#liam warfield

THE BLUES

My friends and roommates, on the whole, are a creative bunch. They might not be Picassos, or Hemingways or Mahlers, but they’re far more creative and imaginative than most Americans. One thing that’s problematic for me, though, is that a lot of them are sort of secretive about their creativity. Secretive might not be the right word - private, maybe. Gen types all her stories late at night, long after I’ve gone to bed. Brian only plays guitar when no one else is home. Peter makes all his music on his 4-track, in the privacy of his apartment. Kate is apparently really good at singing the blues, but God forbid anybody should hear her - she only sings in her bedroom, with the door locked tight. It’s a pretty crappy way of going about things, and I’d love to get all self-righteous about it, but I’m afraid I’m just as guilty. I don’t sing when my roommates are around either. I type most of my stories late at night, and I work on my magazine in the back room of the third floor of the public library. Cometbus said something in a story about how funny he must look when he’s working on copy art - flying from machine to machine, feeding and folding and reducing and enlarging like a man possessed. “But doesn’t everyone look like a madman doing what they truly love?” he said. I finally saw Peter perform his funny 4-track music live, at the bowling alley the other night. He did look like a madman. He made all these weird faces, and when he was playing guitar he did this fucked up thing with one of his legs where it was kind of shooting around spastically and arhythmically - it was awesome. People do funny things when they’re in the throes of creation. I had an art teacher when I was a kid who said I always stuck out my tongue when I got real involved with a picture. I don’t know, maybe I still do that, stick out my tongue while I’m writing. I think it’s fascinating to watch people work like that.

It’s funny to think about what people make public and what they keep private. I feel uncomfortable singing when my roommates are around, but I have no problem hauling my guitar down to Belmont Avenue and singing on the street corner for hundreds of pedestrians. I’m not sure what that’s about. Sometimes you’ll meet a person and they’ll be really shy and quiet and then you find out that they sing for a punk band, and have, like, this alter-ego that can get up on a stage and let all hell break loose - and sometimes the people who are the most carefree and outgoing when you see them on the street or talk to them at a party are terrified of performing in public. There’s this tension where private and public life meet; when you know you’re being watched, it changes everything. It’s a very exciting feeling; it’s also scary as hell. I still get nervous playing for open-mic crowds of ten or fifteen people. When you’re playing for yourself, you can sort of edit. When you fuck up, you can be like, “Well, nobody was around to see it, so what difference does it make?” And that freedom to fuck up allows for a lot more experimentation. It takes a lot of balls to fuck up in public - you can’t imagine your mistakes away when there’s a roomful of people watching you. I guess people that write have it pretty good. They’re able to make their work public and edit out their mistakes - what’s missing is the tension and thrill of having a flesh-and-blood audience. Because it’s great to sing the blues in your bedroom where no one can hear you hit a wrong note or forget the words - but then nobody hears it when you hit that one part just right, when it all comes together, and then when it’s over you think maybe you didn’t hit it just right after all - just your bedroom walls playing tricks on you.

Listen/purchase: Demon Blues by Liam Idiot

The high life was the low road, and we had to pay the rent There were people in the pool halls that we thought were heaven sent Just a bunch of muscles, and a brand new pair of shoes There’s no way for us to beat these demon blues

That early in the mornin’ was the shipwreck time of day My dreams were all in Spanish tongues, and I had nothing to say When you start feeling like a human, you’ve got everything to lose And there’s no way for us to beat these demon blues

The taxman takes our taxes, and the walls are painted green And I’ve fallen half in love with every person that I’ve seen I hired a detective, but he ate up all the clues Now there’s no way for us to beat these demon blues

The bus was going backwards and my hands just felt like steel Took a handful of amphetamines, and got behind the wheel Lying in the ambulance, I thought: “We all gotta pay our dues” But there’s no way for us to beat these demon blues

Burned down my apartment, and I rode out on the rail I went digging through the bargain bins, but nothing was on sale And I found a wrinkled valentine that read: “Beggars cannot choose” So there’s no way for us to beat these demon blues

It’s the first weekend of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the city’s last big fling before summer torpor sets in. The name is somewhat misleading—while the odd jazz band can be found at the festival, they are vastly overshadowed by rock-festival staples like the Dave Matthews Band and pop-culture flotsam like Bon Jovi and John Mayer. Nor is the entertainment in the Quarter of a more discerning caliber—cover bands, churning out Sweet Home Alabama ad nauseam. But just a block south of the Bourbon Street bacchanal, one stumbles across an odd specimen of jazz and heritage. A six-piece Dixieland jazz band has set up in a loose semi-circle in the entryway of a Royal Street art gallery, banging away at the smash hits of the prohibition era, and a growing crowd is gathering to watch them play. A strange alchemy occurs among passersby, as drunken bemusement gives way to total rapture. “They even kind oflook like they’re from the 1920s,” remarks a bewildered bystander. There is, in fact, something disarmingly antique about the band’s appearance. From their unamplified, old-world instrumentation to their shabby, jazz-age fashion sense—the tuba player is wearing suspenders—the band looks like it could have wandered out of a history book. But these are young kids, not old-timers, and they’re playing their guts out—the music swings mightily, and certainly doesn’t sound antique. The crowd responds with an enthusiastic shower of tips. “Thank you, we’re the Loose Marbles,” announces the trumpet player, as the cash box fills rapidly. “We’ll be back on the street tomorrow.”

War Against the Idiots, by Liam 'Idiot' Warfield. (Featured: issue #22.)

This is the final 'official' post in my zine collection look-back 'series' (the other few being zines I no longer have but will still post about), and that seems appropriate, considering. Liam was another IRL friend, for a while, and I have written so much about him over the years. Like, maybe it is a little weird how much I have written about him. I just - I once described him as "Woody Guthrie, if Woody Guthrie were a punk-ass kid from Chicago," and that's pretty much it, and I guess he made such an impression on me cos I wanted some of that dirty'n'free mystique to rub off on me.

Also, War Against the Idiots was fucking great. Liam was one of those rare people whose writing persona was pretty much exactly the same as he came across in real life. His writing (his persona, his personality) was plainspoken, no bullshit, pulling no punches - but there was a definite sense of humor there, too, and more than a hit of wonder and poetry. He never came across like he was outright romanticizing anything, yet he made being unemployed and living in a shitty apartment or squat and getting drunk on the beach seem like just about the best goddamn things that you could ever do.

He does a new zine, now, called The Secret Beach, and I've read a few issues, but it just doesn't give me the same feeling that WATI did. Still, I'm glad that he hasn't given up on zines.

Last year, I traded zines with Mark Novotny (who does a great zine called The Fury), and he sent me a note after he read Reckless Chants #19. I mentioned Liam in it, briefly, and Mark apparently knew Liam, too, and he said: "I see a real similarity in your writing to what I remember of his; I'm not sure if it is an intentional influence or just a function of being part of the same place at the same time." Maybe, probably, a little of both.

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