Greetings from San Francisco’s still fairly ungentrified Excelsior district. No newly laid off tech workers jumping out of buildings here as, for now anyway, there aren’t any high rises in this neck of the woods. The rich people buying houses (like the rather nondescript one three doors down which recently sold for $1.2 million), thankfully seem to spend all their non-working hours in their cars or their boring abodes (given the floor-to-ceiling street-facing windows which pretty much invite invasion of privacy, the dearth of art or bookcases or much furniture is hard to avoid). But that fat money which covers insane mortgages and other hefty expenses has to keep coming, so the newcomers to this hood who are not at the top of the totem pole aren’t exactly secure in an era of disruption that feeds on its own workers. Not a lot of union protections amongst that workforce, either, so good luck with benefits or a safety net when their employers and the stock market leave them hanging.
I’ll probably continue scratching my head all the way through 2023 while trying to figure out how high-rise, high-end condo and office buildings are still going up like so many gigantic Terry Gilliam nightmare eyesores at the same time that Big Tech employers are firing people right and left, on top of men and women of relative means already fleeing the city in droves. Huh, what’s the logic of global capitalism’s real estate investment model again? I guess that monster of perpetual growth and bullishness that refuses to learn from history (1929 or 2008, anyone?) just has to keep dumping its ill-gotten billions somewhere, so it might as well be in offices and ugly overpriced apartments that nobody can afford. Gotta love that magic of the marketplace!
My ever-astute employer viewed a tableau that kinda captures so much of our current moment in the Bay Area, namely a skyscraping luxury complex with the sales pitch “Live Above It All” painted on its sheer glass exterior, destitute street people sprawled in near-death sleep below it. Pass the barf bag, or, as the line from the Leiber and Stoller chestnut “Riot in Cell Block #9” has it, pass the dynamite/‘cause the fuse is lit.
In less enraging news, back in late November I was dreading a Black Friday stampede at the bookstore, especially since last year some old geezer expired after he was knocked aside in the stampede to get to the Chomsky section. Not a good thing! Fortunately what I assumed would be inevitable didn’t happen, and I opened the door at noon on November 26 to a single person waiting to get in. He looked like a dazed tourist but turned out to be a recently-canned Twitter employee. This hapless individual asked if we had any self-help books so I steered him to Desperately Seeking Self-Improvement, the only title in that genre from the radical imprint OR Books. When the guy finally figured out that the book is a bit of a goof (sorry for that spoiler) he lost interest and headed for the exit. What the heck, won’t cheap laughs keep you going in a time of great financial insecurity? I suppose I should have pointed him to David Graeber’s peerless piss-take Bullshit Jobs to give him some perspective on being fired by the world’s leading asshole billionaire (talk about a high bar!).
Swarms of shoppers never materialized later in the day either; we didn’t even sell a single copy of Lies My Teacher Told Me, which features a rightly famous (in my circles, anyway) chapter about the true origins of Thanksgiving. Maybe the aftermath of overeating kept potential customers from making it down to our glamorous Hub locale. Ha, that holiday gorging to excess thing reminds me of the Thanksgiving back in the ‘80s when my old pal Chris Hyde observed with hysterical laughter that that year’s featured T-day movie on one of the major networks was Ghandi. Hard to argue that overfed, bloated Westerners watching Ben Kingsley fasting did check off the old absurdly ironic box.
It’s been several months since I took a rental car to L.A., a jaunt which I began writing some perhaps marginally interesting reflections on the last time around. I didn’t finish pulling flotsam and jetsam from my voyage to the bottom of California road trip field notes, so bare with me as I throw more memories at you. Firstly, I have to note how nice it was to find out that Sirius radio could provide kicks that I used to get from “oldies” radio programming as a kid, with the addition of knowledgeable DJs who provided worthwhile skinny on the songs blasting out of the car stereo. I was pleased to finally listen to the Underground Garage, a Sirius offering I’ve been hearing about for years, which made for a fantastic soundtrack as I bombed down the Pacific Coast listening to an insanely great range of stuff from fifties blues classics to sixties garage rockers to lady soul singer chart-scorchers to punk and punk-damaged numbers.
