I have never seen X play live, I’m sorry to say. Yeah, I saw them a
number of times performing on TV on shows like Dick Clark’s American Bandstand and a couple of those late-night in concert
kinds of shows, but never when I was in the same room.
Early on, I gravitated towards Excene Cervenka’s voice, as the female
tones have always appealed to me, but over time I came to appreciate just how
amazing John Doe actually was at the time. The guitar work of Billy Zoom has
always been a stand-out, but I’m hardly the first one to notice that; same with
drummer DJ Bonebrake. The whole band body politic of their personal and sexual relationships
seem odd to me, but it’s nice that they’ve pretty much stayed together as X.
Also, Excene and Doe have their equally worth hearing Americana side-project, the
Knitters (sort of a mix of X and the Blasters members). Doe and Excene have also released a duet
collection.
While Doe has had a pretty decent on-and-off acting career over the
years, sadly Excene has slipped into a right-wing conspiracy nut (check out her
YouTube channel), and I have seen her referred to as “the Victoria Jackson of
punk.” Sigh.
To be honest, quite embarrassingly, I don’t remember Doris Kiely, who
wrote this piece, which was originally published in FFanzeen, issue #6, dated Year-End 1980. It’s an interesting, poetical stream
of consciousness piece. Doris, feel free to contact me! – RBF, 2015
You don’t like anything to be called New Wave.
You didn’t mind so much when it was called punk. Greill Marcus wrote, “X is the
band that has defined LA’s punk scene.” In NY, their hard-edge is an anomaly in
the lapping curls of the New Wave night clubs. Sid’s dead, fashion changes,
this apartment is too small for me and the cat and the laundry. You say apartments
are cheaper in LA. You say you’ll go uptown to 80s [Club] with me.
The shop is closing, metal gate half
across the door. The guy was nice, showing me old jewelry, each piece a talisman
with a mysterious history. Walking, there was something I wanted to write.
Ringing your doorbell I forgot what it was. No weekly papers, no coffee or
booze. Before going out we watch TV.
X spray-painted on a wall about to
collapse. Prisoners pushing against it trying to get free. Suffocating, they
have fortitude left to make rough sounds, dreary, vertical songs. What am I
thinking? Nothing. This is music about loathing and death. People are dancing
to it.
Excene wears chains, charms,
medallions. Holds her head like she’s drunk, trying not to vomit. Her voice is
bratty, a net John Does get caught in, writhing. He’s pensive, a charismatic
bassist-singer. Billy Zoom, guitarist, grins sadistically, unrelentingly. I’m
on a chair that’s an oasis. X is fast and constant.
You say, “Jane was in a good mood
today, she said she was OK.” I say, “Did you ask her how many
pills she took?” She told you she thinks I’m jaded.
Critics on both coasts invoked X with
hyperbolic claims. In NY, R. Meltzer was “gratuitously grandiose” in his
critique of them, and R. Palmer referred to their “sheer musical excellence.”
Robert Hilburn of the LA Times called
X the American answer to “the rock challenge raised by the Sex Pistols and
Clash.” The expectation which accompanied X to New York was so great that much
of the audience was unduly disappointed. No surf-punks here diving off the
stage.
X’s malevolent lyrics are two
horrified consciousnesses streaming. Excene bends beneath the microphone,
screamed, “Get Out.” It’s not just about a girl who has to leave Los Angeles. “Get
Out,” I would curse silently at my girlfriend’s brother, repeating it till he
left us alone. “The days change at night/change in an instant,” sounds perfect.
I can read their minds. They’re on stage letting me. X is so in pain, they’re
lovable. They look rather like misshapen freaks. The drummer, DJ Bonebrake, is
hidden.
“I’d slap that bitch,” you say. The
women in the ladies room at 3 just got there. They missed the sacerdotal
offering, X’s melancholy pastiche of corpses. You say they’re monotonous. You
don’t have the record Los Angeles, on
Slash [Records]. Its coarse texture is soothing, emotional facets, serious music;
a miasma of dust and opiates which is a city. The music sounds like traffic,
litter on a hot beach, and rock’n’roll at a high school dance.
X remains a tradition the Sex Pistols
initiated. Even so, they exert a powerful originality, and alter our
preconception of the laid-back California mentality. The audacity of their
non-innovation is entertaining. You say you hung the poster from the Beatles’
white album over your bed for two weeks. Instead of fleshing New Wave romance,
X presents skeletons and boney sounds. The songs are narrative, literal,
immediate; they make us privy to the band’s disgust. This incites a certain opposition
and alarm, which makes them repugnant to some listeners.
X’s tidings of grief are ginormous.
They signify intelligence in the face of emptiness. “Thanks a lot,” repeats
Billy. “They’ll make a movie called Rock’n’Roll
College. It’s hot tonight, isn’t it?” you say. I remember Help carved in crooked letters on a
school desk.
This Must Be Where My Obsession With Infinity Began: Essays By Joe Bonomo
Orphan Press (Cordova, TN), 2013
249 pages; USD $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-615-75545-8 It can be ordered HERE
Joe Bonomo is a name that is definitely becoming better known in
the music historian field. He’s had, in part, books published about the likes
of Jerry Lee Lewis, AC/DC (for the prestigious 33-1/3
series), and the definitive biography (okay, the only one) of the
Fleshtones.I’ve read and reviewed just about everything he’s written (just
search this blog), and Joe’s the real deal.
