Bangs on Rock & Roll, ctd.

In 1980 Lester Bangs wrote Blondie, a idiosyncratic biography of the band then riding high on the commercial wave of "Call Me." Bangs famously cared little for the book that he saw as a hack-work project to make some dough. (You can find decent-priced copies at Amazon and elsewhere.) Neither Greil Marcus nor John Morthland excerpted Blondie in their respective collections of Bangs's work, though Marcus acknowldges the book is "scabrous" and "crackling."

In 1992 Clinton Heylin did, in his criminally hard-to-find Penguin Book of Rock & Roll Writing. In the passage Bangs revisits a favorite topic, the anti-virtuosity of great rock & roll, its democratic call to arms to anyone with the nerve and style to pick up an instrument. By 1980, Bangs had traversed this subject many times, but it's always great to listen to the man hold forth on the lo-fi power of rock & roll and punk. "The point is that rock & roll, as I see it, is the ultimate populist art form, democracy in action, because it’s true: anybody can do it," he writes.

Learn three chords on a guitar and you’ve got it. Don’t worry whether you can "sing" or not. Can Neil Young "sing"? Lou Reed, Bob Dylan? A lot of people can’t stand to listen to Van Morrison, one of the finest poets and singers in the history of popular music, because of the sound of his voice. But this is simply a matter of exposure. For performing rock & roll, or punk rock, or call it any damn thing you please, there’s only one thing you need: NERVE. Rock & roll is an attitude, and if you’ve got the attitude you can do it, no matter what anybody says. Believing that is one of the things punk rock is about. Rock is for everybody, it should be so implicitly anti-elitist that the question of whether somebody’s qualified to perform it should never even arise.

But it did. In the sixties, of course. And maybe this was one reason why the sixties may not have been so all-fired great as we gave them credit for. Because in the sixties rock & roll began to think of itself as an "art-form." Rock & roll is not an 'art-form"; rock & roll is a raw wail from the bottom of the guts. And like I said, whatever anybody ever called it, punk rock has been around from the beginning—it’s just rock honed down to its rawest elements, simple playing with a lot of power and vocalists who may not have much range but have so much conviction and passion it makes up for it ten times over. Because PASSION IS WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT—what all music is about.

In the early sixties there was punk rock: "Louie, Louie" by the Kingsmen being probably the most prominent example. It was crude, it was rude, anybody could play it, but so what? It’ll be around and people everywhere will still be playing it as long as there’s rock & roll left at all. It’s already lasted longer than Sgt. Pepper! Who in the hell does any songs from that album anymore? Yet, a few years ago, some people were saying Sgt. Pepper will endure a hundred years.

Photo of Lester Bangs via San Diego Reader; photo of Debbie Harry via Medium.

"It's quite simple..."

"...No Hank Williams, no rock and roll." Radney Foster

10" single (1947)

Photo via Sandbox Entertaiment

"Little things remind me of you"

From dive bars to neon clubs, Honky Tonk to New Wave, bourbon to blow, heartbreak knows no genre.

single (1965)

I just came in here from force of habit
I don't intend to spend too much time in here
But I saw you headin' for the music
And if you play A-11, there'll be tears

I don't know you from Adam
But if you're gonna play the jukebox
Please don't play A-11

This used to be our favorite night spot
And when she was here it was heaven
It was here she told me that she loved me
And she always played A-11

I don't know you from Adam
But if you're gonna play the jukebox
Please don't play A-11

(words and music, Hank Cochran)

~~

 single (1982)

So I saw you in the pizza place
You were with another girl
It was a crime it was such a disgrace
You really shattered my world

Little things remind me of you
Cheap cologne and that damn song too

Don't put another dime in the jukebox
I don't want to hear that song no more
Don't put another dime in the jukebox
I don't want to hear that song no more

Then I learned the treacherous end
You were with my best friend
Ain't got no class ain't got no respect
My broken heart will never mend

Don't want to hear that song no more No! No!
Don't want to hear that song no more
Don't want to hear that song no more No! No!
Don't want to hear that song!

(words and music, Bobby Orlando)


Jukebox photo via Wikipedia Commons.

Field Recordings at Open Stacks

My April 1 reading from Field Recordings from the Inside at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore in Chicago is up at the Open Stacks podcast. You can listen here. While you're at, swing over to Spotify and crank the playlist I created as a companion to the book, a romp through (most of) the songs, bands, and artists I write about in the book. Link here.

