Now Playing: Louisville Lodge Meeting - Louis Jordan

Another Fein Mess
AF Stone’s Monthly
April 2009

Tribute!

There was a tribute to Gold Star Recording Studio held March 11th at the Grammy Museum, downtown L.A. On hand were founders Dave Gold (the Gold) and Stan Ross (the Sta R). Also Perry Botkin Jr. and songwriter Dick Sherman. It was nearly a full house and didn’t last hardly long enough from 8:00 til 9:15. People were ecstatic to see, and afterward meet, the recording studio stalwarts, and Grammy officials hope to hold another forum with them, but this time with questions from the audience.

Guy Pohlman, son of late Wrecking Crew bassist Ray Pohlman, mentioned he recorded at Gold Star. “I hung around there in the 60s when I was a kid, and did some singing.“Do you know the ‘Snoopy Come Home’ movie? I did the singing for Charlie Brown.”

A week later I bought a rough copy of the “Snoopy Come Home” LP at a garage sale. I figured if Guy already had ten copies now he’d have eleven - but when I handed it to a friend of his he said Guy’d been looking for it for ten years!

Music

Oregon has hired 82-year-old Stan Freberg to update his mini-opera “Oregon, Oregon,” which he wrote for that state in 1960.

Oregon is the finest state in the union.

This is a sign that Freberg, hailed overseas as a comic genius, is apparently still recognized in America. He certainly is not recognized in his hometown, Los Angeles. He was born and reared in Pasadena, and in the 1950s began a run to the top of American record charts with parodies and original creations, climaxed by the 1962 historic satire album “Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America.”

KCET, the Los Angeles PBS station, turned down the idea of a Freberg documentary in 1997.

Looking over “Tip Of the Freberg,” the 1998 Rhino best-of comp, I remembered with pride my hand in its creation. While Dr. Demento did a bangup job of assembling four discs of 45s and album cuts, I, then living in Paris (4 month in 1997), wrote back in capital letters YOU MUST INCLUDE COMMERCIALS. So that got done.

I’ve done very few comps or liner notes. But on the other hand, I’m seen ‘in public’ (like on Facebook, only in print) on albums by Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Brown and Louis Prima. That ain’t bad.

Music Notes

At a dinner with Phil Spector, an old friend asked him about the arrangement of “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” on the Xmas album. The Jackson 5 and Springsteen both incorporate Phil’s version with the galloping drum-stop, and now nearly all rock versions use it. (You can’t copyright an arrangement. Just ask Nelson Riddle, or Sam Butera.) “But what’s the break based on?” asked the wizened old head. “I wanted to make it sound like Da Doo Ron Ron” Phil replied. The Spector jury went into deliberation the first of April ... Clay Eals has written “Steve Goodman: Facing the Music,” a wonderful, thorough biography. How thorough? He got Hilary Clinton, a classmate of Steve’s at Maine Township H.S., to speak about him. Goodman was a glorious writer and performer, and Eals has done him a matching tribute ... A friend works at a record-collector store. A man stuck his head in the door and said “Can I get the new Britney Spears CD here?” My friend told him no. “Then where should I go?” he asked. We were all stumped ... Springsteen sold his album exclusively at Wal-Mart. His organization has always maintained he’s for the working man, so his minions cannot NOT have known Wal-Mart’s institutional abuse of its employees. THEN he signs with a ticket agency that ‘accidentally’ sends first-day ticketbuyers to their premium markup department? ... At breakfast with the old studio guys I hear some interesting stories. Fred Darian, 83, produced “The In Crowd” and “Please Mr. Custer,” but also was a stentorian singer from the 1950s through the 60s; he entertained at hotels and nightclubs around the world. (He had two ‘recitation’ chart records in the early 1960s.) In 1951 when L.A. songwriter Wayne Shanklin gave him the song “Jezebel” he recorded it for Vita Records, but Shanklin kept pushing it to bigger acts, and when Frankie Laine heard Darian’s version he said “I’ll do it only if you can kill this version. This guy’s a great singer.” Words to that effect. So the Darian version was pulled, and in exchange he made the deal, Eddie Rabbitlike, to share in Shanklin’s income on that song ... (That isn’t exactly like Eddie Rabbit. Rabbit, like a lot of people, gave “Kentucky Rain” to Elvis rather than possibly having a hit with it himself, choosing the ‘sure thing’ instead of the opportunity to a hit himself with it. And he made it a few years later with other songs) ... Buried in the 4/2/09 Wall Street Journal story about songwriter (“It Was A Very Good Year”) Ervin Drake is that he wrote “Louisville Lodge Meeting” for Louis Jordan, which led to Lux writing the Cramps song “Most Exalted Potentate Of Love.” Shoulda been the hed ...

