Antenna - The Rockumentary

Well, I can only say that I am very excited about the prospect of this coming out later this year. When I first saw this clip, I was stunned to see, first up, the impossibly young looking (sadly now late) Andy Hyrka, on whose "Live From Studio B" cable show I played a couple of times, and who also shot an apparently lost music video for my first band. Following in quick succession are Ron Easley, Barking Dog, Ross Johnson, The Country Rockers, GG Allin, The Grifters, Barry Bob (!) articulate as ever, Greg Cartwright (I assume this is The Oblivians), and Panther Burns. Also check out a segment with Antenna bouncer Mark Kallaher, a.k.a. Angerhead, actually a really lovely guy.

Walk, don't run

Despite the fact that they were, in theory, my "golden years," there's not much I really miss about the late 1970s or early 1980s, apart from some of the music and a lot of the people, and the fact that the world was a lot more easy-going about its definition of fun, in certain respects. Here's one example which I can't imagine being allowed in 2010, more's the pity for the institutionalized of the world. If it didn't exist, you'd be hard-pressed to make it up. The Cramps, live at the Napa State Hospital, California, 1978. "We're The Cramps, and we're from New York City. And we drove 3,000 miles to play for you people. Somebody told me you people are crazy, but I'm not so sure about that. You seem to be alright." Music therapy incarnate.

Scenes from London life

Speaking of Robert Palmer...

Recently I added some songs from a 1989 session by Hot Joe, at my music site. The session actually comprised 14 songs all recorded in one night at the old Easley studios on Marion in Memphis in the summer of 1989. Most of these were instrumentals, of the kind that only Hot Joe could really pull off, but I have only shared tracks on which I sang, because it seems disingenuous to do otherwise. However, the other tracks include a fine take of Linda Heck singing her song "Look Out for Love," and some blistering playing from the band, which was Jim Duckworth (guitar), Jim Spake (soprano, tenor, and baritone sax), John McClure (bass), Ross Johnson (drums), Doug Garrison (drums and percussion), and the late Robert Palmer (clarinet). Listening to these tracks again brought back memories of what an adventure it always was to play with Bob Palmer (he was always "Bob" to us). His unusual take on sound and form introduced an element of risk which kept Hot Joe from sounding too slick, but he could also be surprisingly smooth (check out the solo on my version of "Look Out for Love."). Bob introduced me to the term "skronk," which was my inspiration for the short-lived Skronkadelic project. It was also through Bob that I first learned of the Master Musicians of Jajouka, whom I finally had the pleasure of seeing last year at Ornette Coleman's Meltdown. This recording comes from a concert organized by Bob's daughter Augusta as a tribute to her dad, to benefit the Master Musicians of Jajouka, and features Robert Poss from Band of Susans, giving a personal history of guitar playing and then showing what he's really made of, which is pure awesomeness. I think a lot of bands, whether they knew it or not at the time (or since), drew inspiration from these guys, who were championed by both Bob and John Peel, of both of whose knowledge and wisdom we are now sadly deprived.

Sunday morning energizer

Thanks to Bob Collum for pointing this one out. Linda Heck and The Train Wreck opened for NRBQ at The Antenna in 1987, and I think Linda still has her denim jacket which they all signed. I was a fan but had never seen them live. I remember standing out in front of the stage thinking that they were almost impossibly good. It all seemed to flow from them effortlessly, and they had tremendous energy, despite the fact that it was incredibly hot and Big Al seemed to be suffering, even with his own personal fan right next to his head. Terry Adams was all arms and legs, Tom Ardolino beat the drums mercilessly, Al and Joey were perhaps the most extreme physical mismatch in musical history, and they were nothing short of astonishing.

Lost

I never got a chance to see The Minutemen, but I did see Firehose at the legendary Antenna Club, in 1987. It's nice to revisit, through this video, the shambolic spontaneous musicality and mutual respect which seems to have characterized the whole SST band phenomenon. The Minutemen herein succeed in performing Meat Puppets material at an even lower standard than the originators, which in itself must have been a conscious affectionate tribute, perverse as that may sound in this era of over-polished, over-sentimentalized shit-schlock. I love how D. Boon remonstrates with the bouncer for manhandling an enthusiastic stage invader, having just crushed a large proportion of the audience with his not inconsiderable mass.

