Author: rockfag

Yet again another deadline and I’m at a loss for what to write about-oh but not really.  I was told in no uncertain terms that I must write about my roommates the Canadians, Adam and Michael, who, after about six months of cohabitation in my notorious Folsom Street flat — are sadly leaving us very soon to return to London to live. They recently told me that the distinct lack of their bold-faced appearance in these pages has left them in complete disbelief and shock, hurt even that I haven’t written anything in my column about them during their entire tenancy. After all, they’ve endured the murky mysterious and damned limbo that I call home, bringing their special brand of orange sunshiny glow to at least one room in our house.  I recall the very day I came home to find them painting their tiny room on the air well bright bright orange.  I questioned their color choice and they responded, “We read somewhere that no matter what, its impossible for your skin to look bad if you are surrounded by this color.”  This was merely the beginning, the tip of the iceberg of the wealth of supermodel knowledge, serial killer fascination, Canadian nationalism, and E-bay prowess these two caustic culture vultures of the utmost degree would show and share with me in the coming months.

Part of the reason for their departure, besides payment due notices piling up for their gateway computer, those INS agents lurking around my house, the increasing difficulty to financially survive in S.F., and the mysterious body found in a locker at the transbay terminal with twigs stuck up it’s butt, is their place of employment has decided to shut it’s doors and close up as a business. That phrase is one that’s pretty common in S.F. these days with those once snooty Dot.coms going belly up faster than you can say “Who’s sorry now you pretentious cell-phone using, ill-mannered cyber-retardos,” but in the case of my Room mates their place of employment is the world famous Hamburger Mary’s.

Sad but true, by the time you read this, The famous South of Market Institution in operation for over 29 years, will be enjoying it’s final days.  It’s still hard for me to believe that soon there will be a Folsom Street with no Hamburger Mary’s nestled snugly at the top of the former miracle mile, a welcoming beacon for a huge number of individuals over it’s nearly three decade existence.  I’ll always have fond memories of the funky, kitschy and 100% gay diner that often served as a meeting place for myself and some of my oldest friends, all of us new arrivals to San Francisco and big city life back then.  In fact, in the days before I got my fake ID, Mary’s was the only place I really could go.  They served familiar normal comfort food and provided a vivid outrageous and amusing environment that became as welcoming and warm as the food.  If you were young and enchanted or intrigued by the city and wanted to live here, Hamburger Mary’s was also a place where you could envision yourself working one day.  Who wouldn’t want to, as the staff always seemed kind of crazy and edgy and fun, never short on personality or discouraged by superiors for expressing themselves. One of my favorite memories of dining there was a particular Halloween when our waiter appeared at our table wearing a white shirt, blue jeans, a large pair of red high heels and gauze bandages wrapped tightly around both wrists and a cotton ball taped over the crook of his arm where an IV would be administered.  What was even more twisted about the whole thing was his despondent attitude in dealing with all his tables, seeming distracted and worlds away, sighing a lot, acting like someone who would be put on suicide watch if they were jailed for say attacking their customers with a steak knife.  It was brilliant and I must say that except for the high heels I totally stole the idea and did it a couple Halloweens back.

Over the years I’ve known many people who worked there but the accelerated rate in which I’ve been meeting the staff over the last 6 months through my roommates has completely verified my original thoughts, Mary’s has always employed some wildly entertaining and hilarious and crazy individuals.  As is standard in the restaurant business, many employees at Mary’s are also involved in various creative endeavors outside of work as musicians, performers, painters, heiresses, attitudinal mouthy lesbians, or paired-up nomadic hair-dye gypsies on the grift from Canada with an unusually complete knowledge of serial killers, mass murderers, and supermodels.  I’ve loved hearing a cavalcade of sharp-witted acid-tongued restaurant anecdotes and the pranks and filthy in-jokes they share, as well as the devotion and loyalty and respect for their workplace and it’s legacy.  I also thought that it bears mentioning that approximately a year ago Hamburger Mary’s had the supreme honor of being chosen by producers of Julia Child’s cooking show as a location for a cooking demo as a part of her program.  One of my roommates, Adam, was chosen to do the segment with Julia based on his previous experience on Canadian television as an assistant to the Chef on a cooking show.  I never actually saw the segment but the day it was filmed the place was charged with giddy excitement over the arrival of the end all Superstar of modern cooking.  They don’t come much bigger than Julia Childs.  In spite of his jokes about demanding a make-up trailer and other cute Julia-isms we kept tossing about, I could tell he was nervous because he is after all a cook, like myself, and this was Julia fucking Childs!  She’s got more integrity and pure star power in her little finger than a dozen Wolfgang Pucks could muster, plus she’s over 80 years old.  As I was leaving the other Canadian Michael excitedly said, “He’s gonna touch her hump for luck!” I glimpsed the hump emerge from a shiny black car as I walked away and yelled “Bravo” from halfway down the block.  Things went marvelously that day with Julia and I’m certain all of the copies of her cookbooks he asked her to sign got very handsome prices on E-bay.

Of all the fascinating leisure-time activities I’ve learned about so far in the new millennium my favorite one is Ebay, which the boys taught me about completely shortly after their computer arrived in the mail.  They really dove into it with a passion, and a very specific direction, collecting with fervor various items from the darker side of the modern American experience, more specifically, the mind of the serial killer.  I believe it all started with a portrait of Al Capone drawn by the one and only John Wayne Gacy, then before you knew it, there were framed autographs from all four of “Charlie’s Girls” living in captivity, Leslie, Susan, Patricia and Squeaky, then an actual portrait of Charles Manson as rendered by John Wayne Gacy, then a series of autographed xeroxed portraits of Richard Ramirez, John Wayne Gacy, Henry Lee Lucas (god rest his soul), Otis Toole, postcards and letters from Squeaky Fromme, a nightclub handbill signed by Michael Alig, copies of the S.F. Chronicle from the day after Jonestown, a Look magazine with a Richard Speck cover story written by Loudon Wainwright III, and the list goes on.  I even got caught up in the whole serial killer/crime thing myself, winning bids on an actual drawing of jesus speaking to what look like amputee disciples drawn and signed by Henry Lee Lucas and a copy of a wanted poster of Patty Hearst, but they are far more into it.  I’ll walk by their room and ask, “Hey what are you doing?” and will get a variety of responses from “I’m writing a letter to Leslie Van Houten,” to “We’re mourning over the set execution date for Timothy McVeigh.  We’re eating nothing but pills and booze that day.”

My own direction taken with e-bay travels on a lighter note for the most part, but one I’d have never delved into had it not been brought to my attention by the Canadians, and that is the clothing and accessories of famous punk rock designer Vivienne Westwood.  I’ve picked up scads of her vintage designer clothes and or non-original but adequate reproductions of her famous silk screened t-shirt designs from the mid seventies punk rock explosion.  It’s hard to believe that it’s been 25 or so years since Westwood’s controversial t-shirts were first thrust upon the unsuspecting world and even today they’re still quite shocking. With themes of rape, pedophilia, homosexuality, Transexuality, anarchy, nudity, blasphemy, Nazism and destruction how can you go wrong?  The boys gave me my first Westwood t-shirt and lesson in fashion history.  For this I am grateful.  In fact, they really prompted me to take in a fair amount of culturally and artistically important events, like seeing Nina Simone (and encouraging me to attend in black-face), and going to hear John Giorno do a poetry reading and discussion.  There are also the gifts of note like the copy of photographer Larry Clark’s first book Tulsa, and the autographed Hanuman book by Patti Smith, Jim Goad’s outrageously misanthropic (and out of print) Answer Me!, Joe Dallesjandro’s autograph and my belt buckle that looks like a gun.  The other day they told me that they were bidding on a pair of Frances Bean Cobain’s baby shoes that were somehow procured by a builder hired to work on the garage where Kurt shot himself.  They were apparently in the trunk of his old beat up muscle car.  I asked him what he planned on doing with a pair of Frances Cobain’s baby shoes.  “What are we gonna do with them?” he asked incredulously, putting his hand to his nose as if holding the shoes and sniffing loudly while making masturbatory gestures.  They slay me.  I recall when one of them used to provide in house care for quadriplegic clients for work and I asked him if he liked his job and got along okay with his patient and he said, “Well, you know, we don’t really see eye to eye.”  One night as they were saying goodnight and exiting my room they stopped and said “Knock Knock” to which I replied, “Who’s there?” and they said “Don Baird”

“Don Baird who?”

He stuck his face back inside the door and looked at me and said, “EXACTLY!”

They are so wrong, and that fascinates me.  What is even scarier to think about is how wrong they tell me they used to be.  Their stories kill me, like how they were at two different Canadian public medical facilities, both located on Queen’s Blvd trying to get their government funded seconals at the same time when they heard that Divine died, or how one of them was once chased by a gang of young Asian guys down into the subway where he barged into the ticket takers glass booth and told the attendant he wasn’t leaving and didn’t know why they were after him until he looked at the gang of guys and realized that he had cut a business card into little squares and sold it to them as LSD a week before at McDonalds, or how they used to walk in to a party so fucked up they didn’t realize they were talking out loud and say, “What are we looking for, money or drugs?” or how they used to go to drag bars that featured lip-sync contests with the grand prize being ten pounds of frozen meat, or how they shaved one eyebrow off of a passed out room mate they disliked, or how they once had a large steamer trunk big enough to fit a person in and they used to play this prank on their friends where one would get in the trunk and they would invite a friend over and the other would start visiting with their guest and actually start badmouthing the person in the trunk until the guest would join in on the bitch session in full force and the other would say,  “Interesting that you feel that way about it.  You can come out of the trunk now, Adam.”   I hear these things and I think to myself, “People just don’t know how to have fun anymore.”

One evening at home they informed me that it was their anniversary and I wished them a happy anniversary and asked how many years they have been together.  They paused briefly to think then told me it was their 18th!  They have been together literally since they were like 14 or 15 which I find astonishing and unique in the world of the gay male mating ritual.  It’s unusual to find that someone you were with at such an early age is still that special one at your side all these years later.  I find it terribly romantic this bond the two have formed and how it continues to persevere with no lack of commitment and even passionate sparks.  I recall the day that Michael came into my room where I was chatting with my friend Jerry and he said, “Do you wanna see one of the most bizarre and tacky fashion accessories ever known to man?”

“Sure,” we said.

He produced a flat package of panty hose and said, “These are acid wash colored panty hose with three gold metal medallions on each leg near the ankle.”

“Oh my God,” we both drawled, truly astonished.

“If I put these on before Adam gets home, I’ll be getting me a piece tonight!”

I’m really going to miss the boys, but their return to London has prompted me to make plans to finally travel abroad in the near future, so it wont be for long. They stand warned.

I think a great many people will miss Hamburger Mary’s as well—it’s departure from the strip hasn’t really sunk in for a lot of folks.  But it is true, and rather than be sad or angry or feel like an old queen, I think it best to just say thank you, Rose, for being there for us for 29 years of fun, freaks and comfort.  Yours was a huge achievement, never to be forgotten.

 

Here it is time for me to write again and unfortunately I’ve been sick as a dog with a horrible flu, the most uncomfortable one I’ve ever experienced and a nasty affliction I wouldn’t wish on a soul, well maybe a certain soul or two perhaps but they’d have to be pretty evil for me to want them to feel like this.  Even worse, this illness completely made me miss two shows I was really looking forward to and of course planned on writing about, one was the curious Alternative/Country act from Illinois called The Handsome Family at Bottom Of The Hill and the other, which I’ve had tickets to for a month now but sadly relinquished them to a very elated bartender from downstairs because I heard him playing them all day long in my feverish throes and just had a feeling he might be wishing for a pair of tickets to see Sleater-Kinney magically appear to him if he were to keep on playing them and wishing really hard, so I stumbled down in stocking feet and gave them to him and I was right!  He was hoping for such an event to transpire.  I returned to my bed for more fever-induced dreams, chills, headaches and whining for my mother.  And it is still not over, and I started writing my column rather hurriedly because I somehow had lost a day in there.  It’s not Wednesday at all, still Tuesday for the rest of the world, the healthy world.  Now I have to bring the garbage back in that I worked so hard in my weakened state to put out, Wednesday being garbage day on my street, and the day to start thinking about something else to write about besides the shows I missed.  What fine timing miserable illness can have.  So I did what countless other ill people, shut ins and agoraphobics do, I turned to the internet to find points of interest worthy of  bringing up or writing about.  One of my favorite shut ins, the great Southern writer Flannery O’Connor, housebound by Lupus, didn’t have the internet to turn to so she instead made clothing for her prize exotic chickens to wear.  She wrote a lot of letters about her birds as well.

As I started gathering information on The Handsome Family I started finding a lot of references to Flannery O’Connor, which always quickens my pulse as she is one of my very favorite writers, and when a contemporary musical artist prompts a music critic to draw a literary likeness or comparison to exemplify what this music does, then we’ve got a generally exciting artistic development that defies categorization by simple musical terms.  The Handsome Family do indeed defy categorization. They reluctantly have been tagged “alt/country” which seems a bit like a John Doe tag on an unidentified corpse at the morgue, a major simplification or mistake, and this unique duo know that every corpse has a story to it, one of great beauty or darkness or simplicity or pain or violence or sadness or absurdity or passion.  Some may have lived countless exquisitely plaintive moments of clarity or madness—stories from the darker side of the human experience, or the unfettered perception of a child.  The Handsome Family find great raw beauty in this darkness of the lives of simple folks and their varied tragedies, triumphs, sins and psychosis and are creating a body of work that stands as some of the most revealed stark and brilliant examples of american songwriting as any I’ve ever heard.  I think the “alt” should be removed and replaced by “true” because these songs draw upon a huge range of emotions often explored in more detail by country western music than most other genres, and one can definitely see stylistic similarities or nods to classic Country/Western songs from the likes of Hank Williams or Johnny Cash.  Also detectable are folkish sorts of Woody Guthrie-isms and a bit of  grassroots appallachian lilt that brings to mind material from the Hillbilly Music collection that was popular three or four years back.  The handsome family’s music  has respectfully earned it’s place under the ever widening umbrella of Country music, but if that’s the same place where Shania Twain, Garth Brooks and The Dixie Chicks rest on their mountains of money, it’s the same planet but completelydifferent worlds.

When I listen to the Handsome family I really begin to wonder about the world these narrative tales of death and sadness and murder and  rage and dying neighbors and a milkman who falls in love with the moon, come from.  I know that Brett and Rennie Sparks the two band members have lived in chicago for the past 12 years and recently relocated to New Mexico, but that somehow doesn’t bring me any closer to the strange lands these stories originate in, detailed by wildlife, specific plants and trees, bodies of water, bugs and worms and snakes, wind and snow and moonlight the color of milk–all things indigenous to somewhere, many different places I’d guess, all from the mind of Rennie Sparks.  There is one song from their third album, Through The Trees, that takes place entirely in chicago called “The Woman Downstairs” about a woman who starves herself to death while her boyfriend eats hotdogs and weeps with rats on the fire escape.  The lyrics reference lake michigan, Ashland Avenue and the subway train with the line “In a thrift store chair I drank cases of beer and dreamed of lying down on the el tracks.”  Then the song gently moves to its conclusion with an image of anorexic futility and corrupt  authority with. “The woman downstairs lost all her hair and wore a beret in the laundryroom. I borrowed her soap and bought her a Coke, but she left it on a dryer. She died in June weighing 82. Her boyfriend went back to New York. The cops wandered through her dusty rooms. One of them stole her TV.”  It’s so cold and sad and chilling, as plaintive and haunting as the pained yodel of Hank Williams, as Country as Country gets.

The Handsome Family create and record most all of their music in their living room on a macintosh G-3 utilizing a drum machine often or various found-object percussion instruments and guitar, bass, autoharp, mandolin, melodica, church choirs, pipe organs and other sounds from the depths of their trusty noisemakers.  Live they use a mini disc player for backing tracks and Brett plays guitar and Rennie plays bass, autoharp and melodica.  In popular rock I’ve noted a definite trend over the past three years being the emergence of  the duo as essentially enough members to create and perform as a full sounding entity.  The Handsome Family are yet another shining example of this.

They maintain their own website which I found truly inclusive and fascinating and it can be found at http://handsomefamily.home.mindspring.com/.  The site has photos, all their songs lyrics, their bio, and all of their available merchandise for sale including an actual collection of short stories by Rennie Sparks called Evil.  Their site led me to several interviews mostly with Rennie, and they are quite often hysterically funny and abstract.  She talks about dressing her cat up in clothes (shades of Flannery again) claiming it to be dressed up as sherlock homes at the time of the interview, and some of her personal theories about fame and body size, “You have to be really tiny to be a big star in america, look at Shanaia Twain, she’s so tiny, if I saw her I’d go give her a dollar for being so tiny.  But I’m huge so we went directly to Europe to tour, where you don’t have to be as tiny.”  Her banter is genuinely funny and I bet she can keep a small group in stitches, yet the contrasting flipside to this quality are lyrics like this from possibly my favorite Handsome Family song, “Drunk By Noon.” “Sometimes I flap my arms like a hummingbird just to remind myself I’ll never fly. Sometimes I burn my arms with cigarettes just to pretend I won’t scream when I die…If my life was as long as the moon’s, I’d still be jealous of the sun. If my life lasted only one day, I’d still be drunk by noon.”

I really wish the flu hadn’t kept me from seeing them live but I have a feeling there will be many more chances to see them in the future.  And although I was too ill to do much of anything, I did think about dressing my cat up in clothes, and coincidentally his name is Handsome.

If you can believe it, I went all the way to New York and didn’t even visit ground zero.  You would think that my generally morbid fascination with such things would draw me to it almost immediately, not to mention my many friends who asked me to take pictures of  the site where the double phallus landmark symbol of  capitalist superiority used to stand, but I didn’t go there.  I actually got pretty close to it, which I could tell by an increasing police presence on every corner but more obviously by the smell in the air.  It was nothing putrid or totally unbearable, just the scent of  smoke, like a house fire after it has been put out, only stronger and unmoved by the blustery wind whipping around Manhattan on this unusually warm winter day.  For some reason I decided against getting a closer view, some unexplainable feeling deterred me.  I probably just didn’t want to look like a ghoulish tourist or seem insensitive to the tragedy by snapping photos and gawking or worse yet, emoting gratuitously.  You know, often I am given the opportunity to meet a famous person like a musician or a television personality and I usually decline because I get nervous and tongue-tied and likely because deep down I think I like to keep the distance, so as not to spoil the mystique surrounding the celebrity  In a way I felt like that about ground zero.  It’s not like I’m a fan of total terrorist destruction and massive loss of human lives, but I bet we’ve seen more of ground zero on television than syndicated reruns of I Love Lucy this fall and winter season.  Airtime somehow equated to star-power, making the WTC site one giant television star I ultimately declined meeting face to face, and I Hate Lucy.  I still find it curious that I was really close but didn’t do it.  Something just said don’t.  As for the rest of New York, it was one gigantic, incredibly charged open invitation of a city to just dive into and explore as much of as I could fit into four short days.  I quickly saw what they mean when people call New York “The city that never sleeps.”  Corner stores and some restaurants just never shut down and there seems to be some degree of life on the streets at all hours. I found the fast-paced energy level combined with the coast to coast flight jet-lag more than adequately exhausting to deliver me to my bed….but just that one time.

The main reason for this trip was of course to catch Kiki and Herb’s Xmas show A Stranger in The Manger, running through the rest of the year, 5 nights a week and it was already sold out completely, save for the new years eve show which is going to be a special theme where the duo turns back the hands of time to 1967, just before Kiki lost her darling daughter Coco, left unattended on the deck of a yacht in the french riviera.  Coco will actually be joining her mother onstage that night for a duet of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for Kiki and Herb’s New Years Eve at The Blood Red Casino.  Coco will be played by the inimitable Kathleen Hanna of the incredibly popular synth-pop trio Le Tigre and formerly the magnificent voice behind the legendary band Bikini Kill—who recorded quite possibly one of the greatest punk rock releases of all time in 1993, a seven inch single with the songs “New Radio”, “Rebel Girl”, and “Demi-Rep.”  Hanna is a long time fan of Kiki and Herb’s and they’ve opened for Le Tigre a few times over the past two years.  Sounds like it could be quite a closing night and New Year’s Eve celebration, perhaps as exciting as New Year’s Eve on the SS Poseidon.  No matter how you look at it, someone drowns before its over.  As Kiki says, “Ladies and Gentlemen…people die, that’s all you need to know.”

The two nights that I caught their show while in New York were quite astonishing and in some ways very different than past shows; not a departure from form so much as an extremely deep mining into the depths of  the souls and booze drenched philosophies of  these two characters created by Justin Bond and Kenny Mellman almost a decade ago.  Many of the song choices were a bit on the more sensitive and obscure side, including an old Dan Fogelberg song, “Another Auld Lang Syne” that with a bit of re-working was seemingly autobiographical for Kiki, dealing with her reunion with her daughter Miss D who was taken away from her by Childrens Services Division.  It was actually one of the more oddly moving songs of the show.  Another great but more somber song was an original by Stephen Merrit of the Magnetic Fields written especially for Kiki and Herb about how beautiful New York is when it snows.  Considering the fact that they haven’t had any snow to speak of this winter, the song had a sort of melancholy feel to it but it’s a beautiful song and then right near the end comes a menacing line about “if someone were to flatten all of manhattan”  and then the resounding line of the chorus, “Have you seen it when it snows?”  I noticed a few people in tears at that point but don’t get the wrong idea.  This wasn’t simply a sentimental journey.  Kiki’s meandering between song anecdotes were more pointedly rabidly political than I’ve ever noticed before.  She left almost no stone unturned, riffing on our “moron for a president”, foreshadowing the sublime way the administration is steadily whitling away at our civil rights while everyone is all caught up in the grief or worry or  patriotism of  retalitory military actions leading towards victory.  Victory?  What victory?  “Now the women of afghanistan can bare their face publicly so the men of afghanistan can see who they’re raping!”

Among a small variety of props on stage was a little ornamental white dove, or the Dove of Peace, a symbol of diplomacy and unity that had internalized so much of the worlds woes it had developed a brain tumor, not to mention the voice of a crow, and when kiki took a seat on the small wet bar center stage it appeared that something was iritating her in that princess and the pea way.  She couldn’t get comfortable but finally pulled the object that was causing the discomfort out from under her.  “Look ladies and gentlemen, it’s baby Jesus!”  She eventually put the tiny savior face down behind her saying, “I don’t want to hear a peep out of you, I don’t care if you are the saviour there’s only one star in this manger and that’s Kiki.”  A bit later she picked up baby jesus and said, “You better stay away from bethlehem this year, Jesus.”

The outrageous and shocking comments were far too many to list and ultimately kept the crowd in stitches but then I began to realize something about the appeal of Kiki and Herb in general.  Performers can shock audiences pretty easily and many have for years, that is not uncommon or difficult.  But Kiki and Herb seem to have accomplished a rare combination of  both shocking the crowd as well as moving them to tears or a genuine emotional response with their melodramatic yet intensely human life experiences.  This was especially compounded by kiki’s astute political views, expressed through a very stream-of-consciousness process like a journey unfolding in a skewed uniquely Kiki way yet resounding with an ultimate clarity and truthfullness that was undeniable.  Freak that she is, Kiki knows the score and she tells it when others are afraid to.  It’s emotionally liberating.  It prompted a suggestion from Kenny Mellman’s mother that Kiki and Herb should be performing this act out on the street corner to the people who could use a dose of clarity in this odd miasma of Christmas, war time, and creeping insidious fascism of  our second Bush administration.

