Author Archives: Brick Wahl

Brother Brick Says

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(seven inch single sleeve , c. 1988)

Busting up a brawl at the Anti-club in the 80’s. The kid on the left there had gotten his buddies to pull the soundman down on the floor and were wailing on him. No reason.  I was about to nail one dude who’d taken a swing at me when I realized I could kill him, so I bitchslapped the little fuck. That ended it. My buddy Don Butler was right there with a camera and got this notorious shot, which wound up on my brother Jon’s band 7” cover. The days of vinyl. Claw Hammer (named after a tune off of Trout Mask Replica) was one of the truly great bands of the ’80’s underground.  But don’t even ask about the tune…it’s some strange tale of childhood. People still call me Brother Brick. There was a band in Australia called Brother Brick (I never heard them.) I’m just glad it was a great tune. Imagine having some crap song with your name on it…..

Jazz is a hard luck story

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(2008–Brick’s Picks, LA Weekly)

There is a lot of jazz this week, but if we have to pick a fave it’ll have to be Jesse Sharps’ Gathering at the Jazz Bakery this Sunday. Jesse—a key player in the Pan Afrikan People’s Arkestra—released The Gathering a couple years back, an excellent slice of Leimert Park jazz featuring a couple dozen of the neighborhood’s finest all blowing like mad on some great compositions and nice arrangements. He’s gathered them up again for this show, and besides his own sax playing, there’s reedmen Charles Owens and Kamasi Washington, each capable of extraordinary fireworks (this is Eric Dolphy’s hometown, after all), trombonist Phil Ranelin and the incredible vocalist Dwight Trible. So good to see the great tradition of Leimert Park jazz alive and kicking.

Bit of a shame, though, it has to do its lively kicking out in Culver City, a long way from Degnan Avenue. Or that Jesse Sharps has to come all the way from Germany to get the ball rolling. Leimert Park is probably this town’s last living jazz neighborhood. Central Avenue is but a memory brought brilliantly to life once a year at its jazz festival, and downtown and Little Tokyo exist only in fond memories and some books; the older days are utterly gone. No memory, no history, no names, nothing. But Leimert Park is still here, charming and lovely and full of life. You can tell that jazz was once everywhere….but it’s often hard to hear any now. Now the music of Horace Tapscott echoes over at the Bakery while the spirit of Billy Higgins inhabits a too often empty World Stage. So sad. Perhaps some of our local politicians whose election posters still grace the walls around there will deign to take notice. Or perhaps not. Jazz is a hard luck story, no matter who wins elections. But we digress….

Maybe they just like him

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I’ve been so busy doing this blog I forgot all about Facebook. So I wrote this in Facebook. Then decided I could pretend I blogged it here. Posting or blogging…what’s the difference? Anyway, tomorrow is double nickles for Brick, btw. Finally. There was a time when double nickles meant double pennies, once for each eye. A hundred years ago that’s what that meant. Now people live forever. Weird. I party with guys over 80. And they do party. Everything but chase girls. Though my friend Virg lets them sit on his lap. All night long at our party, women in his lap. A friend a generation younger watched him jealously. What’s his secret? he hissed. How come they all sit on his lap? He was mad. I said I dunno. Maybe they just like him. Which just made him madder. I told him to have another bowl and not worry about it. He did and stopped. Later’s he’s goofing with the guy. Weed does have its uses. That was my birthday party. Last year or the year before, I can’t remember. They tend to blur together in an endless stream of anecdotes followed by hours of cleaning. Not having one this year. Too expensive. We’ll try later. Now we’re just gonna go to the Foundry on Melrose tomorrow. Love that joint. OK, I’m at work and not working. Many of you are also at work and not working. You’re reading this blog or on your Facebook page posting inane shit to people who write inane comments back. Like this. I mean this is inane. Way inane. Textbook inanity. Of course many of you are not working and can’t believe that I’d sit here at work and not work. I know. I feel shame. And that’s America to me. That and those women sitting in Virg’s lap.

