Like A Broken String

Shake your head really hard, it won’t change your mind.  There is no physical or mechanical way to alter your thoughts.  It is an organic process, evolution, and the sloughing of old cells.  Regeneration. 

At any point in life there is a song or an album and it cannot be separated from your life, your soul. Your entire existence rests on vinyl as a needle.  It lasts for days, months, years.  The song comes through speakers or headphones or simply from recollection.

Chords form shapes and depth in your thoughts.  Emotions become directly interwoven with a dark room, and those tones ooze from dark mesh speaker covers.  Vibrations end, spiraling thoughts circle the room in silence while you finish a drink, the last tonight you swear.  You become your own footnotes as you crawl off to bed.

As unexpectedly as it begins, it ends with the breaking of a string. 

Clothes Can Make The Man

I've always found it hard to get rid of old clothes.  The ones that are too faded and too worn to wear respectably.  This is an old habit born out of necessity for having something to wear to certain shows.  Never wear nice jeans or a new shirt or clean white sneakers to one of those shows, and you won't have that morning after comment wondering what the hell happened the night before.

When you first started going to punk or hardcore shows back in the 80's you quickly learned that your "look" could bring grief.  Sure, no one said a word about that Dead Kennedys t-shirt once you got to where you were going, but to wear it in the other places you had to stop at before and after the show or record store could be a hassle that you either learned to accept or avoid.

I've had people give me real grief in fast food places, the convenience store, or just getting gas.  I might have simply been going to a show, but when you stop off to get a pack of smokes on your way and the guy behind the counter starts yelling at you, refuses to sell you the smokes, and then comes out from behind the counter to physically remove you from the premises; it's a good time to address the issue at hand.  It was the one issue that some folks didn't want to hear what you have to say. "Dead Kennedys"?  The name said it all to them.

So you learned.  Wear it uncovered and spoil for a fight, or wear a long sleeved shirt over it until you get to the venue.  No reason to wear a perfectly good shirt to these places.  For the most part you'd just take it off and tie the sleeves around your waist.  No reason to even wash it or worry about how wrinkled it got.  It was going to get tied off at the waist in the end.

Same with jeans.  New jeans worn at a punk club meant new jeans ruined with grubby knees and a filthy backside.  It's not like you were break dancing on the floor.  Sometimes you'd take a shot from the guys down in front of the stage and down to the floor you'd go.  That was the last place you wanted to be, because you'd get kicked and stomped.  Partly by accident, partly on purpose.  But it did happen from time to time and there was also spilled drinks and an occasional bit of blood smeared on them.

Shoes and boots got the same treatment.  All night long you were on this sticky, glue like floor, picking up the gunk on your soles.  This was a stickiness that you could never get off.  Everyone around you would be stomping along, picking up that same grime, stepping on the heels and instep and toes of your shoes. 

Steel toe boots or Red Wing work shoes were great because you didn't get those tender little bones in your feet smashed under the weight of some big ox who was hopping around like a maniac.  I swear, sometimes I wondered if cats dug stepping on feet so much, that maybe they got some kind of criminal thrill out of doing it.

I'd go to these shows looking like crap.  I had black flight deck boots that I'd tuck the pants leg of my jeans into.  Two pair of socks too because with all the sweating it was a good chance you'd rub up a blister on the heel.  Grubby old jeans that may or may not have the knees worn out, or a torn open back pocket.  Any old shirt would do.  Over time I stopped wearing band t-shirts and just wore a plain white v-neck tee or an old sweatshirt.  Usually the neck would have a hole in it.

Anyone who saw me getting a burger before the show, or getting a tank of gas, or a pack of smokes with a bottle of beer would have thought I was just some dirt poor loser.  Probably bought those crap clothes at Goodwill.  That was good.  It gave me anomynity among the masses. 

No alarming slogans or band names.  The only thing to rile their attention may have been a wrist full of crazy bracelets, or my jumble of hair, or a bandana wrapped around the top of a boot to keep it together because I broke a bootlace earlier and hadn't gotten around to replacing it.

I just can't get rid of old shirts and pants.  I always feel like I may need them again some day.

Please Darken My Door

All that Arkansas twang, looking like a cleaned up sharecropper straight from the WPA photo archives.  He's got an old snare next to his knee that could have come out of some St. Louis speakeasy.  He leans when drumming, like the groove is going to make his legs get up and stroll across the stage and dance.  Ghost notes.

He never looked like he was from our time, never did look the part, never once did he seem ready for a TV close-up.  He looks more comfortable smiling behind chicken wire and a simple drum kit, with some mad local husband banging away at the cage trying to get his hands on him.  The barroom crowd laughing and big bouncers drag the rabid spouse away.  "I didn't know she was married, friend.  Let's play us somethin' good, boys!"

Levon Helm is one of the last connections to the days of traveling minstrel shows and those unruly, untamed hillbilly singers who were looking for their slice of the sweet pie.  It was better than farming, easier than working down in the oil patch.  Just play good music for your living and the living will be good.

He's still with us.  He's still passing along the songs and the personal link to what so many of us once were.  Faded Liberty overalls, a pouch of tobacco in the breast pocket, a straw hat you only wear to town or church.  He would see it and remember what it was all about.  To hear him talk we're his cousin, brother, sister, friend.

He'd go with you to hear the preacher on Sunday morning, and drive you to the bootlegger in his Plymouth once the sermon's over.  Just a nip to get the red out of your eyes.  These Sunday morning services are hard on a man when he needs to sleep one off but boy, wasn't that preacher yelling up a good storm this morning!  Let's sing one from the hymnal.  One for us poor lost souls.

Ballroom Blitz

I used to go to shows at The Spectrum in Philadelphia and the security people manning the doors would frisk us as we filtered in.  Not an up against the wall frisk like cops do, but it was the same effect.  "Open your coat.  Let me see some socks." 

You'd reach down and pull up your pants legs and they'd look down at your socks to see if you were stashing something in them.  Wear boots and they got a pat down too, just to make sure something wasn't hidden inside. They would pat down your coat pockets; looking for recorders, pint bottles of cheap booze, and batteries.  Oh yes, the batteries.

Big, fat D cell batteries that maniacs would chuck from the high rafters if the band were slogging it without heart.  Ask Steven Tyler about flying batteries in Philly and I am sure the conversation will be over immediately.  Maybe a scuffle will break out between you and his handlers because you are being a jerk?

They'd eye up the contents of your pack of smokes, looking for the tell-tale signs of rolled up joints.  They'd look you in the eye as well, to see if you were carrying the inertia of crazy or approaching the fall out stage of intoxication.  "Enjoy the show, move along." they'd bark and into the concourse you'd head.  It was a routine that always reminded you that things can get out of hand in a flash at these shows. 

I've seen riot cops and cops on horseback, swinging long clubs and yelling.  One trick they had was to use the horse to pin a kid next to something unmovable and flail away on their head with the stick.  Maybe the kid could break free and make a run for it, sometimes not.  The cops would bust skulls and kids would run like roaches when the lights get turned on.

I saw, or at least I believe I remember seeing, some guy set fire to his coat by accident, and the flames licked up his arm before he began waving like a duck taking to the air.  Someone leaped on him and together they snuffed the flames.  The guy on fire shook the hand of his savior and back to the fist pump rocking he went.  I think we mouthed the word "Awesome!" to each other and kept on going ourselves.  Then again, I've never been able to remember any other details of that night, maybe it was all a false memory?

I've seen Steven Stills and Lee Ving, never together though.  I certainly didn't expect Stills to punch someone in the jaw and it didn't happen, but I did see Ving do it and I can still hear the smacking sound, like a wild wrestling match that doesn't get televised.  I sat quietly and heard Stills play, I tried to avoid broken bones when Ving was screaming at us.  Context is so important.

If I could be 18 one more time and go back to Philly with my young shock hair, an all teeth and gums grin, I'd do it and take one more tour of the dangerous nights.  One more night where I could look at the stage with faraway eyes and fists in the air, staring back into the eyes of some rock star, and if I'm really lucky he'll shoot a finger at me on that one lyric, the one line that sends you off on fated missions. 

One more chance to shout, "Yeah, man!" and not even for a second tell myself the truth.  That dude does the finger point gag a dozen times a night, in every town.  But for tonight, he did it once to me.  Bring on the cops!  I'm ready for the other side of that door.

Lyrical

I could never speak in lyrics.  I knew people, clever people, who could spew lyrics while a tape was rolling and twist their own perverted words to match the moment at hand, but I couldn't.  For me it was like learning to speak Finnish or Polish; I was stuck speaking rubbish.

The great lines in music, the ones that make an eyebrow arch or a throat clench, are always written by a person who's eyes can conceal their word factory like heavy Victorian drapes blocking the sun.  You'll never know the inspiration by simply looking into their eyes.  Their eyes are a gateway to mazes and alleys that you should take caution if you wish to explore.  The pathways are guarded by word traps.

Words can been framed in ways to make the innocent guilty, the descriptive vague, and compassion becomes oppression.  Too many cheer it and believe anything without wondering what any of it means.  Except in lyrics.  In a song, a cigar is always a cigar.  But songs aren't the language of everyday speaking.

I still cannot rattle off the words like water rushing from a spigot.  They come slowly and in bunches.  I'm mostly at a loss for them but once they begin sliding out I cannot stop them and I simply go along for the ride while I have the chance.  Now, I'm feeling less dominated by words and the tide is turning. 

The curious aspect is the words are not fighting back, they aren't trying to regain their upper hand over me.  It is as though they are becoming obedient and seemingly they are asking, How may we serve you?

Rock & Roll Vivesection

The problem with writing about a band or musician is that the moment you mention the name of your subject, the reader's bias immediately appears.  I am equally guilty of these charges when I am in the position of being the reader.

I see or hear the name of the band and a mental checklist appears.  Do I like or dislike this band?  Are they relevant or irrelevant at this stage of the game?  Am I supposed to say they are underrated or overrated?  What do I think about these people?

I believe there are absolutes in music.  Some bands and some musicians hacked their status from the wilds of the music frontier, made their homestead on solid ground, and their contributions cannot be denied regardless of how the periphery of their estate now appears.

Dylan, The Who, The Stones, The Beatles all fall into this category.  Why stop there?  Go back and pull Armstrong, Holiday, Carmichael, and Cohen into this same elevated place.  Grab Parker, Mingus, Davis, Coultrane and show them the same respect.  Dozens of artists to select out of the many thousands who have recorded music for more than a century.

Knowing the history of music is important.  It allows you to understand relationships in the evolution of artists and styles.  But it isn't the music itself.  History on it's own terms does not care about the sounds Brian Wilson was hearing when he wrote the music for The Warmth Of The Sun.  

Knowing the technical details of recorded music and how music is constructed is also important.  This allows you to understand why the oldest Jazz records sound flat and why popular music sounded so airy and open in the 1950's.  It allows you to differentiate between echo and reverb as well.  Only a trained musician's ear can recognize Carter picking style, the rest of us hear a rich sound that evokes a feeling in our heart.

Music is not technical writing.  An architect cannot blow his gig by scribbling the words I need a big beautiful window right here. in the corner of an elevation plan, followed by a big looping arrow pointing to the center of the drawing.  It is the same with music, you cannot point out the obvious or explain the technical in layman's terms without destroying the visceral effect of the work.  It requires an emotional response.

I'm not talking about a simple emotional attachment to a song or an album.  I'm talking about an emotional response that wells up from deep inside and alerts you to a shift of focus in your consciousness.  Music that allows you to defy the physics of our world.

This is the essence of music.  It is communication on a deep level, one that goes beyond language itself.  This is the reason to die a little to the right song.  It is the reason to explode when the high note is hit and the lead guitarist goes off on a tortured solo while the rhythm section lays a groove a mile wide.  It is the reason to consider the limitless depths of the human soul.

Leave your math at the door and your form at the gate.  Music, when performed with total absence of fear and with complete devotion transcends the science of structure.   It is salvation for the desperate.  I am, and live among, the desperate. 

A Simple Twist Of Fate

There is a song you play that keeps my heart broken.  One time it convinced me the world became empty, everyone got on a spaceship and left me behind.  They didn't even say goodbye or leave a note, or even give me a reason why they were going.  They all just left. 

The song is a cold, damp night with no ending.  No matter how many blankets I have on the bed I just can't get warm when it's chords play in my head.  You breathe the words and that particular chill comes on me.  Like a sick old man, dying alone in his bed in a shotgun shack.  Wondering how long it will be before someone finds my body after I am gone.

How do you write a song like that and still maintain a reason to move into tomorrow with a straight face?  It is one thing to relate to your words, the feeling they explain.  It is an entirely different thing to take an ache and describe the depth it runs with harrowing detail.  It is telling a secret that no one ever spills or unintentionally blurts when tricked.  To tell the story and not be burned by the release, the friction as it escapes, is black magic.

I want to have your command of the words.  I want to understand the feeling of holding the reins when the horses begin to lather.  You were the master smithy before I was even born and you've mostly seemed bored since before I was born as well.  You wrote this song when I was just a boy, a lucid time for you.

I think we burned you and you became burned out on us.  We stalked you and asked why that line has no contraction when the rest are littered with apostrophes, and why this line is about a shirt.  It was important to know, I suppose.  Maybe you just liked the way that shirt looked?  A compliment to a shirt maker that rounds out a line, because it just seemed the right thing to do at the time.  Maybe you don't even know?

I'm Memphis and Mobile and Mississippi and you rode my roads and took me for more than face value.  Maybe that is why this song means so much to me now?  You wrote it to ease my insecurities when none of the learned have taken the time to say, "It's alright."  Maybe you did it because it was a good deed?  Give the man with a busted overall gallous a song he can relate to when his luck runs dry, he has nothing else in this old world.  Not even a champion from afar.



   

Can Rock And Roll Save Your Soul?

