Sole Tech, Circle Game and the Joy of Record Store Inspiration

Spent my 43rd birthday in Detroit yesterday. Slept in, chased a six-year-old around a playground and of supreme excitement was my wonderful wife Malissa telling me to take the afternoon to go to whatever record store(s) I wanted. 

I’d been drooling at the Instagram posts for the Circle Game store for a minute. On the West Side of the city, it’s located in an area that I just don’t ever find myself in. My parents both worked in the around the corner some 35 years ago, but otherwise, the environs were unrecognizable and I can’t say that about many Detroit neighborhoods

As I pulled up to the store, I set a simple hope for myself…I just wanted to find a Sole Tech record. 

The outfit had only recently appeared on my radar as I delve further into ghetto tech at an age and geographic locale that belies the fact I could’ve explored the genre with comical ease in my youth. 

Within five minutes I find a Sole Tech 12”, then another and the store just melts into an indescribable whirl of amazing records of all genres and all price points. It was intoxicating. 

Owner Ben Hall pops out around 30 minutes into my visit and is surprised to see me. We’ve really only talked once in person previously. But this dude gets it and we are able to cut straight through the bullshit, a conversation riddled with shorthand for Archer Record Pressing, Sound Patterns, Griot Galaxy, Watts Club Mozambique and on and on and on. 

I got to hear a jazz version of a Ted Lucas song, was hipped to a gospel record out of Ann Arbor seemingly with only two known copies in the world and generally was just happy and enjoying myself in a manner that is unfortunately less and less frequent as I age. 

Overall, this was the most inspirational and satisfying visit to a record store in at least twenty years…and possibly ever. I’m holding up the two Sole Tech singles I grabbed, but really, the pile I walked out with was life-affirming in the best of ways. If you find yourself in Detroit, make way to Circle Game. It’s certainly worth it.

 

1971 Holy Redeemer vs. Catholic Central Men’s CYO Basketball Final Detroit, Michigan

Ted Lucas "The OM Album"

Ten years of emails and phone calls, contractual negotiations, in person meet-ups, the physical relocation of a mess of tapes and probably a bunch of shit I'm forgetting. This is what it took to get Ted Lucas released on Third Man. And for me, spiritually, it was absolutely worth it.

There is so much I could write about this record, but at the moment it feels best to point you to an interview I did with local NPR station WNXP....

https://wnxp.org/on-the-record-ben-blackwell-on-1975-ted-lucas-re-release/

There's audio of me flapping my gums as well as fairly insightful text excerpts of said gum-flapping at that link. If I can further belabor maybe just two points touched on in the interview there, it's as follows:

- there is SO MUCH more Ted Lucas music to sift through and to share. Like, it might be more than 100 reels worth of material. Across every and all iterations of bands and styles that Ted embodied, from commercial jingles he wrote on spec all the way down to field recordings and answering machine tapes, Ted chronicled and saved just about everything. And film footage? You better believe it. Thank god. I said recently that Ted is the perfect combination of an artist who was prolific, an artist who was a genius, and an artist who was great at documenting himself. Those three things almost never intersect. If you're lucky you can get 2 out of 3. 

- the digital bonus track of "Love Took A Trip" is just magnificent in every way. I cannot stop listening to it even now, months after first hearing it. This is the song that overwhelmed me and brought me to tears in the Turnip Truck (local grocery store) parking lot. As a raga, as a blues ramble, as an acoustic paean to the twists and turns that are inherent to the nature of "love" as it were...this song inhabits at least three different personas and each one of them is independently brilliant. But married together they take on a profile larger than the sum of its parts. 

The White Stripes Live at the Magic Stick April 17th, 1999

There are moments, ever so brief, that feel like an entire room has catalyzed and are all

speaking the same language. Even if speaking vaguely or in code, everyone understands fully.

So while I cannot speak for the rest of the 100 or so folks that were at the Magic Stick on April

17th, 1999, I can speak to how *I* felt.

For establishing purposes, exactly 25 years ago, on April 17th, 1999 the White Stripes played in

the middle of a bill with Gore Gore Girls opening and the Compulsive Gamblers headlining. I

was sixteen years old.

Barely a month earlier, it appeared that the White Stripes were done. With their cessation being

reported in the Detroit News, the fact that a DAILY newspaper was covering such underground

countercultural gossip still feels beguiling. Yet in the span of a few weeks, the Stripes had

played a triumphant non-farewell show (March 13th, 1999) and were most definitely soldiering

on, while Jack White’s other current musical concern, the Go, had unceremoniously kicked him

out.

I guess this was relatively big news in the small world of Detroit garage rock. In hindsight, it

seems pretty insignificant. So when the Stripes roll into “Astro” at the tail end of their set and

Jack substitutes in the names of his former bandmates in the Go “Bobby”, “Marc” and “John” as

“do(es) the astro” the feeling in the air, to me, was “oh man, he’s giving it to ‘em.”

