Reflections on The Who Turning 50 by Pete Vogel

Listening to you / I get the music

Gazing at you / I get the heat

Following You / I climb the mountain

I get excitement at your feet

- Tommy (1969)

These four lines pretty much sum up my feelings about The Who as they celebrate their fifth decade in the music industry. From the first time I heard them back in 1978, to the 50th anniversary concert that took place 5/15/15 in Columbus, I am continually reminded of their genius, their passion and their relevance.

As a middle-aged musician—I’m as old as the band—who still struggles in the “minor leagues” (to borrow a phrase from Joe Oestreich) these four lines are passages that I revert to whenever I’ve “lost my way” in this ever-changing, ever-frustrating music biz. These lines are a reminder of why I still do what I do, even though sometimes it feels like it’s in vain.

Pete Townshend was very different than most songwriters coming out of UK in the mid-60s. While his peers were penning songs about teenage love and girls named Angie, Townshend was writing tunes like “The Seeker.” While his contemporaries were writing political and folksy songs about Vietnam, he was penning operas about pinball wizards. Townshend was—and still is—in a class by himself. He took a look at the state of the world in his era and got “in tune with the straight and narrow.” As he penned in his song “Pure and Easy”: “There once was a note / Pure and easy / Playing so free / Like a breath, rippling by.”

For those who craved more meaning to life than suburban sporting events, pop music and movies approved by The Catholic Times, The Who represented a shift from this stifling worldview and expanded hearts and minds to embrace a faith in something bigger. That’s what drew me to them in the first place—they re-examined spirituality in general and how it related to manhood in particular. For males reared in the 60s and 70s, with the specter of Vietnam ever present in their psyche, The Who paved the way for a new vision of what it meant to be a man: “Imagine a man / Not a child of any revolt / But a plain man tied up in life.”

Having grown up in a patriarchal family—with a father who was influenced by no-nonsense role models like Woody Hayes and Bobby Knight—The Who taught me about the softer, gentler side of manhood, what Rabbi Michael Lerner calls “The Left Hand of God.” The Who showed me that you don’t have to be a bully, brute or jerk to get your way in the world, perhaps love can truly reign over everything.

While it’s true that The Who is considered a “masculine” group—and have always appealed to men more than women—the Daltrey/Townshend duo are, to me, the Yin/Yang balance of masculine and feminine energies. Daltrey’s rugged voice and hardscrabble working class persona, coupled with Townshend’s meek tenor and art-school upbringing, address the duality between testosterone-laced impulsivity and feminine reflection. We see this played out so brilliantly in Quadrophenia, the rock opera about the conflicting desires within its main character, Jimmy, who wanted to be both a lover AND fighter for the Mod cause. He realized, at the end of his journey, he had to decide between the two—he couldn’t be both. Would love reign, or would he seek to be the Ace Face?

The Who has always struck a beautiful balance with its frontmen, and it’s a marriage that hasn’t been lost on its fans. Whether it’s expressed in the raw emotion of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” or the melancholic sensibilities of “I’m One” we’ve come to realize that we’re all Jimmy: straddling the fence between selfish, violent whims and the desire to transcend it all.

As for the show last Friday (sadly, they didn’t pay homage to 5/15 by playing that song) it was thrilling to see the band—or at least half of them—perform in front of 20,000 screaming fans at their respective ages of 69 (Townshend) and 70 (Daltrey). Sure, there was a stoop in their walk, and they both wore sunglasses that looked more like bifocals than hipster specs, but their passion was still intact. They started off the show with their seminal, 50-year-old classic “I Can’t Explain” and didn’t let the foot off the gas until the final crescendo of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” two hours later. Most of us walked away with a feeling of awe and respect—they obviously still “got it.” Even those who didn’t enjoy the show (my friend’s son said: “It would’ve been cool to see them in the 70s”) they still left the venue with an understanding of what made The Who special for so many years. Fifty years, in fact. Half a century. Playing music to millions of fans. Still. To me, for The Who to generate that level of enthusiasm—as they approached their seventh decade on the planet—is nothing short of miraculous.

