Page Eight

Do yourself a favor and have a good friend who tends bar at a pub.

Now, I'm not condoning befriending someone who tends bar at a pub simply to reap the benefits, but I would suggest becoming the kind of person who draws only the cream of the crop of humanity to his or herself. The bartender of a local pub has a very good chance of being in this group.

An important point—find an English pub as opposed to an Irish one. I'm just trying to keep you from spending any unnecessary time in a sports bar, mired in Lucky Charms paraphernalia. There's even a groovy little Scottish bar in the valley.

Several years ago, when I lived in the sleepy little town of Fullerton, California, I became pretty tight with a guy named Sean Stentz. Stentzy was my local English pub (The Old Ship) keep, though I'm pretty sure we became pals before he worked there, and The Ship was a few doors down from a coffeehouse at which I had a weekly band gig. Every week, just before I'd go on, I'd mosey down to The Ship and hang with Sean long enough to drink a Guinness, on the house. That drink always made me feel just loved enough to go put on a great show.

I'm not writing this in the hopes that you will find someone from whom you can get free shit. I would just like to think that you have people in your life who care, who know when you could use a free drink, and who love art enough to fortify it on their dime, even if they have to work while you are playing.

This one goes out to the boys of Leather Cobre—Matts, Bens, and Stentzy. I miss the hell outta youse guys.

Page Seven

Do Yourself a Favor And...

Get all tanked and watch Billy Joel's performance of "Travelin' Prayer" from Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special.

I was grateful, seriously grateful, to get turned onto this show by our dear friends Lindsay and Sarah, the Aguilar Sisters, and Sarah's fiance Mark and Lindsay's then-boyfriend, Rob Douglas. We were visiting home for a week and were hanging out at Sarah and Mark's place in Silverlake.

I'm really thankful for the different take on certain bands and acts that this show has given me the chance to see. For example, Billy Joel's "Travelin' Prayer," an uptempo, ragtimey (banjo, of course) sort of saxophone-heavy song. It made me really feel what he was capable of before over-produced feel-good anthems like "We Didn't Start the Fire" were standard. Don't get me wrong; I love the vocal fineries achieved by Joel and Company on songs like "Uptown Girl" and especially "For the Longest Time," but there was something raw and unpolished and decidedly '70s about "Travelin' Prayer."

I had been prepared some for this, a bit tenderized, even, by my friend comedian Kyle Cease (10 Things I Hate About You, Not Another Teen Movie), who could play a lot of Billy Joel songs on his keyboard at his often-enough, plenty-of-booze-to-go-round parties, and who made me dig Joel a bit more than I had in the past. At any rate, these are just a bunch of seriously talented dudes with a serious level of professionalism, and they really, really love playing music. The lyrics are really quite touching, and the energy level is just stellar.

Seriously, check it out.

Page Six

The best band in Los Angeles is, hands down, The Neighborhood Bullys. I've been preaching that for over three years now. They also smoke any band I've seen here in Austin, so... Live music capital...? Anyway, I'm beat, so here's a little something I wrote about the Bullys almost two years ago.

Beaten In An Alley


Years from now, in interviews, people will talk about that night at Taix when The Neighborhood Bullys changed it all. There will certainly be differing accounts of who was there and who wasn't there. Some will say that no, The Kid wasn't in the crowd, simply watching and appreciating; he was already on the road. Everyone will agree that yes, in fact, Air Traffic Todd was there, but was he sitting at Andy Baker's table or was it David Serby's?


The Mexican radio was coming through the amps when they weren't serving as megaphones for Gene's musical equivalent of kicking someone's ass in an alley or Davey's take on what a bassline would sound like in Pergatory, desperately waiting to see if angel or demon would claim it. Yes, it will be said, Joey and Michael looked like subjects of a film set in Bill Graham's wintry music hall, no, no one's guitar strap broke, yes, a hat was passed and filled to the top with tens and fives, no, Eddie Muñoz was not really there, but yes, yes, yes the music... The music was more alive and powerful and insane than ever before, peeling the flowered paper off the Parisian walls, rattling the bottles in their demijohns, and turning the wine to vinegar and the vinegar into wine.


