100 Song March

This fragment is the first recording of Ronnie and me playing together. We had just begun playing guitar a couple months before so our timing sucked, but I like the way it sounds like some kind of forgotten recording from the days of the Delta Blues, a couple of drunk sharecroppers learning to strum.I include it because it is the only remaining baby picture of Lucid Nation and you can see how deeply the blues had us under its spell. I said “my bad’ when I made a mistake so even though I didn’t want to sing at all I was the first vocalist for Cat Cult! The band is mine! Mine I tell you! My unconscious was all set to go go go but it would take riot grrrl to kick open the door. Listen to the song: Click Here

This is Ronnie’s first and by far most primitive experiment with multi-track recording and effects.At first, it seems by fox Ronnie means foxy like the rock stars of yore he mentions but really this title is lifted from the I Ching. Ronnie’s a big Lee Scratch Perry fan as mentioned and I think you can hear a bit of that in this mix. He plays the big solo near the end; I do the meandering bluesy slide licks the rest of the song.There are two kinds of rock and roll: entertainment and enlightenment. Sometimes an artist is both. Any real rock fan is wondering, along with me, what happened to rock as enlightenment? The electric troubadour poets who crystallized and galvanized generations, we haven’t had a real one of those in a long ass time.In this song I think Ronnie captures one reason for that. He sings about Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon and Jim Morrison, three of the most devoted rock as enlightenment poets. Their deaths resonate with an isolation and resentment that would make any sensitive artist think twice a

I wrote the music for Ronnie’s lyrics about patience overcoming violence at a time when AC/DC and Muddy Waters were all I would listen to.“Backed into a corner of mirrorsYou got only yourself to blameChange is original sinWhen you play the sacrifice gameSometimes you find it even in your familyLike being at the mercy of Nazi charity“Baby, ain’t no need for suicide or murderthere’s always a way across if you walk a little furtheryou gotta walk a little furtheryou will find ways across.”You’ll notice that Ronnie at the time had a bad case of baby-itis. Almost every song gets at least one “baby”. It reminds me of a story I was told about the guy who sang for horrible hit band Foreigner. He had “hey-itis”. He had to sing “hey” at least twice in every song, and sometimes he’d add a “hey” after every line. Finally the producer said one more “hey” and you’re fired. That was the cure. Ronnie required nothing so drastic. Listen to the song: Click Here

I wrote the music for this song, Ronnie wrote the vocals. I could never sing anything like:I have an ancestor who was a chief on the Cherokee Trail of Tears. Because of the fate of so many of his family at the hands of the Nazis, Ronnie has strong feelings about the genocides suffered by Native Americans and slaves.Check out Ronnie’s way with lyrics:“Devil headed people came over on a boatThey had a disease that made ‘em want to chokeThe life out of everything beautiful, wild and free,Inside those pilgrim eyes were highways of concrete.”“Don’t it make you wish poor Bob had possession over Judgment Day” is a nod to his obsession at the time with all things Robert Johnson.But what I want to know is how did a first generation American immigrant kid become such a total redneck (as proven by this drawly bluesy rasp of a vocal that sounds like it was lifted off a 78)? Listen to the song: Click Here

I wrote the music for this song, Ronnie wrote the vocals. I could never sing anything like:“You come knockin at my bedroom doorlike some kind of guilty conspiratorlke a spy in the nightlike an angel on the slylike the southern sunin the morning skytalk to me all night about your boyfriendfollow me home into my bedTell me all and everything you’ve seenYou’re first love and last dreamTell me your secrets with a kissUse the talk of fingertips.”I think those are lyrics are beautiful but I would never sing anything so blatantly romantic, and neither would Bon Scott or Ronnie van Zandt, so I’m okay about it. Listen to the song: Click Here

That glitch at the beginning shows how close we came to recording over this song!Way too silly and romantic for Tamra to ever sing, but cute, in a Marc Bolan with a dash of silly Lennon kinda way.I love the bluesy interplay of our guitars. I guess our instincts were good because we had no clue and a lot to learn! We were convinced we could not be good because we had not been playing long enough. Columbia Records’ interest in us was like some kind of strange cosmic joke. Instead of ambitiously exploiting it, we were waiting for the punch line. Listen to the song: Click Here