Jose Abreu hits for the cycle

Abreu moments from launching a homer to center.

I was on hand last night at Guaranteed Rate Field for Battle of the First Round Draft Pick. The White Sox and the San Fransisco Giants own the third- and second-worst records in baseball, both peering with mixed feelings at the cellar position and dubious compensation. Although Sox General Manager Rick Hahn has thus far done a terrific, and to many surprising, job of restocking the franchise's depleted farm system through trades, the team can use all the help it can get. The Sox didn't help out themselves last night, crushing the Giants 13 to 1 behind an improbably sterling performance from beleaguered starter David Shields, who held the Giants to one hit through six and a third innings before surrendering a homer to Nick Hundly. Shields made the Giants hitters look foolish and over-matched all night, hitter after baffled hitter trudging back to the dugout hanging his head ("muscle memory," my buddy Dan quipped.) The Sox bats were hopped up on a cool, windy evening, all six of the home runs no-doubters. I hadn't heard such loud contact the park in a long, long time.

By the far the highlight of the game was Jose Abreu hitting for the cycle, only the sixth White Sox player to do so (the last was Jose Valentin, in April 2000). Coming to bat in the eighth, Abreu had already slugged a homer to deep center, driven a double down the left field line, and looped a little single into shallow left. What was ridiculously fun and improbable about the cycle was how steeply the odds were stacked against Abreu: a triple his hard to will; Abreu's a big guy, the opposite of swift; he fouled the second pitch, a 94 mile per hour fastball, off his foot, a real stinger that brought out manager Rick Renteria and team trainer Herm Schneider. All Abreu did was laser the very next pitch, another fastball, to the gap in right-center. As he rounded second I, and thousands of others, yelled "He's gonna go for it!"—he slid into third just ahead of the throw. I've never seen a player hit for the cycle, and to see one of my favorites do it—improbably!—at his home park was a thrill I won't soon forget. The White Sox scoreboard operator seemed a bit overwhelmed by all of the clangorous contact throughout the night—the Sox rapped out eighteen hits—and didn't acknowledge Abreu's feat, only flashing on the big screen a GIF of an applauding baseball.

Just as well. Abreu's a modest, go-to-work guy. He smiled and caught his breath while standing on third, and received the mauling of congratulations in the dugout, a celebration I was fortunate to be able to see form my seat just above the visitors' dugout. Another night at the park for the low-key and gifted Abreu, only this time it was historic.

~~

It was Tim Raines Night last night. Dan and I were somewhere between the Craft Kave and our seats when Raines threw out the first pitch, but we were each clutching out Raines figurine, courtesy of the team. The scoreboard ran a terrific career-spanning video montage of Raines running, hitting, cashing into walls, and mugging it up in various dugouts. Truth be told, "The Rock" excelled during an era when I wasn't paying much attention to baseball; distracted, I didn't find my way back from my late-70s/early-80s love affair with the game until roughly the mid-90s, when Raines left the White Sox for the Yankees. I'd missed him, but I love the fact that's he's heading to Hall, and that the team for which he played five of his twenty three seasons would so fete him. A fun night all around.

"Punk is..."

In the August 1977 issue of New Wave, Lester Bangs, charged with writing about the roots of "punk," launched an epic treatise on the word, a careening manifesto that's ridiculous, profane, mean, true, immature, self-absorbed, in-character, mock-heroic, probably three-quarters correct and entirely authentic. "The roots of punk was the first time a kid ended up living with his parents till he was 40," Bangs writes. "The roots of punk was the first time you stole money out of your mother’s purse and didn’t know what to spend it on because you weren’t old enough to buy beer. The roots of punk was the first time your father got so frustrated with your intransigence he almost raised his fists against you, and you not out of high school yet, and you didn’t even care, you just wanted to drift a few blocks away and get fucked up."

