Oh well, don't get me started. In any case, for a complete record of Page's preposterous plaigarism, just click here.
But this one I was not previously aware of, and it's really pissing me off.
From 1968, and the throwaway Grape Jam album, please enjoy the astoundingly great Moby Grape and bassist Bob Mosley's "Never."
And from 1970, and Led Zeppelin III, behold in breathless wonder "Since I've Been Lovin' You." Credited, disgustingly, to Page/Plant/Jones.
I particularly like the way Zep changed the lyrics so completely.
From...
Working from eleven to seven every night
Ought to make life a drag yeah now I know that ain't right.
To...
Working from seven to eleven every night,
It really makes life a drag I don't think that's right.
Eleven to seven versus seven to eleven. Get it?
This is reminiscent of a classic Carl Reiner/Mel Brooks comedy routine from the '60s. Mel plays a British Angry Young Man film director named Tippy Skittles, who's just directed a film called Sunday Night and Saturday Morning. When Carl's interviewer reminds him that there has already been a hit British film called Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, Mel/Tippy responds angrily.
"Our film is completely different. It's a week different!"
[h/t Willard's Wormholes]
23 comments:
"Working from seven to eleven every night" ---
Tough life those rock stars have.
I'm thinking of updating the post to include "Never", and The Small Faces "You Need Love", parts of which were lifted for "Whole Lotta Love".
I'd have gone with
"Workin' at the 7-11 every night
My nails are a mess and my hair's turned white."
Then I'd at least have plausible grounds to assert unconscious plagiarism.
I saw an interview with Page where he more or less admitted to the blues thefts and rather snidely blamed it on Plant, who he called "sloppy" for not changing the lyrics enough to get away with it.
Oh god, my early 70s band covered "Since I've Been Loving You." And I had "Grape Jam" at home. I let the cover proceed because it was a feature piece for the lead guitarist, but I made sure the rest of the band heard "Never."
Wow, Steve. You just figured this out now! Plant always loved Moby Grape. It took you 45 years to finally drop the needle on Grape Jam?
I figured this out in 1970 around the same time Deep Purple ripped off It's a Beautiful Day's "Bombay Calling" for "Child In Time." It was the "Blueberry Hill" era.
Say what you will about Zeppelin, but Jimmy Page was an amazing producer. The records really hold up and they don't sound like anybody else in spite of the ongoing theft. Must have been the heavy bagpipe influence that set them apart from the rest. Plus it's got a good beat and it makes you want to jig. Were they sloppy and self-indulgent live? Of course, especially Page.
But they're like a cont that's been focked and satiated sloppy. When they come, they still have the ability to be quite gripping. And I ought to know something about that.
BTW, glad you're still alive and well. I guess you're probably most famous for your belated tip of the hat to the Spiders from Mars which got reprinted in Hot Wacks. They definitely were quite the rockin' little combo!
I had the privilege of being at the Santa Monica shows and the following year's Hollywood Palladium show. I was a senior in high school at the time. I was both the student body president and the homecoming queen. Everybody hated me. I was very popular. It's a curse.
I go to anywhere from 75 to 100 concerts a year. I've been stealth taping for decades, one of the few women who do. I know what I'm talking about. The Spiders 1972 and 1973 shows and Patti Smith's six show run at The Roxy and Golden Bear in early 1976 would rank very high on my all time list. Even higher than Steppenwolf and Three Dog Night at the Forum. I'm not joking. I don't tow no party line. I'm a woman who has no tenets.
Anyway, with regards to the Patti Smith shows, thank god KMET broadcast one of the shows and it became the Teenage Perversity boot.
Thank you Ken Douglas for using my tape!!! But I wish he would have kept the closing comments and credits by the radio personalities after the show. Their noses didn't bleed when they got high and they wanted everyone to know.
I wanted him to do a two record set with the KWST interview as a bonus disc (sorta like the aforementioned "Grape Jam.") but he didn't think it would sell.
Believe it or not, the king of all bootleggers Ken Douglas' favorite artist was Linda Ronstadt. Lucky for him he had partners and advisers who were a lot more in the know, artistically.
