from Patti Smith: an unauthorized biography by Victor Bockris and Roberta Bayley

I'm a big fan, tho' his music didn't really hit me 'til I was 17. Maybe Baby was the one that got me started. Since then I've obsessed about his music, visited his grave (in 1984), learned his songs, read all the books... he was a giant, and he was only 22.

My faves: Listen To Me, Down The Line, Holly Hop, Heartbeat, Everyday, Midnight Shift... and his version of Brown Eyed Handsome Man.

My very fave: Well, All Right.

What a beautiful song.

Buddy Holly...

...and, also, in the same crash, the great young singer Richie Valens. I had the single La Bamba b/w Oh, Donna (as part of my sisters 45 collection) and it is one of the big influences on my musical career, along with Buddy's music.

Loudon won for a great record. Ramblin' Jack won for a kinda lame one... Honeyboy got a lifetime achievement award. I'm happy for him, but sheesh! He's 92, could they have waited ANY longer?

We're fucked if this is our culture.

uh oh...

She's one of those people that seem to have less distance from their soul to the microphone. Others I've seen with this quality: Mavis Staples. Michael Stipe, when I heard him sing solo once at a benefit... Kimmie Rhodes, the texas songwriter has this quality. It's mystical, rare... you don't hear it on records much, it just doesn't seem to come through. I hear it in Tommy McClennans 'Deep See Blues.' In Robert Petway's 'Catfish Blues,' but never really got it from R.E.M. live or or on record.

Not sure I'm gettin getting this across, but what I'm talking about is an incredible presence and feeling, in the voice. I was knocked out to hear it from Patti Smith. Hmmm. Maybe I woulda known if I'd been to her readings, solo shows, etc...

Anybody diggin' those Blake quotes? A good place to get your curiosity stoked on him, maybe?

Here's Patti at Book Soup

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfrcN5LQ4M4

My sister tells me of Neo-nazis over in Europe. The writer on the radio (Rudy Wurlitzer) says we're in a new apocalyptic era of fiction, sorta goes along with the end of the end of the first post-human era as I started calling it, in the heady week before 'Love And Theft' was released.

Sometimes, like right now, I see traffic accidents from my perch up here. This one's only a light side cruncher. No real problem for anybody with insurance. Ooop's... the beat up El Camino just took off without exchanging numbers. Bum kicks.

Teaching songwriting? Not exactly. Living the blues? No, I'm doing great. Doing what I do do do do do.

How 'bout you?

Reading. Books. Aw, tell it to Willie The Shake. Harry Smith. Esoteric knowledge. The keys in black and white. Digging music on the box. The 'R.J. in Dallas' album is my favorite. Also Bukha's gospel. Mississippi Fred's party record. Junior Kimbrough's endless driving groove. Hank, God bless him. Smokey, who is God. 'Fight On, You're Time Ain't Long.'

Now on the tube Justin Timberlake's wearin' a stingy brim and singing Leonard Cohen. I liked him better before, I Want You Back, that sounded like he was gonna cry, was soulful, the producer/manager father figure probably tortured him to get that. This is crap, no feeling, what the fuck is that song about anyhow. Hallelujah . I used to think I knew, but it's embarrassing now. Bono, Tom Hanks, the Supreme Court. Jay-Z, least he looks awake.

I'd rather hear somebody who sounds like they gotta say it. Like Wyclef Jean, now that guy's a rocker. God, Neil Young's old. I love him, but he must seem so weird to kids. Oh well.

Patti Smith's book is great, surprisingly well written. Her last volume of poetry is sounding better to me now too.

My new lp is done, should be out by early summer. It doesn't compare to anything, really, though maybe 'Charlie James meets the Plimsouls at Valley Forge' gets a foot or so closer? An electric string and bone symphony played on 3 hundred dollars worth of the finest rock and roll equipment known to man? A rolling strolling explosion of post human complaint systems, the blues schematic...

Unravelling The Mysteries Of Music, People!

Don't be afraid. Like Jerry Garcia said:'Music contains infinte optimism.' (What's the quote?)

Speaking of the 'Souls, the new live album drops feb 23. If it sees it's shadow winter goes back in the hole. It sounds best loud, and it even sounds loud quiet. Buy it, folks, and dig. I'm especially proud of the first 11 tracks, the originals. And then we get into Thee Midnighters, etc.

I'm about to start bashin' away at that book again. I'm up in the middle night screwing around with this jive, that's a start. Catch you later.

BTW, I hope they ram through that damn health care bill before Brown gets seated. Bi partisan is a joke. NO matter how good an idea is for America's well being, there will always, now, be an insane opposition. Let It Roll, Obama! That's what I say. Show some fucking hair!

Sure, I'm bugged by things, but I've gotta lotta be thankful for. If you're going through these kinda troubles, keep the faith.

So that's where it's at over here. I'm recording, teaching a music class or two at McCabe's. Gettin' my business straight. Finishing that flippin' BOOK! And Denise is finishing HERS. I'm busy. High on life tonight (just like Up With People?) I'm not going WINTERMAD like I often do this time of year.

I'm tryin' to reach out to some people, do what I can do. It is what it is.

I realize I'm carrying around an empty notebook. Somethin's about to go there.

Me and Dark Bob were singing Hank Williams songs today, outside, and Light Bob ran out and yelled at us for being too loud. Even that didn't get me in a bad frame of mind.

And the COUNTRY? Good Lord!

Been diggin' my John lee Hooker vinyl. Also a Jimmie Rodgers album: 'Never No Mo' Blues.' Man I love that song. You know, the Blasters used to blow the roof off the Whiskey with that one!

Speaking of, the Plimsouls at The Whiskey album is coming in February from Alive/ Naturalsound Records. It's a rocker front to back, but especially the first 10 songs on it, the originals, well I'm really proud of it. Also, check out the Breakaways ( from 1978 the lost sessions, I didn't even know they existed!) I dig that one, a fun record to play, its got mad alpha wave action beaming off every groove. And the Nerves 'One Way Ticket' I recommend. (Not the live Nerves, though, that's for super-fans only!)

All of this stuffs at I Tunes, or your local record (that is vinyl!) dealer. Or on CD, whatever...

Doin' a benefit for musicians healthcare at the Echoplex in March, with the Standells. ore on this soon. I'll be with my group (the Uncalled 4.)

I saw a movie but I can't remember. Oh yeah, the one about the foxes is pretty entertaining. That new book about Monk looks pretty fascinating. I'd like to hear the new live Petty set, but I can't lay down the dough right now. Elvis' Sun Sessions, Bob Dylan's first (man I dig that, always did, I think I got it in 65 or 66.) Phranc gave me a Neil Diamond songbook! Dylan Thomas is a Bad MF, too. Green Fuse, Rage, Rage, Fern Hill, Before I Knocked: wow. Secrets of Life revealed. And, only 3 more months 'til Baseball rears it's goofy head, though I may not be watching this year. I gotta work! Let's see, okay, enough outta me. Bye!

By BEN SISARIO Published: January 6, 2010 Willie Mitchell, who shaped the elegant yet gritty sound of Al Green, Ann Peebles and other stars of soul music as the house producer at Hi Records in the 1960s and 70s, died Tuesday in Memphis, where he lived. He was 81. The cause was cardiac arrest, his son Lawrence said.

The Willie Mitchell sound  prominent horns, delicately strummed guitars, some sweet organ and a steady, straightforward beat  is instantly recognizable on records by singers like Mr. Green, Ms. Peebles, Syl Johnson and O. V. Wright, and on the instrumentals Mr. Mitchell recorded as a bandleader. Both raw and sensuous, it became His signature sound as the label rose to prominence with Mr. Green in the 1970s.

Although its legacy has been less celebrated than those of Stax or Sun, two other pioneering record labels that got started in Memphis in the 1950s, Hi was an integral part of the development of the Memphis soul sound, and Mr. Mitchell is widely credited as one of its architects.

We had just gone past what was called race music and blues, which was looked down upon, to this R&B, this soul, Al Bell, a former owner of Stax who is chairman of the Memphis Music Foundation, said in an interview on Tuesday. We worked with each other so we could grow and improve our music, and Willie provided that kind of leadership. His handprint, thumbprint, footprint, heart print is all over Memphis music.

Mr. Mitchells sound owed much to the musicians he used at Royal Recording Studio, a converted movie theater that served as His headquarters. They included the Hodges brothers  Teenie on guitar, Charles on organ and Leroy on bass  as well Al Jackson and Howard Grimes on drums, whose light touch and rhythmic flexibility were central to His appeal.

Its the laziness of the rhythm, Mr. Mitchell said in Peter Guralnicks 1986 book Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom. You hear those old lazy horns half a beat behind the music, and you think theyre gonna miss it, and all of a sudden, just so lazy, they come in and start to sway with it. Its like kind of shucking you, putting you on.

Born in Ashland, Miss., in 1928, Mr. Mitchell began his career as a trumpeter, leading a 10-piece touring band while still in his teens. After serving two years in the Army, he returned to Memphis in the mid-1950s and became a regular in the citys clubs, distinguishing himself as a jazzy, sophisticated player.

In 1961 Hi Records, then four years old, signed Mr. Mitchell as a recording artist, and from 1964 to 1969 he scored a number of minor R&B hits, including Soul Serenade and 30-60-90. But he began to make a greater mark as the labels combination producer and talent scout, bringing in Ms. Peebles and others. (He also produced Bobby Blands 1964 album Aint Nothing You Can Do for another Memphis label, Duke.)

In 1968 Mr. Mitchell was booked to perform at a club in Midland, Tex., with a fledgling singer from Michigan named Al Green as his opening act. On hearing him rehearse, Mr. Mitchell invited Mr. Green to Memphis and promised to make him a star.

Coached by Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Green found his voice, and by 1971 he had reached No. 1 on the pop charts with Lets Stay Together.

Mr. Mitchells style proved a perfect canvas for Mr. Greens finely finessed vocals, and together they made 13 Top 40 hits between 1971 and 1976, when Mr. Green left secular music for gospel and a career as a minister. Mr. Mitchell acquired an ownership stake in Hi in 1970 and remained with the company until it was sold in the late 1970s.

With the sale of Hi, Mr. Mitchell bought Royal studio and continued to record there, preserving much of the equipment just as it had been in 1969. Among the artists he recorded were the blues guitarist Buddy Guy as well as John Mayer and Rod Stewart.

Mr. Mitchells two grandsons, Lawrence and Archie, whom he adopted as sons, continue to operate the studio. Mr. Mitchell is also survived by a stepson, Archie Turner; two daughters, Yvonne and Lorrain Mitchell; and a granddaughter.

When Mr. Mitchell and Mr. Green reunited in the 2000s to make two albums (I Cant Stop and Everythings OK ), Mr. Green recorded at Royal with the same microphone he had used in the 1970s.

Mr. Green has said that he owes much of his success to Mr. Mitchell, especially his coaching, beginning with their first recording sessions together. I was trying to sing like Jackie Wilson and Sam Cooke and Wilson Pickett, Mr. Green said in a 2003 interview, recalling Mr. Mitchell. He said, Sing like Al Green.

Willie Mitchell | Record producer, 81

Willie Mitchell, 81, a record producer, label head, and musician who worked with Al Green and other stars, died yesterday. Mr. Mitchell died at Methodist University Hospital in Memphis, more than two weeks after he suffered cardiac arrest Dec. 19, said his son, Lawrence Mitchell.

Willie Mitchell owned Royal Studio, where Buddy Guy, John Mayer, and many others recorded. In the 1970s, he also owned Hi Records of Memphis, which produced some of Green's biggest hits.

At Hi, Mr. Mitchell was responsible for several instrumental hits of the 1960s and helped the careers of Green and Ann Peebles in the 1970s. In later years, he stayed busy at his studio, working with then-emerging talents Mayer and Anthony Hamilton.

Most recently, he wrote string and horn arrangements for Rod Stewart's new album of R&B covers, and produced a still-unreleased album from soul kingpin Solomon Burke. He received a Trustees Award from the Grammy Foundation in 2008. - AP

This is a great post. (I recorded this song and released it as the first track on 'Peter Case Sings Like Hell' in 1993.)

2010: I'm looking forward to it. How 'bout you?

Best wishes, gang! PC

Coming soon, on Alive, I think...

Me and Tom Russell always used to joke : 'This could be the Big One.'

To all the friends and fans who came out and made Friday's McCabe's such a great time, thanks! Hope to see you again soon.

Getting into things for the McCabes show Friday. Ron Franklin is opening the festivities. DJ Bonebrake will be on drums for a stretch of my set. I'll be playing my batch of new ones. Looking forward to it.

When the weight lifts off, a little music finds its way, new songs, getting ready for next weeks McCabe's show (sold out!) And that's a gas...

Ever see the book, 'The Beatles As Musicians?' A scholarly treatise on the chord changes, 'retonicized' keys, 'descant' lines, etc... pretty interesting though. This guy listened and studied close, to everything.

Oh, the Beatles. What a group. I've been working on the Plimsouls live at the Whiskey mastering, etc... nearly ready. Crazed intense performances and audience reactions. More about this release soon.

Classes start again in January at McCabes. Call 310 828 4497 for the info.

That's enough out of me.

'Peter Case is a remarkable songwriter whos had his own brush with mortality this year (Dave anchored one of a pair of benefit shows at McCabes earlier this year to help with Peters medical bills) and consequently hasnt really been touring. He began by acknowledging what a toll the year has taken thus far and some of the others he (and us) have lost.

Other than a couple older songs (and one from the Mississippi John Hurt record) Peter came with a slew of brand new songs that utterly amazed. He played most on his Taylor 12 string, removing his glasses so he could read his lyric sheets better, and proceeded to take us all on a journey where none of us (including him) knew the destination. It almost seemed like hed dropped some acid prior to arriving, and was coming on as the set progressed-indeed he seemed to have no awareness that each performer was slotted for thirty minute sets-and nobody was going to tell him to stop, resulting in almost an hour on stage.'

!!!!!

Rock and roll is a dream world for me, a far off galaxy. It hardly exists anymore in the culture, but it lives on in the artists and fans. Tom Petty was the last great rock and roll hitmaker. After that, it's off the radio. The Plimsouls were going for that ring too, but we slipped.

BTW, I'm currently editing a Plimsoul's Live at the Whiskey lp for February release on Alive Records. We master it next week. It's over the top: The band is at the peak of form and the crowd goes nuts. At the end this loudspeaker voice keeps repeating 'please leave the building!' while people chant and scream etc... that's rock and roll for you.

So I'm home and out of it today, but planning to go to Brendan Mullen's memorial at the Echoplex, if I can.

Sunday, no politics, no sports. I dig it, even if I am sick.

Man, it's been a rough year or so for this type of thing: The passing of Mike Bannister, guitarist and songwriting singers Chris Gaffney, Stephen Bruton, and Duane Jarvis, all players on the local and national music scenes. Brendan Mullen. And Amy...

Death is part of life, right? Still, it's very difficult, the toughest subject, in a way.

What do you play at a thing like this?

I've got to play the kind of songs I always play, life in the face of death, it's the only way I know.

I like what Gregory Corso said, right before he died: 'I'll never experience my own death. I'm always alive in this moment, and the gifts just keep coming.'

What a year though. It seems like about 10.

'In those days it was a matter of the dollar, all of us could write those blues a dime a dozen. [ Lester] Melrose would talk to me tonight and tomorrow I would have him six tunes, and the very next day knowing that we wouldn't get any royalties we forgot about them and would write six more. Those were the days.' - Victoria Spivey

'As Scrapper describes it, the making of these blues resembled cultivated poet craft rather than the usual folk composition: they would sit for hours at a big dining room table, adding and taking out verses, crossing out and changing, getting the rhymes correct ("if you can't rhyme yourself, get a rhyming dictionary"), and finally, giving each blues a title.' -Rosenbaum, 1961, on Scrapper Blackwell and Leroy Carr

"My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket," says Waits. "My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane."

'Love makes the blues' -Robert Pete Williams

'The blues kept me on the road, it was always leading me somewhere. That's what the blues is, it's a leading thing, something on your mind that keeps you moving.' -David 'Honeyboy' Edwards

So it's Harry Reid showing some hair in the U.S. Senate, coming through for the public option. You know, the element of the plan that enables it to WORK! The part that 73% of the American public wants, even though big insurance company money says 'NO." Didn't think he had it in him. Reid say 'YES!' Go Senator Reid!

So I'm recording an album of 'deep blues' for Alive, sometime in the next month or so. Go blues! Watch here for details. Hope to have it out in the Spring.

So the music I'm digging lately is off the last album 'curated' by John Fahey before he died, a collection of 'phantoms,' one off 78's from the 1930's, some of the most beautiful music ever, including all known tracks by the great Geeshie Wiley (I already had these, but there is a big sound improvement.) So there are no photo's of these artists, next to no biographical information, nothing, just the songs. The set is called 'Revenants: Volume II' on Revenant Records, and it's super inspiring. Music in the raw, in some ways greater than the Harry Smith box (some great artists that hadn't been found yet.) I really recommend this 2005 release for any true music fans out there. There are some very wigged out things, sort of a 'Cabinet Of Wonders' vibe. Surpasses the basement tapes. This is where the basements tapes were coming from. The notes for the set are brilliant. If you want to try one record of 'old time music' this is the one. It's spooky, funny, eye opening, dreamlike, rockin', hilarious... etc. the best music America has to offer.

So anybody see 'A Serious Man?' Coen Bros at speed... pretty good movie, set in the 60's, good despite a glaring anachronism (anyone catch it?)

So there are two (!) benefits for Hidden Love this week in Austin: an electric show with a 16 artist cast, at the Continental Club on Wednesday, and a Friday show with Ian McLagan, Gurf Morlix, and James McMurtry, at the Cactus Cafe. Thanks Tim O Brien! Thanks Kent Benjamen! Thanks Griff Lunburg! Thanks to all the artists! Thanks everybody!

So that's what!

Now I can get back to those songs I was writing! What was I thinking?

He didn't play any song older than the Highway 61 album, and he concentrated mainly on songs from the last three studio albums. The songs from the latest album were ALOT better live, especially 'Forgetful Heart.' (The only weak song they played was from the new one: 'Jolene.' That seems lame to name a song that after the other 'Jolene.' And it's a shuffle, sort of throw away. My only complaint about the show.)

Charlie Sexton's musical presence gave the proceedings a big shot of excitement at every point, playing dynamic rhythm guitar behind the vocals, then soloing, and playing ensemble passages with Bob: guitar and organ unison parts. Bob actually solo'd on the organ several times, and his playing was surprisingly good: rather reminded me of Pigpen's playing live with the Dead (and I mean that as a compliment! Something about the tone.) Highway 61 Revisited actually sounded like a great song again, after years of thrashed out versions. Ballad Of A Thin Man and Like A Rolling Stone sounded symphonic in a new way different from the original recorded versions (which sound symphonic themselves, of course.) His harp playing was the strongest I've ever heard from him live. The band was sharp, the arrangements were great, different, and he's in strong voice. No kidding! Another late career renaissance? It seems like it. Inspiring. Hell, that guys got 14 years on me, I better get busy again!

These are all superficial elements of the show: it was very uplifting, somehow he seemed to be communicating with everybody in the place about Life and Death and God and Love, and as he's says, we're 'together through life.' This show didn't have the museum-like quality even some of his better shows from the past have given off. It was profound. Maybe I'll be able to say more about it soon...

There's one more night in the LA stand: go see them.

1) 'The Nerves Live At Pirates Cove, 1977,' a vinyl only collection from a tape Jack Lee had hidden away somewhere. To be frank, something about this makes it seem to be for fanatics only, (who want to have all the Nerves songs available. There are some previously unreleased numbers here.)

and 2) The Breakaways-Walking Out On Love-(the lost sessions) which is on CD, digital download, and vinyl. I like this one much better, I found it to be a fun listen, all from tapes I didn't know existed anymore. It's Paul and I, with our new band, right after leaving the Nerves in 1978. I think you can check this out at their website. I especially like 'House On The Hill' and 'Little Suzy' which I swear, woulda been a killer Bomp single in '78, but oh well, better late than never, I'm tickled about this one, it's fun to have a surprise record pop up, and from so far back!

The Songwriters' Workshop is set to start again, (after a forced year layoff) in early January, 2010, at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica. Info is available at 310 828 4497, or check the McCabe's website.

My return to McCabe's as a performer is set for December 4. This is the long postponed 'petercase 25th anniversary show.' Tickets are already on sale. 310 828 4497.

I'm gearing up for a couple of recording projects that will commence in the next month or so.

Also, a 'Plimsouls Live From The Whisky, 1982' is planned for February release on Alive. The tapes are high quality, from a radio broadcast, mixed from 24 track tape, and with a hometown Halloween night crowd going nuts. More news on this soon.

That's the latest. All the best, gang! love, Peter

What a disaster, a shame.

I don't know what else to say, except she was a great musician with a strong spirit, and she will be missed.

I'm back up, and my return to the McCabes' boards will be on December 4, 2009, at 8pm... tickets are available now, so see the McCabes.com website, or call 310 828 4497.

I'm excited about this, and plan to debut new songs, stories, jokes, lectures, cracks, expositions, recitations, arguments, and dance moves (man plans and God laughs, of course!) but especially the SONGS are what I'm dyin' to lay down for ya', so I'm really looking forward to it. (I've begun preliminary work on a new album, more news on this soon.)

I'm hoping this gig signals a return to gigs on the road, later in the New Year etc... we'll see.

Anyhow, get your tickets now, folks.

I'm also hoping to get the Songwriter's Workshop going again for January... I'll have more info here soon.

The Old Testament? The New Testament (Jerusalem and King James?) The Books Of Moses? Homer? Dante? The Book Of The Hopi?

Why Are We In Viet Nam? Armies Of The Night? Shot In The Heart? Dispatches? Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas? Agatha Christie? Chandler? John Barth? Saul Bellow? True Crime?

Blake? Keats? Byron? Smart? Vaughan? Chaucer? Jacques-Pierre? Marlowe? Chekov? Maeterlinck, Wordsworth? Shelley? Dr Johnson and his pal?

Langston Hughes? DH Lawrence? Heaney? Brodsky? Milosz? Edward Sanders? Denise Levertov? Diane Di Prima? Anne Waldman? Young Man With A Horn? The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight? A Confederacy Of Dunces? (first 200 pages?) Really The Blues? The True Story Of Ma Barker? Emmett Grogan...

Emily Dickinson. Edgar Allan Pee Oh EEEE?

Stevens? Dr Williams? WS Burroughs? Corso? Patchen? Norse? Kaddish? Planet News? Bob Kaufman! Ted Berrigan? Ronald Padgett? Frank O Hara? Michael Lally? Hubert Selby? Scott Wannberg? Amiri Baraka? Al Young? Who's Afraid Of Virginia Wolfe? Platero and I?

Villon? Montaigne? Baudelaire? Rimbaud? Laforgue? Verlaine? Machado? Lorca? Jimenez? Neruda? Rilke? Apollanaire? Jean Genet? The Encyclopedia Britannica 11th Edition? Decline Of The West? Beyond Good and Evil? The Trial? Strange But True Baseball Stories?

Studs Lonagan? Mike Hammer? James Bond? Milo March! James Joyce? Marcel Proust?

Green Lantern? Sgt. Rock? Weird War? Justice League Of America? the Atom? The Flash? Mad? Harvey Kurtzman?

Yes. etc.

Plus histories, bios and memoirs up the yin-yang!

And the cereal boxes, too?

Yes, yes...

DANBURY, Conn. - Mary Travers, one-third of the hugely popular 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, has died.

The bands publicist, Heather Lylis, says Travers died at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut on Wednesday. She was 72 and had battled leukemia for several years.

Anyhow, we won, the lead is 5 games again, and there's a lot of good lessons in baseball, if you can stand to waste that much time. Hell, I was just daydreaming anyhow. 'Watching the'millionaires play games' isn't that what Bukowski said? That drove me out of the stadium 20 years back, after they traded off the 1988 heros before they'd even swept up the confetti from the streets downtown.

This year Kemp ain't making that much dough for a ball player, but he's got me shut down! Oh well. What a baseball star! (Same for Bellisario, Trancoso, a couple of the others. Furcal makes 10 million a year, as does Manny, and Ethier gets about 3.)

But that ain't the point, it's not like it used to be when I sold a box of promos of my first LP at Aron's, then took the record money and went straight to the stadium with my pals to see 'em play. There I was, wondering, actually worrying if Strawberry was gonna justify his 23 million contract, or go down in a slump forever, and it hit me:' I'm broke, I ain't even got rent money, I'm out of my mind.' So I gave it up, but I'm back into it a bit now (hell I wrote some of Blue Guitar, back then, driving around town with the game on the radio of my shitbox car.)

