My '69 Chevelle

     

     She looked like she sprung herself from the cages of a Bruce Springsteen song and roared through the Badlands on her way to the hilltop in Seattle where I lived.  This was no gleaming machine from a dealer’s lot.  The lady in question was a 1969 Chevrolet Chevelle that was born before the advent of unleaded gasoline.   Her dark blue skin was blemished all over the place from almost 25 years of hard living.  She was built like a fullback- not too tall but wide enough to make her presence known.  On many occasions, I had to jump the solenoid as the car wouldn’t always turn over with the key. In order the jump the solenoid, one has to open the hood and jam a screwdriver in just the right spot in order to get juice to go from the battery directly to the engine.  I'm amazed to this day that I didn't end up as one of those cartoon people who turn into x-rays and levitate when zapped with a surge of electricity.  That car took me on some amazing adventures, including the Oregon Country Fair and the Grateful Dead shows in Las Vegas.  As much as those adventures are stories unto themselves, what I'll remember most was her smell.

     My girl was born in an era before the EPA and other pesky legislators poked their noses around and decided that cars should have things like “environmentally sound emissions”.  Every time I started her up, huge clouds of smoke would bellow out of the exhaust and cover the entire street like it was a KISS concert. Because the floor had holes in it, the smoke would enter the car and make me cough if I was driving for a while.  After one long road trip, I could taste the exhaust on my tongue as I drove. When I  took a shower that evening and rinsed my hair, the water turned black.  There are times where I find myself amazed, almost 20 years later, that these long fume-drenched trips didn't earn me a tumor or two.  The real concern I had every time I took this car out on the road was whether the car would die on me or if it would be impounded for being a public menace.

     She survived an inquiry by the Washington State Police somewhere near the town of Ellensburg.  On my way to Las Vegas, they pulled me over after smelling me drive past them.  I didn’t get a ticket for the emissions as I happened to be driving without insurance but thankfully, I was able to connive my way out of that situation.   One of my neighbors used to leave notes on my windshield threatening to call the police if I didn’t do something about the clouds emanating from my tailpipe.  I was eventually forced to get an emissions test so I could renew my auto registration.  Somehow, perhaps via divine inspiration, the car passed.  Shortly thereafter, I was starting her up and putting on another KISS show in the street when my neighbor began pounding angrily on my driver’s side window.  As he yelled at me, I revved the engine and shoved the emissions test results up against the glass, taunting him with gleeful shouts of “I passed!  I passed!”

    Sadly, as is inevitable with used cars, the only thing she couldn’t dodge was Father Time.  There were a few visits to my local garage, some via tow truck.  I had already replaced the brakes and a few other components as part of the process where all used car owners are forced to justify to themselves yet another expense for their aging vehicle.  One day on my way home, the car was wheezing and lurching as I tried to get up the hill.  I got as far as the mechanic before the car died.  A couple of days later, the mechanic declared her dead as in “you can either buy a brand-new engine and spend more than the car is worth or say goodbye”.  Euthanasia seemed like the logical choice.  I left the car on the side street around the block and said I’d figure out what to do.  As I walked down the street past the spot where the car now resided, I would steal little peeks as if it were an ex that I really didn’t want to see but had to glimpse at anyway.

     After a month had passed, I received a phone call from the mechanic.  Not only was he tired of seeing the car, there was a new odor emanating from the trunk.  I ventured down the hill and opened the trunk to discover a cooler full of mucky water that used to be ice.  Floating in the water was a pile of what used to be ground beef. I cleaned everything out, walked around the corner to the mechanic’s office and handed over the title so that he could either dispose of the car or bring this rusting Lazarus back to life for his benefit.  I never learned what the mechanic did with my car but I never saw (nor smelled) her again.

Photo courtesy of blogcatalog.com

Kurt

Today at work, a kid proposed “Flannel Fridays” as a work team-building activity. He went on to describe flannel shirts in the historical context of the 1990s music scene. To be honest, it was a well-written proposal given that this kid was maybe 7 or 8 years old back then. This spiel was notable to me because yesterday marked 18 years to the day that Kurt Cobain died. I still remember being at work in Seattle when someone came into our office to tell us that she heard on the radio that a body had been found in Kurt's house. As this was pre-Twitter and pre-TMZ, it took a while to confirm what had occurred up in that attic.

