May 2004
Marilyn
Goes to Hicksville! (A Marilyn/Dan Hicks Epic 32 Years in the Making)
Okay, so, I'm driving on I-285 on Sunday night, flipping through the
poppiest of pop
radio stations, and suddenly, on Z-93 I hear a kickin'
live version of Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks doing "Canned
Music." WHAT is GOING ON? But I don't care, because I'm
jamming. AND it's a new version, because they've replaced the
line "playin' on the radio" with "playin' on the Internet..." AND THEN,
when the song is over, the deejay says they're coming to Atlanta --
WHAT? WHEN? WHERE? WHAT??? -- this Saturday at the Variety Playhouse in
Little Five Points!
AAAHHHH!!!
Must drive home faster to get to computer to see if
tickets are still available and grab two for me and anyone I can get to
go with me! (I NEVER go to concerts, because I don't usually like a
band enough to deal with the hassle, plus I don't have anybody I can
plan on to go with me -- and, unlike sitting in a movie theater and
walking by The Gap on my way to the car in the mall parking lot, I
don't want to go to a concert alone and look for my car in a
neighborhood at midnight alone -- but, like Mark Knopfler, in this
case, I'll make an exception.) I figure pal Mark, because Dan Hicks
kind of has that Barenaked Ladies rhythm and sense of humor, and Mark
likes them, and plus he owes me because I went with him to see Dame
Edna last year -- a show he certainly didn't drag me to, but the whole
idea of being the second ticket friend implied.
So I get home and race to the computer, and YES!
There are tickets available, and they're general admission, so the more
the merrier if I can get a group of friends interested (Dan is really a
fun performer and his musicians are great and it's just a no-lose kinda
evening).
See, back in the early '70s, when I was 9 and my
oldest brother Larry was at Georgia, he introduced to me the fab fun
music of Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks (hear samples on Amazon, or,
better, check out his site), and it wasn't long before I
had
my own vinyl copy of Strikin' It Rich
and a cassette recording of
Larry's Where's the Money?
(which I eventually bought -- or maybe I
had to wait until someone gave it to me at Christmas -- albums were,
like, $3 then).
I loved everything about the band -- their sense of
humor, their old-timey musical sound (violin/fiddle, cello bass,
mandolin, guitar Western swing/'30s and '40s sound) and funky grandma's
attic/street gypsy clothes and style, and the lovely backup vocals of
The Lickettes, Maryann Price and Naomi Eisenberg, that I worked to
match when I sang along. And listening to Where's the Money?, a
fun live album recorded at The Troubador that's really inviting for an
intimate live show, made my desire to see them live that much greater.
Even though there were albums, and even an
appearance on The Flip Wilson Show
(where the band sang a number, and
Flip came out all hip and hep and trying to fit in and asked Dan what
the next number would be, and Dan deadpanned, "How Can I Miss You When
You Won't Go Away?" and Flip skulked away), I feared the band would
disappear before I'd ever be old enough to go to a concert and see them
live. He wasn't for the Bobby Sherman crowd, he was of the '70s
college crowd, who went to Marx Brothers film festivals and political
rallies -- a group I dreamed of being a part of, but never felt I'd
ever get old enough for.
Then YEARS later, when I was in Virginia Tech grad
school (and after my own days in Athens, where the early '70s had been
replaced by the early '80s), I strolled through the CDs at a record
shop in Blacksburg, and to my complete astonishment, there was a Dan
Hicks section! Strikin' It Rich
and Where's the Money? on
CD! Who knew someone at the CD companies considered them
important enough to merit burning this new-fangled fad of CDs of their
music? I snatched them up (along with the CD of Last Train to
Hicksville, their farewell album that had nailed the
concert-attendance-hope coffin shut for me years earlier).
In Blacksburg, while telling friends about my CD
score, friends of friends at a gathering said they loved Dan Hicks, and
that he toured the Virginia and West Virgina area a lot.
Wow! Fellow Hicks fans!
Then more years later, in California, on location
during the Power Rangers shoot, I talked with our extremely low-key
aging hippie-type first Assistant Director, and, upon learning that he
was from West Virginia, asked if he was familiar with Dan Hicks.
Oh, yeah, great music, he brightened up, and we sang some of the songs
while waiting for the next set-up.
Throughout all that time, I'd heard bits of Dan
Hicks here and there, his new band The Acoustic Warriors, an appearance
on Austin City Limits, a new album Beatin'
the Heat, etc.
Nothing that made me think in a MILLION YEARS that I'd see him and the
Hot Licks (and the Lickettes) playing live in a club...
So naturally, while watching my computer print newly
purchased tickets for the Variety Playhouse show, I'm absolutely giddy!
Woo-hoo!
And seconds later, when pulling up my email to send
a fingers-crossed invitation to Mark, I get a note from Mark,
announcing how exhausted he was from moving from his sister's house to
his new apartment over the past weeks, and how he and she had been
working on cleaning out her house for her to put on the market and how
they'll be spending their next two or three weekends doing that.
Drat!
He'd moved the weekend before, so I'd figured he was
free and clear by next weekend. But it doesn't take a rocket
scientist to figure if I could pry him away from furiously trying to
clean out the place on the weekends, he'd be unconscious exhausted
asleep before I could get him in a car.
I write him anyway. (I've waited 32 years for
this concert.)
Yeah, he says No. I figure ditto on his sister
Sherry, since it is her house, and I begin the arduous task of trying
to figure out who among my married-with-kids friends (of which they
pretty much all are -- even my final hold-out "no kids" friends Porter
and Leslie are planning to go all the way to Russia to get a baby to
adopt) might not cruelly turn me down. Trying to arrange
alignment of planets so friends can slip away from their lives for a
casual movie or pizza has become increasingly way tiring in the passing
years, so convincing them to use that precious time on a concert with a
band they've never heard of should be basically impossible.
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