Oh, those drunken Replacements.

In "Treatment Bound," singer Paul Westerberg explains the Replacement's touring strategy as follows: "The first thing we do when we finally show up / Get shit-faced drunk / Try to sober up." For legions of impressionable punk rock youth, these were words to live by. The Replacements were like the male equivalent of Courtney Love, one went to their show in guilty hopes of seeing a train wreck, and more than half the time they delivered, being too drunk to remember their own songs and having to revert to out of tune covers to which Westerberg would make up the words. If they did manage the "sobering up" part they might deliver a searing, moving, furious set of rock songs that fell somewhere between hardcore punk and what would eventually be known as alternative rock (Nirvana's Kurt Cobain originally drew Westerberg comparisons with his anguished vocal style and major label-defying antics. I wasn't alone in my first thought on hearing Cobain's voice being "Hey, this guy sounds just like Paul Westerberg!")

The story of the 'mats (as their fans dubbed them) begins in the punk scene of 1979 Minneapolis. Bob Stinson was lead guitarist and the heaviest drinker. His 14-year old brother Tommy was on bass and their friend Chris Mars played drums. They were a hardcore punk band when Westerberg joined them but he brought in gallons of emotion-wracked songwriting talent and they split the difference. They got signed to Twin Tone, and proceeded to release a series of furious, somewhat sloppy albums, the straight up (but amusing) thrash of Sorry Ma (Forgot to Take out the Trash) followed by an EP and then the delightfully ramshackle Hootenanny.

Their big breakthrough came with 1984's Let it Be, the album that invented modern alternative rock six years too soon. They went over to a major label (Sire) for Tim. But then the elder Stinson was kicked out for drug and alcohol problems (which was, as Martin Sheen put it in Apocalypse Now, "like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.") Pleased to Meet Me and Don't Tell a Soul followed, without Stinson and with production values slick enough to make their small but loyal fan base accuse them of selling out. Their final album, All Shook Down, was a step forward to Westerberg's solo career, with sparse acoustic arrangements and anguished confessional lyrics, it still didn't sell and the band split up. Westerberg idled until Cameron Crowe exhumed him for the soundtrack to his film Singles. Though they've long since gone their separate ways, the status of the 'mats as the alcoholic stepfathers of alternative rock remains forever assured, and if I wasn't in rehab at the moment, I'd drink to that.

SORRY MA FORGOT TO TAKE OUT THE TRASH (1981)

The debut album from the Replacements is a typically ferocious and witty entry in the low budget indie LP pressings of the early 80s. Though untrained ears may be unable to differentiate it from other thrash-punk albums of the period, Westerberg's songwriting gifts show through after a couple of listens. Traditional "slam dancing" favorites would be the hilarious "Shut Up," and "I Hate Music," but there's also some real rock and roll heart in the wrenching "Shiftless When Idle" and "Kick Your Door Down." Looking forward to their future rock balladry there's "Johnny's Gonna Die," an ode to downward spiraling junkie guitar legend Johnny Thunders (obviously an inspiration to their own booze-addled stage antics, people would go see Johnny Thunders shows just to see whether or not he'd be too messed up to play.) "Raised in the City" manages to be both a satire of and a homage to Kiss-style rock, an avenue they'd travel down further in subsequent albums.

HOOTENANNY (1983)

You can hear the merry slurs in the vocals here, such as the barely standing up messiness of the title track. The forward-looking track is "Die Within Your Reach," a somewhat sappy ballad whose click-drum track makes one suspect Westerberg did it on his own without the support of his punk rock bandmates. Nonetheless the germs of their future alt rock sound is here, with the ramshackle folksiness of "Treatment Bound" and the vividly realized punk of "Color Me Impressed" and "Fuck our School."
 

LET IT BE (1984)

This classic 1984 life-changer ignited the soul of every alienated teen who bought it and marked a turning point in punk rock and has been celebrated on stage and screen and even has an entire book written about it by that weird guy from the Decemberists. Though there are still several punk tracks on the record ("We're Coming Out," "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out") the key element here is the aching emotionally tormented rock of "Unsatisfied," "Answering Machine" and "Sixteen Blue" in which songwriter/vocalist Paul Westerberg made the band drop all their drunken punk pretensions and expose the tormented anger, hope and longing he, and everyone else, was really feeling. The cathartic end result of all that soul searching is the jangly "I Will Dare," the piano-driven, daring (for the time) "Androgynous" and a Kiss cover; "Black Diamond." Most prescient is "Seen Your Video," in which Westerberg rants about the evils of the then-new music station, MTV, little knowing how it would soon co-opt the genre of music he and his contemporaries were at that very moment creating. I could tell you how cool you are if you bought this record when it first came out, but I'd be tooting my own horn. And my friends and I met Bob Stinson in front of an all-ages show in City Gardens, Trenton, in the summer of '85, and and tried unsuccessfully to get him to give us some of his crappy beers.

