Something 4 The Weekend # 252

Camper Van Beethoven:  II & III:  "(We're A) Bad Trip"  [mp3]

Imagine eight to twelve young stoners sitting around a large coffee table in the living room of a Victorian house on Milwaukee's east side circa 1988.  As you might imagine, every last one of those stoners arrived at that powwow with a disposable lighter on their person.

The circles in which I travelled liked to play a game we simply called "The Lighter Game".  The object of the lighter game was to come into possession of somebody else's lighter without their immediate knowledge.  This meant until that person asks "Who's got my fucking lighter?", or until that person left.  As you can imagine, with bongs and pipes being passed around, there was also the tendency for lighters to travel as well.  And of course, being stoned made it more likely for us to forget we've handed off our lighter.

We played this game within the confines of these stoner circles, and at larger parties, where there were many people who had no knowledge of "The Lighter Game", and so the winner of that night's lighter game might have as many as six or eight lighters rattling around in the pocket of their Levis 501 buttonfly jeans.

Anyways, that was kinda our version of CVB's "bad trip".

Hotcha!  Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 248

Sylvia Juncosa:  Nature:  "Lick My Pussy, Eddie Van Halen" [mp3]


Sylvia Juncosa is still around, bless her.  Her career started back around 1980, playing keyboards at the age of sixteen for The Leaving Trains.  A couple years later she decided she'd rather play guitar, and started her own band, To Damascus.  Bands are difficult things, and a few years later she went solo and signed with SST.  Nature is her only solo record released on that vaunted label in 1988, but she ended up releasing three more solo records on various indie labels in the next three years.

In 1988, I knew nothing of Sylvia Juncosa, but when I ran across the artwork to this album while flipping through the stacks at Atomic Records, I was intrigued enough to pick it up and flip it over, finding the SST logo on the back, and this song title standing out, making me chuckle.

I think I would say that Sylvia Juncosa was the Marnie Stern of the Grunge era, except Marnie Stern is a much much better guitarist, not to take anything away from Ms. Juncosa, of course, because there's some pretty hot shit going on in this furious instrumental.  From a historical perspective, there were not very many women in the Punk or Grunge movements, much less a female instrumentalist in the indie scene in whole of the '80s (and even '90s), and by the time the Riot Grrl movement caught steam, Sylvia had retreated to Europe, so she was and remains a woman out of time.

Anyways, I think it's impossible to deny the beauty of a song titled "Lick My Pussy, Eddie Van Halen".  It's 100%  RAWK!

Hotcha!  Hank

Something 4 The Weekend #245

Brian May & Friends:  Star Fleet Project:  "Starfleet"  [mp3]

One of Brian May's friends on this 1983 project is Eddie Van Halen.  That's pretty much all that matters to a guy like me who believes Eddie is the second greatest rock guitarist after Jimi Hendrix. 

I saw the original Van Halen in concert three times.  Aside from Eddie being the second greatest rock guitarist of all time, I still believe, after all these years and sooo many concerts, that Diamond Dave is the best front man I've ever seen, with the possible exception of Michael Stipe.

I never saw Queen live, nor Jimi, though my dad claimed he and my mom saw Jimi live.  My mom didn't agree.  I can say that one of my earliest memories is going to a Willie Nelson show with my parents when I was about four years old.  Willie Nelson isn't one of Brian's friends on this project.

REO Speedwagon's drummer, Alan Gratzer, is one of Brian's friends.  I saw REO Speedwagon headline The World Series of Rock at Milwaukee County Stadium back in 1981.  That show is significant because it was the first time I smoked weed.  Combined with too much blackberry brandy, and I spent a good chunk of 38 Special's set puking and shitting in a filthy stadium bathroom. 

I don't know if this is true, but I seem to recall being hunched over that disgusting toilet and thinking, "Alan Gratzer is not a good rock'n'roll name."  Meanwhile, five hundred feet away, on the stage erected out in the centerfield bleachers, I hear Donnie Van Zandt singing "Hold on loosely, but don't let go..."

Hotcha!  Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 219

Junior Brown: Guit With It: "You Didn't Have To Go All The Way" [mp3]

Aside from surnames, to the best of my knowledge, there are no popular (or even unpopular) bands with the word "brown" in their names.

Pretty much every other major color has been used in a band name, some more than others obviously...

Average White Band, The White Stripes, White Lion, Black Sabbath, Black Flag, Black Dice, Black Moth Super Rainbow, Blue Oyster Cult, Blue Cheer, The Screaming Blue Messiahs, Green Day, The Green, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Red Red Meat, Simply Red, The Indigo Girls, Deep Purple, Orange, Agent Orange, Orange Juice, Orange Goblin, Orange 9MM, Orange Jefferson, Pink Floyd, Yellow Magic Orchestra...

But try finding a band with "brown" in their name. There's a rapper who calls himself Brown, but that's either his surname, or a reference to his skin color, so I'm not sure he counts.

A quick search at eMusic a moment ago reveals a Polish Metal band who call themselves Brown, so I guess this post has been pretty pointless thus far.

