Growing Old With Rock & Roll

Thursday, October 30, 2025

60 Years On From The Bathtub - October 30th, 2025

Longtime and/or serious readers of Growing Old With Rock & Roll might remember The Bathtub, the first full-length entry in the blog back in 2012, that served as a kind of "origin story" to the rest of the proceedings.

Rather than just posting a link, I've decided to reprint the piece in its entirety here.......

The Bathtub

I was 13 years old in October 1965. Eighth grade just was not working out. I had been a shy, book-reading child, now hormones were kicking in. I loved rock & roll but I just knew I was NEVER going to know how to talk to girls. (This was years before I got ahold of a guitar.) One really bad Saturday night I decided to kill myself. I had it all worked out. I had seen a movie just that week about a guy getting electrocuted when a radio fell into the bathtub he was in. (I was a very impressionable child.)

After everybody had left for the evening (my mom and dad were working their second jobs; my sister was on a date; my brother was at the bar) I went around the house and found a radio with a power cord long enough to reach the bathtub. I ran the bath, plugged in the radio, settled into the warm water, said a little prayer for forgiveness, and let the radio drop. What I hadn't factored in was that although the cord was long enough to reach the tub, I hadn't filled it full enough. Right when the radio hit the water the plug pulled out. I got a nasty shock, I was seeing big purple and black blobs in my field of vision, but it didn't kill me.

I lifted the radio out and laid there in the water a few minutes to let my head clear. I got out and ran some more water in the tub until I was certain I had the right water level for the job at hand. I plugged the radio back in and what was playing? "Get Off My Cloud" by The Rolling Stones. I stood there naked, dripping and chilly, eighth-grade skinny, and listened to the entire song. Right at that moment I quite literally loved that song more than I loved life itself. And then a thought came very clearly into my head: "What if the next Rolling Stones single is even BETTER than this one, and I never get to hear it?"

I set the radio down on the sink, got back in the tub, took a bath and went to bed. If "Danke Schoen" by Wayne Newton or "Roses Are Red" by Bobby Vinton had been playing at the moment I plugged that radio back in I'd be dead now. Long live The Rolling Stones. So began a life of rock & roll.
　
© 2012 Ricki C.

Employing research tools available on the InterWideWeb I've managed to figure out the exact date of that suicide attempt; using the date of the Bob Dylan show I saw two weeks later, a calendar of October, 1965, and the Billboard chart rankings for "Get Off My Cloud" by The Rolling Stones, among other signposts.

That date was Saturday night October 30th, 1965, right around 9:15 pm.

I was 13 that night. I'm 73 now.

Here's what's happened in between.

ME AND DAD

My dad figures heavily in my Life of Rock & Roll. There are entire blogs about him in Growing Old With Rock & Roll. I'm going to link one here, but it's not integral to this part of the narrative, so feel free to just circle back to it later.

Today Is Father's Day

Looking back on that suicidal Saturday night I realize how selfish an act it would have been. It would have very nearly killed my dad, I think, if I had gone through with ending my life. He would have felt like he failed me somehow. But he had ALWAYS encouraged me in anything/everything I had ever wanted to do. He had never once made me feel like the disappointment I imagined I was to him. I wasn't an athlete. I was not yet a musician. I really wasn't really much of anything but a friendless 13-year old kid who read a lot of books, listened to a lot of 45 rpm rock & roll records alone in the basement, and didn't know how to talk to people.

In 1967, within two years of surviving that night dad bought me my first guitar, an acoustic; then my second, a beat-up secondhand electric Stratocaster knock-off that looked exactly like the guitar Jimi Hendrix played at Woodstock, a guitar I loved with a passion. In 1968 I joined my first rock & roll band.

Dad died of a heart attack in April, 1970, less than two years after that.

One night in 1990 - after I had debuted my solo acoustic rocker act - I played a show opening for Willie Phoenix. Afterwards a bunch of my fellow musicians, their girlfriends or wives, and a sprinkling of friends & strangers were sitting around a big table at Bernie's Bagels. I was talking about how dad had been the entire reason I ever survived to become a rocker but died before he could ever see me actually play a show. A girl I had never met said, "Weren't you talking onstage about being Catholic?" "Yeah," I replied.

"Well then, given everything you're supposed to believe in, don't you think he's seen EVERY show you've ever played?" she said quietly.

I never saw that girl again in my life, but I thank her to this day for that question.

THINGS THAT WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED IF I HAD DIED OCT 30th, 1965

(in no particular order)

I would never have written a song.

I would never have tasted shrimp.

I would never have heard an Elliott Murphy song.

I would never have seen every Bruce Springsteen tour from 1976 through a couple of years ago.

I would never have learned to worship Mott The Hoople in general and Ian Hunter in particular.

I would never have kissed Joyce. I would never have kissed Marilyn. I would never have kissed Linda. I would never have kissed Jodie. I would never have kissed Teresa. I would never have kissed (and married) Pat. I never would have kissed Kim. I would never have kissed Mary Jo. I never got to kiss Jenny, but goddamn did I want to badly. I never would have kissed Sharon. I never would have kissed (and married) Debbie, my little love.

I would never have seen a picture of Lou Reed in a black t-shirt and altered my wardrobe forever.

I would never have fallen for Joe Strummer and Tom Petty, my polar opposite rocker discoveries of 1976.

I would never have read a book by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

THE TEN BEST YEARS OF MY LIFE

From the dawn of the 21st century - 2000 to 2010 - I served as the road manager for Hamell On Trial, a solo acoustic rocker whom I have often detailed/explained as "a four-man punk band rolled into one bald, sweaty guy." We traversed the entirety of America - from sea to shining sea, as it were - 5 or 6 times in that ten years, hitting 44 of the 48 contiguous United States along the way. (And Hamell played Alaska, but the promoter wouldn't pay for me to go along.)

It was the best of times with no worst of times. Ed Hamell was a solo acoustic act; we traveled in one car with an amp-stack taller than he was, two guitars and our luggage. Ed did not EVER want to see daylight. He would stay up 'til 5 or 6 in the morning while I slept 2 am to 8 am. I'd wake him up at 11 am in whatever Motel 6 we were in in whichever city, he'd shamble into the car and sleep until soundcheck in the next town, then go back to the car to sleep some more. I'd instruct the opening act to let me know when they were 3 songs from the end of their set, then head back to the car with a can of Red Bull, wake Ed up, and he'd head into the club to tear things up with 90 minutes of some of the best music I've ever heard in my life.

Then, if need be, Ed would drive all night to the next city while I slept in the passenger seat. He'd wake me at 8 am, and again - if need be - I'd drive the rest of the way to the next tour stop.

The next day we'd do it all again.

