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.

Evolution

Selling records for a living puts me in an awkward position at times.  More specifically when I am looking at buying someone's old record collection.  I can see the trajectory and growth of a person's musical taste and their level of interest in music through the years.  It can make me feel uncomfortable when things go off the rails or stops dead in its tracks.

Sometimes I will see the entire length of their music buying life.  Of course people started buying CDs in the 80's and 90's but when I can plainly see their CDs placed on a small shelf I know their buying habits didn't grow after the switch in media.

Their earliest albums are the most worn and battered, often they have their name prominently written on the cover, in their child scrawl penmanship.  "I think that may have been the first album I bought.  I got it at Woolworth's." is a common comment while they are looking over my shoulder as I thumb through the crate.  "It's hard to beat {fill in the blank}" is how I usually respond, never condescending, never judgemental, no matter how bad the band was.

Sometimes I find a run of 70's and 80's heavy metal or southern rock.  Sometimes it's a run of light top 40 pop.  Helen Ready, Dan Fogleberg, Molly Hatchet, Nazareth.  They all show up.  I just deal with it.

There are some good scores though.  Someone might have been a bit twisted in their youth and I'll find a wonderful stash of garage and surf rock.  There is always an aficionado of classical with an amazing selection of scarce private recordings or obscure imports.  Some quiet attorney or Doctor with a robust taste for jazz in the days when Eisenhower was President.

I can bring any of these collections home, sort them, and ultimately find the progression of their interest.  The earliest albums are the most common recordings, or the ones with the covers that show the most wear.  There will be the early signs of reaching out, testing artists of different flavors, perhaps a few cross-overs in tone and content.  The collection will suddenly veer into one area and often, it stays there.  One artist struck a nerve and after that album, the course was set for their ship.

There is always an end point.  The most recent album and the last in chronological order.  It is at that point where they no longer bought LPs.  They may or may not have branched into CDs, but the end point for their vinyl buying days can be seen and noted.  Sadness comes to me when I can tell their interest in buying music completely ended at that point.

Perhaps the disposable cash dried up?  Perhaps there was a marriage and children and the time or interest in listening to new music ended?  Perhaps their interest in music completely ended?  Like a love that has wilted and died.

It is the moments of finding gold where I feel good, and they happen just often enough to keep me going.  A person may have stopped loving their music, but when the interest was genuine and heart felt, it is obvious.  I can't entirely fault a person who found music they truly felt spoke to them, even if was bad, or just something loud and rocking to put on the turntable when they were smoking dope.

Aspire To what?

Is there breathing room for the junkies?  What happened to that niche set aside for head cases to explore?  Can the born loser still spill their guts to us?  We are so sanitized and the thought of yet another messy cultural icon is less appealing when the existential moral panic machine is running.  The machine is always turned on, it just keeps getting louder and louder.  That damn machine can't even idle.

Some people will never make old bones.  You see them at the starting gate and you just know it isn't going to end well.  We watch, we follow, we turn sanctimonious beyond description at the conclusion.  It isn't glorification to admire the fire as it burns, it isn't morbid to admit the fire is burning bodies.  It is what it is and ultimately, it is the hands of the artist that stokes the coals or closes the damper.  The ending is always theirs to write, some just have a different view of how the story arcs.

Disheveled is one of the verbs that float to the top of the dead pool when the end is near.  Emaciated and gaunt find their place too.  Thank God the Internet wasn't around when Chet Baker was at his lowest.  Just another junkie with no teeth and ruined embouchure, ruined beauty.

Yes, it is tragic when demons take hold and end a life too soon.  It is an injustice when addictions bind talent and dull the promise of what could be.  I cannot find justification for a life destroyed in part because of weakness.  Imagine Jim Carroll without broken veins.  Imagine Kurt Cobain without a broken sense of self.  Broken hearts, broken dreams, broken souls; they nourish creative impulses as easily as joy and wholeness. 

Few things are neat and nothing is easy.  Breezy and seamless is all hype, it just isn't there.  Maybe you can be so focused on your ambition that you are unable to show the stress fractures of adversity?  Maybe the heartbreaks are easier to silence when only one thing is truly important to you?  Born under a bad sign is just superstition.  It isn't something you can easily quantify.

The Warm Thrill Of Confusion

A manila envelope full of old ticket stubs.  I forgot I saw them, him, her.  I can't remember a single thing about that show.  This show was like a tent revival and that show was a morgue where the corpses were laughing on the slab. So old they are like relics from another life.  I think they are.

I remember he wore a black blazer with white piping, creased jeans, and cowboy boots.  I remember how fine his hair was, noticing a single light behind and to the side shone through it like sunlight through a window screen.  He played four songs that he shared royalties with and walked off and we looked at each other in a funny way and no one said, "Is that all?"  We knew.  So we left too.

I remember her eyes set on her own hand as it strangled the neck of her bass. I thought she was completely hypnotized by every note she was playing amid the chaos.  Her mind calculating the position and angle of direction for every sweaty torso jostling just feet away like radar was being emitted from the top of her head.  Had one of those animals crossed the boundary into her zone I doubt she would have winced let alone miss a note.  It wasn't poise or control, it was strength and no one crossed over her line.  She willed it.  I think she made me love women bassists.

I remember being on the floor and so close to the stage that I was frightened by the proximity long before the opening act came out to bathe in our disgust.  So close I could see grimaces of workman faces between songs when the set list was still too long and the singer was doing his shtick too early in the night.  It felt like no one but me was looking at him and his guitar, and he seemed frustrated at the tone dial, and he glared into the wings at someone who was being paid to take glares.

I remember being so far away that the amplifiers had two echoes. So high and far away that the security guards hid away from the crowd for a quick break and they passed a smoke between each other.  No one but us fools up here in the clouds. 

I remember riding shotgun in a Mustang up Broad Street after my brain had been washed with Marshall stacks and Gibsons.  Fast was so slow and stop was still moving with the red stop lights shining on  wet pavement.  It was spring and the air was warm and humid and we sipped bourbon from my metal flask with the smell of the city filling our noses.  Let's go for a ride and get the energy out of us so we can speak with more than one syllable.

