Pussy Riot, Cossacks, Putin's Olympics and the Arizona State Legislature by Ricki C.

“Rock & roll as a force for social change
That idea got kicked to the curb
About the same time the noun ‘party’
Got turned into a verb”

- from “Old Heroes Might Be Heroes (But They’re Old Anyway)”

© 1978, Ricki C. for The Twilight Kids

When was the last time an American or British rock band actually did anything Revolutionary, or even mildly controversial?

I once had high hopes for Green Day, around the time of American Idiot, until they merchandized that great disc into a Broadway musical, of all things, not exactly the premier move in radical rock & roll protest circles, ya know?  (They really are a lot like The Who, circa Tommy in that respect, aren’t they?)

It’s immensely sad to me that The Dixie Chicks – a trio of female country singers – essentially punted their entire music career over an off-hand onstage comment in London – “We’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” – at the height of American jingoism in 2003, during the run-up to the Iraq War.  It’s even sadder to me that not one rock & roll band showed any kind of solidarity with them or mounted any kind of free-speech defense.  Where were The Rockers when that shit was going down?

Which brings us to Pussy Riot – an art-collective punk-rock band comprised of Russian women, two of whom served TWO YEARS in a Russian prison after staging a protest in a Moscow Cathedral, performing a song called “Mother Of God, Chase Putin Away.”  (You have to admit, even Bob Dylan in his topical song protest days never came up with a title that cool.  “Blowin’ In The Wind,” “The Ballad Of Emmett Till,” “Masters Of War,” indeed.)

The two women who served time – Nadezheda Toloonnikova and Maria Alyoknina – were released from prison in December, 2013, an action widely viewed as an attempt to show the lighter side of Vladimir Putin, a little PR move in advance of his Olympic Games.  “Forget the last 21 months you spent in prison, girls, let’s all be comrades.  Have a vodka tonic!”  

I saw the two women on the Colbert show and they were intelligent and committed – which I fully expected – but also displayed a great sense of humor, which I did not expect.  I expected didactic, shrill, defensive artistes.  (I’d’ve been defensive & shrill if I did 21 months in prison for singing a punk song in a church.)  What I got were two lovely, funny and articulate individuals.

So do Pussy Riot stay on in the United States and trade on their name to make some bucks, maybe do a commercial for Fancy Feast or Stoli?  No, they go back to Russia and work up a song called “Putin Will Teach You To Love The Motherland.”  (Admittedly, it’s no “Blue Suede Shoes.”)  They’re whipped in public by Cossacks – who apparently serve as a paramilitary adjunct to the Russian police force: kinda like Paul Blart, Mall Cop, only with warmer hats and whips – and were arrested yet again.  That takes balls, my friend.  I don’t care how much publicity you get or how famous you are or how many cameras are trained on you in public, if Putin wants you to disappear, you’re gonna disappear.  (Has anybody seen the Russian Olympic Hockey Team since they got eliminated in the semi’s?)  (By the way, while we’re on the subject of hockey disappointments, concerning the stocked-to-the-gills-with-NHL-players American Olympic team: if I wanted to see a hockey team display ZERO heart and not even TRY to win a Big Game, I’d go downtown and watch the Blue Jackets.)

So next time I see Ted Nugent mewling & whining on Fox News about his First Amendment Rights, I wanna see him do 21 months hard time in prison and then come back for more.  (By the way: my buddy Kyle and I had free tix to Ted’s show at the LC a few years back and he should do 21 months for not being able to play the fucking guitar anymore.  He was three or four minutes into “Free For All” before either of us recognized it.  That calls for SOME kind of punishment and incarceration.) 

