Welcome To Las Vegas, Baby!

By now, most of you know that I have left the sunny climes of Southern California and Los Angeles to move to the City of Sin, Las Vegas, in the Silver State of Nevada. There were many reasons for this move, but I’ll only mention that which was most important. (I really don’t want to go into how tired of Los Angeles I was after 4 nonstop decades of living there.)

The main reason we left LA was for financial reasons. When Skip and I bought our house in Sherman Oaks, we both had jobs and had been reinsured that those jobs would be long lasting. Literally, within a few weeks after escrow closed, Skip was terminated from his job, followed a few weeks later by me.

In Skip’s case, it was the typical shenanigans that are found in corporate American business these days. They give Skip a massive raise, while telling him to buy the house and not to worry, and then a few weeks later, they tell him they’re going out of business and his job no longer exists, once it’s too late to do anything about it, of course. American corporate business sucks. They know it and we know it.

In my case, there was a lot that I liked about my job as head buyer at the Westwood Rhino Records Store, but there were a lot of business practices that were really grating on me, making it hard for me to do my job correctly, and I finally decided to be honest about it. That honesty led to me suddenly being unemployed. I was equally upset and ecstatic about this. Upset because I felt they should listen to me and make the workplace better for all. But since that obviously wasn’t going to happen, I was ecstatic to be out of there and away from the enormous pressure that job was putting on me, pressure that led to constant illness, including two separate hernias.

Now, while we were both upset at our respective jobs for terminating us just after we entered into an impossible deal with a couple of soulless banks, buying the house really saved our lives. We got the house just as the real estate boom began and within no time at all, we found that our house had more than tripled in value. This allowed us to pull from our equity to afford the simple things in life while we both looked for new jobs, jobs that we would never find due to all the reasons people can’t find jobs these days, from lack of availability, to our respective ages. If we would have been renting when we lost our jobs, we would have had nothing to fall back on and would have been homeless in less than a half-a-year or so. This also allowed us to take the time to figure out what we could do with ourselves and within the year, Skip had lined up several customers to do computer work for and I had set myself up selling stuff on the internet, for myself and for a few others. This helped bring in more money to keep us going just that much longer.

Of course, we knew we couldn’t last forever, and one of these days it would all catch up to us and we would lose the house. We didn’t know it would take ten years though. But by that time, we had set ourselves up so that we could afford to live with our meager endeavors. We just couldn’t afford to live in Los Angeles or any major California city. So, I started looking into alternatives.

Our first plan was to move to Tucson in Arizona. Most of my family lives in either Tucson or Phoenix and we’ve always liked the desert, and the Arizona desert is particularly beautiful. But as Arizona moved more politically right than was healthy and started passing crazy anti-immigrant, gun and Presidential birth certificate laws, I knew there was no way I could justify living there. I can deal with Right Wing. I just can’t deal with the crazy aspect of it.

This all came at the end of a particularly hot summer in Los Angeles, so we started thinking that maybe we should move to a climate that was generally more temperate for us, and that led to the Pacific Northwest. We knew we couldn’t afford to live in a major city, so we finally decided on the Washington town of Olympia, just about an hour south of Seattle. We could afford to live there and we were close enough to a major metropolis that we knew we wouldn’t get too bored, since both Skip and I are very social and spend a good amount of time out at clubs, theatres and restaurants.

It was just about this time that the hammer came down on us. At the end of summer, we had been convinced by a real estate broker that we should short sell the house and once we gave our okay, he convinced the bank(s) that it was the thing to do as well. (I’m still trying to decide if this was a mistake on our part or not.) We were promised that we would have “plenty of time to prepare”, but at the beginning of November we were told we had six weeks to be out of the house. Panic set in and I got in touch with some friends in the Seattle/Olympia area looking for help, and I got a lot of it. But they were also busy with their own lives and I needed someone who could go to places and pretty much do everything that I didn’t have the time to do, let alone not having the money to fly up there to do them.

That was when our friend Kathe got in touch with us. She lives in Las Vegas, or technically Henderson, which is a suburb of Las Vegas. She told us about the city and the problems it was having. Jobs had fled and the unemployment rate was the highest in the country. But because of this, it was also extremely cheap to live in. Despite the fact that she was as busy as anyone I know, she also sent along a couple dozen rental housing prospects that she had found. When I saw the rents, I knew we had found the place to live. It was about a third of the cost of living as that in LA. We were back in our much loved desert (despite the summer heat) and we were close enough to LA that I could make periodic trips there to pick up new stuff to sell, so I wouldn’t have to build a whole new client base. On top of that, I picked out a few of the rentals that looked good and Kathe went to them and looked them over, then reported back to me. Once I made my decision, she got me all the information and with only a week and a half to go before we had to leave our house, we had a nice 2 bedroom/2 bathroom condo to live in.

The trip here was a bit harrowing. We rented the biggest U-Haul truck we could get and it still wasn’t big enough. We knew our new place wouldn’t be big enough to hold everything in our house, and we had already abandoned a couch and some shelving units, plus I had sold off all our appliances through Craigslist at way too cheap prices. But we still had to leave more that wouldn’t fit in the truck, including our king-size bed that we both found extremely comfortable despite it being a decade old.

We packed the truck, drugged our cat and put him in a carrying case, and took off to Las Vegas. The cat, Chuck, didn’t like being drugged and yowled weakly through the whole five hour trip, every now and then working up enough strength to knock his carrying case over, causing me to have to pull over and readjust him. (It was all in vain, as he had to be put down a few weeks after we arrived. He was old enough at 13 and the doctor thinks the stress of the move was just too much for him. He started losing steam in January and within a week he was gone. It broke my heart as I had really bonded with the little guy. Now, for the first time in my life, I’m living without a pet of some kind. We’ll end up with a new cat soon, after I get this place organized.)

When we finally arrived in Las Vegas, we found our apartment, only to find out that the water heater was shot and we had no hot water or means to heat the place. This was in the middle of a very cold December and heat was definitely needed. This meant that we had to move into Kathe’s house, crazed cat and all, for four days while the water heater was fixed. We will always be thankful to Kathe and her husband, Buddy, for all their kindness through this.

Finally, we were able to move in and that turned out to be a major job all on its own. We had a huge truck full of stuff that had to be carried upstairs. After the first day, the first two feet of the truck was all that was empty and I began to realize that this was going to take us at least three or four more days and we would have to pay bonus time to U-Haul to keep the truck past the date it was due back.

That was when Larry showed up. I had gone out the next morning and was helplessly looking at all the crap piled in the truck when this huge, muscular black man popped up out of the trash dumpster in our parking lot. He looked at me and said, “Please tell me that you need help.” I told him to hang on and went and talked to Skip. Skip came out and we both talked to the man who introduced himself as Larry. It was decided that if Larry helped us, we would pay him $100 and a case of beer for four hours of work. He fell to his knees and thanked his Lord and immediately got to the job at hand.

Larry turned out to be an ex-boxer who was very much down on his luck. He had several kids and he needed that $100 to pay his rent. I suspect that there was an alcohol problem as well, but during his day with us, we only saw him drink two of the beers. The man was strong. He would lift up bookshelves that would have taken three of us to carry and lug them up the stairs by himself. (Kathe, Buddy, and the man who bought our stove, James, also helped out here and there.) Six hours later, the truck was almost empty and Larry told us that he had to get back home. We ended up paying him $200, that case of beer and a jar of honey. He claimed that honey gave him strength, and who was I to argue? (Larry showed up again the next day, asking if I could give him bus fair. I told him that I couldn’t have that type of thing happening and we never saw him again, which kind of makes me sad.)

The next morning, I finished clearing out the truck and got it back to U-Haul in time, so we didn’t face any penalties. But now we were faced with a medium size apartment/condo filled with boxes. We’ve been here four months now and a good many of those boxes are still stacked all over the place. The reason for this is that I’ve had to concentrate on making money more than on getting settled. And things have worked out pretty well for us so far. I’ve sold enough that we’ve finally bought a new king-size bed a few weeks ago. (We had been sleeping on the floor on a very hard futon mattress until then.) And we can occasionally afford a good meal that isn’t a $6 buffet. The boxes are slowly, but surely beginning to disappear as I sell off the stuff that was in them. I hope to have this whole place cleaned up and organized by June.

So far, we’ve liked it here quite a lot. The people who live here are nice, polite people who I enjoy talking to, despite the fact that a good many of them aren’t very bright. (But they were bright enough to realize that despite their very justified dislike of Senator Harry Reid, the alternate, Tea Party/Republican Sharron Angle, was completely bat-shit crazy.) They’re mostly honest, hard-working middle-America people. And because of them, I find living here to be a lot easier going and a lot less stressful than the run-run-run atmosphere of Los Angeles. Both of our blood pressure readings have gone down tremendously.

A lot of things are cheaper here than just the rents. We have three very nice movie theatres around us that show first run movies on Tuesdays for $5 a ticket and plenty of bars at the local casinos where we can get a top shelf drink for as little as $2 and usually not over $6. Food is a bit of a problem. There’s plenty of cheap food here, but it’s not great food, although at least it’s edible. If we want great food, we have to pay for it. I miss the amazing, cheap Mexican and Asian foods that could be found in LA. Plus, the selection is not up to what we were used to in LA. All the Mexican food here is the same, and there is no Oaxacan or Yucatan or little other regional-style foods here. But when we have the money, some of the greatest restaurants in the country are here, and because of the economy here, we’re already finding good deals used to attract the locals to these places that we use as often as we can.

It’s beautiful here as well. The view of the Las Vegas Strip from out by our place is breathtaking at night. But besides that, I never really saw or appreciated the natural beauty here. We’re surrounded by a beautiful mountainous desert. Red Rocks is to the north. Lake Mead and the Canyon of Fire are both to the south. And Utah, with Bryce and Zion Canyons, is just a few hours away. We love it out here and have already been out hiking and taking it all in.

We still haven’t experienced the summer weather here and we’ll see how well we handle that in a month or so. But the temperatures in LA regularly reached 115 degrees in the summer and it was very humid. They might have more 115 degree days here, but at least it’s very dry, so I think we’ll survive with no problem, except possibly a monster electric bill, which we also had in LA.

I was also afraid that there wouldn’t be enough to do here, but we seem to be out and about at least three nights a week. The indie-rock scene doesn’t much exist here, but there are still plenty of concerts, shows and events to keep us busy. I’m very happy about the number of country music artists who play here, as I didn’t get a chance to see many of them in LA. We saw George Jones and few months ago, and Loretta Lynn is coming up soon.

And I think that’s enough for now. I’m sure I’ll have much more to say about Las Vegas in the weeks to come, but I think this is already running too long.

I’m not going to make any promises, but I hope I can get back to writing this blog regularly now. I have a lot of tales to tell and I really want to get to it. It might only be one or two posts a month here until I can get us completely organized, but that’s better than nothing, as has been the case for most of the last year. I also hope to get my food blog up and running again by the end of the month, with an all new title and focus. More on that will follow soon.

