Lost Amusement Parks
by Chas Glynn

When I was quite young, I went with my folks to Playland at the Beach, a San Francisco amusement park that was about to be torn down. Researching it now, I realize that the oldest I could have been would have been was seven. Even as a child, though, I had a sense that I was visiting something that was ending, something that belonged to another era. Having an architect dad may have helped—many family trips revolved around visits to historic structures that were on the verge of demolition. When we visited Playland, it was winter, rainy, and the Wild Mouse and most of the other outdoor rides had already been decommissioned. The indoor fun house, however, was still open for business. One entered the fun house through a door topped with a giant clown (looking back this may explain my lifelong clown obsession). Even in its dotage, though, the fun house was... fun. There was a big wooden slide (which I think may be the one on the cover of the Cowsills' album) a vast tunnel which rotated as you attempted to walk through it, and the house of mirrors. I remember my dad grumbling about the state the place had fallen into—the slide was slow because hadn't been waxed to a high sheen, the panes of glass in the house of mirrors were covered in dust and countless fingerprints. I was enthralled. Shortly after our visit, Playland was torn down and condos built in its place. Across Ocean Boulevard, the Camera Obscura remains as one of the few leftovers of this urban seaside amusement park, although the part service, loath to be burdened with a decaying relic perched on an unstable cliff, continually threatens to tear it down. As with many people, amusement parks left a strong impression on my young mind. And having the site of these memories disappear leaves a certain nostalgic sadness. My own experience inspired me to look into other amusement parks that have come and gone. In tribute to these lost places, here are some amusement parks and attractions that live on only in memory, as well as one magical individual's visions of what a park should be.

I first read of The World of Sid & Marty Krofft amusement park in Dynamite magazine, which had an article on the then-planned park, and featured a breathless description of a unique new ride in which one sat inside a giant silver ball as it careened through an enormous pinball machine. Hearing nothing more of it in ensuing years, I assumed it was a pipe dream, but I later found out that it had opened and operated, although for less than a year. Located in Atlanta’s Omni International complex, TWOS&MK opened in 1976. This was an indoor park—more of an amusement mall than a traditional park. Visitors boarded a giant escalator which carried them to the top of the six-story complex, where they entered through a gateway composed of a pair of enormous, balloon-wielding mimes. Guests then passed into the Kroffts’ personal fantasy world. In addition to the pinball ride, there was a 60-ton "Crystal Carousel" which floated, hovercraft-like, on a cushion of air. Most familiar was a re-creation of Lidsville, from the psychedelic Krofft TV series of the same name, where visitors were invited to "celebrate amid giant hats." A short trip down a simulated mine shaft conveyed visitors to the "Living Island Adventure," where they could view a pageant starring characters from the H.R. Pufnstuf series.

The park, intrinsically tied to several popular television series, could have been a success, but various factors caused it to fail. It faced many problems—the pinball ride caused a number of injuries, and kept breaking down. Indeed, most of the attractions were built from scratch and faced frequent mechanical problems. And the summer of ’76 proved to be a bad time for tourism. High gas prices, coupled with relentless Bicentennial boosterism (which created the impression that popular tourist spots would be packed with celebrators) meant that many stayed at home that year. And then, too, the Kroffts' vision was just a little… odd. While the warped and vaguely disturbing aesthetic of their TV shows meant that they would long stick in the minds of kids growing up in the '70s, it didn’t necessarily play well with parents taking their kids out for a day of fun. What was amusingly weird for a half-hour on Saturday morning became a bit unnerving when one had to spend a day stuck among it in a windowless complex.

Strange as The World of Sid & Marty Krofft was, it paled in comparison the transcendental meditation-themed amusement park long planned by Doug Henning. TM combined Eastern mysticism and pop-spirituality to become a fad in the '70s, but it’s hard to conceive of it as natural fit for the hurdy-gurdy world of the amusement park. Magician Doug Henning thought differently, though. In 1987, he put his career on hold to begin the creation of Maharishi Veda Land—a theme park to be built in his native Canada, close to Niagara Falls (with a planned sister park in India) which was devoted to Vedic wisdom and enlightenment. In a press release he stated: "We are taking Maharishi's knowledge and then structuring it into entertaining and magical exhibits, rides, and films. There will be boat rides through an ancient Vedic civilization where everyone lives in perfect harmony with natural law. In this exhibit we see enlightened men flying through the air, making objects materialize and vanish at will. We will be able to walk through the Courtyard of Maya where everything we see is an illusion that fades away at a second glance." Doug used his illusionist skills to design such features as piles of money and jewels that disappeared as people grabbed for them, levitating buildings, and boulders metamorphisizing into people. Featured attractions were to be the Magic Flying Chariot Ride (which took visitors on a Monsanto-inner-space-like journey into the atomic structure of a rose), the Corridor of Time (in which parkgoers went on a trip from the birth to the death of the universe), and the Seven Steps to Enlightenment (a series of tiered pavilions which were designed to lead the visitor toward full consciousness). Henning boasted that "one time through and you will never see the world the same way again." Doug Henning died in February 2000, but he earmarked much of his fortune to ensure that work would continue on his beloved amusement park. However, despite over a decade of planning, Maharishi Veda Land seems still to exist largely on paper. Only time will tell if tourists of the future will flock to this park to mix spiritual enlightenment with their thrills and spills.

Less odd, but still very much a personal vision, was one man’s attempt to recreate the mythical world of Oz. Atop North Carolina's Beech Mountain (a popular winter resort), Grover Robbins enlisted the help of designer Jack Pentes to construct the Land of Oz theme park in 1970. Eschewing traditional rides, it endeavored to give visitors the experience of visiting L. Frank Baum's literary creation. Beginning in a Kansas farm (which featured a petting zoo), visitors went through a simulated tornado and embarked on a walk down a yellow brick road into a place adorned with colorful Styrofoam scenery and dancing, costumed characters. One could visit the Cowardly Lion's cave, peer into the handcrafted Scarecrow's house, or take a Wizardly ride in a hot-air balloon. Unfortunately, the remote location made travel to the park an ordeal of twisting mountain roads, and the area was prone to frequent flash thunderstorms, which sent visitors scurrying for shelter. Park employees soon adapted, and would kick off their shoes so as not to slip on the yellow brick road, which became treacherously slick when wet. In 1975, a fire swept through the park, destroying many of the attractions as well as the original dress worn by Judy Garland in the film version of The Wizard of Oz, on display courtesy of Oz-ibila collector Debbie Reynolds. What remained of the park was kept in operation for several more years, growing increasingly more vandalized and decrepit, until it finally closed in 1980. Occasional reunions of park employees and Oz fans take place among the ruins, and Dorothy’s house has been incorporated into the nearby Emerald Mountain vacation development, but this Oz now largely exists only in memory.

Disneyland, of course, is in no danger of disappearing, but many parts of it have faded away. Over the years, rides and attractions are updated, subtly or radically altered, or removed altogether. Tom Sawyer's Island initially featured a fishing pier, with rods provided by the park, but this was closed very shortly after the park’s opening. It quickly became evident that the successful anglers would be burdened with an unwieldy dead fish for the rest of their visit, and many were abandoned in trashcans or lockers. The nearby Swiss Family Treehouse experienced a more recent renovation. Following the release of one of Disney’s animated Tarzan movies, the attraction was renamed Tarzan's Treehouse, with revamped signage and various modification to the set dressing. In an odd oversight, however, Swiss polka music still plays on speakers hidden throughout the treehouse.

Those who visited Disneyland in the '70s and '80s may recall a rather dated version of the future presented by Tomorrowland. Gone now is the Submarine Voyage. Disneyland once had the third largest submarine fleet in the world, after the US and Soviet navies, although Disney’s could only go a few feet underwater. Despite the continued popularity of this ride, it was eliminated in the ’98 revamp of Tomorrowland. Gone too, is Monsanto's Adventure Through Inner Space. Visitors would board buggies and be "miniaturized" to travel through the world of atoms and molecules. (A former girlfriend of mine, as a child, broke her leg hopping from car to car on this ride and entered the hallowed ranks of those who have been injured on amusement park rides.) Also gone is the rather dated House of the Future, which offered such marvels as plastic furniture and a microwave oven. One missing attraction that may not ring a bell except for hardcore Disney fanatics is Captain EO. This large-screen 3D multimedia presentation opened in 1986 and was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, produced by George Lucas, and starred Michael Jackson as a space explorer who transforms an evil planet through the power of pop music. In 1997, it quietly closed and was replaced by the "Honey, I Shrunk the Audience" 3D movie.

Tomorrowland has been fully overhauled, and now attempts to present a vision of the future from a millennial standpoint. Rapidly advancing technology, however, makes today’s gee-whiz gadget commonplace within a few years. Also, the future seems much less a magical wonderland than it did in the mid-20th century. Some of Tomorrowland’s appeal may well have been that it took visitors to an antiquated, but much more appealing, vision of the future. Touchingly, the original Tomorrowland is commemorated in a mural visible over the revamped Tomorrowland.