Poor Pirates. That manager's gonna choke himself on that damn Redman Chew if he don't watch it. And he's such a bluesy dude, with a long long way to go, and nothing to lose. Shit man, forget the count, steal bases, go for it, what difference does it make! 'The runners are going...'

http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/jim-carroll.html

http://www.vimeo.com/6408073

Two Angels:

http://www.vimeo.com/6405093

Mr. Case- First off, I'd just like to say that I have been a fan of yours since the early days of the Plimsouls. I caught a free show of yours in my home town of Costa Mesa, CA, at the now closed Virgin Megastore. That was a thrill, even though bad weather caused us all to gather around the staircase. Anyway, I am writing regarding your beautiful song "The Wilderness." As a historian, I love the song. However, I have often been curious as to your decision to include lyrics regargarding calling up an airstrike on the radio. If it's a hidden metaphor, I can't figure it out. Any light you can shed would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, and keep up the great work. Sincerely, Paul

Dear Paul,

That's the way the song came to me and I went with it, because... it's about the behavior of people at war, and is making a spiritual, not a political point.

Also, I didn't want to write a song where everybody just says 'great civil war song,' I could've done that but instead I wanted to get across visionary reality too, marching armies, angels AND airstrikes, as well as a sense of our dream life and how it's affected by current events.

Maybe there is an analogy, between the words in the bridge (where they set the woods on fire) and the airstrikes that mowed down the Iraqi troops on the desert, though I didn't see the pictures until much later. Have you ever seen the photos? You could check them out, if you haven't yet.

BTW, wilderness also = the desert, ie. 'Jesus tempted 40 days and nights in the wilderness' etc...

It may have been a mistake, if there is such a thing in songs. I was trying to push on the limits of song-art, and did, but I've also recently considered (in fact spoke of it with someone late last night) rewriting that one, as well as a few others including: turning blue and spell of wheels... and may just do it... just to see.

Who's the artist they arrested in the Louvre, applying paint to one of his masterpieces, years after its 'completion?' (not that I consider these 'masterpieces!')

Thanks for your question Paul, I love it when people ask about the songs: it lets me know someone's listening...

I remember that gig, as well, a vivid memory.

best wishes, Peter PS Paul, do you mind if I post your this letter and reply on my site? I think it would be an interesting entry. I could delete your address, or last name if you wish?

best PC

If you're out in the Fur Peace area this weekend, drop by!

We sang Everyday Things, Many Roads To Follow, Day In and Day Out (an early Nerves number,) and Do You Want To Love Me, a song from the upcoming Breakaways album, to be released this September on Alive/Naturalsound Records.

There is also a live Nerves from Cleveland, 1977, coming out very soon.

Crazy, my releases this year were recorded in 1976, 1977, and 1978.

We also did an interview with Dave Schulps and Jim Greene, once upon from Trouser Press...

A day of rest, Sunday. I'm going on the road to do ONE gig, at FUR PEACE RANCH next Saturday, my second show this year, and first since the heart op episode... I'm looking forward.

Getting back into it.

Who do you trust more -- the Post Office or your health insurance company?

Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele and his consultants at the GOP think they have a winning line of attack on President Obama and his campaign to overhaul the health care system. It entails dissing the U.S. Postal Service.

In a fundraising e-mail sent out Thursday, Steele started with a statement Obama recently made to support including a government-run health insurance plan in the health care reform package: I think private insurers should be able to compete. . . . I mean, if you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. It's the Post Office that's always having problems. Obama was countering the claim made by critics that a government plan would drive private insurers out of the market. His point was that private delivery services are still able to thrive, despite competition from the Post Office. But Steele maintained that Obama was acknowledging a bedrock GOP principle: The private sector does a better job.

That was stretching the truth. Still, Steele went on to contend that a government-run health care plan "is inefficient, limits choices, and hemorrhages taxpayer money like the Post Office."

By going postal, can Steele undermine Obama's reform effort? Not if facts matter. True, the Postal Service has had serious financial problems; it expects to lose several billion dollars this year. But when debating the public option, the better comparison is the obvious one: Medicare. A public health plan would in many ways ape Medicare, a generally efficient and effective program that remains largely popular among the elderly who use it. Does Steele want to argue that Medicare is a loser? Despite the fiscal challenges Medicare faces, denigrating it would hardly win the GOP many votes.

The Post Office is a much easier target. Yet in terms of services provided, I would rate it far ahead of the private health care insurers I've had to deal with. Consider this: You can put a letter, photo or whatnot in an envelope, scribble an address on that envelope, drop it in a box, and within a matter of days that very same envelope will appear at the door of the recipient, wherever he or she may live in the United States, even if it's thousands of miles away. All for 44 cents. Federal Express and UPS don't do that -- at that price. (I wonder what their financial situations would be, if they had to operate a universal delivery system and charge so little.)

The USPS achieves this nearly miraculous feat millions of times a day. Sure, a letter or parcel here or there gets misplaced, but how many times have you lost something in the mail? Not many. And most of the letter carriers I have known have been courteous, friendly and helpful. My local post office is staffed by clerks who offer quick and efficient service -- often with a smile. (I realize that's not par for the course everywhere.) The Postal Service even has an inspiring unofficial motto: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." I say, at least two cheers for the Post Office.

Compare all this to health insurance companies. My experiences with them -- particularly Oxford -- have frequently been nightmarish. They routinely don't respond to claims. They often say claims were not received. Or they maintain they cannot make out one piece of information on the claim (the date, the numerical code of the service rendered, etc.). They appear to do whatever they can to duck claims. Then, if they acknowledge receiving a properly filed claim, they often do whatever they can to deny it in full or part. I'm fortunate; I have not yet had to go through any major medical episodes. But regarding routine matters, I usually have had to fight to have claims honored. Without question, of all the service providers I interact with, health insurers have been the most aggravating -- and this includes various DMVs. In a way, their behavior makes sense; they profit when they don't assist their customers. (What might their motto be: "First, lose the claim"?)

In trying to sink health care reform, Steele can take his cheap shots at the post office. It's a misleading attack. (A government-run plan would not provide health care; it would disseminate reimbursements for services delivered by private-sector or non-profit medical professionals.) But by mentioning the Postal Service in the same breath as the private insurers, Steele has done an injustice to hard-working letter carriers. After all, postal workers do a much better job of delivering claims than the insurance firms do of honoring them.

I've been digging Hedges. There ain't enough noise over here on the left, and there needs to be.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090820_hedges_health_care_war_and_the_new_racism/

(from Ron)

Iconic Memphis musician and producer Jim Dickinson has died.

The 67 year-old Dickinson passed away early Saturday morning in his sleep, according to his wife Mary Lindsay Dickinson. Dickinson had been in ill health for the past few months, and was recuperating from heart surgery at Methodist Extended Care Hospital. He went peacefully, said Mary Lindsay.

Iconic Memphis musician and producer Jim Dickinson has died at age 67.

Just last weekend, a tribute concert, headlined by John Hiatt, had been held in Dickinsons honor at the Peabody Skyway, to help defray his medical costs.

A third generation piano player, Dickinson was born in Little Rock, Ark., but raised in Memphis. During the course of his colorful half-century career, Dickinson built a reputation as a session player for the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, a producer for Big Star and the Replacements, a sometime solo artist, and patriarch of a small musical dynasty that includes sons Cody and Luther Dickinson of the North Mississippi Allstars.

Dickinson's health woes began following a high-profile performance with Elvis Costello at the Beale Street Music Festival in May. After a physical exam revealed serious cardiac issues, Dickinson was immediately sent into surgery where doctors at Methodist Le Bonheur Hospital in Germantown put in a pair of stents, then sent him home to rest up for bypass surgery.

Dickinson seemed in good health and spirits when The Commercial Appeal caught up with him at his Coldwater, Miss., home in late May, to talk about the release of his new album of classic pop standards, Dinosaurs Run in Circles.

However, just before he was to celebrate the CD release with a show at Huey's on May 31, he had to be rushed back to the hospital with complications. He remained there before finally undergoing triple bypass surgery on June 24. Two days later he went into cardiac arrest. He was revived and spent several weeks recuperating in a cardiac intensive care unit.

Late last month, Dickinson was relocated to a rehabilitation facility; family and friends and physicians had hoped for a slow but eventual recovery that did not come.

He just never did really get a break, says Mary Lindsay. He had so many different things go wrong with him. Every time he would work so hard to get better, something else would happen. It was a long drawn out experience the last few months.

Dicksons wife says her husband was in a good place mentally and spiritually at the end. He had a great life, and he was a consummate family man. He loved music and his family. And he loved Memphis music, specifically.

The family says there are no immediate plans for a memorial.

1) Don't Look Now- Creedence Clearwater 2) Fugue #2 in C- Bach/Glenn Gould 3) Tight Time Blues -Leroy Carr 4) Daniel -Elton John 5) Like A Bird ( Bird On The Wire) -Leonard Cohen 6) Dirt Road Blues -Bob Dylan 7) Get Away Blues -Robert Wilkins 8) Black Mattie -Sleepy John Estes 9) Dolly Dagger -Bob Dylan (live) 10) Batman Theme -Link Wray 11) Heavy Heart Blues -Champion Jack Dupree 12) Sweet Story Of Old -Bela Lam And His Greene County Singers 13) Muchachos Alegres Narciso Martinez 14) My Mans' Gone Now -Bill Evans 15) Mr. Charles Blues -Ray Charles 16) Long Shadow -Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros 17) The Way I Walk -Jack Scott 18) Where I Lead Me -Townes Van Zandt 19) Bold AS Love -Jimi Hendrix Experience 20) Gonna Play The Blues -Charlie Price 21) Gonna Lay Down My Old Guitar - Bob Neuwirth 22) You Was Born To Die -Blind Willie McTell 23) Give Me An Old Lady -Furry Lewis 24) High Days Bert Jansch 25) Pollux -Harry Partch

These are straight off the shuffle mose, minus Shaky City by the Plimsouls. (I have a thousand of my own experiments, demos, tracks etc... on i tunes.)

If you want to post one, no cheating, just the first 25 that come up on shuffle. OK...

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his publicist, Carol Kaye.

Mr. DeVille, a regular at CBGB in the mid-1970s, lent his bluesy voice and eclectic musical tastes to Mink DeVille, one of the clubs main draws. A disciplined songwriter with a deep admiration for the Atlantic Records sound of the Drifters and Ben E. King, he drew from many sources, including Latin music, French ballads, New Orleans funk and Cajun accordion music. He was, the critic Robert Palmer wrote in The New York Times in 1980, idiomatic, in the broadest sense, and utterly original.

Mr. DeVille was born William Borsey in Stamford, Conn. After dropping out of school at 16, he began spending time in Greenwich Village and on the Lower East Side, where he learned to play the guitar and began performing, affecting a blues style like that of John Hammond Jr. He played with several groups before assembling Mink DeVille on a trip to San Francisco. He brought it to New York in 1975.

Mink DeVille, frequently lumped in with its fellow headliners Blondie, Television and Talking Heads, was essentially a soul band with roots in the commercial songwriting traditions of the Brill Building. Onstage Mr. DeVille cut a dapper figure. A pencil mustache and sculptured pompadour complemented his suits and pointy Italian shoes.

Working with Jack Nitzsche, a producer associated with Phil Spector, the group recorded the album Cabretta in 1977 for Capitol Records. Two of its tracks, Spanish Stroll and Moon Martins Cadillac Walk, became minor hits. The group recorded two more albums with Mr. Nitzsche for Capitol, Return to Magenta, which employed shimmering string arrangements reminiscent of the Drifters on several tracks, and the oddly romantic, highly eclectic Le Chat Bleu.

Le Chat Bleu, recorded in Paris without most of the original band members, baffled Capitol. It included French cabaret music, Cajun accordion melodies and songs written with Doc Pomus, one of the writers of Save the Last Dance for Me. Although the album sold well in Europe, Capitol shelved it, finally releasing it in 1980 to critical acclaim.

In a spiritual homecoming, Mr. DeVille signed with Atlantic Records after returning to the United States and recorded the soul-tinged Coup de Grace (1981), with Mr. Nitzsche as producer, and Where Angels Fear to Tread (1983). Sportin Life (1985), his last album under the Mink DeVille name, included Italian Shoes, a hit in Europe.

After 1985 Mr. Deville performed and recorded as Willy Deville, pursuing a path with unusual twists and turns. His song Storybook Love, from the album Miracle (1987), was used as the theme for The Princess Bride and was nominated for an Academy Award.

Relocating to New Orleans in 1988 reinforced a lifelong attraction to Cajun, zydeco and New Orleans rhythm and blues, a taste Mr. DeVille indulged in Victory Mixture (1990), a collaboration with New Orleans greats like Dr. John, Eddie Bo and Allen Toussaint, and in Loup Garou (1995).

The unpredictable Mr. DeVille recorded a startling mariachi version of the Jimi Hendrix hit Hey Joe on Backstreets of Desire (1992) and turned to Southern traditional music and blues on Horse of a Different Color (1999). He later toured and recorded live as part of an acoustic trio. After living in New Mexico for several years, he returned to New York in 2003.

Mr. DeVilles first two wives died. He is survived by his third wife, Nina; a son, Sean; and a sister, Mimi, who lives in Australia.

2) Hear that semi grindin' gears up the grade: that's my sound, baby! Hear the motorsickle music of gough cough ramble-lators? That's my sound: 'cause I'm a migged up memory bank of lonesome jewels, staggard skylights, peppered stakes and alphabone belittlement: sound, it's all about a sound, crack, dag, whiffle. Barby, skydog, poof! tinkly dinkly then crangdozers of sprinkle beat ax drops. hear it? mine.

3) He's a tall guy, head down as he goes to work, where he tends the public. down lately. workin' on a blues: 'O seaside seaside you rockin' all day long/ you ain't rockin' for nobody you just singin' a song/ leave me lonely & sing yr blues under the bed there's your slippery shoes/ but you long gone chasin' a what? back around when? all the ifs and the butts/ I'm ready to jump but jumps been taken/ I'm ready to hump but my poor back's brakin'/ bye bye FLO/ its Hello To The Rain.'

4) hey Bub/ fulla wisdom talk: 'it's a vicious circle' - dig the circle you say. 'I can't get a handle on it'- there's no handle is the reply. Two more talking on the grain of beach sand needle in a hay ride starshine in the milkyway cell & small voices, little shovels, plastic pales, blankets spread, girls on bikinis, bullys kick sand & a face leans in: 'mail today for free universal rectifier! only this much plus that much plus a little moron a month. And you'll flatten an etruscan like a peterpan cake, diggin' for tea.' deal.

5) on days like this I don't have a song. nothing's coming and besides I don't care. the sun of early afternoon is flat on the rooves of boredom. The Pico Strip shovel cools from the graveyard corridor onto the heads of the ocean police and other freeloaders. The impending blow. The life I'll lead tomorrow? The windows are two glaring eyes on the street, I sit here in the Brain, ready to.... command? to look. playing yesterdays song hoping for a new one, something real, in the fish, please.

Check out both parts.

Movie. In 3 parts...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TyzAAwJnIw

Then there was the used Shut Down Volume Two/ and the vandalism raids on untenanted houses/ and we hid behind the hedge with a pitcher full of ice cubes, which we threw at the car of Tommy The Dog Killer, also a lawn chaser so called adult/ we let him have it and he never knew who or what/ we ran in the summer night/ in the provincial dark of mosquitoes and humidity a million miles away from New York and L.A.

Mr Brotherman Rock and Roll came to me in the bath 'here dig this guy, he'll kill ya' Like A Rolling Stone by a guy apparently named The Mouth then mom brought home tambourine and the poison had been poured in my ear, the porches of hearing, eruptions, more running in the darkness/ the poison whereby I live/ the drumbeat of disengagement/ leaving the ball team the scouts the lessons and finally school/ 'the quitter'/ my poor father loved to mouth/ I was just getting started.

Rock and Roll every morning before school. Rockroll every afternoon/ every daydream had a pile drive beat or else wailed like a harmonica bum on a freight train, thank you Mr Brother now I can live without working/ a thief if needs be/ stealing what I need under cover of Here Comes The Night/ Gloria bit me in a tender place after baseball practice/ we were strolling round the diamonds, walking the tracks/ looking for a place nobody sees/ gettin' some Mr B just like you taught me/ Brotherman showed me to smoke pot drop pills stay up all night wandering or home at 3 am reading about China. It didn't matter/ I quit school on the best advice/ set out on revolution with a gang of dwarves/barking like a dog/ down on all fours, beatin' like a cur, too, God, how long did that last?