This book, however, takes a autobiographical
non-fiction (yes that is a genre, though I prefer the term creative non-fiction) look at his life,
in a semi-chronological approach. Rather than a series of anecdotes or a deep
analysis of what things mean, this is an artistic look at what makes him tick;
not about music, but his formation into what it is he has become.
Over the years, Bonomo has been published in numerous creative
writing journals, such as the prestigious The
Fiddleback, Creative Nonfiction, The Normal School, The Rumpus, and New Ohio Review. These
pieces have been collected (and updated; i.e., re-edited) into this anthology
of his work; he is certainly not a One Topic Pony, even within the
autobiographical framework.
From discovering girls as a youth in a strict Catholic school through
becoming an academic at Northern Illinois University, Bonomo bars no topic of internal
conversation, but rather with fluidly and prose language examines key moments,
often unsentimentally but rather as facts, as they are true to his memory, and
the formation of himself.
While topics such as lost friendships, substances (e.g. booze)
and first crushes are clearly and sharply displayed, as he gets older and
previous events start to build, that’s when you start to connect the dots and
see seminal events in his life, both small and writ large. Not all of it, of
course, is fresh and pretty. For example, a discussion on male gaze –
especially his own – is strongly evident as he attended strip clubs as a young
man:
But as the clothes come off a different
cloak is draped. Witness the growing bulge of the strippers G-string – nothing
less than her money belt – as she pockets more and more control flowing from
these men’s wallets. The sign remains the same for strippers of either gender,
the body’s topography cunningly similar to value: for a male stripper, a bulge
signifies power, masculinity, control, domination; for a female stripper, a
bulge signifies power control, domination – and so, masculinity. … (pp.
91-92).
It isn’t until near the end that specific music show up at all, such
as a mention of the use of Gary Glitter and the Ramones at ball games, though
in “Student Killed by Freight Train,” he talks right up my Media Theory mindset:
“I wonder if before
the invention of movies we heard sentimental orchestral strings in our minds
when we read sad passages in novels, or a wave of triumphant music when, say,
little Sylvia perched atop a fir tree first spotted the prized heron’s nest. In
1793 while a dying man gazed far ahead or far back in his imagination, did the
edges of his perception grow poignantly fuzzy in a cinematic dreamscape?” (p. 183).
We are taken through parts of his life in New York, Maryland, Washington,
DC and finally Illinois, where he is currently a professor. In fact, Bonomo
almost uses places as a substitute for music as the axes of his life. He will
talk about a topic, and pin it to the map by mentioning not only the location,
but the building, e.g., such and such a store on this particular street. It’s
more than a memory; it gives a stranger a foundation, and someone familiar with
the local a mental pinpoint equivalent to a smell that brings back a memory.
Location, by fixing it so precisely, presents a form of the
cycle of eternity, showing how some things change, but others become both fixed
in time and only in memory, so even if they are no longer there, on some level
they linger in mind, so they exist yet. He addresses this head-on in “Colonizing
the Past”:
In autobiographical
nonfiction, place is elastic, no firmer than smoke. Nostalgia carries with it
the desire to return and memory its own mindfulness, less the urge to go back
than the desire to stay put and try to understand… Google Maps allows me now to
fly over my hometown, to revisit in three dimensions an atlas precision the
places I’ve rebuilt (or halted the growth of) in my heady imagination. We don’t
yet know the effects of this on the culture value of memory: the dream-engine
that hovers over the past now competes with digital bits of verifiable information,
cartographic certainties, calendar truths.” (pp.
134-135)
One of the focal points is Bonomo’s Roman Catholic upbringing,
and what one could argue are the sins that normalize into nearly everyone’s
life. In the case of Bonomo, including as I mentioned, there is girls and then
women (lust), neighbors (envy in some cases, perhaps), self (pride), drink (could
be gluttony), and prayer (I might argue as sloth, as in asking for another –
God – to do for you rather than
earning).
Covering both small moments that change one’s perspective and
larger events, Bonomo meditates on not just the what, but the wonder of
it. For example, in one of my favorite moments, in a piece called “Into the
Fable,” he contemplates on a moment in his life where an acquaintance does a questionable,
yet not normally memorable thing as a child, but Bonomo ponders why that moment
has stuck with him for his whole life, and “why I can’t shake it. John has
entered the fable. He’s become a literary figure. He’s become fabled. Does that
mean that I invented him? He’s now fabulous. He’s now somewhere, not thinking
of me” (p. 234). If I may be so presumptuous, we’ve all had moments like that,
where certain events become like a television rerun playing inside our heads,
for reasons that shake the internal head of reason. He does kind of answer that
earlier in “There Was the Occasional Disruption,” where he states, “What begins
as rumor can never circle back to fact, instead moves inevitably toward myth.”
(p. 175)
Not just because we both worked at a Baskin-Robbins at one point
in our lives, I feel a kinship of some kind. Bonomo has lived a very different existence
than mine, but there are so many moments that were aha flashes of understanding and on occasional level clear
identification. For example, he mentions that “…entering a church, I always
felt as if I were entering a movie in the middle. It was a story I felt left
out of many times.” (208) This is often how I felt going to synagogue as a
youth, and something just didn’t jibe to me; I especially feel it now when I regularly
take a relative to a Lutheran church. And don’t get me started on “Spying on
the Petries,” a treatise on one of my favorite shows growing up (in repeat
form), The Dick Van Dyke Show.
