* Bill Hicks said that not me and he meant that he liked the ones who died with passion more than the ones that lived I don’t want anyone dead.
This was originally published September 5th, 2007.
Special July 9, 2018 Update
One of my biggest successes I guess, but definitely a joke that just got funnier and funnier. It was simply a satiric attack against a stupid study. If you don’t want the update and just want the original skip down to the picture of a young unknown Buddy Holly gazing upon big star Elvis Presley.
The original study I found to be so ludicrous is here:
Again if you want to know how I feel about drugs and kids and education it is here.
And here:
I’ve always said that all the Rock Stars who died from substances were great role models, because they did in fact die young from their habits. It’s Keith Richards that you don’t want your kid reading about, because he still thrives and God bless him. My theory on why that is so is that Keith always did nothing but the finest of drugs, he had a pharmaceutical cocaine hookup for a long time, and when Keith indulged, which was always, he just sat around and played guitar rather than attack the town to howl at the moon.
“Scar Tissue” by Anthony Kiedis is a one of many infinitely entertaining books about the horrors of heroin addiction. My favorite story in it concerns him desperately jonesing one night. He had plenty of wealt, but no cash and no ATM card; looked through his house for something of value; grabbed a guitar signed by all of the Rolling Stones that a record executive had given him; took it to the barrio, where a Hispanic heroin dealer whose life was clearly not changed by “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”said, “What am I going to do with that?” He then traded that guitar for enough heroin to get high for exactly ten minutes.
Again, it’s easy to avoid heroin just look at before and after pictures of Chet Baker.
If you want to laugh, discover amazing slang, get the same message, and learn pretty much the entire history of Jazz read this.
By the time I learned that what I wanted to really be was a pop culture Mike Royko, panic attacks, worries about making money, and sleep issues had already pushed me down the wrong path where I would spend for a little over a decade trading on the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange for ten years. I think I had inklings around 1987 or so. I never really tried it until 2000.
Now when I was young, my aunt was sort of under house arrest and started hanging out with me. She would take me on dates where I would sit there and watch her and her boyfriend smoke marijuana. Her boyfriend at the time was sort of a lowlife. He told me that he left his car unlocked in the hopes that it was stolen so he would get the insurance money. I was maybe 12 and smart, but perhaps not yet smart enough to ask how a car that shitty was worth insuring. They never offered me anything. I never asked to share. My parents raised me better than my aunt was ever able to derail me.
I was a rebel and basically rebelled against drugs and alcohol. I went to parties where people drank and they acted stupid. I went to those parties to have a good time and try to talk to girls, which I was not good at. Again though I was supposedly smart, I was not smart enough to understand that alcohol both made it easier to get up the guts to talk to girls, but also made the girls who also drank less put off when you tried to do so. I was probably told this by my drunk friends who were successful with girls, but I wasn’t really attracted to drunk girls either. Someone should have just told me to just have the confidence to talk to girls as well as the ability to follow up on any successful signals they then imparted in response.
I think I once tried to get drunk on wine during a Jewish holiday family get together, but didn’t manage to even drink a quarter of a glass. I’d tasted beer, maybe a bit of other things, but it did indeed taste terrible. To this day, alcohol does nothing for me, I’ve been drunk maybe three times in my life and never once was it a fun experience. Anyone who has been in a bar with me in the last ten years, it’s infrequent, can tell you how I order one Rolling Rock and can only drink half before it becomes too warm to drink and just hold it all night long, and it is always a Rolling Rock, because I love their bottles and it is basically the weakest beer there is.
Most of those parties bored me and I left early, always hearing about how crazy and awesome they got once I left, but maybe it was like watching water boil, no matter how late I did stay nothing fun ever really happened. Until, I left I guess, when friends would inevitably tell me all hell would break loose.
Now I did read everything about Rock and Roll and the biggest early influence on me was “No One Here Gets Out Alive”, by Jerry Hopkins and Danny Sugarman. Hopkins was a journalist, while Sugarman was a kid who Morrison was nice to when he was sober, but who also got to witness the absurdity and self destruction of the “Lizard King” when he was not.
The book was perfect for anyone currently teen age rebelling, basically anyone and should have been used to point kids in the right direction both as learners of art and as potential users of substances, which I’ve said before here: Leave Jim Morrison Alone!
What definitely happened was that it produced a huge Doors revival.
That issue came out September 17th, 1981, when I was about to turn 16.
There are few funnier images from my youth than that of my best friend at the time John Grinnell and I, both reading copies of the same book sitting on a wall together waiting for caddy assignments, while working at The Country Club, which did not allow at the time blacks or Jews, although I guess they hired Jews because I was caddying there.
There were tons of awesome stories in that book, most filled with debauchery and rebellion. It ended with speculation that Morrison faked his own death, which Ray Manzarek did nothing to dispel, in fact he was more than happy and in fact determined to build the legend. I have made fun of him at times, saying that talking about Morrison helped keep Ray something of a Rock Star, but eventually I felt for the three guys, who were very talented and loved to play and create, but could no longer do so because their irreplaceable lead singer had died.
The movie Eddie and the Cruisers came out in 1983 playing on the Morrison fake death idea. I saw it and loved it at the time and still do, but it flopped, until it became a later hit on cable.
One of the smart things I did do when I was young was read “No One Hear Gets Out Alive” properly. Morrison was awesome when he was a little stoned, or tripping on LSD, but a completely, self destructive bozo when drunk. Mostly, what I got out of the book was that Morrison, like me, constantly read as kid (although my books were lightweight and his were challenging). It also made it sound cool to want to be a poet, or at least an artist, something Jim has been been mocked for by his detractors for years. Whether he was or was not a poet, what’s wrong with trying to be one?
I also had another issue. My smartest friend Andre and I both read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Morrison got his band’s name from a phrase in William Blake’s 1793 poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, but also from Huxley’s “The Doors of Perception,” which chronicled his experimentation with LSD.
Andre instantly declared “Brave New World,” the book the greatest book he ever read and moved on. He, unlike me always knew what he wanted to do with his life and it was to be a rich doctor, which he has accomplished. I had no idea, was fascinated with the artist thing Morrison went for, but clearly Morrison was more artistically talented than me and he also had the pure”who gives a fuck” attitude that is necessary to become one.
So, while Andre read it and moved on I pondered this section, where the savage has to decide whether to take the drug Soma, like everyone else in that “utopia” did.
He was suddenly silent, thinking of his mother. In her room on the thirty-seventh floor, Linda had floated in a sea of singing lights and perfumed caresses–floated away, out of space, out of time, out of the prison of her memories, her habits, her aged and bloated body. And Tomakin, ex-Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning, Tomakin was still on holiday–on holiday from humiliation and pain, in a world where he could not hear those words, that derisive laughter, could not see that hideous face, feel those moist and flabby arms round his neck, in a beautiful world …
“What you need,” the Savage went on, “is something with tears for a change. Nothing costs enough here.”
(“Twelve and a half million dollars,” Henry Foster had protested when the Savage told him that. “Twelve and a half million–that’s what the new Conditioning Centre cost. Not a cent less.”)
“Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isn’t there something in that?” he asked, looking up at Mustapha Mond. “Quite apart from God–though of course God would be a reason for it. Isn’t there something in living dangerously?”
“There’s a great deal in it,” the Controller replied. “Men and women must have their adrenals stimulated from time to time.”
“What?” questioned the Savage, uncomprehending.
“It’s one of the conditions of perfect health. That’s why we’ve made the V.P.S. treatments compulsory.”
“V.P.S.?””Violent Passion Surrogate. Regularly once a month. We flood the whole system with adrenin. It’s the complete physiological equivalent of fear and rage. All the tonic effects of murdering Desdemona and being murdered by Othello, without any of the inconveniences.”
“But I like the inconveniences.”
“We don’t,” said the Controller. “We prefer to do things comfortably.”
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
“In fact,” said Mustapha Mond, “you’re claiming the right to be unhappy.”
“All right then,” said the Savage defiantly, “I’m claiming the right to be unhappy.”
“Not to mention the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen tomorrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind.”
There was a long silence.”I claim them all,” said the Savage at last.
Mustapha Mond shrugged his shoulders. “You’re welcome,” he said.
I chose the way of the savage, but was there any doubt? My hero was the guy who wrote “Lola,” after he hadn’t had a hit for years on purpose, proclaimed it a hit sarcastically on it’s album, and was immediately hired to write more gender breaking “glam rock” hits for a film called Percy about the world’s first penis transplant. Of course, my hero was a cranky artist, an iconoclast, and gave them this song which is somehow against even life saving transplants!
Later in life after I’d crashed and burned, Andre after showing me either a Porsche or Ferrari said to me,”You know you’re the smartest guy I’ve ever met, but you ruminate all the time and it’s never done you any good.”
I was totally clean of substances until 22 when I decided to try a martini for this reason and hated it.
Then out of curiosity from Morrison’s least dangerous and most productive vices, I tried LSD at a yearly festival at Northwestern called Armadillo Day, where at least in 1988 that was the point of the festival. I enjoyed it except for two things.
1. A reggae band played and sounded like it was playing stir it up for four hours in a row, which I don’t think even the most devout Rasta could handle and;
2. I chose to wear a Michael Jordan jersey that day and while I was tripping MJ went off in the 4th quarter of a playoff game against the Pistons resulting in everyone yelling Michael at me after the game ended.
Mostly, I decided that LSD was fun because it actually made my brain stop racing. It seemed to me like the awesome challenges of the world were irrelevant that day, because LSD made it challenging enough to just wander around a large group of people massing around the pond of the land fill behind Norris University Center.
I’d had earlier chances to try it mostly from Grateful Dead fans. One who I respected told me I couldn’t understand the Grateful Dead without doing acid. My response was that I had heard the Dead and if it made me like them I was better off without it.
I would have done it again, but I was an eccentric guy among a bunch of odd but wealth obsessed traders. They were doing drugs, but I did not really seek drugs out at least until 1995 or so. There was one night where there were rumors that Robert Cray was going to pop up at a small club and one trader from a family of many offered me basically anything I wanted if I did so choose, which sort of blew my mind. Cray did not show up, and I likely again cradled a Rolling Rock for six hours.
1993-1994 was a big year for me. I met a great girl; took a riskier trading job that I thought would reduce my job issues; had a nervous breakdown; was told psyche meds would fix all my issues (Soma?); decided to be happy; fell in love; decided to be a writer; fell in love; met her parents who did not like me probably because I had just quit my job after my nervous breakdown; and had my heart crushed when she could not handle that.
Eventually I could laugh about it on Nick Digilio’s WGN radio show:
My once super confident psychiatrist, who had told me I had to do nothing to beat my sleep and anxiety issues, but take a pill once every morning (He proudly told me over and over that he could similarly cure Stevie Nicks, had he been so inclined), said well she shouldn’t have left you while you were sick. He then tried pill after pill after pill, as have many doctors that followed with a similar lack of success.
Short term, it led to a horrible year where I did not write the insane story of my fraternity brothers, one a stone cold super genius, who loved to try people’s patience, making $27 million shorting more stock in a company than existed. You probably do not have Bloomberg, but this gives enough to let you know it could have been a really great book. The `Bad Boys’ Of Chicago Arbitrage
After paying $7000 dollars in parking tickets because I was too fucked up to figure out how to get a residential sticker, while living in basically the closet of a friend’s apartment off the Haight, I eventually went back to work as a trader.