See, the thing is - I had run across the following formula while surfing the internet earlier this evening:

The Color Of The Shirt You're Wearing + The Object Immediately To Your Right = Your Crappy Superhero Name

As I write this, my superhero name is The Brown Stack Of Paperbacks, which I don't think is crappy at all.

And for whatever reason, while considering my brown t-shirt and my new, bitchin' superhero moniker earlier this evening, I started thinking about Junior Brown. I had a superdeep love for Junior Brown back in the early '90's, and one time my crew went to see him perform outside the Pabst Theater in downtown Milwaukee, with the slightly smelly (and decidedly brown) Milwaukee River rolling slowly behind him and his band.

After their typically awesome show, Junior hung around the front of the stage, drinking a bottle of Pabst while signing autographs and talking to about two dozen of us fans who hung around. I got his autograph on a $20 bill, and shook his hand, and as I remarked on the drive home, "He had the softest hand I think I've ever felt in my life," to which my buddy RSBJ replied, "Supple."

YES! SUPPLE! That's the perfect word. Junior Brown has the most supple hand I've ever felt in my life.

I still have that autographed Jackson, and while I still listen to his first three or four albums from time to time, I stopped seeking out new Junior Brown recordings about a decade ago. He never really expanded his palette as a songwriter or a stylist, which I hate writing because he's certainly a solid songwriter, and more importantly, a stunning guitarist and an almost iconic performer with his ten gallon hat and famous "guit-steel" guitar.

The most supple hand I've ever felt in my life, and one of the finest guitar players I've ever heard.

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 211

Au Pairs: Playing With A Different Sex: "We're So Cool" [mp3]

We were doing whippits in a kitchen in a duplex half a block off Brady Street in Milwaukee. We were drinking assorted liquors and smoking weed and some of us were snorting coke and dust, and others licked toads and ate fungii and who the fuck knows what else. There were seven or nineteen of us in the kitchen doing things, and some of us were playing Sheepshead.

There was a small Puerto Rican dude passed out in the back hallway with his pants pulled down and a small erection in his purple grundies, but we didn't know that for awhile.

Eventually one of us opened the kitchen door to get more toads, or something, found the small Puerto Rican dude passed out in the back hallway with his thumb in his mouth and a bunch of us laughed because we were doing whippits and whatnot. I remember he smelled like deep-fried fish and one of those Calvin Klein colognes.

Naturally, because the kitchen and all of us were full of Schedule 1 substances, we quickly decided the small dude with the small erection needed to be somewhere else, like in the shrubs on the side of the Walgreen's three doors down. I think that was Betty's idea.

Me and Shortbus, being two large, strong men with the least serious substances in our systems at that time, fireman-carried the guy to Walgreen's, but by the time we got him there, he was foaming at the mouth and starting to moan.

So yeah, shit got really real right then, and I made a call from the payphone on the corner (this was like, 1988, you know?) and now there were a couple of girls gathered, so Shortbus and I slinked off through the backyards because there was no way we were dealing with cops and paramedics.

Eventually the flashing lights that bounced off the living room window and through the dining room and into the kitchen in the duplex three doors down were gone, and we went back to smoking and snorting and licking and Sheepshead. At some point Murph said, "man, I wish we had whatever that dude had", and we laughed and partied just a little bit harder.

Hotcha! Hank

HANK RANKS No. 32

My 9 Favorite Milwaukee Brewers [1976 Season]

09: Darrell Porter [C] Porter had a Fu Manchu, and the requisite '70s sideburns, and that's good enough for me.

08: Gorman Thomas [OF] "Stormin'" Gorman was reckless (but good) in the outfield, and all or nothing at the plate. He was popular in Milwaukee because of his everyman image - beer drinking, Harley-riding, hard-working, and I liked him too, but in the end, he was only ever an average baseball player. Years later, when I was old enough, I went to his southside tavern that he owned with pitcher Pete Vukovich, Stormin' & Vuke's, but it was only an average tavern.

07: Pedro Garcia [2B] Pedro Garcia was small and fast and had no teeth.

06: Sixto Lezcano [RF] Sixto was always on the verge of greatness, but never quite attained it. In 1976, he had the team's highest batting average, but at .285, that's nothing to really brag about. I always liked Sixto. He was a great outfielder, and even won a Gold Glove in 1979.

05: Kurt Bevacqua [OF] Bevacqua didn't start many games for the Brewers in 1976, and when he did, he was a complete non-factor. However, he was crowned the Bazooka Bubble Gum Blowing Champion of 1975, and believe it or not, my dad's factory's holiday party that year featured a variety show that included Kurt Bevacqua blowing bubblegum bubbles up on the stage. For the record, the Hudson Brothers (featuring Kate Hudson's dad, Bill Hudson) headlined that party, and when they did their big hit "Rendezvous", I squealed like a 10 year old girl rather than a 10 year old boy.

04: Don Money [3B] I thought a guy with the last name "Money" was the coolest thing when I was 10 years old. I still do, really. Aside from that, Don Money was one of those solid, dependable players whom sportswriters like to call "scrappy".

