Author Archives: Brick Wahl

You started the fight, Van Gogh

Posted on by

(2012)

Harley Flanagan Arrested: Founder Of Cro-Mags Charged With Assault For NYC CBGB Fest Fight
NEW YORK — Authorities say a two people were stabbed and one was also bitten before a show at the New York City music venue Webster Hall. Harley Flanagan, a founder of the hard-core punk band the Cro-Mags, was arrested on assault charges. Published reports say the victims were current members of the group.

No information on an attorney for Flanagan was immediately available.

The violence happened Friday night during the CBGB Festival. CBGB representatives say in a statement that the disturbance shouldn’t overshadow the events, which included free concerts in Times Square and Central Park.

CBGB was once a famed Manhattan rock venue where bands like The Talking Heads performed in the early 1980s. The venue closed in 2006. The festival is an attempt to revive the CBGB brand.

The “CBGB brand”? Are you kidding me? Rock music is so fucked up anymore, just another bullshit business. I’m glad somebody got bit. At least that’s punk rock. Hell, back then if you didn’t get bit or beaten or jailed or wailed on somehow, you weren’t doing the shit right. When you can brand CBGB’s, it’s time to destroy everything and start all over. No shit. That should’ve happened along time ago already. I can’t believe there’s a whole generation of kids who think what we did back then was cool. I mean you simpering little fucks, you’re supposed to hate what we did. We did. Shit, we lived to harass hippies. Always hate what came before you. How do you think music changes? I suppose this is not part of the music appreciation course curriculum, however. You don’t study it when earning that MBA in music industry administration. Sigh…..Would’ve loved to have seen that idiot bite those guys. My guitar player bit a guy’s ear off back in the 80’s. OK, it was just an earlobe. But you shoulda the dude crawling around the floor of the Anti-Club looking for his earlobe like a lost contact lens. Like here ya go, Doc, sew it back on. Yeah, sure. You started the fight, Van Gogh. He was a rich kid anyway. He could buy another. Ya know, I’m supposed to be a hot shit jazz journalist now, but sometimes I miss punk rock.

.

.

Osama’s Dead

Posted on by

(Brick’s Picks, LA Weekly—what appeared in print was radically copy-edited thank god. Not sure which of these I turned in, or maybe I turned in another draft. This was early May, 2011 and I had quit the week before but the paper said I’d be back the following week but my heart wasn’t in it. I just hated writing Brick’s Picks by this point. Eventually split the end of July when yet another editor came aboard and I just didn’t feel like dealing with another editor. I was a prick about it, one of those take this job and shove it things that left the poor bastard  bewildered and sending me the proper rules of pronunciation. Ya wanna stay on my good side you don’t send me the proper rules of pronunciation, especially after I’d already quit….Oh, the line about drinking myself into a coma is a lie.)

So Sunday night we’re writing this column, snickering, feeling pretty good. We flip on the TV and some newscaster’s babbling, just beside himself with excitement. Osama’s dead, Osama’s dead, Osama’s dead. The foreign correspondent agreed. Osama’s dead. The experts chimed in. Osama’s dead. The kids singing the national anthem outside the White House chimed in. Osama’s dead. The people in New York City agreed. Osama was dead, so dead. And we looked at our column, and it was dead. Every single writer and blogger looked at what they were typing and said the same damn thing: Osama’s dead. So every gardening and fishing and bondage and music and political column written Monday morning says Osama’s dead. But just to be different we’ll just stick with what we wrote and hope no one notices.    

But we’ll keep it short. We apologized for skipping last week. The Kings got knocked out of the NHL playoffs, you see, and we drank ourselves into a coma. We’ll get ‘em next season. We mentioned talking with late great L.A. jazz jock Chuck Niles about the L.A. Kings. He said we’ll get ‘em next season. Segued into his funeral. It got quite poignant here. Then back to jazz and drinking whiskey and it almost made sense. Then it went off the deep end about hockey and jazz. It’d take too long to explain now, but basically we like to listen to crazy hard ass jazz while watching hockey.  Crazier the better. The logic got pretty tenuous from then on. We somehow mentioned AC/DC and jazz critics and chasing Mingus with an ax all in one sentence. Claimed we thought of that next to the stage one night at Charlie O’s. We did, actually, but never mind. Then we wrote a bunch of stuff about jazz and fucking shit up, as Donald Trump might put it. Though we didn’t say Trump, just “a leading Republican presidential contender”. It was very topical. That’s what we were snickering at when they told us Osama’s dead. So never mind. Here’s some shows, though. 

