Tuesday Tuneage
Izzy Stradlin & the Ju Ju Hounds - "Take a Look at the Guy"
1992

In December 1987 Ron Wood was at Odegaard Books in Minneapolis signing copies of his memoir Ron Wood by Ron Wood: The Works. I had been living with my parents in Minnetonka post-college for a few months, drove into the city, bought Wood’s book, and stood in line. Of course, the wait was long. I mostly people-watched and listened to the college kids behind me gossip and joke around. Being out of school just months myself, I felt an affinity for these guys and their sense of humor. At some point, an older guy (he may have been in his mid-to-late-thirties) approached the people in front of me and asked: What are you all in line for? “Ron Wood is signing autographs.” Who is that? “He’s in the Rolling Stones.” Who are they? “Uh, they’re a rock band.” The guy nodded, then went on his way. I related this interaction to the guys behind me, we all shook our heads and chuckled, I ended up shooting the breeze with them a bit.

Soon one of Wood’s people announced to the crowd that he would only be signing for fifteen more minutes and after that anybody still in line would be out of luck. I was close enough to the signing table where I could tell I would get in under the wire, Ron was signing and signing and not chatting. A guy approached me and said he was at the back of the line and asked if I could get his acoustic guitar signed. Sure, I said. When I approached Wood, I asked if he could sign my book to “Wyman”, explaining it was my nickname. He glanced at me with a wry smile, then said “I’ll sign my nickname as well,” and signed “Woodman” and drew a little cartoon of himself. Then I asked if he’d sign my friend’s guitar as well. Sure, he said.

I handed the guitar back to its grateful owner. I asked him whether he knew if the Uptown Bar across the street charged cover charge on weeknights. “You’re old enough for bars?” he asked. (A common question back then, I looked like I was sixteen for many years.) He explained he played bass in The Widgets, that they would be playing at a club downtown on Friday, and could put me on the guest list and buy me a beer as thanks for the guitar signature. I gave him my name and headed home.

The club was Graffiti’s, it was in a loft space above Schiek’s, which back then was a fine dining establishment and not yet a gentleman’s club. Being an up-north kid used to bars and not rock clubs, this place was a revelation. Tiny, like it was somebody’s garage or basement. Wow, this is cool, I thought. The bouncer had the guest list written down in a spiral-bound notebook and boom there was my name. Wow, this is cool, I thought. I ordered a Special Export and grabbed a stool at a table. The Urban Guerilla* opened, my new friend bought me a beer and chatted a bit. Soon after, The Widgets played. Wow, this is cool, I thought, I should get out like this more often.

Sometime five or six years later at closing time after watching a band at the Uptown Bar, I was leaving my place up by the stage when I spotted the Widgets dude sitting on top of a booth back. I walked up to him and said: “You get any Ron Wood autographs lately?” Figuring there was maybe a fifty percent chance he remembered me, I was ready to keep walking. He recognized me and immediately started chatting away, introducing me to his friend and told our shared story. He gave me a business card, which I’m pretty sure mentioned some aspect of the local music scene. A record label? Another band? Unfortunately that slips me. But I still have that card somewhere, can’t wait to to stumble across it tucked away in a box of nostalgia or in some book I bought thirty years ago. If I were smart, I’d have used it as a bookmark in my Ron Wood memoir.

*There was a Minneapolis band called The Urban Guerillas who I had seen open at a (natch) notorious Replacements show in East Grand For*ks in ‘84. But on this night it was just one of them playing a guitar and singing, hence the singular moniker.

Tuesday Tuneage

Bobby Charles - "Grow Too Old"

1972

 

So one night I was having my Sleepytime Extra tea, half bagel snack, and watching Two and a Half Men  before heading off to bed. And one of my teenage actress crushes was the guest star. And I couldn’t remember her name. Brook? Brooks? A brook? A creek? Fukkit Dawson’s Creek? Katie Holmes?? Poor Katie was dropped from the Christopher Nolan Batman franchise, thanks Tom Cruise … Nicole Kidman on a late night talk show after their divorce saying the best thing was that she no longer had to wear flats ha ha. BUT THIS WASN’T KATIE HOLMES. She’s years younger than me and the teenage crush on TV was my age. And I couldn’t place her name. I recalled Calvin Klein commercials, her strategically placed hair in The Blue Lagoon, her going to Princeton, Suddenly Susan, her as the tough working-poor mom on The Middle … Oh yeah her appearing on Letterman and the girls I knew were mad because he was nice to her. But who was this gal on my TV screen? So I leaned on my crutch — IMDB — and typed in “Blue Lagoon” and oh sh*t yeah: BROOKE SHIELDS.

Did I mention the Calvin Klein ads? They were all the talk for a spell in ninth grade study hall. Which makes the Run-DMC diss a few years later in the mid-eighties all the more significant: “Your Calvin Klein’s no friend of mine, don’t want nobody’s name on my behind.” During this era, a friend of ours from the University of North Dakota dorm carried a 4.0 GPA in chemistry. (He went to the bar with us exactly once, needless to say my grades weren’t as stellar.) He went on to graduate school at Princeton. Back at UND we received a postcard. He said that one night he was leaving the chem lab and a passionate Brooke jumped him. Good thing, he wrote, that he was wearing his tearaway jersey and escaped. (An all-time great …)

And despite remembering so many random things from my youth, I forgot Brooke Shields’ name. Aging is bad enough with chronic pains triggering physical therapy appointments, two different blood pressure meds, forgetting the names of friends from my school days, prescription orthotics, hands not always working when I’m trying to do something as simple as holding a spatula, knees that don’t always do well on stairs, changing the sports app on my phone because the old one started using a smaller font, etc., etc. … but this one trip-up got to me. Future nights will bring more disappointments and maybe some small triumphs, yet I am certain something ominous happened that night.

