2CJ

When I drive down
Pacific Coast Highway
I bless the ocean
I bless the sky
and remember always
this is where Claudia Jennings
tragically died

Glittering glow girl
shimmering apparition under the disco ball
another centerfold shot
for a diamond hard apple 8-ball
silver tank top
glitter on your jeans
gritting your teeth
through another nude scene

Gator Bait
Deathsport
Unholy Rollers
Fast Company
looking so perfect
living so imperfectly

Malibu ocean’s drawn a veil
for Claudia’s tears
my frightened fractured
Playmate of the Year
holding hands to eternity
with Stratten, Monroe, Mansfield
and Thelma Todd
sorority of the damaged
celluloid gods

The Rooster Chews Tobacco

He awoke in bed in a crucifix position. He always found himself waking in the crucifix position, arms spread out to the edges of the bed and his legs locked together pointing down and his head pointing up to the ceiling. His eyes blinked once, twice and then he bent himself up in the bed, ruffling his hair.

He slept fitfully that night; he heard a lot of hooting and hollering outside. Not unusual for a marina where all the swells got drunk in their yachts and made a lot of noise. It bothered him because it was his first night out of jail and he wanted to have a peaceful night’s sleep in his houseboat, but no. Big Jason Gulliver was pissed.

“Fucking, fucking, fucking assholes”, Big Jason grumbled. “Fuckin’ lifestylers. Ruining the bay with their rich kid bullshit”.

He woke up in his street clothes, a soiled t-shirt and baggy fatigue pants. He leaned over to put on his Doc Martens when he saw a rat scurrying across the bedroom door. He picked up a boot and threw it at the rat.

“Get the fuck off my boat!” he yelled.

The bedroom was as Spartan as it gets. There was his bed, barely big enough to fit his gigantic frame; a small dresser filling in as a hamper as it collected an unwashed load of clothes; a tiny nightstand with a lamp for his paperback reading, and that’s it. The room was completed by a window with a dirty curtain faded by the sun.

On top of the dresser sat a cassette player with dozens of cassettes strewn about, some buried under a few banged-out paperbacks like Sartre’s “Nausea” and Burroughs’ “Nova Express”.

He got up to face the music, face the world, face the city that paid to put him away, and above all else face his friends, even the ones he owed money to. He fetched back his boot and put them on and walked out the front of his boat.

He stepped up to the dock where a blonde man with a trimmed beard waited for him.

“Oh hey, Jason, I figured it was you. You’ve got a phone call”.
“Tell them I’m still in jail. It’s probably somebody calling about their money”.
“Well, okay. I didn’t know you got out already”.
“Well, the fuckin’ rats didn’t know either, goddammit”, Jason cussed. “Got any coffee?”
“No, dude”, he moped. “Sorry”.

Big Jason lumbered up the dock towards the exit spilling out into the city street, looking around at the cars parked nearby.

“No, fuck it, just got out for that”, he thought. “Can’t jump back into it. Besides, someone might be waiting for me to do it again”. Still, he couldn’t resist ogling at the flashier cars parked around the corner.

He squinted his eyes shut and walked uphill towards the main street to get a cheap breakfast. He felt like a recovering addict, only instead of swearing off drugs he was swearing off theft.

Jason walked like an exiled minotaur, legs stomping spread far apart in a gesture of assertion, funny in contrast to how close his arms were kept to his chest, in the way a boxer keeps his arms and fists close to his face to provide protection in the ring. It might even be said that Big Jason either boxed at some time or trained for boxing during some chapter in his life. This gait was topped off with him leaning forward as he walked, his head and shoulders behaving like antennae, behaving like curb feelers on the lookout for trouble.

Did you ever eat breakfast without even enjoying a single bite? Jason hammered away his meal without really concentrating on what he was tasting, just going through the motions. It wasn’t what you’d call being in a trance. He simply had his mind on everything else but what was in front of him. Sitting in stir will do that to you.

He caught his reflection in the mirror across the room and saw a large, wide piece of half-sculpted concrete. His chin was large, his lips turned down, his short spiky hair crowning his head. The only thing dispelling all this facial cruelty was a set of calm, almost tired eyes. There was peace there while the rest of his body looked hard. He cut an ominous figure but there was something downbeat in his demeanor.

All this soul transference felt harmful because he was too young for such divisions in his mind. While he acted dumb and simple on the outside it was a crowded theater on the inside, thousands of ideas and thoughts racing through his mind like an electrical storm.

He paid his bill and walked out of the café in a trance, slowly trotting down the hill back to the narrow street at the bottom of the hill. An endless line of parked cars showed themselves off to him as he walked by. His eyes flashed at the flashier cars and he felt the tingle, the irresistible urge building inside of him. It wasn’t fair; he was just released for stealing them and here they were heartlessly teasing him.

It was a veritable feast of automotive beauty, steel and chrome pulchritude igniting flames of vehicular lust, daring him to commit another theft. Jason slowed down his pace and turned around, then looked across the street, then craned his head to see if anyone was leering overhead somewhere.

It was a rare moment when there was just him and his urges left alone on the concrete midway. He began appraising his prospective choices: there was the tan Cadillac, “too fogie, no punk would be caught in this thing”; the red Firebird, “perfect looking sled, but red just screams out everybody look at me, I’d get picked up in less than five minutes”; the black Mercedes Benz, “yeah okay, graduation present from Dad, I won’t arouse suspicion pulling this one”.

He looked around one last time, leaned his hips against the driver’s side, reaching for his keys and then broke out chuckling. The window was rolled down.
“Fuckin’ rich people have the dumbest confidence”, he chortled. No need to jimmy the door.

He swung right in, plopped on the red leather upholstery, and quickly reached under the dashboard. He pulled down a few wires, cut off the casing and twisted the bare wires, connecting them, starting the engine quickly.

He popped in the cigarette lighter and grabbed a smoke from the pack on the dashboard, lighting it up. The radio blared out a Grateful Dead song loudly and he turned it off. He pulled out into the empty street and shifted it into a higher gear.

The Benz gave a slight jerk and Jason frowned. “This one’s got shitty transmission. You never can tell if these classy rides are in good shape or not. This one’s a turkey. Well, I’ll dump this in a little bit, but-Hello, who’s this?”

Jason saw a pretty Asian punk girl with spiky blonde hair in a black tee, leather miniskirt and fishnets hitching at the end of the corner. He rolled right up and leaned across the seat.

“Hey, hop in”, he bellowed. “I’m going your way”.
She stared at him for a second and asked, “Do you know where I’m going?”
“Doesn’t matter, babe, I’ll take you there”.
She stared at the inside of the car, appraising it. “Red bucket seats. Okay, but no funny stuff!”
He cranked the door open and she got in. He watched her beautiful legs slide into the front seat.

“So where are we going, gorgeous?”
“Telegraph Hill”.
“Okay, cool”. He let out the clutch and it gave a slight jerk. She chuckled, grabbed a cigarette from the pack on the dashboard and lit up.
“Hey man, this car is pretty bomb”, she puffed.
“For real, you Japs know a lot about bombs, huh?”
“I’m no Jap, asshole, I’m Chinese”.
“I know, I was just testing you”.
“The fuck you were!” she puffed away like an angry dragon.

“I’m Big Jason”, he smiled at her. “You know, I’ve seen you around somewhere”.
“Yeah, you look familiar”, the girl calmed down. “I’m Suzy, Suzy Wrong. I think…I think I saw you at The Mab once”.
“The Nuns show, I was the one the bouncers tried to kick out but I put up a fight. I wore them out, though, so they let me stay in. Assholes”.
“Assholes!” she cackled.

The car jerked sporadically and Big Jason mumbled, “Smooth ride, huh?”
“Is this really your car?”
“Sure it is! Graduation present from Dad”.
“Where did you graduate?” she asked skeptically.
“University of Alcatraz, baby doll”.

Suzy stared at him for a second, and then laughed. “Yeah, you were the big guy the bouncers couldn’t take down. My friends watched that go down. It was more exciting than the show”.
“Should’ve charged people to watch”. Jason tossed his butt out the window.

“Big tough guys. You’re all a dime a dozen”, Suzy stared at him while her slender hand wandered down to his crotch, rubbing his thick tool against the fabric of his coarse jeans.
He glanced at her from the side and caught her licking her lips.

