Went to the Desert Rose tonite to see saxophonist John Altman with the Mark Z Stevens Trio (Mark on drums, Chris Conner on bass and Jon Mayer on piano.) Alto Kim Richmond sat in for a stretch, always a joy, and the superb Mike Lang sat in for a pair of tunes on piano at the beginning of the second set, playing beautifully as always. While Lang played, Jon paced the room like a mountain lion smelling blood. He wanted to be back up there. After his second tune Mike Lang returned to the bar as the crowd applauded warmly. Jon sat down at the bench, an evil gleam in his eye, like it’s the 1930’s and it’s a cutting contest and it’s his turn now. Altman counts down and Jon went instantly mad on the piano, crazy comping, big fat angry chords with all kinds of Monkish space in between, and when it was his turn to solo he did so with a vengeance, grabbing the melody with both hands and whirling it into submission…building and building, each run more intense and impressive than the one before, beautiful figures and shards of melody and turning the old chestnut–damn I can’t remember the tune right now, but you’ve heard it before–turning it into something stunning, muscular, and intensely creative, just absolutely fearless improvisation. When he resolved it and dropped back into the head the crowd burst into loud, sustained applause, the kid behind me whooping like it was a rock concert. What an absolute treasure this cat is. Learned his art in NYC in the crucible of the fifties, brilliance and self destruction going hand in hand. He dropped out for a couple decades, wound up in L.A. No one here plays like Jon Mayer, and yet somehow he remains in the shadows. No one said jazz was fair.
Then Sonny Rollins speaks, talking through his horn
This is from an unpublished piece I wrote back in 2005.
….So the extraordinary facility of his early years, the 15 notes per second on Saxophone Colossus that Greg Burk cited in the LA Weekly last week…well, that was what young brains can come up with. Young brains, young fingers, young lungs…. And the later stuff, the intricacies of The Bridge…well, that was the result of thousands of hours of contemplative, strenuous wood shedding, blowing into the wind, over the blasts of steamships and the cacophony of New York traffic. And even later, as the sixties wore on and Sonny’s tone became more voice like, the Bach complexities replaced by runs that sounded like him talking, as if three little words that emanated from the bell of his horn were even truer than the words that came with his speech…well, that is the result of a lot of struggle, a lot of searching, of endlessly questioning everything as you do it…. I think that finally, perhaps, he got to some point where he felt his seeking was over. All that Eastern religion, the stumping around India after wisdom, late nights thinking, blowing, thinking some more….it had all come to a result. A place. I wonder if you can hear it on East Broadway Rundown. That’s a ferocious twenty minute title track…beginning with a wild head of almost Tijuana Brass simplicity but at a hurricane tempo, Elvin Jones and Jimmy Garrison, fresh off the Trane, work up a savage rhythm, the bass pulsing, throbbing, Elvin locked in a monster polyrhythmic groove, and Freddie Hubbard and Sonny blat, howl and finally, shriek, and then push it on even further to these unearthly staccato squeals that swirl around Elvin and Garrison like the seagulls that used to scream and kite around Sonny out there on the Williamsburg Bridge. At last their cries fade and we are left with a moment of silence.
Then Sonny speaks, talking through his horn. I don’t know what he is saying. Perhaps he is talking with the gods, or Buddha, or some inner self, or to the Muse itself. But it is there, a sentence or two of words that come out of his horn. It is as if he has reached some stage, some state, a place that Trane never got to through all of his screaming. That Ornette never even tried to get to because he didn’t believe in it. That Bird never even knew existed. If it did. Or does. But it did for Sonny. Or so it seems to me. There, in that studio, just shy of the twenty minute mark, Sonny reached Nirvana. Or Olympus.
Then again maybe not. The mind can run riot when the music blares in the dark….
Sonny Rollins, reaching.
.
.
Beads
It was a Fat Tuesday at Farmer’s Market. Mardi Gras. There was a good New Orleans band doing funk, zydeco, etc and the people were drinking too much and throwing beads. The crowd was relatively tame this year and the drunkenness was toned down and I saw less wanton behavior…beads were being handed out but no one had to show anything to get them. Ordinarily that is a requirement. Well, it’s not a requirement, but of course some of the women pretend it is. Even some men pretend it is. Most are drunk. Not all of them, though. Many are quite sober, lifting their tee shirts and gracefully catching the beads. Some have a few strings. Others are burdened down by a weight of beads, some very expensive looking. That’s a lot of flashed tits, hours and hours worth. I wonder about those sober ones, the ones who flash and catch, flash and catch with such admirable skill. I wonder what they do for a living. Are they teachers, secretaries? Lawyers? Were they in the office just a few hours ago? We’re they sitting in dull meetings answering dull questions and thinking about beads?
