Indie Rocker vs. Classic Rocker
In this edition Kurt breaks in a new Classic Rocker and the lads get down and dirty with Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Willy and the Poor Boys and Sebadoh’s Bakesale.
Kristofer Collins: Well, Kurt, thanks for inviting me aboard this floating picnic you got going here, but let me point out that writing about CCR’s Willy and the Poor Boys in the drear dead of winter is almost a cruel joke. This record couldn’t be further removed from the filthy ice and slush, and these steel gray skies. I suppose maybe if Peter Tosh were lurking somewhere in the background of these steamy tracks, then yeah, we could be a little further afield from what’s been goin’ down here in Pittsburgh at the end of February. Cos, man, there’s some dry delta dust in them there grooves, and the only thing coming out of the sky, aside from vacationing Martians, is some thick-as-molasses rain. And that’s a hot stinkin’ rain! There’s no reprieve from the turgid, humid atmosphere of this record.
Creedence is some of the first rock n roll my brain ever got banged with as a bitty baby crawling around on the record sleeves of my father’s treasured vinyl, cooing and gooing, drooling and wide-eyed, ‘Down on the Corner’ blasting through the little house. It still puts a dumb babyish expression on my face after all this time, so excuse me a moment while I wipe the spittle from my chin…
Willy and the Poor Boys is really the zenith for CCR, I mean right here along with Green River (preceding) and Cosmo’s Factory (following) you’ve got the best band in America playing at peak form. This is some full-flowered Fogerty we’re graced with here. And oh, if he ain’t a good and giving man!
The other thing we have here is just about the best concept album of the period. Maybe only The Who’s The Who Sell Out (and then only the A-side) comes close. It’s like Fogerty and the boys decided to school The Beatles and The Stones and all those art school drop-outs diddling around with American roots music and oh so glib theorizing. Old Johnny musta said, “Look here children, this is how you do it right, so enough of your across-the-pond wankery.” I’d go so far as to say that Willy and the Poor Boys is a direct response to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Granted, Willy arrives about two years post-Sgt. P. but the concept for that album is undeniably at work herein
Kurt Garrison: So Willy and the Poor Boys is “just about” the best concept album of the period? Just about? Gee, Collins, way to stick your neck out on your first day. No worries, though, as you’ll find out soon enough that nobody reads this thing anyway. Regardless, I can think of five releases from around that era that are definitely-without-question in line for the best, and none of them are this album. Willy is a good piece of noise – nix that, a borderline great piece of noise -- beginning with ‘Down on the Corner’ and continuing through ‘It Came Out of the Sky’. But the album loses its luster in parts (see: ‘Poorboy Shuffle’), deftly walking the tightrope between the mundane and antiquated. I think I can speak for thousands of poor souls who had to endure the 90’s when over-ripened fat men such as John Popper roamed the jam-band circuit with half-wit burn-outs posing as music writers ruminating about harmonica “virtuosity”; maybe it’s me, but I can only take so much noodling with a glorified kazoo. And tunes like ‘Side O’ the Road’, with its drawn-out guitar twitches and indolent shuffle, just makes me yawn. But first, a sidenote:
If we’re gonna bring up the term “concept album” (and what a world it would be if I could hear those two otherwise harmless words and not think of some god-awful Billy Corgan project), then why not bring up Pet Sounds? Or maybe a little piece of genius called Village Green Preservation Society? Hell, even Muswell Hillbillies, which basically documented the inside of a pub stall -- and I mean that as a grand compliment as it’s probably the most eloquent pontification of pub stall commentary ever committed to tape -- blows this out of the water. I hate the phrase “concept album”; the term should’ve bled to death with Lennon on those cold Dakota steps back in ‘80. But I digress, because when I really think about it, well, I’m just disappointed that CCR, despite Fogarty’s bluesy caterwauling and Doug’s ubiquitous washboard, weren’t really from the bayou, but the Bay Area. I cringe at the thought of John and the boys banging the same smelly hippies as Paul Kantner (or Grace Slick, for that matter).
