Dick Clark

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(2013)

There’s a notion going round that Dick Clark was the one who put Elvis Presley on national television, a notion that seems to have solidified into fact since Clark died. But I think American Bandstand was a local Philly show until later in the 50′s, by which time Elvis had been all over national TV many times, not to mention made a movie or two. Rock’n’roll was on TV a lot then because it sold. Dick Clark was just one of many hustling to get Elvis on their local airwaves, long after he’d already been seen coast or coast on other shows. But I think Dick Clark was the first national show that had rock’n’roll in a Saturday morning time slot, right after the cartoons. That was new. He was certainly the one who helped make rock’n’roll safe for nice white teenagers. He suburbanized it. What had been all Elvis, Little Richard, Jerry Lee, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry became Pat Boone, Paul Anka, Fabian and Frankie and Annette. I always thought Dick Clark was one of those guys who cashed in on rock’n’roll by destroying it. No more crazy black R&B, no more manic redneck rockabilly. Rock’n’roll took years to recover. Thank god some English kids discovered Chess Records and took rock’n’roll back again.

Rock’n’roll has always been a war between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Alan Freed was in league with the Devil. Dick Clark now sings with the angels. Me, I’ll take the evil every time.

Dick Clark, Pat Boone and Jerry Lee Lewis, who is thinking about kickign both their asses right there on live TV.

Dick Clark, Pat Boone and Jerry Lee Lewis, who is thinking about kicking both their silly asses right there on live TV.

Tater tots

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I was in a tater tot riot once. A huge tater tot food fight. A packed club in a blizzard of tater tots. The walls were caked with processed potato. We stood on the balcony and watched the scene below, tossing any strays that came our way back into the vortex. My favorite album release party ever. Band was called the Tater Tots, of course. Though the only thing I remember about them was the food fight.

That was sometime in the late eighties, I think. It was at this pretentious place called the Probe. Everyone hated the Probe so the tater tot flinging was especially enthusiastic. Manic and enthusiastic. I recall seeing the manager looking on, livid and helpless. No one followed rules then. We were all punk rockers or ex-punk rockers anyway. And the tater tots were inedible even by tater tot standards. Big money had not been spent on the catering. But the little inedible things made perfect bite sized projectiles. They were all around on tables, thousands of them. You could scoop up a handful, fling them rapid fire at random across the room and grab another handful. The more nimble probably managed thirty tater tots a minute. We slipped and slid on mashed tater tots, found whole tater tots in our clothes, shook crumbled tater tots from out hair. And that was the last time I ever saw tater tots served at an album release party.

Drive-thru car wash in Norco

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(2012)

We’d been at an all nite rock’n’roll party in a double wide outside Perris, way back in the hills, with dirt roads and recent rain and lots of mud. Car was filthy by the time we were back on the 215. We smelled Norco coming up–a lot of cows in Norco–and needed gas so we pulled off and filled up. The guy at the counter asked if I wanted a car wash with the gas. I’d never seen a drive-thru car wash in a gas station before so I said sure, the best. So after filling up, we made a tight turn and pulled into a miniature car wash tucked behind the station. All was silent for a moment, almost eerie, then whoosh, fwoom, clank, spritz, splash, and the car began moving through a tunnel with psychedelic suds and giant pummeling brushes and scrubbers and blowers and more psychedelic suds and more pummeling scrubbers and flopping squeegee windshield mop things and more colors–a lot of green and blue with streaks of pink and yellow–and more blowing till finally we emerged at the other end awash in air and the windshield alive with rinse water droplets trying to escape evaporation and we were back in the sunlight, gleaming. The car wash turned itself off behind us. All was silence.

Damn, missed a spot.

So we did it again, the whooshing and fwooming and clanking, the spritzing and splashing and the washes of psychedelic suds, the giant pummeling brushes and scrubbers and blowers and more psychedelic suds and more pummeling scrubbers and flopping squeegee windshield things and the greens and blues and pinks and yellows and more blowing and the droplets trying to escape evaporation. Then we were back in the sunlight again, and gleaming, and all was silence, all except Jimi Hendrix, who we’d cranked on halfway through, busily chopping down a mountain with the edge of his hand.

