Tuxedomoon

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Back in 1978 I was hanging out with my pals Mike Oran and Ian Hill at KCSB, the UC Santa Barbara radio station. Jose Rizo–twenty years now with  KKJZ–was program manager then, already doing the Jazz on the Latin Side thing. He took a little convincing (Beat on the brat with a baseball bat…what’s that about?) but let the guys have their show. Mike and Ian’s was maybe the first all punk/new wave college radio show on the West Coast, maybe in the whole country. It went beyond hip, this stuff was all so new, so edgy, so crazy and so unbelievably fun. Anyone lucky enough to be around then remembers that feeling. A revolution. Everyday something new, something different, something you had never imagined before. What a perfect age to be 21, the old world crumbling all around you and this new crazy music everywhere. It’s all we talked about, listened to, thought about, cared about. So being there in that little radio booth at KCSB was like being at the epicenter. I’d bring in records and they spun them. Stuff I liked, I bought, and now it was being played and you could hear it all up and down the south coast and out to sea, provided you were up past 2 am on a Sunday morning. Most people in Santa Barbara weren’t. But the right ones were. People who listened to punk and no wave stayed up all night anyway. Sunshine was for hippies, and we hated hippies.

Can’t remember where I’d bought the Tuxedomoon 12″. But the song No Tears was a knock out, a mind blower. My friends played the tune–I think I even back announced it later–and as it was jamming the phone lit up. A lady wanted to know what was playing. They handed the phone to me. I told her it was No Tears by Tuxedomoon, that they were from San Francisco. She said she loved it. We talked a minute. No idea about what. She sounded cute and wild. Then we said goodbye and hung up. I wondered who she was. It must have been four in the morning. No tears for the creatures of the night Tuxedomoon sang. No tears.

That was the first time I ever spoke to my wife. We met a year later. I’d kicked her boyfriend out–I didn’t know it was his place, actually, not that it mattered–and was pretty much living there. I brought along some records. We listened to the records and partied and talked a million miles a minute. I put on No Tears. I love song that song she said. I heard it on the radio. I called and asked who it was and some guy told me it was Tuxedomoon….

Someone said it was fate.

Tuxedomoon “No Tears”

Tuxedomoon, 1978. No tears for the creatures of the night. (photo by Michel Feugeas from the Tuxedomoon website.)

No tears for the creatures of the night…Tuxedomoon, 1978. (Photo by Michel Feugeas from the Tuxedomoon website.)

Staring at sound

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(2008)

Been struggling with a couple new things, neither of which is yet fit to be seen, and since one is supposed to blog daily (I think that’s the idea) here’s an oldie I’ve cleaned up and annotated with this nice wordy preface. I’m not so crazy about the title I came up with when I first converted this into a blog post a year or so ago, but oh well. The piece (minus a paragraph or two) was taken from a Brick’s Pick’s column in the LA Weekly circa 2008. Alas, the thing never made it to print since my umpteenth editor was canned before he or she (they all blur together after a while) got a chance to look at it. I suppose this is the first time it’s appeared in public. It must have been a slow week in the clubs…when things were slow or shitty in the listings I’d wind up with all kinds of space to fill with pretty writing. I sure filled it here. Couldn’t get me to shut up, waxing deep and heavy and meaningful. I remember this party–though not why we threw it, as if it mattered–and I remember this kid. An artist and a horn player, trumpet, I think. Or cornet. The party was our usual handpicked boho wacko mix, and with the economy having sinkhole’d beneath our feet only weeks before there was a helluva lot of imbibing of booze–always a bad idea, hard alcohol, though watching grown men swill port from the pricey bottle was entertaining–and all the musicians seem to be suffering from aches and pains and depression and hangnails and were medicated accordingly, and had the cards to prove it. Somewhere between the gentle beers and the hard stuff the conversation below took place, and being the sober guy in the pad I remembered it. The next night I condensed it into this column, always one of my favorites, tho’ none of you ever saw it.

The kid was an artist, a painter, and consumed with all the passion and absurdity of his age. We were all talking, who knows what, and something was spinning behind us, the tenor breaking though the chatter and booze and smoke. The painter kid froze. We all kept talking.  He didn’t move. Just some freak at a freaky bash, standing there and staring at sound. That’s Pharaoh Sanders, he said. He was right. He’d been taking it in, communing or reverberating or something quasi-mystical. Someone tried to talk to him. He absently waved him away. That tenor was roaring now, crazy whipsnake ups and downs on the horn.  Listen to Pharaoh, the kid says, he’s speaking. We shut up and listened.  The kid was right.