A couple ladies stood before me. Tomorrow they’d be teaching Sunday School. Today they were dripping beads. The drunken male chorus demanded their tits. The Sunday school teachers obliged. Beads fell like rain. Tomorrow would be Lent, but tonight is about laughter and drinking and venal sin. There will be plenty of time for confession later. They’ll be heartily sorry for having offended Thee. They’ll say it over and over, a dozen times over. The more beads, the more times. A string of Acts of Contritions is worth its weight in beads.
Flung
Kale
When we go to the Super King on San Fernando Road, not far from us, I’ll pick up a couple bunches of every kind of greens they have. All of them. Turnip greens. Dandelion greens. Collard greens. You name it. We love greens and could eat them every day. And Super King must have ten varieties. Each packed with nutrition.
Well, I pick up every kind but one. I really don’t care for kale. It’s bitter, for one thing, the only green I know of that is bitter. And it’s hard to chew, for another, the only kind I know of that is hard to chew. It has no more nutrition in than any other green, I checked. When I found that out I stopped buying it for good.
So why the hell is it so popular? And why so hip? Why did someone decide the least palatable of greens is the one that everyone on the westside with too much money insists be on their plate? I mean what is wrong with those people? Haven’t they even eaten dandelion greens or collard greens before?
Well, no they haven’t. They have never been poor. I guess kale is the green that separates the people with money from the people eating collard greens.
Besides, kale is gluten free.
Musso and Frank
Went to Musso and Frank yesterday and had a tasty meal. Sometimes you get delicious stuff in there, sometimes you wish you’d ordered something else, but that’s not the point. You go for the vibe, the history, that ancient coolness which is such a rare thing in this town. They plow under everything in Hollywood and build something new. Almost nothing is saved. And even if something is saved, will anyone notice? Or care? Los Angeles is where people come to start all over again, it’s a whole city full of people who’ve cut loose from their families, their exes, their pasts, themselves even, and pretend all of that never happened or they never knew those people back home or never had been a male cheerleader, a hit man, a mom. And we pretend the old neighborhood never existed, the old restaurant, the old film studio, the old anything…it just gets plowed under like the time I saw Tiny Naylor’s in Hollywood being leveled by a bulldozer. I stood there across La Brea helpless, all the times I’d been there passing before my eyes, and all the times I might have been there going up in a poof just like that, unfulfilled. The bulldozer reared back, lowered the blade again and pushed right through the dining room. Again and again. Tiny Naylor’s lay there, a disemboweled heap where once incredibly hot waitresses held trays piled high with hamburgers. The men would stare. Their dates pretended not to notice and seethed. The bulldozer plunged into the wreckage and scooped up a mess and let it drop into a big dumpster truck. Dust filled the air. I couldn’t watch anymore and wondered why L.A. ate its own past for lunch like that. Ate it and digested it and used the nutrients to raise new shopping centers, apartments, schools. There’s a school now where once a famous bowling alley once stood. The school was needed. There’s always another bowling alley. And too bad about Tiny Naylor’s , but there’s always Norms. Of course our Norms is now a hospital. Hospitals are needed. And there’s always Astro. Norms we used to go to when we were punk rockers and broke. We’d have spent all our money at the Brave Dog or the ON Klub and walk to Norms the next morning after scraping together a few 99 cents breakfast’s worth of spare change and the odd crumpled beer soaked dollar bill or two. Then we’d walk back to the house, smoke whatever dope was left and listen to loud records all afternoon, laughing and not worrying about a thing. Reagan was president and the world was going to end any minute.
Sometimes for dinner we’d scrape enough together for the Old Spaghetti Factory. We’d walk down there on a Friday night as Sunset Boulevard began filling up with Friday night cruisers. We’d order extra bread and fill our pockets. You could live on bread back then. Bread and beer and weed. On the way home we’d stop on the Sunset Boulevard overpass and watch the Hollywood Freeway come to life, white lights coming at us, red lights disappearing around the Scientology Celebrity Center on their way to the Valley. Dusk fell and the city turned to blackness and light and the craziness of the 1980’s.
