Rock 'n Roll Moment #49

Rock and roll is littered with the cryptic, the obscure, the ambiguous, and the peculiar. I mean, it's a real shityard out there. But, anyone who frequents a dump (a habit I picked up a few years back when I was trying to outfit a damp basement apartment with some fine furniture and such) knows the joy in that old yappity-yip about to whose eye the beauty is beholden. You'll find some precious shit out there amongst the rats (and I do mean RATS - big ass monsters who'd send the most hardened outdoorsman a run-in') and the rancid scraps. My friend Lucas and I were out there this once when I came across a damp box filled with old 45's. A virtual goldmine's worth. The whole thing was a soggy mess and the jackets were shot to hell, but most of the singles looked pretty clean so I grabbed them up site unseen and trucked them home with an old pleather love seat that was chrome-e-sized to the max. Fuckin' retro chic as they get nowadays - and once the smell wafts away even the most uppity hair-pulled back wannabe Manhattan-ite couldn't thumb a nose at this beauty.

During the sumptuous love affair I was having with that love seat (you shoulda seen me, all prissy and moving the damn thing here and there - ma' raised herself one king-hell of an interior decorator that day) I'd dropped the box of platters beside the door and forgotten about them until I heard the buzz of the speakers being clicked on and then the chink-a-chink of that wicked Nile Rodgers Chic guitar and the throbbing bass line of Bernie Edwards. Lucas had started fingering through the old records and tossed on "Le Freak" while I was thumb-to-chin-index-finger-to-lips about furniture positioning.

"Holy fuck!" I'd said. "That's in there?"

"Yeah," yelled Lucas, "and Christamighty you wouldn't believe what else. The Sylvers, Heatwave, Sly Stone, some Archies, fuck, even Glen Campbell, the James Gang and Sweet!"

"Sweet?

Which one?"

"'Love is Like Oxygen'!"

"Oh, no shit, put it on!"

Imagine the fucking luck - me and Lucas spending the entire afternoon plowing through someone else's terrible mistakes and finding our good fortune. I move the love seat under the window until Manfred Mann's dumb freakout of "Blinded by the Light" told me to slide it over near the door wall (it was darker - better to catch a nap, or rather pass out, on). "It's So Easy (to fall in love)" howled through the buildings halls as Lucas and I moved stuff out of the apartment to see how we'd like the "stark" look. Then he some Van Morrison single I couldn't name (hell, I didn't even like Morrison) which kicked us in the ass a bit and took the edge off of the beer long enough to steady our hands so we could get it all back in.

By the time we'd worked our way through those single's - A sides and B sides - we'd littered the place with a couple dozen empty Bud cans, two packs of smoke butts, plopped the furniture into a chaotic crop circle of sorts, and lured the two eighteen year old trying-to-be-hippy chicks from upstairs down with beer and pot (one was actually nineteen - besides, I knew she was as HOT for me as I was for her…the culmination of a long and laborious cosmic courtship).

The next morning was bliss distended. I awoke the sweet sensation of this longish blonde/brown hair retreating across my face and mouth. Shaking the indulgences of the night before, my eyes wavered into and then out of focus until I'd registered a glorious sound - that of a stylus needle caught in the end grooves of a record still spinning.

Pffft thump, pffft thump, pffft, thump, pfft thump

I wanted to know what record it was. What it was that we, in our state of oversaturation, lost minds and loose libido's, could have possibly drifted off to. I wondered. The last thing we played? I couldn't remember. We'd played most of those singles all night, some of them five or six times, and I couldn't tell you what the last goddamn thing we'd played was. I brushed a few of the tangy strands of hair from my lips and back onto her shoulder. I had to find out exactly what song wound down the night and continued spinning on into infinity while we teetered on the brink of another uncertain tomorrow.

"Funk #49" spun around and around, the needle bouncing off of the label's edge. Must have been Lucas's pick, I'd always dug the James Gang, but had long ago left them to classic radio programmers. I lifted the needle, shut the unit down, and scanned the mess that was my world. Fuck it. I went to the fridge and grabbed one of the last two beers, opened it up, and poured it down my parched throat. Rock and Roll moment #133.

I'll be damned if that isn't what this whole rockroll life thing isn't about. Not the boozing and bangin', but the moments when you transcend the fringes of a more insipid reality, the general ho-hum doldrums of a typical life/day, and become rock and roll incarnate. I'm not preaching about what music you listen to, or about how 'hip' or 'credible' your tastes are. In the long haul that shit doesn't really matter all too much. But, when you get into the rockroll thing as life, as a way of living, it is something far away from just listening to the music. Not to go Zen wack on you or anything, but there are a handful of moments, a few events in life, be it a day, one night, one hour, a week, month, year, or whatever it is (although, like music itself, I subscribe to the ideal of the 'high white line' - the quick moment that remains in the moment and crosses you over to something you'd never felt or even knew was attainable. Like that bitch of a song you'd never heard before that grabs you instantaneously and shakes you by the balls - it's a moment that kicks in fast, fades in for an explosive moment, and changes a little something about everything. You just can't lay a finger on it) when you completely lose yourself to another energy, another way of moving through life. For me, they aren't long-lived, but they are memorable as hell, and as I put more time between their occurrence and the present the very thought of them sends a weird chill dancing across my skin. RocknRoll moments when it isn't about the music per se, but about what the music has fueled deep inside you (and we're definitely not describing the specific moment at hand - Linda Rondstadt didn't make one shit a difference that night, the whole thing was about tapping into that informed rock spirit that dwells deep - gnawing at your psyche). It's that high, wild time that feels like you're living the fucking dream you'd always dreamt but could never remember. It's that sensation that comes along so seldom that people resort to slamming dope in its pursuit. It comes out of nowhere and fades to black almost as quickly. Hey, hey, my, my.

