Fiction

Every year on a certain date, he sends her expensive jewelry, which she sleeps with and then always sends back.  The jewelry gets more elaborate and expensive every year because he knows she’ll send it back.  He had only engraved one, long ago.

Starman

It was in a dream I first noticed his eyes.  He climbed up a ladder and came eye to eye with me.  Shortly after that dream, “Pin-Ups” was released with him and Twiggy on the front and the different colored eyes were obvious.  That was my one what I believe was a spirit dream of Bowie.  It was more than just seeing his eyes.  It was looking into his soul.

For me, it began at a jukebox on a declining hippie strip called Paseo in Oklahoma City.  My roommate played the current hit, “Space Oddity.”  I liked it, but I didn’t run out and buy it, but she did.  It was the album as a whole that got my attention.  Back then, the early ’70s, albums were released as they were made, so things moved very quickly.  I’ve always felt that one of the biggest mistakes made in the record business was holding albums back for release.  Music imitates life, but life also imitates music.  Holding music back and releasing it after its time of creation, years after it was truly born, just messes up the relevance of the music and its influence on society.

By the time “Space Oddity” penetrated radio in middle America, it was 1971.  Of course, in the UK, Bowie was already a star and there were already three albums out.  So one day I was at the bar on Paseo hearing “Space Oddity”; the same day, I’m hearing my first Bowie album; and the next, I’m at the record store trying to find any others.  Bowie released albums every single year, through “Heroes” in 1977.  Not that many years later, waiting for a band’s next album became like standing in line for a ride at Disneyland, tired and sweaty.  But during those early years, having a favorite artist was like being on the most thrilling rollercoaster continuously and only coming off long enough to pour over the fanzines, Circus, Creem, and imported Melody Maker, which were the best and nearly only source of information on glam bands in that pre-internet time.  That and the rare treat on Midnight Special. Now, that was something, “The 1980 Floor Show.”  I still haven’t been able to throw out my VHS of it, even though it no longer plays.

Bowie’s images were as powerful as his music.  Even now as I watch “Five Years,” the closeups of his face, the startlingly beautiful makeup and his spiky orange hair, the courage of it, the beauty of it, the artistry of it make me just choke up and cry.  I used to have a black and white photo of him in a Garbo fedora that I cherished most of all that got stolen along with my Diamond Dog tag.

Through the fanzines, you could see the connection between all the great artists of that period.  Bands I’d loved early on like King Crimson, well, you’d pull a thread, and it would lead you to Bowie. By 1973, I was working in my first record store, and I began to rely on these magazines and the interviews or the photos to recommend other artists to me.  If I saw a photo of Bowie with Lou Reed, then I had to look closer at Lou Reed, or Iggy, or RoxyMusic.

Being in the middle of the United States, I was fairly isolated the first few years in my Bowie obsession.  Then in my second record store, I saw a fine-boned rather Bowie-esque young man posing in the aisle, looking at T.Rex, another love of mine.  And that’s how I met my biggest Bowie buddy, Carl Harris.  He was a lot younger than me, in the process of trying to come out.  We were very close in our music preferences, and he was one of the only people who could beat me to a good band, even though he didn’t have the advantage of working in a record store.  We spent hours listening and dressing and posing and practicing in the mirror. He could put on a whole Bowie show for you and bring it to life.

Bowie didn’t tour, probably wisely, the middle part of the US for the first few years.  It was 1974 when I finally got hold of an itinerary and began finding a way to see him.  By then, sadly, the Spiders were already history, so I never got to see Mick Ronson perform with David Bowie, though I would see him later with Ian Hunter and Bob Dylan. In 1974, we drove to Dallas to join a chartered flight out of Dallas to go see Bowie in Memphis.  The other people on the plane were strangers to us and didn’t particularly try to be friendly. I would find out many years later they were a group of guys who made a name for themselves as being a band, mostly by making t-shirts, but never actually played live!

Each early album was a favorite when it came out, but for me, over the decades, it has been “Diamond Dogs” that has become my touchstone.  And that is the first show I saw there in Memphis in 1974.  The set was amazing, with a high cat walk, boys on leashes, and best of all, being able to see Bowie in what was the last period of his glorious orange spiked hair.

“Diamond Dogs,” Side A, became the music I pumped myself up with to go out.  As they say in “Five Years,” (thanks, Diane) Bowie and the other glammers were all about self-actualization, and though I was already stumbling along that path, leaving freakdom behind, Bowie was clearly the professor, and “Diamond Dogs,” especially checking myself in the mirror to “Candidate” is the thing that put fuel in me and got me out the door and back in the saddle during the best and worst of times.  Don’t like your life tonight?  Go become who you want to be.

Nearly every song on every album was personal for me.  Nearly every song had something that reached out and touched me, whether it was lyrics or Bowie’s delivery or a fascinating and addictive note progression. Listening to the nuances and unexpected and beautiful changes was almost a full-time job for me. You really couldn’t give it too much attention.  There was always some other nuance to marvel at. “Chant of the Evercircling Skeletal Family” became my tribal chant.

Bowie had many great guitarists, and Ronson isn’t even on “Diamond Dogs,” (though he did work on it and toured it prerelease, so his mark is there).  Every note Ronson played with Bowie matched Bowie’s intensity and amplified Bowie and brought that loud strong glistering spine-tingling wild wolf wail.  I have days now in my old age that I can’t even take that kind of excitement.  It makes me restless.

In the eighties, I met Iggy at the Hard Rock Cheese Club. I told him “Some Weird Sin” was my favorite song of his.  He told me he was hanging out with Bowie at his place and he saw crumpled up paper under the bed and started pulling it out.  One of them was “Some Weird Sin.”  Iggy said he asked if he could have it and Bowie said yes.  So that was his throw-away stuff!  It’s hard to even comprehend.  I mean, they’re still mining for any scrap a Beatle left behind and meanwhile, somewhere in a New York landfill, there’s God knows how many brilliant songs rotting away.  And what kind of person gives away “All the Young Dudes”?

His songwriting is just limited only by the length of his life.  It leaves you wondering, was there some that were too personal to want to release?  Was there a white elephant that came to him in the middle of the night that he thought, Oh, wish I’d thought of that for the Ziggy Stardust album, but then tossed it under the bed because he’s already been there, done that? I have a feeling he didn’t leave too much in the studio, but I hope I’m wrong.  I think whatever was tossed was tossed right there in his writing chair.

Just this week, on Twitter, I asked Craig Ferguson “When you were young, did you practice Bowie in the mirror?”  He replied, “Yes.  I think everyone of my generation did.”

When Bowie passed, I just really couldn’t process it and am still trying. It’s just too much brilliance to be snuffed out.  That week, the song in my head was “Starman.”  “There’s a starman waiting in the sky/he’d like to come and meet us, but he thinks he’d blow our minds.”