The music business has changed dramatically since The Who first stepped onstage in 1965; Townshend professed this inevitability in his ditty “Music Must Change.” But I wonder if he foresaw the events that are taking place today? The industry has become—more or less—a diaspora of the talent pool and a dumbing down of the medium. Steady radio play featuring new talent has all but disappeared—Clear Channel saw to that. The Internet has generated tens of thousands of new bands, yet it’s impossible to keep track of them. Youtube, Facebook and Soundcloud have created a mass market for songwriting but it’s now a free indulgence—royalties have all but disappeared. Ironically, it’s harder to make money in this ubiquitous industry because competition is stiff, the market is endless and opportunities are widespread. There are too many venues, too many bands, and not enough paying audiences. In fact, nobody wants to pay for music anymore—it’s expected to be free. Artists hand out their CDs like business cards.

It’s nearly impossible for an original, modern act in the spirit of The Who to come close to selling out a Nationwide Arena at $100 a pop—unless your name is Swift, Timberlake or Spears. And you won’t hear songs like “Join Together” or “A Quick One” at these shows either—one can’t afford to take those kinds of risks in the digital age.

As a musician I sometimes despair over the state of our medium. It seems like the least original, least inspiring and least talented acts have risen to the top while the rest of us struggle in the minors. It saddens me that some of the most talented, original, and inspiring acts in this town are playing to fifteen people at a local bar for five bucks a head. It saddens me that a whole generation of folks will grow up in a world where Nicki Minaj is regarded a “viral success.”

That’s when I crank up Tommy as loud as I can and chant those four lines, over and over and over again. Rock is dead. Long live rock.  Pete Vogel 5/16/15

Pete Vogel is an accomplished artist, educator, and musician. He also wrote and directed the documentary "Indie". Learn more by clicking here,

Vet's Memorial, part five - The New York Dolls, Sunday, May 19th, 1974 by Ricki C.

To paraphrase Bette Davis in All About Eve: “Fasten your seat belts, kids, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

I can tell you the entire story of the downfall and eventual long, slow, sad Death of Rock & Roll in one fell swoop in a single story about The New York Dolls at Veteran’s Memorial Auditorium, 41 years ago today, Sunday, May 19th, 1974.

As you can see from my tickets reproduced below, it was a pretty big week for rock & roll in my little hometown of Columbus, Ohio.  I saw the Dolls on Sunday the 19th, The Eagles at Mershon the next Saturday, May 25th, and Mott The Hoople the next night, Sunday, May 26th.  I fully acknowledge that the 1970’s were indeed the heyday of live rock & roll concerts, but I must point out: Columbus did NOT routinely get three acts of that rock pedigree in seven days’ time; it was definitely an aberration.  

Anyway, what does this have to do with The Death of Rock & Roll?  I’ll tell ya.  The Eagles show and Mott The Hoople sold out the 2500-seat capacity Mershon Auditorium.  The New York Dolls drew 150 people to the 3000-seat capacity Vet’s Memorial.  I couldn’t believe it.  When my girlfriend (and later wife) Pat and I arrived at the show that warm Sunday evening there were a scattering of cars in the huge Vet’s parking lot, and nobody going into the show.  “Oooooh man, the show must be cancelled,” I moaned to Pat, dispiritedly.  Shows were constantly getting cancelled and/or rescheduled back in those pre-Rock As Big Business early 1970’s times.  Drug problems, sick band members, routing problems, missed flights, equipment truck breakdowns all contributed to missed shows back in the day.  Art and commerce were still somewhat separate then.   

“Let’s get a refund and see if the show’s rescheduled,” I said to Pat as we walked up the steps to Vet’s.  Weirdly, there was a full crew of ushers in the Vet’s lobby.  I walked up to one of the ushers who had been a friend of my dad’s (see last month’s Vet’s part 4 installment) and said, “Is the show cancelled?”  “No,” he said, tearing my ticket.  “Then why aren’t there any cars in the parking lot?” I asked.  “Because there aren’t any people in the venue,” he replied, pointing over his shoulder.