Since I was already basically taking Soma, I loosened my rules. I tried marijuana and liked it. It actually was much more effective than any of the pills, which I then relayed to the doctors who said sorry, but we can’t write you a prescription for that or anything like that. I started smoking cigarettes at 28, which though it was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, did alleviate stress as they promised. From 1995-1999, I made a lot of money, then lost a lot of money (although not much of my own). By 1999, I was treading water, my apartment building was kicking me out because I would not give up the cat I had illegally had there for four years. That cat, Bailey, saved my life so it was an easy decision. Aimee Mann’s 1993 album, Whatever, also saved my life. So giving the decision about as much thought as I had given any decision. I found out that Mann played a club called Largo every Tuesday night in Los Angeles, and said I have money saved why not move there, which actually led to me trying to be a pop culture Mike Royko.
They were basically the best two years of my life. I smoked a lot of weed, I wrote a lot after doing so, and went to Largo as often as possible where I watched and met, but was not talented enough to join a ton of really talented people.
Just like the Reeperbahn: Thank you Ian Hunter
The internet was very young and had a ton of money around, with no idea what to do with it.
I started posting silly “Felicity” recaps in usenet newsgroups and had a lot of devoted female fans, who loved my writing!
Wreckage from the Felicity Commission
I lived near a friend from those days in closet from the Haight. He was always writing, but never showed anyone any of it. He was a big film buff and was very into John Woo before he decided to make movies in English. He claimed to have coined the term “Hilarity ensues,” which is doubtful, but if anyone ever asks me where that phrase comes from sure, I”ll give him credit. He knew Chris Gore and wrote for his movie web site (once a magazine out of his garage or something), Film Threat. In 2012, this deplorable guy, who had a lot of deplorable stories titled a book “Hilarity Ensues,” which if my friend heard about it after his life imploded, probably made him smash his head into a wall a 1000 times. Oddly, the girl who broke my heart worked at and married a patent attorney, probably now worth untold millions, from the a firm that Max once worked at and told a deplorable story about in his first book. I could write funny, but did not lead a deplorable enough life.
He did introduce me to Gore, who was a fun guy, and I will give him all the credit in the world. He took himself from nothing and built it into something and still thrives with an entrepreneurial spirit and ability I can only wish I had a tenth of. Gore is also really good at getting people to write for him for free, usually with the equivalent quality, but I was willing to write for free and mostly did so about old movies for his site. My pieces were never really edited (and they often needed to be), except one time somehow my witty reference to a character looking for some “strange” got changed to “strange women.” He sold the site and bought it back. My pieces are still there but not with my byline, which considering the facts that they still have not been edited and that they are now formatted incredibly badly, I’m totally fine with them not having my name on them. They are all here now, and thanks to Chris Gore, because through his site, my name got picked up by a ton of movie sites, which list my reviews usually with their best “sentences or two.”
That led to me actually for a time getting paid and well to write!
I answered a Monster.com post for a record reviewer sent in this piece on “A Hard Day’s Night” and was suddenly getting $400 dollars a review for the either genius or hilariously named site and URL “www.com.”
I also had a really good editor for the first time named Deanne Stillman, who writes great books, and still helps me out. I also wrote some really prescient pieces on the future of the music industry, which were sadly not published, because the site I was writing for had a dog in that fight. I pretty much predicted iTunes and Spotify, which probably means I should have been investing my money and doing some entrepreneurship of my own instead of writing reviews about Brian Wilson live albums, but we all know which I’d rather be doing.
You read that correctly $400 a review!
During that time I also took and quit or got fired from some hilariously awful jobs, all within less than a month! Jobs Purposefully Lost.
Eventually, most of my money ran out in 2002, but again the best years of my life. If I could still somehow afford to live two blocks from Largo, I would.
For better or for worse, all of my early incessant quest to absorb all the music and history of Rock and Roll came from the “Rolling Stone” magazine narrative especially that of Dave Marsh. It’s basically the narrative that was responsible for every Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member who was inducted before it became more about a television show and making money. It’s Yann Wenner’s plaything now, but Marsh once had a lot of influence either real of from his past writings.
I read everything I could find, and basically bought and played to death anything that remotely sounded interesting from the “Rolling Stone Record Guide” that had either four or five stars.
At some point, I emailed Marsh to thank him for all I’d learned about writing and music from him. Amazingly, I got away with ending my email with “I love all your writing even if I think you did personally downgrade all of the Doors albums by two stars in the second edition of your “Rolling Stone Record Guide.”
Marsh responded with genuine gratitude and grace. I did not piss him off with the crack about the Doors, because clearly he did do that and was very proud to have done that!
That was the only email from him I ever received that did not contain real and frightening anger from a really articulate and genuinely angry guy.
He will argue that his anger comes from a genuine will to see the world do better. Sort of like George Carlin. I don’t really disagree with Marsh on much, but his anger isn’t really the crusader type of thing he makes it seem to be.
He’s mostly angry because unlike Lester Bangs, he did not die and he did not get lionized by this film made by fellow Rolling Stone writer, Cameron Crowe. Almost Famous and the Pursuit of Cool
Remember 90% of the time, it’s not really how good you write, it’s how good people write about you after you are done.
When I was hanging at Largo all the great talents revolved around Paul Thomas Anderson’s films.
It also helps if you are portrayed by a great actor. Phillip Seymour Hoffman was a great actor, and was in every film Paul Thomas Anderson made until he died. Hoffman was seen as so essential to Anderson, that had he lived and Anderson made a movie with only female roles set in Thailand. Hoffman would have still had a decent sized part and it would have worked and it would somehow not have been criticized in any way.
Marsh and Bangs were together and built themselves and CREEM magazine.
