Bob Reuter's first 7" ep Got Dreamin - LOST and now FOUND!

Went over to the Record Exchange the other night and Gene, the owner says,
"I've got a little box of your records upstairs." I go like,
"What?" and he says,
"A box of records you made, with sleeves and everything"

So I go upstairs and over by the record player is this little cardboard 45 pack that I recognize, it held 25 copies of a four song 45 EP I released in 1982 - and Gene had said, they were in the jacket sleeves me and my (then) wife put together that included a little insert I'd written up. I hadnt seen any of them, in jackets or with the insert, since sometime in the middle eighties. All I could think was that somebody had ripped me off but as for why or who, I got no idea. Gene later said he didnt know the person who brought them in but that they claimed to find them in a house they were clearing out. I've still got no clue.

Let's say just say, i was feeling lost when i released this record, we had just moved back from a year in Syracuse NY where I'd discovered tons of new music, vicariously experienced art graduate school and was aching to do something musically different. Some recording time had fallen right into my lap and I put some guys together to cut three songs I had burning a hole in my brain. As close as i can come to describing what it wound up sounding like is, "punked out arty shit" or "art saturated post punk wet brain" I was drinkin quite a bit at that time and was achin to come up with something i could get excited about! the results were mixed - It was the last thing my old pal Frankie ever played on and i really reigned him in cause i was feeling pretty fed up with guitars - He died shortly after and I felt forever guilty for not having let him run wild - Fojammy and Dominic Schaeffer of Wax Theatrix played primitive synth and sax parts, I played hard edged punk bass like i did in the Dinosaurs and Kevin Griffin of the Zanti Misfits played drums.

The record was called "Got Dreamin" cause i'd been getting inspired reading about Aborigines and their music, the concept of putting ones self into states of trance and seeing what you come up with. Well, the whole thing was somewhat confused by drinkin and drugs, my wired out city boy sensibilities and various personal neuroses... but I WAS out there trying.

Local rock critic Steve Pick damned the project in Jet Lag, sighting our use of tenor saxs rather than alto (whatever that meant) - NY Rocker sent he a postcard saying they didnt care to waste space killing a record that couldnt possibly sell over 500 copies anyway... and i just generally i drank my pain away into oblivion. I tied real hard to just put the whole thing behind me.

Highlights of the record were 1.) the first recording of the song "Jungle Fighter" a song I wrote after listening to the stories of a Mexican American Cat I befriended while working day labor up in Syracuse. The song is pretty much a straight ahead retelling of what i kind of forced him into talking about - bout people he had killed in VietNam, how he came back home and realized that the way he operated in the jungle was actually the only way to operate in the barrio and so he did till friends staged a forcible intervention... I still do "Jungle Fighter to this day with my band Alley Ghost.

2) The song Flashy Graphics which I had begun doing up in Syracuse with my band Serious Journalism - a song preoccupied with Nazi's and fear I felt already beginning to surface in the American psyche.

3) A very odd and fucked up dub version of the song "Jungle Fighter" done as only a couple of fucked up white city boy drunks (myself and Dominic) could dream up - we was literally bent and twisted on champaign and reefer as we twisted and turned control board faders and knobs much go the chagrin of the studio owners - this was our baby - this was the first and really only case of punk ass dub that I have ever heard!!

The odd part now is that the college age kids I've played it for today all seem to like it pretty well. Go figure.

The cover was inspired by the art work of Eve Kahn, that gal I lived with (and eventually married and then divorced) and the sleeves were assembled by the two of us - these are the last 25 copies in existence. When Gene bought them for nothing he says he figured I ought to have first crack at buying them back - Well, I did. Any body interested in buying a copy give me a holler - I think by it's scarcity alone it qualifies as a "collectors item"!

not a dram or a drop

broken boned and waiting. on back streets in the dark. come over here baby and look at my face.
bring me that shard of glass would you please - i cant bare this second guessing over what it is that you see. back over here darlin, just follow my voice. what? i'm alright, that shit just burns in my eyes. on a long dark night, such a long time ago - it was a gasoline town back then. i was waiting near the brick yard and you leaned your cold nose into the base of my neck and kissed my chest. it was the second week of winter and the north side of everything was blown white was blown white with snow. and the wind stung my face and your breath warmed my skin.

