Half the battle of achieving anything is knowing when you need help (and let me save you a couple of hundred bucks in therapy here, you ALWAYS need help... think public radio model: "we're all in this together/I can't do it without you"). The hard part for some, then, is asking for it.

Obviously, shamelessness = a plus, i.e., just the simple act of asking is not for the tame-at-heart. SOL if that isn't your bag; you're going to need to acquire some assertive chops pronto. Because (say it together with me people) when you don't ask, the answer is always no.

But asking isn't even the hard part. First, you have to have people to ask. You have to have fans.

Whether it's your mom (or mine), your friends, your coworkers --- I don't care --- everyone has fans [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Kings Of Pain: Running afoul of der Golem and der Kings of Leon's psycho handlers, with your friendly, neighborhood Ettes. Whose frontwoman, of course, is actually... SATAN!

By Coco Hames

I have never had much luck with authority figures.  Anyone can tell you.  Whether it's my first grade teacher or the man checking my passport at the Swiss border: they just don't like my face.  I'm aware of it going in, and I try to compose myself, but it's very frustrating, and sometimes I blow my stack.  Once, at an airport in Berlin, the ticket agent didn't like my face.  He looked at our previously-approved gear and said, casually, just because he felt like it, "That will be 300 Euros."  It was really early in the morning and I was hungover, which works to my advantage sometimes, because I'm too tired and nauseous to fight.  But it didn't cost 300 Euros and anyway, I didn't have 300 Euros.  And I informed him of as much.  Well, one thing led to another, which led to me kneeling on the concrete floor, tearing apart all of our luggage, screaming about fascism as police officers closed in on me.

 
The point is, I have a real, visceral problem with people who abuse their authority.  I understand the need for order, I sympathize with the necessity of certain social constructs, I respect the people who help maintain the structure of our seemingly functional matrix, I wave at crossing guards, I do.  What I cannot accept is the wicked impulse that invariably takes hold of a person in a position of authority.  Whether it is a temporary glitch, corrected as soon as the person realizes their folly (like Boromir handing it over in Lord of the Rings) or a cognizant, ongoing, coked out desire to gain and abuse power... either way, it's bad news. 

And I'm not sure which form took hold of the manager of the Kings of Leon while the Ettes were on tour with the band earlier this year in Copenhagen, but it Really.  Was.  Something.

 
Backstage at our first show together, everyone was very nice and spirits were high: the King boys had just won a Grammy, and were soon to attend the Brit Awards, for which they all (correctly) had great expectations.  Everyone was in a good mood, everyone was nice.  I'd noticed the red plastic football helmet fastened to the drummer's kit and asked, "Who's the Sooner?"  They said they all were.  Gulp, right?  (I'm a Gator, the Florida Gators beat the Oklahoma Sooners last year in the National Championship, and the band had even attended the game, owitch!)  But no, everyone was friendly and we got off to a great start.  The show was sold out and we had a blast, and afterward, the boys invited us out for drinks.

 
This was all very pleasant; it was really fun to be at a posh hotel bar in Denmark chatting about pleasant things like where we go to drink in Nashville, where we all live.  The juxtaposition of a 6,000 capacity sold out show and chit-chat about local traffic amuses me to no end, truly.  It's what I love most about what I do, the absurdity, I just love the absurd.  Roald Dahl, Hunter S. Thompson, Dali, politics, names of crayon colors, you name it.

 
Now, either we got too close too fast and their manager didn't like it, or they actually did think we stole that bottle of champagne, but something happened.  Everything was fine, everyone was drinking and talking and having a nice time.  Caleb asked if I wanted any champagne, since the label had sent over four bottles in congratulations to the four boys for their Grammy.  I demurred, since I actually don't care for champagne, but he left the bottle all the same.

 
Presently, the boys departed, and by the time we were heading out of the bar, a British friend asked about the bottle.  Oh, I said.  That was theirs, from the label.  I waved my hand dismissively, as if to say, take it if you want.  Poni went to the restroom, I stepped outside with a couple friends to get them a taxi, and as I was headed back to the bar, I saw Poni in full run with fury on her face.  I looked to where she was going, and there were Jem, our British friend, and a couple of guys I didn't know, in full brawl.  One of the strangers threw my British friend up against the wall.  Not okay.

 
I remember yelling, "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" as I ran into the melee, prising bodies apart alongside Poni.  The strangers were yelling, howling, at Jem, "You know what you did!  Now you're going to get a kicking!"  Jem looked bewildered, and Poni and I were foaming mad; as Poe says, no one insults me [or my band] with impunity.  I can imagine, it must be really annoying to have two tiny girls fly up into your face, spitting and cursing, and this is in public, mind you, so I'm sure we weren't afraid of much.  These guys looked at us imperious, slackjawed, like they could not believe we had the audacity to yell what we were yelling (which was remarkably colorful, to say the very least).  One of them sneered derisively, "First night of tour, good job."  Poni tossed them a final comment (she can be so inspired sometimes) and we gathered our friends and left the bar.

 
Once outside, we got the lowdown:  Our British friend had taken the forsaken bottle of champagne and was walking out with it, when two guys blew raging into his face.  Our friend said, oh, I didn't think it was a big deal, and put the bottle down.  But these men said, no, he'd already taken it, the damage was already done.  Our friend, being British (and did I mention, a rocker?) said with charm, "Okay, fuck off then."  And I believe that began the rustle Poni and I fell upon a few minutes later.