03: Robin Yount [SS] The young phenom from Arizona! Robin Yount was the future of the Brewers' organization, and would eventually lift the team out of the malaise of the 1970's with the help of another phenom, Paul Molitor. But that was the '80's. This is the '70s, and man, did the Brewers suck.

02: George "Boomer" Scott [1B] As legend has it, George Scott wore a necklack made out of Pedro Garcia's teeth. He also hit his fair share of home runs, which always pleases the crowds.

01: Hank Aaron [DH] Hank Aaron has been one of my heroes since I was old enough to understand that I was named after him. Not only is he one of perhaps the five greatest baseball players of all time, but a man who's demeanor has always reminded me of the Buddha.
Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 189

Jon Wayne: Texas Funeral: "Mr. Egyptian" [mp3]

Alot of the best parties I attended between 1986 and 1994 involved Jon Wayne and their Texas Funeral album. It usually found it's way onto the turntable well-past midnight, when most of the beer was gone, nobody had the guts to kill the whiskey, and Tim ___ had just enough focus to pack one last bowl. The music was just as bleary as we were, and the songs so fucking stupid and wrong that we laughed and laughed and some of us puked.

Murph. Murph puked. He was always doing that.

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 186

Eleventh Dream Day: Beet: "Go (Slight Return)" [mp3]

I saw Eleventh Dream Day at Marquette University's union sometime in the early '90's, playing in a medium sized room in a lower level of the building to a crowd of about 200 other people, including "Pogo Man", a Milwaukee legend of sorts in those days.

Anyways, this room had a dropped ceiling of the kind you might find in somebody's finished basement, or a typical office environment, and with the band playing on an actual stage, there was a fair, but limited, amount of head space above their heads. Well, at some point, singer/guitarist Rick Rizzo did a Pete Townshend sort of jump, which including swinging the neck of his guitar above his head.

This caused the headstock of the guitar to hit that dropped ceiling, which proceeded to collapse a rather large section, so that it was hanging down, nearly touching the stage itself. In the process, the falling/hanging ceiling hit one of the PA speakers on the side of the stage. The speaker was pretty big, and mounted atop a rather sturdy tripod of sorts, and the whole thing came crashing down onto the stage.

The band didn't miss a beat or a guitar solo as it appeared the entire ceiling would eventually collapse upon the entire room full of drunk and stoned kids who were driven nearly ecstatic by the bedlam and destruction of it all. Eventually the rent-a-cops cut the power to the stage and cancelled the remainder of the show, which only fueled the bedlam, and prompting the crowd to take to streets, with a mini-riot breaking out on Wisconsin Avenue.

Eleventh Dream Day were/are a great fucking rock band, and you really truly had to be there.

GO!!!!!

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 156

Violent Femmes: Violent Femmes: "To The Kill" [mp3]

One hundred and fifty-six editions of S4TW, and this is the first time I've streamed the Femmes...amazing...

Now, I don't know how it was/is by you, but in Milwaukee, we always simply called 'em "The Femmes" and never "Violent Femmes" or even "The Violent Femmes". We called 'em "The Femmes" because they were a Milwaukee band, homegrown, familiar...

I don't know how it was/is by you, but in Milwaukee the Violent Femmes were pretty much legendary, at least among the hipper kids and the college crowds...Going from coffee house gigs and streetcorner busking to opening for The Pretenders at The Oriental on one fateful night in 1981, and from there they pretty much ruled the city for the next two to three years...

At least that's how I remembered it - I was a year or three too young to catch a full, first-hand account of the Femmes...By the time my friends and I were travelling into the city from the suburbs, the Femmes weren't busking anymore, and they were certainly too mighty for coffee houses and the smaller clubs around town...By the time I was old enough to see the Femmes, they were headlining the Oriental themselves, riling up 1000+ of the faithful, and that's a pretty impressive number for a band like Violent Femmes in a city the size and temperment of Milwaukee...By the time me and my friends started going to shows in Milwaukee, the Femmes were hanging out and recording in NYC, and starting to tour internationally...I seem to recall they "conquered" New Zealand and/or Australia on one short tour, and later on, from 85 to 87 when I was living on the east side of Milwaukee, I "ran into" bassist Brian Ritchie from time to time (well, four times, by my reckoning), including once at Lisa's Pizzaria where he recognized me enough to say "hello".

I sound like such a fucking fanboy!

But I don't know how it was by you...I don't know how much the Femmes meant to the typical youth in places that aren't Milwaukee, but considering the kind of raw, wild and literate kind of music the three of 'em made, they were loved enough, by enough, to get requested with regularity at our high school dances...And I also seem to recall RP The DJ getting his ass chewed out after spinning "Add It Up", during which he cut the PA as Gordon Gano sang "Why can't I get just one fuck?", leaving a cafeteria of 200-300 kids singing the line by themselves.

"Add It Up" never got played at a dance again, but there was still "Blister In The Sun" and "Kiss Off", "Prove My Love", "Gone Daddy Gone" and even "Good Feeling" during the slow dance romance segments of RP The DJ's 3 hour set. What I'm trying to say is that the Femmes debut album is really fucking good and solid from start to finish, because here we are with "To The Kill", which is perhaps my favorite song on this album. So now I've mentioned seven of the album's ten songs, which I think is a pretty good indication of just how undeniably great and huge this album is, to me, and a few others like me that I know or knew...

