MySpace Song Number Six: How Do We Feel What’s Real?
Current mood: amused

MySpace now allows six songs to be uploaded.  I have no idea exactly when this change happened, but my friend Lina brought it to my attention this weekend.  Since Lina has a better knowledge of my songs than most, I asked her to pick one of my songs to add.  I was expecting another pick from my new Home CD, especially since it just got a great review in The Big Takeover 61 (plug, plug).  Instead, "I'm sort of torn between the tried and true Mustang Car or even Insomnia," she replied, "although I've also had the thought of you putting up "How Do You Feel What's Real?"

"How Do We Feel What's Real?" it is!  Thanks, Lina.

Some history: I originally wrote this song in 1986 while on tour with The Long Ryders.  We actually played and demoed a Long Ryders version of it. For you trainspotters, I submitted five songs for Two Fisted Tales: How Do We Feel What's Real, The Upper Hand, Sad Sad Songs, 17 Ways, and A Stitch in Time.  The latter made it to the album and 17 Ways was recorded but kept off the record and CD.  The Long Ryders demo of 17 Ways was released on Anthology on Polygram, now out of print.  The remaining two songs I recut and released on my Points Revisited CD.  But no recording of How Do We Feel What's Real has been released legitimately on anything, ever. 

For the record: I did NOT leave The Long Ryders because I didn't get enough songs on the albums, contrary to what some band histories infer.  Funny how those rumors get started.

Anyway, road stories and in-jokes galore reside within this song.  The opening lines refer to the Stockholm police pounding on our road manager's door in the morning after a particularly wild night.  Although this song was written during the Reagan era, some lines certainly ring true with our current president.  Even the departure of Alex MacNicol from Green on Red is referenced in the "the big dog's left his home."

This version of How Do We Feel What's Real was recorded, along with a few other not yet released songs, sometime last year shortly after I finished Home. 

I figure that MySpace Song Number Six should change fairly frequently, so you can now consider it request night on the bandstand.  What would you like to hear?

Currently listening : Raw Power By Iggy & the Stooges Release date: 22 April, 1997

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First Solo Gig: The Troubadour, West Hollywood, December 8, 1980
Current mood: thoughtful
Category: Music

My old band Magi was history by late 1980. Two of the guys had already moved back to Indiana.  They were soon using the Magi name to play more gigs.  I didn't mind.  We gave up our condo in Silver Lake, and I moved to Santa Monica.  I lived alone in a rather intense, creepy garage on 9th Street converted to a so-called "beach house."  It was nine blocks from the Pacific Ocean and rent was $195/month.  There were fist holes in the wall of the living room, and two dilapidated beds nearly filled the only other room in the house.  The bathroom and shower were in a separate building.  My first neighbors were a quiet and odd young man and woman who told me they were brother and sister.  However, passionate sounds coming through the thin wall at night were not the type usually heard from siblings.

I had no TV. I did have my records and stereo, my Martin D-18 acoustic guitar, and a small cassette recorder.  That was when I started seriously, nearly obsessively writing songs.  A Tower Records co-worker, Alan Seymour, was a songwriter and in a band called The Adaptors.  He liked my songs, encouraged me and planted the "write one every day" concept in my head.  I was far from one-a-day prolific, but I was often finishing one or two songs each week.  Most were not great by any stretch, but it was part of the reinvention process into which I was forced after Magi's breakup and the lack of another band.  This reinvention was not without its immediate rewards.

The creepy vibes of the Santa Monica house, combined with the dominance of L.A. punk, influenced my music, but in an opposite fashion.  Rather than surrendering and writing creepy punk songs, I would instead write simple, innocent, straightforward pop songs. I fashioned them like weapons against the din.  I was listening to a lot of Byrds, Buddy Holly and Big Star.  I strived for simplicity and emotional honesty in the face of punk posturing and the ghosts of anger I heard through the holes in my living room.  I would often casually strum Buddy Holly songs on my Martin after coming home from work, as if to exorcize demons.

Another co-worker at Tower Records, Lauren Fowler, now known as Lauren Adams, was also a songwriter.  She needed a bass player for a gig she was doing at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.  I accepted, and used the opportunity to observe the scene.  At the Troubadour in 1980, Monday nights were "hoot nights."  You waited outside the club until it opened, and then signed up to play onstage for fifteen minutes.  If someone liked you, you got a slot to play at another hoot night.

One Monday evening, I drove my soon-to-be-dead 1968 White Rambler to the Troubadour.  I waited in the doorway, signed up, and played my first solo show ever.  My solo fifteen minutes onstage went over well, and I was hired to do another show.

I noticed an unusual vibe in the crowd that night.  Although I'd certainly heard of the place, I'd only been to the Troubadour once, when Alan Seymour took me to see his friends The Bangs play. The vibe tonight was different, and I sensed that it was not just because it was Hoot Night.  The crowd was attentive and polite, smiled at times, but looked drained and even a little sad.  The next act mentioned something about their "favorite rocker" who died that night.

It was December 8, 1980.

I left the Troubadour shortly after my set, still none the wiser. Before I drove home, I decided to stop at Tower Records to hang a bit.  On the way, the AM radio station was playing Beatles songs non-stop. 

After the second song, the word came.  John Lennon had been shot dead in New York City.

Tower Records was already in full pandemonium when I arrived.  Lennon's records had flown from the shelves within minutes.  Bootleg souvenir hawkers were already beginning to arrive in the parking lot outside.  Inside and outside of the store, people were weeping.  Every major media organization sent crews that were literally running in the door.  They mercilessly badgered anyone showing any emotion, and their cameras zoomed in like vultures on the teary-eyed mourners.  I instinctively went into Tower employee mode, despite being off the clock.  The Tower phones were ringing non-stop ("Is he REALLY dead?"), customers kept pouring in, and my friends on the late shift needed help which I gladly gave, as did the masses that were streaming into Tower.  Those masses wanted answers, hope, and resolution.  They could get none of the above.

Christmastime was far from the same that year.

In hindsight, it was very strange for me to have played the Troubadour on that night.  Lennon fans know it as the place where he and Harry Nilsson consumed too many Brandy Alexanders, and Lennon came out of the bathroom with a Kotex on his forehead. (He: "Don't You Know Who I Am?" Waitress: "You're Some Asshole with a Kotex Stuck to His Forehead.")

At Tower, I found my friend Elaine, the woman I would marry three years and three weeks from that night, and we hugged for a long time.  I can still remember that hug.  It was healing.

I was 24 years old.  Once again, our world had changed, and not for the better.

Currently listening : Imagine By John Lennon Release date: 11 April, 2000

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Slayed?
Current mood: happy
Category: Music

The Columbia Hotel quickly became a second home to us.  We almost always stayed there while in London, and we grew quite fond of the place.  Sometimes the Columbia was full and we'd have to endure the dark and dingy Averard Hotel instead, but, even then, we'd make the short trek to the Columbia bar, sneaking in to see friends who would invariably be there.  The desk clerks all knew us well, and Francesco at the bar always treated us kindly, with quiet dignity.  He sometimes opened the bar when we came in late en masse, even though he was not supposed to do so.

