Boston's Finest Sons: The Neighborhoods, including new CD, Last Known Address (w/ special guest, JCE)

This blog originally appeared - in a slightly different form - on pencilstorm.com.


In the age of the internet, it’s possible to have a friend you have never actually met. Ricki C. and JCE are fast friends after years of correspondence, and one of the things they have always agreed upon is the greatness of Boston’s best band, THE NEIGHBORHOODS. After literally years of anticipating a new record, it’s finally here. Titled “Last Known Address,” the new ‘Hoods record is worth talking about, so Ricki C. hatched a plan to do just that. Below, he and JCE discuss the new record and The Neighborhoods in general, through a back and forth conversation. Here you go…

How did you first learn about the Neighborhoods anyway?

JCE: I went to school in Charlottesville, VA, and I lived there afterwards - pretty much all of the 1980’s. One day, probably in 1985, this guy named Maynard was tacking up flyers around town that said “Fire Is Coming” (the band’s then-current indie release). Maynard played in local bands, managed a band and booked shows for bands he wanted to bring to town. Anyway, I had never heard of The Neighborhoods until that day.

RICKI C.: My high school best friend & bandmate Dave Blackburn (who taught me more about music and rock & roll than anybody else in my existence) moved to Boston in 1972 after intentionally flunking out of Ohio State University. My visits to Dave in Boston over the next couple of years is what launched my love of Boston rock & roll. That love affair started with The Modern Lovers, who Dave saw play at a high school – with a young up & coming band called Aerosmith OPENING the show – pretty soon after he got to Boston. Said love affair continued through the 1970’s with Willie Alexander, The Real Kids, The Nervous Eaters and about twenty more. (see appendix A below)

In mid-1980, on one of those visits, I happened on a new magazine called Boston Rock that featured The Neighborhoods on the cover of its debut issue and it was literally love at first sight. I sent away for their debut single on the Ace Of Hearts label – “Prettiest Girl” b/w “No Place Like Home” – when I got back to Columbus and the rest is history.

The Neighborhoods 1980: David Minehan, guitar; John Hartcorn, bass; Michael Quaglia, drums

What’s been your experience seeing them play—how many times have you seen them?

JCE: I saw that show in Charlottesville when I first heard of them, at a place called the C&O, I believe. After that I was hooked. I’ve seen them in their hometown of Boston at Bunratty’s, I’ve seen them in Richmond, VA Beach, at least twice in D.C. and probably at least three other times in Charlottesville. One time I even saw them at a frat party at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, VA. My wife (fiancé at the time) and I lived in Charlotte, NC, for a year. On our last night there, before we moved back home to VA, we saw The ‘Hoods play a club called The Pterodactyl. All the boys in the band were wearing matching black t-shirts that said “Fuck You, We’re From Boston” on the back. I’m forgetting some, so I would say I’ve seen them about 12 or 13 times. They are so spectacular live that me and my friends in Charlottesville would never miss them if we were within a couple of hours. My friends’ band 98 Colours opened for them sometimes and they slept on the couches and floors of people I knew on multiple occasions.

RICKI C.: Oh man, this live category has GOT to be the one where I’m most jealous of my long-distance compatriot, JCE. Virginia & Washington being on the East Coast means he got ‘Hoods live opportunities WAY more often than this Midwest/Ohio boy. I had to FLY to Boston to see The Neighborhoods in the early years. (see: Flying to Boston To See The Rock & Roll)  Luckily, from 1980 to 1984 I was working in the stockroom of Ross Laboratories here in Columbus, and it was simultaneously the HIGHEST-PAYING and EASIEST job I ever had, affording me the cash to indulge myself in live ‘Hoods.

I never got to see the John-Hartcorn-on-bass era band but I know I saw the Tim-Green-on-bass Neighborhoods twice. I was still drinking heavily AND smoking pot in those early-80’s days, though, so those shows are kinda hazy. I don’t even recall what clubs they were at, but one seemed to be in a strip-shopping-center with a carry-out and maybe a laundromat or tanning place in it. For sure it wasn’t The Rat, which I had been to a few times earlier in the 1970’s.

By far my favorite place to see The Neighborhoods in Boston was The Channel, a 1700-person capacity bar near Boston Garden, right on a subway line, really easy to get to from my Commonwealth Motel Boston home base. As much as I’ve come to enjoy seeing bands in small (50-200 capacity) clubs, I dearly LOVE seeing rock & roll bands kick out the jams in big-ass bars, auditoriums & theaters like the shows I grew up on in the 1960’s: Veteran’s Memorial (capacity 3172) and later the Columbus Agora (still in operation, now called The Newport, capacity 1500 or so).

The Neighborhoods @ The Channel, 1982: Minehan & Quaglia; Lee Harrington on bass

The Neighborhoods only played my home town of Columbus, Ohio, once, in May of 1986. This is a review I did of that show for The Noise, a Boston fanzine I dearly loved back in the day. (Along with Boston Groupie News and the short-lived Frenzy.) All tolled I probably saw the guys maybe 7 times, i.e. not nearly enough.

Tell me about the best show you ever saw them play…..

JCE: That’s impossible. The show I saw in Richmond had my friends as the opener and The Neighborhoods had a guest guitarist that night. It was this guy from a Richmond band called The Good Guys. He was great and Dave Minehan loved him. He invited the guy, right there on stage, to officially join the Neighborhoods as a second guitarist, but the offer was declined. I honestly believe it was a serious offer though. Another good one was at a club in D.C. called 15 Minutes. They announced that they were calling it quits and it would be their last show. They played with a vengeance that night (the Dave, Lee and Mike lineup). Afterwards I got a CD signed by them and Dave wrote “Neighborhoods, R.I.P.” under his name. It was heartbreaking. All the shows in Charlottesville were good, because all my friends were always there and they knew us. They would take the stage and my friend Tracy would start yelling for them to play her favorite song, “Shake” before they even played the first note.

RICKI C. I’ve gotta say one of The Channel shows in either 1982 (when I went to Boston to spend my 30th birthday alone, when I was first sobering up), or 1985 were the most rocking shows I ever saw from David, Lee Harrington & Mike Quaglia. But that Columbus show in Stache’s - capacity 85 people (though the club owner once sold 300 tickets to a Dream Syndicate show there) - was the BEST show. When you pack the sheer excitement of a band like The Neighborhoods - who regularly played 1700 capacity venues in their hometown - into a tiny rock club roughly the size of some rich guy’s frickin’ LIVING ROOM, the magic was just OVERWHELMING.

Plus that show was the only time I ever got to talk to & hang out with The Neighborhoods.  It was a real bonding experience for me, and I treasure that rock & roll memory TO THIS DAY, 33 years later.

Rank their records from best to worst.

JCE: Reptile Men, The High Hard One, Last Known Address, Hoodwinked, The Neighborhoods, Fire is Coming, The Last Rat.

Hoodwinked and The Neighborhoods have mostly the same songs. Hoodwinked has that amazing cover of “Southern Girls” by Cheap Trick. Also, I am one person who happens to absolutely love the version of “Prettiest Girl” that is on the self-titled Atlantic release. A lot of people would disagree.

RICKI C.: Wow, their recorded output is a place we really diverge on The ‘Hoods. My best to worst: The High Hard One, Fire Is Coming, The Last Rat, and Reptile Men are the great ones. I haven’t absorbed Last Known Address enough yet to drop it into the canon, but I gotta think it’s gonna slot between Fire Is Coming and The Last Rat. Further, I find Hoodwinked and the self-titled Atlantic CD almost unlistenable. (Indeed, that Brad Whitford-produced record is why I couldn’t ever get people to take The Neighborhoods seriously when I pronounced them my “favorite Boston band ever” and “better than The Replacements” in blogs like this one, The Neighborhoods “Cultured Pearls.”)

Then again, in the first decade of this 21st century I was lucky enough to be supplied – courtesy of Eric Law of Boston and Vic Gagnon of Ann Arbor, MI. (among others) – with a couple dozen live sets of The Neighborhoods from all over America stretching from 1979 to well into the late 1980’s, and any number of those live sets just MIGHT be better than any of the ‘Hoods official releases.

Let’s (finally) get to the new record. Review it in 1,000 words or less.