“Hey, baby, ever been in a houseboat? With beer and pizza?”
“Sounds like a date”, she caressed his unit tenderly. “Let’s make it”.

He dumped the Benz a block away from the docks and they walked down to his houseboat.

One hour later Suzy was in his bedroom wearing nothing but his t-shirt and drinking out of a large bottle of wine from the fridge. She spit some all over his tense, prodigious tool and went to work on him. She tasted the wine and he tasted freedom, among other things.

Punk Rock Retirement Home

This was a three-night engagement I played at The Whiskey A Go Go with my band Arthur J. and The Gold Cups, which was an all-star punk big band (I played saxophone), The band also featured the late Brendan Mullen on drums, Geza X on guitar, Paul Roessler on keyboards and a host of others.

Because it was a three night engagement we had a different band open the show each night, and as you can see X opened one night and The Alleycats opened another. The Avengers headlined and were absolutely amazing. I think Penelope Houston is the best punk rock singer I've ever heard, bar none.

Brendan designed the poster and organized the show.

In September of 1978 I was asked to play sax with The Screamers at The Whisky A Go Go. Pat Delaney from The Deadbeats and I joined them for their exciting encore of The Germs' Sex Boy, re-titled Sax Boy as a tribute to us.

Lead singer Tomata Du Plenty and synthesizer man Tommy Gear prowled the stage like a pair of wild leopards singing the Darby classic while Pat and I honked away. At one point I was given a short sax break and I tooted the riff to Punish Or Be Damned. Tommy winced painfully. Good times.

My friend Lisa Brenneis joined Richard Meltzer's new band Vom as the bass guitarist. Meltzer just moved to Los Angeles from New York, which was a big deal because he was one of the most idiosyncratically New York rock writers around that time. He put together a pretty interesting band, which besides Lisa also included Metal Mike Saunders and Gregg Turner. I may have missed one or two other guys; it was a long time ago.

Vom played their first show at the Whiskey A Go-Go and Lisa invited me. What I didn't count on was being recruited during sound check to act as their official "bodyguard". In order to distinguish me at this dubious job they gave me one of their custom made shirts (seen in the photo). This meant keeping the crowd from killing them, because Meltzer made a few disparaging remarks about Hollywood punks being phony and plastic. He wasn't being serious about it; in fact he was method acting like a locker room wrestler trying to rile the local kids up, and it worked. A little too well!

The club was filled with all the usual local punks ready to boo and heckle the band to death. The entire staff of Slash magazine was there heckling the band to death, as well. Vom went into all their killer numbers like I'm In Love With Your Mom, Electrocute Your Cock, and Broads Is Equal. Kids were picking up anything in sight and flinging it at the band, and it was my job to admonish these twerps from throwing things, like a stodgy old school teacher. Nobody listened to me. I hated it.

Meltzer even chided me from the stage. "Hey, do your job, Tall Guy in the Vom Shirt. You're supposed to be protecting us. By the way, the fat punk chick in the front, you look like a piece of shit with lipstick!" Try defending someone who talks like that.

Not content to merely piss off the audience, they now incurred the ire of the club itself, when they went into their intense rendition of The Doors' My Eyes Have Seen You, which featured Meltzer and Turner pulled out a pickled jar of cows' eyeballs and bursting them on stage and throwing them out into the dance floor at all the heckling punks. The floor was sticky and slippery from formaldehyde goo with crushed eyeballs all over the place.

Well, after this Vom-itous bit of show business the sound man, like the voice of Zeus, thundered over the PA, "OKAY, ASSHOLES, GET OFF MY STAGE! NOW!!!" Of course, this made all the punks cheer as if God himself stepped in and sent the band to Purgatory.

There's a happy ending to some of this, of course. Meltzer shortly after got a hot radio show on KPFK-FM where he invited every punk band he previously insulted and they all played phony kissy face with each other, and then my picture showed up in a crummy fake "New Wave" magazine. Of course, all the idiot Hollywood punks chastised for posing wearing a Vom shirt. Never mind that these were the same people that couldn't kiss Meltzer's ass hard enough to get on his show.

Come to think of it, Richard Meltzer was probably right the first time. Hollywood punks are a bunch of phony assholes, after all.

Suburban Adam and Eve

There were green lawns with sprinklers
shooting water towards the azure sky
Spanish tile towered with television antennae gables
tropical palm trees swaying in the soft wind
blowing away dark gray clouds coughing out of battered station wagons

Things were cool when I was sixteen years old
there was the girl, with her long, dark, wet brown hair
which often fell into her dark, wet brown eyes
she gave me a dark brown smile and said,
“Wait a minute”

she climbed over the backyard fence
and I waited
I heard her voice over the fence,
“well come on”
I climbed over the fence too

she stood next to her neighbor’s peach tree
she pulled off a peach and handed it to me
“Bite” she said

I bit into the soft flesh of the fuzzy fruit
The juice ran all over my hands
she took my hands holding the bleeding fruit

She bit deep into the fuzzy peach
her eyes boring into me
her warm, hungry, brown eyes not moving away from me
the stare of a tiger
the stare of a wolf

This is the way it began
and this is the way it goes on
Even in suburban Culver City

Now Playing ABSOLUTELY FREE On You Tube: Erotic Euro Horror!

While I would never claim to be the toast of all social networking sites, far from it, I can claim to have a fairly robust following on old You Tube. I have a following of 5,500 faithful followers who want to be entertained by my posting of rare films unavailable on DVD or even on TV. Unfortunately, the brain police at You Tube have been pulling down many of my posts at an alarming rate, claiming that I have violated the laws of intellectual property.

What this means is that if James Toback can't make a cent off his wobbly 1983 suspense film Exposed then I cannot even post it for people who want to view it. Other films that provoked near-suspension included the noir classics Desert Fury and The Gangster as well as the Brigitte Bardot-Louis Malle potboiler A Very Private Affair.

Meanwhile, sites like Spotify and Pandora are doing more to rip off artists than my movie posts on YT. The priorities are getting dodgy. I've had so many of my posts pulled down that I've gotten leery about posting more movies. But I will persist. Besides, there's always Vimeo.

While all this drama is unfolding other Tubers are posting an exciting stream of classic erotic Eurohorror films. Many of these films have floundered on the VHS gray market for years, and now beautiful prints can be seen on YT. Unfortunately, half of them aren't in English, but hell, it's time to brush up on your high school French and Spanish!

Movies I have seen in their complete form in the past two months on You Tube:

1. The Female Vampire - Jess Franco starring the great Lina Romay
2. Shiver of the Vampires - Jean Rollin with a cool death metal soundtrack dubbed in, and it works
3. Kilink! - great Turkish series about a supervillain dressed like a skeleton
4. Lisa And The Devil - classic Mario Bava with Elke Sommer and a lollipop sucking Telly Savalas, as the devil
5. Evil Eye aka The Girl Who Knew Too Much - more Bava with a classic haunted house theme
6. Four Times That Night - Bava doing a bedroom sex farce with some real sex for a change
7. All The Colors of the Dark - psycho giallo starring Edwige Fenech
8. 99 Women - women in prison classic starring Edwige Fenech, Rosalba Neri, Luciana Paluzzi, and more
9. Virgin Among The Living Dead - more Jess Franco insanity with more nudity (not from him!)
10. The Nude Vampire - Jean Rollin with vampire laboratory rituals with animal masks and hoods! Creepy!

There's also lots of American exploitation in their complete form, like Russ Meyer's Cherry, Harry, and Raquel and Jack Hill's The Big Bird Cage. There's also tons of Laura Gemser sleaze to feast your eyes on. I also caught the Japanese film classic Onibaba. There's no limit to what you can catch on You Tube these days.

And just to compliment all the wild European horror films watched you can also catch an English TV documentary mini-series about the whole genre called Eurotika. Eurotika has segments devoted to the previously mentioned Jess Franco, Mario Bava, and Jean Rollin. It's pretty cool seeing starlets Brigitte Lahaie and the reclusive Pony Castel talking about their mentors.

Eurotika is almost touching in the way it celebrates freedom in sexual and artistic expression, eventually folding up towards the conservative early Eighties (the Moral majority-AIDS-Thatcher-Reagan years). But that's what makes these films so precious: just like the films from the silent era they show us a society that almost resemble aliens form another planet, a much, much freer planet.

"Sally Can't Dance" - Lou Reed (1974)

In 1973 Lou Reed followed up his most commercial release, Transformer, with his most ambitious album, Berlin. It was produced by Bob Ezrin, responsible for Alice Cooper’s most overambitious works School’s Out and Billion Dollar Babies. Like the two Cooper albums Berlin was overly serious and full of the overbearing weight of its self-importance. Whether this is attributable to Ezrin is open to debate. It seemed like Reed really put all his chips on Berlin and boasted at the time that it was the greatest thing he ever recorded in his lengthy and outrageous career.

Berlin lacked a hit single like a baseball pitcher lacked a right arm and quickly tanked. Reed, embittered by its failure, responded to its sad fate by assembling a top-notch stadium style heavy metal band performing Velvet Underground covers. It was so simultaneously brilliant and vindictive at the same time, with the great irony being that the resulting live album Rock & Roll Animal became his great selling album, even outdoing the legendary Transformer album. The double irony was that the guitarists, Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter had previously played with Alice Cooper (behind the curtain, covering for Glen Buxton).

Lou continued chasing a dollar by following up Rock & Roll Animal by recording Sally Can’t Dance, an album that showcased a more commercial Lou, something very New York and very Seventies. Although the album did respectably, many fans found it a bit of a sell-out. It was their loss, however, because I consider it one of his most decadent works.

Like a David Hockney painting, Sally Can’t Dance is a languid document of images of excess degenerating into lazy decadence. It’s far more reminiscent to my mind of the Seventies than any other work of his. I can almost remember every facet of West Hollywood in that era when I hear that album.

Sally Can’t Dance begins with Ride Sally Ride, a classic somber ballad by Reed that recalls earlier tunes like Femme Fatale, about a played-out party girl. “Sit yourself down, take off your pants, don’t you know this is a party”, Reed croons to a quiet piano and French horn. “Ooh, isn’t it nice? When your heart is made out of ice”. The song ends with a false joyous fanfare of disco horns and backup girl singers.

The next song Animal Language was a silly song about pets getting down and dirty with each other. I think Reed wrote this song just to piss off his most ardent purists by coming up with the silliest lyrics he could come up with. He succeeded with flying colors, as the gang from Creem Magazine shamed him for years for recording this silly song.

Baby Face and NY Stars are classic Reed songs about drugged out monsters walking all over each other and using everyone in their path. While Baby Face has a lazy Quaalude aura mirrored in its hypnotic electric piano riff, NY Stars counters with a furious, coked out irritability in the pounding rhythm and scratchy funk guitar. Reed sings NY Stars in a cold, vampiric voice laden with echo, “Remember, we’re very good at games”.

The second side of Sally Can’t Dance features more cold, echo Lou vocals on Kill Your Sons, his semi-autobiographic tale of being committed to Creedmore State Psychiatric Hospital by his parents. “All the drugs that we took sure were lots of fun, but when they shoot you up with thorazine and crystal smoke it makes you choke like a son of a gun”. All this institutionalized meds talk endeared Reed to William S. Burroughs. In Victor Bockris’ book With William Burroughs there are many accounts of Reed and Burroughs discussing psychotropic medications at great length.

Ennui, like Baby Face, is another bizarre cabaret ballad with Lou doing his finest crooning, but then there’s the title track Sally Can’t Dance, with its big disco horn section and girls oohing and aahing while Lou spits out hilarious lyrics like, “She was the first girl in my neighborhood to wear tie-dyed pants, LIKE SHE SHOULD. She was the first girl that I’ve ever seen that had flowers painted on her jeans”. Anyway, the punch line is that this once badass chick is now a drug-wrecked car crash. Lou goes further into East Village detail, like her rent-controlled apartment. It’s actually a very funny song.

The album ends with Billy, a great song about a childhood friend who was the model high school student and major source of envy, now returned from Vietnam with a major heroin habit. The lyrics and sharp and incredibly poignant, punctuated by Lou crooning over an acoustic guitar and a wailing saxophone. Like Sally, Billy is a study in drug-induced ruin, and who better to report on their downfall than Lou Reed.

There’s a great sense of loss and sadness to the album, inspired partially by the public’s inability to understand Reed and also by Reed’s refusal to fit in the music marketplace (he eventually conformed to every expectation made of him, but it wouldn‘t happen for another 20 years).

I think Sally Can’t Dance is a greater album than Berlin because in spite of all the decadence and ruin Reed manages to slip in enough deadpan humor all through the record – even in the tragic Billy Lou cracks, “Billy studied medicine while I studied foliage”. He couldn’t resist a joke here and there irregardless of the tragedy. I like that.

Sally Can’t Dance deserves a second look as a great Lou Reed album. Trashy, yes; funny, definitely; sad, absolutely, but also every bit as eloquent as a John Cheever short story. When a decadent rock album recalls great literature you need to give it a closer listen.

***************

So what do you do when you see a band that looks absolutely amazing and holds tons of promise until they start playing and then you realize this might be the worst band you've ever heard? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Black Belles.

Where Do All The Wild Boys Go?

It was the first night of August, 1970. My brother and I shared the same bedroom. At three o’clock in the morning my father came into the darkened room and woke us up. Although the room was pitch black I could tell there were tears streaming down his face.

“Boys”, he said slowly. “Your mother is dead. Prepare for the worst. Nothing will ever be the same again”. And he was right.

In those days if you lost a parent either by death or divorce you were looked upon like there was something wrong with you. Your classmates all looked at you like you were odd. Perhaps they were looking at you for signs of mental decay. It wasn’t something so easily identifiable.

You held the hurt inside you, but it wasn’t really something you could talk about. No one wanted to listen, anyway. My friends had more important concerns, like sports and school. They weren’t even thinking about girls at that point.

Something new was in the air. Even the religious boys in my school couldn’t resist the lure of the new movement called glam rock. I remember hearing a kid or two singing “All The Young Dudes” as they walked to class. It was a long step away from the hippie dream of the past couple years.

Everything sounded differently, and everything looked differently.

Music gave me consolation from the loss of my mother and there was nothing more exciting than the records of T. Rex, David Bowie, Slade, Roxy Music, Sparks and an endless flood of glamour bands all dressed up like spacemen from a kaleidoscopic planet.

The glam club to go to in West Hollywood was Rodney’s English Disco. The club not only played great glam records that drove me crazy but also provided me with a crash course in gender bending. It was one thing to look at pictures of rock stars in eye shadow and lipstick, but to see it in person was something new.

Boys and girls alike dressed in silver and gold lame, bright satin pants with huge elephant flares propped up in sky high leather platform shoes. Every kid looked like a superhero. Not to be left out, I ran out to the Sunset Strip on weekends to get a cheap, affordable outfit to fit in.

Every night there was exciting, even the off nights. You never knew who was going to drop in. On a regular weeknight you could see Iggy pop, Kim Fowley, The Kinks, Rod Stewart or Candy Clark. And the kids dressed like mad peacocks. My hormones were ready to explode.

The next day I made the terrible mistake of telling a friend at school about the new glam club. His name was Artie and he had no capacity for confidentiality, so once I leaked my account of going to this cool pace he very loudly demanded to go, too. Very loudly.

“Let’s go tomorrow night. Field trip!” he practically yelled. Our classmates turned up their noses.
“I heard about that place…Nothing but faggots”.
“You’re going to check out the freaks, Artie? Look no further. There’s Andy”.
I sneered right back.

So friend Artie drove me there the next night. I was duded out in my little glam outfit, but…Artie. He was fairly conservative looking – shirt hair, beard, dressed in faded corduroy, heavy-set, not an emaciated glitter rocker type boy at all. As we hung out in the loud, colorful club all wrapped up in silver, he yelled in my ear.

“Look at that dufus in the make-up! He’s got a dog collar on!”
“Please!” I freaked out. “Not so loud! People can hear you!”
“I don’t care if they can hear me. That guy looks retarded. Ugh! Look at that girl, oh she’s so hot!”
“I’m going to get a drink”, I said, anything to get away from him embarrassing me.

The regret I felt was that my private safe harbor from overbearing religion by bringing in someone who peppered his comments with Yiddish expressions and Borscht Belt humor. Bringing in someone from the Boring World ruined my enjoyment of the Wild World. I wanted to kick myself. What a buzzkill.

I avoided Artie for the next few days at school. In between classes he spotted me and cornered me in the hallway.
“Hey!” he said, diving into a small bag of potato chips, crumbs hanging in his beard. “Where have you been? The kids at the club have been asking about you”.
“What? What club?”
“You know! Rodney’s. They guys from Sparks were there last night. It was great”.

“You went without me?” I was incredulous. “I thought you hated the place”.
“Oh, those guys are okay, They just look funny. I met this really cool girl there last night, and you know, she’s Jewish. We spoke Yiddish for a few minutes”.
“What?”
He continued grabbing chips like it was his lifeline to survival.

“And you know that goofy guy with the carrot topped head? He invited all of us to his hotel room after the club closed. It was pretty cool”.

I couldn’t believe my ears. “They like you making fun of them?”
“Nah, I stopped once I figured they were alright. Hey, let’s go after Shabbos. Josh is coming with us!”
I thought I’d shit. Instead I backed out. The great irony, as I was going to learn soon enough, was that for all my bravado I didn’t change Artie’s life. He was about to change mine.

Rodney’s English Disco closed down a year later. As the rabbis in school taught us, like is mostly about loss. Nothing stays around; everything eventually vanishes. I was still distant friends with Artie, more distant than usual because he kept up his nightclubbing ways. Now he was bragging about a club called the Sugar Shack which played disco.

“It’s just like Rodney’s, Andy”, he cracked open some peanut shells.
“No, it’s not. It’s just a disco. I fuckin’ hate disco!”
“You don’t understand. The Sugar Shack is the coolest club”.

Telling me wasn’t enough. He had to show me.
Picking me up from home one night I asked him, “Hey, what time does Serpico go on?”
“Showtime starts in an hour. I think we can make it a half an hour before it starts”, he promised. I grabbed my coat.

While he drove Artie talked about good times at the Sugar Shack. “In between the disco records they snuck some Suzi Quatro in”
. “Oh”, I was bored. “That’s different. I guess…Hey, I thought we were going to Westwood to see Serpico”.
“What?” he accelerated the car. Suddenly we were speeding.
“This isn’t the way to the Crest Theater. Where are we going?”

Artie’s face broke into a nervous sweat. “Oh, uh, I thought we’d stop off somewhere before the movie. You know, we’re still kind of early”.
“The film’s going to sell out and we won’t get in”.

Artie didn’t say anything. He just turned up the music on his 8-track player and drove even faster. I felt like I was being kidnapped.

Not only were we not headed to Westwood, but we were definitely going east towards West Hollywood, Santa Monica Boulevard in particular. When we reached a club with blackened walls with even blacker windows Artie pulled over and parked.

“Come on, this won’t take long. You’ll really like it. Just like Rodney’s English Disco!” he charged towards the club like a bull. I eyed him suspiciously.

Once I got in I knew I’d been set up. The PA was playing “The Hustle” and “Get Dancin’” at roaring, deafening levels. I looked around and there weren’t platforms to be seen. Just lots of men and more men in denim and open polyester shirts dancing around in the darkness. Not a woman in sight.

I’d seen posters of gay bars whenever I walked around Santa Monica Boulevard so I knew what to expect: a lot of Burt Reynolds and Steve McQueen clones walking around displaying tough macho vibes and betraying it with feminine coquettishness.

“Isn’t this great?” Artie gushed. “I’m getting a beer. How about you?”
“No”, I was steamed. I felt shanghaied into going to this club because he knew I’d never want to go here. I was fit to be tied.

“AND NOW IT’S TIME FOR THE MISTER STUD 1975 CONTEST!!” a voice barked over the sound system. The crowd hooted and hollered. “CONTESTANT NUMBER ONE, PAUL PARKER HE’S LEAN, HE’S MEAN AND HE’S READY FOR ANY SCENE…TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER! PAUUUUL PARRRKER!!!”

An athletic man with sandy blonde hair began dancing to “Boogie Wonderland”. He was barefoot and I thought he was trying to be Tarzan but I was wrong. First he pulled his sports shirt off, displaying his muscular chest. The club roared their approval.

Artie came back with his beer. He was enjoying the show. The dancer then pulled his white denim jeans down. Another big round of approval came up. All he had on left was a microscopic bikini.

The song was almost over so I thought he was done, but he definitely wasn’t. His show-stopper was ripping off the bikini to the screams and swoons of the crowd. Dancing wildly, I saw this tiny dingle swinging up and down furiously to the music.

“Oh my God!” I looked away.
“Ahahahaha!” Artie was choking with laughter.
“Can we go to the movies now?” I whined. Artie ignored me.

Well, we got to see more contestants and more wieners for Mister Stud 1975. There was more frantic stripping to disco records as the night went on, and even Artie got bored after awhile. He took me home and I was fuming with rage.

It was nothing personal, though, I later found out. He pulled the same stunt with my brother and his friends. After awhile I just went to the movies by myself. The gay bar shanghai treatment became his modus operandi every weekend.

I didn’t see Artie for a few months after that. A little Artie goes a long way. Finally he apologized for the subterfuge.
“Could you come with me to this girl’s house? I have to talk to her and I’m kind of nervous”, he worked at a dramatic stammer.
“I don’t know”, I sulked. “I kinda wanted to practice my saxophone”.

“Come on. I’ll buy you a Moby Jack and fries”.
“Well”, I realized it was still daylight so there would be no night club frolics. “Okay. What’s this girl like? You never told me about her before”.
We walked to the car. “It’s weird. I have to deal with her brother before I can talk to her”.

He drove me into West Hollywood, not far from the club. We pulled up to a beat apartment building with an upended plaid sofa on the sidewalk and a bunch of soiled diapers in the gutter. We went up to the third floor and Artie knocked on the door.

“COME ON IN! I’M NOT DECENT!” a voice yelled.
We entered to a messy apartment with an open bed, scratched records all over the floor along with men’s and women’s shoes, pants, bras, fashion magazines, smeared makeup, lipstick containers, and whisky bottles. Lots of whisky bottles. There were about four youngmen in there. Two had clothes on, one only had a pair of pants on, and the last was completely naked. The nude jumped around a lot.

“Hi, what’s happening?” a dressed young man with wavy blonde hair asked. He looked bored and slightly annoyed to see us. “Are you holding?”
“Oh, I know him. You were here the other night”. A brunette with curly hair mumbled.
They didn’t seem to like him much.

“Is Sandra here?” Artie asked nervously.
“Who?”
“Oh, he means Billy. That’s Billy’s drag name”.
“Excuse me, could you not talk while my favorite record in the whole world is playing?”

The nude boy jumped right by us and screeched, “PARDON MY NAKEDNESS!”
“Um, yeah”, Artie stammered. “Sandra Billy”.
“Oh, well she’s at work”, the blonde deadpanned. “She’ll be home soon”.

“What did this guy get me stuck in now?” I thought. It was always some situation. Artie kept telling me he wasn’t gay and I kept getting further and further into the life without even asking for it.

The youngman in only pants had a sad Sal Mineo look about him. He stared at me with his big brown eyes.
“Do you know Billy, too?”
“No”, I said. “My name’s Andy. I just came with Artie”.
“PARDON MY NAKEDNESS!” the nude boy ran around the room.

The blonde laughed. “Look how scared he is. Seeing another naked boy. He’s going to go home and tell his mom. AND YOU! PUT SOME FUCKING PANTS ON!!!”

“I’m not going to tell my mom”, I said. “My mother died four years ago”.
The Latino boy in the pants’ eyes welled up. “Your mother’s dead? Is she really?”
“Yeah”, I lowered my voice. “It sucks”.

“PARDON MY NAKEDNESS!”
“YOU! I SAIDDDDD PUT SOME FUCKING PANTS ON!!!”
The boy began tearing up. “Did you love your mother more than anyone in the whole world?”
“Yes, I did”. I was more nervous than sad.

“I’ll bet she loved you more than anything in the whole world”, he almost burst out crying. “She must have been the greatest woman you’ve ever known. Everybody needs a mother’s love. It’s the most important kind of love there is”
“You’re right”, I smiled sadly.