Frequent guests at the Columbia in late 1985 included Dave Hill and Noddy Holder from Slade.  Slade was the toast of the UK in the early 70s, when loud guitar bands in silly haircuts banging 200-second pop songs ruled.  Slade may have been a hit machine in the UK in their day, but they never broke as big in the U.S.  I'd became a lifelong fan from the Friday night I saw them play Cum on Feel the Noize on Don Kirshner's Rock Concert TV show in the early 70s.  I'd also seen them live a few times, including a South Bend Indiana gig in 1973 where, strangely, King Crimson opened for them.  This pairing no doubt embarrassed not only Robert Fripp, but Slade themselves, who were huge admirers of King Crimson. That night, as Fripp spoke to the boogie-hungry crowd, he was interrupted by someone in the audience pathetically yelling, "ROCK AND ROLL!"  Robert calmly suggested that if someone wished to hear some rock and roll, they "should purchase a transistor radio and tape it to their ear."  Dave Hill remembered that incident as I told it with a grin and wide eyes.

Dave Hill and I became friends over many pints at the Columbia bar.  Dave was the Slade guitarist with the bowl-cut hair and big smile.  He was outspoken and friendly. I could ask him anything without seeing him flinch.  Besides talking the usual guitars, amps and tour trivialities, we discussed parenthood.  My son James was on the way that February. Since Dave was already a veteran dad, we also talked in depth about the art of fatherhood.

Noddy Holder was always the character onstage and on camera, but quite a few times when I saw him at the Columbia, he was worse for wear and barely able to speak, possibly due to the number of pints he consumed.  Although I recall him at my table at the Columbia bar more than once, soaking up the suds with Dave and myself, I don't recall him saying much.

One evening I was sitting at a table in the bar, having a pint of lager and reading Hammer of the Gods, a Led Zeppelin biography.  I was at the part where Noddy Holder is mentioned, and as if on cue, Noddy walked past me and nodded hello.  I without warning (and rather rudely, in hindsight) burst out due to my misreading: "Hey Noddy, what's this about you almost joining Zeppelin?"  He paused, then looked down at the floor for a very long few seconds, shook his head, then continued walking without saying a word.  I immediately regretted my outburst, but it was too late to retract my words.

After a little Q&A from Sid ("WHO do you want to give this single to?"), I presented Dave with his own copy of our new single, Looking for Lewis & Clark.  He seemed pleased and curious.  Next time I saw him, he immediately blurted out, "I heard your new single -- it's GOOOD!" His eyes bulged with enthusiasm.  I felt it a great honor.  Later Noddy reviewed the same single favorably on BBC radio on a review panel that included Roger Daltrey and Phil Collins.  Daltrey and Noddy loved it, but Phil remained on the fence discussing it with a condescending tone. I was instantly glad I never had to suffer through a meeting with ol' Phil.

Silently, Dave Hill was sensitive about Slade's failure over a decade before to duplicate in the United States their amazing success in the UK and Europe.  I felt the frustration in his voice when the subject turned to touring in the US.  After 17 hits in the UK including six number ones, they instead struggled and felt cursed across the Atlantic.  As for the reaction of my friends to Slade back then, I recall that some actually hated them on Don Kirshner, the same way they hated The Ramones a few years later on the same show.

Among the many times I saw Slade in concert, I attended a triple bill at the Masonic Temple in Detroit in the summer of 1974 with 10cc, Robin Trower and Slade.  10cc got only polite applause, but the crowd enthusiastically ate up every Hendrix-borrowed riff from Mr. Trower.  Slade headlined and provoked mixed reactions.  A large contingent in the crowd rushed the stage and joined in enthusiastically with Noddy's every call-and-response and danced joyously in the aisles.  So much so that the police began to hassle those in front.  I had brought my trusty tape recorder to this show only to have it confiscated at the entrance and held until the concert was over.  At the same time the fans were having a blast up front, others rose angrily from their seats, flipping off Slade and yelling "you suck!"  Was this the future Kiss Alive crowd?

The mixed reaction puzzled me, especially coming from a Detroit audience.  I can only imagine what Slade discussed after the show in their dressing room and hotel.  By 1985 Slade may have felt down due to the strange turn of past events, but they were far from out. They'd found new life to their careers via MTV, which provided their biggest hits in America, over a decade after England was putty in their hands. And Slade was recording once again, which prompted their stay at the Columbia.

As for The Long Ryders, our second successful 1985 tour of the UK and Europe was about to segue into Christmas 1985 back home with my family in Ventura, CA. Another baby was due for us in February, and the biggest U.S. tour of our careers was to commence in March.  On the heels of a top 40 hit in the UK with Looking for Lewis & Clark, The Long Ryders seemed set to take the same success back to America in 1986.  We were inspired, confident, and I was on top of the world.

Currently reading : Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock’N’Roll’s Last Stand in Hollywood By Domenic Priore Release date: 12 July, 2007

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Elkhart
Current mood: blank
Category: Life

I wrote this a few years back, and it still feels relevant.  Hope you enjoy.

i need no flag to claim it
my love she sleeps tonight
and I finally realized this is my home . . .

Elkhart, Indiana stands almost exactly one-hundred miles east of Chicago.  Interstate 80-90 runs through the northern part that borders Michigan. The land stolen from the Potawatamis and Miamis became a mecca for band instruments, Alka Seltzer, and more recently, recreational vehicles. It is still an industrial heaven and abhorrent to original thought. Conservative in politics and religion, it nonetheless spawns lots of misfits that break free and carve their own niche.

I've been reading Kenneth Rexroth's autobiography. Another lost Elkhart-bred boy. His tales of hanging with his Native American friend and observations of the land and feel make me sad that those times are gone.

So-called progress has long since changed the landscape almost completely, attracting an urban feel to a once quiet town. Profits over humanity. From all over the Americas people flood in, often penniless, to work in soulless factories, pounding profits and flushing away rights and dignity in exchange for a paycheck to survive, and for the privilege of modern consumer-culture indulgences.

I grew up there. The public school system didn't (and probably still wouldn't) know what to do with a kid who could read and write fluently at three, play guitar with abandon at seven, and immediately challenge everything. The mold was slammed down on me early, and my family, silently or not, taught me to play the game. Here they rarely educate children to broaden the mind or enrich the soul, but rather to prepare the young for proper droneship.  Sit down, shut up and assume facelessness.

I escaped once. Hollywood was at first invigorating, like a mad, happy dream. Lots of people from all over the world, many just like me,  searching for a way out of something or a way to somewhere. I found plenty, oddly too much, of what was lacking back home. Insane, fiery spirits, wild speed music, intensely beautiful women, and hope. The future was mine. Grab on and hold on tight.

Ten years later the thrill was gone. When did the end come? The band broke up. My car had been stolen twice within a year while I was recording. I found myself again doing jobs for money in places I would never be seen in otherwise.  A boss was making obscene phone calls at all hours to my house, probably in retaliation for my telling him to fuck off during one of his attempted power trips.

