2. The Witnesses

I’ve always liked how, in Warren Beatty’s 1981 film Reds, the real-life participants (among them, Henry Miller, Will Durant, and George Jessel) are identified in the end credits not as interviewees but as witnesses. Because that’s what they were: witnesses to history. 

Similarly, the 70+ individuals I’ve interviewed thus far for this project are not just the family, friends, and colleagues of Paul Nelson — in many cases they have witnessed history in the making. To cite just a few of these instances: Dylan going electric, the advent of punk rock with the signing of the New York Dolls, and the rise of a nearly unknown young singer-songwriter named Bruce Springsteen to superstardom. Paul Nelson played a key role in each of these significant moments in pop cultural history. 

Among the witnesses who have generously shared their memories thus far are Jackson Browne, Freedy Johnston, Steve Forbert, and the cream of the rock critic elite (including original members of what Robert Christgau back in 1976 deemed the “rock critic establishment”).

Check back regularly to read some of what they had to say.

Copyright 2007 by Kevin Avery. All rights reserved.

RED CROSS : “BORN INNOCENT DEMO TAPES”

There is an unparallel sense of teenage joy & punk rock lust that comes screaming off the grooves of all the early 80s RED CROSS material, particularly their masterpiece LP, “Born Innocent”, one of my favorite records ever. Here’s what we had to say about that one on our old blog Agony Shorthand when we put digital pen to digital paper a few years ago:

“I’m forsaking the commoner’s spelling of the band’s name, “Redd Kross”, in favor of the band’s original, pre-threatened lawsuit moniker and the one that graced the first editions of this incredible record. You know, take a step back for a second here with me. We talk a lot about raw DIY masterpieces here at Agony Shorthand, records in which the relative lack of talent of the musicians & general bash-it-out spirit speaks louder and more forthright than records made by professionals in search of dulled edges and easy winnings. That said, why don’t we bray about RED CROSS more often? It’s not that I’m not a fan or even a newcomer to the early (1979-82) band’s charms — my two college radio shows in the 80s were called “White Trash” and “Notes and Chords Mean Nothing To Me” in honor of tracks performed by the stellar McDonald/McDonald/Housden/Lea lineup captured on this record. No, I reckon I’ve just taken for granted how genius this stuff is after listening to it ad nauseum for so many years. Whenever I’m asked for a list of my Top 20 albums of all time (which is never, but I’m ready!), I always have 1982’s “Born Innocent” fired up and ready to go. Now I will proceed to impart several of my many reasons for having it loaded and at the ready. “Born Innocent” saw a band in which half the members — the very young but already veteran LA punks, Steve and Jeff McDonald — were overcoming early teenage ineptitude and were learning to play fast, loose NY DOLLS-style cockrock, with the wild abandon and revved-up tempo of peers like Black Flag, the Descendents and the Circle Jerks. Stuck on the other pole were their new rhythm section recruits Tracy Lea and Janet Housden, two very young, musically unexceptional party girls who were chosen mainly for their willingness to take direction and party hard on a moment’s notice with the McDonalds. You couldn’t have asked for a better yang for the ying, if you know what I’m saying.

“Born Innocent” is the fruit of this polarity — a rollicking, shambling goodtime punk rock party record full of joy, bacchanalia and plentiful offerings to the garage/trash gods. No matter how often the subject matter approaches topics friendly to dark pop culture-obsessed 16-year-olds (Charles Manson, Linda Blair, “Beyond The Valley of the Dolls” etc.), you still walk away with an ear-to-ear grin and an urge to hear the thing again & again. Top representative moment that sums up the pituitary joi de vivre of the disc: the inept, three-second “bass solo” that pokes its head up for a nibble at the end of “Kill Someone You Hate”. Love it. My favorite “cassette tape” for years was a side of a C-90 I titled “Red Cross – The Early Years”; it had their first EP, “Born Innocent” and every one of the many comp tracks made by the 1979-82 model(s) of the band: “Notes and Chords”, “Rich Brat”, “St. Lita Ford Blues” etc. Of these, the very best two are included on the CD reissue of “Born Innocent”: the bafflingly named motorized screamer “Tatum O’Tot and the Fried Vegetables” (in which the band truly sounds like they can PLAY) and my all-time fave “Notes and Chords Mean Nothing to Me” — a trite statement of purpose to be sure, but a killer harmonic punk rock song in anyone’s book. That tape enlivened many a car trip for years, just as “Born Innocent” will your music collection — indeed, your life — when you click this link and order the expanded compact disc version today!

