| November 14th, 2004 03:42 PM |
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| Barney Fife |
Hey, what happened to that Beat Farmers and Country Dick Montana thread that that Wild bill Guy put up? That was interesting stuff.
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| November 17th, 2004 04:16 PM |
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| Barney Fife |
Here's a good article on Country Dick. Nicky Hopkins played on the Beat Farmers' 1987 album "Pursuit Of Happiness." The Beat Farmers were big fans of The Kinks.
http://www.hbo3.com/dick/
The Last Of The Grown Men
The Life & Death of Country Dick Montana
by Howard Owens
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Dressed in black, Kim grips the corner of the jukebox for balance. She punches a number and tries to focus on the juke's menu; her rings glitter in the shine from a neon beam.
A Donna Summers tune starts to throb through speakers hanging from the ceiling. "I didn't play this shit," Kim yells to the bartender. "Punch the button."
That song ejects. With three clicks, the next one queues up. Again it's the wrong song. Rosie taps a button behind the bar. Kim gets two more chances for her last dollar. Two lame hits: If Country Dick Montana were in the bar this Friday night, would he approve of moldy '70s sap pumping from the box?
"Hey," says a patron, "those are good songs." Rosie shrugs. "It's her dollar."
Kim takes another stab at the numbers, clearly having a hard time focusing on the ivory buttons. She hasn't stopped drinking since 10:30 a.m. Thursday, when she learned Country Dick Montana, leader of the Beat Farmers, died Wednesday night while performing in Whistler, British Columbia.
Kim is a bartender at the Spring Valley Inn. Tonight, she isn't working. She's mourning. She's workd at the Inn for a year. She took the job because she knew the Inn was one spot Dick liked to drink when he wasn't on tour.
The dive bar, in a ramshakle strip mall, next to a used car lot and across the street from a recycling center, is where a Beat Farmer boot first counted time. Back in 1983, the Beat Farmers would push the pool table out of the way and set up their equipment. The barroom, only about 30 feet wide by 150 feet long, would fill up with bikers, punks, mods, longhairs and Inn regulars.
Those were wild nights, when the band played for $50 and all the booze they could drink. Country Dick Montana would swig beer and cuss, spin bottles of brew through the smoky air and splash liquor all over himself and his fans, including the 18-year-olds he let in through the back door. The music was a roots, rock, country hybrid played at hyper speed. Too rockin' to be called country, and with one spur janglin', too country to be accepted by pop rockers.
The Beat Farmers didn't even graduate to a larger venue before Rhino Records signed them to record their first album, Tales of the New West, which contained the band's signature song, "Happy Boy."
Kim first met Country Dick in 1985.
"I loved the guy," she says. "I loved that deep voice, and my favorite thing was that he was tall." She shakes her head and rubs her eyes trying not to cry. She points to a newspaper article that discusses his use of drugs. "That's not the Dick I knew.
"He used to come in here two or three times a month and get drunk," she adds. "He didn't do drugs. He would sit here and drink and write songs."
Rosie, passing by with a couple of empties, adds, "Yeah, and a lot of people would hide from him because they didn't want to wind up in one of his damn songs."
When Kim's tune comes on the juke, the five Inn patrons stop talking. They listen. A voice rumbles about two octaves below the bellow of a foghorn:
"In a bar in Toledo, across from the depot, at a bar stool she took off her rings.
"I thought I'd get closer, so I walked on over and sat down and asked her name.
"When the drinks finally hit her, she said, 'I'm no quitter, but I finally quit living on dreams.
"'Hungry for laughter and here everafter, I'm after whatever the other life brings.'"
Dan McLain was a good boy in his young days. His sixth grade teacher told his father, Monte McLain, that Dan was his best student. That's why the elder McLain was so shocked when his son, at 12, was picked up for shoplifting.
"I just could not believe that my Dan, who had just been the most obedient child, would start displaying this kind of behavior," McLain said.
Dan attended First Baptist Church in El Cajon with his family almost from the cradle. He accepted Christ at an early age. He went to church and Sunday School every week. But sometime around his 13th birthday, he began developing a streak of rebelliousness.
"He wanted to grow his hair, I remember," said McLain. "That was a big deal. He almost ran away from home. I found him several blocks away with bags of clothes. We sat down at a nearby golf course and talked it out.
"He wasn't communicative," McLain added. "It was hard for him to verbalize things. I found out from friends more about how he felt about me than I ever heard from him."
