KISS Made Me Start Taking Drugs - Ricki C. Celebrates the First Day of Legalized Recreational Marijuana in Ohio

Ricki C. decided to celebrate the December 7th legalization of recreational marijuana with a blog about his own history with illegal recreational marijuana, dating back to 1977 and a run-in with KISS.

KISS was wholly and entirely responsible for me starting to smoke pot. In March 1977 I was 24 years old and had made it completely through the 1960’s and more than six years of the 1970’s without partaking in weed. (And this was on the West Side of Columbus, Ohio!) 

My Favorite Band On The Planet At That Time – The Dictators – were supposed to open for KISS (see ad above), so I bit the bullet and dropped $7.50 for a ticket. Come showtime, some lame-ass L.A. douchebags called Legs Diamond came on completely unannounced to replace my Queens, New York boys. It was so depressing a development that when the stoner next to me absent-mindedly mistook me for his Cheech & Chong compadres and handed me a joint, rather than going, “No thanks, maaaaan,” as I normally, derisively, Sex Pistol-ively would have done, I instead replied, “Yeah, let me hit that.” 

From the moment that smoke hit my brain by way of my lungs on that Sunday evening, however, it was spring 1969 again and everything that had gone wrong in the 1970’s – mood rings, streaking, Richard Nixon, The Decline of Rock & Roll and concomitant Rise of Corporate Rock & Disco, my failing marriage, etc. – was gone and I was feelin’ good, Jack. I clearly recall saying out loud to myself, underneath the KISS din, “I remember feeling like this all the time, without drugs.” 

I was a convert. 

I had a pretty good run with pot, indulging from that day in 1977 to the year 2000 and the implantation of my first cardiac pacemaker. My cardiologist advised me to take six weeks or so off from getting high – to let the pacemaker work in, because pot significantly increased my heart rate – and I never really got back into it. I never lost a job or ruined a relationship with pot (though I did with rock & roll); I was never arrested; and I ended my years as an alcoholic in 1980 (that began when I was 16 in 1968) partly with weed’s assistance. 

All that being said, here is stupidest thing I ever did when I was high. 

It’s not exactly a State Secret that I was the model for Sean Richter in the 12-part I Love Distortion 

mix of fact & fiction novella that ran in Growing Old With Rock & Roll in 2013.  

Here’s a re-run from a Sean Richter Chronicles follow-up in 2021.

The Sean Richter Chronicles will appear occasionally in Growing Old With Rock & Roll.  They are an adjunct to I Love Distortion (a rock & roll novel in 12 chapters) that played out in the blog throughout 2013.  This episode slots in right around late May or early June, 1978, before Nicole had called off her engagement to her fiancée and before my wife had tumbled on our little affair. 

Callie was a co-worker of Nicole's in the toy department of the K-Mart where we all worked.  Callie was an INCREDIBLY sweet young girl, who couldn't have found a clue with a stepladder.  When she got pregnant at 18 with her high-school boyfriend, all of us agreed that we doubted she connected the act of having sexual intercourse with said boyfriend with the resulting birth of their daughter. 

This is an (unfortunately) entirely true & accurate account of our hospital visit following that birth

. 

 SEAN AND GREG THE ROADIE VISIT CALLIE IN THE HOSPITAL

"Hey Sean," Greg the Roadie said to me as he parked the car on a street near Mt. Carmel West Hospital that late spring/early summer day, "you think we should smoke a joint before we go up to the room?" 

Looking back I can't imagine HOW that would have been an appropriate - or even sane - question before a visit to the hospital on the happy occasion of the birth of a new baby, but then again, MANY of Greg's & my interactions of that period hinged on smoking joints in cars.  I never indiscriminately smoked pot.  That set me apart from many of my brethren of the day.  I always had a REASON to get high: to attend rock & roll shows; to listen to music at home; seeing movies to make the cinematic experience more intense, etc.  And then I met Greg. 

Anyway, my reply in the car that day?  "Yeah, I guess we should," though even at this point - more than 40 years later - I have NO IDEA how an affirmative reply was the correct one.  Plus it's important to remember that buying pot on the West Side of of Columbus, Ohio in 1978 was just a Chemical Crapshoot: one time you would get a substance that just gave you a Vague Headache and a Little Sort Of High Around the Edges; the next time it might just as well have been Angel Dust that would have you hallucinating for hours.  You just never knew.  To quote/paraphrase Dostoyevsky; "You pays your money and you takes your shot." 