By the way, I’ve been listening to Javier Escovedo’s newest album, “City Lights”, while typing this and I really recommend you download it and give it more than a few good listens. (It’s not available as a hard copy yet.) Javier was the guitarist and vocalist for California’s first ever Mexican-American punk rock band, the Zeros, who I spent a couple of days managing back in the 70s. I wouldn’t call his new music punk, although it retains punk’s energy. It’s just good, catchy, well written rock music that deserves to have more people listening to it than there are.

As always, thanks for reading and take care of yourselves. I hope to see you here again really soon.

Our D-Day Has Arrived!!!!

Hi all,

We have sold our house and have been given a date of December 8th as the day we need to be moved out. I'm a bit pissed off about this because we were promised 45 days and we only got 30, but we'll have to make due with what we have. The house sold as a short sale, so we have no money from that. The person buying the house is a very nice woman, and we believe she'll treat the house right and be happy in it, something that was very important to us.

We can no longer afford to live in Los Angeles and have no desire to live anywhere else in California, so we have decided to move to the Pacific Northwest. We hope to move to Olympia in Washington. It will be ideal for us as the cost of living there is only about a third of what it is here. It's only an hour from Seattle and two hours from Portland in Oregon, two of our favorite cities.

The big problem is finding a place to live. We can't afford to travel up there to find an apartment and even if we could, we really don't have the time. We have a couple of friends who live in Olympia who have offered us help and it remains seen as to what type of help that will be, but one way of the other, I'm going to make it work for us. If we can't find a place in Olympia in the next couple of weeks, we'll start looking elsewhere. A friend mentioned Astoria, Oregon as a great place, so we'll see. I'll be checking Craigslist and any other rental help place I can find. Once we find that place to live, everything else will fall into place easily.

We will be renting a truck and moving ourselves. We'll be having a yard sale about a week before the move to try to cut back on the stuff we have to take with us. I know we'll be selling our washer and dryer, which is in great condition, and some furniture, such as a standard couch and our couch bed. Hopefully we'll get some good money, because we're doing this on the seat of our pants monetarily wise.

As soon as everything settles, I'll let you all know. I hope that I can get back to doing this blog again on a regular basis, but that will still have to wait a while, as we're going to be scrambling to keep from finding ourselves homeless, but you'll hear from me soon enough.

Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving and hopefully you'll be hearing from us before Christmas with some good, settling news.

Love you all,

-Michael

2009 Music, Movies and an Update

Well, due to my lateness once again, you’ve probably realized that getting this blog back on track is not going the way I imagined it would. But there is hope for the future as things have been looking up for us over the last month and a half. It’s been surprising as literally three weeks ago, I was on the edge of panic since we were out of cash and it looked like there was no hope for us to be anything but homeless. Then, suddenly, my online sales started skyrocketing. Shortly after that, Skip was accepted into Government Disability and now gets a good-sized check from them every month. Skip is also in the process of declaring bankruptcy, which is going to be a pain in the ass, but it’s better than trying to deal with bills we can’t pay. He is dealing with a gay bankruptcy lawyer who understands our situation completely. He also understands the laws we can take advantage of since this society will not allow us to get married, and I’m all for taking advantage of the bigotry of the US Government. (Ah Hell, I’m all for taking advantage of the US Government in any way.) Now that we’re not saddled with mortgage payments or paying off exaggerated interest rates on our credit card bills, we suddenly find ourselves with money saved in the bank and a hope for the future. And, as you can probably tell, I have no feelings of guilt about any of it.

As for the future, we’re still on track to moving out of California for good. We have dropped looking into anything on the East Coast, so New Hampshire and North Carolina are no longer possibilities. We just decided that we wanted to stay close to the West Coast. If I’m close enough to LA, I can keep my clients that I sell for. I can make a trip every two months or so to pick up new sale items and visit Disneyland and friends while we’re at it. Plus, I really don’t think I can live somewhere where I can’t find great Mexican food. So, right now we’re looking into Tucson, Arizona or Olympia, Washington (despite the lack of good Mexican food, they still have amazing seafood in the Pacific Northwest, which is almost as important to us). And New Mexico is still in the running as well. We will be in our house until at least July and I’m hoping we can stretch that into September. But one way or another, we have to make up our minds and get prepared to move this summer.

I’ll keep you posted as more develops. And I’m still going to try to get this blog up to a bi-weekly basis again, although that may not happen until we settled into our new digs later this year. So all I’ll promise is that I will get posts up on this blog as I have time to write them. I’ve come to realize that I really don’t have that many tour reports left to do. I’m sure there are plenty of stories I could tell if I could just remember them, but for now, there’s maybe two or three more blogs I can get out of my decade or so touring with bands. I’ll try to get one of those up next, probably my quick European tour with the Young Fresh Fellows and the Dharma Bums.

As for the rest of my New Year’s Resolutions, I’m not having much luck with those either. I haven’t gained any weight, but I haven’t lost any either. And my attempt to read at least one book a month has been futile as well. I have been buying books though, so I have a stack to read when I find the time. “A Single Man” by Christopher Isherwood, “The Gospel of Food” by Barry Glassner, “Footnotes in Gaza” by Joe Sacco, “Just Kids” by Patti Smith, “I Slept With Joey Ramone” by Mickey Leigh, “Kick It Till It Breaks” by Ira Robbins, “Heat” by Bill Buford, and “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” by Michael Chabon are all in that stack.

Now, I usually open the year with a column about music and then I do one about movies around Oscar time. Both of those have fallen victim to my predicament. But I’d still like to talk a bit about both, so what follows are short, cliff-note versions of what I would normally write. I’ll have to rely on you to look up things if you think they might be interesting. (http://www.myspace.com for music and http://www.imdb.com for movies)

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I no longer buy CDs much. In fact, I’ve been downloading all my own CDs and records and selling them on the internet. I used to obsess about owning and holding the covers, but no longer. I’m happy with just the music now. And with the money I’ve been making off these old CDs, I’m even happier. So I can no longer do a top ten albums of the year. But I still go see bands live a lot, or watch them on the late night TV shows and then check them out more online if I like them.

So, let me just point out a few musicians and bands that I heard this year that I think are worth your while to check out as well.

I really enjoyed seeing some younger bands for the first or second time. Amongst these were the Von Bondies, the Black Lips, the White Rabbits, Matt & Kim, Dengue Fever, No Age, Health, Melt Banana, the Doves, Travis, Adele, Xu Xu Fang, Lemon Sun, and Thom Yorke of Radiohead, for his first solo show.

A few “old timers” that I’ve seen before also toured this year. I was pleased and entertained by Leonard Cohen, Rufus Wainwright, Jarvis Cocker, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Pet Shop Boys, Chick Corea, Moby, Tricky, Grace Jones, Fischerspooner, John Fogerty, Creedence Clearwater Revisited, and Kiss!

Then there were the old punk bands (and a couple of disco bands) that got back together and were still just as great as they used to be. Those included the Vaselines, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, Dinosaur Jr, the Slits, Throbbing Gristle, Yummy Fur, KC & the Sunshine Band, the Village People, Kool & the Gang, and the absolutely wonderful Chic.

I was also ecstatic to see my old pals, the Zeros (http://www.myspace.com/wildweekend77), get back together and stun the audience with their greatness several times. And to top it off, even more old pals, the Last (http://www.myspace.com/10395802), reformed in their original line-up and stunned as well with their one-and-only reunion gig. Oh, and speaking of friends, I finally got to see Kid Congo & the Pink Monkey Birds (http://www.myspace.com/kidcongoandthepinkmonkeybirds) and found them to be close to fantastic. I’m really glad to see Kid doing so well.

I should also mention that the return engagement of Los Angeles’ own Silversun Pickups was stunning as well and showed that they are only getting stronger as they tour the world to much acclaim. They are truly one of the best that L.A. has to offer these days.

I also want to point out a few artists for special attention. While I worked with Thin White Rope, I used to get kids sending me the tapes and recordings of their own bands. This usually was accompanied by a spiel or note explaining how much they loved TWR and how much they were influenced by them. More often than not, the music they gave me sucked and I couldn’t figure out where any TWR influence was at all. Most of those bands and performers have fallen to the wayside. I still get an occasional tape or CD though. The difference is that these days, the music is usually damned good. For those of you TWR fans out there, and I know a number of you read this blog, please check out:

Trent Miller & the Skeleton Jive – (http://www.myspace.com/skeletonjive) An Italian folksinger now living in the UK, Trent channels Guy Kyser’s voice without sounding like a copy of TWR. His songwriting is wonderful and well worth the effort to hunt down. And you can do that at his Myspace page, or by finding his CD, “Cerberus”, which is available in this country on Amazon.com.

The Desperate Ones – (http://www.myspace.com/thedesperateones) Paul Simmons is a long time fan of TWR and has been sending me his psychedelic recordings for years now. I’ve always liked them and now, with this new batch of songs, which will hopefully be an album sometime soon, I love them. Check out the band’s Myspace page for more recordings.

Chris C & Swingin’ Danglers – (http://www.myspace.com/chriscswingindanglers) Taking their name from TWR’s fan club, this band just plain rock in a very wonderful way. You need to check them out on Myspace as well.

Doc Holler – (http://soundcloud.com/docholler) This is Guy Kyser and Roger Kunkle’s bluegrass band, so you know you’re going to want to check them out.

And one big, last shout-out to my pal Doug Gillard (http://www.myspace.com/douggillard), from Death of Samantha, Cobra Verde and Guided by Voices, whose new album, “Call From Restricted” is a wonderful pop-rock collection that reminds me a lot of early Wire in that his catchy pop songs are not afraid to stretch out and try something new. It’s a very exciting album and you all need to check it out.

By the way, I’ve already heard some great music this year, including Yeasayer, Broken Bells, Hot Rats, Massive Attack, and an amazing new album by the Liars.

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On the movie front, I managed to see 77 new movies (and that doesn’t take into account all the movies I saw from past years either again or for the first time).