My memories of Bowie are mixed up with a lot of other memories, and for that first few days, to deal with Bowie’s passing, I had to also relive Carl’s.  I kept thinking I would write about it, but I went into the first part of my journal and realized that my Bowie story is basically a huge part of my whole story and that I’ve already written it there in the years of journals.

I would fly to see Bowie a few more times in those early years.  My favorite show was the “Station to Station” show in St. Louis, March 6, 1976.  From my journal:

“When he first came out during the prelude to “Station to Station” to a wildly cheering audience, he swept his stare from one side of the audience to the other, and where his gaze fell, all movement stopped and a breathless hush fell like a wave across the arena. The hair went up on the back of my neck. . . He was in possession of his audience more than any performer I’ve witnessed.

I wore a three-piece taupe wool suit with brown boots and stood out from the rest of the crowd, who were either glammed out or in jeans. I’d bought an extra seat for my binoculars and purse, and I was front row, first tier up from the floor over to the side. I was lit by stage lights. At one point early on, Bowie singled me out to stare at while I sang along. I smiled widely. He smiled widely. It was on “Station to Station,” his new material. Most of the audience weren’t yet familiar with it. He changed cadence on one line so that I sang it the way it was recorded while he skipped a beat and then resumed, and then he laughed at me and moved on.”

Thanks for all the amazing music and imagery and inspiration. Thanks for writing so many songs that spoke directly to who I am or who I wanted to be.  You always gave me courage.

SUNFIGHTER

I can’t even go back far enough for my first memory of Jefferson Airplane.  So I’ll go to my last.  Last night I was idly watching a sitcom on TV about 10:00 or 11:00 at night and on the show, two characters were at a karoake bar and the man told the woman to get up there and sing.  She said, “Why?” And he said, “Because you can.”  My idle mind immediately went to “What would you sing?” and immediately came the opening acappella opening line, “Throw dow-ow-ow-own a-a-all yo-ur sil-verr spoooons.”

One summer in the early ’70s I lived and took care of a small ranch in the middle of nowhere.  There was a wooden step ladder built to go over the fence.  I would open the doors, put an album on the stereo, that summer, mostly Jefferson Airplane “Bark,” “Sunfighter,” and Grace Slick “Manhole,” go sit on the top of the stepladder and sing along.  My favorites were “Silver Spoons” and “Lawman,” plus the entire “Manhole” album to sing along to.

You know, they say that until you’re somewhere in your mid-twenties, your brain is still growing.  If so, it would account for why this music seems such an innate part of me, like my brain formed right around it.

And of course, way before that, there are the memories of my school days, listening to “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love” and dancing in my black fur micro-miniskirt.

This band is one of a few that is truly in my DNA.  And now the brilliant revolutionary Paul Kantner has passed.  But what an impression he made.  He will forever be woven into the fabric of America, and America is better for it.

 

Alice Cooper 2015 – First rain of glitter redux

I had the opportunity to go see Alice Cooper this week when a friend was kind enough to buy tickets and invite me (Tracy D.) It was just them, no opening band, and they played a bunch of hits. As usual, they started with “Hello Hooray” and rained glitter down like a sheath in front of them. They did an “I Love the Dead” tribute to Morrison, Lennon, and Hendrix, which Tracy wasn’t nuts about (“rather hear more Killer”) but I kind of enjoyed it. More and more older artists are paying tribute these days.
There were times during “Ballad of Dwight Fry” that I was almost having flashbacks of the original Alice Cooper lineup being onstage like the first time I’d seen them in 1971, a hugely influential concert for me that left not only audio but visual imprints that will always stay with me. Rather than rehash anymore, I’ll simply repost a blog I wrote some years ago:

I rarely hear Alice Cooper credited among the glam community.  A lot of people remember where they were when Kennedy got shot.  I remember being on the 18th row, center aisle seat April 28th, 1971 when the curtain went up on the Love It to Death tour.  I was a bonafied commune-dwelling hippie in my first year of college, and that concert remains in my memory as a brilliant blue lame flash of adrenalin that left me open mouthed and hungry for change.

There was this silly sort of class thing among hippies: the longer the hair, the earlier you had become one, and hippie royalty could be pretty much measured by it.  So here I am immersed in freakdom but restless, always restless and always riding the fringes of what was accepted hippie music fare, preferring something with a little more life to it at times.  And out comes the longest-haired guys I’ve ever seen dressed in blue sequins and silver lame and wearing makeup and straightjackets.  And they’re just unapologetically loud and the guitars and even the bass is just so irreverently blazingly bold!

“Hello! Hooray! Let the show begin,
I’ve been ready.
Hello! Hooray! Let the lights grow dim,
I’ve been ready.”

I have to say this Alice Cooper show was my first glam experience.  By 1971, Hunky Dory was out and TREX had some acoustical albums out and had just released Electric Warrior, and glam was well formed and starting to really bloom.  RoxyMusic had just emerged.  Certainly Cooper went on to fit more into the hard rock genre, but Alice was the first band I saw pull out the heavy theatrics that glam would become known for a year or so later when Ziggy rose to personify the genre.

“Ready as this audience that’s coming here to dream.
Loving every second, ev’ry moment, ev’ry scream.
I’ve been waiting so long to sing my song
And I’ve been waiting so long for this thing to come.
Yeah – I’ve been thinking so long I was the only one.

Roll out! Roll out with your American dream and its recruits,
I’ve been ready.
Roll out! Roll out with your circus freaks and hula hoops,
I’ve been ready.”

By 1973, when Alice Cooper released Billion Dollar Babies, glam was in full thrush, the most exotically beautifully man-eating butterfly of the entire music chain.  And it was at this point that the paths of Alice Cooper versus the paths of the sparklingly dark visionaries began to diverge.  Alice Cooper had its own identity and never veered from it.  Its influences seemed to be largely horror and American commercialism, while Roxy and Bowie and TREX had UK folk roots tinted heavily by contemporary art influences.  And of course, it goes without saying that all were influenced by the music leading up to their point.  Alice Cooper was my first rain of glitter, and I still consider them to be my earliest glam influence, because they bolted out of the sixties cocoon and took me with them.

“I can stand here strong and thin.
I can laugh when this thing begins.

God, I feel so strong,
I feel so strong,
I’m so strong,
I feel so strong,
So strong,
God, I feel so strong,
I am so strong!”

(And thanks Tracy for bringing it all back to me and being one of my top two favorite people of all time to listen to music with.)

Shivers

I once owned a 1960s Fender Stratocaster, which had previously belonged to Lemmy Kilminster before he found fame with Motorhead. But when it dawned on me I was never going to catch up with the growing band of hotshot British guitarists at that time – Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton – I traded it in for a Selma Goldfield student flute worth £30. 

