La Vie En Robe

Smokey Sunday

Like the lovely lady in my life said to me today, Smokey Robinson and Sundays go together like spaghetti and meatballs. (Actually, spaghetti and meatballs and Sundays go together pretty damn well too, but that's a topic for another post.) So I've been rockin' the Smokey today, and checkin' YouTube for live clips I haven't seen before, and this one completely blew my mind...

Looks like another "Playboy After Dark" clip, this time with a Hawaiian luau (as opposed to a Polish luau) setting. Smokey and the cats, backed by a bongo player, a flautist and the incredible Marv Tarplin, lay down a honey-sweet, butter-smooth medley of hits. If this performance doesn't give you goosebumps, I don't really wanna know you...

Mayer Hawthorne: The Reluctant Soul Man

Here's one of the more enjoyable interviews I did at South By Southwest, with Mayer Hawthorne, a nice Jewish lad from my former home of Ann Arbor, MI who — much to his own surprise — has become something of a neo-soul hero, thanks to his excellent 2009 debut, A Strange Arrangement.

Actually, when I say this was an enjoyable interview, I'm fibbing slightly. This was done on the last full day of SXSW, so Mayer had already blown his voice out playing several shows over the three previous days, and I was working on two hours of sleep and a fairly massive tequila hangover. Plus, the Austin weather had taken a turn for the miserable that day, going from 70 and sunny to 45 and drizzly in less than 24 hours, which didn't help anyone's mood much.

But somehow, the mellow n' gloomy vibe worked for this interview (as opposed to the one I did later that day with the guys from Dr. Dog, which almost put the entire room to sleep, camera crew included), and it was a real treat to connect with this very down-to-earth chap about music and food — it didn't make it into the finished interview, but he told me that seeking out local delicacies on tour was just as important to him as digging for dusty wax. Clearly a man after my own heart, he politely asked if we could finish up the interview so he could get some sweet potato pie from some Austin soul food joint before they closed.

Epstein Takes The Mound

As promised, here is the video clip of my brief visit to the mound during the Cubs fantasy camp coaches vs. campers "Big Game" at Hohokam Field. A big thank you to Spencer Cook for capturing the moment on video, and to Ron Coomer for egging me on in my Mark Fidrych tribute. (He's the one yelling "Come on Fidrych! Attaboy Mark!" from the coaches' dugout.) Man, that was fun...

Don't Forget the Motor City

I read last night that the final wrecking balls have started swinging at Tiger Stadium, which by now is such a foregone conclusion that only a handful of Detroiters actually showed up to watch their city's beloved baseball stadium (where I also happened to see my first-ever major league game) literally bite the dust. I suspect that the slow death of Detroit itself is now a similarly foregone conclusion, which is such a massive tragedy on so many levels — economically, historically, culturally, racially, musically, even culinarily if you're a Coney Dog kinda person (I, for the record, am not) — that I can't even begin to wrap my head around it. Doesn't seem like too many other folks can, either.
    I last visted Detroit five years ago on a Revolver assignment; I specifically asked to stay downtown, so that I could wander around and take photos in my free time. As a kid growing up in Ann Arbor in the 1970s, the Motor City seemed to me a scary but still vibrant and glamorous (at least in a seedy way) kinda place; when I explored it in 2004, it was scary and still, which made it seem even more unnerving. I literally walked around downtown for hours one Saturday morning without seeing a single living soul — with the exception of two bums who asked me, "Hey Elvis, you got any change?"
    I took a number of photos that morning with my old Lomo, which I finally got around to scanning and put up as a Flickr set. I regret that I didn't take better notes about what most of these buildings or streets are/were; the silence was so eerie, I felt like I had to keep moving or I'd become a target for whatever zombie armies were lurking in this or that abandoned hotel. But you can still see the beauty and the power of the city in these old buildings, and get a brief whiff of the days when Detroit was still the baddest place to be and be from. I wish I'd taken more photos while I had the chance.

