HALLOWEEN; some Exhaustion, and Up The Tatts (Oz rock band Rose Tattoo)!

Halloween approaches. But I'm not ready.

Right now I'm typing this on a cold, frosty, early morning, and I've been recuperating from a lengthy period of longer-than-usual hours at work.

I don't talk about work all that much here on my blog, but I presently work in the legal field, working for a couple attorneys as a non-attorney assistant.

The past two years we have been representing a client who had a serious issue against a large, national corporation. The ensuing lawsuit was a bit time consuming. Naturally, when you are involved in a lawsuit, you want to make sure everything is done right. We finally had four days of trial last week, and it was interesting, stressful, and when all was done, I was exhausted. I am just now starting to feel 'normal' again.

It was a sunny day in Seattle as I was driving in to work Downtown. The Columbia Tower is the tall, black glass clad skyscraper in the center of the skyline. Once it was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. The Smith Tower is the white, classic looking building to center left. For a long time, it also was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River.

This was the view from my car as I was driving home on my birthday, after the first day of trial. It was a grueling day, and I ended up working with my boss at the office after hours, until ten at night, going over preparations for the next day in court. The building on the left is "Seattle Lighting", just off the Second Avenue Extension on the southern edge of Downtown Seattle. I think there are at least a couple fixtures in my house from that place. They used to buy lighting fixtures from old, old houses before they were torn down. One wouldn't think there is a market for old, 1920's era light fixtures -- but there is.

The trial phase of the lawsuit took me to downtown Seattle for the first time since April. I usually don't go downtown very often, as it is 15 miles from where I live, and I no longer work downtown, so I have no reason to go there. Besides that, going downtown can be expensive, as parking is expensive (over $15 a day), and if one wants to take a bus, that means your car is in an open, non-monitored, non-patrolled, suburban Park-N-Ride lot for eight or more hours, where it can get broken into or even stolen -- which often happens.

And bus travel into town can be very slow. 

Anyway, it was interesting being downtown last week. The city is a LOT bigger than it was when I worked downtown in the radio industry from 1990-2006. Back then, I worked in Belltown, which -- at the time -- was a somewhat Bohemian neighborhood of Seattle just north of downtown which -- after I was laid off in December 2006 -- became more than gentrified with all the cool haunts and dive bars and restaurants being torn down and replaced by tall, soulless towers of million dollar condos.

A local display, from last year. The same house has a similar display this year.

Downtown itself -- the financial and retail core -- has grown, with tall, blue glass spires everywhere. Some of the photos in this article reflect that.

The four days was an interesting glimpse into the workaday world for the thousands of people who work Downtown, most of them who obviously make a lot more money than I do -- who maybe take the bus in from an inner suburb, or perhaps can afford to park their SUV, Lexus or Prius in a $18 garage all day, everyday -- while working in one of the tall office buildings.

The stores, of course, were a different matter. In April, when I was last downtown, if I looked in through the front windows of the clothing shops and other stores in the city center, I didn't see a lot of shoppers. This time it was no different. There were all these fancy shops with all these cool looking, and somewhat expensive looking, fashionable clothes, and there were few people shopping. I parked inside a popular building downtown, which is designed to be an indoor, fancy mall (which has a 6 floor parking garage beneath it), and none of the shops had shoppers.

Tall spires of steel and glass, and on ground level, shops mostly devoid of shoppers.

It was like walking into a Depression. The only people in the "mall" section of this fancy office building were people like myself, who were parking in the underground garage. Very sad.

Hopefully, the absence of shoppers in these stores was just a fluke.

Inside the Pacific Place indoor mall. One floor down from street level. It's afternoon rush. Where are all the people?

Inside the Pac Place indoor mall. One floor down from street level. The City has grown. But where are all the people?

Hello Seattle. Where are all the shoppers? They're missing. Very sad.

The skylight to Pacific Place. It really is a nice mall. It's just sad that there aren't more people inside the stores and shops.

The view of Westlake Avenue from inside the Westlake Starbucks. Starbucks had quite a few customers. Their 'Everything Bagel' was excellent. The baristas were into alternative music, and had a Starbucks music channel, alternative playlist on the soundsystem. As someone who used to work in radio and dealt with music formats, I was curious about what platform they used. It definitely wasn't 'radio.'

The Starbucks up on Westlake (an avenue that exits downtown, and also the name of a major 'square' on the north side of the financial and retail district), however, was busy. During the last day of the trial, I went for a short walk during the lunch break and got a 20 ounce latte and an 'everything' bagel. The 'everything' bagel was toasted, and awesome. The coffee was good, too. Some people thumb their nose at Starbucks' coffee but I am not one of those people.

A billboard on the side of a downtown Seattle building, promoting the local Duwamish Indian Tribe.

My city, Renton, was the site of one of the largest Duwamish settlements, and my valley was used as a trading route between the Duwamish lands in western Washington and other tribes' lands east of the Cascade Mountain range.