I just couldn’t figure any of this out as Pat and I crossed the deserted lobby & concession area and walked up the steps to our balcony seats.  (In those days I always bought front row balcony seats and brought a little portable Panasonic tape recorder to tape the shows on.  I put the recorder right on the balcony overhang and got great sound right off the stage with minimal crowd noise.  It was great.)  There were four people in the entire balcony: Pat & me and one other couple, who soon joined the “crowd” downstairs.

I couldn’t believe my eyes looking down at the main floor of Vet’s: the first ten rows weren’t even full.  The ENTIRE MAIN FLOOR was all but empty.  Ladies & gentlemen; that was not what happened at rock & roll shows in 1974.  Since the Woodstock Festival in 1969, rock & roll shows SOLD OUT Vet’s Memorial.  And it really didn’t much matter WHO PLAYED at Vet’s: it still sold out.  Aerosmith, Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band, Rush, Frank Zappa, Foghat, etc. all sold out Vet’s.  Christ, the fucking Mahavishnu Orchestra sold out Vet’s Memorial.  (But they had Aerosmith opening, that’s a whole other blog for another month.)    

Creem magazine – my Rock & Roll Bible of those days – had been telling me for over a year that The New York Dolls were The Next Big Thing, and I had no reason not to believe them.  As far as I knew, until that May evening, the Dolls were selling out 3000-seat venues (or bigger, I assumed, in cities like Boston, Detroit & L.A.).  This, folks, was definitely a rude awakening.

I really believed to my soul that 1974 was going to be the year that The Great Rock & Roll Reset would kick in.  (Reboot was not yet a term anyone outside a few scientist computer nerds in white lab coats would be familiar with.)  The New York Dolls would become the New Rolling Stones and Mick ‘n’ Keith & company would retire pleasantly to their English mansions and while away their remaining days playing cribbage, growing roses and/or shooting heroin; Mott The Hoople would become the New Bob Dylan and Mr. Zimmerman would live out his dotage in a Woodstock – the town, not the festival – idyll (actually, that very nearly happened); Elliott Murphy & Bruce Springsteen would be Assistant New Dylans, or at least replace the likes of Van Morrison and Crosby, Stills & Nash in the Singer/Songwriter Sweepstakes.  I wasn’t sure who The New Who were gonna be, because Cheap Trick hadn’t been invented yet to my knowledge, it was at least another year before I saw Rick & Robin and the boys open for some long-forgotten lame hard-rock act at the Columbus Agora. 

I wasn’t sure who The New Beatles were going to be.  I think I figured they were just Too Big, Too Outsized, Too Iconic to be replaced.  We would just have to do without.

So after an opening set by a seven-piece, all-female, funk/boogie band (with a horn section!) called Isis – no association with the current Mideast terrorist organization that I’m aware of, although they WERE torturous – The Dolls came out and, truthfully, THEY WERE WEAK.  It was the first time I realized that big-time rock critics might be ENTIRELY FULL OF SHIT.

The Dolls couldn’t BEGIN to fill up the big stage at Vet’s, they stayed crowded together like they were in a small club or a bar; the sound – because the huge Vet’s expanse was ESSENTIALLY EMPTY – was just boomy & terrible; and – worst of all – those motherfuckers just DID NOT KNOW how to play their instruments.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that was what all the 1960’s Batdorf & Rodney and Grateful Dead hippies that the Dolls were supposed to wipe off the face of the Earth said about them, but unfortunately – and I was an incredibly sympathetic first-hand witness, ready to give David Johansen & friends every benefit of the doubt – THEY COULD NOT PLAY.

