So We're Talking in the CD store last night...

Me and young Joe the Kiss Freak and he asked a question that they had been apparently kicking around for a while...

Can you name many acts where somone has left to so "solo" [or left period] and eclipsed their former band? Even more specifically in the area of hard rock/heavy metal?

Sting has sold more records than the Police, but is he broken much artistic ground since Blue Turtles? Joe says Morrisey and the Smiths is about a push... Dio over Rainbow maybe... most definately NOT Ozzy over Sabbath [if Randy Rhodes had lived, maybe we would be saying different]...

The only one we could really hit on walking through the aisles was Joan Jett over the Runanways, but that's not much is it?

Send replies to chazg66@yahoo.com, y'all.

GOOD NEWS: I got signed on with Brinks yesterday and I start 08/23/04, so I can go driving up the east with abondon and still have a few days to recover when I get back! In town, Leone???

Tommy Get His Tonsils Out

Okay rockers, time for the new Tommy Stinson review! Tommy gave us the purity of Bash N' Pop, a great short lived vehicle [Where IS Steve Foley now?] for carrying on the Replacements mixture of rock and roll and introspection without the 'Alcoholic Boob'-ness [i.e. the fun without ALL the self destruction]  and a slice of purer power pop in the form of a 5 song EP by Perfect [6 if you count the hidden send up of Elton John's Crocodile Rock... but that album, paid for and shelved, now being remixed for release AT LAST, featuring now long time Dallas resident/Clumsy leader Mark Soloman]... bt it's been a while since Tommy's voice has graced our views credited, i.e. not some nom de player or side man. But finally we have Village Gorilla Head. This really is Tommy's solo debut; Taking a cue from Westerberg, Tommy plays about 90% of the instruments here, even drums on one track "because it's MY record."

And it kicks off with the rough gem of guitars and drum machines, even sounding eerily similar to that other ex-Replacement, singing "Not in my house / Not in my room/ Not in my home without a view" which he has to leave to "Hear some noise / A murder on a bus / A dealer with his shame / A baby that want's a different name.." then at about 2 1/2 minutes the guitars and real drums kick up "somewhere there's got to be a better view..."  Ah that left handed Minniapolis optimism...

Not A Moment Too Soon reintroduces Tommy's nasal voice and great pop sensibility ala B&P... Something Wrong recall's Perfect...from here on, the refernces are there, but Tommy expands on that base, managing to sound similar to his previous bands [except that first one] but not as obviously, though Couldn't Wait is another slab of purely Perfect metallic pop. Tommy also has a good way with the lines; check out "Looks like you need some sleep with a walk that defies your speech / You're doing good, you're feeling fine / You're looking tore up between the lines." And Biting Your tongue is a bitter swipe at someone who will be cringing upon playing this disc. 

Village Gorilla Head and Light of Day are clausterphobic 'Modern' sounding tracks. VGH lacks high frequencies and dirge-like pace really paint a good picture for someone's bad dream. Light feels like Oasis meets KLF with Tommy's restrained vocals. Hey You is the album's longest song and maybe its centerpiece, but Tommy doesn't offer any answers; he forces the listener to contemplate if he is 'them or us' asking "Did you come to fight or come to the rescue?"  Motivation follows the tradition of following somewthing heavy with something to relieve the tension, usually something catchy and crunchy. It wouldn't have sounded out of place on Jet's record. And Someday follows a tradidion of baring one's soul on the last track, Tommy maybe mourning, maybe just saying goodbye to 'wasted youth.'

This is definately Tommy's record, mature, the same way Stereo/Mono put the death nail in his former bandmate's 'Drunken Clown Prince of Rock and Roll' persona. This is a mature record from a guy my age stepping out into the unknown and not feeling sure about himself, but going out there anyway. I think you'll like it.  3.5 stars

The Waiting Game


So I am sitting here at work feeling impotent and useless as... gee I can't even think of anything I am so mind numbed. I still have things I could be doing, but I am told "Don't touch; the new people will work their areas." SO I guess I'm sitting here just waiting to be told to go home, 'waiting for the end of the world.' And 'it's the end of the world as I know it [and I feel fine].'


Oh, it's so mind numbing walking into strange places and asking for applications and filling them out. At least I have everything organized on a little folded sheet of paper I keep in my wallet, though I found I don't have everyone's address current while putting down references. It's such a whipping and I haven't even begun the real grovel festival that interviews will be. "Please give me a chance, I'm the hardest working man you've even seen, I'll do your taxes, wax your car, wash your windows, anything, just give me a chance!"


