The Colt 45 Chronicle #76

It is NFL Week Four Sunday, which means if I am going to live up to my pledge and be done by the end of the season with this old letter project, the one I have dubbed "The Colt 45 Chronicle" after my beer of choice consumed while writing these epistles 25-years ago, I might have to start posting two a week. An audit of the remaining letters is called for at least to get a count. So far I have just been selecting them off the top. No culling, no cherry picking, no organization.

The letter below, addressed to my friends Greg and Tresca, is concerned primarily with the necessity of new music, pursuing new sounds. My wife and I often acted as hosts, and one my principal duties was as disc jockey. I liked to have the latest "leader of the pack," whether at the time it was Sonic Youth, or The Pogues or The Pixies, and then embed that in a foundation of Bob Dylan, Neil Young and The Velvet Underground.

I was reminded of the importance of fresh sounds this morning on a run around Lake Union. A couple years back I downloaded a free 2011 Merge Records sampler, on which appears a song, "Civilian" by Wye Oak. It shuffled on my iPod while I was working down the parking lots that line the lake just east of Westlake Avenue:

I close the letter with an expression of love. Greg and Tresca were important to me because they seemed to be doing their own thing. They were refuseniks. They worked but didn't believe that it would amount to anything. They drank. Greg was a tremendous athlete. A big guy at 6'3" or 6'4" and over 210 lbs. Drinking was what they did, drinking and listening to music.

Winter 1989

I finally shelled for some new music. It happened last Monday, down on Broadway and West 4th Street. It was a Monday, but I wasn't working; and the snow was sure snowing. But I braved it all -- the avoidance of worklife and the sloshing in West Village snow streets (like the cover of The Free Wheelin' Bob Dylan, Levi's feeling much too thin) -- so I could get some new music in my life, or at least some music that I hadn't heard for quite a while. 

Too many times in the near past I have found myself overcome, forlorn, because none of the stuff I have does the trick anymore. You know, people come over, bring a few bottles of wine or some quarts of beer (some of Ashley's med-school chums -- though, sadly, not very often; it's usually I who does most of the bringing) and you want to put something on that sparks, that inspires, that captures the mood, but you don't have anything. Sure, you have the old standards, the solid-and-always-reliable: the B.Dylan and N.Young and L.Reed and J.Rotten (everybody knows 'em and everybody loves 'em). But as your're fingering through the pile, you realize/know that they don't cut it, not when you're trying to get people up. People feel too secure around them, too normal and historical, like a high school yearbook; they've got too many memories, too many stories and sorrows attached to each tune you put on the turntable. It's like trying to get people to beer bong and dance, shoot a tequila shot and smoke a joint, all while eating Christmas dinner in the parents' living room and wishing mother a happy birthday, the bright light shooting off the freshly painted white walls down to your white china platter with the slice of white breast meat and the sliver of dark, the patch of stuffing and mash potatoes pig-penned in turkey-neck gravy, the cranberry sauce breeding on the perimeter. 

Music, I hope, isn't supposed supposed to be so comforting and tight-in-the-loins and unthinking as that. I would hope, and do think, that music -- and this is what makes looking for new music (or music you haven't heard before) necessary -- that music is something very outwardly social, energetic and revolutionary.

We, Greg and I, would drive out to San Ramon drinking 12-ounce coffees in paper cups. One morning he put on R.E.M., and I was just getting high from the caffeine. It was Green, and I hadn't heard it before. -- Because of my situation (staying over in S.F.), I was always drunk in the morning (as I know you guys were too). So the coffee would hit me hard -- but friendly -- and so would the sun (we were driving due East in the morning).

Without being hokey, because I'm good and drunk in one night, I love you two.  You're important to me.

Nihilism #3

Nihilism #2 was devoted to a Richmond Fontaine song, how "Allison Johnson" was a perfect projection of the nihilist mind -- a mind unconscious of its own nihilism, yes; but nonetheless a beautiful expression of the essential nothingness of being.

Tonight, it's "Making It Back," the concluding song of what might be the finest Richmond Fontaine record, The Fitzgerald (2005):

3 AM and the bottles are lined up in rows on the floor again
'Summer in Siam' plays on repeat again we never get sick of it
Now that I'm home again
In the kitchen with you
There's no one else I can talk to
The lights are all covered and dim and there's nothing but a gentle ease here
'Summer in Siam' plays and you and me and our whole place, we're okay
Now that I'm in your arms again

This is a beautiful love song dedicated to the joys of being flat-out drunk wasted with your wife/lover/girlfriend/partner/woman listening in the secure comfort of the low-watt light of night's end to The Pogues. It is a wonderful feeling. I have experienced it. Willy Vlautin nails it. There is no doubt about it.

But once you have given up on romance and you live alone, "Making It Back" means making do with your self. This is nihilism. Strength is all there is. The strength of the self.

