I Just Came From the Big Star Movie.....by Ricki C.

I just came from the Big Star movie at Colin and Brian Phillips' Reelin' & Rockin' Series at the Gateway Theater.   It's a pretty great movie.  You should go see it when it opens at the Gateway for its regular run, I think in September.  (Johnny DiLoretto, a little help?)

Anyway, as I was driving home under a gorgeous full moon I was thinking about the parallels between Big Star's and Watershed's careers.  They were both power pop bands from out-of-the-way locales.  (Let's face it, when Big Star emerged in 1972, Memphis hadn't exactly been a hotbed of rock & roll since the  mid-1950's heyday of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Sam Phillips' groundbreaking Sun Studios.)  Big Star's No. 1 Record  came out in the middle of heavy-metal, prog-rock & the sensitive singer/songwriter boom of early 70's America, and was promptly buried underneath all that musical mediocrity.  Who needed a cool Beatle-esque pop band with great lyrics and killer harmonies when you could gobble a handful of 'ludes and nod out to Led Zep or a 15-minute drum solo from Foghat.   (As a matter of fact I heard Black Sabbath's "Paranoid" on the Newark oldies station on my drive home and thought, "Jesus, why couldn't this be "When My Baby's Beside Me"  or "Thirteen" instead?)  Watershed's Twister  was released in 1995 as the Seattle grunge juggernaut was crushing everything in its path, with its lyrical themes of "Give up your dreams, kids, all is death & misery, kneel & listen as we pummel you with our ponderous fusion of heavy-metal & bad punk."  That's not rock & roll.  

Oddly, the very first conversation I ever had with Colin Gawel back in 1990 when I was a roadie for Willie Phoenix and Watershed was Willie's opening band at Ruby Tuesday's touched on Big Star.  Watershed had just delivered a killer set of mostly new material - including "Rise," their first TRULY GREAT song - and I said to Colin, "So do you guys listen to Big Star, The Scruffs, The Records and all those other 70's power-pop bands?"  (I knew Willie was producing the guys.  I figured he had hooked them up with the bands Willie and I had bonded over back in 1978.)  Colin just kinda looked down at his shoes and mumbled, "Uh no, mostly we listen to Kiss and Rush and Triumph."  "Triumph!?!" I said/scolded, and that pretty much ended the conversation.  (Years later, after I became a member of Watershed's road crew and recounted the conversation to Colin - which he had no memory of - in the band van, Colin admitted he had never even HEARD of Big Star at that point and that he only mentioned Triumph because he considered them an obscure rock name to conjure with.)

The most striking difference in the Big Star and Watershed stories, though, is how SAD the Big Star story turns out.  The band descended from the lofty heights of 1972's No. 1 Record and 1973's truly sublime Radio City  to the depths of Third/Sister Lovers in 1975, just two short years later.  Three of the original four members have left this life, well before their time.     

Watershed, however, have just kept plugging away in the 20 years since they were dropped by major label Sony.  They made arguably their best album - 2002's The More It Hurts, The More It Works - 15 years into their career, and possibly their second-best, Brick & Mortar, just last year in 2012, 25 years in.  Not a bad record (pun intended) of creative longevity for a rock & roll band.   But nobody in Watershed has died, or had their careers cut short by drugs & alcohol, so no movie.  The band's biggest casualty to date, drummer Dave Masica, screwed up his back working his day-job as a cook at a country club.  Not exactly Gimme Shelter-level cinematic material.        

I realize that some readers out there might find this incredibly self-serving, coming from a member of the band's road crew, but I was a Watershed fan long before and for many more years than I've been an employee of the group, and I just wanna say this: Thank you Colin, Joe, Herb & Dave (and Pooch & Joe Peppercorn) for the music and  for the memories.  

I just came from the Big Star movie, and while it vividly demonstrates that there is no justice in rock & roll, it also eminently demonstrates that there are many heart-loads of wonder. - Ricki C. / August 21st, 2013. 

Just Seven Days Can Make Your Kid Smarter and Your Vacations Better

My son Owen returns to school this week to begin 4th grade. It has been an amazing summer full of baseball, swimming and sleeping in. Alas, the clock has struck fall so it is time again to line up in rows and do as you are told.  Everybody says, "Summer went too fast" and while it certainly feels this way, the fact is, summer is actually a little too long. We would all be much better served to chop it down to size a bit. There are two reasons why this is the right call. One, it is better for the kids and two, it is better for the parents.

