Trying to Aneasthetize the Way that You Feel

It's only inches on the reel-to-reel.

Boston's WBCN radio announced today they will shift to an All-Sports format next month. (I guess because there far too many radio stations that still have a brand name and a history and far too few outlets for idiots to talk sports.)

A long time ago, WBCN was a classical music station (the call letters even stood for Boston Concert Network, dating back to a period when concerts meant cellos and violins instead of two guitars, bass, and drums).

That all changed in 1968, when they switched to a free-form rock station by playing "I Feel Free" by Cream. Boston's student population embraced the new WBCN and the staff clearly loved music more than anything. For WBCN, free-form radio was more than just a slogan -- for many years as other stations became heavily formatted by radio consultants relying on surveys and test results, WBCN let their DJs play what they wanted. By the late 1970s, the station was one of the few places outside college radio that played punk records.

For 10 or 15 years, WBCN was easily the best thing to listen to in Boston and probably one of the ten best stations in America. It was inevitable that the glory days couldn't last forever and by the time WFNX arrived (and was trumpeted as everything 'BCN used to be back when it was great), WBCN was starting a slow decline. The station backed off from alternative music, put their DJs on ever-tighter leashes, and hired programming consultants. They embraced grunge in the 90s and switched to a harder rock format in the past 10 years, mixing in "classic" songs from its history (and always including a heavy emphasis on local Boston bands).

Additionally, here are three true facts about me and WBCN:

1) Morning DJ Charles Laquidara used to call people up on their birthdays. One morning, he read a letter I'd written asking him to call my girlfriend and wish her a happy birthday. He spent five minutes making fun of the fact that I'd neglected to include her phone number. (It's just as well, the relationship was doomed.)

2) In Los Angeles, we lose great radio stations all the time. In the past 15 years, they always promise to continue as webcasters, then close their digital doors for good a few months later. WBCN plans to continue playing music on the web; here's hoping they can do better than LA's late, lamented 101.9 (World Class Rock) or Indie 103 (home of Jonesy's Jukebox). (Link for Gmail subscribers).


3) WBCN played a crucial role when I lost my virginity. This may already be too much information, so I'll leave it at that.

With the Rolling Truck Stones Thing Right Outside

Purple before Prince.

I remember little about the first junior high dance I went to. The clearest thing about that night isn't the girls (although I remember a few of them), or the dancing (ditto), or even the ribbons hung over the school gym (which might have depressed me if I'd looked closer). What do I remember? Deep Purple.

I'm reminded of this because Deep Purple is in the news this week. (No, really. They are.) Apparently, the band played a concert in Russia last October and has been fined for not first licensing their own songs from the Russian Author's Society.

The $1,000 per song fine is to be paid to the rights-holders of those songs, which happens to be... the band Deep Purple. (Techdirt noted: "Common sense just died.) All I know is this is the strangest thing to come out of Russia since Yakov Smirnoff. (Maybe even stranger -- who knew Deep Purple was even still around?)

When I was in junior high and high school, the stoners all loved Deep Purple, cranking the well-worn vinyl their older brothers and sisters left behind when they went to college. Most of their albums folded out, too -- which was handy for rolling joints (although I don't know if that added to the band's stoner-appeal).

Here's what I do know: at the first junior high dance I ever went to, the first song I danced to (played with long-haired abandon and little noticeable skill by a very bad local band who were probably just a few years older than the kids dancing) was this:


A girl named Rachel asked me to dance. I remember next to nothing about her, except that it was both fun and terrifying to dance with her and she kept moving closer to the makeshift "stage" until we were right in front of the band. And the song ended, she said thank you and we retreated quickly to opposite ends of the gym.

My friends all teased me about Rachel and urged me to go talk to her, but I didn't. Like it says in the song, Swiss time was running out. When the band took a break, she made a beeline for the stage and flirted with the guitar player (no doubt asking him probing questions about effects pedals and what kind of pick he preferred). My buddies and me watched this and decided immediately to form a band. None of us played instruments, but that didn't stop us from spending weeks picking a name and designing a logo. It was so perfect that we had no choice but to break up the band without playing a single note.

Oddly enough, if you go to Montreux, there's a sculpture by the shore of Lake Geneva honoring the song (and including the notes to the never-to-be-forgotten guitar riff). I imagine you'll find Rachel there, too. Or your Rachel. Whoever she may be.

(She'll be easy to recognize, even after all these years; she's the one hanging on the arm of the aging guitar player...)

Let Me Whisper in Your (Right) Ear

Now we know.

Thomas Dolby was onto something.

It's not just poetry in motion. There are clear and obvious electrical, chemical, and scientific causes and effects of everything. Even love. (Maybe especially love.)

Now, what Dolby was trying to tell the world in 1982 (with a little help from Andy Partridge, Lene Lovich, and Bruce Wooley) is finally proven: If you want something, ask the right ear. Requests to the right ear are twice as likely to be granted as requests to the left ear.