TIM (1985)

The follow-up to the Replacement's groundbreaking LET IT BE marks a significant turning point not just in their career but in the history of alternative music. LET IT BE still had a few traditional punk songs under its sleeve, but by Tim time, lead songwriter Westerberg had come fully into his own, and the album is a mix of gut-wrenching ballads, gut-wrenching love songs, and gut-wrenching anthems of angst and alienation. "Bastards of Young," "A Little Mascara" and "Hold My Life," howl with beautiful rage. "Left of the Dial" refers to bands whose only airplay comes from college radio stations (typically at the extreme left of the FM radio dial) and became an instant catchphrase for indie-hood that survives today, as does Westerberg's succinct description of his generation: "Innocence wont claim us / We got no wars to name us." The freewheeling grungy romance of "On the Bus" and the clap-along "Waitress in the Sky" looked forward to the even more innocuous Westerberg solo career but are here catchy, soulful and worthwhile. The final song, "Here Comes a Regular" is a heartbreaking ballad of one slob's failure to escape the dreary all-consuming solace of the local tavern. The band with a reputation for being boozy and unprofessional onstage was realizing the cold, scary future awaiting them if they couldn't stop their downward spirals. This was their first record for a major label and subsequent releases would find them attempting to be more commercial in a bid for crossover success. They didn't make it, but in the passing years, TIM has become a towering milestone whose lyrics are sacred texts to many of today's alternative rock titans.

PLEASED TO MEET ME (1987)

The first album to be released after the firing of guitarist Bob Stinson, this album put off a lot of fans with its unapologetically commercial new direction. Stinson was obviously the force holding Westerberg's more radio-friendly urges in check. Nonetheless, it has stood the test of time to be considered a classic and was an obvious precursor Nirvana's Nevermind album. In fact, the cover of that album--the baby swimming after a dollar bill on a fishing hook--is clearly inspired by the cynicism of the cover here, of a grungy torn up sleeve shaking hands with a rolexed corporate suit. Westerberg was a big Alex Chilton fan and the album was scheduled to be produced by the same guy who did THIRD and SISTER/LOVERS for Chilton, but things fell through. You can here Westerberg's Chilton-esque aspirations running full force on tracks like "Alex Chilton" (!), and the acoustic ballad, "Skyway." The rest of the band shows they can still rock hard with "Red Red Wine" and "Shooting Dirty Pool."

DON'T TELL A SOUL (1989)

In a last ditch effort to break into mainstream radio play, the Replacements made their most commercial album, slathering on the slick production and alienating many of their hardcore fans in the process. Sales still didn't meet expectations, yet time has been kind to this album; if it had come out around three or four years later it may have been a grunge classic. Anthems of youth alienation abound, including the classic "We'll Inherit the Earth" and "I'll Be You". "Rock and Roll Ghost" is one Westerberg's gut-wrenchingly honest ballads, this one an intensely personal autobiography about a life possibly wasted as a rock and roll also-ran. "Darlin' One" stings with the ache of unfulfilled romantic yearning. There is no doubting that the band was reaching for mainstream success with the desperation of a repentant sinner, but they didn't reach it, and for that this album's prescient songs are all the more tragic.

ALL SHOOK DOWN (1990)

This stripped down affair is a big step forward from the slick AOR-bid, Don't Tell a Soul. Recorded with an array of session musicians while the band was in mid-disintegration, this is was originally to be vocalist Paul Westerberg's debut solo album, in the tradition of his longtime hero, Alex Chilton. The title track is my favorite, a lonesome blues with an earthy, almost Tom Waits-y vibe. If the Mats had been a breakthrough success who knows what these songs would have been about? As it is, their unflinching honesty towards a life misspent and opportunities squandered makes for great wallowing in your-lack-of-fame listening. This was Westerberg giving up on mainstream success, and turning his back on the hard rock limitations of his band. From now on they wouldn't have old Mr. Westerberg to kick around anymore, and with that he was off on his path of introspective soul-tearing angst, honing the mope rock he helped invent right up to the closing track, presciently titled, "The Last."

(originally written for Amp Camp.com, 2001, now long gone)

Liz Phair: Siren, Sinner, Sister, Sell-Out

Holy Shit, i forgot how hot Liz Phair is, or was, or looks in heavily retouched photos in sexy teenager clothing with her chin way up and mouth all pouty.

(From my discography entry in the now defunct Amp Camp, c. 2001)
Liz Phair: Miss Popular, the queen of the indie prom, the cute Chicago girl who can actually play guitar and write and sing good songs, who lives alone in the dorm room down the hall and only the coolest kids aren't afraid to talk to, the girl that all the other girls hate, who spends her nights alone with a four track and a bong, composing songs about how promiscuous she was in high school and would like to be now. Talking dirty and driving the boys crazy, she's a mix of droll songwriting talent and sex addiction all wrapped up in a cute-as-a-button package. My friends who have friends who know her from school say she's simultaneously using the nymph boy-eater posing as a gimmick and at the same time is far more voracious and crazy than she pretends to be, while also being a closet "normal" -- in other words, they don't know anything about her either.

