Quizzo Tonight; and No, I’m Not Rooting for the Nationals

Quizzo tonight starts at O’Neals at 8 p.m. $5 tacos, nachoes, and quesadillas, as well as $3.50 Mexican beers. On to City Tap House where, like things have been a bit off the chain lately. Crazy packed. Action starts at 10:15 p.m. There is a math round this week, so things should be interesting. Don’t worry, it’s not too painful.

As far as yesterday’s post about the Nationals, it was an April Fool’s Day Joke. I wouldn’t root for the Nationals if they were playing the Soviets. I hope Bryce Harper falls into an active volcano. I caught some heat for it on twitter and facebook, but not as much as I wanted. Next time I pull a stunt like this, I expect more outrage. Of course, it worked out better than my April Fool’s joke a couple of years ago where I said I was going to quit quizzo to work for WIP…people stopped coming to my quizzes because they thought I had quit. That wasn’t my smartest move of all time.

Why I’m Rooting For the Nationals This Year; and Why You Should Too

It’s Opening Day, so I figured I should offer a few thoughts on the upcoming baseball season. And I’m starting with a bit of a bombshell. I’m expecting to get a lot of negative backlash on this, understandably (and I don’t really mind; remember, my dream job has always been bad guy wrestling manager). But hear me out before your head explodes. This isn’t a decision I took lightly, but I decided for a number of reasons why I’d be better off rooting for the Nationals than the Phillies.

1. Rooting for a winner. First of all, the Nationals are simply the better team. That cannot be argued. They’ve been picked by nearly every prognosticator in America to win the NL East and represent the NL in the World Series. Nobody likes to think of themselves as a frontrunner, but as we get older, we realize that siding with a winner is a hell of lot more rewarding than siding with a loser. As a big baseball fan, watching a team that is headed nowhere (The Phillies) seems like a giant waste of precious time, especially when we have an opportunity to watch a team that has a chance to be really, really special.

2. Young Guns. Bryce Harper is the most electrifying young player in baseball, and Steven Strasburg has a flamethrower for an arm. Both are just starting to come into their prime. Why would I want to spend the next 6 months watching night after night of baseball played by over the hill players in the sad twilight of their careers (Howard, Halladay, Utley, Rollins, Michael Young) when I could be watching two of the most exciting young players in baseball?  There’s something to be said about getting in on the ground floor.

3. Jayson Werth. What can I tell you? I love all the smack Werth talks about Philly, and his fake foul ball toss into the crowd was something every wrestling fan appreciats. (Again, you have to remember, I want to be a bad guy wrestling manager.) I also appreciate what he did when he was here, and think the hate he’s gotten from Phillies fans is pathetic. Let me know when one company offers you half as much money as another, and you take the lesser paying job. It will never happen. Ever. To any of you. So quit whining about Werth leaving for the same reason. Morons.

4. Charlie Manuel. I’ve had enough. Seriously, I like Charlie and I appreciate what Charlie’s done here, but let’s face it, the game is headed in a different direction (See Tampa Bay Rays, Oakland A’s) and Charlie ain’t about to learn new tricks. Why do I want to spend another season watching a guy manage by the 1970s book when I can watch a Hall of Famer like Davey Johnson, who is essentially the Father of Moneyball? The gig is up, and I wish Charlie the best, but I think he’ll be fired by the midway point of the season.

5. Ruben Amaro. What an absolute train wreck this guy has been. He’s what Ed Wade woulda been if he’d been given a huge payroll. The Ryan Howard contract may be the worst one in baseball. Halladay will get paid $20 million to pitch like a AAA pitcher. He unloaded an extremely productive Hunter Pence. But even after all of that, I gave him a pass.

But then he did something I could not abide by: he signed Delmon Young. That, to me, was like the Eagles signing Vick. One thing that had always been fun about rooting for the Phillies was that (with the notable of exception of Brett Myers) they were such an easy group of dudes to root for. But the Young signing was proof that they would happily sell their souls, and have a negative clubhouse, if it meant a few more season tickets sold because Young was a “Name”. And even worse: HE’S ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE. It’s one thing to sell your soul to sign Barry Bonds. It’s another to sign an anti-Semite with a WAR of -0.3 over the past two years. HE IS AWFUL. But Ruben doesn’t understand that. He’s like a 6 year old at GM. “Oh, this guy won the ALCS MVP, he must be really good.” It just another example of how the Phillies are going down one path, and the quality teams are going down another.

6. I Used to Be an Expos Fan. I didn’t grow up near any teams, so as a kid I was sort of a vagabond fan. And the Expos really captured my imagination. A goofy logo, stars like Tim Raines, Tim Wallach, and Andre Dawson, and a manager who had the COOLEST name to a 10-year old kid: Buck Rodgers. So they were really my favorite team through 1994, when they had me really excited with Pedro Martinez, Larry Walker, and Moises Alou. But then the strike doomed the team, and I was so pissed about the strike I stopped watching baseball altogether until I moved to Philly. So in a way, this is almost sort of a homecoming for me, a return to my childhood.

