All posts by Johnny Loftus

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Call Me Mr Blackwell

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Just Call Me Mr Blackwell: THE FASHION UNDERGROUND at Transit, 3/01/01

Transit is the kind of shadowy, bleeding-edge club where you have a nice time dancing one night, only to discover it’s a meatpacking plant the next. Pillars of smoke-filled light lead you through a dark hallway into a circular main room that looks like a crack-laced Thunderdome taking place inside the parlor at Monticello. I kept waiting for blood to come out of the sprinkler system.

On Thursdays, Transit is taken over by FORM – Fashion Or Music. A short runway extends into the club’s main dancefloor, and resident DJ Jernell Geronimo spins fashion-centric house and triphop. For last night’s Fashion Underground event, Geronimo’s selections ranged from Daft Punk’s latest to a nice remix of Sneaker Pimps’ “Spin Spin Sugar” from a few years ago that sounded great. Of course, when the club features a 25,000-watt sound system and state-of-the-art lighting reminiscent of space ships with expensive production design, my left shoe would sound good on the turntable.

After about an hour of carousing, dancing, and the downing of prohibitively expensive cocktails, Transit got the show on the road. A troupe of male and female models trotted out collections from five different Chicago fashion collectives, including Jesus Rodriguez, Supreme Parlor of Funk 2000, and Narcisse Designs. It wasn’t exactly Land’s End Outlet material.

In such a proto-urban space as Transit, with its shady location under the EL tracks and uncomfortable, haughty furniture, it was no surprise that the fashion wasn’t any different. The first collection on display was like a third grader’s Betsy Johnson paper mache project gone horribly 80s. Unkempt strips of multi-colored fabric formed rag-tag hoop dresses underneath black vinyl bustiers that would make Rosanna Arquette’s character in “Crash” shudder violently. In fact, the majority of the night’s clothing had a decidedly post-modern feel – post-modern retrofitted to 1986. Looking like rejects from Scandal’s video for “The Warrior,” models traipsed up and down the runway in get-ups that would not look out of place in a “Steel Dawn” road show. Post-apocalyptic? Maybe. But only if Gordon Gartrell is the leader of the New States of America in a bizarro new-wave future imagined by David Cronenberg and George Miller. In Narcisse Designs’ urban chic beta test, voluminous amounts of eye shadow and fetishistic, insect-inspired fashion somehow suggest what we’ll all look like in 2020. I hope I die before I get old.

As an overall music/culture experience, Transit’s FORM Thursdays aren’t a bad idea. Despite their inherent pretension, it’s still kind of cool to cock your head to one side and say “yeah, I went to a fashion show last night.” Unfortunately, I’m never going to understand the whole concept. Call me crazy, but I don’t think the swirling, flesh-colored bondage nightmares I witnessed on last night’s runway are going to trickle down to the local Greatland Target. When a designer’s line reminds me of a textile Pontiac Aztec, is that a good thing?

JTL

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GOING TO THE LOCKSMITH

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I went to get a key made and it was nothing like it should have been. Ain’t that a bitch?

In my head, locksmiths occupy the same category as cobblers and blacksmiths: old-timey professions that, while still relevant, conjure vibrant mental imagery of their vocational heyday. A cobbler will always work by hand, at night, and have an elfin beard. A blacksmith will be a mountain of man with a hearty laugh, and know why an anvil has that curious shape. And a locksmith? Well…

As I walked to the hardware store with my key in hand, I entertained sun-dappled, soft-focus visions of a friendly, crotchety old locksmith – the kind with a screwed down eye, bands on the arms of his crisp, high-collared white shirt, and silver-rimmed round glasses. He would very carefully pull them out of his pocket, wrap the stems around his ears, and say, “now young man, what can we do for you?” Then he’d offer me some homemade licorice.

The hardware was just off a busy corner where three streets met. As I walked up to the door, I thought it was probably a pretty good location for business. I commended my fantasy locksmith for keeping his business running all these years since 1945, what with all the changes to the neighborhood. 1945 was, of course, when he started the shop with his partner, a Polish-Catholic from Chicago’s south side who everyone called “Ponzi.” The two had met, naturally, while my main man the locksmith was in the Merchant Marine during the war. I pushed my way inside the shop.