For ten years.

It was heaven.

Watershed

Five years into that process - 2005 - Colin Gawel came into Ace In The Hole Record Exchange (my day-job throughout the traveling years when I wasn't on the road) and asked if I might be interested in touring with his band Watershed as a merch person & guitar tech when I wasn't out with Hamell.

My first reaction to that job offer was, "Who died?" I'd been a fan of Watershed since 1990, 15 years earlier and they had exactly the same band line-up (with one drummer change) and exactly the same road crew that entire time. It turned out longtime roadie Rob had finally had enough of the almost-constant traveling Watershed indulged in and got a straight job.

I got in that van with Colin, Joe, Dave, Herb & Biggie, and never looked back.

I have that job to this day, 20 years later.

THINGS THAT WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED, part two

I would never have met and worked for Willie Phoenix, who improved my songwriting by about 85%.

I would never have marveled in silent wonder at the guitar playing of Mike Parks; one time in 1970 when I was still in high school, then countless times in the 1990's & 21st century with Willie Phoenix & the True Soul Rockers and The League Bowlers, when I was lucky enough to serve as his roadie.

I would never have met Jim Johnson, a Rockin' Gibraltar of a drummer.

I would never have met John Vincent, my guide & mentor into the Columbus solo acoustic scene.

I would never have met Dave Blackburn - my high school best friend - who taught me everything I know about music, and whom this song is about.

WINDING UP

Okay, let's start winding this up. The last twenty years or so of the story have been pretty well covered in this blog. I have grown old with rock & roll as the title implies. And that's not necessarily all hearts & flowers.

I sometimes look back in 2025 and question my behaviors. In my late 20's in the early 1980's I used to fly to Boston on People's Airlines on weekends just to see a band called The Neighborhoods. I now sometimes find it difficult to muster the will to drive 13 miles to WORK A GIG with one or the other of Colin's bands at Natalie's Grandview.

In my 30's and 40's I would work 40 hours a week - 9 to 5 - at a catalog showroom (a class of retail store that doesn't even EXIST anymore) called Service Merchandise; unloading trucks and pulling orders, relatively hard physical labor. I would then roadie for Willie Phoenix from 7 pm to 4 am on Friday and Saturday nights; saving Sundays to roll out of bed at noon, not get dressed, and watch NFL football for up to 10 hours. And then do it all again the next week.

Nowadays I find it a lovely day when I can watch birds & squirrels outside my living room sliding doors and spoil the local geese with cracked corn paid for with my Social Security cash.

My sainted Italian father died at 56. I am now 73. I have outlived him by 17 years, the exact same amount of time we had together before a heart attack took him away. What if guardian angels really exist and dad has been mine for all this time?

I live in Ohio. I play the guitar. Not because I want to, because I HAVE to. I have to.

I still write songs.

I still play gigs.

And I still say, "God bless Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones for saving my life in that bathtub."

It's been 60 years. It's 9:15 pm.

Richard Cacchione at 13

Ricki C. at 73

Ricki C. is 71 years old and has two drawers full of black rock & roll t-shirts, which he wears incessantly. He also has a hand-tooled leather hippie belt from 1972 that still fits. He has congestive heart failure and prostate cancer and KNOWS that all this rock & roll nonsense has to stop someday.

But not yet.

Saturday, March 16, 2024

It Was 50 Years Ago Today / Mott The Hoople, The New York Dolls and Elliott Murphy

Today is the 75th birthday of Elliott Murphy; my favorite rock & roll songwriter of all time. In honor of that milestone I'm running this piece that originally appeared on Pencil Storm, a blogsite to which I now contribute stories. You certainly won't be sorry if you also check out that site.

I was 21 in 1973. I had already been listening to rock & roll for 16 years, thanks to the lucky break of my bother & sister being 10 & 7 years older than me and the fact that my sister Dianne LOVED spinning the radio dial of my sainted Italian father’s Oldsmobile, so that at 5 years old I was already plugged in to the first wave of rock & roll - Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard.

I thank the rock & roll gods and especially thank my Dad for buying me my first guitar when I was 16 in 1968. I joined my first band only a few short weeks later. The first song I sang in public was Steppenwolf’s “Magic Carpet Ride” at a classmate’s basement rec-room birthday party. Life was good. By 1973 I had progressed through girl groups, surf music, the British Invasion, psychedelia, nascent heavy-metal, country-rock, sensitive singer-songwriters and prog-rock.

By that time, though, I was itching for a change. From my perspective of the rolling over of rock & roll every 10 years (Elvis Presley 1954 > The Beatles 1964) I was waiting for The Next Wave of Rock & Roll. For me, that next wave’s arrival was Mott The Hoople, The New York Dolls and Elliott Murphy. The Dolls were gonna be the New Rolling Stones, Elliott was gonna be the New Bob Dylan and Mott was gonna be the new Dylan backed by the new Rolling Stones.

That didn’t pan out, of course: Mott and the Dolls had broken up by 1975, and I’m forced to admit that (other than with rock critics and rock aficionados) Elliott Murphy never really broke through in any meaningful way. (Though he remains my most prized & favorite rock & roll artist of all time and continues to record & perform to this day; as does Ian Hunter from Mott and David Johansen from the Dolls, 50 years later. Look ‘em up.)

By 1976 my dream of Rock & Roll Regeneration was over. Lee Abrams & his ilk jammed AOR radio down everybody’s throats; tight playlists came in, corporate-rock (Styx/Journey/Foreigner) flourished, and the soft-rock likes of Eagles and Fleetwood Mac towered over everything. Rock & Roll had gone from Little Richard to Don Henley in 20 short years. Rock & roll was now safe and neat & tidy. It made me wanna puke. (Of course at that point, punk had to get invented, but that’s a whole other blog for a whole ‘nother time.)

Fortunately for me, the producers of the Midnight Special - the early 70’s late-night rock & roll TV show (along with Don Kirschner’s Rock Concert) - fed a steady stream of the great (and not-so-great) rock & roll artists of the day into American television sets every Friday night. Now they have started putting their clips on YouTube. Here are some of my favorites of those clips.

These clips are not drawn from the Midnight Special, but NEEDED to be included here.

A link to my previous birthday tribute to Elliott - On Elliott Murphy's Birthday - appears here.

bonus Growing Old With Rock & Roll video (not included in the Pencil Storm blog)

right, Rick Cacchione; hippie, Loggins & Messina and Batdorf & Rodney fan.

left, Ricki C; rocker and Dolls fanatic, two pictures worth 2000 words.

© 2024 Ricki C.