To follow it up with the ending verse impromptu singing “Maybe someone has an ego!”

and “Why don’t you do what you want to, girl?” (with what I would interpret as foreshadowing of

future attack-like songs as “There’s No Home For You Here (Girl)” and “Girl, You Have No Faith

In Medicine”) and it all had the allure of an up-to-the-minute newscast, made up in real time, for

the couple dozens friends and scenesters gathered there that evening, all of whom knew the

score.

As the song concluded, you faintly hear a request for the Go song “Meet Me At The Movies” to

which Jack replies on mic “Somebody wanna hear “Meet Me At The Movies?” It’s the wrong

band!”

The Stripes performance, overall, is just so different from any single show they’d ever played

before or would play after. First ever appearances of gems like covers of Iggy Pop’s “I’m Bored”

and Earl King’s “Trick Bag” (done in the style of the Gories) alongside Jack and Meg’s first ever

performance of “The Same Boy You’ve Always Known.” They also cover Brendan Benson’s

“Crosseyed” for seemingly the only time ever with Brendan himself smack dab front and center

watching the proceedings.

Interesting little moments abound…the show-opening “I’m Bored” is quickly scuttled as Meg’s

bass drum pedal snaps. She coordinates a quick replacement with Deb Agolli (drummer for

openers the Gore Gore Girls) that precipitates Jack’s solo take on “Trick Bag”

(For years my recall is that I was up there helping Meg attach the borrowed pedal to her kick

drum. But just now, at this moment, I’m half-thinking that I watched it from the crowd. In my

head, I see Deb, coincidentally wearing red and white, behind the drums with Meg. But I also

see myself crouched down, futzing in the dark, helping Meg. The video of the show conveniently

shows neither myself nor Deb onstage during any of this. There’s a possibility my memories are

lies)

But once all is back up-to-speed, Jack just starts “I’m Bored” from the beginning.

There’s a simplicity to taking the song from the top, an innocence to it, a “we’re gonna do this

right” stick-to-it-iveness that I tend to think most bands would not actually endeavor. Most bands

would just move past it and try to pretend that they never even attempted the song in the first

place, let alone start their set with it.

And that’s just one of many reasons why the White Stripes were objectively great from such an

early point in their career.

Other treats include an early run of “The Big Three Killed My Baby” that does not start with the

trilling three scratches of the guitar. Seemingly every version performed afterwards would start

just like the album recording…with those ominous trills. Jack introduces Meg as his little sister.

Jack also, for the first time we’ve documented, signed off the show with a “My sister thanks you

and I thank you.” Little Easter eggs all of them.

And while there’s no real evidence here to point to proving so, we all know that this is the

evening that Jack White would pay a couple hundred bucks to Compulsive Gambler’s Jack

Yarber for his red Airline guitar that in short order would become an iconic piece of the White

Stripes imagery.

My favorite moment of the entire show unfolds in the middle break of “Astro” where Jack drops a

curveball…

What did the hen dog say to the snake?

No more crawfish in this lake

Just a hair, just a little bit, just a hair, just a little bit

Well what did the woman who came to the side,

one hand on her leg, one hand on her thigh

Good lord, have mercy, good lord, have mercy

This is a slightly altered take on George Johnson’s version of “Jack The Rabbit” as featured in

the 1978 John Lomax film The Land Where The Blues Began. Johnson was a gandy dancer, a

now-obsolete job of manual railroad track maintenance. This is a work song, plain and simple,

Johnson’s repeated lines of “just a hair, just a little bit” actually instructions to the rest of his

crew in regards to which increment or degree they should be adjusting the track. It’s chilling, it’s

got unforced attitude, it’s beautiful.

In sharing this clip with Jack this week, twenty-five years later, he said he had absolutely no

recollection of what it was or where it even came from.

But it felt so familiar, both then and now. Like a nursery rhyme I’d heard my entire life. Like

something EVERYONE had heard their entire life, certainly everyone in the room. Like it was

meant to be there, that it had always been there, and would always be there, smack dab in the

middle of “Astro.” 

The point I’m trying to make is that for these fleeting moments on this night, the demarcation of

stage and floor were largely irrelevant. What was happening wasn’t a band playing for a crowd.

What was happening was a conversation, an education, a therapy, a laugh, a finger-pointing, all

wrapped into one. And so much of it, hell, maybe all of it, happened just that once, seemingly to

be experienced only by those in the room. Fleeting.

So should you give a shit that this is effectively a spruced-up audience recording? Not in the

least. Just sit back and enjoy all the swirling different factors and reactors that melted together

to create a one-of-a-kind evening a quarter of a century ago.

Listen here...https://www.nugs.net/live-download-of-the-white-stripes-the-magic-stick-detroit-mi-04-17-1999-mp3-flac-or-online-music-streaming/36808.html

Ada Richards "I'm Drunk And Real High (In The Spirit Of God)"

Ada Richards 

I'm Drunk And Real High (In The Spirit Of God)

Some weeks will have you questioning the existence of a higher being. I like to think if there is one, they exist in a realm where this song is on loop.