I was surprised that in NBC’s woeful coverage of the Olympics – woeful because they didn’t offer even cursory explanations of sports unfamiliar to American audiences, among many other factors – I don’t think I heard even a passing mention of the unrest in Ukraine that took place during the Games.  I’m not saying that there should have been a blow-by-blow account of street battles in Kiev by Tara Lipinski & Johnny Weir during the ice-dancing finals – I understand the argument that the Olympics should not be about politics – but I am saying that if there had been a revolution in Ohio during the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics (roughly the same distance – 700 miles – as from Sochi to Kiev), it probably would’ve gotten at least a passing mention on the talking TV box.

Finally – and I SWEAR I’m gonna bring this in under 1000 words – can somebody please explain to me how the Arizona State Legislature can line up so squarely with Vladimir Putin and the nation of Uganda (once ruled so peacefully by Idi Amin, who slaughtered hundreds of thousands of his citizens) on the question of denying gay individuals their rights as citizens?  I didn't want Governor Jan Brewer to veto this week’s hate legislation for economic reasons, like because the NFL threatened to take away Phoenix’s Super Bowl in 2014, I wanted her to veto it BECAUSE IT’S THE RIGHT THING TO DO!  (And I thought the Republican Party and Fox News – in their Mindless Thrall Deification of Ronald Reagan – were supposed to be AGAINST anything Russia was FOR.  Whatever happened to The Transitive Law of Intolerance?) 

How long can we continue to be on the wrong side of history?

And where is The MC5 when we really need them? – Ricki C. / February 27th, 2014

Learn more about Ricki C. and other Pencilstorm contributors by clicking here

Alejandro Escovedo In-Store @ Elizabeth Records, Monday February 24th, 1 pm. CANCELLED CANCELLED CANCELLED

Hey gang - It's 11:40 am on Monday morning, February 24th, and Pencilstorm has just learned that today's signing session with Alejandro Escovedo has been cancelled for today, possibly rescheduled for April.  Alejandro has been battling a stomach flu the last couple of gigs and wanted to rest before tonight's Kent Stage show in Kent, Ohio.  That show (with Peter Buck of REM) is still on but the Elizabeth Records meet & greet is OFF.

Sorry to bring this news, but wanted to get the word out.  Thanks.

Hey folks, Pencilstorm fully realizes this is truly short notice, but we just found out that Alejandro Escovedo - whom many of us consider a truly legendary practitioner of the art of the rock & roll - will be doing an in-store "signing session" at Elizabeth Records, 3037 Indianola Avenue (right by Studio 35 Cinema) on Monday, February 24th, at 1 pm.  We talked briefly to somebody at the store and she indicated that Alejandro won't actually be playing at the store, it's more a "meet & greet" and Alejandro will be signing items fans bring in.

(The phone number at Elizabeth's is 569-6009.  It probably couldn't hurt to call Monday morning to make sure the in-store is still on.  It's taking place between shows Alejandro is doing with Peter Buck of REM on Sunday night at Stuart's Opera House in Nelsonville and Monday night at Kent, Ohio's truly great Kent Stage venue.  After doing in-stores with both Watershed and Hamell On Trial, I've learned it's always best to double-check.)  (IN LIGHT OF TODAY'S CANCELLATION, I'M GLAD THAT WE RAN THIS.  SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.) 

Pencilstorm further fully realizes that some people have jobs and can't just fuck-off to the local neighborhood record store in the middle of the day to meet their rock & roll heroes, but COME ON, it's Alejandro Escovedo, for Chrissakes!  At any rate, Colin & Ricki C. will be there bothering Alejandro and trying to monopolize the conversation, so why don't you take your lunch hour late on Monday and drop by? 

(Following is a piece Ricki C. did on Escovedo in his Growing Old With Rock & Roll blog, March 16, 2012.)

Occasionally in my job as road manager for Hamell On Trial there were perks; genuine perks, epic perks, once-in-a-lifetime perks.  One of those took place in the summer of 2008 when I got to meet and hang out with Alejandro Escovedo.