Sandy haired and lightly freckled, the young Dan McLain wasn't a calloused rebel. He cared for people and wanted to help them. He was shy and sensitive, not prone to talking much. He kept strong feelings to himself. When his dog Big Sweet died -- "big" being a misnomer for the squat, almost legless creature -- Dan locked himself in his room after the family funeral and didn't come out for a week.
If there was anything he could do for a friend, he would do it. A trait, lifelong friends say, he never lost.
"My last memory of him is from a Halloween party a couple of years ago," said high school buddy John McDaniel. "He came in a Santa Claus costume. I think that's who he would really would have liked to have been. He really liked helping people."
Connie McLain-Brooks, his younger sister, said he was a protective big brother. In sixth grade, when her school's girl bully challenged her to a fight, Dan showed up behind the 7-11 to make sure it was a fair match.
"He cared a lot about his family and didn't want to see anybody get hurt," McLain-Brooks said.
In high school, Dan crawled under several rows of chairs to sneak backstage in an effort to convince singer John Sabastian to play a free concert at Grossmont High School. McDaniel said Dan did it for the school, not himself. The concert would have taken place, too, except administrators squashed the idea.
It was only one of several battles McLain waged with adults at Grossmont. He had such a reputation as a trouble maker that he almost didn't graduate with his class.
"I was very disappointed in the Grossmont experience," his father said. "We moved from Lake Murray to Fletcher Hills because I had always heard that the Grossmont district, and Grossmont High School in particular, were the finest schools around. But I've thought many times that the Grossmont experience wasn't that great and it left a bitter taste in my mouth."
McLain's career in school politics started his sophomore year. He tried running for class president but was barred from the ballot because his GPA wasn't high enough. Classmates say the popular prankster would have been a shoe-in. The next year, his supporters organized an effort to change the school's constitution. If an athlete could compete with a 2.0 GPA, why should a potential class officer be barred from running with a GPA below 2.4 but above 2.0?
In 1972, at the end of Dan's junior year, he ran for ASB vice president in tandem with McDaniel. It was the first time in the school's 40-year history that the president and vice president ran as a ticket. They campaigned as the anti-establishment candidates and drew votes from the disaffected as well as a number of jocks, who favored the athlete McDaniel. The duo won easily.
Even before Dan's senior year, when he took office, he found himself in conflicts with the school administrators.
A week before the fall semester, Dan decided it would be great to have a refrigerator in the ASB meeting room. McDaniel approached Vice Principal Vernon Finch.
"How would it look," said Finish, an ex-Marine who maintained a razor sharp crew-cut throughout his scholastic career, "for the student leaders who ran against the establishment to, in their first week in office, get a special favor?"
Finch left it up to McDaniel and McLain, McDaniel said. But Dan McLain didn't care about image. He trucked in a refrigerator and plugged it in. Finch, according to McDaniel, threw a fit and ordered it removed. As a protest, Dan turned the doorside toward the wall and left it sitting there, with it grimy backside facing the rest of the room, for half the year.
Once the school year started, McLain found new ways of getting into trouble, even when trouble was the last thing on his mind. In one incident, Dan ignited a controversy at the start of a school assembly.
It was normally McDaniel's duty to lead the pledge of allegiance at the start of school-wide functions, but one day near the beginning of the year, McDaniel wasn't available, so the duty fell to Dan.
The wooden bleachers squeaked as the students stood. The old gym had held many assemblies in its four decades. McLain stood on the stage at the north end and stepped up to the mic: "I pledge allegiance to the flag," he began. Then he stepped away from the mic. It was an innocent move, according to McDaniel, but some of the kids interpreted it as an anti-Vietnam War statement. They ran to administrators and complained.
Between assemblies, McDaniel cornered Dan and told him to not back away from the mic. "Now kiddies," said Dan when he opened the second assembly, "put your hands over your hearts and repeat after me."
It was pure sarcasm and pure Dan McLain.
"That's where he really got into trouble," McDaniel said. "He was mocking them."
Dan wanted to make a difference in school. He wanted to shake things up and get people involved. He didn't want to see the school run by the soshes (or socialites, the GHS term for silver-spoon kids).
At a rally in the quad one afternoon, Dan gave a speech that began: "I know we're all happy now; we're enjoying football and everybody is happy, but some of you are pissed off and you are the guys I'm concerned about."