That scream.

Sponge "Molly (Sixteen Candles Down The Drain)"

Sponge

Molly b/w Cowboy Eyes

scum stats: limited edition numbered copies on marigold colored vinyl. It's unclear how "limited" it actually is. my copy is #2884

When this song was released as a single in 1995, I'm pretty sure I *liked* it. I don't recall anyone in my immediate social circle of 13-year-old boys LOVING it, but as it was played ad nauseam on the local rock radio stations, it penetrated enough so that you couldn't really even ignore it. At worst, you just had to accept it.

Sponge being from Detroit didn't even really seem to make any connection to us either. It's not like we knew them or saw them around. They still might as well had been from Mars for all we knew. My appreciation for local music was still a good 4-5 years away.

And once that appreciation for local music struck, in the form of the underground garage bands of the late 1990s, my proverbial about-face found me shit-talking Sponge. Like they were an after-thought response to the true rebel artistry of the Seattle bands preceding them.

I held on to that mindset for a good fifteen years.

Then without warning, on paternity leave back in 2016, driving home from Babies 'R' Us with a dresser/changing table in the back of the Flex, I caught "Molly" on the Lithium channel on satellite radio. 

The production still left something to be desired, but more than ever, the WORDS got to me. My understanding is that the song is inspired by a story of an ill-fated professor/student romance, capped off with a suicide attempt. 

Maybe it was colored by fatherhood, or just the warmth of the familiarity of the lyrics after so many years, but the song, despite all its affected guitar and bluster and edge, struck me as so melancholy, as heartfelt, as properly emotional.

I went on a rabbit hole looking through various live versions and acoustic renditions and the feeling not only remained, but intensified. While the attempted rhyming of "glass" and "vase" still irks me, I keep coming back to the vocal melody sung with the pair of lines "don't ask why" and "sixteen candles down the drain." 

The melody is heartbreaking, it is dour, but at the same time, there's a weird underlying glimmer of optimism to it all. I sing this to myself all the goddamned time.

At the time I made a note to myself that Third Man should reach out to whoever controlled the rights to the Rotting Pinata LP and we should do a big proper reissue of it. I slept on that note, someone else did the reissue and to placate myself I tracked down a 7-inch copy for less money that I spend on a single can of Ghost energy drink.

I've got a quasi-secret plan for this song, I'm not ready to let the cat out of the bag just yet, but assuming I can pull some shit together, it will have made it all incredibly worth it. Stay tuned.

"It's A Holiday Inn Massacre..."

A few years back I worked an extended period in the Third Man Detroit offices. Through normal conversation, the "Fishbowl" single by Green Wall was brought up.

From my memory, the two folks who brought it up could not stop shitting on it. Just HATED the record. It was prominent on their radar when it came out of the Detroit suburbs in 1990, and in some regard, just the antithesis of what was good and worthwhile and noteworthy.

From my perch...I just loved it.

I sat back and waited for nearly three years now...multiple copies available on Discogs, but ALL of them overseas. I finally bit the bullet and spent more on shipping than for the actual record to get it from the UK.

Listening now...I think I love it even more. Swank popped his head in the door with that quizzical "What is this?" look on his face. I asked if he was curious because it was bad...or if he thought it was good. He said it appealed to his teenage "Rats Revenge" sensibilities and I get where he's coming from.

I find localized precedents along the lines of the Tulsa City Truckers and (maybe) the Rascal Reporters. But there's a little bit more adolescent naivete present here, bordering on art rock avant garde, that ups the ante in an impressive way.

Side note: only upon receiving this copy in the mail did I find out that one of the band members is John Tenney. I sat at the same table as this guy at a wedding like 15 years ago. I was told that he had taken over "Coast to Coast" radio after Art Bell passed, but my googling just now shows me that he's maybe only guested on the program. Anyway, Tenney is considered an esteemed paranormal researcher. Seems about right. 

"Holiday Inn Massacre" is my go-to here. Uncompromising, uncomparable, straight ahead, nonsensical. I can see how the shock of 90's nonsensical stupidity might turn off those who fully lived through it. But for those who didn't get to their first punk show until after Cobain kicked the bucket, there's a whiff of the "so close, I just missed it" grass-is-greener feels of what the cool kids were doing just before you walked through the door. 

These are the ephemeral, difficult to put into words moments I find myself searching out more and more. It brings me joy.

Cybotron "Alleys Of Your Mind"

 Cybotron

"Alleys Of Your Mind" b/w "Cosmic Raindance"

scum stats: at least three pressings...red/white labels with black printing, red labels with black printing, white labels with black printing. Anecdotally red/white labels are likely the first pressing, as those seem to turn up the least frequently. I'd venture the red label is the follow-up pressing and the white labels seem to relatively ABOUND in quantity. At one point 30 years after the fact Juan Atkins claimed that the white label was a bootleg, but I think that's the fog of the decades. Original pressings plated and pressed at QCA in Cincinnati, pretty sure that white label ran at Archer a few months later.)