Hopefully you did, but if not, that link still works. Meanwhile, there’s this bootleg I bought in 1993 or so that serves up 6 fantastic demos from the same era, including one (“It Doesn’t Matter”) that didn’t make it to the album. Some of the versions – “Solid Gold” for instance – are barely recognizable, and they rule all the same. Here you go, my friends.

Play or Download RED CROSS – “Everyday There’s Someone New (demo)”
Play or Download RED CROSS – “It Doesn’t Matter (demo)”
Play or Download RED CROSS – “White Trash (demo)
Play or Download RED CROSS – “Self Respect (demo)”
Play or Download RED CROSS – “Pseudo Intellectual (demo)”
Play or Download RED CROSS – “Solid Gold (demo)”

2 INCREDIBLE VENOM P. STINGER CLIPS

VENOM P. STINGER were a simply overpowering Australian band from the late 80s and early 90s (post-SICK THINGS, pre-DIRTY THREE, and containing members of both); I was lucky enough to see them twice live in San Francisco & Los Angeles in a late, late incarnation of the band, but if I’d had my druthers I’d have seen the lineup that recorded the amazing “Walking About / 26 Milligrams” 45, which is easily one of the Top 200 singles that I know of. Well, this cool fella Kent from Iowa was kind enough to “friend” the Detailed Twang MySpace site this weekend, and right there on his page is the following YouTube video of “Walking About”. Wow! I dug a little deeper and there’s one on YouTube for “26 Milligrams” too – both are amazing. Now you can watch them both right here.

I’ve returned

Yard sale, crap work, and a day in the country fishing (one bass in a windy, algae-filled lake…middle of the day, I know how to fish, lemme tell ya). Back to writing and JFAL work, both of which are 2 – 3 days behind schedule. How’s that for blogging?

A re-run:

This was “editedâ€Â (there’s a joke or two here that I would never make) a little too much for my tastes, but it’s….sort of funny. 

FAILED FAST FOOD MASCOTS
by Andrew Earles 
The new Burger King ads are all the rage with the kids these days. Or at least kids stoned enough to understand why a gigantic expressionless plastic headed creep is so damn hilarious. But for every fast food mascot who can pull off “funny creepy,â€Â there are the Ronald McDonalds of the world who are “I want to pull off your little brother’s pantsâ€Â creepy.

Well, as bad as some real fast food mascots have been, there are some that never even made it past a couple of test screenings. Here, CRACKED presents a comprehensive list of the worst fast-food mascots ever conceived.

“Roid Rage Chicken,â€Â KFC
Bred without a beak or an asshole, this steroid-saturated, four-foot tall chicken flies into a violent tantrum, beating its spouse and threatening the cameraman when it’s character is questioned. It then writes a best-selling memoir, exposing fellow mascot chickens of also beefing up. Then its genitals implode.

“Applebee’s Strumpet Waitress,â€Â Applebee’s
When she’s not working a double, sporadic nursing student “Amyâ€Â has unprotected sex with random men who wear visors and barbed wire tattoos. Her latest child, Trey, is named after that dude who makes the salads who is probably the father. Her catchphrase: “The optimistic slogans on the buttons I wear help me get through the day without crying!â€Â proved to be one of the least successful catchphrases of all time.

“‘Let It Go’ Larry,â€Â Carl’s Junior
After a failed attempt at using a bikini clad Paris Hilton to make burgers topped with onion rings sexy, Carl’s Junior adopted a resounding “fuck itâ€Â stance with Larry, the antithesis of Subway’s Jared. Addicted to Carl’s Junior’s Rodeo Burger and tattered word jumbles, Larry is 380 pounds of food-stained, slow-moving apathy.

