Big Hair and Plastic Grass

Farewell, Pepi

 

I knew it felt like there was a disturbance in the Force today… the inimitable Joe Pepitone has apparently passed away.

 

Joe had some really good years as a player for the Yankees and Cubs, though that was all before my time. But in the summer of ‘78, I checked his autobiography Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud out of the LA Public Library, thinking it would just be another mildly entertaining baseball book with which to while away the long summer hours. What I found instead was something I would later describe as a cross between Ball Four, Goodfellas and Penthouse Forum. I have truly never been the same since…

 

Joe was a real character and a “free-swinger” both on and off the field – he was the first MLB player to bring a hairdryer into the clubhouse (at a time when such attention to grooming was considered “unmanly”), he smoked weed when most of his fellow players were still sticking to scotch, and he owned a short-lived Division Street watering hole called Joe Pepitone’s Thing. He also sported some of the greatest muttonchops ever seen on a baseball diamond, and some of the most ridiculous hairpieces. When I went to Cubs Fantasy Camp in 2010 (and again in 2012) I wore #8 on my jersey in his honor. And while I’m not a big collector of MLB memorabilia, my absolute prized baseball possession is a promotional mini-bat from the “Thing,” which I keep prominently displayed on my record shelves.

 

Joe was his own worst enemy, and he did a lot of things in his life that he later profoundly regretted, not the least of which was letting partying and skirt-chasing get in the way of his playing career. But I will always treasure the handful of phone conversations I had with him around the time his book was reissued in 2015. He was sweet, warm and screamingly funny, as the interview we did for Rolling Stone still attests. (You can also find extra material from that interview here.)

 

Joe’s passing makes me really, really sad. But if there’s a Heaven, I know Joe is up there right now doing “the popcorn trick” (Google it) for St. Peter, who is laughing too hard NOT to let him through the Pearly Gates.

 

Rest in Peace, Pepi. 

 

 

Jagged Time Lapse

While this hasn't been the best of summers for me — a fact recently punctuated by my two-week bout with the still-very-much-a-thing Covid-19 — it has motivated me to follow through on something I've been considering for a long time: namely, a music-related Substack newsletter.

While I'm best known to some folks for my baseball books (and a profound thanks once again to everyone who has bought and read them), music has been my main passion for over forty years, and writing about music has been my main profession for nearly 30. Over the course of those decades, I've accumulated quite a wealth of interesting interviews and stories, many of which have never seen the light of day in their entirety. So I'm envisioning Jagged Time Lapse as a way for me to put all those things in one place, along with new writings on current musical obsessions and oddball discoveries, and even chapters of a new "musical memoir" I've been meaning to write as they emerge.

For more information, please go HERE. I hope you'll subscribe — this will be fun, I promise!

 

Farewell, Vin Scully

 

1976 was the year I fell in love with baseball, and of course it didn’t hurt that the two radio broadcasters I got to hear most often that season were Ernie Harwell and Vin Scully. I was so lucky to grow up hearing them coming through my AM transistors, and I am so sad that both of them are now gone.

 

Vin’s most famous calls (Koufax no-hitters, Gibson’s homer, Dodgers World Series clinchers, etc.) will surely get a well-deserved airing today, but take a few minutes to listen to the legendary (and now sadly late) broadcaster call the ninth inning of this May 1976 Dodgers game against the Phillies at Veterans Stadium. The knowledge, perspective and sheer joy he communicates to his audience — even during a sloppy early-season contest that few fans will even remember the following month, let alone decades later — is a wonder to behold.

 

 

For so many of us, Vin was practically a member of the family, someone we shared countless weekday dinners and long weekend afternoons with every spring, summer and fall. Although sometimes eating dinner during a broadcast wasn't the best idea; while Vin was such an engaging pitchman that he could even make those disgusting Farmer John Dodger Dogs sound appetizing, his obsession with Adrien Beltre's botched appendectomy ruined dozens of dinners for me in the spring of 2001. I'd bring my plate over to the TV around 7 pm, in time for the first pitch of the evening, and as soon as Beltre would come to the plate for the first time (usually around 7:20), Vin would start in about how impressive it was that Beltre was in the lineup, considering the unfortunate aftermath of his surgery. "He's even had to wear a COLOSTOMY bag," Vin would marvel, as whatever I'd just eaten began to rise in my throat...

 

To be fair, I should have known by then that Vin always called a game as if he was speaking directly to a first-time or occasional listener. He didn't want you to miss out on any pertinent detail...