OK, he was crazy young. Kids get so overwrought sometimes, so into this stuff. Music becomes everything. Creativity is like oxygen in an anaerobic world. Breathe it deep, man. Suck on it like a big phat joint. Let the notes get into you blood, into your brain, into your soul. Forget all about your lousy job, or not having a job, or whatever’s really getting you down all the time, and ruining your life. Let a jazz musician make you realize that nothing matters but expression.  Oh, those crazy kids.

Still, though, it’s not a bad way to approach things and music and life. Even if we’re older, more jaded, more realistic, less exciting.  Yeah, yeah, yeah we have responsibilities and families to support; there’s gods to pray to, people to vote for, ruts to follow.  But that feeling, like the painter kid there seized with stoned, inebriated focus that sucked him right into the core of Pharaoh’s mad playing….we all need to do that sometimes. The more miserable the vibe out there the more we need that jolt . The pure electricity of suddenly getting it and knowing what the player means. Hearing his message. Letting a solo talk to us, and speaking its language, if only for a few minutes in some dark, half empty club. Like Charles Owens this Sunday at Charlie O’s….blowing his smart soulful madness through some spontaneous suite that surrenders to the most lovely, devoted Trane, or out to lunch Eric Dolphy, a very down dirty blues, and electrifying Eddie Harris.  Just sitting there stage side, and nursing a Jamesons and letting his groove turn your atoms inside out. Listen hard enough and it hits you….you get it! You really do. You can’t even explain it to anyone, let alone to Charles Owens when after the gig you sputter a man that was soooooooo cool and he nods and smiles. He knows. It got him too. Hell, he was playing it.

But you can get that vibe anywhere this week, not just Owens. Hell, at Charlie O’s there’s Rickey Woodard on Friday and Azar on Saturday, and that’s pretty nuts.

And you just won’t believe what you just saw, heard, and felt. But you know it got to you, grabbed you by your insides and shook you to your rattling bones, so you walk out of the club that night feeling different. Renewed. Blessed. So maybe it’s not like doing some deer in the headlights frozen trip at a party, freaking people out a bit with your intensity….you can’t get away with that past your twenties, I mean Jesus…. But you can still get so moved by some cat’s playing that your life just got better just by experiencing the right music at the right time.

Try it yourself. The music is in the clubs, playing. Go listen to it.

Staring at sound. I saw Gerald Wilson do just that a couple nights ago, staring right into the bell of a screaming tenor sax. Kamasi Washington was blowing like a freaking hurricane, just roaring, and Gerald stood maybe two feet in front of him, letting that crazy dangerous torrent of notes wash right over him. He watched and counted time almost invisibly, nodding ever so slightly for another chorus, and another, and another. Kamasi was loud, a big huge room filling sound, and Gerald, 95 years old, never flinched. I was sitting a few feet away, with a profile view of the scene and wishing so bad just then that I was a photographer and not a writer because I could see the picture, still can, and if I had taken that picture I’d stick it right here and cut out a thousand words. But all I have is that image burned into my brain, as perfect a jazz image as I’ve ever seen. And one I’m not likely to see again, not so close, not so perfectly framed. Gerald comes from a different time.

Kamasi Washington (from kamasiwashington.com)

Kamasi Washington
(from kamasiwashington.com)

Jon Wahl & the Amadans and Beethoven and Nick Drake and Moby Grape and e e cummings

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My bro Jon’s over at the pad now, listening to the test pressing of his new record. It’s an EP, five songs, on some very nice vinyl. Calls it The Angst Blues of Jon Wahl & the Amadans.  I think it’s the best he’s ever done. Certainly knocked me out. Magnificent stuff, state of the art, lots of improv but never just a rock band fucking around. It’s a three piece recorded like a classic Blue Note session (with a bit of overdubbed guitar). That’s Jon’s long time drummer Bob Lee (of Claw Hammer) and Bill Tutton (of the legendary Geraldine Fibbers) on bass. Loud beautiful edgy swinging rocking strange righteous grooving walloping stuff. And dig that crazy Telecaster. Jon’s still a killer songwriter as well as player, with an ear for melody but never simpering powerpop shit or hokey rock’n’roll will never die crap. Not my brother. Can’t wait till it comes out.