While Disneyland looms large in shared memory, many have their own personal memories of more obscure amusements past. Mike Lavella, publisher of Gearhead magazine, recalled White Swan Park in his native Pennsylvania. Distinguished by its swan-themed rides, it closed after a number of accidents and fatalities marred its reputation. The country-themed Opryland amusement park is no more, replaced by a more lucrative mall. And while there were many Luna Parks, the one located smack-dab in the middle of Manhattan is viewed by many to be the first modern American amusement park. Featuring landscaping, neoclassical architecture and permanent installations of rides and attractions, it strived for a more tasteful environment than the typical tawdry carnival environment of the day. Present-day park operators could well learn a thing from this industry pioneer.

I'll close with another personal memory, not of a vanished park, but a vanished ride. The Cave Train at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk wasn't thrilling or state of the art—in fact it was worn at the edges by the time I visited the Boardwalk in the mid-'80s. One rode a miniature train through a stalactite and stalagmite-laden tunnel of sprayed stucco, featuring smoke-spewing volcanoes, black light illumination, and fanciful cave scenes of dinosaurs and cavemen in odd, humorous situations, It was obviously built some decades before, and I always got the impression that it was the product of one person's odd vision. I couldn't ever ride it without thinking of the Cramps' song "Caveman." It's gone now, replaced by some prefab spin-n-puke ride, and I feel the Boardwalk is the poorer for it.

Researching this article, I became aware of the vast number of lost amusement parks, and the weight of memory that they have for so many people. While it would be impossible to catalog them all, I hope that those who read this will remember amusement parks from their past, and perhaps seek out decaying attractions remaining in their communities.

(originally published in Scram #14)

Fun Fact: Nikki came out of retirement to play our first Bubblegum Ball!

Red Hot Girl Talk with Nikki Corvette

On a cool winter night, the ladies of Scram (and Bomp) made a pilgrimage to an unassuming Hollywood apartment, just down the road from the former site of the Tropicana Hotel. Inside was Miss Nikki Corvette, the eerily youthful lass who, in the mid-seventies, single-handedly invented a girl-group-meets-hard-rock sound that continues to be plied by acts like the Donnas, Bobbyteens, et al. Nikki and the Corvettes conquered Detroit, then came out to LA as one of the prestigious punk-era Bomp Records signings. When the band split up, Nikki stayed, and today she's unquestionably the most famous waitress in Los Angeles--at Barney's Beanery, and if you go to get an autograph, don't forget to tip! Since this conversation, Nikki's decided to start playing again; watch for her at the Bubblegum Ball, Scramarama and elsewhere in the fall. We draw back the veil on the night's proceedings to find the Betsy Palmer, Harmonee Welch and Kim Cooper sprawled on Nikki's comfortable couches, listening to the Paley Brothers' album.

Betsy: (pointing to Jonathan on the LP jacket) He's cute!
Nikki: I only went out with him because of Stiv. Stiv wouldn't let me go out with Smitty from the Rockats. Stiv says, "He's got strep throat." "I don't care." He's like "No, no, I'm introducing you to Jonathan." I said, "I don't like blondes."
Betsy: He was just watching out for you.
Nikki: Sure he was... 'til years later when I found out what he said to Jonathan. Stiv told him "it will be like fucking your little sister."
Harmonee: That's really creepy!
Nikki: And I looked really young then. I look really young now. I got all the little sister things--all these guys, the ones I wasn't sleeping with, got real protective with me--trying to make sure I didn't learn about drugs.
Kim: So what's your secret? Good genes or good living?
Nikki: I'm thinking good genes. I never went out in the sun, never smoked cigarettes, and never felt guilty about anything. That's all I can figure, 'cause I did everything else! I lived the life I wanted to live. There's stuff that didn't turn out the way I wanted, but I wasn't in rock 'n' roll to be famous. I was in it because I loved rock 'n' roll. It was cool and I got to rock out with the guys.
Betsy: People are asking when you're playing again. Will there be a reunion?
Nikki: If I could figure out what kind of music I wanted to do, I'd put a band together. My old guitar player and Jonathan Paley would totally back me up.
Harmonee: When Betsy sent the CD to Flipside last year, I didn't know anything about Nikki and the Corvettes. We put it on and it was so great! It made me really happy. I didn't know when it came out. It sounded like it could've been this year.
Nikki: I get stuff in the mail and emails from girl bands and read stuff on the internet, bands I've never heard of saying I'm their biggest influence. These girls weren't even alive when I put this record out! The thing I like is that since Bomp put it on CD, it's finally at the right speed. I'm so much happier with it. I don't sound like a chipmunk-well, not as much.
Betsy: I grew up with the speeded-up LP version.
Kim: That's what they did to David Cassidy to make him appeal to the younger demographic. He freaked out when he first heard it.
Nikki: That's how I felt when I saw the cover. We were on the road and it was too late to do anything about it. I was like, "no way! I'm NOT the Archies!" The back was supposed to be the front. Cartoons were never, never mentioned. At this point, the pizza arrives, and the tape recorder is turned off during the repast. Conversation continues some time later.

Kim: So what was that you used to do when you saw your record in the record stores?
Nikki: Put one in front of each row, so all you'd see was our record when you walked in. Uh, that is the BACK cover, facing front!

The Bobbyteens disrupt Nikki's day

Nikki: I got to work one day and the cashier grabs me and goes, "Go talk to this table RIGHT NOW!" So I go over and there's Russell and Tina from the Bobbyteens. Russell has on a pink Nikki and the Corvettes T-shirt. The only ones that ever existed were red and yellow. I know 'cause I made them! They were like, "We can't believe we're meeting you! We just went over to Bleeker Bob's looking for your records and he said you worked here. Will you sign a record for us?" I said, "Okay who put you up to this?" "No really, we're big fans." "Where 'd you get that T-shirt?" "We made them!" And then they told me all about their band. Then they brought Darren, the guy who helped start the Donnas. And some Japanese people they knew. It got to be whenever they were in town, they'd bring more and more people to meet me. So I'd be signing autographs and posing for pictures, then go wait a table. And my tables would ask, "Are you famous?" I'd tell them, "No, I'm a cult hero, but I'm not famous." I gave Tina and Russell a copy of "I Gotta Move," the last single we did that never came out, and now every time they bring friends in they want a copy. And I don't want to make it less special for Tina and Russell. But people offer me money for them... so I'm thinking
Everyone in unison: EBAY!!!
Nikki: I saved everything. I have old fliers and stuff.
Betsy: (pointing to one) Wow, look at that!
Nikki: I can't believe I wore skirts that short.
Betsy: Oh my God, I thought those were little shorts... that's a SKIRT?!
Nikki: That's a skirt. Hey, why do you think I did so good opening for the Ramones? It was all 15-year-old boys in front. They'd never seen a girl in a short skirt. This is like 1980... it wasn't cool.
Betsy: Did you get along with the Ramones?
Nikki: Well I WAS going out with Johnny!
Kim: So how did you get hip to the Dolls when you were a teenager in Detroit?
Nikki: Well, all of us-me and Miriam [Linna], Pete [James], and Stiv [Bators]-we were all just Dolls fanatics! The first time the Dolls came to Detroit, to the Michigan Palace, my stepfather was supposed to meet me and my boyfriend there. So we were holding a seat for him and then there he is onstage going, "Nikki, please come backstage." Somehow he'd met the Dolls. I'm like, "Cool, my stepfather is hanging with the Dolls!" We always had to see the Dolls. That was the most important thing. One time I had a paper for my English class. I think it was on "Desire Under the Elms," and it was due in the morning. So it's like midnight, one o'clock, and I said, "I gotta do this paper!" Johansen says, "What's it on? I'll help you." So we stayed up and wrote it.
Kim: Had he read it?
Nikki: I guess... or he lied! It all worked out. On my paper I wrote "With help from the NY Dolls." We went on tour with them in their Winnebago. We all stayed in one hotel room. One place we were skinny-dipping and the night clerk comes out. Johansen swims over there and goes, "Okay you're gonna tell us we're bad kids and we gotta stop" and the clerk said, "No, I'm gonna tell you the police are on the way and you're gonna be arrested!" We ran out of the pool and grabbed our clothes-ran across the parking lot naked and hid in our room. Okay, so like they don't know who we are, they don't know what room we're in? We had all the lights off, these naked wet people hiding in the dark, I don't know for how long. Finally we're like, "Okay, wouldn't they have been here by now?" It's not like they didn't know who we were. When we checked in we got the Winnebago stuck under the awning. So we decided if we all got out we could get it loose.
Kim: No, it's the other way around.
Nikki: Yeah, I know.