Some money showed up and I was gone. Back to Indiana. Home.

My parents were living in the same house I grew up in. My bed was still there. My father and I finally started talking man-to-man in brief wonderful moments. Less than two years later I watched him reduced from strength to defeat to a sneaking cancer that finally killed him. He passed on May 31st, the same day his mother and father died. Six weeks later my appendix burst and I nearly died as well.

I lived.

After all this, depression set in. Life was slow. I wanted things that didn't exist. My thoughts of the past were glorified in my head. Memory easily reveals only what's comfortable. I was also reinventing myself and didn't know it.

I don't know when it was, but later, a cloud lifted. That ugly melancholy, that in hindsight I realize I craved, was leaving, and I didn't even miss it. I started to be comforted by the sight of the familiar arrangement of trees in a field near my home. The roads were also familiar and led anywhere I pointed the wheel. My family was here. It was somewhere that was mine.

Traditionally, Elkhart's history remembers those who assumed power and/or made freight trains full of cash: the businessmen, the politicians. Maybe some were indeed honorable human beings as well. The artists, poets, musicians that broke free and continue to walk the globe making noise are not talked about in their own hometown. And the silence is deliberate.

Right now, though, a light, beautiful snow is slowly falling down on the Saint Joseph River as I look out of a window of the 19th century house I lay down to sleep in every night. And that is just enough to remind me why I'm here.

Currently listening : Orphans [Fold-out Digipak with 24-page booklet] By Tom Waits Release date: 05 December, 2006

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Logrolling
Current mood: contemplative
Category: Life

I don't consider myself a superstitious man.  Break a mirror?  Clean it up carefully and buy a new one.  Draw aces and eights while playing cards?  Write a song.  Spill salt?  You know what to do. 

I am familiar with karma.  The term is often misused, but I never argue with "you reap what you sow" logic.  And sometimes, it is demonstrated in unexpected, powerful ways.

My family found itself renting a decent enough house years ago on West Franklin Street in Elkhart, IN.  Franklin Street is a winding road with lots of crazy drivers, and we lived just east of where the speed limit jumps to 50 MPH. The road then leads to South Bend (home of Sneaky Pete Kleinow, R.I.P.) and points west.

There was no on-street parking in front of our house, and our driveway was an accident waiting to happen.  You either backed into it from the street, or backed into traffic on the way out. all the while hoping that no one whipped around the curve and smashed into your car.  Traffic habitually flew around that curve.  I even got a speeding ticket there in my youth.

I soon discovered a safe way to enter.  Another driveway from a side street led behind a beauty salon and another house, then connected to my driveway.  I was overjoyed to find it, and started using it exclusively.

One summer day, I saw a rusted car parked where the back driveway connected to mine.  Inside the car was a guy in a dirty white ribbed T-shirt.  He smoked a cigarette while watching my daughter on the swingset.  I quickly confronted him.  His name was Ed.  He made a sweeping motion with one arm while he talked to me, explaining that he owned all of the properties to the west of my house, and that I must stop using his driveway immediately.  Just because.  He then drove away.

A little investigation confirmed that he was indeed the landlord of that sweep of properties.  But I figured I was doing him no harm, so I continued using that back driveway as I had before.

I was nearing my house late one night and suddenly had to hit the brakes.  Ed had laid a very big log across the driveway, obviously to block it.  I got out to move it, but it apparently weighed several hundred pounds.  That damned log blocked access to both my driveway and the beauty salon that he owned.

We heard sirens nearby about a month or two later.  Jumping to the window to catch what was happening, I saw the flicker of orange flames through the window of the beauty salon, and smoke starting to rise from the building.  Someone had left a clothes dryer running inside.  The lint in the dryer had ignited, and the fire spread from there.  The salon was closed, so no one was hurt.

I saw the flashing lights and the firemen out of their trucks.  But instead of readying their hoses to put out the fire, they were all frantically trying to move that damned log so they could get the fire trucks in.  This took several minutes, as the fire continued to burn.

Ed never did move that log back, and I don't remember ever seeing him after that night.

Currently watching : The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter - Criterion Collection Release date: 14 November, 2000

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Electrocution
Current mood: creative

"At least you didn't die in Italy" - Juno, the case worker in the movie Beetlejuice.

"I don't want to play electric guitar. I might get electrocuted." - my son, age 6.

Florence, Italy, December 1985: Another stop on The Long Ryders second European tour. We'd been on the road since October, traveled thousands of miles, slept little, and were nearly delirious.  Greg came onstage with the words "Eat Me" written on his forehead.  Since I was the designated setlist creator, I used the loopy vibe to completely skew our set for the evening.  Out went several of the songs we usually played, and in went Danny & Dusty covers and other unusual songs. Some local guy, drunk in his black leather jacket and doing his best Jim Morrison jumped onstage as we started playing Gloria, and had his sloppy 200 seconds of fame.

Italy was beautiful beyond words, and always very kind to us.  The food was an art form.  Driving through Italian countrysides revealed small towns with winding paths and centuries-old small shops and restaurants. The men and women aged beautifully, with grace and style. The fans at the gigs were warm and passionate, although sometimes their passion went to an extreme.  Once we were recognized, some fans would not leave us alone, no matter what we were doing.  One price of fame, I thought.  At the Italian concert halls, the promoters would set up in front of the stage what resembled a reversed baseball backstop with wire mesh.  It was their attempt to keep fans off the stage. The first time I saw this backstop, I figured that it was pure over-reaction.  We'd seen some wild crowds in the UK and elsewhere, but never was wire mesh needed to separate our fans from us.  I always loved shaking hands with the crowd and getting warm hugs from exuberant female fans.  But our first gig in Italy demonstrated why those backstops were needed.  The crowd pushed violently forward all night, and there were fans in front with their faces pressed against the wire mesh as we played.  Watching them, I imagined them examining the waffle-like imprints on their faces in their bathroom mirrors the morning after.  Further back in the crowd, I caught glimpses of smiling fans jumping up and down, holding their tape recorders overhead. They'd tape our set, then try to interview us on the remaining tape after the show.  We didn't mind.  It was flattery.

We saw other unusual things at gigs in Italy.  One of our first there was at the Communist headquarters in, I think, Rimini (road haze sets in).  The building included a radio station and concert hall. "The fascists hate rock and roll," it was explained to us, and they showed us the bullet holes in their building from frequent fascisto drive-bys.

Tonight in Florence, the weirdness continued.  Upon our arrival at the hall, I noticed that our amps were set up on a pure metal stage.

Playing an electric guitar in the old garage days meant you got shocked. A lot. If your amp's polarity (the direction of AC, alternating current) was different from the polarity of the PA that your mike was plugged into, a jolt would be felt when you touched the microphone and the strings of your guitar at the same time. I never liked getting shocked, although I think some of my fellow band members did.  One guy even volunteered to test the strength of 9V batteries with his tongue.

