The Saga of Dream Team II as Told by a Recovering NBA Fanatic (or Like 9/11, I Never Forget!)

I’m pretty sure half the reason I enjoy following the NBA is for "tele-novelismo" that encompasses the sordid behind-the-scenes story arcs of the players' lives. This isn’t a new realization at all, but it didn't occur to how absurdly deep my knowledge was until I shared this Dream Team II photo with a friend the other day. With just a quick 10-20 second glance of this photo, each player’s face brought to mind a story, a scandal, or some kind of fall from glory. The fact that I could recall each one with such instant brevity was somewhat astonishing... or maybe embarrassing. Either way, suddenly I felt that much closer to understanding how the mind of Dustin Hoffman’s “Rain Man” character functioned.

That said, here are those rapid-fire memories, supplemented with fun internet links!

During the summer of ’94, after playing hoops with a kid who owned the Kemp DTII jersey, I begged my mom to buy me LJ’s Dream Team II jersey. It was the only time I ever made my mom splurge on some kind of expensive clothing item for me. After that I was relegated to whatever closeout NBA jerseys I could wrangle up at the nearest Ross Dress-4-Less, including a Bobby Hurley rookie-year Kings jersey (ouch!) and a Chris Weber Golden State Warriors jersey.

While Catholic guilt has me feeling like a little jerk for begging my mom for that damn jersey, I soon realized it was actually the most cost-effective jersey purchase ever. Since Magic Johnson wore the same number on the first Dream Team, you could switch it up and tell your peers you were sporting a Magic Johnson jersey, which I was prone to do. Essentially, it was two jerseys for the price of one! Brilliant! Thus my accountant mother should be proud of this purchase.

My one NBA career-related thought regarding Larry Johnson, however, corresponds to Alonzo Mourning. A few years after parting ways as teammates on the Charlotte Hornets, they would face each other in one of the nastiest, most gully playoff rivalries ever, between the New York Knicks and the Miami Heat. During one of the most brutal moments from that series, Mourning and LJ got fucking crazy and tried to swing on eachother. The fight ended with Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy trying to break up the fight and inadvertently creating one of the most memorable NBA Playoff moments ever.

Note Van Gundy, in the background, desperately running to stop them.

Note Van Gundy in the foreground, trying to stop the fight by desperately clinging on to Alonzo Mourning’s leg, looking a lot like a small child throwing a tantrum because they'd rather not go to school.

Isiah Thomas. Nobody likes Isiah Thomas. The end.

Seriously, though, dude was snubbed from the original Dream Team due most of the players involved hating him, as Scottie Pippen and Clyde Drexler recall in this brief interview-

Even worse, his post-NBA career has been muddled with terrible coaching stints with the Pacers and Knicks, and an infamous trainwreck of a stint as President of Basketball Operations with the Knicks. His time managing the Knicks saw them devolve into a NBA joke, a team who lacked chemistry but had an abundance of egotistical, overpaid players (see: Stephon Marbury). Oh, don't forget about the sexual harassment lawsuit filed against him by a Knicks executive which had him settling out of court for a couple million. Ouch, dude.

I have no interesting memories of Steve Smith, or "Smitty" as everyone endearingly refers to him. He was always a solid All-Star player who kinda bounced around from team to team, spending his best years with the Atlanta Hawks, doing his baller Steve Smith thing. He was just kind of like Mitch Richmond, in that he carried his team but never got superstar famous. As I understand it, he actually got a championship with the Spurs in the early 2000s. Now he’s an on-air analyst for TNT’s NBA programming, and I guess he runs a charity as well. Legit dude.

Shawn Kemp is the NBA’s reigning king of fathering illegitimate children, which certainly gives new meaning to his nickname, Reign Man. Also, dude’s infamous for squandering a great career on (one can only assume) lots of nachos, weed, Miller High-Life, and cocaine.

Also, he notoriously showed up high-as-shit to his Cleveland Cavaliers team photo shoot:

(Okay, I can’t substantiate that claim at all, but this infamous Kemp picture doesn't help prove otherwise.)

Tim Hardaway hates gay people. In 2007, when asked how he would feel about having a gay teammate he told a radio show host the following,
”You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known," Hardaway said. "I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States."

He has since apologized, recanted, and now advocates for gay rights, but still, that shit really killed Tim Hardaway for me, which sucks considering dude was 1/3 of my favorite Golden State Warriors team, the legendary RUN TMC:

(Dudes were also intense Cosby fans.)

Dan Majerle, assistant coach with the Phoenix Suns, and owner of "Majerle’s", a chain of bar and grill restaurants popular in the metropolitan Phoenix area.