It's kind of sad, like watching your favorite hockey team trade players for 'salary reasons.' Slowly watching a group break apart and go their separate ways, SOME of whom I like. Makes me wonder what I have been doing for the last six years. I mean I don't kid myself that this is a 'life affirming calling' or that anything I do here changes the world, but now it's all so much smoke and dust. "Thanks for everything, here's your check, bye now!" Sure a small golden parachute, but not much... I guess that the weight is starting to bear down on me a little.

I was sitting here listening and playing along to David Bowie’s great Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust… and remembering my first Bowie and Springsteen fanatic, my high school journalism teacher, Barb Tatum. I encountered Barb as a high school sophomore when they had a big class meeting suggesting electives since you have so many more your junior year. I always liked writing so I signed up for journalism, the only upperclassman in a class of freshmen and sophomores. She had an energy to her that I liked and she got to be a friend when we’d sit around and talk rock and roll. [I also got to borrow records from her; I know I taped the first two Aerosmith from her and Alice Cooper’s Billion Dollar Babies and Springsteen’s Born to Run. Too bad I never asked her about Darkness on the Edge of Town…] She had posters for Bowie’s Serious Moonlight tour up and allowed a few select favorites to bring in posters and add to the décor. I brought a promo Tom Petty Long After Dark poster that was hung prominently on the door, Raymond brought in a Judas Priest Defenders of the Faith flat and Monica Mahaughn brought one of those wall sized posters of Boy George, who Barb was also impressed by. "The Boy" was the source of many discussions, whether feminine weird ala Boy George was worse than "shock you" weird like Alice Cooper. I admit, I was sheltered and didn’t understand at the time what a ‘flamer’ The Boy was. Live and learn, I guess. I may have posted before that Barb let us call for Springsteen tickets from the Journalism phone and she, myself, my Dad, Kristie and I don’t remember who else enjoyed lower blacony seats for the first leg of the Born in the USA tour, the first night’s show INDOORS at Reunion Arena. I admit it was one of the best shows I have seen, a long acoustic set to open, then a rocking set after about a 20 minute intermission. Bruce was a great all around show, from both a musical standpoint and a spectacle. I was sorry to see him go to stadiums, though I thought he was one of the few musicians who could carry a stadium show, but I also knew, even then, that the message would be lost among that many souls, that people were going for "The Experience", to brag that they had seen Springsteen. I was cynical, even as an eighteen-year-old. Of course, I did the same thing seeing the Stones at the Cotton Bowl, but I admit I would never go to a show like that again. Lou Reed was also one of the great shows musically; he had a kick ass band and they played tight. I would still love to have a copy of Doing the Things That We Want To from that show. And I’d like the Black Crowes first show from the Bomb Factory on the Amorica tour. [Why does Feathers remain unreleased? The Crowes have an album’s worth of B-sides and unreleased stuff I am sure, and it’d be nice to have Darling of the Underground Press, Chevrolet, Just Say You’re Sorry, Mellow Down Easy and Tied Up and Swallowed together instead of searching for the singles when I want to tape them!]

Anyway, the thought about Tatum… Her son is about 16 or 17, probably getting ready to start going to shows. I was just wondering what he listens to. Does he listen to Korn and System of A Down to annoy his Mom the way listening to Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper pissed off and scared Barb’s parents? Does he realize the treasure trove siting there in his Mom’s collection? Can he appreciate The River, Ziggy Stardust and Long After Dark or does he reject it because "that’s what my Mom listens to?"

It strikes me now that I did that… partially. I said for years I didn’t like soul music, now I get excited about the Stax and Motown box sets as true classics. I didn’t like my grandpap’s country music, now I find myself just this evening listening to Willie Nelson and buying Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard anthologies. [True enough though, some of that is NOT my Grandfather’s country music. Guess I need to go through his stack when I get up there.] Are the kids of my peers rejecting Van Halen, Sammy Hagar, Ratt, Def Leppard, etc outright because "That’s what my PARENTS listen to?" Will the children of the next generation reject Korn, Soundgarden, Puddle of Mud, et al for the same reason?

Then again there are things that seem to cut across generations. People still love the Beatles. People still love the Beach Boys [what 17-year-old hasn’t gone cruising to the Beach Boys daydreaming of fast cars and bikini babes and just being somewhere warm?] Certain things will remain ‘timeless’ because there are few political or dated references: Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Beatles, Beach Boys, and Willie Nelson.

GNR on VH1

While I am no longer and avid VH1 watcher, I do occasionally wander back there to see if anything MUSICAL is happening [it's usually NOT; I ask the rhetorical to end all rhetorical questions yet again, how alleged Music Video channels like MTV and VH1 get away with NOT playing music videos?] and I came across the Behind the Music: Guns N' Roses. [That's Guns An Fuckin' Roses for all you Burleson High School graduates.] Of course, it has been on two nights this week all ready and is scheduled AGAIN tonight, thus reinforcing VH1/MTV rule #2: "Whatever we have, run it a million times, unless it is an actual music video."

Now I dig Appetite for Destruction, though not as much as the next guy. Anyone who is fan of guitar driven rock ala Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith has to admit that it's a great record. GnR Lies was okay; I never got into it, though Patience is a pretty good song and Used to Love Her reminds me of some of the Stones more tongue in cheek stuff like Dead Flowers. But Use Your Illusion is a sprawling mess [and not in a pretty good way ala Exile on Main Street] that should have been pared down to one 2 Lp set, or maybe a 3 Lp set. Come on, Live and Let Die needed to be on that set? Get in the Ring? Whatever the single was after November Rain where Axl's stroking, excuse me, swimming with the dolphins because Stephanie Seymore broke up with him and wouldn't appear in the video? And that wailing note that just drags out at the end of an otherwise descent song like Don't Cry? EWWWW.

So what happened to GNR? Well if you don't know that by now, you've been in a cave since... well since Illusion came out. Some people in the band had bigger egos than their talent could carry I guess, mostly the front man. One lady said "I didn't see one performance where he didn't electrify." Yeah, WHEN he showed up. I am sure it will come out sometime that he's bi-polar or manic depressive. And those long arse corn rows have GOT to go... The one good guy they always have on from Rolling Stone, David Wild said "I think he's trying to make GNR relevant to what's happening, but what's happening has rolled over two or three times on him now." We'll see about that if/when that 'long awaited' [who's calling their record store every week "Is it here this time?"] Chinese Democracy gets released. Axl Rose, the Brian Wilson/ Walter Becker-Donald Fagen super-perfectionist of Generation X.

My thing though is this: Slash, Duff and Matt come together with Weiland and make Velvet Revolver "which critics hailed as a fresh dose of rock and roll [sic, Michael Leone]." Passé rock maybe, maybe a return to Led Zeppelin inspired rock that has been bead as a doornail since the Black Crowes went "on hiatus." Well, Buckcherry and Jet had/have a dose of it...

Yes, it's time for that tired old argument, Isn't it time for rock to re-invent itself again? If we draw parallels from the previous cycles of rock [and roll], we're nearing a flashpoint. Previous cycles have swung from pretty people [see 1960-1963 and oh, 1975-1979] to explosions of new sounds [Beatles 64, punk's TRUE impact period 79-80], then a swing to something radical [psychedilica 67, synth pop/hair pop metal 83] then goes through a splintering and slowdown and 'return to roots' [James Taylor 70, Michael Bolton 91] melts down and then the cycle starts again. Isn't it time that the tuned down "I'm angry at everyone, rage against the inhumanity of it all, voice of the disenfranchised youth" crap went away anyway?

Where do all the hours spent absorbing records go? Was it all worth it?

I ask only because I sit here listening to the Cars Door to Door CD [meant to grab the one next to it, the BRILLIANT first album, but oh well... it's a good pop record anyway] and remembering that this album and Aerosmith's Permanent Vacation came out the same day, a day I was off at Sound Warehouse, but went up just to get them the day they came out [and promptly went over to 'Malibu Deb's' and spun them... another interesting release day was Aerosmith Pump and the Stones Steel Wheels coming out the same day.]. I probably played that Aerosmith every day for week and spent so much time absorbing it at work I think I still know it backwards and forwards, though I probably haven't played more than two songs off of it in two years, and that was just for the Aerosmith road tape re-do a couple of years ago. [Hangman Jury and Magic Touch, maybe Heart's Done Time and St. John got played but not recorded; notice no Dude, no Angel, no Rag Doll... I have become my mother: "I've heard that too many times over the last 20 years!"] I have actually played a whole side of the mediocre Done With Mirrors [say what I will, some of those riffs cook, though the band was in bad shape and Ted Templeman's dry production leaves much to be desired] since I have been in my new place, so in the last two years, more than I have played of Permanent Vacation in probably ten years! So I ask: where does that time go and was it all worth it?

