It Isn't Forever

Several years ago my friend Mindy offered both of us a writing challenge.  The topic was making a mix-tape for a person one doesn’t know.  We both wrote fictional stories around this notion, and even though they were fictional, I believe the seeds of both stories contained nuggets of tragic truth.  I know mine did.  Creating mix tapes, especially during my teens and twenties was a passion for me.  They were important for personal use and for connecting with friends.  Plus, they are legendarily supposed to be some sort of powerful romantic audio love letter that can and will win the heart of a crush.  It makes for a magical idea, but I’m not so sure of its actual effectiveness.  It never stopped me from daydreaming about this possibility. 

Mix tapes (or the modern equivalent – CD, or more likely, streaming playlist) were always important to me.  I have always made them. It has been going on for even longer than I’ve been buying music. They used to come along fast and furious. I could and have cranked them out for myself to listen to in the car, or Walkman or to simply catalogue a moment in time.  In 1986, on a school night, for no apparent reason, I created a tape for my own enjoyment titled October 18, 1986 (the rainy evening it was born), and it included three songs named “Shame.”  This became an annual tradition for a few years – all containing at least one song titled “Shame” (that’s a lot of shame), and then was reborn as a CD series after receiving a kidney transplant on an October 18^th.  Mostly though, these mixes have been made for friends, co-workers, classmates, and relatives. I’m not sure why, other than my near psychotic need to share my love of music. What better way is there than sharing the actual music?  It’s much more effective than my efforts to write about it.  Perhaps all of this has been practice for the dream scenario mentioned above (and sadly rarely ever implemented) – the mix tape for a crush or a girlfriend.

During this Covid-19 pandemic home time, like so many, I’ve been purging junk that is taking up space around my place.  I’ve been browsing through a giant stack of old spiral notebooks, mostly dating back to 1991-93, full of writing - old record reviews, short stories, several drafts of a mission statement of sorts for the fledgling This Wreckage ‘zine, a disturbing number of lists of personal single and album rankings - my own strange version of Billboard countdowns, and a few sketched out song lists for potential mix tapes.  Unfortunately, there is no sign of a playlist for a particular mix tape that I made that has become legendary in my mind.  It’s a mix I made for a girl, where I laid everything bare.  A collection of songs that were able to break my heart and thrill me with shivers.  If only I could hear that collection again.  Sadly, I do not remember what exactly wound up on that Maxell cassette.  I have some ideas and some pretty sures, but with too much alone time on my hands, I have become obsessed with the notion of recreating this long forgotten mix.

Nineteen Ninety One was a really difficult year for me.  I had to drop out of college and move back home to the isolation of the Oregon coast, due to my mom’s serious health issues that would lead her down the road of undergoing long distance kidney dialysis (the closest clinic was at least an hour away from our home) and seriously declining health, leading to her unfortunate passing nine months later.  Plus I had my own related health problems (genetics!) that landed me in the hospital for about a month, due to a botched surgery.  Let’s just say that recovery was slow and painful.  It felt like the table my life resided on had been flipped over suddenly, leaving me blindly searching for some sort of solid ground to stand on.  So, I did what I had mostly done up to that point in life, I shoved all the pain, fear, and uncertainty down into my gut and tried to rebuild some sort of foundation to stand on.

The following year found me back at my High School-era job making pizzas, shuffling through life, creating a handful of Xeroxed ‘zines with Wil and trying to get them some exposure, and then eventually returning to a different school in Seattle that fall for three months.  Why three months?  Well, in December, I found out that I needed another surgery, so at the end of 1992 I packed everything up and moved back home, which honestly didn’t feel like much of a home anymore.

For much of my late teenage years and into my twenties, I battled depression.  I always chalked it up to the tumultuous times that young adults are always told about, you know, never fitting in, not cool enough, no love life, no taste for partying, spending most of my time alone, etc.  No big deal.  Swallow it down.  Rinse and repeat.  Hold onto my nature of being quiet and even keeled.  Yet, this time, after dealing with another major surgery, things were different.  I began to talk more, I began sharing my thoughts, and my insecurities.  I became an open book.  Once I returned to work at the old pizza joint, I remember being a 21-22 year old, working with a lot of 15-16 year olds, and I felt like a complete and utter failure.  Many of my friends were closing in on their college graduations and here I was in the local teenage hangout asking about the town gossip from a boy who was still a year away from shaving once a month.  That kid became a proxy therapist for me as I blabbered on and on about how life sucks and why.  I could no longer hide my depression - my total sense of loss.  Everything bubbled up to the surface. 

