’s barf & piss. The cafes and bar tabacs were buttoned up tight. No busses. After 20 minutes I finally saw a garbage truck, but it didn’t seem to be picking up any garbage. Rather it was just kind of cruising as if casing the garbage. Eventually the peoples began to emerge– jogging, gymming, walking the dog. Texting at the wheel. All the same stuff Americans do in the morning…

I wandered north then west, slowly climbing higher into the picturesque Montmartre neighborhood. The peaks of the iconic Sacre’-Coeur came into view and I turned in their general direction, winding up and down cobblestone lanes lined with arched doorways draped in wysteria.

the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris at sunrise

Upon reaching the travertine plaza of the Basilica– the highest point in Paris– all the air was sucked from my lungs by the breathtaking setting and view. The glow of the rising sun coming from the east illuminated the perfect domes of the temple, and the rest of Paris lay sprawled out to the south– ready for another busy day. There were a half-dozen other people out there also gawking, though most of them were paired up. It was a pretty romantic setting, after all. Suddenly I missed Patti and remembered her telling of her first experience in Paris where she’d felt a little gypped to be stag. The only other unmatched person up there was a bearded guy who positioned himself squarely in the center of the courtyard and proceeded to jump rope. It was odd…

On the way down the hill, I passed along a street with a number of butchers who were just opening shop. Cured and fresh meats were being unwrapped and hung out for display. Ice bins were being filled, sidewalks hosed down. On the curb in front of one shop was a metal shopping cart filled to the very top with huge bones (beef femurs?). It was the deepest collection of the biggest bones I had ever seen. I slowed and discreetly slipped my phone from my bag and snapped a photo from waste level.

It wasn’t discreet enough…

A butcher emerged from the shop as I started to walk away. He was agitated and confronted me, blocking my path.

“Supprime-le,” he said sternly. “Supprime-le!”

Of course I had no idea what he was saying. I shrugged out a no Francias and a perdon for good measure, but he just kept repeating ‘supprime-le.’ Eventually he mixed in some clarifying language which I guessed was none too flattering. But he always returned to ‘supprime-le.’

It’s painfully obvious now of course that he was demanding I delete the photograph from my phone. Supprime-le = delete it. But at the time I just didn’t get it, and at one point actually thought he might have been offering to snap a photo of me posing with the bonecart using my camera– for a fee. Can you even imagine?

Eventually, he was able to mime my phone out of my bag and point to the delete icon on the screen. I was quite embarrassed when I finally realized what he was getting at and of course deleted the image immediately. Supprime-le, my advisor… 

It’s ironic that I said to him “I’m sorry” in English as he turned to go back into his tiny shop. I’d been walking around all morning practicing the phrase I expected to get the most use out of while in Paris, that being ‘Je suis de’sole’ or I’m sorry. I’d been wandering around this beautiful neighborhood whispering I’m sorry to myself for hours, and when the perfect opportunity presented itself for me to show off my French, I totally dorked out and made a bad situation worse by apologizing in English.

Probably just as well. I learned at the end of our stay in France that in my attempt to shorten the phrase from what I understood to mean ‘I’m sorry’ to simply ‘sorry,’ I had lopped off the wrong half. So in Paris and through the south, I had been sheepishly saying ‘I am‘ when mixing salt into a cappuccino or fumbling with the money. De’sole = I am. Je-Suis = sorry.  Sheesh… 

I don’t blame the French for being resentful of foreigners. They have a pretty bitchin’ culture which they’ve been forced to share with the rest of the world for centuries. We’re learning in our modern age that it’s awkward to refuse immigrants and not economically feasible to discourage tourism. Any western joker with a thousand Euro and a passport can spend a week in Paris, displacing locals by soaking up AirB’s, clogging the narrow sidewalks and strangling the language. All the natives can do is roll their eyes and say supprime-le. Kinda hard to fault them…

