Category Archives: memoir

What is this shit? A self portrait.

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bob-dylan-self-portrait-2Columbia Records announced today that on August 27th (my birthday, so you know what to get me), they’re releasing Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series No. 10: Another Self Portrait.

When Dylan released the original Self Portrait, in 1970, Greil Marcus’ review in Rolling Stone started, “What is this shit?” And pretty much everyone wondered the same thing.

I was 14 years old at the time, and I’d listened to Dylan, but I didn’t grow up with him. I remember as a 12 year old being at my young aunt’s house in Brooklyn for a weekend, playing Freewheelin’ and Bringing It All Back Home for the first time, many times, enough times to have them ask me to stop. When Self Portrait came out some forgotten relative bought me the songbook for my birthday, and I “learned” the album by playing the songs on my guitar, figuring out the melodies on the piano. I was well aware that Dylan didn’t write most of them, and I was aware the world thought the album was crap, but what I found in that songbook was a collection of great singable songs I was able to play despite my rudimentary six-string skills.

So, what happened when I finally heard Self Portrait, the album, performed by Bob Dylan and his associates? I loved it. It really is a collection of great dynamic musicians sitting around playing some very famous and some less famous songs, with Bob crooning in front of some excellent chick singers, and everyone is seeming to have real fun time (but not making any kind of big deal about it). It’s loose, but the arrangements are bold and artful. It sounds great and the songs really are great. Not folk, not pop, but simply enduring classic songs written for a clear voice and a bunch of friends backing you up.

Not many saw it that way. Some jokers in the 90s created a list of the 100 Worst Albums, and Self Portrait landed third, behind only Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music and that album of Elvis talking to the audience. This is funny and just plain stupid.

Self Portrait comprises songs that were recorded in the studio while the band was warming up for the Nashville Skyline sessions. Dylan has had a few explanations for why he released them, as a double album(!), next. The one that seems truest is that he was sick of being the voice of a generation and wanted to do something that was the opposite of supercharged. Nashville Skyline got him part of the way there, but they were still Dylan compositions, still ripe for superheated analysis. (This was the period when AJ Weberman was stealing Dylan’s garbage and publishing about what he found.) An album of casual covers was Dylan’s way of taking the air out of the ball.

But my life was outside that history. For me, Self Portrait was a collection of very agreeable songs presented in a very pleasing way. Casual, appealing, easy to sing. Not the greatest Dylan album, not even close, but one I have listened to often. A great pleasure.

You Say You Want a Revolution?

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Happy Fourth of July.

Which is always a good day to reflect upon freedom and liberty and justice for all.

As the progeny of immigrants who fled the holocaust–and then whose father was drafted and sent to invade the country from which he fled–I have a pretty serious appreciation for our freedoms, and more frequently than just July 4.

In fact, at this time where revolution and talk thereof, along with the drive for democracy, occurs before our very eyes–in Egypt, as I write–on the television almost daily, I do have some hope for the world and that change, albeit slow, is possible.

So, why am I writing this jingoistic crap on a rock and roll site?

Because music, and literature and the arts play such a serious role in changing our culture and pushing forth the idea of progress.

johnnycIn fact, there is no better case in point than John Lennon’s struggle not to become an American citizen, but to simply stay in the States back during the Nixon era.

The FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover and wanting to protect the Nixon White House and its policies back in the 70’s, worked hard to expel Lennon and Yoko Ono. In fact there is a great PBS American Masters film called LENNONYC that documents Lennon and Ono’s battle with the government. (And keeping things current, I found a pretty good article correlating Lennon’s struggle with the Dream Act.)

So, over the past month, I noted a couple of rock’n’roll documentaries that I wanted to see, and that tie the notions of freedom to music.

The first is the HBO produced film Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, a movie that ostensibly depicts the Russian punk band Pussy Riot and their three members who were sentenced to two years in prison for protesting the return of Vladmir Putin to the head of the Russian government (the charge was “hooliganism”).

I confess that did not watch the whole film because in truth the movie wasn’t really very good, and the music of Pussy Riot was not really the issue anyway. It is clearly freedom of thought and speech and a government’s suppression those freedoms–the same thing in 2013 in Russia, that Nixon wanted to suppress–that was the core.  pussyriot

The other film was the Oscar winning documentary of last year, Searching for Sugar Man:  a movie about the Detroit-based singer/songwriter Rodriguez, his music. For Rodriguez album Cold Fact, virtually unknown in the United States (though distributed through Motown) was as influential among the youth of South Africa during the final throes of Apartheid in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s as anything Bob Dylan produced domestically a decade earlier.