Forever one night/ gimme shelter on the jukebox/ rescued after eternity by orange juice and the walls kept moving/ out in the streets/ walked out of my body/ everything looked flat like a movie screen/ chanting ' fuck the pigs' before they attacked swinging night sticks/ Rock and Roll was there watching as the FBI picked me up for investigation/ something about a bank/ later/ another one about some missing coins/ I was innocent. Dorian was held 8 hours on a murder rap in South Dakota they pulled him off a train. Mr Rock and Roll said you got nothing to cry about son dig this: and I started running but looked down and I was on his back to San Francisco.

Mr Brotherman King Of Rock and Roll took a shit in the alley in daylight, stole doughnuts vomited profusely at the cow palace/ chain smoking camels/ in terratorial fistfights with knife wielding interlopers/ got arrested again/ bailed out or otherwise released but never set any more free than/ Mr BM R&R shivered/ killers terrorized the city/ then he wept to see the Nerves and Crime reparing flats on the shoulders of the San Leandro Freeway interchange/ swingin' a red cape at the bull/ chasing skirts in 30 cities/ sleeping on floors/ awake for whole summers give or take a couple nights passed out in strangers beds/ Mr Brotherman taught me to lie/ to twist the tales/ especially to/ always to/ myself. Thank you, Brotherman, that's what kept me goin all those years.

Oh Lordy/ that's enough of this/ Brotherman shut yr pie hole/ Jesus Christ!

We went and saw Buddy Miller at The Greek the other night. Buddy and I compared surgery scars backstage after the show. That was fun. Buddy was swell at the gig, as was Patty Griffin.

They're dropping off like mad out there, Michael being a such a big one, eclipsing the death of Sky Saxon in the news, etc... I was a fan of the Seeds, some of the most uncompromising teen age blues ever. I recorded with Sky in '85 or so. He was dressed in a full cape, had a long beard and was worshipping canines. We did a song called 'Love Dog.' Mars Bonfire produced. A weird memory.

Another weird memory: The Nerves met the Jacksons at the 1986 Record Wherehouse Christmas Party at the Great American Music Hall in SF. We were the entertainment. They arrived together, we were all introduced, then we took the stage, while they took a table and watched the show. ( Sammy Hagar was on the show too. I talked to him at length backstage. He wanted to know why I was wearing a suit. I told him, and his next record, he was wearing an identical suit on the cover. Of course, his fans hated it, and the record tanked.)

I liked that 'Off The Wall' record a lot when it came out.

New subject: I'm doing a songwriting workshop at Jorma Kaukonen's Fur Peace Ranch in Ohio, during August. Check the listing under 'Tours' on the main menu here. It's a week long 'live in' session with a concert included, and will probably be my first gig since the 'Big Op.' I hope some of you can come out for it.

Talk to you again soon...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74TDvzZcHPw

A shining moment.

Me and Denise had a nice visit to Martello Tower a few years back.

Here's the comic book version:

http://www.ulyssesseen.com/

Especially on a Saturday night... about to flip the lid.

Gotta catch my breath.

There, that's better.

No tour yet, no gigs, yet. No classes, yet. No dis, no dat. Not yet.

But I'm diggin' it. A time for everything. Right?

Just waitin' for the light to change.

All in good time.

2) Everybody talking/ used to heat the sidewalks/ melt the ice in bars/ spread to the suburbs/ where the homes were heated with hot air/ help is on the way in the form of psychosis/ prints to the end of sidewalk cases/ clutter of fools promises and plaster shuttled by rimrock and other prophetesses. Called home battered, and fried.

3) AFRAID OF/ is no kind of it specializes/ just like death, it/ and the categories, yes, but fluid/ scripted sainthoods/ available after 6 and before/ quality/ after god and before/ truncation Behemoth/ Angio disney self catastrophizing plot liquor boredom/ and/ of course/ true

4) the sunset/ on the board walk/ preposterous distance of wind follower/ kite disturbance/ articles of faith and pier peace as predicted by rollercoaster trouble wrens/ spent on transitory gargoyles of manfred/ of the midnight channels/ whispers of car trouble and binge grocers. catamaran and fizzing drinks.

5) These days/ passed in confusion/ shorter than the fishingpole summers on country motel docks/ brighter in their own way/ than searchlights/ over the platinum sea/ days with numbers driven/ scattered over 6 decades/ emptied of available plymouth rock sacreligion/ stop the traitor/ start the winding roar/ dance with hands taped to accordian heart string possibilities. and dial/ the memory

6) the jungle is tangled but retains it's hue/the shear wall bears rivulets/ headlamps turn inward/ outward/ exhaled intake bridge and bare swath over the ruby black with the snake inside/ row of plates on a cupboard/ shine/ an upside down mountain/ over a fat chimney and bartered, the story is long and not worth finishing.

7) Recovery card/ 'stitched and driven'/ corpuscle waning and vacancies in the friend zone after suicide season/ garbanzo flash of stanislav jacket/ brief lights of black torture/ highlights for the good squad/ capillaries/bone/mucous and soda pop/ bracelets of pain necklaces of numbness/it's step by step/ by simple steps and brain thaws of worsted seizure/ horrors at my own fingernails/ and other god given rights and moments

8) A map of the world with two Indias, two Chinas. Two endless oceans seen from halfway out/ halfway in. Birds buzz and cars climb/ my thumb cries/ the day is sunny and slow/ walking the continents in scrambled egg gold/ brief flashes of scarlet/ I'm hurting/ gotta go/ calibrations of sentimental forget-me-nots, missed with holdings and sparks of darkside knives/ twisted pictures that slide off and away/ if God is good Sunday and Monday/ he'll be fine on Tuesday too.

9) I travelled alone by train/ one year ago/ by the North Sea/ arrived in Glasgow and was met at the station by my guide/ but also by agents of the barroom inquisition. Singing in harbor pubs/ hard to imagine now/ a talent for tightrope that may return but today my circles/ weep/ cough in wracking delicacy/ while heros are considered/ on Rushmores of the Blues/ by Langston Hughes.

0) I'm flyin' low like mumblety-peg. Soft and frightened old and hoary/ preasure of sleep at days end. A wall looms a huge gloom zooms/ a bomb booms and easy challenge double time. my chest is scraped by my shirt/ knitted painworks and doctors orders one to three/ uncomplaining/ always raining fiddlesticks and fantasias. Galloping crabs on the woe be gone highways. west point shoe shines lost their sparkle in sixty. Your sweated outline on the door/private.

2) standard pizzicotto paralysis/ in schoolyard situations/ procenium piefights/ doodle bugs dabbling in/ shitpump politics./ torture by number 3/ backdoor pansies and 5 foot phils. Tantalized by tentpole denizens of scripture and scrapyard society. long distance saxophone.

3) caught in the same two step nightmare/ cumberbuns and gladiator thighs. Somethings fall from the clouds. Rain? Something else rises from the earth? Springtime grassy hymns and robin hopping socialists. I miss you, Michael. Never thought/ still don't/ our little tribe's scattered in the hills of Hollywood and Bombay. Other points South. Where the West of Death is the red point of a new declaration

4) got my strength/ folded in the lap of Griot melody/ pasted by a right and tossed into the machine. A mixture of front and force/ safecrackers and swamis leap/ cool me on the tale-a -phone/ you pimple assed/ jeter-hobbed sprinklenose taffy horned/ duckwights. Awake and away. To the final washbasin of elaborate moonbeams, centered traffic breath-ed squalor hounds, period.

5) warm moments of live kitchen to living room cuppa tea footstool and yellow light bulb carpeted/ seem like forever to a shut in// eternity/ must count for something/ but outside/ above the roof/ the stars are cold and the night is black the ambulence sounds like a carnival ride but the cemetary is no cheap hotel/ and I'm glad/ to be alive/ but as they say/ it's an inside job.

6) beautiful man/ immaculate apparel/ watching the green fields/ the rising rock/ the brothel and the cloister/ each invaded by casual visions/ tell the story, velvet flyer/ the broken bones and ripped up clothes of the beggers decorate the stable/ dogs are barking at the lambs/ the child raises his hand in blessing

7) Haven't found it in me to pick up the receiver/ I'm out of the running/ in the midst of rivercross listening for the word of God. I hear traffic/ birds/ and a ringing in my ears/ the scrape of a pen on paper/ hammer and pickax/ across the street/ my equipment is off/ I'm not turned on/ and now I hear the churchbells of Saint Annes. I vow to do better/ soon.

