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Another Fein Mess
A.F. Stone’s Monthly
October 2009

Crazy Place

I am surprised at The History Channel. On a 9/29 show about the San Andreas fault they showed footage we all know, by now, from the San Francisco quake and identified it as Los Angeles.

The same night beach towns here got a Tsunami warning because of a quake in Samoa.

And one afternoon in the mid-September I felt a pair of shocks that had neighbors out in the street. It was the space shuttle cracking the sound barrier landing at Edwards Air Force Base north of here.

This town rocks!

Over There

A friend got a Facebook message from Todd Everett asking him to wire him $50 in London, Todd having been held up at gunpoint there. He did not send it, but I wrote Todd asking what had happened. “Nothing. Wasn’t in London. Several people got that message.”

Someone opens a Facebook account with your same name, looks over your ‘friend’ list, and hits them for fifty bucks. Good scam - if they asked for $25,000 you wouldn’t do it (would you?), but fifty is reasonable to help a friend, and those fifties add up.

TV Thoughts

* In 1968 there Joey Bishop quit his tv show while it was on the air, as Regis Philbin stood by. What struck me recently was that though that might have been reported in a newspaper, it would not have made the local or network tv news. As recently as 40 years ago tv news was run by a news department.

* My friend’s kid, 28, said “I can’t believe my generation is taking over. Conan is running the Tonight Show now.”

I thought but didn’t say “Are you sure you’re happy about it?” (I don’t know him well enough to ‘go deep.’) When Johnny Carson left the Tonight Show I felt that we were losing a connection with history. Carson’s cornball comedy included racy asides, possibly from burlesque shows of the past. Carson was rooted in old-time stuff that came later than the vaudeville that clung to Milton Berle or George Burns but in its wake. I liked his part in the continuum. He connected to their generation, not to mine. Which was fine.

When Leno and Letterman took the reins I shuddered because not much noteworthy had emerged from my generation.1 But when Leno or Letterman referred to Groucho or Jack Benny in a 50s tv context, it connected the viewer, tenuously, to radio and the 1930s.

Still I harbor some hope because Conan looks like Red Skelton. Maybe it’s intentional.

1 I wasn’t a young grouch during the 60s, but I wasn’t too happy either: I stood to the side to see how things played out. My hair grew long but no hippie 2 ethic took deep root in me. Certainly the great rock & roll we received from giants of the late 50s had turned to shit, mutating into half-hour guitar solos and visual distractions. Behavior turned chaotic and easy rule-flouting took hold. When I see film of kids flipping the V peace sign I think of reports today that 100,000 hipsters did this or that. Black has been in for twenty years, thirty for Mohawks and piercings. As hip as hippies’ uniform uniqueness.

2 It’s not 50/50 but still plenty common to see “hippy” interchanged, which is funny in a clothing store bec it means, in the case of slacks,
clothes for people with large hips.

Starin’ at a screen

I knew the 60s were historical: OK the 70s too. Now I realize the 80s are ancient, not because my daughter thinks they’re pre-historic but because looking at “Die Hard” from 1988 I wondered of the trapped people “Why doesn’t someone use their cell phone?” ...

Watching “Becket” 3 on my friend’s Blue-ray, he raved “Look how blue the eyes are.” Some times. At others the colorizer got carried away and made the whites of the eye blue, and sometimes O’Toole’s peepers went to grey-blue. But when Burton and Gielgud were talking I heard a rustling noise and said “What was that?” It was the rustling of their costumes. Man, what we’ve been missing!

Keith Olbermann’s music guy is pretty diabolical. When KO said “What sort of head would think of something like that?” ‘Ooh My Head’ by Ritchie Valens was slipped in. Same show a few days later, he talked about something being an odd notion and the verse of ‘Rock the Boat’ came in with “I’d like to know where/you got the notion.” Someone’s doing my act.

In the Encore airing of the 1979 movie “Perfect Couple,” I found to my shock that I liked the music of Ted Neely’s grievously-dressed ad hoc band Takin’ It To The Streets. But resonating more loudly was the mention of the video-dating service Great Expectations. You would make a tape and then others would view it and make a tape back for you to consider. I knew a girl who shouldn’t have needed it who paid $1500 (!!!!) to join but just got all sorts of misfits, exacerbating her despair from a relationship with an uncommittal guy with my name.

