Live Music Head: Kevin Quain and the Mad Bastards

Friday, October 24, 2008

Kevin Quain and the Mad Bastards

Kevin Quain and the Mad Bastards
The Cameron House, Toronto
August 31, 2008
by Live Music Head

'Sunday nights in the opulent fin-de-siecle splendour of Toronto's Cameron House Front Lounge, Kevin Quain and his band, the Mad Bastards, splatter the walls with songs about restless corpses, wistful vampires, punchdrunk sailors,
singing bank robbers, and barroom romances.
Led by singer, songwriter and squeezebox slinger Kevin Quain, and armed with an accordion, doghouse bass, trumpet, a couple of Spanish guitars and a musical saw, the Mad Bastards spin surreal musical tall tales in a fury of sturm, drang and dramatic lighting, furiously smashing and reconstructing musical genres without reck, ruth or relent. Like a chance meeting of Kurt Weill and Hank Williams at a drunken pawnshop heist, this is late twentieth-century garage jazz cabaret unlike anything you've seen or heard before.....'
~ www.kevinquain.com

"I hereby declare this The Year of the Bastard"
is what Kevin Quain wrote in his email alert.
Season 13 is about to begin in the front room
of the public house on the northwest corner of Queen Street West;
The Cameron Public House.
The familiar piano intro has a little Over the Rainbow teaser
as the band begins Episode 1, Act 1
on the very first night of their Sunday night slot for 2008.
Leaving the piano bench, Kevin picks up the banjo
to head Uptown Downtown (Everybody Dead).
And Bryden Baird trumpets.
Dean Drouillard is on a guitar, otherwise known as a twang box,
and the newest Bastard, Miranda Mulholland is on violin.
Adam Warner is on a single drum,
while Wes Neal holds the upright bass.
The second song of the night is Let's Get Loaded from the first cd...
"When I told you I loved you
I was drunk,
but I meant it anyway."
and Baird is now a flugelhorn.
Leaning on the door jam,
I find a square of floor space near the front entrance,
and with great lighting and an ever-revolving display
of artwork gracing the walls
"This is paradise."
Above, a beautifully painted ceiling
of angels and lovers on a horse.
Unlike the beer-drinking crowd of the Cameron Saturday matinee,
to me this is music to sip red wine by,
or a tall dry martini with a stuffed green olive.
However, I do spot the odd label of Labatt's 50.
And for the folks sitting on the low couch in front of me,
it’s crantini in a pitcher with floating fruit.
The band has had a long-time all-black dress code,
and Kevin has his black derbie hat on.
But the code seems to be broken,
with Miranda appearing in a red evening dress
under her violin bow.
There's no Gene Hardy on saxophone tonight,
but Kevin plays guitar to Catch You in the Rye.
Baird picked up the accordion,
and Dean played a crunchy guitar on Coffee Dogs,
another Kevin Quain original,
then followed it with a song of sassy broken love...
"If you don't come back to me now,
I'm gonna hold my breath.
I'm gonna drink bourbon for breakfast,
I'm gonna wear chicken bones around my neck."
Kevin is only one of two people I know
who still carries a hanky to wipe his brow.
With shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow,
he stuffs it back in his vest pocket
moving to the piano...
“I have a new record from 2000", Kevin announces,
if you’d like to revisit musicals from the past”.
Wes does another bass solo
as Kevin pulls out the musical saw.
You can hear a pin drop to
"meet me here at midnight for a vampire matinee".
Side-stage, a girl rises from her seat,
and Kevin Quain's other half comes strolling toward me.
Stunning in a black sleeveless dress
and long brown hair twisted up in a knot,
her skin glowed to dangling silver earrings.
"Every time you look at me that way…
I always forget to breathe".
The Cameron is home to some of the finest artists,
musicians, and actors in town,
but during the summer months,
the regular house bands go on vacation.
Kevin joked he forgot some of our names,
spending the summer in the dark, doing drugs
"and your secrets grow like violets…"
While Bryden Baird got busy writing
"the theme song for Hockey Night In Canada
and entered it into a CBC contest".
The hint of a money collection came when Kevin said,
"I wish we had a drop down screen
and a power point presentation.
With a pie chart,
I could show you all where the jug money goes."
More fiery wit leads to
one of his best loved songs on squeeze box...
"Mr. Valentine's dead,
and he's drinking Manhattans, singing a coal miner's tune.
In his daddy's tuxedo, and Fred Astaire shoes,
he's the best looking corpse in the room."
Leaving the stage to lead the band in search of a jug,
the black derbie hat and black vest reminds me,
like it or not,
of Mr Rain Dogs himself.
With funky black gangster hat, black pants and black vest
Tom Waits totes an accordion just like that,
walking Spanish, in a video for Downbound Train.
With old world imagery and a five dollar bill in hand,
I'm ready when the jug comes my way and
the band pauses mid-centre to circle 'round.
At my left shoulder leans an accordion dip,
and a violin bow slides directly to my right.
With a trumpet blast facing front,
I'm in heaven!
Head over heels in love, and perfectly charmed.
"Irene good night
'Goodnight Irene, goodnight…
I'll see you in my dreams…"
But no, suddenly we're in Folsom Prison.
I thought the country classics
were reserved for the set list of Kevin's other band,
The Cameron Family Singers,
But no, and I never!
"shot a man in Reno just to see him die...
Die sucker!"
During the break,
I leaned on the outside ledge of the Cameron's so-called patio
to sip soda water from two purple straws.
There I watched a group of eight walk by,
Labour Day ladies dressed to the nines.