Here are my top ten movies in order:

Hurt Locker
A Single Man
Up In The Air
Up
Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Shapphire
A Serious Man
Sin Nombre
(500) Days of Summer
An Education
Inglorious Basterds

These are the other movies I thought we excellent:

Adventureland, Avatar, Big Fan, Broken Embraces, Coco Before Chanel, Coraline, The Fantastic Mr. Fox, I Love You Man, In The Loop, Invictus, Julie & Julia, The Messenger, Ponyo, A Town Called Panic

These movies were very good and well worth seeing:

Bright Star, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Crazy Heart, Disney's A Christmas Carol, District 9, Drag Me To Hell, The Girlfriend Experience, Goliath, Goodbye Solo, The Hangover, Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince, The Hole, Humpday, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, The Informant, The Last Station, Monsters Vs. Aliens, Moon, My One and Only, Nine, 9, Paranormal Activity, Paris 36, The Princess & the Frog, Star Trek, Sunshine Cleaning, Taking Woodstock, Zombieland

These movies were a let down for various reasons. But I still found them interesting enough that I don’t regret seeing them:

The Blind Side, Il Divo, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The Loss of a Teardrop Earring, The Lovely Bones, Paper Heart, Public Enemies, Terminator Salvation, Watchmen, Where the Wild Things Are, The White Ribbon, X-Men Origins: Wolverine

And these two movies are the only two I saw this year that out-and-out sucked. Interestingly enough, they were both seen at film festivals and as far as I know, they haven’t been able to pick up distribution. So hopefully no one will have to sit through them again:

After.Life, Surveillance

These are the excellent documentaries I saw:

Capitalism: A Love Story, The Cove, Food Inc., It Might Get Loud

And these documentaries were very good and well worth the effort to try to see them:

An Englishman in New York, On/Off: Mark Stewart from The Pop Group to The Maffia, Of Time and the City, Outrage, Shouting Fire: Stories From the Edge of Free Speech, Something's Gonna Live, Who's Afraid of Kathy Acker

I also have DVD’s of “Anvil: The Story of Anvil”, “The Damned United”, and “Hunger” sitting near my TV set and I hear they’re all great. But I haven’t had time to watch them yet, so they’ll have to go unrated in this article.

A few comments about the Oscar’s. I was pretty happy with everything that won. There were some changes I would have made with who got nominated though. For Animated Feature, I didn’t see “The Secret of Kellis”, and I don’t think many people did since it never really opened. And as much as I liked “The Princess and the Frog”, it had its problems. I would have much rather seen the absolutely wonderful “A Town Called Panic” get nominated in place of either of those two.

I liked all the Best Actor and Best Actress nominees, and I was happy with who won in both categories, but secretly I was hoping that Colin Firth would have won for Actor and either Carey Mulligan or Gabourey Sidibe would have won for Actress.

I didn’t see any of the Foreign Language Films except for “The White Ribbon”, which I didn’t much like. But, as you can see, I have “Sin Nombe” as one of my top ten movies of the year and I was very disappointed that it didn’t get a nomination.

And I thought “A Single Man” really got shorted. It should have also been nominated for Best Picture and Director. I don’t think that “Avatar”, “District 9”, or “The Blind Side” deserved Best Picture nominations. The first two were very entertaining and I liked them a lot, but there were many better pictures. “The Blind Side” just wasn’t very good, despite Sandra Bullock’s wonderful job of acting. And I’m sorry, but James Cameron just didn’t deserve a Director nomination, no matter how much his entertaining, but over-rated movie made at the box office. (And don’t even get me started about Avatar’s win for best Cinematography, in a movie that was mostly animated.)

And that’s about all I have to say about the movies of 2009. I can start concentrating on those of 2010. I’m going to be seeing “The Runaways” and “Green Zone” this week, and I’ve already seen “Alice in Wonderland”. It’s a good, entertaining movie, but it should have been a great movie. I liked all the acting and most of the dialog, but the story itself is trite and overdone. I would think that Tim Burton could have come up with something a bit more original than the “young Real Earth child saving the Magic Kingdom from Evil” story that seems to be in every fantasy movie made in the last couple of decades. And the 3D was unneeded.

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And on that note, I’ll sign off once again. I’ll be back as soon as I can, hopefully with a new tour stories entry. Take care of yourselves and thanks for reading. -MLC

Where I've Been and Why I've Been There

Before I get started with this, I should tell you that I have updated my last Redd Kross tour blog with a new paragraph. I remembered a few shadowy things about couple of shows I had forgotten. So if you care, go back, find that paragraph and read it for little more insight into that tour.

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I know it’s been quite awhile since I lasted posted a blog entry. I’ve tried, but something more important always came along to foil my plans. But here I am now, hopefully back to a more regular schedule. So I’ll start by explaining exactly what’s been going on around here. Keep in mind that this is just the cliff notes version. What’s been going on is a lot more complicated than what I write below. I’ve also tried to keep it free of politics and personal comment, although I know I slip a few times in there. I’ll eventually return to this subject in a few months and you can bet you’ll hear an uncensored version of what I think about this whole thing and the path this country has taken over the last decade.

At the beginning of the year 2001, Skip and I decided that we were sick of paying so much money into the rent of an apartment. Whenever something would go wrong at the apartment, it always seemed to be like pulling teeth to get the landlord to do anything about it and there always seemed to be a neighbor right next door who was always mad at us about music or TV played too loud, or vice-versa, always seemed to be having a party that went on loudly to all hours of the morning, pissing us off. We both had good jobs and after some discussion, we decided that the time was right to buy a house we could call our own.

After searching for a few months, we finally found the house we decided we wanted to call our own. It was in a nice area of Sherman Oaks, in the San Fernando Valley, that was home to many third-tier actors. The house itself rested on land that was once owned by Mae West. The house was built by Buddy Pepper, who wrote the song “Pillow Talk” for the Rock Hudson/Doris Day film of the same name, and was in the Disney film “The Reluctant Dragon”. (Look him up on IMDB.com.) Neighbors later told us that until the current owner, a Jewish cowboy who absolutely hated the house and the area, that the house had always been owned by a gay male couple. Buddy and his partner lived there for years until they died, and then it was bought by another couple who lived there until one died of AIDS and the other moved away. It was at that time that the Jewish Cowboy and his family moved in.

We loved the place. It was unlike any house I had ever seen, and was certainly different from any of the other houses in the neighborhood, including Mae West’s old house, which was directly behind us. We had these high cathedral wood ceilings and an almost all glass room in the back that looked out over the backyard. It all looked somewhat like a small Swiss ski lodge. There were two bedrooms and two bathrooms and a large, two-car garage. We immediately started making plans for the house. We wanted to open up the back room and seal all the glass windows to the weather. We wanted to either expand the back bedroom or put a small swimming pool into the backyard. We even thought about making the garage into another room to make the living spaces of the house even that much bigger.

So, despite the fact that the Jewish Cowboy had left the house in a bit of a mess, we resolved ourselves to fixing the place up and we were happy to buy it from him and considered ourselves lucky to get it at just under $300, 000.

Unfortunately, it was almost immediately after escrow closed that the troubles began. First, Skip lost his job. He had a great job as a computer programmer for a major insurance company. They had just given him a great performance review and a large raise. He went to them before buying the house and they assured him there was nothing to worry about. Then, a week after escrow closed, they laid him off. As is the case with many large companies in the USA, they were lying sacks of shit who demanded loyalty from their employees, while actively working to screw over those same employees when it benefited the company.

Then, I lost my job. I was working as the head buyer at the Rhino Records Store in Westwood. There were some policies in the way the store did business that I just couldn’t deal with any more and told my boss that, thinking that maybe he would think about these things and maybe make some adjustments. Instead, the one adjustment he made was to hire a new head buyer the next day and wish me well. On one hand, I was relieved. While I loved what I did, I really wasn’t happy doing it at that store any more. I loved working at the store when I was just an assistant manager working on the floor. But I quickly learned that despite some perks, the head buyer’s job was a no-win situation where stress was leading me into health problems. So, in a way I was actually happy to get out of that poisonous situation. But having both Skip and I unemployed was a major problem, especially after just buying a house.

We both spent some time looking for new jobs. I applied at Amoeba Records, but didn’t get along real well with one of the owners during my initial interview. To this day, I’m glad I didn’t get that job despite my need. The last thing I needed was more ego-driven bullshit. I then cast around to record labels and other music businesses, but with no luck. The music business was changing and everyone was cutting back. Most of the people I knew were losing their jobs, so the chance of being hired was really a pipe dream. Skip was having the same trouble, and despite interviewing at a number of places, was never able to find any regular work, just finding temporary work here and there that didn’t pay very much.

After a few years of this, we both just kind of gave up and joined a huge number of people who were unemployed, but not officially according to the government’s statistics. I settled into selling mostly used CDs on the internet and was able to get a few music business people to agree to let me sell their promos and used CDs, LPs and whatever on Amazon, Gemm and EBay. (And I’m always looking for more, so if any of you want someone to sell for you and make you more money than you’ll get taking them to a used record store, let me know.) Along with selling off thousands of my own items, this has generated enough income to barely pay the bills. For awhile, Skip was able to find some work as a consultant and by fixing people’s computers, but most of that has dried up and he barely has anything to do these days.

What was able to keep us going over the last decade was the housing market. As you all know, it just went crazy and within a few years, the worth of our house skyrocketed to almost $800,000 at one point. So, while we knew it would eventually come back to haunt us, we started living off the equity of our house. And we lived very well for almost ten years. I was actually thankful that we had the house, because if both of us would have lost our jobs while living in an apartment, we would have been homeless as we wouldn’t have been able to afford the rent. The house and its equity actually kept us warm and comfy.

But as I said above, we knew this time would eventually come, especially when the economy started tanking badly and the housing market collapsed. We actually thought we had hit the end of the road a couple of times during the last several years ago, but just as we thought there was no way out, something would come along, like the settlement of a lawsuit or the death of a relative, and dump some money into our laps that would allow us to keep on keeping on.

But now it has definitely caught up with us and it remains to be seen just how much time we have left. We are out of money with all our credit cards booked to the max. I am still bringing in enough money to pay bills and our minimums, but not enough to pay the mortgage. We have been informed by our primary mortgage (IndyMac) that they have started foreclosure as of January 5th. Our second mortgage is with Bank of America and they are threatening us, but we’re just ignoring them. They stand to lose everything if we can’t work out something with the prime mortgage holder, so right now, their bark is worse than their bite. We’ve talked to some realtors and bankers and have opened up a dialog with IndyMac. They know they can’t sell this house right now and they don’t want it to sit empty, so we’ll see what we can work out. This dialog has just started, so it remains to be seen where it will go and how much time we will have before they try to kick us out, if they try to kick us out.

In the meantime, we are looking into cheaper places to live and have already made up our minds that we are going to need to move out of Los Angeles and California as a whole because it’s just too damned expensive. We’re hoping that we have until late Spring/early Summer to get it all together, but we’ll see. Right now, we’re looking at New Mexico or North Carolina as possibilities. There are a few others as well. I would love to move to New Hampshire or Vermont, but the winters are probably too much for Skip to deal with. We will have to go back to renting, but if I can find a good place at a good price, we can make that work. Besides, we never really owned this house anyways. We were just renting it from the bank.

And this is why there hasn’t been much action on my blog. I need to raise not just the money to pay the bills, but I also need to raise enough to stash some away so where ever we end up, I have at least a few thousand dollars saved up for first and last and whatever else we need it for. For the last three months, I’ve been sitting at this computer, entering CDs into for-sale data bases and selling Disney memorabilia on EBay. Any time I had open from doing that, we were at the movies catching up on this year’s selection (there will be the usual blog about that in late February), or just trying to get some much need rest and sleep. Even now I still have a couple thousand CDs sitting here; as well a few thousand LPs and a whole lot of Disney pins, all that need to be indentified, sorted and listed on whatever site they will sell the best. It kind of pisses me off that I have to sell some of this stuff now, especially the Disney stuff, as the crappy economy is keeping me from getting the prices I think I should be getting. But I’m still doing well with it and not losing money from my initial investment, so I guess its all okay. We need the money now anyway, so I have little choice in the matter.