Luckily, the merciless electronic door buzzer was set to stun. But instead of a friendly hello from Dot, the locksmith’s corn-fed wife of fifty years (his high school sweetheart!) who worked the front desk, I received wary, surly looks from two sullen young women leaning on the modern cash register counter. I thought to ask these Hustler “Beaver Hunt” candidates where the key-making counter was, but one look at their shifty eyes and I decided to trust my wits. I swear, the blonde had a shiv. Besides, they seemed rather put out that I had interrupted their conversation about which member of Slipknot was the hottest (don’t they wear masks? Oh, well…). As I left the girls behind, I silently wished them luck in their porn careers.

The store had that same lived-in, sad appearance that you see behind Middle-Eastern hostages when they broadcast their kidnappers’ ransom demands. Burnished tin tile had been (badly) painted over, and the walls had been given a coating of drywall, probably at the same time the new shelving units were bolted in. By this time, my image of the friendly old locksmith was clouding over. I pictured him in a scene out of a John Mellencamp song, signing over his beloved shop to The Man, because without Ponzi’s help (he’d passed away earlier that year), the locksmith would never be able to stay afloat. Ugh. I found the key counter, but it was unmanned. The plastic sign said, “Counter closed. See front counter for assistance.” I figured the Slipknot debate had probably moved on to the topic of Wes Borland’s cool black contact lenses, and instead banked on finding someone roving the aisles, perhaps even my elusive old-timey locksmith.

After a minute, I discovered an older man gingerly placing florescent tubes on a shelf towards the rear of the store. From the down the aisle, he could have passed for my locksmith hero, with his white hair, glasses, and blue hardware vest, with its pockets chock full o’ pens, nails, and various bric-a-brac. I smiled and continued toward him. As I began a hearty greeting, he emitted a great “FUCK! Shit Damn!” He had dropped one of the florescents, and there was glass and white dust all over the floor. He didn’t realize it, but with that shattered lighting tube had gone the last visage of the patient, friendly locksmith I had been hoping for. That locksmith’s image in my head had gone from idyllic, to worried, to its presently degenerated state, which had the locksmith being shackled in his own locks by a band of thieves in the back room. Watch out for the broomstick. Despite all of this, I did still need a duplicate key, so I took my chances with the light dropper.

“Excuse me, sir?”

His head snapped up – I think I heard his neck crack. “What do you need?” He went back to sweeping the light fragments into a pile after a one-second appraisal of me.

“I need this key duplicated.”

“Ah, one of the girls at the front can help you.” Irritated.

I took my chances. “Actually, the girl up there has a line, and I’m sort of in a-”

“All right hold on a second. I’ll be right there.” More irritated.

So after a few minutes, in which I had figured out how to use the key machine by looking at it, he showed up, stepped behind the counter, and asked in an oddly cordial tone what he could help me with. Which was an interesting question, given that I had already told him, and the fact that we were standing at a key duplication counter. But I gave him the key, and he ran it through the machine. In a minute, my new key and I were heading up front to pay, after a gruff thank you from my man. I figured he probably had to get back to pistol-whipping the real locksmith in the back.

Next time I get a key made, I won’t be so naïve. And I’ll bring a camera to get those Beaver Hunt shots.

JTL

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THE DRUGS DON’T WORK (Anymore…)

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Recently on GloNo, the point was made that Steely Dan was arguably the best Drug Rock band of the 70s. While I won’t dispute the point, it raised another question in my mind: what happened to Drug Rock? What a long, strange trip it’s been…

Where are the blacklit rooms, adorned with florescent wall posters of Hendrix and Led Zeppelin? What happened to that guy who lived at the end of the block in his divorced parents’ vacant house – Doug, was it? – who always had the really good weed? The guy who drove the brown Nova with the bitchin’ Realistics in the back, and was always hanging around in the back of the school parking lot behind the tennis courts? Don’t tell me Doug didn’t pass the torch of knowledge to his younger brother, cousin, or nephew. Say it ain’t so! Don’t tell me that today’s American youth have no Wooderson-esque drug mentor, willing to provide his own ganja-laced Afterschool Special?

I DIDN’T learn it from you, alright?! I DIDN’T learn it from watching YOU!!

