Other Fein Messes

1st Record/1st Concert The first record I remember buying was Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On.” I was maybe a month away from my 10th birthday in 1957. I grew up in L.A. but this purchase occurred somewhere in Phoenix, where my family was visiting an aunt and uncle. I wish my mom were still alive because she’d probably remember more details. She liked to tell people I loved music so much that I once walked off with a stranger who good-naturedly offered to give me a record. (These days the good-natured guy would probably be in custody.) This was probably a month or two after one of Elvis’ Sullivan Show appearances, which corrupted me forever. At this point I probably knew Elvis, Buddy Holly and Jerry Lee, and not much else. Of course, what else would a kid want? First concert? Easy to remember. August, 1966, Hollywood Bowl. First band, new group being promoted by KHJ Top 40 “Boss Radio” as the “Boss Buffalo Springfield.” Then the McCoys, which I think was Rick Derringer’s band, although I would have had no idea who they were; then the Standells, and finally the Stones. Went with my pal from high school, rock writer-to-be Mark Shipper. No Ticketrmaster service charges, just an ad in the L.A. Times, sent in the mail order and tickets arrived. No coverage on local TV, no Pat O’Brien specials. Just Our Little Secret. It was the first time I had seen music fans in one place. Easy to say it was all downhill since. Only saw the Stones once more, at the Forum in Inglewood nine years later; had to be prodded into going because kept proclaiming I would never never never go see a band made up of guys that old. Shit, that was 1975. If you told me they’d be touring a quarter century later, I would have barfed in disbelief. Bob Baker is a freelance writer from Los Angeles who worked in the newspaper business for 35 years, the last 26 at the Los Angeles Times. He is the co-author of "Burn, Baby! BURN!" (University of Illinois Press, 2003), the autobiography of legendary R&B deejay Magnificent Montague. He also operates the journalism web site www.newsthinking.com AFM May 2005/ AF Stone’s Monthly Stamps How do you overcomplicate YOUR life? I’ve got so many ways1. I buy stamps in two categories; commemorative and plain. The commemoratives speak to me: Lenny Bernstein, Elvis (bring that stamp back!), Ogden Nash (is he “Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker” or is it Dorothy Parker?). Baseball players and stadia. And plain ones for bills. Sound logical? If you’re nuts. Categorizing stamps is like having 20 different glasses and struggling with which to choose for what you’re drinking. (Done that.) When I’m out of plain stamps and must post a bill, I must decide which commemorative is least meaningful. This, of course, dodges the more fundamental question, Why not buy all commemoratives, and use them willy-nilly? Because a “good stamp” is personal, you don’t want that on a bill. THAT would be crazy! 1 “So Many Ways" is a great record by Brook Benton. What a town! In “October, 1964,” his book about the 1964 World Series, David Halberstram describes problems Roger Maris encountered when he was on his way to surpassing Babe Ruth’s home-run record. New Yorkers already had their home-run hero in Mickey Mantle, so as newcomer Maris closed in on the Babe’s mark, fans loyal to Mantle threw things at him in the field and booed him at the plate! Free Hughey! When asked who my favorite guitarist is, I have no quick answer: maybe Dave Edmunds. But my favorite stringed-instrument solo is easy: the weeping steel guitar in Slim Rhodes’ “Take & Give,” Sun 256. According to my yellowed 1975 copy of the “Catalyst: The Sun Records Story”, by Colin Escott and Martin Hawkins, Slim was the band’s leader and guitarist, but the singer was his kin Dot Rhodes and the steel player was John Hughey. (The flipside, “Do What I Do,” is a fantastic rockabilly record.) “Now the Dead Will Always Be With Us” That was a darn good April 17 hed in the NY Times about the current endeavors of Phil Lesh. But it also gave me the willies. -- I recently came across a tape made me by Les Schwartz in 1984. It was great, but had I ever thanked him? I phoned the guy who’d know his whereabouts and he said “You’re a little late. He died 7 