Now that I had become an open wound, a raw nerve, I began to yearn for my life from two-plus years prior.  I missed the idea of possibility, potential, and hope.  I started to reach out to the few people I knew from school, which included a young woman who, during my dark years away, had become to mean the world to me.  I couldn’t get her out of my mind.  She became some sort of ideal who inspired me to become a better person.  I can see it in those This Wreckage mission statement rough drafts I tossed recently.  There was a desire to broaden my horizons, connect with people, and to offer a place for open expression.  It was about this time the mix-tape plan hatched in my head.  I would mail it to her and it would be a compilation that laid out the story of my scrambled emotions and yearning heart and to let her know how important she is.

 

This is where things get hazy.  I have a feeling that I opened the tape with the solo live rendition of Mark Eitzel’s “Firefly.”  I had been obsessed with that whole album (Songs of Love Live), and that song in particular for a nearly couple of years by that point.  Though, Eitzel’s sad sack “Thanks for coming” that opens the song, or the “I’m always fucking this part up” apology during his guitar bridge, have become repeated jokes over the years within the small circle of my friends.  It’s the warbles and imperfections of his soaring repeated howls over his loss (“Where did you go?”) of a loved one has made people I’ve shared it with laugh, albeit uncomfortably.  It’s a heart wrenching song that never fails to send debilitating shivers down my spine.  That temporary notion of fireflies was strong in those times, and I think I likely bookended things and closed the tape with the Magnetic Fields’ beautiful “100,000 Fireflies.”  Long before Stephin Merritt graced most of his songs with his droll baritone, and every album would be based on some sort of gimmick, his songs were sung by the folk-sounding Susan Anway, whose voice managed to infuse the words with a simple melancholy.  I purchased the 7” single for this song during the height of my love of loud, fast, abrasive music (industrial, hardcore, noise).  However, this quiet, fragile, unique sounding song about the bittersweet nature of love couldn’t have been a more perfect representation of my mindset.

“I went out to the forest and caught
A 100, 000 fireflies
As they ricochet 'round my room
They remind me of your starry eyes
Someone else's might not have made me so sad
But this is the worst night I ever had"

 

Elsewhere, I’d like to imagine that I put on something by the Field Mice whose plaintive uncomplicated songs are the type that no one is supposed to like, because it's too hard to admit their sheer vulnerability have such much emotional power. I’m afraid the spare plea for physical contact of “It Isn’t Forever” was the choice I may have made for this collection.  It’s a song that begs to be heard, while alone, late at night, when the last thing in the world you want is to be alone.  “It Isn’t Forever” alternates quiet verses of longing with loud abrasive instrumental passages that, like the title, display the all too often fleeting nature of intimacy.

 

I must have also put on the majestic and invigorating love song “Sunshine Smile” from Adorable, because it was this girl’s electric eyes that captured my initial attention, dropped my jaw, froze me in place, and placed about 100,000 fireflies ablaze in my stomach.  I cannot hear this song without thinking of her.  Speaking of which, I would’ve been remiss if I hadn’t have placed Ride’s crashing single “Taste” onto this tape.  Again, the chaotic burst of pure energy that drives the song, Laurence Colbert’s unbelievable rollicking attack on the drums, and the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ that come in about 30 seconds into the song make for the exact representation of what was going inside my mind and body every time I was anywhere near her presence, and for long after.  It doesn't hurt that "Taste" was released not long after that first time I was awestruck by her.  It became my constant adrenalized soundtrack to guide me through her presence.

 

There’s a chance I may have doubled down on the Mark Eitzel pain, when he moonlighted for a few songs as the vocalist for the creative instrumental band Toiling Midgets.  The turmoil and self-flagellation that he goes through in the searing “Golden Frog” can only end with a repeated conclusion to himself “you were weak.”  A feeling that I often felt of myself then and now.  The anthem of someone who is often too afraid to take chances in order not to disrupt whatever tiny fragments of comfort remain. 

A good balancing follow-up to that abasement could’ve been “Awesome Sky” from Boston punk rockers Moving Targets.  I'm about 87% certain that this amazing instrumental was near the end of side A of the mix.  Despite being absent lyrics, this song may have encapsulated my emotions better than all of the other soul-baring lyrical songs included.  Its restless energy, its earnest search for that glimpse of an 'awesome sky' that keeps getting momentarily obscured by something. Once we reach that triumphant sight (what a chorus!) the song reaches incredible heights like a stellar sunset poking out between clouds or over a magnificent horizon.  Yet like the sun disappearing, the song quietly runs out of steam and disappears.  Gone for good.  Leaving us astonished and inspired.