Take 2:

So last night we’re typing up this column, snickering, feeling pretty good. Then a bus driver calls. Brick—turn on the TV—they got Obama. He sounded excited. Bus drivers never sound excited. So we flipped on the TV and there, where Donald Trump should have been, some newscaster was babbling, just beside himself with excitement.  Mama done took him to Disneyland. Osama’s dead, Osama’s dead, Osama’s dead. The foreign correspondent agreed. Osama’s dead. The experts chimed in. Osama’s dead. The kids singing the national anthem outside the White House chimed in. Osama’s dead. The people in New York City agreed. Osama was dead, so dead. And we looked at our column, and it was dead. Every single writer and every single blogger looked at what they were typing and said the same damn thing. Osama’s dead. And every single gardening and fishing and bondage and music and political column written this morning says Osama’s dead. Which of course means we can’t. So we’ll just stick with what we wrote and hope no one notices.    

Unfortunately we already wasted space telling you Osama’s dead. So we’ll run through what we wrote. We opened by apologizing for skipping last week. Said the Kings got knocked out of the NHL playoffs and we drank ourselves into a coma. Said we’ll get ‘em next season. Then went on about talking to legendary L.A. jazz deejay with Chuck Niles about the L.A. Kings.  He said we’ll get ‘em next season. The about his funeral. It got quite poignant here. Then we went on about the L.A. Kings and jazz and drinking whiskey and it almost made sense. Then it went off the deep end about hockey and jazz. It’d take too long to explain now, but basically we like to listen to crazy hard ass jazz while listening to hockey.  Crazier the better. The logic got pretty tenuous from then on. We somehow mentioned AC/DC and jazz critics and chasing Mingus with an ax all in one sentence. Claimed we thought of that sipping whiskey next to the stage one night at Charlie O’s. We did actually, but never mind. Then we wrote a bunch of stuff about fucking shit up, as Donald Trump might put it. Though we didn’t say Trump, just “a leading Republican presidential contender”. It was very topical. That’s what we were snickering at when the bus driver called and told us Osama’s dead. So never mind. Here’s some shows, though.

Playboy Jazz Festival

Posted on by

[from a Brick’s Picks in the LA Weekly]

We had a helluva weekend at the Playboy Jazz Festival. There was some great jazz, and killer funk, and Eddie Palmieri was so freaking great he blew our minds. Jackson Brown even read an awful poem. Finally Buddy Guy had people getting naked everywhere, even some critics we won’t mention. We were humming along and writing this column when a conga line driven mad by the jungle beat went berserk and burst into the press section, scattering reporters and papers and setting laptops on fire. We lost everything. Even our parasol. But someone handed us some rolling papers and we managed to scrawl some quick notes:

Oscar Hernandez & the LA-NY Connection are at Vitello’s on Thursday. Hernandez plays such mean piano with those perfect solos for great Latin jazz, and saxist Justo Almario and bassist Rene Camacho are also in this smoking band. As good a follow up to the Eddie Palmieri set at Playboy as you’ll find this week. Maybe you remember Hernandez winning a pair of Grammy’s for his Spanish Harlem Orchestra (who have a local gig coming up, too—details next week.) And like Eddie Palmieri, Oscar Hernandez is pissed as hell about the Grammy’s deciding there’s no such thing as Latin Jazz. But we talked about that in another article.

