Ever been belly-bumped off a bus?

The Derek Trucks Band had just finished at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, California, the last stop on their 2003 cross-country tour. Like most nights, the band – bassist Todd Smallie, drummer Yonrico Scott, keyboardist and flutist Kofi Burbridge and lead vocalist Mike Mattison – went back to the bus with road manager Adam Rosenberg and guitar tech Joe Main. Unlike most nights, guitarist and founding member Derek Trucks was not with them. If he had been, the incident might never have happened.

“Joe [Main] is a big beastly bear of a man,” Rosenberg says of the 40-something roadie. “He’s normally a sweetheart. But everyone knew not to cross him because he had such a wicked temper.”

Trucks had a "special relationship" with him, Rosenberg says, acting as a mediator with the band whenever necessary. Main was a longtime friend of Trucks’ father, and Trucks hired him after alcoholism had nearly consumed him. Everyone else had to be careful to stay on Main’s good side.

That night, the band was hanging out on the bus, now parked in the hotel lot. And just like every other night, Rosenberg was distributing the band’s pay in cash – when he realized that he did not have enough to pay the driver, who had gone back to his hotel room. The road manager is always in charge of the money, and the money is always distributed in cash. He had paid the band, he had paid Main, but now there was not enough to pay their driver on the last night of a long tour.

“In hindsight,” Rosenberg says, “I should have paid the driver first, because he gets you place to place.” And because Main was technically the lowest man on the chain, Rosenberg knew he had to ask him for the money back.

“Joe was smoking a joint in the [bus] bathroom, so I went in there and I said, ‘Joe, we have to talk. I didn’t plan ahead. I need to pay the driver, so I need that money back.’ And at first he just laughed at me. But then I said I was serious. And all of a sudden he went from a calm guy smoking a joint to a gorilla wielding an acoustic guitar.”

Main chased Rosenberg out of the closet-sized bathroom, all the way to the front of the bus, grabbing a guitar along the way and “wielding it like a sword,” Rosenberg says. But there was not nearly enough space for Main to effectively swing a guitar on the cramped bus, so he used his girth to “belly-bump” Rosenberg out of the open door of the bus.
“He literally chased me off the bus and then around the bus, waving this guitar above his head,” Rosenberg says.

The band soon noticed the commotion outside. The tension had apparently escalated so quickly that no one knew what was happening until they saw Main chasing Rosenberg in circles around the nearly empty parking lot. Burbridge and Smallie leapt off the bus and grabbed Main, trying to restrain and calm him, while Rosenberg ran to the bus driver’s room. (“The driver and I got along well by the end of the tour,” he says.) After Rosenberg had explained the situation, the driver offered him some of his Chivas Crown Regal whiskey, feeling sympathetic because the whole episode had been an effort to get him paid.

“Everyone gets paid,” Rosenberg says. “Joe was overreacting. I even said, ‘Sorry, but it’s not like you’re not gonna get paid’ – that wasn’t good enough. But he eventually gave me the money back. Derek wouldn’t have stood for it. But without Derek, it was a bad scene.”

Best Album Ever?

This article appears in the March 23 issue of the Washington Square News:

Most rock 'n' roll fans know that 1980 should have been a very bad year for Aussie hard-rock act AC/DC. Shortly after the band had finally reached international acclaim with 1979's "Highway to Hell," lead screamer Bon Scott died suddenly in true rock-star fashion (he choked on his own vomit in the back seat of his car). And that could have been the end of it.

They weren't finished yet, though - within the next five months, the band found a new singer, wrote 10 new songs and released its seventh studio album.

Now that's a pretty good story. But it wouldn't be worth a damn if the resulting album was not "Back in Black" - an unstoppable aural assault, with so much strut and swagger to spare that it could be called the most explosive rock 'n' roll eulogy ever recorded. No lame power ballads, no existential meditations on death - and certainly no rehab. Just all killer, no filler, lean and mean rock 'n' roll, propelled by Angus Young's instantly recognizable guitar riffs.

The album is an example of perfection in simplicity. Each track is tightly wound and ready to blow, but producer (and future Mr. Shania Twain) Robert "Mutt" Lange maintains clarity amid chaos. Every track has become a lesson in air-guitar greatness, and a model for kick-ass karaoke.

Songs like the hauntingly heavy opening track "Hell's Bells" and the rolling thunder of "Givin' the Dog a Bone" confirm that "Back in Black" deserves to be the soundtrack to every bar brawl, or at least your next late-night freeway drive. New singer Brian Johnson proved he was more than capable of filling Scott's hard-drinking, hard-living, womanizing shoes on songs like "You Shook Me All Night Long," "What Do You Do for Money Honey," and other highlights such as the title track and - hell, everything here is classic.

For those about to rock, we salute you.

Album Review

This article appears in the March 29 issue of the Washington Square News:

Yours Truly, Angry Mob
The Kaiser Chiefs
Key Tracks: "Ruby," "The Angry Mob," "Thank You Very Much"

Their high-energy 2005 debut album, "Employment," launched the Kaiser Chiefs into international stardom. This week, the UK rock band tries to match that success with their highly-anticipated follow-up, "Yours Truly, Angry Mob."

The Chiefs almost succeed. "Employment’s" best songs are arguably the first two: "Everyday I Love You Less and Less" and "I Predict A Riot." "Yours Truly" also starts off with a bang, but unlike Employment, it blows its load early, as the opening tracks – the repetitious but infectiously catchy "Ruby" and the "fuck modern society" invective "The Angry Mob" – build a momentum the rest of the album can’t sustain.