So, really, who was there? I know I was. God damn, I was there.

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Do Yourself a Favor And...

Go see them somewhere. Buy their record.

Page Five

I believe that now is a really good time to be moderately broke, and to be someone who has been moderately broke for a good portion of his or her life. I'll tell you why after I run through some campaign slogans (real and imaginary) I wish I were old enough to be able to claim.

If I Were 21 I'd Vote For Kennedy (One of Bobby's)

Keep Hope Alive! (Obama listened!)

Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Carter (I made that one up)

People want to blame all of this economic mess on Clinton, but I say, lay the blame on the ones who fostered an economy that made the luxurious, easy living life not only attainable, but seemingly normal. Reagan will always pop into my head when you say "The President," just as Ike pops into my Dad's head when you say the same thing. I grew up thinking Ronnie was so cool, but I have to admit now that I think his era is the one that really set us on the path of being compelled to take loans we knew we could never repay simply to avoid being those people at the party who DON'T OWN. 

I'll say it here just this once: If ever you hassled me for being someone who DOESN'T OWN... FUCK YOU. Currently, I have nothing to lose. I like that. How's your portfolio now, douche? 

But enough about economics and politics. I don't really want to dive too much into that here. That shit's a drag. Right now I'd like to talk about rock 'n' roll bands on the sand at beach parties in movies from the early '60s. This is crazy stuff. In particular, I'd like to talk about the "band" The Four Preps, who entertained the groovy surfer kids down at the beach in Gidget (1959).  I shouldn't really put the word "band" in quotes when referring to these guys; they were an actual recording group that had some hits. But, seriously. Their electric guitars are not plugged in. I see a saxophone; I hear a saxophone; but the sax player's not playing anything like what you hear. They brought their gear to the beach. Tools. You know they weren't cool outside of the movie studio, playing the Whiskey and all. Whatever. And I wonder why the viewers allowed it. Was it so new they didn't care about mistakes? Did they honestly believe those instruments worked like that? Here's the part that screws with me—Fifty years from now, what totally obvious mistakes will they see in the stuff we're making now that we think is near perfect, like No Country for Old Men? That's kind of a scary thought. What if we're totally lame?

So, for something from that era that was totally not lame, 

Do Yourself a Favor And...

Get mellow and watch The Endless Summer. The first one. Just dig that soundtrack by The Sandals. Oh, and everything else.

Page Four

So there's this high school after-game party going on at one of the obnoxiously large homes behind us. It's loud. Currently we're listening to a hyper-obnoxious boy jokingly scream, "YOU WANT SOME?! YOU WANT SOME?!" in some sort of girl-impressing peacockery, while the object of this romance yells back, "BRING IT ON! BRING IT ON!" Ah, high school. Fortunately for us, it's all being played out in front of the soothing strains of Panic at the Disco or the Jonas Brothers or some crap. If ever you doubted the rabid devotion to football in Texas, come stay with us for a week. Any week of the year. I'll take you somewhere in town, anywhere, and sooner more than later you'll see a legitimate businessman wearing a tie with little orange longhorns on it, a soccer mom or two or three in orange sweats that sport the word "TEXAS" across her ass where "JUICY" was really meant to be, or even better, a grown man walking down the sidewalk in head-to-toe burnt orange pajamas. I've seen it.   

Speaking of obnoxious homes, there's a castle around the corner. Not a real, ancient, stone, I-live-in-Dublin-and-James-Joyce-used-to-write-in-the-little-castle-down-the-lane kind of castle, but a house that once looked like a house and has been refurbished to look, from the front only, like Medieval Times. It's nothing short of absurd. In the driveway there are usually two or three new American cars—Chevys and Dodges, the kind that look like they were designed after the cars on ZZ Top albums and are bought exclusively by the kind of nouveau riche white trash that will soon have to bandage those sub-quality pieces of junk together with their overstock of Sarah Palin bumper stickers. 