It was a gutsy, funny speech, remembers friend Joel Kmak. But the administrators weren't pleased. They were quite pissed off, in fact, at McLain's choice of words. He had cussed in public, as a class officer, in front of the whole student body. It was cause for suspension.
The end for V.P. McLain came at an ASB meeting in late February. In an effort to rattle the staid soshes, who sought a high school atmosphere replete with pressed skirts, white blouses, lettermen's sweaters, penny loafers and button down collars, Dan brought in his friend Bill Caulfield to make a speech before the sosh-dominated ASB board. The discourse included a call for the students to lynch the principal.
It was up to McDaniel to break the news to Dan that unless he resigned, he was going to be expelled.
"I was feeling lousy," McDaniel said. "I went to his house and he was sitting on his couch. 'They want me to quit, don't they?' he said. He made it very easy on me. 'Those bastards can't take a joke,' he said."
McLain left office with some bitterness. In his resignation speech, reported in a March 16, 1973 edition of the Foothills Echo, he said: "I could no longer work with a Commission and ASB in general filled with narrow-minded, back-stabbing, short-sighted hypocrites."
The incident became a permanent part of Country Dick lore, promoted, and distorted, in part by McLain himself. In one version of the Beat Farmers Almanac, McLain writes: "In high school, during the height of student unrest, Dick found himself elected as student body vice-president. He later went on to become the biggest embarrassment in the 80-year history of Grossmont High when he was forced to vacate his office in the midst of scandal and mass arrests."
Classmate Steve Dana remembers that the school administrators assigned him to sit with McLain during commencement ceremonies. It was his job to keep McLain out of mischief. It was the only way school officials would allow McLain to graduate with his class.
"I remember it so clearly," Dana said. "When they introduced the administrators, Dan leaned over and tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Boo for me.'"
"You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille.
"Four ugly children and a crop in the field.
"I've had some bad times and I've had some sad times, but this time the hurting's for real.
"You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille."
Hanging on a wall in Country Dick's Spring Valley home was a fiddle. It was a well-traveled ax. It had been carried through Montana and Wyoming in all kinds of weather, played at every barn dance between Cheyenne and Missoula. The fiddle belonged to McLain's granddad. It was given to McLain by his father. Country Dick received it in his strong hands as a treasure.
There was never a time when music wasn't cherished in the McLain home. Monte McLain played piano by ear. Granddad played that fiddle and they often played together. Dan picked up piano by sixth grade and formed a band.
"All he ever wanted in life was to be in a band and be up on that stage," Monte McLain said.
In seventh grade, McLain's band was the Screaming Chickens and Dan wanted McDaniel to be the lead singer. McDaniel loved hanging out with his neighbor, but wasn't particularly attracted to performing.
The pair did the sort of things junior high boys do together, like trying to stay up all night while laying in the back yard watching for shooting stars. By ninth grade they were plotting ways to get booze and speed. When McDaniel and McLain got caught with speed, it was a turning point in McDaniel's life, helping to straighten him up a bit, he said.
Early in his high school years, McLain's musical taste began to veer away from what everybody else was listening to. He discovered the Kinks and the Who and the Rolling Stones. He also began uncovering for himself the roots of rock and roll: Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran and Jerry Lee Lewis.
"He was a couple of years older than me and my musical mentor," said Kmak, who's older brother was in McLain's class. "Every Friday evening he would come down to the house and we would go to the discount record house. He always knew what he wanted to buy and we would bring it home and put the platter on the stereo -- Who's Next, Sticky Fingers, the Muswell Hillbillies, Randy Newman. It was always fucking great. I mean, what high school kid brings home the Kink's Muswell Hillbillies?"
So enamored of the Kinks was McLain that he went to every show they played in San Diego and eventually became president of the Kinks Preservation Society. Another treasure on Country Dick's wall is a picture of him and Ray Davies backstage after a Kinks show.
In the mid to late 1970s there were two things San Diego County did not have: A good alternative record store and venues for kids to see local bands play original music. Dan McLain helped solve both of those problems.
He opened Monte Rockers -- named after his dad -- about half way between 54 Street and College Avenue on El Cajon Boulevard. It was a hole in the wall, but it soon became the main meeting place for local musicians into punk rock and new wave. Most of the records in the bins were discs he had taken from his own collection. He wanted to see this great music get into the hands of other people.
McLain was already well known in local music circles as a member of Queenie, a garage band that friends describe as his first quality project, and the Crawdaddys, a roots rock band before the term roots rock was invented.
