With apologies to the band Oasis for paraphrasing one of their album titles, I will definitely maybe (not) be seeing them on their reunion tour.
That’s because I saw one of the two Gallagher brothers in the band, the far less talented one, Liam, five years ago at the Hollywood Bowl, as the opener for The Who.
I wrote about that experience — including paying forty-eight dollars for two pretzels and two beers! — back here, but figure I’ll quote my appraisal then of Liam:
Let me just say, whoever booked Liam Gallagher to open is a genius, because he and his band are so terrible that they make The Who look all the more brilliant! Large barnyard animals sing better than Gallagher and bring more to a stage presence as well, and his band did nothing to hide this fact. He seemed to have two drummers on stage — one of them also named Gallagher, so I’m assuming that particular drummer isn’t on the tour purely on talent — and I’m reasonably certain I can play drums better than they… and I don’t play the drums.
I’m shocked that, ten years after the final death knell of Oasis, Liam still has a career. Of sorts.
I well remember enduring Liam’s off-key (well, flat) delivery and his utter lack of stage presence (him bent over unmoving like a broken-winged crow for the entire 45 minutes) until finally my friend Bridget and I just started laughing about it. I’ve seen many bad acts in my life (have I mentioned late-stage Meat Loaf lately?), but Liam is the only one of them mounting a mega-reunion under the false pretense that he can hit a note.
Meanwhile, as I noted yesterday, I saw (Jeff Lynne’s) E(lectric) L(ight) O(rchestra) on Saturday night, and having just seen that phenomenal show that was Well Worth The Fee I Put Out For It (for two tickets rather close up on the floor), I have no intention of squandering any ducats on Oasis, no matter how much I happen to admire a song or two despite Liam Gallagher’s undeserved high self-regard.
To those who admire Oasis, have at it, especially my friends in the UK and Ireland and Europe; I have no judgment. I honestly hope you enjoy your champagne supernova.
Meanwhile, I’m mystified that the far superior Blur, arch-nemeses to Oasis, were reduced to playing the Glass House in Pomona, California recently, capacity 800. It’s perhaps best to remember, Don’t look back in anger.
With drive-through fast-food joints, it’s like it’s their way or the highway.
I don’t go through a lot of these, but in just the past three weeks I’ve gone through two of them at night neither one of them got things right.
A couple of weeks ago, my fiancée K. and I were coming home from Orange County at about 8 o’clock on a weekend. We’d had a glorious time in the pool and the jacuzzi with her sister and some friends at a private club down there, and lunch now seemed like a long time ago, so we went through the drive-through of a nearby McDonald’s. I ordered a plain cheeseburger with mustard, a small fries, and a small Coke with lots of ice.
I was a block away when I took my first sip of the soda and identified it as diet Coke. Plus, it was medium-sized.
Drove back around and took it inside (seemed quicker) and politely told the young man behind the counter that this was diet and not — and before I could continue, he just thrust an empty cup at me.
Okay, so I filled it with Coke and ice and dropped the other into the trash.
Got back into the car, sipped it a bit, drove a mile or two, dug into the sandwich and discovered that it was some sort of burger with everything on it. I figured I’d just eat it because now I was onto the freeway. Where my fiancée asked, reaching into the bag, “Did you order Chicken McNuggets too?”
So: I’d been given the entirely wrong order. Somewhere, someone was unhappy with a small Coke and a plain cheeseburger with extra mustard and no fries while I was gnawing away at Chicken McNuggets I hadn’t ordered.
Last night, we were heading back to the hotel from seeing Electric Light Orchestra or ELO or Jeff Lynne’s ELO or whatever name they’re going by these days in the Palm Desert opening night performance of their tour in what I tell you was an absolutely stunning, phenomenal performance of great songs sung and played very well indeed and accompanied by a fantastic video- and-laser show. Just incredible, and one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to.
Having had just a bit of salmon and salad for dinner, I was pretty hungry by 11 p.m. when the show ended. So I found a nearby Wendy’s and went through the drive-through. Given my earlier experience (different franchise, different town, but, as with the toddler touching the hot stove, the experience was seared into my brain) I would have gone in, but at 11 p.m. only the drive-through was open. I ordered a plain single but with lots of mustard, a small fries, and whatever they call their little chocolate shake that’s actually just soft-serve ice cream.