Miriam Hopkins

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It’s so strange how movie stars seem free of time, and people who were born generations before us are young and vital and alive forever, and we can develop terrific and utterly ludicrous crushes on them. For me it’s Ava Gardner and Marlene Dietrich , and Miriam Hopkins. I have adored Miriam Hopkins ever since I saw her in the 1930’s Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde. That’s the best version of the story, Frederic March is brilliant and terrifying and Miriam Hopkins is sensational as the dance hall girl, in bed and nude and gloriously Pre-Code. You could get away with that in 1931. She seemed designed for those times, she was gorgeous and sexy, hot tempered and stubborn, she was willful and intellectual and independent. She loathed the Hollywood scene and instead hung out in high level literary circles with the likes of Tennessee Williams, Theodore Dreiser, William Faulkner, Dorothy Parker, and William Saroyan among many, bedding several.. Nuts about writers, she was.  And they her. Who could resist her brains and beauty and languid South Carolina drawl? Who could resist a movie star who didn’t like movie star? A southerner who broke all the rules of the old South, down to bedding who she liked and actively loathing segregation?  Her’s was a long career doing apparently what she wanted to do and not worrying much about the competition. Perhaps she didn’t give a damn what people thought, period.  She certainly swung that naked leg with willful abandon in Dr. Jeckyl and Mr Hyde. Funny how a shapely gam back then could be a feminist statement. Nobody could tell Miriam Hopkins how to behave.
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Monophytism

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Monophytism? It’s either the doctrine that Christ had a single, divine nature, or else it’s a venereal disease, I can never remember which.
 
I think the icon thing was settled when they decided it was OK to venerate icons as long as they did were not worshipped as being divine unto themselves. Of course, then Islam came in and rendered that moot. Aside from the fact that the Koran is venerated.
 
There are always complications…..
 
And then there are relics. Relics of the saints are one thing, but what if the relics are of jesus himself? What happens if you have an urn containing, say, the cock of Jesus. Doubtless there were many of these. Now, how would one venerate the cock of jesus? Is it the Lord itself/himself? In that case you worship it. Or is is a relic of the Lord. In which case you venerate it? Or is it something you leave on the mantle and talk about at parties? 
 
Me, I ‘m an atheist so how the hell would I know. I’m just asking.

Inutterably gorgeous

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(2011)

I am so wasted right now. My allergies kicked in insanely so I asked my  devoted wife to bring me a couple allergy pills. She complied. I gulped them down and immediately forgot. Later I just had to smoke this cigar I’ve had staring at me for a week or so, and then I decided I needed whiskey, went out onto our splendid sundeck, lit up that nice stogie and sipped a double whiskey on the rocks. It was a beautiful night, and everything turned a beautiful two dimensions and I sat out there in the silence, watching everything and out of my mind high on antihistamine and nicotine and a little booze. Loved every second of it. I rarely drink whiskey at home or smoke cigars or take double allergy pills and just loved it.  Thank god I am too wasted to type. But life is so beautiful.

(a couple days later….)

Wow…this is crazy beautiful. I forgot I sent this. I was really effed up…i had forgotten I had taken the double allergy pills and was watching the old Preston Sturgis flick The Lady Eve and everyone in it was drinking whiskey and smoking cigars so I had to join in. After a few puffs and a couple swigs I got incredibly buzzed . I remember sitting out there, the night was perfect, and all was instantaneously two dimensional and inutterably gorgeous…that is the one part of being epileptic I absolutely love, those sudden changes in depth perception. You guys can’t appreciate how lovely it is. The same effect happens on acid, so anyone who’s tripped has gotten a tinge of it.  In any case I sat out there and had the urge to write and laughed wondering who the poor soul was gonna be that got a deranged email, but felt better figuring I’d be too effed up to type. But these damn fingers…they tried. Out came that email. That first paragraph is a vivid and perfect description…I had forgotten all about that until I read this again.

Monotreme

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My first words at the office today were who the hell put a fucking platypus on my monitor? Normally it’s good morning, but there was a platypus on my monitor.

I was up till three in the morning writing, come to work a few hours later and have to deal with a monotreme. A stuffed blue monotreme with absurdly bulbous eyes. Cute.

