THE STOOGES and the victory of the marginal

 

Iggy Pop was a drummer in blues bands before he and his fellows formed the Stooges in the 60s, and as this song demonstrates, the experience wasn't wasted. Iggy and his mates understood, that is to say, felt the vaguely described but conspicuous force that blues had, simple, sonic, repetitive and impolite to any standard measure of tempo. This was the kind of music that was the blend of instinct and wits, a boxer's set of reflexes to things that get in your way. Guitar, drums and are a distorted grind and the tempo of nails hammered.

The Ashtons smashed mightily. Iggy, of course, was the man alone, a three-semester course of unreconstructed Id that inhabiting the center of every ganglion of nerves the brain tried to lay claim to; the superego to twitch and become more reptilian by the second. He was that kid in drainpipe jeans who carried a sharp stick with a brown, mung encrusted nail through it, waiting on the corner for someone as yet unknown to walk by and get poked with it. There was no fun, so you made your own, just to see what happens. These were Mailer's White Negros for a fact, except they shivved me a man who was tailing them and talking too much in the other muse mute streets of two-story burn pads and deserted storefronts that had their front windows sealed with concrete and layers of old concert posters and spray paint exclaiming gang signs and Jesus. Anyone daring to talk past this kid deserved to be whacked with the rusty nail. It was cruel and pointless until something genuine happened to change everything; the bit that everyone knows in the world of the Stooges is that transcendence is not on the agenda, ever.

No band embraced nihilism with more profound off-handedness than The Stooges. Part of their genius lies in t their lyrics, hardly cliché but not conventionally poetic, these were rhymes that were spare and simple, and powerfully to the point, talking about the small matters of frustration that send the young mind into paroxysms of rage and self-recrimination. Ever say something or overheard a phrase from someone else uttered in exasperation or another kind of brain locking state where what is said is so starkly simple and clear and unadorned by apology or other sorts of mental equivocation that it resembles brilliance? That’s my take on the collective lyrics of the Stooges, words as an instinctive reflex, Nor was their music dependent on the trivial concern of instrumental virtuosity.

This was the sticking point with many critics at the time when their first album, The Stooges, was released in 1969. In a counter-culture that was ironically putting premiums on the extreme professionalism of well-trained musicians who could hit notes precisely and improvise at length over increasingly tricky time signatures, the Stooges were the textbook example of the anathema, an insult to the taste-maker elite. Reviews were generally insulting to the band’s repetitive slam and clang approach, and it is one of the wonders of staying alive long enough to see a groundbreaking band, unfiltered from the start, outlast the negativity and change the critical consensus. The intelligentsia had to catch up with them. The Stooges rejected formal instruction on their musicianship and, in turn, weren’t about to suffer the instructions the snoots and snobs demanded they follow.

What’s ironic is that Rolling Stone, the arbiter of quality in matters of the New Rock, still had integrity in their record reviews at the time and allowed one of their original rock critics, Ed Ward, to let the air out of the inflated importance of over-serious rock music and the earnest critiques they inspired by his review of the album. The first two paragraphs have Ward offering a thumbnail sketch of the band’s background, quickly followed the expected litany of sins, that Iggy is a bad Jim Morrison imitator, the lyrics are sub-literate, the guitar and drum work is lifeless and lacking even the dignity of being mechanical. The something wonderful happened halfway through. He summarized his feelings thusly “Their music is loud, boring, tasteless, unimaginative and childish.” Then something remarkable happened.

With the grievances listed, and the verdict delivered,Ward added, in a single sentence, standing alone , unencumbered by other sentences, “I kind of like it”, Ward performed an endearing bit of proto-deconstruction, using the aforementioned deficiencies in the music as examples of virtue, value, honesty, artistic vision. It was one of the great pieces of rock criticism because here Ward created the basis of real aesthetic argument that maintained, essentially, that the Stooges were the true face and sound of a rock and roll that was relevant to life as it was being lived by millions, a voice, sound, and poetry from the curb, alley and shuttered doorway that wanted nothing to do with millionaire musicians with long hair striving to achieve legitimacy by mimicking and misreading the most superficial elements of High Culture. Ed Ward established the concerns that Lester Bangs soon picked up and turned into a masterful argument with the dying of the light. We can thank Ed Ward and the Stooges for that relief.

