Press thing

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So Channel 36 is showing a gig from the John Anson Ford Theatre here in Hollywood–something called Jail Guitar Doors–and there’s all these bands and they don’t give any of their names. There were two rock bands I liked, then this Jackson Browne kinda deal that was, um, a little rough in the playing and harmony thing, and I’m telling my wife there’s some band here trying to sound like Jackson Browne–she can’t stand Jackson Browne–and suddenly they really did sound like Jackson Browne and no wonder, it was Jackson Browne, the real one, not the wanna be, running on empty, and I guess that was David Lindley. Then it was another act. No idea who. The crowd was up on their feet, following orders, and seeming to dig it. I was kinda uhhh but they jammed some on one tune which was cool. Still no hint who anybody is. They’re mostly young. I also don’t know what Jail Guitar Doors is, aside from a Clash b-side.

It just occurred to me that when I was at the LA Weekly I would have known who all these people were. They’d have this press thing, we’d all go, meet the promoters, a few musicians, be mugged by ill-clad samba dancers (well, that happened once), get a tour of the joint, be fed little finger things and drink lots of wine. One of those events where you’re just some bum on Cahuenga until you pull in and your name is on the list and you’re somebody and hanging with Lee Solters at a tiny table and eating pizza. Lee Solters, baby. One degree from Frank Sinatra. Hollywood. I said I’d tell that story some day and I just did. Ya know, the music press lives for this kinda shit. Free food, wine, samba dancers, people kissing your ass. And I always liked that event, but I had to be so nice back then. Not anymore. The less you get invited, the meaner you can be.

Uh oh, all the musicians are on stage doing a Kiss song. I wanna rock’n’roll all night and party every day. This is where I would have left, pulled out onto Cahuenga and been a bum again.

rear view

Those same samba dancers. Or three of them were, anyway. And maybe mugged is an exaggeration. This is from the Queen Mary, though. I was at this event. The table was right about where the photographer is standing. It was a tough gig. I was with a lady who was wearing about as much as these girls were. Weird things happen to jazz critics.

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Red Queen

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A couple weeks ago I confessed on a thread that I had no idea what football player beat up who. And I really did have no idea, I’d missed the whole appalling thing. Which meant I had no idea what these people on this particular thread were all raving about. And they were raving, words gushed out in the hundreds, the thousands, torrents of angry words. Flabbergasted at my ignorance, they turned on me, fairly outraged that I could so be out of touch. I apologized and sputtered something about not being an NFL fan. Neither, it turned out, were any of them…though, apparently, that was quite beside the point. It’s all over the news, they said. So I apologized and said I don’t really watch the TV news. Neither did they, they said…except this time. Well, I’ve been busy. It was a feeble excuse, and I could almost see them rolling their eyes and sighing. They threw themselves back into heated discussion. So and so should be jailed. So and so should be fired. So and so should sue them for everything they’ve got. I quietly slipped away. The Red Queen was coming, a blind and aimless fury.

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Flashback

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Kim Kardashian you’d expect but nude photos of Vladimir Putin on the web? Wrestling a Siberian alligator no less? For real? Does it matter? I miss the Weekly World News. TMZ is so unimaginative, naked movie stars and tacky selfies. Aliens meeting presidents and reptile man Elvis and naked Putin wrestling an alligator, now that is news. Waiting in line at Ralphs was exciting then. Now a supermarket check out line is the inevitable fifteen things that drive men wild and those pictures of Princess Di. It’s just not the same. You’d think the Koch brothers would bring it back, the Weekly World News. Fill it with lies and conspiracy theories and recipes from other galaxies. How do we slip them some mind fuck acid? Grace Slick just missed dosing Richard Nixon. His mind was nearly psychedelicized. In some alternative universe it happened that way. Time really did come today. Nixon in the White House, grokking with the protest kids. Freaking to Country Joe and the Fish. Give me an F, he says. Spiro does, and a U and a C and a K as well. What’s that spell? What’s that spell? What’s that spell?

But no, we got Watergate. And nattering nabobs of negativism. And the Koch Brothers. TMZ. Kim Kardashian’s naked ass. Sometimes I think we’re in the wrong universe.

Richard Nixon on brown acid at Woodstock.

Richard Nixon out of his mind high at a Grateful Dead show. Don’t eat the brown acid, they said. But Nixon went to China, and he ate the brown acid. Chou En-Lai wasn’t so sure, but Mao dug it. Feed your head, Nixon told him, feed your head. Mao did, and went for another swim.

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Herman Riley again

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Lockjaw and Prez made him pick up the saxophone. This was New Orleans. There was a teenaged “Iko, IKo”, the very first. By ’63 he’s in L.A., playing Marty’s every night, and players—Sonny Rollins, everybody—dropping by, sitting in. Steady work with Basie and the Juggernaut and Blue Mitchell. Twenty years with Jimmy Smith. A million sessions for Motown and Stax, and first call for a slew of singers—that’s where you refine those ballad skills, with singers. Live he slips into “In A Sentimental Mood” and everything around you dissolves. There’s just his sound, rich, big, full of history, a little bitter, maybe, blowing Crescent City air. He gets inside the very essence of that tune, those melancholy ascending notes, till it fades, pads closing, in a long, drawn out sigh. You swear it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard, that song, that sound, and you tell him so. He shrugs. “It’s a lifetime of experience” he says, then calls out some Monk and is gone.

LA Weekly, 2006

Herman Riley, with John Heard on the bass.

Herman Riley, with John Heard on the bass.