Ronnie’s rhythm guitar part later became the Lucid Nation song L.A. River that Keith Richards called marvelous. I played a sweet bass line on that, but I like this song just as much.They say L.A. is a cityIn a nightmare that never sleepsShow me a town where pityOutweighs the law of the streetThe twentieth century,Baby, it’s historyTime can’t turn backTo how things used to beDo I sound a little paranoid?I had a nightmare for breakfast today.I saw a hundred million peoplePretending it’s yesterday.It’s like Woodstock never happenedIt’s like Ike never diedIt’s like Elvis never shook itIt’s like Nixon never lied.That song is over ten years old but it makes even more sense today. I may have to do a version of it with Lucid Nation I like it so much. Listen to the song: Click Here

Yes, that is me snickering. This song is a lament for musicians lost when one night stands became pregnancies unplanned. It would make a great condom commercial.On a more serious note I think the cruelty of women who saddle men with unwanted children, often for gain, can be a crime like rape: they forever change someone’s life against their will when they force a man to be a father. Of course, he was too stupid to take precautions so maybe nature elected him for the honor of parenthood.Insert joke about how there wouldn’t be a human race if women stopped trapping men with children.Tamra, you are slandering the very force of civilization, the bit and reins most trustworthy can only be fitted against the wild animal’s will. Men, like horses, must be broken. Besides, it is the oldest profession. Listen to the song: Click Here

As timely as today’s headlines! Things have only gotten worse since this song was written. “How do you deal with hopelessness?How do you deal with helplessness?How do you deal with crisisWhen it’s world wideAnd there’s nowhere to hide.”I’m not sure how we accomplished this weird mélange of Woody Guthrie and AC/DC, no one could have planned it, it reads like it shouldn’t work, and yet somehow it does. Listen to the song: Click Here

Now we are moving back through time to the very cassette tape that got Columbia Records interested in Cat Cult. These recordings were made inside an apartment living room, the two of us playing cheap guitars through practice combos, on a hand held cassette recorder. Talk about no overdubs or effects!I wrote the music, Ronnie wrote the lyrics and he plays lead. It reappears on the Cat Cult Columbia multitrack demo as Boulevard in my Backyard with different lyrics and a much boppier feel only partly due to all the extra instrumentation. The music reappears again as the song Angry Pelicans on Lucid Nation’s “The Stillness of Over” CD with new lyrics and vocal by Debbie Haliday, and Ronnie on bass.Hollywood Boulevard used to be mostly junkies and hookers, in a way it still is, they’ve just been pushed onto the side streets. On the boulevard itself you see mostly tourists these days. Since Disney started spending big bucks there the area is becoming gentrified. Some of it’s cool, like having the Knitting Fa

This was Ronnie’s recording swansong with Cat Cult. The something struggling to be born he’s howling about is probably Lucid Nation!Man he finds a weird groove in here, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever heard, and I’m happy to say it owes a lot to my brooding bass line.Riot grrrl found us on the rebound from Columbia, and every word in every zine could not have made more sense. Ronnie and I were about to become very different people as riot grrrl forced us to see ourselves and the world for real. Listen to the song: Click Here

Conrad Santa Vicca was best known as Divine’s dresser. When he was diagnosed with AIDS he decided to fulfill his dream of becoming a painter. His work was extraordinary, as the art world quickly recognized.Ronnie and I met Conrad at a Holly Woodlawn party in a Silverlake backyard. The three of us talked about life and death under a huge old pepper tree. The stars were bright and the summer night was warm. We knew Conrad was dying. His healthy looking tan was the result of drugs they were giving him. When he lit up a joint and offered to pass it to us I didn’t hesitate. My older brother was gay and I knew you couldn’t get AIDS from a passed cigarette. I also knew what it would mean to Conrad at that point in his life to have a smart ass white girl share a smoke with him without a flinch. Ronnie threw me a horrified look but, slump shouldered and secretly pissed off, he took a puff, too. Conrad appreciated what we had done and the conversation we had then about his race with time to create all the art

Ronnie recorded the sound of the ice cream truck right outside the apartment window to suggest the loss of innocence when you move away from home.He was thinking of a Catholic girl we knew, who because her family would not accept her, had to leave home and church and fend for herself in a world she wasn’t prepared for.Again check out the raw and bizarre, trance inducing mix. More EQ and reverb magic, another tribute to the genius of Lee Perry.I like the old school vibe of this song, but Ronnie said it was corny and declared he’d never write a song on keyboards again. So far he hasn’t but I he’s been playing more keyboards lately so you never know! Listen to the song: Click Here