Back inside,
blue twinkle lights run up the microphone stand
in front of a red curtain back drop.
Set two brought Quain back to the stage, with a banjo.

"No sickness
No toil, no danger…
I'm going back to see my mother
No more to roam".
Act II of Episode I of the 13th season has begun.

At the end of the crantini couch,
country and western scenes are painted on a lampshade,
and gigantic cockroaches crawl down the wall.
Green leaf vines run up the dark blue Cameron ceiling,
but not one available bar stool to lean a butt cheek on.
"I'm singing for my sins.
It's crowded inside this skin."
Kevin wrote a song about Kensington Market
which he played,
and then followed it with Everybody Wants to be a Cat,
from the animated Walt Disney film, The Aristocats.
"While playin' jazz you always have a welcome mat,
''cuz everybody digs a swinging cat."
And just when you're thinking,
well, what about the canine lovers in the audience,
we learn Kevin Quain was Born a Dog...
"Tonight I'm staying underground
I got markers all over town.
I've been dancing in the rain,
casting shadows, leaving stains."
Then it was time for a show tune written by
Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg...
Somewhere Over the Rainbow,
the greatest show tune of 'em all.
Judy Garland aside,
no one covers it quite like Kevin Quain.
Watching him play the saw draped across his lap
I thought to myself,
Mr Quain should have at least a dozen Grammies,
and a star on Hollywood Blvd.
This gig really is "Toronto's best kept secret",
and the front man is our local treasure.
Clearing the tables of tumblers,
the cranky bartender loaned me a pen when my ink ran dry,
and a question is asked
with chirping sounds from the drum perch, …
"If happy little bluebirds can fly beyond the rainbow…
why the hell can't I?"
The forays into popular show tunes
should not mislead the uninitiated,
because Kevin Quain and the Mad Bastards
are most definitely an original band.
Playing with the utmost respect of the singer-songwriter,
the band performs many titles from
Hangover Honeymoon, Tequila Vampire Matinee
and Winter in Babylon.
On the other hand,
if you drop by here on any given Sunday,
you just might hear You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate,
albeit done a little differently.
Or imagine if you will,
AC/DC’s You Shook Me All Night Long
performed with acoustic guitar, accordion and fiddle.
Behind the stage after which, is where Kevin directly headed.
Where his black derbie hat and face
momentarily peaked thru the red curtain,
before he disappeared for good.
Act II, Episode I of the 13th season was brought to a close.
The art bar theatre is now closed.

Kevin Quain...
http://www.kevinquain.com/

Bryden Baird's Hockey Night in Canada theme song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSmvsmU2BDk

The Cameron House...
http://www.thecameron.com/

Favourite Quotes

“Why did I write? Because I found life unsatisfactory.”~ Tennessee Williams

"Life is complicated. It's filled with nuance. It's unsatisfying. If I believe in anything, it is doubt. The root cause of all life's problems is looking for a simple fucking answer." ~ Anthony Bourdain

"I think boredom is the worst thing in the whole world. I think apathy, lethargy, is possibly the worst ways you could spend your life. Because the planet is so full of magic. And you must find it. You must find the magic." ~ Bette Midler

"Pain + Time = Comedy" ~ unknown

"Advice to a new writer: There are no rules in this profession. Do what is good for you. Read books and watch films that stimulate your writing. In your writing, go where the pain is; go where the pleasure is; go where the excitement is. Believe in your own original approach, voice, characters, story. Ignore critics. Have nerve. Be stubborn." ~ Anne Rice

"I think you just write. You don't try and make sense of it. You just put it down the way you got it. You don't try and organize it, or put meaning to it. The best thing to do is take pictures of it. It's like, you go in there with a Safari rifle and a telephoto lens, and you just wait in the bushes." ~ Tom Waits

Some people think I say inappropriate things. I prefer to think of it as... radical honesty." ~ unknown

“She is savagely honest. She has a built-in phony detector and it is working all the time.” ~ Director Mark Rydell on Bette Midler (1980)

"The best defense against bullshit is vigilance. So if you smell something, say something." ~ Jon Stewart

"The psychological equivalent to air is to feel understood. It is the deepest hunger of the human heart." ~ Stephen Covey

"The deepest desire of the human spirit is to be acknowledged." ~ Stephen Covey

"Peace is not the absence of war, it's the presence of justice."~ Martin Luther King

"If people bring so much courage to this world, the world has to kill them to break them. So of course it kills them. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure that it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry." ~ Ernest Hemingway

"Most people do not listen with the intent to understand. They listen with the intent to reply." ~ Stephen Covey

"I’m curious about everything, except what people have to say about me." ~ Sarah Jessica Parker