Conversion

I have spent a few hours digging out and converting old cassette tapes to mp3, which is proving easier and a lot more fun than I had expected. I have converted my largely dormant MySpace site to a MySpace Music site, where some of the results are now available for streaming. I have started with some unreleased Grundies tracks from the 1992 session we did at Easley - McCain studios, which yielded the single "You Look Good"/"San Antonio." The five tracks are:

Lawman (Eddie Bond, arranged by The Grundies)

Trey Harrison - guitar, vocals
Jeff Green - bass, vocals
Bob Fordyce - drums, vocals
James Enck - tenor sax, vocals

I Found My Love in Memphis (George Clappes, arranged by The Grundies)

Trey Harrison - vocals
Jeff Green - bass
Bob Fordyce - drums
James Enck - guitar

Cowboy Song (Red Harrison, The Grundies)

Trey Harrison - guitar, vocals
Jeff Green - guitar
Bob Fordyce - drums
James Enck - bass

(This song was actually written by Trey's then-toddler son, Red)

Fire in the Driveway (slow version) (The Grundies)

Trey Harrison - guitar, vocals
Jeff Green - bass, vocals
Bob Fordyce - drums
James Enck - guitar

Buddy Up (The Grundies)

Trey Harrison - guitar, vocals
Jeff Green - bass
Bob Fordyce - drums
James Enck - tenor sax, guitar

(This recording reflects the way we used to play this live - two instrumental fragments up front, followed by "Buddy Up," a song we wrote in Jeff's living room in about 20 minutes, as I recall.)

I have also added some other stuff, including the "Elephant Man" hardcore mini-opera I recorded in 1988, and the exit theme from the Roy Barnes 1993 film "Doom House," which I think was the only part of the soundtrack we recorded which ended up in the film. The players are Bob Fordyce (drums), Fields Trimble (bass), Jack Adcock (harmonica) and James Enck (guitar). I will be adding and shuffling stuff as I come across it, but I expect the Grundies material will remain.

Alex Chilton 1985

I met Alex Chilton in 1980 or thereabouts, in the home of my friend Gretchen Gassner in Memphis. We crossed paths sporadically in the years that followed, but I always thought we had a pretty good rapport, and it was always a pleasure to run into him at gigs or Piggly Wiggly, which may be the last time I saw him. I've always been perplexed when I come across someone in Memphis with nothing good to say about him (there are a few), because he was always kind and pleasant to me, and we always had interesting conversations. So as far as I am concerned, Alex Chilton is officially alright by me.

A serious can of whoopass

As if I needed to tell you, the internet is an amazing and profound serendipity machine. A couple of days ago I was friended (funny, we used to say "befriended") on Facebook by a young Memphibian named Frank Bruno, who, as it turns out, is a collector with more than a passing interest in the records put out by Style Wooten, including "I Found My Love in Memphis" by George Clappes.

Today he has kindly shared with me, and allowed me to share with you, a couple of super images. First the exalted disk itself, a copy of which lurks somewhere in my parents' closet in Memphis.




Secondly, and more interestingly, he has stumbled across an ad from a country music magazine of the time, in which Style Wooten shows us what he had to offer, including "pressing of 1000 records on 'Well Known Country Label' with 'Credit Plan' available." I wonder if they offered a layaway plan? Maybe that's where the cache of records I discovered in 1990 came from. Pure Memphis history at its best. Thanks for sharing, Frank!

Scenes from London life

Picadilly Circus, 1948, taken from a Viewmaster disk.

Love Offering

Life was never really the same for me after I discovered the Meat Puppets via their now-legendary second album, later championed by Kurt Cobain in the "Nirvana Unplugged" session. There was something about the sound of that record that I found irresistible - probably the fact that it was rough and sounded like it could spin out of control at any moment, but simultaneously it contained some fascinating songs and stunning guitar work. It's one of those records that still sounds fresh when I listen to it today.

After my first exposure, I then went back to their first album, which made me even more intrigued by them. This album couldn't have been more different from its successor. The lyrics were entirely unintelligible, the recording live and low-fi, the playing and singing pretty much completely unhinged throughout. Did they intend to sound this ragged? Was it the best they could achieve under the circumstances? Did they even care?

I saw them twice at a later stage in their career (I think after the Mirage and Huevos albums), both times at The Antenna Club. They were older and tighter, but still highly erratic, launching into covers that they didn't really know how to play, and Curt Kirkwood was prone to making the odd mocking comment about his brother Cris, and refusing to play large sections of the set list which Derrick Bostrom (the only member who seemed interested in playing a structured show) called out. I loved every minute of it. It was liberating to see a band, not "taking it to the edge," but willingly throwing themselves off into the abyss, seemingly unafraid of looking or sounding stupid, but capable of immense beauty at times.

Today I stumbled across this two-part ABC profile of the band (Part 1 and Part 2), which is great, if you like them. Also of interest is this amazing archive of live bootlegs. My personal favorite is this 1983 version of "Plateau," which, though recorded in Phoenix, reminds me very much of an average night at The Antenna Club of the time - a grumpy club-owner, some audience hostility, some political incorrectness, and a heckler who (it sounds like) douses Curt Kirkwood with a drink during the song. He recovers admirably, and the band finishes triumphant. Curt: "Meat Puppets rule the universe." Cris: "We all rule the universe."