Raiding Nikki's scrapbooks
Harmonee: "Look!" (pointing to photo of Judge Reinhold)
Nikki: Yeah, Judge, I went out with him too. I was a bit of a tramp. Good god it was fun!
Kim: They don't say that about Elizabeth Taylor, and she had a lot of boyfriends.
Nikki: Yeah, but she married them. I just slept with them.
Harmonee: Is their anybody you didn't sleep with that you wish you had?
Nikki: (long pause, so long in fact that everyone starts laughing) Okay, okay. Mel Gibson and, uh, David Bowie.
Kim: What was the first band you saw?
Nikki: I've tried to figure that out. I've got it narrowed down to the MC5, the Stooges, or Ted Nugent. I was a major MC5 fan. I was at their last show ever. Somewhere I still have Rob's tambourine. My poor mom-her 16-year-old hanging out with White Panthers
Harmonee: Do you think if you hadn't gotten the Corvettes together you would've ended up in music eventually?
Nikki: Yeah. That's really all I cared about. I spent a summer going to Strasberg in NY. There were these intense eight-hour days: dance class, voice class, acting class. Then you were supposed to work on it all night-every night! I'd be at the clubs. I was at Max's. I was at CB's. I hit every club every night. I could get in for free because I knew everybody. I'd get home just in time to change and go to school. I wanted to be an actress until I realized you have to get up way too early... that was important then. NYC, 1977... how could I not?

Jan and Dean glom on to Nikki
Nikki: The first night the Corvettes came to LA we stayed at the Tropicana. It was the first time I ever heard myself on the radio.
Kim: KROQ?
Nikki: Yep, Rodney. Jan and Dean were on talking about this new girl they discovered and they played our record. I called the station saying, "That's not their record. I don't know them. It came out of my mom's basement. JD Records is 'Juvenile Delinquent,' NOT Jan and Dean!" I was like, this is so cool, Jan and Dean are lying about knowing us, we're sitting at the Tropicana, listening to ourselves on the radio, in LA! It doesn't get any better than this.

Crusharama
Betsy: Okay, I don't understand your Kid Rock obsession.
Nikki: It's a Detroit thing. I have obsessions. I was really into this actor who was in the Temptations movie. I rented every movie he ever made. I'm at the video store holding six black movies, and the counter person was like, what? I was obsessed with Vincent Gallo. Chris Cornell was my god for a while 'cause he's so pretty. I lose track of them.
Harmonee: What are some new bands besides Kid Rock you enjoy listening to?
Nikki: I really love Outkast currently. Who else? Hank 3. I don't know how it happened, but in the last few years I've developed the musical taste of a 15-year-old white boy. I really like thrasher punk-I like that whole genre. Y'know Rage, Metallica... I kinda turned into a little metal girl somewhere along the line.
Kim: Who was your first big crush?
Nikki: It would have to be-well depending on what week, each of the Monkees. I went through my David Cassidy thing. I liked what's his face from Here Comes the Brides, Bobby Sherman.
Betsy: He was adorable.
Nikki: I really liked the kid from HR Pufnstuf.
Kim: Jack Wild?
Betsy: Mmm yes.
Nikki: And the guy from Romeo and Juliet with Olivia Hussey...
Kim: He was pretty.
Harmonee: I used to have a crush on the blonde guy from Dukes of Hazzard.
Kim: Really?
Betsy: I am so sorry!

Yes, she really said Adam Ant
Kim: (looking around at Nikki's collection) So what's your favorite toy?
Nikki: (picking up some fast food freebies) I think it's the Wolfman-he howls. I really like Frankenstein and these guys-they turn into things-like it's fries but you go- (twisting it)
Harmonee: It's Frieformers!
Nikki: Yeah, they turn into these little dinosaurs.
Kim: And it's great 'cause all that stuff was originally dinosaurs anyway!
Nikki: You know the Magic 8 Ball? This is the Magic Date Ball. You ask it about dates.
Kim: Is it always right?
Nikki: It's never right. It totally sucks.
Harmonee: What was your hottest date?
Nikki: Well "date," or "date date," or "person I spent time with?" That would be Adam Ant. Best sex? Adam Ant. One night stand? Adam Ant. Best everything? Adam Ant.
Harmonee: "If you strip for me I'll strip for you."
Nikki: Yeah!

At this point, the girls move it past the old Flipper's Roller Disco to the IHOP for ice cream. The waitress is very annoyed to have to make sundaes. Iggy Pop, card Nikki: The first time we were in a hotel hanging with the Stooges, me and Pete are sitting in the hall and Iggy comes out of his room totally naked and goes, "Hey, wanna fuck?" I'm like, "No, not really" and he goes back into his room. Then he comes out later and goes, "Hey, wanna wash my hair?" They were playing with Slade and they got in some big fight-like they were gonna kick Slade's asses. Then Iggy wandered off. The police call James Williamson saying, "You might wanna get down to the coffee shop; Iggy is asking the cops where he can score drugs."
Kim: Well they'd know, wouldn't they? So what are your secrets for meeting rock stars?
Nikki: I don't know. I'm really lucky. I used to try... y'know call people up, go to their hotels. Then even when I didn't they would find me. I got to be friends with the Clash by giving the drummer directions, not knowing who he was. I don't know. I'm very outgoing. I guess, be direct. Have something to say. Be brave enough to go right up to them and say something.
Betsy: Hmmmm. "Hey, Iggy, wanna fuck?"

Wanna read more, and see exclusive photos from Nikki's archives? Pick up Scram #14

Liz Damon's Orient Express: 1900 Yesterday
by Steve Mandich

When I lived in Portland a few years ago, I got in the habit of tuning in the local "Mature Adult Contemporary" station, Sunny 910. The geriatric AM frequency spun "original hits of the '40s, '50s and '60s," and, though their slogan didn't mention it, the '70s too. Mixed in among the easy-listening powerhouses (Sinatra, Como, Mathis) and the stinkers (Reddy, Lightfoot, Newton-John), were a few swell acts that were new to me (Brubeck, Denny, Getz).

Once every few months this one particularly amazing song that I'd never heard elsewhere would come on, usually in the middle of the night. I was instantly grabbed by its spine-tingling, ethereal female vocals, singing an infectious, broken-hearted melody about lost love, along with this cryptic chorus:

Like smoke from a cigarette
Dreams that you soon forget
It's fading away
And it's 1900 yesterday

What's that all about? After I caught the tune for maybe just the third time in a year, I typed "1900 Yesterday" into a search engine and, sure enough, discovered it to be the title of the song, performed by an outfit called Liz Damon's Orient Express. The group's debut single, written by some guy named John Cameron, peaked at #33 on the Billboard charts in February 1971 I found a copy of the single in December 1998 and played it over and over across the following year. While its B-side, "You're Falling in Love," wasn't worth a second listen, the A-side haunted me, fueling my pre-millennium tension (which I'm embarrassed to admit, but the media's Y2K doomsday hype did have me a little spooked). Still, I couldn't resist repeated listenings, wondering if, way back when, Liz Damon and company were onto something.

Namely, was "1900 Yesterday" some kind of premonition about digital clocks unable to recognize 01/01/00 at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve? Would computers really roll back a full century, causing global blackouts, planes dropping from the sky, the accidental launch of nuclear warheads and scores of other catastrophes? More than Prince's "1999" or that Jennifer Lopez video or any of the other stupid millennium-themed tunes by Sting or Will Smith, I'll forever associate the turn of the century with this weird song.

Of course, the new century arrived, the world didn't end, and things for the most part were fine. And I set out to find more music by the Orient Express. However, it became quickly apparent that the sublime "1900" isn't representative of group's overall sound, which isn't even half as breathtaking.

They had a late-'60s/ early-'70s boy-girl pop-vocal vibe, calling to mind Spanky & Our Gang. The combo's pleasant, breezy tunes were often punctuated with a lively horns and a bit of the period's light exotica, à la the Sandpipers or Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66. Though the band hailed from Hawaii, their music was more suited for a cocktail lounge than a luau. A xylophone added a vaguely tropical air to some cuts, but there were no discernable ukuleles or slack-key guitars.

Still, based of the strength of their smashing debut single, a brief overview of the rest of their recorded output is in order. Here 'tis:

· At the Garden Bar, Hilton Hawaiian Village LP (Makaha Records, 1970)

The Orient Express began its performing career with a year-and-a-half-long gig as the house band of the Garden Bar, a lounge at Waikiki's Hilton Hawaiian Village (the beachfront high-rise hotel with the big rainbow painted on its side).

Despite the debut album's title, which suggests a live disc, ATGB was laid down at Annex Studio in Los Angeles and Commercial Recording in Honolulu. Makaha Records released it, but White Whale soon picked it up and reissued it simply as Liz Damon's Orient Express. They released the opening track, "1900," as its lead single.

The group recorded no original material and instead covered contemporary hits and standards with their own unique arrangements, in this case the Beatles' "Something" and "Let It Be," the Carpenters' "Close to You" and Ray Stevens' unfunny "Everything is Beautiful." Other than "1900," the best moment in the band's catalogue is the arching chorus of the follow-up single, "But for Love."

The gatefold sleeve opens to reveal cutouts of the nine group members' heads, and high praise by the entertainment editor of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The back cover features a long shot of the Orient Express in action at the Garden Bar, all in matching costumes. Liz Damon is front and center, flanked by her backup singers/ dancers: to her left is her sister Edda Damon, and on her right is Sydette Sakauye. Behind them is a six-man band; judging from their appearances, the name "Orient Express" apparently referred to their Asian roots.

