Exene speaks: Wasn’t this supposed to be the new world?

For the second installment of an occasional series dedicated to rescuing my old articles from print oblivion, here’s my interview with punk poet Exene Cervenka (for those who don’t know who she is — in which case, why are you reading this — she was/is a key member of the legendary LA band X). It was the cover story of issue #66 of Boston Rock a/k/a U.S. Rock magazine — those were ambitious times — from July 1985. I was writing a lot for that mag in those days and even had a monthly column for about a year (wildly varying in quality), but this was a definite high point in my “career” with BR, even though, rereading it, it does go on a bit too long for my current taste and I consider my mid-’80s writing style to be, shall we say, a bit too obsessed with flash and gimmicks at points. But, old news.

To set the scene: In the summer of ’85, after four acclaimed but non-hit albums, X had hit an artistic plateau and was on the cusp of what their Wikipedia article refers to as their “commercial era” (1985-87), which ended up being, well, not all that commercial. They had just released their fifth album, Ain’t Love Grand!, leaving behind their longtime producer Ray Manzarek to dance with the German hard rock/metal producer Michael Wagener. Some eyebrows were raised. Exene had grown a bit suspicious of the media by this point and tended to be wary, even contemptuous, of music critics, frequently referring to them as “glorified gossip columnists,” even though X had generally received very positive press throughout their career (more on this topic in the piece itself).

I was a bit intimidated at the thought of speaking with Exene, who had a reputation for not suffering fools gladly, but pushed through it, taking it as a personal challenge to break down her initial reserve and flinty attitude. In the end, I think we made a decent connection; I regarded our interview as a significant assignment for me at the time and still do. I certainly have great respect for Exene’s artistic integrity as well as her resolve to persevere with her career through myriad professional and personal difficulties (she suffers from multiple sclerosis, for one thing) up to the present late day. Like Billy Zoom said, ”If you’re gonna spend your life beating your head against a wall, you should at least find a wall you like.”

From the vantage point of all these years later, I’m amused that both Exene and me already had the challenges of aging on our minds, well before either of us would hit 30. By the end of the interview, Exene struck me as the opposite of a self-important, egotistical artiste. She was able to hold things in perspective. “We’re old enough to realize that there’s more to life than being in a band,” she told me. “You get to a certain point and you realize you’ve done nothing with your life except made these records — big deal. There’s so much more you can contribute.”

And so, to the piece. Boy, do I not write like this now; boy, am I ever a different person today who would do something totally different with the subject. But I hope you find it a worthwhile read. My best to Exene, and to you.

_____________________________________

X

by Wes Eichenwald

This is the fourth story and third cover story about X to appear in Boston Rock since 1981.

“I’m not surprised,” says Exene Cervenka.

First there was the article in BR #22 (October ’81), by Michael Hafitz, chronicling the already-fabled Exene, John Doe, Billy Zoom and D.J. Bonebrake. To quote Hafitz: “Although not blessed with an eight-octave range, they sing with exceptional plaintive, romantic whine.”

Then came Gerard Cosloy’s cover story in BR #31 (August ’82), three years ago this month. Cosloy quoted photographer Phil ‘n’ Phlash horning in on the conversation to ask Exene, “How long have you had dreadlocks?” and getting the answer, “I don’t have dreadlocks. I just don’t comb my hair.”

In BR #44 (October ’83), Bruce D. Rhodewalt checked in with a funny account of how bad the interview went. Rhodewalt said theirs were “homemade vocal harmonies.”

To scoot over to the last issue of NY Rocker (spring ’84), we have writer Andy Schwartz quoting Doe quoting Zoom: “If you’re gonna spend your life beating your head against a wall, you should at least find a wall you like.”

Yeah.

Remember when you first heard X? How full you thought they were of…fresh air? How they mixed punk poetry (gimme that oldtime violence) with our incomparable all-American musical traditions? Remember when it was a big deal that John and Exene were married? Remember those names Exene Cervenka? And John Doe? Finally, how great you felt that such a band was on the planet?

Another X record is out. Another State of the Band Address is due. Ain’t Love Grand is X’s fifth album in five years, its third on Elektra, and the first whose producer is not Ray Manzarek. This time the band went with Michael Wagener, producer of an infamous single for them last year, a cover of the Troggs’ “Wild Thing” that had people who cared screaming “Joan Jett!” and not in a complimentary way.

