Jan/Feb Issue: Home | Editors | Features | Columns | Photos | Regional | New Groove Road Trip | Tour Journal | Venue | Levels | Ghosts | Homegrown | Inaudible | CDs | Charts

West Regional Report
Edited by Sarah Bruner - syrup@hula.net

In This Issue:

• Merman at the Beach Chalet - NYE '98 - '98
• Zero - 12/18 & 12/19 - Maritime Hall, San Francisco, CA
• KVHW - 12/31/98 - Kaiser Ballroom- San Francisco, CA

Mermen at the Beach Chalet
New Year's Eve 1998-1999
by Suki O'Kane

Jim Thomas, Guitar
Allen Whitman, Bass
Martyn Jones, Drums

A quick stroll down the bookcase is important before any New Year's Eve. Either you're spending it propped up under the covers in the middle of the bed with Edwin Abbott Abbott's Flatland, or you have to see for yourself that dog-eared page that introduces the concept of Set and Setting before heading out into the street. I went for the latter, and having done so had no choice but to spend the last hours of '98 at the Beach Chalet. Sited on the brink of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, overlooking Ocean Beach, the Chalet hosted the Mermen in their third New Year's Eve performance there. It was not the utter surf of it, not the woo-woo '99 of it, and definitely not the complimentary champagne toast (cough) that made this show one of the best bets for both setting and set: The Mermen played very nearly every song they've ever written during a three and a half-hour marathon, and did so for an intimate crowd surrounded on three sides by windows onto the Pacific Ocean. No additional proof was necessary that this was the spot, and we were the last people on it, to feel the Stroke of Midnight before it left the continent and hit Hawaii, pausing as it must have to hot up some functionary on the 7th story bridge of a Cho Yang freighter in between Here and There. The Mermen pushed the New Year west aboard its own sonic wave, curling and crashing its post-modern surf swirl.

Although the Beach Chalet is historic, and the place of the Mermen in its revitalization undisputed, it really isn't a very nice place to hear music. We had the luck of the draw and were seated at a table on the edge of the postage-stamp dance floor, about five feet from the band's amps. During the multi-course dinner, this was a bit of a liability as George McCoskey, who has written music for Nash Bridges and Barbra Streisand (fictive and real respectively), tickled the ivories in one long medley of perfectly horrible songs that can only be played in a dinner piano setting or the police will come and take everyone to jail. Mr. McCoskey was so perfect at it, in fact, that he is an obvious God of This Genre, and I was close to tears several times at his fantastic, albeit really loud, segues. If it sounds like I'm unhappy with his performance I decidedly am not. He was just one of those cultural experiences that is so bad, that your eyes widen impossibly, a vessel bursts in your head, you give up at once and start having a marvelous time swingin' to this cool cat with the gradient shades and the sparkly jacket.

The Mermen took the stage at 10pm and opened with an extended composition that introduced the major themes of the evening: just one guitar and just fifty million effects pedals seeking to reproduce the sound of being immersed by a wave, transporting, mournful anthems to the soul's interior, driving rhythms that make you want to get in the oncoming lane and go for it, and the Dick Dale diaspora of surf music. Through the next 34 tunes, the Mermen spoke little, permitted a lot from an increasingly happy crowd basking in the close quarters, and left their handprints on the impossibly high part of the wall during stratospheric spikes of musicianship.

It wasn't as if the band intended to impress the audience with its endurance. We all just lost track of time. If it weren't for a TV above the adjacent bar flashing large numbers, which I was able to grok only when they had reached something simple like "7", did the 'Men disrupt Gulch of Spleens (from At the Haunted House) and move into a guitar feedback noodle of Auld Lang Syne while the auspicious moment passed.

What you must know:

Drummer Martyn Jones returned to la guerre after his departure led to the hiring of Vince Littleton away from Merl Saunders and the Rainforest Band. There is nothing so satisfying as seeing Martyn reach for the microphone between songs, and then hearing him speak. In case guitarist Jim Thomas' speechless intensity or bassist Allen Whitman's extreme height and kind words created a jarring contrast for a listener, Martyn was there with a comforting non sequitur. Tonight, he also had some ripping fills that had his bandmates jumping into huge grins.