I think about all the albums I no longer have, things I just lost interest in like, oh, the Thompson Twins Here's to Future Days or Judas Priest British Steel that are still buried deep in the synapses... I can still recall [with astounding clarity] riffs and some of the words of Metal Gods and Don't Mess With Dr Dream though I probably haven't heard a note of either in a dozen years... I wonder if that's just how my brain is wired. I really do hear the music in my head, in my ears. I jokingly say that "it's so I will still hear the music when I am stone deaf from listening to music at ear damaging volumes on headphones for so many years" but it may be true! But unfortunately, I am not wired to create new music, just retain what I hear.

Do you know how long it's been since I have seen a sunrise and sunset in the same day? Probably for good reason, I am whippped, but my truck is 90% waxed [yes I will do the bed, just to seal some of the scratches] and I got 8 hr of overtime in and had a root beer float with my best friend... not a bad day considering...

I thought of a couple other great things I have experienced: getting up at my grandparents in Pennsylvania early enough to walk through dew covered grass... absolutely wonderful! Sitting on the swing with Grandpap with a cup of coffee reading the paper or just talking... Sometimes walking thorough this apartment complex back to the laudry room that faces the park and just noticing the quiet of a summer evening and how the light of the sstreetlamps and the shadows play across my little corner of Euless...

REPLY TO AN EMAIL

Life is indeed a mystery, sweetest mystery. One cannot imagine any existence but this one; that is to say, I cannot imagine life as a fly or a horse or dog or something. I like being a 'man' and having knowledge of the opposable thumb, the wheel and fire [notice: the elements that enable us to use a simple Bic lighter is what elevated man above all creatures according to Darwin], written language and self awareness. But the hard part of all of that is the 'Why?' element. Funny, we revel in the joy and innocence of children asking their 'Why' questions, but we seem frustrated as adults as we continue to run into things that make us ask 'Why.' Friends and family come and go, bubbles in a river or stream, sometimes running together for a while, others lost on other streams, sometimes running into each other again, sometimes lost forever and it makes us ask 'Why.' We lose things and bad things happen and we ask 'Why' but how often do we ask 'Why' when good things happen or nothing bad happens to us? We know there are reasons and some of them we will never know. Some will be shown to us later as part of the learning process. Some we may only get the answers to when we meet God. I wonder if God does tell us all the answers as part of the peace of heaven, or if we will care about our earthly concerns at that time.

No, we were not promised a good beginning or a happy ending [nor anything in between for that matter]. Our roads are uniquely our own, though we sometimes merge into giant superhighways, sometimes two lane blacktops, sometimes lonely tracks that lead only to our door. Even roads we all travel or travel with others suffer from being able to be seen only through OUR perspective. Two people standing side by side can see completely different things... isn't it sad? Isn't it wonderful? Oh, I wish you could all have the passions and hear the music the same way I do! We try so hard to bridge the gaps between ourselves and so rarely succeed in finding somone else who truly 'gets it,' but when you do it's MAGIC. People DO come and go for reasons we don't know, sometimes don't need to know. You're right, some to show us things, some for us to show what we have learned; some to remind us that it is not always about ourselves.

Neil Gaiman wrote "Sometimes I suspect that we build our traps ourselves, then back into them, pretending amazement the while." Some of our sorrow is our own making. Knowing we have the keys to unlock ourselves is hard to admit, even harder to use them, just like saying 'I was wrong, I'm sorry.' Easy to mad at others for our situations, hard to admit it is 'my own damn fault.'

You are correct, it's not change so much I am afraid of, but the unknown. I do the things you suggest, write them on my silly page and let others see that I am going through the same things they are, take their input when they offer and try to plug into someone else's experience to help with mine. I do not suffer fools gladly, but suffer them I do, trying most days to mind my own Ps & Qs and know that they will get theirs in the end.

I have learned the hard way, same as we all do, to cherish what we have and the people we love. We don't know how much time we have here: live and love like there's no tomorrow for it may not come.


I know it's Henry's birthday... the rat got out of a 40th birthday bash that would have been the be-all, end-all of Heather and Henry parties until her 40th or his 50th... I miss their enthusiasm and love of life. I still look at their picture on my fridge and feel my heart sink; I still look at their email address in my book when I send things out and sigh. Thinking about them now makes a tear well up in me still. They would have loved my friend Elizabeth very much, very much alike she and Heather... will our hearts ever really heal from their loss?