 
"Who the hell were they, though?  What did they care?" I asked, totally hassled.  We were standing outside the hotel, smoking and waiting for a taxi.  Jem said, "They said they were the Kings of Leon's management."  I widened my eyes and laughed, "Yeah, right!  What a bunch of psychos, no manager would behave like that, you'd get arrested with shit like that in the States, what a bunch of lying weirdos, God!"  This incredulous laughter and bashing of the pugalistic lunatics we'd left upstairs continued until our taxi arrived and took us to our hotel.

 
The next day in the van, we had chalked it up as just another night and forgotten about it, when we got a phone call from our booking agent.  He asked to speak to me.  I said, oh hello!  He said, "What is this about a bottle of champagne?"  My jaw dropped.  I started laughing, and asked "Why?"  Our booker then proceeded to read me an e-mail the Kings of Leon's manager and tour manager had written to him, evidently just after the incident, which had occurred around 4am.  The post-incident ranting (chock full of insults and interesting theories) against the dubious character of these strange men?  Oh, that took place conveniently right under their hotel room window.  Sound travels so clearly in the cold Copenhagen night air... Certainly I won't make any criminal accusations, but gosh, I wish I was able to stay up all night after an international flight and a very busy concert, you know, starting fistfights, spying on people and furiously typing scathing (and untrue) tattletales, you know, without having employed any egomaniacally rage-inducing powdery chemical enhancement...

(pictured above: Kings of Leon w/tour crew and management, circa 2009)

 
So.  We were in big trouble.  It is indeed a marvel that we weren't kicked off the tour right then and there, I suppose.  It seems someone stood up for us, though I still don't know the magnanimous who.  But as the wheel turns, neither were these men to be insulted with impunity, and it was time to take our medicine. 

 
They took away our rider.  They took away our guest list.  They took away our sound check.  No one was allowed to speak to us, and no one did.  Gone was the cajoling, open and energetic atmosphere of the first night, replaced by drone-solemn performance of duties and many tightly closed doors.  It was of course a bit embarrassing, and a bit of a hassle, but what could we do?  We stood by what we did, and we'd do it again.  All Poni and I saw were guys going after our friend and bass player.  Any such action would spur us to the same equal and opposite reaction, anytime, anywhere, no matter who you think you are, or who you work for.

 
If they didn't know then, they know now, that we are a punk band; as used to smuggling booze as a bootlegger; as accustomed to solitude as monks; as comfortable as, well, a punk band, to not having sound check.  Infuriatingly to the management, of course, their punishments made no impact.  And it was of course only our pleasure to display it.  We played by all the rules, kicked ass at every show, and got the crowds crazy amped.  The management avoided us like the plague, and we saw neither hide nor hair of them for most of the tour.  Our punishment was finally lifted in Paris, where it was clearly in the air what had happened, but everyone was kind of over it.  We played ping pong with the boys (don't let Jem's long pants fool you, bit of trivia: he went to the Junior Olympics for table tennis) and talked about Michael Pollan, dismemberment, the Beatles.  We walked into the tour manager's office and he so generously welcomed us: "Hello, sober people!" and we hugged and laughed.  Oh you silly, we are never sober...

  
Thus far, nothing has been mentioned of this incident, and I've wondered whether I should put it out there.  Should it just go undocumented?  Should I just keep quiet and resume lurking in the shadows, pretending it didn't happen?  Should I keep my head down, yes sir, no sir, what do I do, sir, where do I go sir, what do I say?  It would be par for the course with my polite southern upbringing, not wanting to cause a fuss.  It is expected that I would keep quiet. 

Because, you know, the greatest trick I ever pulled was convincing the world I didn't exist.

***

Blurt "co-co-editor" Coco Hames fronts The Ettes - Hames on guitar, Jem Cohen on bass and Poni Silver on drums - whose album Look At Life Again Soon and EP, Danger Is, were released by Take Root. Their new Greg Cartwright-produced album Do You Want Power hits stores Sept. 29, and you bet we're gonna have a big feature on the band in our next issue. Check out the band's MySpace page for music and tour dates.

More than a guest post this week... it's a guest Mad Libs. All their idea. In case you needed another reason to fall in love with these guys :-):



Photo by Anthony Byrd

Dear (name of person) Jeffrey,

Before leaving on tour, we made sure to pack the (noun) banana in preparation for two-weeks on the road in (name of country) Kazakhstan. At our first show, we were fortunate to have (name of famous person) Andy Warhol as a support act. By the time we went on stage, the audience, at first, was (adjective) outrageous but by the end of the show they warmed up to us and became (adjective) sugary [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Would you like to know how John, Paul, George, and Ringo destroyed
rock'n'roll? Me too, which is why I read all the way to the end of Elijah
Wald's How the Beatles Destroyed Rock'n'Roll, even as I became
increasingly doubtful that the book would justify its title.

It sure doesn't. In fact, the Beatles feature only in the introduction,
epilogue, and final chapter (out of 17). The narrative runs from around 1890
to 1970, and spends relatively little time with the Fab Four. Paul Whiteman,
an early-20th-century big-band leader, gets much more ink than Paul
McCartney.

In many ways, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock'n'Roll is not a bad book. But
it doesn't deliver on its title, which is a bait-and-switch tease, or even
its subtitle: An Alternative History of American Popular History.

Alternative to what? To rock cultists who celebrate only the most obscure,
least commercial examples of the genre, apparently. But such people aren't
all that common -- they couldn't be, or the music they prize wouldn't be
obscure. And most of us cultists don't deny the appeal of mainstream pop. I
like Future of the Left, but am aware that Taylor Swift sells significantly
better.

While surveying pre-Let It Be pop in some detail, Wald advances two
theses, which are not entirely compatible. The first is that all (or nearly
all) innovation in American popular music comes from African-Americans. The
second is that white and black U.S. musicians were influencing each other
long before the 1950s.

Anyone who's been paying attention already knows the latter. It's convenient
to suppose that 1954, the year of Elvis Presley's debut and Brown vs. the
Board of Education, was a bolt of lightning that demolished cultural
barriers and freed white teenagers to dance to "That's All Right, Mama." But
the endless argument over the "first rock'n'roll record" keeps pushing the
genre's origins back to performers, both black and white, who significantly
predate Elvis.

Wald is aware of that. In his research, he found that Ella Fitzgerald was
singing about "rock and roll" with a ballroom orchestra in 1937. And she
surely wasn't the first person to use the phrase.

If such revelations are less than startling, Wald's book does offer some
entertaining minutiae. I was charmed to learn, for example, about DJ shows
in the early days of TV that illustrated the music with abstract or random
imagery: Detroit's Pat'n'Johnny Show displayed "parakeets, canaries,
hamsters, rabbits, guinea pigs, tropical fish and other animals while
records spin."

I have some quibbles, a few of them related to my hometown, Washington, D.C. To illustrate the importance of brass bands in the earliest days of the
recording industry, Wald notes that Columbia Records's first catalogue,
published in 1890, listed 50 cylinders by the U.S. Marine Band, then under
the direction of popular march composer John Philip Sousa. But he doesn't
mention that Columbia, Sousa, and the Marine Band were all based in D.C. If
Columbia had been founded in New Orleans or Kansas City, its repertoire
would have been rather different. (He also misses the importance to Al
Jolson of a childhood spent in ethnically and racially mixed southwest D.C.,
and Washington's role in "hillbilly" music after World War II.)

To Wald's credit, much of the material to rebut his arguments is right there
in his own book. He charts an 80-year process in which "hot"
African-American rhythms gradually overwhelmed "sweet" Euro-American
melodies and arrangements. Yet he concedes that plenty of black musicians
emulated white ones, and not just during the big-band era. In the 1950s,
when Presley and other rockabilly types were getting raucous, the
top-selling black performers included Nat King Cole and Johnny Mathis.

#How the Beatles Destroyed Rock'n'Roll# seeks to elevate commercial
judgments over artistic ones. It wants to know which performers innovated,
but is more interested in which ones attracted a crowd. Yet these two things
can't be balanced exactly -- as every rock writer knows. While Wald travels
further back in time than many rock chroniclers, the art-versus-commerce
contradictions he encounters won't surprise thoughtful observers.

The book starts to get in real trouble around 1959, when Joan Baez signs to
the liberal-minded folk label Vanguard, rather than Columbia, the domain of
eclectic (and omnivorous) producer Mitch Miller. The new generation of "pop"
musicians who cared more about their idea of authenticity than about
pop-chart success challenges the author's simplistic analysis. Something
happened in the 1960s, and Wald doesn't know what it was.

He continues to assume that pop music is validated foremost by commercial
triumph. So he shortchanges Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones, despite their
enormous influence, because their records didn't sell all that well. And he
treats the free agents of the rock era like the journeymen of an earlier
age: He writes that "Atlantic used Eric Clapton and Duane Allman on
recordings by [Aretha] Franklin and [Wilson] Pickett," as if 1970s
rock-guitar gods were 1930s session players dependent on producers for a
gig.

Wald's essential gripe is that art-rock separated white music from its black
cousin, and he thinks rock has suffered from that breach. Despite its title,
however, the book spends very little time explaining how everything went
wrong.

It seems to all come down to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,
certainly not one of funkiest records of its time. Wald even credits the
Beatles's psychedelic-music-hall period for "opening the way for the Velvet
Underground." Yet the bulk of Velvets's first album was recorded in April
1966, when the Beatles's latest single was "Nowhere Man." #Sgt. Pepper's#
was only 14 months away, but those 14 months would be very eventful.

And the Beatles's acid-washed experiments didn't last long. By 1968, Lennon
would be writing blues-based stompers; in 1969, McCartney would instruct his
own band to "get back to where you once belonged." If the Beatles destroyed
rock'n'roll, they quickly turned to reviving it.

Wald's book reads like a very long introduction to a history that's yet to
be written. He discusses only a few of the myriad influences that led to
psychedelic rock and its various successors, and ends a tale that chronicles
immense diversity and complex interaction by trying to pin late-'60s rock
entirely on a single band. Also, because he's so laden with pop history,
Wald can't hear what's new in post-Beatles music that recasts '50s and '60s
rock.

If the Beatles forever separated white artiness from black earthiness, what
explains the Pop Group's punk-jazz, Talking Heads's Afro-punk, Prince's
new-waved soul, DJ Spooky's art-school hip-hop, or the Dirty Projectors's
high-life guitars? Or the rappers who sampled Kraftwerk, Led Zeppelin, and
the Police?