I remember a show and you were pushed by the mob and a bottle broke in your hand.  Big drops and a thick trail of blood and not enough alcohol in your system to numb the pain.  You went to your car and wrapped your hand tightly with cloth and jammed it into a leather work glove.  By time the band was drenched with sweat and it was all over, the glove was already long hard with dried blood.  As payback you scared the mob, waving wild arms and guzzling beer like water and flashing feral eyes and they could all see your mangled hand.  They left before any of us were done, they knew it was safer somewhere else.  The band loved you for that.

I remember taking you out that one icy night to a small club where we were packed in like cord wood.  There were horns and shouting and shiny suits and choreographed steps.  The air was so hot that women were fainting and you shimmered, all hips and fingertips.  You drank sweet alcoholic mixtures and smiled sweetly when that little slur came alive, coaxing me to say things southern, foreign to you.  It was so cold outside.  After the adrenaline was gone you slept peacefully, under warm soft sheets, sleet hitting our window.  It was our last show, the last chapter of our book.

I have my ticket stub.

Let's Go, Let Go, Let's Pretend

Let's go to the drugstore and see if they have anything new.  They have only two bins, so it won't take long to browse.  What the band is wearing on the cover will have the biggest impact on what we choose.  The wilder, the better.

Let's go in the woods, smoke Luckies from the pack you stole from your Pop's bedside drawer.  The one where he keeps a loaded .44, an address book, and condoms  We'll talk about what we suppose is cool, find dead tree limbs and swing them like barky baseball bats and shout Iron Maiden lyrics at each other.  We can sit next to the creek and talk of leaving soon, going out in the real world and away from the valley.  The world is spinning away from us fast, and haven't even had a shot to see The Clash.

Let's go to a dingy little basement and hear the noise coming from busted, ratty amps.  We'll buy beer and jump and hop and sway and fall, we're pimple faced menace without teeth.  Everyone is suffering from the same disease.  We sweat and when we move quickly it flies into the air like a misty rain without a breeze to carry it away.  We'll go to the bar and catch our breath.  Sweat will collect between our shoulder blades and run down the spine in that firm channel of young man muscle.

Let's pretend we're real grown ups and go buy some wine for tonight.  We'll take it back to your place and light candles and listen to your old folk records while we talk.  Can you ask your roommate to go to a movie with her boyfriend?  It'd be nice to have some time alone together, just like real grown ups.  I'll get pins and needles in my leg from laying awkwardly on your bedroom floor while we make out. I may not be as scared as you, but I'm a lot less confident.

Let's pretend none of it matters.  It's all commercial and so stupid and so very gauche.  What we need is something hard and honest and truthful.  Let's pretend it doesn't matter when our wish is granted.  Let's pretend we aren't shocked by our own narcissism and sadness.  Let's pretend we are actually whole and normal, it's everyone else who is full of abnormal holes.

Let's pretend we know better.  It just isn't the same today as it once was.  Yesterday was art and low-brow wonderful.  Today is low tide.  Look at the rubbish left behind.  I know we shouldn't have thrown trash in the water in the first place.  Let's just pretend we didn't do it.

Take The Day Off From Work, Its Joe South's Birthday!

And they wile away the hours
In their ivory towers
Till they're covered up with flowers
In the back of a black limousine

Happy Birthday to Joe South!

Twenty

Twenty years gone.  I can still remember how the cold Connecticut air smelled and how its sharpness made my cheeks sting.  I remember the end.  Horrible words, tears, rage, hurt.  An intentional indiscretion as an easy means of cutting ties.  This outcome had brewed, not exploded.  Little things are huge to confused and young 20-somethings.  Small changes and big emotions can easily erode a foundation and down comes the house when enough footing has washed away.

Oddly, Nirvana played a small part.  She knew the weird CDs and tapes I had, fetish stuff for a guy to have on his headphones.  Disturbing names, static, and white noise.  All distortion and heavy and dread.

The autumn before it was healthy, boyish baseball love, juxtaposed with visceral metallic noise.  Quirky but tolerable.  I got occasional side-glance looks, those big brown eyes with whites as clean as snow, that I could read.  The eyes questioned my mental fitness.  How can I listen to that?  I don't get it.  She bit the side of her lip a lot and made rows on her forehead.  What she had once dismissed as a quirk now loomed large in her eyes.  She needed to plan her exit for this reason among the least, too many big reasons at the most.  A good enough excuse.

Had Nevermind been released at another time or never been released, it wouldn't have altered that outcome.  It was the sound of fury and confusion blaring through the speakers at the same time I had swallowed a big pill that wouldn't go down my throat without sticking.

On occasion even great automobile racers can park their pretty little red, two-seat, Italian sports car under the wheels of a filthy big rig while traveling at great speed.  Tragedy is inevitable when you drive twice the posted speed limit on a two lane road with the top down, just to hear her squeal with fear and joy.  Moonlight drives are often fatal and lovers can be thrown clear from the wreckage.  A random shoe left in the middle of the road to alert passing cars.  Neither of us were professionals, we were just amateurs, just kids acting like naughty grown-ups.

I crawled from the wreckage with all the damage I could take and had violent sonic landscapes to contemplate while my bones mended.  Within 2 years this blond soul mate, the strange angel who didn't know what the hell he was trying to say, would be gone.  The other noisemakers were corralled, the sharp edges were sanded smooth.   I have no idea what she was doing while I sat and considered what comes next after the noise became quiet.

Nostalgia and sentimentality mean little if you don't have damage to show for the memory.  Something to remind you that life is serious and there are penalties to pay for recklessness, even the youthful variety.

For several years after I left Connecticut, I often thought of her as I plodded through the daily routines of work, rest, and growth.  Memories slowly faded.  Then the thoughts of her entirely stopped.  A new song, a new car, a new love.  Now the broken bones from this latest wreck are mending and I sometimes think back in large, round numbers, the long-range memory center.

It's odd.  Some vacuum has her, a void.  No trace.  All for the better I suppose.  Let the memory stay youthful forever.  Strange...I've always loved women with brown eyes.  Now I'm not sure if I really understood what I read when I looked into them.  Perhaps they were reading me better than I ever suspected? 

Ah, but I still have Nirvana.

Ooh La La

A recent Guardian article discussed the decline of Indie or guitar driven rock.  Yes, rock and guitar based music has been in a sales and artistic decline for quite a while, but I wonder if our notions regarding the state of new music is based on flawed assumptions and the usual suspects for assigning the blame?