Jim DeRogatis wrote the book “Let it Blurt” about Bangs and Marsh was enraged, claiming DeRogatis didn’t talk to him as much as he should have and that he wasn’t given his right due.
Marsh may be right to be angry I have no idea. This New York Times review of “Let it Blurt” only mentions Marsh once.
All I know is that all of those guys took music that was supposed to have been meant to be disposable and fun, and wrote very serious pieces on them being art or not art.
They sort of made it less fun, but they also made it be taken more seriously. There are upsides and downsides of all of it. The only real downside is they all seem very angry and petty.
DeRogatis has done a lot of interesting and angry stuff too. I have stuff I hate, but try to just mostly write pieces about the things I love. I can tear people apart as good as anyone, but it’s rarely worth the effort, unless you find Pat Boone impeding Little Richard’s way.
I had one fun email exchange with DeRogatis, who may be a hero for his dogged pursuit of R Kelly. I’m not in Chicago to see his day to day work, but he does purposely like to tear things down (for good or bad your decision), and in this case he picked a easy target I had an affinity and sympathy for and built a straw man (perhaps accidentally) to tear him down.
I read a conversation in Jim De Rogatis’ book “Kill Your Idols : A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics,” where he and a fellow critic unloaded on the stupidity of the Jim Morrison “Riders on the Storm” lyric “Like a dog without a bone, an actor all alone.” I sent him an e mail, acknowledging the triteness of the line. Only thing is that Morrison’s real words are not “an actor all alone”, but “an actor out on loan”, which refers to the movie studio practice of lending out their hired talent to other studios. It’s a metaphor that perfectly fits the moody detachment of the song.
De Rogatis’ defense was that every single web site listed the lyrics his way. The Internet is a great thing, but be careful believing everything you find in the world’s largest porn depository. I doubt the Lizard King will get an apology. Morrison gets so much crap for wanting to be a poet, as if that were an evil ambition. Again, what is wrong with wanting to be a poet?
I wasted so much time arguing with people about how much better Keith Moon was than Neal Peart from 1980-1984. Then only last year I found out that Peart loved Moon as much as I did.
You don’t have to tear down the work of others to laud the things you like. It’s too easy and silly. Again, it’s nonproductive, unless you are fighting against the Crew Cuts for the Chords, but that’s rarely the case.
Be like these guys instead! Elvis and Jackie Wilson True Soul Brothers
I’ll give DeRogatis the benefit of the doubt and hope that had “Kill Your Idols” been reissued, or if it is someday that he would fix the Morrison mistake.
The internet may still have tons of false crap on it, but since 2004 it has fixed their “Riders on the Storm” mistake. Hopefully, he would too.
All people who write about art seem to be angry at the real artists that they aren’t artists themselves.
The single character from a movie that I identify with most is Salieri from Amadeus.
At least according to the movie, Salieri wanted so much to be a composer, prayed to God to become a great one, worked his ass off to be one, and became one. Then he saw Mozart and instantly knew how inferior he was. Raged at how easy it came to Mozart. Raged at how immature and childlike Mozart was.
This scene is the very definition of being owned.
The same thing happened to pretty much all of the guitarists in England when Chas Chandler brought Jimi Hendrix to England to rape and pillage and reclaim for America what they had supposedly stolen.
After they saw Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Pete Townshend were supposedly so depressed they wanted to quit for while, but they didn’t. I never had an ounce of musical talent, but I had the ambition, and I’ve felt that depression when I see someone like Jon Brion do things so easily off the top of his head in a small club it can be both inspiring and devastating.
Inside Townshend worshipped Hendrix, but that didn’t make him lay down to him at the Monterey Pop Festival. Hendrix topped Pete by burning his guitar after Pete smashed his, but the competition made Pete better. Bird and Magic made each other better.
Of course art is not a competitive sport, but that doesn’t mean competition doesn’t make better art.
So Salieri got madder and madder and destroyed both himself and Mozert, but he forgot the one thing that he actually had going for him. He was the only guy who knew that Mozart was Mozert!
He was never going to be Mozart, but he could have been Jon Landau.
Landau helped Springsteen become Springsteen and got to go along for the ride. He made the best out of being Salieri!
I actually share more of Marsh’s views than Bangs’, but yeah Dave Marsh is really angry.
I gently kept sending him emails and pretty much every time he would send back extremely virulent replies. They were always either interesting or hilarious, whether I agreed with him or not and I treated him with the utmost respect, like an ant would treat a God. I’d politely disagree sometimes with apologetic tones, which would always bring a new torrent of insults and hilarious hostility.
I really wanted him to help me with my writing aspirations, though, and sometimes he did.
I told him about how a big movie site had a page up featuring my old Film Threat reviews, without my permission, and he told me that I could complain, but I wouldn’t get paid and they would just take it down.
At one point, I asked him why he kept spending so much time writing angry responses to me, and he was genuine and said you bring up good things.
Once, I asked him why no one had ever written a book about Allen Klein, who purloined all the rights to pretty much all the Richard/Jagger songs of the Rolling Stones and essentially was really the one who broke up the Beatles infinitely more than Yoko Ono.
“Could it possibly be true that no one has ever written a book about him? Seems like one of the most important figures in Rock music history for
better and for worse. The Don King of Rock. Could arguably be called the man who broke up the Beatles.
Was it your book that I read that Pete Townshend was told that Allen Klein had more to do with the Who than he would ever know or understand?”
Marsh hilariously told me that no writer would write it and that Klein would do everything in his power to fuck over anyone who tried for the rest of his life, that no one would publish it, and no one would want to read it.
God, I’d love to read that book.
When Klein died in 2009, I asked him if I could quote him for my little seen blog, and he was still in obvious terror of messing with that guy, even though he was dead.
At one point, I begged him to read this, which I wrote at the turn of the century, when people were discussing, who the man of the 20th century had been.
