Flaming Pablum

Stupid Musical Opinions I Have Held

My great friend & fellow insufferable music geek Steve Holtje initiated this idea on Facebook last week, and it was sort of the logical progression from this post of last year, so here goes.

As I said in that post, while I no longer really believe in the concept of “guilty pleasures” (as an almost-52 year old, I think life is far too short to worry about what other people might think of my listening habits), there are still certain records and artists I’m quite surprised I devoted so many hours listening to. By the same token, as I think back, I cannot say I really feel any regret about digging certain music. I mean, with the benefit of hindsight, I can look back at specific records I purchased like Walkin’ the Razor’s Edge by the deeply stupid Canadian metal band Helix and/or maybe See You in Hell by the deeply stupid British metal band Grim Reaper and think I really ought to have known better, but hey … I was young, impressionable and deeply stupid myself, at the time.

So, while I don’t lament thinking, at one point or another, that certain music was worth my time (let alone my money), there were certainly moments wherein I harbored significantly misinformed opinions about particular artists. Here are some of those.

Stupid Musical Opinions I Have Held

1. Tom Waits' voice is unlistenable

For a long while, I found Tom Waits’ voice impenetrably cloying and affected. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could voluntarily subject their ears to his gruff, labored delivery, regardless of what he was wheezily crooning about.

Waits' brilliance, meanwhile, was forcibly imposed upon me by repeated airings of Swordfishtrombones and, more effectively, Frank’s Wild Years via my friend Rob D. From that latter record, I particularly warmed, somewhat ironically, to the track, "Cold, Gold Ground.”

But the song that really changed my tune on Waits was "Philippino Box Spring Hog” by way of my comrade, Tod Ashley. About a decade and a half ago, I used to work two overnight shifts a week at the TIME Magazine news desk in midtown. Tod, meanwhile, was a chronic insomniac routinely up past everyone’s bed time at his then-home down in TriBeca. In the small hours when newly broken news didn’t need attending to, I would instant-message songs back and forth with Tod. We would try to change each others’ opinions about certain sacred cows and unsung gems. One late evening, while I was unable to convince him of the brilliance of “Her Head’s Revolving” by paisley underground stalwarts, The Three O’Clock, his submission of “Philippino Box Spring Hog” from Tom’s Mule Variations album practically blew a new part in my hair. I was duly schooled, and it was all over, after that.

2. Steely Dan were just noodly jazzbos who made music for fern-bar-loitering divorcees

I don’t really know why I took such an immediate disliking to Steely Dan in my younger years, but I suppose they just struck me as so pretentious and sophisticated in a manner most of my favorite bands weren't. They were yawnsomely adult. Their album covers seemed arty and opaque (although, in retrospect, the sleeve for The Royal Scam does seem kinda metal). Their songs were about complex scenarios and filled with nuance, finesse and accomplished filigree. To my mind, Steely Dan just didn’t rock, so I made a series of exceptionally lazy assumptions about them.

Of course, Steely Dan were so much more than the soppy yacht rockers I myopically demeaned them as. While certainly jazzy with musical chops for miles, they were also arch, wry, sardonic, bitter as the punkest of the punks and very funny. They also wrote some perfectly flawless tunes along the way.

I didn’t have an epiphany with Steely Dan. I think I just wised up one day, and still feel stupid for ever selling them so short.

3. Patti Smith is only worthy of contempt

I kind of already covered this sore topic on this blog here way back when, but to summarize…

As emphatically stated here and then earnestly recanted here, my relationship to the music, legend and lore of Patti Smith has always been a troubled one. In much the same way I conjured several dim preconceptions about Steely Dan, I leaped early on with similarly myopic aplomb to the impression that Patti Smith was nothing but a pretentious opportunist whose music owed more to the hoary melodrama of Meat Loaf than to the distilled, cut-the-crap vitality of Punk Rock. I could not fathom equating her mannered, laborious incantations with the incendiary songs of the Ramones or the Dead Boys. I didn’t hear it. I didn’t see it. I didn’t get it. So I judged and dismissed accordingly.

As mentioned in those posts, I took my indifference about her music to a more vitriolic level when I penned a probably-too-zealous chapter in a friend’s “humorous” book about toppling sacred cows. From that period on, I went from a passive non-fan to an active detractor. That was unfortunate for anyone within listening proximity of my big, stupid mouth.

For me, the wake-up call came via my reluctant reading of Smith’s justly celebrated 2010 memoir, “Just Kids,” which recounted her early years in New York alongside her muse and partner, Robert Mapplethorpe. While Smith’s prose didn’t necessarily change my appreciation for her music, it did completely decimate several presumptions I’d been harboring about her backstory and how she conducted herself. Suffice to say, she was not quite the shrill, avaricious starfucker I might have made her out to be. I continue to feel like a dopey heel about that.

That said, while I own a couple of Patti Smith albums, I still don’t really listen to them very often.

Okay, those are mine — WHAT ARE YOURS?

Goodnight, Daniel Johnston

I’m a little late to the table with this, but gimme a break …. it’s been a busy week.

I remember reading about Daniel Johnston way before ever hearing his music, but got my first taste via a compilation video called Mouthful of Sweat, which I bought for its inclusion of angry noise-rock bands like Missing Foundation, Prong and Cop Shoot Cop. Daniel's contributions ("Funeral Home," "I Did Acid with Caroline" and "Don't Play Cards with Satan") were *nothing* like the feral, aggressive music I bought the video for, but the songs were just as powerful, albeit in an entirely different way.

At once childlike, surreal and intimately heartfelt, Daniel's music hinted at a much more complicated story than the descriptor "Lo-fi indie songwriter" could ever begin to encapsulate. I had to write an obit for the man for work this week, which you can find here. Given the nature of my organization’s relationship with its affiliated songwriters, composers and music publishers, it wasn’t really prudent to get into the specifics of Johnston’s otherwise largely acknowledged mental travails, although those aspects of his personal and creative life are essentially an inexorable part of his story. The man himself was entirely open about his struggles in that capacity.

That particular aspect of Daniel Johnston — his role as a pivotal figure in so-called “outsider” music (i.e. naive, self-taught) has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. There seems to be a sort of voyeuristic quality and not-so-vague exploitative element to celebrating the more eccentric parts of his art and music, which seems sort of brazenly inappropriate considering that the issues he was grappling with were very real. By the same token, much of the greatest art, music and literature throughout the ages has been produced by similarly troubled individuals. To not celebrate Johnston’s entirely distinctive and prolific work is to deny his life’s greatest endeavor.

When I think of Daniel Johston’s music, meanwhile, I am instantly transported back to a specific era of popular culture. I am reminded of discovering bands like Galaxie 500, King Missile, The Clean and Bongwater, hanging out in long-since vanished live-music venues like Maxwell’s in Hoboken, the Knitting Factory in on East Houston Street and the Thread Waxing Space on Broadway. His music played regularly in similarly long-shuttered esoteric record stores like Pier Platters in Hoboken, Rocks In Your Head in SoHo and Downtown Music Gallery. His songs evoked a specific, intangible sensibility that really did influence and inform a whole legion of artists more inclined to more purely expressing themselves rather than simply catering to trends or shifting units.

May he finally find peace.

We Are Doomed as a Species

Still zonked from the big work event that took me to Nashville and back earlier this week, I walked home from work in the warm, late afternoon, yesterday, up through TriBeCa and into SoHo.

Strolling north on Mercer Street, I was once again reminded of how much that neighborhood has changed. Where it was once a comparatively whisper-quiet backwater of modest, independent businesses and galleries, the strip in question is now a hotbed of retail activity, playing host to any number of high-end “streetwear” outlets that attract gaggles of teenaged hip-hoppers in expensive sneakers. The third-floor gallery I used to work in at 55 Mercer is long gone, its buidling converted into a pricey condominium a few years back.

As I proceeded further, I spied a roiling, animated crowd gathered just beyond the intersection of Prince Street. There was a horde of gawkers spilling over the sidewalk and into the street in front of the Mercer Hotel, gazing up at the hotel, many with smartphones extended above their heads in the hopes of capturing some fleeting image. It was not quite Beatlemaniacal pandemonium, but obviously someone of note was about.

I asked someone standing with earnest intent on the far corner what all the fuss was about.

Apparently, one of the Kardashian sisters was rumored to be inside.

Back from Nashville

Hey there, all. Well, as mentioned back on this post, I did indeed go to Nashville to see the fruition of a certain annual work event. While the walk-up to this week was fraught and stressful, the event itself went off more or less without a hitch, apart from a few eleventh-hour changes. But eleventh-hour changes are kind of to be expected, in these scenarios.

I’d share the details here, but they’re far from scintiliating. You’re welcome.

In any case, I managed to finish up proceedings in time to catch a couple of beers with my old comrade and fellow insufferable music geek Erik (you may rememberr him being invoked in this post), before I had to decamp to Nashville’s airport to catch my return flight to New York – a flight that was pushed back at least four times. This said, the booze & beer flows more readily, giddily and unrepentantly in Nashville’s airport to the extent that it makes a Saturday night in the East Village seem like an Amish prayer circle. This is not a complaint, and I took full advantage of same.

Being half in the bag wasn’t such a bad idea as, while I’m not sure if you’ve had the pleasure, flying on the anniversary of September 11th is still somewhat of a nervy prospect, even eighteen years later.

Speaking of September 11th, it’s hard to write anything about the events of that day without lapsing into predictability, hyperbole and cliché. The subject became a political football before the smoke had even cleared.

Eighteen years later, it’s proven to be the most transformative/disruptive historical event of our collective lifetime. What’s so surreal about that is that it’s become just that already — a part of history, despite the fact that those who witnessed it firsthand invariably remember the details of the day as if it happened earlier this week. I know I do. A whole generation of children has been reared into teen-hood in its wake, but I can still remember what t-shirt I was wearing on the day of.

Towards the end of last night's flight, while I was listening to the suitably eerie strains of “Neverland (full length version)” by ye olde Sisters of Mercy, I happened to glance outside at just the right moment from my window seat to catch the streaming towers of light from the memorial fountains of the World Trade Center reaching well into the dark heavens above my plane. To view this from the air is nigh on indescribable, and the resulting flight over the super-illuminated island of Manhattan was nothing short of breathtaking.

Oh, and actor and Esurance pitchman Dennis Quaid was on my flight, but we did not speak or interact at all.

Longing for the Littler Years

There’s a widely circulated photograph from the early 90’s of Nick Cave and Henry Rollins sitting together, nervously eyeing a tiny toddler in the foreground. Someone posted this photo as a meme on an Instagram page I follow, this morning, and the procreation-phobic commentary followed soon after. Being the hopeless pedant that I am, I felt obligated to chime in and point out that the depicted child was Nick’s own, that being Luke Cave (who, strangely, is in his late twenties today, I believe), and that Nick’s perplexed expression in the photo was proably one he specifically played to the camera. That said, being the parent of a tiny toddler is a totally perplexing experience, so the expression may have been genuine.

In any case, in trying to back up my claim, I found this other photo of Cave and little Luke from the same era -- I believe taken by Peter Milne -- and posted accordingly. And while a lovely, beautifully composed shot, it again features an expression from Nick that suggests that he is grappling with forces beyond his control. This is, of course, only my projection. Nick may have just been dealing with a headache or vexed by his hair, but I prefer to believe that his expression says so much more. In this capacity, I find it an immensely powerful and moving image, one that perfectly captures this fleeting period of parenting.

My own children are now officially into their respective teenage years. To see them bound about our ever-shrinking apartment perpetually prompts a confluence of emotions. I am at-once melancholy, fiercely proud, enamored, heartbroken and worried all the time. And given my already-pronounced penchant for nostalgia (which you may have noticed, if you’ve spent any amount of time on this blog at all), I am continually made wistful by invocations of their littler years.

As if it were yesterday, I can vividly remember being able to pick my children up --- a feat that would doubtlessly require a swift trip to the chiropractor were I to attempt it today. I remember their weight against my shoulders as I tried to coax them to sleep in the evenings. I remember being jostled from my own sleep by them scrambling over me as if I was a rock-climbing wall. I remember striving to be hyper-attuned to whatever possible impediments they might encounter around our apartment and when out and about. I remember feeling regularly overwhelmed by both the enormity of the sense of responsibility I felt towards their continued well-being and the intangibly vast well of love they inspired within me. These latter sensations frequently prompted expressions like the one Nick sports below.

If you’re not a parent, you may have a hard time empathizing with all this, and that’s obviously perfectly okay. It’s not for everyone. It’s not meant to be.

As a tragic coda, in more recent years, Nick Cave lost a child, one of his teenaged twins from his current wife (not Luke’s mother). Cave documented his profound feelings of unimaginable grief in the 2016 album, Skeleton Tree.

Goin' Down to Nashville

As I’ve been alluding to over several posts, I depart this coming week for Nashville, Tennessee to attend a company-wide Town Hall event I’ve been orchestrating logistics and video coverage for. We now seem to do one of these every year. It’s a lot of goddamn work and, frankly, way more stressful than it should be, but I’ve managed to pull it off for the past two years. Here’s hoping this coming week’s event sustains that trend. Please wish me luck, in any case.

While it seems like an awfully fun town (even if you’re not inclined towards Country music), I never get to spend a great amount of time in Nashville. I arrive the day before the event, go right to our office on Music Row and work, go to the rehearsal, head back to the hotel, sleep, wake up, do the event and then check out and bolt back to New York. Nashville has a renowned live-music scene and purportedly some of the best BBQ to be found on the planet, but I haven’t been able to experience either, as yet, and this year looks to be no different, in that capacity. One of these visits, I’m sure I’ll get to know Nashville properly.

For me, though, the first word to still pop into my head after an invocation of Nashville is a very specific and robustly prurient one. I’ll explain, but first … some deeply tiresome and needlessly detailed context.

Popular music in the 1990s. Pose that to someone, and the first word you’ll probably hear is Grunge. While, true, Seattle’s more sludgily bedraggled take on punk rock did indeed break big in the 90’s via obvious bands like Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Tad, Pearl Jam and …. y’know …. that other “N” word, it wasn't the only thing happening. Suggesting that Grunge was the only major musical export of the decade in question is just lazy. In the very early 90’s, alongside Grunge came the British indie boom, with sub-sets like the so-called Shoegazer scene of bands like Lush, Ride, Chapterhouse and Curve and the sort-of post-Grebo crop of bands like The Wonder Stuff, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Kingmaker and the Senseless Things. This was followed shortly by the whole Manchester scene, finding the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, The Charlatans and James rising to prominence. Later on, of course, there was the Britpop boom, featuring bands like Blur, Suede, Echobelly, Gene and, of course, Oasis. Back here at home, Grunge seemed to pave the way for a vast new crop of sloppily-dubbed “alt.rock” bands of all stripes to suddenly get snapped up by major labels. When grunge started to arguably lose its flannel-swaddled charm, along came a brand new crop of more accessible pop-punk outfits, finding bands like Green Day, The Offspring and Rancid taking a formula honed by myriad forebears still wallowing in comparatively impoverished obscurity to both the top of the pop charts and verily the fucking bank. Outside of rock circles, of course there was hip-hop of all stripes — from the progressive and adventurous Native Tongue scene to the grittiest of hardcore gangsta rap, both later overshadowed by the schism between the East Coast’s Bad Boy label and the West Coast’s Death Row. Club music continued to evolve and the phenomenon of Trip-Hop fully blossomed via the triad of Massive Attack, Tricky and the seismically original debut album by Portishead, the blueprint for which later limply copied by countless pretenders who turned the sound into sonic wallpaper for cocktail lounges. Around this same time, many of my native New York’s noise-rock bands were in major percolation, finding Surgery, Helmet, Prong, Barkmarket and — yes, do indeed wait for it — Cop Shoot Cop hitting their respective strides. Regardless, by the end of the decade, the sickly plague of teen pop suddenly became the prevailing order of the day, finding Rolling Stone putting people like Britney Spears on their cover far more times than the magazine’s tenuous grasp on credibility should have ever allowed.

So, yeah, musically, there was a lot going on in the 90’s, and this isn’t even really the whole of it. I’m dead-sure I’ve omitted lots of stuff.

While all this was going on, I was pretty dutifully plugged in. For most the decade, I juggled full-time jobs at LIFE Magazine and then TIME Magazine with gigs as a freelance music journalist for outlets as far ranging as indie mags like The New York Review of Records and a magazine called Exit to music glossies like Creem and HuH! (a seemingly forgotten offshoot of RayGun Magazine) and then onto a delightful position as a weekly contributor to the “Goings On About Town” section of The New Yorker, for which I wrote blurbs about upcoming shows by bands the average reader of that magazine would invariably never consider attending.

