Michael Azerrad's Blog

The time: around noon on a Wednesday
The place: in front of a tony building on Greenwich Street
The players: the building's doorman and his friend

Doorman: See ya!  Have a proactive day!

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    Here's an outtake from The Amplified Come as You Are (purchase link here), my annotated version of my 1993 Nirvana biography Come as You Are: The Story of Nirvana.  Here, the band is getting ready to record Nevermind at Sound City studios in May 1991.
    Original text in bold, annotation in roman.

Next, they went to a drum rental place and selected a brass snare for Dave.  It was the loudest one they had.  The employees had nicknamed it ���the Terminator.���

    The Terminator is a famous drum, kind of like Eric Clapton's the Fool is a famous guitar, the difference being that the Terminator is quite possibly the only famous drum.  At first, the company that still rents it out, Drum Doctors, informally called it "the Arnold Schwarzenegger drum" because of its physical heft (it weighs about 25 pounds) and the fact that it bested every other drum.  That's what prompted the drummer for L.A. metal band Armored Saint to dub it "the Terminator," and the name stuck.  Prized for its pronounced "crack" and a beefy low end, it's a 1980-vintage prototype model of a Tama Bell Brass snare made of thick, cast brass ��� unlike most drums made out of metal, which are formed around a mold.  (A new one will set you back about four grand.)  You can hear the Terminator on countless records, including Stone Temple Pilots��� Core, the Offspring���s Smash, and Rage Against the Machine's self-titled debut.  As Stone Temple Pilots drummer Eric Kretz put it to Modern Drummer, "I���ve never played another drum where the harder you hit it, the more it explodes."  It was perfect for Dave.

[image error]    At first, all music was folk music.  Then it gradually became something people got paid to do, something performed by highly skilled trained professionals.  This created market forces, which led to wealthy people controlling the most expensive musical formats, namely, what we now call classical.  Music became a signifier of power.
    So music became undemocratized.  But some cool stuff came out of that, like Mozart.  But then music started getting democratized again; for instance, the invention of the upright piano eventually allowed millions of Americans to have a piano in their home, and they played popular songs of the day by reading off something called "sheet music."
    Guitars are, famously, easy to learn and hard to master, but the former quality was the important part for us impulsive humans.  So when electric guitars started getting mass-produced, boy, that was really something: in terms of volume and real estate on the frequency spectrum, an electric guitar could compete with an entire horn section and maybe a piano too. Especially if it was played through a fuzzbox or a wah-wah pedal.  Throw in amplified bass that made a low-end, innard-massaging throb previously only experienced in church or in a thunderstorm, and drums with plastic heads that were loud as hell and would take an indefinite beating, and you've got yourself a populist revolution.
    A little later, recording technology became revolutionized ��� because it got a lot cheaper.  So instead of a bunch of guys in white lab coats beavering away at racks of electronics in expensive, exclusive studios owned by major labels that were part of sprawling manufacturing conglomerates, you had one hippie-turned-punk with his own eight-track board and a few half-decent mikes who would charge you only twenty bucks an hour ��� it didn't necessarily sound very good, but hey, you got a record out of it.
    Synthesizers and drum machines got cheaper and cheaper until they were virtually toys, and you could pretty easily extract halfway credible music out of them.  And there was also two turntables and a microphone.
    Then samplers and sequencers arrived, and you didn't even need to be able to play an instrument at all, or need a traditional studio, to make music that could potentially be rump-shaked in discos all over the world.  Soon after that, you could make an entire album on your laptop using free software.
    And now?  Now all you need is a good AI prompt.  "Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys sing Kraftwerk's greatest hits."  "Charles Mingus jamming with Robert Quine and Jaki Liebezeit, all of them mildly stoned."  "A De La Soul album completely composed of samples from Fantasia." "Manilow sings Dylan."  You know, the kinds of things you've only dreamed of hearing.
    So it's back to the people again.

