Flying to Atlanta to get to San Diego, from Nashville? Oh the beauty of airline hubs and the dregs of Hartfield International, a more-despised airport I cannot imagine. In my attempt to explain to Malissa how close the Casbah is to the San Diego airport, I was physically able to point out the window to the marquee of the club approximately 5 seconds before our plane landed. Yes dear, visible-from-the-airplane close.
We arrive to an oppressive, 94 degree heat. Pat’s hanging out with his sister, the rest of the band is running errands for/with Mick. They’ve rented a minivan. Mal’s cousin picks us up from the airport and we go to eat at the Yardhouse. I forgot what I ordered, but Malissa got an amazing mac’n’cheese dish while the rim of my lemonade glass was dusted in sugar. I appreciate the attention to detail.
Arrive at the Casbah just in time to sound check. The Sermon had offered up their gear in exchange for the opening spots on the shows and we couldn’t really say no to that. The day before their van started smoking and they too had to rent a minivan (coupled with a spare truck they were also traveling in) to make the tour possible. Together we felt like soccer moms-in-arms.
We hadn’t played together as the Dirtbombs in about five months. First song at sound check was “What You’ve Got” a song that the band had never played live and only two of us (Mick and I) played on the recording of. I felt comfortable with it but Ko and Zack clearly have trouble making sense of Mick’s complete lack of a follow-able guitar. We then did “Underdog” and leave the stage because the doors were about to open.
First band was the Death Eaters. They may spell that with one word, but if they do, I wonder if they ever improperly addressed as the Deat Heaters? Or kids I knew in St. Louis called the Overtones…did they ever get called the Overt Ones? Or ’76 Kansas City punk unknowns the Vomitones…could anyone have ever called them the Vomit Ones? Oh the needless way my brain chooses to reinterpret band names.
Deat Heaters were a three-piece with a black guy singing lead and playing guitar, an Asian guy on bass and a white dude drumming. Someone made the wise observation that if you added a Mexican and another white dude that they could give the Dirtbombs a run for their money. I sincerely liked how they sounded and I don’t say that often about local openers. I was vaguely reminded of the Reigning Sound. They didn’t have a record. I believe they said they were working on it. Eagerly I await.
The Sermon sounded better than they ever have before. This was peculiar because I only recognized one band member and knew that one of the guitar players was on-loan just for these shows. Nevertheless, it felt as if what before could get caught up in intensity without much intention, this show echoed with effort and exaction. The dirge-y, “Dirt”-like ending tune was a welcome departure as well.
We made the point to actually write out setlists but that action notwithstanding, there really is nothing like jumping onstage with no rehearsal behind you. No net, no take-backs…or as Tom Petty would say, free-ballin’.
The performance was surprisingly acceptable. Upon starting “Wreck My Flow” I felt that the disco boots-pants beat on the hi-hat didn’t seem right. I stared at Pants and for the life of me could not figure out what was wrong. Halfway through I finally realized that I don’t play this song on the hi-hat. I play it on the rim of the snare drum. This was my only “duh” moment of the night.
Encored with the borrowed blue Ludwig Vistalites on the floor in the middle of the crowd as Pants stood over me (on the stage) pouring water all over them for impressive water spouts upon impact. Hands got all wet and resulted in dropped sticks. That shit's funny when you're the only one playing.
Post-show I met up with pal Davey who played in Tall Birds and was in town drum tech-ing for Modest Mouse. Intro’d me to Joe Plummer (MM drummer) who said we’ve met before. I couldn’t specifically remember, but he reminded me that he was at the White Stripes show at Al’s Bar in LA back in 2000. He was with his then-girlfriend Janet Weiss. They bought “Hello Operator” picture discs, Sleater-Kinney asked Jack and Meg to open for them not two months later and it was all downhill for the White Stripes from there.
Nearby Mick was talking with someone and beckoned me over. He said “Ben, meet Alex Chilton.” I was supremely caught off-guard. Member of the Box Tops and Big Star, producer of the Cramps and the Gories(!) and all I could muster was some limp conversation about, shit, it wasn’t about ANYTHING! I was so flustered that I dragged Mal over and she proceeded to have a better conversation with him than I could. Smooth move Ben.
I manned the min-van for the nighttime drive back to San Diego. I was getting a bit sleepy but was too proud to say so. A stop in Orange County found us at one of the three best gas stations in the US (in my opinion). That stop also recharged my constitution and I was easily able to drop off Zack at his friend’s place (where a pack of raccoons were literally climbing 12-foot-tall chain link fences) before the rest of us set up camp at In the Red headquarters in Eagle Rock.
Larry Hardy’s residence on Avenue 45 is the vinyl Valhalla vision in the barren wasteland that is Los Angeles. Mal and I crash in the Dave Katznelson Memorial suite, making this one of only two times at the residence where I failed to sleep on the couch. After about a dozen visits, that couch is part of my DNA (or is my DNA part of that couch?) and to see Ko sleeping on it, I won’t lie, I felt slightly betrayed.
The ability to sleep in the next morning was delightful. Mick, Ko, Pat, Mal and I walked up the street to Auntie Em’s for delectable edibles from Terri Wahl, previously punk who spent time in the Red Aunts and the Screws. The special that day was a lasagna (I think) and me and two of my tablemates all ordered it. We enjoyed it.
Back to Casa de Hardy. Pat scooted off with Mick and they dropped Ko off at her hotel. They went to a gallery doing a show of Polaroid photos. They’d planned to go to the Third Man Records pop-up store too, but somehow got sidetracked and ended up at Amoeba.
Mal and I met up with Steve Macdonald and his son Alfie. We made way to a surf shop in Pasadena in search of rash guard for Alfie’s first-ever swimming excursion the next day. They had no guards. We walked to Urban Outfitters and realized THEY didn’t have rash guards either. From a freeway overpass we marveled at the smoke plume from the wildfires in the distance.
After our QT with Steve and Alfie we went back to Larry’s. Malissa went to hang out with her friend Alia while Larry and I cruised to Hollywood to hang out with Bob Matheu.
Bob has just written the authorized biography of the Stooges. He enlisted me to write a review of Funhouse for the book. I thought it would be just for him to quote from (as he said, he was sick of all the reviews of the album from the era and wanted new words) so imagine my surprise as he shows me the book with my review printed in its entirety.
If that were not enough, alongside my words are the most absolutely stunning photo outtakes from the Funhouse sessions where Steve Mackay looks so damn foxy I feel that my heterosexuality is now negotiable. Add to that a pristine label scan of an Armed Forces Radio and Television Services LP (proudly mentioned in my review) and the whole thing is quite possibly my most favorite thing I’ve ever written. Please do search out the book, officially titled “The Stooges Authorized and Illustrated Story” as it is truly a treasure trove. Pre-order on Amazon today and save!
And if THAT were not enough, he also hipped our ears to some sonic Stooge delight the likes of which have not been heard in 30+ years. That’s all I’m fit to spill here, but let’s just say that there’s still PLENTY of solid material languishing in the vaults that should (hopefully) see a release sometime soon.
I’ve never had the luxury of seeing Larry Hardy so giddy. The original plan was for Larry to drop me off at the Echo and then double-back to Hollywood where he had dinner plans. As we listened to more and more Larry’s eye was increasingly fixated on the time. In what was welcomed desperation, Larry gave me $60 and said “I’ll PAY for your carbide to the Echo if it means I get an extra 15 minutes of listening to this stuff.” I happily obliged and was gracious enough to give him $20 back as the ride was $30 and change and I tipped the driver up to $40.
Brief soundcheck at the Echo and then chill time with my buddy Josh. He has an apartment right around the corner from the club so we hung there a bit before returning to eat pizza slices next door to the club. Not sure if it’s always this way, but the 7” jukebox in there was offering free plays. Naturally I played the Stooges.
Downstairs that evening was Conor Oberest and His Mystic Valley Band. The confusing/interesting thing about it is that the entrance for that club (the Echoplex) is around the corner and down the street from the entrance for the Echo. So more than a few confused fans walked up to the door for our show only to be directed down the block, across the street, down some stairs and back across the street to see Conor. The VIP’s for that show were allowed into the entrance of the Echo and led down a secret set of stairs to the Echoplex. I saw Jenny Lewis and Chloe Sevigny (separate) and couldn’t help but think Chloe’s ensemble was terribly outrageous in the most uninteresting way. Then I wondered if people actually like Conor Oberest’s music.
(although Dungen was opening the show, I made no effort to see them…figured owning the record was good enough and for a band playing that kind of music, the only time I’d seen them live it seemed sterile and rehearsed. I was hoping for more…jamming? I can’t believe I’m actually typing those words. Watching them play felt like jazz to me and that’s not meant as a compliment)
I missed openers Jail Weddings and the Sermon too. Turned out that as de facto tour manager I made a pretty huge goof-up. After LA, we had a day off to drive to San Francisco. The following day, Saturday, we would be performing at the Outside Lands Festival in SF at 12:45pm.
At some point in organizing the tour, the Sermon asked if we wanted to play a show on that Friday and if not, would we be fine if they did themselves? We chose to relish in our day off and had no problem with them booking their own show. Turns out I failed to notify the Sermon that we would still need their gear with us in San Francisco for a 10am load-in at Golden Gate park. And that kind of thing just ain’t possible when they’ve got a late gig in Santa Barbara the night before.
I sat on the curb outside the Echo feeling pretty fucked. As is my usual first instinct on those feelings, I called Kelley Stoltz. He didn’t answer, but I left a detailed message. Before I could even seriously begin to worry, Kelley called back, said he had a drum set and guitar amp we could use. He’d already been in touch with James Kim (his drummer) who proffered up another drum kit and a quick call to Kevin Ink (Stoltz’s bassist/engineer) and we were sorted with another guitar amp and a bass amp. All told, it took maybe twenty-five minutes to sort all that out.
Not that I really needed the reminding, but it was at this moment when I realized how dear and irreplaceable true friends are. I know I would’ve done the same thing for those guys in a heartbeat, but just that feeling of people sincerely making the effort to help us out…there’s absolutely no beating that.
Our set at the Echo was alright. Mic stand started to slide far below Mick’s mouth-level early on and none-other than Har Mar Superstar jumps up and straightens it out mid-song. I scream “anything to get on stage!” while he does so. No one hears it. I still think it’s hilarious.
Crowd seemed a bit thin throughout the performance. It remotely peppered my thoughts and made me feel a bit down. As soon as we start “I Can’t Stop Thinking About It” in the encore Pantano up-and-leaves his drum assignment to bring his kit onto the floor to play in the middle of the crowd. Sonofabitch stole my line. To fight fire with metaphorical fire I pulled my drums onto the floor as well and we ended the entire thing in sloppy, fan-pleasing fashion.
I was exhausted after the show. It was officially Pat’s birthday by this point and he was officially drunk. It was funny, if only because it seems like no one drinks in the band anymore. Load out was slow and steady and we eventually ended up at the Cha-Cha and ate from the fantastic taco truck parked outside there.
We drop off Ko at her hotel, Zack at his buddy’s and the rest of us slumber soundly at In the Red HQ. As per Pat’s b-day request (and thankfully ignoring his bidet request) we awoke early Friday morn to get on the road to SF. I ate some Jack-in-the-Box. I don’t recommend it.
Upon arrival in the Bay Area we dropped off Mick “Where am I Staying?” Collins and Pantano in the Duboce Triangle and made way to the Fisherman’s Wharf Sheraton where the rest of us had paid for rooms that eve. We dropped off Ko and Malissa while Zack and I went to go procure our replacement gear.
First to Hotel Phoenix to meet up with sometime tour manager Dorien who was helping with the whole fiasco in exchange for a pass to Outside Lands. From there to Stoltz’s crib in the Mission. Kelley wasn’t around, so we helped ourselves to the gear he so lovingly laid out for us. I was stretching to find a reason in which we’d need an original German Polydor pressing of Black Monk Time as I know Kelley has one, but we decided against DJ Lethal’s proposition for a live collab.
From Stoltz’s to the Studio That Time Forgot where Kevin Ink calls home. Bass and guitar amps later we were on our way to within hearing distance of Pearl Jam at Golden Gate Park to pick up James Kim’s silver sparkle tubs. I won’t lie in saying that I was really tempted to load-up his Roland synth drums instead and have Pantano work with those, but I relented.
The process of gathering all this gear felt like it took forever. It was dark by the time we returned to the Sheraton. Zack hopped out and I took the minivan to the underground parking and following directions from the attendant, head towards the back where there were more available spaces.
I happened upon a completely empty row of parking spots and with even though it seemed to be a secure underground parking structure, I surmised it was always best to back in when given the chance. What I hadn’t noticed was that these spots were actually underneath a ledge. So as I slowly inch my way back, waiting for the tires to hit the parking block or the bumper to hit the wall, I’m totally fucked.
Because of the ledge, the parking block is placed underneath, somewhere my back tires will never touch but makes absolute sense when parking the sensible front-first way. The back window spider web shattered quietly with a "pop" and remained mostly intact, surprisingly so as what I’d backed into was solid concrete.
For once I had to call Zack without some smart-assed quip. He said he could tell instantly, by the tone of my voice, that I wasn’t joking. So instead of meeting up with Pantano for his birthday, we pulled most of the gear out of the van (the rental place had some clause about not using it for moving cargo) and then drove the 25 minutes to the rental car place at San Francisco International airport, switching spots with Zack before we arrived because naturally he was the only one who was supposed to be driving.
(I’m sure had we followed those rules in the first place we wouldn’t be in this situation)
I sat in the van while Zack dealt with paperwork and crap inside. Just when I thought busting the window out was the clever way to get out of having to refill the gas tank he hops back in and says we need to fill up or pay the $4/gallon charge for them to do it.
We make a wrong turn and soon remembered that they make rental car lots so that you can’t leave without having to pass a security guard. We found ourselves at the mechanic’s station and they stared at us like we had penises on our foreheads.
After doubling-back and finally getting to the security guard we somewhat easily found the gas station we were directed to and filled up. Once back to the rental agency, we carefully switched the gear left inside to our new, identical minivan. After once-overing and double-checking that everything was out, Zack smart-assedly slammed the trunk HARD so as to rain fragments of tempered glass on the black concrete of the parking lot. This was WAY more punk than him breaking that Coca-Cola bottle in Germany.
Finally back at the hotel and looking back I wish we’d have parked in the same spot we busted the window in. Anygay, it seemed like the whole window replacement excursion took us 2 hours start-to-finish on our day off. Ko and Malissa were at some bar and soon arrived back with Mexican food for Zack and I. Passed out watching Fox News. Had nightmares.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Monday, August 03, 2009
Sommet to Springwater, Green Day to Davila 666: A Comparative Study...
Some of the guys from Green Day were backstage at the Dead Weather show on Thursday. They were affable and conversational. This somehow translated into me and Swank finding ourselves at their sold-out Sommet Center gig the next evening.
Swank said he'd never been to a proper arena show (he did see Guns 'n' Roses at the Toledo Speedway on the Use Your Illusion tour, but that was outdoors) and was generally excited. I was intrigued and wondered if they could possibly keep my attention as occupied as New Kids on the Block did back in March.
First observation, before even entering the arena I had to acknowledge how many radio hits Green Day has had. Coupled with Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers, that magic trifecta is any brain dead modern rock radio programmer's go-to list. Seriously, any single released by any of those bands is a surefire playlist staple. With their ascent to acclaim coinciding with the emergence of modern rock as a viable format, all three acts have essentially been bankrolled by the massive publicity, quality of the work notwithstanding.
Openers were the Kaiser Chiefs. While performances in their home country find them headlining comparable-sized rooms and selling them out, the sensibility of US concertgoers has yet to have fallen to that level. I seriously cannot understand the fuss about them. I did find out that a line in their biggest single – "A friend of a friend got beaten" from "I Predict a Riot" – is actually written about Ben Swank. First the Von Bondies, then the Kaiser Chiefs…I'm wondering what else I can start blaming on him.
Missed Green Day's grand entrance while killing time backstage. Made way to the VIP riser behind the soundboard and staked my claim there.
What instantly became clear was that this concert, to me, seemed to have very little to do with the music. The performance leaned toward un-ironic spectacle. Whether it be Billie Joe Armstrong hopping offstage and running half-way up the lower bowl of the Sommet Center, the liberal use of pyrotechnics and subsonic charges, the extended drawn-out jamming of seemingly every song to facilitate preaching what felt like a canned message, bringing a fan onstage what seemed like every-other damned song…it was more of a lowest common denominator circus for those with undiscerning taste in rock and roll. There was no art…just artifice.
I took biggest offense at the "props" portion of the set where, in rapid succession, Armstrong:
1) used a Super Soaker-like weapon to douse the crowd with water
2) manned a redneck rigged device that unfurled two extra-length rolls of toilet paper into the audience
3) armed himself with a t-shirt cannon and began to launch tees to the farthest reaches of the Sommet Center
At this point, what had maintained mainly as a bad rock show had delved into pure pageant. The event had ceased to be about music. I could, surprisingly look past their addition of three additional musicians for the live show. I can, somehow, ignore the fact that they unrepentantly rip-off so much, from song titles ("Know Your Enemy" was originally Rage Against the Machine, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" was at least half a dozen other songs) to actual songs ("Warning" is the Kinks "Picture Book", "Hitchin' a Ride" is the Stray Cats' "Stray Cat Strut", "Brain Stew" is "25 or 6 to 4"). I could pay no attention to the outright pandering of bringing no less than five different members of the audience onstage (not at once, but all at different points) to stage dive, take over vocals, operate Super Soakers, et al. But dammit, if I wanted shit tossed incessantly into the audience I'd go to a fucking Gallagher show.