years ago.” -- When I returned to my late fr Bill’s house, I picked out another couple dozen records and CDs, to buy before the record store guys came. I was struck, as always, at how our collections overlapped. But as I saw his shoveled away (for $2 each!!!!!), I realized we don’t really have collections, just otherwise-random stuff that has meaning only to us. -- Visiting Cedars-Sinai Hospital in mid-April to see my fr Todd after his surgery (small benign tumor, removed completely), I ran into Eliot Ingber of Mothers, Beefheart, Fraternity Of Man and more, and he greeted me with a sentiment all too common these days: “Hey, you look alright!”2 It was the astonishment that got me. What that means to us over-50s is that many people we know DON’T look alright, or look at all. I dream that when I die my records, writing and junk will be spread over a large airplane hangar and pored over by friends and scholars. But realistically, what can’t be sold will probably be put in storage and abandoned when the storage fees grow too high. 2 Leaving the studio after a tv show, one of our bunch spotted Red Buttons and said “Red, how are you doing?” Without skipping a beat, Red said brightly “Still vertical!” Special Effects Are all media going mad? No image on tv stands still; if it’s a still shot, the subject is isolated and the background moves. Shots turn to black and white “for effect.” Cameras swing wildly to connote excitement. Blurry shots accentuate the thrill of later focus. -- On a ‘science’ show3 on A&E, the featured archeologist is standing outside. We know this already, but to goose it up the camera starts at the left and swings triplespeed across the landscape then up to his puss. -- On a docu about the Oklahoma City bombing, we are introduced to a woman amputee survivor by seeing her image, sitting in the studio, in four consecutive fast-flashes accompanied by whoosh sounds. Just to see and hear her would hardly be sufficient in this go-go world! And now still photos are infected. Straight photos are outlawed: they must be taken with a blur. Best if the photo subject is in motion and the background smeared. “Look how original I am” each photo screams, its trumpeted uniqueness nullified by its resemblance to every other. 3 On the History Channel, suddenly we are introduced to a new archeological series in which “Josh Bernstein takes you to the Pyramids” and other places. Who he? Why am I supposed to respect him? Did his family buy this tv series for him? CLICK HERE FOR ATROCIOUS-PHOTO GALLERY There’s Not Enough On My Mind4 In a review of a charity concert in the 2/13/05 L.A. Times, Randy Lewis wrote that the “vast majority”5 of the audience did not begrudge the absence of Blink-182 and Ozzy Osbourne because the cause was so important. (Tsunami aid.) In so doing he was a booster, not a journalist. Instead of excusing the no-shows he should have investigated the reasons for their absence and if necessary excoriated them. Ticketbuyers are ticketbuyers, not necessarily fans of the cause. Charity events are the same as any other concert. The act donates something of value and it is SOLD. If the act shows up without his band, the ticket-buyer is cheated. I’ve seen this many times, acts clowning around under-prepared or -staffed because it isn’t a real gig. It’s not right - the missing acts should be brought to heel by the press, and a portion of the gate money refunded: they offered something and didn’t deliver. It’s like I donated a Beverly Hills mansion and supplied a shack in Watts. Reminds me of pitches for “film preservation.” We should contribute to “save” films bec a series of corporations discarded excess film and turned off vault air-conditioning to cut costs? Saved films get released and make money. Let the corporations pay. 4 The answer to the Kinks song. 5 And exactly what “vast majority” did Lewis canvass? Five thousand? Seventy-five hundred? How’d he have time to watch the show? Beware, Brother, Beware6 Someone gave my daughter the DVD “Queen On Fire: Live At The Bowl.” This caught my eye, as I surely would have attended any Queen show at the Hollywood Bowl (they didn’t appear in L.A. after the late 1970s - or in America, for that matter). Comes the fine print: Live at the Milton Keynes Bowl. And it’s sold by Hollywood