now look here in my eyes, the frenzy of hell is raging inside and the horror that you feel when you hear me speak aint a dram or a drop compared to that sea where the god wind strikes, an armada goes down. can you hear the screams? not a dram or a drop compared to that sea. and everyone with me is now long since gone. and what you've been fed is pure mother's milk compared to that sea...

when you turn from my eyes without saying good bye like jennifer beals just forgetting her lines, i'll be feeling the cost of every last lie...broken boned and waiting... with burning eyes...

and dont life always hold just one more surprise.

the cops are on their way

Phil Ochs - No More Songs - by Bob Reuter

Phil Ochs - no more songs
by Bob Reuter on Saturday, March 26, 2011 at 4:53am
I was actually kind of blown away tonight by the crowd for the Phil Ochs tribute. I dont really know what I was expecting. I guess I wasnt expecting anyone at all. I mean the largest part of Ochs catalogue is pure uncut "protest singing" - what Dylan never was. Ochs was a weird cat from the get go. His father had been a doctor who was drafted and spent his tour of duty trying to put soldiers back together on the battle fields - he came back somewhat shell shocked and depressed - bounced around from hospital to hospital and was never able to establish any kind of personal medical practice anywhere. He was also never able to be close to his wife or family

Phil was born in Texas but spent the bulk of his childhood in Ohio so he was pretty much a midwest city kid. That was maybe one of the draws for me, he actually looked like somebody from my neighborhood - long haired greaser haircut and black leather but not a motorcycle jacket, the kind hoods wore. He had actually gone to college and then dropped out cause he couldnt figure what he was there for. He hit the road and wound up spending two weeks in jail down in Florida for sleeping in a park. He later said he decided during that fifteen days in jail that he wanted to be a writer. He went back to school with that intent but right off the bat he was writing political stuff that the school paper wouldnt print so he started his own alternative paper.

He'd always been a musician - clarinet player for school orchestra as a kid - good enough to make first chair. Now some where along the way a friend taught him to play guitar and turned him on to Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and Cisco Houston - that was pretty much where it really started.

I had always been a fan but I needed more than just politics, that scene seemed pretty fucking Spartan to me. It wasnt till he hooked up with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin who were forming the Youth International Party or the Yippies and he went with them to Chicago to take part in the Festival of Life that was taking place in Chicago during the 68 Democratic convention that something started coming apart inside him. The police violence, culminating in massive arrests including he himself was too much to deal with and where as Abbie and Rubin rode the absurdity of it all, Phil was more of an idealist and the reality of what went down began his unraveling. It was shortly after that, that Ochs realized America was never really gonna warm up to a protest singer - he realized what it was gonna take was a cross between Elvis Presley and Che Guevera to reach the American people! He commissioned Nudie Cohn, who'd made Elvis's, to make him a Gold lame' suit and went on tour culminating with a gig at Carnegie Hall doing some of his own songs mixed with Elvis and Buddy Holly covers which he had always loved. I remember reading about this shit in Creem magazine at the time - it had been an insane thing for him to do, the largest part of the audience HATED it, didnt get it at all - didnt know what the hell to make of it. Oddly enough this is what really sealed the deal on Phil Ochs for me. The idea of rock and roll revolt had appealed to be too - Anyway, A&M his new label put it out on a record under the title "Shoot Out at Carnegie Hall". I dont think they ever actually released it in america though,it was a "Canada only" thing. I never actually even heard it but I didnt need to - the concept alone was enough I was a fan for life.

Several years later I put my favorite cuts from "Rehearsals For Retirement" on a cassette tape with Tim Buckley's "Greetings From LA" (which was an equally insane release) on the flip - I labled the cassette "Desperate Dead Men" (I made another with Howlin Wolf on one side and Captain Beefheart on the other at the same time but that's another story) "Rehearsals For Retirement" featured a grave stone with Ochs name on it declaring him dead as of 1968 the year of the Democratic Convention.

