Tad Williams

Yes, it has been a while, hasn’t it? Well, we here in the Grotto are not immune to the vagaries and trip-ups the world places before us.

Thus it is necessary – imperative, really – to eke (eek!) out a little pocket of time, as best we can, by any or most means necessary, for the creative stuff.

As another estimable fantasy scribe, Mister P. Beagle, has said, sometimes the best advice for writers is that they get one’s gluteus on the damned chair and just let it flow, from cerebrum to hand to page/PC screen. Tinkers to Evers to bon chance. 

Thus emboldened, here we are. Hiya!

Though really, the excuses, distractions and whatnot do make one wish that the services of, say, a ghost writer were within financial capacity. Like the sweatshop of Factory lackeys who actually wrote the Andy Warhol Philosophy book, which did such a serious number on my teenage imagination (as did eventually discovering the truth of its authorship).

Or at least wishing I was Don Marquis, with a genius cockroach typing up its far more colorful, ingenious opinions and daily doings. My inbred neatnik domestic compulsions, though, sadly render this option non-viable.

Thinking about Warhol and ghostwriters makes me think of Cherry Vanilla. A self-styled poet-slash-actress-slash-groupie, Cherry was part of the whole NYC freakscene of the early 70’s. Later in the decade, she capitalized on London’s fixation with New York’s role in perpetuating Punk, fronting a band and cutting a few discs that are of mild curiosity value now.

Most relevant to this, Cherry was David Bowie’s PR rep during the Ziggy/Mainman era. Bowie seemed to respect her knack for writing and overall hype, which improbably led to Cherry ghosting for him a weekly column in Mirabelle, a British magazine for teenage girls. Even once you know of the girl behind the silver mylar curtain, the “Bowie” columns – which ran from 1973 to 1975 – do make for an amusing bit of time-travel.

It’s just one of a fair few revelations found in a new book by David Thompson, Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell (Backbeat Books). Thompson has done a thorough, page-turning job of chronicling the careers of Bowie, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, tracking their individual career arcs and dips but focusing on the fated liaisons of Ig and Lou with Bowie, thus creating the ultimate gutter-glam triumvirate. The spine of Marc Spitz’s new Bowie bio (published by Random House) is also worth cracking, with this longtime SPIN journo offering a surprisingly fresh perspective, as much fan as historian.

The Australian Robert Forster is not only a writer and fan but a musician, the co-leader of renown literary tune-smiths the Go-Betweens. Forster is also responsible for yet another snazz recent read, an anthol of his music journalism titled The Ten Rules of Rock And Roll (Black Inc Books). Forster doesn’t let the cynicism one might feel as a veteran cult artist and working muso bleed into his prose, for the most part; likewise, his enthusiasm as a fan doesn’t override the critical objective mind. He achieves a nice balance, which makes Ten Rules eminently readable for all three groups of them that care. (And definitely start with the title piece.)

So, two sides of the same management coin passed in the interim, Malcolm McLaren and KISS ruler Bill Aucoin. Brilliant as his steering of the Pistols was, I did and do have problems with McLaren’s hindsight view of that whole era: his was as much deliberate manipulation as it was simply right place, right time (and certainly the right crew to pull it off). And as taboo-busting as his SEX/Seditionaries clothing designs were, I’m pretty sure Annabella Lwin of Bow Wow Wow still feels pretty hard done by.

I know that acclaimed French performer Juliette Greco does. A hilarious anecdote from the 80’s, when McLaren was assembling his musical tribute to Paris, involves his attempt to get Greco, Jeanne Moreau and other lights of the City Of Light for cameo appearances. The story goes that onetime Miles Davis paramour Greco took one look at the lyrics McLaren penned for her, and effectively tore him a new one, shouting: “I’ve had the greatest poets in France write for me, and you ask me to sing this?!?”