"I’m not going to change the way I look or the way I feel to conform to anything. I’ve always been a freak. So I’ve been a freak all my life and I have to live with that, you know. I’m one of those people."~ John Lennon

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.”
~ John F Kennedy

"Society is collapsing, and people are starting to recognize that the reason they feel like they're mentally ill is that they're living in a system that's not designed to suit the human spirit." ~ Russell Brand

"The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role, you give up your ability to feel... and in exchange, put on a mask. ~ Jim Morrison

"Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality."~ Edgar Allan Poe

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, pull back the curtains, move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.” ~ Frank Zappa

"When people don't express themselves, they die one piece at a time. You'd be shocked at how many adults are really dead inside - walking through their days with no idea who they are, just waiting for a heart attack or cancer or a Mack truck to come along and finish the job. It's the saddest thing I know."
~ Laurie Halse Anderson

"What I say should always be prefaced with this: I'm not really politically articulate. I just try to be like Thomas Paine: what is common sense? So when I say these things to you, I am speaking from a humanist point of view. I just look around and see what's wrong." ~ Patti Smith

"Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters." ~ Victor Hugo

“One look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say: 'I want to see the manager.'"~ William S. Burroughs

"The opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy."~ unknown

"No matter who you are, someone will try and convince you that you should be someone else, or do something else." ~ Bob Seger

"The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we've ever had." ~ Eric Schmidt

“Every technology ages. The only thing that never gets old is connecting with people. That’s what everyone wants. A real connection.” ~ Logan Pierce (Jimmie Simpson) Season 2, Ep. 14 - Person of Interest

"I wouldn't have started Playboy if I was afraid of controversy. I think controversy is the way you change things. I want to live in a society where people can voice unpopular opinions."
~ Hugh Hefner

"Unpopular speech is absolutely vital to the health of our nation."~ Edward Norton in the film, The People vs Larry Flynt

"We have to be able to criticize what we love, to say what we have to say 'cause if you're not trying to make something better, then as far as I can tell, you are just in the way."
~ Ani DiFranco

"It's better to create something that others criticize than to create nothing and criticize others." ~ Ricky Gervais

"It's a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people, and to disturb comfortable people."~ Woody Guthrie

"You cannot change what you refuse to confront."~ unknown

"A strong spirit transcends rules."
~ Prince

I play music for free. I get paid for the bullshit."
~ Clarence Clemons

“Rock ‘n’ roll needs to be against something. It can’t just BE."
~ Bob Geldof

"To me, punk is about being an individual and going against the grain and standing up and saying 'This is who I am.'" ~ Joey Ramone

"In my experience, rock 'n' roll bands are on the verge of breaking up at all times." ~ Timothy B. Schmit

"What we do here is fucking essential. It's like oxygen. When a true artist sings, they hold back nothing. When you sing like that, it raises the dead. The world's dying a thousand heart attacks and we heal them up three minutes at a time. It's a god damn public service what we do. That's the only reason to make music." ~ Jackie Moreno, record producer (The Get Down)

"Remember that in the end, nobody wins unless everybody wins." ~ Bruce Springsteen

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”
~ Albert Einstein

"To sin by silence, when we should protest, makes cowards out of men."~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"There's something wrong with your character if opportunity controls your loyalty." ~ unknown

"Man can now fly in the air like a bird, swim under the ocean like a fish, he can burrow into the ground like a mole. Now, if only he could walk the earth like a man, this would be paradise."~ Tommy Douglas

"You don't write a song like 'God Save The Queen' because you hate the English race. You write a song like that because you love them, and you're fed up with seeing them mistreated."
~ Johnny Rotten

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." ~ J Krishnamurti

"The attainment of a just society is the cherished hope of civilized men." ~ Pierre Trudeau

“I am just one of the people who is sick of the social order, sick of the establishment, sick to my soul of it all. To me, American society is nothing but a cancer. And it must be exposed before it can be cured. I am not the doctor to cure it. All I can do is expose the sickness.” ~ Nina Simone

“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it.” ~ John Lennon

"It was true that I didn't have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition. I mean, a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?" ~ Charles Bukowski

"Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it."~ George Santayana

“If you don’t have a sense of community or a higher power, then you blame yourself, think bad of yourself, struggle, and try to divert. One form of diversion is entertaining. If you can make thousands love you, you’ll be all right. But in fact, it makes no fucking difference. It’s a kick when you’re on stage, but an hour and a half later, it starts all over”~ Peter Tork

"If you don't connect yourself to your family and to the world in some fashion, through your job or whatever it is you do, you feel like you're disappearing, you feel like you're fading away, you know? I felt like that for a very very long time. Growing up, I felt like that a lot. I was just invisible; an invisible person. I think that feeling, wherever it appears, and I grew up around people who felt that way, it's an enormous source of pain; the struggle to make yourself felt and visible. To have some impact, and to create meaning for yourself, and for the people you come in touch with."~ Bruce Springsteen