The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach is about as historic as a jazz spot can get in this town. It still cooks on weekends in 11 a.m.-3 p.m. slot, but ya gotta get up sometime. This weekend there’s a pair of drummer led combos reflecting two great LA jazz traditions. On Saturday Donald Dean’s quartet features tenor George Harper and bassist Nedra Wheeler, a musical genealogy that can be traced a couple generations back to Central Avenue, through a lot of Trane feeling, and a looser, bluesier bop. On Sunday it’s the classic west coast jazz sound that once called the Lighthouse home. The drummer is scene veteran Dick Weller, with some nice horns up front—saxist Tom Peterson, trumpeter Clay Jenkins and trombonist Ira Nepus. Lotsa bop too, but with some very tight and well read ensemble skills. It’s summer in Hermosa Beach and the scenery outside is gorgeous, and 11 a.m. is a perfect time for the hair of the dog that bit you the night before. And we were going to wax poetic here but were invited to Hef’s big band orgy backstage.

Later in the press box sipping champagne and nibbling caviar we thought about how Charlie O’s is in the middle of the boring old San Fernando Valley where there’s no scenery at all. We’ve looked. But inside they have killer sax cat Charles Owens on Friday, backed by the John Heard Trio. Owens’ sax playing is a joy. Without aping Trane he nails him, he runs crazy around all the fifties and sixties greats, plays mean blues and some fine originals, too. We could go on about him forever and would have too but got distracted as a smooth jazz set turned into bloody fist fight in the middle of “Feeling So Good”. Cosby tried to break it up and got beaned by a soprano saxophone. Hef finally called in his security girls and things settled down. But just as we were about to tell you about the brilliant pianist Theo Saunders being at Charlie O’s on Thursday, we were knocked unconscious by a beach ball.

After Hef’s personal nurses revived us with smelling salts and feathers we remembered that pianist Josh Nelson is at the Blue Whale on Saturday. Nelson has that kind of  refined graceful style and you could imagine him saying the hell with all this and switching to Chopin permanently without missing a beat. Problem is he just thrives on improvisation (you should see him cut loose on a boozy weekend night at the Foundry), and the blend of that European melodic structure and the jazz-going-nuts stuff and very original compositions does it for us. He has a nice quartet with him—guitarist Larry Koonse, bassist Dave Robaire and drummer Dan Schnelle. A good one. And on Wednesday Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra are at the Hollywood Bowl. No one gets naked at Wynton’s gigs, and beach balls are removed by security, but we love his trumpet playing, it’s drop dead gorgeous on ballads, hot as hell when the band is cooking. Best of all saxman Joe Lovano is featured. Very highly recommended.  And two great jazz nights at the Café 322 in Sierra Madre this week, with the always recommended saxist Javier Vergara on Wednesday and trumpeter Elliott Caine’s quintet on Thursday. Caine always rocks this joint. Both nights will be solid jazz at a great venue. No cover.

OK, that’s it. We did have a whole bunch more picks written down as usual, we swear, but we took them to the Playboy Jazz Festival and someone ate them. Or smoked them. Or rubbed them all over their body. Something. Jazz fans are scary sometimes.

Bob Sheppard at Hollywood and Highland

Posted on by
(2012)
 
