Author: kim

10/21 LA- Where The Action Was rock history tour

For immediate release
 
September 18, 2007
 
New Hollywood Rock and Roll History Tour stars Phil Spector and Bobby Fuller

LOS ANGELES- Esotouric, the eclectic collective whose offbeat bus tours expose LA's secret history, returns to founder Kim Cooper's rock and roll roots on Sunday, October 21, when they launch WHERE THE ACTION WAS. This new tour, co-hosted by pop critic Gene Sculatti, explores the musical history of Hollywood and the Sunset Strip through visits to celebrated nightclubs, recording studios, record label offices and other places of subcultural importance.

The launch date is no accident, falling one day before Bobby Fuller, the gifted rocker whose "I Fought The Law" is one of the great singles of the 1960s, would have turned 65. Fuller's mysterious 1966 "suicide" (thought by many to be an unsolved murder) is one of several storylines followed on the neighborhood tour, which also explores the life, the highs and lows of super-producer Phil Spector, the racially mixed psychedelic lions Arthur Lee & Love and the folk-rocking Byrds and their extraordinary entourage of self-proclaimed freaks and go-go dancers.

On WHERE THE ACTION WAS, passengers will make a fascinating journey back in time, from the mid 1960s through the punk era, when Hollywood was ground zero of a series of cultural explosions that started in the music industry, but quickly spread to film, publishing, fashion and lifestyles. The area covered is relatively small, but packed with important spots including nightclubs (Whiskey A Go Go, Pandora's Box, Rodney's English Disco, The Masque), record labels (Capitol, A&M, RCA), teen hang-outs (Ben Frank's, Canter's, Tiny Naylor's) and some familiar locations with unexpected rock and roll connections. Artists featured include Herb Alpert & Tijuana Brass, The Beach Boys, The Buffalo Springfield, The Doors, The Bobby Fuller 4, The Germs, The Grassroots, Jan & Dean, Janis Joplin, Arthur Lee & Love, The Mamas & Papas, The Monkees, Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, Sonny & Cher, Phil Spector, Iggy & the Stooges, the Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa & the Mothers of Invention, and many, many more.
 
Illustrated with an elaborate onboard slide show featuring rare vintage photos, album art, concert ads and ephemera, and hosted by a pair of historically minded music fiends eager to share fascinating tales, WHERE THE ACTION WAS is a must for rock fans or Hollywood dwellers who've heard the famous names, but need some help figuring out where is all happened.

The tour visits the unassuming intersection where teens rioted over an unfair nightly curfew (inspiring the Buffalo Springfield's Stephen Stills to write "For What It's Worth"), the hotel where Janis Joplin died, the one-time roller disco parlor where Prince made his L.A. debut, the notorious Continental "Riot House" hotel in which Led Zeppelin partied with teenage groupie queens, the Hullaballoo Club (later the Aquarius and now Nickelodeon), Ciro's, PJ's (later The Starwood), the Troubador, and many more. It explains how Canter's Deli's continued popularity as an after hours gathering spot is directly tied to its willingness to serve hairy weirdos in the 1960s, reveals how Elvis Presley's shopping trip to Wallich's Music City influenced L.A.'s surf and hot rod music scene, and recalls a time when the Tropicana Motel was simply THE place to go for star spotting.

WHERE THE ACTION WAS is a long overdue celebration of the people and the venues that made Southern California the center of the rock and roll world for more than two decades.

The tour will conclude with a snack break at Scoops, the avant garde gelato shop featuring high concept flavors inspired by Esotouric tours. Available for purchase on the tour will be autographed copies of Gene Sculatti's "The Catalog of Cool," Kim Cooper's books and back issues of Scram magazine.

ABOUT THE HOSTS: Co-host Kim Cooper is the editrix of Scram, the acclaimed journal of unpopular culture that over 22 issues has celebrated neglected musical genius, and spawned the anthologies "Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth" and "Lost in the Grooves: Scram's Capricious Guide to the Music You Missed." Her latest book is the best-selling volume of the 33 1/3 series of little books about great albums, on Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over The Sea."

