Grifters: C er D?

this is kinda weird cause i was just talking to a co-worker of mine about that Hull show this afternoon I swear to god.
Told him how I made the classic american blunder...

our FIRST show overseas was in Hull, England. We flew into london, went and rented our equipment, stopped at a truck stop and had mushy peas and gravy then hit the road for the 5 or so hour drive to Hull.
So we were pretty zapped. When we finally pulled into the verdant paradise that is Hull (wink) I went right to the bar and got a beer. the big lug that ran the place and apparently lived upstairs (?) gave me a nice big pint and I took a sip and said 'Whoa man, I think your refrigeration unit is out or somethin;...'

So he loved me, I'm sure.

that was also the night whassisname came to the show and wrote about it. ... ...... god what was his name......
Everett True!

I remember my bass fell off me during our set and the head of he bass landed on my beer glass. But I caught it by the strap so it didn't fully hit the floor, the head just hit the pint glass with a 'tong' sound and a big triangular piece of glass broke off and landed in the glass. Since it was my last beer (fuckin' drink tickets!) I picked it up, pulled out the shard of glass and finished it off from the unbroken side.

hey. I've done grosser shit, believe me.

Btut Everett romanticized that moment in his article like it was some great punk rock moment. Really, I'm just a clumsy drunk.

Paul Jackson - still lives upstairs and still wears his Grifters shirt. No, really. . He gets quality beer in and turns it all into warm vinegar.Legendary cellarman - but it ain';t a cellar - I can't tell you where it is. So where you stay that night?
Legendary club though thanks to that man really - hey you tread the same boards as Radiohead, Oasis, PJ Harvey, Naked Raygun!, the once OK soul Asylum, God Machine, my band.

Take care.

Some nice insights there.

Let snobby people scoff, but I loved a lot of Grifters music- I really did. You had your own special sound and gave me a lot of pleasure.

Hull Is not too disimilar to Memphis btw. i guess you didn;t make it down town? The gallows and so on?

I remember ET being there. Wasn't he Kurdt Cobain's dad or something? He posts on here I think- or has done

really.

so how widely read is this board?

Cause i've been saying all this wacked out shit.

Tabloid journos, solicitors, Gary Numan, the peabody ducks, Poison Idea roadies.

Keep noodling that bass fella - us Limeys off to bed. Good talking to you. Cheers

goodnight you....Princes of Hull.

we stayed upstairs at the Adelphi that night. with the other band I think. It was just some big junky room with some sofas and carpets and crap layin around. it really was like some kind of weird dream.

mostly what i remember is our tour manager, who we'd obviously just met, this is our first night all bedding down together. a) he's walking around in some pretty tight Calvin Klein underwear and socks and thats about it. While we're all fully fully clothed for fear of bed-bugs ( which we had encountered before staying at some punk rock club in kansas) .

and b) our new TM gets up in the middle of the night and walks over to the wall near where Dave is sleeping, and he whips it out and starts to take a leak!

good times.

ps. no-one was peed on

If anyone's interested email me. I think he's asking 1500.

One memorable offstage moment happened in the front 'bar' at Adelphi. I was playing pool and heading for an eight ball ,of course, but then - mucky water started spurting onto the table from the lampshade above - the lights started to flicker, the dodgy indie band in the front started to wobble - and then - without warning - Jacko burst through the door leading 'upstairs' engulfed in steam and a fleabitten , dog chewed, very ill fitting towelling dressing gown- chanting 'Oh dear!' at his soggy ceiling- the hardcore scenescetter had overflowed his bath. Fkin rock n roll!

Please use this thread to continue to tell Grifters stories, they are highly enjoyable. I'm sure you have a million of 'em. Also, I listened to One Sock Missing a few days ago and "Bummer" is still in my head--no need to get it out at the present moment.

Best,

Clif Steele's Doppleganger

now THAT's funny!

btw i didn't mean to sound like I was ragging on Hull. We loved it. I remember tall tall grass growing out of the pavement and around the buildings. For being the first place I'd ever visited overseas I thought it was (sniff) magical. Even the Adelphi. That was such a great time.

What kind of bands have you seen over in Hull lately? Anything stick out?

bands, I mean.

thats digital.

imagine Scott and Gene Simmons hanging out backstage.

i do.

all the time.

Cinnamon was written one day when we were stuck at Dave's parent's house in Fayetteville Tennessee. I don't really remember why we were stuck there. But we were there for three days. and it was boring. We set up in their garage and killed as much time as we could rehearsing. ( I think we just had three days in between a couple of shows and it was a free place to stay..so..)

Some of you may remember that at live shows we used to do this thing where we would throw sheets of paper on the ground with notes written on them. Musical notes, like one sheet had a big G on it, another one had a big Bflat on it and so on. Sometimes at shows (usually during the bridge to Bummer ) one of us would walk up and step on the G and we'd all start jamming on G. Sometimes we'd step on a combination of notes. Like Dave would walk across and step on G, Bflat , and F or something and we'd try to hit it all together. Most of the time it was pretty wild. A few times it kinda fell on it's face. But for the most part it was pretty entertaining. one time we hung the notes over the stage so the entire audience could see what we were doing.

SO ANYWAY, back to the Shouse family garage. We thought we'd try writing a song using the note-sheets. Thats what Cinnamon is. thats why there are these dramatic key changes throughout the song. Like, within the verses. But especially in the third verse (?) where it's like a hot potato is being passed around.

it was just weird. Kind of an unnatural way of writing a song but fun for sure.

And here's a little spoiler..if you want to retain 'the mystery' read no further.
.
.
.
.
the crazy ending to Cinnamon was a total flub.
What happened was I had the idea for the fake-out ending while we were recording it (this would've been just a month or two after writing it in the garage) So I hit that bass riff "Boogay-Doogay Doo-dow , Boogay-Doogay Doo-dow, Boogay-Doogay Doo-dow. Boogay-Doogay Doo-dow" and Stan got lost and didn't know where the 1 was. So he came in on like, 2 and. (1and2and3and4and) but that was one of those happy accidents. We played it wrong but it sounded cool.

me and Stan use to have people come up to us and they would specifically point out that part of the song and it was like they thought we were from Frank Zappa's band or something. They'd be like "you guys are the tightest rhthym section, man!" and we'd just laugh.

We tried to play Cinnamon live a few times but the arrangement was so tight that invariably one of us would eff it up. So we gave up on it and we never wrote a song using the chord sheets again. But it was an interesting experiment.

Flecton Big Sky - I stumbled across their myspace site some months ago and right away heard da Grifters sound, so that fits.

So, while were on the subject tell me about the guitar tunings - a fair wack of alternate tunings? DADGAD?

Go write a book man! If any of those musings are anything to go by...

D
A
D
Gflat
A
D

..

the tuning for Covered With Flies was real messed up

B
B (yep, the whole octave_
B (the same B as above)_
Gflat
B (another octave up)
and probably another Gflat

the first two chords of the song are just the open strings
then you grab the 2 middle strings (what would nromally be the D and G strings) on the second fret and just bend it around some.

Then pretty much every riff in the song consists of making the chords by holding down all the strings on the same fret

the ending is a lot of fun to play that way. also fun to play slide on. amaze your friends!

it's a great memory!

Tragic memories based purely on the landscape of the town... I'd say thats a tie between Dresden (Germany) and Detroit.

it'a just a thre--fingered chord, all in the same fret.

if it's like this

1
2
3
4
5
6

then on the same fret hold down 1, 2, and 4
and slide that baby around the neck some.

------*---
------*---
----------
------*---
----------
----------

if you hit a sour chord just slide whichever finger you have on the 4th string and slide it down one fret.

------*------
------*------
-------------
---------*---
-------------
-------------

this is like, a zillion grifters songs.

How the heck did you guys get that exploding guitar sound on "Black Fuel Incinerator" the one that kind of blows up and then phases all over the place on the last chorus. That thing sounded really wicked.

Hull has got a lot in commom with Dresden -they were both reciprocally Blitzreig bopped in WW2 - in fact, the Adelphi car park is a bombsite- in more ways than one, all literally.
Detroit looked like a bombsite when I was there in '94- all these unwelcome wide open spaces downtown. I was there with my good friend Tim who used to run Ajax records - he is now an elite marathon runner

You asked about recent bands playing there. I saw the terrific juggernaut Lightning Bolt ,and the the excellent Centro _matic fairly recently.

I don't get out as much now - the lure of a lady (and added bonus of a 7yr old kid) has taken me to the south bank of the Humber (remember the suspension bridge?)- as ill - advised, stupid, and downright boring culturally as it gets - perhaps like if you relocated to west Memphis?

well, I can't be 100% sure which guitar you're talking about.
Dave did one track of backwards guitar that starts during the bridge. He wrote a line for it thenrecorded it on the four-track then played that backwards and learned how to play it backwards.
So when were were recording the actual song Doug and Davis flipped the 2inch tape and Dave played the 'backwards riff'. So when we flipped the 2inch tape back over the riff .
I seem to recall this was kinda inspired by Twin Peaks when David Lynch had them learn their lines backwards (for the black lodge sequences) then they'd show it backwards so it sounded like an alien language.

There's another guitar that Scott laid down that comes in right before the first chorus. I don't know what he did exactly. Sounds like maybe he was messing with a digital delay..?

so it makes an A major when you play it all open.

then me and John used to do an open E tuning
then Dave figured out it was easier on the guitar neck if you tuned everything down to a D (as opposed to winding all the strings UP which makes them snap a lot more easily.)

if you try the A tuning try these chords

__I__I__I__I__I
__I__I__I__I__I
__I__I__I_*I__I
__I__I__I__I__I
__I__I__I__I_*I
__I__I__I__I__I

and this one

__I__I__I__I__I
__I__I__I__I__I
__I__I_*I__I__I
__I__I__I__I__I
__I__I_*I__I__I
__I__I__I__I__I

and combinations of those up and down the neck.

thats a whole bunch of Big Star songs. Try picking out
Watch The Sunrise and Try Again.

Even if you can't play the guitar you can do the D tuning and you too can sound amazing instantly!!

Most people decide they want to learn guitar but give up after a week because you don't sound kick-ass immediately.
I swear, try the D tuning and you be whiling away the hours.

whiling?
is that right?

You correct about alt tunings being a remedy for guitarist's block - back in the day i used to fk around with all types of tunings, mainly due to lack of ability and creativity - the beautiful dronings and harmonics you just cannot get with standard tuning.

Dragoon sound mighty fine btw.

I'd say the Dead weren't an influence musically as much as they were philosophically. And the Dead provide a unique perspective on the band/audience dynamic. that point is not lost on anyone who has ever attended a Grateful Dead show proper. There's a real connection.

here's some grifter trivia for you...

did you know that Scott and Kurt Cobain share the exact same birthday.

Like, the same hour.

If a local band wears their Big Star influence on their sleeve too much though it's kind of a turn off.

On the other hand i remember seeing the band Agitpop at the Antenna Club and they did a cover of You Get What You Deserve and everyone there wept copious tears of gratitude.

ok, maybe not but it did mean a lot to the audience.

I'm kinda drunk.

and I've got jury duty tomorrow,

and so on.

I know I didn't have too much stuff on there.

Eureka IV was all Dave

His Jesus Song was all Scott except for the bridge which was mine.

Slow Day was all Dave (with a nice flourish from John Stivers at the very end)

Felix Cole was heavily Scott's but everyone tweaked the arrangement
(and I got to do the guitar solo)

Founder's Day was another BOB song that Dave took and ran with
(Stivers wrote that intro riff and I wrote the verse riff, and I'm playing guitar on that one)

Banjo was heavily Scott's but again we kinda gutted it. Scott was writing a lot of irish drinking songs so we were trying to undo that sound a little so I wrote a guitar line that was maybe a little more Stax-inspired but I ended up turning the guitar riff into that bouncy bass line. One of my favorite bass lines to play btw. Then Dave added that very last part which he said came to him in a dream.
Also thats me playing the shuffly drum throughout and Roy Berry is playing that bell.

