The Best of Times

I remember watching Letterman when he was uncomfortable and weird on camera, and his show was uncoordinated and saved by the stunts, like dropping things off the back of the building.  He got better.

 

He got much better, and the weirdness became an affectation.  Weird Pet Tricks became predictable.

But one of his traditions remained, and rightly so:  Darlene Love singing “Baby Come Home For Christmas”  Different every year (so I hear, I stopped watching when the Stewart/Colbert duopoly took over) and always good.  Since Letterman is retiring next year, they pulled out all the fucking stops this year:

 

THAT.  WAS.  AWESOME.

I kept expecting the 12-string guitarist to stop mid-song to tune it.

I hope Colbert finds a similar tradition, perhaps Rush playing every Christmas season, but I have no fear.

But at the end of the day,. Letterman has just convinced me that I will be tuning in for HIS final week, like I did for Colbert’s.

 

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I’m On The Lamb But I Ain’t No Sheep

We found the treasure but how do we spend it? What use is it to us today? Where I lie the madness swirling all around carried away.
There are angels in the story you can see, you can see. I wonder if you see the same as me?
Lines on maps lines of wire. Hope and pray no-one tries to leave their holes to come and save us. Still in silence wait and die.
And I wonder what visions you will see, you will see. I wonder if you’ll see the same as me.
We named the guns, the manufacturer. The towns and countries they are made deep in the mud historical footprints, the national treasures of their age
And it’s really just a story that’s been sold, that’s been sold. It’s really just a story that’s been sold
I was tempted to believe.
Now I stand here in a daze over famous people’s graves. Brushing petals from the stones. Get away from me you slimy pimp. Well this isn’t what you think. You know you’re guilty as hell. So believe me when I teil you you’re a free soul.

– Mekons, Arthur’s Angels

OK, yeah, shut up.  We all knew this day was coming.  I am a weak man, unable to stick a flounce. Rip me apart in the comments, you know you want to and you know you’re going to.

Ahem.  Anyway.  the reason for this is the things I had to do this week.

Some of you may remember a graphic that looked somewhat like this:

That shows a series of projects I’ve designed, just north of the historic African American district known as Bronzeville, along the commercial corridor of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.  Four projects, over nearly a decade, comprising over 100 residential units and several thousand square feet of commercial space.  The residential units are built through a public-private partnership using Federal block grant support to provide tax credit financing.  The tenants are not subisidized, but the rents are managed to allow single parent families and blue collar workers to afford good housing.

These projects operate on two fronts; they allow good folks to move into good housing in a struggling neighborhood; and they also fill gaps in a neighborhood that has been damaged by degradation of the building stock and the economic bleeding of good jobs resulting in vacant sites and decrepit housing stock.

The fourth phase of that project was completed earlier in Our Fun Year 2013, and this week was the formal dedication.

I spent part of the early part of the week preparing a few presentation boards and other artwork for the Big Day.  The project consisted of 41 units, 35 new construction, and 6 which were in an existing, near-hopeless building that nonetheless anchored one of the prominent corners of the retail corner.  Some time back I posted this picture of the building as it existed:

Looks like hammered shit, doesn’t it?

When I originally posted it, there were a couple of commenters who noticed it was actually two different buildings that had been casually combined in years past, but mainly people wondered why there was any effort to save it at all, it should have just been torn down.  There is some validity to that idea, true; but the developer and the BID wanted to try and save it because from an urban standpoint, it was an important anchor to an important intersection.  So we did.

Yes.

On Friday morning, the Grand Opening was held in the commercial spaces of that building, and it was packed.  Press, and neighborhood, and local activists, and the BID board, and between all of that, the guys who built it and the guy who designed it couldn’t even get seats.  I shook the Mayor’s hand, though.  He gave me a ‘good job, dude’ nod when I was acknowledged and picked up my framed acknowledgement.

