Colin Gawel and The Lonely Bones, "Still Love Christmas"

Here at Pencilstorm, we are so hip, we write our own holiday music. Sadly, the master tapes of "I Ate Christmas For Breakfast" were ruined when the original Pencilstorm offices were destroyed by a mysterious fire that broke out shortly following our "Festivus" party in 2004. Thankfully, we used some of the insurance money to record the new classic, "Still Love Christmas" by Colin Gawel and The Lonely Bones. (along with an off the hook Vegas weekend. Make sure to ask Hassler about that if you see him)

Watch the video below and purchase the entire record here.

And if you can somehow put down the egg nog and get off your ass, Watershed is playing the Bluestone Sunday Dec 15th @ 5:30 pm & Colin and The Bones are at Woodland's Monday Dec 23rd at 7pm. Both times are solid. Excellent chance you will hear this song live and find yourself singing along. What else can we do?

Ray Davies is the Best Songwriter. Exhibit A

Anybody who regularly visits the acclaimed Pencilstorm music page knows we like to blow around some serious hot air concerning rock n roll. We do, in all seriousness, know a thing or two about a thing or two and are proud of our work. Still, we concede that rock criticism is a subjective field dominated by losers who would rather write about rock than go out and actually rock. The informed reader is right to take all of our musings with a grain of salt. After all, it is the internet, and we don't even have a podcast. How lame is that?

However, like the sun rising in the East or that math formula PIE you once learned, some facts are established and beyond dispute. Reasonable people can agree, Ray Davies is the greatest songwriter the planet Earth has ever produced. FACT. 

"What? That Kinks guy is the best songwriter? You are crazy. NO WAY Pencilstorm guy."

OK, just for the sake of argument, we suppose, it's mathematically possible that some other Galaxy has produced a better songwriter than Ray, but the burden of proof is on you my friend. Tune your HAM radio to the stars and find it. Because here on this planet, Ray Davies has written more interesting and better songs than: John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Hank Williams, Robbie Fulks, all those show tune guys, Bob Marley, Bob Dylan, Elvis Costello, Bruce Springsteen, Chuck Berry, Lucinda Williams, Terry Anderson, Steve Earle, Paul Westerberg, Mick and Keith, Dee Dee Ramone,  Leonard Cohen, Townes Van Zandt, Loretta Lynn and insert your favorite here_______________

There is no debate. Ray Davies is the best songwriter and it's really not even close. We  will now lay out this case in a systematic and cold blooded fashion. Check Pencilstorm every other Sunday morning for another exhibit of Raymond Douglas Davies genius. 

Exhibit A: Village Green Preservation Society

We are the Village Green Preservation Society
God save Donald Duck, vaudeville and Variety
We are the Desperate Dan Appreciation Society
God save strawberry jam and all the different varieties
Preserving the old ways from being abused
Protecting the new ways for me and for you
What more can we do?

We are the draught beer preservation society
God save Mrs. Mopp and good old Mother Riley
We are the custard pie appreciation consortium
God save the George Cross and all those who were awarded them
We are the Sherlock Holmes English speaking vernacular
Help save Fu Manchu, Moriarty and Dracula

We are the office block persecution affinity
God save little shops, china cups and virginity
We are the skyscraper condemnation affiliate
God save Tudor houses, antique tables and billiards
Preserving the old ways from being abused
Protecting the new ways for me and for you
What more can we do?

God save the village green.

Ricki C. Calls "Bullshit" On Rolling Stone Magazine's Lou Reed "Tribute"

A coupla weeks ago I bet my good friend Joe Peppercorn of The Whiles five bucks that Rolling Stone wouldn't put Lou Reed on the cover of the next issue, that they'd half-ass his Death Tribute Remembrance by putting some jag-off like Ryan Seacrest or Miley Cyrus on the cover and just do a few pages on Lou's passing inside the mag.  The bet came about at a late-night discussion held at Quinn Fallon's Little Rock bar, after a gig at the Rumba Cafe where Colin's Lonely Bones opened a show for Willie Phoenix's new band, Blues Hippy & The Soul Underground.

The four people involved in the discussion were me, Joe, Colin, and Michael "Biggie" McDermott, road manager extraordinaire of Watershed, so we had at least three generations of rockers involved, ranging in age from 30's (Joe) to 60's (me), therefore rock & roll as it relates to mortality rates seemed an apropos topic.