I'd have to give the nod to the Roxy shows over the Golden Bear. But that's only because PSG had the stupid Noel Redding Band opening for her in Huntington Beach. Why'd Jimi ever let Bob Dylan's grandma mar his five star albums with his wretched tunes and lead vocals? The Clonakilty Cowboys sucked. They should have just had Cale do more than "Fear" when he opened. But that's nitpicking.
Nevertheless, after the Golden Bear show, she did take off all of her clothes and ran across PCH to take an unplanned skinny dip in the Pacific.
I used to read your stuff in the 1970's as a Stereo Review critic. You had an uncanny knack of raving about stuff I had just gotten into a few months before the issue went to press. It must have sucked working for a magazine which was so time lagged.
I read your reviews and thought, now there's a guy with taste!
But Annie McCue?!?!? I guess you had to be there.
Pithy is just a five-letter word for your "Five O'Clock World."
I can't wait for the next Johnny Rivers concert!
Vickie Rock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKLHbOfket8&feature=c4-overview&list=UU6T-13grvC3sS7Yv0tmVF-Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NDJGW9g_JY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeHIRWMSm2E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OLP7C2ry_U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbn37mxtHa4
Whoa! I messed up on the earlier comment. Instead of reading Annie McCue, it should be Annie McLoone.
I actually like Anne McCue. She could check into my Koala Motel for a little bisexual action anytime.
The previous post should read as follows:
"I used to read your stuff in the 1970's as a Stereo Review critic. You had an uncanny knack of raving about stuff I had just gotten into a few months before the issue went to press. It must have sucked working for a magazine which was so time lagged.
I read your reviews and thought, now there's a guy with taste!
But [b]Annie McLoone?!?!?[/b] I guess you had to be there.
-----------------
Now excuse me, I'm going to play Stoneground's version of "Total Destruction To Your Mind" from "The Family Album." Why? Because it makes me feel soooo goood. Because it's perfectly mindless. From the days of "Does anyone out there have a beer without any acid in it?"
If only "Mud, Lies and Shame" wasn't in storage, I'd play "Walkin' with the King" immediately after.
So it will have to be just the usual smoking of the black tar opium whilst listening and focking my trombamico to Patti Smith's "Horses" CD on repeat. We like Birdland. What can I say, it's a full moon. A super moon even. Heaven's to murgatroyd! We're gonna go up into the belly of the ship.
Then we'll afterglow with Toni and Gwil because there's definitely something in the water.
Pithy is just a five-letter word for your "Five O'Clock World."
I'm counting the days until the next Johnny Rivers concert!
The only thing better than that is Daevid Allen reciting poetry in your home with his cock hanging out of his Dockers. And this, while Gilli Smyth sings space whispers to the lamp and the smiley faced people riding in the balloon gondolas in the pattern of your wallpaper.
This really happened to me. And to top it all off, Didier Malherbe clogged up my toilet with the most fetid excrement in the galaxy. What rot do these people eat?
Vickie Rock
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVHz9fntXKo
Anonymous said...
Wow, Steve. You just figured this out now! Plant always loved Moby Grape. It took you 45 years to finally drop the needle on Grape Jam?
Steve has been a Moby Grape fan since way back when. He just didn't get the blatant plagiarism until recently.
Vicki:
Plant, to his credit, later did right by Skippy. He recorded both "Naked If I Want To" and "Seeing" -- in pretty darn good version, actually -- and as far as I know the royalties went to Spence or his family.
Also Vickie -- are you, as it seems from what you've been posting, currently based in LA?
Reason I ask is my girlfriend and I are gonna be spending a long weekend out there in January, and a friend has promised to get us into Waddy's monday night jam.
If you're around, I probably should buy you an adult beverage in appreciation of your kind words.
Unless you know something I don't know, Waddy's Monday night jams at the Joint ceased years ago. Please tell me they're back! Same with the Screaming Cocktail Hour jams at the NoHo's Baked Potato.
Waddy has been playing The Joint for about 15 years. But lately he just comes in once a month with his band. I don't think it's a jam scene per se anymore. His "band" gigs are usually on the weekends.
There were also some cool jam scenes at various Malibu watering holes that centered around former Black Crowes guitarist Mark Ford. The guesting players were unbelievable. I've seen Lucinda (with various band members) and the aforementioned Anne McCue join in the jams along with lots of guitar gods and demigods from different eras and genres. McCue lived out here for a while. She's gone now for quite some time.
Peter Bardens used to come when he was still alive. I stayed at his place for a week. He liked the way I played flute at one of the jams. What a cokehead!!! Horrible bathroom habits as well. Yeccch. Such reverence for the dead.
The Cinema Bar in Culver City had some nice jam type sessions as well. More in an alt-country vein. Guys like Mike Stinson, Randy Weeks, Dusty Wakeman and David Raven would form the core band and take all comers.
Stinson was living with Pam Des Barres at the time. He left for Texas a while back. Around the turn of the millennium he was in a band called the High Horses which almost, but never got off the ground. I liked them a bit. I have a four song rough demo and treasure it.
The Agoura Valley Inn also had loose jams that featured Albert Lee, when he lived out here. Dave Edmunds would frequent these when available. I didn't go to all of these but knew people who did. I did see Chris Spedding and Albert Lee there on one occasion. The place was tiny. There was barely room for a stage and bar. Local yokels would be drinking there with no clue as to how famous these dudes were. How could I not love that?
On one of the occasions I saw the Everly Brothers with Albert, I took my clueless sister along. It was at The Coach House in San Juan Capistrano. It was dinner theater.
After the meal, sis went outside in the smoking corral to enjoy a puff. A guy asked her if she had a fag and she handed him a Marlboro. She told him that I had dragged her along because I was a big fan of their guitar player. He told her that he heard the guitar player was pretty good.
When the show began, she realized that the cigarette moocher was Albert Lee and felt very stupid.
Stuff might still be happening in Pioneertown near Joshua Tree. It's a bit of a haul for me, so I don't go there often. But have experienced wondrous things there. Mostly more roots oriented stuff.
Lotsa musically oriented folks out there. Pappy & Harriet's is one of the greatest places on earth. If you visit SoCal and they have any kind of decent entertainment booked, it's a must. Few places have that kind of vibe. Most of the ones that did have closed.
But, alas, all that stuff is past tense. If there's a jam scene going on right now, I don't know about it. But I've been less in the know since around 2008.
I still haunt and live in the L.A. area but I also have a place in Idaho. Beautiful country there to run around in your natural state. I live near water and falls. It's so sexy.
I've been trying to get a home built in Huntington Beach for the past few years. My focking permits keep getting pulled. Then granted, then pulled. It's like they have some schizo's working in Planning. Goddamn do I hate the bureaucratic bullshit. It's enough to make you wanna go postal.
My door is always open for you and your girlfriend. Just let me know ahead of time. I'm pretty spontaneous and whimsical, so I'll need notice.
If you want to bring a bottle, get me a chilled half-pint of Kessler. Like the label says, it's "Smooth As Silk." I acquired a taste for this cheaper whiskey in my precocious youth. Love it's warmth.
Steve:
Not sure if my comment went through. Let me know if you got it. If not, it went out in the ether somewhere.
With regard to the Waddy Wachtel Monday night jams from The Joint, some were taped professionally. I'm not sure how many, but a bunch. I think they caught the Robert Plant appearance along with Peter Asher and a bunch of others. Maybe Keith. Not sure because Keith showed up during the early part of the run. So did Daltrey, so I'm not sure if he was captured either.
If you know Richard Bosworth, he's the guy who has the multi-tracks. He's an engineer of some note and a huge Beatles fan.
The Joint is a fairly small place. I'm guessing it holds between 100 and 200 people. It's been remodeled since those videos on youtube were shot. It lost a lot of its funkiness.
Vickie Rock
Vicki:
I could be mistaken about the Monday jams...I'll make inquiries.
In any case, the LA trip is going to be a hoot; we're going to go to the Bradbury Building (a long time dream of mine) and a couple of other iconic landmarks -- the Daily Planet building from the Superman TV show (City Hall), maybe the Bronson Canyon cave that was used in countless sci-fi films...stuff like that. I'm really looking forward to it.
Hope we get to meet you...we don't have an exact date, but obviously I'll be blogging about it...
Steve: Reading about your vacation plans makes me realize how much I take everything around here for granted. I've lived in this general area my whole life and have seen a lot, but one can never catch everything.
Have you ever been to the west coast before? It's an entirely different animal than the NYC area.