“The Ghost of Dave Thomas,â€Â Wendy’s
While initially envisioned as a good natured cross between the Family Circus’ “Not Meâ€Â character and the Coz’s “Ghost Dadâ€Â the decision to portray Thomas’ face as realistically decomposed, along with his catch phrase, “Oh oooooooh, oooooooh how I miss the natural world! I’d suck dick for a Junior Bacon Cheeseburger,â€Â lent the campaign a creepy air of necrophilia that proved decidedly unappetizing.
“Harold McRib, Deadbeat Dad,â€Â McDonalds
To accentuate the McRib’s intermittent appearances on the McDonald’s menu, the fast food giant tossed around the idea of a transient, suitcase-toting father/husband figure, desperately trying to re-acclimate himself into the family fold. The pilot advertisement featured the mascot banging on the front door, yelling his never-to-catch-on catch phrases, “Baby, I’m back, please give me another chanceâ€Â, and culminated with Harold sulking at the OTB, solemnly addressing the audience with a closing statement, “Don’t make the McRib go away again.â€Â

“The Horse,â€Â Arby’s
To alleviate a restaurant-wide surplus of “Horsey Sauceâ€Â packets, Arby’s briefly ran an ad featuring an electroanimatronic horse that approached tables with baskets of “Horsey Sauceâ€Â, repeating the gleeful claim, “It comes from meeeeeee!!!â€Â However, actors’ inability to get through dress rehearsals without vomiting ensured that the campaign never got off the ground.

“Have You Seen The White Castle Ads?!?!?!â€Â White Castle
Riding the wake of Burger King’s recent and wildly successful what-the-fuck?? ad campaign featuring the King and the giant droning, cowboy hat-wearing tooth, White Castle launched a confuse-off that was apparently too intense for focus group participants. Promos focused on an eight-foot, African-American cowboy with a mechanical arm and a glowing red eye that crashes into private homes through the wall or window, extracts the residents by the backs of their necks, takes them an unknown distance to a White Castle location, and throws them into the dining area through the plate glass window. The gargantuan cowboy then joins the bedraggled, moderately injured party at a table and begins to recite dialogue from the 2002 Robert Duvall film, Assassination Tango. Campaign was also designed to provide work for young, creative, funny, and pop-culturally literate idea people that insist on wearing New Balance sneakers with blazers.

 

 

 

 

The Hip ‘n’ Edgy Update

I’m big enough to admit when the New York Times gets it right, and it seems that a couple of weeks ago, that’s just what they did with their recent article on Brunnenstr. as the new art district of Berlin. Actually, it’s one of several, and the more serious one is down on Zimmerstr. by Checkpoint Charlie where the big guns have huge spaces inside some kind of old warehouse. And I’d say there’s a reason that the Times used a picture of a cute beagle instead of any of the art on display, because most of what I saw on a recent walk up the street from Rosenthaler Platz to Bernauer Str. was pretty boring. I’d say that the Brunnenstr. galleries are sort of an arts lab, where talent can be developed.

And it’s kind of not fair for Peter Herrmann to have moved his exquisite gallery for African antiquities, currently showing some astonishing Ife bronzes from Nigeria, onto the block. It just makes the other galleries’ daubings and scrapings look sick. Definitely worth a visit, though. (Interestingly, I’ve been in that building before, since it once held the Amiga recording studios, the place where all the DDR’s pop acts recorded for the state label. A friend was recording a DDR dissident band called Die Vision there, as the tea-ladies cringed.)

But what’s really not fair on Brunnenstr. is the blatant move by Sony to co-opt Berlin street art. A few weeks ago, I mentioned in passing that I’d noticed a lot of broken windows around town recently, one of them in the old Beate Uhse shop at the start of Brunnenstr next to the collection of greasy spoons. A little research shows why this has happened. First, we started seeing brown-paper circles that said www.dont-forget-the-game. com all over the place. When you go there, the first thing you come upon is a blog, which purports to discuss street art. Fine, but click on the photo gallery link and it gets more insidious.

It’s an ad. In fact, if you go down to Brunnenstr. to the old Beate Uhse place, there’s a bilingual sheet of paper posted there bragging that Sony has gotten Berlin street-artists to cooperate with them in promoting the new PlayStation Portable System (PSP) device. So we have a huge number of stencilled brown-paper women caressing huge PSPs, many of which have been defaced by street-artist 6, and everywhere you look, someone’s stuck a PSP-shaped sticker with their custom design on it. Other “artists” have made PSP-shaped art which is on display around the corner on Torstr. in a fake art gallery.

