Brick Wahl

Brian Eno

Brick Wahl — Thu, 16 May 2013 01:00:07 +0000

Not sure why but the only Brian Eno thing I’ve ever owned is that old compilation record No New York. Still got it, too, all old and battered and vinyl. He was the producer and didn’t play anything on it, but he made Mars sound like the weirdest band in the world. And listening to it now, they still do.

I bring this up only because I’ve seen about three hundred posts today wishing him a happy birthday. Apparently Brian Eno makes people feel all warm and fuzzy inside and they just have to wish him a happy birthday. When “Baby’s On Fire” was on regular rotation on KNAC way back when–it was a hit on that station at least–the last thing that I thought of was wishing him a happy birthday. I just thought wow, weird, and jacked up the volume. But my friends have gotten so soft and squeezable in their dotage. All sweet memories and gabba gabba hey. But I love them anyway. And I like Brian Eno. I just don’t understand the Facebook thing where everyone wishes people they don’t actually know a Happy Birthday. It seems weird to me, but they’re all terribly sincere about it. Happy Birthday famous person! they say. And all their Facebook friends chime in. Happy Birthday! Ten years ago this would seem really weird. Now it’s obligatory. I never wish people I don’t know a Happy Birthday. It’s silly and meaningless and, well, weird. Odd at least. Though if I ever met Brian Eno I’d probably wish him a happy birthday. Especially if it wasn’t anywhere near his birthday.

Sigh…..I’m sorry an essay entitled Brian Eno isn’t really about Brian Eno. I mean I like Brian Eno. But I get caught up in tangents, like riptides they yank a narrative right out of my hands and sweep it along who knows where. No free will at all. Just the free flowing rush of random connections and puns that appear out of nothing at all. Writing as Brownian motion. Sometimes I think the only time I speak is in incomprehensible proverbs But any idiot would know that.

Oh yeah, here’s Mars doing “Puerto Rican Ghost” off of No New York. Brian Eno produced. You probably won’t like it. You probably really really won’t like it, even. There’s only two kinds of music, Duke Ellington said. I’m not sure where this fits in. I know it can clear a room, except for a few weirdos. My kind of people, those weirdos.

And here’s “Tunnel”, also from No New York. I think this used to be my favorite cut on the record back in the day. Who knows how many people I tormented with it at maximum volume. I recall playing it one Halloween and some tiny trick or treaters wouldn’t come to the door. I turned it off. Three and a half decades later it’s still a crazily imaginative piece of music (or “music”), the aural sensation of a hurtling subway is pretty incredible. That had to be Brian Eno creating that sound, knowing what buttons to press and levers to push to get that feel, like George Martin assembling “Tomorrow Never Knows” or Teo Macero editing Bitches Brew from an unholy mess of jam sessions. Back in the late ’70′s and even into the ’80′s “Tunnel” sounded stunningly alien, even scary, but I guess all the crazed electro creations of the past couple decades have sunk in and now this thoroughly analog thing sounds a little more conventional. A little more. As it spins it forms itself into a groove in my head. I can imagine people dancing to it. Weird people, yeah, but weird people dancing. Which is the title of an essay if I ever heard one. Not this one, though, but one full of weird people dancing. What a sight they make.

Accidental Death and Dismemberment

Brick Wahl — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:41:43 +0000

Just looking at the dismemberment breakdown in my Accidental Death and Dismemberment policy. It’s not the kind of thing I read everyday, but still, it’s kind of entertaining in a grisly way. Losing an arm, say, or a leg is good money. Losing both is better money. Even better if the arm and leg are on different sides of the body. I remember reading in a book about the Civil War that General John Bell Hood lost an arm on one side, a leg on the other. They had to strap him to his horse. That always seemed kind of pathetic for a big, tough Texan like John Bell Hood. I also read somewhere that he died after the war in one of those yellow fever epidemics New Orleans was notorious for. That would have been worth less money, dying from yellow fever, than losing that arm and that leg. But of course he lost that arm and that leg in a battle, well, two battles. Hood always liked to be in the thick of things. But his Accidental Death and Dismemberment policy would not have covered either amputation. Gotta read the fine print…no wars.* He should have thought about that before galloping like a fool headlong into the fray. He had to rely on veterans benefits, if they had those back then. Well they did, or would have, except he was on the losing side. No veterans benefits for them.They lost their country, their peculiar institution, and their veterans benefits. All they had left was Dixie, and you can whistle that till the cows come home and you ain’t gonna get a penny. Look before you leap, I say.

