gang of four
when i moved back to the fort from colorado in the spring of 1980, after an interval of cooling my heels back at my parents' house on long island, i lived in a duplex off of 5th st. near university. my next door neighbors were a couple of ripping-off truckdrivers who were always offering me stuff they'd stolen, which i invariably declined. one night i heard the guy in the house on the other side pleading for his life. the next day, he and his family had evaporated. for awhile my buddy j.d. and his wife stayed with me. she used to come to the record store where we worked and sit behind him while he ran the register to make sure he wasn't flirting with the female customers.
the windows to this place were painted shut, and the only heat came from gas space heaters which sat on the carpeted floors. there was no air conditioning. in march, when i got back, it was still cold enough at night that i'd put on every stitch of clothing i owned before climbing under the covers and shivering, because i was paranoid about the heaters falling over and setting the place on fire. when it got warm, it got really, really warm. if dan lightner hadn't lent me a small electric fan, i'd have perished. i used to sit in front of the fan until i'd sweated every molecule of moisture from my body, then walk three blocks to the 7 eleven to buy more gatorade or beer.
sometime that spring i took a day trip to austin with brian quigley and tim schuller and wound up getting thrown in jail in fairfield, in ellis county, for having a car full of empty beer cans when the local cop pulled me over on i-35 for having a taillight out. schuller (who was much more inebriated than i was) wound up driving the car back to dallas, and after lightner came down and bailed me out, i rode the bus over to schuller's sumptuous oak lawn palace to retrieve my ride. i got home that night, flushed the toilet, and all of a sudden i felt like i was in a jerry lewis movie. water started shooting out of the toilet tank. i managed to direct it into the shower. if i'd had half (make that a quarter) of a brain, i'd have just _turned the water off_ from under the toilet tank, but instead i unassed the joint, called my landlady, who said she'd send her son over to check it out. then i went to check into a motel 6 on las vegas trail for the night.
the next day i got back from work and found the water was still spraying out of the toilet tank. the place was as humid a swamp, and there was water lapping at the carpet next to the bathroom (which would give me a sense of deja vu when i encountered the three inches of fetid water on the floor of the men's room at the triad club on keesler air force base a couple of years later). i threw all my shit in the car, called the landlady and told her i was moving, then went to check into the rio motel on camp bowie until i could find another shitty apartment to live in. again, all i really needed to do was _turn the water off_, but by that time i was tired of the place anyway.
for most of the time i lived in that apartment, i owned two tapes: the debut albums by the specials and the pretenders. i listened to them continuously for about three months. then around the time i moved, i got a promo copy of the first gang of four album from work. i was already a clash fan. i'd seen 'em twice the year before, once at the armadillo in austin, then a couple of nights later at the palladium in dallas, where i walked in just in time to see charles and barbara buxton running out with their hands over their ears and figured, "this is going to be _good_." i watched joe strummer pound his mic stand against the stage and spit imprecations through ruined teeth while mick jones strutted around like a stormtrooper and thought, "these guys are _the shit_."
i liked the idea of english punk better than the american variety because, y'know, those guys were _political_, their economy in the shitter, unemployment high (although nowhere near as bad as it'd get in the '80s and '90s); hell, they'd had rationing througout the '50s, it was like world war II never ended there. but the clash were really more rock than punk; they started showing their true colors (or colours) on london calling, which i rode down to denver with glenn gutierrez to buy on the day it was released: strummer starting to gravitate more and more towards the american roots music he'd tried to play with the 101'ers, while mick jones revealed that he just wanted to be in mott the hoople.
the gang of four seemed a lot more to the point. they sang in their own leeds university student accents, not foreign service brat strummer's affected cockney. rather than the grand anthemic rock the clash played once they'd gained sufficient control of their instruments and added journeyman topper headon on drums, gang of four played a crabbed, beefheartian version of funk, with andy gill spraying jagged shards of splintered gtr notes every which way, and sang about meaningful stuff in an intelligent way that offered no cheap slogans (except for the occasional advertising mantra turned on its head), no messianic bullshit. later on they veered off into dance music (of course).
