dave and daver, old punks, grit noise & revolution
so last saturday we went to the little jazz fest to see dave and daver play with the sun directly in their faces in front of a huge expanse of empty v.i.p. tables so the ppl who came to see them had to stand a minimum of like 50 feet away. the best seat in the house was occupied by a cadillac (hearing jazz always makes me want an escalade). on bass, wearing a mucho-appropriate porkpie hat to protect his dome from the rays, paul unger sounded so good that i'll bet he wasn't even thinking about the tiny-ass wittle stage to which the schedulers had consigned his miles davis tribute during evening rush hour on friday. ditto dave karnes on drums, in spite of the fact the cloth-eared soundman had neglected to mic anything but the kick and snare. the set really belonged to self-effacing tenorman / co-leader dave williams, whose tunes they were playing. it was good to hear 'em outdoors in the light of day, and they even lit some fireworks on "solid state marty" and "night at the bongalows." prolly now, having made it up to 'em for last yr, when they got rained out, the festival organizers'll write 'em off in favor of festival generica. feh.
a coupla days later, ex-nervebreaker / current big gun mike haskins e-mailed a buncha ppl a pic of a hendrix show he attended as a teenager back in '68, which was notable for the complete absence of stage monitors and drum mics. musos weren't pussies in those days; they spent eons tuning onstage, and drummers like mitch mitchell learned to hit them skins _hard_ to try and be heard over those marshall stacks: their technique was all forearm, no wrist. as the protracted virtual convo turned to such esoteric subjects as who influenced who, mike bloomfield / the grateful dead / the cream, it occurred to me that the first generation of punks like haskins and steve dirkx from the telefones were really '60s rock'n'roll kids. in the same way as tim leary and richard alpert were whiskey-drinking harvard academics who'd ingested the whole of western culture up to their moment before they started eating acid, those old punkers had their _cultural referents_ down before they went about the biz of smashing 'em, and it made all the difference.
yeah, yeah, we know, boring old fart, 40 is the new 20, blah blah blah. let's hear some _old school_ punk: green day.
_fuck_ you poser-ass bitches.
finally, i should note the existence of a tome entitled grit, noise, and revolution: the birth of detroit rock 'n' roll, written by one david a. carson and pubbed by the university of michigan press. inasmuch as i would rather be ripped in half by tractors in texas stadium than read another book like this, i would be less than honest if i didn't admit that this is, in a sense, the book i wanted to write a few yrs ago, when i was doing lotsa interviewing of '60s and '70s dee-troit rock'n'roll peeps. oh well.
my butt-hunger subsides, but the nicotine withdrawal apparently has other interesting side-effects.
a coupla days later, ex-nervebreaker / current big gun mike haskins e-mailed a buncha ppl a pic of a hendrix show he attended as a teenager back in '68, which was notable for the complete absence of stage monitors and drum mics. musos weren't pussies in those days; they spent eons tuning onstage, and drummers like mitch mitchell learned to hit them skins _hard_ to try and be heard over those marshall stacks: their technique was all forearm, no wrist. as the protracted virtual convo turned to such esoteric subjects as who influenced who, mike bloomfield / the grateful dead / the cream, it occurred to me that the first generation of punks like haskins and steve dirkx from the telefones were really '60s rock'n'roll kids. in the same way as tim leary and richard alpert were whiskey-drinking harvard academics who'd ingested the whole of western culture up to their moment before they started eating acid, those old punkers had their _cultural referents_ down before they went about the biz of smashing 'em, and it made all the difference.
yeah, yeah, we know, boring old fart, 40 is the new 20, blah blah blah. let's hear some _old school_ punk: green day.
_fuck_ you poser-ass bitches.
finally, i should note the existence of a tome entitled grit, noise, and revolution: the birth of detroit rock 'n' roll, written by one david a. carson and pubbed by the university of michigan press. inasmuch as i would rather be ripped in half by tractors in texas stadium than read another book like this, i would be less than honest if i didn't admit that this is, in a sense, the book i wanted to write a few yrs ago, when i was doing lotsa interviewing of '60s and '70s dee-troit rock'n'roll peeps. oh well.
my butt-hunger subsides, but the nicotine withdrawal apparently has other interesting side-effects.
posted by stashdauber at 11:00 PM
1 Comments:
Grit, Noise,and Revolution is OK, but it's a stopgap book. Carson primarily just did a cut-and-paste edit job of others' material. I'm quoted and cited in it, so is another writer friend of mine. Neither of us were contacted, nor paid. It's fun to be in hardcover, but my musician interviews appeared in magazine for and had new, original interviews. Carson's book is all reprinted, old material. It's a mystery why everyone wet their diapers after it came out: it's not the ideal MI rock history book, just a short-form attempt using others' writings.
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