A few years later I was at work checking out the new site design. It was wild–colors and sounds and motion and music and was really cool. Overwhelming even. This virtual reality was a trip. I loved it. Afterward we were asked what we thought of it.  I struggled for a comparison. Then it hit me. Virtual reality, I wrote, is like a drive thru car wash in Norco.

Which is another reason why I never made a million bucks in the Internet industry.

My Favorite Year of

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(Another lost essay…apparently I didn’t care for My Favorite Year…)

I saw My Favorite Year once all the way though. I started watching it again sometime later and gave up after a few minutes. Tonight I tried harder and got about a third of the way though it before I wanted to shout what the hell is Peter O’Toole doing in this loser movie? I mean it stinks. Everything about it stinks except Peter O’Toole. All the other characters stink…I don’t care about any of them, except the ones I actively dislike. All of the infuriating subplots stink…I don’t give a damn about these people’s storylines, their lives, their romances…all I care about is the Peter O’Toole character.

And who the hell told the writer he was funny? He’s not. He’s not a funny guy. He thinks he’s funny, He took a course on how to be a funny. He studied comedy in college. He’s analyzed jokes. But he’s not funny. You wanna know how not funny he is?  Let the writer explain it himself:

K.C.: Do you think there are funny people and not-funny people?

Benjy Stone: Yes. Definitely. On the funny side there are the Marx Brothers, except Zeppo; the Ritz Brothers, no exceptions; both Laurel *and* Hardy; and Woody Woodpecker. On the unfunny side there’s anyone who has ever played the accordion professionally.

The Ritz Brothers? He thinks the Ritz Brothers are funny? And I don’t mean kinda funny, but quintessentially funny, funny as the Marx Brothers are funny.  After sitting through that moronic and utterly predictable Storke Club scene I hear him say Ritz Brothers and bells go off and oh man, yes, that was the Ritz Brothers. I’m watching a movie written by a guy who thought that the Ritz Brothers were, without exceptions, as funny as funny can be.

Good lord.

And then there’s the setting. He is one of the writers for a guy who is obviously Sid Caesar. Which means, in 1954, that he would be writing for the Show of Shows. So he’s set himself up as a writer in maybe the greatest television comedy writing room of all time. Those people in that room were incredibly funny. Crazily funny. Savagely funny. The competition was deadly, the timing perfect. The jokes this fool lays out so predictably here would never have survived that room. Would never have survived Sid Caesar. Sid was not the buffoon portrayed here. Sid Caesar was probably the funniest man in America in the 1950’s.  This kid would never have even got in the door. Not with this material. They would have eaten him alive. Humiliated him. It would scar him till the day he died. So what’s he do? He brings that room down to his level and then makes himself the funniest guy in that room. The egomania is overwhelming.

Ya know, if you’re gonna be funny you better be really fucking funny. There’s no room for mediocrity. What a gem of an idea this movie was. And how perfect Peter O’Toole was for the role. It’s too bad that such a sad script, low brow humor, piss poor casting and hamfisted direction turned out something not much funnier than your average inane sitcom. None of you would watch more than a minute or two if it weren’t for Peter O’Toole. Without him it’s just crap. With him, it’s a treasure since O’Toole made so few film appearances.

Yeah, people will always love My Favorite Year because Peter O’Toole is so funny in it. The movie itself is lousy, but Peter O’Toole sparkles, he really does, he’s wonderful in this. So people will be watching this film for generations long after far, far better comedies are long forgotten.

It ain’t fair, it just is.