One day, according to Gary Heffern, the original members of the Penetrators came into Monte Rockers, the location of a planned photo session. The band didn't have a drummer so they asked McLain to pose with a pair of drum sticks. He sat down at a drum kit and showed he could play, so the band asked him to sit in at their practices.
He was supposed to be no more than a practice drummer until a regular drummer could be found, but it dawned on the band that McLain was just what they were looking for. He was a born showman.
"He was a big John Wayne type," said Heffern, the band's lead singer. "He had this lovable gruffness."
Chris Sullivan, the bass player, remembers hanging out with McLain before Monte Rockers opened. They shared an interest in baseball, music and beer. He knew McLain was a good honky tonk piano player, but never expected him to become a drummer in one of his bands.
"He kept filling in for us and after a while we just realized, hey, he's got the same interest in music as us and the exact feel for the songs we're doing, why not?" Sullivan said. "He can keep working at drums and get better."
In McLain, not only did the Penetrators find a drummer, they found a promoter. The drummer was a master flyer maker and he also found venues for the band, such as the North Park Lions Club, which, before the Skeleton Club (now defunct) opened downtown, was about the only place in San Diego that would allow punk bands set up their gear.
Of course, the Penetrators all insist now that they were not a punk band. They were playing roots rock, but in 1977 any band that didn't play disco or heavy metal was tagged punk, especially bands that first came to the attention of local rock critics by opening for the Ramones.
The Penetrators recorded a single on their own and issued about 200 copies. It gained little attention, but local DJ Jim McInnis, who was then and is now with KGB-FM, knew McLain from shopping in Monte Rockers. McLain would loan McInnis records for his Modern Music show, which back then was the only time listeners could hear the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, the Clash, Elvis Costello or the Talking Heads on local radio.
McInnis took an interest in the Penetrators and brought them to the attention of his new business partner Randy Fuelle. The pair had opened a recording studio in Fuelle's garage and started a record label, World Records. On the band's new single, "Sensitive Boy" backed by "Stimulation," McInnis is credited with "spiritual guidance."
"They put that," said McInnis, "because they didn't want to say I loaned them $500. It was $500, by the way, that I never expected to get back, and sure enough I never did."
It wasn't long before the Pens were San Diego's top band, but a record contract with a major label remained elusive, even though new wave was beginning to crest across the nation. Bands like the Cars, Blondie and the B-52s were beginning to produce hits.
It was time for a change in musical direction, McLain decided, so he started a new project. While still performing with the Penatrators, he formed Country Dick and the Snugglebunnies.
The band was a collection of talented musicians who shared a love for early rock and the eccentric. Their stage names included Shameful Dick (future Beat Farmer Jerry Raney, who only sat in with the Bunnies) Dick Everly (Joey Harris) Everly Dick (Paul Kamanski) and, of course, Country Dick.
With so much talent, it was no wonder that members started getting other work. Harris's also led Joey Harris and the Speedsters. The Speedsters signed a big record deal and left for Australia, while other members had similar opportunities. The break up of the band was not a happy time for Country Dick.
The last song they ever performed together was "Lucille."
At the end of the song, McLain fell to the stage, looked up at the ceiling and sang, "You picked a fine time to leave me bunnies."
McLain and Raney first met while McLain was still in high school and Raney was a member of what was then probably San Diego's top band, Glory. By 1983, Raney had his own band, Jerry Raney and the Shames.
"After that last show," said Raney, "I walked up to him and said, 'What you're doing and the show you're doing is a lot better than what anybody else in town is doing and you have a better chance of making it.
"I left it at that," Raney added. "About two weeks later, I hear this deep voice on the phone, 'Hey Raney, you into starting a mobile musical pleasure machine?"
Chris Davies, Penatrators guitarist, won two 12-packs of beer when he suggested a name for the new band: The Beat Farmers.
"You bugger eatin' fat pig, you picked a fine time to leave me Lucille.
"Four ugly children and a crotch that won't heal.
"I've had some bad times and I've had some sad times, but this time the hurting is for real.
"You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille."
If you could resurrect Dan McLain and put him in a time machine and tell him he could go back 20 years and live a clean life and live to be 70, he wouldn't do it," says Ken Layne, a local musician who struck up a friendship with McLain shortly after the Beat Farmers played their first gig at the Spring Valley Inn. "I can almost hear him, '(in a deep voice) Fuck that shit. I'll take the drugs.' I can't imagine him doing anything else."