Yes, the days of the teardrop window’d conversion van are over. Whether your Drug Rock heroes are Steely Dan, Jimi, Led Zeppelin, or even Syd Barrett, the sad truth is that their legacies were beat up and left for dead by the excesses of the 1980s. She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie: Cocaine. Studio 54 begat disco, which begat New Wave, which begat the sharp angles and jarring colors of 80s pop culture. There wasn’t any room in this world of pink satin and skinny ties for the medium cool of a good bong hit. Do you think Bud Fox would’ve still jumped Darryl Hannah’s bones if he’d lured her with kind bud? Hell no! Greed is good. But not when you’re out in the forest preserve, passing the dutchie from the left-hand side. 70s Drug Rock was about those sublime moments of introspection, when you can see the inside of your mouth while realizing exactly why that side of the moon was dark. But the extended musical freakouts of 70s AOR didn’t jibe with the angular, hyperactive pop of the ensuing decade, and by the late 1980s gatefold LPs, concept albums, and 21-minute drum solos were only a memory.

But inevitably, the Sheen wore off of the 80s. The stock market had crashed, Republicans weren’t running the show, and Aqua Net was out of style. Across America, distortion was ringing, heralding the return of the guitar. But Drug Rock wouldn’t be resurrected by feedback. No, the only one who could ever save the Drug Rock vibe was…Dusty Springfield.

In 1991, “Cypress Hill” dropped with the unforgettable pairing of Springfield’s “Son of a Preacher Man” and B-Real slurring “hits from the bong…”. Cypress Hill was all about the Mother Nature, and wanted everyone to know it. The album’s production was on par with 70s-style noodling, as well. Hazy beats combined with wacko sound effects and B-Real’s smirking, loopy delivery to create a new kind of Drug Rock that got all the kids hooked. The West Coast continued its dominance the following year with Dr Dre’s “The Chronic.” If “Cypress Hill” had brought back Drug Rock production, then the hilarious skits, thematic flow, and Parliament-style G-funk of “The Chronic” really got the 70s weed vibe back onto the high road. Listening to “Chronic” was like imagining Cheech & Chong fronting Parliament at a one-night only gig on the Mothership. Maybe now it was endo, but Snoop Doggy Dogg’s laid back drawl let everybody know it was the same vibe: a day not wasted is a wasted day. Tanqueray and chronic? Yeah, I’m fucked up now…

Unfortunately for weed (and music in general), the popular emergence of the G-Funk style did nothing to raise the bar of creativity. Legions of imitators followed Dre’s seminal work, and even Cypress Hill ran into trouble following up the grand tradition of its first release. Sure, everyone was smoking tons of weed, but the beats just weren’t that tight, and the music suffered.

Even more unfortunate is the state of Drug Rock today. A particularly disturbing side effect begotten in part by New Drug Rock pioneers such as Dre or Cypress Hill has been the formulation of the rap-rock movement, currently in vogue on Modern Rock stations and in undegraduate dorms throughout America. Groups like Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, and Incubus seem more enamored of the 70s approach to formulaic guitar-based music than any vaunted Drug Rock history. In fact, their link to the demon weed is tenuous at best. Lots of lip service is paid to the drug, but the dynamics of, say, “Pretzel Logic” or “Aja” are a lot easier to zone out to than the he-said she-said bullshit of the Bizkit. The shit’s just too aggressive, man.

So maybe Steely Dan did deserve that Grammy, if only to please an older, paunchier Doug, who shed a lonely tear into his TV dinner as he thought back to the days of hanging out in the back of the school parking lot, polishing his Nova and listening to “Barracuda” as he separated the seeds from the stems…

JTL

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The GO on the Radio

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It’s Friday, and I’m in love.

The tightness around my eyes reminds me of last night’s Bud, but with The GO on the radio? Hey man, it’s right on. Detroit rock and roll water babies, musical greenhorns, touring tenderfoots? Whatever. Turn that shit up.

The brains behind the operation is one Bobby Harlow. Many names he has been known by, but one thing’s for sure: this kid is skinny. Well, that’s true. But it’s all part of the look, man. He can rock with the best of them, especially when The GO lights it up on all cylinders. Watcha Doin’, a rambling, high-octane assemblage of nicotine-stained rock, is the best thing Sub Pop has released in years (well, don’t tell the Murder City Devils that…they might kill me). Harlow’s sexy howl matches the intensity of John Krautner’s ragged guitar lines, and when the backing vocals come in on the chorus of “You Can Get High,” you know you’re in for the long haul. Detroit rock and roll is nothing new. But don’t sit there and tell me you don’t like it.

The GO knows the history (Harlow does a great Iggy Pop impersonation); they’ve been around that block. But lets go around again, and this time roll the windows down. The GO is infectious, just like how you never change the dial when “Back In Black” comes on the radio. Handclaps, fuzzy, slutty guitar, and just the right amount of drums mix it up for 12 tracks of greasy rock music that wears its influences like a broken-in leather jacket. It smells like whiskey and cigarettes, and that’s empowering.

Rock and roll will give me what I need.

JTL

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Come on, Steely Dan?

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The following comments re: The Grammys are from ML (extracted from an email to Johnny):

I mean come on, Steely Dan? Are you kidding me? Just because people were overlooked when their music was contemporary (meaning in the category of unlistenable 70’s music) doesn’t mean we need to go giving them awards 25 years later. Oooh, they’re soooo visionary man. Shut up. If the Spin Doctors get back together in 20 years and release an album should we give them the award in 2021? Who wins next year, Bread?

Come on, these two trolls don’t serve any purpose today but to drive arguments in bars about what is good music. I would venture to say that there isn’t anyone who is really into music who doesn’t run hot or cold on these guys. Sure, we all know people who say, ‘yeah, I like that one song’, but you know they don’t know what they’re talking about.

If you really like music you either give them a Grammy or you wish they’d just go back to their hole, and take that awful vocal sound with them.

Bottom line being anybody who cares about music feels strongly about them, great. But aren’t the Grammy’s supposed to be about a little more than that. Isn’t popularity and impact supposed to weigh in there somewhere? I’m sure [someone somewhere will] crow on and on about how that record has changed her life, but do you really think anybody will ever say, “man – that Steely Dan album from 2000 – that was it man. I heard that and everything changed.” Bah!

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AIN’T NOTHIN’ BUT A G THING, BABY

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Tragically, the Grammy viewing audience found itself asking all night, “Where’s Soy Bomb?” The utter lack of anything more controversial than another plunging neckline made even host Jon Stewart’s bits about a gay Eminem seem watered-down. The cavernous Staples Center was nicely decorated in shades of purple. But so is a baby’s nursery. After all, it’s the Grammys. It’s like watching a Soviet awards show – always 25 years behind.

2001’s Grammy Awards made an attempt at diversity. Throwing bones to vocal jazz, classical piano, and the Native American community was weak, but at least it was more sincere than last year’s Carlos Santana blow job fest. Unfortunately, whatever momentum gained from these gestures got lost in the shuffle of a poorly produced show with plenty of weak live elements (memo to Jon Stewart: a sardonic smirk doesn’t count as a punchline).

A bizarrely coifed Macy Gray beat out Madonna (nice accent!) in the best pop female vocal category for “I Try.” But hey, do we really need to hear the song again? I wonder if the blue hairs in NARAS thought they were watching another performance by Lauryn Hill. In the role of Britney on Wednesday night was Christina Aguilera, who could have hid behind her mic stand if she hadn’t been lip-syncing. Boring blonde braids flitting about, the JV-squad diva gave us a sneak peek of her Branson future by arriving in a flying Love Toilet and performing (in Spanish?) with an orchestra. Back up the RV, sister, it’s over. Another orchestra helped Faith Hill’s “Breath” sound like the AAA/Adult Contemporary tripe that it is. Looking like an all-growed-up Jessica Simpson, Hill’s 93Lite-FM performance didn’t exactly give some big ups to her Nashville peeps. Shocker: she later won for best country album (Emmylou Harris to waiter: “Get me a drink!”)

U2 performed “Beautiful Day” capably, helped along by a nice light show and Bono’s trademark histrionics. Picking up record of the year honors, The Edge – normally numb – unveiled his Appalachian comedian side. Sounding like an Irish Harry Callas, Edge gave the first documented shout-out to Jubilee 2000, 3-blade razors and frozen pizzas. No one questioned whether his black ‘3’ shirt was related to Dale Earnhardt. After some filler featuring more bad live cueing for Stewart and unlikely celebrity pairings, not to mention about the millionth Unnecessary Carson Daly Siting, Moby took the stage with Jill Scott and Blue Man Group. It’s just like the unassuming Moby to stand back, playing the bass while the Blue Men and Scott conducted an odd re-version of his “Natural Blues.” But those pesky Intel hucksters became annoying about midway through the song, and that was BEFORE they started firing confetti from their drum cannons. Too much percussion, not enough Moby.