Don’t get me wrong, the songs were – and still are right up to when I was blastin’ ‘em on CD today – great, but once Johnny Thunders & the gang got OUTSIDE of those song structures, they were finished.  Case in point, the Dolls went into a jam in the middle of “There’s Gonna Be A Showdown” from Too Much Too Soon and COULD NOT FIND THEIR WAY BACK INTO THE SONG!  They muddled around for a full minute while guitarists Sylvain Sylvain & Thunders and bassist Arthur Kane tried to find the beat, then just simply petered out to a full stop before drummer Jerry Nolan counted off 1-2-3-4! and they lurched back into the last verse.  It was humiliating.  To this day I have never witnessed a major band demonstrate that big a trainwreck onstage.  

I thought things would get better.  I desperately WANTED – almost PRAYED – for things to get better, thought maybe the band just had to get warmed-up, but it never got better.  At one point, while the band was pissing around between songs, trying to get their guitars in some semblance of tune, I yelled “DO SOMETHING AMAZING!” from the balcony.  Johansen looked up into the stage lights, almost smiled, then shook his head like he knew there wasn’t gonna be anything amazing to be had that night in Columbus.    

The first time I saw Kiss top-billed over the Dolls in Cleveland later that year, I knew things were all over.  I discerned from the beginning that Kiss was just Deep Purple or Uriah Heep in comic book get-up’s, but it didn’t matter.  It didn’t matter how good the Dolls songs or records were, if you couldn’t deliver the goods LIVE to the stoned, bluejeaned masses in the Great Midwest, all the rock critics on the East & West Coasts couldn’t save you.  (Further, my love for the 1973-1978 Aerosmith knows no bounds.  They pinched just enough from the Dolls – attitude-wise and fashion-wise – with the added bonus of ACTUALLY KNOWING HOW TO TUNE & PLAY THEIR INSTRUMENTS.) 

So here we are in the 21st century, in 2015.  The Who played Columbus last Friday night.  Bob Dylan played Columbus last Saturday night.  KANSAS, for fuck's sake, played Newark's Midland Theater a coupla weeks ago.  The Rolling Stones are playing May 30th.  Rush is playing June 8th.  We never exactly got that Rock & Roll Reset I was lookin’ for 41 years ago today.

Up to 1974 or so, rock & roll was a living, breathing thing: Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly & Little Richard gave way to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Velvet Underground and The Kinks who should’ve given way to Elliott Murphy, Mott The Hoople, The Modern Lovers, the Dwight Twilley Band and The New York Dolls, who would then have given way to some group of bands in the early 1980’s, and so on. 

Instead, right around 1975 the instigators of what would become Classic Rock Radio decided that we were all gonna listen to The Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and, yes, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Bob Dylan, and Rush for the REST OF OUR NATURAL LIVES.  And then – after we were sick enough of Bob Seger’s “Turn The Page” to puke in our mouths every time it came on Q-FM 96 – then we’d start puttin’ the songs in COMMERCIALS, thereby sucking every last iota of vitality, life & integrity of the Baby Boomer’s precious rock & roll.

I should’ve seen it coming that Sunday night in 1974, but I didn’t.  I see it now. – Ricki C. / May 17th, 2015 

(By the way, it was this 1974 Dolls show that sparked my "celebrity encounter" with David Johansen detailed in my Exchanging Pleasantries With David Johansen blog in Growing Old With Rock & Roll.)

Shows I Saw at Vet's Memorial May Honorable Mentions 

May 14th, 1968 / Cream

May 11th, 1969 / Janis Joplin & the Full Tilt Boogie Band

May 3rd, 1970 / Sly & the Family Stone (instead of attending my senior prom, exactly the right choice)

May 2nd, 1974 / The Mahavishnu Orchestra w/ Aerosmith opening (more on this in September)

Great Band, Worst Song: Mötley Crüe’s “Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)”

A new on-going feature on Pencil Storm, “Great Band, Worst Song,” will cover some of the best bands of rock n roll who squeaked out a rotten egg – a song so bad that it’s an embarrassment.  We kick off our first installment with our 80's hairband expert, Wal Ozello.