I don't think they serve the Thunder bar.

In 2008, Majerle’s former Phoenix Suns teammate, Kevin Johnson, was elected Mayor of his hometown city, Sacramento, CA. Here he is with the former King of Sacramento, Arnold Schwarzenegger... or is that Dan Majerle!?

He also runs non-profit that lost their Americorps funding for mishandling Americorps funds. Hmm.

Joe Dumars’ post-NBA career is the exact inverse of his former Pistons teammate, Isiah Thomas. Dude has been the President of Basketball Operations for the Pistons since 2001, and has been ridiculously successful up until the past two seasons. He singlehandedly orchestrated everything that made the Pistons the dominant Eastern Conference team of the mid-2000s. I personally hate the Pistons, so that couldn’t have been more infuriating.

As a Pacers fan, I (irrationally) cast blame on Joe Dumars for this.

Yo, did you hear about the time Dominique Wilkins engaged in fisticuffs with a former NBA referee who claimed Wilkins owed him money?

No!? Well I’m pretty sure this guy did!

Much like Shawn Kemp, Derrick Coleman was also afflicted with a love for nachos, and drinking and subsequently threw his career in the shitter after disowning exercise and hard work.

However, unlike Shawn Kemp, and despite earning Rookie of the Year honors, this dude never took any of his teams very far, and he is frequently looked upon as having overall one of the most disappointing NBA careers in the history of the league. (Hence the name and theme of the discontinued blog I took the above image from, The Derrick Coleman Awards.)

Hey, remember when Shaq had funny little sideburns as pictured above? I do.

Yeah, Shaq’s pretty run of the mill in terms of being a scumbaggy sports star who cheated on his wife a bunch. But did you know this dude was embroiled in some weird four-way love melodrama that involved his ex-wife banging Gilbert Arenas, while Shaq was involved in some tryst with Arenas’ wife, who also happened to be Shaq’s former personal assistant? Sadly, I do know this.

Reggie Miller, a true basketball great, my favorite player ever, and, like any rich, divorced 40-something, a dude who likes to party hard with young, attractive women.

Well, it looks like too many repeat viewings of Bill Bellamy’s “How To Be A Player” finally caught up with him.

Basically, he was harassing some rich neighbor guy’s fiancé who he found immensely attractive. In turn, rich dude used his riches to have this banner flown over a beach in Malibu, where Millers lives. Classic.

As for Mark Price, I hear he’s quietly shooting free throws somewhere.

Oh, and he’s also the titleholder of “Whitest NBA Highlight Video on Youtube”. Soul Asylum? Seriously?

Your 1994 USA FIBA World Basketball Championship Team!

SST fanaticism at its finest.

In the years 1982-1983 Black Flag were performing some of their strongest material ever, as immortalized in what I boldly declare to be the best punk album ever, Black Flag’s 1982 Demos. Yeah, despite its obvious flaws, I’ll stand by that assertion. Still, it’s always quite the bummer to understand the dynamics of the material written during this era and how it was never properly recorded to its full realization. As a result, I’ll pine over the lost 1983-era Black Flag album that could have been, and then take it even further by contextualizing the LAPD’s tactics against the band within the paradigm of many other well known struggles throughout history involving artistic vision being prevented by the hand of totalitarianism. Then I snap out of it and decide I'd rather be endlessly raging hard to “I’ve Got To Run”, the b-side to the TV Party single, which was as close as they ever came to fully realizing their sound during that era.

Anyway, this soundboard recording of the band at the 9:30 Club in D.C. circa 1983 kind of rectifies the hole in my heart, and it will probably do the same for you if you’re similarly passionate about such things.

Black Flag, Live @ 9:30 Club on February 03, 1983.

I must say, this recording, despite a serious lack of the song “My War”, trumps any other recordings I’ve heard of the band during this era. A few years ago, CD Presents released a pretty good soundboard recording of two sets they did in San Francisco circa 1982. While that recording was a pretty awesome encapsulation of what could have been- it was full-on Chuck Biscuits era Black Flag, for fuck’s sake- Greg Ginn’s guitar was inexplicably mixed really low, which is totally unacceptable, and honestly just kind of ruined the whole damn recording for me.

This recording, on the other hand, is legit – This time we have Bill Stevenson on drums, and, yes, fully audible guitars rounded out by Dukowski’s bass sounding precisely as thick and dirty as it should. Also, I’m pretty sure Ian MacKaye makes a vocal appearance on “I’ve Had It”, which is just as neat as the appearance he makes on the recording of Henry’s first Black Flag show in D.C., in which he actually sings the entirety of “Fix Me”.

