RIP, WRVU

An old college associate of mine, Pete Wilson, writes in The Nashville Scene about the June 7 demise of WRVU (91.1 FM), Vanderbilt's student radio, as a broadcast station. "What's lost?" he asks. "The real-world immediacy that made broadcast radio a better learning experience than online simulation. The respect of students, alumni and Nashvillians who were patronized, told half-truths and kept in the dark until June 7. And one of the best ways of sharing culture that Vanderbilt ever had.

"WRVU gave people all over Middle Tennessee music of all kinds to enjoy for free. It was a site of cultural production at an exceedingly democratic level. Not only could it be received by anyone with a few dollars for a radio, but that same person could find him or herself on the transmitting end as well. In addition to dedicated students, WRVU drew smart, imaginative outsiders into its arms and gave them an opportunity to entertain, educate and inspire as part of a Vanderbilt enterprise."

Once upon a time, I listened fairly often to the WRVU "terrestrial" signal (the only kind of signal at the time), both in my student years and in fact more when I lived in Nashville after finishing school. I knew a number of people who did shifts there, and now and then would visit the broadcast booth. Two other students and I mixed the sound for a movie we made in film class at WRVU, using some of the sound effects records the station had in its vast collection. WRVU in the early '80s was refreshingly informal.

Sure, the station will survive in some form online. Maybe in 30 years few will remember that it was ever on the air -- and they might be increasingly vague on the whole concept of terrestrial radio anyway, considering it something that their grandparents listened to. But I'm with Pete. It's a distinct loss, and the "Vanderbilt enterprise" and Middle Tennessee are poorer for it.

RIP, Aashid Himons

I didn't know Aashid Himons well enough to know what his last name was, or that he had been Archie Himons earlier in his life. A quarter-century or more ago I just knew that he was Aashid and his band was Afrikan Dreamland, a -- the only -- Nashville reggae band. He was quite a talent.

I saw him perform a couple of times on the Vanderbilt campus in the early '80s, and met him once at a Nashville club after a performance because I was there with a friend of mine. That friend had done some camerawork for the band for one of its videos, maybe even the one that appeared on MTV in the mid-80s under the band name "Dreamland," apparently because the channel was too lily-livered to use a scary word like "Afrikan."

Aashid was an enormous man. He had the largest hands of anyone I've ever met, before or since, and a surge of dreadlocks on his head. That night he was in the mood to talk about his experiences playing in the band, and somehow or other got on the subject of keeping track of how much tax was owed from the band's take for each show. At which point he offered some wise financial advice to those of us listening. "The only way to deal with the IRS," Aashid said, "is to pay the bastards."

Aashid Himons died earlier this month in Nashville at 68 years of age. More about him is here and here.

Zweitklassigenthemenparksnostalgie, Nein

More rain ahead for northeast Illinois. We don't need any more for now, but the human residents of a particular area don't control these things. Maybe that's just as well, since if people could control the rain, they would send flooding rains to visit their enemies, who might return the favor. The story of mankind would then be even muddier than it is.

Speaking of floods, Tom Wood wrote in the Nashville Scene today: "I believe it may have been Jung who observed that survivors of a major flood often develop Zweitklassigenthemenparksnostalgie, the communal desire to reconstruct the second-rate theme parks they frequented as children. Sure enough, that's just what's happening. Since last week, more than 27,000 Facebook members have joined a group called "Let's build Opryland where Opry Mills once stood!"

Kudos to Tom for his amusingly bogus German. (I assume it's bogus, but with German you're never quite sure.) As for the Facebook Group, it should be noted that Opry Mills is still standing. Remediation of the massive flood damage will take quite a while, but the property will return to being a mall eventually.

The back story is that Opryland USA, a theme park with a country music theme, operated near the Cumberland River from 1972 to 1997. Then it closed. Opry Mills, a regional mall, was developed at the site and opened in 2000.

I didn't go to the theme park as a child. I went once as a young man, with some other friends, in the summer of 1985. We were entertaining an out-of-town visitor, a Frenchwoman. I remember the weather was very hot. The park was very crowded. The Frenchwoman was not impressed, but then again if the Taj Mahal happened to be in North America, that wouldn't have impressed her either.

We must of ridden some rides, but I can't remember what. We ducked into music venues a few times, mainly to escape the heat. I think I saw animatronic figures at one of those shows, but that might have been Disneyland in some other year. Or -world. It's all a jumble. I feel very little nostalgia for Opryland USA. None, in fact.