"I’m full of dichotomies. I’m a multi-dichotomist man, to put it mildly. And there’s no possible way I could rationalize them because I'm not an intellectual man, so I can’t analyze and take things apart and put them back together again. I’m an instinctive man; a subjective man; a subjective, instinctive human being. I go where ever my emotions suggest that I should go. I pay much more attention to my emotions than to my brain. My intellect, THE intellect is, in my opinion, suspect. I mean, look where the hell the intellect has taken us. Look around you, read the newspapers! It has brought us to the brink, literally to the brink, of mass destruction of the world. So I don't trust it." ~ Farley Mowat

"I tend to follow a very nocturnal sort of existence mainly because I don't much care for sunlight. Bright colours of any kind depress me, in fact. And my moods are more or less inversely related to the clarity of the sky, on any given day... my private motto has always been that behind every silver lining there is a cloud." ~ Glenn Gould

“The Holidays are a time to try and assuage our deep seated feelings of guilt, failure, loneliness, and utter desperation... through a series of ill-fated, barely memorable, booze-fuelled liaisons with people you wouldn’t normally share a car ride with, let alone a mattress." ~ Scotty Campbell

"Christmas: an expensive interruption, predicated on lies and greed. Oh, and then there's the music." ~ unknown

"Christmas is not so much a holiday as it is an annual crisis of love." ~ Loudon Wainwright, the second

"It's New Year's Eve once again. That one night in the long calendar year where it's completely socially acceptable to kiss people you normally wouldn't spit on." ~ Scotty Campbell

"I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me." ~ Anais Nin

"Easter... an annual reminder of how boring my own death is likely to be." ~ Scotty Campbell

"I don't smoke pot. It dulls my hatred." ~ Darlene Conner (Sara Gilbert), Roseanne

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." ~ George Orwell

"People deserve the truth. They deserve honesty. The best music is essentially there to provide you with something to face the world with." ~ Bruce Springsteen

"Every night I get the blues, greens and yellows and chartreuses. You're still living with me. I'd rather be lonely. All the time I look around for excuses to leave town. Everybody wants somebody, but I'd rather be lonely. Loneliness is happiness, it takes less than two. I confess I digress from it when I'm with you. Let's make a brand new start, separate, and stay apart. I've had enough having and holding, I'd rather be lonely. I think that I need some space. Every day you're in my face. How can I get rid of you? I'd rather be lonely. One more verse, a few more words. Love is for the bees and birds. Not for a human being like me, I'd rather be lonely."
~ Loudon Wainwright III

"She was everything one could want... lovely, smart, hard working, responsible, sexy, reads all the right books. His mind went immediately to: 'If only I weren't me.'"
~ Scotty Campbell

"What I am is an alarmist, which is in the same ballpark as the hypochondriac or, should I say, the same emergency room. Still there is a fundamental difference. I don’t experience imaginary maladies — my maladies are real. What distinguishes my hysteria is that at the appearance of the mildest symptom, let’s say chapped lips, I instantly leap to the conclusion that the chapped lips indicate a brain tumor. Or maybe lung cancer. In one instance I thought it was Mad Cow."
~ Woody Allen

"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."~ Stephen King

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."~ Winston Churchill

"My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all."
~ John Lennon

"An artist is an artist because he is not happy with the world, so he creates his own existence."~ Robin Gibb

"The highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and let the chips fall where they may."
~ John F Kennedy

"A writer, or any artist, can't expect to be embraced by the people. You just keep doing your work - because you have to. It's your calling." ~ Patti Smith

“How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?” ~ Nina Simone

"Music washes away from the soul the dust of every day life"
~ unknown

"Not all who wander are lost."~ J.R.R. Tolkien

"Immature: a word boring people use to describe fun people." ~ unknown

"I popped the Pill on Sunset Blvd and searched for my identity through rock and roll -a women's libber in my own right. What I wanted was to take care of a man who played music; someone who might even be able to yank out my own lurking creativity."~ Pamela des Barres

“Music bridges the gap between human beings. We are privileged to be able to do it.”~ David Crosby

“Every generation, as it grows, finds the Beatles for themselves.”~ Sir George Martin

"GOD is a concept by which we measure our pain".
~ John Lennon

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I'm out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." ~ Marilyn Monroe

"I'm not saying I wasn't flawed or amateurish. But you can never say I did anything to appease the music business."
~ Patti Smith

"There is no greater burden than having great potential."
~ Linus (from the Peanuts cartoon)

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." ~ George Orwell

"If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism." ~ Hunter S Thompson

"I don't want any more bullshit anytime during the day... from anyone, and that includes me"
~ Jack Rebney, the Winnebago Man

"Some humans ain't human. Some people ain't kind. They lie through their teeth, with their head up their behind. You open up their hearts, and here's what you'll find. Some humans ain't human. Some people ain't kind." ~ John Prine

“Most guys I know are assholes. I have some great asshole friends, but that’s not the point. Friendship has got nothing to do with that. It’s 'can you hang, can you talk about this without any feeling of distance between you?' Friendship is the diminishing of distance between people. That’s what friendship is, and to me it’s one of the most important things in the world.” ~ Keith Richards

"My heart will always be filled with gratitude to Bruce for one simple reason: without Scooter, there's no Big Man."
~ Clarence Clemons

