Shut Up And Play Your Football

Last weekend we visited our old buddy Phil, with whom we went to high school with in Paris.   Back when he was at college at the George Mason University (Main Campus), he had occasion his senior year (1989-90) to visit the Rathkeller, at SUB1, a student union building.   This is a bar that serves beer.

In front of him were two Hippies, debating which beer to purchase.

Hippie 1:  “How about Coors?”

Hippie 2:  “We can’t, Coors is non-union.”

Hippie 1:  “How about Killian’s Red?”

Phil (overhearing and interrupting): “Killian’s Red is owned by Coors.  In fact, the Rathkeller is run by Marriott, which is non-union too.” 

At this point the Hippies were confused as the optimal course of action.   What they did next is lost to the clouds of time and memory.  In particular, Phil’s memory.  But it illustrates a phenomenon:  using political criterion to make non-political decisions.

Bleeding heart liberals and Social Justice Warriors have been doing this for ages; Phil’s example dates from 1989-90.  But now with Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling during the National Anthem and an eruption of sympathetic acts by other NFL players, we’re seeing a backlash by irate NFL fans burning their jerseys and gear in protest against this behavior by players.

Here’s what I say.  TO PLAYERS:   You have as much right as anyone not playing the sport to your political opinions.   If you want to express them off the field, by all means do so.   If you find an audience, so much the better for you.  But during the game, stick to playing the game.

TO FANS:  You have as much right as anyone playing the sport to your political opinions.  If you want to express those opinions by burning or trashing the NFL junk you paid for yourself, knock yourself out.   This especially applies to fans of the Green Bay Packers, Chicago Bears and Detroit Lions.  (You can guess my allegiance).   I’ll enjoy seeing green/yellow, dark blue/orange, and light blue/grey junk go up in flames as they deserve.

As for myself, I don’t care.  If Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin can QB us to the playoffs, NFC Championship, Super Bowl, and the Lombardi Trophy, fine.   Play the damn game, and WIN.   Your political views – whether I agree with them or not - remain irrelevant to me until you run for President or some local office in my neck of the woods. 

SKOL!

Donington Monsters of Rock

By now I’ve been to too many concerts, not all them thoroughly memorable, to make them all worth blogging about.  But every now and then there’s one which merits the treatment, if only briefly.

The other night, on the treadmill, I wasn’t able to find the Thursday night NFL game, but I did find MTV showing footage of Glastonbury Fayre in the UK.  Ack!  Kaiser Chiefs, Shaggy, Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa…who are these people?  I suppose Radiohead is the only one of that type of band I can stomach.  Give me Donington and Download…

When we lived in Paris, our parents knew another family – I believe with USTS/USTTA – which lived in southwest London; Baron’s Court was the nearest Underground (“Tube”) station.   Apparently the Chelsea stadium must have been nearby, but at the time I had no clue Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham, etc. even existed, much less were anywhere nearby.  Anyhow.   Since we got to go back the Wonderful US of A in even-numbered years, in odd-numbered years we’d vacation in London.  For example, we were in London the summer of 1983 when “Return of the Jedi” came out, and saw it at Leicester Square.  We’ll never forget the cheeky British kids behind us who would NOT SHUT UP, going on about “corr, Wheetabix!” and “corr, Darth Vader!” in their inimitable British accents.

ANYHOW.

I’ve already discussed Metallica’s show here in my recent Metallica blog, so forgive any repetition thereof.  Here’d I’d like to cover the festival itself.

In August 1985 we were back in London.  We learned that RATT were playing at a festival called Donington Monsters of Rock.  Then we learned that Metallica were also playing there.  DING DING DING!  The US Embassy had a bus going there – bus tickets & concert tickets combined in one package.  Where do we sign up?

Our poor Dad had to get up at 5 a.m., drive a right-hand drive car (our friends’ car, which normally stayed in the garage as we normally took the Tube everywhere beyond walking distance) through the streets of London to get us to the Navy Annex where we got on the bus.  

The bus wound its way up the … M1?  No clue.  The highway.  Anyhow.   “Money For Nothing” (Dire Straits) was on the radio literally nonstop, although Dire Straits were not playing at this show.   And my brother and I arrived at this huge empty field at a race track, with a stage at one end.  It was a huge, unruly crowd of Vyvyans, with a few Neals and Ricks thrown in there and there.