Bill Bryson, Douglas Adams, Lee DeWyze, Tom Lehrer & More About Jim Leeson

It was warm enough around noon today for me to sit out on the deck and eat lunch, and then read a little from A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson, though I didn't have much time for such a large subject. By evening, an un-May-like chill was in the air. It's supposed to be around for a few days. Go figure.

I read A Walk in the Woods about a year ago and enjoyed it immensely, so that was my spur to pick up A Short History. Pretty good so far. Bryson has that Douglas Adams flair sometimes. Regarding the distance from Earth to the realm of trans-Neptunian objects (e.g., the planet Pluto), he writes, "and how far is that exactly? It's almost beyond imagining. Space, you see, is just enormous -- just enormous."

Yeah, don't forget to take a towel. Fortunately he doesn't lay that kind of writing on too thick.

I drove through parts of Mount Prospect, Ill., yesterday and saw no fewer than three highly visible signs alongside the road asking me to call in a vote for hometown singer Lee DeWyze. Without the 12-year-old riding with me, I would puzzle at them and then forget about them. But she watches American Idol with regularity and has adolescent-girl admiration for Lee DeWyze, so I know who that is too.

I've only seen bits and pieces of the show, so I don't have much of an opinion about it. Occasionally I ask Lilly if the contestants are going to be yodeling on the next episode, or something equally unlikely. Maybe I'll suggest Tuvan throat singing next time. But at least the contestants seem to sing actual standards sometimes, as opposed to whatever pop glop has emerged lately from the dark Satanic mills of the ailing music industry.

American Idol will probably never get around to featuring their contestants singing from the Tom Lehrer songbook, but it should. I heard last week that much Lehrer has been re-issued this year, along with a CD/DVD collection, so the time is ripe, at least in terms of marketing. In high school I discovered the three Lehrer LPs we had lying around the house and learned them well. My circle of friends were also fans. Now with the help of YouTube, Lehrer is being passed to a new generation. In honor of spring, I plan to show Lilly the following (she expects this kind of thing from me):

(Link for Facebook readers.)

After posting about Jim Leeson on Tuesday evening, BTST got hits from dozens of places it never has before, mostly people looking for information about Leeson, who clearly had a wealth of friends spanning more than one generation. This isn't the place to find out about him, however.

Tom Wood's heartfelt piece in The Nashville Scene is. It was posted earlier today, around the time that the Tennessean got around to publishing a standard obit (I figure the Tennessean has a lot else to do about now). Other publications are now posting articles about him too. Makes me a little sorry that I lost touch with him over the last 25 years, but such is life, if you live long enough.

RIP, Jim Leeson

Too many ill tidings from Nashville. The awful flooding, of course, word of which has traveled far. Unrelated to the disaster is the recent death of Jim Leeson, word of which hasn't traveled so far. I heard about it on Facebook this morning from Nashville journalist Tom Wood, whom I knew at Vanderbilt a good many years ago.

"It breaks my heart to report that Jim Leeson took his own life over the weekend," Tom wrote. "He shot himself on a back road near his home in rural Williamson County. He had been worried lately about a decline in mental acuity that he perceived, though Nicki and I did not see it in our frequent visits with him and almost daily phone conversations. He had some chronic physical issues as well.

"Jim would have been 80 on May 13. Now an Irish wake is planned for that day, to take place on the deep-woods overlook he built in the 1990s to serve as a party venue. Some of you may not even remember Jim very well, but he took pride in the achievements of all the old Tunnel-Rats, and he asked about many of you over the years."

I remember Leeson well. The "Tunnel-Rats" Tom mentioned were student staff members of the various Vanderbilt Student Communications (VSC) media: the newspaper, magazine, yearbook and radio station, among other things. Their offices were all located along a windowless tunnel through Sarratt Student Center. I spent a lot of time there in the early '80s.

Leeson was an advisor to VSC at the time. Truth is, I don't know when he started doing that or when he stopped; he was there the entire time I was a part of VSC. I also don't know much about his previous career as a professional journalist or the details about how he actually made his living by the 1980s, which was as a real estate broker in Williamson County. In his capacity as VSC advisor, he was the grownup among the kids, but not an overbearing presence sent by the university. He gave good advice.

