Holland's Comet

Ignorance Is Bliss

2012-02-11T21:29:00.002-06:00

Hello, dear friends. Didn't mean to abandon y'all, and I apologize for not updating the blog for over two months, but honestly, I haven't really had anything new to say or felt compelled enough to do any creative writing recently. I've been keeping myself busy with other projects at home and have also been making a concerted effort to spend a little less time in front of the computer and get my ass out of said house a little more often and rejoin the human race a bit, thus the dearth of activity here. I was actually even debating whether or not to do this post, but I'm kinda tired of looking at Barney and the gang from the Ol' 1-2 at the top of the blog, so here we are...

I received an anonymous comment the other day regarding the blog entry I posted back in October on actor Demond Wilson's tell-all book about his "Sanford & Son" years in which I took him to task not so much for what he wrote, but the way in which he wrote it (i.e. dreadful grammar and spelling, etc.). The person who wrote the comment didn't bother to sign his/her/its name to it, and I generally make it my policy to NOT publish negative comments on my blog unless there's a name attached to them, and I debated whether or not to glorify this one with an answer, but I just can't let this go. First off, here is the entire comment, completely unaltered by me:

"You went on and on here complaining about how bad Wilsons book is in grammer and style. However, you should know that how well a book is written,edited or presented in binder, look and feel, has a great deal to do with the education level of the one reading it. There are people whos educational level would find mistakes in some of the finest literature ever created. You noticed many of Demonds mistakes in his book, yet there are plenty of mistakes that you have made in this article or blog that you have done in critique of the book. Perfect grammer and language isn't as important as the message that one is trying to get out. Demond still gave us the info, regardless of how poorly it is writen, just as you have given us the book review, regardless to how imperfect your review is. I still learned about the content of Demonds book from your article although there are those who could point out plenty of mistakes in your writting. Lesson? Let's pay attention to the gift that someone gives the world and not so much as the crummy package that they wrapped it in. I do not want to say It's the thought that counts because it is so cliche, but take it for what it's worth. I find info on the internet all the time that I really need and it always has grammer mistakes, but I still get the info I need and move on. The days of speaking the perfect sentence verbally and in print are over with. It's a new world! I will not speel check what I just wrote to you. Why? Because I just wanted to tell you this, I care not if it reads like a perfect novel."

Wow. So bascially, what you're saying is it's perfectly okey-dokey to accept mediocrity and not strive to do better in life, right? That's a pretty ignorant attitude—is this what they taught you in the ghetto school you attended? Or are you a graudate of the University of Hee-Haw? Nobody's perfect, and any book is bound to have some errors in it (grammatical, factual, whatever), but you seem to think it's okay to just publish any old piece of shit and not make the effort to put out the best possible product. It's this kind of attitude that creates blunders like the faulty brakes in Toyotas. Bad analogy, maybe, but you get my point? Nah, didn't think so...

Okay, maybe I nit-picked a bit much on Wilson in my blog entry, but since I paid good money for his book, I felt that he was fair game for criticism. And he's a grown man—I think he can take it. If I were publishing a book for the masses to read and it had my name on the cover, I'd want to put out something I could be proud of, not something half-assed and sloppy like he did. By the way, are you aware that on the cover of another of Demond Wilson's publshed books, his name is listed as "Desmond Wilson"? Don't tell me you wouldn't be pissed if your name was misspelled on something you worked hard to create. If so, you're a fucking idiot.

And oh what a coward you are to take pot shots at my blog and not have the balls to sign your fucking name to your comments. You're like all these other dickheads out there on the Internet who hide behind their computers and the anonymity thereof who don't take responsibility for their words. As I've stated many times here, I WELCOME any dissenting opinions or REASONABLE challenges to what I write, but the least you can do is identify yourself if you're going to post negative comments on my blog. At least in my critique of Wilson, I back up my words with my name. Did you even bother to notice that I made some positive comments about Demond's book at all? Of course not, you're too busy being all pious and pompous with your bullshit platitudes about just being thankful for the information.

Your grammar is even more atrocious than Wilson's was. If you don't like what (or how) I write, then don't read my blog—it's obviously way too advanced for a simple-minded moron like yourself anyway. By the way, I am my own worst critic when it comes to what I write on my blog. I spend way more time than I should going back over and correcting typos and grammatical errors, but you know why? Because I actually GIVE A DAMN what the my blog looks like and how it reads. Would you care to share with me some of these alleged mistakes you've found in my writing? I'd love to hear them. Come on, Big Man...

A Salute To The Ol' One-Two

2011-12-03T20:31:00.006-06:00

I recently completed my viewing trek through all eight seasons of “Barney Miller” on DVD. I got tired of waiting around for TV Land and/or Nick At Nite to 86 their incessant “Roseanne” and “Andy Griffith Show” reruns in favor of New York’s finest, so I went ahead and bought the whole damn series on DVD for a C-note, and it was well worth it. Although critically acclaimed, BM still remains one of the more underrated sitcoms of all-time, I think because too many viewers either don’t get (or aren’t patient enough to appreciate) the show’s subtle humor. There’s no way in hell this show would ever last if it aired today—it’s too sophisticated for our current short-attention-span generation in dumbed-down America.

“Barney” debuted on ABC in early 1975 as a midseason replacement and ran until the spring of ’82, when the producers wisely decided to end the show before it had a chance to jump the proverbial shark, thus it remained consistent throughout its run. Actor Hal Linden brilliantly played the title character, the level-headed yet beleaguered Captain Miller, the kind of guy I think we’d all like to work for, if given the chance. Miller ran New York’s fictional 12th Precinct in Lower Manhattan, and his subordinates had almost as many quirks and personal issues as the zany perps they arrested on a daily basis, but they somehow persevered and worked as a team as they battled crime, police department bureaucracy and the decaying building they worked in.

While the show was a bit predictable and even repetitive at times, what really made it work were the characters. Unlike other sitcoms of its era, “Barney Miller” never relied on silly catchphrases and gags like other sitcoms (“Dy-no-mite!”, “Whatchu talkin’ ‘bout, Willis?” and Jack Tripper-type pratfalls, et al), and it functioned just fine with its outstanding ensemble cast. In addition to Linden, actors Ron Glass and Max Gail made the entire trip through eight seasons as Detectives Ron Harris and Stan “Wojo” Wojciehowicz, respectively. For the first two seasons, Gregory Sierra played Chano Armenguale (following his recurring stint as Julio on “Sanford & Son”), but he never seemed to like to stay in one place very long. Sierra later played a (serious) cop again in the first season of “Miami Vice” in 1985, but left after just a few episodes. Abe Vigoda, previously known as caporegime Salvatore Tessio in The Godfather, was the inimitable Philip K. Fish for seasons One through Three before “retiring” to his own spinoff, the short-lived “Fish” in 1977-78 (see below). Veteran actor Jack Soo played the slightly smart-assed Nick Yemana, who was more preoccupied with perusing his racing forms than doing his job. Soo passed away midway through the fifth season in January, 1979 after a bout with cancer. Vigoda and Soo were replaced in later seasons, for all intents and purposes, by the humorously-annoying (if there is such a thing) Sgt. Arthur Dietrich, played by Steve Landesberg (who passed away last year), and ever-anal and insecure Officer Carl “Little” Levitt, played by Ron Carey (who passed away in 2007).

As good as “Barney Miller” was, I do have a few criticisms of it, the chief one being the overuse of the same stable of actors to portray multiple roles throughout the show’s run. I’m not talking about recurring characters like liquor store owner Mr. Kotterman or Marty Morrison and Darryl Driscoll (the humorous gay couple), but rather actors like Phil Leeds, Howard Platt (best known as Hoppy on “Sanford & Son”) and Florence Halop appearing on BM as many as six or seven times, each time playing a different perp or victim, thus diminishing the show’s credibility a bit. Even Landesberg and Carey appeared on the show as crooks in early episodes before eventually joining the cast as Dietrch and Levitt. Oh, and another thing—couldn’t they find more than the same ten damn laugh tracks to use on this show?!? Oy! Another thing I found quirky was the episode in which Dietrich dressed in drag while pulling “mugging detail” (as all the other detectives had done in the past) and Barney decreed that Arthur wasn’t convincing enough as a woman—as if Fish, Wojo and Chano were?!? Only Harris managed to halfway pull it off in drag (after reluctantly shaving off his mustache).

To their credit, the producers dropped characters that weren’t working out, like future “Alice” star Linda Lavin’s annoying loud-mouthed over-the-top Lt. Wentworth and frizzy-haired trouble maker Lt. Eric Dorsey. It’s a shame they didn’t do the same with the ever-irritating Inspector Luger. I’m sure the late James Gregory was a good guy, but heavens to Betsy, didn’t you just want to hit Luger over the head with a rubber hose? He almost made characters like Urkel from “Family Matters” and Screech from “Saved By The Bell” seem halfway tolerable. One recurring character I could’ve also done without was Lt. Scanlon, the Internal Affairs officer who was always out to bring down Barney and his squad over the tiniest of transgressions. To me, Scanlon was little more than the “Barney Miller” equivalent to “M*A*S*H”’s Col. Flagg—the inept, over-zealous bully—and after about three episodes, both became inane caricatures that I couldn’t take seriously. The first season of “Barney Miller” and part of the second also dealt somewhat with Barney’s family life with his naggy, overly-paranoid sourpuss wife (played by Barbara Barrie) and their two children, but that proved to be superfluous and weak, so Barrie only made intermittent appearances as Elizabeth Miller after that when the show’s focus shifted exclusively to the “Ol’ One-Two”. In fact, apart from very rare occasions after that second season, “Barney Miller” was shot almost exclusively in the Squad Room set or in Barney’s office, and only once did we even get to see the interior of the 12th’s infamous Men’s Room (aka Fish’s branch office).

Admittedly, the show exercised a bit of artistic license and was pretty unrealistic and even a bit contrived at times. First off, detectives investigate crimes, they don’t run out and nab the petty thieves, weirdos and scalawags (much less pull mugging detail) like the guys at the 12th did—that’s the domain of the uniformed patrolmen. And police work sure ain’t no 9-to-5 gig like it was portrayed on “Barney Miller”—and how come no one ever came in to relieve Barney, Wojo and Harris when their shift was over? They might have gotten away with that schedule in Mayberry, but not in lower Manhattan! And a jail cell right there in the office area? Not likely. One facet I always liked, though, was the 12th’s use of those old Royal manual typewriters—just like the ones my old man and I used back in the ‘70s. I still have them, too…

“Barney Miller” also managed to tackle some serious subject matter from time to time without becoming too heavy-handed or preachy. Wojo, a former U.S. Marine who served in Vietnam, became an activist when he learned about veterans like himself being affected by Agent Orange. Racial profiling was dealt with when Harris was shot at by fellow officers who thought he was the miscreant simply because he was black. The show presaged the “Don’t ask/Don’t tell” era by about 20 years with the story arc involving a closeted gay cop who was outed (Sgt. Zitelli) and Dietrich became a bit of a prophet when he asked a perp who aspired to ride on the Space Shuttle, “Aren’t you worried about the tiles?”—a good five years before the Challenger disaster.

My favorite “Barney Miller” character was erstwhile author Det. Sgt. Ronald Nathan Harris, played splendidly by Ron Glass. He always had the best lines and comebacks throughout the show’s run. When a vacationing purse-snatching victim lamented buying into a TV ad featuring Broadway dancers extolling the virtues of visiting Gotham City without mentioning all the crime and thuggery therein, Harris responded, “Well, they only have a minute!” Following one of Dietrich’s typical lengthy Cliff Claven-esque historical spiels, one of the perps agreed with him, to which Harris irritably replied, “Oh, don’t encourage him!” In an early episode during a moment of personal frustration, Harris uttered, “I just wanna BE somebody!”, a line which also gave Blackie Lawless of W.A.S.P. the inspiration to write their classic song “I Wanna Be Somebody”. I think my favorite Harris exchange was the following:

BARNEY (to Wojo): “Harris is captain of Security at the Henmon Arms.”
WOJO: “Well, whoopity-doopity-doo!”
HARRIS: “You know, I expected you to say something like that, however the number of syllables DID surprise me.”

I often find myself using “whoopity-doopity-doo” nowadays in mock response to things, thanks to Wojo, who eventually overcame his vocal doofy-ness and gained Harris’ approval in the final scene in the final episode when Wojo gave a fairly eloquent “farewell” speech, after which Harris said, “God, he is SO much improved!”

The DVD set also contains some nice Bonus Features, including recent recollections from the cast members, including Abe Vigoda, who at age 90 is still as spry and lucid as ever. Oddly enough, Max Gail, at age 68, looks almost as old now as Fish did back in the day, but Hal Linden seemingly hasn’t aged much at all in the last 30 years—I hope I look half as good when I’m 80 as he does. Also included is the original pilot episode for the show, called “The Life And Times Of Captain Barney Miller”, which aired in the summer of ’74 on ABC, and was a bit different in format, although the squad room was virtually identical. Abby Dalton played Barney’s wife, and Vigoda was the only other cast member retained for the series when it was re-titled just plain “Barney Miller”. The pilot was later recycled as the episode “Ramon” in Season 1 and shot with Sierra, Gail and Glass replacing the actors from the original. And as if eight seasons and 23 discs weren’t enough content, they even threw in two discs’ worth of the “Fish” spinoff, where our favorite curmudgeon cop spends his retirement running a rooming house for wayward kids with his Edith Bunker clone wife, Berniece. Riiiiiight. As funny as BM was, “Fish” was as dull as a dead mackerel—dumb premise, lame writing and downright boring show. The Fish character was a lot like Grady on “Sanford & Son”—best taken in small doses and not spun off into his own series. The only thing truly noteworthy about “Fish” was that it featured a pre-Willis Jackson Todd Bridges.

And in a classy final touch, “Barney Miller” signed off in 1982 with the graphic, “Goodbye and thank you from all of us at the Ol’ One-Two” before fading to black. Unlike “M*A*S*H” and “Seinfeld”, they got this finale right…

Regrets, He's Had A Few...

2011-11-19T21:20:00.003-06:00

Not surprisingly, it didn’t take me long to read Ace Frehley’s new memoir, No Regrets. As expected, it was an entertaining read, given that Planet Jendell’s most famous citizen is my favorite member of Kiss. Gene Simmons used to be my favorite, but his continued douche-y-ness over the years has given me cause to drop him in the rankings, just ahead of Vinnie Vincent. And as much as I enjoyed Ace’s book, I do have to question his credibility at times here—if you have to enlist the help of other people to recall parts of your own life because you were too fucked up to remember it yourself, then how accurate can your stories be? The book’s title annoys me slightly, too—it drives me nuts whenever someone claims they have no regrets or that they wouldn’t change anything that happened in their life, if given the chance. Bullshit! We all have things in our pasts that we’d give anything to revise or just plain eliminate. I know I do, anyway.

Spoiler alert: I’ll be quoting several passages in the book verbatim here, so if you plan to read it yourself, you might want to consider whether to pass or play. And now my thoughts, in no particular order…

--Ace played in numerous local NY bands in the late ‘60s and early ’70s before joining Kiss, and he mentioned that some of them covered songs by Cream, Jimi Hendrix, The Who and even my boys Paul Revere & The Raiders. Man, I’d love to have heard Ace ripping up on the likes of “The Great Airplane Strike”, “Hungry” and “Steppin’ Out.”

--I was unaware that Mr. Frehley was friends with the late John Belushi in the early ‘80s. Not shockingly, they were excitable boys who partied hardy, according to Ace.

--It’s real easy to forget that Ace’s given name is Paul. He got his legendary nickname during his teen years because of his natural ability to score with the ladies, thus making him an “ace”. He still went by Paul even by the time he auditioned for Kiss, but since “Paul” was already spoken-for by Mr. Stanley, Frehley made Ace his professional name. His close friends, family and significant others all call him Paul, though, even today. That would be weird to me to be known by two different names, but I could live with it, I suppose.

--I was a bit surprised at some of the stuff Ace didn’t talk about in the book. He kept all his discussions about his relationship with drummer Peter Criss to a minimum throughout, even though Pete was more or less his drinking buddy/confidant within the band. Maybe he decided to let the Catman tell his own story in that regard if and when he comes forth with his own Kiss memoir (and I hope he does). Ace barely mentioned the late Eric Carr, either. Then again, they didn’t work together all that long (two years and change, basically), but I seem to remember that Ace always looked upon Little Caeser fondly. I was somewhat disappointed that Frehley didn’t at least refer to Eric’s untimely passing (20 years ago next week). Nor did Ace discuss working with Eric Singer after Criss left Kiss in 2001. He also didn’t spend much time talking about his solo career during the Frehley’s Comet era in the ‘80s or discussing his working partnership with Tod Howarth, who served a similar capacity to that which Derek St. Holmes did for Ted Nugent in the ‘70s, i.e., the good-looking singer/rhythm guitarist opposite the guitar god, so to speak.

--On Kiss’ infamous 1979 appearance on Tom Snyder’s “Tomorrow” show Ace writes: "You’re supposed to be some sort of spaceman, right?" Tom asked me at one point, while gesturing to my costume. "No, actually, I’m a plumber!" Snyder laughed from the gut, and fired right back, "Oh, well I’ve got a piece of pipe backstage I’d like to have you work on." A hanging curveball if I ever saw one! Regardless, I completed the R-rated joke with the delivery of a major-league all-star. "Tell me about it!’"

If you watch the video you can actually see me turning to Gene and putting my hands up at one point and quietly saying ‘What?’ like a child who’s misbehaving at a family function and wants his dad to loosen up and join in the fun. Gene was sometimes incapable of that, even in a setting that clearly called for some spontaneity and horsing around. It was all so ridiculous. How seriously can you take yourself when you’re sitting there in a superhero costume and full face makeup? Gene missed the whole thing. If he would have allowed himself to be just a little more lighthearted about everything and stopped fuckin’ thinking about money all the time, things might have turned out differently. I love the guy, but he never, ever got it.

Tom picked up on Gene’s negativity, and you could tell he wasn’t digging it. At one point Gene tried to make a joke about selling Tom some swampland in New Jersey, and Snyder completely ignored him and turned his attention back to me. It was like Gene didn’t exist.

Simmons himself has even admitted that he should’ve taken Ace’s advice and loosened up some. Apart from his 1978 solo album, the Snyder show was Frehley’s finest hour as a member of Kiss.

--The one story in Frehley’s book that really stuck with me (and I totally believe it) involves Gene Simmons’ invitation to Ace to appear on his “Family Jewels” show for the infamous celebrity roast episode in 2007. According to Space Ace: I listened to the (voice mail) message a few times, and with each playback, I became more convinced that I could sense a slight tone of desperation in his voice. Most of the roasts I recalled consisted of people who were friends or co-workers of the person being ‘honored’. That’s when it suddenly hit me: Gene doesn’t have any friends! Never did—as far back as I can remember. And everyone who has ever worked with Gene in the past has either been fired or quit. The only person who’s remained with him over the years is Paul Stanley.

And even the Starchild refused to participate in this debacle. To his credit, Paul keeps to himself when he’s not doing the Kiss thing, and doesn’t feel the need to prostitute his private/personal life around for public consumption like Gene does—it amazes me how these two function together, given what polar opposites they are, personality-wise. Anyway, Peter Criss was also invited to be a roaster, but the Catman was busy cleaning his litter box that weekend and politely declined, as did Ace. This explains Gene’s flotilla of newfound “friends” on the dais—hacks like Carrot Top, Paul Rodriguez, Andrew Dice Clay, Eddie Griffin and Danny Bonaduce—getting paid to roast him. After hearing how putridly the show turned out, Ace said: For a moment, I almost felt bad for Gene. I mean, really. How embarrassing. Btw, given the way Gene has repeatedly criticized Criss’ and Frehley’s well-documented substance abuse issues over the years, then why in blue blazes would he even consider being friends with a total fuck-up/fuckwad/desperate-to-remain-in-the-limelight whore like Bonaduce? Ol’ Dante’s drug/alcohol problem seems far worse than any of Ace and Peter’s past transgressions. But, I digress…

--Frehley’s stories about rooming with Gene Simmons during Kiss’s early touring days are pretty intriguing (assuming they’re true, that is)…

“I can’t say for sure because I don’t know a lot about his sexual history prior to KISS, but I do know that once we got out on the road, Gene reacted like a starving man at a smorgasbord. I believe Gene is a sex addict, in much the same way that I’m an alcoholic. We all have our issues and vices, and I saw Gene’s behavior affect him and the band in a negative way. Maybe not to the extent that my drinking impacted the band, but certainly there were consequences…See, Gene in those days seemed to live in a state of perpetual infestation. He would fuck almost anything (and I think he’s admitted as much). Short, tall; plump, svelte; attractive…merely tolerable. We all opened our beds to companionship on a regular basis, but somehow Gene was the one who would end up with bugs in his bush.

Gene has had a lot of unkind things to say about me over the years. Some of the criticism is legitimate. In sobriety you embrace accountability, and I can’t deny that my drinking and drug use eventually became highly disruptive and problematic. But some of the personal jabs have been harder to take, partly because we were all friends at one time, and we did do something remarkable, but also because Gene wasn’t exactly the easiest guy to get along with, either. Fastidious, if not downright anal in his professional life, Gene was an utter mess in his personal life. I guess having a love for money doesn’t have anything to do with cleanliness. I should know—for the first several tours Gene and I were roommates. Strange, considering we had so little in common…As I quickly discovered, Gene was an epic slob.

What can I tell you? Gene is eccentric. Always has been. He had a lot of idiosyncrasies. That’s okay. To each his own. I just thought it was a little strange.

First off, I’m impressed in this passage how Ace owns up to being a fuck-up back in the day (as he does throughout the book), and secondly, I think I have a much clearer picture of what Gene Simmons is really like from Ace’s book than what I got from Simmons’ own autobiography/hatchet job, Kiss And Make-Up, and it’s not too hard to figure out why Mr. Demon alienates so many people. Gene is such a control freak, it’s no wonder he pisses and moans about the things Ace and Peter did, simply because they didn’t do things HIS way. He has a very off-putting demeanor (even Paul Stanley thought he was a total dick when they first met), thus Gene’s basically been a loner all his life and doesn’t seem to have anyone you could call a longtime close friend. Kinda sad when you think about it—my old man was like that too. I’m a loner too, but at least I do have a few close friends.

--Just as an aside, why is it in every book I ever read that mentions Kiss, the band’s name is always KISS in all caps? True, this is how the iconic Kiss logo (designed by Ace) appears, but you don’t see CREAM or LOVERBOY referred to in print this way, do ya? In spite of what all the Holy Rollers will tell you that KISS is an acronym for Knights In Satanic Service, I personally think the name should be ‘capital K, little i, little s, little s’ in print. Ace’s original logo, by the way, had a diamond above it to dot the ‘I’ and a set of lips below it, but he later refined it to what we know and love today. The slashed s’s that are reminiscent of those made famous by Hitler in WWII and the fact that Ace is of German descent? Just a coincidence—Ace Frehley is not a Nazi, folks. Hell, two of his bandmates were Jewish…

--In one chapter Ace writes: So you might wonder now, "How does Ace feel about Kiss today?" I think they’re just a bunch of dirty rotten whores. Yet in another he says: Despite the many ups and downs I had with Kiss over the years, I couldn’t help but remember all the fun we shared in our formative years. We achieved greatness in the music industry and had several groundbreaking achievements well into the new millennium. To this day I still consider them my brothers in Rock ‘N’ Roll and love them. Okay, so which is it, Ace? In his appearance on the “Today Show” week before last, Ace talked about recently having lunch with Gene Simmons and how everything was cordial, blah blah blah. I don’t see how this can possibly be true after all these years of verbal media pissing matches between them. There’s certainly no way I’d be on friendly terms with Simmons if I were Ace—we’d have been at the “fuck you/I hope your dog dies” stage years ago. Then again, I’m not a very forgiving person in those terms, so take that for what it’s worth.

All in all, No Regrets is a fun read, and the pre-Kiss photos Ace enclosed are fun to look at. Not sure I believe everything he wrote, but I’m glad he finally got to fire back at Gene (and Paul, to a lesser extent), given the way they’ve talked out of their asses about Ace all these years.

Next book on the docket: Iron Man: My Journey Through Heaven And Hell by Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi.

Travelblog: The Great Nor'easter—Episode 8

2011-11-12T18:14:00.005-06:00

BY THE TIME I GOT TO WOODSTOCK...
...I was 2/3 of the way through my trip. I deftly avoided the brown acid and navigated my way through downstate New York to the hamlet known as Bethel, home of the iconic Woodstock Music & Arts Festival in August, 1969. I was originally planning to visit Bethel before New York City, but road closures caused by the flooding in the area put the kibosh on that plan, so I swung up that way after hitting Gotham instead. The concert took place in the field beyond the fence here, which was (and still is) a perfect natural bowl and the stage was situated near the dark strip in the grass in the upper part of this photo. Also on the site is the Museum At Bethel Woods, which of course chronicles the entire event and includes an art gallery and a small outdoor concert pavilion (that you actually have to pay to get into, unlike the festival). The museum is a pefect indocrination for those who are uninitiated on Woodstock lore, but for me it was pretty much all review, since I'm so knowledgeable about the subject. After seeing the area firsthand, it's no wonder this thing morphed into the world's largest clusterfuck of people ever, given the lack of decent roads in and out of Bethel.

YO, ROCKO—DONE ANY MAINTENANCE, LATELY?
You are looking at 1818 Tusculum Street in north Philadelphia, fictional former home of fictional pugilist Rocky Balboa. The row of apartments appeared way smaller to me in person than in the Rocky flicks until I realized that the two units at the far end of the block (below the el train tracks just to the left of the telephone pole) have since been torn down. The front door still has the same hand-painted '1818' on display, and it appears Rocky has moved up in the world, judging by the satellite dish on the side there.

YO, MICK—HOW YOU DOIN'?
Just a few blocks down the way by the el train is Mighty Mick's gymnasium, which is hardly mighty anymore. Pretty obvious by the dimensions here that there ain't no gym on the top floor. The pet shop where Adrian worked right across the street really was a pet shop back in the day, but it's long-since closed too. Not far from Rocky's apartment is Adrian and Paulie's house, but I didn't get a photo of it because I was a tad intimidated by the heathens roaming the streets in the neighborhood. To wit, we ain't talkin' Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids! Never once did I feel unsafe anywhere in New York City (even in Harlem), but I high-tailed my big honkin' Mercury Grand Marquis (with Missouri plates that screamed out, "TOURIST!") outta north Philadelphia before they could bring my hat to the hospital. This area looked rough 35 years ago in the first Rocky film and it's infinitely worse now. I'd rank north Philly right down there with East St. Louis and Gary, Indiana in the Shithole Sweepstakes.

THE EAGLES' NEST
This would be the Philadelphia Eagles locker room, which I got to visit during my tour of Lincoln Financial Field. Damn thing is so gi-normous that my entire house could fit easily inside it, top-to-bottom and side-to-side. I honestly think it covers multiple ZIP codes. This isn't even the whole thing--there was more of it behind me when I took this photo too. Their bloody mascot even has his own locker room! The stadium itself is pretty nice, but like all the new NFL venues these days, it has too much of a Country Club aura about it.

GOT ANY JOB APPLICATIONS?
Here's where I'd love to work someday—NFL Films headquarters in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, across the river from Philly. My "dream job" would be film librarian/ archivist—I could sit and watch those old highlight reels from the '60s and early '70s until the cows come home. I'd even watch them with the bloody cows...

"IT'S OUTTA HERE..."
They just love their statues in and around the Philly ballparks. They've immortalized Hall of Fame players like Mike Schmidt, Steve Carlton, Connie Mack and Richie Ashburn in bronze, as well as beloved play-by-play man Harry Kalas, who you'll find on the lower level of Citizens Bank Park in the left field corner plaza. CBP is everything it's cracked up to be—excellent ballpark all the way around, relatively inexpensive beer (for a Major League stadium, anyway) and killer eats at Luzinski's BBQ in center field—best ribs I've ever had east of the Mississippi. Between Philly and Pittsburgh, the state of Pennsylvania has two of the finest parks in beisbol.

"WE'RE GOING TO THE END OF THE LINE..."
For all my K.C. friends out there, this is what the eastern terminus of I-70 looks like, on the west side of Baltimore. Rather unique, too—I've never seen the end of an Interstate where you can simply make a U-turn and head back the other way! There's also some sort of park-and-ride commuter lot in between the highway.

PLAY BALL...AGAIN!
This is the site of Memorial Stadium on Baltimore's north side, former home of the Orioles and Colts where Unitas, Berry, Ameche, Weaver, Palmer and the Robinsons once roamed. In the case of the Colts, the place was affectionately known as "the World's Largest Outdoor Insane Asylum". I always thought Woodstock was the WLOIA, but I digress. The footprint of the stadium has been preserved, and is now flanked by newly-built townhouses. The famed old all-dirt playing surface has been replaced by fake flubber turf (which was being used by some goomer practicing that faggot college activity lacrosse while I was there), and those trees off in the distance are the same ones that were always visible beyond centerfield when the stadium stood. I love it when they can pay tribute to old ballparks like this—nicely done, Balty-More!

Not pictured, but well worth the visit if you're in Baltimore is the Sports Legends museum adjacent to Oriole Park @ Camden Yards. Excellent displays on the Orioles and Colts (including the back of a Mayflower moving van in the case of the latter), as well as all the local colleges and even a tribute to indoor soccer's Baltimore Blast. I didn't get a chance to visit the nearby Babe Ruth museum, but I've heard it's outstanding as well.

YOU CAN'T SEE THE STADIUM FOR THE TREES
This is the view from my $40 parking space at the Washington Redskins game I attended at FedUp Field in suburban Landover. That's right, I said 40 bucks—one of my hotel rooms was actually cheaper than this! You'd think 40 bucks would at least garner me an asphalt parking surface and a space within half a mile of the stadium, but noooooo! Wait—this gets better...

OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WOODS...
...to FedUp Field we go—literally! The signage around the 40-dollar-a-pop gravel parking lot warned fans NOT to walk through the woods to get to FedUp Field. The Redskins wanted everyone to walk an extra quarter mile around the woods, but some enterprising 'Skins fans have erected this rickety, yet effective, bridge to circumvent team management's edict. In lieu of bread crums, one only needs to follow the trail of beer bottles/cans through the Hundred-Acre Wood during their journey to FedUp Field. Fuck you, (Redskins owner) Daniel Snyder!

My Redskins experience was a major disappointment all the way around. For such a storied franchise, I was unimpressed with the passive nature of their fans—FedUp Field holds way more people than Arrowhead Stadium does, but Washington fans can't touch us in terms of noise and ambience. This was more wine-and-cheese party crowd than a rowdy football mob—polar opposite of the way it was over at R.F.K. Stadium back in the day, I'm sure. FedUp Field also reeked of corporate weasely-ness, even moreso than most NFL stadiums do, and the Redskins gameday presentation was extremely dull. On top of that, the nosebleed section I sat in was infested by a swarm of bees, and a gal two rows in front of me got stung on the neck. About the only good thing I can say about my day with the 'Skins was their hot dogs were damn good for stadium wieners.

Travelblog: The Great Nor'easter—Episode 7

2011-11-05T19:00:00.003-06:00

WE ARE NOW ON FINAL APPROACH...
This was my first live view ever of anything connected to New York City as I drove in on the famed George Washington Bridge from the New Jersey side. I pulled up to the toll booth and had my money all ready to give them, only there was one little problem—I was in one of those automated lanes that requires a pass. For a while, I thought I'd gotten away with a freebie, but I got a letter from New Jersey when I returned home saying they wanted their $8 toll, or they were gonna fine me 50 bucks more! For once, I was a fugitive from justice...

HARLEM DAZE
I wanted no part of driving in Manhattan, but I did inadvertently drive in Harlem for a short while, just after crossing the GW Bridge. I was attempting to go by Yankee Stadium in da Bronx, but found myself on the wrong side of the Harlem River. Truthfully, I didn't find Harlem to be all that inhospitable, really—it didn't seem any worse than Kansas City, Kansas to me, anyway. Meantime, that deee-luxe apartment in the sky on the left in this photo sits right where the infield of the Polo Grounds once existed.

ANOTHER VIEW...
...from my hotel, with the Meadowlands sports complex lurking across the way. This has to be the only Red Roof Inn in the world with its own boat dock and resident seagulls, therein. They also had some comfy lounge chairs along the shore, which were great for relaxing after hoofing it all day in the city. Not too bad for 105 bucks a night.

RUST NEVER SLEEPS
This is my favorite photo from the entire trip. I snapped this while I was waiting for the subway train to Yankee Stadium. Get a load of how thick the paint is on this pillar—it's at least a quarter of an inch, and I counted no less than nine different coats! All in all, though, I'm fascinated at how that city manages to function on a daily basis. It's a totally different world than what I'm used to here. The subway rides were interesting adventures too, and you got to know your neighbors a little more than you'd like to, but I survived. Honestly, New York City isn't nearly as horrific as it's made out to be. The people I interacted with were generally amiable and pleasant, and there was none of that macho bravado that is supposedly stereotypical of New Yorkers. At no time did I ever feel unsafe (even in Harlem) and I encountered more assholes later in Philadelphia than I did in Gotham City. Other than driving in Manhattan, I no longer fear New York City like I once did, and I'm itching to visit again.

