Robert A. Mills, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Robert A. Mills
GRAMP ON THE TOWN 5/21/2011 6:18:17 AM
One night last winter while my wife was in Memphis indoctrinating our daughter and son-in-law in the fine art of parenting their brand new son, my friend David Savage invited me to join him and the “Turner Voice-Over Specialist” David Roberts at Smith’s Olde Bar in downtown Atlanta, where a certain high-profile guitarist/comedian was performing for one night only.
“You’ll like him,” Savage assured me. “Well, at least I hope you will. He’s a strange fellow — plays a rapid guitar, strong, very loud, and his comedy is sort of political, you know, sardonic and very liberal. Right up your alley. You know, topical stuff, ribald allusions, and all that jazz.”
“Who’s all going?” I asked, suspiciously.
“Well, there’s me, of course. And our buddy Dave Roberts, his son Oliver, and Ollie’s girl friend Monica. My wife Karen is working on a new estate sale, so she can’t go — you can have her ticket.”
Savage, a musician of imminent talent in his own right, was the sort (e pluribus unum) to be trusted. ”Sure,” I said, “count me in. Besides, with a name like ‘Smith’s Olde Bar,’ the evening has to be memorable.”
It was.
Smith’s, a place I’d never even heard of, was a wild oasis of immature albeit idiotic bliss. A large establishment, a five blocks long, it catered to Atlanta’s crème de la crème of self-proclaimed if unaware avant garde society, and within seconds I realized I out-aged everyone there by at least fifty years. The place was shaking with neurotic tremors, packed to the rafters, being a Friday night.
The “club” part where entertainers performed, one of six such private rooms, was off to one side, about ten miles from the entrance, and up a ramp, mysteriously secluded. A youngster with a head of hair that had never seen a comb, and wearing a grungy t-shirt of unknown ancestory, stamped my hand. “Why?” I asked. “Case you gotta take a leak and wanna get back in,” he told me. “Oh,” I said.
We sat at a tiny table the size of a life raft from a 2-man paddleboat, and waited for the entertainment to begin. I took an inventory of the room.
It was dark and dank, heavy with the odor of ancient talent, about four hundred yards long and ten feet wide. The stage was only slightly larger than our table. Facing it, in the middle of the elongated room, was a deep, limp and tired sofa, upon which sat one patron, obviously a freshman from Georgia Tech who had come early and been waiting since noon. All told, there were about twenty-six people in the room.
A waitress took our drink order (beer and some sort of wine concoctions — except for Roberts, who never drinks anything but Dewar’s Scotch) just before the show started.
The warm-up act was a nameless young lady who played guitar and sang songs she claimed to have composed. At least, that’s what she said — and those were the only words out of her mouth I understood. When she strummed her guitar and sang, her diction and phrasing came out as a muffled, unintelligible hum. Too bad. She was sort of cute, and I was secretly rooting for her. She could have been one of my granddaughter’s baby sitters.
Her “routine” on stage was much too long, and after my first beer I left the “club” and found, after squirming through the outer bar mob, the unisex men’s room somewhere beyond the “game room” (home to seventy-two pool tables and three hundred hustlers.) Thank heaven for little boys with rubber stamps! I was back in the “club” just in time for the Main Event.
Almost instantly the guitarist/comedian pounced onto the stage — literally, and from seemingly out of nowhere, he pounced through a fog of vespertine energy. I was startled; I jumped and nearly upset my fresh glass of beer.
The man was huge and fierce; his head larger than a rugby ball and shaved bald. He wore a rumpled black suit and, tieless, an open-neck white dress shirt. A formidable Erich von Stroheim. Were I his wardrobe man, his trousers would have been tucked into shiny black puttees, a beret would have sat jauntily on his naked pate, and a leather riding crop would have dangled from his wrist. And he would have used a megaphone rather than a mike.
He carried high under his chin a battered guitar that emitted a ghastly cacophony of chords at more decibels than a fully loaded 747 taking off from Schiphol. Luckily, when he tempered the audio assault with songs and patter, his frenetic strumming was muted to a cannon’s roar, and I was able to comprehend 99% of what he said or sang.
The songs, delivered in a sort of white man’s lisping rap cadence, were totally alien to me. Some, though, were clever and well constructed, but none were my cup of tea (I detest tea, anyway, and rarely, if ever, indulge.) His material was late George Carlin, but his delivery was early Chris Rock tempered with indecipherable Robin Williams — refreshingly left wing but with the pseudo-sophistication of a very ribald and scurrilous Comedy Central TV routine. Right up my alley, according to host David Savage.
His guitar virtuosity, however, was mesmerizing. Fast and raucous, his right hand a constant blur, his left paralyzingly deft as his fingers ran up and down the fret board, the chords reminiscent of a melody gone mad and requiring electric shock — frightenly intermingled with hilarious one-liners and jokes that would have stood on their own even if the battered guitar had been left at home. Come to think of it, the instrument itself seemed to wish it had been overlooked and left in Les Paul and Mary Ford’s garage sale.
Afterwards, we went to dinner at R. Thomas’s Deluxe Grill on Peachtree St., and I had, hands down, the greatest hamburger I’d ever eaten (despite R. Thomas touting a “vegetarian” menu.) The parking lot alone, built on a 65-degree angle, is worth the interminable trip that culminates in crawling from the car up to the restaurant (à la a faithful reenactment of devout worshippers approaching the Basilica de Guadalupe in Mexico City.)
I asked David Savage what was the guitarist/comedian’s name (I saw no posters or programs at Smith’s.) He told me, but I foolishly trusted my memory and neglected to write it down. Just as well, I suppose.
“Did you like him?” David asked.
“Yeah. Sure.” I never bite the hand that buys the tickets, especially when I’m enjoying an incomparable, delicious hamburger.
“Who would you compare him to?”
“I dunno.” I started to say Eric Clapton, but between bites I mumbled, “Andreas Segovia?” (Influenced by Cheech Marin?)
WRITER’S CRAMP: the posting for Saturday, May 28, will be delayed until Monday, May 30, as I will be attending my son-in-law’s graduation from UTHC as a full-fledged dentist. Les cavités, me tourmenter non plus!