JCE: Well, I obviously love it, since I have it ranked right after The High Hard One. First off, there are no clunkers on it whatsoever. It starts strong with “Half Life” and if every song was about that good, I would be happy. But it gets even better. I really get fired up starting with track two. “ByGone Era” is a killer, probably my favorite or second favorite on the record. I love the sort-of play on words, and the sentiment: is it ‘good bygone era’ or is it ‘goodbye gone era’? The answer is both.

Tracks 2-5 are my favorite, I think. Track 3, “I Go Dark” is strong. For track 4, we get “Billy the Kid” which is maybe my third favorite on the record. I like the slow, melancholy start and then the way it kicks into gear. Tracks 5, “Don’t Look Down,” is excellent and probably my second favorite. Track 6, “In Case of Creeps” is great. Unfortunately, it has this section that is just talking/noodling that goes on way too long and ruins the song. I cured that by using iTunes to clip the song at the 1:45 mark. That way it’s short, but it’s perfect.  Tracks 7-10 are very good, maybe not great. Track 8 is called “the Stowaway” and it is my least favorite. Track 10, “The Parasites” is a song most ‘Hoods fans already know. It’s never been a favorite of mine but it’s still damn good.

Track 11 jumps up a notch. It’s called “The Tiled Room” and it has a Replacements vibe to me.
The record winds down with track 12, “We Are All Alone.” It’s a really cool slower song. I really like this one a lot, but I think because it is so repetitive that it would have been better if it were four minutes long instead of 5:26.

Overall, it’s just so good. After all these years I feared the possibility of disappointment, but to the contrary, this exceeded all my expectations. I will say that the CD packaging is really weak, but hey, it’s about the music, right? Still, after all these years some liner notes or lyrics would have been nice.

RICKI C.: I concur about the CD packaging. Artists & labels these days just seem NOT TO CARE at all about CD’s as a physical product, everything is just about downloads: Spotify and Rhapsody rule. I really miss jewel-case CD’s with cool covers and inside booklets with credits and lyrics, like JCE said. (I suspect that’s all just about economics in the indie world, and I FAILED Econ 101 in school all those decades ago.)

Musically the record is BEYOND solid: crunching guitars, cool bass, kick-ass drums, great vocals; what else and what more is a rocker gonna ask for these days? Plus, lyrically the songs are actually ABOUT something, and how many places do you get that in 2019, where every band I hear writes maybe two verses and then just bores us with a chorus until the (sometimes merciful) conclusion of the tune? “Half Life,” “Bygone Era” and “Billy The Kid” are my early standout favorites. (And are you gonna find lyrics as sharp, heartbreaking AND insightful as “Standin’ here as sad as birthday candles blown out so long ago / If you could only tell us not to worry, ‘cuz everything is beautiful / We’d let it go” from “Billy The Kid”about a departed compadre on a rock record this year? I kinda doubt it.)

So the entire disc is kinda like a supercharged Cheap Trick rumbling with The Jam in a dark alley in Boston sometime in 1979, only with WAY better lyrics and I’m gonna leave it at that.  David Minehan is absolutely one of my top 10 rock & roll songwriters of all time and bassist Lee Harrington comes up with a couple of solid tunes & lead vocals on this disc.  Buy it, or download it, NOW!

The Neighborhoods, 2010: Minehan & Harrington; John Lynch on drums

Final words or stories?

JCE: I would just say that this has been a long time coming. I discovered a website called Hoods Online years and years ago. At one time, they would post a live show once in a while. I started getting emails from an email list I signed up for, and at one point, they were promising not only a new record, but the release of an apparently finished record called “Last of the Mohicans.” Neither ever came out, that was like eight years ago, or more. Then this one started being teased and there were even little clips of the songs on that website for a couple of years. Guitarist & main songwriter David Minehan is obviously a busy man, but it was so worth the wait. I hope I can see them play live again. I saw Dave play with the Replacements a couple of years ago and he is still just the best to watch.

Oh yeah, and thanks to you, Ricki C, for asking me to do this. You are a real friend, a great writer, and you have pretty decent taste in music. And thanks for the GIANT pile of live Neighborhoods CD’s that you gave me!

RICKI C: I can’t think of a better Christmas present for the rockers on everybody’s list than Last Known Address. It’s on Spotify & all that, or you can order from my favorite Boston-related merch outlet QRST’s Store, linked here…….Neighborhoods & Boston rockers merch.

Appendix A: track listing of Ricki C.’s homemade-from-vinyl Best of Boston Rock & Roll

(note: The Modern Lovers, The Sidewinders, The J. Geils Band, Aerosmith, Reddy Teddy, The Cars, The Neighborhoods, Mission of Burma and 'til tuesday all have individual "best of" CD's in my collection. These are all the other Boston bands that I love.)

CD-1 / Boston Rocks / 1975 – 1977 

1) Kerouac

2) Mass. Ave. – Willie Alexander, indie single, ’75

3) Holiday Fire – Marc Thor

4) Boystown Boize – The Boize, split indie single, ’75

5) Prized Possession – Fox Pass, indie single, ‘76 

6) Loretta – The Nervous Eaters, indie single, ’76

7) All Kindsa Girls

8) Common At Noon – The Real Kids, indie single, ’77

9) Lift Up Your Hood – DMZ, indie ep track, ’77

10) You Looked So Pretty When – Willie Alexander, indie single ’76

11) Boys & Girls

12) Romance – Reddy Teddy, album tracks, ’76

13) Hot For Teacher – Thundertrain, indie single, ’76

14) Pup Tune – Willie Alexander & The Boom Boom Band

15) Boy From Nowhere 

16) Ball Me Out – DMZ 

17) Better Be Good

18) Who Needs Ya – The Real Kids

19) I’ve Got To Rock – Thundertrain 

tracks 14 – 19 from Live At The Rat album, 1976

CD-2 / Boston Rocks / 1978 – 1986

1) Baby Boom – DMZ, album track, ’78

2) Psycho Blonde – Pastiche, compilation track, ’80

3) Better Off Dead – La Peste, indie single, ’78

4) When You’re Young

5) Teenage Flu

6) Big City Rock – The Atlantics, album tracks, ’79

7) Everybody Wants To Survive – The Infliktors, indie single, ’79

8) I’m Talking To You – The Maps, indie single, ’79

9) When Things Go Wrong – Robin Lane & The Chartbusters, ’79

10) Stuck On The Same Refrain – The Peter Dayton Band, ’81

11) Ina’s Song – Limbo Race, indie single, ’83

12) Tiger, Tiger – Scruffy The Cat, indie ep track, ’86

13) The Room Starts Spinning – Classic Ruins, album track, ’86

14) I Want To Help You Ann

15) High On Yourself

16) What A Girl Can’t Do – The Lyres, indie ep tracks, ’83

17) Generic New York City Woman

18) Junk Train

19) Motherfuckers – The Blackjacks, album tracks, ’86

20) I Couldn’t Say No – Robert Ellis Orrall w/ Carlene Carter, ‘83

(c) 2019 Ricki C. & JCE

The Modern Lovers

There are a TON of bands & songwriters that I love: The Dave Clark 5 and The Kinks and The Who and Paul Revere & the Raiders and Buffalo Springfield and Joni Mitchell and The MC5 from the 1960's; Mott The Hoople and Blue Oyster Cult and The New York Dolls and Richard Thompson and Patti Smith and Nick Lowe and about a hundred others from the 1970's, my all-time favorite decade of rock & roll.  There are a LOT of rock & roll acts I love - you've seen them sprinkled through the pages of this blog - but there are only THREE that have actually changed the way I look at the world: those three are Bruce Springsteen, Elliott Murphy, and The Modern Lovers.  I've covered Bruce and Elliott extensively in the past, today we'll be discussing The Modern Lovers.
 

I initially heard about The Modern Lovers from my first rock & roll best friend, Dave Blackburn.  (For an entire entry about Dave, back at the very beginning of this blog, please click here: Dave Blackburn.)  After Dave flunked out of Ohio State University (on purpose, mind you, he was WAY too brilliant to not hack a state school like O.S.U.) in 1972 and moved to Boston, one of the first letters he wrote me was about seeing The Modern Lovers in a high school gymnasium somewhere out in the Massachusetts suburbs.  (With youngsters Aerosmith opening the show, by the way, more on them later.)

I am in no way suggesting this image is the exact show Dave saw, but I love this picture.......