Thursday, December 7, 2023

Legalize It! Ricki C. Celebrates the First Day of Legalized Recreational Marijuana in Ohio

Ricki C. decided to celebrate the December 7th legalization of recreational marijuana with a blog about his own history with illegal recreational marijuana, dating back to 1977 and a run-in with KISS.

(Should this blog have been titled "KISS made me start taking drugs?" Yeah, probably,)

KISS was wholly & entirely responsible for me starting to smoke pot. In March 1977 I was 25 years old and had made it completely through the 1960’s and more than six years of the 1970’s without partaking in weed. (And this was on the West Side of Columbus, Ohio!) When My Favorite Band On The Planet Of The Time – The Dictators – were pushed off the KISS bill for some lame-ass L.A. douchebags called Legs Diamond I was so depressed at the show that when the stoner next to me absent-mindedly mixed me up with his Cheech & Chong compadres and handed me a joint, rather than going, “No thanks, maaaaan,” as I normally, derisively, Sex Pistol-y would have done, I said, “Yeah, let me hit that.”

From the moment that smoke hit my brain by way of my lungs on that Sunday evening, however, it was spring 1969 again and everything that had gone wrong in the 1970’s – mood rings, streaking, Richard Nixon, The Decline of Rock & Roll and concomitant Rise of Corporate Rock & Disco, my failing marriage, etc. – was gone and I was feelin’ good, Jack. I clearly recall saying out loud to myself, underneath the KISS din, “I remember feeling like this all the time, without drugs.”

I was a convert.

I had a pretty good run with pot, indulging from that day in 1977 to the year 2000 and the implantation of my first cardiac pacemaker. My cardiologist advised me to take six weeks or so off from getting high – to let the pacemaker work in, because pot significantly increased my heart rate – and I never really got back into it. I never lost a job or ruined a relationship with pot (though I did with rock & roll); I was never arrested; and I ended my years as an alcoholic in 1980 (that began when I was 16 in 1968) partly with weed’s assistance.

That being said, here is stupidest thing I ever did when I was high.

It’s not exactly a State Secret that I was the model for Sean Richter in the 12-part I Love Distortion

mix of fact & fiction novella that ran in Growing Old With Rock & Roll in 2013.

Here’s a re-run from a Sean Richter Chronicles follow-up in 2021.

The Sean Richter Chronicles will appear occasionally in Growing Old With Rock & Roll. They are an adjunct to I Love Distortion (a rock & roll novel in 12 chapters) that played out in the blog throughout 2013. This episode slots in right around late May or early June, 1978, before Nicole had called off her engagement to her fiancée and before my wife had tumbled on our little affair.

Callie was a co-worker of Nicole's in the toy department of the K-Mart where we all worked. Callie was an INCREDIBLY sweet young girl, who couldn't have found a clue with a stepladder. When she got pregnant at 18 with her high-school boyfriend, all of us agreed that we doubted she connected the act of having sexual intercourse with said boyfriend with the resulting birth of their daughter.

This is an (unfortunately) entirely true & accurate account of our hospital visit following that birth

SEAN AND GREG THE ROADIE VISIT CALLIE IN THE HOSPITAL

"Hey Sean," Greg the Roadie said to me as he parked the car on a street near Mt. Carmel West Hospital that late spring/early summer day, "you think we should smoke a joint before we go up to the room?"

Anyway, my reply in the car that day? "Yeah, I guess we should," though even at this point - more than 40 years later - I have NO IDEA how an affirmative reply was the correct one. Plus it's important to remember that buying pot on the West Side of of Columbus, Ohio in 1978 was just a Chemical Crapshoot: one time you would get a substance that just gave you a Vague Headache and a Little Sort Of High Around the Edges; the next time it might just as well have been Angel Dust that would have you hallucinating for hours. You just never knew. To quote/paraphrase Dostoyevsky; "You pays your money and you takes your shot."

The other problem in that halcyon era was that we never did ANYTHING halfway. "Moderation" was for chumps, and was not a part of our rock & roll vernacular. There was No Such Concept of MAYBE smoking half a joint to test the potency, you just lit it up and rolled the dice. I knew we were in trouble before we even got out of Greg's car, as I found I no longer knew how to work the car-door handle (and I had ridden in that car more than a hundred times).

We weren't even a block away from the hospital, but we STILL got lost finding it. Then we couldn't figure out how to GET INSIDE the building and somehow wound up in a sub-basement. By sheer luck we happened upon an elevator and managed to hit the "Up" button. To our enormous relief when the doors opened there was nobody inside, the car was completely empty. "Oh man, I am SO GLAD there's nobody on here," Greg said, "I am WAY too high to deal with any straight people."

The elevator went up exactly one floor to the lobby, the doors parted, and maybe 15 people - including a couple of doctors & nurses - were waiting to get on. They just stared at Greg & me for a second - I think we probably had a look of total panic on our faces - and then for some reason the Elevator Mexican Standoff just struck us both as hilariously funny and we started laughing so hard we couldn't stop. "Are you guys all right?" one of the doctor's asked as I tried to catch my breath to say, "Yeah, we're good, we're fine," but all I could do was laugh 'til I was crying. Greg was doubled-over, leaning on the wall, holding his stomach, then slid down the wall to a sitting position, laughing the entire time.

The doors closed again without anybody - sensibly - getting on, and we continued up to the 7th floor where the Maternity Ward was. Any Sane Person - or Persons - would have just cut their losses right then & there and gotten their asses OUT of that hospital, but apparently we were functioning on some kind of Cannabis Automatic Pilot at that point: we had COME to this building to visit Callie and her new baby, and we were damn well GOING to visit Callie and her new baby.

We ducked into the first restroom we came to so we could take a break and try to gather ourselves a little bit (and to stop laughing). "Holy shit this is good pot," Greg said, "we hit the jackpot this time." "Yeeeaaah," I said, a little less enthusiastically, "it IS good, but we still have to get through this." The High had taken a turn now, we were functioning better, but now time seemed to be slowing down rather alarmingly, and Greg was starting to flag a little.

When we got to Callie's room I couldn't believe my eyes; the room was CRAMMED with people. Callie's mom & dad were there, her boyfriend's parents were there, Nicole AND her fiance were there (and that guy was NOT a big fan of mine), plus two or three people we didn't know. EVERYBODY was just staring at us, open-mouthed, and Nicole - promptly & properly Sussing the Situation with Greg & I - was so simultaneously angry and frightened of what was going to happen next she had tears starting in her eyes.