Modern Times

Many movies have been made about men confronting mechanization. The Chaplin one, the Jacques Tati’s 1. It’s funny - isn’t it?

Lord Buckley had a bit about how you once brought a list to the grocer and he got your stuff. Then came supermarkets that offered low prices. They had you do all their work, and once the old grocers were driven out they raised the prices. “Now YOU push those mother carts!” 2

Fresh & Easy is a British chain that compares itself to Trader Joe’s, but is more like a large 7-11. When I went to the one in Hollywood I felt like Tati. I carted some stuff and went to the checkout. “Uh oh, self service.“

Because I am old, or have sense, I HUGELY resent self-check lines at grocery stores and evil ugly Home Depot 3. But this once I acquiesced, having already invested 10 minutes walking around.

I punched a tv screen and was ‘told’ to swipe the item across the glass plate. I took a bag off the rack, put it on the left, swiped the item and put it in the bag. The invisible lady said “Place item in the bag rack.” What? I said, to no one. ‘She’ repeated it. The bag rack was a rack of flat bags. Would YOU put an item in a bag that is hanging on a rack? Queer people, Brits. A security guard came over and waved his ID over the screen. “It doesn’t recognize the left side” he said as if with logic. I moved the bag to the right and put it back on the rack. “You are doing something wrong stupid” she said, essentially. I slammed the bag down hard enough to decap the soup container and left.

Behind me, I’m sure, were complacent, obedient Now people shaking their heads about my unwillingness to learn the six or seven easy steps it took to shop there.

1 The French embrace artists. Tati was a Russian that the French took to.

2 Jim Dawson, with two books about farting under his belt (...) has just finished a new opus, the history of “motherfucker.”

3 They opened with great fanfare about full service - a customer-helper in every aisle, seven cash registers for prompt service. That lasted til they figured they could cut back on service. Now they have hardly any aisle help, one checkout line and seven self-service machines.

Music Talk

I had Gary Stewart, the former Rhino stalwart, as the last guest on my tv show. (Last meaning three shows - Steve Kalinich, Gary Stewart, and Anna Laube did shows and they never aired - yet.) Asking the standard question, what’s the first record you bought, he said the Credence album Green River seemed to be a good value: three hits on it AND the flipsides were usually good too. Interesting reasoning. But he also said he learned about country music from Elvis Costello, whose “Almost Blue” album carried a sticker “Warning: This Album Contains Country Music.”

Coming into that show I liked Gary Stewart more than I liked Elvis Costello, but now I like them equally. Elvis C as the gateway to people finding country music!When I had Geoff Muldaur on the show, and asked him how he was affected in 1962, when he was already a blues and folk connoisseur, by Peter Paul & Mary he said “Fah!” I argued that those records led to people looking deeper into those genres. “Harrumph” he said. But then I asked Deke Dickerson where he learned about old rock & roll and he said “Bill Haley singing Rock Around the Clock on Happy Days.”

That wasn’t even the original version! It was a stinky re-do. But it led kids who knew nothing into the wonderful world of old rock. So every crappy nostalgia band I see I cheer: it could be the launching pad for more young kids to get right with the old stuff.