Yes, the record companies have done a poor job of artist development, but they have always had a hit or miss track record of doing this.  Several weeks back I posted excerpts from a 1964 interview with Nat "King" Cole where he blasted the industry for it's failure to develop and nurture talent.  1964 was, of course, year zero of the British Invasion and the beginning of a long prosperous stretch for the labels.  The record companies shoulder some of the blame, but not all of the blame as so many would love to assign.

In an era of file sharing and pop culture obsession with music downloads we should probably consider the effect of sensory overload that many young and aspiring artists may be experiencing.  When every song by every artist is readily available, on demand, and accessible from any location in the world, coming to grips with so many musical ideas is almost impossible to fathom.

How can a young artist immerse themselves in a select handful of influences and genuinely study, absorb and understand concepts when thousands of ideas bombard them daily in the stream of popular culture, mass marketing, and the constant pounding of peer pressure?  Quantity is never a replacement for quality.  An overview is never as wise as in-depth study; specialization is a necessity for young artists.  Experimentation and expansion is something to be addressed once semi-established.  You cannot push new boundaries if the basic skills are not resting on strong foundations.

Something has gone wrong on a basic level.  Chemistry and charisma is missing.  You don't have to be the second coming of Bob Dylan, you don't need to be a better guitarist than Jeff Beck, and you don't need to shock the senses just to slash your name into the collective psyche.  The batteries of popular music today seem to be losing their charge, if they aren't outright dead.  

I referenced The Faces in the title of this post.  They weren't the greatest band in the world, they weren't the most challenging either.  What The Faces brought was the energy of a loose band, obviously enjoying the sermon they were preaching to the congregation.  They were the feel of a warm and boozy Saturday night in the spring, spent on the town with your girl.  The oddly pretty girl, with freshly painted toes and the mischievous little crooked smile.

The members of The Faces were steeped in R&B and displayed the wisdom of musicians who had played this music for years, night after night, nights in dingy little rooms where the only audience was the people you are playing with.  Nights fueled with wine and illicit substances and sharing the secrets of the music that left your soul full and warmed.  They came together after spending years in other bands, stomping the stage in clubs and theaters across England.

Yes, they were looking for cash and booze and dope and girls and all the fat trimmings, and who's to say today's bands are all that different in that regard?  Still, they had the base experience in a sound that inspired them.  The joy and love of the music seeped from them like sap oozing from tree bark in summer.

When I listen to so many bands today I hear a disconnect between the music and the lyrics and the people creating the sound, the joy is absent.  The love of their music, their own songs, seems replaced with a forced effort to rouse a sing-along experience on thin words.  Raunchy, loose riffs have been pushed aside.  No one really seems all that comfortable.

As light in weight, and as lacking in mass as The Faces were, in today's musical environment, they would kill.  Joy can trump all.

Music For The State Of The Relationship

A woman who willingly goes with you to a Rush concert is a woman who truly tolerates you.

A man who willingly takes you to a Michael Buble concert is a man with ulterior motives.

What Is This That Stands Before Me?

No minister or pastor or priest could warn their congregation about the dangers of evil as well as the first four Black Sabbath albums.  With the original members getting together to make a new album and Tony Iommi battling cancer, and all this in the face of the nightmarish news that never seems to end, it's as though we are being given a chance to hear a new telling of an old warning that we never seem to heed, no matter when it has been given; that Evil exists.

It is no wonder that critics and end-term hippies were completely horrified by Black Sabbath.  They were dark, ominous, luridly realistic like a psychotropic audio WeeGee.  This wasn't the music you could get high to and come back from the ride with a neon tinged view of mankind or yourself.  They spoke of lurking Evil, waiting for your moment of weakness.  They pointed bloody fingers at the practitioners of evil arts who want to see the world burn.  It was heavy.

Where are we now?  More wars with no end in sight.  The spectre of mushroom clouds and laughing lunatics who control them still hangs in the air.  Starvation, hopelessness, cruelty...they never went away regardless of how well we ignored them.  Add in the stench of global economic imbalance and the times are just as ripe for evil to find it's hosts as it was in the 60's and 70's.

I have no idea what Black Sabbath will do on this new album.  The tone and mood of today seems fitting for another of their scare the hell out of you albums.

Baby Let Me Follow You Down

What is the greatest source of inspiration?  Is it an external influence that completely absorbs your attention?  Happiness?  Agony?  Desire?

Desire.

Desire that stops you in your tracks and sends a signal through your brain.  An electrical current which provokes that fleshy matter into a spasm when it realizes something has been missing in your life.  The missing loving cup that never empties of sweet wine.  Time for a change.

New suit, toss away worn shoes.  Old vision working with a new set of eyes.  There is a wall in front of you, miles high.  You've got the gear to climb and off you go.  There is a job to do.

This is time to pull yourself clear of your skin, like your ego is hooked to a steam catapult.  Press the button and a rusty suit of armor is ripped away.  You are on your own.  The goal is driving you, the reward at the end.  Selfishness will drag you down, selfless action will propel you up that wall.

You get intoxicated with the desire.  Common sense is senseless.  Sometimes you're no longer scaling a wall, instead you are in a room without light and one way out.  The air is saturated with explosive fumes.  You fumble in the dark for the door, the door that gets you back to the job at hand.  The fumes overwhelm you, clarity begins to leave your mind and in the last instant before you lose consciousness you remember there is a Zippo in your pocket.  I can't smell the fumes anymore, maybe they've left?  So you whip out the Zippo, click open the lid and strike it.

That's the last thing you can recall.  You slowly become aware once more and to find yourself smoldering, the muse has disappeared and you have no idea what to do next.

So you bum it a bit, grapple with ideas and agonize and in the end come up with nothing except the understanding that sooner or later there will be another signal shooting through your brain.  The chase will be back on and the wall will be there again.

A different place, a different girl, a different idea, a different set of words, a different cup, different tasting wine. 

Next time you'll  remind yourself, don't strike that damn Zippo.

The Flood

I don't understand where the words are coming from, I don't really know what I am trying to say or even do.  I was silent for a long time, speechless is a better word.  It's not that I had nothing to say, I simply didn't know what to say or why I should even speak.  One song got into my mind a few months ago and it wouldn't leave.  Like finding a $20 in the pocket of a jacket when you first put it on in autumn, lyrics came to my mind and this is how it started.