I never welch on a bet, so I'm gonna pay Joe next time I see him, but I'm only paying off $2.50 due to Rolling Stone's bullshit move of putting Lou on one cover, but then running an "alternate" back cover of some half-naked Latina babe, so that each individual retail outlet can make their own decision on which cover to display.  (case in point: In the Giant Eagle, Kroger & Meijer I was in this week, the cheesecake cover predominated.  The only store that featured the Lou version was the oh-so-erudite Barnes & Noble.  Either way, it's a pussy move on Rolling Stone's part: why not one cover and the rack jobbers have to sink or swim with Lou?) 

The actual Rolling Stone coverage was equally watered-down & tepid.  (Not that I really expected better, Rolling Stone hasn't really been a rock & roll magazine since maybe 1969, when Jann Wenner made his rock & roll bed by championing hometown San Fransciscans Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead and leaving what he considered the Great Unwashed Midwestern Heathen Rock of The MC5 and The Stooges and the oh-so-nihilistic New York noise of The Velvet Underground out in the Great Rock & Roll Wasteland.  But I digress.)  The David Fricke article was workmanlike but hardly inspired and the remembrances from various rockers & arty film types ranged from touching (Reed's widow Laurie Anderson may almost have brought a tear to my jaded eye) to typical & rote.  (Why does Rolling Stone insist on having U-2's Bono contribute a full-page eulogy every time somebody dies?  It's like being born Irish entitles him to some Grand Vision we lesser Americans are not privy to.  I like Bono, but he's hardly James Joyce.  Or even Frank McCourt.)  And where were contributions from surviving Velvet Underground members John Cale or Maureen Tucker?

The low point of the "tributes" was Michael Stipe of REM's totally exclusionary, humorless casting of Lou Reed as an Outsider Gay Icon.  If I'm going to take Stipe's piece at face value, I myself, as a heterosexual working-class boy in the 1960's, would not have been permitted to enjoy the music of The Velvet Underground because I did not possess the Proper Hipster Cred that Stipe seems to want to demand of Lou listeners.  Shame on you Michael, rock & roll is supposed to be for Everybody, not just The Cool Kids. - Ricki C. / November 13th, 2013

ps. By far the best, most moving tribute I've read for Lou was by his fellow poet/rocker Patti Smith on The New Yorker website that my pal Hamell On Trial sent me.  Check it out here: 

PATTI SMITH ON LOU REED 

Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Nominations - 2013 by Ricki C.

I have a host of problems with the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame (hereinafter referred to as R&RHOF).  Some of these have been previously dealt with in this blog, but let's restate them here in a nutshell: 

1) Rock & roll music was once a free, living, anarchic Wild Thing.  (The Troggs - who hit with "Wild Thing" in 1966 - are not in the R&RHOF, by the way.)  Once an art-form/force of nature such as rock & roll starts getting codified and rigidized into establishing a Hall Of Fame, that art-form/force of nature is OVER.

2) Sports should have Halls Of Fame because the contributions of its members can be quantified in some definitive manner: home runs hit, touchdowns scored, baskets or goals made, championships won, contributions made to the players' teams, etc.  By its very nature, rock & roll is not quantifiable: i.e. if we were going to go simply on one quantified measurement - say, record sales - then Michael Jackson and The Eagles would have been the first acts inducted into the R&RHOF and thank God, Allah, Buddha, Jehovah, L. Ron Hubbard (fill in your own chosen deity), they were not.

3) To extend the question of quantifiability: who can REALLY say who is important to rock & roll music, and HOW important they are?  Sure, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, The Beatles, Bruce Springtseen and David Bowie (to list the first five off the top of my head) are important to rock & roll, but are they any MORE important than One or Two-Hit Wonders like The Left Banke?  Would 1960's rock & roll have been as wonderful as it was if "Walk Away Renee" or "Pretty Ballerina" had never existed?  How about The Syndicate Of Sound's "Little Girl" or "Psychotic Reaction" by Count Five?  And what about 60's bands that have never even been NOMINATED to the R&RHOF even though they had a fuckload of hits: The Beau Brummels, The Standells, Paul Revere & The Raiders, Herman's Hermits, Manfred Mann?  Pertinent question: Why are The Hollies and The Small Faces - both talented but essentially hit-making hackmeister British Invasion bands - in the R&RHOF, but Gerry & The Pacemakers and The Searchers are not?  My Answer - Because The Hollies contained Graham Nash (later of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) and The Small Faces morphed into The Faces which contained Rod Stewart & Ron Wood, a future Rolling Stone.  And let's face facts, folks: Jann Wenner loves him some Rich Hippies and Big Names.

Which brings us to the current crop of nominees.......