My Favorite Year

My Favorite Year

Thunderclap Newman

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(March 30, 2016)

Alas, Andy Thunderclap Newman has passed on. What a strange thing his namesake Thunderclap Newman was, and even stranger what a thing that Hollywood Dream LP was. I remember playing it in the car as I drove down Hollywood Blvd right after moving here in 1980, blasting the title cut out the window and thinking wow, I’ve made it. I wish there was a Hollywood, I sang along, just like there used to be, with long black cars and paper hoods and a film star on my knee. Except that my canary yellow (with grey primer) Buick Opel didn’t have a cassette player when I first moved to Hollywood, it had an AM radio, and unless KHJ was playing Something in the Air, Andy Newman’s unhurried piano never saw the inside of my beat up little car. Now, as I mash together memories, formats, and automobile sound systems I’m listening to an Accidents (long version) that I copped off the internet. Andy takes a wonderfully ancient solo like we’re watching Buster Keaton chasing his hat in a windstorm, so unhip it hurts. “I see Jimmy climbing on the milkman’s van, laughing,” sings Speedy, “on his feet were a pair of granddad’s shoes / Then I looked around / And he was gone / Are we to lose?” Then a melodic solo by Jimmy, a penny whistle, and more of Andy accompanying Buster Keaton. I recall how unpopular a party album this was at our pad. It was an acquired taste, like an aged but weird wine. Andy himself, I always thought, was even better on a b-side of Something In the Air called Wilhelmina that one can safely assume probably did not get as much airplay as the a-side. He sings nothing like Mick Jagger over a barrelhouse piano nothing like Keith Emerson and though Jimmy McCulloch does a very nice psychedelic fill it’s as unrock’n’roll a thing as you can imagine. I love it. Now Andy Thunderclap Newman is gone, following Jimmy McCulloch and Speedy Keen, and the band is gone too. Life is just a game, you fly a paper plane, there is no end.

Thunderclap Newman

Speedy, Andy, and Jimmy on the cover of Tiger Beat.

Check out BricksPicks.com for more reviews.

Vampira

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Vampira

Vampira, 1954 or ’55

Yeah, she got a nice send off, Vampira did. The funeral, the media, the long, beautiful researched obituaries. She became again a major figure in death. Reborn in death, almost. With a name like Vampira that’s fitting, I suppose. I used to see her about…she lived not far from us. In one of those old bungalows on what used to be Cecil B Demille’s studio. Where Silver Lake drops into East Hollywood there, it’s all old studio land. Silents, mostly, so if there are ghosts about you couldn’t hear them. A friend of ours used to talk to Vampira as they both waited for the bus on Sunset Blvd. It’s funny, after all the obits and stuff I read I still could not remember who Maila Nurmi was. She was always Vampira here. And she was considered absolutely way cool. Even revered in some circles. Ed Wood helped. The dame playing her did a good job, all that cleavage threatening to spill out of that dress. A black dress that looked like it could explode any minute and alabaster tits and thighs and ass would fill the screen. The male animal watched closely, hoping, hyperventilating, waiting for mother or the wife to go to bed. A man needed his private time, especially when Vampira  broke into some old Universal horror flick for a couple wisecracks, some heaving bosom and scary music. There was no internet then. There was Vampira.

Vampira. Funny how show biz names become real names in this town. Hence I am still called Brick by nearly everyone. I never told people to call me Brick. It was just a stage name from my punk rock daze, and everyone naturally just uses stage names, or pen names, or just crazy names they came up one drunken night. In fact…I have friends I have known for years and years whose real names—even their last names—I do not know. I only know their nicknames. My favorite example of this is an old friend of ours, an eccentric–well, that doesn’t capture his essence, eccentric. Let’s just say he’s a character. The sort of character who, at a BBQ at our place back in the 90′s, announced that his name was now the Panther. It was a pen name, I think, a nom de plume, but a full time nom de plume. Don’t call me Jeff, I am the Panther. I don’t know if he’d thought of it beforehand or if it just hit him there, a revelation fueled by beer and coffee and a loud stereo. However it happened, just like that he became The Panther.  Not Panther, but The Panther, like the Hague or the Bronx or the Dude abiding. So everyone immediately began calling him The Panther. They still do. He was Jeff coming up the steps to our place, The Panther going back down.  A lot of people don’t even know his given name.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the Panther. He tends to appear suddenly and mysteriously at our Christmas parties. It’s the Panther someone yells and they crowd around and say hello and laugh and not ask any questions about where he’s been or what he’s doing or what his real name is. Hours later he slips away just as suddenly. No one sees him go. The Panther.