Now, keep in mind that we live in a neighborhood that forces us to belong to a home owners' association (Don't worry—we're broke. My in-laws have very generously let us live here rent free.), and this HOA leaves notes on our cars if we leave them on the street after eleven at night. But this same HOA allowed this monstrosity of a dwelling to go up in plain view of the rest of us? Seriously? Come on. 

Uh-oh, the party has dwindled down to the last of the cool kids, and they're now listening to "Ice, Ice Baby." Shit, I kind of have to like them now.

Speaking of Vanilla Ice, did you know that at some point he was some kind of a motocross champion? He has trophies and trophies for this stuff, and a bunch of karate awards, too, I think. Who knew? Well, I did, because I worked for a motocross magazine for over four years. I learned a lot of useless crap like that there. Like who pulled the first backflip on a motorcycle, and How to Fix a Flat Tire with Your Own Skin. Really random people are really into that stuff. Mark Paul Gosselaar, "Zack Morris" from "Saved by the Bell", came into the office several times to pick up an issue or some special gear (Screech plays bass in Brea, California, last I checked). Nouveau riche, man. I guess. Zack Morris was probably born rich. Friggin NPH-Lite. 

*The Beatles? The Chili Peppers? Who are these kids? The party continues.*

That's all I'll say about MX for now. Until then, I'll dig up a poem or something. 

But first—

The "Do Yourself a Favor And..." of the day: 

Get yourself all irie and then watch "Stayin' Alive." Repeat the name "John Travolta" over and over to yourself, and you will see that, at the time, John Travolta was a baddass, and the name "John Travolta" is the most baddass name ever. It sounds like a crimson-red lightning bolt on the hood of a black '78 Corvette. Do yourself a favor. 

Oh, and Crayola invented all the names of the colors. Ask Avery, she'll tell you.

Porch Kiss
David Lynn Clucas

He sat on his porch and smoked. He was leaning back in the chair and he had his feet up on the ledge in front of him. He was drinking wine and eating cashews and chocolates, thinking about the last time he had drunk wine and eaten cashews and chocolates on this porch. It was with that girl, the tall one with the perfect brown eyes that went a little lazy when his face was close to hers. He liked her because she was tall but she wasn’t too thin; she liked to eat cashews and chocolates and drink wine and play Scrabble when they were both a little drunk. She had one eye that went a little lazy when he got close enough to kiss her.

They had played Scrabble drunk and made up words; his were all fake South Pacific fruit names and hers were all space-alien vernacular. She looked adorable when he kissed her.

But this day was later and she was gone and a Mexican guy was walking across his lawn with several shallow strawberry boxes on his shoulder. Strawberries? he had asked. No, thanks, strawberries go bad too fast. Thanks, though, gracias. Lo siento. He liked strawberries, but they went bad too fast.

She called him and he could tell she’d been crying. She started crying again. He asked her what was going on and she just talked small with him. What are you up to today? How’s the job? It was sad for both of them. Sad for him because he didn’t like to see her sad, and sad for her because she was sad. Her best friend had yelled at her, she said, and it wasn’t even my fault, she said, and he knew it wasn’t, not this time, but it had been before. But this time made her cry. He was sad, but he had stopped crying for her long ago.

Page Three

As a writer, it's hard to come to terms with the idea that you may have already written your best stuff. I will read over things that I wrote ten years ago and think, "Man, that's really good. I don't know that I have any more of that in me." I do it with poetry, short stories, songs, concert reviews, whatever, knowing full well that it's a defeatist and fatalistic way to look at things. 

The saving grace is found within the problem itself: it's hard to come to terms with the idea. If it were easy to come to terms with it, I'd have long ago sold my Mac and my guitars; I would have given all my notebooks to my four-year-old to color in. I wouldn't agonize over the fact that I've only written two love songs for my wife, and I wouldn't walk out of the Salvation Army on an almost weekly basis with bags full of twenty-five cent books, hoping desperately that within them I will find more and more inspiration to put down age-old ideas into my own phrasing. 