"All I'll be is a smile on your face that your wife won't understand."~ Margaret 'Hot Lips' Houlihan

"It's because women really just want to be rescued."
~ Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City

"Love is giving someone the power to destroy you... but trusting them not to." ~ unknown

"You can forgive a fool because he only runs in one direction and doesn't deceive anybody. It's the deceivers who make you feel bad." ~ Charles Bukowski

"People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason the world is in chaos is because things are being loved and people are being used." ~ unknown

“What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.”
~ Elie Wiesel

“People say, ‘You must be happy all the time.’ And I think, ‘What kind of shallow, silly person would that make me?’"
~ Dolly Parton

"Happiness is not on my list of priorities. I just deal with the day to day things. If I'm happy, I'm happy - and if I'm not, I don't know the difference... knowing you are the person you were put on the earth to be - that's more important than being happy." ~ Bob Dylan

"Well, this whole notion that we have to be happy is a ridiculous notion. I mean, let's be honest. Paul Quarrington, as you know, died only two weeks ago and I'm really sad about that. I'm devastated. But while I was crying in his office, my therapist said, 'you have issues with abandonment'. I replied, 'this isn't fucking abandonment. Paul's my best friend and he's going to die. Why are you going on about abandonment?' All this is to say, there's a lot in life to be sad about. And the notion that if you're sad there must be something wrong with you, is extremely absurd. Having said that, I've been on Prozac since '97." ~ Dan Hill

"Music is the biggest motivation in my life, and you can't make really good art if you are happy. I think Rufus (Wainwright) and I strived for a certain kind of pain to make us better at what we do."~ Teddy Thompson

"Any fool can be happy. It takes a real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep." ~ Clive Barker

"Happiness is not on my list of priorities. I just deal with day-to-day things. If I’m happy, I’m happy – and if I’m not, I don’t know the difference. Knowing that you are the person you were put on this earth to be – that’s much more important than just being happy." ~ Bob Dylan

"People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.” ~ Jim Morrison

“She secretly refused to believe that anyone loved anyone. Families lived in a wasteful atmosphere of custom and kissed one another with secret indifference. She thought the people of this world moved about in an armor of egotism, drunk with self-gazing, athirst for compliments, hearing little of what was said to them, unmoved by the accidents that befell their closest friends, in dread of all appeals that might interrupt their long communion with their own desires.”~ Thornton Wilder

"For me, a song is the main kind of method of encapsulating an emotion. My songs have a definite strong emotional core... ya know, (laughs) there's a school. Personally, if it's not written in blood, and brought about by some sort of emotional sacrifice, whether it be happiness or sadness or experience, it doesn't say anything to me."
~ Rufus Wainwright.

"Music is supposed to be entertaining and if it touches you emotionally, so much the better. Sometimes you do it to save your own life, not anybody else's. That's why I write. I'm not trying to change anybody else's life or the world, I'm trying to keep from blowing my own brains out. That's the real point."
~ Guy Clark

“Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings. That's what music is to me.” ~ Janis Joplin

"The deepest people are the ones who've been hurt the most."
~ unknown

“I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”
~ Tom Waits

"The truth hurts for a little while, but lies hurt forever."~ unknown

“I picture Cupid, alone in a bar, drunk, chain-smoking, frustrated, bitter, desperate, ready to trade in his bow for a bazooka.”~ Scotty Campbell

"Isn't it strange that two strangers, suddenly don't feel so strange?It's something familiar, though this time it's different... what they're in for feels like sea change. Isn't it weird that two weirdos can wind up not feeling that weird? It's all so momentous, yet perfectly normal. Scary, but not to be feared. And it starts with a sentence that might last a lifetime, or it all might just go down in flames. If I let you know me, then why would you want me? But each day I don't is a shame. Each day I don't is a great shame. Isn't it great that two people together, can tear down one wall? The handwriting is on it, it's not hieroglyphic. That barrier just has to fall. Isn't it sad that most people stay so lonely, it's almost a crime? We might be strange weirdos, but it can't be normal to be frightened so much of our time." ~ Loudon Wainwright III

"I always think of it as my most personal record [Nebraska] that dealt with what happens when all these things that I believed in when I was 25... what happens when all these things don't work? What happens when all those things just break down? What happens when your friends fail you, or you fail your friends... and you're all alone? What happens when you can't find a job and you can't find some place to work? What are you left with? Can you live? Can you go on? At the time I didn't know the answer. I didn't know if you could or not. I know that isolation to me feels about the most dangerous thing on earth."~ Bruce Springsteen

"In my next life I want to live my life backwards. I'll start out dead and get that out of the way. Then I'll wake up in an old people’s home feeling better every day. I'll get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect my pension, and then when I start work, I'll get a gold watch and a party on my first day. I'll work for 40 years ...until I'm young enough to enjoy my retirement. I'll party, drink alcohol, and be generally promiscuous, then I'll be ready for high school. Then I'll go to primary school, become a kid, and play. I'll have no responsibilities, I'll become a baby until I'm born. And then I'll spend the last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service, larger quarters every day and then voila! I'll finish off as an orgasm.”~ Woody Allen

