R.I.P. Michael Been (1950-2010)

Michael Been, lead singer of The Call, passed away yesterday after suffering a massive heart attack backstage at the Pukkelop Music Festival in Hasselt, Belgium.  He was only 60 years old.

At the time, Been was working as a sound engineer for his son's band, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, but his greatest fame came as the frontman for a band that more than one critic described as an "American U2."   While always respected from within the music industry (Peter Gabriel, Robbie Robertson and even Bono himself were counted among their fans), The Call never quite reached the level of commercial success that their potential seemed to warrant.  They touched the brass ring a few times, however: bolstered by heavy airplay on MTV, 1983's classic "The Walls Came Down" reached the lower rungs of the Top 40; during the 2000 Presidential Campaign, candidate Al Gore used The Call's 1989 single "Let The Day Begin" as his theme song.

Been also dabbled in acting, most notably playing the role of the Apostle John in Martin Scorsese's 1988 film The Last Temptation of Christ.

Among my circle of friends, The Call did achieve their rightful status as superstars.  I was only a sophomore in high school when "The Walls Came Down" hit the airwaves, but from the start it found a home on my short list of all-time great songs.  With its hummably insistent riff (da-da-da-DA, da-DA-da), great lyrics, and four-note guitar solo, the song became a favorite among not only my clique, but most everyone I know who has ever heard it.

The album from which it came, Modern Romans, is as good an introduction to the band as you'll find.  Side One is nearly perfect, with "Walls," "Turn A Blind Eye", "Time Of Your Life" (Been does a scarily accurate Jim Morrison on that one), the title track, and the stark "Back From The Front," its a flawless setlist.  Side Two starts to show evidence of The Call's fatal flaw: they tended to load their LPs front-heavy with the best material, with the weaker tunes closing out.  Rather than mixing the filler in to allow context to bring the best out of it, this approach tended to underscore the lesser songs.  The lone exception was 1986's Reconciled, which found that proper mix (although it still led with its strongest track, "Everywhere I Go.")

When they hit their mark, however, no other band could hold a candle to them.  They released eight albums in total, calling it quits after 1990's Red Moon.

In honor of Michael Been, I've chosen the clip for "The Walls Came Down."  (The clip cannot be embedded here, so please follow the link to YouTube when you click on the image below.) You'll spot The Band's Garth Hudson guesting on keyboards here, and you'll be singing the riff in your head for weeks. Goodbye Michael. You will be missed.

New Wave for the New Week #79

As we all do so often, I found myself the other day in a situation where, not long after a particularly frustrating interaction with another person - but certainly after the moment had actually passed - I thought of the perfect thing I should have said. I hate that.  Here I stood with this wonderfully clever and bitingly witty, searingly sarcastic retort, about five minutes too late.  The French call it esprit d'escalier, which translates to "the wit of the staircase." Literally, the thing you think to say as you are leaving down the stairs from the situation where you should have said it.  The only thing more infuriating is that friend we all have who seems always to have that perfect thing to say at the tip of his or her tongue right at the exact moment to say it.  They have the wit, they have the sarcasm, they have the timing, and they know it.  If that friend were a band, he'd be The Monochrome Set.

Well before Adam Ant brought Antmusic to unsuspecting world, he had been in an art-school band called The B-Sides with Hornsey School of Art classmates Ganesh "Bid" Seshadri, Lester Square and Andy Warren.  Much as Adam's first set of Ants would do years later to form Bow Wow Wow, so too did Bid, Square and Warren abandon The B-Sides in the late '70s to form The Monochrome Set. (Though he made some excellent music in those days, it seems Adam Ant did not play well with others!)

The Monochrome Set's sound is the sound of cool.  Their ridiculously hummable tunes flow as smoothly and sweetly as honey, reminiscent of Bacharach and David's catchiest '60s lounge-pop.  Bid's foggy velvet vocals slide perfectly over top this musical bedding, projecting images of high-class yet smokey nightclubs filled with bored-looking patrons scarcely deigning to converse with one another.

And oh! that wit: From clever song titles ("I'll Scry Instead") to incredibly erudite lyrics ("Don't dance the polka in a dhoti/And whistle the Rite of Spring/Don't recite Hamlet's soliloquy/While munching onion rings" from "Ten Don'ts For Honeymooners"), all of which are delivered in the same laconic, off-handed style, The Monochrome Set affected the perfect too-cool-to-care stance that would normally piss people off, if only they weren't so damned funny.