He wrote me that they were one of the five greatest bands he had ever seen.  And, mind you, he and I had seen The Who, the Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Doors, Cream, and Janis Joplin - among many others - together by the time we were 18 in 1970.  Plus Dave had seen The Velvet Underground at Columbus' Valley Dale Ballroom in November, 1966 before we even knew each other, so that five greatest bands thing was nothing to be taken lightly.  He wrote me that The Modern Lovers wore matching cashmere sweaters & brand-new jeans onstage that night, and this was in the middle of the oh-so-woeful-get-back-to-the-country-patched-jeans-'n'-flannel-shirts hippie heyday of 1972.

He further wrote that the band sounded like "The Beach Boys crossed with The Velvet Underground." Huh?  What?  Did Jonathan Richman, Ernie Brooks, Jerry Harrison and David Robinson enact sunny four-part harmonies on tunes about heroin & femme fatales?  That description puzzled me for the entirety of the next three years, until I sent away for Beserkley Chartbusters Volume 1 album in 1975, and finally got to hear some Modern Lovers songs.

The day it arrived in the mail I put it on my turntable and my head exploded.  There's no real way to explain lead singer Jonathan Richman to the uninitiated, so just give me two minutes, and listen to this.

Jonathan Richman (backed by The Rubinoos) playing "The New Teller"

In 1975 all of my standards of rock & roll BAND professionalism were based on Aerosmith.  The Who were long gone from my radar, I'd seen The New York Dolls at Vet's Memorial in 1974 and they were a woefully WEAK live band (THAT night at least), punk hadn't hit yet, and I didn't see Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band live until April of 1976.  At that point Aerosmith was my yardstick/touchstone for rock & roll bands.

When the needle of my stereo touched down on "The New Teller" that afternoon in 1975, my first thought was, "Oh no, this is TERRIBLE."  I had been waiting YEARS to hear The Modern Lovers, and here was leader Jonathan Richman: out of tune, out of time, singing about the new teller at his bank (?), backed by handclaps and acoustic guitars.  I had been waiting for Velvet Underground drug-fueled noise aggro, for N.Y. Dolls decadence, for Aerosmith power & swagger; what I was getting was a song about waiting in line at a bank.  By thirty seconds in, though - right around the lines, "There's only three in the other line, but in my line, well I count eleven / Well that's fine, 'cause I'm in heaven" - I said out loud to myself, "Wait a minute, this is GREAT."      

And then "Roadrunner" came on, and nothing was ever quite the same again.......

Jonathan Richman (backed by Earthquake) playing "Roadrunner"  

"Hold on," my 23-year old rock & roll brain said, "what if 1970's rock & roll doesn't HAVE to be just about drugs and honky tonk women?  What if it could be about drivin' past the Stop & Shoppe with the radio on?  What if I could think back past heavy metal and singer/songwriters and psychedelia and The British Invasion to riding in the back seat of my dad's Oldsmobile when I was 5 years old, trying to figure out what planet Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry were broadcasting from? What if there could be some Essential Innocence in rock & roll again?"  (All of a sudden the Beach Boys side of Dave's equation came clearly into view.   And when the largely John Cale-produced  Modern Lovers' demo album was released on Beserkley in August 1976 (see below), The Velvet Underground side clicked firmly into focus.)  

And the biggest "what if?" of all: What if Warner Brothers records had released The Modern Lovers' first album in 1973 as they were slated to do before they realized, "We have NO FLIPPIN' CLUE as to how to present & promote these guys to a rock & roll industry currently salivating for the likes of Black Sabbath and Van Morrison."  And what if - in one of those scenarios I only come up with given my early childhood addiction to "Imaginary Stories" in DC comic books - it was The Modern Lovers who scorched out of Boston and became the biggest American Band in the Land rather than Aerosmith?  (As much as I LOVED Aerosmith it wasn't exactly like they were visionary thinkers, ya know?)

What if "Roadrunner" and/or "Hospital" had become the FM & AM hits that "Walk This Way'" and "Dream On" did?  What if corporate-rock NEVER HAPPENED?  What if short, fast, hard, loud, INNOCENT rock & roll tunes took precedence over ponderous 10-minute guitar solos (and half-hour drum solos, God help us) in songs about coked-up musicians fucking groupies on the road?  What if songs about walking to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, "to the room where they keep the Cezanne" held sway over Styx tunes about spaceships or Kansas encouraging/validating stoners to consider themselves just "dust in the wind"?  What if The Modern Lovers had naturally set the stage for The Raspberries, Blue Ash, Big Star, Elliott Murphy, The New York Dolls, The Dictators, The Patti Smith Group, The Ramones, The Clash and about a hundred others?

What if KISS never got signed because they were recognized as the painted-up clowns recycling old Deep Purple and Uriah Heep riffs that they really were?  What if the great blue-jeaned masses of the Midwest went around proudly singing "I'm Straight" rather than "Rock & Roll All Night?"  What if they didn't swallow qualludes like they were penny candy and stare glassy-eyed at Foreigner or tap their feet to Journey?  What if Lee Abrams and Big Business never took control of rock & roll, strangled the radio, invented classic-rock and kept Baby Boomers forever chained to the yoke of Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and The Allman Brothers?  What if we never had the albatross of a 70-year old Mick Jagger running around the world singing "Satisfaction" and making babies with 30-something year old models hung around our necks?

Was it Elaborate Rock Fantasies like these that kept the bands I formed and led in the 1970's from ever becoming popular in Midwest rock & roll?  Hell, yes.  Does that syndrome extend to this day? Damn straight it does, and I couldn't be prouder.

Radio on.......

    

BONUS EXTRA CREDIT LISTENING

The Modern Lovers / demos recorded 1971-1973 / released August, 1976

The Modern Lovers / Live @ the Stonehenge Club / Ipswich, MA / 1970-1971

 RECOMMENDED FURTHER READING

There's Something About Jonathan / Tim Mitchell / Peter Owen Publishing, 1999

c) 2017 Ricki C.

The Ricki C. Interview - by the Pencilstorm Editorial Board

Growing Old With Rock & Roll is not solely an excercise in nostalgia.  I still play gigs.  To illustrate that point, tonight we update an interview that originally appeared on Pencilstorm a coupla months ago, when I was opening a show here in Columbus.  I'm rerunning it here because I'm playing the Midgard Comics Reunion Show this coming Friday, April 7th, at the CD 102.5 Big Room Bar.
(For more on Midgard Comics, check out the blog linked here from December, 2013.)  

Ricki C. Interview - by the Pencilstorm Editorial Board 

P/E/B - You’re the only rocker of our acquaintance that will be eligible for Medicare this year: Why do you still do this?  And can you remember your first gig?

Ricki - My first gig was in 1968, at my classmate Ermogene Delewese’s birthday party, in her parents’ basement rec room.  It went great.  The first song I ever sang in public was Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride.”  That’s not a bad beginning.  I’m seriously thinking of trying to find out Ermogene’s birthday, booking a gig on that day in 2018, and quitting the music biz forever exactly 50 years after I started.  (I haven’t seen or spoken to Ermogene since graduation in 1970, so that birthday bit might be tough.)

And, why do I still do this?  What else am I gonna do at this point, become a brain surgeon?


P/E/B - After almost half a century in rock & roll, after seeing literally hundreds of bands, can you name your top three performers/songwriters off the top of your head?

Ricki - Absolutely!  Those three are The Who, Bruce Springsteen and Elliott Murphy.  It’s not even close.  Lou Reed would be fourth and he trails by a wide margin.  No, maybe Ian Hunter (originally of Mott The Hoople) would be fourth, because he’s still alive and putting out great records.  Anyway, after the Top Three, things get kinda sketchy, due to Rock & Roll Alzheimer’s.

Plus, The Who comes with a caveat: it’s The Who from 1965 to 1972, from “I Can’t Explain” to the Who’s Next album.  After that, from Quadrophenia on, there’s a big drop-off in quality.  And I won’t even consider the notion of any band not containing Keith Moon to actually BE The Who.  There might be a band out there containing Pete Townshend & Roger Daltrey calling itself The Who, but without Keith, it don’t count.  (Not to mention John Entwistle.)

Bruce Springsteen and Elliott Murphy – on quite the other hand – are still fucking brilliant.  They’re both only three years older than me, but I fear that someday I might inhabit a planet that does not contain them, and I don’t know if I wanna live on that sphere.