So the next time you ask for a raise (or a dance, or a phone number, or anything else), blind them with science.

I'm sorry to report that I plan to use this information for evil, not for good. I wonder if it matters if the listener is a lefty... (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


And of course, there's no guarantees in science, so you have to take the risk that things might wind up like this:

God's Late-70s Attempt to Save Rock and Roll

God sent Ellen Foley to save rock and roll, but the Devil sent the Clash to stop her.

My friend Gina was a rocker chick. And also a Bible-thumper. She didn't think the two were at odds and fervently believed God loved catchy hit singles, preferably with swooping sax solos, rhythmic keyboards, angelic harmonies, and blistering guitars. Given the right singer and the right guitar, she'd say, you can practically touch heaven (or at least get an idea of what it sounds like).

To hear Gina describe it, God got cranky in the mid-1970s. Rock was in bad shape and the radio was dominated by Disco, self-indulgent singer-songwriters repackaging an angst they lost four Jaguars ago, and songs by coked-up bands still coasting on a reputation they'd earned more than a decade earlier. Punk fluttered up, but acted more like a time-release drug (one that would take 15 years to fully activate).

So God sent down something bombastic and wondrous in the form of Meat Loaf and Ellen Foley, the only chick singer who could match him note for note. When Bat Out of Hell sold a bazillion copies, Epic signed Ellen Foley to her own record deal (and, as Gina told me, God was very pleased).

Ellen Foley's first album Night Out -- produced by Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson -- was a revelation. The songs swoop and jump and Ronson's guitars take you from the seventh circle of hell all the way up to heaven and back in under 4 minutes. Foley's vocals were passionate and rough (but polished up with harmonies from Rory Dodd, who also sang on Bat Out of Hell).

And God was very pleased. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


More than that, Foley was cool as only rocker chicks can be cool. She covered the Rolling Stones at their bitchiest on "Stupid Girl" (and was tough enough that she didn't have to change the gender and water down the song).


Then (since rock and roll had not yet been sufficiently saved), Foley spread God's word, singing on an Iron City Houserockers album (produced by Ronson, Hunter, and Steve Van Zandt from Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band), and doing a duet with Hunter (as seen... um... here). For the first time since Saturday Night Fever, music seemed to be getting back on track.

But, said Gina, the Devil had other plans for Foley.

She started dating Mick Jones from the Clash, sang on their Sandinista album, and decided that her second solo album (The Spirit of Saint Louis) would basically be a Clash album (with production by Jones, credited on the sleeve only as "my boyfriend" and songs co-written by Jones and Joe Strummer). Songs like "The Death of the Psychoanalyst of Salvador Dali" left most fans scratching their heads and few wanted to hear Clash songs (which weren't quite good enough for Clash records) sung by Ellen Foley. The album never caught on and was in cutout bins within months.

And, Gina explained, because the Devil can multitask, the Clash soon started to fall apart (although Jones would channel his troubled relationship with Foley into the song "Should I Stay or Should I Go").

Foley's third solo album Another Breath tried to recapture the sound of her first album, but slick producer Vini Poncia was no Ian Hunter (and certainly no Mick Ronson) and the record -- despite featuring songs by Ellie Greenwich and Desmond Child -- never quite worked.

So Foley retired from rock and roll to raise kids (and take the occasional acting gig)... emerging last year with a new, bluesier band called Ellen Foley and the Dirty Old Men.

And that, Gina explained to me, is why God had no choice but to turn to Bruce Springsteen to save rock and roll.

We Gotta Get Out of Here

Sometimes You Just Have to Leave Town.

During college, I had a friend named Penny. She played the drums and was one of the coolest women I'd ever known. She worked at the college radio station, wrote freelance record reviews for Rolling Stone and was on a first-name basis with every touring rock drummer who rolled through town (but she never broke her strict "don't sleep with touring musicians" rule).

She was also a little impulsive and once invited me to drive from New England to South Carolina because she wanted to visit a particular beach-side barbecue shack. We were late-night BBQ buddies and she kept telling me I needed to go below the Mason-Dixon line to get real BBQ. Besides, she told me, sometimes you just gotta make a break for it and get the hell out of town. (I had a final the next day and passed on the chance; channeling Ellen Foley, she asked teasingly if I was gonna stay home and watch the reruns of the Muhammad Ali/Marlene Dietrich fight. She made the drive in record time but was arrested on the way back on charges of transporting live chickens without proper permits. She used her one phone call to contact me and I wired her $100 for bail. But that proved unnecessary; Penny charmed the arresting officer by telling stories about Ginger Baker until he dropped the charges, got her phone number, and let her go with a warning. They got married four years later but split up after a few years when he started touring as the bass player in an indie rock band. "I should've married you," she told me when her divorce came through, "at least you can't play an instrument.")