A wise woman once said, "Satisfaction means death." It was my wife Sarah, and she just now said it. How right she is. It all comes down to that one word forever immortalized when Keith  and Mick put it to the music Keith had, according to legend, put on tape while sleepwalking. Unfortunately, legend can only take us so far—Alexander's obsession with Achilles got him as far as India (pretty far for an army of antiquity), but he knew there was more. I can't imagine his grief, dying in a bed and not the field, certain that there was more world out there. I know with near certainty that I will never wake up to find a piece of music on my tape recorder that will match the great import of what became the Stones' most famous work—the riff that inspired generations of musicians and will continue to inspire as long as humans are born with hearing. But I take solace in knowing that Keith would have never thought that up had he never learned to play "Louie Louie." I rest peacefully knowing that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" would have never been born without several thousand listenings to "Satisfaction." "Seven Nation Army" must owe a lot to "Teen Spirit." Shit, look at what the White Stripes have birthed. The Black Keys? God, they are good. You know that Jack White must listen to a lot of the same stuff Richard Berry was hearing when he wrote "Louie Louie." Dirty words and all, if they're really in there. 

So this is why I love the past, the history of it all. It reminds me that something great can be used to make something new that is also great. When Sarah and I are done writing out here on the deck, we're going to go inside and watch the newest episode of "Burt Sugarman's Midnight Special" I just got in the mail. I'm telling you, buy any one of these (I suggest the one with Aerosmith), get into your favorite chemical state, and watch this with someone or someones you love. It will change your life. It's just so wonderful to see all these artists really striving to be SO GOOD. Or, as in the case of KISS, not so good, but WHAT A SHOW. Damn. Do yourself a favor.

I know that my best work is not done. I delight in knowing that all of that old beauty is still floating around us, seeping into us. But I want to make something new. For now, here's something old... Keep in mind that I've really grown to love disco and funk and all that junk.

When the Brown Went Away

The world, for the most part, pretty much lost its charm around 1988. Perhaps it's the overwhelmingly odd repetition, visually, of that number, with its circles on circles and their silly resemblance to cloverleafs married to each other, sending car upon car back on to the same freeway. Or maybe it was just that it was the next Olympiad; four years after it was OUR Olympics, here in L.A. and for that one summer we were IT, man, we were the place to be if you could run fast, but this time around in was in Korea or somewhere like that, somewhere, not here, so screw them. This time around there was no stationary to be bought that shone red, white, and really blue at the top that said “Los Angeles Olympics.” McDonald’s was no longer giving out little enameled pins that really made me proud to live near L.A., be the kid whose Dad had once had the first female Olympic luger in his third grade class and love Big Macs like they were transubstantiated.

1988 told me that the 80s were here officially, that the 70s were long gone and that someday I’d be looking for a way to describe the way those first two decades of my life felt.

It’s a color and temperature and music and feel, thing, though, and it’s almost impossible...no, it’s quite impossible for me to ever find someone that gets what I’m trying to say about growing up in the ‘70s and the ‘80s and not simply remembering them for their disco and their hair bands and their funk and all the other shit that crackers like me try to pretend embodied those times in full. We were really into it all, man. But here’s the feel, the feel for ME, and maybe a lot of other people, especially people older who remember it all better than I do. Here’s the feel.

It’s a record. It’s a record that came out in 1973, the year I was born. Of course I don’t remember its release, or even its ten-year anniversary, but it means so much to me now. It’s called I Got a Name, and it’s by Jim Croce, and man, if that record and its cover don’t say it all, I don’t know what to tell you. The whole cover is brown, with a touch of orange and green and even a little pink at the end of the cigar he’s holding. He’s blowing smoke and it half masks the enormous, comical moustache he’s wearing, wafting up past his wonderfully sloppy afro. 

