Such A Small-Town Rodeo

Ian F*cking Hunter.

77 Years Old. Tribute to Bowie.

What's not to love?




And one from the past:

Hail Dropped Like Bullets (Rerun from Last Year)

Cold night air everywhere...

Carrie had a boyfriend. Someone she knew from High School.

We never saw him, but we heard all about him.

Then, one night, she showed up crying. He'd dumped her by letter. Couldn't even wait until they saw each other. Couldn't call her (although it was before cell phones, back when long distance still meant anything).

She waved the letter and we looked at it. It was filled with typos and grammatical mistakes. Someone said "he's an illiterate dope, you're better off without him." This made Carrie cry even more.

I took her for a walk. We went down the hill. To the statehouse with the big fluffy lawn.

I made her roll downhill on the lawn. This momentarily made her feel better.

And we walked back up the hill.

"I never thought we'd be together forever," she said. "But I thought we'd make it to New Year's Eve."

And she started to cry again.

I wanted to hug her, but I didn't. Instead I distracted her with a story about a girl I knew in High School.

It was a funny story. And it made her laugh.

But she would have rather had the hug.

When we got back to the dorms, she thanked me for the walk. Then she hugged me.



"Maybe you and I should hang out later," Carrie said.

And I nodded. I wanted that too.

But I didn't want to swoop in after she'd been dumped.

And it was right before finals.

So I didn't do anything about it.

And then Carrie started dating this guy named Marc. And whenever she saw me, she'd give me a sad smile.

A smile that seemed to say "you should've hugged me."

And I nodded. Because I should have.

Hail Dropped Like Bullets Through the Air

Cold night air everywhere...

Carrie had a boyfriend. Someone she knew from High School.

We never saw him, but we heard all about him.

Then, one night, she showed up crying. He'd dumped her by letter. Couldn't even wait until they saw each other. Couldn't call her (although it was before cell phones, back when long distance still meant anything).

She waved the letter and we looked at it. It was filled with typos and grammatical mistakes. Someone said "he's an illiterate dope, you're better off without him." This made Carrie cry even more.

I took her for a walk. We went down the hill. To the statehouse with the big fluffy lawn.

I made her roll downhill on the lawn. This momentarily made her feel better.

And we walked back up the hill.

"I never thought we'd be together forever," she said. "But I thought we'd make it to New Year's Eve."

And she started to cry again.

I wanted to hug her, but I didn't. Instead I distracted her with a story about a girl I knew in High School.

It was a funny story. And it made her laugh.

But she would have rather had the hug.

When we got back to the dorms, she thanked me for the walk. Then she hugged me.



"Maybe you and I should hang out later," Carrie said.

And I nodded. I wanted that too.

But I didn't want to swoop in after she'd been dumped.

And it was right before finals.

So I didn't do anything about it.

And then Carrie started dating this guy named Marc. And whenever she saw me, she'd give me a sad smile.

A smile that seemed to say "you should've hugged me."

And I nodded. Because I should have.

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.)

Just Like Moses Malone

Squint your eyes, tilt your head, and she's a superstar.

In an alternate universe, Karla DeVito is a superstar.

You may remember her from the video of Meat Loaf's "Paradise By the Dashboard Light" (although it was Ellen Foley who actually sang on the song). Or from her song "We Are Not Alone" from The Breakfast Club.

But whenever I think of Karla DeVito, I think of her goofy and amazing debut album Is This a Cool World... Or What?, which came with a poster that had doodles, photos from her childhood, and handwritten lyrics. And the music was pretty great, Cyndi Lauder-esque goofiness, great pop musicianship from players like Anton Fig, Paul Shafer, and G.E. Smith, and powerful vocals that sounded like the love child of Kate Bush and Linda Ronstadt delivering a message from God. The album had a goofy song about a female pirate (perhaps explaining Broadway appearances to come) and some great covers (CCR's "Almost Saturday Night," the Grass Roots' "Midnight Confessions").

And then there's the title song. Which celebrates the coolness of modernity (circa 1981): French sunglasses, call-waiting, and a "house for my mother, just like Moses Malone." And she even dresses like a hippy chick, a Bobby Soxer, Alice in Wonderland, and a sad clown in the video. I dare you not to like it. (Link for Gmail subscribers.)


Karla DeVito might easily have become the Queen of MTV, but instead she followed Linda Ronstadt onto Broadway for a revival of The Pirates of Penzance. To capitalize, Budweiser made a commercial with DeVito singing a version of "Cool World" mashed up with the then-current Bud jingle (link for Gmail subscribers):


A year later, DeVito married Robbie Benson (her Pirates co-star) and had two kids. She recorded a second album in 1986, but the songs weren't quite as sharp and Bob Ezrin's slick, synth-heavy production bludgeoned all the humor out of the record (which never made it to CD).

The other day, I dragged my vinyl copy of Cool World out of storage. The poster is frayed, the cover is worn, the price tag is partially shredded (but hanging in there). But the music is still amazing -- a goofy, fun artifact from the alternate universe and coolest of all possible worlds, just before Karla DeVito became the Queen of MTV.

Just like Moses Malone.