During my senior year, Dan Monroe and I wanted to persuade the VSC board -- all students, plus Leeson -- to fund the publication of a comic book we'd dreamed up, inspired by a previous work by Geof Huth. We made a presentation to the other members, and then withdrew to let them discuss it. I doubt they would have given us anything but for a compromise suggestion by Leeson (I'm pretty sure it was his idea, anyway): we had to sell some ads to pay for part of the thing, just like any normal pub. And so in the fall of '82 we were able to publish The Cosmic Cowboys. Not a bad collegiate effort, I think, from the perspective of 30 years. I'm glad we got to do it, regardless, and I can thank Leeson for his support.

Leeson periodically invited groups of us to his home in Williamson County -- out of Nashville on a major highway, then along a smaller road, then along a gravel road to his gate. He had a fine country home surrounded by the forested hills of Middle Tennessee; he had an expanse of land; and he had livestock and dogs. We ate, talked and got away from our student concerns during a day at Leeson's. Leeson was always a hospitable host. I don't remember anyone who didn't like going out to Leeson's.

After VU graduation ceremonies on May 13, 1983, a number of us newly minted graduates went out to Leeson's -- with our parents and other family members too -- for a few hours after lunch at the Loveless Cafe. I remember that excursion a lot more fondly that the actual graduation ceremony. (I didn't know until now that was his 53rd birthday, too.)

The last time I saw him was probably in '85 or '86, when Steve Freitag, former Versus editor, came to town. When visiting Nashville, the thing to do was visit Leeson too. So I went with Steve and (I think) another former Versus Tunnel-Rat, Pete Wilson. I can't say that I remember any details of that particular visit, but I'm certain we had an enjoyable time. We always did at Leeson's. Perhaps by this May 13, I can find some Tennessee whiskey -- I've got some Jack somewhere -- to toast to the memory of Jim Leeson.

Item from the Past: The Bluebird Cafe, Nashville

Back in the '80s, every time I moved it seemed to be in the dead of winter. In January 1987, I left Nashville for a new job in Chicago. On the last day at my old job, a number of coworkers plus a few other hangers-on took me to the Bluebird Cafe for a lingering lunch, always the best kind.

Afterwards, I took a picture of my companions. The Bluebird is visible to the left of the image as a window with faint curtains inside and a bit of awning. Patio Coiffure must have been the Bluebird's next-door neighbor, literally, and both were located at a fairly ordinary strip center on Hillsboro road.

In those days, the Bluebird was merely a pleasant place to eat and watch live music, though not at lunchtime. More than two decades later, it's a Nashville institution. I'm glad to know that it's still around. (So is Patio Coiffure, according to Google.)

January 16, 1987.

I finished all the work I needed to do in the morning, and then had a splendid lunch at the Bluebird Cafe: Italian sausage on French bread. Followed by cheesecake, of course. Lindsay, Susan, Steph, Bob, Wendy, Barb and Debbie M. went with me. Lots of small talk, things like the death of Gram Parsons, various movies, previous visits to the BB Cafe. Over the years, it's been a good place to take first dates, see talented Nashville musicians up close and, of course, eat the chocolate-chunk cheese cake, one of my favorite desserts anywhere.

207 31st Ave. N.

Over the years, urban landscapes churn. In Nashville recently, I duly noted that a lot of places, mostly retail establishments, had vanished in the years since I last lived there. But the fact that the Pizza Hut (or Inn?) that I visited a number of times during my freshman year in college has become a Qdoba Mexican Grill is of very little consequence, except maybe to the former franchiser of the pizza joint (Obie's Pizza was much better, anyway, and it's still there).

Some changes amused me. My first full-time job was in an ugly, early '60s office building on West End Ave. Now it's an Indigo Hotel and looks pretty good. Next time I'm in town, I might stay there, if I can get a room on the same floor as my office used to be. (Provided I can remember which floor it was, which I can't right now.)

Then there's the case of the house at 207 31st Ave. N. From the fall of 1982 to the spring of 1983, I lived there with two friends and a divinity graduate student, while the year before that, the house had been a duplex, part occupied by my friends, part occupied by a guy who made his living as a session drummer in Nashville's many studios.

For younger readers (if any), imagine this: no one living there in 1982-83 had a still camera that I remember, or if so, didn't use it much. We could have had cameras, but it would have involved developing film at some remote location, and I don't think any of us could be bothered with it. Likewise, no one had a 8mm camera. None of us had any video cameras, digital cameras or cellphone cameras either, because those weren't on the market yet. All that is a long-winded way of saying that I have no images of 207 31st Ave. N. that I know of, except for fuzzy scenes I shot for film class movies that used the house as a set.