As for Aucoin: while having a grudging affection for a handful of their tunes, back in the day I was a proud conscientious objector of the KISS Army. In point of fact, they were The Enemy. I didn’t want horror-comic cartoon cutouts, I wanted real people. Of course, in retrospect, many of those artists I dug, like those previously mentioned, were as calculating as old Bat Lizard and his pals, but still…(And speaking of which, there’s assuredly a circle of Hell all velvet-roped for Ray Kroc-admiring, Terry Gross-ing out, avaricious lecher swine like Mr. Simmons when they eventually hit the carbon cycle.)

An especially unfortunate departure for me, though, was hearing that Supergrass had decided to split. They were always a firm fave of mine among the Britpop pack of the mid-90’s. Gaz Coombes and co. distinguished themselves from fortunate veterans like Blur and Pulp (as great as they were) with the genuine post-teen zip of their music, by which they laid out classic hard-pop nuggets: ‘Caught By The Fuzz’, ‘Going Out’, ‘Pumping On Your Stereo’. The decade-spanning comp from a few years ago, Supergrass Is Ten, is all killer, precious little filler. (Today’s pick: ‘Kiss Of Life’, an infectious distillation of the best bits from Talking Heads’ Remain In Light, Supergrass style.)

A more recent affiliated project is this year’s Turn-Ons (Fat Possum Records). Credited to the Hot Rats but in truth two-thirds of Supergrass (assisted by a gent better known for producing Radiohead), it’s an offhanded but generally fun collection of cover songs. Some work better than others, as is typical of these situations: I quite like their acoustic busking through Gang Of 4 and the Pistols, while the Doors and Elvis Costello picks only induce shoulder shrugs. Choices by Roxy Music, Bowie and Reed are indeed that, though, and a certain Syd’s Floyd chestnut is sufficiently, convincingly wacky and warm.

Next time: more, better and most definitely sooner.

(Though in closing, I highly recommend that Fogtowners and peripherals check out Deutsche Welle TV’s Strictly Global music program. Showcasing primarily independent musical artists from around the world, it’s definitely added to my ongoing CD shopping list. Every Friday evening on KCSM, Bay Area Channel 60-2 for you digital broadcast box gogglers.

And have a looksee at my new local music tribute blog, The San Francisco Nobody Sings. Three installments in, we have already covered lounge jazz standards, punk and Tenderloin funk. In other words, the waterfront, and we’re not talking Fisherman’s Wharf either.)

MLH
7-1-10

It’s Tuesday on the late A.M. side, folks; hungover as hell, I am thus completing a month of sitting shivah for recent passings of pop music figures greatly admired and grudgingly respected, in that order.

I’m presently bending my lobes to a live tape of Alex Chilton, from twenty five freaking ears ago last month. Now, that should have read years, natch, but it does feel like the ongoing time I’ve possessed of this tape has caused much wear and tear on that many pairs of ears. Certainly as many of them involved listening to this wayward Memphis gent whose departure has affected me like few relative rock icons have. There were even a few cherished instances spent within proximity.

Case in pernt: 1981. I was avidly a fan of Big Star and the solo stuff; Alex’s Like Flies On Sherbert solo disc in particular was a firm favorite among my immediate clique of devotees of off-road-ditch-bound musical expression. It was with a few of said like-minded geeks that I went to Washington DC’s 930 Club to see Our Guy.

Ugh and triple ugh; visibly, he was not the bright-eyed Anglophilic sharpie that we knew from the covers of Big Star sleeves, or even the Box Tops. Point of fact, Chilton looked like at least seven shades of thrice-denuded landfill; we’re talking someone whose mere presence would shame even the lowest of Reno slot-machine joints. Bloated from booze and who knows what else, wearing sunglasses after dark and slept-in jeans, Chilton’s sole sartorial concession to Professional Show Biz being a dark blue smoking jacket.