A brilliant lyricist and notoriously self-conscious performer, Liz Phair was a package no sulky  indie boy or shopworn punkette with an ear for outsider genius could resist. Her debut album, Exile in Guyville landed her the top spot on the 1994 Village Voice Pazz and Jop Critic's poll, but the studio-produced follow up, Whip Smart, was accused of being too mainstream. Word was, she let the producers and studio musicians boss her around, and then--to make matters worse--she went and got married and had a baby. 

Hearts lay broken everywhere.

But she surprised many a few years later with whitechocolatepsacegg, wherein she looked upon motherhood with a mix of horror and good-natured sarcasm, much to our relief. BUT, then she decided to "sell out" after all, and signed with a major label, slutted-up her costumes and brought in airbrush artists and make-up technicians to remould her in a Britney-cum-MILF mode. 30something fans dropped off by the droves, to be replaced by teenybopper girls (or so she and her new label hoped). But hey, she's on a journey, and maturity has been very kind to her, replacing her precocious cuteness with a sexuality that could drop a rhino at 30 paces. Don't hate her 'cuz she's beautiful or because she sold out, hate her because she writes brilliant songs without even trying, and suddenly wants to spend more time with her stupid son than with us.

   EXILE IN GUYVILLE  (1994)

Supposedly a feminist "answer" to the macho swagger of the Rolling Stones' 1972 Exile on Main Street, this sprawling masterpiece showed how one girl and her pet four-track could do more musical damage than your mama and all her biker friends after a case of tequila and an eightball of crank. She potty-mouths off to the older boys that may have once taken advantage of her in tracks like "Fuck and Run," and "Help Me, Mary," while occasionally getting all effortlessly catchy, as in "Never Said" wherein her nasal voice makes it sound like she's been (gasp) SMOKING!  Then in "Canary" and "Flower" she twists the knife all the way in, revealing the pig's blood-soaked telekenetic Carrie underneath the coy homecoming queen veneer. Raw and unhinged, the low-fi trappings here may alienate new listeners, but this album is the one that knocked the rock-and-roll boys club forever and completely on its ass. Miss it at your own risk. Oh hey, it's been re-issued... what... ever. A

WHIP SMART (1996)

The critical adulation Phair received for her 4-track masterpiece, Exile in Guyville, led to the studio-recorded follow-up getting some major label distribution and even an MTV-friendly video for the single, "Supernova." Despite cries of sell-out (even then!) from some of the hardcore indie mopers, this is a fine collection of songs, much more coherent and resonant than many of the lesser tracks on Guyville. "Jealousy" benefits from an addictive, propulsive rhythm as its narrator goes snooping through her lovers draw of ex-girlfriend photos, echoing the co-dependent yowling of Alannis Morrisette's Jagged Little Pill released the same year. Other stand-out tracks are "May Queen" and the "Crater Lake" with its classic line of "Well Look at me / I'm frightening my friends." If the sexually frank opening track, "Chopsticks," seems as if she's talking dirty just to show she can still shock prurient ears, that "Crater Lake" sentiment gets to the real truth underlying our socially conditioned reactions to such behavior: It's "cute" for girls to talk dirty, but if they start telling the real truth about things, they make people nervous. Thank God that Phair still isn't afraid to do exactly that, no matter who she frightens. B

WHITECHOCOLATESPACEEGG (1998) 

Recorded post-child, Phair's third album received some great notices as a mature, edgy, even experimental departure for the indie princess of profanity. Sardonic power chords and spooky prog keyboards count among the many inspired flourishes, showing the whole child thing gave the lass some time to think and expand her sound. The album kicks off with three instant back to back classics, culminating with the single, "Polyester Bride," a Beck-like send-up of 1970's AOR radio that confused a lot of critics who "didn't get the joke" (or maybe I'm just so in love with her I gave it the benefit of the doubt.) Then there was the infectious electro-bounce of "Headache" and her use of different narrative voices to reconfigure herself as a Randy Newman-style storyteller ("Shitloads of Money" comes off as a somehow less ironic sequel to Newman's "It's Money that Matters"). The sheer exuberant catchiness of the optimistic "What Makes You Happy" and the folky lilt of "Uncle Alvarez" show Phair as an artist spreading her wings in a way that makes the alleged "sell out" of her following album less shocking in hindsigh, but nonetheless...A-

 LIZ PHAIR (2003)

