Live Oak Blues What happens.

No other way to describe it: I was in a shite mood this morning, as tends to happen when I have too much time at my disposal. I was restless and needed to be on the move…somewhere. The quick fix is always the kayak, but we’re in kind of a drought, so I needed a place immune to the vicissitudes of water levels, a spring-fed place, clear, cool…Silver River. In the middle of the week, I’d have the place to myself, right?

Thus it was that I joined the caravan of floating retirees on the Silver River today. I was the youngest by at least 15 years (a rarity, so I embraced at least that part of this unembraceable day). I was also the only one on the river who did not have the following: a floppy hat the size of a trash can lid, a life preserver buttoned up to my neck, whistle at the ready, a paddle leash. My fave was the little guy in the tiny boat who hauled ass to pass me downstream and then stopped dead, so I would then have to awkwardly pass him. He looked like a toddler with water wings splashing in the wading pool…cute, actually, in retrospect.

The Silver River isn’t so silver with all the traffic. The algae coating the huge fright wigs of hydrilla tends to dislodge and color the water a greenish-gray. But I have to remember that, according to actual residents of the river–anhingas, cormorants, herons, and fish–I am just as much of an interloper, and stirred up my share of algae too. My secondary preoccupation, though, was the stellar BBQ waiting for me back at Pearl’s in Micanopy, which I most certainly put a hurtin’ on an hour later.  A tough life, to be sure.

As a longtime bulk consumer of punk, I’ve always struggled with the concept of Proto-Punk or, Punk Before There Was Punk. Hell, I even struggle with the word “punk” itself. To name it at all, goes this line of thought, is to commodify it and strip of its transgressive energy. Johnny Thunders himself always said he hated the word and called what he did “Rock & Roll”–which it damn sure was. But name it we must, if no other reason than it allows us to talk about it. Obviously, then, the folks who influenced the Ramones, The Clash, and the Sex Pistols didn’t define themselves by what might come after them. So what, and who, is Proto-Punk?

For me, the bands who make up this hallowed group had several things in common: 1. they recorded music in 1975 or before; 2. the guitar in said music is all up in your face; 3. the music is raw and subversive in some way that is often difficult to define. The Big Dogs in this group are easy and mutually agreed upon: Stooges, MC5, Velvet Underground, New York Dolls, Patti Smith’s first record. But what about the Monks, a group of ex-GIs who shaved tonsures into their heads and put out some of the most freakish music this side of 1966? How about The Who, a band that every punk outfit worth their salt idolized openly? Link Wray? And what, pray tell, do you do with Big Star–a giant in the punk era even though they never recorded a song that sounds even remotely punk?

As you might have guessed by now, I be will investigating this phenomenon this Monday from 3 to 5 on Left Of The Dial, only on Grow Radio!

Records That Will Change You (Or Not)

Back in the day, the good radio stations would play a pre-released record in its entirety. This was an Event and folks anticipated it with something approaching giddiness. Although my father has never in his life been “giddy,” he was one of the many who stayed up late one night in 1975 to record Bob Dylan’s new release, “Blood On The Tracks.” And I will be forever grateful. From the next day forward, I played that tape hundreds of times: car, house, Walkman. I still have it. In fact, I have “BOTT” on cassette, vinyl, CD, and mp3. This, and “London Calling,” are the most played records in my obscenely massive collection.

BOTT is Dylan’s finest hour, and I’m not really going out on a limb to say that. The back story, for those who don’t already know it, is that Dylan was breaking up with his longtime (in Rock & Roll years) wife, Sara, and he was hurting. The result of this pain was the transcendent “Shelter From The Storm,” “Buckets Of Rain,” the gold standard Fuck You song, “Idiot Wind,” and the finest Love Never Really Lasts song ever penned, “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go.” Oh, and he recorded the whole thing in an Open D guitar tuning that many refer to simply as “Dylan D.”

I can’t pretend that I knew what I was listening to when I heard it first at 11, but it has revealed itself to me with increasing, fathomless depth ever since, through more relationships than I’m proud of, divorce, fatherhood, and every other life change imaginable. I’m not even sure Dylan himself knew what he was unleashing on the world, but such is genius. I’ve told folks who don’t feel the way I do about this record to keep listening, but that may or may not work for you. It hooked me somehow at first listen and has been a elder statesmen in my life long after I passed Dylan’s age when he recorded it.

I put the boat in the water yesterday, a suitable paddle down part of the Lower Withlacoochee decked wall-to-wall with houses, docks, motor boats, and those blackfaced fishing statues I didn’t even know they made anymore. To get in the water, I had to pull my boat through a healthy forest of poison ivy, which still scares me even though I haven’t had poison ivy since I was 18. I guess the reason I haven’t had it since 18 was that I got it so bad at 18.