While an artist being an afterthought in his own song would be re-visited later during Eminem’s “Stan,” the night’s best performance was its simplest. Sheryl Crow warmly strummed an acoustic guitar as she harmonized with best “new” artist Shelby Lynne. My pal Phil and I were waiting for the moment to be ruined by an orchestra or 18 backup singers. But for once, it didn’t happen. A lone electric guitar player joined with Crow’s acoustic towards the end of the number, giving it a nice Nashville-meets-Tom Waits feel. Some of Waits’ boozy energy was no doubt conveyed by two of the hardest (and hottest) partiers in the business in Lynne and Crow. Roll out the drink cart, boys – Shelby’s in town.

As the show was winding down, most of the fidgeting crowd seemed to be longing for something, anything to be excited about. Honestly, where’s ODB when you need him? After a self-serving speech by the smarmy president of NARAS, who no doubt cornered some unfortunate soul at the after-party and talked her ear off like your smelly Uncle Ned, Eminem took the stage for his fateful pairing with Elton John, King Of All Gays. Em’s rapping during “Stan” was fine; he showed off his unique flow while keeping it street enough for his homies back in Cell Block 6 (But what was with his right hand? It kept fluttering around like Gene Wilder’s shootin’ hand). As “Stan”‘s chorus arrived, John made his appearance, emerging from behind a set piece castoff from the last stage production of “Star Wars.” The song continued with terrible censoring, and ended without fanfare. The two men raised each other’s arms in triumph, looking like a homophobic Reagan greeting a gay Gorbachev at Camp David for a photo op. Meanwhile, somewhere in England, a forgotten Dido cried in her soup.

After such an anti-climactic event as the Elton/Eminem Peace Accords, the record of the year went not to Marshall Mathers, Beck, Radiohead, or even that over-produced fossil Paul Simon. Instead, the cutting-edge trend-setters over at NARAS went with NYC art-rockers Steely Dan, who evidently released an album in 2000. While cheers could be heard in coffee houses full of goatee’d grad students, no realistic music fan could really give a shit about Steely Dan’s triumphant return to our public consciousness. And yet, in a move similar to the Academy giving “Howard The Duck 2” the Best Picture nod, Donald Fagen, et al took home record of the year. I swear, even Steely Dan looked bewildered about their victory. Someone get Jethro Tull on the line, quick! But that’s what happens when an out-of-touch, thick-as-a-brick group of old voters is confronted with a potentially challenging decision. Whatever you think of Eminem, or even Radiohead and Beck, it’s obvious that these artists’ music was a just a LITTLE BIT more vital in 2000 than a bunch of aging math rockers from Greenwich Village.

See you next year. I’ll be over here in the bread line.

JTL

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LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE HIGH-PITCHED

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On Monday night in Chicago, Coldplay’s Chris Martin proved that you don’t have to sound like a bear to tear the roof off the sucker.

It’s appropriate that Coldplay’s energy runs through the conduit of Chris Martin. His pale, frail appearance matches the fragility of his band’s lovely pop music. And it IS lovely: plenty of acoustic guitar, and prickly melodies that showcase Martin’s cracked-china falsetto. But the music (and the singer’s) balsa wood appearance belies a muscular center. Monday night, it was Will Champion’s drums that provided the muscle. While Guy Berryman (bass) and Jon Buckland (guitar) hung on in quiet desperation, Champion and Martin made it okay for fat Americans to like pretty music. Hearing a crowd of kids, yuppies, and glum Midwesterners sing along with the gospel-tinged set closer “Everything’s Not Lost” was a sublime victory for what The Chicago Tribune’s Greg Kot has called the “soft parade” of new British pop.

From the moment Coldplay took the stage, Martin made it clear that they were sick as dogs. His polite stage banter undercut by coughing and gulps from his water bottle, Martin did his best to hit the high notes that ring throughout Parachutes (EMI/Nettwerk America). And he largely did. Running between his acoustic guitar and keyboard like a skinny, British Buster Keaton, Martin was almost a one-man band. Luckily, Champion’s hard-hitting drums came through with the assist. And with the help of a spectacular light show, the band tore through “Don’t Panic” and “Shiver.” But they never substituted Arena Rock American Style for what they do best: simple, earnest songs that take their own sweet time getting to the rock. This is why it was so great to see The Riviera sold out, and so many people digging Coldplay’s polite brand of voodoo jive. If this show, as well as recent sold-out Midwest appearances by Travis, Richard Ashcroft, and Stereophonics are any indication, The Heartland just might be willing to trade in its aggro-rock and growling lead singers for a bunch of friendly fellows from the UK.