Like I said, I don't know how it was or is by you...The critics generally adore Violent Femmes, at least in those early years, those first two or three albums. I tend to respect the field of criticism, but your opinion may vary. I happen to like their weirder, more difficult second album, Hallowed Ground, a bit more, but this debut is certainly the better album, a true object of art, imbued with the magic of the time and place from which it came to be, pretty much perfect in it's completeness of tone and flow from beginning to end. Every song a slayer, and the whole thing still sounds good, like it hasn't aged a day, much less 28 years!

28 years!

I guess "timeless" is just a nicer way of saying "Holy fuck, I'm getting old! The Femmes are getting old!"

Hotcha! Hank

HOT FIVE: Parliament-Funkadelic

05: Funkadelic: Maggot Brain [1971]
Featuring..."Maggot Brain", "Hit It & Quit It", "You & Your Folks, Me & My Folks","Wars Of Armageddon"

Mother Earth is pregnant for the third time...For y'all have knocked her up! I have tasted the maggots in the mind of the universe...I was not offended! For I knew I had to rise above it all...Or drown in my own shit! Come on Maggot Brain! Go on Maggot Brain!

(I wanna know if you can get to that!)

I want you to hit it! Good god, hit it and quit it! I want you to (hooo-whoaa) Oh mama, hit it! Good god, hit it and quit it!

If you and your thing dig me and my thing, like me and my thing dig you and your thing, and we all got a thing, yeah, and it's a very good thing...

(We are back in our minds, again!)

More power to the people, more power to the people, more pussy to the power, more pussy to the people, more power to the pussy, more pussy to the power...Power to the pussy!

(Right on, brother...)

04: Motor Booty Affair [1978]

Featuring..."Mr. Wiggles", "Aqua Boogie (A Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop)", "The Motor Booty Affair", "Deep"

DG was the only black kid in my middle school, circa 1977-1979...The comfortably numb white middle-classed suburbs of Grafton...DG's family had moved to our languid town from the north side of Milwaukee, an area I knew well on account of my grandparents...

Stereotypes be damned, DG excelled at basketball and boxing...During recess, out on the playground, playing hoops, he'd take it to the rim and totally smoke some taller, gawky kid of ambiguous Nordic descent, and just to make things clear that the only black kid in the school wasn't to be trifled with, he'd start shuffling his feet like Ali when he was done with the rope-a-dope, and start jabbing and dancing, jabbing and dancing, getting in a quick lick or four, and then take off running in the opposite direction of Mr. Stangle.

I was a decent enough basketball player myself in those days, and smart enough not to get sucked into any boxing matches with DG, and so we became pretty good friends...Good enough friends that Stan, Paul and me would go over to DG's house during lunch sometimes, and we'd sit in his bedroom in the basement, passing around a bottle of rhubarb wine his mom had made, and listen to Parliament and Bootsy Collins records...

Never any Funkadelic, for some reason, though...I got into them via the One Nation Under A Groove album, which I bought for myself after DG had schooled me in the ways of George and Bootsy and the rest of the P-Funk crew...

I was a 12 year old white Polack in the suburbs, getting drunk on Parliament! So it shouldn't be so strange to consider the 43 year old white Polack in hipster Madison getting high on Parliament right now?

"I got a string on my thing, rhythm in my thing (Wind me up)... I can do my thing underwater!!! I got a string attached to my thing, when you pull my string, I can do my thing like I oughta!!!"

03: Mothership Connection [1975]

Featuring..."P-Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up)", "Mothership Connection (Star Child)", "Unfunky UFO", "Give Up The Funk (Tear The Roof Off The Sucker)", "Night Of The Thumpasaurus People"

Back in those same middle school years, I used to go with my parents to rummage sales, and one breezy Saturday morning I was rummaging through crates of vinyl, both 7 inch and longplaying varieties in some crumpled uncle's garage, and I happened upon a promotional 45rpm of Parliament's "P-Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up)" with an extended, somewhat dirty version on the flipside...Rather rare these days, and you bet yr ass I got that baby tucked away in a sturdy case in the front hall closet...

Imagine a middle-aged man of ambiguous Nordic descent selling a Parliament 45 to a 12 year old kid of Polish descent out in the whitewashed bedroom community of Grafton!

And damn if I didn't jam that sweet sweet single frequently, full volume in my big fat KOSS cans, bouncing around at the foot of my bed, watching the neighborhood girls ride past and thinking about teenaged sex...

"Good evening. Do not attempt to adjust your radio, there is nothing wrong. We have taken control as to bring you this special show. We will return it to you as soon as you are grooving. Welcome to station WEFUNK, better known as We-Funk, or deeper still, the Mothership Connection. Home of the extraterrestrial brothers, dealers of funky music. P-Funk! Uncut Funk! The BOMB!!!"