And if that is a Nick Drake cover–“Pink Moon”–Nick Drake would  never recognize it. He’d probably love it, though. And Jon swears that the intro to “Her Eyes Are Like Perhaps a Gem” is Beethoven’s string quartet Grosse Fugue, Opus 133. I couldn’t tell. But he says people do, live. People are so smart anymore. I did pick up on the Moby Grape licks, though. But then I turned him onto that album a zillion years ago. Older brothers, you know. But I didn’t know that “Her Eyes Are Like Perhaps a Gem” is an e e cummings reference. Little brothers are so smart anymore.

Anyway, this will be coming out on Elastic Records and will be vinyl only and the initial run is 500 copies so when it hits the stores the middle of March be there. You are gonna play this one to death.

Jon Wahl

Jon Wahl

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She’s So Tough

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“She’s so Tough”This was the song going through my head over and over when I first met my wife. She was tough too, so tough. Scary tough. Scared the hell out of most guys. We went at it tooth and nail, everything, just wild. That was 1979. Damn, man, going on 36 years ago. She’s still tough, too. And everytime I hear this song, I think of her, and us, and back then. And everytime I think of us, even now, I hear this song. Poor Willie DeVille’s gone, though, fucking cancer…….but I wish I could have told him what I just told all of you.

“She’s so Tough”
(from the magnificent Mink Deville debut album, 1977)

Mink DeVille LP

Create your own future–flyers by George Davison, 1979

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“AL POE–ART” it says, a gig flyer by George Davison, 1979. His band on here was the Live Ones…I think it was his first ever show. (Mine too, I was drumming with Keene White.) What a wild night that was. George’s Cafe was a little dive on Lower State in Santa Barbara. It was supposed to be a jazz club but jazz was nowhere in 1979 and George the proprietor (a conga player from New York City, I got the impression he’d had to skip town and wound up in Santa Barbara) was reduced to booking punk bands. He wasn’t happy. We didn’t care. I’ll write more about that some other time. But I found an account of that night I wrote back then, a handwritten letter to someone I never sent. (You can see the part about George’s band here.) I had described everything that night in the long letter, and went on and on about the Live Ones and George, he’d made such an impression. I never finished the letter, stopped before writing about my own first time on a stage. So what I remember about that night is mostly George.
A brilliant example of creative design in the non-digital days. Dig the label gun art.

Creative design in the pre-digital days. Dig the label gun art. Label guns were high tech in 1979.

This next is one of my favorites, a flyer “by Al Poe from items discovered in Ron E Supro’s car”…looks like it’s dated Dec 5, 1979. Ron E Supro was Ron E Phast, the guitar player in Keene White and chief instigator of all the punk rock madness from San Luis Obispo to Santa Barbara. He had an organized talent for sheer anarchy, always putting on these crazed shows. He and George went way back, apparently, though I can’t recall the details. I do remember Ron E and George (Al Poe then) stoned out of their minds showing me the new flyer. They were both very proud of it. Al Poe because he created a flyer out of trash, and Ron E because the trash was from the floor of his car.
Al Poe's legendarty flyer made from litter, 1979

Al Poe’s legendary flyer made from litter, 1979

And here’s another flyer for the December 5th show, which I’m quite sure was done by Al Poe tho’ his name isn’t on it. It took hours of work, obviously, and some very good hash or acid. Maybe both. I don’t recall George working back then, like the rest of us, some shitty nothing office gig or a gas pump jockey (“There’s nothing in my head/and I’m wishing I was dead/I’m a gas station attendant/Fill it up!/Fill it up!/Fill it up!” went a Keene White song). I envied him. He had the expanses of time needed to get properly high all day and make elaborate flyers for fly by night punk rock shows. This seemed very important at the time. And this one even has the date clearly visible, you’ll notice, an important thing on a flyer:
Keene White Rugby Party flyer by Al Poe

Keene White Rugby Party flyer by Al Poe. I didn’t write about it so I can’t remember the show, but it would have been as demented as usual, maybe more so, and the rugby players never showed up.

And there’s one more, this one also for the November 11, 1979 show:

Create your own future.

Create your own future.