While being a non-poetic form of prose, Bonomo tells stories and
thoughts without getting overly philosophical, rather staying within the realm
of thought and more often than not, the marvel about his life and the events
that brought him to the present. The book is an enjoyable read that is
exceedingly accessibly without talking down to its reader; both fun and
thought-provoking. In short, it’s a good read.
I was friends with Gary Pig
Gold way before I actually met him. He had his Pig Paper fanzine out of Mississauga and Hamilton
that started in 1973, and I had my ‘zine, whose first date was 7/7/77. We
quickly started exchanging ‘zines and stories. He published some of my
articles, and I had his highly regarded “Pigshit” column in mine.
A part of the indie music history
most people don’t know is that when I received copies of albums by the cult Texan
musician Jandek, they came in twos, so I sent a bunch of the doubles off to
Gary. In turn, Gary (who enjoyed them way more than I did, honestly) lent them
to a radio DJ named Bruce “Mole” Mowat (also now a friend), who played them on
the air, creating a Canadian tidal wave of fans.
Gary is also a phenomenal
musician, as well as studio engineer, and I had a chance to see him play a
couple of times in New York: once in the Country/Beach Boys themed Ghost
Rockets, and another when he performed with The Cheepskates’ Shane Faubert, who
backed up the legendary Dave Rave DesRoches at an International Pop Overthrow
show in 2007 (HERE).
An internationally known rock
historian with his writing appearing in many blogs Gary interviewed me via
email and this one showed up in a number of them around 2008. It is part of a series of "Eight Questions" Gary did over the years.
Gary
Pig Gold Has Eight Questions for Robert Barry Francos By
Gary Pig Gold Robert first walked into CBGBs circa Spring of 1975 with the Good / Mystic Eyes
founder Bernie Kugel, a high school chum, to watch (along with about a dozen
other prescient folk) Talking Heads open for the Ramones. Now since Bernie and
he were so straight-edged they went for the music rather than the imbibing
(nursing a single beer though a twelve-hour show, much to the chagrin and ire
of a certain CBGB's waitress) they were able to peruse the scene from an almost
objective, outside view. Consequently, RBF tried to write about his tastes and
musical preferences for various college papers, but they wouldn't hear of it
(being much too disco and Billy Joel-focused). So in the ultra-DIY Spirit of
'76 he just started his own fanzine, which he called FFanzeen. Why? As the man himself says, "I figured to name the
publication after its very genre, so I chose Fanzine. But Bernie Kugel suggested that I call it Francos Fanzine. While I thought that
was too egotistical, I did like the double-F at the beginning, since FF is the sign for fortissimo, or "faster and louder." Then another friend,
Alan Abramowitz, who produces a cable access show, suggested I change the
spelling of the end part, a la Monkees, Byrds, So FFanzeen was born." See? Simple! It ran a wonderful run from
1977 to 1988. Throughout that entire period, Robert also took many photographs
of many good bands, and continues to do so, plus since FFanzeen's demise Robert's continued to work the pen for such over
the counter fanzines as Shredding Paper
and Oculus. That didn't stop him,
however, from revealing to us all today--
1.
"Munsters" or "Addams Family": Which one's for you, and
Why?
Tough
choice, but in the long run, I'd have to go for the Munsters because they had
The Standells on the show once. In fact, that whole episode, with the Beat
poetry, was a gasser.
2.
Who in the world, living or dead, would you most like to play a game of
"Twister" with?
Easy.
Either 1963-67 Ann-Margret, or 1966-70 Pamela Franklin (how's that for
opposites?)
3.
How many Sid King & The Five Strings records do you own?
None.
But I have this great EP (7-inch, 33-1/3 rpm) of a doctor describing problems
of the heart, with sound effects. Picked it up at a Sally Ann (no one in the US
of A seems to know what Sally Ann means). In pride, I went to Buffalo, took it
with me, and played it for Bernie Kugel. He reached over and pulled out a
sister EP with respiratory problems. Who knew there was a series?
4.
If you had been working the front gate at The Dakota that night back in 1980
when nasty Mark David Chapman showed up, pistol in hand, to avenge the Chief
Beatle for his "Bigger than Jesus" wisecrack, what would you have
done?
Well,
let me start off by stating that Mark David Chapman and I were born on the same
day. Not just the same date, but the same day, May 10, 1955. Of course, on
December 8 (also, my brother's birthday) 1980, I would not have known that
fact, so after rumination about it, I've come to an answer:
Being
a native New Yorker, used to many weird and strange things, I honestly think I
would have shat my pants.
5.
"Ginger" or "Mary-Ann": Which one's for you, and for How
Long?
Easy.
Definitely Mary-Ann. Not only is Dawn Wells a cutie, but she STAYED a cutie.
Tina Louise is too testy. Got to see Dawn Wells in a dinner theatre production
of a Neil Simon play in Calgary.
My
spouse even bought me tickets for my birthday!
6.
What single song, living or dead, do you most wish you'd written-- and Why
Didn't You?