It’s difficult to know how I filled all 90 minutes of this tape.  Could I have gone for it and crammed it entirely with spirit shredding content?  Was I that willing to be exposed?  Perhaps I threw on something such as Concrete Blonde’s delectable wizened cover of Leonard Cohen’s remarkable “Everybody Knows,” to keep the thread alive but not so damn direct, or the surprisingly groovy and tender love song to planet Earth: “Living in the Rose,” from the normally political and intense New Model Army – a song that would’ve been brand new at that time.  I had to have included something from the Sundays too.  They were and are one of my all-time favorites who wrote a ton of the types of songs to fill this brand of mix-tape.  I imagine that I would’ve snuck the stunningly beautiful and brief b-side “Noise,” an ode to silence and solitude on there as a tasty set up for their second album highlight “Goodbye.”  The first single to follow up their flawless debut is indescribably pretty as it builds to a satisfying and dramatic climax, before ending with the inevitable cold send off to her now former lover.  A dose of reality crashes into the dreams of heaven.  That was it.  A goodbye wasn’t needed in this case.  It was over before it had a chance to begin.

 

These songs I’ve mentioned are merely educated guesses as to what made it onto that tape.  I remember dubbing it on a lazy music filled sunny spring afternoon.  I distinctly remember being abuzz from the emotional impact the lovelorn songs had over me after completion.  I remember feeling completely despondent, yet alive with an unidentifiable sense of accomplishment.  This recorded cry for attention was likely a terrible mistake, but I knew I had to do something.  I was bursting with love to give and utterly incapable of believing the notion that I could ever receive that kind of love in return.  I could not and still cannot imagine it, so the whole thing was an exercise in futility. 

 

By the time autumn of that year came around, I had gone back to bottling everything up.  I nearly stopped speaking entirely.  An overwhelming sense of loss and emptiness swallowed me.  A callus formed around me creating a numbness that still encompasses me to this day.  I have been smashing frustrations, disappointments, sadness, and illness into my gut for so long that there is no room for anything else.  The bubbling over anxiousness, excitement, passion, and most important, anticipation that filled that mix tape and the reason behind it stand as a symbol for everything I feel I’m missing.  I think the idea of recreating that grouping of particular songs, despite the sorrow attached to them, is a tiny spark of life buried deep within my clouded mind fighting to get out.

I’m not sure it can.

What Happens After

Laveda

What Happens After

(Color Station)

 

What Happens After is really the question isn’t it?  What happens after we’ve endured the horrifying Trump presidency, after the pandemic, after the media shifts its focus away from all of the Black Lives Matter protest marches for justice, after yet another war, or religious sanctioned genocide, after the planet’s atmosphere turns to carbon monoxide and cooks much of the life on the surface and in the sea?  What a mess we’ve made of things.  It feels like we, as a whole, never learn from our collective mistakes.  We really can’t seem to get along.  We really can’t seem to avoid not feeling cheated by some change that hurts us in some way, be it financially, religiously, misplaces us, or hinders our conveniences, so we do what we can to get things back to the way they were.  Is there really progress, or just a push and pull between all kinds of various factions fighting for temporary supremacy?  Is this mess really what we want to hand off to our youth?  A youth, that at this point, can only ask themselves “What happens after” everything has already blown up? 

 

All the kids are fucked up

No the kids don’t care about love again

And everybody’s caught up

With the same growing pains of their ways

 

So go the lyrics in the first part of the chorus for the powerfully epic ballad of encouragement “L.”  Yes, the kids are fucked up.  They’re fucked up because we’re all fucked up.  All the kids come into the world searching for meaning, and their teachers are the adults who are even more fucked up and hopeless.  Ali’s comforting vocals have to remind us “you’re not a mistake.”

 

The debut album by this New York duo asks a lot of the types of questions mentioned above in this emotionally charged, and frankly exciting album.  An album full of beautiful atmospheric washes mixed with striking walls of guitar noise, and a low end that at times is felt more than heard.  I know an album is a good one, when my favorite song changes every time I listen.

