Author Archives: Brick Wahl

Compost

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(2013)

It’s Earth Day and people keep posting that really old story about the guy who began Earth Day later killing and composting his girlfriend.  And why not? Everything is TMZ on Facebook. Besides, it brought back memories of the time we hung out with a guy who later killed his boyfriend. Not much later, in fact, just a week or two.  We were hanging out with our pals–he was a heavy metal record producer, and she a violinist–and the two guys came over to join the party. They lived in the next door apartment. We smoked a lot of weed that night. Drank cheap beers. Talked about music and old movies. We all loved Hitchcock, I remember that, all of us talking about Hitchcock and all his clever murders. The victim to be was cool–funny, sweet, and had a great pot pipe, this beautiful thing. The still latent psychotic killer was a little weird. Never smiled, and had an intense stare. It would have been unnerving except he was maybe five feet tall. It’s hard to be unnerved by someone five feet tall when you’re nearly a third taller than they are. Besides, I knew lots of weird people and it never occurred to me that any of them would ever be weird enough to chop up his boyfriend. But that’s what happened, a couple Saturdays later. No one knows why, the cops said there’d been a fight but none of the neighbors heard anything. No one heard the actual killing either. After he killed his friend there was the classic problem of what to do with the body. Rendering it into compost was not an option–this was the Fairfax District and there wasn’t a composter handy and even if there had been you couldn’t use it on a Saturday.  So he cut the body up into pieces and wrapped each carefully and hid them away in the back of the closet. Then he cleaned up. The bathroom was spic and span, they said, not a splash of blood or drip of gore to be seen. He was a bit of a neat freak I remember. His boyfriend had mentioned that. And he avoided the mistake that Raymond Burr made in Rear Window, dumping parts of his wife in the East River, and some in Central Park, and a toe or a finger in with the geraniums for someone’s yappy little dog to find. He’d seen Rear Window. He’d seen Psycho too. So he stuck the packages of his boyfriend in the back of the closet, behind all the clothes and boxes, and took a flight to Mexico. The flight was already booked. Actually he had tickets for two to Mexico, but there’d been the change in plans and it was just him now and he probably enjoyed the extra elbow room. And I have no idea if he had planned this killing long before, buying the extra ticket anyway, or if it was a burst of inspiration to go alone. I do remember his boyfriend telling us about their upcoming trip to Mexico. Cabo San Lucas was supposed to be nice this time of year he said. We’d never been, we told him. That makes three of us.

Our friends finally noticed that something was amiss. It was summer, and their bedroom was right next to the closet. It wasn’t perfume, they told us. The cops eventually caught the guy, they said, down in Mexico. I’m not sure how we missed hearing about the story. It was in the news, a big deal. But L.A. was Murder City USA back in the 80’s, and even a gay man chopped up into carefully packaged portions and stacked neatly in the closet was just another homicide. There were so many killings back then and they all tended to blur together. You actually saw bodies in the street in those days. Wild times, though you got used to it. In fact, I actually forgot about this murder for years. But it was just one of many horror stories. Somebody else I knew nearly accepted a ride from the Hillside Strangler. Richard Ramirez tried to break into another buddy’s house, but his window was bolted so Ramirez killed one of the neighbors. I could keep going. I won’t. There are one or two that really bother me, even years later. Makes me sick and angry and sad remembering them. And L.A. is so peaceful now, so low crime. I haven’t even heard a gunshot in ages, let alone seen a cholo in a T-bird rolling through a redlight at Western and Sunset with a knife in his back, stone dead. That was three blocks from our pad, then, and we were giving my nephew a tour of the town. He’d never been here before. The low rider came through the intersection at an odd angle, jumped the curb and smacked into a lamppost. The driver never moved. It was a beautiful car, too, a vivid metallic blue, just inches off the ground, with chrome pipe organ speakers, big fat tires, wire spoke hubcaps, the whole bit. All the traffic sat still, staring at that knife. Welcome to Hollywood, I said. Jesus Christ my nephew said. Is that for real?

It was. Though now it’s just another wry story. You survive the craziness and you’re full of wry stories. Funny stories, horrible stories. After a while they start to get jumbled up in your head. You mix ’em up and grind ’em up and mulch them all together and out come new stories, like this. Just like compost.

Night Stalker

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Once, at a nice little cocktail party in town, I met one of the women who’d proposed to Richard Ramirez. The Night Stalker? Yes. Why? He was nice, she said. She’d written him lots of letters. He’d written some back. He was into pentagrams, she said. She was pretty, quite sweet, a little off, but not so off that you’d imagine her wanting to marry Richard Ramirez. I didn’t say anything. You’d be surprised how tongue tied you get when someone tells you they want to marry Richard Ramirez. Of course, he’s long gone now, and the woman who did marry him–breaking this lady’s heart, apparently–is a widow who for the rest of her life will have to explain why she married Richard Ramirez. I doubt anyone will understand.

