Brian's Blog

[Brian]

I need a spot where I can blather and brood while practicing my writing again. I'll be satisfied if no one reads any of this -- just posting is enough for me. But everyone is welcome to say anything in this thread. Or start one of your own!


Elias, my Times delivery man, was replaced last autumn after three years of stellar service. The new guy floundered initially, throwing the paper at one of the nearby apartments or not at all. After I made a couple of calls to the 800 number, he responded by driving his car down our long driveway and dropping it right by the house.

Until our favorite neighbor, who resides on top of the driveway, yelled down at Jaime from her window one morning. She also shouts epithets at the speeders zooming down the block and complains about kids playing in the street from her porch. So I know better than to try to negotiate with her, even when I have to dig my Times out of her Chihuahua's poop in the planter. Compared to his predecessor, Jaime's aim isn't as true.

This is no angry rant. I know such convenient delivery was too good to last. I'm vain enough to enjoy stumbling into the freaking rising sun or plod upriver in heavy rain at 6 a.m. for my beloved, ever shrinking, newspaper. But I'm sad because I can't talk about it with our neighbor.

We love her and so we know her limitations. Which means we can't always be forthright or honest with her. It's so easy to be oneself with friends and strangers on a street corner, to work things out and always speak one's mind. But it's not always possible closer to home or at work.

[Brian]

I've been a Tubes fan since they first played L.A. in 1975 and I was only 17, so when I heard that the lead singer of the still somewhat intact band was going to perform in an adjacent zip code, I was there. And I had to write a review. This was one of the highlights of 2008, during what turned out to be the biggest heat wave of the year, on June 21:


Fee Waybill, singing and looking even better than the last time I saw him a few years back, contributed ten rock, glam and punk classics -- including three Tubes songs -- to a fundraiser by Special Spirit Inc. for special needs children at a sprawling horse ranch in Shadow Hills.

Fee was backed by a veteran three-piece band, the Fibers, and vocalist Candice Devine, who used to board her horse there next to Fee's. Turns out that he's a serious polo player who's competing in a match tomorrow morning at Will Rogers State Park.

After telling new jokes and hitting old notes with standards like "Mustang Sally," "Love Is the Drug," "Suffragette City," a punk-style version of Del Shannon's "Runaway" and the Stranglers' "Five Minutes" -- Fibers' bassist Steve Fishman has worked with Hugh Cornwell -- they finished with "Don't Touch Me There," "She's a Beauty" and a masterful "Talk to Ya Later." We sat on the hay bale closest to the stage, so we heard Fee tell the band they had to skip "White Punks on Dope" because of time and, perhaps, the kids in the audience.

Anni asked me, "Is this the weirdest thing we've ever done?" She couldn't hear my answer over the peacocks from the adjoining ranch providing harmonies for Fee. Anni kept recognizing people but couldn't place them -- I think they're the folks we see buying 50-pound bags of carrots at the Sunland Ralphs.

After the event started with a barbecue, we watched kids from the Valley View Vaulters perform gymnastics on real horses followed by the War Horse Heritage Foundation Drill Team recreating a battle that happened centuries ago. Then the ladies in their costumes from old England danced and drank along with Fee, Kiwanis club members, Mexican stablehands, charity mavens, some wonderful teenagers, old school western riders and quite a few Tubes fans from the ages.

[Sharon W]

Jan 6, 2009 0:57:45 GMT -8 Brian said:

I've been a Tubes fan since they first played L.A. in 1975 .....

Wow - we've enjoyed the playing of a former Tubes member quite a few times ourselves. With the 'core 4' members of the Dead planning a tour this year there have been a few stories in the paper. We just mentioned yesterday it was as though Vince Welnick never existed, he wasn't even mentioned - thanks for bringing him to mind again.

[Brian]

Funny, I read Sharon's post and the first thing I heard when I got to work this morning was that Lesh, Weir and Hart were going to play the Forum this May as The Dead. My coworker could not identify the keyboardist for the reunion tour. We both hope the keyboard curse is, well, dead.

I spent the better part of the evening looking at Tubes videos on the aptly named You Tube. The one I liked best is a scaled down version of their stage extravaganza for "White Punks on Dope," performed on TV's "Old Grey Whistle Test" in England in what must be 1976. What was parody back then became the template for too many bands in the 1980's.



I could not find another video from 1975 to 1983 that showed more of Vince, sadly, and you only really see his hair and trademark wraparound shades in profile toward the end. I loved watching him onstage as much as Fee and Re Styles -- Vince Welnick somehow always made me happy. Until he died.

[Brian]

At the risk of turning this page into an archive of my concert reviews from last year, there's one guest of our board from Canada who might be interested in this one. I posted it on the Ian Hunter Message Board, where I'm the sixth member of now 651 worldwide, on May 18. They delete posts after several months, and I already lost another posting of it on another board that died. Those are my excuses.


Crowded House closed their seven-city, 13-show U.S. tour at the Orpheum in downtown Los Angeles last night with their extended family onstage and two generations of fans partying in the restored movie palace.

Don McGlashan of New Zealand's Mutton Birds opened too briefly, joined at the end by Neil Finn on keyboards. A gifted multi-instrumentalist, McGlashan played with Crowded House most of the 135-minute concert on guitar, keyboards, toy piano, euphonium, harmonium, name it. Neil called out L.A. Largo club legend Jon Brion for "I Got You," then Sebastian Steinberg and Lisa Germano. Earlier, two stage crew guys played keyboards and percussion. From a trio in 1986 to as many as eight onstage.

I saw this band -- bassist Nick Seymour, keyboardist/guitarist Mark Hart, drummer extraordinaire Matt Sherrod and old Neil -- at their second gig little more than a year ago in Pomona, Calif., right before their Coachella festival appearance and huge summer tour. Now they're relaxed but intensely, insistently professional musicians and stage raconteurs. Tight and loose.

This Crowded House may last longer than the first one. At least a third of the audience wasn't born when I saw Split Enz in their first U.S. tour in 1977, months before Neil joined. I appreciate a band that will preview five unreleased songs -- "Either Side of the World" and "Twice If You're Lucky" being the instant classics -- and give me a chance to take a leak and get another beer during "Don't Dream It's Over," refreshed for five songs from one of my all-time favorite albums, "Temple of Low Men."

According to friends attending the first concert, there were very few songs repeated both nights. And from the 12 other set lists published on the Internets, they have a stage repertoire of dozens of songs ready to play -- or perhaps wing, as with "In the Lowlands" tonight, so beautifully.

The set list:

Recurring Dream
Mean to Me
Isolation (new)
Turn It Around (new)
Fall at Your Feet
Heaven That I'm Making
Falling Down (new)
Chocolate Cake
Pour Le Monde
Either Side of the World (new)
When You Come
Into Temptation
Twice If You're Lucky (new)
Distant Sun
It's Only Natural

Locked Out
Don't Dream It's Over
I Got You
Thrown Your Arms Around Me
Weather With You

Fingers of Love
In the Lowlands
Love This Life
Better Be Home Soon

[Brian]

Tim and Neil Finn have been very good for me.

Because I worked at the record store in Montrose, I discovered Split Enz in January 1977 before their first U.S. tour and followed them to the Internet in 2000 to keep up with the brothers' albums and tours. Then I met so many wonderful people -- online and then in person -- from Canada, Australia, England and throughout the United States.

A bootleg tape I helped make as a teenager was being distributed worldwide in 2005 by 40-somethings just as nuts about this band as me and being heard by a new generation of fans. Which resulted in one of my most satisfying threads on a message board:

nextexit.proboards26.com/index.cgi?board=Paul&action=display&thread=3559

[Brian]

I've had a beef with Chuck Henry for 37 years after watching him commit journalistic malpractice at the beginning of his career on KNBC. Perversely, because of Jay Leno, I still park the TV on Channel 4 at 11 p.m. while I do my chores, so I hear him oversimplify and sometimes mangle the Big Story every weekday.

I've lived in these hills my whole life, so I remember when the Foothill Freeway was just a strip between La Canada and the Rose Bowl. The first segment of Interstate 210 -- between Lowell Avenue and Ocean View Boulevard -- was under construction from 1971-72. I was 14 then, and I loved riding my bike from our home near the golf course to Montrose in half the time with a third of the effort while it was being built. What a beautiful grade compared to Honolulu Boulevard on a heavy Schwinn.

My brother and I took our last bicycle ride on the 210 one morning during summer vacation. We rolled down the Ocean View onramp, following the cars driving for the first time uphill to the Lowell offramp, where CalTrans had set up a shaded stage for a dedication ceremony.

We heard a local minister give an invocation, then speeches by Ledger Publisher Don Carpenter, Supervisor Warren Dorn and Assemblyman Newt Russell, a family friend. In the audience were the usual government and Chamber of Commerce types, housewives and others of the local citizenry who didn't have to work, crews from Channels 4 and 5, some kids like us and two college-age environmental activists, also on bikes, holding up little signs when the elected officials spoke.

Chuck had six hours to develop and edit the film for the six o'clock news. He cut in his stand-ups and voiceovers reporting on the cost of the project, the next additions to the 210 and the opposition of environmental groups and more soon to be displaced homeowners. Plenty of time to get it right.

My brother and I watched that bright evening before dinner as Chuck ran audio of the minister saying, "Lord, bless those driving on this new freeway and keep them from grievous vehicular harm," then spliced in film of the hippies, astride their fancy French ten speeds, holding up signs saying "BOO!" and "HISS!" -- for Newt! -- during the parson's solemn prayer.

Old Chuck has had a remarkable career in local television news. I pray for his journalistic soul. Film at 11.

[Sharon W]

I had a similar experience in the Fall of 1964 at UCLA as a freshman on the Daily Bruin staff watching a demonstration against the Vietnam war. The LA Times photographer asked us to go stand next to others in the scattered audience so it would look like a bigger crowd in the picture. I guess way back then some of the mainstream press was liberal.

[Brian]

Well, the photographer might have been sympathetic, but the powers that be at the L.A. Times in 1964 certainly weren't liberal!

What a cool time to have gone to UCLA, Sharon. My favorite teacher, Bob Bennett of Verdugo Hills High School, was enrolled in the film program then along with people like Jim Morrison of the Doors.

Also, I'm hoping the mere mention of UCLA on this board could get our Bill B. to post.

[Sharon W]

It was a great time to be there. I got married the next summer and had my son the following summer (both events to keep my first husband out of Vietnam - remember the military draft? ).

UCLA switched to a quarter system that summer too and with a 6 week old at home and a full reading list to get done in 10 weeks I couldn't keep up.

I do recall a really tall skinny kid named Lew Alcindor in the class behind me. He was already a star and we never spoke.