Hey y’all….if ya wanna hear a great saxophonist, I mean a seriously great saxophonist up there with all the seriously great saxophonists, then check out Bob Sheppard at Hollywood and Highland tonight (that is, Tuesday, July 24). It’s a free gig, 7-9 pm, in 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’s utter madness outside, demented superheroes and people who will never wash their hands again after touching John Wayne’s bootprints and once we saw a police chase at 5 mph, a hundred police cars with lights flashing proceeding ever so slowly down Hollywood Boulevard and the lady running out of gas right there in front of the Chinese Theatre and tourists rushing into the street to touch her car and as she emerged 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, nothing could stop grandma from getting that photo. The suspect emerged, unarmed, exhausted, and laid down on the pavement. Superman rushed into the street to pose in front of the scene. Metropolis was safe from evil again.  A Michael Jackson impersonator moonwalked past. Spiderman watched, then slunk into the shot.
.
Inside the courtyard just steps away all was bliss. I can’t remember exactly who was playing (might have been the Clayton Brothers) but the music swinging, the wine good, the vibe perfect. The music is almost always swinging, the wine good, the vibe perfect. Or at least fun. Bob Sheppard is one of my favorite sax players in this town, and when he launches into a solo the melody goes places I can’t follow because it’s so over my head but I love every second of it, I just wait till he comes flying back into the head and you can hear the tune again. That is the art of improvisation, man, a very swinging improvisation. He always has the best players, too, heavy cats, dudes on his level.  Basically, there’ll be two sets worth of state of the art jazz, and he may or may not make it easier for the folks to dig, who knows, but it ought to be the real thing, pure and unadulterated and uncompromising. We’ll see if he takes it outside for the folks. Maybe he’ll take it outside for the folks outside, wander out to the Boulevard blowing those crazy scales for Spiderman and the Michael Jackson guys. I’d pay to see that. But wouldn’t have to because it’s free.
.
I wonder 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, all its tires punctured, and gas running out right there where just a couple weeks before giant inflatable robots stood for some movie premiere. I remember we came out onto Hollywood Blvd after a one of these Tuesday night gigs  and saw them, looming. Then around the corner there was another giant inflatable robot in reserve, just in case. Just in case what I’ll never know.
.
Anyway, we’ll be there tonite. You don’t see Bob Sheppard’s kinda jazz that often anymore, at least not outdoors in front of God and everybody. It’s mostly singers doing standards nowadays. That’s what people want, singers doing standards. It’s comforting. Me, I like an edge sometimes. Well, most of the time. Anyway, if you ain’t doing nothing head over to Hollywood and Highland tonite. Hell, it’s free. Parking is three bucks, cheap. A ten spot will get you two glasses of wine and a mess of cheese and crackers and fruit, or just sneak in some hooch and save the bread. The night will be gorgeous and you can hang and listen and talk and check out the ladies, so I’m told.
.
And say hi to Spiderman.  Actually, don’t. You’ll have to give him money.

.

Ava Gardner

Posted on by

“See that dame? A dame like that comes along once a century, maybe once in a whole civilization. Maybe a dame like that comes along just once in the whole history of the universe, just the once, and there will never be another dame like that again. A dame like that is pure electricity, one look from those eyes and there’s a pile of ash where you used to be. That’s what a dame like that can do. You touch a dame like that and oh boy, there’s not even ashes. You’re vaporized,  just electrons and then not even that. Nothing. You never even existed.   That’s what a dame like that can do. Seriuosly. Totally. Absolutely…. But you can’t take your eyes off a dame like that, can you? You can’t stop thinking about her, you can’t stop hoping a dame like that will  look at you with those eyes and you’ll not vaporize. That you’ll still be there, and she’ll smile at you and when she does she’s yours. All yours. Forever. Totally yours. Tnat’s what you wish for, wish for more than anything.  Why? Because you’d give anything for a dame like that. Anything and everything. Because a dame like that is a dame like that. “

Ava Gardner

Mike Melvoin

Posted on by

(from the International Review of Music, 2012)

I got a few wonderful emails from Mike Melvoin over the years. Beautiful things.  He wrote just as he talked, which is my favorite kind of writing, and then talked a lot like he played. Jazz players write the coolest emails sometimes, just perfect little written things, honest and funny and down to the bone true.  Anyway, this was the last one I got from Mike Melvoin. He was responding to my first Keeping It Real post. As usual, I was incapable of saying something intelligent in return. I get so flustered when a jazz master writes anything back, I don’t know what to say and I don’t think I said anything in reply to Mike except maybe a thanks. I had no idea he was so sick. You can’t tell from what he wrote here.  It’s from Jan 20th, just a month before he died.

Here’s what Mike wrote:

Dead on, Brick!

I pass along a couple of defining ideas to the occasional student I meet.

First: “The only thing more important than having a good time is having good time.”

