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Another Fein Mess
AF Stone’s Monthly
July 2012

L.A. Notes

Mountain-rimmed L.A. is a notch in the coast with unique weather not shared by adjacent climes. 0

“June Gloom” prevails in this often foggy and rarely hot month, then in July summer comes and lasts, in fits and starts, 'til Halloween. A couple of my forty summers here never got hot, or just a week’s worth. As far as 100-plus days go, “but it’s dry air” doesn’t cut it. It’s damn hot.

But the air IS dry. You hang up a wet washcloth and in less than 2 hours it dries. Same for washed silverware, liquid left in cups, anything you spilled. There are few bugs: never saw a mosquito in 40 years. There are spiders and ants and flies, but insects don’t fly around you like in the midwest. The down side is there are no fireflies.

Please keep this under your hat.
It’s crowded enough here already.

0 Santa Monica, by the sea, is cooler and the San Fernando Valley to the north is hotter.

Music

I love the first Kiki Dee album on Rocket. Brits sometimes sneered because she was on tv there as a teen actor, but since I didn’t know that I simply swooned over her singing and Elton’s production. (It was great how steel guitars were used in early 70s rock albums.) But I put a Kiki song (“Super Cool”) on a tape for a touring rock guy and he responded by snorting “Kiki DEE”? By then Elton had passed the new-phenom stage and was being backbitten by crits, to whom my friend answered ... “Solitary Man” threw me in many ways. I thought “Part time thing, flavor ring” was some kind of candy. Also “That died too.” I thought it was ‘dat dye doo,’ like rama lama ding dong ... Back to Elton, he produced one side of the Long John Baldry album “Everything Stops For Tea” and Rod Stewart produced the other. It’s a wonderful album, a whole bunch of artists at their bursting best. (The Jubilee Cloud! Just like a Tennessee Day!) ... Then again, re Rod, I asked Ian McLagan who was playing on Rod’s version of “I Know I’m Losing You” and he said with malice “most of us.” He meant that Rod, who was concurrently lead singer of the Faces, used them also on his solo albums, which, Ian said, contained all the better songs. The Faces got the leftovers ... You can digitize 78s by playing them at 33 or 45 rpm. There is a program that will translate the speed to proper ... When the local fancy market put old standards on its PA, I overheard one young clerk moan “What IS this? It’s like Christmas music.” Now it supplies music by women singing at the upper limit of their voice and beyond. But I get exercise running out to the car to get my iPod.

‘Round Town

Those mighty mites the Hurricanes, Viva Cantina June 2

Jimmy Angel, now expanding his show to the Smoke House alternating Saturday nights, at Viva Cantina June 6th.

Troy Walker knocks em dead at Viva Cantina. June 6th

The Lucky Stars, Farmers Market June 2nd

‘Backstage’ with Lucky Star Dave Stuckey, Ashley Kingman from Big Sandy’s band, Charmin’ Allen Larman and Art Fein.

Jinx Jones from San Francisco sets feet tappin’ and jitterbuggin’ at Viva Cantina June 2nd.

Phil Alvin rehearses with club manager/band leader Cody Bryant and others before his appearance with
Exene at Viva Cantina June 3rd.

Chris Shiflett of the Foo Fighters leans into Marty Rifkin in the middle of The Dead Peasants set at the
Grand Ole Echo June 3rd. The band also played Ronnie Mack’s Barn Dance the next night.

The Honkys celebrate the release of their CD on Thom Yearsley’s new label at the Barn Dance.
The Orange County hillbillies were making their first LA appearance.

Johnny Whiteside and T. Tex Troester of the Groovy Rednecks make a Romeo sandwich around Jolie Blon at the Barn Dance.

Jesse Sykes sings slow stuff at Ranch & Roll’s 2nd anniversary party in Hollywood June 23rd.
Also on hand were Dave Alvin, Johnny Crawford, the Groovy Rednecks and other salutary figures.