Greg broke that little tableau by walking over to the bed, saying, "Callie, congratulations," and KISSING HER ON THE MOUTH. With her boyfriend AND his parents standing RIGHT THERE. "Oh, my God," I thought to myself, "this is getting out of hand, I should put a stop to this," but I found myself rooted to the spot, incapable of action. Before anybody could do anything, Greg then announced, "Man, I'm so tired, I've just gotta lay down for a minute," and climbed into the hospital bed WITH Callie. The entire situation had now clearly gone Train 'Round the Bend, and I knew I had to do SOMETHING. Breaking my drug-induced paralysis, I walked over to the bed, took his arm, said, "Greg, come on," and tried to pull him up. He yanked his arm away and YELLED, "GET OFF me, Sean, I'll fuck you up."

Greg was a Big Guy. He played semi-pro football. I'd seen him in fights. I'd personally witnessed him beat people senseless, and I realized that if I couldn't de-fuse this situation quickly there was going to be carnage in that hospital room and Greg & I were going to jail, possibly for a VERY long time. "Greg, Greg, Greg," I said, a little quieter each time, and stared in his eyes, "you have to get up off this bed and we have to get OUT of this room RIGHT NOW before Security comes, do you understand?"

I think something about the word "Security" cut through the haze of The Big High to reach Greg, and he let me guide him off the bed and out of the room. "Sorry, everybody," I said over my shoulder to the assembled families, "wrong room," even though Greg had called Callie by name before he kissed her.

Nicole showed up at our band rehearsal space later that night after she dropped off her fiancée, and the first words out of her mouth before I could even begin to apologize were, "What THE FUCK is wrong with you?" She was as angry at me as I'd ever seen her and she was so frustrated she started slapping me on the head & shoulders. I got her wrists and said, "Nicole, I'm really sorry. We NEVER should have gotten high before we came up there."

"Yeah, and exactly whose idea WAS it to get high before visiting Callie in the hospital," Nicole asked, whirling on Greg. Greg put his hands up before she could start pummeling him, and said, "Nicole, I'm sorry too, but getting high just seemed like a really good idea at the time." Greg had such a sincere, little-boy-caught-with-his-hand-in-the-cookie-jar look on his face that Nicole actually burst out laughing, much like Greg and me in the elevator.

"You guys are such CHILDREN sometimes," Nicole chided, "I bet Callie's daughter has more sense RIGHT THIS MINUTE than both of you put together." "Come on, let's go outside," she said, grabbing my hand, "you're gonna take me for a walk to get some fresh air."

I guessed things were going to be okay.

(ps. Apropos of The Dictators mention in paragraph one of this blog, we just lost genius rhythm guitarist Scott "Top Ten" Kempner of The Dictators November 29th, 2023.

check out this link - Pencil Storm / In Memoriam: Scott Kempner - for my tribute to him.)

Monday, May 1, 2023

Boston Rock & Roll, Live, early to mid-80's (Mainly The Neighborhoods)

This blog is reprinted with the kind permission of Pencil Storm - the site where most of my blogs now appear - and is co-written with JCE, my best Virginia rock & roll friend.

THE SHOWS

Ricki, why don’t you kick things off?

There’s a BUNCH of entries earlier on this site about my favorite Boston band of all time, The Neighborhoods. (Two examples: Flying To Boston to See the Rock & Roll / The Neighborhoods “Cultured Pearls”.) Plus there’s an early forerunner of the 1X2 concept, a tandem blog with my good friend JCE from Pencil Storm in 2019 about the ‘Hoods (as they were affectionately known to their fans) linked here.

At some point, though, it occurred to me that many of those blogs were about how I GOT TO those gigs or what they meant to me more than they were ABOUT THE PERFORMANCES at the shows. This blog – again with JCE – will set out to correct that fault. (Plus we’re both gonna throw in some of our other homegrown faves from the early 80’s heyday of Boston rock & roll.)

THE NEIGHBORHOODS LIVE IN EARLY 1982 (TIM GREEN ON BASS)

My rock & roll-induced divorce was final in 1982 and occurred just as a marked decline in the quality of local Columbus r&r bands took hold. Thus, my live rock & roll sights began to turn increasingly toward Boston, MA owing to listings of gigs provided by the great Boston Rock magazine and the availability of cheap East Coast flights via People’s Airlines (see “Flying To Boston to See the Rock & Roll” linked above).

I entirely missed the pop-punk heyday of The Neighborhoods with John Hartcorn on bass, and my first trip to Boston to catch the ‘Hoods featured Tim Green on bass. This was the “noisy-post-punk-we’re-gonna-do-our-level-best-to-alienate-our-suburban-fans-who-only-wanna-hear-“Prettiest Girl” and ”Flavors”-period” of David Minehan’s mighty rock & roll assemblage.

The gig was at a small club in a kind-of strip mall in Boston that I can’t remember the name of. It had to be on a subway line, though, or I wouldn’t have been able to get there. In the early 2000’s – when I was tour manager for Hamell On Trial – I tried describing the place to Eric Law (who knows more about Boston rock & roll and its venues than ANYONE I have ever met) and even HE couldn’t pin it down.

That show was good-but-not-great as the band labored mightily to obliterate any pop sensibility from the set and hooks became an endangered species. I’m guessing I heard “Cash Dancing,” “We Don’t Do The Limbo” and “Drums Of Darkness” at that gig, but I can’t be certain. Here’s a video from that era that I find I enjoy a lot more now than I did the appearance I witnessed in ’82.

THE NEIGHBORHOODS LIVE LATER IN 1982 (LEE HARRINGTON ON BASS)

Okay, NOW we’re talkin’! I went to Boston in June 1982 to turn 30 by myself because I knew 30 was not gonna be easy for me, and I didn’t wanna subject anybody to my foul mood, in case that’s the way the birthday ball bounced. Either that visit or one later in ’82 was the first time I saw The Neighborhoods at The Channel club. I had been seeing shows at The Rat since 1977 (more on that below), but The Channel – capacity 1700 – was much more my cup of rock & roll tea, since I had grown up – literally, from the age of 16 – at The Columbus Agora, a 1300-capacity venue.

David, Lee & Mike Quaglia (on drums) were BLAZING at those Channel shows. On a huge stage – with tons of room to move around, great lighting and a nicely-balanced BOOMING PA – those ‘Hoods gigs were more like concerts than just small-club shows. The video below is a good – but far-too-SHORT – illustration of how those shows played out, but what I wouldn’t give for a FULL-SET video from that era.

Over the next two years I saw The Neighborhoods at The Channel probably 4 or 5 more times. At least THREE of those gigs were as good as any rock shows I saw in the 1980’s, and that list includes The Replacements. WAIT; am I saying that The Neighborhoods were a better live band than Paul Westerberg & associates? Damn straight I am. (It’s no accident that David Minehan wound up in Westerberg’s 14 Songs touring band and later Replacements tours well into this 21st century.)

OVER TO YOU, JCE…..