Those Accidental Death and Dismember plans–AD&D in the trade–really get into the details. You make a few bucks losing a finger or two. A thumb is a bit better, being all opposable and everything, and losing a hand better still. Same goes for toes and a foot. But those are still chicken feed compared to having the whole arm or leg lopped off. Losing both really does cost the insurance company an arm and a leg. They must hate that. The rep would be in the operating room, if he could, trying to sew the things back on. OK, maybe not. But it’s a considerable pay out nonetheless.

The policy gets a little weird above the neck. Loss of speech, hearing, vision and maybe even smell (I don’t have the policy in front of me) are covered. You lose just one eye or one ear you earn some pocket change. If you lose one ear and one eye–one of those how the hell did I do that things–you get a better deal. They list all these in the policy, and all the other body parts, with the pay out for each. They run down the page in declining value. Dying is winning the Super Lotto, of course, the big wazoo of AD&D. That first D is what you aim for if considering your prospects in an accident from a strictly financial point of view. The arm/leg thing comes next, then an arm or a leg all the way down to a measly finger. You look at your finger and realize how little it’s worth. It wiggles back, showing you what it can do.

OK, this essay is getting under my skin. And that skin isn’t worth anything, insurance wise. So I’ll stop right here and leave you, dear reader, free to go watch Dexter. Personally I can’t watch Dexter. I find it disturbing and disgusting and wonder what is wrong with all you people. Then again, Dexter the serial killer is giving his victims the big wazoo, insurance wise. I doubt they’d appreciate that, however. Besides, they’re all bad guys and bad guys never have life insurance, so never mind.

* Actually John Bell Hood would have known all this too well, since he was the president of a life insurance company after the war. Imagine that. The company was ruined by the yellow fever epidemic that killed him. Killed him, his wife, a kid or two, and left a mess of orphans. Ironic now, tragic then.

Henry Rollins

Brick Wahl — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:13:06 +0000

Just got an email from Concord Records about the Claremont Folk Festival. Henry Rollins is one of the headliners. Now I’ve seen Henry Rollins in some unexpected places….in particular a Miles Davis tribute party telling the MTV cameras that he we was SO influenced by Miles’ MUSIC and sounding like a steroidal eruption (the reporters ate it up), but no matter how hard I try I can’t see how he fits in at a folk festival. Maybe he was SO influenced by Pete Seeger’s MUSIC. Maybe he plays the ukulele. Maybe he’s added a twang to his spoken word. Whatever.

Actually I like Henry. He’s done really well and done it all himself. He’s got that great radio show on KCRW, and I like his column in the LA Weekly. I remember him from the Black Flag daze, way back in the last century. He even used to live in Silver Lake, right behind me, he on Maltman, we on Edgecliffe. His solo career was just underway, and he was already a bit of a rock star. We had a nice chat on the sidewalk once which he wouldn’t remember but I do (rock stars never remember). I saw him once coming out of Big Mac’s liquor store on Sunset with a bevy of punk rock babes and was impressed. But I especially remember him at the local market, where I loutishly grabbed tomatoes like they were tennis balls but he gingerly squeezed each, looking for perfection. I felt shame. I saw Glenn Danzig do the same at a different market not long after. Both had a lot of tattoos, I had none. And both knew a lot more about squeezing tomatoes than I did, tho’ now, when I carefully pick through a pile at Super King, I ought to thank Henry at least. Henry, incidentally, was a lot taller than Danzig, Danzig was more tatted. I was always hoping to run into Lemmy squeezing tomatoes, or all of Metallica or even Pat Boone during his heavy metal stage. Nope. There was Henry and there was Danzig. I’d seen Danzig at Al’s Bar with the Misfits. We talked about that over the tomatoes. I can’t remember what I said to Henry over those tomatoes. Maybe nothing, maybe I was too jarred by the sight of the way gnarly dude from Black Flag who’d smashed that mirror on the cover of Damaged and was here with that very same fist–well, same hand anyway–handling tomatoes like they were baby sparrows, just fragile little things, so easy to bruise.

And now he’s one of the headliners at the Claremont Folk Festival. One never knows, does one.