In my mind's eye, though, I see a one-story brick house with brown trim, probably dating from the 1920s, when it would have been a nice middle-class property. By the time my friends and I lived there, it had that rundown student housing feel, complete with creaking floors, a fireplace that leaned a little, and other defects. "Firetrap," my mother called it when she saw it just before our graduation.

I prefer "dump," since there were plenty of loose windows from which to escape an inferno. The sort of dump that's perfect for young men. Just thinking about it floods me with nostalgia, but it's the kind of detail that bores people who didn't share the time and place -- except maybe for certain events, such as the time about 10 people crammed into the one of the house's small bathrooms, and accidentally brought down the shower curtains (or was it the medicine cabinet? I remember a crash and drunken laughter, but can't visualize anything). Or the game of Monopoly four of us played in the living room without saying anything. (Try it sometime. There's a lot of gesturing and grunting and pointing to deed cards.) Or the isolation tank we built in the garage and put in one of the rooms, which apparently worried the landlord. Considering the condition of the beams in the damp, moldy basement supporting the house, he might have been on to something. But the weight of the salt water and the wooden superstructure of the tank never broke through the floor, thank God.

Now the house at 207 31st Ave. N., Nashville, Tennessee, is gone. Late last month I drove by en route to the Parthenon, and in its place -- and in the place of the old apartment structure on one side of it, and another old house on the other, was a condo development. Local sources tell me the condos were developed about three years ago, so our old house had an 80-year run or so. A lot of other people must have passed through it, families in its early days, transient students later on. Now it exists only when any of us who can remember it, care to remember it.

Matches & Cards

I come by my habit of collecting matchbooks and cards from restaurants honestly. My mother has, or had, a large collection of restaurant matches. That was simply part of the restaurant experience: get some matches at the end. She never smoked, so smoking had nothing to do with it.

These days you’re more likely to get a business card than a matchbook, but I still collect whatever’s available. Back in April, I was a little disappointed to discover that the Cuban restaurant we visited in Tampa (Carmen’s) had no matches or cards to give away.

This came to mind over the weekend when I assimilated the collection of cards and matches accumulated in my former office into my larger collection at home. At home, I have three former fruit-cake tins nearly full of matches, a business card-holder full of cards (104, I just counted), and probably that many loose cards.

They’re good memory aids, like snapshots. Better in some ways, because rather than looking at a fixed image, they evoke some other kind of memory: the taste of something you ate, a bit of odd décor, someone else at the table with you.

For instance, one beaten up box, emptied of its matches, says Restaurant Metro. 2400 Lübeck-Gr. Burgstrasse 59. Täglich kalte und warme. Speisen von 11 Uhr bis 23 Uhr. See Sunday’s small posting for my arrival in Lübeck—this is where I had lunch with my friend Rich later that day. All I remember is that the service was glacially slow.

Keeping in a German theme, another matchbook I have is from Gerst-House Restaurant. Famous German Style Foods. Draft Beer. Nashville, Tenn. Free Parking. Did that place ever have good pigs’ knuckles. The key was the sauce.

Picked more or less at random, there’s also a reminder of Arthur Bryant’s, a superb barbecue shack in Kansas City, Mo.; the dining room of the remote Kalaloch Lodge on the coast in Washington state; Mama Desta’s Red Sea, on Clark Street in Chicago, where I used to introduce out-of-town guests to the pleasures of Ethiopian food; Gautama, an Indian restaurant in Osaka; Arizona Charlie’s, a second-string casino in Vegas that had huge, terrific breakfasts for about $3 even after the trend for Strip casinos was to make their food service into profit centers, too.

Fine memory aids. Unless, of course, they evoke no memory.

Al’s Steak House. Entertainment Nightly. The Finest in Food & Cocktails. 1990 W. Jefferson St., Joliet, Ill. The matchbook’s a dull red with a fleur-de-lis as the only decoration. I don’t remember spending much time in Joliet, or at any steakhouses there. My best guess would be on one of few business trips I took while working at the Law Bulletin, 1987 to 1990. Probably with Ernie, my boss, who was fond of steakhouses.

There’s also Barney’s Market Club. For Great Steaks. Since 1919. 741 W. Randolph, Chicago, IL 372-6466. With a small drawing of a prosperous fat man, ca. 1940, complete with cigar and caption: Yes sir! Senator. Another steakhouse I don’t remember, and the matchbook shows its age—pre-1990 again, I’m sure—with its missing area code. Every place in metro Chicago was 312 until the late 1980s, and even then we got only two area codes.