The beginning of Detroit techno. Never mind that it's a wholesale lift of the hook from Ultravox's "Mr. X", all you need to know is that this is the shit.

Something shifted on my cell phone in the past week where the first thing to play when I plug into the car is no longer Mike Birbiglia's "Abby" but instead, Cybotron's "Alleys Of Your Mind."

This. Makes. My. Day. Every. Day.

I first heard this song on an "Old School Sunday" Detroit radio show...seemingly each one of the R&B stations in town sets up at a local spot with a club (read: not radio) DJ spinning live. None of the tracks get announced or even identified. 

Anyway, I was driving on Vernor headed west bound at the Gratiot intersection and this one drops. Sounding like nothing I'd ever heard before. Sounding like a BAND, a vibe I'd never thought I could gather from a techno record.

And...nothing. No idea what the song was or how to even try to find it.

A day or two later a call to dear band mate Mick Collins had the question answered in about ten seconds. Imagine my delight in finding out it was a DETROIT record.

In a few weeks one of those white label copies would be procured from People's Records. To later discern the story that Atkins and band mate Rick Davis self-released the record, essentially selling it out of the trunks of their cars and moving roundabout 25k copies in that manner.

As Atkins debut release, it's INSANE that the first lyrics he ever unleashed into the world (at a mere 19 years old!) are "Who'll cry for modern man?" I think about this line ALL THE DAMN TIME it's soo stupid good. 

To hear Mick talk about how it hit in Detroit...everyone heard it...and everyone freaked the fuck out. To the point where EVERYONE was bumping this song and loving the hell out of it.

Oh to have been around Detroit in 1981.

I've not stopped loving this record since. The Dirtbombs covered it on our Party Store LP back in 2011 and it's one of my happier full circles having made that happen. 

I've made a habit of grabbing any copy of this record I ever run into. So I've got some extras floating around here. They are all usually HAMMERED...a sign that a disc was a TRUE party record, getting played all the time, not kept in a sleeve, folks dancing so hard they bump into the turntable. Every copy of this disc has lived a full life no doubt. And that, more than anything, is the sign of the most important kind of records.

A Cursory Look At Detroit Devil's Night Commemorative T-Shirts...

While I was fear-mongered about this night throughout childhood, clearly I should have been…PRINTING T-SHIRTS. Nothing exemplifies the Detroit “hustle” more so than taking serious crime and disorder and trying to make a buck off of it. That they descend into unflinching racism against the mayor adds an unsurprisingly gross touch of Detroit class. The fact that they are almost all blue and almost all depict the Renaissance Center just seems…lazy. 

After posting that paragraph above on Instagram, I received a DM from a former Detroit firefighter providing a little bit of insight behind it all. His words below...

"They were produced and sold by entrepreneurial fire fighters where the funds raised were put back into the firehouse. The ones on your post mainly originated from a crew that ran at Engine 52 on Manistique & Warren. If the art looks slightly juvenile, it's because some of them were drawn by one of the FF's teenage son. The reason you only find them in blue or black is because that's what our uniform requirements mandated and they were intended to be worn at work. The sales became more lucrative in the early 90's as the firehouses would become inundated with extra government entities like the FBI, ATF, state police and even postal inspectors during the days surrounding Devil's Night. They bought shirts as souvenirs and to support the firehouses.

The political content came from the FF's frustration with Coleman and the media's attempt to downplay the carnage they endured. There are still preserved shirts hidden in old retired FF closets. But most were destroyed as guys wore them under their gear and while they worked construction jobs on their days off."

An interesting bit of perspective that provides a little bit more nuance to the scenario. Not as black and white as I'd imagine.

Rough Francis "I'd Be Your Doggie" b/w "We're Gonna Make It"

 Rough Francis

"I'd Be Your Doggie" b/w "We're Gonna Make It"

scum stats: 500 copies on blue vinyl

I am a simple man. I don't seek worldly treasures. I want not for gewgaws and baubles. On the real, all I'm truly looking for is a weird record to fill the pit of my blackened bottomless heart. Once or twice a year. That is all.

I became aware of the Rough Francis single around 2008. I played an ever-so small part in getting the world more acquainted with the band Death, a trio of Black brothers from Detroit who'd recorded some ahead-of-its-time proto-punk back in 1975 before seemingly disappearing into the mist.

Once people started to catch on and know more about Death and eventually reached out to me (I had written about them prior to any modern release/reissue of the material) I was lucky to have one of the sons of one of the original members of the band get in touch with me. 

