"Me Favorite American Band..."
Posted: Thu Mar 12, 2009 2:04 pm
This is my favorite American band, no question...what rock-n-roll is all about for me.
In 1980-81, my roomate in the dorm at McMurdo Station was a young engineer named Kenny 'White Boy' Horns, a brilliant guy from Edina, Mn, just outside Minneapolis. He turned me on to his favorite 'hometown' band...had a tape of these guys that we listened to a lot that season, and when I got back to the states, I resolved to try to see them. I had been invited to Kenny's wedding, and while I was in the Twin Cities, I went to check them out at Prince's nightclub...but they had to cancel the show because of one of the guitarists coming down with appendicitis. I did get to meet them at the club, though. In '82, I saw them at The Ritz in Manhattan, in '83 at the old Mercury Cafe on Pearl Street in Denver, and in '84 at The Blue Note in Boulder...and the last time, in '86, at the Glenn Miller Ballroom on the CU campus in Boulder. At that gig, I mashed my way through the full house up to the stage, and as we waited for the show to start, a young kid next to me told me he was from Minnesota..."Do they stage dive here?", he asked me. I replied that, yeah, I think they do. He said, "If I do it, will you catch me?" Sure, I said, thinking he was just kidding around. Just then, the house lights went out, the stage lights blew on and the band hit the stage...the sound was huge and beautiful, and the place went nuts. Fifteen seconds into the first tune, the kid from Minn. leaps in one perfect shot onto the stage, dances his *** off for about three seconds, and then launches into space, coming right at me. I stopped his fall, more than catching him, and as we both got back up, I saw Beej, the crazy little guitarist/singer, rear his head back and spit a gigantic gob fifteen feet into the air above his head, straight as a laser beam. It came straight back down, too, and at the last possible second he ducked out of the way and let it hit the stage. This, I mused to myself, is rock-n-roll.
I sure miss this band...don't know if it's true, but the story I heard is that after releasing multiple albums, they finally signed to Polydor, and after doing a disc with them, they were called to a meeting with the label's president. In the meantime, apparently, Beej had married a millionaire's daughter, and was not much concerned with 'commercial success'. The Polydor guy starts laying out a list of do's and don'ts, and Beej went off and told the guy to f*ck himself. They were thrown out of the building, with the guy screaming a promise after them that they would never work for any label again.
Again I say: 'maximum rock-n-roll'...
Here are some clips of the one band that, for me, did the most to expose the 'David Lynchian' nasty weirdness and angst brought about by superficiality that underlies the tree-lined, lawn-sprinklered, Benjamin-Moore-painted, little-wooden-jockey-on-a-post streets of America: ladies and gentlemen,
The Suburbs...
In 1980-81, my roomate in the dorm at McMurdo Station was a young engineer named Kenny 'White Boy' Horns, a brilliant guy from Edina, Mn, just outside Minneapolis. He turned me on to his favorite 'hometown' band...had a tape of these guys that we listened to a lot that season, and when I got back to the states, I resolved to try to see them. I had been invited to Kenny's wedding, and while I was in the Twin Cities, I went to check them out at Prince's nightclub...but they had to cancel the show because of one of the guitarists coming down with appendicitis. I did get to meet them at the club, though. In '82, I saw them at The Ritz in Manhattan, in '83 at the old Mercury Cafe on Pearl Street in Denver, and in '84 at The Blue Note in Boulder...and the last time, in '86, at the Glenn Miller Ballroom on the CU campus in Boulder. At that gig, I mashed my way through the full house up to the stage, and as we waited for the show to start, a young kid next to me told me he was from Minnesota..."Do they stage dive here?", he asked me. I replied that, yeah, I think they do. He said, "If I do it, will you catch me?" Sure, I said, thinking he was just kidding around. Just then, the house lights went out, the stage lights blew on and the band hit the stage...the sound was huge and beautiful, and the place went nuts. Fifteen seconds into the first tune, the kid from Minn. leaps in one perfect shot onto the stage, dances his *** off for about three seconds, and then launches into space, coming right at me. I stopped his fall, more than catching him, and as we both got back up, I saw Beej, the crazy little guitarist/singer, rear his head back and spit a gigantic gob fifteen feet into the air above his head, straight as a laser beam. It came straight back down, too, and at the last possible second he ducked out of the way and let it hit the stage. This, I mused to myself, is rock-n-roll.
I sure miss this band...don't know if it's true, but the story I heard is that after releasing multiple albums, they finally signed to Polydor, and after doing a disc with them, they were called to a meeting with the label's president. In the meantime, apparently, Beej had married a millionaire's daughter, and was not much concerned with 'commercial success'. The Polydor guy starts laying out a list of do's and don'ts, and Beej went off and told the guy to f*ck himself. They were thrown out of the building, with the guy screaming a promise after them that they would never work for any label again.
Again I say: 'maximum rock-n-roll'...
Here are some clips of the one band that, for me, did the most to expose the 'David Lynchian' nasty weirdness and angst brought about by superficiality that underlies the tree-lined, lawn-sprinklered, Benjamin-Moore-painted, little-wooden-jockey-on-a-post streets of America: ladies and gentlemen,
The Suburbs...