In The Navy

Yesterday was Father’s Day, so I spent some time on the phone catching up with my dad, who lives in South Carolina. We usually talk about sports, work, the weather, or whatever it is two people who live 2,500 miles apart might talk about. But yesterday we got off the beaten path and onto the subject of his years in the Navy, and he started regaling me with some hilarious stories I’d never heard before. One good punch line came from a Marine recruiter, who set my dad straight with “SON, I WOULDN’T GIVE YOU A DROP OF SWEAT OFF MY BALLS ON A HOT JULY AFTERNOON!” He was in the Navy from 1970 to 1973, and was deployed on the USS Reasoner from March to September of ‘73, for a six-month tour of the Far East.

I was just three years old when he was discharged, so it was pretty cool to hear about some of his adventures and get a timeline of our various moves across the country and back. It definitely made for memorable father’s day conversation – we had some good laughs, and I got to see a side of my dad that I don’t know much about.

A few hours after we hung up, I was chuckling over some of his stories, and decided to do a little Google research on the USS Reasoner. The ship was decommissioned in August of 1993 and she now flies under the Turkish flag. But because everything in my life seems to come down to a song, the biggest and best tidbit I found was that the USS Reasoner was the ship used by the Village People in their video for the 1977 song ‘In The Navy’.

I kid you not, check it out:

Firehouse Kustom Rockart Co./Rockin’ The Mint

Last Thursday night The P and I attended a pair of events in San Francisco that were themed around rock poster art. The first event was held at the advertising agency OgilvyWest and featured the modern poster art of the Firehouse Kustom Rockart Co., which is located right here in Oakland, CA. Many thanks to Fred over at Unnecessary Umlaut for swinging us an invite to this very exclusive event…

Firehouse Kustom Rockart Co.’s posters jump off the page and have a very distinct look, in part because they use multiple layers of metallic paint. Here are some examples of what they were showing off at OgilvyWest…

[Eric Clapton]

[New York Dolls]

[Les Claypool]

[Greil Marcus]

[John Prine]

[Lee 'Scratch' Perry detail from the collage in the lobby of OgilvyWest...]

*****

Our second event of evening was a benefit/award show at the Old Mint in downtown SF. This historic building had fallen into disrepair and reportedly become home to thousands of rats, but it’s being renovated for use as a museum of the city of San Francisco. Thursday night’s event was a sneak preview of the space and served as the introduction of seven Bay Area musical acts into the museum (for the record: Boz Scaggs, Booker T, Huey Lewis & The News, Grateful Dead, Tower Of Power, Carlos Santana, and Jefferson Starship). This formal event was sponsored by Wolfgang’s Vault, so we knew we were in for some psychedelic eye candy. I was hooked by the invite alone:

Here’s what the program looked like:

The walls of the Mint were covered in oversized reprints of vintage Fillmore and Family Dog posters, as well as pictures of movers and shakers from the SF music scene like Chet Helms, Bill Graham, and John Cipollina. There were also some rock artifacts on display, like a swinging door from Winterland. Cool stuff…

[Much to look at...]

[Pretty crowded though...]

[Door from Winterland...]

[Detail...]

[Bill Graham]

[Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?]

[The vaults downstairs were dedicated to the poster art and sounds of the musicians being honored. The vaults also featured the grapey product of different Bay Area wineries. P was pleased...]

[Some of the vaults were dark and winding. A bit spooky...]

[John Cippolina]

[Jerry Garcia keeps watch over a bartender...]

[A reproduction of a vintage Fillmore ticket served as our ticket into the award show/concert, which was being held across the alley in The Mezzanine...]

[We stayed and listened to Ben Fong-Torres give the keynote on the SF Music Scene of the 60's, but when the evening started dragging into a bogus award show ceremony with speeches, we hit the exit. All in all, a great evening full of colorful sights and sounds...]