Let's start with the kids. I'm not going to go all Malcolm Gladwell on you, but the fact is that long breaks from school have an adverse effect on a student's ability to retain and build on previously learned information. This isn't an opinion open to discussion, it is a stone cold fact supported by all kinds of nerdy types wearing white lab coats. 

Or put another way, imagine school as a treadmill for your brain. Is it better to workout hard for nine months and then spend three months not breaking a sweat, or take more numerous, smaller breaks through out the year? Pretty simple answer huh? By taking such a long break, you basically have to start over instead of picking up closer to the progress when you left off. After such a long layoff, you hit the treadmill and run out of breathe very quickly. The first month is spent just getting back to where you were when you stopped. 

But enough about the educational benefits of a shorter summer, when was the last time anybody in America made decisions based on educational benefits anyway? That's like taking somebody out for a salad. Just doesn't happen. Let's get down to brass tacks..

A shorter summer would allow parents more flexibility when planning vacations throughout the rest of the year. Also, we wouldn't spent the last two weeks of August getting on each other's nerves waiting for school to start. Summer ends long before it "ends" if you know what I mean. Let's just get back after it sooner and save those days for later in the school year when  when they have more value.

I'm not about to propose some wacky, probably highly effective year round school schedule used by Sweden or somewhere like that. No sir. If i know one thing about us human types, it is that change scares the shit out of us. Remember how terrified we used to be of freed slaves, heavy metal lyrics and gay marriage? Turns out they were no big deal after all. But just to be on the safe side, let's start slow by only knocking seven days off the summer and see where that gets us? Just seven days. 

For starters we have a no brainer. Thanksgiving week the kids have three days off: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Let's throw two days down so now everybody has the full Thanksgiving week off. Want to visit family but find it stressful to jam all that traveling into a long weekend? Not anymore. Now you will have Nov23-Dec 1st free to make your plans. Why do we even bother to have school on Monday and Tuesday of that week anyway? Just concede nothing is getting done and make it a full week off.

Ok, that leaves us with 5 days to throw around. It seems to me that different schools having different spring breaks is a source of aggravation. Or it sounds that way at the coffee shop anyway. Maybe we put a week in around that time? People who work/study at Ohio State have different schedule than their kids/family so maybe we spend the five days there? Or.. I can tell you in our family, we like to take our niece with us somewhere over spring break but because she attends a Catholic School, our break time doesn't match up and it makes for a difficult situation. Maybe that would be a good spot? So to summarize:

Owen has spring break Mar31st-April4th. We could use our five days to add an extra week of spring break . We could choose to line-up with Ohio State's break which is Mar11-15th or with the Catholic school schedule which is the week of Easter April21-25th. Either is cool with me.

So by just knocking off seven days of summer, families can have a full week of Thanksgiving travel time and an extra week of spring break for travel flexibility. Wouldn't this be a better use of time than the wasted, lazy days of the summertime blues?

Oh, and it's better for the kids.  

Just a thought anyway. 

Colin Gawel plays in Watershed and writes things for Pencilstorm when business is slow at Colin's Coffee. His son Owen goes to Upper Arlington Schools and is damn lucky he does.  To learn more about Colin and other contributors to Pencilstorm please click here

Commercials, Rock & Roll and The Decline of Western Civilization

I watch a lot of television.  I have no problem admitting that.  As such, I wind up watching a lot of commercials (especially if I can’t reach the remote).  I will now proceed to complain about those commercials.

“Every day more people connect face to face on the iPhone than any other phone.” – quote from a currently running iPhone commercial.

NO, NO, NO, THAT’S NOT FUCKING TRUE.  IF YOU ARE TALKING ON AN iPHONE, THAT IS NOT CONNECTING FACE TO FACE.  YOU ARE TALKING INTO A MACHINE, AND THE PERSON YOU’RE TALKING TO IS TALKING INTO A DIFFERENT MACHINE. YOU ARE NOT CONNECTING FACE TO FACE! 