“The smart people won’t listen

And the stupid people don’t wanna know

After love, hope & dreams

All that’s left is a Trump presidency and classic rock radio”

-    Ricki C. / 2016

P/E/B - There’s a fair amount of politics in your rock & roll; given the demise of The MC5, do you think that’s wise?

Ricki - Yeah, I do.  Plus I think my political songs focus more on people than they do politics. When I first stumbled on the solo acoustic rock & roll act in 1990, my idea was that I would be the Billy Bragg of Columbus, Ohio.  I’ve lost a lot of the agit-prop aspects of the Ricki C. show, I think now it’s more focused on individuals than causes.  That being said, I will never set foot in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame again EVER in my life after they inducted Journey this year OVER The MC5.  Some sins can never be forgiven.


P/E/B - Nowadays, you’re almost better known as a roadie than as a performer, how did that happen?

Ricki - When Hamell On Trial hired me as his road manager after I opened a show for him at Little Brothers in the late 1990’s, it put a real crimp into the amount of gigs I played.  Then I joined the Watershed road crew in 2005 and that cut even further into my playing time.  Make no mistake, I wouldn’t trade one minute of those tours: Hamell & I criss-crossed America five or six times in the first decade of the 21st century, I got to see 44 of the 48 contiguous United States; and the good times (and beach vacations) in the Watershed van are irreplaceable.  Plus, truthfully, I’m probably a better roadie than I am a rocker.  I’m too OCD to be a rock & roll star.  I'm not really cut out - given my shy Catholic-boy upbringing - for snorting cocaine off of groupies' stomachs.  I'm much more inclined towards wanting the gig to start on time and for none of the wires to be crossed.

Also, I’m really, really lazy.  I never seek out gigs anymore.  They just fall in my lap.  Somebody asks me to play, and I play.  Otherwise I just stay home, feel sorry for myself and write Pencilstorm blogs about The Neighborhoods and The Dictators.


P/E/B - Tell us about the gig this weekend.

Ricki - I'm playing the Midgard Comics Reunion gig at the CD 102.5 Big Room Bar (1036 South Front Street / 614-449-9612) this Friday, April 7th, 2017.  The superlative Mr. Keith Cousineau - former owner of Midgard and Keith Cretin to you - put this bash together.  Doors are at 7 pm, music starts around 8, goes to midnight or thereabouts, $5 admission.  I would think I'm opening, and the other acts on the bill are Joey74, Robots Revenge, godawfuls, and Mummula.  Plus I think Keith's playing a solo set in addition to fronting Joey74.

There’s much worse things you could do with your Friday night (like binge-watching some crap T.V. on Netflix or Hulu), you should come out.  

For some songs, check out:

If All My Heroes Are Losers

Strummer's In Heaven

(c) 2017 Ricki C.

The Sean Richter Chronicles, part one: Sean & Becky and 920-am

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.  Part one predates I Love Distortion: future installments will involve prequels, sequels, and incidents that took place during the story that weren’t portrayed in those 12 chapters. 

(This piece originally appeared in the Pencilstorm blog in a slighly different form.)

Sean & Becky and 920-am

 920-am is an oldies radio station in Columbus, Ohio.  And we’re talkin’ OLDIES here, boys & girls, NOT classic-rock.  We’re talkin’ all the way back to the Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Al Martino era, but then strangely forward all the way through the 1960’s (Beatles, Kinks, Gerry & the Pacemakers); the 70’s (James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot, anything no louder than Bread and nothing as loud as Bachman-Turner Overdrive); and up through the likes of Josh Groban and Norah Jones.    

Sean & Becky were each other’s first date, first kiss, first boyfriend & girlfriend.  That first date was to go see Canned Heat and Blood, Sweat & Tears at Veteran’s Memorial on the West Side of Columbus, Ohio, in January or February of 1969.  They split up later that year, right around the end of August, just before Sean’s senior year of high school and Becky’s junior year.  Sean was the lead singer of a garage-rock band; Becky was a sweet girl from Grove City, Ohio.

One warm afternoon in spring, 1969, Sean & Becky were lazily kissing on Becky’s parents’ patio in Grove City when “Love Can Make You Happy” by one-hit wonders Mercy came on WCOL-AM – Columbus’ Top 40 radio station of the time – and Becky said dreamily, “Oh, I love this song.  Don’t you think this is OUR song?”  The dreamscape kinda got shattered as Sean replied, “No, I decidedly DO NOT think this is ‘our song.’  I hate this song.”  Realizing he might have gone a little overboard as tears started to glisten in Becky’s eyes, Sean said, “Maybe ‘You’ve Made Me So Very Happy’ by Blood, Sweat & Tears could be our song, since we saw them on our first date.”  But the damage was done.  Sean doesn’t think Becky ever forgot that slight.  It might have been Sean’s first definitive moment in a life as a Rock & Roll Snob of the First Order.

Today in 2017 they both have wound up listening to 920-am: Sean because he's tired of trying to stay allegiant to an alternative rock scene that would embrace the likes of Mumford & Sons and Imagine Dragons as its standard-bearers; Becky because she just wants to hear some sweet, sad songs that remind her of when she was a young girl.

One late summer Friday afternoon Sean hears The Beatles’ “Eight Days A Week” on 920 and thinks, “This constitutes a savage, pounding rocker on this station,” while humming the riff to The Clash’s “Clampdown” to himself.  Two songs later – on the same afternoon – Becky hears “You Were On My Mind” by We 5 while braiding her granddaughter’s hair and she wistfully tells the uncomprehending little girl, “One time a cute, brown-haired boy won me a stuffed animal at Cedar Point, and this song was playing.”

Sean & Becky were really very happy at the start.  They went to movies.  They got burgers & fries at the Sandy’s drive-in by Sullivant & Demorest Avenues.  Becky went to see Sean’s band play at parties & dances.  Sean would drop by Becky's babysitting gigs and charm the kids with ridiculously elementary magic tricks.  They were two mourning doves on a power line.  But Sean knew from the time he was 16 years old – possibly even before the first time his lips ever met Becky’s – that he never wanted to have any kids.  Nobody on the planet took that Bob Dylan lyric/admonition, “You’ve flung the last fear that can ever be hurled / The fear to bring children into this world,” more seriously than Sean.  And Becky had wanted a big family since she was 10.  Becky broke up with Sean in a phone call, because text messages hadn't been invented yet.  They never even shared a goodbye kiss.

Sean went on to work in warehouses and to play in rock & roll bands for the next 15 years, then as a solo act for the 25 years after that.  Becky got married right out of high school and had four kids by five years after graduation.

Sean has read a ton of books over the years: at home; in motel rooms, dressing rooms & vans on the road; at airports & bus terminals and once in a police holding cell.  He sometimes thinks the most profound literary quote he has ever encountered is, “Your name and mine inside a heart upon a wall / Still find a way to haunt me, though they’re so small,” from The Left Banke’s “Walk Away Renee.”   He hears that song about once a month on 920-am, and he thinks of Becky every time.  First loves are like that.

Becky saw one of Sean’s later bands at the Westgate Park Bean Dinner in 1978.  She was there with her husband and kids when they heard a racket from the music stage over by the duck pond.  “This is that punk-rock crap everybody’s talking about now,” Becky’s husband growled as they got closer, “let’s get out of here.”  “No, I wanna watch a minute,” Becky said.  Sean looked great, Becky thought.  He was still skinny, his hair was long but cut kinda cool and he was wearing a tie around his neck over a sleeveless black t-shirt.  Becky had put on 30 or 40 pounds when she had the kids, hadn’t been able to shed the weight, and couldn’t remember the last time she had bought a new dress.  Or the last time she felt cool.

Sean didn’t sing lead anymore, now he played guitar and sang back-ups, and – in fact – the girl who did the singing in the band didn’t look much older than Becky had been when she & Sean were a couple.  The songs they played were all really noisy & fast and Becky didn’t think she had ever heard any of them before on the radio.  Just then Becky overheard the guy in front of her in the crowd say, “Sean writes all these songs.”  The guy had hair down to his shoulders & a scraggly beard and as he passed a joint to his buddy next to him, he concluded with, “Sean has always been an elitist asshole, now he's an elitist asshole who thinks he’s Joe Strummer.”