One of the best musical moments in their show came with a firey brilliant interpretation of  the current Mary J. Blige hit “No More Drama,” in which the vocal interplay between the duo was never more brilliantly arranged and performed, gradually building up to a screaming, gravelly crescendo of soulful fervor that I’m certain Mary J. would have approved of, Kiki down on her knees throwing her entire being into a great song that they so completely inhabited it could have been written for this show.  It was breathtaking.  It should also not go unsaid that Herb (Kenny Mellman) has become insanely skillful over the years but how does one improve upon what I’ve always felt was one of the most instinctual and pure examples of musical genius I’ve ever known?  Steady live performance has built upon an already enormous talent, it always does.  He continually proves himself  as an original, handling varietal styles in his own way from subtle additions as faint as a whisper to manic bombastic and thunderous attacks that one night sent a piano wire flying from the white baby grand.  Kenny also has naturally grown into a more vocal performer as well, singing a solo intro and an entire song during a costume change.  His proud and wonderful parents, whom I had the pleasure of sitting with at the show one night, excitedly informed me that next month Kenny will be playing a solo show for a change of pace.

On the one day that I set out on foot to see some of  New York I just by chance happened upon a record store that I occasionally order things from by mail.  It’s called Other Music and they specialize in rarites, reissues, and a huge selection of international esoterica, trance, electronic, prog rock, soundtracks and on and on.  Oh yeah, they are also the only record store where Kiki and Herb’s album from last year, Do You Hear What We Hear, a delightful christmas record is available for sale.  As a matter of fact it was the number one selling CD in the store for the past two months.  Judging by the amount of folks in and out of there while I dug through the whole store I sense that might be a significant number.

I’ve left myself barely any room to say much more about New York but actually it was a very short visit and the high lights were simple.  I tried Krispy Kreme donuts at long last, I smoked in bars just like the old days, I went to a bath house just like the even more old days, I returned from the baths to the quaint gay owned and operated hotel I stayed at in Chelsea to learn that my chosen place of lodging actually functioned in a fashion quite similar to the baths, I proceeded to meet many fascinating people staying there, I took a walk around Times Square, happened upon a fourth anniversary party at a bar called The Cock where Lady Bunny did an absolutely fithy little number followed by the sexiest go go dancers I’ve ever seen which made me ask myself, “Do we even have go go dancers in SF anymore?”, I saw huge rats scurrying across streets late at night, I never once got pan handled or felt in the presence of danger, I saw Robyn Byrd’s late night smutty homo show, caught all the big depasrtment store christmas windows, ran into real live christmas carrolers outside my hotel and at JFK airport I was forced to remove my shoes at security then run like crazy tripping on my laces to catch my flight home.   I had a great trip and will visit again soon.

I was thinking the other day how in the past two years in the world of rock music there have been a few  new bands that burst onto the scene, and through pivotal music press adoration, (often unanimous and mostly always British) good looks or a ‘good look’ a series of live shows that grabbed a hold of some in-the-know audiences, and a fresh exciting or vital debut release of note, became huge sensations and got tagged as the proverbial next-big-thing.  To some extent I guess the road to rock-stardom is always a bit like that, but this next-big-thing dynamic has seemed far more pronounced in recent years than I recall .  The most blaring example of  this exhilerated rise to superstardom would be that of The Strokes, the new york city based five-piece band who swept the UK and the rest of Europe, Australia, Japan on the strength of a three song single and the british music press going full tilt ape shit with praise and excitement about this bands music, their mop-top good looks, their age, and how rapidly the excitement over them was turning to mania, spreading like wildfire across Europe, creating mad rushes for tickets, drawing in celebrities to the commotion.  All of this from the people who brought you Beatle-mania.  The British Music Press has long been all about creating sensations, which of course isn’t their sole intention in music criticism but frequently the scribes do whip it up into a frenzy over a band and someimes the momentum builds and sustains into new levels of adoration and focus.  The British people take their pop stars very seriously or so it would seem to one riding London’s underground subway and noting that the story on page one of the paper everyone was reading was about Posh Spice losing her headset microphone in concert while the vocals kept coming, another lip-sync scandal exposed!  And what would the ten year reign of Oasis as the top british band be if it weren’t for the highly press-scrutinized inner-band conflicts and rivalry between the brothers Gallagher, the break-ups/make-ups, or their current celebrity shag or shack-up or various drunken antics?  If memory serves, Oasis told us they were the greatest band in the world before the british music press did, but the press fanned the flame accordingly.

I also must say that over the years magazines like Melody Maker and NME have proclaimed many bands as the next big thing and subsequently the mania escaped them and the press dropped them as if they had never existed.  In fact there have been many such instances, far too many to name, but one example that comes to mind is Birdland, a four piece band of teenage andy warhol lookalikes who were reportedly on the verge of world domination, the very essence of the white hot magic that is rock and roll.  They were gone in two weeks, a terrible lp and some special limited edition single packages barely made it to the 99 cent bins here in the states.  Other examples would be The Age Of Chance, who caused a stir with their industrialized version of Prince’s hit “Kiss” while the original was still on the charts, or the wacky girl group We’ve Gotta Fuzzbox and We’re Gonna Use It, or Daisy Chainsaw, or Stump, Crack, Head, and Zodiac Mindwarp and The Love Reaction—all bands the press lauded then forgot about in that fickle way that has made me take such proclaimations by British music rags with a grain of salt.

In the case of The Strokes, I’d have to say the hype was indeed warranted.  Their debut LP was one of the strongest records of the year and the band has really kept a level head about all the praise and resulting pressure of being the next big thing.  They continue to tour and work at improving and creating as if the mania had never occurred, as if Kate Moss wasn’t backstage and Radiohead weren’t in the audience.  They even seem to provide extra attention to their fans who might be edged out by the overwhelming rush of popularity by making extra tickets available to people on their mailing list at certain gigs that are likely to be sold out or chocked full of industry people.

They seem to be handling the burden of overnight stardom with grace and conscience.

I hope some of the other bands that have been receiving a similar treatment by the british press are keeping perspective as well.  Two such bands that seem to be getting the royal treatment but to a somewhat lesser degree are The White Stripes and The Hives.  I believe The White Stripes are so humble and respectful by nature that they will know precisely the proper way to deal with the sudden rush of praise from across the Atlantic.  As a band they’ve been around a bit longer than the strokes and on these shores they have been garnering some pretty heavy weight praise already so they might be a bit more well equipped for being tagged the  “next big thing”.  They seem practically oblivious to anything but creating music on their own terms and having fun playing it for as many folks in as many places possible.  I sense that they are prolific beyond our comprehension and naturally pre-disposed to create unfettered by any amount of fuss or mania that falls upon them.  In other words, I think they are the most important band in Rock and Roll, a live wire conducting the genuine voltage in its purest most simplistic and powerful form.  In other words, they are the Next Big Thing.  There, no even I’ve said it.  Success doesn’t seem to have even a slight chance of spoiling them.

The Hives are from Sweden and have been together since 1996.  They are a five piece and their names are Howlin’ Pelle-Vocals / Nicholaus Arson-Guitar / Dr. Destruction-Bass / Chris Dangerous-Drums / and Vigilante-Guitar.  They have three LPs released and they sport a smart look with white shoes, black shirts and pants and thick white ties.  I first noticed their records available in New york when I visited there but at long last I’ve seen they’ve hit the record stores here.  The brits started to take notice when The Hives LP,  ‘Your New Favourite Band’ careened into the top ten albums chart.  Soon came the bold proclamations of their greatness cropping up in live reviews, and then came the main thing that got me all excited about the group, their hit single “Hate To Say I Told You So” and its accompanying video.  This song really is a powerful catchy hook-laden unhinged example of brilliance in the garage power-pop punk rock vein.  This band plays faster and tighter than most bands ever think of trying, and the vocalist is very charismatic. His facial expressions are hilarious and angst ridden and he jumps around a great deal, singing like each song were his last while the band behind him jerks spasmodically or poses in a variety of rockstar classics.  Watching the video gives me goosebumps and a rush of exhileration that I can liken to the first time I heard other landmark songs like “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, when you just know something big is happening.  You just know they must really tear it up live too.  It’s so refreshing to see a band that definitely feels a need to do more than just stand there and play, a band that gives a show, a performance, something they throw themselves into.  One of my favorite bands ever definitely held this view and delivered every time and that was the now defunct Murder City Devils, who had disdain for the lamentable practice of bands  neglecting certain elements of showmanship and daring, a willingness to give of themselves 100% in live performance.  I sense that The Hives are like this from the reviews I’ve read.  They’ve played san francisco once, opening for The International Noise Conspiracy just before their record hit big.  I certainly hope they return to the states soon.  It’s fun to keep up with the next big thing.