Glen Campbell takes stage center at the Hollywood Bowl at his farewell concert June 24th. He was great and right on target throughout. One of the opening acts was a guy with a name like James James Morrison Morrison - Courtney Taylor Taylor - whose odd low Bill Medleylike versions of Monkees and Beach Boys songs often slid off actual notes. Lucinda Williams also tackled a song with an enormous range and the low notes were wobbly -- precise sound reproduction can be a cross to bear. Jackson Browne did a song and then everyone did “Viva Las Vegas.” Dawes was good, though I had seen them a week earlier at Central Park in NY so was already predisposed.

The Skip Heller Trio, all four of them, kicked off the weekly Thursday night revue at La Luz Gallery in Hollywood June 29th.

Pedals & Pistols, featuring Gene Vincent’s granddaughter Chantilly Lace (red shoes), shook ‘em up
June 29th at Viva Cantina. If they practice more they may really have something.

Time

Someone wrote that there was no “Swinging 60s” London, no Woodstock Nation, no Rockin’ 50s. They are simplifications based on images that survive. Most Londoners went about their business, most people at Woodstock dressed collegelike, and the 50s were rockin’ only where you could find it, at rock & roll dances that were photographed ... Jerry Moss was interviewed in the LAT for the 45th anniversary of the Monterey Pop Festival. He should be interviewed daily for his fine work, but 45th? Is that of some note?

Crooks R Kool

A film is based on “a time-traveling hit man.” What is so great about hired killers? And why does anyone care about “Whitey” Bulger or his wife? The guy is wanted for 19 murders. Fuck him, call him Shitty Bulger. And what about “hero” Rodney King? Holy smokes, the guy came out of a car swinging at cops and refused to stay still. Was he deaf? Simply crazy? Up on something other than PCP? He was a huge guy. If he’d been a big lumbering haystack white guy and kept defying the cops they’d have beaten him as well - they don’t cotton to resistance. Did their punishment seem overzealous for disrespecting their orders? You bet. They are unchallenged authority, they’re always right, and will back one another up to the point of perjury - unless someone on the lonely highway shoulder aims a camera at them from an apartment window, and what are the odds of that?... I didn’t get Obama criticizing the Supreme Court for giving corporations the right to influence elections. Some fat cats in the 1890’s pushed through the corporation-as-citizen law, so they’re citizens. Citizens have rights. It’s not the Supreme Court’s job to overturn a ridiculous law - that’s what we have Congress for. Now if we could only get enough money to pay them ... A shoe company made a pair with decorative leg-irons - and someone complained it was mocking slavery. Tell it to someone who was on a chain gang ... In the 50s and 60s everyone in America knew one characteristic about L.A - smog. Then the ‘bureaucrats’ forced private businesses to limit their air poison output and citizens to get catalytic converters on their cars. Now you can’t grip the air and make a ball of it. Damn tree-hugging environmentalists.

Life

The Secret Service guys hired prostitutes in South America. So? It’s legal there. If they gambled in Las Vegas, would they be prosecuted too? Their crime was skipping out on the bill, the fools ... An ad for Hyundai (?) says “Even Linda likes it,” and shows a citation “I love saving money on gas - Linda.” What kind of idiot writes this? ... I picked up the late-June LA Weekly and read an article/interview with Woody Allen that was perfectly reasonable. Where did the Weekly get Karina Longworth, an intelligent writer without ‘hipster’ dogma?

NYT

Jon Caramanica, 3-12, reviewing a chanteuse who was 15 when she started, tells us she’s “Still only 19” four years later. The mind reels ... Carol Vogel, 2-22, says ‘The Scream’ image is on “everything from mugs and t-shirts to inflatable dolls and iPad covers.” All that? What other things are in that range? ... May 17th, Ruth La Ferla discovers a young woman in NY who dresses 50s and likes Bettie Page. One in a million (others, like her) ...