Punk may (may?) be essentially passive. Punk is stupid proud consumerism. Punk is oblivion when it isn’t any fun and unlike winos you do have a choice in fact; you're young. Punk is bleared out of your mind watching Lancelot Link at 12 noon on Saturday and having no idea of what you're seeing. Punk is getting up early Saturday morning to jack off to Isis. Punk is vomiting all over your “motherfuckers”/ John Sinclair liner notes version of Kick Out the Jams and not particularly caring. Punk is ten thousand tattered skin magazines under your bed but never getting any satisfaction from masturbation not the kind that leads to languorous rest anyway so you exist on a thin hot prostate wire of tension and jack off three, four times a day, knowing it’s stupid and pointless and hating it for that more than submerged guilt but doing it because there’s nothing else to do but get drunk. Punk is having favorite girlfriends in the skin mags you come back to again and ahain. Punk is finally getting a girlfriend and then treating her shitty because you’re too stupid, drunk, and self-absorbed. Punk is being a girl and fucking your husband/ boyfriend while watching TV over his shoulder as he gets his gun. Punk is not punk, because it has become too codifled. Punk is sitting in a half-dark room alone wishing you had Valiums with an indifferent record playing wanting to claw the stuffing out of the chair but feeling futility in your fingernails. Punk is hating poeticization of your condition. Punk is vague dreams of carnage and bloody revenge when you can barely swat a comatose fly. Punk is wine stains across the grooves of Between the Buttons and “Sister Ray.” Punk is pointlessness. Punk is ripping up articles like this one. Punk is lacking the energy or interest to bother ripping them up. Punk is reading this article mechanically because there’s nothing else to do and the words glide by like cinders. Punk is hurling the magazine across the room, dropping your hands into your lap, idly scratching your dick or clit wondering if you wanna jerk off again, deciding it’s not worth the trouble, staring blankly into space. Punk is thinking maybe we should go to the movies tonight and not having the energy or self-discipline to get up and walk across the room to pick up the daily paper. Punk is talking back to situation comedy rerun syndicated characters on afternoon TV. Punk is seeing girls in TV commercials and croaking “Take off yer clothes . . .” when you haven’t been laid in two years. Punk is running out of beer at 5:30 A.M. and taking three Chlor-Trimetons to see if they'll exacerbate what’s left of it. Punk is waking up in the morning and not having the energy or motivation to get up and turn on the soap operas on the color TV atop the dresser across the room from your bed. Punk is starting to jerk off, getting a hardon, thinking oh fuck it what’s the use, and giving up. Punk is putting on a record you love, lying down on the couch, rolling over and trying to go to sleep at four in the afternoon or seven at night just because you want that state of twilight consciousness which is better than drugs. Punk is being so lazy you want girls to jack you off or suck you instead of bothering to fuck. Punk is being willing to eat pussy while dreaming of some record you wanna buy. Punk is laziness at apogee with no apologies. Punk is saying fuck rock ’n’ roll. Punk is saying fuck punk rock. Punk is treating your 2,000-plus LP collection like dirt. Punk is passe’. Punk is just a word dug by media. Punk is anything you do that should have consequences but either doesn’t or you ignore them. Punk is a meaningless word that everybody is sick to death of purporting to represent a state of mind and lifestyle which while not so very complex cannot be reduced any further than it has been already in inchoate preverbal practice. Punk is something worth destroying posthaste. Hopefully this article will speed that process. Punk is being old and smart enough to know that your girlfriend is too young but not having the balls to kick her out. Like when she keeps saying “Oh, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH YOU” everytime you say some ridiculous alkie crazy thing only Bukowski has a right to, and instead of attacking her or just withdrawing you chuckle indulgently. Punk is playing father to teen pussy when you should be a shark but haven’t got the teeth. Punk is getting stuck months later like the old curmudgeon as she chases local deejays at press parties in front of you and all you can say is maybe she’ll grow out of it because you love the taste of her twat and the fact that no other woman will fuck all nite to “Raw Power." Punk is when you throw her over and pick up a barfloozy same day take her home drink gin fuck and in the nite she menstruates all over your bed and in the morning you drink more gin. That is when you know you are growing from punk into what some people think of as a man. At least some blood marks the spot, like Grauman’s prints or the hollows ‘of Pompeii. You don’t feel like such a punk no more with all that history under you. I suppose that’s when you grow up to Jon Landau productions. Either that or a dusty window and an eye that needs a toothpick.

Photo of Bangs in 1977 via CBGB.