This was a band that went in the other direction when they began their quest to find what lay beyond avant-garde posturing in Music during the 60s away from trudging drum solos and long-form guitar essays. Iggy and the Stooges were primitive, out of tune, irritated and irritating in turn. It was a matter where the band and their frontman, Iggy Pop (nee Stooge) blended perfectly, given their ability to turn something that sounds horrible and repetitive into a crashing, sustained drone of attitude, and Iggy's serpentine stage presence and clipped verbal dexterity. He was the guy who couldn't sit stand and would stand for nothing less than what he wanted in full, and they were the grind of the city turned into a droning inner voice prodding him to smash down whatever walls came before him. It wasn’t that he was a bad boy going contrarily to the niceties of all things middle class and calcified, it wasn’t that he as a sentient being had identified an artifice he disliked and defined himself in opposition to it; it was more like Iggy Stooge was unaware of the feelings of others, greater ramifications of dangerous self-gratification, or any code of behavior the rest of us depend on keep drivers and pedestrians, for example, on the streets and the sidewalks, respectively. He was the unadulterated id, a squirming mass of impulse that transgressed boundaries, mashed together poetry and porn, and displayed no interest in theorizing about what he had done or about what he was thinking of doing. His was the case of living in the present tense solely, and whatever sensation presently was utmost.

Let us not be mistaken about this, as Iggy Stooge’s persona and psyche had the virtue of being monochromatic; his immediate impulse was not the only thing that mattered. There simply wasn’t anything else. All this play against the quarrelsome insomniac raunch of Ron Ashton’s guitar work, elementary, rudimentary, undeniable effective, endlessly influential. What he lacked in technique he made up for in essence, a counterpoint to the corrosive thrills of Iggy’s distilled juvenile delinquency; his guitar work might be politely described as “steady”, but this a dodge against the annoyance factor this band turned into a new aesthetic. “Persistent” is more apt, like a dislodged bit of a fender dragging along the highway, kicking up sparks near the gas tank, or a door slamming for hours in a strong wind, or jackhammers at night carving up your street at precisely the moment your brain demands you sleep or die inanely. Obnoxious, profound without knowing. We should all be grateful these guys wielded musical instruments, not guns. Or worse.

ASK THE DUST

 

The film version of John Fante's classic Los Angeles novel Ask the Dust has been available since it's theatrical release in 2006, and it will suffice to say that it's actually pretty good, excellent in fact. That's not the usual thing I say about screen adaptations of favorite novels of mine, as I have a grating habit of taking my favorite books too personally; anything less than a perfect transition from one medium to another seems nothing less than desecration, betrayal, blasphemy against a heaven of literary worth. Yes, I may have some personal problems I should address. But this isn't meant to be about the movie, but rather a plea to others who haven't seen it in the 20 years since it was first issued to please, please, please read the novel first. John Fante's prose is a delight to read and his tale of a young man determined to make a name for himself as a writer in the 1930's while a naive and impatient whelp in Los Angeles is gloriously clear, funny, ironic, with a snappy rhythm that makes you think of Raymond Chandler and a sardonic tone you find in later Bukowski. But he's better than either of those two scribes. That's blasphemy against Chandler, I guess, to suggest that anyone beat him at his own tough guy cadences, but Fante's words, images, brisk pacing and scene setting are without strain. Really, lets admit Raymond occasionally sounded unnatural as he reached for a way to finish a line. Bukowski , in turn, wrote the same story over and over. Most popular novelists do, one can say, but it's possible to read paragraphs from Post Office and Hollywood, two different novels from Bukowski, and find them indistinguishable in memory a scant two weeks late. The film version bodes well, despite the presence of the egregious rude boy Colin Farrell in the role of Arturo Bandini, the young , self-absorbed writer who is appealingly complex in his crazed vacillations between global egomania and desperate self-loathing. The novel is actually the second installment of a four novel sequence following the adventures and heartaches of Bandini, and it is a vivid, gritty bit of confession for Fante's own erring progress as a writer; Bandini is clearly his fictional stand in, a person so acutely aware of their discomfort in their own skin that only the giddy highs of self-mythology or the swan-dive into despair and personal loathing seem to give him armor against his emptiness. The irony of Ask the Dust, not to give too much away, is that it is the one thing he does well, writing, that makes for all the psychic warfare and self-sabotage; his writing is not an escape from his disequilibrium, but an entrée to even more spiraling chaos. Fante is far less didactic than I've just sounded and offers up saga that is colorful, funny, heartbreaking and emotionally raw; it is the perfect stuff for an HBO limited series. He writes as well as his Los Angeles contemporary Raymond Chandler ever did, and is by far the better, more sympathetic novelist than his most famous acolyte, Charles Bukowski. Robert Towne, the writer behind Roman Polanski's glorious Chinatown, writes and directs this effort, and has demonstrated an ability to convey LA in the thirties. But in the event that the movie is a stinker, you should arm yourself by reading Fante's novel; hard-boiled, lyric, skewed and comic, this is a coming of age story that takes believable twists and turns. The story is of a very human scale, and the seeming bipolar rages of young Arturo are moving and nuanced. He is a very flawed and complex character, and he stands as a significant creation the canon of American literature. Everyone who cares about a good story and great writing should experience Bandini on the page, lest the film version arrive flat line and motionless.

