Let Me Roll It #2 - Cheap Trick

In February of 1964, my Mom saw The Beatles on Ed Sullivan. As with so many other people around the world (including Davy Jones who appeared on stage just before The Fabs), her life was changed forever.

I didn't get to have the shock and awe that was Beatlemania. I wasn't even born yet. But I got the next best thing stuck in Atlanta traffic while on summer vacation in 1977; Cheap motherfuckin' Trick!

A FM station decided on the hottest of days, in the most polluted city I've ever been in, to play In Color in it's 32 minute entirety. From the opening notes of "Hello There," through the head bopping catchy ride that is "I Want You to Want Me," and well into the brilliance and sheer perfection of "Southern Girls," I just kept nudging myself closer to the dash of the Volare trying to get all the sound in my ear hole that I could. I was simultaneously bummed and over the damn moon when the album ended but to my shock the DJ put Cheap Trick on! I had never heard any of this! None. "Elo Kiddies"?! "He's a Whore"?! And to think that a DJ would take it upon his all powerful and amphetamine fueled head to spin whatever in the hell he wanted... that's just insane.

So that was it. I was already the head of the KISS Army in my junior high but I was mixing my enthusiasm for Ace Frehley (which my mother would soon destroy) with my increasingly more grown up/adolescent mania for Zander and Nielsen.

In the summer of 1978, free from the emotional dishwater of Oklahoma and relaxed in the record store nirvana of Missouri, I was free to do whatever my Rock n' Roll heart desired. That was to see Cheap Trick. And I did many, many times over. Since they were a regional act they played support to any fucking band that came through town. It was like being in Liverpool after all only with a lot of beards and hot pants. I wore my black Cheap Trick shirt with its repeated and brilliant logo everywhere. I wore my 1978 tour baseball sleeve T to every school function, teen blowout, and to work at the record shop. Heaven Tonight was a masterpiece. It was on that tour that my friend and mentor, Cathy Stevens (who turned me on to Tom Petty and Reggae over one stony week at the store in the fall of 1978), not only took me to a show with a front row seat but managed to get me back stage to meet the band. Her designs were to make-out with Robin Zander but with me in tow she had to do something other than say that I was in fact NOT her kid. She stuck me in front of Rick Nielsen and went to do her business. Rick talked to me about playing the guitar and he gave me a handful of picks with his comic face stamped on each one. He gave me something like 50 of them, I ended up taking the picks to school and scored a date with a cheerleader just because of one Rick's little presents. You were awesome until I had chicken pox, Connie Grogan.

1979 saw the release of Dream Police, another tour, three more shows for me to see, and my favorite Cheap Trick track, "Way of the World." That school year ended with the annual talent show. At one end of the Parkview High School Gym, some upper-class longhairs took ten painful minutes to grind out "Freebird." It was laced with bandannas and a huge confederate flag motif. I was reminded of the 1977 talent show in Oklahoma when some cool 8th graders smoked "More Than a Feeling" and how that was a way better song than this piece of shit. When they were done the lights turned on over the stage that I was in front of and Greg Frazier's band kicked into "Surrender." I was with my people. My crowd. My friends. United in a high school gym singing how our mamas were alright and our daddies were alright but they just seemed a little weird.

We're all alright! We're all alright!

ap - 2009

The first time I heard the MC5

This is one of my formative experiences...

I was working at Hastings (an old entertainment store in Springfield, MO) and there was this really cool guy name Chris who worked there. He was a few years older than I was, (I was 21) and way more knowledgable about music than I was, but I was trying to play cool with him. We were talking about stuff and the topic wandered over to Henry Rollins and I was like, "Oh, I love 'Kick Out the Jams' that song rocks" and he looked at me kinda funny. He says, "You've heard the MC5 version right?" like he's afraid of my answer. I said, "Huh?" He jumped up and down, and was yelling, "Oh my God! Wait till close! You're about to get an education!" I had absolutely no idea what I was in for.