Fortunately Chilton had an amazing band behind him, inexplicably choosing to be a singing not playing front man (one of his many perverse gestures of the night). On guitar and bass were two fellow Memphians; the guitar player, I later divined, was one Jim Duckworth. Even then I was resistant and skeptical of technique over visceral intent when it came to axemen. But I was won over, despite myself: indeed, Duckworth’s impeccably raw and tasty chops would result in being headhunted by LX’s bud Tav Falco and then, later, Jeffrey Lee Pierce of the Gun Club. And yes, I saw each of those bands with Duckworth when they hit DC.

Meantime, on the pagan skins Chilton had installed Jim Sclavunos, who some of you these days might know from that living monument to pretension Nick Cave’s mob.

Things moved from focus to blur within the half-hour set, woozily swaying from loose-limbed rockabilly to Johnny Mathis’ “Chances Are” (!), with barely a smatter of Chilton originals and nothing from his previously celebrated combos. There was this bridge & tunnel nutjob who clearly didn’t know Alex from Adam, offering up a coke-spoon necklace to him between tunes. And then before doing Porter Wagoner’s C/W rehab oddity ‘Rubber Room’, Chilton entreated the soundman to lay on the slapback vocal echo, Sun Records style. When said feat was accomplished, he said ‘now that guy knows what he’s doing!’.

To which some punter shouted, ‘so do you, Alex!’. In response, Chilton lifted his shades, smiled for the first and only time that night, and said ‘True!’.

Fast-forward then to a night of curveballs: spring 1985, again at the 930 Club, the source of the aforementioned tape. Only the barest mind-boggling whispers of what Chilton had been up to since that dreadful ‘81 visitation – was he really working as a dishwasher in New Orleans, or a tree surgeon? – but the place was packed.

Talk about a before and after shot; rail thin and appearing in the rudest of health, Chilton came out once again hoisting a guitar and backed up by a cracking rhythm section. A brief tune up, count five and whap, right into ‘In The Street’. Powerpop nirvana thus transpired. Chilton still didn’t mind airing a few salvaged pop nuggets, including a Carole King girl-group smoochfest and an assured medley of Slim Harpo swamp-rockers (Chilton even laying on the requisite wheezy Harpo mouth-organ). This was a ploy that became a standard element to any Chilton solo set over the years, which enthralled as much as enraged those who came to hear variations on ‘September Gurls’, for sure.

And yet, if one was open to it, it only reinforced the performing persona Chilton had assumed, that of an all-around entertainer (albeit one with an astounding if languishing back catalog of truly classic rock). I remember he even made a point on that night of repeatedly reminding the crowd to tip their waitresses.

And now he’s gone (cue ‘Take Care’ from Big Star 3rd/Sister Lovers; a more prescient fade into the sunset couldn’t be better conceived).

Two quick, final thoughts: first, knowing that one of his other passions was astrology, I can’t help but imagine if Chilton had lived another twenty years or so and decided to give up performing altogether, how cool it would have been for him to cash in on his stargazing abilities. I for one would have loved the idea of opening one of the weekly free rags, and turning to the weekly horoscope column by Alex Chilton.

And second? Conscious of the love he had for his adopted hometown, I sure as hell hope that he got a proper New Orleans funeral, second line and all.

Was going to ruminate on that old scalawag Malcolm McLaren, too, but will have to save it for next time (which will be sooner than never, for sure, with much newish music to discuss!).

MLH
4/27/10

I am thoroughly gutted, as Deb's countryfolk would say, about the sudden passing, on St. Pat's Day, of the awesome, inscrutable, infuriating, arrogant, trashy, bootyshaking, hearttugging, prodigious, forward-minded, power pop auteur and (as he wanted to be known on his tombstone, in a rare fanzine interview back in 1977) 'self made man' known as William Alexander Chilton of Memphis, TN and more recently Nawlins.

I will sans doute expand on this in a sooncome column, but for now, as someone posted online today, 'the music won't be going anywhere'.

So comfort yourselves as I do with that thought, and crank up any favorite Chilton, Box Tops or Big Star track and wish him Godspeed.