Shocking! The queen of low fi (who hadn't really been lo-fi since her debut) drops all her pretensions and makes a distinctly unlady-like grab for the big gold ring of Top 40 girlpop. Slick production team the Matrix, who helped Avril Lavaigne make it over, here work the same mojo on several tracks, including Phair's first chart-breaker, the irresistible "Why Can't I." The many-bridged psychosexual boasting of "Extraordinary" is a definite shocker with production so slick it is beyond slick. But then the smoke clears and all the fuss turns out to be a little unfounded and we start revisiting all the old Phair neighborhoods, exploring her favorite topics such as oral sex ("H.W.C.") and the seduction of impressionable babysitters (this time from the POV of the mother, "Rock Me").  In the heartbreaking "Little Digger" which explains to her 5-year old son why mommy keeps waking up with all these strange men in her bed. In a way she could be addressing her whole dejected indie boy fan base who she knew in advance were going to receive this album with angry, tear-stained dejection; from now on, we would have to share mommy with the whole wide world. C-

 SOMEBODY'S MIRACLE (2005)

Much as I hate to admit it, this cute cover makes me weak at the knees every time I see it, but Phair and I are through, finito, so there's no more listening and trying to like stuff and then getting my feeling's hurt as I realize she's not singing to my demographic anymore... she's singing for the suits, the 'tweeners and the void. Alas, a lot of people agreed with me and the last I knew they weren't even able to give Somebody's Miracle away... probably that helped prompt the career decision to do a bells-and-whistles re-release of GUYVILLE, to see if all her dorky fans will now accept her as a mid-90s nostalgia act instead of the Guyville's Mata Hari. For me, the paint still drying on the cement floor where my heart once lay, it's gonna take another 8 years.

BUT, damn can she sizzle with a good photographer and sultry poutfit, let's take a little pictorial walkthrough and see how one talented, my age indie rocker goes from 80s high school girl to bitingly witty alt-rock princess to just another airbrushed Maxim boytoy:

 

  

I'm not debating her third-wave feminist right to sell out and get paid, the right way, in full... but... sheesh, there's a line between the Madonna "use it cause you got it but also deconstruct it" and the merely "use it because the publicity agents flatter your vanity." Funny that in posting all this, mainly because I found my old Liz Phair discography work from 2001, I'm now back in swooning love with this edgy MILF icon, and all the accompanying jealous pique that love entails.

X: See How They War

X stood onstage somewhere between a ferocious L.A. punk combo and a Sam Shepherd play. Bassist/vocalist John Doe was the wayward cowboy, poet/singer Exene Cervenka his boozy, brilliant, trailer-park dwelling ex-wife, spewing at each other oaths of love and hate, harmonizing like wounded cats over topics like class discrimination, alcoholism, jealousy, lust, and lousy presidents. Pompadour-sporting guitarist Billy Zoom stood off to the side, legs firmly planted in a wide stance as if waiting for a horse to land under him any minute, ripping out rockabilly solos with the fury of an angry kid upstairs in his bedroom listening to his parents fight. DJ Bonebrake in the back on the drums set the pace like the ghost of an abusive stepfather, driving everyone's emotions forward into a sonic cliff dive at the next sharp turn on the highway. They were edgy and in the moment, yet plugged in deep to the roots of their locale; for them Los Angeles was still unsettled desert country and the lonesome folk music of that bygone era was audible beneath their sonic din. This link, and their steady gigs around the Sunset Strip win them the attention of former Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek who produced and played on their first four albums.

 

Unfortunately their major label, Elektra, expected bigger sales, and when their fifth release AINT LOVE GRAND didn't break through, Billy Zoom finally moved out of the house (if I may return to the analogy in the previous paragraph)  and they replaced him with first former Blasters-member Dave Alvin, then Tony Glykson. , When their next album SEE HOW WE ARE still didn't take off, the band began to dissolve, doing other projects, such as the alt-folksy formation The Knitters, and for Doe, the lure of movies and solo projects. They still get back together, and in 2004 even re-formed with Zoom for a tour captured on DVD and CD: LIVE IN LOS ANGELES.

I saw them live only once, when they played at City Gardens in Trenton in 1985. I was 18. I got stuck trapped against the front of the stage as the whole club erupted into a mosh pit (we called it "slam dancing" in them days) I was about to get creamed by this out of control kid in a mohawk when a giant skinhead yanked me out of the way of his  oncoming fist, belting the mohawk kid right in the nose with his other hand, showering me and several other people in a spray of blood. When I looked back up on the stage, I saw Exene and John Doe both smiling down at the scene like proud, happy parents, still singing and playing, beaming with pride at each other and the whole chaotic scene. In that moment we were all one big happy dysfunctional family; twenty years later and I still miss them.

