SHARKFORUM: OPINION WITH TEETH

Rock and roll got big. Really big. Stadium rock. My second concert was Chicago and The Beach Boys (with Terry Kath-yay and without Brian Wilson -nay) at Chicago Stadium. My third concert was The Who with Toots and the Maytals in Cincinnati. Get the picture? Big bands in big stadiums. I loved every second of it. C’mon, Keith Moon and lasers! But what did I know? I was an air guitarist with a rapidly expanding record collection. For the bands, money was flowing in; bands were throwing it out of hotel room windows, Cynthia Plastercaster was sculpting, and the drugs were plentiful. If it was difficult to see the band on stage, don’t worry, the band didn’t see you either. The audience was a big blur; we were the cash flow, we were dollar signs. Especially the boys. We trampled our way into the cow palaces, sometimes literally.

It wasn’t just stadium rock that began for me in 1975; by the end of the year I was introduced to the music that would change my life. In the fall, I went off to college in Lexington, Kentucky. I had no career goals, no vision. I was going to be a lawyer, but I quickly switched to psychiatry. How’s that for an about face? In my dorm, where I knew nary a soul, I somehow hooked up with the only person that hadn’t gone home to pick tobacco over the weekend. That fall my new friend Keith turned me on to the Velvet Underground and Van Morrison. He also had a new single, Gloria by the Patti Smith Group.

We listened to lots of FM radio. It was a novelty to listen to radio with no static and album cuts, not just a string of a-side hits. It didn’t take long for it to suck. For every Steely Dan song, you got four or five Baker Streets. I grew to hate sax solos. Bands started to put out lousy records ruined by coked-up producers. They were in love with the sheen of synthesized schlock, but payola still ruled the airwaves. Satin-jacketed record company hacks paved the way for airplay with lines of coke snorted from rolled up c-notes. Bands holed up in studios for months to make their supposed masterpieces. Rock became a bloated, disinterested beast. Some artists, like John Fogerty and Roger McGuinn were still victims of bad record deals; Fogerty refused to play his hits lest he put any more money in Saul Zaenz’s pocket.

I couldn’t get enough. My record collection was on its way to albatross proportions (I’ve had to move them close to ten times, often up three flights of stairs) When I was in college I spent hours in dusty bins; my mom would send me one hundred dollars a month so that I could eat on Sundays, but I would spend most of it on new and used records. Peanut butter and crackers became my Sunday staple. Ah, those used record stores. My favorite in Lexington was Bearswax which was responsible for my mediocre grade point average. The owner, Chris was a former dj who was basically making a living off old promos.

The seventies also had some great television for rock addicts. I used to set my alarm so that I’d wake up to watch Rock Concert at three in the morning. My favorite image from those days was Neil Young live doing Like a Hurricane. The song wouldn’t be released for another several years, but there he was, wind machine blowing him away, the black Les Paul, and the most ferocious magical guitar playing I’d ever seen. I’ll never forgive the city of Lexington for canceling a Neil Young tour because advance ticket sales were slow. The University also turned down a Springsteen show in 1976 because he wanted half the arena closed off with a curtain to keep it at 5,000 people. There was nothing to do in that town. If I wanted to have an intimate relationship with rock I would have to do it myself. I ordered a bass and an amp from the J.C. Penney catalogue for $180 dollars. I bought the Who Quadrophenia songbook and tried to learn bass by reading the notes. Have you ever listened to John Entwhistle’s bass on that record? I really tried.

And then, as D.Boon said, “Punk rock changed my life.” The Sex Pistols were coming to America and I was going to see them New Year’s Eve in Chicago. Of course, as we all know, that tour was canceled, but Elvis Costello appeared on SNL and blew everyone away. We drove up to Cincinnati to Bogarts to see him. That year we made that ride again and again to see The Ramones, The Dead Boys, and Devo. The cool thing was you could stand right in front of the stage. Heck, we could talk to Stiv Bators at the bar! Music was finally accessible. At the Patti Smith concert in Louisville she yelled for the fans to climb over the barriers and come right up to the stage. You could feel the air move out of guitar amps. Sweat would land on you. You felt like you were part of the concert.

By that time I had picked a few notes out of the Ox’s repertoire and found myself in a punk rock band, The Pods in 1978. We did almost all cover songs; Buzzcocks, Clash, Cheap Trick, Ramones, all the hits. I had kind of spiky hair and a skinny tie. For some reason Lexington bands were playing covers, Louisville bands like Tara Key’s Babylon Dance Band were playing originals. No matter. By 1979 we were ready for the stage. On New Year’s Eve, 1979 we booked ourselves at Halle Lou’s, a dive that let you sign up for a night, first come, first serve. You played for free. That night at the stroke of midnight, I played my first song in a real band on a real stage. The two dozen punks and a bunch of redneck regulars helped us welcome in a new decade. I’m not one to kiss and tell, but I got lucky that night with a girl I was previously unfamiliar with (ahem), a scenario that was highly foreign to me. It would never, ever, ever happen again, but I couldn’t help thinking as we left the club, sweat chilling on my face in the stiff winter wind, that I was going to like this. Rick Rizzo, the bass player, the musician; part of the world I loved.

Next: The Eighties- indies save us from a flock of fluff.