This also brings to mind when, as a school kid in about 1973, I saw a band called Uriah Heep at Notre Dame University.  Their bassist Gary Thain had been badly shocked days earlier in Dallas under similar circumstances: an electrified microphone.  During their show, I'll never forget seeing Gary suddenly fall backward into a wall of Marshall amplifier stacks, which came tumbling down on him like building blocks.  Not long after I witnessed this, he died.

Meanwhile, back the Florence soundcheck, our excellent British crew were setting everything up for our show. Three months on the road had not dulled their ability to get everything right. This type of expert care was a form of heaven for weary traveling musicians. I tuned my bass and plugged it into my amplifier as usual, then cautiously stepped across the metal stage to the microphone. To test for shock potential, I had a trick that drove sound crews nuts. I held the back of the wooden bass neck and slowly brought the metal bass strings to my microphone without touching the mic with my hands. Damn good thing I did this. An ugly orange curve of electricity went from microphone to string, Bride of Frankenstein-style. For the rest of the night I could still see the temporary burn superimposed on my retinas, like a flashbulb from hell.

It seems that the town factory had shut down for the night, and about 700 volts of electricity was going through our amps and PA.

Rather than canceling the show, our road crew, deep into their show-must-go-on work ethic, ran a long cable from the PA to outside the hall, and literally buried the cable into the ground.  This "grounded" the PA (or "earthed" as my Brit friends would say) to prevent those stage shocks.  I later found out that our local promoters grabbed a guy representing the venue, and under fear of violent death (this was Italy, and those promoters did not mess around), they made the venue guy stand guard over that buried cable during the entire gig.  Our show went on, the crowd loved it, tapes were made, autographs were signed, and back into the van we went.  Yet another London show was coming soon with a live recording planned, and then home to L.A. for the holidays.  I couldn't wait to see my baby daughter Sarah and my amazing, beautiful wife Elaine, who was now seven months pregnant.

Currently listening : One Night in America By The Plimsouls Release date: 09 August, 2005

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The Alarm/Long Ryders Tour 1986
Current mood: drained

The Long Ryders were in the midst of their lengthy Fall 1985 tour of the UK and Europe.  We were supporting our new State of Our Union LP and hit single Looking for Lewis and Clark, playing live on BBC-TV's Whistle Test with Andy Kershaw, when the word came.  We were asked to go on tour with The Alarm in the new year, playing dates at U.S. colleges during spring break. Those Alarm guys were already our pub pals, and plenty of pints and laughs were had at the Hotel Columbia bar with Mike, Eddie, Dave and Twist when The Long Ryders were calling London our second home.

Although the 1986 Alarm-Long Ryders tour mainly centered around colleges in New England, it was slated to begin in Stockton, CA on April 9. Upon our arrival in at the venue in Stockton, we noticed that our backstage door was adorned with a sign that the Alarm guys had scribbled and posted to welcome us: "Finally, a GREAT opening band!" We were backstage later that evening when, unexpectedly, the entire show was suddenly canceled. Mike Peters was very ill. Immediately I flashed fearfully on the UCLA show looming in three days.  It was to be a major event, complete with an MTV live broadcast.  We wondered if Mike would recover in time.

Fears were dashed when we did our first successful show of the tour at The Fillmore in San Francisco a mere two days later. Mike's earlier illness was not evident at this show. I recall the Fillmore's Gestapo-like ushers and Alarm fans in the crowd with simpatico hairspray. Immediately after the gig, we began the six hour haul down I-5 to our homes in L.A.

Sleep came and went, and Saturday, April 12, 1986 dawned. My parents were in Los Angeles from Elkhart, Indiana to see the concert, our family, and especially their new grandson.  During the concert they got the VIP treatment, watching their son play in front of 12,000 people on TV while enjoying the amenities of an on-site hospitality room, My father couldn't stop talking to his friends about what he experienced that day, his friends later told me. 

Stage lighting in indoor venues usually prevents the performer from gauging the size of the crowd beyond the first few rows. At UCLA in broad daylight, the 12,000-strong masses were in plain, awesome view. It was dizzying, by far our largest crowd to date. MTV did not broadcast The Long Ryders' set, and it was clearly The Alarm's day to shine. For us, the hometown opening act, the crowd did show respect and some enthusiasm. For The Alarm, they went absolutely bonkers.

The rest of the tour was great fun. Greg Sowders and I were the party hounds in The Long Ryders at that time, with Stephen and Sid being the reserved ones. The Alarm had a similar two-for-two split with Dave and Twist the party guys. Dave, Twist, Greg and myself often embarked on some wild adventures throughout the tour.

The Long Ryders already had two 1984 U.S. club tours under our belts, but we spend 1985 almost exclusively on tour in the UK and Europe. The Alarm tour allowed us to resume playing the States, this time in larger halls.  My favorites were to mid-size Palace-era theaters like the Orpheum in Boston, the Beacon in NYC, and the Tower in Philadelphia.  Besides playing for more people at once, playing bigger venues gave us a feeling that we were at last starting to get real traction in the United States.

The Alarm's kindness was constant. They let us ride in their tour bus during a particularly long haul from Corpus Christi to San Francisco. Their crew (no doubt helped by our bribes of fifths of whiskey and cartons of cigarettes, added to our rider for this purpose) gave us full lights and sound. This was fairly unheard of in a world where jaded, grizzled headliners often do their worst to sabotage wide-eyed opening acts. Instead, The Alarm were then a youthful, high-energy, hard-working band riding high on the charts and loving every minute of it with quiet intensity, all the while keeping to an all-must-share philosophy with their opening acts.

During the last show of the tour, at Irvine Meadows near L.A., we had an on-stage shaving cream battle, and joined them during their encore to play a Maggie Mae/Stand Down Margaret medley. My sister-in-law was caught up in the vibe (and a few drinks) and begged me to introduce her to Mike Peters, which I did.  Ah, starstruck kids.

Ending the tour was nearly tearful. We said our goodbyes.  As we promised, we did see each other again soon, on their side of the pond.

Mike, Dave, Eddie and Twist: wherever you are now, a million thanks for the respect, the fun, and... everything.  Your kindness will never be forgotten.

3:22 PM - 6 Comments - 8 Kudos - Add Comment

My ride with Danny & Dusty
Category: Music

A few months ago, Steve Wynn had posted on his blog the possibility that he and Dan Stuart writing songs together.
 
It has happened. Danny & Dusty ride again.  But without me, and two of the other original guys - Sid Griffin and Dennis Duck.
 
Yes, I played bass for the original crazed mass that was Danny & Dusty -- in 1985-1986.  There were three live shows, one LP on A&M, and a bottled fifth of memories during our brief time as the first incarnation of that band. Gather around kids, and I'll tell you my story of how I saw it all happen, way back when.
 
It was early 1985. I was smiling through the fabulous roller coaster ride that was The Long Ryders.  Our Native Sons LP was released in the Fall of 1984 on Frontier Records and was taking us to new heights.  On the strength of that record and the tremendous press response we'd received in the UK and the Continent, we were about to leave on our first tour across the pond, where many good things were waiting for The Long Ryders.
 