The store closed...half the lights were out, and from the huge soundsystem in the store I hear, "KICK OUT THE JAMS, MUTHAFUCKA!" and it was bliss from there on out. Suddenly I was launched into this whole new world of ROCK that was different from what the mainstream rock was that I was listening to. I didn't know anything but while I was standing there in the book section, mouth agape, soaking it all in, I thought, "I must have more of this." (I'd been listening to Radiohead a lot) To hear the MC5 for the first time like that was like the Heavens parting and the voice of the Almighty saying, "Let there be Rock!" (like in the AC/DC song) just for me.
I had heard rock before, but it was cold and empty. This had swing and was loose but tight all at the same time. The bass was what sucked me and swirled me around and pulled at my gut. The howls were unparalleled and the mix allowed me to imagine they were just on the roof rockin' the house down. I wish everyone coulda had that experience. It's a great one.

So, thank you, Chris for tearing me away from the shoe-gazers and the imitators. Thank you for an experience I will never forget. Thanks to you, I'll be in the nursing home, with Alzheimer's, happily screaming "Kick out the Jams Muthafucka!"

jae - 2006

How I fell in love with Rock and Roll

My folks have never been music lovers. This has always struck me as odd because my dad's uncle, Don Day, has practically dedicated his life to bluegrass music. He converted his dairy farm in Conway, Missouri into a sort of amphitheatre / campground hybrid, and puts on a fairly large bluegrass festival (Starvey Creek Festival) twice a year. Uncle Don's vision and hard work seems to have paid off, too. He doesn't milk cows anymore. Anyway, one might think that this passion for music would have made its way down the gene pool to my father. But it didn't. When I was small, you could count the records in our house on one hand: a couple of Ventures albums that I suspect he bought for the bikini clad girls on the cover, a carpenters album, and a couple of (fat era) Elvis 45's. These were all filed away neatly in the console of the record player that was seldom touched.

Around the time that I was about ten or eleven years old, my folks decided that the old record player was of no use to the family. The record player, it's console, and the contents inside were hauled away (big loss, I mean the fucking Carpenters?!). It's likely that this may have been inspired by one of those "purge your lives of rock music" sermons that we heard at church regularly, but I can't be sure of that

A couple of years later, we moved to a new house with a basement. One day I was rummaging around in the basement looking for a tennis ball that I'd been aimlessly bouncing against the wall for what seemed like hours when I came across an LP that had fallen between the cracks and ended up in the same cardboard box that my tennis ball had landed in. The record's jacket was mustard yellow. In the middle was a circular "fish eye" photo of three really freaky looking guys with huge Afros. Printed across the bottom, in bold purple letters and a font that reminded me of wax dripping down the shaft of a candle were the words, Are You Experienced? "Clearly not," I thought to myself; and I desperately wanted to be.

The image that those three guys (especially the one in the middle) projected from that album cover was irresistible to me. The only problem was that I had no turntable to play this LP on. I tucked the record under my arm, bolted upstairs, and stashed it away alongside my sports illustrated swimsuit issues. It just felt like contraban somehow. I'd get it out every now and then and just stare at it and wonder what kind of sounds would jump out of those grooves if I ever had the chance to drop a needle in them.

By the time I got to the ninth grade, my folks had noticed how much in enjoyed listening to the radio in the car and bought me a "boom box" type cassette player/radio (though I still had no tapes). Also around this time, I had earned their trust enough to be dropped off at the mall on Friday nights with my friends. One of the first things I did when I got there was head straight for Camelot to get a copy of Are You Experienced? on cassette so I could finally hear it (I had actually skipped lunch all week and pocketed my lunch money so I could afford it). My friends laughed. They were all listening to Tone Loc and Vanilla Ice. I didn't care. Hell, if I'd had my own ride, I would have left right then. The suspense had been building for about a year and I couldn't wait to satisfy my curiosity.

Anyone familiar with this classic album can probably guess the rest of the story. My life was changed when I heard the grinding, opening riff of Purple Haze. And the backward guitar riff on the title track even frightened me (still does a little bit). Though it seems obvious now, at the time I could hardly believe how great this music was and the jacket (as much as I love it) paled in comparison. I was hooked

je- 2008

The Sweetness of Honeyboy Edwards

I don’t sleep. I doze occasionally but morning, noon, night, evening, dead of night, early morning, the wee hours have no relevance to me. I’m always tired but seldom sleep.

