Rubber City Review

Fall has arrived in Northeast Ohio, which means five glorious days of breathtaking color. The other 83 days? Take your pick between sort of a rain/mist hybrid or bone-chilling cold, compounded by an impenetrable sky of thick dark clouds.

So naturally this is a time of great reflection… an opportunity to contemplate our own mortality, usually over a few cocktails. It’s time to forget about those light, carefree songs of summer. The sun’s going down, Katy Perry and Coldplay, so run on home before it gets dark. We need tunes with a little gravitas – songs that embrace the dimming of the day and usher in the long, lonely nights of winter. But most of all, we need another cheap excuse for a random playlist.

I defy you to take a song, any song, from Radiohead’s “The King of Limbs” album and play it in broad daylight. I’m fairly confident it would cause rivers to run backward and small animals to burst into flames. But go ahead and crank it up in the basement, which is where the band recreated these songs for a one-hour special that originally appeared on the BBC (and now is showing on my favorite new cable channel, Palladia). The basement performances are stunning – using embryonic riffs and electronic blips as springboards for knotty, full-blown arrangements that I found mesmerizing, especially when lead singer Thom Yorke started dancing like, eh, the king of limbs. I’m warming up to the album – especially this song: Little by Little But do yourself a favor and watch Yorke and company turn up the heat on these tunes in “Live from the Basement” (see video at the end of this post).

Sean Costello was a very gifted blues guitarist, singer and songwriter who passed away from an accidental drug overdose in 2008 at the young age of 28. As a soloist, he tended to dance along the edges – and you can hear his more adventurous side on Susan Tedeschi’s Grammy-nominated “Just Won’t Burn,” which Costello appeared on when he was only 18. He also recorded a string of genre-bending solo albums, culminating in 2008’s excellent “We Can Get Together.” It’s the sound of an artist finally hitting his stride and leaving behind some of the tired conventions of modern blues. Unfortunately, he left this world just when we needed him the most. Here’s a choice cut from his final album to remind us of what we’re missing: Anytime You Want

A new Tom Waits album is certainly reason to celebrate. So uncork the cheap shit on October 24, when the Anti label releases Wait’s “Bad As Me.” He’s not the kind of artist who elicits comments like “I hope he records another blah, blah, blah” or “I can’t wait until he tackles the Great American Songbook.” You just assume he’s going to come up with another wildly original work of art; something that will challenge your senses or maybe even alter your consciousness. As Waits himself crooned some 35 years ago, “change your shorts, change your life… change into a nine-year-old Hindu boy.” I think that says it all. Now sit back and enjoy this nasty little number from the new album: Bad as Me

Few things are more achingly beautiful than the sound of Dusty Springfield’s voice. Even on the pop fluff – little wonders like Wishin’ and Hopin’, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me and The Look of Love. Fortunately for us, she hit some of the hard stuff too. Hard soul, that is (not a tasteless reference to the substance abuse issues she struggled with later in life). Many critics regard “Dusty in Memphis” as the high water mark in a recording career that spanned four decades. No argument here… although the whole thing was a bit of a sham given that Dusty recorded her vocals in New York City. Still, some of that Memphis vibe clearly rubbed off, and Dusty returned the favor by convincing the brass at Atlantic Records to sign Led Zeppelin (those Brits sure stick together). Sounds like a pretty good deal to me. Breakfast in Bed

Someday when I grow up, I’ll write a post about Bud Powell. I love listening to the great jazz pianist tear through originals like Un Poco Loco and Parisian Thoroughfare. I just can’t describe with any authority what I’m hearing (and I know that’s why y’all come to this site, right?). I do know that he was the first jazz pianist to approximate the lightning-fast be-bop runs of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. And I’m familiar with the conventional wisdom that Powell, who suffered from mental illness and reportedly was “treated” with electroshock therapy, was never the same following a beating he took from police in 1945. Then I listen to performances like Cleopatra’s Dream (recorded in 1958) and I have to ask myself, is this really the sound of someone playing with diminished capacity? Cleopatra’s Dream

