Waking Up With Wilford Brimley

I woke up this morning to find Paloma under a blanket on the couch and Wilford Brimley’s whiskered mug on the television screen.

But there was more. There was the actor who played the titular character in The Mummy as well as Lance Henriksen (obviously supressing his dignity and picking up a paycheck).

As Wilford babbled away with a Cajun accent and I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, Jean-Claude Van Damme strode heroically into frame with an impressively sculpted mullet affixed to his noggin.

In the lower right-hand corner of the screen I noted the logo for Spike TV and everything I was witnessing made as much sense as it possibly could.

I looked at Paloma.

“It’s really bad,” she informed me, not elaborating but not needing to do so. I was watching Wilford Brimley fussing over some moonshine.

(personally, when I’m in the mood for a bad action flick from the ’80s/’90s, the hunt begins and ends with Steven Segal)

So, I’m struggling to awake, pondering Wilford Brimley and – and I am likely not alone here – my thoughts turned to Quaker Oats. I mean, anyone from the States that watched any television during the past twenty years recalls his stint as their pitchman and his almost threatening declaration that the consumption of those oats was “the right thing to do and a tasty way to do it.”

And, I can’t think of Wilford without thinking of Phil Kaufman.

Those of you neck-deep in music lore might recognize the name of Kaufman, who, as a road manager, worked with everyone from the Rolling Stones and Frank Zappa to Emmylou Harris and Marianne Faithfull. Kaufman was also involved in the theft of Gram Parsons’ body and, fulfilling Parsons’ wishes, his cremation in the Joshua Tree desert.

Paloma’s mother has long been a friend of Kaufman’s and I had met him years ago (in the presence of Marianne Faithfull, no less). For whatever reason, right or wrong, to me, he bore some resemblence to Brimley. I think it was a moustache thing.

I’m feeling better, though. I have had some coffee. Now, all I need to do is cleanse the mental palatte, completely evicting Wilford and his oats of malice from my headspace.

So, to help do so, here is a quintet of songs from Marianne Faithfull…

Marianne Faithfull – The Ballad Of Lucy Jordan
from Broken English

I knew little about Marianne Faithfull when the bookstore next to a record store where I worked scheduled her for an appearance. So, I grabbed a copy of Faithfull: A Collection of Her Best Recordings to have signed.

She was a tiny woman, petite and rather elegant. And she was smoking a cigarette.

As she signed the CD cover, she commented that she probably should quit smoking. Then, she took a drag and remarked that her grandmother smoked two packs a day and lived to be in her 80s.

Marianne Faithfull – Working Class Hero
from Broken English

When I finally sat down with Faithfull: A Collection of Her Best Recordings I instantly became a fan and one of the songs that converted me was her take on John Lennon’s Working Class Hero.

I knew the song, but her menacing version was far more powerful to me than the original. So much so that I convinced a band with whom I was working to open their shows with the song using Marianne’s cover as the template (it worked flawlessly).

The band found only limited success, but I spent the next few years accumulating most of her catalog.

Marianne Faithfull – Times Square
from Faithfull: A Collection of Her Best Recordings

Given the mostly uneven nature of Marianne’s albums, the compilation I grabbed to have her autograph was a wonderful introduction to her catalog. Times Square, like her strongest material, is a song that she completely inhabits.

Marianne Faithfull – Sliding Through Life On Charm
from Kissin’ Time

Marianne has often collaborated with other artists and I was interested to hear Kissin’ Time as she worked with an impressive array of modern rock acts like Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan, Blur’s Damon Albarn, and Beck. For the most part, the album was less than the sum of its parts.

However, Sliding Through Life On Charm, her collaboration with Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, was a keeper, a driving four minutes or so of chainsaw disco laced with autobiographical references and piss and vinegar.

If I'd Known He Was My Neighbor, I'd Have Brought Him Some Haggis

For a band that had such minimal commercial success here in the States, Big Country made their one shot a memorable one. In A Big Country is a well-worn touchstone in the world of ’80’s pop culture.

When the Scottish band arrived in the autumn of ’83, there was a lot of enthusiastic press. Big Country fit comfortably aside baby bands like U2, Simple Minds, Waterboys, The Alarm…groups making anthemic (sometimes sweeping) music fused with idealist lyrics which often sought to match (or exceed) the melodies for drama.