8) A soft touch with the mailbox and the horserace/ seen through either window the giants kneecap/ spends the future with grim/ support-like comic book elbow/ on it's last legs/ powdered and pleased/ poverty shrouded in peace in the Spring wind of griffin affection. Spell it, then roll it/ tuck it in your waist like a miser's machete that rusted in the rain.

9) lions and lambs/ brokered by pistoleros/ the soft cry and the spoken churchyard lullabye/ melds with Satanic English subcures to form a wheel/ a piston and a purview lennox swift. calls off/ delivers lightning per second at a footfall. I'm spun of funeral combat memories of ticket window deserts and struck like a dealer's bell/ 1000 feet below the rhymes of the sea.

10) owed/ and not working/ loaves of incoming/ shot department wide and adding/ subtracting/ you're a jewel/ skylark and sweet citrus/ we cavort in the rise and the leaves/dance/ I said/ and the sky erects a floodlight and the sands rugburn and the day puts out fires and hope is a tattoo combination/ and others too/ spin, grove/ and groan on the park/ on the last dime of a Rosicrucian.

Slow paced film, set in Spain, got it just right. Blakean. Burroughsian.

Dylan. Thanks, Josh. New guy on the scene, wasted old dude, out on the circuit with Tom Russell. This was the first I'd ever heard of him. Hidalgo rules. Lydia Mendoza, on a twelve string, singing in a cantina.

Ron Franklin's Alive album on vinyl!

Saul Bellow? 'Herzog.' A voice out the window, telling me what to do.

Sunset Park. Baseball. Death. Fuck it. Piano. Flatted fifths.

I'M HOLDING OUT FOR SOMETHING.

More shall be revealed.

also, a piece I wrote for the Blue Rock Review:

http://review.bluerocktexas.com/files/v3/i-see-said-the-blind-man.pdf

(Thanks, Ackles, for the link.)

Bruton released five records as a solo artist, the last three for the New West label. As a lead guitar player, he worked with Kristofferson for 17 years and Bonnie Raitt for several more. He produced records for Alejandro Escovedo, Marcia Ball, Storyville and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Bruton's songs have been covered by Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, Jimmy Buffett, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Martina McBride, Patty Loveless and Kristofferson. He also worked as an actor in the films "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," "Heaven's Gate," "A Star is Born," "Songwriter," "Miss Congeniality," "The Alamo," "Sweet Thing" and "Man Of The House."

Turner Stephen Bruton grew up surrounded by music in Fort Worth, Texas. His jazz drummer father ran a record store where he was weaned on the musical classics from blues, country, jazz and pop to classical. "He always said, if you're going to listen to music, listen to the best music," said Bruton on his web site.

By his teen years, Bruton and his buddy Burnett put down tracks in Burnett's makeshift home studio in between gigging with friends like Delbert McClinton, while digging on musical giants like Freddie King and Ornette Coleman, who could be heard in the local clubs. Bruton played high lonesome bluegrass by day and then soaked up some soul by grinding out the blues at night.

"The thing about Fort Worth is that there was no scene there," Bruton said. "No one was looking at Fort Worth, believe me. But there was great music there and always has been. It's always been black guys and white guys playing together. There was this great exchange of music."

In 1970, Bruton went to Woodstock, N.Y. One night, he headed down to Manhattan to catch a gig by his friend Kristofferson and was offered the guitar gig in the rising songwriting star's band. That launched nearly two decades of regular roadwork with Kristofferson as well as touring with Raitt, Christine McVie and others.

By the mid 1980s, Bruton returned to his Texas roots and settled in Austin, where once he had a break from the road, he became a part of the city's music community. Although he had produced an album with Burnett for Fort Worth musician Robert Ely and the song Amnesia & Jealousy for Burnett's "Behind The Trap Door" album, his production career began in earnest when Jimmie Dale Gilmore asked him to produce his major label debut, "After Awhile."

Bruton also debuted as an artist in his own right with "What It Is" in 1993. And as he stepped out from being a sideman into the spotlight with his own songs, they began to be recorded by such notable artists as Nelson, Jennings, Cash, Loveless, Kristofferson, Raitt, Hal Ketchum, The Highwaymen, Little Feat, Jimmy Buffett, Lee Roy Parnell and Martina McBride among others.

Since appearing in "A Star Is Born" with Kristofferson in 1976, Bruton has acted on TV and film. "When Kris started doing films, he would bring his buddies along because he always had the bullshit meter with us. So we wound up reading for parts," Bruton said.

"In acting, you use everything you use when you are playing music live," said Bruton. "It's an ensemble thing. It's real similar in terms of support and collaboration."

"The guitar is the constant among variables in my life," said Bruton. Since playing with Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge on their "Full Moon" album in 1973, he has recorded with Raitt, McClinton, Burnett, Elvis Costello, Carly Simon, The Wallflowers, Sonny Landreth, Peter Case, Ray Wylie Hubbard and others.

"I really enjoy doing lots of things, whether it's playing a bit part in The Alamo or playing guitar with Bob Schneider for a couple of years. And then I produce and do my own thing," he said.

The funeral will be held in Fort Worth.

Although his credits as a guitarist, producer and songwriter were highly impressive, there was so much more to Austin icon Stephen Bruton, who lost a two and a half year battle with throat cancer Saturday morning in Los Angeles.

“He was one of the bright spots in the lives of anyone who was close to him,” said Kris Kristofferson, who hired a 22-year-old Bruton to be his guitar player in 1971. The gig lasted 17 years and made the pair as close as brothers. Bruton also played in the bands of Bonnie Raitt and Delbert McClinton, plus he produced career-defining albums by Alejandro Escovedo, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Marcia Ball..

“I feel fortunate that I was able to get back to L.A. last night and say farewell,” Kristofferson said. “He finally knew he was going, after fighting it so hard for so long. I said I would see him again down the road, probably sooner than later.” The two talked for awhile, then, late Friday night, Bruton said he had to go to sleep. He never woke up. He was 60.

“Stephen Bruton was the soul of Texas music,” T-Bone Burnett said in a statement Saturday. “This is an incalculable loss. He was my oldest friend and I loved him like a brother. I learned more from him than I can say.”

Burnett flew Bruton to L.A. in a private jet about two months ago, knowing that playing the guitar in the studio would be great for Bruton’s spirits. “Stephen wanted to work,” said Cameron Strang, the president of New West, which released three Bruton solo LPs. Besides playing on a soundtrack produced by Burnett for the upcoming Jeff Bridges movie “Crazy Heart,” Bruton saw two highly regarded oncologists in L.A. and had initially showed signs of improvement, Strang said.

Back home in Austin, where the guitarist played every Sunday night with the Resentments at the Saxon Pub for several years, there was hope that Bruton would pull through. If anyone could beat cancer… Instead, a music community still reeling from Wednesday’s death of Willie Nelson’s beloved stage manager Poodie Locke, had to deal with another great loss.

‘We owe a lot to Stephen Bruton,” Saxon Pub owner Joe Ables said, speaking not only for his club on South Lamar, but Austin as a whole. “The word I think of when I think of Stephen is ‘respect.’ Everyone respected him as a man of talent and integrity. He was the guy you looked up to.”

He was also known as someone you could turn to in times of despair. After getting sober about 20 years ago, Bruton was there to help anyone who wanted to lead a life without drugs and alcohol. He didn’t preach, but inspired by example..

As a producer, Bruton had a way of taking command that made you want to follow him, said Jimmie Dale Gilmore, whose Bruton-produced album “After Awhile” took Gilmore out of the honkytonks and into listening rooms and concert halls. “He was so important to me,” Gilmore said. “He had the right combination of genuine musicianship and organizational skill that made him such a great producer. Plus he was so much fun to work with.”

Off-the-cuff comedy was another of Bruton’s talents you won’t find in liner notes, but he could also take a joke. Once he was the best man at a wedding, but was the last one to arrive. As the couple waited patiently and the guests looked back at the entrance for Bruton, someone said ‘Turn on a movie camera and he’ll be here in two minutes” and everyone cracked up. Including Bruton, when he was told about it.

Raised on rhythm and blues and country in his family’s record store in Fort Worth, Turner Stephen Bruton was only 20 when he met budding songwriter Kristofferson in Fort Worth. A couple years later, the suddenly hot Kristofferson asked Bruton if he was interested in playing the guitar in his band. “Man, that’s all I’m interested in,” Bruton answered back.