Life, for Dan McLain, most friends agree, was a 20 year party. There is some disagreement about how much of that party included drugs, but no disagreement that McLain liked to have fun.
In the days following Country Dick's death, fans began expressing their remorse on the Internet. The common comment was, "The Beat Farmers were the most entertaining band I ever saw."
A Beat Farmers show was a party and the party always started early for Country Dick. He showed up at gigs before the sound check, arriving with the road crew. While the rest of the band lounged at the motel, Country Dick was drinking and joking around with fans. He signed autographs, posed for pictures, remembered birthdays and faces. He drank and laughed and hugged old acquaintances.
Country Dick liked to joke and tell tales, made funnier when people believed them. More than one rock critic has written that McLain formed the Beat Farmers after being paroled from prison on a murder charge. McLain also placed his father -- in real life a pharmacist -- alternately in the music business and in a prison cell with Johnny Cash.
When the band was in England recording its second album, Buddy Blue remembers there were several other California bands at the same studio. There was a singer in another band who always looked at Blue strangely. The singer kept his distance from Blue, never talking to him and always watching him like he had some sort of disease. Finally, when Blue was unnerved enough by this man's behavior, he said something to McLain.
Country Dick got a hearty laugh. "I told him," he said to Blue, "that you are a former boxer, punch drunk and prone to violence, that you might strike out at any time, that you forget you're not in the ring and you start beating people up."
On stage, Country Dick was an imposing figure at a beefy 6 foot 4 inches tall, often dressed in a black duster with his cowboy hat slung low over his brow. He swaggered and sloshed beer, regaling the audience with campfire stories, walking on tables, knocking over drinks. He did his best to live up to a moniker some friends tagged on him: "The Last of the Grown Men."
The Beat Farmers were largely Country Dick's creation. After he recruited Raney, the pair went out looking for another guitarist. They settled on Buddy Blue, who impressed them with his ability to write rockabilly songs that sounded like 1950s originals. When the first bass player bailed on the project before the band's first gig, Blue introduced McLain to Rolle Dexter Love, who worked with Blue in the Rockin' Roulettes.
Blue and McLain were neighbors in a tiny apartment complex at Lemon Avenue and Third Street in La Mesa. The rent was a mere $150 a month, and the musicians got what they paid for -- peeling plaster, rotted pipes and plywood ceilings.
"We drank a lot of booze and took a lot of drugs," Blue said. "It was the musician thing. We also turned each other on to a lot of good music."
By the fall of 1983, the Beat Farmers had mastered about 100 songs, including a few unexpected lounge classics, like "Dim Lights," "Ballad of a Teenage Queen" and "Paradise." McLain's musical taste spanned Elvis Presley to Tom Jones and Hank Williams to Randy Newman. The Beat Farmers song list reflected the whole band's eclectic interests. The were ready for their first gig.
The shows at the Spring Valley Inn have become legendary. Blue is convinced those nights were the Beat Farmers at their best.
"We were really an incredible band," Blue said. "We were boastful, anarchistic, full of youthful energy."
Since the band was already playing in a bar without a cabaret license, they didn't worry too much about sneaking minors in. At 18, Layne became a regular at the shows.
"Dan was so frantic in those shows," Layne said. "He had to play that way because he was so frantic. He would play Merle Haggard at New York Dolls tempo. It was incredible."
After signing a record deal with Rhino, the Beat Farmers moved up to Bodies, and when the crowds become too large for Bodies, they became the house band at the Bacchanal.
The band's following included punks, cowboys and bikers. In 1984, the Beat Farmers officially became San Diego's top band when they won the Battle of the Bands, beating out another East County group, The Seventh. The Seventh were heavily influenced by Duran Duran, five English guys Country Dick hated. Bikers and other rowdy fans who showed up at Lehr's Greenhouse contest threated to bust the bar up if the Beat Farmers lost.
On the road, the Beat Farmers weren't the kind of band to trash motel rooms. It's a safe bet, however, that owners of particularly bad motels would regret the band's visit. There was the time, at one slovenly roadside inn, McLain evened the score by sticking oysters in light sockets and under the cover of the phone receiver -- places that would cause a stink but be hard to find. He also defecated under the mattress, taking a picture of his handiwork to prove to his bandmates that he really did it.
The image McLain built of Country Dick Montana as a hard living, hard drinking rocker was more than just an act, some friends say. He could drink barrels of booze and eat handfuls of mushrooms -- alcohol and drug intake that would paralyze most people -- and still function.