For the uninitiated, I consider Alejandro Escovedo one of the five best singer-songwriters currently criss-crossing this great land of ours, trying to spread the gospel of rock & roll.  (The other four, for those of you scoring at home are, alphabetically; The Avett Brothers, Hamell On Trial, Richard Thompson, and Jack White.  Elliott Murphy would be listed here but he is normally found crisscrossing the European continent.)  I further consider Escovedo America’s answer to Ian Hunter, in that he combines the same superior intellect with a passion for rock & roll power and the ability to simultaneously break your heart with a ballad and pummel you with an all-out rock onslaught, sometimes within the same song.  (Regular readers of this blog will realize I do not throw comparisons to Mott The Hoople’s former frontman around lightly.)

That summer Hamell was playing an arts & music festival in Bowling Green, Ohio, at which Escovedo was also booked.  Ed and Alejandro were friends from way back.  When Ed first moved to Austin, Texas, in the 90’s he sought out Escovedo for advice, counsel and gigs, all three of which Alejandro was happy to provide.  A genuine friendship ensued.  Ed’s introduction of me to Alejandro backstage was, "This is my road manager, Ricki C., he saw The Stooges and The MC5 live when he was still in high school."  Alejandro fixed me with a gaze, shook my hand, and said, "We have to talk later."

And so it was that I wound up sitting at a picnic table at The Black Swamp Arts Festival in Bowling Green, Ohio, talking rock & roll with Alejandro Escovedo.

Now you’ve gotta understand – Alejandro Escovedo is one of my big rock & roll heroes, one of my favorite songwriters of the past 15 years.  Sitting and talking with him put me right back into my shy, quiet, 13-year old, eighth grade self (see The Transistor Radio blog entry, January 2012).  As we sat and talked on that warm evening I found myself really wanting to shout to the other performers and crew members who were eating & hanging out in the backstage canteen area, "HEY, LOOK YOU GUYS, I’M TALKING TO ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO!!!"  Luckily for any sense of rock & roll cool or decorum I had managed to acquire as Hamell’s road manager, I didn’t shout.  (Out loud.)

We talked about Mott The Hoople and how the perfect mixture of deep feeling and loud guitars met right in the blood flowing through Ian Hunter’s heart.  We talked about The Kinks and the battles between brothers in rock & roll bands, including Alejandro’s and big brother Javier’s fights in their 1980’s band, The True Believers.  We talked about the aforementioned Stooges and MC5.  I told Alejandro about pissing next to a smacked-out & wasted Johnny Thunders in the bathroom of the Second Chance club in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1979 during a weekend road trip to see Fred Smith’s mighty Sonic’s Rendezvous Band.  Alejandro told me about offering a wasted Iggy Pop a ride in his car during one of Iggy’s down & out late 1970’s Los Angeles nights.  (Strange how often rock & roll conversations turn to the wasted.)  We talked about heroes for life, we talked about wins and losses, we talked about shared sonic love affairs.

I fully realize that there’s very little chance Alejandro would recall that late summer rock & roll conversation.  I also fully realize that I’ll never forget it.

Ricki C. / March 16th, 2012

In 1979 Ricki C. Had Lunch With AC/DC. No, really, seriously.......

(apropos of last week's Bruce Springsteen "Highway To Hell" video-grab, we at pencilstorm thought we would run Ricki C.'s close encounter with Bon Scott & the boys in AC/DC, which originally ran in Growing Old With Rock & Roll back in April, 2012.)

In June of 1979 I was working in the warehouse of a K-Mart discount store on the West Side of Columbus, Ohio, and writing for a rock weekly called Focus.  My one and only cover story for the magazine came when they sent me to interview Bon Scott of AC/DC at a downtown hotel and then cover their concert that night.  (Said cover story is reproduced below.)  My boss at K-Mart, Mike Mills (not the later bass player of REM), gave me an extra-long lunch break to go downtown for the interview, which was scheduled for 11 am.  I thought that was an unusually early call for a rocker like Bon Scott, and I was proved correct.  A few minutes before noon Bon staggered into the Holiday Inn conference room I had been ensconced in by an Atlantic Records publicity woman.  She had run out of excuses for Bon’s tardiness about a half-hour earlier and had left me to my own devices.

