I heard a story that Groucho Marx wrote an entire book solely using the morsels of time he had while waiting for his wife to get ready. While I don't think I'll get a book started tonight (White Stripes bio stop haunting me!) I will utilize the time to eke out some thoughts.
While the past year seems to have gone by faster than any other of the previous twenty nine, certain things jump out. First off...finally buying a house. There is now a hovel where I can stash all my crap, tear down a wall if I want to, let raccoons live in the basement, and fret over the length of the grass. It's been a dream for quite some time and after the fourth consecutive day of moving, I must say I had the most complete, refreshing and immediate sleep in my life.
I think my favorite live show of the year had to have been Quintron and Miss Pussycat live at Third Man. Complete with guest appearances by King Louie AND the Oblivians, the live LP is my absolute favorite thing to hear when I walk in or out of the store at Third Man. And dare I say the quality of the recording and mix is pretty top-notch.
Also...flexi-disc balloon launch? May be my favorite art project ever. The look of joy and excitement on people's faces that day was incalculably rewarding. I can't believe we pulled it off. Where do you go from there? And who knew helium was at an all-time high price?
Having started this year but not really showing itself until 2013, a lot of my work at Third Man has been focused on reissues. The stuff coming up has been rewarding and challenging and fulfilling all at once, spanning just about every genre and era of recorded music. Folks are already awaiting the reissue partnership with Document Records, but that is barely the tip of the iceberg.
Nothing beats:
-a new pair of zipper boots from DSW
-boutique record digging exclusive Detroit/Michigan 45's
-vintage Detroit high school phys-ed t-shirts
-Boardwalk Empire, and moreso, TALKING about Boardwalk Empire
-Saturday morning breakfast at Mas Tacos (cheesy truffle grits? oh.my.gawd)
-friendly neighbors
-Nashville weather in December
-all the quirks of Mold-a-Rama machines
-issue 5 of Bagazine
-spending New Year's Eve with old friends
Looks like she's just about ready to go...my work here is done.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Friday, November 30, 2012
A Tale of Two Music Cities
(painting by Jen Uman)
Having lived the
first twenty-six years of my life in the same house in Detroit, I wasn't too
concerned about how I would adjust when I moved to Nashville three-and-a-half years ago. I
wasn't pre-occupied with making friends or finding a place to live. I wasn't
even really concerned about exploring the town or discovering what particular
neighborhoods had to offer.
My main concern
was…where would I order my pizza?
You see, Detroit
is the sleeper pizza town in America. Sure Chicago and New York get all the
praise and the hyphenated "style" after their names, but Detroit, as
the hometown to Little Ceasar's, Hungry Howie's, Domino's, Jet's, Buddy's,
Cottage Inn and quite a few other established franchises, offers a variety and
selection that cannot be contained within the confining context of something as
narrow as "Detroit-style."
Without knowing
any better, I was stuck for an inordinate amount of time, eating pizza from
(yuck) Papa John's.
I moved to
Nashville in 2009 for work. I'd been offered a job at Third Man Records to
oversee their vinyl record production and distribution. While at that point in
my life it felt like my entire reason for being was tied into Detroit and my
residency there, it was hardly a difficult decision to leave. Being the height
of the economic downturn, jobs were scarce in town. I had a handful of
immediate family members who were recently unemployed. NO ONE held it against
me that I was leaving…it was as if they knew only good could come from leaving
Detroit for employment purposes.
Nashville's
allure for decades has been the chance of "making it" in the country
music business. Housing offices for all the "Big Four" record labels
(Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI) not to mention the three performance rights
organizations in the US (BMI, ASCAP and SESAC) and it's no secret why the town
is nicknamed Music City. You can't spit in this town without hitting a singer,
songwriter, soundman and a publicist…oftentimes all-in-one.
While Detroit
may give off a reputation of a more "real" or "organic"
music scene, Nashville gives off way more examples of careers in music.
Detroit has just as rich a musical history as Nashville, it just does not have a music industry. There are no major labels, no performance rights organizations, no significant music publishers and subsequently, up-and-coming writers or bands don't dream about moving to Detroit. They dream about moving OUT of Detroit.
Amongst my own
personal acquaintances, I know of 4 people who've left southeastern Michigan in
the past two years specifically for music business jobs in Nashville.
In July of 1999
a rock band called the Starlite Desperation moved from their hometown of
Salinas, California to Detroit. This was, by all accounts, completely unheard
of. Bands had made their way to Detroit in the past, but most of the time they
were moving from Lansing, or if you want to get really exotic, Toledo.
To quote Dan
Kroha (of seminal garage punk band the Gories) on Starlite's move, "I
wanted to give them the key to the city."
Unfortunately,
Starlite Desperation imploded and just over a year later the principles had
moved back to the West Coast, tails between their legs. They'd just missed out
on the press boon behind the White Stripes, Electric 6, Detroit Cobras and (my
band) the Dirtbombs that would kick up in England and propel many Detroit bands
on to unqualified success (the Stripes), fluke-y top ten hits (Electric 6) or
sustenance touring/recording (basically everybody else). Even at the height of
Detroit's center-of-the-rock-and-roll-world reputation (roughly the summer of
2003), there failed to be any
noticeable bands picking up their stakes and setting up camp in town.
There are two
things recently drawing folks in to relocate to Detroit. One is best
exemplified by a quote from Patti Smith. When asked if it was still possible
for young artists to move to NYC and find their way to fame, Smith replied,
"New York has closed itself off to the young and struggling. But there are
other cities." Her first suggestion? "Detroit."
One of the few
(only?) upsides of the absolute hit Detroit took in the economic downturn is
the fact that its extremely low cost of living became a selling point. Artists
did start to show up, even if only in drips and drabs, to set up studios, reclaim
empty buildings, to work on their own terms in a city where space and privacy
are plentiful and oversight or bureaucratic interference is rarely a concern.
At the same
time, Nashville is experiencing an unprecedented up-tick in young, creative transplants.
The city claims among its residents international rock stars like Jack White
(my boss/uncle), the Black Keys, Ke$ha, Kid Rock and all the Kings of Leon. For a town famously known for
country music, the populace is undeniably diversifying. Hell, neighbors I've
had at two different houses I've lived in here include a touring member of the
B-52's and the tour manager that famously set Graham Parsons' body on fire at
Joshua Tree in 1973.
The main
difference I've noticed between Nashville and Detroit is an issue of birthright
versus selection. Detroit is, for the most part, a locale that befalls people.
Very few of its residents made a conscious effort to relocate there. What this
charges the population with is a shared "we're all in this together"
attitude.
In Nashville, it
seems 1 in 10 people I meet are "from here" (where "here"
is considered the metropolitan area) and a scant 1 in 20 are actually from the
city. As a magnet, a destination, the folks I meet have all come to this town
with an agenda. Whether it's to make it as a country singer, to get the hell
out of Alabama, or to attend one of the city's many respectable universities.
While the idea
of folks coming from all over to make this city their home is a nice idea, it
also has a downside. A lot of people, myself included, don't plan on staying
here. It's a stopping off point, a means to an end, a place where few have a
solid connection to their neighborhood
I'm surprised
when people here tell me to be careful in East Nashville…that it can be
dangerous. When I inform them I'm from Detroit, their response is usually along
the lines of "Oh, you'll be fine. You might get your lawn mower stolen
once in ten years." And while the inherent racism in a city with a statue
of Nathan Bedford Forrest and a history of slave trading can seem as mere
remnants of history, to have someone use the word "nigger" to me in
the middle of a business transaction was absolutely dumbfounding.
To hear the
phrase "I'm not racist…" immediately followed by "I love Charley
Pride" is all one needs to know that things in this town can be
uncomfortably white.
I've been told
that at one point, in the 1990's, EVERY house in East Nashville was selling
crack. To now, where it seems like every house actively donates to the local
NPR station, that's a pretty impressive turnaround.
When I drive
around East Nashville now, from its organic butcher, record store located
inside a house, mixologist bars and plethora of food trucks, I can't help but
think this is what Williamsburg in Brooklyn looked like in 2001…like a hipster
bomb ready to explode at any moment. Far too many neighborhoods in Detroit look
like actual bombs have exploded there and the majority of entrepreneurship I
encounter there is usually limited to folks silk-screening t-shirts (almost
always incorporating the idea of and/or word "Detroit") or setting up
Kickstarter campaigns.
These
observations of change in East Nashville stirred up thoughts of Detroit and my
false sense of propriety. "Who
do these people think they are? White-washing the neighborhood, gentrifying it
block-by-block. I hope they rot."