The building has a little courtyard we added in the back , and the ceremony included the unveiling and dedication of this bust of Dr. King:

These projects have kept me working during the Great Crapfest, although not enough to be able to buy a new car or anything.  But that’s not important.

The important part is that these projects have helped to weave a damaged neighborhood back together, they’ve allowed for people of moderate incomes to live in safety and dignity, and they’ve been models of public-private partnerships that make sense and are effective.

They have challenged my skills in design and cost-control.  and I like to think that I’ve responded; out of the three prior projects, two of them have received Mayor’s design awards.  And at Friday’s ceremony, I saw some of my professors, and some of my competitors, recognizing the importance of these projects.  I talked with the developers, and we discussed the projects to come.

But the most important thing wasn’t the ego-stroking, or the prominence of the guests; it wasn’t the free food or the beautiful day.  The thing is; real people, living lives of dignity and grace, with at least one of their troubles reduced, minimized, removed.  Mothers and fathers and children who are able to concentrate and their lives and their loves and their schoolwork.

You know, the idea of being an architect is ususally imagined to be designing tall buildings, big buildings, or lavish private houses.  But when I got into the depth of it during college, I was intrigued by the ideas of improving the lives of normal people.

And dog help me, for all I whine and complain, that’s what I’ve wound up doing.

 

Fire Up The Bassoons!

Oregon Beer Snob reports that the Empire is the third hit when you Goofle the title phrase.  And here I’ve been struggling lately with my impact in the larger world.  Well, now I know that I have changed the internooflizzles for the bassoon.

It makes me want to take up the bassoon.  It can’t be any more horrifying than the noises I make with guitars.  And I bet there are just OODLES of them available cheap on eBay and Craigslist.  Besides, you know how to become first chair in bassoon?  Own a bassoon.  Out of tune Symphonic honking has got to be more lucrative than architecture!

In any case, the number one hit is a page of bassoon jokes.

I mentioned over at Brandos House of Fashion that I intended to do a Friday Musical Spew today, because I am jealous of all the sweet bloggy love he gets when he does his (I KNOW he’s funnier!  SHUT UP) but phone work and oil change and haircut and phone work intervened; however, I figure I can get a little post-office work (see what I done there?  FUNNY, cuz SEQUESTER!) at home and do the Poop Shoot from my iPod (34,000 songs).  The wine is low, but that is OK, because the corner store has big-ass bottles of cheap wine.

Looks like it is kinda a parenthetical kind of day.  Oddly, I don’t have a parenthetical for this paragraph. (Stop LOOKING at me like that, Lucy!)  OK, I guess I had one.

So, here goes the first Friday Musical Spew and IMS Poop Shoot in quite some time.  It’ll be fun!  YES IT WILL.  Fire up the bassoons!

1.  The Story of Nothing, the Mekons; New York.  From the (originally cassette-only) live release “New York” that gave me inspiration for a custom license plate.  Is there a better start for a music list at the Empire of the Bassoon?  Really, though, the Mekons are kind of inspirational. They are a post-punk anarcho-collective of artists and curmudgeons, who live spread around the world but still find a way to get together and record music against all odds, indeed against widespread apathy.  There was a time when punk music threatened the world; now it makes for Carnival cruise lines music.  Well, the mekons never let that stop them.  They know what they do won’t change a damn thing; they do it because not to do it hurts worse.  And still; all else being equal, several of them became American citizens, because…well, I’m not sure really.

2.  Star Me Kitten, William S. Burroughs; X-Files Soundtrack.  Drug addict and writer Billy B, doing spoken word over the music tracks from the REM song.  From the X-Files soundtrack from so long ago, that my office was in a different building and I though I might be able to change the world for the better.

Seriously, when this album came out, I had two small spaces in an old rehab factory, connected by a spiral stair.  My son used to come down all the time, and do some climbing up the stair. He was so tiny!  I had employees, one of which was pregnant and later sometimes brought her son in because child care is a bitch.  I offered health care!  Times were different indeed.  Now, I rattle around my office, poking at various computers and staring out the window in between doing billable services, and wondering where my life went.

