Dear Friends,
It’s so hard to believe that March is almost over. The year is flying by. Flying really is an understatement, too.
What a relief yesterday morning to find Frank. He was literally across the street and one door down to the west. Rhondi even thought she had heard him bark before, thanks to one of those “neighborhood” apps, we found him.
I wonder if the people who fucked with our gate were really after him or just being dicks and fucking around with our gate. If they did steal him, it didn’t take them long to realize that he was (and I say this with a ton of love for the little guy) no prize. He’s old, deaf, opinionated (as Rhondi said hilariously in her post), and from what I hear, quite stinky.
He also lost his balls in the war a long time ago.
*****
Things like that really let you know who is out there paying attention and has your back. It felt really good to get a lot of love and encouragement from our friends and family. As usual, I feel super fortunate and grateful for all you good people
I also wish a lot of ill on the people who fucked with our fence. You have to have balance in life. Balance on a pointy cliff while eating a dick, fence fuckers.
*****
It was a good way to start off yesterday. I had lunch with a couple dudes I admire a lot and we got some balls rolling for future cool Club Placebo stuff. Afterwards, I had a short, but nice visit with Granny and Uncle Joe came by there, too, while I was there. It’s always good to see him.
Then we had dinner over at Doug’s and enjoyed some family time. What a nice day it was, even if it was gray and rainy and cool outside. I sincerely hope each of you, dear readers, enjoyed a good Sunday, too. If only Grand Canyon would have beaten Alabama, it would have been perfect.
*****
So…as promised…The Bet.
I started editing the story from the beginning over the weekend and put the first three revised chapters online yesterday. You can find them here.
I had planned on adding to the serial version here in the blog today, but I would have had to have forced it to write more. There is quite a bit of new things added in to those first two weeks or so worth of posts that are now chapters 1-3. In fact, there is a whole brand-new section in the third chapter.
One of the humbling things about going back and editing is finding all the mistakes I made. I do make these posts first drafts and try to catch stuff as I go, but apparently, I miss a lot. I’m curious how this will impact my writing moving forward. Hopefully in a positive way and I can maintain my current level of productivity.
*****
The question of the day: Will Cocaine Baby be back today. I don’t know how to feel about it right now. On the one hand, if it is best for him to be back, that’s what I want. I feel confident that I have helped him grow, but I’d like to finish the year and help him grow a bit more. On the other hand, the room is so much more pleasant with him gone.
Tune in tomorrow.
*****
I went through a phase in my life where I was fascinated by New York. I would spend a lot of time thinking about what it would be like to live there and how I would eventually find my way into the orbit of famous people I admired. This phase was the strongest between about 1988 and 1995. The city still fascinates me, although I know it is now nothing like the New York I fantasized about back in the day.
One of the albums that caught my attention in the early 90s was an embodiment of this fantasy. Dim Stars was made up of Steve Stelley and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Don Fleming of B.A.L.L./Gumball, and Richard Hell. They put out a self-titled record in 1992 and I picked up a copy at Eastside Records in Tempe.
I have to admit right up front that I wasn’t a fan of Richard Hell before I heard this record and I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to see him perform if it was within walking distance of my house, but something about Dim Stars made me kind of a fan. I like him on this particular record because it just sounds so good. The record sounds like the New York of my fantasies.
It’s easy for me to picture walking down the street, maybe somewhere in the Village, and seeing a sign for a bar that you have to walk down a flight of stairs to get to, you know, some dingy basement place. Inside, Dim Stars are playing and that’s where I start to make friends.
“She Wants To Die” kicks things off with just the right amount of fuzz. It’s a mid-tempo kind of number where Hell starts telling a story. There is a bit of Lenny Kosnowski (Michael McKean’s famous character from Laverne & Shirley) in Hell’s vocal delivery. It’s grungy in the way that Sonic Youth and Boss Hog were grungy, not Seattle grunge. I dig it.
“All My Witches Come True” is another groovy one, but I like “Memo to Marty” a lot more. It’s got a simple, yet perfect bassline (also Hell’s job in this band) under a Pixies-ish guitar sound, and the “Fuck you” part is one I always like. Any song that works “Fuck you” in the lyrics in a cool way, I often like. That’s why PTWKAF has a song called “Fuck You Part.”
There is a kind of Spanish feel to the guitars in “Monkey.” Maybe the guys wanted to do something that sounded a bit like it belonged to Spanish Harlem. I could be reading into things here. This is probably the closed Dim Stars could get to having a sort of ballad and the minor chord stuff that Moore and Fleming do here is pretty great.
“Natchez Burning” is another cool track. It’s got kind of a bluesy/dirge thing happening, but Hell doesn’t really sound like an old blues guy. He sounds like a snotty hipster trying to sound like a real blues singer. Oddly enough, it works. There is some cool guitar noise happening on this one, too, if you listen closely. I have to believe it is Thurston Moore bending some feedback around.
I am not proud of this, but in the 90s, I would often ask people if they’d heard this record. Most people I knew in those days didn’t know or care about it, but it seemed to me that “real” music fans should know about it. Music snobbery is hard, but in those days, I thought it was something that made me cool. I know now it made me more of an asshole than anything else.
Having said that, you really should listen to this record.
“Stop Breaking Down” has a cool shouty chorus and a with funky disjointed bass thing happening, but “Baby Huey (Do You Wanna Dance)” is fucking great. It’s right up my alley. Big, fuzzy, and a super catchy riff. I’m realizing now, too, that it’s also got the whole Lenny & the Squigtones thing happening.
I’m starting to think that maybe Dim Stars started because these guys were all sitting around listening to the Lenny and the Squigtones record and wanted to make their own version. It’s a reasonable theory, I think.
Moore takes over the vocals on “The Night Is Coming On” and it sounds like a different band until the first guitar breakdown. The feeling of Dim Stars comes back when the band is more prominent in the mix. For some reason, they had Moore’s voice way out front on this one during the verses.
“Downtown At Dawn” sounds like Moore and Fleming are kind of blending Nile Rodgers (Chic) and Steve Turner (Mudhoney) together. Hell and Shelley shine on this one, too. The rhythm of this song with that blended guitar attack is great. I don’t think I fully appreciated this song 30 years ago as I would occasionally skip over it.
“Try This” is pretty skippable. It’s kind of a filler song, which is fine, since this record is chock full of really good songs. “Stray Cat Generation” kind of pays homage or pokes fun at the Stray Cats, which really, “Try This” kind of does as well, lyrically, at least.
“Rip Off” is very New York sounding, in my ears. This song sounds like how I pictured New York in the 70s where the media painted the city as a place where literally everyone was either ripping people off or being ripped off. There is a tiny Anthony Kiedis/Red Hot Chili Peppers’ thing going on here, too. It’s subtle, but it is there. Listen and tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.
The album concludes with “Dim Star Theme” and it is a strong ender. These guys weren’t mailing it in, even if they were just aping Lenny and the Squigtones. Unfortunately, there are only a couple of Dim Stars releases. There is an EP with a few other songs, a single, and the LP. That’s all they wrote.
*****
See you tomorrow.
In a totally unrelated way to almost everything in today's blog, I love Dustin Hoffman.
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