And the former is dependent on the latter. The core purpose of our music hasn’t changed since we were hired to grease up Saturday night. If we achieved that, the music had a healthy fan base. If we put some other purpose in front, the fan base was sure to desert us as you are so right in observing. Those of us players who fire the blood pulse with the historic language of the blues put asses in seats. Not just geriatric or academic ones but across the board asses who come to us to feel good. 

And second: “There are no points for being admired, only for being believed.” 

I don’t do this to be thought of as a good player. I do this to get those who hear me to feel as good as I do.  Jazz well played is a physical music first and foremost.  Thank you for the much needed reminder.

Hoping your Saturday night is delicious and our music helped make it so.

Best,

Mike Melvoin

That last line says it all.  No wonder everyone’s missing him.  Very sorry to see him go.

Just trying to capture the spirit of the thing

Posted on by

(2012)

It just dawned on me that if I hadn’t stopped writing the Brick’s Picks jazzcolumn I could have used my LA Weekly cachet to score some righteous press passes to the Los Angeles Kings victory parade on Thursday. 

I spent seven years writing that goddamned column. I spent twenty years a devoted Kings fan. I hated writing Brick’s Picks…maybe not at first but by the end it was nothing but misery. And you had to be a masochist to be a goddamned Kings fan all those years. Sure jumping on the bandwagon in ’92 was great, but staying on meant getting used to the cellar, humiliation, failure, pitying looks from Canadians or insults from people from San Jose in those fey teal jerseys. It meant watching your team finally make the playoffs only to be swept–swept–in the first round. And then doing the exact same thing two seasons later. It meant only once making it to the second round.  It meant watching the owner go to jail for counterfeiting old coins. It meant watching Rob Blake and wondering why the hell he was still here. It meant saying goodbye to the Great One when he left for a shot at a cup. It meant Lakers fans who had no idea who or even what the Kings were. It meant trying to believe it every time they said the miserable failure of  a hockey franchise was in a “rebuilding phase”. It meant feeling kinda sorry for Bob Miller but never saying so. It meant being a little heartbroken when Warren Wiebe died. It meant watching the Mighty Ducks win the cup. It meant not being sure what was lonelier, being a Kings fan or a jazz fan in Los Angeles. And not caring. Because I loved jazz, and I loved hockey. So what if sometimes it felt like nobody else did. 

But if I had known the goddamn Kings were going to be Stanley Cup Champions this year after one of the most improbably glorious post-season runs in NHL history, I would never have quit the Weekly. I’d still be there, grinding out the column every Sunday night and hating every second of it. I would have done it because I could have called in some favors and gotten me a couple passes to the press section and watch this silly-assed parade. I would have so loved that. I could stop watching the end of Slapshot and being jealous of the extras cheering like mad for a fictional hockey team.

So this is the first time I have regretted quitting my gig at the L.A. Weekly. It’s a dumb reason, I know.  And it’s a selfish reason, I know that too. But it’s a good reason. You see, the Charlestown Chiefs have won the championship of the Federal League. Yup. Finally. And all that stuff before, the failures and disappointments and the what-the-fucks?…well, who cares. It only makes this year even better. Amazing. Miraculous. Great. Just great. Beautiful, even.

Oh…and my second favorite team?  The New Jersey Devils. Now what are those odds?

OK…..and I have another confession, and now that the Kings are Stanley Cup Champions it’s not so embarrassing. Well, it’s embarrassing, but not so pathetic. You see, I have only been star struck once in my life. It was a couple years ago, at the height of my hipness. While leaving the St. Patrick’s Day festivities at LALive (press passes with free everything, of course) I run smack dab into Luc Robataille. Luc. Ohmygod. I said–and I quote–wow, you’re Luc Robataille. He said yes I am. I tried to say something hip and knowledgeable but nothing came out. Just a few incoherent syllables. He nodded and walked on. I said to my wife–and I quote–that was Luc Robataille. She said yes I know. I told everyone I that week that I had met Luc Robataille. They said who? Except for Kings fans. They said wow. And then they said Luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuc.