 

One other favorite Vin memory, though he really only figures into it tangentially: Back around the time of Beltre's colostomy bag, when eBay was new — and before YouTube existed — I found a guy selling CD-R burns of Red Barber's Brooklyn Dodgers radio broadcasts from the 1940s and 50s. My dad grew up in the shadow of Ebbets Field, and the first baseball book he ever gave me was Roger Kahn's The Boys of Summer, so I figured I'd get a bunch of these for him as a Father's Day gift. Not surprisingly, he absolutely loved them; and once he'd finished listening to them all, he asked me if the seller I'd gotten them from had any more of them. "He doesn't have any other Red Barbers, but he has a handful of Brooklyn games with Vin Scully on the mic." Dad just shook his head. "Nah," he said, "That's the new guy."

 

Rest In Peace, New Guy. May your dulcet tones ever echo through the ages.

Take Away Our Rocket Fuel: Cliff Johnson, R.I.P.

When I moved to Chicago in the waning days of the 1970s, I knew pretty much jack shit about my new home. Sure, I was aware of the Cubs and the White Sox and (thanks chiefly to Walter Payton) the Bears, and of course I knew about Bill Veeck and Disco Demolition and Steve Dahl and WLUP. A couple of brief childhood visits had introduced me to the wonders of the Field Museum and the Art Institute, as well as the stunning presence of the city's skyline. But throw in a little Al Capone lore and a few archival news clips from the 1968 Democratic Convention riots, and that was about all I really had to go on.

What would the people there be like? For better or worse, I'd already ascertained that the widespread stereotypes about the residents of New York City (my place of birth) and Los Angeles (my most recent home) had more than a slight ring of truth to them — brusque and wiseass in the former, laidback and looks-obsessed in the latter. But back in late 1979, in those halcyon days before the Super Bowl Shuffle, Saturday Night Live's "Bill Swerski's Super Fans" sketch, and (yecch) John Hughes films, SNL's Billy Goat's-inspired "Cheesborger" bit and the controversial antics of the aforementioned Steve Dahl (then riding high on Dr. Demento's charts with "Ayatollah") were the the only obvious elements of Chicago "culture" muscling their way into the mainstream consciousness. And those examples, of course, told me next to nothing about where I'd landed, other than to be prepared for obstreperous Greek countermen and the distinct possibility that my new 8th grade classmates liked disco a whole lot less than I did...

No, I needed Off Broadway (or Off Broadway USA, as they were officially called, though I never heard a single DJ or classmate use the "USA") to tell me how it was gonna be. Their songs were, direct, engaging, fun, down-to-earth, thoughtful without any chin-stroking, free of pretentious bullshit but also humorously off-center — all qualities embodied by the friends I would make over the next few years, many of whom I still know and love to this day.

I had known absolutely nothing of this Oak Park, IL-birthed band before moving to Chicago, but I was introduced to "Stay in Time" almost as soon as I plugged my clock radio into the wall socket of my new bedroom. The song was all over WLUP and WMET on the FM dial in January 1980, and even all over AM powerhouse WLS, where it was beginning a slow climb up the station's charts. 

Opening with pounding drums and ringing, Who-like chords before locking into a click-clack clockwork groove, "Stay in Time" was too straightforward (and keyboard-free) to qualify as New Wave, but it still sounded fresh and modern in the way that, say, Blondie's "Dreaming" or The Jags' "Back of My Hand" or Bram Tchaikovsky's "Girl of My Dreams" or The Romantics' "What I Like About You" all sounded on the radio in those days — three minutes of tight, shiny, streamlined (power) pop that nodded affectionately to the 1960s while heading resolutely for the 80s.

But while those songs were all about romance or lust, "Stay in Time" was more about the pressure to fit in with societal norms, and the eternal tug of war between internal dreams and external expectations. Lines like "Stay in time, boy/Don't get out of line, boy" and "Use your head/You might as well be dead" hit me particularly hard, reminding me of the bullying I'd endured from the jocks at Ann Arbor's Tappan Junior High for the sin of being a "brain". (I'd missed the memo, apparently handed out during the summer break between 6th and 7th grade, that all guys should henceforth comport themselves like pre-verbal cavemen, and that any and all usage of multi-syllabic words was to be regarded with intense suspicion.)

The way the lead singer delivered those words hit me hard, too, His voice reminded me of Robin Zander's, only maybe without the freakish jet-engine power, and he had an adenoidal John Lennon thing going on as well; in retrospect, I can also pick out a bit of low-end Noddy Holder and some Tommy James "I Am a Tangerine" piquancy. But there was also a conversational aspect to his delivery that was very personal, very ingratiating, and immediately identifiable. WLUP had "Bad Indication," "Bully Bully" and "Full Moon Turn My Head Around" — all, like "Stay in Time," lifted from the band's debut LP On — in regular rotation as well in early 1980, and I knew the first time I heard each one of those songs that it had to be Off Broadway; the guy's voice was just too distinctive to miss.