See as much as I had his back as a protest singer for all those years, it was the start of his crack up that really won my heart - that's what spoke to me, this cat looking his total deconstruction straight in the eye and moving forward with it. Then there were stories of his drinking, of another personality "John Train", killing Ochs and taking his place. There were bar fights and his getting jumped on the street in Africa by a couple of street thugs trying to rob and strangle him - it fucked up his voice for the rest of his short life and added to to his destruction and then the final news that he'd taken his own life. I died a little when I heard. I bought up several of his late period albums and held them close for years.

Two months before I heard of this Tribute Night, I'd gone to Record Exchange and rifled through their vinyl folk section looking for cleaner copies or to replace stuff I've lost along the way and I grabbed up a used copy of "Rehearsals" and as I took it up to the counter to pay for it I noted the obligatory hand written name scrawled across the label of the record was that of a girl I knew back in 1972, an old friend. Two months later I was on the bill for this show and my old friend was in attendance.

I put off learning the four songs I had agreed to, till the very last moment. I've never been one to pick up songs my other artist, preferring to write my own but especially not if the songs were as complicated as Ochs' stuff. The four songs I'd chosen were, "Pretty Smart on my Part" a completely unhinged rant of a quintessential american paranoid freak, set to a off kilter semi Bo Diddley beat - "My Life" who's first line, "My life, was once a joy to me..." has always just tore my guts out. I almost wasnt even concerned with the rest of the song, he just sings that line so sadly, it speaks reams each time I hear it. - "Chords of Fame" his most countryish tune about a singer/songwriter who he finds dead on the side of a stage and features the chorus,
"So play the chords of Love my friend,
play the chords of pain,
but if you want to keep your songs,
dont dont dont,
dont play the chords of fame!"

And finally, "No More Songs" one of his last tunes ever.

Three days before this gig and I realized I couldnt put it off forever if I was gonna do this gig so the first day I just listened to them over and over - the second I got the chords and words off he internet and then late that night, played them several times while lying in bed with my unamplified electric guitar. The night before the gig I got out my acoustic and just cranked'em them over and over. I played them for my roommate Mark and his band who had been down in the basement practicing their two songs for the gig. It felt like I was playing them in an insane asylum which was just what I needed. See I dont know if you can get this but once I started really getting inside these things I almost felt like I was getting a look inside Phil himself. I got it, I understood. I kept getting this sensation of almost wanting to cry but couldnt. Anyway, I "got it" ! I felt like I wasnt all that far removed from where he was. I'm not trying to compare my self with him - our lives are different I KNOW that - I will never know what he lived through but I DO think I have an idea.

So anyway, it seems that Phil Ochs people or either kind of old or fairly young. The kids who staged this thing are in their early twenties - old souls I think but still, in their early twenties, the same age Phil was when he wrote his best protest stuff. The songs I chose were his later work, the shit he wrote while coming apart. The room there at Foam was the most crowded I'd seen it, older and younger fans, the middle ground was noticeable in it's absence. I played my four songs - the one I chose to end the night with ( I DID play last) naturally enough is called, "No More Songs". The whole time I was learning it I could feel him - what he must have been going through, he HAD dried up according to all reports, the songs had slowed to a halt, the guy Dylan had marveled at, thought he could never keep up with, had become kind of a burned out shell, had given all he had. And this song doesnt sound like he even wrote it, it sounds like he was the radio tower that picked it up and relayed it to the world. It sounds like it had been written hundreds of years ago, an ancient folk song, but he DID write it, it says all he knew to say right there at the end,

"Hello, hello, hello Is there anybody home?
I've only called to say I'm sorry.
The drums are in the dawn,
and all the voices gone.
And it seems that there are no more songs"

Phil Ochs was 36 years old when he took his own life.

dem bones dem bones...

She ran the damn roost when her old man was alive. you'd hear her screamin orders at'im all day long, you'd see her during the work day sneakin in the apartments she rented, when the tenants were away - then she'd snipe at the kids down the street. when the old man died she she came all apart, you'd hear her cry some nights by herself. i still remember her out front of the row apartments, bow-legged, feet planted firm, her body weavin' like a fighter an' singin' that old song bout dry bones and a red dress, how she missed'em - and then it started raining from somewhere up inside her skirt and i could hear it crakle an'patter on the dried leaf covered sidewalk.

