Geezer Rock

Drummer's Elbow

Yesterday, Kenton complained of burning pain in his left elbow.
"It's shooting up my arm, all the way to my shoulder," he said. "It really hurts."
Kenton is not a complainer. Like a great athlete, he plays with pain. He has arthritis in both hands and his feet. Geezer rock, like aging itself, is not for pussies.
I was concerned. Our big New Year's gig at the Stoney End, opening for the Fryed Brothers, is Sunday night. We have a reshearsal this afternoon. A right-handed drummer's left arm is his backbeat arm - the one that lays down the snare hits on the "two" and "four" in rock. That back beat IS rock drumming. Playing with Little Richard in the 50s, Earl Palmer pretty much invented the style. Listen to "Lucille" sometime. That is a backbeat. It's hardly suprising that Palmer's biography is called Backbeat.
A drummer with a sore elbow on his snare arm is like running with a bum foot, or, for that matter, a writer with hemmorhoids. Physically, you can't get the job done. (Unless, like Hemingway, you write standing up.)
My cell phone rang at 8:15 Friday morning. It was Kenton, fresh from the doctor.
"Tennis fucking Elblow," Kenton said. I guess that's the technical term. "The tendon is torn away from the bone."
He said the doctor didn't even have to do an X-ray. He just pressed a finger into Kenton's elbow, which caused even the stoic KDOG to howl in pain. The doctor injected the site with cortisone and told Kenton to take it easy. "Don't go crazy."
This man is not familiar with the KDOG style. Kenton's concept of pain management is simply to play harder to produce either a nervous system overload or a flood of endorphins, the body's natural opiates.
"How does it feel?" I asked.
"We'll see," said Kenton.
Kenton's life long devotion to the "traditional" grip for holding sticks, coupled with his hard-hitting style, could have produced this injury, the doctor said. Who knows? Musicians suffer repetative motion injuries all the time. Leo Kottke's right hand froze into a claw years ago. He had to learn a new right hand fingerpicking technique. Max Weinberg, the drummer for Springsteen and Conan O'Brien, could barely hold a stick and one point, he had such bad carpal tunnel problems. Louis Armstrong formed his embrochure improperly when he learned trumpet. Playing, especially in his later years, caused him a great deal of pain. His "chops" could bleed profusely, I heard once. Blisters formed on his lips that would sometimes explode.
In Kenton's case, the wear and tear of age is ultimately at fault. Yet, there is hope. Ginger Baker played strong at age 70+ during the recent Cream reunion. Baker, an unreformed smoker, still hits hard. Physically, he is scarier looking than even the Crypt Keeper-like Keith Richards, resembling a skeleton covered by a thin layer of bleached jerky. Jack Bruce also sounded good, despite his recent liver transplant. The rock gods of my youth will soon too aged and busted up for "active senior" living.
What Does Montaigne Say?
My favorite writer, the innovative and influential French essayist Michel de Montaigne, grappled with age and infirmity. In "There is a Season for Everything," Montaigne tweaks the Pepsi Generation concept of thinking and acting young forever: "Our zeal and our desire should sometimes smell of old age." I like "smell." Other translations use the word "savor." This is a cop out. Montaigne was earthy. He probably wouldn't mind "stink."
In "On the Length of Life," Montaigne laments that we waste our youth and begin our adult work too late. He places the age of 30 as the beginning of mental and physical decline. In the world of rock, this is certainly true. What rock innovator has ever begun his assault on stardom at 30? Only blues and jazz guys are thought to improve with age. Howlin' Wolf made his first great records past 30.
"As for me, I am convinced that, since that age, my mind and my body have not grown, but diminished and have retreated, not advanced.
"It may be well that (for those who make good use of their time) that knowledge and experience grow with the years, but vitality, quickness, firmness and other qualities which are more truly our own and more important, more ours by their essence, droop and fade."
Of course, Montaigne mocked his own conclusions by inventing the personal essay as a literary form and publishing his massiv, innovative and influential book of essays late in life. He didn't start writing until he was past 35, pushing the limits of life expectancy in the 16th century.
Howlin' Wolf, in defiance of age, health and taste, continued is wild stage act right up until his death, even crawling on all fours like a Wolf. Muddy Waters released one of his best albums in 1976, seven years before his death. He called it "Hard Again." On the cover, he looks as horny and confident as a stallion. Listening to it today, it's easy to imagine this ferocious music as a soundtrack for every male enhancement commercial ever made.
I'm afraid I have to side with Muddy and Wolf over Montaigne on this one and argue for spending vitality as if it would never run out. This is not the same thing as trying to "stay young" by wearing hip clothes, taking designer drugs, mosh dancing and having your sagging belly button pierced on the way to dialysis treatment. I was always grateful that my own parents never started wearing love beads, smoking pot and attending anti-war protests in the 60s. I do have to face the idea that my own efforts to "rock out," however, may be mortifying to my own children. Should I give it up in favor of shuffleboard?
The Miracle of the Christmas Pillow.
Kenton delights in giving and receiving presents. He rarely needs an excuse such as Christmas or a birthday. He presented me with a magificent padded guitar strap merely after hearing me complain of shoulder pain from the weight of my Les Paul. I had to gently talk him out of buying me a $300 relplica of Duane Allman's saddle leather guitar strap. Of course, Christmas releases the full force of Kenton's generosity. Nick, Kenton and I exchange gifts.
Kenton and I chipped in to buy Nick a Smokey Amplifier to plug is harp mike into. Smokey is a tiny amp built into an actual empty cigarette pack. This is probably the best deployment of recycling I have ever seen. It's a great practice amp. You can use it as a pre-amp, too, to drive your main amp for some furious distortion. Nick is not a technology fan. But he did agree that it gave his harmonica a great sound for practicing. I first saw the harmonical teacher at Skip's using one.
"What did Nick give you?" Kenton a asked on the way to the Mojo Dojo Rehearsal Space and Hair Care Products Storage Facility. "Did he give you a copy of his book?"
Nick had published his lyrics and personal poetry for his family and friends on the occasion of his 50th birthday.
"He'd already given me one so we could turn more of his lyrics into songs," I said. "But he did give me a copy of that book about all the rock stars who lived in Laurel Canyon."
"I got that too," Kenton said. "Guess what I gave him? A pillow!"
"Why in the world did you give him a pillow?"
"Have you ever seen Nick's pillows?"
I had to admit that I had not.
"Well, they're totally decrepit," Kenton said. Kenton is a bit obsessive compulsive about such matters. "So I got him this really cool pillow."
I have to admit I would never buy a man a pillow. It's too intimate, like presenting him with package of briefs. Especially if it's a gift that's going to be opened at a large gathering. Too many questions are raised. How do you even notice the condition of another man's pillows? But that is Kenton. He sees a crying need and he responds, just like Jesus would.
I keep forgetting to bring Kenton's present to him.
Practice - Or Else Suffer My Wrath!
Nick and Kenton got into a mild dispute. Nick double booked himself yesterday afternoon and wanted to leave practice early. Kenton forbade it. He was hosting some kind of social event.
"I don't know if you know this, but we have a gig in two day, a new bass player and we haven't practiced in more than a week," Kenton. I had to agree on this one. Nick stayed an exta hour.
We ran down the set for New Year's. It's not necessary to play every song all the way through. You want to focus on beginnings, endings and trouble spots. We still don't play our arrangement of "One Way Out" correctly. The song's slightly more eleaborte structure conflicts with our sloppy, good-time style. How we can play this every time we get together and still not do it even close to perfectly is beyond me. The question is, are we "Crazy Horse" bad, in which sloppy is part of the style, or are we Andy Warhol bad? I'm referring to Warhol's great quote: "It's so bad, it's not good."
©2006 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Tommy Dunbar Pt. 8

Q: So what year does this bring us up to?
TD: Like 1990. And this is right around when I started going out with Brenda, too. And then we started doing Vox Pop.
Q: Who is in Vox Pop?
TD: Me, Don (Spindt), Al (Chan), Royse (Ader) and Alex Carlin. Basically, it's the Rubes with Jon on hiatus. Jon's down south (in LA.) And I was starting to work with Jon's a a capella band, doing arrangements for them. We're doing the Vox Pop thing and Dan (Alexander) says, "I've got he studio over here. Come in and record the songs you're writing." So we started doing that. Actually I did some gigs with Vox Pop. We ended up going through a bunch of bass players. It was a long, tortuous experience doing the Vox Pop record. And then I put together Mersey Beach. That was me, Al, Don and John Seabury. Sort of with the idea that we're going to do stuff like Beatles tunes, but we're not going to do so much like "I Saw Her Standing There" and the stuff everybody plays. We're going to do more like "This Boy" and "Paperback Writer" and we're going to do The Beach Boys, but we're going to do "Surfer Girl" instead of "Surfin' USA," like that. So we're starting to do that and gigging out and all of the sudden Dick Bright comes along. And I had never done a casual in my life. I didn't really know that they existed. That was a really interesting, new experience. "I'm supposed to what? Get a tux?" So I go to Selix to buy a tux or wherever it was he was getting the deal. What a thing! And he says he's putting together a band and do I want to come check it out?