· Try a Little Tenderness LP (Delilah Records, 1970)

Their second album includes the title track, Laura Nyro's "Time and Love" and a take on "Love Story." Anthem Records reissued the disc as Volume II and released two singles: the Burt Bacharach-Hal David tune "Loneliness Remembers" b/w "The Quiet Sound," and Paul Williams' "All In All" b/w Bacharach-David's "Walking Backwards Down The Road."

Anthem's release also had different cover art, replacing the cool line drawings of Liz with an extreme close-up of a pair of airbrushed eyes (presumably hers). The cardboard cover itself had a slightly corrugated texture.

Sometime after the release of Tenderness, Sydette Sakauye left the band to pursue a solo career. Meri Pherson, who would later design and sew the group's outfits, replaced her.

· Me Japanese Boy (I Love You) LP (Delilah Records, 1973)

The peppy title track of their third album, which was credited to "Liz Damon with the Orient Express," was written by Bacharach-David. Bobby Goldsboro took the song to #74 in August 1964, and the Pizzicato Five covered it on a 1998 release. LDOE's version hit #1 in Hawaii; though it was more popular on a local level than "1900," it failed to chart nationally.

Four of the record's other ten cuts were penned by the loathsome Neil Sedaka, including the follow-up single, "I'm a Song (Sing Me)." They also covered Stevie Wonder's hit from the previous year, "You Are the Sunshine of My Life."

Heaven in My Heart LP (Domi Doncy Records, 1978)

Liz herself wrote the title track of their fourth album, which also included the traditional Hawaiian song "More Better Go Easy" and Nat "King" Cole's "Unforgettable." The rest of the record pretty much consists of international standards like "Canadian Sunset," "Danny Boy," "Chanson d'Amour" and Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Wave."

Interestingly, the back cover credits the "producer" as an international travel company, Cartan Tours, whose chairman wrote the liner notes. With a group taking the name of a famous railroad and performing songs about faraway lands, Cartan apparently thought the record would inspire listeners to book overseas vacations. This is the band's most solid long-player.

· WARNING: This Album Could be HAZARDOUS to Your Ego! LP (Domi Doncy Records, 1979)

"I asked Edda to record some of her favorite stories and little jokes," Liz wrote in the liner notes to this, her sister's debut comedy album. Edda obviously did. Apparently the band cutup, Edda's side project includes bits called "The Job Interview," "The Chicken," "The Airplane," "First Man on the Sun" and "Kanimotoshita's Department Store." I haven't heard this one, so I can't say whether it's actually funny.

· At the Lion's Den Lounge, Reno MGM video (bootleg, 1983)

The entirety of this unedited tape is shot in a single, continuous 45-minute take, panning across the stage and zooming in and out on the Orient Express in full-tilt performance. The front line of Liz, Edda and Meri dance with synchronized, Jazzercise-style moves. Liz, with her enormous fake eyelashes, wears a sparkling orange blouse with matching slacks, while Edda and Meri wear black versions of the same. They all wear high heels.

The four-man backup band had only one Asian guy, the guitarist, down from the original six Asians with which they started out. With the bass player, drummer and keyboard player all haoles, they might've changed their name to Liz Damon's Coast Starlight.

This live show, which includes lots of banter with the receptive audience, is much more rocking than any of their recorded material (from which they didn't draw a single song). The set opens with a cover of Toto's "I'll Supply the Love," followed by Paul Simon's gospel-influenced "Gone at Last" and a medley of Sly and the Family Stone's "Dance To the Music" and Martha Reeves' "Dancing in the Street." Edda, who cracks jokes about men who don't put down the toilet seat, does some silly number about drinking too much tequila, and the drummer sings Lionel Ritchie's lame hit "You Are." After concluding with another medley of songs which I didn't recognize, Liz introduced the individual band members, then announced they'd be back for late shows at 9:45 and 12:15.

Also on the video are a couple interview segments from local Reno news broadcasts. In the first one, Edda the jokester looks like Joan Jett, wearing sunglasses, a torn sweatshirt, leather pants and a spiked wristband (at least I think she was goofing around). The second segment shows live footage of the group performing Dolly Parton's "9 to 5," with the singers wearing gold lamé outfits and headbands like John Travolta in Stayin' Alive.

The Orient Express also took their lounge act to Las Vegas-where they played a Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon-as well as Lake Tahoe, Atlantic City, Puerto Rico, Canada and Japan.

After the group disbanded in the mid-'80s, Edda moved to New Jersey, married, had a couple of kids and currently works as drama coach for children. Meanwhile, Liz lives in Las Vegas with her husband and teenage son. She works at the Westward Ho as casino host and entertainment director, and still sings at private parties and conventions and coffee shops in the area. She plans to return to Hawaii someday.

All of the Orient Express' recordings are long out-of-print, except for "1900 Yesterday," which is available on a few compilation CDs. Following hits by the Turtles, Lyme & Cybelle and Nino & April, the song closes out the 21-track label anthology Happy Together: The Very Best of White Whale Records (Varèse Sarabande, 1999). Otherwise, the marginal Top-40 hit has long since fallen through the cracks, and the group never charted again. Still, while Liz Damon's Orient Express goes down in music history as just another one-hit wonder, what a wonderful hit it was.

Mahalo to Shelley Hinatsu for her valuable assistance.

Wanna read more? It's all in Scram #14.

"You think the Beatles are exciting? These fellas run over the Beatles.
Here they are: Hub Kapp and the Wheels!" ­-Steve Allen, 1964.

by Dan Nowicki

Listen up, Americans! Hub Kapp and the Wheels invented punk rock. And maybe even glam and heavy metal for that matter. Sure, sure. How many times have you heard that old saw? But this one makes sense. Sorta.

Hub Kapp and the Wheels was the notorious joke rock and roll band that was born on a hip Phoenix, Arizona, kids' television show, took Hollywood by storm at the height of Beatlemania and has continued to confound music scholars and record collectors to this day.

For all its phoniness, the group was a huge attraction in Arizona, scored regional hits and was a major influence on the embryonic Phoenix '60s rock scene. Among Hub Kapp's fans was the young Vincent Furnier, who with his Cortez High School buddies would form their own Beatle parody band called the Earwigs. That band, of course, would become the Spiders and then the Nazz and eventually Alice Cooper.

The Coop has never hidden his affection for The Wallace and Ladmo Show, the groundbreaking kiddie program that aired on KPHO-TV (Channel 5) under various titles such as It's Wallace? and Wallace and Co. for an amazing 35 years between 1954 and 1989.

It was on It's Wallace? that Hub Kapp and the Wheels first rose to prominence in 1963. "If you didn't grow up here, you may wonder why people still talk about it years after being off the air," Cooper himself explained in an hour-long 1999 documentary on the Wallace show that he narrated for KPHO. "The reason was simple: it was different. The humor was rebellious, demented, out-of-whack. Imagine the effect it had on kids who watched. But enough about me..."

The show featured Bill "Wallace" Thompson as straightman to rubbery physical comic Ladimir "Ladmo" Kwiatkowski. The duo was joined by Pat McMahon, the so-called "McMahon of a thousand faces" who portrayed a variety of oddball characters such as Gerald Springer, the mean-spirited spoiled brat; Captain Super, the archconservative comic-book hero; Marshall Good, the out-of-work cowboy actor, and Aunt Maud, an abrasive old lady who would read twisted and macabre stories to the kids. Guitar prodigy Mike Condello was the musical director.

McMahon, with an outrageous pompadour wig, long eyelashes and fake eyebrows and sideburns, also was the legendary Hub Kapp, the godfather of punk who taught Alice Cooper a thing or two about shock rock theatrics in falseface.

"Alice continues to insist that he was inspired by a combination of Hub Kapp and Aunt Maud," quipped McMahon, now an on-air personality with Phoenix news radio giant KTAR. "We certainly didn't consider ourselves pioneers or visionaries. We considered ourselves guys who were doing a comedy show back home that was the Monty Python for kids. Hub Kapp was just one of a whole bunch of characters that we did."

According to the TV script, Tony Evans, a popular disc jockey known as "the Fearless Leader" at Phoenix Top 40 station KRIZ, discovered the grotesque Hub Kapp working at a gas station in Cotton Corners, Tennessee. Since Hub Kapp was Phoenix's answer to Elvis, the Wallace and Ladmo gang recruited Evans to fill the Col. Parker role. In fact, Evans would later prove pivotal in helping a number of bona fide local rock acts such as Floyd and Jerry, the Pendletons and the Bittersweets and is credited with breaking Dyke and the Blazers' home-cooked "Funky Broadway" in 1966.