Becky didn’t know who Joe Strummer was and didn’t think she’d ever known anybody who made up their own songs before.  She wondered idly for a moment if any of the songs were about her, but they were all so angry & aggressive she wasn’t sure she wanted them to be.  Her littlest girl had her hands over her ears, yelling, “Mommy, TOO LOUD, TOO LOUD.”  Becky’s husband said, “Let’s go, Rebecca, they’re scaring the kids.”  Becky turned, took little Lee Ann’s hand in hers and “Love Can Make You Happy” was playing in her head as they walked back to the picnic tables in the evening dusk.  She turned to wave goodbye to Sean, but he couldn’t possibly have seen her, in the crowd, through the stage lights.

visual aids………

I consider myself something of a devotee of bad late-1960's rock & roll exploitation films and even I can't claim to have ever caught the movie - Fireball Jungle - this clip is lifted from.   Judging by the fact that the producers allowed the film to grind to a halt for the entire 3:20 run-time of one-hit wonders Mercy, however, I have to ask the question: "Which member of the band had an uncle who was an under-assistant West Coast promo man?"

(blogger's note, 2022; The original Fireball Jungle clip was recently deleted,

so I had to replace it with this one, the original recording of the song.)   

inspirational verse: "Your name and mine, inside a heart, upon a wall /
Still find a way to haunt me, though they're so small" - Michael Brown, 1966

Okay, so it's fairly painfully obvious that the cats & kitten from We 5 have got "1960's Folk Club Refugees" written all over 'em, and readers have probably figured out by this juncture that Ricki C. was likely NOT enamored of the Folk Club Kidz back in the day.  Entirely correct, but goddamn I have always loved this kind of folk-rock tune, and I had a HUGE crush on We 5 lead singer Beverly Bivens when this song was fresh and new in 1965, and so was most of the world around me. 

(c) 2017 Ricki C.

On Elliott Murphy's Birthday

This piece originally appeared on www.pencilstorm.com, the blog I now write for regularly, after I folded Growing Old With Rock & Roll back in December 2013 (see Goodbye blog).  I recently decided to start bringing some Pencilstorm entries over to this blogsite, and maybe to start working up the occasional brand-new original material for Growing Old With Rock & Roll.   

I bought Elliott Murphy’s debut album – Aquashow – at the Discount Records store across from the Ohio State University campus in late November or early December, 1973, the same week I quit college, moved out of my mother's house and got my first apartment.  I didn’t know it when I bought it, but the first verse of the first song on Aquashow – “Last Of The Rock Stars” – contains the lines, “I got a feeling on my back like an old brown jacket / I’d like to stay in school, but I just can’t hack it.”  It was a rock & roll match made in heaven.

I started buying records in 1964, I continue to buy them now in 2017, and Aquashow remains to this day my favorite album of all time.  I bought Aquashow largely because of the blurb in this article about New York Rock, written by Dave Marsh in the December 1973 issue of Creem magazine, my Rock & Roll Bible of the time……

I conducted the following long-distance interview with Elliott Murphy via e-mail in February, 2017.  We're running it today - March 16th, 2017 - Elliott's 68th birthday.  He will be playing two birthday shows at The New Morning in his adopted home of Paris, France, this Friday & Saturday, March 17th & 18th.  We encourage any of our Continental friends to attend.  (I wish I was.)  Details on those shows, pertinent info about ordering all things Elliott Murphy - CD's, books, etc. - and a host of Elliott's prose writings can be found at www.elliottmurphy.com.  You should check it out at your earliest convenience.

THE PENCILSTORM ELLIOTT MURPHY INTERVIEW, WINTER 2017   

1)    You've recorded 35 albums since your debut, Aquashow, in 1973: do you know how many songs?  Also, what are your five favorite songs you've written, and - in as many words as you want/need - why? 

I don’t really know how many songs I’ve recorded and that’s a job better suited for a true archivist than myself (any volunteers?) but I suppose it’s around 300, and maybe I’ve written another 100 that I never recorded. And the saddest part is that I’ve probably started another 500 that I never finished. When asked about my favorite songs it always comes down to those I’ve written and those I’ve recorded. Songs that stand that test of time like LAST OF THE ROCK STARS are essential to me but there are a few songs from my upcoming album PRODIGAL SON that I’m particularly fond of, such as LET ME IN and ABSALOM, DAVY AND JACKIE O, which is an 11-minute opus of a dozen verses. I think my favorite recorded song is ANASTASIA, because for me the production is as close to perfection as I can imagine. But I’d have to throw COME ON LOUANN in there too, as well as YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU’RE IN FOR..… and on and on.

2)    The first prose piece I ever read by you were the liner notes to the 1969: Velvet Underground Live album, released back in 1974, and still to this day in 2017 I consider it one of the five best essays I have ever read on the subject of rock & roll.  How did your authorship of those notes come about?  (And, while we're on the subject: tell us a Lou Reed story we've never heard before.)

I first met Lou Reed in 1971 at a Mitch Ryder show at the Café au Go Go in NYC. (Mitch had covered Lou’s "Rock and Roll" with his band Detroit.) The Velvet Underground had such an avant-garde reputation and a menacing ambiance of sadomasochism in songs such as "Venus in Furs" that introducing myself to Lou took all the courage this 22-year-old nascent rocker could draw up. But I had just returned from a European sojourn, so I had a certain hip bono fides under my belt, having busked in the Paris Metro and appearing in Fellini’s film Roma. But to see Lou standing there in that Mickey Mouse T-shirt, chatting amiably with music business heavyweights didn’t fit the picture of the legend I had heard about. Come on, this was the composer of "Heroin"! The only thing I remember saying to him was that I too was from Long Island. “Oh really?” was his dead-panned response.

A year later my great discoverer, the late Paul Nelson - legendary rock critic and friend of Bob Dylan - who was then an A&R executive at Mercury Records asked me to write liner notes for Live 1969, the posthumous live VU album. Remember that all of this was months before I even began recording my own first album Aquashow, and still to this day fans bring me that VU album with my “It's one hundred years from today …” notes to sign as if it was my very own record and indeed I’m honored. 

I guess you could say that those liner notes contained hints of the suburban fear & loathing that was apparent all over the lyrics of Aquashow and befittingly, I wrote them on the Long Island Rail Road. Paul Nelson passed on my liner notes to Lou for his approval and - much to my delight - Lou liked them a lot, because shortly thereafter he actually called my mother and had a fairly long chat with her, as I wasn’t home at the time. At the end of the conversation my mom told him how excited I would be to hear from him and Lou asked her why.

“Because he’s a great admirer of yours,” said my mother.

“Isn’t everybody?” Lou responded.

My mother - who is in her nineties - still remembers that conversation and I still remember seeing Lou in the Mickey Mouse T-Shirt at Cafe au Go Go, so I guess you could say that Lou made a big impression on all those he came into contact with. When Aquashow came out critics imagined Dylan's Blonde on Blonde as my great inspiration but the truth was I listened to the Velvet Underground's Loaded over and over before daring to even put my toe in the rock 'n roll sacred waters.......

By the end of that tumultuous year 1974, My life had irrevocably changed; not only had my first album exploded on the scene garnering rave reviews from Rober Christgau (Village Voice) and Bob Hillburn (L.A. Times) and Paul Nelson himself (Rolling Stone) but there was my name for all to see on an actual Velvet Underground album. It was almost too much to handle! Or to quote the title of The New York Dolls’ second album – Too Much Too Soon! 

The last time I really spoke to Lou was when he came to Paris in the early 90’s and called me out of the blue and we had a café and we were crossing one of the bridges of the Seine and it was windy and Lou had his collar up and a passing French woman thought he was a priest! Lou didn’t like that. Then we stood on the bridge and Lou asked me what had happened with my life and career and I told him how it got difficult for me in the US during the 80’s and I moved to France and got married to the love of my life and now we have a son together, Gaspard, and my career took off again in Europe and Lou put his hand on my shoulder and said “So it all worked out okay, eh?” like a benediction from a priest!

3)    Who was the biggest influence on your prose writing? (And, I guess while we're on the subject: on your songwriting?) 