The voice at the drive-through says back to me, “Plain single with extra mustard, small fry, medium chocolate Frosty.”
“Yes,” I say, noting that it’s called a “Frosty.” I hear the amount, pull up, and pay.
After a bit, I’m handed back the medium chocolate soft-serve Frosty, then a bag. I look the youngish woman in the window in the eye. “This is a plain single but with lots of mustard, right?”
“Yeah,” she says.
“Plain but extra mustard?” I say again.
“Yes.”
“Okay, thanks.”
I drive a mile down the road and when I get to a traffic light I bite into the burger. It’s a double with cheese and no mustard. Zero.
Meanwhile, in the passenger seat, K. is thrilled that I’ve gotten ice cream, or what passes for ice cream. “You know ice cream is my favorite!” she squeals.
For this year’s Comic-Con, our group was damn lucky to find a place to stay.
Oh, it’s always an ordeal. Which is understandable when you’re bringing more than 150,000 people to San Diego for five days: They all need a place to stay. But this year seemed even harder than usual, with every single hotel on the Comic-Con reservation site booked, including the regrettable hostels (had to pick one of those once; not pleasant), and even every Airbnb within 15 miles booked. The hotel rooms that were available outside the Comic-Con block were either too small for a party of five or too pricey, or both, with rents of $800/night or more.
So, yes, I was giddy when an availability opened up at the Hacienda Best Western in Old Town. We’d stayed there a few times before over the past 36 years and liked it, rooms are relatively large with two queen beds, it has the requisite hot tub, there are good dining options within walking distance, and it’s a short walk off the train line that stops right across from the convention center. I booked it instantly, and we were all delighted at the news.
Every hotel booking you make is an accommodation you’re making based upon your preferences and your budget. So I went into booking this property knowing that it was in no way comparable with the Marriott suites that my fiancée has accustomed me to, or even the smaller Hiltons (such as Garden Inns) that are perfectly suitable, and that while more than $2,000 for four nights at a Best Western might seem extravagant, given the circumstances it was a deal. (My business partner tells me that at Bottle Rock they lay down $800 a night — but she’s running with a different crowd than fanboys pawing through boxes of moldering old comics and abandoned action figures.)
We try to keep the Comic-Con trip as low-rent as possible so that our regulars (sometimes five, but usually six or seven of us) can join in. This means approaching the hotel room like a campsite, like you’re camping out with friends. If there are two beds and five people, welp, two people are going to get beds each night and three people are going to camp out on the floor, with the arrangement shifting night by night. You just make sure you take sleeping bags, or you order extra comforters and pillows, or otherwise figure it out. I’ve been doing this since I was 15 or so, one time sharing a room at a convention in New Jersey with three other comics fans and five actual-to-gosh professional comic book artists in 1977, an experience in which one of the esteemed Filipino artists took the bed of the host without paying anything, while I slept under a table and kicked in, I think, five dollars. Ah, good times. The fact that I’m now 62 should make no difference in this sort of arrangement. In fact, even more than it recreating the sense of being a kid again, and camping out, this arrangement helps you stay young at heart, even if it now comes with bourbon poured neat.
The only downside to this annual scenario is the bathroom. Which I will leave to your imagination. We often bark out requests/demands: “I need to be first in there in the morning to make it to my panel!” or “Oh God! Is he already in the shower? I need to GO!!!!” or “Call housekeeping! We’re out of towels!”
In an age of privation, when so many mourn the decline of reliable customer service whether by airlines that leave you stranded in airless airports, restaurants that slip bogus charges such as “kitchen fees” onto your check, and mobile carriers that now make you accept that they will throttle your speed if you use whatever they deem “too much” of their service, we now come to yet another instance: housekeeping that doesn’t keep house. Under the guise of both the pandemic and “saving the Earth,” the housekeeping at some stayover establishments is even worse than my own at home.