All in all, this show is crucial for anyone who is into Black Flag, not just the collector nerds.

Up next, is another Flag show recorded at the 100 Club in London circa 1981. It’s a pretty standard Flag show, and not really too crucial unless you’re a completist collector nerd. However, the stand out aspect of this one is that it features what is probably the earliest version of “Scream” I’ve ever heard, and played at double the speed than what would become the standard. Pretty cool.

Black Flag, live @ 100 Club, London, UK (December 15, 1981)

After Dez Cadena “quit” Black Flag in 1983, he immediately spent a short time in Redd Kross.

(They’ll always be Red Cross to me.)

My unrelenting journeys into the internet’s nether regions led me to the discover this rare gem – a snapshot of Dez with Redd Kross jamming on tour with the Bangles in Tucson, AZ circa 1983.

(Dez on the left, and dancing, tambourine playing McDonald brothers on the right)

According to the photographer-

“I was lucky enough to meet the band before the doors opened after the sound check for one of the warm up bands, Redd Kross. Susanna Hoffs was telling me that the promoter wasn't going to let Redd Kross play after hearing the band. I expressed my disappointment when I heard this, then she said "The Bangles are a really great band too." She was amazing! And still is amazing! I heard The Bangles for the first time that night, and have been a big fan ever since. Susanna invited some of the members of Redd Kross up on stage for the encores. Cool!”

To see more of this dude’s photos, check out his page HERE.

As an added bonus, here are the McDonald brothers assisting the Bangles by adding a shitty teen punk vibe to their song “Call on Me”.

I also happened to find this great shot of pre-Black Flag Dez circa 1980, along with similar pictures of Jack Brewer and Joe Baiza from Saccharine Trust. These were unearthed by scouring the Saccharine Trust myspace page, so clearly these dudes were ahead of their time, you know, as far as taking myspace vanity pictures goes.

Finally, here’s an epic 1979 rehearsal demo of the band Tyrant, which was Saint Vitus before they got Scott Reager on vocals. All the classic pre-Wino Saint Vitus tunes are presented in a pretty decent recording, all with guitar player Dave Chandler handling the vocal duties. Someone pressed this recording on vinyl recently, but it didn’t include “Burial At Sea”, which is one of the most crucial jams.

(Click on the picture for the link, dude.)

Enjoy! Oh, and fuck mediafire. Internet archive or don't! DIE!

Together Again...

Richard Meltzer and Mike Watt collaborate on something that really just makes me wish D. Boon was still alive.

One gig, guys! Bassist Mike Watt and rock scribe Richard Meltzer's vision finally realized 27 years after the tragic death of D Boon.

The choicest nuggets from the above article-

Having moved from New York to Los Angeles some-years earlier in the mid-70's, Meltzer found himself anchored to his beloved L.A. punk scene. For him, L.A. punk, not New York punk, was the shit.

"I moved out of New York in '75; I was 30," reflects Meltzer. "I felt like I used (N.Y.) up. I lived it - been there, don't that. I ate it up. I moved to L.A. and I used it up in like ten minutes. But it took me longer to get out. I never cared to pretend they (New York) had a scene. The Dictators, who were kind of a pre-punk N.Y. band, who I'm still in touch with and who are friends of mine, weren't really punk. The stuff like Blondie, I never thought it was punk. Talking Heads weren't punk. Maybe Richard Hell was punk. I liked Lydia Lunch. To me, that scene was very overhyped, overrated. They had a bunch of very lightweight bands, who were part of what was considered New York hardcore. I never got along with Richard Hell. I thought he was a putz. But as far as his music (goes), it's alright.

"I was going to shows like four, five nights a week, wherever shows there were...X, Germs, Weirdos, Screamers. It was an audience of maybe 200 people who would go to most of the shows. It was a scene that didn't give a hoot about the mainstream market for this stuff. It was a vibrant scene for a while. L.A., to me, which is the cesspool of the universe; the punk scene was its only redeeming feature.

Meltzer also recalls the demise of L.A. punk. "It wasn't until I.R.S. Records signed some local bands like Wall of Voodoo and the GoGo's that everybody suddenly smelled the possibility of money in it. That turned everything bad, I think. GoGo's used to wear lampshades on their heads. Then were asked by I.R.S. ‘How would you like to become an ordinary girl group?' They thought ‘Fine, let's do it.' After that everything went to hell."