So I got up from a thirty-minute nap to go to CVS, the store formerly known as Osco, Skaggs, Katz and Cranks. I had to find a blank VHS tape that, in the age of TiVo, is tantamount to trying to find a buggy whip or slide rule.
There’s a news show coming on HBO’s “In Focus” called “Vampires in America.” I told my friend Lisa I would tape it for her. She works at a “shelter” facility in NYC counseling homeless teens, drug addled kids, hopeless cases. Some of her “kids” claim to be vampires. She wants to see the HBO report and I want to make her happy.

Lisa is a brilliant writer. She worked for “The New Yorker” and wrote a great novel, “Because of You.” Then she was a junkie for several years and I thought she had died. I am glad she didn’t. Lisa is a middle class white girl. But she knows, loves and understands the blues. Some white kids can. Dig up the first two Electric Flag albums. Or “Better Days” by The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Or any John Mayall record. Or the original Fleetwood Mac.
So... I’m out to find the archaic VHS tape and am tuned to NPR rather than the usual stuff I listen to, right wing radio. It was the godfather who said, “keep your friends close...and your enemies closer...”
I hear the strains of an obviously ancient blues recording.
Guitar and voice.
The announcer is saying, “This is David “Honeyboy” Edwards, recorded in 1942 by legendary folk/blues archivist Alan Lomax.”
The music crossfades into a higher fidelity version of the song and the announcer continues, “...and this is Honeyboy Edwards today, in our studio.”
Honeyboy Edwards is still playing the blues. He still loves the girls, the booze and the music.
At 93, Honeyboy is the LAST living link to the man who brought the Delta Blues to prominence, Robert Johnson.

Johnson, by all accounts, sold his soul to the Devil to learn to play the guitar. He is the father of American blues music. He was the Jimi Hendrix of his time. He remains the absolute mojo man. He is the end all of any discussion of the blues. Charley Patton, some will point out, was more proficient. But Patton didn’t SELL HIS SOUL TO THE DEVIL for his music. That kind of action requires a commitment. Ask Batman, the Joker or Dick Cheney. Selling one’s soul can’t be taken lightly, even if you’re an atheist.

In the interview, Honeyboy says, “Robert loved two things: Whisky and women.”
I understand that. I would sell my own soul for either and indeed may have done so. I still can’t play the guitar but I have been devil drunk and I know and love the kindest women on the planet who give me nothing “bluesy” to sing about because they have never done me no wrong. No wrong at all. Damn it! I could have had a blues career if I didn’t know all of these NICE women... Somebody, PLEASE, break my heart, do me wrong, treat me like a fool, step out, high faloot.

Johnson was killed at a house party one night in 1938. A husband -whose wife Johnson had been diddling- gave him some bootleg whisky laced with strychnine.
Honeyboy was there. He saw Robert Johnson die. For lovers and students of the blues the implications of “I saw Robert Johnson die” are beyond the realm of sanity. Thinking about it will only put a hellhound on your trail. Not to mention stones in your pathway.
Honeyboy went on to play with Big Joe Williams, Rice "Sonny Boy Williamson" Miller, Howlin' Wolf, Peetie Wheatstraw, Sunnyland Slim, Lightnin' Hopkins, Big Walter, Little Walter, Magic Sam and Muddy Waters.
Honeyboy Edwards is the real thing and I heard him sing and play today. At 93 he kicks every young poseur’s ass.
Honeyboy is 93. But in the interview he sounds younger. He is still vibrant and vital. He can still play the blues. And sing the blues. He is not feeble in any manner. The blues he plays and sings are THE blues. He was there when the idiom was being formed.
He’s not some suburban white kid who can flash on the guitar and thinks his life is hell because his parents were selfish yuppies. Yeah, life’s a bitch.
And yeah, I fucking hate “modern” blues.
The last blues guy who had the shit was Johnny Winter. He is an albino. A “Bizarro World” nigger. He’s an outcast because of the color of his skin. It’s a world gone mad. They hate dark skin and they reel from NO pigment. Everyone must be Caucasian, I guess. You know, “normal.”
Johnny was a junkie. A womanizer. A man who was born into the blues. And he plays and sings the real thang. Listen to his “Progressive Blues Experiment” He’s not Stevie Ray Vain or the people of the ilk who come through Springfield on a regular basis and make believe they “have the blues.” They have the blues if they don’t get dinner as specified in their contract rider. Baby ass white suburban blues. Pitiful? Yep. Certifiable? No fucking way.
Honeyboy told a story about his early adult life.
If a black man happened to be found in the daytime hours not working, he would be arrested for “vagrancy.”
Honeyboy realized he could make more money playing on the weekends than working the fields all day and he bucked/fucked the system. When asked what he did to avoid being found out, he says he just “stayed inside all day.” When asked what he DID all day he says, “Sleep. Eat. Ha Ha.”
Honeyboy stuck it to the man. God bless him.