Things seem to moving at a different pace for me right now.  Living a life in a rural community far from the city, after years of living in a city, is odd.  Most days seem to drag and time becomes so very elastic.  I can get a lot of work done in a very short period of time and suddenly time changes pace.  Suddenly I feel like I have been left behind, that time and age have conspired against me and the race is nearing the finish line while I am still stretching.  Panic sets in and the word failure begins to buzz in my head.

It can be very unsettling to experience this but I feel I am learning how to moderate these emotions.  When time is moving slowly I have begun to include more creative pursuits to the day.  I journal much more regular and find I dig into motives rather than actions.  I'm even sketching again and my guitar strings aren't rusting.

These may be fruitless pastimes, they may be distractions from reality, they may even be a masochistic weight that keeps me from reality.  Something about doing these things seems to be pushing me forward right now and I cannot explain it.  Life seems to be more urgent, but not at all in the ways I had envisioned before.

I still believe that I want everything but I also believe that my idea of what I actually need is evolving.  I struggle with wanting to be someplace that no longer wants me.  Rejection and failure are massive burdens to carry but the seeds that they grew from were once promising new horizons.  They were seeds I worked so hard to germinate and tend.  The plant has died and the field gone to fallow.

Renewal is the next step in the cycle. 

Now I find myself trying to navigate the future like a man crossing a muddy river.  I have a stick in my hand and I poke along the bed of the river as I slowly cross.  Trying to find the sinkholes and hidden tree trunks that litter the bottom.  All the while I am watching the surface, keeping a keen eye open for anything that may swim toward me.

These things I spend my time with are leading me to another shore.  I doubt these are the actual things that will take me to the other side and carry me once I get there, but I have faith that they will help illuminate my way.  There are no maps for life, no guide to walk you through in one piece.  It is entirely up to you.

There's A UFO Over New York And I Ain't Too Surprised

The best book about The Beatles, ever?  Postcards From The Boys by Ringo Starr.  Why not?  It is entirely written by members of the band, in their own hand no less. It's light and satisfies any sentimentality requirements the reader may have.

No earth shattering revelations can be found in it's pages but it's very existence covers one thing that most Beatles themed books fail to adequately address.  All of the members actually loved one another deeply.  Seriously, how often have you sent postcards to your family and friends through the years?  That type of contact, as simple and almost clockwork regular as it was, spoke volumes of their love for one another.

The best book written about Bob Dylan?  It hasn't been written yet, or at least the next volume of Chronicles hasn't been published yet.  I really did enjoy Positively 4th St and it is one of the books I've easily resisted the urge to cull for sale, but the first volume of Chronicles really struck me.

Dylan has been analyzed to death, every letter of every word of every line.  These days I think about Dylan as a normal person, not as a legend.  I play his records more now than I did 10 or 20 years ago and I enjoy them more.  I don't analyze his lines and appreciate them more.  I just let the man work and the words soak.  You can look up and see the sun on almost any day, but none of it compares with the first warm day of spring when you can let the sun warm your body and renew your soul.  That's what it feels like to just let it all go.

Then again, maybe John Lennon was right?  Everybody's talkin' but nobody says a word.

Some Weird Sin

I really screwed up.  I shouldn't have picked that Iggy Pop album when I felt I needed something sponge-y.  I have a tendency to remember and relate to the adventures in my life to the music I was absorbed by at the time.  If I play Sketches of Spain, in my mind I am in Florida again and it's 1986.  If I play Tin Machine, in my mind I am remembering a cold winter wind blowing in from the Atlantic while I stumble along Virginia Beach in 1990.  Iggy Pop is different for me, I hear him and I am simply young once more.

To think back on nights that now seem reckless, when I was more in control than I realized at the time and closer to the razor thin edge of control than I could now muster; is a powerful memory to resurrect.  Striped to the waist, all sinew and lean, moving in angles using math I cannot use anymore.

It is remembering that I saw beauty in the ugly, order in the chaos, and the golden ratio in nothingness.  To see the city's ripped backsides was a call to roam forbidden streets.

I'm now battling atrophy on several fronts.  I have to keep it at bay for as long as I can.  It is there, though, and it seems to sense I am a prime candidate for a future host.  Music to inspire you in such a struggle is easy to be found, but listening to something that takes you back several decades to reveal a lost bit of self, can be a bit defeating.

Next time I put Iggy on I'll be better prepared.  I'll let Iggy be my standard bearer when I am stronger.  I am trying to get there.

As Paul Westerberg Sleeps

Everyone has one more masterpiece left in them.  A reminder of why they were great in the first place.  Another chance to point a crooked finger shaped from years of forming chords, saying, "And you thought I was finished..."

Paul Westerberg's only sin was releasing Don't Tell A Soul as a Replacements album instead as a solo piece.  It leaves you with no other choice but to gawk at it, trying to find a way to accept or deny it on it's own merit.  That is quite a tricky process and ultimately I learned to accept it as a transition piece.

Lyricists working at Westerberg's level are rare, maybe a handful per generation.  He never found words, he stitched them together like a tailor, crafting suits that you can always wear.  No trendy or high fashion splash, simply beautiful work.

Quirky self-made basement tapes and bizarre alter-ego.  He's still out there, waiting for the next moment.

Only one sin in an entire life of making music and not once did he roll us.

Mood Music

AC/DC - What you listen to before sticking up a liquor store.
The Ramones - What you listen to before vandalizing a liquor store.

Wild Eyed Southern Boys

There is Gene Vincent, entering from stage left.  He's running to the microphone on one leg and a pair of crutches, a caliper worn on the game leg.  He's covered in several guitar cases worth of black leather.  He's shaking the lyrics loose from his mind like a man experiencing pleasure from the confessional.  Eyes rolled up and staring at the rafters or Heaven or the woman as though from his knees.  The Blue Caps flail.  It's a comfortable riot.

There is Jerry Lee Lewis, long curly hair hanging across his face, a veil of immodesty.  A British boy reaches out to touch his hair, possessed by instincts he could probably never verbalize.  Killer denies sharing his essence and jerks back.  It is the end of the show but he looks like he is just getting started, where did the party roll next?  The English should have rioted.