Happy 10th Birthday, Sweat

I can't believe that it's been ten years since Sweat: The Story of the Fleshtones, America's Garage Band was published. The writing process felt twice that long, longer still the time spent hoping against hope that I might publish the thing. I heard from more than one agent and editor along the way who told me either No Way, or, more charitably, I love those guys, but who's gonna buy a book about them? I'm forever grateful to David Barker, my editor at Continuum Books, for taking a chance. Barker understood the story I wanted to tell: how a rock and roll band that wants to keep playing after their shot at stardom has passed is forced to redefine what "success" means and, against great odds, continues to plug in to what drew them to rock and roll in the first place. The tag line on the book's cover, "30 years, 2,000 shows, 1,000 Blue Whales, no hits, no sleep," might as well have read, "How to live a life successfully." In addition to deepening my friendship with the guys in the Fleshtones and with ex-members, I made a ton of friends while living and working in New York City researching and writing the book, and many more since online around the globe, and I'm grateful for that, too. Above all, thanks and love to Amy, who decided at one point to intercept agents and editors' rejection letters and hide them from me so that I would keep going.

Though I rub my eyes that a decade has passed, the Fleshtones have barely missed a step: since the book came out they've released five albums, nine singles, an EP, three compilations, and toured North America, Europe, Mexico, and China. 2016 saw the band celebrate their 40th anniversary testifying to SUPER ROCK around the globe.

Of the many very cool things that have happened since the book was published, I'd have to list being name- and title-checked in the band's song "It Is As It Was" from Wheel of Talent a few years back as the supremely coolest. I'll let the guys have the last word. See ya at a show.

C’mon, we’re gonna start at the beginning
Page one, Bonomo says: “It’s gonna get good, now, it’s gonna get better”
Read on, this is the story of The Fleshtones
Chapter One, how it started: it is was it is and it is what happened

It is as it was, you know that it is as it was…

Dig it, we didn’t make a whole lot of money
But we did what we wanted to
If you read Sweat you can find out too!

It goes back to our past
But the present rolls on into the future

Tonight the band is ready for some action
Hold tight, you’re here to have fun
Like the Pope in Rome says, “It is as it was, now”

It's the end, the end of the summer

DeKalb, Illinois

"This is fucking awesome."

For years, I'd been deeply skeptical that Green Day could play a show in front of 40,000 people and make the experience feel intimate, could topple the figurative wall between enormous stage and enormous crowd. They made a believer of me last night at Wrigley Field.

I'd never expected to see Green Day. Although I've loved the band since the mid 1990s, I'm a bit of a fameist, and rued that I'd missed my chance to see them in a small club or theater. (I was unable to snag tickets to the band's show at Aragan Ballroom last October.) But when my pal Dave scored free tickets to the Wrigley show and generously asked me along, I couldn't say no. Our seats were near the end of the right field line, lower deck—during a game we'd have been within heckling distance of Cubs right fielder Jason Heyward. The view, it turned out, was pretty terrific; yes, to be in the pit in front of the stage would've been intensely great, but our seats' long view gave me the perfect opportunity to see if Green Day could indeed command a stadium.

They could and, every night, they do. Since around the time of the Nimrod, I've watched video of Green Day perform at enormous stadiums around the world, and I've doubted that a show like that could match the intimacy of a small venue or theater. I saw the Rolling Stones (second row!) and the Who in the early 1980s, and both shows were highly memorable, but were just on the cusp of my exploding love for indie and punk, for bands whose gigs take place in small, sweaty places—and it's there I was truly baptized a rock and roll fan. I hadn't seen an stadium-size show since then (though, in retrospect, I should've put my anti-arena bias aside and gone to see the Kinks, David Lee Roth-era Van Halen, Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, and a few others). Green Day's show began with the mock-heroic triumvirate that's kicked off each show on this tour: Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and the Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop"—originally recorded five months and a galaxy apart, here sharing anthemic spectacle—followed by Ennio Morricone's The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly theme blaring over the PA. Soon after, Billie Joe Armstrong, Tré Cool, and Mike Dirnt darted onto the stage and kicked off "Know Your Enemy." Within a verse, Armstrong showed that he was regarding the crowd: he yanked up a guy from the pit who took over for a verse (after a big bear hug for the singer). When the song was over, Armstrong counted down and the kid took off down the ramp, leapt into the pit, and crowd surfed.

And this was still the first song. Armstrong did this twice more, hauling up a young boy to sing a verse of "Longview" (You're fucking lonely! included) and then sending him into the crowd to surf—he looked like a tiny cork on a sea—and then another guy to shed some guitar during the cover of Ivy Operation's "Knowledge," the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity inspiring the guy to run up and down the drum riser and to ape the end of the song. Twice. (The band happily obliged, and then security hustled him off.)