At the time, the outcome that U2 would someday achieve global success seemed to be a foregone conclusion. However, I would have offered a rebuttal had I been told that, following their almost self-titled hit, Big Country was headed for cultdom in America.

(I sometimes wonder if there’s a parallel universe where Big Country is doing stadium tours and U2 is known only for one song –say Where The Streets Have No Name.)

I’m not comparing Big Country’s body of work to U2, but their first two albums – ‘83’s The Crossing and Steeltown from the following year – are definitely worth owning.

But after setting a template with their debut album and refining it to near perfection with the follow-up, the band seemed to ebb a bit and tread water from album number three, 1986’ The Seer, and onward.

Big Country would put out albums to be largely ignored in the States for another decade (actually some wouldn’t be released), but it seems that much of the rest of the world had love for them.

I had a chance to see them live in a club that was a converted warehouse in a part of town where there is that transition from neighborhood where you are reasonably safe most of the time to neighborhood which has a slight risk of danger at most of the time.

Several years later, I would also have the chance to meet lead singer/guitarist Stuart Adamson. He lived in my neighborhood and was an acquaintance of a friend.

This friend, who worked for a record label, called me one afternoon, telling me how he was headed over to drop some CDs off for Stuart. Knowing that I was a fan, I was invited along.

Ten minutes later, we’re standing in Stuart Adamson’s front lawn; no more than a ten blocks from where I lived, hanging out with the man on an overcast, spring day.

We weren’t there long. Stuart’s young son was scampering around the front yard. Stuart seemed like a guy at ease with the world, at one point offering the hyperkinetic tyke the fatherly advice that jail was a place best avoided.

That’s about all I remember. I really needed subtitles. The brogue which I had grown up hearing on record was much more pronounced in person.

Sadly, in a year or so, he would be found dead in a hotel room in Hawaii, having lost his struggle with alcoholism.

Some of my more favorite Big Country songs from those first albums…

Big Country – The Storm
I posted The Storm several weeks ago, prompted by a viewing of a show on one-hit wonders. However, I can’t do a post on Big Country without including the song. It might be the band’s finest moment.

Big Country – Fields Of Fire
Sometimes lost in the attention given to the effects-laden guitars of Adamson and Bruce Watson, was that the band had a formidable rhythm section. Bassist Tony Butler has played with The Pretenders, Roger Daltrey, and Pete Townshend

Drummer Mark Brzezicki has an equally impressive array of credits. He also had one of the largest wingspans of any human I’ve ever seen (or so it seemed). Seeing him play live was mesmerizing – like watching the Hindu goddess Kali behind a drum kit.

Fields Of Fire was the follow-up single to In A Big Country that most people missed.

Big Country – Wonderland
Sandwiched between Big Country’s debut and follow-up was a four-track EP which arrived in the spring of 1984. The highlight was the bracing Wonderland, which was actually a (very) minor hit in the US and got a fair amount of airplay on the alternative radio station I was listening to at the time.

Big Country – Steeltown
The title track of their second album, Steeltown has a thunderous cadence reminiscent of In A Big Country. It’s bone-rattling.

Lyrically, it chronicles the struggles of the working class. On Steeltown, the themes were grittier and the band had an authenticity concerning such matters. In that respect, I’d describe Big Country as Scotland’s answer to Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band.

Big Country – Flame Of The West
Like In A Big Country, a sense of wanderlust pulsates throughout Flame Of The West. The first song on Steeltown, it kicked the album off in high gear, galloping along at a breakneck pace.

Big Country – Come Back To Me
Also from Steeltown, Come Back To Me closed the first side and showcases a different side of Big Country. Its tale revolves around a widow and a fatherless child with Adamson singing from the point of view of the former (hearing him deliver the line “I have your child inside me” is a bit jarring and always makes me imagine him as a seahorse).

Seahorses and male pregnancy aside, it’s a lovely, poignant song.

Playing Pinball With The Man Under The Most Famous Hair Of The '80s

For better or for worse, A Flock Of Seagulls was the first band that I truly adopted as my band. Hey, it is what it is. I Ran hit the airwaves and hooked me, the cover art for their debut album fascinated me, and I loved the name.

Their image was a relatively insignificant factor as MTV didn’t arrive for us until two years after the band. The infamous coif of lead singer Mike Score was memorable, but I simply loved the songs. They sounded like the future.

