from the Critical List
February 20, 1987
Love Tractor
at UCLA, 2/12. It's been quite a few years since I flunked out of college (well,
I didn't exactly flunk out, but I didn't exactly finish, either -- let's say I
took a long-standing incomplete, and I'm letting it stand). But I never mind
going back to see how tiny the students have gotten since "my day" (why, they're
babies, practically!) and to remind myself just how happy I am to have put all
that business behind me. No more pencils (except when I can't find a pen), no
more books (haven't read one in ages), no more teachers' dirty looks (I knew
them well). Ha ha ha, la la la! I'm free, I'm free, I'm free!
It's also been a few years
since Love Tractor were in college (they went to that school for underground pop
bands outside of Atlanta), though they still live in a college town and get
their records played on college radio and, I would imagine and hope, in college
dormitories, and are every once in a while (last Thursday, say) invited to
perform in a college snack bar, for college students and anyone else who manages
to hear about it. The snack bar they've got at UCLA -- well, I imagine they've
got hundreds of snack bars at UCLA, but the one I'm thinking about now is
that called the Cooperage, in that Queen Mary of student unions, Ackerman -- is
a very nice snack bar indeed, with a commodious stage tucked in the corner, a
better PA and better sight lines than you'll find in half the clubs in Los
Angeles, and darling little pizzas cooked on the spot for a reasonable $1.50.
And there's a bowling alley right next door! And a really decent video
arcade, where I saw for the first time this very cool new game having to do with
skateboards, which throws swarms of bees at you and flashes the stern warning
(or perhaps credo) "SKATE OR DIE." Frankly, I didn't understand this game at
all. Where I went to school, we didn't have video games (dude, Pong had
only hardly been invented!), and if we wanted to do any bowling, we had to go
off-campus to do it. Our snack bar had a pool table and a couple of
pinball units and a candy machine I once found stood completely on its head. You
couldn't get darling little pizzas there, but the French-fried hot dogs (the
specialite de la maison, steaming on the inside, a blackened crisp on the
outside) more than compensated. And there was caviar for a couple of months,
until some person in authority (I think they had to send to the state capitol
for him) put the kibosh on it. (Caviar with kibosh, an old Russian
delicacy.)
Anyway, caviar or no, and even without French-fried hot dogs, the Cooperage is a
dandy little eatery and a fine occasional nightclub, especially as they charge
no cover. (Buy some pizza with the money you save.) Dream Syndicate is there
tonight, if you're reading this on Thursday the 19th, you can check them and the
Union out at the same time. Even when there aren't any bands playing, it's
probably an all right place to hang; you can catch up on the college fashions,
and play air hockey, and maybe talk your way into somebody's bowling party.
Don't be shy -- no one will have the faintest idea whether you belong there or
not. There are like, what, 30,000 students attending UCLA, and they come in all
shapes and sizes, colors and ages. The kid I saw working the skateboard game
couldn't have been more than 12, and nobody asked him for his ID. So
that's my big recommendation -- everyone go down to the Union, and please don't
mention my name.
Love Tractor, for their part
in this abominably digressive review, were just ace....
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Copyright Robert Lloyd © 1987 and
2006