Notes on My Youthful Optimism

 

In revelations still dawning, that hindsight suggests that if  the Sex Pistols had never come to being, someone would have been compelled to invent them. In fact,  someone did, Malcolm McLaren, an experimental fashion designer who felt that the music current at that time in the 70s--lots of Led Zeppelin, Eagles ,Journey and the Who being replayed beyond death and into the spinning rings of limbo--wasn't a suitable backdrop for what he wanted, a style, attitude , manner, a way of thinking relevant to the current wave of alienated youth. The 60s utopianism was a bad joke at this point, a snicker and a fluid snort of disgust at the mention, and the 70s up   til then amounted to nothing much of interest happening in music or radio. I had read the Making of a Counter Culture, The Greening of America and Without Marx or Jesus and had assumed that the adult scholars who wrote these flighty, lyric and toxically optimistic forecasts that America would shed it's racist, sexist, imperialist, murderous ways and evolve to a higher rung on the dialectic's double helix ladder, i.e., it would be heaven on earth, one perpetual Eden of tranquility, enlightenment, tranquility, boundless creativity...well, you get the picture. 

My expectations were as great as my patience was short and nothing changed quickly enough as riots raged, friends continued to get thrown in jail , the musicians we admired seemed less poets and prophets than rich kids in odd clothes and private jets and yachts, and the reality of war and slums and self-seeking remained . The bad habits we had were merely given new names , but the grossness couldn't be disguised. Expectedly , self disgust became my middle name and I became the worst sort of poser, the bored cynic, an easy suit to wear when the glee of utopian expectations are crushed. But sadly, I was still a young jerk impatient for the gravitas being an old man could give me. I had no experience worth talking about , really, so the job for me was to dismiss all new things that came my way. But I knew nothing, Negativity didn't me through. But back to the alleged liberating qualities of rock and roll.

 The pretentiousness of the musicians and the gullibility of the audience had choked off the life force that made rock and roll exciting and worth caring about. Some of it might be laid at the feet of rock criticisms, since the advanced discussions of Dylan's relationship to Chuck Berry's existential Everyman demanded a musical technique and lyrical concept just as daunting. This is the danger when folk art is discovered: it stands to become something distorted, disfigured and bereft of vitality. I was lucky , I guess, in that I was a fan of the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges long before the Sex Pistols caught the punk wave. They and bands like Blue Cheer and Black Sabbath were a grounding principle--rock and roll are beautiful because it's energetic, awkward, and stupid, but profoundly so. There are "concept albums" I admire and still like, if not listen to, but I won't name them here. 

I am pleased, though, that the idea of the Album being a literary object has been dropped in a deep grave and had dirt thrown over it's bloated remains.I miss albums, though. I like holding them, reading them, mediating on their physicality while listening to the record. It was part of the experience of absorbing what the musicians were doing, instrumentally and lyrically. Albums made you think that their size and shape were part of the home you made for yourself--house, room, cave, apartment--and that the collection of them, along with books and other such things marked your growing interest in the world around you. Now it seems like disembodied noise too much of the time piped into devices, not really played nor considered before the music commences. It seems much of the time like a streaming hurry to get done with the whole thing and then move onto another distraction which , as well, will provide no real reward.