3.  Well Thought Out Twinkles, Silversun Pickups; Carnavas.  When I had employees, I tried to be progressive and liberal and a good employer.  But when I was forced to lay off the staff due to lack of cash flow, I found one of my employees made a claim against me for unused vacation time.  Even though I didn’t offer compensation for unused vacation or personal time.  Heck, I was  super-flexible on office scheduling, knowing that everybody has shit to do.  When I responded to the claim by pointing out that I had never represented that unused time was anything other than unused, and not carried over year-to-year,  and beyond that, this employee, had, when the times were analyzed, not met the relatively low threshold of what I considered to be a full time employee over time; the employee responded with a Letter of Butthurt about how I was representing them as a bad person.  even though I had the documentation and records to prove everything I said, and was already taking the unemployment tax hit for everyone I had laid off.  Dunno where the advice was coming from for their claim, but it was crappy, and somehow that was my fault too.  What the fuck, as an architect, I am used to being a sin-eater.

4. 17 on the Wayside, Noise By Numbers; Yeah, Whatever. Where the fuck did this come from?  I like it though.  Yeah, Whatever indeed.

5.  Help Save The Youth Of America, Billy Bragg; Live At The Barbicon.  Punk music was going to change the world, right?  And just like folk music before, was subsumed by the commercial wave and music-industry weasels.  Now, Half of the Clash are dead, and the Youth of America are  the unemployed middle aged waiting around to die. Billy, Washington is not going to burn except in the fevered dreams of Teabaggers and Secessionists, and much as I love you, you still are touring with a beat up old Fender playing for the same 500 people in every town.

6. Lately, Soul Asylum; Silver Lining.  One of my favorite bands, since I saw them play a 300 person club on the Hang Time tour.  Got heroically drunk with Snag at First Avenue when they played with The Figgs opening.  Original guitarist Dan Murphy quit last year, because making a living in a punk band is for losers and nihilists.  This is from the last album, which is pretty good and kind of polished, but maybe it would be a bit freeing if Dave Pirner just did solo albums from here on out.  After a while, of course, they could do a reunion (except for the fact that half of them are dead also) and make some decent money for a change.  The Mekons willingly admit that they have never broken up, so they can never get on the Big Punk Band Cynical Reunion Circuit gravy train (in clubs that provide chairs and tables for their aging decrepit fans), playing the ‘hits’ or at least the songs that someone recognizes.  Good song though.

7. Good Night Sleep Tight, Kevn Kinney; MacDougal Blues.  Local boy from Milwaukee, he went to high school with one of my good friends.  While here, he was in the Prosecutors and started the first incarnation  of Drivin ‘n’ Cryin, and he wrote one of my favorite songs, “Scarred But Smarter”.  I am so, so scarred but am not sure I can claim to be smarter.

On the other stump, Rachel Maddow called out FuckNose Scalia as a troll on TDS last night, and she is right on target.  He LIKES saying horrible things, because it’s about him.  He gives not one shit about actual jurisprudence, or legislating, or the Constitution, but if he gets to kick some wimmins or hippies or poors or blahs, it makes his thing wiggle.  He’s a bigger troll than I am on a thndr thread.

[interlude.  running out for wine, toilet paper, and pizza]

8.  Entertain Me, The Psychedelic Furs; Should God Forget.  There was a time when teh Furs were rocking like fuck.  That time was 1981.  After that, things got wonky at best.  But this is off an obvious effort to catch their former spark, that mostly fell flat.  Sometimes, you can catch lightning in a jar.  But the second time, you just get electrocuted.

9.  After Hours, Velvet Underground; Live MCMXCIII.  Obviously, they got good drugs from Warhol. This is a kind of lame song from a good, tough live set.   Having said that, Mo Tucker is rock as fuck.