MLH
3/18/10

Thanks to that service that places the cute little red envelopes in our mailbox, I’ve been regularly soaking up much celluloid as of late. One of our latest viewings was of an animated film called 9, the debut of recent UCLA Film School grad Shane Acker.

Its story hinges on a timeworn sci-fi premise – intrepid underdogs out to restore a world where technology’s gone out of control – reenergized by Acker’s visual style: equal bits Verne, HG Wells and other Steampunk touchstones, with a daub of the Brothers Quay.

Acker also lucked into snagging a formidable cast to voice his characters: Martin Landau, John C. Reilly, Christopher Plummer (who’s become quite in demand in his senior years), Jennifer Connelly, and the film’s lead, voiced by none other than Elijah Wood, who knows a thing or three about playing underdogs.

Duly impressed all around by 9, I was thus reminded of my enjoyment of Wood’s work as an actor, and the various projects he’s been involved with. The Ice Storm. Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A Gallic vampire story comprising one of the two best vignettes of the Paris Je T’aime anthology. Not forgetting, of course, a certain triptych of Tolkien.

So it was that I decided, now was as good a time as any to unearth the transcript of a telephone chat I was fortunate to have with Elijah Wood, one fine October morning in 2005.

I was ostensibly inspired to quiz ‘Elwood’ about his work on the Peter Jackson films, as one might. More personally intriguing, though, was Wood’s diverse and (for someone his age) surprisingly clued-in knowledge of music, and the eagerness and enthusiasm with which he’d discuss recent finds in interviews. (Since this chat, Wood even started a record label, Simian, which released a fine disc by art-pop combo The Apples In Stereo among others.) I figured having at least that much in common might make for some pleasant music-head discourse.

Which it did: originally allotted 15 minutes by his PR handler, Elijah and I ended up talking for twice that. Affable, cordial and sharp, Wood put this erratic journo at ease immediately.

Of further interest to me was the recent disclosure of Wood being slated to play Iggy Pop in a biopic of the Stooges, provisionally titled The Passenger (and to this day still hermetically sealed in Tinseltown limbo). Clearly, there was much to discuss.

So with coffee in hand and tape rolling, my opening gambit related to my astonishment that Wood, having put so much energy into Lord of the Rings, seemingly dove right into no less than three flicks in LotR’s then still sizable wake.

Things rolled from there, and into areas you won’t usually see covered in your typical Hollywood press gang schmoozefests, such as Elijah’s favorite rock movies.

What follows, then, are just some choice bits. Enjoy.

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Elijah Wood: I think it would have been foolish for anyone who worked on those films to have stepped back and coasted on them for long, primarily because they are so specific and dominating in their scope and size.

I think it was important for all of us – certainly something I employed after – to immediately continue to work, to differentiate myself from what (LotR) was, this…impenetrable behemoth.

We were all extremely proud of it, and it’s something that had a massive impact on my life personally, and an incredible project to be a part of. But, because of the success, it was even more important to look for work that was different, and continue to work.

Also to seize that opportunity to work, as there was already attention on everybody involved, sort of forward what we do, and hopefully be able to further our careers in the process. That part of the process was important after LotR, but also on just a very simple level... I remember when it first came to my mind about being a ‘working actor’: first thing, I didn’t want to work at all when it was finished...

ML Heath: And this was, what, two, three years’ work?

Sixteen months of principal photography for all three, and then three years of work after that, each year doing ‘pickups’ and post-production on each film. So all in all four years, and each of us worked as actors on other films in each year after the principal photography.

Anyway, after it was finished, I was exhausted by the scope and size of LotR, and the idea of working on another large-scale production wasn’t at all something that interested me. The idea of doing something really small, intimate and focused only on character was the only thing I wanted to be part of immediately.

That was in response to having been part of something so huge; I wanted something to just experientially contrast that.

So would it be fair to say that the half-dozen or so films you’ve done since LotR were deliberate attempts to take roles that were completely different, even from one role to another?

