The Late as Usual News August 2005 by Falling James

The big news is that the Leaving Trains are playing the Sunset Junction Street Fair in Los Angeles, Sunday, August 28, 2005, on an action-packed bill that includes – we kid you not ­– the New York Dolls, the Weirdos and the Gossip. It's already exciting enough to perform on an outdoor stage in the summer among the carny attractions and thrill rides along a blocked-off section of Sunset Boulevard in half the band's Silver Lake neighborhood, but it's even more of a jolt to be part of such a fabulous dream-team lineup. Wake me up before we go-go.

The Leaving Trains hit the Bates Stage at 2 p.m., Sunday, August 28, followed by Nebula, Burning Brides, the Weirdos, the Gossip, Eagles of Death Metal, Suicide Girls and - oh, my! - the New York Dolls!! (The weekend fair's headliners on opening day, Saturday, August 27, ain't too shabby, either: Rilo Kiley, John Cale, the Walkmen and Jason Falkner.) It's all too much to think about, to let really sink in that they're going to stop automobile traffic for two days in favor of us impolite & in some cases legendary rock combos. Redemption in the street.

Sunset Junction also marks the return to live action by longtime Trains Melanie Vammen, Miss Koko Puff and Dennis Carlin. The four of us haven't played together since that exciting night opening for the Avengers at Spaceland in June 2004. Since then, guitarist Melanie Vammen & husband-bassist Andrew Buscher have been busy raising their baby, Hayden. Dennis Carlin, meanwhile, has been conspiring with the Helpful Nuns' Fred Manchento in the future-wave synth-pop duo EMA 3, readying their debut full-length CD for release on Babyland's label. Bassist/guitarist Miss Koko Puff sings in Aloo Motor and Pointy Kitty and, along with Dennis, fronted a recent Sluts for Hire show.

While everyone else had other commitments in the past year, I reunited with founding members/brothers Manfred Hofer and Tom Hofer and early drummer Hunter Crowley for our first shows together in two decades. Barring the occasional guest appearance onstage and on one another's studio projects, the four of us hadn't played a full set together since a Leaving Trains gig at Madame Wong's West in L.A. in the spring of 1985. Although Hunter, Tom, Manfred and I first got back together in the fall of 2004, we didn't begin practicing regularly until February 2005, due in part to Manfred landing a leading role in a Westside production of the play "Inspecting Carol" (see Previous News). Once we got warmed up, though, we were pleasantly surprised about how easily it all came together, with new ideas coming quickly unbidden and the early-'80s songs sounding more powerful than ever.

With all this preparation, we were sorely disappointed when our warm-up show, a live-in-the-studio radio broadcast on KXLU's "Livation" program, late Thursday night, April 7 (we went on past midnight, so it was actually early Friday a.m., April 8), was plagued by technical and production difficulties. Only about half of our planned hourlong set was listenable/salvageable, as the show's hosts ran around and often into us while dealing with burning monitors, intermittent sound levels and in-house equipment breakdowns while we were on the air. There were long periods of dead-air time and frantic arguing, and I was knocked noticeably out of tune for at least one instrumental. And yet, despite the chaos, several of the old songs sounded great, particularly the gloomy baseball ballad "Warning Track," with Manfred's woozy, oozing slide guitar, and an extended "10 Generations," with my improv rant over Hunter and Tom's militant, step-to-it break.

We sounded much better – fuller, louder, tighter -- at Spaceland in Los Angeles on Friday, May 27, 2005, our first real show in front of a live audience in 20 years. After an energetic opening salvo by the chameleonic post-punk rockists Dirty Little Secret, we came out and played a satisfying hour-plus set for the old fans who showed up. We hadn't intended to play that long but got caught up in the excitement and ended up running through 20 songs, drawn mostly from the first two Leaving Trains albums, WELL DOWN BLUE HIGHWAY and KILL TUNES. We were so juiced and so in tune with one another that when I was checking my guitar onstage moments before our set, strumming a chord over and over, everyone else naturally fell in, and we improvised a punk-rock instrumental on the spot that turned out to be the lightning rod to the beginning of our set. We were back.