It’s just a fun mostly joking thing with an outcome I thought he’d dig.
He got back to me and hilariously said something like “OK, now what.”
Maybe it was like me with girls and I should have just come out and begged for his help, but actually the emails alone were worth it. They were amazing. Always angry, always fascinating, always full of insults for anything I brought up.
Then after I finally built a website in 2007, he shocked me and I sent him the post we are now remembering.
Subject: did you think this study was as much a waste of time as i did
how do you choose the stuff that goes up on the RRC blog?
Can I submit stuff? Admittedly my tone is less serious than yours.
brad
Then he did the one thing I never thought would happen.
He told me it was awesome and said let me forward it on to my other editor.
Then without any further discussion. He just published it. He didn’t have my permission. He didn’t ask me if I wanted anything for it, but of course it was fine with me I had been writing for free for years with no success, and I got some notoriety.
Right after he used it this came out in the Huffington Post.
Debating the Science of Dead Pop Stars
This guy RJ Eskow slammed Marsh for printing it and took me down in detail full of wild imagery and references and statistics to show how ignorant I had been. He seemed to miss that I wrote a really long joke discussing a really silly study as if I cared little for the issues of substance abuse in world.
Funny thing was I actually majored in statistics at Northwestern and could hold my own in that arena.
So I quickly wrote this:
I sent it to him and cc’d Marsh.
Marsh had moved on and didn’t reply.
It also got discussed here by people who seemed to get the joke.
Brad Laidman critiques the findings from the Centre For Public Health at Liverpool John Moore University report [pdf] ‘Elvis to Eminem: quantifying the price of fame through early mortality of European and North American rock and pop stars.’
“Conclusion: Pop stars can suffer high levels of stress in environments where alcohol and drugs are widely available, leading to health-damaging risk behaviour. However, their behaviour can also influence would-be stars and devoted fans. Collaborations between health and music industries should focus on improving both pop star health and their image as role models to wider populations.
Now I barely critiqued anything, I had just made a really funny joke about what a silly study it was.
I’ve met tons of graduate students that tell me that they are working hard to come up for ideas to write grant proposals for, but no one ever seems to work nearly as hard coming up with a great idea.
My final best stab at being 100% serious was this A Final More Serious Thought about Rock Stars and Drugs
Eskow and I emailed and he realized both that I was joking and why I had made the joke.
He seemed like a really nice guy who was as big of a fan or music as I was.
I leveraged this attention into .. well nothing. More free writing.
In fact, it was then that I learned from Eskow that the Huffington Post didn’t pay its writers for pieces like ours.
For a bit I did leverage that into ten dollars an article here.
Brad Laidman: The Morton Report
That was actually sadly unsustainable for the really cool couple that ran it. So I again wrote for free for them for a while.
The one guy they did pay to write for them was the wonderful Al Kooper. So without any prompting I wrote this after reading his really funny memoir, which is sadly out of print and hard to get.
Reading Al Kooper: Backstage Passes and Backstabbing Bastards
He wrote me a hilarious thank you email, during which he made fun of me, a similar thank you from Dave Davies that I treasure, and made fun of both my name and my “punk name” that I sometimes published under (Keith Crime, which I came up mostly before rap names became preeminent, and mostly just survives in online logs about my online poker losses)! He also made me promise to keep it to myself, which I will always do, even if he dies before I did.
This was me ecstatic about Dave’s response to me defending him against his critics, especially another CREEM writer who thought he was the most clever one, John Mendelsohn, who although he wrote an amazing essay to revive the Kinks with the Kinks Kronicles took many cheap shots at what was perceived as the lesser Davies after that.
The fact that Dave too thought my name was Keith made it more endearing. It’s my middle name.
Sure, I don’t send vicious attacks to artists and sometimes when I send pieces to those I love they never see them or don’t write back, but this happened.
In the early days of the internet, I sent Aimee Mann an E-mail telling her that I’d love to be her manager because I would treat it as a “holy mission” and she responded “I hope you have experience, like with the Crusades.” I treasured that response.
And honestly, I’ve never kissed as or lied once. In fact, I’ve actually done the opposite albeit by accident on impulse due to excitement from meeting someone I dug.
This happened in 2002, I believe.
The night I saw him in San Francisco, the crowd was looking at Mitch like he was modern art being shown backstage at the Jerry Springer show. After awhile, people starting buying him drinks just to see how hammered he would get. Not one to be confrontational, Mitch kept accepting them until his wife Lynn walked onto the stage and took one out of his hands, which was hardly the worst thing she did to Mitch during the show. After about 15 more minutes of more Mitch ramblings, Lyn started yelling out “Tell them about the CD’s,” which Mitch proceeded to ignore until she yelled it out for about the 17th time. Finally, in true Hedberg fashion he replied “I ain’t gonna waste my time for what like three people … would anyone here actually buy this crap?” Me and two other guys cheered yes.
A couple of years later, I met him outside of Largo, and asked him about the show. Thinking back it was probably sort of insensitive of me. When, I introduced myself to David Cross and told him that we had a mutual friend from his comedy past, he treated me like a fungus, who could blame Mitch for going off on me after bringing that night up.
“You were there? That’s hilarious.”
I don’t know how to describe it to you but the instant you met this guy you realized that he didn’t have a cruel bone in his body. Maybe the sweetest thing God ever produced. He spent like 20 minutes smoking with me. He introduced me to his wife. I asked him if he got sick of staying in so many hotel rooms and his answer was “No way, we love it.” I’m guessing Mitch was thinking of the genius way he’d found to get the world to clean up his room for him.
After his death, I read about how he’d met a couple of college kids and after hearing about their sweatbox dorm room returned the next day with an air conditioner. The only celebrity death that’s ever left me severely depressed.
Every artist I’ve met has been awesome to me both in person or even recalling meting them later.