3 My mistake. I thought we were gonna watch “Becker,” the Ted Danson show.

Pod ‘n Me (If I’m Sentimental)

My friends at Apple (not really my friends!) stopped making the 80G iPod “classic” (class of 2007, way back) which cost $160, so now that it broke I’m supposed to buy a 120G 4 for $240 or buy a pocket-pal GPS/ email/ alarm clock/ television/ easel/ camera/ telephone/ hotplate/ Rubix cube/ altimeter/ thermometer/ pedometer/ barometer iPhone with a 10G music base.

No thanks! I’ve had it! This is a music playback system no different from a PC-based one.

I’m tired of being pushed around by my “con”-freres. I’ll go MP3.

4 The 80G still sells for $160 - new or used! - on eBay.

Lost, Stolen or Strayed

Saw the Doors documentary ‘When You’re Strange” and it opened my eyes. All old footage, no prunefaced people reminiscing, it gave me the portrait of Jim Morrison I’ve always lacked because I paid him no mind because I liked rock & roll and they were doing theater.

The film’s opening was startling, Jim, seen from the passenger’s seat, driving a car while the radio (subsequently dubbed) played. Half our audience thought it was a lookalike, otherwise how could we be getting so realistic and lifelike view of him seeming so uninvolved, not posing or acting out? It was chilling, someone so long dead so alive. I came away with the impression of a scamp. All the dramatics were followed by a grin, in this 90 minutes of up-close footage. A lovable scamp, if you overlook the latter part where drink takes hold of him. I liked the guy for the first time.

Enough about me. Wait, there’s more. Seeing his companion Pamela (who followed him in death later in the 70s) jarred loose a memory of spending a couple of hours in her company when I first got to L.A.
I was working for a showbiz trade paper so was embraced by publicists (whose love faded, with exception, when I lost my job). This time, July, 1973, I was invited over to Chuck Berry’s pool by a friend of his who was watching his house. There I met a record company publicist, with whom my friend was sharing cocaine on the diving board. Like Woody Allen in ‘Manhattan’ I said ”Thanks, I’ve already had enough today” (it was noon), and simply sat and talked.

After a while Pamela came and joined us. She never started a sentence without “Jim used to say” and seemed very spaced out. At the afternoon’s end I drove her to her apartment on Detroit Street, near 3rd & La Brea, and that was that.

Sounds in my Head

I heard Conway Twitty doing “It’s Only Make Believe” in genuine 1958 MGM Records stereo on my headset listening-device and thought I was goin’ OUT of my head from all the confusion. What was that harmony singer doing over to the right and behind me? The musicians were strewn around my head room - I thought they were supposed to be playing together! Seriously, this was very annoying, the same as I felt listening to James Ray doing “If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody” - the damn harmony singer was nowhere NEAR Ray. Why? It’s not 1955. We’re not listening to ping-pong balls go back and forth or trains roar by. Stereo was just a goof unrelated to music. (Come to think of it, stereo literally disintegrates music!) A great philosopher once said “Back to Mono,” but he was crucified.

Worship

I can’t say anything about U2 music because I can’t make it out. One thing, they are venerated by crits who worship them like Sting, Elvis Costello, X and the other chosen not-so-few. But when I see the guy open his arms like a savior (not a bad thing - the people he saves need it!), I think of Aimee Semple McPherson.

Wee Bit o Politics

Jimmy Carter misspoke about Obama opposition, saying racism was a part of it. Not specific enough. You can oppose him without being racist; but racists are among the opponents, same as communists prefer Democrats. The way Carter said it, all Obama opposition is racist to some degree. Very inelegant.

But I salute Keith Olbermann. Citing inelegant Rush Limbaugh’s putrid, even for him, characterization of Jimmy Carter as the nation’s “hemorrhoid,” Olbermann said “Well, it takes an A-hole to know that!”