Do you have any eateries in mind? Maybe I could turn you on to dinner. The Formosa Cafe is still standing. El Coyote still cranks. They're landmarks.
I'll either be coming with my husband, my more than best girlfriend Sandy, or my youngest daughter.
Don't worry should my daughter come. She's nineteen and not a drag in the least bit. I raised her right. She's interesting and very adult. Quite charming too.
I'm an alpha female, epicurean and a hedonist, with a capital, boldfaced, arial fonted, double underlined "H." So, I could definitely help you out in those departments.
The Bronson Canyon Caves and low budget sci-fi. I know what you mean. "I ate a hot dog. It tasted real good. And then I watched a movie from Hollywood...."
You're such a nerd. And I mean that in the most loving sense, because aren't we all.
I'm all hung up on Giallo films right now. I find many of them erotic and enjoyable. But there are a lot of lousy ones too. Doesn't stop me from watching them though.
When your plans are "firm." Let me know. I'll take care of you.
If you want to save on hotel costs, I have a guest house and music studio in back with all the amenities. If you want total privacy, I'll leave you two alone.
I also have a pretty spacious guest room in the house if you so desire. But I live about an hour from downtown, so that could be a factor.
If I happen to be in Idaho, I'd just give you the run of the house, kitchen, game room and bar. You can be as sloppy as you want. After all, you're on vacation.
If you have friends in L.A. you want to entertain, it would be perfect. The back yard is huge and has a pool.
I have relatives who live in Europe. They always stay at the "Hotel Rock" when they come to the USA. If I'm in town, I always cook them a hearty breakfast before they leave to do their "tourist" stuff.
Vickie Rock
Vickie:
I haven't been in LA since the mid-70s. I actually got a pedestrian traffic ticket at the time, which I never paid, so technically I'm a fugitive from California justice.
In any case, hope we can meet up with you and/or yours -- don't have a date yet, but I'm sure we'll be discussing it on the board.
Stay cool.
:-)
Didn't notice this comment till now.
L.A.'s changed drastically since the mid-1970's.
Regarding your jaywalking ticket, I think everything's cool. Joe Friday is dead.
Speaking of pedestrian tickets, here's a true story involving my brush with the law. Please bear with me.
I got a Walking on a "Don't Walk" ticket right in front of the Whisky a Go Go at the corner of San Vicente/Clark and Sunset. This was in 1977.
I had a guy friend who lived in the apartments just below the Whisky on San Vicente. He was a journalist for a European rock mag. We walked up from his place to the Whisky to see The Runaways and The Weirdos.
There were about thirty people waiting to cross the street. When the "Walk" sign came on we all began walking. As with all of these stupid crossings, the “Don't Walk" light begins flashing before you can even get half way through the intersection.
There was a cop waiting at the end of the crosswalk. He was standing next to his motorcycle. I made eye contact with him as I tried to get across.
Before I could even get to the sidewalk, he said, "Hey, you, tits, come over here."
My friendly foreign correspondent kept walking toward the Whisky. He had overstayed his work visa and didn't want any problems. I was on my own.
I pointed at myself and said "Me?" to the cop. I wanted to make sure. He said "Yeah you, sweetheart."
I was smoking a ciggy as I walked up to him. He told me he was going to cite me for walking on a "Don't Walk." I made my case saying that it was impossible to get across before the light started flashing. I told him I was one of thirty people. He didn't care.
Then he told me to put out my cigarette. I asked him why. He asked me if I wanted to go to jail. I said no. He told me that if I didn't want to go to jail, then I better put the ciggy out.
I dropped it on the cement and crushed it with my foot. He asked me if I wanted him to cite me for littering. I said no. He told me to pick up the cigarette butt. I did so.
Then he asked me if I had any drugs on me. I did. But I didn't admit it. I had about five bennies in my coin purse. He searched my purse but didn't spot the whites.
Then he told me to go around the back of the Whisky. When we got there, he told me he was going to search me.
He undid my halter top from behind and then reached around and roughly grabbed my exposed boobs. Then he grinded against me from the rear. He asked me if I wanted to beat the ticket and laughed creepily.
As far as I was concerned, this jerk-off was raping me. My uncle had taught me some self defense moves, but this was a cop. If I attacked him I'd be up shit creek.