Looking at the handwriting, it appears this was made by several very stoned people. I can recognize Al Poe’s, Edwin’s, Chuck’s, Ron E’s…I doubt people recognize handwriting anymore. And I just noticed that George called his band the Livewires on this one, as opposed to the Lives Ones that appeared on the other flyer….must have been a last minute name change, Livewires to Live Ones, easy to do when you only had only practiced once or twice, barely, and had only just started playing your instruments.*  Those were the days. It was expected. We liked it raw. It seemed more real that way, less plastic, less what the seventies had turned into. George eventually became a solid and inspired guitar player, a natural, but these flyers take me back to that first gig. And yeah, the flyer’s not pretty but that “Create Your Own Future” line they found somewhere and pasted on onto the edge is perfect, as that was what it was all about. We did, too. Didn’t realize it at the time, but we were, inventing it as we went along, having a blast, never ever giving in. I think maybe George never ever gave in a little more than most.

Anyway, here’s to our Al Poe aka George Davison who was such a blast to be around but damn if he didn’t break our hearts in the end. You just can’t trust anybody. RIP, George, or maybe raise hell in peace, whichever groove moves you. Just don’t be normal, and never ever grow up.

Luv,

Brick & Fyl……

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* Actually, when you think about it a far more likely explanation is that George had nothing to do with this flyer and Ron E just got the band name wrong….

Beach Boys

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Wow…I made one New Year’s resolution, which was not to make fun of dead people. I’ve been doing that lately.  Not real dead people, but iconic ones. People get all dippy when a famous person dies and before you know it another Facebook saint is canonized. Even people who absolutely despised them in life find wonderful things to say about them post-mortem. Drives me nuts. If you hated somebody while they breathed, why love them once they’ve stopped?  Anyway, to get back to my story, I saw some weirdness by Beach Boys fans on Facebook this morning. Now I like the Beach Boys well enough….like some of their stuff, but I hate some of their stuff too because it’s truly awful, which by definition makes me not a Beach Boys fan, who like everything they ever did, even Student Demonstration Time, and who see nothing unusual about spending your adult life in a sandbox also utilized by the cat. I see a piano in a litterbox and I think something’s wrong. Not so the Beach Boys fan. In fact the only thing that gets them riled up is a picture of Mike Love. It certainly did this morning. He was pouring champagne and wishing them all a Happy New Year. Bad mistake. They hated him. Really hated the guy. I had no idea anybody could hate Mike Love or hate anything Beach Boy. Hate seems like such a strong word for such a mild topic. And when one of the angry fans called him the original Abominable Snowman I was completely bewildered. Abominable Snowman?  A Beach Boy? One was from the Himalayas, the other Hawthorne. One is covered with hair and the other wears a bald guy hat. How does that make sense? But it all made sense to the Beach Boys fans. Some kind of in-concept, that I was not in enough to understand. It was weird and cult-like and creepy. A harmless kind of creepy, maybe, but still creepy. So, of course, I had to go and write a nasty comment, all about how strange and disturbing Beach Boy fans are. It was uncalled for, I admit. But irresistible. I’m weak, I gave in, got very literary and sarcastic. And now perhaps a few Beach Boy fans are listening to Pet Sounds and feeling self-conscious as they get all moon eyed humming God Only Knows. Maybe I dampened the innocence of staring at the album cover and thinking wouldn’t it be nice if they were feeding one of the goats too with Brian and Dennis and Carl and Al and Mike Love (who isn’t  actually feeding the goats, which is why goats as well as Beach Boys fans hate him). Subtextually, of course, I was actually making fun of the iconic Brian Wilson…if you make fun of Beach Boys fans you are making fun of the Beach Boys and by default making fun of Brian Wilson. Who isn’t dead, I know, but might as well be. Which is how New Year’s resolutions go right out the window.

Dennis feeds an invisible goat while waiting for the drugs to wear off.

Dennis feeds an invisible goat while waiting for the drugs to wear off.

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Buddy Collette

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Buddy Collette passed from this mortal coil in 2010. I loved Buddy Collette, and here’s the obit I put together for the LA  Weekly. I remember it was a last minute job, and the editor gave me an hour or two to turn in copy, so I had to go with this, my initial draft. Fortunately I’d had long conversations with Buddy, and so I could let him tell his own story.

