Growing Up With Howie
“Life is not so idiotically mathematical that only the big eat the small; it is just as common for a bee to kill a lion or at least to drive it mad.”― August Strindberg
15 years ago this week, on January 18th 2011, KUSF was trenchantly ripped from the airwaves. It happened during DJ Schmeejay’s morning show, where an intruder came into the studio and turned off the signal. Just like that. No death star hope-and-a-pray shot for explosion, just a simple flick of a switch. The station that was a guiding light in the heyday of college radio…giving voice to alternative music when alternative meant that it was an alternative to what was being played (and not a top-40 delineation)…was quickly reborn a classical one, a classical one that had been uprooted from north of the dial to make way for a commercial radio station from Sacramento that played the hits; this was happening all over the country as Bill Clinton’s destruction of FCC rules via his Telecommunications Act (boooo!) allowed capitalism to screw the airways.
So it is with pride that I tell a story and honor a friend that begins with KUSF. When I was growing up…when I was barely a teenager, on Sunday nights after lights-out at my house, I would turn on the radio ever so quietly and listen to Howie Klein’s show. I knew of Howie since his days at KSAN (which I came to early because of listening to the Dr. Demento show with my brothers). I would later learn that Howie was a fixture in the punk community whose history became my studied history, who interviewed The Sex Pistols on their final day as a band, who saw every legendary band that came through The Mab. On Sunday nights Howie would play the greatest new and older underground music, talk about the punk days and often riff…much like a sports radio broadcaster off-topic riff…about his life, about his experiences as a music enthusiast. He told stories about booking The Velvet Underground at his college, about giving Jim Morrison LSD at the Whisky, about learning the hard way that heroin was a harder drug than marijuana after getting turned on to the latter by some beatniks he happened to meet and later finding the former which he misheard brought on a similar high. He would tell these stories, being completely absorbed by my expanding-by-the-moment junior high school mind, in between playing The Ramones and Roky Erickson, Devo and The Fugs…introducing me to dozens of bands that would be woven into my being.
I met Howie when I went to my first KUSF staff meeting in 1985. I was 15 and wanted to work at the station I loved…dreamed of being a DJ. I sat next to Jim Dickson, one of the few DJs who actually attended USF, who sympathetically befriended me. When Howie walked into the room and sat down next to him, he introduced us. Howie had a resting annoyed face at times, super intimidating especially given my fandom of his radio show. When the meeting ended, to engage him I asked about the new releases on 415 Records, his label. His records were all over local radio: Translator’s Everywhere That I’m Not, Romeo Void’s Never Say Never, Wire Train’s Chamber of Hellos. Howie had pulled off a distribution deal with Columbia Records, which he told me about that day (my first conversation about record distribution). He was just putting out a record from the East Bay ska band The Uptones and just started working with the goth-synth trio Until December (featuring future Consolidated members). He told me to call him at the office and he would send me a copy of their upcoming single.
I called Howie during my lunch “mod” from a payphone at Lowell High School to follow up about the record. He had forgotten his offer…pretty much seemed to forget meeting me…but after some cajoling, including pulling out the card that I was getting a DJ training shift on KUSF and would play his records on my first on-air appearance…and telling him I would write about them in the school paper.…he reluctantly (which I found out later was shtick) took my address so he could send a package. From then until when Howie left San Francisco to work for Seymour Stein at Sire, we were acquaintances. He would just-nicer-than-tolerate my coming up to him at a show to talk about the band that was playing…always throw me a comment about the music, sometimes even smile.
It was during my tenure at Warner Bros. Records that Howie and I became friends, especially during the years that he was the President of Reprise Records and I was Vice-President of A&R under him. While Howie understood the mandate of the multi-national company needing hit records, he never stopped championing cutting edge music. He loved that I signed the Boredoms to Reprise, he loved to be able to stand up at South by Southwest or any other music conference and tout how during the post-Nirvana indie band signing spree of the 90s, his label was the edgiest of the majors. When a heckler from the audience had the audacity to challenge Howie…to say that we released the later-period Boredoms records not daring to reissue the old stuff, Howie came into my office and gave me a week to license their debut long-out-of-print record, Onanie Bomb Meets The Sex Pistols (which I did).
When I walked into his office with an advance cassette of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Murder Ballads, it took me five minutes—if that—for him to tell me to call Mute honcho Daniel Miller and sign the band to America. When Bill Bentley brought Doug Sahm into my office…and Doug sang A Little Bit Is Better Than Nada…and I dragged him from the basement of the ski lodge up to Howie’s office for Doug to sing it again for the boss, we walked out with a Texas Tornado deal, Howie yelling WE HAVE A HIT RECORD. Howie championed that song all the way to it being the opening number to Kevin Costner’s golf film, Tim Cup. There were a few amazing years we had together, until he brought it David Kahne to lead the A&R Department, when everything for me fell apart (another story for another time…but feel free to watch the Wilco documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart for more intel). During the good times, he was always available to see a band, go to an art gallery (often having the artist meet us there, given Howie had great taste and was a major collector), and dine on great Asian food.