What really happened to rock in the '60s and '70s was not that it split in
two, but that it splintered into thousands of pieces. A history that
stitched together those fragments would be more useful than How the Beatles Destroyed Rock'n'Roll, which simply hangs new details on a long-established historical framework.

The gap between black and white American music from 1890-1970 isn't that
hard to explain: The country was racially segregated. That a sort of musical
segregation continues -- although it's not so straightforward as Wald
imagines -- is a much more interesting topic. It calls for someone to write
a history, but not an "alternative" one, and not one that attempts to fit
the sprawling jumble that is popular culture into rigid ideological
template.

I hate Led Zeppelin. That's not true. I don't hate them; I just don't buy into all the hype.
I've tried to fit in... especially in high school. I had a couple tapes though never really listened to them. Just kept them around for appearances. I even drew the ZOSO symbols from their fourth album on the white rubber part of my Chuck Taylors in 9th grade. I chalk that one up to peer pressure.
Robert Plant has a cool voice; Agreed. Jimmy Page is a great guitar player; No argument here. John Bonham kicked ass on the drums; No doubt. Individually they are brilliant. But put them all together and you've got a rock decent band, with a jones for old blues songs, but not THE defining moment in rock. They are pretty much the Blue Oyster Cult with better PR.
What most Zeppelin fans won't ever admit (regardless of how often these deep dark thoughts creep into their sweaty little heads) is that the idea of Led Zeppelin, the legend behind the band - everything from the wild groupie sex stories to the rumors of Satan worship - is far, far greater than the band's actually musical contribution.  
Name a song that you can't possible live without. "Stairway to Heaven"?  "Whole Lotta Love"?  "Rock and Roll"?  I'll take a Replacement's song any day of the week.

This is your brain on compassion. Any questions? (PS - support your local animal shelter.)

By Coco Hames

Since I spend a great deal of time out on the road, I am able to report with some accuracy the general and nebulous state of the nation.  I see it in the daylight, the nighttime, uptown, downtown, outskirts, above ground, underground, the denial, fury and/or apathy in hoity toity wine bars and the denial, fury and/or apathy of the griping dives.  And right now, what I can definitely say, is something most people already know: it's pretty rough out there.  Jobs are really hard to come by and, if you're fortunate enough to have one, your money is tight tight tight.  The need to save (instead of spend) shows up in lots of ways, and it doesn't just affect us human people.  In the past six months, I've seen an absolutely unprecedented amount of stray animals on the roads, and I don't just mean back alleys and city streets.  I mean packs of emaciated, mangy dogs trotting aimlessly and insanely through the medians of highways.  And I'm pretty sure we all know what the odds are for those dogs.

My mom said she read an article recently that the financial crunch is just so strong that, among other things, people are having to get rid of their dogs.  And while I am not in the mood to preach the "if you can't afford/take care of a dog, don't effing get one" sermon, I am in the mood to remind you -- if you are so inclined -- to visit your local shelter.

When I was in college my roommate Kiki and I used to foster dogs from the local kill shelter until we could find them a home.  We were the pain-in-the-ass bleeding heart dog savers, and yes, we were very annoying.  Especially to our other four roommates.  But I am glad for what we did, because when a dog has been at a kill shelter for too long, they euthanize them.  That's the way it is.  And while no-kill shelters are a nice idea, the fact is many of the dogs they get are sick, infirm, badly behaved and extremely unlikely to find what we in the biz cloyingly call "a forever home". 

Once, I made the mistake of visiting the Gainesville shelter without intent (you need to have a plan or you WILL go home either extremely upset or with a dog, and FYI the two states of mind are not mutually exclusive) and saw a little crazy guy (he looked like part terrier/part-squirrel) and noticed his euthanization date was the next day.  I didn't really have a choice.  So I took Jarvis home, and while he got along with my other dog, he was totally crazy.  I won't go into details.  He was just crazy.  But I cared for him and he even moved with me to New York.  That pushed him over the edge, all of the people and smells and sounds.  Jarvis was very unhappy and I didn't know what to do; I just knew I couldn't take him back to a shelter.

So I did some research and found petfinder.org.  If you are ever in search of a furry friend, I recommend it highly.  It's a free service that helps list the available rescue animals in your area.  I wrote a clear little bio of Jarvis and put up some pictures, and within a week, a nice lady called me from Maryland explaining her situation.  That their family dog had just passed away, their children were grown, and it was just her, her husband and some horses on a farm outside of DC.  We arranged for Jarvis to have a "visit" for a weekend, and he was so happy.  I still get e-mails from this lady, about every year, updating me on what a blessing Jarvis is and how happy they all are together.  Sometimes she sends me pictures.  Sometimes he's wearing a sweater.

The point is, I had shown petfinder.org to a friend here in Nashville who is beginning her search for a dog.  And I was looking at the available rescue dogs at our local shelters, when I came across a picture.  And yes, I am a sucker, okay?  Just put it out there, yes, Coco is a sucker and a major sucker for matted, emaciated, forgotten bag-o'-bones dogs, okay??  I drove down there and said, you, sad matted stray, you're coming with me.  She was all bones and butchered hair, what was left of her hair was matted and she had a sinus infection.  I'm happy to report that a week later, she's all juiced up on her shots, the sinus infection is nearly gone, and she is as sweet as can be.  She's really funny, really smart, and that is that.  Here's a picture of Lenore.