Referred to the band by a contact at Elektra, Wagener is a German previously known — gasp — for his work with heavy metal bands like Dokken and Accept. Yet Aint’ Love Grand is a long way from metal, or even “Wild Thing” — on Wagener’s insistence, according to Exene. So there.

“Everybody was so scared,” she mocks. ” ‘Oh no, oh no. They’re changing producers, oh no, oh no.’ They didn’t have any faith in us. You can only make so many albums that sound the same. The band was just sick of the way we sounded. We wanted to sound grander.”

Did Manzarek mind being, well, dumped? “I don’t talk to him anymore. I think he did. I’m not sure. I think everyone’s surprised it wasn’t sooner.” After all, Exene points out, look at how much Talking Heads, for example, plays (rock) musical chairs; and X didn’t want to bring in outside musicians, so…(more on snobbish purists later).

A year and a half elapsed between the fourth album, More Fun in the New World, and Ain’t Love Grand. This past spring, according to Exene, was “the first time off we’ve had in eight years”; she went to the library, and spent days in blissful boredom. Because of the slackened workload and lack of overlapping commitments, she says, Wagener was able to work closer with the band than was ever possible with Manzarek.

During 1984 and early ’85, Exene was also busy writing poetry with Henry Rollins and Wanda Coleman (resulting in a book with the former and a spoken-word LP with the latter), and joining Doe, the Blasters’ Dave Alvin and others on a down-home country album by the Knitters (Poor Little Critter on the Road, on Slash), which she terms “a take-off on itself,” comparing it to Woody Guthrie affecting a hillbilly accent while broadcasting his radio show from…Los Angeles (X loves America, too. Their land is your land).

“John was in the mood to write songs and I wasn’t, so it worked out pretty well as always,” says Exene of Ain’t Love Grand. As a result, More Fun‘s political tinge has been replaced by a bias toward stately, Doe-penned love ballads with startlingly lush (to borrow a phrase) homemade vocal harmonies (“Around My Heart,” “I’ll Stand Up For You”). If that’s not for everyone, Exene did contribute several traditional X jamkickers (“Supercharged,” “Love Shack,” “What’s Wrong With Me”).

X always wrote ballads, Exene points out — “Blue Spark,” “White Girl” — “but no one would ever play it, because people wouldn’t get past the production. That’s so stupid.”

As for politics belonging in rock songs: “”Billy would say no, John would say yes, D.J. would say maybe. I would say yes, definitely. More Fun was very political; our concerns were more selfish this time. We were concerned with ourselves and our relationships with each other. We’ve all been going through some interesting things.”

The album’s release has helped return the band to an even keel, says Exene, along with kick-starting the familiar touring cycle (10 and a half weeks this summer and fall).

For a band supposed to be on a leading edge of rock ‘n’ roll — with fans to match — to hear Exene tell it, X is hexed with an awful lot of retrogressive fans and critics, whose unwitting intent is to imprison the band in its own history. But nyaah nyaahs Exene, “We’re not paying any attention to it.” The band has a love/hate relationship with critics; many have placed them on a pedestal, holding them to impossibly high expectations related to memories of a past either outdated or romanticized. Exene is wont to dismiss such creatures as “glorified gossip columnists,” adding, “They’re all adult males! They’re not kids! What do they know?”

However, she is about to have her sweet revenge: she reveals having written a song, for the Knitters, about critics. Does it have a title? “Probably ‘Talking Critic Blues,’ I would guess. Talking about the critics and complaining.”

Have the L.A. writers been freaking out over the new record? “Oh, God, yeah, They’re trying to find reasons. There aren’t any reasons, you just make records!” (If someone could only convince those adult males, eh?)

The original quartet has been together almost nine years now. Is Ms. Cervenka proud of this? “Yup.”

Exene’s roots are not Californian but Midwestern, specifically the south Chicago suburb of Mokena, Illinois. She  moved with her family to Florida at age 15, and didn’t hit L.A. until 1976, hooking up with John Doe and her destiny a mere couple of months later. Exene named the band. “I just found ‘X’ in my mind,” she recalls.

Exene recalls with delight the accumulated false gossip about the group. “All those rumors about heroin addiction; ‘John and I have just broken up, we’re getting a divorce’ — people just make up all these terrible things about you. I’ve been ‘pregnant’ about five times” (including once with Darby Crash’s baby, just after Crash died).