This event has become a milestone for a lot of us who came of age during those years. What I appreciated about Kurt Cobain was his ability to really hone in on moods rather than statements. His lyrics had a stream-of-consciousness vibe that seemed to come out so effortlessly. One of my favorites:

I'll start this off without any words

I got so high that I scratched 'til I bled

I love myself better than you

I know it's wrong so what should I do?

The finest day that I've ever had

Was when I learned to cry on command

I love myself better than you

I know it's wrong so what should I do?

And then the end:

And one more special message to go

And then I'm done and I can go home

As much as he's been touted as a generational statesman, he wasn't trying to make sweeping epic commentaries. He told us how he felt and he did it with a combination of raw punk energy and the the catchiest of pop hooks. If you don't think Kurt was a fan of more mainstream pop music, listen to the version of “About A Girl” from the MTV Unplugged album and just try to deny the obvious Beatles influence.

Perhaps one of the reasons I keep hanging onto memories of the Seattle 90s music scene is that it was the last time I can recall being truly moved by rock music. I don't know if it's my age, but it seems that a lot of what's out there today just goes through me without sticking to my gut. I'm not saying I don't like a lot of the newer bands; it's just that I don't see myself 18 years from now contemplating much of it or listening to it with any regularity. What keeps me in the game is the thought that somewhere in a basement, there's a kid with a crappy guitar and a beat-up amp who is on the brink of making me stand up and take notice once again.

PJ20

I just got home a little while ago from seeing “PJ20”, the outstanding Cameron Crowe documentary on Pearl Jam. The film does a great job of telling the Pearl Jam story starting with the early days of Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament in the ill-fated band Mother Love Bone which collapsed after the death by overdose of singer Andrew Wood. Stone and Jeff decide to forge on and the story continues when they find a surfer guy named Eddie Vedder to sing for them and shortly thereafter, things take off like a rocket ride as Pearl Jam attains meteoric success. There were also a few bumps over the course of the last two decades but at the end of the film you appreciate the members of Pearl Jam as strong survivors who withstood a number of things that have ended countless other bands.

The film starts out with grainy video of the old days and as soon as the band attains success you can see the quality of the footage improve as if on cue. Over the course of “PJ20” you also see the progression of the musicians as their frenetic on-stage energy tempers with age. That's not to say that the energy of their performances is lessened because the passion is still evident. The 2006 live clip of “Release” from their debut Ten is absolutely spellbinding as is the campfire singalong of “Better Man” from Madison Square Garden in 2010. Their take on the Mother Love Bone tune “Crown Of Thorns” gave me the same goose-bump feelings I had when I first heard the original 20 years ago. As they got older they seem to have channeled their energy into the music. No one feels the need to jump around too much these days and Eddie no longer needs to climb scaffolding to prove a point (though he's been known recently to do a bit of scaling). Their endurance over the last 20 years has said enough for them.

The journey wasn't always graceful. For one thing, it's a little awkward to hear them reject the concept of the Grammys but still feel compelled to show up to the ceremony. It's never easy to listen to hugely successful bands as they denigrate the trappings of fame and a life that most people will only dream of living. They were more or less forced into an awful no-win position by their participation in the Justice Department inquiry into Ticketmaster. When they were willing to take a stand, the rest of their peers in the industry stood back and let them take the heat. When you watch the rapid transformation of Eddie Vedder from bra-wearing jokester to the more stoic guy we know today, you see the change as a by-product of the immense pressure that Pearl Jam faced when they were put under the microscope of public scrutiny. All of the people who criticized their rejection of mainstream success overlooked the very important point that they didn't ask for the Time magazine covers or the media blitzkrieg that ensued in the wake of their success. The only thing that Pearl Jam has wanted was to be a band making the best music possible.

It was delightful to take a stroll through all of that history. What I liked about the early part of the film was the portrayal of the pre-explosion Seattle scene as a place where musicians genuinely liked each other and supported each other. Until now, I had no idea about how Chris Cornell served as a mentor to Eddie Vedder during the Mookie Blaylock days. For me, it was a heartwarming look back at a band that I was totally enamored with when I was living in Seattle back in the 90s. (I once almost hit Eddie with my car because he wasn't paying attention as he was crossing the street.) While I'm not playing their more recent albums in constant rotation these days, I'll never tire of the first three Pearl Jam albums. “Vs.” in particular will always stay with me as it was given to me while I was in bed recovering from a very serious case of food poisoning. I will never forget standing on my futon bed and being seemingly healed by the music. I was uplifted from the opening strains of “Go” and the feeling did not subside for the remainder of the album.

