Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: We Are the Clash
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1964
WEBSITE: http://www.chairmanralph.com
CITY: St. Joseph
STATE: MI
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1964, in MI; married Lisa Quinlan (an artist).
EDUCATION:Michigan State University, B.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer and musician.
WRITINGS
Contributor to periodicals and websites.
SIDELIGHTS
Ralph Heibutzki is a music journalist, guitarist, singer, and spoken-word artist also known as “Chairman Ralph.” He is an admirer of many bands, but most of all the Clash, the politically minded British punk-rock group active in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The band’s opposition to the conservative policies of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and U.S. President Ronald Reagan was evident in its lyrics, which were set to hard-rocking music. The Clash had several hit songs, including “Rock the Casbah,” “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” and “London Calling,” and it was famously dubbed “The Only Band That Matters.” This moniker is reflected in the title of the book Heibutzki and Mark Andersen wrote about the Clash’s waning years, We Are the Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered.
It covers a period beginning in 1983, when lead singer Joe Strummer and bassist Paul Simonon fired guitarist Mick Jones, whom Strummer considered too commercially oriented, and remade the Clash with a vision of the band being even more outspokenly political. The revamped Clash, however, did not last long, due partly to disagreements between Strummer and manager Bernard Rhode. The band carried on for a time, though, going on a 1985 tour in which it played impromptu acoustic sets in parking lots and on street corners in northern England and Scotland. No tickets were sold; the musicians merely passed the hat for donations. The Clash’s last album, Cut the Crap, was released in late 1985, featuring mostly unfinished songs. It received scathing reviews and marked the end of the Clash. “We Are the Clash isn’t just another sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll story – although all of those qualities make their appearance,” Heibutzki wrote on his home page. “As Mark and I feel, the issues that fired up the Clash’s music through the ’70s and ’80s – and such heated political debate – still dog us today, whether it’s social inequality, the growing political divide in American society, or workers’ rights, to name only three.”
Some critics thought Heibutzki and Andersen had crafted a compelling portrait of a crucial time in the Clash’s life. In the period covered by the book, “the band may no longer have mattered, but its legacy mattered to the authors, who make it matter to the readers,” observed a Kirkus Reviews contributor. A Publishers Weekly commentator termed We Are the Clash “as much a political history of the 1980s as it is a look at an influential band in its final years.” The Kirkus Reviews critic summed it up as “fascinating” and “more than a footnote to the rise and fall of one of the last great rock bands.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2018, review of We Are the Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered.
Publishers Weekly, May 14, 2018, review of We Are the Clash. p. 51.
ONLINE
Ralph Heibutzki website, http://www.chairmanralph.com (October 17, 2018).
Born and raised in southwest Michigan, I've been writing since I was old enough to put pen to paper.
The collision of music and culture has been a crucial interest from my preteen years; it remains a major motivation for any project I take on today.
I hold a B.A. degree in journalism from Michigan State University, but my real writing education has been forged by experience; the more atypical, the better. How else would I have played bass for a London garage-punk combo, at the height of Acid House mania?
To keep up my landlord's confidence, I've freelanced for assorted music rags and Web sites since 1992...as well as good old-fashioned print journalism.
I remain in the wilds of Michigan, where inspiration is never at a premium.
Quoted in Sidelights: “We Are the Clash isn’t just another sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll story – although all of those qualities make their appearance,” Heibutzki wrote on his home page. “As Mark and I feel, the issues that fired up the Clash’s music through the ’70s and ’80s – and such heated political debate – still dog us today, whether it’s social inequality, the growing political divide in American society, or workers’ rights, to name only three.”
Communiques
****9/18/18: JUST ADDED: The annual birthday EP for my wife: BUDGIE IS A GOTH, four home recorded tracks, over on Featured Songs, to join its companions (HAPPY TRAILS [LITTLE BUDGIE IS 47], and HAPPY 46TH, LITTLE BUDGIE). Get 'em while they're hot, as they say.
AND: Part I of my interview with Curt Weiss, on his new biography of Jerry Nolan (STRANDED IN THE JUNGLE), right here!
PLUS: A 1:50 (in other words, nearly two hours) audio clip from Philadelphia, PA (7/10/18), where Mark Andersen and I appeared at Brickbat Books for our book, WE ARE THE CLASH: REAGAN, THATCHER & THE LAST STAND OF A BAND THAT MATTERED. You get that, plus our pre-event interview with Joseph Gervasi, for Loud Fast Philly...over on the Spoken Word Tracks page.
PLUS: An hour-long clip of Mark and I speaking at the Politics & Prose bookstore, in Washington, DC (7/06/18), which marked the official launch event for WE ARE CLASH. Now on Spoken Word Tracks, as well.
PLUS: "I Got Your Back," recorded live (8/19/18) at Berrien Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, St. Joseph, MI, as part of its special "Poetry Day" service...a tradition that's now been running for five years, as I understand it. Head over to Spoken Word Tracks page -- and dig in!
SOON COME: Further updates on WE ARE THE CLASH, as they roll in...so don't miss a beat!
MOVED: "Clash City Buskers," recorded live (6/10/18) @ at Berrien Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, St. Joseph, MI -- along with a special introductory talk, by me, to set the appropriate scene, for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. So, even though it's got a musical track...I've moved it over to the Spoken Word Tracks page.
NEW SECTION: Featured Interviews, where I'm placing the major interviews that I've done, plus clips of related interest...like the four-part Five Emprees program ("Talking With The Stars"), for example. I'm doing this to distinguish them from the Spoken Word Tracks page, which features more literary, live performance-oriented material (and, not to put too fine a point on it -- carve out a bit more space, as well), so...off you go, then.
SPOKEN WORD TRACKS PAGE (NOW POSTED): My 5/17/18 appearance for Lit Literary Collective's Write Nite, at Lang Lab (South Bend, IN): "Rumble & Bang"/"Waiting For The Bang," "Culture As Commodity," "I Got Your Back."
AND: Two performance clips from the St. Joseph Library (4/21/18): "Health Fanatic"/"X Factor," and "I'm Not A Sissy Anymore"/"I Want To Know Why," "Film Extra's Extra," and "Back In The Day."/PLUS: "Happiness Is...A Packet Of Three: My talk on why (the late) Steve Marriott mattered, and still does, recorded live (3/04/18) at Berrien Unitarian Universalist Fellowship. PLUS: From Lisa D. Quinlan: "Collections"/"The Drudgery Of Love" (Live @ BUUF, 4/14/18), and "Goths" (LIve @ SJ Joseph Library, 4/21/18). Dig in, and enjoy!
SINCE DELETED (FOR NOW): My 2014 covers of those CUT THE CRAP nuggets, "Life is Wild," and "Three Card Trick"..I've only got so much space, and something's got to give, but don't worry...I'm sure they'll make their way back, when I get more room.
Comment capability's back for now, but stay on topic. If not...I'm taking the toys away again! :-) In the meantime: stay cool. ****
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A DOLL'S LIFE (PT. I): CURT WEISS REVISITS JERRY NOLAN'S ROCK 'N' ROLL RIDE IN NEW BIO
Sep 18, 2018
Spring, 1990. I'm living and working in London, realizing a dream that's been percolating since college, when I started reading the music rags – Melody Maker, New Musical Express, Sounds – and mags like Kerrang!, all of which struck me as far more witty and irreverent than the verbiage churned out over here (except CREEM).
Though I haven't achieved my other dream – as in, actually writing for these rags – I am playing bass in a punky garage band (The Vagrants), and going to live shows, typically two to four a week. Imagine my excitement when I find that one of my musical heroes – Johnny Thunders, one of the most implosive, combustive guitarists to stalk the planet – is hitting the Marquee.
I'd counted myself a fan since So Alone (1978), which I bought – on import – at the local mall, where the likes of Styx, Foreigner and Loverboy reigned supreme. Saying you liked Thunders, or his former bands – the New York Dolls, and the Heartbreakers – often triggered puzzled stares (“Who?”), or redneck pushback (“He looks like a chick, what you need that stuff for?”).
At any rate, I still have my copy of So Alone, and rank it among my all-time favorite records. Though I hadn't brought it with me, I figured that I'd grab a flyer, or maybe try and have him sign my ticket stub.
My mind was brimming with all sorts of backstage scenarios, until a couple weeks later...
...when I found out he'd canceled, because he was sick. Or so they said. But that must have been the case, because he came back in May 1990, and made up the date. Which did me no good, since I'd already returned to the States.
As anecdotes like these suggest, being a fan of Thunders and his bands took plenty of dedication – though only the more committed were acquainted with the power behind the riser, Jerry Nolan (1946-1992), whose drumming style, life and legacy are getting a greatly-overdue look in Curt Weiss's new book, Stranded In The Jungle: Jerry Nolan's Wild Ride - A Tale of Drugs, Fashion, the New York Dolls, and Punk Rock (Backbeat Books).
In 320 pages, Weiss takes us from Nolan's Oklahoma beginnings, and all his major bands, before ending with his tragic death at 45 – less than a year after Thunders's own untimely demise – after suffering three strokes that leave him unable to move, or even speak.
The story that emerges is, by turns, inspiring – notably, when Nolan joins a grief-stricken Dolls, reeling from original drummer Billy Murcia's death, and helps them regroup musically – and depressing, although his lifelong (mostly losing) bouts with addiction are just one reason. Racism stalks the narrative, as well as physical abuse and manipulation (particularly women).
The nitty-gritty details of these sins recalls Ian Hunter's truism: “Trust the message, not the messenger.” Even so, Stranded In The Jungle is a timely reminder why we still celebrate the message, in general – and the Dolls, in particular.
Nolan summed it up in his typically succinct fashion for the Beaver County Times, in February 1974 (“The New York Dolls: More Than A Band”): “We want to make a living and a future. We're entertainers. We're the hosts, we'll entertain you.”
Frontman David Johansen pinpointed an equally compelling reason for the New York Times (July 23, 2006): “Our total attitude towards art was, like, get up and do something -- quit sitting there whining. That's what we stood for, that do-something spirit."
With those thoughts in mind, it only seemed natural to reach out to Curt, and find out what drove him to write Stranded In The Jungle -- among many other topics that we explored during our 75-minute phone conversation (7/05/18).
“THEN, I GOT IT”
CHAIRMAN RALPH (CR): Start with the million dollar question: why write about Jerry? Because he’s not necessarily a guy the general public would really know.
CURT WEISS (CW): Well, he was in two of the most influential bands of their time – the Dolls, and the Heartbreakers – if you look at that 20-year period, from’72 to ’92, they really were as influential as anybody. They influenced all the great bands that came out of New York and CBGB’s – Television, Blondie, Ramones, Patti Smith, Talking Heads.
All of them got something from the Dolls, and the first wave of British punk bands, [like] the [Sex] Pistols, The Clash, and The Damned. Then, the next wave, like the Undertones – out of Ireland – and even in the ‘80s, [with] the Replacements, and the Smiths.
Then you’ve got the glam metal, like, Guns ‘N’ Roses – there's nothing, almost, as influential as the Dolls and the Heartbreakers. And a big piece of that was Jerry, his style of playing.
You can hear it in Paul Cook, and Tommy Ramone, the way that he stripped things down to the most elemental. Even Clem Burke – to him, besides Keith Moon, it was [also about listening to] Jerry Nolan.
The Rock ‘n’ Hall of Fame, with all its faults, it’s still the closest thing we have to a Mount Rushmore of rock ‘n’ roll. The Dolls and the Heartbreakers deserve to be in there. So I think that needed to be appreciated. I had met him a couple of times…
CR: Right.
CR: I was a drummer. I saw the Beatles on TV when I was four, and that blew my mind. I wanted to be Ringo for years. But there was something about seeing Jerry – close up, around 1980 – and I said, “Now I understand.”
Because people had been saying to me, “He’s the best drummer in New York.” And LAMF just sounded so raw, and the Dolls’ records sounded so raw, and badly recorded. I didn’t quite get it. Then, I saw him close up, and then, I got it.
CR: Right. As you say in your afterword: “Okay. This is what he means.”
CW [laughs]: “Yeah. This is what people mean.” Now I understood it.
CR: Critiques aside, getting into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame is considered one of the ultimate validations, so…
CW: Oh, definitely. Obviously, like the Velvets, they [the Dolls] didn’t sell a lot of records, but they influenced so many people.
Really, outside of New York, they didn’t cause a stir. A little stir in L.A., but there were these pockets around the country, and all those people – like The Dead Boys, The Cramps – that just got so into it. They were like these pied pipers. The Ramones were the next set of pied pipers, or Johnny Appleseeds, going around there.
CR: Because the attraction of the Dolls was that they [audiences] did not know what they were going to do or say next.
CW: Yeah, and it was this strange mix of New York – you had some of the Warhol scene, bits of the gay scene, bits of the glam scene, and underground rock. I think Richard Hell called them “an inept Rolling Stones.”
There’s [also] bits of the ‘50s in there, bits of a lost rock ‘n’ roll, like, a Little Richard sort of thing. People found that very exciting, and it was very sexual.
CR: And they were very R&B-oriented, which is something that not a lot of people at the time were necessarily trafficking in.