 

My introduction to Laveda came with the stratospheric “Dream, Sleep,” as Ali Genevich pleads urgently for a break amidst all of the chaos.  The dream and the sleep become quite threatening here.  The next single was the very unusual sounding, yet incredibly catchy “Better Now.”  I didn’t know what to make of this song for a long time.  Jacob Brook’s vocal is altered to a phony deep tone, where he repeats the ominous line: “she was seventeen when she looked at me / I doubt she knew what she was in for.”  The only thing is, I couldn’t (and can’t) stop playing this song over and over again.  In context of the album, the song’s message becomes clearer that the deep voice is coming from the Earth after everything has “turned to grey” and “there’s no turning back.”  A wearied messenger for the young girl looking for “Neverland.”

 

The opening salvo, “Ghost,” on the album is a horrifying and sad duet detailing a struggle for life in the midst of some sort of apocalyptic disaster like a nuclear holocaust.  In fact, I don’t think I’ve heard so much nuclear end of the world imagery since Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s Welcome to the Pleasuredome.  The mostly instrumental “CND” is an industrial soundscape with a scratchy recording of a statement about our society’s obsession with apocalypse.  It acts as an explanation for our televangelist preachers and their end of days pleas for donations.  This would have fit nicely onto Front 242’s album Official Version.

 

“Rager,” as implied by its song title is an absolute scorcher!  This straight-ahead song gets louder and more intense as it progresses.  It’s a tragic and depressing anthem that could and should get an audience bouncing around and singing along with this bleak chorus:

 

Now it’s on fire

There’s nowhere left to wander

Soon everyone dies

We’ll never find another

 

As the album progresses everything turns to more personal matters of the heart.  “If Only (You Said No)” acts as the LP’s power ballad – a song full of misguided devotion.  “Child” comes on with a soaring chorus and an admission that sometimes one feels like reverting to the lost innocence and neediness of childhood.  The sad reflection of “Blue Beach” has a haunting beauty that reminds me a little bit of Nirvana’s “Something in the Way.”  The album closes with “color,” a musically meditative reprise of “Blue Beach,” with a thoughtful and somewhat uplifting spoken message: “And I think it’s lovely the way we can see the world and the way we can see time / It’s lovely how it rains outside.” 

 

Perhaps there is hope.  We could be going through growing pains.  We may need to hit bottom before finding out how best to recover – to become better as people and better as a collective.  Maybe the kids will figure out a solution.

 

(https://lavedamusic.bandcamp.com/)

Laveda "L" (session video)

 

Monuments

Fire in the Radio

Monuments

(Wednesday Records)

When I was a young teen working my first job, I saved up all of my money in order to buy a big ole Hi-Fi component stereo system with tower speakers.  It was my pride and joy.  Late at night, I would sit in the dark on a canvas chair in front of the system with my headphones on.  I would stare into console, as I marveled at the power boost a strong FM signal would give to music – an added buzz and increased separation of sound.  I would lose myself in the music and the lights that illuminated the otherwise dark components of the stereo creating a warm glow.  It looked like little city grid in there, or like a little fire burning inside.  My family constantly made fun of me for staring at the stereo with such intent, which could happen at any time and for hours at a stretch.  “Enjoying the view?” my Mom might quip as she passed by my room.  Though some of those components have broken down or petered out over the last 35 years, I still have the same basic system.  It is still an alter acting as a nightlight in my darkened bedroom, and the music it plays keeps me alive.

What does all of this have to do with the new album, Monuments, from Philadelphia band Fire in the Radio?  Other than the fact that their name brought those memories to the fore, the music does make me feel like a kid again.  This is the first I’ve heard of this band, though it is their third LP, and it is filled with punk inspired guitar anthems.  This is the type of thing that used to mystify me.  Like, why isn’t this hugely popular?  These guys rock!  There are chiming power chords, propulsive throbbing basslines, relentlessly upbeat drumming, and sing along choruses everywhere.  The lyrics are thoughtful and can draw out all kinds of personal emotional connections.  Plus the production is big and bright and radio ready.  Yet, here we are.  I found the album via Bandcamp just like most of the other criminally underappreciated artists on there fighting for an audience.