Mötley Crüe… the bad boys of rock ‘n roll. They lived the phrase “Sex, Drugs, and Rock ‘N Roll” to the extreme.  Two of their members had sex tapes which were made public: Vince Neil with a porn star and Tommy Lee with Pamela Anderson. Google their bass player, “Nikki Sixx and Overdose”, and you’ll get dozens of different stories when he overdosed on heroin and died… only to be revived so he could do more heroin. I mean, the guy was declared dead. Woke up and then went home to do more drugs.

These guys wrote raw hard rock… Shout At The Devil, Livewire, Looks That Kill, Wild Side, and a dozen other songs.  Even their covers, Helter Skelter and Smoking in the Boys Room, rocked harder than the originals.

One of their best albums, and their last good one, was Dr. Feelgood.  It had tracks like Kick Start My Heart and Dr. Feelgood that oozed out the sinister hard rock they were known for. Even the power ballad, Without You, had rawness to it that swung closer to metal, on the pop/metal continuum.

But the last song on this album, Don’t Go Away Mad (Just Go Away), sounds more like a New Kids On the Block song than something from the bad boys of rock n roll.  This song is just awful, even for a pop tune. It's got a dance beat and not a pump-your-fist-in-the-air beat. The acoustic intro is lame and the bass meanders like a 50's shoo-bop tune. The lyrics are cheesy and don't even make sense. If you’re a Mötley Crüe fan and think this song rocks then just imagine if Poison released it – you’d think it was worse than Unskinny Bop. Don’t Go Away Mad belongs on Flesh & Blood instead of Dr. Feelgood.

In a year when Guns N Roses dominated the airwaves with Welcome To The Jungle and Paradise City, the Crüe was singing about “two kids in love, trying to find our way.” That lyric sounds like it came from a Milli Vanili song and not from the guys who wrote about skydiving naked from an airplane.

I’m convinced it was this song that ruined Mötley Crüe and hard rock forever.  Somewhere in Seattle a young Kurt Cobain listed to Don’t Go Away Mad and thought, “This is shit. This band is over,” then sat down and wrote Smells Like Teen Spirit.

And that wasn’t just the end of Mötley Crüe. It was the end of heavy metal and hard rock.

Wal Ozello, a child of the 80s, is the former singer of the Columbus hairband Armada. He's the author of the science fiction time travel books Assignment 1989 and Revolution 1990 and a frequent customer at Colin's Coffee.

A Blinn Family Reunion: The Handsome Machine and Black Leather Touch Play @ Art For Your Ears, Delaware, This Saturday - by Ricki C.

Rock & roll has attained an age in which I am now watching the CHILDREN of rockers I grew up with taking the stage.

I guess it started in the 1990’s when Jeff Buckley came on the scene, and I had to pay attention, having really liked his father Tim’s folk-rock balladeer act when I was a teenager in the 1960’s.  Teddy Thompson – son of Richard & Linda Thompson, an act I WORSHIPPED in the 1970’s – followed in the 2000’s, and now here we are in the second decade of the 21st century with homegrown Columbus father/daughter team, the Blinn’s.

Erica Blinn leads The Handsome Machine, probably my favorite rock & roll act in Columbus, Ohio, that doesn’t pay me to say that (as opposed to my employers, Watershed and Colin Gawel & the Lonely Bones).   Erica and the guys stomp, shout & work it all out on a set of originals that is the equal of virtually any band I’ve witnessed in Columbus, and could hold their own nationwide, for that matter.

I’d watch a hundred nights of this band: I’d watch Erica belt out her incredibly well-written tunes like the bastard girl-child of Rod Stewart & Chrissie Hynde;  I’d watch her peel out her rhythm guitar parts from a low-slung Fender Tele like a Harley winding out on a Midwest dirt-track;  I’d watch her wail harmonica solos like she was born on the South Side of Chicago rather than the West Side of Columbus, Ohio;  I’d watch PJ Schreiner bash out drum-pounding fever/beats behind her while simultaneously pitching in note-perfect harmonies along with bass player Mark Nye;  I’d watch guitarist Greg Wise melting faces in the front row with incendiary riffs straight outta the Keith Richards/Fred “Sonic” Smith school of lead guitar, yet ultimately fresh, new, up-to-date and ROCKIN’.  And I’d watch Will Newsome over there stage-right, unassumedly knocking out riffs and solos like the second coming of Mick Taylor from 1972.

