“We
Poets in our youth begin in gladness; But
thereof come in the end despondency and madness.” --William
Wordsworth
“I
saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked, dragging
themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry
fix, angel-headed
hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry
dynamo in the machinery of night . . . .” --Allan
Ginsberg
“They
called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted
me.” --Nathaniel
Lee, on being committed to the Bethlehem Hospital for the Insane,
a.k.a Bedlam
“I
have felt the wind on the wing of madness.” --Charles
Baudelaire
“Lost
in a Roman wilderness of pain And
all the children are insane.”
--Jim
Morrison
Hello,
my fellow Travelers and Troglodytes! This is Electric Dave, and now,
O my little droogies, comes the weepy and lugubrious part of my wee
tale, all full of tears and flapdoodle, partings with such sweet
sorrow, the end of an era, the death rattles of the American Dream,
cough, cough, cough. Ahem. In this final installment, (Before the Epilogue) I pull out all
the stops and describe our intrepid hero's final dark descent into
madness and mayhem with all the fixin’s. Ya want cheese with that?
When
last we left our intrepid poet-warrior, he had just cut the album
White Cars!
to the acclaim of dozens. Well, maybe a baker’s dozen, if you
include the baker. But did our hero rest on his laurels? Did he
decide that all that rock ‘n’ roll fame, the excess, the booze,
the women, the drugs, the screaming madness, it was all too much?
Huh, did he? Maybe. Maybe not. You’ll just have to read on and find
out.
Around
that time we decided ROAD TRIP! Destination: Minneapolis to watch a
Brewers-Twins game at the Metrodome. It was to be Howie, Todd, Tim,
and yours truly blasting off in the white shark, but at the last
second Tim said, and I quote, “I got a bad feeling about this one,”
and bowed out, so his brother Jeff climbed aboard (big mistake!) and
we set off guiding our way by the astrolabe and the occasional
interstate highway sign. It turns out that Tim was prescient because
Howie was in rare form that weekend and got himself rat-arsed almost
immediately upon arrival at the hotel bar. We dialed in the
Mothership, frantically yelling at them, “Houston! We got a
problem!” but all we got was a lotta static and when they finally
replied, they just laughed at us and gave us fake demon rum
incantations to ward off the evil spirits. But it was of no use, our
fate was sealed, Howie was pretty much like Captain Ahab and canned
heat was his white whale. There was Howie, fighting that big ol'
Moby-Dick, but it took a lot outta him and eventually he got so
snookered that we all told him, Look, Howie, why don’tcha go sleep
it off before we go to the game tonight? So he went up to our room.
We continued our own peaceable drinking at the hotel bar and when we
went up later to wake him up he had put the chain on the door and at
first he was so ploughed under he couldn’t even get up to let us
in. We had to shout wicked words at him and threaten to break down
the door before he finally struggled to his feet and let us in.
Whereupon, he started to get belligerent with Todd and although Howie
was a strong dude back then, Todd was stronger (and soberer), and
rassled him down while Jeff deftly grabbed a beer outta Howie’s
hand. We were not amused and so we left Howie in the hotel room and
walked to the game, a couple of blocks away. But after about the 2nd
or 3rd
inning, Howie stumbled in, drink in hand, and found his seat. We sat
there wondering “What the eff next?” but miraculum
miraculorum, there was
no further trouble. Howie just sat there emitting mumblings and
burblings, and after another 2 or 3 innings, he got up and
disappeared. We probably shoulda followed him to make sure he didn't
get rolled on the mean streets of Minneapolis, but we didn’t, and
that was bad on us. But after the game, we went back to the hotel and
found him passed out in our room, so no worries, mate. The next day,
the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Howie show was over, so we did some
sightseeing before driving back to MKE. All day, Howie was contrite,
deferential, and courteous: his affable old self. What a difference a
day makes!