The first two nights, I agreed to sleep on the floor, surrendering one of the beds to my good friend Larry, who is as they say a gentleman and a scholar (specifically of the “Star Trek” universe), who requested it for the first night and then received a boon when I gave it to him for the second night as well. For the third night and fourth nights, it was going to be mine. Other shifting-arounds in the room would take place as well with the remaining queen-size bed and the bonus sofabed, but they were of no import, others having made their own deals. Sleeping on the floor between the two beds like a dog made me feel humble and happy and, I admit, a bit like a martyr (“Look, ye children, upon the sacrifices I will make for friends!”) and, again, took me back to being 15, but with older joints.
Wednesday and Thursday nights, Larry slept in the bed. On Friday morning, I ordered housekeeping. I called the front desk and asked them to please come clean the room, and also asked when I came across housekeeping staff in the walkway outside, and dropped in at the front desk later to remind them. All good. And so when I came back from the Con at some point late-ish on Friday and checked, the beds were made and the bathroom was restocked with towels and what the supermarket politely calls “bath tissue.” Great. I climbed into bed and started reading “Palestine,” a “documentary comic” by Joe Sacco, before finally drifting off to sleep with a new appreciation for the invention of the mattress and box spring.
In the morning after my shower, I brushed my teeth in the little adjoining anteroom so someone else could use the bathroom. There I noticed that the towel hanging there from yesterday, that day of housekeeping, had a little black smudge on it. I recognized it instantly: a bit of eyeliner courtesy of my daughter, who was a member of our party. She shared that she’d used that towel on Thursday. This was now Friday. And I got a sinking feeling. I climbed back into bed just to read for a bit when I felt something in the sheets, grabbed hold of it, and produced a half-eaten cookie.
Dread rising, I said, “Larry, did you eat a cookie in bed two nights ago?”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Is this it?”
“Looks like it.”
The housekeeping staff had added towels, left in place at least that one used hand towel, and… remade the beds with the same sheets.
With nearly 20 years of adventures together, Larry is a close friend — but sleeping in his soiled sheets? Perhaps too close.
But our friend Paul, a sage who bears two masters degrees in hospitality management, advised us there was one bright side: “Be glad Larry said that was his cookie. If not, it would’ve been from the guests before us.”
Back in my college days, we had a drinking game called “Hi, Bob.” You would turn on The Bob Newhart Show, and every time a character said, “Hi, Bob!” you’d have to do a shot. Given the number of entrances on that show, I don’t recommend this if you’re no longer college age.
Today being the day that Bob Newhart died, today is yet another time I wish I did a better job of keeping a journal.
Oh, I keep a journal. But I don’t write in it every day, and so I frequently miss the days and details of when something noteworthy happens.
Like: the evening I met Bob Newhart and had a little conversation with him.
Wish I could remember more of what it was about.
Twenty years ago this October, I was a guest at the 10th anniversary event for the Richard and Karen Carpenter Performing Arts Center in Long Beach. Bob Newhart opened with a 20-minute set in which he was pretty damn funny, and then Richard Carpenter played and sometimes sang, accompanied by a 15-piece band, and different singers from the extended Carpenter family, doing lots of Carpenters songs.
Afterward, everybody lined up onstage for food, served buffet-style. I wound up right behind Mr. Newhart. The line was long and slow, so I think we actually talked for 15 minutes or so as we crept along, plates in hand. As I recall, we mostly talked about the food on the buffet line, with him eyeing the ham steaks with appreciation.
So, I can say I met him. Which is the sort of thing that happens a lot in Los Angeles and environs: You just meet people. Some of them you just run into and wind up talking to, like Keanu Reeves and Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston (in line at plays), others you’re doing something with (Giancarlo Esposito, Tim Robbins, William H. Macy). Sometimes you’re at the supermarket and you realize you’re talking to James Karen, who appeared in Samuel Beckett’s only movie but who people living on the East Coast from the 1970s through 1990s remember as “the Pathmark Shopping guy.”
While my association with Bob Newhart was obviously fleeting and unremarkable, in another way my association was longer, that is, about 10 years. That’s because there was another standup comic from that era whom I knew better: Shelley Berman. Shelley and I both taught in the master’s program in writing at USC. In the late 1950s, Shelley’s standup routine caught fire with a telephone routine: Just him, on a stool, engaged in a telephone conversation, with us hearing only his side of it. Some years later, Bob Newhart did a bit like that, just him on a stool with a one-sided telephone conversation, but Newhart got more famous for it — and, to be fair, for records that were built out of quite different routines, and for two sitcoms that had nothing to do with that. But for years, Shelley would say, “He stole that from me.” Mentioning Newhart was not a good idea.
