Visit: A Tale of Two Movies
Weather: Light rain earlier today -- just fine!
Charity Alert: The Hunger Site
Media Watch: I've been reading here and there -- I picked up a Dover reprint of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Land That Time Forgot and The Moon Maid, both originally published in the mid-1920's. Dover even reprinted J. Allen St. John's illustrations -- he had a certain flair when he was at his best.
Neither he nor Mr. Burroughs were at their best in these works, though -- Moon Maid is one of the worst things I've ever read by anybody, so I stopped reading it. I can't remembering trying to read it in junior high either -- when I was on a Burroughs kick, and all of his books were reprinted as paperbacks. Ace published Moon Maid with a somewhat banal cover by Ed Emshwiller, who later caught my attention as an innovative film maker, but I think that Burroughs' ultra-dumb concept scared me away even then.
The Land That Time Forgot is actually several novellas strung together, but my memory tells me they were yawners, so this book is going onto the shelf dedicated to illustrators only -- St. John's pictures are worth keeping.
I'm finishing up a sad book about Jimi Hendrix, written by one of his friends, from transcripts of tape recordings and interviews with him. It's good to get the truth, even when it's kind of ugly. Fly on ... sweet angel!
Looking Back: End of the Century; The Story of the Ramones by Michael Gramaglia & Jim Fields -- My Thoughts Part II:
In 1977-78, I was unwillingly living in my home town of Salt Lake City, Utah, and would stay there for another thirteen years. One of the good things about the place was Cosmic Aeroplane Books and Records. A decade earlier, the owners had started as a tiny "head shop," but that small, wandering store became a center of alternative art and culture in Northern Utah -- spawing many imitators and successors over the generations.
I often went to 'The Cosmic' on Saturdays -- I could make new friends, and meet old ones, while observing what was current, or currently collectable. They had new and used books, records, and comics. Smokey Kolesch, the manager of the record section, had several bins of Punk-Rock albums, but didn't seem to sell any, despite the pierced-and-painted teenagers who filed through the aisles all week. (Later on, my enterprising friend Pat Eddington bought up all of Smokey's stock of Punk-Rock records and promotional items for very little money. He had a very successful Punk-Art show a few years later at a neighboring gallery.)
The Cosmic's "head shop" seemed to do well selling Punk clothing and accesories. I was able to study the Punk and "Post-Punk" music as it developed in various directions, and even started to sell when labeled as some kind of ill-defined early version of "The New Wave." I noticed the people who looked "Punk" kept increasing.
One day The Ramones came to Salt Lake -- in a little club on South Main Street. I didn't go, because I was working in the evenings, but the buzz afterward was tremendous. That little joint soon closed after hosting The Police on their first world tour. I can't remember it's name, but an actual Punk-Rock musical scene develped in Salt Lake City, because of the idealistic efforts of those brave entrepenuers.
The Roxy, in downtown Salt Lake -- a basement bar next to Sam Weller's Bookstore in the David Keith Building, became the incubator for another decade of raucus, creative, musicians and bands.
Remember -- Punk wasn't my scene. If anything, I considered myself some kind of long-haired aesthetete, hiding beneath a short haircut and business clothes. (My disguise fooled nobody.) The pressure from New York and London was too much to resist. Despite propaganda to the contrary, there was inspiration beneath the nihlism. John Cale of the Velvet Underground became a producer and introduced Devo to the world -- a New Wave success. CBGB's Blondie recorded Top Ten material. Patti Smith made a soft-rock classic with "Because The Night." The Talking Heads opened The Festival of Fools in my old theatrical circuit in Amsterdam. Keith Haring in New York elevated graffiti into witty, iconic fine art. Late 70's design reflected a rip-it-up attitude that was so refreshing after the slick tightness of Milt Glaser and his competitors.
The Ramones even collaborated with 60's popmeister Phil Spector. On paper, it would seem to be a perfect match -- they echoed the sonic assault of Spector's Wall of Sound, and their songs owed a lot to his clarity of image, and spareness of melody. The album they made together, End of the Century, served neither of them well. (In retrospect, I'll blame Spector -- his ex-wife's accusations of abuse and madness have been verified by tragic reality.)
One thing worked for The Ramones -- Roger Corman produced Rock and Roll High School. Alan Arkush directed it, and The Ramones were excellent in their limited roles, unlike almost every other musical group who were ever in a movie. It was shown in the drive-in theaters which still ringed the Salt Lake Valley at the time, and was a HOOT! I still recomend this flick to anyone who enjoys off-the-wall laughs.
Other friends my age began to participate in Punk-Rock -- Free Jazz saxophonist Dave Fagiolli played in a Devo/Ramones-inspired band called The Athiests ("We play so fast, if you pushed us off the Eifel Tower, we'd play our full set before we'd hit the ground.") Their bass player, Steve McCallister, later teamed up with my fellow art student Mike Kirkland. The two eventually went to New York, worked at CBGB's, and sold records in their group called Damage. (Mike was also in a band called Prong that toured the world in the early 90's.)