7. Rooting For the Home Team is Kind of Silly Anyway.

8. It’s Not a Big Deal. Ok, I know I’ve talked a fair amount of trash on the Phillies here, but don’t get me wrong: I’m not going to root against them. I’m just going to root for the Nationals as well. I mean, by the middle of the season, when the Phillies are 39-43 and the Nationals are 55-27, you’ll be wishing you had gotten on the bandwagon at the beginning of the season as well. Like I said, I hope the Phillies do well, but it seems HIGHLY doubtful that the Phils can make the playoffs, while it seems all but assured that the Nationals will win the East.

Hey, when the Titanic went down, some dudes jumped on lifeboats, and some dudes went down with the ship like gentlemen. And maybe the guys who jumped in the lifeboats were punks for doing so. But at the end of the day, they were alive, and the guys who proudly “went down with the ship” were sitting at the bottom of the ocean. Don’t go down with the ship. There’s a very viable life raft, with a cursive N on the side. Hop in. There’s plenty of room.

Cool Job: Philly Rock Legend Kenn Kweder


If you live in Philly and you’ve never seen Kenn Kweder perform, you need to put it on your Philly bucket list. A local legend, he’s been on the Philly rock scene for over 40 years, and has played with some of the biggest names in rock ‘n’ roll. Furthermore, he’s crafted some absolutely incredible songs, ranging from the hilarious (Crackhead) to the epic (Diablo). And of course his cult classic Heroin, which is simply a mindblowingly great rock ‘n’ roll tune. He’s also an incredibly cool guy. In our interview, he talks about his infamous meeting with Clive Davis in 1977 (Davis wanted to sign him, but only if he’d make his music more accessible), where his favorite places to play on South Street were back in its heyday, and how legendary producer Ben Vaughn changed his outlook and his life. It was an IM interview, so capitalizations for emphasis are Kenn’s. Enjoy.

JGT: How’d you first got into music?

Kenn: As a kid, whenever I heard music that I really liked on TV or the radio it gave me the chills, a certain type of happiness. An unbelievable feeling.  Then one day I thought, “Why not try to do the same thing and become a musician to send out the sounds to make others happy and to feel good?” So I bought my first guitar with saved up coupons at age 16 and started to play.

JGT: And where were you playing when you first got started? South Street?

Kenn: Started off in coffeehouses and churches in Southwest Philly, and West Philly. Then migrated to open air gigs in Rittenhouse Square. All folkies used to play in the Square back in 1970, 71.  By 1974 I was on south street and played a zillion gigs at clubs on South Street for the next couple decades.

JGT: Where were your favorite places to play on south street in the 70s?

Kenn: It was a dream come true to perform at GRENDEL’s LAIR (ed. note-When South Street went corporate, it became the Gap at 5th and South). Grendel’s was legendary!    Also a place called Positively 4th Street (4th and Gaskill) and of course JC Dobbs.

JGT: What was Grendel’s Lair like? What was so special about it?

Kenn: All the cats that I looked up to had played there, cats I would hear on the UNDERGROUND radio stations:   Dave Van Ronk, Mose Allison, Phil Ochs, etc.

JGT: What kind of music were you playing at the time?

Kenn: Pure folk stuff–Dylan, John Prine, Kristofferson, Phil Ochs, Arlo Guthrie, Woody Guthrie, Roger Miller, etc

JGT: But you sort of moved into rock ‘n’ roll by the late 70s, right?

Kenn: 1975/76 was when I started the band.  Although I LOVED folk music I would eventually be banned from every folk club in Philly for what they deemed OUTRAGEOUS behavior on stage, so I had no choice.  I would have PREFERRED to have made my way via FOLK anyway over the Rock route but I had no choice at that point.  I ended up taking all that so called “outrageous behavior” to the Rock rooms and it ended up benefitting me and my music ambitions to perform. I used to bring sword canes, whips and firecrackers on stage at the folk venues, so I guess I see their point now.

JGT: Hahahaha! Well, there was an infamous TV interview (ed. note: this is an absolute must watch, for a number of reasons. For one, the club where Keder was playing is now the Ten Stone) where you were described as playing punk rock. You never did anything close to punk rock, did you?

Kenn: Everyone was confused back then with the labels to describe what was actually happening. I think perhaps the “theatre” of a Kweder performance was a bit “punky”(guns, whips, truck tires, traffic lights, etc. on stage) but the music was solid with serious musicians and great melodies. To me PUNK was not about the latter.  So I distanced myself from that label and immediately went from punk rock messiah to a leper in the punk community.

Photo courtesy of Philadelphia Weekly

JGT:So that interview damaged your reputation locally, because you said punk was out of tune and unintelligible?

Kenn: Oh GOD, yes!  The repercussions were something you would never want to experience, and it went on for many many many years. The anger, hatred directed at me because of that inarticulate interview was OFF THE HOOK. To this day I will occassionally see someone from the punk community back then that still has it in for me. Of course by now they no longer play music.

JGT: I find it funny that punk, which is supposed to be all about not giving a shit, gave such a shit.

Kenn: Soooo very true. Total contradiction. Which drove me even more frustrated in their weird negative behavior towards me.