I don’t have any opinion about whether or not one can “own” an act with a one-sided telephone, and I should note that I also know a gentleman who absolutely swears that the idea for “The Terminator” was stolen from him by James Cameron. It’s that kind of town.
I just know that Bob Newhart made me laugh a lot for many years, with his standup routines, with his two sitcoms, with his brilliantly funny role in “Elf” and, for 20 minutes, at the Carpenter Center. Even when we were picking up our dinners, he made me laugh. I just wish I could remember in what way.
I had dinner last night with my good friend Shanna at a place with amazing Thai cuisine. (And that’s the restaurant’s name: Amazing Thai Cuisine. So, yes, there sometimes is truth in advertising.) I had last been to Amazing Thai Cuisine just days before, with my fiancée, bringing a bottle of chardonnay for myself and ordering spicy duck salad with brown rice on the side. Tonight, feeling adventurous, I ordered the spicy duck salad with brown rice on the side, but brought a different label of chardonnay.
Discussion with Shanna turned to Martin Mull, who had died earlier that day, breaking my heart.
I loved Martin Mull. As a kid in the 1970s, I watched him on “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” “Fernwood 2Night,” America 2Night,” and in various television or film appearances over the years, and bought all his records. One year, for Chistmas, I bought myself his album “Normal,” which remains my favorite, and then unwrapped my presents and found that my sister had bought me the same album. No doubt we both bought this because my love for Martin Mull was well-known in the family and because the album was available as a discounted cutout at the local Two Guys department store for a buck-ninety-nine. “Normal” was chockful of clever sing-along-able songs told from the point-of-view of a smart, sarcastic, judgmental 30ish man forced to suffer among rubes, but who wonders if it wouldn’t be easier if he were less clever and just went along to get along, swallowing his wit and urbanity. In other words, the Martin Mull character. As a 15-year-old desperately not wanting to live in southern New Jersey with its greenhead flies and snapper turtles and traffic circles and dirt roads, who ached to get to wherever the cool intellectuals were with their impregnable aesthetics, this was exactly how I felt. Martin Mull summed it up in the title track, which I haven’t listened to in decades but can still summon up at will:
What say you and I get normal We don’t have to be that formal We’ll just sit and watch TV like others do We’ll eat meat and mashed potatoes Cut our hair so folks don’t hate us Life is nuts enough just livin’ here with you
Let’s see who can be most borin’ You do the dishes honey, I’ll start snorin’ Get a mower, do some mowin’ Spend all mornin’ gettin’ it goin’ We’ll show everyone in town we’re not deranged What say you and I get normal for a change
I also suspected that Mull, who was good-looking and whose character dressed well in a stylish but somewhat sleazy manner that said he knew what to do with a woman, was having lots of sex. So 15-year-old me was very interested in whatever I might learn from him, or at least from what I could learn from this character he kept portraying on TV and records.
On “Fernwood 2Night,” where he was a dimestore version of a local talk show host, Mull’s character, Barth Gimble, frequently got phone calls from what you’d assume were beautiful women, with us hearing only his side, which dripped innuendo. I always was trying to figure out what the woman was saying, trying to slot into my brain her side of a quick call centered around sex.
I shared all this and more with Shanna, and then she surprised me: Martin Mull had been her client. “He was a very nice man,” she said. Shanna works at an accounting firm, largely for the well-known and the well-off, and Martin Mull had been a client.
The first time he came in, she said, she saw him coming and went to greet him in reception. He put out his arm and she thought, Wow, really nice, he wants to hug me! So she went in for the hug and he hugged her, and it was very nice, and then when they parted she realized that he’d actually been reaching for the door. Mortified, she ducked away and went and hid in the file room until he’d left.
But for years after, whenever he came in, he’d hug her. Now it had become a thing. And he’d add a kiss on her cheek.
I’m not 15 any more, but I still love Martin Mull’s act from then and in all the years since — but 46 years later, I also love this story about him, which was not an act… except of kindness.
Setting: Lee, 61, is sitting comfortably in a cushioned chair on his mother’s enclosed porch on a warm late afternoon. To his left is his friend Keith, a good-looking man in his late 60’s with warm eyes and a voice touched by honey and silk. Also present, Lee’s mother, aged 98, and her old friend Sue.
Lee (to Keith.): It’s nice to see you.
Keith (cheerily.) It’s nice to be here!
Lee sips coffee from a flowered teacup, part of his mother’s set that she’s used for thirty or forty years or more. Keith also has a cup, as do Sue and Mom.
Lee: Did you hear me on National Public Radio today?
Sue: I did!
Mom: I did too!
Keith: Sorry, no.
Keith’s phone buzzes. He looks at it.
Keith (cont.): Sorry, I have to take this. It’s London.
He rises, phone in hand. He starts to walk inside.
Lee(calling after.): Keith, wait. Wait! Keith! Before you go!
Keith comes back in, barely.
Lee: Before you go. Didn’t you… die? I remember you dying. A few months ago. Didn’t you die?
Pause. Finally:
Keith (it dawning on him.): I… do remember that.
Lee: Me too.
Now no one knows what to say.
Lee (Cont.): Go take your call, then we can talk. But you come back, hear? You come back.
Keith: Okay.
Keith goes back inside.
Mom: I thought he was dead. That’s why when I heard he was coming over I waxed the floors!
Lee: Yeah, he died in January. I don’t think either of us expected it.
Sue: Who is he again?
Lee: One of my closest friends, for a period. We did a lot of plays together. I really loved him and miss him. I didn’t expect him to die!
Sue: Oh, nobody ever expects it.
Keith returns.
Lee (re the phone call.): Well?
Keith: It was nothing.
Lee: I was just telling Sue and my mom how much I miss you. Miss knowing you’re around. Really didn’t expect you to go.
Keith: No, me neither.
Mom: That’s what Lee was sayin’!
Lee: It’s nice that you came back to say hi.
Mom (to Keith.): Did you eat yet?
Keith: I’m good, thanks. (He gets up.) Well….
Lee: Well. (A beat.) Is it nice?
The setting melts away, and Mom and Sue with it. Now Lee and Keith are in a mausoleum of sorts: Keith’s final resting place as envisioned by Lee in this dream.
Lee (cont.): Looks nice! For… y’know.
They walk down three steps, taking it in, and come to Keith’s casket, tucked around an inside corner. It’s open. Keith runs his hands over the fabric within.
Keith (with appreciation.): Velvet…!
Lee: Very nice.
Keith: Feels soft.
Lee: (ruminating.) I just realized that Mom is dead too.
Keith: Really.
Lee: Yeah. One month before you. But she was 98! Sue died a long time ago; I always liked her.
Pause.
Keith (eyeing his coffin.): Well….
Lee: Nice seeing you, Keith! Didn’t think I’d get the chance. Be well.
Keith: You too.
The setting shifts again, to the morning of May 13, 2024. Now Lee is in his bed, having just awakened.
Lee (To us.): Hah! I guess I got to do one last play with Keith. (A beat.) Although given the chance, I would’ve done better. Given them more to say to each other. It was just so nice to see him that we didn’t need to say much.
One of my neighbors, a middle-aged Latino in his front yard on the block behind my house, introducing himself while my son and I were walking by with our dogs:
Every time Facebook prompts me to wish Happy Birthday to a friend who’s dead, I rush over to their Facebook page to confirm that, yep, they’re still dead.
Nevertheless, it’s a friendly reminder every year of how much the dead friend meant to me.
I just wish I weren’t piling up so many of them in recent years.
I was excited last week to go with my son and a friend to see Buzzcocks and Modern English in concert at a smallish club here in Los Angeles. I’m a fan of both acts, and while I’ve seen Modern English several times, I’d never seen Buzzcocks.
Thing is: I still don’t think I’ve seen Buzzcocks — and never will. “Buzzcocks” as we know them, are gone, their lead singer/guitarist/songwriter dead and his beautiful pitch with him, his role now filled awkwardly by their former bassist. I think of this incarnation as Buzzcock, singular. Buzzcock is enthusiastic, but he isn’t a lead guitarist and he certainly isn’t a lead vocalist and he clearly isn’t a frontman, because he doesn’t know how to get the audience going or how to command attention or even how to dress the part, looking very much like he’s a bloke who wandered in from the pub. He and the three fill-ins will, though, play most of the five songs you know, minus one of their hits because even he knows he can’t hit those notes.