“PARDON MY NAKEDNESS!”
“GODDAMMIT IF YOU DON’T THROW SOME FUCKIN’ PANTS ON RIGHT NOW YOU NELLY QUEEN I’LL THROW YOUR SCRAWNY ASS OUT!!!! NOW!!!”

The door flew open and a bookish black youngman in glasses came in. Artie spun around.
“Sandra! “Artie gushed. “I thought I’d come by since you haven’t been returning my calls”.
“Oh. Arthur”, Billy scoffed as he walked by us. “I don’t like surprises”.

“PARDON MY NAKEDNESS!”
Billy frowned. “Girl, cover that thing. I’ve seen more of your package than I’ve even seen of mine”.

An hour went by with the five youngmen ignoring Artie and me. They talked as if we were invisible. I was so bored.
I kept whispering to Artie, “Let’s just go. He, I mean she, doesn’t care about you. Forget about…her”.
“No!” Artie was steadfast and proved it by trying to ask Sandra a few things, only to be dismissed.

The dressed brunette jumped up from the crumpled bed and announced, “WELL, I’M HUNGRY! ANYBODY ELSE HUNGRY? LET’S GO TO DANIELLE’S!”
“I’M HUNGRY!”
“I’M NAKED AND HUNGRY!”
“GET DRESSED OR YOU DON’T EAT!”
“LET’S GO!”

Sal Mineo piped up. “Everybody be nice to Artie’s friend because his mother just died”.
“Ohhh, that’s so sad. You’ll get through it, I promise, sweetie”, the naked boy said as he was struggling with a t-shirt that was three sizes too small for him.

We followed the car with the two dressed youngmen, the no-longer nude and Billy. Sal Mineo rode with us. On the way there Artie griped about Sandra to him.
“I’m so nice to her. She seems to like me when she’s Sandra, so I don’t know why she keeps treating me like I don’t exist”.

“Oh, well, she’s the coy type, you know. The coy type! Hard to get. She gets things by playing hard to get!”
“I bought her drinks, I took her to the –“
“Turn here and park!” he practically yelled. He rolled down the window and yelled at his friends. “GET US A GOOD TABLE!”

Dinner at Danielle’s was as good as a dinner can be when the menu is stained and laminated with silverware that looked like it came from a soldier’s rusty mess kit. We got to see two sky-high tall transvestites attack each other in the middle of the restaurant, almost falling over our table.

Sandra/Billy never did hook up with Artie, and feeling crushed he drove me home feeling ejected, dejected and rejected. I was just glad to be home with my saxophone.

Two years later I had my own apartment, where I had a very strange dream. I dreamt I was a baby again and my mother was young, healthy and happy. She was dressed in a Greco-Roman toga in white and bathed me in a small spring. While she bathed me she laughed and sang quietly. It was the most tranquil dream I’ve ever had. I didn’t want it to end. I woke up feeling happier than I had in years.

In the following days after I thought more and more of my dream, and rather than feel happy I was stricken with a terrible melancholy. Life is mostly loss, like the rabbis said.
One night I wearily sat down at the bus stop on the corner of Crescent Heights and Santa Monica. I quietly waited for the bus to arrive.

Two youngmen sat down at the bench by me.
“Oh! That bartender, if he watered those drinks any more than he did you could breed turtles in them!”
“That’s the T, Mary”.
“And that butch door man! Yikes!” They both laughed.

Three more youngmen showed up and just laughed non-stop, probably drunk but harmless.
“I told him to put that thing away!”
“You told him? I think not!! I did. You needed help, bitch!” They all laughed.

A very sullen youngman who looked like Jethro Bodine with a duffle bag walked up to the bus stop sign and slammed his bag down as loudly as possible. He then spread his legs challengingly and folded his arms.

“Ohhhh, my, Miss Butchness”, one boy giggled quietly.
“Yesssss…men at work!” One’s eyes widened.
“Tragedy at work. Too, too tragic!” the other muttered.
“Footlocker daddy, hohohoho!”

My melancholy dissipated as I looked all around me. The bright, colored lights of West Hollywood felt like a carnival that didn’t want to end, ever. By the time the bus pulled up and we hopped on I was smiling.

I was smiling because all the boys on the bus were laughing and some of them had mothers, some of them probably lost theirs, but it didn’t matter because they knew the carnival will never end.

The Tubes (1975)

In the early Seventies there were several collectives that combined glam music with theater. In London there was the highly successful Rocky Horror Show, Los Angeles had The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo (some of whom evolved into the band Oingo Boingo), and San Francisco had The Tubes.

Although Rocky was a musical production, Oingo Boingo was a theater troupe and the latter was a rock band, they all had one thing in common: a talent for blending cabaret, high camp, retro post-modernism with a healthy dose of glam rock in the mix.

What made The Tubes wilder and creepier than the others was the way it took glam rock, North Beach strip club sleaze, video technology, S&M and good old American excess (from both average Americans and decadent rock stars – no one was innocent) and presented it in a flawless stage production with brilliant musicianship.

Released in 1975 and produced by Al Kooper, The Tubes is one of the strangest debut albums ever recorded, a stunning mélange of glam rock, progressive rock interludes, cheesy Broadway showbiz vocals and breathtaking high-tech electronics.

The band’s stage show had them flanked by television monitors, at least twenty in all, hence the band name. Some of the monitors showed the band performing in real time and others showed interactive routines going on as the band played.

The first track on the album is Up From The Deep, sung by Bill Spooner, one of the two guitarists, letting us know that the music can be changed and morphed whenever the spirit moves them. His voice is recorded as if he’s underwater. The melody has an Indian-type wail to it until it goes into a bizarre prog rock interlude that takes several flashy twists and turns, finally breaking into an explosive boogie woogie piano rave-up.

Guitarists Roger Steen and Bill Spooner played great Alice Cooper-style guitar while Michael Cotton on synthesizer and Vince Welnick on keyboards created brilliant aural soundscapes that set the atmosphere for each track.

When I first saw The Tubes at The Roxy in 1975 (previously home to The Rocky Horror Show) they performed Haloes in matching suits a la The Temptations while a pre-recorded track played behind them. No great shakes these days, but in 1975 it was unheard of, but funny.

Space Baby sounds like a retro-Fifties ballad about an intergalactic babe that space traveler Fee Waybill pines for down on Planet Earth. Waybill sings in a wailing David Bowie style. The song also features the aforementioned Broadway choir-type backing vocals with the synth playing as an electronic horn section, all very Bowie meets Flash Gordon.

Mondo Bondage was probably the very first exposure many rock fans had to the world of S&M since most bands never even went there. Fee and show girl Re Styles both donned bondage outfits and masks during this number and it was a pretty intense show stopper. The song was pretty weird, too, with a wild jazz-metal interlude while the two performers went into a creepy session, giving us all a taste of North Beach live sex acts to a rock beat.

What Do You Want From Life? is a Frank Zappa-type parody on super consumerism that’s still powerful today, and even posits that proposition that even if everybody got what they wanted would it still be enough? Really???? The more excessive the needs the faster, quicker and more manic Fee Waybill’s voice gets.

At some point during the show Fee sang Bali Hai from South Pacific – there goes that Broadway shtick again, and then after rips into a manic rendition of Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” with a quintet of naked girl dancers backing him up.

The finale to the stage show, as well as the album is Boy Crazy and White Punks On Dope. The reason why both songs are lumped together is because they both share the same thing in common. The Tubes turn the spotlight away from themselves and point it at the audience, something most punk bands took credit for a year later. In an era when most bands sang about the pain of being rock stars this approach was highly subversive.

Boy Crazy is about teenage sexual promiscuity – I seem to recall hardcore porn playing on the video monitors while the song was played. Fee, once again, sings it in a decadent David Bowie-style wail. It’s a great track, more direct than the others in spite of the big Broadway treatment. It would be interesting to hear from the band whether the big production was their idea or Al Kooper’s?

White Punks On Dope was The Tubes’ big anthem and told the tale of wasted, wasted youth in the high class suburbs. Once again, it was released one year before punk rock so it’s uncanny how much ground The Tubes broke and received scant credit for their innovations. The blend of ray-gun synthesizer with heavy metal boogie guitar is infectious while Waybill delivers another uncanny David Bowie imitation in his sky-high platform heels and huge platinum blonde fright wig. His Quay Lewd routine was the other show stopper after Mondo Bondage.