All that aside, the show was still sponsored by Chicago’s modern rock mouthpiece Q101. So a significant contingent – we’ll call them The “Yellow” Brigade – were making their presence felt, lurking in the back by the bar. Despite its popularity, “Yellow” is still a beautiful song, and when it arrived midway through the set, Martin tried his damnedest to pull it off. But his voice was failing, and he broke a string on the acoustic 20 seconds in. Jon Buckland’s utter lack of distortion couldn’t pick up the slack during the song’s quiet verses, so the song suffered. But again, Martin’s nervous energy took over. Discarding the wounded guitar and jumping onto his monitor, he clapped along with the audience as they sang “Yellow”‘s final verse. “Turn into something beautiful,” indeed. And the lighters, they were flicked on throughout.

After two deserved encores, Martin shuffled out onto the stage one last time. And after playing a brand new song, “never played before, anywhere, honest,” the lone blue spotlight followed him as he made one more guitar-to-keyboard transfer. Standing up, Martin slowly sang “what the world…needs now…is love…sweet love…” and with that homage to a like-minded crooner, he waved and was gone. American Badasses take note: wimp-rock’s here to stay, and the kids love it.

JTL

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NEVER SAY GOODBYE

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New Jersey rockers/fossils Bon Jovi have announced plans for a summer tour in support of their newest album, Crush (Island). Don’t doubt it: their jaunt across America will be a success. After 35 weeks on the Billboard Hot 200, Crush is holding at 70, and its second single “Thank You for Loving Me” is storming the charts.

The question is, who let these guys back in?

Didn’t we bury them in the early 90s, after sagging album sales proved that “Bad Medicine” was not, in fact, what we needed? Did we not accept a newly shorn Jon Bon Jovi as an actor simply because it was a lesser evil than his band? Richie Sambora? Isn’t he dead? How have these lousy longhairs clawed their way back into the public consciousness? It’s like throwing a party, and noticing about halfway through the night that the guys you tried so hard to avoid inviting have come over anyway, and are standing by your keg drinking.

I laughed out loud when I first heard the band’s rockin’ lead-off single, the imaginatively titled “It’s My Life.” From Bon Jovi’s braying vocal to the muddled, Hysteria-esque production, it was the 80s, remixed. The obligatory synth-drum track in the background was an obvious (and cheap) attempt at updating a tired idea. In my head, the boys rocked along with a mullet-headed DJ, spinning the wheels of steel in Z.Cavariccis and a Hyper-Color t-shirt.

Inexplicably, “It’s My Life” was a hit.

Who was buying this? I asked around. No one I knew was happy to hear of Bon Jovi’s return. And yet, the re-emergence continued. Appearances on VH-1. Concert specials. All of this exposure was only serving to illustrate that the members of Bon Jovi who aren’t named Bon Jovi or Sambora would easily be confused with those employees of Aerosmith not named Tyler or Perry. The rub: aging white men in leather vests and bad weaves. Amazingly, Crush peaked at #9 on the Billboard charts.

Taken at face value, Slippery When Wet is a great album. You drum on your steering wheel when K-Billy FM plays “Livin’ On A Prayer” as part of its Big Hair Weekend. “Never Say Goodbye” brings you back to that night at the union hall, when there was no use talkin’ ’cause there was nothin’ to say. But check it: I’ve listened to Crush. It’s terrible. Danger Kitty performing “Love Rocket” at a bris is better than this shit. Every rock cliché, every sappy lyrical couplet (“It’s my life/it’s now or never/I ain’t gonna live forever”)—it’s all here.

If Bon Jovi needed a quick payday, why didn’t they just release a Christmastime greatest-hits box and get it over with? That would’ve been better than Crush, a collection of weak rockers and sleep-inducing ballads that somehow manages to sound amateurish and sad all at once. You know that feeling of pity you get watching some middle-aged fat guys rock out the songs of their youth at a summer street festival? It’s my sincere hope that it’s this notion of pity that accounts for Bon Jovi’s resurgence. You don’t really want to watch those fat guys, sweating as they roll though an out of key take on “Livin’ After Midnight.” But you order another beer, because like a car accident, there’s a perverse pleasure in watching the carnage unfold.

JTL

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Pedal Steel Transmission at Schubas

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In 1996, I stood in the front row of Detroit’s St Andrews Hall and watched Polvo unleash hell. The North Carolina quartet was at the height of its considerable indie-rock power, and proved it with a blistering reset of Gary Numan’s “Cars.” It was the perfect cover song, mixing the black lipstick’d histrionics of Numan’s signature tune with Polvo’s gull wave bridge of Silvertone fury. “Cars” remained, but Ash Bowie and Co. had ripped out the circuit board and jury-rigged the mainframe, re-programming the original’s dirty vibe into a distorted lockgroove. It was a real Rock and Roll moment, and somewhere, AC/DC stood up and cheered.

Last Friday, it was time to root for the cool kids again, as The Pedal Steel Transmission took the stage at Schubas. Like the name suggests, the Chicago quartet is built around its pedal steel guitar. But this isn’t Gene Autrey, beans out of a can, or yodeling. It’s more like a pedal steel guitar with its collar up and a knife in its teeth. Warriors, come out and play…and they did. The Pedal Steel Transmission is cosmic American music, like Gram Parsons, The Band, Sixteen Horsepower, or Afghan Whigs (r.i.p.) before them. But this country music is made in The Big City. The high-lonesome, Neil Young soul is present and accounted for, but it’s ghost-riding on a dark back road called Rock and Roll. Churning, LOUD guitar clashes with the pedal steel, and both hit up the rhythm section for a fix of Polvo-esque groove. Cowboys in leather jackets? Maybe. But it’s more like rough riders listening to Fugazi and Stereolab around the fire. When The Pedal Steel Transmission really got on their horse about midway through the set Friday night, it was like Lou Reed in a cowboy hat, and somewhere Adam Duritz cried into his beer.

Rock and Roll ain’t noise pollution.

JTL

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Slurping blow off of prostitutes’ tits

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When Liam and Noel aren’t busy slurping really good blow off of prostitutes’ tits, they’re leading on the British press about whether or not Oasis has broken up. Last year’s ‘Standing on the Shoulder of Giants’ was a nice, fuzzed out attempt at rocking out. With the addition of Gem Archer on 2nd guitar, Noel finally had somebody with as big of balls as him on stage with which to duel. Liam doesn’t count because he’s the younger brother with the spinning hat, licking a LSD-laced lollipop as he sneers Noel’s lyrics into the mic. ‘Shoulder’ and its subsequent world tour proved that Oasis can be more than a (bad) Beatles cover band. It proved that Noel is an equal opportunity ripoff artist, who is as equally enamored with T.Rex, Free, and Thin Lizzy as he is with Les Beatles and Paul Weller. Even if the record was a critical failure (especially in the UK, where blowhards proclaimed Oasis dead, despite 3 sellout nights of 70,000+ at Reading…), for fans of good old pint-swilling rock and roll, the Gallaghers proved they can still come with these thangs. If the boys want to fight, you better let ’em.

Nowadays, the boys’re laying low. Liam, who seems to base his loutish behavior on an early 80s template of Sean Penn, was recently accused of, and subsequently acquitted of, charges that he tried to give an British Airways stewardess an unwanted rogering. Good ol’ Liam. God love ‘im! Meanwhile, Noel is hanging around with the aforementioned Weller, no doubt wearing skinny pants and pounding back Carlings, envisioning new Oasis material (through a haze of hash, blow, and stale perfume, but envisioning nonetheless…)

If you ask me, I’d like to see the boys next come out of the blocks with an album that continues the Rawk of ‘Shoulder’. And if Noel’s appreciation of Gem Archer’s guitar and songwriting isn’t just shite, he might think of letting some of the other humps write a song or two. And no, Liam’s “Little James” from ‘Shoulder’ doesn’t count, as it seemingly was done using the “Write Songs The Noel Gallagher Way” manual that he sent away for out of the back of Melody Maker.

And anyway I’m pissed the fuck off at Liam. Who kicks Patsy Kensit out of their bed? Honestly…

JTL