I thought last year was going to be the big year of change for us, but it turned out to be a year of thinking about change instead. This year will be the year of acting on change. So, at the beginning of this year, I made a small series of New Year’s resolutions to myself.

The first was to lose the weight I’ve gained over the last 5 years. Back at the beginning of 2000, while I was still at the Rhino store, I had some problems with hernias and high blood pressure. So I lost about 140 pounds over the next year. Most people thought I was too skinny and I have to admit it didn’t feel comfortable. So I gained about 30 pounds back and felt very comfortable at that weight. But since we started traveling a few years ago, going to South Africa, Argentina, Italy and a number of American cities, I’ve slowly gained about half the weight back and its time to put an end to that and get rid of those extra pounds before I start having medical problems again. I don’t need that expense on top of everything else. Losing weight shouldn’t be too much of a problem since we can’t afford to eat any more like we’ve been eating the last several years. But I don’t really want to diet. I just want to eat healthier. I’m pretty confident that most of that extra weight will be gone by summer.

The second was to get back to reading more. I love reading and consider it one of the most important things a person can do. Reading enables me to understand more about the world and the people who live in this world. But it’s gotten to the point now where I just don’t have time to read any more. I now read maybe one or two books a year. I used to read two or three books a month. So I’ve resolved to read at least one book a month and make the time to do so. It will be hard to work into my schedule, but this will be done!

The third resolution is to get the hell out of Dodge (Los Angeles). And as I’ve explained above, that will likely happen more sooner than later. It was so easy to just pick up and move when I was younger. Now it’s a pain in the ass and quite a scary prospect. But I’ve been unhappy with Los Angeles for a very long time now, only living here because it suited my music business aspirations to be here. But now I want nothing to do with the music business and I have no reason to be here any more. So while it may be scary and it may be a pain in the ass, I’m really very excited about the prospect of a change of scenery. And living somewhere cheaper, that isn’t as overgrown and frantic with humanity as this place is, will be a definite plus.

And finally, to bring this full circle, I resolved to get this blog back on track. So, I promise you all I will post more regularly. I’m going to try to get at least two blogs up a month. I would love to get back to a weekly schedule, but I have to be realistic here. I should be able to handle every other week. As for my other blog, “The Order of the Omnivores” food blog, I haven’t really been happy with that since I started it. There are so many food blogs out there and I just don’t feel like another is needed unless it can express a viewpoint that hasn’t been expressed yet. So until I find that viewpoint, I’m just going to leave it alone. Once I can figure that out, I will let you all know. But until then, “The Top of My Head” will be the only blog I will be worrying about.

And on that note, I hope to see you back here towards the end of the month. I’m hoping to have another tour story, perhaps my short European jaunt with the Young Fresh Fellows and the Dharma Bums, but I will make no promises on that front. Until then, take care of yourselves and, above all, have fun. Enjoy it now, because you might not be able to enjoy it later.

On the Road with Redd Kross

Quite a few months ago, I talked about my first ever United States tour with a band called Choir Invisible. That tour had many moments of fun, but it was also extremely frustrating and exhausting, so when we called it off and came home, I promised I would never tour again.

Several years later, I was temporarily living in New York City and trying to decide if I wanted to stay there or return to LA. I was missing Skip terribly, but I loved New York and had a great job there. That was when music manager, John Silva, called me and asked if I would like to work with the Three O’clock, a band he was managing at the time. I had promised myself that I would never tour again, but I loved to travel and I really wanted to get to Europe and the rest of the world. I never had much money and the only way I could see going overseas was with a band. The Three O’clock were fairly popular and had just signed to Prince’s label, Paisley Park, through Warner Brothers Records. Getting back to Skip and possibly being able to travel the world made up my mind and I took John up on his offer.

I’ve also talked about my tours with the Three O’clock. I did several tours with them, but never got out of California, with the exception of one show in Reno, Nevada. Then the band split up. Silva was also working with another LA band with the name of Redd Kross. At the time I knew the band pretty well, or at least I knew the two brothers, Jeff and Steve McDonald. I had met them very early on at the Hong Kong Café. They were very young and embodied everything that I thought a great punk rock band should have. They were extremely fun, had great songs, and expressed a snotty attitude that tied it all together. I had them out as guests on my radio show in Riverside and would see them play live as often as I could.

They eventually morphed into a loving parody of extremely long-haired heavy metal and garage rock, but they were still loads of fun and they still had those great songs. So, when Silva asked me if I wanted to manage their first ever USA tour in 1987, I jumped at the chance. Both John and I figured that we already knew each other and got along well. I was a fan of the band, so the tour should work out well for all of us. We were all wrong.

I should stop here to say that I’ve shut a good amount of this tour out of my mind. I was miserable from almost the first moment we left on the tour, and was almost suicidal by the time the tour ended two weeks later. So there’s a lot I can not remember about this tour. But there are some basics and a couple of shows that stick out which should give you a feel of how this tour went.

At this time, along with the two McDonald Brothers, the band also consisted of Robert Hecker on guitar and Roy McDonald (no relation) on drums. As soon as we took off, I begin to find out things about these guys that I wasn’t thrilled about. They claimed to be vegetarians. By that they meant that they loved Dairy Queen, where they would eat french fries and milk shakes. And let me tell you, that was all they wanted to eat each and every day. And only at Dairy Queen. Every time we saw one on the road, they would get all excited and we would stop for a meal of fried potatoes and ice cream. As a lover of food, that began to grate on me badly after only one day.

Another big problem was that the two brothers did not get along at all. They were always bickering and many times it would get violent with lots of loud yelling and fists flying. In a small crowded van, that became a big problem and I found myself having to pull over the van many times to try to keep the two siblings from killing each other so the tour could continue. (I’ve come to discover that this is standard reality for bands that have brothers in them, although I realize that not every brother band is like that. But it sure seems like a good many of them are and I quickly resolved to never work with a band again if any of the members were brothers. Of course, several years later I would start working with the Poster Children, who had two brothers on guitars, so another promise went out the window. Those two brothers got along very well though. In fact, except for some musical stubbornness, which they were well within their rights to have despite the business frustrations it caused, they were a pleasure to work with.)

On tour in 1987, we also had a problem with the band’s public image. That was something that couldn’t be helped though, and we all just had to deal with it. I can remember at least two incidences, one in Wyoming and the other in Mississippi, where the appearance at a gas station/rest stop of four guys with tight jeans, shiny shirts and hair down to their waists brought cat calls and close confrontations with bigoted locals. In North Carolina, we had a day off and I decided to stay in the hotel and read, knowing the band was going to spend the day at Heritage USA, the Christian theme park that Jim & Tammy Faye Baker had built several hours away in South Carolina. I kind of wanted to go, but badly needed some time away from the band. When they returned hours later with stories about confrontations with Jesus Freaks and just the whole strange nature of the place, I was really disappointed that I had stayed in, but it was probably all for the best.

The biggest problem of all was the band’s utter cluelessness about how to conduct themselves on and off stage. They were young and they had never toured before. I was also fairly young and still a novice at this touring thing or I probably would have had more patience with them. (Professionally, I really should have had more patience with them.) But it was hard.

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the club owner was so excited that the band was playing his club, that he threw a big surprise party for the band. He had invited lots of locals and had stocked his club with barbecues and lots of locally made sausages and beer. He didn’t know the band were “vegetarians” though and that they didn’t drink alcohol at all and since he threw it as a surprise, neither Silva nor I were able to tell him about it. The band weren’t happy, but I finally convinced them that he had his heart in the right place and he wasn’t trying to insult the band purposely. But that evening, they only played a 20 minute set and then walked off the stage. They also refused to come back on for an encore. The club owner went crazy. He was screaming at me that the band was contracted for at least an hour long set and he expected them to get their asses onstage and fulfill that contract. When I tried to talk to the band, they claimed it had nothing to do with the club owner’s party. They had just decided that if they only do 20 minutes and leave the audience wanting for more, that the next time they came back to this city, the audience would be even more excited to see them again. I was flabbergasted! In the end, I had to call Silva and somehow, by threat or sweet talk, he managed to talk the band into getting back onstage and finishing their complete set. All this took about 30 minutes and the audience stuck around the whole time, so I guess they did want more. Unfortunately, this incident left the band mad at me for ratting them out to Silva, but I didn’t see any other option.

Outside of New Orleans, we were staying at a Motel Six and since there were no Dairy Queens around, we all decided to walk across the street to a truck stop to find something to eat. Robert wasn’t hungry and wanted to stay in the room. So off the rest of us went, where I remember a pretty satisfying meal, for me at least. Several hours later, we returned to the room to find it was full of horror.

Now, while the other three guys in the band were long-haired rockers, Robert was just an out-and-out Hippie. He was completely into the peace-and-love thing and because of that, had helped break up the brother’s fights a number of times. He also loved communing with nature, and that’s exactly what he was doing when we returned to the room. He had opened all the doors and windows, claiming he needed the fresh air. The problem was that this was summer in the swampish, deep South. The room was full of insects. There wasn’t an inch in the room that wasn’t crawling with some sort of beetle or flying creature. Some of them were huge! They were embedded in the bedding. They were snuggling in our clothes. They were everywhere, buzzing and chirping and looking for flesh to bite. We were all horrified, but Robert didn’t see the problem. They were just natural. It took us hours to finally clear the room of all those creatures so we could comfortably go to bed.

In Austin, Texas, we played a show with Dinosaur Jr opening. I had met the Dinosaur guys before at Richard Kern’s apartment in New York. I had never heard of them at that time, but they seemed nice enough, although really quiet and reserved. It was during this show that I realized that Dinosaur was almost as clueless as Redd Kross and listening to the two bands talked just boggled my mind. All-in-all though, it was a fun show and I don’t remember any major problems.

I can also remember bits and pieces of a few other shows. I recall a great show in Ann Arbor, and I also remember being disappointed that we weren’t going into Detroit, although we were so close. (I still have never been to Detroit, one of the few major cities in the USA I haven’t been to.) Cleveland was a fun show. We arrived at a club along the river and were horrified to see people swimming and rafting amongst all the garbage and crap floating in the water. (I believe a few years later, that river caught on fire, finally prompting the city to clean it up.) That was also the show where I met the band Death of Samantha, who quickly became a favorite band and good friends. That friendship is still going today with some of the band members, who went on to form Cobra Verde and join Guided By Voices. And another good show was in Dallas, when a few of the Butthole Surfers showed up, bringing with them a load of chaotic fun and craziness in the dressing room.