Or to quote from that heroic poem of the zenith of Grunge, Rollins Band's "Low Self Opinion":

The hatred you project
Does nothing to protect you
You leave yourself so exposed
You want to open up
When someone says
Lighten up
You find all your doors closed
Get yourself a break from self rejection
Try some introspection
And you just might find
It's not so bad and anyway
At the end of the day
All you have is yourself and your mind

The End of Silence (1992) was an album I listened to religiously when it was released, and I continued to listen to it throughout the 1990s. I don't know how much of its material was written prior to the murder of Rollins' buddy Joe Cole, but I always interpreted the record as a deconstruction of the tough guy "Search & Destroy" persona Rollins had assiduously developed and marketed.

I was wedded to the tough-guy myth throughout the 1990s. Street fighter, construction worker, independent scholar -- all the paperback fictions -- Charles Bukowski, Jack Kerouac. But the toughest tough guy is the one who takes apart the sacred idea of toughness.

Remember, it is Jacobi who coins the term "nihilism" in order to characterize Kant's critical philosophy, a system perpetually open, never able to be shut, forever overflowing with meaning produced by a striving, self-reflecting consciousness.

The Colt 45 Chronicle #53

This is a drunken buddy love letter that waxes nostalgic about the joys of being an undergraduate. It speaks for itself.

If you ever wonder what it is all those young men in their beards and flannel shirts and dirty jeans are hankering for, it is on display right here. Bliss.

Summer 1989

Well, Niall, what was that season? The season when we were open to a grand life-tide, tossing a football up Durant Avenue in the Berkeley winter late afternoon sun (which is better than the spring sun for most of the world) when that pretty 18-year-old beauty student of mine came walking down the same sidewalk. You had just tossed the old brick-red pigskin, and I was reaching up -- both arms stretched up and outward like a shit-ass brat begging for mamma's crotch and tit) -- but my eyes were slanted to her, to Melissa, making sure that she was looking on as I made the catch. And she was; and I made the catch. And then I pulled up and started to chat with her, and you came trotting up; and we -- Melissa and I -- proceeded to talk about that phone number of mine that I had included on her final paper along with her course grade; and she said that she had considered calling me but that she hadn't because she didn't know what to make of it; and then I assured her -- in your presence -- that everything was on the up-and-up and that she should call, and, better yet, that I would call her, if she would give me her phone number. And she did. Then you and I departed, returning to our pigskin-tossing jaunt up Durant destined for the post office. (You had to mail something pertaining to law school.)

Man, that was really a wonderful time. It meant a lot when you were living there with me, after I had my shindig with Maura. We'd toss the ball out on that stretch of university lawn by Oxford Avenue while the low Hawaii-bound sun scraped the top of our heads, shooting through our hair with its strawberry poptart fingers. Nothing can replace that time. And we spent it together: sleeping on the blue futon in the Berkeley morning; sharing a cup or two of coffee listening to Dylan or the Pogues; those good tasty meals in the evening (that were either made for us or by ourselves); but best of all: all those happy and vitally important social functions we hosted. I can see us now, smiling, the door knob in your hand and the door in an open position, a person walking through the door -- that person could be Craig, could be Mark, could be Eric, or Maura or Colin or some girl -- a background tune blanketing the air, the house already half full; and me, standing guileless and greeting, with a peanut-butter jar of Coors, at ease.

Listen, just make sure that you don't forget how close we are, and how much we've been through together, and what it is that we are to each other: like the times we'd go to the BANCROFT LOUNGE and dance in appreciation of the simplicity of our drunkenness; not to dance to be seen or to be powerful, just to be drunk and alone and with a heartfelt buddy. Thank you, man, for all and whatever we've done together; you're a true friend.

Hippies vs. Punks: Penelope Houston's Birdboys

The Friday before last Hippies vs. Punks dealt with the Avengers, the first wave San Francisco Punk band famous for preceding the Sex Pistols at the January 14, 1978 Winterland show that signaled the demise of the Pistols only a few months after the masterpiece Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols (1977) was released.

Ten-years later -- nine years after the Avengers broke up and five years after the release of their sole full-length album, Avengers (1983) -- lead singer and feminine Punk avatar Penelope Houston released her debut solo album, Birdboys (1988).

It was my final year at the university. By 1988 I was, at 23 years of age, somewhat of a salty dog: a drinker, a confused philanderer and occasional street fighter, a reader of weighty texts and a teaching assistant. I was headed back East to live in the Big Apple where my girlfriend, who I would marry en route, had been admitted to medical school.

Nineteen-eighty-eight was a tumultuous year. The Pixies' Surfer Rosa (1988) would appear and put a little pep back into a music scene that was listing from underground indie toward the corporate mainstream. My friends and I were listening to a lot of The Pogues. We played constantly Rum Sodomy & the Lash (1985) and If I Should Fall from Grace with God (1988).