And Erica’s just the KID half of the equation.

Her father Jerry Blinn was one-quarter of Black Leather Touch, my second favorite late-1970’s Columbus rock & roll act.  (Hey, c’mon, Willie Phoenix was leading Romantic Noise at the height of his powers at that time; they HAD to be my favorite.)  Black Leather Touch played a no-nonsense brew of originals and kick-ass covers that took in the best of 70’s hard-rock: from The Rolling Stones to Ted Nugent to their big-brother band The Godz, plus a slew of Chuck Berry & Jerry Lee Lewis, just to illustrate they knew their roots.  To a song, Black Leather Touch did ‘em all justice.  And their cover of Garland Jeffrey’s Stones-esque “Wild In The Streets” was truly a thing of rock & roll beauty.  (For a contemporaneous review I did of a Black Leather Touch show in 1978 – when they opened for Steppenwolf, of all people, 10 years past that band’s “Born To Be Wild” prime – check out Three Easy Pieces in my earlier blog, Growing Old With Rock & Roll.)

I saw the reunified/reconstituted Black Leather Touch last summer at some Delaware bash and singer/guitarist Tom Cash, bassist Jerry Blinn, his twin brother & lead guitarist Garry Blinn and drummer Greg Hall were just as solid as they were in their long-ago, halcyon late-70’s heyday.  I couldn’t stop smilin’.  I couldn’t help rockin’.     

This Saturday evening – May 16th, 2015 – The Handsome Machine and Black Leather Touch will appear at Art For Your Ears, an adjunct of the Delaware Arts Festival in historic downtown Delaware, Ohio, home of Ohio Wesleyan University.  Music kicks off at 6 pm with Delyn Christian, followed by Hootie McBoob, followed by the daughter/father rockin’ of the Blinn family.  (Full disclosure: I’m stage-managing this show in my capacity as roadie-for-hire around town.  In no way, shape or form does that have any influence on one word I’ve written here.  I consider it a gloriously happy accident that I’m getting paid to work a show I’d do for free, or, furthermore, would PAY to see.)   

It’s gonna be Saturday night rock & roll on a gorgeous Midwest evening.  You could do worse with your Saturday night.  Take the road trip to Delaware. - Ricki C. / May 12th, 2015.
 

Art For Your Ears takes place Saturday, May 16th, 2015, adjacent to the Delaware Arts Festival.
Music kicks off at 6 pm, goes to about 11 pm.  Admission is free, whattya got to lose?

The Point Is Playing at Bernie's on Monday. You Need to Get to The Point - by Ricki C.

When Dave Masica first joined Watershed in 1998, I really couldn’t believe my eyes and ears.  “Where did you find this guy?” I asked Colin, marveling at how good a drummer Dave was and how lucky they were to find him to replace Herb Schupp (a noted skins-basher in his own right).  “Oh, Dave was in some band that opened for us in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and when Herb left we called him up.”

I totally believed that story right up until sometime in 2005 when I joined the Watershed road crew and casually asked Dave at breakfast one morning somewhere in the south what band he was in before Watershed, up in Michigan.  “Whaaat?” Dave replied, perplexed, “I was never in a band in Michigan.”  “Colin told me you were in a band from the U.P. that opened for Watershed and they scooped you right into the van after a show.”  “No, that’s total Colin bullshit,” Dave replied, “I was in The Point before Watershed.”  “THAT’S where I know you from,” I said, “I saw The Point a bunch of times.  I always thought you looked familiar.  You guys were GREAT.”

The Point epitomized my central idea of rock & roll: that rock & roll should be Deadly Serious Fun.  All of my favorite rock bands from the very beginning – The Lovin’ Spoonful, The Who, Mott The Hoople, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, The Dictators – were simultaneously intensely serious rockers with an equally killer sense of humor: Deadly Serious Fun.  They didn’t take themselves too seriously, and they rocked like motherfuckers.