Kevin Kanner

Brick Wahl — Thu, 09 May 2013 18:25:55 +0000

Ran into Kevin Kanner last nite. Apparently he’s in town for a brief spell. We reminisced and bitched and told stories you don’t repeat. That guy is such a great jazz drummer. And I mean jazz drummer.You could drop him into a Blue Note session two generations ago and he would swing those mothers like mad. He’s just got that thing, that blues thing, deep down, that goes back all the way to the beginning. He could play with Louis Armstrong in Chicago, I think, or with Lester Young in Kansas City. He could fill in for Jimmy Cobb or Tootie Heath or Art Taylor–especially Art Taylor–in a hard bop New York City. He wouldn’t play like them, he wouldn’t copy them–that’s not what jazz is about, mimicry–but he sure the hell could sit in when they had to sit out for some jazz player’s reason or another, better left unsaid. He could sit in and swing, really swing, and the cats would turn around and nod, just nod, and he’d know he was in the groove, in the pocket, solid. That’s Kevin Kanner. He’s back in New York City now, where his playing always fits in somewhere, uptown, downtown, Brooklyn, wherever the music is cooking. He’s doing well, since he plays more like a New York drummer, and less like one of our own. The players swing back there and experiment out here. Well they experiment back there too, obviously (that’s where it started!), but they also swing hard, way hard, which seems passe among the new jazz generation in L.A. The state of the art here in downtown is just that, art, which is kind of ironic since swinging Kevin Kanner pretty much kickstarted the whole scene when he brought his weekly jam session east from the Mint. It grew and grew into something world class out here, that Blue Whale scene, daring and innovative and full of everything but the old school. Everything but the blues. What would Ray Brown say? Kanner asked once, and apparently Ray Brown would have said go to New York. Which he did. Other drummers, like Zach Harmon and Dan Schnelle and Tina Raymond, filled in nicely and were more attuned to the new vibe. They can be wild or textured or subtle or ethnic and in Harmon’s case especially, absolutely brilliant. They can switch time like you or I switch socks. Which wasn’t Kevin’s thing. Not at all.

I miss him out here, not just because he’s such a swell cat but because when he was behind the kit you’d have no worries at all that this shit was gonna lag, gonna stumble, gonna transform into crazy meters and advanced music theory. No, it’ll just be jazz. That’s all. Just jazz. That’s Kevin Kanner. Just jazz.

Silver Lake

Brick Wahl — Wed, 08 May 2013 21:41:28 +0000

Just read that our local Ralphs–once a local Hughes–will be turning into a Whole Foods. Which means we will have a Whole Foods and a Gelson’s to shop at now. That’s the new Silverlake for you. To think this used to be a real neighborhood, full of real people making real people wages. I swear, having your neighborhood gentrified under your feet is so sad. All the soul and feel is sucked dry and you’re left with nothing but rich white people buying organic food and complaining about the Mexicans in the parking lot.

I love where I live, but I’m not so nuts about a lot of the people living here. If I’d wanted to live on the Westside i”d have moved there. Watch out Echo Park, you’re next. The tide of money flowing in from the westside is inexorable. Head east, young man, head east. There’s life across the river.

Barry Fitzgerald

Brick Wahl — Wed, 08 May 2013 08:30:40 +0000

Barry Fitzgerald was just so goddam cool. One of my favorite actors ever, and that brogue of his is so exquisite, and every time I hear him speak I wish I could write with the same poetry that he can say a sentence or two, or a fragment of a sentence, or even one word with just a hint of a trill that fades past the last syllable like tenor sax players used to let a melody trail off, pads closing, just air. The people he’s trading bits of dialog with speak a hard American English, the consonants end words like a window slamming shut, and you can really hear the germanic underlying our common tongue, hard and unyielding. Fitzgerald’s gaelic is pure melody, with all the gaelic guttural ch’s and gh’s merely hinted at…when the Irish crossed the Atlantic those disappeared, I suppose because English has no use of them, with its solid, punctuating consonants that turned an Irishman’s ch’s into k’s and the gh’s into sad little puffed F’s. Barry Fitzgerald scarcely hints at them. That’s what gives Irish English that melodiousness, I think, that sound of flutes softly talking, gives it that twitter and laugh and those words and passages that glisten….because it’s only the soft and melodious Gaelic sounds that make up the brogues you’ll hear at a wake or in a bar or an old movie full of cops and priests and gangsters. Like Barry Fitzgerald now, as this movie rolls, talking to a grieving, bitter mother. Her words are hard, angry, unforgiving. Hate–a hard, hard h, the long vowel unyielding, the t almost spat. I hate her, she says, I hate her, like a boot stomping on a wooden floor or a hammer pounding a nail into a wall. No you don’t hate her Barry trills, aspirating the h’s ever so slightly, the simple sentence as much breath as sound, ’tis no time for hatred. The Good Lord will see to her soul. His Lord is almost a lard, its r ever so slightly aspirated that’s almost impossible for a non-Irishman to replicate or even hear. The mother weeps inconsolably, and Barry Fitzgerald, sighing, says now now…..letting it trail off into nothingness, his hand on her arm finishing the sentence. She turns away and weeps and weeps, the lens shifts and she’s weeping off camera. Barry Fitzgerald sighs and turns and shuffles off. Sweet Jesus, he says, sweet Jesus.