Yeah, but I think that’s also something I’ve always believed in, and I think as I’ve gotten older, believed in it more. To constantly try and find things that were totally different from the last thing I worked on, with a mind to challenge myself as an actor, but also to change perception as to who people think I am.

Also to keep myself interested, you know? A lot of the recent films I’ve worked on have been small independent films, but it’s not so much a result of me looking specifically for independent or small films. It’s just, those were the scripts I read that I responded to and they happened to be small.

These would of course be Everything Is Illuminated, Green Street Hooligans...

And Eternal Sunshine...but a lot of it is more…organic than a specific thing I’m looking for, or some great plan. I think I’m just always looking for something that’s good, first and foremost – and that’s a very difficult thing to find, in and of itself – also for something that’s different, each film from the last.

So I’m old enough to remember when, every six months, the news would always be that David Bowie was going to play Sinatra in a movie. Should I take this recent news about you playing Iggy Pop in a biopic with a similar shovelful of salt, or what?

Yeah, it’s true, it’s happening…we start shooting in March.

So will this be covering the entire history of Iggy or the Stooges, or a particular time period for either...?

It’ll focus on the Stooges, from the Iguanas up through when they record the three LP’s, from the perspective of Iggy in the hospital. After the Stooges’ split he checked himself into an L.A. hospital, because of his drug dependency and, basically, because he thought he was losing his mind. So it’s Iggy telling the story of the Stooges in flashback to this doctor in hospital.

That’s a big gig, you must admit.

Yeaahh, it’s huge. I’m a huge fan of the Stooges and I loved the script, and the same guy who produced The Ice Storm is producing it... although initially I was, and still am, incredibly scared. And rightfully so; it’s no small task to fill anyone’s shoes in a biographical sense, much less Iggy Pop, pretty daunting...but it’s extremely exciting to play someone like that. To play someone so completely different from anything I’ve done before is such an incredible opportunity. It’ll be its own journey.

So then, with this drive you have to play characters so different from one film to the next, do you see yourself ultimately becoming best known as a character actor?

I don’t know – I want to have a career that’s relatively versatile, and different, and colored by all these very different kind of films and choices. The career paths I respect most are those not nailed down by one specific kind of role or film. Actors like Philip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly.

Chris Cooper’s like that too.

Yeah, Chris Cooper, definitely. They’re actors who are known more for their work, and if I can have a career path that’s in any way similar, it’ll be incredibly satisfying. But it is such an organic process, because I’m only at the mercy of whatever is available, and always looking for something different, and those don’t always come around. I’d much rather not work, than work on something I don’t believe in – so it’s really down to what comes my way, what I can find.

Your appreciation of all kinds of music does seem to go hand in hand with your involvement in acting...and it’s such a great gig, you have the acting thing and then through that you can indulge your obvious passion in this other thing. A great combination.

And I feel very fortunate to be able to indulge in that passion.

But what first caught my attention as regards to that were things like this piece I read awhile back in Blender magazine, where you listed your favorite LP’s. One of them was the first Sundays album (Reading Writing and Arithmetic)...

Oh yeah, what a great album.

...where you commented that ‘oh yeah, I got that after it came out’. Now that was 1990, and so I did a little mental arithmetic, to realize that you were, what, ten? (laughter) So clearly this is something that goes way back for you.

Yeah, yeah. It’s funny, I think that was around the time my tastes in music were really being shaped, around 10 or 11, and really took hold around 12 and 13, being exposed to really interesting music at a young age.

Was this stuff you actively sought out or did you have outlets to feed that, or...?

I wasn’t as actively seeking it out as I do now. My knowledge as how to discover and find music were not as sophisticated as now, but as a function of working in films, I was traveling and being surrounded by all sorts of creative, interesting people all the time, at work. All of them of course older than me, but because I was interested in music, I would talk and listen to what they had to say, pick up on their stuff, hear about bands and investigate them...a scope I would not have gotten if I had been only watching MTV, or from the radio, or other people my age.