But before then, as the 70's became the 80's, Punk was, commercially, an 'edge' phenomenon -- when I went to see Dave's band at The Roxy, the only people in the place were myself, a barmaid, and the members of the four bands playing that night. (Kind of like CBGB's in the early 70's.) I was impressed with The Athiests, but I hadn't expected to hear my favorite music of the time, Reggae, played between the sets -- I asked the sound man, Steve McCallister, about it, and he said that Punk and Reggae had made common cause in both England and New York since the beginning of the movement. He recommended The Clash to me as an example.
This conversation led to an interesting future event (see below).
Brad Collins, who I met at the Cosmic Aeroplane, was a particularly dedicated volunteer at a new community FM radio station in Salt Lake -- KRCL. He worked day and night for nothing, just to keep them on the air, as they still are at present, but it wasn't easy back then. While Brad sat in the control room in the cruel hours after midnight, he played his favorite Punk-Rock records. Once the word got around, thousands of people tuned in to hear him, and to indulge in the latest by Black Flag, The Germs, The Dead Kennedys, and other dire messengers. His show aquired the name "Behind The Zion Curtain," which made most Salt Lakers laugh because of it's jab at the stifling Mormon Church and their spurious use of the word 'Zion' for their local theocracy. Brad squeezed some prosperity out of his communications with youthful listeners by means of his store Raunch Records (a cultural offspring of 'The Cosmic') which existed through the late 90's.
After I finally graduated from college, and got my ass kicked trying to be an art teacher in the public schools. I went back to being a technician, doing steady work after years of struggle. I met a man in one of my previous dead-end student jobs named Tom Bolan who had opened up a club called "Hole In The Wall Saloon," and invited me to visit. He presented live music EVERY NIGHT, a very risky venture that paid off in the short term, but eventually ran him into bankruptcy. The name came from when he expanded the old Camelot Lounge into an adjoining storefront on the ground floor of the historic (i.e. run-down) Hotel Plandome on State Street, Salt Lake's "main drag."
I first went there when my friend Stuart Curtis was playing with the Jordan River Uptown Band, and later with a jazz combo named Mainsteam. Stuart left town in the 80's, but he put on several fabulous performances, especially with Mike Vatcher, Greg Moore, and Mike Moore. Another remarkable Jazz act that played at the Hole In The Wall was Air Pocket -- a brilliant group of Frank Zappa refugees that featured Salt Lake's Fowler brothers -- Bruce, Tom, and Walt -- along with Mike Miller, Ike Willis, Al Wing, and one of the best drummers on Planet Earth -- Chester Thompson. Yes, I had some good times there! (Forgive me, but I had to make this digression from Punk-Rock in order to introduce Tom's place.)
One night, after a long afternoon shift at my regular job, I was restless and drove by the Hole In The Wall. I saw the word "SKA" on the marquee, and became interested -- there was a kind of multi-racial "Two Tone Reggae" that had been developing in England using this old Jamaican term for "Rock-Steady" music. When I parked my car, paid my cover charge, and went inside, I heard what I hoped to hear -- slightly fast, but churning Reggae, with many original songs. The place was full of dancing women, (a very good sign), and I even knew one of them -- ex-model Lynn Wilhite! I hung around until closing time, which was no more than an hour and a half later, due to Salt Lake's stupid liquor laws, and I noticed that Steve McCallister was running the sound board. Mike Kirkland had been quietly lurking, and I found out that the band (named 004, pronounced Double-Oh Four) had also been inmates of The Roxy.
004 became very popular for awhile, and I became friends with all of them. As a result, I also became friends with other musicians, and people related to Salt Lake's Punk underground. I'd known Steven Fletcher from before, and I was very pleased when David Fagiolli convinced Tom to bring The Athiests to the Hole In The Wall. (Live music every night, you know.) I met an intense Punk gutarist named Al Grazzi, and became friends with tall, beautiful Lisa Versteeg -- the Queen of SLC Punk.
I was inspired by the simple power of 004's dance music to show up with my camera, take photographs, and make colorful cabaret drawings, after a rather long artistic layoff. They made use of my art in their publicity, and put my pieces on their walls. This minor participation helped bring me out of a period of social isolation too.
It was rough for everybody when 004 broke up -- I maintained my friendships as well as I could after their dispersal. I made some more drawings when Wanda Day, 004's drummer was in a Punk band with Grazzi. (My images of Lisa with her own Punk group, Shot In The Dark, were just as good.)
I kept up with Phil Miller, and Doug Edwards for a number of years. I gave Doug some pretty good graphics when he came back to town from California to perform with his Temple of Rhythm band at The Zephyr Club. Elaine Matsui was a wonderful friend, as was Scott Simon -- who still makes music with his wife Diana. Jimmy Hamamoto became a long-time stalwart at KRCL, and cohort when I volunteered there myself, until he moved to Boston.
The last time I saw Wanda Day was on a business trip to San Francisco in 1995. (I also saw Elaine and her husband too.) Wanda founded a band there called Four Non-Blondes. What should have been a tale of talent triumphing over long odds had turned into a sad story of infighting and collapse in the wake of an album that had sold over 4 million copies.