Well, Charlie Manson’s wife would. He’s going on 80, she’s young enough to be his great grand daughter. She loves him. Manages all his social media sites, and even cut an x into her forehead to prove it, though it’s just a little scar now. She doesn’t believe a word about Helter Skelter. He had nothing to do with killing all those people, she said. He doesn’t manipulate anybody. The only thing that he’s trying to manipulate people into doing, she said, is planting trees and cleaning up the Earth. Charlie is nice to everyone.

Richard Ramirez’s wife said the same about her betrothed. We don’t know the real Richard, she said. He’s kind, he’s funny, he’s charming.

I didn’t ask the lady at the party anything about Richard. I got a bad vibe and snuck off to the other side of the room. Everyone was eyeing her. She was pretty, after all, with very nice legs. She was striking in her black dress and lace and raven hair. She was crazy. And she’d wanted to marry the Night Stalker.

Love is a beautiful thing.

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The Anti-Mogul (aka Long Gone John of SFTRI)

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(Written for Noise Works, a Washington D.C. music zine, 1992)

The Headquarters of Sympathy For The Record Industry–perhaps the world’s pre-eminent truly independent label–is in Long Beach, California in a smallish house crammed to the eaves with record boxes and artwork and tapes; but also with paintings and wacky looking statues and ghoulish dolls and odd photos and little figurines and beggar’s bowls carved from human skulls. Everything. The office, far in the back, is the most crammed room of all–spikey death bronze pagan ritualistic voodoo punk rock’n’roll souvenir shit from floor to ceiling so that it’s almost sacred in some tattooed way–lots of weird funny cartoon art on display or in piles–Sympathy records and discs and paraphernalia everywhere…oh, and a desk, a little clutter of papers, a calendar and Long Gone John, self-proclaimed Anti-Mogul.  “Where’s your files?”  Dumb question.  “What files?  Here’s the receipts, here’s some mail.  There’s a couple of boxes in the garage….”

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Bank robber

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(2013)

I had a friend who was a bank robber. Actually I had two friends who were bank robbers but one of them only tried it once, surrendered immediately and is doing great now, squeaky clean and legitimate, better than most of the non-bank robbers I know. Not that I recommend it as a career path. My other bank robber friend robbed a whole string of them in nasty fashion, I don’t know which or where but I was wishing at the time I didn’t know him. Problem was he was a helluva writer. Not so much skilled as overwhelming, spewing vast amounts of prose at a sitting, thousands of words. A true hypergraphic. In fact I have never known a music critic (did I mention he was a music critic?) who wrote so much.

He did his best work in prison. It’s hard to write with a cellmate hanging over your shoulder, asking stupid cellmate questions and squabbling about space. But he’d been in jail so many times (did I mention he was a junkie?) that he had a system worked out. His first day there, he’d wallop some poor bastard, just jump him and wallop him for no reason, so they’d toss him in solitary, and then convince the prison shrink that he was anti-social enough to get his own cell. Worked every time. And then he could sit and write for hours.

Bands and pals and fans and the magazines he wrote for would send him cassettes of new stuff. They must have sent hundreds to whatever prison he was in at the time…they must have because he would review more bands and albums than you could imagine possible. He seemed to know everything about rock’n’roll, no matter how obscure, no matter how remote. Everything. If you ran into him at a club between prison sentences, he knew everybody playing and everything they played. He’d hit as many shows as possible, bumming rides from people apparently thrilled to death to chauffeur him around. When he got out for the last time I’d bump into him occasionally, and we’d talk music critic talk, me the LA Weekly jazz guy and he the ex-con, and he had so much respect for me it was embarrassing. I’d never had to beat up anybody to write a column, and certainly never robbed a bank. The occasional misdemeanor is nothing compared to a serial felon. Nothing. Besides, he’d written more than I had ever written anywhere. Maybe I was more stylish, but his was packed with hyperactive energy. I’d dance around writing pretty, showing off while he poured out pure, white hot information. I’d never known a music critic like the bank robber, never read anything like his prose. I tried to write prose like jazz, swinging and loose and cerebral, but his had all the muscle and jet engine velocity of Black Flag or an especially unhinged Stooges gig. They don’t make music critics like the bank robber anymore, thank God, because he was a menace. Doing bad things, real bad things. Junkie things. A sweet guy, though. We had some good talks. He even showed up at one of our big loud parties. He didn’t spin records, but he listened intently and asked a lot of questions, sucking in information. He was a good party guest. He was a good writer. He’s dead now. His was a helluva life, hopefully some one will write it up some day.