Wonderful Town

Space is precious in the L.A. Times, but not so precious that they couldn’t squeeze into the April 3rd news hole a long article (with pic) about Britney Spears and fill one-third of thesole “World” news page with a story about a Korean actress’s suicide (“possible sex scandal”) ... and at 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 31, I found La Brea blocked at Fountain due to a traffic accident. That night I saw on the news that a young guy driving south turned west and struck a car heading east on Fountain and rammed that car into the curb killing two women. Nothing about this - not an everyday occurence - in the paper. Too much Britney news that day, or was he somebody’s son? (This just in: sleuth “Todd” found it on “L.A. Now,” the electronic L.A. Times. However, that report, from within hours of the accident, never was updated to say exactly what happened, names of victims, drivers, etc. The only advantage of online news is that it can be constantly added to as facts are revealed. Not on L.A. Now, however.

NY Times: Namedrops Keep Falling On My Head

3/8/09 book reviewer Laura Miller finds that an author’s character is “a bit like Philip Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman, a quasi-autobiographical alter ego who lets Kraft write about himself without sticking to the facts. ” WOW, she knows a SECOND author who does that! Also, when the author posits “high-concept” as highbrow, she repeats it twice, not aware it’s a tv term for extreme commonality ... Same ish, David Gates critiques a novel about the interior life of a Nazi complaining “We’ve heard this story before,” then observes that “its exhaustively researched historicity and documentarian realism clearly derive from ‘War and Peace.’ “ Like sectionmate Miller, he knows the OTHER novel that incorporates history! ... Douglas Martin’s 1/10/09 obit for William Zantzinger, villain of “Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll,” at first traces the incident that spawned Dylan’s song, then - everyone wants a soak in Dylan’s emanation - he ponders where the song was really written: “Some accounts say he wrote it at an all-night coffee shop on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, others that he wrote it at the singer Joan Baez’s house in Carmel, Calif. (This conjecture is for Dylan’s obit, not Zantzinger’s.) THEN he cites “literary critic” Christopher B. Rick’s 2004 (!!!) praise for “Mr. Dylan’s exact control of each word.” This is apparently the first time Martin has encountered this opinion. Take the rag (Rolling Stone) away from your face, Dougie and get the focus back on Hattie Carroll and her killer ... Likewise, Ben Ratliff, in the same ish, calls “self-defined socialist” (is that better or worse than generally-defined? - AF) Steve Earle’s performance at a chic wine bar in Gotham incongruous, then says “Strangest of all” Earle “did not comment” on the dissonance. Ratso means “I am a keen observer, I’m surprised Earle is not as smart as me.” Bend way over, Benji, and take a bow ...

Annie Watch

Ann Powers is tasked with putting on record every move Prince makes. What you and I see as publicity stunts - $3000 concert tickets, slumming in Las Vegas - she coats in brilliance. His latest appearance (L.A. Times 3-30-09) at the L.A. Live Theater opens with her notion of a universal experience - the uncertain date that is resolved by a sweet kiss 5 -- and proceeds with not namedrops but show-drops, i.e. “last year’s set at Coachella” or when she saw him in Phoenix, Burbank, Istanul, etc.

Mid- month she went to Austin for the biggest music festival in the world and reviewed two established bands, one of whose biography she revealed she’d written. Reviewing that act surely was at the insistence of the real editor: reviewing a friend is not ethical. And reviewing another wellknown act at this fest was inevitable, because she could nott praise any of the 200o new acts there because SXSW, itself, is no context. 6

5 That the evening “felt like a date with a special someone that wasn’t going quite as expected” was followed by the deadly “You know how such evenings can be.” Since we all experience the same lives she delineated our common experience: “Your beloved insists on making all the decisions; he (or she) directs the conversation toward unfamiliar topics (Her dream date is Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day” - AF): he makes you wait, but when he’s finally fully present (Brings his artificial leg? Finishes his bourbon? Gets a boner? - AF), announces he can’t stay too long.” To misquote the Shirelles, Annie, maybe it’s you.