Now, I follow setlistfm; I know that Green Day has featured these "spontaneous acts" at nearly every show since the late 1990s, but there was no denying the thrills and laughter that those audience-participation stunts generated, a feeling of good will and humor that hummed throughout the park, all the way up into Section 240, where I sat with a dumb grin on my face. I rolled my eyes at the thirtieth "Hey-oh, Hey-oh" call-and-response that Armstrong bellowed from the stage, the one-too-many "HELLO CHICAGO!" arena cliches, and the overly-elongated songs—but this morning, an odd thing happened: I awoke and remembered them all fondly. Armstrong knows that those telegraphed, well-worn giant-stage gestures work, and that when they work, accompanied with the fireworks and the flash pots and the light show, the crowd feels involved and spirited, and when the crowd feels involved and spirited, every song sounds better, every solo sounds inspired, every beer tastes better, all of that fun accumulating as the long night goes on. Armstrong is tireless; his and his bandmates' stamina are magnificent, and the band's willingness to play long and hard is tribute to their affection and respect for their fans and the great time that they want, and pay for.

Ideally, I'd like Green Day to play a two-week residency at, say, the Empty Bottle (capacity of a couple hundred) so that I could experience the band up close and watch Armstrong field a smaller venue. Those days of small clubs are long gone for Green Day, and I stupidly lament that, though I don't fault the band their mammoth success. (Selena Fragassi, reviewing the show in Chicago Sun-Times, shares my sentiment: "Though Green Day is anthems away from playing the small clubs anymore, it still makes one wonder if returning to places like Metro (which hosted a one-day pop-up shop across the street) just might be the most punk rock thing ever for a band that has gotten very used to the big time.") Yet, remarkably, Green Day played not just a great stadium show last night, but a great rock and roll show, with hooks, spectacle, anthemic choruses, grins, a well-paced roar of songs with the proper ebbs and flows. I knew in advance that "King For A Day" was going to blend into the Isley Brothers' "Shout"—the band's been doing that for years—but I was dubious about "Shout" blending into the Stones' "Satisfaction" and then into the Beatles' "Hey Jude," warhorses all. Yet at that point in the song, three quarters of the way through the show, Armstrong, lying on his back, implored the crowd to fuck politics and fuck Neo Nazis and fuck hate speech and by extension fuck Trump, and as he sang "take a sad song and make it better," with his eyes shut, he looked a little embarrassed at the song's shopworn sentimentality, but also probably how he looks at home on the floor, alone, singing a song that he digs no matter how "classic" and overplayed it might be, no matter how many strangers love it for different, corny reasons. It was the most intimate moment of the night—a pretty remarkable occasion considering that he's lying on the stage in front of thousands of people. It led warmth and texture to everything that came and everything that followed.

Yeah, the giant screens help—but even in the right field stands I felt, as undoubtedly many in the crowd did, that I was crashing on the stage alongside him.

~

On the day of the show, Rolling Stone published an article written my buddy Dan Epstein about Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk, a documentary directed by Corbett Redford focusing on 924 Gilman, the nonprofit Bay Area club which spawned Green Day and many other punk and indie bands in the 1980s and 1990s. (Snippets from the film played on the screen before Green Day took the stage last night.) Infamously, Green Day experienced backlash from bands and figures of the small but intense Bay Area scene when they signed to a major label in the 1990s, enmity that only increased as the band experienced major success and ultimately a Broadway adaptation of their most popular album. (I saw American Idiot in 2011 and found it surprisingly moving). Armstrong told Epstein, "There was a very vocal few that sort of blew it out of proportion and we felt it. But I think the majority of the people in the scene were wrapped up in their own lives, and doing their own thing, you know? Most people were just like, 'You're going your way, and I'm going my way'." Still, I couldn't help but think about the many miles that Green Day's trekked from playing Berkley back yards and garage shows in front of dozens to enormous stages in front of millions around the world. Back then, Armstrong and others on the scene surely loved the Isley Brothers, the Beatles, and the Stones, but would they have admitted it, or played their songs in way but ironically? Last night, Armstrong, a genuine ham but also a genuine rock and roll fan who gets it, ran that line of Sixties classics with love, affection, and an instinct for pleasure. "This is fucking awesome," he said at one point last night, surveying the phone-lit crowd and ancient Wrigley. "Let's just celebrate this."

L'American Beat en France

The YouTube channel ScottishTeeVee has posted this beaut, the Fleshtones performing "American Beat" (into "Everybody Needs Somebody") on French television in March of 1985. This must've been filmed during the band's residency at the Gibus in Paris, well-documented on the Speed Connection albums. Never lose that beat!