We'd already played shows with Green on Red while we both crisscrossed the U.S. on tour in the Spring of 1984. The camaraderie was magical.  We'd toss a coin to see who would go on first and last.  Dan and Chris would come up on stage during our set for various songs, and we'd do the same during their set.  Friendships were formed that continue to this day.
 
I think I first met Steve Wynn when he and Russ Tolman from True West jumped on stage during one of the first gigs I played with The Long Ryders in the Bay area, and did a frightening version of Green River.  Weeks later, Steve and I had a chance to have our first good conversation at Folk City in NYC, again the occasion was a Long Ryders gig.
 
I recently found a tape of a Steve Wynn solo show at McCabe's in August of 1984 where Dan gets up and sings a heartfelt "Bend in the Road" with Steve.  This gig seems to signal the beginning of what would become Danny & Dusty.
 
Steve Wynn's band Dream Syndicate was already signed to A&M, but was going through some serious changes with the not-so-amicable departure of Karl Precoda.  Is there ever such a thing as an amicable split?  Anyway, changes we looming.
 
In January or February of 1985, we got a call.  Danny and Steve had written a song and wanted to record it for a compilation, then titled "Little Sisters."  This LP was to be a compilation of L.A. bands doing country-tinged songs.  Later I received an early tape of proposed tracks for the LP, including songs by The Bangles (under the pseudonym Donna and Phyllis Everly), Michael Stipe/Matthew Sweet duet on "Tainted Obligations," and in the studio I heard stuff like Jeffrey Lee Pierce doing Bad Moon Rising.  The LP did come out later, under the title Don't Shoot, with far fewer tracks than I heard initially, and the songs I just mentioned left out.
 
Seven guys entered The Control Center studio in Hollywood that evening for the session that turned out to be the beginning of the first Danny & Dusty LP.  It was Sid Griffin, Stephen McCarthy and myself from The Long Ryders, Dennis Duck from Dream Syndicate and Chris Cacavas from Green on Red, along with Dan Stuart and Steve Wynn.
 
We got to work almost immediately.  We first stood around Danny, who was seated with an acoustic guitar, and he played us Bend in the Road, the song we were to record that night. The tape soon rolled and we nailed it with little effort, and unexpectedly, Steve introduced a new song called The Word is Out, which we also finished that night.
 
It then became clear that we needed to finish an album.  Those two songs were killer and the band instinctively knew their way around the mood and material.  We had rehearsals, but not many.  It was all happening fast.  It was from listening to a rehearsal tape that I realized how good the material really was.
 
We recorded the rest of the LP on a Saturday and Sunday, again at Control Center.  At one point Danny wanted to play Phil Spector and sit in the control booth and listen while we churned out instrumental tracks, but it soon became obvious that his spirit was needed in the studio.  Whenever he was there singing, twirling, and antagonizing Steve Wynn, the band was at its wildest and best as a result.
 
There were modifications to the original LP.  It was decided by someone (Wynn?) that Bend in the Road should be left off, so that the Little Sisters LP would have an exclusive track.  Also gone was the brief, impromptu version of Green on Red's Gas Food Lodging that once was sequenced between Miracle Mile and Baby We All Gotta Go Down.  The Little Sisters LP, after going through a series of changes, came out years later as Don't Shoot, with Bend in the Road intact.
 
Danny and Dusty had no label deal before we started recording, but Steve assured us that his label, Down There, would release it if no other came forward.  Both The Long Ryders and Green on Red were on independent labels and not bound to exclusive label restrictions, but Dream Syndicate was at that time signed to A&M Records.  As a result, Steve had to give submit the LP to A&M, and submitted the finished LP to them.
 
Someone from A&M loved it, and they picked it up.
 
Despite rave reviews, sales of the LP were not spectacular.  Radio in 1985 was much more geared toward Madonna and Tears for Fears rather than a rootsy, rollicking band whose lyrics reflected the damaged underbelly of modern American culture.  A&M never knew what to do with us, so they did next to nothing.  Across the Atlantic, reaction was much more friendly.  Tour offers were made but never happened.  We played our last gig at the Music Machine on February 1st, 1986.  Danny & Dusty never officially broke up, but we were all bound to our individual projects, and eventually we all were scattered to different parts of the globe.  Ten years ago, Sid tried to launch a Danny & Dusty reunion in London, with all of us but Danny agreeing.  Danny was retired from showbiz at the time, for personal reasons.
 
I'll let you in on a little secret: Sid and I have been working on a Danny & Dusty - The Lost Weekend CD, slated for release on Universal UK, with two extra tracks: the deleted Gas Food Lodging mentioned above, and a live Down to the Bone from Club Lingerie in Hollywood in 1985.
 
Fast-forwarding to today, you can bet that any new collaboration between Steve Wynn and Dan Stuart will contain great songwriting, and sound as good 20 years from now as today.  Steve Wynn's last three releases (...Tick...Tick...Tick, Static Transmission and Here Come the Miracles) have been superb, and required listening and ownership by those of us who care.  Dan surprised everyone by emerging last year with a reformed, original-lineup version of Green on Red, who played many beautifully honest and devastating gigs this summer.
 
Here's what I wrote to Dan and Steve last week. Obviously, this was before I knew that Chris was joining the fold as well.
 
Dan,
 
My thoughts of the prospect of you and Wynn writing new material together trump any narcissistic feelings that I may have over me not being a part of it.
 
I know that every note that I improvise, every lyric or chord change that I write, is strongly influenced by every band or musician with whom I've ever played music.  It's inescapable.  That extends to the dodgy bands that I've slaved alongside here in Indiana just to keep my stage chops sharp, and into the truly great bands I've lucked into.  Danny & Dusty was one of those truly great bands, one of those rare far-greater-than-the-sum partnerships. Best of all, the material was strong enough to fuel the band into giving beyond their best, and inspire on a lasting level.  I know that the lasting effect for me being a part of Danny & Dusty will affect me in a very tangibly positive way for the rest of my life.
 
Am I disappointed?  Hell, yeah!  But getting guys spread around three continents to back two guys whose potentially fragile reunion could explode at any time under the weight of their very own idiosyncronicities could indeed be ruled a form of insanity.  Case closed.
 
I understand totally why you guys are doing what you're doing in converting to Danny & Dustyball.  The show must go on.  But, in a non-linear way, Chris, Dennis, Sid and myself will always be a part of Danny & Dusty through how it enriched all of us, even those that cannot remember as well as I do.  Again, it's inescapable.
 
Thus, the brotherhood is not broken.  It's expanding.

Tom Stevens

Danny & Dusty - The Word is Out - live at the Music Machine, West Los Angeles, CA 1986-02-01

5:35 AM - 8 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

The Garfield Ghost
Current mood: melancholy
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural

Around 1977, I lived briefly with a young woman best described as a rebounder. My psycho high school sweetie had ungraciously smashed my heart like a bottle of cheap beer against a wall. To try to heal (foolish me) for a while I took up with another on the rebound.  We had a old house near the one I grew up in, on Benham and Garfield in South Central Elkhart.  It was a beautiful two-story duplex, with lots of natural woodworking, a mail slot that led to a glass, metal and mahogany mailbox inside the house, wooden swinging doors to the kitchen, and creaky steps that led to the upstairs bedrooms.