The knowledge of the existence of Death, even amongst the progeny of its members, was zero. So these kids, who grew up listening to the likes of Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys, had their minds sufficiently blown upon finding out that dad and their uncles were creating some unholy punk scree in the family domicile on the East Side of Detroit back in the day.

As they dug deeper and deeper into the attic and family archives, they made me aware of a lone single released under the name Rough Francis. As I was told, Rough Francis was uncle David Hackney (guitarist in Death) doing his own thing, seemingly out-of-step with whatever could be considered "current" in 1991. I was sent a cassette dub of the two songs, quite possibly the last time I was ever hipped to music of an older, archived nature on a cassette tape. 

The standout track is the b-side "We're Gonna Make It." I remember the Hackney nephew's description along the lines of that the tune was kinda country sounding. And while I don't necessarily agree with that, I don't hard disagree either. The plaintive tone is warmly reminiscent of 70's country and western crooners, but the canned horns and (seeming) approximation of a lead sitar melody has me recalling "Abbey Road"-era Beatles. 

And the inherent message of "We're Gonna Make It" just rings SO true in light of the travails of major label tease, self-release scream into the void, decades of slogging it, David prognosticating that folks were someday going to care about the band Death, handing over the master tapes just before his own passing...you can't help but feel the emotion in it all. 

I put the Rough Francis record on my mental "want list" and didn't pay it too much mind.

Over the years, I'd find myself pondering here and there how, for such an unknown (and arguably undesired) single, it had NEVER turned up in my constant searching. The nephews, in a fit of tribute, named their new band Rough Francis, starting out merely covering the tunes penned by Death and eventually branching out into their own original material. 

Cut back to a couple weeks back, I got an email from a trusted Detroit record dealer, Steve. Our interactions have only ever been over email and he knows my reputation as a "Detroit" guy, so he'll share with me things he's found and/or is looking to sell from time-to-time. It is a seemingly simple courtesy that he pays me that I am never slow to marvel at. Being removed from Detroit on the regular, THIS is how I stay in touch with my preoccupation with music from the place of my birth. 

Anyway, he'd recently visited a record store far off the beaten path (one I haven't been to in 25 years) and pulled a wide-ranging pile of weirdo Detroit and Michigan 45's. Some cool Otis G. Johnson related singles, a $700 gospel 45, impressive stuff. And amongst that pile was a lone copy of this Rough Francis single, to which he asked "Do you know anything about this?"

The collector's dilemma. I have not always put myself on the morally defensible side of answering this question.  Record collecting is a balance of informed guessing, straight up knowledge, and dumb luck. So easy it could be to say "Eh, I dunno, looks interesting, I'll give you $10 for it." And without any other info out there to be gleaned on the record, I could merrily hop-scotch away, happy with the spoils of my deceit, tra-la-la-ing away to the next hopeless mark with a pile of precious desirables clean for the taking using nothing but my guile and mind games.

But I ain't got time for that bullshit anymore.

Without hesitation, I share everything I know about the record and my extreme desire to get my grubby little paws on it. I express some interest in a handful of the Otis G. Johnson singles too and directly offer $50 for the Rough Francis single.

He responds with prices on the Otis titles and says he's gonna hold onto Rough Francis for a minute.

UGGGGGGGGGGGGGH.

So then I got COVID and spent 10 days locked in the guest room of my house and seemed to forget about most of this while I just stared into the mental black hole of my cell phone and laptop screens until springing out with everything but my sense of taste for liquids intact. 

Steve reached out asking if I was still into the Otis stuff. I told him I got COVID and reconsidered. He said in trying to find out more info about Rough Francis that he'd reached out to Archer Record Pressing and Death's management seeking more details. 

I told him based on my experience, Archer's archival invoices stop at 1986 so he wasn't going to get any information from them about a single from 1991. But based on my knowledge about the plant and other releases that Death (and their off-shoots the 4th Movement and Lambs Bread) had pressed at Archer, they probably did 500 copies and that they would've all been on blue vinyl.

He responded saying that the manager confirmed my suspicions and that he was still going to hold on to the record and think about it.

After 13 years of never even SEEING the single, I figured he'd holler back at me in another year and ask for $200. And I'd be perfectly content paying it.

It's not that I even think the record is worth anything near that amount of money. That's not the point. I oftentimes veer into the world of consciously and conspicuously OVER paying for a record, almost as a matter of resigned deference to forces larger than myself. I will happily rid myself of $200 and all that could otherwise bring/do/change in my life (not much, I know) in exchange for the peace of mind that I no longer have to be "on the hunt" for this 30 year old piece of reconstituted fossil fuel. 

(I understand there's an argument that the record absolutely IS "worth" $200 if I am willing to pay it. But that's a deeper quagmire than I have time to parse today)

I'm sitting on my couch a few days ago and a 45 mailer arrived with Steve's return address on it. "Oh shit" I think. "He sent the Otis singles before I could tell him I'd changed my mind!" I slice open the packing tape and am immediately dumbfounded. 