Your old notebook is ragged.  Scribbles and half-truths, lies and doodles.  Toward the back pages you write the words etched on your tombstone.  You write on the dirty floor of a squalid little room with no heat and a junkie nodding in the corner.  Two filthy punks having sex on a clean bathroom floor beyond the other side of the wall you lean against.  You don't know where you'll crash tomorrow.  Tonight you are desperate and dramatic and fatal.

You've got a riff that sounded half right on the acoustic, the one that goes sharp above the 6th fret, so you do that run of notes between songs at the next show, with the overdriven amp and the distortion pedal, and for a moment the room went totally quiet.  Slacked jaws and blinking eyes and off you go with another Melvins cover.  That riff was what you talked about after the show and the bass player asks what those notes were.

It is the axle that will carry the load.  It is the pivot point from one generation to the next and the shaved becomes hairy and no one is any wiser that you are pouring rotgut in the top shelf bottle.  It is the fulcrum that lifts the weight and fools walk underneath with umbrellas until a kingpin snaps and it all comes tumbling down.

Years will pass, trends will shift.  Some will decide to rant against the song just because everyone else seems to get in lock-step when it's brought up in bored conversation.  You take the anti stance and in a way, it seems appropriate considering the circumstances.  Young punks do what young punks think they should do, or what they suppose they should do.  You'll go home later and play that song through ear buds.  It's still that good, even if it has to be kept a secret.  

Gotta Find A Way, A Better Way

Good days aren't as common as they once were, but they still come to me.  They aren't as frequent as I'd really like.  They never last as long as I need them to last, and it's so unfortunate that they aren't as intense as they once were.  Still, they sneak up on me and when they happen, I notice them much more.

Some days it gets no better than waking up with my sweet little dog, Butchie.  He'll stretch and yawn and flop his little head on my shoulder and rub his face on me.  The day can fall to pieces after that, it doesn't matter.  Having a little dog who's unconditional love knows no bounds is all you need on any day.

Some days a mood of lightness will come across me, like there is no more weight on my shoulders and some strange sensation will spark my inner voice, "It's all going to work out.  You are exactly where you are supposed to be right now."  It isn't a hollow feeling, there seems to be a point to all this, even though I still see fog.  There are shapes in this mist, I'm simply having trouble making out the details.

From time to time I'll put on a record or CD and the feeling I get inside is so warm and so positive that I have to get up and walk away for a few moments.  To sit is torture.  Words and ideas will come to my mind and I cannot shake them.  My mind will race ahead so quickly I'll stumble over my thoughts and have to back track just to keep pace.

For the first time in so long, I feel more positive about the future in spite of the current circumstances.  I've been here before, I've made it out of the rut, and in the past when I was in those situations the rut seemed just as difficult as the one I am in right now.  One twist of fate, one turn of phrase, one simple idea, and the rut vanishes.

Neil Young once sang,
"Don't let it bring you down,
It's only castles burning.
Find someone who's turning,
And you will come around."

For my sake, I'm trying to be the one who's turning.

Is It Real, Or Is It Memorex?

At my age, I often find myself falling into dismissive territory when I consider new music.  I fall back onto the music of the past for inspiration or simply for enjoyment.  Sometimes I mislabel my emotions or actions as nostalgia, sentimentalism, or familiarity.  I think now its a matter of holding boredom at arm's length.

Pop culture rarely reinvents itself.  Its always a distillation of the distant past or recent-past.  One thing sells so 20 other things that look or sound or feel like it will crop up next.  It is the nature of pop culture and the machine of manufacture, it has always been this way.

I can listen to a number of bands that are popular with today's hipster sect, and I can understand why their passions are aroused.  Self knowing glossiness, self awareness in all-too-knowing lyrics, smugness, routine grinding out of a song that follows a prescribed template.  The trail is always less cluttered when it has been traveled before and the way is easily seen.

Distraction is the last thing you want to have when listening to new music.  When you find yourself drawing a mental line of procession backward from what is coming through the speakers, to the original source, the intent of listening to new music is lost. After the 3rd or 4th derivative generation there is no more distillation from the inspiration, it is all dilution at that point.  This, is what I have been experiencing.

This isn't to say I don't find "new" music to listen to.  For more than a decade I have been finding new music by digging further into the past of rock and pop music and scouring the dimly lit corners.  New music has become the jazz I couldn't comprehend 20 years ago.  There is still something new to listen to, at least something new to me.

I do keep a fantasy alive in my heart that some kid is going to emerge on the music scene, with a sound and energy we haven't seen before.  I dream that they will burn in the minds of millions of young people.  I don't dream of this for personal reasons, I honestly do not care if I get them or not.  I simply wish people below a certain age could live the experience of seeing the world open up before their eyes like some odd fruit because a completely new way of communication has been found.

I may be overly sentimental at times.  If I am, it is only because I can so vividly remember what it was once like to have the wool pulled back from my eyes.  That vision fades in intensity as time passes, but the feelings never diminish.