"Supposedly Tony Evans was driving through Tennessee and had to have some automobile work done and discovered Hub and the Wheels in the grease pit," McMahon said. But Hub Kapp and the Wheels were true proto-punks. Wallace originally had dubbed them Hub Kapp and the Tire Slashers, but KPHO management quickly put the kibosh on that. The Wheels wore dark sunglasses, black berets and sullen expressions and adopted the punky pseudonyms Rip Kord (Condello), Ry Krysp (bassist Bob Dearborn) and Ty Klyp (drummer Rich Post). Occasionally they were joined on stage by fourth Wheel Terry Kloth (keyboardist Ted Harpchak).

You want D.I.Y. attitude? Hub Kapp and the Wheels merely declared themselves instant Rock and Roll superstars, and it was so. Buoyed by the local television exposure, they immediately began drawing huge audiences at personal appearances at area high schools and Legend City, Phoenix's late, lamented Wild West amusement park.

Their 1964 debut single, "Work, Work" on Condello's Take Five label, was a No. 1 Phoenix smash and shoved the Beatles off the top of the local charts for the first time since they'd come around. The song, an ode to slacking off (to Hub Kapp, work was "a dirty word, the dirtiest word I ever heard") that features some blazing, this-ain't-no-joke rockabilly fretwork by Condello.

Although an obvious parody group, the musical integrity of the Condello combo still holds up and none of the Hub Kapp records reflect the sneering contempt of, say, a noted rock hater like Stan Freberg.

"We didn't go out and make fun of the genre," McMahon said. "There was a subtlety to the things that we wrote. I wrote 'Work, Work' in about four minutes before the show one day. We thought, 'What would Hub do?' Hub would probably think about how to get out of working very hard. So I dashed off the lyrics, we did a blues sequence, and that was it. It was a huge local hit."

The first single's other side, a call-to-action titled "Let's Really Hear It (For Hub Kapp)," has its charm as well, although McMahon now dismisses it as "a whole bunch of nonsense lyrics that Wallace made up just so that we would have a B-side." Some sample lines: "Send up flares/ Can't stand squares/ Mirror, mirror, on the wall/ Who's the fairest one of all?/ Let's really hear it for Hub Kapp." Like "Work, Work," the song also has crowd cheering to give it "in-person" appeal.

If the Hub Kapp story ended there, it would have been improbable enough. Instead, that's when things started to get really surreal. The regional success of "Work, Work" was substantial enough to attract the notice of show-biz industry mullahs in Los Angeles and eventually led to a contract with Capitol Records, home of the Beatles and the Beach Boys, the band's heroes. Hub Kapp's alien stage presence proved a perverse attraction to the Hollywood starmakers and it wasn't long before he and the Wheels were holding court at the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip and making national TV appearances on the Steve Allen and Joey Bishop programs. All the while, they continued to fulfill their obligations to the Wallace and Ladmo show in Phoenix.

"It was all beyond anything that anybody could ever plan," McMahon recalled. "It was one of those crazy, I-don't-really-believe-that-this-kind-of-thing-could-happen where in some B-Grade, low budget movie a guy puts a wig on and becomes a Rock and Roll star. We were commuting back and forth doing shows and screen tests for bad beach movies. We did an audition for Shindig and never did hear what happened."

The strangest twist of all was that much of the group's intrinsic humor was mostly lost on the West Coast. McMahon was bound by contract to never appear sans wig and eyebrows or in any way tip off the Southern Californian public that it was all a gag.

"If you could have been over in Los Angeles with us, you wouldn't have believed it," McMahon said. "Because it was Arizona who really 'got it,' and went along with the joke. It was L.A.­sophisticated Hollywood and the big-time show biz people­who took it very, very seriously."

McMahon, Condello and company were introduced to the L.A. entertainment media at a major press conference and party at the Capitol Tower. The Wheels were instructed not to utter a word and Hub was told to do all the talking.

"And, of course, I had to wear the entire outfit," McMahon said. "I thought, 'My God, they are right up in my face. Can't they tell that this is make-up?' The mood of it was, if they did think that they were phony eyebrows, nobody wanted to bring them to my attention. They thought I was a burn victim or something."

A recording session at the Capitol Tower produced a sophomore 45, but the results were somewhat disappointing both to the band and record buyers. This time, both sides were covers: Larry Williams' R'n'B standard "Bony Maronie" and the Everly Brothers' "Sigh, Cry, Almost Die." The versions were credible if not particularly memorable to anybody other than diehard Hub Kapp fans. Both songs were a bit overproduced and played a little too straight.

"They were OK records, but they didn't sound like Hub Kapp," Condello would note years later in an interview for a locally published book about the Wallace and Ladmo show. "They didn't have the content in them that might have given some clue to the personality of the group."

McMahon and the Wheels were conflicted about the way the act was progressing. They were homesick for Phoenix and were beginning to feel guilty about constantly leaving Wallace and Ladmo in the lurch while they pretended to be rock stars in L.A. Eventually, they told the Hollywood agents and record company executives to stuff it.

"Over there I had a bunch of people talking about how they were going to make me the next biggest Rock and Roll star. I kept wanting to lift up the wig and say, 'Guys, see underneath. Disc jockey and actor,'" McMahon said. "It was clear, for crying out loud. How long could we possibly continue doing this charade? Everybody wanted us to stay. They said you really have something unique. We said, 'Yeah. We have jobs.'"

Back in Arizona, Hub Kapp and the Wheels recorded and released a third and final single on their own Framagratz imprint. It paired the anti-hot-rod anthem "Little Volks" with a cover of the Beatles' "What You're Doing" (incorrectly titled on the label as "What You're Doin' To Me").

Condello reflected on the Framagratz 45 in the liner notes for a 1994 compact disc compilation of records associated with the Wallace and Ladmo show. "Here was our brilliant two-part plan: A. Somehow get our hands on a Beatle song not yet released in this country. B. Have an automatic smash record in the U.S.A., beating the Fab Four at their own game. Here's the results: A. We did. B. We didn't."

McMahon has a different recollection of the events surrounding the single. "I don't remember sitting there saying that we were going to have a hit," McMahon said. "Condello and I were both Beatlemaniacs. Condello and I went over to Dodger Stadium, in fact, to see them in concert. We picked 'What You're Doin' To Me' as a piece of material that sort of got lost. It was an album track that nobody paid any attention to. We both loved the song. It was more of a tribute than anything."

In fact, according to McMahon, it was the anti-hod-rod anthem 'Little Volks' that got most of the attention upon its release. The song was penned by McMahon and Condello and is one of Hub Kapp and the Wheels' finest moments. Condello provided the piercing lead guitar, while honorary Wheel Jim Vanier guested on rhythm. (Vanier was in a popular Arizona group called the Vibratos, who had in fact had scored a solid local hit with their cover of the Beatles' "I'll Be Back." Their success with a Beatles LP cut might lend some credence to Condello's strategy.)

Here's McMahon on the song's origin: "All you heard were car songs in those days. If you didn't hear British rock and roll, you heard car songs­'Little GTO,' 'Little Deuce Coupe,' and so on. I passed by the parking lot of Washington High School one day, and I remember thinking, 'Nobody has hot rods. These kids are driving Volkswagens.' There were a whole bunch of little bugs. I thought, 'Now, who would write a car song proudly about his Volkswagen?' It would be a geeky guy. But he wouldn't think he was geeky. He would be really proud of his machine, and he would be sensitive about it. 'Don't make jokes about my little Volks.' The whole idea was about how he's out there proudly chugging along in his little 4-cylinder Beetle bug."

If the three singles provide an incomplete picture of Hub Kapp and the Wheels, posterity got a big break recently via the discovery of an amazing unreleased acetate. Had it been pressed up at the time, their names would today be whispered with the same awe as any of the garage-punk bands found on the best Back From The Grave or Teenage Shutdown albums. One side features a guttural, surfed-up take on "Sixteen Tons" while the other is a great raw rocker titled "Don't Put Me On." The latter boasts some of the most timeless punk prose of all time: "You tell more stories than a fairy-tale elf/ You ain't fooling anyone but yourself/ Don't put me on!" Both highlight scorching Condello guitar work.

The "Sixteen Tons" acetate, formally released in 2000 in Phoenix on an already hard-to-find Hub Kapp CD collection, mystifies McMahon. "I don't ever remember the idea of doing 'Sixteen Tons,'" he said. "I remember writing the song 'Don't Put Me On,' but I don't remember recording it. I kind of vaguely remembered the way 'Don't Put Me On' went."

Sometime in 1965, McMahon, Condello and the rest of Wheels decided that Hub Kapp's race had been run and retired the wig and eyebrows. Around the same time, McMahon was temporarily fired by KPHO and was off the Wallace show for about a year. He worked as a KRIZ boss jock in the meantime, and eventually became the station's program director. Condello continued making Wallace and Ladmo show music without McMahon. His Ladmo Trio put out the classic Blubber Soul EP, a four-track disc featuring Beatles and Yardbirds songs rewritten about the show's wacky characters. Later, he formed Commodore Condello's Salt River Navy Band, which recorded two 7-inch EPs, including the spot-on satire of Sgt. Pepper. The second Commodore Condello EP featured similar goof-takes on Jimi Hendrix and the Bee Gees plus the original "Soggy Cereal," which showed up on an early Pebbles volume years later. Condello must have had the last laugh to see the song offered as an example of semi-serious psychedelia.