Dylan and DeLillo's "White Noise"

 I would have attended this 2019 academic conference on the reputed genius of Bob Dylan, as a lifetime, albeit cranky of The Bard. My attention to detailswould have been wide-eyed skepticism, if that makes any sense.

The of literary doctorates dedicating a conference to a rock and roller makes brings to mind Don DeLillo's novel 'White Noise", much of which occurs at a small college where we follow the postmodern adventures of the head of the Department of Hitler Studies, where the ultimate aim of the department is never revealed outside collating seemingly random data on the historical monster. A delight is in the middle of the novel, where there is a "dialogue" between the head of the Hitler Studies program and the chair of the Department of Elvis Studies. The two scholars spend their time bouncing scattered bits about Adolph and El, not really connecting any of the data or subjecting it to critical thinking of any sort.

The two are talking past one another. DeLillo comically outlines the problem of specialized departments , particularly literary societies and such, and the issue of how their concentrations have relevance to a larger society. And asking, basically, what is the point of amassing pure research for its own sake. Something similar occurs in his Oswald novel "Libra", where we witness experts of all sorts reexamining the photos, film and various witness accounts of the Kennedy assassination , a ritual that goes on years after the event. With all the research, we find that nothing is revealed. I suspect, though, the Dylan conference was a lot of fun for the pop-cultural obsessives who attended.

A RAGE TO SPLATTER

 

A young painter given to producing huge canvases blessed with sub-Cubist line drawings somewhat highlighted with fading coloration that suggest a cross between Robert Motherwell and an anemic Peter Max opined, over drinks, that democracies are anti-art. Where this came from I don’t know, as I wasn’t in her conversation, but it is a topic that I thought about for about an hour, on the way home, my head alive with half formed ideas needing a keyboard for elaboration.

This is among the benefits (or curses) of not drinking, you tend to remember every idea that comes to you. I thought, regarding the comment from our young abstractionist, that the matter of democracies being “anti-art” is less that democracies are anti-artistic than they are resistant to the notion that aesthetic concerns and artistic expression are reserved for a cultivated elite. Democracy rejects this sublimated priesthood on principle, and opens the arena, the galleries so that more who wish to do so may engage in the intuitive/artistic process and keep the activity alive in ways that are new and precisely relevant to the time--this is the only way that the past has any use at all, as it informs the present day activity, and allows itself to be molded to new sets of experiences.

Art is about opening up perspectives, not closing them down, and that is the democratic spirit at its best. Otherwise, the past is a rigor mortised religion, and history is an excuse for brutal, death wish nostalgia. One advances into their art with no real concern about making history--their obvious concerns are about making their art, with some idea of what it is they're advancing toward, and what past forms are being modified and moved away from. But the judgment of history--as if History, capital H, were a bearded panel viewing a swimsuit competition--will be delivered piecemeal, over the years, after most of us are dead, and our issues and concerns and agendas are fine dust somewhere. The artist, meantime, concentrates on the work, working as though outside history, creating through some compulsion and irrational belief that the deferred import of the work will be delivered to an audience someday, somehow.

That is an act of faith, by definition. The artist, painter or otherwise, also casts their strokes, with brush or mallet, with the not-so-buried-dread of the possibility that the work will remain unknown, shoved in the closet, lost in the attic, and they will be better known for their day job rather than their manipulation of forms through a rarefied medium. History, for that matter, is not some intelligence that has any idea of what it's going prefer in the long run--the best I can offer is that history is news that stays news, to paraphrase a poet, which implies that the painter who survives the tides and eddies of tastes and fashion and fads will the one whose work has an internalized dynamic that is felt long after the brush is dropped and the breathing stopped. History, however it comes to be made, and who ever writes it, is a metaphysical dead end the better art makers side step, and instead make the punch and panache of their invigorated wits count in the strokes of the brush, the curl of the paint scudding over the surface, the blurring and clarifying of forms, shapes, colors and its lack: painting, coming from the modernist angle that still seems a sound and malleable way of handling the hairier knots on the chain, comes as where the world ends, the limit of what the eye can see, the forms the eye is blind to but the mind, muddle that it is, tries to imagine in a sheer swirl of perception. It is about the essaying forth of projects that strive for a moment of perfection that suddenly dies with the slightest re-cue of temperature, it is always about the attempt to convey a new idea. The articulation of the fresh, original perception may end in inevitable failure, but the connections made along the way, the bringing together of contrary energies, made the attempt and its result worth the experience.