Look, it doesn’t matter how much soothing/tinkling/new-age piano music is oh-so-discreetly, dreamily playing behind the dialogue that is wholly attempting to tug at your heartstrings and get you to believe you’re actually COMMUNICATING FACE TO FACE with another human being on your iPhone, you’re not, YOU’RE TALKING ON A CELLPHONE, just like millions of people before you have.

Further, from another iPhone ad: “Every day more people get their music on the iPhone than any other phone.”  Yeah, congrats kids, you’re getting thin, incredibly compressed, bad-sounding Robin Thicke tunes in total isolation on your little earbuds, oblivious to the world around you while you bump into me walking down the street. 

Make no mistake, I am entirely aware that I’m in full anti-technology Grumpy Old Guy, Drunk-Uncle-From-Saturday-Night-Live mode here, but I don’t care, these commercials presenting iPhones as some kind of soulful, heartwarming means of communication are just the worst kind of patronizing, false advertising.  And that (ostensibly, it’s all subjective) adorable little boy who kisses his iPhone and then grins so big – I hope he gets brain cancer from that too-close contact with his machine.  (Author’s note: My lovely wife Debbie – who edits my Pencilstorm blogs as well as the large majority of my entries on   Growing Old With Rock & Roll – and my good friend Kyle both asked me to take out the “wishing brain cancer on an innocent child” reference, but in the end I found that, in all good faith, I just could not.  That kid’s parents put him in that video for a quick buck from their soulless Corporate Masters and they must now live with the consequences of that decision.  On second thought, I think I'll wish brain cancer on the parents, in the hopes that at some point they were stupid enough to kiss their iPhones.)

Other commercial comments: Jim Steinman – the songwriter responsible for Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell records, among others, and the man instrumental (pun intended) for Colin getting signed to Epic Records in the 90’s (read all about it in Joe Oestreich’s excellent Watershed band bio Hitless Wonder) – seems to be conducting a fire sale of his material for commercial considerations.  He’s got “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That)” in an M&M’s ad and sold out Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” for some fiber bar.  (And he even let them change the lyrics to that tune, to include a fiber bar reference.  Weak.)

By my calculation, Mr. Steinman has sold approximately eleventeen million bazillion copies of Bat Out Of Hell and they play Mr. Loaf’s “Two Out Of Three Ain’t Bad” and/or “Paradise By The Dashboard Light” on Classic Rock Radio approximately every 23 minutes, thus he shouldn’t be hurting for cash, so WHY, Jim, WHY?  When is enough money enough money?  (In my household this is known as The Pete Townshend Selling His Ass To The Highest Bidder Conundrum.)

Finally, I see that Jake Bugg, “alternative” artist who was recently extolled by (the now useless, irrelevant, antiquated) Rolling Stone magazine as a “New Dylan” is hawking Gatorade with his tune “Lightning Bolt,” apparently primarily because Gatorade sports (pun intended) a lightning bolt on its label.  Is it too much to ask for ANYONE to have a little integrity in this Commercial World?  And I fully realize that even Bob Dylan himself appeared in a Victoria’s Secret commercial in 2004, but only because he was provided, as compensation for that ad, with 72 virgin models by the lingerie manufacturer.  (And where did Victoria’s Secret even FIND 72 models who were virgins?) - Ricki C. / August 18th, 2013.  

Ricki C likes himself a good rant. Learn more about him and other Pencilstorm contributors by clicking here. 

A Prayer for Breaking Bad. Kill Skyler. by Tommy C.

You know, Breaking Bad, it's kind of  like I’m Conan and you’re his Barbarian God Crom – I've never prayed to you, and you don’t mind because you wouldn’t like it anyway.

It's awkward for both of us, I'm sure. And why would you need prayers in the first place? You’re already kicking ass. Absolutely nobody's questioning that.

No, I come to you with full faith in your writing, and your actors. I know they won’t fail us, and humanity knows it, too. You’re the Greatest Show Ever, and your ending will make us all grab our faces and scream, and then run out into the street still screaming about how awesome it was.

I know that you won’t abuse yourself with normal Big Series Endings, that you’ll avoid the Newhart Ending, where Walt wakes up on the couch with the cast of Malcom in the Middle running around him banging pots and pans together. And I know you’ll avoid the LOST ending, where all the characters go and have pizza in a parallel universe and agree that the show was never about crime or meth or tightly-woven plotlines, but was instead about several hundred classic works of literature.

