Rubber City Review

Saturday Noon: Arrive at LaGuardia with wife, daughter and friend to spend a few days in NYC with other family members. Agenda includes The Black Keys’ sold-out show at Madison Square Garden. Guest list has grown to include 20+ Quines, Auerbachs and friends. Earn spot on road manager’s permanent shitlist.

12:30: Fight off limo drivers to get to cab stand at airport. Head off to big city. Let the games begin: Run Right Back

1 pm: Arrive at apartment in Chelsea. Rep from online rental service tells us to avoid contact with other tenants. If anyone asks, we’re friends of “Bob and Heather” (names changed to protect Dirk and Althea).

2 pm: Buy beer, wine and cereal at Whole Foods Market. Get yelled at by customer for not understanding color-coded checkout system.

2:30 pm: Pick up sandwich and spicy pickle at Murray’s Bagels (essential stop during stay). Head back to apartment and start drinking.

Mary Auerbach

7 pm: Meet other family members at hotel in East Village (only the deranged try to pull off family reunions in Manhattan). Miraculously find restaurant that can accommodate 16 people on a Saturday night: Congee Village. The fact that their food is edible seems like a bonus. Annoy piss out of wait staff.

9 pm: Walk into empty bar on Bowery looking for nice, quiet place where we can chat. Get thrown out because daughter and friend are under 21. On way out, we let bartender know she’s leaving lots of money on table by strictly enforcing NYC’s antiquated drinking laws. She seems glad to see the last of us.

9:30 pm: Plan B – Stop at liquor store, pick up bottle of Bourbon and head over to nephew Geoff Auerbach’s apartment on St. Marks Place. Spend next two hours looking at photos of strange tattoos.

11:30 pm: Make annual pilgrimage to Lakeside Lounge, home of world’s greatest jukebox (including some selections by our friend The Hound). Despite several hours of steady drinking, we’re still too sober to cram into photo booth.

1:45 am: Find cab.

2 am: Provide final instructions to driver re: destination.

Chuck Auerbach

Sunday 10 am: Head over to nearby Starbucks. Spend 10 minutes behind two nimrods who seem to be dumping Scarface-sized lines of Equal into their coffees. Finally elbow my way through, only to find empty pitcher of Half and Half.

10:30 am: Head back to apartment to microwave coffee.

Noon: Begin walking High Line with orderly mob of New Yorkers and tourists. Truly remarkable public space created on former elevated rail line. Wife abandons plan to jog it after slamming into several oversized strollers.

2 pm: Visit Chelsea Market. Load up on espresso in anticipation of long night.

3 pm: Head back to apartment. Lapse into zombie-like state – somewhere between fully awake and comatose.

5 pm: Get carry-out paella (a term you’ll never hear in Akron).

8 pm: Head down to private party for The Black Keys, hosted by Warner Brothers and Nonesuch Records. Specialty drink: the “El Camino” (tequila, hot sauce, ginger, dash of used motor oil). Get usual warm greetings from Pat Carney and his brother Michael. This is a sarcasm-free statement – I love all the Carneys (including ones I haven’t met). Great DJ, dude named Edan. Plays old-school funk like this tune: Sexy Coffee Pot …and even a little boogaloo.

8:30 pm: Daughter’s friend is clearly overserved. Gain new appreciation for NYC’s antiquated drinking laws. Dad leaps into action by grabbing both girls, dragging them to cab, taking them back to apartment, locking several deadbolts on the door and returning to party.

10 pm: Decibel level has tripled. Run into Russell Simmons. Have nothing to say, so I give him deep, soulful head-nod. I’m sure this still haunts him.

11 pm: Head back to Dan’s hotel lobby, where I sit down with his dad, Chuck, and surly road manager. Latter warms up considerably when I describe my own first trip to NYC, during which Chuck takes me to peep show on 42^nd St. I was 15 at the time. Fortunately, Chuck is protected by statute of limitations.

1 am: Call it a night.

Dan's back

Monday, 12:30 pm: Head down to meet Dan, Chuck, Ned Pollack (Chuck’s cousin, proprietor of Ned’s Southside Kitchen in St. Augustine) and Tandy Wilson (owner of City House, one of Nashville’s finest) for lunch at Famous Foods in East Village. Walk about 10 blocks to get there. It amazes me that, although every cab in NYC is showing the Keys’ March Madness video, no one recognizes Dan. Ah, the vagaries of life in big city. Dishes at restaurant are to die for, especially lamb sandwich and salad. Culinary highlight of trip.

2 pm: Catch ride with band back to apartment, since Chelsea is on way to MSG. My rock star moment.

6 pm: Order pizza and begin preparations for concert (e.g. buy six-pack).

8 pm: Walk eight blocks to MSG. Find meeting spot where sister (and Dan’s mom) Mary Auerbach is corralling everyone for trip backstage. We’re in!

8:30 pm: Backstage is practically empty, except for several stagehands who look like they just left central casting for a Martin Scorsese movie. Bartender is surprisingly excited to see us. Obviously, she has no idea what’s in store for her. Party continues.

9:15 pm: Grab seats off to side. Keys’ set kicks in with Howlin’ for You and never lets up. Songs from El Camino sound even more revved-up live. Great show… much love from NYC faithful. Mirror ball during encore seals the deal.

10:45 pm: Return to backstage area, where I run into my new BFF, CBS correspondent Anthony Mason. He wisely chooses not to introduce us to his stunningly attractive wife. We eat pizza while various camera-wielding strangers take pictures of us making spectacles of ourselves.

11:15 pm: With looks of great disdain, burly stagehands inform us it’s time to vacate MSG. We leave without hesitation.

Geoff Auerbach, patrolling backstage area

11:30 pm: Head down to after-party at The Spotted Pig in West Village. Sidle up next to Kings of Leon drummer Nathan Followill at bar. This time I work up enough nerve to introduce myself and wife, who is a huge fan. Ask him if he’s enjoying the evening. He responds that he’s just trying “not to throw up.” I applaud him for his initiative.

12:15 am: Run into Brian Burton aka Danger Mouse as I’m choking down hors d’oeuvre. Introduce myself as I gasp for air. He smiles in a withering sort of way as I sulk back to little-kids table. Is it rude to refer to supermodels as “accessories”?

1 am: My daughter meets Aziz Ansari, star of hit show Parks and Recreation. She asks him if he thinks her friend looks just like Amy Poehler. He says “yeah, I see it. You’re both white.” Best line of trip.

2:30 am: With flight back to Ohio approaching, we flag cab back to apartment.

Tuesday, 9:30 am: Time to blow this popstand. I say goodbye to tenant next door, noting that Bob is in recovery and Heather has run off with several circus freaks. We beat hasty retreat back to Akron.

Some photos (the good ones) by James Quine.

A gaggle of Quines (and significant others), backstage at MSG

Steph & Dan, no doubt admiring photo above

I haven’t had much contact with my famous nephew since The Black Keys conquered the world. Just the occasional text about someone I should check out, like Michael Kiwanuka or Bombino. So, like anyone who takes a few minutes out of the day to live vicariously through someone else, I’ll do the occasional google search to see what the boys are up to.

That led me to a brief interview in the Boston Phoenix in which Dan reveals his undying love of Link Wray:

“He was a huge influence… I still have all of my guitar amps turned sideways because when I saw him play he turned his guitar amps sideways, because it was so loud, and you would hear the ambient sound of the amp and not just the direct speaker sound. I thought that made a lot of sense. Plus, the amps aren’t blasting the audience in the face, which I think is really good, too. When I saw him, it was one of the greatest shows I ever saw in my life. There was a vocal mic and he didn’t say one word; he got onstage and started ripping through songs, and 40 minutes later he was done. Everybody was screaming for an encore, and he never came back — it was amazing.”

And that reminded me of a promise I’d made a couple of years ago to one of RCR’s earliest supporters, Joscha from Germany: At some point, I’ll get off my ass and do a post on Link Wray.

Then I started digging around on the interwebs for some Link-related items and came across a sprawling, six-part tribute by Jimmy McDonough, who first published the piece in the online music magazine Perfect Sound Forever (which also did a great post on Robert Quine, another Link Wray freak). As an interesting aside, the McDonough piece was highly touted at Link Wray’s official website, wrayshack3tracks.com – a site that expired on March 1. Yes, my friends, hundreds of websites dedicated to the Kardashians, and Link Wray’s official site is no longer available (note: looks like it’s back up and running – see comment below). Welcome to America, 2012.

Before I get to the music, I should point out two things about McDonough’s article I found very interesting – mainly because they seem to strengthen the link (sorry, couldn’t resist) between Link and Dan.

Thing 1: “He lived in a dimension of his own and would pretty much remain there – decades later, musicians would tell tales of rehearsing with Link only to have it abruptly end, Wray’s eyes glued to the TV, the guitarist lost in an episode of Batman.” Granted, Dan is far more focused during his own musical projects, but he definitely has a unique way of checking out of the world (and people) around him to follow his own muse.

Thing 2: “Fan and friend Bobby Morris, AKA Widmarc Clark, was amazed at how influence-free Link seemed, despite his awareness of players like Chet Atkins and Merle Travis. ‘Link was an experimenter. I never recall him playin a riff from those guys and sayin’, This is what I learned, because he just had a headful of it himself. He didn’t have a bit of trouble thinkin’ of a chord progression that sounded different and good. That’s just how he was born. Link was gifted.’” So it goes with Dan – born with a gift, restless experimenter, human hook machine. Even on the Junior Kimbrough tribute “Chulahoma,” he’s incapable of slavish imitation. Every song draws from the Hill Country blues tradition but seems fully formed in the here and now.

And now, the music…

Rumble… the song that started it all. That bad, bold and beautiful sound that inspired virtually every rock guitarist who followed (or at least the ones who mattered). And to think that the restless experimenter Link came across that sound by using a pen to poke holes in his amp’s tweeters. One of the great moments in modern music, like when Paul Burlison dropped his amp and broke a tube… or when his bandmate Johnny Burnette first let loose with one of his blood-curdling screams after backing into his guitarist’s lit cigarette. Rumble

Link lost a lung from a bout with tuberculosis, but you wouldn’t know it from the way he manhandles this Jimmy Reed original. I love how he gasps for air right before the chorus – a truly dark and demented touch… which of course is why we keep coming back for more. Ain’t That Lovin’ You Baby

Jack the Ripper – a masterful slice of menace from 1961. This cut worked its way into one of the few Richard Gere films worth watching, Breathless (video below). The song features Wray and his longstanding trio – brother Doug on drums, Brantley “Shorty” Horton on bass – at the peak of their powers. As Horton’s successor, bassist Richie Mitchell, pointed out, “There was somethin’ about the sound of those three guys that nobody could ever get again… You could play the same notes as Shorty played, but it was just somethin’ about the chemistry between those three people. They had an early original rock sound that was all theirs.” (McDonough, Perfect Sound Forever.) Jack The Ripper

Link did have a lighter, more playful side, and you can hear it on this cut from “’They’re Outta Here,’ Says Archie” – a collection of tracks that were shelved in the late ‘50s by Archie Bleyer, president of Cadence Records. Bleyer scored a hit with Wray’s Rumble, but decided that the rest of the songs intended for a Cadence LP would have a corrupting influence on teenage youth. Maybe the song Patricia was an attempt to meet Bleyer halfway… but apparently it still had just enough sleaze in it to scare off the label’s dipshit boss. Patricia

Here’s a grinding, blues-based tune that Dan covered during his 2009 solo tour, when he was backed by the great Texas band Hacienda. In the show I saw in Cleveland, Hidden Charms was the closest Dan came to playing an honest-to-god, four-on-the-floor blues number. And he was clearly inspired by the filth and fury of Link’s original. Hidden Charms

