HOME / diary: A weeklong electronic journal.

Mick Farren

diary:
entries

Posted Wednesday, Dec. 8, 1999, at 9:00 PM ET

I can't name the last bar in Hollywood where illegal cigarette smoking is still met with a blind eye. Don't ask, I won't tell. Suffice to say it's a stone's throw from Hollywood Boulevard, and you've probably seen it on TV or in a movie, since filmmakers frequently use its ready-made noir atmosphere. George, the bartender, who could be Isaac Hayes' more amiable brother, puts out no ashtrays. Just take a coaster and fold up the edges. The clientele are punks, musicians, grips, rock 'n' roll girls, and Nathaniel West/Charles Bukowski characters who once chased a Hollywood dream, but--failing to become Tuesday Weld or Steve McQueen--traded it for a gin-on-the-rocks illusion. This is probably why Andy Colquhoun, my guitar-playing co-conspirator, and I choose this bar when matters of moment require discussion. The other denizens remind us to swim forward or die.

RSS

Andy and I arrive almost simultaneously. Punctuality is always cool. George greets us. "How's it going, boys?"

With Andy in his late 40s and me past 50, it's always nice to be addressed as "boys." "Keeping on keeping on, George."

"That's all you can expect these days."

In that we really are keeping on, we have little to complain about. Earlier in the year we toured Japan and briefly became the toast of Tokyo. We even cut and mixed a live CD culled from the shows. But, with that accomplished, the obvious question is, What next? With Doug Lunn, our bass player, on a protracted leave of absence to orchestrate a Broadway musical, we've been a holding pattern. A couple of live shows--like one a few of weeks ago in a packed and enthusiastic L.A. club with our good buddy Brother Wayne Kramer--have kept the performing jones at bay, but with Doug back, and a new year all but here, plans need to be made.

A long time ago we decided mindless and endless touring wasn't it. Wet Tuesday nights in Pittsburgh ruin your health and turn you into a drug addict, and, besides, I would never get any writing done. Also, the Japanese spoiled us so rotten that to go back to dubious promoters and damp dressing rooms (if there's a dressing room at all) is just too retrograde. So where next? "London?"

"We need to go there?"

"New York."

"Likewise?"

"Logistics?"

"Aaaah."

This is where we both fall silent. Currently one of the best schemes on the horizon is to play at one of the new Las Vegas '60s-revival shows. With the rock audience growing progressively longer in the tooth, Vegas is now rocking to accommodate them. Nothing would be finer after Tokyo than for us, the Deviants, to rampage around another city of sin and neon for a long weekend. It's the '60s-revival part on which we choke. We are not in the business of reviving anything. Dear me, no. Although our reputations, such as they are, were made in the '60s and '70s, we operate exclusively in the now. Indeed, as the years have passed, creativity has actually become both more urgent and intense, and with experience and techno-resources to complement the energy, we now have a mind-meld of neo-psychedelic music, destructured science fiction, and howled poetry flowing out of Andy's computer-coordinated home studio that will take us well into the next century. Our problem is that to get our new creations to the public, we have to involve ourselves with the dreaded entertainment industry.

"It's bottom-line obsessed, and we're not teen-agers."

"The bottom line is the wall between art and audience."

"So what do we do about it?"

We both know the answer. Whether we're working on live shows, CDs, MP3 downloads, or like Pete Townshend and his current Lifehouse project, pioneering a new radio form, we have to tackle that formidable bottom line. Tunnel under it, go around it, or most probably, continue beating our bloodied heads against it until something gives.

"Two shots of Jack Daniels, please George. It's time to get drunk."

Mercifully, the bar's proximity to both our homes means we don't need to drive. Outside, an intense Santa Anna has come out of nowhere shaking the palms and whipping up vortices of garbage. It's the wind immortalized by Raymond Chandler, the one that caused meek housewives to "finger the edge of the carving knife and eye their husbands' throats." Ditto for record execs. Outside, I turn up the collar of my leather jacket wishing this eve of the millennium wasn't so overtly apocalyptic.

diary:
entries

1 2 3 4

Posted Wednesday, Dec. 8, 1999, at 9:00 PM ET

E-MAIL

RECOMMEND... Get Slate RSS Feeds

Mick Farren is a writer, musician, and author of the novel Jim Morrison's Adventures in the Afterlife, to be published next month (click here to buy the book and here to buy his band's CD).

What did you think of this article?

Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum

POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES