Radio Ethiopia

I showed up for college at University of Kentucky in August of 1975, and almost nobody was in the dorm when I moved in, save for two other freshman and the R.A. One of those dorm neighbors, the aptly named Larry Dumford, a beefy, thick-necked linebacker who had been there early to report to football training camp, sauntered across the hall to peak in on me hanging posters and getting settled.  "You got a n****r on your wall, he drawled, pointing at my giant Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock poster next to my bottom bunk. I realized I wasn't in the north suburbs of Chicago anymore. During the rest of the day, I would poke my head out of the door to see if anybody else had shown up. As I peaked down the hall, another face looked down my way. Uncomfortably we both realized we couldn't retreat back to our rooms, and I sauntered the four doors down to introduce myself. His name was Keith Holland, a slender hawkish looking guy with slightly Native-American features. He was from Calvert City in the far west of the state, and as he explained, had more churches per square mile than anywhere in the country. He was a heathen, he offered, and did I want to listen to some music and get high?
The record he put on, I can remember as clearly as anything, was 1969 Velvet Underground Live. Now, in addition to my love of classic rock, I also was into Zappa, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and The Allman Brothers at the time, so I was no pedestrian listener, but this was the first time I had heard this amazing band. I had a feeling Keith and I would be friends. He was the anti-Larry Dumford. The next record was The Stooges Raw Power, another first listen, and yes, I was home. I was going to like it here.
As the semester wore on, especially into 1976, we each bought new records, most of which would drive the rest of the dorm crazy. Keith sent away for the Patti Smith Hey Joe 7", then the Horses lp. No record store in Lexington had it. As we gathered around the t.v. for Saturday night live, we'd see a band and go find the record. F.M. radio sure wasn't playing anything cool. I didn't own a copy of Horses until the nineties--I had listened to Keith's copy a million times. The first one I bought was Radio Ethiopia in 1976, and it is my favorite Patti record. I know that it isn't such a popular choice, but it struck a chord with me. The Velvets, Iggy, and Patti helped me find who I was. I knew I was a little off socially, and felt like a bit of a weirdo. I had found my equilibrium.

Two of Patti's best rock songs are on the record--Ask the Angels, a great lead-off, and Pumping, which sounded amazing in concert. Listening to Patti, and scanning her references, made me want to explore what she loved. My education began in earnest like many a nineteen year-old, and I discovered the Beats--started reading Kerouac, Rimbaud, and Genet, which coincided with our independent film study--$1 movies at the student center or Kentucky Theater where you could catch Herzog, Fassbinder, John Waters, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, among so many others.

Ain't it Strange, the second song on the record, sounded like nothing else. Eleventh Dream Day used to play it in rehearsal as a 3 piece--not sure if we ever played it out. Poppies, Pissing in a River--Patti's lyrics were so great. Lenny Kaye's guitar playing is genius on this record. The band with Jay Dee Daugherty, Ivan Kral, and Richard Sohl was a force. They did what every great band must do-- jam--the title track takes a ten minute trip. When we made Prairie School Freakout, some of the endings may have been deeply influenced by Radio Ethiopia.
We later drove to see the group in Louisville on the Easter tour. One of my top five concerts of all time. The energy there as Patti urged the crowd to storm the stage past the photographer barriers was the essence of punk rock. After the show, Keith showed Patti's brother Todd a letter their mom had written back to Keith saying he could meet Patti. Todd whisked him backstage.
We eventually found the other couple of dozen punk loving kids in Lexington, Keith moved to L.A. to become a chemical engineer after graduation, and put out the first three edd releases (as well as Freakwater, Precious Wax Drippings, Hollowmen, and God's Acre records. Sadly, the last time I saw him was when I stayed with him when I toured with Palace in 1997. Sort of fell out of touch.
Thanks for Patti Smith, the Velvets, and so much more Keith, and for changing my life.

Neil Young/ On the Beach

Day 2. Fast forward, eighth grade. The kid ended up ok. Great grades. Honors English. Nickname:Shorty. Shortest kid in class. Obviously. Mr. Friendliness in yearbook. Fortnightly, learned to ask girls to dance. Asked a girl out. Got dumped for my best friend week before dance. Christmas present Paul McCartney Ram and Neil Young After the Goldrush lps. Fell in love with the music of Neil Young.

On any given day I will give you a different answer when it comes to the best Neil Young record.
I learned to play guitar from the chord charts in the Zuma songbook. Zuma is Crazy Horse/Neil at its best. Tonight's the Night is a tour of Neil's soul. Everybody Knows This is Nowhere has the solos. On some days, I will argue for Hawks and Doves as my favorite. No, Time Fades Away! But today I unequivocally declare On the Beach the best Neil Young record. No doubts.

I wanted to be a hippie. Thing is, junior high kids are too young to be hippies. I loved the way they danced, I loved the Beatles with beards, my baby sitter was a hippie girl. Peace. Love. Understanding. Not war. Neil Young drove down from Canada to live the hippie dream, and he found it. Reveled in it. Gave it fringe. By the time I was old enough, the dream was dead. The early seventies were a bummer, man. Festivals became scrambles for money.  The drugs of choice changed from pot, acid, and mushrooms to speed and heroin. Neil's contemporaries were biting the dust. College armories burning, kids dying at war and at home. The planet was choking with pollution. Lakes were dead.

Rolling Stone described On the Beach as "one of the most despairing albums of the decade," and if you don't let the album inside your head, you might come to that conclusion. It's not. I have never listened to this record without feeling better about myself and the world around me after the last note fades. Purportedly, Neil and the band were consuming honey slides at Sunset Sound, a simple combination of cheap pot and honey. Not a recipe for despair. The record is a salve for the psyche.

The record begins with Walk On.  "Sooner or later it all gets real."
Beautiful Wurlie on See the Sky About to Rain; Danko, Levon, and Crosby romping through Revolution Blues.

Sidebar: Eleventh Dream Day's first show in Chicago, as a three piece with Shu Shubat, Janet and me, was at Armadillo Day Festival on the main stage at Northwestern. There is a recording of it somewhere, although the WNUR feed had a weird patch and all you hear is my guitar and vocals with almost no drums or bass. We played Revolution Blues. A very young Urge Overkill was playing a set near the rocks at the lake. Albini set off strings of firecrackers. They rocked.

For the Turnstiles. "though your confidence may be shattered, it doesn't matter." My favorite line, "all the bush-league batters are left to die out on the diamond" would someday meet its match in "it's better to burn out than to fade away."It wasn't the sixties anymore. Time to move on.

Vampire Blues--Neil is a beast with the one-note solo, and this song has one of the best. This is one of Neil's first appeals for the planet. Oil companies sucking blood from the earth.

Side two (which Neil wanted as side one, but gave into the advice of David Briggs) is the group of three songs with some of Neil's best lyrics ever. On the Beach slays the soul. "The world is turning' hope it don't turn away" The line that has long resonated with me--"I need a crowd of people, but I can't face them day-to-day" It's complicated. Neil ends up alone at the microphone. That's okay too.
Motion Pictures seems like a down too, but consider, "I'm deep inside myself, but I'll get out somehow." And I always do, listening. "I'll stand before you and I'll bring a smile to your eyes."
And then the closer, Ambulance Blues, the best. A bit of the past, a bit of bitterness. "Burnouts stub their toes on garbage pails." The line that combines nursery rhyme nostalgia with Cassavettes: "Mother Goose, she's on the skids Shoe ain't happy, neither are the kids. She needs someone that she can scream at, and I'm such a heel for making her feel that way." And the line that leaves my wallowing behind:
"You're all just pissin in the wind. You don't know it but you are." Yes, Neil, I am. "And there ain't nothin' like a friend, who can tell you you're just pissing in the wind." Thank you Neil. Always a friend.