    Back in 1980, tons of people said they would move to Canada if Reagan was elected.   So I started a moving company completely dedicated to helping people move to Canada.  I called it I'm Moving to Canada.  (I know, snappy name, right?)  Bought a truck and a van, hired five employees and set up an office to deal with immigration issues.  Put all my life savings into it because so many people said they were going to move to Canada.  And then Reagan won.  And nobody moved to Canada.  Nobody.  My business was worthless and I was bankrupt.  I took a lot of odd jobs and worked a shift at a Burger King and eventually got back on my feet again.
    Then in 1988, people started saying that if Bush won, this time they would move to Canada FOR SURE.  It really seemed like they meant it.  So I started up the moving company again.  And then Bush was elected and nobody moved to Canada.  I was bankrupt again.  I went back to Burger King and worked my way up to manager and had started doing a bunch of free-lance writing about rock music.  With my modest savings, I started playing the stock market and made a pretty decent nest egg.  The Clinton years were pretty good for me.  My Nirvana book came out and I was writing for lots of magazines and I could quit my day job.  Sweet.
    And then the 2000 election came around.  And yeah, tons of people said they'd move to Canada if Bush got elected. It was more people than ever, and they seemed really determined: if Bush won, they were up and leaving for the Great White North.  This time, I waited to see what the outcome would be but of course Bush eventually "won." I was convinced that my time had finally come.  This time, I put my writing career on hold, took a bunch of my savings, maxed out two credit cards, and bought two trucks and two vans, set up the immigration services office and hired nine employees.  I took out ads in the New York Times, which was really expensive. And once again, no one actually moved to Canada.  Turns out they were all talk, no action.  I wasn't broke this time but I'd blown a lot of my savings and I was pretty pissed about that.
    I kept the trucks and the vans in a storage facility in Queens until I could sell them.  But the free-lancing career caught fire again after the success of my second book, so I hadn't gotten around to it by the time of the 2004 election.  Just like clockwork, everyone I knew swore that if Bush was re-elected, they were going to move to Canada.  I was pretty sure he was going to win ��� Kerry was dull as dishwater and it seemed like Bush had the electoral process all rigged up anyway.  So, of course, I figured what the hell, I'll start up the moving company again.  And once again, everybody talked a big game about moving to Canada but they never did it.  I sold the trucks and didn't lose too much this time.
    And now that Trump has won again, people are threatening to move to Canada again.  Well, guess what: I'm just not buying it this time.

The time: A sunny late morning in June
The place: Governors Island, in New York Harbor
The player: A twentysomething bro in a Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt

Twentysomething bro [gazing out at the Statue of Liberty]: Why'd they put it there?

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    Since I was a teen, I've loved "Billy the Mountain," a 25-minute, side-long epic anti-war parable from the Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention album Just Another Band from L.A., recorded live in 1971 at the Pauley Pavilion at UCLA.
    The piece (it's too long and episodic to be called a song) cites a ton of places in Southern California.  As a confirmed East Coaster, I figured I'd finally educate myself about the geography of this piece of music that I've been happily listening to all these years.
    The story opens this way:

Billy the Mountain and his wife Ethel, a tree, are "residing between lovely Rosamond and Gorman"

    Rosamond and Gorman, California are pretty obscure places, but Zappa knew the area very well: he went to high school in Lancaster, which is about fifteen miles due south of Rosamond. A small city in the Antelope Valley of the western Mojave Desert, Lancaster is only about 50 miles north, as the crow flies, from downtown Los Angeles but between Lancaster and LA stands the Angeles National Forest; I'm sure it's a world away from Tinseltown.
    Forty miles almost due west of Rosamond, Gorman is in the extreme northwest corner of Los Angeles County, on the Golden State Freeway section of Interstate 5, one of the state's most heavily traveled highways, linking southern and northern California and points north. It's such a small town ��� about 15 homes ��� that the US Census doesn't break out population figures for it.  But it's the site of a popular rest stop, and Zappa might well have been familiar with it from touring from Los Angeles up to San Francisco or San Jose.
    Given his placement between Rosamond and Gorman, Billy would be part of the Tehachapi mountain range, which runs northeast, starting at Gorman.  The Tehachapi range separates the San Joaquin Valley to the northwest and the Mojave Desert to the southeast and is one of the traditional boundaries between northern and southern California.  The peaks in the range are from approximately 4,000 to 8,000 feet, so Billy is a pretty big boy.
    And since Billy is part of the Tehachapi range, Ethel would probably be a black oak (Quercus kelloggii), Coulter pine (Pinus coulteri), incense cedar (Calocedrus decurrens), or a white fir (Abies concolor), or possibly a quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides).