I also recall from when you were filming LotR your raving about the CD collection you were amassing at the time.

Well, one of the great benefits of working on a film is a thing called per diem (chuckling).

When abroad or in another state, they give you money to live on, food and basic provisions to live on throughout the week when you’re not working, that’s what it’s for.

Which, for the most part, I would use as record money! (much laughter) More of that money has gone towards CD’s as anything else, which is great. Being in New Zealand for so long – and there’s a relatively cool record store there called Real Groovy, after a while I got to know the folks there – over the course of 16 months, I must’ve got 2-300 CD’s there.

It definitely comes across, in most interviews I’ve read where you talk about music, that you are someone who doesn’t keep secret treasures, that you’re very much someone who will say ‘you have to hear this!’ So what has been pricking up your ears lately?

Sons And Daughters, a really extraordinary band from Glasgow; they just put out their first full-length LP this year. They’re kind of based in Americana and rootsy stuff, but they’re essentially rock and roll. They do these really amazing shared male and female lead vocals, and don’t sound like anything else out there, which is refreshing.

Given your interest, then, in both music and films, there’s something I’ve never heard anyone ask you before. Do you have any favorite rock music movies or documentaries? Because I know that you went to the L.A. premiere of the recent one about the Ramones (End of the Century).

That’s an incredible one, although I do find it really sad, and extremely depressing, as a portrait of a band that, basically, so many others stole from and got the credit for starting a movement, when the Ramones were really at the forefront of it. And, of course, the issues between band members – but it’s an incredible document of a band that deserved so much more than they ever got.

I also think I Am Trying To Break Your Heart (the Wilco documentary) is amazing. Not only as a great document about the making of a record, but also a really fascinating look into...how f#%@ed major record labels are (much laughter).

I mean, when a band like Wilco can do what’s arguably their best record, one that ends up deemed a classic upon release, and yet their record label could reject it...it’s a fascinating tale into where we are in the music world these days, and how the people at the top don’t necessarily know what they’re talking about. I mean, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot will probably go down as the best record Wilco ever did.

What about older rock movies?

I think Purple Rain is classic, I’m a huge Prince fan. I even quite like Under the Cherry Moon (ML groans). I know, to most people it’s not exactly a ‘film classic’, but the soundtrack is incredible...Parade’s one of his better records, so to see those songs in that context of, basically, an extended music video, I think was really cool.

And this last year, I was obsessed with Martin Scorcese’s series of documentaries on the Blues. I had originally gotten fascinated with Blues when I heard Skip James’ “Devil Got My Woman,” the way it was used in Ghost World.

Up until then I wasn’t really familiar, certainly not with Delta Blues...I’d heard bits of Leadbelly, Robert Johnson...and of course, with any genre of music you’re not familiar with, if you step into it, you sort of jump into a large pool and end up spending a lot of time in that pool, peeling the layers as it becomes deeper and deeper. That’s what happened to me with the Blues.

So I watched those Scorcese documentaries religiously – I found it fascinating, the way they each focused on different elements of it, like one was about Chicago Blues, Muddy Waters and Chess Records and Willie Dixon...but the first one that Scorcese directed himself, about Delta Blues, I found utterly fascinating.

There’s also a really great documentary from the early Sixties, I don’t know the name of it, where they got all the Delta Blues artists that were still alive then, Son House being one of them...got them together again in this house, and just had them play. It’s a great window into a generation that was kind of dying back then.

And do you know this documentary about the band Beulah, A Good Band Is Easy to Kill? They’re from the Bay Area, and it’s essentially a video of their last tour, they broke up last year. It’s a great insight into a small band. I mean here they were, even on their last tour they were still managing themselves, still touring around in a van, selling their own merch.

A great insight into what it’s like for 99 percent of all bands out there, really, everyone working their asses off; that’s where the real fight is for music, where it really exists, is in these people who believe in what they do, traveling across the US, doing it themselves.