(Director's Commentary: A 'casual' is a gig in which a group of musians is assembled to play an event. They're not an official band. The group simply plays songs that everybody knows in the style thye've been hired to plaly. Or at least they can fake their way through the material. Casuals often consist of jazz standards. There might be some charts. There might not be. Players might use "fake books," which consist of lead sheets for popular standards showing the melody, the chord changes and the basic "road map" for the arrangement. The leader calls the tunes and everybody does their best, which is often very good indeed, if the the first call players are on duty. An occasional train wreck sometimes happens, especially on jazz standards in which different people have their own idea about what the chord changes are. The party goers ususally have no idea anything's wrong. The band that's being assembled during this time is Dick Bright's SRO, which maesto Bright himself desribes as "Lawrence Welk meets Earth Wind and Fire." The band mixes 70s, 80s and 90s hits with lots of choreography and humor. They can also play jazz standards. In its full form, SRO puts up to 5 singers on stage, along with three violinists, two dancers, a three-piece horn section, a bass player, a guitarist, a keyboard player and a drummer. The band did very well during the dot-com boom in the Bay Area, but has worked less often after the bubble burst. Tommy is not longer a full-time SRO member, but still subs for the band. He's playing at Lake Tahoe with the group on New Year's Eve. Bright himself is a Bay Area legend. A child prodigy on the violin, Bright started playing professionally in 1974 as the electric violinist with Little Roger and the Goosebumps, headed by Roger Clark. Dick and Roger recorded the Dr. Demento favorite "Gilligan's Island/Stairway to Heaven," which prompted a visit from Led Zeppelin's lawyers. Bright served as musical director for the Bay Area Music Awards, aka The Bammies. Bright assembled a 30-piece orchestra for these events and backed all the big Bay Area stars, including Carols Santana. As musical director for the Fairmont Hotel's supper club, bright accompanied big names like Tony Bennett and James Brown. He's got so many great show biz stories, he should write a book. Bright's is an actor with a lot of theater experience. He's hosted a children's show and played parts in many big movies filmed in the Bay Area, including Mrs. Doubtfire. I've seen SRO several times. It's a great show. Bright's theater experience inspired him to pay as much attention to the presentation of the music as the music itself.)
TD: So I show up at the rehersal and the drummer and (bassist) Duane Pate are playing like, you know, Morris Day and the Time stuff. I just thought "Oh, my God. These guys are good." It's not my style of music, but they're so good, that I wanted to do it. And so, it's kind of like an audition, but Dick's attitude was, if you want to do this, it's totally cool. We'd known each other for a long time, probably since 1974 or something. He used to do The Dick Bright Show, which was a spoof on The Johnny Carson Show. He would do it live. Dick would be the interview guy. Supposedly, Fernwood Tonight actually got the idea from seeing Dick's show. For awhile, I think he was doing it almost every week at the Longbranch.
(Director's Commentary: Fernwood Tonight was a spinoff from Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. It starred Martin Mull as the smarmy host and launched the comedy career of Fred Williard, who birlliantly protrayed the glad-handing Ed McMahon-style sidekick. Here is an excerpt from the TV Guide story on the show: "Sacrilegious?  Tasteless?  Outrageous?  You bet.  The satirical, deliberately weirdo “talk show,” “Fernwood Tonight,” is the summer replacement for “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman.”  The series, Norman Lear’s version of every dippy talk show ever broadcast, is running in the usual “MH2" time slot this summer.  If everybody loves it, the program may return in January.  (“Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” itself has been translated into “Fernwood USA,” which begins in September.  Thus, the original series has metastasized into two – both without Louise Lasser, who has other floors to wax.)"
TD: All of the sudden, I'm playing in a band that's getting paid a decent amount for doing these corporate events. Which is another thing. I never knew those existed. The cover band universe. Such a diffferent thing. It was also really interesting playing with a horn section. Or playing with guys whose main thing was R&B and modern stuff. That was very different musically.
Q: So that's how you were able to make a living during this time?
TD: Yeah.
Q: Plus you're doing arranging.
TD: Yes. Arranging for the Pacific Mozart Ensemble. But in a way, working with SRO was the first time since the Berserkeley days that I was actually making a living. It had been so hand to mouth before that. That was different.
Q: So, how are you supporting yourself these days? You moved to Sacramento, for example, so you could afford to buy a house.
TD: Yes. Trying to buy a house in Berkeley was not going to happen financially. Especially when the place next door to the crack house we couldn't afford. Then talking to you guys. Brenda mentioned "hey, let's go check out Sacramento." I said "Are you crazy? Isn't that like Stockton?" Then when we came up we said "Oh, my God - this is great." Of course, that day you took us around, found the house and we started about doing some advertising stuff. That sounded really different and fun. So these days, obviously, we're going that. And then still gigging with Maestro Dick, plus Take Two, Hip Service and KDOG! (Director's Commentary: Tommy graciously agreed to fill in on bass two times at the Stoney End for KDOG.) It still feels like this never-ending story because here we are in the middle of putting together a Rubinoos box set with these guys in England and working on Mighty Echoes records and still working with Roger (Clark) and still working with Dick.
Q: Which brings up a good point: the Rubinoos are still together! Not full time, but still recording and touring occasionally.
TD: Around the time when I had moved back to Berkeley, I started getting this calls from Ken Sharp, who was this guy who was a fan and a journalist. He had recordings of Rubes stuff that I didn't know existed. I started sending him songs that we had, which later turned into Basement Tapes. He said "You guys have to get back together and do a gig." (Director's Commentary: Ken Sharp co-authored Power Pop: Conversations with the Power Pop Elite, which contained interviews with the Rubinoos, The Move, and The Raspberries, among others.) So we did a reunion gig. We put together a cassette, which was Basement Tapes. Somehow that cassette got back to this label in New York, One Way Records. They said "Can (we) put this stuff out?" We said "Sure. We're not doing anything with it." So we got a call from another guy a year later who said, "I heard all of these other tapes, I can I put that out?" That became Garage Sale. That led to doing stuff with Kevin Gilbert. Kevin mastered Garage Sale. And Kevin told Jon "I'd really like to work with you guys. I've got a studio, if you want to get together."
Q: Is this pre or post Sheryl Crow?
TD: Right when Sheryl is coming out. She's not a hit yet, but he's already bitter about what's going on with Sheryl. She's just starting to break (with Tuesday Night Music Club.) She's been on shows like Letterman, claiming that she had written lyrics that he had written. Well, what do I know?
(Director's Commentary: Kevin was an amazing songwriter, producer, singer, performer and multi-instrumentalist. He'd fronted his own bands and worked on projects with Madonna and Michael Jackson. When Kevin started bringing his girlfriend at the time, Sheryl Crow, to the regular sessions of his songwriting collective, "The Tuesday Music Club," the resulting collaboration yielded Crow's smash album, Tuesday Night Music Club. Crow and all but one of the Tuesday Night musicians split bitterly over songwriting credits and other issues. Kevin co-wrote many of the songs on Tuesday Night Music Club, including "All I Wanna Do," which won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1995. Kevin died accidentally in 1995. Jon Rubin, who was acting as Kevin's manager, found the body. As executor of Kevin's estate, Jon has supervised the release of several posthumous Gilbert recordings, which are dark, angry, witty, brilliantly arranged and played and also painfully sad, since they contain such promise. They can be purchased at Tommy's website, Pop Plus One, along with the entire Rubinoos catalogue.)

Cryin' To the Chipmunks

My mother loved Christmas music. In music, as in everything else, she posessed impeccable taste. Our Christmas album collection when I was growing up included the classics in the genre up to that time. I especially loved her Johnny Mathis Christmas album. She drank herself to death. It took years to complete the job. She died in October 1988 at he age of 49, collpasing in her kitchen. She looked like she was 70. Her liver just blew out, finally. I was 30.
I dreaded that first holiday season without her. Especially Christmas music. I could handle hearing it in the stores. But I did my best to avoid playing anything at home. When tree decorating day arrived, I decided to ease into the holiday spirit by playing my Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas album. Who could be sad listening to the antics of Alvin, Simon Theordore and the always put-upon David Seville? I did okay, until David himself took the mike the sing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas Now." Although Seville's take on the song is barely up to karaoke standards, I broke down sobbing amidst the ornament boxes. Even now when I hear Alvin and the boys, I get a little choked up, but overall, I've made my peace with the season and my mom's memory. I no longer feel suicidal when I hear Burl Ives sing "Holly Jolly Christmas." I can even take a little Johnny Mathis.