(Swank, on the other hand, seemed to think this was the part of the performance that elevated the night from "bad show" into "so-bad-it's-good-show")
Equally as inexcusable was the demands coming from the stage. EVERY-FUCKING-SONG required a clap-along, a coordinated waving of the arms over the head, a call-and-response vocal desperately trying to ape those of European football chants (or in one case, just chanting the classic "Ole' Ole'" tune itself) that more often than not sounded like limp renditions of "The Banana Boat Song."
In their defense, the songs off Dookie still resonate. "Longview" to "Basket Case" to "She" to "When I Come Around" all had me singing along, the words forever stuck in my brain. I remember first hearing about the band on a short-lived MTV show hosted by Kurt Loder called "Daily Dose" where they showed the vid for "Longview" and a clip of them touring in a bookmobile. I went out the next day and bought a cassette of Dookie. It seemed that the album didn't hit until a few months later, at which point I was already claiming to be a fan from "way back." Even at age 12 I was a snob.
I had a 24"x33" poster of the Dookie album cover in my bedroom back then. I strategically placed it at eye-level right next to my bed. While my interest in the band was nowhere near Nirvana-levels of fervor, that album cover provided countless hours of staring, laughing, dissecting and rapt attention where a poster of the In Utero album cover was on the wall as a matter of principle rather than entertainment. Fifteen years later you could say my intentions of attending a Green Day concert were the same as placing that poster next to my bed…I wanted to be entertained and despite their all-out attempt to do so, I think I would've just preferred something less flashy and a bit deeper. Like Nirvana.
I even remember girls in middle school prank calling my house while I wasn't there. When I asked my brother what they said, he replied "They asked 'is the fritter fat boy there?' and then immediately hung up." The "fritter frat boy" is in reference to a cop depicted on the cover of the album. Why do I remember these things?
I remember because in a time where MTV was my only significant exposure to new music Green Day stuck out as something different. The shenanigans of a mud fight at Woodstock '94 were like crack to a 12-year-old by trying to be benignly deviant. Seeing Armstrong play his baby blue Fernandes "BJ" Strat (the same one used at the Woodstock gig) put a smile on my face. I respect those who stick with a specific model for ages…Willie Nelson and his 40 years with Trigger, Mick Collins and twentysome years with his Kent Videocaster…I guess I just never expected a performer of Billy Joe's ilk to hold on to something very long. It's refreshing to see otherwise.
We went backstage without watching the end of the set or either of the two encores. Why was I not surprised to see that they ended it all with "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)?"
Instead Swank and I rolled over to the Springwater. The room was packed and we arrived just in time to see Jeff the Brotherhood take the stage. It seems like these guys just keep getting better. I love the three-stringed guitar that actually sounds MORE full than a six-string one. I like it that Jake seems to be singing more. I adore the fact that they remind me of a more tune-driven version of the Melvins (which is by no means a slight on the Melvins) and I can wholeheartedly endorse their upcoming Heavy Damage album as riff after totally-bitching riff of must-hear quality.
Next up was Davila 666 from Puerto Rico. I had the album but had yet to listen to it. There was an instant feeling of kinship with them as we are label-mates. For people who aren't on labels or don't have the benefit of being on one they love as much as I love In the Red, I guess I'd compare it to being an older brother. You want to look after the younger bands on the label. You want to go to their shows and support them, buy their 7"s, pay the cover and make sure they're taken-care-of on the road. The fact that I'd never met them made no difference. Once you are part of the In the Red family, there's an unspoken bond I feel that, while difficult to explain, definitely exists.
These six guys, all looking like characters I knew from my days of baseball in Southwest Detroit, utterly smoked the place. Sure there were long pauses between songs. Sure the feedback was squeal-y and unrelenting. Sure they were mostly out-of-tune. But the all-around solid performance coupled with a downright explosive crowd reaction and all I could do was be excited for the band.
I can't imagine what kind of notions one has of the States coming from Puerto Rico. As I stood there, watching the mayhem and interaction, the CLOSENESS of it all, I wished to be in Davila 666's position. I can't imagine they pegged Nashville for being an exciting place to play, because, for most bands, it's not. Instead, they're greeted with what arguably has to be the best response they've received in this country. I was excited FOR them, just imagining the happiness and joy (and drugs and girls probably) swirling around their heads. Collective calls of "uno mas!" were met with an encore. The whole thing felt special.
Turbo Fruits had the unenviable task of following that blast and they did so with poise. While the new rhythm section still doesn't have tons of miles backing Jonas Stein, they're already on their way to becoming his best assortment of players yet. Barring any disastrous mistakes, I can't see how the newest Fruits material could be denied by anyone whether it be live, on record or in theory. The Turbo Fruits are scary good.
The evening's two shows were oddly similar. Davila and Green Day were clearly both intent on having fun but that manifested itself in different ways. Every band wanted a connection with the audience, but a dank bar and massive arena don't facilitate those connections in the same way. As much as I disliked it, I cannot blame Green Day for their actions. They are merely filling a need. They're not evil…they're just not for me. I'll take the smoky bar over the arena any day.
Swank said he'd never been to a proper arena show (he did see Guns 'n' Roses at the Toledo Speedway on the Use Your Illusion tour, but that was outdoors) and was generally excited. I was intrigued and wondered if they could possibly keep my attention as occupied as New Kids on the Block did back in March.
First observation, before even entering the arena I had to acknowledge how many radio hits Green Day has had. Coupled with Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers, that magic trifecta is any brain dead modern rock radio programmer's go-to list. Seriously, any single released by any of those bands is a surefire playlist staple. With their ascent to acclaim coinciding with the emergence of modern rock as a viable format, all three acts have essentially been bankrolled by the massive publicity, quality of the work notwithstanding.
Openers were the Kaiser Chiefs. While performances in their home country find them headlining comparable-sized rooms and selling them out, the sensibility of US concertgoers has yet to have fallen to that level. I seriously cannot understand the fuss about them. I did find out that a line in their biggest single – "A friend of a friend got beaten" from "I Predict a Riot" – is actually written about Ben Swank. First the Von Bondies, then the Kaiser Chiefs…I'm wondering what else I can start blaming on him.
Missed Green Day's grand entrance while killing time backstage. Made way to the VIP riser behind the soundboard and staked my claim there.
What instantly became clear was that this concert, to me, seemed to have very little to do with the music. The performance leaned toward un-ironic spectacle. Whether it be Billie Joe Armstrong hopping offstage and running half-way up the lower bowl of the Sommet Center, the liberal use of pyrotechnics and subsonic charges, the extended drawn-out jamming of seemingly every song to facilitate preaching what felt like a canned message, bringing a fan onstage what seemed like every-other damned song…it was more of a lowest common denominator circus for those with undiscerning taste in rock and roll. There was no art…just artifice.
I took biggest offense at the "props" portion of the set where, in rapid succession, Armstrong:
1) used a Super Soaker-like weapon to douse the crowd with water
2) manned a redneck rigged device that unfurled two extra-length rolls of toilet paper into the audience
3) armed himself with a t-shirt cannon and began to launch tees to the farthest reaches of the Sommet Center
At this point, what had maintained mainly as a bad rock show had delved into pure pageant. The event had ceased to be about music. I could, surprisingly look past their addition of three additional musicians for the live show. I can, somehow, ignore the fact that they unrepentantly rip-off so much, from song titles ("Know Your Enemy" was originally Rage Against the Machine, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" was at least half a dozen other songs) to actual songs ("Warning" is the Kinks "Picture Book", "Hitchin' a Ride" is the Stray Cats' "Stray Cat Strut", "Brain Stew" is "25 or 6 to 4"). I could pay no attention to the outright pandering of bringing no less than five different members of the audience onstage (not at once, but all at different points) to stage dive, take over vocals, operate Super Soakers, et al. But dammit, if I wanted shit tossed incessantly into the audience I'd go to a fucking Gallagher show.
(Swank, on the other hand, seemed to think this was the part of the performance that elevated the night from "bad show" into "so-bad-it's-good-show")
Equally as inexcusable was the demands coming from the stage. EVERY-FUCKING-SONG required a clap-along, a coordinated waving of the arms over the head, a call-and-response vocal desperately trying to ape those of European football chants (or in one case, just chanting the classic "Ole' Ole'" tune itself) that more often than not sounded like limp renditions of "The Banana Boat Song."
In their defense, the songs off Dookie still resonate. "Longview" to "Basket Case" to "She" to "When I Come Around" all had me singing along, the words forever stuck in my brain. I remember first hearing about the band on a short-lived MTV show hosted by Kurt Loder called "Daily Dose" where they showed the vid for "Longview" and a clip of them touring in a bookmobile. I went out the next day and bought a cassette of Dookie. It seemed that the album didn't hit until a few months later, at which point I was already claiming to be a fan from "way back." Even at age 12 I was a snob.
I had a 24"x33" poster of the Dookie album cover in my bedroom back then. I strategically placed it at eye-level right next to my bed. While my interest in the band was nowhere near Nirvana-levels of fervor, that album cover provided countless hours of staring, laughing, dissecting and rapt attention where a poster of the In Utero album cover was on the wall as a matter of principle rather than entertainment. Fifteen years later you could say my intentions of attending a Green Day concert were the same as placing that poster next to my bed…I wanted to be entertained and despite their all-out attempt to do so, I think I would've just preferred something less flashy and a bit deeper. Like Nirvana.
I even remember girls in middle school prank calling my house while I wasn't there. When I asked my brother what they said, he replied "They asked 'is the fritter fat boy there?' and then immediately hung up." The "fritter frat boy" is in reference to a cop depicted on the cover of the album. Why do I remember these things?
I remember because in a time where MTV was my only significant exposure to new music Green Day stuck out as something different. The shenanigans of a mud fight at Woodstock '94 were like crack to a 12-year-old by trying to be benignly deviant. Seeing Armstrong play his baby blue Fernandes "BJ" Strat (the same one used at the Woodstock gig) put a smile on my face. I respect those who stick with a specific model for ages…Willie Nelson and his 40 years with Trigger, Mick Collins and twentysome years with his Kent Videocaster…I guess I just never expected a performer of Billy Joe's ilk to hold on to something very long. It's refreshing to see otherwise.
We went backstage without watching the end of the set or either of the two encores. Why was I not surprised to see that they ended it all with "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)?"
Instead Swank and I rolled over to the Springwater. The room was packed and we arrived just in time to see Jeff the Brotherhood take the stage. It seems like these guys just keep getting better. I love the three-stringed guitar that actually sounds MORE full than a six-string one. I like it that Jake seems to be singing more. I adore the fact that they remind me of a more tune-driven version of the Melvins (which is by no means a slight on the Melvins) and I can wholeheartedly endorse their upcoming Heavy Damage album as riff after totally-bitching riff of must-hear quality.
Next up was Davila 666 from Puerto Rico. I had the album but had yet to listen to it. There was an instant feeling of kinship with them as we are label-mates. For people who aren't on labels or don't have the benefit of being on one they love as much as I love In the Red, I guess I'd compare it to being an older brother. You want to look after the younger bands on the label. You want to go to their shows and support them, buy their 7"s, pay the cover and make sure they're taken-care-of on the road. The fact that I'd never met them made no difference. Once you are part of the In the Red family, there's an unspoken bond I feel that, while difficult to explain, definitely exists.
These six guys, all looking like characters I knew from my days of baseball in Southwest Detroit, utterly smoked the place. Sure there were long pauses between songs. Sure the feedback was squeal-y and unrelenting. Sure they were mostly out-of-tune. But the all-around solid performance coupled with a downright explosive crowd reaction and all I could do was be excited for the band.
I can't imagine what kind of notions one has of the States coming from Puerto Rico. As I stood there, watching the mayhem and interaction, the CLOSENESS of it all, I wished to be in Davila 666's position. I can't imagine they pegged Nashville for being an exciting place to play, because, for most bands, it's not. Instead, they're greeted with what arguably has to be the best response they've received in this country. I was excited FOR them, just imagining the happiness and joy (and drugs and girls probably) swirling around their heads. Collective calls of "uno mas!" were met with an encore. The whole thing felt special.
Turbo Fruits had the unenviable task of following that blast and they did so with poise. While the new rhythm section still doesn't have tons of miles backing Jonas Stein, they're already on their way to becoming his best assortment of players yet. Barring any disastrous mistakes, I can't see how the newest Fruits material could be denied by anyone whether it be live, on record or in theory. The Turbo Fruits are scary good.
The evening's two shows were oddly similar. Davila and Green Day were clearly both intent on having fun but that manifested itself in different ways. Every band wanted a connection with the audience, but a dank bar and massive arena don't facilitate those connections in the same way. As much as I disliked it, I cannot blame Green Day for their actions. They are merely filling a need. They're not evil…they're just not for me. I'll take the smoky bar over the arena any day.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Two Weeks of Thoughts on Sonic Youth...
What does one hipster who was too cool to scam tix to a Sonic Youth show say to the still-die-hard fan who attended with ducats purchased from an online presale via Ticketmaster the instant they went on-sale?
"What old songs did they play?"
Having attended Sonic Youth concerts for over a decade now, I hate to admit it, but this is generally how I'd rate any Sonic Youth show I've ever been to.
On the Thousand Leaves tour I was excited because they ended the set with "Death Valley '69." Everything else was from A Thousand Leaves or the relevant SYR releases of the period.
I should have known better and learned my lesson then.
Every subsequent show has been judged solely on the back-catalog tunes they played. Murray Street tour was alright because they ended the show with "Making the Nature Scene" and Sonic Nurse was cool because they jammed on "Inhuman" with a bunch of Detroit noise dudes.
As a musician, I can understand their position. Anytime you have new songs, those almost instantly become your most favorite to perform live. But as seems to be common-knowledge now, Kim Gordon has declared herself all but finished with playing bass on new Sonic Youth recordings.
So with Mark Ibold (and prior to him, Jim O'Rourke) taking the majority of the bass duty, that leaves fewer and fewer instances where Kim plays bass, ie, does old songs. I actually think that such a bold artistic statement, 20+ years into her musical career, is exciting. It's as if Picasso, at age 65, would have said "I am completely done with paint."
Part of you would think "Well, his other mediums may become even better" while you could just as easily counter with "But you're such a damn good painter!"
The show in Detroit was a let-down, but only because I couldn't get into the old songs they played. I've been listening to The Eternal intently and I'm into it, but I know exactly what to expect from those songs live. There seems to be no experimentation or spontaneity to them. So when their set completely ignores 19 years of their career (1989-2008) I feel that I have ample reason to complain.
Nothing off of Goo, Dirty, Jet-Set, Washing Machine, A Thousand Leaves, NYC Ghosts and Flowers, Murray Street, Sonic Nurse or Rather Ripped. To me, that was appalling. They leaned too heavily on Daydream Nation tracks, unsurprisingly so as it was an album they toured playing in its entirety last year, augmented by "PCH" and "Catholic Block" from Sister and "World Looks Red" from Confusion.
The entire show felt like Sonic Youth cruise control.
But such is the problem when you're an artist with such an enviable back-catalog. SY could easily tour and play nothing but the "hits" and the fans would eat it up. To play the new material still cultivates new fans (and young fans) while old-timers like myself sit here and gripe.
The discouraging part is that it feels like it's eliminated some of the mystique. Sonic Youth is still sacred to me. I still place a lot of faith in them. So when it feels like I've solved a bit of the mystery (ie, we go on tour, play the new album and a handful of old songs) it hurts. I wish it felt a bit more spontaneous, more experimental, more boundary-pushing. The more I dwell on it, the more The Eternal feels completely predictable. It feels like any of that truly wild vibe of the band now finds it outlet in Thurston's noise endeavors.
It's frustrating to feel like I've figured them out, able to predicted their moves, their plans telegraphed….like seeing a magician a few too many times to the point of where you know how he pulls it off. You'll still go to see him every time he comes to town, but you will only leave the show with disappointment that he doesn't wow you like he used to.
But what a difference two weeks makes.
While being clearly bummed about the SY Detroit show, I'd still held out hope for Nashville. I'd managed to finish their "Goodbye 20th Century" biography the day of the show and that felt like some cosmic connection and gave me good vibes.
Even though we arrived 3-4 songs into the set, the vibe was immediately liberating. And as if they'd read my mind, they really did destroy it with the old songs they pulled out. "White Kross", "Shadow of a Doubt", " PCH" (again) and decidedly little off of Daydream, an overrated album if there ever was one.
To top it all off, they ended the set with "Death Valley '69" and it was, dare I say, heavenly. The way the breakdown slowly builds up, rumbles along with the vocals errantly yelping "hit it" and culminates back into the undeniable chorus…it was all teenaged blissful passion bursting through a song about cult murders.
What become more apparent was that while again their set excluded everything from Goo through Rather Ripped (as most of their sets have this year) it finally clicked that all of those albums were released by big, corporate, major labels. Kim's bass disinterest/tendonitis notwithstanding, I think this is a subtle message. Maybe they're saying fuck major labels. Maybe they're saying "free at last, free at last…" Maybe they're not saying anything. That's the beauty of a band who's been around forever…it's so easy to discriminate every last bit of minutiae and foist some self-determined importance to it. It gives hacks like me something to write about at the very least.
Each proper Sonic Youth set was followed by a hush-hush after-show appearance by Thurston at a separate location. In Detroit, the show was in a sweaty basement filled with smelly noise dudes. You had to know the password to get in (for us it was "John Olson") and it was just as much a bummer as the SY gig.
The room was 90% dudes. Thurston would yell something at the opening band, for example "Dudes" and then EVERYONE would start chanting "DUDES! DUDES! DUDES! DUDES!" coupled with a scary raucous banging on the heating/cooling ducts overhead. The few girls in the room were yelling "Kiss him!" but could not be heard over the din.
It was frustrating because, just like the Sonic Youth show, I really wanted to like it. But it was completely formless. Noise music can be so mercurial. I personally LOVE so much of what comes hand-in-hand with that scene… the artwork, the writing/reviews/label copy, frequency/randomness/locations of shows, catering to collectors, hand-made copies…all that stuff is completely up my alley.
