Chuck E. Weiss: Piccolo Pete

2008.Sep.29

antiques, chuck e. weiss, jay leno, los angeles, piccolo pete

Chuck E. Weiss seems the ultimate Los Angelino. Full of amusing bullshit; a raconteur; untrustworthy; a little seedy; fun, but ultimately superficial and soulless? Is that fair? It’s all on display in this track about a Ventura Boulevard antiques shop owner who disappears – with his entire stock – after “the cigarettes made him dead.” Anybody who has to preface a chorus by swearing on a quote from some random is 100% fulla shit. To wit:

He told me, and this I do swear "Piccolo Pete's gone to Jesus. He died in his Wakefield bed. They say he's in antique heaven. The cigarettes made him dead."

Anyway, unless you personally have some wistful reminiscence about an unhealthy antiques peddler bottled up inside of you just aching for a shuffling kinda honky tonky ballad to set free, this track may not catch you in the grip. But Weiss is very ventura-boulevard-deco-antiques-dealer and so is this song.

MAPPING IT

An article in the L.A. Times from 1999 pretty well establishes the location of Pete’s at 13814 Ventura Blvd.

HEARING IT

23rd & Stout (the parent record) isn’t on Spotify. Copy.