THE HOUSE THAT STEINBRENNER BUILT
Here be the new Yankee Stadium in da Bronx. I wasn't able to get a real good look at it because there was a concert going on there with Metalheads queueing up to see Metallica, Megadeth, et al, so I had to view it from a distance. In the foreground is where the original Yankee Stadium stood, now occupied by a cheesy little league ball diamond. This is how they're going to honor Ruth, Gehrig and DiMaggio? Oh well, at least they didn't make it a parking lot...

WHERE GOOD 401K'S GO TO DIE...
This of course, would be the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. Not much of a street, really—it's more wall than street. The beginnings of the current "Occupy" movement were taking shape while I was there. I'm all for reforming our financial system, but I really don't see the point of the whole "Occupy" thing—what exactly is it accomplishing?

OUT OF THE ASHES...
I saved Ground Zero for last in my tour of Manhattan, and this is the new Freedom Tower under construction. Behind the blue tarping on the fence is the new 9/11 Memorial, but I didn't have a ticket for it, so I didn't get to see it. I still say the new tower should include a huge middle finger on top aimed at the Middle East...

THIS ONE SPEAKS FOR ITSELF...
Right next to the 9/11 Memorial. Damn right, we won't forget...

Travelblog: The Great Nor'easter—Episode 6

2011-11-05T17:59:00.007-06:00

We're still in Manhattan--only about halfway through my first day there...

SAY HELLO TO OUR GOOD FRIEND, DAVID LETTERMAN...

Here's the Ed Sullivan Theater, where they tape the Late Show With David Letterman. I'm guessing there was no show that day because there's usually a line of people waiting for tickets in the afternoon. Or so I thought, anyway...

WHERE'S THE VELVET ROPE?
The doorway to the left of the dude in the blue shirt was once the entrance to the infamous Studio 54. The building still carries the name, but the club is long gone, of course. I wouldn't be surprised if there's still some cocaine stashed away somewhere in there, tho...

"I'M YOUR FAIRY MANAGER--YOU SHALL PLAY AT CARNEGIE HALL..."
Seems like everything was being renovated in NYC during my visit, and Carnegie Hall was no exception. I didn't even know what the place looked like on the outside before I got there—I was a tad disappointed. I hope it's prettier on the inside, because the exterior ain't much to look at.

"WHAT HAPPENED HERE, AS THE NEW YORK SUNSET DISAPPEARED?"
I had to see this for myself, so I made it a point to walk by the Dakota at 72nd St. and Central Park West. The entrance doesn't look like it's changed much since 12/8/80. I was majorly disappointed with the Strawberry Fields thing in Central Park honoring Lennon just across the street, however. I thought it was a bit more elaborate than just the mosaic in the sidewalk that reads "IMAGINE" with people sitting on it having their photos taken. How 'bout a statue of John or something?

HELL AIN'T A BAD PLACE TO BE
Or is it? This is the Prudential Center (the "Prude"?) in downtown Newark, NJ, home of my beloved New Jersey Devils. It's an oasis in an otherwise Hades-like town, as I was majorly unimpressed with what I saw in the area surrounding the arena, which stands out like a turd in a punchbowl in this dumpy downtown they call Newark. I saw more low-lifes in the 20 minutes I spent in Newark than I did all day in Manhattan. Go figure...

THAR SHE BLOWS!
Here was the view from the balcony of my hotel in the Meadowlands, some eight miles from Manhattan. It amazed me how the Empire State Building just dominates the entire skyline of NY when viewed from any direction, even with all the other skyscrapers scattered about—it always seems to command your attention. I stayed at the Red Roof Inn right across the river from the new Giants/Jets (Gi-ets?) Stadium, which was pretty handy for getting around the area.

EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
Again, another example of the seeming omni-presence of the ESB in a shot I snapped while waiting for the morning train in Jersey, not far from my hotel. It also gives a pretty good idea of how hazy it was that week. How about that form and composition and the way I centered the building in the window there? Brilliant!

Travelblog: The Great Nor'easter—Episode 5

2011-11-05T17:02:00.007-06:00

It's been exactly two months since I left town on my big road trip, and I'm only halfway through chronicling it on here. Two subsequent weekend road trips and lack of time on my part are to blame for that. Bear with me—I may finally get around to finishing this damn thing one of these days...

"AND WE SAW THEM STANDING THERE"

You are looking at where 2nd base once existed at Shea Stadium in Queens, NY. It was on this spot that The Beatles played their famous concert at Shea in 1965, which was then one of the biggest Rock concerts ever. This is also the spot where Pete Rose and Bud Harrelson of the Mets got into a tussle during the 1973 National League Championship Series (won by NY). In the background is the Metropolitans' new home, Citi Field, which I wound up liking a lot more than I initially expected to. It didn't look all that impressive to me on television, but in person, it was a really nice ballpark. The Jackie Robinson Rotunda (modeled after the one at Ebbets Field) and adjacent Mets Hall of Fame are worth the visit alone, and it was at Citi where I enjoyed my first taste of Carvel ice cream. It's even better than Dairy Queen, folks!

I FINALLY MADE IT TO THE GARDEN, AT LAST!

This was the first thing I saw above ground when I landed in downtown Manhattan, the world's most famous arena, Madison Square Garden, which is actually round and about 11 blocks north of the actual Madison Square, for which it is named. I was not about to try to drive in Manhattan, so I rode the train in from Joysey and it dropped me off at that underground labyrinth/clusterfuck known as Pennsylvania Station, which also includes a shopping mall and restaurants throughout. Between Penn. Station and the subways, I spent more time getting lost underground in Gotham City than I did above ground! I would dearly loved to have toured MSG, but my timing was bad because the building is currently undergoing a massive renovation (hence the scaffolds), so no tours until next year. Oh well, gives me a good reason to go back soon and do a Rangers game next spring. It was here that my long day on foot began, as I covered the better part of 70 New York city blocks over a six mile area. And let me tell you, my friends, my feets were killing me by day's end...

IT REALLY SUCKED!

This item caught my eye as I passed by a storefront in Manhattan. Mom used to have a sweeper just like this one when I was a little kid. Here's to good ol' Electro-Lux!

GOOD MORNING, MRS. KONG--IS KING HOME?

And here be the Empire State Building. Word to the wise if you plan to visit: Buy the VIP ticket so you can by-pass the long lines and ride to the top faster—it's well worth the extra moolah. I've heard the place referred to recently as the "Empty-pire" State Building because of the high vacancy rates of the office spaces, especially those in the higher floors in the wake of 9/11. Sad, but true, and perfectly understandible, I guess. Not so sure I'd want to work that high up either, on a daily basis.

And here be the view from Mr. Kong's perch, looking up Broadway:

The scariest part about this photo to me is the thought that downtown Tokyo is EVEN BIGGER! The building at the lower left with the red flag next to it is the famed Macy's store where they do the annual Thanksgiving parade at. The long-distance shots I tried to take from the observation deck weren't terribly good because it was pretty hazy out that day, but that couldn't be helped. I also coulda done without the pushy foreigners up there—they were far ruder than the locals, who, much to my surprise, were much friendlier than I expected.

FRESH AIR! TIMES SQUARE!

And here would be the building where Dick Clark drops his ball on New Year's Eve every year. Or something like that. For all the whoop-de-doo that's made about Times Square, I was pretty underwhelmed by it all. Nothing but crass corporate advertising everywhere you look. I think I would've enjoyed TS more back when it was a little more sleazier with all the titty bars and dives during the Midnight Cowboy era. And like Mick Jagger before me, I couldn't give it away on 7th Avenue either! Times Square today? Meh.

Oh, by the way, I might be in a movie soon. As I neared Radio City Music Hall, there was a film crew out doing crowd shots, and I wandered right in front of their big camera. "They're gonna put me in the movies..."

"AT ST. PATRICK'S EVERY SUNDAY..."

"...Father Fletcher heard your sins." This is the famed St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan. I'm not much into churches and such, but it's an impressive structure all the same...

Travelblog: The Great Nor'easter—Episode 4

2011-10-16T17:59:00.004-06:00

ROCK AND ROLL NEVER FORGETS I made it a point while I was in the Providence, RI area to stop off in West Warwick and visit the site of the 2003 Station Nightclub fire tragedy, which is now a makeshift memorial to the 100 people who died that awful night. Apart from the memorials, the property has remained virtually unchanged since the what was left of the building was demolished. It was very moving to stroll around the individual tributes, which appear to be very well-maintained in the grassy area that was the basic footprint of the nightclub, I'm assuming.

As you can see by the above photo, the place wasn't terribly big. Makes me wonder what the hell they were thinking trying to cram 400 people (plus a stage and a band) into such a confined space—I imagine they were breaking more than a few fire codes even before Great White's pyro stunt went wrong. The original marquee sign also remains in the parking lot, with a bumper sticker affixed to it that rings so very true. Just a sad, sad night for Rock 'N' Roll. Rest in peace, all...

ROLL UP, FOR THE MAGICAL KISSTORY TOUR—STOP 1 Also during my Big Nor'easter, I made an effort to visit a few important sites in the history of my favorite band of all-time, Kiss. The first was in the town of Newburgh, NY where late drummer Eric Carr was laid to rest in a quiet mausoleum not far from the Hudson River. Unlike other Rock star graves, it appears fans have been respectful here by not leaving behind trinkets and other memrobilia, thus Eric's crypt looked no different than any of the others. Just after my visit there, I stopped for gas about a mile down the road from the cemetery, and my fill-up amounted to $41.41. Eric Carr was 41 when he died. Rest in peace, Little Caeser...

Ironically, on my way to Newburgh, I passed through the town of Wilton, CT, where one Ace Frehley once resided for a time back in the '80s. Ack! Ack!

ROLL UP, FOR THE MAGICAL KISSTORY TOUR—STOP 2 Not long before heading into the Big Apple for the first time ever, I drifted by the town of Nanuet near the New Jersey border to see this building, which was once known as the Nanuet Star Theater. It was here that Kiss recorded their classic Rock And Roll Over album in 1976. They chose this theater-in-the-round venue over a conventional recording studio hoping to capture their live sound better on a studio recording because the building had killer acoustics. It now houses a mega-church (no comment).

Two things I found interesting in the Nanuet area. First, I was fascinated by the high concentration of orthodox Jewish folks I noticed roaming the streets. Nothing wrong with that at all, but it kinda made me chuckle because up 'till now, I've only seen these people in the movies and on TV. I thought to myself, "You're in a different world up here, Homey." The other thing that caught my attention was the gas prices in the NY-NJ area. The highest pump price I saw was in Nanuet at $4.39 a gallon. Ten minutes later, I'm in New Jersey and saw a station that had it for $3.49. 90 cents a gallon difference—WTF?!? Obviously the disparity is due in part to New Jersey having so many toll roads, thus their gas taxes aren't as high. I was also unaware until I got there that you can't pump your own gas in New Jersey. Damn Communists...

ROLL UP, FOR THE MAGICAL KISSTORY TOUR—STOP 3 This is the corner of 23rd St. and 8th Avenue, a fairly ordinary intersection in Gotham City. But, it will be forever known for the photo on the right. The building across the street with the red awning is now a barbecue place, but it was a bank back in '75 (witness the time/temp. sign above Peter Criss' right shoulder) when Kiss posed for their iconic Dressed To Kill album cover. The building across 8th Avenue on the right is still there, and that may well be the same traffic light post that Ace leaned on back then too.

ROLL UP, FOR THE MAGICAL KISSTORY TOUR—STOP 4 This is 10 W. 23rd Street in New York, a mere four blocks from the Dressed To Kill site. Kisstory began in earnest at this locale (entering through the Locksmith door) in their infamous rehearsal loft (on the second floor, I believe), as they tweaked and refined their act. It was also here that one Paul Daniel Frehley entered their lives...

One Across His Lip

2011-10-14T19:40:00.010-06:00

I absolutely love “Sanford & Son”. It was/is my favorite TV show (on earth, in this hemisphere, as Fred would say), thus I’ve been anxious to read Demond Wilson’s 2009 tell-all book, entitled Second Banana: The Bitter Sweet Memoirs of the Sanford & Son Years. I was very much looking forward to learning about all the behind-the-scenes dirt on “S&S”, as well as getting to know a bit more about Wilson himself, who’s always been a bit mysterious to me, to the point where I went ahead and shelled out $25 (plus 10 more for shipping) and bought the book directly from DW’s website because I got tired of waiting to find it cheaper on Amazon or eBay (or at Fred’s junkyard, maybe?). Hell, I couldn’t even find any libraries that carry the book. Now I wish I’d held out a bit longer…

I know I’m going to sound like some old uptight anal high school English teacher here, but I was majorly disappointed by this sophomoric effort because it’s brimming with typos (starting with the subtitle of the book itself—‘Bitter Sweet’ should be all ONE word!), poor grammar/sentence structure and random/unorganized and/or repetitive thoughts. Didn’t anyone bother to proofread this thing before it went to press?!? My first impression of the book was also not helped by the format they used—it’s hardcover with 107 pages, but the 9” x 12” size with small double-spaced print on the pages (not to mention the canary-yellow cover) make it seem like those old Curious George volumes I used to read in second grade! The actual text would barely even fill 50 pages of a regular-sized paperback. There might at least be some excuse for the amateurish nature of Second Banana if this was Wilson’s first published work, but he has, in fact, authored several other books prior to this one, which actually resembles a rough draft rather than a finished product. Demond, buddy, with all due respect, I’m sure you had the best of intentions with this book, but for what I paid for it, I can’t help but feel a tad ripped-off here. I think you came down with a case of Fred’s infamous “Author-itis.”

Sample some of the FUBARs here…

--The intro piece on the back cover mentions that ‘70s fashion staple “leisure suites” and something about “keep-sake” photos.

--Nearly every time Demond makes reference to a deceased person in the book, there’s an unnecessary “RIP” attached to it. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with honoring those who are no longer with us, this got kinda old after a while.

--In reference to his early comedic influences, Wilson talked about the Marx Brothers: The synchronized off-the-wall wacky routines of the Marx Brothers was priceless, especially in the (zany) team’s riotous comeback film, A Night At The Opera. First off, it should be ‘were priceless’ instead of ‘was priceless’, and secondly, why is ‘zany’ in parentheses at all? Another example: Prior to the “Amos n’ Andy Show”, blacks were portrayed in movies and on television programs as domestic sidekicks like “The (50s) Beulah (a maid) Show”. WTF?!? He does this parentheses thing throughout the book for no apparent reason, thus readability is a major issue here. And here’s an incomplete sentence for you: My agent at the time a gentleman named David Graham, who later became a top motion picture casting agent. That’s all he wrote, literally. Come on, dude...

--In crediting the former cast of “S&S”, he lists the females as “M’s Lynn Hamilton” and “M’s LaWanda Page”. The only M’s I’ve ever been familiar with are the Seattle Mariners!

And then there are the misspelled names. We had former President Richard Millhouse Nixon (twice), legendary pugilist Mohammed Ali (twice), actress Adrian Barbou, singer Glenn Campbell, actress Nancy Culp, entertainer Sonny Bonno, singer Edie Gorme’, musician Canonball Adderly, famed Hollywood Square Rosemarie, screen siren Mae Wes and former LA Lakers great Hap Harriston. On behalf of Richard Milhous Nixon, Mohammad Ali, Adrienne Barbeau, Glen Campbell, Nancy Kulp, Sonny Bono, Eydie Gorme, Cannonball Adderley, Rose Marie, Mae West and Happy Hairston—dare I say it?—YOU BIG DUMMY!!!

As for the content of the book, I was also very disappointed that Wilson barely made mention of fellow cast members like Hamilton and Page, as well as Don “Bubba” Bexley, Nathaniel Taylor (Rollo), Gregory Sierra (Julio) and Pat Morita (Aw Chew), et al, or even Julio’s beloved pet goat, Chico. He did speak briefly about the late Whitman Mayo, who played Grady Wilson (Demond’s real life full name is Grady Demond Wilson, btw), but that discussion was limited to the block of episodes where Mayo subbed for Redd Foxx during his infamous 1974 contract dispute/holdout during which he demanded Carroll O’Connor-like money, not to mention windows in the rehearsal hall to relieve his claustrophobia. One thing that did please me was that Wilson didn’t get preachy in this book, being as he became a minister after his “S&S” days. I was actually impressed that he made an effort to avoid spouting off religious platitudes, and chose to keep things secular, for the most part. He even still used language like “shit” and “Niggas”, which surprised me.

Wilson, who in fact turned 65 just yesterday, went to great pains throughout the book seemingly to avoid saying anything really nasty about Redd Foxx, even when Foxx behaved inappropriately or acted like a jerk towards Demond or other people in some way. It’s already a foregone conclusion that Redd Foxx was no angel, and although he did a lot of great things in his life and career, it’s almost as if Demond Wilson feels some need to be protective of Foxx’s memory. As much as I love Redd’s work (both as Fred Sanford as well as his legendary X-rated comedy records), he always came across to me off-screen/off-stage as a bitter old asshole with a chip on his shoulder. It’s understandible, to a degree, given all the bullshit and bigotry Foxx encountered in his early life and career, but once he did become successful and made beaucoup money, he pissed most of it away on drugs, alcohol and women, not to mention the I.R.S. To wit, many of his trials and tribulations were of his own doing.

One of the more interesting stories Demond told was how during some celebrity function in the '70s, “…Redd got into a verbal confrontation with Bea Arthur, who was starring in a short-lived Tandem (Productions) series called ‘Maude’” Short-lived? Uhhh, dude, “Maude” aired from 1972-78, lasting a full year longer than “Sanford & Son” did, so I hardly call that short-lived. Anyway, wouldn’t you love to have seen Redd Foxx and Bea Arthur duking it out in the boxing ring? Given the disparity of their sizes—short and stocky Foxx vs. tall and lanky Arthur—it gives me visions of Rocky Balboa vs. Ivan Drago! Arthur would’ve probably killed Foxx, and then undoubtedly turned to her “Maude” co-star Ms. Barbou—er uh, Barbeau, and exclaimed, “Yo, Adrienne—I did it!” But I digress…

As for the show itself, “Sanford & Son” is the one sitcom that made me laugh out-loud harder than any other from its era. Still does today, too, even though I’ve seen every episode 100 times and can recite the dialogue verbatim. Sure, it was a silly show, but good goobly-goop, it was damn funny, and Fred G. Sanford is my favorite TV character ever. I was always home on Friday nights in the ‘70s anyway, so I never missed an episode, except during Foxx’s contract dispute hiatus in the 3rd season, anyway—Grady was just no substitute. Fred’s constant barbs at Aunt Esther and “Porter-Rican” neighbor Julio, his various get-rich-quick schemes (often with Grady or Bubba aiding and abetting) and innumerable “Elizabeth, I’m comin’ to join you, honey!” faux heart attacks were classic stuff. Demond Wilson was a great piece of casting, too, as long-suffering/overworked/beleaguered-yet-faithful son Lamont, and he turned out to be the ideal straight-man opposite Foxx’s over-the-top junkman character and the two worked quite well together.

I think my favorite aspect of the show were Fred’s brilliant comebacks. A few examples…

Lamont: “Hey, Pop—you asleep?”
Fred: “No, I’m just checkin’ my eyelids for cracks!”

Lamont (after calculating Fred’s cumulative lifetime cigarette consumption): “Pop, since you was 10, you smoked a cigarette 41 miles long!”
Fred (proudly): “That’s real Super King-Size, ain’t it?”

Aunt Ethel: "You look ridiculous!"
Fred: "Ethel, I fell off a truck...what's your excuse?"

Lamont’s poker-playing friend: “And you must be Papa Sanford!”
Fred: “No, I’m Mama Cass!”

Mary the house maid: “Mutton—do you like boiled mutton?”
Fred: “Does anybody?”

Mae Hopkins (in a huff): “Well, I never!!”
Fred: “I bet you did!”

Con Man: “I’d rather cut off a leg than go back on my word, right, Mr. Sanford?”
Fred: “Right, Stumpy.”

Fred’s cousin (describing his overweight daughter): “There’s more to Betty Jean than meets the eye.”
Fred: “There can’t be!”

Otis (bargaining for Fred’s pool table): "I thought you said that's how much it would cost in a store!"
Fred: “Whatchu think I’m runnin’ here, a taco stand?!?”

Rollo: "How you feelin', Pops?"
Fred: "I feel with my hands like I always do!"

Committeeman: “Mr. Sanford, you are out of order!”
Fred: “And so’s the toilet down the hall!”

Lamont: “You’re a dirty old man, you know that?”
Fred: “And I’m gonna be one ‘til I’m a dead old man!”

Nelson B. Davis (funeral director): “You must excuse my cold hand--cold hand, warm chapel. That's a little joke in my profession.”
Fred: “That’s funny as a train wreck. Now, THAT’ll get you some business…”

Fred: “I suggest you acupuncture your bill.”
Acupuncture doctor: “What do you mean?”
Fred: “Stick it!”

Lamont: “Pop, what’s that horse doing in the kitchen?”
Fred: “How should I know? You saw him last…”

Pretty much all the episodes from the first three seasons of “Sanford & Son” with Foxx in them are classics and there were indeed a few gems in seasons four and five after Foxx returned from his holdout, but by the final season in ’76-‘77, it was clear the show was running on fumes. I wouldn’t say the “Jump The Shark” point was Foxx’s contact dispute, per se, but it wasn’t long after that when the show started circling the drain. As Demond Wilson states in the book, it didn’t help that the show’s original producer and director (Bud Yorkin and Aaron Ruben, respectively) were replaced by a pair of Jewish producers/writers (Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein). For an all-Jewish sitcom, these guys undoubtedly would’ve excelled, but on an all-black show like “S&S”, it was a bad combination. Before long, they resorted to typical sitcom-killing desperation gambits like featuring the cast members singing and dancing, cameo appearances by celebrity guest stars playing themselves (Steve Lawrence/Eydie Gorme, Merv Griffin, Della Reese, B.B. King, George Foreman, et al) and weird concept episodes like having Fred and Lamont acting as spies in Nazi Germany (“Sergeant Gork”) and an adaptation of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with Fred as Scrooge (“Ebenezer Sanford”). Foxx himself even played himself on an episode where Fred enters a Redd Foxx look-alike contest ("Fred Meets Redd"), but it was pretty lame.

Basically, they started messing with the formula that had worked so well and the show seemed strained and hackneyed toward the end, reaching its nadir with an episode (“Funny, You Don’t Look It”) where Fred suddenly thinks he’s of Jewish descent. Of all people, did they really expect us to think that Fred G. Sanford—as proud a black man as there ever was—would for even a nanosecond think he was a Jew? Riiiiight. That episode makes cringe every time I watch it. It was also readily apparent by that final season that both Wilson and Foxx were bored and ready to move on to other things. Wilson often wore dark shades that season to mask his cocaine usage while he blandly delivered his lines with his thumb in his vest pocket most of the time. Foxx seemingly phoned in his performances too, and the mere fact that he willingly did an episode like the Jewish debacle I just mentioned tells me he didn’t give a shit anymore.

Redd Foxx left NBC for his own tepid ABC variety show in the fall of ’77, the main claim to fame of which was that semi-annoying Raymond J. “But ya doesn’t have to call me” Johnson recurring character. Demond Wilson moved on to the CBS sitcom “Baby I’m Back”, but didn’t last long either. He later teamed with “Barney Miller” alum Ron Glass in the TV revival “The New Odd Couple” during the ‘80s. Meanwhile, Tandem Productions tried to salvage the Sanford “empire” (get it? junk/salvage) with the short-lived “Sanford Arms” in the fall of ’77. The initial plan was for Demond Wilson to star in the show, but he wanted too much money, so they brought in the late Theodore Wilson (no relation) to run Fred’s rooming house next door, the luxurious Sanford Arms. Considering this used to be Julio’s house which Fred often referred to as a “death trap”, I fail to see how they could’ve converted it into a hotel, much less gotten anyone to pay money to stay next door to a junkyard, but I digress. Anyway, Aunt Esther, Bubba, Grady and Uncle Woody hung around, but “Arms” only lasted four episodes before landing in the junkyard at 9114 S. Central. Also residing there is the long-forgotten “Grady” spinoff that ran briefly in ’75-’76. Love Grady to death, but he’s best if taken in small doses, not as a lead character.

Three years later, the fish-eyed fools at NBC somehow coaxed that old heathen Redd Foxx into reprising his famed role on “Sanford”, this time minus “Son”, as Demond Wilson wanted no part in doing a sequel. Only Rollo returned from the original show, and Lamont was replaced by rotund hick Cal (played by Dennis Burkley), who supposedly worked with Lamont on the Alaska Pipeline before returning to L.A. to become Fred’s business partner/comic foil. Aunt Esther, Hoppy and Smitty all dropped in here and there, too, but it just wasn’t the same, and Foxx looked like he’d aged about two decades in the three-years since “S&S” went off the air. The new show seemed like a great idea at the time, but looking back now, they should’ve just left Fred in the ‘70s where he belonged. “Sanford” lasted longer than it probably should have (26 episodes over two seasons), due mostly to the dearth of decent NBC programming, as they were still in the death throes of their moribund early’ 80s “Pink Lady & Jeff”/“Manimal”/“SuperTrain” ratings desperation era, a few years before “Cheers”, “Hill Street Blues” and “The Cosby Show” resurrected the Peacock Network.

A few more random thoughts…Here’s the real-life 9114 S. Central in Watts (where the telephone pole sits). No Sanford. No Son. Not even &. Another curiosity for me is the storefront shown in the opening title sequence, which looks nothing like the Sanford estate on the show itself. And what about the Sanford “junk-pire” itself? How the hell were Fred and Lamont able to remain in business—let alone Fred being named Watts Businessman of the Year—when they seemingly never had any customers and were perpetually broke? There was talk of a “Sanford & Son” theatrical film a couple years back with the late Bernie Mac in the title role, but his death brought that to a screaming halt. Just as well, because there is no other S-A-N-F-O-R-D, period!

Travelblog: The Great Nor'easter—Episode 3

2011-10-08T20:50:00.012-06:00

My profounded apologies for the interruption in road trip coverage, dear friends. As I rapidly discovered while I was on the road, it's hard to find the time to properly chronicle a vacation while one is STILL ON IT, therefore my posts ground to a halt. I also encountered issues with poor Internet connections at some of the hotels I stayed at, which made uploading my photos very slow or impossible at times. I've been back home for over two weeks now, but a combination of fatigue, personal home projects and illness have prevented me from giving you the rest of the story, so over the next few days or so, I hope to finally catch up this whole sojourn, which by journey's end, made me feel like I'd just come off a concert tour. I can safely say, folks, that I'd make a lousy Rock star!

Now, where were we?...

GREAT SEAT, EH BUDDY?!?

Ah yes, I last left you at Fenway Park and the most enjoyable tour I took of it. This photo was taken near the end of it in the Bob Uecker section as we got to sit in the ancient rock-hard original butt-buster wooden seats they have yet to replace that date back some 70-odd years. Fenway is a trip within a trip, and I was glad to finally get to see it on the inside. Much to the chagrin of Red Sox Nation, however, their majestic tailspin at the end of season more or less began long about the time I set foot in Fenway Park, thus the Holland Curse was born...

PAVE PARADISE, PUT UP A PARKING LOT—LITERALLY!
You are looking at the site of the legendary Boston Garden. Way to develop the site, there, Beantown! As much as Boston likes to honor its rich history, this is the best y'all could come up with for the former home of the Bruins and Celtics? True, there is a very cool Bobby Orr statue nearby just behind where I took this photo, but come on! Center ice would've been about where the white trailer sits, only three stories higher, since the Gaaaaaden sat on top of a train station, as does the new joint nextdoor to the left. I didn't have time to check out the New England Sports Museum housed inside the new arena, but it looks pretty cool. Will catch it next time...

SIGN, SIGN, EVERYWHERE A SIGN
Here's something you don't get to see very often—the backside of the famed Citgo sign in Boston's Kenmore Square, two blocks from Fenway Park. I never knew that Citgo actually stood for Cities Service, and one of their gas stations used to exist in the ground floor of the building the mighty sign resides on. One of the cooler corporate logos of all-time, too.

DOWN IN THE TUNNEL TRYIN' TO MAKE IT PAY...
I love tunnels. We don't have near enough of these here in the Midwest, which is one of the many reasons I love to travel back East because they're everywhere. I made it a point while in Boston to check out the infamous Big Dig/Ted Williams Tunnel, and I was not disappointed. What was only supposed to cost Mass. taxpayers $5 billion wound up costing them $17 billion, so I tried to chip in by paying the toll and riding through it--twice! This tunnel actually comes in three parts under downtown Boston, with the third one being the coolest (eastbound, that is). A mini-thrill ride for yours truly...

THANK YOU FOR SHOPPING AT BELICHICK'S
Last time I was in Foxboro, MA in 1994, it was just a bump in the road with an NFL stadium attached to it. I think there was maybe a used car lot, a 7-Eleven and a podunk hotel along U.S. 1 back then, but it's a whole different world 17 years later, as they've managed to put the ugh in Foxboro(ugh) with the Gillette Stadium complex on the site where the original home of the New England Patriots, Schaefer/Sullivan/Foxboro Stadium once stood. Don't get me wrong—the stadium itself is pretty cool, and one of the best in the NFL. It's the ancillary (and unnecessary) pieces of the complex that made me throw up in my mouth a bit.

Pats owner Bob Kraft has seen fit to create a sports/entertainment/business/shopping mecca on the property (see diagram), and I found it all rather indigestible. For my KC friends, the complex is very similar to the Legends clusterfuck by Kansas Speedway, complete with a shopping center, hotel, restaurants/bars (including the oversized and probably overpriced CBS Scene entertainment center), and even a breast health hospital. The football/sports purist in me cringed at the sight of this garish site. In a nutshell, any Pats fan (male or female) can stop off and grab that bustier and matching panties they've been so badly wanting at Victoria's Secret and/or get some fishing tackle at Bass Pro and get a mammogram at the hospital right on the way into the game! What pissed me off most is from where I parked, I had to walk all the way AROUND the damn shopping center and overpriced hotel to get to the stadium for the soccer game I attended. Oh, and the P-Men cater to the short-attention-span society as well--if you get too bored with the event you're attending, you can watch the Red Sox game on the big screen outside of CBS Scene. While I do give the Patriots brownie points for their classy team Hall of Honor, I could do without the rest of this monument to corporate excess—it's just so un-football to me.

THERE ONCE WAS A FAUX GREEN MONSTER IN PAWTUCKET...

I thought this was kinda clever outside of McCoy Stadium in Pawtucket, RI, home of the Red Sox' triple-A farm team, the PawSox. Gotta love where they put the Yankees in the standings...

Travelblog: The Great Noreaster—Episode 2

2011-09-12T22:30:00.004-06:00

EAT AT TED'S Seriously—eat at Ted's! I highly encourage you to visit Ted's Hamburgers in Meriden, CT (or their other two locations in Connecticut) and check out their world famous steamed hamburgers, as seen on "Drive-Ins, Diners & Dives", "Man Vs. Food" and "Hamburger America", et al. This photo is my actual dinner from last Friday evening, and it was outstanding. The meat itself was tasty enough, but the gooey melted cheese totally made the burger. It reminded me of the tangy cheese they put on my chicken burritos at Margarita's in K.C.

WE GOT TO GET OURSELVES BACK TO THE GAAAARDEN The last time I saw the old Boston Garden scoreboard was in 1994 when it was still in use at the Bruins game I attended. I'm pleased to report that it still exists and now hangs in the food court at the Watertown Mall, about four miles west of Fenway Park. Not sure if it's still functional, but it's great that they preserved it.

HIT IT HERE! Also during that 1994 excursion to Beantown, I got to see Fenway Park for the first time...from the outside. This time, I actually got IN the place via the official Fenway Park tour, which was totally worth the low, low price of 12 Yankee (sorry, Sox fans) dollars. I snapped this photo from the front row of the right field party deck seats just above Ted Williams' retired #9 on the facade. The tour guides were almost as entertaining as the park itself, and I think I enjoyed this tour more than I would've enjoyed an actual game at the Fens, considering the high ticket prices and limited availability thereof. I got to see more of the place this way anyhow...

Travelblog: The Great Nor'easter—Episode 1

2011-09-08T21:23:00.006-06:00

Well, friends, I've been neglecting this blog far too long, but I now actually have something to yap about, my long-awaited East Coast invasion that has been years in the planning stage.

GOOD THING I DIDN'T PAY FOR THE VIEW! This excursion features a new wrinkle or two, not the least of which is my new laptop PC, which will allow me to post reports on my trip while in progress, as opposed to waiting until I get back home. This trip also features better accomodations than I've been accustomed to in the past, as I've decided to splurge a little and not just do Motel 6 exclusively. I currently am reporting to you from the Holiday Inn Express outside Cooperstown, NY, and the room I rented is quite nice. The view from it, however, is not exactly scintillating...

