Richmond Flood, 2004
Brooke Saunders
Dika Newlin
Paul Bloch
Mike "Hunter" Duke
Featuring:
Mike Erwin
Zip Irvin
Nat Nolan
Apocowlypso. The very name makes me shudder. In many ways, though, the 'Cow was Richmond's perfect band, consisting of a man who wore sunglasses indoors, a wacky painting student, a moody English major, and an 700-year-old VCU music professor. This song—by no means great, but tenacious—has a tendency to rattle around in my head days months after I give in and listen to it, and it chronicles one of the many times our city got smacked down by the weather gods--1985, nearly 19 years ago. After that disaster, plans were finally put into place to build a flood wall that would protect Shockoe Bottom from the mercurial James River.
It didn't help this time, though, when a river fell from the freaking sky and rolled down Church Hill and downtown to party in the Bottom. I don't care what your take on faith is, you've got to question the competence of a god who destroys Cafe Gutenberg and leaves Mama 'Zu intact. Guess we all get the deities we deserve. Hey, maybe the prayers of nightlife-hating Baptist assholes get answered first!
Anyway, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's feeling Bloch's sign-off at the end of the song: "Well I'm packin' my bags, and I'm movin' on / I've seen too many dreams die in this squalid old town." Apres him, le deluge.
posted by Andrew Beaujon at 13:15
15 Comments:
1. Mama Zu is a great restaurant though the owner may be an asshole. I moved before Cafe Gutenberg opened so it may be a better restaurant though...
2. Do you think the flood wall contributed to the flooding? The water had no where to go. Normally it would have dispersed into the river....
Ya win some, ya lose some.
I have to take exception. Only in a place with as many protestants as Richmond would Mama 'Zu even pass as an Italian joint. The food is mediocre at best (ditto Edo's--take away the garlic and you have...nothing), and the service is atrocious. I get the impression a lot of people here seem to think that means the place is "New York style." Wrong. In New York you get treated well, and there's never any bullshit about how the owner "doesn't like there being more than four plates on the table." Fuck the owner--I'm paying. Actually, fuck the owner full stop.
I was friends w/ the waitstaff but I still know about the bad service but b/c of those friendships I gotta stand up for the 'Zu.
My only lingering (but powerful) memory of Apocowlypso comes from a Greenpeace rally in Monroe Park, perhaps in 1989 or 1990. Dika Newlin was standing with Brooke Saunders banging on pots and pans; a paper mache' whale was floating in the background... Dika was screeching at the top of her lungs, "Save! The! Whales! Save! The Whales!"
As for the flood of 1985, I was in high school and was excited to be heading down to P.B. Kelly's (now Havana '59) to see DRI play. The river rose. And rose. And rose. And stopped somewhere around the second floor of the club. The show was cancelled, which was fine since I never really grooved with DR. But I was a 17-year-old punk, and I was just beginning to discover taste.
- John Sarvay
"P.B. Kelly's got swept away / They were going under anyway"--note the use of water imagery; very Walter Coppedge.
that track is a great fuck you to richmond. but sung from a place of love, IMO. plus the wah plus sax breakdown almost get's to a plausible UB40 imitation. made me very happy to hear it again. not sure how mama zu got in this discussion, but c'mon-that place sux by any measure. only the most narrow of RVA points-of-view can find something to defend there.
Unfortunately I arrived in Richmond too late to experience Apocowlypso, though I heard interesting, good things about the band. But hey, what do I know, hipsters still put me down for loving some of the more edgy '3rd wave' 80's ska like Bim Skala Bim, and locals Burma Jam.
As for Mama Zu's, sorry I was born into a "Protestant" family, but I love that place. I signed Ed's ABC petition when a lot of people thought he was an idiot for trying to open in Oregon Hill. I like the fact that they do not spare the garlic, they don't care what you think of the building, and that try to keep the prices reasonable. My girlfiend's stepdad, who grew up in old Philly in the '30s, thought it was very old-school authentic. Mama Zu's sometimes quietly does neighborhood parties to raise money for charity where they set up a buffet and bring in a band. Yeah the waiters are sometimes surly, but you would be too if you had to trip over West Enders who are all proud of themselves for "slumming it" by parking on Pine Street.