From 1979 through 1985, The Monochrome Set issued five albums and several singles worth of material, with 1982's Eligible Bachelors being the best of the bunch and a fine jumping-in point for those unfamiliar with the band (although you can't go wrong with any record with their name on it).  There are also a few best-ofs and singles collections which serve as both introduction to and history of the band.

After a five-year hiatus, they returned to the record racks in 1990 with Dante's Casino, released at first only in Japan, where the band had always been hugely popular. When that album's import sales proved the audience was still there, several more albums followed.  The band finally called it quits in 1998, although their website indicates plans for reunion gigs in February of 2011.

This week's NW4NW entry comes from The Monochrome Set's 1982 masterpiece Eligible Bachelors. Here is the clip for "The Jet Set Junta" - enjoy!

I've Got Nothing To Say, But It's OK...

You may have noticed lately that things have been pretty quiet around here.  Other than the weekly NW4NW posts, I haven't written much, and for awhile I was chiding myself pretty harshly over it.  "You gotta write! You MUST write! How can you call yourself a writer if you don't write?  Look at all your blogging friends - they write.  Why aren't you writing?"

So I'd sit at my desk and stare at the blank screen, which returned the stare with its stark, unblinking white emptiness.  I lost that staring contest every time. The distractions were too easy. "Hmm, maybe I need some music. No, that's too loud.  This one's too quiet. Hey, when did I get that CD?" One song would remind me of another then another then another, and suddenly I wasn't writing - I was listening to music!

"OK, back to it," I'd command myself.  But first, a sandwich.  Brain needs energy, right?  Of course, the kitchen is downstairs from my office, which means a trip through the living room and the combined dining room/library (don't ask), which means a quick side trip to make a sandwich turns into half an hour or more because "I'll just see if there's anything worth watching on TV for a moment," or "I really need to read another chapter of the book I'm in the middle of," or whatever.

As you can see, I may fancy myself a writer, but I am far from a disciplined one.

I do employ some helpful tools and exercises.  There is a wonderful website called Write Or Die where you set a goal of writing x number of words in x number of minutes, and the timer starts and you better start writing, because if you don't hit your word goal you receive a penalty that ranges anywhere from "Gentle" to "Electric Shock."  I find it immensely helpful in just getting the flow of words to paper going, even if all I spit out is meaningless gibberish (which, more often than not, it is, but it's about the process, not the content).

When it's content I want to hone, or I start feeling like I'm getting far too verbose, Six Word Stories becomes a source of inspiration.  The idea is to tell a complete story using no more or less than six words.  A personal favorite from the site: "Woman eats horse. Dies, of course."

There are a number of sites out there that offer up random writing prompts or initial sentences to build upon, and trying to write extemporaneously using those prompts can sometimes help me get going, but I don't use those often.  Some folks find them very useful; I find them to be too much like an assignment, which takes the joy right out of writing for me most times.  No, I'm one who needs the inspiration to come from within.  For that reason, I keep a notebook on the nightstand by my bed, as well as scraps of paper throughout the house. Never know when one of those light bulbs will suddenly click on.  I have, at times, sat bolt-upright in bed in the middle of the night and scribbled down a nearly complete blog post, needing only to transcribe it and do some minimal editing the next day.

Recently, though, those notebooks and scraps of paper have been empty.  No inspiration.  Until the other day, when I realized that there really wasn't a problem.  There was no need to scold myself or fear that the writing muse had left me altogether.

That realization was triggered by a line from an old movie I was watching, 1973's The Paper Chase, in which the lead character, Hart, is a first-year law student studying under a demanding and intimidating contract law professor, Kingsfield.  Kingsfield calls on Hart to analyze a particular case, and Hart, seeking to assert a newly-found confidence in his relationship with the professor, replies that he respectfully passes on the opportunity to do so.  "I have nothing to add at this time," Hart boldly explains, "When I have something relevant to say, I shall raise my hand."

And that sums up where I have been in relation to this blog recently: I quite simply have not had anything to say.  Nothing has spurred me to write.  I have not suddenly awoken inspired; I have not had the sudden light bulb moment in some time.  And there's nothing wrong with that.  In fact, it's probably better than me attempting to prattle on about something toward which I feel no particular inspiration.  And when I do have something worthwhile to say, I shall do so.