But, even as I was deeply versed in all the subsets floridly cited above, I was also fortunate enough to still be fleetingly hip enough to be privy to a live-music circuit of an endearingly grotty, downmarket and proudly underground variety. Via a select coterie of comrades in the mid-to-late 90’s, I was regularly attending shows by bands like The Lunachicks, The Unband, The Prissteens, The PeeChees, The Candy Snatchers, The Lee Harvey Keitel Band, The Pleasure Fuckers, The Upper Crust and a particularly eye-&-ear-immolating (literally and figuratively) combo called Nashville Pussy.

Not actually from Nashville but named after a slavishly libidinous bit of idiotic stage banter by Ted Nugent on his Double Live Gonzo album (right before he lapses into the suitably obscene “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang”), Nashville Pussy was — and remains — a Georgia foursome who play a blistering, boogie-fueled blend of depraved, high-octane cowpunk that is as informed by KISS, AC/DC and Motorhead as it is by Blackfoot, Molly Hatchet and Skynyrd, but played with the ferocity of Black Flag. I realize that’s an awfully messy description, but they’re that kind of band.

Taking this bizarre aesthetic to a whole other level were Nashville Pussy’s secret weapons, the two-fisted punch of weapons-grade estrogen in the form of perpetually bikini-topped guitarist Ruyter Suys and towering Amazonian bassist Corey Parks, two ridiculously sexy — and ruthlessly adept -- players who flanked lead-singer/guitarist Blaine Cartright (himself a dead-ringer for neighbor Carl from “The Aqua Teen Hunger Force”). Where Ruyter was a perpetually head-banging and tantalizingly sweaty hybrid of Angus Young and an Alberto Vargas pin-up, Corey Parks stalked the stage at Darth Vader height and spat fucking fire in a manner that really did not suggest a scrupulous observation of venue fire codes. Parks left the band in 2000, a couple of years before the horrible Great White fire at Rhode Island niteclub, so I’m not sure Nashville Pussy still dabbles in this sort of reckless pyrotechnics to this day. But, at the time, it was really quite a spectacle.

I was lucky enough to see Nashville Pussy almost burn off my eyebrows off and singe my eardrums at least four or five times, usually at the Continental just off St. Marks. I did also see them at Tramp’s (possibly in a double-bill with The Hellacoptors, but I cannot recall). At that particular gig, I managed to take a couple of shots (this was before cell phones, so I braved the pit with my proper camera — no small feat, in retrospect). Some of those shots are above and below.

I adored both the Nashville Pussy live show and their first album, the somewhat predictably titled Let Them Eat Pussy — which is not exactly a great album to leave lying around on your coffee table when, say, your in-laws come visiting. Early versions of the record came with a bonus EP — titled, WAIT FOR IT, Eat More Pussy — of esoteric covers, featuring deep cuts by AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, Mitch Ryder, The Flamin’ Groovies and The Saints, among others. Corey Parks split the band right before their second record, High as Hell, and her departure sort of sapped my enthusiasm a bit, and I didn’t really keep after them beyond that. I’m sure they still kick a man-sized platter of ass, but I wish Corey were still in the band’s ranks.

Despite being nominated for a Grammy Award (!!!) for Best Metal performance for the song below (the delightful “Fried Chicken & Coffee”), Nashville Pussy have never really broken big. Whether it’s their indelicate name or their proudly blunt espousal of sleaze, the band has remained underdogs of the underground, which is probably just how they like it. I have a weathered Nashville Pussy t-shirt, but stopped wearing it some time ago, as it started to appear a bit unseemly for a greying dad like m’self to be sporting such a legend across my chest. I’ll never part with their first album and EP, though. God bless’em.

So, yeah …. anyway…. whenever I hear the word Nasvhile….the next word in my head is always… well, Pussy.

Enjoy.

New from SWANS...

If you care, you've probably already heard about/read about/heard this, but I cannot help sharing, as well...

Blondie on The Bowery in `76

From "Blank Generation." It's hard to believe it's the same city...