A ruptured stomach ulcer almost killed the Killer, one did kill Vincent on a California visit to see his daddy.

In an alternate reality, Sam Phillips holds steady when the bill comes due and Elvis doesn't get scrubbed clean by the Sanitary Department at RCA.  Maybe he kicks or moderates his love affair that began with Army issued greenies?

There Is Elvis, the Melungeon Sun King of Memphis. Why riot?

If I Should Fall From Grace With God

I see Volkswagon is now flogging their cars on TV to The Pogues song "If I Should Fall From Grace With God".  I'm not able to come down on artists as sell outs, those dudes have got to eat and it's not like the Pogues made the kind of cash that U2 can bag with just a single show.  I do have to wonder if anyone at the ad agency actually read the lyrics though.  Not exactly inspiring for a car buying mood.

The point of including the song, I assume, is less about the meaning of the lyrics and more about accessing the subconscious of the buyer with the tempo and arrangement of the song.  That uptempo Irish reel, quick-cut editing, a family on the move with things to do and places to see.  Post haste, and all that.  If I'm buried neath the sod but the angels won't receive me..is this is a family tune?

The music used in commercials hasn't had an actual relationship to the product being sold for a very long time.  No one does a literal interpretation of what's being said, done, or sold on the screen, no catchy jingle.  Bury me at sea where no murdered ghost can haunt me.

In the world of advertising I can almost imagine an executive having a database or spreadsheet which lists songs and the products they could represent.  I would love to see what they believe "Fairytale of New York" could sell.  With the current boulevard of broken dreams state of the economy, perhaps it would be an excellent choice to sell banking or financial services.

Let me go, boys.  Let me go, boys.

Wait A Minute, Something's Going Wrong

Does anyone really write good love songs any more?  Yeah, yeah..I know.  There are always going to be love songs and there always seems to be some sudsy ballyhoo on the sales chart.  Even hair metal bands used to make a living on the power ballad when that's all the gas they had.  But the original question was; does anyone really write good love songs any more?

I'm talking about writers who can use one honest twist in the lyrics that can make your head turn.  Writers who knew it took more than mid-tempo and a minor chord to set the mood.  Writers who could find a phrase that would jolt a name hard through your mind and clench your gut.

Al Green was love incarnate. Incendiary and phoenix, alpha and omega, dust to dust, have and have not.  He once wrote, "Someone's on the phone/Three o'clock in the morning/Talkin' about how she could make it right".  Is she telling you that she can make it right, or are you telling her that she can make it right?  Which is it?  It doesn't matter.  Al is channeling both F. Scott Fitzgerald and his own night of being haunted by the void.  You're coming along with him because it's your ghost story too and Al is in the exorcist role.

Marvin Gaye's "Here, My Dear" has had renewed attention over the last decade and rightfully so.  Imagine being inside Gaye's mind while he was in studio, knowing the album is being made solely to pay for a divorce.  Knowing the relationship wasn't just damaged, it was totally destroyed.  Knowing he never could filter his inner thoughts and feelings.  It just flowed out like water from a broken pipe, something that started as a simple leak, each attempt to stop the leak made the water flow faster.  He wound up chronicling a swim for life.

Ann Peebles wrote wonderfully of the introspection that can come when alone in bed, with rain beating on the window pane.  The discordant opening tones of sound, sour and alarmingly wrong, it just sets her off.

Soul and R&B performers never had a stranglehold on lost love. George Jones' albums should have come with a parental advisory label.  Not to warn them of what their children would hear, but to warn them specifically, "Caution: These songs could happen to you!"

Lennon wrote, "Red is the color that will make me blue/In spite of you, it's true"

Pete Townshend had Jimmy from Quadrophenia say, "The girl I used to love/Lives in this yellow house/Yesterday she passed me by/She doesn't want to know me now"

The Smithereens sang about the house we used to live.

Love is a rich vein.  It's a sucker's bet and a sure thing.  You lose it, find it, lose it again.  There is always a song to match your place in the short and long cycle.

For all the dreamy or angry, professed or denounced statements of love; it's always the words of Hoagy Carmichael that I hear:

Though I dream in vain
In my heart it will remain
My stardust melody
The memory of Love's refrain

EADGBE

I tried my hand at playing guitar too late in life.  I was in my 30's when I finally decided to learn. I should have started while still in my teens, when absolute immersion in something is easier because teenage hours are like buckets of water in the ocean.  My path in life took me in a different direction but I am still glad I've picked up the guitar, as horrendous as my playing is.

In a way, playing the guitar is like coffee in the morning.  You can't play scales or form a few chords while your mind is on something else.  You have to focus. Cancel out the external and internal distractions.  Internal distractions are the biggest.

If I can eke out a half hour practice from time to time, when I put my guitar down I notice the focus is still there and it sticks.  I can solve problems or come to terms with an issue so much more easily.  It's such an amazing way to snap my thought process into a calm shape.  The problem is I didn't pick up the guitar and do this enough over the past few years.

I just didn't have the time.  I couldn't find the time.  I didn't make the time.  There was too much to do and far too much was at stake, all the time.  Time now is more like buckets of water in a pond.  It's a smaller area but I can at least see the other side.

Down The Lost Highway

I had been hoping to make a two or even three day record buying trip this last fall.  Unexpected bills, slower than expected sales, and a lack of extra cash shot down those plans but I'm still hoping to do it this coming spring or early summer.

There is a long, narrow corridor of roads that stretch from where I live all the way to Memphis, and along the way west I can make stops in several cities with rich and noted histories in music.

Florence:  The birthplace of W.C. Handy, Sam Philips, and Kelvin Holly.

Muscle Shoals:  The Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, The FAME Recording Studio.

Tupelo: Of course, Elvis.

At the end of the road, Memphis.

Back in the 1950's and 60's you could have traveled those same roads and run into any number of rock and roll, R&B and country legends.  Muscle Shoals isn't New York or Los Angeles, but in the right place at the right time you could have found yourself rubbing elbows and chatting with Duane Allman, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin or Keith Richards.

R&B pioneers clambered into old buses and station wagons, shuttling from one city to the next while touring the Chitlin Circuit.  They drove through little towns every day, just like the town I currently live in.  Some times they stopped for food and gas and to stretch their legs when time permitted.