But the music is so hit-or-miss. A friend came up to me in the middle of it all and said "There's no way you can possibly like this" and I had no counter to his statement. The curious thing about it all was that with certain people, saying you saw an unannounced Thurston noise performance would carry some sort of bragging rights. .But the people who would be impressed by such a claim are the exact same people who would not be able to stomach 5 minutes of his performance that night, an uninspiring coupling with Greh of Hive Mind.
It was quite funny seeing the tour bus on 11 Mile at 2am, unable to make the turn down the quiet, Royal Oak street where the performance went down. Apparently the tour manager literally had to run down the street to grab Moore and Ibold and get them on the bus.
But the hush-hush noise gig in Nashville was so fucking exciting. Thurston and Leslie Keffer squealed unholy feedback in the sports bar confines of Betty's Bar. It was exactly what noise music needs to be…scary, loud, unpredictable and confrontational. At one point the sole power strip connecting all the amps/pedals/electronics got switched off. Both Thurston and Leslie stopped sheepishly and slowly made moves to get things going again.
I took a breather outside and when I came back in both of them were on the floor in the middle of the crowd, Thurston with a long-haired bandana-wearing bumpkin on his back and Keffer with her evening gown almost over her head, exposing her "not cute" (her words) underwear. They were quick, they were engaging and they left everyone in the room entertained.
Afterwards I approached Thurston and said "That was way better than your show in Detroit."
He responded simply, "Yeah…it definitely was."
"What old songs did they play?"
Having attended Sonic Youth concerts for over a decade now, I hate to admit it, but this is generally how I'd rate any Sonic Youth show I've ever been to.
On the Thousand Leaves tour I was excited because they ended the set with "Death Valley '69." Everything else was from A Thousand Leaves or the relevant SYR releases of the period.
I should have known better and learned my lesson then.
Every subsequent show has been judged solely on the back-catalog tunes they played. Murray Street tour was alright because they ended the show with "Making the Nature Scene" and Sonic Nurse was cool because they jammed on "Inhuman" with a bunch of Detroit noise dudes.
As a musician, I can understand their position. Anytime you have new songs, those almost instantly become your most favorite to perform live. But as seems to be common-knowledge now, Kim Gordon has declared herself all but finished with playing bass on new Sonic Youth recordings.
So with Mark Ibold (and prior to him, Jim O'Rourke) taking the majority of the bass duty, that leaves fewer and fewer instances where Kim plays bass, ie, does old songs. I actually think that such a bold artistic statement, 20+ years into her musical career, is exciting. It's as if Picasso, at age 65, would have said "I am completely done with paint."
Part of you would think "Well, his other mediums may become even better" while you could just as easily counter with "But you're such a damn good painter!"
The show in Detroit was a let-down, but only because I couldn't get into the old songs they played. I've been listening to The Eternal intently and I'm into it, but I know exactly what to expect from those songs live. There seems to be no experimentation or spontaneity to them. So when their set completely ignores 19 years of their career (1989-2008) I feel that I have ample reason to complain.
Nothing off of Goo, Dirty, Jet-Set, Washing Machine, A Thousand Leaves, NYC Ghosts and Flowers, Murray Street, Sonic Nurse or Rather Ripped. To me, that was appalling. They leaned too heavily on Daydream Nation tracks, unsurprisingly so as it was an album they toured playing in its entirety last year, augmented by "PCH" and "Catholic Block" from Sister and "World Looks Red" from Confusion.
The entire show felt like Sonic Youth cruise control.
But such is the problem when you're an artist with such an enviable back-catalog. SY could easily tour and play nothing but the "hits" and the fans would eat it up. To play the new material still cultivates new fans (and young fans) while old-timers like myself sit here and gripe.
The discouraging part is that it feels like it's eliminated some of the mystique. Sonic Youth is still sacred to me. I still place a lot of faith in them. So when it feels like I've solved a bit of the mystery (ie, we go on tour, play the new album and a handful of old songs) it hurts. I wish it felt a bit more spontaneous, more experimental, more boundary-pushing. The more I dwell on it, the more The Eternal feels completely predictable. It feels like any of that truly wild vibe of the band now finds it outlet in Thurston's noise endeavors.
It's frustrating to feel like I've figured them out, able to predicted their moves, their plans telegraphed….like seeing a magician a few too many times to the point of where you know how he pulls it off. You'll still go to see him every time he comes to town, but you will only leave the show with disappointment that he doesn't wow you like he used to.
But what a difference two weeks makes.
While being clearly bummed about the SY Detroit show, I'd still held out hope for Nashville. I'd managed to finish their "Goodbye 20th Century" biography the day of the show and that felt like some cosmic connection and gave me good vibes.
Even though we arrived 3-4 songs into the set, the vibe was immediately liberating. And as if they'd read my mind, they really did destroy it with the old songs they pulled out. "White Kross", "Shadow of a Doubt", " PCH" (again) and decidedly little off of Daydream, an overrated album if there ever was one.
To top it all off, they ended the set with "Death Valley '69" and it was, dare I say, heavenly. The way the breakdown slowly builds up, rumbles along with the vocals errantly yelping "hit it" and culminates back into the undeniable chorus…it was all teenaged blissful passion bursting through a song about cult murders.
What become more apparent was that while again their set excluded everything from Goo through Rather Ripped (as most of their sets have this year) it finally clicked that all of those albums were released by big, corporate, major labels. Kim's bass disinterest/tendonitis notwithstanding, I think this is a subtle message. Maybe they're saying fuck major labels. Maybe they're saying "free at last, free at last…" Maybe they're not saying anything. That's the beauty of a band who's been around forever…it's so easy to discriminate every last bit of minutiae and foist some self-determined importance to it. It gives hacks like me something to write about at the very least.
Each proper Sonic Youth set was followed by a hush-hush after-show appearance by Thurston at a separate location. In Detroit, the show was in a sweaty basement filled with smelly noise dudes. You had to know the password to get in (for us it was "John Olson") and it was just as much a bummer as the SY gig.
The room was 90% dudes. Thurston would yell something at the opening band, for example "Dudes" and then EVERYONE would start chanting "DUDES! DUDES! DUDES! DUDES!" coupled with a scary raucous banging on the heating/cooling ducts overhead. The few girls in the room were yelling "Kiss him!" but could not be heard over the din.
It was frustrating because, just like the Sonic Youth show, I really wanted to like it. But it was completely formless. Noise music can be so mercurial. I personally LOVE so much of what comes hand-in-hand with that scene… the artwork, the writing/reviews/label copy, frequency/randomness/locations of shows, catering to collectors, hand-made copies…all that stuff is completely up my alley.
But the music is so hit-or-miss. A friend came up to me in the middle of it all and said "There's no way you can possibly like this" and I had no counter to his statement. The curious thing about it all was that with certain people, saying you saw an unannounced Thurston noise performance would carry some sort of bragging rights. .But the people who would be impressed by such a claim are the exact same people who would not be able to stomach 5 minutes of his performance that night, an uninspiring coupling with Greh of Hive Mind.
It was quite funny seeing the tour bus on 11 Mile at 2am, unable to make the turn down the quiet, Royal Oak street where the performance went down. Apparently the tour manager literally had to run down the street to grab Moore and Ibold and get them on the bus.
But the hush-hush noise gig in Nashville was so fucking exciting. Thurston and Leslie Keffer squealed unholy feedback in the sports bar confines of Betty's Bar. It was exactly what noise music needs to be…scary, loud, unpredictable and confrontational. At one point the sole power strip connecting all the amps/pedals/electronics got switched off. Both Thurston and Leslie stopped sheepishly and slowly made moves to get things going again.
I took a breather outside and when I came back in both of them were on the floor in the middle of the crowd, Thurston with a long-haired bandana-wearing bumpkin on his back and Keffer with her evening gown almost over her head, exposing her "not cute" (her words) underwear. They were quick, they were engaging and they left everyone in the room entertained.
Afterwards I approached Thurston and said "That was way better than your show in Detroit."
He responded simply, "Yeah…it definitely was."
Monday, June 22, 2009
The Gories: Still the Same After Sixteen Years...
The Gories were sublime.
I'd formed a little thought in my head on the drive from Nashville to Memphis. I was hoping the Gories (who were supposedly going into the show with only one rehearsal under their belts) wouldn't be too bad. Everyone's heard the stories of their inability to play in tune, play in time or just simply start and finish songs at the same moment. Going into their two shows this past weekend I couldn't help but hope that I would at least recognize the songs through the caterwaul.
At the same time, there were grumblings among the super-snooty of not wanting to attend the show because "Mick knows how to play guitar now." Having a vague understanding of that statement myself I could understand where it comes from. The guy generally has his shit under control in the Dirtbombs and it'd be easy to ascribe that ease to the Gories.
So when Dan Kroha came up to me after the show and asked, as the utmost Gories super-fan (as big a highlight as any for me on that particular eve) what I thought, I felt happy and confident in saying "You weren't worse than you needed to be and you weren't better than you were supposed to be." To make the statement a little more clear, I say the Gories were perfect.
From the opening primitive three-chord rumble of "Nautiloid Reef" I was agog in disbelief. I'd been waiting at least ten years to witness Dan, Mick and Peg onstage together, most of the time believing full-well that there wasn't a chance in hell for it to happen. Others had waited longer…Larry Hardy who started In the Red Records with the sole intention of putting out a Gories 7" back in 1991 had never seen the band perform. Others had come farther…there were whispers of some dedicated soul who'd flown all the way from Brisbane, Australia for the performance. And I don't think he was disappointed.
Sure Mick's voice was totally blown out to Blacktop proportions and Dan sang a few of the tunes his pipes couldn't handle. There was significant downtime between songs with repeated requests for duct tape for Peg's hands and drums. There were definitely fuck-ups and the laughing and attempts to correct them were endearing. All of this was necessary and almost fail-safe.
With such roadblocks all those uninitiated to the Gories live experience (ie, most everyone there) got exactly what they would have back in 1988. That is, a balancing act, a band completely capable of being transcendent and terrible within the context of the same song.
Mick played Jack Yarber's Fender Jaguar. I missed the classic Kent Videocaster, but his sound is his sound regardless of axe and it was cute seeing him and Kroha play matching guitars. Dan did the blown-out harmonica on "You Don't Love Me" and surfed into the crowd like a rock star. They bungled the intro to "View From Here" while Mick's vocals took on a never-before-detected sense of "me against the world" that imbued the song with so much fist-in-the-air rah-rah that I just smiled as I, along with the rest of the crowd, ended the couplet "One of these days, I'm gonna shout, won't somebody open the world up" with a gutteral "AND LET ME OUT!"
I was in the middle of the crowd, dancing like a fool, sweating my ass off, happy as a clam.
Missed the first three songs on Saturday night. The Gories went on at least a half-hour earlier than they had on Friday. They played a fairly different set too…tossing in their cover of the Iguanas "Again and Again" and adding "Detroit Breakdown" and "Ghostrider" which I was secretly longing for. As Friday was a long time coming and a long night living, Saturday experienced a noticeable downturn in crowd enthusiasm, save for the crowd's rapturous replies to Mick's call in "Thunderbird ESQ."
The fifteen-year-old in me favored the debut performance Friday while the record collector in me preferred Saturday's performance. But with Mick pledging to have his voice in full-form for the show at the Majestic this week, coupled with a sold-out crowd of 1000+ and the Gories going on last and it's the Detroit show that I'm near-certain will be the tops of the US gigs.
Below is a list of all the songs, by album, I recall the Gories playing over the two nights. Also included is a probably never heard-before live version of the Motown classic "Leavin Here" as done by the Gories in Paris, France back on June 5th, 1992. Enjoy.
Feral
I Think I've Had It
Charm Bag
Boogie Chillin
I'll Go
Hidden Charms
Sovereignty Flight
Detroit Breakdown
Stranded
Thunderbird ESQ
Nitroglycerine
Let Your Daddy Ride
Queenie
Ghostrider
View From Here
Telepathic
To Find Out
You Don't Love Me (You Don't Care)
Again and Again
Baby Say Unh!
Nautiloid Reef
Train Kept a Rollin'
Teased:
Stormy
Gimme Some Money
The Gories "Leavin Here" Live in Paris 6-5-1992
http://www.sendspace.com/file/6j36lo
I'd formed a little thought in my head on the drive from Nashville to Memphis. I was hoping the Gories (who were supposedly going into the show with only one rehearsal under their belts) wouldn't be too bad. Everyone's heard the stories of their inability to play in tune, play in time or just simply start and finish songs at the same moment. Going into their two shows this past weekend I couldn't help but hope that I would at least recognize the songs through the caterwaul.
At the same time, there were grumblings among the super-snooty of not wanting to attend the show because "Mick knows how to play guitar now." Having a vague understanding of that statement myself I could understand where it comes from. The guy generally has his shit under control in the Dirtbombs and it'd be easy to ascribe that ease to the Gories.
So when Dan Kroha came up to me after the show and asked, as the utmost Gories super-fan (as big a highlight as any for me on that particular eve) what I thought, I felt happy and confident in saying "You weren't worse than you needed to be and you weren't better than you were supposed to be." To make the statement a little more clear, I say the Gories were perfect.
From the opening primitive three-chord rumble of "Nautiloid Reef" I was agog in disbelief. I'd been waiting at least ten years to witness Dan, Mick and Peg onstage together, most of the time believing full-well that there wasn't a chance in hell for it to happen. Others had waited longer…Larry Hardy who started In the Red Records with the sole intention of putting out a Gories 7" back in 1991 had never seen the band perform. Others had come farther…there were whispers of some dedicated soul who'd flown all the way from Brisbane, Australia for the performance. And I don't think he was disappointed.
Sure Mick's voice was totally blown out to Blacktop proportions and Dan sang a few of the tunes his pipes couldn't handle. There was significant downtime between songs with repeated requests for duct tape for Peg's hands and drums. There were definitely fuck-ups and the laughing and attempts to correct them were endearing. All of this was necessary and almost fail-safe.
With such roadblocks all those uninitiated to the Gories live experience (ie, most everyone there) got exactly what they would have back in 1988. That is, a balancing act, a band completely capable of being transcendent and terrible within the context of the same song.
Mick played Jack Yarber's Fender Jaguar. I missed the classic Kent Videocaster, but his sound is his sound regardless of axe and it was cute seeing him and Kroha play matching guitars. Dan did the blown-out harmonica on "You Don't Love Me" and surfed into the crowd like a rock star. They bungled the intro to "View From Here" while Mick's vocals took on a never-before-detected sense of "me against the world" that imbued the song with so much fist-in-the-air rah-rah that I just smiled as I, along with the rest of the crowd, ended the couplet "One of these days, I'm gonna shout, won't somebody open the world up" with a gutteral "AND LET ME OUT!"
I was in the middle of the crowd, dancing like a fool, sweating my ass off, happy as a clam.
Missed the first three songs on Saturday night. The Gories went on at least a half-hour earlier than they had on Friday. They played a fairly different set too…tossing in their cover of the Iguanas "Again and Again" and adding "Detroit Breakdown" and "Ghostrider" which I was secretly longing for. As Friday was a long time coming and a long night living, Saturday experienced a noticeable downturn in crowd enthusiasm, save for the crowd's rapturous replies to Mick's call in "Thunderbird ESQ."
The fifteen-year-old in me favored the debut performance Friday while the record collector in me preferred Saturday's performance. But with Mick pledging to have his voice in full-form for the show at the Majestic this week, coupled with a sold-out crowd of 1000+ and the Gories going on last and it's the Detroit show that I'm near-certain will be the tops of the US gigs.
Below is a list of all the songs, by album, I recall the Gories playing over the two nights. Also included is a probably never heard-before live version of the Motown classic "Leavin Here" as done by the Gories in Paris, France back on June 5th, 1992. Enjoy.
Feral
I Think I've Had It
Charm Bag
Boogie Chillin
I'll Go
Hidden Charms
Sovereignty Flight
Detroit Breakdown
Stranded
Thunderbird ESQ
Nitroglycerine
Let Your Daddy Ride
Queenie
Ghostrider
View From Here
Telepathic
To Find Out
You Don't Love Me (You Don't Care)
Again and Again
Baby Say Unh!
Nautiloid Reef
Train Kept a Rollin'
Teased:
Stormy
Gimme Some Money
The Gories "Leavin Here" Live in Paris 6-5-1992
http://www.sendspace.com/file/6j36lo
Monday, June 01, 2009
DJ Set for the Turbo Fruits Shindig...
With Swank by my side, here's the shit I played (vinyl-style) with only one working turntable. That made song-to-song transitions an exercise in dexterity. An original Checker pressing of Bill and Will's "Goin' to the River" was the only record completely snapped in half and left unplayable.
Sides one and two of "Wild Things" compilation LP
Mountains and Rainbows – Knock You Out
The Jesters of Newport – Stormy
The Orange Wedge – From the Womb to the Tomb
Link Wray - Hidden Charms
Roy Head – Just a Little Bit
The Dead Weather – I Cut Like a Buffalo
The Horrors - Shadazz
A Number of Names – Sharevari
Viva L'American Death Ray Music – Dub SS
The Fabs – That's the Bag I'm In
The Glass Sun – Stick Over Me
The Black Lips – Born to Be a Man
Gardens – All is School, All are Teachers
Jay Reatard – Gamma Ray
Randy and the Radiants – My Way of Thinking
Dick Rabbit – Love
The Treniers – Poon Tang
Death – Politicians in My Eyes
Detroit Grand Pubahs – Sandwiches (Bloated Evil Bread Dub)
Sides one and two of "Wild Things" compilation LP
Mountains and Rainbows – Knock You Out
The Jesters of Newport – Stormy
The Orange Wedge – From the Womb to the Tomb
Link Wray - Hidden Charms
Roy Head – Just a Little Bit
The Dead Weather – I Cut Like a Buffalo
The Horrors - Shadazz
A Number of Names – Sharevari
Viva L'American Death Ray Music – Dub SS
The Fabs – That's the Bag I'm In
The Glass Sun – Stick Over Me
The Black Lips – Born to Be a Man
Gardens – All is School, All are Teachers
Jay Reatard – Gamma Ray
Randy and the Radiants – My Way of Thinking
Dick Rabbit – Love
The Treniers – Poon Tang
Death – Politicians in My Eyes
Detroit Grand Pubahs – Sandwiches (Bloated Evil Bread Dub)
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
From a White Stripes Book Proposal That *Almost* Got Accepted...