The Point – in their 1985-1990 heyday – were that kind of band.  They would romp through their sets at Bernie’s or the Alrosa Villa (and, for that matter, they might have been the ONLY Columbus band to regularly play BOTH of those venues) playing a bizarre mix of originals like “Suzie,” “Big Dead Gay Vampire Monsters,” “Lemmings” and “Men Are Pigs” (their big hit song) with covers that ranged – in a single set – from Deep Purple to Devo to Cheap Trick.  They were the only band I ever saw that played a Broadway show tune (The Beatles’ cover of “‘Til There Was You”) AND Nick Lowe’s “Heart Of The City” IN SUCCESSION and made it work.  They were a killer power trio that could blend power-pop, metal & punk like they were meant to be blended. They were a throwback to an earlier, infinitely more innocent and great time in rock & roll when bands PLAYED SONGS THEY LIKED, no matter who originated them or whether they fit into any kind of “format.”

I must have seen The Point – “Merv,” “Greed” & “Dixon” by (nick)name – 20 times in that five year period and never once SET OUT to see them.  They would just kinda appear from nowhere in front of me when I was out for the night on campus or up north at Alrosa, and they were never once less than white-hot GREAT and hilarious.  But this was no joke band, my friend, those fuckers could PLAY.  (This was roughly the same period of time I would go see Jim Johnson, Mike Parks & Phil Stokes in a band called The Retreads that mined a similar, though marginally more serious, style of Deadly Serious Fun rock & roll.)  

Anyway, I could go on like this all day about The Point, but here’s all you gotta know: I know it’s tough to get your sorry rock & roll asses out of the house on a Monday night to go see a band, but The Point is starting at 8 pm; and campus isn’t far from anywhere in Columbus; and the “Gotham” season finale was last week, so really, what have you got better to do on a Monday evening than have a coupla beers and go see some Deadly Serious Rock & Roll?  C’mon, people, in the words of Ian Hunter: “Just get yourself out on the street.”

Get to The Point. - Ricki C. / May 8th, 2015

The Point will play at Bernie’s Distillery,1896 N. High Street, just across the street from 
the Wexner Center on the O.S.U. campus, at 8 pm on Monday May, 11th, 2015. 
There’s no cover, admission is FREE, so whattya got to complain about? 

Ricki C. Turns Down a Roadie Job With The Replacements

Click here for previous Mats' article - "Tommy Stinson is the George Harrison of the Replacements"

It was the winter of 1984, I had just left my day-job at Ross Laboratories in January.  (Ross Labs, by the way, was simultaneously my highest paying AND easiest warehouse job ever, but also came with a boss who once called me into his office and told me, quote – “I am going to make it so you don’t have one single interest outside of this job.” – when I dragged-ass into work one too many Monday mornings after roadie-ing for Willie Phoenix & the Shadowlords all weekend.  He was wrong.  I quit.)  One cold morning in February I got a phone call from Curt Schieber, who was then the co-owner of Schoolkids Records on campus and local promoter of “alternative” rock shows.  (Curt is currently the host of Invisible Hits Hour Sunday nights on CD 102.5.)

It seems The Replacements were headed from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Columbus for a show that week when their van broke down.  They had it towed to Krieger Ford on the West Side and the band was all crashing at Curt’s house.  (We should get Curt to write an entire separate blog about the amount of damage done to his home by the band that week.)  (Also the amount of drugs & alcohol ingested by said band.)  Anyway, the band’s manager – Peter Jesperson – needed to run errands that day, Curt knew I wasn’t working and asked if I wanted to make a quick $50 driving Jesperson around all day.  (Note: asking an unemployed West Side boy if he wants to make a quick $50 is like asking Colin if he wants a beer at a gig.)