LAT

Amy Hubbard, 6-21, writing about seals escaping from a Duluth zoo, reported that pics of them “were even popping up on social media.” People sending funny photos on their phones? Amazing, Amy ... Harriet Ryan, 3-2, opened that a trial “took an unusually nasty turn” when an actress testified with “her face reddening, and her eyes filling with tears.” This should have little effect on a jury: to fight her firing, she has argued that she is a fine actress ... “Bob Pool,” 3-26, laments the destruction of an old nondescript movie studio bldg by citing “Legend holds” and “is said to have had” and a door “was said to be” installed by Harrison Ford when he was a carpenter, violating every tenet I learned in journalism school. It reads like a conversation with Marc Wanamaker ... June 28 article about people moving back to cities. The city in the illustration - Chicago? Boston? Denver? Why it’s New York. Who wouldn’t have guessed it ... The 6-3 issue of the new infrequent but chic (if a subscriber is in the wrong zip code, they have to request it) LA magazine, a poor but improving version of the NYT mag, had feature with pics of celebrities in motorcycle jackets (so fresh). Only five, but they got one wrong: the pic of Johnny Ramone was slugged Joey ... Patty Goldstein’s latest (June 2) homage to a Disney hire includes usual specificities such as “many showbiz insiders,” “in the creative community,” “many inside the movie business,” as well as “storied,” “iconic” (wow), and ”gravitas and decision-making prowess.” The new guy is in “the business of creating Big Events that can be rolled out all around the globe, full of the kind of family appeal and visual excitement that is just as easily understood in Seoul” as Timbuktu. It reads like a press release, but it’s all true. The guy told him so at lunch

It’s So Much Fun Being A Man

June 6, LATimes. A 73-year-old man was escorted from an Arizona book store for sitting, for a moment, in the children's area where he’d been shopping for books for his grandchildren. A female customer was “uncomfortable” that he was there.

Face it fellas, we’re NO DAMN GOOD. Can’t trust us anywhere. Thank goodness there are women pointing this out every day. (You should have seen the looks I got when I used to carry Baby Jessie around. The glares would melt ice.)

Movies

PLAYING AGAINST TYPE: In ‘Exit Smiling,’ 1927, with Beatrice Lillie 1 , one of her romantic interests is Franklin Pangborne. In ‘Pigskin Parade,’ 2 one of the hardy clean-cut fraternity boys is Elisha Cook Jr. ... In ‘Alice’s Restaurant’ Arlo Guthrie screams ‘I want to kill, I want to see blood and guts” or words to that effect at the draft board interview. In retrospect (I was against the war) this is cheap and juvenile, implying that the other inductees were enthusiastic about killing, or war, rather than soberly doing their duty ... In Susan King’s 6-21 LAT interview with Roberto Benigni, after citing that his underwear was a factor in a movie she crassly and cheaply asked what kind he wears. Beside being a blatant sexist question (try asking a woman actor that, fellas) his response, “This is the most important thing!”, was a satisfying spit in her eye .... When I say I like a film that’s been remade, someone asks ”The original?” Who takes the 1994 ‘Gun Crazy’ over the 1947 one? Or Kevin Costner over Errol Flynn in ‘Robin Hood”? “The remake was better” is a rare category. I say “Little Shop Of Horrors,” but that’s all ... When Jack Lemmon, being chased in his car by bad guys in “China Sydrome,” entered an LA freeway something felt not-right. The cars around him remained in place at his speed, not jerking in and out of lanes to pass him.

1 Twenty years ago I saw her in the 1929 ‘Show of Shows’ revue and flipped. She was so unusual and compelling. The host of the movie was Frank Fay, after whom Jack Benny modeled his effeminate “fay” style. Fay was Barbara Stanwyck’s first husband.

