RIP Larry Batson

This is a really late post. Larry Batson, former newspaper man died a couple of weeks ago. I know his two sons, Billy and Ernie and if they are any indication of what kind of man there father was than we lost one of the greats. Billy and Ernie are two of the jolliest men I know. Very kind and they are members of two of the greatest rock bands in history: The Hypstrz and the Mighty Mofos.

Here's two stories on Larry's death:
http://www.startribune.com/466/story/215447.html
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/columnists/joe_soucheray/13759637.htm

Here is one of my favorite music columns ever, written by Larry about the Hypstrz in early 1981. Any typos are to blamed on me, not Larry.

Between rock, young band finds itself in a lot of hard places

The young man who sleeps upstairs and the rock band that practices under my bedroom are preparing for another tour. As they make their plans, memories of the last one emerge. Not the stuff about crowds and encores and radio and TV interviews that we heard immediately. These are the more intimate details that mothers want to hear, then wished they hadn’t asked about.

For weeks now, part of each performing fee has been saved to cover transportation and lodging. Individuals keep reminding each other to put aside something for personal expenses.

That’s what they did the last time. Remind each other. Then at the first gas stop, one player asked the keeper of the band kitty for money for a Coke. He hadn’t saved quite enough. (At the end of that 4,000-mile tour the band used its last $20 to buy the last tank of gas it needed to get home.)

Milwaukee was the first stop on the tour. A brief one, professionally speaking. They weren’t allowed to play. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had closed the club that hired them.

“The band that was supposed to play there the night before announced it was going to kill a pig onstage,” one musician explained. “So the SPCA got a court order banning live music in the club.”

Chicago, the next stop, went well. Gary, Ind. Spewing flame and choking gas, was passed in the night. “The smell inside the van changed every 20 miles,” said Scott, guitarist, “depending on what the factories made.” The six young men from Minneapolis arrived at the home of Mrs. Wombat in Cleveland at 3 a.m.

Rock musicians live largely by the generosity and good work of mothers, who generally are referred to by the name of the band by which they owe first allegiance. Mrs. Wombat is the other of the lead singer of the band of that name. Vic, another Wombat, also possesses a most kind mother who speaks little English. When confronted by a young musician, she feeds him, points him toward a shower and a bed, then washes and irons his clothes while he sleeps. This is exactly what he needs.

All these ladies are addressed by musicians as Ma’am, like the Queen of England. They seldom meet, but through tense phone calls late at night—“Did they get there?”—they come to know other mothers all over the country.

The Wombats joined the band that practices under my bedroom for performances in Cleveland, Detroit, Washington, and Baltimore. This meant that Mrs. Wombat had to telephone around and find someone in Cleveland who would lend the Wombats a car. Another mother came through.

The Wombats run on a very tight budget. At one performance Vic dropped his guitar pick. He immediately stopped playing, got down on his hands and knees and began searching.

Other memories of Cleveland include a low ceiling in a dressing room and something that looked like a string dangling from a crack in it. A musician pulled the string. It was the tail of a huge mummified rat.

Fat rats frolicked and played like squirrels under the streetlights behind Ford’s Theatre in Washington. Scott recalled. The hotel was not what they expected. “The bathroom was down the hall,” one son of Middle America said, still slightly shocked months later.

Bunce, muscular and energetic roadie, went sight-seeing. Opposing groups of Iranians were demonstrating in front of the White House. Bunce wandered into the pro-Khomeini group and, as is his custom, asked them what they were beefing about. He disagreed with their position and, also his custom, said so immediately. The protest began to turn into mass debate with Bunce.

Police broke it up. Bunce was just getting warmed up. He suggested the whole band find the Iranians and resume the discussion.

Baltimore was next. No member of the caravan will forget Baltimore.

The hotel that housed the club where they would play had once been an elegant hostelry, playground of the famous, the rich, and the discerning. Fred Astaire had danced on the marble bar in the club and had admired the room’s white leather walls. It appeared neither had been cleaned since. The owner, a jovial sot, was drunk through the band’s stay, roaring with laughter, slapping backs, forgetting every word as soon as it passed through his lips.

The rooms provided, two for 10 musicians, had no air conditioning, so they demanded at least one that was cooled. When they plugged in the window unit, fuses blew. Now they had no lights. There was trash on the floor and no sheets on the beds.

They demanded another room. “We’re full,” the clerk said. It was a palpable lie. Doors sagged all over the place. “Repair man’s on the way,” the clerk claimed. He was still insisting on that when they left 24 hours later.

A tenant from across the hall confided that he had been there nine days and had his room broken into six times. There were pigeon feathers all over the rooms. The got in through broken windows, flew along the hallways and became lost or trapped in rooms. Where was the SPCA when they needed it?

Mark, the bass player, flatly refused to touch anything in Baltimore but his guitar. He drove the van to a suburb and slept in it.

Because they had no light, the young man from upstairs and Donn, the second roadie, had to leave the hall and bathroom doors wide open when they showered. “Less light the better, actually,” Donn said. The next morning he found a 4-inch cockroach under his pillow.

They stopped for a few hours in Atlantic City, N.J. Bunce stepped in front of a woman who was playing a row of slot machines in sequence. He won $20 with his first coin. The woman cursed him bitterly. That would have been her next machine. Donn took a solitary walk. His mood was not cheerful. Two band members spotted him on the Boardwalk and shouted greetings. He walked past without responding.

New York was next. From New Jersey they phoned Mark Freeman, singer and guitarist and transplanted Minneapolitan. “Roll up your windows and lock your doors,” Freeman said, then gave directions. Later he mentioned the time a knife-wielding junkie threw himself at his car and clung to it for half a block, shouting threats. This was right before they dropped Tommy at his sister’s apartment. Happened right close, Freeman said.

Rooms had been found for all. The young men from upstairs stayed with Freeman, who rode with him to “the only safe parking garage in Manhattan,” a fortress where they left the van. Nearby, packs of Great Danes roamed the docks, looking for pilferers of vagrants to rip into shreds.

Not far from the garage, as they left, they saw a man methodically stripping a car. He had piled the radio and choice parts on the sidewalk, had broken off the steering wheel and was taking the seats. He paid no attention to the two young men.

Freeman had a studio apartment with a sleeping loft and a bathtub in the kitchen area, the first clean tub the visitors had seen since Mrs. Wombat’s in Cleveland. Nest day the young men from upstairs was relaxing in the bath when a 5-foot iguana, resting hidden on a window ledge, flicked its tail over his shoulder. Freeman hadn’t mentioned his pet.

Saturday came and the band drove to the Peppermint Lounge, probably the only club in America all their middle-aged parents could name. As they got out to unload equipment, a man raced past them, ripped the necklace from a nearby woman and ran away.

This time the band will tour the Sun Belt and the West Coast. Their parents are following news reports of the California mud slides with horrified fascination.