Ian Hunter smoked with me. Badly Drawn Boy smoked with me.
I’ve only ever had two bad experiences with artists. One was because I was asking him about another artist, who had recorded one of his songs, and he suspected possibly truly that I liked the other one better, and once by a guy, who everyone had already told me was a jerk, when I mentioned my “Hollywood Game Night” who had been in the same Boston comedy scene as me coming up.
My “Hollywood Game Night” friend, who has always been an artist only had one ugly experience, and it was with one of our heroes. He went on for like five minutes to Bill Hicks about how incredible he was for maybe three minutes and told him how much he had influenced his life and his work, and Bill, who had issues at the time, which he dealt with later, responded with “Do you have any cocaine?” Hicks always told the truth he needed some cocaine!
An electrical guy I shared a hot tub with in LA told me that John Belushi once came up to him on a movie set and politely asked for some cocaine, quickly snorted all of his, which was a lot, genuinely said “thanks” and dashed off. I’ve done a little cocaine, although never a lot, which is a bad idea, and sometimes you just need cocaine.
The one guy I purposely left alone, was a huge hero of mine. I had years to try to talk to him, and I was on a first name basis with both his ex-wife and his current wife. I coached Robin William’s son a bit in San Francisco. I wanted to tell him how angry I had been as a kid when “Mork and Mindy,” was not the number one show in America, because my home town Cleveland’s affiliate aired some odd historical program instead and I had to watch it from a UHF station out of Akron. I wanted to tell him how proud I was when I saw Tony Randall on the Tonight Show say “The only guy with talent on TV right now is that guy on Mork and Mindy.”
I had four years to talk to him, but I instantly saw the way he hung out in the back, shy, away from the other parents. I knew that he knew that I knew that he was Robin Williams, and in one of the rare cases that I did not let my exuberance and passion impel me to do something insensitive, I left him alone. In those four years, I can proudly say that the only thing I ever said to him was, “Hi, do you know where the other team went?” He didn’t.
Artists have always been wonderful to me. It’s why, even though I’m fairly poor these days, and I’ve decided to use the internet on occasion to watch shows or movies from super rich artists, I insist on supporting smaller artists I love by buying whatever they put out with honest intent, which is pretty much everything, wherever they will make the most money by me doing so.
Doug Stanhope has talked to me for long periods many times, the only truly good thing that came from starting to smoke other than the stress relief. He tells his fans to steal his work. Once after he took a photo with me, I perhaps too proudly told him about my philosophy.
He immediately said to me, “You’re an idiot!” and that’s why I’ve bought every single thing he’s put out since 2000, be it be it audio, video, or book.
The only people who have ever been dicks to me are critics, which is why I would never want to be called that even though I can be critical.
There’s immense worship for Ray Davies on my site, it probably doesn’t say on here until now that “Black Messiah” is the worst song he has ever written, but it is.
Even the stuff I hate I try to do with over the top humor:
Terms of Endearment: The Worst Movie Ever Made
You can’t name your site after the funniest Elvis joke of all time and not be able to joke about Elvis, as long as it is merited.
Tons of Morrison jokes on here, but when someone gets a lyric wrong and doesn’t seem to care, I get irate.
I do understand exactly how hard it is to write about pop culture and get paid these days. There are tons of people like me with tons of good things to say, with better graphics than me, etc. Even good sites that don’t pay their people are full and won’t look at someone they don’t know’s work. The Onion last time I checked doesn’t even take submissions or queries.
I slaved over a book for years. My www.com editor was kind enough to look at it for free (since, I’ve paid her to look at other stuff, as I should) and shocked me by saying it was “marvelous,” she gave me her agents email, and he responded in 2006 that he would publish it if I were Andy Rooney. At first I wondered, what Andy Rooney would have to say about the Clash, and then I googled the word he used “platform.”
I guess the next day I should have started becoming an SEO expert, but I’m not.
Mitch had alerted me when he was still alive.
I’ve actually tried really hard to get twitter followers. I’ve gotten tons of likes, but no real followers and no real retweets for any of my articles.
I currently have 118 followers.
There are six year olds with 7,000,000 million Instagram followers and I don’t even really understand exactly what Instagram does.
I only once did something semi-satirically shameful to try to get a response, and it took me two hours to feel sick to my stomach and take it down.
Although, I did post a should I assassinate the president thing about 10 years ago, that was labeled satire all over it in big letters. It took less than a minute to get scared and take it down.
Things didn’t end well with Dave Marsh and hilariously so. Ethics and laws prevent me from sharing how hilarious and weird it was.
It actually happened because I, through sheer accident, tried to share an email from him with the only real friend I have that even knows who Dave Marsh is. I tried to forward something to that friend from Dave asking merely, “why is he so angry about this?” and of course, accidentally sent it right back to an already angered Dave Marsh. Followed by another hilariously apologetic reply from me. I wish I could share that stuff, but I can’t and won’t.
That’s not true I have shared it once with another guy who was in my situation to see what he thought because the entire time, I kept being respectful and apologetic, he kept getting angrier and lobbing atomic weapons at me. I did have the high ground and I do think I was right all the way up until, I accidentally sent back his own words to him. So I apologized, asked him with all respect not to be so angry with people who not only agreed with him most of the time, but respected his work. That was the last email I sent to him.
I should have known how it was going to turn out, though.
At some point, I went to see Dave Marsh talk at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where I’d endlessly tried to volunteer to work in their education department. You can know everything their is to know about popular music of the 20th century, and if you do not have a PhD, they will not let you even shine the railings there, and yet Dave Marsh and Bangs, and Mendolsohn and Wenner had no PhD’s, which I thought was the point.