“I don't know about other people, but when I wake up in the morning and put my shoes on, I think, Jesus Christ, now what?”~ Charles Bukowski

“Son, I just want you to know:
life is a black, sucking vortex of anguish and despair, filled with brief moments of false hope and empty joy, all the while dragging you inevitably closer to final, absolute, and eternal death. Enjoy your day. Love always, Dad."
~ note on a dresser

"Your heroes turn out to be assholes, and the light in the tunnel that you're chasin' is a train".
~ unknown

"I don't mean to sound bitter, cold, jaded, cynical or angry, but I am, so that's how it comes out."
~ Bill Hicks

“Let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

"You're the one who broke my heart. You're the reason my world fell apart. It's guys like you that make me cry, yet I still love you, don't ask why." ~ Unknown

"It's not death that separates people; it's the absence of love."
~ Jim Morrison

"Since you're gone, deep inside it hurts. I'm just another sad guest on this dark earth. I want to believe in the mercy of the world again... make it rain, make it rain!" ~ Tom Waits

"The truth is... everybody is going to hurt you. You just have to find the ones worth suffering for."~ Bob Marley

"Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do, you apologize for the truth." ~ Benjamin Disraeli

“If you're looking for sympathy you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”~ David Sedaris

"Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes." ~ William Gibson

"It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone." ~ Rose Kennedy

"I'm amazed that men like you can be so shallow, thick and slow. There is not a man among you who knows or cares if I come or go!"
~ Ted Neeley (Jesus), Jesus Christ Superstar

"In the quick of the night they reach for their moment and try to make an honest stand. But they wind up wounded, not even dead." ~ Bruce Springsteen

"The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity."~ George Bernard Shaw

"The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference."
~ unknown

"The longer we listen to one another with real attention the more commonality we will find in all our lives. That is, if we are careful to exchange with one another life stories, and not simply opinions." ~ Barbara Deming

“We met a lot of really good people, but I never met one person who really impressed me. The first person to ever impress me in my life was Ravi Shankar. And he was the only person who didn’t try to impress me. It was by his being. He taught me so much without actually saying a word. It was by example.” ~ George Harrison

“Great spirits have always encountered opposition from mediocre minds. The mediocre mind is incapable of understanding the man who refuses to bow blindly to conventional prejudices and chooses instead to express his opinions courageously and honestly.” ~ Albert Einstein

"I'd rather die of thirst than drink from the cup of mediocrity."
~ Stella Artois

"I have a low tolerance for mediocrity in music and life. I'm into pain and joy and the in-between doesn't interest me."
~ Steve Earle

“How can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointment can bring?” ~ Tom Robbins

"I will not be a common man because it is my right to be an uncommon man. I will stir the smooth sands of monotony."
~ Peter O'Toole

"It's not the time in your life, it's the life in your time."
~ Bruce Springsteen

"Time, as far as my father was concerned, was a gift you gave to other people." ~ Michelle Obama

"Dear Optimist, Pessimist and Realist... while you guys were arguing about the glass being half full or half empty, I drank it." ~ The Opportunist

“There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.” ~ Buddha

"Love don't make things nice. It ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We're not here to make things perfect.... we're here to ruin ourselves, break our hearts, love the wrong people, and die. The storybooks are bullshit."~ Nicolas Cage, Moonstruck

"You're a victim too Flagg. But you're such an unbelievable example of walking fertilizer, it's hard for me to care."
~ Dr. Sidney Freedman, M*A*S*H

“I might be the only person on the face of the earth that knows you are the greatest woman on earth. I might be the only one who appreciates how amazing you are in every single thing that you do... and in every single thought that you have. And how you say what you mean, and how you almost always mean something that’s all about being straight and good. I think most people miss that about you. And I watch them wondering how they can watch you bring their food and clear their tables and never get that they just met the greatest woman alive. And the fact that I get it, makes me feel good... about me.”
~ Melvin (Jack Nicholson), As Good As It Gets

“You make me want to be a better man.”
~ Melvin (Jack Nicholson), As Good As It Gets

"Why go out for hamburger when you have steak at home?"
~ Paul Newman (on fidelity to his wife, Joanne Woodward)

"She's faced the hardest times you could imagine. And many times her eyes fought back the tears. And when her youthful world was about to fall in, each time her slender shoulders bore the weight of all her fears, and her sorrow no one hears, still rings in midnight silence, in her ears... let her cry, for she's a lady. Let her dream, for she's a child. Let the rain fall down upon her. She's a free and gentle flower, growing wild."
~ Wildflower by Skylark

"Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm." ~ Winston Churchill

"I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth,
I didn't come to fool you.
And even though
it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah"
~ Leonard Cohen

"Parrotheads are just like Deadheads, but with money."
~ unknown

"You have to be a bastard to make it, and that's a fact. And the Beatles are the biggest bastards on earth." ~ John Lennon

"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench,
a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free,
and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
~ Hunter S Thompson

"I could name on less than five fingers the individuals who've become tremendously successful, who have changed positively."~ Bill Graham

"Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value."
~ Albert Einstein

"If you're going to do what you want to do, and be as challenging as you want to be in this day and age, and not completely suck everybody's penis, you have to treat the music industry as a type of war." ~ Rufus Wainwright

“The make or break of a show is how well the artists perform. But we have to make certain that the sound is good, the lights are good, the dressing rooms are clean, there’s paper in the toilet room, the hot dogs are hot, and whatever else goes into it. And what that takes is mania.” ~ Bill Graham

"The two most misused words in the entire English vocabulary are love and friendship. A true friend would die for you, so when you start counting them on one hand, you don't need any fingers."~ Larry Flynt

"We build too many walls and not enough bridges."
~ Isaac Newton

"It's no good pretending that any relationship has a future if your record collections disagree violently, or if your favorite films wouldn't speak to each other if they met at a party."
~ Nick Hornby

"Your blessing in life is when you find the torture you're comfortable with." ~ Jerry Seinfeld

“I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.” ~ JB Brooks, (John Wayne), The Shootist

“I will fight for your right to be weird, just as I know you will fight for mine.” ~ Hunter S Thompson

"When you get to the very bottom of the human soul, where the nit is slamming into the grit and you're sinking, but you reach down to help someone who's sinking worse than you are... everybody gets high." ~ Wavy Gravy

"One day I was pretty upset, and we walked in the garden. We didn't say much for a long time. We sat down on a bench. He really went inside me. He wanted to find out what made me so sad. And he did this in such a fantastic way. I can't repeat the words or tell you exactly what it was, but he did it in such a fantastic way that made me feel good. He found out what the problem was in no time. Nobody had ever done that before and will never do it again." ~ Klaus Voormann on George Harrison

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart."
~ Helen Keller

"Hearts will never be practical until they can be made unbreakable."~ The Wizard of Oz

"I should, of course, have been warned. Our differences were plain to see; that I chose not to see them said much about my fantasies, my desire to please and my denial of reality. I was not just a product of the 60s; I was, by nature, volatile, oversensitive, quick to take offence, prey to burst of exuberance and energy soon followed by deep troughs of melancholy." ~ Margaret Trudeau

"Why do some people say 'grow some balls'? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you really want to get tough, grow a vagina... those things take a pounding!" ~ Betty White

"If you think all men are created equal, you haven't seen Bo Diddley in the shower." ~ Ronnie Hawkins

"The only thing better than roses on my piano is...
tulips on my organ!" ~ Tom Waits

"If I see something sagging, dragging and bagging, I have it nipped, tucked and sucked." ~ Dolly Parton

"The important thing is to write music that people will sing generations from now; for the unborn. Human emotions and melodies are always what we’ve stuck to, because that’s perennial as the grass. People will always be able to relate to it, young and old.” ~ Robin Gibb

"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." ~ Ernest Hemingway

"If you do not breathe through writing; if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then do not write, our culture has no use for it." ~ Anais Nin

“Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.”
~ Frank Zappa

"More often than not, even the people and even the moments and even the circumstances that you feel you can go to for stability, for that piece of happiness, can all of a sudden shift, and can all of a sudden become tainted. And everything that you believe, or even that small moment of connection that you can feel can sometimes be destroyed. And I’m not a negative person, I’m shockingly, somewhat of a realist. And I’m a very passionate person, so I don’t like to expect that shift, I don’t like to expect for things that I love to become malignant or to become a great disappointment. But it happens. And it’s devastating. Every time." ~ Davey Havok

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive." ~ James Baldwin

“And once you live a few good stories, after you’ve fucked up a little, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can't go back to being normal; you can't go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time.” ~ unknown

"Millions of books have been written on every conceivable subject by all these great minds, and in the end, none of 'em knows anything more about the big questions of life than I do. Jeez, I read Socrates, ya know. He used to knock off little Greek boys, so what the hell's he got to teach me? And Nietzsche with his theory of eternal recurrence who said we're going to live the life we live, over and over again, the exact same way, for eternity. Great. That means I'll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It's not worth it."
~ Woody Allen

"To live is to suffer. To survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears this to be true."
~ James Branch Cabell

“The forecast today is overwhelming depression with scattered betrayal , and a high probability of melancholy coupled with intermittent bouts of black rage.” ~ Scotty Campbell

"If we're gonna fight a disease, let's fight one of the most terrible diseases of all: indifference."
~ Robin Williams as Hunter "Patch" Adams

"Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet."~ Bob Marley

"Rufus (Wainwright) put a lot of effort into his press and publicity duties. He was an engaging interviewee, no matter how obscure the publication or how few readers it might expect to reach. When the tape recorder or camera was clicked on, he could usually be relied upon to deliver. 'I've had a lot of practice in front of the mirror', he explained to the Phoenix New Times. 'I stayed up long enough doing mock interviews with Letterman and Barbara Walters in bed, before masturbating."~ Kirk Lake, There Will Be Rainbows

"Loudon [Wainwright] writes bitterly funny and heartbreaking folk music, which has inspired me to be honest in my own work. He is truly fearless. Commercial considerations don't seem to matter much to him. His music is gorgeous and hilarious and painful. It is everything I hope to achieve in my career." ~ Judd Apatow

