The Sheila Variations

My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent You & Me, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here.) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series Survivor’s Remorse. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. I just wrapped up posting his 50 Best Albums. But I figured I’d keep “Music Monday” going with more of the stuff Bren wrote about music.

I have always loved Bren’s writing, so I am happy to share it with you!

The Best Ever Never Was

Like any small town, Los Angeles has its best kept secrets. And those who are in the know spend an inordinate amount of time trying to give the secrets away to as many people as possible. When you are new in town, everyone and their mother wants to show you something.

Larry took me to the 101 for chow, to Runyon Canyon for hikes, and the House of Pies. Mike touted Marino’s on Melrose as the best Italian food he’d ever had, and Jeff brought me to some cowboy bar on Sunset to ride the mechanical bull.

There was a band called The Broken Remotes, fronted by a good friend Jon Leahy. He helped produce a play I was in when I first arrived on the left coast and he was going around foaming at the mouth about something called Big Mondays at The Joint.

What do you think of when you hear the name Waddy Wachtel? If you’ve never heard of him then you probably aren’t a guitar nerd. Guitar nerds turn into teenage girls when Waddy’s name gets mentioned. Put it this way: when Keith Richards records albums, Waddy Wachtel is the guitar player, okay? He worked with EVERYBODY: Stevie Nicks, Warren Zevon, everybody. Master session player but also a true collaborator and creator.

So when Jon told me that Waddy played EVERY Monday night at The Joint and called it Big Mondays, I was beside myself. Little did I know that Waddy would become an afterthought for me once I went.

The Joint is tucked away on Pico down near Robertson surrounded by pharmacies and Starbucks and almost-ritzy car dealerships. But inside it feels like a roadhouse. At least, it did until they renovated. I am not crazy about the new Joint. The old one was like a dead-end street in a noir film. You came in the front door and there was nowhere to go but straight to the stage. A tunnel with a bar lining the right side and tiny booths on the left. The stage was the width of the tunnel and elevated almost eye level.

On either side of the stage, framing the action, were what seemed to be two elephant tusks. The booth side was bordered above by a huge mirror that reflected the tops of heads and almost down behind the bar.

The Big Mondays lineup is a revolving door of singers backed by Waddy, a silent bass player who plays with Neil Young, and Tom Petty’s drummer when he isn’t with The Heartbreakers. They know how to play every song you’ve ever heard.

When I started attending, the two singers were Stacy P. from Tennessee, a blonde lanky bombshell who could play guitar like a mofo and sing in that country/rock mode that Bonnie Raitt and Sheryl Crow mine so well. She later went pretty far in the Nashville Star series, the country American Idol thing and we all wished her luck from down on the floor of The Joint.

And the other singer? Oh, how do I even start? I didn’t recognize him. He was a handsome English gentleman in his 60’s with a pencil mustache, unruly dark hair, and a gray suit with white sneakers. As the band rolled through classic songs, he didn’t cover the songs, he interpreted them. Authorship was unimportant as all history seemed useless in the face of his expression. He growled, he roared, he rasped, he falsettoed, he cooed, he blared.

His voice seemed limitless. When they did AC/DC, the rasp was cut with an R&B lilt that brought out the blues under the metal. When they did Zeppelin the whine was deeper and fuller than Plant so that even on impossibly high notes the voice was wide and hard. When they did the Beatles, the melody of McCartney and the power of Lennon were woven together in a single voice.

Then came the apex of the evening, a cover of The Kinks “Waterloo Sunset.” How to put in words what music does? That is the question I’ve been trying to answer in this blog and I am always going to have to admit the impossibility of this equation. I am not a religious man in an easily definable sense, but this performance was of the ecstatic variety that can only come through faith. The audience was encouraged to sing along at one point as the band played the most minimal of vamps. We sang along with this golden-voiced shaman and felt closer to the divine.