The last thing I remember of the tour was the drive back home to LA. We were driving through the Mojave Desert and were really all on each other’s nerves. I don’t remember what it was, but something got said and Jeff and I started arguing. It escalated and escalated and before long I finally had had enough and pulled the van over. Both Jeff and I piled out of the van and we just started screaming at each other. I think there was some light pushing and maybe even a few punches that didn’t connect were thrown. It was close to really getting ugly. I believe it was Robert who waded in and calmed us both down, but that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We climbed back into the van and finished the trip without saying a word to each other.

When I saw Silva the next day, I immediately told him that there was no way I could ever work with that band again. He told me that that was okay because they didn’t want to work with me either. In fact, that was the last time I ever worked for Silva again. A few months later, I re-met with Thin White Rope and started working for them exclusively for a number of years. I also finally got to Europe with them. That was a job I loved.

For their next American tour, Redd Kross got local journalist/scenester/great guy, Phast Phreddie to be their tour manager. He was a whole lot mellower than I was and just took everything in stride. I heard that during one fight between the brothers in the van, one tried to kick the other and missed. Instead, he kicked out the side window of the van. I would have probably melted down over that. Phred just got the van fixed and continued on with the tour. More power to him. Everyone was happier.

As I said, I was pretty good friends with the band before the tour, but in the years after, the McDonald’s and I have rarely spoken to each other, even ignoring each other when we were at the same events together. It’s too bad that it worked out this way because I was truly a fan of the band and I really did like those guys when I didn’t have to work with them. In recent years, the tension has broken a bit and I’ve talked to both Steve and Jeff when we’ve seen each other around town. I wouldn’t call the conversations extremely friendly, but I’m glad we can acknowledge each other again after all these years. We were all young and new at the game at the time. I look back on the tour and laugh now. If I was working with them now, I would have done things a lot different. You live and learn.

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I really am trying to get this blog back on a regular schedule. I would like to do this blog every two weeks, with my food blog on alternate weeks, meaning I would have a new blog entry every week, just like the old days. I’m working towards that, but right now, I’m overwhelmed with trying to raise money so we don’t end up homeless and broke. Most of my time is spent listing items for sale on Amazon, Gemm and EBay. I’m trying to get that into a schedule as well, so I will have certain days for listing, writing and time away from home for movies and such. (I’m so far behind on movies now. I haven’t had time to see one in several months.) This will also help me find the time to work on these stories a bit more so I don’t feel I’m rushing them out, as I feel I did with this new entry. So please be patient with me and I promise that I’ll get all this together. I still have so many stories I want to tell. Keep with me and you’ll hear them all.

My Creedence Summer

Back in the 1960’s, when I was a young teenager, I had my favorite bands. There was lots of music that I liked, but a few bands were special to me. The Doors were the first band to ever attract my attention. I was just 13 when I first heard them and their raw sexuality was a siren’s call I couldn’t resist. Spirit was another band that I just loved to death. I actually bought their first album in 1968 when it came out. I had seen a billboard on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood one day while traveling with my mother. The band’s look shocked me. For some reason, I thought having an older, bald guy in the band (drummer Ed Cassidy) was the height of non-conformity. So I bought the album unheard and found an atmospheric collection of psychedelic, jazzy songs the likes I had never heard before. I was hooked. And, of course, there was the Beatles, who I never got seriously into until the “Sgt. Pepper” album came out in 1967.

Then there was Creedence Clearwater Revival. I first heard CCR when the edited single “Suzie Q” became a hit in 1968. I loved the song, but I didn’t pick up a CCR album until 1969 and the release of their second collection called “Bayou Country”. “Proud Mary” was a huge hit and I just couldn’t resist the old time country/blues feel of the music mixed with the overt psychedelic sounds of the time. I was surprised when I brought the album home and put it on the tiny turntable I had in my bedroom. Usually, the first thing that happened when I put a record on was that my parents would start yelling at me to turn it down. But this time my mother knocked on the door and asked what it was. She actually liked it. She was into country music and the influence it had on CCR’s music was enough to attract her attention to it.

Over the years, CCR had quite an impact on me. Their music brought me around to country and blues. They broadened my mind at the time in ways few bands had been able to. I spent my teenage years going to school in Southern California’s Orange County, and spent the summers in Northern California at my grandparent’s house in Marysville. I would usually work for my grandfather in his grocery store in Yuba City. (One of his best customers was notorious serial killer Juan Corona, whose car I packed with groceries several times.) Most of the time my whole family would make the trip, but there were a few times when I was packed onto a Greyhound bus and sent through the Central Valley overnight to be met by my grandparents at the bus depot. I was always in amazement as we passed the city of Lodi. CCR did a song about it, so to me it was an exotic, unknown place that I longed to visit. I would stare out the bus window at the Lodi city sign and wonder what mysteries laid beyond it. (Of course, in reality the place was a dump and I was probably very lucky that I never saw it in the real light of day. I actually have visited the city many times now in the last decade as it’s quickly becoming one of California’s best up-and-coming wine regions.)

One of the biggest disappointments of my teenage years is that I never managed to see any of my favorite bands live. My father would periodically take me to the Anaheim Convention Center and drop me off to see whatever band happened to be playing there that evening. I can remember seeing such bands as Iron Butterfly, Blood Sweat & Tears, the Bee Gees (in 1968 when they were still a pop/rock band), Vanilla Fudge, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, and Donovan, and being amazed by them all. Remember, I wasn’t even 16 years old yet and all these bands seemed new and fascinating to me. But I never managed to see my favorites, although they all played the Convention Center at one time or another. The reasons for this are lost in time, but I regret missing those bands to this day.

Over the last several decades, I’ve been able to catch various members of my favorite bands in the live setting. I saw Paul McCartney in the 70s during his first big Wings tour. I caught Ringo Starr with his All-Star Band only a few years ago. I saw Spirit in one of their Randy California led later incarnations, as well as singer Jay Ferguson and bassist Mark Andes’ later band, Jo Jo Gunne. And I’ve seen various Doors in solo settings as well as all three surviving members backing up Iggy Pop on stage. But I had never seen any of the CCR members play live.

Until this summer, that is.

I’ve talked before about how much I love the summer seasons at the Hollywood Bowl. It’s a great place to see someone perform and I always look forward to seeing what musical legends are going to play there when they announce the summer schedule each March. I also like the fact that you can still attend the Bowl for a rather cheap price ($5 to $15 depending on the show) if you don’t mind sitting a quarter mile away from the stage. There are giant screens so you can watch the action on stage close up. They also allow you to bring your own food and wine or beer to the Bowl. So it can be a very inexpensive evening out under the LA summer sky if you choose to do it that way. Skip and I usually end up going to at least a dozen shows there every summer, usually in the cheap seats, but sometimes spending more if the headlining act calls for it.

This summer was opened by a three day 4th of July stint by CCR leader John Fogerty. When it was first announced, we were torn about it. There was no question that we were going to go. After all, it was a Creedence legend we had never seen. But it was also well known that he hated playing the old CCR songs live and most of his solo material just didn’t interest us all that much. But we bought tickets. $25 each, about half way down to the stage. We brought a couple of bottles of nice wine and relaxed, hoping for the best.

And the best is what we got. He opened his set with “Green River” and I was pretty ecstatic. I thought he didn’t do CCR songs and here he was opening with one. His voice was strong and the band sounded good. His set turned out to be almost 2/3 Creedence, with the rest filled out by his solo material. He played a good many of the hits and even pulled out a few surprises, like “Run Through the Jungle”, “Keep On Chooglin’”, “Fortunate Son” and a country version of “Lookin’ Out My Back Door”. He also did a four song set backed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra that included a beautiful “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” and an incredibly rocking “Proud Mary”. We left that night in very high spirits. It was a great set by one of rock and roll’s great talents and we were glad that we had been there to see and hear it.

A few weeks ago, Skip and I were at the LA County Fair. We were looking at the list of upcoming bands playing there and we saw that Creedence Clearwater Revisited was coming soon. This CCR was formed 15 years or so ago to allow original Creedence bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford to capitalize on the music that they were so much a part of. The two guys, rounded out with several other musicians, had toured the world playing the hits they had originally recorded with John Fogerty. Creedence had ended on a sour note at the beginning of the 70s, with Forgerty going one way and the other three members (including the late Tom Fogerty, John’s estranged brother) going the other. Over the years, the relationship between the two camps has remained strained. This led to the incident during the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 where John Fogerty refused to let Stu and Doug play with him on stage. I found this to be petty, childish and extremely embarrassing. To me, John Fogerty may be a major talent, but he’s seems to be kind of a giant asshole as well. (I did meet Forgerty once. He was on his way out of Warner Bros Records as I was on my way in. A mutual friend introduced us and we talked briefly. He seemed nice enough, but his actions towards the other guys in the band are still inexcusable.)

Anyways, Skip remembered that his niece, Shannon, had once told him that she knew the son of one of the guys in the band. So, he gave her a call and before we knew it, we were on the guest list to see them play at the County Fair. (We’ve since found out that Shannon more than knows the guy. She’s living with him. And he’s the son of drummer Doug Clifford. I look forward to actually meeting him some day soon.)

We arrived at the Fair to find stage-side tickets and back-stage passes waiting for us. Those seats cost $125 each, so we were pretty thankful. (Lesser seats cost $25 each, but most of those were way in back and off to the sides.) The place was packed, which I found amazing. I had no idea that a band like this would bring in such a crowd consisting of so many people of all ages. We bought a couple of giant Fair margaritas and settled into our seats directly in front of the stage. We had no idea what to expect.

Now, I should break here to explain that I usually really have a problem with bands that continue on after their lead singer has left. It usually doesn’t work and I have bad memories of seeing the James Gang without Joe Walsh or hearing those horrible albums the Doors made after the death of Jim Morrison. I also have a problem with bands getting back together as a tribute to their old selves. Or I should say, I did have a problem. Lately I’ve been seeing lots of those types of bands, from X to the Human League to the Zombies, and I’ve found myself enjoying them tremendously, despite the lack of new songs. Sometimes, like in the case of the Human League, they’re even better than they were when I first saw them in their original form. Then, last year, I saw From The Jam, which is the original drummer and bassist of the Jam with a new singer, touring by playing the old songs. They were tremendous; as good as they were with their original singer/guitarist, Paul Weller. (Some people even thought they were better, although I won’t go that far out on the limb. The new material the band is working on may decide that for me.) It may just be nostalgia, but there’s room for that these days and I realized that I couldn’t condemn a band for falling back on that.

Getting back to the show, on walks Creedence Clearwater Revisited to thunderous applause. Stu Cook looked chipper and happy, and Doug Clifford looked fit and trim and not much older than he did 40 years ago. They were rounded out by three other musicians; Steve Gunner on keyboards, Tal Morris on guitar, and John Tristao on vocals and guitar. They immediately broke into “Born On the Bayou” and the crowd went wild. Their hour and a half long set included most of the band’s hits, including the biggest and a few of the smaller ones like “Travelin’ Band”, “Hey Tonight”, and “Lodi” which I found to be a delight.

