Long-time rock-n-roll journalist and current managing editor at CoolCleveland.com (and my good friend) Peter Charkerian meets Henry Rollins:

Yesterday, me and the L’il Man are cruising the aisles at Trader Joe’s for some dinner fixins. We stop and say hello to our pal Carrie who works there. I’m pondering the Mandarin Orange Chicken and a bag of Edamame; All of the sudden, I catch a familiar face in my field of vision and can’t quite believe my eyes — I was up with the L’il Man for 3 hours the night before, so seeing this punk legend, author, actor and IFC lynchpin in a grocery store really could be a hallucination.

It’s not a hallucination. He’s in town for his Provoked gig tonight. He looks up from shopping with his female companion, and as he is explaining why he usually buys this certain kind of frozen vegetable, he sees me staring (I assume with my dropped jaw) and smiles one of those quietly intense smiles he always flashes. “What a cute little guy,” he says to the L’il Man, smiling at him. I approach, not knowing what to say. “Thanks,” I gulp and extend my hand to shake. This is weird. Unexpected. Not rehearsed for this. Doesn’t happen every day. Damn, I don’t even have a Sharpie and my copy of The Portable is nowhere near.

And I interview people all the time — so how come this run-in with Henry Rollins is different? I preface my approach with an apology. I know famous people usually hate this, especially when they’re trying to live their normal life. “Hi, sorry… I love you, man. All your work, especially your writing and spoken word stuff…”

Make sure you click thru for the pics.

Joyrides for Shut-ins

This film has a few things going for it. It’s an independent film by an area filmmaker about roots music:

Chasin’ Gus’ Ghost is a documentary film on the history of Jug Band Music. It traces the roots of American music beginning with Gus Cannon and Cannon’s Jug Stompers, The Memphis Jug Band and the Dixieland Jug Blowers from the 1920’s, and weaves a tapestry through interviews, live performances, archival footage, and photographs showing their influence on the ever-popular folk and rock movements of the 1960’s.

The movie is written and directed by independent filmmaker Todd Kwait, and includes interviews and live performances by John Sebastian from the Lovin’ Spoonful, Jim Kweskin, Geoff Muldaur, Bill Keith, Maria Muldaur, and the late Fritz Richmond from the influential Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead, Charlie Musselwhite, Paul Rishell and Annie Raines, plus many more artists who were influenced by the great jug band musicians from our past…

Chasin’ Gus’ Ghost » Synopsis

Here’s a link to the newsletter archive.

Mike’s Barn Musicians Clubhouse

Great commentary:

Please read the following transcript from the Marketplace segment, and notice what Ted is advising – that the way to “save the music industry” is for the labels to demand a piece of an artist’s merch/tour revenue/e-commerce…in short, everything. This is already the new reality: I have seen contracts that demand this, and if in the past the general perception of all labels was that they were predatory (and one of the reasons there are few tears shed ‘bout the death of the B. R. I.), these new deals and terms make the B. R. I.’s even more (and officially) predatory.

After the artist has slugged it out on the road (clubs closing left and right), worked hard on fluffing up their My Space friends numbers (don’t laugh…a key indicator of an artist’s potential popularity), set up their merch (big initial capital outlay), bought/mastered all their own recording gear (even bigger capital outlay), made nothing less than a stunning video (youtube rools)…the label comes in and takes a chunk of all of it in exchange for…what, exactly?

This is a survival strategy for The Suits that comes from desperation, and all but institutionalizes the worst, scumball, bleed-the–artist aspects of the music biz. The one ironic, unintended consequence is that deals like this make it in the label’s interest to actually hold on to an artist for a long period of time, making Artist Development - a nearly extinct part of the business - a necessity.

Sorry I missed the reunion – I had a gig with my surf band, and obviously I come down squarely on the player/artist/songwriter side of this. If I had attended, my first question would have been “whatever happened to that Telcaster, Ted?”…and our respective allegiances would have been very, very clear.

JAMMED.ON.ON: TED COHEN

And listening to:
Never On Sunday from the album “Greatest Hits” by Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass