John Finger dot com

So long, Dave

What’s the world like without a David Letterman show? What’s it like when the most dependable and consistent comedian heads off into retirement?

How much do we lose?

OK, this is probably the wrong question to ask a devout non-TV watcher. Sitcoms, dramas, reality TV … sorry, it’s too tough to sit still. Besides, The Wire, Taxi, Barney Miller, Johnny Carson and Cheers are off the air.

What’s the point?

That’s especially the case now that Letterman is finished. Frankly, it was a perfect show. It had it all, complete with solid interviews, sketch comedy, jokes and jokes and jokes, and, of course, music …

Lots and lots of music.

Maybe what made the Letterman Show so perfect was the music. It was the cornerstone of the show with Paul Shaffer’s band to the nightly guests. What could be better than a ripping house band that can play every single song worth playing as well as a different live band playing something new every night?

Some nights, the band saves the day. Maybe the guest isn’t interesting or the comedy a little lacking … at least Shaffer’s band and the musical guest are there to deliver. Better yet, Dave often broke bands that would otherwise be ignored simply because he liked them. He wasn’t afraid to book bands that rocked or we’re avant garde or whatever. As a result, other late-night shows followed Dave’s lead.

And lucky for us because there’s nothing like live music. Mix it with Letterman’s sensibility and comedy and it was the perfect TV show.

Anyway, here are the best music performances that stuck with me over the years. Some are on here simply because I like the artist. Others are here because I find myself thinking about them from time to time for whatever reason.

So, here we go … (not in any particular order)

1. James Brown 
Last week I was in the audience for the show and Paul Shaffer told a great story about the Godfather of Soul visiting the show. Though this one isn’t up to the level as James Brown doing 45 minutes on Soul Train in 1974, it’s pretty damn good:

2. Letterman and Nugent 
I met Ted Nugent at the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. He was funny and cool, which made him stand out in that crowd. Funny goes far in my book. The Nuge is funny in this one:

3. Joe Strummer 
Joe died not too long after this appearance and it could be my favorite of the bunch. The performance is right on the money, especially when Joe tosses his Telecaster to his guitar tech, and the song is beautiful. It’s also a bit melancholy because Joe is gone … we could sure use some more of Joe these days.

4. Beastie Boys 
Surprisingly, no other group pulled off the street/studio performance before this one. But if it was going to go down, the Beastie Boys had to do it. And, of course, it may be Adam Yauch’s last appearance before his fatal cancer diagnosis …

5. Foo Fighters 
When Dave came back from his bypass surgery, he requested the Foo Fighters perform at his first show back. So the band stopped their tour in South America, flew to New York, played the song and went back to South America.

6. Red Hot Chili Peppers
Here’s an oldie from the NBC days. The story here is I saw the band the next day in Philadelphia at the Chestnut Cabaret. It was an over-21 gig and I was only 18 … yep, we snuck in the backdoor and saw a pretty great show.

7. Bruce Springsteen 
This is the last performance from Dave’s NBC show. It’s a bit of a middle finger to a company that didn’t treat Dave very well. I like it.

8. Pearl Jam 
This is a Bob Dylan eff you song. Dylan’s version is better, but it’s fun to see it on corporate television.

9. Bob Dylan 
Bob isn’t particularly good in this one, but the band is as hot as they come. Plus, the whole 10th anniversary episode was terrific. I wore out a VHS recording of it.

10. Warren Zevon 
Warren Zevon is one of those artists that a lot of people would have missed if it had not been for Dave. He filled in for Paul Shaffer a handful of times as the leader of the band and when Warren had terminal cancer and was dying, Dave gave him a week-long residency on the CBS show. This is his last performance a few months before his death …

11. Bob Mould 
This is one went down last month and it already is an all-timer. Word is, Bob’s band — Jason Narducy and Jon Wurster — knocked the plaster off the ceiling. Yep, this one …

ROCK!

12. The Ramones 
Joey Ramone would have been 64 today. The Ramones broke up shortly after this taping …

13. Sex Pistols 
Imagine the Sex Pistols on corporate TV in the ‘70s or ‘80s … it wouldn’t happen. When they put together the original lineup and went out on the road, a stop on Letterman was mandatory.

14. Amy Winehouse 
A lot of talent here. Prophetic, too.

15. Sonny & Cher 
Only Dave could get a divorced couple to sing a song on his show.

16. Liberace 
If you grew up watching Johnny Carson in the late 1970s, there were certain celebrities that made you sit really close to the TV set. Don Rickles was one and Richard Pryor was another. They were unpredictable and wild. But a notch above Rickles and Pryor was Liberace.

How do you describe Liberace?

If you didn’t see it, you missed it. Liberace was a piano player, I guess.

Watch and figure it out for yourself …

17. Bill Murray
Here’s Bill’s homage to Liberace:

And here’s Bill from the very first episode of Letterman’s show at NBC:

From first to last … how will Bill close it out?