One day, a man in "a checkered double-knit suit" driving a Cadillac Eldorado "leased from Bob Spreen, where the freeways meet in Downey" drives up to where Billy is and hands him a royalty check for all his appearances on postcards.

    At the time, the city of Downey, about 13 miles southeast of downtown LA, was centered around aviation and aerospace manufacturing, and perhaps best known as a place you drove through to get from Pasadena to Long Beach, or from LA to San Diego.
    The Bob Spreen auto dealership would have been just south of the intersection of I-605 and I-5, at 10686 Studebaker Road.  There's still a dealership at that location: Honda World.  It's about an hour and a half drive north by northwest on I-5, through Glendale and Santa Clarita, past the Castaic Lake Recreation Area, to where Billy was, and then a long walk, followed by a very steep hike, from the nearest road.

Billy is overjoyed at this windfall and announces to Ethel that they're going on vacation in New York, but first a stop in Las Vegas.

    I'm not sure how quickly a mountain can travel but it would take anywhere from three and a half to four and a half days of continuous walking to cover the 250 miles or so northeast from Rosamond to Las Vegas, depending on the route.  Billy and Ethel seem to have avoided roads and braved the very rugged and hilly terrain in the Mojave Desert.

Billy and Ethel's route runs straight through Edwards Air Force Base, the famous installation about 18 miles east of Rosamond, and Billy levels it.  When news gets out about the destruction of Edwards Air Force Base, a TV announcer claims that Billy and Ethel have been linked to "drug abuse and pay-offs as part of a San Joaquin Valley smut ring!"  And then there is an extended litany of towns involved in a "recent narcotics crack-down."

    The TV announcer is a reference to conservative Los Angeles newscaster George Putnam, a pompous, homophobic fellow who was the model for the Ted Baxter character on the popular '70s sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
    The San Joaquin Valley is a vast section in the middle of California, north of Los Angeles County, that is a major agricultural center.  Several of the biggest cities there ��� Stockton, Modesto, Fresno, Visalia, and Bakersfield ��� have historically suffered from high crime rates.
    The places listed in the narcotics crackdown ��� Torrance, Hawthorne, Lomita, Westchester, Playa del Rey, Santa Monica, Tujunga, Sunland, San Fernando, Pacoima, Sylmar, Newhall, Canoga Park, Palmdale, Glendale, Irwindale, Rolling Hills, Granada Hills, Shadow Hills, Cheviot Hills ��� basically comprise a grand tour of the eastern side of Los Angeles County, from Palmdale in the north down to Rolling Hills in the south.

The crackdown will, the announcer nonsensically notes, "...avert a crippling strike of bartenders and veterinarians throughout the Inland Empire."

    The term "Inland Empire" was apparently invented by real estate developers, so the definition varies, but the Inland Empire is basically western Riverside County and southwestern San Bernardino County, just east of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.  The Inland Empire area is home to massive industrial distribution centers, and is one of the least educated areas of the state, with one of the lowest average annual wages in the country.
    Zappa had a strong Inland Empire connection: in the early '60s, he learned how to engineer recordings at Pal Recording Studio in Cucamonga (now called Rancho Cucamonga).  The studio was where the Surfaris recorded the classic "Wipeout."  Zappa bought Pal in 1964 and renamed it Studio Z, although it closed the following year due to municipal construction.  You can hear some of Zappa's recordings at that studio on the compilation Cucamonga.

Billy and Ethel have apparently made a U-turn and, instead of heading to Las Vegas, have passed through Glendale, in Los Angeles County, which Billy has "leveled."  In response, Jerry Lewis hosts a telethon "to raise funds for the injured and homeless in Glendale."  Unfortunately, on top of all the destruction, Billy has caused a fissure that releases "the pools of old poison gas and obsolete germ bombs [in]... the secret underground dumps right near the Jack in the Box on Glenoaks."

     The joke about "the injured and homeless in Glendale" is that Glendale was a stereotypically vanilla, mediocre place.
     There is a Jack in the Box at 1200 W. Glenoaks Boulevard in Glendale, although I can't verify that this is the location that the song refers to.  But Glendale really does have what the US military calls Formerly Used Defense Sites (FUDS) that contain toxic or radioactive waste.

A "freak tornado" comes through and blows all the poison gas to Watts.