Jim Thomas was playing a single-necked guitar, but sounding triple-necked. His between-song interludes are shorter and more easily recognizable as tuning sessions rather than iridescent balls of feedback bubbling off one song and bursting onto the next, but his use of effects continues to expand. I used to think he was becoming Adrian Belew and some kind of elephant noise was going to come out real soon now. During the show I saw him working a crunchy noise box and realized it's much more likely Jim will become DJ Shadow.

Allen Whitman's bass playing was the bottom of the swell that revealed, once it was in your face, the dangerous verticality of Mermen music. Diving right into it was the only way, which a few audience members did while Al beseeched them with his eyes to restrain themselves. Only after his water bottle had made the rounds of audience members and the instability of some stage dancers been made apparent did he use his Inspector Gadget extensions to gently clear the stage.

The Merman sound is all instrumental, a dense departure from the surf genre that for ten years has evaded commercial success almost as many times as it has defied description. Too progressive for landlubbers clutching their Agent Orange cassettes, too twangy for the sulking hipsters wondering if Sonic Youth just packed up and moved to Ocean Beach, too loud for your unborn children, much less your parents, too ready to end the movie and let you decide what you just saw instead of banging you over the head with the message placard as you make your way to the aisles. They are that good.

You can begin by swing dancing with your date to the Mermen, but you will always end by swaying sinuously by your lonesome, your head filled with enough soaring sound that your feet just barely brush the ground. Ending existentially is a trademark of Mermen performances, but this time was a fitting conclusion to the revels. No flashpots. No thundering codas. No windmills or leaps. The Mermen ended an astonishing uninterrupted set much as the sea ends a period of incessant sets of eight: with a blanket of calm spread by a luxurious version of Pull of the Moon. Hypnotized fans slid out of the Chalet and walked across the Great Highway to the surf's edge. The New Year was already underway.

Setlist:
[new untitled]
100 Ft Lemon
Ocean Beach
Varykino Snow
Emmylou Rides
With No Definite Future
[new w/ marching beat]
Honeybomb
Be My Noir
Latina>
Casbah
Raglan
Splashin' with the Mermaid
Wes Montgomery
Gulch of Spleen>Auld Lang Syne
[new untitled]
Sponge Cookie
White Trash Raga>
Curve>
Glimpse
Adv In Paradise>
Endless Summer
Silly Elephant
Quiet Surf>
Madagascar
Unknown>
Penetration>
Bikini Beach
[new untitled]
Krill Slippin' Intractable Boy
[Dragonfly Song]
Goodbye
Pull of the Moon

---

Zero
Live at the Maritime Hall, San Francisco, CA
Nothin' Lasts Forever' CD Release Party
Friday and Saturday, December 18 and 19, 1998
by Christian Crumlish

In 1997 I got to see Zero once or twice nearly every month, and I got spoiled. Since June, bandmembers had been pursuing other interests. Amidst the chaos and rumormongering, Zero appeared at a low-key benefit gig in Marin hideaway San Geronimo in September and announced a sequel to last year's Hawaii band/fan vacation. Within weeks, two shows were booked for December at the Maritime Hall in San Francisco to celebrate the release of Zero's new live CD, Nothin' Lasts Forever. One consolation for this drought was that the shows were booked without openers to cramp this expansive band's sets.

When Zero plays a CD release party, they celebrate the recording. At the party for Zero at the Fillmore on 9-13-97, they reinvented each song from the album and filled out the second set with one fantastic instrumental excursion after another, capped by scorched-earth blues.

So I was determined to see both shows. I brought my significant other to the first one on December 18th. We arrived at the Maritime Hall around 9:15, the p.a. playing an old Legion of Mary show, Jerry belting out Dylan's "Tough Mama."

The band looked relaxed and at ease. The San Geronimo show had been a mite testy, Martin telling the audience repeatedly to "get over it." For the audience at least, The show had the feeling of a reunion. The band led off with "Cole's Law," the opening track on the live album, a beautiful soaring instrumental. The songs choices during both shows reflected a balance between old favorites and some of the most promising new material. The first set continued with a second instrumental, Bobby Vega's underplayed "Berm." My partner said this one reminded her of the Brecker Brothers. For the third song, lead vocalist Judge Murphy finally took center stage to sing the epic Hunter ballad "Horses," which the band segued into the Clapton version of Robert Johnson's "Crossroads" (the last time I heard a band play this it was Phish at Madison Square Garden!). For the next two songs, the initiative turned to keyboard maestro Chip Roland with an aching if tentative version of Van Morrison's "Into the Mystic," and then the Chick Corea fusion classic "La Fiesta," which featured phenomenally charged interplay between Kimock and Roland.