2 Also featuring Judy Garland when she was quite young. (Not “a young Judy Garland,” which means there are several.)

TV

He loves a cliché: Joel Fuhrman, on PBS, “At the end of the day we’re on the same page” ... Seeing the Johnny Carson bio on PBS again, I re-hated the “biographer” who said in lugubriously overfamiliar ‘knowing’ tones “He really loved her” and other personal things. Writers ... Woman on MSNBC: “You can’t increase health coverage and reduce spending. It’s an oxymoron.” No it’s not ...

Obits ...

Why did every obit for Nora Ephron include the writer’s personal relationship with her? She was surely beloved, by them. Others disliked her, though there was no need to mention that. Her sendoffs enhanced many news writers’ self-importance ... Same thing for the end of the awful, just terrible “band,” The Rock Bottom Remainders. Writers gathered to rock are exactly as good as rockers gathered to write. The novelty of this vanity effort did not deserve such space, except for music writers to suggest their connection to literature ... June 6, LATimes. Couldn’t the president of the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame stick his neck out a wee bit and say the Platters were “the most significant vocal group” of the early rock era in singer Herb Reed’s obit? He prefaced that with ‘arguably,’ which inarguably negates what he says ... and an online obit for Donna Summer weighed me down with grief not just for her passing. A Rolling Stone veteran living in Texas wrote that she was “widely ridiculed” by crits but “won over the rock audience” who were initally “very skeptical” of her. To revive in an obit the piddling opinions of the damaged kids who wrote rock reviews gives their twaddle respect and soils his legacy.

It’s burden

Possessive “its” should have an apostrophe.
It’s is right (like Wensday, in the Arthurian dictionary) .

It’s is the way it should because it is not living.
Yours, his, hers theirs - OK.
But cat’s, rat’s, uncle’s, aunt’s are correct.
War’s, door’s, star’s car’s get apostrophes.
It is not a person. Not even a thing.

Change it, I say.

Words

3-4 NYT hed: “Don’t Fixate On the Orgies.” Fixate? Isn’t that “Fix” with an extra syllable? Like ‘orientate’? ... Young Jessica Gelt, the hippest of the 500,000 hipsters in Silver Lake, snickers 3-2 in the LAT that something was so old it was written “when ttyl was still a typo.” Oh, you frothy young thing ... If there’s an award for product-names, I’d give one to the guy or gal who came up with Astrolube for that specifically-targeted personal gel ... Ellen Barry, in the 7-2 NYT, writes about village life in Syria, then starts a sentence, preceding a wider description, with “Pan to.” Pan? For gold? Oh, panning, like in a movie script. (Attention movie producers: Ellen knows fancy moviemaking’ words. I’ll bet she’d write a script for you!) ... So many people misunderstand the name of the NoCal singer-songwriter band Marley’s Ghost that it has added some Bob Marley songs ... I often use “anchor tooth” for something that is at its (it’s!) very base. I think I got it from “Reuben Reuben,” the Peter DeVries book 3 in which the town dentist, angered by the poet’s affair with his wife, removes his anchor tooth (?) so the patient cannot get proper false teeth ... When did “inform” cut loose from its association with traitors? Nobody told me ... There’s a “storied” epidemic in newspapers today. It is a good word, as it fits all and means nothing.

3 DeVries is my writin’ idol. Funny, I never finished this book, his most famous. (I know the tooth thing from the movie.) The first 40% of the book is narrated by an old Connecticut farmer, angry at NY commuters ruining his farm town, who is taking a creative writing course. Made me double over laughing. Then it switched narrators and I lost interest. DeVries is entirely forgotten, except by a few of us. His mentor at the New Yorker was James Thurber.

Commerce

In Chicago when I was growing up, light bulbs were given free by the electric company. You use them to consume electricity, right? You picked up a new ones when your others burned out. This was still in effect in the 1970s ... Among the three drugstore chains that rule the city, coming in third is Rite-Ai, whose store grid is a maze of diagonal aisles taller than shoppers, where it is possible to wander lost for days. (In Double Indemnity they meet at a grocery store and talk to each other over adjoining aisles. Ya can’t do that no more.)