Exene never cared for hardcore too much: “In L.A. it was really violent, I don’t care what anybody says.” Back in 1982 — when the L.A. hardcore world equated X with Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen — Exene did venture out to a few shows. “Every time I’d go, some girl with heavy black eye makeup would come up to me and go, ‘I hate you, Exene, I hate you!’” Eventually, Exene began to get annoyed at this.

The singer appreciates a 50/50 blend of domesticity and rock ‘n’ roll world. “People who aren’t into the rock lifestyle (at all) are real boring,” she says. On the other hand — and, as is seemingly inevitable this summer, talk turns to the Live Aid concert — when she was watching Zeppelin, “Robert Plant looked like he had vodka injections in his face or something. I don’t want that. I want to be healthy.”

“(Live Aid) reminded me of mythology,” she continues. “Where all the gods are on Mount Olympus, and one day they say ‘Let’s go down and help all the humans!’ And they go down, and it’s like, ‘Look at us, we’re so famous and so wonderful!’ and then they say ‘Bye!’ It was really funny…although it was for a good cause, I suppose.”

Exene was amused at a letter to a Los Angeles newspaper castigating X for not playing at that concert. “As if anybody would conceive of the idea that we would be invited! We’re not gods! You had to be a god to be invited to that one…although Rod Stewart wasn’t there.”

When a band goes on for almost a decade — or a job or marriage, for that matter — one of three things ensues:

1)  Desperation sets in

2)  Sameness tends to stultify

3)  Every year it gets better!

X and desperation have had a special relationship, but Exene places choice (1) way in the band’s past: “In the beginning you’re really desperate, but you’re having fun so it doesn’t matter.”

The answer, of course, is (4): a little of each, all of the above. X is growing older, and for the first time, Exene is ready to admit it, have it over with, and get on with things.

“You’re so used to people accusing you, you defend yourself. But you do change,” she says. “We’re old enough to realize that there’s more to life than being in a band. You get to a certain point and you realize you’ve done nothing with your life except made these records — big deal. There’s so much more you can contribute.”

“I have no idea of the future,” Exene adds, but allows as there probably will be at least a sixth X album, and another Knitters LP. As for the current tour, they look forward to playing the Orpheum in October — “or is there another place in Boston now?” she asks. “We’d pick the Boston area over the New York area if we were given a choice; we’ve played New York so much.” (And not to get anyone’s hopes up, but she did mention the band wants to hit all the area college towns…)

X are still not huge commercial successes, and probably won’t be this year. So what? Their albums sell between 100,000 and 150,000 copies apiece. It pays the rent. It keeps them going. “We don’t feel like failures,” says Exene, who shouldn’t. “It goes by so fast we don’t really have time to think about it too much.”

Yet another requiem for the Boston Phoenix

Some of my headlines.

As you may have heard, the Boston Phoenix, a storied 47-year-old alternative newsweekly, is no more, a victim of the online age and the resulting revenue free-fall that has left print media decimated and gasping for air everywhere in the First World. Since the announcement a week ago, when the publisher suddenly removed the paper from life support, tributes, eulogies and encomiums have poured in from the four corners, mainly from former staffers and freelancers, from Susan Orlean in the New Yorker to Camille Dodero on Gawker to Charles Pierce on grantland.com to the Phoenix’s own editor-in-chief, Carly Carioli, on its in-house blog. (For a clear-eyed view of both management failures and the paper’s diminished role in today’s media landscape, see Peter Vigneron’s piece on the Boston Magazine blog.) All of them speak with far more eloquence and insight on the subject than I could hope to provide, and the greatest favor I could do you, gentle reader, is refer you to them. But the feeling persists that I should say a few words about my history with the Phoenix. I know, of course, that it’s not all about me, but this paper — or more correctly, its staffers — did play a significant part in my growth as a writer, and I learned certain useful things there that have stayed with me to this day.

I freelanced fairly regularly for the Phoenix between 1989 and 1996. Aside from an abortive stint as a freelance copy editor, I was never on the paper’s inside crew and had only brief glimpses of its inner workings, mainly when I would come in to discuss a piece with an editor or even, in those pre-Internet days, bang out a piece on one of its vintage computer terminals. The paper had a well-deserved reputation in those days — beginning way before I arrived and continuing way after I left — of not paying its staffers well (or, God knows, its freelancers), but attracted an extraordinary amount of talent by offering them a different coin, that of allowing them the freedom to write about things they cared about as long as they cared enough to perform due diligence and, oh yes, to write well. (For lists of the distinguished arts critics and investigative reporters who toiled for a time at the Phoenix, I refer you to the links above.)

