Dear Friends,
As I’ve noted before, the brain is a wonderful thing. It is choosy sometimes about what it allows you to ruminate on, even when you feel like you should probably acknowledge something major in your life that went fantastically wrong. Today is the anniversary of one of those days, but I am choosing to ignore it.
This is not out of spite or malice. It’s out of the fact that my own life moved on, and my brain doesn’t even allow me to spend any considerable time on what happened twenty-five years ago today. I was there. It was me, but then again, it’s not me anymore. I’ve grown, changed, moved on, and am a better person.
Letting go of the past can be hard. I’m still trying to master it and maybe you can never really master the art of letting go, but I’m working a program, as they say. I’ve never really been one to hate others. It’s just not who I am. I don’t even spend a lot of time thinking about people I strongly dislike. I’ve always felt like that was kind of letting them get what they want.
People aren’t that hard to let go of if they prove themselves to be “let-go-able.” Events, though, have always been harder for me to let go of when I think of the past. I have a nostalgia streak a mile wide. I love many people, but I also love the moments we share (and shared). Maybe that’s why I like to tell stories so much.
Time passes and is gone. In fact, right now, the time I spent writing the last word I wrote before this one is also gone. Every word is the death of itself until someone new reads it then it dies again and again. It only lives on if it is memorable enough to breathe a little longer.
If it breathes a little life into someone else.
That’s a beautiful thought.
*****
(The Bet - update)
I made the executive decision to put a few more chapters up rather than add to the story just yet. I’m intrigued by where Sean’s story is going to go, though. Seems like we need to get to the beach with Friday and spend a little time with Freddy and Janet.
Check out the updated chapters, though, if you would like. I appreciate it.
*****
By rule, one should never really listen to drummers when they talk. When they are keeping the beat, yes, but talking, not so much. Life is way less complicated when drummers just don’t say anything.
I’m kidding, of course. I’ve been very blessed to know a lot of great people who are drummers and many of them of have turned me onto a lot of great music. Drummers typically have excellent taste, in my experience, and the quality of my life has been greatly enhanced by a bunch of suggestions from my skins slapping friends.
When we were doing Pinky Tuscadero’s White Knuckle Assfuck in the early 2000s, Eric, our drummer, told us about this band he saw called Pleasure Club. I snoozed on it for a tour cycle, I think, but then we all went to see Pleasure Club at Nita’s Hideaway in 2003 and I was blown away.
Led by James Hall (Mary My Hope), Pleasure Club was just a straight up professional onslaught of rockin’ greatness. Part rock and roll, part Alex Chilton, part heavy alternative, and part groove, Pleasure Club just ruled it live and their debut record, Here Comes the Trick, is a roller coaster of delight.
They were such and under the radar band and Here Comes the Trick is such an under the radar record that I sincerely hope that if you are reading this and have never heard of the band or the record before, you go out and listen to it right now.
The Alex Chilton part of the equation comes from the Southern, New Orleans-drenched connection. I remember talking to Grant Curry who played bass in the band at one of their valley shows and he was telling me about them spending a lot of time down there. He is a pretty rad bass player and held down the four-string part of the band quite well. Drummer Michael Jerome is also a bad ass.
Jerome was also in another band that Eric tried desperately to turn me onto, The Toadies. In addition to them, he has played with another hero of mine, John Cale. The dude is super cool and was very kind to us drunk White Knuckle Assfuckers telling him how great the band was back in the day.
Marc Hutner played guitar, as well, although James Hall is a bad ass singer and guitarist. I need to really explore some of Hall’s other projects because the guy is a great songwriter. He’s been a bunch of different projects, too, and probably is still cranking out good music somewhere.
Here Comes the Trick is just stupid good. I literally love every song. There is also a bunch of different types of songs on the record that a lesser band would completely fuck up, but Pleasure Club had a lot of different ways of making you bob your head.
The record starts of rockin’ your face off. “Permanent Solution” starts off with this sort of heavy chorus on the backing vocals and some sleigh bells over Jerome’s ever expanding drum beat. When the guitars fully kick in, the band blasts off behind Hall’s powerful vocal attack. This is the type of song that Jane’s Addiction wishes they could write right about now.
It also has this crushing part right around the 2:15 mark that just sells Pleasure Club, at least to me, completely. I’m in by this point in the song and then it’s just like a whole new gear. I assume this is what driving a Ferrari would be like and realizing there are two more gears to go as you hit 100 MPH.
“Permanent Solution” fades right into the big bassline and shuffle beat of “High Stepping.” This song reminds me of walking on Bourbon Street. Curry is killing it here and Hall and Hutner tastefully let him lead the way. The song is mixed so well that I wanted to look up who was the engineer and I never do that.
It was Jay Joyce. Kudos, Jay!
The title track is up next and it’s a scorcher about charlatan preachers. This subject matter is near and dear to my heart. I’ve been fascinated by the whole scam artist/faith healer/tent preacher thing for a long time. Maybe in a past life I was one of these guys. I might be working off some Karma…. who knows. The lyrics are great.
“Little Willy Loman in a city full of sin/with a pocket full of money and a belly full of gin/he starts this conversation with a girl who’s in the game/he wakes up in the morning/ oh man, he’s so ashamed.”
The band rocks through those first three songs with a vengeance and then slows things up a bit with another song that Jane’s Addiction wishes they wrote. There are some similarities between Hall and the songwriting combo of Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro. “One Hand Washes the Othe” is a just a big, lush song that could have easily been on Ritual de lo Habitual. The main riff kind of sounds like that Jane’s song that was the theme music to the HBO show, Entourage, “Superhero.”
The Pleasure Club song is way better, though.
“Roll Around” is kind of a big sexy song. I could see the character “Leon” (played by the awesome J.B. Smoove) from Curb Your Enthusiasm saying, “Oh, fuck yeah, I could fuck to this.” “Roll Around” evolves into a super powerful, heavy rock song in the middle. I love the line, “I’ll take off my skin and roll around” in the chorus.
Up next is “Shout! You’re Automatic” which is another one that kind of reminds me of an Alex Chilton song. Jerome’s drums are fucking great here, too. It’s just big and ballsy and, like “Permanent Solution” seems like a good song to listen to in N’Awlins.
“Daze In Daze Out” is also just fucking great. If this was on vinyl, side two would be just as strong as side one. This one has a great groove and has that same sort of Chilton thing going on, too. I guess I’ve made my point. If Alex Chilton had started Jane’s Addiction, the result would be Pleasure Club. Hopefully that isn’t selling James Hall short. Eric might have something to say about this.
“Good Time Girl” keeps this same heavy, groove thing going. It’s a full-on party song. “Streetcar” switches things up a lot, though, and has this really tight, effected guitar. The song is almost something out of the Robert Smith playbook and sounds a bit like the Cure, but not in a bad way. All these comparisons I’m making are not intended to lessen the greatness of the record.
The thing Is, I think several of us Pinky guys listened to this record a lot for a while. I certainly drove around with Here Comes the Trick as my soundtrack A LOT. I was super jealous after seeing these guys a few times because of their talent, the songs, and just how fucking tight they were. I would love to see them again.
“Marble Coast” and “Holding Hands And Singing” are both beautiful songs. The former is the second to last track and it starts off seeming like it is going to go one way, but when the chorus kicks in, it’s quite lush. Hall’s vocals are perfect and the guitars are a perfect compliment to them.”
“After the crashing seas, I’ll find a marble coast just like before.”
“Holding Hands And Singing” is mostly just acoustic guitar and vocals. It’s a bit of a tone meditation and a modern-ish variation on the blues. Puts the album to bed nicely. Just Hall and a guitar, I think.
Go listen to it now.
*****
See you tomorrow.
Another Uncle Allen painting...
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