As for me, I won’t even tell you his name. I don’t know why, but I won’t. I guess I’ve never worked out the contradictions. I probably never will.

Merging Buses Ahead

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(2014)

The sexiest of all signs is Merging Buses Ahead. There was such a sign, too, on the Hollywood Freeway. I noticed the sign one night a zillion years ago when my bass player, stoned out of his mind, was driving us to a gig. Looking for a shortcut he suddenly pulled into the bus lane. We whizzed past the mystified people waiting at the bus stop and gunned our way back into the slow lane, saving maybe three seconds. As he was holding at least a quarter ounce, was ripped, had an expired driver’s license and an unpaid traffic ticket or two I thought his act showed unusual verve. Had I known the car was unregistered I would have awarded him even more verve. He always was a lucky bastard, though, and those three seconds seemed important. His luck later ran out when be blew a tire while tripping on acid at the Grand Canyon. Without a spare, he stood staring into the vast and infinite beauty of the canyon. Dusk was falling and the sandstones glowed a brilliant red and the whole universe seemed full of color. A park ranger stopped to help, discovered his DMV rap sheet and cuffed him. A drag, of course, though with all that blotter it seemed at the time rather groovy. Like I said, he was a bass player. Anyway, as we zipped past the people waiting for the bus and muscled our way back onto the freeway I noticed the sign on the left. Merging Buses Ahead. It seemed tremendously funny at the time. It became my sign. Some hippie or lady at work would ask me my sign. I’d say Merging Buses Ahead. It had just the right mixture of randomness and disdain. Made a lot of sense in the punk rock eighties. I’d never explain. They’d usually walk away, or change the subject. I was big and mean looking, wore huge steel toed army boots and had developed quite a glower I’d use when annoyed. If asked my sign and I said Merging Buses Ahead and my wife was there she’d explain.  He thinks that’s funny, she’d say, he’s an Aries. Oh you’re an Aries…no wonder you said Merging Buses Ahead. I don’t know my wife’s sign–after 34 years I still can’t remember but it’s either Gemini, Scorpio, Aquarius or maybe another–but she knew mine. She doesn’t believe in astrology of course, not a whit (she’s into astronomy and the two can’t mix…she doesn’t believe in UFO’s either) but at least she knows the signs. But then I’m an Aries. You can always tell an Aries because we don’t believe in astrology. We’re arrogant and stubborn and skeptical and confrontational. Lively, though. Fun.

Somewhere in middle age telling people I’m a Merging Buses Ahead lost its zing. It doesn’t seem to come up much anyway. Recently, though, someone asked me my birthday. I told her. Then I told her all the cool people that have been born on my birthday. A whole bunch: Spencer Tracy and Gregory Peck and Bette Davis and Lord Buckley and on and on. Her eyes lit up. Then I told her it was a cool death day too and ran off Howard Hughes and Chiang Kai-shek and Douglas MacArthur and Kurt Cobain and Allen Ginsberg and Saul Bellow and Charlton Heston…. She looked appalled. You know who died on your birthday? Well, yeah, famous people die on your birthday and it’s in the news and it’s easy. She gave me a look–it’s the people who are born on your birthday that matter. The dead, well that’s just sick. She walked away. Wow. I’d just been dissed by an astrology freak. I didn’t even think that was possible.

I suppose it was too late to say Merging Buses Ahead..

"Merging Buses Ahead" is funnier.

Merging Buses Ahead is funnier.

Milk

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(2014)

I’m reminded of a story.

A couple decades ago this band we used to know (a brilliant band called God’s Gift to God) had a rather eclectic following including a pair of Japanese exotic dancers/escorts/maybe actresses. They were keeping their career options open. Neither could speak any English, not that it was a job requirement. They giggled instead. Lots of giggling. The little one, I remember, was sexy to die for and the other, a bigger girl, had some very impressive tits. Big things. Huge. Very unusual on a Japanese girl. She was also lactating–not sure how, but she was–which made her quite popular in some circles. One night after seeing God’s Gift To God at a place in North Hollywood I walked out the door of the club and there she was on the sidewalk–this was on Lankershim right in front of God and everybody–standing in front of a rocker dude down on his knees. He was nearly writhing in ecstasy as she squirted her milk into his mouth, all over his face, in his hair, all down his leather jacket. He was a sopping mess. He kept begging for more and she seemed to have an unlimited supply and could really aim, I mean three or four feet. Like a firehose. The crowd around them was in hysterics. Finally he had his fill and she turned around and there was a beautiful shiny Harley parked there and without missing a beat she squirted the seat, filling it with a little puddle of snow white milk that must have mystified the owner completely when he returned. As I passed by her exhibition I remember thinking please god don’t squirt me. It would have been sticky and I hate sticky. She didn’t.