Co-host Gene Sculatti is a writer, editor and music-business veteran whose work has appeared in USA Today, Rolling Stone and Creem. Gene was Editorial Director of Warner Bros. Records and Director of Special Issues for Billboard magazine. His book "The Catalog of Cool" was the bible of pre-internet hepcat exploration. Gene is also author of "Too Cool," "San Francisco Nights: The Psychedelic Music Trip" and "The 100 Best Selling Albums of the 60s."

Upcoming Esotouric bus tour schedule:
Sat Sept 22 – In A Lonely Place: Raymond Chandler's LA tour
Sat Sept 29 – Blood & Dumplings (San Gabriel Valley true crime tour)
Sun Oct 7– Reyner Banham Loves Los Angeles (architecture/urbanism tour)
Sat Oct 20– The Real Black Dahlia tour
Sun Oct 21 – WHERE THE ACTION WAS (rock history tour)
Sat Oct 27 – Haunts of a Dirty Old Man: Charles Bukowski's LA
Sun Oct 28 – Hallowe'en Horrors featuring Crimebo the Clown
 
For more info on Esotouric, visit https://www.esotouric.com

PreKom Krumbs

I’m sitting here waiting for the phone call that’ll tell me that the SXSW crew is in town and it’s time to head off to the ICC to put up the stand in the trade show for PopKomm, which opens tomorrow. So I’ve got a couple of very minor things to post here before that all happens, and I’ll likely have an overall PopKomm post this weekend.

* * *

First, some good news. My favorite street artist, Nike, hasn’t been much in my eye recently because her pieces have started disappearing at an alarming rate. Hell, if I knew how to take them down, I would have nabbed the girl with the green hair not far from my house before someone else got it. But over the weekend, I was up in Prenzlauer Berg, and found the first of her paintings I’ve seen dated 2007 — the latest one I’ve seen til now was 2005 — and the good news is, she’s still painting babes:

Just…not that kind of babe.

* * *

Two more restaurants we won’t be eating in:

Bogus Restaurant, on the corner of Choriner Str., Oderberger Str. and Schönhauser Allee. Since I’ve never seen anyone other than the odd service personnel in here, it may be accurately named.

Restaurant Nemesis, Haupststr. corner of Helmstr. in Schöneberg.

You gotta wonder: what are these people thinking?

* * *

Finally, a quote from the old Dame herself: David Bowie allegedly told people he liked Berlin because it was a “city full of bars with sad and disappointed people.” No argument there, Dave, but I fail to see the attraction.

THE BRENTWOODS, MATRIARCHS OF THE 1990s OLDIES SCENE

Anyone who’s heard THE BRENTWOODS’ 1994 LP “Fun In South Cityâ€Â – and there aren’t many of us, unfortunately – is still trying to get that ringing sound out of their ears & get that leg to stop twitching. I figured it was high time that I posted a few tracks from that album; no full LP from us – what do you think we are, some sorta illegal Rapidsharing site? I wrote a little bit about this on my old blog – so here’s what was said:

THREE CHEERS FOR THE LOST 1990s “OLDIESâ€Â SCENE!….Anyone out there remember a San Francisco Bay Area 1950s teen-sound combo called THE BRENTWOODS, who were active just over a half-decade ago? Their profile was so low, despite an impressive pedigree (Darin and Karen, ex-SUPERCHARGER + an ex-TRASHWOMEN & more), that even those of us who were living here pretty much missed them (I had to order their wildly underpressed LP “Fun In South Cityâ€Â directly from the band, who lived about 8 miles from my house). I just digitized their entire 1994-98 ouevre minus one single I could never find, and the whole package is quite a hoot. Comprised of five 45s and an LP, the Brentwoods’ work is not for the audiophile nor for the easily annoyed. Their m.o. was flat-out, full-contact dance party rock, with a heavy tilt toward a mongrelized farfisa-drenched garage punk/good-time oldies mix, all recorded more or less live and on cheap equipment to boot. Lots of screams, yelps and hollers, and you certainly have to love the chutzpah of a band that puts its woefully inept female singer (who sounds like she might be about 15) front and center, and then encourages her to yell herself raw.

The band had an inexplicable attachment to their hometown of South San Francisco, a blue-collar suburb with a decaying bowling alley from which the band took their name. A good two thirds of the songs have references that only an upper Peninsula maven could figure out, including many that mention the cryptic “Buri Buriâ€Â, which I believe is a So. SF neighborhood & which The Brentwoods have made into a teen dance of their own. Listening to each stomping, screaming 90 second track, it’s clear there’s really not a lot to figure out here – The Brentwoods were an oldies band, they thoroughly enjoyed going to parties, and they planned to take the USA by storm with dances like “The Bugâ€Â and “The Doofus Stompâ€Â. Another key draw here are the frequent vague jabs made at thin-skinned ex-Supercharger guitarist Greg Lowry and his then-band the RIP OFFS. The LP’s cover art alone is one long cartoon about how the Brentwoods and their fans could easily beat up the Rip Offs (cleverly cloaked as “The Riff-Raffsâ€Â here) in a street fight. If you loved the calculated no-talent genius of SUPERCHARGER, and it would be hard not to, you just might be able to handle this. Now the trick is getting Radio X (Darin’s label) to get back in business, put it together and push it out to the kids. Good luck!

and

BRENTWOODS : “GO LITTLE SPUTNIK / SOUTH CITY SHINGLE & SHAKEâ€Â 45….I professed my undying devotion to this near-mystery mid-90s rave-up party band last year in the pages of Agony Shorthand, and included a veiled whine about the 45 of theirs I was missing. Well what do you know, vocalist Patty up & sent me the one I was missing (autographed!), this after I called her a “woefully ineptâ€Â singer “who sounds like she’s 15â€Â, She knows and you know I meant it in the very best sense of “woefully ineptâ€Â. The 45 that escaped me is as pepped-up bonkers & go-go-go as their other ones – quick, bursting with energy and teen screams, and recorded so on the cheap that I’ll bet the session’s donut run cost more than the “studio time”. It also includes the band’s usual array of unfunny but nonetheless charming skits and spoken tomfoolery bookending the two songs. I’ll take it! Hats off to Patty and her crrrrrrazy 90s shenanigans!

Play or Download THE BRENTWOODS – “Buri Buri Bashâ€Â (from “Fun In South Cityâ€Â LP)
Play or Download THE BRENTWOODS – “Little Barfy Bobbyâ€Â (from “Fun In South Cityâ€Â LP)
Play or Download THE BRENTWOODS – “Go Go Shingle & Shakeâ€Â (from “Fun In South Cityâ€Â LP)
Play or Download THE BRENTWOODS – “Chow Fun San Mateoâ€Â (from “Fun In South Cityâ€Â LP)

That music writer that you hate….

Another music writer recently expressed a fear that he might be becoming “that guy that we used to hate.â€Â Specifically, it’s the music writer that can only pull passion, or maybe just general interest, out of old music. We used to make fun of “that guy.â€Â We convinced ourselves that no matter what the future year might be, it would yield amazing new sounds for us to go nutz over.

“l’ll never end up like that. What an old, jaded asshole.â€Â

Well, guess what happened?

BUT THERE IS A HAPPY ENDING TO THIS PHONED-IN POST!!!!

These albums came out this year. They did it for me. AND….I’m leaving some out (not intentionally). AND….we’ve got 3.5 months to go.

Thurston Moore Trees Outside the Academy (Ecstatic Peace) – I can’t review this because I’ve already done so for Vice and The Onion (look for it next week). Great album.

