Category Archives: The hip life

Soooooooooooooooooooooooo hip.

Regretting things in the morning

Posted on by

(Presidents Day weekend, 2012)

Nice long weekend it was. On Friday we went out to the 322 for a pizza and there was a not very good screaming soul singer (with three back up singers in matching outfits) and a  a bar band trio…it was all oldies and date night for the parents and divorcees who were getting drunk. The table of couples next to us, oh man. The women got drunk and soon all of them were talking about 80′s porn. The guys were driving apparently so were fairly sober and the women regretted things in the morning, I’m sure. As the night wore on the place got more and more crowded and the female percentage was probably 60% at least. Someone requested “I Will Survive” and the floor was flooded with bad dancers and it was surreal…I’ve lived in Silverlake so long I’d forgotten that that it hadn’t always been a gay anthem. I was expecting they’d segue into “It’s Raining Men” but no. Anyway, we left long before the evening ended. I didn’t get outta work that night till 7 and we didn’t get down to the 322 before 9 so this is what happens when you go out for late dinner on a Friday night. Actually all the people were having one helluva good time, it was funny seeing the 322 turned into a bit of a meat market. They used to book jazz on Fridays but the bills gotta be paid somehow. On Saturday we went to Farmer’s Market for the Mardi Gras thing….there was a good New Orleans style band doing funk, zydeco, etc and the people were drinking too much and throwing beads. The crowd was relatively tame this year and the drunkenness was toned down and I saw no wanton behavior…beads were being handed out but no one had to show anything to get them. Some years that’s a requirement. Well, it’s not, but some women pretend it is. Some men pretend it is. Most are drunk. I wonder about the sober ones. Like what do they do for a living. Are they teachers, secretaries? Lawyers? Were they in the office just a few hours ago? We’re they sitting in dull meetings answering dull questions and thinking about beads? 

On Sunday we went to the York and saw Elliott Caine tear it up. He owns that place when he brings his band in there. It’s all Blue Note stuff, at least in spirit, and the crowd, hip and young and boho and most of them not strictly jazz fans, go nuts. A standing ovation even. At a bar. The band looked astonished. Elliott blushed, I swear. I wish it was like this all over. I wish it was like the old days. I wish and a lot of good that does.

Yesterday we did nothing but think about presidents, all day. You’re supposed to think about Washington and Lincoln, but I wondered about Millard Fillmore and Chester Alan Arthur. Somebody has to.

Michael Buble

Posted on by

(2009–Brick’s Picks, LA Weekly)

Finally thought we’d mention that a recent night’s club hopping wound up late at a jumping Foundry on Melrose just in time to catch guitarist Perry Smith and the house trio trading fours with a mysterious tap dancer and Michael Buble. That was one loose and swinging “All of Me”. Everyone up there was on…Smith, bassist Matt Cory, drummer James Alsanders, Buble, the phantom hoofer. You never know what you’ll see in a jazz club around here.

Jessy J

Posted on by
I just saw that  Jessy J is at Vitello’s tonite. She is one of smooth jazz saxophonist babes. Legs for days.  There was a time where I could gotten the best table in the house right by the green room and I could have watched her whole set and begun to feel like a sleazelag because I’d only be there because I thought she was hot. And then she would have been introduced to me by April the manager, who would bring her up between sets to my table and Jessy J would be all nice and very sweet and hope like hell I had liked her show and would interview her. And I’d be polite and say I liked the show when actually all I’d been doing was looking at her legs and feeling like a dirty old man.
 
I emailed this to a friend of mine. She’s a singer and beautiful. She said not once? You never went to see a smooth jazz saxophonist just because she was hot? I said no. She said but why not?
 
All I could think of was integrity…but felt real dumb saying so.  
 
She laughed. Darn that integrity anyway, she said. LOL.
 
I said oh well.
 
Best I never write this down, I thought, typing.
 
Jessy J
 
 

Killer shoes

Posted on by

(2009) 

Went to a party last night. A gloriously crazed one just down the street with wild music spun, drunken germans spinning, inadvertantly cracked skulls, blood, and a rather wanton little thing from Uzbekistan. I had never smoked dope with an Uzbek before. Uzbeks are just like regular people, only drunker and with killer shoes.

If you are the drop dead gorgeous mega-rich machiavellian daughter of the dictator of Uzbekistan nobody will tell you how stupid your shoes are. Especially at the Cannes Film Festival. And It’s also amazing what pops up when you google Uzbek and shoes.

Alec Baldwin

Posted on by

(2008)

Ya know, last night at Charlie O’s I was accosted so incessantly by a singer telling me about her album/gigs/life that I actually pretended I got an urgent cell phone call and fled out into the parking lot and waited there ten minutes hoping she would go away or die or something. I abandoned my barely sipped Jamesons on the bar.