Luckily for me a delivery truck pulled into the back of the Whisky and spooked him. We walked back out to his motorcycle after I retied my halter top. He wrote the damn ticket.
I thought about suing the cops for the way he treated me. But I really just wanted to put the whole episode behind me.
I got a notice in the mail a few weeks later. It was a thirty five dollar fine. I paid it via check by mail.
Fast forward two years later. I’m now living with a major drug dealer. We had another couple over our house.
Somehow pizza came up and I was raving about this one place that had the best around. The other girl’s boyfriend and me went to pick it up.
We got a couple of six packs of Michelob in bottles on the way. We each cracked one open. We got the pizza and began heading back to our place.
The guy I was with was driving a really nice restored ’55 Chevy pick-up truck. Apparently its license registration tags had expired. When a cop got behind us, even though he was quite a distance from us, the guy got super paranoid.
He told me he had outstanding warrants for traffic tickets. He made a really quick and reckless turn off of the street we were on to avoid the cop.
Quite frankly, I don't think the cop was suspicious at all until he did this. I told him it was a total dumbshit move. Because of this, the cop followed us into a neighborhood cul de sac. The lights came on.
I told my friend that I would drive his truck to my place, since it was likely he was going to go to jail for warrants. I'd get his girlfriend and we would bail him out.
The cops wrote him up for expired tags, and open container while they ran a warrant check. Sure enough, he had warrants. He was going to jail. They cuffed him and put him in the back of the squad car.
They wrote me an open container ticket as well, for the Michelob. I told the cop that I would see to it that his truck got moved.
Then the cop told me that I had a warrant as well. I knew for a fact that I didn't. I told the cop so. He just said "That's what they all say." Which was probably true. I was fucked.
They cuffed me and put me in the back seat with my friend. I kept protesting. I demanded to know what it was that I had a warrant for.
Eventually the cop gave me some meaningless code number for the law I violated. Upon further pressing, he told me it was for Walking on a "Don't Walk."
I was livid. I told him I paid that ticket years before and I could prove it. He said, "That's what they all say." I was fucked. And the goddamned cuffs were way too tight and digging into my wrists.
The jail they took us to was about fifty miles away. The guy I was with was nicknamed affectionately Pecker-Wood. This was because he had a Bakersfield drawl and also because he was very well endowed.
About halfway to the jail Pecker-Wood told the cop he had to piss. The cop told him he would just have to hold it till we got to the jail.
But Pecker-Wood's back teeth were floating. He told the cop that he was about to piss all over the car.
The cop pulled over. He helped Pecker-Wood out of the back seat. My friend asked the cop to un-cuff him so that he could pee. After all, it wasn't like we were hardened criminals.
The cop refused and proceeded to unbutton Pecker-Wood's 501's and pulled his beautiful cock out. I was watching all this through the back door window. It was pretty funny watching a cop hold my friend's dick steady while he pissed mightily.
Pecker-Wood was understandably upset and embarrassed. But it was a memory. Something we still talk about on occasion.
At any rate, I had to pay nearly 550 bucks to get bailed out. I was really angry since I had paid the damn ticket in the first place.
Vickie Rock
I had to appear in the Beverly Hills court a few weeks later regarding the matter. It was a woman judge. I brought my canceled check from two years before which proved I paid the ticket.
I told her that I spent the better part of two days in jail for no other reason than their bureaucratic incompetence.
I also gave her the original citing officer's name and told her what he did to me before writing the ticket. I could tell she wasn’t going to do anything about it based on my word alone.
She told me the fact that I went to jail was terrible and apologized. She told me the court would issue a refund of my 550 bail within a month.
I told her that wasn't good enough. She got a bit snippy with me, but I held my ground. I told her that when I was in jail they wanted my bail right away, not a month later.
I told her that the government had picked my pocket and I needed the money right there and then. Though it was against court protocol, she agreed to do it.
So, sometimes even if you pay your tickets, you end up being a fugitive of California Justice.
By the way, that was the first time I saw the Runaways without Cherie. Jackie had also quit. It was no big deal. We had a great upstairs table but we got bored and horny and left early.
Vickie Rock
Vicki:
Suddenly I feel very conventionally middle class and bourgeois.
:-)
Seriously -- that's some amazing story.
Steve: That story is just the tip of the iceberg.
