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Vietnamese Baby (feat. Chip Nold)

from His Majesty's Request: A Wink O'Bannon Select by Antietam

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about

For the first six or seven years Wink and I knew each other, we abraded. I’ll spare everyone the details except to say that, from my side, it’s a token of how callow I was back then.

And yet, even in that time of mutual misunderstanding, he exposed me to music I’d never heard (he was my gateway to Howlin’ Wolf and Hubert Sumlin, a major gift).

Then, six years into our acquaintance, he swooped in to more or less rescue a band I was in (a founding member had quit suddenly). He proved, for several years, to be a most congenial collaborator — and did it playing bass, an instrument I don’t recall him picking up with any regularity anywhere else. Then he quit, the band broke up, and we were back to the way things had always been between us.

Years later, it occurred to me that we might be like magnets with the same pole: scholar-analysts of minute details; fans and adepts of irony and sarcasm; and men who found intense pleasure in that crazy, driving, crazy-driving sound. The surprise was that we ever got the magnets switched around. (Maybe playing bass with the Bulls was Wink’s way of temporarily reversing charge.)

Not long after I realized we were secret sharers, Wink and I had a last few pleasant contacts — and one last, glorious time onstage together, playing a clutch of Babylon Dance Band songs with Antietam.

The last time we saw each other, at the benefit for his medical expenses, we hugged. (“Wink hugged you?” someone asked, astonished. I’m not sure I remember which word in that sentence he emphasized, but I’d like to think it wasn’t the last one.)

Throughout the years, the New York Dolls were a harmonic of our tastes. Some time at the turn of the 80s, I had a ball singing “(Who Are the) Mystery Girls?” with the Blinders. I’m not surprised he picked “Vietnamese Baby” as his favorite of theirs. It’s grown in my estimation, as well, although it defies this scholar-analyst’s best efforts to completely decipher the lyric — and I pored over it like a poem I was going to write a paper on. (Anyone who can interpret the “match me a slingshot” verse, please call me.)

Vale, Wink. I wish we could have played and talked a lot more. (I had a fantasy we’d start a band playing Louisville punk’s greatest hits.) I think being old men would have been agreeable to a closer relationship between us. And thanks for the crabby, cranky, crafty contributions you made to the worlds we shared.
--Chip Nold

Vietnamese Baby
New York Dolls
(David Johansen)

Antietam
Guitars, background vocal: Tara Key
Drums: Josh Madell
Bass: Tim Harris

Vocal: Chip Nold

Antietam recorded at Chessie Studios, NYC
Chip Nold vocal recorded at La La Land, Louisville

Mixed by Tara Key at Chessie Studios

Photo by Susan Bailey

credits

from His Majesty's Request: A Wink O'Bannon Select, track released October 15, 2021
2021, Motorific Sounds

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