10.  Call That Living, The Angels; Skin And Bone.  True story.  Younger Zombie Brother was always into more metal and such than I was, hard as that may be to believe.  But while I was tangenting into punk and new wave, he was moving into his teens and working on rebellion, and he was all Kiss-AC/DC and such.  And somehow, he triggered in the Angels album Face to Face (renamed for America as Angel City).  It was a point of congruence for us, and wow, the song Take A Long Line was SO good.  Later, Dark Room was released, and it was even better.

In recent days, The Angels have gotten back together to some extent, and while the are mining the same vein, and it’s pretty good, they have yet to hit on all cylinders like they were during those days.  Fuck it anyway, but they are still pretty damn good.

11.  Headline News, Weird Al Yankovic; Permanent Record. More True Story.  When YZ was an infant, when I was getting up with him in the night, I had this four-disc set queued up on the multi-disc player so while I was getting him back to sleep, we would be listening to Al’s best.  It explains, or at least demonstrates, so much, doesn’t it?  In any case, a couple of years ago Wife Sublime and YZ got the 3rd row tix for Al at the Riverside, while I went to Turner Hall to see Trampled By Turtles.  I loved TBT, but the opening band was so awful I was glad WS was not there.

12. Harry Worth, Elvis Costello; Momofuku.  Last week, Brando posted a couple of videos, one of which was the Police.  I did not post a comment, because, hey, SQUIRREL! But if I had, I would have said that at one point I loved the Police with a large, sickening obscene love.  But they have not aged well for me, I think mainly because they keep playing the same damn songs.

When Elvis toured on this album, he opened for the Police reunion tour.  And he was nothing less than great, with a stripped down set that kicked ass.  And while the Police were good, Elvis was the one that rocked the fuck; and since then, who has continued to record and release and tour? None of the Cynical Old Guy Tours for Declan.

12. Bell-rung-man, WATT; hyphenated-man.  I need say nothing about the big bass man, but all you need to know can be learned by watching the video We Jam Econo.  Go.  Do it.

13. I Know Their Name, Men Without Hats; Folk Of The 80s, Part III.  Heh.  Trolling my own Musical Poop Shoot!  Moar True Story, because it is a Night for Truth.  When i was in college, mistakenly thinking that working to become an architect was a viable future, the Future Wife Sublime was in college somewhere else.  And yeah, long-distance romances don’t work, except when they do.  So, although most weekends she would come this direction (because Milwaukee is more Fun) some weekends I would go the other direction, and when I did, i would prepare by taking new vinyl I had obtained, putting it on cassettes for the drive.

Well, what I would do is put on side one to record, then go to class, then rewind and do the second side.  Then listen on the drive.

Also, what you need to know is I had a linear tracking turntable at the time, so start/stop and such was all push button, and the buttons were outside the dust cover (all terms relating to an ancient technology).  Also, I had two cats.  Do you see where this is going?  Do you?

So I was recording this album, and was kind of looking forward to listening to it (shut up.  I have a problem, it’s been established.  Also, these guys were Canadian folk-punks, like a syrup-fueled Violent Femmes.  Who knew?).  So I was driving through the Wisconsin night, grooving to annoying Canadian folk-punk, when the cat walked over the stop button, and the album just quit, leaving the rest of the tape blank.  Fucking cat.

14. Worse To Live, Matthew Sweet; In Reverse.    Ouch.  Well played, iPod.

15.  Rio, Duran Duran; Rio (of course, like you don’t have it in YOUR collection too).  This was a fricking great album, so great that nearly every aspect of it: videos, cover, lyrics, music, the band; have become cliches.  But my clearest memory of Duran Duran was from the prior album, when my roommate and I were in a video bar (shut UP, we had those too) and the long-soft-core version of “Girls On Film” came on (heh).  Our gast was flabbered.