We gave in to the friendly but insistent entreaties of ARTHUR mag staffer Parker Gibbs, who booked the reunited Trains for a three-night stand in San Francisco in June. (Not that we needed much convincing, as San Francisco has long been one of the band's favorite cities.) What made it more interesting was the chance to play three shows in three nights at three different clubs. Even though San Francisco is a relatively small and compact big city, many of its denizens choose to lurk only in their particular neighborhoods, so the three-night stand made it easier for different types of crowds to see us while we were there. Even my later lineups of the Trains had played S.F. only a couple times in the past decade, and the Manfred/Tom/Hunter & me lineup hadn't played there in 20 years, so we were all excited about trying to make up for lost time.

We'd added a bunch of songs since the Spaceland concert and, despite some overlapping every night with certain favorites like "Creeping Coastline of Lights," we made sure that each of the San Francisco set lists had different songs. By now, we were even mixing in songs from the later Leaving Trains lineups, as well as two songs from Tom Hofer's solo album, CLEARINGHOUSE ("Obsession" and "Prisoner of Lace") and a catchy, poppy new tune he'd just written, "Stumbled Again." Manfred sang lead vocals on "Crash" at all three S.F. concerts, a sinister number he first sang with the Mariettas and which is based on a primitive early Trains fragment, "Fever Girl."

The first show in San Francisco, at the Hemlock Tavern on Thursday, June 16, was a little disorganized, but still properly rambunctious and people seemed to have an apocalyptic good time. This was our introduction to the S.F. band Killer's Kiss, who were wonderfully dark & propulsive, and surprised with a thunderously abrupt version of Neil Young's "Like a Hurricane." As for our own set, the sound mix was terrible and the monitors were inaudible, made worse when I had difficulty getting my guitar in tune early in the set. Everyone else was solid, though, and I eventually got it together, and we closed strongly despite the elements and sound-man indifference.

I personally thought we were much better the next night, Friday, June 17, at the 12 Galaxies in the Mission District. I felt more comfortable in this neighborhood, the staff were kind to us (which is always nice), the sound was the best of our mini-tour, and we finally played the old multi-part epic "Going Down to Town," with its pummeling rave-up ending. Manfred's old Mariettas partner, Sean O'Brien & His Dirty Hands, opened and played a fine cover of Rank & File's "Amanda Ruth." I really dug the next band, a really amped-up, hard-&-fast Sacto group called S.L.A. (Sonic Love Affair) who were trashy and crashy and loud and helped wake me up. It was a fun, unhurried, decadent night all around.

Our final reunion show in San Francisco, at Thee Parkside on Saturday, June 18, wasn't as well-attended, but we still had fun and treated it like our own party. I enjoyed the skittering, scattering, spazzy, snazzy snarling garage-rock of the Willowz, who opened for us. They played a cool version of Love's "My Flash on You." We started our set with the rarely played "Falling," and also played the superfast and tight "I Am in a World Crash With You" for the first time since the mid-1980s, and we scared ourselves with how easily we whipped it out. Check the Tour Diary section soon for more photos and my complete rundown on the San Francisco and L.A. reunion shows.

Why hadn't we been doing this more often in the past 20 years? we wondered. It was nice to make these songs sound new again. And while it's not clear when or even if we'll do any more reunion shows, we're hoping to release a live EP from one of the shows within the next few coming months (check this page next month for details). I'm hoping that at some point, we'll do some more shows and record the new songs we'd started working on. We'll see. It's not easy keeping all these stars aligned. With Manfred and Tom Hofer (Kjehl Johansen Band) and Hunter Crowley (the Hangmen) busy with other things, all that's clear is that right now, for the Sunset Junction festival, I'm playing with my longtime version of the Trains: Dennis, Koko and Melanie. I'll play with anyone who'll show up and put up with me (that's not always easy, though).