Debbie said she’s probably crazyBecause all she can think aboutAre the identical refrigeratorsIn every claustrophobic house.”I guess in a way you could say those are Debbie’s first lyrics for Lucid Nation, since Ronnie is repeating something she told him when we all were first becoming friends, just before she began drumming and zine writing.What sounds like an anvil being smacked with a hammer is actually finger cymbals Ronnie used effects on.Lyrics from this song wound up in the Lucid Nation songs Them (American Stonehenge, Public Domain) and Bleed (DNA, Public Domain). Listen to the song: Click Here

Ronnie painstakingly memorized this bit of Celtic open tuned picking that makes up the intro of the earliest version of the Lucid Nation song Trip.As the lyrics in this version make obvious, Andy Wood of Mother Love Bone had recently died. We liked Mother Love Bone.The lead playing in this song shows how quickly Ronnie’s skills developed when he was encouraged by interest from Columbia. But my favorite thing about it is the way he mixed using reverbs and EQs to create a unique mood; again, a benefit perhaps of his being a Lee Scratch Perry fan. Listen to the song: Click Here

Hollywood Boulevard was one of the songs Columbia picked out so Ronnie revamped it into this new song with a completely different loose and funky feel. Check out The Doors-y keyboard part he threw in. I like the lines: “We tore down the jungle to put a street up keep making it wider and longer so we can drive and never stop chicken hawks and stone faced cops tail lights streaming red pizza after midnight see where Caesar bled. “Some walk through like angels Untouched and unafraid Past shopping cart apartments And pavement beds like graves Everybody’s got a mission, a scam or a crusade Some it seems never leave like ghosts that slowly fadeI wrote the lines: “stuck on a fault in here under fire out there”and later used them for the Lucid Nation song Landmark (The Stillness of Over, Public Domain). Listen to the song: Click Here

Ronnie took to multi-track recording like a duck to water. I fell in love with playing bass. The results were a startling leap forward from the hand held cassette demos Columbia liked that you’ll hear later this episode. Ronnie was goth once and you can hear the influence of bands like Bauhaus, Sisters of Mercy and Angels in Aspic in this moody song. The lyrics sound like they were written about today, huh?Insect breath, the sweet smell of soil. That’s actually true! Listen to the song: Click Here

FUBAR is U.S. Army circa WW2 slang for Fucked Up Beyond All Repair.“The more things you treat like it the more your life turns to shit.”When Jody heard those lines she wanted to chant them with me. I have to admit it felt surreal to stand there recording with her. We’d played gigs together, Lucid Nation’s second gig was opening for Team Dresch at an art gallery in downtown L.A., but she and Donna, like Kathleen, and Adrienne from Spitboy, were heroes to me. Team Dresch is on top of the list of the best bands I’ve seen live (in a tie with a Sonic Youth sound check I saw at the Hollywood Palladium). I’m stoked that Jody played on FUBAR.FUBAR was recorded on an ancient Soundcraft Series 3 sixteen track mixing board big as a boat. Supposedly it had belonged long ago to Heart, and more recently to Soundgarden. This song and Mung Jung Bushi were the only recordings I got out of the huge thing before it broke down completely. Only one repair guy in all southern California could work on it and he was in deman

Late into the night we talked about the future. The audience hasn’t yet learned that the great art of the future will be DIY and hard to find, not corporate and handed to passive consumers everywhere on a silver platter. Remember, average people didn’t know who Beethoven or Van Gogh were during their lifetimes.Here in Hollywood the movie, TV and music corporations, most of which are divisible into five giant octopus corporations, are scared shitless by the changes technology is bringing.What happens when there’s no more forced programming? Instead of having to wait till 8 PM to see the show you want to see (and if you don’t have Tivo and you miss it well you’re screwed) someday soon you’ll search for the show on a search engine just like you search for music files. Instead of a few commercial stations and a couple hundred cable stations we’ll have millions of directories and blogs, and huge databases just waiting to be enjoyed by explorers in pajamas.Make no mistake, great artists of the future will use th

On the subject of malfunctioning vintage gear that makes people go misty eyed, Ronnie drove Mecca Normal to their gig at Spaceland in a broken down silvertop 1966 Pontiac GTO coupe. Because the trunk was rust eaten it filled with exhaust which spilled into the backseat till the passengers were dizzy. But the beautiful heap hauled ass on the freeway when Ronnie demonstrated what it could do. It had the California license plate Artcore.Eight cylinder guilt, it haunts me, that thrill I get from the rev and torque of a big block engine. I love a car that jumps up when you shift it into second. I am an American, damn it, and I like that. I’m so ashamed, but Delorean was inspired when he designed this biosphere killing machine. Listen to the song: Click Here