I’ve deliberately withheld his name up to this point because I wanted to impress upon you how deeply he affected me. I left that first night convinced that I had just seen THE GREATEST ROCK AND ROLL SINGER WHO EVER LIVED. Where the hell had he been hiding? How come I had to go to The Joint to see him? How come I could afford it?

Well, it turns out that these questions are quite common when people talk about Terry Reid.

Even typing the name gives me chills. As the details of his career were made known to me, it made his performance seem all the more otherworldy. He was Jimmy Page’s original choice to front Led Zeppelin but he was already an established solo act. He’d been a teen sensation as a blues singer and was touring America opening for Cream. He SUGGESTED Robert Plant and John Bonham. He created Zeppelin by turning them down. A series of missteps left him floundering in Los Angeles in the early seventies. Rumor had it that Bob Dylan let him stay at his house for 5 years because he was broke.

I’m going to make another effort at describing his sound. Imagine if Ray Charles grew up listening to Led Zeppelin, or if Robert Plant had the silkiness of Smokey Robinson ingrained into his wail. Take Frank Sinatra and feed him Scotch and cigarettes and a jukebox full of Motown and metal and you’ll get a pale imitation of Terry Reid.

Here’s the bottom line. Somewhere in heaven, God has Hendrix on guitar, Keith Moon on drums, Jaco Pastorius on bass, and he’s waiting to book gigs until Terry Reid shows up to sing.

I felt angry at the world on his behalf. Imagine coming upon Mount Rushmore and finding it defaced with graffiti, left untended, unweeded. This man ought to be a treasured and honored icon. Instead, he carried that talent down to Pico and Robertson every Monday and let loose for pocket change. Unfortunately, Terry doesn’t sing at Big Mondays anymore. Why? I am not really sure.

As usual, Terry Reid is the one that got away.

— Brendan O’Malley

My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent You & Me, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here.) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series Survivor’s Remorse. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. I just wrapped up posting his 50 Best Albums. But I figured I’d keep “Music Monday” going with more of the stuff Bren wrote about music.

I have always loved Bren’s writing, so I am happy to share it with you!

The Living Room, Pt. 3: One Two Three Four

One of the most interesting things about live music is the cross-section of the public that is on full display. You can actually tell a lot about the artist by looking at the crowd. Back in my hardcore days it was all safety pins and mohawks; the high octane rock bands of the 90’s shifted things to a flannel stoner vibe; followed by the hipster chic of indie rock.

But by far the most interesting crowd I ever witnessed came back at my favorite club The Living Room in Providence in the late ’80’s.

I was not yet a huge Ramones fan when I heard that they would be touring behind their latest album. I’d heard their songs, seen parts of Rock and Roll High School at high school parties, but to be honest, I took them for granted somehow. I think everyone does, actually. Their sound and look is so perfectly realized that they don’t seem real. They are avatars.

The usual ritual of the live show in Providence ensued. Someone was chosen to drive. A full party could be achieved before having to head up the highway. Headliners at The Living Room didn’t usually hit the stage until midnight. 9 times out of 10 we knew who the openers were and disliked them. There were very few local bands that we cared for so we invariably had some sort of party before the show.

Once the beer was gone we would pile into the designated driver’s car and head out. Fast food would be purchased and consumed by the time we hit the county line and before you knew it we would be looking for parking outside the old mill that housed The Living Room. I know it can’t be true, but in my memory, the streets are always shiny with rain. The bricks of the mill have that wet sheen as well, as if moss is just about to sprout.

The courtyard outside the club was usually packed with smokers, under-18 kids hoping to get into the club somehow, and people who needed a break from the incessant slam dancing. So as you entered you got a good idea of what kind of people were in attendance.

Now, up to this point, I’d been used to extremely homogenous crowds. In fact, my friends and I tended to be the odd square pegs who didn’t have purple mohawks and leather jackets with English punk band logos spray painted on the back.

What I saw outside The Living Room the night the Ramones played astounded me. Inside the club it was even more pronounced.