I do not know anything about Fire in the Radio and there is no information about them on the record sleeve.  To me, it sounds like there are two lead vocalists, which is always a strength if you ask me, because it creates a nice unforced variety.  The album opens with an instant favorite “Let’s Get to the Start,” a song about needing to reset after a crippling disagreement.  It reminds me a ton of early Idlewild’s incredible 100 Broken Windows album, as does the excellent “Tulare” and the more Remote Part-ish “This is My Document.”  On the other hand, you’ve got the more difficult (not as straight-ahead), heavier songs such as “Gravity” and “Breaking,” which hint at Bivouac -era Jawbreaker as played by a mid-90s Washington DC band, are still infused with ear appealing choruses.  Speaking of Washington DC, the cranking “Ex-SF” reminds me of Fugazi.  Another highlight for me is the wistful “I Said,” which cruises along like a Chris McCaughan led Lawrence Arms heartbreaker.  I am a sucker for sparse lyrics about quiet moments in time that feel emotionally monumental.  Which brings me to the closing song “Save Me.”  This is exactly the kind of song I was referring to earlier.  This universally understandable song should be massive!  It is so damn catchy, it rocks, it’s easy to sing along with (and to get stuck in one’s head), and it is tragically sad in a desperate identifiable way (“Save me now / save me from the demons I once brought home / I don’t want to be left alone”).

It has been too long since I’ve had this kind of punk rock band come into my life, and there is always room.  It's energizing and exciting.  There's a certain cathartic enjoyment I get out of loud, emotionally charged upbeat songs that are also tender and, at times, heartbreaking.  It doesn’t hurt when the bulk of the songs stick with you and repeat over and over in your head – in a good way.  “Wake me up / It’s time.”

(https://fireintheradio.bandcamp.com/)

Fire in the Radio "Tulare"

Nostalgia

Spectres

Nostalgia

(Artoffact)

Nostalgia indeed!  When I first listened to this album from Vancouver BC’s Spectres (their 4^th LP, but my introduction), I was immediately transported back to when I was a shy kid in the 80s losing myself in the discovery of post-punk music.  These discoveries were so exciting for me that I still get a charge thinking about it.  I used to dream about finding rare (or non-existent) vinyl singles in strange places, like in the grocery store near the produce, or in a roped off section of a hardware store.  These records would have striking cover art that would intensify my curiosity about what mysterious music was inside to discover.  Hell, I still have dreams like these on occasion.  What’s so great about Nostalgia is it not only sounds like it could’ve come from the early 80s UK indie chart (though thankfully without the over treated 80s drum sounds), but it could’ve thrived there.  I can easily see them being heralded as legends now, if they had been a part of that era.

The most obvious influence could be the bass, which draws on the style that Peter Hook created in Joy Division and New Order.  The opening of the incredible “When Possessed Pray” is very reminiscent of “Ceremony,” and the influence is only intensified when vocalist Brian Gustavson borrows the vocal melody from “Age of Consent” to open the second verse.  What’s funny though, is despite a handful of nicks like these here and there, Spectres do not sound like any particular previous band at all.  My introduction to Spectres is the second track “Dreams.”  This song is a shimmering breath of fresh air as it evokes both the excitement and sadness of a young relationship that is experiencing that first separation.  One is off across the world, while the other stays at home.  The trebly guitar chimes of the chorus is exhilarating. 

It’s damn refreshing to encounter lyrics that are about things beyond broken hearts and relationships (don’t get me wrong, I love these things too), but here we get songs about the world, culture, religion, and politics – but not in a preachy specific way.  The LP opens with “The Head and the Heart,” which builds momentum as it progresses, making it a perfect introduction.  It is about discovering a worldview beyond religious doctrine and they seem pretty happy about it as the song closes with the repeated refrain of “the worst is over.”  Elsewhere, in “Pictures from Occupied Europe,” Gutavson channels Pete Shelley as he shouts over a frenetic set of verses lamenting the fact that we struggle to learn from history and as a warning against the factors that lead to fascism (“Recondition / shapes of what’s to come / polarized parties / breakdown has begun / and no one cares what happened anymore”).  The dangers of political polarization between the left and right continues in “Years of Lead,” which has an absolutely killer guitar hook.  “Insurgence” reflects all of this political tension and comes on the some chanted “woooah –oooooohs” like a fueled up to the point Killing Joke.  Meanwhile, “The Call” is a song after my heart with its Peter Hook bass intro that jumps in like Big Country’s “Steeltown.”  I can almost hear a phantom e-bow from the ghost of Stuart Adamson, as the sing-along chorus kicks in.  As my friend Matt said, when I shared this song with him: “That’s got it going on.”  The exciting finale is “Along the Waterfront,” with its stumbling forward musical momentum and its melancholy mix of the excitement and possibility of youth and the dashed hopes of experience. 

There is not a weak track on this collection.  If you like you like UK post punk, catchy pop songs, and thoughtful lyrics, then this is likely right up your alley.  Highly recommended!