When it comes to songwriting I’m just a product of my generation: step one was watching Elvis on the Ed Sullivan show; step two The Beatles conquered America; and, step three Bob Dylan changed the possibilities of lyrical content in a rock song forever and ever. In my case, my father brought me to a lot of Broadway shows when I was a kid so I was introduced to the story telling aspect of songwriting right away. When it came to prose the first “important” book I read was EAST OF EDEN by John Steinbeck when I was 12. I had seen the James Dean film on TV and then searched out the book and it was such a larger universe than the film. After that there was of course F. Scott Fitzgerald and I related to GATSBY especially because it took place on Long Island where I grew up and also because I shared some of his romanticism, or as Scott said, “Show me a hero and I’ll show you a tragedy.” But there were so many other writers I admire all the way from Graham Greene to Kerouac to Raymond Chandler to Joyce Carol Oates to Hemingway to Wallace Stevens to John Cheever….. the list could go on and on. But honestly, I can’t say that any of them ever consciously influenced my style, they just showed me what great writing could be and how important it was to get it right.

4)    In your early career (circa 1973-1977) you made it a point to dress above/apart from your hippie rabble contemporaries (sharp white suits as opposed to patched bluejeans 'n' plaid flannel shirts): What was the worst fashion mistake you ever made onstage?

I think I avoided the worst mistake when Polydor Records hired an ad agency to promote Aquashow and they came up with the brilliant idea that I was the “prophet of my lost generation” and should wear long robes. I could live without seeing a few of my Miami Vice 1980’s shirts but aside from that I don't have many sartorial regrets. And my boots were always correct, which is the most important thing!

5)    How hard was your decision in 1989 to leave New York for a new home and life in Paris?

It was more gradual then you would imagine. I first played in Paris in 1979 and by 1989 I’d say most of my career was Europe-based. I had a good record company in France -New Rose - and I was touring all over the continent and in Scandinavia. I didn’t know how long I would last here because there are legal matters like visas and working papers, but then when I married Françoise everything worked out. She has been my guide through the French bureaucracy so it’s been fairly smooth even if I get stressed out like any immigrant. But leaving New York was not so hard; I had a bad memory on every street corner and it was time for a second act. 

6)    Were you already playing guitar when The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in February, 1964?  And what was the very first rock & roll song you sang in front of an audience?

I started playing guitar when I was 12 (around 1961) and the folk boom was happening, so I think the first song I performed in front an audience was "This Little Light of Mine" by the Kingston Trio. When “Murphy went electric” in 1964 my father bought me a Kent guitar (same guitar as Bruce S. had!) and my band did mostly surf music instrumentals. So probably “Walk Don’t Run” or “Wipeout” was the first rock ‘n roll song I sang. For a guy best known for his lyrics it’s ironic wouldn’t you say?

7)    Circa 1975, after the split of Boston bands The Modern Lovers and The Sidewinders, you hired Ernie Brooks, Jerry Harrison and Andy Paley as your backing band: What or who was your Boston connection?

Well, let me see..…when I came back from Europe in 1972 and was hanging around in Max’s Kansas City there was a lot of talk about The Modern Lovers although very few people had actually heard them play because they were really a Boston band. Then they opened for the NY Dolls on New Years Eve at the Mercer Arts Center (I played there a week later) and I think I said hello to Ernie Brooks and we became friends. The touring bands I had for Aquashow and Lost Generation never really worked out because they weren’t the same musicians who were playing on the albums and that was frustrating for everyone. So when I started to plan Night Lights I thought I’d get a band together, do some shows, and then go into the studio, which is kind of what happened. Ernie introduced me to Jerry Harrison (who 10 years later produced some cuts on my album Milwaukee) and also to Andy Paley because, I think, he had gone out with his sister. We opened for Sha Na Na in Canada, which had to be the worst pairing of acts in the history of the music business. But we did go into Electric Lady Studios and record quite a few songs, including "Diamonds By The Yard."

l > r: Elliott Murphy (guitar), Ernie Brooks (bass), Andy Paley (drums), Jerry Harrison (keyboards)

8)    As with Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen, your career is no exercise in nostalgia, you’re constantly recording new records and playing shows, what new releases do you have coming up?

I was actually writing a lot of songs and making demos and about ready to start a new album right before we decided to do AQUASHOW REVISITED (wherein I re-recorded the songs on my first album in a new way and through the ears of my son and producer Gaspard Murphy), so I gently put those songs aside and dug back into my past, like Proust searching for lost time. And then, when I revisited these new songs again after letting them lay dormant for about a year or more they had..… improved! Or at least that was the impression I had when I went back to the demos, and so I thought OK it’s time to put together that album again. I was haunted by this idea of working with a gospel choir and Gaspard found four great singers and a wonderful young piano player by the name of Leo Cotton who played like Leon Russell. We're looking toward a spring release. I don’t know how any artist can live in nostalgia-land. 

9)    Tell us about Jorge Arenillas documentary The Second Act of Elliott Murphy; any idea when we will see it in America?

I first met Jorge Arenillas when he was involved in some kind of futuristic horror film as a writer, I think, and the director wanted me to play a role in the film as a crazy rock star living like a hermit in a haunted house. That film never got made but when Jorge directed his next film - Another Summer – he asked me if he could use my song "Summer House" (from Just A Story From America, 1977) over the end credits, so I went into the studio with my son Gaspard and we made a new version of "Summer House" that went into the film. It’s a great film, by the way, about a haunted man who is trapped in his memory of a summer romance. Anyway, following that Jorge said he wanted to make a film about..…me! I was shocked and doubted that he could pull it off, but you know what? He did! Jorge started following Olivier Durand (my great French guitarist) and myself around on tour in Spain and soon we became used to his presence, almost like he was haunting us. He filmed a concert in Bilbao, where I’ve been playing for over twenty years, and it really was a magic night. So the film was finished and was even shown at one festival in Spain but Jorge said it needed something else. I asked what? He said … Bruce Springsteen. So I called Bruce and asked him if he would agree to be interviewed for the film and being the generous wonderful man that he is, he agreed. And then it just so happened that I was back in touch with Billy Joel around this same time because I came across a photo of Billy, Doctor John, and myself backstage somewhere and sent it to him. So I asked Billy if he would agree to be interviewed as well and being the generous wonderful man that he is too, he agreed. Jorge jumped on a plane and interviewed Bruce in New Jersey and Billy in Florida and voila! 

The film is available on DVD but in PAL, and will have its U.S. premiere at the Stony Brook Film Festival on Long Island this summer. 

Hopefully a release on Netflix or Amazon will follow…… 

10)    Tell us Ohio boys about a spring Parisian twilight……… 

The best part for me is always to be crossing one of the beautiful bridges that span the Seine on my Vespa scooter at twilight and to see the Eiffel Tower in the distance and all those gold-domed buildings and just the wonderful Parisians themselves all decked out, each in their own universe and to pass all those cafes and think of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Picasso and even Jim Morrison and to know that you are really at home. At least that’s my story from America.….

(editor's note: Previous Elliott Murphy blogs on Growing Old With Rock & Roll can be found by clicking on How I Spent My Summer Vacation and Elliott Murphy in Piermont, among others.)

(c) 2017 Ricki C.

Goodbye

Growing Old With Rock & Roll was always intended to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.  It was originally conceived in the Watershed tour van, somewhere in the South, when Colin Gawel & Joe Oestreich started badgering me to write down some of my rock & roll stories (bantering with David Johansen, pissing next to Johnny Thunders, having lunch with Angus Young, getting in a fight with Ric Ocasek, etc.) before Rock & Roll Alzheimer's kicked in or my second cardiac pacemaker gave out.

When I actually started to put pen to paper in the Baltimore Airport just after Christmas 2011, I projected the blog to last six months - from January 1st, 2012, to my 60th birthday on June 30th of that year.  Various factors extended that deadline - my computer died, I was in the middle of the Watershed Brick & Mortar/Hitless Wonder tour on that 60th birthday, more & more stories kept coming up - so I decided to make it a one-year blog instead of six months.

Somewhere in there, though, I got the idea of the 12-installment I Love Distortion novelette unfolding in real time in the blog, so here we are at the end of 2013.

I'm not going to stop writing.  It's really been too much fun doing this to quit, and I've learned a certain amount of discipline.  (Plus January, February & March get pretty long out here in Ohio and my lovely wife Debbie & I rarely leave the house in the winter, except to obtain Chinese takeaway, cookies & milk, potato chips and Mountain Dew.)  I may begin an entirely new blog eventually, but for the time being I plan to be more active on Colin Gawel's great Pencilstorm blog that I've contributed occasional pieces to since its inception.  (I actually have a projected title for the new blog, which I'm not going to preview here, because I'm told the WorldWideInterweb is brimming with intellectual thieves & malingerers.)