But then I
realize, wait, I'm not from here. I'M the one who moved in here. I'M the one
who people who were born and raised here should be pissed about. In the
meantime, I welcome these new businesses and residents with open arms.
More than
anything, I'm happy to have found two wonderfully warm establishments. The
first, Italia, is a classic, old-style pizzeria has been around for awhile and
is on a nice, sleepy stretch of Woodland Street. While the pizza is greasy and
definitely unhealthy, I prefer it. Italia feels familiar and inviting. It feels
like home.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
A Sprawling Trawl Through Oddities of Detroit Vinyl...
I like the weird records in Detroit history. They are by no
means the greatest…but we all know that Motown and techno and the MC5 and
Stooges have all been chronicled to the absolute bottom of the barrel and it
overshadows a lot of the one-off, unique and downright odd records produced by
this fair city.
Records like "P.A.L. Bump" by Les Cochons Bleus.
While they were later known as the Blue Pigs, this group of five active-duty
Detroit Police officers were a band that would play schools, recreation centers,
civic events and other various gatherings where passable live music was
desired. This record was released
by the Police Athletic League (PAL) where in 1993 I was the only white kid on
an all-black baseball team. (team photo available) The song itself motors on in
a vaguely funky way until an otherworldly synthesizer solo blows the whole
thing up into oblivion.
My dad told me he was friends with one of the original members, one who eventually got kicked off the force for doing off-duty security at an after-hours bar. This may or may not be discerned with the two different picture sleeves this record was issued with, depicting different guitar players on the cover. (side note: the Blue Pigs played at my grade school at least twice while I was a student. I remember two cover songs they did: "I Wanna Be Rich" by Calloway and "The Best for Last" by Vanessa Williams. Also, the drummer used a tiny electronic drum pad for all his parts…not a cymbal or drum in his arsenal at all. Such was the early Nineties.)
My dad told me he was friends with one of the original members, one who eventually got kicked off the force for doing off-duty security at an after-hours bar. This may or may not be discerned with the two different picture sleeves this record was issued with, depicting different guitar players on the cover. (side note: the Blue Pigs played at my grade school at least twice while I was a student. I remember two cover songs they did: "I Wanna Be Rich" by Calloway and "The Best for Last" by Vanessa Williams. Also, the drummer used a tiny electronic drum pad for all his parts…not a cymbal or drum in his arsenal at all. Such was the early Nineties.)
(a more-desperate need for an upgraded picture sleeve I cannot think of...hook a honkey up if you're holding)
(notice how the mullet-ish qualities of the guitarist in the upper left-hand corner have been edited)
(both of these sleeves open on the BOTTOM. fucking dumb)
Or "Rock 'n' Roll Screamer" by Adrenaline. These guys were East Side and went to Catholic grade school...two things that could also be said of myself, and thus I feel an affinity for them. In a later incarnation they were better known as DC Drive, but this first single by Adrenaline is unlike anything else they'd ever put to tape. "Screamer" smokes in a weird way that only a non-punk rock record from 1977 can. All chugga-chugga motoring riffs with powerful vocals that border on melodic, this is a rare breed of 70's-80's Detroit rock that is almost completely overlooked outside of a handful of hardcore, borderline psychotic collectors. The original pressing seems to have been self-released on the Green Grass label, but existence of that has yet to have been proven...at least to me. It was definitely released by Fiddlers, a label headquartered out of a music instrument store that was half-a-mile from the house I grew up in and where I bought my first ever drumsticks, kick pedal and guitar. Fiddlers also and put out ignored records by the likes of Holy Smoke, Jett Black, the Happy Dragon Band and others.
"Methane Sea" was self-released by Richard Davis
in 1978. Davis would later gain renown as the other half of Juan Atkins
Cybotron outfit, under the moniker 3070. As the self-released showcase for a
'nam vet electronics enthusiast, this single packs loads of programmed electronics
and vast swaths of synthesizer wash coupled with Davis' spacey vocals. The
tracks are "Prelude" and "Aftermath" and they are genuinely
bizarre. All the lit on techno history makes mention of Davis and this single,
but damned if you can find it or even clips of it anywhere. I immediately
jumped on the only copy I've ever seen and it was the most confusing/satisfying
$300 I've spent on a record.