    This is a prescient dark joke about environmental injustice.  Watts, 14 miles due south of Glendale, and much farther away in many respects, was a Black ghetto of Los Angeles that had been the scene of a massive, nearly week-long riot several years earlier, in the summer of 1965, in response to chronic police brutality.  Plus ��a change.

The blowhard square TV newscaster returns to announce, "We now have confirmed reports from an informed Orange County minister that Ethel is still an active communist..."

    Heavily conservative in 1971, Orange County is a huge suburb southeast of Los Angeles; the minister could well be the televangelist Robert Schuller, then the host of the widely viewed Hour of Power TV show, who built the 2,248-capacity "Crystal Cathedral," designed by iconic architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee, in 1968 in the Orange County city of Garden Grove.

"It was right outside of Columbus, Ohio when Billy received his notice to report for his induction physical."

    It's unclear how Billy and Ethel got from Glendale to Columbus, Ohio, almost 2,000 miles to the east by northeast.  Maybe they had resumed their journey out to New York.  But even the narrator concedes that he may have misunderstood Billy's whereabouts.
    Billy had to undergo an induction physical because this was during the Vietnam War, when young men were drafted and then had to have a physical to determine whether they were fit to kill people.

At one point the narrator mentions "City of Industry."

    City of Industry is a real place.  Like most of the locations in "Billy the Mountain," it's in Los Angeles County, on the eastern side, in the San Gabriel Valley.  It's so named because it's almost entirely industrial: although it's twelve miles in area, it has only 264 residents, according to the 2020 census.

A fellow named Studebaker Hawk ("fantastic new superhero of the current economic slump") is dispatched to stop Billy's rampage and convince him to show up for his induction physical.  Hawk is apprised of the news that Billy has somehow traveled all the way from Columbus, Ohio to El Segundo, California, which he has destroyed.

    Studebaker was an American automobile manufacturer that had a line of sporty models called the Hawk: the Golden Hawk, the Sky Hawk, the Power Hawk and the Flight Hawk.  The Hawk line went out of production in 1963.
    El Segundo is in Los Angeles County, about 15 miles south by southwest of downtown LA.  It's on the Pacific Ocean, the northern border is LA Airport, and its neighbor to the south is Manhattan Beach.
    The Spaniards didn't name it El Segundo ��� Standard Oil did, because in 1911 it became the site of their second California refinery.  El Segundo is still the site of the largest producing oil refinery on the West Coast, as well as a nearby wastewater treatment plant, which explains the town's nickname, ���El Stinko.���  Another pall over the town is its extensive racist past, which was still very much in force in 1971, something a Southern California audience would have picked up on immediately.  Old folks may remember how the Fred Sanford character on the '70s sitcom Sanford and Son regularly ripped on El Segundo.

Hawk springs into action.  His first step is to get some "big large, unused cardboard boxes" from "the back of the Broadway at Hollywood Boulevard and Vine."

    That's the historic Broadway Building in downtown Hollywood, with its famous neon sign on the roof that says "The Broadway Hollywood."  At the time, the building housed the Broadway Department Store, so it would have been a great place for Hawk to find cardboard boxes.

Then he needs to buy some maple syrup, some aluminum foil and "a pair of blunt scissors," so he goes to "Ralph's on Sunset."

    There is still a Ralph's (a Southern California supermarket chain) on Sunset at 7257 W. Sunset Boulevard.  That's probably the location Zappa was referring to since it's a five-minute drive west of the Broadway Building.

Hawk rigs up some wings with the cardboard and aluminum foil and coats his thighs with maple syrup, attracting a large swarm of flies which carries him into the air.  He eventually catches up with Billy and Ethel and stands on "the edge of Billy the Mountain's mouth" and orders him to report for his induction physical.  Billy just laughs at this, dislodging Hawk, who tumbles off his mouth, 200 feet down into "the rubble below."  The end.

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Note: some of the facts in this piece are straight from Wikipedia. I won���t properly research and fact-check this thing unless and until I get compensated for it.  In the meantime: you get what you pay for.

Politely offered corrections accompanied by credible supporting sources are very welcome.

