Turn The World On. (A Requiem for Grant Hart.)

(In response to yesterday's sad news about the death of Grant Hart, many people are writing reminiscences of the band Husker Du. Here is mine - it's a brief excerpt from Almost Infamous, my never-to-be-published memoir.)
 In 1984, I graduated from college and immediately had to move home. There I was, living with my parents in my boring home town, wishing that my life could be more like a movie: the kind where the formerly average girl uncovers a terrible secret and starts an exciting campaign to get rid of the evil corporate entity that’s taking over her town, or meets a wacky and charming boy and together they galvanize the community by starting a dada theater group, or even just discovers that there’s a ghostly presence in the local woods. In fact, daily life as an adult had none of those elements. It was very disappointing.

To pass the time, I volunteered at the local college radio station, KFJC and they made me the editor of their newsletter. One of the first events I attended in that capacity was a fundraiser the station was giving at the cafeteria. My friend Isabelle, who served as my assistant editor, and I had never heard of the first three bands, and only knew the headliner, the Dead Kennedys, by repute. Even people a lot squarer than us knew who they were, because their lead singer, Jello Biafra, had run for mayor of San Francisco, but this was 1984, and the Kennedys had been around a long time at this point. Is and I showed up to the gig early, because I was supposed to interview the Dead Kennedys. It wasn’t the first time I’d interviewed a band -- I'd interviewed Jonathan Richman for the Daily Cal – but the Dead Kennedys were a lot more threatening because there were four of them and they were punks.

four years before they were dicks to us.

Well, I don’t know what went wrong in our first few minutes together, but I know that the interview went south very fast. It might have been my own fault, it often was in those days, but my impression at the time was that they were extremely obnoxious to me, in what I now recognize as a sexist manner, though at the time – not having the language we have now to describe that kind of power play -- I just thought, “Jeez, what dicks!”

 The problem wasn’t just that we were women. It was that we were dressed wrong. Despite our great and sincere love of rock music and punk rock in particular, we weren’t so immersed in it that we looked like we liked it. We didn’t have tattoos, or wear peg leg black pants and stilettos and torn white t-shirts with red bra straps showing. We didn’t even dye our hair. We looked like exactly what we were: two girls in college, with fluffy 1980s haircuts. And I can tell you, DJ Peligro, East Bay Ray, and Jello Biafra, were not nice to people who looked like us, i.e. ordinary.

The interview lasted all of five minutes before we got pissed off and left the room. I can’t remember what they said to us, but I can assure you it was horrid. Outside the “backstage” area, on the cafeteria stage, the first band was just starting: we’d never heard of them, but we stopped to see what they were like. Hopes were not high, to say the least. We were about as depressed as we could be, having just been called ‘dumb bunnies’ (or possibly ‘lame groupies’) by some stupid looking punk poseurs.

But just then the weirdest thing happened. We walked into the cafeteria, and a wall of sound hit us in the face, and locked us onto the floor, right in front of the band. We were riveted, not metaphorically, you know, but literally: we could not move because we had been enchanted. It was a magical thing. There was hardly anyone in the room yet, the place still smelled like food, and the band, a trio of men who looked about as opposite to the Dead Kennedys as it is possible to imagine, pudgy, mustachio’ed, in plaid lumberjack shirts – far, far more ordinary than us, if such a thing was even possible -- was playing like the world was about to end.

Not dicks to us.

I believe we gasped, more than once. We did not speak. We just…listened. It was like what Jacques Attali says about music being a harbinger, a bell tolling that the world is changing: we had quite literally met our future face to face. The music simply roared at us. When the band finished their set, which was short, we looked at each other, astonished.

 Then we walked out the door and into the parking lot and drove straight to the University Creamery, because why stay when we knew that we would not be seeing a better band that night. If ever.

“Jesus!”

“Did that just HAPPEN?” Isabelle asked. 

I was shaking my head. Then I laughed. “What the hell was I doing interviewing the Dead Kennedys, anyway?”

Isabelle nodded. “Well, at least you know what to write about.”

“Yeah, I’m going to shine those assholes. Their day is through. Now, what was that band called again? At the meeting they said they were from Minneapolis, I think. On SST Records.”

It was like the opening shot of that movie that I wanted to be in. We solemnly chanted the name together. Husker Du.