Same thing with his lyrics; though not exactly verbose, they were definitely a little off-kilter. "If the world revolved around you/We'd try to escape to Mars," were the first lines of "Bad Indication," followed by "Take away our rocket fuel/We're gonna escape in cars." As lyrical flip-offs go, this was fairly conceptual — as was the line later in the song about "You try to pinch our girlfriends/With your selfish shellfish claw." But unlike, say, Elvis Costello, this guy didn't seem to be straining to impress anyone with his whimsical wordplay; he just sang these lines with a matter-of-fact shrug, like they were the kind of things that just happened to fall out of his mouth whenever he felt like expressing himself.

This singer, as I quickly discovered, went by the name of Cliff Johnson — a fact which I initially found extremely amusing since the only Cliff Johnson I knew was the hulking Black catcher/DH who'd clubbed 12 home runs in just 142 At Bats for the 1977 Yankees. But you'd never mistake one Cliff for other; Off Broadway's lead singer was short, wiry, had curly reddish-blonde hair and a somewhat disconcerting tendency to wear shorts and white nurse shoes onstage. But as "Bully Bully" proved, he was just as scrappy as his baseball counterpart, whose infamous 1979 shower brawl with Goose Gossage put the future Hall of Famer on the DL for nearly two months. The song, which tells the story of a high school dance that goes awry when local mooks decide to hassle the band, concludes with Cliff slamming his guitar into the mouth of the ringleader. Yeah, this was a band I could relate to.

Since On was their debut album, I figured that Off Broadway must be a new band that had shot to fame relatively quickly. I had no idea that Johnson and bassist John Pazdan had first played together as far back as 1972 in an early incarnation of the Oak Park-based Pezband (another cool group that I'd never heard of before landing in Chicago), or that "Full Moon" — my favorite track on the album — had originally been recorded as a demo by D'Thumbs, an earlier "local supergroup" that featured Johnson, Black Oak Arkansas drummer Tommy Aldridge and future Cheap Trick members Pete Comita and Jon Brandt. Indeed, it was no fluke that the band was considered one of the main attractions at Loopfest '80, a two-day affair at the International Amphitheatre billed not-too-hyperbolically as "The Most Incredible Chicago Rock Event In History"; these guys had all paid their dues for years, separately and together, in the bars of Rush Street and the greater Chicagoland area. And yet, when Off Broadway kicked into "Full Moon," there was no evidence of any lingering jadedness or exhaustion from endless one-nighters to be found anywhere in the music; there was only pure rock n' roll exultation, the sense of tapping into the same cosmic power that catapulted The Beatles from The Cavern to Candlestick Park.  

Off Broadway should have been big, or at least bigger than they were— every song on On was jam-packed with power and hooks, without any ballads, lonely rockstar laments or ass-covering disco moves to bring the album down. Aside from the talents of Johnson and Pazdan, the band boasted the dynamic drumming of Ken Harck and a fantastic guitar tag-team of John Ivan and Rob Harding, all of whom came through loud and clear on the record. But "Stay in Time" was unfortunately fated to be the epitome of a regional hit; though it would eventually peak at #9 (lodged between Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker" and Gary Numan's "Cars") on the WLS charts for the week ending May 10, 1980, it failed to climb higher than #51 nationally.

In the past, John Pazdan has shared some bitterly hilarious Facebook posts recalling how the club-hardened band had failed to connect with wasted arena crowds while on ill-conceived tours with the likes of UFO, Blue Oyster Cult, Blackfoot and Molly Hatchet, and how On had ultimately been torpedoed by the soul-crushing indifference of some of the higher-ups at Atlantic Records. (Though On sold by the truckload in the Midwest, one Atlantic exec reportedly brushed off the tens of thousands of units moved as having been "bought by the band's friends".) Then again, without the promotional efforts [cough PAYOLA cough] that had gotten Midwest radio stations on board in the first place, On probably wouldn't have made it as high as #101 on the Billboard 200.

In any case, by the spring of 1980 it was starting to become clear to many suits in the music biz that the frenzied signing of "skinny-tie" power pop bands (which had reached fever pitch the previous summer in the wake of The Knack's surprise success) wasn't going to pay the sort of dividends that anyone had hoped, and were already thinking of cutting bait and casting their nets for whatever the Next Big Thing might be. And while New Wave was still surging in popularity via the likes of Devo, The Cars and The B-52s, Off Broadway simply didn't have the quirks, the keys or the visual image to hang with that crowd. By the time Quick Turns, Off Broadway's second album, was released in the fall of 1980, it was clear that the band's moment had passed; Pazdan had already left the fold (he was replaced by Pezband's Mike Gorman), and if the album's title didn't betray the rush to strike while the iron was still hot, the lesser quality of many of the songs certainly did.

