Author Archives: Brick Wahl

Rush Tom Sawyer 45 played at 33

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A buddy posted a video of a Rush Tom Sawyer 45 played at 33 and made a Melvins joke. Perhaps some of you don’t get the reference. Don’t worry about it. It’s not important. But I have to admit that a couple times over the years I’ve realized that I’d been listening to a track at the wrong speed. Had been listening to it a lot sometimes. Maybe even every day. Usually because it didn’t say 45 or 33 anywhere on the label so I guessed and it sounded alright. Sounded great even. Then I’d notice something funny in the cymbals. Cymbals always give it away. Sped up or slowed down, a cymbal will not sound like a cymbal. It’ll sound like some weird metallic thing the drummer hit by mistake. So I’d switch it to the correct speed and the cymbal sounded like a cymbal. Indeed, all the instruments sounded like instruments, sounded so much like real instruments now that the tune wasn’t all that special anymore. Just another tune. Or maybe just another tune that would have been much better played faster or played slower. But when I went back to the wrong speed all I’d hear is that goddamn cymbal sounding so otherworldly and wrong. Fifty times I might have listened to that record and never noticed the distortion in the cymbals. Now that’s all there is, a drummer hitting some weird metallic thing by mistake. So I’d start listening to it at the right speed all the time and it wouldn’t sound as good and after a while I stopped listening to it at all. The song had been ruined. Bitterness resulted. You can only take so much bitterness before you give up and become a jazz critic.

photo by Kymberly Janisch

Bitterness.

Joe Cocker

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(2014)

Joe Cocker’s performance at Woodstock was so freaking outrageous, his live act was so demented that when I first heard he’d been a working man I didn’t believe it. I thought he must be mad. And what a band he had, that Grease Band, one of the great forgotten bands of the time. They are so hard and so on, that crunching guitar is so gigantic, those ridiculous backing vocals are so perfect, and when Joe says Baby it sounds like a hurricane, a tornado, a volcano blowing itself to pieces. That silly little nothing of a Beatles song rendered rough and Wagnerian by a band you could have seen in a bar. Nothing but dynamics, loud guitar, cool organ, falsetto, a hard ass rhythm section and a voice like a really angry god. Joe loved his Ray Charles, obviously, but, Ray never hurled a Baby into the void like that, this wasn’t soul, it was Götterdämmerung. Joe was on that day. And if there was one day you wanted to be on, it was that one, in front of all those people and all those movie cameras. I doubt he was ever that on again. Some things come only once in a lifetime, you do it, and spend the rest of your life wondering just what got into you that day.

I remember seeing Woodstock back in the early seventies when I was impressionable and fragile and sitting in a dark, dank movie theatre full of hippies and freaks and weed smoke and thinking uhhh, wow. Still, my experience was nothing like my pal Richie, rest in peace, who spent a wintry New Jersey afternoon smoking hash and wandered into the local cinerama dome to see Woodstock feeling three feet tall and the light was vibrating and like a little kid he decided to sit in the very front row and melted into the seat and the music and images surged over and around him and Joe Cocker was like some enormous monster, Godzilla sized, destroying the city. Richie was frozen, wide eyed, terrified, exultant, and when Joe let loose that Oh Baby to the gods above Richie thought it was the end of the world.

L.A. Marathon

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Back in the eighties we used to live on the route of the L.A. Marathon. Our place was on Edgecliffe just a couple doors up from Sunset Blvd. Perhaps you partied there. We threw one every weekend. We were very popular with the neighbors and it occurs to me that if the me now lived next to the me then, I would hate my younger self. Anyway, there used to be an empty lot at the corner of Sunset and Lucile, a block away, just perfect for a band. They gave away water and donuts too, but apparently runners like live music with their water and donuts. On the morning of the Marathon the band–high school kids, I assumed–would start warming up at 6 in the morning. We of course had gotten to sleep at 4 am after a night of punk rock and wantonness. You would be surprised at just how loud an electric bass can be playing top forty hits at six in the morning. And how it can turn you against runners, not to mention bass players. “What is Hip” they played three times, making it so very hard to go back to sleep. So I got up, made a pot of brutal coffee and staggered down to Sunset Blvd and joined the crowd of fools on the sidewalk staring at a completely empty Sunset Blvd. Eventually a guy from Kenya ran by. People cheered, which the band took that as a cue and played “What is Hip”. A few minutes later another guy from Kenya ran by. Then a guy from Ethiopia, a couple women from Kenya, and a cop on a bicycle. Finally scattered Angelenos appeared, then more, then a flood. The band ran through the entire high school band songbook. There was a Beatles tune I can’t remember. A Beach Boys tune I’ve repressed. Some Bee Gees (“How Deep Is Your Love?”), some Blood, Sweat and Tears, and “Vehicle” by whoever. By then there were hundreds and hundreds of runners. The band did “What is Hip?” again, but it was “25 or 6 to 4” that sent me back up the hill to our place again. I shut the door, shut the windows and put on something loud. By the time I was ready to face the daylight again the Marathon was long gone and Sunset was full of cars and buses exhaling great clouds of blue smoke. I breathed in deeply, coughed, and all was right again.
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LA Marathon