Stop the world I want to get off (and melt with you)

My friend Kammy gets free VIP tickets to the Mountain Winery in Saratoga through her work, and she recently asked me what I’d like to go see there for my birthday. I took one look at the list of upcoming acts and said, “Whatever is most convenient for you, Kammy.” That’s how I wound up at the top of that mountain at the “Lost 1980s” gig  on the hottest day ever recorded in the Bay Area, with Kammy, her husband, her father, her 11 year old and her 11 year old’s ASL teacher.

The music of the 1980s means a lot to me; it’s probably my most important era, but to the Mountain Winery, the”Lost” 80s doesn’t mean Dumptruck, the ‘mats and Mission of Burma, it means British synth pop and American New Wave. In the course of several hours at the top of that mountain, we saw the Flirts, the Motels, Naked Eyes, Wang Chung, Berlin and Missing Persons – in short, it was like we got jammed inside a radio set to KROQ circa 1983. In my memory, that kind of music – synth pop – didn’t get played all that much on the radio, but maybe I am mis-remembering, since a lot people in that audience acted like Wang Chung was Bob Dylan.

The guy in wang chung. Forget his name. Note dumb guitar.

As for me – I used to be a rock critic and I was completely unable to recognize any of the bands when they came on stage. 1980s new wave seems to be where my memory is going fastest.

Wang Chung was especially puzzling. What songs did they do again? I had to look them up on Wikipedia, and it said it was named for the phrase “yellow bell” in Chinese.

“It says here that Wang Chung means ‘yellow bell’ in Chinese,” I told Kammy, who is Chinese. She and her family consulted with one another for a while. No it doesn’t, was the consensus. 

So much for Wikipedia.

Those bands aren’t exactly worthy of a ton of sentient thought, but the show did give me a chance to reflect on two aspects of the 1980s I hadn’t thought about in a long time, namely, changing music technologies and the wretched “women in  rock” narrative that first reared its ugly head at that time.

Regarding the technology, suffice it to say that the evening was awash with synthesizers, saxophone, and those funnily shaped guitars, and boy do they sound old fashioned now! Sonically, they gave off the same whiff of moth balls that the men’s black peg leg pants and red tennis shows, skinny ties and – in one case – a slender silk scarf did.

Second, women. It was an era when a lot of that kind of music was made by men and sung by women.  Both Dale Bozzio, of Missing Persons, and Martha Davis, of the Motels, are in their mid 60s, and what I learned from watching them was that, as an aging woman in rock, you are supposed to wear a really large coat over your aging lady body, even if you’re a former Playboy Bunny, like Bozzio.

Dale bozzio. Big jacket

Come to think of it, I recall feeling infuriated at Bozzio’s bunny status, this being pre-3^rd wave feminism (!); the sight of her prancing around in a see through raincoat on MTV used to bother me, especially when male critics would justify it by saying, “but she used to sing with Zappa!”

The thing is, thanks to 3^rd Wave Feminism, I am no longer angry at her over that, because I no longer consider it to be her own fault. I still hate Berlin’s song “Sex. I’m a…” (“I’m a slut! I’m a geisha! I'm a little girl!” etc. etc.) but I can at least acknowledge that both Bozzio and Nunn were pretty good singers, indeed, last week they were far superior performers to the men in Wang Chung and Naked Eyes.

Still. Let’s face it, Dale Bozzio and Terri Nunn DID have a dampening effect on women’s role on MTV and subsequently in music – before them, you could be Christie Hynde, Patti Smith, a B-52; after, you had to boob it up all over the place. Honestly, the history of MTV and TV in general never ceases to remind me of that book “Super Sad True Love Story” by Gary Shteyngart, in which kids in kindergarten are made to watch pornos and teenage girls wear jeans with cut outs over their crotches. Remember Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke? It feels that directional.

After Berlin, my friends and I decided to leave. It was a long way down the mountain and Cutting Crew and Spandau Ballet were not a good exchange for the giant traffic jam that was about to occur. But then, I was never going to wang chung, not that night, or any other. Later I posted a lot of nutty stuff about the night in twitter, and  people on social media suggested to me that they didn't actually like the music of the 1980s, that it was 'the worst time' for music. But I don't know about that. Sometime around New Year’s Eve of 1989, I was asked to appear on channel 2 news to comment on the music of the 1980s. For me, the 1980s meant REM, the Replacements and rap, but to the news station it meant Madonna, Bruce Springsteen and Michael Jackson. Neither of us were exactly right, or rather, both of us were.