In 1953, there was a white kid who knew more about every obscure musical genre, white and black, than anyone else in America, he barely graduated high school and drove a truck. His name was Elvis Presley, and very few people today know that about Elvis Presley, even though they know every aspect of his 70s diet. In 1961, there was a guy, who never told anyone the truth about anything when asked. He barely went to college for a few months in Minnesota, and mostly to steal priceless albums from people, and when confronted said something to the effect of, “you don’t understand I need these albums!” There was a kid who lived on the docks in England, who got all the best records from America, that even most Americans never heard, who decided he was going to end up a Rock Star or broke and in jail, even though no one from his country or anywhere outside the United States had become a Rock Star.
I never had that drive or that talent, even though I listened to everything and bought Billy Bragg’s debut EP, because I would spend money I did not have on copies of NME. I also bought The Replacements “Let it Be” right after it came out because of a hilarious article in what was then a fraction of what CREEM, had once been about the band. I look back on those days and see how few of those albums were sold back then and wonder how I owned so many of them.
In college, I knew every song in the top 100 somehow. Today, I can’t tell you very many top ten hits from he past 5 years.
This was basically the last obscure great record I knew about when it came out. It was released ten years ago and I only heard it, because I was and am creepy enough to still love teen soaps and 42 years of age and saw every episode of the 90210 reboot.
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Bob Dylan tore apart all of popular music that came before him, without shedding tear. Was given an award by old people, who loved what he had to say and told them, “You people should be at the beach. You should be out there and you should be swimming and you should be just relaxing in the time you have to relax. It is not an old peoples’ world. It is not an old peoples’ world. It has nothing to do with old people. Old people when their hair grows out, they should go out. And I look down to see the people that are governing me and making my rules – and they haven’t got any hair on their head – I get very uptight about it.”
They were basically, Jessica Tandy paying to see Martin Luther King speak, but leaving Morgan Freeman, to wait in the car while they did so.
Dylan is perfectly not a hypocrite. He’s old, he hasn’t said much about politics since February of 1991, when he got a Grammy lifetime achievement award (most great artists win no awards until they get there lifetime achievement awards). During that show which occurred in the middle of the Gulf War, he sang an undecipherable version of “Masters of War” (90% of those who watched it had no idea what song he was even playing).
He then gave a short thank you, which was mocked even though I cherish every word.
Bob Dylan: Well, um … yeah … my daddy, he didn’t leave me much, you know he was a very simple man, but what he did tell me was this, he did say, son, he said …He said so many things you know. He said, you know it’s possible to become so defiled in this world that your own father and mother will abandon you, and if that happens, God will always believe in your ability to mend your ways.
That soon led to this hilarious, although probably clueless SNL sketch. Dylan and Petty on Weekend Update
For the past 20 years, Dylan has pretty much done nothing, but do odd radio shows playing nothing but obscure old music from before he took an in progress game of Monopoly and kicked over the table it was being played on, and mostly just celebrated the music that came before him.
Joan Baez was pissed at Dylan, when he turned his back on Freedom Marches. Wynton Marsalis likened Miles Davis to your greatest general going over to the other side, but artists are artists.
Had Baez been paying any attention, when Miss Daisy gave Dylan got that award, he told everyone there exactly what he had planned to do.
Anyway, Dave was slated to give a speech on Jimmy Webb, I didn’t care about Jimmy Webb, I just wanted to see and maybe shake hands with Dave Marsh.
Hilariously Dave Marsh did not once mention Jimmy Webb he talked about nothing, but Bruce Springsteen. for 90 minutes.
I think it was around 2009, and he talked about how even seemingly obscure, weird songs like something called “Queen of the Supermarket” were classics, leaving me wishing I was hearing someone else talk about the Clash’s Lost in the Supermarket. Recently, I saw this article from the website I’d most like to write for The A.V. Club (I’m working on it), about all the expensive Joe Strummer rarities being released. It made me very sad, because I remembered how stupid I was in high school for paying $30 for badly recorded Led Zeppelin rarity bootlegs, when I did not even own all the essential Led Zeppelin albums at the time.
I instantly thought, what we need right now is for everyone to hear and understand the real Joe Strummer canon.
When everyone knows where these lyrics came from then people should be buying rarities.
The judge said five to ten-but I say double that again
I’m not working for the clampdown
No man born with a living soul
Can be working for the clampdown
Kick over the wall ’cause government’s to fall
How can you refuse it?
Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
Do you know that you can use it?
The voices in your head are calling
Stop wasting your time, there’s nothing coming
Only a fool would think someone could save you
The men at the factory are old and cunning
You don’t owe nothing, so boy get runnin’
It’s the best years of your life they want to steal
Dave droned on about Bruce and I listened to every word, about how he was still relevant.
He sounded like a soldier ready to go into a life or death battle espousing Bruce as his unquestioned leader.
He finally took questions, and I maybe should have just said, “When are you going to talk about Jimmy Webb?”
Instead I asked him a different question, I probably knew would make him angry.
“You are Bruce’s official biographer now. Politically you sound like an acolyte of his, which is cool, but can you really still honestly evaluate his new music,” but probably not that eloquently.
He got angry, of course he did, and related something honest that he wrote in “Before I Get Old,” that made Roger Daltrey nearly punch him. I read “Before I get Old,”at least 20 times, and the one thing I definitely learned from it was that I did not want Roger Daltrey, punching me.
He then invited everyone to come back and hear him do his Sirius E Street Radio Show the next day.
As I walked out, a few people came up to me, possibly people who felt betrayed that they learned nothing about “MacArthur Park” and said “You totally were right to ask that question.”
Respectfully, I paid like $25 dollars for his most recent Springsteen book from 2003, “Bruce Springsteen: Two Hearts : The Definitive Biography, 1972-2003, “which I obviously wasn’t going to read, because I had read the first part already, and I haven’t heard I single Bruce Springsteen song that I’ve loved since “Darlington County,” which was off of “Born in the USA,” released back in 1984, just as I graduated high school, and I literally hated every other song on that album.