Released with an anchor, Quick Turns quickly sank without a trace, only to resurface in the bargain bins it calls home today. It's still worth picking up for "Automatic" — a perfect blast of edgy, Costello-y power pop. Maybe a Cars-like synthesizer line would have made it more commercially viable in the fall of 1980, but I loved the song from the first time I heard it on WLUP. I couldn't find the single anywhere, though; I only learned decades later that, while Atlantic did ship promotional 45s of "Automatic" to numerous radio stations, the label never even bothered to press up actual sales copies.

The band pressed on into the early 80s, and would reconstitute with various lineups in decades to come, but the best days of Off Broadway USA would be forever in the rear-view mirror. Still, they made a dent, something that most bands can never say — ditto for the fact that so many people still love their music four decades after the fact. In October 2018, just a few weeks before Katie and I moved from Chicago to North Carolina, we caught a performance of the reunited On lineup in Evanston. I had never seen Off Broadway back in the day (I'd wanted to make the Loopfest '80 scene, but couldn't figure out how to get down to the South Side on the CTA), and I figured this would probably be my last chance to see them at all.

The place was packed, mostly with fans much older than myself, and while it was admittedly a little jarring at first to see a bunch guys in their 60s and 70s amble onstage to perform songs that meant the world to me when I was 13, we all became young again as soon as they started playing. The musicians were wonderfully tight and energetic, Johnson was in remarkably good voice throughout, and the crowd sang along with just about every word. And during "Stay in Time," it hit me — the band that had welcomed me to Chicago when I first arrived was now providing the exit music as my third and final residency in the Windy City was coming to an end. That seemed beautifully poetic, and made me all the happier that we had gone to the show.

I became even more thankful for that experience yesterday, when my phone lit up with texts and Facebook posts from Chicago friends about Cliff Johnson's passing. I never met the man, and only got to see him do his thing onstage once, but the news still hit me hard. I pulled out my Off Broadway records, cracked a beer, and took a time-trip back to that small, chilly bedroom on North Lake Shore Drive, where the music coming out of my clock radio provided all the warmth I really needed. Rest In Peace, Cliff; thanks so much for adding fuel to the heater.

 

 

Get Yer Signed Copies of The Captain & Me!!!

Well, it's certainly been a long time coming. The COVID-19 pandemic washed out all the book-signing events Ron Blomberg and I were supposed to do last year for The Captain & Me: On and Off the Field with Thurman Munson, and various other challenges have prevented Ron and I from getting together since then — with the upshot being that the opportunities to purchase copies of the book signed by the both of us have been pretty much non-existent.

UNTIL NOW...

Yes, folks, that's right — for a limited time only (that is, until I run out of copies), I will be selling first-edition hardcovers of "The Captain & Me" signed by both Ron and myself. The cost is $50 per copy, shipping and handling included. (That offer is for customers in the US only; if you want me to ship the book to you in Canada or overseas, let me know and I'll try and figure out what your additional cost will be.)

You can purchase the copies from me via Venmo (@Dan-Epstein-15) or PayPal (dockfidrych@gmail.com). Please include your shipping address in the transaction info, as well as the name of whomever you would like the book to be signed to. Makes a great gift for any Yankees fan, or any 70s baseball fan in general!

Act now while supplies last! All sales proceeds will go to the HELP DAN MOVE TO NEW YORK FUND, which I hope you all will agree is a worthy cause...

Thanks as always for your support!

What They Say

Hey, folks — long time. 

Sorry for the lack of updates; there's been a lot going on in these parts. The biggest (and saddest) news is that my wife and I are splitting up, and I'll likely be moving from North Carolina to New York's Hudson Valley (where I'll be much closer to my folks) in the next few months. It's an amicable split, and for the best, but it's been a heavy and emotional time for us. Please send good vibes.

Thankfully, I've had plenty of work to keep me distracted, including this FLOOD magazine interview with Steven McDonald of Redd Kross, which I conducted in honor of the new 35th Anniversary edition of Neurotica, which drops June 24 via Merge Records. Neurotica was an absolute revelation to me when I first heard it in the fall of 1987, so it was a real treat to be able to speak with Steven about the making of the album, as well as get the lowdown on the bonus disc of 1986 demos included in the 35th Anniversary reissue — which includes a (to me at least) vastly superior version of "What They Say," which is not only much rawer than the one that made it onto the finished album, but also features a completely unhinged vocal by Robert Hecker in full-blown Paul Stanley mode. If you're a Redd Kross fan, you definitely need to grab a copy; and if you're not a Redd Kross fan, well, I weep for your eternal soul.

I also recently did a preview writeup for the Forward on the new Lou Reed exhibition that has opened up at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. This looks absolutely fantastic — the friends of mine who have already seen it assure me that it is, indeed — and I can't wait to get back to NYC to spend some serious time with "Uncle Lou".

