Episode VIII: The Geek Who Knew Too Much

Diary of a Fading Rockstar - Episode VIII: Fin de Siecle Musings on Rock Scene Incestuousness, or The Geek Who Knew Too Much

By Erik Rader

This one’s not over yet, but if past decades are any indication, we are in for a suffocating avalanche of retrospectives, best-of lists, top 10’s, 20’s, 100’s, etc. Everybody’s going to be making lists - I don’t know why people do this, and in fact I’m far from innocent in this regard, but it appears to be a common psychological response to the awareness of one’s own mortality. If we’re all going to die, it’s no surprise if a lot of us want to gather up our chips and stack them by color before we cash out.

Taking stock of one’s personal aesthetic inventory begins for many of us in elementary school when we start writing down lists of “BFF’s”, collecting trading cards, or memorizing sports stats; until finally we take interest in owning our own musical recordings, and songs become the collectibles, and album credits (songwriter/lyricist, producer, engineer, guest musicians, etc.) become the stats. Some freaks take it to the bridge with data such as chart placement, units moved, even collecting reviews. (Recently, this has evolved to include the creation of fan web sites, but I’ll leave that for a younger person to write about.)

I do know that when my brother and I were budding rock and roll fanatics, we were the only kids we knew who actually followed the connections from the first couple of albums we bought down a many-tributaried stream of names hidden in the fine print on the back of the album covers. One of our greatest inspirations was the classic and indispensable textbook of ultimate rock geekdom, the hale and hoary Pete Frame’s Complete Rock Family Trees (Omnibus Press). Through its auspices, we could take a record we knew and loved when we were little kids and had to depend on our much older brother to hip us to - say for instance, “Close To The Edge” by Yes - and discover that percussionist Bill Bruford also played for a band called King Crimson, which also featured bassist/vocalist Greg Lake of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (whose music we were less impressed by) and bassist/vocalist John Wetton who had also been in Roxy Music; and that KC guitarist Robert Fripp not only appeared on albums by David Bowie, Brian Eno and Talking Heads, but produced and even provided an entire album concept for Peter Gabriel, who by the way used to be in this band called Genesis, and so on and so forth ad nauseam. In this manner one could get from one side of the ocean of rock history to the other, jump from genre to genre, and discover a world of underrated bands and artists that had brushed up against fame but had not stuck.

This curiosity about the backstory behind the incestuous world of rock and roll interestingly enough dovetailed with our own firsthand experience of it later on. Berkeley during our time growing up there, and even perhaps to this day, was lousy with professional musicians with absurdly deep connections in the business and to each other. Our milieu (or melee) of acquaintances ended up threading through, over a couple of decades, the Camper van Beethoven/Monks of Doom/Cracker/Counting Crows mafia, the 90’s San Francisco Jazz-Hop scene, the ridiculously connected Sam Coomes/Janet Weiss matrix, former members of the Grateful Dead and the English Beat, the Operation Ivy/Rancid continuum, Fishbone, the gigantic sponge-like mass surrounding Wes Claypool and Primus, as well as numberless similar conglomerations of musicians and bands with more or less name recognition than those listed above, but all deeply important to us.

For example, not many readers of this fine magazine will recognize the names Eskimo or Blue Movie, but the audiences of Sam Coomes’ early band Donner Party (which you should know about if you are a card-carrying indie rock geek, and your membership is hereby revoked if you don’t) were packed with fans of these two other bands. Similarly, you may not be familiar with Sleepytime Gorilla Theater or Charming Hostess, but if you’re a Bay Area musician, you’d have to have been living in a cave not to have. And while the name Leslie Medford probably won’t ring any bells with you, mere mention of him can strike entire rooms full of musicians dumb in an awed silence. Does it piss you off that Black Pole didn’t become hugely famous? It does me. Whenever I talk to indy-rock geeks who haven’t heard of the Sneetches, a stern lecture is likely to ensue.

Furthermore, none of these various rock dynasties existed in a vacuum, but cross-pollinated, interbred, merged and mutated together. The Donner Party crowd had direct ties to the Counting Crows scene, which had its own ties to the aforementioned Leslie Medford, Black Pole and the Sneetches; and almost every one of these band groupings somehow or other crossed paths (either by sharing members, rehearsal spaces, or gigs) with my band, as did Sordid Humor, Engine 88, Smoking Section, Papa’s Culture, the Freaky Executives, Sweet Baby Jesus, Unskilled Labor, Deadly Reign, etc. etc. None of which might ring any bells to, say, someone from Detroit, Chicago or New York, but might click a lightbulb on over the head of any Bay Area rock musician over the age of 30. Because of this, parties thrown by musicians in the Bay Area are a sometimes mind-numbing social vortex of ex-girlfriends, boyfriends, band-mates and business associates. At one of these functions you are 100% guaranteed to run into at least three people you’ve been hiding from for months, not to mention the ones that are hiding from you. On the other hand, if you’ve got your game face on and are in the zone, you could recruit a band that could rule the world.

Of course we all know almost too much about the music scenes in our own towns. Somebody from outside the Minneapolis-St. Paul area who happens to dig Husker Du and the Replacements won’t necessarily be hip to Trip Shakespeare; and believe it or not, I have actually met R.E.M. and B-52’s fans who have no opinion about Pylon, Flat Duo Jets or Love Tractor. Heck, just because you like Throwing Muses or Mission of Burma doesn’t guarantee you’ve ever heard the Bags, much less the Oysters. There’s also the generational thing you have to allow for - somebody who likes Spoon might not have heard “Marquee Moon”. Although if you don’t at least have an opinion about the seminal Television album, you probably should find something else to be a geek about, like sports or model trains.