DISCOGRAPHY:

Wild Gift (1981)
The second album from punk rock darlings X is actually a mix of tracks recorded from around the time of the first album, 1980's "Los Angeles," with some new material which shows the band already progressing at a fascinating pace. Produced by Ray Manzarek (the Doors), this album finds the band realizing they have an almost mature and poetically distinct style that separates them from their early 1980's punk peers, then trying to upset the apple cart and either make it or break it loose with Doe and Cervenka's searing anthems of romantic disillusionment, "White Girl," "When Our Love Passed Out on the Couch," and "Adult Books," all career highlights. Billy Zoom's hopped up surf-abilly guitar gets its chance to rock out on the rip-roaring "We're Desperate," probably the album's most definitively "punk" tune, followed by the choogling rage-a-thon, "In this House that I call Home." The 2001 re-mastered version features several worthwhile demos and B-sides including the amazing demo of "Blue Spark," a track heard on the their following album, the definitive "Under the Big Black Sun."   

Under the Big Black Sun (1982)
Considered by many to be the band's artistic peak, this is a dark, feverish, disillusioned piece of acidic beauty, with deeply personal lyrics including such topics as the death of co-vocalist Exene Cervenka's sister Mary in a hit and run auto accident ("Riding with Mary"). You can practically smell the grief, the drug-laced sweat of dank hotel rooms, the mountains of cigarettes in ashtrays, the day-old sex, the simmering disillusionment, and the blood drying on the bathroom floor.  Cervenka and her lover/songwriting partner/co-vocalist John Doe generously share every excruciatingly personal detail of ther disintegrating romantic life on the punk rock tour road to hell, kicking ass every mile of the way. Guitarist Billy Zoom, a rockabilly powerhouse who cut his teeth playing with country legend Gene Vincent, brings some salve and salt to the wounds with some of the most furious playing of this career. "Dancing With Tears in My Eyes" is a cover that offers a welcome respite from the angry gloom, while songs like "Real Child of Hell" and the slowly simmering "Blue Spark" show how to mix rooted musical maturity and unhinged ferocity for maximum results.

More Fun in the New World (1983, Elektra)
After almost killing themselves with a series of critically acclaimed but poorly selling albums, the X family decided they needed to break out of their furious punk rock rut (after Under the Big Black Sun there was probably nowhere else to go but back from the edge of the cliff, or over, Thelma and Louise-style) and achieve the breakthrough AOR radio-play success that was the measure of one's artistic cred back in Reagan-era Hollywood. Checking a significant chunk of their punk rock fury at the recording studio door, they went and developed a whooping good time call-and-response style song cycle about political apathy and their own music industry frustrations, presaging west coast rap in the process, as in the litany of metonyms shouted out in "True Love" Parts one and Two. My own personal favorite is "Drunk in My Past" which seems to prefigure the post punk introspection of emo by twenty years. There's also a great cover of Jerry Lee Lewis' "Breathless" with Exene Cervenka on vocals so rough and sexy you may feel like you're violating some law just by listening. The 2001 re-master includes several worthwhile demo tracks.

Ain't Love Grand? (1985)
When their previous album, More Fun In the New World, didn't cross them over to the mainstream as they hoped, punk rock icons X took another step closer to traditional rock respectability with this album. Ray Manzarek, the former Doors member who produced the band's first four records was replaced, and in came the 1980's studio gloss.

Okay, stop for a second, you neo punk rocker reading this: Before you turn away with the words "sell out" on your lips, remember that in 1985 (long before the advent of CDs) being on a major label involved serious pressure from the suits and unless you sold at least a zillion albums you were losing money, something your White Stripes never had to worry about. Understand this, and forgive X their high gloss trespasses, because the album is worth it. This was my first X album, which I bought in 1985 when it came out due to pressure from my punk rock high school buddy. It took me a few listens to get into it but then when I did my whole life started to change. In comparison with its predecessors it spits its venom in fewer places but with better aim, and there's a great lovesick sense of nicotine-stained compassion floating through, even during their angry litany of towns they don't like playing in ("Well downtown NYC, people there F--k with me / Downtown Paris, France / they never give us half a chance" -- "What's Wrong with Me.")  What was wrong nobody still knows, but X was proving they were capable of crafting accessible but hard edged songs of loss, failure, acceptance and hope better than anyone else. When in "Watch the Sun Go Down," Exene sings "I Wish I'd never grown up / So I could cry myself to sleep," she sounds both genuinely grown-up and genuinely wishing she could cry, but she can't anymore. You can't get much more genuinely human in a pre-alternative alternative rock record than that, gloss be damned. There's also a glimpse of the X to come with the ex-Blaster Dave Alvin producing the track "Little Honey" (he would later replace Zoom albeit briefly). There's also some great demos and B-sides including the only released as a single "Wild Thing (Long Version)" and a great demo of John Doe solo, playing bass and singing the Replacements song "I Will Dare."