So here’s to all the one name people, the Vampira’s and The Panthers and the zillion others  in this town. Yeah, they almost never get famous. You need a last name (or is it a first name?) to get famous. But ya gotta admit, having just the one name is way cooler.  You think we’d even be writing this if her name was Vampira Smith?

Well maybe. That was some bosom she heaved.

vampira 2

Trader Joes

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That free coffee at the Silver Lake Trader Joes. The one hipster complains it’s too hot. The other hipster says it’s too strong. I said it’s too wet. Both look at me, then at each other, then back at me. It’s funnier if you’re stoned, I said. Oh wow, the one said. The other nodded, sagely. Truth.

Lawrence of Arabia

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[Sometime last winter….]

So the color’s going on the television. Well, it’s gone, basically. I just tone it down and pretend it’s the fifties. Not a problem. I’ll get a new set one of these days. This morning I went looking for a hockey game. Nothing but golf. Not quite the same. I swept past TCM. A pair of guys clowning behind a camel, trying to sneak out of camp. I love these Road movies. Ruffians grab Bob and Bing by the feet and drag them from behind the camel to face Anthony Quinn. But it’s not Anthony Quinn. It’s Omar Sharif. I just mistook Lawrence of Arabia for Road to Morocco. Somewhere, on some other television, that sky, a bird’s egg blue, stretches north to Aqaba. On mine it’s just a soundstage at Paramount.

Sham 69

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I saw Sham 69 at the Whiskey (the Dead Kennedys opened) back in 1979. Right there on the Sunset Strip. Great set. I loved Sham 69. Loved that first album. OK, it was dumb. Way dumb. The Ramones looked like intellectuals compared to Sham 69. What about the people who are lonely?/You don’t really give a shit/People that you never meet. It wasn’t exactly poetry. It was oi. Oi! None of us Californians had ever even heard somebody say oi! before punk rock. Now snot nosed rich punks from Pacific Palisades would say oi! Oi? Yeah, oi! It was a very deep time. The hippies had Dylan. The Beats had Ginsberg. And punks had oi. Well not all punks. Just the less coherent ones. Swilling beers and yelling oi! They don’t say it now, though, they are lawyers. But this was 1979, and they were all here at the Whiskey for Sham 69. Though criminal as they tried desperately to look, none of them stole the microphone when Jimmy Pursey, the singer, stuck the microphone in the audience for the sing along. A bit of English football camaraderie, that. If the Kids are United we all chanted, they shall never be united. Deep stuff. Rhymed even. To this day when I hear that ferocious guitar riff I can’t help singing along, me, a very late middle aged jazz critic, singing if the kids are united, they can never be divided.

Sham 69 did White Riot in their encore, too, the Clash song. Jimmy Pursey stuck the microphone into the crowd again and the kids all sang I wanna riot, a riot of my own! They repeated it. Repeated it again. And started to repeat it one more time when the microphone cut out. Jimmy pulled the microphoneless cord back from the crowd and shrugged. They’ve stolen the microphone a stage hand yelled. The band roared on, Jimmy grabbed another mic and finished the tune. The audience was mad with testosterone, swirling, bouncing, pushing and shoving. It was a moment of punk rock heaven. Meanwhile the stage was flooded by stage hands and sound men and bouncers peering into the boiling mass, looking for the culprit. No one leaves till we get the microphone back someone announced over the PA.

Let me explain. I was in a punk rock band then, the drummer, and we had drums and guitars and amplifiers and even an avocado ranch to practice at. But we didn’t have a microphone. Our singer had to scream bloody murder to be heard above our proto hardcore din. Suddenly right there in front of me was this beautiful, state of the art, zillion dollar microphone. Being a drummer, I didn’t make the connection between it and us, but my guitar player–who shall remain nameless, as he has three beautiful daughters and a grandchild–did. Take the mic, he yelled into my ear. What? Take the mic! Steal the mic! We need a mic! So I stole it. It took a tug or two but it came off the cord. I stood there in the packed crowd, staring at it. Hide it! my guitar player yelled. Hide the mic! Stick it in your pants! So I did, hoping it would pass for a rather impressive hard on.