Below is my just-missed-it proposal for Continuum's 33 1/3rd series. Out of 527 proposals, I made it to the final 27 and they ended up selecting only 10 titles. If anyone runs a publishing company and is looking to hand out a royalty advance, I'm listening.
No other band from the turn of the century has been more mythologized or misunderstood than the White Stripes. The red and white-clad duo from Detroit was thrust to the forefront of the nascent "garage rock" revival of 2001 with the likes of such bands as the Strokes, the Hives and the Vines. In the name of a "return to rock" the White Stripes right-place-at-the-right-time 3rd album White Blood Cells was critically acclaimed the world over and introduced the band to an overly receptive international audience that would only grow exponentially in the years to come.
The Michel Gondry Lego-fied clip for "Fell in Love with a Girl", John Peel's exulting praise on the BBC and the subsequent blistering live sessions recorded at Maida Vale, the band's turning down of a cover shoot for almighty NME magazine (only to have a live shot used without their approval)…these are just a myriad of the well-tread, good copy stories that are frequently and without thought repeated ad nauseam in the telling of the tale explaining the success of White Blood Cells.
To that I say, you've not even scratched the surface.
What really gets me excited is that there's so much more about White Blood Cells that's never been told, never been dug up and exposed to the ripe air of peering eyes and inquisitive minds. Information (hardcore facts…pure provable FACTS) that only add a complex back-story to the narrative being told by the lyrics and melodies we're all familiar with. Stories about its creation (the band crashing on the couches and floor of a cluttered Memphis apartment during recording), the touring (a near-riot in Missoula, $15,000 cash locked in a hotel safe in LA with no way to retrieve it) and the drama (being kicked out of the actual Hotel Yorba by a hammer-wielding employee while trying to shoot a music video there) are all, whether you're familiar with the band or not, intriguing to the point of enjoyment regardless and unattached to one's opinions on the actual music.
I'm amazed no one ever brings up the fact that HALF the songs on this album originated in various musical outfits Jack White inhabited through the late-Nineties in Detroit, mutating and adapting with each different group that tackled them. Whether it was as a sideman in Two Star Tabernacle, a country-gospel-rock band (think the Gun Club meets Hank Williams' "Luke the Drifter") that debuted the album's first single "Hotel Yorba" and stellar "Now Mary" a good four years before they'd ever see release - OR - his very own take on Dylan with the Band (Jack White and the Bricks) that debuted "I Can't Wait" and "Offend in Every Way" in their brief, six-show existence in Detroit in the summer months of 1999.
And no one even seems to know that a song like "I Can Learn" had been performed at the White Stripes' first live performance in 1997 or that "Dead Leaves…" had been kicking around in their arsenal since 1998. In short, I hope to portray how White Blood Cells is the brilliant fusion of the musical detritus that'd been collecting in Jack White's brain for years equally coupled with his ever-expanding and expressive brand new compositions.
People gloss over the fact that such White Stripes touchstones as cover songs, guest musicians, blues music and guitar solos are all literally non-existent on this album. This may seem small, petty or insignificant, but when only one other White Stripes album is lacking only ONE of these components (Get Behind Me Satan has no covers), it makes it all the bit more peculiar and intriguing. White Blood Cells, while being most people's introduction to the band, is seemingly the least "White Stripes" White Stripes album.
And no one outside a small circle of those closest to the band are even aware of the absolute legal shit-storm that resulted with their record label, Sympathy for the Record Industry, upon the severe non-payment of royalties on sales for and the band's resultant leap to major labels XL and V2.
I've interviewed both Jack White solo (for an in-depth feature in Plan B magazine in 2003) and the band together (as part of an upcoming, feature-length documentary) as well as having penned the track-by-track liner-notes to their Under Blackpool Lights concert DVD. I have an established rapport with both band members that already has them committed to speak with me at great length about anything and everything in regards to White Blood Cells and the surrounding hysteria.
While band involvement is by no means anything unheard of in 33 1/3rd territory, let it be known that of the no less than seven books written about the White Stripes, neither Jack nor Meg have participated in any aspect of any of them. With their involvement it's painfully clear that this book will contain heretofore unimagined insight, musings and involvement the likes of which White Stripes fans (whether they be die-hard or casual) will salivate at the hope of. Conversely, even readers completely uninitiated to the band will simply be better informed because of it.
With their pledged participation, I've also been granted access into Jack White's personal archive of the band. From the daunting MOUNDS of press clippings (White Blood Cells was the first time the band would employ a publicist) from the era to unreleased live recordings, personal photographs and everything else imaginable, the availability of this trove will not only help to strengthen my own knowledge of the band, but it will help cut my time spent on research considerably.
Of most supreme historical importance is hours upon hours of video footage shot of the band in-studio while recording White Blood Cells. While previously only rumored to exist, the availability of said tapes will open a virtually untapped portrait of the band…that is, how they operate, interact and get along in the ever-mystifying studio setting.
As if their help were not enough, I've established strong connections with many others involved in the making of this record. David Swanson (filmographer of the sessions), Patrick Pantano (album cover photographer) Jack Yarber and Nick Ray (friends who's floor the band crashed on while recording), Chloe Walsh (the band's publicist), Ian Montone (the band's lawyer and subsequent manager) John Baker (tour manager) and no less than fifteen others.
As it stands, White Blood Cells is a quirk in the band's catalog that is deserving of deeper critical analysis and exposure. While access to the trove of above-mentioned raw information to the band is crucial, the ability to synthesize and present that information without boring, confusing or pandering to the reader will be a paramount goal of the utmost importance. It is my intention to cut through the rampant mythology and misunderstanding of everything surrounding them and this record and simply portray what a truly outstanding piece of modern musical achievement it really is.
The best way to do so is to simply let this smattering of 16 seemingly disparate songs guide the story. Each song's genesis, whether it be in 1997 with Two Star Tabernacle, the White Stripes in 2001 or whatever, will be its starting point and it will all be chronologically pieced together with the main focus being each composition's studio completion. From there, due attention will be paid to the resultant touring, press mania, video shoots, legal wrangling and surrounding hubbub that helps complete the picture of how this album (and more so this band) truly connected to its audience.
I've been following the White Stripes since 1997 and have dedicated more time, energy and manpower hours to the band than any sane person should to ANY endeavor that doesn't result in marriage or birth.
I completed three years of journalism studies at Wayne State University before leaving to tour in the Dirtbombs. Because of my journalistic training, I tend to focus on facts, anecdotes, and first-hand quotes in my writing rather than observations, stream-of-consciousness, feelings or any of that other flowery hippie bunk that behooved Lester Bangs but has severely hampered any subsequent rock writers.
Since leaving college, I've had my writing featured in publications as varied as Ugly Things, SF Weekly, Plan B, NME, Chunklet, Creem Online, the Stranger and Careless Talk Costs Lives. I also won Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 college journalism award for a tour diary I wrote about the Dirtbombs' trip to South-By-Southwest that year.
The reason I think I'm most qualified to write a book about the White Stripes is that I've always intended on doing so. From the early days sneaking into dank Detroit bars, collecting set lists and photocopied flyers off the wall on school nights all the way through worldwide tours, platinum records and TV appearances, I've stood by. Studiously keeping my own archive and mentally filing away every last bit of informational flotsam and jetsam, this band is my life.
The problem is…I've never known quite how to best frame my own personal experiences with the band in terms of writing. It's always felt too massive or too complex for me to even begin to digest or tackle.
The possibility of a 33 1/3rd book was like a beacon from heaven. I don't need to worry about or focus on the band's early years or any tabloid fodder. That's a different story for a different time. The story that I can tell is that of a band caught right on the precipice of decent indie rock notoriety teetering onto outright worldwide recognition…roughly, from the time of recording White Blood Cells in February 2001 until touring of the record ceased in October of 2002, with two triumphant gigs opening for the Rolling Stones and a performance on Saturday Night Live.
I think most famous artists will agree that the most exciting period of their careers was that precipice…when things just started to pick-up, where each day held a fresh, new and usually surreal experience that, after awhile, could (or would) easily become rote and commonplace. And that is why although I think Icky Thump is their best record, Elephant the fan-favorite and Get Behind Me Satan the most shrouded in mystery, White Blood Cells is the exciting record, the one most-deserving to be fleshed-out into a cohesive, well-informed book.
No other band from the turn of the century has been more mythologized or misunderstood than the White Stripes. The red and white-clad duo from Detroit was thrust to the forefront of the nascent "garage rock" revival of 2001 with the likes of such bands as the Strokes, the Hives and the Vines. In the name of a "return to rock" the White Stripes right-place-at-the-right-time 3rd album White Blood Cells was critically acclaimed the world over and introduced the band to an overly receptive international audience that would only grow exponentially in the years to come.
The Michel Gondry Lego-fied clip for "Fell in Love with a Girl", John Peel's exulting praise on the BBC and the subsequent blistering live sessions recorded at Maida Vale, the band's turning down of a cover shoot for almighty NME magazine (only to have a live shot used without their approval)…these are just a myriad of the well-tread, good copy stories that are frequently and without thought repeated ad nauseam in the telling of the tale explaining the success of White Blood Cells.
To that I say, you've not even scratched the surface.
What really gets me excited is that there's so much more about White Blood Cells that's never been told, never been dug up and exposed to the ripe air of peering eyes and inquisitive minds. Information (hardcore facts…pure provable FACTS) that only add a complex back-story to the narrative being told by the lyrics and melodies we're all familiar with. Stories about its creation (the band crashing on the couches and floor of a cluttered Memphis apartment during recording), the touring (a near-riot in Missoula, $15,000 cash locked in a hotel safe in LA with no way to retrieve it) and the drama (being kicked out of the actual Hotel Yorba by a hammer-wielding employee while trying to shoot a music video there) are all, whether you're familiar with the band or not, intriguing to the point of enjoyment regardless and unattached to one's opinions on the actual music.
I'm amazed no one ever brings up the fact that HALF the songs on this album originated in various musical outfits Jack White inhabited through the late-Nineties in Detroit, mutating and adapting with each different group that tackled them. Whether it was as a sideman in Two Star Tabernacle, a country-gospel-rock band (think the Gun Club meets Hank Williams' "Luke the Drifter") that debuted the album's first single "Hotel Yorba" and stellar "Now Mary" a good four years before they'd ever see release - OR - his very own take on Dylan with the Band (Jack White and the Bricks) that debuted "I Can't Wait" and "Offend in Every Way" in their brief, six-show existence in Detroit in the summer months of 1999.
And no one even seems to know that a song like "I Can Learn" had been performed at the White Stripes' first live performance in 1997 or that "Dead Leaves…" had been kicking around in their arsenal since 1998. In short, I hope to portray how White Blood Cells is the brilliant fusion of the musical detritus that'd been collecting in Jack White's brain for years equally coupled with his ever-expanding and expressive brand new compositions.
People gloss over the fact that such White Stripes touchstones as cover songs, guest musicians, blues music and guitar solos are all literally non-existent on this album. This may seem small, petty or insignificant, but when only one other White Stripes album is lacking only ONE of these components (Get Behind Me Satan has no covers), it makes it all the bit more peculiar and intriguing. White Blood Cells, while being most people's introduction to the band, is seemingly the least "White Stripes" White Stripes album.
And no one outside a small circle of those closest to the band are even aware of the absolute legal shit-storm that resulted with their record label, Sympathy for the Record Industry, upon the severe non-payment of royalties on sales for and the band's resultant leap to major labels XL and V2.
I've interviewed both Jack White solo (for an in-depth feature in Plan B magazine in 2003) and the band together (as part of an upcoming, feature-length documentary) as well as having penned the track-by-track liner-notes to their Under Blackpool Lights concert DVD. I have an established rapport with both band members that already has them committed to speak with me at great length about anything and everything in regards to White Blood Cells and the surrounding hysteria.
While band involvement is by no means anything unheard of in 33 1/3rd territory, let it be known that of the no less than seven books written about the White Stripes, neither Jack nor Meg have participated in any aspect of any of them. With their involvement it's painfully clear that this book will contain heretofore unimagined insight, musings and involvement the likes of which White Stripes fans (whether they be die-hard or casual) will salivate at the hope of. Conversely, even readers completely uninitiated to the band will simply be better informed because of it.
With their pledged participation, I've also been granted access into Jack White's personal archive of the band. From the daunting MOUNDS of press clippings (White Blood Cells was the first time the band would employ a publicist) from the era to unreleased live recordings, personal photographs and everything else imaginable, the availability of this trove will not only help to strengthen my own knowledge of the band, but it will help cut my time spent on research considerably.
Of most supreme historical importance is hours upon hours of video footage shot of the band in-studio while recording White Blood Cells. While previously only rumored to exist, the availability of said tapes will open a virtually untapped portrait of the band…that is, how they operate, interact and get along in the ever-mystifying studio setting.
As if their help were not enough, I've established strong connections with many others involved in the making of this record. David Swanson (filmographer of the sessions), Patrick Pantano (album cover photographer) Jack Yarber and Nick Ray (friends who's floor the band crashed on while recording), Chloe Walsh (the band's publicist), Ian Montone (the band's lawyer and subsequent manager) John Baker (tour manager) and no less than fifteen others.
As it stands, White Blood Cells is a quirk in the band's catalog that is deserving of deeper critical analysis and exposure. While access to the trove of above-mentioned raw information to the band is crucial, the ability to synthesize and present that information without boring, confusing or pandering to the reader will be a paramount goal of the utmost importance. It is my intention to cut through the rampant mythology and misunderstanding of everything surrounding them and this record and simply portray what a truly outstanding piece of modern musical achievement it really is.
The best way to do so is to simply let this smattering of 16 seemingly disparate songs guide the story. Each song's genesis, whether it be in 1997 with Two Star Tabernacle, the White Stripes in 2001 or whatever, will be its starting point and it will all be chronologically pieced together with the main focus being each composition's studio completion. From there, due attention will be paid to the resultant touring, press mania, video shoots, legal wrangling and surrounding hubbub that helps complete the picture of how this album (and more so this band) truly connected to its audience.
I've been following the White Stripes since 1997 and have dedicated more time, energy and manpower hours to the band than any sane person should to ANY endeavor that doesn't result in marriage or birth.
I completed three years of journalism studies at Wayne State University before leaving to tour in the Dirtbombs. Because of my journalistic training, I tend to focus on facts, anecdotes, and first-hand quotes in my writing rather than observations, stream-of-consciousness, feelings or any of that other flowery hippie bunk that behooved Lester Bangs but has severely hampered any subsequent rock writers.
Since leaving college, I've had my writing featured in publications as varied as Ugly Things, SF Weekly, Plan B, NME, Chunklet, Creem Online, the Stranger and Careless Talk Costs Lives. I also won Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 college journalism award for a tour diary I wrote about the Dirtbombs' trip to South-By-Southwest that year.
The reason I think I'm most qualified to write a book about the White Stripes is that I've always intended on doing so. From the early days sneaking into dank Detroit bars, collecting set lists and photocopied flyers off the wall on school nights all the way through worldwide tours, platinum records and TV appearances, I've stood by. Studiously keeping my own archive and mentally filing away every last bit of informational flotsam and jetsam, this band is my life.
The problem is…I've never known quite how to best frame my own personal experiences with the band in terms of writing. It's always felt too massive or too complex for me to even begin to digest or tackle.
The possibility of a 33 1/3rd book was like a beacon from heaven. I don't need to worry about or focus on the band's early years or any tabloid fodder. That's a different story for a different time. The story that I can tell is that of a band caught right on the precipice of decent indie rock notoriety teetering onto outright worldwide recognition…roughly, from the time of recording White Blood Cells in February 2001 until touring of the record ceased in October of 2002, with two triumphant gigs opening for the Rolling Stones and a performance on Saturday Night Live.
I think most famous artists will agree that the most exciting period of their careers was that precipice…when things just started to pick-up, where each day held a fresh, new and usually surreal experience that, after awhile, could (or would) easily become rote and commonplace. And that is why although I think Icky Thump is their best record, Elephant the fan-favorite and Get Behind Me Satan the most shrouded in mystery, White Blood Cells is the exciting record, the one most-deserving to be fleshed-out into a cohesive, well-informed book.
Friday, May 01, 2009
Return to Recent eBay Losses...
YOUNG SAVAGES GARAGE 45 ON DYNAMIC SOUNDS 2006! HEAR IT
Your max bid: $37.77
# of bids: 8
Ending price: $38.77
Never underestimate the power of a soundclip in an auction. I've put so many uninspired, runner-up bids on rerun45's auctions after hearing soundclips that I feel like he owes me money. No regrets on losing this one.
Garage - The Driving Stupid -"Horror Asparagus Stories"
Your max bid: $67.77
# of bids: 33
Ending price: $67.97
Hipped to this by the Horrors fanzine of the same name. How it never made it to a Back from the Grave comp I'll never know. And this was just for the one-sided promo version? Serial eBay overpricer craigmoerer has the stock issue available as a $175 Buy-It-Now which is absurd, although I still desperately want this gem.
1960s Garage 45 ASCOTS Who Will It Be? FRAT B.F.T.G.