Marlon Brando’s gardener

Brick Wahl — Sun, 05 May 2013 19:40:27 +0000

So I was watching Charles Owen’s quintet jam at LACMA on Friday–they were really cooking–and Marlon Brando’s gardener was dancing up a storm, a crazy expressive beatnik gonzo dance, all in his own world. Some hipster is filming him and trying not to look like he was filming him which made him really look like he was filming him and you couldn’t help but stare, like he was the lamest spy ever. It made the lady archaeologist mad. Made her really mad. She wanted to hit him, that hipster. She wanted to punch him in the face. It’s an odd thing, a mad archeologist. Somehow anger and archaeology don’t seem to go together. Simmering, maybe, or grudges even, but wanting to punch some goofball hipster in the face, I dunno. But it reminded me of George Zucco. George Zucco? She’d never heard of him. I explained how there was a movie called the Feathered Serpent in which George Zucco played a mad archaeologist. There was, too, and it was a perfectly lousy movie, except the villain was a mad archaeologist. A very limited genre. A jazz critic pal of mine on hand seemed to know everything about George Zucco. Weird how that happens, but he did. All his roles, even as a grave robber. He’d played an excellent grave robber, that George Zucco. Not many do. Chevy Chase would play a terrible grave robber. As would Richard Burton. I mentioned neither, so not to ruin my pal’s spiel. If a guy’s playing a hand, I let him play it. I’m no kibitzer. By now all the archaeologist’s rage had dissipated, the goofball hipster unpunched. Which was good. It would have ruined a perfectly splendid afternoon. We retired for drinks and babble, talking about Marlon Brando’s gardener again, and what a wonderful, wonderful town this is.

Mime

Brick Wahl — Wed, 01 May 2013 08:39:09 +0000

Once about twenty years ago I was walking though the Beverly Center and out of the corner of my eye I caught somebody walking beside me. Glanced over and there’s a mime. This little dude, matching my long stride with a big loping gait and a idiotically serious expression, every movement I did, he did, in his little striped turtleneck and big floppy beret and whiteface. I stopped. He stopped. I turned toward him. He turned toward me. I stared. He stared back. I didn’t utter a word, he didn’t make a sound. I said if you don’t stop I am going to kill you. He said you can’t be serious. I nodded yes. He said sorry. I resumed walking and went about my business. He stood there, considering a career change.

When I passed by the spot on the way back, he was gone.