THE NEIGHBORHOODS at Bunratty’s, 1987 or 1988

This club was on Harvard Ave. in the Allston neighborhood. I had seen the ‘Hoods play a number of times in Virginia, but the idea of seeing them rock out in their hometown was impossible to resist. The show was well attended, but not as packed as I thought it would be. If there was an opening act, I don’t recall one. All I know is that once they kicked into gear, The Neighborhoods were a force of nature. They played a great set. Actually, I think they may have played two sets. While my memory is faded, I vividly remember the crowd shouting for the song “The Pipe” which was a staple in the set during that time period. There’s not too much more I can say - it was a great show. This was the Minehan/Harrington/Quaglia lineup. I shot a few photos on my Kodak Instamatic camera, this was way before iphones…

NOT BUNRATTY'S, But Close Enough For Rock & Roll

THE TITANICS w/ THE JONESES at The Rat

If I could have only been to one club in Boston, I would have chosen The Rat. In high school, I had the vinyl 2-record set called Live at The Rat and I loved it. Luckily, I got there in the heyday of ‘80’s Boston rock. I wish I had seen the ‘Hoods or The Outlets, but the show I saw was killer. On this visit to see my sister in Boston, she set me up on a blind date. The girl picked me up and promised to show me the cool parts of Boston nightlife. We started at some new wave dance club where the music was bearable and we got on pretty well, but after an hour or so of getting to know me, she realized what would really resonate. Out of the blue she said “Let’s go to The Rat.” Hell yes. I didn’t know if anyone was even playing that night and neither did she, but we were in luck. The Joneses played first.

The band played to a good crowd that really seemed like it was just waiting for The Titanics. I thought The Joneses had a good crisp rock sound with a bluesy flavor—The Rolling Stones meet Bad Company. Not too long after this show, they released a record called Hard on a major label which I still play occasionally. (SIDE NOTE: There is a California punk band called The Joneses that is better known and very good - this is not the same band.) I was in heaven already when The Titanics hit the stage. Their front man came out in this big fur Daniel Boone looking coonskin cap and just ripped into it. They never slowed down and the crowd was really jumping. I had The Titanics record at home, so I knew their songs, but as is often the case, the live set was superior. My date was a bit out of her element, but I am grateful that she was cool enough to know about The Rathskeller, and to take me there. We were pen pals for years after. If you happen to be a fan of the band Upper Crust, they grew from the ashes of the Titanics.

THE CLUBS

JCE: Other clubs I wish I had been to would have to be The Channel, and maybe T.T. the Bear’s. I differ some from Ricki C. in this area - I love the little dark basement clubs.

RICKI C. Small clubs like The Rat in big cities confused me. The first time I visited The Rat in 1977 I couldn’t find the place, even though I knew the address and was standing right in front of it. After crisscrossing Kenmore Square a coupla times I went into Strawberries – the record store next door & above The Rat – and inquired WHERE the venue was. The ill-tempered clerk on duty at Strawberries pointed outside the window. “Where?” I repeated, looking UP for a club as big as my beloved hometown Agora, and the clerk pushed my head down and said, “DOWN THERE! Down that flight of stairs.”

The fact that The Rat – the premier Boston rock club for punk & new wave bands – was no bigger than the church basement coffeehouses where I had played halting solo acoustic gigs in the early 1970’s SEVERELY strained the credibility of rock critics who had been telling me in print that punk was gonna be THE NEXT BIG THING in rock & roll and wipe Styx, Journey & others of their corporate-rock ilk from the airwaves and concert stages. (It’s probably a good thing I never made it to CBGB’s back in the day.)

I bet this was a Saturday afternoon all-ages show The Rat used to present back in the day.

(The interactions between those kids to the left in the front row and the club bouncer never fail to crack me up.)

OTHER BANDS

JCE: Other bands that were high on my Boston list were Shake the Faith, Nervous Eaters, The Blackjacks, Classic Ruins, The Real Kids, The Lyres (saw them in VA though) and more than anyone else, the aforementioned Outlets (saw them in VA too). And definitely in the late 1970’s I would have loved to see The Cars in a Boston club.

Ricki C. : Oh man, SO MANY other great bands; Willie “Loco” Alexander’s Boom Boom Band, DMZ (later The Lyres), The Nervous Eaters, The Real Kids, Reddy Teddy, Thundertrain, La Peste (later The Peter Dayton Band), Mission Of Burma, The Atlantics, Salem 66, and The Del Fuegos, just off the top of my head.

JCE FAVES THE OUTLETS AT THE SAME ALL AGES SHOW AS THE NEIGHBORHOODS ABOVE, 9/14/1985

THE CITY

JCE: The city itself is pretty excellent, or at least it was then. My sister would be working, and I would just get on the ‘T’ and ride all over the city by myself going to every frickin’ record store I could possibly find. There were so many record stores, like Newbury Comics. I had a real blast finding all these local releases I never would have found at home. I didn’t feel unsafe or anything either, although I did once get stopped by a young woman, who was apparently a sex worker, who flashed me. There were some great radio stations too, willing to play all the local bands.

Ricki C. : Everything I always hated about New York City I loved about Boston. (Then again, I never read a book that scared me about Boston like Hubert Selby’s “Last Exit to Brooklyn” scared me about New York. I read that book when I was 17 in 1970 - on the “recommendation” of Lou Reed in an intervew when I first discovered and fell in love with The Velvet Underground. I read it again during the pandemic and it STILL scares me.) Boston never intimidated me like that. And I admit; I’m a smalltown Midwest boy at heart with an innate mistrust of Big City Life. (Cue The Atlantics here.) But just like JCE mentioned above, I never gave a second thought to riding the Boston subways anytime of the day or night. It just felt like my home away from Columbus.

PARTING WORDS…

Ricki C. : There are probably more blogs to be done on Boston rock & roll. For one; the excellent 70’s & 80’s fanzines - The Boston Groupie News (STILL active!), Frenzy, The Noise (which I got to write for in the mid-80’s when Boston bands would play in Columbus on the van-tour circuit). For another; the time I bought a Mission Of Burma record from Aimee Mann (then in The Young Snakes, later leader of ‘Til Tuesday) when she worked behind the counter at Newbury Comics, Boston’s premier “alternative” record store, which also published Boston Rock. And finishing up; a compare & contrast blog on seeing The Del Fuegos here in Columbus and at The Rat only a couple of months apart in 1984, to illustrate the effects the (grueling) van-tour grind of the mid-80’s had on nascent “alternative” bands.