So whatsit all about? It’s all about taking that moment by the scruff of the fucking neck and living man! Which comes around to this disc I got in the mail the other day. This friend of mine from way back apparently discovered this writing gig I was onto and decided to send me a disc he’d burned of some very old music he’d had lying around. Not just any old music either, this was grade A prime freak rock of the highest order, and it once fueled some of the more enduring rock moments of my less than dazzling life. As soon as I opened the envelope and saw those two fateful words, the two words that became scarred into my brain tissue as the name of the one band I will always point to when someone brings up the subject of the best obscure band/record/music I’ve ever heard – hell, it was some of the best music that I’d ever been privy to period. Those two distinguished words slapped me into stone cold sobriety, and I felt that goddamn chill run through me: Manatee Bailey. Lives. The record was a burned copy of everything that Daystar Wistar – Bailey’s guitarist - knew to still exist. The thing had this queer photo of a little boy holding a basketball and smiling as someone (his dad? Big brother?) was stringing up a new net in the background. It had only three words on the homemade cover: Manatee Bailey Lives. There was nothing else. Just the photo, that title, and a non-cryptic little note signed by Wistar that said "and I mean it". I nearly fucking cried.

I grabbed a beer, slipped the disc in the stereo, grabbed the remote and pressed my thumb down on the "+" volume hard. Christ, what a mess! A rush of heat came over me as the skronking guitar clattered over the un-syncopated drums and tumbled into a brooding hunk of what could only be described as the stupid blues. The band wailing as this voice squawked tunelessly on about being "just like Charlie Brown" ("round head / yellow shirt / black shorts / all he’s worn since the day he was born" – top that Rob Thomas!) – and it was as fucking brilliant as I’d ever recalled it being. Fred Teo leapt off of the second song playing a bizarre Casio keyboard that was funneled through a microphone jacked into it straight to an amp that was actually an old reel-to-reel tape player. The sound was a beautiful disaster of necessity and guile and it led the whole band down some weirdly poetic road proclaiming "I Invented the Ployjoist". Awash in the reckless noises I was stunned to realize how utterly proficient the drummer – some kid who went only by the name McMahon – was. While all of the horrible falling apart noises crept around the often funny and always captivatingly psychotic lyrics, McMahon played this unpretentious, almost marching band style drum. It was, and still is, utterly amazing to hear.

The real beauty of this band, however, was that it completely lacked focus or sound. They recorded everything that any of the members ever noodled around with (many songs feature only two of the sometimes four, sometimes maybe five piece band), and all of the stuff is homemade, so there are spots – particularly the acoustic craziness that middles the disc ("Here Come da Judge" is a wild, long, insane jaunt into the free-form acoustic art) – when it feels like you’re listening in on a late night stoner party that’s gotten very weirdly serious. But let’s be honest, this isn’t hapless, disorganized rubbish, it’s music thought out in a manner that good songs – very good songs – are melted down into the essence of rock. Rock and roll as groove, as feel, as lost, confused, and exhilarating; both unlistenable and essential; it’s rock as art, heady jazzified rumblings, lost simple moments, and it’s about heat, passion, sex, sweat, and all of that stuff that has poured over the collective spirit of a generation and a half now.

It’s not that it mattered much then though (Teo recently told me "I wish we’d never put it all on tape, you know? It would have then just disappeared into the ether and been a real part of something bigger within us now"), but this music coming back to now connects me to the religion that I’d set my soul on so long ago. As agnostic as that may seem, people have many higher powers, and I prefer mine to come pouring through some unerringly loud amps on the backs of real people teetering on the brink of chaos. Somehow it just seems to bring order to life.

It was in late 1988 that my bond with Bailey was forever sealed. I’d known the varied members of this Beefheart-ian collective for years, yet I’d never been privy to the real, honest Bailey experience. Having listened to the enormous collection of tapes they’d amassed, I could sense that the real ideal was being served in the making of this music. Jams turned into short pop-ish tunes, players called out changes, instruments dripped in and out of songs – you could hear the exuberance, discovery, and life.

Sitting around Teo’s apartment boozing a bit one afternoon Teo put a beer down and said, "Wanna make some songs?" I was stunned, but quickly replied "Yeah!" And so we did. I’d never been part of any band let alone a songwriting/making process, but I wouldn’t miss this chance for anything. Teo pulled out an old Casio-type keyboard, a weird, damaged guitar with only two bass strings attached, and amp, the tape player, and a couple of microphones. Over the next four or five hours we’d pulled together two sloppy, keyboard-based, fun-as-hell pop songs. "What the Heck ‘88" and "Dark Hedges" were the results of one of the most bizarre, freakified, and indulgent rock and roll moments of my life, and now they sit as tracks 11 and 12 on this disc, Manatee Bailey Live, that Daystar Wistar graciously mailed to me. They, and I, are forever a part of the chronology of a band that existed only in the "ether" of Teo’s, Wistar’s, McMahon’s, and so many other contributor’s worlds.

Which reminds me of the time I took to the stage with this band from Detroit to sing the Who’s "Squeezebox"…Rock and Roll moment #255!

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