That Like thing

Posted on by

I would “Like”, Amanda wrote,  a whole lot more of your writings (because I love & enjoy your writings)… but I just hate to sign up and sign in, in order to do the “Like” thing.

The Like thing? Wow. I had no idea there was a like thing on WordPress. I thought that was a Facebook thing.

So I looked. Sure enough, there it as. Right below the Share This thing. Which I had never noticed either.

I don’t think I’ve quite gotten the hang of this blog thing. 

I told Amanda things were different on my planet. I say that  a lot, things are different on my planet. A nice way of saying clueless.

I am clueless about the like thing. I don’t quite understand why people care or not if people “like” what the wrote. Personally I don’t give a fuck. I don’t sit here writing and hoping somebody will be moved enough to do the like thing. I don’t think about that at all when I write. It’s not like I’m writing advertising copy. I’m writing for me. If I like it I post it. If I don’t like it I do the delete thing. I do the delete thing a lot.

If I kinda like it I do the edit thing. I have a couple hundred pieces here that I kinda like but not enough to do the edit thing yet . They’re stuck in the draft category. It’s like limbo for blog posts.  If I lit a candle for each you could read a book by their glow.

And how come there’s not a hate thing? That’d be a lot more fun than a like thing. If you post something and people do the hate thing, then you know you’re doing something right.

(This was a while ago…I understand that whole Like Thing thing now. And am a much better person thing for it.)

No commas

Posted on by

No commas. No idea why, but there’s no commas. A whole email without any commas. It’d probably be a bad idea to write my Great American Novel this way. Anyway, feel free to parse.

We have to go the Omaha Steaks store on Pico which is next to Norms which we go to commemorate the Norms we used to go to at Sunset and Vermont and have the 99 cent breakfast because we were that broke back then like when we used to go to Greens Soul Food on Yucca on all you can eat chicken night which I think was Tuesdays and get more than we could eat of the chicken and sneak it out when the lady wasn’t looking but that Norms was demolished and replaced by a Kaiser facility 25 years ago at least and we get all our meds there now plus been to doctors upstairs and we haven’t been to that Green’s since 18th Street took over that block but the gangs there are long gone now but I don’t know if Greens is even still there and then after we eat cheap at Norms we’ll drive east on Olympic with our boxes of gourmet burgers we got for half price or even less and take them up the stairs and put them in  the freezer and change clothes and socks because I love fresh socks and then we’ll pop into Jax I imagine around 9 pm which I think is what you asked so if you and friend are there we’ll see ya. OK?

Zoogz Rift

Posted on by

(Journal entry, c. 1982)

Later we went to the Anti-Club. It is not identified as such, announcing itself over the door as “Helen’s Place”; luckily we heard the give-away sounds of a slapped, ill-tuned snare and over-amped keyboard: Art! This had to be the place. Indoors was, ah, “refreshingly different”: Helen’s Place is a country music bar, and dangling from the ceiling were saddles, and covering up large portions of the walls were large wagon wheels (I leaned against one a good part of the evening)—between these were various accoutrements of the Old West. Of particular interest was a large display, labeled and all, of a collection of barbed wire.

Three bands played that night. First was Earth Dies Burning: singer, aged circa sixteen, two on casios, one circa fourteen (the singer’s brother; their parents sat next to us, adoringly), the other circa sixteen (and who played drums one night for Nervous Gender at Al’s, subbing for Don Bolles who was with 45 Grave in Arizona; the kid was a real formlessly energetic drummer and lots of fun), finally, a drummer, circa thirty. The latter’s set was cruder than mine, his crash looked to have been run over by a tank. They played a real short set, including a version of “Heartbreak Hotel” retitled “I Like Fishsticks And So Does Dad” (you see, father was injured in an auto wreck and is paralyzed from the waist up—and when Mom goes out to play Mahjong all he can prepare for dinner for himself and son is fishsticks). Also a great version of “Psychotic Reaction” which was as good as the Urinals doing the “Jetsons” song and [my old band] Keene White doing “Rave On”). A great, stupid, short set.