If you’re looking for a truly depraved example of Link at work, go no further than this stunning number from ’62. It was released under the name Ray Vernon & the Raymen (a nod to his brother Vernon, an aspiring pop singer who chucked it all to play a more essential role as Link’s producer and engineer). There’s absolutely nothing respectable about this song – from the drunken jackhammer rhythm to Link’s completely unhinged guitar. Maybe Bleyer was right… At the very least, wait until Junior’s voice changes before you expose him to this one. Big City After Dark

When it came to his music career, Link almost consistently made bad decisions – from signing with unsupportive labels to turning all his finances over to his brother Ray (Vernon), whose daughter Sherry inherited Link’s publishing company after Ray took his own life. At least Link could count on auteurs like Quentin Tarantino, John Waters, Robert Rodriguez and Breathless director Jim McBride to keep his music in front of the masses. But I still can’t figure out why the blazing instrumental Ace of Spades didn’t show up on the soundtrack to Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Even when Link seemingly caught a break, he couldn’t make it work to his advantage. Ace of Spades

More than a few of Link’s songs incorporate some exotic touches, including various tributes to his American Indian heritage (his mother, Lillian, was a full-blooded Shawnee) and lounge-flavored numbers like Patricia. This next cut combines a cha cha cha rhythm with a Malaguena-influenced chord progression. Of course it all comes out sounding like Link Wray music, which is a very good thing. Pancho Villa

One of Dan’s favorite albums is “Wray’s Three Track Shack” – Link’s “Big Pink” moment. In other words, much like The Band did back in ’68, Wray holed himself up in the country to come up with his own vision of Americana. But don’t cloud this vision with thoughts of guitar-strumming troubadours playing gauzy, sensitive tributes to rural life. Wray’s homespun recordings at the family farm in Accokeek, Maryland, were as rough and ready as his favorite switchblade – including this number covered by The Neville Brothers on their 1990 release “Yellow Moon”: Fire and Brimstone

When I first latched on to Link Wray’s music back in the Seventies, I assumed he was this strange, shady figure from England (he spent his last years in Denmark, so I wasn’t that far off). I actually was shocked to find out he grew up in Dunn, North Carolina, without a pot to piss in… that he was a lifelong teetotaler… and that he was very religious, in a God-fearing, fundamentalist sort of way. Wray kept rockin’ til the end – he toured America in 2005 before passing away that year from heart failure at the age of 76. Here’s a cut he recorded in England when he was 60, sounding like the youngest guy in the room. The Wild One

Link Wray live in England, probably ’96 or ’97, which puts Link in his late-60s… I’m sure there are better-quality live videos out there, but I love the way he prowls the stage like a mad hyena and literally snuggles with the crowd (knocking his guitar out of tune – a minor distraction):

From the movie Breathless… Richard Gere channels Link Wray as he steals a car to pick up his girlfriend.

As we approach the end of 2011, some of you might be looking at various ways to shake things up in the coming year. Maybe take a few dance classes, learn how to cook with a wood-burning stove, turn that toolshed into a bitchin’ mancave, recycle that oxy you found in grandpa’s bathroom…

I tend to be a little more realistic. It’s hard enough dealing with the day-to-day challenges of making ends meet with a dwindling paycheck. Why complicate matters by trying to reinvent yourself? The craziest thing I’ve done in recent years is start this blog (which I view as the cornerstone of RCR’s burgeoning virtual empire… and my wife sees as “the thing that keeps you from fixing this goddam sink”). That slight reinvention should do me for the entire decade – or at least until End of Days (see #10).

This year, I prefer to simply express my gratitude for all the things that somehow went well in 2011. Let’s face it, plenty of things sure as shit went south. We lost Hubert Sumlin, Howard Tate, Dobie Gray, Amy Winehouse, Cesaria Evora, Manuel Galban, Doyle Bramhall, Gil Scott-Heron, Bert Jansch, Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, Clarence Clemons, Cornell Dupree, Pinetop Perkins, Melvin Sparks, Big Jack Johnson, Eddie Kirkland… and, in a way, Etta James, who’s in the final stages of leukemia and also suffers from dementia. Also, Fear Factor came back on the air – an event that surely was documented in Revelations. And Rick Perry’s still in the hunt. But let’s set aside those tragedies for now and focus instead on some positives from a year that needed every one of them.

1. 10 Years of Daptone Records. It’s reassuring to know that soul music – made the way god and James Brown intended – is alive and well in Brooklyn. But that’s just part of the story at Daptone. Do yourself a favor and pick up one of the label’s outstanding samplers. You’ll find everything from Afro-beat (Antibalas) to a capella gospel (“Como Now: The Voices of Panola Co., Mississippi”). Simply put, Daptone is an American treasure. Here’s to many more decades of fine, funky soul… and a whole lot more. Let’s celebrate the first 10 years with the queen of Daptone soul, Sharon Jones: Be Easy/Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
2. More Live Music on TV. Maybe I’m deluded, but it seems like I’m coming across more first-rate music programming on cable (not on the main broadcast networks, unless you count your favorite band’s performance on SNL, Letterman or Jimmy Fallon – and even then, you have to wade through a lot of crap to get there). In the course of a few days, I watched two great shows on Palladia – one featuring Radiohead (The King of Limbs: Live from the Basement) and a rebroadcast of My Morning Jacket on VH1 Storytellers. And although it only includes a few live performances, Talihina Sky: The Story of Kings of Leon was easily one of the most powerful and captivating rock docs I’ve ever seen (video below). Keep ‘em coming, cable gods!
3. The Return of Gillian Welch. It took Welch eight years to deliver a follow-up to her previous album, “Soul Journey.” But “The Harrow & The Harvest” was well worth the wait. Tunes like Scarlet Town and The Way It Goes capture Welch and her longtime musical partner David Rawlings at the top of their game – combining heavenly harmonies with Rawlings’ predictably stunning fretwork. I had the great pleasure of seeing the duo on tour in support of the new album… noticed a lot of local pickers watching Rawlings’ every move. But my favorite moment found him on banjo and harmonica as Welch hamboned and clogged her way through Six White Horses (video below). It seemed like a pure expression of joy, without pretense or artifice. In other words, many galaxies away from modern country.
4. The Black Keys Bust Loose. They started the year on a roll, and now they’ve conquered the world with their new album “El Camino.” As Brian van der Brug of the LA Times put it, “After something like 30-odd years of listeners’ declaring that rock had run out of steam, there’s something wonderfully weird about a drums-and-guitar duo riding swaggering blues-rock to the top, and it sounds even better.” Basically, it’s what happens when two unassuming and non-ironic dudes from Akron reinvent blues, soul, garage rock and a few other vital strains of American music, tour relentlessly, and spend countless hours honing their craft. I know, pouring Crystal over strippers sounds a lot more glamorous, but for these guys, it would just get in the way of the work. Money Maker/The Black Keys
5. Music Streaming Services Become More Competitive. And by competitive, I mean “free.” Actually, I’m not sure if this is a positive or a negative. Earlier this year, RCR teamed up with the MOG Music Network, which gave me access to their massive digital library. It’s pretty cool, but in some ways overwhelming. If you have 16 million+ songs at your fingertips, where exactly do you start? Playlists and Pandora-like streaming helps, but I get a little cranky when a song by Steve Earle is followed by American Pie or some other dreck. Fact is, they should just pay me to program their service (then they’d really be out of business!).
6. The Miami Heat Tanks. I know, I shouldn’t take pleasure in another team’s demise. But they sort of asked for it, didn’t they? I don’t even consider myself a LeBron hater. After all, he keeps coming back to our fair city to dole out money to various charities and play some hoops with his buddies. But it would’ve really pissed me off if the billion-dollar trio had realized their goal in Year One. The King will eventually get his Ring, but let him wait a few more years… builds character.
7. I Finally Visit Europe. You didn’t think I’d leave myself out of this, did you? I should be embarrassed to admit that at fifty-(cough) years, I’d never made it to Europe. But I fixed that in June when I flew to Berlin with my wife (hobbled by a knee injury) and daughter. We spent a few days in Chemnitz, a former car manufacturing center that was practically destroyed by bombs in WWII and then partially rebuilt under Communist rule (the bartender at the hotel yearned for the good old days when the Russians would show up with wads of cash). Then we survived a wild night in Berlin with our friends at iCrates before heading over to Paris, where we joined throngs of other tourists staring at the Notre Dame Cathedral, the gardens of Versailles, the Eiffel Tower, the Arch de Triumph… Glad we went, not sure we’ll be back any time soon. Aaah, the ennui…
8. I Got Hooked on Justified. For this, I blame my sister Mary. It seems to me that few shows capture the nuances of life below the Mason-Dixon Line better than Justified. There’s nothing even remotely hip about the show – other than maybe the theme song by Gangstagrass with T.O.N.E.-Z: Long Hard Times to Come Just solid storylines with some fine acting (including a well-deserved Emmy for Margo Martindale, who scared the shit out of me as Mags Bennett, the matriarch of a very twisted crime family from Harlan County). And it’s all served up with a healthy dose of backwoods funk and filth. Still time to jump on board this crazy train… Season 3 starts on January 17 (FX).
9. Commodity Prices Rise as Dollar Weakens. Actually, I have no idea what this is all about… Just thought it was time for RCR to tackle one of the more important financial issues facing the nation. Done.
10. Last Full Year Before End Times. The 5,125-year Great Cycle of the Ancient Mayan Calendar ends on winter solstice, December 21, 2012 (at 11:11 a.m., to be precise). What does this mean? Is The Rapture near, or am I confusing the Mayans with a religious cult in Idaho? I think the best we can hope for is that we reconnect with the wisdom of nature, and Bravo cancels the next season of The Real Housewives of New Jersey.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t thank my family for sticking with me as I spend far too much time on dubious missives like this one. After all, what’s more important than the support of your loved ones? Even Charles Manson hears from his family this time of year… in the “extended” sense of the word, of course.

Kings of Leon perform Talihina Sky – after a solid minute of bitching…

Gillian Welch and David Rawlings at the 2011 Newport Folk Festival…

Back in the heyday of Cleveland rock radio, this wildman named Murray Saul – sounding a lot like Howard Dean when he blew up his campaign for President – would usher in the weekend with a full-throttle rant on WMMS-FM. Here’s a taste from one of the station’s TV commercials, circa 1975:

Typically, Saul would stick it to the “slavedrivers” who owned us all week at the office or factory. Of course, that was back when most of us had office or factory jobs. Today, Saul’s rants seem like quaint reminders of an era when 5 p.m. on Friday was something worth celebrating. If you’re lucky enough to have a job today, it’s probably one of three low-paying gigs that keep you working all weekend. If not, well, Friday is just another day to smoke weed and hone your Xbox skills while waiting for your mom to get home so you can borrow her car.

I sort of enjoyed the whole ‘MMS “Home of the Buzzard” schtick, even though I was turned off by much of the station’s hard-rock playlist (did we really need to hear Ian Hunter’s “Cleveland Rocks” every four hours?). Which led me to wonder, what if I were in charge of picking the song that would officially kick off a weekend of unholy activity? What homage to hell-raising would I unleash on the populace, whipping thousands of worker bees into a frenzy of drinking, drug use and other forms of debauchery? Sure as hell wouldn’t be anything by Loverboy (with all due respect to ‘MMS fans around the world).