I picked up some beautiful little pastries at a real live French bakery and some fruits at a sidewalk market and returned to the apartment to wake Edie who was still sleeping at 9:30. We got cleaned up and boogied to the insane Marché aux Puces de Vanves flea market. Row after row of overpriced old world relics waited on folding tables along the sidewalk. I wanted all of it, but settled for a short stack of souvenir 45s and a heaping platter of sauteed mussels. We made the very photogenic Canal St-Martin neighborhood next on our way to the you-know-what. You can’t go to Paris without visiting the Eiffel Tower, and it was of course very spectacular. The late Sunday afternoon sun was setting over the Seine as we strolled amongst our fellow tourists, gazing up at the 1000′ icon. The grounds there are very nice and you can buy a little mobile party if you are so inclined. Eiffel Tower: check! Oh, the Arc de Triomphe, too: check!

not Notre Dame

Monday morning brought vintage shopping in Le Marais en route to the Centre Pompidou. We’d been dissuaded from chasing the Louvre by more than one well-meaning domestic friend, and if you’re in Paris for 2.5 days, you can’t really justify spending one in the Louvre. At least I can’t. Three hours in the Pompidou was plenty. All the AC/DC and Thin Lizzy was on the 5th floor, which was where I hung out. The view from the rooftop terrace was spectacular, too, and actually proved a useful perspective in the planning the rest of our afternoon.

not Notre Dame

not Notre Dame

We exited through the giftshop and headed in the general direction of Notre Dame. It was well-past the lunch hour by this time, and we were feeling a little rummy with fabulousness overload in this picturesque neighborhood. Possibly a bit low on bloodsugar. Every corner we turned brought us face-to-face with a new architectural marvel and we would stand reverently in its shadow, gazing up and shaking our heads. “Wow,” we’d whisper. “Notre Fucking Dame…”

And it wouldn’t even be Notre Dame! There are just so many ridiculous buildings down there that you can mistake any one of them for Notre Dame if you haven’t been holding up a picture of Notre Dame with one hand for most of your life. The Paris City Hall is wikked cool! But yeah– it’s not Notre Dame…

By the time we actually did get to Notre Dame, we were just about wetting our pants laughing about all the buildings we’d mistaken for it. So we felt pretty bad when it burned down two hours later.

not Notre Dame

We saw no sign of the Yellowvests in Paris, and–as in London–observed very little sign of economic angst or presence of the unsheltered. There was the occasional sidewalk tent, and actually Paris did have what seemed like a fairly civilized network of doorway mattresses, almost like the Lime bikes and scooters. There was no apparent ownership– rather if you needed a place to sleep, you just flopped on an available mattress. Once you woke up, you moved on– freeing up the bed for the next weary Parisian down on luck.

We did not have time to venture deep into the Left Bank. Our host neighborhood was described as Montmartre on Airbnb, but it was quickly obvious that this was fairly wishful marketing. Our neighborhood was literally on the other side of the tracks from the Montmartre in a neighborhood we later learned was informally known as Little Algeria. It bordered a bustling Bangladeshi neighborhood along the Rue Marx Dormoy where there were very few women visible at all, particularly after dark when the street vendors took over the sidewalks. On our last night there, we encountered a burgeoning race riot outside a grocery store that looked a little too much like Do the Right Thing with a large crowd of unhappy young men pushing up against the metal accordion fence of a small grocery. The shopkeep appeared to be evicting a representative of the crowd whose shirt was ripped and there was a lot of spitting and shouting. We totally valued being in an authentic neighborhood not seemingly catering to tourists. But this particular moment also seemed like a pretty good time to cross the street.

not even the Arc de Triomphe

We had ventured to the Republique’ neighborhood earlier that night, enjoying a drink in a Greek place and some snappy tappas at a little Spanish joint. It was late when we got back to the apartment and I turned my attention to confirming a roof for us for the following night in Lyon. We weren’t exactly walking into towns with our backpacks and looking for a place to sleep like in the ’90s. But booking this stuff only one night in-advance was an exercise in agility nonetheless. Edie & I had agreed not to over-plan, and short-notice reservations were part of this agreement. We’d done well in Paris booking this apartment from London and we fully expected to get as lucky in Lyon. But booking trains at the last minute can be limiting– and the only cheap seats left bound for Lyon the next morning were on the 5:50. We’d need to get up at 4 in order to make the train. So of course I didn’t sleep.

We got loose of the pad (at 4:20!) and down to the street to meet the only Uber we’d take the whole trip– as the Metro didn’t start running till 5am. Before I knew it, we were chugging gently through the rolling green fields of the French countryside– dotted with herds of sheep, tiny villages (always with a tall church steeple in the middle), and the occasional medieval castle on the hill. The coach rocked side-to-side as I watched Edie sleep from across the tiny train table.

Lyon is a cool town. But arriving at 8 o’clock on a rainy Tuesday morning, it didn’t seem like the locals were really all that mass stoked. Commuters trudged up and down the slick platforms, their umbrellas up and the corners of their mouths down. I hadn’t slept on the train and my eyes burned like fire. The toilets in the station cost .80 Euro, which I couldn’t manage to count. My left hip clicked with each step.

Edie punched up our destination.

We marched across the square in a steady rain and up into a network of narrow cobblestone lanes rising steeply out of the downtown. Five minutes later we were inside our building and climbing a limestone staircase open to the interior courtyard of the building, up toward the 4th floor flat. At this rate, by the time we reached Barcelona, we’d be on the ground floor! The key to the apartment was where it was supposed to be and it actually unlocked the door. I am always amazed when this stuff works.

This apartment was our host’s home. Her bills were on the desk, her laundry in the hamper. She was probably staying with her sister on the 2nd floor while I slept in her bed. We had just booked the place 9 hours ago. And not only was she willing to cut out on short notice, but she actually was kind enough to let us check in early. I would not have inquired about a mercy checkin if I’d known this was someone’s home. A lot of these places are vacant, like a sock waiting to be used*. But not always…

We rid our packs and took off our shoes and immediately fell asleep side-by-side on the couch. All I wanted to do right then was dormir, but I knew if I stayed down more than about an hour I probably wouldn’t sleep again for the rest of the trip. So I made myself get up after 90 minutes and put my shoes back on. I dropped back into the downtown and ordered a cafe creme’ deporto at a coffee shop in which I would become a 2-day regular. The rain had stopped and the sun was beginning to peak out. I sat on the stone steps of yet another fantastic unnamed church and pulled out my journal and pen. Good day, Lyon!

Large Sraight, Lyon

I woke Edie up at 2pm, this time with a bottle of white wine and some cookies. She’d had a solid nap and was ready to rock, as was I. We rolled a quick game of Yahtzee (I had packed dice) before cleaning up and getting back on the street. Edie’s Sunnyland homie Nick had just landed in Lyon the week before, beginning a similar study abroad experience to the one Edie had last year in Barcelona. We were meeting him at 6, so we had some time to kill cruising Lyon’s canals and crossing the quaint footbridges over them. There were statues built into caves on the other side and a huge cathedral looming on the hill. Our accompaniment for this segment was “Yeah Yeah Yeah” by Alice Cooper– a brilliant afternoon!

It was great seeing Nick. He’s one of my favorites of Edie’s buddies from home and he seems to really be digging his experience in France so far. We strolled around through the old town catching up, eventually selecting a Fine French Restaurant for dinner. In some foodist cultures, it is an honor to be seated by the kitchen. In this situation, we were merely being seated at the back of the restaurant. The 4-course experience involved much pointing at the menu. It was OK– not necessarily what I’d call fine… 

Unlike England, France is kind of known for its food. But much like England, our culinary experiences were not super fine. My general distrust for the internet makes it hard for me to shop for restaurants online. “Look, Edie– this one has quatre e’toiles. Only 80 more blocks!” I am much more-inclined to eat when I’m hungry and drink when I’m dry. Just like Bob Dylan. Sometimes the place that presents itself at the right time is killer; other times less. But Yelping our way around Europe is not what I had in-mind and Edie was fully in agreement. Whatever. We didn’t starve.

Speaking of Dylan, we missed him in Paris by two days. I don’t know whether I would have efforted to see Bob Dylan in Paris if our paths had crossed. But they didn’t. We also narrowly missed Teenage Fanclub and Lake Street Dive. And in London I missed UFO by three days! I definitely would have done whatever necessary to make that show had the dates aligned. And then Paul Raymond died eight days later. Timing– it’s universal…

Paris is known for its gothic cathedrals, its majestic river and quaint cafes. Lyon has all that stuff too, but without the mountains of garbage that you have to climb over in Paris. How anyone could think about dropping as much as a gum wrapper in that holy place is hard to figure– but I don’t think I’ve been in a dirtier town. I like a gritty city, but Paris is just plain littered and shat upon and that’s less romantic no matter how you look at it or in what language you describe it.

Being a less-common destination, Lyon may even be a skosh Frencher than Paris and we found it very usable. Divided by the Rhone River to the east, the Saone River in the center and the hilltop Fourvière to the west, Lyon is the 3rd largest city in France at a half-million people. Posing patiently above the old town is the sultry Basilique de Fourvière. It isn’t ancient– the current version was completed only in the very late 19th century. But it is architecturally stunning and the view over the city from the grounds is dizzying. We climbed up there on the sunny second afternoon in town, and Edie left from there to go meet Nick and his friend from school. I went inside the sanctuary and sat for a long time, staring up at the coved, tiled ceiling. I dislike organized religion in general and Christianity in particular. Catholicism perhaps most of all. But dang– those guys sure do know how to build a churchhouse.

I don’t think anyone was on-duty in the confessional by the front door, but I paused on my way out and considered spilling a gut anyway just the same. I wasn’t carrying anything particularly heavy. But I was sensing the impending mortality of this adventure, being at about the halfway point that day– England behind, Spain ahead. Struggling to be in the moment every moment isn’t really a conventional sin, but it is a hangup. And I thought that maybe if I could admit to a stranger that I was even thinking about the end of a trip from its middle, it might help me stay in the present more completely. I stood at the threshhold of the booth for a minute, pondering. Eventually I crossed the street to the gift shop and bought a postcard instead. They were playing Judy Garland and Gene Kelly’s “Ballin’ the Jack” in the shop, which made me feel a little better since it didn’t seem to have anything to do with France, Christ or redemption. I scaled back down the 800 stairs (yes, I counted) into downtown and got a glass of whisky at a cafe overlooking the river, feeling great. I addressed the postcard to myself and placed an Airmail stamp into the upper right corner.

The French don’t:

• Give a good goddamn about much of anything other than the French

• Wear berets

• … or any hats for that matter, except Yankees caps. Certainly no widebrim hats in any venue in Europe. That fashion phase has either not hit yet or else has well faded (probably the latter, huh?)

• not smoke

• keep cats

• busk

Very few street performers of any kind in France, actually, other than the occasional strolling accordionist outside the cafe– like the Mariachi’s in Mexico. I did happen upon the French version of the Dy Young Combo on the last night in Lyon, at a small wine bar in the old town. A pretty lady with her hair in a scarf was singing and dragging on a guero, accompanied by an electric guitar and percussionist. As soon as I sat down they launched into “The Girl From Ipanema” and I wondered if it was the first time they’d played it that set. Seemed kind of obvious…

On my way back up to the apartment, I peered into a doorway that had bar sounds coming from within it. There was no sign outside, but ducking down into the tiny, dark room below street level I discovered it was indeed a dank little bar full of wasted locals. French hardcore music was blasting from a small Sonos speaker in the corner and there was one vacant stool at the bar. I slid in and smiled at the bartender.

“Vin Rouge,” I said confidently, trying to be clearly heard by him but not overheard by the entire bar.

“I am sorry,” he said, in English of course and loud enough for everyone at the bar to hear. “I do not have any wine.”

“Oh,” I said, abandoning my attempt to French out. I noticed a chalkboard menu with Absinte halfway down. “Absinthe?”

“Sure,” he said, and poured me the cutest little shot along with a glass of water. “Three Euro-fifty.”

The place looked like the belly of a boat, where bearded slaves shackled together might sit and row to the beat of a whip-cracking coxswain. It smelled like it too. In the back corner, a thick sleeveless woman in her 30s was pouring beer on the heads of the others at her table. Two younger men jumped up and grabbed an arm each, returning the gesture. She shrieked in delight and sprawled across the table, toppling glasses and bottles. The men sat back down laughing and the entire ritual repeated. I had one more shot, but I don’t think that was the place I was supposed to be. I returned to the apartment, packed, and confirmed the AirB for the following night in Montpellier.

If Lyon seemed 15% Frencher than Paris, Montpellier might as well have been Gaul. It looked more Spanish than the other cities, with more palm trees and more white iron– like what I imagine Havana looks like (never been). But it was apparent immediately upon deboarding the train that we would struggle more with integration here. We were hungry so we muscled through ordering a ‘pizza.’ Meanwhile, Edie attempted to punch up our accommodations.

“This downtown area is showing up,” she said looking around before re-puzzling over Google Maps. “But the place isn’t…”

Life’s a Beach and then you smile– Carnon

As it turned out, the AirB was 20 kilometers away in a small seaside resort called Carnon. It was too remote to get any directions through Google Maps. We had an address and a general direction. So we got on a tram that looked like it might take us to Knott’s Berry Farm.

After some eventual third-guessing, we transferred to a bus then walked on our feet a mile and finally got into range where Google Maps would recognize us. The lovely & adorable host at our AirB was there to greet us even though we were three hours late, and she gave us a very detailed orientation of every system & appliance in the apartment– in French of course. We wouldn’t use anything other than the key and the beds, but it was nice to hear some more French spoken as we’d be leaving for Spain in the morning. Plus she gave us the total French cheek peck– un, deux, trois— which we had not yet observed being administered in the larger venues. So we got to cross that off our list…

Carnon also had a pleasant little sandy beach that we went out and sat on for a while. I was stoked to finally behold the storied Mediterranean Sea until I was reminded that it wasn’t the Mediterranean at all really, but actually the Golfe d’aigues-Mortes which was actually more contiguous to the Balearic Sea than the Mediterranean, yo. In any event, it was a sandy beach and there were a couple of guys kind of surfing out beyond the breakwater and neither Edie nor myself had had an aneurysm or even so much as a canker sore– so I guess I was feeling pretty alright about France as I scooped up handfulls of the fine white sand and let it run slowly through my fingers.

Carnon was a little like Ocean Shores and it closed up pretty early. Just as well. I needed to book a bus to Spain and a room once there, so my full attention came in handy. The next morning was Friday and not just any Friday. We shouldered our packs and retraced our path back to the Montpellier train station where we caught the 3:30 to Barcelona where Good Friday observances were already in full swing…

Brazil 2003

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Garage Shock Memorial Day weekend 1999

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                                                                           --Callous French  

Dear brother

Hey Sean,

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

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

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

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

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

• Powerful Pete pocket screwdriver—for your Irish

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

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

• Ferrari patch—it’s a Ferrari patch

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours,

Jeff

Broken Teeth, Bulldozer

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

What happened was this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jane’s Addiction, April 17 1989— I Was There

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- Callous French 

LCD Soundstystem, American Dream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tomorrow: Broken Teeth, Bulldozer

Bring a picture of Malcolm Young to Dave’s

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

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

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

Dear The Bellingham Herald

McClatchy

1601 Alhambra Blvd., Suite 100

Sacramento, CA 95816

                                                                                        Thursday June 9, 2022

To whom it may—

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

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

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

But at $3.14 per issue, I cry uncle.

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

Either way, I think I’m out.

Regrets,

Jeff Braimes, Bellingham WA

Rick Sands 4/8/64-8/23/24

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wooden Nickels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk about your wooden nickels…

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

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

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

It worked out pretty good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Karate Church

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

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

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

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

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

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

Twisted Sister, Y&T & Q5 Seattle Center Coliseum, spring 1985— I Was There

Once an SMF, always an SMF.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Once an SMF, always an SMF…

NYY

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

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

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

“We should go.” It’s embarrassing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Play Ball…

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

Odd Ones Out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Melody Way

“How much does the melody weigh?”  

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

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

“How much does the melody weigh?”

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

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

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

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

“I did it,” she repeated. “Awesome…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Again Rachel’s shush.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Because the night belongs to lovers

Because the night belongs to us

Don’t give a damn ‘bout American Idol

Please Dominic, just take me home

Discomfort behind the cameras gave way to horror.

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

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

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

Sunshine too bright

Patti comes from a big family and once every few years there’s a reunion.

It was OK I guess. 

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

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

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

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