Bonus 16 (I could do this all night, do you have some where to be?).  Donner Lake, Wonderlick; Wonderlick.  Years after Too Much Joy tragically broke up, a couple of them got back together to make some music, and this wonderful power-pop gem cropped up.  You could do much. much worse than to look it up.  Heck, while you’re at it just fill out your library with the TMJ back catalog.  As Too Much Joy, they got thrown in jail for doing 2 Live Crew in Broward County, toured with the Mekons, and gave a shout out to Milwaukee punk-metal band Die Kreuzen in their liner notes.  when they re-released their first recording “Green Eggs and Crack” (they’re funny, but not subtle) with a couple of new songs,  Tim Quirk said in the notes :

..it’s hard to trot out all this embryonic stuff out again without showing you what it was supposed to look like when it grew up.  The second reason is kind of amorphous, but probably more accurate: these three songs were written shortly after our relationship with a major label had been….well, severed is a good word for it.  That is, the last three songs were written and recorded under the same conditions as the rest: by a band with very little money and no real idea what it was recording FOR.  “Secret Handshake” is very specifically about missing the money and still getting a boner from playing.

I keep doing what I do because I still get a boner doing it.  Watching a building erupt from a the tip of a magic marker into three dimensions is a tremendous high.  Just like the boner I get writing these stupid blog posts.  Nobody may read them or comment or anything, but they still get thrown out of the nest, even if only to flutter and fall to the ground, splatter and get eaten by the neighbor’s cat.

OK, I need to work on my control of similes.

Hey, did I just put two number twelves in that list?  I think I did.  What the hell, write to the central office I am sure they will give you a refund.

The Kids Are Alright

EDIT:

Moar Kids are Moar Alright.  h/t Friend of the Empire Chuckles.

I Bet On Sky

Vegging on the couch this afternoon when a couple of canvassers made me get up and answer the door.  They liked our door, by the way; we had the glass panel replaced with reeded glass some time back and I admit it looks awesome.
But here; check out the flyer they dropped:

I have a lot of disagreements with some Democrats and they rarely approach my stand on most issues.  But claiming there are no differences between them and the Republicans is demonstrably false.  Further, I don’t agree that they have gotten more reactionary over the years.

I cast my first Presidential Vote for a white guy.  My governor votes have always been for white guys.  Mayor ditto.

But look at the slate of top tier votes I get to cast on Tuesday.  A black guy, a lesbian, and a black woman.

Progress may be hard, halting, not as fast as one might like; but progress still.

Title Lonk:

The Fucking Champs

Foul-mouthed blogging has a long history:

Teaching kids the bird.  I am so impressed.

Also, fuck anybody who can sleep like this:

Finally, I spent the morning at one of my client’s request, judging a Senior Design project at MSOE; they were to design a birdhouse in the style of a famous architect, and build a model.  It was kind of a hoot, and saw some people from my college days.  But it reminded me that the real reason for this career is here:

After all the hell and savagery of the process, the money finally started flowing and something is getting built.  That’s a duplex and single family infilling part of a residential block.  Another couple of months and they will be ready to provide a home to blue collar families, and help move along the gentle mending of a neighborhood decimated by poverty and long-term neglect.

 

Edit, for that Bimler fella, who seems to be Unaware Of Internet Traditions (the actual phrase is PICS or it didn’t happen) two of the projects that I liked:

A Different Kind Of Tension

First off, a Fungus Report, for Thunderpants.  The pictures may not be thunder-level (mainly because I only bother using my iPhone), but the growth is SPECTACULAR.  those bigger discs are about 12 inches across.  My neighbor asked me if I thought they were edible, but more than one person at the party last night seemed to be more interested in the possibility of hallucinogenic properties….

Oh yeah, the party.  Oh well, we had a good time.  Some friends were regrettably missing, but we made up for it with the ones we had.  Making do.  There were kids, and dogs, and Zelmo delivered a bottle of a local distillery’s whiskey that I am quite looking forward to trying….