In my alternate universe, it could easily be something by Southern Culture on the Skids. “I got eight slappin’ pistons ri’cheer under my hood”… kind of says it all, doesn’t it? Sure, “just wrap your legs round these velvet rims and strap your hands across my engines” is a pretty cool come-on for a lost weekend together. But here in the real world, you only have a few seconds to make the pitch. So I’ll defer to SCOTS frontman Rick Miller and his timeless ode to parking-lot dating. Besides, how can you resist a song that name-checks Tony Joe White and announces its presence with the mighty cowbell? Voodoo Cadillac

In honor of The Black Keys’ new release dropping on December 6, I’ll simply point out that my favorite song on the album could wreak havoc any night of the week. Unfortunately, I can’t sample the cut without getting sued by my nephew. So let’s go back to one of the band’s more overlooked efforts, “Magic Potion,” and a tune that’s destined for the Garage Rock Hall of Fame. By the way, where would one locate such an establishment? Maybe Boone County, West Virginia – home of the one-man garage band, the late Hasil Adkins… or how about Link Wray’s “Three-Track Shack” on the family farm in Accokeek, Maryland? RCR’s phone lines are open… Your Touch

Those of you who reside on more rural routes probably like to start the weekend with a healthy dose of twang. Forget about that overprocessed horseshit you hear on modern country radio. Let’s revisit a honky tonk classic and one of the great career launchers of all time – the very first cut from Dwight Yoakam’s debut on the Reprise label. Once again, cars play a key role (hard to spend a memorable weekend without one). And thankfully, the guitars are in the capable hands of Pete Anderson, who along with Dwight led the “Back to Bakersfield” movement in the mid-‘80s. If it’s possible to make hillbilly music hip, those two guys pulled it off with this one: Guitars, Cadillacs

So Friday night rolls around, you’ve put in your 40+ at work, the next two days are all yours… but it still doesn’t seem like you have anything to celebrate. You can always ease into the weekend with a little blues, Jimmy Reed-style. Might help you face the facts – like, for example, your boss is a dick and you don’t get paid squat. Maybe this tune and a little “liquid courage” will help you set things straight on Monday morning. Good luck with that. Big Boss Man

I can already predict the comments. “How can you get the party started without the Bubba anthem, Freebird?” Well, I’ve hung out with a few bikers over the years… spent an evening or two at a Bourbon-fueled bonfire… experienced the primordial forces within this storied ballad-cum-guitar throwdown. I get it. But I’d rather start the weekend with Lucinda Williams spreading her own brand of Joy. This tune has no use for a ballad-style opening. It jumps in with a snarl and then works itself into a barely controlled rage. Which is how most people feel after five days at a dead-end job. So don’t hire me as your Friday-night DJ if you’re trying to escape reality. Joy

What’s the best party ever thrown? Woodstock. What was the best performance at Woodstock? Santana, hands down. OK, Sly and the Family Stone gave them a run for their money. But to me, Santana playing Soul Sacrifice defines Woodstock. And I can’t believe Carlos played as well as he did, watching his guitar neck writhe like a snake while he was tripping on acid (which is only more discouraging for the rest of us who can barely play straight). If I were head of the Rock Police, all drum solos would have been outlawed after Michael Shrieve tore it up at Woodstock. That dude from Rush can whirl around all he wants – he can’t touch what Shrieve laid down in ’69 (video below).

Now that I’ve downplayed Sly’s performance at Woodstock, I have to admit that he came up with one of my all-time favorite Friday-night jams: Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin). How can you hear that deep groove kick in – fueled by Larry Graham’s funky bass – and not want to jump up and shake something? I’m pretty sure this song helped popularize that unfortunate dance known as The Robot. But I’m willing to overlook that (and the title) to place it at or near the top of my list of weekend kick-starters. Hell, you could put another four or five tunes by Sly on that list. In fact, just slap on his Greatest Hits and stand back – someone’s about to hit the switch on this ‘bot. Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin)

We’ll close by taking one step back from Sly and paying tribute to the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. Forget about songs that build to a climax… This next tune starts with an explosion of sound and never lets up. The guy driving the beat is the original “Funky Drummer,” Clyde Stubblefield – someone who I’m sure didn’t miss Michael Shrieve’s attention back in the ‘60s. For a number of years, Stubblefield had a regular Monday-night gig at a small club in downtown Madison, Wisconsin (I understand he’s now ailing and in need of a new kidney… if anyone has an update on Clyde, set me straight). If you need the aural equivalent of a kick in the ass, bring this to the party and watch your backside. There Was A Time

Santana at Woodstock, with a 20-year-old Michael Shrieve. The only drum solo you’ll ever hear on this site. It’s been 42 years since this performance… Can any modern-day jam band touch this?

From the sublime to SCOTS… The wizards of white trash extol the many virtues of the Mojo Box:

Last year, you couldn’t avoid hearing The Black Keys on TV. And I have to admit, it started to annoy me a little bit. But I realize their marketing strategy is dead right.

I mean, who listens to the radio anymore, unless it involves sports talk or NPR? And with the music industry such a fragmented mess, TV is now the new Top 40. But it’s more like a radio station programmed by a small army of ad agency geeks – which is a good thing, actually… far better than listening to something programmed within an inch of its life by so-called professionals sporting the latest Arbitron ratings.

And that means occasionally I get turned on to some pretty cool stuff just by watching my favorite TV shows. For a while I thought Mad Men was the best thing on cable. Turns out it’s quite possibly the third-best show on AMC, which also is home to the incredibly tense and satisfying series The Killing as well as my new personal favorite, Breaking Bad.

Our flawed hero, Walter White

The latter is really an extended exercise in “what would you do under the same circumstances?” Chemistry whiz with dead-end teaching gig finds out he has cancer – and his lame-ass health care plan threatens to make his wife and son indigent upon his demise. What to do? Why not team up with a former student – now a full-time homey – and put their chemistry chops to work cooking the best crystal meth in the tri-state area?

Of course this traps our hero in a web of lies that could tear his family apart – which, to him, is a far greater concern than spending his last months in prison. Trust me, there are few better ways to waste an hour each week than following this cancer-ridden teacher and his cartoony sidekick down one rabbit hole after another. And Breaking Bad’s superb writing and direction have already earned it a boatload of Emmys (not that those haven’t gone to far less deserving programs).

Back to the music… One episode included a beautifully disturbing sequence that gave viewers an inside look at the meth supply chain. The show’s producers had the brilliant idea of juxtaposing the seedy footage against a jaunty little number by legendary New Orleans horn player Alvin “Red” Tyler: The Peanut Vendor. Actually, I didn’t know what the song was or who performed it, so I took a lengthy side trip on google to find out. Guess I should’ve checked youtube first… Here’s the clip:

My like/not so like relationship with the HBO series Treme continues with Season 2. The first season ended with John Goodman’s seething character, a professor at Tulane, doing himself in by jumping off a ferry. Which was fine with me, because I found him annoying – and I’m secretly hoping a couple of other characters on the program follow Goodman’s lead.

I keep coming back to Treme because of the one thing the program consistently gets right: the music. It’s always been a life-affirming force in New Orleans, but even more essential post-Katrina as local musicians and entrepreneurs like Antoine Batiste (played by the wonderful Wendell Pierce) struggle with a number of indignities – both self-inflicted and otherwise – in their day-to-day lives.

I’ve been hooked on New Orleans music for quite some time, so I can’t say the show has exposed me to a lot of songs and performers I wasn’t aware of already. But they did throw me a curve in the finale of the first season with a tune by the Baby Dodds Trio. Dodds was a Crescent City drummer who played with Louis Armstrong and King Oliver, among others. Although he spent many years living outside of New Orleans, his stock in trade was a syncopated, improvisational style of drumming that owed everything to his hometown. My Indian Red also features singer and banjoist Danny Barker. It’s an expression of pride and strength among Mardi Gras Indians: “We don’t bow down on nobody’s ground.” Here’s the scene from Treme that featured the song in its entirety:

The award for best use of a Black Keys song in a TV show or commercial goes to… Eastbound and Down – the ongoing saga of washed-up pitcher and part-time philosopher Kenny Powers. In this scene from the first episode, Powers makes his not-so-triumphant return to his old middle school in Shelby, North Carolina, to start a new job as a substitute physical education teacher. Gives me goose bumps every time I watch it:

As much as I try to avoid them, commercials are about 20 times more tolerable when they use the right soundtrack. This one has some powerful images, but the real star of the show is the Godfather of Soul, James Brown (then again, using Super Bad with an HR training video would still pack a wallop):

And of course the best music on TV is often saved for booze. I’m sure a few of you will tell me that there’s something inherently wrong with a tune that’s used to flog beer or liquor. I say bullshit. Listen to this steamy little number by Cold War Kids and tell me it doesn’t stand on its own merits without the help of Heineken, which tagged it for a TV spot several years ago: Mexican Dogs/Cold War Kids

Love that opening riff… but it still doesn’t match my favorite beer commercial soundtrack of all time – by the Master of the Telecaster, Albert Collins: Kool Aide/Albert Collins

I’ll close with another alcohol-fueled number, this one prominently featured in a new TV spot promoting the hard stuff (Jack Daniels). It’s a cover of Slim Harpo’s King Bee by a nasty little garage band from the Bay Area called the Stone Foxes. I think these guys are onto something… even if it has the whiff of a certain two-piece from the Rubber City: I’m a King Bee/The Stone Foxes

Caroline, Dan and Mary at the Grammys

My sister Mary Auerbach, French teacher at Woodridge High School and mother of The Black Keys’ Dan, gives us a blow-by-blow of her recent trip to the Grammys, where the Keys picked up a little hardware for the trophy case.

So, not being a tweeter or much of a social networker, I’ve decided to use my brother’s blog to respond to all the wonderful Akronites who’ve asked, what’s it like to be at the Grammys? (The “GRAMMY Grammys,” as my friend Julie put it.)

Let’s begin in the middle – and if you want to really hear about all my lame preparations in anticipation of attending this year’s Grammy ceremonies, you can catch that on my facebook page.

When our son Dan and his bandmate Patrick of The Black Keys were nominated for four Grammys this year, my half of Dan’s parental unit decided it might be a nice idea to actually attend the ceremony in Los Angeles. My husband Chuck opted out of the garish event, deciding to remain true to the alternative roots of our son’s band, even though the doting dad had predicted a Grammy eight years ago. I decided to attend with my sister Caroline and her two girls, Hazel and Pearl.  A girls’ weekend for a mom who has four brothers and two sons. Yippee!

Hazel and Pearl, Grammy-bound

Preparations aside, let’s just say that after two months of gearing up, I found myself with two days off my teaching job, flying to 80-degree LA on the day before the Grammys, fresh from the slushy streets of Akron and the crunchy ice that’s been underfoot for seemingly a lifetime. I was immediately blinded by the intensity of… what do they call it? Oh yes. The sun. I was literally blinded. So much so that this seasoned international traveler found herself immediately at the wrong baggage carousel – and in the wrong terminal! None of the airport staff could help me, but my younger sister (from Boulder CO) not only found me but picked me up in her rental car and ferried me to the proper place. My lone bag was sitting in the “found luggage” room and god knows how I had found it. Welcome to LA.

I got a Grammy schedule from Dan’s manager, and we GPS’d our way to the boutique hotel in West Hollywood where Dan had reserved a suite for us. “What suite?” they asked. “Oh, for today, not tomorrow?” Four hours later we moved into our rooms, and god knows how they found a suite at the last minute on Grammy weekend. “God knows how” became the catch-phrase for our stay.

We proceeded (very fortunately, it turns out) to front-load ourselves with food. And where was Dan? Meeting with a “megastore” – the first of many business-related responsibilities he had warned me about. Our post-arrival lunch spot, just around the corner, was chosen by Dan’s very foody wife Steph, in an effort to get us off to a good start in LA. But the charming little cafe was so jammed with customers and fast-moving, tray-laden waiters that we literally cowered against the walls (for an hour, with a three-year-old in tow) and opted for take-out. Then we hoofed it back to the hotel in time to gobble it down in our rooms just before leaving for – early dinner. My capable sister had set up reservations in the only nearby restaurant that was offering them, at the only time available. We met up with my younger son Geoff (renamed “Thank God for Geoff” after the weekend) and his girl Katie, who cruised over in a convertible they had rented. We had arrived. We had eaten. We were ready for Grammy day. Possibly the longest day of my life.

Geoff and Katie

The front-loading ended with room-service breakfast on Sunday. Dan and daughter joined us. Then it was time for “hair and make-up” for Dan and Steph. We girls did our own hair and make-up, in which I had been diligently tutored by fashion-minded friends in Akron. My hippie sister winged it, and her girls needed no help whatsoever. We carved aside an entire hour to get dolled up, and then set off at noon for the three-hour pre-show, which would be immediately followed by the three-hour telecast. That’s more than six hours of interminable self-congratulation and waiting around! We brought our books and of course several pairs of shoes, jammed into a giant bag. My friend Ann had advised, “Don’t you dare wear flats. Just bring a bottle of 800 mg. ibuprofen!” I also threw in a bag of almonds… We were ready for a long day.

As you all know by now, Grammy night is all about spectacle. A two-man band from Akron is not exactly spectacle. The event organizers decided to shave off as many awards from the telecast as possible in the search for continually higher ratings. Gaga! Bieber! Mick! Bring ‘em on. In the meantime, the four categories for which the Keys were nominated would be dealt with at the “pre-show,” held next door to the Staples Center. We were hoping, though, that perhaps the Alternative Rock Album award might find some broadcast time. In fact, at one point during the handing out of 98 Grammys at the pre-show, Dan’s publicist excitedly told me that award had been moved to the telecast. No such luck.

Instead of paying $60 for a taxi, we took our rental car to the LA Convention Center, where the parking lot required a permit. So of course we started to whine as we searched for side-street parking within high-heel range of the center. Caroline soldiered on, making a U-turn into a place marked “Barney’s Warehouse Sale Parking.” It was a practically empty parking garage under the far side of the center. We were almost afraid to ask if we could park there for the Grammys, but the attendant sheepishly waved us in. He knew the $100 parking lot on the other side was a total rip-off. He just forgot to tell us we needed to be back by 8 p.m.

We hiked through the Center – several football fields’ worth of hiking – to the back door of the pre-show theater. “Thank God for Geoff” met us there with tickets in hand and bullied the five idle scanner guys into getting us in the back door. “Look at all those shoes,” one of them said.

Brothers

Arriving late at the pre-show, we found a grinning and daffy Mike Carney, who had just won a Grammy for the design of Keys’ “Brothers” album. He had endured the podium acceptance and the media room grilling and was still somewhere on a cloud. He needed a hug. I fulfilled my duty as a surrogate parent.

Our entourage was seated quite far in the back of a very dark room. We weren’t allowed to bring a camera… curses! Dan and Pat showed up in tuxedos, and their young ladies were stunningly beautiful. Steph was over six feet tall in high heels. Brother Geoff wore his tie in a “Merovingian” knot – like the evil twins in the Matrix, he said. Keys’ management was hovering. Would Mike win a Grammy, and not the guys whose album he’d designed? But they won two – and we cheered wildly as they went up to the podium, reminding me of the many graduation ceremonies I’d attended where that sort of thing was frowned upon. Other band entourages stomped out. Wildly dressed people swarmed about. Country singers with guitars brocaded on their tuxedos stood out. I met the great bluegrass musician Del McCoury, who Dan had performed with on Friday night at the Troubadour. And my heart went out to Neil Young, who was there to pick up his first music Grammy. Unbelievable.

But where was the food? Water bottles everywhere, but nothing to eat. And my feet were starting to hurt. I decided to stick with the flats (sorry, Ann) for the trip to the Staples Center for the telecast.

My God, the Staples Center. Hazel and Pearl took off to explore and peek at outfits, and Geoff and Katie left for a brief drink with friends. We all badly needed a break and couldn’t attend the red carpet at 4. Caroline and I stood around outside, wondering why the doormen (and women) were so insistently herding people indoors. Were they taking their duties too seriously? Bizarre outfits, seas of long dresses, even kimonos flowed past us. Rappers in massive suits, someone in five-inch platform tennis shoes. Still, no food in sight.

Del McCoury, Grammy nominee

Caroline and I had taken the more expensive tickets and left the rafter seats to the others. Our special seats had a special entrance, but it took us awhile to get there through the crowd. The auditorium was gasp-out-loud huge. It was packed with people hurrying to their seats. Huge screens with moving graphics only made us feel dizzier. Where were Geoff and the girls? The doors were closing! We were being locked in the Center with no food! No one could leave and return, and no one else could enter. But the rest of our group made it in at the last second. It was 4:45 and the telecast was about to begin, hence the herding. I reached for my bag of almonds while watching the people in the box seats eat all the food they could handle.

Dan, Pat and Mike were dragged to do some red carpeting, but their luscious ladies were barred. What up with that? Dan especially liked Jimmy Kimmel. His Mexican waiter interviewer (a Kimmel show regular) was about to ask a question when he saw Kim Kardashian. He ran off after her, leaving the boys staring at an empty mic. Ah, the Grammys.

I must say I was nicely distracted by the spectacle, and we were never bored – annoyed at times (Bieber, anyone?), but not bored. I don’t tweet, but I texted almost continuously to give my Akron family and friends one degree of separation from the Grammys. Brother Tim was having a viewing party with Chuck, and I sent him a few photos taken by my lame phone camera (which he of course tweeted right away). The light show was astounding – and, as reported, almost seizure-inducing for the band Arcade Fire. Cindy Lauper made her way to Dan’s row just before a performance started. She was forced to crouch down, so Dan briefly offered her his seat. And that’s how Steph appeared on the telecast, clapping with Lauper after one of the acts. I hope it wasn’t Bieber.

Screen shot of Steph, Cindy Lauper and Ray Lamontagne on TV

The stage production was amazing, and from farther back it was really magical. Hundreds of people would scurry backstage to set up during commercials, with never a hitch. Megastars who typically don’t take orders from anyone arrived exactly where and when they were needed. Despite a few minor screwups – like Christina Aguilera almost falling off the stage and the Avett Brothers mic stand falling over – the whole event had a Cirque du Soleil-like precision and flair.

Sheer screens, flames, people hoisted into the air, Lady Gaga’s egg thingy… It was all pretty astounding. My favorite act was the intense Eminem, with Rihanna flowing gently on a film screen above him. But the most amazing thing was the sound. Not even the best home theater could possibly capture the effect of being that enveloped in sound. The place was huge and it literally vibrated, but without killing your ears.

We stuck it out until the very end, then remembered how hungry we were. Dan was long gone, and Geoff left shortly after him (probably had a nose bleed) but made sure we were on the guest list for the Warner Records party.

The next hour was spent trying to find a street entrance to our parking lot (the upper entrances were locked shut after 8 p.m.). So we were late for the after-party and, at that point, close to starving. Some celebrities, having fulfilled their record company obligations, were already leaving. Thankfully, someone met us at the door with sliders and a fizzy wine drink. I scarfed down the burger (in my elegant dress and high heels) before I even got to the party room, where we were greeted by even more trays of food. I took off my shoes and chowed down, leaving the celebrity search to the young ‘uns. Geoff saw Juliette Lewis, Beyonce/Jay Z, Lenny Kravitz, Jane Lynch (“We loved you as Constance in “Party Down,” Geoff told her, to her utter delight) and Jeffrey Ross. But the highlight was when long red-haired Pearl met snowboarding celeb Shaun White. “I have red hair. You have red hair. We should be friends.” We took a picture, and they look like twins.

Pearl and Shaun White, twins

Dan was there for a little while, but soon left for the hotel with Steph. They flew to Vegas the next morning, and the show goes on. The flight home was all sunshine and clear skies – with the pilot tilting the plane each way after takeoff to give us a better view. I loved seeing the LA skyline… behind us, of course.

Thanks to Ann, Jenn, Amy and Laura and Meg for the shoes, make-up, hair and jewelry contributions. Thanks to my work friends, who had me walk a 12-inch paper “red carpet” as a going-away touch. Thanks to Chuck for staying home and letting me do my Grammy thing, and for his premonitions…to Dan for winning, to Geoff and Jeny for helping, and to Katie, Steph and Sadie for the fun times.

Thanks most of all to the “girls” for a great fun time, especially that Buddhist wannabe and master of competence, my sister Caroline (aka Keena).

For those of you who missed the Keys accepting one of their Grammys (in other words, virtually everyone who didn’t attend the Grammy pre-show):

Conway Twitty and Mamie Van Doren rockin' da house

No over-arching themes this week. No long-lost album to dissect. No need to dig up buried treasures from any given genre. And nothing about Mamie Van Doren, even though we use her glowing figure as a cheap ploy to get your attention (it worked!).

Let’s just spin the big wheel and see where it lands.

It might shock some of our loyal readers to find out I’m curious about a couple of brand-new projects.

The first is a new release by Greg Allman, produced by T Bone Burnett. In his prime, Allman ranked up there with some of the great voices of blues and soul – Ray Charles, Freddie King, Solomon Burke, Little Milton, Johnnie Taylor, Bobby Blue Bland… Granted, he’s not as awe-inspiring as he used to be. But if anyone can bring out the best in Allman, it’s probably Burnett. “Low Country Blues” is Allman’s first solo recording in 14 years, but probably one of about 20 projects that Burnett has taken on in the last week alone (OK, I exaggerate).

Since I couldn’t wait until today’s release date, I decided to fire up the interwebs to get a “First Listen” on NPR. And I warmed up to “Low Country” right away. First of all – and Sister Mary Ignatius, please excuse the double negative – Allman can’t not sing with soul. It’s just not in him to fake it. And I was especially drawn to songs on both ends of the spectrum – Allman accompanied by Colin Linden’s dobro on the intro to Skip James’ Devil Got My Woman: Devil Got My Woman and the full uptown blues treatment that Burnett gives Blind Man (with Dr. John on piano), a number made famous by Bobby Blue Bland: Blind Man No extended jams; no guitar histrionics. The emphasis is right where it needs to be – on the timeless sound of the man’s voice. I feel like I was raised on Allman, given all the summers I spent as a kid in Milledgeville, GA. He really needs to do a hell of a lot worse (another duet with Cher?) to disappoint me.

The second project is “Cure for Pain: The Mark Sandman Story” – a yet-to-be-released documentary of the indie rock icon from New England (directed by Robert Bralver and David Ferino). I’m far from well-versed on the recorded output of Sandman’s groundbreaking band Morphine, although I do have this little gem in my collection (recorded live on World Cafe): Candy I was more enamored with his previous band, Treat Her Right, which had all the elements I ever wanted in a modern blues-based combo (some of which made the transition to Morphine): cocktail drum kit, heavy bass, virtuoso harp player, nasty slide guitar, effortlessly soulful vocals (Sandman) and cinematic originals that convey a seriously bad attitude (also Sandman, reportedly inspired by pulp writers Jim Thompson and James Ellroy). Here’s one of my favorites: I Think She Likes Me

Sandman formed Morphine in ’89 with baritone sax player Dana Colley, and drummer Jerome Deupree eventually made it a trio (the band later became a quartet when Treat Her Right alumnus Billy Conway – the cocktail drum guy – joined up to accompany Deupree, who was dealing with some health issues). Sandman, who played a two-string bass guitar with a slide, coined the phrase “low rock” to describe the band. Hard to argue when you listen to this one: Buena But beyond the first-rate music, Sandman’s captivating life story should make “Cure for Pain” a tough one to miss. He was a college graduate who worked construction, drove a taxi and schlepped cod on a commercial fishing boat. He also dealt with the death of two brothers – not to mention being robbed and stabbed in his cab. And, like the late, great Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Sandman died doing what he loved best – he collapsed from a heart attack in the middle of a Morphine performance in Italy. Here’s a trailer for the upcoming movie:

Next up is a video sent in by Dan featuring Conway Twitty and the Lonely Blue Boys, circa 1967. Now, I don’t watch the TV show Family Guy, but I’ve heard they use footage from one of Twitty’s live performances as a running joke on the show. And that’s OK, because Conway Twitty the bloated countrypolitan star of the Seventies is a big old easy target: Hello Darlin’ But Twitty the hungry young artist is a different story altogether – and the tough little band he put together in the Sixties is a well-oiled honky tonk machine. Big Joe Louis on bass, Pork Chop Markham on drums, and Lew Houston on pedal steel.

These were the lean years, when Twitty was making the transition from rocker to full-blown Nashville star. I’m sure the Lonely Blue Boys had more than a few numbers like Working Girl on the setlist when they played shitty little dives in backwater towns across America and into Canada. Songs that made the girls shimmy just like Big Joe and the men wish they were as cool as Pork Chop, twirling his drumsticks like a badass at band camp (special thanks to the guys from Hacienda for turning me on to P.C.). And you can get away with this bare-bones lineup when you have a red-hot steel player like Houston handling all of the leads and accents:

Houston’s widow, Kitty, still performs today at Ingrid’s Kitchen, a German restaurant in Oklahoma City (she sings with Curly Cardinal’s band every Saturday from Noon til 2). And her web site includes a few random notes about the Sixties, when Kitty knew Twitty:

A young Kitty... mee-ow!

“‘Big Joe’ Louis was the ‘front man’ and picked the electric bass guitar, and sang tenor harmony with Conway. Pork Chop was one of the best drummers in rock or country music. After Big Joe died, Pork Chop became the front man for Conway… Lew was a fantastic steel guitar man. He could back any artist and play any song. Lew sang exactly like Jim Reeves and could imitate and sing like many other artist(s).” Conway went on to Nashville… his lifelong friend Big Joe died in a car wreck… Lew left… Pork Chop stayed… and Twitty began his long run of number one country hits – which is roughly about the point where I would’ve lost interest had I been aware of Twitty back then. Although I must say (and this is my last thought on the subject) my first band, The Warsaw Falcons, did a smokin’ version of the Twitty classic Lonely Blue Boy. Here’s the original: Lonely Blue Boy

Finally (whiplash warning), I was intrigued by a post on The Black Keys’ facebook page – a mashup (I hate that term) of the Keys’ “Brothers” album and Outkast rapper Big Boi’s solo effort “Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty.” The perp? An artist who goes by the name Wick-it the Instigator. And while I’ll admit I’m not much of an expert on hip-hop (I’m a 54-year-old white guy, for chrissakes!), I have to admit this little act of digital thievery is pretty damn good. Keep in mind, this is how Danger Mouse got his start, slamming together the Beatles and Jay-Z. I’m guessing this guy is looking at a pretty bright and prosperous future: You Ain’t The Next DJ

We’ve emptied all the bottles and thrown away the broken furniture. That means our panel of judges has completed its deliberations and picked a winner to The Black Keys ticket giveaway.

But first, a few idle musings (in other words, let’s take a cue from all those lame-ass reality shows and leave you hanging a little bit)…

The best entries seemed to fall into two basic categories: funny and heart-rending. Regarding the former, funny is funny. It really doesn’t matter if our readers make this stuff up. If you can elicit a small laugh, or perhaps even a mild chortle, from a group of folks who share the same grim outlook as a meteorologist for a Cleveland TV station, then you’ve accomplished something. Hard-luck stories are much more difficult to judge. And I wouldn’t dare accuse anyone of making up one of these tales of woe. On the other hand, it seemed completely disingenuous to simply hand over the tickets to someone who lists the most mishaps in one tweet.

Then again, we’re not heartless bastards — even though we live in a city where asking for spare change is simply the first step in a lengthy negotiation. So we decided to announce winners in both categories, with a slight twist for the “non-humorous” award.

First, some of our favorites among those that made us smile.

Several contestants tried to string together the most references to Black Keys song titles, with varying results. Here’s one from Linjatheninja:

• I have a Strange desire for your touch during these strange times. So tighten up and give me those tickets for your show in Chicago!

OK, the “tighten up” reference didn’t work very well, but still clever. Or how about this one from Sam_Huber:

• Because I’m Busted, having No Fun Everywhere I Go, and b4 I become a Psychotic Girl, I need to see the Explosion on NYE!

Maybe Sam couldn’t spring for the tickets because he’s saving up for the sex change operation.

One of my favorites (from cgross) expertly mimicked the cover of The Black Keys’ latest album:

• This is a request for Black Keys tickets for New Years. This request should be the winner.

And we had a hard time resisting this one from MikaGolfcat:

• My psychic grandma said it’s auspicious to start a new year with great music played by a bearded man and a man with glasses.

The editor in me wanted to change it to “guy with glasses,” but you get the basic idea.

A few more favorites:

• fodork: I wanna rep AK in SHYY! give me the black eyed peas… er, black keys nye tix!
• abaldwin3278: should award the Keys’ tickets to me because I sold Dan his TV and need to follow up on how he enjoys it so
• ryanwells21: Black Keys=favorite band. Went to Bonaroo to see them put passed out before show from no water. I live right by Chicago!
• Enen1: You had me at “Goin’ upstairs to pack my leavin’ trunk”
• AcWendel: I need to prove to science that Stendhal Syndrome is contagious and doesn’t need a cure.
• MattGrouponPitt: Native of the Rubber City, Living in Chicago. Would make my NYE to win tickets to The Black Keys, will also settle for a Galley Boy…

Matt, next time you’re in town, look me up. I’ll take you to Swenson’s.

But the tweet that got the most votes from Dan’s uncles and aunts was this one, from AtomKanner:

• ‘Girl is On My Mind’ is a Zales commercial! I’d like to celebrate with the Keys and then yell at em.

Congrats, Atom… You’re a wiener! Enjoy New Year’s Eve with the Keys at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. But understand that security has your twitter photo, so you won’t be allowed anywhere near the band.

As far as the other two tickets are concerned, I kept going back to this very straightforward entry from mvgpictureguy:

• I get back from Iraq about 4 days before the show! – perfect christmas present for me and my girlfriend!

Merry Christmas, picture guy (pictured in cammo on twitter)… I never considered enlisting, and I’m pretty sure the military wouldn’t have taken me even in my prime. Just seemed like a small way to show our appreciation. Now get home safely to pick up your tickets.

We’ll close with yet another video sent to us by Dan. It features two of the greatest stringbenders of all time, Roy Nichols and Roy Buchanan, backing up Merle Haggard at the Blackboard Bar in Oildale, CA. Buchanan’s solo on Merle’s Travelin’ Blues is a revelation.

We now have a twitter account, which means we need to do something drastic to promote it. So we’re giving away 2 free tickets to The Black Keys’ sold-out New Year’s Eve Show at the historic Aragon Ballroom in Chicago. Here’s how you can earn a chance to win:

1. Follow Rubber City Review on twitter (link at right)
2. Tweet a 140-character (max) essay telling us why you need to go
3. Include the following hashtag: #rcrtix (OK, now you have 7 fewer characters to work with!)

Deadline for entries is midnight, December 4, and our team of editors from around the globe (our Russian judge is shown squatting at right) will pick the winner the following week. And don’t forget to check back for more goodies down the road.

Speaking of the Keys… You know Dan has turned into a Nashville Cat when he starts sending me videos of pedal steel players – as opposed to, say, Freddie King or Magic Sam.

Here’s a couple of his latest finds – Alvino Rey and Pete Drake. And once you get past the corn (Lawrence Welk, faux farm setting), this stuff is pretty damn tasty.

Born in 1908, Rey grew up in Cleveland and has been called the father of the pedal steel guitar. Unlike the much-younger Drake, he honed his chops outside of country music, playing mostly big-band swing. But both Rey and Drake were early pioneers of “talkbox” technology later made famous by another northeast Ohioan, Joe Walsh (Rocky Mountain High), the ubiquitous Peter Frampton (who now hides out in Cincinnati) and funkmeister Roger Troutman (Zapp), who hailed from nearby Hamilton, OH. So blame the Buckeyes for one of the more notable gimmicks of the Seventies.

In this next cut, Rey joins the Lawrence Welk Orchestra – don’t laugh: its alumni include more than a few red-hot jazzbos – on a blazing workout of the exotic Hindustan, a tune originally written in the ‘30s for the theater organ but later given the full swing treatment by Artie Shaw. No talkbox on this tune, but I love how Rey gets a very respectable wah-wah effect by manipulating his volume control (long before Danny Gatton twisted the knobs on his first Telly). Also interesting to note that Rey’s first talkbox experiments involved having his wife Luise hide behind a curtain and sing along to his pedal steel, using a specially rigged microphone.

Drake was a long-time mainstay on the Nashville music scene – “first-chair” pedal steel player for Tammy Wynette (Stand By Your Man), Charlie Rich (Behind Closed Doors), Don Gibson, Marty Robbins and a long list of other country music stars. He even played steel on Bob Dylan’s groundbreaking Nashville sessions, adding some legitimacy to the hit Lay Lady Lay, as well as on George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass.”

For the purposes of setting up the next video (and tying it in with the previous one), I’ll add that Drake played on the first international hit involving a talkbox. He recorded Forever back in ’64 – at least a decade before Frampton came alive and Zapp got more bounce to the ounce:

One more nod to the Keys… I know this video has shown up on their main website and myspace page, but I’ll post it here in case some of you missed it. It takes you inside the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio as Dan and Pat re-imagine deep southern soul in the place that practically invented it. “We got a little trashed the night before and asked our manager for a harpsichord,” Dan said. “It showed up at the studio the next morning.”

Oh, and here’s a little taste of Roger Troutman, who scared the piss out of Muffy, Bif, Scooter and the rest of the student body at Miami University in the mid ’70s with his mighty band Roger and The Human Body… More Bounce to the Ounce/Zapp with Roger Troutman

What kind of town do you live in, musically speaking? Is it classic rock, country, jazz, polka, Tuvan throat-singing? I’m not referring to the kind of music you hear on the radio. I’m talking about the songs that seem to make the most sense when you’re driving around town; that make you think, yeah, this sound starts to get at the heart of what this place is all about.

I, of course, live in Akron – a city that’s incredibly easy to live in, but over the last couple of years has taken on a little bit of the “suck factor.” Don’t get me wrong, I love it when we get a rare visitor or two and I can upend their perceptions of my hometown as a 60-square-mile Superfund site. I live about five miles from a national park… we have no traffic to speak of… and all of our self-inflicted environmental calamities are well behind us.

I remember when my friend Andy came to visit from NYC on one of those spectacular fall afternoons that turn my tree-lined street into an orgy of color. I interrupted our catch-up talk to fly down the road on a two-seat bike and pick up my daughter, who was walking home from school. When I came back, the blimp was hovering over our house. Of course, that never happened again and the weather went south right after Andy and his wife left town.

Beyond the occasionally dicey weather, the minus column includes a few more recent entries. Despite what some financial experts are saying, the economy has yet to turn the corner… The Black Keys have made Nashville their new home base… and the Cleveland sports scene has hit rock bottom. I’m beginning to think that professional sports teams should only exist in the four or five metropolitan areas big enough to support them. Cities like New York, Chicago and L.A. would have dozens of football teams that you’d watch on television, using some sort of digital contraption to place your bets.

I’ll leave the sports musings to the experts, like Gary Benz. We’re here to talk about music, and I’ve decided that the most appropriate soundtrack for driving around Akron is stone-cold, tough-as-nails honky tonk music.

That might speak volumes about the parts of town I tend to cruise. It also might add some logic to the lure of Music City USA, which stole the hearts of Dan and Pat (a city seemingly at odds with their heavy rock swagger, but I can assure you Dan is a big fan of classic honky tonkers like Lefty Frizell, Buck Owens and Merle Haggard). But I think it has more to do with the thousands of folks from Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia who came to Akron to work in its massive rubber factories – and the kind of music they listened to in the small corner bars they called home.

So if you happen to live in the Rubber City, or plan on visiting America’s Newest Vacation Mecca anytime soon, I encourage you to slap these tunes on a CD and head down Kenmore Boulevard. You’ll quickly fall in love with the idea of a city that’s blissfully out of synch with the rest of the world.