And speaking of major cultural figures — the new George Carlin documentary inspired this piece for the Forward, in which I look back on the impact that his 1972 album Class Clown had upon the fragile eggshell minds of myself and my grade school classmates, even though we didn't actually discover the album until a good five years after its release. (For the record, his "Teenage Masturbation" and "Baseball-Football" bits also had a profound influence on us, but since those were both on 1975's An Evening With Wally Londo Featuring Bill Slaszo, I didn't get into 'em here.)

Though Rolling Stone left my name off the byline because of... reasons, I still massively enjoyed writing a feature for them in which six artists of varying ages, backgrounds and musical styles talk about the first time they ever heard The Sex Pistols. My absolute favorite part of it was getting to talk to Peter Hook of Joy Division/New Order fame about how seeing the Pistols in Manchester back in 1976 quite literally changed his life forever. I'd never spoken with Hooky before, and the 20 minutes or so we spent on the phone together had me laughing so hard I thought I was gonna cough up a lung. Check out the piece and see why!

The Dan Epstein Trilogy sounds like the name of my next power trio (and it might well be!) — but it's actually what That Seventies Card Show host John Keating has dubbed my three baseball books. I could argue that The Captain & Me doesn't actually qualify as the third installment of what began with Big Hair & Plastic Grass and Stars & Strikes, since I co-authored it and it thus has a different voice and feel than the other two, but I'm really just happy to have published enough baseball books to qualify for a trilogy. In any case, John and I recently had a really fun (and occasionally emotional) conversation about 70s baseball and music, and if you're in the mood to hear me gab at length on those topics with someone who definitely knows their shit, I highly recommend clicking the above video.

And finally, speaking of The Captain & Me — folks have been asking me since before the book was even released if they could buy copies signed by both Ron and myself. Unfortunately, the pandemic washed out our book tour before it could even begin, and various other issues have prevented Ron and I from meeting up to sign a stack of them together. However, we may have finally breached that hurdle; so if you're interested in buying a copy signed by both co-authors, check back here in a week or two for more info!

 

 

 

 

Funky Squatch, Part One

After the Easter Bunny failed to show up, I spent most of my Sunday putting the finishing touches on "Funky Squatch, Part One," a (mostly) instrumental tribute to another mythological (OR IS HE?!?) figure of note.

I was going to hold off on releasing this new Corinthian Columns track until the next Bandcamp Friday, but the Funky Squatch wants to get on the good and/or Big foot NOW, and who am I to argue? Clink the link below to join the party!

(And a grateful tip of the crested skull to my pal DB Edmunds for the inspiration!)

 

A Rock N' Roll Fantasy

The ticket stub for my very first Kinks show came up in my "Facebook Memories" this morning, and immediately unleashed a vivid torrent of thoughts, images and emotions. I promptly reposted it, calling it one of the,"Top 10 happiest moments and/or most life-changing events of my high school existence," but upon further consideration I think that heady description may have actually sold it somewhat short...

I don't think I was ever more fully, organically, ecstatically pumped up for a concert than I was for the Kinks' appearance at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion in the spring of 1983. I'd seen Springsteen at the height of my Bruce fandom in September 1981, but those tickets had fallen into my lap at the last minute. I'd seen The Who, another all-time favorite band, in the fall of 1982; but even going in I was aware that they were past their prime, and I'd sat impatiently through songs from It's Hard and Face Dances while waiting to hear more "classic" material. And while there have certainly been many, many subsequent shows I was excited about attending, I was never more ready to see a particular band than I was that night.

I'd been a Kinks fan for about four years at that point. "(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman," which was all over AM radio in the spring of 1979, had made me aware of them, and "Lola" — which I heard on FM radio soon after — made me want to learn more. (I'd actually really liked "A Rock N' Roll Fantasy" the few times I heard it on Casey Kasem's American Top 40 in the spring of '78, but for some reason I didn't put it together that it was The Kinks until a few years later.)

My fandom was forever solidified in the summer of 1980 by the high-energy concert album One For The Road, which introduced me to a number of choice cuts from their back catalog, including "Celluloid Heroes," "20th Century Man" and "David Watts," as well as clued me in to their excellence as a live act. A few months later, I casually mentioned to a music-loving friend of my mom's that I was a Kinks fan. "Oh, you like the Kinks? Then you need to get The Kinks Kronikles," he said. (Thanks again, Joe; you've been gone for years, but you surely deserve a place in paradise just for that recommendation alone.)

By the spring of 1983, The Kinks had officially become my favorite band. The brilliance of Ray Davies' songwriting has been dissected and celebrated countless times elsewhere, but the band's sardonic humor and "Yes we're a mess but let's ROCK" attitude really spoke to me as well, and the little very British details in Ray's lyrics reminded me fondly of the chunk of 1974 that I spent living in Leamington Spa, England with my father and sister. I'd become fascinated with mod culture in the early 80s via The Jam and the early Who, and loved that The Kinks were both "of" that world sartorially (at least for a time), but had also transcended it. (Much as I dug the mod look, I was always firmly of the belief that one could and should put a personal spin on it; arguing over the "proper" amount of eyelets on a desert boot with parka-clad Quadrophenia clones always seemed like a colossal waste of time to me.) While I would later experience some misgivings about their early 80s albums, largely due to their dated, arena-riffic production, they sounded fantastic to me at the time, and repeated viewings of their One For the Road home video convinced me that they were still very much in their prime as live performers. I'd missed that tour and the one for 1981's Give The People What They Want, but I swore to myself that there was no way they'd come through Chicago again without me being there.

The UIC show was announced in early March, and I immediately notified my high school friend Brian; aside from being a huge Kinks fan himself (and one who'd generously allowed me to tape several of their older albums from his collection), he had a sweet concert ticket connection who always seemed able to get him good seats. Even though State of Confusion, the album they were ostensibly touring to promote, wouldn't actually be out for several more months (yet another brilliant move courtesy of Arista Records), they were currently enjoying a surprise Top 10 hit with "Come Dancing," so I knew that the demand would be high. "Brian, call your guy NOW," I pleaded. He did, and promptly procured us four seats that, while not as "up close" as I might have preferred, would give us an excellent view from stage right while still putting us in reasonable proximity to Ray and the boys.

Unfortunately, we still had the problem of how to get to the show. Neither Brian, myself, nor our friend Jason (also a huge Kinks fan and a no-brainer addition to our party) had access to a vehicle, and for whatever reason taking the CTA down to Circle Campus (or "Cample Circus," as the late Mayor Daley had memorably called it) from the North Side didn't occur or appeal to us. I embarked upon a "Kinks Charm Offensive" with our friend Jim, hoping to convince him to be our fourth and our chauffeur — he had full use of his mom's early-70s Buick LeSabre, which was so fearsomely large that we referred to it as "Das Car") — but while he loved the song "Better Things," the rest of the records I played for him didn't impress him enough to commit. Finally, with a week to go before the show, a schoolmate of ours named Jackie overheard us discussing our predicament in the high school hallway; she offered to take the ticket, and give us a ride as well. None of us knew her well enough to have even guessed that she was a Kinks fan, so this came as a welcome surprise, especially since she had a really sweet car; I can't remember now if it was a Mercedes or a Saab or a BMW, but it was definitely something on that level. We would be riding to the concert in style!

In "casual mode" on the back stairs of our Chicago apartment, spring 1983.

Now then, what to wear for it? There are many moments from my youth that I wish had been commemorated photographically, but perhaps none more so than this evening; I know that Jason and I must have been looking exceptionally sharp for the occasion — we wouldn't have had it any other way — but try as I might I can't retrieve that night's outfit from my battered memory banks. My best guess is that it would have involved a dark, narrow-lapeled thrift store suit jacket, a tab-collared shirt, a narrow tie with a shiny, Art Deco-like pattern that I'd picked up at LA's Aardvark's over February break and was especially fond of, pink or purple socks, and either white buck oxfords or two-tone wingtips. And pants, of course, though I can't for the life of me remember which ones. (But whichever pair it was, I can assure you that a lot of thought went into choosing them.) 

But however I arrayed myself, there was no way I'd be the best-dressed man there that night — not with Ray Davies in the house. He must have changed jackets four or five times during the course of the set, each one more eye-catchingly striped than the last. Most of these, I later learned, were known as "boating blazers," and that night I wanted one with every fiber of my being. They were nicely set off by a pair of skin-tight rose-colored pants, which somehow remained intact despite Ray doing all manner of crowd-pleasing kicks, leaps and jumping jacks throughout the show. (I can still hear myself saying with amazement to my friends, "Can you believe that guy is almost thirty-nine?!?" God, how ancient I truly thought that was.) 

Ah yes, the show — how was it? The setlist for that night at Setlist.FM is woefully incomplete, and pretty much looks like someone's basic guess for what would be played at a 1983 Kinks show. Yes, they played those songs, and the bulk of the set consisted of recent material, songs from the forthcoming album (I heard "State of Confusion," "Don't Forget to Dance," "Bernadette" and probably "Definite Maybe" that night for the first time), as well as a handful of their "oldies" in the One For The Road arrangements. Ray hadn't yet got the memo that many of their American fans wanted to hear deep cuts from their 60s albums, so we didn't get anything from, say, Village Preservation Society (hell, I don't think they even played "Waterloo Sunset" on that tour), but I didn't care. The show opened with "Around the Dial," one of my favorite cuts from GTPWTW; the stage lights went on full blast for the song's portentous introduction, then dramatically cut out to leave just a single spot on Ray as he pumped out the song's opening two-chord guitar riff. I just about lost my mind at that point.