The first piece I wrote for the Phoenix was an article about gift calendars that ran in a holiday supplement in December of 1985. It was assigned to me by the then editor of the lifestyle section, Sandra (Sandy) Shea. I remember her joking with me, as we were walking outside the Phoenix’s offices on the grittier end of Newbury Street, about how editors at the paper were paid less than fresh hires at the local TV stations. Her remarks had nothing to do with it, but it would be nearly four years before I’d start writing for the Phoenix again (my recollections are hazy as to why this gap ensued, but it was probably a combination of my freelancing for other outlets, the non-receptiveness of certain Phoenix editors to my pitches, or simply the time not being right).

November of ’89 pretty much coincided with Caroline Knapp‘s ascension from columnist to Styles (as in Lifestyles) editor. I first met her a few weeks before that, when I complimented her on a column she’d written and she acknowledged it with a shyness almost painful to witness. Caroline — an intensely self-directed, really smart person who exemplified the David Foster Wallace quote about writers being “exhibitionists in private,” since she let it all out in print and nowhere else (at least nowhere I observed) — must have seen something in me that I probably didn’t even see in myself, since my relationship with her — which never extended outside of the office — was instrumental in my broadening my horizons from record and concert reviews to writing about subjects like the arts scene on South Street and the South End of Boston; the resurgence of religion, in newer and more interesting forms; the so-called “men’s movement,” midwifed (or mid-husbanded) by Robert Bly, which made the cover, subtitled “Why are so many men dancing, chanting, spear-throwing, and running naked through the woods?”; ruminations on the baby boomers vs. Generation X, a trendy topic in late ’92; and a long piece on the science of memory, for which I interviewed the director of the Memory Disorders Research Center at Boston University’s medical school.  Working on such pieces, I developed a journalistic voice that still appeals to me — one without a spin or agenda, at least not an overt one. It’s a voice that, ideally, just presents the facts and lets the readers make up their own mind about which side to take. To this day, I enjoy interviewing people — I like the challenge of thinking up interesting, out-of-the-ordinary questions that might illuminate some hitherto unknown aspects of the interviewee’s character.

For some reason — perhaps I was unconsciously looking for mentors — I found myself especially drawn to those Phoenix staffers I perceived as being adults, Serious People, like Caroline and the dignified, reliably sober Carolyn Clay, who had been the Phoenix’s theater editor and chief drama critic since time immemorial, in which post she continued until the bitter end. There were a couple of other editors and writers I’d known before their Phoenix days, but I suppose I felt most comfortable around the Serious People; I liked the challenge of winning them over (which succeeded, well, some of the time).

Throughout all these excursions I continued to write about musicians and comedians for the arts section, along with a bunch of cheap-eats restaurant reviews and even an article on the rising Seattle rock scene, reported from on location in the Pacific Northwest hub, which was published June 21, 1991, mere nanoseconds before the release of “Nevermind” (no, I wasn’t prescient enough to score an interview with Kurt, Courtney and company, though I did at least chat with Messrs. Pavitt and Poneman, the lords of SubPop, and Scott McCaughey of the Young Fresh Fellows). For what it’s worth, I also wrote one “Cellars by Starlight,” the longtime local-music column which, in the hands of a succession of accomplished, dedicated writers, did much to promote, cohere and, I’m sure, encourage generations of Boston musicians. I took over for the issue of July 17, 1992; it was an honor. (Just for the record, I think the relationship between musicians and the people who write about them isn’t parasitic, it’s symbiotic, or at least it should be. Writers tell people things they should know; musicians show people ways they can feel.)

My contributions to the Phoenix are largely offline and likely to remain so, except for a very few pieces archived in a piecemeal fashion on bostonphoenix.com. Aside from a couple of short record reviews, my online Phoenix archive consists of a 1996 recap of a post-Grateful Dead music festival at Great Woods and my next-to-last article for the paper, this July 1999 article about my home at the time, Slovenia (picked up by the Weekly Wire website). If newsprint exists only in some writer’s dusty, yellowing scrapbooks and not online, did it ever matter beyond the day or week of publication? In some people’s memories, perhaps, if one is lucky; but one can’t know such things. I hope the online archives continue to be maintained in a reasonable way by someone, somewhere.