"He chose to live the way he did," Blue said. "It's not like he was some pathetic junkie. It's not like he was a slave to his vices. He loved and cherished and celebrated his vices. This is a person who quit smoking and never looked back. He used to tell me I ought to quit smoking. 'Cigarettes don't do anything for ya,' he said. 'They don't get you high. They don't make you feel good. There's a lot better ways to ruin your health than with cigarettes.'"
The mobile musical pleasure machine almost stopped rolling in 1990. McLain was diagnosed with cancer in his lymphs. He began the long process of recovery, which included surgery, producing a cut on his neck that he joked made him a walking PEZ dispenser.
Country Dick continued performing even when friends advised him to take it easy.
"There were times when he should physically have not been playing," said Kmak. "But he was Dan. It was his choice. He had his eyes wide open and he wouldn't let that cancer slow him down. He was quite a man."
After six albums -- two on Rhino and four with Curb Records -- the band found itself with no record contract. Curb had failed to promote the band. The Beat Farmers could pack any bar in the world, but they couldn't crack Billboard's Hot 100.
But that didn't stop Country Dick or the Beat Farmers. McLain always found ways to keep himself busy, and cancer or no cancer, he was going to perform. While the Beat Farmers rested, he formed the Pleasure Barons with Southern California musical hot shots Mojo Nixon, Dave Alvin (The Blasters) and Rosie Flores, among other.
With Country Dick and Mojo on the same stage, the Pleasure Barons went wild. Rock writers warned their readers when the Barons came to town to lock up their children and protect their valuables. The Barons went out on two tours and recorded an album for HighTone, Live in Las Vegas.
Layne had just moved from Europe to San Francisco when the Pleasure Barons rolled into town for a show. With a seat backstage and a bottle of whiskey from Country Dick, Layne was in awe. After the show, the two old friends sat and talked for hours. When Layne got up to leave, Country Dick growled, "We still got drinkin' to do." They headed off to the hotel. A band staying in the next room gave them some drugs and McLain and Layne talked until 8 a.m., when Layne suddenly remembered he was supposed to start a new job that day. He dashed home, changed his shirt and was in the office by 9 a.m.
"In true Country Dick style," Layne said.
In 1994, the band signed with Sector 2 Records. They hadn't been in a studio since 1989. Like all of their first six albums, their new effort, Viking Lullabys, was critically acclaimed but failed to sell.
The next disc, the band's eighth release, Manifold, came out a few months before the Beat Farmers departed on its Canadian tour.
When the band pulled into Whistler, British Columbia, they read a preview story in the local paper about their show that night. The feature described Country Dick Montana as "a man who already has one foot in the grave."
The show opened with Country Dick singing "Country Western Song." Then he moved to the drum kit for "Reason to Believe" and "Girl I Almost Married." At the end of the song, McLain slumped in his seat. Raney thought he need to catch his breath. McLain sometimes had a hard time breathing at high altitudes. Raney began picking a Hank Williams tune, "Setting the Woods On Fire." A moment passed and the band tried starting the next song. McLain hit a cymbal then looked up at Love. It was as if he was looking right through him.
Tom Ames, the road manager, knew something was wrong. He rushed to the stage. "Dan, what's wrong," Tom said. McLain couldn't answer. Ames held him in his arms and lowered him to the stage. Band members kicked the drum kit out of the way. He had a pulse, but his breathing was erratic.
When the paramedics arrived 10 minutes later, they hooked him to their monitors. They all saw the flat line.
Country Dick Montana died that quickly, with his boots on in front of a room packed with fans. "It seemed like he went painlessly," Raney said.
Even with the years of heavy boozing, his liver was in good shape, the coroner said. But his kidney had developed cysts, a condition Ames said McLain knew about.
"The coroner told me that had he lived, he would have died from that and that it would have been a slow painful death," Ames said. "It was better this way. He went quickly."
McLain, 40, leaves a world of saddened fans, relatives and friends.
"The best memory I will always have of him," said Kmak, "is how he got along with my father.
"I remember whenever he walked into the house, he would start playing the family piano. One day my dad asked him if he knew 'Alley Cat.' He didn't but he went out and learned it and the next time he came over -- and every time he came over after that -- he played it. My dad would dance around the piano with the biggest smile on his face."
"You picked a real bitchin' time to leave me Lucille. ..."
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| November 17th, 2004 04:20 PM |
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| F505 |
thanks..... can someone give me a summary? |
| November 17th, 2004 04:52 PM |
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| Barney Fife |
quote:
F505 wrote:
thanks..... can someone give me a summary?
Buy these albums today!!
Poor and Famous - Curb, 1989
Van Go - Curb, 1986
Viking Lullabys - Sector 2, 1994
The Devil Lied to Me (Country Dick's posthumous solo album) - Bar None Records, 1996
Then read the article tonight when you're listening to them. |
| November 17th, 2004 04:55 PM |
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| F505 |
quote:
Barney Fife wrote:
Buy these albums today!!
Poor and Famous - Curb, 1989
Van Go - Curb, 1986
Viking Lullabys - Sector 2, 1994
The Devil Lied to Me (Country Dick's posthumous solo album) - Bar None Records, 1996
Then read the article tonight when you're listening to them.
Thanks but it's night over here right now. And do you think I'll find these albums in a Dutch record store???? |
| November 17th, 2004 07:37 PM |
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| Barney Fife |
quote:
F505 wrote:
Thanks but it's night over here right now. And do you think I'll find these albums in a Dutch record store????
In a cool record store, yes. I'll be interested to know what you can find there.
Here are some available on-line:
http://beatfarmers.com/records.php
http://www.djangomusic.com/artist_m...d=RAND092512200
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Country Dick's Road Rules
From "Alt-Rock-A-Rama" published by Rolling Stone Press
Editor's note: On November 8, 1995, the unforgettable Country Dick Montana-drummer, vocalist and chief hell-raiser with San Diego's Beat Farmers-died with his boots on, onstage in front of a sold-out crowd. This is the code he lived by.
Hi! I'm Country Dick Montana and I get paid to act like I'm eleven! I just finished a six-week tour of Canada and the Midwest and I can't wait to get back out there in those un-airconditioned vans full of hungover Beat Farmers filling the air with involuntary responses to the outrageously violent ride (bad roads, worse shocks) while constantly arguing about some music you hate that's distorting the crappy little speakers that cut out on every bump after zero sleep 'cause we had to leave real early to be interviewed on the radio by some dickhead that got stuck covering for the one guy who's ever heard of us who split 'cause his dog was havin' puppies and he's got the only copy of our product that anyone's ever seen so we climb back in the van and Joey snaps the base of the passenger seat in half which inspires a cry of "I told you that would happen, you fuck!" and most of my fresh whopper to miss most of his face and splatter 'cross the driver's side of the van Jerry washed just this morning as we head down to the border to enjoy our four-hour momentum break while the bastards rifle through every square inch a few more times than they need to make us miss the soundcheck for where we star tonight as the only "non-local heavy metal" band but Rolle, seeking more distinction, takes so much Valium he can't remember pushin' me into the black hole at the side of the stage where they were on the other side but luckily the corner of the monitor board stepped in to break my fall and crack a rib which I knew bummed out my kidneys 'cause they were workin' the first two weeks of this tour but had finished passin' the stone two days before I met this rib that just 'bout cried thinkin' of how much fun they all coulda had workin' me together in that van...Ahh...But enough about me...Let's get you packed!
Crack open a beer. Grab that suitcase and listen up, 'cause this is important: always assume that whatever you take you out there will be lost, broken, or stolen. So leave all your precious items buried in the yard (and don't forget where).
All right, toss all your medical supplies, vitamins, lotions, sprays-whatever's in the bathroom-into a suitcase. Be sure to include every single pain killer you can get yer hands on! Don't ask-take! Trust me, it's worth the bitching out.
You will also need:
1 million cassettes and CDs (124,712 for misplacing; 91,039 for givin' away; 380,000 for thieves; 250,000 for breakage; 197,457 for throwin' out windows; 4 for playin'; rest for layin' 'round the floor)
All your clothes
1 cheap camera that your roommate probably won't even miss
2 rolls of duct tape
Most of a roll of somebody's stamps
1 rabbit's foot, 1 mojo bag, and 1 suitcase full of good luck candles
2 comfortable shoes
Everybody's sedatives
A copy of the "Beat Farmers' Bowl Report" - a detailed rating of North American rest rooms in categories ranging from acoustics to seat condition and water temperature. It'll become your best friend.