The thing is, there are songs on this album that still hold up really well, ‘Don’t Look Now’ and ‘The Midnight Special’ serving as prime examples of capturing an idyllic moment on reel to reel; these songs could very well have been served straight from the tobacco field. Even ‘Fortunate Son’, a song plundered by the forces of commercialism, still manifests its vision through Fogarty’s searing indignation. Best of all, though, the album bows out on a high-note with ‘Effigy’. Always a personal favorite, the reverb tinged vocals and melancholy (or, mellon collie, for those who grew up on the teat of Clear Channel Radio) guitar lines are fantastic. It’s still a haunting track forty years down the road. Although this release is far from perfect, CCR will always be known as a great band. Besides, it’s tough to dismiss a group who’s influenced everyone from The Minutemen to Uncle Tupelo.
KC: Wow, Kurt, you’re really something special, you know that. How you manage to find an argument where there is none, well, that’s just a rare talent. I hedged a bit and didn’t say this was the greatest concept record, as you pointed out said cowardice of hyperbole, but yeah, it’s certainly in the Top 5 and today I’ve got it riding the trigger spot. So if you meant to cleverly put me in my place by pulling these other discs from up your sleeve, you have failed mightily. But since you brought it up, let’s talk Pet Sounds for a tic. Arguably, one of the best bursts of pop to ever drop on yours or anyone’s turntable, as a concept record, which it is, it doesn’t work. Ultimately, it fails because hunkered down, right there in the middle of all that sweet adolescent jim-jam is ‘Sloop John B’. Sure it’s an awesome display of the Boys’ vocal interplay, and a cool groove on top of that, but it wrecks the movement of the album and has no relation whatsoever to the other tunes. That’s not a problem for Willy, so in that way, and only in that way, really, Willy’s better or at least more successful.
But I admit it, you got me on The Kinks. I guess Willy just caught me on one of those rare occasions when I wasn’t ruminating on the greatness of those Muswell malcontents. Ah, well. But I will go on record that Village Green is, if only in The Kinks catalog itself, an overrated album. I can hear the hisses and catcalls now coming from the cheapseats of our imaginary readership. So, go on lads, get it out of your system. I can wait...
Done? No. Alright, I’ll give you another minute...
Right, Village Green. It really is the album The Beatles claimed Sgt. Pepper was going to be: a rumination on the England of the band’s childhood. But when you get into tracks like ‘Phenomenal Cat’, ‘Wicked Annabella’, and ‘Monica’ I think the album begins to collapse under the weight of its own concept. These are not strong tunes by any measure but seem to be there to pad out Davies’ overarching idea. I’d suggest that Arthur is more interesting and ultimately more successful as a concept record, and that Face to Face is a much stronger suite of songs. So in The Kink’s catalog Village Green has always felt overrated to me, it gets a little more credit than it deserves. Compared to almost any of the Great Albums of The Sixties, however, it remains somehow underrated. But I suppose that’s the fate of The Kinks anyway, right.
But let’s get back to CCR.
Willy and the Poor Boys turns on the premise of CCR masquerading as another band, a fictitious group of washboard scratchers and tub thumpers busking for the audience’s nickels. If we’re to take the album cover at face value, then the only audience Willy and his boys can corral is three or four small children who all stare at the band like they, also, came outta the sky and do not belong here. I’ll put it to you that Willy is one of two primary subjects running through this record. The other, quite naturally, is America circa 1969. They run parallel to one another, comment upon one another, and crash into each other all throughout the record.
