All About A Good Time On A Saturday Night

High-flying

It was 30 years ago today -- 8-8-88 -- that Tommy Conwell's debut album was released by Columbia Records, which if you were around Newark, Delaware at the time was something of a big deal.

Conwell and his band, the Young Rumblers, played a brand of party blues pop that sort of bridged the gap between area icons: the more traditional R&B of George Thorogood, who'd been at it for 15+ years by that point and was a national star albeit with an older audience; and the bright, heartland dance-pop of The Hooters, who'd only recently raced up the charts on the strength of a radio-loving debut the kids ate up.

Conwell had the same management firm and record label as The Hooters, and similarly got a deal after demonstrating skill as a crowd-pleaser in live shows and locally released recordings that attracted airplay from Philadelphia's then-influential WMMR. Especially around the Delaware Valley, Conwell looked as close to a can't-miss rookie as comes along.

But top prospects don't always become all-stars, and sometimes the hype is all that shows.

By the time I wrote this article -- nine years after Conwell's debut and seven since he'd last released a record -- he had long since returned to the local bar scene that birthed him and obviously had had plenty of time to put the whole experience into perspective. I'd done a little bit of background work before we met, but it was a single, extraordinarily candid interview with the artist that really carries the story. I read where some interpreted Conwell's remarks in this story as bitter but let me assure you he was anything but. I've always thought this was one of my better attempts at writing about music, and about growing up.

Here's the album in all its overpackaged glory.

Sharing This Night That Will Soon Be A Blur

Ignorance of contemporary music can have its rewards if you're not scared to arrive at a party a 20 years too late.

That's sort of how I felt watching Rhett Miller perform at City Winery this week. It was the first time I'd seen Miller, who is best known as the front man for the Texas-based alt-country rockers the Old 97s. That band's 90s and oughts heyday was largely overlooked by me: I'd vaguely known who they were, but until a few years ago hadn't done enough to distinguish them from others in their ballpark. For a while there I conflated the Old 97s and the Old Crow Medicine Show, in a manner not unlike my brain tangled the Hoodoo Gurus and Husker Du in the 1980s. I just didn't know better.

It wasn't until 2014 and MOST MESSED UP -- the band's 10th album! --  that I finally caught on. That album is so good -- funny, hardrocking, full of goofy energy, a classic of the life-on-the-road genre and only the slightest bit Western twangy -- to inspire a journey into the past where I discovered these guys had lots of terrific stuff I'd overlooked.

In the meantime, I'd had a second connection to make: the name Rhett Miller had bubbled up through my power-pop feeds over the years, and I was familiar with his album THE INSTIGATOR (2002). Eventually I pieced it all together and realized the singer and the band belonged to one another and had parallel careers. The whole load of it eventually worked its way into heavy rotation around the house and so for me, going to this show was as though I was seeing a hot band.

Little did I know there were still more surprises ahead.

Miller is something of the David Lee Roth of solo acoustic performers, bringing a huge physical energy, charm and a bag of tricks -- most notably a windmilling strum hand and shag-shakes -- to the act. He's got an expressive yelp conveying the sad-sack, whiskey-dicked losers at the heart of most of his songs. I can't imagine there were many at the show like us who hadn't seen Miller before, but that was our reward. We rocked and we laughed, totally entertained.

Recently, Miller authored this sobering takedown of the modern music industry, wondering whether domination by gigantic streamers, "Swedish hit factories" and YouTube leaves anything for young musicians to aspire to. I wish I knew a solution. I will note that the stream -- particularly the late lamented Rdio -- is what I have to thank for having discovered the Old 97's and Rhett Miller to begin with. The economic model is most messed up, if you will; and so it's not without internal conflict I am sharing the below sampler.

He Is The Entertainer

I've written before about my complicated relationship with Billy Joel, who meant a lot to me when I was very young, but whom I rejected along with most everything associated with Long Island as I got older and worked a little too hard to be cool.

The time to scratch that itch for real came about this week when I finally cashed in the birthright of millions of my neighbors and saw the man perform a sold-out show at Madison Square Garden. There was something more satisfying to having "won" our tickets by bidding on them at a PTA auction for our son's school; it felt good to contribute but as it turned out, the seats were donated from the "band friends & family" pool and so we learned as we entered we had excellent seats in the lower bowl, very close to the stage.

