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Stories by Richard Meltzer

Gonzo Richard Meltzer digs into San Diego's Mayor Roger Hedgecock

The Unbearable Rightness of Being Roger Hedgecock “I was at Santa Barbara, a junior in college, and I got appointed as the head of all social programs. And we did Ray Charles, the Doors, we …

January 2, 2022
Santee's Creation Museum, the nuns behind Mercy Hospital

A Little Bit East of Eden There are also sharp disputes about Noah's Ark within the Creationist movement. Some years ago, in the ICR museum, I helped John Morris, their principal ark investigator, look for …

December 26, 2021
Dahmer's Diner, Nico, Deadheads, Paul Williams

Eating people is the ultimate control You won’t find Dahmer’s Diner on the bill at the Cannibal Bar in Mission Beach. In fact, DD has been banned from all but two venues in town, SOMA …

September 19, 2021
Richard Meltzer reviews Mexican beers, soundtracks for listening to O.J. Simpson trial

Meltzer Family Christmas Beer Bust Carta Blanca's the best. I would stand behind Carta Blanca. It's the first one that's given me any sense of, you know, where I have conviction about it. Its taste …

August 7, 2021
The Hemet-San Diego State commute, bulldozing Mexicans out of central Escondido

Chinaberry Farm: Finding Home Half our belongings still packed in the barn, paths form a quotidian maze between stacked boxes. The house livable, anyway. A rat takes up residence in Cindy’s paintings stored in the …

July 12, 2021
San Diego corporate giants: PSA, Sheraton Hotels, Jack-in-the-Box

Thought for Food Bob Peterson (husband to Mayor Maureen O’Connor) opened his first Jack-in-the-Box restaurant at 63rd Street and El Cajon Boulevard in 1951. Peterson had expanded his chain to include 350 units by the …

June 19, 2021
Driving a plane on Interstate 5, buying liquor in Tijuana

Cardiff man builds DC-3 to drive on freeway After six months his scavenger hunt came to an end in Tucson, Arizona. There, he paid $1500 for the GMC bus chassis and another $9000 for the …

April 17, 2021
Miramar's F-14s, MCRD officer's club as pick-up venue, Richard Meltzer goes to sea

Wing Men On June 15, 1988, they headed north to the Aleutians, where the F-14s played their usual games with Russian MiGs and bombers: VF-51 pilots shot excellent video of the Soviet planes on patrol …

March 29, 2021
El Cajon classmates Robert Houghton, Roger Anderson, Andrew Hamlin on Lester Bangs

Lester Bangs, El Cajon Kid These “great man” theorists see Lester as self-made and El Cajon actually was a hindrance. Those of us from El Cajon, especially those who knew him well, have a much …

January 24, 2021
Mark Twain's daughter ends up at the Bahia Hotel, Osama bin Laden's brother at USIU

Third Spud from the Sun: Cameron Crowe Then and Now “A couple things about Cameron set him down a peg from even the rank and file of ’zine greenhorn dust-suckers. He for all intents & …

September 12, 2020
Beat Farmers, Frank Zappa, Lester Bangs

Birth of the Beat Farmers Jerry Raney: “This guy from El Cajon High named Jack Chan knew how to play, we’d go out and get the Beatles songbooks and go through 'em and he’d teach …

June 7, 2020
Best Reader stories from 2000

Rancho Peñasquitos boys, charged with hate crime The teenagers shot at Roman from the Subaru with the BB gun during three or four passes. They took turns shooting at him as they drove by, but …

January 26, 2020
Best Reader stories from 1988

Ku Klux Klan 's John Metzger talks of hate and tears "My father was in the Crusaders, a national organization that was pretty powerful in San Diego, which was part Christian Identity. It’s a church …

December 15, 2019
Best Reader stories from 1986

Was James Gibson tortured by Mexican police? When two Mexican police officers and two FBI agents showed up at his beachfront Playas de Tijuana apartment on October 17, James Gibson had reason to suspect that …

December 8, 2019
Autumn Rhythm

Haiku #1 where the fuck’s my car? don’t even gotta be drunk no more t’ lose it! Gig Let it be known, to begin with, that I didn’t ask for this, but was asked — …

May 2, 2002
Third spud from the sun: Cameron Crowe then and now

By the time Cameron showed up, Rolling Stone was little more than a highwater marker for self-effacing, slave-drudge careerism: the most conspicuous place, nationally, to have your copy butchered, your ideas reshaped to fit the moment’s market-driven party line.

November 2, 2000
CD review: Alan Lechusza/Christopher Adler Duo, Pleistocene

There’s nothing wrong with this — it’s great. Oh, okay — so what izzit? Two guys playing, well, one of ’em’s on saxophone, two saxes actually — soprano and baritone — and the other on …

September 7, 2000
The Magnificent Meatsticks

CD review: The Magnificent Meatsticks, MP3.com You can download all of this from www.mp3.com/magmeat, including a little ditty called “Richard Meltzer Is My Fucking Hero” — I kid you not. But it couldn’t be me …

July 27, 2000
29 Reader writers on their fathers

To commemorate Father's Day, this issue contains a collection of reflections from Reader writers about their fathers: The Last Tag Sale — Jeanne Schinto An Air of Exoticism — Duncan Shepherd Kinder Than I Would …

June 15, 2000
Wild and Crazy S.O.B

Perhaps it’s a question of semantics, who knows, but I feel incredibly relieved to be done with “family,” “home” — these are things you grow up to leave and be done with, at least as …