At The Grocer

I left one of three grocery bags at Ralphs, one of our grocery monopolies. Called them and they said a bag had been left, and they had returned the items to stock. “Sometimes people don’t come back, and the stuff spoils.”

I got to thinking. The stuff should spoil. It’s not theirs to put back in stock. If they reclaim it, their inventory goes up over 100%. It’s mine! I had used my phone number for the bonus discounts. That number is connected to my receipt in their computer. They should have called me!

I wrote to Ralphs and complained. They sent back a form letter saying they would notify the store. I replied that I wasn’t interested in that store, I was interested in their corporate policy. Why does the store have my phone number if not to help me. Why! I asked why someone did not phone me to notify me of my loss. The Betty Crocker-named respondent did not respond.

Ode to a Facebook user

Every day I post pictures of myself - as a child, or with famous people, or freshly taken. I bravely state that I love my mother. I send buddy-buddy messages to important people, many of them dead. And I photograph my meals.

Someone once told me what I am, but I can’t recall the word. It sounded like pharmacist but started with an N. Oh well, gotta go change my profile picture ...

Come to thnik of it

The title of the REO Speedwagon album, “You Can Tune A Guitar But You Can’t Tuna Fish” is wrong. Tuna is often canned.

”Do not stick finger in electrical socket”

We get foreign visitors in Hollywood, but is this necessary?
Below the peanut packets at Trader Joe’s it says: “A favorite at baseball games” and “An American classic. Good with beer.” (They’re wrong about the baseball games - the peanuts are shelled.)

- 57 -

Mark On The Move fans must wait til next ish. For now --

Artie’s New York Party

21st floor, my room on 42nd, looking south.

Seven bucks all day? Sounds good til you read the fine print. L.A. did not invent deceptive parking rates.

In NY there’s a million huge bldgs next to centuries-old little ones that wouldn’t leave.

Don Langford of the Mekons, left, the first act at the Barbecue Festival at Madison Square Park June 9th.

Southern Culture On The Skids. I was sitting with my eyes closed in the backstage area when Rick poked
me and said “What are YOU doing here!” SCOTS are the greatest.

1631 June 10 Soul singer Tre Williams was powerful good.

Alejandro Escovedo rocked the crowd hard.

June 10. A bloke named Dibbs Presley held the stage at the bar beneath the temporarily-named Max’s
Kansas City (a/k/a Bowery Electric) for a handful of rockabilly fans at this fete organized by
Englishman-cum-Los Angeleno-cum-Icelander Smutty Smith, seen at right riding the bass.

June 13. I escaped from New York to the home of Joyce and Billy Altman in Hastings-on-Hudson.
These painters, too, dug the stillness, although the upthrust palisades across the Hudson have recently
been visited by a crust crack that led to a cascading rock slide. (A sign of End Times?)

Funny sign (maybe commonplace, I dunno) in a store window in Tarrytown.

Lisa Harrigan, in green under glass, and Joe Henry at their June 14 concert at the Highline Ballroom .

Our feet were achin’, so songwriter/actor Paul Hampton and I rested in front of the The Plaza. June 15.

NY Notes June 8 - 17.