If I do begin a new blog, I'll plug the info into this Goodbye entry retroactively, so watch this space. 

(Actually, it should be WHEN I begin a new blog because I owe my good friend Chris Clinton a major piece on Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band that I never found space for in Growing Old With Rock & Roll.)  (Come to think of it, I never covered The MC5 or The Modern Lovers in any significant way, either.  Where did the time go?)

I want to thank writers-turned-rockers Lester Bangs, Patti Smith, Charles Shaar Murray & Mick Farren (R.I.P. Lester & Mick) and rocker-turned-writer Elliott Murphy for teaching me long-distance how to do this; I want to thank Hamell On Trial and Watershed for taking me on the road with them and providing stories & inspiration; I want to thank Will Kenworthy for setting up Growing Old With Rock & Roll for me; Debbie for editing the large majority of the pieces, and vastly improving them in the process (any of you who have ever had the misfortune of having me try to tell you a story in person - wherein I start talking about The Who in 1969 and somehow wind up recounting The Bronze Age in history - will understand how hard it is to keep me on point, focused, and anything like succinct); and especially I want to thank anybody & everybody who read and hopefully enjoyed any of my little scribblings.

Thank you and goodbye.  Let's let Steve Earle take us out.......

© 2013 Ricki C.

The Ballad of Willie Phoenix, part four - The True Soul Rockers & beyond, 1990-2013

I became a roadie for The True Soul Rockers quite by accident one Sunday afternoon in 1990 when Willie and the band were playing an outdoor show at Mirror Lake on the Ohio State University campus.  I was sitting in the audience with a girl I'd dated for much of the 1980's - who shall remain nameless for her various crimes & misdemeanors against the rock & roll - when Willie gestured for me to come up on the stage.  I actually looked around to see if he was signaling somebody behind me, but finally realized I was the one being beckoned.

I hadn't noticed that Willie had broken a guitar string until I met him at centerstage and he said, "Hey Ricki, can you change this for me?"  There were two young kids bustling around with the gear before the show - a girl with wildly curly hair I would later come to know as "Cheese" and work with for months, and a kid named Eric - and I couldn't figure why they didn't handle the string situation.  I put that question to Willie and he said dismissively, "Those kids don't know anything about changing strings.  Help me out."  I remember being totally taken aback and saying to Willie, "You have TWO roadies and neither one of them know how to change a guitar string?  You're slippin', Willie."

I broke up a long-term relationship to roadie for that band.  One night while driving home from a show at Ruby Tuesdays (where The True Soul Rockers maintained a residency similar to the The Flower Machine's earlier one) the girlfriend from paragraph one said, apropos of not much, "It's really kinda sad that all you guys are almost 40 years old and you're still trying to recapture your teenage glory days."  I broke up with her that very night, not because the comment was necessarily inaccurate or hurtful, but because it was clear she would never understand the Elemental Essential Truth of Bruce Springsteen singing, "Some guys, they just give up living and start dying little by little, piece by piece / Some guys come home from work and wash up and go racing in the street."

We weren't trying to recapture teenage glory days, we were simply trying to keep SOMETHING for ourselves in a world that seeks daily to take everything away.  Sometimes I think we still are.

The True Soul Rockers rhythm section consisted of Kozmos (held over from the Flower Machine) on bass and Jim Johnson (brought back from The Shadowlords) on drums.  The two new recruits were Mike Parks on backing vocals & shared lead guitar duties with Willie and - for at least the first year of the band - Ralph Denny on organ.  The Rockers (as they will be henceforth referred to herein) were a truly fearsome live unit.  My roadie stint with them was one of those times in my rock & roll life where I often found myself thinking, "I'm getting PAID to see and hear rock & roll music played this well, with this much power, commitment and sheer flat-out fucking QUALITY?  I've got the best job on the planet."

There were rock & roll moments I'll never forget with The Rockers: Mike Parks jamming the headstock of his Stratocaster into the brick wall at stage-right of Ruby's, using that wall to warp the neck of his guitar to get the desired bends of the notes he was searing out into the smoky air of the club; Willie venturing out almost nightly during third set-ending renditions of "Gloria" to inflict terror-raids onto the tabletops of unsuspecting audience members; Willie utilizing Kozmos as his onstage foil in Bruce Springsteen/Clarence Clemons-like rock & roll stage bits; Jim & Ralph seated stolidly at their instruments, anchoring the band John Enwhistle-style, keeping them from simply flying off into space.  It's no accident here that I've invoked my two favorite live bands of the 1960's and 1970's - The Who and Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, respectively - in that sentence.  On their best nights, The True Soul Rockers were one of the three best live bands I witnessed in the 1990's.  (For an full account of a workaday night from that gigging period check out Willie Phoenix & the True Soul Rockers vs. Frat Boy Friday Night from the May 30, 2012 entry of this blog.)

Unfortunately, (you could just FEEL an unfortunately coming here, couldn't you?) all that live firepower didn't translate to wax (or plastic, or whatever CD's are made of) on the Radio Simplicity album released in 1991, at the height of the band's popularity.  Radio Simplicity was certainly a solid collection of Willie tunes: ranging from quality rockers the band could knock out in their sleep ("Guys Like Me Don't Get Girls Like You," "Stick With Me," "Housewreckin'") to reggae or dance-inflected left-field numbers ("She's So Powerful," "Dancin' In Suspicion," "Suffocation") to the rock & roll ballads Willie had always been good at ("Walk You Home," "Dark Pages").  There was not one trace, however, of the incendiary twin lead guitar attack that Willie & Mike unleashed nightly in the live sets.  And, even more problematically, arguably the two best songs on the record - "Take My Advice" and "Hey Little Girl" - were brought back into the set in souped-up renditions from The Buttons repertoire of 10 years earlier.

And therein lies my Essential Quandary with the Willie Phoenix Experience.  At the same time I know in my heart and believe to my soul that if Willie gathered together all of his best material from the last 35 years into a Greatest Hits Set - "No Exits," "Artwork," "Knockout Girl" from Romantic Noise and The Buttons, "The Sketch" and "New York Is Burning" from The A&M Band, "This Is My Apartment" and "Misunderstanding" from The Shadowlords, even "Mild Tasting Tea" from the lackluster Flower Machine period - that it would be a live repertoire to truly reckon with, I also fully realize that Willie isn't interested in being a Nostalgia Act.  He's interested in moving forward with new material, new concepts, and his new band: Blues Hippy & The Soul Underground.  It would be hypocritical of me to ask Willie to draw exclusively on his past material and ignore progression while constantly badmouthing Pete Townshend for doing the same thing with The Who.

But goddamn, the rock & roll public hasn't had Willie Phoenix's Greatest Hits ground incessantly into pablum on classic-rock radio in mind-numbing Endless Heavy Rotation like those Who Hits, and it would be so great to hear Willie's best songs live all in one place again.

By time The True Soul Rockers split up in 1992 I had moved on from my roadie station at the side of the stage into my own solo acoustic rock & roll act.  Between that and my road manager position beginning in 2000 with Hamell On Trial and later joining Watershed's road crew in 2005 - jobs that frequently took me out of Columbus and around the U.S.A. - I kinda lost track of Willie's later bands.  (Jim Johnson played in many of those bands and would be THE authority on Willie's 21st-century output - live and on record - maybe we can get him to contribute a guest blog sometime.)

Just a few weeks ago, Colin Gawel & The Lonely Bones - Colin's side-project from Watershed - opened a show for Blues Hippy & The Soul Underground at a local Columbus club.  It's a solid rock project, with Myke Rock (of late-70's Columbus punk-rockers Screaming Urge) on bass and Johnson once again returning on drums along with new second guitarist Dan-ro James.  The effect is kinda Willie Phoenix & Crazy Horse.  The band sets up some great rough-edged rock grooves for Willie to solo over and it's a rockin' good time.  Do I wish the caliber of the original material was a little bit higher?  Yeah, I do.  Do I want Willie's lyrics to reflect our reality as 60-year old Elder Statesmen Rockers a little bit more than the same old rebels & angels sentiments Willie has mined for at least the last 20 years?  Yeah, I really do. 