Just as deadline for this article rolled around I was met with some very sad news about a co-worker/friend who had bartended at the Hole in the Wall, Mike McGee.  He quite unexpectedly died in his home.  Mike was the quintessential HITW bartender, the  archetype, with his biker-tough tattooed and long-haired look and somewhat intimidating manner.  If  you got to know him better you could see there was much more too him than just that.  He was generous, intelligent, had a great sense of humor, was lots of fun on roadtrips and he really defined the Hole In The Wall experience with his straight-forward candor and rugged good looks. He played a mean game of pool and served in the military during the vietnam war.  He will be sorely missed.

On the first shift without him I was playing some of the songs he always liked best and ironically every one of them bore some kind of message about death or a repeated refrain of “I guess I’ll see you in hell.”  If there is a hell, I doubt you’ll see Mike there, he’s not really your standard cookie-cutter hell-bound type.  I think he just enjoyed the sentiment of the song, as much as I enjoy playing it in his memory.  It’s like he’s having the last laugh.  I’ll miss him more than I can say.  Long live Mike McGee.

Has anyone but me noticed that the singer for Creed, the multi-platinum selling post-Alice In Chains post-Pearl Jam post-Grunge popular rock band, has the voice of Cher, just an octave or two lower?  Really, give it a listen.  Match any Creed song up to the likes of “Take Me Home” or even that hideous comeback hit “Believe” and you’ll hear all of the same weird inflections, miniature growls and  yelps that have characterized Cher’s entire musical career and unusual singing style.  It’s worked for her for decades but I certainly hope it doesn’t fare as well for Creed, the band that must have been listening when Beavis said to Butthead, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if like all bands sounded more like Alice In Chains?” and took it to heart.  There are so many multi-platinum selling bands that just totally suck and I can never understand why they’re so popular, what is it that propells a band up into that echelon of  million sellers?  Why are we subject to the mediocrity of bands like Creed, Staind, Slipknot, Blink 182, Linkin Park, Sugar Ray, Puddle of Mudd, No Doubt, Godsmack, and more while so many other bands seem so much more worthy of acclaim and massive popularity?  Is it still all about that lucky break, that pivotal appearance, that video going into rotation just before spring break, the selling of souls to Satan or Sony, word of mouth, or simply just a song with a good hook?  What sends the kids out to their local Tower or Virgin outlets to make concerted enough purchases to push folks like Eminem or Limp Bizkit into the consciousness of the masses?  Why is it that many new bands seem to skip the humble beginnings stage of a career in rock music and immediately take on the limousine driven gold-plated sheen of  corporate industry mega-properties, staying at the Four Seasons Hotel downtown like they were Dianna Ross as opposed to The Phoenix Hotel where it seems all the cool bands used to stay comfortably on a mindful budget with no massage therapists on duty?  I think it’s pretty obvious that bands are definitely buying into the corporate sponsorship deals a lot more readily and frequently now than they used to, lending their endorsements and representation to certain products all the time for major amounts of money.  Rock stardom has moved further and further away from the D.I.Y. ethics of punk rock’s origin, the bond of a band being just like the people who come to see them and support them, the like-minded community from whence they came.  Today I don’t think bands play to people like themselves.  You could take a band member off the stage and place them in the crowd at their own show and they quite possibly wouldn’t feel any sense of comraderie or community with their audience but rather a disdain, like “Who are these people?  Don’t touch me…security, where’s security!”  Success currently in rock music could essentially be more within the grasp of a band featuring a vocalist who looks like Matt Dillon as opposed to a masterful guitarist with an other-worldly ability like Jimmy Page or a brilliant lyricist like Elvis Costello, or a singer who could actually really sing as well as pose and mug for a soft drink commercial.  The criterion for being a rockstar has definitely become convoluted with demands that go above and beyond just being in a band, developing your artistry and showing creative growth and expertise and pleasing and broadening your fan base.  Now it requires image consultants, personal trainers, jumping through every concievable flaming hoop of promotional activity your record label suggests, hiding or fabricating elements of your “bio”, and basically restricting yourself.  Gone are the days of rebelious hellcats bucking standards, setting trends in fashion without the aid of a big designer, trashing hotel rooms  and cutting a hedonistic trail around the world of  sexual exploits, excessive drug and alcohol abuse, and the adulation that allows and antics that fuel the creation of rock and roll legend.  No, there will be none of that for todays rockers, they’re to busy preparing for the day when they get to meet the Pope, just like Bono.  I bet the reportedly devoted spiritually deep bible-studying leather-clad pretty boy singer for Creed is cueing up for his turn to meet Pope Jon Paul, or as I refer to him after his tour de force Easter appearance in Italy, Monsignor drool-bucket.  If  he wants to meet him I’d say time is of the essence,  we’re gonna be seeing color-coded smoke signals coming from the vatican sometime soon.  He couldn’t even wash a single foot or carry the cross of forgiveness around the grounds where so many christians were slain, let alone take part in the easter egghunt in the altar boys quarters after dark.  Hell, the few words he muttered were unintelligible.  If he dies will Bono be the next Pope?

On that note The British Royal family I’m sad to say, has lost a member that no one could ever replace with the passing of the Queen Mother at the astonishing age of 101 years old, a good twenty years older than the pope.  In her long life you never once saw her being trotted out in the public eye without her faculties about her, easter bonnet or not.  She managed to carry on through life with her dignity intact, looking neat as a pin and frequently surprising and delighting her adoring public with an occasional disco dance or an outrageous hat or her enduring strength in the face of several tragedies over the last few years.  The Royal Family is now dwindling in numbers with the devestating loss of Princess Diana, the more recent death of Princess Margaret and now the peaceful passing of  the oldest and likely most beloved member.  If it weren’t for Prince Harry’s widely publicized  recent indescrepency involving the use of marijuana, I’d be hardpressed to choose a new favorite royal.  Harry should learn that what they say is true, marijuana does indeed lead to the use of  harder drugs…thank God.  William might be first heir to the throne, but Harry is the true Royal Without a Cause and my new favorite.

Speaking of families, I’ve become completely enamored with a new television family, new to me that is, as I don’t have cable and until now had only heard about the hit HBO series The Sopranos.  I’ve been renting and viewing the series on DVD and it’s pretty amazing.  When it comes to these new and bizzarre programs produced by HBO like The Sopranos, OZ, and Six Feet Under and Sex In The City the fact that they don’t have to adhere to the guidelines and standards of  normal broadcast television makes these shows sort of like a thrill ride.  I’m continually shocked by the the amount of times I’m hearing the word fuck coming come out of the mouths of virtually every Soprano’s character in the cast, the ambient sort of  non-stop nudity of  the tittie-dancers at the strip club where they meet and conduct business, the sexual content, and the rampant and extremely graphic acts of violence.  All of these staples of  a New Jersey Mafia saga are oddly juxtaposed by the portrayal of a family just trying to get through day to day life providing a nurturing healthy environment and sense of proper family values and the ability to deal with lifes ups and downs and always having some leftover pasta to heat up for anyone who stops by.  The character development is so well paced and the actors are turning out such brilliant performances you begin to care about people you really shouldn’t, as they are criminal—theiving, extorting cold blooded murderers, yet you understand their plights and choices and identify.  The inherent danger of creating a show like this kind of became clear to me when I was out seeing a live show at the eagle last week.

Having witnessed so many pistol whippings, execution style murders, stranglings, brutal beatings etc. on the show, this violence has permeated my consciousness in a way that really makes me feel more prone to committ such acts, or think about it at least.  I was up near the front of the bar by the stage watching an amazing set by local group Erase Errata an all female four piece with a kinetic, charged and rhythmic style and a great sense of  angular terse post-punk influences and deconstructive redefinition of form.

