Author Archives: Brick Wahl

AC3

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The AC3 at the Garage, I think, a zillion years ago. Allen A. Clark III was all of three years old here and already quite the drummer. His pop, Allen Clark Jr and mom Zebra (aka Zaida Clark, that’s her legs) formed the trio when AC started syncopating before he could walk, taking after his old man (once the driving beat of the Lazy Cowgirls) who is playing guitar here off to the right. You have to imagine it, as he’s not in the picture. I remember carefully composing this picture to get the perfect balance of child and gams, but I didn’t bother with Dad. After you’ve seen a guy leap stark naked into your drum kit there’s nothing much else to see. But that’s another story, deep in the blog somewhere. And little AC the tyke drummer is now huge AC the monster drummer, and mom and dad and son are rocknroll lunatics back in Indiana. And if that ain’t a wholesome tale I don’t know what is.

Publik Enema

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Formed in 1977 on a chicken ranch in Nipomo CA and quickly banned just about everywhere between Frisco and El Lay, Publik Enema was the greatest first wave punk rock band you never heard of. I saw their very last show, at George’s on Lower State in Saint Babs in 1979 and had my 22 year old mind blown. Still have a piece of that see thru guitar Ronnie shattered on the concrete floor at the end of the set in a fit of beauty, punk, pique and punctuality. And dig the crazed punk rock solo he plays on that guitar at the 9:00 mark of the Publik Enema Movie. This long lost film was shot in ‘78, at a bar in Goleta CA they were banned from soon after and in front of a terrified music appreciation class at a junior college in Santa Maria. Those were the days.

Mike Watt

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Terrific Mike Watt & the Missing Men set last night in MacArthur Park. For some reason their take on Little Johnny Jewel was my favorite this time but the whole damn thing was great. Perfect even. And I had never seen Bastidas! before. Great three piece, noisy and dissonant and young enough to run all over the stage without hurting themselves. There was a biblical prophet or a fur trapper or maybe one of the lesser known members of ZZ Top spinning obscure 70s Europrogopsych and zany glam and fucked up bubble gum before sets. Don Bolles, he said, but I knew better.

Great night, saw a lot of pals. And standing there on a cane a nice lady brought me a chair. I could get used to this gimp shtick.

And thus began our summer concert season.

Brick

Damn, the Seventies

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Robert Mitchum on the Tonight Show, June of ‘ 78. Turns out he lived in Santa Barbara when I did. Oddly enough, we never ran into each other. He’s wearing shades indoors, I assume so we can’t see his dilated pupils. You hate being on TV, Johnny says. I hate being in Hollywood, Mitchum says. Even if Hollywood is Burbank. Johnny Carson is way coked out and edgy. Ann Margaret has been so high on something she was talking in a whisper, terrified, and walked off stage in the wrong direction. Weird bit with a guy in a kangaroo suit, from some completely forgotten waste of celluloid Mitchum did with Elliott Gould. The guy does an incredibly good kangaroo. Mitchum makes sure to mention the name of the guy in the suit, twice. Interview over, the ersatz kangaroo goes stage left, Bob Mitchum departs, stage right, and even after patting the fake kangaroo, he comes off an ineffably cool motherfucker.

A comic now, no idea who, talking incredibly fast. The last guest, incredibly, is a judge. A real judge. Imagine the band hiding the drugs. Johnny is talking carefully. The comic is completely silent. Damn, the seventies.

Hillbillies in a Haunted House

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Hillbillies in a Haunted House (which would be one word in German) seems dumber than a rock, but Ferlin Husky just picked up a guitar and sang a beautiful ballad so I’ll keep watching. Sonny James just sang another. It was shot in 1967 without a hippie in sight and set in a haunted house on the road to Nashville. John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr and Basil Rathbone (in one of his very last roles) provide the spooky parts, but they’re not really ghosts but Russian spies, back when being a Russian spy was a bad thing. Imagine that. If you would betray your country you would betray us, Basil says to a treasonous FBI agent in a rare plot complication, and shoots him.