(The opening act for the evening, by the way, was The Reflectors, a young San Diego band whose members appear to be about one-third my age. My 21-year-old son disagreed, stating that I can’t accurately ascertain youth anymore, and that to him they looked to be in their 40s. “Even the 15-year-old Latino bass player?” I asked. “Oh, well, not him,” he replied.
I do have some advice for the band:
The Reflectors’ drummer kept stretching to hit his cymbal in a way that I can confidently predict foreshadows a future rotator cuff injury, having one myself. It’s no fun. Maybe pull that drum kit together a little more. Which is what the drummer for Guns ‘n Roses once advised a drummer friend of mine; she said it worked miracles.
Second bit of advice: Maybe vary the songs a bit. So that, y’know, 45 minutes sounds like there are individual songs in there. As my son said, “They need to find a new beat.” Exactly.
The final bit of advice: If you’ve got two “lead” guitarists who both play the same three chords at the same time, fire the blond one who doesn’t sing and split your fee three ways instead of four. Instant payday!)
As for Modern English, my interest in them stems primarily from their keyboardist, Stephen Walker. I’ve been listening to this band for 40 years, and I can tell you that most of what’s interesting is coming from Mr. Walker. Modern English’s music is primarily power pop — a harder sound than mere new wave — but what sets it apart is the fills and the soundscapes and the occasional leads that Stephen Walker adds to everything. I like their songs, but it’s their sound that gets me, and that’s mostly Stephen Walker. I advised my son to watch the keyboardist when the band comes on, because that’s where it’s really happening.
So imagine my distress when the band came on without Stephen Walker, their member throughout their history.
Or their lead guitarist.
Instead, it was lead singer Robbie Grey, and their longtime bassist Michael Conroy with some drummer and a guitarist. And no keyboardist whatsoever.
Meaning that it didn’t really look like or sound like Modern English. (Even though, evidently, they’ve sampled some of the keyboard effects.) This was more like post-Modern English.
Their other members are still on their website, still listed on Wikipedia, and on their new album… so I dunno what’s going on. But I sure missed them!
All of this got me to think about music acts that are on tour. Are they really those acts?
I like The Stranglers, but I won’t go see them again, because, again, to me their keyboardist was essential to their sound and he died during the COVID pandemic. Now there’s only one original member left (a bassist again!), and I think of them as The Strangler. Singular.
Echo and the Bunnymen put on an erratic show, given the proclivities of their erratic frontman, but I recall the band as a foursome. Now there are two Bunnymen: the singer and the guitarist. Is that really Echo and the Bunnymen?
I don’t like The Eagles, but is it still The Eagles without Glenn Frey? Even when you’ve replaced Glenn Frey with his son, Deacon Frey — who has now left the band anyway? Who’s going to be the next Eagle? Glenn Frey’s great-nephew?
I’ve seen The Beach Boys many times, dating back to the 1980s both on the beach in Atlantic City and at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, and since then in Dallas in 2012 for their 50th anniversary tour and a few years afterward in a concert in Pasadena I was helping to promote. What’s touring under that name now is enjoyable, but it’s not The Beach Boys. There’s not one person named Wilson in it (understandable given that two of the Wilson brothers are dead and that the third sadly has dementia), it’s got one longtime replacement Beach Boy (that’d be Bruce Johnston, who by this point has earned the title Beach Boy having joined the band in 1965) and it’s got one actual key member of the band: Mike Love. Is this the Beach Boys?
I know that seeing what’s left of these bands provides some real enjoyment to many people. If nothing else, it’s a chance to hear the songs you love played live. And in some cases, the replacement players are terrific. Poor Phil Collins can no longer play drums due to nerve damage, but I can tell you with authority that his son is a sensational drummer who manages to replicate his father’s drum sound and style while bringing added power.
But I do wonder: If Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr went on tour as The Beatles, how would we feel?
What if Micky Dolenz toured as The Monkee? And, actually… he kinda does, and puts on a great show. But shouldn’t he change the lyric to: “Hey, hey, I’m the Monkee. People say I’m monkeying around….”