Then came the guy [John Trubee] who once played bass in the Amazing Shitheads laying down (the first time we ever saw them he was doing that—I think that was his final gig with them, though.) He did this ridiculous poetry—real crude, witty and funny. He rolled around on the floor, dropped to his knees, and waved at and cajoled the crowd with a big rubber penis. He also had one of those mechanical chimps you wind up and they clang little cymbals together: clang clang clang clang like that. His best poem was one about Sonny andCher, elevating their story to the level of a Greek tragedy.

He had been backed by the next band on the bill (though their “backing” was a quite unrehearsed volley of noise and squeaky guitars), who called themselves Vertical Invaders. They had a line-up and sound similar to MX-80 Sound, though much less developed. Good points were a) they didn’t wallow in sloppy-noise-as-art b) their guitars were used in interesting manners c) no rhythm boxes or other trendy devices. Bad points were a) monotonous drumming and b) some of their songs were a little too similar to others, e.g. their climactic number was very similar to “Waiting For My Man”. Promise, though.

A couple oddities: they had a song about General Guderian, and one song they started, screwed up, started again and then having completed it, decided the did it poorly should do it again. I liked that. It was extremely hot in the place, the air conditioning having broken down in the midst of our 100+ degree heat wave.

Finally, of course, was Zoogz Rift, who put on as good a show as I’ve ever seen them do. Zoogz began the show with an acapella rendition of “An American Tune” by Paul Simon, done straight, then he joined his band and tore into some new material, including “Kiss My Bleeding Dork”, an attack on theL.A.music scene, and some song really trashing Frank Zappa. Plenty of old stuff as well, in particular a great version of “Heart Attack”.

We sat with Zoogz and his band, talking, and all in all had a good time. Richie Häss, the drummer, is exceptionally good—plays all kinds of beats, has two bass drums and a high hat, etc. The bass player, Dan Buchanan, is the strangest rock bassist I have ever seen: never mind that he bounds about eland-like, but he plays with a slide on his little finger and runs his fingers up and down the fretboard (sometimes both hands) maniacally, making a really strange sound—his bass at times sounds more like an Elvin Jones drum solo (fast, deceptively erratic) [think I meant Rashied Ali.]. The keyboard player [Jon Sharkey] is really weird, playing a cheap organ and electric piano through fender amps—you can imagine the effect. He also strings his equipment with blinking Christmas lights. Finally Zoogz himself: fat and angry as ever, voice strong and guitar frenzied. Nice guy, too.

These guys are our favoriteL.A.band; I think they are the best band on theL.A.rock circuit, and I can’t even think of any other band that compares.

The next night we went to the Cathay de Grande to see, once again, Zoogz Rift. Opening the show was a strange band calling themselves “Hurtin’ Bros”, playing a kind of intellectually crude R&B: imagine an R&B band on the old Roxy album [the Roxy Live punk comp], heavily influenced by Mirror Man—that is kind of the idea. A bit pretentious, but crude enough to satisfy my punk urges. Three guitars (two lead and a rhythm), bass, drums and sax, and a barefoot singer. FromPasadena and I liked them [one of them was our crazed friend and original Silverlake BBQ Association member Bormann]. They’ll probably gain some notoriety around town—a cultist’s cult band.

Zoogz and His Shitheads were good that night, though it finally dawned on me just how bad the sound system is there—criminal! The worst of all the clubs in town, especially after the real good system they had at the Anti-Club. The crowd sucked, too it’s too bad the crowds are so lame in L.A. anymore—the art crowd has been permeated by this sappy gay funk disco mentality with no real sense of purpose. I suppose all youth movements are prone to this—it’s just sad to see it happen. Zoogz, too, was sick of it, or them, especially of people walking out, so, during “Heart Attack” he lunged off stage and charged after two deserters using his guitar like a lance, then thought better of, turned around and told the band to pack it up. That was it. The Shitheads said he does that sometimes…. Zoogz explained it to us later, and his reasons actually made sense. We talked for quite a while, on the Cathaystairs, about all kinds of stuff; he gave us a copy of his first album (gratis), called Idiots On The Miniature Golf Course, qualifying it like mad: I like it, a lot in fact, though it is nowhere near the quality of the stuff he’s doing now.