With the gig-going Meltzer ingrained in L.A. punk, it was inevitable that Boon and Watt's paths would cross with the iconoclastic VOM front-man and writer. "This is back in '78. '79 or '80," says Meltzer. "I was in L.A. and had a punk rock show. I was aware of them (Minutemen) already. They had a few records out. Then Mike Watt-we had not met yet - sent me some vinyl and asked me what I thought of it. ‘Is this any good? Are we full of shit?' Please tell me,' asked Watt. Following that, we kinda became friends."

Meltzer was instantly sold on the Minutemen's jam econo aesthetic. "They were just so unassuming; they were just folks," he says about the trio. "They never postured. They never wanted to be celebrities in any way. They didn't dress or talk like celebrities. They were just genuine with everybody and the music didn't feel like the traditional lyric that most bands still do and they weren't going to do. They wrote things on a napkin and it became a song, especially when they were doing short things. I just thought ‘Great. There's no need to play these long jams and solos.' Everything they did was just so basic, and at all times, real."

Meanwhile, Meltzer had soured on the rock-writing, having penned shit-tons of reviews since the mid 60's. He invented the singular phraseology for rock criticism, until the template was deconstructed. "I was certainly one of the first two or three (critics)," Meltzer says. "It was very free-form at first. What is a record review? It was yet to be determined. In 1966 and '67, there was no style sheet on what a record review was. Then Rolling Stone comes in and the record companies insist on writing on a dotted line so they can sell records. (They said) ‘Write clearly about this record and you'll be paid well to say good things about it'."

Ironically, one of the last critiques Meltzer wrote was of a Minutemen disc. "That (1982's Bean Spill EP) was one of the last rock reviews I ever did. I would still write about shows once in a while and the scene. But I didn't write about the Minutemen after that," remembers Meltzer. Watt, in hopes of a Meltzer review, sent him the record. "I did send'em the Bean Spill EP and sure enough (I wrote) ‘Here it is, man, it came out,'" says Watt. "In the review, he called us ‘scientist rock.' I used that in a song. I think ‘History Lesson - Part II.' I put it in there and it's a direct quote from him."

As an SST Records devotee (Meltzer professes his love for Black Flag, too), he was witness to his fair share of Minutemen gigs and one in particular stands out. "I saw a really great show they did in the Mojave Desert. This long, long bus ride out to the desert. As soon as we get there, Minutemen were already set up but everybody had to piss. The first several minutes of the show was everyone pissing in a circle around the stage. It was terrific."

R. Meltzer and VOM don't get their just dues as often as their counterpart band, the Anrgy Samoans, so I was stoked to see Watt give them the nod-

Richard moved to Los Angeles the early days of the punk scene and he was in a band called VOM. We got to see gigs and he was with the Angry Samoan guy Gregg (Turner). He also had a radio show called Hepcats from Hell on KPXK, a Pacifica station. He had a show that would be on Saturday nights from midnight on and stuff and I was hearing'em there. Lo and behold, we got to meet him but it was through the punk scene becuz he was way in it."

Thankfully, the magical internet repository gods have blessed us with this series of brilliant, yet criminally obscure, VOM music videos. Parts of this look as if it was shot in El Segundo right in front of the Standard Oil Refinery, which makes this the second time the Standard Oil Refinery has come up within the history of L.A. punk. The more notable event occurred when Black Flag played there in 1979, which resulted in them almost getting killed by oil roughnecks. Yeah, no shit.

A digest of youtube comments from alternate versions of the above sheds a little more light on this video-

I've been looking for a copy of this for years. That's me playing guitar with long hair. The last time I saw this was at the screening in Richard Cases apartment on Kingsley Drive back in 77. We also shot scenes at the Long Beach Pike and in Pointe Dume in Malibu.
squintchy 3 years ago

( richard meltzer / lyricist )

Stairway To The Stars is one of the best rock lyrics ever written! (1st BOC lp)

it actually took three people to write the words for "I'm In Love With Your Mom"

= meltzer/turner/saunders all hunkered down at the round kitchen table at 12966 Kittridge, north hollywood, sometime Fall 1977. (radically rewriting RM's original lyric, same title).

true story: mid-session (writing), the front door gets a knock, and it's greg shaw (of Bomp Records)

(cont. below)

metalmikeinoakland 2 months ago

(pt 2)

and it's greg shaw (of Bomp Records) looking for his staffer gary sperazza (who lived in the back bdrm)

when wild (g)reg saw the Vom trioka just fifteen feet away, he thought it was some sort of conspiracy plotting again' him (shaw never did return saunders' austinTX-thrift-store orig Kenny and the Kasuals LIVE AT THE STUDIO CLUB lp borrowed in 1972, per his long standing practice of permanently borrowing/appropriating things he "needed to hear") ("book" ex/mt on that one approx $1k)

metalmikeinoakland 2 months ago

(cont pt 3)

so there was paranoia aplenty in the air around Bomp HQ in 1977. dozens of record collectors worldwide! at least ten of them must be plotting to get their "loaned" records back!

anyway so (g)reg freezes in the doorway. backs up three steps, turns around, and skeedaddles back to his car. safe and sound to live another day!

true story!

metalmikeinoakland 2 months ago

Actually, the VOM videos were filmed in (August?) 1978.