The Kaiser Chiefs combine Blur’s polished pop sensibility with the songwriting and vocal styling of the Kinks’ Ray Davies and the echoing guitar of the Smiths. The peaks just don’t reach as high on the Chiefs’ sophomore effort, and therefore the album’s few missteps become even more pronounced, as is the case with the plodding "Try Your Best" or the piano ballad "Boxing Champ."

Unfortunately, most of the songs here are mired in self-conscious cynicism. "The Angry Mob" begins as a bar brawl but then becomes a simplistic anti-establishment rant. The rock star in "Thank You Very Much" is bored with groupies. "Highroyds" reveals that drunken youth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And "Everything Is Average Nowadays" is, well, self-explanatory.

But singer Ricky Wilson’s sometimes subversive (and more often trite) lyrics are saved by poppy, guitar driven tunes and insanely catchy hooks. Don’t look to the Chiefs for insightful social commentary – just have fun basking in their Britpop exuberance.

But somebody likes me...

Apparently, New York Post movie critic Lou Lumenick starts every morning with a cup of coffee and a Google search of his own name. Here's what he wrote in his blog today:

Daniel Lehman of NYU's student newspaper, Washington Square News asked Chris Rock what he thought of my savage pan of Rock's "I Think I Love My Wife.'' You might think he would have quipped, "If you want a real film critic, get A.O. Scott,'' (who loved it), but Rock is surprisingly philosophical about the bad reviews and the film's lack of box office success. "It's like my stand-up," Rock said. "Some jokes you love, some jokes you're like, 'F--- him.' I wanted that type of movie experience. I want people arguing when it's over. There's things in it that didn't test well, that I just kept in because I thought it was a better movie.''

Everybody Hates Chris Rock's New Movie

This article appears in the March 28 issue of NYU's Washington Square News:

Comedian Chris Rock expected some criticism for his new movie, "I Think I Love My Wife," in which he plays a black family man living in white suburban Westchester and working in an even whiter Manhattan investment banking firm. Many critics say he's gone soft, and fans worry that he's lost his edge.

But Rock is OK with that.

"I hope I get softer over the years," Rock said. "I was never angry. I was only edgy compared to other things. I was always just me. I was only edgy because you watched Paul Reiser before me. But he's not edgy, he's just Paul. And I'm not edgy, I'm just Chris."

What the comedian might not have expected was his latest film's mixed reviews and poor opening weekend upon its release last Friday. It tanked, earning only $5.7 million in a week where the Sandra Bullock time warp thriller "Premonition" was the biggest new release (that movie finished third behind "300" and "Wild Hogs," with about $18 million in ticket sales).

"It's like my stand-up," Rock said. "Some jokes you love, some jokes you're like, 'Fuck him.' I wanted that type of movie experience. I want people arguing when it's over. There's things in it that didn't test well, that I just kept in because I thought it was a better movie."

The movie's rating at RottenTomatoes.com is holding at a pathetic 18 percent, with reviews as cruel as they are cliché: Lou Lumenick of the New York Post writes that the film is nothing more than "an exercise in misogynistic tedium," while down at the Miami Herald, Connie Ogle considers the film "as entertaining as reading someone else's divorce settlement."

Rock knows that past films, such as "Down to Earth" and "Head of State," have met with even harsher reviews, but their box office receipts likely soothed the sticks and stones thrown at them.

"Going into this movie I absolutely was not thinking of a box office number," he said. "I was just thinking about, 'OK, how do I fit in? How do I make the movie that is perfect for me?' The last couple of years, you might watch something like 'Bad Santa,' or 'Borat.' Those are just guys that made movies that really fit their persona. It's like, this suit fits. I need a tailor-made Chris Rock movie."

Rock co-wrote (with frequent collaborator Louis C.K.), directed and stars in "I Think I Love My Wife," co-starring Gina Torres as his devoted wife and Kerry Washington as the bold bombshell who draws him into adulterous temptation, blowing his formerly routine life out of the water.

"I like playing a grown-up," Rock said of his role. "I think most comedians play guys that won't grow up. And I think my comedy comes from being a grown-up."

"I Think I Love My Wife" is based on the 1972 French film "Chloe in the Afternoon," directed by Eric Rohmer, about a happily married Parisian man who fantasizes about other women but never considers infidelity until an old acquaintance drops by and tries to seduce him.

If a witty, elegant, but very French character study seems like odd source material for a Chris Rock comedy, he isn't exactly surprised.

"It's weird," Rock admits. "I know it sounds like a joke. But I loved ['Chloe,'] and I got Louis a copy and he loved it, and we both thought that we could get a lot of comedy in here. We thought it was like a house with no furniture; there's a lot of jokes that could go in here."

The result is a story that probes the fuzzy line between fantasy and infidelity, telling the humor-filled truth about the pratfalls of married life. And while some jokes fall flat, other moments manage a biting insightfulness more characteristic of Rock's best stand-up comedy or television projects than his prior films.

"Is [the movie] autobiographical? No," Rock said. "I definitely relate to the character. I've been married 10 years; I have two kids; I live in the suburbs; I commute into the city - all that stuff. It stops there, pretty much."

The real-life parallels between Rock and his fictional character are too apparent to ignore. TMZ.com reported in November that Rock was filing for divorce after nearly 10 years of marriage to wife Malaak Compton. But he has since refuted the claims, and said now that, "It's nothing. It's all rumor. We know Britney cut her hair. But it's a rumor that she's crazy, right?"