(Reserve Not Met)
Your max bid: $466.66
# of bids: 6
Ending price: $360.00
Next to Lee Marvin Computer Arm, the only other respectable thing to ever come out of Waterford, Michigan is the Ascots. Perpetually available in Barry Wickham's mail auctions for the convenient price of $998, the quantity find of mint, unplayed copies has killed the value of this record. I was hoping to cash in and my max for this VG++ copy was more than $100 over what anyone else wanted to pay for it. Emailed and asked what his reserve was and if he wanted to sell outside of eBay. No response.
Woven Bones Hozac Hookup Club Black Lips Blank Dogs
Your max bid: $8.87
# of bids: 13
Ending price: $51.00
I'd heard a track on their Myspace that I dug and thought I might be able to get this easy. I was wrong. Is this absurd for a record that was just released this year? For a band that's not even that well-known?
Idle Times Hozac Hookup Club Black Lips Blank Dogs
Your max bid: $7.77
# of bids: 10
Ending price: $26.00
I clearly should have joined the Hozac Hookup Club when I had the chance. Not one to sleep on singles club invites, when Hozac sent the list of upcoming artists for this, I recognized not one that I had to have. In the interim, I've found out about 3 (so far) that I'm bummed I didn't jump on.
Dutchess and Duke Hozac Gold 69/150 Tyvek Black Lips
Your max bid: $29.99
# of bids: 10
Ending price: $30.00
Got screwed out of a gold version of this because I'd failed to include what record I wanted with my paypal payment to Hozac. Even more reason for the standardization of Paypal shopping carts the internet over. I'm totally smitten with this band and otherwise would feel no compunction in paying this much just for color vinyl and derivative artwork.
CLIX RECORDS STORY 31-cut CD Michigan rockabilly label
Your max bid: $13.33
# of bids: 3
Ending price: $13.83
A rockabilly label from Troy, Michigan? Sure, I'll bite. Got a copy for my bid price when the seller relisted. Have yet to listen to. Artwork is shoddy and liner notes nil. A bootleg.
A NUMBER OF NAMES Skitso/Sharevari QUALITY/RFC 12"
Your max bid: $33.33
# of bids: 11
Ending price: $52.00
The only place to find A Number of Names classic "Skitso" is on the Canadian release of their seminal "Sharevari" single. I'd plunked down a C-note on an original Capriccio 12" in post-fire retail therapy but am now terribly anxious to actually hear what I believe to be their only other song.
MAJESTICS Class A ULTRA RARE DISCO/FUNK/RAP 45 mp3
Your max bid: $111.11
# of bids: 13
Ending price: $393.00
Bid because I was erroneously told it was a Detroit record. Turned out to be from Milwaukee and my interest plummetted. A peculiar record in that it's sought after by modern soul collectors for the A-side and early rap collectors for it's B-side.
BLUE HAZE W/BIG Z KILLER MICHIGAN GARAGE INSTRO 45!
Your max bid: $44.44
# of bids: 6
Ending price: $77.88
Another case of rerun45 enchanting me with Michigan 7"s with soundclips. I've probably spent more money with this seller (through both eBay and record fairs) than any other in my life. He consistently turns up great shit and I've been known to pay top dollar for...uh, shit?
BMW - ROCK THE HOUSE DETROIT BLUE ROSE RAP 12" HEAR
Your max bid: $202.22
# of bids: 8
Ending price: $204.72
Have you noticed how often I'm the second highest bidder in these auctions? Too often. It's way better to lose by a mile than by a hair. I guess now I can let the cat out of the bag and say that I think the Blue Rose label is the genesis of the rap scene in Detroit. I was hoping I was the only one hip to this stuff, but obviously there's people as equally enamored as I am. Bid on this was overcompensating for losing the 12" below.
BMW - CHILLIN DETROIT RAP ON BLUE ROSE RARE 12" HEAR
Your max bid: $333.33
# of bids: 11
Ending price: $338.33
Both of these BMW 12"s were sold by a record store in Detroit that I frequent and frequently ask them to hit me up if Blue Rose/weird Detroit rap comes in. They put them up on eBay. I can't say that I'm mad, they clearly got a buttload of dough for them. But I can point to this as a reason that record stores are dying. No, it's not putting records for auction online (that's one of the few lifebloods still flowing). It's lack of connection with customers. Had the seller contacted me (and yes, they have my info) and asked for $500 for both of these 12"s, I most likely would have taken that offer. And granted, it brings into the equation all kinds of unpredictable variables that can only really be determined once the record is listed (or as the seller said to me "rolling the dice"). Here the human-to-human interaction level is removed and the possibility of finding sweet-ass records at physical stores diminishes, to the point where I will soon not bother going into their storefront and instead merely peruse their auction list. While this is great for the worldwide record collectorate, it does not endear yourself to hometown customers. All that being said, I'm still aching copies for these two BMW 12"s and the Breeze 7" on Blue Rose. Will pay or trade handsomely. Please.
MUDHONEY Street Waves 7" '08 RARE #13/79 SUB POP Punk
Your max bid: $33.33
# of bids: 12
Ending price: $129.50
One of the few bands who I have damn-near everything they've ever done on vinyl. The sleeve enticed me and I thought I'd get it cheap, but I underestimated the dormant Mud collectors out there. I don't even think I've got the non-sleeve version of this 7". I'm slacking in my old age.
Your max bid: $37.77
# of bids: 8
Ending price: $38.77
Never underestimate the power of a soundclip in an auction. I've put so many uninspired, runner-up bids on rerun45's auctions after hearing soundclips that I feel like he owes me money. No regrets on losing this one.
Garage - The Driving Stupid -"Horror Asparagus Stories"
Your max bid: $67.77
# of bids: 33
Ending price: $67.97
Hipped to this by the Horrors fanzine of the same name. How it never made it to a Back from the Grave comp I'll never know. And this was just for the one-sided promo version? Serial eBay overpricer craigmoerer has the stock issue available as a $175 Buy-It-Now which is absurd, although I still desperately want this gem.
1960s Garage 45 ASCOTS Who Will It Be? FRAT B.F.T.G.
(Reserve Not Met)
Your max bid: $466.66
# of bids: 6
Ending price: $360.00
Next to Lee Marvin Computer Arm, the only other respectable thing to ever come out of Waterford, Michigan is the Ascots. Perpetually available in Barry Wickham's mail auctions for the convenient price of $998, the quantity find of mint, unplayed copies has killed the value of this record. I was hoping to cash in and my max for this VG++ copy was more than $100 over what anyone else wanted to pay for it. Emailed and asked what his reserve was and if he wanted to sell outside of eBay. No response.
Woven Bones Hozac Hookup Club Black Lips Blank Dogs
Your max bid: $8.87
# of bids: 13
Ending price: $51.00
I'd heard a track on their Myspace that I dug and thought I might be able to get this easy. I was wrong. Is this absurd for a record that was just released this year? For a band that's not even that well-known?
Idle Times Hozac Hookup Club Black Lips Blank Dogs
Your max bid: $7.77
# of bids: 10
Ending price: $26.00
I clearly should have joined the Hozac Hookup Club when I had the chance. Not one to sleep on singles club invites, when Hozac sent the list of upcoming artists for this, I recognized not one that I had to have. In the interim, I've found out about 3 (so far) that I'm bummed I didn't jump on.
Dutchess and Duke Hozac Gold 69/150 Tyvek Black Lips
Your max bid: $29.99
# of bids: 10
Ending price: $30.00
Got screwed out of a gold version of this because I'd failed to include what record I wanted with my paypal payment to Hozac. Even more reason for the standardization of Paypal shopping carts the internet over. I'm totally smitten with this band and otherwise would feel no compunction in paying this much just for color vinyl and derivative artwork.
CLIX RECORDS STORY 31-cut CD Michigan rockabilly label
Your max bid: $13.33
# of bids: 3
Ending price: $13.83
A rockabilly label from Troy, Michigan? Sure, I'll bite. Got a copy for my bid price when the seller relisted. Have yet to listen to. Artwork is shoddy and liner notes nil. A bootleg.
A NUMBER OF NAMES Skitso/Sharevari QUALITY/RFC 12"
Your max bid: $33.33
# of bids: 11
Ending price: $52.00
The only place to find A Number of Names classic "Skitso" is on the Canadian release of their seminal "Sharevari" single. I'd plunked down a C-note on an original Capriccio 12" in post-fire retail therapy but am now terribly anxious to actually hear what I believe to be their only other song.
MAJESTICS Class A ULTRA RARE DISCO/FUNK/RAP 45 mp3
Your max bid: $111.11
# of bids: 13
Ending price: $393.00
Bid because I was erroneously told it was a Detroit record. Turned out to be from Milwaukee and my interest plummetted. A peculiar record in that it's sought after by modern soul collectors for the A-side and early rap collectors for it's B-side.
BLUE HAZE W/BIG Z KILLER MICHIGAN GARAGE INSTRO 45!
Your max bid: $44.44
# of bids: 6
Ending price: $77.88
Another case of rerun45 enchanting me with Michigan 7"s with soundclips. I've probably spent more money with this seller (through both eBay and record fairs) than any other in my life. He consistently turns up great shit and I've been known to pay top dollar for...uh, shit?
BMW - ROCK THE HOUSE DETROIT BLUE ROSE RAP 12" HEAR
Your max bid: $202.22
# of bids: 8
Ending price: $204.72
Have you noticed how often I'm the second highest bidder in these auctions? Too often. It's way better to lose by a mile than by a hair. I guess now I can let the cat out of the bag and say that I think the Blue Rose label is the genesis of the rap scene in Detroit. I was hoping I was the only one hip to this stuff, but obviously there's people as equally enamored as I am. Bid on this was overcompensating for losing the 12" below.
BMW - CHILLIN DETROIT RAP ON BLUE ROSE RARE 12" HEAR
Your max bid: $333.33
# of bids: 11
Ending price: $338.33
Both of these BMW 12"s were sold by a record store in Detroit that I frequent and frequently ask them to hit me up if Blue Rose/weird Detroit rap comes in. They put them up on eBay. I can't say that I'm mad, they clearly got a buttload of dough for them. But I can point to this as a reason that record stores are dying. No, it's not putting records for auction online (that's one of the few lifebloods still flowing). It's lack of connection with customers. Had the seller contacted me (and yes, they have my info) and asked for $500 for both of these 12"s, I most likely would have taken that offer. And granted, it brings into the equation all kinds of unpredictable variables that can only really be determined once the record is listed (or as the seller said to me "rolling the dice"). Here the human-to-human interaction level is removed and the possibility of finding sweet-ass records at physical stores diminishes, to the point where I will soon not bother going into their storefront and instead merely peruse their auction list. While this is great for the worldwide record collectorate, it does not endear yourself to hometown customers. All that being said, I'm still aching copies for these two BMW 12"s and the Breeze 7" on Blue Rose. Will pay or trade handsomely. Please.
MUDHONEY Street Waves 7" '08 RARE #13/79 SUB POP Punk
Your max bid: $33.33
# of bids: 12
Ending price: $129.50
One of the few bands who I have damn-near everything they've ever done on vinyl. The sleeve enticed me and I thought I'd get it cheap, but I underestimated the dormant Mud collectors out there. I don't even think I've got the non-sleeve version of this 7". I'm slacking in my old age.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Placeholder...
As I've been busy, just wanted to check in with quick thoughts.
I equally love "Sea Within a Sea" by the Horrors and "Mama's Mad Cos I Fried My Brain" from Turbo Fruits. The 5CD Little Walter comp on Hip-O is bananas. Sonic Youth wins on their split 7" with Beck. More words soon, I promise.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Random Rambling Thoughts on New Kids on the Block Live at the Sommet Center...
Why did everyone think my going to see New Kids on the Block was a joke? I never was a fan (beyond buying some packs of NKOTB trading cards because they were unbeatable at .25 cents each and I was a sucker for some cards) but with a friend working for them I couldn't resist the opportunity to see what they had to offer live.
First off, if before the show I was pressed to come up with four New Kids' songs that I was familiar enough with to sing along to, I would have quickly failed. So to sit through roughly twenty songs and clearly recognize half of them was a welcome reintroduction to the mass of shit buried in my unconscious. As I said, I was never a fan, but my sister played those damn cassettes religiously, slept on the bed sheets and even went to their concert at the ripe old age of seven (with my DAD, ever the trooper) thus always making me jealous that her first live concert experience was a good six years before mine.
As I look up a list of NKOTB jams, I'm realizing there's a handful more that I could've kept rhythm to that they didn't even play…"Funky, Funky Christmas", "Dirty Dawg" and "This One's For the Children"…and realize how utterly inescapable this group was in my formative years. These guys completely OWNED it during the first Bush administration and apparently I was paying attention enough to never forget. Wikipedia claims they've sold over 80 million records worldwide. That is a shit-ton if there ever was.
The guys put on a genuinely enjoyable show and I don't mean that in an arch-ironic hipster sort of way (but will say I feel vaguely inspired by Carl Wilson/Celine Dion). They are able to maintain your attention for a solid two hours and the thousands of screaming, fake tanned, late Gen-X/early Gen-Y, peroxided women losing their shit in the room not only ups the db's a bit…it adds an unexpected, good-natured humor to it all. The kind of thing where you just sit there and randomly laugh at the absurdity of it all at random points in the concert. I was told there's just something about New Kids that just instantly brings those women to back to the shrieking pre-teens they were some years ago. And while it helped to be told that…it wasn't like it wasn't completely evident while sitting in the crowd. I wondered how the volume compared to that of the Beatles in their heyday or what performer unequivocally has the loudest audience besides that of theater-goers for Barbershop 2? Heyoo!
I like the vague references to more critically acclaimed pop culture throughout the show. Donnie Wahlberg at one point was wearing a Misfits "Crimson Ghost" t-shirt. In a video segment with the instrumental outro of "If You Go Away Girl" they flashed images of "Those We Have Lost" that included Kurt Cobain (decent applause) and Notorious B.I.G./Tupac Shakur together (fucking MONSTROUS crowd reaction).
I also noticed the bass line for "Games" was almost a direct lift from Liquid Liquid's "Cavern"…and sure that bass was popularized by Melle Mel's "White Lines"…but the fact that something as obscure as Liquid Liquid can be made palatable to a generic, Middle American crowd goes to show that cream truly does rise, for better or for worse. Liquid Liquid never got paid for the lift and the legal battles essentially ended the group but now you can hear said approximation live at a Nashville hockey arena. Good times.
I was also wildly surprised to find out that NKOTB's original guru, Maurice Starr, a large, seemingly lovable black man (or at least depicted as so in their Saturday morning cartoon series) was an integral member of the Jonzun Crew…a seminal electrofunk band whose records are a definite must-hear.
Or that "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)" is an unparalleled Philly-soul track from 1970 that was less of a hit for the Delfonics than it was for New Kids. Not only that…it's a classy tune.
Why does it feel like I'm trying to find reasons to justify being at a New Kid's show?
Conversely, the songs' lyrics are particularly more dreadful with about two decades behind them. The puerile, juvenile, sappy, pappy dreck that severely overuses the word "girl" ultimately comes off as an 8th rate Michael Jackson imitation. The soporific instrumentation (those faked keyboard string sections!) is equally as retching and I dare you to find a fan of triggered drums.
It's hard facing the fact that this is how most Americans (hell, most people everywhere) experience live music. In big, oversized barns with no regard for acoustic quality. Once, maybe twice a year. At inflated ticket prices. Miles away from the artist. I get the feeling these people, on the whole, do not know what they are missing.
They are not exposed to smaller-level artists (with traditional radio and television outlets all exposing FEWER artists than ever) and are thus that much less likely to experience more intimate performances. To put on an impressive show in an arena you really do have to up the production value…video screen, pyrotechnics, back-up dancers…and with the added production you add to your costs, thus ballooning the ticket prices.
I'm not saying the world would be a better place if more people went to small clubs to check out music. I just think that a majority of people would sincerely enjoy it. It seems a large percentage of the population genuinely enjoy music and in turn derive pleasure for seeing it live. Yet it's something that most people take part in so infrequently that it's almost heartbreaking.
I suspected the key of some songs was changed to accommodate the fact that voices have changed in the past twenty years and wonder if anyone else noticed. The omnipresent, monosyllabic chanting vocals (see "Hangin Tough", "The Right Stuff" and "Games") seemed like it was an attempt at New Kid's "hook" or "thing" as much so as a fresh rap from Donnie Wahlberg or wicked falsetto from Joey McIntyre. Certainly there's enough of a cultish edge to their fans that getting them to just grunt along is hardly a challenge.
It was awkward that Wahlberg non-consecutively kissed (on the lips) no less than four women from the crowd. It was badass they let Jordan and McIntyre perform the hits from their solo careers and I particularly enjoyed "Give it To You" with its syncopated start/stops. It was no surprise I spotted no more than twenty men in the audience. It was 17 years since their last performance in Nashville.
It seemed that their dance routines had not changed in that time. They were still doing the "both hands on belt-buckle and shake legs like an Elvis clock" thing for "The Right Stuff" and a few other moves that seemed sneakingly familiar. It brings up a bevy of questions…first, if these are the same routines, how much did they remember after 17 years? If nothing at all, do they employ the same choreographers? If not, do they refer to videos of old performances and take notes? Who in the New Kids' camp is the keeper of old performance vids? What are their band meetings like? How do they split their $18 million gross from the first leg of the tour? How come this is so incoherent? What am I trying to prove here? Does any of this make any sense? Are you with me?
I guess, in short, being in a different town made me want to try different things.
(Does anyone else remember Hard Copy story from the era where a runaway/kidnapped girl was supposedly spotted in the crowd of the "Hangin' Tough" video? How did that story end up?)
First off, if before the show I was pressed to come up with four New Kids' songs that I was familiar enough with to sing along to, I would have quickly failed. So to sit through roughly twenty songs and clearly recognize half of them was a welcome reintroduction to the mass of shit buried in my unconscious. As I said, I was never a fan, but my sister played those damn cassettes religiously, slept on the bed sheets and even went to their concert at the ripe old age of seven (with my DAD, ever the trooper) thus always making me jealous that her first live concert experience was a good six years before mine.
