Words by Dave Crimaldi
​Photos by George Dellinger, Dave Crimaldi

While the art of music journalism seems to be hanging off a cliff as writers turn to more lucrative PR jobs, the genre of rock music is thankfully NOT dead. If there is any proof of it, the Friday night show at Backyard on Bell here in Denton is fire-breathing proof. There were spectacular performances via Denton bands Hen and the Cocks, Fun Button and Classic Action. And holy smoke, the Denver band! The band Pink Fuzz from Denver, Colorado sucked the air from the room and whisked me and possibly many other off to rock and roll heaven. 

The second the band hit the stage, the room got 1000 degrees warmers as a groove as filthy as Satan’s rectal cavity filled the air. Steam appeared to be rising off of music photographer George Dellinger's camera as he could not press the shutter button fast enough to capture the sheer essence of a young band transcending their youth with a most precise 70s infused rock music. Every note was the right one as if handed down from some rock and roll savior. If you like Queens of the Stone Age and Jack White you will love this band. The dual vocalists blended together in a deliciously intoxicating way and those harmonies got the floor weak in the knees.

It should be noted the show was moved indoors due to the rain. The outdoor big stage is fine but the intimacy created within a small rectangular room with audience vying for position to get close to the band is priceless.   

Besides the Pink Fuzz interview, we've got an interview with Nick Perri of The Underground Thieves due hopefully soon. The Underground Thieves recently finished a tour supporting Black Stone Cherry and The Thieves are opening for Slash in Philadelphia this October 10. Nick Perri has played guitar for Perry Farrell of Jane's Addiction, Matt Sorum of Guns 'N Roses, Shinedown, and many others so this is wicked exciting. 

Also look out for profiles of Denton songwriter Spencer Wharton and Pensacola, Florida whiz kid LOOSE BOLTS.  

The Denton music community recently lost one of its beloved buskers, Julian Patrick Quinn of Waxahatchie, TX. Julian was a fixture on Denton Square standing in front of McNeill's Appliance playing his banjo and bantering with passersby. I met him back in September of 2017 during a 2 week visit to Denton and when I returned in November I was surprised he could even remember my name.

To me Julian was a posterboy for Denton weirdness and I have had the idea for some time he should be a character in a film or something. He'd jump on his skateboard and cruise down the block with his banjo. Always had a wet cigarette for you to drag on... the last time I saw him he gave me a sip of his wine and I gave him a dollar. 

In his passing I discovered his album on Bandcamp, a collection of sappy love songs so infectious they've been buzzing in me head all week. It's called Lovers Telepathy and is the kind of music that could easily be the soundtrack for an entire summer: that summer when you graduated high school, met a girl at the beach, considered moving with her to California or just saving the cash and going to Europe for a year or lifetime. The music now seems tragically optimistic and hopeful about the nature of existence but I am OK with that as long as there is a place where summer nights truly are forever.

I have been wondering why I think about Julian so much: I didn't know him well. He was a crazy kid in front of an appliance store old enough to be my son if I had any of my own. In his youthful  exuberance I recognized something lost in myself or something I simply had to cultivate from nothing. There was a time when I enjoyed life so much the molecules of bliss just bubbled out of my skull. 

That he died so young is a reminder we're all heading out one day sooner or later. Until then we've got the lastlove songs of Julian, Lovers Telepathy for our endless summer nights.

Here's a link to Julian's music here.
Read more here about his life.  
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Recently, I noticed a photo of mine being used by a bar in Berlin to promote the show of a Bangkok band. There was no attribute and it bothered me. There was no way of contacting the bar privately except Instagram message. I sent a message to them and have not heard anything. I don't expect to either. I have said my peace. It was most likely an honest mistake and I'm sure the photo was used in haste by a venue which caters to underground rock music. I choose to focus on the positive and be proud of the fact my photo of the legendary Stylish Nonse of Bangkok, Thailand is making its way to Europe. Pok and June of Stylish Nonsense are heroes and it's really an honor to know them and call them friends.  

That said, thank you to all the bands, promoters, venues that have paid me for photos before or after they have been taken. I am very grateful to the community of talented artists and for their constant support and encouragement. Sometimes just hearing "thank you" makes my day. When I am compensated for the work I do, it makes a tremendous difference in my quality of life and allows me to do more. There are things i simply have to do and I can't help it sometimes even when I know my time could be spent elsewhere focusing on larger financial rewards. (Lately I am focusing on creative fiction writing.) 