Songs For A Tree

As a certified tree-hugging, environmentalist hippie, I’m always sad to see a brand new tree stump. So I was quadruply disappointed during last night’s stroll with The P when we discovered four fresh stumps in our sprawling local rose garden. The biggest of the four sits on a hill overlooking the garden, and the tree it represented was big enough to produce a void that now reveals the entire side of a not-too-pretty apartment complex. The rabble-rousing commie third-grader in me had to count the tree rings to see approximately how old this tree was, so I climbed up on the massive stump, blew away the fresh sawdust, and counted, and counted, and counted… to 121. Which means that this tree was planted around 1888, when Grover Cleveland was president of the United States and George Eastman was patenting the name Kodak.

Here are ten songs dedicated to trees – or one song for every dozen years our old friend sat on that hill in the rose garden and watched the world go by…

Listen: One Tree Hill [U2]

Listen: Tree Green [John & Beverly Martyn]

Listen: Trees [Wayne & Wanda - The Muppet Show]

Listen: Stumptown [Nickel Creek]

Listen: The Family Tree [Steve Goodman]

Listen: Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree [Tony Orlando & Dawn]

Listen: Garden Of Four Trees [The Explosions]

Listen: A Forest [The Cure]

Listen: Cut Down That Old Pine Tree [Cootie Stark]

Listen: Trees [Snooks Eaglin]

Long Way To The Top

Last night The P and I attended a private screening of the documentary Anvil, which was shown in the amazing Fantasy Records building in Berkeley. Anvil is a Canadian metal band who hit their commercial peak in the early-80s, when they were considered on par with (some would say better and faster than) groups like The Scorpions, Bon Jovi, and Whitesnake. But while the latter groups would go on to conquer MTV and sell millions of records, Anvil slipped into not-so-quiet obscurity, playing small bars and churning out one increasingly poorly-produced album after another.

After an opening montage of past glories (including footage of the band rocking a packed stadium while lead singer/guitarist Steve “Lips” Kudlow plays his axe with a dildo) and famous talking heads (Lemmy: “I always liked Anvil. They get my vote”) we catch up to the group in the present. Lips is working delivering box lunches for school kids, but he and drummer Robb Reiner, who founded the band together at age 14, haven’t let their dreams of rock stardom die. The film follows these 50 year-olds as they keep on rocking and trying to claw their way back to the top.

Certain shots (the band at Stonehenge, a dial turning to “11″, the band playing to a handful of fans in an airplane hangar-sized venue, and LP covers with titles like Backwaxed and Pound For Pound) seem to intentionally draw parallels between Anvil and Spinal Tap. But while those comparisons are easy to make, they’re not entirely accurate. Tap was an oblivious band of buffoons, but the guys in Anvil are all too aware of the long, grinding road that has got them nowhere. In spite of circumstances that would make lesser men bitter, Lips goes about his business with an optimism and determination that’s impossible not to admire. Forget heavy metal and forget Spinal Tap – what emerges here is a very funny and deeply moving portrait of two dudes following their dreams. “A HYMN TO THE HUMAN SPIRIT” is a pull-quote used prominently on promotional posters for the film, and that’s no lie.

As we were entering the screening room, one of our hosts told The P and I to “prepare to cry” – which seemed funny considering that we were about to watch a film about a metal band. But you’d have to be pretty hard-hearted to not fight the waterworks at least a couple of times during this movie. You’ll see the trials Anvil goes through – not getting paid, playing to empty rooms, getting snubbed by labels – then you’ll hear Lips say things like “I’ll play for no one” and “The music lasts forever” with a dumb grin on his face, and you’ll wish more rock stars cared as much as this guy.

If you don’t like metal, don’t worry – you’ll still love Anvil.

*****

Watch the trailer:

(A very special thanks to Stuntrocker and Umlaut for arranging the screening!)

It’s A Shame About Bob

As the title character in the 1992 movie Bob Roberts, Tim Robbins plays a shady, dim-witted conservative politician who hides himself behind a guitar and a smile. Roberts is a baby-kissing man of the people who charms his way past the many skeletons in his closet, and to the brink of the United States Senate. Bob Roberts is a wry bit of political parody that provided some chuckles at the time of its release, but now stands as a nausea-inducing flashback of the Bush era for anyone on the left side of the political aisle. What once seemed implausibly amusing now looks sorely prophetic. This and Wag The Dog are two 90s’ movies that went from being genuinely funny to utterly unwatchable, due only to subsequent real-life events.