A recent perplexing find has been a self-released LP by
Richard Ristagno. While I'd originally become aware of the guy based on a
single he did under the name Canada (which I'll talk about some other time),
his LP from 1980 is unwaveringly odd. He pressed 200 copies, never made any
cover art and his backing band was a group called Soular. Ristagno hired Soular,
a band usually at home doing covers of the Marvelettes or Temptations, out of
the classified ads. What results is a pre-new wave, low-fi, fuzz guitar therapy
session where the loner gets the cheese. With lyrics like "Give it to me
front-door style" you know you can't go wrong. A buddy and I managed to
scrounge up some copies from Ristagno himself and before that, there was
absolutely NO evidence anywhere of this record ever existing. A reissue by
respectable independent label is currently in the works.
(special bonus...getting an original Archer Records emblazoned cardboard box out of the deal)
Of particular interest is the LP of Tape Fed Into
Garbage Disposal by Spaceman and Jake by Sweet Kelly. First off, that may
be the best album title of all-time. Released in 1997 on the Zedikiah label
(run by the quasi-legendary biker-folk madman Nicodemus) it remains unclear how
a trio of suburban youth crossed paths with a motorcycle gang leader with a
face tattoo. The record was "re-discovered" a couple of years back by
Aaron Dilloway (formerly of Wolf Eyes) who went as far as buying up the remaining
stock Nicodemus had of the LP and began hawking 'em at the WE merch table while
on tour. While looking for a copy I managed to snag one sold by Steve Turner
(of Mudhoney/Super-Electro Records) that had a complete press kit included.
According to the band, their influences are Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath and
Monster Magnet. The list of clubs they'd played is also fairly impressive…solid
East Side haunts like Java House, I-Rock, and the Palladium, not to mention a
surprising appearance at the Gold Dollar.
(quite possibly the first time a picture of the band has ever shown up online. does anyone care?)
The record itself is reckless teenaged confusion that sounds
like it was mastered directly from a fried cassette. I'm still fairly confident
I don't "get" where this record is coming from or what it's trying to
accomplish (Floyd, Sabbath and Magnet all feel like red herrings). But the
manner in which it stands alone, seemingly devoid of context, contemporaries or
discernible influence, is what keeps me coming back. I would not be surprised
if I was told "Tape Fed…" was actually recorded ten or twenty years
earlier. Interpret that as you may, but it's truly a more difficult feat than
it seems.
"Love Eyes (Cast Your Spell on Me)" by Lenny Drake is wonderfully out of place. Drake had success (I guess) with his group Lenny and the Thundertones performing instrumental surf tunes. Yet in 1970 on what seems to be his own "Rated X (for Excellence)" record label, Drake unleashed a searing guitar workout that seems out of place in just about any era…especially when the home organ-esque drum machine rat-a-tats without variation as the only rhythm throughout the entire song. With Drake's slaughtering guitar work, it's safe to say that any more accompaniment would only detract from the rest of the brilliance.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
New (Old) Jams to Chew On...
Here's a pile of new things currently available for purchase on the mediocre Cass Records label.
First off, from New Zealand's Ray Woolf is a tasty slice of 1967 doom, unreleased until this year.
Next is the latest nugget from Nashville's Ranch Ghost, a collection of upstanding individuals unparalleled the world over. They make rock and roll.
And finally, of particular excitement in releasing something that's been a goal to put out for over ten years, the Vegetarian Cannibals and the poignant punk prose of "Preppie Attack" from the LP Before the Fact recorded in 1990.
Of additional excitement is some of the TV publicity Mr. Woolf is getting in regards to "Little Things That Happen" Check out the clips below...
Too Risque for the 60's a nice piece talking in-depth about the history of "Little Things That Happen"
Live Studio Performance Ray performs two songs with "Little Things" starting at the 3:25 mark
All these gems can be purchased from the delightful Cass Records website. Please do so post haste.
But these things already...
First off, from New Zealand's Ray Woolf is a tasty slice of 1967 doom, unreleased until this year.
Next is the latest nugget from Nashville's Ranch Ghost, a collection of upstanding individuals unparalleled the world over. They make rock and roll.
And finally, of particular excitement in releasing something that's been a goal to put out for over ten years, the Vegetarian Cannibals and the poignant punk prose of "Preppie Attack" from the LP Before the Fact recorded in 1990.
Of additional excitement is some of the TV publicity Mr. Woolf is getting in regards to "Little Things That Happen" Check out the clips below...