This seems to be the material that the shrouded groves of History recalls, the earnest and frenzied striving of artists who are too busy with their work to realize that history may, or may not, finally absolve them of the strange rage for paints and brushes.

Bob Seger's SEVEN album, from 1974

 SEVEN -Bob Seger (Reprise)

Bob Seger's SEVEN album is an uncommonly mature rock and roll statement in a scene where the rule of thumb dictates that rockers must be public idiots for audience consumption. Seger doesn't wear funny hats, tight pants showing the width of his rig, or bandy about the stage gasping and wheezing, acting like the power of the music has possessed his soul. No, Seger is content to sing his hard rock straight forward, letting the rough-edged intensity of the music supply its own excitement. And Seger is a singer of such manic power as to lay to rest forever all the inept rabble-rousing Slade, Foghat and Humble Pie indulge in. Seger has his finger on the rock and roll pulse—beat. "Get Out of Denver “opens the album, a Chuck Berry chop done the way Berry meant it—fast, intense and over with, quick. The truck driver as dope smuggler theme makes a believable image of a Semi hauling ass down a Midwest highway from a slew of county sheriff’s cars. "Need Ya" is a great lift from the Faces' "It's All Over Now." Seger's voice is breathless and hoarse, laden with an obvious base desire while some slippery slide guitar from Jim McCarty riffs under it. "School Teacher" is the weak link in the album's progression. Neither the rapid redundancy nor Seger's all stops pulled grate manage to salvage this nothing exercise.

Fortunately, this fluke is one of a kind, and everything that follows is an ecstatic upward climb. "UMC (Upper Middle Class)" smacks of brilliance. Brandishing a mocking Mel Torme blues scamper while fine-tuning a witty, Mose Allison outlay of mid-century irony, Seger sings a song about wanting to be rich. Why not? One can sing the blues convincingly if one's led a wretched life to back up bragging about hard times. But who sings about wanting to be poor? Seger at once lampoons his white culture and expresses a universal aspiration anyone with an eye for better things can identify with. "Seen A Lot Floors" is a great rock and roll touring song, a terse blues grunt whose matter of fact lyrical sparseness amplifies its meaning. "Seen a lot of flooooors....Seen a lot of dooooors " shouts Seger, letting the words drop into an abyss of ennui and low level dread, tangibly described.

The details of toad life—the motels, the groupies, the larger than humanly tolerable concert halls— all become an amorphous drug drenched blur. A Jim McCarty solo starting with a ruthlessly stretched harmonic enters, followed by a lazily drawled sax solo, returning bluntly to Seger's bone-tired voice. Indicative maybe that after a while even the music ceases to have meaning, that it becomes part of the systemized routine that earns the artist a living. "Floors" is great. "20 Years from Now" is the only let up in the brisk pacing of SEVEN; it's a mawkish love song crammed to the gills with Van Morrison phrasing. But the song is worth the listening effort, if only to hear Seger squeeze his words in an effective emulation of Otis Redding.

The last song, "All Your Love," again cops from the Faces. The guitar chords are chunky, metallic without approaching heavy metal, and Seger's phrasing cleanly takes from Rod Stewart without once suggesting imitation. Bob Seger is his own man, able to take from any number of mainstream rock sources and use them to his own best advantage SEVEN fires no innovating trails in the history of rock and roll, but at least it's honest, which is more than you have a right to expect from a scene dominated with disposable personas.

BIG TEARS by Elvis Costello and the Attractions

  A perfect and I believe genuine Angry Teen Rant with this song, a string of intense and spiteful non sequiturs . Costello gets the mindset that is thinking too fast in the raging fit, bringing up snipers, not being accepted by bohemians in the hipster hangouts, failed love, getting jerked around by work. This is a young man who wants to burn the world to the ground, a comprehensible if not well articulated blurting of unsolvable turmoil. Costello's word -smithery is in good form here, and the Attractions provide the proper grinding chord progression and nagging organ backdrop.