Howie loved championing great music…he loved broadcasting the music he was working with, always the promo man even when President. Howie would stand outside his office, conversing to Vice Chair Rich Fitzgerald about an upcoming Eric Clapton, Seal or Niel Young release while pawing at the piles of band stickers atop an already cluttered file cabinet…Mudhoney, Babes in Toyland, Gallon Drunk…to decorate every music-filled package leaving the building, simultaneously handing out promo CDs to anyone walking by; just like our first conversation at the KUSF staff meeting, he never let an opportunity go by to speak through his thick New York drawl about the newest artists he was working with. More often then not, walking by Howie’s lair would mean being pulled in to listen to the latest Reprise Records artist demo or a band some luminary had sent him to gander.
He was loyal to every artist whose music had changed him (I was surprised that he did not sign the Pop-O-Pies to Reprise!), every music writer who came out of the 70s, every record label owner who ever put out a good single and most everyone he ever worked with. Walking into his office was often walking into a history lesson, finding myself suddenly in conversation with Penelope Houston, Richard Meltzer, Tony Wilson…so many others. Always a punk rocker. Always kicking against the pricks. He was the first to call out any bullshit he saw or heard, which sometimes made for awkward conversations if you either disagreed with him (and we did have our disagreements, and he was an incredible debater) or when he went against etiquette while talking to a band’s music lawyer or manager (did Howie really say that??). When he left the music industry he started a blog…Down With Tyranny…triumphantly blooming into his role as a biting political commentator…a lead singer if you will…following in the footsteps Jello Biafra, Joe Strummer and Henry Rollins.
Howie Klein died of cancer a few weeks ago. It was not his first go-around with the disease, and when he announced that it returned, he intimated that this fight was going to be the hardest yet, handing over control of his being to his doctors. Fuck Cancer and long live the fight that Howie gave to everything. His was a voice that helped shape my passion for music and my perspective on the industry. May his memory be a blessing and may the music he worked with live on forever.
On my latest radio show on NQRA (listen here) I pay tribute to Howie, along with playing some of the 415 Records releases that were playing around the Bay Area when I was growing up….
“If I had us talking here in a story and I allowed a ghost in from the 1940s, I might be more interested in it. It might be because they are in fact here,” he says, gesturing to the hotel lobby around us. “Or even if it’s not ghosts, we both have memories of people we love who have passed. They are here, in a neurologically very active way.” A ghost story can feel more “truthful”, he adds: “If you were really trying to tell the truth about this moment, would you so confidently narrow it to just today?”
Alex Garland’s The Bone Temple is brutal, brilliant - and mind-blowing
Once again late to the party: my family and I cuddled around a TV recently to watch 28 Years Later Pt 1 to ready ourselves for part 2. Anyone who has kept up with this franchise understands the insanity…the unexpected brilliance of the film. The layers of meaning that take the zombie genre and mold it into a work of Sophocles. We were so blown away by it that within hours we were sitting in a dark movie theater watching the sequel Bone Temple, equally blown away…maybe more so. Ralph Fiennes should get an Oscar nomination for his playing of Dr. Ian Kelson as well as director Nia DaCosta. Sensational filmmaking, unexpected…impossible to quite figure out…completely engaging cinema…and yes, some gore in there as well…
SFMOMA Adds 85 Modern and Contemporary Artworks to Its Holdings
Crazy to think it can only show a. small percentage at any given time. Some of these art pieces might never be seen again! By the way: collecting art for museums….sounds like a pretty great job. What am I missing?
Public domain contest challenges filmmakers to remix Betty Boop, Nancy Drew and more
So much good stuff went into public domain on January 1st. You can read about it here…and this contest seems a killer way to celebrate it.
Joan Didion and Kurt Vonnegut Had Something to Say. We Have It on Tape.
The 92nd Street Y is making available their incredible archive of recordings of poets and writers from hosting over the decades “some of the most celebrated writers of the past several generations, from Isaac Asimov to Anaïs Nin and Kazuo Ishiguro to Margaret Atwood…(The collection) offers a glimpse into history and a taste of what the writers themselves were like in public.”