See How We Are (1987)
First generation punk rock icons X recorded SEE HOW WE ARE during a period of personal and professional disappointment: Their guitarist Billy Zoom left the band, discouraged by their inability to break out of the punk rock ghetto. Their harder edges had been burned off in an effort to court AOR repsectability and the marriage of lead singers and songwriters John Doe and Exene Cervenka was over. Getting played on mainstream radio had became something of a white whale for the band, but somewhere among all the changes and compromises something amazing happened; the rural Americana country rock sounds they had been dabbling in all along began to fill the empty spaces. Soon they were bringing their maturity, edge and rawness into the heartland symbolized on MTV by the white t-shirt of John Cougar Mellencamp; alternative-Americana was being born. Fans were baffled, but no one could deny they were onto something, despite the studio gloss. The title track is a stand out and became something of an anthem in thier subsequent years and the straight-up confessional oomph of "I'm Lost" let's you know right out of the gate this band is looking for direction even as they find it. There are also some great rockers, like "Fourth of July" and powerful near-ballads like "When it Rains."  Replacing the departed Zoom were two guitarists Dave Alvin (The Blasters) and Tony Gilkyson each bringing a distinctly "other" country vibe. The 2002 re-mastered CD includes several bonus tracks. 

Live at the Whiskey A-Go-Go (1988)
This double live album captures X at around the period of their final Elektra release SEE HOW WE ARE, and is an excellent swan song for that period of their career. Tony Gilkyson is on guitar, substituting pretty adequately for the absence of the legendary Billy Zoom, but though the punk classics of the earlier part of the decade are all there ("Blue Spark," "Los Angeles," and "This House that I Call Home"), it's clear the band is headed in a more twangy-folksy direction as they turn down the heat on the rockabilly boil for a spell late in the evening to perform some acoustic songs in their alternate incarnation, the Knitters, sich as:  "Skin Deep Town" and "Call of the Wreckin' Ball."  All in all this is a fine place to start for casual listeners, especially if they are wondering what all the fuss is about, or coming to band via the roundabout route of John Doe's solo work or the Knitters albums. There's also some great audience interaction between the songs, capturing Exene and John's rare ability to make an entire audience feel like they're cherished guests at a drunken, dysfunctional family gathering. (originally published Ampcamp 2000)

The Lost Art of Japanese Loungecore

In the mid 1970s the future bassist for the Yellow Magic Orchestra, Harumi Hosono, was a minor star as a lounge revivalist, a Japanese version of Leon Redbone perhaps, creating a great post-modern frisson by doing Japanified versions of American orient-inspired exotica like "Hong Kong Blues" and "Salt Peanuts." Hilarious stuff! And also great, why can't Japanese impersonate Americans impersonating Japanese? They have great organ and about eight marimba and xylophone players. And Hosono's voice is as rich and lovely as Redbone's even on the worst of days. At times as on the heavenly "Exotic Lullabye" he provokes hilarity through "Americanese" ranting.

Bardo Pond and synaptical misfires at Louise Point

Bardo Pond is the best and only ones who do what they do - which is create panic attack at the club music... the drugs kick in and everything gets slow and weird and you're surrounded by weird beautiful loving people, but the guitar-=-slowed to an alien crawl by your push into timelessness--slowness, blanking - wha? The guitars of the Gibbons brothers cut in and out of tempo, the way a brain stuttering its dehydration S.O.S. might cut in out of your aural perception. Is not hearing just illusions of coherence the way the eye fills in blind spots and the memory remembers what it wants and buries the rest under thick layers of carpet and yet can still hear the hideous beating of its miserable twin? This is music for when you're in love with someone and its like a druggy sickness. You smoke cigarettes to fill that void the way a kid tosses a rock in the ocean. But love makes that cigarette a surfboard. Bardo Pond find you on the floor in the corner of the Knitting Factory and reach down with one jangly hand to pull you off your wave like a lifeguard in reverse. Blacking in and out of consciousness downstairs at the dance shouldn't be so easily condemned as a bad thing. In the end they're all just experiences. As Isobel Sollenberger puts it in "Sunrise" (off of Dialate): "Watching it happen / watching /
it / happen
And then this chunky distorted fuzz guitar so tasty you can feel it in your saliva comes spiraling out of the yellow distance and when Isobel suddenly starts singing again "When words to breath / and silence reigns golden / the sky is falling / ... watching it happen."

The bass and drums just keep kicking over the same can and almost catching themselves from falling into the basement foyeur of the nearby apartment house. It's music to swoon too, and while Isobel and the brothers swoon these guys keep grabbing your arms right before your head smacks the concrete.

Rock and roll is ultimately, the devil's music, and its appalling when acts like U2 and Green Day profess to have ins with punk and the devil crowd. People like that don't even KNOW what they're missing when they just say no all the time. How could they? It's a war of realities, and between where they sit, you look like squares. Uh here comes a rant, and one more thing, let's talk about peace and Buddhism and shhit and who the real posers are now, it's the new generation of hippie gurus, beware the carpetbaggers that would be the mouthpiece to "your generation" every time you make a collective swing towards the light.