I introduced myself and he said, “I know you, you’re smart,” and he signed the book for me “For Brad, Good friends, Dave Marsh. 6-03-09”
I came back the next day to listen and hopefully watch Dave do his radio show. I may have even dreamed of being on it and talking about how much I loved how prodigious, Springsteen once was, when he could just give away great songs like “Because the Night,” “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come),” “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come), and “Light of Day.”
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The next day, I was the only one who showed up to hear his radio show other than two women, he had personally flirted with and invited the previous night.
I was there early, saw that because the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was exactly the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, that without being in the room, you could not watch Dave do his show. I stepped away for 30 seconds to glance at Bruce’s famed Telecaster which was up on a wall temporarily, encased in glass.
While I did so, the two women were on his show for two hours. I just stood there, the whole time, and could not even listen to it.
He knew I was out there. There was plenty of room in the studio. I was fine with not being on the show, although it would have been a huge honor to have been, not because I’m a big Springsteen fan, but a big Dave Marsh fan. Instead after the show, I said hello and he rushed past me.
Our last encounter as “friends” was exactly like things ended with my aunt, who can become so enraged after nothing but hours of flattery if you so much as use one small word the wrong way, and it was about three months later.
Honestly, I wasn’t bitter not a bit, I loved his crazy, angry emails.
He made a post on Facebook promoting his most recent interview on Sirius with Clarence Clemons.
I jokingly replied, “I just heard Clarence on Howard Stern, I bet the two interviews weren’t very similar.”
They were not, which made Dave Marsh go Dave Marsh, with me via email.
I was 100% respectful after every Liston like blow. I simply argued logically that I didn’t understand what he was so angry about.
I pulled my punches, at every opportunity. I could have pointed out that his serious (Sirius) interview with Clarence, only existed because, almost all of Satellite network’s shows were paid for by subscribers like me only paying to hear the Stern Show.
Years later, I would laugh about how racist he called me for defending a question that Stern asked Clemons, which he was also asked at least six times previously on the same show, which Stern asks every guest. I would laugh because Ron Howard was on his show, and Stern, not only asked him the same question, he asked him if he had any idea about how Don Knotts would answer the question.
So I was sitting there at my computer looking over at my well worn, barely in one piece, copy of my favorite book of all time, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” saying could he possibly be right? He can’t be this insane, maybe I am a racist, so for the first time ever I did try to forward it to the one sane friend, who would know, which ended Dave Marsh and I’s “friendship” forever.
I knew what had happened, and tried to preempt the storm with a complete apology trying to explain my mindset.
I did not work. His last blow was swift, but cruel. The only word I’ll share was his final insult, because it was such a great word, he called me “scurrilous.”
I was 100% wrong and sent him one last goodbye.
It was a fascinating conversation, with me citing tons of relevant history that he had taught me, or at least I thought he had, but I’m not the final word he called me so it will die with me.
11-9-2009
“When Allen Klein died I asked you for permission to quote you – you said no and i didn’t do it
I didn’t know there was an email code of honor – the reason i wanted my friend to read it was because I wanted to know whether I deserved the gigantic amount of venom that came back at me – because I didn’t mean harm and felt horrible
I respect you as a writer – I respect your passion as a crusader – I have no idea why you need to be so mean to someone who is doing their best not to offend you and admires you –
it hurts to have someone you look up to call you a scumbag –
Saying “your opinion is so abhorrent to me that it’s beneath me to answer you with logic and it convinces me that you’re a total piece of sewer filth that I will now and forever impugn and disregard” – doesn’t seem like a revolutionary change in the world that I want to be a part of
I’m sorry that I upset you – although I don’t really feel that before forwarding the email to my friend that I did much to deserve the hate that came my way – it was hurtful and crushed me – nevertheless, I promise with this last word that I will delete your address and never concern you again”
The quote I used wasn’t his, he was less eloquent, it was just my description of what he had said to me. Before my misclick, he had told me we were done forever and that I was basically, worse than the worst person who had ever voted for George Wallace.
Had I just posted the whole exchange, I sort of think that even in our divided times that 95% of people would realize that the guy I grew up idolizing, who wrote passages of great beauty and passion that I had memorized, had truly gone insane. In fact most of those passages were about music that expressed passion.
That won’t happen. He still showed me the path to where I am now. I wish that his Salieri had been a more productive less bitter Salieri.
He hasn’t really written anything new since then, although then I did ask him what was up with him with his blind rage against Bono, even though I got his points about building wealth, paying as little taxes to Ireland as possible and buying “Forbes.”
If he does somehow write a new book, I’ll probably still buy it although if it is about Bruce I probably won’t read it, at least not until I read Bruce’s book, and I’m wary of all autobiographies even Malcolm’s.
If there is a civil war. I will be on Bruce’s side, even though Bruce is now playing big money Broadway shows, that I hear are fantastic.
Him using the following article without my permission is still one of the best things that ever happened to me.
He grew up thinking Rock and Roll would change the world and he was perhaps that argument’s Ted Sorenson to me.
But there is one thing Dave Marsh claimed he could do and didn’t do, and its pretty unforgivable if he didn’t fight to stop it from happening as hard as he found me over a silly Facebook comment.
Clarence Clemons died before he was inducted into Marsh’s Hall of Fame, which has to be a gut punch to anyone who was truly a fan.
I’m thinking be less concerned about a show Clarence chose to go on over and over again, and more concerned with honoring the man before he dies after having been ignored for 10 years supposedly under your watch.
That’s why my favorite exhibit in that place is Jim Morrison’s Cub Scout uniform, and that’s why the people who took my advice to scroll down to the Elvis/Buddy picture are much happier right now too.