And I know that the characters won’t just go out to dinner someplace and then you turn the camera off.

No, I come to you with respect, Breaking Bad, like the dude came to the Godfather and yes, I have a favor, something I need from you that only you can provide. Something the whole world needs at this exact time in television history.

Something I beg of you, sir, as your humble and faithful follower.

I want you to kill Skyler, Breaking Bad.

I hate her so much that I frequently find myself screaming obscenities at her image on the screen. I have to rewind it a lot when she’s poking around for stuff to do. Please kill her.

Pretty, pretty please, Breaking Bad?

I mean, I don’t want to micromanage. I understand that you probably have to have Hank nearly get Walt but then get killed in a very tricky way by Walt, who then appears to get away but then Jesse shows up and shoots him, ironically using all the amoral cunning and criminal experience he gained teaming up with Walt in the first place. And I understand that at the end, Walt’s annoying son gets a stack of cash – sure.

But kill Skyler. And I mean like, kill her when she’s in the act of being an irritating moron, that would be the most satisfying thing, like she walks into some deadly trap Walt set up for say, Hank. Explodes or maybe gets her head cut off by some sheet metal, or she’s eaten alive by pigs or insects. You're a very original show - go nuts.

That’d be great. Hallowed be thy name. Don’t forget to kill Skyler. See you Sunday.

Tommy C. is a man of mystery who writes the acclaimed blog "The Curse of Future Tom". You can learn more about him and others on our contributors page. 

Shark Attack Obsession! by Johnny DiLoretto

I spend a lot of time thinking about sharks.

Let me rephrase. For a guy who lives in the middle of Ohio, doesn’t travel much, and never goes into the ocean, I spend a lot of time thinking about sharks.

Yes, it’s all because of Jaws, but, more than fear, Jaws inspired in me a lifelong fascination with sharks. Can’t get enough of ‘em. Love to learn about claspers and the ampullae of Lorenzini and all that.  Look those up and thank me later. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clasper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampullae_of_Lorenzini

Photos like this are hypnotizing. You know, you could be in there...

I should also clarify that in addition to thinking about sharks, I think a lot about being eaten by a shark. Now, the Washington Post just published an article about this and here are the latest numbers: “Last year, 80 unprovoked shark strikes took place worldwide: Seven resulted in deaths, including one in California. Fifty-three strikes took place in U.S. waters, nearly half of them off Florida.”

That’s more than enough to justify my anti-frolicking-in-the-surf stance. By the way, this is also a guy who loves to fish from the shore when we vacation in the Outer Banks. And while I’m safely fishing from the beach, I intently follow all the swimmers just waiting for one of them to do that horrible jerking thing right before they’re tugged under in a gush of froth and blood.  

I know I have a better chance of being felled by a wheat penny dropped from the Empire State Building than I do of being attacked by a shark, but I’m not interested in the numbers really. Shark attacks are inevitable. They are inevitable because people go into the ocean, and there are sharks in the ocean. If sharks were found in Crate and Barrel, people would be attacked while they were shopping for sofas and flatware.

So, a couple times a year I will see the inevitable news story about someone being bitten and/or killed by a shark. I then eagerly post the story on Facebook and Twitter with an added, and I’m paraphrasing, “I told you so.” Whenever I post these shark-attack stories, beach-lovers and saltwater-swimming enthusiasts everywhere comment to the effect that I’m an idiot; that these attacks are so rare I have nothing to worry about; that more people die in car accidents every year than they do by shark attacks, and so on and so forth.

But this is the reasoning of people who, if they were fictional, would end up dead first in a horror movie.

Yes, it's Photoshopped, but you get the idea. It could happen to you..

First of all, their argument doesn’t hold up. Let me see if I have this right: More people are killed by cars than sharks, so why aren’t I afraid of cars? That's their reasoning? Well, for one, a car won't fucking eat you. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. OK, it’s unlikely, I get it, but why play that particular lottery? We play the good lottery, the big cash payout, change-your-life lottery, because despite the astronomical odds we just might win millions of dollars. But why play the bad, possibly decapitated, lose-your-life lottery? The odds are equally astronomical but if you win this one --- you get eaten by a shark. Congrats. You're a torso. 