Nina Hagen’s highly operatic version of White Punks also has to be heard to be believed. I saw her do it at The Greek Theater – the show with the spaceship and nearly fell on my ass. Good times!

Clocking in at only thirty-seven minutes and some change, The Tubes’ debut album is like the Daffy Duck magic trick where he blows himself up and laments that it’s his “best trick, but he can only do it once”. The Tubes couldn’t really produce anything as powerful as their first album, but in spite of it they managed to rack up several hit singles during the New Wave Eighties – Talk To Ya Later, Monkey Time, and She’s A Beauty. But the debauchery of the stage show never went much further or wilder than that first tour. Perhaps it was just a sign of the times.

The Tubes’ first album is still a crucial work because there’s a timelessness to it, it’s musically challenging, endlessly inventive and the sonic soundscapes are downright creepy at times. Like The Residents, there’s a post-modernism that anticipates the beginning of punk rock and even the dreaded behemoth of New Wave. Like the foreign radio voices that herald and close the album you will be transported to a strange land unlike any other.

The Rack Jobbers (Robt. Williams title = 12-Inch Plastic Peons Push Vapid Vinyl Thrills Whilst Farting Jive & Junk Food)

Work is a lot like love. People who look for jobs never get them. People who never look or don’t want them in the first place always get hired. I got a job as a rack jobber and I wasn’t even looking for one.

It was 1978 and I was sitting around my friend Donnie Albinoff’s cozy apartment. Cozy because between a plush sofa Donnie laid back on and the easy chair I sat on were book cases filled with tons of albums from every music scene and every era, so many that there was even a steamer trunk packed to the gills with albums.

We were tapping our feet like a pair of spastics to Donnie’s latest catch, “Eternally Yours” by The Saints, “Know Your Product” blasting through his speakers with the buzzsaw guitar ripping our ear drums out and a knife edge horn section ripping out punk rock soul.

“Fuck, this is great. Did you say this is so new it’s not even in the stores yet?” I sipped a beer he handed me.
“Yeah, and I also got this great Sham 69 album, too. We got a shipment from Sire today”, Donnie sipped his beer and got ready to light a roach. He showed me the roach and I did the “No thanks” wave.

“You’ve got the greatest job, getting all these cool new records even before the stores get them”, I gushed while Donnie sucked some weed smoke into his hipster lungs. Donnie paused for a moment and gave me a blank stare.

“You know, Sevrin”, Donnie talked while a gusher of lung clouds flew out. “You’re always making noises about needing a job to pay for rent and records and shit. Why don’t you come down to Spin Central and join the team? They’re always looking for new guys. I think I can get you in as long as you’re willing to work and you don’t make me look stupid. It pays okay and you get a discount on all the records you want”.

I mulled the offer over while The Saints were blasting in my face. “Okay!” I swigged my beer and tapped my feet harder.
“Good. I’ll put in a word for you tomorrow and with their okay you can come down later in the week and fill out a bunch of paperwork”.
“Great. Put on that Sham 69 album nobody’s heard yet”.

WEEK ONE: Spin Central One-Stop Distributors was a record distribution center in the Pico-Union district – corner of Venice Boulevard and Normandie Avenue. There was a cemetery around the block with a crematorium you could smell as you walked down the street towards work. It was a good appetite killer if you were too short to buy lunch.

My boss was Stan, heavy set in a dress shirt with slacks who was balding but wore the rest of his long hair in a pony tail. I never saw him smile. He seemed conflicted between looking hip and acting overly serious. It was a serious conflict for him. The only bands he swore by were Gentle Giant, The Dixie Dregs and PFM.

“Sevrin!” Stan barked. “Go to the loading dock with the dolly and pick up the new product and replace the pallet, let’s see, replace that Steely Dan with the new product. Take Freddy with you. Go now!”
Freddy was a morbidly obese man with short hair, a peach fuzz moustache and stained clothes who didn’t even look like he cared about music.
“Are you sure the boss asked for me?” He whined quietly.
“Yes, let’s get going! The truck’s here!” I insisted. Freddy trailed reluctantly behind me.

Freddy threw several boxes angrily while I held the dolly and held my breath. The burning dead were really pumping it out today. Freddy cursed under his breath, sweating through his Hagar executive shirt, pit stains spreading like a busted levee.
“Sevrin, I’m thinking of having Chinese for lunch. Are you in, man?”

I raced into the warehouse with the dolly, escaping the corpse stench.
“Cigarette break. Back in five!”
Freddy wandered off to smoke, leaving me alone to move the gigantic stack of Steely Dan albums off the pallet. The really big sellers were usually displayed in stacks on the pallets while the medium sellers or loss leaders were stocked in much smaller numbers on the shelves. It was my turn to grunt and sweat. Finally I got around to tearing the cardboard boxes open and loading the new albums on the pallet. Expecting the new Dead Boys album I was crushed to see hundreds upon thousands of Linda Ronstadt albums.

“LINDA RONSTADT LIVING IN THE USA”. Linda Ronstadt was rocking a secretary bob clad in satin shorts and roller skates singing the oldies. Boxes and boxes of Linda Ronstadt in roller skates. I felt my back almost going out humping all this vinyl product out. Freddy’s five minutes were way past over but he was still out somewhere.

I ran back out to get more product to stack on the pallets and instead of feasting my eyes on the new Captain Beefheart masterpiece I ripped open the boxes to find copies of “BOZ SCAGGS SILK DEGREES” to stack. A million seller in 1976, people still clamored for more Boz Scaggs two years later. I had to take a back break before my back broke.

“Are you having fun yet?” Donnie walked by, joking in his deadpan voice.

WEEK TWO: After buying records for five years at Morty’s Records it was wild to see the man himself, Morty Simon plucking albums from the racks to sell at his store. His face was set with steely determination picking out which albums he would retail that week. He pulled two copies out of the four Ramones albums we had in stock.

While he pulled a few copies of the new Kraftwerk album – too cool to be stacked on pallets, I made a fool out of myself and approached Morty.

“Hey Morty, how’s it going, man? It’s Andy, I come into your store all the time to buy your stuff. What’s happening?”
“Yeah”, Morty mumbled, just looking through me. What a dick.

When I ran into Donnie I said, “Hey, that guy from Morty’s Records just snubbed me. What a dick!”
“He doesn’t talk to anybody”.
“That’s a hell of a sales approach”.
“I’m getting Mexican for lunch. I keep smelling enchiladas”.

WEEK THREE: One night after work I was back sitting and drinking at Donnie’s apartment. “So, how’s Freddy working out in the warehouse?” Donnie sipped his beer.
“Oh, that fat fuck’s useless. He takes a lot of long cigarette breaks whenever shit gets too busy”.
Donnie chortled. “He doesn’t even smoke that much. He just camps out in the john either taking long, smelly shits or he’s busy playing with his tiny needle dick”.

“Stan really stuck it to me”.
“Freddy really hates you, too. He told me, ‘I hate Sevrin. He’s always shuffling his feet’”.
“He said that? Are you kidding? What’s wrong with shuffling your feet?”
“Nothing, he’s a big, fat idiot. I had to kick him out of here once when he came over. Check this out, as soon as I left the room to take a piss he made a pass at Dora”. Dora was Donnie’s girlfriend. “He actually said, ‘What are you doing with a loser like Albinoff’?”
“Shit! In your own house”, I popped open another beer.
“ON MY PROPERTY!!!” Donnie yelled, fired up a bomber and I gave the “No thanks” wave again.

WEEK FOUR: Stan ordered me to sit in a little room upstairs with a turntable on a desk, a relief to be off my feet from stocking records on pallets and on increasingly shrinking space on the racks.

Stan raced in with a stack of Al Dimeola and Neil Diamond records almost spilling over on the floor.
“Okay, Sevrin, I’ve gotta special job for you”, he dropped the stack of heavy albums on the floor. “I want you to slit open every album, take out each disc and put each one on the turntable. You see those magic markers next to the turntable?”
“Oh!” I pulled one out of the box. “Yeah, sure!”

“Play the record on the turntable and take one of these markers and very carefully black out the Columbia Records emblem that’s circled around the label. Can you do that? Let me see you do that with this Al Dimeola album!”
I spun the disc and very simply took the marker and dragged it around the circular Columbia Records emblem on the label.