The historical tidbits and factoids from the DJs reminded me of rabidly listening to various musical maniacs who lived at 45 RPM on WMBR’s great Rock and Roll Memory Time show, which I listened to weekly in Cambridge, Massachusetts back in the ‘80s. Those mini-platter-spinning nuts gave me all kinds of education in the joys of real rock and roll from the fifties, sans Elvis, who they understandably deemed way overplayed. Hey, Wynonie Harris, Don and Dewey, Ruth Brown, Hank Ballard, and Little Richard were in the house, why give Colonel Parker’s property more airtime? That same station also gave me Lost and Found, a sixties time capsule with heavy emphasis on garage bands, girl groups, and soulful belters on the Otis and Aretha end of the spectrum. My favorite DJ on that show was Roger the K (whose moniker fused NYC’s Murray the K with Mad Magazine’s Roger Kaputnik), a lover of Nancy Sinatra, Stateside teen worshippers of British Invasion bands, and lesser-known soul and blues powerhouses.
Rog also had a fondness for painful recordings by ‘60s celebrities who really had no business cutting records, a sub-sector of ill-advised releases later popularized by Rhino Records’s Golden Throats series (hello Leonard Nimoy, hello William Shatner!). His quick-witted between-song patter was both droll and deranged, often featuring the reading of ridiculous back of record cover hoopla for maximum absurdist appeal. It’s no surprise I had to yell “pinch me!” when I met Duane Johnson, a fellow driver at Red Cab in Brookline (bordering Boston’s Fenway district), and discovered that Roger the K was his alter ego. Who would have thought Rog doubled as a modern jazz/avant grade composer with deep knowledge of jazz and classical music, not to mention short cuts to the airport? Later, after moving to the Bay Area, I was treated to an equally abundant embarrassment of vintage riches when tuning in to Opal Nations on KPFA and Rocking Johnny on KPOO, neither of whom I ever met.
I still play CDs at home but my record player is out of commission and I don’t have room for a vinyl spining set up in my squalid garret anyway, so I do wind up in YouTube musical rabbit holes fairly often. Admittedly the threads to further offerings yield all kinds of treasures but, having read Shoshana Zuboff’s masterful, meticulously-researched The Age of Surveillance Capitalism cover-to-cover, I’m not overjoyed that I’m helping Google reap data mining coin while hopping from song to song. But at least at said site I choose what I listen to, as opposed to having it picked by a corporate algorithm. Everyone and their mother has Spotify now, which I admit is no-brainer level convenient and can turn listeners on to new stuff they might well have never heard otherwise.
However a corporate algorithm doesn’t have much of a personal touch (who knew?) and on the subterranean parking show I got all kinds of enthusiastic relaying of background detail from Little Steven van Zandt and his cohort of sonic obessives. The vertically-challenged van Zandt, creator of the show, is known for wearing a bandana on his head and having had parts in The Sopranos and at least one Scorsese movie (feel free to check how many, I have library books to read). He’s also played guitar in Bruce Springsteen’s band for decades, which I don’t begrudge him despite agreeing with Keith Richards that said New Jersey icon’s music is overblown; though come to think of it I don’t see why anyone should care what I think about the man known in some parts as The Boss. Feel free to slag me for sharing that judgement; it turns out that pretty much anything else happening today is more important than my taste in music.
Naturally I’ll keep sharing my opinions anyway, including a recommendation that you immediately turn off the radio if an arena-friendly power ballad called “Miss You in a Heartbeat,” as performed by some wannabe ‘80s light metal hair farmers called The Law, hits the airwaves. Mr. van Zandt struck out on that number, which had me jumping over to the Sirius blues stream, unfortunate timing there as the focus was on post-‘60s electric blues which went rapidly downhill from a tolerable bar band playing a B.B. King standard to the awful ‘70s top 40 outfit Foghat sludgily flogging an Elmore James song to death. Why, oh Lord, why?
Back in the first decade of this century I used to tell people who wanted to know if my ex-wife and I were going to have kids that we were thinking of adopting a highway. So it’s no surprise that I try to always check the roadside signs which give credit to those praiseworthy individuals who actually follow through on that impulse. The most memorable roadside patrons from this jaunt were the Valley Vixens Motorcycle Club, who took legal guardianship over a section of 101 near Gilroy. I’m disappointed to report that there was a fair bit of garbage along that stretch of road; one would expect better from a bunch of bikers with such a cool name. That letdown didn’t sour my mood, however, as the show Trashpop Shindig’s offerings whilst hitting Gilroy included “Can’t Explain” and “Riot On Sunset Strip,” hardy perennials for a badly aging child of the ‘60s and ‘70s like myself. Soon thereafter a urination stop by the side of the road with the car door open was greatly enhanced by Elmore James blasting “Dust My Broom” (the original, not some lame cover). Ah, the simple joys of solo travel!
The highlight of the drive for me was when Lenny Kaye took over somewhere around Santa Barbara, on the ever-scenic (sans sarcasm) Highway 1. Kaye put together the essential Nuggets compilations way back when I still needed a fake ID to watch bands, played guitar in the last inception of the Jim Carroll Band, and has been a mainstay in Patti Smith’s combo since its inception. He’s a walking encyclopedia of all kinds of popular music who was a major factor in me enjoying the heck out of watching Ms. Smith and Mr. Carroll perform. What better way to enjoy entering the final leg of my excursion than to hear Mr. Kaye wax rhapsodic about bands of his youth, not to mention his sharing information like the fact that his Sonny Boy Williamson pick of the day, “Don’t Start Me to Talking,” featured Muddy Waters on guitar and Otis Rush on piano. Did I need to know that? Why yes, I certainly did! One person’s trivia is another more fanatical individual’s essential knowledge, after all. An additional thanks to Lenny for making it possible to blast Levi Stubbs’s dramatic belter “Bernadette” while exulting in splendid views of the mighty Pacific at 75 mph.
In recent months Jerry Lee Lewis and Mike Davis shuffled off this mortal coil. Of course many others did as well, but, as odd a pairing as they make, those two stood out for me. The void left by Davis’s death is huge, and the loss of such a rigorous movement historian, activist, and journalist seems incalculable at this point. On the other hand, suffice it to say that Jerry Lee dying at age 87 means he lived about 50 years longer than expected. I began scribbling about both of them but it’s getting overlong in here so my internal editor is advising that I now cut and run. I will have more to say about Mr. Davis and Mr. Lewis next time around, which I hope serves as a tantalizing, or at least perfunctory, preview of coming attractions.
Enjoy the interim until the next Dispatch and keep your guard up for fascists, not to mention rapacious capitalists in sheep’s clothing.
NOTES
Our good friend Denise Sullivan’s sharp review of Bob Dylan’s new book ought to save you the annoyance of reading the old troubadour’s latest rambling hodgepodge: https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/books/review-dylans-philosophy-of-modern-song-is-tangled-up-and-skewed
My tribute to the best self-help book in human history (if I had paid attention when being shown how to post to the main page of benterrall.com it would be at the top of said vanity site to leaven the “eat your vegetables, comrade!,” perhaps overly-stern reviews of left political books): https://januarymagazine.com/wp/non-fiction-desperately-seeking-self-improvement-a-year-inside-the-optimization-movement-by-carl-cederstrom-and-andre-spicer/
I’m sure Lenny Kaye had too much to dream on many occasions, no wonder he made the great choice to include this number on his Nuggets anthology: [the youtube link gets all screwy when pasted here, just go to YouTube.com and punch in “lenny kaye too much to dream last night on nuggets” and enjoy Electric Prunes magic]