The Who Sell Out

Day One. I feel a little like the Monkees must have felt having to go on stage after Jimi Hendrix opened for them in 1967. My friend Rian Murphy has just finished an epic account of ten great records that he holds dear, and he has selected me to carry forth the challenge. I ordinarily find it easy to shuck these sorts of tag-you’re-it exercises, but Rian reminded me of how much I love music, and how woven it is to identity and personal history, and out of respect to the grooves and the rockin’ one, here goes. 

I almost started with the Monkees. This morning, they were on my mind. My first record was Meet the Monkees, and my parents had given me the money to go to Goldblatts to get it because I had finally raised my grades after a disastrous start to 4th grade. And I would have carried through with that album if not for the intrusions of Davy Jones songs, which are dreck. 

1967 was a rough year for me. I was in constant trouble at school, regularly sent into the hall or principal’s office. The teacher once literally threw the book at me. But at home in the haven of my bedroom, I fell in love with rock and roll. My Uncle Jay, who I shared the room with, had been drafted to Viet Nam, and had left me his portable turntable and three records: Rolling Stones/ Out of Their Heads, Otis Redding/ Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, and Bill Cosby Sings. But my secret weapon was my Sears Silvertone radio set to WCFL with the timer set to turn it off after I had fallen asleep. I was an insomniac though, and a sleepwalker and i often laid awake in the wee hours with the wonder of a.m. radio. It was in one of those moments I first heard I Can See For Miles. There was nothing more intimate or exciting as hearing those opening chords beamed to me in the black of night. I know you’ve deceived me, now here’s a surprise—this was not I wanna hold your hand. One note solo over crashing chords. 

It would be a few years after buying the single before finding the record it was on, on a rack near the registers at Jewel Foods, a fifty cent cut-out. Of course it looked absurd—Roger in the bathtub covered in baked beans, Pete with the giant Odorono deodorant under his armpit on the cover. And although the joke is played out through the course of the album, there are songs that defined the greatness of the Who, and they became my favorite band. Of course I loved the Beatles, of course I loved the Kinks, and The Rolling Stones—I would never argue that the Who were better, because it just doesn’t matter. The Who spoke to me. Pete and Keith were misfits. Punk rockers. Miscreants. Probably got in trouble at school when they were younger. 

By no means is it the best Who record. Who’s Next, Tommy, Live at Leeds, and Quadophenia all got more spins in the big scheme of things for me. Sell Out was the Who bridging their career. They had just played the Monterey Pop festival and were on their way. The record seems like a throwaway, but in addition to their highest charting aforementioned single, there are some truly innovative sounds.

A radio jingle countdown of the days of the week gives way to the backwards guitar feedback of Armenia City in the Sky, a brilliant song written by a friend of the band, Speedy Keen. (I got to play guitar on a cover of the song for Bun E. Carlos’s solo record a couple of years back—a thrill indeed!) Mary Anne with the Shaky Hands follows the Heinz Baked Beans jingle (the jingles do not detract from the greatness!), one of the many masturbation songs written in the era—I’m sure it was over my head. Tattoo is great, but the next one, Our Love Was, Is along with I Can’t See You are two power pop songs that I’m sure influenced a young Alex Chilton. 

Three songs on the b side are my favorites. Relax reaches a crescendo that blows my mind every time. There is a live version of the song I have on a bootleg, but it cuts off. Maybe my second favorite Who song next to Miles. Sunrise is beautiful, a solo Pete-sung song where he explores some of the rhythmic strumming that would define the songs of Tommy. Big Star would capture this sound perfectly. The finisher is amazing. Rael. No doubt the Beach Boys magic had been heard by Pete (we know Keith was a major fan), because there is no way some of the vocal stuff going on here was without precedent. It’s the opera between A Quick One and Tommy and contains the dna of Amazing Journey. A brilliant album closer on a brilliant album!