I would see "better" Kinks shows over the next decade-plus, in which I would be surprised by the inclusion of such lesser-known wonders as "Too Much On My Mind," "Dead End Street" and "Sweet Lady Genevieve"; I would witness memorably dysfunctional moments like Dave hurling a full cup of beer across the stage at Ray, after catching his older brother miming a "bored-to-the-point-of-yawning" gesture during a lengthy guitar solo; I would even make it backstage after a show in '93 and have a lovely conversation with Dave about ruffled shirts, one of which I happened to be wearing at the time. (Honestly, if you'd told me back in 1983 that Dave Davies would one day say to me, "You look great, man — where did you get that shirt?", I would have promptly tied up all my teenage worries in a 32-gallon trash bag and set them out by the curb, never to consider them again.) And I've certainly had friends scoff at me when I tell them that an early-80s Kinks show was a life-changing experience, because a show so mainstream or arena-oriented or campy or whatever couldn't possibly have the life-changing powers of seeing [insert massively influential punk or indie band here] at [insert dingy, claustrophobic venue here]. And yeah, I get it — I'm a snob, too, especially when it comes to music...

And yet, the utter elation I felt that evening cannot be denied. It was such a thrill to be in the same room as my favorite band for the first time, to watch Dave Davies rip one wild (and yet still totally tasty) lead after another, to watch Ray bouncing around like he had springs in his pointy-toed shoes, to watch bassist Jim Rodford dancing like a diminutive dervish between them, to watch original drummer Mick Avory pound the skins on what would be his final tour with the band, to hear them play so many songs I deeply loved, and to feel their energy surging out at us from the stage. Though obviously not a punk band, The Kinks in this period played with a fury (and, let's be honest, a lack of polish) that didn't feel so different to me from what the likes of The Clash and The Jam had harnessed. There was no anger here, though, only sheer exultation and good-time rock and roll — as well as an object lesson in how a master showman can connect with everyone in the house, even if it's 8,000 people in a sterile basketball arena. 

(Speaking of which, a quick side note on Shoes, the evening's opening act, who unfortunately provided an object lesson in how not to engage an arena audience. They came off that night as competent but charisma-challenged, and they kept saying "Hey, we're Chicago's own SHOOZE?" — well, it sounded like a question from where we were sitting — between songs, a gesture which won them exactly zero support from the audience. I would go on to enjoy many of their albums, but for years afterwards "Hey, we're Chicago's own SHOOZE?" was a running joke between me and several other friends who'd been in attendance that night.)

If you've made it this far with me, you're probably wondering, "Hey, you were a high school kid at a big concert — did you guys get totally wasted? Did you make out with some random girl you were sitting next to at the show? Did you go out and vandalize some pay phones or flip over a cop car because you were so hopped up on that demon rock n' roll?" And the answer, perhaps disappointingly, is no. None of us were big partiers at the time, and the idea of getting wasted before or during the show (and thereby potentially missing a single note of it) was absolutely anathema to me. I certainly wouldn't have minded a random makeout session, but all the excitement that night for me was wrapped up in the anticipation of the concert and the experience of the show itself; for once in my teenage years, I was too laser-focused on what was happening in front of me to even idly scan the place for attractive girls. And as for afterwards, there were no shenanigans of any sort to report; we simply piled back into Jackie's Benz (or whatever it was) and she drove us all home.

I lived farther north than everyone else, so I was the first to be dropped off. My cassette of GTPWTW was playing in the tape deck, and I vividly remember us double-parked outside my building, waiting for "Add It Up" (another favorite from the album, but one they didn't play that night) to finish before I ejected the tape, bid goodnight to everyone and stepped out of the car. It was certainly well before midnight on a Saturday night, and I'm sure I could have gotten into some kind of trouble if I'd wanted to, but I didn't want to; I simply wanted to savor and luxuriate in the memory of what I'd just experienced. I floated up the two flights of stairs to my family's apartment, closed the door to my bedroom, carefully hung up my clothes, and fell asleep with a big smile on my face while listening to the rest of that cassette.

I often think of the summer of 1977 as the last truly happy period of my life, that last blissful stretch of late childhood before adolescent hormones and angst kicked in, to be followed by the challenges of dealing with new schools, new cities, new family situations (one of them extremely toxic), and then the myriad stresses and pressures of college and adulthood. But when I think back to that Kinks show in April 1983, I realize just how truly happy I was during the second half of my junior year of high school. After a miserable sophomore year where I'd failed a couple of classes, I'd gotten back in the academic groove; I was getting good grades again and genuinely enjoying most of my classes. I was surrounded by great and loyal friends (most of whom I still know and adore to this day), whose love, support and humor helped me get through the aforementioned toxic family situation, from which my mom had by now thankfully extricated us.