A parallel universe

Whenever I visited the old Pat's Pizza on Summer, near the equally strange and otherworldly Alamo Plaza Hotel, I had a feeling I have seldom felt anywhere else, of entering a world where time had utterly stopped, unbeknownst to everyone else. The pizza was remarkably good, as I recall, and I think I even had a steak there once, the thought of which now fills me with thoughts of imminent mortality. The jukeboxes were full of amazing records, the furniture and light fixtures the stuff of dreams, and I once remember sitting at a table next to a window with a curtain, which, when parted, revealed a dark, windowless room full of old car tires. Mr. Pat, as many have noted, including in the comments to this video, wore an obvious toupee and smoked constantly. He often placed the cigarette hand against his face, and over time the smoke had given this side of his toupee a yellow tinge. I don't think I knew until watching this film that Pat's wife was called Lois, because everyone always called her "Ms. Pat." The remarkable film is made even more extraordinary by the appearance of the late Lee Baker.

So nice

Cooler than the average bear

I find these guys very uplifting. One of my local friends was a bass teacher to the bassist. Small world.

The Open Road London (1927)

So much is recognizable, and so much entirely transformed.

Scenes from London life

What is Truth?

"And the lonely voice of youth cries, what is truth?" Johnny, honestly, if I had any idea, I'd be happy to help. Not really sure what the show's directors were up to with the rambling spoken intro, but what a song.

Dead End Street

I've always loved this song, and it seems to tread a fine line between the tongue-in-cheek Noel Coward-esque satire which Ray Davies' work frequently adopted and an overt political statement of the sort which was relatively rare for him. This strange promo film seems to come from the same place - amid the cross-dressing and predictably wacky "British Invasion"-era antics, there is some menacing, almost demented, behavior from the band (I love the door being slammed in our face by Pete Quaife) and grim still photos of people on the wrong end of the social ladder in what must have been an unrelentingly drab and bleak post-war Britain. I don't know how widely seen this film might have been at the time, but it must have been a fairly unsettling contrast to the prevalent images of "Swinging London."

Memories of The Cove

You are there!

American readers of roughly my age will no doubt remember the brief 1970s revival of the "You Are There" show hosted by Walter Cronkite, an attempt to bring history to life for young viewers via fairly wooden, low budget re-enactments of important moments in history. I don't know why it's taken me a month to get around to producing my own twist on this approach in documenting the Memphis experience, but it is what it is. And it was what it was, which was mostly amazing.

It's always a pleasure to go back and see the family and friends, delve into nostalgia and history, and attempt to process the changes which have taken place in my absence. My children enjoy seeing their grandparents and cousins, and experiencing a different way of life, as well as the food. I had a chance to reconnect with people I haven't seen in far too many years, and I had some wonderful experiences as a result. And for all its laid-back charm, there is a certain undercurrent of energy running through Memphis, or at least through Midtown, the part most worth spending time/living in. As I tell anyone here who will listen, Memphis' music scene seems to me to be incredibly vibrant and diverse, especially considering the city's size. To have the number of independent labels and venues it is able to support speaks volumes about the enthusiasm of the locals to make their own entertainment, which I think is the way of the future.

However, I can never escape the vague feeling that I have entered a parallel universe of some sort. Simply stated, there are few places where daily life could be more different from what I experience in London. Population density is low, land use is generally wasteful, streets are wide, houses and their yards are generously proportioned. There's a profound sense of space, but also of emptiness, which are different things. Zoning, a fairly uniquely American concept, keeps residential and commercial activities pretty rigidly separate, except in older or poorer neighborhoods. As a result, everyone is effectively enslaved to the automobile, and people seem to be eternally launching out on car journeys to accomplish relatively simple tasks, which I would normally do by walking around the corner. I think I saw maybe five cyclists during my week there, and four of them were classifiable as "poor people with no alternative."

Anyway, the focal point of the trip for me was the New Year's Day reunion of Linda Heck and The Train Wreck, with whom I had not played since 1993 or so. I hadn't played with drummer Kurt Ruleman since 1984, if I'm not mistaken. There was huge anticipation on my part, but also some anxiety, so I spent the weeks before in London getting to grips with the electric guitar again. I had no expectations other than having fun and being in the moment, but we did much better than that I think, despite having only one three-hour rehearsal all together, and a couple of smaller break-out sessions in twos and threes.

On New Year's Day we returned to the venue on Broad Street formerly known as Fred's Hideout, where so much good music took place in 1987/88. This in itself was strange for me, because the room itself brought back its own set of memories, in some cases different from, and in some cases overlapping, my memories of the people who turned up to see us. I have to confess that this contingent was nowhere near the number I thought it might be. As someone pointed out to me later, New Year's Day is a funny time for a gig, and I agree, but I guess I felt that, given that we are a rare surviving remnant of a scene which ultimately laid the groundwork for what is happening today, there might have been more people there, if only out of historical curiosity. Sixteen years is a long time.