02: One Nation Under A Groove [1978]

Featuring..."One Nation Under A Groove", "Who Says A Funk Band Can't Play Rock?", "Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad (The Doo-Doo Chasers)", "Into You", "Lunchmeatphobia (Think, It Ain't Illegal Yet!)", "Maggot Brain [Live]"

So wide can't get around it! So low you can't get under it! So high you can't get over it! Do you promise to funk, the whole funk, nothin' but the funk??? One nation under a groove, gettin' down just for the funk of it! One nation and we're on the move...Nothin' can stop us now!

'Bout that time they asked me where was I going, ya know? I, said, " Well, you have to be reasonable...So you know I've never been away from home before...And, uh, besides, they gave me a good deal, and I think that, uhhhh, Funkadelica is...you know... the nation, uhhhh, you know, I would like to, live under..."

(What in the world is this boy talking about?)

The world is a toll-free toilet...Our mouths neurological assholes...And psychologically speaking, we're in a state of mental diarrhea...Talking shit a mile a minute! Or in a state of constipated notions, can't think of nothin' but shit...And in this world of stinky futures, shitty memories and constipated 19 now-nows...Emerges from the hiney of your head...The doo doo chasers!! The Promentalshitbackwashpsychosisenemasquad!!! The prune juice of the mind! The doo doo chasers!! Friends of roto-rooter!!! Bringing you music to get your shit together by...The band in the tidy bowl of your brain!

(Fried ice cream is a reality!)

You know, it was in my hands, it was in my feet...I got it all over me! Yes, I did! I got it all over me! Got to go, got to go, got to go with the funk!

01: Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome [1977]

Featuring..."Bop Gun (Endangered Species)", "Sir Nose D'Voidoffunk", "Wizard Of Finance", "Funkentelechy", "Placebo Syndrome", "Flashlight"

What I consider the greatest Funk album ever made...Six fat, sick slabs of groove and hardcore funk, bookended by arguably the two best songs in the entire Parliament catalog...Or at least the two best-known and most-sampled...

I guess it isn't much of a surprise that two of my favorite Hip-Hop albums, Ice Cube's Death Certificate and Digital Underground's Sons Of The P, infringes upon this album hardcore...

I don't know what else to say at this point, about my favorite album by a band you might never expect would mean so much, and run so deep, for a guy like me...What might I have missed if I hadn't been such good friends with the only black kid in Grafton in the 1970's? Would we have jammed Grandmaster Flash on the boombox in the JV football locker room a couple years later? Would I have loved Run-DMC if they hadn't teamed with Aerosmith? What about Fela Kuti?

Of course, they were on the same label as KISS, so maybe all of this was inevitable...

"Everybody's got a little light under the sun!"

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 132

Archers Of Loaf: Icky Mettle: "You & Me" [mp3]

I like MP3 playlists...It's pretty much the same as putting together radio show playlists, except you can add enough songs to fuel a 44 day broadcast marathon out on the ledge of the radio station's building, like Tim "The Rock'n'Roll Animal" did back in the early '80's on WQFM in Milwaukee...

But I digress...

I make playlists...Some of them consist of songs from the same decade...This particular Archers Of Loaf song came from my 1990's playlist...

It was chosen at random by looking away from my monitor and clicking...

That's kinda the way I've been rolling this past week or so - too busy with other stuff to dedicate much time to blogging and whatnot...

So, there ya go, and here we are...

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 117

John Prine: In Spite Of Ourselves: "In Spite Of Ourselves" [mp3]

Once upon a time, in a suburb far, far away, I used to be a teenaged romantic.

I believed in love. And while my idea of love contained many wonderful and lovely things, it was the sight of my mom popping a zit or two on my dad's back one evening as they sat next to one another on the edge of their bed that came to represent love to me.

That was about 30 years ago, and while I don't remember what they said that evening, I distinctly remember my dad cracking jokes, cuz he's a joker, and my mom laughing, cuz she was a laugher.

But mostly I remember the zit-popping.

Alot of years have passed since that evening, and I've accumulated plenty of wisdom and experience, and while I still believe love is possible, it seems less probable. Or maybe it would be better to say love doesn't mean as much to me as it used to. It's not a priority anymore.

It's Mother's Day this Sunday, and I'm planning on visiting my mom's resting place in Milwaukee this weekend, where I'll probably sit quietly and wonder how and when I arrived at this place, my philosophy of love, and maybe even life.

Something went wrong along the way, and I'm often just...weary...these days.

Hotcha! Hank

Sink Your Teeth Into This Sideways Maneuver

Speaking of rock bassists of the mid-80's with permed and teased hair, here's Billy Sheehan from Talas, laying down a significantly better bass solo than Gene Simmons could ever fake with a DAT tape...

Now, I have a story about Billy Sheehan that is almost exactly the same as my Stevie Ray Vaughan story, and it is this:

For all I know, that is the top of my fucking head at the feet of Mr. Sheehan in this video...