— Ian Anderson, Jethro Tull

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/fameandfortune/6102159/Fame-and-Fortune-Jethro-Tulls-Ian-Anderson.html

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May 20, 1970

Shortly after National Guardsmen shot and killed four students during a protest at Kent State, Neil Young and David Crosby were cloistered in a cabin in California’s Butano State Park.  Crosby left to get supplies and came back with a copy of LIFE.  “I handed it to Neil and watched it hit him,” Crosby says.  “He picked up his guitar and started fooling around.”  Right there, Young spit out a scarred howl of outrage, a lament that tapped America’s fury . . . Hours later, without altering a word or cord, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded “Ohio” and rushed it to radio.

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,273503,00.html

Below: Kent State LIFE Magazine, and “Ohio” single, Bill of Rights sleeve.

Sad Song

I was working in my first record store in Oklahoma City. A guy named Joe worked there too. He was my first fellow Lou Reed fan, and he was gay. Even though I kept up with the glam fanzines, for some time, I still thought Max’s Kansas City was in Kansas City.  Joe and I talked about buying big motorcycles and going there. Once I found out it was actually in NY, this period became the only period of my life I thought maybe I should go to NY.

I guess you could say my first two gay influences were Lou Reed and Gore Vidal. If not for them, how many wonderful friends would I have missed knowing? “Walk on the Wild Side” in many ways brought this country out of the closet.

Just hearing “Walk on the Wild Side” filled my head with visions of platform heels and glitz.  It became and remains an anthem.

Once I was traveling late at night near the Angelina Forest in South Texas when by some miracle of phantom radio signals, Lou Reed came blaring past the local station the radio was tuned to, and not just “Walk on the Wild Side” but a less commercial song I can no longer remember, coming all the way from Chicago, on the “X.” It was like being transported into another world, out there in the dark, made me realize how many possible realities there are and both how near and how far away they are.

I used to play the darkly beautiful “Berlin” a lot. The juxtaposition of beauty and joyful appreciation of the simple things emerged from a thick shadow of sadness. Here was Lou Reed, the quiet poet.
“Staring at my picture book
she looks like Mary, Queen of Scots
She seemed very regal to me
just goes to show how wrong you can be”

So many of his lines became catch phrases. I always loved “just goes to show how wrong you can be,” because it’s so simple and so true.

When “Rock and Roll Animal” came out, that live version of “Sweet Jane” became my favorite guitar dual of all time. Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter parry through the long intro. The sound quality and production of the song was just amazing. The recording in many ways made everything he’d done before pale in comparison, at least to an electric witch like me. “Berlin” was for a special mood. “Rock and Roll Animal” was the best of everything, for anytime.

Lou Reed is one of the only rockers I really wanted to meet but never got to. The label had arranged a dinner once, but it fell through. Maybe that’s why he’s still an enigma to me. He was a true pioneer, a nucleus of a growing genre of music that came together in different ways at different points in time. He influenced music, art, and most of all culture.

To Lou Reed, in his passing, I’d just like to say, “It was very nice. Oh, Honey, it was paradise.”

Definition of “Blues Musician”

I was listening to Buddy Guy burning the house down on guitar when I realized that blues musicians are just musicians whose living off women has finally caught up with them.

From Neil Young’s Biography “Waging Heavy Peace”

3/17/13

“You see, they are my window to the cosmic world where the muse lives and breathes.  I can find myself there and go to the special area of my soul where those songs graze like buffalo.  The herd is still there, and the plains are endless.  Just getting there is the key thing, and Crazy Horse is my way of getting there.  That is the place where music lives in my soul.  It is not youth, time, or age.  I dream of playing those long jams and floating over the heard like a condor.”

—- Neil Young

A Visitation by the Gods

11/12/12

One of the most remarkable things I’ve ever heard about is how Neil Young wrote “Cinammon Girl,” “Cowgirl in the Sand,” and “Down by the River” in one day while sick with the flu.  Friends, those are three of the best songs ever written.  This wasn’t the flu so much as it was a visitation by the gods.

Random Quotes from My Journals

9/29/12

“He said he was on his second day of not smoking and was bitching:  ‘What else am I supposed to do when I’m at a bar drinking, hold my dick?’  I said, ‘Hmm, I’ll have to remember that if I ever quit smoking.’  After awhile, he said, ‘Give me a Parliament.’  I said, ‘No,’ and he said, ‘Then hold my dick.’
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“He was real butch, and lots of things made him mad, like when I called the Metallica l.p. ‘Master of Muppets.'”
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“Did I want Hugh back at some point? Yes. Would I have given up five years of sporadic hand kissing from Trey for it?  No.”
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“After I had mock-shaved his toes, I started the countdown, and the peel landed on my chest after having been launched from his foot.”
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“I made a comment about the Bermuda Triangle apartments. He asked why I called them that.”

“We slept until right before dawn. I told him we should get up and watch the farm reports. I pull the good-clean-life-ready-to-rise-chipper routine with him because he thinks it’s sick to be alert.”

“He steers away from sentimental TV, movies, etc. They actually make him mad.”
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(at a label promotional party)
“Bored and ready to evacuate by 8:00 o’clock, I looked up to see Johnny, avec black leather jacket, had arrived. I was in a circle of people when Tracy asked me if I didn’t think that Johnny guy was real weird. Like that’s a deterrent.”
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“Three of the worst bands played I’ve ever heard, and ____ said he and I should just go over to his place and fuck, adding that even if we were the two most boring fucks in the world, it couldn’t be worse than staying there listening to the bands.”
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“He left pretty soon, during Foghorn Leghorn, my favorite besides Pepe Le Pew. Probably couldn’t take my impression of Foghorn Leghorn saying, ‘Ah jus’ dotes on bo-ays.’”
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Tantalizing Men I Was Not Necessarily Involved With

8/18/12

THE COWBOY I DIDN’T SAVE

I was working in my first record store, had spent the few prior years as a hippie, had spent the prior summer caretaking a ranch, was wearing cowboy boots and jeans for everyday and was just entering my glam rock phase, and was mentally still transitioning and reconciling with change.  So I was probably a confusing hodgepodge of a person.

I had come from the country, of course, grew up with horses and fields surrounding me, attended my share of little community rodeos, but I guess because of the times, being late sixties, early seventies, I’d pretty much shunned the cowboy community and was already completely immersed in the rock music community. There was a big divide between conservatives and hippies, and you pretty much had to take a side.  But I always didn’t mind getting an eyeful of a real cowboy every now and then, but never seriously considered taking one on as a boyfriend.  I didn’t figure they’d put up with me, and I was probably right.  Still, me and a friend would sometimes go backstage (or back-corral, as it were) during the National Finals Rodeo and just, as they say, have a look-see.  There was something about the swagger of a cowboy, a real cowboy, that can’t be denied, just like there is men of rock.  It’s just a different foil.