The band is growing in popularity so the area I stood in was quite crowded and predominantly female.  The crowd was dancing and jerking about in a way that was comfortable, people recognizing each others personal space, etc. when I overheard this long haired guy behind me who had earlier pushed me forward like it was the thing to do say, “I’m gonna cause some trouble,” and laughed like a moron as he threw himself into the crowd trying to start a mosh pit like we were seeing Limp Bizkit in a huge auditorium or something.  He caused everyone around him discomfort and people were getting pissed, spilling drinks, getting knocked down and he just continued.  Eventually more nitwits started in like that until the band actually said something about it.  The whole time I just wanted to grab him by the hair, break my bottle on his face and repeatedly punch his head till he couldn’t stand up.  I had my bottle ready and I assumed most everyone would like to see this happen as well.  It would be so satisfying.

I of course didn’t do it, knowing I’d probably end up with assault charges and jail time but I really wanted to and feel more likely to do something like that than I ever have before.  And the band came to a close on one of my favorite songs by them, the last line being, “I can’t tell myself from a TV.”

I was watching MTV the other night, something I don’t do very often so when I do it’s like I go crash-course on it and watch entirely too much in an attempt to remind myself that I really most likely don’t “want my MTV”, and considering that it was Grammy Night, I got an eye and ear-full of it in all it’s ultra-edifying from-the-inside-out,  tabloid-like, reality-TV, gritty-rockumentary, and moralizing Scared Straight-style programmed glory. Imagine, all of those manipulative lowest-common-denominator sub-genres of modern television all rolled up and spewed out to a viewing audience in a matter of just a few hours and you’ve got a good basic idea of  what MTV has evolved into over the last two decades.  I won’t even go into the ridiculous retarded and rendered meaningless by it’s own history of absurd and inept recognition of achievement in the music industry the Grammy’s are.  For many, this award show has come to mean little more than a chance to see if some of the biggest but not necessarily brightest stars in popular music have any sort of knowledge regarding formal attire or a personal sense of style strong enough to pull off an eccentric or unique look.  For the artists in attendance, they must be aware that their outfits will be scrutinized, picked apart, criticized and have entire shows for two weeks after devoted to approval or disapproval of  what everyone chose to wear that night.  This makes for a big fashion showdown, a plethora of statements made by a motley crew of those crazy musician types, dressing up and down for effect, making statements with fashion of personal cultural identity, unkempt unclean anti-fashion maverick, anorexia couture, slutty like J-Lo or slutty like Lil Kim, proper black tie formal, glittery cleavage, jeweled eyebrows and wigs, Chanel in capital letter logo, patriotic stars and stripes (isn’t it amazing how something that could be viewed as so wrong, even retro-bicentennial, could suddenly become fashionable due to terrorist attack on America?  But then again, I’ve often thought that terrorists should have an active part in fashion dictate.), urban street wear chic, sci-fi Patti Labelle, or the combination of an Indian Sare with jeans sported by the night’s big winner Alicia Keyes.  I had to wonder if the men appearing at this event stood before their closets in preparation for this night and asked themselves, “What would P. Diddy do?”  It was pretty clear that Kid Rock didn’t, clad in his best Coors beer t-shirt, sweaty hat, and casual short pants, with his girlfriend the properly blonde and uber-chesty pass-around-rock-and-roll-party-mol Pamela Anderson on his arm.  And why did one member of hip-hop duo Outkast seemingly opt for Cher’s new blonde wig and a pink gaucho jumpsuit?

As I clicked through the multi-channel wasteland known as cable TV that night there was one Grammy moment that I’m truly glad I caught, and that was Mary J. Blige singing her current hit song “No More Drama.”  I must admit that in the past two years I’ve become a sort of closet Mary J. Blige fan, as she isn’t an artist that most people would associate with my general tastes in music and definite leanings toward alternative or independent rock and roll.  People might think I was losing my edge or something, that I was just a few steps away from mainstream gay diva idolatry, soon to be caught in the act of purchasing a Celine Dion box set or something.  But Mary J. Blige’s last three releases have really gotten under my skin, culminating with this epic, powerful statement of a song about something she has seen plenty of, but isn’t having it any more, “No More Drama.”  The sentiment and message are very strong, spiritual and mature, personal yet applicable to most lives, cathartic and tough yet positive, whipping you up into a swelling crescendo of orchestrated gospel bravado and pure emotional fury, then ending, as it began, with the simple piano piece recognized as the theme from the soap opera The Young and The Restless.  It’s a brilliantly crafted soulfully delivered song.  I like it a lot but that in no way prepared me for what Mary J Blige did with it at the Grammys.  In a slightly more up-tempo rendition the undisputed queen of hip hop soul vehemently sank her teeth into this song, giving a performance of such passion and fervor you could hear the crowd roar as she single-handedly blew the doors off of every act in the entire Grammy’s ceremony.  I’d even go as far as saying that what she did in just that one unforgettable five minute song practically topped the entire careers of most of the awarded artists that night.  It seems kind of dangerous or scary in our already youth-obsessed culture, that the new contemporary pop stars, Alicia Keyes, Nelly Furtado, Christina Aguilerra, Britney Spears, Pink, etc. are all 12 years old, (and stardom has seemingly taken its toll on Christina who could pass for 38).  If the trend continues on like this I could likely live to see embryonic pop stars, ripped from the womb like veal in my lifetime.  Mary J Blige was so good it shocked me, I mean I know she’s good, but I had no idea I’d be getting goosebumps and flipping out while merely watching her on television.  She gave a performance that showed the little ones how to get back to Magic Mountain because they’re just not big enough to go on a ride like this.  She reigned supreme and I was satisfied enough to ignore the rest of The Grammys and channel surf through the rest of what cable TV has to offer.

I caught an episode of MTV’s The Real World, a show I thought they had stopped doing but apparently not, and this group of seven young people, planted in Chicago, live in a highly stylized Sharper Image catalogue human habitrail and hamster fun house, complete with a freight elevator, bubbling spa and, as if that weren’t enough, a large communal bathroom for boys and girls alike.  Clever move, MTV!  That will certainly heat up the small screen with more bare nude male torsos and digitally blurred female nude torsos frolicking about titillating each other into that “should I fuck or not fuck my room mate” danger zone.  Sex does seem to be a preoccupation with this group, especially homo sex, as the episode I saw was mostly devoted to everyone speculating about the sexual orientation of one of the two model-like good-looking, accomplished and educated white male room mates.  One black female member of the household came out as gay, comfortable with her own nudity, and a total cock tease, all at the same time in the first 20 minutes, driving the one black male roommate crazy with disbelief that she has seen him in the shower and still doesn’t want him.  Then there’s the fun loving sex-in-the-city-damaged white girl who attends a concert of a popular musical artist whose identity is not divulged and she stays the night with him and I’m just going to assume that it’s either Ole Dirty Bastard or Paul McCartney.  The other white girl is always on the phone and doesn’t agree with the gay lifestyle in general and they failed to focus much on the very pretty very quiet girl.  The fag first comes out to the dyke, then the non-fag white guy, so secure in his hetero-orientation and acceptance of the gay lifestyle, actually sort of brings the fag out—like a coach.  Being openly gay is a pivotal detail to the shows future and direction—they need to show him on a date which hopefully will end with an on camera male to male kiss—something even these adult themed progressive too-real-TV-like programs are still totally obsessed with.  It’s all so giddy/retardo in the cheap thrills department, and so much more sexual than the crew of seven who settled in to this cow town a few years ago.  Our gay guy did things like whine about hygiene issues, spoke at high schools about HIV, held hands with his boyfriend a bit then died.  We didn’t even catch a glimpse of his washboard abs or see him out slumming in gay bars with his lesbo exhibitionist cock tease roomie.  Yeah, the SF Real World folks were dull as can be.  I can hardly wait for gay communal shower night in Chicago.  I bet that each cast member will be gay for at least one episode, except the black guy who is dead set on  converting the lesbian, who is always naked.  Sound like fun?  It’s not.  It’s as insulting and lame as date rape, it’s not  Queer As Folk (which I watched and enjoyed a bit until I was sadly overwhelmed with the thought “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re over.”), it’s more like Queer For Folk, again and again and again.  Is this progress?  Has gayness moved way ahead towards mainstream understanding and acceptance?  I don’t think so, and

I still wanna fuck the straight guy most.