6 I cringed at - and sympathized with - her nod to the rhythm section: “Bassist Sonny Thompson and drummer Michael Bland raised a powerful blues-rock ruckus.” Anyone who wasn’t there could have written that but that’s the problem, this dancing about architecture. She wanted to say something nice (if they’d backed Celine Dion, it would have been snotty), but what she said is as good as anyone could say. “The triple-fill followed by the soaring paradiddle was especially clever” is as good as “it went boom boom boom.”

Flummers

A gal wrote me on Facebook “I hope you’re not still mad at me.” Twenty years ago I was mad at her in behalf of my friend Jerry. They were married, and he came home and found her in the shower with a guy. “We weren’t doing anything” she said, ingeniously. He became morose. They split. But ten years later Jerry did something rotten to me! So do I stay mad at her?

I was at a party. A gal was saying something stupid and obnoxious and I said something to that effect. Her husband came to her defense, saying “You can’t talk to her like that.” But now they’re divorced and he hates her. Is he still mad at me for calling her on her crap?

Twenty years ago you stole a record from me. Then my house burned down and I lost all my records. When I went to your house I found my stolen record and retrieved it with anger. But I’m glad you stole it because now I have it!

There’s probably a word for this.

Auntie Me

I’m this anti-anti guy.

Does everyone hate Yanni, or just the scribes. ‘Smart’ people like him elst why do they run him on Public commie tv? I am watching him now bec all the crits dislike him. It’s Yanntertainment with a Latin feel. He’s got regular hair, no mustache and a black t-shirt. It’s simple stuff elaborately staged, that would draw cheers at a Roman amphitheater. I don’t like it much, but I am not fleeing the room like I do from Bouncy and most singers today.

Last week PBS ran a John Denver special. He was sincere, sweet and talented. And if you really like him, he was sensational! (I sure like “Thank God I’m A Country Boy.”) What about Kenny G? I have no interest in piccolo players or whatever he does, but the music is not, again, the poison I hear on the radio. Bill Clinton liked him.

My friend Duggles observed that I am aping Woody Allen. In Annie Hall, she superficially inveighs about “overrated” people and he says “What are you talking about? I like every person you mentioned.” She was doing her Ann Powers bit, kicking the uncool.

I’m so anti-anti that I don’t know for sure what’s wrong with Scientology. Not its excesses and badnesses, but what keeps all those people together? Evil? If you’re lost and they offer a road to salvation, Take it. I am talking about the good it does. There must be some.

Next week: Paul McCartney’s albums and SUV’s are great!

NY, New Yawk!

Magma craters below Yellowstone extend 400 miles down, according to the National Geographic TV documentary, “twice the distance between New York and Washington DC.” Wouldn’t it have been easier to say “As far as L.A. to Phoenix?” (You wouldn’t have to “do the math”?)

Old Joker

I told someone that I saw people roasting a camel on a tv show.

“That’s funny,” he said. “Luckies are toasted.” 7

7 Fifty years ago the Lucky Strike cigarette slogan, Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco, was so well known it was abbreviated on the bottom of the pack as LSMFT. Which led inevitably to other creations including “Lord Save Me From Truman” and “Let’s Screw My Finger’s Tired.”

I WILL Get Fooled Again

At Trader Joe’s, and other places, they sell ‘vegetable chips” that are colored to suggest tomatoes, bell peppers, etc. “Finally, a relief from potato chips!” you would think.

Then you read the ingredients: Potato, then flavoring and coloring.
Potato is a vegetable so they’re ... not ... lying ... exactly...

Ha!

At a record store I saw an odd Who album with a cover done in grey technographics and no group picture.

But it was for a group called OHM. They’d filed it upside down.

- 57 -

Mark On The Move’s A List

Austin

This year my theme for SXSW was No Credentials, No Wristband, No Problem – I paid $20 each to get into two evening shows, and took advantage of numerous free daytime events (sponsored by various magazines I don’t read, record labels, clubs and record stores I like, and the City of Austin itself) and managed to see about twenty acts on the cheap. I witnessed two bands called The Heartless Bastards, a psychedelic Austin 4-piece with a dynamite female singer at Waterloo Records, and the group of the same name – they had it first -- that serves as James McMurtry’s backup band, at The Continental Club’s annual Mojo Madness Saturday afternoon event. McMurtry I’ve seen every SXSW for the last few years and he was great again, but somehow I managed to avoid seeing the equally ubiquitous Bill Kirchen this year, although I was pleased to catch his compadre flash guitarist Redd Volkaart leading no fewer than three different aggregations at Threadgill’s, so I got my guitar heroics in anyhow.

