SOMETHING IN THE WATER?

Middle of March and I couldn’t wait to leave Memphis. It’s funny, I always felt right at home in this town, It was my refuge from the insanity of Los Angeles, including, but not limited to the music business, the film industry, competitive rock bands and the moving night clubs that host them, dope fiends, dealers, gang members, tourists, gas huffing, homeless punk rock kids, ( where I got my notorious start in ‘81 ), skaters, stars, salesmen and sycophants. Policemen and pornographers.


When Rock City Angels got signed to Geffen Records I was in the process of reading Peter Gularniks “Sweet Soul Music” and that book provided the missing ingredients to a slightly better than average knowledge of music history. Reading about Stax Records and the rootsy soul scene that provided a new spiritual depth to popular music in Amerikkka was exciting to me and I wanted to be inspired by the city that produced such great artists as Otis Redding, Booker T and the MG’s, antihero Dan Penn and his Box tops, Rufus Thomas, James Carr, etc., etc.


The infamous Jim Dickinson, who had worked with all these and others including The Stones, Aretha Franklin and many more, had just produced The Replacements “Please To Meet Me” L.P. and was now free to work with someone new. His eccentric, down-home enthusiasm was catching and after meeting a lot of potential producers including Bob Ezerin, Paul Rothschild, Rick Rubin and Tom Dowd, the decision was made to work with him in Memphis.


Memphis in those heady days of ‘86 was a wild town and Rock City Angels fit in there like we’d been fated to meet up with a lost lover. In many ways Memphis was the then equivalent to a Mexican border town. The strip bars were the sleaziest the band had ever experienced, sex and drugs were everywhere and the bars were nothing short of a free for all. Most had a BYOB policy, drugs were snorted off the tables openly, there was sex in the bathrooms, all were open clandestinely after hours - In short, it was a paradise of sorts for a rock band such as ourselves. After our experience with Nashville, where our management resided, Memphis was a breath of pot smoked air. The differences between the two towns was striking. Where Nashville was genteel and bland for tourist consumption, Memphis was filled with character and danger at every turn. I don’t know if there was something in the water there or what, but the band was inspired by the madness and grew tremendously in the time spent recording “Young Mans Blues”. Of course Mr. Dickinson was a great help to us in that department as well. His “to hell with corporate rock” attitude was extremely simpatico with our punk rock ethos and we got down to work on our shared vision of creating something timeless and chaotic immediately. If “Young Mans Blues” had been produced in L.A. it would have been a very different record indeed. As it was, by the time it was finished it scared the hell out of Geffen Records and our A&R liaison, Tom ( what do we do with it?) Zutaut, who were expecting some kind of G&R experience we had no intention of delivering.


Instead of supporting the artists they signed, these geniuses tried sanitizing our vision, which I fought every step of the way, thus sealing our fate.


Just as Geffen were attempting wildly to tame Rock City, Memphis was attempting to tame the very city itself. Strip bars were closed, Hooters were opened. Bars, prosties and dope dealers were shut down. Even Beale Street, the home of the blues, was transformed into a tourist trap of blues breaking proportions. A city with a small, corrupt police force became a fascist refuge of corrupt gangs of cops on every corner. Hell, you can’t even smoke a joint at the yearly music festival on the river anymore with out being surrounded by a dozen madly sniffing cops, anxious to throw anyone suspected of having a good time in jail. It really is a crying shame.
Though I still live in Memphis, I take every opportunity I can to get the hell out of this town. Escape is impossible but a temporary reprieve can be obtained with a little work. So when I got a chance to visit Florida again, I jumped at the chance. This time it was sunny Ft. Lauderdale, a city I hadn’t visited for twenty years. Amazingly, I didn’t recognize a thing - none of the landmarks I was familiar with were still standing. They had all been torn down to create brand spanking new strip malls and parking lots.


I can report, however, that a music scene is still alive and well, and I’m not talking about cover bands like when I was playing there. I even got a chance to check out a great new band at work on their first demo. Four girls called Angry Pudding proceeded to kick out the jams for an all day session, and I got to kick it with them, trading stories of sleazy bars we’d experienced. I believe it was the singer, Brea, who stole the show on that one, with her tale of a fabulous hole in the wall where one of the regular patrons, whose body was so tore up by alcoholism, would pour his beer directly into his colostomy bag, so as to cut out the middle man as it were. An excellent band, check them out at My Space Music. Sitting in the grass out front between songs, I was thankful it was still spring, so I wasn’t hit by the unmerciful heat, as a matter of fact, I had a fantastic time, and I plan on visiting that city again real soon, best explained by reasons left to a later blog. I will say this though, the honeymoon with Memphis, Tn. is over and a new chapter is opening in my life that is so exciting and amazing that I can only say, "Viva La Revolucion”!

DURANGO 2008