JCE: Those two shows (The ‘Hoods at Bunratty’s and Titanics at the Rat) are the best of my live rock n roll experience in the city of Boston. I did also see another show at Bunratty’s - The Cave Dogs, who were a Boston power-pop band. All four bands I saw were Boston local bands. I love the city for a number of reasons, dating back to my childhood, but I won’t go down that rabbit hole. Let’s just sum it up by saying that I have been to see the Red Sox at Fenway, I’ve been to see The Neighborhoods in their hometown, and I’ve been to The Rat. I’m all good.

JCE, or John to his friends, became a fan of the Boston Red Sox when his hometown Senators left Washington, and a fan of Bean Town in general when his sister moved there to attend Boston University. But it was the music coming out of the city in the 1980’s that sealed the deal. He counts himself lucky to have gotten to spend just a little time immersed in that music scene at the height of what he considers to have been a golden era.

Ricki C. began his love affair with Boston rock & roll when his best friend Dave Blackburn intentionally flunked out of Ohio State (note; not THE Ohio State University), moved to Boston and saw The Modern Lovers play AT A HIGH SCHOOL. That love affair continued through Willie Alexander’s “Kerouac / “Mass. Ave” single (see note below), The Nervous Eaters’ “Loretta” 45, DMZ’s e.p. on Bomp Records (among many others) and culminated in The Neighborhoods.

He hasn’t regretted one single minute of it.

Thursday, December 22, 2022

Joe Strummer / August 21, 1952 - December 22, 2002

Today is December 22nd, 2022, exactly 20 years to the day of the death of Joe Strummer.

This isn't gonna to be a long blog, or in-depth, or me belaboring my usual points; just a few remembrances, some videos and a song I wrote in tribute to Joe the week after his passing.

Just some things to remember him by.

I was in New Jersey on December 22nd, 2002, to spend Christmas with my lovely wife Debbie and her family. I was in the car on the way to some grocery store when I heard on the car radio that, "Joe Strummer, lead singer & songwriter of The Clash was found dead today in England." When I got back to the house my friend Ed Hamell (aka Hamell On Trial) for whom I served as road manager called and confirmed the news.

We couldn't believe it. Strummer was on a roll right then; fronting The Mescaleroes, his best band since his heydays with The Clash. I remember saying to Ed, "How will his family ever celebrate Christmas again?" the genesis of my song below.

So 20 years have passed and sometimes I find myself thinking that God and the gods of rock & roll took Joe home when they did so he wouldn't live to see what became of his beloved rebel music. (Bruce Springsteen charging $4000 for a concert ticket? Please. Really?)

So right at this moment I'm picturing Joe on some astral plane with a lit spliff dangling out of a corner of his mouth, trading licks with Chuck Berry and Tom Petty.

Joe, I'm still listening to your songs.

(For me, the main acid test of punk-rock music is, "Does it make me wanna break stuff?" On that basis, when I listen to the music of The Clash, it ALWAYS makes me wanna break stuff.)

inspirational verse; "And I'm not here to mourn Joe Strummer. I'm here to try - however palely -

with this acoustic guitar to honor his memory, to try to be worthy of his legacy,

to beg for just a bit of his bravery, to try to escape the slavery of all that which is not righteous,

of all that which is not the rock & roll" - Ricki C. / January, 2003

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Music On Television, 2022-style; Alejandro Escovedo vs. Bleachers

This blog originally appeared (in a slightly different form) on Pencil Storm.com.

WARNING! As befits a blog entitled Growing Old With Rock & Roll, this post contains whiny-ass Baby Boomer musings from a 69-year old individual who saw Bob Dylan & the Hawks live in 1966; The Doors and The Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1968; The Who in 1969; and Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band in 1978 on the Darkness On The Edge Of Town tour, and can’t seem to let ANY of us ever forget it. We guess the fact that he also saw and loved The Strokes in 2004 and The White Stripes in 2007 should indicate that he still has an interest in rock & roll music in the 21st century, but it remains a sad fact that those shows were 15 years ago at this point in 2022.

I witnessed these two videos on T.V. the same night - Saturday, January 15, 2022: Alejandro Escovedo on the 7th Annual Austin City Limits Hall of Fame presentation and Bleachers as the musical guests on Saturday Night Live. And they coalesced a lot of my feelings about what passes for “rock & roll music” these days and the presentation of that music on television.

Escovedo’s tune - “Put You Down” (originally released on his With These Hands record in 1996) is - if you will excuse my French - a fuckin’ masterpiece of song & performance. As this song was unfolding in front of my eyes on my Samsung, I found myself thinking, “I haven’t seen a musical presentation this powerful in YEARS.” Part of that is due - of course - to the Covid-19 pandemic’s sabotage of live rock & roll for almost the entirety of the last two years. The larger part of it is due, though, to the fact that Alejandro Escovedo is a musical genius, and actually STILL CARES about the PRESENTATION of his songs.

It’s all there: Escovedo’s “I wish I was a soul singer from the 1970’s and you better RECOGNIZE” stage attire; how incredibly TIGHT the combination of a core band, string section, and trio of backing singers are; the whisper-to-a-scream DYNAMICS of the song, from the string intro to the raging steel guitar and 6-string solos (by Lloyd Maines - father of Dixie Chick Natalie Maines - and David Grissom of John Mellencamp’s band, respectively), culminating in Alejandro’s Pete Townshend-derived windmills on the guitar at the conclusion to the tune. And that’s saying NOTHING about the impassioned vocals and stunning lyrics to the song. I must repeat; a fuckin’ masterpiece.

Bleachers’ presentation on Saturday Night Live - on quite the other hand - kinda left me cold. Much of my exposure to new music these days (because I don’t subscribe to Pandora or Spotify and the only things I listen to on Sirius/XM in the car are Underground Garage, The Tom Petty station, and the Bruce Springsteen station) is from late-night T.V. shows; Colbert, Seth Myers, SNL. (I refuse to even consider watching either of the Jimmy’s; Fallon or Kimmel.)

At least Bleachers seemed to be playing LIVE on SNL. These days precious few of the musical acts I see on T.V. can even be bothered to PRETEND they know how to play an instrument or sing in tune or in time. Questionable lip-synching abounds. And drummers? Fuggetaboutit. Jim Johnson would be appalled at how poorly these indie-rock and/or rap drummers PRETEND to be hitting those skins. These youngsters couldn’t find the (pre-recorded) beat if it fucked ‘em in a closet.

Sadly, that’s the extent of my (limited) praise for Bleachers. It seems like the lead singer guy can’t decide whether he wants to Jonathan Richman of The Modern Lovers in 1971 (a white t-shirt & blujeans as a stage outfit, really?) or (God help us) Bruce Springsteen in some unidentifiable time period. Either way, he fails rather spectacularly miserably. And the band as a whole is just a mess, sartorially. It seems like the young lady playing bass is the only member who gave even ONE MOMENT’S THOUGHT about what she was going to wear on national television. I am SO TIRED of seeing these rag-tag indie/modern rock acts take the stage in whatever clothes they woke up in that morning. I’ve been through this trend at least TWICE in my rock & roll existence so far; from The Grateful Dead and all those San Francisco bands in 1968 to Nirvana and the grunge guys in the 1990’s. (I think whoever manufactures threadbare t-shirts & nondescript ill-fitting pants decides who gets signed these days.)