As always if you need a photographer, you know how to find me. Rates negotiable for artists always. The rock philosopher is here to serve you. Read about Stone Free 4 where said photo was taken right here. 

   

Stay tuned for upcoming content including an interview with Nick from The Underground Thieves - they are opening for Slash in Philly!
Should have a scene report from Portland, Oregon from Barry Todd.
Review of ST 37 at Backyard on Bell any day now. 
I can talk your ear off about the fiction I am developing at moment, how I need financing, etc. 

It’s the last band of the night on a warm June evening. Two long haired guys, a drummer and guitarist, set their gear up on the stage at Dan’s Silver Leaf in Denton, a north Texas city often described as a mini Austin or what Austin used to be. I’ve been here several months checking out the local music scene centered mostly on Denton Square and adjacent streets. Every kind of music can be heard in the small city (the little d) a stone’s throw from Dallas and Fort Worth. Still, numerous venues have closed their doors in years as the laid back college town experiences gentrification, a sour note for the sleepy arts community composed of many students and alumni of the city’s two universities, University of North Texas and Texas Woman’s University.

It’s a typical night in Denton hanging out at Dan’s where Slobberbone’s Brent Best runs sound and Houston transplant Craig Welch of Brutal Juice runs the door. I have become as common as a bar stool here and the neon longhorn behind the bar has become the most notable feature in my Denton photos. There’s three bands on the bill: Sama Dams from Portland, Dezorah from McAllen,Texas and The Last Great American Rock Band.

A cheap domestic pint is my drink unless it’s hot in which case it’s beer and whisky, sometimes a White Russian. I should go home but a sense of duty keeps me. I order another. By the time TLGARB take stage it seems more fitting to close the bar and start mopping. Watching the band set up, I am fooled into thinking this must be a classic rock 2-piece like Tom Petty, Allman Brother or Lynyrd Skynyrd. Stay 5 minutes, snap a few shots and sneak out the door. The musicians are not hurried nor do they seem overly concerned the room feels empty. Something catches my eye: there’s a crash cymbal with a massive chunk missing from its body. Quickly note absence of bass player. Did you leave the bassist in trunk of car and forget him? Brent adjusts their levels. Drummer has gadgetry set up on chair.  

What kind of band names themselves The Last Great American Rock Band? The lights dim as the ice in my whisky melts into oblivion. The room dissolves in droning hypnotic rhythm. No band introduction. The stage is lit by a few bluish lights giving guitarist Scotty Warren an angelic halo of hair light while drummer Brandon Young is shrouded in near darkness. Flickers of colored light appear from the assorted electronic geekery present but the players on stage are quite still. The drum rolls are fast and plentiful providing an endless cycle of  waves for the guitars to surf on with a degree of disconsonant agility. Slowly the mind takes flight or slips down a rabbit hole of kaleidoscopic radiance... a series of cascading dreams unfolding....

*********************************************************************  

A few weeks later and I am standing in the practice room of Brandon and Scotty. Music gear covers every inch. They have agreed to do a podcast and I’ve shown up with cameras, Zoom recorder and cables without knowing what to expect or what to ask. I have gleaned little to nothing from their Facebook profile and I suspect that everything they really need to say happens when they are creating sound with their respective instruments.  You’ve read about musicians who picked up the guitar and then could not put it down and I would not be surprised if Mr. Warren woke up playing his guitar and would never think to stop playing. Brandon and Arlington, Texas native is the more talkative of the pair. Fresh off a tour with Claire Morales, he learned you really could make a living as a touring band if you hustle. When I had met them just a few weeks earlier the idea of touring for months seemed an unlikely event but now, something has changed in the pair of musos.       

They work through songs they admit are challenging and push their abilities. Rarely do I see a post rock instrumental band honing craft before me. It’s like finding unicorns prancing in the yard - it just doesn’t happen and all the things you wanted demystified suddenly come to light. Like everyone else, they will resort to ordinary language to explain parts the other may have forgotten; they have definite opinions on Star Wars v. Star Trek. Post rock doesn’t mean they don’t have a Led Zeppelin influence somewhere. They are not unaware the confusion and prejudices the name inspires... Yes, this is musicians in their natural habitat and they are definitely The Last Great American Rock Band.

We’ve got a podcast coming out soon featuring The Last Great American Rock Band. 

​DC

PS - got a minute? Sign my guestbook. Click here.  

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Where did the character of Lek come from? Is there anything autobiographical in there? How long did it take to write that part of the book? The story of Lek feels extremely personal as the reader is privy to the inner dialogue of Lek throughout - was it meant to feel like one’s personal diary?  
 
One Amazon reviewer said that Lek, the main character of the two interconnected novellas in the first part of the book, is having a “dark night of the soul” on the evening when he heard that his favorite punk singer, Joey Ramone, had died and his own music career is in free fall and he’s now producing boy bands. When you’re dealing with a story that’s more about personal issues, like divorce, rehab, bad family relationships and one musician’s mid-life crisis, you need to be as close as possible to that character‘s state of mind and emotions. In any of the cow-punk, rockabilly and pop-punk bands I played in from 1980 to 1991, I played bass and rhythm guitar and wrote some songs, but I was never a lead singer or a lead guitarist, both of whom come with outsized egos. Many musicians compare bands to families and, if so, they’re extremely dysfunctional families. That comes through more in the second novella when Lek is trying to write a comeback album and gets in touch with his old drummer, Ric, who is still resentful about the lack of songwriting credits and royalties he received, and having to put up with all the singer’s egomania and temper tantrums.       

Lek is going through a midlife crisis where one’s inner values are incongruent with his real world life. Do you think Lek is a narcissist? Is his infatuation with Edana another manifestation of his addictive personality?
 
Those are good points and insights. To be a real musician, or any kind of productive, careen-minded artist, or entrepreneur, you have to be very driven and self-focused. Part of the story, in looking at his troubled relationship with his teenaged musician son, named after Dee Dee Ramone, deals with Lek trying to come to terms with his selfishness and make amends. At one point of the story, where he’s relapsing into doing cocaine again, he mentions how addictive both the drug and this Norwegian girl are and starts humming to himself, “She’s Like Heroin to Me” by the Gun Club, which was one of my favorite bands of the 1980s. And in the new paperback edition with the music journalism section in the back, I describe a bizarre encounter with the band’s bassist, who died of a heroin overdose only a year or two after I met him. 

The narrative seems to finish abruptly with a letter if I recall correctly. Lek is kind of a hopeless romantic I guess? Is he really capable of love? Why doesn’t he just go find her in Mongolia?
 
Without giving away too many plot spoilers, by the end of the story he’s finally quit drinking and drugs and is acting somewhat his own age again, though he is back playing music again. I know people have accused me of being a “hopeless romantic” and I always say, “No, I’m a hopeful romantic.” But the sappy ending of romantic comedies has grown tedious. In the last decade I’d say the most moving ‘love story’ I’ve seen or read was Lost In Translation, where you have these two lost souls of different ages and at completely different points in their lives, coming together to share some laughs, experiences and commiserate with each other, but they both know it can’t last or go any farther. The last scene, where they have that final hug and chat, and “Just Like Honey” by the Jesus and Mary Chain kicks in, is spellbinding. If I had any sort of blueprint in mind for this odd couple and darkly comedic “love story” it was probably more influenced by Lost in Translation than anything else, 

To be totally honest I wanted to grab Lek, smack him and tell him to get a life. He’s got money - get out of your head and go live! Ironically I am certain I know someone very close to me that lives permanently in a dissociative dream state.
 
With a lot of musicians who have enjoyed success and still have money, you have to wonder sometimes why they keep doing it? But when music has been your entire life, and you don’t have any other skills, what else are you going to do? A couple of months ago I met an older American guy of my age in Bangkok who used to play guitar in hard rock bands. We ended up comparing notes on our musical careers, and then discovered that both of us had started playing again. Dave told me, “Cranking up an electric guitar is like riding a motorcycle. It’s a monkey on your back. And you’ll always crave that thrill again.” When older musicians are out there doing reunion tours the cynical response is that they’re just doing it for the money, or trying to relive their glory days, but I think they still love playing and they still love music too.   

There was a mention of Lek receiving royalties from his music. How much different does the royalty system in Thailand different from North America?  
 
I think they’re similar in that all recording and publishing deals bilk the musician out of most of the money.

Here’s a question about music journalism. I grew up on music zines like RIP for metal and Rolling Stone. Where does one find great music journalism these days (besides your book)?
 