Records! Tsk, tsk.7 6 Louis Jordan was a funny musician. Like the Queen guys. 7 “Tsk” is the inadequate phonicization of the sound you make when you rue something. When the tongue is extended forward to the roof of the mouth, then snapped forward while sucking. Well, how should it be represented? “Sucked letter-tee?” People actually say “tisk tisk.” Sneerers In “Boomer rock keeps Bush’s heart in tune” in the 4/11/05 NY Times, Elisabeth Bushmiller writes that the Prez’s iPod includes “ ‘My Sharona,’ the 1970s song by The Knack that Joe Levy, a deputy managing editor in charge of music coverage at Rolling Stone, cheerfully branded ‘suggestive if not outright filthy’ in an interview last week.” Two questions here. One, why was Joe Levy interviewed about anything? Know him? Love him? He’s very available for quotes8, judging from the number of times I see his name crop up. He’s like Michael Musto, the affected ghoul from the Village Voice you see on every tv music-history thing. What’s Levy done? What’s his worth? Elisabeth can reach only Joe in the whole wide world9? Jesus Kee-rist, he’s “a” deputy managing editor! It’s fantastic that Rolling Stone, the stiff hippie paper, has a hierarchy like the Army or the Kremlin. “Deputy” means he’s not a managing editor, dunnit? Two, when are these hard-line old-age rock writers gonna let loose about the Knack? Younger writers don’t know, they must learn, that the Knack was unpalatable to righteous indignant rock-writers of 1979. “Kids” (20-40) I meet these days know nothing about the insidious and perfidious Knacklash of 1979; they are in fact incredulous. They must consult invidious history books to dig up this dirt. But I don’t remember the argy-bargy back then being about morality. It was the band’s “arrogance” in borrowing Beatles motifs for their album’s artwork. (The Clash copying Elvis’s first album cover for ‘London Calling’ drew no flak, but as we know crit-standards are .... flexible.) Old crotchety Joe Levy has forsworn the loose-love and sexual-freedom days of the 60s/70s and aligned himself with tv preachers10. He’s the little old lady from Rolling Stone. 8 Perhaps he is “Quote Minister.” 9 She’d probably not know Wreckless Eric. 10 My friend Rip, who’s “right” about most things, says this isn’t about the Knack or morality, it’s Levy the liberal summoning up questionable indignation just to indict Bush. “If ‘Sharona’ was in Clinton’s iPod, this issue would not have been raised.” Levy For Pope Filth-branding Deputy Levy of Rolling Stone has many more morality lessons, and has prepared this tear sheet for you to pull quotes from. (When I say “pull,” I don’t mean anything immoral.) 1. Let’s Spend The Night Together - To be avoided by righteous people. Band includes DRUG USERS! 2. Why Don’t We Do It In The Road - Lyrics invite - nay, demand! - UNSAVORY THOUGHTS. 3. Softly As I Leave You - Post-coital lament of the male member - SORRY! - of a probably-unmarried couple. 4. The Tender Trap - A song about female sexual opening. THIS STINKS! 5. Star Star - DO NOT EVEN LOOK AT THIS SONG! The Devils did it. 6. I’m Into Something Good - Filthy record by debauched “teen idol.” A MUST TO AVOID! 7. My Cup Runneth Over - Whichever sex the singer, this is DISGUSTING! 8. The Happy Organ - A tribute to the phallus. Oh, GAG ME! 9. Blowin’ In the Wind - A paean to outdoor sex. SATAN BE GONE! 10. Hold On, I’m ...... decency prevents me from finishing - I BESEECH YOU, turn away from this Sam & Dave record, and ALL HEATHEN ROCK & ROLL! I Thought We Weren’t Marching Anymore In Bob Hilburn’s 3/30/05 U2 article he wrote “For a band that made its mark with soaring guitar-driven anthems that commanded you to march along...” So THAT’s what I’ve missed in U2’s songs: the commands! But in the April 4th ish of Calendar, in only his fourth Bono mention that month, he protests perhaps too much that Bono’s “continuing commitment to social issues and the excellence of U2’s music have won over those who once mocked him as ‘Saint Bono.’ “ Huh? Bono-mocking over? Let’s not be hasty...... Everything’s So Glamorous! Writes Gina Piccalo, 4/10/05 L.A. Times: “Xeni11 Jardin12 arrives fashionably late13, her platinum curls bobbing above the crowd 14, as she sheds a floor-length faux-fur to reveal a white silk, backless gown that so effectively evokes Marilyn Monroe15, it nearly stops cocktail chatter cold16. And that’s saying something17 because there are some big brains in this room who aren’t easily distracted18, among them the lead scientist of the recent Mars missions and the inventor of the Palm Pilot19. Jardin herself is no slouch. Her glamourous mien belies20 what her colleagues say is true briliance.” Later we learn, from Piccalo, that Jardin is a “cyberpunk babe21” who wears Gucci and drives a Mercedes22. Are there any other smart people in L.A.? Picallo will find them only if they impersonate movie stars (“He’s a brain surgeon who dresses like Charlie Chaplin”) and obey every current style dictate. 11 Immediately I’m xeniphobic. 12 What are the odds it’s her real name? 13 Fashionable among the fashionable. Among the rest of us, piggish. 14 Ten-foot curls? She was on stilts? 15 Now there’s someone we don’t hear enough about. 16 But, as “nearly,” doesn’t. 17 Lest you miss the profundity of this moment. 18 From drunken cocktail chatter. 19 These may be the people who continued to talk while Jardin was doing her runway trot. 20 Aha! - Picallo KNOWS “Jardin” looks foolish. Yet she admits it only obliquely. 21 Picallo’s command of cliches is bling-bling! 22 Well-known “rebel” symbols. Mour Glamour!23 Leslie Brenner, in the 4/13/05 L.A. Times Food Section, gushes forth this paean to a new chef’s cookbook, alongside the pic of him shirtless: “He’s the guy your girlfriends warned you about. Look at him, emerging from the surf like a chef-Adonis, kelp fairly dangling from his biceps. He caught those big fish with his bare hands! The guy’s gorgeous. And he can cook. What could be sexier?” What could be idioticker? Read on. “He peers at you with an MTV come-hither stare24 He’s holding, quite tenderly, a papaya filled with pomegranate seeds. But you’re not looking for symbolism.”25 Brenner was too busy wetting her pants to tell us what was so hot about his cooking. Or, thank heaven, what else was dangling from his body. 23 When did everyone adopt the British spelling of glamor? And what about compleat? THIS IS ONE BRITISH INVASION THAT’S GOTTA STOP. 24 What does this mean? She is blinking so excitedly that he appears three images per second? 25 Someone call Joe Levy! Girls Talk26 Man-objectification is now not only OK but hammered at you in current media. Not to mention man-hammering. In the 4/7/05 L.A. Times toy department, the Weekend Calendar, Lori Gottlieb tells of an answering-machine message listening-party she held with likeminded girlfriends. It’s “no sillier than a group of men sitting around watching instant replays of touchdowns on ESPN.” Hard to argue with this (but why only on ESPN?), but she is saying, unknowingly, that she and her peers are girl-lummoxes. In their “tail”-gate party, they natter over the sincerity of her current boyfriend’s recorded profession of affection. Her uncertain lover is described only as “an investment banker.” Not “Jeff, who is wonderful” or “Joe, who once baked me a pie.” We can only conclude that if Gottlieb’s love-interest were, however unlikely, a non high-paying professional, these gals wouldn’t be huddled around the answering machine at all. (Future Gottlieb swains prepare your Dun & Bradstreet reports, and caveat emptor to ye all!) 26 I first heard this by Dave Edmunds, so didn’t know it was considered a Costello tune. But it just struck me that Stiff, or f/beat, was like Motown in having its acts record many versions of the same song. All good. The Pedant I never say “a friend of Joe’s” because it’s too much. A friend of Joe’s what? I say “a friend of Joe.” And what of these German words creeping in? Bob Paton in Peoria (see Letters) complains about “wunderkind.” Frank Rich in the NY Times writes (3-13-05) that something is the “ur-text” of something. (No umlat: did he meant “errrr... text”?) And “uber” is all uber the place. However, there may be some use for this stylish new Germania. In an age when so many cliche-"meisters" begin sentences with “Yes,”27 praps they can vary it with “Jawohl.” 27 Each week the L.A. Times runs an automobile column by reaching28, strident29 Dan Neil. Like a pre-teen he writes something (he thinks) clever, then comments on it! In a recent column he listed types of people who buy Subarus, the last being lesbians. That was pretty good placement, it woke up the reader, but he followed with the stale, predictable, “Yes, lesbians.” When I pointed out how silly this guy was on the tv show, Neal McCabe responded “He’s won a Pulitzer Prize.” If you want to see a genuine look of horror and shock, see my face. 28 3/30/05 “it might seem any company hawking a pair of new luxury sports sedans is as out of touch as a Russian street vendor selling Romanov trading cards in 1918....” 29 His fists-bared attack on General Motors was rash and egocentric. The fact that they sell dull cars to dull people may offend him, but his vitriol was reckless for a medium as large as the L.A Times. Everyone’s a Critic, Baby, That’s For True... In a 4/22/05 L.A. Times story about a guy who ran a phony charity organization, Amanda Covarrubias writes that his website showed him with “A-list stars such as Bill Cosby” and then sneers “and lesser known names such as country musician Keith Urban, actress Kelly Preston and the casts of ‘7th Heaven’ and ’The Real World.’ “ Memo to “lesser” musicians, actors, and show casts: Keep working and maybe someday you’ll earn the respect of Amanda Covarrubias! In the 2/9/05 NY Times “Critic’s Notebook,” Caryn James, describing the phases of Marilyn Monroe appraisal over the years (was seen as victim of patriarchy, now “reinvented” as shrewd), tells us MM “has been refrozen as a lost soul by Elton John’s icky song ‘ “Candle In The Wind.’ ”30 Icky? Now no one will confuse her with HENRY James. 30 Overlooking, also, its wholesale reassignment to Princess Di. J’m’appalled I have no blind faith in any publication, but I was startled by this in Hendrik Hertzberg’s opening story in the 2/28/05 New Yorker: “Some observers were reminded of an old Fleet Street ditty” .... and a 4-line ditty followed. SOME observers? I thought this was a sickness only of daily newspapers. “Some” is the writer’s opinion, a phantom invented for backup: “they” veritably run the L.A. Times. It is unlikely that anyone other than Hertzberg was struck as if by lightning by that quatrain, but it flew past the vaunted NYer fact-checkers, who should have demanded that he name at least two other people who had the same thought simultaneous with him. and failure is no success at all.... Isn’t it weird how acts that stay “alt.” are cheered for it? Each is on a stage asking for approval, but if their acceptance stays small there are people, like Jon Pareles, who can write (NY Times, 12-7-04) without awareness of contradiction, this about a band still-unknown since 1983: “With no small pride, Robert Pollard told the sold-out audience at Irving Plaza on Sunday that his band, Guided By Voices, was playing “a three-hour show without one single hit.” Pride? What do you call bitterness? Twenty-two years without achieving mass popularity probably wasn’t the band’s initial plan. “It was the boast of a songwriter who has earned every member of an international cult.” Boast? In his zeal, Pareles seems to say that Pollard personally knows all his fans, their number is so small. Nice, nice, very very nice -- better than having no fans at all -- but a boast? Pareles’s faint praise damns. Block That Metaphor! Stephen Holden, in the 12/17/04 NY Times: “The matching of two slithery chameleons, the singer Bobby Darin and his latter day doppelganger (Jawohl! - AF), Kevin Spacey, in “Beyond The Sea,” sparks a weird bluish flame that suggests a wax Yule log posing as wood in the season’s teeming fireplace of movie biographies.” An Even Evaluation of the Broadway Show “Good Vibrations” Ben Brantley in the 2/3/05 NY Times: “Even those who believe everything on this planet is here for a purpose may at first have trouble justifying the existence of ‘Good Vibrations,’ the singing headache that opened last night at the Eugene O’Neill Theater. But audience members strong enough to sit through this rickety jukebox of a show, which manages to purge all the catchiness from the surpassingly catchy hits of the Beach Boys, will discover that the production does have a reason to be, and a noble one: ‘Good Vibrations’ sacrifices itself, night after night and with considerable anguish, to make all other musicals on Broadway look good.” - 57 - - - - E - A - - - I - - O - - Last ish I asked what fit into these spaces, from the crossword clue “1959 hit that asks Why?” Turns out it was “A Teenager in Love.” Winners (of what Edwin Starr said war was good for) were 3 gals: -- Maxi Mouse -- Sue from Michigan -- Jennie Angel from Bakersfield (whose dad, memorably, refers to Our Town as Smell-A) and a guy at the L.A. Times In the Mailbag: ------------------------------ From Bob Paton, Peoria: Your column on cliches was spot-on! (oops) I had a list going a few years back concerning cliches in rock journalism. May I? guitar pyrotechnics critical hosannas wunderkind (ugh) pop sensibility McCartneyesque/Beatlesque stripped-down a batch of songs (always a batch? Like a pride of lions?) One last thing: how could you forget the grandaddy of all "song title" songs, "Follow the Rock" by the Bay Bops? The Turtles/Crossfires put that on their fantastic Rhino LP and its entire lyrics are song titles strung together. I found the Bay Bops version a few years back; it's on Coral I believe. ------------------------------------------ From Brent Walker, of Del Noah & The Mt. Ararats: I hope you're just overlooking the trumpet solo in Dick Dale & the Del-Tones "Miserlou," and aren't excluding it from the category of rockin'. I know "Miserlou" has been overexposed since PULP FICTION to the point where people actually thought it was a hit the first time anywhere outside of Los Angeles (which of course it wasn't, nor were any Dick Dale songs in terms of national top 40 charting). Still a rockin' trumpet solo to me, anyway. My favorite rockin' trumpet solo comes from 1948 though...too early to be "rockin'" under R&R Hall of Fame/rock critic conditions, but not to me. That solo is in a 78 I have by Big Joe Turner, a version of "Feelin' Happy" on Freedom. The trumpet player (whose name I know I once looked up, but have forgotten now) holds a single note for almost all of the solo, then lets loose with a few more notes at the end, but that one long trumpet blast is the most rockin' one note I've ever heard. It's my favorite Joe Turner song, but when they issued an LP of his Freedom sides in the 80's (one side Joe, one side a live Kay Starr performance with dirty lyrics) I saw that "Feelin' Happy" was on it and was looking forward to getting a clean copy on LP to replace my scratchy 78. Alas, they used a different take of "Feelin' Happy" that wasn't as great, and didn't have the brilliant trumpet solo! Argh. ------------------------------------ From Tom Wilt, former Angeleno, now of Eugene, Oregon, who attended the “Big TNT Show” in 1966: Raised in a conservative christian home, forced to take piano lessons for 2 years, I hated music till the Beatles came along. There was no television or rock n roll allowed in our home. My piano lessons consisted of Beethoven and Jesus Loves Me. When the Beatles came along, if one wanted to talk with the girls, you had to know about the Fab Four. At the age of 13, I discovered rock n roll. When my friend Dan Prothero showed me a picture of a concert he was going to, my eyes popped out of their sockets. This woman Tina Turner was so stunning and sexy. I had to go. But Dan saved the day, I could stay at his house. My parents would never know. His mom was part of the plot; bless her wicked heart. When the band took the stage, I heard a new sound. Not knowing what to make of it, I stared at the beautiful women, who were called the Ikettes. I drooled. After a few songs it was show time, and out came the woman of my dreams, Tina Turner. This was 1965, pre mini skirt days. She had a long red dress on, with a slit on one side that that went well up her leg. I sure don’t remember any of the songs, I remember what I thought was an amazing band, and I remembered the woman, Tina. The way she sang, the way she moved. I was hooked on older women, one in particular. About 25 feet away, I stared, I drooled, I stared and drooled some more. My young manhood was paying attention too. I was hooked on the music that some called satan's, that others would be convinced was part of a communist plot. If only I had been allowed to play “Lucille” or “Lewis’s Boogie” on the piano. Some 2000 live shows later, live music still moves my soul. In my dreams Tina still looks mighty fine, and yes that band was great

Other Fein Messes