Author Archives: Brick Wahl

Thirty bands

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Wow this thirty band thing. It’s like some kind of plague. Infected, I tried coming up with thirty bands I shared the stage with and all I could come up with was Beatlemania, the Norman Luboff Choir and Corrosion of Conformity. Then I remembered I wasn’t actually on the bill, that was just the line up of the Lollapalooza no one talks about. I was supposed to be on a Gong Show once, sharing the stage with Chuck Barris, but cell phones weren’t invented yet. I played drums for Sky Saxon twice in one night, neither time voluntarily. And I remember once opening for Green Day, they were the 13th band on the bill, we the first. We were so first, in fact, the manager wouldn’t open the doors and our half dozen fans stood outside, listening through a window. Sort of like the sound check we never had.

I did have a guy leap stark naked into my drum kit once. To make things worse he was the guitar player. One of the guitar players. The other was slithering across the stage like a snake. That left me and the bass player, or just the bass player, actually, as there was a naked stoned guitarist flailing about where my drums used to be. I remember another time when the stark naked daughter of the district attorney of Ventura County ran screaming across the floor into my drum kit but didn’t fall in. I don’t remember if I said anything, but I do remember that her rack toms were bigger than mine. Heavy metal sized. An autistic guy fell into my drum kit once.

When this stuff stopped happening I got bored with drumming and became a jazz critic.

I did actually play with Joe Baiza a couple times at Al’s Bar on No Talent Night, but his attorney told me never to mention that. I also opened for Black Flag the very weekend they got arrested for playing punk rock music. In fact, they had just gotten out of jail. The LAPD called them nuisance in publics or something like that. Anyway, they put them in jail and this song is called revenge and it’s for them. It’s not my imagination, I got a gun at my back.

Otto’s Chemical Lounge

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Dig this: “Departure Blues” by Otto’s Chemical Lounge.

I’m amazed–appalled?–that this is the only cut I could find on YouTube off this amazing album. Otto’s Chemical Lounge were not only one of the most inventive bands to come out of Minneapolis in its heyday (speaking of Minneapolis….), but OCL were one of the great bands of the entire 80’s. One of the greatest even.  Noisy as hell, rocking but swinging, they had great dynamics for a punk band of the time (we were all incredibly loud back then) and some crazy ass guitar. The music is plenty loose in the stretch but tight on the changes, which come hard and fast. Insane stuff. I’ve had my copy of Spillover for thirty years and still play it. If only I could have seen them live. They never came out west. The successor band did. They were called the Blue Hippos. I saw them at Club Lingerie in Hollywood in the late 80’s and they were good, but not as good as the original. But the Blue Hippos were brand new. You got the feeling that Otto’s Chemical Lounge had been around a while, jamming hard in the basement through winter after dreadful winter, and if not the most popular band in town, they just might have been the most ingenious. There’s a mindphuque Shakin’ All Over on the record, and an intense take on the old Flamin’ Groovies classic Slow Death. The originals are best of all, though, a good thing. Spillover is just one of those splendid records that never seemed to make it onto compact disc, or onto anything really, except a record geek’s mix tapes, and who knows where those wind up.

I couldn't find a picture of the band back in the day, but I found this record geek shot of the album.

I couldn’t find a picture of the band back in the day, but I found this record geek shot of the album.

My Pal

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Listen: God “My Pal” (1987)

This might be my favorite song out of all the songs from the incredible 1980’s underground rock era that infested dingy bars and dangerous night clubs world wide…one of the most exciting and creative periods in the entire history of rock’n’roll, a gloriously analog time that is almost completely forgotten for that very reason, because we now live in a digital universe. Only those who were there remember it, just as only those who were there remember the days when vaudeville or radio or live television was the most happening thing ever. Digital lives forever, analog disappears as records become unplayable and cassette tapes disintegrate. Maybe one tenth of one tenth of one tenth of all the music of that time survives on CD or YouTube. Entire scenes have disappeared without a trace. It’ll take archeologists to dig through all the basements and storage bins and closets where the remains lie, in worn out old 45’s or piles of flyers or boxes full of mix tapes. We called them compilation tapes then, and they’re like time capsules. You find one and if it still plays you can hear your past life. I have this song on cassette, one I put together, all this ancient music pouring out. I still have the 45 too. And I have my memories. It was a glorious time to be alive–those of us who survived it, anyway–and for some reason, it has all crystalized for me in this one song, which I first heard some thirty years ago when this record magically appeared in the mail all the way from Melbourne, Australia, and I slipped it on the turntable and listened to it over and over and over.

“My Pal” by God on Au Go Go records, 1987.