Never mind, the friends who did turn up were a wonderful audience, and I saw, if only too briefly, a lot of people I wish I could see more often. On the whole, I think we collectively (band and audience) were not a bad-looking bunch, the ravages of time kept at bay by clean living and low lighting. However, the material, particularly Linda's newer songs "Rescue," "How About You?" and "All Things Fall Away" revealed the marks of age and experience on the heart, and maybe I'm just imagining it, but it felt like people were listening a lot more intently during these. A heartfelt thanks to everyone who came out, to Clayton Rogers for shooting the video, to Jim Duckworth for his generous loan of amplifier and the most beautiful guitar I have ever played, and most of all to Linda, John, Kurt, and Jim. It was an honor and a pleasure to share the stage with you again, and I enjoyed it more than you can possibly imagine.

What follows is more or less the entire show, minus a handful of songs which weren't captured due to some battery life issues.

The first two songs "Look Away" and "Can't Change Me," two stalwart songs of early LHTW shows, are sadly missing, though the rehearsal video does survive.


When Water Burns




How About You?

I love this song, though its subject matter is distressingly familiar.




Laff

A song for/about Jim Duckworth, probably the Train Wreck's biggest fan back in the day.




Sunday

As far as I can recall, this is a song about an epiphany of sorts which Linda had after an all-nighter in Memphis. Whatever the background, the lyrics are generally inspiring.




Skinny Little Thread

Another early song, a real heartbreaker.




Barrooms to Bedrooms

A tribute to The Country Rockers, who also played in this space back in the day, and whose drummer, Gaius "Ringo" Farnham, died ten years to the day before this gig. I always loved this song, and was really happy to be able to sing it to a crowd of people who knew and appreciated it.




Beer and Guitars

This song was inspired by the sign outside Fred's Hideout, which featured a frothing mug of beer and an acoustic guitar - both the promise of good times, apparently. I think Linda's lyrics really nail the sense of the place back in those days, when it was primarily filled with local alcoholics.




Lonely As Me

A song from the 1987 period, the demo version of which features some beautiful violin work from Roy Brewer (then our drummer), which I try to replicate here.




Hurdy Gurdy Man

A frequent fixture of our sets back in 1987 or thereabouts, especially at Fred's Hideout.




'Tis The Season

This was a retro-psychedelic meltdown, inspired, as I remember it, by a Sky "Sunlight" Saxon album which I had at the time, which was so ridiculous as to inspire.




Split the Earth

Beginning of the second set, this is a great song, which we would have probably played at twice the tempo in the past. Still, the slower pace reveals some new aspects to the song.




Onward

This is one of my favorites from among Linda's range of new material. I could say what it's about, but I won't.




Today

This is one of my very favorite Linda Heck songs of all time: for/about the late Craig Shindler, but with a message of use to anyone who ever hears it.




Love is Strange

The Mickey and Sylvia classic, a feature of our shows back in the Fred's Hideout days.




Look Out For Love

Linda's jazz-vamp classic, with Johnny Mack showing why he is the man on guitar.




Professor of Love

Somewhere there is an entertaining video of this song, shot by Roy Barnes about a block from where I used to live in Midtown. Back in the day, I think this is the song people identified as being a potential single from the album which ended up never being released.




Failing Sky

Jim Duckworth played guitar on the recorded version of this, and here I am trying to reconstruct two different parts he came up with. The late Robert Palmer used to refer to this song erroneously as "Failing Star," for some reason.




Transformed

I love this song, and for me it demonstrates the power of remaining silent, which is a valuable lesson for any musician to learn.




Crying is Done

One of the highlights of the evening, I think.




All Things Fall Away

I think this is one of Linda's most powerful new songs, though I may be biased. Only a short segment here before the battery dies, though I made a humble attempt at a cover recently here.




Rescue

A new song. Only Linda really knows what this is about, but listening to the lyrics, it seems to be about an unreachable estranged friend. "I guess maybe lost is where you want to be." Very grown-up stuff.




House is Burning

A wonderful song about Memphis gossip and schadenfreude.




Dig

A wonderful song, lead track on the Lost Album, which has also featured on compilations and film soundtracks. Unfortunately, I had a terrible cramp in the fourth and fifth fingers of my left hand, which hopefully didn't affect the whole too much.




Vela

A song postponed from the first set to the last, written in honor of a clairvoyant once resident at Decadence Manor on Madison in Memphis.




I Found My Love in Memphis

The George Clapps "classic" revived in the neighborhood where I originally discovered it.




Serious (About Rock-n-Roll)

A song we frequently used to end shows with back in the Fred's Hideout days. There weren't that many people left by this point anyway, so it felt a bit of a non sequitur.