You never really talked to Buddy Collette, you listened. That’s an octogenarian’s right, saying your piece without being interrupted. He’d been wheel chair bound for years now, ever since the stroke that took away his chops, but he had no intention of sitting in a corner and withering away. Not Buddy Collette. This was a man who had been at the very birth of L.A. Bebop, with Charles Mingus, Lucky Thompson, Britt Woodman, who’d broken the color barrier and gotten himself into a television studio orchestra. A man who’d help integrate the musicians union, one of this town’s little known unknown Civil Rights achievements. He played with everybody, not just his old bebop running buddies, but with the big bands of Gerald Wilson and Benny Carter and so many others…if they rehearsed in L.A. and were integrated at all he likely as not was in the ranks, playing and writing. He played flute in the legendary Chico Hamilton Quintet…and that’s his tune, “Blue Sands”, that Eric Dolphy plays on in the documentary Jazz On a Summer’s Day. Buddy’s flute playing was so fine, so distinctive. It was his best axe. Many of his best students, Eric Dolphy and James Newton among them, seemed to pick up on that, becoming glorious flute players themselves.

It’s amazing the players he taught. Mingus is probably his most renowned student, though Collette was still a kid himself at the time. There’s great stories of them on a street car, he with his alto sax, Mingus heaving into a double bass, making music for very tolerant riders. He taught Frank Morgan, Sonny Criss, Charles Lloyd (who’s in town this weekend, coincidentally). Who knows how many more. He stayed in L.A. when his contemporaries—Mingus and Dexter Gordon among them—headed to New York and fame. Buddy had a family here. A house. Steady work. L.A.was home. He was born here, lived here, died here. He was Angeleno to the core.

A stroke robbed us of his beautiful playing back in 1998. It hit the L.A.jazz scene hard, losing an institution like that. Thing was, he was still here. He did the hospital thing for a while, then the recovery thing. He was driving himself around before long—probably without doctor’s permission, but no matter. He dove head first back into educating and organizing. And he kept talking. He still had that. Had his memory too, a jazz musician’s extraordinary memory, and he’d forgotten nothing. Steven Isoardi and the UCLA Oral History Project sat him down in front of a microphone and let him go. It poured out, into a dozen or so phone booked sized volumes, all of Buddy’s past. Of Central Avenue, and the union battles. Tales of Mingus, of everybody, of L.A.back then in the forties and fifties, and what had changed for the better, and what hadn’t. You can read some of it in Central Avenue Sounds. But he had more to say. All you had to do was ask.

Buddy wished he could have had more time to tell his story. He had so much to tell. He could have gone on for hundreds or thousands of hours. Didn’t take much to get him going. Ask a question and out poured jazz stories and civil rights stories and stories about all the people he’s ever worked with, had grown up with, partied with, made beautiful music with. There was anger in there…he once said the history just doesn’t get across the anger.  The pent up rage of being a second class citizen in Los Angeles back then, with the cops and the rip offs and the gigs you simply could not get just because you were the wrong color.  Desegregation had been a rough battle. Watching his beloved Central Avenue go to rot and junk had been rough. There was plenty to be angry about. He’d make sure you understood that. But it’s so hard to stay angry. He’d never played angry…his music was anything but. It was sophisticated, swinging, bopping and beautiful. That’s what he got across to the kids too, taught then to play real jazz. Hearing those kids play he knew just what he’d been struggling for all those years.

It was a good life, Buddy. We’re going to miss you.

Richard Grant

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(An old piece, reworked a bit, from 2006, I think. I can’t remember if it was from a Brick’s Picks or not, but I can still hear that lonely Autumn Leaves, and I probably always will.)
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Last night I was down on Degnan going back and forth between the World Stage and Sonny’s Spot. At the Stage Azar Lawrence was blowing his head off, and the vibe in the room got really deep. Afterward Derrick Finch sat at the piano and man, what a player. A lot of that old stride in his style. Richard Grant picked up his muted trumpet and played some absolutely gorgeous horn. Beautiful player. There was a fast “Autumn Leaves”. A Miles tune. Some others. Bass player joined in for one before splitting. Then as a duo again they worked out two ballad interpretations: “Giant Steps” and “Confirmation”. Finch finally had to leave and the few of us there walked outside. We hung out talking for a few minutes, then went our ways, and as we left you could still hear Grant in there, alone, blowing another “Autumn Leaves” into the empty room.