After
Jack left the band, we tried to make it as a three-piece, but it
wasn’t working. Oh, it was fine for the studio, but it became
apparent that it was unsustainable live, so Howie invited Kelly, a
loafers-and-no-socks wearing guitarist/vocalist to audition for the
band and he passed. Around the same time, “THE EXACT CHANGE,”
i.e., Todd and me, advised TWO BUCK that we were going to start
playing some new material or that we would nail his sneakers to the
floor. The rock songs from White
Cars! were still good,
but the rest of our repertoire was getting stale. So Howie agreed and
we started playing songs by the likes of Hüsker Dü, The
Smithereens, Hendrix, Black Sabbath, The Ramones, The Replacements,
and some of our originals. With Kelly on board, we got tight in a
hurry and played Garibaldi at the end of the year, and, despite a few
gaffes, it was a good show. After playing together that long and what
with the studio work, I guess we found a groove. Kelly brought his
own entourage who kept requesting the one song he wrote to that point
and we kidded him endlessly about it. Little did we know, but that
would prove to be the last dance by TWO BUCK HOWIE WITH THE EXACT
CHANGE. I still have the tape from that show, and one of the most
hilarious moments of the evening is when Stritch, who was running the
tape deck for me, yelled into one of the recording mics in the middle
of “I Wanna Be Sedated” by The Ramones, “FUCK YOU, DAVE!” I
still laugh every time I think of that.
We
didn’t know that would be our last gig together, and after that I
got a little used 4-track cassette recorder (only 3 tracks actually
worked reliably) with the intent of using it to write some more
originals together and maybe doing another album. So now we were
recording at The Marzbed Club (as I had christened the flat I lived
in in South Milwaukee) and various members of $2 Howie would come
over and we’d lay down tracks. It was a helluva lotta fun and we
came up with some good sketches for songs but didn’t really follow
through on them. Oh, well, maybe some day.
We
also continued to jam in Todd’s loft and I still have a few odd
tapes from this era on which there are both weird experimental
ditties (Todd, besides being a kick-ass percussionist, was an idiot
savant on the keyboard) and also pretty tight versions of our
repertoire. The final set of tapes and, indeed, the last time we
jammed together is called “Howie’s Farewell Tour: The Last
Rumble,” and is the official album of the Pope’s visit to
Carollville (inside joke). Howie was way
late to the jam session and showed up howling for more beer! more
beer! more beer! He was in rare form that night, his banter was
great, Todd and Kelly were into it, the songs we played rocked hard,
there were wild singing and playing, and even Stritch tried his hand
at bass even though we kept shouting at him, wrong string! try the
other ones! I started slithering the fretboard of my Les Paul up and
down on my amp while playing a slide part and Howie and Stritch just
looked at me and said, “Where’s that been all this time?” Kelly
had a new song, or at least new music, and Howie made up lyrics
impromptu and they were hilarious. By the end of the evening, we were
playing songs we’d never done before and that we didn’t actually
know, improvising lyrics and chord changes and solos and just
generally being boys behaving badly. Some things never change.
Epilogue
It
was a fitting end to an era. Howie left for California soon after and
about a year later I moved to England. I don’t remember if I felt
an acute sense of loss right away because I was excited to be moving
into a new phase of my life, but I’ve often since thought about
those days of playing with TWO BUCK HOWIE and Todd, Jack, Kelly, and
the rest, and I wouldn’t trade a minute of it for all the hops in
Yakima. OK, maybe a minute or two, but there’s no experience that
is like playing in a band and getting tight with your friends in that
situation. Whatever quarrels or disagreements we had, however we
disappointed one another, all that stuff fades away. What mattered
then and still matters is that we had a helluva lotta fun in each
other’s company and came out the other end relatively unscathed. As
I said above, I still have tapes from us back in those days and I
sometimes listen to them and am surprised at how easily I am
transported back into the Zeitgeist of those young guys having a
blast learning to be a band and maybe finding out a few other things
besides. Anyway,
That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
“For
I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of
this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto
him the plagues that are written in this book: And
if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this
prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and
out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this
book. And look out, there's a tiger behind you.” --Revelations
22: 18-19
Thus
endeth the third
and final installment of
“TWO BUCK HOWIE: THE MAN,
THE BAND, THE MUSIC, THE LEGEND.”
Well,
that about wraps ‘er up.
If you liked what ya read,
why don’tcha click on some ads
and stuff
and earn
$2 Howie
a buck three eighty
or whatever they’re paying
blog meisters these days to provide puerile pablum for the uncritical
masses?
Or at least buy him a shot of cheap gin at the
National Ave. Liquor Bar,
fer criminey’s sake,
willya?
This is,
Damn And I Quit Drinking Too
Ah What The Heck
If Your Buyin' I'm Tryin'
Jim Hauenstein
And,
That is my story and I am sticking to it!
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Thanks for reading.
Be Kind To Everyone.
I'll Be Seeing You!