Musically, “How Dare You Want More” just ISN’T A VERY GOOD SONG. And when lead singer John Antonoff and that sax player started doing pseudo-vintage Springsteen/Clarence Clemons trade-offs I found that I really just needed to avert my eyes in order to not change the channel or put a bullet through my T.V. Elvis Presely-style. I get the feeling Bleachers might’ve watched the E Street Band No Nukes performance on their tour bus while they were all high on weed & ‘shrooms and said, “Hey, WE could pull this off.”

I think Bleachers might believe they’re tapping into some grand long-lost rock & roll tradition that they can update and present (or peddle?) to a younger generation, but I’m afraid they just might be confusing imitation with inspiration, and artifice with art.

In summation, ladies & gentlemen of the jury, on the one hand - with Escovedo - you have passion, power & purpose; on the other - with Bleachers - you have pomp & play-acting. Just watch the videos and make your own choices.

ps. In my 2000-2010 capacity as road manager for Hamell On Trial I was lucky enough to get to meet and have a long conversation with Alejandro Escovedo backstage at a festival show both acts were playing. If you like and have a spare few minutes, you can read about that encounter here…….

Growing Old With Rock & Roll / Alejandro Escovedo

Monday, July 12, 2021

The Sean Richter Chronicles, part two: Sean and Greg the Roadie Visit Callie in the Hospital

The Sean Richter Chronicles will appear occasionally in Growing Old With Rock & Roll. They are an adjunct to I Love Distortion (a rock & roll novel in 12 chapters) that played out in the blog throughout 2013. Part two is contemporaneous with I Love Distortion: future installments will involve prequels, sequels, and stories that weren’t portrayed in those 12 chapters.

This episode slots in right around late May or early June, 1978, before Nicole had called off her engagement to her fiancee and before my wife had tumbled on our little affair.

This is an (unfortunately) entirely true & accurate account of our hospital visit following that birth.

Looking back I can't imagine HOW that would have been an appropriate - or even sane - question before a visit to the hospital on the happy occasion of the birth of a new baby, but then again, MANY of Greg's & my interactions of that period hinged on smoking joints in cars. Plus, I have to admit at this juncture that Greg just had a way of making TOTALLY outlandish scenarios look, sound & seem COMPLETELY normal. (On one occasion Greg had me drive the getaway car while he scaled an eight-foot barbed-wire topped chain-link fence to steal a muffler from an junkyard. I hesitate to mention that, but I'm pretty certain the Statute of Limitations has run out on that heist. I had never to that point - and have never since - participated in that sort of petty/grand larceny, but Greg just made it seem SO COMPLETELY normal I found I couldn't say no.)

Anyway, my reply in the car that day? "Yeah, I guess we should," though even at this point - more than 40 years later - I have NO IDEA how an affirmative reply was the correct one. Plus it's important to remember that buying pot on the West Side of of Columbus, Ohio in 1978 was just a Chemical Crapshoot: one time you would get a substance that just gave you a Vague Headache and a Little Sort Of High Around the Edges; the next time it might just as well have been Angel Dust that would have you hallucinating for hours. You just never knew. To quote/paraphrase Mark Twain; "You pays your money and you takes your shot."

Greg broke that little tableau by walking over to the bed, saying, "Callie, congratulations," and KISSING HER ON THE MOUTH. With her boyfriend AND his parents standing RIGHT THERE. "Oh, my God," I thought to myself, "This is getting out of hand, I should put a stop to this," but I found myself rooted to the spot, incapable of action. Before anybody could do anything, Greg then announced, "Man, I'm so tired, I've just gotta lay down for a minute," and climbed into the hospital bed WITH Callie. The entire situation had now clearly gone Train 'Round the Bend, and I knew I had to do SOMETHING. Breaking my drug-induced paralysis, I walked over to the bed, took his arm, said, "Greg, come on," and tried to pull him up. He yanked his arm away and YELLED, "GET OFF me, Sean, I'll fuck you up."

Greg was a Big Guy. I'd seen him in fights. I'd personally witnessed him beat people senseless, and I realized that if I couldn't de-fuse this situation quickly there was going to be carnage in that hospital room and Greg & I were going to jail, possibly for a VERY long time. "Greg, Greg, Greg," I said, a little quieter each time, and stared in his eyes, "you have to get up off this bed and we have to get OUT of this room RIGHT NOW before Security comes, do you understand?"

Nicole showed up at our band rehearsal space later that night after she dropped off her fiance, and the first words out of her mouth before I could even begin to apologize were, "What THE FUCK is wrong with you?" She was as angry at me as I'd ever seen her and she was so frustrated she started slapping me on the head & shoulders. I got her wrists and said, "Nicole, I'm really sorry. We NEVER should have gotten high before we came up there."

I guessed things were going to be okay.

Sunday, February 14, 2021

In Memoriam: Sylvain Sylvain - 1951-2021

This blog originally appeared on the Pencil Storm blogsite, January 23rd, 2021.

Today - Valentine's Day, 2021 - would have been Sylvain's 70th birthday.

Sylvain Sylvain – lynchpin guitarist, songwriter, & fashion mobster of The New York Dolls – passed away on January 13th after a two and ½ year battle with cancer.

After I wrote that first sentence I followed it about five different ways: the biographical route (Sylvain – born Sylvain Mizrahi in Cairo, Egypt on Valentine’s Day 1951, fled Egypt with his family to escape anti-Semitism – jeez, I GUESS you would flee; if you think it was easy being Jewish in 1950’s Egypt you better think again, mofumbo); the musical route (trying to explain how Sylvain and Johnny Thunders worked like TWO guitarists – and I mean this in an entirely complimentary way – with only ONE brain & one set of hands); the historical route (bringing in Sylvain’s post-Dolls solo career, his time in the David Johansen Group, the 21st century resurgence of the Dolls, etc.).

But you could read any & all of those things anywhere on Google, so I decided to tell you how The New York Dolls saved my rock & roll existence and how badly music sucked in 1973, before the Dolls’ first album came out. Wikipedia tells me that first, self-titled album was released July 27th, 1973. I’m pretty sure I bought it the first week it came out, if not the first DAY – record stores didn’t always HAVE every new release the first day they came out back then – because I had been reading about the Dolls in Creem magazine, my Rock & Roll Bible of the time.

