"Tribute to Ron Asheton" DVD

I don't make pilgrimages to see bands anymore, but I know a few people who were at Ann Arbor's Michigan Theater for this show, and they all say it was something special. This DVD bears them out, and is a huge improvement over the In the Hands of the Fans disc from a couple of years back. If you want to see the Stooges with James Williamson on video, this is the way to go. But there's more...

Ron Asheton -- groundbreaking guitarist on the first two Stooges albums and bassist on Raw Power, B-movie actor, and raconteur extraordinaire -- shuffled off this mortal coil at the beginning of 2009, aged 61. Before he left, he got a nice victory lap, touring the world with the reunited Stooges from 2003 to 2008, playing to many times the number of folks that got to see the band in their initial 1967-1974 trajectory. His sister Kathy put together this hometown show in the spring of 2011 to salute his memory and benefit the foundation that bears his name, dedicated to supporting animal welfare and musical endeavors. Henry Rollins served as master of ceremonies and provided guest vocals on the opening song in the Stooges' 19-song set, which was augmented by an orchestra (!) and Ron's friend and fellow Ann Arborite, Radio Birdman guitarist Deniz Tek, on a handful of Ron-era numbers.

I'll admit that I dig Henry Rollins' writing and spoken word more than his music; as an intelligence and a presence, the cat is undeniable. He speaks eloquently and at length about Ron's legacy to start things off, then cedes the mic to normally taciturn drummer Scott Asheton, who thanks Iggy for letting his brother realize his rock 'n' roll dreams ("and that goes for the drummer, too"). Rollins fronts the band on its opening number, "I Got A Right," then Iggy explodes out of the wings as James kicks off "Raw Power." The Stooges play the set they've been performing since James returned to the fold in the wake of Ron's demise, a mixture of songs off their three albums along with a couple from Iggy and James' post-Stooges release Kill City and one song -- "Open Up and Bleed" -- from the never-officially-recorded, post-Raw Power period.

Iggy seems to be conserving his energy more than he did earlier in the reunited band's trajectory, but he's all about connecting with the audience in this relatively intimate theater setting. The show is beautifully shot, with a good mix of group, individual, and audience views that gives a good feel for what it felt like to be there. The stage invasion on "Shake Appeal" is the most insane and absolute of any of the post-reunion Stooge shows I've seen -- there must be a hundred people onstage, jammed asses to elbows, and you can imagine the black-clad security dudes had their work cut out for them protecting the equipment and the musicians. But unlike, say, the crowd in the James Brown show in Boston the night Martin Luther King was shot, these folks know their role in the drama, and clear the stage at the end of the song with relatively little fuss.

I don't know what the live mix was like, but to these feedback-scorched ears, there's way too little of Mike Watt's bass in the DVD mix -- particularly striking in light of Rollins' comments on the primacy of the rhythm section. "Funhouse" sounds sparse in this version. With Iggy cuing them like a soul singer, the band shows they have a good sense of dynamics, and Steve Mackay's sax provides most of the instrumental mania. "Open Up and Bleed" is a high point -- for my money, the best song the Williamson-era Stooges ever did -- and the version here is damn near definitive. (I wish I still had the version from, I believe, Isle of Wight 2010, when Scott Thurston was briefly on board again.) Things really pick up from there, with "Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell" leading into a big block of Ron-era songs.

When I heard "Stooges with orchestra," I was initially skeptical -- things like this tend to be either good or very, very bad. "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is an encouraging start, with the strings playing the telegraphic high note that John Cale's one-note piano played on the studio version. Deniz Tek takes James' place onstage for the sequence "TV Eye"-"Loose"-"Dirt"-"Real Cool Time." Again, the band sound here is more spacious than in the studio versions, and the orchestral arrangements are unobtrusive and supportive. At one point in "Loose," Iggy careens into Deniz and then goes to the floor in an echo of his more dissolute past, and he wrings every ounce of drama out of "Dirt." He makes a few brief comments before "Ron's Tune," the new original that evolved into something more considered as "The Departed" on Ready To Die, but here is raw emotion. And they take it out with a rousing "No Fun." You get the feeling that somewhere, Ron was smiling (when not trying to flick cigarette ashes on Iggy's head).

Special features include the opening set by a band called the Space Age Toasters, and interviews (shot by Tony D'Annunzio, director of Louder Than Love: The Grande Ballroom Story, recently reviewed here) that include Rollins (getting his spiel together the night before the concert), filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (whose own Stooges doco we anxiously anticipate), and Deniz Tek (who speaks of Ron with the real affection of a close friend).