As it turned out, Christmas music got me back into playing the guitar. Christmas Eve, like Easter, really packs the pews. Even non-believers want to get close to the magic. You have to arrive early to get even a lousy seat. This means can mean sitting for an hour or more before the service even starts. It occured to me that people might like to hear some music during this period. I thought if I could teach myself al the songs from The New Possibility: John Fahey's Guitar Soli Christmas Album, people might like to listen to that. I had learned the folk fingerpicking style when I was 12 from my first guitar teacher, Jack White, who taught at Sordel's House of Music in Springfield, Ill. Ralph Sordel drove hard bargains, so we often referred to it as Ralph Sore-Deal's House of Money. I still remember the night I finally nailed that rolling fingerpicking pattern for first time. The song was Mississippi John Hurt's "Candy Man," which was contained in a Happy Traum folk fingerpicking song book. I was watching Bonanza. The baby sitter who often stayed with my brother and I, Betty Buddie, was seated next to me on the couch. (Happy Traum and Betty Buddie would be a great name for a folk music duo.) I don't think I put the guitar down for six hours after that. I even sat on toilet, playing that pattern over and over. ("What the hell are you doing in there?" my mother, standing at the bathroom door, would ask. "It sound good with all the tile," I'd say. "Give it a rest, for God's sake" she'd say.)
Not that I ever quite equalled John Hurt's great feel. The story is that the legendary classical guitarist Segovia, upon hearing a recording of Hurt's faciile, quirky technique, refused to believe that only one person was playing.
Fahey was a great American visionary, innovator and eccentric. In the early 60s, he conceived the idea that the guitar styles of Pre World War II folk and blues could be adapted to present purely intrumental compositions. The old timers, even the great pickers, mostly used the guitar to support vocal music. It was Fahey who first recorded and gave concerts playing strictly steel-string guitar instrumentals. This led directly to Leo Kottke and about ten thousand other fingerpicking wizards. Many credit Fahey with sparking the whole New Age music movement. Fahey hated being credit with this development, almost as much as he disdained hippies and feminists. Fahey delighted in baiting his audiences. Indignant, the peace and love types would often heckle Fahey or just stalk out.
In 1968, Fahey released his first Christmas album. It was shocking, simple and beautiful: the first ever of solo guitar playing Christmas carols. The story is the Robert Johnson sold his soul to the Devil a the crossroads to aquire his guitar playing mastery. On The New Possibility, Fahey plays as if he had a midnight encounter with Christ, producing music of a quiet, rhapsodic beauty. Familiar melodies such as "What Child is This? (Greensleeves)" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" take on new beauty as Fahey attacks his steel string acoustic with the sinewy hand of his hero, Charley Patton. Fahey always disounted divine inspiration, although he often recorded hyms he'd heard in the Episcopalian church growing up. Instead, Fahey, would say, he just wanted to sell records.
"No one had ever done that before - solo guitar playing familiar Christmas Carols," Fahey said years later. "I first go the idea when I was 18. 19 years old. I was in this record warehouse in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and there was this four-foot pile of White Christmas by Bing Crosby. The owner told me that record had sold out every Christmas for 20 years, and that's when I got the idea."
Fahey's gut was right: the album was an immediate success and continues to sell well. I have never played it for anyone who didn't ask how to get a copy. Like Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas, The New Possibility is one of few popular holiday albums that goes beyond the phony Holiday cheer to communicate hushed awe in the face of the Advent story and to acknowledge the deep current of melancholy that runs through the season. And yet, neither record is a bummer.
I learned this songs, slowly and painfully, at least five years ago, maybe more. I had to start in August. I hadn't played guitar at all in years, until The Long Suffering Mrs. Chance presented me with an inexpensive Yamaha acoustic for my birthday one year. I play a selection of Fahey's arrangements at every Christmas Eve service. The pieces are not technically diffucult, but I have never equalled Fahey's expressive power. As in most music, the real beauty lies somewhere out side the notes. I can't get there. But I'm trying.
I'm also playing bass to back up two of our singers. I should play upright, but I think I'll take the easy way out and play electric. Kenton won't be playing tonight. He has other plans. I'm going to miss the beat.
Last night, I attended the holiday party of dynamic male vocalist and harmonical player Nick Cinani. There must have been 200 people there. At least half of them were probably related to Nick in some way. It's the biggest, craziest and loudest Italian family ever. "Where the hell are all these people at the shows?" I told Nick. "My god, we could pack the the big room at the Stoney and make someone for once." Nick and I played a couple of songs acoustically, sitting around the outdoor fire pit. I had given Nick a Smokey amp, an incredible practice amp for guitars that can also be adapted for use as a harmonica amp/preamp. The speaker, jacks and electronics are all built to an empty cigarette pack, the flip top box kind. The Smokey looks cool and sounds really great. Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top gives them away as gifts. Nick takes his "bullet" harmonica mike and just plugs in right into the pack. As an amp, it's very quiet, but delivers that raw, hornlike Little Walter sound. Used as a pre-amp going into a tube Bassman or Super Reverb, say, the sound should be awesome.
©2006 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Tommy Dunbar Pt. 7

Tommy and Jon Rubin journey to Hellay, the belly of the music industry beast, a town crawling with record industry lowlifes.
TD: So we hook up (with a new manager) and he and Peter Paterno get us a deal (with Warner Brothers). (Director's Commentary: Peter is also Metallica's lawyer. He appears in Some Kind of Monster, handling the business end of hiring the new bass player, Robert Trujillo. God, I hope that is spelled right.) It's not like a great deal. It's not a deal to do a full album; it's a deal to do what they called a "mini LP." Five songs. And the reason that's different than an EP is that it's marketed along with LPs. So, we're shopping around for producers. We met with Flo and Eddie. (Director's Commentary: This, of course, is Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan of the Turtles and, later, Frank Zappa and the Mothers.) We played pinball with them. That was fun. They wanted to do the record. We got to work with them on The Care Bears Christmas record and sing with them in their studio. Anyway, that would've been so much fun, working with those guys. They would have had the right attitude to steer us way from where we were going, getting into this overdoing it in the studio thing.
Q: Then, many years later, you sang Mark and Howard's parts from Zappa's 200 Motels in Amsterdam at the Frank Zappa festival.
TD: Yep.
(Director's Commentary: Jon and Tommy did some demos for Warner on the label's dime. They went over well. But instead of sticking with the producer who did the demos, they boys went to Todd Rundgren, who produced the album Party of Two. This was the first Rubinoos album I bought. The Long Suffering Mrs. Chance, who loved the band in her college days, made me do it. She explained that her sister, the now legendary Aunt Brenda, had "gone out" with the guitar player, Tommy somebody. I think "Tommy Somebody" would be an excellent Andy Warhol Superstar name for an aspiring rocker. Since the Long Suffering Mrs. Chance had previously declared her love of records by Bobby Sherman and John Denver, I had doubts. But it rocked pretty convincingly. When I finally got the Berserkley label Rubes albums, my respect increased exponentially. They were better records and the label had also issued my cherished Jonathan Richman recordings.)
TD: So we did the Todd Rundgren thing. We didn't have a band. But Todd had the keyboard player, the drummer and the bass player. So myself and Jon and the three of them made the band. We flew out to New York and lived on Todd's land there. The old Gabor house, I guess it was. It was kind of fun. We lived there for a couple of weeks and made the record.
Q: So did you guys all get along with Todd?
TD: We got along okay, except for Todd was sort of a dour guy. But he was okay. We're not very fond of that record. It's not all Todd's fault. We were at the point where we were going over the top in the studio. Tripling all the vocals. Not having our band was also not very good. We were kind of at the point where not having a band allowed us to not restrain ourselves in the studio. Everything has to be tripled. Everything has to be perfect. We made a video for it.
Q: The video where you are out in the desert?