Shocking Pinks s/t (DFA) – Review forthcoming in October issue of Spin. That and, I don’t feel like it.

Liars s/t (Mute) – It’s no “lieâ€Â that this is a fine album!!

Pelican City of Echoes (Hydrahead) – Breaks absolutely no new ground, but the damn thing is catchy!! Well, catchy for something that gives off very little emotion.

Jesu Conqueror (Hydrahead) – J.K.B lookin’ healthy for his age!! Granted, he did form Napalm Death at age 4.

Pinback I’m a Humorless Dick (Touch and Go) – First three songs? Unbelievably catchy. I’d like to attribute them to the guy from Three Mile Pilot.

Shellac (the new one) (Touch and Go) – Dunno the title. You know the Earles drill re: looking things up! SOMETIMES I DON’T FEEL IT!!! I’ve only heard a collective four minutes of this album. Clearly I’m qualified!! I felt some rocking within the rigid confines of a Shellac record, where you get what’s expected. It shines with amazing cover art and packaging that exceeds the combined cost of every rainbow bumper-stickered Ford Ranger in the parking lot of a Lisa Lampanelli show. HeyOhhhh!!!!

RELAPSE TRIPLE-SHOT COMBO #5: Brand new albums by Coliseum, Baroness, and High on Fire – Coliseum could probably kick my ass. In the street…not with their music. I like the idea of Baroness. I like that Savannah, GA is on the map. Oh, if I just felt the same about this guy’s vocals….. High on Fire? The only band with a name this bad that I’ve listened to repeatedly…..

 

 

 

Ponys

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Slacker Cats: Second Pass (of sorts)

I don’t remember my first mentioned ABC Family’s Slacker Cats. I could go back through my blog and read the exact post. Because I control the weather here at failedpilot.com, the decision has against any research (at all). I do remember the tone. I didn’t find it especially funny. I found it weird and crude for an ABC Family program with Walmart spots. My first impression of the jokes? Early South Park (pre-good); maybe Family Guy’s pop-culture-references-as-a-crutch. Good news! Slacker Cats has changed for the better, or I’ve lost more of my mind. Your choice. I must reiterate: Cats are the thinking-person’s pet. Please allow five minutes for my trademark critical train wreck:

“Buckleyâ€Â (voiced by Harland Williams) – The overweight cat. The cat with a heart. Gets along with owner (a single white female). One of two main characters. The flawed hero. Wears a fanny-pack that became a bad punch line. Sleeps under a specially-made “Best Cat in the Worldâ€Â blanket. The still-unfortunate slang “Slackerâ€Â does not apply to Buckley.

“Eddieâ€Â (voiced by the Ebony/Redbook-approved Sinbad) – The bad cat responsible for the schemes that make up each plot, as well as most of the “adultâ€Â humor.

“Dooperâ€Â (voiced by Emo Phillips) – Homeless, possibly drug-addicted cat. Lives in a fridge box. Other than my affection for all things CAT, the V.O. is the only reason this post is being written. That and the fact that I’m obviously out of material (saving the good stuff for an upcoming live performance – I spread it thin). Ten years ago, I made a career-killing joke about Emo Phillips. My career…his died in some other fashion.

“Tabithaâ€Â (voiced by one of the Desperate Housewives) – Not a Tabby. Fills the batty, air-headed, “all women are crazyâ€Â stereotype. Most of the show’s pranks end with her as the butt.

“Mrs. Bootsâ€Â (voiced by the hilarious Niecy Nash, a performer rocking the previously unknown void created by the need for a poor-man’s Wanda Sykes) – Fills the all-hefty-Black-ladies-are-sassy-and-act-like-underpaid-student-loan-customer-service-employees stereotype.

Why am I doing this? Why was it allowed to go this far? Did I just write all of this? Lisa Lampanelli is enjoying her first appearance on my TV (I’ve yet to endure the female Don Rickles, the white Carlos Mencia), I have a couple of deadlines burning a hole through my brain, and I’m absolutely beat ragged…..

