Bart Bull: August 2009

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Aphorism Fifty-One: One of a Series; Collect the Whole Set!

"You can beat a dead horse to water but you can't make him drink it."

from How The West Was I

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Really Short Fiction

Here's the first line or two from the second chapter of my first novel or two, written way back...well, a while ago. And now, today, oddly, it felt appropriate to me.

"When we come back again this time it was summer time which if you go to Arizona in June or July or August and know better all ready than you are probably crazy or stupid or more."

Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Aphorism Fifty: One of a Series; Collect the Whole Set!

"A lie can only thrive on truth; lies, heaped one upon another, lack substance."

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Monday, August 10, 2009

Aphorism Forty-Nine: One of a Series; Collect the Whole Set!

"That's like trying to pick out your favorite leg."

Jerry Reed, all-'round genius guy. . . and, ironically, a master picker

It's Not All About Me

Vogue, Details, Spin, Sounds staff writer, West Coast editor; loads of magazines, daily and weekly newspapers; columns, reporting, features, criticism. Couple of Deems Taylor Awards for music stuff, lots of other awards for reporting, writing, columns. Worked and traveled in more than twenty countries. Published in six languages; writes exclusively in American.

"The best new American rock writer of the '80s" — Creem

"[SPIN's] West Coast editor Bart Bull's piece on John Lee Hooker is as witty and perceptive a piece of writing as you're likely to find in any magazine anywhere." — Los Angeles Times

"Shakespearean." — Tom Wolfe

OG punk rocker, founded first American xeroxpunk fanzine, Browbeat, in 1977;
OG skateboarder, once clocked at 38 mph downhill.
Adequate accordionist; quarter-assed steel guitar player. Historian, cultural commentator, culinary adventurer, raconteur, wanderer, cook (pro/semi-pro/amateur), bon vivant (p/s-p/a), picaro y guero y gabacho.
Record producer, arranger, and mixer. Manager; Artistes et Property Intellectual. (Under his watch: Two Grammy nominations; more than one thousand tour dates internationally; precedent-setting application of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution to major label recording contracts; establishment of fiscally and aesthetically successful independently distributed record labels in territories on three continents; numerous other accomplishments.)
Urbanist

Designer
Documentarian
Expatriate American
High school dropout;

North Central Phoenix yo-yo champion, 1966.
Danced on Soul Train (one time, 1986; not invited back);
Hit long foul off Juan Marichal, 1984;

Played accordion for 80,000 bikers and metalheads in Nuremburg, Germany, 1992;

Briefly (thanks to Title IX) a member of the Phoenix College Women's Volleyball Team;

Charter member of the M. M. M. S.; Founding member/co-president of J.A.G.U.A.R. (Juveniles of Arizona Guard Against Undesirable Armed Rascals);

Co-founder of the notorious N.C. L. F. (Neon Cowboy Liberation Front); once shared a barber with the late, great Sam Cooke; numerous other awards, distinctions and visible scars

Once and former owner/operator/mechanic & close personal associate of: 1966 Pontiac GTO (389); a 1967 GTO (Tri-Power); a 1967 Chevrolet Malibu SS-327; a 1968 GTO (4ooCI, Hurst His'n'Hers shifter; Posi-Traction;); a 1969 GTO with Ram-Air III and four-on-the-floor; and a 1969 SS-396 El Camino with a 427 Corvette engine installed; numerous others, from three continents. Currently grumpy about Americans using too darn much gas. Rides the Metro standing up, goofy-foot; and a one-speed Dutch bicycle with coaster brake and friction-generated headlight (avec tres authentique Ed "Big Daddy" Roth Ratfink decals).

"Writer, musician, manager, gadabout, and cool-guy raconteur..." — New Times

"This obsessive, smart-ass, and at times uproarious collection... [has] nothing to do with commercial success. If (it) did, '...probably the eighth greatest band name ever would be Celine Dion, and we'd all know the Book of Revelations was kicking full effect.'"

Failure magazine "book" review of Battle of The Band Names

"His explication of why white America hasn't clasped Michael Jackson to its bosom as tightly as it has Bruce Springsteen [in another publication] was the most provocative, insightful, and prolix piece of writing I've read since Lester Bangs' famous piece on wanting to do James Taylor grievous bodily harm. . .

His condemnation of Woodstock a few issues back made me cackle aloud with delight."

Creem

"Ironically, for a book [Tom Waits On Tom Waits] that leans overwhelmingly towards smaller-press rock journalism, the most intriguing character in the book aside from Waits is Bart Bull, veteran journalist extraordinaire, a large-publication writer and the former West Coast editor of SPIN. Two of Bull’s Waits pieces are included — the first, the aforementioned “After a One-Night Stand” article from 1977, is the account of a fight between interviewer and interviewee that arose when a mid-tour Waits was particularly exhausted and cranky. The second, “Boho Blues,” written for Spin in 1987, is an ambitious, successful attempt to write a piece of Waits journalism in the style of Waits himself and the most insightful piece in the book.

At its absolute best, as with the Bart Bull articles, Tom Waits on Tom Waits illuminates its subject and allows a peek into the history of lesser-known late-20th century rock journalism, sometimes from now-defunct publications."

"Not all the interviewers here fall into line and churn out cookie cutter questions though. One of the best pieces is written by Bart Bull for Phoenix New Times in 1977. Waits had just released Foreign Affairs and was in a particularly bad mood that evening. Rather than let Waits run roughshod over him, Bull fought back. Written in a narrative style, it stands out amongst the typical Q+A format that dominates this book. And what did Bull gain from giving the man such a negative profile? The chance to interview him again 10 years later for SPIN. In Tom Waits on Tom Waits, many music journos learn that flattery gets you nowhere."

"Some, like Spin magazine’s insufferable Bart Bull, flash plenty of sub–Lester Bangs style to zero effect. " Kirkus Reviews, unsigned review of the same book

Bart Bull