September 11, 2008 by info.

(Originally published on MOLI 8/27/08)

Long before he was channeling Keith Richard into his role as Captain Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp (sigh) was a swashbuckling guitarist himself. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, he played in a band called the Kids, one of many new wave acts trying to make it big in a part of the country geographically — not to mention psychically — far from the established music meccas: South Florida. Not many people know that before bass and Gloria, Miami was a rocking town. As the film Rock and a Hard Place: Another Night at the Agora documents, bands like the Kids, Cichlids, Charlie Pickett, etc., were creating the soundtrack of a tropical Athens (in fact, REM were Pickett fans).

Depp is the only member of this scene who went on to great fame — and he did it as an actor, not a musician. But even the world’s biggest movie star can’t let go of those rock-star fantasies. I suppose that’s why Depp’s strapping his guitar on again; this weekend, he’ll play in a Kids reunion in Pompano Beach, as part of the Sheila Witkin tribute concert that also features Pickett, Slyder, the Romantics (featuring a veteran of the SoFla scene), Z-Cars, and Tight Squeeze.

It’s not the first time Depp has rejoined his old bandmates: The Kids played the first Witkin tribute in 2007. Witkin was a concert promoter who helped build the South Florida scene; her son Bruce was also in the Kids. The ‘07 concert was caught by the Rock and a Hard Place filmmakers. Depp wears a vest, beret, and his instrument hanging low. Be still, my heart.

Rock ‘n’ roll, like any arts career, is a crap shoot. Rock and a Hard Place perfectly captures that sense of failed dreams, the ones that got away. I mean, if even having the hottest guy on the planet in your group doesn’t get you an English countryside mansion, whatcha gonna do?

It’s not the first time Depp has rejoined his old bandmates: The Kids played the first Witkin tribute in 2007. Witkin was a concert promoter who helped build the South Florida scene; her son Bruce was also in the Kids. The ’07 concert was caught by the Rock and a Hard Place filmmakers. Depp wears a vest, beret, and his instrument hanging low. Be still, my heart.

Rock ‘n’ roll, like any arts career, is a crap shoot. Rock and a Hard Place perfectly captures that sense of failed dreams, the ones that got away. I mean, if even having the hottest guy on the planet in your group doesn’t get you an English countryside mansion, whatcha gonna do?

Posted in Populism, Uncategorized | No Comments »

September 11, 2008 by info.

Maybe it’s the Scandinavian influence, but Minneapolis is probably the cleanest rock ’n’ roll city in America. I remember the refreshing lack of pollution being my first impression, when I began visiting the Twin Cities in the mid ’80s, hanging out on the fringes of the then-verdant rock scene, back when the Replacements, Husker Du, Babes in Toyland, Rifle Sport, Breaking Circus, and Soul Asylum were still around. I was well aware the metropolis had its seedy underbelly– a dark side that New York Times media columnist David Carr documents chillingly in his addiction memoir The Night of the Gun. In fact, I usually stayed with a bassist who doubled as the scene’s biggest drug dealer – let’s call him Sven. But even we pale, tattooed potheads went for hikes around Minneapolis’s many lakes and parks. Remember that scene in Purple Rain when Prince drives Apollonia out to a lake on his motorcycle? The call of nature is never far away in Minneapolis.

Perhaps all that clean air offers a stark contrast to the pockets of depravity and hard-luck characters. Two of the best records of the year so far come from Minneapolitans skilled at spinning tales of gritty realism out of a city not known for its grit. On the Atmosphere album When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold, rapper Slug writes about a waitress trying to pay off student loans, a lost-soul rock star, and on “Dreamer,” a single mom struggling to make it from day to day. With a mantra chorus of “but she still dreams after she woke tight hold on that hope/ sometimes it can seem so cold do what you gotta do to cope,” it’s probably the best feminist anthem by a male rapper since Tupac’s “Dear Mama.” Spieled out over jazz piano riffs and spry, live backpacker hip-hop, these are unsentimental but sympathetic portraits worthy of Bruce Springsteen or Joe Strummer.

(Originally published on MOLI 8/21/8)

The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn explicitly toasts Strummer on “Constructive Summer”: “I think he might have been our only decent teacher.” Finn cut his teeth in Minneapolis but formed the Hold Steady in Brooklyn. Whereas he used to locate many of his songs in the back woods and alleys of the Twin Cities, on Stay Positive, he writes about all of America. On first listen “Constructive Summer,” with its backdrop of paper mills and parties, became my instant summer anthem – I was driving around the Upper Peninsula, after all, in a county where the red steel plant of a container company is the largest local employer. I interviewed Finn a couple years ago, and not surprisingly, he knew my old friend Sven. Sven could have been the model for many of Finn’s characters: the big-hearted drunk, the tragedy looking for a savior.