This is day 3 of the trip, which has been a bit sluggish so far. I had a rental car all lined up with Budget, but was rebuffed Tuesday when they informed me that I couldn't bring their precious vehicle into the state of New York because of some bullshit insurance law they have up here, thus I ended up taking my gas-guzzling Grand Marquis instead. Nice going, Budget—you've permanently lost me as a customer. Oh well, the Merc is holding up just fine so far, and the extra payload comes in handy with all the luggage I brought.

Meantime, I was also late taking off the first two days, which put me a bit behind schedule, and today, I liked to never made it to Cooperstown thanks to Mother Nature and the road closures she's caused because of all the flooding in Pennsylvania and New York State. Every creek, stream and river I crossed over around these parts today was more swollen than Charlie Sheen's head. I was planning to do the baseball Hall of Fame this afternoon, but arrived long after it closed, so I'll visit first thing in the morning instead. My planned visit tomorrow to the Woodstock museum in Bethel is going to have to wait until next week because I can't get there from here at the moment without being airlifted to it...

JUST PEACHY This ballpark should look familiar to youse movie fanatics out there, as you're looking at the scene of one of the more famous film quotes in recent history, "There's no crying in baseball!" right in front of the 3rd base dugout. I made it a special point to stop in to Huntingburg, Indiana (about 30 miles NE of Evansville) to see the home of the Rockford Peaches in A League Of Their Own, an ancient minor league ballpark that's still in use, as is Bosse Field in Evansville proper, which served as the Racine team's home park in the film. Much of the original wooden grandstand remains here, as does the Peaches signage from the movie (see upper right in pic), which was filmed exactly 20 years ago this month.

THEIR OL' KENTUCKY HOME? One of my favorite pastimes on these big road trips is sneaking into college football stadiums and snapping a few photos. Yes, I know I'm trespassing when I do this, but I don't mean any harm and if you leave a gate open, I'm gonna go through it! This would be the first SEC football playpen I've "stalked" so far, Commonwealth Stadium at the U. of Kentucky. Nice looking joint--too bad they don't have a decent team to use it. I also passed by Rupp Arena, but it's not much to look at on the outside, and it's named after a bigot anyway...

BUTTER? NO—PARKETTE! Also while in Lexington, I stopped in at my first "Drive-Ins, Diners & Dives" eatery on this trip, the legendary Parkette Drive-In. Not really breaking any new ground, food-wise, but the burger and onion rings I devoured were quite tasty, and I love the way they kick it old-school there—a definite throwback to a "better vanished time", as the Rush song goes.

I also stopped at another DD&D place, Hillbilly Hot Dogs in Huntington, WV. I wanted to check out their famed "Homewrecker" entree, but the damn thing was $17 and should have its on ZIP code, plus I'd just eaten at the Parkette two hours earlier, so I just sampled their Hill Billy Filly sandwich, which weren't too bad. I loved the intentionally-trashy decor there, as well as their motto, "If we don't live up to your standards, then lower yours."

THEY WERE MARSHALL My main objective in Huntington, was to pay a visit to Marshall University, home of the Thundering Herd (or "Thundering Turd", as I affectionately call them). On the exterior of their stadium, they pay tribute to the fallen 1970 Thundering Herd football team who perished in a plane crash with this sculpture, and there's also a very classy memorial in the nearby cemetery. Right about the time I was visiting that very memorial, the news broke about the plane carrying the Russian hockey team crashing into the Volga River, killing 43 people, including former St. Louis Blues star Pavel Demitra. Very spooky coincidence, and in both instances, major tragedies. Rest in peace, all...

OLD TIME HOCKEY! EDDIE SHORE! Let's end on a happier hockey note. This would be the Cambria County War Memorial in Johnstown, PA, better known as the home of the Charlestown Chiefs in the 1977 classic Slap Shot, starring the late Paul Newman. Tiny little arena, seating only 4,000 or so, but it's still in use, and was perfect for the film, which featured a half-assed minor league hockey team. Much of the film was shot right in Johnstown, including the town square, which I passed by this morning on the way out of town, and it doesn't look like it's changed very much in 34 years. My hotel was just two blocks away from the arena, but I didn't run into the Hanson Brothers, thank goodness...

The War Memorial was also the site of a fun footnote in the career of Kiss at their concert here in 1975. For the first (and only) time in Kisstory, the band was joined on-stage by a fifth performer, Creem writer Jaan Uhelzski, for a one-off publicity piece. Clad in a black leotard and tights, platform shoes (with her backstage pass affixed to one of the heels), Uhelzski wore a Kiss make-up design that was a composite of all four band members (just like on the back of the Hotter Than Hell album cover) and strapped on an unplugged guitar to mime playing along to "Rock And Roll All Nite" during the show's encore. She chronicled her experience in the Creem feature I Was On-stage With Kiss In My Maidenform Bra in 1976.

Yeah, I'm sick of looking at Sammy too!

2011-08-06T08:00:00.000-06:00

Thought I better post something just to get Hagar's mug off the front here.

This blog is not dead, but I really haven't had anything new and compelling to write about lately, thus the inactivity. I've been working on several personal projects that eat up most of my time these days, and the blog has been an unfortunate casualty of that.

One of the projects I've been feverishly working on is my Kansas City Comets database, which I've had for years, but have been fleshing out and expanding this summer. It's basically a summary of every game (over 500 of 'em) they ever played from 1981-91, and I've been spending a lot of time at UMKC library going through each box score from the old K.C. Star microfilms and getting all the pertinent info that I need. My hope is to eventually turn this all into a website/tribute page to my favorite sports entity of all-time. It's been tedious work, but I've enjoyed it thoroughly.

I'm hopeful there will be more good stuff to post this Fall, especially since I'll be vacationing a couple times in September and October, so I should be a little more active in the coming months here...

Green Eggs And Sam(my)

2011-06-28T18:21:00.007-06:00

Another book read, another blog post. It only took me the better part of a day and a half to rip through Sammy Hagar’s new otto-biography Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock. That’s partly because I’d already read excerpts from it long before I bought it and mostly because it was a fairly entertaining read, even if I didn’t quite believe all of it. I do give the Red Rocker credit—he holds back nothing here, but he’s no doubt burned a few bridges with this book, some of which were already on the verge of collapse anyway. Suffice it to say that the Van Halen brothers don’t come off looking too good here at all.

Oddly enough, the first thing I ever remember hearing from Hagar was his 1979 remake of Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay” on the old KY-102 when I was 15 and gradually making my transition from FM Top 40 Pop to Album Rock radio. He pretty much disowns that track in the book, saying it was a lame attempt by his then-manager to score a Top 40 hit. Long about that same time, Sammy was the second act I ever saw at a major Rock concert, playing fourth on the bill at Arrowhead Stadium (right before The Cars, Heart and headliner Ted Nugent, and just after local favorites Missouri), and I remember being semi-impressed with his stage act. After being dismissed from the band Montrose in a clash of egos (mostly Ronnie Montrose’s), Sammy built his fan base in a rather workmanlike manner in the late ‘70s, in spite of little-to-no support from radio or his label, Capitol Records. Much like another Capitol act that preceded him years earlier, Grand Funk Railroad, Hagar’s early success was largely through word-of-mouth about his live performances, even though he had some pretty decent material, like “Red”, “Trans Am (Highway Wonderland)”, “Rock ‘N’ Roll Weekend”, “Plain Jane”, “Turn Up The Music” and a song called “I’ve Done Everything For You”, which you Rick Springfield fans (all four of you) might remember. Hagar’s fortunes changed when he sacked his manager and jumped ship to Geffen Records, who realized his potential and promoted him much more avidly, thus resulting in a very respectable run of successful albums in the early ‘80s (Standing Hampton, Three Lock Box and V.O.A.), as well as a brief run in the (sort-of) supergroup Hagar/Schon/Aaronson/Shrieve. By 1985, Hagar was wealthy enough (and burned-out enough) to quit the music business when his telephone rang and one Edward Van Halen was at the other end…

As for the book, I find myself picking and choosing which parts I actually believe and which parts I think he embellished, exaggerated or just plain made up. Here’s a little rundown on my thoughts on stuff from the book (in no particular order):

—I was very surprised that there’s no mention whatsoever in Sammy’s book of his 1997 song, “Little White Lie”, which was a direct bazooka shot at Eddie and Alex Van Halen.

—Apart from Hagar cronies Bill Church (bass) and David Lauser (drums), Sammy barely spoke of his longtime touring band during his solo years, and never once mentioned his lead guitarist Gary Pihl, who is now with (what’s left of) Boston. Guess there weren’t too many juicy tales to tell from those days.

—I find it more than a little fucked-up that Hagar often cheated on his mentally-ill wife (whom he’d married very young) after he’d been on the road for a while. Why do these musicians always insist on marrying some chick and having kids when they’re 20 and just starting out in their music career, knowing damn well how the Rock ‘N’ Roll lifestyle is counter-productive to marriage and family?

—Much of Hagar’s wrath in Red was aimed at VH manager Ray Danniels, whom he pretty much views as evil-incarnate. Danniels replaced the late Ed Leffler, who was Sammy’s choice to manage Van Halen when he joined in 1985. Leffler died of cancer while 1995’s flaccid Balance album was being completed, and Hagar clashed with his replacement (whom the VH brothers hand-picked to manage the group) almost immediately. Danniels also manages Rush (the band, not the Big Fat Idiot), and being’s how those crazy Canucks seem to be such a well-oiled machine, it makes me wonder how bad a guy this Danniels truly is, thus making me question Hagar’s credibility a bit. Then again, Rush is a totally different animal altogether, devoid of fragile egos, factions, personal vendettas/agendas and out-of-control alcoholics, thus fairly self-contained.

—I could’ve done without Sammy’s recurring bits about aliens supposedly contacting him from beyond. Even if they really happened, I’m not into that stuff, sorry. But if I ever do hear from Beldar Conehead on Remulac (sp?), I’ll let y’all know, mmm-kay?

—Sam spent a lot of time in his book going on about his Cabo Wabo cantina venture in Mexico. Apparently the late John Entwistle was a regular visitor at Cabo in the years right before he died, and it was sad to read how he was rapidly declining. According to Hagar, The Ox was extremely deaf by then, to the point where even hearing aids were of little use. “He was pretty high most of the time,” Sammy writes. “John always had a drink and a cigarette in his hand…I’d try to get him to sing ‘Boris The Spider’, but he’d go, ‘Oh, man, I can’t sing.’” This sounds very consistent with what Pete Townshend has said many times about John’s voice being “very dodgy” toward the end and that he clearly was not taking care of himself in his final years. Same can be said for Stephen Stills, who was/is also a frequent flyer at Cabo Wabo. I never much cared for the song “Cabo Wabo”, anyway…

—And then there was the infamous “Sam & Dave” tour fiasco with Diva Lee Roth in 2002. I actually had a free ticket to that concert here at Sandstone Amphitheater but I passed on going to the show, mostly because I didn’t feel like driving the 60-mile round trip over to Bonner Springs and back. Probably a wise move on my part—I heard the show really sucked, and Sammy’s narrative about that tour echoes the same sentiments. As with pretty much every other piece I’ve ever read about Diamond Dave since he left Van Halen in 1985, he comes across as a total prima donna douche in Sam’s book. Fuhgetaboudit, Dave…

—Hagar contradicts himself throughout the book, and I have to call bullshit on a couple of items. For instance, while concluding the book by spouting off a bunch of hollow platitudes about life in general, he says: “I don’t believe in killing people, inflicting your will on another person or trying to hurt them in any way.” Then Sam, what’s up with lyrics like “Shoot them down to their graves, yeah!” from “V.O.A.”? Come to think of it, Sammy often talked out of both sides of his mouth with his songwriting anyway. First he sings, “I’ll Fall In Love Again”, then turns around with “I Don’t Need Love” (furthermore, “I’m just lookin’ for some sex, yeah!”), then comes back with “When It’s Love”, etc. In another passage, he wrote: “Drugs kill people. People think drugs are what made Jimi Hendrix great. No, drugs are what killed Jimi Hendrix.” No argument from me on that statement, but then why’s it okey-dokey for Hagar to not only do cocaine himself, but provide some to his Cabo guests like Stephen Stills as well?!? Mr. Pot, meet Mr. Kettle—you’re black! In a similar vein, based Sammy’s own descriptions, his father was not unlike Sean Maguire’s “mean fuckin’ drunk” old man in the film Good Will Hunting, and things got so bad when Sammy was young that his mother would often evacuate herself and the kids from their own house when Daddy got home from a night at the bar. Considering all the bad experiences between dealing with his dear ol’ Dad and the drunken Van Halen brothers all these years, I think it’s rather disingenuous of Hagar to market and promote alcohol, especially tequila, of all things. It’s not like Sammy needs the money—he has several other successful outside business ventures in addition to his musical career, so we won’t be seeing him in the bread lines anytime soon.

Then again, Sammy Hagar has never been known as a Rhodes Scholar. I once read in a 1980 concert review of his show at Memorial Hall in KCK (during the height of the Iran hostage crisis), someone in the crowd held up a huge sign that said, “Iranians Go Home”, which Hagar misread as “Trans Ams Go Home”, and he goes off on a 10-minute filibuster about his favorite automobile. When Eddie and Sammy performed together in public for the first time ever at Farm Aid in 1985, Sam proceeds to introduce “I Can’t Drive 55” by saying, “Here’s a song for all you tractor-pulling motherfuckers,” which immediately got them yanked off the live TV feed. At that Arrowhead gig I attended in ’79, between songs he was trying to say something to the crowd and suddenly bellowed, “Turn this fuckin’ mic on!!!” Uh, Sam, I think it’s on…

I don’t mean for this post to come off as a Hagar bash-fest because I actually do like Sammy. I enjoy most of his music and he seems like a decent duck overall, and fairly level-headed (for a Rock star, anyway). I’ve always liked his upbeat attitude and he seems like a fun person to be around. I’m amazed he remained with Van Halen as long as he did, considering how dysfunctional that band was even when Hagar first joined them—their problems and issues weren’t ALL Roth’s fault, as we were once led to believe. Sammy certainly brought a MAJOR upgrade to Van Halen lyrics—I swear, many of Roth’s songs sound like he just made them up as he went along in the studio (“Jump” being the most heinous example) and it was Eddie’s guitar pyrotechnics that truly gave this band its substance. I generally believe most of what Hagar wrote in his book about the Van Halen brothers is true, especially in light of the way Eddie and Alex have jerked us VH fans around the last 15 years with their Hagar/Roth/Cherone/Hagar again/Roth again lead singer carousel. "We’d be rippin’ off our fans,” Little Hitler—er uh, Eddie—proclaimed in 1998 in discussing a potential reunion tour with Diva Lee. Funny how he didn’t feel that way ten years later when he reunited with Roth anyway, just so he could finally take Junior on the road with him. Okay, Ed, we get it—your dick worked once. Now bring back Michael Anthony already, will ya…

Sammy accurately points out that Alex Van Halen was NEVER a creative force in the band, yet he always got a quarter share of the songwriting/publishing money, even though he has yet to write a single song for his own band. Same could be said for Michael Anthony, but at least Mikey was always a good soldier for the band, never failing to answer the bell in concert, putting up with more bullshit from the Van Halens than he should have, and also providing his trademark high harmony vocals that were an integral part of the VH sound during both the Roth and Hagar eras. I like Mike and really think he got a raw deal in the end when Eddie essentially humiliated him by kicking him to the curb and replacing him on bass with his son Wolfgang for their 2008 tour with Roth. While Junior VH appears to be at least a serviceable bass player (he’s light years better than Sid Vicious, anyway), he’s not a very dynamic performer on stage and looks like he belongs in some lame slacker band. Sorry, Wolfie—only Entwistle was allowed to stand still all night while he played, and you ain’t no Ox…

Getting back to Uncle Alex, I’ve always thought he was/is an average drummer, at best. He’s no Neil Peart, that’s for sure, and unlike Peart, AVH’s massive drum kit was/is mostly for show—four bass drums, Gracie? Come on. Meantime, Alex is basically a lackey and enabler for his far more talented (yet sadly whacked-out) brother. According to Hagar, during most of his tenure with the band, the Van Halen brothers drank like fish and smoked like dragons from dusk till dawn, especially while working in the studio, and if that’s true, it’s a wonder they were functional at all. Hell, Eddie lost a third of his tongue to mouth cancer, and yet he STILL smokes cigarettes!! Back in the day at one of the VH shows I attended, following Al’s slightly off-kilter drum solo, David Lee Roth proclaimed, “Let’s hear it for Alex Van Halen…and his drinking problem!” It was funny in 1981. 30 years later, not so much…

As for Van Halen (the band), apart from maybe Guns ‘N’ Roses, I don’t think we’ve ever witnessed a front-line Rock band totally implode the way they have. I saw VH four times in concert during the DLR era and they were white-hot on-stage each and every time. I saw them three more times with Hagar, and they were pretty good then, too, in spite of losing their edge a bit. To the best of my recollection, I did not touch one drop of alcohol at any of those shows (I abstained from drinking at concerts pretty much until the ‘90s), so I’m definitely not viewing these memories through a booze-tinted prism. I even went back and re-watched their 1986 concert video “Live Without A Net” just to reassure myself that it was all real once upon a time. Sure enough, Eddie was still Eddie in that video—he looked vibrant and healthy, was totally into his performance, interacted well with the rest of the band (not just his brother) and operated on his guitar like a neurosurgeon. Unquestionably, Van Halen—with Roth or Hagar—was truly “the shit” back in the ‘80s. Now they’re just shit. How the mighty have fallen…

Evidently Sammy Hagar started to write a book like this (with another author) about ten years ago but halted the project in midstream. Excerpts from that book made it to the ‘Net anyway, and they’re pretty consistent with what’s in Red. The only difference is a lot of the unnecessary details and superfluous music business minutiae and has been eliminated in the new book. Here’s a link to the excerpts.

My all-time (non-Van Halen) Sammy Hagar Top 10:
10) “Winner Takes It All” (1985) Largely forgotten track Hagar did for Sly Stallone’s arm-wrestling saga Over The Top. Sammy has contributed a boatload of songs to movie soundtracks over the years, including Footloose, The Rose, Heavy Metal and Twister (the latter with Van Halen).
9) “Three Lock Box”/“I Don’t Need Love” (1983) [Tie] These two made nice bookends on the Three Lock Box album.
8) “Heavy Metal” (1981) Unlike Don Felder’s “Heavy Metal” song from the Heavy Metal film soundtrack, Sammy’s actually lives up to its title.
7) “Two Sides Of Love” (1984) This one had all the makings of a big hit single, but wasn’t, for some reason. I always liked it, tho…
6) “Privacy” (1987) Loved the bass line on this one, provided by Edward Van Halen. One of the better tracks off that album Hagar let some MTV contestant re-title I Never Said Goodbye.
5) “Bad Motor Scooter” [Montrose] (1973) Ronnie Montrose was a total Melvin to let Hagar ever get away from him. But, Ronnie suffered from that all-too-common affliction, Nugent Syndrome, where a fine lead guitarist can’t bear to share the spotlight with a talented and/or good-looking lead singer. I don’t see where Montrose (the band) accomplished a whole lot after Sam went solo. Meantime, BMS is one bad jam…
4) “Missing You” [HSAS] (1984) Not to be confused with the hit song John Waite had out at the same time with the same title. According to Sammy in the book, Schon, Shrieve and Aaronson were nice to work with, but they never totally jelled together as a unit, thus the alliance was short-lived. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think this was just another Hagar solo track, and it’s a pretty good one. Surprising that it wasn’t a bigger hit, considering Journey’s gi-normous popularity at the time.
3) “I Can’t Drive 55” (1984) Should be re-titled “I Can’t Drive 65”. The video for this one was funny in places too.
2) “There’s Only One Way To Rock” (1981) This is the one that made me really sit up and take notice of Sammy Hagar when it came out. Excellent album and concert lead-off hitter too, especially when Sammy hooked up with Eddie Van Halen in their dueling guitar solo bits in concert. It was lifted from the album Standing Hampton, whose title is a British euphemism for "hard-on". I'd much rather have a Standing Hampton than a Little Hampton...
1) “V.O.A.” (1984) I love this middle-finger pointed directly at the Middle East and Soviet Union, even though it’s terribly dated now and no longer relevant in the case of the latter. In ‘84, I actually believed the line “You in the Middle East—be on your toes/We’re bound to strike, everybody’s knows” and that the U.S. could resolve a major conflict in one fell swoop. But, as history in the last ten years has taught us, it don’t quite work that way. Ditto goes for the line “We think as one—there’s no contest.” Still a cool song, anyway…

Travelblog, St. Louis

2011-06-22T17:50:00.009-06:00

“You ain’t seen nothin’, ‘til you been in a motel, baby, like a Holiday Inn.”—E. John/B. Taupin, “Holiday Inn”, 1971

In all my years of traveling, I’ve always wanted to stay at a Holiday Inn, but for whatever reason, I never had until this past weekend. I usually just Motel 6 it on my road trips, or occasionally upgrade to Red Roof Inn now and then. My original plan was to stay at the Red Roof along I-44 in St. Louis near “The Hill” (more about that below) for $75 a night, but I waited a day before booking that rate, and during that time, the rate suddenly shot up $14 a night for the same freakin’ room! That’s when I decided to give myself a late birthday present by splurging a little and booking the Holiday Inn right next door to Red Roof for $110 a night instead, and it was totally worth it because the accommodations were outstanding. My room came with a terrific panoramic view from the balcony of the surrounding area to the north and east of I-44, including the former site of the old St. Louis Arena (which once dominated the horizon straight above the highway billboard sign in the foreground in this pic), and I merely needed to lean over the balcony and look to my right to see downtown and the Arch. Meanwhile at Red Roof, I would’ve had an enthralling view of the Public Storage facility next door (and no balcony). In addition, I got free Internet access in the lobby and two free breakfasts out of the deal, as well as a killer LG plasma TV in the room with 80 channels. My only two real complaints were the elevators (too slow and not enough of them for a building that size) and the hotel bar—closing time @ 10PM on a Saturday? Ditto goes for the Dirt Cheap liquor store just across the parking lot. Seriously, people?!? I bet even Amish bars are open later than that…

ARTY-FARTY!

On my way to those free breakfasts at HI, I passed by this wall just off the lobby, which is evidently someone’s ersatz tribute to Shredded Wheat! A Lucky Charms display might have livened the place up a bit more…

“THIS USED TO BE A PLAYGROUND…”

And here be 5700 Oakland Avenue, the above-mentioned former site of St. Louis Arena, which I paid tribute to in a 2007 post here. My friends and I spent several nights there doing Blues hockey and Steamers soccer games in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and it was my favorite old-school sports venue outside of K.C. Located just across I-64/U.S. 40 from Forest Park, it now houses a semi-bland mixed-use complex comprised of office buildings, retail outlets, loft apartments and a Hampton Inn hotel. The Arena used to sit in a bit of a hole, but they’ve since raised the ground level so it slopes up north toward Oakland Avenue, where I snapped the current photo. I also didn’t realize it until I drove through the place that they actually built the whole development around the original footprint of The Arena itself, leaving a nice green common ground in the middle, thus you can walk your dog and let him/her poop right where center ice once was! They’ve also placed a nice fountain dedicated to organ donors and transplant recipients approximately where the back wall of the old building was situated. That’s all fine and dandy, but unless I missed something, there’s no plaque, no Blue Note, no historical marker, no nothing on the site to commemorate the “Old Barn”—and that’s just plain wrong! The only hint of its existence anywhere nearby is the Arena Liquor store around the corner on Hampton Avenue. Rather surprising too, considering how much the city of St. Louis usually reveres and honors its rich history. Let’s get on the ball (and/or puck, in this case), St. Lou!

CAN YOGI COME OUT AND PLAY?

Barely a mile south of The Arena is the locality in St. Louis known as “The Hill” (or “Dago Hill” before it became politically incorrect), an area heavily populated by those of Italian descent. I’d heard of The Hill for many years, but never knew where it was located until recently, and I feel like a real dolt now, because for years I’ve driven up and down Hampton Avenue (the western boundary of The Hill) and never knew I’d been passing right by it all that time—there’s definitely A hill going up Hampton, but I never realized it was THE Hill! Anyway, you’re looking at the boyhood home of one Lawrence Peter Berra, Hall of Fame catcher and King of the Malapropism. It’s only natural that he and fellow catcher/character Joe Garagiola would become such lifelong close friends, because they literally lived right across Elizabeth Street from each other (I was standing in front of Joe's place when I snapped this photo). Liz Street was also home to one other rather famous St. Louisan…

WHERE’S THAT JOE BUCK?!?

Down at the east end of that same block on Elizabeth Street resided one Jack Buck, legendary Cardinals play-by-play man, in this classy little brick abode. I’m assuming this is the boyhood home of current Fox Sports announcer Joe Buck as well. What’s so cool about The Hill is even though most of its homes are over 90 years old, not a one of them is run-down, and it’s a very clean and safe area for being in the inner-city. That’s a whole different story north of downtown and east of the river, but the south central part of St. Louis is very quaint and fun to roam around in. This little tour turned out to be a fun and educational gambit, and it didn’t cost me a freakin’ dime…

Meantime, I’m still doing my A-Z by song title thing on my iPod (which I started in March!) and I’m up to the W’s, so it was perfect timing that it tracked through all the “Walking” songs (“Walking In L.A.”, “Walking On Sunshine”, “Walking Down Your Street”, “Walking To New Orleans”, etc.) as I hoofed it through the streets of The Hill. Synchronicity personified…

“I DON’T TRUST NOTHIN’ BUT THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER”

If you won’t come to this river, then by dingies, this river will come to YOU! With all the recent heavy rains upstream along the Mighty Mississip, it’s overflowing just a skosh along the St. Louis riverfront. It’s not an unusual occurrence for the road in front of the Gateway Arch to be under water, but the scary part for me is this ain’t nothing compared to 1993 when the water reached up to the steps leading to the Arch. I would’ve been completely submerged in the spot where I stood to snap this pic at the foot of the famed Eads Bridge. Meanwhile, as I took this photo, my ever-prescient iPod—with no assistance from me whatsoever—kicked in with Bob Dylan’s “Watching The River Flow.” I swear, friends, I’m NOT making that up!

YOU’LL FIND YOUR THRILL…

…or you’re bound to, anyway, at Blueberry Hill, a nifty bar/restaurant/nightclub in the Delmar Loop entertainment district in west central St. Louis, yet another St. Louis “Hill” I was blissfully unaware of until now. It’s worth the visit just for their food alone, but the coolest part of BH is all the music and pop culture memorabilia they have on display throughout the place, which literally takes up its entire city block. They have a little of everything—Beatles collectibles (stuffed dolls, lunch boxes, etc.), old-school Pez dispensers, “Simpsons”/“Scooby-Doo”/“Star Trek”/“Star Wars” figurines, sports stuff and a dandy tribute to St. Louis native Chuck Berry, who STILL performs there once a month. Joe Edwards, the dude who runs the place, apparently knows all the stars, as well, and several walls at Blueberry Hill are covered with photos he had taken with them, everyone from Tina Turner to Barack Obama to Stan “The Man” Musial to Motorhead!

Mr. Edwards also took a page out of the Hollywood playbook by founding the St. Louis Walk Of Fame, which Blueberry Hill resides along. Unlike the Hollywood WOF, which merely lists the name of the honoree, each sidewalk star in the St. Louie version is accompanied by a brief bio, as they honor numerous famous St. Louisans. In addition to entertainers, people from other realms like sports, local history, architecture, the arts and culture are included as well. This was also quite educational for me—for example, I wasn’t aware that actor Robert Duvall was from St. Louis until I saw his star on the Walk. But just as with the Hollywood WOF, I have issues with some of the more questionable inductees, Cedric The Entertainer?!? Riiiiiiight. And there’s something warped about placing the likes of Nelly right next to Scott Joplin, but beyond that, the STLWOF is quite boffo, and Kansas City needs one of these—it would slot in perfectly in the new Power & Light District.

EAST ST. LOUIS, TOODLE-EWWW!

East St. Louis, Illinois doesn’t get its bad reputation for nothing, as evidenced by this crumbling edifice—one good windstorm could probably knock this whole damn thing over. It would be an appropriate venue for G. Carlin's "St. Louis Home For The Totally Fucked". Apart from Gary, Indiana, I don’t think I’ve ever seen an uglier and more dilapidated shithole of a town than ESL, which I cruised through on board the Metrolink commuter train. Just for kicks, I rode the entire length of the route, which extends eastward way the fuck over into Illinois to its terminus at Scott Air Force Base near the town of Shiloh. You get to view a little of everything on Metrolink—suburbia, office parks, freeways, tunnels, major sports venues, downtown/riverfront splendor, storm sewers, ghettos and cornfields. Great way to get around the city, too—it hits many of the major attractions in St. Louis, or at least gets you within walking distance of them.

NOT PICTURED HERE
Does anyone know the average number of beers announcer Mike Shannon goes through during a typical Cardinals game broadcast? I listened to parts of all three games this weekend with the Royals, and he sounded pretty incoherent most of the time…

I paid my first visit to Lumiere Place casino at Laclede’s Landing this weekend. For all the hype and hoopla about Lumiere, I was pretty unimpressed. Gaudy décor (for a casino, anyway), unattractive cocktail waitresses, bland-looking sports bar and an overpriced dinner buffet (which I passed on). Meh—I’ll stick with Harrah’s and Ameristar…

Why are there Gulf Oil logos on the outfield wall at Busch Stadium? There ain’t a Gulf station within three states of St. Louis, is there?

The mighty K-SHE 95 never fails to play some cool old song I’ve never heard before on their Sunday morning lost classics show whenever I’m in town. This time it was 10CC’s “Rubber Bullets” from 1973. I must take a few points off K-SHE, however, because of the 20-something chick DJ in the afternoon who was yapping about a new Jimi Hendrix DVD set that will feature his appearance on the “Dick Cavett Show” back in the day. Instead of ‘CAV-ut’, DJ chick pronounced Dick’s surname ‘Cuh-VETT’. Fail!

We Want The Funk!

2011-06-06T20:05:00.009-06:00

"You kids don't know Grand Funk? The wild shirtless lyrics of Mark Farner? The bong-rattling bass of Mel Schacher? The competent drumwork of Don Brewer? Oh, man!"—H.J. Simpson, 1996

Homer, my good friend, Mr. Brewer’s drumming was WAY more than competent. And he once sported the greatest white-man afro of all-time…

I haven’t done a band tribute in ages here, but since I recently read Billy James’ biography An American Band-The Story of Grand Funk Railroad, now’s as good a time as any. James was/is a longtime fan of the band and sought to get their story told, and overall, he did a pretty fair job in chronicling their history. One downside to the book is it was published in 1999, so it doesn’t cover the more recent history of GFR, which includes guitarist Mark Farner’s (apparently acrimonious) departure and subsequent replacement by former Kiss axe-man Bruce Kulick on guitar and vocalist Max Carl, who once was ever-so-briefly the lead singer for .38 Special in the late ‘80s. The other downside is how Mr. James is a tad biased! At times he puffed up the band to be way better than they really were! And his overuse of exclamation points where they weren’t appropriate throughout the book was more than a little annoying! (Sorry, couldn’t resist…)

The first Grand Funk song I ever recall hearing on the radio was “Footstompin’ Music” in 1972, which I thought was pretty cool, but the one that made me a fan for life was “We’re An American Band” the following summer. Even though I was only nine and didn’t know what a Chiquita from Omaha was (let alone who Sweet Sweet Connie or Freddie King were), I fell in love with that song from the get-go, from the cowbell intro to Farner’s opening riff to Craig Frost’s rhythmic organ figure to Mel Schacher’s rumbling bass to Don Brewer’s powerful lead vocals. GFR churned out plenty more hits over the next couple years and sounded great even on AM Top 40 radio. They were also one of the hottest concert attractions of the ‘70s, breaking house records at numerous venues and even selling out New York’s Shea Stadium in 1972 for the first time since The Beatles played there in ‘65. The band’s success was all the more impressive because early on they got virtually no support from the press or Rock radio—it was all pretty much via word-of-mouth that the Funk built up its extremely loyal fan base. The band’s success also confounded and rankled music critics no end—in particular the elitist know-it-alls at Rolling Stone—and the Railroad was often the target of unfair and biased (not to mention scathing) album and concert reviews.

For the longest time, I never understood why the critics loathed this band so much. However, after reading all about it, so to speak, and recently pirating their early CDs from the library and giving them a good long listening-to, I can now kinda see why they had issues with Grand Funk—to a point, anyway. Apart from the majestic 10-minute opus that was “I’m Your Captain/Closer To Home” in 1970, the bulk of Grand Funk’s output from their first four studio albums (On Time, Grand Funk, Closer To Home and Survival), sounded rather sloppy and amateur-ish to me. I struggle with a lot of GFR’s early stuff just as much as the critics did—I just don’t groove to their long, mopey “My-baby-done-left-me” bluesy jams like “Heartbreaker”, “Paranoid” (not to be confused with the Black Sabbath classic of the same name), “Mean Mistreater”, et al. The Book Of Rock Lists once ranked Grand Funk’s first live album (the cleverly-titled Live Album) as one of the Worst Live Albums of All-time, and for good reason—it was just a travesty of noise. Control-freak producer/money-laundering-schmuck manager Terry Knight’s constant hyping of the band didn’t exactly endear them to the Rock press either, thus their understandable disdain for the group. More on moron Knight later…

Having said all that, however, it’s no small coincidence that Grand Funk Railroad’s records improved immensely after they fired Knight in ’72 and began working with more experienced and dynamic producers like Todd Rundgren, Jimmy Ienner and Frank Zappa (yes, THAT Frank Zappa). They went for a cleaner and more commercial sound with shorter tracks, added old friend Craig Frost on keyboards to give more color to their music and Mark Farner reigned in his voice a bit and actually sang instead of half-shouting/half-singing like on the early records. Drummer Don Brewer also became more prominent by writing and/or singing lead on more songs than before, most notably on hit singles like “American Band”, “Shinin’ On” and “Some Kind Of Wonderful” (trading off with Farner on the latter), and frankly, I think his voice is far more interesting and superior than Farner’s anyway. But, by the time GFR’s albums became more polished and sophisticated, the critics had all pretty much closed their minds to anything GFR put out, regardless of its quality, thus the unjustified critical flogging continued unabated until the band broke up in 1977. No doubt those critics mourned the loss of their “whipping-band” back then in much the same way stand-up comedians were crying in their beer when the Dubya Administration ended.

Another facet of the band that may have rubbed the critics the wrong way was how Knight tried to spin Grand Funk Railroad as the new “spokesmen for America’s youth” as soon as the band hit the big-time, not to mention Farner’s outspoken political views, especially about protecting the environment, energy conservation, religion, et al. While he’s certainly entitled to say/do what he wants, I get so turned-off when people in the entertainment industry—especially Rock musicians—go on these “save-the-world” crusades simply because they suddenly have everyone’s attention. This same pretentiousness/ arrogance turned me off to people like U2, Jackson Browne, Neil Young and Don Henley (and even John Lennon, to a certain extent) for many many years. Sorry dudes, but you’re STILL just a Rock band/musician, and you’re naïve as hell if you think you’re going to change the world just because you have a microphone and/or a guitar in your hand. I don’t listen to music or attend concerts to hear some lecture/guilt trip about “stryofoam boxes for the ozone layer” or my fossil fuel-burning vehicle polluting the air, etc., and to be brutally honest, I don’t really give a rip about the rain forests, either. Sorry, Sting...

In spite of their on-going popularity, by our country’s Bicentennial, the “American Band”, ironically was running on fumes. Basically, they’d had it all/done it all by the Summer of ’76, and everyone in the group was pretty well burned-out, especially Farner. Perfectly understandable, though—almost constant touring and producing 11 studio albums and two live albums in roughly 6.5 years would do that to most any band, and Grand Funk quietly ceased to be in 1977 after releasing just one album for MCA. Messers. Frost, Brewer and Schacher (pronounced ‘shocker’) tried forming another band called Flint (as in their hometown in Michigan) in the late ‘70s, but little came of that venture. Craig Frost subsequently joined Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band in the ‘80s, as did Don Brewer for a brief time (that’s DB playing on Seger’s live take on CCR’s “Fortunate Son” on the Like A Rock album). A Grand Funk reunion (without Schacher or Frost) in the early ‘80s was a monumental flop and another one (with Schacher, but still without Frost) in 1996 was a semi-success, resulting in a benefit live recording called Bosnia, and a VH-1 “Behind The Music” appearance in 1999, but evidently the renewed good will didn’t last long amongst Mark, Don and Mel, and Farner returned to his farming/environmentalist/American Indian concerns and Christian music career while Don and Mel carried on with the aforementioned Kulick and Carl (and keyboardist Tim Cashion) as the current touring version of Grand Funk Railroad.

Oh yes, this Terry Knight character, aka Richard Terence Knapp. Grand Funk Railroad history actually began in the late ‘60s as Terry Knight & The Pack, which included Farner and Brewer at various times, and gained a regional following in the Michigan-Ohio area in particular. TK&TP recorded a few minor hit singles, including “I (Who Have Nothing)” on the Cameo-Parkway label in its dying days, where they were label-mates of one young Bob Seger, as well. Knight couldn’t carry a tune with a handle, so he got more into the production side of the music business, working with acts like ? And The Mysterians, whose latter-day touring band included Mel Schacher, whom Farner and Brewer snapped up in a heartbeat when they searched for a bass player. After getting Grand Funk Railroad rolling down the tracks, Knight also produced their rather infamous Capitol label-mates Bloodrock, whose 1971 post-plane crash death dirge “D.O.A.” is a macabre classic of its own kind. TK also found he was well-suited to work the business side of music as well—a little too well, one might say. And what a charming gentleman he seemed to be, based on his interview bytes on “BTM” and unrepentant attitude about his management practices with GFR, saying: “The media have always looked at Terry Knight as wearing the black hat. That doesn’t bother me as long as I can wear the black hat to the bank every week.” In reality, he swindled the band out of millions of dollars between 1969-72, and screwed them over in some investment deals as well. When he was fired by the band in 1972 once they realized how much he was skimming from the top, Knight showed his true colors by morphing into a litigation whore, suing Mark, Don and Mel left and right for every little transgression. Then he pissed away all the money he made off GFR on drugs, booze and women. On top of that, his musical acumen was limited at best, hence the often sparse production values on the early Grand Funk albums. Terry Knight was murdered in 2004 while trying to defend his daughter from a knife attack by her estranged boyfriend. Apparently he at least still had SOME chivalry left in him, but he came across to me as a real asshole.

MY ALL-TIME GRAND FUNK TOP 10:
10) Gimme Shelter (1971) Serviceable remake of the Stones’ classic from a couple years before and one of Don Brewer’s first lead vocals with GFR. The track would’ve sounded better without Knight’s pedestrian watered-down productions, especially the drums, which sound really timid here.
9) Pass It Around (1976) Wonderful track that I recently discovered off the Good Singin’, Good Playin’ album, on which they worked with Mr. Zappa. What a pleasant surprise this record was—it certainly lived up to its title, but was totally overlooked by both radio and critics alike, and this sadly was more or less the end of the line for the Railroad (pun intended). “Pass It Around” features great vocals from Brewer, and I love the overall attitude and feel of it, thus it went straight to my iPod after one listen. For a band that was supposedly in total burnout mode at the time, they sure sounded rejuvenated here.
8) Rock ‘N’ Roll Soul (1973) Great song in spite of lame lyrics like “It’s kinda funky like an old-time movie…” Are old-time movies really all that funky?
7) Bad Time (1975) This one might have been a tad too Pop-sounding for hardcore Funk fans, but I always liked it. Mark Farner’s vocals had really matured by this point and he sounded so much better here than he did on the early records. No one realized it at the time, but this was GFR’s final sniff of the Top 40.
6) The Loco-Motion (1974) GFR took a bit of a chance by doing this one, and some die-hard fans did look upon them as sellouts, but you can’t argue with success. Grand Funk managed to cover this song and make it their own without sounding schmaltzy.
5) Shinin’ On (1974) Lots of echo here, and a very underrated track. Don Brewer’s growing confidence as a vocalist is quite evident too.
4) Footstompin’ Music (1972) Craig Frost’s recorded debut with Grand Funk, “Footstompin’” actually started off as just a jam and morphed into a hit single. I was always partial to the “Does ev-ar-ee-body want to?” part.
3) Walk Like A Man (1974) The ONLY Top 40 song I can think of with the word “cock” in it! I truly hope Don Brewer lives another 36 years so we can see if he still truly can “strut like a cock” until he's 99.
2) Some Kind Of Wonderful (1975) Have to admit I got kinda burned-out on this one for a while because it got played to death on Classic Rock radio, but it’s still a great track. I always like exaggerating the high-pitched “My baby! My baby!” bits while singing along with Farner during the “Can I get a witness?” section.
1) We’re An American Band (1973)/I’m Your Captain/Closer To Home (1970) [Tie] I can’t choose between these two, so it’s a flat-footed tie. These two are such favorites of mine that they’d both easily land in the higher reaches of my Top 100 Songs of All-Time list, if I ever get around to compiling them. I already discussed “American Band” above—Rock ‘N’ Roll 101, without question. As for “Captain”/”Home”, oddly enough, I didn’t really discover this absolute masterpiece until the early ‘80s, but I want this sucker played at my funeral—if I actually DO die, that is!

Concert #110

2011-05-17T19:39:00.019-06:00

The Rainmakers/The SnotRockets (Saturday, May 14, 2011—Knuckleheads) Ticket price: $15.00

I wasn’t real sure what to expect heading into my fourth concert encounter with Kansas City’s most successful Rock ‘N’ Roll band ever, the mighty Rainmakers. It had been 13 years since I last saw them perform, which is almost as long as they’ve been inactive. The band has reunited this year (sort of) to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their 1986 debut album on PolyGram, The Rainmakers, by releasing a new CD entitled 25 On. I was a late-bloomer as Rainmakers fans go, not really getting into their repertoire until the early/mid-‘90s after they'd broken up. Not sure where my head was at in the late ‘80s when they were regularly packing the Uptown Theater and/or Parody Hall, receiving regular airplay on the old KY-102, and getting to “play the gee-tar on the MTV” now and then via their videos and even developing a rabid following in Scandinavia, of all places (hence the title of their live album, Oslo-Wichita). Hell, the Swedish Chef probably caught them in concert before I ever did, and I’ll plead total ignorance for missing out on their original heyday! To wit (to what?), I never got to see the original linuep of lead guitarist Steve Phillips, singer/leader/rhythm guitarist Bob Walkenhorst, bassist Rich Ruth (originally known as the trio Steve, Bob & Rich) and drummer Pat Tomek—play in concert.

And oddly enough, I STILL haven’t! When I saw them play on those three previous occasions circa., 1997-98, Ruth had departed to Nashville to pursue other musical avenues, and was replaced by Michael Bliss for their 1997 CD Skin. Well, now RR’s back, but Phillips could not participate this time because of commitments with his current outfit, a Celtic-Rock band called the Elders. D’oh!! Guitarist Jeff Porter fills his spot now.

The boys got right down to bidness Saturday night by reeling off “Rockin’ At The T-Dance” , “Downstream” and “Let My People Go-Go” in succession, and I thought to myself, “Man, they’re knocking out the biggies early tonight.” Two songs later, my night was totally made when they whipped out “Big Fat Blonde”, a song I never expected to hear. Although “BFB” is a big fat fan favorite, Walkenhorst had sworn off playing it live and has expressed regrets in recent years for writing it, citing how its sexist overtones now clash with his current pro-woman sensibilities. I've never taken its lyrics seriously anyway, in much the same way no one really takes Queen's "Tie Your Mother Down" seriously. Nobody's tying any mothers down, and by extension, there ain't that many guys clamoring for the Anna Nicole Smiths of the world—It’s just a damn funny song to me, and the crowd went bonkers doing the “Sooo-weee!” bits. Check out the youngstas in this here video performing the song back in the day. Anyway, it took me a while to realize they were playing the first album in its entirety in original track sequence to begin the show, and following the closer track "Information" , Walkenhorst thanked everyone for “letting it be part of the soundtrack of your lives.”

Next up, they test-drove some songs from 25 On, which I have yet to get a hold of, but I sure liked what I heard from it, especially “Half A Horse Apiece”. The second and third albums—Tornado and The Good News And The Bad News, respectively—were then finally visited, including two of my Rainmakers favorites, “The Wages Of Sin” and “Reckoning Day”, with the latter featuring the repeated refrain, “Get outta my way!”, which came in rather handy as I emerged from the restroom and made my way back through the crowd to my seat! The only real glaring omissions from the set list were “Tornado Of Love”, “Snakedance” and “I Talk With My Hands” (all off Tornado), but the surprise inclusions of “The Width Of A Line” and “Another Guitar” from 1994’s Flirting With The Universe made up for them. Much to my astonishment, Skin was the only Rainmakers album that they ignored altogether. A time-honored Rainmakers tradition also continued—during their encores these guys love to tackle a couple AM Top 40 golden oldies (often welded together with “Drinkin’ On The Job”). Past selections include the likes of The Fireballs’ “Bottle Of Wine”, the Monkees’ “Daydream Believer”, C.C.R.'s "Proud Mary" and Chuck Berry’s “Memphis” and I've heard that somewhere that back in the day, the band even took on Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and Bob Walkenhorst sang it word-for-word! I’d give anything to hear a tape of that today. Anyway, this year’s Way-Back Machine picks-that-clicked were a raucous rendition of Elvis’ “Burning Love”, as well as Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away”. Hey, Bob, if you’re out there reading this and taking requests for next time, might I suggest the Blues Magoos’ “We Ain’t Got Nothin’ Yet”? Youse guys would sound awesome on that little ‘60s rave-up…

Looking more than a skosh grayer than the last time I saw him, Brother Walkenhorst was his usual energetic/animated self on stage, and he also displayed his typical good-humored banter between songs. As mentioned, this was my first time seeing Rich Ruth on stage, and he acquitted himself quite well on the bass, and also filled in nicely on vocals in place of Steve Phillips on “Nobody Knows”. I couldn’t see much of Pat Tomek because my view of him was blocked most of the night, but he sounded rock steady on the skins. As for Phillips’ replacement, Jeff Porter, he wasn’t too bad on lead guitar, but didn’t necessarily blow me away, either, and I definitely missed Steve’s distinctive slide playing.

This was my first experience at Knuckleheads, which is a rather unique venue. It’s an indoor/outdoor nightclub with the stage outside at the west end of the block. Technically, our seats weren’t actually IN the venue itself, but for larger shows like this, K-heads cordons off the adjoining street to allow for expansion of their seating area, and in spite of sitting on what is normally a city sidewalk by day, our view was just fine at stage left, about 20 yards from the stage. I also rather enjoyed our close proximity to the $3 beer stand a mere 15 feet away! The sound was outstanding too, apart from the first ten minutes of the Rainmakers set, which was a bit too bass-y before they corrected it. The downside to Knuckleheads is the horrid part of town it’s located in, an area called the East Bottoms, with ‘bottom’ being the operative term. To use a line from a song played early on in the Rainmakers' set, we were in "the lower parts of beautiful downtown Doomsville, baby," as you have to drive through industrial parks and W.T.H. (White Trash Heaven) to get there, and the venue itself literally abuts an active railroad line, thus Casey Jones and Union Pacific came chugging by at regular intervals all night. The crowd was estimated at around 600, which justified adding a second show on Sunday night. In spite of the unseasonably cool weather (upper 40s by show’s end), everyone seemed to go home happy, including my good friend Phil, who for one of the rare times, out-imbibed yours truly!

Opening the show were K.C.’s own SnotRockets (every city should have their own SnotRockets, doncha think?), fronted by local radio personality Doug Medlock on guitar and vocals. They played a snappy 30-minute set of edgy Reverend Horton Heat-esque Rockabilly and were quite good. High point of their set might have been their rather humorous rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Daddy Sang Bass”.

SET LIST (Incomplete and kinda-sorta in sequence): Rockin’ At The T-Dance/Downstream/ Let My People Go-Go/ Doomsville/Big Fat Blonde/Long Gone Long/The One That Got Away/Government Cheese/Drinkin’ On The Job/Nobody Knows/Information/Given Time/Half A Horse Apiece/Like Dogs/Wages of Sin/Small Circles/Spend It On Love/The Lakeview Man/Another Guitar/Reckoning Day/Shiny Shiny/Width of a Line/Hoo-Dee-Hoo. ENCORE: Burning Love/Not Fade Away/One More Summer

A Salute To NFL Films

2011-04-07T19:50:00.012-06:00

I’m a little surprised I haven’t done a blog tribute to one of my all-time favorite sports entities, the good people at NFL Films. Hard to believe they’ve been serving the National Football League for almost 50 years, and there is no equivalent in any other sport to their peerless documentation of NFL games since it was founded by Ed Sabol in 1962. I’ve always said my “dream job” would be head film librarian for NFL Films, where I could have access to everything they’ve ever produced, because I could spend hours on end watching those old highlight reels (especially from the ‘60s and ‘70s). Unfortunately, I don’t live near Mt. Laurel, New Jersey, where the company is headquartered. Maybe I should move there—I’d be closer to my beloved NJ Devils too!

NFL Films was initially called Blair Motion Pictures (named after Sabol’s daughter) and Ed bought the rights for $3,000 to film the 1962 NFL Championship game between the Giants and Packers at Yankee Stadium. Then-commissioner Pete Rozelle was impressed enough with the results that he brought BMP on board to film the action at all NFL games, and the name was eventually changed to NFL Films. Sabol immediately hired his son Steve, who many now know as the face of NFL Films on their many compilation videos, including the wonderful “Lost Treasures” series. The younger Sabol served as camera operator as well as editor, and in the early days of this venture, a lot of what the Sabols and their crew did was trial-and-error when it came to the equipment they used, camera angles they shot from, who and what they emphasized on the field (close-ups vs. wide shots, for example) and the film editing process, not to mention enduring harsh weather conditions—it never dawned on anyone initially that film freezes and cameras can jam when it’s 10-below outside! It was quite a learning curve, but over time, the classic NFL Films presentation style evolved into the model of consistency and class that football fans have become familiar with today.

I came of age right when NFL Films was hitting its stride in the early ‘70s in conjunction with the AFL-NFL merger, and it’s my favorite era of highlights to watch over and over again. I became addicted to them via several avenues, including the syndicated “This Week In Pro Football”, hosted by Pat Summerall and the late Tom Brookshier, where Pat and Brookie would recap the previous week’s NFL action, as well as the old “Sports Challenge” quiz show hosted by Dick Enberg. I think a lot of people’s first big exposure to NFL Films (exposure/film pun partially intended!) was Howard Cosell’s venerable Halftime Highlights feature during “Monday Night Football”, where his “He…could…go…all…the…way!” and “Sir Francis Tarkenton—right there!” calls while narrating the previous day’s action became the stuff of legend. For NFL Films, it was a fairly Herculean task back then to round up the footage from the selected games from all across the country as soon as Sunday’s contests concluded, get them all to New Jersey, and edit them down into the 10-minute MNF highlight package in just over 24 hours.

The early ‘70s/merger era was by far the most interesting to me because of all the changes that took place and altered the landscape of pro football. You had new match-ups of teams who’d never faced each other before, like Miami vs. New Orleans, Philadelphia vs. Houston or Denver vs. the L.A. Rams. This was also the period before the plastic multi-purpose stadium boom of the ‘70s, so most teams were still playing in their original home parks, or in the case of the Boston/New England Patriots, seemingly playing in a different stadium every year. While all those new venues were under construction, the Philadelphia Eagles still called Franklin Field home, the Bengals played at tiny Nippert Stadium at the U. of Cincinnati, the Cowboys were still in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas and the Patriots hovered between Fenway Park, Harvard’s Alumni Field and Boston U.’s Nickerson Field. The irony here is all six of those stadiums are STILL standing and still in use, while the facilities that replaced them—Veterans Stadium, Riverfront Stadium, Texas Stadium and Schaefer/Sullivan/Foxboro Stadium, respectively—are all either parking lots or vacant lots now.

I also love viewing those one-time occurrences like when the Dallas Cowboys visited the Bills at ancient War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo (and even had a brawl!), the San Diego Chargers playing the Giants at old Yankee Stadium, and especially seeing the Washington Redskins and Pittsburgh Steelers in their lone appearances against the Chiefs at my beloved Municipal Stadium here in K.C. It was also fascinating to see Denver’s Mile High Stadium when it was still essentially a minor league baseball park prior to it’s mid-‘70s expansion or when Busch Stadium in St. Louis had real grass the first time. I love seeing all those wonderful Vikings tilts in the snow at old Met Stadium in Bloomington, the beauty of the Detroit Lions playing home games outdoors on real grass (okay, real dirt/mud) at Tiger Stadium and even the heresy of the Chicago Bears playing on AstroTurf at Soldier Field. Today’s fancy new stadiums with all the bells and whistles just can’t compete with the old joints in my eyes. I’ll take San Fran.’s old Kezar Stadium any day over the new Meadowlands joint, even as nice as it seems to be.

The other aspect I love about the post-merger era was the helmets and uniforms the teams sported back then, some of which I think are light years better than today’s overblown and gaudy duds (Eagles, Seahawks, Bengals, atten-shun!). I love seeing the Eagles in their white helmets with the green wings and the Redskins with the yellow helmets with the “R” on them that they wore for only two seasons (1970-71). The Houston Oilers had silver helmets for a brief time back then that I thought looked really cool, and of course you had the San Diego Chargers in their famed power blue uni’s. Given their popularity now, I don’t see why they don’t just revert back to them permanently—their current navy blue uniforms are rather boring to me. And am I the only person who loves the L.A. Rams in just blue-and-white (during the Deacon Jones/Merlin Olsen/Roman Gabriel era) before they added the gold to their uniforms in 1973? Cool uni's to me, anyway. Other subtle stuff is fun to examine in the old reels too, like when there were no names on the players’ jerseys, none of the fans in the stands sported their team colors and the coaches wore suits and ties on the sidelines (with the ever-dapper Hank Stram of the Chiefs being the trend-setter). It’s funny to see the goalposts in the fronts of the end zones instead of the back, not to mention those cheesy facemasks the players wore back then—I’m amazed there weren’t some major facial disfigurations in those days! What’s also amazing about NFL Films is their ability to make a highlight reel look timeless. Apart from the helmets, uniforms and stadiums, their game films from this past season don’t really look all that much different than the ones they shot 30 or 40 years ago.

As beautiful as their visuals were, no discussion of NFL Films is complete without mentioning two fundamental elements of style on the audio side that made their presentations special: the background music and the narration by the late John Facenda. I’m a non-believer, but if there really is a God, then I'm pretty sure this is what He sounds like. Facenda’s commanding baritone added that extra touch of drama to even the most mundane contest, like Super Bowl V, aka the “Blooper Bowl” between Baltimore and Dallas, for example. Facenda was a longtime TV newsman in Philadelphia and huge football fan, and since the Sabols also hailed from Philly, the match was a natural. He didn’t write “The frozen tundra of Lambeau Field…” but JF made it sound like his own. Meantime, Facenda’s narrations were laid over some wondrous music beds, many of which were composed by musician Sam Spence. Most of these musical pieces were 2-3 minutes in length, and they fit the various highlight packages like a glove. My personal favorite piece was called “The Over The Hill Gang”, and many are instantly recognizable, like the Oakland Raiders’ theme "Autumn Wind" . These recordings were even available on vinyl albums back in the '70s, and I was ever so pleased when much of the NFL Films music catalog was re-released on CD in the early ‘00s in a classy 10-disc box set called Autumn Thunder.

Another technical concept NFL Films pioneered was the use of mircophones by coaches and players during games. Their first full-fledged effort was one of the most memorable, as Chiefs coach Hank Stram became an instant hit with his constant jabbering on the sidelines during Super Bowl IV vs. the Vikings, thus introducing "matriculate that ball down the field, boys" and "65 Toss Power Trap" into the pro football vernacular. Hank was a real hoot, but the all-time sideline classic for me was the late Lou Saban on the Denver sideline pitching a fit over a botched Bronco play and exclaiming, "They're killin' me, Whitey, they're KILLIN' ME!" Whitey was assistant coach Whitey Dovell, who ironically, later served on the Chiefs staff. Miked players and coaches are all quite commonplace now, but in 1970, this was considered revolutionary.

NFL Films’ best-selling videos are their “Follies” blooper reels, which oddly enough, the NFL brass was initially very reluctant to make public. The league was overly-paranoid about image and didn’t want the sport or its participants to be made out to look bad, but when Sabol and crew privately screened these films for the actual players in the late ‘60s, they found them utterly hilarious and even begged to see more. And when it came to the stellar plays in NFL history, NFL films provided those classic tight spiral passes caught on film by the likes of cinematographer Ernie Ernst and other iconic shots like Franco Harris’ “Immaculate Reception” (also by Ernst), Dallas Cowboys’ head coach Tom Landry silhouetted in profile against the Texas Stadium crowd, and Lynn Swann’s acrobatic catches in Super Bowl X. My favorite shot is the one of Raiders defensive back Willie Brown (see photo) returning his INT in Super Bowl XII chugging straight toward the camera while his helmet bobbed around on his head with every stride and late Raiders’ play-by-play man Bill King screamed “Old man Willie!! He's gonna go all the way!” The “Lost Treasures” series that Steve Sabol narrates is must-see viewing for any NFL fan, as he chronicles the off-beat and quirky stuff the company accumulated in its vaults over the years, like an early interview with wide-eyed rookie Terry Bradshaw (when he had hair!), fashion faux-pas from the ‘70s like Tom Landry and Don Shula in tacky plaid slacks and even a feature on the short-lived and ill-fated World Football League. The three-DVD “Inside The Vaults” collection is an excellent starter set for the uninitiated on “Lost Treasures” and is readily available.

Ed Sabol is now 94 years old and—almost too late—has been selected for enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame this year. Ed has been long-since retired and Steve Sabol is now president of NFL Films, a company that is far more well-run than the outfit it services sometimes, given the currenly NFL labor strife. I'm saddened to learn that Steve was recently diagnosed with a brain tumor, and I hope he's able to recover—I thoroughly enjoy his stories from back in the day on the videos. One also hopes that when the Sabols are gone that the baton will be passed to someone who can carry on the dynasty and uphold its stellar reputation.

Flea Circus or Flee 'Circus'?--an addendum

2011-03-31T22:10:00.014-06:00

After further review in ye olde Circus magazine issues, I found some more interesting meat to chew on...

SKIP TO MY LOU? BETTER YET, JUST SKIP HIM ALTOGETHER!
I’m a little surprised I didn’t tackle the spectre that was Lou O’Neill, Jr.’s “Back Pages” column in my previous Circus blog post. It’s just as well that I saved it for now, because I have quite a bit to discuss. Lou, Jr. was your basic gossip hound/rumor monger—the Rona Barrett/Hedda Hopper of Rock music, so to speak—who tried to pass himself off as some sort of all-knowing authority on the Rock biz, all the while injecting his own unsolicited opinions along the way. A feeling of déjà vu came over me while I perused various “Back Pages” pages, like I’d read this same kind of stuff even more recently than the ‘70s and ‘80s and then it hit me: this guy’s writing style was almost a carbon-copy of yet another gossip maven I greatly loathe, former Kansas City Star columnist/column-inch-waster, Hearne Christopher, Jr.! I detailed my distaste for the great and powerful Hearne in a blog piece here a couple years ago, and as I re-read O’Neill’s tripe, I marveled at how these two Juniors both used the same arcane phrases like “Heard on the streets…”, “Inside skinny/scoop”, “In the know…” and “Rumor has it…” so frequently that I began to wonder if they’re not the same person. And when not-so-sweet Lou’s ego got as big as his fat head, his columns started featuring photos of him taken with various and sundry music and entertainment people, just to enhance his credibility and prove how “hip” he was, as if to say, “Dig me, I had my picture taken with Joan Jett—how do ya like of me now?” Sorry Lou, a dork is still a dork, no matter whom one poses with.

Anyway, here’s a little compilation of Lou’s gems:

“’Music Must Change’ is sure to be one of the most talked-about Who songs ever recorded.”—Issue # 194, October 17, 1978

Riiiiight. I’ve never heard all that many jaws flapping over “Music Must Change”, even amongst rank-and-file Who fans like myself. I always thought it was one of the weaker tracks off Who Are You, and far too many people (music critics, especially) were reading way way way too much into Pete Townshend’s lyrics here, claiming it supposedly signaled some kind of seismic shift in The Who’s sound and/or in Rock music in general. Keith Moon’s untimely passing right after it came out is merely a coincidence, but some people (O’Neill included) considered MMC to be some sort of premonition of his demise by Townshend, all because Moon didn’t even play on the track. At most, it was quite possibly The Who’s quirkiest number, and to me it’s simply a footnote in their career instead of a revered classic or turning point.

“We’re calling it his strongest effort since Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. What we’re talking about, of course, is Elton John’s new album, A Single Man. It’s obvious that the Madman From Across The Water went to the well with this record. His back was to the wall. But the really great talents bear down and thrive under this kind of pressure: Reg Dwight was no exception. Elton has definitely salvaged a large portion of his cherished “progressive” image with this new album. It’s a commercial hit! The single “Part-Time Love” is also climbing the charts”—Issue 203, December 19, 1978

Oh, turn off the hype machine already, Lou! Chuck the clichés, while you’re at it, too. And in the words of the dude who Clint Eastwood wanted to make his day in Sudden Impact: “Who is ‘we’, sucka?” I hated the way this smarmy hack always used “we”, “our” and “in our judgment” to make his column sound like it represented the consensus opinion of the entire Circus staff when it was merely his own personal opinions.

A Single Man was the beginning of E. John’s lost-in-the-wilderness period when he ceased writing with lyricist Bernie Taupin for about three years. After five prolific years where virtually everything he touched turned to gold and/or platinum, the bottom was bound to fall out sometime, thus by 1977-78, Elton fell and fell hard. He was also suffering the unfair-yet-predictable backlash for coming out as being gay, which did some major damage to his career for a while. He even ditched his trademark crazy eyewear in favor of contacts, got his ear pierced and tried to look and act all serious all of a sudden, as the cover photo of ASM makes him look like some snooty aristocrat—a far cry from “Captain Fantastic” three years earlier. He’d have been better served to just take an extended break from the music biz, but EJ still owed MCA more albums, so onward he trudged, working temporarily with lyricist Gary Osborne. Meantime, Elton was lashing out in the press at other acts like Jethro Tull and the Moody Blues for putting out contractual obligation albums when all the while he was doing the very same thing! The man himself has freely admitted what a miserable fuck he was during that time—he was so jaded, bored, drugged-out and burned-out and it’s obvious his heart wasn’t totally in his music at that point.

Getting back to Lou’s commentary: "Strongest effort since Yellow Brick Road?!?" Hardly! Elton’s intervening LPs Captain Fantastic and Rock Of The Westies were as solid as anything else he’d done to that point, and I've always thought Caribou was unfairly drubbed merely because it was such an inevitable letdown after GYBR—a victim of unreasonably-high expectations. Of his post-Yellow Brick Road studio output up to that point, only Blue Moves proved unsatisfying to me—it was too unfocused and would’ve been better as a single LP instead of a double album laden with throwaway tracks. A Single Man did contain some good cuts, like “Part-Time Love” and one I thought could’ve been a hit single, “I Don’t Care”. The best track was the mostly-instrumental “Song For Guy”, which was indeed a song for a guy, but not in the way all the homophobes out there might have you believe—it was about a young man named Guy Burchette, who was a messenger/gopher in Elton’s entourage who was killed in a moped accident. Still and all, A Single Man wasn’t even as good as Caribou—let alone Yellow Brick Road—and was hardly the blockbuster “commercial hit" that Brother Lou cracked it up to be. “P/T Love” climbed those charts all the way to #22, btw. ASM was one of Elton’s more soulless and weaker efforts, IMHO. Things got worse before they got better for EJ, too—witness the utterly pathetic 1979 disco album Victim Of Love that he pretty much phoned in—and it would be the early ‘80s before that cat named Hercules’ music would once again be relevant.

"Cheap Trick is playing with fire by utilizing pre-recorded tapes in concert. Ask another big touring band (this one from England) what happens when the word gets out that you can’t perform songs ‘live’ without some help from the friendly Sony tape deck. And besides it’s deceitful to allow people to think you’re live when in reality, you’re not. ‘Nuff said.”—Issue #225, July 10, 1979

“’Nuff said” was yet another overused grating/irritating Jr. O’Neill catchphrase. No doubt he was referring here to The Who’s use of tapes of the synthesizer bits from “Baba O’Riley”, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and songs from Quadrophenia, while chastising Cheap Trick for doing the same on “Surrender”. Wait, it gets better…

“In our last issue we [‘I’?] stated flatly that Cheap Trick is utilizing pre-recorded tapes in concert. This is incorrect…the truth of the matter is that a Cheap Trick roadie, hiding behind the curtains backstage is actually playing the keyboards…Let’s not split hairs. CT is not using tapes. But I [what happened to ‘we’, asshole?] still believe what they’re doing is not kosher.”—Issue # 226, July 24, 1979

Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the sound of Lou O’Neill Jr. extricating his foot from his mouth! Queen always used taped accompaniment for the Scaramouche (sp?)/Galileo section of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and the intro to Elton John’s “Funeral For A Friend” was always canned in concert, yet Brother Lou never bitched about that, so why all the fuss about CT? Who the hell was this wanker to tell a band how to perform in concert anyhow? Was he a professional musician? Now I will say that if a band augmented their songs with tapes throughout an entire concert, I might have issues, but for one or two numbers that are especially difficult to reproduce live, who gives a Royal rip?

“The Rolling Stones are working on what probably will be their hottest record ever… Prediction: The album will not only be the commercial success everyone expects, but will also be hailed as a creative monster. Keith and Mick are working their magic again and the result is some of the greatest rock you’ll ever hear. There may be two Number 1 singles on the next Stones LP”— Issue # 230, September 18, 1979

More grist from Lou Jr.’s hype machine. That would be the fairly putrid Emotional Rescue debacle he refers to here. Ironic that “She’s So Cold” was the only true standout track on such a “hot” album, and there weren’t no #1’s on it either. Okay, the title track got to # 3, but it's not all that fondly-remembered amongst Stones fans. Apart from their consistently-lame live albums, Rescue may well have been the biggest flop in the Stones’ career. Lou’s prognostications had all the accuracy of Dubya’s WMD intelligence info. Please witness the following, as well…

“One cut [from Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk] that’s gotta be a single…is Lindsey Buckingham’s ‘Not That Funny.’ The tune can’t miss…”—Issue #234, November 27, 1979

Well, it did. “Not That Funny” even managed to live up to its title, too…

“It saddens and sickens us to see one of our all-time favorite bands sell out for the lure of corporate money”—Issue #276, February 28, 1983, in regards to The Who’s 1982 “Farewell” tour.

Uhhh, as if the Stones were any better? And again, there’s that “us” and “our” crap. Again, I can’t stand it when scribes try to make their personal opinions sound like those of the entire publication they’re printed in. It’s just phony pompous grandstanding in my book. It’s true that Pete Townshend was a money-grubber in the ‘80s, and I too, could’ve done without the Schlitz logos everywhere on that 1982 Who tour. But you know what? The man has been extremely generous in donating his money and time to major charities, like the Secret Policeman's Ball and Teenage Cancer Trust, among others. Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend is a lot of things, but he's certainly no Montgomery Burns.

Meantime, O’Neill also had this annoying habit of alluding to people in his little blurbs (usually under the heading “Inside Stuff or Secret Stuff”) without naming names, as if we readers could easily decipher whom he meant. For example: “A major label is very unhappy with its continuing large losses at a certain high-profile subsidiary. The ax-man is honing the blade right now.” Okay, Lou, care to elaborate a little more? Some 33 years later, I STILL don’t know who he was referring to here. What’s worse is he rarely, if ever, bothered to follow-up on any of these non-sequiturs in future issues.

To sum up,: just as with Hearne Christopher’s “Cowtown Confidential” column in the Star, Lou O’Neill, Jr.’s “Back Pages” column was the epitome of vapidity.

CRITICAL MASS IGNORANCE
Another example of why I view music critics merely as a subhuman species:

“The kids who are buying the album on the strength of ‘You Really Got Me’ won’t be disappointed even though the rest of the songs suffer by comparison.”—Dr. Oldie & Big Al, Issue 185, July 6, 1978, in their review of Van Halen’s classic debut album

First off, why does it take TWO people to review a record? Secondly, WTF?!? “The rest of the songs suffer by comparison”? Which Van Halen album were these stoners listening to? Surely not the one containing “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love”, “Jamie’s Cryin’”, “Runnin’ With The Devil”, “Atomic Punk”, “On Fire” and “I’m The One”. That album rocks from start to finish and is one of the greatest debut sets in Rock history. You can bet these same two doofuses (doofi?) were just raving about the latest Elvis Costello album at the time. As David Lee Roth himself accurately pointed out at the time, “The reason music critics like Elvis Costello so much is because most of them look like him…”

And here’s another…

“There is, though, one song that doesn’t work. It’s glaringly weak and its position (next to last) gives it away. Seemingly given the least attention, even synthesizers and a pounding sledgehammer beat can’t save “All My Love”. Plant’s vocals don’t strain or even reach, and there’s nothing to distinguish the song from a product of other rock groups.”—Shel Kagan, Issue # 230, September 18, 1979, in his review of Led Zeppelin’s In Through The Out Door

Hmmm, then why was this the most-frequently played track off ITTOD, Shel, baby? While not one of my big fave Zep tracks, it sure sounded like a hit to me for being so “glaringly weak”.

DRIBS & DRABS
Other misc. caca from the annals of Circus…

“But I won’t be part of an assembly-line show like Kirshner or ‘Midnight Special’ that’s going to put me on in front of a band like Kiss. The whole thing’s shoddy, and I’m not going to identify myself with acts like that. I’m not going on with the giant letters B-I-L-L-Y in back of me, or with the ‘Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert’ logo…it’s not the Kirshner rock concert…if I’m out there, it’s the Billy Joel rock concert.”—Billy Joel, Issue 200, November 28, 1978, on his reluctance to do TV appearances in the pre-MTV days

Bill, I believe you are killing me! Being the card-carrying Kiss fan I was at the time, I was majorly offended by “I’m not going to identify myself with acts like that.” Okay, in 2011 I can kinda see his point—Billy’s hardly a spectacle-type performer, and I respect that—but back then it came off to me as such an elitist put-down of my favorite band, and I took it wrong. Because of this quote, it would be a couple more years before I finally warmed up to Mr. Piano Man’s music and truly embraced him.

The recently-departed Mr. Kirshner didn’t get no love from The Cars, either: They turned down “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert”, according to Ric Ocasek, “because we couldn’t stand his fucking introductions.”—Issue # 229, September 4, 1979

They also passed on appearing on Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” for similar reasons: “they didn’t like the show.” Gotta admire their honesty, if nothing else…

One rather curious item I found in Circus was an advert for a special edition Kiss issue—published by Creem magazine! Why on earth would you accept advertisements from your direct competition?!? Burger King sure doesn’t hype Big Macs, now do they? Very strange…

In a feature about Styx (Issue # 235, December 11, 1979) Circus publicly outed bassist Chuck Panozzo about 22 years before he did so himself with a caption under his photo that read, “Panozzo’s dark looks can mask his gayer moods…” Nice job, Circus, I bet that just made CP’s day to see this in a national magazine while he was still struggling internally with his sexual identity. I just found this rather odd because it was so out of step with the article in the first place. I highly recommend Chuck’s otto-biography, The Grand Illusion: Love, Lies, and My Life With Styx, by the way—interesting stuff, not only about him, but the band, as well.

From the Strange Bedfellows Dept.: Issue #243, May 27, 1980, featured this photo featuring (L-R), Rick Derringer, Edgar Winter, Andy Warhol, Ted Nugent and—keep your smelling salts handy—Truman Capote! And Nugent has his arm around the latter, too, as he gazes longingly at Warhol! I always thought Theodocious Atrocious didn’t play for that team! And I'm clueless as to what event brought these five together in the first place.

From letter-writer D.W. in Pittsburgh in Issue #245, July 22, 1980: “There’s no excuse for [David Lee] Roth’s sickening arrogance and constant use of four-letter words. He needs lessons in manners, maturity and class.”
Uhhh, D-Dub, this is Rock ‘N’ Roll, not the Christian Science Reading Room, bud…

In an ad for Import LPs on sale, Black Sabbath’s Live At Last, their legendary ode to marijuana “Sweet Leaf” was listed as “Sweet Lease”! Good ol’ Ozzy and Geezer were really into rental properties in those days…

Issue #254, April 30, 1981, did a feature entitled, “The fiery return of The Who” in regards to the quite flaccid Face Dances album. Apart from John Entwistle’s contributions “The Quiet One” and “You”, the majorly disappointing Face Dances had all the spark and flame of a Zamfir album. Chalk that feature title up to the Circus hype machine. It’s no small coincidence that you can’t spell Face Dances without ‘feces’! I hereby quoth the “Men on Film” boys: “HATED IT!”

Issue # 256, June 30, 1981 had a bit on Ted Nugent’s new backing band, the D.C. (Detroit City) Hawks, which already featured three lead guitar players. “Some fuckin’ SWAT team, ain’t they?” Ted mused in his inimitably humble manner. Three guitarists plus Nugent—can you say OVERKILL? Ted quickly learned that bigger isn’t necessarily better, and by 1982, he wisely welcomed back his original singer/guitarist Derek St. Holmes and also added journeyman drummer Carmine Appice to his band.

Issue # 273, November 30, 1982: Circus printed a list of “10 records to shun at any cost” and one of them was Motorhead’s classic Ace Of Spades. But in the same article, they urged readers to rush out and nab those latest Gino Vannelli and Gary Numan releases. Surely they jest(ed)! Even dumber, Ace Of Spades wasn’t even Motorhead’s current release—it was already two years old by then and Lemmy and the boys had put out two subsequent albums by late ’82.

"Send In The Clowns"--An ersatz tribute to 'Circus' magazine

2011-03-16T17:53:00.012-06:00

Okay, I lied, I decided to get off my ass and post something new here after all!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I’m currently in the process of going through my personal archives, inventorying old belongings, purging stuff and reorganizing the rest, which includes the old Rock ‘N’ Roll periodicals I used to collect. Circus magazine, “The Leading Rock & Roll Bi-Weekly”, and/or “The Voice of American Youth” as they alternately dubbed themselves, is the one I read the most (along with Creem and Hit Parader, to a lesser extent), and it was my primary source for Rock news and music features back in the day. I bought my first copy of Circus in the summer of ’76 when I first got into Kiss and spotted Gene Simmons’ tongue on the front cover, and was a regular reader until the nether end of the ‘80s when Circus featured nothing but hair bands ad nauseam and ceased writing about under-the-radar musicians like Nick Lowe, John Hiatt and Dave Edmunds like they used to. Thumbing through these old issues here lately has brought back a ton of memories, which I will share here (in no particular order)…

CONCERT GUIDE Circus featured a Concert Guide in each issue with the latest tour dates for every major group/artist. And I do mean EVERY group or artist—along with the usual suspects like Aerosmith, Z.Z. Top and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Circus also included listings for people they never even featured in the magazine, like Waylon Jennings, Steeleye Span (who?) and Shirley Bassey (WTF?!?). Predictably, the guide was usually very inaccurate and already outdated by the time each issue hit your newsstand. The funniest part was how these editor clowns constantly mangled the names of the event venues in their listings. Kansas City concert-goers supposedly went somewhere called “Chief Stadium”, there was a “San Diego Coliseum” (aka, San Diego Sports Arena) and a “Ridgefield Stadium” near Cleveland, better known as Richfield Coliseum, former home of the Cleveland Cadavers. Toronto had a “C&E Coliseum” and Vancouver had a “P&E Coliseum” (to wit, CNE and PNE, respectively) and Seattle’s new domed stadium at the time was listed as just plain “Dome Stadium”. But my favorite bon mot of all was Chicago’s “Kaminsky Park”, home of the White Sox! Renamed for Electric Light Orchestra’s Mik Kaminsky, I suppose. In addition, in 1978, the Concert Guide had some intrepid upstart band called Van Halen listed alphabetically under 'H'! I give Circus an A for effort, but it was a bit lacking, all the same.

LETTERS The Letters column in Circus was almost a forerunner of today’s Internet message boards/forums as it was a breeding ground for the never-ending pissing matches between Kiss and Aerosmith fans, not to mention the snoody Prog. Rock fans who looked down their noses at those same Kiss and Aerosmith fans and acted as if they were better than everyone else just because Yes, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Pink Floyd, Genesis, King Crimson, et al, were all such virtuoso musicians. I’m already on record here about my distaste for much of ‘70s Progressive Rock—I found a lot of it to be cold, overblown, soulless and downright boring—give me Black Oak Arkansas any day over that pretentious lot! At least Jim Dandy and the boys were fun to listen to, which is often far more important to me than musical virtuosity when it comes to Rock ‘N’ Roll, but I digress…

I’m really kinda stunned at some of the stuff Circus actually accepted from readers and printed in the Letters section, like the following classic from Tony in Stirling, Ontario: I would like to tell you that your column “Into Your Head” is a ridiculous waste of space. Who the hell is interested in some crazy bopper’s sexual hang-ups? You’re supposed to be a music magazine. Also, I just want to say that I think Elton John is a fag, and the Beach Boys suck.

Classy guy. I’m real curious to see what all they edited out from Tony’s original letter! Letters like this one really have no place in a first-class national periodical, but oddly enough, Tony was right on all three counts—Sir Elton is indeed a homosexual, the Beach Boys pretty much did suck in the ‘70s minus Brian Wilson, and “Into Your Head” fit in Circus magazine about as well as a nun at a frat party. IYH was a Dear Abby-esque advice column compiled by some psychiatrist hack who seemingly got his degree from Hazzard County A&M. One of the correspondents to his column had issues with “fagits”, whatever those are...

Here’s another gem of a letter from Issue #150, February 28, 1977 by Stephen from Mississauga, ON: In regards to John Casale’s letter in CIRCUS, which insinuates that Freddie Mercury is queer, sorry to disappoint you fella, but I am now going to quote from the book ‘The Queen Story’ by George Tremlett, renowned rock biographer. "No one could be more heterosexual than Mercury, who had been living with his girlfriend Mary Austin…" So go back to your Bowies and Jaggers and leave Fred alone ‘cause you’re barking up the wrong tree!

Fella?!? How gay is that? Excuse me, fella, but both you and the book author were shoveling more bullshit than highway workers in the wake of an overturned manure truck. And as we all know from our homework, Freddie Mercury was most decidedly gay, and hardly tried to hide it. Mary Austin was indeed a longtime girl friend and confidant of Fred’s but she was never his girlfriend. He half-heartedly tried to make it appear that way to get the press off his tail, but everyone knew he was busy with X-number of boys of his own…

In a semi-related item in the same issue, Ed from Bloomsburg, PA chastises Robert Duncan (whom I chastise below here) for a feature he did on the just-released Led Zeppelin concert flick in which he (for some bizarre reason) referred to Robert Plant’s talleywhacker several times: ...since you have an obsession to keep mentioning Robert Plant’s cock so many times dealing with movie sequences, you should have entitled the article '"The Dong Remains The Same.''

Friggin’ brilliant!

A Kansas City letter-writer, Clare, ripped Ted Nugent a pretty good one following a 1977 article in which Nuge—true-to-form—bragged on himself a bit too much about his appearance at Arrowhead Stadium in ‘76: First of all, he didn’t break any attendance records here in K.C. that I know of. The 41,000 people came, for the most part, to see REO Speedwagon because they have been K.C. favorites for years. A lot of people including myself left midway through Nugent’s set. Ted also boasts that “police received complaints [about the noise] from people 15 miles away.” Because of that, stadium concerts were almost banned here…He has blown it for himself because he will never play an outdoor concert here again.

I think that whole “15 miles away” business is a pure B.S. urban legend that Ted chose to create. We lived five miles from the Truman Sports Complex and I never heard a thing. And Nugent has indeed played outdoors in K.C. several times since then, including my first major Rock concert at Arrowhead in ’79, at which I was rather miffed and disappointed with the lack of volume—the powers-that-be obviously made Ted turn it down a bit by that time.

ALBUM REVIEWS And then there were the atrocious album reviews. It was through these often-pompous, condescending, sarcastic and grating reviews (as well as those found in Rolling Stone, which were ten times worse) that I developed my healthy long-standing loathing of Rock music critics. And just as with today’s ESPN-dominated sports media, there clearly was/is a definite East Coast bias amongst these critics. Everything the Ramones, Patty Smith, J. Geils Band or Bruce Springsteen ever did was the cat’s ass with these schmucks, but except for Cheap Trick and a scant few others, most Midwestern and Southern acts like Styx, REO Speedwagon, Kansas or Z.Z. Top never got a fair shake from these assholes. Some reviews were so overblown and snarky that the reviewer (Lester Bangs, atten-shun!) would prattle on for ten paragraphs about totally unrelated crap before finally getting around to talking about the record he/she was reviewing. Some never even mentioned the LP in question at all! I much prefer a track-by-track analysis over three columns of unnecessary (and usually unrelated) prose in an album review.

The single-most asinine album review I’ve ever read appeared in Issue 138 of Circus, August 24, 1976, Robert Duncan’s hatchet-job of the Kiss classic Destroyer, in which he proclaimed “The new Kiss album stinks.” Yes, I know opinions are like assholes and all, but this review was such utter stoat excrement, and it was blatantly obvious that Duncan’s sole purpose was to mock the band just to make Aerosmith’s Rocks look that much better in the same review. Personally, I think Toys In The Attic was the far superior Aerosmith platter compared to Rocks, but that’s just me. What I never got is how the critics ripped the first three Kiss albums because they sounded too amateur-ish, yet here they came along with a very slick and sophisticated record, and the critics still ripped it to shreds anyway. I maintain to this day that Destroyer is Kiss’s finest hour in the recording studio, and it remains my second favorite Kiss album of all-time, right behind Kiss Alive!

Anyway, check out a couple more of Duncan’s witticisms here:

In "King Of The Nighttime World", they have this little bastard kid talking in the background as if Kiss themselves were unable to relate any more to what a drag it is living at home.

Uhhh, Bobbo, there are no children talking in KOTNW. No doubt, the little bastard kid he refers to is the one who appears on the following track, “God Of Thunder” (producer Bob Ezrin’s son, to be exact), and he wasn’t relating to what a drag it is living at home, either. Evidently, Duncan Donut was too stoned here to know what song he was reviewing.

In "Shout It Loud" [sic], they have a grand piano playing the descending riff, and, in case you hadn’t noticed, the grand piano is an acoustic instrument!

Wow, what a shocking revelation this was! And guess what, Bob—I have actual photos Kiss without their make-up on! Was it some sort of unpardonable sin for an acoustic instrument to appear on a Kiss album? This certainly wasn’t a new phenomenon—they had previously utilized acoustic guitars on both “Black Diamond” and “Rock Bottom”, not to mention another piano on “Nothin’ To Lose”.

As one might expect, this thing instigated a lot of tongue-wagging in the Kiss/Aerosmith pissing match forum, but letter-writer Holly from Joliet, IL probably summed it up best in a later issue: “All I can say is this Robert Duncan is so full of shit he can’t hear the records he reviews.”

I do realize all this analysis and hair-splitting on my part is 35 years too late and fairly pointless, but I didn’t have a blog in ’76, and besides, I love doing shit like this! Duncan authored a similarly-scathing review of Love Gun in ’77 that I thought was uncalled-for. What cheeses me off is this is the same man who authored (and I assume made money off of) a suck-up biography book about Kiss in the fall of ‘76.

MISCELLANEOUS The full-page album ads (especially for Kiss) were often highlights of each issue of Circus. I especially liked the ones that said “Alive II is coming…”…Circus ill-advisedly tried to get into the socio-political and culture realm for a brief time by featuring non-music people like Caroline Kennedy, The Fonz and Chevy Chase on their covers, but a fair amount of backlash from readers quashed all that in a hurry…I remember how Circus made a major effort to hype two bands who had Kiss connections that are now long-forgotten, Angel and Starz. The all-white-clad Angel were label mates of Kiss on Casablanca Records, and featured one Punky Meadows on guitar and another guitarist named Greg Giuffria, whose self-named band had some success in the mid-'80s (with a little help from G. Simmons). Angel had a cool logo that looks the same when viewed upright or upside down, but they never really went anywhere. Same goes for Starz, who were stable mates of Kiss at Rock Steady Productions. Mostly style over substance, I think. Yet another Casablanca act, The Godz, suffered a similar fate, although Rock Steady did produce a promising band called Piper that featured a young hot-shot singer-guitarist named Billy Squier…I’ve found it rather fun to go back and read stuff about bands that I really dig now whom I ignored, overlooked or just plain dismissed back then like Rush, The Band, Rainbow and Aerosmith…Circus was good as misidentifying songs and people over the years, like when Cheap Trick’s perennial concert closer “Goodnight Now” was labeled “Good-Bye There”, the album released by the The Doors featuring Jim Morrison's poetry was An American Dream instead of An American Prayer in Circus, and in a 1981 feature on Ozzy Osbourne, bassist Rudy Sarzo was referred to in the photo caption merely as “Rudy from Cuba”. Sarzo himself was quite miffed over this in his autobiography book. When Circus reviewed Z.Z. Top’s Eliminator in ’83, they inexplicably titled it Destroyer!...Photographs were often reversed in Circus, like in the 1976 feature about Black Sabbath and Nugent in concert together where Ted is depicted as a lefty guitarist and southpaw Tony Iommi is shown as a righty in the same spread! It also wasn’t uncommon to see Paul Stanley’s star over his left eye…

I found the following quote rather fascinating: “This is the Rock & Roll album of the year, my friends…It’s a son of a bitch.”—Frank Zappa (Issue #138, August 24, 1976, regarding Grand Funk Railroad’s Good Singin’, Good Playin’, which he produced)

THE Frank Zappa?!? Anti-establishment Frank Zappa? Funny-looking moustache Frank Zappa? Father of Dweezil and Moon Unit Frank Zappa? Talk about strange bedfellows—I never knew about this unholy alliance before now. I just can’t fathom Mr. Avant-garde/Anti-establishment/corporate music-hating Frank Zappa producing a commercial Arena Rock band like Grand Funk! I have yet to actually hear this LP (which was GFR’s debut on MCA after Capitol Records let them go), thus I can’t speak to the quality of it, but I do know that it didn’t fare well at all and Grand Funk were sadly already on the downside of their career by then. As for Zappa, he never struck me as being such a chest-thumper, either. Sorry, Frank, but I gotta give Album of the Year for ’76 to Destroyer.

Circus was published from 1966 to 2006, and I read it regularly from '76 through about '88 or so when it devolved into a shell of what it once was. The album reviews—crappy as they were—were reduced to little drive-by short-attention-span blurbs, the feature articles on the bands were all-hype and no substance, and the rest of the mag featured nothing but full-page photos of Poison, Bon Jovi, Ratt, Def Leppard and Whitesnake, et al. I swear, they used the same in-concert photo of Motley Crue’s Vince Neil in three straight issues at one point! It was at this point that Rock ‘N' Roll started circling the drain anyway, with the impending Grunge malaise, so it’s probably just as well. I’m still perusing the old issues currently, and if I find some more juicy quotes and oddities, they might make it into a future post here. Meantime, I found an interesting Circus tribute site should you desire further background.

Welcome to Limbo...

2011-03-08T18:11:00.004-06:00

“Been away so long I hardly knew the place…”—P. McCartney, “Back In The U.S.S.R.” (1968)

I thought I’d better post something before someone does an autopsy on this blog. I heartily apologize to those of you who still check in here for the past three months of inactivity on my part—it wasn’t by design. I’ve just plain not had the time lately—let alone the writing mojo—to devote to putting out blog posts that live up to the quality you’re used to seeing here. I do have a litany of excuses, if you care to read them…

Excuse #1: I’m currently going through a transitory period where I’m trying to get my head out of my ass in regards to my personal life and flatlining social/love-life situation. Shit, I might as well just say it: I’m seeing a therapist to help me figure out why I keep stepping on my own dick (often while wearing soccer cleats) when it comes my finances, not to mention the stuff that really counts in life (friendships/relationships) and why I often feel so disconnected from even my closest friends and family. This is my second go-round with professional therapy, and unlike Charlie Sheen, I hope to make it stick this time. I’ve found a new therapist who comes highly-regarded and after only six sessions, we have a great rapport going and I feel very comfortable opening up to her. I’m feeling a sense of urgency now that I’m approaching my late ‘40s (I’ll turn 47 in June) and it’s time to take out all this mental garbage I’ve been dragging around for four decades and have a real life while I’m still young enough to enjoy it. I need to finally get an answer to Pete Townshend’s eternal question, “Can you see the real me—can you?!?”

Excuse #2: I’ve been concentrating more lately on finally completing several long-dormant computer projects that have eaten into my free time, as well as my on-going effort to load songs into my new super-mega iPod. Annnnnnd, I’m doing some long-overdue house-cleaning (literally) by purging old stuff I’ve collected over the years that’s no longer relevant to me or has been replaced by other things, i.e., old cassette tapes, magazines (including porn, which is readily available on the ‘net anyway), wall posters, defunct stereo components, bizarre childhood school artifacts and just plain crap that I have no idea why I kept in the first place. I inherited a pack-rat mentality from my old man, and after he died last year and we had to get rid of his belongings, I was totally amazed at all the shit he held onto—this man couldn’t bear to throw ANYTHING away. For example, bank statements and paycheck stubs dating all the way back to the ‘40s! He even kept this ‘70s vintage toilet tank lid that was busted into three pieces—as if he could somehow glue it back together?!? Well, I don’t want to be like dear old Dad (in more ways than just this), so I’m doing some major herd-thinning at my house. I’m not tossing everything out, mind you, just carefully selected items, and unlike these nerf herders on “Clean House”, I don’t need some total stranger(s) going through my personal belongings telling me what’s what. It’s not all that hard to do, really—just time-consuming, therefore I’ve found it’s easier to work on this a little bit at a time, when I can think straight and not feel rushed to get it done, all the while reorganizing the remaining belongings and storing them properly. Space in my two-bedroom abode is at a premium anyway, so this will make my place a leaner/meaner operation in the end. If nothing else, I’ve been impressed with my own productivity the last 3-4 months, after years of half-assed effort/apathy. I’ve discovered that the slow, rolling boil method is quite effective…

Excuse #3: One of the major components of this blog early on was my ranting about political/social stuff that chafed my hiney, but I’ve outgrown a lot of that now. I’m still slightly left-leaning, but I’ve done a lot of re-evaluating of my own political outlook recently and I now view some people whom I once thought highly of in a different light, Michael Moore being a prime example. Whereas I still find right-wing Schnauzer’s dicks like O’Reilly, Hannity, Coulter and Limbaugh, et al, to be highly repugnant, Moore’s money-grubbing attitude and fact-distorting tactics make me question his motives and credibility too. Keith Olbermann is another lefty pundit I could do without—he’s too childish and snarky, and MSNBC was wise to sack his ass. Anyway, I’m to the point now where I think both sides are full of shit anyway, and I’m totally burned-out on the whole liberal vs. conservative/left vs. right/blue vs. red/Jedi vs. Sith/us vs. them discourse. I don’t see/hear a lot of solutions coming from either camp, and I’ve come to realize what a waste of time it is expending so much energy bitching about them when it doesn’t really solve anything. Although I’m still a practicing hypocrisy pointer-outer, I’ve ceased being such a reactionary—it ain’t worth my time anymore.

Excuse #4: You can also blame Facebook for the dearth of activity here. Like many others before me, I, too, have been seduced by the power of the Dark Side. Although I could do without the limitations of having to post things in little dribs and drabs on FB in their 482-character limit (as opposed to my full-fledged filibusters on here), I fully admit I have gotten somewhat addicted to the instant gratification FB provides when friends respond to what I say. It’s sorta like performing for a live audience, as opposed to acting in a movie or TV show or even writing a book, where the reaction is delayed and/or far less tangible. Blogging also seems to have become very passé of late, and I’m loathe to admit that I don’t even read my favorite blogs by other people much anymore. Just as home-taping was “killing music” back in the ‘80s, Facebook is killing blogging now.

Excuse #5: With spring fast approaching, I have several home-improvement projects looming, as well as beaucoup impending yardwork…

I’ve been tempted to pull the plug here altogether and ride off into the sunset, but I don’t want to do that in the event that the dust clears and I can find the time to do some relevant creative writing again in the not-so-distant future. For now, let’s just say the HollandsComet blog is on temporary hiatus until further notice. Please check back every so often—I might feel compelled to do some new feature pieces or pay tribute to someone who passes on when and if I have more time.

“Hit the target or you better hit the ground—still time to turn this game around…”—N. Peart, Rush (“Face Up”—1991)

"Get away from the blind side of life..."—S.R. Vaughan ("Change It", 1985)

"Reelin' In The Years" - Vol. 5

2010-12-04T18:30:00.013-06:00

More golden oldies from my original journals in the early '90s...

Mon. June 8, 1992: “Responding to accusations of financial and religious improprieties, officials of the Christian Science Church provided members with the most detailed financial report in church history. The report said that since 1986, the church had exhausted $135 million of its unrestricted reserve fund and borrowed $115 million from its pension fund to finance new ventures in radio, TV and magazine publishing.”
Shades of the United Way? And just as with big charities, the bigger the church, the less I trust it.

Tue. June 9, 1992: “Dan Quayle’s been shooting his mouth off again, and once again displayed his total ignorance in the process. He divided the nation into ‘the cultural elite and the rest of us’, and broadened his attack on the moral values of “Murphy Brown” to encompass a wide swath of American life, including universities, Hollywood, and the news media. Quoting Chairman Quayle: ‘As I discovered recently, to appeal to our country’s enduring basic moral values is to invite the scorn and laughter of the elite culture. Talk about right and wrong and they’ll try to mock us in newsrooms, sitcom studios and faculty lounges across America…That’s why I say this about the scorn of the media elite: I wear their scorn as a badge of honor.'"
Does this not sound like the same mantra that Sarah Palin chants today? “The nasty old news media was/is being mean to me!!” Ain’t nothing worse than a beleaguered politician who constantly plays the “Why’s everybody always pickin’ on me?” card. Suck it up and deal with the media—you’re politicians and it’s part of the game. Quayle single-handedly ended any chance of Bush the First to be re-elected in ’92 with his ignorant comments, just as Palin pretty much lost the election for McCain in ’08.

While I'm on Ms. Winky-Dink, I read somewhere recently where she steadfastly refuses to be interviewed by mean old Katie Couric again. Now, tell me please, if Sarah Palin is elected President, how the fuck is this woman going to stand up to our enemies in the Middle East, North Korea, et al, when she's afraid of a lightweight twit like Couric?!?

Sat. June 27, 1992: “In a development I’m real pleased to see, Dan O’Brien won’t be going to Barcelona (for the Olympics). Dave Johnson won the U.S. track and field trield in New Orleans and earned a berth in Barcelona, but O’Brien failed miserably in the pole vault (he completely chickened out on one run), and failed to make the team. Dan and Dave have been the focal point of this silly Reebok ad campaign all year long, 'Who’s The Worlds Greatest Athlete?...to be settled in Barcelona', and now it’s all academic.”
Don’t you just love it when an ad campaign by a major corporation blows up in their collective faces? They kept hyping the hell out of these two schlubs (who no one knew in the first place) for months and it got to the point where it felt like we were being force-fed the whole thing, just like when we were told that Alan Thicke would supplant Johnny Carson as the "King Of Late-Nite" back in the '80s. Riiiight....

Sat. June 27, 1992: “Apparently Hank Williams, Jr. had too many tears in his beer at Sandstone (Amphitheater) tonight, and staggered off the stage after only fifteen minutes. He was so drunk he didn’t even sing one song all the way through. He also saluted the crowd with half a peace sign, and said things like, “Fuck you, Kansas City,” “Fuck Garth Brooks,” etc. Not surprisingly, the idiots who paid $30 to see Bocephus were not too pleased, and booed him off the stage. Sandstone officials weren’t happy either, and said Williams won’t be paid for his “performance”. Patrons will probably get refunds. Meanwhile, (radio station) KFKF, who sponsored the show, imposed a moratorium on Hank Jr. music on their station until further notice, saying that ‘this is not what Country music is all about.’ Funny how often this happens in Country music and nobody says anything about it, yet when it happens at a Rock show, it’s front-page news.”
Hank’s lapse in judgment indirectly resulted in the death of a deranged fan in Belton, MO about a week later. Things had been going badly for the guy as it was, evidently, and the aborted concert and subsequent ban on Hank Jr. music on the radio put him over the edge and he threatened suicide. Cops were called to his home at 3:30 in the morning and when he threatened to shoot them, they were forced to fire on him. The man had also talked of hunting dinosaurs and owning a fighter jet, so he was a couple fries shy of a Happy Meal anyway.

Mon. July 6, 1992: “National leaders for the deaf community are angry that a hearing actor plays a deaf man in a new film directed by Penny Marshall called Calendar Girl. ‘Hiring hearing people for such roles is akin to white actors in blackface,’ says Linda Bove, a deaf actress who has appeared on “Sesame Street” for 17 years. Leaders of the National Association of The Deaf and the Deaf Coalition say they may boycott and picket the movie when it comes out.”
Uhhh, folks, that’s why it’s called ACTING!!! No one fussed when Laura Dern played a blind girl in Mask. Tom Hanks and Sean Penn ain’t gay, but they played homosexuals in Oscar-nominated films. As far as I know, Anthony Hopkins has never killed anyone—should the role of Hannibal Lechter have gone to O.J. Simpson instead? Roger Daltrey is neither deaf, dumb, nor blind, buuuut—well, you get the idea. This is why I bristle so much at these grandstander coalitions and special interest groups who make these big stinks over nothing just to get their names in the paper. They do more to damn their cause than to promote it. You really wanna impress me? Have a deaf actor play someone who can hear clearly!