The L.A. Marathon on Sunset at Maltman, one block east of my vantage point. That 99 cent store was a grocery then. The empty lot was two blocks down, just around the bend. For you out of towners, that is the Hollywood Hills in the background, and that white smear near the summit is the Hollywood sign.

Red Carpet

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(2013)

Had pictures taken on the red carpet again last night. That’s Hollywood. You show up to an event as a bum. Well dressed, nice car, but still a bum. You hang around the somebodies and drink expensive free wine poured by a tall gorgeous thing named Melinda. I didn’t ask her name, she offered it. Probably because I was the only one tipping. More beautiful things slip silently around the room, bearing platters of edibles you can’t identify, usually. Never admit it, though. Never a what the hell is that, lady? Just take, eat, and thank her.  Every one around you knows everyone around you except you, it seems, then you know everyone around you too, for a moment, then you move to another part of the room seeking more oxygen and less carbon dioxide and don’t know anyone around you all over again. You watch. The dudes look cool, almost all of them, they got it. And there are far too many gorgeous dames for such a smallish room. Art everywhere, mostly musicians in photos and portraits, and album covers. This Aladdin Sane really stands out, as does Miles Davis in a grey suit, looking bad ass. There’s Hendrix over there. The Beatles. Stones. The sixties seem to dominate everything still, and always will. My time not so much. The seventies were too underground and small. Oh well. Don’t dwell on it, not here. Lay off the moody intellectual crap and get busy schmoozing. Meet new people, find unexpected connections, actually have to hand out business cards, how droll. This is a Miles Davis party, yet another one, he’s a whole party industry, and he’s not even around to stand us up. There’s a book, Miles Davis, the Collected Artwork, lovingly assembled by son Erin Davis and nephew Vincent Wilburn Jr., and it’s a vast thing, a superb coffee table tome so heavy you could kill someone with it, like in a murder mystery. People crowd around the table. It’s a hit and they’re grabbing them at fifty bucks a pop. One guy struggled with three, had he dropped one he would have smashed toes, but he didn’t. Look around again…there’s Summer Watson looking lovely, been ages, big hug. She’s with John Altman who knows everyone in the known hip universe and he did here too, the Miles Davis offspring, Wah Wah Watson, everybody. He offered introductions. I demurred. No Idea why. The crowd grew and grew. I hid in the back room a bit where there was air and remarkable jazz record collection, every time I pulled out an album at random, it was classic. I asked about them. The gallery owner (Sam Milgrom, a cool guy) had run a record store in Chicago and moved out here and opened this place, Mr. Musichead Gallery. They have a nice website, but in real life they’re a great little gallery a couple doors down from the Guitar Center. Rock stars past and present probably wander in here and buy something for the studio wall. I wanted to buy the Miles Davis LP cover. I didn’t (well, couldn’t). Back into the crowd. The deejay had tried valiantly to play acoustic Miles but gave up. I heard Bitches Brew later. Began to recognize people now. They nod, I nod back. Back at the table I flip dreamily through the book again. The art is really striking. The kind of thing a jazz lover buys himself for Christmas. But alas, it’s time to leave. The wine was too fine. And free. Out the door, through, we were ordered onto the red carpet. Smile! We smiled. A half dozen quick snaps. The valet brought round the car, and back we were, bums again.  What an odd world Hollywood is. You can almost get used to it.

Dodger Stadium

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(2015)

I haven’t been to Dodger Stadium since the early 70’s, and think that might have been the only time. My wife has never been there. We live only a couple hills over too, for decades now, and while these days the local urban forest blocks most of the view, the fireworks resonate incredibly here, echoing off the walls. Much louder in the back yard–sometimes with a distinctly metallic ring–than out front. Like a distant bombardment. It’s said that during the Great War, when the wind was blowing just so, you could hear the sounds of massed guns in Flanders across the Channel, and people would stand atop the white cliffs of Dover and wonder about their sons. I thought of that, oddly enough, when the Bee Gees played Dodger Stadium a decade ago and the atmospherics were such that there was an immense disco bass throb in the neighborhood. It was so loud I assumed there was a helluva rave going on down the street. We stood out of the sundeck in the warm night air and listened. When the cheers washed over us and I remembered the Bee Gees were at Dodger Stadium. The bass throb started up again as they encored, but I couldn’t make out the tune. Could have been Stayin’ Alive, could have been anything. I hate the Bee Gees my wife said. Yeah, I said, but the acoustics are cool. She shrugged and went inside. The bass throb ended and the cheering washed over us again, distant but immense. Fifty thousand voices condensed into a faraway roar. It was the strangest thing, this disembodied mass of human sound. I thought of the guns again, wafting on a cross channel breeze. After a few minutes the cheering ebbed and all was silent once more. For a big city, L.A. can have moments of near silence, and you can pretend you’re a million miles from anywhere.

And I swore I would never write about the Shaggs, again

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(2015)

So I’m outside the pad here and a car goes past blasting My Pal Foot Foot. Loud. Way loud. Even set off the (admittedly hair trigger) alarm on the neighbor’s SUV. I bet that never happened in your neighborhood, a whooping old school car alarm set off by the Shaggs. I bet it never even happened in your universe. It did here, in mine. Terrified, I ran inside, shut the curtains and waited for the Four Horsemen. They never came of course. Instead I’ve had the Shaggs bouncing off the inside of my skull all afternoon. A shambling, down beat stuttering, in tune only on Jupiter (or beyond) kind of earworm, alleviated only by the world’s greatest trumpeter next door stretching A Night in Tunisia on the rack. The tune cracks, bleeds notes, then dies a descending death where the bridge ought to be. I make the sign of the cross and light a candle.

And now this post is the second time I’ve written about the Shaggs. Here was the first.

Independence day

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(2015)

Saw literally thousands of fireworks last night, 100% illegal. It was like an artillery bombardment that went on for hours for as far as you could see. Enormous roman candles kept exploding right over our heads. You had to yell to be heard. Even the car alarms seemed to give up. LA’s eastside is magic and anarchy on the 4th of July, and from a height it is hellishly, crazily beautiful, a vision, and you can sit and watch it for hours. It one of this town’s most extraordinary spectacles, and one almost completely unknown to the rest of the world, and even to the rest of the city. First time viewers are always flabbergasted. The whole sky is blown to smithereens. I don’t think there is an official fireworks extravaganza anywhere that matches the backyard pyrotechnics of Los Angeles. This is a remarkably well behaved city, with a crime rate about fiftieth among American cities, yet once a year it goes utterly mad, turning the skyline into art and children into scofflaws and police into mute observers. Independence day means independence day.

"Silhouettes on Lincoln Heights" by Sonia Castro

“Silhouettes on Lincoln Heights” by Sonia Castro. This gorgeous shot from 2014 was taken from a vantage point that offers a 360 degree panorama of a city gone complete off its rocker on the Fourth of July.

Dr. George

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(2015)

Dr. George Fischbeck, RIP. What a classic character (and what a classic character’s name….) Dug up this clip from 1987. Hard to believe how simple it is, more 1950’s than now. The pace is so relaxed, the technology so sparse and free of busy clutter. He’s not competing with anyone. He’s not stacked out to yar. There’s no futuristic Mega Ultra Ultimate Gnarly Weathertrackingthing Plus spinning and glowing and promising rain. And dig that list…it’s paper. It’s wrinkled. Remember paper? Remember wrinkles?

Bakersfield was 97 degrees that day. Boise was 92. He got as far as Pine Bluff, Arkansas, 96. Record breaking heat. Then he turns to some little black and white photographs right out of 12 O’clock High and explains why. The pointer waves and twirls like a conductor’s baton in a John Philip Sousa march. Stars and Stripes Forever. I remember thinking that way back then.

Dr. George was to L.A. weather what Seymour was to monster movies and Cal Worthington was to dogs named Spot. I stopped tuning into local forecasts when Dr. George moved on. Not even the Pinay with a 100% chance of pulchritude kept me watching.

Well, a couple times she did. But only because it was raining. And not men.

Dr. George

Dr. George and his pointer. (Photo courtesy of the Los Angeles Times.)

Pizza Buona

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Just saw that Pizza Buona is looking to move. Priced out by rising rent. Sadly inevitable, though it suddenly reminded me of this, probably the closest I ever came to a restaurant review. It wanders off in a series of tangents–music, scenery, a party–and barely mentions the food, which is why I’m me and Jonathan Gold is Jonathan Gold, not to mention better paid. That being said, I did see him play cello in a heavy metal band. But I digress.

So we went to Pizza Buona at Alvarado and Sunset yesterday, per Justin Burrill’s and Lee Joseph’s recommendation. The place is a lot less red than I remembered. She ordered a large Special, crispy, which was perfect. The jukebox in the joint was gloriously unhip. Moon River is so unhip it’s not even ironic. Playing the Andy Williams version might be ironic, but this was the straight Mancini. They had Baby Elephant Walk on there too but I was afraid some hipster might walk in and it would show up on his next album. I dig unhip. There’s nothing unhip in Silver Lake anymore but it’s nice to see pockets remain in Echo Park. Got me a salad and I’d have shown you a picture but I hate it when people take pictures of their food. They invent digital technology and what do you all do with it? Take pictures of cats and salads. In the Polaroid days we didn’t waste precious film on pictures of cats or salads. Well cats, maybe. But not salads. Or cats and salads together.

OK, salad was good, beer was cold (Moretti), meatballs were good (we got meatballs), pizza was Jersey perfect. The vibe was good too (if not as red as it should have been) and the Burrito King across the street looked good. Never eaten there, but it looked good because it’s still there. That corner is pretty much unchanged since the days when Raymond Chandler could have mentioned it  but never did. You used to be able to get brain burritos across the street at the carwash. Wash your car and eat a brain burrito. What is sesos a lady asked. Brains, the guy behind the counter said. Cow brains, I added helpfully. She changed her mind and walked off, suddenly unhungry. I shrugged. The guy laughed. It was a tough town then, full of drive-bys and crack and brains in your burrito. Jonathan Gold probably ate there. Had the brain burrito. Those Pulitzers don’t come easy.

One time a friend showed up at our house for a party with a dozen vegetarian bean burritos from Burrito King and a bottle of Cisco. Cisco looks like Orange Hi-C with a mean hangover. He spent the party out on the steps roaring drunk and digesting loudly. You can only hear a slurred Cisco Kid so many times before it loses its funny edge. The Panther showed up and joined him. They ate vegetarian bean burritos and passed the bottle back and forth and belched front and back. They sang and laughed and made loud jokes without punchlines. They became the best friends a man ever had until the bottle was empty. I’m sure neither remember this now, but I remembered while gazing out the window across Sunset Blvd. We waited for our pizza and I put quarters in the jukebox and listened to Enrico Caruso sing Vesti La Giubba from Pagliacci. He recorded that in 1907. The year before he’d been in San Francisco when the earthquake hit. The city fell down all around him and he didn’t like that one bit. But you can’t tell that hearing this. So I played it again, and the pizza came, and it looked beautiful and smelled delicious and I listened to Caruso in rapt silence. What’s he singing about my wife asked. He’s a clown, he tried to kill his wife and her lover, I think. Were they clowns too? Yes, I said, they were all clowns. Sounds sad for clowns. Yeah, it’s a tragedy. She handed me a slice of the pizza, the music swelled, and we ate in silence, listening.

Caruso

Here’s that same 1907 Recording of Enrico Caruso performing “Vesti la Giubba” from Pagliacci. If you don’t know it by name you’ll recognize the tune after a minute and a half, trust me.

Renzo Piano’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum

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It might look ugly now, but in the future it will also look ugly, so there will be continuity and a sense of timeless ugliness. Plus people will always love bowling. But I think it would look better next to the Triforium.

Renzo Piano’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Museum.

Renzo Piano’s Academy of Motion Picture Arts, Sciences and Bowling Museum.