Odd Times

A program on the History Channel said that during an old plague in England, people turned to witches and soothsayers.
But now that the History Channel is filled with the DaVinci Code, how the Masons 5run the world, Nostradamus, haunted houses, psychics, assassination fables and every day in Hitler’s life they engage in the spurious activities they once exposed. So maybe the plague’s a-comin’.

5 Mason Williams is a great musician, though he doesn’t run the world. There’s another guy with that same name still at Rhino Records - he’s one-fourth of their staff now, I believe. (See next.)

Rhino’s Last Stand

Rhino’s Sept 22 party for the new CD box set “L.A. Nuggets,” was a terrific launch/swan-song. Performing as part of the sendoff at Amoeba Records in Hollywood were Keith Allison (with harmonies by songwriter Bobby Hart), P.F. Sloan, Jackie DeShannon, Danny Hutton 6, the Peanut Butter Conspiracy 7, and the Standells. A&R chief Andrew Sandoval had a swell time hosting the show and playing and singing. The place was packed, and among L.A. music figures roaming the crowd were Mickey Dolenz and Michael Lloyd.

The coup de gras pas came two days later - Warner Bros Music dismantled the Rhino Records division, firing nearly everyone.

6 The teenage girl announcing the upcoming show pronounced it “hooton” which was really a hoot.

7 In 2005 I had PBC bassist/singer John Merrill on my show. A couple weeks later I was invited by friends to a party held at the home of people I didn’t know in Laurel Canyon and knocked on the door of their quiet house at 7 p.m. “Party?” I inquired. “It ended two hours ago” the guy said, “but come on in anyway.” So I sat around for an hour with -- PBC guitarist Lance Fent and his wife!

PHOTOS FROM AMOEBA SEPT 22nd


Keith Allison, w/Bobby Hart in red shirt.


P.F. Sloan singing “Halloween Mary”


Jackie DeShannon doing “Splendor In The Grass” backed up by the Wondermints.


Danny Hutton doing “Roses & Rainbows”

405
The Peanut Butter Conspiracy

410
Standells doing “Riot On Sunset Strip”


Kim Fowley flanked by the Sponge Bob Twins, Tom Kenny and Andy Paley. Comedian Fred Stoller, otherwise engaged, at left.


Knack lead singer John Chain. (The 1966 Knack! On Capitol!) Antiquities dealer Eric Caidin rummages through records at right.

Bad Bill

In her glowing sonicboomers.com review of the new Swamp Dogg album (“Give 'Em As Little As You Can....As Often As You Have To”), Jaan Uhelszki cites “infamous” record producer Billy Sherrill. I don’t follow Nashville, but what did Sherrill do? Kill children? Betray the United States? Infamy is shameful or disgraceful conduct on an enormous scale. Shame on Sherrill, absent the facts, for whatever scurrilous, egregious act Uhelszki imputes.

L.A. Times Wanderin’

On Sept 23 there was a COLUMN ONE (the prestige space) story about a clerk in Washington state who recognized her identity-thief when she appeared at her cash register. Great coincidence.

But the face-off was long over, the sentencing soon due. Why did the Times send a rep there? I’m sure the Seattle paper covered it thoroughly. Cheaper than paying for a pickup? What possibly could our gal get there that theirs didn’t? Instead of “It was like two bullets meeting mid air” did we get “It was a one-in-a-million chance”?

I’m not knocking the reporter, but what is the point? I see it frequently - shoot-out at a Kansas courthouse, our reporter rushes there to get quotes from people not yet quoted and probably culls the rest from local reports. Why must the L.A. Times mark stories like a fire hydrant with hit-and-miss ‘national coverage’?

The Goofiness in the Details

Journalism classes teach you to include details in reports.
Or is it novel-writing classes?

- Re the 9/11 story about bank employee who threw parties at a foreclosed Malibu home, Scott Reckard and David Sarno not only tell us that the home’s big glass windows look out on the ocean - dog bites man! - 8 but that a side wall is “mostly beige tile and metal.” I kept thinking about Ben Braddock in “The Graduate” muttering senselessly “So Elaine got started in the back seat of a Ford.”