The other problem in that halcyon era was that we never did ANYTHING halfway.  "Moderation" was for chumps, and was not a part of our rock & roll vernacular.  There was No Such Concept of MAYBE smoking half a joint to test the potency, you just lit it up and rolled the dice.  I knew we were in trouble before we even got out of Greg's car, as I found I no longer knew how to work the car-door handle (and I had ridden in that car more than a hundred times). 

We weren't even a block away from the hospital, but we STILL got lost finding it.  Then we couldn't figure out how to GET INSIDE the building and somehow wound up in a sub-basement.  By sheer luck we happened upon an elevator and managed to hit the "Up" button.  To our enormous relief when the doors opened there was nobody inside, the car was completely empty.  "Oh man, I am SO GLAD there's nobody on here," Greg said, "I am WAY too high to deal with any straight people." 

The elevator went up exactly one floor to the lobby, the doors parted, and maybe 15 people - including a couple of doctors & nurses - were waiting to get on.  They just stared at Greg & me for a second - I think we probably had a look of total panic on our faces - and then for some reason the Elevator Mexican Standoff just struck us both as hilariously funny and we started laughing so hard we couldn't stop.  "Are you guys all right?" one of the doctor's asked as I tried to catch my breath to say, "Yeah, we're good, we're fine," but all I could do was laugh 'til I was crying.  Greg was doubled-over, leaning on the wall, holding his stomach, then slid down the wall to a sitting position, laughing the entire time. 

The doors closed again without anybody - sensibly - getting on, and we continued up to the 7th floor where the Maternity Ward was.  Any Sane Person - or Persons - would have just cut their losses right then & there and gotten their asses OUT of that hospital, but apparently we were functioning on some kind of Cannabis Automatic Pilot at that point: we had COME to this building to visit Callie and her new baby, and we were damn well GOING to visit Callie and her new baby. 

We ducked into the first restroom we came to so we could take a break and try to gather ourselves a little bit (and to stop laughing).  "Holy shit this is good pot," Greg said, "we hit the jackpot this time."  "Yeeeaaah," I said, a little less enthusiastically, "it IS good, but we still have to get through this."  The High had taken a turn now, we were functioning better, but now time seemed to be slowing down rather alarmingly, and Greg was starting to flag a little.  

When we got to Callie's room I couldn't believe my eyes; the room was CRAMMED with people.  Callie's mom & dad were there, her boyfriend's parents were there, Nicole AND her fiance were there (and that guy was NOT a big fan of mine), plus two or three people we didn't know.  EVERYBODY was just staring at us, open-mouthed, and Nicole - promptly & properly Sussing the Situation with Greg & I - was so simultaneously angry and frightened of what was going to happen next she had tears starting in her eyes. 

Greg broke that little tableau by walking over to the bed, saying, "Callie, congratulations," and KISSING HER ON THE MOUTH.  With her boyfriend AND his parents standing RIGHT THERE.  "Oh, my God," I thought to myself, "this is getting out of hand, I should put a stop to this," but I found myself rooted to the spot, incapable of action.  Before anybody could do anything, Greg then announced, "Man, I'm so tired, I've just gotta lay down for a minute," and climbed into the hospital bed WITH Callie.  The entire situation had now clearly gone Train 'Round the Bend, and I knew I had to do SOMETHING.  Breaking my drug-induced paralysis, I walked over to the bed, took his arm, said, "Greg, come on," and tried to pull him up.  He yanked his arm away and YELLED, "GET OFF me, Sean, I'll fuck you up." 

Greg was a Big Guy.  He played semi-pro football.  I'd seen him in fights.  I'd personally witnessed him beat people senseless, and I realized that if I couldn't de-fuse this situation quickly there was going to be carnage in that hospital room and Greg & I were going to jail, possibly for a VERY long time.  "Greg, Greg, Greg," I said, a little quieter each time, and stared in his eyes, "you have to get up off this bed and we have to get OUT of this room RIGHT NOW before Security comes, do you understand?"

I think something about the word "Security" cut through the haze of The Big High to reach Greg, and he let me guide him off the bed and out of the room.  "Sorry, everybody," I said over my shoulder to the assembled families, "wrong room," even though Greg had called Callie by name before he kissed her. 