Hank Williams' last road trip on Earth took him through Fort Payne, Alabama; a town less than 30 miles from where I sit.  Williams and his driver stopped at a local diner so the driver could grab a bite to eat, Williams left their waiter a $50 tip.  Williams also purchased a bottle of bourbon from a local bootlegger. Off they drove toward Chattanooga and then to Knoxville, scant measured hours of life were left for Williams as they left Fort Payne. The wire stories reporting his passing would be out in less than 24 hours.

Johnny Cash had a notorious run-in with the police just north of here.  In late 1967 and with a head full of pills, Cash wound up spending a night in the Walker County jail.  He had crashed his car and scared the living hell out of a local by beating on their front door in the middle of the night, in his altered state he thought it was the home of a friend.  Just how and why Johnny Cash found himself driving around the north Georgia mountains, so very far from Nashville, high as a pine is tall, is still a mystery to me.  This area isn't just off the beaten path, it's several trails over from the beaten path, hidden by hills.

Several years after her passing I learned that even my Grandmother had one of those brushes with greatness.  At one point during the 1950's my Grandmother and Mother moved to Vila Rica, Georgia for a brief period of time.  My Grandmother was apparently working at a small roadside diner when Fats Domino stopped to get something to eat and his order was brought out to him.  I assume he and his band were making their way between Birmingham and Atlanta, most likely for Chitlin Circuit dates.  My Grandmother wasn't the person who brought his order to him but she did get the chance to see him.  Apparently she was impressed with how polite he was and that he was a stunningly sharp dressed man.

The last big band to come through here, that I can recall, was REM.  They came to town to visit Howard Finster and shot a video in Paradise Gardens.  This was long before the big time, long before they played the big sheds. 

No one comes through town anymore.  I need to get back onto the road and explore.

Echoes

There is an album you play and it makes you a kinetic mess.  Your neck moves, your face tics, and your index finger points to that one cymbal crash in the left speaker.  You've heard it a million times, it's the table of contents, predictable and reliable.  It's dog-earred.  It's the best dish at your favorite restaurant. 

There is an album you play and it's sleep paralysis.  A face you can still see clearly, her voice in a long concrete pipe.  The woman, the harvest moon, the chord change is the smell of her hair in summer.  You've heard it a million times, you never expected the plot change when the first song began.  Low fire burns down to embers.

I can lean my head back and adjust the headphones.  Sometimes I see the ceiling as a movie screen, sometimes a canvas I'm painting, sometimes the ceiling is just white.  The run out grooves make me stand up.  I have to flip sides.

Radio Song

I still listen to a lot of radio, especially while I am working.  My work often carries over to late night when I can get some quiet time and the ability to focus is much easier.  I still love picking up AM stations.  A good station will not distract me from work, for good or bad reasons. 

Late at night the AM band turns mysterious.  The far away signals you pick up can vary from night to night based on the weather.  A strong signal one night may be a static mess the next.  Of course there are the odd signals that faintly come in unexpectedly.  One night it's Huntington, one night it's Nashville. 

I used to regularly stay up listening to the radio into the night when I was a teenager.  I had to stay as quiet as possible, a plastic earphone stuck in whatever ear I could hear with better. In the summer I would regularly pick up stations in Texas and from time to time a Mexican station would come in.

There is a station out of Cleveland I listen to regularly.  They play Coast To Coast AM at night and I enjoy listening to their local news before the sun rises.  Something still enchants me about hearing the local news from a place so far away.  Yes, I could easily look on the internet to see what's going on in Cleveland, but hearing local folks tell the story, from the place it is happening, has charm you can't get from a web page.  It's a person.  A voice. Contact.

Some folks are into radio DX'ing, where they try to pick up radio signals from as far as possible and keep records of their finds.  If they pick up something unique they'll write the station a letter and tell them the technical details.  Engineers at the stations used to send the DX'ers a postcard that thanked them for the information since it was valuable for engineers to know how their transmitters were working.  DX'ers collected those postcards.  I think this form of communication is now done through email.  I think getting a postcard was a much better deal.

On good days or nights I'll have a vague impression of what's playing while I am busy with work.  I might get pulled into a song or some DJ banter, but only briefly.  When a station is doing it right I'll wonder where the time went.  I'll want to pull out a record I haven't played in years.  I'll feel good and positive.  There will be a rhythm to what I am doing while I work. 

If every day could just be like that...

Let's Go Down To Berlin, Join The Ice Capades

I got into The Ramones when I was 15 years old.  This wasn't something I could broadcast in my little home town.  This was something I did in secret.  We would all grow into new music and broader ideas as the school year progressed and the changes of adolescence seemed to accelerate in speed.  By time we had driver's licenses a year later we would almost be completely different creatures and even more different by time we turned 17.  But at 15, The Ramones had to be a secret kept in my bedroom.

Later there would be that moment of truth, admitting to a friend that I had a Ramones album and I really thought they would like it too.  A tape would be made, another wandering soul could be saved, another link in the secret chain we were a part of.

These friends had to be like minded, and those were in short supply, but they were there no matter how small the town.  When I later joined the Navy I was fortunate to meet and become friends with another kindred spirit and he would introduce me to Black Flag, The Dead Kennedys and other forbidden musical fruits.

Years of loud shows and albums passed, we went our separate ways to start new lives but oddly enough I found no new kindred spirits for the music when I moved on.  I learned to put up a screen where new people saw  whatever it took to keep them from running away.  Inside was where the other music was playing and no one to share it with.

Yes, there were the clubs and the shows and the record stores, places I could co-mingle with the other freaks.  But you're really only relating to people on that superficial "public" face level at those places, unless you are going with that friend, the one who gets "it".

The one who got why you hunched your shoulders and made that weird face when playing Tin Machine.

The one who got what D. Boone was doing with that Telecaster and had his poster hanging on her closet door, like a huge guardian keeping an eye on her while she slept.  Maybe she felt comfortable enough to show you because you got "it" too.  You got D. Boone jumping around the stage like a wild bear in cutoff jean shorts, all treble and polemic.  Maybe that was vulnerability?  An 80's college girl showing a guy she was into The Minutemen.