That’s ridiculous. If you absolutely insist, by some misguided logic, on playing some variation of lethal lottery,  why not play the golf-club-in-a-thunderstorm lottery. At least you're in one piece when that one's over. 

This is the shark equivalent of having a rain cloud over you.

But, just for kicks, let’s examine this car-shark argument a bit closer. First of all, as I've mentioned, a car won’t eat you. It’s not like you’re walking down the street and suddenly a car swerves off the road, grabs you in its grill and starts thrashing back and forth, tearing off a huge piece of you before casually pulling back onto the road and driving away.

Furthermore, for this shark-car analogy to actually make any sense, we’d have to be driving sharks. And, well, now that’s just Crazy Talk.

This is not Photoshopped. This is really a man being eaten by a car. 

The bottom line is that because automobiles are manmade and because they're one of the most common things we see on a daily basis, they just don't inspire terror. We spend a lot more time in the presence of cars than sharks, so of course we're more likely to be killed by a car. In any event, I would rather die in a car accident than by shark attack. In other words, I’d rather die by blunt force trauma than by being crushed and torn apart in the gaping maw of a ruthless carnivore.

Here’s another, different way of looking at the problem. Why risk it because we may just have it coming... Humans kill more than 100 million sharks a year for no good reason, so maybe shark attacks, which are on the rise globally, are just the animals’ way of trying to even the score. I may be scared shitless of them, but I’m definitely on the sharks' side. I'm with them. Absolutely, I would attack someone if I was a shark too. With pleasure. I’d be like – “look at this guy - dicking around in my territory, swimming, splashing, flailing around like an idiot with his dopey limbs and tacky board shorts. What balls on this guy – killing 100 million of us every year for soup and he comes into my ocean? Screw this guy.” Then wham, I’d clamp down on his ribs.

Just a little food for thought. And, now, for your reading pleasure - a brief history of shark attacks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/6984067/Worlds-10-worst-shark-attacks.html

Johnny DiLoretto thinks a lot about sharks. You can read his top notch story about the  the movie JAWS by clicking here. Also check out our contributors page to learn more by  clicking here.

Superchunk in 45 Minutes or Less

No, it's been about a month since you posted something.

Speaking of a month, in less than a month Superchunk will release a new album called I Hate Music.

I learned of Superchunk from listening to fIREHOSE. They covered "Slack Motherfucker" live ("It's about working for an ass-hole," Mike Watt would bellow.), but it wasn't until the song was included on their Live Totem Pole EP that I knew what and who I was looking for.

I liked what I heard on Superchunk's debut, "Slack Motherfucker"'s home.  After a few listens, I came away with some favorite songs but nothing to send me racing for more.

A couple years went by.  Superchunk released Here's Where the Strings Come In.  I gave them another try, with similar, yet slighter, results.  I came away with some songs I thought were decent, but the rest, I didn't care for at all.

Several years went by.  Superchunk released Here's to Shutting Up.   My love for albums titles beginning with the contraction "Here's" was at it's pinnacle.  I couldn't resist giving Superchunk one last shot.  The album was much more mellow than their debut, but the songs were a lot better than Strings.  I was satisfied.  However, I wasn't inspired to dig any further into their catalogue.

Many years went by, and the music scene began to see acts from the early 90's reunite and tour and sometimes release new material.  While Superchunk never broke up, they hadn't toured or released an album since Here's to Shutting Up.  

Enter: Majesty Shredding.  Fifteen seconds into the first track, I was questioning everything I felt about Superchunk.  That song, that album.  Great and great.  I was hooked.  To their back catalogue!  

Oh, the years I wasted not listening to Superchunk.  This whole time I was playing a losing game of Battleship, missing the albums that would have made me an fan: On the Mouth, Foolish, Come Pick Me Up, Indoor Living.  I just didn't know it.

Well, everything is good with me now.  I'm worried about you, though.  So, I've put together a Superchunk sampler that you can listen to here though Spotify. It's just the tip of the Superchunk iceberg, but it should get you ready for I Hate Music when it's released on August 20th.

Rob Braithwaite writes stuff for Pencilstorm. Learn more about him and our other contributors by clicking here.

The live cover that started it all... 

And the song that got my mind right...