Broken And Wonderful - a review from "Ephemera Etc." -

Broken and Wonderful
Posted on January 29, 2011 by erineph
Every couple of years or so, I write a love letter to St. Louis. Not like a real love letter, because that’s trite. But more like a statement, a testament to why I live here, or, more specifically, why I came back. The easy reason is that I was unhappy with a shitty marriage in Southern California, and that’s partly true. But the other reason is that even though, at one point, I couldn’t wait to leave, eventually I realized that the place I felt most at home, the place where I knew the streets and the weather and the dialect in my bones, was here. I knew it every time my plane touched down in St. Louis, every time we drove home from the airport past the total decay of North City, every time I remembered how to interpret the signals at the most convoluted South City intersections without a second thought.

I know it’s uncool to stay where you grew up. I know it’s extremely uncool to stay in the same ZIP code, but fuck you guys, it’s cheap here, and I’m home. Plus we’ve got people like Bob Reuter, one of my favorite people on 88.1, whose photos and music look and sound like St. Louis feels. If you want to come back but you can’t for some reason, watch this 11-minute documentary about Bob, Broken and Wonderful:


(The first several seconds are audio only. Soldier on, you’ll be glad you did.)

My friend Shannon (local activist, running for alderperson of the 20th Ward, all around Better Person Than I Can Ever Be) is friends with Bob. I mean, Bob is my friend on Facebook, but so is that one girl I’m not really friends with but am keeping around because I’m sure that one day I’ll get to witness her complete psychological meltdown. So, you know. I told Shannon that I occasionally see Bob around at cafés and shows and I always want to introduce myself but the lameness of the introduction stops me: “Uhm, we’re friends on Facebook and know the same people? Derrrrrp.” Then she pointed out that if I need an icebreaker, I could always tell him about the time I threatened to kick his ass for getting the pots and pans she offered for free.

Which is a good icebreaker and I’d forgotten all about it, but to be fair, whose ass haven’t I threatened to kick at one point or another?

ME AND MY SISTER ON THE BLACK ICE OF WINTER

me and my sister on the black ice of winter

by Bob Reuter on Friday, December 17, 2010 at 12:44am

dark dark dark - the world's a sheet of black ice tonight

i got this friend, a black guy, told me he came home one winter night and his chickens were layin dead in the yard. said he didnt know they'd die

said he always gets rid of'em now in the fall

us city folks dont know shit about chickens, we learn it as we go - like learnin bout cars as each part breaks down

somebody told me today

my older sister

said she never really knew me

stopped me cold

felt like a chicken frozen on the black ice ground

that whole track of dirt

round the spike in the middle of the yard

that holds the chain hooked to the old dog's collar

feel like that ol'dog

that orbits that spike

spike

patches of grass

orbiting dirt track

never let that dog come in

never really got to know'im

Why We Listen To The Juke Box

There's a story involving Willie Nelson back when he let go of Nashville and first moved to Austin. He'd been there about a week when a cosmic thought hit him - "Fuck suits!" said Willie - after which he never wore one again - from there on it was t-shirts and jeans like the folks he'd grown up with - like the folks out in the crowds he'd play to. He hadnt exactly been run out of Nashville and the country music mainstream, I mean they liked him alright only he kept wanting to sing a play lines that seemed a little bit, i dont know, more jazz based than what the country industry's demographic was used to - so he packed it in and moved back to Texas where there were enough halls to make a living playing for hippies, students, shit kickers and such that seemed in congregate down there.

He was talking to a friend backstage at one of those halls, he pulled, the stage curtain open just a touch and says, "Take a look - there's the whole story" the friend didnt quite pick up on his meaning and Willie continued, "Ninety-eight percent of'em arent with their first choice of who they wanted to be with"
"Hey, neither are we" said the friend.
"it's why they listen to the juke box" Said Willie.