Band 1:  Magnum.   Some quasi-metal, quasi-prog British band was up first.  Matt has since investigated this band, but I never did.  They were….OK.
SET: All England's Eyes; The Prize; On A Storyteller's Night; Changes; Les Morts Dansant; The Lights Burned Out; Two Hearts; Sacred Hour; Kingdom of Madness

Band 2.  RATT.  “Round And Round” – of course.  Invasion of Your Privacy was the current album, but Out of the Cellar was the popular one – and remains so today.   A good show, though as of this point I can remember little of it.  Incidentally I’ve never seen RATT again. 

SET: You Got It; Wanted Man; You Think You're Tough; You're In Love; Lay It Down; The Morning After; Never Use Love; Round And Round; Sweet Cheater

Band 3.  Metallica.  YES!   Ride the Lightning tour.   Hetfield, Hammett, Ulrich and CLIFF F’N BURTON.  We were definitely psyched.  Not everyone else was – many bottles and cans were thrown at the stage, which James, Kirk and Cliff had to periodically duck.  Hetfield implored the audience not to “hit our beer”.   More recently I finally scored a bootleg of this show, and lo and behold, I heard him say that again.   Nice.

SET: Creeping Death; Ride The Lightning; For Whom The Bell Tolls; The Four Horsemen; Fade to Black; Seek & Destroy; Whiplash; Am I Evil?; Motorbreath

Band 4.  Bon Jovi.  I can’t remember which tour this was, and to this day remain unimpressed with Bon Jovi.  I certainly wasn’t impressed that day.   Mind you, this was before "Wanted Dead or Alive", which at gunpoint I'd identify as the Bon Jovi song I hate the least.  I think I had a headache and took a nap during their set, believe it or not.
SET: Tokyo Road; Breakout; Only Lonely; Runaway; (guitar solo); (drum solo); In And Out Of Love; I Don't Want To Go Home; Get Ready

Band 5.  Marillion.   Yes, at the same concert as Metallica was this band, who we’d never heard before.  No bottles or cans chucked at Fish & his friends.  Indeed not.  It was the Misplaced Childhood tour.   Matt and I were actually impressed, him more so than me.  I got a t-shirt, he got all their albums and followed them even into the Steve Hogarth phase.  He also followed solo Fish and saw his shows, but apparently much of those involve lengthy diatribes about Scottish independence, delivered to American audiences who have no reason to give a shit about that. 
SET: Waterhole (Expresso Bongo); Lords of the Backstage; Blind Curve; Emerald Lies (intro); Script For A Jester's Tear; Assassing; Pseudo Silk Kimono; Kaleigh; Lavender; Bitter Suite; Heart of Lothian; Incubus; Garden Party; Market Square Heroes; Fugazi; White Feather

Band 6.  ZZTop.  By now I was zonked out, and practically sleeping on the bus.  Matt says he was actually watching the show.  I like ZZTop, and now have several of their albums.  With Eliminator and its various videos playing all the time – most notably “Legs” – we knew who they were.  By now I’d call “La Grange” my favorite song.   Reviewing the setlist now, I regret I was not actively enjoying the show, but I’d have lacked the musical maturity to enjoy most of the set, including a Funkadelic cover.   [If anyone has a bootleg of this show, by all means let me know.]
SET: Got Me Under Pressure; I Got The Six; Gimme All Your Lovin'; Waiting For The Bus; Jesus Just Left Chicago; Sharp Dressed Man; Ten Foot Pole; TV Dinners; Manic Mechanic; Heard It On The X; I Need You Tonight; Pearl Necklace; Arrested For Driving While Blind; Hit It And Quit It (Funkadelic); Party on the Patio; Legs; Tube Snake Boogie; Can't Stop Rockin'; Jailhouse Rock (Elvis); La Grange; Tush 

The bus left, brought us home, and yet again our poor Dad had to pick us up again.   We’d scored t-shirts of Metallica (Metal Up Your Ass, the only choice), RATT, Marillion, and a ZZTOP DONINGTON one, none of which fit anymore, assuming we can find them (I recently got a new Metallica one in XL). 