I had a few problems with the set. There was a bit too much guitar pyrotechnics at times, which I don’t think was needed, although the crowd seemed to respond excitedly to those moments. And although singer John Tristao has the voice down, in person he’s kind of a solidly built, bald, biker guy and I just couldn’t place the face with the voice. I found that I was watching the set without watching him and I was enjoying it more because if that. Both of these problems were small ones though and the vast, crazy audience didn’t seem to mind them at all. I guess it’s just me.

But, Oh, that rhythm section!!! Those two guys are beautiful to watch and listen to. Fogerty owes those guys a lot more than he’s given them. He could never have pulled off what he was doing without those guys there to anchor him down. I watched and listened to them in amazement. I found myself wishing that we could have found a rhythm section like that for Thin White Rope. It would have been a beautiful thing. (These days I look back and think that we may have had that rhythm section in John and Joe if we just would have been a bit more patient.)

So once again I found myself glad to be where I was. I enjoyed the show tremendously and if I put the two parts together, I can convince myself that I’ve sort of seen Creedence Clearwater Revival play live now.

Afterwards, we went back stage and Doug, or Cosmo, a nickname he seems to prefer, came out to talk. He was friendly and talkative. There were a few times when I thought we were taking up too much of his time and would start to make our goodbyes when he would suddenly change topics to another subject that we would spend a good amount of time discussing. It’s been quite a while since I’ve felt so comfortable talking to someone I respect so much but don’t know. Topics went from family matters to John Fogerty to old memories of CCR to Lodi to Dolly Parton and on and on. It was really a pleasure. (And the thought that if all works out, he may become a distant relative boggles my mind.)

So there you have it. My Creedence Summer. I fell in love with the band 40 years ago and this summer reinforced the fact that I’m still in love with them now. And I know that if by some chance I live another 40 years, I’ll still be in love with them then.

Fun at the Hollywood Bowl and Other Musical Musings

Once again I’m going to ignore the rapid descent into pure insanity that we are watching this country’s right wing fall into. Instead you’re getting several music oriented tales.

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The other day Skip and I went to the Hollywood Bowl to see a concert. This isn’t unusual in the summer. We usually end up at the Bowl to see a dozen or more shows every summer season. And there was certainly nothing unusual about the show. It was jazz artists Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White, three of the four members of the 70s jazz fusion band Return to Forever. I was a big fan of the band and wanted to catch them live again after three and a half decades to see what they had been up to lately. So it should have only been a nice evening out featuring some great jazz music. Instead we got one of the most bizarre, chaotic, and ultimately rewarding shows I’ve seen all year.

We started the evening by deciding to park up on Cahuenga Blvd, which is right around the corner from the Hollywood Bowl. We usually go to North Hollywood and park at the Red Line station and then take the subway to Hollywood Blvd, where we walk up the hill to the Bowl. That way we can avoid the traffic and the long lines of cars after the show due to the Bowl’s insane policy of stack parking. But we had decided to eat at the Loteria Grill on Hollywood Blvd before the show, so we were early enough to find parking on Cahuenga, which is the only legal place you can park near the Bowl. It fills up fast, but if you’re there early, you can usually find a space. We left the wine and water we had brought for the Bowl show in the car and walked down the hill to Loteria, about half a mile walk.

Now, keep in mind that Southern California was experiencing a really bad heat wave at that time and also has one of the worst fires in recent history burning nearby, so the air was hot, muggy and full of smoke. We ate a delicious dinner and walked back up the hill to our car to get our packs full of ice, wine and water. After swinging the packs onto our backs, we walked part way back down the hill to the entrance to the Bowl, then walked all the way up this huge hill to get to our seats in the second to the last section up. By the time we got there, we were red-faced and out of breath, and we had probably worked off most of the calories we had ingested at dinner.

I knew we were in trouble when we first arrived. Sitting right next to us were a very enthusiastic Latino mother with her adult son. They were already drunk and I think quite a bit stoned and were very loud and friendly. “Hey!” “Sit Down.” “Take a load off.” “Here, have a beer.” And it wasn’t long until we were asked, “Hey, are you guys significant others?” “It’s cool, man,” “Sure you don’t want a beer?” We thanked them every time they offered us a beer and explained that we really weren’t beer guys and that we had brought our own wine and we preferred that, which was probably why they figured out we were significant others.

Everyone was distracted though when an older black man arrived along with three middle-aged black women and they sat right behind us. They were all very excited about the show and started devouring a large basket full of fried chicken, ham and booze to prove it, all the while talking about how excited they were about the show.

It was about this time that the opener, guitarist John Scofield hit the stage. Dear God, I hated him. He played a set of what he described as “New Orleans Gospel” except there was absolutely no soul involved. It was just four musicians sounding like studio hacks and they weren’t even that good of musicians. But the audience loved it. The young Latino guy next to us started “WOOing” immediately and it wasn’t long until he pulled out a tambourine to beat along with his WOOs. I looked behind us and the whole audience was on their feet, swinging their hips and dropping wine glasses and bottles, and probably themselves, onto the aisles with loud crashes. I have never seen an audience so set on partying.

Forty minutes later, the torturous music stopped and the lights went up. The young Latino guy looked at us and screamed, “I MEAN, HOW CAN YOU FOLLOW THAT?” We just grimaced back at him. I certainly hoped that Chick Corea, et al, would be able to follow that quite easily, but I was really worried that perhaps we had made a big mistake by coming to this show.

The young Latino guy got a phone call and announced he had to leave. His mother seemed upset and asked if it was “that girl” and he affirmed her suspicions. He told her that “that girl” was down in Section F and he was going to join her and with that, he was off and I was relieved as I had just told Skip that if he was going to keep up that WOOing and tambourine pounding through the rest of the evening, we were going to have to move.

Mom just sat there drinking beers and talking to us about past shows she and we had seen at the Bowl that summer. The people behind us were still eating and drinking and seemed pretty oblivious to anything else going on around them. It was about then that I noticed the crickets. They were all around us and they were damned loud. We couldn’t see them, but they could be heard all over. I was sure those crickets had to be the size of small dogs to make a sound that loud. They didn’t seem to mind all the people around them and kept up their gleeful chirping without pause. I mentioned to Skip that we should have brought a couple hundred hamsters to let loose to eat the crickets (hamsters LOVE crickets) and the thought of that sent him into insane giggles, so I wasn’t sure if I was happy I had brought it up.

Then the lights went down and Corea, Clarke and White walked out, promised a night of “illegal melodies and illegal chords”, and broke into a pretty great acoustic version of “500 Miles High” from the first Return To Forever album. Immediately, one of the middle-aged black women behind us started screaming, “I LOVE YOU, STANLEY CLARKE!”, like he could hear her a quarter of a mile back and over the music he was playing on stage. By this time, all I could do was laugh. But she quieted down after a couple of minutes and I relaxed and enjoyed the music.

The trio did a couple more acoustic numbers and then brought on violinist Jean Luc Ponty, starting into a beautiful version of Corea’s “Armando’s Rhumba”, and then into a soaring version of Ponty’s “Renaissance”. (He announced the song by claiming that he pronounces the song title as “ren-e-sance”, while us American’s pronounce it “ren-a-sance”, which Skip and I found hilarious for some unknown reason.)

Then guitarist Bill Connors joined the group and it all started going south. They started playing “Senor Mouse”, but the only guitar the audience could hear was a crunchy feedback sort of thing that took any energy out of the music the band were trying to perform. The band didn’t seem to notice the sound problems and just kept at it and after 5 minutes or so; roadies started scurrying around the guitar amp, trying to solve the problem. They eventually got it sorted out, but by the time they did, the song had been ruined. Halfway through the song, the young Latino guy came back. I guess he hadn’t scored well with “that girl”. But he got right back into it by screaming “JEAN LUC PONTY” over and over again, obviously hoping that would get the band through their sound problems and back into the groove of things.

Then things really started to get weird. Chaka Khan was introduced and out she bounced. Skip and I had seen Chaka perform at the Bowl earlier this summer and thought she was pretty good. But she wasn’t cut out for this performance. I know she has sung with Corea, et al, on the album “Echoes of an Era” in 1982, and by all accounts, it’s a good album. But she’s no Ella Fitzgerald, and I found her attempts at scat singing and jazz in general to be sorely lacking and just downright irritating.

She announced that they were going to perform a song from the first ever black opera and the old black guy behind me yelled out, “CARMAN”. I turned around and yelled back, “NO, PORGY AND BESS”, and he just stared at me before yelling out, “SUMMERTIME”. I turned to Skip and said that they were probably going to do “I Loves You, Porgy” just as Chaka announced they were going to do just that. I didn’t hear another word from the old black man that night.

But it was just at that time that Chaka Kahn decided to talk about how much she loves working with that band and ran over and started hugging Stanley Clarke. The middle aged black woman behind me screamed, “I WANT TO HUG STANLEY”. Chaka said, “I love you, Stanley” and the woman behind me screamed, “I LOVE STANLEY”. Then Chaka saw Lenny White sitting behind his drums and said, “I love you too, Lenny”. And the woman behind me screamed, “NO. I LOVE STANLEY.” Then she continued to scream “STANLEY” over and over for the next five minutes or so until she lost her voice or passed out or something.

The band started into “I Loves You, Porgy” which is a beautiful song that wasn’t quite jelling, when a stir went through the audience. Over at the side of the stage a man was being led on stage and in moments the whole audience could see that it was a black-clad Stevie Wonder. This brought the audience to its feet as Stevie pulled out his harmonica and played a perfect solo over the band. Then he joined Chaka on vocals and the song suddenly seemed to soar. Stevie sang and the crowd went wild. I have to say, it was a pretty beautiful moment. (My favorite part was when Stevie finished singing his lines and tried to hand the microphone to Chaka. But she was excited and running all over the place. Stevie just kind of waved the mic around in a confused manner, then shrugged his shoulders and started singing again. Always a professional, that Stevie.)

The young Latino guy was screaming, “STEVIE, OH, STEVIE” over and over through all this and his mother turned to us and screamed, “NOW ALL WE NEED IS AL JARREAU”, the thought of which sent shivers of terror down my spine.

Then the song ended and Stevie sat down at the electric piano across from Chick at the acoustic piano. “OH MY GOD! WHAT ARE THEY GOING TO PLAY? CHOPSTICKS?” screamed the young Latino guy and Skip told him it was going to be the best damned version of “Chopsticks” any of us had ever heard. He just looked back confused.

They started playing while the audience was still going wild. The Mom turned and screamed “IT’S SPAIN” and “THIS IS SPAIN ISN’T IT?” and “SPAIN IS MY FAVORITE SONG” before screaming again, “THIS IS SPAIN, ISN’T IT?” I assured her it was. In fact, I think a couple other people behind us also assured her it was, hoping she would shut up and listen to her favorite song.