Until now I'd only seen him riding his bike around Huntington and getting ice cream with Christie Brinkley at Baskin Robbins while they were still secretly dating 40 years ago.

 

Billy is front and center with a grand piano on a rotating platform. His seven-member band of course is top-notch; we'd seen Mark Rivera (sax, tambornie, vocals etc) lead the "Breakfast w/ the Beatles" band before. The guitar player, Mike DelGuidice, was an excellent singer who did some Zeppelin snippets (Kashmir, Rock n Roll).

We got a kick out of all the dressed-up Long Island Moms in attendance. 

Just like the outstanding SONGS IN THE ATTIC, recorded on the same stage 38 years before, he opened with a stirring "Miami 2017" and we were off. 

Billy was in good spirits and good voice, mentioning he'd just turned 69 ("I used to like that number."). My brother, who used to work at the Garden tells a story of watching Billy rehearse a show as part of his Elton John tour years back only to get so drunk during the course of the day he couldn't go on that night, but Billy is apparently clean and sober now and whatever he was drinking came out of a mug. He dedicated "Don't Ask Me Why" to a little girl in the audience I guess was a granddaughter seated near us. The first half of the show was what he called "fielder's choice," letting the crowd choose which of two songs off various albums they would perform. I won with "Vienna" (over "Just the Way You Are," thank the lord, and with "Zanzibar," (over "Stilletto"), but lost big time with "She's Got A Way" (over "Everybody Loves You Now"). I cheered for "Root Beer Rag" over "The Entertainer" but the latter was performed and turned out to be one of the better selections on the night.

It's Fleet Week here, and so as "Goodnight Saigon" starts a dozen uniformed sailors come out on stage and sing the chorus arm in arm. It was cheesy but the audience loved it and learned the True Meaning of Memorial Day. That's as political as Billy dares to be. I would have liked him to rip Trump a new one and challenge his fans in a new verse or two of "We Didn't Start the Fire" but Billy hasn't bothered. Twenty-five years without a new pop album!

I mentioned this to my friend Edward who in no time had penned a clever suggestion:

Mike Pence, Manafort, kneeling players ruin the sport

Sean Spicer, Kelly Ann, the truth about crowd size

Health care, got no plan, gotta do a Muslim ban!

Fox News, Hannity, parrot all my lies

Ronny Jackson says "Great shape!" Mueller, find the pee-pee tape

US Nazis, they're so fine, Putin is a friend of mine

Fuck our allies from the West, Mexico don't send the best!

Sheriff Joe gets a pardon! DAUGHTER GIVES ME SUCH A HARD-ON!

We didn't start the fire!

Obama lit it! O, Fake News, admit it!

We didn't start the fire!

There was no collusion! It was a spies intrusion!

Give it a shot, Billy. If I can change, you can change!

The hard bargain of the Billy Joel MSG phenomenon played out as he totally went "back wall" with "Stop in Nevada" off PIANO MAN and folks went flying to the men's room and hardly any remaining audience members even applauded. I thought, do you need to hear "New York State of Mind" again? Me, I got up and peed for "Italian Restaurant" -- another chestnut beaten into banality for me by way too many classic-rock radio spins.

I enjoyed the three-sax chorus in "Movin' Out" and the brass was activated again for "Half A Mile Away," which Joel described as a "fukuka" song the band had never before performed live. I could barely believe that was true; in my Southside Johnny-influenced youth that was one of my favorites. "I Go To Extremes" on the other hand came out after I'd already decided Billy Joel was the uncoolest guy ever and would never listen to him again on purpose, but everyone including me enjoyed that one quite a bit. 

After a while I feel into a spell thinking how much of Billy's Winning Streak material was just ripped off stylistically from others, performing the one he ripped off from the Cars ("Sometimes A Fantasy") and the one nicked from Graceland-era Paul Simon ("Middle of the Night"). Billy to his credit never considered being "derivative" a criticism. I guess we all have a idea of what Billy Joel ought to be (for me the post-singer-songwriter, pre-superstar TURNSTILES is the ideal) but he is what he is. There was just no way to stop him from playing Side A of his Greatest Hits at the encore.

He is The Entertainer. 