Before the ‘80s ended, but well past A Flock Of Seagulls’ brief burst of popularity, a desire to finally see them live led me to a dive in a rather dodgy area of Indianapolis. My girlfriend at the time – whose interest in music was limited and in the Lionel Richie, Air Supply portion of the dial – was a trooper.

And so, my reward was original lead singer Score and four other guys who could have been any anonymous hair metal band from the late ‘80s – they were three seagulls shy of the MTV-era flock.

Somehow, I ended up playing pinball with Score. He seemed quite miserable as the front man for White Lion and he told me how the rest of the original band was back in England because “they didn’t want to work.” Surprisingly, I don’t recall if he was good at pinball.

As for the infamous hair, it was not fussed over, but simply pulled back into a long ponytail and tucked under a baseball cap.

Now, despite popular perception that has labeled A Flock A Seagulls as fluff and snarky pop culture types who use them for target practice, I will defend my first band. True, although they, too, were from Liverpool, they were no Beatles, but they were certainly no Oxo, either.

A Flock Of Seagulls – A Space Age Love Song
Sure, I Ran was the bigger hit and, for the most part, only those who lived through 1982 could even name another song by the band. However, I’ve always preferred A Space Age Love Song to the former. It’s very wooshy in the best possible way.

A Flock Of Seagulls – Committed
Not even possessing a turntable, I would still browse the bins of vinyl in 1983, trying to find music by A Flock Of Seagulls which wasn’t available on cassette. This was how I discovered the twelve-inch single, specifically one for their song (It’s Not Me) Talking with the eye-catching cover featuring a giant seagull attacking a building. I can’t recall if Committed was on there or not, but it’s a delightfully manic little track which never appeared on an actual album.

A Flock Of Seagulls – Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You)
This is the song – their Stairway To Heaven, their Free Bird, their Satisfaction. If Phil Spector had been born twenty years later, this is what it would have sounded like.

A Flock Of Seagulls – Transfer Affection
Most of the time A Flock Of Seagulls sang about aliens, Russian cosmonauts, technology, and aliens. However, Transfer Affection was one of their few ballads and even though it still has an icy cool about it, it’s actually rather sweet.

A Flock Of Seagulls – The More You Live, The More You Love
From the band’s third album (and ultimate swansong) The Story Of A Young Heart, The More You Love, The More You Love got a bit of radio play where I lived and, as MTV was available by 1984 for our community, I do recall seeing the video a handful of times. Not a bad way to go out.

Cheese, Crackers And The Voigt-Kampff Test

Some, to paraphrase Kramer, serve their dark master, the cocoa bean, but it is the salty snacks that I crave, particularly in the form of a cracker. Having had a reaction due to the ingestion of a certain plant-based substance, I once rampaged my way through several boxes of crackers, leading my housemates to dub me “Cracker Vacuum” (it was later translated into Chinese as the far more sonically palatable Bin Gone Kon).

Munchies-inspired nicknames aside, crackers are delightful and the addition of cheese was a great moment in humankind. My enjoyment of this combination has been tempered of late by my concern that – based on knowledge gleaned from numerous viewings of Blade Runner – I’m a replicant.

When I first saw Blade Runner, it was as on VHS a couple years after its theatrical release. I’m certain it didn’t get screened at our smalltown theater and I’m surprised my friends and I found it at our local video rental joint.

It bored me.

I certainly found it to be breathtakingly grim and it’s still visually stunning twenty-five years later, but I didn’t truly ponder the ramifications of the concepts at the time. When I did, the questions the film raised about consciousness and humanity were mind-bending.

[Did they have crackers in Blade Runner? I know that there were noodles (which are another wondrous foodstuff).]

Now, throughout the film, Gaff leaves origami animals for Harrison Ford’s character Deckard and these items – combined with the unicorn footage added for the director’s cut – strengthens the argument that Deckard himself is a replicant. The unicorn memory is one programmed into all replicants who are unaware that they are synthetic creatures.

My earliest memory of eating cheese and crackers was when I was four or five and it’s vivid. On a family vacation, I was allowed to stay up quite late with my uncle; we watched a movie about cartoon cats in Paris and ate cheese and crackers.

Unfortunately, when I reconsider the event, I fear it couldn’t have happened. The movie had to have been The Aristocats (is there another “cartoon cats in Paris” flick?), but this was years before VCRs and cable television. Would they have shown such a movie on network television following the late news?

More suspicious is the conflict between my memory and my uncle’s life rhythm. It was remarkably consistent as I recall – on the river fishing at dawn, an afternoon draining bottles of Iron City at the Moose Lodge, and asleep in his recliner shortly after dinner. I don’t remember ever seeing the man awake after dark let alone eating cheese and crackers.

And so, I have to wonder at the possibility that this memory is my “unicorn sequence.” Maybe lots of people have such a memory.

Maybe Edward James Olmos is someday going to leave a foil, origami Triscuit at my doorstep. Or maybe a Ritz.

Vangelis – Blade Runner (End Title)
Vangelis really captured the vibe of the movie with his score. My friend Chris, who had prompted our friends and me to rent Blade Runner, played the album into the ground.

White Zombie – More Human Than Human
The motto of the Tyrell Corporation set to music. I met Rob Zombie at a record store where I worked and he seemed like a good guy – very polite, very soft spoken.

Cracker – This Is Cracker Soul
I loved Cracker’s debut which included This Is Cracker Soul, but David Lowery was rude to Paloma once and it’s dulled my enthusiasm for Cracker’s music ever since.

Kenickie – Robot Song
I remember Kenickie being “the next big thing” for about ten minutes in the mid-90s. Coming across this track to post, I’m thinking I might have to go back and check out the rest of their debut, At The Club.

All The Gold In California (Wasn’t Enough To Keep Larry Gatlin From Flying Southwest)

Paloma nudged me as we were checking our bags. “Hey, isn’t that Larry…ummm…Hagman?”

I was puzzled and, in a role reversal, I offered up her standard reply. “Isn’t he dead?”

I’m not sure if Larry Hagman is still among the living or not, but I did finally recognize the gentlemen waiting for the same delayed flight as us. It was country singer Larry Gatlin.

Now, the only song I know by the man is All The Gold In California because it played constantly on the country station to which my parents had tuned the kitchen radio. As for actually being able to visually ID the man, you can chalk that up to years working in record stores and, in fits of boredom, perusing every single album in those stores.

As we munched down some food near our flight’s gate, Larry assumed a position against a post, leaning in posed casualness like some hooker on a street corner.

“Think he wants to be noticed?” Paloma asked.

He got his wish soon enough as another passenger latched onto him like a dog to a soup bone. As Larry had a travel buddy, Paloma and I settled into our seats, ignored the safety lecture, and observed the other famous folks aboard our flight.

Paloma spotted the portly fellow who played Craig on Malcolm In The Middle. Then, she nudged me as a forty-five-going-on-twenty-five year old, bottled blonde took a position across the aisle.

“It’s Betsey Johnson,” Paloma whispered.

“The woman who invented the American flag?” I asked. “Can’t be. She has to be dead.” (OK, I know that was Betsy Ross, but I had no idea who Betsey Johnson was and had to think fast.)

Our flight was turning into an episode of The Love Boat; our cast completed by some busty brunette that Paloma insisted was a porn star. She turned out to be some flight attendant sans official attire (either that or, in an effort to cut costs, Southwest is employing porn stars as part-time help).

In truth, none of these people were any of the people we suspected/accused them of being except for Larry Gatlin. This fact was confirmed as we exited and passed his seatmate who was chattering like a monkey on crack into his cell phone – “I just spent the past two hours with Larry Gatlin…”

Hole – Gold Dust Woman
Personally, I thought the final Hole album, Celebrity Skin, was nearly flawless and I actually prefer their version of this Fleetwood Mac classic to the original (I think it appeared on the sequel to The Crow soundtrack).

Aztec Camera – Working In A Goldmine
I first learned of Roddy Frame when I heard the effervescent Oblivious on 97X out of Oxford, Ohio in high school. I think that I heard Working In A Goldmine on the syndicated show Rock Over London and immediately was smitten with the dreamy song – “glitter, glitter everywere.”

Neil Young – Heart Of Gold
I’m a much bigger fan of Neil’s more grungy material, especially with Crazy Horse and, if I had to choose one album by him I’d likely opt for Freedom, Sleeps With Angels, or Weld, but what’s not to love about Heart Of Gold?

Dire Straits – Love Over Gold
In college, I used to mess around with one of my roommate’s guitar and became so infatuated with the playing of Mark Knopfler, I spent a good six months listening to nothing but Dire Straits. It didn’t make me a guitarist, but I did know every note of their catalog, particularly their finest three albums: Making Movies, Love Over Gold, and Alchemy.