Having Fun with Detroit Cobras On Stage

Rachel Nagy (left) and Mary Ramirez

The Detroit Cobras delivered the goods at Brauer House in suburban Lombard last night, their patented sloppy, tipsy strut through obscure, bad ass rock and roll songs well received by the sizable crowd. It's well known that you roll the dice when you see the Cobras: lead singer Rachel Nagy, she of the superbly emotive and impossibly timeless voice, staggered onto the stage a couple times before when I'd seen the band. Last night she was all there: confident if a bit self-conscious in the opening numbers, forgetting some of the words to "Out of the World" ("because I'm old!" she grinned at the crowd), pausing at one point to indulge herself with a face-bury into the ample cleavage of a besotted fan at the front of the stage, and ordering a "fire brigade" to bring her a Grey Goose and soda near the end of the set. She was fully committed to each bracing song, from the rocking to the "slow skate" ballads, from the silly stuff to the momentous, and her voice.... Well, what can I say about Nagy's voice that hasn't already been said? Whether she's husky close to the mic or rearing back her head and belting from the back of her throat, she owns the songs she sings, renewing each of them out of their obscure past, and the decades-old songs feel as relevant as the contemporary rock and roll over played the PA before the set. Nagy's the real thing. I hope she never puts down the mic.

The rest of the band were loose, in good humor throughout the night, clearly enjoying themselves. (A bucket of iced-down Miller High Life's always helps.) Longtime Cobra Mary Ramirez, grinning and peacocking, plays a muscular rhythm guitar that churns below the songs' surfaces, the engine parts that move them, and swapped occasional aggressive leads with the second guitarist. During Irma Thomas's "Cry On," a heartbreaking ballad, Ramirez looked lost in the sentiment of her expressive playing. (Note: I have no idea who the other guitarists and drummer are; the Cobras' rhythm section is notoriously fluid, and the website, which didn't even list this current Chicago jaunt, didn't provide much information. The lead guitarist looked a bit like Emit Rhodes, if that helps.) Though clearly having fun, Ramirez at times gives the impression of being a slightly older, resentfully responsible kid straitening ties and cleaning the smudged faces of her mates before the trip down to the Principal's office. "Uh guys, this ain't the van, OK?" she addressed her giggling band. "We're in front of a crowd of people now."

My favorite exchange occurred between Nagy and Ramirez after a bit of onstage lovey-dovey during one song:

Nagy: (pointing to Ramirez) That woman is the true love of my life.
Ramirez: (smiling back at Nagy) My best friend is a little salty.
Nagy: It's called sweat, you dipshit!
Ramirez: I've got to keep my sodium intake down!
Nagy: Sorry I don't smell like peppermint and roses!
Bass player: You mean, "Incense and Peppermints."
Nagy: No I don't. 'Cause I'm not a hippie.

Near the end of the set as Nagy danced onstage, she blanched at the lead guitarist's extended vamping. "Hey, I thought we had a no jamming rule!" Lead guitarist: "Well, I thought I saw some ass." And so on. It's hard to know how much of this is shtick, but it's a blast to see a band having so much fun. Things veered into strange territory at times. Nagy made more than one reference to Chicago's violent reputation, which didn't seem to go over well, and on one occasion between songs began lecturing about the fact that dolphins rape other dolphins. As the bass player stepped to the mic to concur, Ramirez swiftly interrupted: "No rapy dolphins, please!" And the band kicked in to the next tune. There were several good-natured roofie jokes. All in a night's work.

Songs were spread over the band's several albums, and a new number, the terrific "Feel Good," rocked the joint. The Cobras play only old R&B and soul covers, with the infamous exception of the original "Hot Dog (Watch Me Eat)" from 2004's Baby ("'Hot dog' means 'slut' in Detroit," Nagy helpfully explained), and they play the eternal chord changes and song structures so lovingly and with such loose pleasure that they give the impression of inviting the crowd to crash on the floor with them as they rifle through their great album and 45s collection. "We are a cover band," Nagy said to Roger Holland at PopMatters. "We definitely do covers for a reason, and it’s not so we can start off here with covers and then grow up into our own sound and material. It’s that this is what we love to do, this is what we want to do. These are the songs and the music we love and that we want to play.... We’re not thinking that we’re improving on it or anything else, we’re just saying that you can’t go see these people any more, but hey! We’re a cheap imitation ... well, not so much an imitation ... we’re a cheap thrill ... but at least you get a little bit of the thrill as opposed to not getting to hear this stuff at all."