CW: If they did, it came off like boogie, like the Allman Brothers, or Savoy Brown, or something like that – it didn’t sound exciting anymore. It just sounded like old people, you know? Or long-haired people, as much as we all did have long hair. I think Johansen called them, “the denim bedraggled.” The Dolls didn’t wanna be that.
CR: Exactly. Well, it was much more stylin’, of course.
CW: Yeah, it was style, but it reflected who they were. Syl talks about, they would take hours just to leave the apartment, because he just didn’t wanna go out just being a nothing. It reflected something new, and you rebelled against the previous generation. They were so much of that. They were exciting, there were people that saw that.
“INNOVATORS ARE OFTEN LIKE THAT”
CR: For the people who struggled with it, it was a struggle – but people who liked them picked up on them really fast.
CW: Yeah, people saw the Dolls on that first record cover, and said, “These guys look gay, or they dress like women, and that’s it. I cannot give the music a try.”
Of course, if they did hear the music, it’d just sound a little too raw, and out of tune. They just couldn’t give it that extra effort, and so, they were victims of that [thinking]. They were two or three years just too early. Innovators are often like that, sadly enough.
CR: For sure. Researching Jerry’s life, what challenges did you encounter, and how did we work through them?
CW: Well, the quickest way to research was books and articles, and what I couldn’t find from books and articles, I would do interviews, and vice versa, really – there people that didn’t wanna talk. Bette Midler didn't wanna talk, Steve Jones didn’t wanna talk.
CR: Oh, you went through some experience with Nina, from the articles that I read. She wasn’t really too cool with it, either, at a certain point.
CW: At first, she was very supportive. She sent me a number of articles that were lost from smaller magazines, and they weren’t on the Internet. I had sent her – I had some bootleg Thunders stuff, and we traded a lot of e-mails. She cared about Jerry, and was glad that somebody was trying to keep the legacy alive.
And then, a few years in…I was first approaching this as an oral history, and sent her some stuff from ’79-’80. Jerry’s addiction was really overwhelming at that point. I think she was kind of shocked, at some of the things I had…I'd sensed this from other people, too: they wanted to see Jerry as a noble hero.
And there was a side of Jerry who was very loyal. A good friend, funny, and innovative, and all those things. But there was another part of him that was a duplicitous drug addict.
CR: Yes.
CW: He could use people, take advantage of people, and lie to people. And some people don’t like seeing that. It makes them have to rethink their own relationship with Jerry. And Jerry hid a lot from people. He had a lot of self-esteem issues, confidence issues. That’s so much of why clothing and style was so important to him, because he was able to recreate a Jerry Nolan that didn’t really exist. And it was hurtful, I think, for some people to admit that.
But I would say, some of the biggest obstacles? Bette Midler didn’t wanna talk, Debbie Harry didn’t wanna talk. She was very sweet, when I met her, but she wouldn’t do an official sit down. Mick Jones didn’t wanna talk.
CR: Right, and I guess Phyllis [Stein] didn’t either, right?
CW: She didn’t wanna go on the record.
CR: Because she would have been really crucial for a lot of the last couple years of his life?
CW: Yeah. I had my sources, nonetheless. You’ll see a lot about her, and that period. But Jerry’s mom, Charlotte, was fascinating. Even if I had to take some of what she said with a grain of salt. And Jerry’s ex-wife, Charlotte.
CR: From Sweden.
CW: Yeah. Who also let me come over there, and just dive through all these storage units, just filled with stuff. She was great. I think she had three storage units.
CR: Wow.
“HE WAS VERY ARTISTIC”
CW: Because she had these fascinating things, like these little boxes Jerry would buy. He would decorate them, as well as put all his sewing tools in them, the buttons, and snaps, and things like that. He would organize and collect them in there. He was very artistic.
CR: Yeah, he was very creative, in that way.
CW: Very creative, yeah, so I got to see all that kind of stuff.
CR: Who was really crucial to your understanding of him, especially in the pre-Dolls era – which I’d not heard much about, till your book came out, at least.`
CW: Obviously, I had to cover his whole life, from beginning to end. But I was interested in what made him him. His first major girlfriend, Corinne, from ’62 to ’72 – she was fascinating.
As well as the people in that band, Cradle. As well as a lot of the people in the smaller bands – it would have been great to have Steve Jones, and Mick Jones, from the Clash.
But Joe and Simon from the Daughters, who backed Thunders, like, ’81, ’2, ’3, and played with Jerry around that time, they were great. And [guitarists] Steve [Dior] and Barry [Jones], from the Idols.
CR: Yeah, he [Barry] had a lot of great quotes in there.
CW: Oh, yeah. They were fantastic. And Nancy Quatro. People like Greg and Vinny from the Plug Uglies, and the people in the Ugly Americans –
CR: From that period.
CW: Yeah – there was the band Shaker, so it was Gregor, and Art. They were just great, because they lived and struggled with Jerry. So they would get to see a real Jerry – like Peter Jordan, the Dolls' roadie, who also played bass. And Buddy Bowser, what a character Buddy was. Because Buddy goes back to, when he [Jerry] was 15, 16 years old, on the Army bases in Oklahoma.
I would have liked more time with David Johansen, but he just finally said, “All right. I’ll answer a couple questions through email.” I think they were both two-part questions, so I cheated a bit. But he was great. I loved what he wrote. You know, Leee [Black] Childers was great. You had also asked, what were the surprises?
CR: Yeah, I interviewed him a couple times for my own Dolls story [for DISCOveries, in 2000]. He was great.
CW: Oh, Leee loved to tell stories. Leee loved to talk. He was so much fun. When I was in the Rockats, he had first managed them, when they were Levi & The Rockats. Though they had split, he would still come to shows, I would see him, and he was always really sweet and funny. But I didn’t realize how much Leee hated Jerry, the deep divisions and issues they had.
For years in the ‘80s, he wouldn’t talk about Jerry, and I interviewed Lee three times through the years. By the last interview, he had, maybe a self-realization, that he and Jerry really loved each other. I don’t mean in a sexual way.
He said, “Look, those last six months between Johnny’s death, and Jerry’s death” – where Jerry confided in him, and realized that without Johnny, they didn’t have to compete anymore for Johnny’s attention. They could just focus on each other, and they had been through the wars together.
I think Jerry realized that Leee really was looking out for his best interests, and particularly because Jerry knew, he was HIV positive, that he was sick, Leee was someone he could confide in, and who understood him, to a degree maybe that others didn’t.
People think addiction is the issue. And it is an issue, but addiction is a reflection of something else, a manifestation of something else. What is that something else? Often, particularly with intravenous drug addicts, it’s almost always trauma as a child.
The traditional traumas are physical and sexual abuse, but with Jerry, and so many others in the scene, it was really abandonment. Johnny never knew his father.
Jerry really never knew his real father. And two ex-father figures left him and abandoned him. Richard Hell’s dad died suddenly, when he was 10. The guys in the Idols, who were addicts – one never knew his father, one was given up for adoption. I mean, you see this over and over.
So, understanding more about that in Jerry, and knowing that he never really got any validation or recognition from people outside of his mother, I think, until he started to play the drums. And so, those were kind of the surprises…
CR: That came out of your research.
CW: Yeah, and some people think, maybe I’m being tough on Jerry. I had to tell the truth in the book. But I think of him as a tragedy, and a victim of this – his mother loved him, but she couldn’t give him everything he needed, and she couldn’t be his father, and she couldn’t make up for that, for him being abandoned by fathers.
He needed something no one was able to give him, and he wanted so badly to be successful – and when the Dolls fell apart, nothing got rid of that pain, except for drugs. It almost sounds like a cliché, but there was some sort of pain he felt. Heroin made that pain go away. That simple. It just made that pain go away.
WHEN WE RETURN (FOR PART TWO): A look at Jerry Nolan's musical legacy, and what made him such a compelling drummer, as well as life with Johnny (Thunders, that is), and the mental and physical issues that he faced down for most of his life.
Curt Weiss:
https://www.facebook.com/curtweissauthor/
Stranded In The Jungle:
https://curtweiss.com/book/
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CHAIRMAN RALPH HITS THE ROAD TO PROMOTE "WE ARE THE CLASH"
Aug 23, 2018
Anyone can write a book. But only one thing matters, whether you convince someone else to take the risk, or self-publish – getting it over the finish line, and getting it out. For those who do make it – as Mark Andersen and I have managed, with our new book, We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher And The Last Stand Of A Band That Mattered (Akashic Books) – the result feels like running a marathon. You're elated and exhausted, and a little bit anxious, too. What will reviewers think, and how will people react?
Last month, I got to find out some answers to those questions, as I went on a book tour to the East Coast, after Akashic released We Are The Clash on July 3. While nearly everyone I knew looked forward to some badly-needed rest on July Fourth, I'd have to leave home for ten days, so I could join Mark for book signings in Washington, D.C. (July 6), Philadelphia (July 10), and New York (July 12).
We kept busy during our downtime, too, including a local radio interview in Takoma Park, MD (July 8), and a 45-minute one with our Philadelphia host, before our signing at Brickbat Books.
We squeezed in some related tasks, too, like hand-delivering a copy to Foo Fighters singer-guitarist Dave Grohl – backstage, no less, at the Merriweather Post Pavilion, after we'd caught the last hour of his band rocking a screaming, sold-out, 13,000-seat house.
For those who haven't toured the country, I definitely recommend figuring out how you're passing the time, because – like so many bands say – one mile blurs into the next, and one town doesn't look much different than the last one.
Or, as I told my friend Don, after stopping in Lucas County, Ohio, searching vainly for somewhere decent to eat around 10:30 p.m: “We must be on tour, all right. We're having dinner at McDonald's!”
But he'd volunteered to drive me down, right? That's the game.
Similar thoughts ran through my head on the return trip to St. Joseph, which required taking three trains – from New York, to Washington, D.C., and then, Chicago, and back home – for about 23 hours (no kidding!).
Sure, I got my fair share of sleep between all of these stops, but suffice to say, I felt like I'd run several marathons by the time it all ended. Still, We Are The Clash marks my second book with a Washington, D.C. area connection. My first book, Unfinished Business: The Life & Times Of Danny Gatton (Backbeat Books, 2003), focused on another previously untold story, that of Washington, D.C.'s late “Telemaster” of the guitar. I ended up making a major research trip to the area in 2001, and doing a couple of book signings in 2003, which is the last time I've made it out there.
For any author, book signings offer the nitty gritty flipside of all the hours that you put in – when you meet and greet readers, whether they've already bought your book, or waiting for you to sign it that night.
Whenever I felt my energy flagging, I'd think back on those nights, and the conversations I'd had. There's no other experience like it, which is why you do it.
“Pop Will Die”
We Are The Clash deals with the final two years of the British punk band's existence. That era started in 1983, when lead singer Joe Strummer kicked co-founding guitarist Mick Jones out of the band, which he aimed to remake in a leaner, harder-rocking, and more out aggressively political image. Only two years, however, the Clash would fall apart – and split up for good – after releasing its final album, Cut The Crap, in November 1985.
With help from three replacements – drummer Pete Howard, and guitarists Nick Sheppard and Vince White, all in their mid-20s – Strummer hoped to blow away the era's dominant trends of synth-pop and heavy rock. “Pop will die,” he vowed, “and rebel rock will rule.”
With rare exceptions, though, this story has only been told in bits and pieces. However, it's also one with a strong sociopolitical streak running through it, as our publisher's press release notes: “While the world teetered on the edge of the nuclear abyss, British miners waged a life-or-death strike, and tens of thousands died from U.S. guns in Central America, Clash cofounders Joe Strummer, (bassist) Paul Simonon, and (manager) Bernard Rhodes waged a desperate last stand after ejecting guitarist Mick Jones and drummer Topper Headon. The band shattered just as its controversial final album, Cut the Crap, was emerging.”
Suffice to say, We Are The Clash isn't just another sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll story – although all of those qualities make their appearance. As Mark and I feel, the issues that fired up the Clash's music through the '70s and '80s – and such heated political debate – still dog us today, whether it's social inequality, the growing political divide in American society, or workers' rights, to name only three.
“More Than A Footnote”
On those grounds alone, Mark and I hope that We Are The Clash will strike a chord with readers, whether they experienced them during the '80s, or didn't. And, whether they agree with our conclusions, or not, we also hope that our readers appreciate the human interest side of the story – including the Clash's May 1985 “busking” tour of northern Britain and Scotland, in which the band played impromptu “unplugged” sets for whoever showed up, and passed the hat after the finished, just like any other street performer.
It's an audacious idea that no major band has tried since, and one of many stories from this era of the Clash that haven't been told fully – until now. For Mark and I, We Are The Clash also puts an exclamation points on five long years of work, that also required launching a successful Kickstarter campaign, to help Akashic with the production costs – for which we raised $16,131, from 211 supporters.
What happens now is up to the public, and the reviewers – whose verdicts, so far, have proven sufficiently supportive, and encouraging, of what we've tried to do, such as this notice from Publisher's Weekly: “This is an inspiring take on the rock-band bio format, as much a political history of the 1980s as it is a look at an influential band in its final years. More than a footnote to the rise and fall of one of the last great rock bands.”
Six weeks or so after We Are The Clash dropped on the public, the road show behind has continued to roll on – with book signings in Chicago (July 30), where I joined Mark – who headed on to Minneapolis alone (August 1), and off to the West Coast, as part of his family vacation.
As usual, we squeezed in a couple joint radio interviews, too – If I need anymore inspiration, I'll only to recall Mark's words from our press release announcing the book: "I was a Clash fan from 1977 on, and the band was a tremendous inspiration for me as a teenager. But this period of The Clash -- for all its failures -- actually may have had an even bigger impact on the work I've done with Positive Force and other community projects since 1984."
For more information about We Are The Clash, visit www.akashicbooks.com.
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"WE ARE THE CLASH": FIRST COPIES/REVIEWS IN
May 8, 2018
My excitement about We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher & The Last Stand Band Of A Band That Mattered, due out in July from Akashic Books, just got a little bit more tangible...after my 15 copies, to which I'm contractually entitled, landed on my doorstep last week. You can pre-order it here, via Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/We-Are-Clash-Thatcher-Mattered/dp/1617752932.
As the old cliche goes, it's one thing to see your vision -- one shared a as co-author, with Mark Andersen -- on a computer screen. But there's nothing like holding the book in your hand, turning it over and over, telling yourself, here it is at last, after all the blood, sweat and tears that we devoted to it. For Mark and I, that period, from conception to completion, turned out to be roughly five years.
Not surprisingly, one question I've gotten since the book's completion is, what took so long? Well, the short answer is, various life and professional issues that both of us had to work around, at different times. As I've learned from experience, publishing isn't for the impatient. I struggle with many of those issues in carving out time for smaller projects, like issue #2 of my 'zine, Desperate Times. I'd hoped to start laying it out this week, but now, I'm thinking that next week seems more realistic, because of various "rent money party" items that I have to sort out first.
I learned that phrase in 2000, while writing and researching an epic article on the New York Dolls for DISCoveries magazine. As original guitarist Rick Rivets and his buddy, the late bassist, Arthur Kane, explained, a "rent money party" meant getting various people together -- some playing instruments, some not, to varying degrees of ability -- while the booze flowed, plus the usual array of substances, this being the '70s. As the night wound down, a hat would go around, or a small admission charged, with the proceeds going toward the rent.
As the story demonstrates, big ideas often have small origins, and the gender-bending, genre-smashing Dolls sound is no different. In truth, though, rent money party issues aside, there is no magic time period for how long anyone should wait to see their vision come alive. There's little point getting wound up about it, since that issue is dictated by time and interest -- no more, no less. My favorite example is "Rock 'N' Roll Is The Answer," a song that Joey Ramone co-wrote with Plasmatics lead guitarist Riche Stotts. I remember Joey talking up the song as a different path forward, in 'zine interviews, in 1984. But the song didn't see the light of until it appeared on his second solo album, Ya Know (2012) -- 11 years after his death.
That said, it's a great song, but if you check out this site, you probably already know that. Suffice to say, the time it takes for any creative idea to surface...is the time it takes. I'm sure Joey didn't expect to wait nearly 30 years. Anyway...on to our next subject.
There's two early reviews on We Are The Clash's back cover that deserve a comment. First, this salvo from Kirkus Reviews: "When did the Clash quit being 'the only band that matters"? This fascinating book faces a challenge: documenting the final years of the British band that its record label had promoted with that slogan...The band may have no longer have mattered, but its legacy mattered to the authors, who make it matter to the readers. More than a footnote to the rise and fall of one of the last great rock bands."
I'm not sure if the reviewer grasped our premise, which is that -- despite the behind-the-scenes skulduggery that interfered with the revamped Clash's potential -- the reality is that the band did matter, by soundtracking the noxious social ills that we still grapple with today, including the legacy of Reaganomics, and Thatcher's reckless, nihilistic monetarism. Just ask those who caught the celebrated "busking tour," or the Miner's Strike benefits of 12/6-7/84, for example. They'll tell you how much the band meant to them, and still does. For further specifics, though, you'll have to get the book.
The other back cover review comes via the Library Journal, as follows: "Coverage is specialized, extending considerably beyond mere behind-the-scenes reportage and deeply explores the sociopolitical context in which the band operated; as such, the tone can be intense (read: punk) and professorial. In all, Andersen and Heibutzki's examination of the band's proletarian stance in light of its (of) its commerical (sic) striving is immensely satisfying."
Typos aside, I say, kudos to the Journal for nailing what we tried to put across. At its core, We Are The Clash isn't solely devoted to the usual rock 'n' roll goings on, though we do examine them, like all the other issues associated with the band. In looking back at this era's interviews and live reviews, one thing that strikes me is how many writers banged on about how a band with two remaining founders (Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon) could still claim some measure of legitimacy. Ironically, this issue probably wouldn't raise a peep today, when you've got bands touring with two (The Who), one (AC/DC) or even no original members (One Way System). To my recollection, I haven't seen people demand their money back.
Those are the times we live in, I suppose, and we move on. Or have we? This is one of the central questions we hope that readers will ponder, especially in today's environment: plug Donald Trump and Theresa May into their respective US and UK corners, with all the hard right rhetoric to match, accompanied by various initiatives that, if left unanswered and unchecked, will damn untold millions to miserable, hopeless lives...and you've got a climate that feels like 1984 all over again, minus all the catchy-looking iconography. But if our words become part of the overall soundtrack of resistance, then we'll have done the job.
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CHAIRMAN RALPH APPEARS ON CROOKED BEAT LP RELEASE
Apr 16, 2018
Last Thursday, I got the thrill I'd awaited since this summer, when I recorded my contribution. RECUTTING THE CRAP VOL. 2 (Crooked Beat Records) landed, right on my doorstep, plus the bonus LP, THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN, which I ended up on. As the cliche goes, it's one thing to see any object on a screen, but a different feeling to hold it in your hand. And what a package it is -- the two photos I've posted only scratch the surface (so to speak: I'll post more images after this weekend).
RECUTTING THE CRAP picks up where last year's VOL. I release left off, with various Washington, D.C. area bands recasting songs from the Clash's final bow, and likely, its most controversial: Cut The Crap (1985), as well as the handful of unreleased tracks that have circulated mainly in tape trading and bootleg circles ("In The Pouring, Pouring Rain," "Jericho," and so on) all these years.
THE FUTURE IS UNWRITTEN, for which I recorded "Beyond The Pale" (Big Audio Dynamite), rounds up the various Joe Strummer-Mick Jones collaborations that they managed after the Clash broke up, including those that made it on record (notably, the second BAD album, No. 10, Upping St.), and those that didn't (such as "Dog In A Satellite," and "US North," which BAD actually played on their spring 1987 tours). I also wrote the liner notes, as well (while my compatriot, Mark Andersen, with whom I co-authored We Are The Clash, did the honors on VOL. I).
Crooked Beat will release both albums on Record Store Day, which is Saturday, April 21. This edition is limited to 1,000 copies, so act fast, if you want a copy, as they tend to go quickly. For more information, see: http://www.crookedbeat.com/.
For "Beyond The Pale," I carried the full instrumental load (bass, acoustic and electric guitars), and sang the song, while my longtime friend, Don Hargraves, did the drum programming, helped me work out the arrangement, and produced the track. We largely recorded it in August 2017, with additional touch-ups and remixing completed in October.
I chose to record this song for one simple reason: its central theme ("Immigration built this nation/You got a bloodclot standing here"), which provoked no less argument at the time of its release (1986) than it does nowadays. Some of Joe's most powerful and provocative lyrics are here, particularly this line: "If I was in your shoes/I'd say Soweto's gonna happen here, too." Not surprisingly, many fans see it as the "great lost Clash song".
More pertinently, I relate to this song on a personal level, since my late parents came from Germany to the USA...though they went three times, before they finally decided to stay here for good, during the 1960s. Like many people in that era, they simply hoped to build a better life -- as the so-called German "economic miracle" was still a long way off -- without clamoring for undue attention from the powers that be.
That attention waxes and wanes, depending on the level of demagoguery attached to it, and whether the haters manipulating it think they can get away with it. I still hold strong memories of the '90s, when the Republican-controlled Congress floated ideas to cut off legal immigrants, as well as their illegal brethren. I'd never seen my father so angry in my life -- it was "intergalactic," as Miles Davis's biographer observed of the late trumpeter's equally explosive outbursts.
Thankfully, that mania passed, but Trump's ascendancy -- and determination to punish all who disagree with him, legal or illegal -- is a warning not to relax too deeply, or risk sliding into banana republic status. Ironically, I might not have ended up in our current political situation, had my father gotten his first wish: Australia. He wanted to go there first, but couldn't get in, due to strict labor quotas in place at the time.
I often think of how differently my life would have turned out, in a country several time zones away...one of many associations that comes to mind when I listen to "Beyond The Pale," or play it live.
Now, all I need is a record player to hear it...and I'll be in business!
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HAPPINESS IS...A PACKET OF THREE (STEVE MARRIOTT REMEMBERED)
Mar 12, 2018
I blew my one and only chance to see Steve Marriott, although that's not the right verb, perhaps – I might need something a bit weightier, such as, “unable to deal with adverse conditions.” That invitation came in the fall or winter of 1990, when I was working and living abroad, as a clerk at the University of London – being a twentysomething at the time, I was experiencing whatever I could, packing in every sight imaginable during my six-month stay there.
Trouble was, once my cohorts explained the circumstances – apparently, he was playing a tiny pub, on an equally tiny island, somewhere in the Thames – I realized, once the logistics of that proposition sunk in, that I'd probably get there all right, but getting back might prove a little trickier (as in, you might have to hang out all night, till the next available form of bus or rail transport turned up).
Nowadays, I imagine, such a trip might not pose any problems at all. Two decades of creeping Americanization, including longer, more liberal hours for just about everything, will do that. But that wasn't the case back then, and as I'd begun spending my weekends in Camden Town – for the market, mainly, plus whatever hanging about I could get in – I regretfully declined. I figured I'd be back next year, at a more congenial time, when he'd be playing a more convenient venue.
Sadly, of course, that never happened – Marriott died in April 1991, after a tragic house fire that snuffed out his life at age 44. However, his legend has only grown since then, as I detail in my recent talk, “Happiness Is...A Packet Of Free,” which I gave at Berrien Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (St. Joseph, MI).
One thing became apparent right away when I scanned the Internet, looking for the usual fun facts and scraps of information to round out my talk: there's no getting around Marriott's influence, even today. It's easy to forget that fact, in light of all the articles and blogs that focus on the “Greek tragedy” part of his life – but, as the man himself said, “Yes, it's heartbreaking, but if you can laugh at your own tragedy, it's great. It don't matter.”
In a matter of minutes, I learned there's a Small Faces musical – “All Or Nothing,” what else would you call it? – making the rounds to massive acclaim, in London, and all over the UK; there's a film, “Midnight Of My Life,” which tackles Marriott's later life, the same period I focused on in my talk; and there's a daughter, Mollie, who's carrying on the tradition as a vocalist, and just released her highly-anticipated debut album. TRUTH IS A WOLF, last fall.
Does this sound like the fading footprints of a man who's often described as “long forgotten”? I think not. It's tempting to think how Marriott would have fared, had he lived to see the Britpop craze take the UK by storm, when the likes of Oasis and Paul Weller dropping his name, and covering his songs – I suspect he'd have had to reconsider his strategy, since the resulting higher profile might have enabled him to take life a bit easier, and stake out his own territory, on his own terms. Of course, Steve's here to see any of it – let alone the induction that he finally earned, in 2012, into that ever-so-controversial entity, the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame – which makes such musings lend themselves to that ongoing parlor game of, “What if”? However, that's not the point, as I make clear in my talk, now featured in Spoken Word Tracks – I also managed to work in a few lines of my own poetic tribute, “I Remember Steve Marriott,” because it seemed to fit the occasion. Check out the evidence, and see how it strikes you.
Suffice to say, I'll always regret not going to that gig. But we still have the music, and plenty of it, at that – 12 hit singles by the Small Faces in Britain alone, plus two in America, and eight by Humble Pie (primarily in America, which they toured 22 times, as godfathers of the boogie movement). As the man himself might say, that's a fair week's work.
LINKS
All Or Nothing: The Mod Musical
http://www.allornothingmusical.com/
Midnight Of My Life: http://midnightofmylife.com/
Sunday Express: Mollie Marriott Interview
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/life/615210/Small-Faces-frontman-Steve-Marriott-daughter-Mollie-favourite-photograph
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WE ARE THE CLASH: POST-PRODUCTION WORK CONTIUNES
Jan 29, 2018
It's been awhile since the last update, but -- as I've probably mentioned in the past -- I'd rather save them for major steps in the creative process. (Or, to put it another way...saying, "We've just buckled down on 10 pages of Chapter-So-And-So" doesn't quite cut it, for me, anyway.)
At any rate... WE ARE THE CLASH is now officially in post-production...meaning, Mark and I have agreed on the final draft, which we've duly submitted to our publisher (Akashic), who promptly sent back PDFs of their edited final copy for us to go through, and make whatever corrections we deemed necessary. For those who haven't undergone the publishing process, it's one of the most intense steps involved, because you've literally got to trawl through your creation, page by bloody page, and mark whatever inconsistencies you spot.
In most cases, you'll be redlining grammatical inconsistencies, outright misspellings, or the odd sentence or two that requires a bit of punching up. Most of these edits aren't terribly earthshaking, since the guiding assumption -- on the publisher's part, anyway -- is that this proof copy, as they call it, is as close to the camera-ready stage as possible. (For example, I remember adding an "n" that got left off the Swedish newspaper, Expressen.) We've gone through about three rounds of this process so far, which isn't unusual, though the number of bites at the apple depends on the publisher, obviously. (In contrast, when I completed the final ms. for my first book, UNFINISHED BUSINESS: THE LIFE & TIMES OF DANNY GATTON, Backbeat essentially gave me all of a single weekend to go through the page proofs -- which were expressed shipped to me, in the pre-Internet explosion era -- and get it back to them.)
We spent last week attending to some other odds and ends, including our respective dedications, and the acknowledgments section, which also ranks among the bigger tasks you'll have to handle -- since this is your chance to give whatever shout outs to those who've helped along the way, whether they sat down for an interview, provided a crucial press clipping, or pointed you in a direction that might have otherwise have languished unexplored...all that sort of stuff.
Next up: sorting out photo credits and permissions, as well as seeing what lyrics, if any, we can actually quote. I, personally, would like to see a section that rounds up CUT THE CRAP, along with the B-sides ("Do It Now," "Sex Mad Roar"), and unreleased songs that have crept out over the years on the various live bootlegs, and/or recordings, like "Ammunition," "Glue Zombie," and "In The Pouring Rain" (to name three).
Obviously, time will tell how we fare in that department, but I'm hoping we can make this happen, especially since I've never seen a proper transcription of Joe's lyrics during this era, aside from the various bits and pieces knocking around online. (That being said, I recommend Marky Dread's work in that area, which you can see on the Clash II-related threads on the IMCT (If Music Could Talk) message board.)
Right now, it looks like the book is coming out around July 4th -- which would be prefect, since the noxious political winds blowing through the US and UK at the moment bring to mind that old Yogi Berra-ism: "It's deja vu all over again." Of course, that date isn't cast in stone, but, naturally, I'll update that information as the situation requires. No need to worry, though, in any case: as I've repeatedly stated, it'll be well worth the wait.
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'DESPERATE TIMES": MORE REVIEWS+UPDATES
May 24, 2017
What a spring we've enjoyed at Desperate Times Towers! First, I'll mention our latest review,via Xerography Debt, which said (for the benefit of those who can't read sideways):
"Pure old-school vibe and I love it. This one takes me back to the times when 'zines in punk were a very essential part of communications on the scene. This publication has a lot to read, but is also very artistic with its words and images. It is both interesting to read and look at it. The 'zine talks about music in a way that makes you want to read more and more about the topics. I cannot wait to see what is coming next from this publication. I am very sure that I will not be disappointed."
Thanks, Xerography Debt! I hope that future issues live up to that particular billing.
Locally, we seem to have caught the fever, too. On April 14, Krasl Art Center hosted a grand opening for a new 'zine library that it's creating, complete with a 15-minute keynote speech from Luz Magdaleno, founder of Brown & Proud Press (Chicago, IL). Not surprisingly, I wound up recording and writing many more comments than my resulting Herald-Palladium story could accommodate, but I think the basics came across well.
I swapped a copy of Desperate Times #1 with Luz, for her 'zine, Serio....and, best of all...was asked to drop off two more copies of DT for the library. Since then, my wife and I have also taken out time to contribute one page apiece for a special collaborative 'zine that Krasl also rolled out for the grand opening (and will also end up in the 'zine library). That just goes to show, there's no limit to the formats and styles associated with 'zines, which the best part (and reason) for doing them.
Lastly, but certainly not least: Desperate Times #1 is now available at Quimby's Bookstore, in Chicago. I pulled off that feat by dropping off five copies at their table, for a consignment, during the Chicago 'Zine Fest, on May 6. I'd missed it a couple times before, because I couldn't seem to remember that it preceded the Grand Rapids 'Zine Conference -- the event that inspired me to get into the game.
Suffice to say, the variety and diversity on display across the Chicago 'Zine Fest Floor proved awesome to behold -- and, naturally, difficult to summarize in a paragraph or two. However, based on the energy and commitment that I witnessed, it's fair to say that proverbial printed paper comeback of 'zines continues apace. I caught up with Luz again, this time at her table, and handed off a photocopy of my Herald-Palladium story, which she'd requested.
Overall, it's been a great couple of months. We'll find out soon enough what the rest of the year holds, as I begin the process of compiling Desperate Times #2. Onward and upward.
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WE ARE THE CLASH: ROUGH DRAFT WRAPPED UP
May 23, 2017
For a lineup often dismissed as a) not terribly memorable, b) overly loud, or c) too strident for its own good, the Clash Mark II have proven remarkably durable. One indication is the constant preponderance of new anecdotes, live tapes and photos that keep turning up, such as the badge -- created for the miner's strike -- by Eddie King, the artist who created many of the graphics associated with that era, as he confirmed through an email to my co-author, Mark Andersen:
"The badge? Yep...that's one of mine...got my drummer at the time (from Middlesborough) to pose for it....we also made a stencil from it and when it came to the 'Skagill's' [Christmas Party] gigs at Brixton we made multi coloured bunting that was sprayed with that logo then hung throughout the lobby....idea was kind of like 'let's make this a party/carnival/rebellion against Thatcher'....we made it all (yards and yards and yards of it) over a period of a couple of days on the upper floor of the Clash base of operations/headquarters in Camden Stables....can't remember how many spray cans we used - let's just say if there was a hole in the ozone above Camden I'll put my hand up for it."
I'm pleased to note that Mark and myself have just completed our rough draft of We Are The Clash: The Last Stand Of A Band That Mattered, which comes four years after we announced it, via our joint communique. Though, at times, the editorial goalposts have seemingly moved further and further back, we're amply confident that the end result will be worth the wait.
We now move into the editing and postproduction phase, which will carry on through the summer, with the goal of releasing We Are The Clash (via Akashic Books) in 2019. That's 35 years after Joe Strummer, Paul Simonon and Bernard Rhodes sought to remake the band for the fight ahead, against the twin claws of Thatcherism, and its American counterpart, Reaganomics, which works for me.
I find it equally fitting that we completed our work in March, 32 years after the miners' strike ended, without any concessions from the Thatcher regime -- and the unfetted monetarist aggression that it represented. These are the same ides of March, of course, that have seen the U.S. House of Representatives rushing to strip an estimated 24 million of their hard-won benefits through the innocuously-named American Health Care Act.
Time will tell what befalls this legislation, which the U.S. Senate is attempting to remake in its own image, behind closed doors. If nothing else, those who dismiss the Clash Mark II as invalid and insubstantial should recognize its ability to soundtrack the events it decried -- such as the repression of the miners, and the union that advocated for them.
"We could either surrender, or we could stand and fight," Scargill observed, in a 25th anniversary piece for the Guardian newspaper. The need to respond in a seemingly life or death struggle overrode all other issues, such as whether the NUM should call a national benefit before it proceeded -- as Scargill made clear during a special conference on April 19, 1984,to deal with the issue: "We can all make speeches, but at the end of the day we have got to stand up and be counted ... We have got to come out and say not only what we feel should be done, but do it because if we don't do that, then we fail."
This is the landscape that the Clash Mark II's music inhabits, why people respond to it, and why it still matters -- then, and now. That "last stand" against unrestricted capitalism, and all the social ills it represents, is more resonant than ever, because the basic issues don't change throughout history. What matters is how we respond...which is We Are The Clash comes in. Enough said.
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"DESPERATE TIMES" 'ZINE: FIRST REVIEWS ARE IN!
Feb 9, 2016
Well, the verdicts are trickling in (along with the orders): thanks to those who have shown a willingness to wrap their arms around Desperate Times, the 'zine that sticks up for the right to cut, paste 'n' comment...without a care in the world for where the chips may happen to fall.
Here's what they're saying so far: UGLY THINGS #40: "....A throwback to the classic cut 'n' paste style of the '70s and '80s with collaged Xeroxed images, hand-drawn graphics, and -- ah, yes, I remember them well -- paste-up lines." "Written, assembled and stapled by UT writer Ralph Heibutzki, Issue #1 has articles on Swedish Killed By Death favorite Hemliga Bosse, a reappraisal of the second Jam album, and Sylvain Sylvain stage banter, and some personal commentary pieces." Thanks to my main man, UGLY THINGS Supremo Mike Stax, for his comments there...as you'll gather from the above company, this is one instance in which I don't mind being seen as a throwback....they don't call it "old school" for nothing, right?
MAXIMUM ROCK 'N' ROLL (#391, December 2015): "Mostly punk oriented, Chairman Ralph is putting in work to dig it up; digging through clues in comment threads in old KBD blogs to contact the old '77 punks behind classic singles or making the two-hour drive for a 'storytellers'-style session with Sylvain Sylvain. It's good to know that someone is hoofing it to dig up and preserve the gritty details....Curious to see what gets turned up for #2."
POSITIVE CREED #28 (UK): "All the way from the States, DESPERATE TIMES is a new 'zine with a difference. Ralph has done a good job with this debut effort, and put it together in a Dada kind of way, which gives it an old look, which takes me back to a time when 'zine editors relied on imagination, not modern technology. "Inside this issue, you'll find an interesting piece on the New York Dolls, an article on the Jam which goes back over their THIS IS THE MODERN WORLD album, a brief chat with Paul Shand from The Numbers, a really nice piece of writing regarding theft at work, and various other things which have been thrown into the mix. "For a first attempt, I'm impressed with what's going on here, and my only criticism is that each page is only printed on one side, which makes it a bulky read...and I think it would not only be cheaper to distribute, but easier to follow if both sides were used. Nice work, Ralph, and I look forward to seeing issue #2 soon, my friend." Thanks, Rob, nice on that score, as well!
And, as I freely acknowledge, the last point he raises about the single versus double-sided issue is a fair one....believe me, though, it's not intentional, or some kind of art statement on my part...it's more a reflection of living in a small town where your options are crap! :-) Or, in other words...the best deal I've found on double-sided copies so far is 9 cents a page, versus the nickel per page I currently pay for my single-sided copies....so guess what's winning out? And I'll probably have to stick with the latter, at least for the short run, until I find some clever way around the whole nonsense.
Or, put another way...I could have waited for the ultimate moment, with all the options falling into place...but you don't always happen to get that particular combo, in life or in art...so I followed my instincts, and went with what I had. If you have any interest in the proceedings, I hope you won't mind...for all I know, I suspect you won't. So what are you waiting for?
Check out the contents for yourself, all 44-odd pages, with a color stock cover that'll make you sit up and take notice (trust me)...for only $5 postpaid, to: PO Box 2, St. Joseph, MI 49085-0002, USA. Go ahead -- just take a deep breath, and take the plunge! And it'll beat seeing the usual stacks of junk mail, or bills...more updates to come, as events and space dictate.
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GR ZINE FEST WRAPUP (7/25/15)/ANNOUNCING THE 'ZINE: "DESPERATE TIMES"
Aug 2, 2015
The hunger for something tangible seems all the rage these days -- as anyone witnessing the return of vinyl can attest. The same situation seems to apply to 'zines, those gloriously cut 'n' pasted, hand-designed, errantly-stapled samizdat dispatches from some alternate universe where nobody gives a rat's ass about celebrity A-list circle-jerking...the latest auto-tuned pop something-or-other phenom...let alone the latest installment in some mercifully forgotten movie franchise.
No, 'zines serve a purpose, and more people seem to have reached the same conclusion, judging by the turnout I witnessed at the Grand Rapids Zine Fest (7/25/15), which took place at the Kendall College of Art and Design's Fed Galleries. Having planned on doing a 'zine myself for some time now, I decided to go and see how the field looked. After all, pundits and scenesters alike had been sounding the death knell of 'zines since the 2000s, when blogs seemed to have taken over the space that they'd occupied. The '90s era of zinesters-make-good-now-here's-your-book-deal seemed as unthinkable as an ashtray on a motorbike.
However, the energy on display in the room said something else to me, as my wife and I made the rounds of tables -- from anarchist-oriented, to feminist, to personal and back again, all the passion on display made me want to pursue my objective that much more. Given the heavy hand of tech developments like "Mobilegeddon," all of a sudden, paper looks like a better and better bet: you can hold it in your hand, you can put it down again. Hey, what a concept! I suspect that's one reason for developments like the return of vinyl records, and the apparent rebound of indie bookstores.
The day's bigger draws included Matt Feazell, best known for his series of mini-comics: "The Amazing Cynicalman." Fittingly enough, he gave a workshop on the subject -- and, 90 minutes later, I found myself creating my first one! Now that's energy in action, I say. The afternoon concluded with a workshop, where several exhibitors read from their own 'zines -- and, though I didn't have a table, I was able to read excerpts from one of my own 'zine's forthcoming articles. Hear it for yourself on the "Featured Songs" portion of this site.
Somewhere, somehow, an inner ring of true believer is doing its best to keep the cause alive, which makes me want to sign up all the more. The nature of instant publication is hard to deny, especially when you're used to publications sitting on your ideas for weeks -- or even months -- at a time, only to say "NO" anyway...or, worse, seeing them watered down through sheer attrition in the editing process.
While I can't leave these developments behind just yet, I've dedicated that it's time for my own outlet, my 'own zine -- and its name is DESPERATE TIMES, which will combine my lifelong love of outsider music and art with personal commentary, essays and reflections on whatever topic or issue might strike my fancy (though it'll most likely come wrapped up in a social bent). I'm working on it this week as I speak -- creating a look that dips into the currents of Punk and Mod, without permanently dropping anchors into the choppy waters of the past.
DESPERATE TIMES will cut through the fog of those '77-era ills that seem stronger and more noxious than ever -- cultural apathy, glaring social inequity, mindless media content, and narrowing of opportunities for the majority -- with humor, without a concern for the passing of trends, or falling into the common traps of art/cynicism for its own sake, or making lengthy lists of rules that everybody else but the compilers feel obliged to follow. DESPERATE TIMES will offer a voice to music and the culture on the margins, and -- in the process -- reclaim a space outside mainstream cliches of "elevator speeches", "media platforms" and "staying on message." DESPERATE TIMES will stake out a presence away from the gatekeepers' mindless power games of "thumbs up, thumbs down, what else you got, kid?"...and, hopefully, leave its own lasting imprint.
What happens from this point? Stay tuned, as I begin assembling the final product, and figuring out the usual distribution/promotion issues...but all I know is, after seeing all that energy on display, I don't feel like standing still.
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CHAIRMAN RALPH UNPLUGGED: "POLICE" (THE PROLES) (TAKE IV)
Apr 25, 2015
Unless you're a diehard punk partisan, the odds are even that you may not know this song -- which gained wider exposure on the BLOODSTAINS ACROSS AUSTRALIA comp CD (1998), having appeared exactly 20 years before then. Like many singles of that era, "Police"/"Underage" was a self-released production, and marked the only one that this Australia band managed to put out. There's a certain symmetry in that fact. But what a great song it is -- if you've heard it, you already know.
One reason is the riff itself, which shows how you can milk one chord (F) to set a mood...a quality it shares in common with "The Leader" (The Clash), which is also based around that same chord, same key (F). The original 45 also features some fiddly bits that my fingers weren't fast to emulate, so I let that go and built my version around the rhythm, which is simple, urgent and driving.
My other inspiration for doing this song is the subject matter, which (sadly) hasn't changed a bit...and is arguably heading backwards, given the recent spate of fatal police-civilian shootings. Twenty-odd years ago, the nation watched transfixed in horror as LAPD officers rained down blow after blow from their night sticks onto Rodney King.
Today, we seem no farther along to a comprehensive solution of the ills that create situations like the King incident (and so many more like it).As the lyrics make amply clear, the situation wasn't much better, then, either ("The police force needs a drastic change/At war with the public, it's time to stop their game"), which has something to do with the militarized aura that characterizes many departments ("They have too much power over us/They try to tower over us"). I had to improvise one line in the latter half of the song, because I couldn't make it out...but it's one that's in keeping with the overall vibe, I think. (I can't recall which one at the moment -- I'll have to listen to it again, and type it out accordingly.)
At any rate, it's a great song from this politically inclined group...and one that deserves a wider exposure than it got the first time around. Go to "Featured Songs" and hear the story for yourself!
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"THE CROWDS WERE ALL IMPORTANT": VAUGHAN MACKAY RECALLS THE UNKNOWN BLUES' LIFE+TIMES (8/9/14)
by Words: Chairman Ralph/Images: Vaughan MacKay Archives
Aug 16, 2014
Some ideas just take on a life of their own.
When I started delving into the Unknown Blues' life and times -- and the resulting DVD, ANTARCTIC ANGELS AND THE UNKNOWN BLUES -- I imagined that I'd do a writeup of the film, and call it a day....at the least.
However, that notion quickly fell by the wayside after the filmmaker, Simon Ogston, put me in contact with some of the former Unknown Blues members...one thing led to another, which is how Dave Hogan's interview came onto this webpage...and how you're reading this email chat now with lead guitarist Vaughan MacKay, who's gone above and beyond in providing his own recollections for me. (Thanks to Vaughan for providing all the photos, as well.)
Given the length of this chat session, I thought only fitting to include Vaughan's thoughts separately, so we don't have a super-lengthy block of text to read...so dig in, delve on and don't think you've heard it all...especially when we get to the story of that German military tunic!
CHAIRMAN RALPH (CR): What made you want to be a musician, and who inspired you -- especially since you switched from drums, to guitar? And how did that percussive approach carry over to your playing style?
VAUGHAN MACKAY (VM): I learned drumming in boarding school and played in the college pipe band. Mainly out of boredom, but once I started learning I was hooked. After leaving school I took a few lessons from a jazz drummer and bought a drum kit. Started playing Shadows, Cliff Richards and Beatles music. Gradually, a few Rolling Stones tracks. As I was drumming I would watch the guitarists at rehearsals and pick up a bit from them. Little by little. I don't think playing the drums influenced my playing style really.
CR: Tell me a bit about your previous band, The Whom -- did they make any recordings, and how were they different (or not) from Unknown Blues?
VM: I played in a few bands before Whom. Whom was a polished outfit, matching Beatle suits. The equipment set up on stage like the Beatles and playing a lot of Beatles stuff. We did play numbers by other groups such as the Searchers, The Kinks, The Animals and a few of The Rolling Stones at my insistance.. The group was tight and strong vocally. We recorded a single with our own song (I can't remember the name) on side one, and "That's How Strong My Love Is" on side two. My one recording as a vocalist. We also appeared on NZ TV playing "Satisfaction" to demonstrate the Fuzz Box...I felt stifled in Whom as they were very conservative. I was getting more and more into the Stones. I was sacked as a result. (Thank God). The Unknown Blues were the complete opposite. We were very serious about our music, but not into uniform dress and a clean cut public image.
CR: What was New Zealand's music scene like before the Stones and the Pretty Things arrived there -- and how did it change from that point on, since bands like yourselves -- and Chants R&B, to cite another example -- drew so much inspiration from them?
VM: I think up to this point Instrumental Guitar bands and American pop were very popular. Bands doing steps on stage and solo performers with show band backing. Conservative.
CR: One of the things that fascinates me about watching the film is how these harder-edged London sounds traveled half a world away. What accounts for the appeal of that music, then and now?
VM: It's easy to play, Is great party music and has a great beat. It is based on american blues and is timeless
CR: I love this description from the Audio Culture entry on the band: "At their peak, they could pack out the swirling psychedelic decorated basement club, playing with local fellow travellers, The Third Chapter and The PIL. One memorable YMCA concert was filmed showing Hancock smashing a redundant semi-acoustic bass, Who-style, in a blistering finale to a hot show. They were not asked back."
Throughout the film, there's an element of "...their reputation preceded them wherever they went." Which gigs were the best -- or most riotous -- and which venues were good for you? (And who were those bands mentioned above -- what they were like? As wild as Unknown Blues, I suspect?)
VM: The Best Gigs we played were The Cellar Club in Dunedin, The Ag Hall Dunedin and a club in Christcchurch. I think it was called Sweethearts. We also played some private dances in Invercargill at Woodend which we ran. They were invitation only and the tickets were about $2.00 each. For this you could drink as much as you could.
After these nights we didn't use brooms to clean the floor. We used Squeegies!!!
Many Invercargill girls lost their "Cherries" at these nights The Third Chapter and The PIL were resident groups at The Cellar Club. They were great musicians and welcomed us to The Cellar. I remember their great parties.
The Dunedin crowds were much different to Invercargill ones. The girls, or some of them, liked to shock. I remember on girl called The Leppy Lady as she was very short, walking into a party in high boots and fur coat. She opened the coat... Stark naked with a very nice figure.. Just one of several memories.
CR: OK, let's talk about that Luftwaffe jacket -- as you probably know, that photo of you wearing it is among the most iconic images associated with the band. As I've mentioned to Dave, and Simon, this is a good 10 years before Johnny Rotten & Co. -- and the New York Dolls, as well -- flirted with such imagery (including the swastika, which we also see in the film).
Obviously, you guys weren't pro-German, or anything like that -- but what motivated you to wear that kind of clothing, and how does it fit into the overall equation of the Unknown Blues' look and sound?
VM: Someone said to me "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story"... So here is the truth.
We didn't dress or act to upset people. We wore what we wanted to. Dave loved white or yellow and wore leather waist coats. Bari loved jeans and always wore blue suede boots. Rocket wore anything he liked and was very fashion conscious. Wombie changed his style of dress during his time with the Blues but was always tidy and well dressed.. As for me, well, I liked uniform tunics. I had my old school cadet jacket. with Sergeant's stripes which I wore a lot. I also had an old redcoat jacket and ripped the sleeves off as it was too hot on stage.
The Unknown Blues stopped playing in July 1969 and up to that point I didn't own a German tunic. I went up to new Plymouth for four months after that time and during that time bought a German Wehrmacht Cavalry Leutnant's jacket. I thought it looked great. When I returned to Invercargill in November or December we did one or two extra gigs and I wore the tunic on stage during this time. I make the point that it wasn't a Luftwaffe tunic. It was a German army one. Nor was it a "NAZI" tunic, but an ordinary army officer's tunic.
We never played at the RSA according to me extensive band archive. I think the photo was taken at St Mary's. There is no way I would have worn the tunic in an RSA as my father was in German capivity for four years. I was brought up to respect our veterans, not upset them. Hope this clears this up once and for all!!
CR: In retrospect, bands like Chants and Unknown Blues could be considered forerunners of punk -- and the film makes a strong case for that, as well. How do you feel about your association with the term, and the movement that exploded during the mid-'70s (and also resonated strongly in Australia and NZ, too)?
VM: This question just makes me smile. We often used to party before gigs and would go on stage in whatever we were wearing that day more or less. We wern't anti social, in fact I would say we were very social. The girls loved our parties. Some of the snobbie girlfriends of other Invercargill bands would leave their boyfriends and then sneak out to our flat. Yes, we were sometimes drunk in public sometimes but were usually happy drunks..
CR: As I've told Dave, your association with the Antarctic Angels immediately reminded me of another parallel to '70s punk (specifically, the Sex Pistols' diehard fans -- the Bromley Contingent). How did the relationship affect your music, and what did they see in it, from your standpoint?
VM: We were kicking around with a lot of the guys who were later Antarctic Angels before The Antarctic Angels were formed. A lot of these guys loved our music and one by one started buying bikes. Roy Reid, the Founder of The Antarctic Angels, was a close mate and was often our Roadie when we went away. He learnt a bit of guitar and was on stage with us from time to time. RIP, Roy!
CR: Between yourselves and Chants, the talent definitely existed to record an album, or two -- though you primarily did covers, in your own way, and were known primarily as a live phenomenon, Why didn't you achieve more in that arena, you think?
VM: We were never interested in recording. We were a live band. I think when we played there was an excitement which fuelled the crowd which in turn fed back to us and took us up higher. This was not drug fuelled as we weren't into that. We drank a lot but put a good performance above everything.
When we were offered to do sessions for Viking in Christchurch we saw it as an opportunity to get there to play and bracketted the sessions with gigs in Christchurch. I think we spent about four days there. One huge party from beginning to end. We arrived at the recording session after a night of playing and parties. Bari's guitar case was full of beer and someone smuggled in a bottle of whisky..
We were surprised to see some session brass musicians in bow ties there to fatten out the rhythm section. They were really square with bow ties. Man what a circus.. We were doing a cover of John Mayall's "Suspicions" and I laid down a pretty good fat solo. Sounded great but a sax player thought he could do a better one. Had to remind him they were backing musicians on this day.. What a hoot. Later in the day we found a party and then off to play a gig. It was a riot..
CR: What do you think led to Unknown Blues' demise -- did it come down to a lack of an audience for original music, or simply a case of not being able to fend off real life any longer?
VM: The demise of the Unknown Blues came over a few months. I became engaged and wanted to see the North Island. Dave, Phil (Sharman) and Wombie wanted to go to Melbourne.
Bari wanted to stay in Invercargill, although he lived in Melbourne later.
We lost interest to a degree I think. Maybe we were burnt out as we were living in party houses and sometimes the parties would go on for weeks with only brief interludes and playing engagements. Our rehearsals often developed into parties.
CR: How long did you continue playing after the breakup, and is music a significant part of your life today?
VM: After The Unknown Blues broke up I played in another group in Invercargill for about a year. I think The band was called Powerhouse. Bari Fitzgerald was in this band with me along with another friend, Paul Kirkwood, on drums. We played in Dunedin, but by this time The Cellar Club was gone.
I then moved to Dunedin in about 1972. I played as a fill in guitarist for Noah with Steve Brett and Richard Lindsay (a fine guitarist!!)
Around this time I also played with a Group called Roach whose members came from Timaru. Still rock but J. Geils type music. I still have a few guitars around the house and enjoy myself with them, but no more playing (in) public.
CR: How did you react when Simon first approached you about making a documentary about Unknown Blues, since the story had effectively been lost to time (and the memories of the participants involved)?
VM: I was very surprised but became enthusiastic about (the idea). I think it was a great experience.
CR: The chemistry between yourselves come through loud and clear in the film. What other factors do you think made the "classic" lineup (Bari, Dave, Keith, Rocket and yourself) so potent, musically speaking? Did you learn anything new from watching the final product?
VM: Not really, except it was a great week -- there is a chemistry there, but it's hard to define. Rocket's bass and Wombie's drums put down a solid beat and Bari, Dave and I bounced off each other. On a good night a single number could go for two hours. The crowds were all important. It wouldn't have happened in an empty hall.
CR: As the cliche goes -- the reunion footage makes it seem like you'd never been apart. Do you see a day when the Unknown Blues will rise again, or has that day passed, you think?
VM: Not really. maybe four of us will but as for the fifth. Nope I don't think so. I love those guys. We lived through a very special time.
CR: Are there any bands in today's Kiwi scene that you might regard as a kindred spirit?
VM: I really don't know. I have lived in Australia since 1979.
CR: And lastly, the million-dollar question -- any regrets, and what kind of footprint did the Unknown Blues leave on Kiwi music?
VM: No regrets. I think we were all blessed to have been born when we were. We were teens during the pop revolution. What can I say? Met so many wonderful people. It was right in the hippie time and many of those people are lifetime friends all around the world.
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"THIS IS THE STORY FOR MOST BANDS": "ANTARCTIC ANGELS" DVD BRINGS THE UNKNOWN BLUES STORY TO LIFE
Aug 3, 2014
Some of the most fascinating stories -- from a journalistic perspective -- are the ones that don't get told right away. In some cases, though, "right away" is a matter of definition. Just ask the members of Unknown Blues, who tore up New Zealand from December 1966 to June 1970.
Taking their name from a track by the Pretty Things -- whose August 1965 tour, along with a previous outing by the Rolling Stones, provided the jump-off point -- the Unknown Blues and their biker fan following, the Antarctic Angels, burned a permanent footprint into local fans' memories as a loud, wild and rude outfit to reckon with...drinking heavily from the well that yielded Buddy Guy, T-Bone Walker and Muddy Waters...plus the amped-up white blues of Chicken Shack, Cream, and Fleetwood Mac.
And that's where the story sat after the band broke up. Like many local acts, then and now, the Unknown Blues remained a live phenomenon: aside from a couple of sessions that didn't satisfy the parties involved, the Unknown Blues left no recorded footprint behind.
And that's where paths diverged for the classic lineup: lead singer Dave Hogan has continued playing with various bands (Blues Hangover, Southern Lightning, The Paramounts). So does guitarist Bari Fitzgerald, who plays locally -- in and around the band's Invercargill stomping grounds.
The remaining members (bassist John "Rocket" Hancock, drummer Keith "Wmobie" Mason and lead guitarist Vaughan MacKay), on the other hand, left music and got on with real life. If you didn't catch them in their prime, you wouldn't have seen or heard the story -- which filmmaker Simon Ogston has now documented in this snappy, roughly-hour-long documentary.
The resulting DVD ("Antarctic Angels And The Unknown Blues") emerged, as we'll see, while Ogston set about documenting the story of another long-unheralded local New Zealand legend (Chants R&B) for a totally different documentary project ("Rumble & Bang"). From there, nature simply took its course.
But that's perfectly fine, because the Unknown Blues story is more than that of an inspired local band -- although that's the obvious starting point. It's also a great human interest story of five guys who had the time of their lives, but didn't give a damn, and have no regrets now. As far as I'm concerned...that's the perfect exclamation point.
Having stumbled across the story myself, I threw out some fishing lines to Simon, and the band, as well...and this is what emerged. Enjoy...and long live the Unknown Blues!
SIMON OGSTON (7/12/14 INTERVIEW)
CHAIRMAN RALPH (CR): First, tell me a little about yourself: how did you end up in the film business, and what did you do before starting Bellbird Pictures?
SIMON OGSTON (SO): I'm largely self-taught, I started working in TV in 2006 as a reporter, then started Bellbird in 2009 with the intention of making family history films, then went off the rails and started making doco's about underground Kiwi music
CR: You stumbled on the Unknown Blues Band while researching the Chants (story). How did that connection come about?
SO: I was interviewing someone about the Chants R&B and he told me that "if you think these guys were wild, you should check out the Unknown Blues". Up until that point very little was known about the band, just a very brief mention about them and the Antarctic Angels in a few NZ (New Zealand) books. Of course this lack of info added to the band's legend. Everyone who ever saw the group in or around Invercargill in the 1960s has never forgotten them.
CR: In a sense, both bands' stories follow the familiar arc that you see in films like "That Thing You Do!": band forms, gets some local notoriety, makes the odd record, then splits up and gets on with real life. What made you decide that both stories were worth telling?
SO: Yes, this is the story for most bands. I guess I'm interested in groups that pursue their own approach and in the process develop something that is distinctive to NZ rather than just mimicking overseas groups. With the Unknown Blues in particular, the story had basically been lost to time and I thought it was worthy of recording just because it was so out of the ordinary at the time - like in most Western countries, the late '60s were a time of significant social change in NZ.
CR: Tell me a bit about the lone Unknown Blues recording that features in the film -- where did you source that clip, and can you tell me where/when it was recorded?
SO: Somebody recorded that live performance off their radio at home, I'm not sure who. The band did record a few songs in a studio in Christchurch but these were ruined by engineers in bowties who insisted on overdubbing a brass section. The recordings have been lost, probably forever.
CR: The talent was certainly there, so why didn't both bands achieve more, you think, recording-wise? Why didn't they write more original material?
SO: Not sure -- I guess the concept of writing your own music was largely yet to filter into NZ at that point, most bands played exclusively covers, although their versions did differ significantly from the originals.
CR: Although both bands had strong blues/R+B leanings, they arguably fall into the proto-punk category, too...to what extent do you think is this perception accurate, or is it more a case of how "polite" (quote-unquote) New Zealand society viewed such endeavors at the time?
SO: I think the rawness of the Unknown Blues in particular is a connection with punk, a general preference for playing loose and raw rather than technical proficiency.
CR: I'm (also) thinking of the swastika affectations and images like (guitarist) Vaughan McKay playing in the Luftwaffe military jacket -- I'm intrigued at how that sort of imagery surfaced well before Johnny Rotten or the New York Dolls were toying with it.
SO: I guess the desire to provoke a reaction among a generally more conservative society has been around a long time. For most people it was the most shocking thing they could think of. Having said that, I would wager that wearing a Luftwaffe jacket into an Invercargill RSA in 1967 was considerably more dangerous than the exploits of Ron Asheton or Sid Vicious.
CR: As a biographer and historian-type myself, I know -- and so do you -- at how difficult it can be to pin down stories that weren't particularly well documented (or only sketchily documented, at best). What were some of the challenges that you faced in making both these films, and how did you deal with them?
SO: The main challenge, as always, is a lack of any funding. I found most band members' memories were pretty intact and everyone was pretty open about talking about it. Having such a wealth of photos was a real plus. It's a shame there's no film footage in existence.
CR: How's "Antarctic Angels" been received since its release?
SO: The Unknown Blues film has been popular among the gang/band's old cohorts, it's been a great way of bringing some old friends together. I think they're very happy the story has been preserved for posterity
CR: And the million dollar question: what's up next? Your website mentions a documentary on the Skeptics -- how's that coming?
SO: The Skeptics film "Sheen of Gold" is out now on Flying Nun Records, and can be ordered from their website. The next film will be on Phil Dadson and his percussive ensemble From Scratch.
CR: Are you done with music for now, or is there another great cult story somewhere in the pipeline, just waiting to be told?
SO: There's a few things in the works, we'll see what happens...
"...WE WERE MORE THAN READY TO BE CORRUPTED":
DAVE HOGAN RECALLS HIS UNKNOWN BLUES EXPERIENCE (8/02/14)
CR: The Keith Richards comments cited near the beginning of the film ("How the fuck can you stand to live here?") are priceless. What was New Zealand's music scene like before the Stones and the Pretties arrived -- and how did it change, since bands like yourselves (and Chants R&B) clearly drew so much inspiration from both of them?
DAVE HOGAN (DH): In short, very conservative. It was the era of short back and sides haircuts and every member of the Unknown Blues was definitely a “post war” baby. I was the baby of the band, born in 1949. When we heard The Pretty Things and Rolling Stones it was like nothing we had ever head before. On top of that they looked like nothing we had seen before and we more than ready to be corrupted.
CR: What other bands and/or musicians proved influential in your development as a frontman, and a harp player?
DH: Before the British R&B bands I personally loved early rock and roll. Elvis, Jerry Lee, Little Richard, Gene Vincent, etc. So that was the initial musical grounding.
CR: One of the fascinating elements in Simon's film, to me, is how those harder-edged London blues/rock sounds traveled so far away. What accounts for the appeal of that music, in your mind, and what kind of effect did it exert on the local scene?
DH: Like everywhere else in the world at that time there seemed to be the thought that you were either a Stones or Beatles person. New Zealand was no exception. There were plenty of conservatives and plenty of rebellious extroverts – the Unknown Blues definitely fell into the later category.
CR: Other than those Stones/Pretty Things tour stops -- what, do you feel, was the catalyst in your own band's formation?
DH: At school I was asked by the vocational guidance officer what I wanted to be. To which I replied a singer in a rock and roll band. I was about 14 years old at the time, so I guess what I did was a given.
CR: Throughout the film, there's definitely an element of "...their reputation preceded them, everywhere they went." What were some of the best and/or most riotous gigs, in your opinion? The best venues?
DH: The Cellar Club in Dunedin was always fantastic and our first ever gig at a Christmas Bible Class Dance in Invercargill was probably the most riotous and set the precedent for things to come.
CR: In many respects, you and the Chants could be considered proto-punk forerunners -- albeit with strong R&B leanings -- to what extent is this accurate, you feel, or does it say more about how "polite" New Zealand society viewed such goings-on?
DH: Back in the 60’s a “punk” was prison term for young men who provided sexual favours to other prisoners. We definitely didn’t fall into that category, however I did enjoy the attitude of the Sex Pistols, New York Dolls, etc, when they provided “punk” with a new definition a decade later.
CR: I'm thinking, in particular, of some the more compelling images in the film, particularly Vaughn wearing that Luftwaffe jacket. -- a good 10 years before Johnny Rotten & Co. flirted likewise with such imagery (and six years if you count Johnny Thunder's swastika T-shirt -- don't know if you've seen that photo).
Obviously, you guys weren't fascists, but how does that imagery fit into the equation of the Unknown Blues' look, and sound?
DH: We like to provoke not just with our music but also with how we looked. Alongside Vaughan’s German Gear there were yellow jeans, pink Denim Jackets and our bass player “Rocket” was known to borrow clothing from his eldest sister’s wardrobe – and that was way before Boy George.
CR: Your adoption by the Antarctic Angels is another interesting element -- right away, I thought of the Bromley Contingent's early loyalty to the Sex Pistols as another common element with punk. What do you think the Angels saw in your music?
DH: Those guys were our neighbours, school friends and relatives. They were also up against the system and it seemed only natural that we fell in together and got into some very hard partying.
CR: Between you and Chants, the talent definitely existed to record a full album or two -- you were known mainly as a live phenomenon, so why didn't you achieve more in the vinyl realm, you think?
DH: The Unknown Blues were taken into a recording studio by a representative/manager from Viking Records and laid down two tracks for a proposed single. The tracks scrubbed up pretty well, but the record company representatives decided that we were a bit too rough and ready to be launched onto the New Zealand scene as potential pop star material.
CR: What factors led to the band's breakup? Towards the end, as the Audio Culture entry on Unknown Blues makes clear, you had a fair amount of lineup changes -- was it a case of breaking up the original chemistry, or a lack of a wider audience for original music?
DH: Rocket left the band to move to another city. Vaughan got engaged to be married and plain and simple the gigs had dropped off.
CR: Looking back, what kind of imprint did Unknown Blues leave behind on the Kiwi rock scene?
DH: Internationally known Punk Chris Knox of Flying Nun records has said that we were a direct influence. Thanks Chris. Also, we have been mentioned in a couple of books on the history of New Zealand Rock and Roll. And Hell! We have been inducted into the World’s Southernmost Hall of Fame.
CR: How did you feel when Simon first approached you about making a documentary about the Unknown Blues' life and times? I imagine that you had to be surprised, since the story had effectively been lost to time.
Were there any surprises, for you, in terms of what people remembered (or didn't remember -- this being the '60s, after all)? What does Antarctic Angels say about the era in which Unknown Blues existed?
DH: First off, I thought Simon was stark raving mad to even suggest such an idea. I mean, who gave a shit about us? Then when I met and spoke to Simon he proved to be the nicest guy in the world and somehow he convinced me that such a project made perfect sense. I am so grateful he did.
CR: Seeing the reunion footage makes plain that -- as the old cliche goes -- it's like you'd never been apart.
Do you see a day when the band will play again, or has an exclamation point has effectively been put on Unknown Blues' existence for good?
DH: Playing with the Unknown Blues again after a break of 40 years was truly one of my life’s highlights. However, as much as I would like it happen again, I wouldn’t put any money on it.
CR: Obviously, playing with a guy like John Stax keeps a foothold with your roots. What are your current musical influences, and how do you see yourself fitting -- or not fitting in, as the case may be -- with what's happening now? What's your favorite record of all the ones that you've made since the Unknown Blues era?
DH: I still love the Blues, The Stones and The Pretty Things, so what I play really hasn’t changed at all since I started. I love them all, but here is the time to plug a live album that Southern Lightening have just recorded. It contains all the good old stuff and it should be out by the end of this year.
CR: Lastly, any regrets -- or did everything happen for a reason, in the end?
DH: I have always refused to regret anything, mistakes and all. Rock on everyone.
LINKS TO GO
AUDIO CULTURE: CHANTS R&B PROFILE: http://www.audioculture.co.nz/people/chants-r-b
THE UNKNOWN BLUES PROFILE: http://www.audioculture.co.nz/people/the-unknown-blues
BELLBIRD PICTURES: http://www.bellbirdpictures.co.nz/
DAVE HOGAN'S MELTDOWN: http://www.davehogansmeltdown.com/
THE SOUTHLAND TIMES: "Unknown Blues Band A Blast From The Past": http://www.stuff.co.nz/southland-times/culture/5687368/Unknown-Blues-band-a-blast-from-the-past
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“I OFTEN THINK OF HIM WHEN I PLAY IT...”: HOWARD PICKUP RMEMBERED, 15 YEARS LATER
Dec 26, 2012
Like many charter members of Punk Rock's Year Zero, John Howard Boak's impact proved all too brief – but what a resume he acquired, as one-quarter of the original Adverts, who remain one of the era's most influential underdogs. Renaming himself after the loudest part of a guitar, Boak – now known to the world as Howard Pickup -- carved out his own unique sonic vapor trail on the band's two albums, CROSSING THE RED SEA WITH THE ADVERTS (1978), and its greatly underrated, but equally worthwhile followup, CAST OF THOUSANDS (1979).
In many ways, the Adverts were punk's archetypal “here today, gone next year” story, bookended by two markedly contrasting halves. Where the first album emerged to a near-universal ecstatic reception, the band's main songwriter, TV Smith, freely acknowledges that the critically-pummeled CAST OF THOUSANDS was a bridge-burning, scorched-earth sequel – a declaration of independence from the 1-2-FREE-FOAH! Formula that his peers had perfected in '76 and '77, but also recorded during a time of heavy indebtedness, and precious little help from its new label, RCA.
The band's last recorded gasp, “Cast Of Thousands”/”I Will Walk You Home,” appeared in November 1979 – and, like its parent album, slipped out to indifference and yawns from the public. The B-side, in particular, “had one foot hanging over the outer edge of what most people would call 'punk',” Smith wryly observes, in his sleevenotes for THE PUNK SINGLES COLLECTION (1997). “For most of our fans that particular walk – from Cast Of Thousands to One Chord Wonders – was the one they weren't prepared to make.”
By then, the Adverts no longer existed to kick around, anyway, disbanding after a final gig on October 27, 1979, at Slough College. Smith would endure numerous setbacks to continue his career, but the world would hear no more from Howard Pickup – who'd simply stopped coming to rehearsals a few months before the end,. He never joined another band, and never again lent his telltale spidery guitar parts to a different outfit, or one-off project. That was then, this was now, and he'd simply had enough.
The rock 'n' world heard no more from Howard until his untimely death from a brain tumor, aged 46, on June 11, 1997. (Some online sources give the date as November 7, 1997, but I'm positive that this is wrong – I was writing for Goldmine at the time, and if I recall correctly, the fall date coincides with the issue in which his death was announced. The BBC Channel 4 documentary, “We Who Wait,” puts the timeline at two months after he got his diagnosis, in May 1997. I think I'll put my money on Auntie Beeb here.)
Most chroniclers are quite happy to quit there, and call it a day. However, if you have any sense of curiosity – then and now, an absolute must for success as a writer – your gut suggests that there's always a good human interest story around the corner. In this case, I found myself wondering what Howard's life after the Adverts felt like. How did he look back on the whole experience?
Did Howard ever see one of the many punk documentaries that have splashed across our TV and cinema screens in recent years, and feel a twinge of “what have been”? If so, was it enough to jump-start the interest again? I found an answer while circling the Internet – and reached out to a gent who came back with an insightful slant on all these questions, one that could only have come from someone with knowledge of the person involved.
Read the answers for yourself, and make up your own mind. If nothing else, this particular entry should get us all thinking about the other side of fame – and its effects on those people who don't jump back in the barrel after having their proverbial day in the sun.
Thanks to Steve H. for his recollections, and also, for providing the attached photo. This entry is also dedicated to Tim Cross, who died this summer from cancer, and played such a pivotal role in the Adverts' life and times – not only on CAST OF THOUSANDS, but many of TV Smith's subsequent solo outings, as well. RIP to him, and Howard – a part of the Adverts, now and forever.
MEMORIES OF HOWARD PICKUP (STEVE H.: 12/10/12)
I am happy to say that Howard was a great friend of mine who I miss a lot.
After the Adverts finished he moved to Kingston, which is south of London and worked as a taxi driver before starting his own courier company. I met him when he employed me as a driver and at first we were just worked together, but soon became friends as we seemed to share the same sense of humour and similar interests -- he was an extremely funny chap.
I had worked for him for quite a few months before he mentioned his music past. He had left all that behind him and wasn't interested in playing and didn't really have anything good to say about his time in music. I was never really a fan of punk, so when he lent me copies of the old albums I did my best to get into them, but as I say, it wasn't really my kind of thing.
He was very much into fitness and he and I would go jogging in Richmond Park and even took up doing weights, but I soon lost interest in that.
His interest in music returned when he and I visited a music shop and saw a demonstration of some of the new types of equipment that was around and suddenly he had to have it. He managed to get some money out of the company and brought himself a Roland U20 keyboard that was linked to a PC and we spent many happy hours trying to figure out how it worked. We were old analog boys and this was the new digital stuff. It took us a while, but we got it all working and put a few things together..... If you know of this kind of equipment you will know that it very easy to make loops that sound great........ but only to the people making them.
One day he decided he wanted to play guitar again so after work we drove into London and he brought a (Japanese) Fender Strat, but he found it difficult to get back into playing, so the guitar was soon put behind a door and forgotten.
I worked with him for 4 or 5 years before moving on to other things, but we kept in touch and would speak on the phone every few weeks. He called me one day and asked if I wanted to buy all his music gear as he had completely lost interest. So the next time I visited him I left with most of what he had. Much of it was out of date, but the Fender is still my main guitar and I often think of him when I play it.
As I mentioned, Howard was very fit. He didn't smoke and drank very little, so I was very shocked and saddened when he suddenly became very sick. Even after all these years I can still get quite upset when I think back to that time. I wasn't able to spend much time with him as my Father was also dying at the same time.
I didn't go to his funeral, but there was a get-together at his house for all his friends. When I am in that part of the country I often drive down his road and look at the house where he and I had so many laughs.
He was buried in Carnforth which is a long way from where I live, but I promised myself that one day I would make the journey and 2 years ago I did. I found his grave and spent a few moments remembering a great friend.
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A DRUM BEAT BEHIND BOOK EXCERPTS (PT. TWO): A NIGHT WITH WALLY NIGHTINGALE
Nov 25, 2010
"ANY CHANCE OF SOME MONEY UP FRONT"?: EDITOR'S NOTE
History is written by the winners, and rock 'n' roll is no exception. The late Sex Pistols guitarist Wally Nightingale looms large in our "coulda been a contender" file, since information about him is hard to come by...sacked as the classic Sex Pistols lineup began to emerge in 1975, he essentially fell off the map thereafter, save for the odd fleeting glimpse or two that he left behind.
If you've seen Alex Cox's SID & NANCY (1986), you'll meet a character named "Wally Hairstyle." Glen Matlock's account (I WAS A TEENAGER SEX PISTOL: 1991) contains some interesting anecdotes, and -- even though the abbreviated version of Wally's given name (Warwick) translates into Brit slang for "idiot" -- he definitely doesn't come across that way in the two interviews that I've seen from Jon Savage's book, ENGLAND'S DREAMING (2002), and his ROCK COMPACT DISC chat from 1993 (posted on the God Save The Sex Pistols website, www.sex-pistols.net/). I haven't seen an obituary for him, although he apparently died on the eve of the Sex Pistols reunion tour in 1996 (if someone can confirm or rule out this information, this site would appreciate it).
Other than those tidbits I've mentioned, that's it...which makes our latest excerpt all the more fascinating for the questions that David raises about the machinery of fame. Why do some people seem to catch all the breaks, while others get chewed up, and spat out? How do those who don't cross the finish line deal with the inevitable "what might have been" feelings? And finally, what does their treatment say about ourselves, and how rock 'n' roll mythology is shaped for masss consumption? Answers on a postcard, please...otherwise...I'll get out of the way, and let you get on with your reading!
A DRUM BEAT BEHIND, CHAPTER SIX:
The Wally Nightingale story (Edited/adapted excerpt)
For my twenty-fourth birthday, in the April of 1988, I went out with the band for a daytime drink in Camden Town, North London. Drinking with us was Wally Nightingale, a strange guy who I’d met at the 100 Club just a few weeks earlier. He’d been standing talking to the Sex Pistols Glen Matlock and the legendary British DJ John Peel. At first I was more interested in meeting John Peel, as I’d met Matlock before in the toilets at a Damned gig back in 1979. At this point I hadn’t clocked Wally but once I had my mind started working and I asked him if he wanted join me for my birthday pissup.
In the early '70s Wally Nightingale, along with two of his schoolmates, had started a band, The Strand or The Swankers. Later, on Malcolm McLaren's suggestion that they get rid of Wally, he was kicked out and replaced by Johnny Rotten.
On the day Wally arrived pretty messed up, holding a briefcase that contained an assortment of drugs – including cocaine and speed. Behind Wally’s back I kept saying to everyone. “Wally's such a fucking wally.” And I really thought he was, but as I needed him for my plan, I just put up with him and we all got shitfaced.
We left the bar sometime late afternoon and made our way to the back of London Zoo. We all climbed over a high barbed wire fence, not having a fucking clue what animal lived in the enclosure and jumping into. This wasn’t such an easy climb, not for the not so agile Wally, so together Big Jim and Joe pulled him over and we got in for free. As I stood with Wally drunkenly watching the penguins I asked him if he wanted to guest at one of our gigs, he said yes, I jumped in with the penguins and we later set about putting my plan into action.
A few days after my birthday while sitting around his house, where he still lived with his mum in Shepherd's Bush, West London. We all sat drinking tea while Wally told us stories about when he roadied for the Clash, his pre-Pistols days and the time he spent in prison for possession of Class A drugs. He also told us that he’d written the Sex Pistols song: “Did You Know No Wrong,” but was never credited on it. While standing with him and his mum in there garden, he said to me that not being a famous Sex Pistol had played a part in his nervous breakdown. At the time I didn’t realise that what I was planning, was going to end up as such an historical piece of punk history. But apart from mentioning that he’d hung around with Sid Vicious, this is pretty much all I can remember about what Wally told us.
We had a gig booked at the hometown Castle on the 20th of April 1988 and I wanted Wally to guest on two songs for our encore. I knew that our fans would turn out in force, as we hadn’t played there since December, four months previously. This was going to be so different, it was Porky's debut as our new/fifth member, and Wally, the living legend onstage with us as well. All that Wally had to do was learn two covers, the Ramones's “Blitzkrieg Bop,” and “Born To Lose,” by Johnny Thunders; it was as simple as that! As we went to leave his house he whispered in my ear.
“Any chance of some money up front.”
Not prepared for this I simply said, “No.” And we left. For this gig I sent the press just a small flyer of our poster. Over background pictures of ourselves it read: “The Beat of the Beast, with very special guest Wally Nightingale of the Sex Pistols.” This was only 10 years after the Sex Pistols had split up and they were still big business, and as far as I’m aware we were the only other band Wally played in. Although he did tell me he’d worked with the avant-garde New York band Suicide. But he may have made that up.
Before the big night we paid one more visit to Wally's house and while passing his bedroom on my way to take a piss, I noticed that on his wall he had one of our posters. As shivers ran down my spine, I noticed Wally had added a picture of himself to it. I then felt really bloody sorry for the man because he actually had nothing going for him at all, apart from being the punk rock version of Pete Best, the original Beatles drummer before Ringo Star. This broken man was the only other person in the whole world, apart from Paul Cock and Steve Jones, that could honestly say: I started the Sex Pistols. He never fulfilled his dreams and the whole situation had completely turned around. It was Wally who needed us and it must’ve been really important to him. I remember thinking, bollocks! What the fuck have I got myself into?