- In the 9/1 story about Garrido, the creep who kidnapped the girl, five reporters found a woman who patronized his shop: “His prices were better than chain stores, she said, he had a knack for personalizing work, and he often threw in free extras, like notepads.” (Syntax fractured in original.) No stone left unturned!!!

8 Bolstered with the de rigueur info that it’s near homes of “actor (sic) Tom Hanks, former Univision Chairman (Times cap) A. Jerrold Perenchio, and high-profile investment banker Michael E. Tennenbaum.” If the last two chumps need such long ID’s why mention them? Like Stuart Pfeifer’s 9-23 article about people who were swindled citing “among them Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth, who wrote ‘The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button,’ and Mark Peel, executive chef and part owner of Campanile restaurant.” If no celebrities were named, would the L.A. Times run the story?

Jillin’

Sept 27th Jill Sobule did a ‘house’ concert in the back yard of Toluca Lake resident and fan Sherry Barnett. Plenty much fun was had. The shindig was promoted by her close friend and fan Paul Surratt, who runs Research Video in North Hollywood, supplying archive video clips to film and tv outlets. He also played in the Shilohs with Gram Parsons in the early 1960s.

The hourlong set held the delighted attendees in thrall. And for a backyard concert, the Music Trax sound system was phenomenal - as perfect as the music.

PHOTOS


Paul Surratt with on-site advertising.


Jill fans Jane Lynch and Todd Everett

What’s It All About, Annie?

Ann Powers, without a local street beat anymore, spins webs of floss in her old Kentucky, er, Alabama home. Her theses contain enemies and commands. The enemies are straw dogs who disagree with her theories, and the commands - well, they come quick.

Take the 9/17/09 L.A. times piece about Susan Boyle. Did she miss Boyle’s emergence last April 11th, or is it simply time she explain this woman, whose world fame has thus far eluded her appraisal?

The subhed sets the tone with “It’s time to stop considering her a sideshow and begin appreciating her for her exacting singing.” Yes! You are all fools! You have been watching the wrong movie, hearing the wrong singing! If only she’d told us sooner.

She avers Boyle is not the first gal singer to “defy” beauty standards.

Chew on that for a minute. Unglamorous women DARE to sing. They’re not just exercising god-given talent, they’re poking a thumb in the disapproving eyes of beauty-bigots.

This is a narrow post-MTV, post-video perspective. In the past, women were heard singing on black discs but not often seen - or were Kate Smith or Fanny Brice purposely hidden from view? A couple have surmounted the public gaze, she says - Ethel Merman and Janis Joplin. Well Ethel was no Dodie Stevens, but she was an interesting looking young gal. (Perhaps Powers confused her with Ernest Borgnine, whom she married.) We know Janis was not a conventional knockout, but she looked great during the “Pearl” period. Powers then posits another sisty ugler, an ‘American Idol’ player, and that wraps up her summary of butt-faced distaff singers of the past 110 years.

Then there’s the enemies. “To argue against her rise” is wrong, she raves, and never was a dog more straw-built. Who knocks Susan Boyle? It’s time to straighten your head, simpleton reader: “... let’s not fool ourselves” she thunders - Boyle sings good.

Then we get into that which marks all Powers pieces, the all-encompassing confusorama 9: “The affect of sincerity, taken on by spaghetti tenors, crooners, and balladeers since the days of Enrico Caruso, has nothing to do with genuine feeling, though Boyle certainly does seem to have access to plenty of that.”

‘Affect’ as a noun is tricky: I think she thinks it’s the root of affectation, an attitude or impersonation of a feeling. Judging the sincerity of a singer was long the wacky province of Ann’s staffed predecessor, the former music editor. She, like he, does not know that performers call their show an ‘act,’ which means they simulate emotions they actually feel, perhaps often feel, but don’t necessarily feel at the precise moment they’re summoned. THAT is their art.

And what of the notion that singers since Caruso, and not a moment before (some of them Italians, as ‘spaghetti tenors’ so weirdly offensively conveys), have feigned emotions as if it’s a crime. That Boyle has “access to plenty of that” is clumsy - Boyle accesses ... professionalism? Reality? Oh, who knows.