TD: Yeah. Then there was a huge purge at Warners, like getting rid of a hundred bands at one time. Of course, we were caught in that. That was it for the record, too. So we just started recording a bunch of stuff again. We were already recording and we didn't know we were fired from Warners yet. And right as we were giving them the 10 new songs on a tape, it was "Oh, by the way, you're fired." So then we started talking to the guys over at CBS. We had done an a capella version of "The Love You Save" just at home on a little eight track. They heard that. The Jacksons were huge at that point. They were on their Victory Tour. The Jacksons were on Epic. So Epic said "Oh, this is great. These guys are doing a version of a Jacksons song. Perfect." So they sent us in with this guy John Boyland(SP?) who had worked with the Eagles and stuff. But he seems to be going for kind of a stock rock sound. I thought "Okay. He's got a lot of experience." One of the problems was that we really did not have the courage of our own convictions very much. It was like "Oh, these big Hollywoood guys. They probably know better than we do." Even though everything we'd done up to that point had been, you know, something we liked. It was mostly just coming from us. Then you get in the Hollywood scene and you think these guys know so much more than you do. So (the producer) leaves town and we're stuck with these arrangements that he's given us. It just sounded like stock rock to me. So we finished those. We give those to CBS and they said "Okay, we'll sign you guys." Just on the strength of "The Love You Save" we want you to do all dance. This was pre hip-hop. They called it "dance." We said "We want out of this deal. We don't want to do that." We finally figured out "Okay. That's where the line is drawn." Then we did some stuff like Reverge of the Nerds that came along. (Director's Commentary: Jon and Tommy recorded the theme song, but did not compose it.) Various things like that. We got a new manager who didn't do much, but tried to get us more into doing some film stuff. He's the one who got us doing "Once Bitten" and some of that stuff. We tried to put a band together a couple of times but we never found people to play with where it really sounded good. We never found a drummer that sounded solid. It just didn't sound good. Everybody in L.A.'s first question was, "How much do I get paid for rehearsal?"
Q: So how are you supporting yourself during this time?
TD: There was a few years were basically Jon was supporting me. Loaning me money for the rent.
Q: He was selling music gear at this time, right?
TD: He was also doing cartage, too. You cart somebody's keyboards to a session. And that actually paid well. Five hundred bucks or something to drag keyboards over and set 'em up and get 'em later. Also, I was living with my girlfriend. She was kind of supporting me.
Q: And you were playing gigs, too. Weren't you playing in a blues band?
TD: Yes I was playing in a blues band for awhile there. It paid next to nothing, though. Why not? I wasn't doing anything else. What was it? The White Falcons. An old guy who played harmonica and sang songs and a couple of guys. We played at this bar. That was actually pretty fun.
Q: At what point do you sit up and realize, "We're bombing. We're not making it."
TD: Never. (We just kept) doing stuff. The thing that got me out of LA was Don (Rubes drummer Don Spindt) called. He was doing this band called the Straight Jackets. It was just like a cover band. And this guy Peter, who was the guitar player (left) so I'm taking (his) place in the Straight Jackets. I kept driving up, you now, in a VW Bug for these gigs that we're playing at, like, the San Jose Hyatt. Five nights a week, five sets a night. But it's steady work. So I was (thinking) I really like it up here in Berkeley. Why am I driving up to Berkeley to work? Also, my girl friend and I were (going in different directions.) She was going Jehovah's Witness, while this is happening. Both my mom and dad were having health problems. So I wound up moving back into their house ostensibly to help them. My dad had colon cancer surgery. And my mom was having reconstructive surgery on her hands for her arthritis. I was doing some gigs with (The Straight Jackets) and also with a band called The Nomads with John Seabury. And all of the sudden, my back goes out. So it's like (my parents) are taking care of me.
Q: You hurt yourself lifting an amp. Do you remember what KIND of amp?
TD: The Randall. The Randall something with one twelve (inch speaker), but really heavy.
Q: How long did you spend in bed?
TD: Ten weeks. That was horrifying. I got really good at Tetris. That was the silver lining.
Stay Tuned for Part 8!
©2006 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Rockin' With Montaigne

The "about" page of the Geezer Rock blog, which no one ever bothers to read, hits the downbeat with a passage from my favorite all-time writer, Michel de Montaigne:
"You go to cutting marble and are about to die, yet you forget your own tomb and start building houses."
Horace
"...the greatest flaw they (ancient philosophers) find in our nature is that our desires are forever renewing their youth. We are constantly beginning our lives all over again. Our zeal and desire should sometimes smell of old age. We already have one foot in the grave, yet our tastes and persuits are always just being born."
Michel de Montaigne, The Complete Essays.

Both of these passages are found in a book that can never be optioned for the movies or turned into a TV series: The Penguin Classics edition of Michel de Montaigne: The Complete Essays, translated and edited with an introduction and notes by M.A. Screech. That is the man's real, actual name. I believe it is also the name of a character in the hit TV series Saved by the Bell. Modern scholars do not, at this time, believe there is a connection. This almost-1,300 page paperback has seldom left my nightstand in the last 10 years. (It also makes GREAT bathroom reading.) There are even dirty bits. The monumental "On Some Lines of Virgil" is a discourse on sex. In it, Montaigne translates the thoughts of ancient poets, philosophers from the original Latin, then tests his own observations against their hallowed wisdom. The translated stuff sounds like lines ripped directly from a John Waters script. Example: "Cold leaden snot drips from his dog-like conk and bedews his beard. Why I would a hundred times rather go and lick his arse." This is cited as Martial, Epigrams. I believe the quote deals with the social custom of kissing from a feminist perspective. And may I say you just don't get this kind of potent imagery and musical language in a Tom Clancy novel. Every sentence Tom Clancy writes lands on the ear like a monkey wrench going through a plate glass window.
Bloggers are always proposing so-and-so as the first blogger or as a proto blogger. Samuel Pepys, for example. But Pepys was a diarist, writing privately. (Pepys frankly describes his multi-various sex life, which can go libido-to-libido with dry cleaning poster boy Bill Clinton.) Montaigne, writing in the mid-to-late 1500s, took himself as his subject and wrote for publication. And he wrote in plain everyday French, instead of scholarly Latin or Greek. It had never been done! He invented the personal essay. His complete essays, published in his lifetime, really is the first blog. Like any blog, no subject was too prosaic. Two of his essays: "On Thumbs" and "On Not Pretending to be Ill." (Thinking of calling in sick? Read this first to discover the moral implications of your actions. Liar.) This stunning breakthrough, sadly, triggered the "cult of me" which plagues us to this day, culminating in Time magazine's horrific Person of the Year stunt. (The person of the year is You. The cover features a mirror. The editors of time have abdicated their sacred journalistic responsibilities. Thankfully, they are not in charge of the Sexiest Man Alive.) I would like to acknowledge that I am an enthusiastic participant in the Cult of Me and a total ham, so I can't really get too lathered up.
Montaigne studied the ancient Greek philosophers, who, if M.A. Screech is to be believed, taught men how to die. Montaigne concerned himself with how to live: how to arrange your life, how to avoid the frivolous and find meaning, depsite tragedy, ill health and going gaga in your old age.
So that is the purpose of the Geezer Rock Blog, which I have restated as this: "how to have a good time while you're dying." Montaigne found the muses a comfort in his old age. His muses were books and friends. Mine are the entire recorded works of every Southern White trash rocker who ever strapped on a guitar.
I had drafted another mission statement earlier: Here's what's possible if you will just stop watching so much TV.
Would Montaigne, if he were alive, approve of Geezer Rock? In "Reflections on Cicero," he includes this passage: "Plutarch goes even farther, asserting that to appear to excel in such unnecessary accomplishments is to bear witness against yourself of time ill-spent on leisure and study which ought to spent on things more necessary and useful. So Philip, King of Macedonia, when he heard his son Alexander the Great singing at a feast and rivalling the best musicians, remarked: 'Are you not ashamed of singing so well?'"
So here's a new idea for a Regular Feature: What Does Montaigne Say? Anytime I'm confronted with moral difficulties in my quest for total musical obscurity, we will dip into Montaigne for some wisdom and reflection.
As I've said before, a rock band is a small business. So I will also include a feature "The Harvard Review of Biz:" in which we will commune with the leading minds in marketing, strategy and management theory to see if what to if, say, your lead singer insists on performing at corporate events in tight jeans with the ass cheeks cut out of them. (This is actually happened.)
As Montaigne himself would say, most blogs confuse opinion with knowledge and so I hope to do more basic reporting so that today's Geezer Rocker might glean some useful substance from those who know more than I do. Like Tommy Dunbar. Look for Part 7 later today.
©2006 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Rockin' Into the New Year.

The excellent liner notes to the Criterion Collection edition of the Rushmore DVD describe the movie's protagonist, Max Fischer, as "an American dreamer who refused to allow reality to limit his aspirations." This description fits Kenton "KDOG" Lee like a pair of Lyrca bicycle pants. Our dynamic male vocalist and harmonica player, Nick "Sewer Boy" Ciani has said that Kenton vision does not allow for the possiblity of reality and that, like any good salesman, Kenton "eats objections like Cheerios." Our band, like one of Max Fischer's plays, exists in definance of common sense, budgetary restrictions and even musical limitations. Like Max, Kenton thinks big. And, like Max, the Dog sometimes drives people nuts. When I got Kenton into the church praise and worship band, I warned the musical director that he shoud be careful what he agrees to with Kenton. "I am not kidding. If you say to KDOG, 'Oh, it might be fun to live on the moon, you will find yourself with a 10 story rocket strapped to your ass within twelve months."