Al’s Bar

Brick Wahl — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:22:03 +0000

Going to a PopDefect gig at Al’s Bar on a Friday night in July, before the smoking ban and the house is packed, beyond packed even…you came home, threw all your clothes in the washer and washed your face, as if that would help. Woke up past noon smelling like Perth Amboy. Jump in the shower and then likely do it all over again on Saturday night if the line-up looked good. It usually did. What a glorious hell hole Al’s Bar was. All of us will die early from the air in there. Plus the bathroom fixtures were sticky. And the Pope getting everyone way too high on the back patio. How did they put their band sticker way up there? I saw your name in the men’s room. It says you rock. You put your cigarette out in my beer. What a stupid band name. There’s somebody fucking in the photo booth. My car got broken into again, and I gave the homeless guy a dollar to watch it. No, the bartender’s boyfriend is in the band. No, not the drummer. We’re not on the guest list? Jackson Brown, here, really? It was better before they earthquaked it. Art fag! Damn, if my wife wasn’t here I could get so laid right now. Can we get anything in the monitors? Wow, Seattle. God that art sucks. Are the smoke machines really necessary? You live upstairs? Uh oh, I owe her money. I go to Raji’s now but I drank too much. I was way up front and that blonde’s ass was rubbing against me the whole time. Dude, you gotta lay off the junk. Tip or die! Shit, took so long to find a parking space I missed the first band. Who were they? They don’t serve food in here? Yeah, I know, but I’m clapping because they put me on their guest list. I used to walk here from the Brave Dog. It was cool then. Spoken word? In here? It’s five bucks for the single but it’s colored vinyl. Cliff said no way. I saw a dead guy out on the sidewalk once. My band is here next month. Can I get a martini? No? We’re kind of a Stooges meets Velvets meets Exile on Main Street era Stones thing, but all original. Just talk to the bouncer, he always gets me in. How come there’s never any toilet paper in the ladies room? Wow, another Flipside guy. The beer is warm. I couldn’t hear a fucking thing up there./ Yup, I smoked a joint with Kurt Cobain where that pile of boxes is now. I didn’t know you played the saxophone. I met Angie Bowie here once. I met my ex-boyfriend here. I thought I met Robert DeNiro here once but it was just some guy. Either I’m way too stoned or that band is way too weird. After party? Where? Can I come? Their seven inch is worth big money now. She’s a performance artist, but be nice. We got reviewed in Maximum Rock’n'roll, but I couldn’t tell if they liked us or not. Yeah, but he’s an asshole now. We wanna shoot our video here. Under the table at rock’n'rolI Denny’s? Really? I dunno, some shitty band from Boston or Austin or something. They’ll be done soon. I can’t find my shit. She’s naked. Completely. We got banned from no talent nite ’cause we were too talented. Here’s a flyer. Who didn’t you sleep with? We need gas money. A naked guy jumped into the drum kit when I closed my eyes. This is a drinking song! My feet are killing me. It’s on compact disc, but all I have is a cassette player. I liked ‘em better when they couldn’t play. Wiener Gotcha. Hey, that’s George Herms. The band wasn’t much, but the chick on bass was hot. Whose getting laid on top of the volkswagen? No, outside. I played pool with Jerry Brown but my girlfriend danced with Linda Ronstadt. Dude that’s way too many piercings. Would you guys mind, we’re trying to conduct an interview here. Sounds like he blew an amp. Yeah, the hot little bartender is a writer, I always tip her extra. El Duce pissed on me once. You should have seen the encore. We were getting high in the soundbooth..we know the guy.Those assholes can’t play pool worth shit. The singer showed me her boob job. TURN DOWN!!!! I hate this place. Wait, I’ll go to Bloom’s for more rolling papers. That guy’s been hitting on me all night, I think he’s from Orange County. I never liked this punk metal shit. There is no industry list. The dominatrix at the bar teaches at my kid’s school. Art damage, they still call it that? Oh, that smells good. They’re trying to find the drummer now. What does a fluffer do? Whose beer did I just sit in? There’s glass all over the floor there. I think I got her phone number. Remember when these guys were good? The toilet overflowed. She’s one of those Brat Pack chicks, ignore her. It’s a fanzine, there’s a xerox machine at work. I think of them as art films, actually. She hated the band so much she threw the money at them and told them to get off the stage. Look across the street, a yuppie. Let’s fuck with him. Meet ya at the Chinese Denny’s, you can sober up there. Sonic Youth, here? Or just somebody from New York? Jack Brewer weirded me out. He always does. You get a flyer? Puppet shows never work in here. Sex Bomb! Not rockabilly, swampabilly. This is the greatest place in the world if you’re fucked up. There’s not enough graffiti in the bathroom. She thinks she’s Siouxsie Sioux. He’s drinking all the half empty beers. I know all the backstreets. Oh god, another yuppie. There goes the neighborhood.

He Stopped Loving Her Today

Brick Wahl — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 07:53:11 +0000

I’ve never told anyone this before, but there was a two week stretch there maybe a decade and a half ago when I must have listened to He Stopped Loving Her Today a hundred times. Over and over. Once turned to twice turned to thrice turned to twenty times. I couldn’t tell you why, but there I was, in the dark, maybe a little stoned, George Jones singing this most perfect song ever in a tone I knew I could never match in words even if I spent a lifetime trying. I met a trumpet player once, a fine jazz musician, a bebopper, who confessed to me over a couple whiskeys that he wished he could play like George Jones sang. The other jazzers kind of laughed nervously, unsure what to say. I said nothing. I knew exactly what he meant.

I started writing this a verse or two into the tune. A couple sentences later I spun it again. And again. He stopped loving her today fades, a piano descends five notes, strings disappear way into the background and are gone. They’re Nashville strings but you couldn’t tell here, they’re so subtle, the band is so subtle too, the drummer swings the thing like a funeral dirge. Which it is. They placed a wreath upon his door. I had a fight with the wife once, said things I wish I hadn’t, hid in the living room in the dark, and kept thinking about those letters by his bed, all the I love you’s underlined in red. I played the song. Played it again. Again. I went into the bedroom and said I love you. It was underlined in red. In my mind I mean, three little words underlined in red. This might sound like the dumbest thing you ever heard, but then I’m not talking to you people. I’m talking to the people who heard George Jones finally died, the ol’ Possum, and found themselves singing they left a wreath upon his door. You knew you would too. And you knew you’d cry just a little. Which you did. He stopped loving her today.

He Stopped Loving Her Today