So one day I’m working in the record store, and this cute cowboy comes in.  I didn’t do anything particular to encourage him.  I don’t know why he gravitated to me.  Probably the boots.  They were some good-lookin’ boots.  Anyway, he chatted me up a little, and it did seem like there was some chemistry there.  He was a gen-u-ine rodeo cowboy.  Not long after, he came in one day with a girl and shopped.  Not much conversation that day, just some glances.  She was probably nice enough, but you know women, we can’t help but be a little catty.  She had “local” written all over her.

I’m not sure how much time passed, probably just a week or so.  He came in as soon as we opened one day, like he’d been waiting, didn’t make any pretense of shopping, and came up and told me he’s getting married later that day.  I was, like, “Well, what are you doing here then?”  He said, “I just wanted to tell you.”  I could tell he just very badly wanted me to stop him.  He had that panicky trapped look.  But I had had exactly one conversation with this cowboy, whose name I never even knew, and here he was wanting me to save him from marrying the local filly.  He was just this young guy, probably was just still maturing and changing and it probably just hit him he hadn’t explored much.  I don’t know.  And why me, I don’t know.  I felt really bad for him, but there was just no foundation upon which I could justify pulling the reins in on him.  It was a look of regret in his eyes as he left the store, and I imagine I had that same look, but what can you do when people won’t stop themselves from going down the trail most traveled?

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“THE BAND WE’RE GOING TO MARRY”
(names changed)

Ian was just straight-up sexy, a deliberate, self-admiring, calculating female torturer, deliciously slitherincubus in form.  To watch him dress and get ready was arguably better than the main event.  He became so self-enamored that he used one of his bandmates, a lithe six-footer with rainbow hair, as a foil when he would come out of the back of the bus resplendent.  I saw the scene repeated more than once, with these two seemingly heterosexual men having a playful flirtatious moment before the show.

Ian owned the sexiest pair of leather pants I have ever seen — and I’ve seen plenty.  He emerged from behind the separating door into the aisle of the bus , muscles moving catlike, smoothly and almost imperceptibly, in those red leathers with diamond-shaped cutouts all the way down the side, the tender flesh pushing out in tantalizing shivers, alive, as if between the diamond windows, it was crawling slowly like skin on a snake.  It was a moment of stunning animal grace.

The interesting thing is he wasn’t even the one I liked best in the band.

Lee was well over six foot tall and naturally shy, but he had mastered his shyness to a degree.  Well, he was a performer, so he had mastered it quite well, but you could still tell.  That’s a strong person, you know, who overcomes their innate nature and makes themself push through it.  His hair hung all the way down his long back in rainbow tatters.  Although it was the second meeting, my first clear memory of him was he was watching as I came down the narrow stairs into the basement below the Hollywood stage after the show.  It was my birthday, a rare perfect one.  He remembered meeting in Dallas, seemed really happy to see us.  He was always so nice from then on, made me and the label girl feel like family, saw to it the crew did as well.  She and I used to joke that this was the band we were going to marry — and in no particular order.  They were all so nice and talented and gorgeous that anyone would have trouble focusing, but Lee was the first one that raised my interest.  But it was to be overridden.

I was focused enough on Lee that I can’t say when Cash took over.  Cash got caught in my personal memory vortex.  You know how sometimes you don’t realize it but someone reminds you of someone from long ago that you really disliked?  It was all unconscious, but that’s why I hadn’t paid much attention to Cash, other than his guitarwork.  At some point we began having more interaction, mainly over a belt I’d made and worn to a show.  Lee seemed to step down and Cash stepped up.  None of this was blatant, you have to realize.  It was band politics, band courtesy.  Nothing had gone on outside of private thoughts between any of us.  At the time, I had to sit down and figure out why I had dismissed Cash at first, and it finally came to me.  Once I’d pulled that from my subconscious, I was able to look at Cash with new eyes.

He would play guitar sitting across from me on the bus, then do his hair and makeup right before the show.  He had perfect features and thick long black hair.  We’d had a walk in the parking lot, where he told me about being in his first year of AA and was faking drinking because people kept trying to give him drinks.  I watched on the bus as Ian’s strippers tried to pull Cash back to the lounge with them and he had to literally fight them to leave him alone.  Being on a tour bus your first year in AA is not an ideal situation.  The portrait of him that stays with me was when he came out on stage in all black, including a wide-brimmed leather hat, and how he was just rock-perfect, his  clothes, his looks, his attitude, and his playing.

The label friend and I used to comment solemnly that this was a band that had it all.  She and I were always “protected” at their gigs.  Cash would always leave the bus to see me and her to our car.  During gigs, the band would insist we either stand right in front of them or on the stage, off to the side, where the entire band would play to us, including Ian, who would sing to us while slithering and crawling toward us on the ground.

By sheer felicity, I have good pictures of Cash and I from the first meeting.  We look like we already know each other, but we didn’t.  An ill fate cut me off from the world right in the middle of this slowly developing friendship.  When I emerged 10 years later into the internet age of MySpace and reconnected with him, he sent me a TREX lyric for his comment.  I think it was:
“Could it be
you’re gonna bring my baby to me
she’ll be wild you know
a rock and roll child.”

He had, like, a thousand women friending him and leaving comments like they were trying to hook up with him at gigs.  On my part, I’d been distracted by the somewhat recent re-ignition of an old flame, though by then it was behind me in fact but not quite emotionally.  Cash and I exchanged a couple of friendly emails.  Some months later, he wrote saying something like, So you were just interested in seeing what the band was up to, I guess.  I just didn’t really know what to do.  I reminded him that I was always older than him (and now 50-something to his 40).  I guess it’s the John Galt in me, but I didn’t see how it could get better.  I know he wasn’t “the typical band guy,” at least not when I’d known him, but common sense told me band guys are always going to opt for the younger women if they’re surrounded by them, and he still was.  But it was sweet anyway, bittersweet.  A casualty of bad timing and my own weakness.  I let him fall through he cracks back there at the end of that decade because I was just going through a very bad time.  Who knows, he could have been the angel that pulled me from my hell.

ARMS OF ANGELS

I am the faithful bride of my dreams
I lay breathless in the arms of angels
their mouths pressed on mine
filling me with life.
I surrender
My head falls back with the touch of their stroke
A single tear lies on my cheek
My arm encircles their shoulders
touches their chest
as they reach for me
to pull me away from my hell.

Tolling the death nell
I roll away sated
My heart is still pounding,
but my lust has abated for now
Resting at peace, I sleep soundly awhile
and dreams once again seduce me
with visions of fate

Destiny is running late
Sand in an hourglass
drifting to sea
lapping the shore
taking little bits of me away

Check back for more “Tantalizing Men I Was Not Necessarily Involved With” as I add to the topic.