1985 was actually the last time I was in London or the UK, so I haven’t been able to attend any more Doningtons or any Downloads.  Checking the lineups for other years shows that even numbered years had the best lineups.

Here they are, in reverse order (headliner first) (* = show recorded/filmed for official release):

1980.  Rainbow, Judas Priest, Scorpions, April Wine, Saxon*, Riot, Touch.

1981.  AC/DC, Whitesnake, Blue Oyster Cult, Slade, Blackfoot, More

1982.  Status Quo, Gillan, Saxon, Hawkwind (!!!!), Uriah Heep, Anvil

1983.  Whitesnake, Meat Loaf, ZZTop, Twisted Sister, Dio, Diamond Head

1984.  AC/DC, Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, Y&T, Gary Moore, Accept, Motley Crue

1985.  See above.

1986.  Ozzy Osbourne, Scorpions, Def Leppard, Motorhead, Bad News, Warlock

1987.  Bon Jovi, Dio, Metallica, Anthrax, WASP, Cinderella

1988.  Iron Maiden*, KISS, David Lee Roth, Megadeth, Guns N’Roses, Helloween

1990.  Whitesnake, Aerosmith, Poison, Quireboys, Thunder

1991.  AC/DC*, Metallica, Motley Crue, Queensryche, The Black Crowes

1992.  Iron Maiden*, Skid Row, Thunder, Slayer, WASP, The Almighty

1994.  Main Stage: Aerosmith, Extreme, Sepultura, Pantera, Therapy?, Pride & Glory; Second Stage: The Wildhearts, Terrovision, Skin, Biohazard, Cry of Love, Headswim

1995.  Metallica, Therapy?, Skid Row, Slayer, Slash’s Snakepit, White Zombie, Machine Head, Warrior Soul, Corrosion of Conformity

1996.  Main Stage: KISS, Ozzy Osbourne (both headlining, but playing separately), Sepultura, Biohazard, Dog Eat Dog, Paradise Lost, Fear Factory; Kerrang! (Second) Stage: Korn, Type O Negative, Everclear, 3 Colours Red, Honeycrack, Cecil

The festival was discontinued, until 2003, when it was reborn – taking place at the same location – as the Download Festival.   Saxon’s song “And the Bands Played On” (off Denim & Leather) is about Donington. 

Best Buy and Barnes & Noble

Or as I call them (sometimes), Breast Buy, or Buns & Nubile. 

I’ve already done a eulogy for Tower Records a few years ago.  Borders is also gone.   FYE is still around, but charges twice as much for CDs as you’d expect to pay on Amazon.  Unless you absolutely, positively have to have that CD NOW, don’t buy it at FYE.  Assuming you could even find it there.

When you think about it, Amazon is the optimal deal.  No brick & mortar store, even a Costco Warehouse, could possibly stock all the items which Amazon could list through its website – not merely its own inventory but all the sellers it associates with (that actually includes me).  I suppose you could forgive the genies and gurus who predicted the imminent demise of the brick & mortar store, which obviously can’t compete with Amazon.  My own quest for the more obscure Philip K. Dick and Robert Heinlein books – I’ve long since read Ubik and Starship Troopers – plus the more obscure author, Harry Harrison, who doesn’t seem to be carried at all in Barnes & Noble, has been possible thanks to Amazon and no thanks to Barnes & Noble.  By now the only printed materials I can expect to purchase from B&N is the new Classic Rock magazine and military surplus special edition gun magazines. 

Not only that, the advent of Spotify, streaming, and immediate digital downloads also make in-store music purchases somewhat obsolete.  Except that you can’t download vinyl.  I suppose you could say that the resurgence of the vinyl format is saving the brick & mortar music store.

Which brings me to my next topic:  where to buy CDs in a store, as of 2017.

A few weeks ago I was up in New Jersey – again.  And I paid a visit to our old friend, the Garden State Plaza, a mall in northern New Jersey at the intersection of 17 and 4.   The Adidas Store is still not open despite its promise to return “August 2017” (it was already September).   Despite that, there was a new addition: a “brick & mortar” Amazon Book Store.  It wasn’t particularly big, and not stocked nearly as well as a Barnes & Noble, but it was remarkable.  It had more of the look of a model store and not something to be taken seriously as a commercial establishment.  Anyhow.

GSP (as we call it) also has a Best Buy.   This one is… typically poorly stocked.  You would think, in theory, that all Best Buys are identically stocked.  And for the most part you’d be right.  However, the Best Buy in Paramus, up 17 North from GSP, is a bit different.  Every now and then I find stuff there I don’t see at other Best Buys.  This time it was two Jimi Hendrix CDs and Season 20 of South Park.   They also had the bundle packs of S1-5 and 6-10 of South Park.  Yet the Best Buy in Annandale, Virginia (Little River Turnpike & Pickett Street) had no South Park at all.   Score again for BB-Paramus.

I suppose you could say my preference is to walk into Best Buy and/or Barnes & Noble, find something really cool, bring it up to the register, pay for it, and walk out of the store with it IN MY HANDS.  Failing that, I just get back into the car, go home, and look online, click a few buttons, and a few days later the item I wanted is in my mailbox.  Best Buy and B&N also have websites, and these sites allow you to buy online and pick up at a local store, which is a nice compromise.

Best Buy also sells TVs, fridges, dishwashers, video game consoles, and other hardware which no one can download, but you can order it online and have it delivered.  Even so, most of us would prefer to “kick the tires” on a fridge on a showroom floor before spending $$$ to have it delivered.  Of my 5 guitars, though, one – a Gibson Les Paul Studio Pro in Black Cherry Pearl – I bought online without ever having seen it before it arrived on my doorstep.  To this day, I have never seen another one in a store, Sam Ash or Guitar Center, even the bigger flagship stores in Manhattan. 

I think we all can appreciate that convenience.  Of course the response to that is:  we could do all our shopping online in minutes, then sit back bored in our home and wonder what to do with the rest of the day.  

Is the business model that we stay home indefinitely and do all our shopping online, never venturing forth into the outside world to shop, see what’s out there, or just out of sheer boredom and stir craziness?   As enjoyable as I find it to come home from work and find a CD in my mailbox, I also get enjoyment out of finding something new or different at Best Buy or B&N and walking out of the store with it.  Fortunately, the continued existence of Best Buy and B&N suggests that I’m not the only one who thinks so.  

Augustus "Bear" Owsley Stanley III

Recently I picked up a book, Practical LSD Manufacture, by someone named “Uncle Fester”, clearly an alias.  My impression going into the book is that of all the clandestine substances  you might attempt to make yourself, LSD is among the hardest and least amenable to those of us (e.g. me) who struggled through high school chemistry and stayed light years away from it from graduation onward.  I lack (A) the lab or space to make it, (B) the precursor chemicals (most of which are closely watched by The Man), (C) the equipment (unlike Walter White, I don’t have chemistry lab to raid for my own use), and most importantly, (D) the skill set necessary to do any of the necessary procedures.  In the unlikely event that I could cook it up, what would I do with it?  I’d have several lifetimes of LSD at my disposal, and the examples of excessive personal consumption aren’t good: (1) Charles Manson – still in prison, (2) Syd Barrett, baked out of Pink Floyd and retired, now dead, and (3) Roky Ericksson, who went insane.  No thanks.  

Although 90% of the material went over my head, many of the comments were fairly amusing.  A “cook” (clandestine LSD chemist) in the UK was nabbed in “Operation Julie”, so named after the female operative who took down the operation, much of which involved orally stimulating the chemists’ genitals.  This particular cook had come up with yet another way of making LSD, which itself was of major interest to the author.  And yet another method – there appear to be several – involves phosgene, evoking images of WWI chemical warfare. 

But reviewing this gave me more understanding and appreciation of this famous counterculture personality, Augustus Owsley Stanley III, often known as either “Bear” or “Owsley”.  Of course, reading a biography on him also helped.

Bear: the Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III, by Robert Greenfield.  “Bear”, as in the Dead album “Bear’s Choice”, is mainly known for two things:  developing the Grateful Dead’s on-stage sound system (and recording countless shows) and making killer LSD he claimed was more pure than Sandoz’.  [Note, Hofmann’s book, LSD – My Problem Child, does not mention him, nor does it mention Ken Kesey, but Timothy Leary does come up.]

