Author Archives: Brick Wahl

On the Waterfront

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Was watching On the Waterfront and when Terry Malloy fesses up to Edie (he didn’t know they were gonna knock him off, he says) there is a helluva racket in the background, a huge clattering pounding. It’s a steam pile driver, and I remember seeing one in downtown Milwaukee thirty years ago. One of the loudest sounds I have ever heard, huge bangs amplified off tall buildings. Almost painful. You had to shout to be heard. I remember being startled at the volume, but the locals didn’t seem to notice. They used to build those monsters in Milwaukee and I suppose they were part of the scenery. No one ever said the industrial revolution was quiet.

Anyway, here’s one in upstate Wisconsin somewhere, at a fair. It’s loud, but it’s hammering wood, not steel. You want to hear it slam steel. You won’t forget it. A clang like the gods themselves, almost.

OK, this was an essay about On the Waterfront and I didn’t even write about On the Waterfront. Instead I wrote about something Terry Malloy might have talked about. Method writing, I guess.

A picture may be worth a thousand words and all that, but it doesn't make a sound. Without the incredible harbor racket in this scene, the scream of the tugs, the shrieking steam blown off by giant harbor rigs and and especially that pounding, slamming, clanging incessant pile driver, you don't feel the claustrophobia at all.

A picture may be worth a thousand words and all that, but it doesn’t make a sound. Without the incredible harbor racket in this scene, the scream of the tugs or the shriek of steam blown off by giant harbor rigs, and especially that pounding, slamming, clanging incessant pile driver, you don’t feel the claustrophobia at all. You can’t tell at all how trapped these two are. You can’t tell anything at all. It’s mute.

Batman

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(February 1, 2014)

Watching Batman. Never really watched Batman. Was about to turn it off when the Joker empties several buckets of paint–red, yellow, purple, green–onto a priceless antique table and then has his henchmen bust it up with axes. All this color and violence. Out with the old, he yells, and in with the new! His henchmen reduce the table to fragments and he cackles and cackles.

Damn, man, revolution. Anarchy. That was me as a punk rocker. Sometimes you need to destroy everything, I use to say about rock’n’roll, reduce it to atoms. Then start over. The excitement was so visceral. We took our axes and destroyed everything beautiful. All the pretty, all the luscious, all the sensitive we destroyed. We were the Joker’s henchman, smashing. These beautiful old things, pulverized, reduced to fragments. The very sound of the smashing thrilled us. The feel. The urge. The everything. We were the Joker cackling. The me then would hate me now. I had my time I’d say. I’d splutter in self-defense. Why me? I believe in you. I’m on your side. I’m a good guy. Down come the axes. I stand cackling over the destroyed me. God rot good men. The Joker cackles.

Worlds are rebuilt by fire.

Bob Dylan

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(February 3, 2014)

People are moaning–and having seen the commercial, I can understand why–that Bob Dylan is selling Chryslers now. That’s because Bob Dylan didn’t die. If you die early enough you’re never corrupted. But if you live to old age people condemn you for things that they themselves would do in a minute, given the chance. Alas none of us ever will get that chance. But I’d bet even money that Bob Marley is selling Caribbean Cruises in an alternate universe right now.

Then there’s blinkered memories…people forget that John Lennon was a washed up junkie has been when he died. Not saying he wouldn’t have turned around, but his stuff was no better than Paul’s crap of the time. We dis Paul. Whatever happened to him? Was it Linda? But John was heading in an even limper direction, that first album ancient history. Remember he sang, but he probably didn’t. Hard drugs do that. Then he is murdered and suddenly he was as great as he ever was, perfection, a martyr. He and Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix and John Coltrane and Hank Williams and you name it, all dying before a long spell of rot set in. It’s lucky Jesus died when he did, a fat old Jesus with a drinking problem could not have launched a faith.

I picked up a Sonny Rollins album. Sonny is my hero of heroes. There was a tune on side 2 called Disco Monk. Had I seen it on there I would never have bought the album. Disco Monk. From The Bridge and East Broadway Rundown to Disco Monk. I heard that and wondered about John Coltrane in long sideburns playing sessions with the BeeGees and felt a cold shiver down my spine. Age is tragic for a martyr. Bob Dylan came so close to perfection in that motorcycle accident. We’d have all been so happy now, comparing all the sell outs to Bob Dylan lying there lifeless on the side of the road.

Pig roast

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Going to a pig roast.

It’s amazing how many people in L.A. you can offend by going to a pig roast. Religious reasons, PETA reasons, global warming reasons, even Green Acres reasons, everyone gets mad. It’s not even Tiki themed so all the ironic types are rolling their eyes, listening to Martin Denny.

There’s no winning. Just eating..