"La Fiesta" eventually turned into the roadhouse blues of Will Weldon's "Outskirts of Town," reinforcing the poor-relation, skid row glamour Zero endlessly cultivates. At this point an ordinary Maritime Hall with-opening-act first set would be running over, but the band was in a generous mood and "Outskirts" gave way to the familiar drums intro of Zero classic "Tear Tags off Mattresses," one of the band's original jazz-like instrumentals, now sorely underplayed. Deep in the jam, which was laced with allusions to "Horses," Chip introduced a jivy vocal cover called "Natural Causes," featuring rhymes such as "if I should die before I wake/I hope you all have a very nice break," and then steered the band back into "Tear Tags," which wound up explosive and wound down with a swift shave and a haircut, six bits.

The second set started with another semirare but very popular instrumental, "Tongue 'n' Groove" (it features a David Lindley melody played over the rhythm changes of Marvin Gaye's "Sexual Healing"). Steve started the song on the standup lap, and finished it with his axe. After fiddling for a while, the band brought out the title tune from their first project with Robert Hunter, "Chance in a Million," a song about not being a hit song, which went into a powerful drums workout anchored by bandleader Greg Anton as most of the band left the stage. Judge sat in on a spare drumkit on and off during both shows, and Lonnie "Showtime" Walter played bongos throughout the run.

They came back to amble through a hesitatin' vocal-centered reading of Allen Toussaint's "On Your Way Down" (made more famous by Little Feat), which turned back into drums and Vega took the lead for a "Rigor Mortis" fake and then a very funky "Use Me" for which Judge was so loose that he sold himself on my SO, who'd not seen him at his best before. "Use Me" is '70s r&b hit by Bill Withers, which, along with "On Your Way Down," some fans later decoded as a message between band members.

The looseness went beyond swinging for a disjointed "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone," the Temptations cover that plays a leading role on the live CD. The bass laid down a slinky, off-kilter rhythm, but the drums hammered down a much more straight-ahead beat, and Judge sang somewhere in between, his vocals losing traction and his memory lyrics, to his own visible frustration. The "Papa" jam turned into "Gregg's Egg's," which also suffered from this problem of synch, to a degree. Soon, after Fierro had teased "Taste of Honey," the band ended up the show pushing 2 am with a cosmic version of "Sun Sun Sun," said to feature the best, most out-there jamming of the night. We went home dead tired.

The next day I was on line before 7:56. Never lined up for a Zero show before! I snagged some real estate on the floor and prepared for the show.

They started with one of their oldest covers, Aretha Franklin's "Baby, Baby (Baby, I Love You)." Immediately we were all dancing so hard that sweat was pouring down my face. (waterfall eyes. --a. dorchak.) Again the show started with two instrumentals, as they followed "Baby, Baby" with jazzish Zero original, "Tangled Hangers," a number Steve's been assaulting with his other band lately. After a jammin' version that featured some of Steve's new nonwestern fingerings, the band dropped the pace to a slog with the Clapton ballad "Running on Faith," followed by the Band classic, "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down." President Clinton had been impeached that morning, by the way, in a national tragic stage play with southerners in most of the lead parts.

Things picked up when Bobby Vega, strutting in place, laid down the impossibly funky bottom of Zero's elaborate take on the Meters' instrumental "Rigor Mortis." The jam exploded at least three times into entirely new slinky grooves. The entire audience was a seething, sweaty mass of revelers. People were just stunned. The guitar peaks were transformative.

Deep in the "Rigor Mortis" jam (where the oddly named third track of the live album was pried from), I thought to myself, 2 arms 2 legs, we have 2 axes, the third dimension follows by induction, as do the rest, anything is possible, throw off the shackles, dance with both arms both legs, in all dimensions, DON'T FORGET!!

As with "Natural Causes" the previous day, Chip eventually steered them into "Jump Back," a shouter that soon had the whole band on board for a huge rave-up. They finished up the set with the closer from the live album, not played since '96, the Beatles only studio jam, "I Want You (She's So Heavy)," which was a blast.

Dorchak passed this one woman from behind us through our space to the front of the stage with simple motions of his hands. You delivered her, I said. From evil, he snickered, missing not a beat. oh no i'm losing my top again. ink stains on hands watch out it's a loose pen. How 'bout that "Rigor"? said BigRxR.

The second set started with Steve at his standup lap, teasing out the melody to the other instrumental masterpiece on the new CD, Anton's "Forever is Nowhere." Later, on the net, I heard complaints about this not-best-ever performance from spoiled brats who deserve to be spanked. Chip followed up with "Friday's Child," the Van Morrison song he likes to play frequently. The verses of the song were fine, lovely even, but the performance really took off when Vega introduced a funk variation on the tune. After this the band resurrected an old jam from the shows of the '80s, "This is Your Brain" (not to be confused with the similarly named "Rigor Mortis" jam on the live CD), which evolved into a slow funky emotional reading of Leon Russell's greasy lament, "Out in the Woods," which gets lost further in the woods each time I hear it, and I mean that in a good way.

The set's centerpiece was a state-of-the-art rendition of perhaps Zero's quintessential tune, "Golden Road" (not to be confused with the Dead's first single), a song that dates back to Keith and Donna Godchaux's Heart of Gold Band in which Anton and Kimock first played together. It's a signature song that evokes the Meters, the Dead, Bo Diddley, and Johnny Otis. Just when I think I've heard the best possible "Golden Road" (say, the Hula Hut show in Hawaii last year), another one comes along and floors me. In my notebook setlist I followed it with !!! - one for each orgasmic jam peak.

After that, I was exhausted and literally sat on the floor for the slower but more emotional "End of the World Blues," a Hunter/Zero original sung with road-weary texture by Judge. After this, Chip tried to lead the band into the Desmond Dekker reggae chant "Israelites," but they didn't really get into the skankin' riddim the song calls for and swiftly made for their familiar reggae-fusion arrangement of Jimmy Cliff's "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down." When Chip tried to end the song he looked across the stage to see Steve, features half hidden by an unruly mop of hair, face fierce and grim, with a look of "the song's not over yet." They built the jam to one more curlicue crescendo to top them all, and we collapsed in a heap. For the encore, Zero took it back to their earliest days with their tribute to David Lindley, "Mercury Blues."

Nobody asked me if Zero was breaking up after these shows.

12/18/98 First Set Cole's Law Berm Horses -> Crossroads Into the Mystic La Fiesta -> I'm Going to Move to the Outskirts of Town ->   Tear Tags Off Mattresses -> Natural Causes -> Tear Tags Off Mattresses Second Set Tongue 'n' Groove Chance in a Million -> drums -> On Your Way Down -> drums -> Use Me -> Papa Was a Rollin' Stone -> Gregg's Egg's Sun Sun Sun

12/19/98 First Set Baby, Baby (Baby, I Love You) Tangled Hangers Running on Faith The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down Rigor Mortis -> Jump Back I Want You (She's So Heavy) Second Set Forever is Nowhere Friday's Child This is Your Brain -> Out in the Woods Golden Road End of the World Blues Israelites (vamp) -> You Can't Keep a Good Man Down Encore Mercury Blues

---

Christian Crumlish is working on an article about Bobby Petersen and would welcome any insights into this poet and lyricist via e-mail from anyone who knew him or has studied his writing.

---

Kimock Vega White Hertz
12/31/98 Kaiser Ballroom, Oakland, CA
by Charlie Dirksen

Thousands of West Coast deadheads descended on the Kaiser Auditorium to celebrate the New Year with String Cheese Incident, Planet Drum, Hot Tuna, Ratdog, and KVHW. Though tickets cost $52.50 in advance, there were abundant extras outside. Many "miracles" occurred as a result. Bill Graham Presents handed out free soup and bread outside, as deadheads frolicked in a nearby park, and began lining up early for the show.

The Kaiser Ballroom, where KVHW played from approximately 8:15pm to 11:30pm, is located at the back of the auditorium building, above and to the right of the auditorium's main stage. You walked what seemed to be a neverending ramp up to it. The ballroom was very long and narrow, with a cute little stage, and a smoothly polished, glistening wooden floor. Weird tapestries of psychedelic green and red creatures adorned the walls (a salamander, some sea turtles, a hammerhead shark, etc.). It could probably hold around 250 comfortably. About 600 showed up for the gig.