Setlist

Miami 2017

Pressure

Don't Ask Me Why

Vienna

Zanzibar 

She's Got a Way 

The Entertainer 

Allentown

Goodnight Saigon

Movin' Out 

(Followed by 'Kashmir' (Led Zeppelin) snippet)

Stop in Nevada

New York State of Mind

Half a Mile Away

She's Always a Woman

I Go to Extremes 

My Life

Sometimes a Fantasy

The River of Dreams

Nessun dorma

Scenes From an Italian Restaurant

Piano Man

Encore:

We Didn't Start the Fire

Uptown Girl

It's Still Rock and Roll to Me

Big Shot

You May Be Right

(with "Rock and Roll" (Led Zeppelin) snippet)

Kihnetic Energy

Dear Sirs,
Lookihn back, my career went fuckihn nowhere.
Signed,
Greg Kihn
Workihn in a Burger Kihng

As far as I can remember it, that was the parody "letter to the editor" published in a mid-80s copy of the National Lampoon we had in the dorm room. I miss this kind of savage comedy today even if it took an unfair shot at Greg Kihn, whose career didn't really go nowhere. You might call him a "two-hit wonder" but that's not really accurate either. He wrote two songs you'll never forget, several other near-hits, and you probably also know his album titles were all puns based on his name.

Or so I thought. It turns out there were more Greg Kihn albums (most credited to the Greg Kihn Band) than I ever knew and not all of them came with a punworthy title. As I went back in time to listen to them I was somewhat disappointed to learn that he'd flirted with the idea, then dropped it, only to resume it in time for his midcareer breakout then lose it again.

Greg Kihn was born in Baltimore, though came into his own after moving to the Bay Area. Having grown up amid the British Invasion, its not surprising to learn he would come of age in the first wave of Power Pop artists, though Greg was by no means a purist; he was a stylistic borrower who had no problem mixing in the odd 50s style ballad, folk-rock, reggae beats, soul covers, keyboard-driven dance pop, and Springsteen Lite to his pop-rock core. He was considerably more mainstream than Beserkley labelmates the Rubinoos or especially the Modern Lovers.

The Greg Kihn Band was established following a self-titled singer/songwriter debut, and spanned most of the era: bass player Steve Wright; drummer Larry Lynch; guitar player Dave Carpender; and keyboardist Gary Phillips. Wright co-wrote a number of songs with Kihn including "Jeopardy" and 'The Break-Up Song." Wright also took lead vocals on some album tracks, as did Lynch.

Kihn made a lot of records. Exactly one every year for 11 straight years, 1976 to 1986. The good stuff was generally pretty good, the less-good stuff wasn't awful, and most of it presumably sounded better on stage than on record, since until MTV came along and a string of "concept videos" made him a kind of star, touring was the only alternative to Burger King.

I was inspired to go back and listen to the Kihn Katalog due to my admiration for an odd non-single, "Madison Avenue Man" buried on Kihn's second album, GREG KIHN AGAIN. I like everything about this song: starts off as a bush-league "Day In The Life" cowbell-clanger, then suddenly springs to life with an irresistible chorus straight out of "Ricky Don't Lose That Number" and goofy lyric I guess pokes fun at the music biz "Let me touch your money with my Madison hands."



Kihn was also among a group of 70s artists who recognized Bruce Springsteen's burgeoning songwriting chops sooner than most. He covered "For You" (AGAIN, 1977) winning the Boss's own admiration and a BORN TO RUN outtake, "Rendezvous" (WITH THE NAKED EYE, 1979). The guy had taste.

"The Breakup Song" (ROCKIHNROLL, 1981) hit No. 15; and the danceable "Jeopardy" (KIHNSPIRACY, 1983) went all the way to No. 2, but couldn't beat "Beat It." Beserkley folded following 1984's KIHNTAGEOUS, but he Kihn-tinued under EMI with the the very 80s sounding and solo-credited CITIZEN KIHN (1985), then got the band together again for LOVE ROCK N ROLL (1986). The latter two appear to be whatever the streaming-era equivalent of "out of print" is although you can still find some videos online.

Kihn became a deejay and part-time horror novelist following his run on the pop charts, and a year ago put out a new record that may or may not prove they write 'em like that anymore, but to celebrate the harmless, punmaking, reliable rocker here's a playlist with one handpicked track from each of his 9 Beserkley platters in the 76-84 Kihn Dynasty.