Keith Levene

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In one of those mysteries of social media, I now get messages from Keith Levene on LinkedIn. So do lots of people, I imagine, but the idea of getting messages from the guy who played the post punk Ur-riff on “Public Image” now on a platform so hopelessly square as LinkedIn is surreal. It’s like seeing Allen Ginsberg in Reader’s Digest or Tim Buckley on Lawrence Welk. Anyway, he sends us these chatty little messages, thoroughly unpretentious, and sometimes includes music. I just listened to his latest, “Never the Same Thing Twice”, and damn, it’s really good. It’s got a real analog, 1977 feel to it, and though it doesn’t sound old, it sounds authentic. Real. Alive. And that, I seem to recall, was what it was all about back then.

It’s off his new release, he says, Keith Levene’s Commercial Zone.

Look and listen for yourself here.

Keith Levene's Commercial Zone cd cover...puled from his website teenageguitarist76.com

Keith Levene’s Commercial Zone cd cover…pulled from his website teenageguitarist76.com

John, I’m Only Dancing

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Back in high school–this must have been ’73 or ’74–a bunch of rotten kids turned school sponsored Elvis Day, with all the kids dressed up in fifties get ups, into David Bowie Day, dressed to the nines like Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, it was beautiful. I remember sitting in English class in my regular togs, surrounded on three sides by kids dressed exactly like this video and John, I’m Only Dancing going through my head over and over.

Miles Davis, once removed

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One time I was asked to attend an event–one of those Miles Davis events, some album cover art thing again–and when I got there I was literally the only person from the jazz world present. No critics, no players, no fans that I could tell. A lot of arty types, and some very beautiful women, and dudes in slick suits and bling. There was no food and the scenesters started splitting. I looked at all the paintings (alas, I’m an art ignoramus) and was about to leave when the publicist grabbed me and said she wanted me to meet Miles’ daughter. I was introduced. Miles’ daughter looked bored and tired and sick to death of hangers on and sycophants and especially critics. She rolled her eyes, sighed, and turned away without saying a word. The publicist blanched but I remember thinking how cool…I was just totally dissed by Miles Davis’ daughter. It was too perfect. It was almost like having a Miles Davis experience. Jazz was once full of Miles Davis experiences. His raspy voice, his sighs, his sting. Jazz musicians tell and retell those stories their whole lives. Critics still wince remembering their own painful encounters. Alas, I’d come along too late for that. But this was the next best thing. A story I’d be telling for years. His son, though, was a real disappointment, friendly, polite, affable and apparently pleased to meet me. A nice guy. We talked a while, and I wondered if he was adopted. OK, I didn’t. That’s ridiculous. But what a contrast. Anyway, the event was pretty dull, but Miles Davis’ daughter made my night. I met her again later, at some other function, and she was perfectly sweet. But I had lucked out that first time and caught her on a bad night. When you’re a critic with lots of readers you get a lot of fawning attention, it’s unavoidable. It used to drive me nuts, every one being so nice to me. Secretly I couldn’t stand it. So getting the full Miles from someone who was part Miles…that was priceless. One of my favorite jazz memories, in fact. I had my own Miles Davis experience, once removed.

One Angry Samoan

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Had a ball last nite watching old pal Billy Vockeroth with his Angry Samoan (just the one) at Cafe NELA. Seen him and Lizzie plenty of time at our xmas bashes over the years, but we haven’t seriously hung out (or been to their rural digs) in hell, a decade or more. I’d forgotten what a perfect drummer he is at this stuff, a tutorial in how to play punk rock not like an idiot or like a good drummer slumming or exactly like the Ramones. Better yet, you can’t name him stylistically–he doesn’t sound like anybody except, well, happy crazy Billy Vockeroth. I hadn’t watched a rock drummer that knocked me out just being a rock drummer in a long time, not like I do the jazz and Latin cats. But Billy is great, a blast to watch and when called for, he shreds. When not called for, he can sit back, every backbeat and splash and perfect little fill completely in the pocket, as they say, tight where it should be tight, with natural precision. And it wasn’t even his kit. Fifty years of drumming and you learn a thing or two. He even sings and plays, like Moulty or Karen Carpenter. The three non-Samoans are perfect, too, tight but with an edge, the two kids on guitar nail it as well as take most of the vocals, and bassist Mike Villalobos (aka Mike V, a creative cat, here solid as always) was loving every second being half of a rhythm section where the drummer is always there. (It was also Mike V’s birthday bash, a good one.) They did all the hits and people spun around crazily bopping into and off each other when the music got frantic, old style, though nothing–beer bottles, equipment, bones–was broken. They finished up the set with My Old Man’s A Fatso and the place went into Brownian motion again, and when they encored with a couple ancient Black Flags tunes, Wasted and Nervous Breakdown, the crowd went even more nuts, bouncing off each other like crazed eastside dervishes in a miniature pit. It was all harmless fun, though. This stuff ain’t scary anymore, it’s not menacing or dangerous or bloody or revolutionary. It’s not even angry.  It’s just thoroughly entertaining, and everyone went home happy and exhausted, even the old geezers who thought they’d never write a punk rock review again.