As I look up a list of NKOTB jams, I'm realizing there's a handful more that I could've kept rhythm to that they didn't even play…"Funky, Funky Christmas", "Dirty Dawg" and "This One's For the Children"…and realize how utterly inescapable this group was in my formative years. These guys completely OWNED it during the first Bush administration and apparently I was paying attention enough to never forget. Wikipedia claims they've sold over 80 million records worldwide. That is a shit-ton if there ever was.
The guys put on a genuinely enjoyable show and I don't mean that in an arch-ironic hipster sort of way (but will say I feel vaguely inspired by Carl Wilson/Celine Dion). They are able to maintain your attention for a solid two hours and the thousands of screaming, fake tanned, late Gen-X/early Gen-Y, peroxided women losing their shit in the room not only ups the db's a bit…it adds an unexpected, good-natured humor to it all. The kind of thing where you just sit there and randomly laugh at the absurdity of it all at random points in the concert. I was told there's just something about New Kids that just instantly brings those women to back to the shrieking pre-teens they were some years ago. And while it helped to be told that…it wasn't like it wasn't completely evident while sitting in the crowd. I wondered how the volume compared to that of the Beatles in their heyday or what performer unequivocally has the loudest audience besides that of theater-goers for Barbershop 2? Heyoo!
I like the vague references to more critically acclaimed pop culture throughout the show. Donnie Wahlberg at one point was wearing a Misfits "Crimson Ghost" t-shirt. In a video segment with the instrumental outro of "If You Go Away Girl" they flashed images of "Those We Have Lost" that included Kurt Cobain (decent applause) and Notorious B.I.G./Tupac Shakur together (fucking MONSTROUS crowd reaction).
I also noticed the bass line for "Games" was almost a direct lift from Liquid Liquid's "Cavern"…and sure that bass was popularized by Melle Mel's "White Lines"…but the fact that something as obscure as Liquid Liquid can be made palatable to a generic, Middle American crowd goes to show that cream truly does rise, for better or for worse. Liquid Liquid never got paid for the lift and the legal battles essentially ended the group but now you can hear said approximation live at a Nashville hockey arena. Good times.
I was also wildly surprised to find out that NKOTB's original guru, Maurice Starr, a large, seemingly lovable black man (or at least depicted as so in their Saturday morning cartoon series) was an integral member of the Jonzun Crew…a seminal electrofunk band whose records are a definite must-hear.
Or that "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)" is an unparalleled Philly-soul track from 1970 that was less of a hit for the Delfonics than it was for New Kids. Not only that…it's a classy tune.
Why does it feel like I'm trying to find reasons to justify being at a New Kid's show?
Conversely, the songs' lyrics are particularly more dreadful with about two decades behind them. The puerile, juvenile, sappy, pappy dreck that severely overuses the word "girl" ultimately comes off as an 8th rate Michael Jackson imitation. The soporific instrumentation (those faked keyboard string sections!) is equally as retching and I dare you to find a fan of triggered drums.
It's hard facing the fact that this is how most Americans (hell, most people everywhere) experience live music. In big, oversized barns with no regard for acoustic quality. Once, maybe twice a year. At inflated ticket prices. Miles away from the artist. I get the feeling these people, on the whole, do not know what they are missing.
They are not exposed to smaller-level artists (with traditional radio and television outlets all exposing FEWER artists than ever) and are thus that much less likely to experience more intimate performances. To put on an impressive show in an arena you really do have to up the production value…video screen, pyrotechnics, back-up dancers…and with the added production you add to your costs, thus ballooning the ticket prices.
I'm not saying the world would be a better place if more people went to small clubs to check out music. I just think that a majority of people would sincerely enjoy it. It seems a large percentage of the population genuinely enjoy music and in turn derive pleasure for seeing it live. Yet it's something that most people take part in so infrequently that it's almost heartbreaking.
I suspected the key of some songs was changed to accommodate the fact that voices have changed in the past twenty years and wonder if anyone else noticed. The omnipresent, monosyllabic chanting vocals (see "Hangin Tough", "The Right Stuff" and "Games") seemed like it was an attempt at New Kid's "hook" or "thing" as much so as a fresh rap from Donnie Wahlberg or wicked falsetto from Joey McIntyre. Certainly there's enough of a cultish edge to their fans that getting them to just grunt along is hardly a challenge.
It was awkward that Wahlberg non-consecutively kissed (on the lips) no less than four women from the crowd. It was badass they let Jordan and McIntyre perform the hits from their solo careers and I particularly enjoyed "Give it To You" with its syncopated start/stops. It was no surprise I spotted no more than twenty men in the audience. It was 17 years since their last performance in Nashville.
It seemed that their dance routines had not changed in that time. They were still doing the "both hands on belt-buckle and shake legs like an Elvis clock" thing for "The Right Stuff" and a few other moves that seemed sneakingly familiar. It brings up a bevy of questions…first, if these are the same routines, how much did they remember after 17 years? If nothing at all, do they employ the same choreographers? If not, do they refer to videos of old performances and take notes? Who in the New Kids' camp is the keeper of old performance vids? What are their band meetings like? How do they split their $18 million gross from the first leg of the tour? How come this is so incoherent? What am I trying to prove here? Does any of this make any sense? Are you with me?
I guess, in short, being in a different town made me want to try different things.
(Does anyone else remember Hard Copy story from the era where a runaway/kidnapped girl was supposedly spotted in the crowd of the "Hangin' Tough" video? How did that story end up?)
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Jams I DJ'd Wednesday Night...
All played from original issue 7"s...
The Monks - Complication
The Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog
MC5 - Looking at You (A-Square version)
The One Way Streets - Jack the Ripper
Crime - Hot Wire My Heart
Nirvana - Love Buzz
Kack Klick - One More Day, One More Night
Psycho Surgeons - Horizontal Action
Tyvek - Duck Blinds
The Gories - Baby Say Unh!
The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat
Nick and the Jaguars - Ich-I-Bon #1
Sonic Rendezvous Band - City Slang (stereo)
Ralph Nielsen and the Chancellors - Scream
Beck - Gamma Ray
The Monks - Cuckoo
Dansette Damage - NME
? and the Mysterians - 96 Tears (Pa-Go-Go version)
The Victims - TV Freak
The Buzzards - The Shiver
The Monks - Complication
The Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog
MC5 - Looking at You (A-Square version)
The One Way Streets - Jack the Ripper
Crime - Hot Wire My Heart
Nirvana - Love Buzz
Kack Klick - One More Day, One More Night
Psycho Surgeons - Horizontal Action
Tyvek - Duck Blinds
The Gories - Baby Say Unh!
The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat
Nick and the Jaguars - Ich-I-Bon #1
Sonic Rendezvous Band - City Slang (stereo)
Ralph Nielsen and the Chancellors - Scream
Beck - Gamma Ray
The Monks - Cuckoo
Dansette Damage - NME
? and the Mysterians - 96 Tears (Pa-Go-Go version)
The Victims - TV Freak
The Buzzards - The Shiver
Monday, February 16, 2009
ATP 2008 The Year of Touring is Finally Fucking Over...
(Exactly one year ago today the Dirtbombs started off 2008 with a record release show at the Magic Stick in Detroit. There was an eviction notice on our practice space that day. Surprisingly, we didn't get kicked out and besides omitting "I Hear the Sirens" from our set of the entire album front-to-back, everything went off without a hitch.
After the show, Ralph, the night manager of the Magic Stick appeared backstage with champagne to celebrate the occasion. It was unexpected and decidedly classy and honestly, the only time in my life I've ever thought alcohol tasted good. The Magic Stick has always done right by the Dirtbombs.)
Seemed like we drove all day to get to Berlin after dark. I bought a monkey calculator along the way…equally offended and enthralled by the tin toy's mere existence. The show was lively and refreshing…the crowd mobilized and vibrant was a welcome reaction. Zack jumped into the mass at some point and came down hard on his ankle. I kept telling the dude he should be doing pre-game stretches.
After the show we're backstage and Zack's looking for some ice for his ankle. Somehow this leads to an argument between him and Ko. Then, with a bottle of Coke in-hand, he was looking for a bottle opener. Unable to find one, he slammed the bottle to the ground out of frustration and it exploded into hundreds of tiny little pieces. Part of me thought, "Wow…barely been on tour two months and he's already turning into a rock star." I said nothing, as I'm wont to do in such situations, and an argument between Z and Pat soon developed.
Their argument didn't really resolve. I talked to some fans onstage after the show and some dick literally lights a match under my ass. I go off on him, posing hypothetical parental questions like "Do you think that's funny?" and "What's wrong with you?" until I angrily grab his arm and forcibly remove him from the establishment.
At the hotel Pat knocks on our door asks Zack into the hallway and picks up where the argument had left off. I'm nervous because the volume of their exchange is too much for a modest German hotel hallway at 3am, but also excited because it's so seldom that actual verbal confrontations happen in this band. I forget how it ends, but I was clearly entertained for a few minutes.
The Paradiso and its surrounding neighborhood in Amsterdam are so familiar at this point that they fail to feel like foreign land. After soundcheck Mick and I do an interview for an upcoming documentary titled "It's A Long Way to the Top…" and our general demeanor is one of negativity.
The show was fine. Spent time afterward looking over the prospective layout of an upcoming White Stripes fan website and then hoofing it over to our hotel. Had an expensive telephone call and, unable to sleep and the Internet failing to interest me, I went down early for breakfast, at lots of toast, cereal and orange juice and then tramped around town.
(Live photo from Amsterdam...the best Zack has ever looked on-stage)
Hit up my favorite antique store and bought some cool prints from the early 1900's. Found a familiar vintage clothing store and bought a new striped Breton sweater made by the same company (Pop) that made the Dirtbombs' matching jackets from the cover of If You Don't…
Basically, time off in Amsterdam to walk around was refreshing and therapeutic. I could gather my thoughts and scatter them simultaneously. The layout of the city and relevant landmarks (Paradiso, Febo, massive postcard store, outdoor stall selling tulip bulbs) are permanently burned into my brain, yet I'm still able to explore and discover new places.
Our final show in Antwerp was mostly forgettable. I do remember ordering a steak "medium-well" and having it served to me bloody. I also remember a guy in a wheelchair at the front of the stage, totally into our jam.
On our drive through the UK back to London a solid argument about the merits of liquor-license requirements in the city of Detroit and heavy-handed enforcement thereof. We find Zack is not one to back down or let go of an argument and in the midst of all this we were pulled over.
The constable who stopped us expressed concern that our vehicle was overweight. He checked the limit on the inside of the driver's door and shook the frame of the vehicle a bit with his hands. We all had a good laugh and then followed the cop back to the nearest weigh station where we indeed were a good 800 pounds overweight.
Zack "Smash the State" Weedon remarked "I bet your on the cops side, right?"
According to our tour manager Matthew, if our van in this situation was overweight, then almost anyone who ever rents any van of the same size is overweight. We barely had anything with us. Jeez, and SVT alone would put that shit in the red. As we left the weigh station Matthew says we have to go to a car park and somehow jettison the offending 800 pounds before we can continue on our way.
What.the.fuck. How in the hell are we supposed to do this? 800 pounds? That's like a drumset and two bass players? What in the shit are we supposed to do to get the rest of the offending weight home? We certainly can't discard the Guinness, Matt would throw a fit. We are racking our brains trying to figure out how to make this work, all the while Matthew's still driving along the motorway. After a good twenty minutes or so, he lets us in on the fact that he was fucking with us. Well-played.
We had minor time to kill in London and I used it to walk around a street market and buy Jammie Dodgers. From there we walked to the Agency Group's offices and got paid in a room lined with Pink Floyd gold records. Off to Finchley to drop off the gear and then reconvene at casa de Viner to tie-up the rest of our loose ends.
Ma and Pa Viner were back from the hospital where their first grandchild was just born that day. They wanted to celebrate and popped open the celebratory champagne and fancy Italian cheese. We stayed at a hotel outside Heathrow that night, took a shuttle to the airport the next morn and I personally bought $60 worth of UK candy bars before an easy flight to an uneasy home. But really, I think of the tour ending there in the familiar kitchen in Finchley, everyone happy and congratulatory with a toast of champagne, just like it had started.
2008: A Year in Numbers
Trips to the Emergency Room – 1
Trips to museums – 2
Significant, reconsider career-path injuries – 3
In-Store performances – 3
Records released – 5
Tour managers – 6
Shows played – 156
Shows played in NYC area - 9
Bands played with (excluding festivals) – 134
Days off on tour – 29
Flights – 26
Countries visited – 19
Records remaining unreleased – 2
Most people crammed in our van at once – 9
Continents we hung out with the guys from the Datsuns on – 3
Chipped teeth – 1
Trips to the beach – 3
Ferry rides – 11
Times pulled over by the police – 3
(don't look back in anger)
After the show, Ralph, the night manager of the Magic Stick appeared backstage with champagne to celebrate the occasion. It was unexpected and decidedly classy and honestly, the only time in my life I've ever thought alcohol tasted good. The Magic Stick has always done right by the Dirtbombs.)
Seemed like we drove all day to get to Berlin after dark. I bought a monkey calculator along the way…equally offended and enthralled by the tin toy's mere existence. The show was lively and refreshing…the crowd mobilized and vibrant was a welcome reaction. Zack jumped into the mass at some point and came down hard on his ankle. I kept telling the dude he should be doing pre-game stretches.
After the show we're backstage and Zack's looking for some ice for his ankle. Somehow this leads to an argument between him and Ko. Then, with a bottle of Coke in-hand, he was looking for a bottle opener. Unable to find one, he slammed the bottle to the ground out of frustration and it exploded into hundreds of tiny little pieces. Part of me thought, "Wow…barely been on tour two months and he's already turning into a rock star." I said nothing, as I'm wont to do in such situations, and an argument between Z and Pat soon developed.
Their argument didn't really resolve. I talked to some fans onstage after the show and some dick literally lights a match under my ass. I go off on him, posing hypothetical parental questions like "Do you think that's funny?" and "What's wrong with you?" until I angrily grab his arm and forcibly remove him from the establishment.
At the hotel Pat knocks on our door asks Zack into the hallway and picks up where the argument had left off. I'm nervous because the volume of their exchange is too much for a modest German hotel hallway at 3am, but also excited because it's so seldom that actual verbal confrontations happen in this band. I forget how it ends, but I was clearly entertained for a few minutes.
The Paradiso and its surrounding neighborhood in Amsterdam are so familiar at this point that they fail to feel like foreign land. After soundcheck Mick and I do an interview for an upcoming documentary titled "It's A Long Way to the Top…" and our general demeanor is one of negativity.
The show was fine. Spent time afterward looking over the prospective layout of an upcoming White Stripes fan website and then hoofing it over to our hotel. Had an expensive telephone call and, unable to sleep and the Internet failing to interest me, I went down early for breakfast, at lots of toast, cereal and orange juice and then tramped around town.
(Live photo from Amsterdam...the best Zack has ever looked on-stage)
Hit up my favorite antique store and bought some cool prints from the early 1900's. Found a familiar vintage clothing store and bought a new striped Breton sweater made by the same company (Pop) that made the Dirtbombs' matching jackets from the cover of If You Don't…
Basically, time off in Amsterdam to walk around was refreshing and therapeutic. I could gather my thoughts and scatter them simultaneously. The layout of the city and relevant landmarks (Paradiso, Febo, massive postcard store, outdoor stall selling tulip bulbs) are permanently burned into my brain, yet I'm still able to explore and discover new places.
Our final show in Antwerp was mostly forgettable. I do remember ordering a steak "medium-well" and having it served to me bloody. I also remember a guy in a wheelchair at the front of the stage, totally into our jam.
On our drive through the UK back to London a solid argument about the merits of liquor-license requirements in the city of Detroit and heavy-handed enforcement thereof. We find Zack is not one to back down or let go of an argument and in the midst of all this we were pulled over.
The constable who stopped us expressed concern that our vehicle was overweight. He checked the limit on the inside of the driver's door and shook the frame of the vehicle a bit with his hands. We all had a good laugh and then followed the cop back to the nearest weigh station where we indeed were a good 800 pounds overweight.
Zack "Smash the State" Weedon remarked "I bet your on the cops side, right?"
According to our tour manager Matthew, if our van in this situation was overweight, then almost anyone who ever rents any van of the same size is overweight. We barely had anything with us. Jeez, and SVT alone would put that shit in the red. As we left the weigh station Matthew says we have to go to a car park and somehow jettison the offending 800 pounds before we can continue on our way.
What.the.fuck. How in the hell are we supposed to do this? 800 pounds? That's like a drumset and two bass players? What in the shit are we supposed to do to get the rest of the offending weight home? We certainly can't discard the Guinness, Matt would throw a fit. We are racking our brains trying to figure out how to make this work, all the while Matthew's still driving along the motorway. After a good twenty minutes or so, he lets us in on the fact that he was fucking with us. Well-played.
We had minor time to kill in London and I used it to walk around a street market and buy Jammie Dodgers. From there we walked to the Agency Group's offices and got paid in a room lined with Pink Floyd gold records. Off to Finchley to drop off the gear and then reconvene at casa de Viner to tie-up the rest of our loose ends.
Ma and Pa Viner were back from the hospital where their first grandchild was just born that day. They wanted to celebrate and popped open the celebratory champagne and fancy Italian cheese. We stayed at a hotel outside Heathrow that night, took a shuttle to the airport the next morn and I personally bought $60 worth of UK candy bars before an easy flight to an uneasy home. But really, I think of the tour ending there in the familiar kitchen in Finchley, everyone happy and congratulatory with a toast of champagne, just like it had started.