Bon was great.  He was already drunk at 11:55 in the morning, introduced himself and we got right down to the business at hand.  By my third question – "Have you ever had an orgasm onstage?" – I think Scott had realized that this wasn’t going to be a pro forma interview.  He grabbed my notebook away from me and demanded, "What else you gonna ask me then, if I ever fucked me mudder?"  By 1 pm when the Atlantic Records woman came in to call a halt to the proceedings Bon and I were laughing along like old friends.  I got him to autograph my baseball glove (I was big into softball from my 20’s to my 40’s) and then had to explain the entire concept of the sport to Bon, which he claimed never ever to have been aware of. "Sounds stoopid," was his one-word estimation of America’s pastime, "doesn’t anybody ever get punched in the mouth like in rugby?"

Publicity woman said, "We’ve got to go now, Bon, lunch is ready."  We shook hands as I stood up to leave and Bon said, "Where do ya go now?"  I told him I had to go back to the store where I worked.  "’Ave you had lunch, then?" he asked.  "No, I’ll have something at work," I replied.  "Well, stay and ‘ave lunch with us," Bon said.  "He’s not having lunch with us, Bon," the Atlantic Records lady cut in.  "Do you wanna stay and ‘ave lunch?" Bon reiterated.  "Yeah, I’d love to," I said.  Ms. Atlantic was now staring daggers at me, she was totally pissed at my lack of professionalism, but my only thought was that I was going to get a much better lunch out of this deal than the K-Mart cafeteria had to offer.

At lunch I was seated across from Angus and Malcolm Young, all the way at the other end of the table from Bon.  I think that was my punishment from the publicity woman for cadging my way into the meal.  They had cordoned off a corner of the dining room for the band because back in the day you had to have a coat & tie to eat in the dining room of the Downtown Holiday Inn.  (The hotel is still there, it’s the one right across the street from the Greyhound Bus Station.  I’d be willing to bet that you don’t have to have a coat & tie to eat there anymore.  And I also bet that nowadays you just might be able to get crack from room service, or at least from a bellhop.)

Angus and Malcolm never said a word to me.  And I soon discovered that Angus couldn’t order his own meal.  I just sat and stared as he perused the large, leather-bound Holiday Inn menu, then turned to his older brother Malcolm and slurred, "WhasshouldI’ave, Malcolm?"  "Have whatever you want, Angus." came the curt reply.  Malcolm didn’t even look from his own menu to answer his little brother.

Angus returned to looking intently at his menu, narrowing his eyes and hunkering down to make it abundantly clear he was really giving it his utmost consideration. "ShouldI’avebreakfussorlunch, Malcolm?"  It was a plaintive question from the notoriously fierce little lead guitarist.  "Have whatever you want, Angus!" was the testy, shot-back reply from Elder Sibling.

In the end, of course, Malcolm wound up ordering Angus’ meal for him.  Just as inevitably, when the food arrived, Angus took one quick look at his plate, one longing look at his brother’s dish, and asked sheepishly, "Can I have some of your food, Malcolm?"  Malcolm never replied, completely ignored his little brother, and the two never exchanged another word for the rest of the meal.  There would be no sharing.  It was genuinely sad to watch Angus pick at his food in that swank hotel dining room.  He couldn’t have eaten more than four bites.

That was my first glimpse into the bubble that rock stars exist inside of on big-time rock & roll tours.  To this day I don’t know whether Angus Young just couldn’t decide what he wanted to eat that afternoon or if he literally COULD NOT READ the menu.  At any rate, the editors at Focus took out virtually all of my lunch story, as they thought it would piss off Atlantic Records if I implied in print that Angus Young was illiterate.  (I had already caused RCA Records to pull all of their advertising for two entire issues when I suggested that Canadian metal-clowns Triumph "wouldn’t know rock & roll if it fucked them in a closet," in a derogatory live review earlier that year.)  They also changed Bon Scott from already drunk at noon to hung-over.

