Category Archives: Autobiography,memoirs and confessions

Grammy Museum

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One night I finally gave in and went to one of these events at the Grammy Museum they were always after me about. It was dull, dull, dull. There was the inevitable private reception afterward with an open bar with expensive wine. The bored waiters slipped about with trays of bite sized things I couldn’t identify, but generally tasted odd. The crowd was all music industry types and hangers on and ass kissers and aging star fuckers and their rich kid freeloaders and not my scene at all. Not one bit. I slipped away for a minute and looked at some photo display in the gallery. Big shiny photos perfectly positioned and mounted and framed and very artily significant. Most of them were of rock stars, this being the Grammy Museum. Boz Scaggs and Rod Stewart and Bonnie Raitt, some Debbie Harry and David Byrne and Sting, like that.  For some ungodly reason, right there in the middle of them, was a shot of crazy, hardcore, anarchist, music business-hating Black Flag, with Henry Rollins all serious and fierce and young and not quite so buff. I recognized the beat up van they were sitting in and laughed….I remembered smoking dope in that very same van. Getting very high. That was, what, some thirty years ago? A couple party attendees came up, maybe wondering what I found so funny.  I got high in that van I said, aloud. Maybe too loud. They backed off. I laughed again. Nice people did that when we laughed back then too, thirty years ago. We would laugh, they’d retreat, we’d laugh again. Funny how laughter can be dangerous. Everyone took themselves very seriously in the seventies. So we’d laugh at them. It worked. This and the rest of my life three decades ago passed before my eyes. I was dying in there, surrounded by these photographs,  these people, this place. 

Suddenly I wondered just how the fuck I wound up hanging around a bunch of music industry hacks at the Grammy Museum. I hate the Grammys. I hate the music industry.  At that moment I knew I would never make it in this business. Me, who’d shared a bill with Black Flag in some hole of a club long ago. And me now, who only wants to sit in a small bar somewhere and listen to intense jazz improvisation. I just want the music, the pure stuff, all creativity and inspiration and intensity. Not this shit. Not this ultra hip industry crap. Not their fine suits and  fine cars and arm candy. I was hating myself for even being there. I had promised I never would, but there I was. Just another jazz journalist on the make. I had to get out of there, so I gulped down my two hundred buck chuck and split. The valet brought my car around. I got in and cranked up the radio. A saxophone screamed. I pulled into the city traffic and went looking for some jazz, feeling clean.

Plumbing

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So the boss comes by my desk and says you better run upstairs to the 19th floor and see what the hell is going on up there. It sounds like the ceiling over the men’s room is gonna explode. I ducked into the 18th floor john and sure enough there was an ungodly racket coming from above. Loud, vibrating, scary and potentially disgusting. I’d once had a very traumatic moment in the building when I was trapped by a volcanic toilet and came close to dying a horrible death, or at least having to buy new shoes. It just began welling up from one of the empty stalls, gurgling and splashing and trapped me in a corner behind the sink.It was a very long few seconds there, the foul tide rising and rising till I could back up no further and my mind was filled with really nasty scenarios. St. Crispin had mercy on me and interceded, the tide retreated, and I washed my hands with a violent intensity that made no sense at all. They were clean. I stood in the men’s room, remembering all this and staring at my shoes on the shiny floor. It began rumbling again upstairs. OK, let’s roll.

I took the elevator up to the 19th floor to investigate. It was a tonier floor than our humble 18th floor, with better, newer carpeting and not a hint of napwear. The furniture in the lobby looked new. The plants were so perfect they looked artificial. The elevator closed and slid away behind me and all was silence. Not a voice, not a rumble. Found the men’s room. All was peaceful inside. Flushed a toilet…the water splashed, rushed away, and all was silence. As I stepped back out into the hall suddenly there it was, an enormous roar, seismic even, you could feel the floor rumble. It filled up all that silence like the end of the world. Then it stopped, suddenly. Nothing. Since the world was still here, it had to be the plumbing. I stood in the hallway wondering when it began again, huge and loud and menacing. I’d never heard anything like it. Then the door of the ladies room opened, and I could hear it, the flush from hell. Pipes vibrated and roared, and out walked a very pretty blonde. Just lovely. She lowered her eyes as she passed, the door swung closed behind her. The noise abated.

Oh.

Transformation

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(2011)

Today the wife and I were running about town doing errands and decided to stop for lunch at some Mexican place in Echo Park we’d never been to. It’s off Sunset, a bit hidden, and you descend into the place from a rear entrance. Not a window in the joint, it was probably a speakeasy in the twenties. Very cool little spot. The room was intimate, the bar ample, the service great, the food delicious and it just oozed an Echo Park hipness, not yet discovered by the outsiders.  We’d picked a booth at the back with a view of the bar, and we’re being waited on hand and foot….it was obvious the elite dropped in regularly, and they treated every customer as a member, just in case. Basically a fun scene.