(https://spectresvancouver.bandcamp.com/)

Spectres "When Possessed Pray

Digging Your Scene

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself muddling through another day.  I was feeling despondent and overwhelmed – so pretty normal.  Somehow I made my way home from work, and began the process of paying bills, and preparing my stuff for this year’s taxes.  Fun stuff, right?  I sat down in front of my laptop, when suddenly “Digging Your Scene” by The Blow Monkeys popped into my head.  I mean with force, as if it were actually blaring from speakers nearby.  I had no choice, but to pull up the video on YouTube.

“Digging Your Scene” was a top 15 hit in the US way back in 1986.  I was a freshman in high school.  As far as I know, they did not crack the pop charts again.  I never went out and bought the record, but I liked the song ok.  I would get the opening refrain stuck in my head a lot back then – exaggerating the vocal and haunting my friends with it at school.  I have no idea why it forced its way into my thoughts on this recent dreary weekday, but I can truly say that I was not ready for the music video. 

I had likely seen moments of it, when it was new.  However, my small town did not have MTV yet, and I spent much of my time, like now, huddled near a stereo, with headphones, listening to music.  I think I ran across the beginning of the video over at Bill’s house.  The God TV (it was named the God TV, because it was always on whether anyone was there or not, and often recording endless hours of material onto VHS) had recorded a few hours of the previous weekend’s episode of Night Tracks on WTBS.  I think we (the Campbell family and I) all thought the singer was extra creepy, made a bunch of jokes, and went on with our day.

Yes, the singer in this video looks especially creepy, but what I just now discovered is that the video is actually kinda funny.  It appears that the singer is parodying a mythic lounge-singing diva of epic proportions.  He works the audience, magically changes outfits every few moments, makes a mockery of guitar solos, and walks away to cheers and applause, a fistful of cash, and an overcoat draped over his shoulders like a cape.  It’s brilliant!

Immediately, my mind began racing.  I have always had a certain fondness for music videos – especially from the 80s, because so many of them are so damn strange.  As I have touched on here before (first paragraph of Downtown), there was often a dystopian landscape where videos were taking place in some kind of post-apocalyptic world with raging skies, blowing dust, and possibly revolutionary factions of horseback warriors carrying flags with cool logos led by our musician heroes.  Don’t forget the oppressive societies that our heroes had to face, where music and dancing were all illegal and could only be found in hidden basements of faceless grey stone buildings under constant threat of violent discovery.  I had an instant rambling essay forming in my head.  One that would touch on all kinds of bizarre 80 video-isms that I find fun and fascinating.

Once I began to collect video references I wanted to address and notes of things, I wanted to essentially make fun of, I had “Digging Your Scene” playing on repeat to get myself into the right mindset.  Unfortunately for my silly essay, each time the breezy, jazzy pop song with a killer bassline flowed into my brain, something began to happen to me.  I began to actually listen to the lyrics.  The words to this song are actually quite powerful.  Instead of being some kind of light-hearted expression of love, it is an indictment about the societal backlash toward people who have AIDS (“It’ll get you in the end / it’s God’s revenge”).  It comes from a place of fear, when being true to oneself could also mean a death sentence (“Everyday I walk alone / and pray that God won’t see me…Tell me why is it I’m digging your scene / I know I’ll die baby”).  

Shit.  Things just got real.

Favorite Records of 2019

Not feeling especially nostalgic at the moment, despite reaching the end of another year - another decade.  This list is comprised of my most listened to records of this past year.  There are many other deserving releases that I'm neglecting, which is never easy for me.  Here it is nevertheless.  

Agent blå Morning Thoughts

Blankenberge More

Fawns of Love Permanent

Fresh Withdraw

Mammoth Penguins There is No FightWe Both Can’t Win

Moving Panoramas In Tune

Silver Bars Center of the CityLights

Soft Blue Shimmer Nothing HappensHere

Versus Ex Voto

Young Romance Don’t Look (2018)

Happy New Year Everyone!

Wayside Wonders

Kenny was like the Fonz.  You know, the Fonz from Happy Days?  The cool guy, who was small, yet seemed tougher than everyone else.  He was cool.  Kenny was just a kid, as I look back on it now – maybe 19-20, but for a fifteen year old getting into his first ever job, he seemed to be in complete control.