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    I have been on tour for nearly six weeks.  The previous evening, in Little Rock, Arkansas, has left me disoriented due to the performance of a very kind woman by the name of Constance, who ��� and I am not lying ��� entertained, so to speak, every member of the band.
    I was up into the wee hours with legendary blues musician Freddie King, who very much enjoys playing poker.  I can indulge freely in liquor and female companionship, provided they don't prevent the band from arriving on time at the following evening's venue.
    We are a rock group from the United States.  We are a rock group from the United States.  We are en route to your city and upon arrival we will assist you in establishing a festive atmosphere.  We are a rock group from the United States.
    In Omaha, Nebraska, a quartet of ladies anticipated our arrival after our performance.  I am in a good mood and it is a Saturday evening.  The head of security at our hotel was most cooperative.
    The aforementioned attractive quartet of young women intended to make our acquaintance, stating, "Gentlemen, we invite you to get intoxicated and have sex with us."  And we obliged, desecrating our hotel in the process.
    We are a rock group from the United States.  We are a rock group from the United States.  We are en route to your city and upon arrival we will assist you in making it a festive place.  We are a rock group from the United States.
    We are a rock group from the United States.  Ooo-ooo.  We are a rock group from the United States.  Ooo-ooo.  We are a rock group from the United States.  Ooo-ooo.

The time: A sunny autumn afternoon
The place: 6th Avenue between 8th and 9th Streets
The players: A somewhat hip fortysomething couple

Somewhat Hip Fortysomething Woman: What was the singer's name?
Somewhat Hip Fortysomething Man: Roland Orzabal.
Somewhat Hip Fortysomething Woman: That's a terrible name!

    There was a period of my life when I considered myself substandard.  Before a looking glass, I adjusted my coif into a myriad of configurations and yet it didn't significantly alter my appearance.  My father declared, "Travel, young man.  I'd completely understand if that's what you want to do.  I would only advise you not to fall deeply in love with a lady who will be profligate with your financial resources."  And so I left home.  Woo.
    The famed City of Light was a location where it was possible to go into hiding if one felt like an outcast.  However, the Gallic gendarmes harassed me, asserting that I was an odious individual.  On the southern bank of the Seine ��� woo ��� a group of fleeing protesters pushed me to the ground and I was taken into police custody, charged with instigating a benign uprising, when in fact I had merely been seeking a spot of Earl Grey.  I was held responsible ��� woo ��� and so I left town.
    In the City of Seven Hills, I was not obtaining sufficient quantities of those things which are critical to sustaining a lad.  I had powerful body odor and yet I retained my ��lan ��� woo ��� during a period when I was enduring great misfortune.  My despair was growing, yes it was, and I was quite a sight to behold.  I really ought to leave before the Holy See retracts its approval of me.  I was not prepared for such an eventuality; no, I was not.
    I traveled toward the rising sun, yes, I did, and now hear me out.  I was in good spirits en route home on the boat from Beijing. By the particular lunar light unique to Asian skies, I began an amorous relationship with a woman whose eyelids featured the epicanthal folds often found in persons of East Asian descent.  Lily, who hailed from Shanghai, did not employ oral contraception, asserting that it's unacceptably synthetic.  She escorted me aboveboard and gave me a hickey.  My listeners, I was delighted to have encountered her.  Oh yes, I was delighted to have encountered her.  Woo-hoo.  And now let's pause a moment.
    I was fully confident that I was self-sufficient.  I honestly believed that I required no one but myself.  But that was profoundly incorrect.  I would not allow the ladies with whom I have had relationships to knot my laces.  They had no respect for anybody.  But I was smitten by the woman whose eyelids featured the epicanthal folds often found in people of East Asian descent.  My heavens, I was delighted to have encountered her.  I have some helpful life-advice, but I won't cite the 19th-century English novelist Charles Dickens, or the 19th-century English Romantic poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats because they've already said what they've said.  My advice is this: try to see the upside of adverse circumstances and dismiss them with good cheer ��� ha ��� after all, you did not choose to be born.
    So don't forget that every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.  Woo.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.  Woo.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.  Woo.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.  Woo.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.  Woo.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.  Woo.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.  Woo.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.
    Every image imparts a narrative, doesn't it.

THE TIME: 8:10 on a balmy Tuesday evening
THE PLACE: A street in the West Village
THE PLAYERS: Two twentysomething men


 
Twentysomething man #1: It's better to get smashed after dinner than it is to arrive smashed.