Charles Owens at the World Stage

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(from an LA Weekly article–2005. My editor Greg Burk and I went down to Leimert Park and wandered about. Talked to a bunch of the local jazzers. He wrote it all up in a piece and then added part of this account of a gig at the World Stage. Space limitations let him use only about half of it, but here it is in all its raging glory.  To this day, I look on this Charles Owens performance–if that’s the word, it seemed more than that–as one of the most spectacular nights of saxophonery I’ve ever witnessed.)

Went down to Leimert Park on Saturday night to check out sax player Charles Owens and trumpeter Richard Grant at the World Stage. Inside, the place is just a tiny storefront with folding chairs, really, and it was stifling. Nedra Wheeler was squeezing her double bass behind an unused drum kit. Derf Reklaw, up front by his three congas, was tearing the folks up with an outrageous story about some nearby African gig where he was yelled at by the bandleader for not dressing African enough. “What you mean, man? These clothes are from Senegal! I bought ‘em there!” Owens walked in decked out in matching powder-green shirt and slacks and a big white Stetson. Absolutely incongruous; someone cracked wise about the hat. A guitar player, whom I did not know (it was a very young Steve Cotter) took one edge of the stage as Owens busied himself taking away that unused house kit a piece at a time, giving the band some breathing room. A local loony took a seat in back, chortling a little too intensely, and the doorman hushed her — for the first of several times. Outside on the street, a trumpeter was blowing loud, flat, cracked notes. Someone went out and shushed him too. Owens was doing mostly Joe Henderson tunes. Reklaw laid out some Elvin Jones rhythms that kicked up the energy — certainly got the loony going; she was squirming in her seat and shouting like Moms Mabley on bad acid. In the second set, Owens’ “Shake Your Booty” was genuinely funky; he took his solo from the back of the room, and the whole place seemed filled with the music; the loon was going even more nuts. Owens took his solo outside—literally, out onto the sidewalk, playing for all the folks out there–came back in, dropped out and Wheeler took over, laying down a swimmy groove. The encore on Joe Henderson’s “Jinrikisha” was the best, Grant blowing like Freddie Hubbard, Owens filling the air with flurries and screams, Wheeler and Reklaw locked in a monster groove, the guitar player darting around all of them. After most of the folks had wandered out, it still wasn’t over. Don Littleton came up, started messing around on the congas, Reklaw picked up his bongos, and suddenly there was a new jam, with Owens playing “Cherokee” at bop tempo over the manic hand drumming, crazier and crazier till, just like that, it ended. Reklaw, shaking has stinging hands, sat down. Littleton started up again, and Owens jumped in even madder, freer than before. When it stopped, the dozen people remaining burst into applause. They’d seen the most dangerous jazz created anywhere in L.A.that night.

Charles Owens

Charles Owens

(Photo is by Rick Loomis from Greg Burk’s fine piece “Charles Owens, spreading the jazz faith worldwide” in the Los Angeles Times Sept. 17, 2011. Make sure to follow the link to the full profile.)

Long, low tones

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(Brick’s Picks, LA Weekly)

Years ago we heard Chuck Manning and Sal Marquez duet into the wee hours at a party in the hills above Pasadena. The home was old and Spanish, the lights of the city spread out in all directions, and Manning blew long, low tones that Marquez softly cavorted in and around…. Just one of those boozy late night jazz memories.

Photo by Tony Gieske.

Piano

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(Brick’s Picks, LA Weekly—first draft, 2011)

I was at the Autry Museum a few years back and in the middle of the lobby some cat was making a dug out canoe. He had this enormous chunk of tree right there in the middle of the floor and he’d been hacking away at it in the traditional style. You could see the shape emerging at the one end. The other end, though, was still a big old chunk of tree. I looked at the thing and for some reason tried to figure out how to describe the thing in words. And I froze. It defied my descriptive abilities. This big giant half dead tree half boat thing all carved up, shavings everywhere. I stared and stared but damn man, it rendered me mute, language wise. I kept going back to it seeing if anything emerged, a sentence or three, anything. Nothing. On the way out of the place I made a long detour so as not to look at it again. It still haunts me, years later. It haunts me every time we have to write about a piano. Continue reading →