But Coco, you say, I have allergies/spacial issues/a really nice couch/a cat; I need a special kind of dog, I can't just go to a SHELTER.  To you I say, I am a major snob and have a purebred dog because I had excuses too (lifelong major allergies, fo realz) but if you do your research and know what you are looking for, you WILL find an animal in your area that meets your needs.  I gots needs!  There are of course a lot of things to consider, but if you make a checklist and give it time, you will find a friend you can rescue from a sad fate or situation, while filling your pet needs and enriching your life (BOTH of your lives) immensely.  You can have your cake and eat it too, I promise.

That's all.  Just a reminder.  If you like animals, and you figure you might want one in your life, don't forget your local kill shelter, or your local fostering and adopting facilities.  Petfinder.org, y'all.

***

Blurt "co-co-editor" Coco Hames fronts The Ettes - Hames on guitar, Jem Cohen on bass and Poni Silver on drums - whose album Look At Life Again Soon and EP, Danger Is, were released by Take Root. Their new Greg Cartwright-produced album Do You Want Power hits stores Sept. 29, and you bet we're gonna have a big feature on the band in our next issue. Check out the band's MySpace page for music and tour dates.

Death Of An Indie Bible (or, Adventures with Option Magazine, Pt. 2)

By Johnny Mnemonic

In my last installment of Music Journalism 101 I outlined my misadventures in the land of grunge and honey circa 1991 and how a proposed story on Sub Pop lumberjacks Tad got deep-sixed, frustratingly, by Option. The magazine operated from 1985 to 1998, publishing 81 issues overall, and at its 1995 peak, according to Wikipedia, had amassed a circulation of 27,000. That's not quite at Spin level, and not even in the same universe as Rolling Stone, but still damned respectable for what was known in its time as the indie underground's bible.

People tend to remember Option rather fondly, and I'll be the first to admit that I was proud to write for it even though the pay, if adjusted for inflation, probably wasn't any better than writing for online publications nowadays - which is to say, negligible. Those of you reading this who also reviewed records for the magazine back in the day will recall that reviewers, in lieu of actually payment, got to keep the albums and cassettes sent to them by the editors. But the free music (plus free subscription, of course) combined with the ego-buzz of seeing one's byline in print was enough when it was a magazine whose mission you believed in.

Respect from the music community aside, editorially speaking, Option was pretty disorganized, and it was hard to get a handle on what, if any, editorial "stance" the publication took other than "if it's independent, we cover it," which meant one issue you'd see, say, Patti Smith on the cover, an African world-beat artist the next and an obscure British folk artist attempting to make a comeback the next. Cool, but in the long run, not the smartest strategy to employ when trying to make headway at the newsstand. Subscribers are one thing, and I suspect the magazine had a fairly loyal subscription base that re-upped each year. But the habits of newsstand browsers are different, and nowadays even the lowest-circulation fanzine knows to put a known quantity or semi-familiar face on the cover (along with names of main feature artists listed on the left-hand side of the cover, not the right, due to the way magazines are displayed); otherwise you risk nobody even picking the damned thing up in the first place, and you can't build a brand in a vacuum. Option, to its credit, wised up about this considerably during its 13-year run, but I still hear people make the occasional comment about it being "too eclectic for its own good."

As a writer, contending with Option could also be confusing, as one's story pitches seemed to be accepted or rejected on such a random basis that you imagined the editors taping ideas to a giant roulette wheel, spinning it, and making assignments based on where it stopped. Worse, it wasn't unusual to get an assignment, turn it in, and then wait for it to be published... and wait... and wait... or in the case of the Tad piece, call up the editor only to be told, "Oh, we didn't have room to run it, and now it's too old..."

Too, the head-in-sand quality I alluded to in the Tad story could sometimes be perplexing. For all Option's so-called championing of the music underground, Amerindie and otherwise, it "overlooked" (or conveniently ignored) anything that didn't quite measure up to the editors' rarified notions of what was hip. Ergo, the Seattle snub; grunge bands were kinda ratty-looking, presumably blue collar or worse (we now know that grunge's early white-trash image was a marketing ruse foisted upon the public by Sub Pop), and - shudder! - borderline heavy metal, therefore very uncool. Option played favorites; for example, you'd always see some avant-garde Independent Project Records band or shambling K Records artist being featured (one of this blog's comments, below after the Tad entry, makes a similar observation), but only occasional lip service would be given to the skronk/noise groups of Amphetamine Reptile, Treehouse and Touch & Go. (For some reason the gnarly, noisy, long-haired outfits on the SST label were mainstays of Option-land, but hey, SST was headquartered just down the road from the Option offices in L.A.) Additionally, a pervasive politically correct streak, editorially speaking, was impossible to miss; there's nothing wrong with covering females and persons of color, but that sort of lingering Great Society mindset sometimes trumped notions of actual musical worthiness at Option.

This myopia-bred snobbery extended to the Option choice of cover subjects. Certainly featuring the likes of Sonic Youth and the Meat Puppets early on was admirable, and it wasn't unusual to see (as noted) Patti Smith or Frank Zappa staring out at you from the newsstand down at your local record store where Option was typically sold. (Good choices from a circulation point of view, by the way.) As that Option Wikipedia page points out, however, the frequent dialogue among staffers ran along lines of, "Is this artist too popular to be worthy of a cover?" (What do we do if Sonic Youth leaves SST and goes to DGC?) Such navel gazing further resulted in an almost formulaic rotation of non-rock cover subjects to ensure that Option was never perceived as "mainstream" or, heaven forbid, "rockist" (more p.c. groupthink there). The comment above about being too eclectic aside, part of Option's appeal, certainly, was how it wore its eclecticism on the sleeve, that between its covers nearly all genres were considered equals (again, see the Wikipedia entry for more details). But to many who discovered the magazine late during its tenure, it's likely that it did indeed have a somewhat schizophrenic reputation.