1 Swiss army knife
4 skin mags
An ice chest
2 pairs of sunglasses, 1 to hunt around for several times a day and 1 to replace the ones that just blew off when ya stuck yer dumb head out the van window
1 "Do not disturb" sign
5 international symbols for radioactivity
A condom
Some Super Glue and an extra large, all-purpose rock-solid alibi.
Bonus tip-if you're flying, pack a load of liquor into your carry-on before arriving at the airport!
Do:
Remember which states currently hold "immature" (under seven years of age) warrants for your arrest.
Drink the local brew-and love it!
Practice peeing in Bud bottles and shitting without sitting.
Know how to say "rest room," "bar," "taxi," and "hospital" in the tongue of wherever the hell you are.
Have the front desk refund you the $1.80 you may lose to that vending machine, now that you've got it.
Be in a country and western band whenever you get pulled over. It also helps to have an older brother suspended from the Chicago force for driving around town with his partner's suspected killer cuffed to the back bumper, and dig this: in the South, you can drink and drive naked in a carved ivory convertible with SATAN LOVES YOU painted on the sides and a senior citizen tied to the hood if you're related to the quarterback. So be that.
Save your receipts.
Do not:
Write any songs about being "on the road."
Even think about getting laid in England.
Open the mini bar.
Order spaghetti at Denny's.
Pee on toilet seats (I will find you!)
Tell Mojo Nixon your room number
Direct morning rush-hour traffic in Omaha with your pants around your ankles.
Leave your crack pipe on the dash.
Take souvenirs from the crypt of a voodoo queen-remember that zombies are even worse drivers than drunks.
Ask a cop where the nearest drive-thru liquor store is, what it's gonna take to get a message through his thick skull, how long the Village People have been broken up, or for change back from your five dollar bribe.
Use someone else's bus sock.
Random advice:
Harness the power of the guest list! It can cover your forgetful ass by being stocked with celebrities ("Of course, I put you on the list! Just tell 'em you're Nancy Reagan and John Wayne Bobbit!") and save your money ("How much would it be if I put you + 2 on the list?").
The party's in the roadies' room.
The sketchier you are, the better you'll look in artist's renderings.
You should be able to see more than just your face in the rearview mirror.
Onstage only play half of your most popular song and act all compromised about it in an English accent that's regularly dropped, and be clear about nothing except your genius and worshipability.
In interviews, remember to drift off in mid sentence, avoid eye contact by three to four inches, go to the bathroom for half an hour at least once, refuse to answer questions concerning your name, place, and date of birth, weight, height, and one more thing selected at randomand emotionally produce a photo of a dog that died when you were four. In England you should be from Texas and animatedly hostile towards these "tea-timin', sync-lipped lard feeders" that won't let you have a gun 'cause they're "wimpy-whiny-wipers of royal weenie-wackage that couldn't handle a drive-by drum machine memory bank trashing!" In the rest of Europe, just be from Texas.
For a duration-length, maid-free environment, combine surprise and high volume with a pottymouth tizzyfit highlighted by agressive nudity.
Even if you don't drink and hate tomato juice-start each day with a bloody Mary! You'll see.
Dealing with your accommodations:
Always demand a room on the top floor, and quickly establish yourself as the biggest problem in the joint (minor and even major problems mean nuthing to a total disaster!). If you are not the biggest problem on the premises, then you're probably up against a preexisting condition of considerable nastiness.
It is wrong to purposely damage your room or anything in it. However, if management and staff are evil, or you realize that your room sits above violated burial grounds, then what you need is a project of untraceable origin to keep your mind clear of "bad things."
(Note: Do not try this at home!)
March to the market and pick up a zip-lock baggie and one whole, uncleaned fresh fish. Now, return to your room and place your uncleaned and securely zip-locked tight aquatic bomb behind the grill of the Time-Release Natural Disaster Storage Unit (a.k.a. the Heater Vent). Mother Nature will take over from here, as she proves that although Fishy may be quite dead, he's still not quite done!. And sure enough, after a feverish week or so of super-natural gas-accelerated frenzy, the highly pressurized action becomes uncontainable in a dramatically explosive manner so sensorily devastating that even evil gets the hell out!
Of course, you'll be long gone by that time, or at least you'd better be! It's checkout time, so haul ass!!
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| November 17th, 2004 08:22 PM |
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| PolkSalad |
Don't forget Dave Alvin. |
| November 17th, 2004 08:40 PM |
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| Barney Fife |
Do many people in Europe know about Dave Alvin? I know he toured in Italy a few times.
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