Photographer at the Scene of Deadly Train Crash in Spain Discovers Vital Clue
Remember that moment in Blow Up, when the photographer discovers that his picture mistakenly shows a murder? It looks like Finbarr O’Reilly has just pulled a similar move…but it real life solving a mystery of a horrible accident.
“I Never Felt I Had Any Power”: Carol Burnett, in Conversation With Laura Dern
“(Lucille Ball) was doing my show, and my husband, Joe Hamilton, was producing, because he produced The Garry Moore Show too, so he was producing our show. We had a dinner break and Lucy and I went across the street to a little Chinese restaurant. She’s having a couple of whiskey sours and she said, ‘You know, Kid, it’s great, you’ve got Joe to be the good cop or the bad cop on the show and everything.’ She said, ‘When I was married to the Cuban, he did everything. He was smart. He took care of the scripts, he invented the three-camera system by putting them on wheels. And all I had to do was come in and be silly Lucy every week.’
She said, ‘And then we got divorced and I realized I had to be like Desi.’ So they had the first reading of one of the Lucy shows and she goes, ‘It just was terrible. I didn’t know what to do because Desi wasn’t there to fix it. I realized I had to be like Desi and not mince words or anything, but just tell them exactly what I think.’ So she went back after lunch and she said, ‘I told them in no uncertain terms what was wrong with the script.’ Because if you were Sid Caesar or Jackie Gleason, you’d say, ‘Hey, this sucks, fix it.’ But a woman, it’s a little tough, because when she gets tough they label her with another word. And then she said, ‘Hey, Kid, that’s when they put the S on the end of my last name.’”
The Frontier
By: Ariana Reines
I felt a pressure not
To write. How
Can I explain it.
It was as tough
Embarrassment
Had been connived
Into language—
Which could not any
More receive
Reality Neutrally and, well,
Express it. For me. I felt
Yes, I am writing but
It wasn’t accurate.
There was something in the world
That hadn’t been named
Or studied—a kind of suctioning
Action mostly at the border
Of my perception and just beyond
That did not need to communicate
Directly to me for its force
To be felt by me. I had trained
Myself to resist whatever
It was, for years. Even this
I don’t know how to explain.
My troops were at the border. But
After a while things got confusing
And I started feeling tired all the time
Wanting to lie down in the road
Or just stay in bed which
Was also a form of resistance
Or so I was told and even
When I was feeling vigorous
And cultivating desires—because
If you don’t want anything it’s hard
To move your body—I felt something in me
Always wanting to speak or sing
Tell my lover something
I wouldn’t end up knowing
How to tell them, that when
I wrote it down it also just did not
Feel accurate, and this went on for years
Until a cultural phenomenon caught up
With me and now shame and cruelty clung
To words and they no longer seemed godly
And my experience of the world stayed inside
The world, never reaching the threshold
Of its transformation, never reaching your ear
However you might name the edge where all I feel
Drops off into infinity, canyons, a hole
To put it mildly—this frontier—
The place from which I write you
A light year in the future
From where I perceive the grid
Of our developments and ideas
Eaten away at and gouged by hands
Of wisdom and also of rage. From
Where I perch like a bird.
From where our yearning used
To meet the beautiful languages of our century
And from there, into our bodies
Or did the feeling hit our bodies first
And trust and love making understanding?
Is there such a thing as loveless telepathy?
I don’t think I want it.
The way my man friends spoke of the future
It sounded like a dead neutrality in which their ideas
Would enjoy free play.
The child’s head presses down
At the door of the world. The cow’s horn
Prods infinity. In infinity the cow eats patiently
Beyond the sounds that shape the mouth
And borrow the air for our voices
I lost faith in my strength to say it
And lost trust in your desire to hear it
I stopped hoping my father would call me
Eventually I had to accept that I also
Could not call him. Silence
Is golden. Silence is dignified.
A picture is worth a thousand words.
There was a vogue for silence in writing
Among adults when I was younger. It was taken
To be the correct consequence of slaughter
And those art works and forms that figured
Out how to contain the silence was considered
The great ones. “How can a secret
Be known as a secret,” asked a now
Forgotten philosopher. It is no
Exact science how a world takes form.
We know the old books speak
Of the word
Splitting the darkness. Gods seem
To recede for lack of love—they begin
To resemble ghosts; forgotten history
And also the distortion of something
Talked about if you never get
To hear anything better than the talk.
So. The female form representing
Universal wisdom is fashioned
And refashioned again. “We never
Learn” is true in a way. But truer
Still the monument to a kind of time
That does not age. If you fell
It then you know
Great remembrance.
Thank you for the Howie love. He was incredibly supportive of me in my early career especially at WFNX/Boston though he did take a few calls from me when I was at the tiniest of college stations. Hope you & yours are well, David.