On the surface Willy seems to represent a more innocent America, as illustrated by how Willy is represented in ‘Down On the Corner’, with rollicking goodtime folk tunes played by The Poorbys like ‘Cotton Fields’, ‘Poorboy Shuffle’, and ‘The Midnight Special’. This is music that harkens back to the early 1960s and the folk music boom that went hand-in-hand with a youthful optimism. That whole Kennedy scene and all that We Shall Overcome stuff, right. But Willy is really a ghost haunting the album because the other tracks, the tunes played not by Willy but by CCR, ‘Don’t Look Now’, ‘It Came Out of the Sky’, ‘Fortunate Son’, and especially ‘Effigy’, are the reality. The album is saying here’s the myth, here’s what we want to believe and it’s what we tell ourselves we are, a folksy good-hearted country where everything is getting better, and here’s what we are, a country gone horribly off-track. Hell, ‘Don’t Look Now’ and ‘Effigy’ are downright apocalyptic in their vision of America. And as you suggested, the acid fury of ‘Fortunate Son’ has lost none of its sting.
The really sly move on the album’s part is Willy performing two Leadbelly tunes. Now both of these songs are campfire sing-a-long standards that have become rather toothless. By juxtaposing them with the darker tracks, remember you get one Leadbelly cover to a side so it’s a very self-conscious move, you kinda get to hear them a-fresh. And they’re returned to being what they are, songs of economic depression and unjust imprisonment, songs that have something to say in terms of the current events.
I suggested earlier that Willy and the Poor Boys was something of an intentional middle finger to other bands either playing in the Americana sandbox or dropping conceptual lead balloons on the record buying public. So here I’m going to posit another version which completely contradicts all that nonsense. It’s more probable that coming, as this record did, in the same (recording) year as two other full-length albums, this being the middle child, it got short shrift from the band. They had a couple of songs left over from the previous album’s sessions, and only a couple of new songs. To fill out the record they threw on two covers and an instrumental. And there you have it, a new record as was promised to the record company. Any conceptual integrity is almost certainly by accident, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. And it works.
Kurt, you’re right to point up the fact of CCR’s lineage. They were indeed a product of the same San Francisco scene that birthed Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and The Grateful Dead among many other acid fried goofballs. The whole bayou thing, had nothing to do with the band’s geography, and you can claim it as calculated artifice. But let’s recognize that CCR wasn’t the only band on the scene making a rootsier noise. Their lesser-known, and harder rocking brethren The Flamin’ Groovies also came out of that place and time (and The Dead did turn into a roots rock band the year following Willy’s release). So while the psych scene still gets all the press, I think there was more happening in SF at the time, and bands, like CCR, with a greater interest in the roots of rock’n’roll, which was already at the end of this particular phase as would become very clear at Altamont, should not be written off as mere poseurs and appropriators.
KG:
Memo to: Classic Rocker
From: Indie Rocker
Subject: The Title of This Column and How It Pertains to Column Subject Matter (and more assorted, unrelated rants)
First of all, it’s called Indie-Rocker vs. Classic Rocker not Two Agreeable Gentlemen Diplomatically Discussing the Merits of Their Respective Music Genres. The title alone implies an argument of some sort within the confines of the piece -- even if it means taking a monumental stretch regarding the interpretation of what each of us writes. And really, would anybody want to read this thing if it was all nicey-nice? (FYI: just typing out the word “diplomatically” makes my stomach turn.) And, there’s certainly no reason for me to be clever when all you have to do is make ridiculous statements like “Village Green is overrated”, and then further the insult by – surprise! – back-pedaling and saying that it’s overrated when compared the rest of their catalog. Well, shucks. Way to once again under-whelm our dear readers with your delightfully equivocating prose, Collins. If your words were a knife they’d be buttering toast right now.
Anyway, regarding your thesis on Willy and the Poor Boys: I agree with the latter part about it getting short shrift. It has “B-Sides” written all over it. There are just too many potholes on this ride. But I do give it credit for not sounding like that garbage that was spewed from across the bay. I hate that hippie shit; just listening to ‘White Rabbit’ makes me run for the penicillin.
And another thing; yeah, ‘Sloop John B’ might compromise the rhythm of Pet Sounds. But that’s my point about ‘Poor Boy Shuffle’ and ‘Side O’ the Road’ – they do the same exact thing. The songs contradict the over-all flow of the album. The songs just don’t appeal to me in the framework of the album. Also, regarding ‘Sloop John B’ (and I know I’m going off on a tangent, but really, I’ve got nothing left to say about Willy and the Poor Boys, so humor me.): It’s all about context. Yeah, ‘Sloop’ has been overplayed beyond recognition; every time I hear it in Giant Eagle I want to launch cans of cream-style corn at the store speakers. In fact, after many years spent in grocery stores, whether as a patron or employee, I’ve developed a basis for rating songs while shopping. It’s totally biased and completely unscientific in merit. Here goes…
I’ve created a scale based from the traditional 1-10 (see below): 1 being the lowest rating, 10 highest. I based it on several criteria, most notably, the song’s initial catchiness, but also taking into account depth of songwriting, past history as a good/bad artist, as well as the chance of actually hearing the song while in the grocery store. I also took into account the truly discriminatory angle of geography and genre, and the intertwining of the two. For example, I like Neil Young’s “Southern Man”. However, when I hear Lynyrd Skynyrd sing “Sweet Home Alabama”, I want to vomit. Why is that, you probably are wondering. Well, Neil Young merely writes about southerners. Lennie Skennie are southerners. Big difference. However, Buddy Holly, though also a southerner, is exempt. He influenced the Beatles and, unlike Van Zandt and Co., died in a plane crash before he started making crappy music. “But R.E.M. are from Georgia”, you’re probably saying. Well, nobody’s perfect. Remember that unlike Skynyrd they too have a substantial back catalog of great tunes, so they get a pardon as well. Such circumstances cannot be overlooked. Confused? You shouldn’t be. It’s as clear as day.
As you’ll note below, some of these “established” artists, like the Liverpool Lads and Beach Boys are rather high on the list. However, “one-hit wonders” such as Crowded House and The Church are more than capable of holding their own – again, we’re talking in context. I would never put those charming Kiwi’s from NZ on my top ten all-time list of favorite bands, but I recognize that it’ll be a cold day in hell before I hear a Blonde Redhead tune while buying cat litter.
So anyway, here’s my list:
- Anything Celine Dion
- Anything related to Top Gun Soundtrack
- Anything Whitney Houston
- Anything 90’s related (Toad the Wet Sprocket, Counting Crows, etc.)
- Sloop John B. (The Beach Boys)
- Down on the Corner (CCR)
- Under the Milky Way (The Church)
- Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey (Paul McCartney)
- Don’t Dream it’s Over (Crowded House)
- Instant Karma (John Lennon)
I know, I know -- all the Paul McCartney fans are pissed because “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” is only at number 8. Deal with it. And for you George Harrison fans pissy about “Something” or “Hear Comes the Sun” not making the cut, well, deal with that, too. Just be happy I didn’t include “Back Off Boogaloo” on the list. I didn’t include any actual Beatles tunes because you can hear their stuff pretty much anywhere, the car radio, an elevator, etc. Same goes for songs like “Bad Moon Rising”, “Stairway to Heaven”, etc. Keep in mind that you can have your own list, too, as well as multiple lists. Sometimes I’m equally, if not more psyched, when I hear “What’s Going On” than I would be about anything that Lennon wrote. It’s all about mood, really.
In that context, I think that “Sloop John B” is pretty good. And you’ll notice that I even threw you a bone, Collins, and put “Down on the Corner” in there. Like I said, slots 2-10 can be substituted for other songs/artist (example: “Go Your Own Way” would make a strong number 7 – Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer” would rank about a 2), but for my money, the skinny little frog with the creepy husband is hands down the worst thing that I’ve ever heard while dutifully accruing Giant Eagle Advantage Card points.
KC: Zzzzzzzzzzzzz... Huh.... Whuzzah? Oh, sorry, man, I drifted off there somewhere in the middle of your oh so fascinating exegesis on your adventures in the cereal aisle. Really great stuff. Really.
Christ, Kurt, are you auditioning for a job at NPR with that shit or what? You got some secret crush on Terry Gross, some sticky late-night fantasy involving Mara Liasson, a jar of peanut butter, and your favorite stuffed animal?
Forgive me for actually THINKING about the music I listen to instead of reacting to it like a hopped up monkey with one fist full of poop and another fist full of raging simian hard-on. Looking back over the previous installments of this column I consider myself lucky to have expressed any consideration of the album in question at all, when typically it seems if you guys get the title of the record spelled right more than once you feel satisfied you’ve actually done some good solid work.
I do have a few things to say in regard to your little supermarket tour of popular music, but they can hold for the moment. Let’s move on to the Sebadoh platter, and I promise to make my comments in a series of burps and farts...slowly...so you can follow along, Kurt.
KG: Is pairing me with NPR the best you can do? I mean, you seem to know the DJ’s and their respective shticks; it wouldn’t surprise me at all if you had their station pledge pins strategically placed on the strap of your man-purse as a means to initiate conversation with girls (“Oh, you listen to NPR, too? Gosh, what are the chances of that!”) I’m far too much of a hate-monger to listen to those hippies – and you of all people should know this. But as far as the late night fantasies go, well, what I do with peanut butter and stuffed animals in the privacy of my own home is my business…
And all of us appreciate you taking the time to venture forth from your ivory tower to espouse the intricacies of pop music. At last, my weary head can rest easy knowing that we common-folk now have somebody to turn to when confronted with troubling questions regarding some “artists” half-baked meanderings. Sorry, but sometimes a song is just a song; an album just an album – even if it’s dressed up and passed off to the unwashed masses as something credible. But kudos Re: the monkey metaphor, as I have also grown weary of the antiquated, ahem, “poop” that bogged down Willy and the Poor Boys and look forward to talking about a band that has induced many a monkey’s hard-on (metaphorically speaking, of course.) I’m talking about Sebadoh’s Bakesale.
Anyway, I had the fortune to hear Bakesale when it first came out back in ’94. I’ve probably listened to this album as much as any in my collection. What I like about the disc is how solid it is. Each song is precise and ephemeral with few signs of causeless phrases or notes, from “License to Confuse” to “Together or Alone”. Sure, there are some tracks that I might skip depending on my mood, but it’s an easy record to listen from beginning to end. Whereas Bubble and Scrape and Smash Your Head on the Punk Rock had gems in “Soul & Fire” and “Brand New Love”, they remained inconsistent releases overall. Bakesale finds the band, with the departure of Eric Gaffney and the inclusion of Bob Fay, finding a more coherent batch of songs. That’s not to say that Bob was a better songwriter than Eric – as Gaffney’s songs often kept early Seb albums from devolving into Lou Barlow Reading Excerpts From His High School Journal – it’s just that the songs on Bakesale seem to get along a lot better than those on previous releases. If the early Sebadoh records were a collection of insolent brothers, each with their own unique idea, charging into each others bedrooms and infringing on each other’s personal space with noogies and sleeper holds, then Bakesale was more paternal outgrowth of this, with Barlow and Loewenstein each taking turns as to who was head of the household.
Favorites on this album include the aforementioned “License…”, “Careful” and the single “Magnet’s Coil” But the choicest picks on this release often sprout from the serrated mind of Jason Loewenstein, specifically “Not Too Amused”. While not as prolific as Barlow, one could argue that he introduced an equal number of quality tunes to the fold. By this time Jason, who had already shown potential in prior albums (Bubble & Scrape’s “Happily Divided” comes to mind) had perfected the “complimentary” songwriter to Barlow’s more prolific output; think of a Grant Hart/Bob Mould dynamic, but without the ego-mania and heroin addiction. And, as someone who was widely viewed as the most musically talented of the group, and who seemed to possess a more caustic approach to interpersonal relationships, it was exciting to see what Loewenstein would accomplish from a writer’s standpoint. The Bob Fay piece, “Temptation Tide”, with its fetching male/female vocal interplay, also fits nicely into the mix. This album could easily have regressed into a directionless mind-fuck, but somehow, through luck or talent (or that eerie combination of the two that inhabits every great release) everything is kept in its right place.
With that said, this is still Barlow’s ship. From “Skull” to “Rebound” we see firsthand a songwriter who knows where his strengths lie: heartbreak + fragile psyche = Golden Pop Nuggets. This, of course, provided the perfect your-boyfriend’s-far-away-but-I-will-keep-you-company cocktail for the more amorous indie-boys to put on mix-tapes for lonesome, foxy co-eds, regardless if Barlow was the poor sap on the receiving end of a cheating heart. In this particular case, his loss was our gain.
KC: Attacking my murse? Christ, Garrison, have you no shame? Oh yeah, right, you don’t. What was I thinking? But I’ll have you know it’s a very convenient, and quite stylish mode of transporting books and records and worthless scraps of my shitty writing around in. And just so you know, the ladies go crazy for my T.Rex pin. But I suppose we have to talk about this Sebadoh record, so on with that.
I’ll admit Bakesale kicks off with a really nice, big dumb guitar riff (License to Confuse); a little scuzzy, a little abrasive but not a riff you’d be embarrassed to bring to your cousin’s wedding. It seems to know its limits and won’t be a nuisance at the open bar. If it were a leather jacket it would be draped across the shoulders of an assistant professor at the local college on those special Friday nights when the MFAs go pub crawling, not on some biker who’s lost a most of his teeth to alley fights and wrenching open beer bottles.
About halfway into the second track, however, I realized I was suckered by that riff. I’d been set-up to expect a solid rock’n’roll record decked out in thrift shop finery, but what I found was an exercise in tedium. I should’ve known. I can also remember way back in 1994 when this record came out. Back then it felt like Barlow and Co. were releasing a new record every week, whether it was as Sebadoh, Sentridoh, Folk Implosion or whatever the hell he was calling himself that day. What I remember most was just how many of those records I would come across while flipping through the used bins the weeks following the records being released. I guess I’m not the first to fall for the ol’ Sebadoh sleight-of-hand.
I will agree with you, Kurt. Bakesale is definitely solid. It’s a big solid block of boring, which I guess is one way of saying I think it’s a really consistent record. Here’s just how dull of a listening experience this was. Closing out the fourth cut, “Not a Friend”, Barlow starts mopily exclaiming, “Don’t break my stride” and all I could think of was, I wonder what Matthew Wilder has been up to since 1983. This led me to humming Wilder’s “Break My Stride”, which, while not the greatest of tunes, has been jammed in my, granted not over-full, brain since the early Eighties. Whereas I find I’m unable to remember anything about Bakesale, not just after I’ve listened to it, but while I’m listening to it. It’s that much of a non-entity. No record should ever inspire anyone to conclude that Matthew Wilder is sorely missed on the current music scene. I mean, what the fuck?!?
And as you know very well, Kurt, I’m okay with boring shit. I mean, look at all the time I waste hanging around with you.
Anyway, by this time I came out of my reverie to find I’d missed two and a half songs. The worst part was I still had another half an album of this mess to wade through. Realizing that, I felt just as sad and pissy as the subjects of the songs. I don’t know, maybe that’s the point. These guys are miserable and want nothing more than to inflict their somnambulant self-pity routine on everyone within earshot. Like the man says, “It feels good to just bitch about it”, and while that may be true, it’s always a chore to have to listen to some fool’s incessant complaining.