Nicole showed up at our band rehearsal space later that night after she dropped off her fiancée, and the first words out of her mouth before I could even begin to apologize were, "What THE FUCK is wrong with you?"  She was as angry at me as I'd ever seen her and she was so frustrated she started slapping me on the head & shoulders.  I got her wrists and said, "Nicole, I'm really sorry.  We NEVER should have gotten high before we came up there." 

"Yeah, and exactly whose idea WAS it to get high before visiting Callie in the hospital," Nicole asked, whirling on Greg.  Greg put his hands up before she could start pummeling him, and said, "Nicole, I'm sorry too, but getting high just seemed like a really good idea at the time."  Greg had such a sincere, little-boy-caught-with-his-hand-in-the-cookie-jar look on his face that Nicole actually burst out laughing, much like Greg and me in the elevator.     

"You guys are such CHILDREN sometimes," Nicole chided, "I bet Callie's daughter has more sense RIGHT THIS MINUTE than both of you put together."  "Come on, let's go outside," she said, grabbing my hand, "you're gonna take me for a walk to get some fresh air." 

I guessed things were going to be okay.

(ps. Apropos of The Dictators mention in paragraph one of this blog, we just lost genius rhythm guitarist Scott "Top Ten" Kempner of The Dictators November 29th, 2023. 

check out this link - Pencil Storm / In Memoriam: Scott Kempner - for my tribute to him.)

 

© 2021 & 2023 Ricki C..

The Del-Lords "I'm Gonna Be Around" (Bonus Video Friday)

The pride of the Bronx, New York - Scott Kempner, Eric Ambel, Manny Caiati & Frank Funaro - kickin' out the jams in faraway Sweden, making the world safe for American rock & roll.  Why is it that Europeans always seem to have so much more love & respect for our rockers than America does?  (re: Elliott Murphy,  The Flamin' Groovies, The Real Kids, to name just three.)

inspirational verse; "When the country is one big shopping mall / And some slimy foreign

cartel runs it all / And every song that you hear on the radio has the same sound /

I'm gonna be around" - Scott Kempner, 1988

ps. I saw The Del-Lords one time in 1985 or so at a venue very much like the one in this video - a 1300-capacity club in Columbus, Ohio, called The Newport Music Hall (previously the Columbus Agora, ahhh good times).  Towards the end of the set I said to the girl I was with, "Watch me make the lead singer crack up."  I got a Sharpie and a big piece of cardboard from the sound guy and wrote "D.F.F.D." on it.  (Scott Kempner was a founding member of N.Y.C's The Dictators, whose motto was "Dictators Forever, Forever Dictators.")  I pulled myself part-way up on the stage and tossed the cardboard right in front of Kempner's microphone stand.  He glanced down, started laughing and gave me a big thumbs up.  Del-Lords Forever, Forever Del-Lords. 

© 2013 Ricki C.

    



The Dictators "Steppin' Out" (Bonus Video Friday)

Ladies & gentlemen, here’s the deal: Over the past couple of weeks there’s been a Perfect Storm of circumstances that have led me to consider taking a little break from blog-dom, or blog-icity.  (I refuse to call it "the blogosphere.")  First; I’ve started playing out again in my solo acoustic rock & roll format and have discovered that the part of my brain responsible for songwriting is ENTIRELY DIFFERENT & FOREIGN to the part responsible for producing prose pieces. (See Throwin' Red Meat To The Base, March blog entry.)  Second; my editor and I.T. Department (aka my lovely wife Debbie) is taking a little East Coast trip to serve as the I.T. Consultant for her mom and aunt as they get new laptops.  Third; my boss at my day-job is heading to Florida for his mother’s memorial service and I will be working open to close at our beloved little indie record store for the next two weeks.  None of these circumstances bode well for new blog entries being written, let alone posted.

I promise that this will be no more than a two-week hiatus.  (And who knows, if we get our Sound Cloud process together, we might start posting some Ricki C. tunes during that time along with the lyrics and the literary pieces that accompany them.)  In the immortal words of Adny Shernoff – "Steppin’ out, steppin’ out, steppin’ out for a little while….." 