And X-Ray Hip is all Dave, he even wrote the bass line.
But the line at the end about the dead bat came from a BOB song.
Stivers full line was "I'm gonna spread you out, like a dead bat, wrap you up in cellophane baby and sell you for parts in a medical show."
that line cracked me up so bad.

interesting. is this something you guys actually talked about?

we didn't sit around and say that we need to cultivate that kind of dynamic by any means but there would be moments onstage when we were playing and we were all blotto, and the audience was mostly blotto, and we'd look at each other and have that unspoken agreement that we had tapped into that same dynamic a little.

We didn't think were anything like the grateful dead BUT, like them, people who loved acid seemed to dig us. which is weird because we didn't do a lot of feelgood 'jamming' or anything.

seemed like we'd be the source of a bad trip.

have we talked about live recordings? i only got to see you guys twice, but i'd love to hear some live tapes, especially ones that go pretty out there.

Founder's Day is one of my fave Grifter's songs ever.I just love that dripping melancholy and the guitar lines
I've never heard Impala - wasn't that your friend's band (Stivers)

You may well have been a trippin tripp and all rock n roll but there's some glorious sadness in there
...the casual years, sain,founders day, junkie blood, contact me now...black bile by the bucket load

... and yes, plain old Big Star sadness - certainly evokes the same feeling - probably plain old nostalgia for something that never happened .Or maybe they're all ecstacy fuelled motherbangers...

You mention K C. Was it true that Spin thought Ain't My Lookout was a concept album about Kurt Cobain's suicide!Jeebus G! I remember those trendy fucks at the NME panned it - on the premise you weren't Britpop.The post 'grunge/lo fi'- come to think of it- USA- backlash.

I've done enough Tripp stalking now

Thanks for the great rekids.

Let us know how Dragoon are shaping. You may even get to the Adelphi? I'll ask Jacko to fumigate'upstairs', but I doubt he's talking to me yet.

.......

SAIN is scott's baby. don't want to take credit.

casual years was something i was very proud of though
and I'd say that there is defintiely some Big Star influence if not just outright Chris Bell influence on it.
thank you D tuning.

I don't remember SPIN saying that about AIM. I don't think it was a concept album but maybe nobody told me..

You might like Impala. If you like the Ventures you'll like Impala.
I believe I saw one of them boys in here last week. i love Impala. My favorite memphis band of the 90's.

,,,
here's a true story from the vault...

We were in Hollywood once (on tour, not making pornos) and before leaving town we stopped for lunch at Barney's Beanery. I swear their menu is like a whole section of the New York Times. Huge omelettes and whatever. If it's still there I recommend.
great bloody marys.

So it's us, Martin the soundman and our ole girlfriend Jean (who happened to be in LA taking care of her brother).

In walks Quentin Tarantino and Jean screams "OH MY GOD ITS QUENTIN TARANTINO!!" So we all immediately crouch behind our gigantic menus, embarassed.

But there he was with a lovely young lady. no idea who.
Me and Scott and martin go outside the restaurant for a smoke and martin suggests we give him a grifters cd. So I volunteered for the mission.

Unfortunately the van is backed up to a wall and the cd's are in the merch case at the bottom of everything. I checked in the front to see if there was anything laying out. There wasn't. BUT I did find an Impala cd. I don't remember which one. Rancho Reverbo? Kings of the Strip?

So i walked up and gave it to mr tarantino. I said nothing. he politely said 'oh, thanks man' and I assume he thought we were Impala.

Could it be a coincidence that a few years later, Quentin's buddy George Clooney wanted to use some Impala stuff in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind?

actually, yeah. it probably was a coincidence.

.......

SAIN is scott's baby. don't want to take credit.

...

ALSO y'know, the BOB version of Junkie Blood (which obviously wasn't called Junkie Blood) sounded nothing like the grifters version. BOB's version sounded like Sittin On The Dock of the Bay. Dave took it and slowed it waaay down to Codeine-speed (the band not the...)
He took one of our goof-offs and made it something really cool.

audience recording and Peel Session up now on D!mead0zen.

I'm ecstatic to hear this, annoyed that I can't seem to join the site, and saddened that nobody else flipped out over the news. Every week or so I have to play Soda Pop and She Blows Blasts of Static to remind myself that no, nobody does anything like this anymore.