In the interim, continue to enjoy the weekly NW4NW posts.  There are some other goodies coming as well, but we'll let them be a surprise.  For now, I have nothing else to write.

New Wave for the New Week #78

“Look man, I’m no cheapskate Elvis Costello. I’ve never tried to impersonate him. For a start, we’re more humorous, more tongue-in-cheek than him. He’s more bitchy and venomous, like a middle-aged child.” - Nick Watkinson of The Jags (source: Magnet Magazine)

The Jags were a band that suffered unjustly as a result of their initial success.  Over the course of their four-year existence, these six fellows from London gave the world two albums and one of the most fantastic debut singles of the era; however, the very song that brought them their greatest renown also cast the shadow that stunted the growth of their career.

Formed in 1978 and signed to Island Records by 1979, Nick Watkinson, John Alder, Steve Prudence, Alex Baird, Michael Cotton and Patrick O'Toole saw their very first single, "Back Of My Hand (I've Got Your Number)," spend 10 weeks on the UK pop charts and peak at number 17.  With its jangly guitars and stop-start verses, the song was a bona-fide hit and seemed destined for even greater chart heights.  Unfortunately, there was this fellow named Elvis Costello who had been hanging around the charts for a couple years already, and who had become the darling of the music mags and appointed King of the New Wave of by rock critics everywhere.  Didn't this upstart band's record sound suspiciously like Costello?

The short answer was, yes, in many ways, it did.  The lyrics certainly weren't at Costello's level of skewering wordplay (who else's were?!?), but Watkinson had a voice that veered very close to E.C.'s and a penchant for Costello-esque phrasing.  Close your eyes and listen to Watkinson deliver the final line of the first verse ("you wouldn't phone those guys who mess around wit' choo") and, damn, that almost could be Elvis himself!

By the time The Jag's first LP, Evening Standards, hit the shelves, the unnecessary backlash had begun.   The critics were bound and determined that no one should approach the throne of Costello, and wrote The Jags off as a poor imitation.  Never mind that nothing else on the album sounded like Costello, but was in fact solid power pop material that by all rights should have gone over big.

Their second album, the brilliantly titled No Tie Like A Present, came along a year and a half later, but was a pale imitation of the first record.  You can hear the band struggling to distance themselves from the Costello-imitator tag even further, resulting in a self-conscious paint-by-numbers record of solid but uninspired pop rock.  When the album failed to sell, The Jags called it a day. (Both albums in their entirety, along with a few bonus tracks, were combined for a 2001 CD, The Best Of The Jags)

Really a shame, because that first single remains one of the most enthusiastic and enjoyable records of the time, and the clip below captures the band in those heady early days when their potential seemed limitless. Enjoy this week's NW4NW entry, "Back Of My Hand (I Got Your Number)" by The Jags:

New Wave for the New Week #77

When most people think of Punk Rock and New Wave bands from Canada, the name that immediately springs to mind is Vancouver's legendary D.O.A. Those who know their stuff will also quickly cite The Viletones...and then the head-scratching starts.  It's a shame, too, because many great bands came to us from the Great White North: The Action, SNFU, The Dishrags, Forgotten Rebels, Dayglo Abortions, The Modernettes and Teenage Head are just a few.  But perhaps the best of the Canadian bands was The Diodes.

The Diodes came together in 1977, and in that same year headlined the opening bill at Canada's first Punk Rock club, Toronto's Crash 'n' Burn, with The Nerves opening for them.  Also that year, they released their self-titled debut album, which remains one of the hidden gems of the era.  From start to finish, the album crackles with energy.  Each cut shimmers with punky pop (poppy punk?) goodness, from the endearingly exuberant amateurism of cuts like "Blonde Fever," "Time Damage," and "Child Star" to the somewhat dated declarations of the New Wave ("Plastic Girls") to the well-meaning if ham-fisted metaphor for doomed relationships, "Tennis (Again)" ("...you're never gonna get to Wimbeldon," the lyrics warn).  The two perfectly chosen covers of semi-forgotten '60s nuggets, The Cyrkle's "Red Rubber Ball" and Max Frost & The Troopers' "Shapes Of Things To Come," are not to be missed. Simply an essential album.