Sat., July 18, 1992: “Roger Clemens got pissed at a Boston newspaper reporter during a post-game interview after his victory over Minnesota, and threw hamburger buns at him. It seems that George Kimball of the Boston Herald used his column to blame Clemens for the death of a kid who had Down Syndrome. The kid’s grandmother had asked Clemens for an autographed baseball, but he allegedly refused her. I don’t quite follow how this could’ve caused the kid’s death, but Clemens repeatedly called Kimball a “lowlife” and then assaulted him with hamburger buns.”
Far be it for me to defend a dickhead like Clemens, but I side with him on this one. But hamburger buns, Roger?!? This man threw 100-mph fastballs and his weapon of choice for retaliation was hamburger buns?!? Guess his steroid needles weren't handy at the time. I would’ve at least gone with bagels or English muffins instead…

Wed. July 22, 1992: In reviewing my first-ever Kiss tribute band show of the group Kiss’d: “’Paul’ was too much of a hot dog and his between-song patter was nothing short of embarrassing. ‘Ace’ was the funniest-looking—he was short and kinda fat, and shaped like Barney Rubble. ‘Gene’ actually did the fire-breathing (twice) and the blood-spitting, although he wiped it off right away. ‘Peter’ was the best instrumentalist, and also looked the most like his character. The show was marred with numerous equipment problems, lyric fuck-ups and too much smoke. By show’s end, they place resembled the inside of Cheech & Chong’s Volkswagen."
Kiss tribute band shows can be a crapshoot—sometimes they play really well but the costumes/make-up look like crap, or sometimes they look good, but sound like shit or their pyro and special effects suck. Still, it’s become a fun cottage industry that will no doubt outlive the original band, and when you get a good Kiss tribute band like Strutter or Destroyer, it’s like seeing the Real McCoy in its prime. What I’d love to see is someone do a Kiss tribute band from the non-make-up era—now THAT would be a challenge to get the look exactly right!

Thu. July 23, 1992: “[KCTV-5 news anchor] Anne Peterson invented a new word on the news tonight: 'acquitment'. That’s acquittal, you airhead!”
My friend Tom always called Anne Peterson “The Rock” because according to him, if you held up a rock and a picture of her and compared the two, there was no difference. AP was cute and perky in a Katie Couric kinda way, but not terribly qualified to be a news anchor. Still, somehow, she managed to stick around for 20 years on Channel 5, teaming up with the late Wendell Anschutz as the longest-running news anchor duo in TV history.

Sat. July 25, 1992: “Speaking of Boatmen’s [my former employer], an airplane flew over the stadium [Busch in St. Louis] with one of those streamers that read: ‘BOATMEN’S—HOW YOU’DE RUN A BANK’."
Ah, yes, proofreading, the lost art…

Sun. July 26, 1992: “When we returned to Denny’s for breakfast, we got there a little before Noon, and they were pretty busy, but not unusually so. The people next to us ordered AFTER we did, got their food, ate it, paid for it and left BEFORE we ever got ours. How fucking long does it take to cook two grand slam breakfasts and an omelet?” Classic case of the poor service we encountered at Denny’s, but for some reason, we kept going back for more. During our many drinking binges in St. Louis, my friends and I often de-toxed at the Denny’s in the suburb of Bridgeton near our hotel, or as we referred to it, “Home of the Butt-Ugly Waitress”. It never failed—we were always waited on by some White Trash gal who looked like Mick Jagger in drag, and once I actually had to explain the complicated Denny’s breakfast menu to this gal who didn’t understand the difference between the Top Sirloin & Eggs and a New York Steak & Eggs. That particular Denny’s closed down several years ago, but many of the Butt-Uglies no doubt work at the Waffle House that opened just up the street.

Tue. August 4, 1992: “The Adam Rich Saga continues—once again, our man Adam was sentenced to three years’ probation and ordered to go back into drug rehabilitation. L.A. Deputy District Attorney Teri Hutchinson reacted to the ruling by saying, 'What a joke. This is the fourth time he’s been sentenced to a program. I thought "Eight Is Enough" was talking about the TV program he was on, not how many treatment programs.'”
Ol’ Adam spent the better part of 1991-92 in and out of jail for stealing drugs and drug paraphernalia and just plain being a first class fool. I’m a little surprised he’s not milking this for all it’s worth on “Celebrity Rehab” today.

Fri. August 7, 1992: [Regarding my first—and last—high school reunion] “Ozzy’s ‘Road To Nowhere’ was playing on the radio on the way over, and it was most appropriate because '…the wreckage of my past keeps haunting me…'”
It had never really hit me until that night what a total waste my high school years were for me, socially. It dawned on me that I really had no close female friends back then, and that’s a tragedy, because it took me years to finally realize that I was just as worthy of friendships and romantic relationships with women as any other guy, but in high school, I was a virtual shut-in in that regard. I was never encouraged to socialize and chase girls during my adolescence, let alone just have one or two as friends, and this reunion was a painful reminder of what I missed out on if I had only opened up a little more, and in a lot of ways, I’m still paying for it today. High school is supposed to be “the time of our lives”, but I fucking hated it, and vowed “Never again” when it comes to future reunions.

Sat. September 5, 1992: “Went and saw Single White Female tonight—pretty good flick. Interesting moment happened during a scene in which Jennifer Jason-Leigh’s character is shown masturbating in bed. She no sooner had started bumping and grinding when the power went out because of the wicked thunderstorm outdoors.”
Not making this up, folks—it really happened! Timing is everything…

Mon. September 7, 1992: “Big story of the day: Baseball commissioner Fay Vincent resigned his post today, citing that he wanted to avoid a big legal battle (over realignment, et al) after the owners had been ganging up on him. This is pretty fucked-up because although I disagree with some of the things he did, I think he did a great job, overall. No replacement is on deck as yet. Mark my words, the owners are going to run the game into the ground after this.”
And they damn near did, thanks to the work stoppage two years later. I thought Commissioner Fay did a pretty decent job, overall—he was light years better than Bud Selig. Just as an aside, every time I hear Fay Vincent’s name, I remember David Letterman’s “Top 10 New NBA Slogans” list, and one of them was “At least we don’t have a Commissioner named Fay!” Another on that list was “Come see our Johnsons!”

Tue. September 8, 1992: “No less than 20 present and former Cincinnati Bengals have been fingered in a lawsuit for raping or imprisoning a woman know as Victoria C. The alleged rape too place October 9, 1990. Among the players names in the suit are Ickey Woods, Lewis Billups, Rickey Dixon, Rodney Holman, David Fulcher, Eddie Brown and Solomon Wilcots.”
I don’t think anything ever came of this lawsuit, but it’s funny how some things never change—the Bungholes spent just as much time on the police blotter back then as they do now.

Tue. September 9, 1992: “Brewers owner Bud Selig has been named temporary chief of Major League Baseball until some sucker takes over for good.”
Unfortunately, no one ever did, and we’ve been stuck with Howdy-Doody running MLB ever since...

Wed. September 16, 1992: [During my first-ever East Coast road trip] “I hopped off at Lincoln Memorial and immediately encountered a large group of cute little Hispanic babes in these colorful costume-like outfits with very short skirts. This, coupled with the sharp angle of the stairs leading up to Abe, provided me with some most excellent tush photo opportunities! Even ol’ Abe himself was smiling…
Yes, me and Abe were eyeing little girls with bad intent…

Wed. September 30, 1992: [The night George Brett of the Royals got his 3,000th hit in Anaheim] “Where was I when all this happened? Sitting right here at this computer while watching a boring movie on Showtime, totally unaware of what happened.”
I inadvertently missed this little hunk of history as it took place and didn’t learn of George’s feat until the next morning on the radio and I was like “He fucking did what?!?” He’d been injured and hadn’t played the previous two nights, and he was sitting at 2,996 hits going into that game, and I figured he either wouldn’t play at all or would only pinch-hit—I never dreamed the bugger would go 4-for-4, thus I didn’t tune the game in on TV. D’oh!

Sat. October 3, 1992: “Sinead O’Connor decided it was time to stir up some more trouble. In one of the more majestic pieces of bad taste in recent years, Sinead appeared on “Saturday Night Live” singing one of her new songs, and concluded by methodically shredding an 8 x 12 photo of Pope John Paul II and shouting, “Fight the real enemy.” I’ve been a staunch defender of Sinead up ‘til now, but I have to call her out on this one. What point could she possibly have been trying to make by pulling such a stupid stunt? Come on, Sinead, lighten up.”

Talk about a colossal career-killing maneuver, this was even more lethal than Billy Squier outing himself by prancing around like Richard Simmons in the “Rock Me Tonite” video. You know, I really wanted to like Sinead—this woman made the shaved head a cool female fashion statement (instead of a punchline like Britney Spears in ’07), she has stunning blue eyes and a beautiful voice, and is a fairly talented individual—but she’s as flaky as a Pillsbury pie crust (keep reading). She’s also way too dead-dog serious about everything. Given my stance on religion and all, it’s unusual for me to defend the Catholic Church, but I thought what O’Connor did was wrong. While I think religion is pretty much all bullshit, I at least try to be respectful in regards to religious figures—except for TV evangelists, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Fred Phelps, of course.

Wed. October 14, 1992: “Sinead O’Connor is featured in the current issue of Rolling Stone in an interview in which she thinks:
—Everybody should smoke pot.
—“There’s absolutely no point” in voting.
—The L.A. riots were “great” because “people had some expression at last.”
—Mike Tyson is a victim, even if he did rape Desiree Washington, who shouldn’t have filed charges.
—What she really is fighting is child abuse. Apparently she blames the Catholic Church for abuse she suffered from her parents.
—Organized religion is a lie.

Sinead, sweetie, I really AM trying to understand, but quite frankly, you sound like a blithering idiot. Lighten up before you alienate every fucking fan you have.”
I do agree with the last two points she made in the interview, so why is O’Connor an ordained minister now? And yeah, some of those poor folks in Watts got to express themselves during the riots, but 53 of them didn't—because they FUCKING DIED! It’s pretty obvious that Sinead was/is in the same league with that deranged Hank, Jr. fan I mentioned above.

"Reelin' In The Years" - Vol. 4

2010-11-20T22:55:00.004-06:00

Now that the Comets saga is complete, here's another round of old journal stuff I dug up from back in the day when I kept close track of day-to-day headlines, as well as happenings in my life. My original text appears in blue here, followed by my more recent observations thereof...

Mon. March 23, 1992: “Magician Doug Henning and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (the one The Beatles denounced in ’68) want to turn 1,400 acres near Niagara Falls, ON into Maharishi Veda Land, a theme park combining recreation and spiritual enlightenment. Yeah right. Will they sell dashikis at the souvenir stands?”
Didn’t these guys learn anything from Tommy’s Holiday Camp in The Who’s Tommy? “All these pricey deals don’t teach us…your freedom doesn’t reach us…how can all this trivia take us to the goal you reached?” Doug Henning wasn’t quite all there, anyway—didn’t he remind you of Mr. Van Driessen, Beavis & Butt-head’s tree-hugging hippie school teacher? A little light in the loafers, too…

Tues. March 24, 1992: “A bundle of about 2,000 dirty magazine sections spilled from a recycling truck about 10:00 this morning and littered I-35 near Cambridge Circle. Now there’s a section of highway I wouldn’t mind adopting!”
As Chandler and Joey on “Friends” would surely attest, there’s nothing quite like free porn!

Fri. April 3, 1992: “The ousted president of the United Way and two close aides transferred more than $1 million a year to other organizations they controlled, the United Way admitted today. The three also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on their travel, pensions and insurance plans, according to a report released by their new management. The report revealed a five-year pattern of financial manipulation far more extensive than any the organization had previously disclosed. This included the spending of more than $100,000 of the charity’s money by the former president, William Aramony, for limos, flights on the Concorde, golf equipment, jewelry and flowers. Need I say more about these big charities?”
And these are only the three scumbags that got caught—one wonders how many more schmucks within the United Way were/are laundering charitable donations under the table. The bigger the charity is, the less I trust it, and UW is one of the worst, in my opinion—they’re nothing but a big corporation to me. I resented being force-fed all their propaganda at my job every year when I worked at Boatmen’s Bank, not to mention how they tried to make me feel like a shithead for not donating. I never confirmed this, but someone told me that some companies who do United Way pledge drives would even go as far as to put employees who don’t participate onto a shit-list which would affect their pay raises, chances for promotion and so forth. Thankfully, the employers I’ve worked for the last 14 years since I left Boatmen’s haven’t done the United Way’s bidding for them. There are numerous smaller charitable organizations out there that are far more worthy than United Way.

Sat. April 4, 1992: “[My friend] Tom discovered that we have a new Rock station in this town. KRVK “The River” is no longer. 98.9 is now KQRC “The Rock”, playing a basic hard Rock/heavy metal format. This may finally be what I’m looking for. Someone finally noticed that there are too many AC [Adult Contemporary] stations in this market, and decided to try something different.”
This turned out to be one of the most successful format changes in K.C. radio history. “The River” was so wimpy I started calling it “The Puddle”, so anything new would’ve been an improvement. Hard to believe The Rock has been around 18 years now, and they’re still one of the higher-rated stations in the K.C. area. I don’t listen to them much now, though—they play way too much Metallica for my liking, and I can’t stand their overrated morning drive yakker Johnny Dare.

Tue. April 7, 1992: “A jet carrying P.L.O. chief Yasser Arafat disappeared in a sandstorm while trying to make an emergency landing in the Libyan desert. Hope they don’t find him…
That towel-headed jagoff was the cause of most of the trouble in the Middle East in the first place. Too bad we had to wait another 12 years for him to finally croak.

Thu. April 16, 1992: “The Blades [our former IHL hockey team] did better on Salt Lake’s power play than on their own tonight, and won Game 4 over the Golden Eagles 5-1 at Delta Center. The Blades scored three shorthanded goals—two on the same penalty! By the way, the Blades were 0-for-5 on their own power play.”
Shorthanded goals are rare enough in hockey, and three in one game is phenomenal. Salt Lake had several players who Blades radio announcer Bob Kaser dubbed the “Cement Heads” for taking dumb penalties. Evidently they weren’t too good at capitalizing on the other team’s transgressions either.

Mon. April 21, 1992: “The Concert For Life AIDS benefit in memory of Freddie Mercury was held in London. Elton John, David Bowie, Extreme, Def Leppard, George Michael, U2, Roger Daltrey and Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath were among the performers who joined with the surviving members of Queen for the four-hour concert. One of the more interesting moments occurred when Elton sang the first part of “Bohemian Rhapsody” and was followed by Axl Rose singing the “So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye…” part. The two then joined together to sing the soft part at the end. Strange combination.”
This is the same guy (Rose) who thought nothing of performing in t-shirts that read “AIDS: Kills Fags Dead” singing with Elton John, who is arguably the most famous homosexual in the world. Strange bedfellows, indeed. Little did anyone know at the time that Guns ‘N’ Roses’ best days were already behind them at that point, too. Easily the most self-destructive band of all-time. They coulda been a contender...

Wed. April 29, 1992: “Another Raytown (or near-Raytown) institution is closing. Brywood Theater, KC’s first six-screen cinema complex closed tonight after 19 years of operation. The lease on the building is up and the cost of upgrading the air conditioning system for the summer would be too much, according to AMC officials.”
Remember when six screens in one complex was considered revolutionary? Now you have these mega-plex clusterfuck theaters with four times as many screens (or more). I worked just a few hundred feet away from Brywood Theater at Waid’s Restaurant during the ‘80s and saw many a good flick at the theater, which was state-of-the-art when it opened in 1973, but it was grossly out-dated by 1992. What AMC didn’t mention was the other reason they closed Brywood was that there was too much gang activity going on in the parking lot at night, and too many Homies were assaulting and/or killing each other over those overpriced L.A. Raiders Starter jackets that were all the rage at the time.

Thu. April 30, 1992: “The death toll stands at 24 in the wake of the rioting in South Central L.A. At least 63 fired were burning by mid-evening…The ramifications of the Rodney King thing went further than just riots and protests. Sports events in the Los Angeles area scheduled for tonight were postponed. Hollywood Park also cancelled its thoroughbred racing cards for today and tomorrow.”
In all, 53 human beings died because of all this mess. All over a routine traffic stop of a good-for-nothing alky who to this day still doesn’t have his shit together. While Rodney King certainly didn’t deserve the beating administered to him, and all the stuff that resulted from his trial and the verdict thereof wasn’t his fault, he at least owes it to those who perished to straighten his life out and make something of himself. Loser.

Mon. May 6, 1992: “All curfews were lifted and L.A. tried to get back to abnormal today. Meanwhile, in typical Republican fashion, the Bush administration blamed liberal welfare programs started by Lyndon Johnson for the rioting that went on last week. White house press secretary Marvin Fitzwater said, ‘We believe that many of the root problems that have resulted in inner-city difficulties were started in the ‘60s and ‘70s programs of the Great Society.”
What Marvin failed to mention was that almost all of those programs were wiped out by the Reagan administration and hadn’t even existed for the 11 years prior to the ’92 riots. But, the Blame Game was the Republicans weapon of choice as much then as it is now. Wait, there’s more coming…

Tue. May 19, 1992: “Dan Quayle got a lot of single mothers steamed at him with some remarks he made during a speech in San Francisco. He blamed a breakdown of American family values for the Los Angeles riots and accused prime-time TV of contributing to moral decay by glamorizing a character who bore a baby out of wedlock. He said the plight of urban America had not been helped by the portrayal this week of “Murphy Brown”’s mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another ‘lifestyle choice’. ‘Marriage is probably the best anti-poverty program there is,’ quipped Quayle. So let me get this straight—Murphy Brown’s giving birth on TV the other night to an illegit child is what caused the riots in Los Angeles. Are you totally deranged?!? I’m just about sick of this traditional “American family values” crap they keep throwing in our faces. I’m fed up with this ‘live how we think you should live’ attitude our so-called leaders have toward us in the ‘land of the free’. I’m astounded that people in power can make such ignorant and off-the-mark remarks for public record. I’m also sick of this hard-on Republicans have for trying to find a scapegoat for all the problems they can’t fucking solve.”
Up ‘til then, I didn’t really have that much of a quarrel with the Republican party (except maybe the Dickie Nixon debacle), but it was at this point that I started leaning to the left. Republicans are so good at displacing blame where it doesn’t belong and using easy targets as scapegoats. I never much cared for the “Murphy Brown” show, but I’ll defend it by saying that they were hardly glamorizing single parenthood as much as they were trying un-demonize it. True, two parents are generally a preferable situation, but there are lots of single mothers out there who can still get it done, including a young woman I worked with at the time who is no longer with us. She was an ideal loving mother to her two you children. Rest in peace, Susan…

As for Dan Quayle, this side of Dubya, was there not a more intellectually bankrupt political figure in American history? He single-handedly kept late night comedians in business for months. Read on, and you’ll see…

Wed. May 20, 1992: “The White House spent the day trying to save face in the wake of Dan Quayle’s lunkheaded remarks on Tuesday. White House spokesman Marvin Fitzwater (the man who blamed LBJ for the riots two weeks ago) tried to put Quayle’s remarks in a better light, but failed miserably. Reaction was fierce and hot on the radio and late-night talk show circuit, as one would expect. Some of the more interesting quotes:

—“If the Vice-President thinks it’s disgraceful for an unmarried woman to bear a child, and if he believes that a woman cannot adequately raise a child without a father, then he’d better make sure abortion remains safe and legal.”—Diane English, creator of “Murphy Brown”
—“Well, Dan Quayle came through for us one more time…I’m surprised he watches ‘Murphy Brown—isn’t that opposite ‘F Troop’ on cable?”—Johnny Carson on the “Tonight Show”
—“If I hadn’t seen the ‘Murphy Brown’ clip with my own eyes, I would have thought it was another stupid Dan Quayle joke made up by people trying to humiliate him.”—Matt Groening, creator of “The Simpsons”
—“Murphy Brown is not going to cause an outbreak of illegitimate births.”—Michael J. Robinson, Georgetown University political scientist
—“This whole thing with Murphy Brown is hilarious. Next, 'Doogie Howser, M.D.' will be responsible for no health care in this country.”—Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, creator of “Designing Women”
—“I think the effect of Murphy Brown on the Los Angeles riots was marginal.”—Bill Clinton, Presidential candidate

Fri. May 22, 1992: “Even though I never thought it would end, Johnny Carson ended his reign tonight as host of the “Tonight Show”. Johnny went out with a classy wrap-up show that included a montage of the guests who appeared on the show, as well as a musical montage with everyone from Judy Garland to Z.Z. Top. I know how badly Johnny wanted to move on and do something else, but for some reason, this just doesn’t seem like the right time for this to end. Although I haven’t watched Johnny as much the last few years as I used to, it just won’t be the same anymore. But hey, life goes on…and who knows, maybe Jay Leno will find his niche, too. Then there’s always Letterman, who by the way, is already one-third of the way to matching Carson’s reign of 30 years. Later, Johnny…”
And in less than a year and a half, Dave will have matched Johnny’s 30 years on the air doing late nights. Here in K.C., we were forced to wait over an hour for the final Carson “Tonight Show” to air, thanks to the Royals game at Texas that ran late. I think Johnny was having second thoughts about retiring at that point, given all the fresh material Dan Quayle was supplying him. It certainly hasn’t been the same since Johnny retired, and I miss him a lot—just a classy guy and a fun show to watch. Today’s late-night landscape is a virtual wasteland in comparison.

Sat. May 23, 1992: “Went with Tom and saw Basic Instinct at Blue Ridge West. I was not impressed. This thing was overly-long, rather boring at times, and it left you hanging as to who the killer is. Sharon Stone is a real babe, but her character was just a little too arrogant for me. In fact, the whole movie was just a little too arrogant for me. It only rates a 4 on my scale.”
Can you say ‘overrated’? And apart from the infamous beaver-shot scene, was there really anything truly memorable about this film? I don’t think so.

Sat. May 30, 1992: “The cable guy arrived around 3:00 to disconnect Cinemax and hook up Showtime. This guy did not have his shit together. He smelled like he hadn’t bathed in a week, and when he went out to do his thing on the pole, he not only hooked up Showtime, but HBO and Cinemax as well. After discovering this, he said it was my lucky day, and that he didn’t feel like dragging his ladder back out there to fix it. He said the next time he did a job out our way, he’d change it. I hope he has a poor memory—got a feeling he might…”
And sure enough, the som-bitch never returned, and for the next three years until I moved out of my parents’ house, I was getting free HBO and Cinemax! Sorry, Comcast...

"Hot Winter Nights" - Epilogue

2010-11-13T18:53:00.019-06:00

Time to conclude my tribute to the original Kansas City Comets indoor soccer franchise. First off, a few more misc. reminiscences, then a final overview of my devotion to this team...

ODDS & ENDS

How much did I love the Kansas City Comets? Well, this blog is partially-named in their honor, and I took my radio name, “Captain Comet”, from them as well. The latter was probably not the best choice in the world, but I enjoyed the anonymity of not having to use my real name on the air, so it kinda stuck. Besides, "Captain Fantastic" was already spoken for by E. John. Anyway, I was also probably the only fan in the building at Comets matches who kept score during the games. I figured baseball fans keep scorecards, why not soccer? The idea came to me by accident on the night of February 26, 1986 (easy to remember—that’s the day of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster) during pre-game warm-ups at Kemper Arena. I attended alone that night, and had come straight from school (I was attending UMKC at the time) and tried to do a little studying before the game, and since I had my spiral notebook with me, just for shits and hoots, I decided to keep track of that evening’s goals. Unfortunately, most of the goals were scored by the evil San Diego Sockers, as they drubbed K.C. 13-3 in easily the worst game in Comets history. Before the next home game, I designed my own homemade scorecard on graph paper (see photo) and a couple years later when scanner technology came about, my friend Tom put together a more professional-looking model, although I’m still more partial to my original. I continued to use my scorecards even after the Comets’ demise when the Kansas City Attack replaced them, and even adapted them for hockey, as well. There are times when I wish I’d become a sports statistician instead of a DJ…

On two separate occasions when a Comets game was played on snowy nights that impeded many folks from reaching the Kemper Corral, the team was good enough to allow us fearless fans who did manage to make it to those games to exchange our ticket stubs for a free ticket to a future home game. Let’s see the NBA do that! One such night was a freak early April, 1990 weeknight snowfall that dumped about 7” on the city. I was working downtown by that time, and the Comets game worked out perfectly for me, because if I had tried to navigate my way home in the snow after work, it would’ve taken me two hours or more. By attending the game, it allowed enough time for the rush hour traffic to dissipate and for the crews to plow the roads, and I was able to cruise home rather easily following the game. And the Comets won that night, too. Timing is everything.

After that thrilling 1985 playoff victory against the St. Louis Steamers (see Chapter 3), I couldn’t get enough of the Comets and started attending each and every home game, and several road games in Wichita, St. Louis and Cleveland as well. From April 19, 1985 until the bitter end on May 4, 1991, I only missed two Comets home games, both because I had to work at the radio station, but even for one of those I still got to run game broadcast on the radio anyway, as KKJC was an affiliate on the Comets Radio Network. About midway through the ’85-’86 season, I got tired of having to do the box office thing every night, so I came up with the bright idea of getting season tickets. My friend Tom and I went down to Kemper Arena one fine afternoon bought a half-season ticket package. We decided to go the Bob Uecker route and sit right down in the front rowwww behind the Plexiglas in Section 119, seats 5 and 6. There were actually better seats available throughout the building—from these seats, the view to our left was obstructed by the player benches and we basically couldn’t see the corner at the other end of the field on our side. But, I had ulterior motives for choosing this pair—besides the obvious perk of being right on top of the action, I figured we could see ourselves on TV a lot during game broadcasts, being’s as we were on the side of the arena opposite the press box, plus we would be able to participate in the Comets victory laps where the players would run along the glass and high-five the fans after every win. It worked out great, and we kept those seats for the ’86-’87 season as well before we got burned-out on sitting in the same place for every game, not to mention getting annoyed with the family of four that sat to our left and their squirmy little ADHD kids. Working in the radio biz at the time also netted me more than a few free Comets tickets for the next couple seasons anyway.

THE AFTERMATH
I must now confess that I’m a little embarrassed by how overboard I went with my enthusiasm for the Comets those last six years or so, to the point where it sometimes came at the expense/exclusion of family, friends and even career obligations as my priorities got a little out of whack at times. Example: when I was given my first shot at a live air-shift on KKJC, filling in for our afternoon drive guy on a Wednesday, I was initially peeved because it conflicted with a Comets home game scheduled that evening. It all worked out and I got to the game on time, but you’d think I’d have cared more about my future livelihood than a sporting event. Another time, my mom had an important grand poohbah wing-ding with her Eastern Star organization that I probably should’ve attended with the rest of the family, but I chose a Comets game instead, and I’ve always felt bad about that. I was also inconsolable immediately following the Comets demise in 1991. Not to be melodramatic or anything, but it felt a little bit like having your heart ripped out—hell, I took it harder when the Comets folded than I did when two of my three (count ‘em, three) serious relationships with women ended and I felt very empty, angry and sad. Given the precarious state of the MISL/MSL during those last years, I had prepared myself for the possibility that there would be no more Comets, but I never dreamed it would be the team pulling its own plug—I always figured if the team ever did fold, it would be because the entire league went under, considering what a successful and model franchise the Comets had been.

Hell, my devotion to the team was such that I even passed up a Saturday night Kiss/Ted Nugent concert over at Municipal Auditorium in early ’88! I chose the Comets game because I’d already seen Kiss two months earlier in Topeka (with up-and-comers White Lion) on the Crazy Nights tour, which is considered by most Kiss fans (me included) as one of their worst, and Nugent’s career was in irreversible free-fall by that time. In retrospect, I almost wish I’d done the concert now anyway—the Comets lost that night, and it was one of those rare times when the team seemed really listless with no sense of urgency. I also faced a dilemma during my 1991 vacation regarding the Comets, who were in the midst of that final playoff series with the Cleveland Crunch at the time. Games 6 and 7 (if necessary) were slated for Cleveland, but I was also trying to hit some Major League Baseball stadiums on this road trip, including Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, which was in its final season. I could’ve skipped Game 6 and gone onto Baltimore, hoping the Comets could extend the series to Game 7 (which they did), but I didn’t want to chance it, thus I never saw an Orioles game at Memorial Stadium. With all apologies to Cal Ripken and Co., I still stand by my decision, as seeing the last two games in Comets history was a privilege and I had a great time that weekend at Richfield Coliseum. Sorry, Baltimore…

I’ve been reluctant to fully embrace any other teams that have emerged since the Comets (including the Kansas City Blades hockey club, whom I also miss greatly), and I’ve kinda kept them all at arms-length because it hurt so much when the Comets folded. The Blades did manage to take some of that sting away by having a magical 1991-92 campaign in which they literally went from worst to first after their dismal inaugural 1990-91 season, and had the best record in the International Hockey League, culminating in a Turner Cup championship. The Comets’ replacements, the National Professional Soccer League’s Kansas City Attack, also filled the void, but only so much. The team spent its first season playing at Municipal Auditorium (where the rent was cheaper) instead of Kemper Arena, but the sightlines in our venerable basketball venue were terrible for indoor soccer, and it was like being in the Twilight Zone. Even though Gino Schiraldi returned for one more year and former Comets Zoran Savic, Iain Fraser, Chad Ashton, Chris Duke and Kim Roentved were members of the Attack at one time or another, it just wasn’t the same anymore. The team wisely moved back to Kemper Arena in 1992-93 and even though the Attack franchise was even more successful that the Comets on the field, winning NPSL championships in 1993 and 1997, the fire just wasn’t there anymore for me. It was like having to watch black-and-white TV after your color set was stolen from your living room—or for you youngsters out there who can’t relate to B&W, it was like having to watch a 27” analog TV after your 44” HD digital flat screen got nabbed.

And I don’t mean to slam the Attack here: their players worked just as hard as the Comets did (both on and off the field), but the NPSL had such a small-time attitude and I hated their rinky-dink scoring system—two points for a regular goal, 1 point for a power play or shootout goal, 3 points for a goal from beyond the arc, 5 points for goals scored on Ground Hog Day, 10 for goals scored on Thursday nights by Eskimos, etc.—to me, a goal is a goal, period! Another example of the low-rent nature of the NPSL: to save on travel expenses in the postseason, the league would settle a 3-game series that was tied 1-1 with a 15-minute “mini-game” immediately following the second game—in effect, a 15-minute overtime to decide the whole series—which I thought was totally crass. The whole thing just seemed so cheesy and inferior compared with the MISL and I never fully recognized the NPSL as a “major” sports league. It also didn’t help that the NPSL seemed devoid of the characters and charismatic players the MISL had, like Tino Lettieri, Tatu, Karl-Heinz Granitza, Preki, and the late Stan Stemankovic and Slobo Ilijevski, et al.

Not surprisingly, the Attack (and the Blades, too, for that matter) suffered from the same indifference the Comets received from our local media. When their move from Atlanta was announced in September of ‘91, the K.C. Star relegated this news to the back seat behind the Chiefs, Royals, U.S. Open tennis and Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield, only managing a small blurb about the new team on the front page. Radio coverage for the Attack was spotty at best, and local TV personality Nick Vasos couldn’t hold a candle to Kevin Wall when it came to doing soccer play-by-play. Vasos uttered this annoying “Ding DONG!” every time a shot would hit the crossbar or a goal post, and he just sounded very third-rate compared with Wall. Even when the Attack honored several former Comets during a halftime ceremony in 1992, the Comet players still had to take a back seat to something else. Comet greats like Alan Mayer, Tim Clark, Elson Seale, Enzo DiPede, Kevin Handlan and Ben Popoola were forced to wait for some local aerobics group to finish performing their little demonstration before they were finally honored. So typical of the way this team never got any respect…

While the Attack drew respectable crowds at Kemper, their numbers never came close to approaching the attendance figures of the Comets, and never once did the Attack sell out a home game in their entire history. The team even changed its name back to Comets in 2001 (while the NPSL cleverly renamed itself the Major Indoor Soccer League—confused yet?), but it made little difference. I like to call this period the “Faux Comets” era, as they were Comets in name only, with a much lamer logo and bland uniforms compared with the originals. Even sillier, the team’s mascot, Fuzzy The Attack Cat, was forced to morph into Fuzzy The Cosmic Cat! During the early ‘00s, owner Donald Kincaid was hopeful of moving the team to a proposed 8,000-seat arena (i.e., lower overhead) in Johnson County, KS that would’ve been similar to the Independence Events Center where the new Missouri Comets now play (minus Fuzzy). But, the mythical Johnson County venue never materialized, and the team ceased operations after the 2004-05 season and hardly anyone even noticed.

I’m still a fan of our current “niche” teams like Major League Soccer’s Kansas City Wiz(ards) and the Missouri Mavericks CHL hockey team, and I’m cautiously excited about the new Comets franchise, but I don’t care to put myself through the agony again of being a “SuperFan”. Having said all that, however, I loved the original Kansas City Comets for a reason—they made us fans truly feel like we were part of the team! I actually felt like I’d be letting them down if I didn’t attend the home games and show my support. As I wrote at the time of their demise, “It was refreshing to see a group of athletes playing their asses off, not worried about who was making more money than who, or how many Ferraris they owned. I’d take one wounded Jan Goossens over a hundred Bo Jacksons any day. When I see people forking out $12 for Yogi Berra’s autograph, it makes me wonder what’s wrong with our society. Comet autographs have always been free, plus you could probably get a handshake and a nice chat, to boot.” There was a purity to this franchise (and league) that just doesn’t exist in sports anymore—it was all about winning and the love of the sport, without all the trappings of ego, exorbitant salaries, steroids, et al.