Unlike our neighbors to the north, we’re a fairly hopeful lot here in Akron. When the Tribe drops six games in a row, we don’t start ranting about “The Curse of Rocky Colavito.” We just stop making the 30-mile drive to Progressive Field and head over to Canal Park, where you can watch the pros play and save a little cash too. On the political front, we have a few bad seeds, but none facing hard time in prison like virtually half of Cuyahoga County’s elected officials. We’re like the Buck Owens to Cleveland’s Johnny Paycheck – and some of us don’t even own guns. So when things start to look bad, we can just put a little more spring in our two-step with Buck and his Buckaroos: We’re Gonna Let The Good Times Roll/Buck Owens

But some problems are a little harder to ignore, like a bad housing market. And many of the stories behind those padlocked doors and sheriff’s auction signs can be pretty heartbreaking. I’m sure most of this hard luck has to do with a lost job or an investment gone awry. But a few can be traced back to a more basic form of heartbreak – that is, the final stop in a dead-end relationship. Nobody has driven down that cul de sac more often than George Jones. I don’t care if country music isn’t your thing. If you’re not moved by George’s Grand Tour of his empty house, then you have a small, black heart that’s barely beating. The Grand Tour/George Jones

For those older folks who are fortunate enough to sell their homes, the next stop is usually a trailer park in Florida. But a surprising number decide to ride it out in the Rubber City, where the relative lack of traffic makes it easier for octogenarians to navigate their sturdy land-yachts down the exact center of our streets. Then there are the characters all of us know who never make it to old age – who take Buck’s advice to the next level and decide to party their way into oblivion. No need to bother these folks with retirement plans or the value of investing in low-risk savings bonds. They’d rather blow it at the bar and leave beautiful memories. Live Fast, Love Hard, Die Young/Faron Young

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the bold, spirited women of our town. Women who refuse to turn the other cheek and are willing to fight for what they believe is right. Women like my mom, who came here from the Deep South and left a long trail of busted-up Yankees in her wake. So if you’re one of those painted floozies hoping to come here to steal our men, think twice (or call first). Because you’re about to take a one-way trip to Fist City… Fist City/Loretta Lynn

As this song might suggest, towns throughout the Midwest are well-populated by folks who – how do I say this carefully? – have a certain penchant for sleeveless T-shirts, filterless cigarettes and instant lottery tickets. Oh what the hell… I’m talking about white trash. And no one has chronicled the lifestyle of the Appalachian transplant longer or more lovingly than Akron native David Allan Coe. He rode with the Outlaws motorcycle gang and did time in the Mansfield Reformatory, which later served as the backdrop for the movie The Shawshank Redemption. And he channeled those experiences through songs like The Ride, Take This Job and Shove It, and this next one, which seems to describe the parts of town where being “off the grid” is not a desired outcome. If That Ain’t Country/David Allan Coe

Of course, our city’s elders have decried the continued exodus of Akron’s best and brightest to other communities, mostly those that offer warmer climates. Then again, no one’s asking David Allan Coe to move back… but certainly the recent departure of Dan and Pat has left a void. I think there’s more than a little denial in all this hand-wringing. And I wonder how many of those same elders would stick around if someone handed them all the cash generated by The Black Keys’ latest album, “Brothers”? Even if you don’t have a pot to piss in (let me rephrase that: especially if you don’t…), it makes perfect sense to long for a life far away from where you live. And that’s true no matter what town you call home. It’s all about that age-old yearning for a new start, expressed by the protagonist of this Steve Earle song: Someday/Steve Earle

Truth be told, most people in this town are refreshingly free of attitude and live here because it’s a solid, stable place to raise their kids. They work hard all week, get a little over-served on Saturday nights and usually practice a form of religion that doesn’t involve snake handling. And they didn’t lose any sleep over LeBron’s “Decision.” So this last tune is for them. It’s a little gospel number by someone who wrestled with more than a few snakes during his 29 years, the Right Reverend Hank Williams: I’ll Have A New Body/Hank Williams

“Enjoy Akron” t-shirt courtesy of Rubber City Clothing.

Penn Says David Allan Coe is bat-shit crazy… This is good stuff – and who would’ve thought that Coe was a big influence on Penn & Teller’s act? There’s another funny clip on youtube of Penn talking about bringing Coe backstage at one of their Vegas shows.

Article first published as Book Review: Composed: A Memoir by Rosanne Cash on Blogcritics.

Our last post on living, breathing artists led me to another crisis in confidence. Just what is this blog all about? Why keep blathering on about music that, with the possible exception of The Black Keys, most humans simply don’t care about?

Then I came across a passage in Rosanne Cash’s new book, “Composed: A Memoir,” that also could serve as RCR’s mission statement:

“We all need art and music like we need blood and oxygen. The more exploitative, numbing, and assaulting popular culture becomes, the more we need the truth of a beautifully phrased song, dredged from a real person’s depth of experience, delivered in an honest voice; the more we need the simplicity of paint on canvas, or the arc of a lonely body in the air, or the photographer’s unflinching eye. Art, in the larger sense, is the lifeline to which I cling in a confusing, unfair, sometimes dehumanizing world.”

I’ve been a fan of Cash’s ever since “King’s Record Shop” was released back in 1987. And I have to admit, her music doesn’t sit comfortably next to a lot of stuff I listen to. Nor would anyone confuse the writing on this site with the kind of intense, deeply reflective, almost painstakingly eloquent language found in “Composed.” Let me put it this way: Rosanne Cash will not be appearing at a chuckle-hut near you.

But she’s had a long-standing gig at my house. I may have been raised on the Stones, but my daughters were raised on Rosanne Cash – along with other alt-country favorites like Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Dwight Yoakam and Gillian Welch (for some reason, my girls didn’t take to Howlin’ Wolf… although Meghan loves Taj Mahal). Rosanne’s highly literate songs provided the soundtrack to many of our trips south. And even though my youngest eventually moved on to hip-hop and rap, I’m sure she still has a soft spot for Cash’s “The Wheel.” Fire of the Newly Alive

Cash brings the same sensitive touch to “Composed.” And her descriptions of growing up in a musical family especially resonated with me. We’re sort of the Cash family in reverse. Although my brothers and sister remain active and performing musicians (and I’m considering a return to service), all of the fame and notoriety has landed on the next generation as nephew Dan Auerbach – and his musical soulmate in the Keys, Pat Carney – continue their march toward world domination. Granted, they may never be as recognized and beloved as Johnny Cash, but there’s still plenty of time.

Much of “Composed” is about the many ways that fame can change those who enter the celebrity funhouse, either voluntarily (friends and second spouses, for example) or otherwise (immediate family). I enjoyed Rosanne’s stories of the time she spent in London, working in a low-level artists relations job for CBS Records simply because she happened to be Johnny Cash’s daughter. She had no illusions about the experience, perfectly understanding why some people treated her with great deference, and appreciating it when others didn’t. She was determined to make the best of the situation – and her father’s patronage – as she partied her way through a pleasant yet frivolous assignment.

Of course, there are larger themes to “Composed” – including death, motherhood and the challenge of struggling with addictive personalities (a theme that Cash felt was grossly overblown in the movie “Walk the Line”). Another big theme involves sacrifice. What does it take to really make your way in the world as an artist; to build your entire life around creating art, and doing it on your own terms?

Cash is philosophical in describing her own journey from Nashville hit-maker to a well-respected singer-songwriter with her dignity intact. In earnest and artful language, she takes us through the process of starting over again – of leaving behind a certain level of success and comfort to head into the great unknown, with only your creative instincts to guide you. But the true meaning of sacrifice is often revealed in the most mundane details, like the way Cash describes the simple act of flying:

“I have been in planes that have been struck by lightning, surrounded by tornadoes, diverted to new and even more miserably inconvenient destinations; planes whose landing gear failed to descend, engines conked out, wings clipped the ground and spewed rivets across the runway, takeoffs and landings have been aborted in snow and ice storms and violent winds and rain; planes that dropped so fast and so far that people literally hit the ceiling; and once, on a nearly empty late-night flight into Nashville, the pilot sent an attendant back just after the landing to ask me if I knew where Gate 4 was, since he thought I had probably landed at this particular airport more than he had. And I had.”

On more than one occasion, I’ve stared at an opportunity as a full-time traveling musician, and then looked away – mainly because I knew deep down that I couldn’t handle life on the road, especially in a third-tier band. But even a steady string of local gigs can take their toll (especially before the indoor smoking ban took effect). As my wife points out, we were tossed off more than a few social calendars because of my busy playing schedule. And after moving back to town in ’91, I went 10 consecutive years playing shitty (but well-paying) gigs on New Year’s Eve while my wife stayed home to entertain our daughters. Someday I’ll figure out how to make it up to her.

But all this pales in comparison to the act of ripping yourself away from home and family for huge chunks of the year to make money on the road. And touring income has become even more essential for bands today as CD sales are eclipsed by file-sharing and other acts of digital thievery (I confess, I’m not without sin).

Cash doesn’t try to gain our sympathy for millionaire artists. Whether she’s making somber observations about the creative process or describing a major fuck-up at the airport, she’s simply sharing the basic realities of life as a working musician. And, to her credit, she doesn’t make much of a distinction between that pursuit and the art of everyday living – like her late mother’s gardening. It’s just that when you play on a bigger stage, you usually give up a lot more to get there. Thankfully, modern-day road dogs like Cash and The Black Keys still find a way to make it work, so their inspiring shows can help us feel just a little bit better about life on planet earth.

A number of years ago, I read a newspaper column by some Big Gulp-swilling soccer mom that really rubbed me the wrong way. I’ll paraphrase: “Music really mattered when we were kids… Then we grew up, bought houses, had kids of our own, raised families and came to realize music really isn’t that important at all. Now we revel in the music of life.” Or some such drivel.

What I wanted to say to this nitwit was, surely there’s a form of art – movies, painting, gardening, woodworking – that still feeds your soul, no matter how much it’s shrunk over the years. For some of us, that form of art is music. And despite Rubber City Review’s best (and worst) attempts to keep it light, we’re dead serious about the music and artists we love and write about.

Rosanne Cash’s touch is far from light. But I blasted right through the fussiest language in her book – because at its core, “Composed” is all about the serious business of passing rich musical traditions from one generation to the next.

The List… Musical inheritance doesn’t get more real than this: Alarmed by his daughter’s lack of knowledge about American roots music (Rosanne had a good excuse – she grew up in Southern California), Johnny Cash jotted down a list he called “100 Essential Country Songs.” But as Rosanne Cash points out in the liner notes to her latest release, “The List,” “he could have called it ’100 Essential American Songs,’ because he included history songs, protest songs, early folk songs, Delta Blues, gospel, Texas swing, and standards that simply defy genre.” Thirty-five years went by before Rosanne got up the nerve to reinterpret a few of these tunes on record, and the results are a little mixed. The requisite guest artists don’t add much (with the exception of Bruce Springsteen, who brings a wonderful harmony voice to Sea of Heartbreak). But Rosanne’s cover of Motherless Children, by the always popular “Public Domain,” is one of the best versions I’ve heard of a song that has suffered many indignities over the years. And it’s all in the voice – no gospelly histrionics; just an honest, heartfelt read of an American classic: Motherless Children

Other Rubber City Review posts that have appeared on Blogcritics:
o Juliet, Naked… with the Fat Man in the Bathtub (Editors’ Pick)
o The World’s Greatest Advertising Jingle (Editors’ Pick)
o Guns, Drugs, Money and Vinyl… Welcome to School Kids

LeBron, post-LeBacle

The Cavs crashed and burned, the team’s fragile chemistry in ruins. LeBron’s making noise about leaving town. The Indians can’t hold a lead, and Asdrubal Cabrera broke his arm diving for a ball. Meanwhile, in my mom’s hometown of Milledgeville, GA, world-class whackjob Ben Roethlisberger is doing his best General Sherman as he cuts a wide swath of destruction through the countryside.

And that’s just the bad news in the world of sports. The economy’s still in the crapper… Dan of The Black Keys is thinking about moving to Nashville (Pat’s already in NYC)… Oh, and HBO’s “Treme” still sucks, for the most part – even though the music is first-rate.