I finally gave in and went back inside. SHE WAS STILL THERE. She started right in again. The ice in my drink was melted. She introduced me to everybody. No matter I already knew these people. She started in about her recording plans all over again. I finally made like I had a headache, apologized, and fled to the back of the club. After a few minutes she returned to her table.

I actually do know this lady. She’s a splendid singer. But I made the mistake of mentioning her in print a couple years ago and hadn’t seen her in ages and ages. Just because I write a nice sentence about someone once a long time ago does not mean we’re best friends forever. But hell, this happens all the time. I used to love going to Charlie O’s, sitting at a table alone and just listening. That’s all I would do, sit there and drink and listen. There’s a lot to be said for sitting and drinking and listening. I wish people would realize that just sitting along and drinking and listening is not a cry for help. Or a chance to score a paragraph in a column.

Ya know, I saw Alec Baldwin in Charlie O’s last week and no one bugged him all night. He was there with some poor chick, chatting her up. He never shut up. I doubt she ever got a word in edgewise. She probably blew him anyway. But that’s not the point. The point is that Alec Baldwin is a Somebody. I’m a nothing. So why wasn’t anyone bugging him? Why me? So what gives with this shit?

Tony Curtis

Posted on by

Tony Curtis

(2010 and 2012)

Tony Curtis was just so freaking cool that everybody in this town needs somehow to make a personal connection with him.  When so much coolness up and disappears from the planet all the hipsters feel an odd bit of desperation; they just have to, somehow, reach out and touch that coolness while it still lives. For coolness lasts beyond the grave, but not for long. It  fades in a eerie way, still alive, before becoming history. Once history the coolness is gone, the kind of tactile coolness you can get high with, or drink coffee with, or fuck or fight or just run into on the way to the elevator. The real, corporeal coolness. History renders the living cool dead, stone dead…turns it over to academics and poseurs and biographers who, let’s face it, someone as cool as Tony Curtis wouldn’t be caught dead with. But to actually have a story based on something real life, where you and Tony were in the same space together, interacting or even not interacting but conceivably could have in a way that a historian never ever can…well that kind of coolness is addictive. It is the power of the story. The time that you and Tony Curtis were together. When your universe and Tony’s came together, briefly, and somehow a tiny bit of his coolness rubbed off on you. Just because.

I have one of those stories.

Sometime back in the mid eighties we had a friend, Jeannie Lynn, this crazy cool chick, older than us, a red head and tremendously, proudly stacked, who was really hip. She worked on films, knew gallery people, actors, directors, jazz musicians, artists, beatniks, hippies, and punks, she was a  fine bassist and great partier. She  loved to laugh and tell crazy stories and dirty jokes and smoke weed and we were all great friends. She was the first person we knew I think that was able to exist in that world without losing any of her hip, cool edge. Anyway, she took us to a gallery opening….no, a store opening, some kind of pricey, big boutique on what had been a dull little nothing street called Melrose Place.  This was just before Melrose Place became Melrose Place, and Melrose itself was still a new concept, not yet overrun and tacky. This was that long ago. Anyway, this party was packed with people, all these Beverly Hills types slumming it on Melrose Place.  There were a lot less rich people back then, and fewer rich neighborhoods, so that end of town below West Hollywood (“WeHo” hadn’t been invented yet either) was thoroughly middle of the middle class with a smattering of struggling bohos  and wanna be show biz types. I remember Fyl and I and the others with us, whoever they were, were decidedly out of place at this bash, but enjoying it nonetheless. The food was great. And the open bar.  The band was subdued but all killer players…everyone said that guy there was Sinatra’s guitar player (which meant, I know now, that he was Ron Anthony), and the harmonica player was the guy who did the theme from Midnight Cowboy (though I doubt it now).  I watched them for a long time, saying hey to the people who said hey to me, and checking out the westside babes—jeans were still very tight at the time. Yowza. Anyway, I polished off a drink–I was drinking greyhounds back then–and went back for another. Jeannie Lynn pulled me close, quietly squealing with excitement. DID YOU SEE WHO YOU WERE STANDING NEXT TO?  Uhhh,  no. YOU DIDN’T SEE WHO YOU WERE STANDING NEXT TO OUT THERE ALL THAT TIME??? No I didn’t.  She was very stoned and paranoid about making  a scene and still incredibly excited. I said sorry, but hadn’t noticed. THAT WAS TONY CURTIS!!!!!   Really? Standing next to me? Aghast, she blurted YES!!!! YOU WERE LOOKING RIGHT AT EACH OTHER. Wow. I think we’d even exchanged pleasantries, me and Tony. But I didn’t put the face with the legend. I was too stoned , probably, or maybe just listening to the music, or distracted by coked out westside babes.  Jeannie just shook her head. My wife said he doesn’t know anything about actors. I didn’t.