The fact that it often relied upon less-than-seasoned writers to provide the bulk of its content didn't help its case either. Nobody who picked up Option was necessarily expecting The New Yorker, but I distinctly recall getting my copy in the mail from time to time, reading an article, and wondering to myself, "Did anybody even fact-check this?" Plus, the magazine had a tendency to favor certain "pet writers" of dubious talent beyond that of extreme self-promotion. Without a doubt one of the most annoying music journalists the ‘80s and ‘90s ever produced was Gina Arnold, whose solipsistic wet kiss to alternative rock, 1993's Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana, remains a low literary point of the era; Arnold penned feature after feature for Option despite all extant evidence that her reporting skills were nil. Having edited publications in both L.A. and NYC myself, I understand how thousands of writers are out there clamoring for work, and how as a result one tends to rely on a small pool of trusted freelancers, folks who turn in clean copy, and on time. But they also have to write coherently and cogently, and they need to be mindful of the fact that their readers aren't interested in their personal diary scribblings (which is how Arnold's pieces invariably came off).

Option began life in ‘85 as an outgrowth of/successor to the late, great OP, which had enjoyed a healthy 26-issue run in the early ‘80s as the first indie music bible prior to founder/publisher John Foster imposing a built-in obsolescence rule. Two music publications sprung up in its wake: Sound Choice, a kind of anarchist/collective-minded mag published by the extraordinarily grumpy and no-business-sense-whatsoever David Ciaffardini; and Option, founded by Scott Becker (publisher) and Richie Unterberger (editor). I'd subscribed to OP (among scores of music fanzines) and faithfully sent in my money to Sound Choice and Option, too. It wouldn't be too long before I offered my services to Option, because while I'd already been reviewing records for Spin and Circus (for pay), I greatly liked the magazine's DIY spirit, and anyway, it was hard to place more than one review every few issues in the other two because the competition among freelancers was so fierce. Option seemed to be a welcoming group of peers.

That "DIY spirit" could be a double-edged sword, however. Publisher Becker reportedly had an iron-clad rule that his magazine would not accept pitch calls from record labels' publicists. A pitch call is exactly that: the p.r. agent rings up an editor in order to hype a client or follow up on a record that had previously been mailed to the magazine. In order to increase the chances of landing coverage in the magazine, sometimes the label would also provide what's known in the industry as "swag": free teeshirts, coffee mugs, shot glasses, promotional-only releases, and just plain bizarre gee-gaws with vague thematic tie-ins to the artist or the record. (Swag is far less abundant in 2009 as the labels have realized they're just giving editors and writers free eBay fodder.) I personally never saw Becker's rule being implemented during the times I visited the Option office, but I heard enough complaints from publicists who knew I wrote for Option and were begging me to pitch their artists to the magazine that I have no doubt it existed in some form or another.

So you can add a measure of hubris to the aforementioned snobbery when tallying up the Option score. Virtually no magazine in the history of entertainment coverage ever enforced such a strict mandate, for while a moderate separation between the editorial and advertising departments is generally considered good for a publication's ethical health, we're not exactly talking about someone ringing Option up and offering, payola-style, to purchase the back cover ad space in exchange for a ten-page feature. In all fairness to record labels, their viewpoint tends to be that they advertise in music magazines where their products will get the most visibility, and there's an expectation that at least from time to time those products will be covered. They don't necessarily expect a positive review (some do, actually), but they still want a fair shot at coverage. That's just the way it works. Imagine someone calling up Option: "Did you get our check and the artwork for the Johnny Mnemonic Blues Band ad?" "Yes we did, and thanks. It will run next issue." "What are the chances of the Mnemonic album getting reviewed?" "CLICK!"

For a magazine in the early ‘90s to play the gatekeeper card to the extreme that Option did, trying to remake the rules in an industry where back-scratching and favor-rendering is not only business as usual but, when done properly, an efficient and mutually beneficial process, was ludicrously out of sync with reality. That, an inability to see the music magazine milieu through the eyes of the aforementioned newsstand browser (it's no coincidence that Mojo came on the scene around this time and, with its regular rotation of Beatles, Dylan, Neil Young, Stones, Springsteen, etc. for its covers, was wildly successful due to its sheer predictability), and a series of unfortunate business decisions (notably the launching, in 1995, of sister publication UHF, a glossy "alternative fashion" magazine that was a massive, money-sucking flop and embarrassed everyone associated with it), all conspired to doom Option.

In mid-'98, we writers received a letter from Becker indicating that Option was temporarily suspending publication. At the time it was suggested that Option would eventually reincarnate itself as some sort of combined digital-print entity, although Becker's plans were pretty vague, and nothing ever materialized. The July-August 2008 issue was the final one.