I hate cute. I’m six and a half foot tall and look like an aging linebacker and that and cute don’t jibe.

But I work at Disney. ‘Nuff said.

Once I came to work many years ago and found an eight foot Tinkerbelle painted on my wall. There was me, my desk, my computer, and Tinkerbelle. The girls had a ball with that. A big macho dude with a huge Tinkerbelle over his desk.

That’s not even cute. It’s just sick.

And while none of this is worthy of a blog post, it’s my blog so there.

Joe Bataan

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Man, I love Joe Bataan. I finally got to see him several years ago (circa 2004, I guess) at the Filipino Cultural Festival in San Pedro. All around those huge old trees with their screaming parrots was a sea of Filipinos. They were chattering like mad, averaged about four feet, and craned their necks and stared waaaaaay up at me, giggling. We got some pansit or something and watched the inevitable beauty contest. There was some important pinoy dude emceeing the thing, and some politicians, and somebody from the consulate. And there were two beauty queens, former Miss Philippine Cultural Festival or something. One was a perfect pinay virgin, prim, sinless, polite, with a sweet smile. The other was some saucy knockout, an LA girl, this smartass, hysterically funny gorgeous chick who made a risque joke and I fell immediately in love with her, of course. She had some kind of connection with the LA Raiders, had been a girlfriend or something. A wantonly sexy woman. I remember the good beauty queen was obviously offended by her.

Anyway, there was some bad singing group that opened and went on forever. Then out came Joe Bataan. Really thick NYC accent and attitude. He called himself Joe Bataan (as in ran), and not Bataan (as in on) or Joe Bata’an (as in ah-on), which is how he was introduced. What an amazing set. Great soul and funk, all the classics. A total showman, he owned that stage. I stood in line afterward to have him sign the CD I bought there….something I never did before or after. I felt like a complete geek. But he was soooooooooooooooo cool, that Joe Bataan….

(2003 or so)

Eric Ego

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(unfinished letter, 1979, rewritten about 20 years later)

“Anyway, nothing much to say except that our singer is good, but manic” and I remember him bounding about a living room, pogo-style, screaming, “and after one practice session wanted to name the band after himself. He originally was gonna call himself Eric Ego, but by today the band’s name was Eric Ego. I told him, firmly but diplomatically, that there was no chance of that. Interesting character….” This Mr. Ego had some major credibility with us in that he had actually been to London, having raced over their upon punk’s outbreak.  He’d even been at the giant Rock Against Racism show in Hyde Park put on by Tom Robinson (of “Glad To Be Gay”) where Jimmy Pursey sang with the Clash and stole the show. Eric worshipped Jimmy Pursey.  And then the local pub band in his neighborhood had been Screwdriver, who wrote the early Oi! classics “Anti-Social” and “You’re So Dumb”, and Eric had been completely enthralled by the whole cockney oi! sensibility.  We were to be the Screwdriver to his Jimmy Pursey—I even seem to vaguely recall his plans to take us back to London—to New York anyway.  There were flickers of Ian Stuart’s later fascist leanings even then, but I think Eric embraced them as well…that is what happens to former Bowiephiliac Ezra Pound freaks when they wallowed in punk.  He left—I think I had to kick him out—and last I heard he had abandoned punk, married some Italian dame of some ancient but faded lineage, had a child or two and lived out some horrible European art film of an existence in the cultural backwater of Trieste.  I guess the bottle nearly killed him in the end.  Hard to believe he was just kid from Stockton, California.

Cephalopod

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The whole cephalopod universe is so amazing. That fantastic communication system of the squid. The intelligence. Especially of octopuses. It has always seemed so sad to me that they are constrained by such a brief life. If only they could have delayed sexual maturity a decade or so….with that brain the implications are astounding. Alas, I imagine the nature of their reproduction strategy precludes that from ever happening, it’s just the one quick shot and then death. But if only…..

Sigh….

I must learn not to ruin my whole day in ruminations over critters with whom I haven’t been close enough to exchange christmas cards since the pre-cambrian.