The
song would probably change, or I'd want it piece-meal. I love the keyboard on
Del Shannon's "Runaway." Then there's almost any early Simon &
Garfunkel (yes, the secret is out, I'm a S&G fan). But then there's most of
Ellie Greenwich's catalog (best American pop songwriter, bar none). Then
there's some stuff by a Winnipeg native named James Keeleghan whose songs can
make me cry. Etc.
And
the reason I haven't is simple: I'm not talented -- that way.
7.
Whose guitar kit would you most like to be reincarnated as?
See
number 2.
8.
In 2000 words or less, Your Hopes, Aspirations and Goals, musical and
otherwise, for your life and your country?
Not
to have to listen to any more disco, techno, rap (as a wise Canadian I know
once said, "Remember, rap is three-quarters of the word crap"),
hip-hop, boy-band, Britney-Christina-Pink-Eve-etc., etc.
This interview was originally printed in Big Star fanzine, issue #2, dated August-September-October 1977. It was written
by its publisher, Buffalo (NY) Musician Hall of Fame Inductee Bernie Kugel, who
kindly and granted permission for this reprint.
John Mendelssohn is a well-known
and respect music and culture critic. At the time of this article, he was
gaining name for both is snarky and funny album reviews, and for his two bands,
Christopher Milk and then The Pits. He also released some solo recordings, such
as Sorry We’re Open (2010) with pop sounds that belied a
history of insecurity and depression (as most writers will attest to about
themselves). He often writes about that history now, which is quite evident in
this interview.
Over time, as the recordings dwindled, he focused more on his writing,
including a number of non-fiction books (such as the much lauded Kinks Kronikles and Waiting for Kate Bush)
and a blog. He has made some serious moves over the years, living in such
diverse areas as SoCal, England, Germany and Upstate New York, some of which
revolved around marriages.
Like Lester Bangs, who was arguably better known, Mendelssohn’s
contribution to rock writing cannot be underplayed, as he was part of a voice
in the very late ‘sixties and well into the ‘seventies, helping create a form
of creative non-fiction that influences the way people discuss the
entertainment world at large even today.
Two things to note are that Mendelsson also has been known to spell is name
with a single “s” so don’t let that misleadyou, and that anything in [brackets] was added by me in 2015. – RBF,
2015
Christopher Milk publicity shot: John is second from right
John Mendelssohn’s been making
unique, personal, great pop music for some years now with only some of the best
of it surfacing on records like his old band Christopher Milk’s great Some People Will Drink Anything[Reprise Records, 1972 – RBF, 2015] LP
and his new band the Fits’ fine debut EP on Bomp! Records. But there are other
fine John Mendelssohn compositions that have as yet not seen the light of day.
Incredible stuff too, like the amazing “Bring Back the Sixties” and the simply majestic
“Prepared to Love” among the hours of unreleased Mendelssohn songs.
We’ve been very fortunate to be in
contact with John the past few months, and he’s been kind enough to send along
some of his unreleased tapes which will be covered in upcoming Big Stars in great detail. But for now,
we thought we’d satisfy all you die-hard Mendelssohn freaks out there with this
little by-mail exchange I had with him recently. But hang on, ‘cause there’s
lots more Mendelssohn-Milt-Fits fax-n-pix comin’ your way soon. And remember,
before you decide to move out west, Hollywood can be cruel. Now, Milk on…
1. Did you have aspirations for rock superstardom as a kid?
Up until the time I saw Hard Day’s Night, I dreamed not of rock
stardom, but of a career as a professional baseball or basketball player, in
spite of the fact that I never exactly excelled at either. (I was very small up
until the age of seventeen, which had a little to do with it.)
2. What were your earliest attempts at bands like? What were your
earliest original compositions like?
The Fogmen (Santa Monica High School,
1965), The Rubber Souls (winter, 1965) were both Beatles imitations in velour
turtlenecks and Thom McCann boots. The Consouls (summer, 1965) was run by three
older geezers and played soul music, very poorly. The 1930 Four played English
stuff, jazz and a couple of Ray Charles things, and won the Battle of the Bands
sponsored by the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce in 1966. I was thrown out in
May 1967. My earliest compositions were lame imitations of my favorite records.
3. What were the early days of C. Milk like? How did the group come
together?
Hectic, silly, young and innocent,
induplicable [sic] fun. Ralph [Oswald] and I began playing together in
April 1968. The Kiddo joined in April 1970, with Mr. Twister. Forgive me if I
don’t get more into it, but I’s boring to get so detailed about a group that no
longer exists, and hasn’t for nearly four years.
4. Were you satisfied with the first [self-titled 1971] Milk EP when it
came out (and the reaction towards it)?
No, but explaining why would take too
long and ultimately prove not worth the trouble so far as I can see.
5. Why didn’t Mr. Twister ever appear on vinyl?
Because he couldn’t carry a tune to
save his life and was used sort of as comic relief on stage only.
6. Were you happy with the release of the first album? What did you think
of the generally negative reaction it got from “critics”?
No. If we’d spend one-tenth the time
on the vocals that we did overdubbing seventy-five thousand guitar parts I
might be able to listen to it today without cringing. Since most of Warners
either hated us or were embarrassed by our presence on the label, it was doomed
from the beginning. Also, I think Chris Thomas is a horrible producer [Thomas has produced, among others, The
Beatles, Pink Floyd, Queen, Roxy Music, Badfinger, The Pretenders, and The Sex
Pistols), although he was at that time of the sessions a very dear friend.