But outside of that petty criticism, it just feels good to see Willie on a stage, wielding a Tele like some lovely sonic deadly weapon and singing his heart, soul & guts out.  It's a pleasure to bear witness to a Rock & Roll Survivor.  "Some guys, they just stop living, and start dying little by little piece by piece / Some guys come home from work and wash up and go racing in the street."

The True Soul Rockers, 1992

Left to right; Mike Parks, Kozmos, Willie Phoenix, Jim Johnson

Three sets a night, every gig.  Think kid bands could do that nowadays?  I think not.

The True Soul Rockers set list, December 23rd, 1990.



© 2013 Ricki C.

Midgard Comics

Hi everybody, it's Christmas morning, 2013, I just wanted to wish my Growing Old With Rock & Roll

readers a Merry Christmas.  My lovely wife Debbie is away in New Jersey visiting her family, I'm

off in a little bit to my sister's house for our family Christmas and for some reason I found my

thoughts turning to Midgard Comics.  This works out well for the blog, as with the conclusion of

I Love Distortion, the next part of my life of rock & roll was my action-packed solo acoustic act.

That act would never have lasted without Midgard Comics.  It was my home away from home,

my laboratory, my sanctuary.  I wrote the following piece in 2004 for my old MySpace page

(jeez, does anybody remember MySpace?), and I found it needed very little editing or updating.

My most heartfelt thanks to Keith & Derek and every last one of the Midgard Kidz.

I miss Midgard Comics, I really do.  I played there starting in 2001 when owner Keith Cousineau first started booking (mostly) underage (mostly) punk bands in the empty storefront adjacent to his comic book store.  It was a 20 by 60 foot room in a suburban shopping center in the north end of Columbus, Ohio.  They had a great P.A. and a huge parking lot for hanging out.

Midgard Comics was my laboratory.  It was the place where the Ricki C. act was honed. Not so much where the act was developed, that was at a variety of places: Cappuccino Café in Westerville, Ohio; Moonspinners Cafe near the Ohio State University campus; the Border’s Bookstore at Kenny & Henderson (where, one night, management informed me that I would have to play my second set “slower and softer” because I was “frightening the audience”).

I miss Midgard Comics.  There was no such thing as frightening the audience at Midgard. I could play flat-out solo acoustic rock & roll - fast, loud & aggressive - and the kids would go right with me.  It was at Midgard Comics that the Ricki C. act really blossomed.  I would play the set breaks between electric punk bands young enough to be my children and once I could command the rather short to virtually non-existent attention span of hyperactive teenaged throngs, audiences of 20 and 30 year olds were child’s play.

I miss Midgard Comics.  The Who had the Marquee Club in London, The MC5 had the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, The New York Dolls had the Mercer Arts Center in New York City, Hamell On Trial had the Electric Lounge in Austin.  I had Midgard Comics.

By 2004, Midgard had grown to be a regular stop for national touring punk bands. Motion City Soundtrack, Bowling For Soup and Something Corporate had all played there.  But constant money pressures, landlord hassles and problems with the police (hey, you try babysitting throngs of teenagers like Keith and his staff did every weekend) eventually took their toll.

I played the closing weekend festivities in June 2004.  A kid came up to me after my last set and said, “You were the most punk rock thing ever about this place.”  He was wrong, of course, but it might be the nicest thing anybody has said to me in 45 years of playing rock & roll.

That was Midgard Comics. I miss it.  These are Tales Of Midgard.  (Apologies to Stan Lee, but mostly to Jack Kirby.)

Grandma

In the early days at Midgard, rock & roll speed and a healthy dose of profanity were my best teenage-attention-grabbing tools.  Some nights I wouldn’t even play from the stage.  I would set up by the soundboard with my own amp and microphone to stay out of the way of the band changeovers and so I could more closely confront the audience.

One of those nights I headed back in the dark to start my second set and discovered a 70-something white-haired grandmother IN A WHEELCHAIR parked right in front of my allotted play space.  This pretty much shot my projected set plan to hell.  It’s more difficult than you would imagine to adjust from teen-punk blitzkrieg to septuagenarian kum-ba-yah.

As luck would have it the woman’s grandson’s band (which, by the way, was a full-bore-screaming-stab-your-mother-hardcore-punk band) had just finished their set and the lead singer’s dad wheeled grandma away.  After my set I caught up with Keith outside in the parking lot and said, “Hey man, you’re gonna have to tighten up your door policy.  I had a grandmother in a wheelchair out in front of me tonight.”

Keith chuckled and replied, “Yeah, I saw her.  She was on oxygen, too.  I was hoping nobody would flip a cigarette at her and blow up her oxygen tank.”  I love Keith.  I miss Midgard Comics.

Smoke, Smoke, Smoke That Cigarette

One night my buddy Kyle and I stopped at Midgard on the way home from seeing The Mooney Suzuki downtown. (I think I forgot to mention, not only was Midgard a great place to play, but it was less than a mile from where I live.  It was the least far I’ve ever driven for a gig in my life.  At one point I was running a Wednesday night acoustic open stage there and I realized I had left my guitar tuner at home.  My good friend John Vincent started a Dylan song, I drove home, got my tuner and drove back before he finished the song.  And it wasn’t even "Desolation Row.")

Anyway, The Mooney Suzuki was an early show, it was barely 11 p.m. when Kyle and I hit Midgard.  Shows there usually went to about midnight, but the place was deserted.  The front door was standing open and when we went in there was so much smoke hanging in the air we thought there had been a fire.  While we were trying to figure out where the fire engines were Keith walked out from the back room.  “What was on fire?” I asked.  Keith looked around, concerned for a moment, “Something’s on fire?” he said.  I said, “Wasn’t there a fire?”  You couldn’t see the back wall of the club, 30 feet away.

“I guess it was a smoking crowd tonight.” Keith replied, his usual serene cool returning.  I love Keith. I miss Midgard Comics.

Sterling Morrison Is Dead But I’m Still Around

One night in 2001 I debuted my song "If All My Heroes Are Losers."  As I leaned into the last verse I noticed that one of the kids gathered down front stopped talking to his friend and perked up at the line “Now Sterling Morrison is dead, but I’m still around.”  I didn’t think much about it, forgot it by the end of the set, but when I left the stage the kid came up and asked, “Sterling Morrison isn’t really dead is he?  Why did you put that in a song?”  I replied, “Yeah, he certainly is dead, he died about five years ago, of cancer.”

The kid was really, really distraught.  He was only about 15 or 16 years old and had just discovered The Velvet Underground a few months earlier.  His eyes started to glisten, he was almost crying.  I thought, what a crummy way to find out that one of your new musical heroes is gone, having some loudmouth rocker blather it from a stage on a Saturday night.  “I’m really sorry,” I said, “I just never could have imagined that somebody wouldn’t have heard about Sterling dying by now.  I’m sorry you had to hear it this way.”

I tried to cheer the kid up by telling him that Sterling had three pretty cool jobs while he was alive: member of The Velvet Underground, college literature professor and tugboat captain.  I told him most people never even have one cool job in their life, or find one thing they love, Sterling found and accomplished three.  "Sterling Morrison was a college professor and a tugboat captain?” the kid wondered, incredulous, “I thought he was just always in The Velvet Underground.”

The kid’s friends wandered over and I found myself filling them in on all this stuff: about how The Velvets broke up in 1970 and got back together for the reunion tour in 1993 right before they found out about Sterling’s cancer; about how Lou Reed and John Cale hated each other; about Alejandro Escovedo writing a truly beautiful and moving song about Sterling called "Tugboat."

That was when it hit me.  That this was why I had arrived at Midgard Comics, at that gig, at that time. That after all the years of playing guitar, all the years of songwriting, all the amplifiers, all the broken strings, all the roads traveled, all the smoke-filled bars, all the cool quiet bookstores, all the broken dreams of rock stardom, that it was time to pay up and start giving something back to rock & roll.  That it was time to start trying to pass on some fragments of my accrued knowledge to a new generation of rockers.  (blogger's note, 2013: In retrospect, that night just might have been when I started growing old with rock & roll.) 

All of this was three years before that Jack Black movie.  Midgard Comics was my School Of Rock.  I miss it, I really do.

For some songs, check out:

If All My Heroes Are Losers

Strummer's In Heaven

(c) 2004 & 2013 Ricki C.