Just an aside, Comets defender Tom Kain, an up-and-coming young star at the time, abruptly retired from the team during the 1990-91 season. He saw the writing on the wall that the league was in trouble and had a job offer to go to work for Adidas back home in New Jersey. It’s a rather warped commentary about the league that a good young healthy player was forced to take a real job to support his family instead of playing the game he loved. Yet, these guys in the old MISL probably worked as hard—if not harder—than their overpaid NFL, NBA and MLB brethren and easily spent more time out in the community with their own fans than the big-league sports guys did/do. On the day the Comets folded in 1991, it spoke volumes that Kevin Hundelt and Jim Gorsek carried on conducting their Comets-sponsored youth soccer camps—in 100º heat, no less—even though they had both just lost their jobs. Many MISL/MSL players were barely making more money than I did as a working stiff at Boatmen’s Bank—and I was woefully out-of-shape! True, no one forced these guys to take up soccer as a vocation, but somehow, this just didn’t seem right.

Despite their popularity, the Comets certainly had plenty of detractors in this town as well. I often chafed when I read the numerous letters-to-the-editor in the Star criticizing/mocking the team and the sport, and I often wrote rebuttals in defense. There were also short-sighted bozos like the guy who called in on the radio one time who deemed the Comets and MISL, “Just a bunch of foreigners with funny names running around in shorts.” Oh, like funny names are a just reason not to like something. Based on that line of thinking, the NFL (Marty Schottenheimer, anyone?), Major League Baseball (Dale Sveum?), NBA (Detlef Schrempf?) and college basketball (Mike Kryzyzewski?) must have sucked back then too, eh?

Another example of simple-minded thinking is the charming Mongoloid who anonymously commented on my previous post about the Comets and the media: “but indoor soccer sucks. it's not interesting and no one cares...you know...so that's why it always got the short shrift. it sucks. You can almost hear the conversation repeated in every newsroom: 'we're not going to devote much resources to indoor soccer.' 'why not?' 'you know...'cause it sucks and no one is interested. we cover football and baseball because they have leagues with big television contracts. who watches indoor soccer? nobody. little manboys. weirdos.' 'oh.'" Wow, this is Rhodes Scholar material here! And such great sentence structure, too. Must be a University of Hee-Haw grad. Seriously, I never understood all the vitriol heaved at the Comets back in the day, much less now. I never gave a rip about professional boxing or golf or team tennis, but you didn’t see me trying to run Tommy “The Great White Dope” Morrison or Tom Watson or the K.C. Explorers out of town on a rail back in the day. Lighten up, folks—to each his/her own…

[And as I’ve stated before on the blog, I don’t mind dissenting opinions or any reasonable challenge to what I write on here, BUT…if you’re going to criticize what I write, at least have the balls to sign your fucking name to it—I do NOT suffer cowards gladly! Try writing in complete sentences, too, if you want me to take you seriously...]

Curiously, I’ve never been able to get into Arena Football in the same way I embraced indoor soccer. Football needs to be played in a big open (preferably outdoor) space, and Arena Football is too claustrophobic for me—it looks to me like they’re playing in a phone booth! On the other hand, Indoor soccer on a hockey rink makes a lot more sense and is a much better fit. And while it’s true that outdoor soccer is played in a big open space, it’s a freakin’ bore! Like most Americans, I have great difficulty getting into watching 22 guys just trotting around kicking the ball back-and-forth for 90 minutes, with only a scant few scoring opportunities sprinkled in. And what’s up with this tie business?!? Some soccer teams are delirious if they can just finish in a tie! Americans like scoring and they want to see someone win the bloody game—a 0-0 tie just don’t cut the cheese over here. That’s what made/makes indoor soccer so much more appealing to me—it’s fast-paced end-to-end action that keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout the game, unlike football and baseball with their inherent lulls and stoppages. True, indoor soccer loses a little something on TV (as does hockey), so it’s better viewed in-person, and when the music cranks up, the Rock concert mentality just adds to the intensity of the game.

Another perk about the original MISL was how the league was virtually devoid of prima donnas like Brett Favre, showboaters like Terrell Owens (apart from Tatu, anyway, and even HE was pretty benign) and insatiable egos like Kobe Bryant or LeBron James. The rivalries the Comets had with St. Louis, Wichita, San Diego, et al, were both fun and intense, which just added fuel to the fire. I tend to root for the underdog/little guy anyway, and I really thought indoor soccer had a chance to become the fifth major league sport in the U.S. along with the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, so it was quite disappointing when it all fell apart. Several indoor leagues have come and gone since the original MISL died (the CISL, the WISL, the NISL, the PASL, etc.), and for whatever reason, indoor soccer just can’t seem to capitalize on the current rising popularity of World Cup soccer in America, either, so it’s always going to be considered a “niche” sport, unfortunately. Damn shame, because it’s a fun game and far more entertaining (to me, anyway), than the outdoor game, no matter what my “soccer hooligan” friends in England might say. I’ve gradually learned to appreciate the subtle nuances of outdoor soccer, but it’ll never come close to matching the excitement and intensity of the indoor game for me. And it’s the ONLY sport (besides mini-golf, anyway) where I approve of the use of Astroturf!

I hope y’all don’t mind me indulging myself in this little series here, but it’s one I’ve been wanting to do for quite a while now. I also hope you’ve enjoyed reading this series as much as I’ve enjoyed reliving so many great memories while researching this material, many of which I hadn’t thought of in years and some which I’d blotted out altogether, for some strange reason. Thanks to the magic of YouTube, there are numerous MISL video clips out there for your entertainment pleasure. The history of the Wichita Wings series is especially good—hell, I like their highlight reel better than the Comets’! In closing, to the original Kansas City Comets players, coaches, owners and front office folks out there who might be reading this, I send out a hearty salute to you. You were a fine body of men (and women) and I hope I’ve paid proper tribute to this wonderful sports entity. Those “Hot Winter Nights” somehow even managed to make an awkward and star-crossed venue like Kemper Arena feel like home and THE place to be, and they were some of the best times of my life.

"Hot Winter Nights" - Chapter 6--Top 10 Games in Comets History

2010-11-10T17:05:00.011-06:00

Pretty self-explanatory...

HONORABLE MENTIONS
Wings 10, Comets 9 (December 19, 1986 @ Kansas Coliseum in Wichita)
The only Comets loss that appears on this list, but this was such a good game I feel compelled to include it. It was our first road trip to Wichita, as well, and my friend Tom and I got to experience the cacophony that was Kansas Coliseum for the first time. Comets radio man Kevin Wall wasn't bullshitting when he talked about how loud this place got with 10,000 crazies screaming in it. As the score indicates, it was a crazy-ass game, too. The Comets led 3-0 after one quarter, 4-2 at halftime and 8-6 early in the 4th. Then the Wings took the lead on three unanswered goals before K.C.'s Damir Haramina tied it again with a buck-05 to go. This game set the Comets all-time mark for the shortest OT in team history, as Wings sniper Erik "The Wizard" Rasmussen drilled the game-winner just 30 seconds in—his third goal of the contest to go along with 2 assists. Disappointing finish, but we had a great time that night.

Comets 6, Wings 0 (April 12, 1991 @ Kemper Arena—Game 1, 1991 MSL Eastern Division
Semi-Finals)
Shutouts in the MISL/MSL were even more rare than perfect games in baseball, and the Comets only had two in their entire 10-year history. Enzo DiPede recorded the first in a regular season game on January 4, 1984 against the Memphis Americans, and Jim Gorsek threw a no-hitter at the Wichita Wings in this playoff opener. The Wings couldn't buy a goal that night, even though they had numerous close calls, and Big Jim stopped everything they threw at him, including a two-man advantage, a shootout attempt and over seven minutes of 6th-attacker pressure by Wichita. The single greatest goalkeeping performance by a Comet ever.

THE TOP 10
10) Comets 10, Steamers 5 (March 21, 1986 @ The Arena in St. Louis)
I rank this one highly more for personal reasons as this was my first road game with the Comets, and I was lucky enough to snag a seat directly behind the Comets' bench at the old barn on Oakland Avenue. 1985-86 was a down year for K.C., so the Comets vented a little frustration that night by exploding for double-digits on the scoreboard and in doing so, tied the team record for most goals in a road game, including a hat trick by Charlie Fajkus, along with two goals and two assists by my boy Damir Haramina. Things got a little ugly in this one too, as there were fights galore and Steamers defender Carl Rose was ejected for instigating one of them.

9) Comets 5, Wings 3 (March 16, 1991 @ Kansas Coliseum in Wichita)
My friend Tom and I had made four previous trips to Itchitraw for Comets-Wings contests, and the Wings won all four (three of them by one goal), but we finally got a winner in our final try, which also turned out to be the Comets' final regular season appearance in Wichita and final regular season road win team history. We took great delight in giving a little guff to the Orange Army (Wings fans) or as I dubbed them, the "Wing-A-Lings", in particular this one old fart who kept accusing the Comets of playing dirty. Never mind that Omar Gomez of the Wings was ejected for being a douche. "Y'all go home and we'll shut out the lights fer ya!" I quipped. I truly miss them damn Wing-A-Lings...

8) Comets 5, Sockers 4 [2OT] (March 28, 1990 @ Kemper Arena)
Third-longest game in Comets history (86 minutes, 10 seconds), and a stirring comeback against the Sockers as K.C. knocked in two 6th-attacker goals in a 31-second span late in the 4th quarter to tie it at 4. Dale Mitchell gave head coach Dave Clements his 200th MISL/MSL coaching win @ 11:10 of the second OT in a game that was televised nationally, which Clemo later deemed, "a great advert for the sport". Very true, but sadly, it was too little, too late to save the then-floundering Major (Indoor) Soccer League.

7) Comets 6, Sidekicks 5 [2OT] (February 27, 1987 @ Kemper Arena)
The 1986-87 season got off to a poor start for the Comets, in which they endured an 8-game losing streak that included an embarrassing 8-4 loss to the hapless expansion New York Express (who folded a month later). Head coach Rick Benben was dismissed and eventually replaced by Dave Clements, and things started to turn around for the team. This game was another typical Comets-Sidekicks nail-biter, as Dale Mitchell sent it into OT on a 6th-attacker goal with 42 seconds left in regulation. The game was also filled with lots of chippy play, but very few penalties were called, and both teams were getting pretty frustrated. Just :35 into the 2nd OT, Jan Goossens knocked home the game-winner, and in what he later deemed "a moment of mental illness", ripped off his game jersey in a little dig at the Sidekicks' Tatu and his goal-celebration shtick and ran around the field flailing his arms (@ 2:37 of this video), leading play-by-play man Kevin Wall to proclaim on the air, "The MAGIC IS BACK at Kemper Arena!" And it was, too!

6) Comets 8, Crunch 6 (May 1, 1991 @ Richfield Coliseum outside of Cleveland—Game 6, MSL Eastern Division Final best-of-seven series)
The Comets staved off elimination in Game 5 of this tough series with a 5-4 OT win at Kemper in what turned out to be the final Comets home game ever, and kept the momentum going in Game 6 in what turned out to be the last game the Comets ever won, period—and best of all, I was there! The Comets' 1991 playoff run dovetailed nicely into my vacation plans that spring, as I did a baseball/indoor soccer road trip that also took me to Cincinnati, Detroit and Pittsburgh and the ballparks therein, and Cleveland's Richfield Coliseum for the final two games in Comets history, though we didn't know for sure at the time. Game 6 and Game 7 were both exciting contests, but since 6 was the winner, I'll go with it on my list here. David Doyle had a hat trick on this night, and Carl Valentine added three assists as the Comets held off high-scoring Cleveland for one more night, even though Hector Marinaro had four goals for the Crunch.

5) Comets 9, Wings 8 (April 14, 1991 @ Kansas Coliseum in Wichita—ame 2, MSL Eastern Division best-of-three Semi-Final series)
The Comets' final visit ever to Wichita was a crazy day all the way 'round for the team, but a happy one all the same. The game was a see-saw affair in which the Wings took an early lead, then the Comets roared back with five goals in the 2nd quarter, only to relinquish the lead again to Wichita in the 2nd half. Then David Doyle tied it all up at 8 early in the 4th quarter and with just 20 seconds left in the game, Carl Valentine rammed home the game winner and series clincher in the last contest ever staged between the two I-35 rivals.

A funny thing happened to the Comets after the game when their team bus broke down on the Kansas Turnpike en route back to Kansas City. Head coach Dave Clements, assistant coach Tony Glavin and trainer Doug Wiesner stood guard with the bus until help arrived, but the players all hitched rides with various Comets fans who’d made the trip down I-35 for the game. My friend Tom and I weren’t among them, unfortunately—we decided not to attend since we'd just gone down there a month before (see #9 above) and besides, the game was in on local TV here—d'oh! That would’ve been fun, too—there was plenty of room for a couple players in my ’87 T-Bird.

4) Comets 4, Sockers 3 [OT] (December 5, 1986 @ Kemper Arena)
There were times when the San Diego Sockers seemed like the Ivan Drago of the MISL, and after losing 15 in a row to the Suckers, er uh, Sockers (including more than a few drubbings like disastrous 13-3 shellacking at the hands of San Diego the previous February), we fans were all frothing at the mouth on this night when S.D. came to town early in the '86-'87 season. And just like Rocky Balboa before them with Comrade Drago, the Comets discovered that the Sockers weren't machines—they were human after all! K.C. was totally focused this time, taking advantage of two Sockers penalties with power play goals, and Jan Goossens took a feed from Damir Haramina about 4.5 minutes into OT and jammed it home. From that point onward, the Comets-Sockers rivalry was much more evenly-matched. Vengeance was ours...for the moment, anyway.

3) Comets 7, Sidekicks 6 [3OT] (December 6, 1987 @ Reunion Arena in Dallas)
At 94 minutes and 23 seconds, this was the longest game in Comets history, a see-saw affair that saw several lead changes throughout, after Kansas City fell behind 4-0 late in the 2nd quarter. The Comets were on the verge of winning when Dallas' Mark Karpun tied it at 6 on a 6th-attacker goal with 18 seconds left in regulation to send it into extra innings. As luck would have it, I was working that Sunday afternoon at my radio gig at "The Mighty 1030", KKJC in Blue Springs, and we just happened to be a Comets radio network affiliate, so I got to run the board for the game broadcast during the 4th quarter and all three OTs, during which I was on pins and needles throughout. When the late Barry Wallace drove home the game-winner @ 4:23 of the 3rd OT, I let out a loud "GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!" in the studio, and the other guy in the building at the time thought the fire alarm had gone off!

2) Comets 7, Sockers 6 [OT] (May 13, 1988 @ Kemper Arena—Game 3, MISL Western Division Final best-of-seven playoff series)
It was Friday the 13th, no less, and was shaping up like a cursed night for the Comets, as they fell behind 5-1 and 6-2, before roaring back with five goals in the 4th quarter, including Barry Wallace's game-tying goal with less than five minutes left in regulation. Dale Mitchell capped off the greatest single-game comeback in Comets history with his second goal of the night with a buck-03 left in OT. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to witness the finish because I was due at my new radio gig at KKJO in St. Joseph—an hour's drive from Kemper Arena—and reluctantly had to leave before the game ended. However, you can see the goal 2:49 into this video.

1) Comets 4, Steamers 3 [OT] (April 19, 1985 @ Kemper Arena--Game 2, MISL Wildcard best-of-three playoff series)
As I detailed in Chapter 3, this was the sweetest victory of all for me. This wasn't just a game—THIS WAS WAR! I look back more fondly on this game more than the Royals winning the '85 World Series five months later. Easily the most intense sporting event I've ever attended.

"Hot Winter Nights" - Chapter 5--The Comets And The Media

2010-11-06T18:14:00.022-06:00

In this installment, I will examine (and rant about) the media coverage (or lack thereof) given to my favorite pro sports entity of all-time...

Local media coverage of the Kansas City Comets indoor soccer franchise sucked like a Hoover vacuum cleaner throughout their existence. While the Chiefs, Royals and KU basketball received the lion’s share of attention on the front pages of The Kansas City Star Sports section, the Comets barely rated a mention on Page 12 next to the tire ads most of the time. When the team folded in July, 1991, the Star devoted the better part of three whole pages to the Comets, which was more than they’d cumulatively written about the team in the three years prior to that!

Then there was KCMO/KCTV-5’s “special coverage” (as they called it) of Comets game telecasts, featuring sports anchors Don Fortune (nee Forunato) and the ever-pompous Jack Harry, neither of whom knew a damn thing about the sport they were covering. Between the two of them, Comets fans were subjected to such insightful commentary as “Both teams really want to win this game,” and about the only soccer term Harry ever bothered to learn was “one-timer”. Fortune was particularly annoying with bon mots like “Both of these two teams” and he often redundantly reinforced his points with “He really does,” or “They really did,” or “It really is,” and you could usually tell by the tone of their voices that neither Fortune nor Harry really wanted to be there doing the games—they really didn’t! DF also had this irritating habit of calling defender Kim Roentved “Kimmy”, even though no one else ever dared to call the man by that name. Once at a game in Wichita in the early days, both of these two guys (pun intended) openly complained about the loud music playing overhead on the Kansas Coliseum P.A. system, calling it “bush league” of the Wings to do this while the game was going on. Never mind that this was standard operating procedure in the Major Indoor Soccer League, and the Comets were every bit as guilty of it at Kemper Arena as Wichita was in their place. Someone in the Comets front office finally got wise in the later years and convinced Channel 5 to at least pull Harry from the broadcast booth and replace him with former and/or current players like Enzo DiPede and Mike Dowler to provide color commentary, which helped some. Don Fortune retired and moved off to Florida years ago, but Jack Harry remains on the air as sports anchor at Channel 41 here, and he’s an even more arrogant grandstanding blowhard prick than he was 20 years ago.

If all that wasn’t bad enough, then there was the half-assed way Comets TV games were handled on KCTV. The team was treated like a red-headed stepchild by Channel 5 throughout their entire existence, as the station would only air their games when it was convenient for them. Many Comets telecasts originated from San Diego, Tacoma and L.A. and usually started at 9:30PM, K.C. time, but quite often, Channel 5 would join these West Coast matches in-progress at 10:30 following their “Eyewitless News”. This usually meant the game broadcast began with two minutes or less remaining in the 2nd quarter, so in effect, they were sending their people all the way across two time zones just to cover half a soccer game! In early 1991, a Sunday afternoon game from Baltimore was joined with ten whole seconds left in the 1st quarter following a CBS college basketball telecast of UNLV and Arkansas that no one here in KC gave a rip about. Yet another time, during a game from Wichita, Channel 5 lost its broadcast feed about 9:45PM. They went with live radio play-by-play in the interim and abandoned the broadcast altogether when the news came on at 10:00, even though the game wasn’t over yet! I have no doubt they did this on purpose. It’s funny how Channel 5 was loathe to pre-empt weeknight prime-time CBS programming in favor of Comets games, yet it was perfectly okey-dokey to do so whenever Billy Graham did one of his weeklong “crusades” every other month or when Channel 5 would air their self-serving "For Kids' Sake" and "The Best of Call For Action" programs. And heaven forbid that Channel 5 viewers would’ve ever had to go without “Wheel Of Fortune” for an evening now and then—a 1990 Comets game from Cleveland that started at 6:30, Central time, didn’t hit the air until 7:00 after most of the 1st quarter expired just so all the Rain Men around town wouldn’t miss their Pat and Vanna fix for the night.

Ironically, one of the last Comets telecasts was a SportsChannel America broadcast of a playoff game carried on local TV by Channel 62, which is Channel 5’s sister station today. Channel 62 succeeded at something Channel 5 had failed to do all that season—televise a Comets game live in its entirety! In a nutshell, KCTV-5’s “special coverage” of the Comets was a fucking joke. Unfortunately back then, the team didn’t have many choices when it came to TV outlets, unlike today with cable stations like Metro Sports and even Channel 29, who carried most of the Kansas City Wizards games on TV this season. However, a select few Comets games in the late ‘80s aired locally on American Cablevision (now Time-Warner) with KKJC-AM Sports Director Chuck Heinz (my radio co-hort at the time, #57 in your program, naturally) and retired Comets defender Clive Griffiths at the mics. Chuck and Clive’s on-air performances far out-classed anything Channel 5 ever did for the Comets. Chuck even sought my help on learning the pronunciation of some of the players names, which I was only to happy to coach him on, like "Margetic—sounds kinda like 'my headache'; Boncek = BON-check", etc. Here's a little sample of Chuck and Clive's work, courtesy of a fellow MISL junkie who amassed a nice library of games on VHS back in the day. Just as an aside, I think I remember Chuck telling me about how he (or it might've been Clive) once spilled a full cup of soda and ice out of the press box perched on high at the mighty St. Louis Arena onto some poor unsuspecting soul below him in the stands during a broadcast. Oops…

On radio, things were far more professional for the Comets, thanks to the enthusiasm of announcer Kevin Wall, the only radio play-by-play man the team ever had. That's him about 20 seconds into this video, and you can hear some of his radio calls scattered throughout, as well. Kevin was there from Day One to the bitter end, and he did an excellent job of describing the on-field action and keeping even the casual fan glued to their radio, all the while promoting the Comets as much as humanly possible. On the air, Kevin was the indoor soccer equivalent of the Seattle Mariners' legendary Hall of Fame screamer Dave Niehaus, and I loved his trademark “GOOOOOOOOAAAAAALLLL!!!!!” calls. He was sometimes accused of being a “homer”, but I thought he was pretty objective most of the time, and if the Comets sucked on a given night, he would say so. Wall (not to be confused with the media entreprenuer or conservative talk show host of the same names) at least took the time to familiarize himself with the nuances of the indoor game, unlike his TV counterparts on Channel 5. KW remained on KC airwaves briefly after the Comets demise, then relocated to Tacoma to do sports talk radio there, and last I heard, he was in Detroit doing the same.

In spite of Wall’s brilliance at the mic, Comets radio broadcasts were still often subjected to the same shabby treatment they got on TV. Example: A Comets home game broadcast in early ’91 was interrupted midway through as 980 KMBZ broke away at 9:10PM to carry a West Coast K.U. Jayhawks men’s basketball game in its entirety—including the endless pre- and post-game shows—before resuming the Comets broadcast on tape-delay around Midnight. In the last season or two, head coach Dave Clements’ weekly call-in show originated practically everywhere but the KMBZ studios themselves, as they constantly did remotes from various locations around the city and poor Clemo was expected to traipse all over town just to do his own show. You think the Chiefs’ station woulda made Marty Schottenheimer do this? I think not. One “Clemo Show” was truncated just so KMBZ host John Doolittle could interview Nebraska head basketball coach Danny Nee before their “big” game with my alma mater UMKC—they had all friggin’ afternoon to do that! KMBZ also rubbed a little salt in the wound for us Comets fans by continuing to run station promos well into 1992 that said, “Your home for the Royals, Jayhawks, Comets and Kangaroos, Sports Radio 980-KMBZ…” for several months after the Comets folded in the summer of '91. I actually called the station and pointed out the error of their ways, and the boob I spoke to didn’t even believe me at first.

What, me bitter? Nahhhh....

"Hot Winter Nights" - Chapter 4--An Abridged History

2010-10-23T13:47:00.031-06:00

In this installment, I will explore the history of the original Kansas City Comets indoor soccer franchise (mostly off-the-field) in order to provide a little background on why it was so successful—and why it all fell apart too...

Dr. David Schoenstadt brought his struggling San Francisco Fog franchise to K.C. in the summer of 1981 and re-christened it "Comets". While we do get fog here on occasion, somehow "Kansas City Fog" just wouldn’t have cut the cheese. Besides, Kansas City Fog would've sounded too much like Kansas City Faggots (from Blazing Saddles), but I digress. The Comets actually got their new name from a man named Steve Merz, who was known as "Mr. Soccer" around K.C.—he laid much of the groundwork for youth soccer in the area and was once equipment manager for the Kansas City Spurs of the old North American Soccer League. Merz died in 1993 at age 90.

Unlike "Dr." Bill Cosby, Schoenstadt really was a doctor (a retired anesthesiologist, to be exact--i.e., a gas passer!) and he had lots of money, although you couldn’t tell he was a millionaire by his appearance—he wasn’t exactly GQ material with his sloppy attire and unkempt hair, making him almost resemble late entertainer Tiny Tim (with a hangover) at times. This photo of him appeared in one of the Comets annual team yearbooks—note the pack of cigarettes sticking out of his shirt pocket—real classy! But Schoenstadt was still a decent enough duck as he was also co-founder of the Discovery Zone children's indoor playground facilities. DS wisely chose the Kansas City market for the Fog's new home, noting its close proximity to MISL franchises in Wichita and St. Louis and the built-in geographic rivalries they provided. And in a rather daring—yet very astute—move, he hired two young pups, brothers Tim and Tracey Leiweke, to run his soccer club, and in spite of only being in their 20s, these two had the smarts not only about how to market the team, but how to put on a show for the fans in the process. Using catchphrases and slogans like "Too Hot To Handle" and “Hot Winter Nights” (hence the name of this series), it didn’t take the Leiwekes long to generate a buzz about the Comets. About the only real blunder they made in the early going was hiring control-freak head coach Luis Dabo, who lasted all of 11 games that first year. The Leiweke Bros. would both eventually climb the sports executive ladder after their Comets days, and Tim is currently president of the powerful AEG sports and entertainment group that manages numerous stadiums and arenas nationwide, including the Sprint Center here in K.C., which, by the way, I would love to see house an indoor soccer team someday.

The first regular season game in Comets history on earth in this hemisphere took place on November 13, 1981 (a Friday, oddly enough) at McNichols Arena in Denver, a 5-3 loss to the Avalanche (not the hockey team of the same name). Ivair Ferreira notched the first goal in Comets history 2:28 into that game. Two weeks later, the first home game in Comets history also resulted in the first win in Comets history, a 5-4 overtime victory vs. Wichita in front of a near-sellout crowd of 15,925. Marco Antonio Abascal scored only one—count it—ONE goal in his illustrious MISL career, but it was the game-winner in OT on a feed from Clive Griffiths (@ 1:03 of this video), thus Comet-Mania was born. Apart from a brief cup of coffee in the NASL with the K.C. Spurs in the late ‘60s, this town had precious little outdoor soccer history, and absolutely none with the indoor variety to that point, so it was astonishing how quickly the Comets caught on like wildfire here. The fans took to the team immediately, and the Comets drew huge crowds at Kemper Arena right out of the chute that first season, even though the team pretty much sucked on the field in 1981-82, finishing 14-30 and enduring an MISL-record 14-game losing streak therein. The Leiweke brothers were brilliant at marketing both the game and the players, and they made sure to get those players out into the community to really sell the sport. It also helped that ticket prices in 1981-82 were quite reasonable, ranging from $4.00 to $8.50. Hell, $8.50 won’t even cover the price of a nosebleed seat at any sporting event today! You also have to factor in the impact of the legendary pre-game lazer shows and player introductions complete with flashing lights, disco mirror balls, fireworks and pulsating music to add a little sizzle to the mix. By the way, you can’t tell me that my favorite band of all-time, Kiss, wasn’t a MAJOR influence on how sporting event pre-games and halftime shows are staged, both then and today. The game itself was a strong enough draw on its own for me, but the league was smart to add a little pizzazz to get the attention of the casual fan, and people were flocking to the stockyards in droves to see this mini-spectacle/sporting event. I remember one night my friends and I decided to go to a Comets game on the spur of the moment during those early days, only to be turned away at the Kemper box office because all that remained were scattered single tickets.

By the Comets’ second and third seasons here, the turnstiles at Kemper were spinning like Joe Pesci’s tires in that Alabama mud in My Cousin Vinny, as they were just packing the place every night. By way of comparison, for five straight seasons, the St. Louis Steamers averaged bigger crowds than the NHL’s Blues during the early ‘80s, and likewise, the Comets were smoking the NBA’s Kansas City Kings at the gate—like a great big marijuana joint! Hell, the Comets even gave the then-woeful Chiefs a run for their money too—the Comets actually drew 4,000 more fans to their game at Kemper Arena in December, 1983 than El Chiefos did the same weekend at Arrowhead. Keep in mind also that this all occurred during the NBA's Larry Bird/Magic Johnson era when most NBA teams enjoyed a healthy resurgence in popularity, but the Kings were totally clueless about how to capitalize on that. True, the Kings drew well when Bird’s Celtics and Magic’s Lakers (as well as Dr. J’s 76ers) came to town, but crowds for other league opponents were mediocre-to-pathetic. The Celtics or Lakers would bring in a crowd of 16,000 one night, but only 4,800 might show up for the next home game vs. Utah or Cleveland. It also didn’t help matters that the Kings farmed out some of their home dates each season to St. Louis (including one with the Lakers that drew over 19,000 to The Arena there in 1983), and the Comets just trounced the Kings at the box office during the four years they shared Kemper before the Kings bolted for Sacramento in 1985, just prior to the Michael Jordan-era where interest in the NBA vaulted into the stratosphere. The average home attendance numbers Kings v. Comets are fascinating…

1981-82: Kings—6,644; Comets—11,508 (2nd-highest in the MISL)
1982-83: Kings—8,076; Comets—14,962 (2nd-highest in the MISL)
1983-84: Kings—9,030; Comets—15,786 (Highest in the MISL)
1984-85: Kings—6,411; Comets—12,917 (2nd-highest in the MISL)

[NOTE: These numbers are from team media guides and in the Kings’ case, aren’t official because I did not count the Kings “home” games played in St. Louis as part of their average.]

That 15,786 average for the Comets in ’83-’84 was only about 500 short of Kemper Arena’s full capacity, to wit, they practically sold out every game that season! 15 out of their 24 home dates that season were indeed sellouts, and the team was a hot commodity, with many players doing endorsements for local retailers. The attendance spike for the Kings in 1982-83 was a residual effect from their unexpected 1981 playoff run during which they just missed advancing to the NBA Finals against the Boston Celtics, but they failed to fully take advantage of the bounce they got from it, even though the early-‘80s Kings were a fairly competitive squad with the likes of Phil Ford, Joe C. Meriwether, Eddie Johnson, Larry Drew and Reggie King, et al. You can easily make the case that the Comets’ success at the gate was as responsible as anything for running the Kings right out of this town. That, and bonehead general manager Joe Axelson, who capriciously traded away star players/fan favorites like Ford, Otis Birdsong and Scott Wedman and got bupkis in return for them. Also, from what I remember, the Kings and Comets had a fairly acrimonious coexistence in their respective offices in the bowels of Kemper Arena during that four-year stretch, clearly a case of sour grapes coming from the bassit-ball side. Not too many Kansas Citians were crying in their beer over the departure of the Kings, and they really haven’t been terribly missed in the quarter century since they left here, as the University of Kansas men’s team virtually supplanted them as K.C.’s local "pro" basketball franchise anyway. The Comets were only too glad to see the Kings leave too—their departure made the soccer team the primary sports tenant at Kemper and freed up those coveted prime Friday and Saturday night slots on the schedule.

The Comets continued to draw well until the late ‘80s when the MISL fell on hard times after the novelty of indoor soccer wore off. It’s tough to pinpoint exactly when the wheels started coming off, but unfortunately, the league got a little too ambitious and tried to expand too rapidly without first making sure its existing franchises were healthy. Salaries spiraled out of control as the MISL fought to keep big-name players from jumping to rival leagues and/or lure star players from outdoor leagues to play indoors, thus flagship teams that were once stalwarts of the league like the St. Louis Steamers and Cleveland Force were suddenly hemorrhaging money and both folded in the summer of ’88, replaced (to much lesser impact) by the Storm and Crunch, respectively, in 1989-90. By that time, the league’s coast-to-coast presence had morphed back into a more regional footprint as those 3:00AM tape-delayed game telecasts on ESPN somehow failed to generate national interest, for some reason—I wonder why?

The MISL’s original commissioner from 1978-85 was a man named Earl Foreman, who once presided over the infamous American Basketball Association in the early ‘70s, and he was brought back to try to rescue the league in 1989. The MISL experienced tremendous growth for during his first tenure, with none of the shenanigans that took place in the ABA (secret drafts, ambush player signings, hand-me-down team uniforms, sub-standard venues, rinky-dink game promotions, et al), but in his second stint, Foreman was unable to stabilize the situation, and the Major Indoor Soccer League—or Major Soccer League, as it was known toward the end—was doomed. Merger attempts failed with the rival (and somewhat small-time) American Indoor Soccer Association, which later changed its name to the National Professional Soccer League (are youse all confused yet?), and the MISL/MSL limped along on life support with seven teams in its final season and folded for good in the summer of ’92. Ironically, three franchises wound up joining the NPSL anyway—the Wichita Wings, Cleveland Crunch and Baltimore Blast. The latter was renamed the Baltimore Spirit, but the name eventually reverted back to Blast again, and they are the only franchise from the original MISL still in existence today in the modern-day MISL. The Dallas Sidekicks and San Diego Sockers joined the new Continental Indoor Soccer League, which was partially subsidized by some NBA owners. Ironically, the erstwhile-dominant Sockers failed to win a championship in that league, for some reason. Meantime, the St. Louis Storm and Tacoma Stars simply ceased to be when the “Missle” disbanded, with St. Louis joining the NSPL in 1992-93 as the Ambush (transferred from Tulsa) and the Stars were in effect replaced later by the Seattle franchise in the CISL.