Speaking of which, yelped Smut Clyde: “..I am happy to provide extensive suggestions & tasting notes. That is what you are after, right?”  

No sir.  I am suggesting you blatherskites deliver samples.

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The weather was gorgeous, warm and sunny, maybe a little humid.  A fine time, it was, and we wish all of you could have joined us, if for no other reason than to demonstrate that all these people I talk about do not exist solely in my head.  Maybe then EVERYONE WILL STOP LOOKING AT ME FUNNY.

In any case, Lucifer is a fucking wreck today:

She’s got to learn to pace herself.

Ancient & Modern

Eddie Vedder did a ukelele album?

It’s either genius or stupid, and maybe both.

 

 

FWIW, I have an 8-string ukelele at home (otherwise known as a mandolin).  The intertubas tell me that both instruments are members of the Lute fambly.  First one to make a “Lute!  I am your father” joke gets unceremoniously banned.

 

 

Ahhh, who am I kidding?  I’ll probably end up getting it; I am halfway to liking it already and I have unused eMusic credits.  So just to shake things up a bit and inspire shenanigans and arguments, I will go against tradition and ask for opinions.  We can trash Paul Ryan further next week.

 

Opinions?

Though my mates be drained and weary/ and believe their hopes are lost/ there’s no need for their bones on that blackened bottom

Chapter 0: the prequel

There is some advantage to living in a house that is adjacent to one frat house and across the street from another.  Primarily being, that the police take little convincing that the person puking on someone’s car came from one of them, not from us.

I met Craig in the dorms, but his father made him drop out of college because he only made a B-.  After that, Craig was working as an electrical journeyman, hauling heavy shit and grabbing bare wires until his terminal nerves were decaying.

After all that, he needed a break, and I was living in cow-town college for the summer, so I invited him to come up.  I had a few summer credits, and with aggressive hay fever in the middle of corn country, I spent the entire time in a OTC drug haze.  When, of course, I wasn’t in an illicit drug haze.

Memorably, we spent one weekday evening in a local bar, drinking $1.50 crap beer pitchers; I spent the evening in an antihistamine fog, talking(?) with a guy who was on pain meds.  Both of us were on beer, so it worked out, but I am glad this was before hand held video was widely available.

Chapter 1:  the setup

In any case, Craig showed up on a Thursday.  We were already on the porch, drinking heavily.  Have  I mentioned that this house was closer to the liquor store than it was to the campus?  We had our fucking PRIORITIES, man.  We would put the speakers out on the porch, start cleaning a fair amount of pot, and send people repeatedly up to the corner for beer, until inevitably someone decided that it would be easier to just get a barrel.  We had better pickup parties on a Wednesday or a Thursday than the neighboring frat houses could do when they were planning.

I think I should explain a bit about the town.  Mining town; of course, miners were notorious for their desire for drink and prostitutes.  So one of the earliest statutes in many mining towns did not allow taverns or restaurants on the Main Street.

Now we should mention one of the idiosyncracies of American planning history.  When a village hits the threshold to become a town, the primary street in the community is named something significant; Main street is very common, of course, but often it is based on other elements; Smith street, or Mine Street, Water street, so on.  But nearly without fail, after the primary street is named and laid, the next cross street goes down, and is called Second Street.  And thus, Second Street is the most common street name in the country.

And since the community wouldn’t not allow taverns on Main Street, they all showed up on Second Street.  Immediately.  And after the Mining College morphed into a nearly-full fledged Land Grant State College, the Students found this clever planning to be convenient.  “Second Street” was our euphemism for “frog-fighting, knee-ealking drunk”.  There was a bit of friction with Townies, as is the way, but we usually hung out in the local biker bar, so it was of little concern.

So; after getting pre-twisted on our porch, when Craig showed up, we immediately moved down to Second Street to begin drinking in earnest.