Highlights last night included the sexy "Weak Spot," "Bad Girl," a deliriously fun "Leave My Kitten Alone," and the perennial raise-the-roof "Hey Sailor." The Detroit Cobras play loud, beery, fun rock and roll, and last night their enthusiasm, energy, and good will matched their catalogue. The phrase "I Know Where You're Coming From" is emblazoned on the band's drum set. I know exactly where the Cobras come from, too, but last night they show that old rock and roll songs can sound like they were written yesterday, in the van.

"A stupid song, a brilliant song"

I pulled out Dave Marsh's book about "Louie Louie" for the first time in a while. I still dig this graph that comes early on:

It is the best of songs, it is the worst of songs. A rock’n’roll song, a calypso song, a sea chanty, a filthy, dirty, obscene song, the story of rock’n’roll in a nutshell, the most ridiculous piece of junk in the history of damnation. A stupid song, a brilliant song, an R&B oldie, a punk rock classic, a wine cooler commercial, an urban legend, a sacred text, a song with roots, a glimpse of the future, the song that defines our purpose, the very voice of barbarism. A song that casts a spell, a song that ought to have been forgotten and many times has been—and for all that, a song that roots into the brain until there’s no erasing it. Barely a song at all—three chords and a cloud of dust; the song that really does remain the same—no matter the reinterpretations it suffers. An old story, an untold story.

Music Without Melody: Jim Carroll on singing rock and roll

JC onstage, Albany, New York, May 13, 1982, Photo by Martin Benjamin

I've been re-reading a lot of Jim Carroll lately. In a passage in Forced Entries: The Downtown Diaries 1971-1973, he reveals that he's been thinking about writing lyrics for some rock and roll bands. "Certain friends have prompted me toward this idea for years," he writes. "Some, like Jenny Ann [Patti Smith] have even made the ridiculous proposition that I sing these songs . . . that I actually front a band! They tell me they see the possibilities when I give readings of my poems and diaries. The way I move. The phrasing."

Considering this a bit further, weighing the exciting possibilities against his own perceived limitations, Carroll offers a brief but potent theory of good rock and roll singing: "I do believe that a poet would possess a stronger intuitive sense of phrasing with a rock song . . . ",

that there is a way to tap into the emotions of an audience simply by the cross of a certain phrase, even a single word, against a certain chord. There’s no doubt in my mind. But I respect craft. I believe in technique . . . and my singing abilities are so serious a handicap that it would take a whole new scale to make the entire thing less than ludicrous. Music without melody, where my voice would simply be another rhythm instrument, like a drum.

Sounds to me like the template for many a raw and untutored rock and roll classic. Like this one Carroll and his band cut at the end of the decade:

Photo of Carroll via OB Rag.

Present and Future

Thanks to my DeKalb buddy Kevin Goldstein, a scout for the Houston Astros, we enjoyed sweet seats for the White Sox/Astros game last night at Guaranteed Rate Field. Bad news for Kevin: the Sox commandingly beat the AL-best 'Stros, winning the three-game series. Miguel Gonzales held the Astros to five hits over eight innings, his only miscue surrendering a homer to Derek Fisher in the eighth. For the Sox, Nick Delmonico had three hits and Tim Anderson—who could use a confidence boost—drove in three. The weather was beautiful, the park in a fine mood, the company terrific. A great night.

During the third inning, a friendly Dad-type sat down next to us and asked Kevin what had transpired during a comic infield opera when three Astros infielders let Adam Engel's high pop land among them on the dirt. (Engel was alertly running the whole time, but blew the gift by trying to stretch to third, where he was thrown out: the 2017 Sox season writ small.) Moments later, Kevin introduced me to the man, his boss, Jeff Luhnow, the Astros general manager. It was quite cool to sit with a scout and a GM at a game, imagining seeing what they're seeing, and when Luhnow departed I wished him luck with the rest of his season. (When Amy and I stood to buy some beers, Luhnow had made sure that we were aware that it was Dollar Hotdog Night at Guaranteed Rate—generously promoting the other team's promotion! A class act.) Despite his team's current slump, Luhnow needn't be worried, and he didn't look particular anxious as he watched his team lose: the 'Stros will play in October. As for the Sox, last night was another glimpse into the hoped-for bright future.