Released followed in 1979, with its lead single, the phenomenal "Tired of Waking Up Tired," appearing at the end of the previous year.  While not quite as strong as its predecessor, the record has some high spots that do reach the level of the debut, notably "Jenny's In A Sleep World" and "Madhouse."  "Red Rubber Ball" is repeated from the first LP, as the band's American label kept pushing the single in hopes of breaking through to the US market, but The Diodes were already showing signs of wear. 1980's Action/Reaction would be the band's final proper studio LP; by then, any hard edges the band may have once had were sanded smooth, and only vague hints of their early greatness remained.  A decent collection of outtakes and B-sides, Survivors, appeared in 1982, and that seemed to be the end of the line.

Sixteen years later, however, interest in The Diodes resulted in the release of the CD Tired Of Waking Up Tired: The Best Of The Diodes. Essentially a repackaging of the first two LPs, it finally gave The Diodes a voice in the CD age, and is highly recommended as an introduction to, and nearly complete discography of, this great band. 2007 saw the band reunite and begin to play the occasional live show, generating enough reaction to see to more Diodes releases this year: Time/Damage Live is a vinyl document of the band performing live in their heyday, circa 1978; Action/Reaction has already been made available on iTunes and the reissue CD is planned for later in 2010, making everything but Survivors officially available once again.

For this week's entry, I'm going with two of my favorites.  "Child Star," from the debut LP, tells the true story of Anissa Jones, who played Buffy on the TV show Family Affair and later died of a massive drug overdose at age 18.  The song's unforgettable chorus name-checks characters from the TV show ("Uncle Bill, Uncle Bill, I took some pills/Mr. French, Mr. French, I'm really tense").  "Tired Of Waking Up Tired," as noted before, is phenomenal, and may be the finest thing they ever recorded. Enjoy them both!

New Wave for the New Week #76

Torch Song via last.fm

Following last week's entry on one man/many band artist Jim Thirlwell, I thought it appropriate to choose another one-man musical whirlwind for this week's entry, although this one inhabits quite a different area of the musical universe than Mr. Thirlwell does.

William Orbit first appeared on the map in 1984 as one third of the trippily etheral synth trio Torch Song.  Their debut album, Wish Thing, kicks off with the simply amazing single "Don't Look Now," and from there flits and soars and sparkles with washes of melody and assorted bleeps and blorps.  It's not all as strong the opening track, but it is, on the whole, irresistable.  Laurie Mayer's honey-soaked vocals pull you right in, making the album's effect almost hypnotic: you'll hardly even realize that by midway through side two you're listening to a horribly wrong-headed stab at covering a cheesy 1970s radio staple ("Ode To Billy Joe").  That misstep aside, the album is well done and recommended.

A second album followed three years later, but by the time of Exhibit A's release, Orbit was becoming known as a capable producer, remixer and DJ.  Hence, the artist credit was changed to "Torch Song featuring William Orbit," and the music focused more on Orbit's synthesizer acrobatics and less on Mayer's vocals. Both Torch Song LPs are difficult to come by; neither has been reissued on CD to my knowledge.  Still, they're worth seeking out, especially Wish Thing.

The following year, Orbit dropped the Torch Song name and Laurie Mayer's vocals, and recorded an unnecessary cover of The Psychedelic Furs' "Love My Way," found on the first record released under his own name, Orbit.  Getting that out of his system, he launched a dizzying catalogue of solo material under his own name and assorted pseudonyms (hello Mr. Thirlwell!) such as Bassomatic, Strange Cargo, and Electric Chamber.  A dozen or so albums appeared over the next ten years, mostly following the spirit of the original Torch Song material, but done in a more club-friendly dance style.  When not recording his own material, he was remixing others, working with names as well-known as Madonna, U2, and Prince.

In 1996, Orbit returned to the Torch Song name, bringing Mayer back into the fold, and recorded a new LP, Toward The Unknown Region.  Hailed by fans as his best work yet, its sound was more in line with his solo work than with either of the previous two Torch Song projects.

For this week's entry, we go all the way back to the beginning.  My brother stumbled upon the clip for "Don't Look Now" some months ago and brought it to my attention (thank you, Marc!), suggesting it might make for a good NW4NW entry. Indeed it does!

There's Gonna Be A Reunion

"There's gonna be a reunion
Down by the telephone tree
And all your lips will be movin'
You're talking shit about me..."

- Telephone Tree by The Young Fresh Fellows


The countdown is on: one week from this Saturday will be my 25th High School Reunion.  Class of 1985 - can you believe that was a quarter of a century ago?  How did we get so old?