“Great! Perfect! We have an important shipment going out to Bangkok tomorrow. Get going. Oh, and keep the door locked!”
Stan slammed the door shut and I got busy, wondering when my employee discount would kick in so I could buy the new Johnny Thunders album. Otherwise I’d have to go to Morty’s Records.

I spun disc after disc on the turntable studiously blacking out the Columbia Records logo ring on each disc, just thinking about all those Neil Diamond albums being sold in Thailand. I was known around the warehouse as being pretty quiet, quiet enough not to squeal that Spin Central was selling albums on the black market in Bangkok and all points East. Well, it was alright. I was getting off on the fumes from the magic marker.

WEEK FIVE: I was back in the Private Room. There were no magic markers on the desk but a pair of headphones and a stack of Waylon Jennings albums.
“Okay, Sevrin, we’ve been getting a lot of complaints about this inferior RCA Records product. I want you to open all these Waylon Jennings albums and play the first track and let me know how many of them skip and how many pop. Leave the albums in three stacks: The Ones That Skip, The Ones That Pop, And The Perfectly Good Ones”.
“Okay, no problem”.
“And keep the door locked!” He slammed the door shut.

I pulled the first disc out of the cover and immediately noticed how thin and light the vinyl felt in my hand. The disc even felt kind of hollow. I put on the first disc and adjusted my headphones.
Waylon sang:
“I've always been crazy and the trouble that it's put me through, I’ve been busted INTENTIONALLY HURT ANYONE One foot over the line I SHOULDN’T COMPLAIN Going insane”. Whoah. I tossed that one in The Skip Stack.

I pulled out the next disc and it was warped to hell. It felt more flaccid than a flat tire. I didn’t even bother playing that one. I simply threw it into The Skip Stack.

I put the next disc on, and listened intently: “I’ve always been crazy and the trouble INTENTIONALLY HURT ANYONE One foot COMPLAIN insane”. I threw that one in the ever-growing Skip Stack. Jesus, all this vinyl sucks. It feels cheap and it doesn’t play for shit.

I took my headphones off for a second and heard a bunch of yelling downstairs. I opened the door and looked down the stairs over the warehouse and saw a seeping flood of water coming from the bathroom.

Stan was yelling at Donnie.
“YOU’RE FIRED, YOU SON OF A BITCH! GET YOUR SHIT AND GET OUT OF HERE!!!!”
“FUCK YOU! I’M NOT A FUCKING JANITOR, ASSHOLE!” Donnie yelled back. “I DON’T CLEAN TOILETS!”
“YOU’LL DO WHAT I TELL YOU TO DO IF YOU WANT A JOB HERE!”
“YOU CAN’T FIRE ME!!! I QUIT!!! YOU CAN STICK THIS JOB AND THIS JOHNNY BRUSH UP YOUR ASS, MAN!” Donnie stormed off.

I walked back into The Private Room and locked the door. I thought about all those albums maybe making their way to Bangkok. I opened up the rest of the Waylon Jennings albums, put two in The Pop Stack, three in The Skip Stack and the rest in The Perfectly Good Ones stack.

I quietly left the job after two weeks’ notice and three weeks later got a job at an adult book store in Silver Lake. I used my stock clerk experience from Spin Central to score a gig selling dildos and butyl nitrate poppers to terrified stockbrokers. Weeks later I moved over to the Rexall Drugs on Hollywood & Highland, across the street from Grauman’s Chinese Theater. It’s all show business!

c 1978, “I’ve Always Been Crazy”, written by Waylon Jennings. All rights reserved.

Little Johnny Jewel (Parts 1 & 2)

Everybody wants their stuff and they want it now. "We want the world and we want it now", Jim Morrison bleated almost fifty years ago and nothing has changed. If you want a song or an entire record you can get it a matter of seconds, movies, books, you name it. But it wasn't always that way.

In 1975 glam was going through its last gasp - you knew it was over when The Edgar Winter Group threw on the spackle and platform boots. Punk rock crawled its way through just like the freaks crawled under the circus wagon in the thunder storm with knives in their mouths, ready to gut Venus and Hercules.

I followed the glam scene closely in Rock Scene Magazine and there were gurgles about punk bands in New York like The Ramones, The Fast, Patti Smith, The Mumps, The Stilettos and Television. Television was the most interesting looking as they were the very antithesis of glam: short hair, no makeup, torn clothes and crappy pawn shop guitars. One particular photo by Christopher Makos of Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell made them look like Richard Speck and Charles Starkweather formed their own noise band. The only nod to glam was Richard Lloyd, who sported platinum blonde hair like Debbie Harry.

Rock Scene Magazine printed a little caption announcing an exciting new single by Television called "Little Johnny Jewel (Parts 1 & 2)" on Ork Records. It only cost $3.00 and could be purchased post paid from a P. Laughner in Cleveland, Ohio. It was the most eagerly anticipated single of its time. Yeah, back in the day we had no downloads. We had to send money across the country for a 45 RPM single. There was a quite a wait (more on that in a second) but the wait was worth it.

After sitting out for an eternity waiting for the single to arrive I received an interim postcard from Peter Laughner, the front of the postcard advertising Television with his band Rocket From The Tombs (who would later split into The Dead Boys and Pere Ubu). On the other side of the postcard was an apology from Peter Laughner for the delay.

"Dear Avram*- As regards TV all orders were forwarded to New York City as the response was fantastic they had to do a third pressing of the record to meet demands - please be patient and thank for your support.
Peter Laughner
P.S. As further correspondence should be directed to me at the above address (Cleveland Heights, Ohio)".

Well, I eventually got my single and it was so bizarre, not what I expected, it wasn't rock but it was definitely a very New York record. What does that mean? Well, I see the Museum of Modern Art when I hear the single, I hear some jazz club like The Five Spot. I feel beatnik frequencies ripping into my head, ESP-DISK nightmares, even some of The Godz and Silver Apples in their sound. Very New York.

"Little Johnny Jewel (Parts 1 & 2)" sounds like a dark, dark, dark beatnik coffee house, seductive in its intimacy. You can smell the burning candles - the record sounds ascetic for its time, avoiding the decadence of Queen or The Tubes or any other overproduced glam rock of the time.

Part 1 begins with Fred Smith playing a very simple bass line over and over while the guitars make twittering and plucking noises, like they're waking up and then Billy Ficca's drums kick in, not playing a simple 4/4 punk beat, but shock horrors (!!!) it's a disco beat.
As soon as the drums simmer a cool disco beat the guitars wail a remedial, almost naive fanfare. Tom Verlaine sings a very cool, laid back vocal like Lou Reed in "Here She Comes Now".

What's so remarkable about the recording is that it's a veritable textbook in dynamics, drums exploding one moment then simmering, guitars howling and then whispering, emitting moods of slacker cool and boiling tension equally. I like the part where Tom whispers like a hypnotist, "And he ran down to the airport...the rush, the roar...and he crouched down behind a fence...with a chest full of lights..." The guitars go impressionist, playing sparse but bright notes like winking airport lights, quiet hypnotic guitars and the drums sending us out of Part 1.

Part 2 picks up where Part 1 left off, the hypnotic part building up into a noisy palette of sounds, guitar picks banging against necks like Jackson Pollock splatters of paint, and then explodes into a perverse flamenco guitar solo punctuated by a high shrieking note. All the guitars eschewed the big fuzz Marshall stack arena sound, Richard Lloyd strumming simply behind Verlaine's freedom guitar playing.

The second side ends with Verlaine returning to the main theme, crooning cooly, "Oh Little Johnny Jewel...he's so cool...but if you see him looking lost...you ain't gotta come on so boss!
And you know that he's paid...you know that he's paid the price...all you gotta do for that guy...is wink your eye". Mysterious lyrics, mysterious music. Entranced by TV.

Rock groups weren't supposed to be mysterious or quietly sly, music was by and large loud and brash. Television made people nervous because they weren't a quick study. Personally I thought "Little Johnny Jewel" was a far more auspicious debut than Patti Smith's "Piss Factory" which had a corny Broadway musical jive to it. It could've been a show stopper in a musical like "Rent". But I digress.

Television released a single which sold out several times over and captured the mystery of New York. It was executed so well even the band had trouble living up to their promise with subsequent recordings. It wasn't punk rock but it wasn't average Joe rock, either. It was lightning in a bottle set to music. What a great five minutes it was.