If only Dave stuck around long enough for The Sophisticates to make it ... 

Bob reads Baseball Weekly in the Kwik-e-Mart

I'll be back on Tuesday... next stop LA.

Best bets

Last week: 0-3
Year-to-date: 1-4

Man, I’m really bad at this game-picking stuff. Maybe instead of selecting the point-spread winners I should see how poorly I can do for an entire season. Oh-for-three? And I’m selecting the games to pick?

Geez!

Then again, who would have thought that Temple would score? Not me. Obviously, I thought Vanderbilt giving the Owls 34 points was a lock. But then to follow that with telling the good folks out there to avoid the Penn State-Northwestern game because the line was too big and I knew a few people who went to school in Evanston even though my wife, sister-in-law are Penn Staters and my father-in-law is a former PSU prof? I’m surrounded by a sea of Penn State-ness yet I can’t take them over Northwestern?

What a jerk.

Oh it gets worse. Mark Brunell stinks? Obviously I stink at picking games. The Dolphins over the Texans? Well… that’s an honest mistake. Who knew the Dolphins were so awful?

Nevertheless, I’m coming back with some more to take to the bank. Here’s what we’re going with this week:

Eagles minus 2 over Cowboys
Generally, I try to avoid the home team, but I like how this is shaping up. The Eagles appear to be focused, ready and can’t suffer another loss to an NFC East team. Then again, Dallas has a history of thriving in seemingly distracting situations and that team is all distraction. There are so many distractions in Dallas that Terry Glenn just kind of blends in.

Still, I’m taking the Eagles and giving up the two points.

Giants minus 4 over Redskins
I have a friend who knows a lot about football. Actually, he might know more about football than anyone I know outside of the business. He has good contacts with the NFLPA, a few former players and front office personnel and never hesitates to call them up to chat about the goings on around the NFL. What makes his information better is that because he isn’t a writer or reporter, his contacts are willing to reveal more. In turn, he sometimes fills me in on what he knows.

With that in mind, my friend says the Giants stink. He doesn’t like their defense and thinks Eli Manning still has a lot to learn. I wonder if that’s his opinion or if he heard that from someone?

I also have another friend (two!) who writes about the Redskins for the biggest newspaper in Washington, D.C. and one of the largest in the country. That newspaper is better at covering politics and the industry town that is Washington, D.C., but they go crazy covering the Redskins because aside from politics, the ‘Skins rule D.C.

That information has nothing to do with anything and neither does my relationship with the football writer because he doesn’t tell me anything about the Redskins, the NFL or anything. However, it seems as if he agrees with me when I email him about how bad Mark Brunell is because he won’t throw the ball to Chris Cooley.

What’s that all about? Take the Giants.

Minnesota minus 3 over Penn State
It’s local week here on the friendly little blog that could. Actually, this line just leapt off the page at me, mostly because I recognize the schools and it appears to be a tightly-contested game.

Looking at the almighty trends, Penn State is 8-1 against the spread in the last nine Big 10 games. Conversely, Minnesota beat Temple, 62-0. That makes it a wash.

The next variable is the players and I can name one – that Morrelli dude. Since everyone is writing that he needs some “seasoning,” he’s a non-factor. That means we go to great writers from each school.

Minnesota has Todd Zolecki, but Penn State has my wife. Call it a tie, though Todd has been writing more lately.

Minnesota has Bob Dylan.

Penn State can’t beat that.

Gophers!

Petula Clark and the Dreadlocked guy

Though I once pronounced that I wanted to be Tom Wolfe, it should be noted that the claim was only for occupational purposes. Truth be told, all I ever wanted to be was Bob Dylan, you know, as in that trite lyric from that one-hit wonder band from the mid-'90s whose name escapes me -- you know, the white boy with the faux dreadlocks -- shit, you know the guy.

Anyway, the lyric was: "I wanna be Bob Dylan... "

Who doesn't? I remember reading that this group often changed that lyric to pander to the specific audience they were performing in front of. For instance, if they were touring with Big Star, they would change it to: "I wanna be Alex Chilton... "

That's cool if it was the original lyric, but it's not. Aspiring to be Bob Dylan is a big job and if you're heart is truly in to it, you can't sway off course. Who is going to stop those geeks from singing "I wanna be Jeff Tweedy... " or "I wanna be Zack de la Rocha... "? Nobody, and that's the problem. Immediately this band is exposed as a fraud because they don't really want to be Bob Dylan. They just want to be cool like Justin Timberlake wants to be cool.

Maybe that's why I can't remember the name of the white boy with the extensions or what he called his band.

Anyway, I've been reading the first installment of Bob Dylan's memoirs, which I am enjoying very much. Obviously, that cat can really write. Based on Tarantula: Poems – a stream-of-consciousness tome that puts even Jack Kerouac and Thomas (not Tom) Wolfe to shame – and now Chronicles: Volume One it’s clear that ol’ Bobby D could have been an influential writer or novelist.