Steve sent me the Rough Francis single accompanied by a handwritten 

note saying...

"Ben,

This is much better served in your collection. Glad I found it, enjoy!

Steve"

Does this change my life? Does it change the world? Does it truly matter to anyone, the record itself? Not really. Does it make me smile any less? Absolutely not.

What I find taking precedence in my life as I creep toward the crippling age of forty...is our interpersonal interactions. Connecting with other people in the world through whatever barriers and boundaries (self-imposed or otherwise) separate us. Finding connection amongst ideas and thoughts, being receptive to new and challenging ones, never remaining static or intractable in our lives or beliefs. Giving, whether based on need or based on where something SHOULD be. That is my goal.

And thus I am far more moved and will treasure this record THAT much more as opposed to if I had just thrown a pile of money at it. An acquaintance that I know only through the digital email realm thought it far better to just give me this record than to sell it to me. A small, easy gesture, that just resonates beyond the complexities of capitalistic exchange of culture and commodities and harkens back to all the hunters in the prehistoric tribes working for the common promulgation and continuance of us all. 

These moments, however fleeting, are the foundation of what keeps me optimistic for the never-ending future that lies ahead of us. I hope and strive to put the same positivity and good vibes out into the world for others as others have divined in my direction.

Determine what the things are that you love. Seek them out. Live a life open to ideas and experiences. Share everything. That is all that will matter.

Are Teenage Dreams So Hard To Beat?

I was never legally old enough to enter the Gold Dollar when it was a functioning rock and roll club. 

From my first visit on June 6th, 1998 (The White Stripes opening for Dura-Delinquent) until my final time through the front door on August 8th, 2001 (my band the Dirtbombs playing as a kick-off to a West Coast tour) I spanned the ages of 15 through 19. For insurance purposes, the bar was a 21-and-over establishment. But whether by carrying amps, playing the drums or just earnestly convincing whomever was working the door that I legitimately had no interest in consuming alcohol...I was able to see no less than two dozen shows there. 

As likely the youngest person to have been a witness/participant in the music scene at the Gold Dollar...I am well aware that I was DAMN lucky to have done so. That may be the coolest thing I am ever even remotely adjacent to and truly embracing it I feel simultaneously both proud and depressed. Most people who peak as teenagers do so as some sort of high school football/cheerleader/big shot on campus bullshit...all things that I was expressly avoiding at that time. Yet, here I am, over twenty years later, still talking about the group that had a half-dozen mildly attended performances within a nuclear blast radius of each other, across five months of 1999 like it's goddamned "Glory Days" and I'm Bruce stepping back from the mic so that the crowd can shout along the words to the chorus. 

Tony Soprano saying "Remember when...is the lowest form of conversation" fucked me up more than any other dramatic dialog in my life. I feel like I am constantly fighting with myself. Fighting to appropriately appreciate and contextualize the past and at the same time, attempting to downplay it, hoping that I'm currently living something that will be worthwhile to recollect in another twenty years. 

While I weirdly never felt like "The Bricks" (a name we'd never called ourselves and were never referred to as when we were actually performing) were a real band, I was, by far, the weakest player in the group of otherwise professionals. I had yet to join the Dirtbombs and prior to my gigs with the Bricks I had played MAYBE three shows in front of a crowd. One of those was a high school battle of the bands. Another in a bowling alley lounge. You know...inconsequential shit. 

While an audience recording of this show has existed in tape trading circles since the performance, this multi-track soundboard recording proved revelatory in what had been unheard to my ears since that night. The opening of "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" shined through with Brendan Benson's striking countermelodies on guitar, all but nonexistent on the audience tape. When the opening lyrics came through, I was confused "Why is Brendan singing?" 

The delivery is unmistakably him, though through years and years of listening on a lo-fi tape I’d never noticed Brendan sang the first two lines… 

 Dead leaves and the dirty ground when I know you’re not around 

 Shiny tops and soda pops when I hear your lips make a sound… 

Only to have Jack jump in, with gusto, guts, glory and the response to Brendan’s call.. 

When I hear your lips make a sound! 

I’m not exaggerating here…when I first heard this, clear as daylight, I choked up a bit. I think it’s beautiful and feels like a truly moving moment just accidentally happened to be caught on tape that night. 

Although I play drums here, I have few clear memories of what went down that evening. Royal Trux, the headliners, were late to arrive. I believe they showed up after we’d finished our set. My mom was there. It was a school night. I was seventeen years old. Pretty sure I got paid. That’s about it. My entire time in the band I was just making a very poor attempt to play drums like Patrick Keeler. Why I thought I could approximate his style is beyond me, and I often compare myself to Billy Yule playing drums in the last-gasp iteration of the Velvet Underground. I really shouldn’t have been onstage or in this band, but am forever grateful and happy that I was. 