Anyway, waiting here for Merle Haggard and figure Ferlin’s got more sanging to do. Joi Lansing is in a shirt a size too small except when she moves and it’s three sizes too small. They really knew how to fasten buttons on in those days. She’s supposed to be a country singer. But this tacky torch tune she’s singing is about as country as chicken fried steak in Santa Monica.

Oops, Merle’s on, cooler than fuck. Someone told his story, he’s singing, in a song.

Bopping the blues

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Carl Perkins performing “Bopping the Blues” live in Los Angeles, 1958

I’m digging this drummer. He’s right there in the pocket with Carl Perkins, doing a rockabilly hep cat Mitch Mitchell to Carl’s playing and singing and bopping the blues. It’s a house band and I assume a house drummer, but the cat is so hip and has that rockabilly thing down in a Krupa crazed torrent of sticks and cymbal crashes that never ever loses the bloozy dancing shuffle of the tune. You don’t even see him till the last forty seconds or so, then there he is, eyes locked on Carl, a thirty something cat who’d probably played in every Western swing band this side of the Mojave and yet loves that Sun rockabilly, loves it so much he’s singing along as he plays. All his friends are bopping the blues, he sings, drum stick dancing across the high hat. He loves you baby, but he must be rhythm bound.

Trout Mask Replica

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It came out in 1969 and even though I’d heard of it for years, I didn’t actually hear Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica until much, much later: 1978. Nine years late. Talk about uncool, uneducated, and unhip. Still, it immediately had a huge impact on me. Not just the mind blowing music (“Pena” remains the strangest piece of music I’ve ever heard), but the stunning imagery in the lyrics, which shaped my own prose (especially “Bill’s Corpse” for some reason I could not begin to explain). People read my stuff and assume I’ve read James Joyce but I never have, what they’re hearing is Don Van Vliet. But perhaps most surreal to me now is the fact that four decades have transpired since this now five decades old album finally connected with my gray matter. It was on the third spin in perhaps as many days and it still eluded me until half way through “Hobo Chang Ba” I got it. Hobo Chang Ba, the Captain groaned, Hobo Chang Ba, and suddenly all was clear. What exactly made it so clear I do not know, but suddenly the frantic clattering music made perfect sense. It still does, most of my lifetime later. Forty years can make a man’s eyes, a Beefheart fan’s eyes, flow out water, salt water.

Elton John

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While being subjected to Lady Di’s mega-televised funeral, I started giggling and got shushed. I kept giggling. Angry stares. What’s so damn funny? She lived her life, I said, like a camel breaking wind. As the giggling spread, I was asked to leave.

Tony Sheen

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Oh wow.

Loved this guy, one of the most amazing characters I’ve ever met in my life filled with characters. He really stood out. I tell Tony Sheen stories all the time still. Tony the jazz pianist stories. Tony the jazz fan stories. Tony the mail man smoking a joint with John Lennon. Just last night we were wondering if he’d make the Dwight Trible gig at LACMA. He didn’t. I wasn’t really expecting him. It’s been a couple years since you’d see Tony at every jazz gig around town. A couple years since he’d been to a party here. A year or two since I heard his voice, it’s be bop cadence, his comping behind others telling their stories. Been a long time I listened to his stories, hanging on every word no matter how ridiculous they could get. A long time. So I told his stories for him, his laughter filling the air in his absence.

Warren William

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Seems that no one remembers him anymore, but Warren William was a great actor. His Perry Mason is so morally deficient, alcoholic, shrewd, tough, venal and hysterically funny that there is no character in film even remotely like him. The Case of the Curious Bride is a wild ride, with be bop tempos and dialog so razor sharp there must have been blood everywhere. Imagine a cross of the Thin Man, Duck Soup and one of those very dark and troubled Dick Powell film noirs, plus the Galloping Gourmet. Warren Williams nailed it. Hugely popular in the thirties, his characters were apparently a little too much for the forties and with that came oblivion (though dying in 1948 didn’t help any.) There’s never been another like him, though it seems obvious that many of the classic film noir anti-heroes–Bogie, Dick Powell–picked up some of their shtick watching Warren William. If you dig old flicks then The Case of the Curious Bride especially is a must see.