That summer, I was attending the Orientation at my college and did what folks did there during Orientation: get rip-roaring drunk at the local bar. I didn’t need a way back to the dorm, because at JMU the railroad tracks led conveniently from the bar to all relevant campus ports of call. All you had to do was walk the tracks and remember when to stop walking the tracks, which in places were banked by 10-foot cliffs. For whatever beer-addled reason, I decided that scaling these cliffs would be a cool idea–and, hey, how about these cool vines I can pull myself up with!

This ain't me, babe. Mine was much worse.

The vines were, of course, poison ivy, which I didn’t realize until the next morning when I was red all over (and I do mean all over). By the time I got in the car to drive back to Virginia Beach, I was slathered in Lanacane (useless), with all four windows down, and crying, yes, crying. The sight I greeted my family with was enough to make my mother scream (picture the head of Conan O’Brien at 100psi). It was in my eyes, ears, down my throat, throughout my crotch, and all points in between. Later that day I was horrified to discover that my little brother had been bringing all his friends over to “look” at me (cue the line everyone knows from Elephant Man, a profane version of which I actually said).

A couple of cortizone shots and too many days later, I recovered, never to be so cursed again. I’d also like to say this was the last alcohol-related bad decision I made, but too many of the folks reading this know that just wasn’t true. So kids, “Leaflets three, let it be. Berries white, poisonous sight!”

When I was teaching English, I’d have this clause in my syllabus that claimed plagiarism was worse than murder, or words to that effect. It was designed to deter, but taking someone’s handiwork and passing it off as one’s own really pissed me off, and still does. But if a student did something really cool like construct a paper based completely on relevant quotes that ended up making a cogent argument (this never happened, by the way), then I would have praised this student to the heavens.

Within this distinction is the difference between musical plagiarism and remix culture. This is why Girl Talk is a genius and Led Zeppelin are thieving, reprehensible…well, they were geniuses too. I love everything about (most of) remix culture: the cutting up, the piecing back together, the new art from old. But what Led Zeppelin did (for those who do not already know) was take a whole lotta songs and then stick their names on the credits. Some of these ended up in the courtroom, some didn’t. Anyway, I will be looking at these songs and other examples of musical plagiarism on my show, “Left Of The Dial,” this Monday, from 3 to 5 on Grow Radio.

Here’s the argument their defenders use: from the beginning, blues culture was all about reworking received songs. Who, for example, actually wrote “Walking Blues”? No one who knows blues believe Son House did. For that matter, did Bukka White write “Shake ‘Em On Down”? I do know that “Page/Plant” didn’t, as they claim on their “Custard Pie.” Tribute? Tell that to Jake Holmes, whose note-for-note “Dazed And Confused” came out in 1967, two years before Led Zeppelin I. There were no greater blues interpreters than Led Zeppelin (and on that I will brook no argument), so who’s to say?

Anyway, I won’t be Zepp bashing the whole time, so tune in.  And seriously, I really do still love Led Zeppelin.

It’s 1978 and I’m a paperboy. Every cent I collect goes to records, weed, and cigarettes, but mostly records. What few friends I have are stuck in the KISS, Aerosmith, Blue Oyster Cult whirlpool. I know–and Rolling Stone Record Guide knows–that I need to break out, that there must be something out there beyond suburban, white boy, middle-class rawk. The Guide tells me that Bob Marley & The Wailers “Live!” is a fine place to start, so I pick it up, slice it open, and drop the needle.

Until about 1990 or so, you would get no argument from anyone on whether or not reggae was a good thing, a great thing even. That beat, the most visceral thing since Bo Diddley’s, is right there. The Sly & Robbie juggernaut…St. Bob…Ganga as a religious sacrament. It was anti-suburbia. And Joe Strummer worshiped it, and that was good enough for me. I grabbed up every reggae (and reggae-inspired) record I could get my hands on.

Fast forward to 1995. A very good, hipsterish friend of mine says to me “Eew, you like reggae?” I am aghast, but not totally surprised. After all, I had watched the frat boys* all but take over reggae in the worst way possible. I had gone to a Yellowman show a few years before this and was stunned by the number of greeks fist pumping to my sacred reggae beat. By then, Reggae Sunsplash had become MTV Spring Break. Since then, I’ve heard plenty from the anti-reggae crowd. Even as recent as this week another friend told me he didn’t “get” reggae. Sigh.

I knew this post would be a losing battle before I started it, because there is no way to explain reggae to anyone who doesn’t already “get” it. The second I heard Bob Marley “Live!” I got it. “No Woman, No Cry” on that record is one of the most transcendent moments in music history and no amount of convincing will change opinions either way. I was in a one-off band once (one of many) and we did several reggae greats (“No More Trouble,” “Get Up, Stand Up”) with me on the bass. It remains my single favorite music-making event. To crawl inside that reggae engine was more powerful than I can describe.

So, yeah, I have become accustomed to separating the music from the music lover. Even frat boys get it right once and awhile.

_______________________

* Full disclosure: I was in a fraternity, but we did not reggae.