All in all, working Downtown like we did those four, long days was in interesting experience. I can't tell you how things came out during the trial, but working in a trial like that was something I probably won't experience again. 

So, right now it's late October, and my goal is to continue to get some extra sleep, make sure my cat eats enough, and attempt to get ready for Halloween.

Already, some houses in the area have some really cool decorations up.

I'm not looking forwards to the holidays in general, but I always like Halloween.

However, as it's been 21-25 degrees F every night and morning (around -6C or more) over the past week and a half before Halloween, I haven't felt like doing a ton of outside work when it's cold and I'm still tired a lot of the time.

Spooky Pumpkin Monster! This pic is from last year (I couldn't get a good pic of it this time around), but the Spooky Pumpkin Monster is up and delighting little kids this year!

UP THE TATTS, AND MICK COCKS LIVES!

I will end this with a couple videos by one of my favorite Oz pub rock bands, Rose Tattoo. I got into them soon after I saw their import LP for sale in a local record store, and was hooked. Mick Cocks, the rhythm guitar player, was one of the best in the world. He was like a fast Malcolm Young, with the amp cranked up a little bit higher (he had a Super Distortion pickup installed in his black Custom Les Paul in the bridge position, and also had a custom bridge installed on his guitar).

One astute, online genius described Rose Tattoo's music as "Humble Pie with Ry Cooder, all jacked up on speed." He wasn't too far off the mark in that description of the Tatts' sound.

The first vid here is a track from the Tatts' first LP, which was called "Rock N' Roll Outlaw" in the US, but was just self titled in Australia. The track is a blaster called Remedy. From the first jagged chords, you can hear how good Mick Cocks was.:

Here is a live vid of Rose Tattoo playing a couple songs in France in 1978. The show includes live versions of the Tatts' tracks "Remedy" and "Astra Wally". Here you can hear slide player Peter Wells, and if you listen to the drumming you can see that drummer Dallas Digger Royall was an excellent rock drummer -- he could deliver the classic, Oz-rock one-two punch, but at the same time provide just a bit of finesse and swing.:

Here is the LP track to Astra Wally, followed by a live track. It's a shot of boogie adrenaline. Mick Cocks' guitar is featured throughout. This song is quintessential Tatts.

Rose Tattoo, sadly enough, never took off in the US, and they didn't really have a large following in the UK either. I think they had a bigger fan base in Germany than they did in the US or UK. In Australia they didn't sell a ton of records, but they were well liked by the pub goers in the inner city 'hotels' and suburban beer barns, RSL's and Leagues' clubs throughout Australia.

I shall end this by adding the Tatts' ode to the state of Texas, apparently a US state they enjoyed playing. It's about the hot (and hot blooded) women in Texas, and women in Texas are different from the ones in my section of the country, I'm certain. :-) At least Angry Anderson thinks so. :-)

And here's the US FM Rock radio hit that should have happened in '82, but never happened, because most US FM Rock stations were too stupid or too afraid to play some hard hitting, Australian rock 'n' roll. Scarred For Life. Great guitar chord riff, courtesy of the guy who replaced Mick Cocks, Robin Riley.:

In this last vid you can see the guys playing, miming to the album track of one of the Tatts' three radio hits, We Can't Be Beaten. They are staged in a junkyard, as they were in another video I've added here below, their single Branded. The music on this track (and on Branded) was written by Robin Riley, who was (and is) a great rhythm guitarist in his own right. You can see him on the right hand side of the video screen, playing a beat up looking Strat (or maybe a Strat-copy, perhaps an Ibby?) outfitted with what looks like a Super Distortion pickup (and a mid-position P-90). It also has the name "Julie" painted on it.

Mr. Riley once talked about having to use Ibanez guitars, which he described as 'working muso's instruments', which Ibanez players can tell you they are. Ibbys get the job done. :-)

For slide guitar aficionados, Peter Wells is on the left side in the vid, and he's tuned to Open E. And bassist Geordie Leach appears to be playing a Thunderbird bass. 

Branded, released in the US, never got airplay. MTV may have played this vid a couple times before junking it. Such is life for an Oz band Stateside much of the time.

The Tatts never made it here in the States, but they did influence Guns N Roses and Motley Crue, however, so their impact did have some lasting importance here in the US. Sadly, all of the original members are gone, except for long time touring and recording bassist Geordie Leach, who retired from the Tatts in 2013 and apparently fronts his own band, and singer Angry Anderson, who -- despite his hardcore, rock 'n' roll rebel image -- is a very literate, well read, and a well-spoken man.

Until next time, I hope all my readers worldwide are doing well.

Happy Halloween.

Peace,

C.C., October 19th and 31st, 2023. 

Two photos added November 3rd, 2023, and a little more description.... and a correction. Rose Tattoo's former bassist Geordie Leach is still very much alive!!

December 10th, 2023. I realized I had more photos of my Seattle sojourn on my phone, and I added about seven of them to this post, as they covered the things I wrote about.