Though both journeys–those of Pussy Riot and Rodriguez–are beyond compelling, yet completely different paths, the influence and notoriety that each propagated due to their respective art is huge. (Interestingly, both artists are identified as rock and rollers, though their music could not indeed be more different.)

coldfact

The point, though, is that just as the US wanted to censor John Lennon, and the South Africans did indeed censor Rodriguez (by the way, Searching for Sugar Man is indeed a terrific movie as well as a wonderful celebration to the human spirit) now, 40 years later, the Russians have worked to suppress Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Maria Alyokhina, the three convicted members of Pussy Riot.

What these examples remind us is just how powerful music is, for it can make national governments fearful of performers who simply want to tell their own version of the truth.

I write this remembering that our country is far from perfect; however, at least there are now ideally few of us who need fear being imprisoned for speaking our mind irrespective of which side of the political fence we live or speak (meaning I think Trace Adkins is a xenophobic pig, and that Ted Nugent is an idiot, but I am glad they have the freedom to say and sing what they want).

I think the other points are never underestimate the power of art, which includes music. And, finally, that the struggle for freedom for all the inhabitants of the planet is a long and winding road.

Just a few things to think about as we enjoy our own Independence Day (and, do catch both LENNONYC and Searching for Sugar Man).


 

Please Don’t Mop the Floor With Me

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tonesMy mates here have been lamenting the passing of several notable clubs, known for booking bands who often made it big, to larger (sic Arena) venues.

Make no mistake, paying your dues, and working the club circuit is no easy way to simply try and make a mark on the music world (let alone make a living). And, for most young musicians, it is pretty much the only path forward there is.

I know both my partners Steve Moyer and Gene McCaffrey have paid these dues, and as younger guys than I. Meaning, they did it as a job, which is indeed a hard row to hoe.

I have probably been playing dive bars off and on for the past five years, but for me it is simply because playing out is so much fun (and, since I make a comfy living outside of music, no pressure). But, at my advanced age, I don’t really have any illusions that anyone will ever discover the Biletones. In fact, though we are pretty disciplined, practicing at least every week, I know we will never be good or tight enough to be considered a serious band.

Of course that does not diminish the pleasure, for just a little over a week ago the Biletones played Rooster’s Roadhouse in Alameda, drawing a pretty typical crowd for us of about 75 folks. Which is actually not so bad for a bunch of guys in their 50’s and 60’s (well, me anyway).

Truth is I have never really played a huge venue (about 400 is the most) and I am not knocking the Arena circuit, but truth is also that I have very little use for it any more.

The best concerts I ever saw were generally at Winterland, the Fillmore, and a great old club in San Francisco that passed on a la CBGB’s and Maxwell’s, The Old Waldorf. For, I saw the Cars (first US tour), U2 (first American tour), Ian Hunter (with Mick Ronson), Hall and Oates (during their punk period, with a young G. E. Smith and Ray Cooper), The Records, Bram Tchaikovsky, Leo Kottke, Romeo Void and a lot of other bands in a venue that only held about 250 people.

There is nothing like seeing a band–especially a hot one–in a little club, however. Nothing like it for the band, and nothing like it for the crowd, for the energy feeds symbiotically, elevating the experience all around.

More to the point, I also find I am just not that interested in elbowing my way through thousands of people to sit half-a-mile away from the stage (which at my age I cannot really see too clearly anyway). In fact, most of the time I don’t even need an opening act. Let alone standing in line for 20 minutes for the honor of using a Port-o-Potty.

As it was, this past week I have been in Chicago, doing some work, but then helping Diane’s cousin Cherie and her husband Mike move into this cool house they built in Woodstock, about 40 miles northwest from the center of town.

On Saturday, I had committed to watch the Blackhawks and Bruins duke it out with Mike and his friend Jeff at a local bar, Rosie O’Hare’s, where their friend Steve Hopp, a carpenter by day, oversees the smoking of meat at night (it is good, too).

Now, I am not much of a hockey fan, but watching sports in Chicago is generally a lot more fun than watching sports in the Bay Area. Not that ATT does not rock, or even the Coliseum when the Athletics are hot. Plus, the Niners, Sharks, and Warriors all have devoted followings, and even the piece of shit Raiders (call me bitter) have the “Black Hole.”

But, football here is so different than at home, and these locals go ape shit over their hockey team (I am actually looking forward to watching the next game with Jeff and Mike, and like I said, I am not a hockey fan).

Anyway, after the game–in fact we got a two song taste before Saturday’s overtime began–the local band Jimmy Nick and Don’t Tell Mama completely blitzed the place with solid Chicago Blues.