Tuesday Tuneage
Mike Post - Theme from The Rockford Files
1974

In the first summer of my self-employment, NBC would show an hour of SCTV at midnight, after the 11 p.m. showing of The Rockford Files on WGN. It didn’t get any better in that summer of 2000 when there wasn’t much to do the next day — I’d just sip whiskey in my little apartment on Emerson Avenue and watch those two hours of great TV and smile and that is how these great journeys get started.

This was when I was hepped to the true genius of Harold Ramis (me, looking him up on the Internet: “Holy crap! He was SCTV’s first head writer! He co-wrote Stripes and Ghostbusters! No wonder he was in those movies!”)

The temp agency was still occasionally sniffing around at that time. I would get some phone calls saying: “Can you take this two-week assignment as a favor?” I had been so good at my work 1996-99 that two-to-four week assignments would get extended for months as the clients would like me so much. But I turned these latest offers down, hoping to sustain my income on only self-employed work. 

One hungover afternoon that summer, I came up with the knockoff Black Sabbath Vol. 4 font for Exiled on Main Street #24, using graph paper, a ruler, dime, and pencil. (It was all measuring and math.) And somehow using the Paint program on my PC to put it all together.

There are other memories — reading Nick Tosches, buying a 1997 Chevy Cavalier and being excited about it, adding some Gary Stewart and Jerry Lee Lewis to those whiskey trips, seeing The Godfather on the big screen at the Oak Street Cinema, and scheming to get out of that little apartment as the building had been bought by a (since disgraced) landlord.

I compare that era to now. I start my Sleepy Time Extra tea around 9:30 p.m., toast half a bagel, add light cream cheese, watch an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine on DVR, then head for bed. Still smiles all around.

Tuesday Tuneage
Nick Gilder - "Here Comes the Night"
1978

“Hey we’re Nick Gilder and band and we don’t dress like your typical rockers of these late seventies because we are not your typical rockers of these late seventies. No jeans, tee shirts, and regular-guy looks here.”

Left to right: First we have Nick, whose pants sport a high waistband (sans belt) and pinstripes. Extra button undone on the sheer shirt. Then we have the dude who is confident enough to pull off brown shoes with black slacks. The confidence abounds as not only can he pull off wearing a vest (not all can) but he also wears a necktie unconventionally — without a corresponding collared shirt: the breathtaking audacity. Next is the guy whose shirt has a nonconforming design, plus his shoes look damn comfortable. Okay, the band’s fashion approach hits a little bit of a snag as the next gent is obviously the traditional rocker trying to fit in: hair parted in the center, mustache, jeans (d’oh). Put him in a white blazer and sneakers, have him hold  a cigarette in a rad way, and hope he blends in. (Around this same time, The Cars would do a better job of hiding Elliot Easton’s obvious rocker intentions on the sleeves of their first two albums.) The final dude has short hair but also goes with the high waistband look and considers the buttons on his shirt optional. Two of the guys have their hands in their pockets, anticipating Alanis Morissette or maybe just indicating cool casualness. (This could be two-point-five guys, hard to see what Gilder is doing with his left hand.) And hey nobody’s smiling, but neither did the Dwight Twilley Band on their two albums and they were America’s power pop finest!

Tuesday Tuneage
Faces - “Wicked Messenger”
1969

Down in the Valley, Richfield location. Located on Penn south of 66th Street, exact location not quite remembered. What I do remember is returning from a day trip to Rochester for my corporate job and heading there to buy some CDs and (yes!) a much-desired blue surfer hoodie to wear on cool evenings lakeside up north. Along with the MC5’s Back in the USA, the Allman Brothers’ At Fillmore East, I also scored the Faces’ debut album, First Step.

This was a Japanese pressing, so it was credited to The Faces. Huh? Well, American pressings have always had “Small Faces” on the cover apparently because the Small Faces-to-Faces transition happened so quickly nobody informed the folks at American Warners. (With Rod Stewart at 5-10 and Ron Wood at 5-9 taller than the former Small Faces Kenney Jones, Ronnie Lane, and Ian MacLagan, it was part of the impetus for the name change. Being a modest 5-8 myself, I appreciate Stewart and Wood being looked up to as tall.)

The lyrics were in the CD booklet and they must have been translated by some intern in Tokyo with limited English knowledge as on the great Bob Dylan cover “Wicked Messenger”, this happens:

Actual lyrics:

When questioned who had sent for him
He answered with his thumb
For his tongue it could not speak, but only flatter

CD booklet lyrics:

When questioned who
You said the answer will I come
Boys tongue it could not speak but only patter

Then there’s the Faces’ original “Three Button Hand Me Down”:

Actual lyrics:

Now I had my fair share of these women
But they came between me and my suit

CD booklet lyrics:

Now I had a fair sheriff named Wynn
That came between me and my sweetheart

Hoo-boy. Lost in translation indeed.

Tuesday Tuneage
Cheap Trick - "ELO Kiddies"
1977

Punk didn’t make it in America, unless you count the Standells, Paul Revere & the Raiders, the Seeds, etc. back in ‘66. Cheap Trick’s “ELO Kiddies” anticipates Reaganomics with a fury equal of the Clash. New wave metal weirdos and from the Midwest to boot. Five stars.