Recently by Rick Rizzo

I generally have a great distaste for anything that has to do with looking back at the previous year. There is one geeky habit that I suppose is a holdover from my formative years however, and that is a list of songs that I couldn’t get enough of over the course of the year…

It’s hard to get nostalgic about a place that smelled like piss and beer, but CBGBs, I’ll miss you. I’ll remember fondly how the house soundman asked loudly through the stage monitors, during the middle of an eleventh dream day encore, “Are you guys gonna be up there much longer?”

The first time I witnessed our friend, The Shark, in action, Big Black was providing the live soundtrack in a loft somewhere west-Loopish (was it on Lake?- what year was it? My memory flags after so many years). Could you imagine anything more menacing? Albini, slinging his guitar from a guitar strap on his hip, scraping chords like rusted steel and The Shark, fin barely visible, weaving through the crowd. Back then you could be assured that you would see the same people at any underground event; and I’m not sure if Corey Rusk was there, but the attitude was what Touch and Go records has created for at least a couple generations of musicians, filmmakers, and artists.

On the dvd commentary track to Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger, recently released on Sony Picture Classics, both Jack Nicholson and writer Mark Peploe refer to the movie as an “art film”. I’m wondering when that term disappeared. I first saw The Passenger at the Kentucky Theater in downtown Lexington sometime around 1976. The Kentucky Theater was the prototypical “art house”. It was too big, too cold (or hot), with thick mildewed curtains. But it was cheap, and it had the films that any deep-thinking college kid who lacked the drive to change the world, but wanted to understand it better wanted to see. I pretty much went every weekend. Herzog, Fassbinder, and Wertmuller; Waters, Cassavettes, and Altman. Most of the films lived fondly in my memory for years. Many have turned up on dvd and have stayed in my top ten verified by repeated viewings. Stroczeck, Woman Under the Influence, The Last Detail, Days of Heaven. Some weren’t as good as I remembered. The Passenger was one of those films I would tell people about, but it remained elusive. When Nicholson finally took it off the shelf, allowing a transfer to dvd, I couldn’t wait to buy it, but I was nervous that it wouldn’t live up to my expectations and memories. All I remembered was that it had Maria Schneider and what I vaguely remembered as my favorite ending ever.

It’s already six years into the decade and one has to wonder what legacy the Naughts will bring. If previous times were defined by grunge, punk, new wave, psychedelia, rock and roll, and swing; there seems to be nothing new in the millennium. The hot bands these days are all reminiscent of what was going on twenty-five years ago; bands that existed twenty-five years or thirty years ago are regrouping to tour. I suppose that if anything, the naughts will reflect the sound byte culture we have grown accustomed to. Where I used to sit gazing at a gatefold sleeve while I listened to an album, I’m now more apt to include music in some multi-tasking scenario (and I don’t mean drinking a six-pack while listening). It is an exciting time for bands and consumers though; technology is causing massive shifts in the music business, and it remains to be seen if it’s the consumer, artist, or record company that reaps the most benefit. If I were a betting man, I would put my money on the corporation. You can count on the fat bastards to conspire with the government to squeeze anything that’s good out of the new industry.

The Progressive Department at Atlantic Records was tucked away in a corner of the label headquarters in New York’s Rockefeller Center offices. Why they called it progressive, I’ll never be certain; there was no plan for progress. The bands were not well-known; The Subdudes, Map of the World, Lemonheads (before Mrs. Robinson). The department was there because indies were getting too popular. Just in case there was money to be made, the majors wanted to make sure they were the ones making it. When A&R rep Bettina Richards came to see Eleventh Dream Day for the first time at Cabaret Metro, she walked up to the dressing room moments after our guitarist Baird Figi had hurtled a folding chair down the stairs in disgust at what he thought was our worst gig ever. After sidestepping the chair she assured us in her inimitable affability that we were great and that no band was ever signed or not signed because of one gig. By January of 1990 we had remixed our Beet record at Fort Apache in Boston with Lou Giordano and were ready for our first major tour. When I first saw that classic green, white and orange Atlantic label with our name on it I felt as excited as I would have making my pitching debut with the Chicago Cubs. Led Zeppelin- Houses of the Holy and Eleventh Dream Day.

If New Year’s Eve 1979 was a night of punk rock glory, the morning after to start the Eighties was the start of a long hangover. After a couple months in Lexington putting off my future, I moved back to Chicago to get a job. Outside of graduating from college in 1930, I couldn’t think of a worse time to emerge into the market- unemployment and interest rates had the economy paralyzed- I spent the summer in Chicago before chasing the girl I wanted to be my girlfriend to Florida. I got a job mixing paint in Delray Beach for $9800/year and lived in a studio coach house. It was a nightmare. I can still remember the giant cockroaches scurrying as I blew out my woofers with the P.I.L. Metal Box. My girlfriend wanted to be an actress, and when I inadvertently got a role in The Miser which she was trying out for (and failed), it marked the beginning of the end.

My first concert experience ever was Frank Zappa with Captain Beefheart at the International Amphitheater in Chicago in 1975. Row Forty on the floor. The amphitheater was originally used for livestock shows. Our dog raced there once. I was ecstatic. Zappa was previewing the upcoming Apostrophe record (remember Yellow Snow?). Luckily, there was the Bongo Fury live record to document that tour because the sound was atrocious. I’m pretty sure that was Zappa on the stage. The guy next to me (I didn’t know him) passed out with his head on my shoulder. The air smelled funny.

On my street in the mid- sixties, about twenty-five houses with a choice of two designs curved around adjacent to a school yard; bordering a small creek that flooded in a big rain, bushes filled with black and straw berries, and the remnants of Illinois prairie. Besides being the perfect setting for a dusky game of Kick the Can, the houses on this small suburban street also provided the basements and garages for no less than four teenage rock bands.

I don’t know if the paint fumes are getting to you art world people, but I’m happy to be removed from the drama. As a veteran of the music biz, it’s all familiar; the decision makers with no spines or vision, the talent-less hacks, the system that rewards mediocrity. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. Actually, I feel somewhat blessed. Sure, my band eleventh dream day saw all the ugliness that the music business had to offer, but we survived intact, we lived to tell.