The mighty Dictators performing "Steppin’ Out" in 1977.  Great clip that would have been SO much better if those damn San Francisco hippies could’ve figured out that the lead vocals switch back & forth between drummer Richie Teeter and songwriter Adny Shernoff.  (Put down the joint, Mr. Camera Man, please put down the joint.)  

inspirational verse; "Hey Lord, I’m reaching right up to ya / Touch me or I’m just another crooner / This love’s gonna be written down in history."

author’s note; First reader who writes & identifies what song the line "This love’s gonna be written down in history" is quoted from by Adny wins a prize from Growing Old With Rock & Roll.

ps. Bonus Video Friday will very likely continue uninterrupted.


© Ricki C. 2012

The Five Best Bands That You Never Saw Live, part two: The Dictators (Bonus Video Friday)

All of my standards of rock & roll professionalism are based on The Who in 1969, nature’s most perfect rock & roll organism EVER. That unifying factor is going to hold us together through a BIG BUNCH of digressions in this edition of Growing Old With Rock & Roll. (author’s note; the whole Who/Dictators thing got so out of hand so quickly that the other two digressions – "Why were late 70’s punk bands SO unprofessional?" and "Why are the young supposed rock & roll bands of 2012 SO puny & bloodless?" – will be postponed to a later date. Somebody remind me.)

Digression One – Why has there never been an American version of The Who?

I truly feel that The New York Dolls were a pretty damn good stab at an American version of The Rolling Stones. I further feel the original Patti Smith Group circa 1976-1978 might also be a contender in that Stones sweepstakes, but I think you kinda hadda be there for that one, so I’m not going to press it. And a lot of you might question (based on scant recorded evidence) my pick of Buffalo Springfield as America’s answer to The Beatles, but I stand by it. Buffalo Springfield boasted three great songwriters and lead singers (Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay), great instrumental interplay, great personalities. If only the Springfield had gotten a great producer, or indeed, even a REAL producer for their first album and if only they could have learned to coexist as a group with three strong writers. (But then again, that’s what split the actual Beatles, but not until they recorded 12 albums and many, many singles from ’63 to ’69.) (This actually brings up a whole ‘nother digression, i.e. How quickly rock & roll transmorgified itself between 1963 and 1969.) Plus I realized as I was typing this that America’s version of The Beatles was probably actually Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, but that band got so horribly self-righteous and hippie-fied after the Déjà Vu record they even lost me, and I loved ‘em in their heyday. (In one of the truly terribly naïve moments of my childhood I was glad when CSN&Y got huge because I thought it would give them enough money so that Stills & Young would leave and go back to reform Buffalo Springfield with Richie. Oh, little Ricki C.; you were so innocent, so cute, and so wrong.)

The Who, however, are another animal entirely. I can’t think of a single American band that ever came anywhere close to touching The Who for songwriting genius, instrumental power, and just flat-out charisma. I guess Cheap Trick might’ve come somewhat close circa Live At Budokan and Dream Police in 1978, but that might have been a little too calculated: Goofball/offbeat songwriter guitarist, Pete Townshend = Rick Nielsen; pretty blonde lead singer/screamer, Roger Daltrey = Robin Zander; dark-haired brooding/invisible bass player, John Entwhistle = Tom Petersson; zany drummer Keith Moon = Bun E. Carlos. If you try to convince me Rick Nielsen didn’t build that model with airplane glue in his garage in 1969 you’ve got another think coming.

The Dictators, though, mighta been a contendah a couple of times. Great rock & roll songwriting from Adny/Andy Shernoff (if "Steppin’ Out" from 1977’s Manifest Destiny isn’t a stab at the greatest Who song Pete Townshend forgot to write, I don’t know what is), great searing lead guitar from Ross "The Boss" Funicello/Friedman (my good friend & rock & roll brother Hamell On Trial thinks there were TOO MANY guitar solos in The Dictators, a point I must diametrically dispute), and the perfect blend of genuine rock authority AND A SENSE OF HUMOR that I always loved in The Who. If, indeed, there was one thing The Who completely lost after Keith Moon’s passing (apart from rock & roll’s greatest drummer EVER, of course) it was that sense of humor. Think about "Pictures Of Lily," think about "I’m A Boy," think about "Sally Simpson." All of those songs were simultaneously heartbreaking AND hilarious because the band contained both Pete Townshend AND Keith Moon in constant yin/yang pendulum action. (Plus there’s that great scene in The Kids Are Alright where The Who are sitting around a conference table and Pete Townshend is expounding/pontificating about how "The Who have to change and progress and stop being such a circus act," while Keith Moon initially nods in supposed agreement until he is compelled to do a headstand in his chair to undercut the pretentiousness inherent in Pete’s diatribe. Townshend, then, is left to try to balance a drink on Keith’s boot heel to save face. I never liked Led Zeppelin much, but at least they had the good sense to break up when they lost their drummer and he was never as integral or indispensable to the band as Keith Moon was to The Who. Pete, you shoulda had the good goddamn sense you were born with and broken up The Who for good when Keith left this mortal coil.)