The Night Sheryl Crow Wouldn't Stop Undressing Me With Her Eyes

The following events took place between August of 1993 and April of 1994. Had these events unfolded in a slightly different manner, it’s possible that few people outside the world of cycling enthusiasts might know the name Lance Armstrong. Conversely, more people outside of my living room might know mine.

During the late summer of 1993, I was fulfilling my duties as the buyer for a large record store, trolling through a new release catalog for Polygram when a then-unknown singer’s forthcoming album caught my eye. The album’s list of guest musicians was an impressive collection whose names I recognized even as the most noteworthy credit of the singer herself had been as a backup singer for Michael Jackson in the waning days of his pre-pariah period. Curious, I requested an advance copy from my label rep.

Days later, my request had been granted and, one morning before heading to work, I gave it a listen over a breakfast of Pop-Tarts and leftover pizza. It was pleasant enough, if unspectacular. I trudged to work.

Now, in this record store we did our best to avoid interaction with the customers. There was one exception which was when we found the customer to have aesthetic appeal to our individual sex, gender, and/or orientation. As it would happen, the same day I perused my advance copy of the unknown singer, I noticed a rather fetching lass approach the store counter, midriff bared and possessing the belly of a goddess.

As I rang up her purchases, I deftly made conversation in a most rico-suave fashion. She handed me a credit card and I noticed her name. With the cool of a cat burglar, I said, “You’re Sheryl Crow.” Inside, I nodded my head and thought “smooooooth” as I added, “I was listening to an advance copy of your album this morning.”

Sheryl and I chatted for a bit about the record and the musicians on it and she was gone. The record was released a month or so later and, initially, sold modestly. It should have been the end of the story, but, like a late-night commercial for Ginsu knives, there’s more.

Fast forward six months. Sheryl Crow is starting to get airplay for the song All I Wanna Do. Nothing major yet, but she’d snagged a gig as the opening act for Crowded House. My then-girlfriend and I had tickets. I generally don’t speak of ex-girlfriends, but, for perspective, the kindest nickname she had among my friends was Fire Bush. Most of her monikers were more in the line of a friend who simply referred to her as Evil (i.e. “So, are you still dating Evil?”).

So, the Fire Bush and I arrive in time to catch the end of Sheryl’s set. Waiting for Crowded House to take the stage, my rep from Sheryl’s label came up to us at the bar. He wanted me to do him a favor and come backstage to hang so that he has someone from one of his accounts. Backstage is usually not what it’s cracked up to be, but there is often free food and drink.

Standing backstage, munching on cocktail weenies and having a beverage, Fire Bush and I stayed out of the fray which is mostly a mixture of egomaniacs and sycophants. From across the room, I see Sheryl. She kept glancing over at me, much to the chagrin of Fire Bush. This continued for 10-15 minutes, ratcheting up the tension between Fire Bush and myself (and, as our relationship was already headed for cinders by this point, there’s no shortage of awkwardness).

Finally, Sheryl made her way over. “I’ve been trying to figure out where I know you from,” she said, taking my hand. I refreshed her memory while simultaneously trying to figure out if I concentrated hard enough whether I could make Fire Bush spontaneously combust. I dismissed the idea as too distracting and likely a buzz kill for everyone but me.

Sheryl smiled. “Yeah. I knew that I knew you,” she said. “Do you know that you are the first person ever to recognize me in public?”

I replied with my usual savoir faire and unmitigated charm, mumbling something like, “Yeah? Huh.”

My mind did mental calculations with the precision of the Casio calculator I’d had in third grade. The first person to recognize her in public? Surely I held a special place in her heart, one which no one else could ever supplant. Such a distinction could certainly be parlayed into a positive response to the query “Would you like to have a drink?” Experience had taught me that “a drink” could lead to several drinks and several drinks could lead to…well, most likely nothing more than a hangover and an opportunity to embarrass myself in front of Sheryl Crow. But, nothing ventured, nothing lost. All she wanted to do is have some fun. Right?

But, I was shackled to Fire Bush. And, furthermore, Fire Bush was enraged, having introduced herself as “his girlfriend.” The only thing going up in flames was me.

But, Crowded House was phenomenal, so here’s a quartet of personal favorites from them.

Crowded House – Fall At Your Feet

Crowded House – I Feel Possessed

Crowded House – Distant Sun

Crowded House – Not The Girl You Think You Are