Present at the creation. Well, slightly after the creation, but still way early. Dig all the long hair, the band’s and the audience. Tommy’s is the hippiest. Johnny takes care of his. And everyone looks so nice. Rock’n’roll was still very nice in 1976. It had probably never been nicer. Nice people, nice music. I don’t think anyone had a clue about what was to erupt in a year. Punk rock—were we even calling it that yet?—was still a college kid thing. Not a drop out thing or a fuck up thing or a this close to being put away psycho thing. And it looks like somebody was recording the show on the state of the art portable recording machines (I’d say recorders instead of recording machines but recorders were still those inexpensive little woodwinds that hippies drove us up the wall with). The cassette he recorded would have sounded like he’d recorded inside a blender. Unlistenable. He probably still has it somewhere, Ramones scrawled across it in ball point pen, the venue and the date. Sometimes he finds it in a junk drawer and remembers.
The Ramones at CBGB, September 9, 1976. Photo by Bob Gruen.
Finally found the S.H. Draumur double CD with all their vinyl on it. That Internet thing again. I had all their vinyl, sold it in one batch to a guy at a garage record sale, who was thrilled, and listened to the earlier version of this double CD I had just gotten, which I immediately lost. That was probably 25 years ago. Now, at last, all the way from Iceland and the last copy they had, I get this. The lovely InstaCart lady (very lovely, in fact) brought it with our Total Wine order, with the white wine for the wife and the apfel schnapps für mich. You got this thing here from Iceland, the InstaCart lady said, lashes aflutter. Hot damn, I said, Thanks. I’d been waiting a while. For some reason customs always gets involved, like it’s actually a little package of that hideous Icelandic dessicated shark. Then they sniff it, see it’s a CD, read the voluminous paperwork you have to add in Iceland to ship anything anywhere not part of the Greater Iceland Empire, which is all in Icelandic, which no one at the U.S. Customs office can read, I’m sure—I mean who can?—so they eventually give up and let it go. A week or so later it’s left on our steps for the lovely Instacart lady to find. There’s a reason for everything. Actually, this CD reissue was released a decade ago but only in Iceland and ever since we sold the rooftop condo in Reykjavik we don’t get over there much. But I got this new double CD now. I actually do. Nice packaging, too, extra live tracks, all the lyrics and a long historical essay, everything in Icelandic. As are the lyrics, every single word of them, right down to those to those groovy weird letters for the voiced and unvoiced TH. (English had those. Don’t ask.) I like to think it’s because Icelanders don’t particularly give two Paul Weller fucks about anyone outside Iceland. Which just makes this even cooler. Anyway, I don’t listen to much rock anymore, I notice, I’m way more into jazz and African and Latin and Brazilian and all kinds of wacky metrically skewed ethnic shit, these things happen, but S.H. Draumur was one of my favorite rock bands ever, and twenty five years later it still is, turns out, so I’m one pleased old punk rock motherfucker, he says, and plays it again.
Epilogue: You can try Bad Taste Ltd, out of Rekyavik, for all your Icelandic music needs, like this double CD, if they have any left). And you adventurous postpunk etc music nuts ought to have plenty of Icelandic musical needs, as it remains as musically creative a place as you’ll find on this crazy little sonic planet we’re on. Bad Taste are a couple great guys whose English is much better than mine with a helluva catalog and I highly recommend them. Google them, as I’m way too lazy to look up the link. Gunni Hjalmarsson—aka Dr, Gunni in a later life—who wrote, sang and bassified in SH Draumur (and in a follow up project Bless) is still around, too. Back in the innocent punk rock pen pal days of the analog 80s we swapped letters and music and to be honest, I got the much better in the swaps, and soon I knew more about Icelandic music than maybe anyone in LA. You’d be amazed at how far you can get as an Icelandic music expert in Los Angeles. This spacious office, the BMW, the secretary with the legs? That’s right, all due to those packages from Gunni. A zillion years later I still have a mess of that stuff too, and certainly all the cassettes. He’s a terrific writer too, and in English, which I hate, as I can’t read Icelandic at all (well, I can pronounce it, and you are all mispronouncing Björk) so of course Gunni translates his own stuff, not that I’m jealous or anything. (Monolingually jealous? Moi?) Maybe he translated the lengthy notes that are tucked into the CD booklet too. And now I can’t think of a clever close to this epilogue. Fuck.