At 93 Honeyboy still has the thing that has made men play music from time immemorial: The love of women. I would say “the chance for getting pussy” but that might be considered rude.
Honeyboy says, "I can do anything I ever done. It just take more time." The woman interviewing him laughs and is somewhat taken aback at a man of Honeyboy’s age talking about sex. But he’s a consummate bluesman and I’m sure he’ll be fucking until the day he dies. And maybe there will be 72 hookers waiting for him in heaven. I never understood the appeal of 72 virgins. I want some womens who already KNOW what ta do.

93 and still singing, playing and running with the girls. God bless Honeyboy. If there is a god he surely DOES bless Mr Edwards.

From time to time I have the privilege to sing with The Bluesberries, Steve Smith and the Sneakers, The Maxwells and some other local bands. I always do a Howlin’ Wolf song or two. I take the time to proselytize and tell the folks, “Go to Amazon.com or your local record store and BUY EVERY HOWLIN’ WOLF CD YOU CAN FIND.” I mean that. The Wolf is my spiritual blues guru. And Honeyboy is in the same realm.
Honeyboy Edwards is still alive. He knew Robert Johnson and Charley Patton.
He’s the end of the line, a real treasure. He deserves his respect.
Hearing him on the radio gave me hope that maybe things were OK.
But when I got home, Still President GW Gump was on TV and the hope faded.
So now I’m spinning up Wolf’s “Killin’ Floor” and am being taken away.
The “blues” is cathartic. And so is rock and roll. Next in line on my queue is “Search and Destroy” by The Stooges. Which is just a hype, skip and jump from Honeyboy Edwards. Acid fueled, Nixon era speed blues.
Ah the lineage will never be put asunder.
Johnson, Honeyboy, Wolf, Waters, Stones, Jimi, Iggy, The MC5, Cobain.
Tear out my heart but give me hope there’s something that’s gonna fill the hole.
The mens don’t know but the little girls understand.
I’ve worn this .44 so long, it’s made my shoulder sore.
There’s evil goin’ on.
Another mule’s been kickin’ in my stall.
And if I had listened to my first mind, I wouldn’t be here, down on this killin’ floor.
I am the world’s forgotten boy, the one who searches to destroy.

There ain’t no heaven. But if there were, the first thing I’d like to hear if I got in would be Howlin’ Wolf admonishing me the way he did Eric Clapton on “The London Sessions” record. While explaining “Little Red Rooster” to the band (Clapton, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, et al) Wolf is incredulous when Clapton says, “Maybe you should play it with us.”
Wolf says, “Oh man, come on! All you got to do is to count it off.”
He then plays the most sublime acoustic slide and counts, “One...two...three... four...and then the E drops in and he say BOOM! Always stop at the top, don’t stop down here...”

It’s one of the best musical moments ever documented.
When the E drops in he does indeed say boom.
In an era where Britney Spears gets a month of coverage for showing her kooch while drunk driving, it’s sad to think that when Honeyboy Edwards passes there will be little notice.
God bless you Honeyboy. And The Wolf and Muddy and Lightnin’ and Lead Belly and Willie Dixon and Little Walter and BOTH of the Sonny Boys and BB and The Stones for turning us dumb kids onto an indigenous American art form.
Everyone needs to remember, “All you got to do is to count it off.

Whineboy James 7/19/08

Hear the Honeyboy Edwards interview

"Put the panties back!" - My life with The Menstruals.

