Sometimes a suddenly evident truth just reaches out, knocks you over the head and drags you to its cave.
You know, something you’ve really always known.
It was an August night in 1990 and my next door neighbor and I were sitting in her kitchen, which opened on my backyard, talking, as we often did, since we’d known each other for years, about our friends and about life in general.
Most of our mutual friends were then in their 20s or 30s, many of them musicians or other artists, and there was plenty of turmoil, of all varieties, not the least of it romantic and/or sexual.
I’ve forgotten what exactly, what scandal, what dilemna, what intricate arrangement, we were talking about, but I remember a few moments of silence, standing up, and saying, “Well… men are stupid. Women are crazy. It’s a system. It’s the way it’s always been… ”
MEN ARE STILL STUPID
When I was just a little bitty boy
sitting on my pappy’s knee
he said hey TK listen to my story
take the word from me
dont let a girl get you in trouble
spend all your money make you see double
take this tip from your dad
don’t fooled and dont get had
I said hey dad huh dont worry so bad
times have changed and that stuff’s in the past
and then he rolled his eyes and he slapped his thigh
and he fell over laughing as he grabbed his sides
times ain’t changed since the early days
men are still stupid and women are still crazy
When I was older growing up
not quite a man but not still a pup
I asked my mama for some love advice
and she put down her slide rule and she picked up some dice
she rolled a seven then he rolled 2 ones
she said snakeyes sonny youre just like everyone (because)
times aint changed since the early days
men are still stupid and women are still crazy
Now Caesar he told Cleopatra
I know baby just what youre after
you think your loves gonna wear me down
she said julie baby ya got it turned around
You think my loves some palace plot
but I dont even know what I want
cause times aint change since the very first day
men are still stupid anw women are crazy
The original punk scene in LA was very small, scruffy, and thoroughly art geeky. When I started going to shows, there was maybe a hard core of 50 or so and maybe another 100-150 hangers on like me. It’s safe to say that all of us had felt out of place for years, if not forever.
I remember the day I decided to cut off the long hair I’d been growing since I got out of high school (okay, there were a few trims along the way, but at its longest it was maybe 6 inches above my belt)… it was a Traffic concert at the Santa Monica Civic in 1973.
There I was, in line, waiting to see one of my favorite bands. A band I thought of as artful and smart… even when they were playing stoner grooves like “Low Spark of High Heeled Boys.”
But as I looked around me, I felt as though I might as well be at a Grand Funk or Deep Purple show. Wherever I looked, there were long haired dooods… I could feel the IQ points ticking away. The next day I arranged to get my hair cut.
It was a long wait, waiting for something to happen. There were glimmers along the way. In 1975 or so I stumbled onto the nascent Hollywood scene. I was shocked to find young people with short hair (Like me! They were like me!) and straight leg jeans. (It hadn’t occurred to me… I hit the thrift store the next day.) I remember seeing a Sparks-like band called The Quick a few times. In some ways they were what would later be called power pop, I suppose, but at the time they seemed almost revolutionary.
Few small venues even booked original music. If you were not in a touring act, you’d better be prepared to spend your time playing Doobie Brothers covers. When my friends and I found even a cover band with a few shreds of personality or originality we cherished them as a few drops of water in a barren desert.
So, when a few signs of life started poking up around 1976-1977, I was practically beside myself. The year before the first (and, for me, only really satisfying) Patti Smith album came out, with its strange blend of arty pub rock and drug poetry lyrics. A Tom Verlaine/Television cassette made its way around. The first singles started coming out of the British punk scene.
At first I didn’t get the Brit scene. When I read about the Pistols, they seemed plastic, like the Monkees. The first time I heard them — on a really crummy portable stereo — it really did sound like noise to me. (And you have to realize that I’d seen Captain Beefheard a couple times by then. We’re not talking about a Loggins and Messina fan, here.) But after I’d heard the first single a few times I decided that, whatever the background of the band, there was something really going on there, no matter how bogus the motivations behind the project or culturally suspect such the media manipulations seemed.
Flash forward a few years.
It’s early fall 1980 and, after I’d predicted the demise of punk as we knew it the year before, it really had looked like it was dying out in LA. Silly me.
By mid-1980, a new suburban punk was then beginning to leave its heavy Doc Marten bootprint on the scene. The result was that most of the early scenesters were gone.
This was nothing like the arty, ultra-boho scene of ’77 and ’78. The new, rapidly expanding scene was made up of dudes, suburban headbangers, their own longhair recently shorn, exuding all the mindless conviction of any new and rabidly fanatical set of converts.
While the LA Times pop music coverage was lucky enough to have a couple of writers at the time who actually got into the scene and participated (Craig Lee, RIP, bro!), much of the paper’s coverage was dominated by a sort of culture-vampire perspective, seemingly slightly revolted by this new music scene — but afraid to look “out of it” or stodgy.
Near the beginning of fall of 1980, the Times’ Sunday entertainment magazine featured a lead photo spread and article on, and I quote, “The Slam” — which was, according to the culture mavens at the TImes, taking the local music scene by storm.
I am absolutely positive that I had never, before that article, ever heard anyone describe what the Brits called “moshing” as “slamming” (people slammed heroin, y’know?) but — hey, there it was in the Times.
And, for awhile, particularly among the newly buzzed and mohawked suburban converts, the term actually stuck.
Which provoked near endless amusement among me and some of my friends… what had once been so fresh and genuine and interesting was now just the latest prepackaged plop on the big conveyor belt of American pop commercial culture.
The original version of The Slam by my band, Machine Dog, didn’t sound much like this acoustic version, below, lemme tell ya.
The Slam
Went to the Whisky just the other night
did a little dance that I learned in the Times
Beach punk made a grab for my date
smashed by beer bottle right in his face
La La La La La La
Aint it great how the media
regulate your culture — tell you just who you are
10,000 kids and they just found themselves
cause they saw the punk report on the Evening News
La La La La La La
They threw me out on my face but that didn’t phase me
cause The Dance is Art and Art ain’t free
Well, I’m proud to be a Punk and I proved that’s true
when I pogo’ed through the window of the Emergency Room
I‘ve never been a union member — I don’t really think I’d be a good fit. I have worked (in non-union jobs) in a union environment (though it was a Teamsters shop in the ’70s… not exactly the best showcase for the postive aspects of trade unionism).
I understand the collective bargaining system and — though it is clearly far from perfect and may not be well-suited to modern, progressive companies — I think over the last century and change that it has, on balance, worked fairly well for both US workers and companies, bringing some much needed stability to employment relations at the end of the 19th century and laying the foundation for the 20th century American middle class, which, itself, nurtured the enormous expansion of US manufacturing in the last century.
But at the dawn of the union era, it was a different matter. Around the globe, workers in the industrializing nations of Europe and North America faced unsafe working conditions and violence and intimidation from privately held companies. While stockholders might blanch at the thought of company-hired goons firing what we now call “live rounds” into crowds of workers and splitting heads with metal clubs, individual mine and factory owners all too often didn’t.
It’s a different time, now, of course.
But only a few days ago with the Sago mine disaster/debacle, we had a grim reminder that even modern, publicly held companies can fall down and fall down hard when it comes to treating their workers with common decency and regard for their safety and health.
And the part of our federal government devoted to policing those conditions fell down hard, as well, handing out scores of hazard violation citations — but backing them up with trifling punishment. In one case — at a Sago mine — the company was cited for “significant and substantial” violations and ongoing dangerous conditions that led to the death of miner — and then fined the minimum possible — $60.
Maybe we haven’t evolved beyond the need for unions, after all…
The Company Says
You walk into town
and you look all around
and it doesn’t take long
to see that something is wrong
very wrong
the people stand around
with their eyes on the ground
it doesn’t take long
to see that something is wrong
and the company says
it’s a company town
now, if you don’t like that
don’t ya hang around
and the Company says
it’s a company town
if you don’t like that
sell a penny on the pound
give ‘way
One man stands
says I won’t run
but the goons come around
with their clubs and guns
and they knock him down
and they kick him around
and they drag his body
to the edge of town
and the company says
he’s better off dead
than fightin’ with us
and the company says
it’s a company town
if you don’t like that
we’ll put you in the ground
and the Company says
it’s a company town
now, if you don’t like that
don’t ya hang around
and the Company says
it’s a company town
if you don’t like that
sell a penny on the pound
give ‘way
and the company says
he’s better off dead
than fightin’ with us
and the company says
it’s a company town
if you don’t like that
we’ll put you in the ground
You see a lot of homeless people near the ocean, at least around here.
If you ask them, often as not they’ll tell you, if you have to be homeless somewhere, you might as well be homeless by the beach. And there are often pick-up jobs and day labor opportunities near the waterfront, and sometimes hideaways in coastal estuaries.
But sometimes I can’t help wondering — as I’m sure others have wondered — whether they end up along the water because other people keep pushing them away and, eventually, there’s just nowhere else to go.
The protagonist of this song finds himself torn between pity and forgotten love as he struggles with the natural inclination to turn away when he sees his estranged wife homeless on the street and she doesn’t recognize him.
I’ve seen the mutation and destruction of personality that can result from some sickness and injury and I don’t know that I would have the kind of selflessness it takes to make the sacrifice he makes by eventually taking her back in. (Eventually, meaning by the second short verse in a two verse song.)
I saw my baby on the street today
I saw my baby on the street today
she didn’t recognize me I turned away
I shoulda said
come back baby
come back home
how could I leave ya out here all alone(in the cold
I know youre crazy and it’s tearing me apart but I vowed to love you til’ death do us part
come back baby come back home
i jusc can lveave you out there in the cold
unpack your shopping crat
take a nice long bath
it ain’t like the old days
but the worst is past
I know youre crazy and it’s tearing me apart but I vowed to love you til’ death do us part