Minneapolis is in the heartland, so maybe it’s not so surprising that it’s produced two of the aughties’ Strummers – Woody Guthriesque champions of the downtrodden and unsung. Unlike the Minneapolis bands of the ‘80s, these bards aim for the anthems. Maybe grit is in the eye of the beholder.

Posted in Populism, Uncategorized | No Comments »

June 27, 2007 by info.

In deference to my new gig, I’m making that my primary blogging site. Please look for me there: www.MOLI.com, search for Profile name: Evelyn. Let me know if you have any problems. Thanks.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

June 11, 2007 by info.

The disturbing story below was reported by Kimberly Chun at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, and brought to me by Rock and Rap Confidential. Meanwhile, in Miami Beach, there are ongoing calls of racial profiling during Memorial Day.  

THE COUP’S BOOTS RILEY SAN FRANCISCO PD PROFILING VICTIM

GUILTY OF “DRIVING WHILE BLACK” REPORTS SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN

The Coup’s Boots Riley – a long-standing outspoken political
“raptivist” – was on the receiving end of racial profiling by the San
Francisco’s Police Department this past Memorial Day. In the
early-morning hours of a day where Americans celebrate their freedom,
Coup mastermind Boots (né Raymond) Riley found himself looking down
the wrong end of the SFPD’s gun barrel while innocently attending a
get-together at a friend’s warehouse in SF’s Dogpatch-Waterfront zone.

According to a report in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the
thought-provoking rapper was guilty of simply “driving while black”.
“Riley had just parked his car near the warehouse when he was blinded
by flashlights, and he realized that he was surrounded by cops,”
Guardian reporter Kimberly Chun reports.

“They were saying, ‘Don’t fucking move, don’t fucking move,’ and came
straight at me,” Riley told Chun this past Sunday (June 3rd) as he fed
his kids breakfast in his Oakland home. “They put my hands above my
head, searched me, and searched my car, even though they were looking
for someone who was stealing tires. You know, if they had a
description of a light-skinned black man with a big Afro and
sideburns, maybe they should have taken me in. But they were yelling,
‘Are you on probation? Do you have a warrant?’ And every time I said
no, they said, ‘Don’t lie to us. Don’t fucking lie to us.’”

According to Chun, area resident Hoss Ward had been walking his dog by
the warehouse when he spied officers with flashlights lurking between
parked cars amid the trash on the street. “I thought that was weird.
They didn’t question me, but I’m a white man,” he said later,
verifying that Boots parked, got thrown against his car, and had guns
pulled on him. “It’s not unusual for someone to pull up in a beater
car,” Ward said. Yet this incident smelled like racial profiling:
“That’s what the vibe felt like.”

“I walked over there and said, ‘What the hell is going on?’” recounted
Riley’s friend Marci Bravo to The Guardian. Bravo, who lives at the
warehouse, witnessed Riley’s release but added, “It was really messed
up. We fire off fireworks, burn things in the street, and there’s been
no problems with cops. They’ve actually come and hung out before. It’s
just a nasty case of police profiling.”

In the end, Riley said, the officers didn’t even check his ID. Police
representatives have yet to respond to inquiries about the incident,
however Riley is planning on filing a grievance with the city watchdog
agency the Office of Citizens Complaints, a process that the longtime
activist is, unfortunately, familiar with.

After a 1995 Riverside performance with Method Man, Riley and kindred
local hip-hoppers Raz Caz, E-Roc, and Saafir were pulled over and
pepper-sprayed in their car seats following a yelling argument at a
club. A more recent incident during the Coup’s 2006 tour in support of
the ironically titled Epitaph album Pick a Bigger Weapon was equally
disconcerting. Shortly after the group’s tour manager urinated next to
a semi at a Vermont rest stop, the tour vehicles were stopped by
plainclothes officers who claimed to be surveilling a cocaine deal in
the truck. “Half the band woke up with guns in their faces,” the Coup
leader told The SF Bay Guardian.

“There are stories all the time,” Riley told the SFBG. “Everyone knows
you used to get fucked with in San Francisco and Berkeley. Usually
it’s not anything with me specifically being a rapper,” he continued.
“I might have even more protection because of that. Like at this
get-together, somebody came up and said, ‘Don’t you know who this is?
This is Boots Riley.’ They might not have known who I am, but they
realize this isn’t the regular case where they can do whatever they
want.”

For more information contact Hector Martinez, hector@epitaph.com 213.413.7353