I got the blues, baby, and I got ‘em bad.

Of course, the best antidote is more blues – or maybe a little old-school soul or rock ‘n roll. Anything to get my mind off this sad state of affairs here in America’s heartbreak… I mean, heartland.

Now, I won’t weigh in on the many rumors swirling around the Cavs following yet another gut-wrenching postseason in Northeast Ohio. And I have no idea who will show up to play when the team gets back together later this year for training camp. But I can’t help but think that “the plan” LeBron keeps referring to is all about getting a Ring for the King, no matter where he plays. Meanwhile, the goal of bringing the next major sports championship to Cleveland remains as elusive as Lady Ga Ga’s good taste.

Future home of RCR

Lots of theories about where LeBron will end up. I’m guessing Cleveland is now a long shot, even though the Cavs built the Taj Mahal of training facilities only minutes away from LeBron’s Dubai-scale house, which is just down the road from a large architect’s model of Rubber City Review’s new world headquarters (at right: pending stimulus grant approval). One theory has him hooking up with Dwyane Wade and several other A-listers in Chicago, where they could bring back the glory days of Michael Jordan and Scotty Pippen. But I think the great bluesman Jimmy Reed knew all along where LeBron would land – so if you’re from Northeast Ohio, listen and weep… Jimmy Reed

Actually, at this point I’m sort of agnostic when it comes to LeBron and The Black Keys leaving town (in Dan’s case, it gives me another cool place to visit). But I’m also not sure how it would help advance their careers. We live in a world where some punk kid skyping in his bedroom in Duluth can become a global phenomenon. Why would anyone think that someone like LeBron needs a bigger stage to achieve his goal of world domination? Hell, he’s already there. Might as well stick it out in Akron, where livin’ is easy and people pretty much leave you alone. And besides, it’s easier to find a qualified contractor who can maintain a home that’s the size of a shopping mall.

The Tribe? I don’t think I’ve ever gotten over seeing them lose the ’97 Series – in extra innings of Game 7, no less – to this Frankenstein creation of a team from Florida. A team with absolutely no tradition. A team that was systematically dismantled the next year by its owner, like he dumped off a bunch of cats on someone’s farm after they killed all the rodents in his house. I was devastated. But I have to admit, I thought of this next song when I was sitting in a beach house in Captiva, watching Game 1 on TV with the snow falling in Cleveland… Muddy Waters

With Roethlisberger, I could take the easy way out and simply play “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” but there has to be a more appropriate song… one with a lot of big, dumb swagger – preferably by a band with a strong connection to the Deep South. Yeah, I got it right here. Just imagine this tune being reworked by that big-voiced blonde chick from American Idol. Whatever the hell her name is… Lynyrd Skynyrd

I can come up with a whole slew of songs about economic hardship. How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live, Money Honey, Depression Blues, All My Money Gone, Sidewalks of Chicago, Hard Times Killing Floor Blues… But I get tired of all that bitching about not having two nickels to rub together. In these times of short-selling scam artists and massive ponzi schemes, I want songs of retribution. I want to know that, even though my ill-conceived investments have tanked, some former Wall Street wunderkind is getting passed around federal prison like a joint at a jam-band concert. Time for a sermon from Rev. Scott H. Biram… Scott H. Biram

Then there’s “Treme,” which I already complained about a few posts ago. Fact is, even a half-baked show with great music is better than anything involving real (incredibly annoying) housewives or snotty rich kids from California.

So I’ll try to end on a more hopeful note. Here’s hoping that the Cavs rise from the ashes and the Indians rise above .500 and the South Rises Again and my bank account… well, you get the picture. But when everything seems to be swirling down the drain, the best way to lift my spirits is to play me some funky brass-band music – straight from a city that makes sports heartbreak seem trivial. Funky Liza/New Orleans Nightcrawlers

Everyone’s an expert… Dan and Pat of The Black Keys weigh in on LeBron and the miseries of Cleveland sports (starting at 1:25). Excuse the commercial at the beginning:

We now have nearly 40 posts completed and properly filed with the internet authorities. Not what you’d call a highly prolific output. But as my sister pointed out, what I lack in frequency I make up for in long-windedness. Someone else told me I should write shorter posts and publish more often. I sent him a 10-paragraph email – with readership stats broken out in several tables – explaining why I disagree. For some reason, I never heard back from him.

Anyway, it seemed like a good opportunity for the RCR team to rummage through the old mail bag and find out what’s on our readers’ minds. Not that we plan on using that information to do anything different. I just couldn’t come up with a coherent theme this week.

I was a little disappointed in the response to “Truck Driver’s Boogie” – until I heard from Rob, who directed me toward one Scott H. (Hiram) Biram. I guess I’d describe his stuff as classic cowpunk and gutbucket blues, and I especially enjoyed this little item from Biram’s myspace page:

“Scott H. Biram won’t die. On May 11th, 2003, one month after being hit head-on by an 18-wheeler at 75 MPH, he took the stage at The Continental Club in Austin, TX in a wheel chair – I.V. still dangling from his arm. With 2 broken legs, a broken foot, a broken arm and 1 foot less of his lower intestine, Biram unleashed his trademark musical wrath…” Then it offers this promotional nugget: “When Scott H. Biram took the stage at his 2004 SXSW festival showcase right after Kris Kristofferson he was quoted as growling ‘They said that was a hard act to follow….I’m a hard act to follow motherfuckers!!’ The stunned crowd looked on.”

So obviously we’re dealing with a badass of epic proportions. Here’s musical evidence of Biram’s ornery nature (from his latest, “Something’s Wrong/Lost Forever”): Hard Time/Scott H. Biram

Lots of good comments to “There Stands the Glass,” my homage to the American drinking song. Musician and RCR contributor Kevin Swan captured the joys of the Big Three Trio’s Cigareetes, Whuskey and Wild Women: “Just add a Mason jar of sour mash, a big-boned gal in a flower dress, and sing loud.” And Bruce from Australia recommends that we down a pint of Woody Guthrie’s Rye Whiskey.

But Brother Jack convinced me I’d overlooked a true classic, One For My Baby (And One More For The Road), from the songwriting team of Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer. The tune was first performed by Fred Astaire in 1943 in the musical “The Sky’s The Limit” – then made popular four years later by a far more appropriate interpreter, Frank Sinatra. Over the years, it’s been covered by artists ranging from Lou Rawls and Lena Horne to Willie Nelson and Iggy Pop, and Bette Midler famously serenaded Johnny Carson with it on his last night as host of “The Tonight Show.” But I don’t think anyone plumbed the depths of this tune as effectively as Billie Holiday, who certainly drew from a deep well of experience… One For My Baby (And One More For The Road)/Billie Holiday

Don’t be surprised to see a future post titled “There Stands Another Glass.”

Dickey Betts, 1972

My love letter to Milledgeville, GA (“Georgia On My Mind”) received the most comments to date. Nephew Dan of The Black Keys has warm memories of our family’s log cabin in the piney woods – “i remember playing in that log cabin as a kid… i’ve driven through georgia what seems like a million times on tour and thought about stopping by but never have.” I mainly recall scaring the kids when I threw a chair across the room after losing my third-straight pot in poker. Fellow blogger The Hound shared one of Southern Rock’s great ironies: “I love that Dickey Betts was booted from the Allmans for taking too many drugs. Think about that. That must have been an incredible amount of dope to get chucked out of that band.” Old friend J.T. savored the time he spent at the cabin, when he almost died in Longino’s Jeep and then got poison oak everywhere, “even my schween.” And college buddy Art Rock (I prefer the more quotidian alias, admin) remembered waking up to Valerie Carter singing Ooh Child and bacon sizzling on the stove. I’ll throw in another cabin favorite, an acoustic duet with Betts and Duane Allman that Leo Kottke called “the most perfect guitar song ever written”: Little Martha/Duane Allman and Dickey Betts

A few of you played along to “Great Moments in Modern Music.” Christian from Albuquerque loves the trumpet work in the “Chinatown” soundtrack as well as the last section of John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” (Psalm). Kevin came back with a vote for Louis Armstrong’s “Big Butter and Egg Man” – a saucy duet with May Alix. Keena and her ganja-inspired friends couldn’t get enough of an odd “bip” that somehow found its way into Warren Zevon’s vocal fills in Werewolves of London. But we’ll give the RCR Ribbon of Achievement to Joscha from Germany, who threw out two big winners – the MC5’s I Want You Right Now (Joscha’s favorite moment is at 2:13, “where they take it down, creating tension, ready to explode back in the full blast main riff”) and Aretha Franklin’s It Ain’t Fair, which brings back the tasty guitar of Duane Allman along with sax great King Curtis… It Ain’t Fair/Aretha Franklin with Duane Allman and King Curtis

I’ll leave you with a couple of unqualified recommendations from the RCR Nation…

First, if you share my obvious enthusiasm for Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings (“Rare Soul + Funk, Pt. 1”), you’ll want to check out her latest platter – yes, it’s available on vinyl – “I Learned the Hard Way.” Here’s a little taste… Better Things/Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings

Second, The Black Keys’ new release, “Brothers,” drops on Tuesday, May 18. Obviously, I can’t be objective about these guys, but I think this is the one they’ve wanted to make ever since they first hung a mic over a water pipe in Pat’s basement. It’s definitely their best-sounding disc… fat, heavy grooves with lots of trunk-rattling bass – something you probably wouldn’t expect if you’re partial to “The Big Come Up” and “Thickfreakness.” Most of “Brothers” was recorded at the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio – former home of the crack session team that laid down Aretha’s It Ain’t Fair. And although the Keys are far from bound by tradition, you can still hear the ghosts of Eddie Hinton and other masters of deep southern soul who never got their due.

Make no mistake, Dan and Pat are Rubber City guys at heart, as you can tell by this next tune. It was recorded during the “Brothers” sessions but won’t appear on the CD release (it’s now available as a free download on the band’s website if you register). Ohio/The Black Keys

Catch the Keys on tour this summer… get the full list of dates here. And test-drive “Brothers” right now at NPR.

These just in from Dan… A hotel-room video of Dickey Betts playing with “Dangerous” Dan Toler and a Greg Allman solo performance – both from a documentary called “Brothers of the Road” (1982) – and Duane Allman from 1970. “Dickey Betts is really underrated,” Dan says. “I love those double-stop country things he always adds. His signature, I guess. And the footage of Duane is something I’ve never seen. Modern jam bands just don’t get it.” Amen, brother.

Little Women (clockwise from top left): Jane, Kat, Alice, Sis and Margaret

My mom grew up on a farm in central Georgia. She was the youngest of 10 children, and her family spanned generations in a way that was unusual even for the Deep South. Her father, Wirt Little, was born at the tail end of the Civil War and had his first child with his much-younger wife, Kate, when he was in his 50s. Mom’s oldest brother, Buddy, died in World War I from mustard gas, which the Germans used to turn the Allied trenches into killing beds.

Her other siblings were every bit as colorful as their names, which included Marshall, Kat, Sis, Bib and, my personal favorite, Longino. That name had a typically Southern origin… Kate went into labor during a horrible storm, and the local obstetrician, Dr. Longino, survived a rough trip in a horse-drawn buggy to deliver the baby, which was named Longino in eternal gratitude to the good doctor.

Mom and Longino, down on the farm

I loved visiting the farm as a kid and seeing all my aunts, uncles and cousins (Wirt and Kate were long gone by then), but the drive south in the early Sixties definitely had a Joad-like quality to it. The interstate was largely unfinished, so my dad would test the very limits of our Dodge station wagon – fully loaded with mom, six kids and luggage strapped to the roof – by negotiating the hairpin curves on Route 441 through the Great Smoky Mountains. It was a nerve-wracking, three-day trip, which made all of us even more delirious when we arrived at the Georgia farmhouse with the fragrant scent of boxwood shrubs along the front porch (remnants of the Victorian tastes of Georgia’s early settlers). To this day, the smell of boxwood takes me back to the wonderful summers I spent in Milledgeville.