After a few hours of that, we came back to the house, and Craig decided he needed to move his motorcycle to the back of the house; we tried to dissuade him, but have you ever tried to dissuade a Craig?  so he did.  Move the motorcycle, that is.  It sounded something like:

vrooom vroom vrooom clank. grrrrrrrrrr rowr eerrrrrrrr ……thud. OW!

Craig came back around the corner of the house with a couple of new scrapes, we continued drinking for a while, and we all passed out in good time.  Craig passed out on the porch, with his feet pointing downward over the front steps.  We tried to get him to sleep on one of our couches.  Honest.  But  as drunk as we were, how much could we try?  He had made his choice.

Chapter 2: the heat.

Oh god when you wake up from a cheap beer drunk, can there be anything worse than a 90 degree, 80 percent humidity heat wave?  No there cannot be.  We went down to the grocery store and got gallon jugs of generic Orange Drink, and started mixing it with brandy.  Orange Crud, we called it, and we drank it until we ran out of orange, and crud, and ice.  We played a weird-ass version of croquet around the house, until the frat-bastards next to us got irate.

In our half-hungover, half-early drunk state, we just kind of started pouring ourselves down the street.  It was all downhill to the bars.  On the way, we took a detour to the local musical instrument shop, but the owner got tired of the way we bashed up his instruments pretty quickly, and when actual musicians showed up, we were back out into the heat.

Finally rolling up into the Hoist House, which was the only bar on Second Street with A/C.  yeah, right, an ancient window unit over the door, clanking along.  What the hell, though, you know, any port in a storm and this port had beer.

So we got a pitcher of Augsburger Dark.  Which was the ABSOLUTE WRONG THING  to drink on a hot afternoon when you’re hungover.  But dammit, Craig and I are fucking troopers, and we worked it for all we were worth.  Until….the bartender served up a couple of ginantonics to adjacent patrons.

Oh. Holy. Hell.

I am not a huge gin fan, but on that day, with that heat; seeing that glass full of ice and alcohol and lemon and sweating condensation nearly made me pass out.  We pounded down the beer and started in with the sweet gin, and the afternoon started to make sense at the same time it started to fade….

Somewhere in there, my room mate Dave showed up with his new girlfriend.  Now, you must recognize that Dave grew up on a farm, and was a pretty big stoner; his girlfriend was going kind of preppy.  She was wearing a LaCoste shirt.  Remember those?  I, being a proper punk, greeted her warmly, shook her hand, offered her a drink, and then leaned over and ripped the fucking stupid alligator off her shirt with my teeth.

yeah, it was over the line; but I had been drinking for several hours at that point.  Dave laughed; his gf laughed, I bought her a drink and we all kept the afternoon going.

Chapter Three: the Gig

At some point, we noticed that a few guys were setting up musical instruments.  Interesting.  But we had gin to drink, did we not?  So we were not overly concerned.  Until at a later point (and don’t ask me the time or anything, for fuck’s sake; we were drinking gin all afternoon) a guy came up and asked us for a cover for the band.  Actually, we were kind of drunkenly nonplussed; in the little cow-town, cover charges were kind of unknown.

However, these guys were ostensibly from Madison, and were looking to score gas money.  We were kind of working our way toward the door when the bartender, in mind of the amount of booze we had bought all afternoon, told the band that he would comp us.  Actually, he was kind of laughing at our inability to comprehend paying money for a band, so he decided to help us resolve the issue.

would YOU have given these guys money?

This started out as a story about Craig, and I have all kinds of weird stories about Craig, but it ends up being a long story about alcohol and drugs and good times and the way sometimes you remember things.  We got righteously, royally twisted and fucked up that night, indeed.  I guess that’s not that surprising, considering we started drinking when we got up at the crack of noon.

Craig was  a tremendously good friend of mine, a smart and talented guy, and it was unconscionable to me that his dad made him leave college based on only-mediocre grades.  Fuck, I nearly flunked out at one point.  Well, maybe I am a bad influence.  Anyways. I met Craig when I was  a sophomore and he was a freshman.  In later years, he came back to college in Milwaukee, after he spent some time in the military, and he was never the same.