I've thumbed through dozens of girlie magazines in the last 30 years. They're all over the place. Circus of Books, Paradise, Barnes and Noble, the Stop n' Shop. They're in my bedroll. Inside my copy of The Grand Illusion, no one would ever look there. Cheesecake rags were under the passenger seat of a 1978 black Monte Carlo that my friend Jeff and I used to ride around in trying to scare up Glendale girls on summer break. Switching between Badfinger's No Dice and a Devo back n' forth jerk. The latter sounds sexy, sure it does, admit it, and I can't speak for Jeff but I'm sure that one of those nights was filled with The Menstruals. The only band that would let a girl put a panty liner on her thigh for the hell of it.

The Menstruals, for the uninitiated, were an all hotshit girl new wave band from The Queen City in the earliest of 1980s. They were so fine that they turned Robert Palmer into a buttery dishrag. You think he got that sexy man guy crap on his own? No, no. The Menstruals taught that act to him. That and how to behave.

The Menstruals recorded the first "A" side only single in pop history, "My Boyfriend Jerks Off." That's hotshit and that's what got Jeff and I to go to as many Menstruals shows as we could. It spoke heavy volumes that you could only wipe away with a gym sock. You could tie that sock around your head, ball an end up, shove it in your mouth, and you still wouldn't be able to contain yourself. The Menstruals were that good. How many times did we get thrown out of Klinkers before we got it right?

Eventually you could pick us out of the crowd. Black suitcoats, black peg legged pants, a Menstruals club only t-shirt which featured a sexy "M" with panties pulled down around the opposing legs of the letter. We each had a number of colorful Canal Jeans t-shirts. Remember that scene in American Gigolo when Julian is laying all his clothes out on the bed? Ties, jackets, sox, manpanties, and cummerbunds (always the favorite article) spread out so he could decide just how much he'd pull in a single night. That was Jeff. He had more Menstruals buttons than I did. I had more Costello buttons. Especially the tiny little Elvis head model. I knew that one of The Menstruals was really into Elvis and I knew that if I wore that button just right then maybe I could after party. A guy could really dream in 1982. So much more than now.

The Menstruals only needed an "A" side. A motherfucking "A side." That was it. The other side, the so called "B" side was just black vinyl. Limited numbers, something like ten, had the M with the panties thing etched into them. The cover was simple. A photo of the gorgeous chicks, Kelly with the panty liner in her tights. A deft touch and an ode to Wunderle. Mary smoking. It was when Mary smoked during their sets that The Menstruals took off. It was if her smoke, her smoke rings, the essence and smells of the smoke, would turn the girls on and make them play even better than ever. That's what happened that night in Kansas City, at the Uptown, when Kathleen got busted for soliciting. She couldn't keep the show inside. Had to take it to the streets.

"My Boyfriend Jerks Off" wasn't the only club hit. It's just the one that stuck. The regional sound that The Menstruals had rivaled their partners in Fools Face. The Menstruals told it like it was. I mean, you really can imagine the guy in Fools Face's "To Be Someone" actually having a masturbation issue. "Now I get to hang out with the number one gang." Please. That's 1962 guy code for jerking off. It's from a Dion song. Look it up.



I recently was sent this photo that was supposedly taken during the shooting of the lost Menstruals film. For the last 25 years the rumors surrounding this film were as thick as Nixa kudzu. "Cocksucker Blues" is brought up so many times when referencing the scratchy, wood paneled porno chic of the thing but Larry Clark and Helmut Newton didn't shoot that goddamn movie so that doesn't explain the amazing amazingness of this small yet perfectly breasted outtake that features The Menstruals having a party. Look at the blatant merchandising not only for the single but for another band. A Fools Face t-shirt, long brunette hair, and girl underwear all in front of an open window. This is an after party we weren't invited to but after following Kelly's car after another show at Klinkers we hung out outside some guy's house. I can attest to the authenticity of this picture being from the movie. They played Twister too. In front of the window. It was fucking awesome.
I could've taken a whole magazine of those photos.

"On your knees boys, The Menstruals are in town!"
Damn right, sugar.

Silky Poplin - 2008

Adventures in Hi-Fi to Lo-Fi and back again.

The obsession. Followed, sought. Anticipated. Agonized over. Written in Sharpie® over bathroom walls, notebooks, mix-tape covers, endless amounts of paper, and knuckles, as is all too often the case with "OZZY."