Owsley was a remarkable character.  AOS I – his grandfather – was governor of Kentucky during WWI.  His father (AOS II) was a drunken Navy guy who survived the sinking of the Lexington at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in WWII.  AOS3/Bear lived in the DC area for awhile, went to Washington & Lee High School (down the street from GMUSL, and I even took a car class there), and briefly went to UVa in Charlottesville (long before my Cousin Eddie went there).  

Much of the story involves the other of Owsley’s major roles with the Dead: taping their shows and developing their sound.  He was more effective at the former, much of which was intended as feedback for the band to improve their live performances.  Garcia himself once confessed that he had been unhappy with Phil Lesh’ bass playing during one early show, so much so that he threw Lesh down a flight of stairs.  After listening to the tapes (most likely recorded by Bear) he was so impressed that parts of that show wound up on Anthem of the Sun, their second album.  Naturally, Garcia was remorseful about his.  [Ah, so this is why Lesh doesn’t tour with the Dead any more.]

Owsley’s later “Wall of Sound”, a massive and unwieldy PA system which overtaxed the band’s logistics, proved too much and had to be abandoned in favor of more mundane and conventional concert amplification.  As of 2017, a more tangible and lasting legacy of Owsley’s work with the Dead are several live albums and bootlegs, the most notable being The History of the Grateful Dead, Part 1: Bear’s Choice.  Naturally, Greenfield’s book has a fairly extensive list of all those recordings.  They also include non-Dead recordings, e.g. Janis Joplin & Big Brother & the Holding Company.  Owsley also recorded supporting acts and other bands playing with the Dead.  His tangential relationship with Blue Cheer (and the LSD they named themselves after) is briefly mentioned.  While not nearly as famous as the Dead, Janis, Quicksilver, etc. they were still part of the San Francisco, Haight Ashbury scene – the hairy edge of that scene and its connection to the Hell’s Angels (e.g. “Gut”, ‘Cheer’s famous manager). 

Of all the “cooks”, Owsley is probably the most famous.  He supplied Ken Kesey with his doses.  What I found funny was that Kesey’s preferred dose was 400 micrograms, which even veteran tripper Bear thought was excessive (100-200 is the ideal, 250 being Hofmann’s famous bicycle ride dosage).  Owsley also supplied the Beatles with their LSD.   Remarkably, Owsley often gave about half his output away free not only to various celebrity musicians, but also anonymous festival patrons.  Of the half he sold, he did so practically at cost.  His goal was to distribute as much top quality LSD as he could to as many different people.  Unlike Walter White – who so far as we know, never sampled his own meth (and in any case was a fictional character anyway) – Owsley could and did trip on his own supply.  For one thing, he enjoyed it, but also it was a sincere question of quality control.  Owsley would not expect anyone to trip on a batch he wasn’t sure was up to his standards, and he took immense pride in the quality and purity of his LSD.   

Acid Tests.  These were public gatherings at which people could trip on LSD amidst friendly comrades with a house band playing the appropriate music, occurring in the San Francisco, CA area.  The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe, is the most famous description of these.  They occurred from 1965 to 1968.  The house band was the Grateful Dead; the LSD was supplied by Owsley.  Note: over in London, similar gatherings were done, mimicking the California version.  The house band at these was Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.  The SF version was organized by Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.

Owsley himself estimated his lifetime production to have been somewhere close to 5 million doses.  Since LSD doses are measured in micrograms, as opposed to milligrams, a relatively modest amount of LSD can produce an unusually high amount of effective doses.   In fact, for some time the Guinness Book of World Records listed LSD as the world’s most powerful drug. 

What’s also remarkable about Owsley’s LSD operation is that technically he had no background in chemistry and “taught himself” how to make it.   Again, the prior book explains how difficult this is.

However, there are two major caveats to this assessment of his achievement.  First, his GF at the time was a chemist, so undoubtedly she taught him the procedures necessary to do so.  This goes a long way to explaining how he was able to “teach himself”, very likely taught by her, as she was also closely involved with him and his lifestyle and also helping him consume and distribute the top quality acid he was making.  Second, he was doing so before it became illegal and shortly after it was banned, at a time at which the feds were far less sophisticated at tracking down cooks by precursor chemicals and such.  He would have had a much easier time than a contemporary cook at acquiring what he needed.    