The setlist features a couple of songs that aren’t on the Bricks live recording from the Garden Bowl two months prior, which was released as part of Third Man's Vault #15 in 2013. “One and Two” is an original Jack White song that never ended up being used or recorded anywhere else, which is odd for him. I particularly enjoy the slippery bass playing of Kevin Peyok on this song and feel like he may well have been the glue that held the band together. “Candy Cane Children” feels odd outside of the context of the White Stripes, especially as they never really performed the song live. “Ooh My Soul” is sloppy sloppy sloppy and in my opinion, the first two chords presage what would come later via “Fell in Love With a Girl." 

 

All my personal caveats aside, the show is a legitimately fun listen. That weird time in '99 where Jack just seemed like he had so much music seeping out of him that he had to hurry up and start ANOTHER band after the break-up of Two Star Tabernacle and his ousting from the Go...and that band seeming to be COMPLETELY different from either of those outfits or the White Stripes even. I can't help but stress here, besides "Candy Cane Children" NONE of these songs would've been considered "White Stripes" songs at the time of this performance. They were "Jack White" songs that hadn't truly found their form or footing in the duo format. 

Originally included as part of our 27th Vault package back in the first quarter of 2016, the audio here is newly remastered by Bill Skibbe at Third Man Mastering...a facility only blocks away from the Gold Dollar address at 3129 Cass Avenue. 

As part of my duties at Third Man Records, I was able to enter what remained of the Gold Dollar building on "official business" not long after the original release of this show. Clad in a hard hat and joined by folks representing the Illitch family that owned the spot...it was a sad collection of four walls, dirt floor and collapsing ceiling. The idea was to try and see if there was some sort of collaboration that Third Man could spearhead to rehab the building. But damn...all I could think of was that besides the walls, there was no "there" there. As someone who had MANY formative nights in that space and saw more than my fair share of transformative performances on that stage AND could possibly help revitalize it...I was unmoved. I'd rather let the memories exist as they were than invoke a Ship of Theseus experiment. 

Though I did take solace in the fact that I had finally entered the building legally. 

On July 22nd 2019, the structure would meet its ultimate demise in a suspected arson, the news of which no less than a dozen people felt compelled to immediately share with me. Developers reached out to me directly asking if Third Man would be interested in trying to rebuild/recreate the spot. Dare I even mention that there was talk of Third Man getting the building for a $1/year lease prior to the fire? And that we weren't interested then? 

When asked by the Metro Times to comment on the fire at the time I said, "History like what happened at that club, for me, transcends the buildings it happened in. I'm sure there were probably at least five other fires in Detroit today that were far more tragic. Life goes on. This too shall pass. Memories are all that matter." 

I stand by that statement. I think I was unemotional about the fire because I actually had the vague "closure" of being able to walk through that room one last time. Bar missing, mirrors behind the stage desintegrated, finally able to go backstage for the first time (no one ever told me there was a backstage!)...the only sign music ever happened there being a destroyed Half Japanese / Godzuki / Wild Bunch handbill I'd dug out from underneath where the security monitors were. Otherwise...it was just a space, empty for 15 years, left to the ravages of time and the elements and scrappers and squatters and in desperate need of being demolished. You know...a regular building in Detroit. 

So here's to the memory of the Gold Dollar, to club owner Neil Yee for being wise enough to hit "record" so many times, to the sublime summer of '99, to peaking early, to electric nights of loose rock and roll, played for no one you didn't know, figuring it all out in the process, working on mysteries without any clues, crystalline and idealized in my mind, me unaware of how clueless I actually was at the time, feeling like there was nothing but opportunity, potential and promise that lay ahead. 

While youth may be wasted on the young, why are teenage dreams so hard to beat? I think memories, true, deep, stay-with-you-the-rest-of-your-life-because-they're-fundamental-to-your-ever-so-fragile-sentience MEMORIES are only thrust onto those who are both sufficiently eager and receiving. Old guys who only talk about old times have closed off their receptors, failing to continue as memory collectors. Scientists say that humans aren't the only beings that recollect, that rats can have episodic memory, but I doubt those vermin are ever troubled by it. Yet the tenous balance between nostalgia and living in the moment shows no signs of subsiding in my consistently evolving superego...with all indications that my final actions, final words, and final thoughts on this mortal coil will almost certainly be some act of reminiscing. 

I hope when I get older I don't sit around thinking about it, but I probably will. 

You know...glory days. 

-Ben Blackwell February 17th 2021

In-Depth on The Spike Drivers "Often I Wonder"

The Spike Drivers

"Often I Wonder" b/w "High Time"

So working remotely this past week has been...challenging. No matter how much you tell a three year old that dada is "working from home" the fact that they just wet their pants and are staring at their father like HE created the problem, well, you just suck it up and you clean up the piss.

I usually write these ramblings from the friendly confines of my office. But having only stopped in there twice, briefly, over the past week, means I'm a little out of my element for contemplation, selection and concentration. At least three times since I've started this essay I've had to threaten "going to the office" in order to get the six-year-old to stop braiding my hair, the three-year-old from climbing on top of my shoulders, or the 18-month-old (as of today) from staring me down like a Wild West duel.