By now, most of you have heard about the closing of Common Grounds (AKA Covered Dish). This leaves a huge gap in a community that, among others things, is known for its music scene stretching back to before I moved here in 1988. When it closes its doors, there will literally be no place for the types of bands I get my old ass off the couch to see. I haven’t seen a show at the O’Dome in at least a decade and it takes a lot to get me out to the smaller clubs.

The glory days (for me and most others my age) were when it was the Covered Dish, run to the point of exhaustion by the indomitable Bill Bryson. Bill managed to convince touring bands, who would generally shoot from Jax to Orlando (yikes) and Tampa before heading back up to the upper 47, to come through Hogtown. This was how I was able to have long convos with Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo), Mo Tucker (Velvet Underground, of course), and meet other heroes of mine, such as Mike Watt and Robyn Hitchcock. I did not stick around long enough to meet Robert Pollard, who was so pants-shitting drunk the night I saw Guided By Voices that I left before the set was over. My love for GBV took a big hit that night.

My memories of Covered Dish involved fire-code-pushing crowds and that cool, little balcony around the side. With Common Grounds, that balcony went away, as did most of the crowds, which probably explains a lot about why they are closing now. Nevertheless, I would take my then-middle-school son to every Against Me! show that came to town (now those were packed), and would make it out for the occasional Son Volt or Dumptsaphunk show in the intervening years.

Who knows what will happen with that place next, but surely Gainesville does not need another place to line dance. Please share your memories of Common Grounds/Covered Dish below.

Records That Will Change You

Lou Reed’s “Berlin” (1973) is simply the most devastating record I have ever heard. Nothing even comes close, nothing by Pink Floyd (for whom “darkness” was a business model), nothing by Elliott Smith (whose music has become inseparable from his biography). In college, I do not think I listened to “Berlin” when I wasn’t under the influence. By choice, I have not listened to it in years.

But it is Reed’s post-Velvets masterpiece. The arc from euphoric romance to darkest tragedy is brutal and determined, each song more unforgiving than the last. By the time the listener gets to “They’re taking…her children…away/Because they she said she was bad mutha” the day, nay, the week is ruined. When “Sad Song” rolls around it is a fait accompli and the listener is left wondering how to get out of the fetal position. Some have said Lou dips into melodrama with “Berlin” but I say hell no…he earns every bit of the emotional power this album produces. Those who want redemption in their music need to look elsewhere. This record offers none.

So why would anyone want to listen to “Berlin,” you say? So much music has assumed the role of an offstage fluffer these days, the stuff folks listen to as dispensible overhead to the mainstage of their lives. Not so, “Berlin.” It will demand your participation and it will change you, and beautiful…God, is it beautiful.“Berlin” delivers in spades the kind of darkness that Reed attempted elsewhere but never again produced. And he never will.

Note: Portions of these were previously published on GodIHateYourBand.

I’ve told this one so many times that I thought I would get the “official” version on the record here.

My son and I were in Costa Rica and decided to take a boat trip to a wildlife refuge so remote that you can’t get there by car. After the long boat ride, my infamously tiny bladder was no longer to be denied and I was directed to an “outhouse” up the hill (three plywood walls and a bucket).

By the time I got unzipped and ready, I felt a slap atop my head so foreceful I half expected to see Andre the Giant. What I saw instead was something like the picture at left–which is, trust me, precisely what you don’t want to see with your love tackle flapping in the breeze.

"Sweetie"--the little shit who attacked me

By the time they had gotten “Sweetie” off me (I’m not kidding on the name), I was running shirtless and nearly pantless down the hill back to the bewildered bosom of the strangers with whom I made the trip. One guy said to me “I figured something was wrong, because I ain’t never heard a man scream like that.” My “life-threatening” story quickly (too quickly for my taste) became a hilarious story for my boat mates, son included.

“Sweetie” had punctured me pretty good with one of his incisors and was apparently freaked out by the stranger in his home turf. Sweetie and I are no longer on speaking terms.

“I never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.” – Mark Twain

Like you, I saw this quote on dozens of Facebook statuses this week. Amen. But I experienced unalloyed joy at the death of Osama Bin Laden and posted as much on Facebook. I’ve wanted him dead since the Clinton Administration. If I have to explain why, then I don’t know what to say to you.

This, of course, led to a debate between those uncomfortable with any kind of political assassination at the hands of the US and those who never have any issue with US brute force, especially in the Swarthy Regions.

As a lifelong Leftie myself, I found myself uncomfortably in the “middle” of this one, so allow me to clarify my position as clearly as I know how.

Stuff I Support

• The assassination of any terrorists, particularly the Big Game ones

• The continuing strengthening of our Intelligence network

• An immediate end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

• The naming of evil when I see it

Stuff I Don’t Support

• Jingoism of any kind (and the Righties have really screwed up patriotism for me as well)

• War as a spectator sport (the most egregious thing I was accused of for my post)

By the way, I also rejoiced at the deaths of Jerry Falwell, Charlton Heston, and Jesse Helms (although not so much after I heard about his turnaround on AIDS). I will also applaud and dance when Dick Cheney’s mechanical ticker finally runs out of batteries.

Questions?