Most outstanding performance was by Dan Auerbach (of The Black Keys) leading a powerfully rockin’ new band at The Parish (composed of Austin band Hacienda and a borrowed percussionist from My Morning Jacket). After a massively inventive set of new songs, Dan ripped into The Animals’ “Inside Looking Out” like he wrote it. I also dug porterdavis (all lower case), a local blues band (drums, guitar, harmonica) that reminded me of the late lamented Treat Her Right, the return of punk-cowboys The Meat Puppets at Stubb’s, and Jon Dee Graham putting his heart on his sleeve at Mojo Madness and proving he‘s the equal of John Prine, Joe Ely or Guy Clark when he doesn’t let his substance abuse get in the way. I also got to see Tim Easton three times, including a full-band set at the New West Thursday afternoon party doing some good new alt-country songs (his related artwork was on display at Yard Dog gallery as well), a freebie show that also featured the ex-Jayhawks-enemies Gary Louris & Mark Olson doing folky material from their new make-up-let’s-be-friends CD Ready For The Flood.

Arizona

As a kid I’d seen Arizona’s Monument Valley in westerns and always wanted to go there, preferably on horseback. (I wore cap pistols in a holster and loved Roy Rogers and Spin & Marty.) I finally got there in March, but in luxury, staying at the newly-opened hotel The View, nestled in a gorgeous setting on Navajo land with a panoramic view of several of the largest buttes. (From my balcony I could see red sandstone pair called “the mittens” -- they look like a left and right mitten and stand about a thousand feet tall.) The well-maintained several-mile dirt road on the valley floor allows visitors to get up close to dozens of spectacular rock formations. I was especially awed by The Three Sisters, carved from wind and water, standing in a row like totem poles. The hotel will be booked solid once word gets around, so act now if you want to get a room. (The Navajo Reservation adheres to Daylight Savings Time but the rest of Arizona doesn’t, so it moves between Pacific and Mountain Time during the year.)

Not too far away is Canyon de Chelly (pronounced d’Shay) National Monument, one of several areas (including Mesa Verde) where you can see the cave dwellings of the Anasazi people (Navajo for “the ancient ones”) who lived there for thousands of years before moving south around the year 1350. They (and the Hopi, Pueblo and Navajo who followed them) left many ruins in this 26-mile-long canyon and the adjoining 25-mile-long Canyon del Muerto, along with cave paintings and petroglyphs (carvings in the sandstone walls). They carved foot- and hand-holds into the rock to climb up to their cliff dwellings, and designed separate storage and ceremonial sites along with their sleeping quarters.

You need to hire an authorized Navajo guide to enter the canyon floor, and the 3-hour jeep ride – much of it through a rushing creek – makes it possible to get out and see the caves and paintings. I also took a drive around the canyon rim, which has overlooks that allow you to peer down at 1,000-foot sheer walls. There are about 50 Navajo families farming and raising animals in the canyon, and in March they had just started to come down from the town of Chinle for spring planting. My guide, Don, was raised in the canyon and had his own names for many of the rock formations, lore from his grandmother, and at one point we stopped on the land of one of his aunts to check out her weavings, displayed in a traditional round Hogan.

Somewhere on this trip, I was expecting to see Richard Dreyfus’ butte from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but it’s in Montana or North Dakota or somewhere. And the magnificient arches seen in films like Rainbow Bridge are also in a national park in Utah. I guess I’ll have to go back. Come to think of it, I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon!


-- Mark Leviton

(Mark’s sixties-themed radio show Pet Sounds can be heard alternate Mondays 10pm-Midnight PST on KVMR-FM 89.5 in the Sacramento area and streaming at www.kvmr.org )

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