That night back in 1989, I remember, in honor of the decade changing into the 90s, Isabelle and I put on new romantic blouses and teased our hair up like Robert Smith of the Cure in memoriam of that style. We had, at that moment, already heard Nirvana’s “Bleach” – as well as De La Soul’s “3 Feet High and Rising” --  and we were about to plunge, like human knives, into the heart of grunge and rap. The 80s were indeed long since lost to us at that moment. I would be happy as hell to recover them, but I have a very different playlist going in my head, and I bet you do too. What would be your idea of a great 'lost 1980s' bill?

Play that old cliche

My daughter and I were struggling to build a giant piece of IKEA furniture and it took way longer than we thought, so I got a late start for the Todd Rundgren show the other night. But I paid good money for that ticket, the Chapel is my favorite venue to see things in San Francisco, and Todd Rundgren is, well, Todd Rundgren, so I leapt in the car and began booking it up 280.

 It’s been 105 degrees this week in the valley, which meant the summer fog was pouring down the mountains, and the ipod shuffle came up with a song from a record I forgot that I had downloaded: Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoff’s “Under The Covers Vol. 3,” the third record in their series of recordings of other people’s songs. Volume 1, which was songs from the 1960slike “Different Drum” “Everyone Knows This Is Nowhere” and “It’s Alright BabyBlue” was sublime. This one – the 1980s – was equally killer.

It was, in short, a beautiful drive, probably, I conjectured gloomily, better than the show could be. What could Todd do that would be superior to Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoff’s shimmering version of “Shaking Through,” or “How Soon Is Now?” I was once a Todd-head, with the songs of Runt and Hermit and Something/Anything burnt into my brain, but I lost interest in about 1981, and I could no longer remember why. What was good about him again? Well, I was about to find out.

Up in SF’s Mission district, my usual go to parking lot on Valencia and 21^st was full, god damn it, which meant I had to drive up and down the hills on the hunt for the elusive space…and when I found it I was later than ever. Todd’s voice was pouring out of the club by the time I got there, but they sure as hell weren’t carding anyone at the door: as soon as I shouldered my way in I had the glad realization that I was literally the youngest person in the room.

Of course, in part this feeling was heightened by the fact that I immediately went up to the balcony, where the people who can’t face standing for two hours were, but there is no doubt that many of  Todd’s fans are Todd’s age, i.e. in their 60s. (He’s 69). I was a spring chicken by comparison and may well have been the only person there who could name the writer and band of the song he was singing when I arrived: “When The Walls Came Down” by the Call.

That’s a weird choice, I thought. Did he produce them? Todd  Rundgren has produced a diverse lot of bands over the years – Bad Company, the New York Dolls, Patti Smith, Meatloaf, the Psychedelic Furs, to name just a few --  but the Call seemed not quite in his wheelhouse. The Call haven’t been around in ages, but that turned out to be one of the newer songs Todd was going to sing this evening: most of the repertoire was from the 1950s or early 60s. And not to put too fine a point on it: it blew.

I’m sorry, but it DID! It was awful. I mean, I love a wacky cover as much as the next person – that Matthew Sweet/Susanna Hoff record is my favorite thing I’ve heard all year; finding Easter eggs in Afghan Whigs sets is my life’s work, and I was bitterly disappointed at a show the evening before when the Filthy Friends didn’t play a Bowie cover – but this was insane.

 I mean, the Call are mediocre band at best, but he followed that up with this terrible song called “Little Dove and Running Bear,” by Johnny Preston, which is sung by the Big Bopper. I try not to be too doctrinaire about PC stuff in music but honestly, he might as well have been singing in a fake sing-song Asian accent, or been white-rapping about his riches. Anyway, nothing says “OLD PERSON WHO HAS NEVER HEARD OF WHITE MALE PRIVILEGE” more than singing a rude song about Native Americans because, you know, ‘it’s hilarious.’ NOT. Honestly. How hard is it not to be publicly racist these days?

what's wrong with this picture?

Todd seemed to think he was doing some riff on the Wild West, which made me have this sudden, ecstatic thought: “What if he plays “TheRange War?'” If he had played "The Range War," everything might  have been forgiven, but NO, he did not. Instead, it went downhill from there. I am not sure what I hated worse, his covers of “Fire” by the Crazy World of Arthur Brown,”  the Proclaimers’ “Five Hundred Miles” complete with super fake Scottish accent, the endless blues-to-show-he-could shit show, the Frank Sinatra song, or “Hash Pipe” by Weezer. And that’s just scratching the surface.