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Jack Palance

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Jack Palance on TV. The Lodger. I sat on his lap when I was one year old. Encino. A dentist’s office. He cooed. I grinned. No blood was shed. Later I found his copy of Henny Youngman’s party jokes at an antique store in Bakersfield. Five dollars. I cooed. I grinned. But now I can’t find it. Maybe it never happened. I don’t remember sitting in his lap either. I was too young. Perhaps my mother lied. Mothers do that in old Jack Palance movies. They lie. Hide things. Have secrets. The truth is twisted, warped, dark. Too many shadows. Like Rita Hayworth with a gun in a fun house mirror. She didn’t want to die. She did. But I digress. And now Jack Palance is lying to Aunt Bea. Life is cruel, hard. Jack Palance cooed. I grinned. And I didn’t even get a selfie.

Jack Palance in the Lodger.

Jack Palance in the Lodger.

Cow Bop: Too Hip For the Room

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2011: Bruce Forman asked me to write the liner notes for the new Cow Bop album. I don’t want the usual jazz liner notes, he said. Just write like your usual crazy self. Just start riffing. So I riffed a take. I like this, he said, got another? I riffed another, and another. Yeah, he said, I like these. Anymore? So I dashed off another. That it? I gave him one more. Five takes. That enough? Yeah, this is great. I’ll use one for the CD, he said, and another for the website, and he cut me a check. Cool. Can’t remember which of the five he used, though. But if only all liner note gigs were like this.

Cow Bop Take 1

Too Hick For the Room my big city ass. Sounds just right by me. This town, hell this world, needs a lot more Bob Wills. Western Swing is air you can breathe, smoky and boozy and dudes out in the parking lot fighting. Inside the honky tonk everyone’s grooving and swinging, hell there’d be dancing with the ladies if all them uppity jazz swells and slick hipsters would or could take a step or two. Man, can these cats play. Cow Bop ain’t no country radio band (not yet anyway), ain’t no jazz band either, but mama they sure swing, and yup that’s some pure Charlie Parker you’re hearing there in that mind blowing guitar solo. Bruce Forman that cat is, a barbed wiry, smirking smartass in a Stetson. The fiddler trading licks with him is Phil Salazar, and the hottie singing sweetly in the middle is Pinto Pam. Hands off, fellas, she sizzles. A dude I knew heard this album just once, jumped into his car and headed straight up the Grapevine where the mule deer and antelope play. Bakersfield is up that away, he said, next best thing to Amarillo. They got pickup trucks there, and cows and oil fields and chicken fried steak, and they got the Silver Palace and Merle and honky tonking Saturday nights. They got Cow Bop? No, he said, but they should. Best western swing in the land.

Cow Bop Take 2

Never expected to see something like CowBop in a jazz club. Saw ‘em take the stage in cowboy hats, pronghorns glued to the bass drum, singer in a long cowgirl dress. The regulars in the jazz joint stared over their cocktails, not getting any of this. The music was lightning fast, kinda swingy but awfully down home too. And man could those cats play. Solos zipped back and forth from fiddle to guitar and back again. Damn if that smartass guitar player wasn’t quoting Charlie Yardbird Parker. And ol’ crooked horn Dizzy too. And a lot of Bob Wills. The pretty girl sang about Texas, and dancing, and drinking, and men doing ladies wrong. By set’s end I was hooked, line and sinker. Y’all got any records? They said they had a couple. We got a new one we’re working on too. Yeah? Any good? Goddamn right it’s good. It’s gonna make us stars. And they packed up their gear and tossed it in the back of an old red Chevy pick up and took off in a cloud of dust. Well, that new one is this one here, Too Hick For the Room. Hot damn. What they call great driving music. That long stretch of highway between Tulsa and Bakersfield went by in a flash. Cow Bop.

CowBop Take 3 Continue reading →

Les McCann

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(2010, from a Brick’s Picks column in the LA Weekly)

This Friday at LACMA the L.A. Jazz Society presents their Los Angeles Jazz Treasure award to the great Les McCann.  Even if you don’t know the name you know his signature tune “Compared to What”. Talk about a soul jazz classic, it cooks hard and is funky as hell too. Not to mention one angry tune, angry at the War mostly, but at everything else too, all the bullshit that going down in 1969. “Compare to What” quickly morphed into a Civil Rights anthem in the bitter days after the Jackson State Massacre, when “People Get Ready” seemed too quaint and optimistic for the heavier times. Jazz-wise, Les McCann laid out the tune’s funked up piano and that wonderfully pissed off vocal, saxman Eddie Harris wailed on the thing, trumpeter Benny Bailey too. You’d hear “Compared to What” on the jazz stations and the R&B stations and on the free form hippie kid stations for years afterward, slipped between angry funk and Gil-Scott Heron. For sure he got sick to death of the thing soon enough, people yelling out for it all the time, no matter what he was playing, and he played an awful lot of great music over the years. But yell it out again here…they did at Playboy, where he also appeared with tenor Javon Jackson’s quintet, and he performed a pumped up and righteous rendition, too, ten thousand voices chanting god damn it, real compared to what? Having Jackson here at LACMA is a special treat, we’ve been digging his stuff for years, he’s a brilliant player; we just love his great sense of dynamics. His own grooving take on the soul jazz thing is alive and creative, never clichéd. Dig this one people, give it up for Mr. Les McCann and this smoking band. It’s free, too.