The one who got why you felt disgust with any fellow wearing guy-liner and a blouse-y shirt with black jeans and Cuban heeled boots; while he nursed whiskey sours chatting up the girls by prattling in detail about some band who's music you could only get through mail order, as if he were Jarrell and the band were Frost.

Am I prattling right now?  Well, I'm certainly not Jarrell and The Ramones were certainly not Frost.

It seems these days that folks under a certain age are less likely to be unsettled by music that has a structure different than what they are used to hearing.  Maybe some of this is due to the ubiquitous nature of digital downloads for young people who's teenage and young adult years have been spent with iPods and iPhones and downloading torrents?  They've been exposed to everything and it's still rock and roll to them, and I can't believe I stole a Billy Joel lyric, but it just happened.  Maybe some of it can be traced back to an after effect of the Grunge breakthrough?  Maybe 1991 through 1993/4 was some kind of a booster vaccination for noise tolerance?  Maybe everything older than 10 years is simply quaint now?

There was a time when The Ramones were just a loud and simple mess to so many ears.  Just 3 chords, inane lyrics and "they look so weird."  They were a distillation of one flavor of rock and roll.  It was comic books and leather jackets and crazy hair and really, really intense passion.  They made music that could make you bounce along  like a bouncing ball on a twisted version of Mitch Miller.

If I could have one rock and roll wish it would be that some kids cook up one more crazy distillation of rock and culture, boil off the useless medium, render the essence, and passionately throw the results back into the face of the world, saying, "See what you made us do?  It's all your fault!"

The Shoes Of The Fisherman's Wife Are Some Jiveass Slippers

Imagine the Pearly Gates of Heaven, two podiums stand side by side.

The first podium is where Saint Peter stands and he's looking to see if your name is written in the Book.  He sees your name and grants your entry to glorious heaven.

You walk toward the gates and suddenly a burly black arm grabs you by the collar of your shirt, "Hold on a second, son."

Standing at the other podium is Charles Mingus.  Mingus is there to judge the soul of your music collection.

Mingus can't be jived.

From time to time I find myself doing a little research through old issues of Billboard Magazine via Google Books. Usually this research relates to release dates of old LPs or I'll see if a record company did a press release when I find a more obscure title. Recently I found a very interesting article in the January 25, 1964 issue.

In an interview, Nat "King" Cole stated, "No one's developing stars anymore, and the industry is guided by hard sell, blitz tactics. Artists are here today and gone tomorrow."

"Today a kid makes a record and if he's lucky, it becomes a hit and he goes out and buys a Cadillac, sets up his own production company and sits around like an expert."

Things haven't changed much since 1964, except the Caddy is now a Veyron.

I Got Nasty Habits, I Take Tea At Three

Sometimes you can have too much of a good thing and still not find the power or will to cut back.  With financial needs pressing and a desire to lighten my load of heavy personal items, I've done a bit of culling from my personal book and record collections over the last year.  Oddly enough, the books have been the hardest to let go of for sentimental reasons.  I considered culling some copies of one of my favorite albums of all-time, but I ultimately nixed that idea. 

I'm not 100% positive what year I first bought The Rolling Stones Let It Bleed but I believe it was 1980.  I do remember I bought it at a flea market in the summer, and I am positive I knew the album before they released Emotional Rescue.  I absolutely loved that old copy of Let It Bleed.  It was well worn with plenty Rice Crispies action going on -- snaps, crackles, and pops.  But the songs had an impact regardless of the high noise level.

At some point in the mid-80's I picked up a new pressing of the album and absolutely loved being able to hear such a clean sound.  I could finally crank up the volume without being pelted with noise.  This was followed by an early digital remaster released on virgin vinyl in the 80's that blew me away.  Several years later when I was living in Virginia I was able to score an original US pressing in beautiful condition complete with the glossy poster.  Of course, there are the remastered CDs.  I should, by any reasonable stretch of the imagination, be able to let some of these copies go.  But I just can't bring myself to do it.

I still have the ratty old copy I bought over 30 years ago, but I just feel too sentimental about it to let the damn thing go, split seams and all.  It was the copy I fell in love with.  The original release I found in Virginia is just one of those "nice" things I can't muster the will to let go of and quite frankly, the two 1980's re-issues just sound too good to let go of, even compared to the CD remasters.  I play the virgin vinyl copy sparingly but on one occasion I played it for a friend with an audiophile's predisposition and even he was duly impressed with the sound.

Exile on Main Street may get the higher reputation, but for my money Let It Bleed was their best and most powerful album.  I believe the real secret to this album's success is not in Richards' or Taylor's guitar work, as impressive as they are.  It isn't even Jagger's vocals, which he seemed to finally be able to masterfully manipulate at this point.  Lyrically it's one of their strongest albums.  What seals this album's greatness lies in the grooves made by Wyman and Watts.

Wyman's walking bass lines are really lively and drive all through the album, my favorite being on Live With Me.  He's aggressive but not once is he obtrusive.  There is no sense that the bass is climbing all over the song, trying to find a groove or just exploit what's going on.  He's pulling the groove along, like a locomotive.

Charlie Watts..no question this was his greatest work with the band.  After all these years I am still impressed with just how well he played on this album.  He alternately plays in front of the beat, behind the beat, and on the beat.  He never pushes the song hard, doesn't throw out a cliched fill and sounds understated even though he's laying a groove with Wyman that the rest of the band dances upon.

It's the groove.  You have to listen for the groove and follow what the rest of the band are doing with it to grasp the power of the album. It's the sort of thing Booker T and the MGs mastered, get the groove moving and hang on for the duration.  This is much more raw than Booker T and the MGs and this was the essence of the Stones as the decade closed.  Raw.

Pure brilliance.

Hoveround With The Devil

So, it sounds like a new Van Halen album is really in the works.  Dear Lord, all I can hope for is that they will go back to Eddie's "Brown Sound" and cast aside maturity and wisdom to the wind.  No reason to suddenly grow up on us boys, no reason to experiment.  Just go with the old formula and be happily done with it.

In the early 80's I genuinely admired Joe Strummer.  A serious minded muckraker of Strummer's level was always a good tool to keep handy, especially in an uncertain time. Some goals and heroes should set a high standard and The Clash fit that bill nicely in those early Reagan years.