I had dreamed of starting a band again. Now I'm doing it. I'm playing lead and even singing. Only one year ago, this seemed impossible. I had never sang in public before. Ever. When Kenton suggested I sing a few tunes, I said couldn't sing. Kenton brushed aside this objection as absurd. "I can't sing, either. That hasn't stopped me." It certainly hasn't Kenton wildly belts out "One Way Out" and "Good Morning Little School Girl," which I introduce as the "Registered Sex Offender Song," at every gig. His vocalizations have little to do with the actual melody. His style lies some where between rap and yelling. But he manages to put the songs over, somehow. People feel cheated if they don't hear from the Dog. Kenton even convinced me to switch to lead guitar from bass, someting I swore I would never do. I fought him. "Never, no way," I'd say. "I won't do it because I suck." Kenton's response? A blithe "so what?" And so, I complied with the KDOG vision, as all eventually must. Kenton is like General Patton. Always attack.
Indeed, I did suck. My early guitar efforts were awful. I really think I drove off the original KDOG bass player, who just considered the whole thing hopless. All this will be recounted.
My goal for the new year is to tell the back story of KDOG and the band that spawned it, The Bittermen. I have other goals, too. We need t-shirts. Perhaps we can market a line of urinal deodarant cakes with our logo carved into them.
I'm am living my own personal rock fantasy. It's a modest one. I don't dream of limos and groupies. Mostly I dream of making enough to pay for the gear and not herniating myself by lifting 100 pound PA columns. It would be good if my life could remain relatively divorce-free.
On Monday, Kenton's pal, Dusty came to the World Famous Mojo Dojo and Hair Care Products Storage Facility to check out the rehersal. A former bar owner who hosted many bands, Dusty has offered his tough-as-saddle-leather advice on the business end of gigging. I guess he liked what he heard. Kenton told me he helped us book to nights at a club in Lincoln, which is North of Sacramento. The gigs are in mid-Janurary. We might actually make some money. Dusty wouldn't let us break up reshersal until he'd heard Kenton's leering, atonal take on "Good Morning Little School Girl." Kenton is a grandfather. The whole thing is just sick. But in an entertaining way. One thing I learned from the last Stoney End Gig, which is recounted in the series of "Mr. Two Gig" posts: a desire to entertain makes up for a lot.
We plan to rehearse next week. My dad, Harold Dean "Weird Harold" Chance Jr. may be in attendence at this rehersal. He comment on my musical efforts so far, at least the ones he has experienced directly, has simply been stunned silence. This should be interesting. I hope we have some ear plugs for him.
©2006 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Tommy Dunbar Pt. 6

Tommy Dunbar continues on The Rubinoos and other subjects of interest to the Geezer Rocker of today.
TD: The tour was going great (with Elvis Costello, who was on the road in support of his Armed Forces album) and supposedly the record was doing great at first. And then, all of the sudden, it's "uh-oh," the record distributor is out of business. That sort of ended that one.
Q: And that's how it happens in the music business. It's just like the board game "Sorry."
TD: Yep.
Q: Were you disappointed? Or did you just think, "Oh, well."
TD: Excactly.
Q: But the audiences were into The Rubinoos?
TD: Yep.
Q: Did Elvis like you?
TD: Never made any comment. Didn't talk to him much. Talked to the other guys in the band some. But not all that much interaction.
Q: So, what was it like being on the road in the 1970s?
TD: We were in a Winnebago, driving. Almost no flying.
Q: Was it a nice Winnebago?
TD: Yeah!
Q: You had roadies?
TD: Yes.
Q: Who hired them?
TD: Well, Louie was a guy we had had since day one. His parents kicked him out of the house, so he had built a box in his backyard. We used to just go in there and smoke weed and listen to records in the dark. But he wound up being our sound guy forever. Also, Berserkley had some guys who just worked for a few of the bands. Like this guy John, who was our guitar tech went with us basically everywhere. But when we would go overseas it would be different guys.
Q: Were you guys making money at this point?
TD: I think we were just getting salaries.
Q: And how many shows were you doing on this tour?
TD: The Elvis tour was 56 cities in ten weeks. So it was five or six cities a week. That was a lot of driving.
Q: Was that lifestyle hard?
TD: Nah. It was pretty fun. And in the day, you're just kind of kicking back in the Winnebago. I didn't really party. Some of the guys were hitting the bar at the end of the night, but I was usually studying out of these harmony books. I was just going through those, you know, doing the exercises.
Q: Were there sex, drugs or rock and roll at any point?
TD: Not so much at that point, on tour. Oh, there were a few stories such as so-and-so's ill-fated pawing of a girl after like eight whiskey sours only to find out that it was the wife of the program director who was at the other end of the bar. It was like, "Well, maybe you shouldn't have done that."
Q: But you guy were pretty much done with partying.
TD: We'd finished that phase by age 16.
Q: That's one advantage of growing up in Berkeley. You can just get it out of the way.
(Director's Commentary: When the boys figured out that partying made them too stupid to play well, they quit. Just like that. They were done by the time most people start experimenting.)
Q: So how did you go over with the Elvis Costello crowds?
TD: Really good. The crowds were great.
Q: The Rubinoos to this day are known for delivering the goods live.
TD: We certainly rehearsed a lot. We used to rehearse five days a week and gig one or two days a week.
Q: What's the secret to effective rehearshing?
TD: I don't know. Generally, we were just working on a new song. It would usually take it seemed like about a week to really get the song whipped into shape. We were always working on a new tune. That dictated what we would be doing. I remember practicing out in Alamo at Royse's mom's place. They always had the Pringles potato chips.
Q: So, the tour finished. You get home. Then what?
TD: We wound up going back to Europe a couple of times.
Q: What countries?
TD: The Netherlands. That's probably where we spent the most time.
Q: How did you end up in the Netherlands?
TD: I don't know. Beserkley had distribution deals, different ones in every country. I remember going to the record company in Holland and just running up huge phone bills. In England, there was actually a Berserkley office where they had the Telex machine. I'd never seen one of those. You type into it and it comes out the other end. Such a weird thing to think about now. So we did a lot of Telexing. And, uh, in Holland we were not playing that often. We were maybe playing once a week. We started out in this cottage, where we were for a couple of weeks. Everyone else was antsy to get out of it and get into Amsterdam. Amsterdam - totally fun.
Q: What year is this?
TD: I'm thinking like 1979.
Q: How come you were stuck in Amsterdam?
TD: As I remember, Berserkley just couldn't afford to get us home. And we wound up putting the plane tickets on Royse's American Express Card.
Q: So this is all after the first album.
TD: Well, I do remember being in Holland after the first album, because "Peekaboo" was the single in Holland and doing a TV show there. After the first album was when we went and played in Germany and I remember that was when I got hit in the face with the mike stand and basically split open my nose and broke a tooth on the last song. And that was on live TV. Of course, then you have to do it every night. So going from that to having to to Dutch TV, doing "Peekaboo." So Don was out front, al la Gary Lewis and the Playboys. (Director's Commentary: Drummer Don Spindt delivers the key vocal touches on this song.) I remember doing that, then running around Amsterdam. We also stayed in London for like 10 weeks. We got over to Scotland, Belgium. A couple of days in France. But, really, our base was in London. Don and Royse were staying at the Berserkley office. That was fun, just being over there.
Q: The Europeans still seem to like the Rubes better than the American audiences.
TD: Yeah, the audiences were really good. It helped being on the same label as Jonathan and stuff. The fact that Berserkley was the little label that was trying to do it. That made it a little different.
Q: At what point was the decision made to kind of market you guys as cuddly teen pop idols?
TD: It seems like from the beginning. Or even more at the beginning that later.
Q: This was like the Tiger Beat stuff.
TD: That was when the first album came out.
Q: Who was driving that. Was that Berserkley?
TD: They just sort of handled all that stuff.
Q: So they weren't trying to put you over to rock fans.
TD: I don't know what they were trying to do. We never really talked to them about that. We even went down to the Tiger Beat offices and they made us fill out little questionnaires about your favorite food and your favorite movie. We did a little photo shoot. It was just very bizarre. We were actually distributed by Playboy at that point. So we got to meet Barbi Benton. (Director's Commentary: Barbi was Hef's girlfriend at the time and a Playmate.) Very odd.
Q: Even the cover of Back to the Drawing Board had that heartthrob kind of feel.
TD: Right.
Q: It's funny. The people who connect with The Rubinoos now are more like hardcore classic rock and pop fans.