The day of the gig arrived and so did Wally with his guitar case in hand. He brought us unseen video clips of the Sex Pistols, but we never got to see them because we were all to out of it by the end of the night. After setting up Wally frantically tried to hold down a chord on his guitar but as his hands were shaking so much, he only managed to make a horrible fucking racket. Big Joe eventually shouted out:
“Wally, will you shut the fuck up.” And then, said nicely: “What song do you wanna do first?” This was our soundcheck come first rehearsal with Wally and he replied to Big Joe, saying. “Blitz Bop.” Before he’d even had time to shut his mouth we all shouted out together: “It's fucking 'Blitzkrieg Bop!'” And in Dee Dee Ramone style, I shouted out “1-2-3-4,” and we all went straight into the song, apart from Wally. We were all looking at each other as we realised that our Wally didn’t know the song and for once not one of us said a fucking word. It turned out that he didn’t know either of the songs, so Big Joe tried to show him but he just didn’t get it! Once Wally was up onstage for the encore, he played fret wanker fiddly guitar parts over the songs. But because everyone was drunk and having a good time, this was kind of un-noticed by most of the two hundred people in the audience.
Later the same night I found out that Wally wasn’t such a wally after all and we ended up having a really great time. He was very sensitive and a really nice guy, but he was lost in the what might’ve been head fucks that had been going around in his mind for far too long. As far as I know, this was the end of his musical days, but at least he managed to end his story with a small piece of glory. Sadly after this night, I never got around to seeing him again. The famous Wally Nightingale died in 1996 from drug related complications.
The four original members of The Beat of the Beast are all still alive, Vince the singer is an artist and part-time postman, living in Romford, Essex. Both Big Jim and Joe have lived in Canada for the last 20 years; Porky, the fith member, sadly died on New Year's Day 1999, and I’m living in Upton Park, East London. Today I hold down a full-time job working in a music college, I’m a photographer/artist.
ROLL THE CREDITS, THEN...
For David's limited edition handscreen prints: www.hipposcreenprinters.
For David's photography and designs, visit: www.artificialdesigns.co.uk.
Fancy saying hello? Then visit: facebook.com/davidappsphotography.
Bio And FAQs
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CHAIRMAN RALPH: THE LITERARY RUNDOWN
Feb 8, 2013
In real life, Chairman Ralph is always on the go as a published author, freelancer for local, regional and national magazines, newspapers and websites. Ralph's nonfiction debut, UNFINISHED BUSINESS: THE LIFE & TIMES OF DANNY GATTON (Hal Leonard: 2003), won broad acclaim as the first in-depth biography of Washington, D.C.'s late instrumental guitar underdog -- known to fans as "The Humbler," and "The Master Blaster Of The Telecaster" -- and has remained a "bubbling under" bestseller ever since.
Ralph's additional publication credits include the AllRovi Guide, BASS PLAYER, DISCoveries, eHow, GOLDMINE, GUITAR PLAYER and VINTAGE GUITAR. During his career, Ralph has profiled numerous topflight artists and performers - from blues (Luther Allison), to funk (George Clinton), heavy rock (Eye Empire, Halestorm, Sick Puppies), '60s pop-rock (Tommy James), punk (Iggy Pop, John Lydon, Henry Rollins, Bob Stinson) and beyond, no genre nor trend is beyond his reach.
When not committed to these activities, he's also an accomplished spoken word writer-performer whose work has been featured in THE CHIRON REVIEW, and stages like the Artpost Gallery's Poetry Marathon (South Bend, IN), The Acorn Theater (Three Oaks, MI), and The Livery (Benton Harbor, MI), among others. He also keeps his hand in as a rock 'n' roll packrat and eBay seller (ID: biggreenfrog2002).
CHAIRMAN RALPH: THE MUSICAL RUNDOWN
Feb 8, 2013
I fly several musical flags of convenience, with "Punk Rock Troubadour" being the most common. My agenda is pretty simple: it's live 'n' direct, no holds barred, with one guy and his guitar -- no tricks, no gimmicks, everything played sharp, hard, and straight to the point. The original '77 punk explosion and '60s Beat Mod culture form two major cultural reference points for this approach.
My lyrical faves include Greg Ginn, Ian Hunter, Iggy Pop, The Ramones, and Joe Strummer...you get the idea. If you're unhappy with the status quo, spiked with a heady dose of sarcastic insight, you'll definitely enjoy what I do! My subjects range from difficult bosses ("Fetch 'N' Step"), to tribute ballads about the concertizing of The Only Band That Matters ("I Saw The Clash"), and our desire for escape from our current political insanity ("Move To Finland").
My shows are like fingerprints: no two are alike. Some nights, I throw in '60s and '70s-style spy themes ("Action Budgie," "Samurai Budgie") and appropriate covers, done in my style ("Julie's In The Drug Squad," "To Have & To Have Not")...depending on my mood, the crowd and the room I'm working, in that order.
Since 2005, this agenda has been refined and upgraded through nearly 150 live shows, plus assorted home recordings (some of which are posted on the "Featured Songs" or "Spoken Word Tracks" sections of this website), which form a body of work that continues to grow. For a more detailed description of the proceedings...see the "FAQs".
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQs)
Feb 8, 2013
AND THE STORY BEHIND YOUR NAME IS...?
Well, my last name's long enough -- but the Chairman Ralph name is taken from an Iggy Pop lyric ("I'm bored, I'm the chairman of the bored"). A lightbulb clicked off, and the rest is history.
DESCRIBE YOUR STYLE, ALREADY.
If pressed, I'll say, "folk-punk," since I've played both types of bills. Previous flags of convenience have included "left-field folk," and "modern alternative folk"...which is my way of saying, "Here's one guy and his guitar, no tricks, no gimmicks, everything played straight to the point."
WHAT KIND OF STUFF DO YOU PLAY, THEN?
My own songs talk about what's happening today. My targets range from idiot bosses ("Fetch 'N' Step," "I Get Paid The Same") to the breakdown of our political system ("Nothing Works Anymore"), the ways that people use and lose each other like so much Kleenex ("I Fired The Dog," and "My Cousin Kevin," one of several co-written with my wife, Lisa).
Depending on my mood, the crowd and the room, I'll also throw in '60s/'70s-style instrumental themes ("Action Budgie," "Budgie Is A Spy"), improvised medleys of classic rock tunes and commercial parodies, plus classic Britband covers by Kevin Ayers ("I Don't Depend On You"), Billy Bragg ("To Have And To Have Not"), the Clash ("Clampdown," "Koka Kola"), the Who ("The Kids Are Alright"), and beyond.
WHO ARE YOUR INFLUENCES?
Personally speaking: my biggest influence is my late friend, Anthony Salazar, who taught me those first chords (A, C, D) and helped me to take it from there. Without him, I wouldn't even be holding a guitar, let alone playing one. After he died in '05, I figured it was time to get serious about what I did, without losing the fun. Every show that I do is for him, in a way.
Musically speaking: there's too many list in such a small space, but after Tony's input...the Year Zero dynamism of the Clash, Sex Pistols, Stiff Little Fingers and their related postpunk offspring (Basement 5, Gang of Four, Joy Division, PiL, the Slits -- to name a few) made the greatest imprint on my brain.
From the spoken word side: Attila the Stockbroker, John Cooper Clarke, and many of the Liverpool Poets (Adrian Henri, Roger McGough) exert the strongest gravitational pull on that side of my creativity. They took the form back from the dusty academics, and gave it back to the people -- as did classic Jamaican DJs like Big Youth, Dillinger, Mikey Dread, I Roy, and U Roy...that's enough validation for me!
WHAT ARE YOUR IMMEDIATE PLANS?
There's never been a grand master plan: I don't have to conquer the world by lunchtime. However...to find out when that might actually happen...check the "Communiques" section, or my Facebook page, for the relevant nitty-gritty on whatever project I'm pursuing.
WHAT DO YOU DO ON YOUR DOWNTIME?
I've covered a lot of ground as a newspaper editor, reporter and author, too, so let's put it this way -- when I'm not performing, recording or covering an event, I prefer to be home! Wouldn't most of us?
YOU MAY HAVE CAUGHT ME AT...
Feb 8, 2013
Thanks to the stages that have let me do my thing, in no particular order: Hillsdale Annex (Hillsdale, MI), Manifesto! (Niles, MI), Bizarre Bazaar Festival (Grand Rapids, MI), Coldwater Community Resource Center (Coldwater, MI), The Darkroom (Chicago, IL), Expressions Cafe (Benton Harbor, MI), The Hillsdale County Coalition For Peace & Justice Festival (Jonesville, MI), Thunderbird Cafe (Jackson, MI), The Nomad Bookhouse (Jackson, MI).
You may also have caught me recently at:
Art In Motion (Niles, MI)
Artpost Gallery (South Bend, IN)
The Chocolate Cafe (St. Joseph, MI)
Downtown South Haven (South Haven, MI)
Elkhart Public Library (Elkhart, IN)
Expressions Cafe (Benton Harbor, MI)
International Festival,
Minority Coalition Of Cass County (Cassopolis, MI)
Krasl Art Fair (St. Joseph, MI)
Maple City Market (Goshen, IN)
Maud Preston Palenske Memorial Library (St. Joseph, MI)
Six Degrees Resale Store (Benton Harbor, MI)
The Oak Room At The Citadel (Benton Harbor, MI)
The Livery (Benton Harbor, MI)
Manifesto! (Niles, MI)
RALPH HEIBUTZKI (Chairman Ralph) is the author of Unfinished Business: The Life & Times of Danny Gatton. He lives in southwest Michigan. We Are The Clash is his latest work.
Quoted in Sidelights: “as much a political history of the 1980s as it is a look at an influential band in its final years.”
We Are the Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered
Publishers Weekly. 265.20 (May 14, 2018): p51.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
We Are the Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered
Mark Andersen and Ralph Heibutzki. Akashic, $18.95 trade paper (400p) ISBN 978-1-61775293-3
In an ambitious look at the last days of the Clash, music writers Andersen and Heibutzki examine Clash front man Joe Strummer's struggle for relevance beginning in 1984, nearly a decade after the band was formed. Dazed by stardom, family trouble, and the machinations of manager Bernard Rhodes, Strummer dismissed his guitarist and collaborator Mick Jones from the band (drummer Topper Headon had already been kicked out for his heroin addiction). Without Jones, Strummer worked to combine his R&B roots with his interest in world music; at the same time he was trying to juggle his commitments to political causes, his recording label, and his family. Meanwhile, the authors write, Thatcher and Reagan were attacking workers' rights and social welfare. During this time, the Clash disintegrated while producing the controversial 1986 album Cut the Crap, which consisted of unfinished songs and was reviewed harshly in the British press. Andersen and Heibutzki's enlightening reevaluation of this period highlights the band's final, rabble-rousing 1985 busking tour of Britain, which saw the band play acoustic sets in parking lots, parks, and on street corners, as a remarkable act of defiance against Thatcher's policies. This is an inspiring take on the rock-band bio format, as much a political history of the 1980s as it is a look at an influential band in its final years. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"We Are the Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered." Publishers Weekly, 14 May 2018, p. 51. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A539387462/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5cb6be1d. Accessed 20 Sept. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A539387462
Quoted in Sidelights: “the band may no longer have mattered, but its legacy mattered to the authors, who make it matter to the readers,”
“fascinating” and “more than a footnote to the rise and fall of one of the last great rock bands.”
WE ARE THE CLASH
Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band that Mattered
by Mark Andersen & Ralph Heibutzki
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KIRKUS REVIEW
When did the Clash quit being “the only band that matters”?
This fascinating book faces a challenge: documenting the final years of the British band that its record label had promoted with that slogan. It’s a period the band has disavowed and that critics have generally reviled, resulting in one album released after this version of the band had effectively disbanded and which the Clash has omitted from its authorized anthology. The best that Andersen (co-author: Dance of Days: Two Decades of Punk in the Nation's Capital, 2009) and Heibutzki (Unfinished Business-The Life and Times of Danny Gatton, 2003) can say about the album, “Cut the Crap,” recorded with only two original members, is that it was “indeed unique, if also sometimes a bit of a car wreck.” As much as the Clash as a band, the authors focus on the Clash as an idea, an interchange of rebellious fervor between artist and audience and perhaps more timely than ever with the ascent of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. The authors risk oversimplifying what led the Clash to this juncture: a split between Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, whose more commercial-sounding hits were at odds with the band’s activist urgency. There’s also a bigger tension at work: how rock can possibly fight the system from within the system—recording for a huge conglomerate—and how it can become popular enough to wield significant influence without succumbing to the temptations of rock stardom. Following a large festival payday, Strummer and the band sacked Jones (after their drummer had already been sidelined by heroin addiction) and recruited a new lineup under the old name. However, they could never agree on what the new Clash was supposed to be, and Strummer and his manager ultimately found themselves at irreparable odds. The band may no longer have mattered, but its legacy mattered to the authors, who make it matter to the readers.
More than a footnote to the rise and fall of one of the last great rock bands.
Pub Date: July 3rd, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61775-293-3
Page count: 400pp
Publisher: Akashic
Review Posted Online: April 11th, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1st, 2018