My phone rang.  It was a dude who wants me to write some elaborate liner notes. He pitched me, we went back and forth on what ‘s needed, and when, and how much money he was offering. The food came, I nodded at the waiter and he brought another Tecate, I mouthed “con limon” and he bought a beautiful dish of freshly sliced lemons. He silently refilled my water glass as I chattered loudly into the phone, I nodded thanks while laughing into the phone, he poured my beer and dropped in two slices of lemon as I gestured broadly at the guy I was talking on the phone to, who could not see me, and went back and forth over the money.  The waiter—his name was Miguel—slipped away silently. My food sizzled on the platter as the guy on the phone kissed my ass. I nodded. Finally I said OK, the food’s here and getting cold, and I could hear him grow nervous on the phone that I might bail because the temperature of my huevos had dropped a degree or two, so I said I’m aboard on the project, he said excellent, so we can work out the details later? I said sure, and he said ciao. I didn’t say ciao back, but said cool, which is basically jazz-speak for ciao. I put down my cell on the table like it might ring  again any second and took a sip of my ice cold beer and realized, damn, I was just one of those assholes who talks loudly on a cellphone in a Hollywood restaurant, making a deal. It doesn’t get more show biz than that.

Scary. Since writing for the L.A. Weekly I had changed. Little by little, but still, five years before that wasn’t me. Not even a little bit.

It bugged me enough to write it all down.

[I quit the Weekly a month later.]

Elevator

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Did I ever tell you about the time a lady took off her jeans, pulled on some panty hose and a skirt while I was with her in the elevator? Gorgeous blonde she was, too. Executive secretary.  She said pardon me as she pulled off her jeans. I said no problem as she slipped on the panty hose. She tugged and straightened and ran her hands up from toes to up there. I looked away. There were pumps in her purse. We got to her floor. She smiled and was gone.

That was so long ago, but I still think about it sometimes. Not often, maybe once or twice a year. But I’ll think about that elevator ride and I’ll smile, knowing no one really believes that story but me.

Kitty heaven

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Cat’s dying and we’re sitting here waiting for it to go. It looked bad once and revived so that you’d feel just terrible putting it down too soon. Now there’s been a turn for the worse, but not as bad as the first time. We were ready to put her down then but the vet really didn’t think it was time yet. She’s not ready, give her time. So we did and sure enough she perked up, wandered around, enjoyed herself. Spent some quality time with her sister. But now, I dunno. We’ll see tomorrow. Cats have an infuriating tendency to hit the final skids on evenings or weekends, when you have to go to the emergency vet and it’s big bucks. It’s a shame, though, she’s only ten years old. Diabetes. A severe case. She’ll be gone soon enough, she’ll shut herself down and begin that final purr. Then kitty heaven. Life returns to normal.

The new happens only once

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Watching The Foreigner again on TCM Underground. Yeah I know it’s awful, but so punk, so punk. God those were the days. I see these crazy asshole punk rock kids and I think damn, I was just like that. There’s a scene where the main guy’s watching a news report on the English punk rock scene and the horrified newsman describes in his broadcast voice what a bunch of destructive worthless scary incoherent morons we all were. All we want to do is wreck everything. We’re artless and nasty and a menace to society. The Damned are playing, the music is raw, hard and fast and the electricity shot through me. again, just like it did the first time. You’ll never hear that again. Never feel that again. The new happens only once, and after that it’s all history and nostalgia. So sad. You spend the rest of your life watching people who don’t realize what they’re missing when they don’t try to change everything. Sometimes everything is so fucked and compromised all you can do is tear it down and start all over. I’m useless to society and society is useless, the lead character says. Sometimes that’s a good thing.

You can’t be a rebel at 56, but you still don’t have to collaborate. Sometimes all you can do is tell the world to fuck off and get on with your lives. I beat the hell out of an old drum kit then, but now all I can do is write. So I write for me.

I’ll post this now before I have safe, middle aged second thoughts. Ha!

Oh yeah, Deborah Harry was gorgeous. Stunning. And not like Joni Mitchell at all.

iPhone

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Years ago a beloved cell phone of mine made a sudden, unannounced and very graceful dive into a cup of coffee. It really was a perfect dive too. Alas, it was suicidal, and the poor thing lingered for days beeping fitfully and emitting little vibrating death rattles. At last the phone gods put it out of its misery. Sad. Sadder still that all the phone numbers that were on it disappeared as well. Some of those numbers I never did get back. Some of those friends I never did get back. Friendships died with the phone.

The good thing was that my replacement cell phone was given the prefix 420. It didn’t occur to me at the time. 420 was 4-2-0. That’s how I thought about it, 4-2-0. Not my card carrying friends, though. 4-2-0 was 420. Dude! 420! They asked me how I got that number. I said I had no idea, which they all found awesome and hysterically funny until they went off to find something to eat.

I got a wrong number on the new phone once. He thought I was a pot clinic. I can’t remember the name, something vaguely medical. I said I wasn’t it. But is this 420-xxxx? I said yes, it is. Oh. A long uncomfortable pause. Perhaps you have the wrong number, I said. Oh, sorry, he said, and hung up. I thought there would be a mess of those calls but that was it, just that one bewildered, disappointed and slightly weirded out caller. Stoners can weird themselves calling wrong numbers, like they’d just called the police who are coming over to arrest them right now. A siren freezes them like a deer in headlights. It fades in the night and they fire up another bowl. Whew.