Zoogz Rift and His Amazing Shitheads is probably the third band like that both of us have been really behind, and fond of: others are the Sequencers (+ Christian Lunch), and Nervous Gender. I think what we appreciate in them is a) an uncompromising attitude and belief in what they are doing, which borders on ferocity; and b) a healthy dose of personality, that is, interesting exciting people who don’t try to cover up their appearance onstage behind a made up image (they can act weird on stage, but it’s them acting weird, and not some facade; and c) they’re nice guys. If they are jerks, stuck up, or attitude coppers [attitude copper?], she doesn’t like them—nor do I.

So we went home—a bit discouraged that the show went so poorly, but happy that we are getting to know the band so well—they consider us two of their biggest fans.

We went home and turned on Monster From A Prehistoric Planet, Japanese circa ’65. Kind of a cross between Godzilla, Rodan and Gorgo—complete with a brown-faced Japanese kid portraying a little jungle boy who is friends with the Mom and Dad monsters and cries as they are blown to pieces by massed rockets. Real trash—actually drove Fyl off to bed, but I remained, the TV with the sound off, one of those strange KPFK late night-early morning “new Music” shows squeaking and rumbling quietly in the corner, and reading (what, though, I don’t recall). How bohemian….

Sunday we went to Spike’s to issue in the Labor Day. He lives in a sort of “artist’s” colony at the corner of Western and Melrose: great litle vaguely European apartment, but the neighborhood is crazed, being the center for drag queen whores. Just a wonderful neighborhood—the whole time we were there we were accompanied by screams and yells, breaking bottles, squealing tires, loud queen voices, threats in Spanish, sirens, strange and ominous bumps in the night. I couldn’t handle it [we must have been very stoned and I was freaking out, as we’d been hanging in neighborhoods like that on a regular basis….] Spike was once mugged outside the gate of the building [by a gang of six foot plus black drag queens, seriously]; they hit him over the head with a metal bar, and nearly tore his ear off as well. And he was on acid at the time….

We had a good time, though, talking talking talking, drinking beer and smoking pot. Listened to the Slits, Dolls, Hell Comes To Your House, Stooges, UXA and other neet records [that “neet” was a joke, or better have been], watched an animated Flash Gordon (only partly with the sound on—it wasn’t very good); told variations on the “maybe it’s just a stupid bird-lizard” line from Monster From A Prehistoric Planet, and listened to Spike’s great flying saucer, etc., stories. Fun.

On Monday Phyllis, out of the blue, said let’s go to my folk’s house to see my Dad off to Philadelphiathough he’d already left. Went anyway—had fun, great hamburgers, weird jokes (my brother Jon wouldn’t sit on the lawn because it was full of “insect shit”). Had a couple hits of pot and a great trip home—windows open, air beautiful; heard a riot-like Jerry Lee Lewis song (“High School Confidential”, live) and something by Aaron Copeland we liked a lot. Ed O’Brien [aka Celtic Runes of Renfield Brick, then bassist in Zoogz Rift’s band and later art director for SST] returned my MC5 albums and “Teenage Head” by the Flamin’ Groovies; he also picked up a copy of that rare old Some Chicken single—great savage ’77 punk; real obscure, too. Oh—I borrowed my sister Suzi’s copy of Sometime In New York City album, which was surprising on two counts: first, that Suzi had it at all (apparently she’s a real John Lennon fanatic), and two in that it’s not that bad, after the reviews I’ve read. The title cut (minus the “Sometime In…” ) is a real killer cut—just hard rock’n’roll. I like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “We’re All Water”, too. That Elephant’s Memory is a hell of a band, too—I’ll keep an eye out for their album.

That was our three day weekend, then—I had lots of fun. It was real refreshing. Wow, I started this Sunday, and am just finishing it now, Thursday 9/9/82, at 10:30 PM.