Eight months later, February 19th, 1980, Bon Scott was dead from some combination of alcohol poisoning, aspiration of vomit or hypothermia, depending on which magazine you read and who you believe.  At any rate, massive amounts of alcohol were involved.  When I heard about it I thought back to that June afternoon.  Bon Scott was the happiest pre-noon drunk guy I had ever or have yet ever encountered.  Some rock stars just are not supposed to get old.  Would I enjoy watching a 65 year old Keith Moon embarrass himself on some endless Who-reunion tour in 2012?  Nope.  Do I wish Pete Townshend had lived up to his hope and died before he got old?  Sometimes.

Bon Scott, salut.

Springsteen Opens Show with "Highway to Hell" / Columbus Show Announced!

Bruce Springsteen and the E. Street Band aren't allowed to have on off night. To the contrary, they have raised the bar so high that every single time the Boss steps on stage, people expect a life changing rock n roll experience. And damn if he doesn't always achieve it or come very close trying.

So what does Bruce do when making a rare appearance in Perth, Austraila, which also happens to be hometown of the late great AC/DC singer Bon Scott? He opens the show with "Highway to Hell." Of course he does. What else would you play? By the time the song kicks into the first chorus the crowd is so revved up it looks like they are ready to smash chairs over each other's heads. Bon would have approved. Bruce Springsteen just announced North American tour dates for 2014 including a date in Columbus,OH April 15th. I strongly suggest you attend. - Colin 

Click here to read Ricki C's review of Bruce Springsteen in 1976

Click here to read my review of Bruce on the Wrecking Ball Tour

Ray Davies is the Best Songwriter. Exhibit F.

Hey Hipsters. Get a load of this. "Give The People What They Want" might be the best Kinks album of them all. Yup, you heard me. Better than "Face to Face" or "Village Green" or "Muswell Hillbillies". Chew on that. This is our sorta-weekly example of why Ray Davies is the greatest songwriter that our planet has ever produced. Lyrics and video below. Enjoy! - Colin G.

Click here for Ray Davies is the best songwriter exhibit D & E

Exhibit F : Give the People What They Want

Hey, hey, hey...
Give the people what they want

Well, it's been said before, the world is a stage
A different performance with every age.
Open the history book to any old page
Bring on the lions and open the cage.

Give the people what they want
You gotta give the people what they want
The more they get, the more they need
And every time they get harder and harder to please

The Roman promoters really did things right.
They needed a show that would clearly excite.
The attendance was sparse so they put on a fight
Threw the Christians to the lions, sold out every night

Give the people what they want
You gotta give the people what they want
The more they get, the more they need
And every time they get harder and harder to please

Give 'em lots of sex, perversion and rape
Give 'em lots of violence, and plenty to hate
Give the people what they want
Give the people what they want

When Oswald shot Kennedy, he was insane
But still we watch the re-runs again and again
We all sit glued while the killer takes aim
"Hey Mom, there goes a piece of the president's brain!"

Give the people what they want
You gotta give the people what they want
Blow out your brains, and do it right
Make sure it's prime time and on a Saturday night.
You gotta give the people what they want

The Perfect Age For Rock & Roll, part three by Ricki C.

I was The Perfect Age For Rock & Roll when punk-rock vinyl began to arrive in the Midwest in 1976.  I was 24 years old and had been buying records since I was 12 in 1964, half of my earthly existence.  I’d dabbled in punk earlier, sending away for Patti Smith’s “Hey Joe/Piss Factory” single back in 1974 when instructed to by my Rock & Roll Bible Of The Time – Creem magazine.  I don’t remember if it was Creem or Who Put The Bomp! Magazine that brought the pride of Boston, Massachusetts – Willie “Loco” Alexander – to my attention in 1975, but I was glad to send my hard-earned Service Merchandise warehouse cash eastward to get the “Kerouac/Mass. Ave.” single, and thus begin a love of Boston Rock & Roll that carried me right through the 1980’s.  (Willie Alexander begat DMZ who begat The Real Kids who begat The Nervous Eaters who begat The Neighborhoods who begat Scruffy The Cat who begat The Blackjacks, etc.)   