In light of all the recent music magazine shutterings, the Option story probably isn't that unusual. It's even likely that, as consumer habits change and markets shift, most if not all magazines will enjoy a finite lifespan; only one in several thousand ever has a shot of lasting long enough to be considered "an institution" like Rolling Stone or Vanity Fair. But it did last for 13 lucky years, and a lot of folks, myself included, loved it dearly, which is why being privy to Option's numerous eventual missteps was so frustrating. In all my conversations back in the day with the editors I don't know if I ever leaned across the desk and asked, "Why are you doing this? Have you considered this instead?" - mainly because it wasn't my place to do so. It was their magazine, after all, and they were supposed to know what they were doing.

 By the way, I never got a kill fee for the Tad story, dammit.

***

Johnny Mnemonic is the pseudonym of a "highly-regarded" national writer with, he advises us, over two decades' experience working as a music critic, reporter and editor. We've never met him face-to-face, and he further advises he will be delivering his blogs to us via the "double blind drop-box method," whatever that is, to ensure his anonymity.

You know the drill... taking our cue from Seth Godin with the idea that what unites us is more than music -- basically, if we share the same taste in music, we likely share the same taste in other stuff, as seemingly useless as it occasionally may be. Hence, this month's compendium:

Stuff That's Kept Me from Losing My Mind This Summer

1. Harry Potter Hangover



Seriously. It happens to me every summer. Another book comes out so I have to read all of the previous books again just to remember what the hell is going on. Same deal with the films. So in advance of the Half-Blood Prince's release, it was the usual deal: start reading around midnight, can't put the damn thing down til roughly 4 AM = bags under the eyes daily.

I don't know who that kid is but I like it.

2. Air Rifle



Friggin cool. My parents pulled it out of the basement and it was love at first shot. That's my dad (sporting silk boxers with silver dragons) getting in touch with his inner badass. Forgot to take one of me. I did good. Everyone should have one of these things. Yes, I'm still a Democrat [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Some people spend their time wondering about the meaning of life .......others worry about death and the afterlife. Me, I'm trying to figure out just how many people have recorded and released records over the last 60 years. I've concluded the answer is way beyond a million and even that may be a low estimate. Every year my brother and I take a road trip to "dig" for records, this year we did 3,000 miles, 5 states and looked at what we estimate to be over 2 million records. Our goal is to find those undiscovered gems of music that have been lost in the black hole of vinyl releases. Music that truly deserves attention but for various reasons never received any when they were released. Music that has remained unheard, sitting in the bin of a used record store until folks like us give them a spin and discover the magic within.


In Cedar Bluffs, Iowa there is an amazing store packed with vinyl called Kanesville Kollectibles....three levels of an old manufacturing plant with enough records to build a suspension bridge to neighboring Omaha......more records than most people see in a lifetime.....heaven for nuts like me. We arrived at this vinyl Mecca at 10:00AM and proceeded to spend the next 8 hours digging through racks and boxes of LP's....hoping to find that unknown gem, that musical golden ticket that makes all our time and effort worthwhile. This year's winner was found hidden away in the Country & Western section...an LP by a young couple, Kris & Jerry, who were from rural Illinois titled "A Sunny Day" released in 1966. The second the needle from my portable turntable hit the grooves we knew this was special...a great discovery....the reason we dig.


There are many amazing things about this record. The music is unlike any I've ever heard in my 30 years of vinyl addiction, sounding like a real down to earth Sonny & Cher without the Hollywood glitz that tainted their records. A folky duo that use saxaphone, accordian and viola all to their advantage.  The songs are beautiful monuments to young love and innocence and must be more powerful than both as Kris & Jerry are still married today some 43 years later.  When I realized I was in love with this record I decided to try to find Kris & Jerry which turned out to be pretty easy.

Still living in the same area, Jerry is a Music Director at a local school and had fond memories of the record he recorded in 1966. "I loved to write songs" Jerry told me, and the songs on the LP were written in very short order. "I didn't really have too many influences, I just wrote what I felt. It was a way for me to communicate". Very humble about his record I think Jerry was surprised that someone had unearthed his past.

The LP is a "vanity press", one of those records that have a generic catalog chosen cover which just happens to capture the feel of "A Sunny Day" in an uncanny fashion. The songs are short and to the point, all original songs except for the fitting cover of the Rolling Stones "As Tears Go By". This LP has that magic that very few LP's exude, something that occupies it's own special time and space while having a sound that has proven to be timeless. Cuts like "The Boy I Really Loved", "In A Far Away Place", "See The Shape I'm In" and "Little People" all reach out from my speakers and make the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention...an eerie journey into the private lives of two people who have no shame in sharing it with us. Kris's vocals which don't really jump out at first really grow on you in a beautifully haunting way that penetrates deeper with each listen.


It is with great honor that I am now able to share their music with the world and know that the message they placed in a bottle some 43 years ago has been found by an appreciative audience. Hopefully some enterprising re-issue label will want to get their music to a wider audience, until then click on the tunes below and enjoy the sounds of Kris & Jerry

The Boy I Really Loved


Can’t You See What You’re Doing To Me



In A Far Away Place

GUEST STARS, GUITARS AND SALSA: Wiyos on the Bob Dylan Summer Tour, Pt. 3

Willie Nelson is royalty! Bob Dylan smiles! When's the next tour?!?

BY CARL HANNI

August 11, Tucson, AZ: Of all possible places for a band to spend five nights in the middle of a summer tour, Austin, TX, is surely one of the most prime. And indeed, the road gods smiled on The Wiyos, and gave us five nights in a big house off Lamar on the South side all to ourselves after, during and before gigs in Houston, Austin, Corpus Christi and Dallas, including two full days off. Our host (an Austin musician friend of The Wiyos' Michael Farkas), his wife and kids were on holiday at just the perfect moment for us to turn it into a home-base; a very good thing, considering how oppressively hot and humid it was at every turn in Texas.