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* I used to use my Hebrew name in correspondence, in this case being Avram, Abram also known as Abraham before God anointed him as Father of the Jews. In other words, as Sun Ra once said, "I have many names, names of mystery, names of splendor".

Fifty Years in Los Angeles

This is the year and that was the year and it all comes down to half a century of living in Los Angeles, mostly Hollywood. No, it doesn't all seem like yesterday; in fact it feels like several lifetimes ago. The Twentieth Century didn't fuck around, what with every decade feeling like another life spent.

How did I even get here? I was just a European boy living the Yankee life in Rhode Island and liking it. I was living in Kennedy Country (New England) and our man John F. Kennedy was in The White House. Everything seemed cool. My father was in the electronic designing department at Brown University in 1963. A few months later Kennedy was toast and so was New England for us.

My father joined the New Frontier headed towards outer space and the psychedelic landscape of Hollywood. He got a job offer from Aerospace in Redondo Beach. Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Long Beach and all points south turned Southern California into a veritable Boomtown for Aerospace workers. My father heard the siren call to Boomtown USA, not mere gold but better, designing spacecraft, missiles and rocket appendages. Welcome to Los Angeles.

Sixties: My first home in Los Angeles was around West Hollywood in the Fairfax District...it was insane, we were sandwiched in between CBS Studios with its ever watching eye, the Silent Theatre and the enormous Pan Pacific Auditorium...we'd have dinner at Canter's and I'd stare at the freaks with their long hair and beads...my Mom said, "Andy, don't stare"...people were getting pissed...I remember watching the Watts riots on TV and my parents said "Stay home today"...

Two years later we moved to Beverly Hills...I went to a modern Hebrew school where half the kids looked like they came from mixed marriages but I didn't care.... they were building Century City down the street and LBJ was going to speak at the Century Plaza Hotel with kids marching down Olympic Boulevard, protesting the Vietnam War...we were too broke to do anything big on Saturday night my dad took us out for a ride (families used to do that sort of thing) down Sunset Boulevard which was crowded as hell, especially since there were so many paddy wagons pulled up in front of Pandora's Box on the corner of Sunset and Crescent Heights.

Seventies: My teenage years were spent in endless nights at Rodney's English Disco and watching countless glitter bands at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium...glam rock seemed like it would never die, it just got bigger and crazier and I got into the scene, platforms and velvet flares...Westside days spent going to summer school at University High and Rhino Records in Westwood...taking endless jazz music courses, harmony theory and the whole damn Big Band thing at the Dick Grove School of Music in North Hollywood...

Then driving down to gay discos like The Other Side in West Hollywood...Santa Monica Boulevard haunts like a weird old dream even to this day...and then there were punk rock memories at The Masque, playing there and even living there with Spazz Attack and Brendan Mullen, moving to punk palace The Canterbury, big mistake but so what?

Eighties: Disappointed by the decay of Hollywood punk and shitty new wave I retreated into endless movie shows at The Beverly Center, sitting in my car in the darkness of the Centinela Drive-In with the Studio Drive-in across the street, right by LAX so during the film you'd watch the jet planes swooping down for a landing...

I lived across the street from A&M Records on la Brea Avenue in a trashy courtyard next door to a massage parlor..one rainy night I found a hundred dollar bill by the parking lot...bought a leather-bound saxophone case with it...Rajis was the rockin' club by the end of the decade and I watched The Nymphs, Haunted Garage and Pygmy Love Circus, the greatest club ever...I started my own band Trash Can School and we recorded at Radio Tokyo in Venice for about three years (1988-1990)...it was epic.

Nineties: My band played with some amazing bands at The Shamrock and Jabber Jaw, I'll never forget them...I lived at The Gramercy Apartments in Koreatown, apartments that recalled every noir film you've ever seen...Elisha Cook Jr. must have drifted through the walls several times...after I broke the band up I moved to the Miracle Mile and went to every lowbrow art show at Luz De Jesus on Melrose Avenue, there was Pablo and Pizz and Robt. Williams and XNO and Billy Shire, Golden Apple Comics representing, too...

Then there was Johnny Legend and Eric Caidin putting on sleazy movie shows at the Florentine Gardens on Sundays...I married Rebecca and we created fashions for The Fetish Ball and every other kinky fetish event in town... we also had a band called Cockfight and made a funny video with Ron Jeremy, it was clean, it's cool.

Y2K: Rebecca and I worked morning, noon and night...dealing with bullshitting imagineers who knew nothing about art, smarmy stylists who knew nothing about fashion and a lot of TV people who wanted to interview us and show our clothes....then there were the Comic-Con assholes who knew nothing about anything and the money slowed down so I worked at Dodger Stadium for awhile in the executive office designing their merchandise catalog...the palm trees circled around Dodger Stadium looked like a dreadlocked tribe of dinosaurs looming over the city...bored with that I drifted into a 15-year career with Los Angeles County....played my last show ever at Headline Records on Melrose Avenue...LA, always LA.

Teens: So fifty years later I still eat at Canter's and haunt the streets of West Hollywood. Now I'm a writer, writing, always writing...tell the story even if no one wants to listen, read the words of God even if no one believes anymore...making clothes for myself and other people, hitting the Garment District in the early morning...although there were a few detours here and there in New York and Europe I always returned to Los Angeles like an old habit I couldn't shake off..I'm still in Hollywood...still making noise, still making trouble...take my advice, don't forget to go to the beach.

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Cruel Story of Youth

I didn't count on thinking too much about the past because it's something I don't normally do. Silly fool, I believe in looking forward, always now and forever, but the past comes back when you least expect it, like it or not. Case in point: a single I recorded in 1977 just recently turned up on a punk rock CD compilation for the first time.

It was the first band I ever played in, it was called Max Lazer and the single was "Street Queen", released on Siamese Records. Max Lazer was a singer-songwriter who looked like Thor minus the muscles and he had shiny platinum blonde hair that drove the girls all wild. He had a glam rock image but was more of a metal-punk sounding guy. Siamese Records up to that point was known only for putting out Iggy & The Stooges' bootlegs of "Raw Power" outtakes.

Anyway, the CD featuring "Street Queen" is called "Godfathers of LA Punk" (ouch!) and also has tracks from The Controllers and yup, some Iggy & The Stooges tracks. The entire album could be bought here: Godfathers of LA Punk, or better yet, just buy the download of "Street Queen" HERE. I didn't play on the other Max Lazer track so you're on your own there. I don't think we were very punk rock, in fact the most apt description of our sound would be glam-period Mott The Hoople. If you liked "All The Way From Memphis" or "Golden Age of Rock & Roll" then you would have liked us.

The funny thing about Max Lazer was that I remember playing a show with him at Baces Hall in Los Feliz around the spring of 1977. I caught the punk rock fever the previous summer when I went to London and saw The Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Buzzcocks, so when I did the gig I wore a ripped wife beater with Polaroid photos safety pinned all over them. No big whoop in jaded 2014 but it seemed like a big deal back then, especially to one person in particular.

Brendan Mullen, punk rock impresario and author of several punk history books, confessed to me a year after my show that he was in the audience that night and said I was the very first punk he saw when he came to Hollywood. Too much! He also thought it was awesome when I occasionally broke into extended free jazz sax breaks on some of the more sludgy metal songs. There were a lot of people at the show that night so I'm sure he was there. As Lou Reed once sang "those were different times".

"Different times" which people still miss! Rebecca has a friend who scouts for anything designed by the SEX label from 1976 aka Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm Maclaren's store in Chelsea. I wrote a blog about it called The Rubber And Leather T Chronicles (http://blackhairedboy.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-rubber-and-leather-t-chronicles.html).

I recently unearthed some pics of myself rocking the leather and silver rubber tees I bought from that store way back when. Just a few of them are posted here for your entertainment, and no, neither one is for sale. Well, the rubber tee decomposed two years after I bought it, anyway. The leather one's still around here somewhere.

Here are some of the pictures, and it's funny. I had so many taken during the late Seventies and then for some weird reason I became very camera shy in the Eighties and didn't have any pictures taken of me until 1988 when it was time for my band Trash Can School to get publicity shots taken. That's when I broke out the eye shadow and eye liner, etc - but that's an entirely different story.