I’ve come to believe that it deserved the reaction it got. (Essentially, C.
Mil’s biggest problem was that ours – or, more accurately, Ralph’s – ambitions
far exceeded our abilities as musicians. Of course, I didn’t realize this fully
until much later.)
7. Do you have favorite songs off the first LP?
“Tiger,” “A Second Hard Viola” (which
I still think Rod Stewart ought to record) (that’s me on drums), the last part
of “[The] Babyshoes [Bittersuite Sad Songs That She Inspired].”
(If Ralph’s techniques equalled his melodic inventiveness he’d be the best
guitarist in rock.)
8. What were the final “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” [1973] single sessions
like and did the band immediately break up after being dropped from Warners?
Great fun for everyone save The Kiddo,
who disliked the way I recorded and mixed he bass (I produced, but didn’t give
myself credit because my work as a critic had made us so many powerful
enemies). We broke up almost immediately after the single flopped, having no manager,
no label, no agency, no gigs, few fans.
9. Did ya go solo and record things solo before the invention of the
Pits, and how did that band come about?
I began working on my own stuff a
couple of months before the Milk officially called it quits. The Pits came
about because I realized that my trying to synthesize everything on an ARP
Odyssey [analog synthesizer] wasn’t’
working.
10. If you had to choose a few songs which have influenced your writing
of songs the most, which would you choose?
“Here, There and Everywhere,”
“Waterloo Sunset,” “For No One,” “Tattoo,” and so on far into the night. I’ve
always been the soft to succumb unhesitatingly to a beautiful melody and a
poignant or amusing bunch of lyrics. “For No One’s” my all-time fave.
11. What’s the normal day of John Mendelssohn like today?
Wake up, get out of bed, have a bowl
of Team [cereal], some apple juice,
several cups of coffee, re-read the LA
Times’ Sports Section 85 times, go in den/studio and brood, make lunch, go
back into den to sulk until mid-afternoon, go run mile as fast as possible and
play basketball or tennis at Fairfax High School (alma mater of Phil Spector),
come home, sulk until Marie comes home from work, eat dinner, get high, make
love, watch TV or brook some more (or sometimes work on prose or new song),
wonder why it’s taking so long to put new Pits line-up together, go to sleep.
12. If you had to briefly characterize your songs what would you say
they’re about?
All manner of things, whimsical and
wondrous. People are forever comparing me to Sparks, which I detest with a
passion.
13. How many songs have you written in your life and which are your
favorites?
Around forty. Favorites: “Prepared to
Love,” “Autumn Approaching,” “Where’s My Jane?”
14. Do you have a favorite and least favorite rock critic?
Favorite: Lester Bangs, even though
he no longer returns my calls. All-time least favorite: Ed Ward [at the time, writing for Rolling Stone,
Crawdaddy, and Creem].
15. What do you think you’ll be doing at age sixty?
Brooding.
16. Why aren’t you singing on the new Pits recordings?
I’m very insecure – with good reason
– about my voice. But I am getting better.
17. If you had to choose between journalism and songwriting, which would
you choose?
Not between songwriting and
journalism, but between music and prose. (Sitting at my Hohner String Vox [electric keyboard] for hours on end
trying to make a song work isn’t the fun part: recording and performing are
infinitely more enjoyable.) I’d take music.
18. Do you envision a day when the Pits will play Dodger and Yankee
Stadiums?
I’d settle for the Santa Monica
Civic.
19. Do you think superstardom will change you?
Probably a little. In this regard,
one couldn’t do better than Bev Bevan [English
drummer for the likes of The Move, ELO and Black Sabbath], who’s remained
one of the nicest guys and best friends in the world in spite of everything.
20. Do you regret anything you’ve done in this life?
To be honest, there aren’t a lot of
things I don’t regret. I’m not one of
nature’s happier sorts as a general rule. (When it comes to finding a way to be
miserable, even when it appears that everything’s coming up roses, I’m topped
only by Chris Thomas.)
21. What would you like written on your grave when you have to go to the
popstar heaven in the sky?
Here lies John Mendelssohn.
22. What advice would you have for rock journalist types and somewhat
saner folks who want to pursue the road to being a superstar?
I’m the last person anyone in his
right mind would come to for advice.
23. Are you generally cheerful or optimistic would you say?
Not hardly.
24. Why haven’t there been more live appearances by the Mendelssohn
bands?
We couldn’t get bookings. God knows
we rehearsed enough.
25. If you had to put your lifetime goals in twenty-five words or less,
what would they be?
I’d like one day to be very happy.
26. What do you think of the (formal) education you’ve had?
Roughly 95% of the teachers and
professors I had over the course of sixteen years of schooling ought to be
shot, or at least allowed never again to open their stupid yaps within hearing
of impressionable youngsters.
27. If you could live in another decade than this one, is there any
particular one you’d choose?
I think I could learn to love the
present century’s ‘forties and ‘sixties (and probably ‘twenties) in perpetuity.
28. What would you do if there was no rock-n-roll?
Not play quite so loud.
29. Do you have favorite books and authors and films and TV shows and
foods?
When I heard
about Saskatoon writer Wes Funk passing suddenly in his sleep at the age of 46,
it came as a deep shock to me, the local writing community, and to his many
fans around the world.