A young band (I believe Nick is just 22 years old), grabbing the blues tradition pretty well, these guys have a great local reputation, in fact the clip here was recorded just a few weeks back at the very same Rosie’s. (They laid down a great cover of Los Lobos’ “I Got Loaded,” that featured a blazing guitar solo centered around the theme to “The Andy Griffith Show.”)


After we split from Rosie’s, Mike drove the long way back home, showing me that rural Chicago has a pretty active bar scene, and I really liked that. Kind of like I like that my mates Steve and Tom Muscarella always implore us to go to brick and mortar record stores.

For though I appreciate the fact that bulk purchasing allows big business to offer lower prices, there is something indeed to be said for supporting small business. For, those small businesses–and I am talking about mom and pop establishments, not companies like Koch Industries that masquerades as small business because only two guys own it—are largely our neighbors and community.

So, we should do what we can to keep them rocking.

Jefferson Airplane: THE Best San Francisco Band

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volunteers cov

I guess the news of ex-Jefferson Airplane/Hot Tuna drummer and percussionist Joey Covington’s passing earlier this week sort of pushed the thoughts I have always had about the Airplane into this virtual-osity.

I think of all the San Francisco bands–especially those who bore the “psychedelic” moniker–the Airplane were the truest to the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll.

True, The Dead were a great band,but they were a jam band. Big Brother was a great band, but they were a blues band. Quicksilver and Country Joe and the Fish were great bands, but they were indeed psychedelic,though the Fish gravitated more towards jug band music, and Quicksilver the blues.

However, though the Airplane could indeed be classified as a psychedelic band, they embraced what I think is the essence of real rock ‘n’ roll, and that is attitude.

It was the Airplane, who with White Rabbit encouraged us to “feed our head” as part of what I consider a favorite all time album of mine, Surrealistic Pillow.

That disc followed Takes Off, which featured the band’s first drummer, Skip Spence, who then fled to Moby Grape (another great, albeit tragic band), and female lead singer, Signe Anderson. One the heels of Pillow came After Bathing at Baxter’s and then the wonderful Crown of Creation, but it was album #5, Volunteers, that really sealed the deal of the Airplane owning the the title of best band of their generation. That is because very few albums until then were as in your face as was Volunteers.

Aside from the faux salutes and homage/parodies to Old Glory all over the liner notes and inserts, the opening track , We Can Be Together, announced that as “outlaws in the eyes of America,” we would “cheat lie forge fuck hide and deal.” Equally menacing, the song then screams “Up against the wall, Up against the wall, motherfucker.”

The Farm implies the pastoral life romanticized by Flower Power is the way to go, and the beautiful pairing of the post-apocalyptic Wooden Ships (co-penned by David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Paul Kanter) and Kantner’s adaptation of the lovely Good Shepherd, with the haunting guitar of Jorma Kaukonen might be demure compared to the fuck you of Together, but they never-the-less indicate there is a different path out there and we are on it, like it or not.

There is also the symmetry of the title track and closing cut, that screams “Look what’s happening out in the streets, got a revolution, got to revolution,” riffing off the Goodwill-like spiritual renewal organization Volunteers of America, shouting out just that: We are volunteers of America.

And, though spiritual renewal may indeed be what author Kantner was pointing to, it was certainly not a Salvation Army style one.

There are other parts of the album, like the half sides of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich–something so American–on either sides of the inside of the album, so that when closed, there was indeed a complete sandwich, albeit in just two dimensions.

pbj

Finally, there is the newsletter from the Paz Chin In, a Woodstock take off, that in the text gives us the lyrics (it was still the 60’s, so fuck is replaced by the word “fred”) plus cartoons, baseball stats (with a great subtle homage to local hero and SF Giant, Willie Mays), a goofy crossword puzzle with no questions but cryptic squares, and a funny reminder that says, “Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon.” However, the first is crossed out, and replaced with the word “last,’ and at the time it was true, that Armstrong was first and last.

volunteers back

We are also reminded in the notes to “feed and water our flag,” among other suggestions

In my mind, there is no other statement by any band in the counter culture that ever embraced art and music and sentiments in such a fashion.  Within Volunteers, Jefferson Airplane pushed the agenda of “we are forces of chaos and anarchy,” sneering at the status quo while also supplying a deadly combination of cuts in here-to-fore uncharted territory.  In fact, nothing else was even close.

Of course the band did rankle in other ways. Like Grace Slick trying to get into the White House to then first daughter Tricia Nixon’s tea for Finch College graduates. Slick, as alumnae, was invited, and did try to attend. However, the singer was not allowed entrance. According to Slick, she and her date, Yippie Abbie Hoffman, were pulled out of the entrance line and denied because they were on the FBI watch list at the time.