That Old Spaghetti Factory is gone now. Just a shell where a restaurant used to be. They had to leave it like that, a shell. Whoever bought it was not supposed to tear it down. Historical designation. Like that helped any. It looks like a monument to post-war Berlin, like a B-17 dropped a big bomb square on the thing and everyone inside eating spaghetti is in heaven now.
Musso and Frank, though, hasn’t changed. Not one whit. Not even the waiters. Certainly not the wallpaper. Or the menus. Or menu. What Charlie Chaplain once ate you can eat now. What Bogie once drank you can drink now. What Orson Welles once complained about you can complain about now. That’s what Musso and Frank is. Continuity. Between it and the Pantry you know what was then is still now, only a little more expensive. Continuity is a rare thing in this town. Studios hire editors to maintain continuity in their movies, so one scene looks like the next, the curtains, clothes, who’s holding what beer and with what hand. It’s all fake, of course. One scene was shot weeks after the one before it. But you can’t tell. It’s a nice trick. LA’s like that. Stuff looks like it’s always been here. It hasn’t. That hospital was once a Norms. That public storage warehouse was once a silent movie studio. That school was where Robert Kennedy was shot. But you can’t tell. Continuity. That’s a take. Let’s break for lunch.
After Musso and Frank (they have valet parking now…that’s different) we wandered over to Hollywood Forever cemetery. Parked the car by Johnny Ramone’s grave with the big bronze Johnny Ramone on top. Kids kept coming up, carloads or straggling little groups. They looked up at Johnny and held back tears. We looked the other way. The Fairbanks are down there, Douglas senior and junior. Their crypt lies at the far end of a long reflecting pool, and everything is marble and perfect. A perfect pair of swans glided across the water, and the rain came down and the swans never noticed.
(2013)
Killer shoes
(Many years ago….)
Went to a party last night. A gloriously crazed one just down the street with wild music spun, drunken Germans spinning, inadvertently cracked skulls, blood, and a rather wanton little thing from Uzbekistan. She passed me a joint. I had never smoked dope with an Uzbek before. I took a hit, my head spun, and I laughed. She laughed. She said I was a very big man. I said she was a very pretty lady. We laughed again. Drank bubbly and talked about the weather. Inside the music roared and the hostess was bleeding all over everything. Out here was a night breeze and the sound of our laughter. Uzbeks are just like regular people, only drunker and with killer shoes.
If you are the drop dead gorgeous mega-rich machiavellian daughter of the dictator of Uzbekistan nobody will tell you how stupid your shoes are. Especially at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s also amazing what pops up when you google “Uzbek footware”.
Rock’n’Roll Denny’s
Before the recession I didn’t drink PBR. I had class.
Before the recession I didn’t use coupons, either. Well I did, but not so seriously. And I couldn’t calculate them so well. I didn’t know that two boxes of x with a fifty cent coupon is still less per y than one box of z even without the coupon. No, I didn’t. And when I saw the little piles of coupons that crazy ladies leave on the shelf I ignored them, like they weren’t even there. Yesterday I found a better coupon in the pile. And I left my not as good a coupon in return. I’d joined the coupon underground without even realizing it. Before the recession I didn’t belong to the coupon underground. I would never have belonged to a coupon underground. I had class.
I take a sip from my PBR and think.
Before the recession I ignored restaurant coupons. Now we have them in the car in a little folder. Coupons for everything, everywhere. All kinds of food. Denny’s even. Denny’s. Before the recession I didn’t eat at Denny’s. Not even Rock’n’roll Denny’s. I had class.
I’ve only eaten there twice since the recession. Three times if you include the Cypress Park Denny’s. Which we aren’t. We’re discussing the much hipper Rock’n’roll Denny’s. It’s in Hollywood, right off the 101, on Sunset Blvd. With that kind of propinquity it ought to be one of the hippest places on the planet but jesus effing christ it’s a goddamn Denny’s so let’s get real Brick. Wasting people’s time talking about a Denny’s. Even if it’s a rock’n’roll Denny’s.
Before the recession I didn’t talk to myself in my own blog.
We still call it Rock’n’roll Denny’s but I dunno, it doesn’t seem like a rock’n’roll Denny’s anymore. Now it’s just another stupid Denny’s. It’s changed. Those were different times back then. The poets they studied rules of verse, Lou tells us, and the ladies they rolled their eyes. Except we didn’t, really. No rules of verse got studied, and ladies rarely rolled their eyes. We just raised holy hell at noisy underground holes in the wall and drank too much beer and smoked too much of Pope’s dope and wound up at Rock’n’roll Denny’s because we had the righteous munchies and the parking lot was fairly safe. Rock’n’roll Denny’s used to be full of characters and denizens and Wild Man Fischer. I miss Wild Man Fischer. He’d sing for you in the parking lot if you didn’t run away. Sing Don’t Be a Singer.
