Brain Surgeons & Friends
brown ‘n’ sugar
Please, dear reader, consider it no less loving an appreciation than theirs–not a damned iota less! I just, well, view certain things differently, let’s say, but the problem may simply be that I no longer hold to the sacraments of their particular branch of the R & R Church…there are so many branches, y’know?
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When I first met her, in 1967 or early ’68, Helen Robbins, as she then was known, was a shy little college girl, sweetheart of the drummer for this band called Soft White Underbelly. When I say little I simply mean she was on the small side, short, and the median height of the band, as bands go, was itself below average–a buncha peewees. (Near that median myself, I tend to notice these things.) Short and cute, on the cusp (at least) of pretty, tho by no means beautiful, “sexy” in a nonspecific way, a warm if not hot mammal heat source, an appealing soft creature, about 18, casually groomed, a very sweet smile when she smiled, but above all shy…reticent…she didn’t say very much at all.
A knock at the door one night in late ’69 altered the sweetness of the picture. Without prelude, a couple in their early 20s, total strangers, asked, “Where’s the mescaline?” It turned out Helen, without consulting anyone, had set up a little business. For customers she’d suss out the younger patrons of the liquor store she sometimes worked at–“If you like gin, I know something that’ll really get you high.”
From out of the blue Helen would phone me, or I’d run into her at BOC shows or here and there in Manhattan. Small talk, how’s tricks, not exactly flirtation but almost. She had the same lovely smile. Finally, 1975, I’m about to leave New York, now’s my chance. I call–hi howzit?–and bop up to her Lower East Side pad with a pint of rum.
By no stretch of the imagination was her music–or its “attitude”–punk, as was occasionally claimed. (Punk wouldn’t even piss on the flags.) Altho possibly more hard-edged–“tough”–“kick-ass”–than any Underbelly installment’s would ever be, it was just basically the kind of rock that celebrates nothing real (not for anybody with half a brain, 2/5 of a heart), that is so lowest-common-denom by design that the LEAST noxious thing it’s gonna do is make you stupid.** (The kind that MOST working bands, American or otherwise, continue to produce, with or without trying.)