It was still sweet seeing her again, and I gave Wanda my most inspired drawing of herself from ten years before.
"I look so young! she almost sobbed.
"We were young!" I replied, even though I'm a decade older than she was.
004's bass player, Terri Mitchell saw it later that week, and reportedly tried to steal it. ("She was drunk," said Wanda.) I am intentionally skipping the nature of her problems, but Wanda passed away in 1998 after a drug overdose. 004 performed one more time in her honor, alongside Four Non-Blondes' lead singer Linda Perry.
The end of the XX Century was also the end of The Ramones, but I need to backtrack to the turn of the 80's to pick up on the Punk-Rock thread again -- it's do-it-yourself aesthetic provoked some funny things -- there was a chain-letter society called the Church of the Subgenius which produced some hilarious satire, and continues to do so today. In Salt Lake, another new aquaintence of mine, Dave Brothers, did a weekly radio show in a similar vein around his Church of Jayne Mansfield. I regularly watched New Wave Theater out of L.A. on cable TV. It was artless and fun, plus it was followed by Space Patrol, reruns of a low-grade science fiction TV show that I had enjoyed before elementary school! A strange amalgamation of music videos was played on Night Flight too, before MTV cornered, and later smothered, the creativity of the form. David Fagiolli made a video with his Plague of Locusts band, "Utah -- Gateway to Nevada." I watched it being edited at Brother's 'Sensible Media' studio, but I never saw it played on the air.
When New Wave music finally came to shore on the radio in Salt Lake, a station called KCGL flew the banner high (out of the same studio which hosted the Church of Jayne Mansfield). They were a commercial success, despite playing a lot of the stuff Brad Collins had already introduced on KRCL. BOTH stations played The Ramones as some sort of classic band. Brad stuck to the "Hardcore" side of Punk, but he didn't skip The Cure, The Smiths, or the Violent Femmes, who reached everybody else's ears on KCGL. There was even a home club for Punk-Rock at the Speedway Cafe, near Rauch Records, in a tough industrial slum among the rail yards. Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, and even the Red Hot Chili Peppers made their way in and out of that tiny little place.
A decade or more after I ceased being around 'Punks' in SLC, a movie was released called SLC Punk. When I finally saw it, I realized that the story could have been set anywhere in Suburban USA. There were only a small handfull of SLC location shots in the film -- one interesting vista was from brown foothills, overlooking ugly railroad tracks (A mile north of the Speedway Cafe), towards the distant Great Salt Lake, but it was voiced-over and didn't really advance the plot. The movie had one character who vaguely resembled an actual personality in the real SLC Punk scene -- a sexy woman shopkeeper who acted one of the roles which Lisa Versteeg played in the subculture. (She worked at the Cosmic Aeroplane too!)
The height of Punk-Rock for me in Salt Lake City was a remarkable event called "Rock Against Reagan."
That damn phony, who some sycophant mis-named The Great Communicator, even though he unceasingly lied about everything, was on an official visit. Several thousand people came and went to Symphony Plaza, kitty-corner from the Mormon Temple, to stand in silent (for them) protest, while small groups of angry young musicians screamed loud ugly songs of varying quality, all together in mutual rage against our unworthy president.
The master of ceremonies of this inter-generational statement was my favorite DJ -- the soft-spoken Michael G. Cavanaugh, who had championed progressive Rock music to Salt Lake's AM radio in the 1960's, as well as playing good jazz before then on 'grown-up' stations. (As a matter of fact, he's doing a Jazz gig now.)
None of thse events would have happened without the ioneering efforts of The Ramones -- they were on the road throughout the 80's and 90's. They never had a 'hit,' despite being repeatedly played on various radio stations, but they continued to make a living, and lived up to an artistic standard that challenged everybody else with their basic integrity. It seemed that everytime someone turned fifteen, The Ramones had a new fan. Wherever I've lived, I've seen the effect of Punk-Rock in general, and The Ramones in particular, on youth. (The situations which cause this kind of alienation are getting worse, I'm sorry to say.)
It was sad to hear when they announced their final tour -- it was sadder when their lead singer died of cancer at age 49 a few years later! I knew that "Joey Ramone" had constantly been plagued with health problems, but I never suspected how bad they were. Nobody deserved to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame more than The Ramones. I am glad that such a good movie was made about the people who made this band -- who came, and went, and later died.
Punk-Rock endures, even in Salt Lake City. My sister saw the Circle Jerks play at the Velvet Glove last month. Her son has played thrashing guitar at Kilby Court, a "performance gallery" inspired by the owner's memories of the Speedway Cafe. Alternative shops are entrenched in the Sugarhouse area of Salt Lake, and on the corners of 9th East and 9th South, where the first incarnation of the Cosmic Aeroplane landed in 1967. The building which housed The Cosmic in it's glory days became Comics Utah, and the manager of The Cosmic's excellent bookstore of the 70's owns Ken Sanders Books -- but those are stories for other days.
(Note: Revised 5/18/05, thanks to Dave Fagiolli)