Richard Grant, blowing in the shadows. I think the shot is by LeRoy Downs, off his essential LA jazz site, thejazzcat.net

Richard Grant, blowing in the shadows. I think the shot is by LeRoy Downs, off his essential LA jazz site, thejazzcat.net

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Jazz Grammys

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(2014)

I never attended the Grammy main event—hated filling out press pass forms—but they begged me to attend the jazz Grammys every year. I went several times. My favorite Grammy memory comes from the first one I attended, when it was still at the Biltmore, and is a helluva story, but I promised myself never to tell it till the parties involved are dead. They aren’t, so we’ll wait. My worst Grammy moment was the last one I attended, and which I had done only because Charlie Haden was being given a lifetime achievement award. Not that anyone in the place had a clue who Charlie Haden was. I’d never seen any of these people in the Nokia anywhere, I had no idea who they all were. I didn’t even know who the other press were. There was no evidence of jazz people there at all. They were there, the jazz stars, but tucked away in the VIP room, hanging with Neil Portnow as a deejay spun hip hop and gorgeous waitresses brought them complimentary drinks. None of them–not Portnow nor the big name jazz stars–were down in the main room when the Lifetime Achievement Award  was being given. That moment comes, and Charlie Haden is brought out on stage for his award. He accepts, then is bum rushed off the stage as he is saying a few words of thanks to make way for some terrible smoove R&B act. It was ugly, disrespectful and laid bare the disdain of  Grammy machine for real music. It was so goddam insulting I couldn’t stand breathing that air another minute and split instantly and went to a little jazz dive. Got lost in a saxophone solo. I think I trashed the ceremony in my next column. I went from having no use for the Grammys to actively hating them.

I saw Charlie Haden at the Redcat a couple weeks ago–just blocks away from the Nokia and LA Live but a whole different universe–and the respect and love that audience had for him was overwhelming. I kept thinking back to that moment at the Grammys and relishing its denouement at the Redcat. It was a beautiful, bittersweet night.

Ya know, it’s a shame…the Jazz Grammys were the real deal a generation ago. Time can be cruel.

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CeeLo on ice

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(Jan. 29, 2014)

CeeLo was the opening act at the Islanders-Rangers game at Yankee Stadium just now. The silence, I kid you not, was deafening. You could hear absolutely nothing from the stands. Nothing. It was like no one was there. He’s doing this ridiculous little light pop number with these three dancing ladies in spooky black lacy wings or something prancing behind him, and he’s pleading with  the audience. I can’t hear you! he pleads. Let’s make some noise! Complete silence.  You could see the despair in his eyes. They cut to a commercial after a minute and a half.

It was the most disastrous performance I can ever remember seeing on television.  It was hysterical. If he doesn’t do better at the period break there’ll be a network executive’s head rolling down a corridor somewhere in Manhattan before the game ends.  They’ll be kicking it around like it’s the World Cup.

Hell, man, they might as well have had Lawrence Welk. Absolutely clueless.  This is hockey. You have either hard rap or hard rock.  Period. That’s all.  You can have dippy music at the Super Bowl….half the people are only watching it for the commercials anyway. But this is hockey. Only hockey fans are watching. And hockey fans don’t want CeeLo croaking a ballad with weird zombie waifs flitting around behind him. Give them Metallica or Run DMC next time and then drop the fucking puck.

The best part of this was that probably a million or so people in the Greater New York metropolitan area just saw that.

Oops.

More cocaine to the green room, please.

Forty minutes later. CeeLo’s back, it’s uptempo this time, they’re rapping, his dancers are freezing their thighs off, and either the people are digging it or they’re trying to revive circulation in frozen limbs. Maybe both. I hear cheering. There goes the hallway soccer game. No, someone actually there assures me on Facebook, it’s game on. That is booing you’re hearing. Lots and lots of booing. Perhaps the frigid air is doing weird things to the harmonics and the boos sound like cheers. Whatever,he says, they’re boos. You can see CeeLo crying on the JumboTron. The poor thing. Hockey fans are so insensitive. Incidentally, you could house a family of six comfortably under CeeLo’s full length fur coat.

Eighty minutes later. Beatlemania, good God.  This is hockey ferchrissakes. What would Gordie Howe say?

One hundred twenty minutes later. Goddamn Rangers win, 2-1. That’s what the Islanders get for playing in the Bronx.

Of course the Kings got skunked in their outdoor extravaganza and they were playing in Los Angeles. Dodger stadium is beautiful this time of year. Sometimes we even have winter.
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Tim 'Dr. Hook' McCracken

Tim ‘Dr. Hook’ McCracken