Now I understand the rocks through the windows. And it’s depressing to walk around and have to wonder if the latest piece of street art is, in fact, some lame-ass viral marketing campaign. I wonder how they enlisted these guys. Just handed ’em a PSP? Was money involved? I have to say, I saw one of these in action when I flew to America last month, and although the game being played was that moronic car-crash one, the graphics were extremely impressive. I wouldn’t mind having one (well, if there were a game that could hold my interest for more than ten minutes, anyway, which there rarely are on these systems), but would I viral-write an article about it for one? I don’t think so.

So boo to the supposed “street artists” who let themselves be pimped by Sony, hooray to the ad-busting graffiti artists who are sabotaging the campaign, and, like that car whose ads were everywhere a couple of monts ago — what was it called again? — may this fade from view as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, a bit of street art from Brunnenstr. that I really find impressive:

THE BUNNYBRAINS’ EARLY COUP DE GRACE

There was this band THE BUNNYBRAINS that made some strange noises in the early nineties, most of which were entirely unremarkable. Legend has it that this Danbury, CT outfit still won’t give up the ghost, and continue to be an active band with only one constant member. I’m too lazy to check into it. However, in 1992 I bought a 45 of theirs, one of their first, on a recommendation from a friend that just knocked me for a loop. Of course that would be the one I’m posting for you here, albeit just one side, because the other side as I said was entirely unremarkable. “On The Floor Againâ€Â is pure, unadulterated FLIPPER action, but even better (save for “Sex Bombâ€Â and “Love Canalâ€Â – nothing can touch those). Creepy-crawling bass riff, oceans of static-laden feedback, great vocals, and a chorus that you’ll be chanting on the floor with your significant other this whole weekend. I bought the next few records with eager gusto after this 45 came out, yet I never found the magic key in them that made this one so goddamn special. Hope you see this one’s bleary-eyed beauty the way I do, because it’s a total classic.

Play or Download THE BUNNYBRAINS – “On The Floor Againâ€Â (from 1992 45)

Rollo Banks, RIP

The e-mail came last night at quarter of midnight: “Rollo died two days ago from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was a few days shy of turning 65 and been in bad health for a long time.” It wasn’t even signed, but it didn’t have to be; the sender was a long-time friend.

Rollo came into my life, and those of my friends, when he married Margaret Moser, Austin’s queen of the groupies, and a talented journalist whose career I’d helped get started. Thinking back on it, I have no idea how they ever met, but they made a great couple, two larger-than-life people who’d collided and stuck together. I thought it was fate: Margaret’s a large woman, and Rollo was a tattoo artist. “He must see a canvas waiting for a masterpiece,” I kidded her. Actually, she replied, Rollo wasn’t at all turned on by tattooed women.

To say he was a “tattoo artist,” though, diminishes him in these days when every teenager has some blob of ink on his or her skin. Rollo (whose real name was Mike Malone, and who was born in Fairfax, in Marin County, suburban San Francisco) was the designated heir of Sailor Jerry, whose China Sea Tattoo was the pioneering studio in Honolulu’s Chinatown. Jerry opened in the 1930s, and developed a huge number of designs in what might be called the American Classic mode: anchors, mermaids, the “battle in the sun” showing two eagles fighting in mid-flight, skulls and dice, cocktail glasses. These designs were first worked out on paper, where they were called “flash,” and Jerry was astute enough to copyright them. This, of course, didn’t keep lesser artists from stealing them, and counterfeit or unattributed Sailor Jerry flash is rife in the world’s tattoo studios. Jerry was also something of a chemist, and developed several new colored inks that were safe. Purple, in particular, had been a problem, as I remember Rollo telling the story. There was a studio in Hong Kong that used a particularly brilliant purple, which was admired by all except for the unfortunate fact that it eventually gave you blood poisoning.