In some ways, it is kind of surprising that I remember anything about that night. But in some ways, it is the kind of stuff you never forget.

Oh yes, the band was Free Hot Lunch.

They took the stage in their hawaiian shirts, and we heckled them, and they treated us like experienced comedians treat hecklers.  And we laughed, and they laughed; they played wonderful music and we bought them shots.  In fact, as fogged as my memories are, I remember Craig with a tray of like 20 double shots of tequila, wandering through the crowd like an alcoholic easter bunny…

I remember songs that I had never heard before, but loved immediately; I remember laughing, laughing all night.  Songs like I Hate To Wake Up Sober In Nebraska.  Like Reiba’s Cantina.  Tequila Sheila.  Trees in Love. I remember drinking tequila, between jinnantonnyx.  The first ever Punk-folk tune, My Wife And My Best Friend’s Girl.  The lovely Sailor’s Prayer.

At the end of the set, I bought a shirt, and a poster and an album; I ran into one of my other room mates at another bar; he was amused at my drunken slobbering about the band.  I went home and wrote a long, perplexing letter to the girl I was courting about the band; eventually she was able to see a FHL (Wa-Ha) show and GET IT.

Oddly, I do not recall how Craig ended up the night.   I am pretty sure that is not the night we had to bail them out….

Chapter X: the aftermath

Free Hot Lunch had a good strong regional run; but they peaked at a time when music was dictated by labels and radio stations.  I would suspect that if they were going at it these days, they would be able to take advantage of the digital medium to make a decent go of it.  Fuck, they got 50 or so people to travel to Hawaii with little advertising.

Here we are gathering outside Shank Hall before a 2007 show…. Zelmo was inside, scoring us the ENTIRE FUCKING FRONT ROW OF TABLES for the show.  I harass Zelmo a lot, but he redeemed himself in perpetuity for that one.

For years, people would look at me oddly (shut UP) when I would play these albums; but eventually we would go to a Wa-Ha show and the confusion would disappear, to be replaced by drunken shenanigans.  Toy chainsaws and prop inflatable pool toys.

Craig recovered and went back home; eventually (at his fuckhead father’s urging) joining the military.  After basic, he came back to Milwaukee, and we gave him a welcome back party which freaked him out so badly that he hid in the back bedroom.  After he trashed another friend’s apartment over a girl, I confess I lost track of him.  I keep on eye on the casualty lists from Iraq and Afghanistan….

I spent like the rest of my life going to see Free Hot Lunch.  I saw them at many many Summerfest shows.  We saw them at Shank Hall, we saw them at the Landing (this is going to be a short set, to get you out before the looting starts). we saw them on a New Years Eve show at Club De Wash.  We’ve seen them in Hawaii, we’ve seen them in Florida.  This Bar Flies.

My most favorite music is punk.  And then metal. And then prog.  And over and above all of that is the music that these three weirdos from Madison made; more than anything else, the underlying subtle soundtrack of my life.

look at how old they got!

The tragedy in this entire story is that my friend Craig went full goose bozo right wing loony after this. He suddenly started to ridicule anybody who received some kind of assistance, and also suddenly was vocally opposed to any gay rights.  It was not pleasant for me, because while Craig was a really good friend, so were my other friends who were gay and women and not-white.   And Craig, dude, you were wrong.

Chapter Postscript

The most bittersweetly amusing thing about the whole obsession is that nowadays, after FHL is pretty much gone and done, is when digital recordings and distribution are so easy.  One of my good friends has given me recordings he did at Shank Hall, and in Florida;  the band itself did a DVD of their own, recorded at Barrymore Theater; guess who is visible front row throughout.

This whole post was inspired by  a couple of Brando’s Vegas epics.  After getting this far, I realize that I suck.