When not performing before the KPHO cameras, Condello for years was one of the most respected musicians on the Phoenix scene. His Phase 1 album on Scepter is well-regarded in psychedelic circles and his band Last Friday's Fire had three singles on Lee Hazlewood's LHI label. If Condello's top-notch unreleased Freberg-meets-the-Mothers comedy LP­showcasing great lost classics such as "A Pimple Is A Sometime Thing" and "Public School Lunch"­ever officially sees the light of day, his spot in the pantheon of the '60s pop gods will be secured.

Condello left the Wallace show in the early 1970s and relocated to California. Tragically, he committed suicide in 1995, a victim of severe depression.

"You always hear the interview with the next-door neighbor who says, 'He was the last guy in the world I ever expected to do this,'" McMahon said. "As close as I was to Mike over the years, I never knew about the clinical depression, and most people didn't. It must have been insidious. I still miss him."

Still, Hub Kapp and the Wheels' impact on Phoenix and the Valley of the Sun was so profound that the shockwaves from the band's impact continue to be felt. Their influence was crystal clear on Valley New Wave bands such as Billy Clone & the Same and the Jetzons, whose 1982 Made in Japan EP was produced by Condello. The entire Hub Kapp saga became the subject of a locally produced stage play that was one of the most popular theatrical events of the past year.

The real Hub Kapp and the Wheels reunited for a 1989 swan song performance at Phoenix's Encanto Park before tens of thousands of adoring fans. The show was in conjunction with Wallace and Ladmo's 35th anniversary.

"We made Hub an industrial giant who no longer had to do music," McMahon said. "The Wheels were all working for him and have generous stock-option programs. There's Hub sitting there with the eyebrows talking about all of the investments that he made. It was a very funny bit."

Amazingly, McMahon said he still gets plenty of offers for Hub Kapp reunion shows, as ridiculous as that would be without Condello. McMahon said he just doesn't dig the idea of "grandfathers" singing Rock and Roll.

"Even the high school kids are dead now," he said. "That was a long time ago."

*

HUB KAPP AND THE WHEELS DISCOGRAPHY

"Work, Work" (McMahon) / "Let's Really Hear It (For Hub Kapp)" (Thompson/ Condello/ Dearborn) Take Five 631, 1964. Recorded at Alectron Recording Co., 1344 E. Indian School Road, Phoenix, Arizona.

"Sigh, Cry, Almost Die" (D. Everly/ P. Everly) / "Bony Maronie" (Williams) Capitol 5215, 1964. Recorded at the Capitol Tower, Hollywood. Features long-time L.A. session player Carol Kaye on bass. Produced by Dave Axelrod.

"Little Volks" (McMahon/ Condello) / "What You're Doin' To Me" (Lennon/ McCartney) Framagratz F-101, 1965. Recorded at Audio Recorders of Arizona, 3830 N. Seventh Street, Phoenix, Arizona.

"Sixteen Tons" (Travis) / "Don't Put Me On" (McMahon) Unreleased acetate.

Mike Condello Presents Wallace & Ladmo's Greatest Hits, Epiphany W&L 1954, 1994. CD-only compilation includes all six officially released Hub Kapp single sides plus essential related 1964-1968 sides by the Ladmo Trio and Commodore Condello's Salt River Navy Band. Regrettably, it's out of print but shows up occasionally on eBay.

The Hub Kapp Kollektion, Epiphany 1020X, 2000. Very limited CD only anthology includes all three officially released Hub Kapp 45s plus the previously unreleased "Sixteen Tons," "Don't Put Me On" and a boss 1964 radio spot by local Phoenix disc jockey Tony Evans for a Hub Kapp and the Wheels gig at his Fearless Leader Club at Seventh Street and Bethany Home Road. This collection was pressed to sell at a local Phoenix play about Hub Kapp's rise to fame and was never commercially released. Good luck finding a copy.

Compiled by Dan Nowicki for Scram.
Photos courtesy Johnny Franklin.

Wanna read more and see the crazy vintage Hub Kapp pix? Pick up Scram #14

The Go-Betweens, interview from Scram #14

posted in memory of Grant McLennan, a gentleman and an artist, R.I.P. May 6, 2006

Someone played me a Go-Betweens record in 1985, and I just didn't get it--to my eternal regret, because I spent the next year in London, unaware of the wonderful band sharing that city. A decade later loud guitars were less essential to my listening enjoyment, and I realized my mistake. I even named a tabby cat Talullah. But by that time the only way to see the Go-Betweens was in pieces: Robert Forster one year, Grant McLennan the next. Astonishingly talented songwriters, the both of them, but neither one can singly replicate the strange magic when they play together. Happily, they've reunited to record a fine new Go-Betweens disk (The Friends of Rachel Worth), and have been touring with shared longtime bass lass Adele Pickvance. Margaret Griffis and I caught up with them backstage at the Hollywood Knitting Factory during soundcheck for a rambling chat encompassing tailoring, space vampires and the mystery of whether Grant or Robert have ever worked a day in their lives.

                                                                                    -Kim Cooper

KIM: What are your immediate plans?
GRANT: We're going to San Francisco on Monday, and then fly home Tuesday night.
KIM: And where is home?
GRANT: Brisbane, in Australia. Robert goes back to Germany. And then we reconvene after Christmas, in early January, for rehearsals with our new drummer, for a series of festivals. The Big Day Out in Australia. We haven't played in Australia as the Go-Betweens for twelve years. That's gonna be fantastic.
ROBERT: We're playing at the same time as Limp Bizkit.
KIM: You're opposite them?
GRANT: Yeah, two bands close the show.
KIM: That's good, because I can't imagine there'd be anybody who'd wanna see both.
GRANT: Exactly, that's why it's such a cool thing. And PJ Harvey are playing, Placebo, Rammstein, some Australian bands, You Am I, Powderfinger. It should be good.
KIM: You were saying you had a drummer and you lost one. How many nights did you do with the drummer?
ROBERT: It's three and a half weeks we're on the road. We did CMJ the 17th or 18th of October, and the last show we did with him was in Barcelona on the 15th of November. So it's about a month. And now we have to find a drummer, and it would be good if this person was Australian, as we're all gonna be in Australia. We had such a good time with Janet Weiss from Sleater-Kinney and Quasi. She would have been perfect for us.
KIM: She's doing something else now?
ROBERT: She's got two bands; she can't really spend time with us on the road. We were lucky to get her for the record, really. But she set a standard, cause we know how we can sound with her. And just the personal chemistry: we liked her, very very much.
KIM: You're gonna have to find someone very special.
ROBERT: Exactly. Without being egotistical, we've got three special people now, we need the fourth one and then we're invincible. Isn't that true, Adele?
ADELE: It is. Extremely so.
KIM: Well, with all three of you looking, you're bound to find someone.
ROBERT: I know, I know. But see, this is what we're gonna do. We're doing the Big Day Out, and that's when we're gonna get the word out. We're travelling with all these bands, and we're gonna go to each city. So it's the perfect opportunity to just pick peoples' brains.
KIM: Maybe you can put the word out that the best drummer in every town should be ready to play one song with you.
GRANT: Now that's a good idea.
KIM: And it can be the last song of the set, so if it's awful everyone will be leaving anyway.
ROBERT: Right, but it is putting someone into a high-pressure situation.
(Grant leaves the room.)
MARGARET: Soundcheck might be better.
ROBERT: No, no, there is no soundcheck.
ADELE: Not for the big festival. You just get in there and do it.
ROBERT: The first band of the day does all the soundchecking. (laughter)
ADELE: So by the end of the day the microphones are really smelly!
KIM: We were just talking about that. Apparently the American Music Club has a rider that you have to disinfect their microphones for them!
ROBERT: (through a mouthful of bread and cheese) What I've talked about with Grant is getting a roadie to come out just before we start playing, with a bottle of Chanel No. 5, quite visible to the crowd, and just spray each of the microphones. (giggles) Preferably the grottiest roadie that you can find!
KIM: One of the really big bottles, the toilet water.
MARGARET: Will it be Chanel No. 5 or will it be?
ROBERT: I don't know. Grant's the expert on perfume in the band. Ask him.
KIM: What are you the expert on?
ROBERT: I'm tempted to say everything else-but I won't! (laughter) A few things.
ADELE: (noticing a club employee with a vat of energy drinks) Oooh, Red Bull!
(Robert disappears with employee)
KIM: Wanna do a little interview, Adele?
ADELE: Sure.
KIM: Tell us about yourself.
ADELE: Ah, okay. I'm from Manchester. I lived in Brisbane, and that's where I met Robert, as you know. That's when I met you, when we were doing the Warm Nights tour. I've played with Grant as well for solo kind of stuff. And then suddenly these guys get together and decide to do an album, and I was lucky enough to be chosen to play bass. And it's worked out really well.
KIM: Were you surprised that they decided to get back together?
ADELE: I don't know. Every couple of years, they'd do a little duo tour. And in '96 we did a Go-Betweens show in Paris for Les Inrockuptibles, a French magazine.
KIM: They used the Go-Betweens name?
ADELE: Yeah. And I've been involved in those with two different drummers. And also we did a little European tour in '97. So, it's good that they've got an album out-I think it's about time! It wasn't a surprise, but I was hoping that they would. And it felt like it was gonna happen. I think it's perfect timing.
KIM: They both have built up a lot of interest in their individual work, but it's sort of like-you have two halves of a deck of cards, and you keep messing them around-
ADELE: Yeah, this new album, it sounds to me like-it's a Go-Betweens' album, but it's Robert's and Grant's songs. They're each playing and each has an influence. It's weird, they're kind of different but they work together so well. Grant'll throw some licks and ideas onto Robert's songs and Robert will put ideas onto Grant's songs, and I think it ends up sounding really good. I'm just enjoying the touring. And the Big Day Out will be happening, then maybe another European tour.
KIM: What do you do when you're not with them?
ADELE: I play in a band in Australia, in Melbourne, called the Dave Graney Show, which is a guy who used to play in the Moodists. And I have a day job as well, because you know, musician, it's impossible.
KIM: (whispering) We were wondering-do THEY have day jobs?
ADELE: (whispers back) No! (laughter) They're big stars.
KIM: It's hard to ask. They've never worked a day in their lives?
ADELE: I don't think so! You can always tell. For me, I always look at their hands. (laughter) All these beautiful soft hands!
KIM: Y'know who else had hands like that was Tiny Tim, because he always put lotion on whenever he had an impure thought.
ADELE: Oh, really?
KIM: And he had very, very soft hands, because he'd obviously had a lot of impure thoughts. But I don't know if he ever worked either. He was kind of crazy.
MARGARET: He must have worked as a 15-year-old youth somewhere. Paperboy?
ADELE: I'm sure they've done as much work as anyone, but I've never known them to-they've survived, it's great. It's really hard, this inconsistent kind of-one minute you're all right, and the next minute, "Oh my god!"
(We stop recording and reconvene over supper)
ROBERT: How's life been in LA?
KIM: Oh, LA's great. Lots of people are moving here, I think because San Francisco's just had all the creativity squeezed out of it by the money people.
ROBERT: Ah, really? That's interesting. That's a shift.
KIM: You haven't been up there yet, have you?
ROBERT: No.
KIM: Well, you know what's happened, right?
ROBERT: Yeah, the dot-com thing.
KIM: And all of the cheap lousy rotten neighborhoods have become unlivable. Landlords have pushed all the poor people out and they've started putting up condos. For a while there were artists doing public street demonstrations against all of the SUVs driving around-but I think people are giving up. All the music venues are shutting . You can't even live in Oakland anymore!
MARGARET: (chortling) All those artists who kicked out the really poor people have gotten kicked out.
ROBERT: I know. When we were up in Portland at the start of this year, I was talking to a lot of people that have come up-like Janet, Sam from Quasi, Larry-they'd all been in San Francisco for a while, and they'd all come up to Portland as sort of the next step away. Economically, all of them could survive in Portland and still follow what they were doing, where in San Francisco they'd have had to make major life decisions that would have cut severely into what they wanted to do.
KIM: People are also moving out to central California, Sacramento, and to Davis-
ROBERT: And are people going between LA and San Francisco-are people moving to the coast there as well? Or are they going just to LA?
KIM: I think there's a lot of people in San Francisco who never come to LA-there's a big prejudice against it. But there do seem to be people who are coming here from other places.
MARGARET: One of my friends moved down and has already moved back up! The prejudice is strong. (laughter)
KIM: How's Germany?
ROBERT: Good! Very, very nice. But next year I'll be moving back with Karen and family, back to Brisbane. At the end of next year. So Grant and I can-a number of reasons-my parents are getting older. And also I want to be in a warmer climate. The German experience is going to go on for about another year. It's very good for working, because it's a very indoor lifestyle.
KIM: Do you live in a city?
ROBERT: City of about 120,000. It's a small, provincial city, but very, very nice. Very beautiful. A classic European city. But it's very nice to be out here on the West Coast. I think that we're more West Coast people. We're a West Coast band.
KIM: I think there's an affinity between Australia and California-
ROBERT: There is! As soon as you get here it's familiar. Food, culture, everything. It just corresponds a lot more. And also in Australia we get a lot more America, the Californian version, than anything else.
KIM: When you first came to California-when was that?
ROBERT: God, '83, '84.
KIM: And was it what you had in your mind, or did you have a California that doesn't really exist?
ROBERT: That was really scary-we did a show, I think-my earliest memory is playing the Lingerie club-
KIM: (chuckles) Yeah, on Sunset.
ROBERT: And there was this guy there who was playing, he'd written a Top 10 hit, his name was Lee? I think he'd written one for Blondie-
KIM: Yeah, "Hanging on the Telephone!" What's his name?
ROBERT: It could have been him or it could have been someone else-I don't know if it was actually him-
KIM: Was he in the the Nerves?
ROBERT: I dunno, but he was a little bit of a sort of underground singer, and he'd had a Top 10, and he was kind of hip. He was playing, and he had shoulder-length hair, and this sort of buckskin thing, with all these sort of Valley groupies around! These girls who were like out of a seventies rock fantasy! Hippie girls, with long, long hair-
KIM: Jack Lee! Is that it?
ROBERT: It could have been. But these girls were just sort of not Sunset girls, if you know what I mean, not Rainbow Room girls. These were girls from the Valley that you just imagine sitting around the feet of David Crosby back in 1969! (giggles all around) It was like seeing this rock fantasy that I thought would have been gone, but it wasn't, y'know?
KIM: It was a big surprise to you?
ROBERT: Yeah, that this LA rock world still existed. He was just going to get into a big car or some sort of combie-
KIM: A what??
ROBERT: A combie, a camper van. And just drive off into the hills, to some sort of "love pad."
KIM: And share the land.
MARGARET: Topanga.
ROBERT: Very Topanga. I thought that era was over, and it wasn't. That was my introduction to LA.... Do you know the Aislers Set? They're a San Francisco band.
KIM: No.
MARGARET: We're not allowed to know about them and they're not allowed to know about us.
ROBERT: Well, that's good.
KIM: Tell Robert about the war paintings.
MARGARET: Oh, the war paintings! There's this artist Sandow Birk who's making war paintings like the ones you see in museums-
KIM: Goya and all that-
MARGARET: But it's based on the mythical war of the San Franciscans versus the Angelenos.
ROBERT: Right!