...

The Summer 2019 Survey

Since, as mentioned, I'd suggest it's fair to say that Summer 2019 is officially over and done with, I thought I'd exhume this Summer Survey that I haven't done since 2016. Here goes...

Defining Moment of Summer 2019:
I would say that the defining moment, for me, would be --- after months of fretting about the prospect of our son, Oliver, departing for his first time away at sleepaway camp for four weeks -- arriving back up at the camp and seeing him bounding out of his cabin looking happy, healthy and filled with tales to tell about how much he enjoyed his time there, completely exceeding our expectations about the endeavor. The whole experience ending up being all that we'd hoped for him, and more. 

Best Purchase of Summer 2019:
Overlooking stuff I procured for my kids, I'd say the most rewarding purchase would be the pair of ridiculously indulgent YETI 10 Oz Rambler Wine Tumblers I bought to celebrate the wife & I's eighteenth wedding anniversary. Nothing says "marital bliss" like needlessly expensive outdoor lifestyle products. 

 

Best Book You Read of Summer 2019:
It was initially a toss up between Wayne Hussey's memoir, "Salad Daze" and Joe Doe & Tom DeSavia's continuation of their oral-history-styled documentation about the trajectory of L.A. punk, "More Fun in The World" (which I'm currently finishing), but if I'm being honest, it was re-discovering H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu & Other Weird Stories" (which I discussed here) that really brought me the most joy.

Best Movie You Saw During Summer 2019:
I honestly cannot recall the last film I went to, as in sat down in a movie theater to watch. I saw plenty of decent movies in the past couple of months, but I did not have the experience of attending a movie in its intending setting. I mean, yeah, I guess I enjoyed "Avengers: Endgame," but I feel like that's the lamest of possible answers. 

Best Gift You Received of Summer 2019:
For Fathers Day, my son Oliver gave me a fetching red Forbidden Planet t-shirt that I was quite pleased with. Also, my friend Rob B. surprised me with a copy of the sprawling, live Wonder Stuff boxset, Upstaged, for no readily apparent reason other than that he'd heard me mention how curious I was about it. Damn nice of him. 

Biggest Loss of Summer 2019:
I spoke about it here already, but I was quite sad to see the final demise of Manitoba's on Avenue B. 

Song That Best Sums Up Summer 2019:
Honestly, while I'm inclined to cite the new single by IDLES, "Mercedes Marxist," which arrived back in June, I can't say it's the song that defined my summer. For whatever reason, my family found itself repeatedly playing the 1978 best-of by Paul McCartney & Wings, Wings Greatest with some inexplicable regularity, although no one else seems to enjoy "Live & Let Die" as much as I. Realistically, I think the song that is destined to always remind of this summer is one by a guy named Spencer Ludwig. As mentioned elsewhere, at my job, I am tasked with putting together a fiscal-year-end highlight video, scored by various pop hits of the day by my organization's affiliates. Spencer Ludwig's "Best Life" is factoring heavily into that video -- whether I like it or not -- and it has been an inescapable ear-worm. Here it is: 

Happiest Memory of Summer 2019:
After initiating a dialogue with an estranged best friend (which I spoke about here), he suggested reconvening with another since-inexplicably-distanced friend at a Murphy's Law gig on a boat. The evening in question was far and away the happiest I've been and the hardest I've laughed in a long, long time. 

Saddest Memory of Summer 2019:
This might sound pretty histrionic, but I found the failure of Robert Mueller's beleaguered testimony to congress to really move the dial in any meaningful capacity to be pretty damn tragic. To my mind, it was a blown opportunity to make a crucial course correction, and I kinda blame Mr. Mueller for that. You may beg to differ, but so be it.

Scariest Memory of Summer 2019:
In early July, I showed up for jury duty and narrowly escaped being selected for placement on a case they'd informed me would take "at least three months," which would have fallen squarely in my busiest period at work. Suffice to say, I vehemently protested, but was called in to talk to a roomful of lawyers to explain my situation anyway. I was probably a little needlessly belligerent about it all, but managed to convince them I would very much not be an asset to either side of the dispute. I had no problems serving at the time, but this was a commitment that would have severely messed up my life. 

Word That Best Describes Summer 2019:
Intangible.