Which is to say, Murph, Rosie and I saw Talas live at The Palms in Milwaukee in 1983, and we were pressed right up against the stage in front of Billy, and we talked and joked with him between songs, and handed him bottles of beer and cups of water...Unlike the SRV story, Billy Sheehan chatted with us after the show and autographed the covers of our Talas LPs...And then HE went backstage and drank some more and eventually made his way downtown via Lincoln Towne Car to the Hilton, where he fucked a thick Milwaukee groupie with fat Wisconsin tits out on the balcony of the 23rd floor. Or at least I imagine he did...

Murph and Rosie and I went to George Webb's for burgers and coffee, and then drove I-43 back to Grafton, all three of us sitting silently and listening to the ringing in our ears.

Hotcha! Hank

Something 4 The Weekend # 85

The Kinks: Lola Versus Powerman & The Moneygoround: "Powerman" [mp3]


I still remember that sunny summer afternoon in 1995, when Geoff, the manager of Atomic Records, over on the fashionable east side of Milwaukee, pulled a handgun on me as I inspected the import CDs in the glass case/counter.

"The cash register's already yours," I said with a cracked voice, but Geoff barked back, "Who's the greatest songwriter of all time?"

"Huh?"

"Tell me who the greatest songwriter of all time is, right now, or I'm gonna empty this thing in your face."

"Jesus, Geoff, put that fucking thing away."

"I'm not joking, Hank. It's quite simple - I've got a gun to your head, and I'm asking you to name the greatest songwriter of all time. Just answer the fucking question."

I sighed heavily, and for dramatic effect...

"Alright, I'll say Mozart is the greatest songwriter of all time."

"Wrong!" Geoff screamed, "Try again."

I considered The Ramones t-shirt he was wearing. I don't think Geoff likes The Ramones. In fact, I think he wears the shirt as some sort of ironic "punk" statement. Irony sucks, and Geoff still has that gun pointed at my head. Maybe if I stall long enough, somebody's bound to come bounding through that heavier-than-fucking heavy door, and that bell is gonna ring and wake Geoff from this insanity, and either this scene is gonna come to and end with a whimper, or we're all gonna go down together in a bloody hail of bullets. Well, six bullets at most, I suppose, but then again, I have no idea what he has in his pockets. He probably has some cocaine in one of his pockets. I'm pretty sure Geoff likes cocaine. Man, managing a small but legendary indie record store must pay pretty fucking well if he can afford coke...I can't afford coke...I can't even afford these fucking Fugazi bootlegs...Who fucking charges $18 for a fucking Fugazi CD? Who fucking pays $18 for a fucking Fugazi CD? I betcha $14 of that goes straight up Geoff's nose...The Ramones...Who the fuck does he think he's fooling?

"Quit stalling, Hank...And don't give me another bullshit answer like 'Mozart'. Let's keep this in the 20th century, shall we?"

"Irving Berlin."

This answer pissed off Geoff so much that he laughed.

"You've got to be shitting me."

"Well, sorta, but maybe not...I dunno...The dude wrote thousands of songs, and dozens of 'em have become standards. White Christmas. God Bless America. Puttin' On The Ritz..."

"Well, that's only three, and the answer is wrong anyways."

"This is ridiculous, Geoff. Alright. You're favorite band is Depeche Mode, so I'll say, whatshisname...Martin Gore."

"Good answer, but that's just pandering. Martin Gore doesn't count. C'mon, one more time - Who is the greatest songwriter of all time?"

What a bullshit question, I thought to myself, or possibly out loud. Completely subjective, but Geoff expects some sort of absolute truth. Greatest songwriter of all time? Lennon and McCarthy? Jagger and Richards? Bob Dylan? Tom Waits? That guy from Abba? Elvis Costello? Robyn Hitchcock? The boys from REM? Paul Westerberg?

"Me and the gun are waiting, Hank."

Finally, I blurted out "Ray Davies."

"Ray Davies?"

"Yes, Ray Davies."

Geoff stood there motionless, staring at the wall of show flyers behind me, for what seemed like an eternity but probably just fourteen seconds. On that sunny summer afternoon I couldn't fucking believe that I was the only hipster doofus on the fashionable east side of Milwaukee that just wanted to flip through NEW RELEASES and talk trash with whichever hipster doofus was working the counter that afternoon, which just happened to be store manager Geoff that day, who still had that fucking gun pointed straight at my noodle.

"Ray Davies, huh?"

"Yeah."

"Meh, good enough for me."


Hotcha! Hank

HANK RANKS, No. 17

7 Summerfest Memories

SUMMERFEST is underway on Milwaukee's lakefront again this summer. My friends and I used to go as often as possible after we got our own wheels in high school, but I quit going after moving out here to Madison a decade ago...That won't stop me from roughly enforcing some of my own nostalgia, however...

HPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHPHP

07: Summerfest 1990, meeting a weed-smoking girl named Bunny while sitting on the rocks on the lakeshore...A short, intense conversation led to a trip to Saz's stand for some ribs, led to a Hip Hop rope-jumping exhibition, led to alot of beer, more weed on the rocky lakeshore, led to a random Maynard Ferguson set, led to her place on the east side via 10 minute cab ride, led to her hookah pipe, led to her bed...Never saw Bunny again...