Make no mistake, though, up until 1976 I was a Mainstream Rocker West Side Boy: my heroes were Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, Blue Oyster Cult, Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band, etc.  But right about the time that Styx, Journey, Foreigner, Foghat, Boston, Peter Frampton (whom I had earlier loved when he was in Humble Pie with Steve Marriott), Rush, et al were making it impossible to live and love rock & roll I fell under the thunder of The Dictators, The Ramones, The Clash, The Pop!, Earthquake, The Jam, Elvis Costello and – maybe most of all – Nick Lowe.

I fully admit it, when I fell for punk-rock in 1976 and ’77, I fell hard.  Looking back, I think that was The Great Divide of The Rock & Roll: as a music fan you had the choice of making the leap to punk-rock and continuing to explore new music or you settled into a noxious haze of Allman Brothers, Pink Floyd and The Grateful Dead and now subsist on generous helpings of Q-FM 96.  (God help us.)

I think my first encounter with the Year Zero aspect of punk – that starting then, rock & roll was going to start ALL OVER NEW AGAIN, A WHOLE NEW BALL GAME – was a Joe Strummer interview in The New Musical Express, a great English rock weekly I would get approximately six weeks after the cover date at Little Professor Bookstore at the Lane Avenue shopping center.  The NME – along with Back Door Man fanzine, New York Rocker and the above-mentioned Bomp! Magazine – replaced Creem as my Holy Grail Journals of the Rock & Roll.  Indie labels Stiff Records and Beserkley Records became my new Capitol and Columbia. 

Accordingly, I started my own xeroxed fanzine – Teenage Rampage (read all about it over on Growing Old With Rock & Roll) – and, this is really important to the story, gave all of my acoustic-based records away.  All the Neil Young, all the Townes Van Zandt, all the Judee Sill, all the Joni Mitchell, all the Ian Matthews, all gone, given away to folkie friends of my first wife Pat.  I had always maintained a certain schizoid relationship with acoustic music: in the 60’s I simultaneously worshipped The Who and the folk-rock of The Beau Brummels and The Lovin’ Spoonful; later The MC5 and The Stooges peacefully coexisted with Crosby, Stills & Nash, James Taylor and Joni Mitchell; still later The New York Dolls and Mott The Hoople shared shelf space in my record collection with Van Morrison and Fairport Convention.  But at that point in 1976 I felt so strongly that punk was The Way Forward then & forever, all my Flying Burritto Brothers, Poco and Jesse Winchester records went bye-bye.

By 1982, of course, after punk ground into hardcore and devolved into synth-pop and New Wave, I wound up scouring the used record stores on campus to buy all those records back.  I never made the mistake of turning my back on an entire form of music again.

The 1980’s were, of course, The Wasteland, definitely the worst decade of rock & roll I have lived through.  Starting off with disco, moving through synth-pop and the continued dominance of radio-controlled corporate-rock, ending up at the end of the decade with hair metal, it just was not a good ten years.  (Synth-pop became so rampant that even Roy Bittan of the mighty E Street band had to deploy a Roland on his piano.  That wasn’t pretty.)  Plus MTV came along and started demystifying The Secret That Was Rock & Roll by blasting it into every genteel living room and wood-paneled basement that could afford basic cable.  Rock & roll was never intended to be just another segment of show business, it was supposed to be a Holy Rite of rebels, outcasts and losers.  The “culture” of People Magazine and rock & roll just do not mix.   MTV took away a central premise of the rock & roll Art Form – the listener being able to make up his own vision for a song – and replaced it with scantily-clad models & fire.  It somehow managed to take rock & roll BELOW The Lowest Common Denominator, something my third-grade math class taught me was impossible, but here we were.  