Arriving late Sunday (8/2) after a drive from Houston, we had the whole next day to run errands, hit thrift stores and try and avoid spending the tour profit in record stores. Highlights: Cura's for lunch, and a dip in Barton Springs at sunset. There's no way to overstate how awesome the huge, spring-fed public pool of Barton Springs is; Austinians of every stripe flocked there by the hundreds and there's still plenty of space. I got to hang out with the fabulously talented Austin musician Graham Reynolds (Golden Arm Trio, etc.) for a Texas BBQ dinner and his usual high level of discourse.

Tuesday's show was at Dell Diamond in the sprawling suburban city of Round Rock, just north of Austin. The Wiyos played a great set looking straight into a blazing sun to a huge, happy, crispy crowd. These folks were ready to party, and the show had a festive atmosphere, despite the local coppers actually busting people for pot in the crowd and - I kid you not - dragging some off in handcuffs. Apparently Johnny Law hadn't heard that WILLIE NELSON was playing, but the crowd sure knew; these were Willie people through and through. I hung with Wammo from Asylum St. Spankers, Graham Reynolds and local audio tech and musician Buzz, and soaked it up from out front with all the happy, hot people.

Willie Nelson is royalty everywhere, but he's the mayor, governor, president and potentate all rolled into one in Texas, especially in Austin and Dallas. Everyone wants a little piece of Willie; everyone feels like they own a little piece of Willie; and he manages, in his own Zen-like way, to give enough of himself that everyone seems satisfied. This is sort of the cowboy hat version of the loaves and fishes; no matter how much Willie gives, there's always more to give. His show was actually a double-header of Texas royalty, as the venerable Ray Benson of Asleep At The Wheel, another legendary Texas icon, sat in for the whole set, rocking his Telecaster and grinning up a storm. Boy, is he tall. The crowd went bananas, and stayed that way.

Bob Dylan, perhaps taking cue from Willie, also had an ace up his sleeve; local guitar hero Charlie Sexton, an alumnus of previous Dylan bands and recordings, sat in for most of Dylan's set. He totally rocked up "Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum," reproducing his original licks from Love and Theft. Sexton produced an interesting chemical reaction on stage; not only did he add a hot layer of lead guitar over everything he played on, but he spent quite a bit of the show inching into closer and closer proximity to Bob on-stage, unlike everyone else in Dylan's band, who generally kept their distance.

But as Sexton got closer and closer, locking eyes with Dylan, Dylan actually started to mug back at Sexton, executing a series of subtle feints, shoulder rolls, bug-eyes and - HOLD THE PRESSES!! - an actual, face splitting, ear-to-ear grin that seemed to light up the entire stage like a torch for about 2 seconds. Now, in most artists a single grin might not be front page news, but Dylan generally seems pretty detached and sometimes a bit dour on stage. This one grin, though, was so full of genuine mirth and (momentary) good cheer that... well, it made me feel a little different about the man. It broke through the surface, and kind of made the tour.

After that...

Corpus Christi was absurdly hot and humid, and put The Wiyos in an even hotter on-stage oven in front of a fairly modest and sun-stunned, rough looking crowd. The ball park was beautiful, but the setting was desolate, situated in a totally decrepit industrial area that wasn't even coolly decrepit, just ugly. On the other hand, they had a POOL just behind and to the right of the stage; Wiyos Parrish and Joe Bass and I lounged around in the pool with Willie Nelson playing 40 yards away; ah, that's the life. A full moon shined like a sky-lamp, illuminating our way back to Austin by midnight.

On Thursday Parrish and I hit Waterloo Records for a few used vinyl scores (The Gossip, Brother Jack McDuff, John Hammond, 3 Mustaphas 3, more) while the band took care of the never ending errands and we convened for a fabulous meal at Polvo's.

My last day on the road with The Wiyos was less than scintillating, but we all do what we have to do, and what I had to do was stay behind with the tour van at the Freightliner repair shop in Austin for repairs while the band caught a ride to Dallas/Grand Prairie with Nevada Newman, another Asylum St. Spanker. I didn't get on the road till 4 pm, just in time to catch some crap traffic out of town, and it was almost 8 pm by the time I hit Dallas, long after The Wiyos' and Willie's sets. Oh well. I got in a final, fabulous meal (thank you DEGA!), said some good-byes to the promoter folks from JamUSA and some stage crew, and we beat it to a hotel. The band was up and out and on their way to Lubbock by 8 am and I caught a noon-time flight back to Tucson.

The Wiyos went on to Albuquerque and have a few shows in S. California, ending 8/16 in Stateline, NV, at Lake Tahoe. The Phoenix show on 8/11 was cancelled due to heat (what DID they expect in Phoenix in August?); instead of being at the show, I'm here writing about the tour.

Back home. To the heat, the routine, the fish tacos, the sunsets. I love it here.

But still: hey Wiyos, when's the next tour?

***

For Wiyos tour video blogs, see:

http://www.thewiyos.com

http://www.myspace.com/thewiyos

***

Carl Hanni, a music industry publicist, record collector and club deejay based in Tucson, regularly blogs for Blurt.