Midnight at Mother Blues

4/4/12

September 1976 – From my journal:
Glam was more alive in Dallas than Oklahoma City, where it was mostly people just coming through playing at the clubs. When we got to Mother Blues, there were two glammed out babes sitting on the hood of a car outside. One had shoulder-length straight light blond hair, lipstick on his full mouth, and dark glasses. The other had dark layered hair past his shoulders, a great face, and dark glasses. They made an indelible impression on me and were the image of Dallas I carried with me when I left.

You know who you are.

July 23, 1977 was my first night living in Dallas.  I went to Mother Blues, and two of the Ramones were there.  Dee Dee bummed cigarettes from me all night.  U.S. Kids were playing.  I talked to the nice drummer, Mike.  There’s a note in my journal that the best looking guy I’d ever seen was in there.  Now I have no idea who that was.
There were some characters at Mother Blues.  I remember one guy who was around for awhile, and then I never saw him again.  He would talk, but he was very dark and broody, and always fatalistic, like what was the point talking to women, because it was all going to go wrong anyway.  He would tell me he could tell I was on the precipice of falling in love with someone.  He would end up saying, mostly to himself, “It would never work.”  When he disappeared, I used to wonder if he offed himself.  No one seemed to know who he was.

October 6, 1977 – From my journal:
       Will, Faulkner, and Cole were at Mother Blues last night. Faulkner bit my Roxy pin off my lapel. I think he’s perversely sensual. And I mean that in the best possible way.

Carter used to bartend there.  He would insist he had met me in Oklahoma, but I swear if I’d met anyone that good looking and fun there, I’d have remembered it.  I had been managing record stores in Oklahoma, making good money, got front row seats to any concert I went to, and was seriously in pursuit of a music business career.  I’d moved to Dallas abruptly and landed at Peaches Records for $2.50 an hour, basically starting all over, so I had to adjust my standard of living drastically.  I used to ask myself what the hell I was doing, because from a financial standpoint, I was static.  I swear the best raise I ever got while working at Peaches was when Mother Blues stopped charging me for drinks.  I’m telling you, it made all the difference in my existence.  Because I was a lush.  I remember that day thinking maybe I’d survive in Dallas after all.  And in retrospect, those three years at Peaches and Mother Blues were three of the most exciting years of my life.

March 18, 1978 – From my journal:
As I was backing out the door to my apartment, Clif grabbed me and scared me half to death. His birthday is Saturday, March 25th, and Toys are playing afterhours at Mother Blues.
       Thursday, I promised Lisa I’d help her throw a pie at Will. Clif wants me to join the “hordes of girls” and stand at the foot of the stairs at Mother Blues screaming while they blow kisses making their Grande Entrance. ANYWAY…… 
       As he was leaving, he talked about what all he was going to do on his birthday, ending with, “and if I can just find a chick…”  If I can just find a chick, indeed. 
       Then he left, and I went to Goodwill and bought a cartoon shirt, straight-legged Russian-blue lamé pants, and a shitload of gorgeous antique lingerie. Don’t FUCK with ME, boy!  
      
        I met so many people at Mother Blues that I would know for years to come.  There were a lot of great bands playing there, especially after midnight, and then of course every musician in town seemed to hang out there.  Things could get complicated.  There were triangles.  Triangles on top of triangles.  Triangles that turned into orgies.  There were times I didn’t know if I was a date or bait.
Mother Blues was such a second home to so many of us that we’d go there even when we were down.  You might find someone hanging out in the back, sad and melancholy, but they still came, and so did I, because Mother Blues always represented an exciting new day, and was also a proving ground in many ways.

April 28, 1978 – From my journal:
Last Sunday, I pulled myself together and made myself go out again.I wore my black bustle dress, which looked really good, spiked heels, and that huge rectangular cut-glass necklace, as well as my diamond bracelet. I’d done my hair, of course. I’m sure I looked better than I have in months, if somewhat eccentric.  I gave myself a stern lecture all the way from the car to the door of Mother Blues and so walked into the place haughty as you please.  

       Mother Blues would get shut down and reopen several times over the years.  I remember one particularly bad timing.  Patti Smith and band were in town, and she asked me where they should go.  Mother Blues had just been closed down, leaving its clientele utterly without an alternative venue.  I was at a complete loss where to send her.

Mother Blues had been closed for some time in ’87, but reopened its doors very briefly one last time.

April 1, 1987 – The last mention of Mother Blues in my journal:
Today at work, RB pointed out to me that Mother Blues was reopening, and then showed me the itinerary.  I told him, “Looks like next Wednesday is Old Boyfriend Night. I’ll either have to stay away or get very drunk.” 

I still feel that way.

Paleocyberia

PALEOCYBERIA

She exists like a ghost out of time

sees herself at the window and walking in corridors

dwells in the minor strains of a plaintive lament carried on the wind

Sentimental Fool

Folded like a flower on her knees

the velvet crushed beneath her

she’d held herself and rocked,

the music tearing through her like knives.

Wasted and worn, she’d slept, then once more dawned her eyes

She rose from the underground,

energy building like a storm

black duster slapping elevator heels

Robotic scoping viewfinder eyes

blue this time

swept the room before the arched doors closed with a thud behind her

The wine smelled familiar

The tink of the glasses

clink of the chandelier

fell like music on her ear

She blinked back a tear as the balcony swam high above

Heis somewhere lurking in the gray

Materializing like smoke, then wafting away

She will leave him for another time

EndofpartI

Stripped like a twig and raw

life hitting her like air on scraped skin

Hyperhuman paleorgasmic darlingale

lashing back like a whip

cracking like lighting and ripping the sky

her cloak flapping behind her as she rode into the pale

begin tape loop X3 fade

PartII- Paleocyberia

24 Hours of Alice Cooper

It’s weird having so little time to pursue my interests.  They have to be put on hold until I have enough time to unwind and get back to myself.  I guess it’s partly for that reason that things got weird in these last 24 hours.  

Alice Cooper was a guest on Joy Behar this past year, and she reran the show as one of her favorites before her show went off the air recently.  It was a truly delightful interview.  People seem to underestimate how charming and entertaining rockers can be in interview, I think.  Alice looks amazing, and he’s, I guess older than me.  I think he looks more handsome than he ever has. I guess all that golf agrees with him.  

I’ve always loved Alice Cooper, the man and the band.  I saw them when I was a hippie, the “Love it to Death” tour, and it was, as I said in my journal, my first rain of glitter, a very influential concert for me.  It was the direction I was headed and the house of my true heart.  A couple of years later, working in my first record store, I became preternaturally possessed by another band, whose name I always have to disguise because of security reasons (to avoid a past internet stalker), Rox-xxy Music.  I didn’t understand them at the time, but I had a premonition that their third album (“Stranded”) was, the inner voice said, “going to be very important to me.”  I heard this message in my head as I unpacked its new release box and uttered those words out loud, before I ever heard the album.  I’d found the first album by this band confounding, and I was unsettled and excited by it. Couldn’t leave it alone, but really wanted to.  I was paranormally pulled to this new and, in the U.S., obscure glam/art rock band.