Like Bob writes in his memoirs, I too am a “traditionalist with a capital T.” He was talking about folk music with that line, but I sense that he’s talking about other things too. Like I bet Bob gets his hair cut in a barbershop that has a red, white and blue pole spinning out front with the old-fashioned chairs and old-timers who use talc, thinning shears and let you hold the mirror so you can check out how they snipped up the back.

I don’t think Bob goes to the Wal-Mart, Olive Garden, Home Depot, Best Buy or Barnes & Noble. Then again, maybe he does. Thanks to those stores, the suburbs have its exurbia. Even the backwoods folks can get vice grips, a CD, Pasta Primavera and a mocha latte at any time of the day.

Who knows, maybe that’s progress? After all, as much as Bob (and me for that matter) is a traditionalist he is also quite progressive. In fact, I imagine he’s more broad-minded than anything. Shit, maybe he goes to Home Depot all the time. Maybe he’s a mall rat.

So I went to the barbershop on Queen St. in downtown Lancaster this week for a haircut. As far as I can tell this joint – called Segro’s – is one of the few traditional (or “old-school” in the popular parlance) barbershop remaining in the area. I used to go to the College Barbers, which was a joint with three chairs, a long mirror and a leather bench built into the wall for people to sit and wait their turn. I used to like waiting so I could sit and read the paper or bullshit with Tom the barber. But apparently Tom wasn’t as into as much as I was, because he sold out and went to work at one of those blow-dry salons. Now, instead of regular old shears, clippers, talc and warm shaving cream, Tom has to shampoo, rinse and repeat.

So now I go to Segro’s, which like Tom’s old joint, is a throwback. I’m convinced the old-timer who cuts my hair was there at the beginning because he says he knew my grandfathers and talked knowledgably about seeing them around town in the 1950s and ‘60s.

Therein lays the point. Those old timers remember when the downtown flourished. It was a place where one went to be seen, to see and to take part in community life. But like urban centers all across America, the cultural shift and white flight placed the centers in the suburbs. The center of commerce in Lancaster is at the mall beyond the edge of town, not the city center.

Needless to say, there have been many groups and organizations – both public and private – designed to get people to come downtown. Sadly, these groups have been miserable failures. The ideas produced lack inspiration or innovation and the city leaders are arrogant in accepting ideas that are not their own and in how they treat the constituency.

In a nutshell, the downtown leaders and the groups associated with them are trotting out the same tired ideas from the same old tired people. They fear progress when it is progress that they must embrace or die.

Oh they have their ideas. One of them – and perhaps the only one at that – is to build an upscale hotel and convention center smack dab in the town square. OK, sounds good. Now how come I called around and couldn’t find a single group or organization that would want to hold a convention in downtown Lancaster, Pa.? How come it has been nearly 10 years since the project first came together and not a single minute of construction has been performed? How come the image of the state of the downtown sector has gotten worse, not better?

Answers?

Yeah, right.

In Lancaster, Pa. the downtown resembles one of those old west ghost towns by 5:30 p.m. every day. Who would want to bring a convention to a town with nothing to do? Maybe the smart thing to do is to try to get people to come downtown instead of hanging out at the mall. That way outsiders will see the area as lively and want to bring conventioneers so they drop some expense-account cash in local restaurants and stores.

Good idea, huh? Well, not to the Downtown Investment District folks. In fact, it seems as if the Lancaster D.I.D. prefers the ghost town look. All that’s missing in downtown Lancaster is tumbleweed blowing across the main drag.

Now I’m not the smartest dude in the world. That one is pretty easy to figure out. However, I’m smart enough to know that if people like going to the mall, maybe other businesses should copy what the mall does. In fact, in Boulder, Colo., a town similar in size and population to Lancaster, the downtown leaders did just that. When the suburban malls started popping up, the smart folks in Boulder paved over a section of Pearl St. and turned it into an outdoor pedestrian mall. Not only is the mall popular with merchants, and consumers, but it is also a tourist destination.

When I suggested the Boulder model to the folks with the Lancaster D.I.D., they literally scoffed at me. They may have even rolled their eyes, for all I know. But it was definitely a scoff. It wasn’t that they hated the idea, they didn’t even want to consider it.

But when I asked why I saw more people at 7 p.m. on a Tuesday night at the Pearl St. Mall than I would in the entire downtown district of Lancaster for an entire week, they had no answer. Maybe I was asking the wrong questions. Maybe I should have asked why they were so lazy or what they were afraid of.

The point of this that the traditionalism we all love and miss is still there. We just need to be a little less lazy and we can make it return. That means we might have to challenge civic leaders to look beyond the tiredness of bureaucratic and political thinking.

Until then, I'll see you at the Orange Julius.