Robbins is a well-known liberal crusader, making his portrayal of the arch-conservative Roberts all the richer. Because of his true political leanings, Robbins decided to not release a soundtrack of the songs from the movie. He feared, with good reason, that these songs would be played out of context, to support the very causes parodied in the film. But thanks to my friend Rob (and no, his last name isn’t Boberts) I have a copy of the songs from this film, and I want to share a couple of them with you today.

As the culture wars heave their last ugly grunt, these songs can provide the grins for which they were originally intended. But a word of warning: for those still embittered by the Bush/Cheney years, these probably won’t be yee-haw funny quite yet. And, respecting the spirit of Robbins’ wish regarding the soundtrack, the links below will disappear after one week. They are meant as listening tracks, for the readers of this space…

[links removed]

Statuesque Accordion

Most towns have statues of war heroes on horseback – but not Cotati, CA. The statue that stands in the southeast corner of Cotati Plaza honors local accordionist extraordinaire Jim Boggio, who passed away in 1996. Boggio has been described as “one of the happiest and nicest men you could ever hope to meet” and his memory is honored each year at the Cotati Accordion Festival. His statue is a smiling, happy departure from the typical small town memorial.

*****

Here are two accordion-related tunes – one featuring the instrument, and another about it…

Listen: Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam [Nirvana]

Listen: Squeeze Box [The Who]

Rainy Day Music

Bob Dylan famously claimed that “Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.” Growing up in Oregon, I learned to feel the rain, because it sure beat standing around just getting wet. That skill has come in handy over the last week, as the Bay Area has been mauled by a torrential rainstorm that dumped more than five inches on San Francisco in one 48-hour span.

Here are some songs that were inspired by those clouds in the sky, and serve as a good soundtrack for sitting and watching the raindrops roll down the windowpanes…

Listen: Buckets Of Rain [Bob Dylan]

Listen: Rainy Day, Dream Away [Jimi Hendrix]

Listen: Little Bit Of Rain [Fred Neil]

Listen: The Rain Song [Led Zeppelin]

Listen: Rain [Richard Betts]

Listen: Go Ahead In The Rain (Pimp Juice’s Players’ Paradise Remix) [A Tribe Called Quest]

Listen: Escape (Pina Colada Song) [Rupert Holmes]

Swingin’ With Cole

Perhaps the greatest American songwriter, Cole Porter was a musical force from the 1920’s until the mid-50’s, creating hundreds of tunes for both stage and screen, and indelibly lettering his style in the Great American Songbook. He never settled for an easy rhyme, and made music that was always witty, smart and sultry. In particular, his songs about relationships still resonate with the joys and frustrations of being madly in love. Many songwriters have tackled the topic of love, few have handled it so deftly and gracefully. “Birds do it, bees do it. Even educated fleas do it,” he observes in ‘Let’s Do It’, and providing those fleas with their Phds is one of his typically wry touches. The ultimate tribute to Porter is that his music still sounds sophisticated, still speaks to the many conditions of love in the 21st century, and still gets played in the well-heeled clubs.

Listen: Let’s Do It [Ella Fitzgerald]

Listen: Night And Day [Frank Sinatra]

Listen: Ridin’ High [Peggy Lee]

Listen: Love For Sale [Bobby Darin]

Listen: It’s Delovely [Ella Fitzgerald]

*****

“There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something, we’d all love one another.” – Frank Zappa

Rolling With The Kid

I spent most of yesterday looking around on Facebook and making contact with people I haven’t talked to in years. I discovered that roughly half my graduating class from high school (Springfield High School, Class of ‘87) is on there, and, well… what a trip. Seeing the people I grew up with looking like adults and posing in pictures with their spouses and children is both disorienting and flashback inducing.

In the spirit of the flashback, I decided to take a few minutes to reflect on some of the music that accompanied my high school years. The town I grew up in (Springfield, OR) is a very blue collar place, supported mostly by a dying wood products industry. In her book about child-murderer Diane Downs, author Ann Rule described Springfield as an ugly step-sister to neighboring city Eugene (and I’m not sure which hurts more – the semi-truth of that analogy, or that I just cited Ann Rule as an “author”). She may be right, but Springfield is a place with many interesting nooks and dramatic vistas, and I spent a lot of my teenage years behind the wheel of a red 1972 VW Bug, driving all over that town and dreaming of the day that I could leave its sawmills and orchards behind.