It was into this milieu that Penelope Houston made her debut with Birdboys (which was also the name she gave her acoustic backing band). I never owned or even heard the record. Put out by Bay Area Punk label Subterranean Records, I remember reading a review of it in the East Bay Express and seeing a picture of PH in what I took to be some sort of Hippie dress. It confused me. She still had her Punk insouciance, but she was wearing a Hippie dress. My buddy and musical mentor Oliver made a sarcastic comment about the former Avenger's metamorphosis from Punk to Hippie.

I don't think I was alone in avoiding Birdboys. The album didn't find an audience. Most of us were still fully wedded to the "Hey Hey, My My" rock 'n' roll fantasy. It took five more years for Penelope Houston to find her niche, and it turned out to be in Germany, where she was dubbed the "Queen of neo-folk" and would end up signing with major label WEA Germany. (For a helpful synopsis of Penelope Houston's career, see her interview with Richie Unterberger.)

When I was working on the Avengers post a couple weeks back I decided to download Birdboys and listen to what I missed out on 25 years ago. The album garners favorable reviews online.

I wasn't much impressed my first few listens. The songs have a "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" / "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" elementary-school-growing-up-in-California-in-the-'60s-sing-along daintiness and preciousness that is off-putting when listened to on iPod ear buds, prompting me to say to myself, "No wonder she never cashed in like Suzanne Vega."

It wasn't until I heard Birdboys on good speakers at home on a Saturday evening cooking dinner that I found myself enjoying the record. I proceeded to play it repeatedly. I understood what Penelope Houston was up to -- the aural capture of empty space -- and how the "Kumbaya" folkiness of Birdboys is of a piece with the first wave Punk of the Avengers. Here is how Houston explains it in the interview with rock 'n' roll historian Unterberger:

I remember I used to tell people that we were a folk band when I was in the Avengers. What I meant was that we were just playing music that we made up for friends, the way the original of folk is just music of the people. It's the folk music of Mexico, or the folk music of whatever. It's music that's played by regular people. It's not played by the court entertainers for the king. It's just the music that people go out on their porch and start strumming, and the neighbors come around. When I said the Avengers were a folk band, I just meant that we were making it up ourselves, that we'd taken it out of the realm of arena rock and the gigantic showplaces, and taken it back to the garage. 

I never really thought, oh, I want to do a cover version of "Wild Mountain Thyme." But there wasn't any...the loudness of the Avengers was so much of the expression. There wasn't really a chance to actually sing. I don't remember ever having monitors. I know we must've had monitors, but I don't remember looking at them and thinking, "I'm not getting enough of myself on the monitor." Everything was really loud and you just screamed at the top of your voice to be heard in live shows. I didn't think our live shows were anything...they were so different than our recorded output. 

I guess it was 1984 that I did my first show that was acoustic. The idea of having these big holes in the music, where there was no sound and then my voice would come out, was the most terrifying thing to me. I thought it was much more frightening than getting up in front of a Marshall stack three-piece band and screaming your lungs out. It was like stepping on a tightrope over this huge hole that was left in the music. 

And I was never a big fan of rock. I was never a rock'n'roller before I was a punk rocker. I was just a punk. I was just doing it because it was the most exciting thing that was happening. It was different, it was new, and we were creating it ourselves, and I felt the same way when I started doing this music with different instruments that had big holes in it. I didn't think, I'm going to start playing folk music. I just thought, we're doing something new and it's exciting and it's scary. The whole thing became more musical after that. But the way we started it was more like the Violent Femmes. It was more like kind of a punk attitude towards really quiet music. Since then, I think I've become a lot more musical. I guess in that way, I've changed.

Going forward in future Hippies vs. Punks posts, several topics suggest themselves from Penelope Houston's biography; the aforementioned influence of the Violent Femmes, for starters. Also, Houston, during the period she lived in England in the early '80s, performed on Howard Devoto's only solo album, Jerky Versions of the Dream (1983). I intended to post on Jerky Versions of the Dream before. It was ubiquitous at the time of its release, and it typified a kind of sound that spelled doom for the Punks, much like the California pop rock of the Eagles and Fleetwood Mac spelled doom for the Hippies.

Finally, PH mentions in the interview that at some point in her solo career she realized how much she had been influenced by English folk rockers Fairport Covention and Pentangle:

When I was younger, before the Avengers, listened to a lot of Pentangle and Fairport Convention and Incredible String Band. I loved them. I didn't really realize this until maybe six years ago, after I'd recorded Birdboys. I got a copy of the double Pentangle album, Sweet Child. I listened to it and I knew ever song on it. I was like, "Whoa! This is weird." It was before my punk life, I'd heard a lot of English folk-rock. So I think that was a big influence that I'd forgotten about somehow.

These are bands that were vital for the Hippies but were also held dear by the Punks. Why is that? Which brings up the issue of Richard and Linda Thompson, who, as I will argue in a future post, provide an example of a Hippie counter-avant-garde during a time when the Punks were wiping out the last vestiges of the longhair Flower Power Freak scene.