2008: A Year in Numbers
Trips to the Emergency Room – 1
Trips to museums – 2
Significant, reconsider career-path injuries – 3
In-Store performances – 3
Records released – 5
Tour managers – 6
Shows played – 156
Shows played in NYC area - 9
Bands played with (excluding festivals) – 134
Days off on tour – 29
Flights – 26
Countries visited – 19
Records remaining unreleased – 2
Most people crammed in our van at once – 9
Continents we hung out with the guys from the Datsuns on – 3
Chipped teeth – 1
Trips to the beach – 3
Ferry rides – 11
Times pulled over by the police – 3
(don't look back in anger)Thursday, January 29, 2009
MFIC: A Closer Look at the Musical Taste of Detroit Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr...
I'll forgive the guy for spelling Pasty Cline's name wrong, not including a thunderbolt in listing those guys who wrote "Dirty Deeds: Done Dirt Cheap" and adding an unnecessary "e" for Alicia Keys. Otherwise, I don't think Detroit has ever been in more-capable hands. Did he seriously just name drop Gang of Four and Black Flag? The last band on his list ain't too shabby either. Taken from his questionnaire posted at www.metrotimes.com/news/story.asp?id=13664 and I haven't felt so happy in quite some time.
"I like too (much) music to pick a favorite but if I was stuck on a desert island I'd want an Ipod loaded with a generous helping of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Johnny Cash (especially "At Folsom Prison"), Patsy Kline(sic), Marvin Gaye, Pink Floyd, the Who, ACDC, Peter Frampton (specifically "Frampton Comes Alive"), Foghat, The Clash, Gang of Four, Joy Division, New Order, Black Flag, Public Enemy ("Fear of a Black Planet" changed my life), Ice Cube, Run DMC, Tupac, DMX, Jay Z, Notorious B.I.G., Moby, The Chemical Brothers, DJ Shadow, The Crystal Method, Lil Jon and the East Side Boys, Alicia Keyes, Jill Scott, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and last but not least Detroit's own Dirtbombs."
Sunday, January 11, 2009
ATP Part Four: The Worst Possible Phone Call...
We get into Oslo early and the town is nipple-twistingly cold. Freezing…as in "this place is far too north for civilization" bone-numbing, hate-your-life frost. For some reason this made me feel like I should shave off my beard and just as I had that thought I noticed a classic, old-school, old-man type barber shop outside the van window, as if beckoning to me and my facial follicle folly. I put a pin on that location of my mental map of Oslo with hopes of trekking back there to get clean, but by the time we arrived at the hotel, we were beyond feasible walking distance. A cursory internet search of "Oslo barber" possibly even with "old-school" attached failed to turn up my white whale.
Instead, the fellas in the touring party hopped up the street to an army surplus store. All I can say is if ever given the chance to visit this kind of establishment, in Oslo, you really must. While their vintage regalia is jaw-droppingly expansive (Mick scored a pin from the 1936 Berlin Olympics) it's the inclusion of all types of broadswords, chain mail, full-body armor and other assorted Viking recreations that truly do take you into a mystic mind wonderland of elf slaying and wench-napping.
From there we skipped across the street to one of the most expansive post card shops I've ever seen. The mere size and scope of their stock was paralyzing so much so in that I did not buy a single thing. It was located in a collection of assorted antique/junk shops all sharing a similar plaza/courtyard. The band coterie split at this point as Pat and I got separated from Mick and Zack and went to find the Munch Museum on our own.
I was particularly tired that day and felt somewhat pressured into hitting the museum and the main thing pushing me to go was being able to cross Edward Munch's The Scream off the "Classic Paintings I've Viewed In Person" checklist. I mean, I was already in Oslo, it was (just barely) walking distance from the hotel…I'd be a fool not to.
So Pantano, armed with a city map, ably guided us to the Munch Museum. Back in 2004 it was the site of a brazen, broad daylight robbery where without much force two men stole The Scream and Madonna off the wall and seemingly pulled off one of the higher-profile art heists in recent memory. Both paintings were eventually recovered and after the museum was shuttered for ten months and a $6 million security update both works were put on display to the public again earlier this year.
As we enter the museum an older woman at the counter smiles and says to me "Let me guess…you're here for the Nobel Prize awards?" My laughter was uncontrollable. While I knew the Scarlett Johansson/Diana Ross hosted ceremony would be taking place in Oslo in mere days, it was the idea that, to her, my long-haired, scruffy-faced visage said to her "Nobel Prize."
"No," I responded, "actually the complete opposite…I'm here with a rock band." We made small talk about the club we were playing and having been to town twice before and the good-natured folks there seemed genuinely interested that some fools from an under-the-radar American rock band would choose to visit their museum.
Our trip through the collection was enjoyable. We caught up with Mick and Zack and were able to view a large selection of Munch's works spanning mainly the early portion of his career. The recreation of his scandalous Berlin showing was interesting in trying to discern what exactly was scandalous about it all…apparently his work appeared "unfinished" to the old guard and to display it was a travesty that ultimately worked in Munch's favor as the resultant press/closing of the exhibit enabled him to keep showing his work elsewhere in town.
As we exited the redone Berlin expo we were right back at the front desk/gift shop. With Zack standing there I tell him "I think we missed something…" to which he replied "It's not here."
Fucking hell. Nothing against Munch and his museum, but I really only came to see
The Scream and was under the impression, from what I'd read online, that it was on display there. I hereby declare this the first time I've been royally screwed by Wikipedia.
The kind women at the front desk go on to tell us The Scream is on display at the National Gallery and give us directions how to get there, oblivious to the fact that we've no energy for ANOTHER museum this day. They excitedly get us to sign their guestbook, complete with a picture of us printed from our website taped to the page.
As a sign of gratitude they give us one copy of a lux Taschen Munch book "to share." Hadn't they ever seen the Radioactive Man #1 episode of "The Simpsons"? This can only end in disaster, barring us taping the spine of the book to the tour van floor so that is always accessible during those mind-erasing long drives.
From there we traipse around a little neighborhood we're told has lots of interesting vintage shops and the like, but all I really remember is how fucking cold it was. Seriously, the shit was bananas…frozen bananas.
Back at the hotel with nary a minute to spare before lobby call. We're waiting for Zack and he's not around so we head to the club and load-in without him. Matt goes back to the hotel a little later and grabs Zack, we soundcheck and I sleep until it's time for us to play. Our show was decent, if vaguely unmemorable on this drummer's end.
On to Gothenburg where the venue-prepared food gave everyone in the band diarrhea. Again, 'twas cold beyond belief and while no opening band was quite a bonus, the crowd was dead and the encore we played was unnecessary. Talked with some locals who've made a handful of vacations to Detroit and promised to tell all their acquaintances (local club owners and bartenders) they say "hi."
Reading Vanity Fair while eating candlelit breakfast solo was the high-point of time spent in G-burg.
The snowy, morale-killing drive to Stockholm was only saved by the remote possibility that Pelle from the Hives would possibly be at the show. Luckily, not only did Pelle show up and chat with us, but the club was happily packed and the crowd went apeshit in a moshpit sort of way that made Zack's eyes light up. We played magnificent and it helped redeem us from the bummer in Gothenburg.
Stayed up all night in Stockholm basement hotel room cruising the internet. Went to free breakfast at 7am and ate so much bacon that I think I smelled like a pig pen. The hotel was stylishly modern in that Scandinavian way and it made me feel all the more important while shoving yogurt mixed with granola into my face.
I slept most of the six hour drive from Stockholm to Lund, leaving the van only once to buy some ice cream.
We arrived at the club and my phone buzzed with a call from the Shopinski's, the family that lives next door to my mom's house. I was confused, but let it go to voice mail, still groggy from the drive.
As I slowly began to process the information, I realized that for them to be calling me was peculiar and before I could call them back they were ringing me again.
There'd been a fire at my mom's house. Both her and my brother went to the hospital for smoke inhalation and were expected to be alright and they needed my permission, being of the family, to start the emergency boarding up of the house.
To describe the thoughts racing through one's head at this moment is pretty difficult. It really does feel surreal, like it's all happening in a bad dream and that you just can't wait to wake-up. Trying to imagine the house I grew up in, where ALL my shit still is, on fire, in need of boarding up, it's not really sad, it's just confusing, unexpected and being stuck in Sweden thousands of miles away just left me feeling utterly helpless.
I called my dad and he was on his way there. I called my sister and she didn't answer her phone. I sat and waited as my stomach turned knots on itself. My dad called once he arrived and somberly said "It'll be a long-time before someone's staying at 3424 (the street address)" and it just pierced my heart.
He handed the phone to my Uncle Steve who gave me a brief rundown of the damages (two front rooms, burned, badly…pretty much all of my books destroyed) and asked what of mine needed to be taken from the house for safe-keeping.
The first thing to come to mind was the "fire" boxes, two high-quality, wooden 45 carrying cases, one with all of my White Stripes 7"s and the other with all the most-expensive, least-replaceable singles in my collection.
They're called the "fire" boxes because I so often tell anyone who'd listen that, in case of a fire, grab those two boxes and we won't need to worry about paying for another house and only be partially kidding. The fire was so intense that my brother had to climb out a basement window (just like he used to in high school so he could sneak out and drink) and my mom had a carbon monoxide level of 20% in her lungs, so they could be forgiven for forgetting about the boxes.
After those boxes, I couldn't really muster anything that absolutely HAD to be saved. While there are thousands of LP's and other singles, it all seemed pretty unimportant at that point. They're just records. I remembered my fire-proof safe, filled with years of hand-written journals and one-of-a-kind White Stripes paper ephemera. It's heavy as fuck and partially obscured from view, so I didn't even think it'd be an issue…it could just sit in the house for a couple of days until I got home.
My uncle Steve then offered the possibility of some punks busting into the house after it's boarded up, looking to run off with some shit and just tearing the place up. And that's what really messed with my head. The fire, the damage, the loss…that was all easy to cope with. But the idea of people breaking into the singed house and going through my shit…the mere possibility of that violation made me want to vomit.
I would call back a little while later, after soundcheck, and subsequently tell him to take anything that was already in boxes, which includes a good chunk of 45's, more White Stripes goodies, all of my photos, massive amounts of post cards and other stuff that I'm probably forgetting.
I wouldn't eat anything the rest of the day. I talked to my sister, living in Chicago, and told her if she needed anything to get home (money, credit card, etc) to just let me know and I could take care of it. I talked to various aunts and uncles, all concerned and wanting to know if there was anything they could do to help. It's times like this where one really cherishes being part of a big family. Petty differences and squabbles are instantly put aside and instead they come together to get through the adversity.
I managed to get through the show that night, but clearly my mind was elsewhere. It was the same place we ended the Euro Stoltz tour of '06 and I remember an equally small and tepid crowd back then. After a perfunctory encore I went backstage and continued the litany of phone calls and text messages with family back in Detroit.
Zack let me take larger, non-top-bunk bed in the room that night, clearly sensitive to the fact that I'd had a rough day.
Instead, the fellas in the touring party hopped up the street to an army surplus store. All I can say is if ever given the chance to visit this kind of establishment, in Oslo, you really must. While their vintage regalia is jaw-droppingly expansive (Mick scored a pin from the 1936 Berlin Olympics) it's the inclusion of all types of broadswords, chain mail, full-body armor and other assorted Viking recreations that truly do take you into a mystic mind wonderland of elf slaying and wench-napping.
From there we skipped across the street to one of the most expansive post card shops I've ever seen. The mere size and scope of their stock was paralyzing so much so in that I did not buy a single thing. It was located in a collection of assorted antique/junk shops all sharing a similar plaza/courtyard. The band coterie split at this point as Pat and I got separated from Mick and Zack and went to find the Munch Museum on our own.
I was particularly tired that day and felt somewhat pressured into hitting the museum and the main thing pushing me to go was being able to cross Edward Munch's The Scream off the "Classic Paintings I've Viewed In Person" checklist. I mean, I was already in Oslo, it was (just barely) walking distance from the hotel…I'd be a fool not to.
So Pantano, armed with a city map, ably guided us to the Munch Museum. Back in 2004 it was the site of a brazen, broad daylight robbery where without much force two men stole The Scream and Madonna off the wall and seemingly pulled off one of the higher-profile art heists in recent memory. Both paintings were eventually recovered and after the museum was shuttered for ten months and a $6 million security update both works were put on display to the public again earlier this year.
As we enter the museum an older woman at the counter smiles and says to me "Let me guess…you're here for the Nobel Prize awards?" My laughter was uncontrollable. While I knew the Scarlett Johansson/Diana Ross hosted ceremony would be taking place in Oslo in mere days, it was the idea that, to her, my long-haired, scruffy-faced visage said to her "Nobel Prize."
"No," I responded, "actually the complete opposite…I'm here with a rock band." We made small talk about the club we were playing and having been to town twice before and the good-natured folks there seemed genuinely interested that some fools from an under-the-radar American rock band would choose to visit their museum.
Our trip through the collection was enjoyable. We caught up with Mick and Zack and were able to view a large selection of Munch's works spanning mainly the early portion of his career. The recreation of his scandalous Berlin showing was interesting in trying to discern what exactly was scandalous about it all…apparently his work appeared "unfinished" to the old guard and to display it was a travesty that ultimately worked in Munch's favor as the resultant press/closing of the exhibit enabled him to keep showing his work elsewhere in town.
As we exited the redone Berlin expo we were right back at the front desk/gift shop. With Zack standing there I tell him "I think we missed something…" to which he replied "It's not here."
Fucking hell. Nothing against Munch and his museum, but I really only came to see
The Scream and was under the impression, from what I'd read online, that it was on display there. I hereby declare this the first time I've been royally screwed by Wikipedia.
The kind women at the front desk go on to tell us The Scream is on display at the National Gallery and give us directions how to get there, oblivious to the fact that we've no energy for ANOTHER museum this day. They excitedly get us to sign their guestbook, complete with a picture of us printed from our website taped to the page.
As a sign of gratitude they give us one copy of a lux Taschen Munch book "to share." Hadn't they ever seen the Radioactive Man #1 episode of "The Simpsons"? This can only end in disaster, barring us taping the spine of the book to the tour van floor so that is always accessible during those mind-erasing long drives.
From there we traipse around a little neighborhood we're told has lots of interesting vintage shops and the like, but all I really remember is how fucking cold it was. Seriously, the shit was bananas…frozen bananas.
Back at the hotel with nary a minute to spare before lobby call. We're waiting for Zack and he's not around so we head to the club and load-in without him. Matt goes back to the hotel a little later and grabs Zack, we soundcheck and I sleep until it's time for us to play. Our show was decent, if vaguely unmemorable on this drummer's end.
On to Gothenburg where the venue-prepared food gave everyone in the band diarrhea. Again, 'twas cold beyond belief and while no opening band was quite a bonus, the crowd was dead and the encore we played was unnecessary. Talked with some locals who've made a handful of vacations to Detroit and promised to tell all their acquaintances (local club owners and bartenders) they say "hi."
Reading Vanity Fair while eating candlelit breakfast solo was the high-point of time spent in G-burg.
The snowy, morale-killing drive to Stockholm was only saved by the remote possibility that Pelle from the Hives would possibly be at the show. Luckily, not only did Pelle show up and chat with us, but the club was happily packed and the crowd went apeshit in a moshpit sort of way that made Zack's eyes light up. We played magnificent and it helped redeem us from the bummer in Gothenburg.
Stayed up all night in Stockholm basement hotel room cruising the internet. Went to free breakfast at 7am and ate so much bacon that I think I smelled like a pig pen. The hotel was stylishly modern in that Scandinavian way and it made me feel all the more important while shoving yogurt mixed with granola into my face.
I slept most of the six hour drive from Stockholm to Lund, leaving the van only once to buy some ice cream.
We arrived at the club and my phone buzzed with a call from the Shopinski's, the family that lives next door to my mom's house. I was confused, but let it go to voice mail, still groggy from the drive.
As I slowly began to process the information, I realized that for them to be calling me was peculiar and before I could call them back they were ringing me again.
There'd been a fire at my mom's house. Both her and my brother went to the hospital for smoke inhalation and were expected to be alright and they needed my permission, being of the family, to start the emergency boarding up of the house.
To describe the thoughts racing through one's head at this moment is pretty difficult. It really does feel surreal, like it's all happening in a bad dream and that you just can't wait to wake-up. Trying to imagine the house I grew up in, where ALL my shit still is, on fire, in need of boarding up, it's not really sad, it's just confusing, unexpected and being stuck in Sweden thousands of miles away just left me feeling utterly helpless.
I called my dad and he was on his way there. I called my sister and she didn't answer her phone. I sat and waited as my stomach turned knots on itself. My dad called once he arrived and somberly said "It'll be a long-time before someone's staying at 3424 (the street address)" and it just pierced my heart.
He handed the phone to my Uncle Steve who gave me a brief rundown of the damages (two front rooms, burned, badly…pretty much all of my books destroyed) and asked what of mine needed to be taken from the house for safe-keeping.
The first thing to come to mind was the "fire" boxes, two high-quality, wooden 45 carrying cases, one with all of my White Stripes 7"s and the other with all the most-expensive, least-replaceable singles in my collection.
They're called the "fire" boxes because I so often tell anyone who'd listen that, in case of a fire, grab those two boxes and we won't need to worry about paying for another house and only be partially kidding. The fire was so intense that my brother had to climb out a basement window (just like he used to in high school so he could sneak out and drink) and my mom had a carbon monoxide level of 20% in her lungs, so they could be forgiven for forgetting about the boxes.
After those boxes, I couldn't really muster anything that absolutely HAD to be saved. While there are thousands of LP's and other singles, it all seemed pretty unimportant at that point. They're just records. I remembered my fire-proof safe, filled with years of hand-written journals and one-of-a-kind White Stripes paper ephemera. It's heavy as fuck and partially obscured from view, so I didn't even think it'd be an issue…it could just sit in the house for a couple of days until I got home.
My uncle Steve then offered the possibility of some punks busting into the house after it's boarded up, looking to run off with some shit and just tearing the place up. And that's what really messed with my head. The fire, the damage, the loss…that was all easy to cope with. But the idea of people breaking into the singed house and going through my shit…the mere possibility of that violation made me want to vomit.