My very last piece for the Phoenix was a report on the memorial service in London for the singer-songwriter Kirsty MacColl, which ran in January, 2001 (for some reason it’s not archived on the Phoenix site, but you can find it elsewhere on this blog). By then I’d long since moved on from Boston, and the Phoenix, both physically and mentally.

And yes, again, I know: It’s not about me. Dozens of staffers are currently looking for another job, and who knows how many important articles, reviews and columns won’t get written.  The cruise ship has sunk in the North Atlantic, and freezing, wet journalists in life jackets are clinging to the wreckage. (Okay, I’ll stop.)

I sometimes reflect about the natures of journalists — whose role in life is, ostensibly, to tell the rest of us about stuff we at least theoretically ought to be paying attention to, stuff we should know — and how, at least in the alternative-newspaper universe, they’re so often put down by outsiders, the normals, to be, well, kind of weird folk. The Phoenix was the antithesis of a buttoned-down workplace, and it’s striking to me that in all of the reminiscences I’ve read about the paper, almost none of it relates to the work itself, the stuff that was written; all of the writers’ memories have to do with their relationships with the other writers and editors on the staff. As if they’re taking for granted that the work was important, but that the work speaks for itself. What’s not so apparent, perhaps, what could use a little publicity, has to do with journalists explaining themselves to themselves, why they chose that life, or why it chose them.

The Boston Phoenix closing its doors is sad, for sure, but the atomized molecules of the staff will eventually recombine, coagulate and express themselves in different forms. One day you look up from what you were doing, look around, a bit dazed perhaps, and realize that you’ve built a life in a certain place; that it was as permanent as anything could expect to be in this world, that is, not permanent at all; but if you’re lucky, you have other people around you who knew what it meant to you, knew what you did there, and valued you and were, in turn, themselves valued. It has to have meant something.

That’s the news this evening. Good luck, all.

On Old Coney Island, 1998

The recent weather event — Hurricane, Superstorm, whatever you want to call it — has been much on the minds of my wife Donna and me, even though we’ve experienced it from watching TV and emailing friends from Austin, Texas, where we’re experiencing nothing but sunny skies, cool breezes and some of the most pleasant days of the year. Donna is a Jersey girl, and cried for the destruction of much of the Shore, the place of some of her most vivid memories from childhood and well into adulthood. As a Queens and Long Island kid I’m personally upset at the destruction of large parts of Jones Beach and Coney Island, but also feel much for the Shore through Donna’s eyes, even though I’ve never been there and regret that I’ll now never get to see it the way it was.

Back in 1998 I wrote an article about Coney Island for Historic Traveler magazine. I was actually living in Ljubljana, Slovenia at the time, but returned to Coney and did research during a trip home. The article is still available online, but only the text; since I love the old illustrations that accompanied the piece in the magazine, I’ve scanned the thing for anyone with an interest in Coney and its storied history. Click on the links to read — clicking twice will get you a very enlarged version. By the way, Coney Island USA, which I discussed at the end of the article, could use a lot of help right here, right now.

We Didn’t Think It Was The Past At The Time

My workspace at MPG, strategically located in the middle of a hallway and fitted with the latest in computer terminals. At far right is one of my fellow copy editors, a woman named April Applegate. Wonder where she is now.

Back in the late ’80s, when Dukakis was in flower, I took a job as a copy editor for MPG (Memorial Press Group), a Plymouth-based company that owned a chain of small weekly newspapers in the southeastern corner of Massachusetts, mainly the part just north of Cape Cod, as well as the jewel in their crown, the Old Colony Memorial, the venerable daily paper of Plymouth (home of a certain allegedly historical rock which tended to visibly underwhelm tourists when they first set eyes on it). The OCM actually held claim to the title of New England’s oldest newspaper, dating to 1822. To come to MPG I had taken a significant pay cut from my previous job as a medical transcriptionist at one of Boston’s downtown hospitals (excuse me, medical centers) but this was, after all, Journalism, my higher calling. I commuted to the job four days a week from Allston, just west of Boston proper, a round trip of 88 miles. Again, it was for Journalism, so it was OK.

