Joe Wong “Nite Creatures”

Once in a while I feel like the best approach to an album is to put myself in the cinematic flow of the feelings I get as it takes me along—it’s usually a record I like, as I do this one. It works best when I get the sensation that I’m watching something—not necessarily a movie or anything narrative, but not abstract either. It’s often my most enjoyable version of a journey—neither weighed down by dramatic convention nor floating on an unhinged dreamscape—but something in-between—maybe a combination of memory and discovery. At any rate, it’s more fun than trying to isolate instruments or nail down influences. I can make out the lyrics, here, but there’s no lyric sheet included, which is sometimes good because the lazy approach is to isolate and analyze text. But first… this is a 2020 release—the Decca label looks like an old one, but the vinyl is heavy-duty, the way the kids like it. The cover is nice—a double exposure of either Joe Wong and Joe Wong, or Joe Wong and Crispin Glover (though, that would make no sense, but such is the nature of double exposures). Joe Wong and Mary Timony are credited with most of the sound—along with a few guest artists, and some orchestra. If I’m going to use one term for the music, I’d say psychedelic pop. Side 1 ends with a lock-groove. I wish Side 2 did, as well—in fact I wish all sides of all records ended in lock-grooves, seeing how I don’t have an automatic return turntable.

Okay, I guess I’m in Los Angeles, a town—whenever I visit—that I fall in and out of love with, within a week’s time—a microcosm of my relationships. It’s over. What a good place to start. I’ve reached absolute bottom, and now I’m walking. Well, that’s what one does in L.A.—not drive, that’s a myth—which is good because whenever I’m driving in a dream it’s all about not being able to hold a tight corner at high speeds. I’m walking along the boardwalk. Is there a boardwalk somewhere? Maybe I’m not in L.A. after all—never did make it to the beach. I come to a church, but it’s an old one, like a mission—not one of those new, drive-in ones. I either begin to pray or pretend to pray—I’m not sure—but then it occurs to me that it doesn’t make any difference. Did you ever dream in church? Did you ever kiss someone in a church? And why am I dressed in a cowboy costume? I was named after Randolph Scott, who looked comfortable in cowboy gear but miserable in a suit. I stop at a busy and hip pizza place, now, on a street populated with hustlers and insane dreamers—but I’m not eating—I’m taking in smells, perfumes, flowers, pizza—I can live on the wafting odors—which connect directly to the part of my brain that resides in heaven. Past midnight, now—adventure. I’m in a car, as a passenger—it’s an open convertible. We’re going somewhere—a surprise—there’s fear and anticipation. Then… the lock-groove of death.

The next morning, I’m walking along the beach. Finally made it to the beach! Something (could it merely be a good night’s sleep?) has made me feel invincible! I can do anything I want to do. Well, short of surfing—but I like watching the surfers—for once they’re not annoying, but beautiful. Well… I guess I’m performing my own version of riding the waves. Yeah, but it couldn’t last. Now I’m stranded in the haunted hills, and someone lent me some shitty sunglasses that allow me to see every single thing that happened here in the near and distant past. I’m a passenger once more, this time in an old VW bus, taking the hilly curves way too fast—though maybe we’re actually gliding just above the road. How’d I end up with these cats who are each dressed in a different satin rainbow color? Fortunately, they let me out at my girlfriend’s house (to be clear, this is a woman I’ve never met—yet she seems to know everything about me). She is absolutely everyone I’ve ever known condensed into a B-movie actress. As the sun is setting, now (in the east, for some weird psycho-geographic reason), I’m walking in slow-motion through lovely, old Union Station, lit, tonight, exclusively with candles. The huge, antique train is waiting for me, steaming and shaking, like a giant horse, and I pretty much am certain that once I get on it, all of this will be lost. Except for, you know—not the memories—but a single pearl—that they tell me… if you roll it ’round a roulette wheel it will never land. That’s all, folks! Thanks, Joe Wong, for the dreamy trip, and the trippy dreams. Keep ’em coming.

Crabby Appleton “Crabby Appleton”

I bought this record because I’d never heard of Crabby Appleton, and it’s a great album cover—five longhaired white guys who look very 1970 are in a narrow brick alley in front of a dilapidated mansion. The bricks are painted green, and they’re sitting on some steps—the foremost of which is art department graffitied the name of the band (and their debut album), as well as the awesome Elektra logo. My copy has a “Crabby Appleton” semi-circle logo stickered over the top of the mansion—which actually looks pretty natural there. Also, a promo copy/not for sale sticker. I’m impressed by the amount of debris in the alley—it looks less art department-like, and more like no one had a broom—there’s broken glass, sticks, paper bags, a Campbell’s Soup can, and the best, a crushed Cap’n Crunch, Crunch Berries box. It’s fairly obvious the principal guy in the band is the one in the center, looking like a high school age Jimmy Page—it’s Michael Fennelly, the singer, guitarist, and songwriter. But the one I especially like is the guy with the glasses—he has a quality that like to call “Speenish”—in that he’s a little goofy-looking, and very much of his time. At first, I could only assume the band was named after him! He kind of resembles that one guy in Jefferson Airplane—so I immediately assumed this was a Bay Area band, but they’re from LA. I had to look up each name before I found out who was who. The conga player/percussionist, who is apparently Cuban, has the great name, “Flaco Falcon.” It turns out the Speenish guy is named Phil Jones, and he has the best resume of anyone in the band—he played with an impressive list of big names, including Tom Petty.