KG: And here I thought that your highly-prized collection of Books/CD’s/DVD’s would form a common bond with Barlow and Co’s abject mopiness. Go figure. (I won’t even count the GI Joe/StarWars/Strawberry Shortcake/MyLittlePony figurines that dot the landscape of your basement bedroom – that shit’s just creepy.)
It’s only natural that someone who can remember not only the artist, but the year that a song as utterly irrelevant as “Break My Stride” came out, wouldn’t get this release. That’s just sad. I mean, seriously, can I expect rants about Manimal or scathing polemics in future columns about Knight Rider? Why don’t you just start roller-skating to work and chatting up customers with fantasies about Valerie Bertinelli? Are you still pissed about New Coke? Wait a minute…is this even you? Or is this Groucho working under your email account so he can harass me from NYC? At least your being a bona-fide Yinzer explains your predilection to think about 1983 while listening to this cd; living in the past does, after all, seem to be a Pittsburgh thing to do.
And by all means, don’t let my “boring” personality keep you from that truly interesting life you’ve created for yourself in your mother’s basement with your collection of Disney memorabilia and porn videos. Just remember, bucko, to always keep a spare sock handy.
KC: Manimal was awesome! Coz you know, he was a man that could turn into animals and he fought crime. How that show never made it past the first few episodes I can’t understand. Can’t wait to get the dvd. By the way, Kurt, I’d like that copy of Dirty Harriet returned without any of your love stains crusting the box this time. I had to throw out Behind the Green Door after you had your filthy, filthy way with it.
Getting back to your little study of the ubiquitous supermarket serenade for a moment. Would you really want to hear “Down Under” or “23” spitting out of tinny speakers, repeatedly interupted by some call for an emergency clean up in the freezer aisle, while examining apples for blemishes? Do you actually want the music that means something to you personally used as wallpaper, as a form of seditive to induce the impulse purchasing of a Dentyne big pack? I find the whole thing abhorrent. Even when I hear something as great as a Marvin Gaye tune or John Lennon jam the context contaminates the music. Nothing can wreck the goodwill accrued by The Temptations more than having Papa Was a Rolling Stone as the soundtrack to some parent’s public meltdown berating their precious little Timmy, who’s heaving sobs and canned goods, for having lost bladder control while riding in the cart and pissing all over the radichio. Trust me, you indie rockers have got a good thing going on that front.
Well, on that note, I suppose we should wrap this up. First round at Gooski’s is on you, buddy.
KG: The thought of us swapping pornography is enough to make me lose my lunch; I can’t imagine what the reader is going through right now, so I’m going to apologize on behalf of us both. But before I move on, just let me say that you’ll see Dirty Harriet when I get back my deluxe anniversary addition of The Diary of Anne Spank (note to reader: I totally stole that title from a buddy. All compliments/complaints should be addressed to Ben Acker of Los Angeles, Ca. USA.)
As far as the supermarket theory goes, well, we’re just gonna have to agree to disagree. I hate shopping. Hate it. If I could somehow sucker you clowns into paying me a supplemental income of some sort I’d use that to pay somebody to do my shopping for me. And since they don’t hand out Soma tablets or shots of whiskey at the front door (though those Clorox disinfectant wipes are a good start), I’ll take whatever sedative I can get.
Kurt Garrison likes to bang on stuff and yell into microphones for Workshop and The Plat Maps. A somewhat devoted skiier, he is one half of the The New Yinzer’s wildly irrelevant Indie Rocker vs. Classic Rocker. Kurt also enjoys fishing and has spent the last two and a half years pissing his life away on this utterly confounding story about juvenile delinquents and their importance in our society. He also enjoys asparagus on the grill.
Kristofer Collins is the managing editor of The New Yinzer, an occasional book reviewer for The Post Gazette, and owner of Desolation Row CDs. A book of his poems entitled King Everything was published in 2007 by Six Gallery Press. The Liturgy of Streets is forthcoming from Six Gallery Press in 2008.