Putting aside woeful ephemera like A Flock Of Seagulls, A-Ha and The Human League and long-serving dreck-meisters such as Duran Duran and Depeche Mode, I know there were 80’s bands I should have liked – U2 or The Smiths, for example – but they were just so smug, so self-important, so English, just so fucking EARNEST, ya know?  Where was the fun factor?  Where was the simple joy?  Where were the groupies & blow?

In 1984 David Minehan of The Neighborhoods – easily my favorite Boston band, then and now – wrote, “Today’s bands are like a school of fish / When I see a star I’ll make my wish.”  I may have been The Perfect Age For Rock & Roll, but I found myself starting to long for 1966, when there were certainly less artists and fewer records in the bins, but the quality was SO MUCH HIGHER.  By 1984 the music business was firmly committed to the principle, “Let’s throw it all at the wall and see what sticks.”  (Or was it Styx?)  (“Mr. Roboto,” indeed.)  Quantity definitely did not equal quality.

I made do with New York City’s Del-Lords and Boston’s Del Fuegos, got briefly excited by REM and The Replacements, but had to constantly ask myself as I watched an out-of-control Bob Stinson lurch across the Stache’s stage drunk on his ass, clad only in a diaper, “Where is the next Rolling Stones?”  “Where is the next Bob Dylan?”  “For that matter, Where is the next Bruce Springsteen?”  I would have to say that Prince was the only mainstream million-selling rock act I had any love for in the entire decade of the 80’s.  Michael Jackson?  Please.

By 1992, when Sinead O’Connor and Nirvana – two of the biggest acts in rock – seemed to do nothing but complain and bellyache (quite literally in Curt Kobain’s case) about their rock & roll star status, I knew it was all over.

I hunkered down with my Lloyd Cole, Richard Thompson, Dave Alvin, Steve Earle and Alejandro Escovedo records and dedicated myself to a genre I dubbed “Adult Rock & Roll,” while watching out of the corner of my eye as the likes of Limp Bizkit, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice In Chains and others of their ilk became the mainstream of rock.

I’ve often said in recent years that I got fully involved in the rock & roll business just in time to watch it all fall apart.  In 1998 – 30 years after I sang in my first rock & roll band and 25 years after I started working in warehouses – I was able, courtesy of a small inheritance when my mom died, to take a job at Camelot Music.  I got that job at a record store just in time to watch – and be complicit in – The Backstreet Boys, ‘N Sync, Eminem and Britney Spears sell millions of records.  

At the dawn of a new century, year 2000, I became road manager of a solo rock act out of New York called Hamell On Trial, who I believed to my soul was going to be the next Clash.  I crisscrossed the United States with Hamell over the next few years, fulfilling a life-long dream to travel America with a rock & roll band.

By time I turned 50 in 2002 I believed that The Strokes, The White Stripes and The Hives were going to usher in A Whole New Era Of The Rock & Roll, and further believed I was The Perfect Age for that rock & roll resurgence.  I was wrong.

Today as I type this it’s 2014 and looking back I feel like I might have outlived rock & roll, that I might have witnessed its beginning, middle and end.   

At 61 years old I still play solo acoustic gigs, I still climb into a van with Watershed – whose road crew I joined in 2005 after watching them grow up literally before my eyes from 1990 on – I still wrangle guitars for Colin Gawel and occasionally roadie for Erica Blinn, whose FATHER, Jerry Blinn, I competed with for gigs in the 1970’s when he was in a band called Black Leather Touch and I was in The Twilight Kids.

I’m on my SECOND GENERATION of rockers.  I’m the Perfect Age For Rock & Roll. - Ricki C.

Click here for "Perfect Age For Rock n Roll"    Part 1   Part 2

Click here to learn more about Ricki C. and our other Pencilstorm contributors