Looks like I ditched the whole fall theme about five songs ago. I’ll try to reel it back in with this number by acoustic guitar wizard Tony Rice. Although a bluegrass picker at heart, Rice is just as comfortable interpreting songs by Canadian folkie Gordon Lightfoot or jazz legend Wes Montgomery. He grew up in L.A., which may not seem like a bluegrass hotbed but the city did expose him to the amazing talent of Clarence White, the legendary guitarist for the Kentucky Colonels and the Byrds. Like his mentor, Rice plays even the most straightforward songs with a jazz-like and often skewed sense of phrasing. But back to autumn… This Rice original seems tailor-made for the fall season – a bittersweet blues that reminds us time is slipping away: Blues for Paradise

Speaking of fall, let’s revisit the wonderful new album by Gillian Welch, “The Harrow & the Harvest.” Now I won’t go into my usual rant about all the high praise heaped on indie darlings like the Fleet Foxes and the Decemberists while seasoned veterans like the Wood Brothers or Welch (with her longtime foil David Rawlings on guitar and harmonies) are largely ignored. So here’s to stark, intimate harmonies and stunning fretwork – not to mention well-crafted originals that somehow sound completely fresh and as old as the hills. We’ll leave the virtual dry-humping of those other bands to the experts. Scarlet Town

Most songs from the Caribbean are not what I’d call “autumnal.” They usually make you (or at least me) think about hot, sweaty, open-air dives that serve enough Red Stripe in one night to intoxicate a small island nation. And maybe this tune does too. But it’s definitely on the darker, more introspective end of the scale. The artist is Cuban bassist and composer Orlando “Cachaito” Lopez – nephew of mambo innovator Israel “Cachao” Lopez. Cachaito appeared on the wildly popular and Grammy-winning Buena Vista Social Club album (and accompanying documentary by Wim Wenders) released in 1997. Cachaito’s solo release from 2001 was a revelation to me. I was expecting more of the same respectful and almost stately arrangements heard on the other Buena Vista releases. But clearly the man came to play – not just fluid and often funky bass lines, but also with the Afro-Cuban form itself. The album even touches on hip hop and dub reggae (keep in mind, Cachaito was 68 when it was released). He passed away in 2009, joining five other original BVSC members already on the other side… and guitarist Manuel Galban’s death earlier this year brought the total to seven. R.I.P. Cachaito, Galban (who plays on this cut), Faustino Oramas, Compay Segundo, Ruben Gonzalez, Ibrahim Ferrer and Pio Leyva. Redencion

Thom Yorke demonstrates why every self-respecting rock band needs maracas…

You’ve probably seen this video somewhere else, but always worth a second look – Tom Waits’ Private Listening Party:

Hey, someone peel a grape for Dusty, stat! (Special thanks to friend and longtime Dusty admirer Andy Moore for sending this clip our way.)

Is that Saul Goodman rolling out the new Black Keys album, “El Camino”??

Consider this the final installment in our Substance Abuse Trilogy (I’ll blame another brutal winter in the Rubber City):

Athens, Ohio, was an interesting place back in the late-Seventies. I was there earning a Journalism degree from Ohio University after spending a couple of aimless years without a major at Miami University. Nothing against the “Yale of the Midwest”… it was just an unsettling experience going to a school where the kids were more conservative than my own parents.

Athens was another story altogether. At the time, Ohio’s minimum drinking age was 18, and the town had plenty of bars to take advantage of it. In fact, almost every other structure uptown was a bar, and virtually every demographic had its own drinking establishment – hipsters, townies, stoners, nerds, foreign students, East Coasters… I think the handful of jocks who mistakenly enrolled at OU hung out at a wet bar in someone’s basement. Greek life also was an afterthought on a campus that resembled a Gold Rush mining town.

They even sold beer at the student center, which was jammed with kids every Friday starting around Noon. Any faculty member who scheduled a class on Friday afternoon was quickly banned from campus, never to be seen again.