At MPG, it was my responsibility to lay out the newspapers — using a ruler, a pencil, and paper to dummy out the pages — and write headlines and cutlines (photo captions) for three of these a week, publications like the Bourne Courier, Fairhaven Advocate and Mashpee Messenger, plus occasional advertising supplements.  Each of these hyper-local rags was served by a single reporter and a single editor, both of whom often served double duty on another town’s weekly. In those medieval times we edited copy on computers which were hopelessly antiquated even then, perhaps dating to 1822 (do I even have to mention that the publisher was exceedingly cheap?), one step above ASCII with large green letters blinking on a dark screen, the edits executing as slow as drip coffee. The actual makeup of the papers was done not on a screen but by a crack paste-up crew of women with X-Acto knives and huge reservoirs of patience, who painstakingly pressed and smoothed text set on photographic paper  onto large white boards resting on green easels inlaid with perfect little squares. (Although early versions of desktop publishing had already been around for a few years, none of them had yet penetrated MPG’s linoleum corridors.) If space was short, the paste-up auteurs would separate individual lines of type and air to fill, that is, space out the lines as evenly as possible down to the bottom of the page. Recurring “garbage fill” stories (recycle your old eyeglasses at the Lions Club!) were always included in the feed to help the cause on slow news weeks, which occurred more often than not in these sleepy burgs where Page One was usually given over to the doings at the latest meeting of the zoning board or water authority or, if one was lucky, the annual Scallop Fest. (One week in 1989, when the actress Geena Davis, a Wareham native, had received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, I remember having to blow up a head shot of her to nearly fill an entire page of the Wareham Courier because the accompanying article was so brief.)

  The editorial staff was divided between younger up-and-comers, biding their time before their inevitable call-up to the Quincy Patriot Ledger, New Bedford Standard-Times or Boston Globe, and older lifers who were quite content living out their days in a comparatively nice part of the world (the winters aside). I suppose because I lived in Boston, could talk about music and occasionally exhibited a sense of humor in print, the young, bright editor of the OCM, Mark Pothier, assigned me the pleasant task of writing a monthly column about Boston-area events, usually of an artistic bent. (Before working at MPG, Pothier had been a rock musician who played in the bands Adventure Set and, later, Ministry; he’s written about this  time for the Globe far better than I could, for understandable reasons such as, uh, having lived it.)

Although working at MPG was sometimes consumed with the drudgery of most office jobs, at least, I kept telling myself, I was getting paid to think, even if it was thinking about zoning and scallop festivals, and I got to work with talented editors and cartoonists, most of whom approached their jobs with good humor and earnest attitudes. I didn’t hit it off at all with one legendarily cranky editor in particular, someone out of “The Front Page” but transposed to small-town New England, who would send back the editions to me after publication with his comments on my headlines and layouts marked in red crayon, sometimes complimentary but more often than not savage criticisms about how I could have done a better job on the layout or written a more accurate headline. I soon began to hate the guy with a passion (I’m sure he felt I was a stupid, lazy sod, and he didn’t appreciate my jokes). To be fair, Mr. Editor did know his stuff backwards and forwards, had a ton of experience and could have gotten a better job at a larger paper any time he cared to, but apparently stayed on the small-time beats out of sheer New England bullheadedness, or maybe because his greatest joy in life was tormenting poorly paid copy editors. I was relieved when the editorial musical chairs were realigned and I didn’t have to work with him anymore.

My immediate supervisor was a tall, terse, cynical (of course) guy in his 30s who wore no other footwear but red Converse high-tops and engaged in long-distance bicycling and skydiving in his off-hours, and thought, like the editor dude above, that I was a lazy, careless sod until I proved otherwise to his satisfaction. My fellow copy editors were a mixed lot: guys just out of school, academics lost between M.A. and Ph.D., and competent twentysomething women soon on their way to better things of one sort or other. The middle and upper management hit the entire range from brilliance to absolute incompetence, with most, as in most other workplaces, somewhere in between. Once I actually quit in a fit of pique after I’d spent an entire day laying out a supplement, only to have the assignment canceled due to some management screw-up; the relentlessly chipper executive editor, Sharon, immediately convinced me to stay on, giving me me a significant raise into the bargain.

For fun, I worked on my off-hours zine, plotted my next freelance adventure and occasionally scribbled stuff never intended to see print, such as this scrap I actually printed on photographic paper (and no, it didn’t get published, not until now, anyway):

mokita — – — (wme) — L4: dddddd at 3-29-88; 3:39p

What copy editors do for fun

The major recreational activities of copy editors ARE:

1) Chortling over typos

2) Raising a family

3) Skydiving

4) Freelancing for the competition

5) Pasting up “The Far Side” cartoons

6) Sending out resumes

7) Ordering out for pizza

8) Crying

9) Logging off

10) Thinking up obscene cutlines

One lunch with my fellow copy editors and Sharon around the summer of ’88 stands out, where we went to a local restaurant and started discussing the upcoming election and I said that if Dukakis was elected it would be safe to ignore politics for awhile (cool, boring hand on the tiller and all that) and came out with a suggested slogan for the campaign, “Elect Dukakis so we can all get on with our lives.” Everyone laughed.

My time at the OCM and MPG came to an abrupt end in 1989 when the company eliminated Plymouth’s copy desk and planned to move the staffers to (if memory serves) their office in Orleans on the Cape itself, which was a bridge too far even for me.

Several months before my departure, Sharon fell in love with an Italian guy, left the company and moved from Marstons Mills to Rome; she’s worked for a United Nations agency there for many years, and I exchanged emails with her while I was in Slovenia. Mark Pothier, who’s had and continues to have a distinguished career at the Globe, last year revived Adventure Set (good for him).

During my time as a columnist and occasional music writer for the OCM, I was simultaneously writing for papers like the Boston Herald and the Patriot-Ledger, not to mention Boston Rock, and I greatly appreciated the chance to pretty much write about whatever I cared to for the Plymouth paper. Among other things, I interviewed Chris Butler, formerly of the Waitresses, one of my all-time songwriting heroes; John Goldrosen, author of the definitive biography of Buddy Holly, Remembering Buddy (Goldrosen was working in a Hyannis bookstore at the time and stopped by the newsroom for an engaging chat about his obsession); bands like Brave Combo and the Incredible Casuals; and covered, among other things, MTV, independent movie houses around Boston, the secret treasures of Harvard Square, and Soap-A-Rama, a combination laundromat/dry cleaner/tanning salon/exercise spa/snack bar/TV lounge in Brighton.

I also wrote this column (click on the links), OCM_page_one

OCM_page_two

published on July 23, 1987. It incorporates an interview with Julie Farman, veteran PR pro and rock ‘n’ roll survivor, who currently writes this amusing blog recounting her past adventures. At that time she had just resigned her job booking bands at the Rat, Boston’s legendary punk Ground Zero, and was, as I wrote, “job hunting, in any city that isn’t Boston.” I still remember taking, with my crappy point-and-shoot camera of the day, that out-of-focus photo of Julie, standing just outside the Rat’s front door, in front of the display case that used to announce the nightly bill.  (Visiting Boston from Slovenia, I last gazed on the Rat’s facade on the first day of October, 2000; it was boarded up then, and would be torn down later that very month.)

For my fellow veterans of the since well-mythologized mid-’80s Boston garage-punk scene, I think it’s instructive to read this primary-source document from a distance of nearly a quarter-century, and see that this bruised but still enterprising and idealistic, bright young force of nature — as I remember her to be — had all but closed the coffin lid on the vitality of said scene as far back as the summer of ’87. It was already over, or was it? Eventually, one way or the other, one moves on.

Michael Dukakis failed to get elected president.

And me, I’m Durward Kirby.

…and the Thursday and Friday papers, too

Continuing an absolutely stellar (by starlight) month for me in newspaper arts-and-entertainment journalism is this interview I did with Wanda Sykes in the Austin American-Statesman. Wanda talks about the personal, the political, and the art of stand-up. If you don’t know who Wanda Sykes is, you should.

Finally, out in REAL magazine (a stand-alone monthly insert in the Statesman) is my piece on an all-abilities playground in Round Rock, TX. My wife Donna took one of the photos, too.

Thanks for reading.

You can read it in the Sunday papers

I’ve had a busy weekend in print in the Austin American-Statesman. Here’s my interview with comedian Steven Wright, in advance of his playing a new comedy festival in Austin, the Moontower Comedy & Oddity Fest. I remember Wright from his early days starting out in Boston’s comedy clubs, and it was good to talk with him and inquire into the workings of his unique mind.