Hippies had certain ideals and coda they adhered to, and I was having trouble wrestling with my own philosophies as I began making the transition from hippie to glam, which is quite a gap to bridge.  It was during this time I had a dream that Alice and some other guys were all sitting around in my room where I grew up, talking and had guitars and they were picking and, I guess, arranging.  (Realize this was before I really knew what that would look like, but in retrospect, except for being in my room, it seems reasonably realistic.)  I felt like an intruder going in there, but I needed to ask Alice something.  He made some statement to indicate he’d rather not be interrupted right then (like guys will ignore you when they’re immersed in working with music with each other), but I asked him anyway.  I asked if he liked Rox-xxy Music.  He said he did.  I told him it was important for me to know that because I’d liked Alice Cooper so much the past couple of years, and now it was Roxxxy and Bowie.  He nodded and made a hand gesture that I interpreted as, Yes, it makes sense, or, It follows (logically).  I felt relieved, both in the dream and upon awakening.

Thereafter for many years, I sometimes thought of Alice as my spiritual mentor.  Life continued down the glam path now that I’d clarified my way, and that music became the most important music of my life, a life whose entire focus was music, a 20-year career in it during which everything in my life centered around it and was for it.  I marked time by music, and my memories are stored in music.  It was a spiritual time when I sometimes had an inexplicable “knowing,” and then there was one remarkable time when, while awake but in a relaxed alpha state, I slipped into a parallel reality for a moment where a meeting was being held in a lime green room by a panel to discuss my life plan, and make adjustments.  I entered enthusiastically, approached the main guy, who was in a robe, though most of the others looked modern, and was told, “You know you can’t be here for this,” and banished, but I knew they were discussing me.  I’d had times during this period when I could literally feel the big wheel turning, and the big cog locking into place, as I began living my dream.

About 15 years later, I would meet Alice Cooper for the first time.  The first meeting was fun, and I felt honored, of course.  By now, I felt like “one of them.”  That was always my dream.  It was where I always felt I belonged.  So I wasn’t really star struck by this time, and I wouldn’t show it on the rare occasion that I was.  I, more or less, considered rock musicians the closest thing to what I would call peers, because although I was no musician, I was completely immersed. The meeting was brief but enjoyable.  

A year or so later, in ’87, I would attend another show and, together with others, meet ‘n greet Alice on his bus. The visit afterward was really a special one for me.  I think the difference was in me.  I’d had periods of turmoil and periods when I kind of shut myself off to get through some stuff, but I was able to really connect and get the most out of this rare opportunity.  Alice’s assistant (everyone calls Renfield) remembered me.  (He must have had a photographic memory or something, because there was really no reason to remember me from a year prior, it being a brief and fairly typical meet ‘n greet situation.)  Alice and I got off to a good start when I complimented him on choosing the theme from Frank Langella’s “Dracula” as his opening before taking the stage.  He and Renfield both remarked that no one had gotten that yet.  That led to a longish discussion about horror movie themes, and about horror movie scenes we loved, and books.  Alice and I differ some on this, because I’m a gothic horror fan, which includes the Anne Rice books of the time and the more gothic movies, but I don’t like slasher stuff, and Alice does, but he loves the goth stuff, too. We talked about who had rights to “Lestat” and “Interview With a Vampire,” at some length, and he told me he’d tried to get them, too late, which would have been awesome.  Against the advice of Renfield, he told me one of the names he used to check into hotels (because it was germaine to the topic).  It was just a great back-and-forth on subjects we were both really into, and one of the most memorable meetings of my career.  


I would meet him one more time, very briefly about a year later.  This was the “Trash” tour. His new single, “Poison,” was a hit.  I loved the song.  When I relate to a song and it has such great music behind it, it’s like I’m being almost torn apart by it, and this song had such passion that I really connected with it, still get chills listening to it. I wrote in my journal that I thought it was their best single since “18,” emphasis on “single.”  Co-written by Desmond Child and Alice, it was an inevitable hit. There are other Alice songs I love more, entire albums, but for a single, this was it.  I wrote in my journal, “It’s so perfect, you wonder why it hasn’t been written before now.” This meeting was more of a typical meet ‘n greet cattle call.  There were a lot of people in groups to be brought through to meet him, and I didn’t put much about the meeting itself in my journal and don’t recall any significant face-to-face interaction.

I’ve already written about all this and everything else in my journals in much more detail than I am here, and I hate to reiterate it, but it is all leading up to the weirdness of the past 24 hours.  

So as you can see, I’ve always regarded Alice as an important influence on me, long before I ever met him, some sort of spiritual bond, plus a simple kinship of common interest, which is a common enough occurrence for fans.  If I were ever going to have a thought turning more fondly toward Alice, it would certainly have been after the second visit; but knowing that Alice is long and devotedly married would have thrown water on any prolonged errant thoughts heading down that path.  

So I was driving to a doctor’s appointment in Oklahoma yesterday.  Once I get about 25 miles north out of Dallas, I can pick up a good hard rock station in Sherman.  As soon as the signal cleared, the opening guitar from “Poison” came on.  I can’t explain why my reaction this time was so exaggerated.  Maybe in my subconscious, Alice’s charming and funny appearance on Joy Behar (the rerun of it) had triggered a longing in me, made me miss being “one of them.”  I’m really not sure.  But as soon as the guitar started, I burst into tears and began shouting to any spirits out there listening, “ALICE COOPER, I LOVE YOU!”  I felt this bright searing pain of longing and love for him, whereas before, and for decades, I’d always been satisfied to view him as a sort of spiritual guide/mentor with whom I sensed a very strong kinship.  I was sending my love out into the universe to him, wherever he was.  (Probably on a golf course no doubt completely oblivious.) 

I recovered somewhat as I drove down the road and became distracted by a small dog about to get run over and stopped to call animal control to come get him.  I made my day trip and returned tired, turning in rather early, and then it all hit me again, these feelings of intense love.  It was unrelenting for awhile, but I finally got to sleep.  This morning I read back over any mentions in my long journals of Alice trying to get some perspective, and that did help some — but then I lost ground again after watching a couple of videos [addendum: it’s 48 hours now, and more than a couple of videos]. I’m sure this mania had something to do with me just working too much to ground myself, and it just all built up and spewed out, but it’s too soon for me to really sort it out.  Anyway, for what it’s worth, I do love Alice Cooper, the man and the music, just in case I haven’t been clear.  

One More Reason He’s My Number One

In a recent interview, The Telegraph’s Bryony Gordon got this quote from my favorite music artist, Ro*xy M*usic’s Br*yan Fer*ry.  How would he describe his average fan?


“None of them are average, darling.”