I first
became aware of Wes when my partner bought me his first novel, Dead Rock Stars, when I first moved to
Saskatoon from Brooklyn in 2009. It was an interesting story about a gay man
who lives in this city, goes home to rural Saskatchewan to visit his religious family,
and yet still manages to possibly find some happiness along the way. Like his
character, Wes was a fan of classic rock, hence the title, and even had a
tattoo of the Nirvana logo on one arm, and the Carpenters’ logo on the other.
When I saw
that Wes was having a book signing at the local McNally-Robinson bookstore in
2010, I brought my copy and had him sign it. As fates would have it, he was
alone at the table which gave us time for a very nice chat about music and
life. We talked about getting together again for coffee at some point.
LIT Happens: Wes interviews Anthony Bidulka
After a few
more conversations, Wes invited me to come on down to his Shaw Cable television
show that focused on writers, called LIT
Happens; some of them can be found online. Shaw played the episodes between
films. I took my camera along, and was also interviewed for the show. It gave
me the chance to give him a copy of a coffee table book about AC/DC which
featured photos by me. As far as I know, I am still the only blogger he ever queried
on the show. Afterwards, he drove us from the studio in the North End to the
then-new downtown Tim Hortons, where we continued our talk.
His next
book was Baggage, the story of, yes,
a gay man looking for love in Saskatoon, who opens a shop in the area across
the street from where Wes actually lived at the time, at the top of the
Broadway Bridge. While Dead Rock Stars
was a good book, I found this one an even better read. His writing was improving
substantially, and he was no slouch to start. His third book was Cherry Blossoms, which was told from a
woman’s perspective. It was a critical success, and for an independent release,
sold quite well.
Hafford Summer Sizzle: Wes and his parents
Over the
years, I would see Wes frequently at events, such as Word on the Street, PRIDE,
and even the 2012 Hafford Summer Sizzle (close to where Wes grew up), where I
would take his picture. He was quite proficient at promoting himself and his
work, and always had a smile for anyone who would approach him. When he made
the cover of the first issue of Bridges,
a weekly magazine produced by the SaskatoonStarPhoenix daily newspaper, it was a
nice nod.
After
getting quite a few shots of him, I gathered a bunch of my photos together onto
a disk, and gave it to him, which he thanked me by mentioning me into the
acknowledgements of his next book, a memoir wittily titled A Wes Side Story. I told him I was going to buy a copy, but he
insisted he wanted to give it to me, instead. But he never had the chance.
Likewise I
had some rock music-focused books I wanted to give him, but a bad back and
health issues always managed to come in the way. Still, we talked via IM on
Facebook from time to time. His announcement of moving to Edmonton recently
took me by surprise, but kind of made sense as it is definitely a bigger
market.
Yesterday, I
heard the news of his passing in his sleep. He recently had back surgery, and
was in constant pain. The most common belief among his fans and friends is that
he may have overmedicated himself.
While his
loves of comic books and music, and his authorship is what most people will
remember, and rightfully so, what will stick for me is his smile, his sense of
humor, and his outgoing and friendly attitude. He was a good man, with a big
heart, and his passing will affect many, including me.
The reason I put these two reviews
together is because they both deal with different perspectives of the same
group of people in overlapping time periods, essentially from 1966 through
1978. Though both have different viewpoints and distribution companies, they
really are companions as both are British release documentaries from the same parent
enterprise and have an Executive Producer in common. The second DVD listed here actually was released first, but I reviewed them in the order I watched them.
Bob Dylan and the Band: Down
in the Flood – Associations and Collaborations
(aka
Down in the Flood: Bob Dylan, The Band
& The Basement Tapes) Executive Producer Rob Johnstone Narrated by Thomas Arnold Prism Films / Chrome Dreams Media 114
minutes, 2012 www.chromedreams.co.uk www.MVDvisual.com
The
title of this documentary is a bit misleading as it focuses not so much on the
Zimmer-Man as much as the group that would first become famous backing him up,
The Band. Actually, the documentary’s narrator, Thomas Arnold, vocalizes the
“elevator pitch” of just what this DVD is about in one sentence: “This is the
story of the relationship between Dylan and the Hawks, their reinvention of
American Music at the close of the ‘60s, and the legendary amateur recordings
they made together in Woodstock: The
Basement Tapes.”
It
all starts in the mysterious Deep South of the early ‘60s when rockabilly rebel
Ronnie Hawkins gathered a band together and called them The Hawks. The Beatles
were breaking and rockabilly was fading fast. That is when the call came from
Toronto and Hawkins and the Hawks move to our friendly neighbor to the north.
With attrition (and probably some work visa issues), the band is replaced one
by one by Canadians, with the exception of the drummer, some guy named Levon
Helm (d. 2012). Perhaps you’ve heard of him? The rest of the new group
consisted of Rick Danko (bass; d. 1999), Garth Hudson (keyboard / sax), Richard
Manuel (piano; d. 1986), and Robbie Robertson (guitar).
When
The Hawks outgrew Hawkins’ rockabilly sound and struck out on their own just a
couple of years later, they would eventually rename themselves The Band,
outshining Hawkins with their own illustrious career.