Because, really, all in all very few bands are massively successful, while under the surface there’s hundreds and hundreds of bands that people don’t necessarily hear about. So it’s an interesting documentary to me, in that it’s a very revealing look into that process.

So to wrap things up: when this interview was first arranged, I went around to friends and asked them what they would ask Elijah Wood if they ever had the chance.

One friend I asked, Christopher J. Garcia, is a curator at the Computer History Museum here in the Bay Area, and here’s what he wanted to know: what was your foot care regimen during LotR, when you weren’t wearing the feet?

(A long, raspy laugh, then) There actually wasn’t much of a regimen, really. What would happen is, they’d put the feet on in the morning, then take them off at night...but our feet were, actually, really well taken care of. We’d take these foot soaks at the end of each day, and they’d clean them, soak them in hot water. And in between days of shooting, it was almost a relief to be able to wear shoes (laugh). But there was this sort of evening regimen where they’d, kind of, bathe everybody’s feet, put powder on them. Which sounds incredibly cushy (chuckling).

MLH
2/22/10

So then, Groundhog Day has been and gone, that plucky little creature having emerged from his Pennsylvanian hidey-hole to do his bit for another year.

There was an equally anticipated surfacing down in Southern Cali last Tuesday as well. Didn’t you know? Oh yes: down in La La Land, old ‘Pico and Sepulveda Phil’ ducked out of his rent controlled burrow long enough to spot his shadow (aided by the paparazzi flashbulbs and TMZ vidcam light rigs trained on him). Job done and scene made, Phil then retreated, paws thrown across his face to dissuade the assembled culture vultures. Thus making it official: six more weeks of televised award show season.

Speaking of which, I just as briefly ducked out of my own lair a few days previous, to have a bemused box goggle at the annual, sequin encrusted, slow-mo car crash that was this year’s Grammys. Believe you me, there’s nothing like the Grammys to reinforce one’s thorough alienation from the mainstream pop music industry.

Please understand: I wasn’t expecting a squad of video game warriors and courtesans working it Baz Luhrmann-style to ‘Garbage Man’ and ‘No Fun’, in honor of this year’s passing of Lux Interior and Ron Asheton. I’m not that naïve. (Hush up, you in the peanut gallery.)

Still…it pains me to waste such valuable column space expressing the repulsion I felt watching the admittedly not untalented Beyonce Knowles unveil her new alter ego Johanna Jingo, complete with desert-storm-trooper entourage. I wonder if Blackwater accorded her a celebrity discount?

Or the hilarious-if-it-wasn’t-so-pathetic sight of Jon Bon Jovi, working overtime to convince viewers that he possesses some sort of ‘rebel’ cred (who buys his records these days, anyway?).

We spare a thought instead, then, for the members of Green Day. All those years ago, when they working their butts off honing their Punk-Pop craft in places like Gilman Street in Berkeley, was it really Billie, Mike and Tre’s ultimate, driving ambition to be at the center of a musical theater piece that, from all accounts, is basically Rent with faintly better music? Somehow I think not.

All this show, all this spectacle, seemed to have and to serve no other purpose than insubstantial media hypnosis, just like all too many other distractions thrown up in today’s world (yes, even the medium by which I’m sending this). Concerted desensification, created to fill empty holes in the mind with ever emptier product. This is the opposite reason for the existence of the best art, certainly the best music.

Detroit’s famed high-energy rock mob the MC5 once described their songs as ‘resensifiers’. Exactly: what I want, what I expect out of the best music, is something more than the induction of a catatonic state. Far more desirable, instead, is a mindful, occasionally tuneful noise that’ll wake and shake me, get the imagination firing up, make me scheme, dance and dream, excite and incite.

So really, why bother with the lame, eternal yield of industry-grown Pop – spiced with the manageably eccentric – when there’s so many other sources of good music before me? Or should I say in this particular instance, behind me, as last year was a very good one for reissued or recently salvaged nuggets from the vaults o’ time. Old wine in new bottles, perhaps, but why deprive one’s self when the source grapes are this pleasing?