This is a statement of unredressable grievances that will not be ignored. This was what the younger Costello was consistently brilliant at, penning the two or three minute harangue with rhymes and analogies that occasionally didn't make literal sense but which added to the exhilarating jolt one might get in "going off", ie, launching into a lacerating assault rapidly, nearly stammering as the words came, not all of them logical .

Three discs from 1979

 (From 1979, The UCSD Guardian, when I still was trying to be a local version of the Village Voice's music editor and critic Robert Christgau. Yes, it's humbling to see how clumsy and ham-handed my prose could be back then._

Special Edition -Jack De Johnette (ECM)

Considering the line-up on this disc-drummer De Johnette, one of the best-rounded jazz drummers anywhere, alto saxist Arthur Blythe and tenor saxist and bass clarinetist David Murray, and bassist Peter Warren- you would have thought it would have been a significant breakthrough record, one of those legendary sessions that chart new directions in the art. This ensemble, though, had no intentions of blazing any new trails, as the music stays safely in the boundaries of what we've heard before. Which isn't to say that this record lacks spark. On the contrary, Special Edition is fresh and lively, highlighting first-rate at the hands of Blythe and Murray. Throughout the disc, their instruments join in a variety of harmonic settings-the fusion-tinged "One For Eric," the rhythm and blues riff of "Zoot Suit," the ethereal texturizing on John Coltrane's tone poem "India"-and at key points branch out to establish their own personalities. Murray, alternating between tenor sax and bass clarinet, offers a strong,confident tone which he sustains through the wildest stretches of his soloing, an unpredictable style that finds nuance and unexpected inroads in a solo space. Blythe, on the other hand, exploits the alto sax for all it's worth, often changing moods from the whimsical and lyrical, to the soulfully anguished. DeJohnette plays solidly under their playing, rumbling like Philly Joe Jones one moment, accentuating hard-rock bass- drums another, and continually fragmenting and piecing back together rhythms as the music flows onward. Bassist Warren seems the odd man out here, maintaining a fairly conservative attitude as he backs the others dutifully, if not preceptively. Special Edition has much to recommend it. Though not profoundly original, it nonetheless cooks hard like the best jazz should. 

 Songs The Lord Taught Us- The Cramps (Illegal Records)

On the cover, The Cramps look like a cross between The Munsters and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and on record their music sounds like the ersatz psychedelia of a bad 60s youth movie (Riot On Sunset Strip, Psyche-Out).The absence of a bass player is unnoticeable, given the rest of the band members' collective incompetence. Mod Squad guitar solos and recommissioned mothballed rock cliches add a lot of eldritch squeals and howls to the cuts.The most refreshing tracks on this disc are the grooves between cuts. The Lord apparently didn't teach them how to play these songs properly. Perhaps a stint in Purgatory listening to surf music would be an appropriate refresher course. With song titles like "Mad Daddy." "Sunglasses After Dark," "Strychnine," and "Zombie Dance," I don't doubt that some people call this stuff New Wave. Yawn. I call it old-hat. 

Formula-Lazy Racer (A&M)

The title is the tip-off to what this record contains, wherein an earnest young band searches for that sound to put them over the top. Lessee, whatta we got here? Doobie Brothers? Steely Dan? Pablo Cruise? Yep, they're all here. The problem is that Lazy Racer jumps from style to style as if they were desperate-as though they suspected their appropriated styles wouldn't work as well as they hoped.

Some decent vocals and fairly competent soloing are found on these tunes, but the songs are so polished that the overall effect is imminently forgettable. While running in the vein of the aforementioned groups, Lazy Racer lacks complexity and hooks, which are essential for commercial success. If you hear a tune twice on the radio and can't hum it afterwards, it's going nowhere. 

1994: slumbering 70s hard rock

 

Hard rock isn't dead, but as one must realize about any medium with a growth prospectus of near zero, the once invigorating sounds of power chords, hysterically accelerated guitar solos, and rust- bucket vocalizing have reached a dead end. These days, there are no new Led Zeps, Deep Purples, Mountains, or Captain Beyonds to fill the shoes of the once mighty. Though Robin Trower, Aerosmith, Van Halen, Heart, and Pat Travers add the occasional breeze of fresh air to revved-up rock, the scene remains a stinking, static morass, with the dim-witted likes of Ted Nugent, Boston, Kiss, Rush, and Frank Marino dominating a scene I think, for the most part, should have died a passive death years ago. But, against my better judgment, I attended the KGB-A&M Records free concert at the California Theatre Friday, featuring a new band ambiguously named 1994, whom I suspect their record company hopes will become the new standard bearers of hard rock.