Hooking
up with Bob Dylan after his motorcycle accident in 1966, Dylan talked the Hawks
into moving to Woodstock, NY (a very lovely, quaint and New Age-y town that is
miles from where the so-called Woodstock Festival was held). They all moved
into a house with pink exterior which they dubbed The Big Pink, which would
eventually be the name of The Band’s first solo record after Dylan abandoned
them once he got what he wanted. To date, 138 of their sessions, taped by
Hudson, would emerge and be called The Basement
Tapes, for obvious reasons. Decades before the release was official, the
Tapes were floating around as a 2-LP bootleg. I still remember listening to it
in a friend’s house in the early ‘70s. It was in a plain white cover with a
stamp that read Great White Wonder. I
recall the quality of the records not being that good, as it was probably
several generations down the road.
Dylan
does play a recurring role in the story of The Band, but that’s pretty much it.
He used the group to help get him figure out the direction he wanted, and then
dropped them to record his next LP, John
Wesley Harding, and using studio musicians in their stead, without the
people who had just spent all that time with him. This would apparently become
a pattern with Bobby, using The Band as his touring group, and then dropping
them before reaching the studio. On the other hand, this kind of forced The
Band to strike out on their own, borrowing what they learned in that basement,
and releasing their seminal first folk rock album, The Big Pink. It also contained their first – and one of their
biggest – hits, “The Weight” (a song I really
do not like, but I digress…).
The Big Pink would
quickly be considered a classic album, a trendsetter in Americana roots rock
(hence the “reinvention of American Music” comment above), and blast them into
the A-list. While “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” was also a huge hit,
they never really came up to the level of Big
Pink status again.
As
happens with most bands, a power struggle emerges, in this case between
Robertson and Helm, along with a few deaths here and there, and The Band
dissolves into history not as much with a whimper but a bang, thanks in part to
the release of the Martin Scorsese-directed final The Band concert, The Last Waltz, as infamous for its
guest musicians (e.g., Dylan, Joni, Neil, Ronnie) as for the group’s last
hurrah. All in all, the life and death of The Band really never touched me, as
I always found them kind of uninteresting, even while recognizing their talent
as musicians.
As
with most of the prodigious series of documentaries put out by the Chrome Dream
company (there’s over a dozen of just Dylan alone), the film is not just a
collection of comments: there are multiple clips, both live (including arenas
with Dylan and by themselves, their appearances on Saturday Night Live, and clips from The Last Waltz) and commentaries by various writers and critics
(many of them British), musicians and technicians, with both first and second
hand anecdotes and theories. Of course, it’s the first-hand anecdotes that
attracted the most of my attention, such as Hawkins, Mickey Jones (who played
drums during their 1968 world tour), The Band’s early producer John Simon,
Nashville session guitarist Charley McCoy (Blonde
on Blonde, John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline), and the one who
interested me the most, Garth Hudson, who was known for both recording TheBasement
Tapes and also credited for giving The Band their sound. As is common with
Chrome Dreams releases, there are few women who are questioned, making this a
testosterone-driven doc; this is a comment I’ve made before, and I’m sadly
probably going to posit again.
While
I’ll never be a fan of the Band, it’s still good to get a history of them
that’s somewhat thorough, and that’s one thing about this series, they really
tend do delve into minutia through clips, interviews and theory. I’m glad
they’re keeping track.
Bob Dylan: After the Crash 1966-1978
(Special Edition 2 Disc Set) Executive Producers Rob
Johnstone and Andy Cleland Narrated by Mandy O’Neale Pride Films / Chrome Dreams Media DVD:
Disc 1: 118 minutes, 2005 / 2013 CD: Disc
2: 50 minutes 1971 / 2013
This
DVD is especially interesting to watch after the one above, because even though
they cover essentially the same timeframe, and have in some respects the same
format, the focus is incredibly different.
Again
we approach Dylan after his motorcycle crash in 1966, but this time we hear
some skepticism about whether it even happened the way Dylan explained by his
friend, Al Aronowitz (d. 2005; I had the opportunity to meet Al once a year or
two before he passed at an Andy Pratt / Moogy Klingman [d. 2011] show in New
York City the night I got kicked out of a Starbucks; but I digress…). Either
way, it infamously led to Dylan holing himself in a house in Woodstock, NY with
a group of guys called the Hawks who would soon change their name to The Band.
Funny
thing is, in this story, the equally infamous Basement Tapes that came out of that are just a blip in this
telling of the story. The Band gets little shrift here, even when they are
backing him on tours, the exception of which is towards the end when they show
a clip of Dylan and the Band playing the group’s last show in Martin Scorsese’s
The Last Waltz (1975); it’s the same
clip from the other DVD, “Baby Let Me Follow You Down.”
The
story here follows Dylan through his Nashville albums, such as John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, the latter in 1969. This
is accompanied by a clip of Dylan singing a duet of “Girl from the North
Country” with Johnny Cash on Cash’s ABC television show (which is also shown in
the other DVD).
One
major difference between this DVD and many of the others from this label is
that there are a remarkably fewer musical clips here, and a lot more talking
head interviews. As this one originally came out a few years earlier, perhaps
they were still developing the “formula” for this series? While hearing the
music is great, it also can see seen as padding to make these longer, and at
near two hours, I’ll take the info and be as happy as if there were snippets of
songs (they never ever play full
numbers, just 10-30 seconds each).