Soar On, Sweet Bird

I don't even know what to say about the strange, abrupt and sad passing of Mark "The Bird" Fidrych, except that it's not a coincidence that the year of his brilliant rookie season also happened to be the year I fell in love with baseball.

Fidrych was like Harpo Marx reincarnated as a pitcher for the Detroit Tigers — he was a clown and a goofball, sure, but he also radiated a cosmic joy that was beautiful to behold, and he could back it up by pitching rings around the best teams in the American League. These days, most pitchers never throw 24 complete games in their entire careers; The Bird threw 24 in a single season, and rarely seemed to break a sweat (or lose his sheer excitement over being in the big leagues in the first place) in the process. And then it was pretty much over, thanks to knee and shoulder injuries; but for one glorious season, he gave Tigers fans — and baseball fans all around the country — something to smile about. As Jim Caple writes in this excellent obit, he was the kind of gate attraction who, whenever and wherever he pitched, could regularly pull in 20-30 thousand over the average fan attendance.

Unlike the late, great Dock Ellis, I never got to see The Bird play in person; but like Ellis, Fidrych was a major inspiration for my baseball book, and for the way I see and live my life in general. And now they're both gone. If I were Dick Allen, Bill Lee or Jim Bouton, I'd definitely start looking twice before crossing the street...

Ron Asheton, R.I.P.

My friend Don gave me some shit today about failing to mention the recent death of Ron Asheton on this blog. Truth is, I've been all kindsa busy; plus, the protean Stooges guitarist hasn't exactly lacked for gushing tributes and in-depth articles this week detailing his massive influence upon punk, grunge, and rock in general. So, I'd been thinking, what could I possibly add to the flurry of well-deserved hosannas? I never met Ron Asheton, nor (I sadly must admit) did I catch the Stooges on any of their reunion shows over the past few years. So all I can really offer, in the end, is a little bit about what his guitar playing on the first two Stooges records meant to me.

Growing up in Ann Arbor in the 1970s gave me a slightly skewed perspective on rock and roll history; I was familiar with the terms "White Panther Party" and "MC5" from my nursery school days onward, and I recall that pretty much everyone in my sixth grade class knew who Iggy Pop was — although our understanding of him was as some sort of gross-out bogey man, as opposed to a brilliantly primal performer. ("That would be so bitchin' if Iggy Pop showed up," I remember my friend Johnny whispering to me during one school assembly. "He'd just get up on stage and PISS on everybody!!!")

But I never heard of Ron Asheton, or even the Stooges, until the early '80s — which was, not coincidentally, around the time that I was learning to play guitar. The songs on 1969's The Stooges and 1970's Funhouse were simple, but (contrary to what I've been reading in many of the Ron Asheton tributes) were not easy to play along to. The Ramones? Those records were a breeze to play along to — you just dialed up a nice distortion sound, found a barre chord in the right key, and off you went. Ron Asheton's playing, however, had a menacing logic all its own, and utilized a uniquely personal combination of fuzz and wah-wah pedals, natural tube distortion, feedback, extreme Stratocaster abuse (see the above photo), and blues licks that — once you actually broke them down — seemed more extra-terrestrial than delta-derived. What I eventually realized was that just about anyone can play a Stooges song, but very few people can do it and make it sound even half as bad-ass as the real thing, even if they're working with the right gear; and that's because the magic in the music truly came from Ron's hands and soul.