06: Seeing Willie Nelson & his family live on the Summerfest Mainstage with my family, circa 1975...I was nine at the time, and my parents met up with a couple of my dad's younger co-workers, and I saw and smelled marijuana for the first time that night - it was no longer just something joked about on my dad's George Carlin, Redd Foxx, and Cheech y Chong records...Perhaps more startling, I saw my dad sneak a few tokes off his friend's joint when he thought no one was looking...

05: Got into a very brief fist fight with a very drunken tool at the Blues Stage one year, probably 1994...While walking towards the nearest beerstand, I accidentally stepped on a young woman's foot as she passed me going in the opposite direction...She let out a rather loud squeal and a "FUCK!", and then her boyfriend/husband came up from behind her and full-on shoved me backwards yelling "Watch where yr going, you fucking ape!" I shouted back, "What the fuck, asshole?" and he lunged/punched at me...I sidestepped it pretty easily, and landed a quick, hard left to his cheek, which sent him sprawling...And I just kept on walking, easily disappearing into the thick crowd there to see Johnny Winter...

04: After a day and a night of torrential rains, my high school friends and I went down for the last day of SUMMERFEST, circa 1984, and by mid-afternoon, it started pouring again...At some point all of the bathrooms on the northern end of the grounds had flooded, and indeed, we walked through the filthiest, stinkiest water you ever saw on the general SUMMERFEST grounds themselves, sewage about a foot or so deep...The joke of it all was that I believe we went that day to see Milwaukee's own Glam Power band, Bad Boy, for about the 50th time...

03: One night, Summerfest 1985, the Rock Stage headliner was Yngwie Malmsteen, with Talas preceding them, so you know my friends and I got down there early and camped out in front of the stage all day long, drinking mightily and holding down our fort, you know? By the time Talas hit the stage at dusk, the crowd was rather in a lather, and Billy Sheehan never disappointed in those days, right? So then it was Yngwie's turn, and I never liked the dude - all technique and arrogance, no fucking soul whatsoever, but hey, he's the most popular guitarist in all the guitar magazines my friends and I subscribed to, so whatcha gonna do? Well, I'll tell ya what Yngwie did that night - he got pissed off at the sound guy, and he got pissed off at his drummer, and then he got pissed off at his amplifier in the middle of a solo he eventually aborted, and then he got pissed at the other two guys in his band, and some of us in the crowd were laughing at him, and he got pissed off at us, and by the end of the fourth or fifth song, not twenty minutes into his set, he throws his guitar at one of his speakers, and storms off the stage...Meanwhile, lightning can be seen in the west, behind the rock stage, way off in the distance, like in Brookfield or thereabouts...Yngwie never comes back, but the guy on the PA says the show's postponed because of the impending thunderstorms, not Malmsteem's bitchiness...Either way, a mild riot doesn't so much erupt as spills, drunkenly, out of the Rockstage area and into the general Summerfest grounds, trashing things and chanting "Bullshit! Bullshit!" Still, it was enough of an uprising to warrant the swift deployment of additional security and law enforcement personnel...Who proceeded to funnel many of us straight out into the parking lots...My friends and I were lucky enough not to get caught up in that herd...By the time the fuzz showed up, we had slipped behind the beer tent and followed the rocky shoreline north to a different part of the grounds...Blather...

02: Making out (and more) with a girl named Ruby, summer of 1989, in the ski-lift/air-tram moving slowly and silently about 50 feet above the Summerfest grounds, while the big 4th of July fireworks went off over Lake Michigan...

01: Standing at the edge of the Rock Stage, 1983, while Stevie Ray Vaughan, right on the verge of superstardom, stood hunched over us with his guitar, sweating on me and my friends...During his set, we handed him beers and talked to him, and shook his hand, and of course the whole thing becomes much more poignant in hindsight...Achieving legendary status before the tragic death...And speaking of that - I could have gone to his last show at Alpine Valley, but I turned down the ticket at the last minute...I had decided that having the flat to myself (I was living with 4 others above a diner at the time) for recording purposes was a night better spent than seeing SRV (for what would have been the fourth time)...I was doing the dishes when the news hit on the television...It must have been at least 1am, and my friends/roommates weren't back from the show yet...In the end, I have to say that I was never much of an SRV fan...I certainly respected his outstanding abilities, and I'd never deny his soul, but I never believed that he ever truly rose above his influences, or rather, took those influences to new, unexplored musical terrain...It may sound trite, but he never fully got out of Hendrix's shadow...Still, that first SRV show, at the edge of the Rock Stage...Unbelievable and unforgettable...

Hotcha! Hank

Full-Circle Sideways Maneuver

I might as well bring this round of Milwaukee music videos full-circle, with another one from Die Kreuzen, the band who started today's burst of SIDEWAYS MANEUVERS...

This time, the video has actual footage of the band, rather than LedZep...LOL...

Appropriately enough, this video is for a song called "Gone Away"...

Hotcha! Hank

Sideways Daddy Sideways Maneuver

I couldn't escape all this nostalgia for the Milwaukee music scene of the 1980's without acknowledging the Violent Femmes...Sure, the other bands I've posted about (Sacred Order, Crusties, Die Kreuzen) were harder varieties of Punk music, but in their way, the Femmes may have been more subversive than any of 'em...Plus, they were much more musical, and much more sophisticated lyrically...