Oh, and I also interviewed Carol Burnett, who’s making an appearance in Austin on Tuesday. I know it’s usual for journalists to affect a blasé pose about the people they speak with for print, but this one is kind of special for me. It’s also one instance where my being old enough to, well, remember the Carol Burnett Show (and rather well) was a distinct advantage. It took me right back to my high school drama club, where her show was part of the cultural fabric and one student thespian of my acquaintance worshiped her as the be-all and the end-all. Carol did seem to be one of the nicest people ever and she did not disabuse me of this in our conversation and I even made her laugh a couple of times. She also told me an interesting anecdote about how she turned down the lead role in the original Broadway production of “Funny Girl” and might have given a huge career boost to someone named Barbra.

Finally, I wrote a sidebar referencing the repurposing of Burnett’s childhood home in San Antonio as an early-childhood education center (which explores the little-known connection between Burnett and former San Antonio mayor and US education secretary Henry Cisneros).

I’ll just end by quoting myself from the main article:

<<Burnett might be, as she describes herself, “a clown,” but she also seems to be one of the few remaining people in show business who is a fully functioning grown-up. If you come to the show you might get to ask her a question yourself, or just say: Thanks, Carol.>>

Blondie and the art of the (very) long encore

My article on the band Blondie, including an interview with Chris Stein (the man beside, not behind, the blonde), is out today as the cover of the Austin360 entertainment tab (the Thursday pullout section of the Austin American-Statesman).  I don’t usually inject myself so much into articles like this, but given that I’ve been listening to their music and seeing them live since I was 18, it seems that I’ve measured out my life in Blondie concerts.  I’m particularly happy that the sidebar was included, which lists those concerts and namechecks Long Island, Boston, Mansfield, Ljubljana and, of course, Austin. If Blondie can keep it up, so can I.

Revisiting my visit to Sarajevo

I visited Sarajevo in April 2001 for about a week, and subsequently wrote this article with an eye to publication in a newspaper — any newspaper, really. For one reason or another, it was never published; I suppose it didn’t and doesn’t fit neatly into a typical travel section and is perhaps a bit too service-feature-ish for a more arty mag. But I still like it and wanted to put it out there, finally, for those who might be interested.

Sarajevo was an odd place for me; I felt very much at home in Ljubljana, but in Sarajevo I was uneasy and unsure of myself. In a diary entry at the time, I wrote, “There’s something very odd about listening to Kirsty MacColl singing ‘I Wanna Be Sedated’ while walking through Freedom Square, Sarajevo, on Palm Sunday.” That about sums it up, I think.

This version dates from around the spring of 2002, shortly after I’d relocated to Austin; I’ve only lightly tweaked it here. I’ve left in the extremely travel-sectiony “If You Go” bits after the article proper, though I’m sure nearly all of it is now seriously obsolete info.

 

Free counters

The Ugly Beatitudes

No, I haven’t abandoned this blog! It’s just that time flies when you’re…well…really busy with a bunch of challenging stuff. But never mind about that…today’s all about how I’ve gone back to my rock-writin’ roots with this article in the Austin American-Statesman profiling the Ugly Beats, a  ’60s-inspired garage-rock/power-pop combo that’s been plugging away since 2003. There are so many musicians and bands in Austin that it’s hard for all but a select few to get any significant press coverage, so I was glad to be able to give a bit of well-deserved local publicity to this hard-workin’ bunch of nice folks who make well-crafted music that’s fun to listen to. Cheers, and buy their CD.

By the way, the headline for this post is my original headline for the story, which the Statesman (wisely) decided not to run with. Yeah, I do appreciate having an editor when it counts.

Worlds colliding…in a good way

Of all the articles I’ve ever written over my career, this newly published piece has to be in the top 5 if not at the all-time peak, concerning as it does so many of my favorite things:  (1) Slovenia, (2) expats and foreign visitors, (3) alternative musicians and writers. Also, it appears in (4) the in-flight magazine of Adria Airways, Slovenia’s national carrier, which happens to be, in my opinion, the finest airline magazine I’ve ever seen.

On top of all this, it’s the first article I’ve ever done that you can read in Slovene (all the articles in the magazine appear in both Slovene and English, expertly translated). Love it to pieces. To read, go to the third dot at the bottom and scroll to what’s identified as page 46 (which is actually page 56 when you get into the page).

What more could I possibly ask for? Oh, yeah, there’s this one thing where a photo of musician Chris Eckman is miscaptioned with my name, to which I say, huh? We look nothing alike…