Was Ron Asheton the single biggest influence on my own guitar playing? Not exactly; as a guitarist who also happens to be an obsessive music fan, it's all but impossible to not be influenced in one way or another by the millions of different licks and solos I've heard through the years. But I can say that Ron ranks high in my personal guitar cosmology. Or put it this way: When I slam a power chord, I want to be Pete Townshend. When I jangle around an open G, I want to be Roger McGuinn. When I hang on a note during a solo, I want to be Neil Young; when I slide up the neck to go for the punk-rock "air raid siren," I want to be Johnny Thunders. But when I kick on the wah-wah pedal, there's no one I would rather be than Ron Asheton. His way with a wah had almost nothing to do with the artful tone sculpting of JImi Hendrix, or the percussive funkiness of Eddie Hazel — with Ron, the wah-wah pedal was all about orgasmic eruptions of frustration and anarchy. He could make that thing spit like an angry wildcat, sting like a swarm of bees and belch like a drunken German, and it's virtually impossible to listen to the first Stooges album on headphones without feeling like your brain is being rubbed raw by fistfuls of steel wool. 

Case in point: This fantastic alternate mix of "Real Cool Time" from the first album, which is pure nasty fuzz-wah heaven. Stick around at the end to hear the clueless engineer (or is that producer John Cale?) wondering if perhaps all the song could be trimmed down to the 2:20 mark...

Real Cool Time (Alternate Mix)

R.I.P., Ron. You fucking tore it up.

(Oh yeah — the amazing photo above was taken by the great Robert Matheu.)

Friday 'Fro: Smokey Robinson

Not long ago, someone on some chat board linked to one of my Friday 'Fro entries, telling their fellow chat-mates that "this is a cool 'fro site, but it's mostly about dead guys." Which has never been my intent, of course, but I made a mental note that I really oughta throw a living 'fro into the mix.

So, today at the office, my colleague Tony was making the afternoon go better with a Smokey Robinson (both with and without the Miracles) collection, and that got me thinking — I'd never seen our "Greatest Living Poet" (to quote Bob Dylan) sport anything beyond the most rudimentary tennis-ball 'fro. Did Smokey ever go for the big hair?

Well, five minutes of internet research turned up very little on that score, except for the above picture from the cover of his 1974 album, Pure Smokey. And, to be honest, I have to call "'fro shenanigans" on it, because that perfectly coiffed afro really looks like the work of the Motown art department, instead of anything remotely "natural". Maybe they were worried that Smokey's old-fashioned romanticism wasn't playing anymore with "the kids," and felt a faux 'fro was needed if he was gonna keep moving units like he used to. Sigh. That's simply no way to treat a national treasure...

Anyway, this all brought back some very lovely memories of interviewing Mr. Robinson for the L.A. Weekly back in 2002, so I went online and checked to see if I could find the article I wrote on him and the radio show he was doing at the time. It's still there, though does omit some of my favorite memories from the experience. I did it right after Thanksgiving, and thus I got to have the surreal experience of watching him try to heat up some leftover turkey and stuffing in his oven; I think the housekeeper was gone for the day, and he wasn't, shall we say, completely comfortable in the kitchen. 

He was super smooth in every other way, though; we broke the ice talking about the Detroit Tigers (I was wearing my 80s-era Tigers starter jacket at the time), and he waxed nostalgic about going to old Tiger Stadium with his uncle back in the 1950s. But from the get-go, he really was every bit as sweet and warm and kind as his records had led me to imagine, and I thoroughly enjoyed every second of our hour-long conversation.

It was also Carole's birthday that day, so as we were wrapping up I asked if he would wish her a happy birthday; without any further prompting, he grabbed my tape recorder and sang a full chorus of "Happy Birthday" to her — then added, "Hi, Carole, this is Smokey Robinson, wishing you the most joyous of birthdays! God bless you!" Pure Smokey, indeed...

Oh yeah — you can read my old L.A. Weekly piece here.

Norman Whitfield, R.I.P.

Damn, quite the sad week for music. First Rick Wright of Pink Floyd goes to that "Great Gig in the Sky", and then legendary Motown songwriter/producer Norman Whitfield dies yesterday at the age of 65, apparently from complications of diabetes.