One night we were slightly, er, imbibed and laughing, when suddenly we felt a breeze and noticed the kitchen doors swinging.  We were alone and the house was shut tight.  My girlfriend, out of the blue and in her infinite (lack of) wisdom, made a derogatory crack about a damned ghost in the house.  As if on cue, a coin that had rested on the top of the TV came spinning violently down onto the floor in front of us.

Uh-oh.

For the next few months, we'd wake to unexpected sounds, mostly of the kitchen doors swinging or the steps creaking.  Things placed on tables at night would be found on the floor in the morning.  If at night I had heard the actual sound of a burglar stealing all of our belongings, I would've just chalked it up to the sound of yet another ghosting episode and went back to sleep.

My relationship with the rebounder just wasn't working out at all.  She wanted marriage and children pretty much immediately, while I was looking to exit the sheer misery of punching a factory clock for a living.  Deep scars within me began to form from her games and deception that my wife Elaine is still helping to fully heal, bless her.

Then opportunity knocked.  Girlfriend had located her long-lost father in Florida, visited him there and loved everything about her trip.  I seized the opportunity and began coaxing her to move there.  She did not long after, and got married six weeks later, arranged by her father.  Suddenly I was free, and coincidentally started doing much more life-affirming band roadwork, and suffering few pains of withdrawal.

I returned from taking her to the airport for the last time to what was now my own home.  On the way I stopped at the store to change the brand of cigarettes I smoked.  As I laid alone in bed that night, *creak* *creak* went the stairs.  By now, this was far from being a scary experience for me.  Instead, it bordered on obnoxious.  Still, if this was a genuine ghost, and I could think of no other logical explanation, I took pity. They went to church faithfully in their living state, my young mind pondered freely, believing all the while in the promise of Heaven with its wings and harps.  Instead they found themselves in a dull purgatory of walking this old house, and out of spite or boredom doing their best to terrorize its inhabitants du jour. Too sad. So, I got up out of bed only partially clothed, came down the stairs, and began to speak to the ghost, explaining:

1) My girlfriend has moved out permanently and I'm the only one here now.
2) I apologize for any disrespect shown to you.
3) Your noises are unnecessary, they don't frighten me and must require some futile effort on your part.
4) We're both stuck here in this house for now, I'm only renting it, will be on the road with my band and thus gone a lot, and probably won't even live here for long.
5) I can't stop you from cavorting around the house, but I really wish that you'd come to rest and find some peace for both of us.

I never heard the ghost again after that, not even when I had overnight guests.  This was the house I stayed in during the Blizzard of 1978. I was returning from a 6-night gig in Rockford, IL, where every female I met there proudly claimed that they "knew" Rick Nielsen, with the same star-struck tone as those women I met during the early Long Ryders U.S. tours that proudly proclaimed that they "knew" Paul Westerberg.  I drove a woman's Vega all the way from Rockford to Elkhart, and the normal four hour drive took more like nine to ten hours.  They'd just opened I-80/90 and there were still ice craters all over the road.  I got back and marveled how the old house felt just like home.  It was warm and loving with my writings, records and guitars.  After my travel companion Vega-ed slowly back to Rockford, I worked on a new song that I was writing on a Sony 2-track reel-to-reel tape recorder that I owned since I was a kid.  I then paused to look out the window at the 12-foot drifts still covering most of the neighborhood, and pondered the ghost once more.  Did it leave the house, venturing into the unknown, or was it merely quietly observing my lifestyle without a sound?  I'll never know, but one thing struck me as ironic.

I, too, was looking for a way out.

Happy Halloween, all!

Currently listening : Creedence Clearwater Revival By Creedence Clearwater Revival Release date: 25 October, 1990

6:47 AM - 3 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Home, What Was, and the Brave New World
Current mood: artistic
Category: Music

"The CD as it is right now is dead"
EMI Music Chairman and Chief Executive Alain Levy this Friday, to an audience at the London Business School.

Home, my new release, will be available November 6 via iTunes.

But, there's more to the story...

If you live long enough and are as obsessed with music as I have been throughout my life, you will see formats change again and again.

I learned to read while playing 45s on my little red record player and staring at those labels, probably trying to put the words together with the songs I heard.

I started going to nursery school when I was four, in 1961. I found the games played by my peers boring and unnecessarily emotionally involving, so I avoided them like an incurable disease.  Instead, as my teachers complained in my permanent record, I tended to go off by myself, picking out tunes on their piano or playing records.  "He needs to work on his social skills," they insisted.

My favorite record at that school was a Bozo the Clown album.  It was a multiple set of 78rpm records in a fold-out cover, brightly illustrated, like a photo album, hence the name album.  All was well in my 78-spinning young world until one day I dropped and broke one of the 78s.  I cried and was guilt-ridden, and later talked my Dad into checking into a replacement for Bozo at Jack's Record Shop in downtown Elkhart, which was patterned after Wallach's Music City in Hollywood, with listening booths and everything at list price.

My Father returned with the news: they didn't make 78s anymore, only LPs and 45s.  I never owned a 78, so it made sense.

So was the first change noted in my young mind: 78s were dead, replaced by the 45 and the LP.

Sometime in the late 60s, cassettes emerged, and I got a Norelco cassette player for Christmas.  It was fun and portable, but nowhere near as nice and hi-fi as LPs or even 45s.  Eight-track cartridges were also popular, and I actually bought a home 8-track player which I sold later.  I did love sticking my head between the speakers and turning up the volume, and this was the first really identifiable stereo music player I'd ever possessed.

There were also 4-track cartridges, similar to 8-track cartridges, but they died a fairly quick death.

Eight-track cartridges were cool since they were the first portable media to catch on, so you could listen to something other than the radio in your car.  Dealers had trade-in programs for eight-tracks. Pirate eight-tracks meant that you could often find well-compiled tapes full of the hits of the day, before big copyright changes came in 1972.  But they were fragile, and their design flaw of unspooling the tape from the center meant that the lifespan of an eight-track cartridge was short.  They also didn't sound as good as LPs.

For those of you who read my Tower blogs, you'll know I got a job there in 1979, and there were still eight-track cartridges on the shelves, but not for long.  Only the cassette survived in the realm of tapes as the 70s drew to a close.  Vinyl still thrived, until the mid-80s, when compact discs emerged.  Suddenly, vinyl was disappearing as compact discs took over the shops.  What the hell was going on?

Overnight, prices for recorded music doubled.  CDs had a heyday when labels began to reissue long-out-of-print albums, and add bonus tracks to CDs.  Still, something was wrong, consumers knew it, and slowly people stopped buying CDs.

So, here we are.  My daughter and her friends think that iTunes is totally legit, in fact, preferred.  Why buy a CD for nearly $20 when you can download it to your iPod for $9.99?