A week or two later both girls were deported back to Japan.

Personally I’ve never had the urge to be sprayed with the milk of a Japanese stripper. Not even one with huge bazoombas. Though I doubt the opportunity will ever arise again. And it’s funny–when I began this story I said to myself I can’t post this, it’s dirty. But it’s not dirty, it’s just weird. Weird and sticky. And I hate sticky.

Giant inflatable robots

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I love Hollywood & Highland. Inside is that trippy interior courtyard with the Intolerance elephants overhead and tourists everywhere, shuffling and staring and wearing stupid tee shirts they picked up on the Boulevard. It can be surprisingly blissful in there though, and sometimes they have jazz concerts, and sometimes it’s just full of people chatting or reading or napping. Yet just a hundred or so feet away, out on Hollywood Boulevard, it is utter madness, with demented superheroes and people who will never wash their hands again after touching John Wayne’s boot prints. You never know what will be happening out there. One night a few years ago we left the courtyard after a concert and nearly walked into the path of a police chase at 5 mph. A hundred police cars with lights flashing proceeding ever so slowly down Hollywood Boulevard and the lady they were chasing ran out of gas right there and coasted to a stop right in front of the Chinese Theatre. You couldn’t imagine anything more cinematically perfect. The throng of tourists, like extras, rushed into the street to touch her car as she emerged. The cops pleaded through bullhorns for the people to stay clear of the vehicle, the suspect might be armed. But it was Day of the Locust, baby, and nothing could stop grandma from getting that selfie. The suspect emerged from her little car, unarmed and exhausted and infinitely sad. She laid down on the pavement. A zillion cell phone cameras flashed. A man in Superman get-up rushed into the street to pose in front of the scene. A Michael Jackson impersonator moonwalked past. Spiderman watched, then slunk into the shot. The cops waved him off, and he slunk away.

I’ve always wondered what ever happened to that car chase lady. It was the most pathetic car chase I ever saw. I mean you could have pushed that car faster, with all four tires punctured and running our of gas right there in the middle of Hollywood Boulevard. It was a scene from a Buster Keaton silent. Just a week before, though, in the very same spot giant inflatable robots stood for some movie premiere. Every premiere ever it seems has taken place there with crowds and limos and red carpets, but this one had giant robot balloons too. That was different. I remember we came out onto Hollywood Blvd after a one of the Tuesday night jazz gigs in the courtyard and saw them, those giant balloons, looming. Then, as we maneuvered around the premier on side streets, heading home, we came upon another giant inflatable robot balloon held in reserve, looming in an empty parking lot, just in case. Just in case what I’ll never know. As we stopped at a light I watched that extra giant robot in the rear view mirror, and it looked both spectacular and idiotic, like the coolest stupidest thing you ever saw. I can’t remember what the movie was that was premiering, it sank without a trace. But somewhere, somebody has three giant deflated robot balloons, and not a clue what to do with them.

(2012)

Marlon Brando’s gardener

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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.

Jon

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(Preface for a collection of my brother Jon’s lyrics put that came out in Europe in 2010. It’s a remarkable book, incidentally, Jon’s very literary songs and his matching introductory essays. Good luck finding one though.)

We pick Jon up. He’s in one of those little pads that clings to a lane that’s tucked against the side of a hill. Right near Spaceland. Cool spot if you don’t mind the yuppie bohos moving in from the Westside, thinking a cool ‘hood will make them cooler. It doesn’t. You can paint yourself black in tattoos with Sanskrit that reads fuck me in the ass but they told you was something deep and meaningful. You can grow the tiniest, hippest beard. Drink wine at the local wine shop and listen to KCRW till you pass out but you’re still a nothing. Just Westside rich kid garbage that washed in with the 90’s boomtide. Now your life sucks, that mortgage is killing you and no one gives a flying fuck about your exotica collection. You’re just an aging little hipster fuck.

So that’s Silverlake.