No Worries

Those of you who follow this blog assiduously will recall that in this post about my social anxieties I wrestled with attending this reunion, among other things.  I made the decision about a week ago to go.  Our reunion is being held at the Lancaster Convention Center, about a 30-minute walk from my front door, so I determined that if I show up and really have a lousy time, I can easily ditch and head for home. Or a bar. More likely a bar.

But I don't think I'm going to have a lousy time.  In fact, I'm looking forward to it! I'm excited to see faces I haven't seen in years and catch up in person with those who have been only unseen entities on the other end of a Facebook connection for the past year or two.  Sure, there are those who I really would rather not encounter - I think everyone has their short list like that, and I don't doubt that I'm on a few of those lists - but I'm not going to spend my time focusing on those folks, and I'm certainly not going to give them the power to stop me from showing up.  I'll smile and say hello if I must, and then spend my time with the people who matter.

Most surprising to me is the anxiety process which I described in that previous post has not begun.  Again, I made this decision a week ago.  Usually, a week is plenty of incubation time for a full-fledged panic to set in, and for me to begin scrambling to set up my "outs," my excuses for not going.  Since I have the safety-hatch built in this time, knowing I can easily leave at any time, I have managed to keep that panic at bay.

Oh, little bits of it have tried to grab a foothold: at least two nightmares so far where I'm at the reunion and things go horribly awry; where the bullies I suffered back then have not changed and I am defenseless and unable to retaliate.   But the full-on anxiety has not appeared.  More importantly, I don't find myself waiting for it.  Sure, I wonder if it will show up between now and then.  Another week is, as I said, plenty of incubation time.

Memories

To me, it's far more interesting to learn about what my classmates are doing with their lives now then to sit around awash in nostalgia.  But I suppose reliving the old days is a necessary part of the reunion process, and I do have fond memories of my high school years. What a different time it was back then.

Those were pre-Columbine days, and during my senior year it was unsafe to walk the halls of the school unarmed.  Our weapons of choice were called Tracer Guns.  These plastic pistols fired little plastic discs that sailed like mini frisbees and stung like the dickens when they hit you - especially from close range.  When the locker banks would clear out in the mornings as everyone headed to first period, the ground would be littered with yellow plastic circles.  The cafeteria was a likely place for an ambush, as were the restrooms.  And, I have cloudy memories of shootouts in the school's planetarium.  We had a blast, and it was all innocent fun.  To think what would happen to a kid bringing a plastic Tracer Gun into a school nowadays!

Do schools still do fire drills? As often as we did back then?  It seemed like we had fire drills on a weekly basis, where we all dutifully file out to the busport behind the school building or the grounds in front and loiter purposelessly until we were allowed back in.  I know those drills happened often enough that we no longer took them very seriously and were somewhat less than prompt in our practice evacuations.  Once, after taking a particularly long time to empty the building and just as long to meander back to class, our principal got on the intercom to scold us, and in the process made the oft-quoted remark, "This is a fire drill, not a lemonade party!"  Now, I've never been to a lemonade party, nor do I know anyone who has, but our principal was mad, and often had difficulty finding the right words when he was so agitated. This was classically demonstrated when someone pranked the school by pulling a fire alarm, sending us all through the process once again.  Across the loudspeaker came our principal's barely concealed fury in the form of the unanswerable question,  "Doesn't anyone remember the story of the three little pigs who cried wolf?"

My own bizarre sense of humor found outlet, if not always receptive audience,  in my high school days.  One year I entered the school's Talent Show.  My talent? I read Green Eggs and Ham aloud.  (Years before Rev. Jesse Jackson did it on SNL, mind you!) I found it hilarious to consider that you had to actually audition for the Talent Show, and me reading a children's book made the cut amongst the typical piano recitals, dance routines, etc.  Another time I managed to get a page worth of nonsense and gibberish published in our annual student literary magazine.  My most Andy-Kauffman-esque moment, however, was the night I DJ'd one of our school dances, playing an evening's worth of music hardly anyone knew or recognized on a cheap, rinky-dink stereo that could hardly be heard across an empty gym, much less one filled with my fellow students.  Very few people got that one - more than a few were kind of ticked, actually.  I still smile to remember the looks on some people's faces...