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After the crash

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I was looking at a photo essay of abandoned buildings in Ireland. They’d had quite a tech boom there for a while, then came the crash. You know the story. And while I stared at bittersweet pictures of Ireland I couldn’t help thinking of stretches of Southern California. It was just after the our own crash, in 2009, way out in the distant suburbs, the ones that sprang from nothing in the nineties and oughts. Though unlike emerald Eire with all its rain, out there in the high desert or Inland Empire or Temecula the unwatered lawns withered and died. You could drive through a tract of beautiful homes and tell the abandoned places by the dead lawns. Dead, dead, dead, green, dead, green, green, dead, green, dead, dead…..you’d see the lone green lawn on a cul de sac and wonder how eerie it must be to live there.

Empty houses seem more than foreclosed. It’s like whole a family was snuffed out. Streets of them, just gone. Ghosts.

Dead lawn, Temecula.

Abandoned yard, Temecula.

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Bulgarian women

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Last nite at Cafe NELA, out back. The guy said do you know what it’s like walking on an ice-covered street holding a Bulgarian woman’s purse? I said no, I didn’t. Well, he said, it ain’t easy. Then he went to get another beer.  He was a big guy, strong, stoned, intense, funny. Went all the way from to Sofia for some chick. That’s a long way from Highland Park. She showed him all the crazy places, the crazy people.  Listened to the crazy music. Wound up holding her purse so she could cross the street in spiked heels without toppling. He slipped and slid behind her. Never dropped the purse. You don’t do that for just any woman, I said. No, he said, you do that for the experience.

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Hemingway

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There’s a storm somewhere off Baja, and the air over L.A. is damp and listless and hot, and everywhere is the sound of overheated air conditioners and little else; people, pets, even the birds are still, no chatter, nothing. Words linger, form little phrases that string themselves out into long, lazy sentences full of conjunctions and commas that seem to wander nowhere in particular until stumbling onto a period. Remind me not to use such long sentences in a heat wave. When it’s humid, think like Hemingway. Short sentences. Drunk.

I love this town

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A wedge of Canadian geese just did their morning commute overhead from the Silver Lake reservoir–that’s why the grass is so green there–to the Los Angeles River behind me. Honking frantically. What a cacophony. They’ll come back a little less noisy at dusk heading back to the reservoir. I love the sound, and their ragged V’s are always perfect against the sunset. The sunsets have been lovely. Last night the sky to the west went from a gorgeous pink to a beautiful orange that filled the whole front room here with its light. Almost spooky. We went out onto the sundeck and watched till it turned to shades of grey and into black, and the lights in the hills came twinkling on and a last bunch of geese flew past, heading home.

And I wasn’t even stoned.

I love this town.

Canadian Geese (and a couple coots and a mallard) in the L.A. River.

Canadian Geese (and a couple coots and a mallard) in the L.A. River.


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Falling down

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So last night I’m heading down the front stairs, a bag or two for the recycle bin in each hand, and there’s no moon and no lights on and it’s pitch dark and I forgot there was one last step and bam. Nothing broke, recyclable or me. I picked myself up, went on down to the bins, did a few things in the car, smarting a little, came back in, popped a couple Tylenol, tooled around the house doing chores, wrote an essay, reworked a couple more, straightened out the place and got ready for bed. Then I noticed I had a bruise the size of a dinner plate. Realized it hurt. Took a couple more tylenol, and went to bed. I woke up today a little stiff and sore and the bruise was gorgeously purple. Very impressive. Then it dawned on me….I’m 57 years old and need to stop hurting myself. I’ve been hurting myself my whole life in all kinds of stupid ways, falling, slipping, bashing my head, slicing myself, everything and anything, and it’s time to stop. I mean I bet I’ve fallen on those steps half a dozen times. I’ve fallen so many times in my life–I have one functioning knee–that I fall like a stuntman. I fall without dropping what I’m holding. I fall and catch my glasses at the same time. I fall and get right back up like it’s nothing and didn’t even hurt, no matter how much it did. One time my knee gave out while on me while I was holding a cup of coffee and in half a second I was on the floor in a heap but didn’t spill a drop of coffee. It was a wedding reception, I remember, with all these people in suits and finery staring. It’s a skill I learned after probably hundreds of falls. A stupid skill, but a skill. So the next moonless night I decide to walk blindly down our treacherously charming old Silver Lake stairs–people were much smaller in 1932, and had tiny feet–I’ll take a flashlight. And only carry one bag and not four.  And try not to be such an idiot. It’s taken me fifty seven years to figure that out. And while this is a subpar blog entry, I just wanted to have it here so when I’m all laid out in traction trying to use the computer with one unbroken finger I can remember the promise I made myself, laugh, and hurt all over.

OK, time for more tylenol….

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You write about them

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(2014)

Wow, it’s been over six months since I pulled a Bill Holden. Scar isn’t much, apparently I heal well. And while bashing your head open on a coffee table is a bit traumatic, and bleeding all over is a drag, a sticky clean up, the experience now seems kinda cool. Being on my knees on the floor, a handful of blood and the first lines of a story popping into my head. Trying to staunch the bleeding with a compress and the rest of the piece coming together as I’m laying there. It was a trip. I wouldn’t say I’d do it again, but it was a trip. Life is full of crazy experiences, you take them as they come, and you write about them.

William Holden with cool scar. Mine was in the middle of my forehead, longer, and real.

William Holden in Stalag 17 with cool scar. Mine was in the middle of my forehead, longer, and real.

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