Molly Ringwald wrote The Rave-Ups all over her Sixteen Candles notebooks. Oklahoma punk rockers wrote bullshit all over their jeans. Some made really stupid jackets. There was a girl in the documentary The Complete Beatles who almost cried displaying her groovy painting of McCartney as a tree. People used to wait in line for days for concert tickets. Allen Doss once pulled Elvis Costello's King of America out of his bag and waved it at me in the street shouting, "It just came out today!" He looked like his teeth were going to bite him.

The crush is a love either unspoken or something that you're so fucking into that you tell everyone about it. You scream it. You measure everything against it. Nothing stands in its way. And a central element of the crush is anticipation.

I was talking to a girl about life, the sound, and anticipation. Today, people have to really struggle to avoid spoilers. If a record's going to come out in August, there are dozens of ways to hear it and decide if it's going to be shit or shinola. I did that with Wilco's Sky Blue Sky and even though I love the record, it took me over a year to buy the thing. In today's cool economic climate it only makes sense that people either download an album off a blog or rip it from a friend whose already done just that. It's rare that I hear of anyone spending months waiting for an album. I don't even know if there are many bands today that warrant that kind of fervent dedication. What was once months of waiting turns into years. Years between projects until no one cares (Elastica, Stone Roses, Guns n' Roses) or years that really can make a difference (Mission of Burma, Portishead). But what about the crush that continues year after year and pays off each time? Well, for five years at least.

The summers between 1984 and 1989 were heady times for me. Every spring or summer meant a new R.E.M. album which meant every fall had a tour. I picked up Murmur in 1983, the same day I bought The Pretenders' Learning to Crawl. I had never heard Chronic Town but I read a blurb about Murmur in Trouser Press and immediately went out and bought it. Murmur stunned me with its subtlety, harmony, and openness. Radio Free Europe was a brand new sound to me. Resonant, spooky, and with so much Rickenbacker salt that I picked the needle up five times to repeat it before I just let the record play out.Talk About the Passion, Shaking Through, and Perfect Circle became staples. I really wanted to see the band.

Next spring, Reckoning was released.



Seven Chinese Brothers and Little America. A Summer's worth of listening, videos seen, tour dates announced and then a drive with friends to an old church turned nightclub in OKC to see Romeo Void, The DB's and R.E.M. Deborah Iyall churned Romeo Void. The DB's were spot fucking on and the headliners were the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. I sat just above the band. Entranced. Deer eyed. Michael Stipe had been bitten by a jellyfish in California. He sang with his foot on a stool. All long hair and shy. He had a drawing of a bear on the back of a long jacket with an arrow pointing towards Peter Buck that said "Bear." Peter Buck doesn't look like a fucking bear but he may when he's 70.

Then came the year of FFA jackets, growing my hair like Mike Mills, buying a Rickenbacker 620/6 with a hot check and sitting with my friend Sondra learning songs. We waited for Fables of the Reconstruction to come out, bought it, jumped around, hung out, listened and pined for the tour. Driver 8, Life and How to Live It, Green Grow the Rushes. Damn. I hit OKC and Dallas. Saw them at an outdoor stage under the full moon and the Cotton Bowl. Life would repeat the same circle with Life's Rich Pageant. I sucked the album dry. It was everything I imagined it would be. Begin the Begin, Cuyahoga, Just a Touch on the heavy loop. At the time, I couldn't imagine playing anything else but Life's Rich Pageant. Yesterday, it's all I listened too.

Another year another album. Document. Absorbed and released. More shows seen. Lightin' Hopkins played over and over. Sam Lines took the Stipe photo attached to this story at Memorial Hall. A great show with lots of sleep lost. Then what? For the next eight years I would move in and out of Green, Out of Time, and Automatic for the People. I dug Monster, some, enjoyed the show with Sonic Youth. But the first five records, plus Chronic Town, and Dead Letter Office (that wonderful album of outtakes and live material that served as toast and biscuits between album releases) got taped, archived, given to girls, and raved about. New Adventures in Hi-Fi, released in the fall of 1996, is still a work of art to me, and their best album of the 90s. Binky the Doormat, Be Mine, New Test Leper. Bill Berry's swan song. An album conceived and recorded on the road. Soundchecks, studios, dressing rooms, and with Patti Smith to add sauce and touch. The press keeps hounding me to get the new album, Accelerate. Perhaps it's time to get obsessed.

ap - 2008