TD: In a way, the first album cover is almost like bizarro world unintentionally weird looking. One review of the second album said something like "once again, the Rubinoos have done a satire on kitsch album cover art." Didn't mean to, but that's great. Glad you took it as a joke 'cause it's so ugly. That should be a lesson. Never come down on the side of mediocrity. If you're going to be foul, be really foul.
Q: What happens next, after the second album. What's happening by 1980?
TD: Well, there was the point where we're asking, what is going on with Berserkley? They would say, well, "Oh, well get an AR guy to the next show." But no one would show up. Finally, we just got to the point where we needed new management. Up until this time, every interview we were doing, we said how great we thought Berserkley was. Because we did think that. We loved it. We loved the whole concept. It was not, you know, I mean some of the labels that we had even talked to a little bit about signing with, we would hear stuff come out of their mouths, like they really wanted to market us, kind of in a serious Tiger Beat way. Maybe hook us up with a producer who had done something like that. It seemed, ugh. To us, the biggest joke in the world was being in Tiger Beat. I mean, it was so rediculous, coming from Berkeley. In a way, we liked it because we thought it was so ridiculous that it was hilarious. You know. But going with a regular label could have been like, "uh-oh," they're actually taking this (teen image) stuff seriously. Everything we were learning from the music business we were learning from our management, who was also the record company president. So there was that little conflict of interest. So we finally decided to leave their management. And that's when things got ugly. That's when our manager said "You guys are not co-owners of the label. You never have been and if you don't like it, you should get a lawyer." That's when we realized that our lawyer was also his lawyer.
Q: Who produced your first two records, by the way.
TD: Gary Phillips. And Matthew. (Matthew Kaufman, Berserkley founder.)
Q: So anyway, you say you want to leave their management and the answer is basically, "get lost."
TD: We just got to the point where we realized that this is not happening. We had an album's worth of material just sitting there for a year.
Q: Was this the stuff that became The Basement Tapes?
TD: Yes.
Q: Now, at what point is Royse out of the picture?
TD: Right around then, when we left their management.
Q: Why did he leave?
TD: Partly just out of disgust. Interestingly, Royse was always saying we should get out of Berserkley. These guys are slimeballs. He didn't trust the whole thing. We thought he was a complete idiot. Of course, he was right. I think we even have an argument on tape somwhere. Anyway, we left. We wanted to take our masters with us. One thing is they had been saying they were going to pay our taxes. None of us had ever paid any taxes. (They were supposed to take care of it) and they were always saying, "Don't write to the IRS. That'll fuck everything up." Of course, our parents are telling us, "you know, you really do have to pay your taxes. You guys have been under salary now for a couple of years." After we left their management, another guy started managing us for a littlel bit and he got us this gig on Tahoe that wound up being the worst gig ever played. It was at Del Webb's High Sierra. And, after that, I actually got a letter from the IRS basically saying...well, they thing is, they had paid the check to me, sort of inadvertently. Somebody has to be band leader or whatever. And all of it had been paid out in expenses. We had brought alongn like two road crew guys. A huge PA. And all this kind of ridiculous stuff. So it had all been paid out in expenses. And the IRS said "Oh, okay. We understand now." But how come you never filed taxes ever before? That was happening while Jon and I were moving to LA.
Q: Why did you move to LA?
TD: We had been recording some stuff, a lot of the stuff that wound up on Garage Sale. Like "Over You," "Facts of Love," those kind of things, over at Dan's studio. We sent it to a friend in LA. He was the guy AR guy at Playboy Records, they guy who had promoted "I Think We're Alone Now." (Director's Commentary: This excellent cover of the Tommy James and the Shondells song was, I belive, the only Rubinoos single to chart in the U.S.) So he said, "Come down, I can get you a deal." We would just send a song at a time, as we would finish it. He said "I'll be your manager." We said "Great. We want to move to LA." But Don didn't want to move to LA. And Al didn't want to move to LA. Because Al (Chan) was our bass player by that point. (Director's Commentary: The Rubinoos discovered Al Chan through a classified ad. Applicants had to be under 30 years of age, be into pop music styles and be able to sing a high A in full voice. Al fit the bill perfectly. Plus, he's a great guy. Tommy noted that all kinds of people called about the ad, including several who in no way fit the required description, including one guy who was 42, didn't sing and hated pop music. He seemed insulted the the band declined to audition him. "Fuck you guys! I don't need you! I got my own bag!" Tommy and I now use "I got my own bag" as an all purpose catch-phrase. It's a great way to annouce your exit from almost any social situation. Just say "Fuck you guys! I got m own bag" and stalk out.)
Q: So why did Royse leave again?
TD: I think Royse left because nothing was happening. He was married.
Q: Were you making a living from gigs?
TD: I guess. From gigs and whatever. I wasn't living with my folks any more.
Q: So you move to LA with your new record deal and this is when Party of Two gets made.
TD: Right.
NEXT: Tommy reveals the ins and outs of living in LA with no car. This is an incredible feat, even for a musician. It would be a great reality show. Are you listening, Hollywood?
©2006 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Tommy Dunbar Pt. 5

More of Tommy Dunbar's thoughts on The Rubinoos, songwriting, the music life and much, much more.
Q: Your music was out of phase with the musical tastes of the time, especially when you first started. Things like "Heartbeat, It's A Love Beat" and "Sugar Sugar" were hardly considered fodder for serious musicians.
TD: There was definitely a thing where people would say "You guys need to be more streetwise. You guys need to have more edge. Everybody wanted us to play, like, distorted, heavier rock. Or else there was definitely the element of, you know, funk stuff that was going on in Berkeley. There were these contingents of which we didn't really fit into any of them, particularly.
Q: Was this on purpose? Did you guys ever say, "okay-this is our concept for the band: bubblegum, but more rocked up?"
TD: Not at all. It was really just this natural progession where you start to add stuff that's what you really like. You know what I mean. Like you do in any band you're playing in. It just starts to lead itself in a certain direction. We were writing stuff where I was really thinking, 'Okay - where to the vocals fit in this?' Writing from a vocal perspective. Thinking as if the arrangement was also part of the writing process. The vocal arrangement. So it was getting very pop.
Q: Was this from listening to The Beach Boys and Phil Spector and whatnot?
TD: Just all the stuff we were listening to. We were listening to a lot of R&B. A lot of old R&B vocal groups. Then of course we were really into, you know, The Beatles, The Beach Boys. Anything that was on the radio during the 60s. And collecting 45s. (Director's Commentary: Tommy maintains a huge collection of 45s at Mole Man studios, along with a real juke box to play them. I call it the "Juke Box of Mystery" since none of the titles are listed. You just press, say 'H6' and you get what you get. The juke box was a wedding gift to Tommy and Aunt Brenda from Jon Rubin. Jon twisted his ankle moving the thing into their home in Berkeley, which added to the wedding weekend madness.) There used to be a record store called Don's Swap Shop that just sold old 45s. Fantastic. All the stuff we wanted to get was like a quarter. (I'd) just go in there and buy like 25 or 30 records.
Q: So there was never any thought such as "This is where music's going and we're going to get there first. There's a bunch of people out there who really want to hear this kind of stuff?"
TD: Oh, God, no.
Q: So how did you manage to resist all the suggestions from people who were trying to 'mold' you.
TD: Part of it was that Jon and I were such good friends and Don that we just liked what we liked. You know that feeling you have when you're like 16 and its sort of us against the world? And what we think it cool is what we think is cool? And it's that much cooler that nobody else thinks it's cool?
Q: For many, many musicians, it's very hard for them to figure out who they are and what they like. I mean, what you really like as opposed to what you're supposed to like.
TD: Right. There was a process of almost like coming out of the closet in terms of liking records. I'd get together to play with some of my friends who were sort of into jazz and stuff like that. And if I'd bring up the fact that I liked Chiffons records, they would actually think I was kidding. Or like Lou Christi. They would seriously think it was a joke. And we were just more and more figuring out that we really liked that stuff and the more we would try to play it, our respect for it was growing. We were realizing how hard it was. You know what I mean? Like try to actually do a song by like, say, the Ronettes, and make it sound good with a four-part band was not easy and we kind of...there was a lot of 'why does this not sound good when we're playing it?' Or like I remember trying to do "It's All Right" by the Impressions and saying "Why does this not sound good when we're doing it?" (Director's Commentary: Curtis Mayfield's amazing rhythm guitar playing and chord voicings influenced the TD guitar style. You can hear it in Tommy's playing to this day. Another player who copped a lot of stuff from Curtis was Jimi Hendrix.) It was a matter of really listening to those records and really picking them apart.
Q: So how much work is going into all this? I mean, doing this is your whole life, right?
TD: I don't know. I mean, it never seemed like work. You take a record that you love and you're learning to play the solo off it.
Q: But this is all the focus of your existence.
TD: Absolutely.
Q: That's a very necessary phase. This is not a hobby or a part-time job.
TD: Not at all. We're living a breathing being in a band.
Q: So who's the leader? It is Jon?
TD: Not really, no. I guess Jon and I were doing most of the decision making. Musically, I suppose...
Q: You're kind of like the musical director.
TD: Yeah. We had management. It's not like the Dave Clark 5, where they're doing their own business decisions and all that. I guess Jon and are are doing most of the figuring out what we're doing.
Q: How did you handle disagreements? You're running a small business at this point.
TD: There really wasn't much (discord.) I gotta say, it's funny. In a way, our roles in the band were so clearly defined and separate that there really wasn't any...I don't remember any arguments about material.
Q: Who was considered the 'cute' one?
TD: I don't know if we were thinking in those terms. Compared to most band, I guess it was really harmonius, you know. There was a little bit of friction between Royse and Jon at time. Head-butting. But it didn't really affect anything musically or the direction of the band. To this day, there's never been any head-butting musically. Which is probably why we're still (together). I guess that's gotta be a thing with bands that when there is a lot of head butting going on, the minute the band is not really successful, it's like "Well, why are we even here? We' re not even having fun."
Q: There's also an element to the Rubinoos of not quite taking yourself so seriously.
TD: Hopefully.
Q: No. It runs through everything you've done. It's never been "oh, this is so heavy."
TD: No. I don't think we could ever take ourselves so seriously in that way. It would be so far from true.
Q: But you know how it is with bands. Guys start thinking they're stars.
TD: Part of it is that some people have the desire to be seen as "heavy." Kind of like we were just watching that Steve Vai video. Hey - no flies on Steve. He's a great player and all that. But obviously, the stuff that he's digging musically would probably...well, the stuff that I've always loved in just not so deep. It can be deep musically...with a lot of layers.
Q: So, you make the first Rubinoos record. And it has a lot of original material. Including your hits. They weren't mass market hits maybe, but it's the stuff you fans expect to hear, even today. So you're writing songs at this point. And you're having pretty good luck. Things are working out artistically. You're found your voice and what you want to do. It's happening, whatever that means. You got out of of the "Ode to a Bamboo Leaf" phase. One thing I've noticed from working with you is that when you set out to create something, you just do it. There's no agonizing.
TD: It's the thing of "What's the first thing that comes into your mind?" I do remember at first trying to write, I got hung up because it was like trying to write...well, first of all, you know when you first come up with an idea, it's always going to be similar to things that have come before. It's never like some germ of an idea is like some brilliant and original concept. So I decided "Well, let's try to write a whole bunch of things and let it spill out without worrying about whether the thing we're writing is great." What comes out of your brain?
Q: So at what point did you guys get out on the road?
TD: The first time we ever really went out was the Elvis Costello tour.
Q: How did that come about?
TD: I believe that Stiff and Berserkley had and agreement...
Q: ...Stiff being Elvis' label...
TD: Yes. They were kind of like the Berserkley of England. I remember hearing that they actually kind of got the idea from Matthew. They were requesting I think Greg Kihn on the tour and Greg was already booked to do something. So they said 'Well, how about The Rubinoos?" Wait a minute. I'm totally wrong about this. We must've gone to England first. Because we started recording the second album in England (Back to the Drawing Board). The Elvis tour was to promote the second album. And the distributor went out of business a few weeks into the tour. We were doing a 56-city tour with Elvis of the U.S. The record had just come out and then we got the news like three weeks into it that the distributor had gone out of business and the records were not gonna get into the stores.
Q: So you're getting good breaks and bad breaks at the same time.
TD: Yeah.
(Director's Commentary: In the book Power Pop! Jon Rubin relates that this was not just a bad break, it was a commercial disaster. He says the band had sold 10,000 records in New York and was beaking out in other markets, too. "The record was raging and probably would have gone gold," Jon says in the book. But nobody could buy the thing. Back to the Drawing board indeed.)
©2006 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Big Bottom Solution

We have a bass player. I am just going to refer to him as Player X. Player X is not yet aware of his enforced participation in the Geezer Rock Blog project. It's best to ease people in to these kind of situations. ("Oh, and by the way, I'm going to be writing about everything you're doing in the band, with a special concentration on any embarassing mistakes or drunken rages. Here's a tape of a song Nick and I wrote called 'Doin' My Cousin.' We need to get this in shape for our next show. Be sure to invite the whole family!") Some readers has voiced concerns about the unexpurgated nature of Geezer Rock and having their names associated with what might be called the "Geezer Rock Brand." What they don't realize is that I actually have held back a lot of juicy material for fear of going on permanent pariah status. So I'll protect Player X's identity, for now. The man is a grandfather. (So is Kenton "KDOG" Lee. But Kenton, like all celebrities, is willing to sacrifice certain privacy rights in exchange for lasting glory.) Two grandfathers. Nick's son is in his twenties. My own children are in college and high school. Kenton has arthritis. Player X has been warned about cholesterol. Nick complains of acid reflux. Yes, this is Geezer Rock. Idea for two new songs: "Let's All Complain About the Government" and "This Country is Going to Hell."
I met Player X last night in the Tower Records Parking lot to give him CDs of KDOG songs and performances so he can brush up before the The Big New Year's Eve Show with the Fryed Brothers. I hope we can all stay healthy. It is the cold, flu and hangover season, after all. Show business is not the kind of job where you call in sick. I guess all performers have their horror stories. Tommy Dunbar has performed sick many times, but never actually vomited on stage. But there were close calls. During a show in England with the James Gang, Joe Walsh fell victim to explosive diarrhea. He raced backstage to change and reemerged in a wearing a giant, improvised diaper. The audience went nuts, thinking it was part of the show. This is a man who undertands the concept of "giving it up." Why he didn't immortalize this incident in a song is beyond me. When all of Deep Purple's equipment burned up in the casino fire in Switzerland, they immediately wrote their triumphant worldwide hit, "Smoke on the Water."
The Geezer Rock lifestyle isn't all cheap bars, free Heinekens and high-volume shows for mildly enthusiastic audiences of up to 10 people. What stands out is work and stress.
As a former crime reporter, I had pictured myself as an icy customer. Carnage and mayhem did, in fact, leave me unruffled. But I hardly responded well to pressure. I still don't. In some ways, I'm getting worse. This has become more evident as my life experiences accumulate. I spent several years in the grip of panic attacks, but bullishly refused to isolate myself from the situations that triggered them, such as restaurants and crowds, despite making myself miserable and everybody in my life nervous. As it turned out, this probably saved me from becoming one of those lonely hermits that feeds, and maybe even eats, stray cats. The Xanax also helped. That and gold old talk therapy. (I actually got to take the famous "ink blot" test! I scored off the charts for being creative, angry and depressed. Just like Van Gogh! Thanks to my therapist, I am now only creative and angry! Go me!) I often didn't even have to insert a pill into my own plumbing. I just carried the plastic bottle in my pocket and jiggled it when I felt the steel bands of anxiety tightening around my guts. Which was several times on a typical day.
Maybe it's time to dig out that Xanax bottle. I've saved it, the way veterans might hang on to their medals or an enemy flag.
When the pressure is on, I am the first to start sweating, throwing things and venting. All of this is generously larded with smart-ass comments for anyone who dares to speak to me. The Monday night rehearsal is a good example of this. Our original PA mixer/power amp and blown up, so the band had to replace it. We went with a much higher wattage, dual power amp set up with a separate mixing board. Much more professional. The problem was we'd only have an hour to set up and and get it working before the arrival of Player X. I desperately wanted to present a image of being together and ready. The pressure was on, exposing the fissures in my personality, just like the rumble of trucks and buses reveals weak points in the engineering of an overpass. This involved one phone call to our sales rep at Skip's music, who patiently explained again the concept of chaining together power amps in paralell. It also involved improvising when I found we didn't quite have all the right cords. At one point, I even went "monkey style" on the controls, randomly punching buttons and flipping switches, until some sound came out. All the while I was being a royal pain in the rectum. Here are some direct quotes from myself, just to give you the flavor:
•"I don't need any help. One ignoramus is more than enough, thank you."
•"I don't want a fucking cheeseburger. If I wanted a cheeseburger, I'd be eating a cheesburger."
•"There. We've plugged in your new monitor. Are you happy now?"
I mean, really. This is the behavior of a two-year-old. Whey Kenton and Nick put up with this, I'll never know. Well, that's not true. Kenton can be just as intense and crazy. On gig days, he gets even more wound up and abrasive than me. Maybe he expects everybody to behave this way. But I got the PA working! It is louder than God on a bad day. I wish I knew something about mixing live sound.
To that end, I also purchased a book call "live sound for musicians," which is even too simple and dumbed down to qualify for the "Dummies" books. Perfect for me. I got some good stuff out of it. I had always wondered why people say "check, one, two" when testing the public address system. Can't they think of something original? It turns out, the the mix of hard and soft consonants, high and low sounds and explosive bursts of air contained in this short phrase test the full range of sound reproduction in a PA. Is the low end too boomy? Are the highs brittle or dull? "Check, one, two" reveals all to the properly focused ears. I took this book, along with the new owners manuals, to bed with me. I know it's unmanly to actually keep the instructions, which should be thown out immediately. Reading instructions, like asking for directions, is a sign of weakness. However, many men I know actually love reading owners manuals. For some, it's the only literature they read at all. It's the perfect male literary genre, since it doesn't deal with relationships or feelings. I may start a book club in which the members read a different owner's manual every week and meet to drink beer, eat pickled eggs and discuss it. ("I cried when I came to the section on troubleshooting.")
I am always up for doing someting new in my life. The Long Suffering Mrs. Chance refers to these activities as "phases." I think of them as being "the enthusiasms of a gentleman." These phases have been many and varied: the painting phase, the stand-up comedy phase, the screenplay phase, the photography phase and even the correspondence chess phase. (Correspondence chess, is of course, chess by mail. It combines the thrills of chess with the raw excitement of U.S. Postal delivery.) Each phase involved the purchase of specialized equipment and the accumulation of exciting technical literature and owner's manuals. Nothing I've tried so far rivals the "rocking out" phase for equipment, manuals, complexity and male bonding.
I have learned this: rocking out, like growing old, is not for pussies.
Tommy, as a young man, picked up an amp the wrong way, ruptured a disc and spent 10 weeks in bed. I tremble when I think of the physical risks we're taking, since we have no real road crew. After once show, I moved the entire PA myself, including the bulky, 100-pound columns. Everyone else was focused on setting up and breaking down one of Kenton's monstrous drum sets. (Kenton told me Monday that he made a complete inventory of all his drum sets and equipment. He told me he found an entire drum set he didn't know he owned. How do you lose an entire drumset? I mean, I can see misplacing a pair of scissors or coming across a t-shirt you'd forgotten about.)
©2006 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Tommy Dunbar Pt. 4

The exclusive Geezer Rock interview with power popster Tommy Dunbar, the one they call "Mole Man," thanks to his tendency to remain underground during daylight hours.
Q: Already you've got the band, original material, the recording contract and all that in a pretty rapid pace. That's a lot in just four years for a bunch of kids. But you were not touring at this point, right?
TD: No.
Q: You were just playing locally.
TD: Right.
Q: Did you have a local following?
TD: Somewhat. Not big. Certainly not before making the first record.
Q: Were you making any money playing gigs?
TD: Nah.
Q: So how were you supporting yourself?
TD: I was still living at home. Well, I had moved into my girlfriend's mother's house - probably by 1976. (Director's Commentary: He would have been about 20 at the time.)
Q: A popular musician ploy.
TD: Yeah. But basically living at home. Once we started with Berserkley, we were actually getting a salary. Every couple of weeks, we'd get, oh, I forget what it was, maybe $350, which seemed like a lot of money in those days. Of course, we went out to dinner every night. We were kind of living that life, you know.
Q: So when you signed the deal with Berserkley did you have a lawyer look at it?
TD: Yeah, we did. And then of course Berserkley told us the lawyer was full of shit and we should just not pay any attention to the stuff he told us.
Q: Like what?
TD: I'm sure basically what he was trying to tell us was...I mean one thing is we were supposed to be co-owners of the company. Although that was the second deal. The first deal was, you know, there were things like a dollar royalty per record. I think he was telling us stuff like a dollar royalty per record was too low or who knows, specific stuff like that. But by the time we did the second album, the first deal, I guess, was up. And we were supposed to be part owners of the company. That was part of the deal. We were getting offers from other labels and stuff by that point, but instead of doing that, (we said) 'Let's stay and try to make Berserkley a happening thing. You guys will be part owners.' But we didn't get that in writing. It was the kind of thing, well, you know...
Q: What? You don't trust me?
TD: Yeah. That was the whole thing.
Q: Jonathan (Richman) was on board at that point? Had Berserkley released his first album by then? (Director's Commentary: Johnathan had recorded an album's worth of material in 1972 with John Cale producing. It included his classics "Roadrunner" and "Pablo Picasso." But the record hadn't been released. Berserkley issued the material as The Modern Lovers in 1976. The lable issued more Jonathan genius on Chartbusters, Rock and Roll with the Modern Lovers and The Modern Lovers Live.)
TD: I'm no sure of the exact order. The thing I remember is going over to John Doukas' house. He's the Earthquake lead singer. It was the first time we ever heard Jonathan. He played us, like, 'Hospital' and some of those tunes. And then we went to see Jonathan play that night. (Director's Commentary: John Doukas played tapes of Jonathan to Tommy and the other Rubes. They didn't meet him in person until that night at the Long Branch Saloon.)
Q: I love the story of meeting Jonathan for the first time.
TD: He had written in either felt pen or crayon on his shirt 'I Love My Life' and he's out there dancing in the middle of the floor.
Q: Dancing to what?
TD: To whatever was coming over the PA. We had no idea that was the guy we had come to see.
Q: The story is that you guys are sitting there saying, 'Oh, look at that poor retarded boy.'
TD: Well, I remember thinking that. It was like 'Oh, there's the guy who sort of out of his mind just dancing away.' Which was not that uncommon in Berkeley. Maybe the guy's on acid or something. Who knows? Then it turns out that this is the guy we were coming to see. Of course, it was great.
Q: Did he still have his band?
TD: Yeah. That was the Modern Lovers Band with Jerry Harrison, the guy who wound up playing with Talking Heads and David Robinson, the drummer, who wound up being in The Cars. And then, what's his name, Ernie Brooks(?), I guess, was on bass. And that was his band. And they were fantastic.
Q: So things in your career are happening like they're supposed to. Already, you've gotten so far ahead of 99.99 percent of other rock bands. Almost nobody even gets to this phase: recording that first album of mostly original material.
TD: Yeah. We're actually getting to record and it's kind of blowing our minds because we're hearing it on the radio.
Q: Plus Jonathan and Earthquake had created a considerable amount of buzz or attention around Berserkley.
TD: Yeah.
Q: And then, Greg Kihn is in the mix in there, too.
TD: Yes. Greg had also I believe come out from Baltimore. I think that's how they (Greg and Matthew) knew each other. (Director's Commentary: Kihn, a native of Baltimore like Berserkley founder Matthew Kaufman, moved to Berkeley and sang backup on Earthquake and Richman records. He produced a bunch of chart-topping albums for the label as a solo artist, including Rockihnroll which contained the brainwashingly hooky single 'The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'Em)'. Kihn's trademark punning album titles, such as 1983's Kihnspiracy, inspired Jon Rubin to propose an album title and art concept, Trash Kihntainer. Rubin's design featured the heads of the band tumbling out of a garbage can. He showed this to Kihn's backup band. They were not enthusiastic. The album art mysteriously 'disappeared.' Perhaps into a trash container.)
TD: I remember Greg being over at Robbie's (Dunbar's) house. They would play on the Cal Campus, just the two of them. There was a lot of that playing on the street and stuff. So it was already becoming sort of an incestuous situation, but in a good way. There was a lot of cross pollenization that I think was really good for all the bands. You know, just watching what other people were doing.
Q: So it was a real creative, anything's possible time.
TD: Yes. Really fun.
Q: So at what point has Royse come into the picture. (Royse Ader, Rubinoos bassist, and supplier of backing vocals.)
TD: Oh, uh, right after we did 'Gorilla,' (bassist) Greg Keranen, (aka 'Butterhead; aka 'Curley') who become 'Curley' because Jon gave him a shag haircut that was so ugly that Greg just said 'Shave all my hair off.' Which at that point in time was outrageous. Because everybody had hair down to, you know, shoulder length at least. And here's Greg saying 'Just shave all my hair off.' And it was just weird to be a round a guy who had such a fantastic, you know, fashion sense. But anyway, he left the band. Greg was getting really into jazz. And he was bringing songs like Chick Corea songs for us to do in the Rubes. We actually tried to do 'What Game Shall We Play Today' off the Return to Forever Album. And then we'd want to do songs like 'I Can Hear Music' by the Ronettes. We were not really digging the same things at that point. Greg quit. And then we got Royse. I think Jon put an ad (in a newspaper) or something. Royse saw it and called. Jon went to find him at the bank that he was working at. So then we started practicing out at Royse's house in Alamo. And that was sort of a new chapter. All of the sudden, we were doing that every day.
©2006 Edward Dean Chance. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.