They've come a long way from their beginnings as the ultimate outsiders to this once-in-a-lifetime performance, but like my buddy Geoff from Philly (who was there) is fond of saying, "The Stooges always win."

FZ's "A Token of His Extreme"

About half of this DVD has been seen before, on the Dub Room Special set, but there it was intercut with footage from the '81 Palladium Halloween show that was broadcast on MTV and is now available in its entahrty as The Torture Never Stops.

This is better because the '74 Brock/Duke/Underwood/Fowler/Thompson lineup probably had the best balance of chops and personality of any Zappa band after the original Mothers (around whom they could play circles). The '80s bands added virtuosity but were kind of boring, and the material got more self-indulgent (songs like "Bobby Brown" were the auditory equivalent of the fictitious "gross-out contest" wherein FZ is purported to have eaten shit).

As Frank explains in the special feature Mike Douglas Show interview (which also includes a nifty performance of "Black Napkins" through a Pignose, accompanied by the Douglas show band), A Token of His Extreme was shot on his dime and shopped to American TV networks and syndication, which roundly rejected it.

The editing -- lots of quick cuts and overlays -- can be distracting, but I suppose one could argue that it allows you to see more of the action than if Frank had chosen to focus on one muso at a time. The intimate club vibe of the TV studio, with the band dressed as though for a day at the beach, is light years away from the Big Rock Show dynamics of Baby Snakes, Does Humor Belong In Music?, and Torture.

The band is ace: the humorous interplay between rubber-legged Napoleon Murphy Brock and Hancock/Corea surrogate George Duke, and the intertwining of their soulful voices; Ruth Underwood's joyful presence as she plays those impossible percussion parts and more than compensates for the absence of Roxy and Elsewhere second drummer Ralph Humphreys; the elastic riddim section of Tom Fowler and Chester Thompson.

FZ's guitar plays a bigger part in the arrangements here than it did on Roxy (in the same way Robbie Mangano's did with the Grandmothers of Invention at the Kessler last summer), and he's still soloing in the jazzed acid-blues bag of Hot Rats (rather than the metalloid approach he'd roll out with Zoot Allures). When he plays a mundane solo, he has the good sense to throw in some of Bruce Bickford's wacko animation to provide some visual interest, but the ones he plays on "Florentine Pogen" (excised from the version on One Size Fits All, although the basic track came right from this show), "Pygmy Twylyte" (greatly altered and distended from the Roxy version), and "More Trouble Every Day" are fiery and satisfying.

So for now, A Token of His Extreme is probably the best way to experience this band, at least until the Zappa Family Trust finds a way to get the post-production done that Gail says would be necessary to make the Roxy video releasable. Within our lifetimes, perhaps?

Pssst! Hey, kid! Wanna see a doco about the early days of St. Lester?

Wire Nest - "The Good The Bad and The Dubby"

New dub wonderment from Sub Oslo magicians Frank Cervantez and John Nuckels.

Pssst! Hey, kid! Wanna see a Joni Mitchell interview?

The estimable singer-songwriter talks to the CBC's Jian Ghomeshi. One of the best things of its kind of seen, thanks to the interviewer's empathy and the subject's candor. I see a Joni binge in my future.

Stuffs 'n' such

i.

Jazz labels are typically associated with a certain sound and style. For Blue Note, it was hard bop in the '50s, post-bop modernism in the '60s. Atlantic carried the soul jazz banner through the '50s before raising the flag for the "New Thing" with landmark releases by Coltrane and Coleman in '59. The children of Trane and Ornette hung their hats at Impulse, while ESP-Disk recorded the more outre and avant manifestations, as well as documenting a kind of generalized Greenwich Village weirdness.

The estimable Portuguese indie Clean Feed -- now in its 12th year of existence -- is a little more eclectic. If the label has precursors, they reside at opposite ends of the spectrum: the extreme avant-gardismo of Hat Hut, say, and the lapidary poetry of ECM. Thus, in the current Clean Feed release, the ecstatic glossolalia of Trespass Trio and Joe McPhee's Human Encore rubs shoulders with the intimate dialogue of The Destructive Element by Harris Eisenstadt's September Trio.

On Mirage, New York-based tenorman Ellery Eskelin (a familiar of our fave Dennis Gonzalez) leads a drummerless trio that includes the avant-garde steel guitarist Susan Alcorn. In the austere sound field they create, scraps of melody rise like wisps of smoke, and the slightest gesture is magnified. Alcorn uses her instrument's silvery texture to voice querulous inquiries, like John Abercrombie and Nels Cline do when they're leaning on their volume pedals. Elsewhere, the date has the atonal ebullience of Ornette's duets with Charlie Haden.

Made To Break's Provoke features a quartet that includes Christof Kurzmann's electronics ("Lloop") alongside Windy City institution Ken Vandermark on reeds and Nels Cline Singers bassist Devin Hoff. The result is a bracing jazz/rock hybrid (imagine Archie Shepp sitting in with King Crimson). When Hoff leans into a rolling ostinato and Vandermark unfurls sheets of sonic surprise, they generate heat as well as light.

The pick of this litter, however, is Eric Revis' City of Asylum, on which the ex-Branford Marsalis bassist leads a trio with pianist Kris Davis and drummer Andrew Cyrille. With her unfettered expression and robust technique, Davis is the closest thing you can hear in the now to the emerging Cecil Taylor of the '60s. With Cyrille shadowing her the way he did Cecil on Unit Structures and Conquistador, City of Asylum is an unexpected delight.

ii.

If you want to understand what happened to America since the '80s, you could do worse than to start by reading Mick Farren's pulp sci-fi novels The Armageddon Crazy (1989) and The Feelies (1990). In their way, both books are as prophetic of Millennial 'Meercuh as the films A Face In the Crowd and Network were.

Farren (b. 1943) has been an astute social commentator since the '60s, when he alternated fronting the Deviants (a grungy "people's band" that was the closest UK equivalent to the MC5 and Stooges when they were happening) and helping launch the Brit underground press as a scribe for OZ and International Times.

A persuasive advocate of punk -- for which he somewhat disingenuously sounded the clarion call in "The Titanic Sails At Dawn," published in the New Musical Express as the first wave of Brit punkers was leaving the starting gate -- he spent the '80s in Lower Manhattan and the '90s and oh-ohs in L.A, where he continued casting a jaundiced eye on the passing scene, whether his medium was fiction (a dozen sci-fi novels and a quartet of vampire stories) or journalism (in the alt-press and the blogosphere -- don't fear the content warning on his Doc40 blog; some folks just can't take a joke).

Farren moved back to the UK a couple of years ago to get medical care and resume performing with the Deviants on a regular basis; world without end, amen. Now Headpress -- a Brit imprint whose other offerings include a repubbed John Sinclair's Guitar Army and a decent 13th Floor Elevators bio -- has unleashed Elvis Died For Somebody's Sins But Not Mine, subtitled A Lifetime's Collected Writing.

It's a well-selected compendium of stuff going back to the very beginning, including enough obscure and previously unpublished items to make it a more than worthwhile purchase, even if you already own all of his other books. The table of contents fails to list individual pieces; if you're going in, Farren wants you all the way in.

There's rockaroll here -- the aforementioned "Titanic Sails At Dawn;" revealing portraits of Pete Townshend, Frank Zappa, Johnny Cash, and Chuck Berry; the 1982 Village Voice piece on the Who and the Clash at Shea Stadium that let me know the jig was up when I read it while in the Air Force in Korea (while listening to Combat Rock melding, Ives-like, with "The Message" and Journey's Infinity on my barracks mates' dueling cassette players).

The real meat of the matter, however, is in the other subject matter to which Farren devotes his attention: the evil that those in power do, the polis's endless gift for mass delusion, Elvis as metaphor for a generation's dreams (how could something that started out so promising end so ignominiously?), the end of the world. The fictional offerings include a snippet from the long-out-of-print "gauche first novel," The Texts of Festival, recently returned to availability via Kindle. Sometimes I hate the future less.

ADDENDUM: Just found out Farren has a radio show at basic.fm starting on June 18th. Not sure what time yet, but more when we know more.

"Louder Than Love: The Grande Ballroom Story"

I have three stories that I keep writing over and over.

The first is about a social outsider who's also a creative person, and why you should be interested in them. (Most of my cover stories for the Fort Worth Weekly fit in this category.) The second is about a group of people who grow up together through music. (Most band bios fit in this category, one way or another.) The last is about a group of people who find a sense of community centered around music. The Wreck Room Stories book that I did with my wife is an example of this. Producer/director Tony D'Annunzio's documentary Louder Than Love: The Grande Ballroom Story is another, and it's a corker. (That means it's a goodun.)