The first set began with a tight, five minute "You're the One," an instrumental often played at Steve Kimock and Friends gigs over the years. Though not revolutionary in its jam, it nevertheless kicked the spirits of the crowd high up towards the ballroom's ceiling and beyond. Kimock was chatty and clearly inspired for this show, and working to impress. He even said on mic -- he doesn't often speak to the crowd -- that he was glad that they got "the little room," or something to this effect.

The second song of the evening was KVHW's original instrumental "Bad Hair," a groovy, psychedelic number with a catchy melody. Easily danceable, many in the audience worked up quite a sweat for this one, which was rewarded by a calming, peaceful blues jam structured around the melody line -- a very original ending for this improvisational tune. Hertz followed with a powerful drum solo, out of which the funkasaur "Five B-4 Funk" began. Three instrumentals in a row? Many fans were loving it! Though not as powerful as the 12/11/98 Cafe Tomo or 10/4/98 Chester's versions, it nevertheless swayed and charmed the audience. It was chock full of tasty, mellifluous riffs from Steve Kimock.

"In Time," an old Sly and the Family Stone tune, grooved particularly well, and featured Ray White's gorgeous tenor vocals. The moody and highly improvisational instrumental "Slumber" came next. After bewildering the crowd with it's sleepy melody in the opening section, Slumber's jam section sent minds, souls, and bodies spinning in ecstatic joy. There were in effect two jams. The first was a gorgeous Kimock solo on dobro, in which he teased Zero's glorious song "Forever is Nowhere." The second jam, on the other hand, featured the entire band raging mightily in support of Kimock's dazzling guitar gymnastics. An olympic version, to be sure.

The Kimock-heavy first set ended with a brilliant but unfinished "It's Up to You" -- a legendary instrumental of spectacular beauty -- which segued into a full-band, powerful-yet-short "It's Not Impossible."

After a reasonable thirty minute break, during which many fans commented on the hot, sweaty, ultra-dank, and crowded atmosphere of the Ballroom, the second set opened with a spacey, mellow "Why Can't We All Just Samba?" This version was not the mellifluous dance-a-thon many of us have grown to love. It was instead much more relaxed, even though it retained the fluidity and intoxicating majesty of a typical version.

"Spring Water" featured stunningly powerful vocals from Ray White, but was noticeably and unusually short on jamming. Several versions in the last few months were half-hour long, improvisational journeys. This version was heavy on White's vocals and light on most everything else. "Footprints" was a triumphant, full-band effort, however. It alone was worth the $52.50 price of admission. Improvisational fusion is rarely so spell-binding. Aficionados of the original should especially check it out.

"It's Your Thing (Do What You Want to Do)" was fun, marked by yet more sweetly sweeping vocals from Ray White. It had a great jam, too, which contained an excellent solo from the awesome Bobby Vega on bass, if memory serves.

"Point of No Return" was a masterpiece. A flawless gem of improvisational rock artistry, this version may go down as one of KVHW's most awe-inspiring, breathtaking jams. You should seek the tapes if only to hear this version. Improvisational rock rarely reaches such a profound plateau.

The "City of Tiny Lites" closer, a Frank Zappa cover that KVHW has performed many times, was inspired. It featured many improvised lyrics from Ray, such as references to tiny wool blankets, tiny airplane food, and tiny airplane pillows, which presumably stemmed from Ray's experience flying back to the West coast from the Wetlands show in NYC earlier in the week. Kimock's solo was magnificent and tight, and it was a strong close to the gig.

All things considered, the show was arguably not as mind-blowing as the 12/11 Cafe Tomo, 11/28 Great American, and 8/25/98 Powerhouse shows, but it was nevertheless a wonderful way to bring in the new year! Rumor has it that KVHW is in the studio this month recording for a possible 1999 release. For more information on KVHW, check out their web site at http://www.studioemusic.com/KVHW.html/. They will be playing at the Powerhouse Brewery in Sebastopol, CA, on January 16th and 17th. If you are within five hours of Sebastopol, you would be foolish to miss it. They are, after all, the most exciting improvisational rock quartet playing these days.

Set One: 
You're the One
Bad Hair > 
Drums > 
Five B-4 Funk
In Time
Slumber
It's Up to You > 
It's Not Impossible

Set Two: 
Why Can't We All Just Samba?
Spring Water
Footprints
It's Your Thing
Point of No Return
City of Tiny Lites