Owsley was busted eventually and went to prison for two years (Terminal Island).   Oddly, although he taped many Dead shows – and the opening acts too, which supposedly included Blue Cheer – it seems only a fraction of these recordings have been released to the public.  He moved to Australia and made a compound out in the outback.  He long since stopped doing interesting like doing the Dead’s sound or making killer LSD – but his cause of death was actually a car accident in the outback.    

While I’m on the topic of cooks.

Nick Sand & Tim Scully.  I recently watched “The Sunshine Makers”, a 2015 documentary on this pair of cooks, essentially Owsley’s successors.  Scully trained under Owsley himself.  With Owsley’s arrest and incarceration, this pair became the biggest and most important producers of LSD – until they themselves were caught.  Sand died in April of this year in exile; Scully served his time and permanently retired from the LSD business. 

William Pickard.   If you believe the Feds, this man was the biggest cook, as the supply of LSD dropped dramatically after he was caught – though Pickard himself insists (quite plausibly) that LSD production has always been decentralized since its banning in 1966, and the end of the Grateful Dead’s regular touring schedule (Jerry Garcia died in September 1995) essentially shut down the most important distribution network the drug had.  [If you don’t know anyone personally who sells LSD, a jam band concert is probably the best place to score acid.]  What’s interesting is that Pickard had been particularly careful about his operations.   He was arrested in 1999 and is serving a life sentence.   

One thing you notice: every major “cook” – and while “Uncle Fester” falls short of identifying himself as one, his extensive knowledge of the intimate details of LSD production would infer that he was one, or maybe still is – has eventually been caught, sooner or later.  None of them were stupid or careless, they were all aware their activities were illegal, and all took the matter of evading notice or capture seriously.  But it wasn’t good enough.    

New Cars

A quick one, while he’s away.   Err, a quick one before off to a viewing.   I’ll have more to say next week. 

Recently I had an accident, and had to rent a car (paid by the insurance company) while my own car was being fixed.  It was a Ford Fusion, relatively new.   Although I appreciate having something to drive instead of walking, riding a bike, or Ubering everywhere (including New Jersey), some things bugged me.

Let me start with the good things:

1)         Awesome brakes

2)         Decent acceleration

3)         No mechanical issues

Ok, done those.   Here are the features I did not like, relative to my 2009 Dodge Charger R/T, which has over 100k miles on it and isn’t exactly new.

1)         Push button ignition.   Call me Henry Ford, but I prefer putting a KEY into the ignition.   Then again, call me Freud.  

2)         AUX vs. USB.   I use an iPod and Spotify through my Smartphone (Galaxy S6).   If you plug in iPod into a stereo with a USB port, the stereo takes over.  The catch is that the interface is 10x slower than the wheel on the iPod.  Hooking it up through an AUX connector lets you keep control with the iPod.  Moreover, you need the AUX to access Spotify through the cell phone.

Now I’m hearing that some newer cars don’t even have CD players.   HUH?   Ok, that truly sucks.  

As of now, my priority means of listening to music is CD.   I use the iPod and Spotify, but mainly it’s CDs.  I have a vinyl player and if it’s Friday night I might listen to a record, but for the most part it’s CDs.  So I appreciate having a CD player in the dashboard.  

3)         No auto lights.  My Charger has a setting where the headlights come on and off automatically based on light conditions.  The car won’t run down, and the lights will come on when it’s night or a garage.   The Ford didn’t have that.

4)         Horrible dash.  Whoever designed the Fusion dash needs a new job.   Speedo front and center, OK, but the tach?  Right next to the fuel gauge, parallel thereto, really as an afterthought.  An up-down vertical indicator, which is OK for a fuel gauge but sucks as a tach. 

Here’s how that worked out back at Ford:

Manager:          “Dude, where’s the tach?”

Designer:          (Blank stare) “Tach?”

Manager:          (Facepalm) “Give me a damn tachometer.  Figure out what it is and do it.”

5 days later

Designer:          “Here it is.” 

Manager:          (Sees shitty tach but too late to fix it).  (Sigh). 

Charger, Firebirds, Honda Civic, all had round tachs.   No excuses, Ford.  Come on.