Fer sure, coz I was subbing for "Ted Kluzewski" (my brother, Metal Mike) on drums... and arrived in LA in July 1978.

bonzeblayk 2 years ago

First Dudes on the Moon. And you?

In keeping with Neil DeGrasse Tyson's call for the general public to keep their imaginations freshly lubed up with dreams of deep space exploration, a visit to the SPACE exhibit at the Springs Preserve led me to think that perhaps the groundwork for a revived public interest can be spurred by showcasing what a badass Buzz Aldrin is.

  

Seriously, Converse needs to stop playing themselves and call Buzz Aldrin up for an endorsement deal immediately. Shit, this picture alone should have made them change the name of the "Chuck Taylor" to the "Buzz Aldrin".





Pictured: Buzz Aldrin having "fun".

I'm pretty sure Buzz Aldrin's kid came up with the term "buzzkill" to describe what it was like to grow up with his father-

"Weeeee! Isn't this awesome, Dad!?"

"Eh, it's no MOON."

He's still got it!

SPRIIIIIIING BREAK! YEAH! (PT. 4)

Since the weather was clearing up, I decided to stop by the Mulholland Overlook to take a peak at the Los Angeles Basin. The view was more than I expected...


(Panoramic pic was taken with an my iPhone. Click the pic to get a BIG view)

This was the clearest view I've ever had of the city from the Mulholland Overlook. Due to smog, it's pretty rare to see Long Beach, the Palos Verdes Peninsula, and the Santa Monica Bay/Pacific Ocean from this view point. Unfortunately, the iphone camera didn't capture the ocean that well, but it's still somewhat visible. A Satellite map of the area in this pic can be seen here.

Also, on the punk history and geography tip, this is where Brendan Mullen gives his spiel in the Decline of Western Civilization. If you take the time to watch his bit from this link (starts @ 30 seconds), notice how you can barely make out downtown L.A. in the background from this same exact point.



Since the rain was clearing up at the end of the day, I made a quick stop by Beale's Cut once the rain subsided. Located in between the Santa Susanna and San Gabriel mountains, the cut was the original connecting route between the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys.




Originally cut into a 30 ft deep pass in 1854, the Surveyor General of California deepened the cut to 90 ft, and then named it after himself-- pretty baller.




As a kid going to school in the SCV, this place was brought up a lot as a local point of interest especially whenever we went on field trips to the SCV Historical Society museum.




Oddly, we never actually went on a field trip to this place, so I mostly remember it as our favorite funny historical pseudo-pun, "Beale's Butt." The above picture is one of the most well known of the cut, a cut and paste composite of early Western star Tom Mix. Yeah, he didn't actually jump Beale's Cut.




This was my first time getting to see it up close. Unfortunately, it had caved in sometime in the late 90's so it's not quite the cut it used to be. You could say it wasn't quite cutting it anymore!




Here's the cut as seen from the backside, after I climbed up and over it. The caved-in area can be seen in the middle of it.




View of SCV and old Newhall refinery from the Beale's Cut road.




The 14 freeway as seen from Beale's Cut/Newhall Refinery Rd.




I have no idea exactly what this is, but I'm assuming it was made while deepening the cut.




Since it had just rained, all of the surrounding landscape was still ridiculously moist. These are the most ideal conditions for Southern California's infamous landslides and rockslides to occur. So, of course, only on the way back did I see this huge crack in the cliff face on south side of the cut, which scared the crap out of me, and made me realize how stupid it was of me to go here by myself. I'm lucky I wasn't engulfed in a sandstone rockslide.




Plaques for the site had been located on these monuments since the late 30's. Unfortunately, like most isolated interpretive sites, this one had fallen victim to vandals, so they have since been removed. Also -- surprise, surprise -- apparently there was a lot of illegally waste dumping at the site, so it was surrounded by an ugly, slapdash chain link fence. Bummer.

Needless to say, I miss California.