JGT: Anyways, around this time, you had a meeting with Clive Davis, correct?

Kenn: The Clive thing was in 1977.

JGT: Oh, ok. So you had a meeting with Clive, and he told you he wanted you to sign, but drop your band?

Kenn: And to write simpler more “accessible” tunes so no one in Iowa would be offended or be confused or have to “think”.  That suggestion was anathema to me!

JGT: Would you say that meeting was the “crossroads” of your career?

Kenn: One of the “crossroads” for sure. In 1979 I had a similar, yet less notorious meeting with the prez of Infinity records.  Same exact nonsense went down.  Basically a request for Kenn to agree to be defanged and artistically castrated. I said no thanks!

JGT: Why was it that people wanted things so dumbed down? I mean, there were some popular groups at the time, The Who, Led Zeppelin, etc. who weren’t at all dumbed down and who sold millions.

Kenn: Things really changed everywhere after the STAR WARS mentality set in—by that mean STAR WARS was such a huge success, a MEGA MEGA BLOCKBUSTER that everyone in the entertainment field wanted a BLOCKBUSTER success. This mindset continues to this day. The Who and Zeppelin were already Gods from pre-blockbuster mentality and could do as they wished. Me, I was an unknown drifting into the record business that was hell bent on another SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER blockbuster ambition.  So it was only logical for them to ask me to “tone done the lyrics to something simpler” for the so called “everyone, everywhere” to enjoy without exerting much brain power. But certainly some very intelligent artists penetrated that filter force field of the industry  like DEVO, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, etc and sold lots of records. For whatever reason I did not succeed with that.

JGT: At what point did you say, “You know what, I’m never gonna perform in stadiums, but I’m still determined to record and perform  kickass music for appreciative crowds?”

Kenn: 1985 when I met Ben Vaughn. He’s the guy!!

JGT: What did Ben Vaughn tell you?

Kenn: He simply said to me “Hey man, why you getting so fucked up all the time?  Step back a second. Think. Think about this Kenn.  When you wake up everyday YOU know what you want to do, right? You wanna play music. Am I right, Kenn? Then realize this…..that 90% percent of the people ain’t as lucky as you are, they either do NOT know what they WANT to do, or they ain’t doing what they WANT to do. Get it! So stop fucking yourself up!”  That little pep talk pretty much turned my world around to the point I can do a gig in a closet full of brooms to people in a hoagie shop ordering sandwiches and actually get a kick out of it!

JGT: Haha! OK, let’s talk a little bit about the job itself. What is a typical day for you like, or does such a thing exist?

Kenn: I’m sure our days are similar. Emails correspondence galore, texting, phone calls—-pretty much non stop administrative stuff to keep the gigs coming in.  Stopping by bars, clubs to drop off Kweder CDs, press kits.  Practicing guitar–Working on small projects, bigger projects, etc  always in motion. Non stop. Basically announcing my existence to new club owners or constantly, proactively reminding club owners at places I may have just performed at that I actually still exist(ahhh the ephemerality of Showbiz!!) and to rehire me.

JGT: Let’s talk a bit about the music. You said at the beginning that your inspiration was to make people feel good when they hear your music. Do you feel that, by making fun, funny, and up-tempo songs, you are fulfilling your goal as a kid to make people feel good? Because I’ve been to a few Kweder shows and the operative word is definitely “fun”.

Kenn: You’re darn right. It is work to get work but THAT is what we do as we BELIEVE in what we do! And the payoff in many ways can be so great. Better than a medicine sometimes.   And yes I think I’ve been able to deliver some type of happiness to folks. Maybe a “happiness that has a bit of irony within it”.  And that makes me feel pretty good.

JGT: What are three of your favorite places you’ve ever performed?

Kenn: These would all tie for First place:  Bijou Cafe, Tin Angel and JC Dobbs–Philadelphia Ethical Society would be close Second place (honorable mention). By the way, I am the only performer in the history of the Ethical Society where the Police were called to quell a “disturbance”. TWICE!!

JGT: What about travelling? Have you played anywhere cool on the road?

Kenn: The Ad Lib in London was always great to me as was the Carnarvan Castle Pub in London—CBGB’s, Max’s Kansas City, Tramps in NYC were always a favorite of mine.

JGT: One last question: when you write songs, do you sit down, carve yourself out a few hours, and plow through, or is at all inspiration that you suddenly “feel it” and run to a notebook and write it down?

Kenn: Most of the time it is crazy head popping inspiration to create the anchor of the song. Then take a little time to mold the anchor into the shape needed to do its job to anchor itself inside people’s brains.

PREVIOUS JGT INTERVIEWS: JGT interviews boxing champ Bernard Hopkins about his life in prison.

Interview with pro poker player Vaughn.

Interview with 105-year old restaurant owner Mama Teshima.

Interview with restaurant GM Andy.

Interview with street performers Anthony RIley and Infitain.

Interview with Shibe Park historian Bruce Kuklick.

Interview with 91-year old statistician Harvey Pollack, who was the scorekeeper for Wilt’s 100 point game.

Interview with comedians Chip Chantry, Mary Radzinski, and Doogie Horner about handling hecklers.