Though I had my hopes high, something inside my jaded, beer-soaked brain prayed for music as brilliant as Deep Purple's masterwork Burn, or, more hopelessly, something equal to Mountain's live version of "Dreams of Milk and Honey" from Flowers of Evil, to this day an unparalleled example of everything hard rock ought to be. I was ready to have any whimpering, wishful thinking I had dashed unmercifully. Thus, psychologically forewarned, my letdown was less severe than it might have been. I could have guessed what 1994 would have sounded like, and those of you who've "matured" beyond rock and roll and have joined the elitist ranks of white dilettante jazz fans—who now regard your former affection for rock and roll as a "juvenile" phase you're glad you grew out of—you can second guess the invective I'm about to sling.

1994, like other hard rock bands working their way from third to top billing with grinding tours, is a band devoid of any imagination whatsoever. Their songs are stripped to the most remedial riff-heavy gruel feasible, with solos that are fast, flashy, and screaming, without the needed intelligence or forethought that set Ritchie Blackmore, Leslie West, and Jeff Beck apart from the pack. And true to the "boogie" tradition, every song was extended light-years beyond whatever worth they had in the first place. 1994, in total, reminded me of a dying dinosaur mindlessly smashing anything that got in its way, wasting time and energy in a fit of useless rage that served only to enervate the beast faster and further.

There were a couple of good moments, however. Karen Lawrence, a Linda Ronstadt clone, possesses a rusty drainpipe voice akin to Lydia Pense (of Cold Blood) and Bonnie Tyler, which could be put to better use elsewhere. As a rule of thumb, raspy vocals in hard rock are best left to men, as in the case of Paul Rodgers, Frankie Miller, Bob Seger, or Rod Stewart. Don't ask me why. Guitarists Steve Schiff and another one whose name I don't recall had a few moments of inspirational playing, especially during their rendition of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads," made famous by Cream. Both of them have ample facility and touch, and succeeded in their trade-offs to recreate Eric Clapton's original guitar solo note for note. I find it ironic, however, that it took two guitarists to replicate what originally took one guitarist to accomplish. The less said about drummer John Desautels and bassist Bill Rhodes, the better, as both of them managed more to get in the way of things rather than expedite them.

This review, though, should not be construed as any kind of "goodbye to rock" testament by someone hopelessly wrapped up in his own trivial reification. The basic statement is that despite the artists mentioned before, hard rock is a dead horse, a form that's largely exhausted its potential. There are too many other good rock artists for me to call it quits altogether: Little Feat, Steely Dan, UK, Bryan Ferry, Elvis Costello, Bowie, Devo, Bob Seger, Peter Gabriel, Streetwalkers, Bill Bruford, Zappa, Jack DeJohnette's Directions, Brand X, Johnny Winter, and a host of others who keep incongruous company in my record collection. 1994, to me, was a baleful reminder of sterility in rock that has to be gotten around and ignored. The good rock is out there. You have to look for it on your own, however, because the radio doesn't play it most of the time at all.

(From the UCSD Guardian, 1978).

A Poem and a Back Story

I can see my house on the Russian River

near the mad rapids

that slather

over the rocks and

kiss the embankment.

You could see me coming up

a San Diego walk way

emerging from the

dreamy mist clinging

to the trees and

blades of grass poking

through the cracks,

I am holding

bags of bagels

and five dollar wines

to go along with

the video about a

man who knew a women

who did a thing

that made the world

make sense for a minute I would

never forget.

Decades later

it was like

we had just learned

how to talk

in uncapitalized at a volume

that is clear and

suggests a language that

sound it's been lived in.