I picked Jesperson up around 11 am at Curt’s house near campus.  The band was splayed around the living room in sleeping bags, sound asleep & snoring.  I don’t really remember all the places we had to go that day, but at one point we drove out to see how the van repair was coming along at Krieger.  Peter decided while we were there that we might as well get a load of laundry together so we could hit a laundromat.  When he slid open the side door of the van I couldn’t believe my eyes: EVERY SURFACE of that van was covered with beer cans, liquor bottles, fast-food wrappers, cigarette butts, porn magazines & other sundry garbage.  We literally COULD NOT TOUCH the actual floor of the van from the dashboard to the back door as Peter & I bundled around picking through the debris for articles of clothing: a flannel shirt here, some t-shirts there, jeans spread around everywhere.  (I wouldn’t TOUCH the underwear; that was their manager’s job, as I saw it.  I was only makin’ fifty bucks.) 

By that point, in 1984, I had been a musician since I was 16 years old in 1968, a roadie since 1978.  I had been in a LOT of band vans, and I had NEVER laid eyes on anything like the condition of that vehicle.

By the end of the day, Jesperson and I were getting along like old buddies from the war.  He mentioned that Curt had told him I was a roadie and a recovering alcoholic.  Jesperson said they were looking for somebody sober to drive the van and help roadie the shows, offered me the job.  My family was proudly Italian, I had started drinking wine with dinner at age 12, mixed-drinks by 14 with total parental approval.  I was solidly an alcoholic from 16 to 30.  And I just couldn’t get the sight of the floor of that van out of my head.  I KNEW I hadn’t been sober long enough, knew I wasn’t strong enough to counter that brand of temptation.  (I had moved from the West Side to up around Northland just to put some literal distance between me and my old drinking buddies.)  

The Replacements stayed at Curt’s house for a week on that tour – renting vans each day to make it to gigs in Ohio & Kentucky, and then driving back to Columbus to crash – until their van was repaired.  Looking back, I should have gone along on those short hauls just to see if my sobriety would hold up.  But I didn’t: shoulda, coulda, woulda.  

I have very few rock & roll regrets in this life: one of them is turning down a job writing for England’s New Musical Express in 1978; the other, perhaps bigger, regret is not being smart enough or strong enough to become a roadie for The Replacements in 1984. – Ricki C. / Sept. 10th, 2014.

ps. It's been brought to my attention that my contributions to Replacements Week here at Pencilstorm might lead people to believe that I'm not that crazy about Westerberg & the guys.  NOTHING could be further from the truth.  From the very first time I heard "I'm In Trouble" in some now-forgotten campus record store - remember when you could still discover great new music IN A RECORD STORE? - I was hooked.  And, as time went on and Westerberg's songwriting got better & better - from "Take Me Down To The Hospital" > "Unsatisfied" > "Kiss Me On The Bus" > "Left Of The Dial" > "Within Your Reach" > "Here Comes A Regular" > "I'll Be You" - CHRIST, what more are you gonna ask for than that from one guy from Minneapolis?  Plus the fact that Westerberg could move effortlessly from "Alex Chilton" to "Skyway" - from flat-out rocker to killer ballad - in the same breath and on the same album, put him in a league with Pete Townshend, Ray Davies, Ian Hunter & Bruce Springsteen, four of my other all-time favorite rock & roll songwriters.    

I just wish they'd've rehearsed a little more, or drank a little less, or tried a little harder when they played live.

pps. Apropos of the Replacements appearance on Jimmy Fallon's show earlier in the week, and the song "Alex Chilton" in general: The Westerberg line (which I love, make no mistake) "Children by the millions wait for Alex Chilton when he comes 'round" is either the hugest overstatement or the biggest lie ever rendered in a rock & roll lyric.  I would venture to say that even at the peak of the popularity of The Box Tops - when "The Letter" hit Number One in 1967 and was awarded a gold record - that children by the millions DID NOT, in fact, wait for Alex Chilton when he came 'round-'ound.  I think even Alex Chilton would have concurred.  But God bless Paul Westerberg for making the claim.  (Conversely, the bridge-statement/advice - "Never travel far / Without a little Big Star" - might be the TRUEST, MOST ACCURATE rock & roll lyric ever penned.) - Ricki C. / Sept. 13th, 2014.

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