My family and I have endured far worse treatment from the police than the trivial incident that I have just mentioned. I’ve had some real doozies happen to me and my kids. Most people will never experience this kind of stuff in their lifetime. We’ve definitely had more than our share. And we're white, college educated and upper middle class! Guess we’re just unlucky.
Also, since 1985, I have been involved in eleven different “Eminent Domain” actions. That’s where the government entity files court papers, condemns your land and takes possession of it for ten cents on the dollar.
The ultimate value of your land is determined by a court action which takes five years. By the time the landowner gets paid just compensation for their property, the road, or other government project, has usually been operating for a few years. I fuckin’ hate the government and the games they play.
With regard to police misconduct, it happens all the time. And they all cover for each other from the patrol officers to the judges. I know firsthand the type of tactics they employ. The blue wall. Stall and delay. Harassment. Attrition.
Between 1989 and 2009, I have successfully sued three different police agencies in Southern California. And believe me, when I sued, they more than had it coming. The prospect of a lawsuit has always been something I’ve tried to avoid. A suit fucks up the quality of your life and makes you constantly relive the incident. Plus they’re expensive and drag on forever. But sometimes offences are so egregious that one has no option left.
Still, even though I did win the cases, none of the bad cops lost their jobs permanently. We were compensated monetarily, but we never got the satisfaction of seeing the creeps’ heads roll. So they’re still out there probably doing the same stuff to other victims who can’t afford to fight them. It’s a travesty.
One case in particular involved my, then, 19 year old son. A drunken and “on duty” patrol officer ran a red light in his black & white and crashed into my son’s mini-truck in T-bone fashion. This was in the early afternoon and right in front of the Department of Motor Vehicles, which my son had just left. There were witnesses galore. There was a bench at DMV which faced the street. All the people who had to take their driving tests were waiting there and it was standing room only.
My son hit his head on the upper part of his door and was temporarily knocked unconscious. The drunken cop got out of his car without putting it in “Park.” In the grips of road-rage he ran up to my son’s car window, which was rolled down. He pulled my unconscious kid out through the window by the neck. Then he threw him down on the pavement and started beating the shit out of him.
My son regained consciousness just as the cop started wailing on him, first with fists, and then the belly club. He put up no resistance as he was still in a daze from the accident.
Meanwhile, since the cop forgot to put his car in "Park", his vehicle was driving itself down the street. This road, Gary Avenue in Pomona, is a major arterial with four lanes and median divider. The cop car drove pilotless for about 200 yards hitting another car before it went up the sidewalk and struck a tree.
After the cop finished wailing on my son, he cuffed him and made him sit at the curb while he called for another officer. When that officer arrived, the cop told him that my son was attempting to hit-and-run and resist arrest. This was absolutely ridiculous.
The accident rendered my son’s truck un-drivable. Also, if my son was hitting and running, why was the cop on foot? Why was his police car crashed into a tree a couple hundred yards up the street? It was ludicrous.
Nevertheless, my son was arrested and subsequently thrown in jail. But first, to cover their ass, they brought him to the emergency room and took x-rays and pictures before the bruises set in. He had a couple of fractured ribs. They stitched up the back of his head.
The drunk cop told the reporting officer that my son had resisted arrest and he needed to immobilize him. This was completely false.
My son kept telling the cops that the officer that struck him was drunk. He told them to do a sobriety test on him. He smelled of whiskey.
They ignored him even though the cop was obviously shit-faced. One of the cops present started intimidating my son, threatening to lock him up in a cell with very sick and dangerous criminals, if he didn’t shut the fuck up.
Some fourteen hours later, after they officially processed him into the jail, he was able to bail himself out. He was staying at his dad’s that day so I didn’t find out about it till the day after.
The next day his face was completely purple. His eyes were swollen and black. He had bruises on his neck which were shaped like the hands of the cop. You could see each finger of each hand along the sides of his neck.
I asked him what happened. He told me the story.
At first, I wasn’t sure if I believed him all the way. It seemed too crazy. I told him that he better be telling the truth, because if he was, we were gonna sue the pants off of the fucking cops.
He swore it was true and started crying. My son doesn’t cry easily.
He said the cop was the ugliest, meanest bastard he had ever seen. I now totally believed him. We took four rolls of film to memorialize the injuries to his chest, neck and face.