There was never any mistake that Gordon Gano's religious upbringing brought a certain kind of fervor to the Violent Femmes sound and performance, and I remember their early shows often taking the flavor of a gospel revival, with the trio leading intense chants of "Fuck Harold Breier! Fuck Mayor Maier!", which was the Milwaukee equivalent of chanting "Fuck Tha Police!" cuz Harold Breier was the city's Chief Of Police and Henry Maier was the city's mayor, and here's the inside scoop on that...

Breier had been Police Chief from 1964 to 1984, and Maier had been Mayor from 1960 to 1988, and over the years, Breier proved to be a rather gruff, hardnosed man leading a department rife with racism and corruption...I'm not sure Breier himself was corrupt, but he certainly tended to look the other way when his officers did bad, illegal shit...

Like beating the crap out of, and sexually assaulting, Wendy O Williams of The Plasmatics, after a show in the city...There are supposedly pictures of a cop fingering Ms. Williams while she is pinned to the ground by several other cops, though I have never seen these pictures...However, there really are mugshots of a bloodied and bruised Williams, who was ultimately charged with Obscene Conduct for her dress and lewd stage acts, and Battery of a Police Officer for the subsequent and notorious arrest...

Anyways, this happened in 1981, the same year as Milwaukee cops were accused of beating the crap out of drunken motorcyclist James Schoemperlen and taking his pants, and it was probably these two events, happening so close together, that brought two decades of Breier's brutal department and Maier's blind eye to a boil in Milwaukee...

So it was no surprise that some Milwaukee bands were getting themselves and the fans, the citizens of the city, all riled up...Well, the Violent Femmes were, anyways...Couch Flambeau had a song called "Mayor Maier", but it was about getting a car plowed under by snow, and going to City Hall to bitch about it, so it might not have been exactly the same, except Couch Flambeau were so weird and subversive that maybe it really was the snarky equivalent of "Fuck Tha Police!" or "Fuck Harold Breier! Fuck Mayor Maier!"

Anyways...I might as well use this post as an excuse to do some name-dropping, because, you see, I went through the English program at UW-Milwaukee with Peter Balestrieri, who was a member of The Horns Of Dilemma, who were the horn section that the Femmes oftentimes employed for live performances, and who appeared prominently on their second album, Hallowed Ground...Through him, I met the Femmes on a couple of occasions, and in a roundabout way, he led me to a "movie night" that included Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads, another Milwaukee (well, Shorewood) native...

The movie? "Raising Arizona"...Jerry Harrison? Nice guy. Wore a yellow "pimp suit".

Aaaaaanyways...All of this tangential bullshit aside, what I want to finally say is that the ladies loved The Violent Femmes. This was crucial.

Hotcha! Hank

Terminal Sideways Bender Maneuver

So, continuing my shallow dive into the hardcore music scene of Milwaukee circa the mid-'80's, here's a punk band outta Cream City called Sacred Order, doing a song called "Terminal Bender" on an L.A. cable access show called Media Blitz, circa 1985...

To my way of thinking, Sacred Order had the wrong name for their sound and image, as they were kinda pretty, a bit glam, and to me were cut from the same cloth as bands like the Dead Boys, New York Dolls, and Generation X...I seem to remember Sacred Order being quite popular with the girls, but to me a band called Sacred Order ought to be popular with creepy black metal dudes, you know?

HINES WARD!

Hotcha! Hank

Crusties Revenge Maneuver

So, this is The Crusties (they may have just called themselves Crusties, I don't remember), a hardcore punk band that originally hit the Milwaukee scene around 1983...Except, this particular performance is from 2004 at Mad Planet in Milwaukee, and the song, "Rats Revenge" is a fairly new one as well...

The Crusties sounded mostly like a west coast punk band to me, and though they were courted by Touch'n'Go outta Detroit, they probably would have sounded more at home on SST...The trumpet that singer Tim Cole sometimes used was a fairly fresh approach to the genre, and the chainsaw he would whip out onstage was fairly unique as well, I suppose...

Despite those label courtships, The Crusties never really escaped Wisconsin, though they were well-loved and well-respected by the underground community here at home. By the end of the decade, their hardcore dream was deferred. Tim Cole moved to Texas, but interestingly enough, interest in the band never completely died, some of their old recordings were re-released in the mid-90's, and in this past decade, the band has re-united to play shows and even release a new CD of new songs called Rats Revenge...

Hotcha! Hank

Led Kreuzen Maneuver

This is a video mash-up straight from 1988, courtesy of some person calling themselves Cheapo Flims...S/he has a bunch of golden Die Kreuzen videos at YouTube, as well as some Sacred Order and even a Crusties video, so don't be surprised if they pop up here in the next few minutes/posts...Thanks, CheapoFlims!

Anyways, the song is "Earthquakes" by Die Kreuzen, off their 1988 Century Days album, and the footage is obviously Led Zeppelin...Enjoy!

Hotcha! Hank