1) Deep Purple / Yes - Deep Purple?  Seriously?  I liked Deep Purple.  I liked them when I was in high school in the 1960's and they were goosing mediocre Joe South and Neil Diamond tunes ("Hush," "Kentucky Woman") into Heavy Rock Hits.  I liked them for being a reliable mid-level Heavy English band. I liked them less later when organist Jon Lord came up with Concerto For Group & Orchestra and moved them into Ponderous Orchestrated Symphonic-Rock (?) Territory, a genre later perfected by Yes.  (And let's face facts: if it wasn't for Yes we would not have been subjected to their hopelessly inferior American copies - Styx, Marillion, Pegasus, Journey, and, the most-dreaded of all, Kansas.)  Are either Deep Purple or Yes more important to rock & roll than fellow Englishmen Mott The Hoople?  I think not.  (And Mott's Ian Hunter wrote "Cleveland Rocks" for chrissakes, but still can't get a nomination to the Rock Hall on the shores of Lake Erie.)

2) Kiss - Kiss?  Kiss?  I really have to laugh at this one.  I hate to run afoul of my good friends Colin Gawel & Joe Oestreich of Watershed here, but I think even they would agree that it's lamentable that The MC5 and The New York Dolls (without whom, let's face facts, Kiss would not exist) have never been considered for the R&RHOF, but Kiss gets nominated.  I suppose I should be heartened that the Rock Hall has relaxed its rather genteel May-I-Pour-You-A-Cup-Of-Tea-Darling? Standards to include a hard-rock band like Kiss in the nominations, but why choose a mediocre, overblown Spectacle-Over-Music hard-rock band when you could consider the melodically-inventive, most perfectly-balanced combination of power & pop hard-rock band EVER - Cheap Trick?  (Oh yeah, now I remember, because Kiss are from New York City and Cheap Trick are from the Midwest.)   

3) Linda Ronstadt - This nomination is just sad for a number of reasons, most of them completely unrelated to music.  Ronstadt's fellow California Soft Rock Compatriots - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Eagles, Jackson Browne - have been in the R&RHOF for years, if not DECADES, but Ronstadt has never gotten a nomination until this year, when it was revealed she has Parkinson's Disease.  Condescending?  Yeah.  Sexist?  Yeah.  Ronstadt was a reliable hit-maker all through the 1970's and a fairly good interpreter of singer-songwriter material  (I'm sure Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon and even Elvis Costello appreciated the publishing royalties that lined their pockets from Ronstadt covers of their songs), but she can't get a Rock Hall nomination until she contracts Parkinson's?  Sad.

4) Chic / LL Cool J / N.W.A. - Okay, I have no problem with these three acts being considered for a Rap Hall Of Fame or Soul/R&B Hall Of Fame, but the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame?  Please.  And before anybody levels a Racism Charge, allow me make my point.  There are many black artists who belong in the R&RHOF: Chuck Berry (without whom rock & roll might not even exist, and certainly wouldn't be as much fun as it is), Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Sly & The Family Stone, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Prince, etc.  If we're going to nominate Chic, LL Cool J or N.W.A., where are the nominations for Love, The Chambers Brothers, Bad Brains or Living Color, all of whom are more vital black contributors to the legacy of rock & roll?

5) The Paul Butterfield Blues Band / Peter Gabriel / Hall & Oates / The Meters / Cat Stevens / Link Wray - ZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.  Why bother?

6) The Zombies - These guys certainly deserve to be in the R&RHOF, but I would hate to think they were only nominated this year because of Pop Culture Zombie Mania - The Walking Dead, World War Z, etc.

7) Nirvana / The Replacements - As a rocker, I suppose these were the two nominations that made the most sense.  But it's going to be sad to me when Nirvana makes it into the Rock Hall on their first try and The Replacements don't.  It's probably not entirely fair but I kinda blame Nirvana - and specifically Kurt Cobain - for the current Dire Straits Of Rock & Roll.  (note; Mark Knopfler's band is not in the R&RHOF either.)  First Cobain knocked Hair Metal (which, though I certainly wasn't a fan, was at least FUN in a rock & roll sense) off the charts, radio, and MTV, thus ushering in The Age Of Alternative.  He then went on to CONTINUOUSLY bellyache (literally, he had an ulcer) about Fame, His Fans, The Pressures of Rock Stardom, etc.  That is not a Good Message to send to aspiring rock stars.  And when The Biggest Rock Star In The World blows his brains out in a Seattle garage, the lesson to young boys & girls with guitars is that Genius Is Pain and you should just roll around and wallow in your grief rather than use rock & roll to escape that darkness.  And that's not Rock & Roll.

The Replacements are rock & roll.  And that's exactly why I'm betting they don't get into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 2013.  We'll see.  - Ricki C. / Oct. 25th, 2013

Footage of Colin Playing a Willie Phoenix Song at Apollo's in 1990!