As you know from listening to Ghost Train, Flying out of London and Belladonna, I have a new release that kept nagging at me: "When am I coming out Dad?  Don't people like me as they did my older brothers and sisters?". To stop that nagging, I've made my usual rounds to CD labels old and new, and I heard:

1) CDs are really hard to sell nowadays.

2) I'm going through a divorce, and the label had to go as part of the settlement.

3) We folded about a year ago, despite our best efforts.  It just wasn't profitable.

4) I can't see this type of music on my label. (Label goes bankrupt weeks later)

5) You want an advance??? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

6) Mastering?  Sure, I've got software that came free in a box of Wheaties.

7) (the sound of crickets)

Meanwhile, thanks to my old friend Gary Stewart, once bigwig at Rhino and current Chief Music Officer (CMO) at iTunes, I inked a swell deal with AWAL UK.  Home, my new release, will be available November 6 via iTunes.  I'll be writing more in the coming days about this release, but for now, keep watching, because it's coming soon.

Already I've fielded weird looks.  Among those that remember the bygone eras above, iTunes is simply not a substitute for a real LP/CD/8-track that you can hold in your hands, study the liners and gape at the pictures.  It's a brave new world.

Currently listening : Let It Be... Naked By The Beatles Release date: 18 November, 2003

10:19 AM - 7 Comments - 12 Kudos - Add Comment

Tower Records part three
Current mood: sad
Category: Music

Remember that TV commercial about ten years ago with Daffy Duck being turned down for a purchase because he didn't have ID?

That really happened at Tower Sunset in the late 70s.  To one of The Beatles.

Stars and record company folks would often bring purchases to the info booth to use a company charge.  Store policy had recently changed, and anyone requesting a company charge had to show ID first.

One day, up to the info booth comes Ringo Starr, a stack of records in hand, to charge them to the Capitol Records account.

"Hi, Ringo.  Can I see some ID?"

Silence.  If this was a joke, Ringo was not at all amused.  "You're kidding?"

"No, Ringo, I have to see some ID."

The sound of commotion filled the store.  I do not know exactly what Ringo said, but the words were not pretty.  He left the store, vowing, "I'll never come back here!"  He never did.  Said employee was reamed sideways by Delanoy, and was gone not long after.

A few years later, Harry Nilsson, a frequent flyer at Tower, bought a bunch of LPs for Ringo and wanted them delivered.  My friend Regina and I gladly volunteered, and made the drive to the Beverly Hills Hotel, where Ringo lived at the time.  Regina and I were major Beatles fans, so we could barely contain our excitement on the way over.

But the hotel desk clerk would not let us see Ringo, only allowing us to leave the records for him at the desk.  This was early 1981, paranoia was running high among a lot of celebrities after John Lennon's killing, and who could blame Ringo?  We left the records with the desk clerk and went back to Tower.

I never did get to meet Ringo, or any Beatle for that matter.

Meanwhile, full-tilt life went on at Tower.  For sanity's sake, I'd have to detach myself from the swirling, intoxicating chaos every once in a while, just to observe rather than being caught up in the movement of the herds of people from everywhere passing through the Tower doors with dizzying relentlessness.  They'd line up outside for our opening early in the morning, and we'd be throwing them out of the doors after midnight.  Stars mingled with street people, Broadway lovers lined up with punks.  To see it through the eyes of a cashier, Tower and the music business brought everyone together, and was an unstoppable money machine.  There was no end in sight, or so it seemed at the time.

Then trouble started in 1983.  Business suits from the outside somehow came into control of Tower and started making jarring changes. The first thing they did was to freeze our salaries.  More changes loomed, and none for the better.  It was a clampdown.  What were they thinking?  These guys were proudly out of touch with what made Tower great.  Knowing how quickly things can fall apart, I immediately started searching for a new job, as others did at the same time.  I soon found one at an import LP distributor in Santa Monica.  That business got red hot when we started selling imported compact discs.  The hype for CDs was devastating in early 1983.  None were being made in the U.S., but compact disc players were arriving with much fanfare at U.S. hi-fi dealers.  Those dealers were starving for compact discs of any type.  Having shelves of CDs to sell and a major untapped market at the waiting, I bought stacks of metro yellow pages, made cold calls and got orders for thousands of compact discs within days. Of course, that boomtime had a built-in poison pill as labels soon cracked down on such imports.  I was safely in The Long Ryders by the time that business died, and you may well know the rest of my story with The Long Ryders.

Why is Tower no more?  I've heard the long debate. The emergence of the compact disc and forced demise of the LP from music retail was the most obvious "beginning of the end" marker.  Strange coincidence that the suits at Tower had come into the picture just months before.  Compact discs were expensive from the start, and promises of cheaper CDs in the future were never fulfilled.  The labels kept quietly increasing the wholesale price of a compact disc to stores, forcing retail to take the bullet.  Also, a CD will never have the soul of a record album.  Relative to an LP, everything on CD is miniaturized and squeaky-sounding.  Forcing customers to re-buy their music in an inferior package for twice the price resulted in old-time customers not going along for the ride.  Many loyal customers never returned to their former buying habits, including me.

Slowly but inevitably, karma happened.  The next generation of music lovers emerged.  Those music lovers never knew the joys of buying cheap LPs by the dozen.  As prices went up on music CDs, prices went down on CD burners and blanks.  This little thing called high-speed Internet allowed music downloads to flourish.  Internet music downloading was going to happen with or without the record labels, and the labels showed no leadership in propelling this emerging music delivery system.  As a result of that lack of leadership, it was left to the public to perfect the system, and perfect it they did, throwing music downloads into a weird de facto public domain state.  Instead of embracing music downloads, the industry response was raising compact disc prices yet again, whining to legislators, signing even fewer new artists and offering us even less in terms of excitement, innovation or diversity in new music. Artists found it harder to survive on their label deals and were often forced into bankruptcy.  Then the record industry started suing their own customers via their pitbull, the RIAA.  Nice PR move.  The implosion of the music business has been the saddest, slowest suicide that I have ever witnessed in my years on the planet.  And the downward spiral is still in full horrifying slo-mo descent.

There are glimmers of hope today for music fans.  MySpace is one, despite of all its flaws.  You can hear new music from brilliant artists like The Last, who have not yet been able to secure a traditional record deal, but three of their new tracks are here. Steve Wynn has released three killer albums in a row, and you can hear songs from them here. How else would I hear Jenny & The Belmont Boys?  The list goes on...

As for the future of music and music distribution, I truly believe that there are huge things on the horizon that haven't emerged yet.  iTunes is a start, but that's not it, mainly because DRM is yet another way to make war on paying customers and restrct the free use of paid-for music.  Despite the hostile tactics from the old guard, there will always be ways to get our favorite tunes and support artists.  All ways are welcome, but any music distribution system that expects to survive must exist to the benefit of artists, industry and customers alike.  When all three aren't synchronized, we lose wonderful institutions like Tower Records as a result.

There are so many lessons to be learned with Tower's demise, but I'm done philosophizing.  Mostly, I'm more than a bit sad right now, and the full impact hasn't hit me yet. I do know that my world without Tower, particularly Tower Sunset, will be a lesser one.