The article:
http://tinyurl.com/cme86uk
[type gimicks in name above are used for security reasons-sorry]

Song Suggestions for Craig Ferguson Late Late Show

I guess because it’s the last thing I hear before going to sleep, I often wake up with ideas of what would be good songs or “numbers” to work into Craig Ferguson’s Late Late Show.  I know he’s an old punk, and that can never be bad, and that he has a genuine love of music and their trailblazers, and, well, don’t we all?  His lip-sync numbers are always great, especially Britney Spears’ “Oops, I did it again,” which I saw in concert.  He’s added a Rick James-style Superfreak to his taped Tweety repetoire, and recently he’s brightened my night with a live Bowie imitation, which was actually quite good.  I bet he spent nearly as much time as I did practicing Bowie in front of the mirror, and how refreshing is that for a late night host? So I’ve decided to keep a running list of songs that I wouldn’t mind seeing incorporated some way into the show, in whole or part, mainly just because some of them are awesome songs, and because Craig is an awesome entertainer and maybe he can think of some way to use them, if only a snippet or a dynamic guitar part. I supposed some of my choices will be unfathomable to anyone but me, but there’s a reason , in my mind, at least, that they’re all in there.


Gap Band “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” – It’s suitable for snippet, great groove, nice chorus.  Key phrase: “You turn me ooun.”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17lkdqoLt44


Parliament – “Mothership Connection” – I love these assholes. Just the intro: big bouncy guitar and a bunch of bullshit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR-m-QDDKPI

Parliament – “P.Funk” – Key phrase:  “Make my funk the P.Funk/I wants to get funked up.”  Bassy groove would be great going in and out of commercial.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swW0f_9z_R0

Ramones – “I Wanna Be Sedated” – I know he’s thought of it.  Don’t know why he hasn’t used it some way, even if only the chords going to commercial. Or maybe he has and I slept through it.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_wssByW7JQ

Alice Cooper “Ballad of Dwight Fry” – snippet from where the acoustic and then electric guitars first come in after lyric intro.  It’s just too good a song to not use some way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVxr63WaRrs

Leslie Gore “You Don’t Own Me” – because she’s a confused lesbian, just like Craig. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmOrWG2FTbg

Jefferson Airplane “White Rabbit” – This is for the filthy bunny of course. Time he had a bit. Chilling intro.  Keywords: pills, LSD, psychedelia, awesome band bitch. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0

Jefferson Airplane “Lather” – Can’t think of an application for it on the show, but the Smothers Brothers put the whole thing on theirs, and here’s the YouTube to prove it.  It’s just a psycho goddamn song whose last stanza gives me chills, beginning at about 1:59 on the video, and I just couldn’t think of any way NOT to put it on the list. Key phrase: “Putting drumsticks on either side of his nose/snorting the best licks in town/but that’s all over…”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVstafKZDYY

Cheap Trick – “He’s a Whore” – Key lyrics: “He’s a whore/I’ll do anything for money.”  You could even just play that one line on the way to commercial.  I think you know why.  But the guitar riff is great too. Best bar band ever. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmfKkbJBiBk

Julio Iglesias and Willie Nelson – “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before” – This is just one of the most hilarious songs ever.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSAODcg–Dc

Ultravox – “I Want to Be a Machine” – midway through it goes loud and electric and just repeats the title over and over. Very robot-y. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU0IeXsadRw




more to come…..check back.

LAST NIGHT I HELD ALADDIN’S LAMP

From my journal:

The first few times I heard a live band, I cried. It was the music. For a long time, I cried during drum solos. My earliest concerts, as a young teen, were Herman Hermits, headlining over the Who; Paul Revere and the Raiders; and Steppenwolf. I blubbered through most of it, to the puzzlement of my friends. The night of Steppenwolf, I had a warm and fuzzy dream about John Kay. I dreamt I was making his bed. Literally making his bed. It was a poor excuse of a wet dream, but I was working from a very limited perspective at the time (being 13), and that was the best I could come up with. He’s the first man I ever saw in leather pants.

I never really got over it.  

Which is at least partly why I vowed to see Steppenwolf again before either I or John Kay died.  So that’s what brought me to the Choctaw Casino Event Center in Durant, Oklahoma 46 years later.  I suppose it’s fitting that I had to return to, if not quite the scene of the crime, at least my home state to see them again.

Not surprisingly, the first thing I noticed was that John Kay did not have on leather pants, and neither was he wearing the sunglasses it’s impossible to think of him without, but he was still handsome and in fine voice and form as they moved through the set.

Although I confess I did not buy every album in their catalog over the years, I’m the only one I ever met who truly loved Monster.  In fact, just last year, I had added the CD to my collection, having only the original album from the time of its release.  Monster was a bit of an anomaly because the highlight was an early mashup lasting nearly 10 minutes, “Monster/Suicide/America.”  Just as radio had no interest in this ’60s revolutionary sociopolitical/patriotic (yes, that’s right) rant, neither did I have any hope of ever hearing it in concert, what with a full platter of bonafide chartbusters at their fingertips to easily fill the setlist.  

Warming the crowd with “Sookie Sookie,” a huge hit which has dropped off the classic rock radio play lists as mysteriously as “Itchycoo Park,” the band moved into some deeper (but all recognizable) catalog, which included about three heavily blues-based songs, the last of which was Muddy Waters’ “Hootchie Kootchie Man,” which in subsequent conversations with friends I’ve discovered wasn’t widely played in every locale, but was heavily played and a big hit on the Oklahoma City radio stations.  I could barely see drummer Ron Hurst from my seat (4th row, aisle, far left), but he was really good, very strong.  Increasingly, I am finding reason enough to go see the old bands is that they are the most likely to treat you to a nice blues or psychedelic jam, the kind you haven’t seen since at least the early seventies. When I saw Neil Young a few years ago with Crazy Horse in the second set, they went at it like Big Brother & the Holding Company.  If they had done nothing else, it would have been enough.  The same was true with Steppenwolf’s blues selections.  I felt like — well, maybe not a kid, because my appreciation for guitar blues came a bit later, but I could sort of feel the damp grass underneath my velvet bellbottoms there for a moment, that’s for sure.  

The video on the large screen was worth keeping an eye on.  Tribute was paid to Joplin, Hendrix & Morrison in one video segment, which was touching and made me grateful for the ones who lived.  Then I had a little 13-year-old flashback as a video of a younger Steppenwolf was synced up to what John Kay was singing onstage.  There he was, black hair, dark glasses, dove gray leather pants, moving like a panther, singing like an angel. 
            Excuse me, I have a sudden urge to go fluff the pillows.  