I don’t know how many hours all these very creative types—some musicians, a writer, a couple artists, maybe some others—had settled in around a beat up table in an assortment of abandoned chairs at the very bottom of the Cafe NELA patio. Either gravity or our careers had left us there because you couldn’t get any lower than that table. We sat there drinking and smoking and laughing way too loud, the jokes were terrible and the insults mean and the stories were always old and sometimes true. Far nicer people than us gave us a wide circle, like plump eating fish warily eyeing a circle of sharks. Sometimes one would foolishly come too close and be devoured, chomp, in a swirl of cackles and humiliation. It was all rather merciless and totally enjoyable and we sat there for hours laughing and basking in our asshole exceptionalism. We knew we were it. We knew it did not get any lower than us. More dumb jokes, each more offensive than the last. Some bass players have no pride at all. Eventually three grown men were doing Jackie Mason impressions at the same time, though not quite in harmony. I’d never heard three bad Jackie Mason impressions at the same time. Probably never will again. Pipes went round. Holy vodka in a water bottle, Batman. Even friends were abandoning us by now. The Jackie Mason was getting weird, the sculptress was getting dangerously out there. We were starting to peak on our own delicious high. This is what I’m gonna miss, my painter buddy said, this. You can see music anywhere, he said, but this…. He gestured it in water colors, I saw it in words. This, he said, this is the life.
At an Agent Orange show in Milwaukee, of all places, maybe twenty years ago. It was cold as fuck for our Southern California blood. We’d known bass player Sam since his days playing some terrific bass for the Lexington Devils in the ‘80’s, and known Mike Palm forever. Crazy venue too. It was near downtown on an ancient block of low brick buildings from the 19th century. You stepped down some stairs which opened into a basement, three basements really, with big holes bashed through the walls separating them to give the illusion of three adjoining rooms. There was a bar in one, while in the middle room Agent Orange played and it was a ball, especially Mike’s guitar playing that wonderful blend of punk riffs and surf chops and that stinging tone matched to his ebullient stage presence, and seeing them out there was just like seeing them out here except for the freezing temps. The Milwaukee kids were beside themselves, bands we take for granted living here are something thrilling and longed for in the Midwest where they live for rock’n’roll. And while I love visiting Milwaukee—it’s Fyl’s hometown—seeing a Southern California summer band on a frigid Milwaukee night was discombobulating. But it was a good discombobulating. Having your expectations jarred loose once in a while lets you know you’re alive, otherwise everything turns grey.
Anyway this piece needs some tightening up, but later, later.
Inside a punk rock bar in Milwaukee. Photo, if I remember right, is by Mike Palm.
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.
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.
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.
Pete Shelley, R.I.P. Those Buzzcocks records, that Buzzcocks sound, it blew my mind in 1977-78. I actually have a vivid memory of the first time I ever heard them. It was the opening of Fast Cars. No one had ever made rock music like that before. I was stunned. Wow. Saw them twice back then, and still have a Buzzcocks poster on our living room wall. A bunch of jazz LP covers and the Buzzcocks. Anyway, a big part of my life then, the Buzzcocks were, those big geometrically dissonant power chords and staccato elfin vocals, the hooks and hot drumming. Forty years later I’m still surfing on a wave of nostalgia for a wave yet to come.
It’s just so cool to see Chris Stein (of the legendary Saccharine Trust and so many other aggregations) getting such a jazz man’s send off on Facebook, people talking about what a great guy he was and such a solid, inspired ensemble player. The grief is there, low and blue, but I think there’s no greater way to pay tribute to a musician who fought so hard against the inevitable than to talk about what a great guy he was and such a good player. He’ll certainly be missed in our crazy underground. He’ll certainly be missed on inspired nights at Cafe NELA. Bassists like him are a rare thing. People probably even rarer. A shame he’s gone but a treasure he was.
Chris Stein at Cafe NELA in another terrific live shot by Deb Frazin.
Back in 1977 I almost bought the Eater album, but I bought something else, who knows what. Then listening to a Sonny Rollins cut on YouTube just now, I saw the Eater album in the list of coming tracks. How that happened I have no idea. But I’m listening to the Eater album now. Never heard it before. Some of the cuts I know somehow, but not the whole record. About halfway through their take on Alice Cooper’s 18, I realized that when I didn’t buy this album I was only two years past 18, and next month I will be 41 years past 18 and I still didn’t buy this album. My friend didn’t buy it either, he stole it, way back when, which I suppose is kinda what it is I’m doing now, actually, since I didn’t pay anybody anything. Certainly not Mr. Eater or whoever. But when I tried to envision all the changes in technology between then and now it made my brain hurt, so I typed this instead and tried not to figure out where all these letters came from.
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