There was one other atrocity I encountered on MTV and it was in the form of a public service announcement.  Modeling itself after those commercials that itemize certain props and list their price then mention some sappy family-like precious moment and say, “priceless”, this particular PSA starts listing things like Fake ID–$18, Safe House rental $800, Computer–$899, box cutters–$3.59, aviation courses $600, cell phones $79, plastic explosives, $250 and then when you expect to see the twin towers exploding followed by a “Priceless,” it flashes the question, “Where do terrorists get their money?”  then another question, “Do they get money when you buy drugs?”  and the final frame says “Maybe.”

I don’t know what group devised this ad or why but I found it as offensive as Falwell’s comments on the Pat Robertson show post September 11.  For the group responsible for this manipulative reactionary propaganda I have three words:  Iran Contra Affair.

Mary J Blige has three words for you too.

You know, it really thrills me when locally known or identified talents suddenly hit upon new levels of achievement or notoriety, a convergence of details all in their favor or the creation of their finest work to date, hitting their full artistic stride or the top of their game, entering a realm that will likely insure them some of the exposure they so richly deserve.  There have been a couple of shining examples of this recently and it would be a sin to not faithfully sing their praises here in the pages of Beat This.  The first is Lynn Breedlove, upon the publication of her first novel entitled Godspeed.  Lynn, best known as the full-on, balls-to-the-wall vocalist for the punk dyke metal band Tribe 8 whose very existence has pushed issues of expression and equality and sexuality into places and faces as diverse and unsuspecting as the male dominant punk rock scene and the separatist and initially perplexed Michigan women’s music festival for a decade now.  There was really nothing like seeing Lynn onstage skank dancing in a circular motion, shirtless with a strap on dildo sticking out of her pants, which at times she’d eventually saw off with a chainsaw or dull knife or force a guy in the audience to go down on, but the simple fact that she did these things not just here in SF but all across the states in places where people weren’t so tolerant of anarchist feminist political vaudeville, or mock genital mutilation, or genitals for that matter.  Where-ever Tribe 8 went, they blazed the trail for so many other women of the underground, lesbians that even most lesbians were afraid of, the marginalized subculture of extreme butches to  FTM’s, mod prims, green-haired punk dykes, cartoonists, lesbian S&M sex workers, women of contemporary literature, aggressive spoken word artists and poets, filmmakers etc., all these unique factions brought together by simple mutual admiration and respect for Tribe8’s tireless commitment or just the awe they inspired in so many others like themselves to be themselves. After all, not every dyke wore khakis, had bad mullet haircuts and dangly earrings and listened to the Blazing Redheads.  There was a new outrageous dyke emerging, defying assimilation, being confrontational, throttling the gay community with artistic endeavors replete with political purpose, creating a new voice and opening the floodgates to thousands of others.  To me Lynn Breedlove was the perfect example the new and extreme lesbian of the 90’s, Futuredyke, like a super-hero flanked by her band of equally empowered, fearless female greats.  She also created and ran an all-female bike messenger service called Lickety-Split and one day she had some photos delivered to my home to accompany an article I was writing and the messenger who made the delivery was the most stunningly beautiful woman imaginable, an enigma with eyes that danced with light, and I thought, Lynn, you’re such a dude, imagining a fleet of similar Goddesses making up her staff.

More recently there has been some changes in Tribe 8’s line-up, most notably the departure of long time guitarist Lynn Flipper, a great player with teen idol-good looks who has decided to make films instead of music for now.  Her departure had some worried about the fate of Tribe 8 but some new players were added and reportedly the change has sparked new life into the band.  Enough so to have earned them a spot on an upcoming bill that in some ways must be a big highlight, thrill or milestone for them as a band, for on April 25 at the Warfield Theater Tribe 8 will be opening for Siouxsee and the Banshees!  But wait! Right at press time another show was added on the previous night at the Fillmore same line-up so that’s twice they’ll have the honor—and a possible second chance for folks to get tickets as the Warfield show sold out like instantly.

But enough about that, the book Godspeed (St Martin’s Press, $24.95) is what I wanted to talk up here.  I’m only about half way through Lynn’s first novel and it’s the kind of book I purposely force myself to put down and halt my consumption of it because I want to make it last as it is so rich and fascinating and hard and funny, a page turner that takes you on a journey weaving in and out of harsh reality and drug induced hallucinatory whimsy, memories to present moments, heroism to humility, violence to tenderness all in a rapid-fire highly detailed manner so fresh it crackles with amplified surges of uncontrolled noise, rolls you through filth and smells so acrid and blows directly to the synapse of nervous impulse as opposed to just getting under your skin.  You experience this uniquely alive turn of the phrase with all five senses and it takes your breath away.  For a first novel this is so strong it’s frightening.

In the acknowledgements it states, “Mom says to tell everyone this is a work of FICTION.” as the book’s main character Jim, a dyke bike messenger speed freak who dates strippers and kicks ass and sells drugs and lives in a squat and tours as a roadie for a punk dyke band, bears some definite parallels to Lynn’s own life.  If you’ve ever heard Breedlove do any readings or spoken word stuff that she does so magnificently, you have an idea of the narrative fast paced style Godspeed takes on, but just an idea because she hits on a whole new realm of effectiveness in construction and she tells so many stories within stories, with incredible characters bouncing in and out of Jim’s singular quest for the ultimate drug high or the love of Ally Cat, the stripper of his heart who can’t abide the junkie behaviors yet can show him glimpses of the one thing in life he might fully submit to, romantic love.  Or at least that’s what I’ve gathered so far, being only halfway through the book and savoring each chapter like a fine feast.  I will say that the book portrays certain drug experiences with the most evocative accuracy and conceptually detailed descriptions that I’ve ever read.  The rituals, the preparation, the ceremony, the high, its metamorphosis as you introduce another drug on top, and then another, the personalities encountered in buying drugs, the people surrounding dealers, the casualties who lose their minds and are hearing aliens, the perpetual tweak projects that never reach completion, and some of the most graphic and ugly details of severe abuse I’ve ever heard—they’re all in there—the agony and the ecstasy, served up without judgment, romance or glamour, just the truth.

I maybe should read the rest of it before going on more but I think the literary world is going to take note and recognize that with Godspeed a brilliant new talent has emerged—alive and kicking ass.  Buy this book—it’s beyond just great.

Finally, the other local or semi-local act that I feel is really on the verge of getting the massive attention they so deserve is Imperial Teen, especially after their thoroughly delightful show at The Great American Music Hall last week.  On the heels of their third and latest release, On, which I reviewed a couple issues back, Imperial Teen played a set to be proud of.  The new material worked perfectly, the band never seemed happier, and proficiency was at a definite high.  It was a buoyant ebullient set, focusing on the new material yet including all the best songs from their previous albums.  The response of the crowd prompted a second encore from the band with Roddy Bottum explaining,  “A long time ago when we first started, we decided to be one of those bands that never played an encore, now look.  That idea really stuck.”  Over all it was just a really fun show.   I’ve written about them so much already I cant think of much more to say besides I think they are somewhat over-looked and underrated for such an attractive group of people creating some of the best intelligent contemporary pop music out there today.  The fact that they’ve been chosen as the support act for the upcoming Pink tour, the young artist of “Lady Marmalade” fame in heavy rotation on MTV, is an excellent opportunity for Imperial Teen to possibly reach a larger audience who are bound to adore them, its hard not to.  I believe it’s going to be a good year for a great band.