Case in pernt: 801 Live by Phil Manzanera and 801, recorded during the UK Punk ferment of ‘76. Along with a recent raft of live documents of the group heretofore unaired, it’s now available in CD stylee via Manzanera’s own Expression Records. When all fellow teenage guitar heads I knew were raving about the prowess of Hendrix, Nugent, Blackmore and then E. Van freakin’ Halen, I was a resolute booster of the likes of Bill Nelson of Be Bop Deluxe, but especially Manzanera. From the first moments of ‘Remake Remodel’ on the first Roxy Music lp, our Phil cast down synaptic firestorms of fretwork, delicate and demonic, sometimes all at once.

This side project – which also briefly included Brian Eno – articulated a fearsome but tightly constructed burst of fat-free, progressively minded rock noise. For some of us, this is what the likes of Miles Davis, Return To Forever, Mahavishnu etc. anticipated, while sweeping them away as utterly superfluous. It still connects, inflames and occasionally (as on ‘Rongwrong’ and ‘Diamond Head’) gently edges the willing listener into one’s personal dream soup.

If nothing else, the climactic medley of Manzanera/Eno jam ‘Miss Shapiro’ canoodling with a take on ‘You Really Got Me’ (never sounding before or since like lower chakra obsession), deserves even now to be in constant rotation for enlivening otherwise pasteurized FM flagships like KFOG.

And another: Before Obscurity: The Bushflow Tapes by Tin Huey (Smog Veil). While fellow 70’s Ohio folk Pere Ubu ably traversed their path of urban ‘avant-garage’ paranoia, and DEVO their equally singular robot emasculation vibe, Tin Huey were of a rather more playfully executed stripe. This Akron based mob had a keen understanding of wackiness as a value, passed down from Zappa, the Bonzos, Canterbury, Van Vliet etc. Post-teen Dadaists (are there any more suited at that age?) with humor, chops and imagination galore.

It’s an altogether zesty overview comprising many salvaged nuggets, from prodigious rough early live sketches to the full-strength prog-pop firm en route to a sadly brief major label stint with Warner Brothers at the turn of the 80’s. The latter includes first airing of tunes by their more commercially successful outgrowth The Waitresses, helmed by tail-end Huey Chris Butler.

Especially check out the meta-pop that Huey’s keyboard jockey Harvey Gold vocalizes, like the one about an armadillo. As well as the jazzy japery on display courtesy the ever astonishing woodwind wiz Ralph Carney, heard here in truly formidable fettle. A delightful addition to one’s ongoing secret pre-millennial culture history. And I didn’t mention (longtime Carney collaborator) Tom Waits once.

On a decidedly more modern tip: does anyone here remember the recent Grotto column where I mentioned Animal Collective? Well, I finally snagged a copy of their universally hosanna’ed latest disc, Merriweather Post Pavilion (a reference only Maryland sprouts like me and the band members no doubt get), and…hmmm.

The tracks – far too abstract to term ‘songs’ – are ostensibly anchored in these pristinely sung, richly melodic, sunshine saturated group harmonies (OK, let’s get it over with: Beach Boys – albeit in dear Brian’s most chemically tormented post-Smile reveries, perhaps), that coexist within these pool-pah meteor showers of disorienting synthetic interference. One particularly upbeat song even turns a classic Ramones lyrical hook on its bowl cut, chirping ‘I wanna walk around with you’!

In any case, with only a few airings, I don’t know if I wholeheartedly like it, but so far? Intriguing as all hell, and certainly more stimulating than what was on offer in the Grammy’s Cirque du Pink parade.

Stay tuned.

(Special, necessary thanks to both my brother Robin Heath, and to Austin, TX.-based performing poet Big Poppa E, for ideas pinched in the service of the above column.)

MLH
2/7/10