 

 

BRAIN-ERASING DUB, ACT 3

If you visit frequently enough, and download every infrequent dub track I post here (at the rate of about two tracks every three months), then sometime late into 2008 you’re gonna have yourself one hell of a compilation CD. For the first two editions of the Brain-Erasing Dub series, please click here and here. They represent the finest in drop-out, shimmering, echo-filled 70s Jamaican dub. This round I’ve got one from BLACKBEARD’S ALL-STARS that I procured from the “Trojan Dub Raritiesâ€Â 3xCD box set. The only information I can glean on the web about this here gem is that it can be found on said box set – that’s it. Blackbeard, are you out there? Come home and tell us about yourself. The other is a killer from MORWELL UNLIMITED & KING TUBBY, from the excellent “Dub Meâ€Â CD on Blood & Fire. Track one, even! The whole CD’s great. More for you in November.

Play or Download BLACKBEARD’S ALL-STARS – Bridgeport Dub
Play or Download MORWELL UNLIMITED & KING TUBBY- Sky Ride

“It’s showtime, folks!”

Today on CBS Sunday Morning, in a segment devoted to interviews with five prominent octogenarians (including entertainer Elaine Stritch, White House correspondent and resident thorn-in-the-side Helen Thomas, Ben Bradlee of The Washington Post/Watergate/Woodward and Bernstein fame, and Playboy incarnate Hugh Hefner), TV producer Norman Lear was asked if he had any advice for writers: “Write,” he said.

And Lear’s secret for living healthily and happily beyond eighty?

“Every day’s a production,” he said. “You produce.”

The Berlin Avant-Garde Takes Another Hit

Once upon a time, the 18th Century Podewils’sches Palais, built for Count Podewil, whoever he was, was the headquarters of the FDJ, an arts-and-crafts center, and the place where East Berlin bands wanting permits to play passed their proficiency and ideology exams. Starting in 1990, however, the former “House of Young Talent” became just plain Podewil, an arts center specializing in media art, avant-garde music, and dance. The music program in particular, curated by a woman named Elke Moltrecht, who must know everything there is to know about the current “out” scene, brought some amazing shows to town, and it was there that the Transmediale Festival held its first few years. Podewil also had money from the city to provide grants to artists wishing to work in Berlin, and the city’s cultural scene was enriched by this. (Or, in some cases, not. But that’s how it is with the avant-garde).

Now, I don’t follow this city’s cultural politics too closely, but somewhere along the way, a split developed between the more visionary (Podewil) and more academic (Transmediale) factions, and the latter won. Moltrecht and her merry crew were exiled to Ballhaus Naunystr. in Kreuzberg and the other folk moved into the Palais as Tesla at Podewil. Not that they were exclusively dull, although I never really saw anything on their e-mail newsletter that would induce me to walk over there for a show, because one thing they managed was to produce Zeitkratzer’s famous live concert of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, at which Reed famously showed up himself. But far more frequently, Tesla showed the tired old art-proceeds-from-theory symptoms which make so much artistic production in Germany so dull.

Last week, though, Tesla got some bad news: the city, after only two years of funding, had decided to pull the plug. As they put it in their latest newsletter (original orthography preserved): “kulturprojekte berlin gmbh, which commissions t e s l a with the cultural program in the podewils’sches palais, has decided, together with the senator for the arts, to reverse a previously confirmed extension of t e s l a’ s contract until 2008. our yearly budget of 500.000 euros will be completely redirected towards use for a cultural education program, the details of which remain to be more clearly defined. we will lose our space and our financial support at the end of this year.”

I’m not positive, but there might be a subtext lurking here. Besides the city’s wanting to save money — they’ve been slashing away at the cultural budget without really addressing the question of how many opera houses we really need here, and if there isn’t something that can be done with the orchestras, both of which suck up a lot more money than Tesla ever did — there were several incidents in the past when the Podewil group were threatened with eviction so that one or another branch of the federal bureaucracy could move into this nice building. (Nice facade, anyway: behind it stretches a lot of rather grim DDR addition).

As for Ms. Moltrecht, she’s hanging on, and her Interface Festival, which started Friday, is more star-studded than anything Tesla’s done recently, but if you check the posters hanging around town, she’s also gathered together an impressive array of sponsors to help her produce it.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: Berlin’s reputation as a center for artistic innovation owes plenty to Podewil and Tesla. No amount of play-it-again-Wolfgang opera productions is going to change this. Without support from the city, this scene can easily pick up and go somewhere it’s wanted, and Berlin will cease to be so hip! and edgy! and become the provincial backwater so many elements here want it to be. The avant-garde thrives on synergy, so having a city chock-full of art galleries but no venue for cutting-edge dance and music is an empty triumph.

One wonders if anyone in the Rathaus cares.

Fear, Dread, and Anxiety

First things first, I hereby swear not to do any more YouTube-related posts for at least thirty days. I’ve whiled away much too much time over at that copyright-infringing, time-sucking, Stuckey’s-on-the-Web (though, I must admit, I did enjoy seeing again, for the first time in years, “The Contest Nobody Could Win” episode of WKRP in Cincinnati).

Second things second, this clip from Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick’s often brilliant thirtysomething epitomizes what it’s like not only to be self-employed, where you’re dancing as fast as you can to pay next month’s rent, but also what it’s like to work in a creative field (in this instance, an ad agency), where you’re only as good as your next idea.

In this scene, Ken Olin’s Michael and Timothy Busfield’s Elliot perfectly portray the battle constantly waging within the creative psyche: each of them anxious to welcome, then almost automatically dismiss, whatever idea, no matter how good, they come up with.

As Elliot concludes: “Mike, you gotta relax. It’s just fear, dread, and anxiety. I mean, we’re gonna deal with this on every job.”

THE NO-COUNT GARAGE BLUES OF ART PHAG

There was this compilation that came out, jeez, I don’t know, I want to say 1987 (?), called “IT CAME FROM THE GARAGE IIâ€Â. It was a bunch of Detroit-area garage bands, most of them extremely raw & quite more fulfilling than anyone else at the time who sought to connect 60’s raunch with CRAMPS-style lurch-n-roll. Even THE GORIES made their debut there, and they, along with ART PHAG, were the ones that made the most immediate impression. (I seem to remember an ode to porn stars by SNAKE-OUT that started with the line, “Hey Ginger Lynn / What’s on your chin?â€Â, as well as a hideously racist song by someone going by the nom de plume of JERRY VILE. Classy!). ART PHAG’s contribution was equally distressing – a two-minute, bottom-feeding sludge-o-rama of the most guttural garage sounds imaginable called “Golfâ€Â, interrupted by occasional angry rants from a guy yelling at his girlfriend for messing with his golf clubs, followed by the sound of her screaming in sheer terror as he goes on a rampage. Like I said, tre classy.

So a couple years later the ART PHAG album comes out. It’s got a spray painted cover, each one handmade – you know the way every Tom Dick & Harry noise band does it this century. Kinda cool back then. “Golfâ€Â is on it, and all the politically incorrect DJs at my college radio station rush to be the first one to play it. But hidden in its grooves are other songs – much better songs, I thought – that proved that ART PHAG weren’t a one-trick pony, and that they engaged in a primitive level of subdued raunch as well as anyone else going – sounding very CRAMPSian for sure but also with nods to the Panther Burns and 60s punkers of all stripes. I’m posting two of the best from the LP – oh yeah, and “Golfâ€Â – as testament to a band undoubtedly lost to time if not for the Interweb.

Play or Download ART PHAG – “A Boy And His Gunâ€Â
Play or Download ART PHAG – “Molly & Bobbyâ€Â
Play or Download ART PHAG – “Golfâ€Â