In my senior year, I decided one night that I had to get out of town, so I called Penny and told her I was driving to Montreal. She laughed at me and said there was no decent barbecue in Montreal -- and besides, I needed to get finish a paper for a philosophy class we were both taking.) I drove all night -- in a red VW bug whose floorboards were slowly rusting out and whose driver's seat had been stolen a few months earlier. I didn't quite make it to Montreal because I ticked off a border guard who then refused to let me into the Canada because I didn't have enough cash (Penny never did pay me back for the "bail money" I sent).

Penny dropped out after that semester; I drove back to New England, finished my philosophy paper in one uninterrupted two-hour stint at the keyboard, and graduated. Years later, Penny would finish her degree... but I still get terrified whenever I enter Canada.(Link for Gmail subscribers.)

Hey Babe, It's the Fourth of July

Happy Independence Day

For a few minutes in the 1980s, guitarist Billy Zoom left the band X and was replaced by Dave Alvin of the roots-rock band the Blasters. Alvin had previously played with X's D.J. Bonebrake, John Doe, and Exene Cervenka in the acoustic-country collective the Knitters.

Alvin wouldn't last long in X, but he did bring in an amazing song he wrote -- a sad and poignant look at the City of Angels that's worth revisiting more than once a year.


And another version (sung here by Alvin himself) for your holiday listening pleasure:


Ironically, by the time X got around to recording the song, Alvin was already gone (replaced by guitarist Tony Gilkyson) and X itself would soon be gone (although they'd resurface and vanish again several times in the 1990s).

For years, one of my favorite radio stations would play this song every July 4th at noon. They played it from vinyl and the record was filled with clicks and pops that perfectly amplified the song's story of disappointments and the sad shimmer of hope. A few years ago, that radio station upgraded all their equipment and their library. When they played the song at noon on the 4th of July, the sound from a shiny, newly remastered CD free from surface noises.

It just wasn't the same.

Looking for Lewis & Clark

Maybe it wasn't the explorers, but Gary Lewis and Gene Clark.

Like most stories, this one begins with a song.

In this case, the song was "Looking for Lewis & Clark" by the Long Ryders, complete with its self-referential lyrics and homage to the Kingsmen.

I was working at my first job out of college (a soul-killing endeavor made almost bearable by great co-workers who lived to savage the company's management during beer-soaked lunch hours at a local pub) and was looking for an apartment in Watertown, Mass. Apartments in the area were notoriously hard to find, so unscrupulous brokers charged obscene "finder's fees" and kicked back half to greedy landlords. One broker's teenage daughter drove me to a series of crappy apartments while trying to get me to comment on whether or not I was in favor of "nipple rouge" (I'd never heard of it and kept trying to change the subject). She had a Long Ryders mix tape that she played as she drove us around in a crappy Pinto whose left front light was missing. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


I would have cut the afternoon short after the first crappy apartment, but I liked listening to the Long Ryders and wasn't sure exactly how I was going to find a place to live. Plus, I could always steer the conversation away whenever she brought up "nipple rouge" again. (For the record, she brought it up seven times.)

In the early 1980s, Sid Griffin, Greg Sowders, Stephen McCarthy, and Barry Shank formed the Long Ryders, bringing a Graham Parsons/late-era Byrds country feel to the growing L.A. psychedelic movement known as the "Paisly Underground." (To cement their ties to the Byrds, the Long Ryders even got ex-Byrd Gene Clark to sing on a song on their first full album.)

The teenage wannabe broker chick didn't care about any of that. The only thing she knew is that her boyfriend loved the tape, then broke up with her because she wouldn't agree to wear nipple rouge. Finally, when the second side of the tape was nearly done, she told me there was one more apartment she could show me. (Link -- with bonus panda dancing -- for Gmail subscribers.)


The last apartment she showed me was down a hallway that stunk from cat piss. I tried not to make a face, but I guess I failed. She smiled the kind of smile seen mostly these days on the faces of delusional contestants trying out for American Idol and said: "And the best thing about this place is you can have pets!"

I didn't rent any of the crappy apartments in Watertown. But I did drive into Harvard Square that evening and buy the first Long Ryders album.

As for the band, they were invited to open for U2 on the Joshua Tree tour, but were plagued by personnel problems and broke up instead.

I never saw the wannabe teenage broker chick again, so I never got to tell her that she got the best of the deal -- getting rid of the loser boyfriend and gaining a Long Ryders tape. In an alternate universe, the Long Ryders would have been huge stars and the wannabe teenage broker chick and her new boyfriend (the one who didn't care if she wore nipple rouge or not) would've been in the front row in front of 50,000 other fans. (And if she really wanted to be a broker, she wouldn't have to show apartments that smelled like cat piss.)


Bonus video -- The Long Ryders cover NRBQ's "I Want You Bad":