Can you hear me?
Monday, October 27, 2003
About those con artists:
I met Nicholai Sorensen Goodich in 1991 when I was playing open mics at the Sun Mountain Bar on West Third Street in NYC. At the time he was jovial, dredlocked, and played vampy Richie Havens, stream of consciousness type grooves. He did not know what his chords were called. What became evident about Nicholai, over time, was that he had a dream and a plan. I was part of the plan. He wanted rock superstardom. He was an unabashed self promoter. He was unafraid to approach anyone no matter how unprepared he was. He called club booking agents, presidents of record companies, Mike Watt from Firehose. Amazingly, he got results. He booked a gig at Wetlands with a demo we did on a radio shack tape recorder in my parents basement. A crude partnership was formed between us. I was afraid of the world. He needed a musician to play leads, sing backup, fix his forms, and teach his rhythm sections what to do. Over time the situation became complex, dragged out, and quite ugly.
Nicks music and politics became strident. His sense of humor vanished.
Wounded Bird
Saturday, October 25, 2003
Stacia and I have done this thing periodically which is to move some town with next to no one and where we have no connections and try to make a life. This video is a wry comment on the situation. It comes complete with pictures of the house and of Stacia making turns on her snowboard on the hill behind the house.
Trajesty
Friday, October 24, 2003
Fast forward to modern times. It's the aftermath of 9/11 and I'm on the Brooklyn Bridge, searching for the twin towers in the sky with my video camera.
Barbecue
Thursday, October 23, 2003
Recorded in 1994, this tune represents a harder side of stuff the Round Band did. I hung out with some con artists and listened to a bunch of early grunge stuff like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr. and Swerve Driver. Bands like Sound Garden were on TV. Hard music that wasn't based on show off technique, or sex or violence was coming to the fore. Still, there was some anger.
War
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
I think one of the most important reasons I wanted to head back east in 1990 was that Joe Quigley, who had been the bass player in The Round Band, was home from two years in Japan. He had been teaching English, drinking beer, and slumming with Japanese fusion musicians. The Round Band had existed and played about twenty six shows in 1986 and 1987. The band was (and still is) myself, Jon Feinberg (who was in LA living with me but not in Onion), and Joe "supabassu" Quigley. Click below for Round Band at it's best.
Season's Change
Monday, October 20, 2003
When I was in Los Angeles in 1989, I bought a 67 Ford Mustang. Totally cherry, as they say. Well... not the the original paint but no dents and no rust. It was a very cool looking car. That was where the coolness ended. Driving it made me feel like Fred Flintstone. The brakes were such that you had to practically drag your feet on the ground to stop. It had this unbelievable pull to the right when you applied them. I went through the break pads quickly (Like once in the middle of downtown Madison, WI). It was a muscle car in that you needed muscles to turn the car. I guess folks in an older cohort are used to this but you, literally, needed to be rolling in order to turn. Hey, parking was no joy. I'm glad the thing was stolen before I got a chance to drive it in NYC.
Miklos and I used the Mustang to escape LA. Dan had a rod in his leg. I had played the heavy, broken up the band and scuttled our publishing deal. Anth had taken a job on Rocky V and went to sleep at 8:00 and woke up at 5:00. The construction we had done was becoming a ruin, and would later be completely destroyed by the few that remained.
It was time to fly. To find a place to feel like human beings again. To find a place with women. We took the northern route and visited Miklos's sister Corrina in Madison, Wisconsin. We ate peanut butter in the car, passed gas, and tried to process what had happened. We memorized Rachim's Follow the Leader. It was snowing over the continental divide. A little lower we put the car in neutral and go-carted for ten miles. We drank cheep beer in Madison....kissed girls. They were somehow more approachable than in LA.
Miklos who is an incredible film editor and the architect of this site, was awash in angst. He knew not what he was doing nor why he was doing it. He was like me, talented and spoiled. He did not want to do it if it wasn't a grand vision of his own making. At the same time, he was scared of the world and of not being good enough. He was coming to the realization that outside of his small circle was an ever increasing spiral. Our conversations had a frenetic and frustrated pace and brief moments of clarity.
After a week, we drove the rest of the way to the east coast. Back to our college town, Providence, RI. The first night back someone ran into the Mustang and severed the left headlight and it's housing from the rest of the car.
Monday, October 13, 2003
We did have our brushes with greatness out in Hollywood. We met Marilou Henner who was Elaine Nardo in the show Taxi, and she was like, "who are these cute guys?". That was when we were being wooed by Dick Rudolph.
Me and Dave walked past the "time to make-a-da pizza" guy from a famous frozen foods commercial. I think he was Mama Celeste's brother or something. He mumbled "time to make da pizza" as we walked by.
The most bizarre one though, by far, was how Dan met Vanna White. A truck had just knocked him off his motorcycle and run over his leg on Sunset boulevard. He looked up and there she was.
Friday, October 10, 2003
Some of the folks in Onion and what they're doing now:
Anthony Avildsen is one of the most amazing cartoonists in the world. He is dark, devious and amazingly funny. He was a drummer then and he's a bass player now. He writes catchy tunes that display his macabre world view.
Dan Mackenzie was the bassist and a singer songwriter for the band. He doesn't play primarily bass anymore, still, he's one of the best slap style players I've heard. These days he writes deft pop. He's got a suave love song thing going on. The words are sweet but the thoughts behind them are perhaps more shady. His melodies are pure sugar. I hear he's big in the Philippines.
Jon Feinberg is, probably, my single most important collaborator. This is, probably, why he drove me insane often. Insane enough to fire him from a band he was, probably, the best musician in (god I'm terrible, I better start making my character more sympathetic). He had his differences with me too, at the time (there that's better). Anyway, Jon went on to artistic and commercial success as drummer for They Might Be Giants. Jon and I got it back together in NY later on.
Jon played some guitar in Onion, and then smoked Anthony on drums when Anth came out to sing. Tracy Swope said it best when she said that Anth should have been the lead singer. That might have worked.
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
Onion was a competition. Who could ride the biggest wave (we went to the beach more than we practiced).... who could break the most stuff. I needed my mommy and, eventually, I returned to her. We had a publishing guy Dick Rudolph who was dangling Michael Douglas's money. Dave and Rob, our managers, (who in nine months booked two gigs), were against the deal claiming that we did not get enough and were going to get robbed on the percentages. I wanted the deal but broke the band up before we could take it. I wanted a deal for myself and to be done with the dysfunctional compadres. This was a tactical error because, I think, Dick liked Dan and Anth more than he liked me. He liked Onion.
Monday, October 06, 2003
Everyone in Onion had something to prove. Dan needed to be a mans man. Anth needed to prove he wasn't soft. I needed to prove how smart I was. Jon needed to prove that he needed no one. Dave and Rob needed to be in charge. Miklos needed to prove he could function. Alex just wanted to have fun. We did have fun sometimes, just not enough.
The band was only me, Dan and Anth plus Jon until we fired him. We all lived together to form Onion the culture. We had two 1000 square foot lofts in Downtown LA near the courthouse where the OJ trial eventually was, Yohan Plaza (a Japanese Maul), Al's Bar, Hilby's Kitchen, and shanty's filled with homeless people. When Dan made the mistake of parking on the street someone camped out in his cartoon Colt Vista and left a bunch of Popeyes Chicken, and worse.
Skunk
After college I moved to Los Angeles with my friends and we formed the group Onion. It was the right idea at the wrong time. We played east coast bug music for west coast copy artists. Everything out there sounded like The Red Hot Chili Peppers meets Bon Jovi. We hung out with a band called The Swing who later became Stone Temple Pilots. They loved our demo. On it was a song called Creep. Alex and Miklos were so broke that they would buy bags of white bread to give pieces to bums. Anthony spray painted Dan Mackenzie's Colt Vista in a semi-urban cartoon. Dan got a license plate which said Kind Bud.
Creep
Thursday, October 02, 2003
I've been thinking a lot about this issue of a tree falling in the woods and whether it makes a sound or not. My dad says it has to do with ways of knowing. If you did not see or hear it, how do you know it happened? If you know it happened but did not see or hear it how do you know it made a sound. You think you know but you don't really. You only have a clue and no answer. I do know that I do lots of stuff that is neither seen or heard by anyone else. So my hypothesis is that the tree makes a sound.