One
thing I also like about the Chrome Dream series is that while they’re happy to
lionize the artist in focus, there is also a level of honesty, even on the
negative side. For example, for Dylan’s show with the Band at the 1969 Isle of
Wight Festival, Aronowitz tells a story of why Dylan was an hour late due to a sound
system issue; this is contrasted by Ray Foulk, the Festival’s organizer who
blames the Band for playing too long and that it was only starting an hour later
than scheduled. Much like the folkies not expecting Dylan to go electric, the
Festival fans were not expecting his new country style, leading to bad reviews
from press there.
Another
example of this frankness is British music journalist Nigel Williamson (he
appears regularly on Chrome Dream documentaries), who plainly states about
Dylan’s Self Portrait LP, “It’s
almost as if he deliberately set out to make an album that everyone would hate.”
For New Morning, Nigel calls it a
“good rather than great” album.
Around
this time in the story, we are introduced to AJ Weberman, a fan who claims he
was Dylan’s friend that searched Dylan’s garbage trying to find clues about song
meanings. This led to some angry (and both pathetic and funny at the same time)
phone calls in 1971 from Dylan asking Weberman to cease and desist. At some
point Dylan physically beat Weberman up, something that would have been all
over the television now; then again, Weberman couldn’t do what he did
(harassment) either.
The
phone calls, which Weberman recorded, have been available as bootlegs for
decades, and are collected here in an accompanying CD, licensed to the
documentary directly from Weberman. I found it fascinating to listen to
Weberman, who is interviewed (probably part of the deal of the rights, as he
comes across as a strange yet narcissistic man). This is part of the story of
Dylan that has fascinated me, so it’s nice to actually see Weberman in the
(digital) flesh, as he humorously claims he is starting the Bob Dylan Liberation Front against
Dylan’s newer styles. I find it curious that in all the information that is
flowing through this DVD, there is no mention of Dylan’s manager, Albert
Grossman (d. 1986), a usually sore topic for Weberman.
There
is some digging into Dylan’s only Asylum Records release Planet Waves (after pressure from David Geffen), a 1974 tour after
8 years off the road, the more successful Blood
on the Tracks in 1975, and his Desire LP in the film, but it feels more
informational and chronological that delving. For the deeper look, they discuss
Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy
the Kid, which was Dylan’s first acting role (and the first and only film I
ever saw stoned on weed). The film is looked at critically, but we see no clips
other than the trailer, which has a brief shot of Dylan. In other words, for
all the talking, there is very little imagery other than concerning the
accompanying album. Weirdly, no verbal mention or musical clip is made of the
biggest hit on the soundtrack (and one of my fave songs of later-day Dylan),
“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”
The
next big piece in the story detailed here is the Rolling Thunder Review, a tour
that started out successfully and fell under the weight of its own success and
Dylan’s boredom. We see it through the eyes of Dylan’s band leader for the
show, Rob Stoner (nee Rothstein; I still have a couple of his solo albums).
He’s a good storyteller of what it was like to work with Dylan in both the
studio and on tour, and though he left midway through the second RTR tour, he
still has good words to say about Bob. What I felt was his most intriguing
comment is that Phil Ochs was turned down for the RTR, and soon after took his
own life in 1976, so Stoner wonders if there is a correlation. This segment is
followed by the Bob Dylan directed disaster of a film, Renaldo & Clara, which all the critics interviewed here say
essentially that the live footage was good, but as a piece of cinema, as a
whole, it was not a success.
Towards
the end of the story here, Dylan gets a bigger band, and records and releases
the Street Legal album, which is well-received
everywhere except on his home turf of the US. The end of this DVD comes in November
1978, when Dylan becomes a Born Again Christian.
Again,
with the Chrome Dream collection, there are lots of interviews, here more than
usual, consisting of writers, journalists, and some of the people who were
integral to the period, such as Weberman, Stoner, Aronowitz, Foulk, as well as
Ron Cornelius (guitarist on Self Portrait
and New Morning), Bruce Langhorne
(guitarist for Pat Garrett and Billy the
Kid), Eric Weissberg (guitarist on the New York session of Blood on the Tracks), Kevin Odegard
(guitarist for the Minnesota sessions of Blood
on the Tracks; Jacques Levy (d. 2004; playwright and lyric collaborator on Desire), and Paul Colby (d. 2014; owner
of the Bitter End). And finally, giving a strong female voice to the boys club is violinist Scarlet Rivera (Desire, Rolling Thunder Review).
The
information here is both direct stories and second-hand journalism by
professional writers in the field, but it flushing out pretty well, which is
just what I expect from the Chrome Dream team.
The shop is closing, metal gate half
across the door. The guy was nice, showing me old jewelry, each piece a talisman
with a mysterious history. Walking, there was something I wanted to write.
Ringing your doorbell I forgot what it was. No weekly papers, no coffee or
booze. Before going out we watch TV.
“I’d slap that bitch,” you say. The
women in the ladies room at 3 just got there. They missed the sacerdotal
offering, X’s melancholy pastiche of corpses. You say they’re monotonous. You
don’t have the record Los Angeles, on
Slash [Records]. Its coarse texture is soothing, emotional facets, serious music;
a miasma of dust and opiates which is a city. The music sounds like traffic,
litter on a hot beach, and rock’n’roll at a high school dance.