Kat and Sis lived in the farm’s main house and always welcomed us by “putting the big pot in the little one,” as mom would say. Fabulous southern dinners with big roasts, squash soufflé, cornbread and mashed potatoes were often followed by bowls of homemade peach ice cream with Kat’s famous pound cake. Nothing in the Rubber City – not even the first-rate Italian dinners on North Hill – could compete with these feasts on the farm (although mom’s cooking came damn close).

I’d wake up to the sound of a rooster and a few cows outside our small guest room. During the day we’d go down to a dock on nearby Lake Sinclair and swim for hours. If it rained, we’d sit together on the porch and listen to my Uncle Longino, his droll wife Dunk and our older cousins tell stories about the rattlesnakes and water moccasins that apparently killed hundreds of small Yankee children every year.

Milledgeville was filled with notable characters – Southern Gothic author Flannery O’Connor among them – and Longino was near the top of the list. He received a Purple Heart in World War II after taking over a troop of soldiers by default (the officers lost their lives on or just after D-Day) and getting riddled with machine gun fire. He came home with a little lead in his side and a slight limp, and spent the next 20 or so years earning a pension with an uneventful assignment at the Robins Air Force Base near Macon.

An early, failed attempt at Southern cooking in the Rubber City

But Longino was an entrepreneur at heart. He always seemed to have two or three ventures – moneymaking or otherwise – going on at the same time. At one point or another, he ran a par-3 golf course, a teen dance club and a small restaurant. He also bought a few houses and other property throughout the area, which he would tend to almost as an afterthought. The only piece of his kingdom I wanted, though, was his WWII Willys Jeep. I may have been too young to drive in Ohio, but down south I tore through the woods in that jeep like Richard Petty’s demon seed.

I spent one summer working for Longino, doing odd jobs at his various properties. He was constantly frustrated with my ham-handed approach to basic tools, like hammers, saws and paint brushes. And if I did a particularly good job of screwing something up, he’d let loose with one of his oddball Southern expressions, like “boy, you remind me of the ox that walked a mile to shit on an axe handle!” Guess that meant I took the long road to nowhere… but I never bothered asking Longino for clarification.

His most humiliating admonishment, though, was completely non-verbal. I was doing some light construction at the “clubhouse” of his par-3 course, and he asked me if I could knock a wall into place by hitting a 2×4 with the flat end of an ax – without burying it in the drywall, of course. I said sure and swung away, missing the wood by a couple of inches. Longino studied the fresh, gaping hole in his wall, looked down his nose at me, then calmly pulled a pen from his pocket and wrote my name under the hole. Ouch!

Longino gave my mom a log-cabin structure that once housed a restaurant (and whorehouse, as I found out later). Against all odds, my mom had the cabin moved down the road and onto the 50-some acres of pine forest she inherited just outside of town. Longino then went to work replacing one of its side walls and building a massive family room – and that cabin became my main summer destination, with or without my parents, throughout my high school years.

In the early Seventies, central Georgia was both way behind the curve and ahead of it. For example, the “Summer of Love” that Time and Life magazines documented ad nauseam in 1967 finally hit Milledgeville around 1972. My cousin Shep led the charge with his long (albeit well-groomed) hair and newfound prowess on his Gibson Les Paul. He also was a star on the ultimate stage for local stoners, the foosball table. His cousins and their friends from “Up North” became his hapless posse – and it’s probably best that we avoid any more discussion of the summers of ’72 and ’73.

Meanwhile, 30 miles down the road in Macon, the Allman Brothers Band blazed a new trail by layering jazz-like improvisations over tight, rootsy arrangements. They had an arsenal of talent few other rock bands could match, with Greg Allman’s deeply soulful voice and Hammond organ serving up the blazing twin guitars of brother Duane and Dickey Betts. The Allmans single-handedly created, and then completely dominated, a new sub-genre labeled “Southern Rock” – much in the same way that Bob Marley cast a long shadow over the rest of reggae. Here’s a little sample… Done Somebody Wrong/The Allman Brothers Band (live)

I think my mom got a charge out of the Allman Brothers – especially when they became “The Nation’s Official Rock Band” after Jimmy Carter won the election of ’76. By then, mom had become very active in Rubber City politics and even served as a delegate for Carter at the Democratic Convention in New York City that year. She also ran the district office for Congressman John Seiberling, became the first woman to chair the Summit County Democratic party, and helped launch more than a few successful political careers.

Mom had qualities that worked well in politics. She was whip-smart and very determined, but always masked her intentions with healthy doses of down-home charm and wit. Like many Southerners, she used a combination of sweet talk and brute force to get exactly what she wanted from unsuspecting Yankees. And she didn’t take shit from anyone, from the Congressman to her kids.

In the 40-plus years she lived in the Rubber City, my mom never lost her Southern drawl. And she hung on to the same crazy-ass expressions shared by her family back in Georgia. If someone handed her a ridiculous assignment, she’d say “what do you want me to do, stand on my head and stack BBs?” Which usually led to the room-clearing “I’m so mad I could just spit!”

Mom and Kat

Over the next decade or so, we continued making pilgrimages to Milledgeville for family get-togethers at the cabin. It remained a magical place that seemed worlds removed from whatever problems we were dealing with back home. I never saw my father happier than when he stood in the corner of the big family room, holding a bourbon-fueled drink while listening to his kids play bluegrass music.

After my dad passed away in ’86 – and the rest of us began raising families with their own preferred holiday destinations – the log cabin became more of a burden for my mom, who eventually sold it and the surrounding acres of pine forest to Shep. My wife and I made a bittersweet trip back to Milledgeville nearly 20 years ago, but I haven’t visited since. Maybe it has something to do with the growing sense of loss as Sis, Kat and Longino passed away. Then my mom’s passing in 1999 closed the book on a farm family with especially deep roots.

I know we’ll make the trip back to Milledgeville someday – and it won’t have anything to do with a wedding or funeral. I’m sure I’ll be saddened by everything that’s changed, but maybe some quality time with Shep, cousin Jane and the next generation of Littles will help fill the void.

Since this is usually about the music, I’ll end with a gospel number that we sang at my mom’s graveside – I’m sure Jane sang along too. Angel Band/The Stanley Brothers

Spoken-word Jane… When we realized mom wasn’t long for this world, my sister Caroline started taping her stories about the Littles. I highly recommend this to anyone else who’s in the same situation. Here mom recalls how her parents found out about Buddy’s death: Buddy’s Death

More spoken-word Jane… Hey, I’m just doing this for my own enjoyment – bail out any time you want! Wirt gets ready to meet his maker: Wirt’s Last Goodbye?

Jane meets The Black Keys… Dan pissed off more than a few buyers of “The Big Come Up” with this hidden tribute to his grandma Jane, which followed about 20 minutes of silence in the album’s final cut. Jane with The Black Keys

Welcome to Rubber City Review.  It’s not intended to be Akron-centric, but I should probably kick things off by asking the question:  When it comes to roots-rock and other mutant forms of modern music – Devo, The Black Keys, The Cramps, Chrissie Hynde, The Numbers Band, Tin Huey founder and Tom Waits sideman Ralph Carney, punk guitar trailblazer and former Lou Reed sideman Robert Quine, Vaughn Monroe (Vaughn Monroe?  More on that later)… what makes Akron so damn special?

Growing up in Akron, I always felt that “bastard stepchild” vibe when I talked to hard-core Clevelanders.  There was never a sense that they were missing out on something by not taking the 30-minute drive south to check out Akron (although I can’t say that our meager live music scene was much of a draw).  Maybe we just had a little more to prove.

You could argue that the lack of a vibrant music scene forced many aspiring rockers into the garage – or, in the case of the Keys, literally underground – where they could tinker like mad scientists without fear of failure.  How else could you explain this hidden track on The Big Come Up? 240 Years Before Your Time

I’ve also heard that legendary late-night TV host Ghoulardi (aka Ernie Anderson, father of indie director Paul Thomas Anderson) had a huge impact on a young Erick Lee Purkhiser of Stow, OH before he morphed into psychobilly king Lux Interior of The Cramps, and that members of Devo were devotees as well.

Akron writer David Giffels expands on the Ghoulardi influence in the book “Are We Not Men? We Are Devo!”:  ”The Ghoulardi aesthetic seemed to capture a much broader and more significant notion:  Akron and Cleveland were a noirish sci-fi movie.  In Cleveland, it was steel.  In Akron, rubber.  But both places were defined by aging brick factories with round chimneys that breathed fire and smoke.”

Purkhiser also was under the spell of local DJ Pete “Mad Daddy” Myers, whose fast-paced chatter drew listeners into a carny sideshow of space-age sound effects and oddball rock ‘n roll… Songs like Teenage Machine Age by The Travelers, or this classic by Link Wray…Rumble

(Many examples of Mad Daddy in action here)

The Mad Daddy

In the late ’50s, Mad Daddy became an underground fixture in Northeast Ohio — occasionally hosting sock hops in his patented Dracula outfit.  But he never caught on at his next stop, New York City, where he eventually killed himself with a shotgun.

Now, I could go on at great length about The Cramps and the seductive powers of guitarist Poison Ivy (and I probably will down the road), but I’ll let this video clip speak for itself… You can almost hear the spinning sound of “the Singing Brakeman,” Jimmie Rodgers, who wrote this one back in 1930!

I love the TV show host at the end… Just another day of depravity at the station!

As this clip suggests, if there’s a common musical influence that connects all these bands, it’s probably rockabilly – which makes sense, because Akron’s rubber factories pulled in a lot of folks from the South who had little trouble adapting to a more urban environment.  You can hear some of that influence in Robert Quine, who was a huge fan of Ricky Nelson’s guitarist James Burton.  I’ll go straight to the source on this one – Burton’s blazing solo on Susie-Q by Dale Hawkins… Susie-Q

About 30 seconds of pure goodness… and cowbell to boot!

Since Chrissie Hynde moved back to town (part-time), her music has taken on a harder, more rockabilly edge — which is especially evident on this cut from Break Up the Concrete… Don’t Cut Your Hair

Maybe there’s something in the air, emanating from the primordial ooze of the Cuyahoga River.

But one thing is clear – there really isn’t anything you could remotely define as an “Akron Sound.”  The most obvious reason is that we never had a major studio in town with a forceful personality like Sam Phillips or Berry Gordy running the show.  Hell, Hynde didn’t even find her sound until she moved to London, and you could argue that The Numbers Band has never been properly recorded (Dan?).

And that sense of disconnect brings me to the odd man out – Vaughn Monroe, also known as “Old Leather Tonsils” and “The Baritone with Muscles”…

Back in 1920, Monroe was just another young punk with a rubber rat for a father.  He lived around the corner from my dad in Akron’s Goodyear Heights neighborhood, created by its tire-building namesake to house a small army of plant workers and their families.  But he eventually became one of the best-selling artists of the Forties – a big-band vocalist who wrapped his warm baritone around hits like Let it Snow and this one, Ghost Riders in the Sky… Riders in the Sky

I’m sure Monroe’s huge success appealed to my father’s belief that hard work and a modicum of talent can take you anywhere.  Here’s to Vaughn Monroe, the Godfather of the Akron Sound!

This just in from our Florida Bureau (brother James)… an entirely different take on Ghost Riders in the Sky — from Ned Sublette, author of “Cuba and its Music” and “The World that Made New Orleans” (more on those two books here):

Bonus video from Dan… We share a love of the late, great bluesman Freddie King.  I’m partial to his “surf-blues” recordings for the Cincinnati-based King label in the early-’60s — tunes like Hide Away, widely covered by blues bands around the world, and this one… Sen-Sa-Shun

But Dan came across this gem from Freddie’s later years, probably around 1972.  Watch him work out on Bill Withers’ Ain’t No Sunshine.  I like how he takes his time strapping on his guitar, tosses off a perfect blues lick, and then kills it!