I’m not crazy about this record, but I still might put it on from time to time. Since there’s a keyboard player, you know ahead of time you’re going to be inundated, at some point, with that Hammond organ sound—and yes, it creeps in like the salty sea taking over a sinking ship. I mean, it’s okay, but Hammond should be used like a dangerous spice, and it wasn’t always, in that era. The percussion is compelling, throughout. There are only a few instances where you get the sense that the guitar leads were overdubbed with deadly obviousness. It’s overall, a pretty upbeat, but mellow, record with the best intentions. Apparently, they recorded a second record called “Rotten to the Core!”—and that was it for Crabby Appleton—maybe they’d run out of apple puns. One more observation I had was that I’m not in love with any of the songs—they are okay, but I wonder what kind of stuff they covered. I wouldn’t usually say this, about most bands, but I get the feeling I would have liked this band more in a live setting, at least of they stretched out and  jammed for longer spells—just because they sound to me like someone who might be able to fall into a nice groove—the percussion really helps with that. But I’m just guessing. I’ll look for some live stuff on the big internet, but I’m not expecting I’ll find much.

The Woody Herman Band “Chick, Donald, Walter & Woodrow”

Big band leader Woody Herman made records from the Thirties to the Eighties, and though he’s as household of a name as Frigidaire, I’ve heard very few of them on my record player. This is one of many, but to me an exciting oddity because Side 2 consists of five Steely Dan songs: “Green Earrings,” “Kid Charlemagne,” “I Got the News,” “Aja,” and “FM.” But first—Side 1 is called “Suite for a Hot Band” and is composed and arranged by Chick Corea. It’s a long piece with “movements”—it’s hot, though I haven’t listened to it endlessly or anything. In the “Second Movement” there is even an odd vocal part, which sounds like either a guy who can’t sing, or some kind of rarified jazz singing I’m not hip to. (It’s Woody Herman.) I like it. Side 2, then, is all Steely Dan (Donald Fagen and Walter Becker being the other first names in the album title). Kind of a subtle tip-off—but much nicer than a record called, say, Woody Herman Plays the Sizzling Hits of Chick Corea & Steely Dan. The cover offers no real clue to the vinyl inside, either; in fact I might have seen this for years and never picked it up since it’s frankly kind of hideous. It’s an airbrush composition of some kind of car—a convertible, with a Fifties winged look—floating on an endless, global “Waterworld” sea (the curve of the horizon is prominent). Or it could be in the clouds, I don’t know. Anyway, the barely visible passengers are four penguins. I suppose meant to represent out heroes—but penguins?

I was only aware of this record because my friend Doug, knowing I’m a huge Steely Dan fan, gave it to me. It’s the first record I have with any cover versions of SD songs—and though I know there must be tons out there—I’ve heard very few. These five hot tunes do them justice. Oddly my favorite, here—since it’s a SD song I’m not crazy about—is “FM.” There’s a flute part that really works. You can find most of these on YouTube if you want to hear them, I’d recommend it—and there is a bonus—you can also find the version of “Deacon Blues” that was left off this record—for no reason I can tell—it’s very good. Full musician credits on the back of the album cover, which is cool—and Steely Dan regular Victor Feldman is heavily involved. Also, there are liner notes: Chick Corea’s jotted seemingly at gunpoint, but Woody Herman’s is nice, informational, and heartfelt. But then Becker and Fagen go and write what seems like a “short story”—ha! (I always say, if someone gives you a chance to write something that’s going to undergo some kind of printing-press treatment, be it a cereal box, doctor’s office magazine, or album liner notes—go for it.) The story is an extended and bizarre anecdote involving “Dick LaPalm”—who I assumed was a made-up character (that name!) until I looked on the internet (which wasn’t available to me in 1978 when this record came out). He was a real guy—Woody Herman’s publicist—and known as the “The Jazz Lobbyist.” Also evident is the address of the record company, “Century Records,” on Sunset Blvd in LA, so I looked that up, and I was not totally surprised, but happy, to see there’s a Mexican restaurant there, now. Rather see tacos than chain drugstores.

Tom Waits “Nighthawks at the Diner”

This is a very early Tom Waits record, though I can’t remember exactly when I first heard it or where I got it, but it’s always been one of my favorites—of his, and favorite records period—and without a doubt my favorite live record—though it turns out—according to the internet—that it’s not really a live record after all. Apparently it was recorded at the Record Plant, in LA, in front of an invited audience used to replicate the sound and feeling of an intimate jazz club or piano bar. It’s really well done—they had me fooled. I always pictured this kind of sleazy, Sunset Strip nightclub, and throughout, he does refer to the Ivar Theatre repeatedly, and also “Rafael’s Silver Cloud Lounge,” and though I always figured he was kind of spinning tales, I still assumed this was in a legitimate club—you can almost smell the bourbon, vomit, and cigarette smoke bathed in red neon. Now, when I found out that I had been totally fooled, do you think I got angry? No. Because I have a high intellect, and I can enjoy being fooled, and I appreciate something so well executed.

His monologues before many of the songs are amazing in themselves; the one before “Eggs and Sausage” is particularly good and would make the record, even if that’s all there was. But there’s more, of course; in fact it’s a double record, and all the monologues and songs kind of blend seamlessly. Okay—now I notice—on the back of the album cover it says, right there, that it was recorded at The Record Plant. I guess I never bothered to read it. I also just noticed that there’s extensive lyrics on the inside, when you open it up—these are some long songs. I guess I never read along with the lyrics because you can pretty much make out every word—even though he’s doing a real Tom Waits-like, rough nightclub singer voice, he’s also clear as a bell. The lyrics are crucial. I can recall listening to this record in the spring of 1986, in Columbus, Ohio, while I painted my kitchen. So even to this day it feels like it’s the ideal record to listen to while painting a kitchen.

It would take me pages and pages to even kind of go over my favorite songs and excerpt my favorite lyrics. There are only two or three songs per side, but it all kind runs together, feeling like one live show, and it’s dense and extensive. Tom Waits must have been only in his mid-twenties when he recorded this, but he sounds convincing as an old-timer who’s been around forever. That’s part of the act. The cover photograph is of Tom Waits in a booth of a diner, photographed through a window—it could possibly be something an art department set up—but could also be a real diner—it would have been easy to find this diner in 1975. There’s nothing in that picture that doesn’t ring true. There are also seven people in the picture, in the diner, with him. I suppose I could scour the internet to find out if it’s known who they are—it could be the musicians, or friends, or real people in a real diner, who knows? Someone knows. It would be pretty cool to be one of those people. I just noticed, for the first time ever!—on the very bottom right of the cover, lying face-down in front of the diner window, is a person wearing a leather jacket. How did I never see that before? It’s kind of freaking me out—what else, in this lifetime—have I also not ever noticed? A lot, I’m sure.

George Benson “Weekend in LA”

Ever since the suffering, bored days of high school, I’ve always considered George Benson’s 1976 milestone, “Breezin'” as shorthand for “insipid.” So it was with great trepidation that I put on this double, LIVE, LP from two years later, the dreaded cultural abyss of 1978. But to my surprise, I’m rather enjoying this low key, smooth jazz experience—really, I’m not kidding. I’ve graced my turntable and neighbors with this LP more than a few times lately. Perhaps I have mellowed like a fine wine. I’m not exactly coming home from school, putting on the Sex Pistols, and pounding a quart of hard cider like I was doing in the days this was pressed. No, these days Ray Speen has used his crack pipe to prop up the wobbly leg of his game table where he’s slowly working on an enormous jigsaw puzzle of the Taj Mahal. That image in the reflecting pool—as still and perfect as it is—just drives you crazy! But that’s another subject.

At first I thought this was a single record, as the second disk is gone. Then I noticed that I was in possession of Record 1 Side I, backed with Record 1 Side IV. That’s Roman numeral “4” for all you intravenous drug abusers who can’t get their minds off the dope. Try a jigsaw puzzle, really. The best song is on side “IV”—the awesome Leon Russell’s “Lady Blue.” Other standouts are “Weekend in LA”, which could be synonymous with “mellow,” and “On Broadway” which could maybe be the theme song for everything in the 1970s I’d like to forget. But in a good way. You can barely tell this is a live record, the audience is so subdued; they sound like they’re all sitting in comfortable seats next to blonde ladies, sipping gin sours.

The cover is as equally classic, with “George Benson” “signed” in red neon, and George assuming the (strictly reserved for superstars) Jesus on the cross pose, that is if Jesus had been gripping a hollowbody, George Benson signature Ibanez in one hand, which, who knows, maybe he was. There are a couple more good pictures of GB, and really, he’s got one of the best moustaches of all time. This could very well be my moustache model for my new look. I’m already, as it is well known, fond of those open collars big enough to double as a jib, Genoa, or even a mainsail. Not something you’d want to wear on the high seas, but fine for tropical, LA nights.