"The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear."
~ J Krishnamurti

"Fear not your enemies, for they can only kill you. Fear not your friends, for they can only betray you. Fear only the indifferent, who permit the killers and betrayers to walk safely on the earth."~ E Yashinsky

"We are each on our own path, doing exactly what we are supposed to do, and I have to learn to let go. I've been of two minds lately: the-standing-up-for-myself-proud woman versus the-cosmic-acceptance-of-everything-in-its-proper-place. I know I can no longer present myself on a silver platter to anybody, but I refuse to play the fucking game, and I'm interested in drawing someone to me who has no interest in playing it either." ~ Pamela des Barres

"I was being interviewed by an intelligent man who obviously took my novel very seriously, and he asked, simply enough, 'How has returning to Christ actually influenced your life?' I found myself thinking about this and then answering, 'It demands of me that I love people'. This was a turning point, this simple acknowledgement. Because I began to realize what the message of Christ was for me: to love my friends and to love my enemies. And the mystery was that loving my friends was sometimes harder than loving my enemies. And that if one loved both, completely and sincerely, and if one could convince others to do this as well, one could, theoretically, bring the Kingdom of Heaven to earth... I am a baby Christian when it comes to loving. I am just learning. So far were my daily thoughts from loving people that I have a lifelong vocation now in learning how to find Christ in every single person for whom I meet. Again and again, I fail because of temper and pride. I fail because it is so easy to judge someone else rather than love that person. And I fail because I cannot execute the simplest operations - answering an angry email for instance, in pure love." ~ Anne Rice

"Age doesn't protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age." ~ Anais Nin

"I had this song (on Boys In The Trees) called Haunting. Basically you don't have to see someone for a long, long time for them to still be inside you. There's no way of killing it off; it's kind of an obsession. And some people do have that affect on me. I have a good memory, especially for emotions. I never get over strong feelings." ~ Carly Simon

"Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place."
~ Zora Neale Hurston

“Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us, but we can't strike them all by ourselves.” ~ Laura Esquivel

"Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same." ~ Adlai E Stevenson

"After we made love I knew it was over. Did I ever really love Big, or was I addicted to the pain? The exquisite pain of wanting someone so unattainable?
~ Carrie Bradshaw, Sex and the City

"The hottest love has the coldest end." ~ Socrates

"Joy lives concealed in grief." ~ Rumi

"Imperfection is beauty; madness is genius. And it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring."
~ Marilyn Monroe

"Art and love are the same thing: it's the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you."~ Chuck Klosterman

"I'm obsessed with death I think. It's a big subject with me. I have a very pessimistic view of life. You should know this about me if we're gonna go out. I feel that life is divided up into the horrible and the miserable. Those are the two categories. The horrible would be like terminal cases, blind people, cripples. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So when you go through life you should be thankful if you're miserable."
~ Wood Allen, Annie Hall

"It isn't the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it's the pebble in your shoe."~ Muhammad Ali

“Too often in her life, love had been defined as... humiliation with occasional roses." ~ unknown

"The truth is... we hide because we want to be found, we walk away to see who will follow, we cry to see who will wipe away the tears, and we let our hearts get broken to see who will come and fix them." ~ unknown

"I cry a lot because I miss people. They die and I can't stop them. They leave me and I love them more."
~ Maurice Sendak

"I remember awakening one morning and finding everything smeared with the color of forgotten love." ~ Charles Bukowski

“They say time heals. It’s bullshit. Time’s a thief.”
~ Bobby Cannavale as Dr. Miguel Cruz on Nurse Jackie

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish it's source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings." ~ Anais Nin

“The wreckage and the ruin and the heartbreak is all worth it. Life is tragedy, broken by moments of unworldly bliss, making the tragedy bearable.”~ Bruce Springsteen

"I may not lead the most dramatic life, but in my brain it's War and Peace everyday." ~ Rufus Wainwright

“For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.”~ Hunter S Thompson

"The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless." ~ Tolstoy

"We go through life. We shed our skins. We become ourselves." ~ Patti Smith

"This thing we call existence, who knows what it all means? Time and Life and People are just glossy magazines." ~ Loudon Wainwright III

"Too often in her life, love had been defined as 'humiliation with occasional roses.'" ~ unknown

"For her fifth wedding, the bride wore black and carried a scotch and soda." Phyllis Battelle

"If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it." ~ Ernest Hemingway

"Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards." ~ Soren Kierkegaard

"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery. The artist's job is not to be clear, to be heard fully or understood, or to even be liked. The job of an artist is to deepen the mystery within each person that crosses their path so much that they have no choice but to give up shallowness." ~ Francis Bacon“ "Happiness is a fleeting moment of a day. It's not a state of being. If you're happy all the time, something's wrong with you. We are put on this earth to toil and to make things. Making the world a better place is not a happy job." - John Mellencamp “There was a young lady named Sally, who enjoyed the occasional dally. She sat on the lap of a well-endowed chap, and griped, ‘Sir, you’re right up my alley.’” ~ unknown

Live Music Head

Friday, October 24, 2008

Kevin Quain and the Mad Bastards

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