It was fucking bananas. To make matters worse, about midway in it he suddenly played two of his own  songs, “Cliché” and “Love of the Common Man” and they were both so absolutely sublime they nailed me to my chair. I spent the whole rest of the time texting quips to my brother in North Carolina, as I breathlessly awaited “Hello It’s Me” or “Just One Victory” (or, said my brother wistfully, “Piss Aaron”) but no. The only other Todd song he sang was “One World” at the end, and I don’t care for that song.

It was so incredibly mean of him. But at least it was over early. When I got home, I flounced into my daughter’s room, sat down on her floor, and tried to explain how terrible it was.

“Imagine if, twenty years from now, you go see Damon Albarn solo and all he does is play songs by Taio Cruz and LMFAO.”

Her: “Did he play “Sexy and I know It?"”

“No, but the 1950-70s equivalents.”

I told her their names and she played them on YouTube, commenting, Beavis-like. Hence:

 “In the Year 2525.” C: “This sounds like the theme song  a really bad sci fi movie where a man falls in love with a robot and at the end the robot kills him.”

“Patches.” “Is this like old people’s idea of rapping?”

“Incense and Peppermints.” “No. Just…no.”

“I’m A Gun.” (Lorne Greene.) “You realize this is written infirst person from the point of view of the gun?”  

“I’m a Gun” IS a hilarious song, although I didn’t want to hear Todd Rundgren sing it: at its end, the singer/gun proposes to destroy itself, because it’s a murderer. When we finished listening, my daughter ill-advisedly started reading the YouTube comments, many of which were from NRA people objecting to this ridiculous song’s content (not its premise: its content). One read: “Owning a gun makes one as much of a murderer as the extremist feminists who say that being a guy essentially makes you a rapist

Another read, “The kind of people who like this song probably think abortion is OK, too.”

C: “Oh my god – self burn! It’s like they think they made a good point, and they DID – but it’s not the point they think they made!!”

I think the same can be said about Todd Rundgren’s show, somehow. I am not exactly sure what point he thinks he’s making, though I believe it has something to do with the showing off of his incredible talent. Because he IS so so talented, no question, and, more importantly, his own work is still so outstanding that he only needs to do a few lines of one song – “I Saw The Light,” for example, which he played early in the set, before it degenerated into toilet-ville – for one to go into rock shock. Indeed, after our trash-fest, I forced my daughter to listen to one Todd Rundgren song, and after the first five notes she sat up like a chipmunk and went, “Oh my GOD, I LOVE This song.” (It was “Hello It’s Me.”)

Is it false humility, to not play your great songs and play shitty ones instead? Or is it the height of arrogance? I think in this case it was the latter: to have that kind of power within you and withhold it from a paying audience. As he played all this stuff, I was reminded of the Replacements. They used, on occasion, to put in sets in which they would spin out into horrible covers – “Heartbeat It’s a Lovebeat,” “I Get Around,” “Roundabout” by Yes (Todd Rundgren has been touring with Yes, by the way, a circumstance about which I wish to know nothing about).  I always used to like those sets – though of course I preferred a set where they were ‘on’ and played their own stuff brilliantly. But I think the ‘mats reason for doing it was different. When they did those sets, they would occasionally start, and then stop, one of their own songs, and I think they stopped because they were so drunk they were about to butcher it, and they preferred butchering other people’s songs.

Or at least, that’s what they said. By contrast, Todd seems to be doing this just because he can. I can certainly see that it’s probably more fun for him to play silly music that makes him laugh than his own music, which he’s maybe sick of. But still! After one song, I forget which, he said, “that was like spending an hour on the toilet,” and indeed it was.

On my way home from the club, I put on “Under The Covers” again and thought about why it was OK for those 2 artists to cover other people’s work, but not for Todd, and it came down to one single factor: song choice. I downloaded “Under the Covers” without even looking to see what songs were on it, and when the song would change to the Bongos “Bulrushes” or  XTC’s “Towers Of London” I  practically shed tears of joy to hear them again, and to hear them done with this amount of love and care, and, in some cases, to hear new things in them that I had not heard before. In my car, under my own cover, I literally  shouted along with the words to “How Soon Is Now.”When I was young, Isabelle and I used to make fun it, we would say, in a fake “elephant man” accent, “I am not an animal! I am human being and I need to be loved!” But hearing it on this record, I was just slain.

It goes without saying that didn’t happen at Todd’s show, with “2525” or “I’m A Gun” or “Hash Pipe” (which was done, incidentally, exactly like Weezer do it themselves.) But it would have, if he’d played “Range War” or “Piss Aaron,” or “Real Man.”Self burn, Todd. Self burn.