All of my trips up Hayden Bridge Road and down Main Street were punctuated by music from my modest collection of cassette tapes – remember those? Some have held up pretty well, others are as embarrassing as the bowl haircut I sported in my 5th grade photos, but they were all part of the soundtrack of a time when I was a restless kid, rolling down the road to somewhere else.

Prince | Sign O’ The Times

dk says: Prince was an essential for me in high school. Around The World In A Day, Under The Cherry Moon, and 1999 all got play, but Sign O’ The Times was the dominant tape in my deck.

Listen: [link removed]

AC/DC | Who Made Who

dk says: The original AC/DC best-of, this compilation leans heavily toward the Brian Johnson years, but rocks from start to finish.

Listen: Ride On

INXS | Kick

dk says: The band behind my first concert, it seemed like everyone at Springfield High listened to these guys in 86/87…

Listen: Need You Tonight

Beastie Boys | Licensed To Ill

dk says: This tape stayed in the deck for two straight months during spring term of my senior year.

Listen: The New Style

Def Leppard | Hysteria

dk says: This one really speaks for itself.

Listen: Animal

LL Cool J | Bigger And Deffer

dk says: I knew every word of this album back in the day, but it hasn’t held up well.

Listen: Get Down

Bon Jovi | Slippery When Wet

dk says: This one also speaks for itself, although it led to a good debate here.

Listen: Or not.

Dead Or Alive | Youthquake

dk says: This one has drawn some verbal fire from friends and family over the years, but it’s still a thumbs-up in my book.

Listen: Lover Come Back To Me

The Cars | Greatest Hits

dk says: Not necessarily a favorite, but a staple nonetheless…

Listen: Since You’re Gone

Billy Idol | Vital Idol

dk says: Billy Idol is funny. And another debate ensued…

Listen: Catch My Fall

*****

QUESTION: What did you listen to when you went cruising during high school?

Super Boss

Historically the Super Bowl has delivered less than spectacular football games, and the same could be said of its ham-fisted halftime shows. Viewers of the first Super Bowl were treated to the no doubt scintillating spectacle of the University of Arizona and University of Michigan marching bands, and the performers rarely rose above that level for the game’s first three decades. But within the last ten years, the Super Bowl has produced some great action on the field, as well as the halftime stage.

U2 solidified the trend towards serious, non-lip-synced performances with their halftime show in 2002. In the last few years The Rolling Stones, Prince, and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers have turned the intermission into an epic mini-concert, and this year’s performance by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band continued this pleasant new tradition. It used to be that you could safely run to the bathroom and load up on snacks during the halftime break, but no more.

“Ladies and gentlemen for the next 12 minutes, we’re going to bring the righteous and mighty power of the E Street Band into your beautiful home!” Springsteen shouted like a country preacher. “I want you step back from the guacamole dip! I want you to put the chicken fingers down! And turn your television all the way up!” The Boss is a joyful performer as a rule, but he seemed especially pumped up yesterday, bounding around the stage, tossing his guitar in the air, and at one point sliding across the stage on his knees and crashing into a TV camera before smirking like a misbehaving teenager.

The band led with the one-two punch of ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze Out’ and ‘Born To Run’ (both from the breakthrough 1975 album Born To Run), before finishing up with ‘Working On A Dream’ (the title track from Springsteen’s latest, complete with gospel choir) and a ‘Glory Days’ with lyrics altered for the occasion (the baseball player with a speedball was benched for a football player with a hail mary). Meanwhile, the large crowd on the field couldn’t have been more animated if they’d been bussed in from Jersey for the event.

All in all it was a performance worthy of the considerable Super Bowl hype, and a nice reminder that superstars – football and otherwise – often save their best stuff for the biggest stage.

Listen: Tenth Avenue Freeze Out [from the album Born To Run]