Another revelation: “In truth (finally, the truth! from the sage!) pop spent the last century developing a whole range of voices more individualistic and challenging than Boyle’s,” meaning that like the gals who thought they were just singing but were actually defying visual convention, “pop” has progressed, matured, developed distinct singers such as ... Walter Huston? Frankie Valli? Cyndi Lauper? - no, Shakira, Rascal Flats’ lead singer, and the “diva” Leona Lewis.

The final finger-wag ends the penultimate graph: “We should stop being startled by her performances and respect her for her qualities.”

You got that, dummies!!!!

9 Comes to mind Steve Erickson in the Sept. Los Angeles mag: “Two different audiences for the Beatles exist” bla blab bla. What about the Beatles provokes arbitrary divisions?

Loco Baseball 10

During a Dodger game 9/24, they decided to interview Smithsonian honoree Tommy Lasorda. We saw him splayed on a chair between two announcers while the Dodgers were at bat BEHIND THEM and asked “Did you ever imagine back in 1947 that your portrait would hang in the Smithsonian?” A whole inning. There was a pinch hitter, but I never got his name.

The interview could have happened after the game.
Or in place of a commercial. For the fans. Ha ha.

10 Why isn’t Eddie Lawrence in the R&R Hall of Fame? And in the Smithsonian? And Universal, where is the Eddie Lawrence box set?

But there is hope for the future:



MORE PHOTOS


Skip Heller performs at Arnie’s in Tujunga Sept 17 with bassist Mark Pocket Goldberg and keyboardist Marty Axelrod.


Frank Sprague and Pete Curry (Los Straitjackets) at Pete’s recording studio in Santa Monica, Sept 23.


Dave Gold, co-owner of Gold Star recording studios, being interviewed at Fromin’s Deli, Tarzana by Alex Jordanov for a french Phil Spector documentary 9-29-09. Old-time record industry people gather at Fromin’s at 9 on Tuesday mornings.


Stan Ross, Gold Star co-owner, being interviewed at his home in Toluca Lake, 9-29-09.

Low-Tech Me

I’ve got a pile of dvd’s, but it’s hard to pick one up. I am attached to prehistoric VHS technology, in memory if not in reach. You put the cassette in. It spooled. Maybe you had to fast-forward past the previews, but it was tactile. Once seated, it ran.

The dvd drops in and spins a hidden web, then presents a screen of choices that requires concentration and patience. Nothing happens fast. And to skip ahead or back - well, who wants inaccurate digital jerks that lurch and surge? Who DIDN’T like smoothly sliding tape with its constant images?

Local PR News

* The 9-26 front page Business Section article trumpeted the turnaround of a posh Malibu eatery. Sales hav sunk so the owner brushed up the menu and hired a party-thrower.

“Restaurant plans to lure customers back” is the story of most restaurants and businesses. Why did this attempt make the paper?

It’s owned by former L.A. mayor Richard Riordan. Other surfside businesses north and south of his are surely in the same boat, but what pull do their owners have with the L.A. Times?

* Late in the month Keith Floyd, whose delightful BBC show Floyd On Food ran here in the 90s, got a passing mention in the Obits. But a half- page obit space was reserved for The News-Writers Friend, a well-connected, even in death, publicist. I say it again, this is like the Congressional Record honoring a lobbyist.

How Low Can You Go

I realize that newspapers want younger readers, but a stoop is where a newspaper is thrown, not a concession. In the 9/23 L.A. Times Chris Lee writes a creepy paean to Megan Fox, a gal who appears in scanty clothing. Lee, born the day before today , is flabbergasted at her act. The subhed (not written by Lee), plants on her the thorny crown of “the Pamela Lee of her generation.”

Lee, agog at this rarest of all things, a movie sexpot, writes “With her mane of black hair, taut physique, eight tattoos” “and bedroom eyes” “she projects an unapologetic sultriness whether she’s wearing a bikini in GQ or bending over a ‘76 Camaro in a tiny blouse.”