First off, the front cover sucked: the Dolls done up in full gay/transvestite mode (teased bouffant hair & platform shoes dominated). I’m sorry, but I was a born & bred West Side of Columbus, Ohio, boy – meaning blue-collar/lower-middle-working class – and that image was JUST NOT gonna fly with my rock & roll brethren. But OH MAN when I dropped the needle on the record that first day and “Personality Crisis” came roaring out of my cheap-ass Sears & Roebuck speakers – keeping every promise rock & roll had made to me throughout the 1950’s & 60’s – I was in fuckin’ HEAVEN. “Looking For A Kiss” came next, was even BETTER a song, and goddamn if there wasn’t one weak cut on the album (a critique I don’t throw around lightly).

I’ve written elsewhere that previous to the Dolls my favorite “rock & roll” band was Loggins & Messina, and how that was the saddest sentence I’ve ever written, and that is exactly & entirely true. How I could have put the purveyors of atrocities like “Vahevala” and “Your Mama Don't Dance” in the same musical UNIVERSE as the Dolls remains a mystery to me to this day. Except it’s NOT a mystery, it was just the times. In the early 70’s all of my music-loving friends – who had cut our rock & roll teeth on the likes of The Who, The Yardbirds, and The MC5 – were now hippies (or THOUGHT we were hippies, we pretty much all had jobs). And we now all listened to Crosby, Stills & Nash, The Eagles and all that country-rock crap, or singer/songwriter ephemera like Batdorf & Rodney or (God help me) Pearls Before Swine.

Anyway, a picture – or in this case, to be more exact, TWO pictures – is worth a thousand words, so here is Ricki C. (five years before “Ricki C.” was actually invented) before and after The New York Dolls’ first record. If I’ve said it once since 1973, I’ve said it dozens of times: If it wasn’t for The New York Dolls, today in 2021 I would have a gray ponytail halfway down my back and still be listening to Grateful Dead bootlegs on my stereo.

A PRETTY GOOD SEVEN-DAY RUN OF ROCK & ROLL SHOWS IN COLUMBUS; MAY, 1974

Let’s close with a story: The New York Dolls played my home town on Sunday evening May 19th, 1974; only 9 days after their second album – Too Much Too Soon – was released, so I’m not sure I even had it yet. Pat & I drove to Veteran’s Memorial – a 3000-seat venue on the west edge of downtown Columbus where I had previously witnessed The Turtles, Paul Revere & the Raiders, Bob Dylan’s first electric tour with The Band, The Doors, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Who, and many others thanks to my sainted Italian father, who worked a second job there in the ticket office – for the show that Sunday night, and the parking lot was essentially empty.

“OHHHH MAN, the show must be cancelled,” I whined to Pat as we got out of her orange Chevy Vega. (I didn’t have a driver’s license or a car until I was 28 years old.) We walked up the big stone steps to Vet’s to get our refund – rock & roll shows got cancelled at the drop of a hat back in those pre-Ticketmaster/Live Nation days – and ran into Chet, one of my dad’s old buddies, working the door. “Hey Chet, is the show cancelled?” I asked. “No, it’s not cancelled,” he said. “Then why are there no cars in the parking lot?” I continued. “Because there are no people in the venue,” Chet replied nonchalantly, flipping away a cigarette.

Damned if he wasn’t exactly accurate. I had bought front-row balcony seats for the show as was my custom back then, when I would put a little Panasonic cassette recorder on the lip of the balcony to tape the shows without any crowd noise and to get GREAT sound coming right off the stage. When we got to our seats, there were only two other people in the entire balcony, and that couple moved downstairs during the opening set by Isis – a long-forgotten all-female horn-driven funk/rock band from NYC that the Dolls had brought on tour with them.

While the houselights were up in the break between Isis and the Dolls I counted the “crowd.” There were 151 people – counting Pat & I in our own private balcony – in an auditorium that seated 3172 (an exact figure I knew from all the years my dad had worked there). The first ten rows of Vet’s weren’t even full. I was crushed. I’m not ashamed to admit that I very nearly cried. I was ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that The New York Dolls were going to be “The Next Big Thing” and render the likes of The Rolling Stones quaint & redundant. Creem magazine HAD TOLD ME THAT. The media wouldn’t LIE TO ME, would they?

I further believed that Elliott Murphy – who had also debuted in 1973 with the masterful Aquashow album – was going to be the New Bob Dylan and that Mott The Hoople – who I had liked since 1969 but LOVED since “All The Young Dudes” in ’72 – were gonna be the Stones AND Dylan rolled into one. Rock & roll was gonna roll itself over in 1974 and rejuvenate itself just like The Beatles and the British Invasion had done in 1964.

But I was wrong. Within two years Lee Abrams and Classic Rock Radio had ossified rock & roll into truly endless re-plays of the Allman Brothers, Pink Floyd and Bachman Turner Overdrive that PERSIST TO THIS DAY. And Corporate Rock – your Styx’s, your Journey’s, your Kansas’ (or is it Kansai?), your Boston’s, your Foreigner’s – were poured into the arenas of the Midwest & elsewhere to suck up all those stoned-out Teenage Wasteland dollars. (Thank God for Aerosmith: my salvation of one-word-name 70’s hard-rock bands.)

Does any of this mean I love Sylvain Sylvain and that first New York Dolls record one iota less, 47 years later? Does any of this mean I didn’t love Sylvain’s solo ventures with The Criminals following the original Dolls’ break-up? Does any of this mean I wasn’t thrilled when Sylvain turned up in David Johansen’s first solo band in 1978? Does any of this mean the second incarnation of The New York Dolls featuring Johansen and Sylvain from 2004-2011 and the three great albums they recorded are ever far from my CD player? Does any of this mean I’m not gonna miss Sylvain Sylvain and his heart, soul, guitar, piano & songs until I join him, Johnny, Arthur & Jerry? Not on your life. – Ricki C. / January 20th, 2021

ps. By the way; As the Last Doll Standing, I wish David Johansen good health & a long life in our Rock & Roll Universe.

FEAST YOUR EYES ON THESE, LADIES & GENTLEMEN……

“Teenage News” a David Johansen/Sylvain Sylvain co-write, intended as the first single from the never-recorded THIRD New York Dolls album.

The David Johansen Group, featuring Sylvain Sylvain, in all their rock & roll glory. I know the tag says 1980, but I say this was from 1978.

The 21st Century New York Dolls, rhyming “anthropomorphize ya” with “perversely polymorphosize ya.” Let’s see Mumford & Sons try that.

(My buddy Kyle & I saw this incarnation of the Dolls in 2006 at The Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland, and they were KILLER!)