June 15, 2000
Richard Meltzer on the 1900s

MY CENTURY, YOUR CENTURY BOBO OLSON'S CENTURY Century’s short but centuries long should be limited. — "Microwave," William Carlos Williams [It ended abruptly around 1970, or slightly earlier. ’69 would be a good likely date. …

December 23, 1999
Richard Meltzer on Robert Christgau, the Fugs, Moby Grape,the Germs, Joy Division, Jaki Byard, Ernest Tubbs, Gershwin, Lavender Hill Mob, Lester Bangs

Things we’ve saved and saved and SAVED. For all the stupid reasons you or I or anybody saves things. You can’t take them “with you,” not all, not any, but chances are what’s left is …

January 28, 1999
Richard Meltzer on Liszt, Wagner, Verdi

I have no context, no history (other than remote; remoter than remote; wholly, utterly adventitious) to plug into when I listen to classical music, no environment in which to meet and greet it even halfway.

December 21, 1995
Hey, Mr. Deejay, what's that powder on your face?

Ten minutes later my guest arrives, John Cale, never my favorite member of the Velvet Underground, always struck me as a method actor, ugh, though some people thought of him as a progenitor of punk.

June 22, 1995
Charles Bukowski: an appreciation

I got up, went in, pulled down my pants, sat down, thought, fucking often has nothing to do with being “lovers” and fucking seldom has much to do with literature and literature has nothing to …

May 4, 1995
Arnold, OJ, and the brain from Planet Arous

A decisive factor in Schoenberg’s terminal discomfort with America had to be the unsettling presence of ruling modernist pickle-herring Igor Stravinsky. Both lived in L.A., hung out in emigre circles, they had friends in common.

O.J. trial makes me want to leave L.A.

Let’s face it: as football commentator, film actor, star of high-visibility commercials, O.J. was my-t-bland. He was exactly the sort of bland BLACK ex-jock TV is always hiring to be unoutspoken, undangerous.

February 9, 1995
William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, John Clellon Holmes, Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, Herbert Huncke

Ten, 12 years ago I was talking to some small-press jerk, a publisher of pamphlets and broadsides and occasional 40-page books and such, who didn't much care for the Beats. His idea of a Real …

December 15, 1994
Meltzer leaves L.A., tosses Ornette, Parker, Dolphy, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Lester Young, Albert Ayler, Cecil Taylor

Getting rid of records, right, because of the goddamn quake. Like bricks, dead albums fall heavy. They fell and they fell — hard — and in five months of aftershocks have fallen some more. Less …

June 30, 1994
Meltzer family Christmas beer bust

You know the biggest lobby currently in Washington is the one whose job it is to keep ingredients off the beer labels. They’ve done a pretty good job, wouldn’t you say?

December 23, 1993
Gonzo San Diego visitor studies baseball caps, shark's tooth, postcards, placemat

"See the marketplace in old Algiers,” sang Jo Stafford quite clearly in the summer of 1951 or ’52, “Send me photographs and souvenirs,” but I heard it funny. (Kids’ ears are like that.) I heard …

September 2, 1993
Richard Meltzer friend dies, he listens to music

He’d seen Ornette play Philly in ’59. Was delighted. Liked his way of improvising, creating melodically, chord changes be damned. Minor reservations later but not then. (Three years before I’d even heard of him.)

March 11, 1993
The heart of sleaze

The bookstore “pop-up” for Niek Tosches’s Ditto: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams reads: “The Great American Show Biz Story — Straight Up with a Hark Twist” — and dark it is. Darker …

September 3, 1992
The best book on Dean Martin is by Nick Tosches

The bookstore “pop-up” for Nick Tosches’s Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams reads: “The Great American Show Biz Story — Straight Up with a Dark Twist” — and dark it is. Darker …

September 3, 1992
Countdown to oblivion in Lawrence Welk Village

While some may harbor Welk values in general, they can't hack the music nohow — so to avoid taking any chances, to be demographically safest, there is simply no Welk music at the resort.

July 30, 1992
Charles Mingus snarled at Richard Meltzer

JOY AS I KILL IT Hi, returning your... Oh hi, I’m having another rock trivia game tomorrow night and I... Where'd, who gave you my number? George. Is that okay? Well, there's not much I …

March 14, 1991
As I Lay Dying, which prob'ly the most people read because it's the shortest

All right, let's see if I can do this in one sitting, no leaving the typer, a thousand words on Faulkner, should be a snap. Faulkner, wait, Hemingway. Why does (or did) anybody, even as …

December 20, 1990
Every book and movie about boxing

Hi, howya, come in, lemme show ya something. From a tan glueless envelope, ½ square, the kind used for storing stamps, coins, and various other miniature collectibles, he removes a speck of hard white paint …

November 1, 1990
Too Carlsbad for Words

I don’t listen to the cops, I wish they all were dead. — The Dils, “Sound of the Rain," by longtime Carlsbad residents Chip and Tony Kinman Do as I do, do exactly as I …

July 12, 1990
Housepets I've in all likelihood killed or maimed

Dogs: are too worthless even to kick. Kicking a dog is like beating a rug; killing a dog is like washing one. Dogs are stupid and breathy, rugsmelly, dogloyal: who needs ’em?

March 15, 1990
Richard Meltzer dresses up and plays Santa

Some kids burst when they came within a couple-three yards of me. A female 2-year-old sees me, whimpers, her ma’s embarrassed, pushes her closer: WAAAAAA! (Ma takes a candy cane for later.)

December 14, 1989

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