Never lived in the Guerenville area back in the day, but I was there twice in the early 70s, two years out of high-school, when a particularly charismatic scoundrel a year older than I convinced me to hitchhike with him up the California Coast, hitting lots of small towns, spending a few days in Big Sur, winding up in that fine town for an overnight residence. We made that trip twice, back backs, carton of Marlboro 100s. sleeping bags, carrying too much cash to be traveling around in the land of s trangers. But it was delightful and what I saw of the area made a lasting impression on me, much like my adventure through Az and Colo. did a couple of years ago. I had a girl friend, later on, who had friends who lived on the Russian River, and we went to visit them; quite a scene, real off the grid counter culture life style, gentle, peaceful, remarkably non- materialsitic. It was a fine time indeed, as I was entranced with how all these homes were nestled into various nooks and crevices of the thick forest , lots of winding roads, mist in the air, with a what looked like a magnificently roaring, churning, pulsing river below. None of these incidents are related other than my trying to find some emotional and tonal commonality with things seen from a distance , through a thick fog or heavy mist, with the idea of that one is left wondering what they were thinking at those moments and how it all brought us (me) to the age of 71, somewhat dazed and amazed. The third stanza that starts "You could see me..."refers to the Coast Apartments near UCSD, where morning fog frequently hovered close to the earth and made the walk to work (I was at the Birch Aquarium at the time) serenely and eerily ethereal.

Capsule reviews of John McLaughlin, Tom Petty and David Johansen from 1978

 (Anyone familiar with the style of the well known rock critics of the 6os and 70s will without exception realize I was imitating the style of the Village Voice's Robert Christgau, who was and remains an argument-starter I admire. That said, forgive the obvious indebtedness).

Johnny McLaughlin, Electric Guitarist - John McLaughlin (Columbia)

After three interesting albums with all acoustic and raga-oriented Shakti, guitarist McLaughlin plugs in again and re-teams himself with several stellar musicians he used to share band duties with. Accordingly, there are a variety of jazz styles on this disc, and McLaughlin proves himself comfortable in all of them. The highlight track here is "Do You Hear the Voices You Left Behind", a post-bop chase in the mold of John Coltrane's classic "Giant Steps" composition. McLaughlin skillfully negotiates a complex chord progression and solos with a surprising spiritedness. Chick Corea (piano), Stanley Clarke (bass) and Jack DeJohnette (drums) live up to their reputations, each maintaining a pulsating rhythm and offering their own inspired sorties. "New York on My Mind" is an unexpected change of pace for McLaughlin, being a Gershwin-like melody with brilliant blues shadings. The solos, from McLaughlin, violinist Jerry Goodman, and keyboardist Stu Goldberg, are cleverly restrained and subtle, complementing the moodiness. Another departure is "Every Tear from Every Eye", a dreamy composition with an ethereal tinge in which McLaughlin offers an angular, introspective solo, and which features pop-jazz saxophonist David Sanborne playing in a more cerebral context than his fans are used to. Though not the best effort he's ever made, Johnny McLaughlin none the less shows that the guitarist is more than the Speed King Honcho of the frets. This disc is a refreshing change of pace from someone who many had dismissed as having fallen in an irrevocable rut. B plus.

You're Gonna Get It -Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

This time out, Petty, and crew sound a bit less journeyman-like in their mild manner brand of rock and roll. Petty's voice, a limited vehicle for self-expression, is more soul-oriented this time out (though not soulful), and the band, especially in the guitar work, is crunchier, dirtier, and a little more committed to mainstream rock and rollisms. In time. Petty and the Heartbreakers may become, as San Diego based writer Mikel Toombs alluded to in his concert critique, a sturdy Rolling Stones type band. They have sound and song writing talent. All they need is a little more hysteria and bad luck. B.

 

David Johanson - David Johanson.

Johanson, the former lead singer for the well-loved New York Dolls, has become another over-stylized non-entity who is salvaging what's left of his "punk" reputation into an a priori mélange of typical street posturing, none of it very interesting at this point. Johanson's voice, which sounded good with the Dolls because he was buried in the mix, is an uninteresting bellow, and having it upfront on this album, booming like cannon fire and not much else, only accentuates the problem. The band. as well, are contrived study in slick sloppiness, deliberating themselves through the material like over conscious artistes calculating the effect of some mechanical vulgarity. In general, David Johanson rolls plenty. but it hardly rocks worth a bean’s worth of flatulence.