That was the beginning of a five-year ordeal. I hired a wonderful lawyer who had a fantastic detective track down all the witnesses who were at the DMV and adjacent apartments that day. Every one of them corroborated what my son had said. We had over thirty witnesses from all walks of life.
My son was still charged with “attempted hit and run and resisting arrest.” They also wanted him to pay for damages to the cop car!!! Of course it was bogus. But that didn’t stop the D.A. from dragging the process out for nearly four years.
After the long stall, the judge would tolerate no more extensions. The D.A. informed the judge that they had no case to put on against my son. Surprisingly, the judge seemed really pissed off at the prosecutor for dragging it out forever, when all the time he knew they had no case. But all he did was give him a lecture. I suspect it may have been a dog and pony show for the court record.
They had no case because the reporting officer didn’t feel comfortable testifying and backed out. He knew it was bullshit. And he knew it would be perjury. So, at least one cop has a conscience. But I think it was just more about his self-preservation than anything else. My counsel was champing at the bit to get a hold of this guy. And the cop who hit my son.
My lawyer and the detective both used to work for the police. When they read the police report, they both knew it was bullshit. It contained the word “apparently” far too much. Now that the charges were proved to be bogus and dropped, we could sue for false arrest and damages. It was a Civil Rights case.
The police’s representative got spooked and wanted to settle out of court for 250 thousand. My lawyer relayed the offer to me and my son. He said it was up to us.
I mulled it over. At that very moment the cop who beat my son up walked into the courtroom. My son nudged me and said “That’s the guy, mom.”
He looked like the biggest prick that ever walked the face of the earth and I was being totally objective. He had mean, abusive, hateful and violent written all over his face. He was the perfect villain.
As soon as I saw the guy, I told the lawyer that we were going all the way. There was no way we were going to lose now that I got a load of Officer Prick's face.
We did win. The lawyer got about 35%. My son got the remainder. He, in turn, gave half of his money to a cystic fibrosis foundation which was set up by our wonderful neighbors after their son died from the disease. With the other half he started up his own car and truck customizing business.
Nevertheless, that dickhead is still patrolling the streets of Pomona. No one ever gave him a sobriety check that day. Whether or not he was drunk didn’t make much of a difference in our legal action. What he did was unforgivable and he should have been fired.
I think if we would have gone to a newspaper, the public pressure may have forced it. Lots of my friends were telling me to do that. But that’s the last thing I wanted to do. My son felt the same way. We had enough problems the way it was.
I realize that cops also do a lot of good for the community. But I can't understand why they cover for each other no matter what the circumstance. That sickens me.
It's a major uphill battle when you fight them because the entire system tilts in their favor. It was the same with my "Eminent Domain" cases.
Judges can be incredibly biased. I've seen it's blatancy firsthand. In one of my "Eminent Domain" cases it was soooo damn ridiculous, the jury revolted against the Judge. Which was very good for me.
Like I said, I've been through "Eminent Domain" 11 times. I also settled four additional "Eminent Domains," out of court for a grand total of 15.
Most people will never have it happen to them in their lifetime. So, I'm a pro. I've been through so many that I could give pretty sound legal advice on the subject.
But I still wish they'd never happened. In the end, you never get the fair market value for your property because you have to pay the lawyer a five-tear tab. Judges seldom award legal expenses after the county that cuts their paycheck just got their ass kicked in court. They're all on the same team and probably golf together. Jerks.
Most of my "Eminent Domain" actions were against the County of San Bernardino. Specifically an organization named S.A.N.B.A.G. You can't make stupid stuff like this up. The slimeball representatives who I had to deal with from this organization were named Dick Rieker (pronounced Reeker, honestly) and Chuck Wisdom. What slippery fuckin' jerks. The worst.
But that's an entirely different story.
Every time my son or I drive by the Department of Motor Vehicles in Pomona we remember what happened to him there. The name of the street my son got beat up on is Beaver Court. Honestly.
It happened at the intersection of Beaver Court and Gary Avenue in Pomona.
That Pomona Police Department has received a multitude of complaints from citizens. As of late, they have been harassing and injuring youthful concert goers at the Glass House and the Fox Theater, among other things. They have a very bad rep. So, apparently things haven't changed.
Vickie Rock
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