It was a beautiful version and I was surprised at how well Stevie held his own playing jazz chops. Chick Corea threw in a bit of Stevie’s own “Ribbon in the Sky”. The audience was going crazy. And then it was over. Corea thanked the audience and Stevie was led off the stage and everyone in the audience turned to each other to talk about how amazing it had all been. I was happy. It wasn’t a perfect set, but it was full of its own fireworks and I found it to be extremely beautiful when the band was one and at least fun when they weren’t, possibly due to the company around us.

As we were leaving, the young Latino guy and his Mom told us that they enjoyed spending time with us. “Hope to see you again soon”, they said. We nodded and walked away down the hill. I was glad we had come to this show, but if I ever see those people again, I’ll run screaming in the opposite direction.

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This year’s FYF Fest was a whole different affair than past years’ have been. First, there was a name change. They used to be the Fuck Yeah Fest before becoming the F Yeah Fest. Now they’re just the FYF Fest. The organizers also took the Fest away from the Echo Park clubs, The Echo and the Echoplex, and moved it to the Downtown area’s LA State Historic Park. This enabled the Fest to be more of a legitimate, commercial-type Festival and it paid off as there were hundreds more people attending than I saw at last year’s Fest.

But the basic premise of a festival featuring up-and-coming to unknown indie rock bands is still in place and that’s a good thing. I usually go to this yearly Fest as a way to check out bands I might not have heard yet and there were a number I discovered this year.

My favorites included Woods (http://www.myspace.com/woodsfamilyband), the Thermals (http://www.myspace.com/thethermals), Eat Skull (http://www.myspace.com/eatskull), and Times New Viking (http://www.myspace.com/eatskull).

I also quite liked Dios (http://www.myspace.com/diosmalos), Darker My Love (http://www.myspace.com/darkermylove), Crystal Antlers (http://www.myspace.com/crystalantlers), Wavves (http://www.myspace.com/wavves), and the Strange Boys (http://www.myspace.com/thestrangeboys).

I was rather ambivalent about the typical punk rock of the Carbonas (http://www.myspace.com/thecarbonas) and the faceless electro-pop of Cold Cave (http://www.myspace.com/coldcave).

And I absolutely hated the chaotic noise of Lightening Bolt (http://www.myspace.com/laserbeast), which surprised me since so many people seemed to be into them.

I really wanted to see, but missed Kurt Vile (http://www.myspace.com/kurtvileofphilly), Nobunny (http://www.myspace.com/nobunnylovesyou), Avi Buffalo (http://www.myspace.com/avibuffalo), Telepathe (http://www.myspace.com/telepathe), and Glass Candy (http://www.myspace.com/glasscandy).

Dan Deacon (http://www.myspace.com/dandeacon) cancelled due to illness or I would have seen him.

I’ve seen both Mika Miko (http://www.myspace.com/mikamiko) and Peanut Butter Wolf (http://www.myspace.com/pbwolf) before. I loved Mika Miko. I’ve seen Peanut Butter Wolf do much better, but his travels through 90s hip-hop was fun and had the audience going apeshit.

We left before No Age (http://www.myspace.com/nonoage) and Black Lips (http://www.myspace.com/theblacklips) played. I love both bands, but have also seen both of them recently and just decided to get home at a decent hour.

All-in-all, I had a great time and certainly got my $20 worth. I’m already looking forward to next year.

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Finally, I just want to make a couple of movie recommendations.

“It Might Get Loud” was one of the best rock music documentaries I’ve ever seen. It’s basically a conversation between Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2) and Jack White (White Strips, Raconteurs, the Dead Weather). During this conversation, the three guitarists touch on their early years and what brought them into music in the first place. There is some absolutely amazing footage of the guys as youngsters just getting started. There is also footage of all three talking about their influences and the best footage comes out of that. The look on Page’s face as he plays and talks about Link Wray’s “The Rumble” is just priceless. More than any other movie I’ve seen, this one shows the pure joy and excitement in the love and creation of music. See it.

“Taking Woodstock” isn’t even close to being the best movie that Ang Lee has made, but it’s still a very likable and enjoyable film. It’s the story of how the Woodstock Festival came to be. Some people have complained that it didn’t include a lot of the music and performances, but that’s not what the movie is about. It’s about how some people with big dreams made them come true. There are some problems. Some of the characters aren’t properly fleshed out and at times the story seems to meander a bit. But I still enjoyed the movie quite a lot and so I’ll recommend it. You can wait for this to come out on DVD, but some of the cinematography is beautiful and is better suited for the big screen. Either way, try to see it eventually. I think you’ll enjoy it as well.

Thin White Rope in the United Kingdom

It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted a blog here and I apologize for it. All the usual excuses apply. Not enough time while trying to make money; various minor medical problems; lack of motivation and pure laziness; etc, etc. I was tempted several times to write a political rant about all these ignorant anti-healthcare asswipes, but as bothersome as they are, I just can’t get myself all that worked up any more. These people will get the government and the healthcare they deserve, and both will hasten the downslide this country has been in for decades now. I’m going to spend my anger time looking for a way out instead. (If there’s any of you non-Americans out there who need a manservant or cook, let me know. I’d be glad to dust, wash your dishes and/or cook your meals, and I’m a damned good cook, in exchange for getting out of this hellhole and having a place to live.)

So, lacking a rant, I’m going to give you all what you really want and present a new Thin White Rope road story. In fact, I’ll give you a whole bunch of them. So, I present to you: Thin White Rope in the United Kingdom!

Please keep in mind that I still can’t find my journal that had all the TWR tour dates and information in it. It’s around somewhere and when I do finally find it, I will make all corrections that need to be made. But until then, I have to trust my memory, and that means that some of what follows is a bit sketchy. In the case of this report, I have called in help from the members of the band as well as the always accountable Andy Bean, who provided me with his data base of TWR dates he was at, which was a good many of them. But even with all that help, I know some of the dates and events will be a bit off. (And if any of you have additional information, please send it to me so I can make corrections.) One of these days, when I can find all the information I need, I’m going to take all these tour stories and upgrade them, but until then, this is what you get, which I think is better than nothing.

This is a long one, so get that cup of coffee, or whatever beverage you prefer, and whatever snack you’re partial to and sit back and enjoy.

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After playing several tours in Italy, our booking agent, Paulo, decided that the time was right for us to start making inroads throughout the rest of Europe. He hired a driver for us, a dapper guy named Pino, who’s various adventures and idiosyncrasies I’ve documented in an earlier blog, and we headed out on our first great European adventure.

One of the shows we were really looking forward to was our first in London. The UK was very much responsible for a good amount of the reason the band was where they were at the time. The English magazine, “Bucket Full of Brains” wrote one of the first articles on the band, an article that led to their signing to Frontier Records and the attention that enabled the group to tour Europe in the first place. So we were pretty excited about this show. The only problem was that we didn’t have any work permits and that’s a big problem when playing in the UK.

We got around this by packing all the equipment, including the guitars, in the van and as we approached the Belgium ferry that would take us over the English Channel, we all got out and walked into the building and onto the ferry, while Pino drove the van onto the ship. Once we arrived at Dover, we walked off the ship, claiming we were all on vacation and were going to catch a bus to London. Once cleared, we walked a ways down the main road until Pino met us with the van. We climbed aboard and headed straight to London, where we played our show with the British government none the wiser. (The customs people did question Pino about all the band equipment, but he didn’t speak any English and after several long minutes of babel-confusion, the customs agents grew impatient and waved him through, since he had all the correct paperwork allowing him to possess all the stuff.)

We arrived in London in early afternoon and had the rest of the day off. We were met by a member of our European record label, Demon. I believe his name was Spike. He asked if we wanted to go to a club called Dingwalls to see the band playing that night, a band called Spaceman Three. The band created a deafening drone using guitars and old analog synthesizers. They were extremely loud and we thought they were great.

The next day our show was at a hole-in-the-wall bar by the name of the Sir George Robey. We were the middle band, opening for the great British punk-poet John Cooper Clarke. The opening band was some forgotten band from Canada who was terrible and had the distinction of having one of the slimiest managers I had ever met. (Andy has this date as being in March of 1988, but I believe it was in the fall of 1987. I think we put out the “Bottom Feeders” EP in Europe only so we would have a record to tour on, and that record came out in ’87.) I remember the show as going very well for us and John Cooper Clarke was amazing and extremely nice, which thrilled me to no end, as I had a lot of respect for the man.

This show started a particular thing that puzzled me, but I found was par-for-the course in England. One of the three weekly music newspapers in England, Melody Maker, took a strong liking to us, but because of that, the other two, Sounds and New Musical Express, decided that we weren’t to be bothered with. This was highly frustrating to me and to the people at Demon. During the run of the band, MM gave us the cover once and always had a major article about the band for every new record and tour, even sending journalists on tour with us in the UK, throughout Europe, and in one instance, directly to LA to cover the recording of the “The Ruby Sea” album. We managed to get a few small articles out of Sounds, most notably a short interview that took place at Stonehenge and Hampton Court Palace, but NMN never acknowledged us at all, as far as I can remember. This was an attitude I never really understood. I also had problems with the nation’s foremost disc jockey, John Peel. He would bring bands into his studio and record them for broadcast. Those recordings always received a lot of attention, but I was never able to get any interest out of him for TWR. The people at Demon simply told me that he didn’t like the band, but I was never able to talk to the man myself, not due to lack of trying, so I never got any real reason that I could understand. Because of this, I don’t have the respect for Peel that most people in the music business have for him. I understand that he made many careers, but he didn’t help me out and didn’t even give me the courtesy of an answer when I tried to contact him.

Things get a little sketchy for the next year or so. We met Andy and Duncan during a spring 1988 Dutch tour with Nikki Sudden and the French Revolution. They were playing drums and bass in the band and they became great friends and an even greater help to us during our UK tours and with the European tours in general. We started splitting up in London, with some of us staying with Andy, Duncan, or their friend, Chim, in order to save money. When we could afford it, we would give them a break by staying at the Columbia Hotel near Hyde Park, which was the rock and roll hotel in the city and always provided a good time. But we always ended up back at Andy, Duncan and Chim’s, since we preferred staying with friends and they would always feed us with great English breakfasts.

(I remember one tour when we stayed at a hotel near the British Museum. There was absolutely no place to park the van. It wouldn’t fit in any of the parking structures and the posted hours on the street meant we would be towed. I asked a street cop what we should do. He simply told me to find a parking space where the meter was broken. If I found one of those, I could stay in that space as long as I wanted. So, we got back from our show that night and found an empty space. We then pulled out our tool box and proceeded to completely dismantle the parking meter for that space. We were making a horrible racket, but only one person, who was staying in the hotel room near where we were parked, asked what we were doing. We just told him to shut his window and go back to bed. The meter was in pieces all over the sidewalk and we just collected it up and threw it away. The next morning I woke up and went out to check on the van. There was already a brand new meter placed on the spot, but our van was un-ticketed and left alone. I saw the same cop I had talked to the day before walking towards me. He said, “I see you found a broken meter.” Then he winked at me and walked away. I always look back in amazement on that moment.)