This concert outing followed a long bleak period while my sister has been in the hospital and I have done nothing but work two jobs.  It was my gift to myself for my birthday, which is actually next week, but close enough.  And maybe that’s why, just like the old days, I teared up once again when I heard what I never thought I would, the opening strains to “Monster.”  I really had no hope of hearing this great trilogy live, 10 blissful minutes of it.  The segues between the parts are really dynamic live.  The transition into the chorus of “America,” a mostly overlooked anthem, was thrilling and poignant; then after, the segue back to “Monster” with the loud lengthily-spaced dramatically repeated one-chord chop.  Dave Mustaine would be proud.  I was touched that the guitarist, Danny Johnson, ended the trilogy with a final nostalgic note, a teasing, only momentary, Hendrix-like opening wail of the “Star Spangled Banner.”

There had been a long wait for the band to come onstage after the opening act, during which I had time to look at the equipment.  It’s always a relief to see Marshall stacks, of course. Then over on the left behind the keyboardist, Michael Wilk, were what looked to me like custom wood cabinets with the old Leslie rotating horns that you used to see down in the bottom of  Hammond B3 organs back in the 60s.  I wasn’t sure exactly what it was about since there was an electric keyboard, but then I’m not exactly a techie when it comes to equipment. But I used to love to stand near those horn/blower/whooshing fan thingies back in the day for a good rumble, so I was holding out hope.

I found out what they were for the very next song as the band started the engines on “Magic Carpet Ride.”  WHOAM, WHOAM, WHOAM, WHOAM.  It was awesome.  Has there ever been a better intro?  (OK, Roxy’s “Sentimental Fool” comes to mind, but that’s different.) The crowd went, predictably and ecstatically, vertical.  It’s too bad it took the punk rock days to teach us how to properly dance to “Magic Carpet Ride,” which is to abandon nuance and simply jump up and down, because I remember a sad attempt me and three dance club partners made at going at it via jazz dance moves we’d learned in gym, and failing summarily to be included in the Jerry Lewis Telethon.  It was such a great song, it just SEEMED like you ought to be able to dance to it.  

This, of course, was followed by “Born to Be Wild,” the rock anthem of all time, the common denominator of every person, young or old (or as John Kay said “young people who just happen to be in vintage bodies”).  I was prepared to leave on the BTBW high, but the stage was set for an encore.  I was trying to think what could POSSIBLY be left.  And then there they were, coming back with the ominous opening notes to “The Pusher.”  Wow, how had I forgotten about that.  Can you believe “Goddamn the Pusher Man” was played over and over again on AM radio in Oklahoma?  That would NEVER happen today.  

I walked out smiling and boarded the shuttle back to the casino, sitting on the back row of the bus with the rest of the bad girls.  OK, only one other girl, but she was blond and VERY drunk.  Ah, memories.  I had scored an excellent complimentary room at the casino hotel.  I went to sleep watching “Bad Dogs” in a big cushy kingsize bed, woke in time to win $50, enough to pay for my Steppenwolf ticket and dinner, and drove home feeling better than I’ve felt in months. 

Close your eyes girl

Look inside girl

Let the sound take you away

ENDLESS SUMMER

I realize now that I’ve filled in the obvious title of this post that it was probably something subliminal that made me dig out the “Endless Summer” DVD today.  What an oppressive few months this has been.  My only close family member has been in the hospital five months with only a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel, causing massive financial fallout, to say nothing of emotional stress, and for much of the duration, our temperatures have exceeded 100, with only one brief rain occurring in my back yard in those 44 days of draining heat that is killing wildlife and strays, and even the usually indestructible honeysuckle.  

Now it’s Labor Day, and I’m enjoying an increasingly rare day off as I juggle two jobs that some weeks leave me 45 minutes to pick up groceries that will sit in the refrigerator and get old while I wait for another break in work long enough for me to cook them.  


I had plans today.  I was finally getting around to a belated birthday for a friend who was on vacation at the time of her birthday in July and has been busy moving into a new house ever since.  Though I was looking forward to finally catching up with her, the lure of lying flat on my back with a book and movie made me almost gleeful when I learned she had some relatives unexpectedly dropping by during what would have been our time.  

Light fiction is about all I can handle reading right now.  For decades I read nearly 100 percent nonfiction, mostly crime-related.  I can’t say it was particularly good for my psyche, but I was driven, and I came out the other end preternaturally knowledgeable about things none of us should ever have to contemplate.  But as soon as my sister fell ill and I was facing long hours in the waiting room, I immediately went out in search for something I’ve never really read before: mystery.  Specifically light mysteries, my goal being to totally escape to a featherweight safe place, a place I’ve never been and am never likely to be in the future.  As little time as I have to read, that these light little books move very, very quickly is an advantage as well.  

Two days ago, the daily high finally fell below 100, and today we awoke to a proper September day with a slightly cool breeze. Just a few moments ago, I turned off my air conditioners for the first time in months and opened up all the windows.  Tired of reading, ready for a change, I browsed my small collection of DVDs, and only one seemed to pull at me.  I slid “Endless Summer” into the player, trying to remember exactly what it was about it that I always loved so much.  

The good thing about getting older is you can remember you loved something but not remember the details so that you can fully enjoy watching it all over again.  For me, perhaps partly due to my overly indulgent youth, this has been the case for some number of years now.  

I know all my peers have seen this movie, but for anyone else who might stumble upon this blog who hasn’t seen it, “Endless Summer” is a sixties documentary of two very skilled surfers who decide to follow summer around the world so they can surf all year.  They go to places the UN hasn’t yet gotten to and paddle their boards out to surf waves that have never been surfed before, in front of villagers who have never seen white men.  They follow the sun around the world for the perfect wave.  To watch it has always been zen-like for me, despite the frequent little wry jokes woven into the ongoing narrative.   Besides just the zen of surfing and the beauty of the cool blue ocean and the portraits of the now iconic surfing spots, such as Malibu and Hawaii during surfing’s heyday, it’s a genuine glimpse into a certain golden era lost in time that seems very California at its roots.  It’s a bridge between the wholesomeness of the 50s and before the blue skies of California clouded with revolution in the 60s.  

Men, don’t start your engines because there are no g-string bikinis on these beaches, more Annette Funicello-type gear. As if you know what that is.  It’s like granny panties. Awright??  But it’s not about that. It’s about riding the endless cool blue curl into the sunset.  And it’s a very seductive place for me to escape to on our first refreshing September day.  

In Hindsight

Looking back, I really had a lot in common with my past loves.  We just didn’t see eye to eye on who they should be dating. 

No Body No Where No Time

I’m watching the 1969 performance of Janis Joplin on the Dick Cavett DVD, doing “To Love Somebody,” and I was reminded of how many people have been spouting nonsense about different contestants on the television talent shows “sound like Janis Joplin.”  I tell you what, you listen to Janis Joplin in 1969 belting this song (or any number of others) and you can’t say that with a straight face.  I will put this as colloquially as possible:  Ain’t NO-BODY got voice power like Janis Joplin in 1969 and not likely anyone ever will.