Kenny was the dayshift/prep manager at Gianelli’s Pizza.  I had joined the coveted Saturday afternoon shift as the dishwasher.  I had heard about Kenny, but had yet to work with him.  I generally worked evening shifts after school or weekend nights.  I had just tied on an apron to start my shift and was scrubbing a few random leftover dishes from the previous night to run through the machine.  Kenny came around the corner, in faded Levi’s, and the black Gianetti’s t-shirt, hopped up on the counter next to me, propped his feet on an empty garbage can, revealing worn black Converse high-tops.  He had a Frusen Glädjé ice cream container in his hand.  Remember Frusen Glädjé?  It was the copycat fake Scandinavian fancy ice cream trying to horn in on the other fake Scandinavian ice cream, Häagen-Dazs.  It came in a pint sized plastic capsule container.  Kenny popped the lid off with the thumb of the hand he was holding the capsule with, while twirling a spoon with the other. 

“Did you eat a nutritious breakfast?” Kenny said without looking at me.  I assumed he was talking to me, since no one else was around.  I nodded my head side to side.  I had literally been in bed asleep 30 minutes ago, before rolling out of bed, getting dressed and walking the mile or so to work.  He poked the spoon into the container revealing a quiet crunch and scooped out a small bit of cereal into his mouth.  Between chews, he continued: “I expect everyone to be ready to go.  Get yourself one of these.”

That is where my training began.  Every moment with Kenny contained teaching moments.  Not all of it made sense at the time, and a lot of it still doesn’t make sense, yet I still feel like those lessons are still to come to fruition 35 plus years later.  Being the Saturday dishwasher really meant that I would be doing prep for the evening rush.  Saturday nights were the busiest and we would have to prep the cheese, the pepperoni and salami, cook the ground meats, and slice the tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and green peppers.  Everyone helped with prep, but dishes were light duty during the day, so it was mostly up to the dishwasher to get this stuff done.  I learned these trades from Kenny.  He was a master.  Everything he did oozed quality.  He was neat, efficient, and in his hands, all of the prep work was immaculate. 

I remember him showing me how to use the slicer.  He fastened on a big heavy metal tube and we poured about 10 pounds of raw yellow onions inside and turned the switch on.  The thing jumped to life with a stutter and then jolted violently back and forth.  I was terrified.  He tightened a knob on this jerking monstrosity to adjust the thickness of the slices.  We would collect the booty into a tub, seal it when full and date it.  Eventually, my intimidation with this beast wore off.  When slicing onions, the air of the entire restaurant would fill with that eye burning toxicity.  Often I would handle the run off by approaching the slicer with a makeshift blindfold.  It feels incredibly stupid in retrospect, but after learning the trade from Kenny, I had an intimate knowledge of that machine and total confidence.  It was like Jedi training.  I could mentally feel the machine.  I only learned years later that a 15 year old should not have been working the slicer at that age, nor should any of us been working 75 hour weeks during the summer like we often did. 

The stove tops near the slicer would be on simmer all afternoon cooking ground beef or sausage, which we would flavor with seasonings when ready.  Every so often, someone would have to check the meat by throwing the massive pot on the floor, and mashing and stirring the brew.  The meat mashers became our guitars.  Whatever horrible songs would absolutely blare from the one speaker transistor radio out of the dough room was generally emitting from KSKD 105 (an early Top 40 station with no DJs, which then became the hair metal leaning Top 40 station Q105), if there was a guitar solo, someone was likely performing it on the meat masher.  Kenny taught us the importance of this.  To be an effective performer, one could not simply put their hands in position and move their fingers around.  One had to play with passion.  One had to contort their face with pained expressions accentuating each note.  It was important to look like you mean it.

The dough room was an isolated long hallway that was parallel to the front kitchen, which was out in the open public area.  The dough roller would make a lot of each size of pizza dough and store them in a two-sided refrigerator, so the pizza makers could grab them from the other side.  They worked the day shift.  I never knew who the dough guy was, but he was cool.  He had long sweeping bangs, wore surf shorts and band t-shirts, wore a lot of those fluorescent colored rubber bracelets around his wrists, which were all the rage in my mind, and was always covered from head to toe in flour.  He reminded me of Peter Zaremba from The Fleshtones.  He and Kenny would nod to each other occasionally, but otherwise, they never seemed to communicate.