For the first time in my life, I also had money in my pocket. At least, I had enough left over from my job the previous summer to buy records and shoes and vintage clothes, as well as the occasional concert ticket. And for the first time in my life I felt okay about how I looked, even if one of the things I liked about my mod suits was that they disguised what I thought was an embarrassingly skinny frame. It would be another few months before I had to start thinking about doing college applications, running the school newspaper, or grappling with "the future" in general. For once, I didn't even dread Mondays that much, because Monday meant that I could wear whatever vintage prize I'd found over the weekend to school. Looking back, I was more or less living in the moment, at least as much as it's possible to do when you're sixteen and seventeen.

Dealing three-card monte in the high school hallway. As one does. No idea what that button says.

But while my high school years provided me with no shortage of life-altering experiences, for good or ill, that Kinks concert of April 9, 1983 really stands out to me now as a major turning point. I'd already loved music to the point of obsession for years, but that show was the first moment where I thought, "Hey, I could actually do this!" Not that I could ever hope to be as brilliant a songwriter as Ray or as dazzling a guitarist as Dave, but the way they presented themselves and performed their music was distinctly human and down-to-earth; they weren't rock gods to be placed upon a pedestal, but rather misfits and showbiz survivors whose devotion to their music and bond with their fans had sustained them through tough times, and improbably brought them back for their biggest stretch of commercial success since the mid-60s. I wanted to feel that same connection with an audience; I wanted the powerful vibration of amplified guitars to fill up my slender ribcage; I wanted to experience that same shot of adrenaline that can turn even a thirty-nine-year-old man into a human pogo stick for two hours. (That Jackie had pronounced Ray "the sexiest man I have ever seen" during our walk back to the parking lot was not something unnoticed by me, either.)

Within two weeks of the show, I was pricing used guitars down at the local pawnshop; within three, my mom had bought me a red no-brand Korean-made Strat clone (albeit with only two pickups and a short-scale neck) for my birthday, and I slowly began learning the instrument — a process which ultimately had a far greater impact on my life than any class I took in high school. (That's not hyperbole at all; to name just one instance, the essay that got me into college was a humorous recounting of my dogged if occasionally wayward attempts at teaching myself how to play.)

A couple of months later, while spending the summer working at my dad's office in New York City, I saw Ray's face staring out at me from a newsstand on Lexington Avenue. He was on the cover of Musician magazine, a publication I'd never heard of but now had to immediately grab. Obviously, the immediate attraction was the interview with Ray, but as I paged through the mag I fell in love with the whole thing. I was already an avid reader of Rolling Stone and CREEM, but this was the first music magazine I'd ever read where musicians honestly discussed songwriting, an art form which up to that point had seemed about as mysterious and remote to me as sculpting from marble. Musician made me think about music and the people who create it in a whole new way, as did the magazine's detailed discussion of gear and its many colorful ads for things like effects pedals, which I'd never been aware of before. (I literally thought that a distorted guitar sound was the result of being a really good player, rather than something you achieved via a pedal or an overdriven amplifier.)

Nearly forty years later, I'm the one asking musicians questions about their gear and their songwriting process, a job I didn't even know existed until I ran into Ray at that NYC newsstand. And I would have a whole lot less of a clue about what to ask them if I hadn't actually picked up a guitar and experienced the joy and frustration of playing in bands for myself...

(I've never actually interviewed Ray, btw, but I have interviewed Dave a couple of times, including this chat from 2018.)

So yeah, you could say I owe a lot to The Kinks. Or maybe I should blame them — maybe if it wasn't for that April 9, 1983 show, I would have done something sensible like become a lawyer or a psychologist or an archaeologist or anything else with a steadier income, a straighter career track and a promise of a comfortable retirement. (Lord knows, I wonder that myself sometimes.) But if you'd only seen The Kinks with me that night, maybe you would understand why I chose the path I took, and why I'm still living in this rock and roll fantasy.

God Save The Kinks.

 

Hail Herbie

Well, one cool thing about last night's Academy Awards was that Summer of Soul won an Oscar for Best Documentary — which ties in nicely with this tribute to the late, great jazz flautist Herbie Mann (whose incredible 1969 band with Roy Ayers and Sonny Sharrock makes a tantalizingly brief appearance in the film) that I penned for today's Forward.

You can read it here:

https://forward.com/culture/484609/herbie-mann-jewish-jazz-artist-herbert-solomon-flute-hunter-thompson/ 

Sprang Thang

Spring is finally here, and to salute her arrival after a brutal-in-so-many-ways winter, I've written and recorded a new Corinthian Columns track — a little instrumental accompaniment for a springtime stroll.

It's kind of a funky soundtrack/library keyboard groove with a little Ernie Isley-meets-Thin Lizzy guitar damage thrown in—because, well, why the hell not?

I'd also like to give a special shout-out to the Carolina Chickadees in my back yard, whose chirps I recorded (admittedly without their consent) and added to the mix for extra vernal flavor!

Happy Spring to you all. Here's to the season of beauty and rebirth...