“PJ20” is the story of a group of guys who stayed the course no matter what was thrown their way. When the pitfalls of mega-success began creeping in, the band chose to retreat and stay true to themselves. In an era of “American Idol” and short-attention-span success cycles, watching this film makes you appreciate what it means to be in for the long haul and especially all of the crap that comes with the territory. Cameron Crowe truly captures the dynamics of the bonds that these guys have shared.

Fallout Records

As a result of this meme going around about deceased record stores and writing about the comic “Hate", my thoughts drifted to the late great Fallout Records up on Seattle's Capitol Hill. I have never encountered a cooler record store in all of my days. I suppose Fallout has a special place for me because my patronage there coincides with a time in my life where I was bored and was in desperate need for change. One side was devoted to punk and garage vinyl and the other was devoted to comics and zines. Had they sold food and beer (and, ahem, a few other things), they would've covered all of my basic needs back in the 90s.

One thing I will credit Fallout for is for re-kindling my interest in comics. My current interest in alternative comics started with the shelves at Fallout. As a kid I grew up on Marvel superheros but by my early teens, I had stopped reading as those stories no longer held sway for me. It was at Fallout where I discovered the world of Fantagraphics Comics and people like Peter Bagge, Daniel Clowes, and Los Bros Hernandez. The characters and lifestyles those artists brought to life were a much better reflection of where I was at than the universe of Marvel (though I have since come back to the fold).

My musical tastes also undertook a major permanent shift at Fallout. That's where I learned about labels like Crypt Records and Norton Records and had my mind blown by bands like The Gories and Dead Moon. The free live shows that took place in that cramped space are etched in the memories of those that were fortunate enough to have experienced them. Much of what I listen to today is based upon what I found at Fallout and expanded upon later as the internet grew and facilitated my musical detective work.

All of this rumination makes me really miss the sense of community that indie shops like Fallout were able to create and sustain. I'm pretty sure that lots of people who hung out at Fallout back then would share the same sentiment. Sure, the internet has its upsides in terms of discovery and distribution but it's way cooler to walk in the door of a physical store, hear something new, and chat up the person behind the counter about it (especially the young petite female that I was infatuated with). The ability to easily Google something takes away the sense of accomplishment of having found something by getting your hands dirty.

I still have some of the best vinyl I bought there as well as all 30 issues of the original “Hate” (some of which had to be supplemented years later outside of Seattle). Recently, I found a Joe Coleman book I picked up at Fallout that has a caricature of me drawn by Coleman as we talked about a minor police riot that took place on Capitol Hill that weekend. I've been shlepping some of these items around for a long time and as I've been getting ready to move once again, these artifacts from Fallout are coming along for the ride.

**Photo courtesy of the great Ten Things zine.  Read it today (but after you're done here).

Hate Is Alive And Kicking

One of my favorite memories about my time in Seattle during the 1990s was the comic "Hate".  20 or so years later, I can still conjure up the feelings of amped-up joy I got from walking into the now-defunct Fallout Records on Capitol Hill and seeing the latest issue on the shelves.

The comic, released from 1990-1998, followed Buddy's adventures as a beer drinking, junk collecting dirtbag and at the same time provided a painfully accurate and often sardonic look at what the Seattle 90s scene was all about.  I liked the idea that Buddy, like me, was a Jersey guy who moved to Seattle and then back again.  Since 2000, Bagge has been keeping us up to date on Buddy Bradley with the yearly-or-so “Hate Annual”.   Buddy is now a junkyard-owning Family Man with a shaved head and, inexplicably, an eye patch and captain's hat.

In “Hate Annual #9”, Buddy returns to Seattle to meet the dysfunctional family of his wife Lisa who he has never met despite having been with Lisa for close to 20 years. In a tension-filled 72 hours, Buddy is subjected to senile parents, criminals, and drug addicts. Each page is filled with the sardonic humor and high drama that are staples of Bagge's work. The short “Home Of The Brave”, appearing at the end of the book, allows Bagge the opportunity to cast his sarcasm towards our current political state.

Read this issue slowly because once you're done laughing your head off, you are sure to be sad that you'll have to wait another year to check in with one of the best characters of alternative comics.

Order it here or buy it at cooler comic shops near you.