The bitter end for the Comets took place one season before the rest of the league folded. In spite of finishing either first or second in the MISL in average yearly attendance in every year of their existence, and in spite of fielding a consistent winning team toward the end, the Comets were losing money hand over fist as the team’s average attendance dwindled from 10,474 fans in 1989-90 to 7,103 in 1990-91, a drop of 35%. The league was down to eight teams by this time (the Comets, Baltimore, Cleveland, Dallas, St. Louis, San Diego, Tacoma and Wichita) and interest in the MISL was fading like Mel Gibson’s film career across the board, not just in Kansas City. On top of that, during that final season in 1990-91, the Comets had to compete with a new “enemy” of sorts, their new co-tenant at Kemper Arena, the International Hockey League’s Kansas City Blades. Although the Blades didn’t make the same spectacular initial splash the Comets made a decade earlier, long-suffering K.C. hockey fans (me included) who’d been starving for over 11 years without pucks in this town embraced the new team right away, and there just weren’t enough sports dollars in this city to support both franchises simultaneously, thus trouble was brewing for the Comets.

Uncertainty reigned about the team’s future during the 1990-91 postseason as both the Comets and the Major Soccer League were teetering on the brink. Schoenstadt sold the club in the summer of ‘87 to a group of local investors headed by Chris Clouser, but as the league struggled to keep teams afloat, the Comets’ ship was taking on water, and by March of ’91, Clouser publicly asked for three more investors for the ownership group or the team would fold after the season, plus there was no guarantee the league would survive anyway, as Dallas, San Diego and Tacoma were threatening to fly the coup too. No one knew it for sure at the time, but the last game in Comets history took place on May 4, 1991 in Game 7 of the Eastern Division Finals against the Cleveland Crunch at Richfield Coliseum, and I was there to witness it in person. The final goal in Comets history was scored by Kevin Hundelt, a sixth-attacker goal at 11:55 of the 4th quarter to bring the Comets within one point, but Cleveland held on to win the game 7-6 and the series four games to three. In spite of the loss, the players and we fans were buoyed by some hopeful news from the day before the last game that the team’s future had been secured after all, as local business entrepreneur Delbert Dunmire had stepped forward to pursue those three ownership units in the team. It proved to be false hope, however…

I liken the Comets situation to what I/we went through during my radio daze at the “Mighty 1030”, KKJC-AM in Blue Springs in late ‘87/early ’88 when we didn’t know from day-to-day whether the station would be sold to new owners or go out of business (or in broadcasting parlance, “go dark”). One of my co-horts there had a brilliant analogy for the situation—he stood by a light switch and said, “This is KKJC,” then flipped the lights off (pregnant pause). “Oh, wait—there’s still a glimmer of hope after all!” and he flipped the lights back on, repeating the scenario several times. This is pretty much what went on for the Comets in the ensuing weeks after the season ended. The team reduced ticket prices and tried to sell 4,000 season tickets for 1991-92, so my friend Tom and I did our part by putting a deposit down on a pair, but they never came close to reaching their goal, and just like The Mighty 1030 before it, the Kansas City Comets went dark two months after the ’91 playoffs. The ownership group sounded (on paper at least) like a very doable deal, but it started to unravel when two investors got cold feet and backed out at the last minute—namely Clouser and Schoenstadt themselves, of all people. This was eerily similar to what happened with the radio station, oddly enough, as it looked like we had a done deal in place at one point, until one horse's ass decided he wanted a bigger piece of the pie for himself and the whole thing fell apart. It also didn’t help matters that Clouser had already taken an executive gig with Northwest Airlines during the team’s dying days. It’s also just as well Schoenstadt got out—he died of cancer five months later on December 15, 1991.

At 11:00AM CDT on July 16, 1991, the original Kansas City Comets officially ceased to be, as the ownership group gave up the fight. Team VP Robert Hagens said, “Our heads won’t let us proceed, no matter how much our hearts want us to.” The real shame about it is they were only about $200,000 away from having the necessary working capital to move forward. Even after the team was euthanized, there were numerous attempts to revive it over the next few weeks, but all proved to be futile. The league had granted an expansion franchise to Pittsburgh, but their ownership group balked when the league started wobbling, and withdrew their interest. The MSL players union also agreed to lower the salary cap and such, but it was too little, too late to save the Comets, and the league carried on for that one last season. Oddly enough in 1991-92, MSL attendance actually rose by 15-20% league-wide over the previous season (depending on who you believed), with St. Louis experiencing an increase of 31% more fans, and there was talk of expansion teams in Phoenix, Buffalo and San Antonio for 1992-93 and possible franchises in San Jose and Anaheim in 1993-94, plus an eventual return to K.C. somewhere down the road, as well. I attended games in St. Louis and Wichita during that final season after the Comets died, and the atmosphere at the arenas was certainly still electric. The St. Louis-Tacoma game I went to was particularly fun because it was played in front of a huge crowd—almost 13,000—and it featured nine former Comets playing between the Storm and Stars, including a match-up of the Comets’ former goalie tandem of Jim Gorsek (St. Louis) and Mike Dowler (Tacoma). The old barn on Oakland Avenue was still rockin’, and the fans’ enthusiasm there as well as in Wichita a few weeks later gave me hope that K.C. could have a new MSL team soon and that the league might thrive again. I truly believe if the Comets had fielded a team in that final 1991-92 MSL season, they would’ve survived and joined the lower-budget/lower-overhead NPSL along with Wichita, Cleveland and Baltimore in 1992-93 and the original franchise/organization might even still exist today in the current MISL. But sadly, it was not to be.

On a hot Sunday afternoon on August 25, 1991, a public auction of the remaining Comets property was held in the north parking lot at Kemper Arena. It was a surreal event at which my friends and I and approximately 300 other fans came to pick at the carcass of the team and take a piece or two of it home with us. Everything from player uniforms to unsold souvenir merchandise to office furniture and supplies (right down to the rubber stamps!) was up for bids, even the 5’-high neon Comets logo sign (in this photo) used in pre-game introductions. I think I heard that some guy in Overland Park snagged that rascal for four-figures, and I’m hoping the new Missouri Comets team might be able to track it down and buy it back from him so they can resurrect it this year, since they are reviving the old Comets logo and colors as well. Some people were paying ridiculous sums for stuff like office chairs that they could’ve easily gotten cheaper at Office Depot. Anyway, for a professional auction, this was a very disorganized affair, in which people were able to sift through a lot of the merchandise beforehand as if they were shopping at a flea market. One woman actually had the effrontery to just grab up the box full of Comets/MISL media guide books (that yours truly just happened to have his eye on to bid for) and try to cart them off to her mini-van. I pointed this miscreant out to one of K.C.’s finest who was on duty there and he made her put the stuff back, and I was able to bring it all home legitimately after successfully bidding on it. Don’t NEVER fuck with Captain Comet, bitch! Those very same media guides have been most helpful in my research for this here blog series, by the way. I also tried to nab some old North American Soccer League media guides (even rarer than the MISL books) but was outbid by this “Anybody got extra tickets?” scalper schmuck whom we often encountered in the parking lot on the way to the games—douche! Anyway, the whole thing was a sordid end to a great sports franchise. How the mighty had fallen…

"Hot Winter Nights" - Chapter 3--The Other Guys

2010-10-15T18:26:00.043-06:00

This time in my not-so-little tribute to the Kansas City Comets of the original Major Indoor Soccer League, I'll discuss (and sometimes decry) a few old foes they faced back in the '80s and my memories thereof...

St. Louis Steamers The Comets’ most heated rivalry was with their Missouri counterparts in St. Louis. The Steamers—whose logo was eerily similar to that of Boatmen’s Bank, a former employer of mine—were a dominant MISL franchise the early ‘80s and pretty much owned the Comets through the first four seasons they played each other. Many Comet-Steamer contests were ugly affairs, fraught with lots of chippy play, rough stuff and out-and-out fist fights that even drew blood sometimes. This rivalry made Yankees-Red Sox, Ohio St.-Michigan and Chiefs-Raiders seem like pillow fights in comparison. Kansas City met with much frustration in both the regular season and playoffs against Team Steam, especially when St. Lou won a best-of-five series 3-2 in 1984 that the Comets could’ve/should’ve won, had it not been for some poor officiating that turned a blind eye to some major Steamer transgressions.

The following year, the teams met again in the postseason, and the Comets won Game 1 of a best-of-three in St. Louis on an overtime goal by my boy Damir Haramina (@ 2:16 of this video). Game 2 took place here at Kemper Arena on Friday, April 19, 1985—a date I’ll take to the grave with me. All 10,241 of us in attendance were in full-goose Twisted Sister We’re-Not-Gonna-Take-It-Anymore mode and this turned out to be the most intense sporting event I’ve ever witnessed in person—THIS WAS WAR! The crowd was into every little thing that happened in this game, and it was like we were going to will this team to victory even if it was the last thing we did. I remember there was a lot of pushing and shoving on the field, but surprisingly few penalties considering the bad vibes between the two squads. Things were looking dire late in the 4th quarter as St. Louis maintained their 3-2 halftime lead until Angelo DiBernardo tied things up with 2:13 left in regulation. Then a buck-22 into overtime, midfielder Tasso Koutsoukos rammed home a feed from Laurie Abrahams past goalie Slobo Ilijevski to clinch the Comets’ first playoff series win, thus sending me and 10,240 other souls into a frenzy. I remember raising my hands and looking at the Kemper ceiling and half-yelling/half-screaming an orgasmic “YEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!” It felt like demons were being exorcised that night, and in a way, they were, because the Comets dominated the St. Louis from that point onward, and the Steamers began a rapid decline and were out of the league altogether a mere three years later.

The Kansas City Royals won the World Series six months later against that other St. Louis team, which was awesome, but I look back even more fondly on this victory. I had no real quarrel with the Cardinals, and it just seemed so much sweeter that the Comets finally took out those fucking Steamers! It didn’t even matter that San Diego swept the Comets in the subsequent playoff series that spring—we’d FINALLY gotten over the Steamer hump, and anything else would’ve been anti-climactic. That game was also so exciting that I couldn’t get enough Comets soccer, thus afterward I only missed attending two Comets home games throughout the remainder of their existence until 1991. And both of those absences were because I had to work, yet during even one of those, I still got to run the game broadcast thereof on the board during my KKJC radio gig in Blue Springs, MO for the home opener of the 1987-88 season—against the Steamers, naturally.

The Steamers had four players I truly despised in those early years: defenders Carl Rose and Steve Pecher, forward Don Ebert and goalkeeper Slobo Ilijevski. Rose, Pecher and Ebert were agitators, always instigating skirmishes and then complaining to the officials that someone else started them. Pecher later played for the Comets, so we had to learn to tolerate him, but I saw Rose and Ebert (elbowing Val Tuksa in this pic) as pure evil. I do remember one of the Comets getting the best of Rose one night, leaving his nose and face bloodied. What made Ebert even more infuriating was that he was a good scorer in addition to being a goon. You can also watch Pecher totally lose it against the Wichita Wings in a legendary 1982 playoff game at the very beginning of this video.

And then there was Slobo. We just loved to hurl invective at Mr. Ilijevski (pronounced illy-EV-ski) the most because he was one of the great whiners of all-time. I also seem to remember an on-field spitting incident at Kemper Arena that inspired many Comets fans to call him “Slobbo”. Having said all that, this man was also one of the greatest goalies in MISL history. The “ageless wonder” was the Dominik Hasek of indoor soccer, seemingly getting better the older he got, and Slobo played well into his ‘40s. As good as Slobo was, he did have a penchant for wandering too far from his goal (wanting to be part of the offense, usually) and he'd get burned by allowing a cheap goal, like the one at the tail end of this video. He was usually good for one of these at least once per game. From everything I’ve read, he was a very nice man off the field, and Slobo Ilijevski was to the St. Louis soccer community what Gino Schiraldi is to the K.C. soccer landscape, making his unexpected death in 2008 all the more shocking and saddening. Slobo was a great warrior and a worthy (yet whiny!) opponent indeed. Rest in peace…

In spite of the numerous nasty things I write about the Steamers, I do respect them as people and as competitors. St. Louis was/is a fertile breeding ground for soccer talent, especially amongst the numerous Catholic schools in the area, and the team preferred to employ homegrown players as opposed to stocking their roster with foreign-born players like most MISL teams did. Thus, native St. Louisans like Jeff Cacciatore, Steve Pecher, Don Ebert, Ty Keough, Greg Makowski, Sam Bick, Tony Bellinger, Ed Gettemeier, Mark Frederickson and Daryl Doran, as well as other U.S.-born players like Ricky “Captain America” Davis, were all mainstays on the Steamer roster for years. This is not to say the Streamers were totally devoid of foreigners—stalwarts like wee Scots Tony Glavin and Duncan MacEwan, London’s Carl Rose, Irishman Redmond Lane, and Yugoslavians Nebo Bandovic, Njego Pesa and the late Slobo rounded out the squad, and they were a formidable force for several years beginning in 1979. Over time, though, it seemed like the St. Louis and Kansas City rosters were interchangeable, as players like Pecher, Frederickson, MacEwen, Gettemeier, Makowski, Bandovic, Keough and Glavin all shuffled back and forth across I-70 and played for both teams over the years.

Team Steam was quite a phenomenon in the early ‘80s at the venerable St. Louis Arena on Oakland Avenue, then known shamefully as “The Checkerdome” when Ralston-Purina owned the NHL’s St. Louis Blues. Amazingly, the Steamers outdrew the Blues in average attendance five years in a row, thanks in large part to having so many local boys on the squad. At one point in the winter of 1981-82, the Steamers were the 2nd-best drawing pro sports team in North America, just behind the NHL's Edmonton Oilers, and it's hard to fathom now how names like Slobo, Glavin, Bellinger and Ebert were just as prominent in the St. Louis sports scene as Whitey Herzog, Vince Coleman and Ozzie Smith were back then. However, the “St. Louis vs. The World” mentality that initially won over the Gateway City faithful would ultimately be the franchise’s downfall—that, and a revolving-door ownership situation. St. Louis was always a bridesmaid but never the bride when it came to championships in the MISL, and while the homegrown talent on the team was good, it wasn’t quite good enough to get them over the hump. Sadly, the novelty of the team wore off by 1985 or so, and Steamer crowds dwindled as the Blues began to reassert themselves during their 1986 “Monday Night Miracle” playoff run and puck fans in St. Louis rediscovered their team. The Steamers suddenly started hemorrhaging money and folded after the 1987-88 season. It figured—as soon as the Comets had finally mastered the bastards, they crapped out! The Steamers were replaced by the St. Louis Storm in 1989-90, and featured several familiar players (Doran, Slobo, et al) and a cool logo, but it just wasn’t the same. Oh, how the mighty had fallen…

Wichita Wings Apart from the Kansas City Wizards, the Wichita Wings were the only Major League professional sports franchise that ever called the state of Kansas home, and they were the “Little Engine That Could” of indoor soccer, if you will. Although they competed with Wichita State Shockers basketball for sports $$, the Wings were pretty much the only game in town, and the city supported them avidly during the ‘80s. The success and longevity of the Wings in small-market Wichita was remarkable, and we Comets fans had a fun and almost-friendly rivalry with their rabid following, the “Orange Army” (or “Wing-A-Lings”, as I preferred to call them). The Wings played their home games at Kansas Coliseum out in the boonies north of town off I-135. The Coliseum, also known as Britt Brown Arena, seated just a skosh under 10,000 and had outstanding sightlines for indoor soccer and a flat, low-slung roof that created a cacophony of noise when the crowds got loud, not to mention wide, comfortable seats. My friends and I made several trips down the Turnpike when the Comets played there, and the Wing-A-Lings certainly traveled well, as we’d often encounter several hundred Wichita crazies at Kemper Arena—many with orange hair—clanking cowbells and popping balloons every time the Wings scored a goal. The rivalry between Wichita and the Comets wasn’t quite as nasty as Comets-Steamers, I think because the Wings (and their fans) had just as many issues with St. Louis as we did (as this video attests), but it was fun all the same, and very evenly-matched. So much so, in fact, that the Comets trailed their head-to-head regular season series with Wichita pretty much throughout their entire existence until the Comets’ very last regular season home game ever, when they defeated the Wings to win the all-time series 32-31.

The Wings debuted two years before the Comets in 1979, and were competitive right away, finishing either first or second in their division in each of their first five seasons. They fielded a team built around the “Danish Connection” of Kim Roentved, Erik Rasmussen, Keld Bordinggaard, Jan Oleson, Frank Rasmussen (no relation to Erik) and Jorgen Kristensen, along with stalwart goaltender Mike Dowler and fiery forwards Chico Borja and Andy Chapman, among others. Roentved, Kristensen, Dowler and Frank Rasmussen all later played for the Comets, as well. Borja was a fan favorite in Wichita, and a likeable guy off the field, and he won my eternal respect when he and fellow Wing Dale Ervine assisted in the rescue efforts immediately after the tragic tornado that struck the Wichita/Andover area barely a week after the Wings were eliminated by the Comets in the 1991 playoffs. However, on the field, the man was every bit as volatile as Carlos Zambrano of the Chicago Cubs is today. Once when Chico played for the L.A. Lazers, the ref called a questionable foul on him right in front of me and Tom in our front row seats (3:43 of this video), and I swear, I thought Borja’s eyes were going to explode when he reacted! I can’t help but wonder if the dudes who created “Ren And Stimpy” were in the crowd that night, because Borja resembled Ren in “YOU EEEEDIOT!!” mode when he went ballistic. I can't resist this: "Chico, don't be discouraged..."

For the 1988-89 season, the Wings sported the goofiest sports uniforms I’ve ever seen. They came out for pre-game warm-ups one night wearing these vertically-striped blue-and-orange shirts (modeled by Pedro DeBrito here) and Tom and I started laughing. At first we thought these were just for warm-ups, but when they came out again for the game we were like, “Those are their actual uniforms?!?” They looked like something clowns would wear. Anyway, after several trips to Wichita to see the Comets play some close-but-no-cigar matches with the Wings over the years, Tom and I finally got a winner in our final visit there in 1991. We were being smart-asses with the Wing-A-Lings near the end, and I said, “Y’all can go home—we’ll turn out the lights for you!” The Comets players, to their credit, made sure to make their way in our direction and acknowledge us and the rest of the K.C. contingent who had assembled, and they waved to us and applauded in thanks for our support. Total class.

The Wings survived the demise of the MISL in 1992 and landed (get it? wings/landed!) in the NPSL and the rivalry continued (tepidly, anyway) with the Kansas City Attack for a few more years in the ‘90s before being grounded for good in 2001 when the NPSL morphed into the MISL Mach II and the Wings finally folded. The Kansas Coliseum is now closed as well and awaits the wrecking ball, having given way to the fancy new downtown Wichita arena last year. I’m cautiously optimistic that the current MISL may well place a new Wings franchise in the fancy new downtown arena someday soon so we can “Go back, Jack—do it again” and resurrect the rivalry with the Wing-A-Lings and the new Comets. If you want a very succinct synopsis of Wings history, I highly recommend all five parts of this YouseTube video. I think I like it better than the Comets video that's out there...

San Diego Sockers Those natural geographical rivalries with St. Louis and Wichita were certainly intense and exciting, but the MISL opponent I loathed and despised the most was the San Diego Sockers—much moreso than the Steamers and Wings. To me, the Suckers (as I preferred to call them) were like the Oakland Raiders of the MISL—pure evil! I almost dreaded watching those late-night game telecasts from San Diego because the Comets rarely ever won out there (especially in the early years), and struggled mightily to defeat SD here at home. The playoffs were particularly frustrating, as San Diego knocked the Comets out no less than four times in five years, the most painful loss being in 1988 when the Comets had San Diego by the balls with a 3-1 series lead, then proceeded to get hammered in the final three games by scores of 7-1, 6-1 and 8-5. The ’87 playoffs were similar, as the Comets led SD 2-1 in a best-of-five series and couldn’t finish them off then either.

Other incidents over the years gave me cause to revile the San Di-EGO Suckers from time to time, as well. The most egregious to me was the time in 1985 when Sockers head coach Ron Newman pulled his goalkeeper in favor of a sixth attacker with three seconds left in the match when they had the lead! Newman justified this Bush League maneuver by claiming that he wanted his offense to practice a particular set piece, to which Comets head coach Rick Benben responded with something to the effect of, “If he wants to practice, next time we’ll move off the field so they can have more room.” Ironically, I was later forced to accept Mr. Newman when he was named the first head coach of our mighty Kansas City Wiz(ards) of Major League Soccer in 1996. I still don’t like the bastard, tho!

Speaking of bastards, San Diego forward Juli Veee didn’t endear himself to K.C. fans in the aftermath of the worst beating the Comets ever took, a 13-3 drubbing by the Sockers in early 1986, during which SD poured it on with six goals in the 4th quarter, four of which came after they already led 9-3. Veee proceeded to call our players “tired old war horses”, "the worst team I've ever played" and accused them of quitting. Not to make excuses, but undoubtedly not everyone’s minds were into the game that night because of what happened earlier that day—the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Oh what sweet revenge it was a mere ten months later when the Comets made Veeeeeeeeee eat his words as Jan Goossens (assisted by Damir Haramina) jammed in the game-winner in OT at Kemper 4-3 to snap the Comets’ 15-game losing streak against SD. From that point onward, the SD-KC rivalry was much more competitive and evenly-contested. In Game 3 of the 1988 playoffs, the Comets staged the greatest single-game comeback in team history, as they trailed SD 5-1 and 6-2, and roared back to tie the game on a goal by Barry Wallace with about 5:00 left in regulation, followed by Dale Mitchell’s OT goal to win it, 7-6 (2:48 of this video).

Aside from Veee and Newman, the San Diego Evil Empire was also comprised of cretins like Paul Dougherty, Cha Cha Namdar, Brian Schmetzer, Zoltan Toth, Waad Hirmez, Ade Coker, Kaz Deyna, Kevin Crow, Brian Quinn, Jean Willrich, Jacques Ladouceur, Hugo Perez, Branko Segota, Fernando Clavijo and Steve Zungul, as well as future Comets Gary Collier and Jim Gorsek, and numerous others. I remember during a late-night TV broadcast from SD, an open microphone picked up someone on the Comets bench shouting, “Crow, you cocksucker!” Thereinafter I always referred to Kevin Crow as “Crow the Cocksucker”. It seemed to fit, anyway...

Twenty years ago, I would’ve gladly pissed in any of the San Diego players' Cheerios, but the passage of time has given me cause to step back and see what a truly fine body of men that team was back in the day. The Sockers won ten championships between the NASL and MISL from 1981-92, thus making them the New York Yankees/Montreal Canadiens/Boston Celtics of indoor soccer, and like them or not, you at least have to respect their accomplishments. You would think the most successful sports entity in San Diego history would rate a nice exhibit in the San Diego Sports Hall of Fame museum, wouldn’t you? Guess again. I was quite taken aback when I visited the museum two years ago and the only mention of the Sockers’ existence in the whole place was Juli Veee and Ron Newman being members of the SD Ring of Honor. Made me almost feel sorry for the team in general. Almost, that is…

For you movie buffs out there, the late Kazimir "Kaz" Deyna of the San Diego Sockers appeared in the 1980 Sylvester Stallone film Victory as one of Sly’s teammates on the soccer field. Sadly, Deyna was killed in 1989 when hit by a car while changing a tire along a California highway.

Los Angeles Lazers The MISL team I actually DID feel sorry for was the Los Angeles Lazers, an expansion franchise owned by Lakers president Jerry Buss, who joined the year after the Comets. You’d think in a metro area as big as L.A., you could get a few folks to come out to see your games, no matter what sport, but for some reason, the Lazers never caught on out there. It was almost comical to watch Comets games on TV from a three-fourths-empty Fabulous Forum, as the Lazers would routinely have crowds in the 3,000-4,000 range. It didn’t help that they went 8-40 in their inaugural season, but the Lazers improved to .500 and actually finished ahead of the Comets the next two seasons, then plummeted back to last place for two more seasons, in spite of having some star-quality players like Poli Garcia, Willie Molano, Gus Mokalis, Greg Ion, Doug Neely, David Brcic and the single-named killer B’s, Batata (aka, Nilton DaSilva) and Beto (aka, Roberto Dos Santos). The Lazers were involved in a rather infamous incident in St. Louis when head coach Keith Tozer was so incensed at the officiating that he instructed his players to just stand still and let the Steamers score at will, for which the league fined and reprimanded him later. By the time they finally put a really competitive team together, Buss pulled the plug on the Lazers in 1989. The Comets were beneficiaries of the Lazers’ demise, nabbing Ion, Neely and goalie Jim Gorsek in the dispersal draft. Tozer later was head coach of the Kansas City Attack before moving on to the Milwaukee Wave, winning several NPSL titles there in the ‘90s, and Batata’s son, Nino DaSilva, was a star and fan favorite with the Attack for a time.

It’s a shame the Lazer thing didn’t work out, because I think success in the L.A. market would’ve been a boon to the MISL in terms of media exposure, especially if some Hollywood-types like Jack Nicholson would’ve made attending Lazer games fashionable. Similarly, the league could never get a foothold in the New York City area, as four different franchises—the New York Arrows, Cosmos and Express on Long Island as well as the New Jersey Rockets at the Meadowlands—all came and went between 1978 and 1987 without any New Yorkers noticing, even when the Arrows dominated the league in the early years. Even worse, neither the Cosmos or Express were able to complete a full year in the MISL, each folding ignominiously midway their respective inaugural seasons.

Best Of The Rest There were a few oddities in Comets history. In the seven years the Comets faced the Cleveland Force, each team only won one game in the other’s home arena. However, the Comets were a bit more successful at Cleveland’s Richfield Coliseum against the Force’s replacement, the Cleveland Crunch…Similarly, the Comets only won once against the Minnesota Strikers at the Met Center in Bloomington, and the Strikers had one lone victory at Kemper against the Comets…Games with the Dallas Sidekicks always seemed to be decided by 1-goal for the longest time, and during a stretch in 1987 four straight Comets-Sidekicks games were decided in overtime, including two of the longest games in Comets history—a triple-OT marathon in Dallas and a double-OT thriller in K.C. (the Jan Goossens shirt game @ 2:36 of this video), both won by K.C.

Other individual player memories:
Cleveland’s high-scoring midfeidler Kai Haaskivi was a perennial all-star for both the Force and Crunch, serving as head coach for the latter as well, but my friend Tom and I always made fun of the man because of his startling resemblance to this nerdy guy we went to junior high school with! A classic judging-book-by-cover scenario, you might say…The late Stan Stemankovic of Memphis and Baltimore was nicknamed “The Magician” for his remarkable footwork and ball-control skills, and you’d swear that damn ball had a string attached to it, the way he was able to draw it back to himself at will. Because of his stocky and pudgy build, we also called him “The Weeble”—he wobbled a lot, but never fell down on the field! Sadly and ironically, Stamenkovic died of a head injury in 1996 after falling on an icy sidewalk. Check The Magician out in the 1983 MISL All-Star Game, right here at Kemper…In those last couple seasons, the Comets had to deal with the Dastardly Duo of Hector Marinaro and Zoran Karic with the Cleveland Crunch. These two seemingly scored at will against us, no matter how well we defended them. Karic was especially annoying because he was a career whiner, pissing and moaning that he’d been fouled after nearly every play, which made it really hard to root for the little fucker when he joined the Kansas City Attack in the late ‘90s…My favorite MISL player nickname was for Tacoma’s Neil Megson, who as known as the “Elegant Assassin”. I’m sure he preferred that over “Meggy”…Speaking of nicknames, South Africa’s David Byrne (not to be confused with the head Talking Head) was known as “The Man With The Red Shoes” in honor of his crimson footwear. That worked out fine in Baltimore, since red was one of the Blast’s colors, but looked kinda funny when he was traded to Wichita and their orange and blue ensembles…Perhaps the MISL’s biggest star was Tatu of the Dallas Sidekicks. His real name was Antonio Carlos Pecorari, and facially, he reminded me of a cross between actor Tony Danza and the late Freddie Mercury of Queen (w/o the dreaded moustache). Tatu’s trademark was ripping off his uniform after every goal he scored (home or away) and tossing the sweaty garment into the crowd. A bit of a showboat, yes, but not nearly as arrogant as say, Terrell Owens or Chad Ocho-Stinko, and thankfully, Tatu never took his shorts off and threw them into the crowd!...One of my favorite opponents was goalkeeper Tino Lettieri of the Minnesota Strikers. Tino was a colorful dude who was known for his equally-colorful stuffed parrot/good-luck charm, Ozzie, whom he always kept in the back of the goal he was tending. What I liked about Lettieri was his reckless, scrappy playing style, although it sometimes got out of hand, like at the 6:30 mark of this video, where clearly the Bird was NOT the word! Like Slobo before him, Tino was known to go astray and get toasted on a "gimme" goal now and then. And just like our man, Gino Schiraldi, Tino went into the pizza bidness up in Minnesota after he retired as a player.

I guess I better say something about the “Lord of All Indoors”, Steve Zungul, the MISL’s all-time leading scorer. While I respect his accomplishments, I was never particularly enamored with him, as Zungul came across as an arrogant Reggie Jackson/Barry Bonds-type—i.e., he was good and he knew it. The guy scored 108 goals in a 40-game season in 1980-81 and 103 in 40 games in 1981-82—that’s damn near a hat trick every game! Some players are lucky to get one hat trick in their entire lives. The S.O.B. was good, no question, but I just can’t shake the horse’s ass image I have of Zungul…

One last person of note is Willy Roy. Little Willy was the fiery head coach of the Chicago Sting, and he was fit to be tied following a 1986 game at Kemper when Comets midfielder John Bain scored four goals, including the game-winner (at 2:27 of this video) with precisely one second left in regulation in a 6-5 victory. Roy claimed that the winning goal shouldn’t have counted because the clock expired before the ball crossed the goal line (even though the above TV replay clearly indicates otherwise) and he called the Comets a “Mickey Mouse organization”, among other things. This was obviously a mere case of sour grapes that I think had more to do with his team giving up four goals to the same guy than issues with the game clock operator. Comets fans didn’t forget things like that, so next time the Stink, er uh, Sting came to town about a month later, the entire crowd proceeded to serenade Willy with, “M-I-C…K-E-Y…M-O-U-S-E…Willy Roy…Willy Roy!” Ironically, Chicago won that game in OT by the score of—you guessed it, 6-5!

The Refs And finally, no discussion of the Comets/MISL would be complete without mentioning the abysmal officiating that plagued the league throughout its existence. Picture this year’s putrid World Cup officiating (on steroids) and you’ll get a pretty good idea of how piss-poor it truly was. It seemed like Comets games were always officiated by the usual suspects, Bill Maxwell, Esse Baharmast, Ermanno Ritschl, Herb Silva, Kelly Mock, Brian Hall and the worst of the bunch, Gino DiPollito. “Dippo” was a roly-poly man who bore a slight resemblance to Mr. DeFazio on “Laverne & Shirley”, and he lived up to his nickname with some of most blatantly horrid calls (both for and against the Comets) that I’ve ever seen in any sport. Some of Dippo’s gems made Don Denkinger’s 1985 World Series gaffe seem accurate. According to one of the league media guides, DiPollito worked as a carpenter during the off-season. If he carpentered anything like the way he reffed, one can only surmise that his houses resembled Early Cuyler’s place on “Squidbillies”. In addition to their general ineptitude, these guys always seemed to “baby” star players like Steve Zungul, Tatu, Kai Haaskivi, Karl-Heinz Granitza and Juli Veee, especially when they took dives, which was more than a little bit. I swear, there were some nights when I really wondered if MISL games were fixed, given the appallingly bad refereeing that was taking place.

Just to give an idea how poor the officiating was in the MISL, a 1987 incident that went in favor of the Comets gives a good illustration. During the off-season, the league made a rule change that eliminated the three-line violation when a team has a two-man advantage. Similar to how icing becomes legal in hockey during a power play, the goalkeeper was now allowed to throw the ball over the three lines on the field (think the red line and two blue lines in hockey) without infraction while down two men on a penalty-kill, but on this particular night in St. Louis, one of the refs nailed Steamers ‘keeper Pat Baker for a three-line violation anyway while the Comets had the two-man advantage. The Steamers got hosed because the Comets subsequently scored on that power play. And who was one of the refs on the field that night? None other than Herb Silva, former MISL Director of Officials! How could the league maintain any credibility when one of the senior referees didn’t even know the freakin’ rules? Yes, I realize these guys were/are human and make mistakes, but geez Louise, it was soooo frustrating, especially during important playoff games.