- I hit a 75 degree week, miraculous I was told. Two days of rain set my feet into a panic, though; athletic shoes and loafers were no damn good.
- The NY Times local edition is printed wide, like it was here a few years ago before the NYT shoehorned the copy for its LA edition into the LA Times’ new narrow size. Both papers, in L.A., share the same printing facility.
- Times Square has big screens with big ads. Nothing of substance at ground level, just chain stores, restaurants, souvenier shops.
- I vowed to walk and walk to get back in shape. Instead I walked and walked til my legs hurt like hell.
- Many healthy delis on 42nd in the area I stayed, between 9th and 10th. “My” mammoth multi-use bldg is MiMa, which is an awful coinage for Midtown Manhattan. Hope it doesn’t catch on.
- Bands with amps are allowed in the subways. This is wrong. Tip them? I’d sooner kick them.
- Subway cars are air-conditioned but the subway station in 75 degree weather was very warm. On hot days it must be brutal. Trains are neat, many with an electronic grid that tells you what stops are ahead.
- Terminal 5, where Jet Blue lets out, contains the remains of the Eero Saalinen futuristic buildings of 1962. It’s startling to walk out and see that beauty.
- There is a massive magnetic field below Manhattan. I know this because new batteries in my pocket camera wore out in a day when it was mostly off. The earth sucked the life out of them. Same for a transistor radio I bought for the tvless, radioless, wifiless apartment I enjoyed.
- I saw only one subway stop with escalators (34th?), perhaps because its cant was 55 or 60 degrees and no one could conceivably walk that sharp an incline.
- The Highline is an elevated pedestrian walkway between buildings of no interest, an alternative to treading a street. It is the city’s #2 attraction.
- Taxi fares aren’t that bad for scooting around town. Most hops ran around $10, second passenger no charge.
- Saw Robt Osborne buying a paper, Kristina Wiig at a cafe.
- Many people walk rudely in front of cars on red lights. Of course the first thing we think is New York brusqueness, but I think that many have no experience driving. They don’t see traffic patterns, only the sidewalk ahead. Earth people.
- When I suggested to a local that we go to the Carnegie Deli he scoffed: “What, buy a sandwich for $34 and be insulted by the waiter?” I thought that was accepted local masochism, but maybe it’s just for tourists.
- Thirty years ago, when the Blasters played their first NY gig, I got stuck in the elevator at the Wellington Hotel, near Carnegie Hall/Deli. That was one of two elevator-trappings that season, the other in Chicago, also with the Blasters. It made me very leery of elevators. And the Blasters.

Parting Shot

The night of June 15th, The Underground, at 107th & West End, was the site of a birthday party for songwriter Toni Wine. I didn’t know her personally, only her singing voice on Archies records and songs she co-wrote including ‘Groovy Kind Of Love,’ “Candida,” and a personal favorite “I Think I Love You Again,” recorded by Brenda Lee. Her good friend and mine Teri Landi invited me, along with good friends Maggie and Missy Connell from the Heaters of yore.

After an hour of chat Lillian Walker grabbed the mike and sang “I know, something, about love.” Other gals chirped in with doop/dee doop and an hour of girl group songs sung by many of the girls who sang them ensued. At the end, Susan Collins grabbed the mike and launched into “River Deep, Mountain High” accompanied only by a guitar and some backup vocalists. (This may be the only acapella version of that song ever performed.) Later Nicole Spector duetted with Toni on “Black Pearl,” the song Toni wrote with Nicole’s dad.

Visuals are all I have, along with memories of a magic night.



L to R back row on couch: Maxine Brown, Toni, Baby Washington
L to R foreground: unknown (with blue sunglasses), Margaret Ross-Williams (The Cookies), Louise Murray (The Jaynetts & The Hearts)



L to R: Margaret Ross-Williams (The Cookies), Beverly Warren (The Raindrops & solo work), Baby Washington (at mic), Lesley Miller (solo & session work)



L to R: Nanette Licari (Reparata & The Delrons) (at mic), Margaret Ross-Williams (The Cookies), Toni, Susan Collins, Mikie Harris (The Rag Dolls, solo & session work), Lillian Walker (The Exciters), Louise Murray (The Jaynetts & The Hearts)



L to R: Jeremy Chatzky (w/guitar), Nanette Licari (Reparata & The Delrons), Lillian Walker (The Exciters) (at mic), Lesley Miller (solo & session work), Toni, Nicole Spector, Louise Murray (The Jaynetts & The Hearts)



L to R: Jeremy Chatzky (w/guitar), Beverly Warren (The Raindrops & solo work), Margaret Ross-Williams (The Cookies), Lillian Walker (The Exciters), Baby Washington, Louise Murray (The Jaynetts & The Hearts)