One of the things I appreciated most about Kenny is that he wanted everyone to know how to do everything.  He would spend the time to make sure you were comfortable at each stage of learning.  When I was taught how to put together a pizza, it was simply having me learn all of the toppings for the combos on the menu.  The business had no limitations for toppings.  We didn’t weigh ingredients or count pepperonis or anything like most places.  People just piled on a lot of stuff and the result would often be a mess leading to a pizza that would have burnt crust and a doughy middle.  Kenny taught moderation.  His skilled hands would wrap around the pizza and each effort would be a perfect balance of toppings and little to no run off.  He guided the toppings onto the pizza looking like a potter working the wheel.  He was an artist.  He insisted that we shout orders and commands randomly.  He had seen a restaurant TV commercial that had all of the chefs shouting back and forth with urgency – likely displaying the busy yet smooth running kitchen.  Know what you’re doing, and look like you mean it.

Over at the ovens, it was the same thing.  Kenny had the ability to cook the pizzas to the perfect crispness and taught us what signs to watch for that would signify when a pie was ready to pull.  More importantly, Kenny took me aside out at the ovens one afternoon and showed me what to do during any downtime.  There are some open minutes after putting a pizza into the oven.  Again, our kitchen was up front.  The crew worked away right behind the counter where the customers placed their orders.  The wall by the ovens displayed pans representing all of the pizza sizes available.  Below these was a stool – about knee high.  He put one foot up onto the stool and leaned into his upraised leg.  With his arms crossed casually over that leg, Kenny looked out towards the counter and did a subtle one finger wave and a head nod.  It gave me chills.  He looked like a movie star hero.  Kenny was teaching me how to do this.  It took a lot of practice, but I began to get the correct nuances.  This, he taught, was the proper way to acknowledge our fans.

It didn’t take long to become a devoted disciple of Kenny’s teachings.  As my skills increased, the training led to more excursions.  One afternoon, Kenny took Nick and me outside and had us lug a 50 pound bag of onions up and down the hillside out front of the building by the Gianelli’s sign.  The landscaping was more fitting to the high desert with its red lava rock and big sagebrush and Idaho fescues, than what one would generally see on the constantly damp and dreary coast.  This military style training wound up bringing in a few curious customers.

As the Christmas holiday neared, Kenny had Nick and me out on the roof of the building stringing lights.  The slippery roof was incredibly hazardous with the coastal wind whipping us around and blasting the driving rain into our faces.  As I look back on it, it feels like maybe Kenny was trying to kill us.  It felt different at the time.  I was terrified of heights, but he instilled in me a confidence that I didn’t know I had and felt I could accomplish anything.

On another outing, Kenny, Nick, and I, suited up in our Gianelli’s shirts, took a handful of pizza pans down to the beach access (D-River Wayside) and tossed them about like Frisbees.  When not engaged in some sort of acrobatic diving catch, we would employ the casual ‘stud’ wave to any curious on-lookers.  The local kite shop, who employed teenagers to fly kites on the beach as advertisement, were getting annoyed at our invasion.  We were a curiosity who were taking attention away from their wares.  We began planning to make our own t-shirts, as we were now known as the Wayside Wonders.

Late one Saturday afternoon, as our shift was winding down, Kenny was sitting on that counter where he liked to eat his morning cereal, he looked exhausted.  He was tussling his hair and taking deep gasping breaths.  This was about the time that Kenny announced to us, that he was packing up his young family and moving to California.  It was an uncomfortable emotional moment.  He continued to look spent as he described to us all of the effort he had put in to this job.  “Sometimes you tell the day, by the bottle that you drink,” he continued.  After a beat, we realized that he was mimicking his favorite music video: “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi, which was the ultimate example of how to look like you mean it.

I continued to work at Gianelli’s all through High School.  Things were never the same after Kenny left.  Several months after he moved away rumor had spread that he had become the head chef at some fancy restaurant in the Bay Area.  This was no surprise to any of us.  All of us who had learned from Kenny tried to keep the teachings alive, but it didn’t translate.  None of us had the Fonz-like charisma.

A couple of years later, one busy evening, I was working the ovens and standing out by the size display pizza pans and a fan.  I was lost in thought.  I looked out at the building crowd hanging around the front counter queuing up to place their orders.  A pretty tourist girl with a Slippery When Wet t-shirt and tight jeans with slits cut into the thighs caught my attention.  She was looking at me, even though I looked like a few discarded clumps of leftover dough balled together, rolled through some pubes, and stuffed into an Echo & the Bunnymen shirt.  I locked my gaze on hers and gave her a slight nod, along with a little finger wave.  She smiled. 

* Wayside Wonders drawing by Arlon Gilliland