The story of Russ Gibb's Grande Ballroom is one which signifies a great deal for me, since I spent a lot of time as a teenager listening to Detroit bands like the Stooges, the MC5, Mitch Ryder's Detroit, the Rationals, Bob Seger, SRC, and the Frost, and reading about the Motor City's radicalized youth community in Creem magazine and John Sinclair's articles for Jazz & Pop. From October 1966 to January 1970, the Grande was the epicenter of that community and a hotbed of rebellion, drugs, sex, revolutionary politics, and rock 'n' roll. For much of that time, it was also an essential stop for touring bands, particularly those from the UK.

While the Grande might have been patterned on the model of San Francisco psychedelic ballrooms like the Fillmore and the Avalon, the Detroit audience gave it a down-to-Earth, no-bullshit midwestern spirit that made it many performers' favorite place in America to play. And the hard-nosed, competitive Michigan music scene meant that listeners' expectations there were as elevated as their consciousness.

In his first film, D'Annunzio, a Detroit native with two decades in broadcast TV, tells this compelling story via interviews, archival footage and still photography -- including many of Leni Sinclair's iconic images of the MC5 and others -- and the stunning work of Grande poster artists Gary Grimshaw and Carl Lundgren. (After viewing Louder Than Love, I was motivated to peruse Sinclair and Grimshaw's book Detroit Rocks and immerse myself in those images again.)

The interviews are the heart of the story, and they're exceptionally well presented, including some surprises. Grande impresario Gibb -- a high school teacher who got his start in music promoting sock-hops because his students weren't allowed to have dances -- describes his exposure to the West Coast hippie ballroom culture (which every Texas music fan knows was exported there by Austin expat Chet Helms) and his efforts to bring it to the Grande -- a disused '20s dance palace and a great-sounding room designed for live music -- aided and abetted by rock 'n' roll beatnik poet/MC5 manager Sinclair. Gibb's an articulate and personable fellow who was willing to give the kids what they wanted even if it didn't appeal to him personally. (For the record, it was a blender the Stooges brought onstage for their first performance, not a toilet.)

Talking to D'Annunzio's camera, Sinclair comes across as much less overbearing than he did in the MC5 documentary A True Testimonial. Viewers who've seen that film will also note that guitarist Wayne Kramer seems more relaxed and spontaneous here, and drummer Dennis Thompson less angry and combative. (Maybe having a hometown boy behind the microphone makes a difference?) One of Louder Than Love's most surprising interviews is ex-Amboy Dukes guitarist Ted Nugent, who wisely puts his shrill right-wing blowhard persona on hold (or has it done for him editorially) and speaks of the Grande and '60s Detroit music scene with both fervor and humility.

Grande manager and Who familiar Tom Wright (whose memoir Roadwork is eminently worth seeking out) describes the importance of the Grande to the Who and other English bands, his reminiscences supported by Roger Daltrey's. Louder Than Love includes snippets from Wright's audio of the Who's world premiere performance of Tommy at the Grande, as well as previously unseen 8mm footage of that show. Emcee Dave Miller remembers having Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker to dinner at his parents' house, while photographer Tom Weschler recalls the night the crowd loaded Cream's equipment out over their heads so the band could make a flight home for Christmas.

B.B. King speaks with emotion of the rousing reception he received from the Grande audience, while Alice Cooper, whose band relocated to Detroit from L.A., talks about how they had to step up their game to earn a place on the Grande stage. Producer Don Was, too young to have played the Grande, provides a wealth of insight on the venue and its surrounding milieu. "Grande groupie" Ruth Hoffman and Fifth Estate editor Harvey Ovshinsky also provide valuable perspectives. My only beef with the interviews is that Rationals frontman Scott Morgan only makes a brief appearance, while non-participants like Henry Rollins (who's at least intelligent and informed in speaking of the Detroit scene's impact) and Slash get lots more onscreen time. It's also noteworthy that Morgan is seen without a hat for the first time since about 1987. (Why'd Ted get to keep his on?)

D'Annunzio integrates his interview material and period images seamlessly. There's a noticeable reliance on performance footage from other venues, most noticeably the 1967 Belle Isle Love-In (the Stooges' infamous 1970 Cincinnati Pop Festival appearance is disguised in B&W), but it doesn't detract from the film's impact. The soundtrack is rich with Detroit rock 'n' roll music from the period. It also includes a new song from Frost leader Dick Wagner, as well as the late MC5 singer Rob Tyner's paean to "Grande Days."

Louder Than Love is currently making the rounds of festivals. D'Annunzio says it should be out on DVD by late fall or early winter this year. Watch for it. This story will resonate for you if you grew up getting your clothes moved around by air molecules from drum heads and speaker cones, whether or not you're familiar with the era it describes. For besides being unique and historic, the Grande's story is also universal.