I don’t think we did a UK show during that early 1988 tour. There were two shows in London in late 1988. One was at Dingwalls and the other was a week later at the Sir George Robey, but for the life of me, I can’t recall anything about those shows.

Then, in July of 1989, we came back to do a show at the Marquee Club. We were using a new English booking agent at the time. I believe his name was Mike Hink and he was supposed to be a big deal, booking Morrissey and many of the more popular British bands. We were starting our tour in the UK this time, which meant picking up a van that would drive from the right side of the car (left side of the road). We would have to get used to this, as we were taking it over to Europe with us. We also found that we didn’t have as much room as we wanted for us and all our equipment, so we took all the rental amps out of their cases and left the cases in Andy’s house, which took up quite a lot of space in his flat. Let me tell you, that man was a saint to put up with all the stuff we put him through. (He can tell you of all our increasingly crazy favors asked of him, as well as nightmare tales of broken down vehicles, fried equipment, and drunken escapades throughout the countryside.)

We had a few days before our first official show at the Marquee, so we hastily arrange a surprise show that would be attended by word-of-mouth. That show was at the Camden Falcon and became one of the most infamous shows the band ever played. The place was packed and the band was spot on that evening. But it was hot as hell in that club. Sweat was evaporating, rising to the ceiling and then condensing and raining down on the band and the audience. And there was no air in the place. Our drummer, Matt, passed out part way through the show due to lack of oxygen. We got him back behind his drums eventually, but it wasn’t long until everyone finally just gave in to the heat exhaustion and depletion of H2O. It was a wonderful show; one that people still talk about to this day. In contrast, I can’t remember the official show at the Marquee at all.

I think this is when we did our first official English tour. As I mentioned above, we were happy because we had a real booking agent and the tour should have been a great one. It was anything but great. We arrived in Birmingham to find that we had been booked into a black soul/reggae club. Once they took a look at us, they didn’t really want us to play and told us that there was no PA. I was insistent though and along with our genius soundman, Elliot Dicks (another saint in the history of the band), we dug up enough equipment around the club to put together a PA and play the show. It actually did okay, with enough people coming out to see the band that the club was relatively happy. I fell in love, or I should say in lust, with one fan and kept the band waiting long after the end of the gig while we chatted. But we finally got on the road and realizing we were starving, found an Indian restaurant that was open late and indulged in some of the tastiest and spicy-hottest food we’ve ever eaten. That unfortunately led to a late night farting contest in the hotel that found me hiding in a closet and trying to sleep through the hideous stench.

We were met on the road by a Melody Maker journalist, who went with us to the next gig in a town called Morecombe, which is one of those seaside tourist towns that seem to be planted in several places along the English coast. But the next day we discovered that the club was a new one that hadn’t even opened yet and because of that, there was no show to do no matter how bad we wanted to do it. So we spent the day walking along the seaside attractions with the journalist and his photographer. I remember getting my fortune told and the fortune teller telling me that I would realize that my choice to be a band manager would eventually be proven to be a correct one. (I’m still waiting on that.) And we bought a bunch of candy nougat, which was supposedly the one claim to fame of this town, to find it inedible. So we threw it to the seagulls, who would swallow it and then spit it out in disgust. That kept us amused for quite awhile. You know something’s horrible when the gulls won’t even eat it.

In Glasgow, Scotland, we arrived to find that our gig was being advertised for a week later. The first person we met at the club was impossible to understand, his brogue was so strong. But we finally found the club owner and through all sorts of apologies, let us know he still wanted us to play. We went out to dinner and met a group of fans at the local Wimpey’s Burger. When they found out we were in town at that time, they rushed around and told people about it. We ended up with a small, but very rowdy group of fans and the show turned out to be quite fun. At one point, a group of fans were in the balcony above the stage and Guy handed his guitar to them, which they strummed and made all sorts of unholy racket with. It all fit into the set very well though.

We had a day off the next day and I wanted to drive up to Loch Ness, but the band rebelled at that idea. They didn’t want to be in the van any more than they had to, so we took the train to Edinburgh and toured the castle there, marveling at Mon’s Meg, the big cannon they have in the museum. (I eventually made it to Loch Ness during a vacation with Skip years later. It was wonderful, but so was the castle. Glasgow is one of my favorite cities anywhere in the world.)

There were other English shows that weren’t as bad as these. Some of them were part of this tour and some weren’t, although I can’t remember where they fit in. By the way, we never used Mike Hink to book any date ever again.

On that same tour, we showed up for a show in Hull to a panicked club owner. It seemed that he had accidentally booked two headlining bands on the same night. The first was us. The second was a band that was beginning to make waves all over England, My Bloody Valentine. I hadn’t heard MBV at this time, but I knew they were on the cover of the Melody Maker that week. (We had been on the cover the week before.) It was decided that we would both play, but it couldn’t be decided who was the headliner. Since they were on the magazine cover that week, I thought they should headline, but they didn’t want to follow us. We finally decided by flipping a coin. We lost and had to headline. I walked out to watch their set and upon the first note, my jaw hit the ground. They were amazing. One of the best live groups I’d ever seen. I have to say, I was rather nervous about the band following them, but in pure TWR style, they rose to the challenge and played an amazing set that had the audience going wild. To this day, that was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen thousands of them. And it turned out that Hull had the best fish and chips I have ever eaten, making it a double-good place.

We did a show early on in Milton Keynes, which at the time was known for having fake cows in their meadows for whatever reason people have fake cows in meadows. Paul Weller and Style Council even did a song making fun of the town. It had been described to us as a leisure town, whatever that means, and we were worried it would be a horrible show. But we showed up at some community center there and ended up having a really pleasant show after all.

I was always disappointed we didn’t make it to Liverpool, but we did do a show in Warrington, which was between Liverpool and Manchester. Opening for us was the Charlatans. This was before they were well known. They had a different lead singer, but their sound was developing towards the one that gave them hit singles. I remember them as being very nice guys, but I don’t remember the show at all. We also did a show in Manchester and I was very excited to be playing there, it being the home of the Fall and Joy Division, but I really remember nothing about that show except some frustration in finding a place to park our van when we arrived at the club.

We did several shows in Leeds and they were always fun, except the one time we played a university community center where the Who recorded “Live at Leeds”. I was excited about being there, but the show has left an unpleasant taste in my memories, and I can’t remember why. I know Guy has the same memories, so something didn’t work with that show. (I do remember being lightly hassled for being gay at that show, which was the only show in Europe or America I was ever hassled at.) Much better memories of Leeds come from the three shows we did at the Duchess of York. Those shows always did great. One of them was a Halloween themed show (the club’s idea) that turned out to be a whole lot of fun. We eventually met some of the Mekons, a great Leeds punk/country band, on the road in Germany and that gave us a place to stay the last show we did there. I always looked forward to Leeds.

In 1990, we arrived in London to do a show at a club called the Subterrainia. We arrived at the club and I immediately got excited when I realized it was the same club I had seen Joy Division in during my first trip to London in 1979, except it was called the Acklam Hall back then. That show went great and led into a very drunken party at the Columbia Hotel that included our visiting German booking agent, Christof, as well as the head of our label, Lisa. That party wound down after guy mistook an occupied phone booth for a urinal and peed all over it and the poor guy inside. The next day we headed off for a month long tour of continental Europe, before returning to London for another show at a big venue called the Astoria. At the last moment though, the Astoria got cancelled for reasons I don’t remember and we hastily put together a show back at the Subterrania. For whatever reasons, that show did terrible though and Roger cracked the neck of his guitar in frustration. We left London feeling rather blue. But before we left England, we did another great show in Leeds, that show in Manchester and a show in Doncaster at a club called the Jug.

In 1991, we had three shows in London. Two of those shows were busts for us. The first was at the Marquee in June. Unfortunately, there was a tube strike that day, so attendance for the show was terrible. That was too bad, because it could have been great. It was followed the next day by a free in-store concert at the HMV Record Store on Oxford Street that went well and saved the day for us. In late August, we were back to play the Reading Festival and then played again at the Subterrainia, this time with two great bands, the God Machine and Whipped Cream. (The same line-up played the next night at the Joiner’s Arms in Southampton.) That same tour took us to shows in Sheffield, Wendover, Leeds (again), Leicester (where there was a great jukebox on which I played Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine”, impressing the band so much it later became a cover in their set), and Nottingham.

The Nottingham show is notable for a number of reasons. The promoters were a couple named Anton and Linda who were huge fans of the band. They were so excited about TWR playing their club it was almost frightening. (They showed up for the last show ever in Gent, Belgium a year later and cried over the band breaking up.) I recall that it was a great show that night.

I also recall the day before. We had a day off and decided to visit the Sherwood Forest. As usual, we all drank a little too much. I bought a Robin Hood outfit, put it on, and then we proceeded to rage about the forest in mock battle, with me being Robin and Andy being the Sheriff of Nottingham. Before long, we stumbled across a couple of standard-size poodles someone was walking, and started shooting rubber-tipped arrows at them, which didn’t please either the dogs or their masters. I think it all ended out of pure exhaustion. And yes, there are pictures of the battles. I recall one of Andy and me trying to clock each other with tree branches. Oh, the fun we had.

The Reading Festival was great fun and I felt very proud having the band there, since I had been trying to get them into a European Festival for some time. (The next year they played Roskilde in Denmark.) We were only playing the small tent to the side, but I was just happy to have the band there on any stage. We ran into some old friends (Babes in Toyland, American Music Club), made some new friends (meeting the guys who would go on to form Swervedriver), and generally had a great old time despite the rain that turned the ground into a giant mud pit.

Our last show in England was on October 17th, 1991. It was at a big place in London called the Venue New Cross. We were playing with a band made up of TWR fans called the Gorgeous Space Virus, I believe. I remember having all sorts of anxieties about playing there, but being told by the label and booking agents not to worry. I also remember that it did terrible and that few people showed up. I never got a logical reason for that.

The band played their last ever European tour June of 1992. They didn’t have time to schedule a London date in there. A lot of English fans came over to Belgium for that last show and it was great to see them there, but I’ve always regretted not having a show in London for the last tour. Everything kind of started there and it would have been nice to put a formal finish to it all there. But that’s the way it goes sometimes.

(By the way, the English tours always turned out to be a great place for me to check out and discover bands. While on tour there, I became fans of Spaceman Three, Cornershop, Blur, My Bloody Valentine and the Young Gods (thanks to That Petrol Emotion, who insisted we show up to their show on time to see the opening band),. I also saw the Fall play one their shows with dancer Michael Clarke, including guitarist Brix riding around on a giant hamburger. And I was able to experience the Velvet Underground reunion, which was pretty damned exciting for me. This doesn’t even include all the local and visiting bands that we played with, some deservedly going on to greater things.)

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And that’s all I have for now. As I said, I’ll eventually find my logs and this will all get updated with correct dates and events. Sometimes memories work out just fine, so I hope you enjoyed these stories. So, until next time, which I hope will be more sooner than later, take care and be sure to have fun. It’s about all we have left in this world. -ML