Older, Fatter, Better

Now, 25 years later, I'm going back.  Back to reminisce with old friends.  Back to see those who I did not know well then, but who have become good friends on Facebook and Twitter.  I can't say I don't have any preconceptions going in; I think we all do.  But I know I'm not the only one who has gotten older and fatter and balder in the ensuing quarter century (sorry, my friends, but your Facebook pics give you away!), and I'm not going with the hope or intention of impressing anybody.  I've got my faults and my idiosyncracies, but I'm living a pretty good life, thank you, and I'm in a happier place than I have been in years.  I have no doubt there will be stories from the reunion to share here, and rest assured I will!

New Wave for the New Week #75

James G. Thirlwell might just be a genius.

Where most bands are comprised of many individuals, Thirlwell is an individual comprised of many bands: since 1981 Thirlwell has been unleashing his seething pseudo-industrial musical genre-fusion catharses on an unsuspecting world in a multitude of guises.  Most well-known for his various Foetus-based pseudonyms (Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel, You've Got Foetus On Your Breath, Foetus Art Terrorism, Foetus Interruptus, etc.), he is also Clint Ruin and Frank Want.  He is Wiseblood; he is The Venture Brothers; he is DJ OTESFU, among myriad other names.

The sheer volume of his output is startling. Trouser Press lists no less than 21 albums and EPs in their admittedly abbreviated discography, and that only covers the music he has released himself.  Add to that his compositions for others and his assorted guest appearances, collaborations and studio manipulations, and you are faced with a sprawling musical family tree that puts most others to shame.  His music is multi-layered and genre-defying.  Bits of various styles and genres burble up through the muck: the punk aesthetic is fused to a swing beat, a surf guitar spices up a military march, strains of familiar melodies are hopelessly twisted and morphed into frightening spectres.  Every idea Trent Reznor ever had for Nine Inch Nails, Thirlwell had first and executed more deftly - and Reznor only scratched the surface of deep, murky pool.

If you don't know Thirlwell's music, the best place to jump in are his two masterworks under the Scraping Foetus Off the Wheel moniker, Hole and Nail.  Both will leave you breathless and stunned but wanting more.

This week's NW4NW entry is Thirlwell performing Nail's "Descent Into the Inferno," probably my favorite Thirlwell creation, on a UK TV show called The Tube.  How perfectly ironic to see him standing their lip-syncing like your typical pop artist, and how funny to see the disbelief and confusion on some of the faces in the audience...

The Day I Met Johnny Thunders

In the summer of 1989 I was both the Music Director and the Interim General Manager of WDCE (90.1 FM), the campus radio station at the University of Richmond in Richmond, VA.  I had been appointed to the Music Director position at the beginning of the previous school year, and had been hosting a weekly three-hour Saturday night radio show for the better part of three and a half years by that point.

Among my duties as MD was the responsibility to arrange on-air interviews with bands who might be passing through Richmond, and matching those artists up with the DJs whose shows would be best suited and who had the ability to conduct a somewhat intelligent interview. (I remember my sophomore year roommate's spot-on impersonation of "every college DJ everywhere:" in a perfectly deadpan monotone voice, "OK, that was a song by The Cure, and now here's another song by The Cure...")

One day around mid-summer, I was in the station's office perusing the newest shipment of material to determine what would make the station's playlist, when the office phone rang.  A woman on the other end of the line introduced herself as Johnny Thunders' manager, and said he was going to be playing in Richmond that weekend, and were we interested in doing an interview with him?

Johnny Thunders!  Johnny Thunders of The New York Dolls! Johnny Thunders of The Heartbreakers! Johnny Freakin' Thunders!  The epitome of New York glam-punk-rock-n-roll guitar greatness! THE Johnny Thunders? Nah...couldn't be...had to be a joke, right?

No, she insisted, this was a last-minute deal, here's his room number at the hotel where he'll be staying, give him a call on Friday and set it up.  I asked her what name he'd be staying under, and she said, "Just ask for Johnny Thunders."  Of course my next call was to the club where she said he'd be playing.  They verified that, yes, Johnny Thunders would be there, with next to no promotion because it was a last-minute booking.

That Friday, I called the hotel and asked for Johnny Thunders. The nasally New Yawk accent that answered was unmistakeably him.  He'd love to do an interview, he said, but he needed a ride to the station from the hotel, and by the way could we get him to the club also?  I called a friend of mine and told her, "We're chauffeuring Johnny Thunders around tonight!"