Incidentally, Pink who had seen a particularly inspiring 4 non-blondes show in her youth apparently sought out vocalist Linda Perry to collaborate with and she ended up co writing Pink’s entire second album, which has produced two hit singles so far and I also noticed that Janice the beautiful and seriously talented bass player from former San Francisco sensation Stone Fox is now playing bass in Pinks band and can be seen wailing away on her instrument in Pinks latest video.  Linda Perry also has a cameo appearance in the “I’m Coming Out” video as a bartender and was featured a lot in a recent episode of MTV’s A Day In The Life:  Pink.  Just thought you’d all like to know.

 

A couple of Thursdays ago I rather unsuspectingly wandered into the Eagle Tavern to catch yet another installment of Live Music Thursdays.  This night was featuring a larger than usual line-up of acts as a part of the The Mission Creek Music Festival, a local celebration of musicians enjoying its sixth year with a week of live shows scattered across the city at various smaller venues.  By the time I had arrived the one band that I really wanted to see, The Quails, had just finished but there were a couple more featured acts to go and the crowd gathered was a very interesting mix of familiar and unfamiliar faces so I was content to mill around and socialize.  While doing so I noticed a group of people slowly start to congregate on the stage area of the patio, the only thing setting them apart from the rest of the crowd was an occasional brass instrument and maybe a flashy sort of marching band uniform.  That’s when I remembered that one of the nights featured acts was called The Extra Action Marching Band, which is all I really knew about them.  I liked the name but didn’t really think they would be an actual marching band.  I talked to some people in the crowd who were there specifically to see the act and they filled me in a little more about the EAMB, or at least that they were recently featured as an opening act that actually closed the show for David Byrne at his recent appearances at The Fillmore.  By then the group of people on the stage area began to slowly march in formation from outside to the main bar area playing a sort of new Orleans style funeral march, the notes hanging and lingering lazily accentuated by a guy with a megaphone speaking in French while certain percussive motions brought to mind something far more primal than say Dixieland.  I suddenly knew the place was in for a real treat, these 35 or so musicians and dancers were already showing a decidedly bent and bizarre nature with the stylistic hodgepodge of influences in just the music alone.  Before long they had circled the bar and as many as could fit took the stage while others including some really powerhouse dancing girls jumped up on the bar or danced at stage front.  Once in place, so to speak, the band exploded in sound and motion and the room just sprang to life with an edgy exalted joy.  The invasion of a familiar place by a large group of strange people can be very off-putting and uncomfortable, but if that group just happens to be a marching band, well then it’s quite another story.  To witness your standard uniformed marching band playing simply a Sousa march is a very exciting thing, or it was for me when I was about seven and standing right at street level, having never seen one before.  I knew something was approaching, sounding like a herd of cattle but with rhythm, buffered by the swelling cheers of the crowd. Then I caught first sight of them, rigid and marching and decked out in uniforms with shiny ropes on the shoulders and big feathers on tall hats.  As if that weren’t enough already, the band burst into song and proceeded marching in time led by the member with the fanciest uniform, heading right at us.  It was the loudest thing I had ever heard, the big bass drums and snare drums sending waves of sound so thick you could feel the vibrations inside of you, then the tuba’s and the trombones and trumpets and French horns kick in like a tornado, so strong you fear being swept up in the air, floating away from the crowd and your mom by the sheer power of sound, then the flutes and clarinets and glockenspiels provide a more delicate dreamy soundtrack for the center of the swirling cacophonous fantasy you drift through. Only with the metallic clash of the cymbals ringing in your ears do you float back to earth, and then all you really want to do is run after the band and join them forever and never go home, not that home is something horrible or bad mind you, but what could be better than marching around with a group of people creating this magnificent sound, this magical powerful thing that swept me off my feet and into a dream?   If you could, who wouldn’t want to do that forever? I knew I could probably master that triangle instrument in no time.  Seeing The Extra Action Marching Band at the Eagle made me feel just like that again.

The show was a bit different than what I saw so many years ago at the Pear Blossom Parade in my hometown.  I saw a high school marching band doing nothing more than traditional American songs and marching in simple stiff formation.  The people in EAMB looked like people who might be arrested for hanging out anywhere near a high school and there was nothing rigid about their formation—it was totally chaotic, dancers on the bar, patrons bending back to avoid getting smacked upside the head by a tuba, trombones stabbing down towards the ground or up towards your chin or erratically back and forth when players were dancing not playing, and dancing girls yanking you into the chaos for some extra action dirty dancing.  But the music was the thing—an interesting hybrid of multi-cultural influences with boundaries far reaching as hip-hop and punk to the famous Moroccan ensemble Master Musicians of Joujouka.  They sound like a marching band but actually more primal and more polyrhythmic and jam-like, even at times a touch improvisational.  The percussionists were the standout musicians, aggressive precise and sometimes seeming to move about four directions at once.  Their overall sound differed from traditional marching band fare in that it was definitely prompting lots of movement in the crowd.  It was an instant party, with an almost otherworldly spell taking control like Haitian voodoo drummers inducing trance-like states in unsuspecting vacationers.  It was fucking wild, way too much fun, and as far as I could see, nobody got hurt.  Seek out the EAMB’s next scheduled appearance and other useful information on the band at their website, http://www.extra-action.com/,

which is chocked full of great stuff including short movie and sound files.

I thought it was an odd coincidence that the next show I attended featured a band that boasted a total of eight members with lots of horns and percussion who had chosen a definite funk and groove oriented style not usually embraced by musicians emerging from the indie/punk scene of Sacramento, the birthplace of !!! (pronounced chik chik chik)   Yeah, the name is sort of annoying to try to explain when searching for their eponymous CD release at the record store but if you can find it by all means buy it.  Already a couple years old, that CD is one of the most enduringly satisfying and engaged sort of punk/funk/groove affairs that I have ever heard and it has literally become like a staple food to my DJ sets.  The songs are long and kinetic bass and drum driven constructions that build up to frenzied horn and guitar crescendos and chant-like vocal assaults then deconstruct to the spareness of  that fantastic ever present spine of a bassline, often several times during one song.  The lyrics are self-revelatory sort of statements or philosophies regarding a lot of life’s issues, like drug use and things learned from it, spotting insincerity in other people who want to be friends, the importance of not holding oneself back with limitations in taste or style, and basically awakening yourself to the importance and fun of experiencing and dancing a good groove.

!!! bring to mind a variety of influences from the past, like Gang of 4 and their melding of punk’s sharpness with a more funky groove, and The Talking Heads as they forged into a deeper exploration of African rhythms and cerebral art-school rock, and a score of other bands from the early 80’s New York scene like Liquid Liquid, ESG, Konk, Indoor Life, Bush Tetras and even Pylon, an Athens GA band that is often lost or hidden in the shadows of R.E.M. and the B52’s.  At any rate, this time period was rich with great music that I find myself listening to all over again in part because !!! brought them to mind.

In early 2001 six members of  !!! relocated to New York and started making a splash on the east coast, the two remaining members in Sacramento visiting every three weeks or so to rehearse or play live at loft parties and small venues.  The band was starting to get some good press in major magazines like Rolling Stone and Spin and recently they signed a deal with Touch and Go records.  They plan to release their sophomore effort in early 2003 and their first record will definitely be redistributed and hopefully much easier to find.  I was completely thrilled to learn they were playing in town recently opening for Trans Am so I went to catch this act, very curious about what they looked like and if they could achieve live the magic of their CD.

I missed about half their set waiting in the will call line for my ticket. Unfortunately I heard two of my favorite songs by them while standing outside but I finally got inside and enjoyed the rest of their set which all seemed to be new material.  Live the band could definitely hold up to the promise of their recorded stuff, maintaining a very fine-tuned sense of timing and high energy level.  The entire band was also in constant motion, when not playing or switching from horns to percussion they were dancing or clapping hands.  The band looked like a fairly unassuming bunch of guys, kind of like members of your high school marching bands off-shoot jazz-lab.  The vocalist was pretty taut and intense like a wire, occasionally jumping on the crowd verbally for not dancing enough, then apologizing for doing so.  In all I was very impressed with what I saw and I believe the world at large will likely be enjoying this band a great deal as well in the very near future.  Buy their record, and if you can’t find it just ask for it, go ahead.  You should see what it does to spell-check on my computer.