Wild Man Fischer. Don’t be a singer.
A sad tale it was, too. Liars and swindlers and chiselers, Frank Zappa broke his heart. He’d sing that broken heart out there right outside the doors at the Rock’n’roll Denny’s, and I’d give him a buck and try to get away. There were eggs in there with my name on them. Eggs and hash browns and bacon and wheat toast and a big glass of orange juice and keep coming with the coffee. Sometimes the waitresses were gorgeous. I’d watch them walk away in their little skirts and comfort shoes and dream tiny little dreams wide awake.
This is the final draft of this magnum opus. The first draft was shorter and a mess and had an altogether different ending that went like this: Rock pspsrt svissossssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssm. That’s it. That last word has only two vowels and a train of sibilants. Looks like a snake crawled across the keyboard. But there was no snake. I just fell asleep. I didn’t fall asleep at the keyboard like that before the recession. Though class had nothing to do with it. I just went to bed earlier. You can’t blame the economy for everything.
Vegans
I was sitting at a bar last nite and within three minutes the lady next to me told me she was a vegan. She spent the next ten minutes talking about food. Then about Whole Foods. After that about a macro-biotic diet that means you will never die. But I like the lady, otherwise I would have moved to the other end of the bar. They weren’t talking about food down there. They were talking about all the things you do that don’t involve eating or cooking or shopping at Whole Foods.
The funny thing about vegans is that while they never shut up talking about food you can’t talk about food because if you did you’d mention something offensive and they’ll make that disgusted Vegan face and start talking about their food even more. It’s like talking to hardcore Christians and mentioning Jews which makes them talk about Christianity even more. You can’t stop them.
Christians don’t party, though. Not like we party. But vegans, if you can get them to stop talking about food for a minute, will party. That’s why they’re fun. But then they’ll smoke pot, and get the munchies, and start talking about food again. And I start looking at the other end of the bar, where omnivores are talking about everything under the sun and laughing. Laughing. You can’t talk about organic produce and laugh. Vegetables just aren’t funny. You can’t talk about fruit and laugh. Fruit’s not funny. Except for bananas. Banana peels are funny. But nobody eats banana peels. Not even Vegans. Not even raw foodies. Not even Fruitarians like Sky Saxon, who said God spelled backwards is dog.
But Sky probably did smoke a banana peel or two in his time. You don’t write a “Mr. Farmer” high on life.
Baloney salad
I can remember my mother making baloney salad–Oscar Mayer bologna, pickles, onion pushed through a kitchen meat grinder. The grinder was a big solid steel thing that you’d vice clamp to the counter and turn the crank. It was so 19th century I can’t believe this was in my lifetime. In fact, our meat grinder was probably not much different from the one patented in 1845. It had revolutionized sausage making and made hamburger stands possible, but we made baloney salad. Being the eldest, my job was to turn the crank. Watch your fingers my mother warned. I was probably six or seven, and all my younger siblings watched, amazed, as the baloney came out a ground up mess. Then the pickles went into the grinder, the crank would go round and round, and unlike the bologna, I could feel the pickles being pulverized, like the fingers my mother warned me about. Then in went the onion with a satisfying crunch. You mix ’em up together in a bowl and add lots of mayonnaise. Baloney salad. We loved it. Not sure about now. Within a few years there were astronauts on the moon and it was all space food sticks. Then microwave ovens. Now people post pictures of food and we all gain digital sustenance. I don’t post pictures of food. Or cats. I do post pictures of manual meat grinders, though.
Meat grinder. Every kitchen of tomorrow had one in 1845.
Fish boil
I went to a fish boil in Wisconsin once. Take a cauldron, add fish and potatoes, bring to a boil, toss gasoline on the fire, the cauldron boils over, fish oil causes a flare up for a few seconds, then eat the fish and potatoes. I asked why not add a carrot or onion. Got cold Norwegian stares. Everyone ate in Lutheran silence, then went out to their cars and drove home. That was it? I thought we’d missed something. No, that was it. Oh. Silence. So how’d you like it? The fish was good, I said. It really was. And the potato was too. The Norwegians really know how to boil fish and potatoes. I liked when they threw the gas on the fire too. Yah, sure, he said, that was exciting. Continue reading
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