Beware the prophesizing and brazen attempts to be cool and religious at the same time. Be a leader of yourself and you no longer need to put yourself in a superior position to others. When the object is humility, this is even more important, which is why a book title like HARDCORE ZEN smacks of "More Humble than thou" histrionics. A true Buddhist hardcore path would be to make your book as intentionally mauve and tacky as possible "Love Affirmations for Mom" or something like that. What about writing something about how to understand and embrace the hobbies of one's unenlightened parents, such as golfing, drinking, going to church, sewing, and television watching? Warner's book should be called "If I'm enlightened why can't I finally can't let go of wanting to be a badass" That would be hardcore if for no other reason than all the hardcore kids are afraid to do it. I know I am.

Even in being "open" there's pitfalls, so don't think I blame the coming wave of plastic fantastic shamen. Emotional openness and a posture of universal love and acceptance of all things as inherently good, but judging not by any pair of opposites or dualities, this stance is the most fearsome of all. Kids will jump off cliffs or empty out their wrists just to avoid being loved. The tattoos and piercings and fight clubs are just extreme forms of distraction from the whirling hole of raw forgiveness that is the full you, the you who blows parent's minds with your raw positive acceptance and creates room for dialogue so heartfelt it would make Hallmark Cards writers sick in the hallway. Hardcore kids can't even make eye contact half the time, let alone say I love you with eyes moist like black velvet puppy dog eyes. Plus, the minute you're noticing other people not living with their whirling raw hole open as wide as yours, then man you may as well admit it: it's closed again. Mine's closed again. Can you tell? My book would be "It Closed Again, but I can still get off to BArDo PoNd.

#1 Greatest Rock Moment: Joe Cocker, "With a Little Help From My Friends," at Woodstock 1969

"All we gotta do is love now," he starts croaking, the bass starts sliding away then comes back with a spine-tingling acceleration, every cycling piano thirds, pounding drums, Cocker just roaring along like a big Welsh punter on his first acid trip. The charge of "getting together with all my friends" was huge at Woodstock. The recording levels are amazing, and that's part of why Woodstock is so remembered, it's a glimmer into a time when being on acid and being a moron weren't one and the same. Alcohol-free super competence reins. These are the kids who already knew stuff before they dropped their first hits. They already knew guitar, or sound mixing, or bass frets, and then the acid came and blew them to the next level, and beyond, wafting them to the pinnacle of their crafts the way a wind might blow leaves up the steps. I forgot that myself, when I was in a band. As Coppola sez to Dennnis: you learn the words first and then forget them... in fact I forgot the cords to the songs, where I was, all that jazz.

Whoa, flashback just thinking that. In fact I get one everytime I see or hear Cocker's amazing anthemic freak-out. To me it's like watching Jesus appear, the perfect blend of high, help and friends is all surging through his soul. One can't imagine a better moment in a rock singer's life - a big crazy stage, fans into infinity, the dawning of the age of aquarius; everything was going to be okay. There was no longer any doubt of it in anyone's mind. We, the freaks, had won. Cocker comes on with a little glass of beer or water or something, a little drunk, tripping, mystical, massive beautiful side burns, a colorful t-shirt completely soaked through with rain and sweat, hair wet. He howls like a deep banshee and all it's in the name of love, an electric feedback squall of pure transformative selfless but sexual, fratenral, familial, audiencial and balls out rock. Look at the picture up there, with his tie-dye exploding outwards like he just took a love bullet in the ribs, his wild English face is the mirror to the explosion on the shirt, from the depths of his diaphragm and soul, all 8 chakras blazing, out through the diaphragm to Woodstock, to and through the people, the past, the future, and to and through the endless masks of God.

The performance would be nothing without the Beatles original though, from the influential Sgt. Pepper's. Ringo's pleasant modesty in answering the spiritual questions: "Yes. I'm certain it happens all the time," it was all too much genuine open-hearted non-gender specific communal love for the unprepared ego to handle. Sgt. Pepper's lit the minds of anyone who heard it on fire, you didn't even have to lick the buttons on their tacky uniforms to get way high, it was in the wind, a wind which had fanned a big flame that was now a raging Woodstock bonfire sea. The words are like Poe's (and Zizek's) Purloined Letter finally and inevitably arriving at its full expression. Just one simple message in that letter: Love Everyone, Right Now. It's okay. We all love you. That was all we needed, and in that one moment, Cocker was its undeniable messenger, and his message was heard and embraced by all. *

Everyone, man, they spend so much time worrying about who loves them and if they are loved. Dig, it only works the other way around man. That's what the Professor was trying to tell Dorothy. Note in that final scene how ole Wizard turns the meaning to suit the status quo's banking agenda: "It's not how much you love, but how much you are loved by others." In other words, "don't look behind the curtain! keep doing what you're doing, coveting and over-spending, harvest more love, harvest it like grain, like blood from the Tom Cruise-splattered lawn.