Biggie recently posted this on the Watershed Facebook page and I thought it was worthy of a permanent home here at Pencilstorm. How on earth somebody taped this or how it was found I have no idea. My hair should have been a dead giveaway I used a fake I.D. to get the gig. - Colin

One common thread in the Columbus music community has always been its generosity. Watershed has benefited early and often from the kindness of our home-town musical brothers & sisters; from Happy Chichester giving Herb his first drum lesson to Sue & Marcy from Scrawl lending their vocal talents to recording sessions. 

One of the first and most generous bounties bestowed to Watershed came from Willie Phoenix. Willie’s mentoring of the band is covered in great detail by Joe’s book Hitless Wonder. Sadly, Watershed has not shared the stage with Willie very much in the recent past (Willie once warned us to avoid being on bills with superior talent) but this Friday, November 1st, Colin Gawel and The Lonely Bones are going into the ring and taking their lumps from the mighty Willie Phoenix (Blues Hippy & The Soul Underground). It is an early show, starting at 6:30 sharp at the Rumba Café.

In preparation for this monumental event please enjoy an erstwhile Colin Gawel covering one of his favorite Willie songs back in 1990.

Lou Reed 1942 - 2013 by Ricki C.

(This piece appeared originally in Ricki's blog, Growing Old With Rock & Roll .)

I'm sure by now almost everybody who reads Pencilstorm or Growing Old With Rock & Roll knows that Lou Reed died yesterday, Sunday Oct. 27th. I'm also sure anybody who has ever seen me play knows that there was no bigger influence on my music and songwriting than Lou Reed. My five favorite rock & roll performers of all time are - in chronological order - Pete Townshend, Lou Reed, Bruce Springsteen, Ian Hunter and Elliott Murphy.

I fully realize Bob Dylan is not on that list. Lou Reed was my Bob Dylan.

I was introduced to the music of The Velvet Underground by my best friend ever - Dave Blackburn - when he and I first met at Bishop Ready High School in 1968. (There's a song about it, kinda, in blog entry If All My Heroes Are Losers, Sept. 26th, 2012.) I have to admit I didn't get The Velvet Underground in '68 or '69 when Dave was first trying to indoctrinate me. (Dave was at that show at Valley Dale Ballroom here in Columbus, Ohio, that came out on one of the "Banana Album" box-set reissues. I didn't go because I found the Velvets "too noisy." I would think I stayed home that night with my Lovin' Spoonful and Paul Revere & The Raiders records.)

By 1973, however, when I came back from trying to start a band in Boston with Dave and moved into my first apartment, Reed's Transformer album and a German import best-of Velvet Underground double-record set (that I got for two bucks at an Ohio State University campus used-record store) became my touchstones, my muses and my Masters course in rock & roll songwriting. (see blog entry The Apartment, March 9th, 2012.)

If you had told me in 1973 that Lou Reed would still be alive in 2013, I'd have just laughed, dismissed you, and walked away. If you had told me Iggy Pop, Keith Richards and Bob Dylan would still be alive in 2013 - let alone still playing music - I'd have called you a fuckin' idiot to your face. (And Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis? Fuggetaboutit.)

And maybe that's kinda the entire point of this whole Growing Old With Rock & Roll Concept. I cannot reconcile which side of "It's better to burn out than to fade away." I believe in. I realize how awful a thing it is to say in the wake of Lou Reed's passing, but a large part of me wishes Pete Townshend HAD died before he got old, just so I wouldn't have to dislike him and all that he stands for more with each passing year. I was sad in 1978 when Keith Moon died, but Keith wasn't meant to get fat and wasted and useless as he had already started to do even 35 years ago. We're not all supposed to get old and have long careers in rock & roll. 

Bruce Springsteen is. Ian Hunter is. Elliott Murphy is. Alejandro Escovedo is. Maybe Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Richard Thompson, Steve Earle and Dave Alvin are, but I haven't bought a record by any of those five artists in years. And David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash certainly shouldn't still be out there. 

And does it make me sad that Lou Reed's last recorded work is that debacle duet record with Metallica from a coupla years ago? You'd best believe it makes me sad. 

But I digress.......

I think before I lose control of this blog and start down too many rabbit holes, I'm just going to turn it over to Elliott Murphy. The following are the liner notes to 1969 - Velvet Underground Live, released by Mercury records in 1973 to capitalize on Lou Reed's post-"Walk On The Wild Side" popularity. It's my favorite piece of rock journalism/poetry ever, and it says more about rock & roll and loss than I ever could, in a hundred years.