The name may only vaguely familiar to some of you; but if you've ever listened to the radio at any point in your existence, you already know Whitfield's work: He either wrote or produced (or, in many cases, did both) "Pride & Joy" for Marvin Gaye, "He Was Really Sayin' Something" for the Velvelettes, "I heard it Through the Grapevine" for Gladys Knight & the Pips, "I Wish It Would Rain" for the Temptations, "Car Wash" for Rose Royce, and that's really just the tip of the soulful iceberg. But my favorite Whitfield stuff — and Marvin Gaye's immortal What's Goin' On aside, my favorite Motown stuff, period — is from his "psychedelic soul" period, wherein he found a way to apply the freaky soul and fuzzy funk of Sly & the Family Soul, Funkadelic and Jimi Hendrix to the more traditionally staid Motown sound.

(I remember reading an interview years ago with some of the original P-Funk players, where they alleged that Whitfield used to tape Funkadelic performances at local Detroit nightspots on a portable cassette player, and then work their riffs into Temptations songs. It may have been bullshit or sour grapes; then again, given the competitive nature of the Detroit music scene at the time, it's also entirely possible.)   

Beginning in 1968 with the Temptations' "Cloud Nine," and continuing until he left Motown in 1973 to form his own label, Whitfield produced the trippiest, funkiest — and in some cases, most socially conscious — records Motown ever released. "War" by Edwin Starr; "Smiling Faces Sometimes" by the Undisputed Truth; "Friendship Train" by Gladys Knight & The Pips; "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" by the Temptations... the list goes on and on and on. Fuzz guitar, wah-wah, phasing, extended grooves — Whitfield considered all the new tricks of the trade fair game, but his productions went way, way beyond mere novelty or jive-ass cash-in.

Well, some of it was pretty jive-ass, but to me that only adds to the charm. Consider 1970's "Psychedelic Shack," with its gypsy caravan of period sound effects, and its florid description of a day-glo nightspot that sounds as if it were written by Madison Avenue ad execs. ("Hmmm, let's see... 'Got a cat that's shoutin' the blues'... anybody got a rhyme for that?" "Well, Bert, I was thinking that 'Talkin' 'bout payin' some dues' might work in that particular spot." "Nice going there, Ted. Shall I have my secretary send out for sandwiches?") But it's so supremely cheesy and so gloriously funky at the same time, I can utimately only stand in awe of its utter brilliance. Chant along with me now: "Psychedelic Shack / That's where it's at / Psychedelic Shack / That's where it's at..."

psychedelic_shack.mp3

Sharin' Your Love With Larry

Straight outta Detroit, Michigan, one of my all-time favorite astrologically-based '70s slow jams...

George Carlin, R.I.P.

Damn. Another great one gone.

I can't even count how many hours I spent listening to George Carlin's Class Clown LP with my Ann Arbor friends in fifth and sixth grade. We always used to dare each other to bring it to school; listening to "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television" or his riff on teenage masturbation on the classroom turntable would've been way more rebellious (and gotten us into a lot more trouble) than spinning our Kiss and ELO albums. We never did, but we got a lot of joy out of thinking about doing it. And I suppose that the idea of ten year-old boys plotting to bum out their teacher by playing George Carlin records in the classroom would have given Mr. Carlin a fair amount of joy, as well.

Like the Marx Brothers, Monty Python, National Lampoon, Creem magazine and the early movies of Mel Brooks, George Carlin profoundly influenced the way that I still view the world and its myriad absurdities. My friend Jason and I loved the "meatcake" riff from his "Ice Box Man" routine so much that, once we "grew up" and formed a band, we inscribed part of it on the run-off grooves on the first Lava Sutra 45 — "Could be meat..." on one side, "Could  be cake..." on the other. (The punchline, which we didn't have room for, is of course, "It looks like... meatcake!")

Baseball fan though I am, I was never particularly dug Carlin's famous "Baseball vs. Football" routine. It always seemed kind of toothless in comparison to his other stuff; then again, I guess he needed to have something "clean" he could do on the Tonight Show. But I'll always remember him for his more thoughtful and acerbic routines, such as the still-totally-relevant "Religion Is Bullshit"...

He was a class clown, all right.