Whoa, get back on track, man! Before that big 1980s sell-out there was one more echo of this great performance, John Belushi's hilarious, dead-on impersonation on the then-cool Saturday Night Live. Obviously loving and heartfelt, Belushi could clown it to the top with air guitar and staggering and still honor the greatness of Cocker's moment in time, a moment we all can still feel in our blood every time we watch it, especially loud. -

And there you have it, the decline.. into the raging rock manhood of today, the little boy losts with their therapy and their prescriptions. From the empathic outward feel good angelic possession of Joe Cocker at that one particular moment in time, to the narcissistic nightmare miasma of today, with Cruise our fetishistic icon, soon to be dipped in the volcano like a wick, and Bono still prancing around going "Take me instead, I'm ever-so mythic!"

Om Dada! The natives are unusually jobless tonight, my dear. Prepare the evacuation vehicles and toss the Christians to the wolves like Jesus paid us to. The only law is the Golden Rule, all is is phony and empty as late night Cinemax.

Joni Mitchell's "He Comes For Conversation" (From Ladies of the Canyon)

This song, from Ladies of the Canyon (1970) is a song about a love triangle, of which Joni is the unloved part. It discusses "he" who comes to her little Laurel Canyon kitchen to undoubtedly sponge coffee, wine and snacks off her--lady that she is, perhaps tea--while bitching about his girlfriend ("Why can't I leave her?")

He comes for conversation
I comfort him sometimes

Patiently she relates to us, the listener/s, what he says about his girlfriend-- the one Joni hopes to replace:

She speaks in sorry sentences
miraculous repentences
I don't believe her.

Mitchell's delivery of the last line is kurt, almost an aside.
It's a powerful song, she is a genius, I tremble to think of it. I used to listen to Ladies of the Canyon and Blue all the time while driving around Seattle, all lonesome and addled and lovestruck for whomever I wasn't dating at the time. I loved a girl named Flora (not her real name), she had long blonde hair like Joni, and on a big billboard along my courier route in downtown Seattle there was a Virginia Slims ad, the same girl, the Alice in Wonderland girl but is she chasing me or am I chasing her? Am I the Mad Hatter like I hope or just a thugged-out caterpillar? It was never a sex sort of love,but more chivalrous and ancient. The muse is seldom the same as the lover; the muse should always be far away, on the other coast. Flora was back east, still in school. I could let my heart melt in gushing Lancelot-esque tears for my queen back on the other shore with old King Arthur, my old guitarist. Ah the vaniglorious associative-depressive miracle of youth.


So I would listen to Joni while driving and thinking of Flora, and suddenly the tears would start. "All I really really want or love to do / is to bring out the best in me too," she sings the very first song. "I want to shampoo you / I want to renew you again and again." I wanted her to do that, the sunshine was her shampoo as it flooded through my windshield on my route.

1977, my mom was working in a runaway shelter, and brought home for Xmas weekend one of the runaways, Toots was her name, because "everybody calls me Toots." She was Joni Mitchell in mood, and Venus-like in pristine 16-year old beauty, and denim. Nothing much happened between us. It didn't need to. I remember my mom gave her two packs Marlboros wrapped up for Xmas, and it took me like five minutes to croak "Hey Toots, do you want to do Doodle Art?" All this came rushing back to me with joni's witty but genuinely heartfelt declaration of wanting to shampoo me. The tears came flooding out, I almost couldn't believe it. I hadn't cried for years, and even then only in violent spasms. This was genuine emotional release. It was a private discovery, reminding me instantly of other sorts of releases. It got me really high and relaxed, crying did, and I became a junky for it. Now I know it's called "depression!" In my case, alcohol-related, bro. Pills took care of that, and then other pills took care of those pills.

And that brings me as well to "He Comes for Conversation" and our place as the listener in the little love qudrangle we share with Joni. That's the zinger of course: he comes to her to talk about his abusive girlfriend, completely oblivious to her affection for him and that is just what she's doing to us with the song. The confessing to us of her attraction for another implicates us in this schemata of confession. That's fancy talk, but what it means in simple terms is... she's punking us out.

If anyone ever does a rap version of "He Comes for Conversation" I hope they will bear this in mind. Joni never mentions any particular reltaionship she has with the intended listener of her song; and as we know, even the most private diary is really a letter, but to whom? For me it's always a girl like Joni, my beautiful Other, and yet while it is a letter of longing and needing it is not a case of actually "wanting." When the beloved is alone in the room with you, the love snuffs out, it is only when they are far away that love burns Joni-size.