No one else looks good in a bikini? She’ll bend over a ‘76 Camaro but not a ‘75? Rear view or front? Probably rear, if all she wears is a blouse. Unapologetic? Maybe she should apologize for her obviousness. Lee too - this is tripe, the writing offal.

L.A. Times Vegas Beat

* Ashley Powers, 9-19, writing about “anything goes” Vegas sites, oozes that “Out on the cutting edge of trendy are clubs such as the bronze-walled XS, the centerpiece of casino magnate Steve Wynn.”

A less-dazzled writer would use ‘owner,’ and what cutting-edge means in this context is anyone’s guess: goat sex? And does she mean to use trendy as a compliment? It means tawdry.

* Ashley strikes again, 9-27. This story, taking up 50% of the National news page, reveals that some Vegas restaurants have ... lavish restrooms. Can you believe it!!! Her astonishment is a reflection of the target readership, people who know nuthin’, made clear by the story’s inclusion of a map showing where Vegas is. Her next scoop - gambling is legal there!

I Can Almost See Gotham From Here: L.A. Times Eastern View

9-19 Mark Swed is in NY questioning whether a conductor is ‘flashy’ enough for the NY Philharmonic. Then how about Freddy Mercury? Oh, he’s dead. Or did he mean fleshy, like the guy’s too thin. Who cares? Who wants to know this? Anyone going to NY soon? Do people there get dual paper delivery like here? Maybe, but one of them isn’t the L.A. Times.

9-21 The razor blades in my house were hidden after my reader pre-digested the morning paper. In it, Evelyn McDonnell’s book review opens with “If you’ve lived in New York some time during the last three decades, you might have seen David Byrne on his bike.” Thirty years is a long time, reader - don’t tell me you haven’t lived in NY during that time! What kind of L.A Times reader ARE YOU?

Defining Movement

* Prior to its diminishment over the past 20 years, the term diva was applied to a once-in-a-lifetime opera singer of incomparable majesty. Some were temperamental or had difficult lives. But the voice was it: Barbra Streisand may, or not, have been called one, but wasn’t because when she emerged there already was Maria Callas.

Today it is anyone who can hum a tune. Reviewers like to bestow the title because it makes them feel important. The term also trickled down (down from critics - can you imagine?) to merchandisers, whose nadir was reached a few years ago when a “diva” package included hoarse whisperer Astrud Gilberto.

Jon Pareles, in the 8-31 NY Times, deems Whitney Houston one, and gives us instructions: “Without adversity, a diva is just a singer. Without the back story” and there I stopped, back story a word-complicator embraced by trend-followers (trendanistas? trendsters?) but not tolerated by moi (heh).

TV Tee-Hees

Cialis uses a Muzak version of “Be My Baby” 11 for a boner-pill ad, to accompany a rod-wielding geezer shooting a white streak into a putting hole. Most of these ads fall short of subtle, but this ...

Reminds me of an old tale that may never have happened. When Bob Hope asked a golfer what he did for good luck the night before a game he said “My wife kisses my balls.” Hope responded “I’ll bet that straightens out your putts.”

11 The best rock music ‘scoring’ in a tv show came in the episode of “Moonlighting” when Maddie and David fight like cats and dogs - then suddenly embrace to the opening drumbeats of the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby.” The surprise - on two fronts - was an earthquake of joy.

- 57 -

Mark On The Move

Special Edition: My Show Business Career (Part Two)

I started my freshman year at UCLA in early September 1970, and during the first week I responded to an ad in the UCLA Daily Bruin looking for writers for the entertainment section of the paper. I’d already been published in Rolling Stone, Fusion and lots of other places while still in high school, so I figured I’d be pretty hot shit to them. The first person I met there was Jim Bickhart, who had graduated but still hung around as editor. He’d been writing for some of the same publications, had more impressive credentials than me, and grilled me on my tastes in music. I made the cut, but felt taken down a peg.

I met some of the other Daily Bruin music writers, past and present, including Richard Cromelin, Melissa Mills and Harold Bronson, all of whom were at least as obsessive about music as I was, but could express themselves better. Harold had already recorded with his ad-hoc band Mogen David & His Winos (which at one time included Bickhart and Jonathan Kellerman, who after college became a psychologist and then one of the best-selling novelists in the world). They’d rehearse after hours in the Daily Bruin offices, and it wasn’t long before I got pulled into their orbit and started writing songs with Harold, who aspired to sing like a combination of Ray Davies, Mick Jagger and Roger Daltrey (and who didn’t?). My rudimentary rhythm guitar skills complemented his “mod” approach, and sounded suitably grungy beside the lead guitar of Paul Rappaport, who was then the campus rep for Columbia Records and went on to a long career with them after graduation. I acquired the nickname “Punk” based on my interest in groups like The Standells, The Troggs and The MC5, an enthusiasm Harold shared.

Listening to those early Leviton-Bronson songs now, I don’t think they are very good, but they did attract some interest from professional musicians (Cub Koda of Brownsville Station once considered recording our tune “Party Games,” one of a series of songs about how we thought girls were shallow and should sleep with guys like us more often). Harold would issue the occasional single, which he’d sell at the UCLA bookstore and any independent record stores that would take them on consignment, and in 1973 cobbled together an album’s worth of material Savage Young Winos (Kosher Records KOSR-001), including early recordings like the Winos version of “Nose Job” (the Mad Magazine novelty song) and some recent live material he’d recorded at one of our few real Winos gigs (at a private party). I was away at college in Birmingham, England when the album was being planned, so Harold invited me to record something and send it over to him to overdub. I wrote what I thought was a funny song about the Daily Bruin called “The Berkowitz Blues” (Stan Berkowitz was one of my editors) and recorded the basic tracks at the home of Dave Pegg of Fairport Convention, with whom I used to hang out. In L.A., Harold had Stan record an accompaniment on typewriter, which sounded great, and made it the last track on the album. The back cover had a photo of me (titled “Punk Abroad”) surrounded by adoring girls recruited from my dorm. Harold included lots of Live At Leeds-style memorabilia in the gatefold jacket (including a failed music theory test) and pressed about a thousand copies. I think he managed to sell most of them over the next few decades, while he was working at Richard Foos’ new Rhino Records store on Westwood Blvd., co-founding the record label of the same name, and becoming a media mogul.

Harold and I continued writing together when I moved to the college town of Claremont, past the outskirts of L.A., in 1974 (having acquired no real marketable skills at UCLA, at the suggestion of my fiancé Linda I convinced Richard to open a second Rhino Records store and let me run it). Our songwriting improved a lot. Under the name The Low Numbers (The Who’s original monicker was The High Numbers), with a whole new group of musical confederates, we released a punky single “Shok Treetments” b/w “Try It” in 1976. The original song on the A-side had spelling inspired by Slade, and the B-side was a Standells tune. My wife took the b&w pic-sleeve photo in which we tried to look hard and mostly failed.

By 1978 Harold had enough accumulated recordings to issue Twist Again With The Low Numbers as Rhino Records LP #4, and it contained seven of our songs (including “1977 Sunset Strip,” “Elementary Doctor Watson,” “Little Miss Quote” and “The Prom Bombed”) and versions of recent punk/new wave songs we admired (The Kursaal Flyers’ “Original Model,” Graham Parker’s “Hotel Chambermaid” and The Jam’s “In the City” among them). Harold also threw on a previous Winos single, “All The Wrong Girls Like Me” b/w “The Savage Surf” so the album would be long enough. As with Savage Young Winos I wasn’t in the front cover photo, so over the years I’ve been spared the adoring crowds fighting for my autograph.

Many years later Harold arranged for a Winos reunion and recording session, and filmed the whole thing. It was great fun. We recorded a song by an obscure Toronto band The Pursuit of Happiness called “I’m An Adult Now.” Reunited, we sounded just like we did in ’73, for better or worse. It was included as the last cut on Tales From The Rhino, a 1995 double-CD compilation of tracks spanning the entire history of the Rhino label.

I haven’t recorded anything since, and while I still have ideas for songs, in the past 15 years I’ve never finished one. My son Michael’s the musician in the family now.


-- Mark Leviton

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