Too Risque for the 60's a nice piece talking in-depth about the history of "Little Things That Happen"
Live Studio Performance Ray performs two songs with "Little Things" starting at the 3:25 mark
All these gems can be purchased from the delightful Cass Records website. Please do so post haste.
But these things already...
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
Interview with a Teenager...
Interview with a Teenager
I had the pleasure of typing back and forth with a journalism-minded teenager from the Detroit area not too long ago. Dare I say he reminds me a lot of how I was at his age. I also must admit being jealous of hell of his being able to write for the Metro Times at a time when I wasn't even able to write my way out of a paper bag. Some would stay I still can't get out of the bag. Regardless, enjoy.
I had the pleasure of typing back and forth with a journalism-minded teenager from the Detroit area not too long ago. Dare I say he reminds me a lot of how I was at his age. I also must admit being jealous of hell of his being able to write for the Metro Times at a time when I wasn't even able to write my way out of a paper bag. Some would stay I still can't get out of the bag. Regardless, enjoy.
Friday, June 29, 2012
How Jack, Jack, Brendan and Patrick Became the Raconteurs
Here are my liner notes for the Raconteurs "Live at Montreux" DVD. I figure no one is crazy enough to buy the whole thing just to read what I have to say, so here it is in its entirety.
For a band whose every move has been overly documented since the instant their existence was known, there's still a large part of the Raconteurs story that's largely untold.
While
Jack White was at the time the most
well-known musician amongst the self-proclaimed "new band made up of old
friends,” it is oftentimes overlooked that Benson had the earlier success. His impressive debut album, One
Mississippi, was released on Virgin Records in
1996. Benson supported the likes of the Wallflowers, saw his song "Insects
Rule" covered by the Foo Fighters and even enjoyed a successful tour of
Japan all before the White Stripes would play their first live show.
Benson
moved back to his hometown of Detroit in 1998 after a stint living in
California and soon met (and hit it off with) White. Brendan was the first
artist to ever cover the White Stripes when he performed “Sugar Never Tasted So
Good” at the Magic Stick in Detroit on November 27th, 1998.
At that same time, Jack Lawrence and Patrick Keeler were
barnstorming the Midwest as the rhythm section in the Cincinnati-based act the
Greenhornes, quickly making a name for themselves as the nation's premier
garage/soul band. It was a given then that all future Raconteurs would know
each other by the release of the Greenhornes debut album Gun For You in May of 1999, but that it would take until 2004 for
them all to collaborate was almost
odd given the collabo-happy times they were enjoying.
There were previous pairings of the friends that would
happen first. White and Benson did a one-off performance together (doing songs
each had written) at the Garden Bowl in Detroit on March 14th, 1999
and recorded demos of songs like "Now Mary" and "You've Got Her
in Your Pocket" in Brendan's attic later that spring. Benson would later
appear in the documentary Detroit Rock
Movie performing "…Pocket" while the White Stripes would begin to
cover Brendan's "Good to Me" live in the fall of '99 and released
their version in 2003.
Benson and White also performed together in the short-lived
and posthumously-named Jack White and the Bricks along with Kevin Peyok (the
Waxwings) on bass and Ben Blackwell (the Dirtbombs) on drums. While they only
existed for a handful of shows in the summer/fall of '99, their first
performance was actually opening for the Greenhornes on the Garden Bowl Lanes
on July 9th…White's 24th birthday.
With a set comprising mainly of songs written by White that
had yet to be appropriated by the White Stripes, the Bricks were never a
serious concern to any of its participants. The band is only really remembered
because of a decent audience recording (easily found online) made live at the
Gold Dollar in Detroit on September 16, 1999.
Come September 2002, the White Stripes were personally
selected by Jeff Beck to serve as backing band on songs from his Yardbirds era
in a career spanning 40th anniversary concert at London's Royal
Festival Hall. Needing a bass player to fill out the group, the Stripes tapped
Jack Lawrence for the spot and the result was an unqualified success, as the
YouTube videos will attest.
By August 2003,White had Keeler and Lawrence serve as the
rhythm section for the sessions that would yield Loretta Lynn's universally
acclaimed Van Lear Rose. Released in
April 2004, the album would go on to win two Grammy's and found White, Lawrence
and Keeler backing Lynn for performances on The
Today Show and The Late Show with
David Letterman. It would also seemingly be the last necessary step before
all members of the Raconteurs would finally play together.