i hear they just played coachella, and are getting ready to re-release their debut (good) album entertainment! on rhino. i was reminded of 'em yesterday, when kcrw played "to hell with poverty," which i used to have on their brief history of the twentieth century comp. it'd be good to hear them sing "damaged goods" and "at home he's a tourist" again. i'd forgotten how much decent music there was between '80 and '82, when i kinda lost the thread for awhile.
the windows to this place were painted shut, and the only heat came from gas space heaters which sat on the carpeted floors. there was no air conditioning. in march, when i got back, it was still cold enough at night that i'd put on every stitch of clothing i owned before climbing under the covers and shivering, because i was paranoid about the heaters falling over and setting the place on fire. when it got warm, it got really, really warm. if dan lightner hadn't lent me a small electric fan, i'd have perished. i used to sit in front of the fan until i'd sweated every molecule of moisture from my body, then walk three blocks to the 7 eleven to buy more gatorade or beer.
sometime that spring i took a day trip to austin with brian quigley and tim schuller and wound up getting thrown in jail in fairfield, in ellis county, for having a car full of empty beer cans when the local cop pulled me over on i-35 for having a taillight out. schuller (who was much more inebriated than i was) wound up driving the car back to dallas, and after lightner came down and bailed me out, i rode the bus over to schuller's sumptuous oak lawn palace to retrieve my ride. i got home that night, flushed the toilet, and all of a sudden i felt like i was in a jerry lewis movie. water started shooting out of the toilet tank. i managed to direct it into the shower. if i'd had half (make that a quarter) of a brain, i'd have just _turned the water off_ from under the toilet tank, but instead i unassed the joint, called my landlady, who said she'd send her son over to check it out. then i went to check into a motel 6 on las vegas trail for the night.
the next day i got back from work and found the water was still spraying out of the toilet tank. the place was as humid a swamp, and there was water lapping at the carpet next to the bathroom (which would give me a sense of deja vu when i encountered the three inches of fetid water on the floor of the men's room at the triad club on keesler air force base a couple of years later). i threw all my shit in the car, called the landlady and told her i was moving, then went to check into the rio motel on camp bowie until i could find another shitty apartment to live in. again, all i really needed to do was _turn the water off_, but by that time i was tired of the place anyway.
for most of the time i lived in that apartment, i owned two tapes: the debut albums by the specials and the pretenders. i listened to them continuously for about three months. then around the time i moved, i got a promo copy of the first gang of four album from work. i was already a clash fan. i'd seen 'em twice the year before, once at the armadillo in austin, then a couple of nights later at the palladium in dallas, where i walked in just in time to see charles and barbara buxton running out with their hands over their ears and figured, "this is going to be _good_." i watched joe strummer pound his mic stand against the stage and spit imprecations through ruined teeth while mick jones strutted around like a stormtrooper and thought, "these guys are _the shit_."
i liked the idea of english punk better than the american variety because, y'know, those guys were _political_, their economy in the shitter, unemployment high (although nowhere near as bad as it'd get in the '80s and '90s); hell, they'd had rationing througout the '50s, it was like world war II never ended there. but the clash were really more rock than punk; they started showing their true colors (or colours) on london calling, which i rode down to denver with glenn gutierrez to buy on the day it was released: strummer starting to gravitate more and more towards the american roots music he'd tried to play with the 101'ers, while mick jones revealed that he just wanted to be in mott the hoople.
the gang of four seemed a lot more to the point. they sang in their own leeds university student accents, not foreign service brat strummer's affected cockney. rather than the grand anthemic rock the clash played once they'd gained sufficient control of their instruments and added journeyman topper headon on drums, gang of four played a crabbed, beefheartian version of funk, with andy gill spraying jagged shards of splintered gtr notes every which way, and sang about meaningful stuff in an intelligent way that offered no cheap slogans (except for the occasional advertising mantra turned on its head), no messianic bullshit. later on they veered off into dance music (of course).
i hear they just played coachella, and are getting ready to re-release their debut (good) album entertainment! on rhino. i was reminded of 'em yesterday, when kcrw played "to hell with poverty," which i used to have on their brief history of the twentieth century comp. it'd be good to hear them sing "damaged goods" and "at home he's a tourist" again. i'd forgotten how much decent music there was between '80 and '82, when i kinda lost the thread for awhile.
posted by stashdauber at 11:06 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home