KIM: So you've got all the gay clones coming down fighting the Valley Girls in the trenches of Tarzana!
ROBERT: This person is from San Francisco?
MARGARET: He's from here but he moved to San Francisco and there felt like he was being attacked constantly for being from Los Angeles.
KIM: Every Angeleno who moves up there is shocked to discover that they hate us. And it goes back apparently to the 1970s when they weren't allowed to flush their toilets. (laughter) They were told there was a water shortage, and that Southern Californians were using up all their water in their swimming pools. I believe the phrase was "If it's yellow it's mellow, if it's brown flush it down." And they're still really angry about that-which I can understand.
MARGARET: I don't think anyone remembers that.
ROBERT: Right, right. It's over.
(Grant wanders in and demands that we teach him the mellow yellow rhyme, which he repeats delightedly.)
GRANT: It's a bit like "the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain."
ROBERT: Well, I thought you two might be up on this-
GRANT: San Francisco in the '70s, been through it, mate. They're still pissed off about it, eh?
KIM: Yeah, they hate people in Southern California-and we don't really care about them! Nice place to visit Grant, how has Robert changed since you've known him?
GRANT: He's sense of humor has improved. It's frighteningly quick these days. He's more Robert that he's ever been, which is a good thing. There was a time when he didn't know, and he was sort of that Robert and that Robert, now he's ALL Robert.
ROBERT: Isn't that a nice thing to say?
KIM: Look, he's crying.
GRANT: He's developed into a very, very fine, world-class rhythm guitarist.
ROBERT: My guitar playing has improved, hasn't it?
KIM: Same question for you, about Grant.
ROBERT: Grant is remarkably the same.
ADELE: Still 14! (laughter)
GRANT: And it's on tape!
ROBERT: (long pause) Very much the same, which is a surprise. But then Grant has stayed true to artistic vision, which I think is a remarkable thing. That is a very, very hard thing to do. In other ways remarkably the same, but I think that we are quite similar to the way we were when the band started. And also it's not coincidental that the band has re-started. And we're still looking for a drummer!
MARGARET: You can just go out on the street here and find this drummer.
ROBERT: I know, but they're sort of-
GRANT: We're very particular.
KIM: What do you need?
GRANT: Well, you've got to be a Go-Between, whatever that means to you. It means something different to me. It's almost impossible to explain. You just know it when you're playing with someone that it's working. It's a groove-and it's not just musical groove, it's personality groove, and clothes. They can wear really different clothes to the rest of us, but if they're cool within that, and they fit-it's a matter of fitting. This is a very precious gang. Anyone can join, but you have to fit the criteria. You could be a little bit weird-you know what I'm saying?-just a little bit weird. But the music shop types don't get us. Forget it. No ads in music shops.
KIM: Could you guys play "Stairway to Heaven," if you needed to?
GRANT: No no no no. We can't play any of these songs. Never learned. I can sing it, karaoke style. I can do that.
ROBERT: That's the criteria.
GRANT: It might be a 17-year-old who's been playing for six months.
ROBERT: It might be Jet Black.
GRANT: We're not looking for the product.
KIM: Isn't that how you started out, just looking for someone who looked like the right drummer?
ROBERT: Exactly!
KIM: So you're gonna do it again.
ROBERT: I know, I know. But-
GRANT: There's only so many Mo Tuckers-
KIM: She's around-
ROBERT: She is, but-
GRANT: She's Lou's drummer.
ROBERT: But I was saying how much we admire Janet Weiss-
GRANT: Very much so.
KIM: Robert, where'd you get your suit?
ROBERT: This was made in Regensburg. I always thought it very LA. That's why I wore it to the soundcheck, because I want to get this suit out and on the street.
GRANT: You need the Arthur Lee sort of winklepickers, though.
ROBERT: I know, I know. I think it's very Arthur Lee '66. It's very Love.
KIM: It should be a little tighter for the Arthur days.
ROBERT: I know, but it looks good.
KIM: Does it have your name sewn in the pocket?
ROBERT: No.
GRANT: That's what you should do. Get a little stitching and put "Robert" inside. It's a very good idea.
KIM: If it's made you have to have your name put in.
ROBERT: (sounding stricken) I know, but the maker does not want to do any writing on it. I've asked them.
KIM: Not their name, not your name?
ROBERT: No.
GRANT: The person that makes them wants to stay anonymous.
KIM: But then fifty years from now when it turns up in a thrift store, someone's gonna know it's your suit.
ROBERT: It WON'T turn up in a THRIFT STORE!! It'll be in Cleveland, at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In its own little cabinet.
GRANT: Yeah, it's all museum stuff.
KIM: Everything you own is going to the museum?
ROBERT: Sure! Of course!
MARGARET: Maybe you can pin it, a little safety pin inside with your name?
ROBERT: It will be verified.
GRANT: You have to learn "Stairway to Heaven," and then you get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
KIM: Karaoke style. You're laughing, but I saw someone do "Stairway to Heaven" karaoke style last week. And during the guitar solo he just shook his hair. And it was very wrong.
ROBERT: This still goes on. This amazes me.
MARGARET: I saw a small girl like you do it on Hallowe'en in a little fairy outfit. And she did all the live version additions. Like from the movie soundtrack.
GRANT: What movie?
ALL: The Song Remains the Same!
GRANT: Oh, that's a bitchin' version of it, too. Jimmy's got the two guitars-three guitars! Three-necked guitar.
ROBERT: Is this in the fantasy section?
KIM: With the horses.
GRANT: No, the fantasy sections are terrible. I saw it recently.
ROBERT: Really?!
GRANT: God. I saw it in the West End. It was terrible.
KIM: You can't watch it in the theater! You have to be able to fast forward.
GRANT: The live footage is awesome, the band is just fantastic.
ROBERT: And what's in the fantasy sections? What's Robert Plant's fantasy?
GRANT: On the farm. The hair, the sheepskin vest, the Boticelli little girls running around, and sort of the maid in the field. John Bonham's dressed as a gangster. (giggling all around)
ROBERT: Jimmy's Satan!
KIM: (Laughing) Okay, you guys make the same movie: what are your fantasy sequences?
GRANT: Now that's a good idea! Adele, what would you do? Oh, I know what your fantasy would be; I don't have to ask you about that. (chuckling)
ADELE: I know what you're gonna say-
GRANT: Is it Buffy? (laughter) No, that's mine!
ADELE: No, no, I can't say it! You go first, Robert.
ROBERT: No. Does your fantasy involve Queen?
ADELE: No, it doesn't, actually.
KIM: I know what Margaret's is.
MARGARET: What is mine?
KIM: To be picked up by the Creature from the Black Lagoon and carried into the swamp!
MARGARET: Mmm, that's a good one.
ROBERT: Wow!
ADELE: All right!
GRANT: Can I have that one?
KIM: Mine's some sort of 18th century coffeehouse thing.
ROBERT: In what country?
KIM: London, of course.
ADELE: I do like the Viking idea, sitting at a feast at a table, and wine and chicken legs and (makes gnawing sounds).
ROBERT: Throwing the bones-
ADELE: And huge dogs under the table! And people unconscious, and eating, that's my idea.
KIM: Maybe they're going to burn a ship burial afterwards.
ADELE: Yeah, that'd be nice.
ROBERT: Mine would be a Hawaiian fantasy. Beach house, surf, me running in slow motion-
KIM: In a white linen suit?
ROBERT: Yeah, in a white linen suit down the beach, hair in the wind, very slow motion.
MARGARET: Is there a volcano? (laughter)
ROBERT: There's a volcano with a little bit of smoke. We might do it with animation.
MARGARET: Is something chasing you? Women? Lava?
ROBERT: There's a combination of lava and women. There's women in lava!
MARGARET: Are they carrying food?
ROBERT: No, no food, no food, no food!
KIM: Fish?
ROBERT: There's no fish! There's no food in the fantasy!
MARGARET: There's no coconut-drenched fish in the fantasy?
ROBERT: There's no coconuts, there's no fish. There's lava, there's volcano-I didn't know about the women-but there's lava coming down the beach. I'm in the white suit. Bare feet. And I'm running down the beach, very early in the morning, sunrise, whole screen drenched in orange and red. Waves that nobody's riding, and me running down the beach. And then while I'm coming like this, there's a table with a big bowl of muesli! (laughter) Soy milk-
MARGARET: I told you there was food.
ROBERT: There's always food. Soy milk, strawberries, and a very, very nice muesli. And the New York Times!
MARGARET: Wrapped?
ROBERT: You're good! Wrapped, so I have to unwrap it, sit there on the beach in the white suit, bare feet, eating muesli.
GRANT: That's great.
ROBERT: What's your fantasy?
GRANT: I'm on the spot, so I'll just go to a fantasy I often think about. A spaceship comes down, sort of chrome, and a beam-it's the most beautiful light you've ever seen-you get lifted up into the spaceship. And there's vampires. And they go, "Do you wanna come with us?" And I go, "You betcha." That's it.
MARGARET: Isn't that a movie already? A space vampire movie?
GRANT: Do you know the name of it?
ROBERT: Space Vampires?
MARGARET: It wasn't that out of the way. It was pretty popular.
GRANT: Oh, I'd love to see that!
MARGARET: I saw the end of it on the TV with the spaceship and the beam of light coming down.
GRANT: Proper vampires, not trashy Hollywood vampires.
ADELE: You want a sexy vampire.
MARGARET: Like Bela?
GRANT: No! None of that rubbish. Your real vampires, people that live forever, those dudes.
KIM: What is a real vampire like?
GRANT: I haven't met one.
MARGARET: Not that you know of.
ADELE: You mean somebody that's a really together kind of vampire.
MARGARET: Sharp dresser.
GRANT: Yeah, good clothes. Probably a little bit 18th century.
MARGARET: A bit foppish.
GRANT: Yeah, but also a bit of leather. Books, I'd like there to be books on the spaceship. An opium den. And a bar that serves the best absinthe ever.
ROBERT: That sounds very nice.
GRANT: Would you like to come on, then?
ROBERT: For a short while. (chuckles)
KIM: Have you had absinthe?
GRANT: Mmm-hmm.
ADELE: I had a bottle last Christmas.
KIM: Psychedelic or just alcoholic?
ADELE: I just found it really, really alcoholic.
GRANT: They've taken the drug out of it now, they've taken the wormwood out.
KIM: Really? I thought they were making the real stuff again.
ADELE: I got mine over the internet.
KIM: The Czech stuff?
ADELE: It was from London, Canadian from Spain, I think.
ROBERT: (puzzled) Wormwood?
KIM: It's an herb.
ROBERT: Is it an illegal herb?
KIM: Wormwood is perfectly legal. Brewing this alcoholic beverage with wormwood in it has been banned since the early 20th century, because it was causing all sorts of brain disorders in people who were addicted to it.
ROBERT: (hungrily) Ahhh....

And then the Go-Betweens excuse themselves to get ready to play. Margaret and I give Robert a ride back to his hotel, commenting on all the rock and roll landmarks along the way; he eats it up. The band later plays a wonderful set with (I think) four encores, and they might have gone on all night if the club hadn't rented out the room post-show to an increasingly irritated bunch of salsa dancers. Their annoyed muttering first sounds like tropical birds, then like rude humans. But it can't wipe the smiles off Margaret's and my face as we take our leave and step out onto Hollywood Boulevard, very happy that the Go-Betweens are back.