I would call back a little while later, after soundcheck, and subsequently tell him to take anything that was already in boxes, which includes a good chunk of 45's, more White Stripes goodies, all of my photos, massive amounts of post cards and other stuff that I'm probably forgetting.
I wouldn't eat anything the rest of the day. I talked to my sister, living in Chicago, and told her if she needed anything to get home (money, credit card, etc) to just let me know and I could take care of it. I talked to various aunts and uncles, all concerned and wanting to know if there was anything they could do to help. It's times like this where one really cherishes being part of a big family. Petty differences and squabbles are instantly put aside and instead they come together to get through the adversity.
I managed to get through the show that night, but clearly my mind was elsewhere. It was the same place we ended the Euro Stoltz tour of '06 and I remember an equally small and tepid crowd back then. After a perfunctory encore I went backstage and continued the litany of phone calls and text messages with family back in Detroit.
Zack let me take larger, non-top-bunk bed in the room that night, clearly sensitive to the fact that I'd had a rough day.
Tuesday, January 06, 2009
ATP Part Three: "We Should've Ended at ATP..."
Rotterdam was fine. Played some Star Wars video pinball with Pat to pass the time. Didn't watch the first opening band, Beyond Lickin', and the second, Dead Letters was one of the more confused, offensive things I've seen of late.
Our set was ordinary and the crowd enjoyed it, but once backstage some uttered the slogan for the rest of our time in Europe, "We should've ended at ATP." It didn't seem like that big a deal when we'd booked the gigs, but now in the middle of it all it was clear. Why would you go to the equivalent of rock and roll summer camp for all kinds of fun and hang out time and then follow that with MORE shows? Ugh.
From Rotterdam to Hamburg, home of the Reeperbahn, where sex shops, prostitutes, gambling and all other naughty possibilities abound. We've reached a level of recognition at the Molotov club where our name is included in the list of "notable" bands that have played there and have their name painted above the front entrance. That's a good sign, right? It feels like we're family, coming home for the holidays.
With time to kill after load-in/soundcheck, I decide to sample the cornucopia of delights the neighborhood had to offer. It only takes a few minutes in a German sex shop for me to realize how milquetoast or vanilla I really am. I mean…this stuff would make Marilyn Manson say "Whoa, hey, why don't you tone it down there a little?"
With no desire for life-sized rubber fists or stud-encrusted ball-gags, I made my way to the outdoor holiday market, festively decorated with Christmas lights and the inviting smell of food being cooked over open fires all the complete opposite of what one would expect in this civic municipality of inequity. So I found myself surprised when I unknowingly walked into the "adult" section of the market only to stumble upon, I shit you not, a stall selling wooden vibrators.
At this point, I call "too far" and order all guilty sex toy manufacturers back to their respective "time-out" corners to sit and think about what their service to society is. Have we come so far that…these things need to be made out of wood? Is this the "greening" of the sex industry or the opposite of it? I hate a world where I am now saddled with the knowledge that such a peculiar object even exists. I want to quit life at this point.
Before we hit the stage we all got individual pizzas to eat after the show. As we sat there waiting for who-in-the-hell remembers what, I got the nerve to munch and minutes later found myself with no pizza left and being prodded to hit the stage. For some inexplicable reason, I find this hilarious.
Molotov was packed and I felt we kinda blew it. There were some tuning issues for a good portion of the set and I just didn't feel that "oomph" that usually permeates the friendly, constricting confines of Molotov. Mick attempted to bring ladies onstage to dance during "Theme" but it didn't work out too well and it just becomes excruciating seeing him struggle with that task.
Upon completion of the main set we were locked out of our own dressing room, left to stand there in the crowd, thumbs-up-our-butts, until we somehow managed to unlock the "Being John Malkovich"-sized door. We reluctantly came back for an encore and "Sherlock Holmes" suffered from Mick's mic shorting out, Zack stopping playing bass to bring HIS mic over to Mick, said mic engaging Mick's synth pedal all resulting in an all-encompassing feeling of embarrassment to wash over me and most likely my bandmates as well.
After a somewhat redeeming "I Can't Stop Thinking About It" complete with a floorshow from the stage-right drummer, we retreated (this time easily) backstage. The roar for more songs was insistent and in our minds uncalled for. Really? We deliver a steaming pile of shit and you still want more? Ok. We ended with "Granny's Little Chicken" and I played the entire song on the floor. From there, the crowd was either satisfied or fed up with our act and we sat backstage in peace.
Until this loud, brash, annoying voice keeps booming through complaining that we didn't play "Pretty Princess Day" to the point where the dude yelling it actually got backstage and I got within seconds of confronting him to say "Who in the FUCK are you?"
Turns out it was Jim Hassler, someone I did not know personally, but a Detroit rock veteran who did time in Cum Dumpster (Finally! a reason to mention them here) and was along for the Gories' entire implosive 1992 European tour as he was Peg's boyfriend at the time. He and Mick talked at length and I merely wished I had another pizza to eat.
Lodging that night was provided at the Molotov's "punk but tidy" apartment a few miles away. The shower was traditional Euro removable nozzle head. These are almost always lacking a hook or attachment to suspend from and instead find the bather trying to awkwardly complete a shower with use of only one hand.
This punk flat would prove to be no exception. But with my MacGyver-like skills, I manage to precariously wedge the nozzle behind some unidentified plastic box structure and I bathe with relative ease. I tell the rest of the band to thank me later.
With everyone tired and Mick's snoring at a fever pitch there was a moment where there were five of us (luggage included) squeezed into one room with six beds, all hoping to escape the EARNOSETHROAT resonance emanating from him. But being so entirely cramped in there, I got out and bunked with Mick, rightfully figuring I wouldn't be able to sleep anyway and more so needing an available power outlet to charge my phone and computer.
So I sat and typed and the with the bar downstairs still open and music blaring I couldn't help but listen along to what was being played. At one point a familiar, lilting melody came through the system and I was racking my brain trying to name the tune. I vaguely discerned the lyrics "and I'll always love you" and fed them through Google and iTunes with no help.
With no recourse, I got fully dressed and marched down to the bar and confronted the DJ. He pointed to a picture disc copy of Thurston Moore's Trees Outside the Academy and the track "Honest James" and I thanked him, told him he was playing good jams and marched back upstairs to go lay in bed and type as Mick snored next to me.
After Hamburg was a much-needed day off. We first made a short drive to the short ferry that took us to Denmark, which is kind of a short country. With approximately a half-hour to kill, we made way to the pseudo-anarchist/hippie/off-the-grid commune of Christiania, located smack dab in the middle of Copenhagen.
Started in the late 1960's and situated around abandoned army barracks, the space is most widely known for Pusher Street, an avenue in the middle of the place where an open drug market at one time flourished. Marijuana, mushrooms, hash (and probably more) were indiscreetly sold in stalls on Pusher Street, supposedly controlled by the Russian mob.
The Dirtbombs played the Loppen club in Christiania in 2002 and since that time there was marked increase in police presence and while every time I've heard anything about the place since then it's always been along the lines of "the Danish government finally shut 'em down." Seriously, I must've heard that at least a half-dozen times in as many years.
So I'm here to report that on the surface, Christiania is alive and well. The only visible difference is that there seems to be no more narcotics dealing on Pusher Street. That feels good to say and apparently the residents there feel the same way, as the drug trade detracted away from the original tenets and purpose behind the inception of the place.
We didn't get much done in our half-hour…there was an indoor holiday market where I contemplated for 5 minutes whether or not to buy a bootleg White Stripes DVD from the Icky Thump tour and ultimately decided against it.
From Copenhagen we'd take an overnight ferry to Oslo on a ship fully equipped with sleeping cabins, several restaurants, bars, dance clubs, a movie theater and a wide-range of other crap to offer. Once inside the state room with Pat (bunk beds!) I immediately konked out.
Pat would pop back in later and say that if I was hungry that he'd be eating at the fancy restaurant on board. I demurred and he came back soon after to say that because said establishment only took reservations that he would be eating in 45 minutes…the soonest available opening they had, while empty tables plentiful.
We ordered on note cards that we had to fill out ourselves. I'm sorry, but if I'm eating at a spensive place I certainly am hoping that I'm not required to write anything down or check a box even. My chicken Caesar salad was almost too filling and my steak (the cheapest one they had) was good enough. Matt had given each of us a stipend in Norwegian Kroner for the ferry and mine was completely eaten up by dinner, probably the equivalent of $50. No, I don't think it was worth it.
From dinner back to our quarters where I tried to stomach the over-indulgencies of the Daydream Nation entry in Continuum's 33 1/3rd series. As a die-hard Sonic Youth fan, I recommend all avoid this book at all costs. I'd sleep a little but would spend most of the night awake either staring at the underside of the bunk suspended over me, listening to the Duchess and the Duke on the iPod, reading the wretched SY book or tweaking the intricacies of my White Blood Cells book proposal for Continuum.
After shifting between those activities for hours I noticed my laptop power running low and grabbed for my power cord to plug in. I frantically searched through my man bag, the only place I ever keep the charger, and cannot find it. I get nervous and a little sweaty, if only because I pride myself on not losing shit on tour. With no more power on the PowerBook I just sit and stare for the next hour or so, trying to remember where in the hell I lost the damn thing.
When time to disembark the ship, Zack knocks on our door and hands me my charger saying "It fell out of your bag and I accidentally though it was mine." Granted, it only fell out of my bag in the van, but I still think I can pride myself on the lack of losing things skills. Hell, I'm continually amazed that I've still managed to maintain possession over that little rubber/plastic protective cover for the pointy computer end of my wall charger.
Our set was ordinary and the crowd enjoyed it, but once backstage some uttered the slogan for the rest of our time in Europe, "We should've ended at ATP." It didn't seem like that big a deal when we'd booked the gigs, but now in the middle of it all it was clear. Why would you go to the equivalent of rock and roll summer camp for all kinds of fun and hang out time and then follow that with MORE shows? Ugh.
From Rotterdam to Hamburg, home of the Reeperbahn, where sex shops, prostitutes, gambling and all other naughty possibilities abound. We've reached a level of recognition at the Molotov club where our name is included in the list of "notable" bands that have played there and have their name painted above the front entrance. That's a good sign, right? It feels like we're family, coming home for the holidays.
With time to kill after load-in/soundcheck, I decide to sample the cornucopia of delights the neighborhood had to offer. It only takes a few minutes in a German sex shop for me to realize how milquetoast or vanilla I really am. I mean…this stuff would make Marilyn Manson say "Whoa, hey, why don't you tone it down there a little?"
With no desire for life-sized rubber fists or stud-encrusted ball-gags, I made my way to the outdoor holiday market, festively decorated with Christmas lights and the inviting smell of food being cooked over open fires all the complete opposite of what one would expect in this civic municipality of inequity. So I found myself surprised when I unknowingly walked into the "adult" section of the market only to stumble upon, I shit you not, a stall selling wooden vibrators.
At this point, I call "too far" and order all guilty sex toy manufacturers back to their respective "time-out" corners to sit and think about what their service to society is. Have we come so far that…these things need to be made out of wood? Is this the "greening" of the sex industry or the opposite of it? I hate a world where I am now saddled with the knowledge that such a peculiar object even exists. I want to quit life at this point.
Before we hit the stage we all got individual pizzas to eat after the show. As we sat there waiting for who-in-the-hell remembers what, I got the nerve to munch and minutes later found myself with no pizza left and being prodded to hit the stage. For some inexplicable reason, I find this hilarious.
Molotov was packed and I felt we kinda blew it. There were some tuning issues for a good portion of the set and I just didn't feel that "oomph" that usually permeates the friendly, constricting confines of Molotov. Mick attempted to bring ladies onstage to dance during "Theme" but it didn't work out too well and it just becomes excruciating seeing him struggle with that task.
Upon completion of the main set we were locked out of our own dressing room, left to stand there in the crowd, thumbs-up-our-butts, until we somehow managed to unlock the "Being John Malkovich"-sized door. We reluctantly came back for an encore and "Sherlock Holmes" suffered from Mick's mic shorting out, Zack stopping playing bass to bring HIS mic over to Mick, said mic engaging Mick's synth pedal all resulting in an all-encompassing feeling of embarrassment to wash over me and most likely my bandmates as well.
After a somewhat redeeming "I Can't Stop Thinking About It" complete with a floorshow from the stage-right drummer, we retreated (this time easily) backstage. The roar for more songs was insistent and in our minds uncalled for. Really? We deliver a steaming pile of shit and you still want more? Ok. We ended with "Granny's Little Chicken" and I played the entire song on the floor. From there, the crowd was either satisfied or fed up with our act and we sat backstage in peace.
Until this loud, brash, annoying voice keeps booming through complaining that we didn't play "Pretty Princess Day" to the point where the dude yelling it actually got backstage and I got within seconds of confronting him to say "Who in the FUCK are you?"
Turns out it was Jim Hassler, someone I did not know personally, but a Detroit rock veteran who did time in Cum Dumpster (Finally! a reason to mention them here) and was along for the Gories' entire implosive 1992 European tour as he was Peg's boyfriend at the time. He and Mick talked at length and I merely wished I had another pizza to eat.
Lodging that night was provided at the Molotov's "punk but tidy" apartment a few miles away. The shower was traditional Euro removable nozzle head. These are almost always lacking a hook or attachment to suspend from and instead find the bather trying to awkwardly complete a shower with use of only one hand.
This punk flat would prove to be no exception. But with my MacGyver-like skills, I manage to precariously wedge the nozzle behind some unidentified plastic box structure and I bathe with relative ease. I tell the rest of the band to thank me later.
With everyone tired and Mick's snoring at a fever pitch there was a moment where there were five of us (luggage included) squeezed into one room with six beds, all hoping to escape the EARNOSETHROAT resonance emanating from him. But being so entirely cramped in there, I got out and bunked with Mick, rightfully figuring I wouldn't be able to sleep anyway and more so needing an available power outlet to charge my phone and computer.
So I sat and typed and the with the bar downstairs still open and music blaring I couldn't help but listen along to what was being played. At one point a familiar, lilting melody came through the system and I was racking my brain trying to name the tune. I vaguely discerned the lyrics "and I'll always love you" and fed them through Google and iTunes with no help.
With no recourse, I got fully dressed and marched down to the bar and confronted the DJ. He pointed to a picture disc copy of Thurston Moore's Trees Outside the Academy and the track "Honest James" and I thanked him, told him he was playing good jams and marched back upstairs to go lay in bed and type as Mick snored next to me.
After Hamburg was a much-needed day off. We first made a short drive to the short ferry that took us to Denmark, which is kind of a short country. With approximately a half-hour to kill, we made way to the pseudo-anarchist/hippie/off-the-grid commune of Christiania, located smack dab in the middle of Copenhagen.
Started in the late 1960's and situated around abandoned army barracks, the space is most widely known for Pusher Street, an avenue in the middle of the place where an open drug market at one time flourished. Marijuana, mushrooms, hash (and probably more) were indiscreetly sold in stalls on Pusher Street, supposedly controlled by the Russian mob.
The Dirtbombs played the Loppen club in Christiania in 2002 and since that time there was marked increase in police presence and while every time I've heard anything about the place since then it's always been along the lines of "the Danish government finally shut 'em down." Seriously, I must've heard that at least a half-dozen times in as many years.
So I'm here to report that on the surface, Christiania is alive and well. The only visible difference is that there seems to be no more narcotics dealing on Pusher Street. That feels good to say and apparently the residents there feel the same way, as the drug trade detracted away from the original tenets and purpose behind the inception of the place.
We didn't get much done in our half-hour…there was an indoor holiday market where I contemplated for 5 minutes whether or not to buy a bootleg White Stripes DVD from the Icky Thump tour and ultimately decided against it.
From Copenhagen we'd take an overnight ferry to Oslo on a ship fully equipped with sleeping cabins, several restaurants, bars, dance clubs, a movie theater and a wide-range of other crap to offer. Once inside the state room with Pat (bunk beds!) I immediately konked out.
Pat would pop back in later and say that if I was hungry that he'd be eating at the fancy restaurant on board. I demurred and he came back soon after to say that because said establishment only took reservations that he would be eating in 45 minutes…the soonest available opening they had, while empty tables plentiful.
We ordered on note cards that we had to fill out ourselves. I'm sorry, but if I'm eating at a spensive place I certainly am hoping that I'm not required to write anything down or check a box even. My chicken Caesar salad was almost too filling and my steak (the cheapest one they had) was good enough. Matt had given each of us a stipend in Norwegian Kroner for the ferry and mine was completely eaten up by dinner, probably the equivalent of $50. No, I don't think it was worth it.
From dinner back to our quarters where I tried to stomach the over-indulgencies of the Daydream Nation entry in Continuum's 33 1/3rd series. As a die-hard Sonic Youth fan, I recommend all avoid this book at all costs. I'd sleep a little but would spend most of the night awake either staring at the underside of the bunk suspended over me, listening to the Duchess and the Duke on the iPod, reading the wretched SY book or tweaking the intricacies of my White Blood Cells book proposal for Continuum.
After shifting between those activities for hours I noticed my laptop power running low and grabbed for my power cord to plug in. I frantically searched through my man bag, the only place I ever keep the charger, and cannot find it. I get nervous and a little sweaty, if only because I pride myself on not losing shit on tour. With no more power on the PowerBook I just sit and stare for the next hour or so, trying to remember where in the hell I lost the damn thing.
When time to disembark the ship, Zack knocks on our door and hands me my charger saying "It fell out of your bag and I accidentally though it was mine." Granted, it only fell out of my bag in the van, but I still think I can pride myself on the lack of losing things skills. Hell, I'm continually amazed that I've still managed to maintain possession over that little rubber/plastic protective cover for the pointy computer end of my wall charger.
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