Additionally, the bulk of my new arrival vinyl sits in my office. It's where I have my packages sent, where I can listen in peace, where I have a door I can close to prevent people from entering without permission.

But at home, shit, anything goes. My records here are a little more haphazard, a lot more older, and shockingly more difficult to trawl through. I must've spent 25 minutes just trying to find something I thought was worthy to write about. Granted during that time I discovered a copy of a gospel record I had recently put on my Discogs wantlist, asking price for only available copy $300 plus, so I actually saved money in the process.

While digging through 45's, Violet the 6 and 11/12ths-year-old calmly sat nearby on an overturned crate and asked me, "Dada, why do you like records so much?"

I paused. I thought. I blanched at the fact that I had no immediate answer at hand. It's almost embarrassing to say it even. But oftentimes it's the simplest questions, asked from the most unexpected perspectives, that give you the most reason for deep, introspective thought.

So now, with the tiniest bit of hindsight, I'm saying to Violet...

When we want to be sad, records can help us be sad. When we want to be happy, records can make us happy. Records tell us stories. Records help us understand who we are and where we've come from, while giving us hope for who we can become and where we are headed.

When I ask Violet why she likes records, she says "I like records because it's the best."

Amidst the clutter I was initially scared that I could not find this 45 in my stack of all the other Spikes releases, including exotic South American, Japanese and Australian releases, though I quickly remembered I'd spun it at my last DJ gig and happily found it safely amongst my "going out" case.

I am hard-pressed to invoke a more perfect song than "Often I Wonder." The minor key, Eastern-influenced string pairings present the bass guitar formulating one-of-a-kind figures while the lead guitar threads breezily in-and-out, all of it light years beyond anything else that was happening in Detroit in 1966, shit, probably better than just about anything else in the WORLD at that time. Push comes to shove, I would put this on par with the first Velvets album...but otherwise...unparalleled.

And when the 90 second long fuzz guitar solo drops in...just pure delight, chordal overtones ringing out in ways that I could never fully explain or understand, other than that they FEEL special, like they were woven with the microscopic filament of a thousand electric eagle feathers.

Spending the past twenty minutes trying to transcribe the lyrics here has me taking stock, so moved by the beauty, precision, choice and deployment of these words. Hitting me harder and harder with each replay.

In full, from my ears (and if someone can definitively decipher my question mark, I am offering up a prime Jack White or White Stripes or whatever test pressing I can make happen for the effort and for reading closely) the lyrics are...

Often I wonder

And try to remember

The splendor that I once had known

Days free from scheming

Were days full of dreaming

When seemingly all could I own

I flew to the moon on a thousand delights

Was washed in the sun's warm and mellowing (maddening? meadowing?) sights

That caressed me and blessed me through ten thousand nights

Filled with longing and raging for love

But circling round me

A feeling has found me

That can comprehend where I'm in

Stripped of illusion

I flee the delusion

That man is a creature of sin

Wow. Stunned. Don't think until right NOW have I fully absorbed these lyrics. Now they feel sewn into my soul.

Furthermore, the flip side "High Time" is, while more stereotypically 1960s pop-psychedelia, as precise a double-entendre as you could wish for from '66, with a solo and biting tone just as fierce as "Often" and as a sublime pairing as you could hope for.

(necessary asides...there are no a-side or b-side distinctions on this single, the record is self-released by the band, the label name Om is as much a sign as I need to know that they weren't dabblers in the esoteric, "Often" clocks in at a phenomenal 5 minutes 45 seconds at 45rpm and whomever the genius is that cut this single deserves a medal)

I speak in pure honesty when I say that this single should cost $500 and it would be worth every penny. I seem to recall back ten years ago or so that Ted Lucas' family was selling copies on eBay for $50 a pop. I think that is where this copy came from. I feel blessed.

In some ways I feel like as a counterculture we're STILL just trying to catch up to what both Lucas and the Spike Drivers accomplished over fifty years ago. Divining inspiration from unexpected places while imparting our own coloring on it all, pushing the envelope and trying to advance our worlds and open ourselves up to varied experiences.

While trying to press on and make all this happen, an unexpected Uber Eats delivery of White Castle burgers arrived on our doorstep, I told them no one here ordered them, they left then returned minutes later saying they were from my mom. I instantly sent her a text saying "You son of a bitch."

Not long thereafter, deep in my writing, girls running around helter skelter, Navy stinking up the place with a diaper that needs changing (yeah, we gave her the White Castle), a balloon delivery shows up on our doorstep, individual balloons for each of the three girls, with a note that said "Navy, Happy 1 1/2 birthday. Love, Gigi."

I texted mom immediately "You son of a bitch again."

I can't imagine however many more weeks we have to live like this. Take care out there.