Up the tubes

These are grim times, friends, and we must take our little pleasures whwn and where we can.

Conceive then of your correspondent’s delight when he saw last week that the telly was taking a break from ‘round the clock war coverage to screen highlights from The Old Grey Whistle Test from 1977, back when Sam wasn’t even a gob in his father’s eye. (Well, in fact he was 47, but why spoil a good line?).

And so your hero flicks over from some horny war groupie on Sky, an anal retentive nerd getting over excited about the latest flash bang ordnance, and suddenly, oh joy, oh rapture, right there before his eyes is the be-afroed, roly poly figure of the semi-legendary Handsome Dick Manitoba, leading his fabulous Dictators through a blazing ‘Search & Destroy’ live at CBGB’s, complete with that authentically snotty Ig spirit and the best Spinal Tap facial grimaces. I am the world’s forgotten boy, indeed. But not in this house, Master Dick, not now, not ever.

And then just when he thinks things couldn’t possibly get any better, Sam is assailed by the sight of a human preying mantis on stilts, all wrapped up in bacon foil, apart from his arse, which is as definitively butt naked as the day he was born - it can be none other than the towering Fee Waybill of The Tubes, cranking out the epic rich kid blues of ‘White Punks On Dope’.

Spectacular forty footer

Just for the record, your correspondent searched the net for info on rock’s most garish stick insect and found that, not only are Fee and The Toobs still alive and well but – dig this, hepcats – the mainman recently won a celebrity golf competition Stateside, clinching victory by one stroke with a spectacular forty footer. “Fee’s putter was on fire”, says the report.

Holy shit. From Jerry Lee torching his piano to Jimi firing up his gee-tar to Fee Waybill (one of the “three most important people in the world”, according to Bill and Ted) and his blazing putter – is it any wonder that they’re calling golf the new rock ’n’ roll?

(On which subject, would you mind stepping inside these brackets for a bit of a digression? Sam sees that the splendidly named Davis Love 111 recently beat off our very own Paw-drag Hair-ing-ton to claim the Players’ Championship in Sawgrass. Indeed, so far ahead was Davis coming to the 18th that tv viewers could overhear a competition official already instructing the resident master craftsman to begin engraving the winner-to-be’s name on the elegant Waterford Glass trophy. Sam’s question – as the engraver got to work, did he show pride in the name of Love?).

But back to Fee Waybill. As already mentioned, the immortal ‘White Punks On Dope’ is the definitive anthem of disaffected rich youth, as witness the classic couplet: “Other dudes are living in the ghetto/But born in Pacific Heights don’t seem much betto”.

Oddly, this brings us back to the war and pop’s position on such unsavoury things. Listening to The Tubes, Sam was reminded that Bob Dylan’s ‘Masters Of War’ has been dusted off by protestors eager to chant down the war groupies.

All well and good but can I draw your particular attention to a portion of the lyrics of that early sixties Dylan anthem. I quote: “Come ye masters of war/ye that build the big guns, ye that build the death planes, ye that build all the bombs/ye that hide behind mansions, ye that behind desks/I just want you to know I can see through your masks”.

Now, with all due respect to the bard of Hibbing, that doesn’t really cut it, does it? I mean, he could have said “dasks” or he could have said “mesks”, but “desks” and “masks”, no matter how Dylanesque your drawl - and, to be fair, ‘ol Bob does do a better Dylan than most - are just never going to rhyme. Not like “ghetto” and “betto”, proof that when confronted with a tricky couplet, Fee Waybill’s Joycean flair is your only man.

Great warriors

So, a big thanks from Sam to Whispering Bob for bringing a little joy back into our lives by reminding us that there was a time when truly great warriors stalked the earth, men like Handsome Dick Manitoba, Fee Waybill and, lest we forget, John Otway and Wild Willy Barret, the former inadvertently knocking out the latter’s effects pedal mid-song, restarting it by thumping it with his fist, and then completing an unforgettable tv performance by jumping onto the speakers and falling flat on his ass.

And they have the nerve to say that the ’70s was the decade that taste forget.

Sadly, despite such delightful distractions, it’s proving impossible to entirely forget the Great Unpleasantness. This morning’s paper reports that “dozens” walked out in protest at a Pearl Jam concert in Denver Colorado when Eddie Vedder beat up a mask of Dubya.

Worse still, Sam hears that the entire crowd walked out of a venue in Boise, Idaho when they heard that Foghat were playing.

Bastards.

Your ever lovin’ Samuel J. Snort Esq