In the summer of 2004 Benson, recording in the attic of his
grand Detroit home, was stuck on an uncompleted lyric of “Find yourself a
girl and settle down, live a simple life in a quiet town.” Good friend,
neighbor and occasional musician White came up with the fitting conclusion and
de facto song title, “Steady as she goes.” Slide in Keeler and Lawrence as the
best bassist and drummer around and it all fits together like pieces to a
musical puzzle…while they'd all been knocking about in the same space for
years, they were finally locked-in together in the right configuration.
The sessions in Benson's attic at 419 E Grand Boulevard (a
house that at most recent check was boarded-up) yielded the ten tracks that
would serve as their debut album Broken
Boy Soldiers. During overdubs White managed to lay down a demo of "As
Ugly As I Seem" which would later make its way into the Stripes'
repertoire.
With all songs
written and produced by the White/Benson pairing, the album was more-or-less
finished by the beginning of 2005. The fact it wouldn't see release for over a
year was understandable as '05 saw the White Stripes release Get Behind Me Satan, the Greenhornes East Grand Blues and Benson The Alternative to Love. Each album was
accompanied by extensive touring.
The bulk of the Stripes' dates had the Greenhornes as openers while
Benson opened a handful as well.
The Raconteurs' first live performance was an unplanned
occurrence on October 1st, 2005. The event was a private party held
in White's home at 1731 Seminole in Detroit's Indian Village and followed a
Stripes concert at the Masonic Temple. While the Greenhornes served as the
planned entertainment, with all four members in attendance it didn't take much
urging to get the Raconteurs playing. White's house, where …Satan was recorded, was less than a mile
from the attic where …Soldiers was
recorded.
White
moved to Nashville in December 2005 and it wasn't long before the rest of the
Raconteurs were rehearsing in his living room (footage of which is viewable on
Third Man Records' Vault fan club), pulling up their stakes and moving there
too.
The public wouldn't hear music from the Racs until XL
Records released 1000 copies of the 7" single of "Steady, As She
Goes" in January 2006. Their public live debut would come a few months
later on March 20th, 2006 in Liverpool, England but from there, the
rest of the story has already been told.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
I Remember that dog...
I wrote this nine years ago for a website called Swizzle Stick that seems to be long gone. Today seemed like one of those perfect limbo pre-summer days that I remember fondly in the piece.
I remember that dog’s “Totally
Crushed Out” because the album came at a transitional period in my tender
youth. I had seen the band open
for the Foo Fighters on March 30th, 1996 and was non-plussed. Granted, it was the first live show I’d
ever attended, but I think I was overly-anxious to see the guy who used to be
in Nirvana.
Two months later and I was
different. It was an awkward
time…I’d finished 8th grade and we were done with school a good two
weeks before the rest of school.
Hanging around at this time was a strange, unknown pleasure of nothing
to do during school-hour weekdays.
Ordering pizzas in the middle of the day, riding bikes down streets we’d
never been, perpetually throwing water balloons…me and this motley group of
rag-tag others lived as unchallenged kings in our own four square block
stomping ground.
Be we did other shit too. I’d dyed my hair forest green…only to
have it fade that same day in a gruesome shaving cream fight. The rest of the summer was spent with faint
pea green locks atop my head. We’d
gotten unusually obsessed with the Anarchist’s Cookbook, but all being under-18
were unable to purchase said text from the local head shop.
So we improvised. We had a general idea of what a Molotov
cocktail was made of, so the Snapple bottle was filled with lighter fluid with
a paper towel hanging out of the top.
We lit the paper towel and sat there, basking in the pyromania that most
twelve-year-old boys go through.
I’d say the flames got a little over my waist, so at that time, about
three feet tall. We never seemed
panicked or worried or scared…someone simply filled a kitchen pot with water
and doused our sorry excuse for overthrowing the government. The concrete on that spot had actually
been bleached a bright white from our actions and would remain so until we tore
up the backyard six years later.
But behind all this pre-pubescent
machismo, that same fucking day, I rode my bike to the Harmony House and spent
what felt like an eternity trying to decide between that dog and the Vaselines. The Vaselines album had the originals
of three songs that Nirvana had covered and was on Sub Pop to boot and was so
terribly hip and tempting. But I
kept coming back to that dog.
Something about the cover drawn to look like a teen romance novel or the
no short of brilliant use of all the song titles in a well-written, coherent
paragraph on the back cover was all too much. I was secretly scared that some suburban youth would come
and buy “Totally Crushed Out”, having witnessed the same mediocre opening
performance for the Foo Fighters I had, and I would never find the album
again. I bought that dog and came
back a few days later for the Vaselines.
The songs on “Totally Crushed Out”
are heartbreaking stories of lost love, missed chances, the “what could have
been?” which is totally what leaving eighth grade is all about. It made sense to me, but not too
quickly. As I grew, I kept finding
myself coming back to the record…it never aged and always seemed to equate to
that particular moment in my life that I happened to be living.
After meeting Anna Waronker, she
told me that she thought of that dog as an art band…the whole thing being a
kind of art project. And I thought
that a little queer. “Totally
Crushed Out”, a masterpiece that I revered as highly as any Beatles or Stones
effort, was almost shrugged off by its inceptor as a one-off art thingy. I prided myself on telling her that it
meant so much more to me and she was flattered.
So what I think of when I think of
“Totally Crushed Out” is the confusing time at the end of my pre-teens, my
stupid ugly green hair with the stink of lighter fluid still fresh on my hands
and the squeak of bicycle breaks humming in my head, partaking in some psuedo
rite of passage with a bunch of other hormone-addled freaks, and later, in
secret, hoping that no one would find me out, listening to this “pop” album and
feeling utter bliss and confusion and ecstasy and bewilderment. I liked the album so much that I was
scared. “Totally Crushed Out” made
a difference in this poor white boy’s life.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Even More Items I Didn't Win on eBay
1. I'd never seen the Atlantic promo sleeve with the MC5 pic on it before. Strangely enough it's a photo from the band's time on Elektra records. Not crazy enough to spend any more dough on.
2. Detroit-area garage single I didn't even know existed. Somewhat happy I did not win.
3. Detroit-area girl-band single I didn't know existed. Definitely happy I did not win. Probably sucks.
4. I'm slowly trying to acquire big time Detroit rap titles for the archive. Found out late in the game this was erroneously listed as an original pressing and withdrew my bid. Glad I did not win, but not willing to spend $8500 asking price on Discogs for an OG.
5. Was able to grab the Friars' other single, but this one NEVER turns up. Probably should've bid a little more. Bummed I did not win.
6. I'm a sucker for the Correc-Tone label. And an instrumental with a title like "Monkey Whip"...how could you go wrong?
7. Another big-time Detroit rap title. I still need this one...badly. Hook a honkey up...someone.
8. I think I've lost the last 3 auctions for L.S.D. How in the hell? Do you think these guys ever even tried LSD? Probably.
9. Private press, Michigan psych-folk...I've been known to take a chance on the genre before. Anything more than that $$ is beyond my level of interest and enjoyment of the genre.
Some observations...all of these titles are Detroit/Michigan records. Yeah, shit's serious. Three rap 12"s. I was the second-highest bidder on all but three of the auctions. I like my bid amounts to repeat numbers or patterns. In the same amount of time I won auctions for nine records that cost me a combined total of $277.79.
2. Detroit-area garage single I didn't even know existed. Somewhat happy I did not win.
3. Detroit-area girl-band single I didn't know existed. Definitely happy I did not win. Probably sucks.
4. I'm slowly trying to acquire big time Detroit rap titles for the archive. Found out late in the game this was erroneously listed as an original pressing and withdrew my bid. Glad I did not win, but not willing to spend $8500 asking price on Discogs for an OG.
5. Was able to grab the Friars' other single, but this one NEVER turns up. Probably should've bid a little more. Bummed I did not win.
6. I'm a sucker for the Correc-Tone label. And an instrumental with a title like "Monkey Whip"...how could you go wrong?
7. Another big-time Detroit rap title. I still need this one...badly. Hook a honkey up...someone.
8. I think I've lost the last 3 auctions for L.S.D. How in the hell? Do you think these guys ever even tried LSD? Probably.
9. Private press, Michigan psych-folk...I've been known to take a chance on the genre before. Anything more than that $$ is beyond my level of interest and enjoyment of the genre.
Some observations...all of these titles are Detroit/Michigan records. Yeah, shit's serious. Three rap 12"s. I was the second-highest bidder on all but three of the auctions. I like my bid amounts to repeat numbers or patterns. In the same amount of time I won auctions for nine records that cost me a combined total of $277.79.
| Bids | Price | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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