Per Slick, all the Airplane were on the list for “suspect lyrics.” Also per Slick, she did try to sneak LSD in to slip Nixon the father–hardly beloved by the left at the time–a mickey (presumably in his cottage cheese and ketchup).

Jefferson Airplane did release a few more discs after Volunteers–Bark and Long John Silver–but they never had the bite of Volunteers. The band did release a terrific live disc, Bless it’s Pointed Little Head that captures everything that is Airplane, and features a brilliant cover of Fred Neil’s The Other Side of this Life, which opens with a Jack Cassady bass-line, that is then joined by some deadly interplay by Kaukonen, then Dryden, and the best of the band systematically joining in.

If the Airplane peaked with Volunteers, they then slowly landed, re-emerging as Jefferson Starship, which was a Kantner/Slick/Balin endeavor to start, but quickly the principles abandoned ship, and the group morphed into the Starship, which really had nothing to do with anything Jefferson at all.

However, Kaukonen, Cassady, and the late Covington did form their own spin-off, Hot Tuna who did stay true to the folk-blues roots that signaled a lot of the original band’s sound in the first place.

Certainly, the Airplane, and especially the then exotic and brainy Slick, with the powerful voice, generated a lot of buzz when they entered the eye of the public at large, but to me at the time it all seemed in the context of the media trying to be or act hip. And, though Slick was indeed a great character, the real story was what a killer band the Airplane really was.

More to the point, they were a great band that embraced the “fuck all of you in the mainstream” principles that are the essence of rock ‘n’  roll.

Bang Bang. Maxwell’s Is Nearly Dead.

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Hoboken Maxwell's NJThere are bars with music and there are legendary bars with music. Maxwell’s, in Hoboken NJ, will be one of the legendary ones for just another two months. I lived in Hoboken in 1981, when Maxwell’s, just three years old, wasn’t yet venerated. At that time it was too new and too exciting, regularly booking the same bands that were playing CBGB, across the river, and serving as something of a home club for Yo La Tengo and the Feelies, among others. During my Hoboken days I remember going to see bands at Maxwell’s, drinking beer at Maxwell’s, having brunch at Maxwell’s, but I don’t remember at this point what bands I saw at that point. At that point the point wasn’t the names, but the music, which was still lively and energized by punk, hugely broadly do it yourself, full of folks making their own legends (and sometimes succeeding) making rock or what became known as Alt-Country, in a movement that changed the tastes of the nation.

The first show that I remember going to see at Maxwell’s by design involved commuting across the Hudson River via the PATH train to see the legendary British punk band the Mekons, whose amazing country record (and that does not do it justice) was called Fear and Whiskey in the UK and had just been released in the US (with some extra tracks) as Original Sin. The room with the music at Maxwells was small then (and is still the same small), an irregular box with a myriad of obtuse and acute angles on the perimeter, plus columns in the middle, kind of the shape of a game controller, only you’re on the inside. There were some chairs and boxes for sitting around the edges, a bar in the back, and the band was crammed into a nook at the other end of this rhomboid box, crushed amidst whatever speakers and amplifiers were stacked up there to help them make noise. The Mekons that night had at least seven people jammed on the stage, and it seemed like 20, playing the usual guitar, bass and drums, with Sally Timms on vocals, and also a fiddle player and an accordion player and a few others who banged on things this and that and who sang along, too, at the sing-songy parts.

mekons liveThe room was packed with expectation on June 20, 1986. The Mekons had always been a political band, but arch, funny, engaged, enraged, also aware they they were playing music ferchrissakes. Their first single, released at the height of punk mania, was called “Never Been in a Riot.” Unlike the Clash.

Their music in 1977 was brittle, angular, clangy, totally amateur. They couldn’t play. A legend arose that if you learned to play your instrument the Mekons kicked you out. The Mekons were masters of the ethos of the naif, the beginner, but over the years their chops improved and their ambitions grew. Jon Langford developed as a guitarist and songwriter. He fell in love with Hank Williams and he steered the band toward the fabulous hybrid they developed in Fear and Whiskey. It’s country, but not afraid of reggae and afropop, in places, homespun but raging with anger about the injustices of the Reagan/Thatcher years and the darkness at the heart of the soul. And that isn’t the half of it. Love songs, sex songs, passion, history, politics, metaphor, but most of all joyous strange music that often sounded trad., music from the ages, but was played by a big rock ensemble with passion and craft. It was was wholly original, like nothing exactly you’ve ever heard before, but full of the spirit that courses through your soul, maybe like marrow. At least on your good days.