Frankly, the age of great rock writers like Lester Bangs in Creem magazine, and Ira Levin, in Trouser Press, has faded because critics don’t have nearly the influence that they once did in the pre-Internet age. It’s also because stories and reviews are so short now that nobody is going to publish any of Lester Bangs’ type of long, experimental pieces, like when he allegedly interviewed Jimi Hendrix in the afterlife. Pitchfork and Consequence of Sound and Louder Than War still have some good writers and articles and reviews, but I don’t see anybody breaking any new ground in music writing these days.
 
I also got some of my first publishing credits in music fanzines and university newspapers where I was allowed free reign to experiment with different styles and voices. When I put out the new edition of the paperback and ebook, I decided to add a whole 130-page nonfiction section of “Rock Writings and Musical Memoirs,” which gives the two main novellas more context and history, but also allowed me to include a few pieces about my own musical career and some of my favorite journalism stories, like how I met Leonard Cohen in Montreal and what his music means to me, and how I had the opportunity to interview Ice-T in Bangkok and watch him do a small club show. He’s still the funniest musician I’ve ever met. When you see rappers doing cameos in boy-band videos now it’s easy to forget how radical Ice, NWA and Public Enemy, were in their early days.           

When I look at a lot of music publications these days I can’t find the cutting edge attitude. It’s all just PR. No one is going to say to a big band “You suck” anymore. I miss those days, don’t you? I remember reading Rolling Stone’s review of U2’s album, the one that came out on iTunes – what a farce.  
 
You’re exactly and sadly right. More and more often these days the media is just a marketing machine for their corporate advertisers, which also means less and less investigative journalism or any quality reporting or op-ed pieces. When newspapers, magazines and websites are all fighting for the same diminishing pile of advertising scraps because their circulations are so low, they will not dare to scare off any potential advertisers by writing critical reviews or stories.    
 
I have mentioned this several times already but I enjoyed how much you bring together so many different kinds of music. It’s really troubling for me to meet people who only listen to one kind of music like punk! Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth loves Norwegian black metal and that’s totally cool. I guess my question is, what do you think punk is if not a musical genre and not a way of dressing?
 
When we were having some Messenger chats before I think we came to the same conclusion that listening to the same genre of music over and over again, and then splitting pubic hairs over what is and what isn’t punk, or what is real metal, is just tedious. In a way it’s kind of like identity politics, where people define themselves solely by what music they listen to, and how they dress to conform to that particular genre, whether they’re punks or Goths or metal-heads or rockabilly cats, it seems very limiting. My musical tastes are all over the map, and so this book wanders from the Ramones to Hank Williams, to Chet Baker, to Cannibal Corpse, the Carpenters and the New York Dolls. It’s not a very commercial move, but it will make an eccentric playlist on Spotify when I put it up. In the journalism piece at the end of the book, “When Punk Turned 40,” I mention how the whole DIY aspect of punk is its most enduring legacy, and that indie spirit still rocks on. The great quote by the late singer of The Clash, Joe Strummer, “The first rule of punk is that there are no rules,” is also instructive.   

So you mentioned seeing GG Allin live before. Can you elaborate on the show?
 
When GG came on as the headliner at a 500-seat club in Montreal I was still at the bar finishing my beer. About three minutes after the music started my girlfriend came running up to say GG had just punched her in the head. Almost in tears, she described how he came out with a stripper on stage and while she was dancing around he took a dump onstage, then pushed her in it and he began rolling around in his mess too. After that he jumped into the crowd to start punching people. By the time I got inside, I’m not sure if there’s a fecal term for premature ejaculation, but the rest of the gig largely consisted of him wandering into the crowd and fighting people, or smashing the mic into his face until he drew blood, over songs that could best be described as third-rate MC5 and Stooges: a true ‘shit show,’ in all senses of the word. Some six months later at a local music mag where I worked, we received a press release saying that GG was going to kill himself onstage at a Halloween concert that year after he took out as many of the audience members as he could. That show never happened and he died a few years later.
 
Fame seems to really mess with people’s heads. Do you think musicians just accidentally become famous AND successful or is it really a goal?
 
If you’re going to become famous it usually takes a strong marketing plan, plenty of ambition, talent, persistence and some Svengali of a manager like Colonel Tom Parker or Malcolm McLaren. In the nonfiction story in the book, “My Close Encounters with Rock Stars,” I talk about meeting everyone from the Pixies to Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, and Jim Carroll, with the Pixies and Carroll being by far the nicest and most approachable, but the story also talks about how, if you have enough ego to get onstage in the first place, then all the adulation you receive is only going to heighten your towering narcissism and justify your egomania. Now that everyone is trying to be famous on social media, from the fitness coach to the “butt model” to the marketing maven and the chef, there’s never been a better time to rediscover the age-old virtue of humility. In this sense, most rock stars should be viewed as cautionary tales not role models.
 
The new edition of Jim Algie’s latest book, “On the Night Joey Ramone Died: Tales of Rock and Punk from Bangkok, New York, Cambodia and Norway,” comes with a new music journalism section and front-cover blurb from the acclaimed author and hit songwriter, Timothy Hallinan: “The funniest sad book and the saddest funny book I’ve read in a long time.” It’s available as an ebook or paperback from Amazon.com.     

Midway Craft House
3/31/18

Still observing this band Acid Carousel out in the wild. 

The shows are fucking wild. This is rock n roll!  

It was as if a barrel of festively dressed elves spilled out of a time portal. If you somehow were born too late for the American counterculture revolution you’d be thrilled to know there’s still young bands out there that praise the sacred pyre of rock n roll established by the early Stones, The Who, and The Byrds. There's a healthy dose of snarling protopunk, and spaghetti western in there too.   

The songs just keep coming. They don’t seem to stop although they do. Some drunken public service announcements on the microphone. The commercial failure of an EP is almost celebrated = the implication if you’re cool enough to be here with us now fuck everyone else - you’re all that matters. Still, you might want to buy the music and keep the band alive.  

At first glance the band seems to be emulating the Brian Jonestown Massacre's pastiche of everything cool from earlier eras. The Ondi Timoner documentary Dig! did inspire legions of BJM  devotees. But could it be Acid Carousel are somehow channeling directly from the metaphysical world? Not copying but conjuring? There's an existential difference. No matter, this is a band to be seen and heard live.

Find them on Bandcamp here: https://acidcarousel.bandcamp.com/​

The podcast with Tristan Thorndyke of Rock 'N' Roll Cannibals is up. 

If you are having any technical issues let me know, thanks. 

A black leather clad apparition appears in the doorway at The Bearded Monk, a  guitar case dangling at side. I wave my hand and the lanky musician makes his way to the table where I’ve assembled a jumble of cables, microphones and gadgetry to record an interview and live performance. All this effort to peer into the soul of a rock n roll believer. With a pompadour, ghostly skin and biker jacket on a skeletal frame, Tristan Thorndyke looks as if he’s stepped out of a time portal from a world where greasers fought preppie kids in varsity sweaters. The music that inspires his three piece band Rock N Roll Cannibals draws its influences from Elvis, Johnny Cash, The Cramps and Link Wray. In a world dominated by electronic music and big data companies, the rebel is carrying an acoustic guitar and a flip phone.    

While I’ve just met Thorndyke for the second time, I feel like I may have known him my entire life. There is something about artists carrying the collective talent and soul of generations past that captivates and what I really want to say without saying it is: “I’ve met you before haven’t I?” Just as a protagonist from Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey will follow a very specific series of events, so it would seem for the musician before me.        

In the morning before the podcast I prepared a series of questions ranging from weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten to how do you feel about the apocalypse? It would be lunacy were not for Thorndyke’s songs like “Jeffrey Dahmer’s Making Dinner Tonight” and “Please Don’t Feed the Werewolves Cocaine.” Who says horror can't be fun? 

After recording the podcast, we get a bite to eat and walk back to a small apartment near Fry Street. Over PBRs we listen to the two Rock N Roll Cannibals releases in a compact living room decorated in horror movie posters. What blares out of the speakers is befitting of the age where teens went to sock hops and slurped cherry cokes at the 5 and dime. I am not totally convinced the music was recorded in the new millennium even as an hour earlier I saw them performed before my very eyes. Perhaps the comic book fan discovered a time machined, jumped back in time, made these records and then returned along with the souls of The King, Buddy Holly, and god only knows who else? The Swamp Thing could be lurking under the sofa. While I have no memory of the 50s I have memories of watching films set in the 50s (while a kid in the 70s and 80s)… it’s almost like I was there being pulled through a wormhole…. I have woken up in modern times and am thoroughly disillusioned.

There’s a podcast coming out in a few days with Tristan Thorndyke: some chit chat with ridiculous, ill-conceived questions that have nothing to do with music and a great live performance of the crooning rock 'n' roll cannibal solo. It’ll be on Mixcloud.

If the Rock 'N; Roll Cannibals sound interesting, check out the website.

http://www.rocknrollcannibals.com/​