We pick Jon up. He’s hanging out front of his little pad watching a stray pigeon in his dirt yard. Nothing grows there, not at ground level. Not enough sun. There’s bushes and shade trees and vines spindling up walls into the sunlight, there’s crabgrass by the curb, snatches of Bermuda grass left over from the sixties, when they thought it looked nice (maybe it does in Bermuda), there’s trails for skunks and raccoons and possums and coyotes and cats for coyotes to eat. There’s babes coming back from dog park, and the men who want to mate with them. There’s a lot of mating in Silverlake anymore.  Goddamn breeders colonized the place after the queers did all the work raising property levels. The gay bars turned straight. The gay bars book rock bands with Facebook pages for you to like. The gay bars turned into restaurants that would die for a visit by Jonathan Gold. Once heavy leather scenes now make delicate cups of coffee, and you can’t even tell where they’d hung the sling. And those who slung are dead. AIDS, baby. Fear. That dry cough and the look of death. Estate sales with all kinds of cool stuff. Gays always had the best taste. We’d pick and choose. Straight people houses full of the things of the dead.

We pick Jon up. He likes our car. He melts into the back seat and listens to me babble on relentlessly, or sits up front and watches Silverlake go by and I flip through the satellite radio relentlessly. An old hippie tune. Steve Winwood singing about Mr. Fantasy. Jon knows to be quiet when that second solo starts in. Older brothers have a lot of hippie in them, deep down. Jon never laughs at it. We go to clubs, to parties, to things with the family down in Orange County. There are six Wahls—me, a sis, Jon, Lex, another sis, another brother, the baby of the bunch, with all the kids. Mom died just a bit ago. Jon was there in the room with her, playing bits of Mozart on the piano. She shuddered and was gone. We’d had a family party the night before. Lots of goofing around and joking as always, a small feast, Mom laughed and joked and even ate. She was so thrilled we’d all made it out. The priest came by and delivered Final Unction. She was ready. We had a smallish wake that day, in the Irish way. A bigger one after the internment. It was beautiful. Jon and Lex and baby brother Jim jammed. They are all such great musicians. Dad died decades ago. Hit Jon hard. I can scarcely remember him. Jon fills me in. He remembers everything. Details you can’t believe, he doesn’t remember like you and me remember, doesn’t see things in dull washes of black and white, faded pictures, colors long gone. Jon sees the past like he’s there now. Say we picked Jon up fifteen years ago. Jon could tell you the car, the color, the weather, the party, the jokes we told. He can tell you how he felt, what bugged him, what scared him, who he longed after, why his neighbor was an asshole and not to forget we’re going to Mom’s next week and can you pick me up?  He remembers all that. His short term memory is long term memory. His emotional memory retains its vividness for years. He can tell you about some ancient painful moment and you can tell he still feels it likes it’s happening today, right now, as we’re picking him up. My memory has slowly been destroyed by epilepsy, huge chunks have vanished. I don’t miss them especially. And I’ve learned that having no memories is much easier than having too many. Jon has too many. You can see them in this book. Vivid details. He remembers the feeling of long ago fog on his skin. Who remembers that?

We pick Jon up. Turn onto Silverlake. Spaceland’s on the left. We saw Jon there a zillion times in the Clawhammer days. Most of the words in this book are from those days. When Clawhammer played the place was packed with intellectuals and freaks and hipsters and stoners and musicians and record collectors. The music was unbelievably, gloriously loud. Awesome rock’n’roll. You could light up the whole city with the energy they expended. The songs were so rocking, so smart, so weird. Jon’s passion was palpable. No wonder. Read these lyrics here. See how close to the bone he wrote. When I pass by Spaceland I always remember those days. The drunken forays to the 7-11 across the street for more money. Hanging out on a porch behind with Pope and Dean and Bomb and getting way stoned. Loving everything. Loving life. Wishing it could go on forever.

That was so long ago. I’m getting lost in the past. Jon’s an Amadan now, and plays sax for people. I write about jazz and get in places for free. We still throw huge crazy parties. Jon’s always there. Thanks, Jon, for being my brother.

Hells Angels

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(2009)

We used to hang out in a Hells Angels bar, the Canby Sweet. Van Nuys chapter. This was back in the 80’s, there was a record store around the corner that would book all kinds of cool shows. We’d smoke pot in someone’s van parked out front, coughing and giggling, but if ya wanted a beer you had to go into the Angels hang around the corner. We always wanted a beer. The dudes were mellow, huge and almost laid back. The women were insane, tight jeans, tighter tees and violent tempers. Hot, scary hot.

I really liked the place. We never got in anybody’s way, and they tolerated us just fine. Only time it ever got a little tense was when the women were tweeking. At the pool table they’d wave the cues around wildly, and they’d slam their empties on the bar and demand another. They always got served immediately. It was never fast enough for them. They’d grab the fresh beer off the bar and chug a lug, yell something at somebody, and stride across the room, their asses like sculpted marble.

.

Angels.

Their women.