Obsessive chartings of music scene inter-band incestuousness (I'm always reminded of the character of Alice from Showtime's "The 'L' Word", with her massive "Who slept with who" map, which looks like nothing so much as a ball of thread that's been played with by a cat for a few days) might not be everyone's cup of tea. Alternatively, there's the "fantasy dream team" game, where you make up imaginary supergroups out of all your favorite musicians -- "Dude, how about Keith Moon on drums, George Harrison and Roger McGuinn on guitar, Slim Harpo on Harmonica, Kim Deal on bass and Bon Scott on vocals? That would KILL!"

If I were to imagine a musical dream team (which I have to admit I've done a thousand times) with the caveat that it must be composed of musicians from my home town, I might not do much better than the actual real-life lineup of my most recent attempt at a band -- my brother on guitar, the rhythm section from his previous band, one or two local ringers on second guitar, and myself on vocals. When I think about it, I actually prefer the dream team/supergroup approach -- I mean, why not recruit the best musicians you know, in a combination you feel would gel supremely?

The problem is, at least in a ridiculously creativity-rich (not to mention pro gig-rich) field of players like the one I came from, the competition is all but insurmountable. Two musicians I know, with whom I have worked at one time or another, and who would be sweet additions to my supergroup, are pulling down the multi-platinum bucks. (Why won't that stuff rub off on me?) Not much incentive to throw the valuable minutes of their lives at a speculative venture like mine. Another two I imagine corralling for the dream team each have the same situation I do -- "Can't rehearse, have to go pick up the kid at daycare." If I had a pillow case full of cash to throw around I might be able to make the attempt -- most musicians are bigger whores than actual whores are -- but without those resources I'm just the casual friend they might run into at one of those parties, who they'd slap on the bicep and maybe even talk to for five minutes before going to refill their drink and forget the conversation. This may sound maudlin, paranoid and self-pitying -- and I'd be the first to admit it probably is -- but I have no solid data to the contrary.

It may be for this reason that I find myself compelled to make another list: My top five "We're getting the band back together" movies of all time.

1. "Still Crazy" stars Bill Nighy ("Love, Actually", "Underworld") as Ray, an aging, tweaked-out, shine-on-you-crazy-diamond former lead singer who lives in a castle with his Swedish wife. When members of his old band contact him with an idea of taking their old show on the road once more, he responds like an ancient desiccated vampire having blood drizzled on his lips.

2. "Rocker" features Rainn Wilson ("The Office") as Robert "Fish" Fishman, a drummer who gets kicked out of an 80's hair band on their way to the top, and who is forced to live in his sister's attic. When his nephew asks him to act as a last-minute replacement for his band's AWOL drummer so they can make their debut gig at the senior prom, Fish's over-the-top enthusiasm ruins everything.

3. "The Blues Brothers", John Landis' career-making masterpiece, as described in Wikipedia:

The story is a tale of redemption for paroled convict Jake (Belushi) and his brother Elwood (Aykroyd), who take on "a mission from God" to save from foreclosure the Catholic orphanage in which they grew up. To do so they must re-form their rhythm and blues band, The Blues Brothers, and organize a performance to earn $5,000 to pay the tax assessor. Along the way they are targeted by a destructive "mystery woman", Neo-Nazis, and a country and western band—all while being relentlessly pursued by the police.

4. "New York Doll" -- as Metallica would say, "Sad, but true."

5. "Hard Core Logo" -- In contrast to the previously mentioned real documentary, a fake documentary about a fictional punk band on a last-ditch reunion tour…..and any of you who have been in hardcore bands, been into hardcore bands, or at least know what a hardcore band is, can see it all now…..middle-aged punks, driving around the countryside trying desperately to bring back the magic…..good times, good times.

"Getting the band back together" is quite literally, no kidding, a recurring nightmare of mine, and none of these bad dreams has had anything remotely like a happy ending. That's why, when the band actually did decide to get back together, I most respectfully declined. There may be a lot of ingredients in the soup, but for me the simplest reason is this: I enjoy many, if not most, of my memories of what it was before I decided I was done. I can see no good reason to "fuck with the past", as Patti Smith so glibly put it. I am sure that those involved are getting something perfectly valid and enjoyable resurrecting or recreating a version of that past relationship, context, or whatever you want to call it; it just doesn't work that way for me. It's like these people meeting up with old high school lovers via Facebook and breaking up their marriages for a night or two of "What if…?" One of the things that I love about the past is that I can't change it. Maybe I can change how I feel about it, or change what I think it means, but the facts are indelible.

For better or worse, an acute knowledge of the past is crucial to rock and roll. It’s a foil for young musicians to reject, revile, revolt and rebel against; it’s a mine from which they can loot many a forgotten gem; it’s a place where the myriad layers of popular culture become ingrained in the collective memory. On a surface level, the majority of people listening to music today are barely conscious of anything before this week. For the people who are dedicated to digging a little bit deeper below the surface - who hear the voices of “Dead Souls” calling them - there is no better archaeological site to dig in than one’s own back yard. In my next few articles, I'd like to talk a little bit about the present, and maybe even the future. Until then, hand me that shovel, will you?