He hadn't come to town with a big entourage.  It was just Johnny and his saxophone player, Jamie Heath.  From the moment we shook hands, Johnny Thunders was among the friendliest people I've ever met in the music world.  "Hey, can we play a couple songs from my demo tape?" he asked as we drove across town to the radio station, shoving an unmarked cassette toward me.  Turns out he was between labels at the time, and was shopping some new solo stuff around.

The interview went well.  The regular Friday night DJ and Johnny Thunders and me, talking music and having Johnny cue up his own demo tape live and having a great time.  I wish I had a recording of that interview, but I don't.  The only thing I do have is a recording of the station promo he did for us:


From there we headed downtown to a little hole-in-the-wall on Grace Street where Johnny played - just guitar and saxophone - a mix of his newer stuff and a few classics.  Maybe fifty people showed up that night. We hung out with Johnny all night. I'd like to think he was clean at the time.  I can say that I saw no drugs that night, and Johnny was lucid; in fact, he was great to talk with and very funny, and insisted all our beers were on his tab.  But Johnny's addictions were well known - the stuff of legend, as they say.  All I can tell you is, if there were any drugs there that night, he kept them hidden from us.

When the time came to drop Johnny off at the hotel, he made a big production out of thanking us for our hospitality and insisted that "if you ever come to New York, you look me up!"  He took his demo with him, it being the only copy he had, but he promised he would send a copy to the station the first chance he had.

No copy of the demo ever arrived, and I never heard from Johnny Thunders again.  Within a year and a half, he would be gone, found dead in a hotel room in New Orleans of what some people claim was a methadone overdose, although a lot of mystery still surrounds the event and many feel foul play was involved.

Yesterday would have been Johnny Thunders' 58th birthday.  To this day, when people ask me for my greatest "brush with rock and roll greatness" story, this is the one I tell them.  Hard to top Johnny Thunders buying you a beer.

New Wave for the New Week #74

A quick entry this week, and perhaps the most mainstream band I've included in the whole NW4NW series, but since they're playing right here in my good ol' hometown tomorrow night, and since they are one of those bands that everybody thinks of when you talk about New Wave, it's only fitting that this week's entry be The B-52's.

Not going into biography or discography here.  If you don't who The B-52's are, you really need to get out of the house more often.  The second band (behind Pylon) to come out of the Athens, GA music scene that would eventually give us an incredible string of fantastic bands (including, notably, R.E.M.), The B-52's combination of '50s/'60s kitsch, twangy surf guitars, and the juxtaposition of Fred Schneider's bombastically nasal yelps with Cindy Wilson's and Kate Pierson's southern-fried harmonies became the template for what the mainstream thought New Wave was supposed to sound like.

By the time The B-52's finally broke onto the American charts with "Love Shack," the band was already well past their prime.  That album (Cosmic Thing), as well as the follow-ups Bouncing Off the Satellites and Good Stuff, were clearly geared for commercial airplay, and to long-time fans sounded so watered down compared to their groundbreaking early material.  No collection of Punk/New Wave vinyl is truly complete without their first two albums.  The 1979 debut, The B-52's (sometimes called "the yellow album"), is still jaw-dropping 31 years later: fun, funny, insanely catchy and without a bad song, it is one of the ultimate party records ever recorded.  Classics like "52 Girls," "Planet Claire," "Dance This Mess Around," and of course "Rock Lobster" all sound as fresh and enthusiastic as they did back then.  Wild Planet, released the following year, picks right up where the debut left off, with "Private Idaho," "Give Me Back My Man," Strobe Light" and more.  Both are essential.  I also include 1983's Whammy! with those first two albums - although the material here is a step below the classics, when it hits the mark ("Legal Tender," "Song For A Future Generation," "Whammy Kiss") it scores big.

Last year, The B-52's released a brand new album, Funplex, which has its moments and shows that the band is still capable of getting the party going.  The tour they've been on brings them to Lancaster's American Music Theatre tomorrow night, but I don't think I'll be going.  $49 is a steep price to see them three decades on and well past their classic days.  I might have shelled out that amount back in the Whammy! days, but not now.

No, instead, I'll be content remembering the glory days of The B-52s.  This week's NW4NW entry, for example: here are The B-52's back in 1979 performing the classic "Private Idaho." Enjoy!