Tony was gone by the time I turned around. Apparently he’d only been at the party ten or fifteen minutes. He woulda been flying on blow back then. Everyone knew he’d gone all to hell. But still, he was Tony Curtis. And we could, maybe, have had a nice little chat. But I never recognized the guy. I always regretted that, I mean, Tony Cutis was so cool. Oh well.

And that is my Tony Curtis story.

It’s not much. But he’s dead now and I wanted to tell it one last time, the best way I know, in writing. I wanted to tell it while his memory still glowed, and that feeling that he’s not really dead still hung about. It takes a little while to get used to the dead thing. You can’t quite let go till the body is stone cold and buried, and even afterward he hangs about, a living memory.

But Tony’s gone. I can never tell him this inane story. And he can never show me one of his goddamn paintings.

Sigh….

Another sigh even.

Ya know, I began this story trying to be funny. But it’s not funny at all. Maybe I left my sense of humor in my other suit.

Not quite Mrs. Hefner

Posted on by

A couple summers ago it was a very hot day at the Playboy Jazz Festival and I had snuck into the press room to cool off in delicious air conditioned comfort and have an ice cold beer. Suddenly there was a rush of reporters and activity and it was time for Hugh Hefner’s press conference. He gives an impressive performance every time, but I’ve seen too many and slipped away to another corner of the room, found a table and sat and relaxed.  Suddenly I was surrounded by photographers and video crews. Two gorgeous, sweaty babes appeared two feet away. One was tallish and gorgeous and young and confused, the other was little and gorgeous and came off dumb. Much older looking. Experienced. The idiot reporters asked all kinds of inane questions. The younger one tried to answer them seriously, the poor thing. Finally one asked the little one about the future of jazz. She batted her eyes and started talking about her new hat. It was a huge cowgirl thing, big and floppy and pink and very expensive looking. She pushed it back and posed. Posed again. And again. The cameras went mad. End of press conference.

Anyway, that was Crystal Harris.  Dumb, maybe, but certainly knows her way around the track. Funny, though, I just saw that she’s only 24. I thought she was older. Lily white girls should stay out of the sun. And not party quite so much.

Hef, by the way, is vital but getting up there, way up there. Usually you see him when he’s in peak form. One Saturday, though, I stepped out of the press room about 7 p.m.  It was the end of a hot day. A parade of very tired blondes traipsed by. They looked sweaty and miserable and exhausted and all their perkiness was sagging. No airbrushing. In the middle a very tired little old man shuffled along in a yachtsman cap, looking every one of his eighty plus years. A big black limo awaited them in back.  Back to the Mansion.          

I remember thinking that I wished to hell I had not seen that.

The big pink hat.

Miles Davis

Posted on by

(from a Brick’s Picks in the LA Weekly, 2010)

Miles Davis. Maybe you’ve heard of him. Colombia Records is just making sure.  They’ve repackaged everything He did for them, then repackaged the repackages, finally they stuck all the repackages into a trumpet case and are selling it for a jillion dollars. One of those way limited editions that millionaire jazz fans just have to have. Not even critics get that thing. They’d probably just sell it to Amoeba anyway. Critics do get invited to the fancy release parties though. Free food, free booze, free respect. Colombia and the Miles Davis Estate do these things up good. The Bitches Brew one was atop a fancy Beverly Hills hotel. Rooftop, baby. Look at all those rich people down there. They had live Miles projected on the side of a building and he was like a dozen feet tall. A giant, huge Miles. A young hippie-ish Chick Corea was mad on the keys, and Wayne Shorter was so rad. If you stood just right the light reflected on the glass wall surrounding the roof and a gigantic mega-Wayne Shorter loomed over the Hollywood Hills, blowing crazy saxophone. A sky god. Unstoned, it looked cool. It might have been terrifying stoned. The thing is, though, that Wayne does not loom vast over the city. Not even Miles does.  That’s why they were throwing this big bash. So we’d tell you about this new Bitches Brew reissue that we’ve had in the changer here now for weeks. It’s a good one, people. Real real good. But we wish this stuff did loom over American culture like that giant Wayne Shorter. And that music meant as much to people nowadays as it did a generation ago. Oh well. Those were different times. The poets, they studied rules of verse, and the ladies, they rolled their eyes.

[That last couple lines there were copped from Lou Reed's "Sweet Jane".....  "Ridin' in a Stutz Bear Cat, Jim/ You know, those were different times!/ Oh, all the poets they studied rules of verse/ And those ladies, they rolled their eyes." ]