Eye doctor

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(2010, from a Brick’s Picks column in the LA Weekly)

Listen, man, Dr. Elliot Caine is up front explaining  astigmatism to a Highland Park hipster mom when Cannonball just starts burning on alto for a zillion choruses, then Hank Mobley comes in, takes it back to the head and in comes Miles again. A little while later it’s a funky Lou Donaldson session, then an even funkier Lonnie Smith with a groovin’ George Benson before he got so damn rich. And look around….half these cats are up on the walls, no waterfalls and floral scenes in Dr. Caine’s office, just classic jazz photography. As we’re about to step back out onto York Boulevard we hear the opening strains of Search For the New Land. Dr. Caine looks up from the scrip he’s writing, says ya gotta have some Lee Morgan, man, then goes back to optometry. It’s pretty damn hip office for an eye doctor. He’s got a pretty hip band, too, at Alva’s this Friday. Tenor Carl Randall, bassist Bill Markus and drummer Kenny Elliott are solid players and veterans of the jazz grind, earning and learning the craft the hard way in the joints and bars along Central Avenue or on Chicago’s South Side or in just whatever dive was booking for a while before turning into a disco.  The experience shows, when they do a blues it’s down and dirty, when they launch into one of Caine’s exciting post bop things it smacks of the street and a zillion worn out Blue Note LP’s, not of art school. Caine’s trumpet reflects decades of long nites doing casuals or blowing high notes in funk and Latin and ska bands while learning every Lee Morgan and Miles solo just to see just what made them tick. Sitting in again is astonishing young pianist Mahesh Balasooriya, who in a town awash in ridiculous keyboard skills stands out for the visceral power of his playing, a virtuosity stripped of frill and niceties, just stunning jazz power. And brilliant Nick Mancini returns for this live session too, bursting with ideas that no matter how arcane or out or gorgeous he never lacks the vibes chops to pull off. (Nick also writes a great gig announcement—get on his list.) It’s an evening well worth your ten bucks, especially when you can bring your own drinks and eats and there ain’t a bad seat in the house. Plus LeRoy Downs in emceeing, and he don’t do no bogus gigs.

Playboy

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Playboy’s Miss May 1979 is on Antiques Road Show with her bunny outfit. It’s worth several thousand dollars. She didn’t have the knee socks. Though I didn’t remember the knee socks. Apparently my roommate didn’t pick up that issue. Or maybe all I read were the articles. Though knee socks are an article, actually. In fact, knee socks were about the only article. The parasol was an accessory.

The first time I ever dropped by Playboy Studios West to pick up press passes for the Playboy Jazz Festival the receptionist was this great old guy built like a retired master sergeant. Loud and a lotta laughs. Perfect. We had a long talk while I was waiting for some harried production assistant to show up with my passes. She rushed out, panicked, found my passes, and rushed back inside again. I said so long to the master sergeant and he said hold on and handed me a few copies of the magazine. They had stacks of them in the waiting area, the way your dental office has People and Sunset. Enjoy, he said. I held them tightly by my side, covers down, as I walked back to the car. Tossed them in the back seat. At home later I discovered they were the Czech, Dutch, Turkish and Japanese editions. The pictures were nice and very international, but since I don’t speak Czech, Dutch, Turkish or Japanese, I couldn’t read them for the articles. I can now say long walks on the beach in four languages, though.

Leave It to Beaver

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What is the awkward age, asked the Beaver as I surfed past. I waited for his friend to answer. That’s when you start shooting up and your clothes don’t fit, he says. Sounds more like crack, I thought, marveling at how Beat-hip the dialogue was. I had always figured that was more a Dobey Gillis thing, Maynard G. Krebs out of his mind high, wigging out over Dizzy Gillespie. But here is Jerry Mathers, learning about heroin on the street. Channel surfing past a few minutes later he is asking Wally if he’s cuddly. I’m your brother, Wally yells, don’t ask me questions like that. I guess I had missed all this subtext as a kid. Maybe Ward really was hard on the Beaver last night.

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