A small army of bouncers began moving through the crowd. Big dudes, muscular, mean. The sound man announced that someone had stolen the microphone and no one was going to leave till it was returned. They began patting people down on the floor. We better return the mic I said, stupidly. My guitar rolled his eyes. Then they’ll know that you stole it, he said. It dawned on me that it was actually me who had stolen it, and it was in my pants, feigning manhood. I must have looked panicky. Drop it on the floor, my guitar player said, and we’ll tell them we found it. So I retrieved it from my pants and dropped it on the floor. He picked it up and yelled Hey! We found it! We found it! He held the microphone aloft for all to see. Several bouncers rushed over. He found it, one said. He found it said another. My guitar player said and since we found it for you can we go backstage and meet the band? The bouncers rolled their eyes. C’mon, we found this expensive microphone for you! He whined like that for thirty seconds. OK, alright, let them backstage for a minute. And lucky felons that we were, we were led through the mass of sweating kids, past several other bouncers and either up or down some ancient stair to the backstage area.

It wasn’t what I expected. No lush chairs. No cocaine on mahogany tables. No greenless M&Ms. And the girls appeared perfectly nice and fully clad. Someone with an English accent said these guys found the microphone and want to meet the band. The girls rolled their eyes prettily. We were led into another room and there, exhausted, was Sham 69. Oh my god, real rock stars. It was like meeting the Rolling Stones in 1965, if the Rolling Stones were midgets. Because Sham 69 were dinky, like five foot tall. Well, five foot four maybe. We towered over them. I remember them peering up through exhausted eyes. Back home guys our size were always trouble, the toughest football hooligans. Here we were just kleptomaniac punk rockers. I shook Jimmy Pursey’s hand. You were great, I said, with genuine originality. Fanks, he said.

Their manager ushered us out again. C’mon now, the lads have another set to do. Back up (or down) the stairs we went, thanking the bouncers profusely. They thanked us for finding the microphone. You guys really helped us out, they said. Most people would have tried to steal it. I still feel a tinge rotten about that. Then they let us out a back door and into the December night, where the punks were chucking beers at passing cars.

Meanwhile a buddy of mine I didn’t know yet mouthed off to the bouncer at the door when they tried to search him for the microphone. I don’t have your fucking mic he said and got worked over good. Beat up by bouncers at the Whiskey for being such a punk. He told me this twenty years later and I laughed it was so funny but I bought him a beer for his pain. When he reads this I’ll have to buy him a whole six pack.

sham 69 buttons

(And I don’t want to use without permission, but there is a great live shot of Sham 69 at the Whiskey by the Jenny Lens here.)

Blood on the Ice

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Found a copy of Blood on the Ice on my nightstand. I’m thrilled. It’s the Slap Shot of hockey writing. Hockey in the seventies, before it was full of grace and Europeans and skills. It was a Canadian game, then. Putting on the foil. Old time hockey. Eddie Shore. Dead history, alright. I didn’t even know I had the book. I’ve never read it. I’ve read Ira Gitler’s book on Be Bop, which is essential for a jazz fan, perfect, but never his Blood on the Ice, which is essential for a hockey fan. That’s what happens when I leave anything on my nightstand. It’s because I fall asleep instantly. People who fall asleep instantly have no idea of what secret treasures lie just inches from their snoring head. Insomniacs have their nightstands memorized. Their ceilings too. And every minute of the day that just passed. And everything they ever could have done in their entire lives but didn’t. People who sleep all night wake up refreshed, their minds swept clean by deep REM sleep. Insomniacs sip their morning coffee, haunted, and wonder if they should call that old girl friend they had tossed and turned about all night, and if she would remember him, and if she would sleep with him, or if she would call the police.