5:16 AM - 1 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Tower Records part two
Current mood: sad

I can say that the rumors and stories you're heard about Tower Records on the Sunset Strip are all true, at least when I was there. There were indeed celebrities there: truly great stars, stars as normal people, stars as derelicts, along with everyone else, all the time.  My mother would always ask what stars had visited lately, and I could never remember half of them.  There were those who embraced modern times and those that seemed perfectly preserved from another era.  All were welcome.

There was always a buzz of excitement, creativity, struggle and success bouncing off every wall, customer and employee.  Industry and customers alike looked after us.  Record companies would send graphic artists, who would paint the latest album covers on the large boards that draped the outside of the building.  Clerks were sent by the industry to inventory their own stock.  Tower's fly-off-the-shelf factor was famous, so there was big return in making sure that one's product was well-stocked at all times. Those labels reps would also give us promos of any new LP we asked them for, along with comp and drink tickets to shows at the nearby Whiskey or Roxy, and larger venues like the L.A. Forum.

My fellow employees were a motley collection of unique characters, often refined with Hollywood precision to make their familiar-to-me Midwestern equivalents seem still-in-development.  Some would stay at Tower for years, some would disappear without a trace weeks later.  Some were losers, some were destined for far better. The amazing networking potential was fed by the diversity of co-workers and clientele.  At any moment one's life could change drastically if one could just see the door opening for that split-second.

Tower Sunset employees came from all over the world, often going on to musical, acting, film, writing careers, or just going back home.  There'd be the world-wise-but-damaged California-bred perennials, East Coast transplants, Vietnam vets, oil-rich kid good guy Kaz from Iran, and naive people from who-knows-where, all successfully escaping their nowheresville hometowns, if only for a while.  Just like me.

The diverse music played constantly, and it was all chosen by the employees.  Everyone got their pick of one side of an LP, pulled off the shelves. We wrote our names on the shrink wrap, and placed the LP under the to-be-played stack next to the turntable behind the register.  Joy Division followed by Tito Puente followed by the Sweeney Todd soundtrack followed by the latest disco mix followed by Miles Davis follwed by The Kinks.  Each selection was chosen by the employee, either to hear and share music they loved, or to be used as a weapon to piss off those too narrow to appreciate the full sweep of the collection of music we sold and soaked in daily.

It's a wonder I made any money there at all.  Freebies aside, we always swooped down upon new arrivals of independent and import 45s and LPs, devouring them. Great bands that I'd only read about in mags like Creem and Who Put the Bomp were in stock en masse, begging me to take them home.  A little short on cash?  No problem!  Just sign that little charge slip and a Tower employee's  records, tapes, magazines, and maybe even a salary advance  for lunch money would come out of the next check.  Did your piece of crap car break down again?  See Bob for a small loan!   Must've been an accounting nightmare, but it worked for us.

The phone rang constantly.  Tower Sunset employees were regarded as musical experts, so we were often called to settle arguments and even bets.  Once when I explained that it was Them featuring Van Morrison and NOT The Shadows of Knight that recorded the original version of Gloria, the caller groaned and a whoop of triumph came from the background.  No telling how much money traded hands as a result.

There were in-store appearances and parking lot concerts. One of my first was The Pretenders, looking tired and edgy, signing their brand new first LP while guzzling Heinekins at ten in the morning.  One could always tell what Elvis Costello's next LP would be like by the type of records he bought before.  Robert Fripp sitting with his guitar performing Frippertronics, so close to me that I could kick him.  While I was working the cash register one morning, there was a grumbling in line that Richard Dreyfuss, also in line with purchases, had refused to sign an autograph for a customer.  I rang his purchases up, he signed his credit card slip and handed it to me.  I waved that slip over my head to the people in line, declaring, "I've got it!" to applause.  A diminutive Bruce Springsteen was spotted hiding in the tape department, but he still signed my copy of Born to Run with gratitude.  James Brown signing customers' aging King label 45s during an in-store, always with a gracious smile.  Robin Williams, worse for wear but still razor-sharp that late Sunday, giving me a hiliarious, obviously improvised routine at the info booth.  Brian Wilson's, er, morning episode, with 45s having to be removed from the ceiling afterward, all with a white-coated Dr. Landy standing guard at the endcap.  Why did Rick James always want to use our bathroom?  Rodney Dangerfield doing an in-store, then walking to the Tower back room, firing one up and passing it around.  Helping a cool and cordial Tom Waits find the first Hollywood Fats LP, misfiled in the oldies section.  Father Guido Sarduci signing Devo records.  An alluring Lauren Hutton bumming cigarettes off me.  Rickie Lee Jones and I just hanging out early on a Saturday morning, shooting the breeze like old high school buds.  David Lee Roth wishing me a Merry Christmas. Slowly I adjusted and the unexpected became routine, but never, never dull.

Larry from Magi remained in Hollywood, eventually running Music Plus on Vine Street, across town from Tower.  While working the info booth I was thinking about how we hadn't chatted for a while.  As if on cue, up comes a harmless but very obnoxious customer, who started asking for an album in an accent that I could not decipher.  I stopped his rant and calmly wrote down Larry's name and the Music Plus address, assuring the looney that Larry could help him.  Half an hour later, Larry was on the phone, livid.  This began our series of "good will customer exchanges."  I think the topper was when he sent Wild Man Fischer looking for me.

7:28 AM - 2 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

Tower Records part one
Current mood: sad

Tower Records going out of business

I started writing as soon as I heard that Tower was going out of business for good, forever.  It's quite long, so I've broken it into parts.  Here's the first.

Wow, was I green.

It was April 1979. Magi, the band I was in at the time, got fed up with the Midwest and decided to move to Hollywood to Make It Big.  We found a condo on Silver Lake Blvd., across from what is now Spaceland.

Never being independently wealthy, my arrival in Hollywood meant that I could only watch in horror as all of my savings were flying out of my wallet, with no source of replenishment in site.  Hollywood has ingenious ways of separating people from their money.  Time to get a job.

Since a great record store has always been heaven on earth to me, I applied to them all over Hollywood: Wherehouse, Licorice Pizza, Music Plus, Aron's, Rene's All Ears, Peaches, Tower, and probably more.

The first serious interview I had was with Wherehouse.  The guy enthusiastically suggeted moving me directly into an assistant manager position.  I was honored, until hearing that they say that to all of their prospective employees.  They never called me back.

Lack of food money became a concern.  The band was no help, and it was already showing signs that the end was near.

I found myself returning to Tower Records on the Sunset Strip via the RTD bus, to just hang and soak in the amazing collection of music and the Sunset Strip vibe.  An employee there told me that they were about to do an inventory, and they always needed extra people for that.  Sure enough, I soon landed a two-day inventory job with Tower.

Almost immediately after the inventory, I was hired full-time by Bob Delanoy.  My hiring was probably due to my little notes on the inventory sheet - for example, under the record bins I found and noted several carrying cases for 45s with psychedelic designs.  "You're hired," enthused Bob, "we can always use someone sharp like you."  Wow, it was that easy?  So began