Van Halen, on the other hand, was pure teenage boy ecstasy.  A generation earlier a boy of my age may have fantasized about running away from home to join the circus.  In my age the fantasy was being kidnapped by Van Halen with their intent of corrupting you with loud music, illicit substances and teased hair, gum smacking rock chix (yes, with the "x").

They were everything I wasn't.  I was shy, introverted, and as naive as the day was long.  They certainly weren't any of those things.  They were loud, smart-assed and about as serious as a 1950's Archie comic book.  They were one of the last thing adults wanted us to listen to and that made the fruit so much sweeter.  We weren't going to make a new religion after their image, or even a lifestyle.  Just drop the needle on Diver Down or VHII and for a brief while you could live vicariously through them.

Looking back on those horrible, hormone-driven teenage years, one thing I can now see clearly with the benefit of 30+ years distance is that you can be pure with your listening tastes at that age.  You don't need to reconcile the contradictions of having Lou Reed, The Rolling Stones and Rush lined up in your meager LP crate.  You didn't need to worry what someone else might think if you had the new Journey LP in your collection.  All it took was for word to get around that you had a copy of Iggy Pop's The Idiot and people would bring you a new Maxell tape still in the wrapper, asking nicely for a copy even if you were a Grade A high school screwball.

Just a few years later, just a few short years past puberty and into the stages of early adulthood and things would drastically change.  In the eyes of some Van Morrison would be acceptable in your collection, Van Halen would not.  You had to learn how to stash certain records when certain people would visit.

Diamond Dave isn't going to bring out the ass-less chaps again and there will be no more feathered hair.  Eddie's even got short hair now, and a new life post cancer.  Michael Anthony won't be harmonizing with Eddie either.  We can't go back to 1981, but we can at least get a little taste of what we once had.  The good things we had.  Here's hoping for the brown sound and at least one more good laugh.

Image from Van Halen News Desk.com - http://www.vhnd.com/2011/09/09/caption-this-photodavid-lee-roth-at-the-us-festival/

Daydream of Birdland

A few years ago Bob Dylan was questioned by police in New Jersey after they received a report of a suspicious person peeking into the windows of an empty house.  When asked why he was roaming around in a residential neighborhood, Dylan responded "I wanted to take a walk."  Dylan is still out there, roaming and making music, and chances are that house in Jersey is still unsold. 

2011 saw the breakup of REM and Sonic Youth.  I read a number of message boards after REM's announcement and with jaded eyes I read post after post praising the band...for calling it a day.  I don't know why so many of us think this way but at some point the bands we love, or at least tolerate when their efforts become less inspired, seem "old" and we want them to go away.

Does it really matter that REM would probably never make another "Reckoning" or "Automatic For The People"?  Not really, as long as they were working and creating new music, wasn't that enough?  Maybe, maybe not.  There is Dylan though, he's still out there.  Peeking into windows in New Jersey. 

Sonic Youth's breakup is less like a retirement. The best description of Sonic Youth's music that I ever heard was from one of my old friends.  He said "I'm not epileptic, but their music makes me feel like I am, and that isn't bad."  Shortly before they announced the band was breaking up, we learned that Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon had separated.  In light of divorce, a band breaking up is trivial.

The part of my brain that controls stupid behavior reacts to such news by saying, "This means Kim Gordon is available."  That same part of my brain follows up with "Lot of good that does me...we don't live in the same town."  That stupid part of my brain is also found in other people when they are glad to see a long-standing band break up.  I can't really explain it in any other way.

I think I was 19 when I first read On the Road.  Back then I didn't know who George Shearing was, but it was obvious how smitten Kerouac was with him.  Shearing was a total mystery to me but I understood what Kerouac felt when he described seeing Shearing perform.  I had similar experiences already, that feeling of being in the presence of some kind of perfection.  Or was it a feeling of peeking into a window, seeing something miraculous on the other side? 

In all the Shearing obituaries I read in 2011, none made note of Kerouac's lyrical praise of Shearing. It is a shame, actually.  Source inspiration so strong that it sends a writer into a transcendent state is never to be taken lightly.  REM and Sonic Youth are no longer with us in the figurative sense, George Shearing in the literal sense. There are albums and interviews and assessments left to mark their place.  The vibe of their time of brilliance is, however, gone; and with it is the true explanation for what they did and why they did it.  Kerouac left a template for decoding any mystery of their music.

Dylan is still out there though, he's peeking in windows.

A Day In Their Life

Few things go hand in hand as well with music as books about music? I currently have a small selection of nice music themed books on sale in my eBay store for your choosing. I have to say that music biographies are a very strong seller for me and they are hard to keep in stock. I'm adding new inventory when I run across something nice, so if you are interested in seeing what my current selections are I'd suggest you visit regularly.

A Drink With Shane MacGowan  A wonderful biography of MacGowan written by his long-time partner, Victoria Clarke.  The structure of the book is more like a long conversation with MacGowan rather than a chronological  telling of his life.  It's very easy to get lost in Shane's words and I often found myself "hearing" his voice as I read his words.  You can almost hear his sly laughter in many of the stories.  An excellent biography that probably has more in common with Cash than the average music biography.

 Do I Come Here Often? Black Coffee Blues Pt. by Henry Rollins, signed.  

I've been a fan of Rollins since the 80's and I think his writing is somewhat overlooked.  I would love to see some of his mid-80's magazine work published again, especially the back page articles he did for Spin Magazine in it's earliest days.  One of the old back issues that I still have in my collection features his article about Madonna and the music industry titled, "Desperately Seeking Something"

He had a great energy in his writing that was a definite carry-over from his Black Flag days and from living in the tool shed behind Raymond Pettibone's parents house. 

Blown Away: The Rolling Stones and the Death of the Sixties by A.E. Hotchner

Hotchner's book does one thing exceptionally well that I feel is  overlooked.  He is able to capture the darkness that seems to envelop rock and roll musicians who suffer an untimely, early death.  Whether Brian Jones tempted his own fate of "death by misadventure" or if there was a conspiracy involved, what is very clear is the dark undercurrent in his life at the time of his death.

While Blown Away is less stylistic than the writings of John Gilmore, the tone and subject matter are very much in his area.  I've also found the book to be a good companion piece to the Maysles documentary "Gimme Shelter".




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