I had a number in college that spelled y-o-u s-u-c-k. Kids would smoke marijuana and call me. Your number spells out you suck. I know it does. You do? Yeah, that’s why I picked it. You picked you suck? Yes. Wow. They giggled, bewildered. Once I tried picking up one of the girls. She was so stoned she thought I’d called her. Hi, she thought I’d said, my number spells you suck. Your number spells you suck? I could hear her girlfriends giggling. I asked her her name. My name? Her girlfriends told her to hang up. Click. It might have been the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

Years later a friend of mine got a wrong number. The caller was a lady. She apologized and was about to hang up but he was slick, this guy, and two hours later he’s at her place. A long running not exactly healthy affair ensued. This was the days before cell phones, before email, before texting. I can only imagine his success rate texting. 

iPhones. I’ve yet to get an iPhone. I was just about to except a friend of mine has taken to wiki-ing every subject I am ever talking about, then showing me the screen so I can read it too. Apparently this is considered conversation.

Once I was at a jazz club. I’d accidentally sat down next to a couple who knew me, though I couldn’t remember them. The lady was so excited to be sitting next to me she pulled up my L.A. Weekly column on her iPhone. Look! It’s your column! She handed me the iPhone. I wasn’t exactly sure how one reacts in this situation, so I read a couple lines. Yup, that’s me. I handed her phone back to her. She beamed. She showed the virtual me to the real me. There was a big stack of Weekly‘s right behind me which contained the analog version of my column. But it wasn’t the same, I guess, as having the analog me, big as life, and the digital me in electrons there on her little iPhone screen. What a trip, she said. She sat there, furiously typing on the tiny keypad, tweeting. She took my picture and then typed again. Now you’re on my Facebook page! I said thank you and excused myself to find another seat.

I told myself that maybe I wouldn’t get an iPhone just yet. Not until these cultural issues worked themselves out. In a bar I’m still strictly analog. At a party I try to avoid the virtual reality for real reality. But those problems won’t iron themselves out. I’ll just start wiki-ing as people talk to me, and handing them my iPhone to look. They’ll glance and shake their heads like I do now. I’ll take their picture. Now you’re on my Facebook page. They’ll get up and find another seat.

Tweet.

That’s life, that’s what all the people say

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So I found an old item on my blog, an article I’d written about Tigran Hamasyan years ago, added some post-script paragraphs, and then re-posted it. Well, tried to re-post it. I hit the “publish” button and it vanished. Poof. Like it had never been.

So I wrote this, hit publish, and this one doesn’t diasppear. Which is ironic, because this is just stupid while the other was one of the best things I’d ever written.

Aint life funny that way.

Beyoncé

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I’m watching the hockey game and a commercial comes on with this pretty lady with long hair and she’s dancing and drinking a Pepsi and I ask who she is and discover that I don’t know what Beyoncé looks like and I can’t tell if that is cool or just kinda out of it.

Mea Culpa on the Pasadena Freeway

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My wife read me a gentle but firm riot act for arguing politics at a party tonight. I got the reading on the ride home. The Pasadena Freeway was a tangle on the oncoming side, three lanes funneling into one, lights stacked up the entire northbound length. We zipped along southbound, which would have been perfect but for the scolding sotto voce. Not that I didn’t have it coming. I apologized, made a joke, talked about the traffic. Ahem. That low grade shame, like getting caught chatting up somebody’s wife, pretending I hadn’t been, changing the subject. Man, look at all those cars going nowhere. Meaning we were going somewhere, moving, and ain’t that a good thing? She admitted it was a good thing. I imagined being stuck on the other side, going nowhere, and getting read the riot act. It wouldn’t have been so gentle then, not there in the middle of a freeway going nowhere. My ego would take a helluva beating, and I could say nothing, certainly not argue. There are times in a husband’s life that he knows not to argue, That would be one of them. I thought about that and sped along and sighed quietly in relief. We’d be home soon, and my behavior would be forgotten for the night. It’ll come up again. Wives always do that, bring up some ancient infraction just to prove some unrelated point.  It works. A husband has no idea what to say then, blindsided by ancient memories of a political argument at a party, or hitting on some long forgotten somebody else’s wife. Which is why I never argue politics at a party.

Except for tonight. I certainly argued politics tonite. But let’s not start that again. I just found my way out of that paragraph.

I used to work with a very likeable Tea Party sort. I never argued politics, tho’ he would, solo. Fulminating like a fool over something or other. Once he began ranting about Cesar Chavez. I can’t remember why. He just really hated Cesar Chavez. Hated him so much he stomped up  and down, hating him. Stomped and stomped. I looked up from my desk and said, simply, I used to work for Cesar Chavez. Which I did, actually. The effect was immediate. He stopped, mid-stomp, turned red and returned to his cubicle without uttering a sound. Last I heard about Cesar Chavez.

I didn’t stomp today. I bellowed, though. I was one of those. Ah well. Won’t happen again, I tell myself. My wife says sure, that’s it, just sure. Point taken.
 
p.s.: I was right though. Really, I was. Take my word for it.