My sister Mary lived outside of Athens with her husband, Chuck, in a little town called The Plains… very charming. I’d go there often for wonderful home-cooked meals and some mild ball-busting from Chuck, who seemed to revel in the fact that I was just as scatter-brained as his wife. Chuck’s cousin, Ned, ran the best restaurant in town, Chiccalini’s – sort of a hangout for older transplants from the East Coast (Chuck and Ned were from Teaneck, NJ). One of the bartenders turned me on to the music of Django Reinhardt. I was deeply moved. I even fantasized about putting together my own Hot Club of Athens and playing every week at Ned’s joint, then I realized I’d never be able to play like Django. But I digress…

Amazingly, I managed to maintain a GPA of three-point-something (I was never good at math) – maybe even miraculous when you consider all the distractions uptown and my part-time job at the city’s cultural hub, School Kids Records. It was a step up from my previous gig as a delivery guy for a beer carry-out. That’s right, it was perfectly acceptable to bring cut-rate cases of Busch directly to students who were either too lazy or drunk to make the short walk uptown. I’m surprised they didn’t serve drinks at orientation.

We moved mountains of vinyl at School Kids. But we didn’t sell a lot of records to average students, if it were possible to define such a group at OU. The ones from New York and New Jersey tended to have more disposable income than those of us who were fleeing economic ruin in Northeast Ohio. But the biggest spenders at School Kids, by a large margin, were wily desperadoes from the hills and hollers south of town – the Meigs County Varmints.

Law enforcement was relatively lax in this little corner of Appalachia, where the Varmints cultivated the number one cash crop in Meigs County, marijuana. And they had become quite skilled at using the area’s rugged terrain as cover for their very profitable farming enterprise. A few owned small planes to move product out of state. All of them had big wads of cash, ready to spend at our humble establishment.

One Varmint was a sweet guy who seemed genuinely interested in broadening his taste in music. He popped in the store one day while I was playing the first album by the David Grisman Quintet – an organic melding of bluegrass and gypsy-influenced jazz that showcased Grisman’s prodigious chops on mandolin and the amazing Tony Rice on guitar. Here’s a little taste… Dawg’s Rag/David Grisman Quintet

“What the hell is this and where do I find it,” the Varmint asked, sensing that our broad categories of rock, country, blues and jazz were virtually useless with Grisman. I confessed that I brought it to the store from my own collection, mainly because I was sick of listening to Dan Fogelberg for eight hours straight (back then, big-selling albums were returned in droves for any number of reasons… I had about three crates of Fogelberg at my feet – evidence of the record industry’s eventual demise).

“I’ll buy it from you,” he said, without actually opening the door to any kind of meaningful negotiation. I faced an interesting dilemma – should I do a side deal with a man who probably has several firearms concealed on his person, and thus part with a hard-to-find album I’d grown quite fond of? Or politely tell him that it’s not for sale?

“Sure,” I quickly replied, expecting little in return. He tossed me an extra twenty and thanked me profusely as he took the Quintet and about two dozen other albums with him into the night.

Several months went by before I could find another copy of the album. But I also had a few bucks left over to go next door – the bar on the left, as opposed to the one on the right – and share a round or three with my friends.

I often wondered what life was like on Reefer Ranch, with a small Cessna in a nearby field and a few crusty old farmhands sitting around the fire, listening to Grisman and Rice jam on Opus 57 and Swing 51. Maybe they piped the Quintet into the barn, where barefoot women and children packed the final product into massive baggies. Or, they simply flew in Grisman and friends to play at the company picnic.

As I was nearing the end of my time in Athens, the authorities in Meigs County finally decided to get tough with the Varmints. Helicopters with infrared cameras were used to find the larger crops; specially trained dogs were sent into the hills and hollers to track down smaller stashes. A reporter from the Athens Messenger asked my boss at School Kids if “Operation Buzzkill” would have any impact on his business. His response was clear and concise: “Let’s see, you’re taking about $10 million out of the local economy… the next biggest source of revenue is lunch money… what the fuck do you think is going to happen?”

I can’t recall what actually ended up in the paper, but it wasn’t difficult for me to figure out the math on that one.

Today, someone’s selling posters and costumes at the former home of School Kids Records… R.I.P.

David Grisman, Tony Rice and fiddle player Mark O’Connor on video – tearing up a tune from Grisman’s first album…