This was quite suddenly a band at the top of their game, at the top of anyone’s game, Fear and Whiskey representing the first of a string of maybe five albums (Fear and Whiskey, The Edge of the World, The Mekons Honky Tonkin’, So Good It Hurts, Rock and Roll) that are as first rate as any such sequence in rock history. This was a band for whom the motives seemed to be purely moral, large of heart, full of sensual pleasures that come from making great rocking music with your friends. That sweaty woozy hot night at Maxwell’s I had the unalloyed joy of being in a packed room full of people who were becoming members of the band that was up on stage, the audience pushing them hard, the band embracing their fans and embracing the push, and making music back at us! Encouraging us! By the end we felt like we’d been invited onto the tour bus for the rest of our lives, and while we get off here and there, the many times I’ve seen the Mekons live since, as soon as the band comes on stage, it’s like you’ve never really been away. We’re all serious friends, here to laugh and to grouse together. Together.

Maxwell’s owner announced this week that the club was closing. In this obit in the New York Times owner, Todd Abrahmson, said that they could probably make the business work for another year or two, but that the changes in Hoboken’s demographics make the club’s demise inevitable. “If you think of Willie Mays playing outfield for the New York Mets — I didn’t want us to wind up like that,” he said.

Abrahamson now books the Bell House in Brooklyn, which happens to be on my street, a few blocks down the hill in Park Slope, and where I saw the Mekons play last year. Somewhere I have a file with a recording of that show, but what I was really excited to find was a recording of that show at Maxwell’s back in 1986 at archive.org. Not like being there, but a swell souvenir and not a waste of your time.

The Heartbreakers

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tumblr_l8e1glHJ571qckm0wo1_500The two best shows I ever saw were both the Heartbreakers. I saw all their early shows, starting with their debut with Walter Lure at CB’s in July 1975. They had played a no-one-knows gig at Coventry in Queens as a trio: Johnny, Jerry and Richard.

Truth be known, the Heartbreakers really made CBGB. By that time Television was drawing but not packing the place. No one else was even on the map, except Patti Smith who was working her way up along with Television. For the Heartbreakers debut it was packed out into the street. I got there early and sat at a front table with my buddy from work Steve, who was four years older and curious.

We saw I think six bands that night and I’m trying to remember them. Possibly Talking Heads was one but they may have opened for the Ramones about a week later. The Shirts for sure, a band called Cracked Actor, and definitely Mink DeVille. It was a great show and The Heartbreakers topped it easily, but it wasn’t their best show.

That show was their 3rd gig at CB’s, the night that they debuted their version of Love Comes in Spurts, which was eventually recorded in a much different version on the Voidoids first album. That night I went with my best friend Dee, and the two of us and the whole house were blown speechless. Maybe someone else can do it just as well but no one can do it better.

Naturally, they couldn’t get a record contract. Everyone was scared of the junk and the failure of the Dolls. Richard left the band in early 1976. Johnny, Jerry and Walter disappeared for 2-3 months and emerged with Billy Rath on bass. The Hell songs were gone and in their place were Get Off The Phone, It’s Not Enough, I Love You, All By Myself and Let Go. They gigged around a bit and went to England at the end of the year, as it happened on the very night that the Sex Pistols were on the infamous Bill Grundy Show. The Heartbreakers were on the Sex Pistols tour, along with The Clash and briefly The Damned. Briefly too because the tour only played six dates what with the threat to England of Johnny Rotten, but the boys stuck around after the tour gigging extensively all over England and even Paris.

In the summer of ’77, that anarchic summer, they came back to New York to play a long weekend at the Village Gate. No doubt me and the boys would be there. It was the week that Elvis died.

Another wild scene. I don’t mean uniforms either. What came to be “punk” fashion was much more an open question then. The looks were various and imaginative. The band was hanging out among the crowd and they looked perfect early 60s gangster, except for the hair of course (there is a Facebook page called Johnny Thunders’ Hair). It took several years for the junk to really show. Any number of members of NY bands were also there, in addition to all the band’s fans and lemme tell ya they were an active bunch. The little headline in the Daily News said “Crowd Steals Show at Heartbreakers Return.”

But not for us. The band stole the show. They came out smoking with Chinese Rocks, absolutely on the money with the hugest sound I ever heard, right into One Track Mind, and just blistered their way upward. Halfway through, Robert Gordon gets up on stage and they do Jailhouse Rock for Elvis and Be Bop a Lula. All of us walked out of there soaked and full of wonder. Actually, three of us decided that night that we were going to do this; we would make music like this. The fourth guy said “I’ll be your manager.”