First of all, there were more people there than I’d ever seen. And I’d already seen The Replacements, Hüsker Dü, Violent Femmes, etc., etc. There were more people outside in the courtyard than were usually inside the shows.

If you’d been an anthropologist, you absolutely would not have been able to pin down what this gathering was for. The diversity was staggering and seemed dangerous somehow, as if some strange faction might attack another at any moment.

There was a large contingent of Hell’s Angels, average age mid-50’s, sporting the hardened look of men who’d spent the better part of their lives astride giant machines. Their beards hung between their leather jackets, their boots clanked and jangled, their tattoos weren’t visible under all the coverage but you could feel them just the same.

Then there were the hardcore punks. The Ramones were a bit too mainstream for their tastes but options for entertainment were so few in those days that they would show up on principal. But they scorned the rest of the crowd because they weren’t true believers, they were only drawn to the world of punk by the commercial success of The Ramones. Their hair hovered feet above their heads, shaved into a thin fan that ran from the back of their necks to the tip of their foreheads. They wore leather biker jackets much like the Hell’s Angels did, but they covered them with stickers, logos, sayings, anything they could get their hands on. Their jeans had holes ripped into them and held back together with safety pins and the black leather began again midway up the calf with combat boots. If these were clean, you weren’t a real punk. Many of them had adopted a straight-edge lifestyle, refusing to drink or do drugs. Inevitably they wound up in college two years later wearing Polo shirts and doing beer bongs.

Peppered amongst the throng were the tenured Professors. They were probably in their late 30’s but seemed older, guys who still lived like college kids but taught them instead. They were wearing suit jackets and band t-shirts underneath, blue jeans and topsiders. Occasionally their hair was enveloped in gel, adding a touch of the underground to their establishment look.

Hippies were also everywhere, oddly enough. How they hooked into the 3 distorted chords and no guitar solos that the Ramones played over and over, I’ll never know. But there were many tie-dyed t-shirts, Jesus beards, patchouli splashed onto hairy female underarms, and bad dancing hippies in attendance.

Goth was a barely-known fashion choice at this point. If there were 20 goth kids in Rhode Island at this point in history, I’d bet each and every one of them was at the Ramones show. Black eyeliner, white pancake, extra piercing…

Then there were the frat boys. Izod, khakis, Nikes, wasted on beer. No dope for these guys yet so they were still annoyingly hostile to all the other people who had decided to venture out.

The Ramones hadn’t gone on yet so all these various groups (and many which I have omitted) circled each other warily; I kept expecting dancing Jets and Sharks to start snapping their fingers and threatening each other.

Then the lights dimmed, a smoke machine filled the teensy stage, and out the Ramones came. Joey seemed to be twenty feet tall. The smoke machine must have been their own because I’d never seen smoke at The Living Room unless it was coming out of my lungs.

He stepped up to the mike. This legend! What would he say to this impossibly varied group of worshippers?

“One Two Three Four!”

All hell broke loose and stayed broken loose for 2 hours. Joey never said a word that wasn’t a number to count off for his band. There was never more than 3 seconds of silence between songs. The disparate fashion factions were instantly and totally transformed into one swirling mass of humanity. Distinction was impossible. How can one unit be divided?

At one point I was somehow lifted and deposited onto the bar. I sat there with no way to get down. It was as if I were sitting on a barn roof just above a flood. The bartender didn’t tell me to get the hell off the bar, he poured me a water and yelled that I could get down at the end of the song. Indeed, I barely made it off in time because the Ramones were off and running.

What had seemed like a powder keg of differences was now a fireworks display of diversity.

Hell’s Angels helped hot punk chicks escape whirlpools of slam-dance destruction, frat boys held up stage-diving goth geeks, hippies shared joints with mohawked straight-edgers, and The Ramones gave everyone a center to slouch towards.

— Brendan O’Malley

The Living Room, Pt. 1
The Living Room, Pt. 2

My talented brother Brendan O’Malley is an amazing writer and actor. He’s wonderful in the recent You & Me, directed by Alexander Baack. (I interviewed Baack about the film here.) His most recent gig was story editor/writer on the hit series Survivor’s Remorse. Brendan hasn’t blogged in years, but the “content” (dreaded word) is so good I asked if I could import some of it to my blog. I just wrapped up posting his 50 Best Albums. But I figured I’d keep “Music Monday” going with more of the stuff Bren wrote about music.

I have always loved Bren’s writing, so I am happy to share it with you!

The Living Room, Pt. 2: 7 Seconds of Bliss

Summer before my junior year in high school. I’m psyched to finally join the ranks of upperclassmen. My comfort level has actually settled in and I’m enjoying myself. The strange underground world of punk rock has started to become a real force in my life. Being a soccer player and good student makes me something of an outsider in the punk world but my Chuck Taylor hi-tops and 7 Seconds t-shirts let the in-crowd know that I’m not that IN.

This has started to cause some tension in my life, but it is an exciting kind, knowing that I am starting to define myself in ways that might threaten other people. Just what a teenage boy could want. And it was sincere! I truly loved this music, how completely unconcerned with mainstream success they were, how they lived their dreams.

The glamour band of the scene was definitely Reno, Nevada’s 7 Seconds. We’d been listening to their Walk Together, Rock Together album nonstop. It was chock full of one and a half minute epic anthems of unity and disenfranchisement.

The singer was a broodingly handsome guy named Kevin Seconds. His brother played bass and they’d started their own record label. They had made this band their entire life. They were teenagers and yet they ran a mini corporation. The whole punk teen population had man-crushes on Kevin Seconds, firstly because of his talent, and then because he was doing what we all dreamed of.

When I heard that 7 Seconds was coming to The Living Room that summer, it instantly became the focus of my every thought. I was too young to drive but I knew a couple of punks who were going to the show. 7 Seconds were part of the “straight edge movement”, which meant that drinking and drug-taking were NOT done. I knew if I drove with John Smith he wouldn’t get wasted and strand me in Providence.

A whole crew of us piled into his car and we took off. It was an all-ages show, as many of the punk shows were, so we weren’t worried about getting in. John and his girlfriend Kristin were sort of the glamourous punk couple of the town. They were both really good-looking so their strange haircuts were more like fashion statements than political ones. I never went in for the extreme punk look so I always faced a good amount of scorn from the TRUE punks who thought I was a poser. That word was like the kiss of death in the punk world, it called into question your authenticity as a fan and a person.

7 Seconds took the stage and it was like a peace rally. Tom and I remarked that we’d thought Kevin Seconds would be taller. But he was still an amazing presence, all positive energy and openness. They barely paused between songs and barreled along, sweeping us up with their energy.

I was in a small crowd with John, Kristin, and their circle, a circle I wasn’t too familiar with. In front of me stood a girl with a shirt on that clasped at her neck and draped down in two sheaths of fabric. Her back was bared but from the front you would not be able to tell. My attention was split away from the music as I stared at this brazen fashion choice. I couldn’t see her face but her back sure looked great.

At some point during the show we were introduced. Her name was Maria and she was spending the summer in Rhode Island. She was from Ireland. She responded favorably to my Irish name and she was unfazed by this crazy American punk music. And, come on, she was wearing a shirt that didn’t have a back.

Through no fault of my own, we began to make out. Now, up to this point in my life, I had kissed exactly one girl. So the quick moving kiss was certainly not my initiation and I’ll always be grateful to her for her bravery. 7 Seconds roared away on stage and my hands had nowhere to go but her bare back.

One doesn’t often think of romance when listening to hardcore punk music. But all across this great country of ours there are legions of middle-aged men and women who first bridged the puberty gap with other horny misfits at dirty all-ages shows.

Maria went back to Ireland, Junior year began, and before you know it, here I am.

Don’t let anyone ever tell you that youth is wasted on the young.

— Brendan O’Malley

The Living Room: Pt 1
The Living Room: Pt 3