Check back here later to see which of the two versions of the Trains, old or new, will perform at the Echo in Echo Park, Los Angeles, on Saturday afternoon, September 17, 2005. Such suspense! The Question, The Urinals and members of Wednesday Week and The Last are among the groups scheduled to perform; the show starts at 4 p.m. The event is a combined CD-release party for WARFRAT TALES and KEATS RIDES A HARLEY, two early-'80s various-artists compilations that are only now being released on CD for the first time. Both albums have been long out of print and feature some of the earliest and rarest Leaving Trains recordings.

Originally released to much obscurity in September 1981, KEATS RIDES A HARLEY quietly boasted the debut recordings of the Leaving Trains, the Gun Club, 100 Flowers, Earwigs and the Meat Puppets, along with key tracks by Human Hands, Toxic Shock (with future members of Slovenly and Overpass), S Squad and Tunneltones (future Savage Republic). The new CD re-release includes bonus tracks from all nine of the original bands, plus the long-lost HAPPY SQUID SAMPLER with cuts by the Urinals, Rik L. Rik with the Vidiots, and Danny & Doorknobs (with members of The Last and Trotsky Icepick). Both of the Leaving Trains tracks on KEATS, "Virginia City" and "Cigarette Motel," feature keyboardist Sylvia Juncosa and are different than the versions released later on the first two Trains albums. The extensive liner notes include commentary from Manfred Hofer and me (Falling James). Contact Happy Squid Records for more info.

The just-released WARFRAT TALES (UNABRIDGED) CD includes all of the original 1982 compilation WARFRAT TALES, which had two songs apiece by the Leaving Trains, Wednesday Week, The Last, 100 Flowers, The Question, Hector & the Clockwatchers, Rain Parade and more. The bonuses include tracks from most of the above as well as songs from bands that weren't on the original WarfRat LP, including the Gun Club, Sylvia Juncosa, and the Up & Out. Needless to say, if you're a Leaving Trains fan or interested at all in that time when punk blossomed unruly-like into cowpunk and and mod and pop and the Paisley Underground and beyond, WARFRAT TALES is a good nexus point. This expanded CD edition includes my (Falling James') original liner notes, and new verbiage from producer Vitus Matare, Last manager Gary Stewart and Jason Falkner.

A more modern Leaving Trains tune, "Dumb as a Crayon," appears on the FREAKS AND GEEKS soundtrack CD. The song, originally released on EMOTIONAL LEGS (the most recent Trains studio album), was an homage to my favorite character on the F&G show, Kim Kelly (as wonderfully portrayed by Busy Philipps). "Dumb" bears the interesting distinction of being the one song on the soundtrack that wasn't actually used in the series, since it was written fannishly about the show, after the program was canceled.

Meanwhile, the Leaving Trains' first-ever live album, AMPLIFIED PILLOWS, was released in late 2004 in Steel Cage Records. The 70-minute CD captures the Melanie/Andrew/Dennis/James lineup during a 2002 radio broadcast and at a nightclub show, and includes bonus tracks from European and American concerts in the late 1980s. Get it just for the glamorously interstellar cover art by noted collagist Winston Smith (Dead Kennedys, Tijuana No, Green Day).

Look for several new features on this-here Leaving Trains website, including our first-ever MERCHANDISE page (we've finally got t-shirts, a poster and CDs). The updated GALLERY page now boasts two separate new mini-galleries documenting the recent reunion show at Spaceland, with arty, high-quality photographs from David Winogrond and the Earwigs' Tom Underhill. Also, check out THE ATTIC, where strange things go to hide . . . And if you haven't found out enough about the Leaving Trains already, check out the interview I did with Mr. Monkey Motherfucker in a recent issue of his GARAGE DUMP magazine. Now go home!

--Falling James
Silver Lake, Lost Angeles
August 2005

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