He has a huge nose to hold that huge moustache up, and if you pull the record out and flip it over (well, that’s what I had to do just now), you’ll see Jim laying on a big, wrought iron bed in what must be an apartment somewhere in New York City. I’d like to imagine it’s the Hotel Chelsea, the one bit of that city that made me feel like this record when I went in its lobby. Of course, I couldn’t go past that lobby; I’m not published yet, I don’t have a record out, and even if I did, I’m not skinny enough or enough of a smoker to stay there and get my Rolling Stone pictures shot on one of the balconies in my cowboy boots.

Croce is barefoot, lanked out on that old bed; he’s shirtless, smoking a cigar at what could be nine in the morning or two in the afternoon, depending on which direction his window is facing. There’s an ashtray on the night table—it looks empty, almost like it’s a prop, but maybe cigar smokers don’t leave their cigar butts laying around. The two coffee cups are most likely empty, or at least filled slightly with very cold coffee. On the bed next to Jim is a Car & Driver magazine with a Mustang II on the cover. Not just a Mustang; a Mustang II. The pin-up calendar on the wall is just far enough from the portrait over the bed to seem accidental, or at most an afterthought, while that photo—of whom?—John Sebastian, perhaps?—seems unnaturally focused and sharp compared to the rest of the scene. Croce is smiling—almost maniacally—and the photo, in black-and-white, or is it sepia-and-white, is tinted here and there, like the cover, with some red, some green, a little yellow, and are his jeans slightly blue? I think they might be.

I tend to think of that time and place like that photograph. Not colorless, but brown, mostly. And brown is good, brown is warm, and rich, and earthy, and skin-like. It’s soft, it’s dirty, you can smell it, and it’s the closest color to most people that I can think of. It’s like a thing baked, or cultivated, or carved. And those occasional other colors are thrown in, hand-tinted onto the jacket cover of that record that just feels like old bakeries, velveteen hallways, cigarettes, coffee, frocked wallpaper, old-looking taxicabs, macramé, corduroy, jean jackets, fucked-up guitars, and a good song here and there.

December 28, 2003

 

Page Two

John Steinbeck wrote, "This history is designed now and ever to keep the sneers from the lips of sour scholars." I suppose that's part of why I decided to start a blog—though I'm not entirely pretentious enough to believe that I merit sneers from sour scholars—but I don't think it's a bad idea to keep track of the things you have said or believed. Someday, you hope, you may have to set the record straight. If anyone cares enough about your existence that they would start some nasty tale, then there will be just as many, or more, who will come to your defense.

So, let's talk about boxing. 

Johnny Cosas is a great boxer, so I listen to everything he has to tell me about boxing, which is quite a lot. Johnny’s main topic of instruction is defense, which, according to him, is the cornerstone of good fighting. He’s big on the idea that you’re gonna get hit no matter what; just don’t get hit as much. “Stay tight!” he’ll holler at you from outside the ring. “Defense! Defense! Stay tight!” Once, after I put in a few rounds of sparring that Johnny carefully studied, he and I sat down and watched the next bout. He kept telling me that I needed to work on my defense; that I should be sparring less and shadowboxing more. We eventually moved on to other topics, like food and Impalas and our families, and a couple more rounds passed as he told me all about his kids who were trying to figure out where to go to college and how to survive high school and stuff like that. “Hey, Johnny,” I said, “you gotta teach me some Spanish boxing phrases so I can understand some of the things coming out of the other corner.” Johnny looked at me with his little bulldog eyes. “Fuck that, güero—defense! Don’t worry about that Spanish shit until you learn defense!”

There are a lot of metaphors in boxing. I'm going to keep looking out for them.

Page One

I can't write long. It's late, I'm exhausted, and I'm really not sure what this blog is going to be about. My day? My family? Music? Books, writing, boxing, the island of Capri? Maybe it's simply going to be about all of it. Maybe I just really need to write more than I do. Maybe I need to put it all on the page. 

Right now I just need to get up, get some water, and turn off the lights. Night.