China Sea prospered because of its location: sailors love tattoos, and Honolulu is mid-point for the Pacific Fleet. Sailors on leave get drunk, drunk sailors get tattoos. Sailor Jerry did great work, and his fame spread. How young Rollo came to apprentice with him I’m not sure, but I do know that his first experience with humans (as opposed to potatoes, which is what tattoo artists traditionally learn on, leading to the disparaging description of someone who’ll let you ink anything on them as a “potato”) was inking people’s names on them. This was something the “local boys” liked, and Rollo quickly came to loathe: “They’d ask me, ‘Hey, boy, you got plenny many alphabet?’ which was their way of letting me know they had one of those incredibly long Hawaiian names.” He also made them write the name down, every time. “I now how to spell Jim, but if you write it wrong, that’s your responsibility, not mine.” And in this respect, he’d tell a story about a tattoo artist he’d known in England who’d had a particularly inebriated young man come into his shop demanding to be tattooed — in really big, black, thick letters — with the name of his new idol, an American pop star who’d just taken England by storm, and whose name sounded odd to the artist, who’d never heard of him. He made him repeat it several times, but wasn’t sure how to spell it. Finally the customer passed out, and the artist, thinking he had it, went to work. The young man woke up to see his brand-new tattoo, huge block letters praising ELVES.

Stories: the pit is full of them. Rollo used to encourage me to try to sell a book of tattoo artists’ stories. Thanks to him, I spent a lot of time around some of America’s greatest tattoo artists, and he was right: besides a steady hand and a flair for color, it seems that having the genes for being a natural raconteur was part of the package. Since tattooing is an incredibly slow practice, talking to the customer is part of the service, and given how colorful the customers were before tattooing became a teenage fad, you got great stories back in exchange.

Sailor Jerry passed China Sea Tattoo on to Rollo, who himself eventually took on protegés. Over the years, Rollo got plenty of tattoos himself, a whole body suit, as they’re called, mostly in classical Japanese style, from what I could see. Unlike today’s exhibitionists, Rollo kept his tattoos covered, because, like Rembrandt drawings, they fade with exposure to light. Nowadays, in the summer, I’ll see some kid with thousands of dollars’ worth of work on him running around with his shirt off, and remember Rollo talking about how that not only faded the colors, but smeared the black outlines, turning the work into one huge multicolored blotch in just a few years. Rollo had too much respect for the masters who’d worked on him, one of whom, Horiochi, was considered Japan’s greatest master, the latest in a centuries-old lineage.

And although the American Classic designs (not only on people, but as flash, which people buy and trade for good money) paid the bills, Rollo also paid attention to the Japanese masters. After he moved to Austin to be with Margaret, he set up shop near the Austin Chronicle offices, and that drew musicians and other scenesters to the little house with the China Sea shingle out front. Among the people drawn there was a local eccentric who owned Atomic City, a shop selling Japanese monster-movie figurines and other Japanese pop culture artifacts. The guy’s name was Jim, but everyone in town knew him as the Royal Hawaiian Prince, or Prince, for short. He swore he was what his name said, a member of the Hawaiian royal family, although that seemed really unlikely. But he was flamboyant, and had some tattoos, and wanted Rollo to create a masterpiece on him. Rollo rose to the challenge, and admirably: over a year in the making, Prince’s back-piece was the culmination of everything Rollo had learned about classical Japanese tattoo art — with a twist. It showed Godzilla destroying Tokyo as airplanes swirled around him. Waves in the style of Hokusai broke behind Godzilla, exquisitely stylized flames leapt from the broken skyscrapers, and tiny people writhed in the monster’s hands. In the bottom left corner, three Japanese characters spelled Go Ji Ra. When it was finished, Prince, Rollo, Margaret, and I went to the National Tattoo Convention, held that year in New Orleans, and, as I reported in the Wall Street Journal, they took home a prize.

Austin loved Rollo, who did a number of covers for the Chronicle, particularly for Chinese New Year, and Rollo loved Austin. I cooked for several Thanksgiving parties at Rollo and Margaret’s house, and I remember one where Rollo, rather sozzled, yelled my name. “Ward! I want you to know something. There are people who I just know are going to get tattoos. There are people who are thinking about it, and might do it and might not. And then there are people who, if they’re going to get tattooed, they wouldn’t come to me, they’d go to some art faggot like Don Ed Hardy [Rollo’s purported arch-rival, master of the classic Japanese style, with a Master’s degree from the San Francisco Art Institute, who’d been written up in several high art magazines]. Now, you, you’d probably go to Hardy if you were gonna do it. But I don’t think you’re ever going to get a tattoo. And I just want you to know that that’s ALL RIGHT WITH ME! I got enough work! I don’t have to tattoo everyone in the world. So it’s okay that you’re not going to get a tattoo.” And he was right: if I was ever going to consider it, I probably would have gone to Hardy — Rollo, I believe, had. But he was also right: as much as I was fascinated with the world of tattoo artists, thanks to the entrée Rollo had given me, I wasn’t going to be anybody’s potato.

Eventually, Rollo and Margaret put their heads together. China Sea wasn’t doing all that well in Austin (this was, as I said, well before the fad began) and the home shop on Army Street in Honolulu’s Chinatown needed shaping up. The couple moved to Hawaii, and Margaret got a job with a firm which produced those freebie tourist magazines which clog up free space in hotel lobbies down there. It wasn’t very demanding work, but it paid well enough, and she loved Hawaii. I pitched a story on traditional Hawaiian music to an airline magazine, and they bit. Margaret set up the hotel and rental car end, and offered to research where I could find slack-key guitarists and falsetto singers. It was a week filled with adventures off the Hawaiian tourist trail, as I interviewed the Samoan-Hawaiian slide guitarist Tau Moe about his 40-year tour which had only recently ended, found Hank Williams’ former steel guitarist Jerry Byrd teaching in a small music store in a corner of Honolulu, visited a high-end ukulele factory, and, in fact, managed to do everything except find a slack-key gig, although Margaret ransacked the local media for clues.

One of the most magical days, though, came towards the end of the trip. Rollo had wanted to show me around Chinatown, as much to dispel the guidebooks’ characterization of the neighborhood as insanely dangerous as anything else. So I met him at 6:30 one morning and we toured the place. There was the all-night dancehall, where a motley orchestra played sleazy music and you could really rent an Okinawan girl for 50 cents per dance, although the real attraction was the little pavilions off to one side where the same girl would give you a blow-job for considerably more. I remember the orchestra’s drummer was sound asleep, although still playing with one hand, while the other picked a scab behind his ear. We went to a strange antiques/curiosa store, filled with dusty Chinese stuff, open, for some reason, at that odd hour. We met a Samoan lawyer who’d just come back from burying another of his brothers whom his father had shot in an ongoing dispute about some land. And, finally, we visited the wholesale market, where they were wheeling in tuna for the inspection of the local sushi chefs. (Actually, I’ve already mentioned this trip in my post about bánh mi a couple of months ago). When we got back to the shop, there was a line down the block because the fleet was in. I don’t know what I did for the next few hours, but Margaret had, at long last, found a gig, by the amazing slack-key guitarist and singer Ledward Ka’apana at a locals-only club, where we sat for a couple of hours mesmerized by his voice and by the table full of lesbians next to us who were well-versed in traditional hand-hula and were performing for each other — and their mother, this being Mother’s Day. The only reason we left was that Margaret realized she had both sets of house keys, and Rollo was trapped at the shop, unable to close and go home. By the time we got there, he was exhausted and he quickly chased everyone out of the studio and shut it. As he got in my rental car, he handed something to Margaret. “Put this in your purse,” he said. “I got no way to carry it.” It was his wallet, so stuffed with $20 bills that it was bursting its seams and incapable of folding. Fleet’s in.

Margaret and Rollo didn’t last. She came back to Austin and got her old job at the Chronicle back, and the grapevine had it that Rollo had started using other kinds of needles. Another wife apparently helped him get clean, but I lost track of him after I moved to Berlin. But I remember the stories and the characters he’d introduced me to, and always felt a lot of affection for him for doing that.

When I was back in the States last month, I noticed a lot of kids wearing t-shirts with Sailor Jerry flash on them. The words “Sailor Jerry” and “China Sea” were on the shirts, and I thought, hey, great! Rollo’s licensed the flash now that tattoos are so popular, so maybe he’s making some money. I don’t know if he was or not, or what the details of the deal might have been, but whatever happened, it apparently wasn’t enough to keep the darkness away.

I can only hope that he’s gone somewhere where the colors never fade, there’s always a cold beer at hand, and there’s always someone to listen to the stories and tell some more. And the fleet comes in only when you need the cash.