Right, right, right, we’re supposed to be talking about The Dictators. I guess we gotta face facts: If I’m gonna claim godlike Who-status for The Dictators we have to deal with the Handsome Dick Manitoba question. No way am I gonna be able to claim to you, dear readers, that Handsome Dick could ever go one-on-one vocally with Roger Daltrey. As great and charismatic a frontman the Handsome one is, he really didn’t sing that great, did he? And Andy singing his own tunes was shaky at times. But what I respect immensely was that Shernoff could undoubtedly have found himself a blonde pretty-boy David Lee Roth-style lead singer, but he didn’t. Andy’s from Brooklyn, not L.A. Plus, owing to my friendship with Hamell On Trial I was privileged enough to meet Handsome Dick Manitoba in person at his namesake watering hole in N.Y.C. in 2004 the night before The Dictators’ triumphant performance at Little Steven Van Zandt’s International Underground Garage Festival, and let me say this: That man is the living embodiment of a rock & roll lead singer. Rock & roll isn’t a paycheck to Handsome Dick Manitoba, it’s not a way to get his mug into People magazine, it’s not his ticket to sell out his entire rock & roll heritage to become clown judge on American Idol, it’s a way of life. (And how many rock guys are better-looking in their 50’s than in their 20’s?)

Andy Shernoff, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Ross "The Boss" Friedman, Scott "Top Ten" Kempner, Mark "The Animal" Mendoza (for a little while) and the entire Dictators drum corps; Louie Lyons, Stu-Boy King, Richie Teeter, J.P. "Thunderbolt" Patterson, I salute you. Dictators Forever, Forever Dictators. 

The Dictators rockin' Spain in 2008; inspirational verse; "June 1st, '67 / Something died and went to heaven / I wish Sgt. Pepper NEVER taught the band to play."  - Andy Shernoff, 2001 

also, is "My Generation / Is not the salvation" a not-so-subtle dig at Pete Townshend for dragging the rotting, bloated corpse of The Who around concert stages all these many years, or am I just projecting?

The Dictators are often lumped in with punk, as a kind of afterthought/missing link between The New York Dolls and The Ramones in the history of New York City rock & roll, but they were WAY more than that. They never laid low, slinking around CBGB’s or The Mudd Club, trying to score gigs and/or heroin. They went out and played for kids.  They went out and opened arena shows for the likes of Uriah Heep, Styx, Kiss, and other bands of that ilk. (Sorry, Colin.) (Adny Shernoff had this great quote back then along the lines of, "We could never sell out as bad as Peter Frampton and sell 13 million records, but we could certainly sell out as bad as Aerosmith and sell 2 million.") The first time I saw The Dictators live they were opening for AC/DC at Columbus, Ohio’s, Agora Ballroom in 1977 and they more than held their own against Bon & Angus and the boys. Punk poseurs? Skinny-tie new wave wimps? I don’t think so, pal, these guys were a rock & roll BAND. This is a postcard Andy sent to my rock & roll fanzine, Teenage Rampage, in 1977 from some Holiday Inn somewhere on the road.

Bonus Friday Bonus Video clip - The Dictators live 8/14/2004

This clip comprises The Dictators entire set at Little Steven’s International Underground Garage Festival August 14th, 2004, on Randall’s Island in New York City. I was at that show. (In fact at the 5:17 mark, the guy with brown hair & a black t-shirt next to the white-haired guy wearing a red & white baseball cap, that’s ME.) The clip takes FOREVER to buffer on my computer, but it’s worth the wait. (Go get a cup of coffee from the kitchen while you’re waitin’. Run around the block, get some exercise.) Spin magazine’s review of the festival had a great quote – "With a combined age of around 250, The Dictators almost carjacked the show with their NYC-proud gutter-punk anthems." – that I initially resented until I did the math (5 members times 50-some years, I guess it does come in at 250). As I find myself growing old with rock & roll I now take it as a badge of honor.

© 2012 Ricki C.