Ed himself may sometimes come off as rude, but he has a system, kinda like Dave over at Cafe Ole, and it works.
If you do not like the place or the service or the owner, then I can highly recommend sliding over to the bar and ordering take-out, which is what I do when I do not want to deal with crowds.
In Italian-American cooking, "old school" is not a compliment!
One thing I did like about Ed, is that no matter what, he would walk though 'Zu screaming HOT,HOT,HOT - even itf it was ice cream.
Let's really test your Apocowlypso memory: what word was painted on Paul Bloch's bass?
i was doing a search online re: Bloch et al you see, and your blog came up...
The first time i saw Dika Newlin on campus, was a transfer student to VCU. she truckin' around in her combat boots, kilt, leather jacket caressing her hunchedback and black beret. my soon to be ex-boyfriend pointed to her and said, "Look! That's YOU in 40 years!"
i guess i'll find out if he was right in another 20 years.
halfway to hell,
sfw
I hate Cafe Guttenburg; it's the most contrived poo-poo wanna-be place I've ever been. There is MUCH better food to be found in Richmond for MUCH less money and in MUCH more authentic environements.
LOL - I did a search for Brooke Saunders and came across this. I just grabbed my Apocowlypso tape that I purchased one night when they were playing at the JADE ELELPHANT where I was waitressing at the time. I live in Panama City, FL now and this really has blown my mind. I still play this cool tape once in a while - it has 6 songs, including Harry in the Park (which must be Harry Gore!) It is a photocopy cassette insert and says "recorded and mixed at Audio Werke between July and October 1987. I was a music student at VCU and always ran into Dika. I always gave her a big smile and hello and she always grunted back at me, which made me smile and wave harder every time. She cracked me up! Something happened the other day that blew my mind!! I ran into one of my former band mates from Richmond right here in Panama City! We have reformed Mood Pill and will be playing out again soon. Does anyone remember "Charlie the hitman Hudson?" - Kristi
Whoa - is that Andrew Beaujon from Eggs and other fine Lets Rain projects? D00d, I'm a big fan!
Oh, and I used to be Paul Bloch, too. Now I work as Alazka, and at Garageband.com you'll see a slew of my more recent work.
Re:chmond Flood: what happened was, back when I was 18 & playing in Amphetamine Library (with whom I gigged PB Kelly's etc), which was a psychedelic grunge band a few years too early, but we all really admired Stevie Ray as much as we admired Sonic Youth and the Velvet Underground, we tossed around the idea of "Richmond Flood" as an homage to SRV's "Texas Flood" album, since after all it was '85 or so and the flood was going on...only the curse of Amphetamine Library was we kept getting washed away in the flood of other bands in town, so it became a song about the band scene and how frustrating it was.
Then one day in class at VCU (yes, possibly Coppedge's, possibly Cliff Edwards's, more likely someone boringer) I penned the more surreal verses as a poem. Amphetamine Library had never really run with "Richmond Flood" and I wasn't really into it, but when I spliced the in-joke band scene lines 50/50 with the surreal poetry lines, it actually came out pretty well.
I could go on about ApoCowLypso, the bizarre chemistry, the weird struggle with our vague potential in RVA's odd little incestuous scene, but I gotta run.
Andrew, my name is Zip Irvin, and I was on e of the folks playing on this Acowpalypso cut.If you have an MP3 copy of Richmond Flood by Acowpalypso on an MP3 I would appreciate it as I am trying to reconstruct some of my recordings that I made in teh 80s and 90s in RVA.
P.S. You are dead on about this joint and RVA eateries in general. My girlfriend is from Sardinia and her cooking on an off day kicks anything in Richmond's ass. If you are living in Alexandria VA, , though, go into DC and at New York, 6th, and L Northwest, there is a crushingly good Italian restaraunt called AV Ristorante Italiano that has been there since 1938. If you happen to have this MP 3, my e mail's zipirvin@earthlink.net. Thanks.
I have some old mp3's of Flannel, F Word, Flat Stanley, Near East, Amphetamine Library, etc. if anyone cares....
dhanishattuck@hotmail.com
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