“Kris was always so encouraging about my songwriting,” Bruton told the American-Statesman in 2007. Bruton co-wrote the title track of Kristofferson’s 1972 album “Border Lord” and had his greatest writing thrill when Raitt and Willie Nelson sang a duet of Bruton’s “Getting Over You” on Nelson’s “Across the Borderline” LP.

Raitt has a show Sunday in Austin at the Bass Concert Hall. It could be one of the toughest she’ll ever have to get through, as she and Bruton were extremely close.

By the time he played a part in the video for Raitt’s “Thing Called Love,” Bruton was a bit of an acting veteran. Through his association with Kristofferson, the guitarist with the movie star looks beefed up his resume with roles in such films as “A Star Is Born,” “Heaven’s Gate” and “Songwriter’ (writen by Bud Shrake, who passed away yesterday). Bruton also had speaking roles in “The Alamo,” and “Miss Congeniality” and had a cameo as the band leader in the TV series ‘Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip.’

And then he got cancer. His wife Mary had a sore throat one day and she wanted to see what a normal throat looked like so she had Stephen say ‘ah,’ but his red and swollen tonsils looked even worse. He was diagnosed in December ‘06 and vowed to fight it with everything he had. Even though he was still feeling the exhausting effects of chemotherapy, he worked as band leader for the Freescale Semiconductor “Road To Austin” show in May 2007. Playing again with special guests Kristofferson, Raitt and McClinton seemed to rejuvenate “the Kid.”

McClinton and Bruton go back to 1965, when a 16-year-old Stephen and his older brother Sumter were guitarists in the house band of a Fort Worth juke joint called the Bluebird. McClinton would sometimes sit in on harp; white teenagers playing the blues in a black club and having a blast.

By the time he hooked up with Kristofferson, Bruton had an encyclopedic knowledge of guitar riffs. But his playing was never flashier than what the song called for. “He’s my all-time favorite guitar player,” Kristofferson said.

In that 2007 interview with the American Statesman, Bruton proudly pulled out a photo of him and Kristofferson backstage warming up for their first gig together, at the Golden Bear in San Rafael, Calif. in 1971. That was the moment Bruton became a professional musician.

“Touring with Kris was the greatest experience,” Bruton said, looking at the photo with a big smile. “I feel like we went through life together.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQEyff1vZok

Also, here is a link to Jon Kanis' 'State Controlled Radio' which is a great ongoing music resource that you might dig. He dedicated this show to me on my birthday, (thanks Jon) and as this includes a number of my actual favorite records... I thought you might enjoy it, too.

It also includes 'Coulda Shoulda Woulda,' the first song I wrote with my good friend Duane Jarvis, who died last week. It's been a rough year for musicians and their friends in LA, with the deaths of Chris Gaffney, Michael Bannister, and now Duane... a sad time.

Also dig Stan Ridgway's 'Talkin' Wall of Voodoo,' a song that nearly says it all about Rock careers.

State Controlled Radio Episode #158 April 5-6, 2009 Happy Birthday Peter [PC Turns 55]

1) So What/Miles Davis (from Kind Of Blue) (08.17.59) 2) Howl (For Carl Solomon)/Allen Ginsberg (from Howl And Other Poems) (06.59) 3) Every 24 Hours/Peter Case [with Richard Thompson] (from Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John) (08.07.07) 4) Juke/Little Walter (single A-side) (05.12.52) 5) Mystery Train/Little Junior Parker (single A-side) (1953) 6) Still A Fool/Muddy Waters (single A-side) (07.11.51) 7) Freddie Freeloader/Miles Davis (from Kind Of Blue) (08.17.59) 8) Smokestack Lightnin’/Howlin’ Wolf (single A-side) (01.56) 9) Milk Cow Blues/Kokomo Arnold (single A-side) (09.10.34) 10) Poem For Lew Welch/David Meltzer (from Howls, Raps & Roars) (1963) 11) Coulda Shoulda Woulda/Peter Case (from Flying Saucer Blues) (2000) 12) Peter Case SCR Interview in Santa Monica, CA (03.26.06) 13) 19th Nervous Breakdown/The Rolling Stones (single A-side) (02.04.66) 14) Save The Country/Laura Nyro (single A-side) (09.24.69) 15) (To Be) Young, Gifted And Black/Aretha Franklin (from Young, Gifted And Black) (01.24.72) 16) Day Dreamin’/Aretha Franklin (from Young, Gifted And Black) (01.24.72) 17) All Blues/Miles Davis (from Kind Of Blue) (08.17.59) 18) Desolation Row/Bob Dylan (from Highway 61 Revisited) (08.30.65) 19) Visions Of Parfume/Ron Franklin (from Blue Shadows Falling) (2007) 20) Paperback Writer/The Beatles (single A-side) (05.30.66) 21) I Was Made To Love Her/Stevie Wonder (from I Was Made To Love Her) (08.27.67) 22) Beulah Land/Gillian Welch (from Avalon Blues: A Tribute To Mississippi John Hurt) (2001) 23) Still I Long For Your Kiss/Lucinda Williams (from Car Wheels On A Gravel Road) (06.30.98) 24) Stones In My Passway/Robert Johnson (single) (06.19.37) 25) Blue Wing/Peter Case (live at McCabe’s Guitar Shop, Santa Monica, CA • 2nd Set) (04.08.94) 26) Talkin’ Wall Of Voodoo Blues/Stan Ridgway (from Snakebite: Backtop Ballads and Fugitive Songs) (04.09.94) 27) That Soul Twist/Peter Case (from Let Us Now Praise Sleepy John) (08.07.07)

Here is the link for SCR #158a Part One [04.05.09].mp3: https://download.yousendit.com/WnBRclVKbWd0NjhLSkE9PQ

Here is the link for SCR #158b Part Two [04.05.09].mp3: https://download.yousendit.com/WnBRclVLa0R3TGgzZUE9PQ

Also, the tribute cd to Chris Gaffney is out. It's called 'The Man Of Somebody's Dreams' and features a number of artists doing Chris' great songs. I sing 'Six Nights A Week' accompanied by a group, produced by Dave Alvin. Most of the set is produced by Dave and is worth getting, and relieves debts incurred by Chris' family during his illness. Here's the link:

http://yeproc.com/artist_info.php?artistId=13038

Please check this out.

Finally, May 1-2-3 are the dates of the Hidden Love Benefit at McCabes. See McCabes.com for details.

(I'll be playing myself in early June, I believe, in what will be my first show this year. More on this as soon as I know.)

Mr. Jarvis, who recorded five critically acclaimed solo albums, lived in Nashville from 1994 until recently. Known to his friends as “D.J.,” he played guitar on recordings by Flores, Lucinda Williams, John Prine, Dwight Yoakam, Frank Black, Amy Rigby, Giant Sand, Peter Case and many others. He toured with artists including Prine, Black and The Divinyls, and his songs were featured in motion pictures The Horse Whisperer and The Rookie.

He was an admirable conundrum: a rock ’n’ roller known for kindness and gentility, and a shy and soft-spoken man known for his electrifying stage presence.

“D.J. was such an unassuming fellow. He was quiet and sincere,” said Prine. “But he also had this Rolling Stones thing going on when he was onstage, whether he was playing country or rock. (Wife) Fiona and I would go see him whenever I was in town and whenever he was playing. I loved his songs.”

Mr. Jarvis grew up on the west coast, in Oregon, Washington and California. His father — who often played country records around the house — was in the U.S. Coast Guard, and his mother was a nurse. Mr. Jarvis was fascinated by music from an early age. As a pre-teen, he lived briefly in Florida, where he saw blues legend BB King in concert. At show’s end, he moved to the edge of the stage, where King saw him and handed him a guitar pick that he kept throughout his life.

As a teenager, Mr. Jarvis joined a blues band and then became a member of power pop group The Odds.

“I was very quiet, and music was my big outlet which helped me communicate with people,” he told interviewer Shuichi Iwami. “I think I would have been kind of lost without it.”

In concert, Mr. Jarvis would sometimes proclaim “This is what we live for,” before striking a guitar chord and singing one of his self-penned stories.

Mr. Jarvis moved from Oregon to Los Angeles in the mid-1980s, and he became part of an L.A. country scene that included Flores, Yoakam, Williams, Buddy Miller, The Blasters and Jim Lauderdale. Mr. Jarvis wrote songs and worked in Long Tall Marvin, a band fronted by Lone Justice founder Marvin Etzioni, and his session work included playing guitar on Williams’ Sweet Old World album.

He also played club gigs and made demo recordings, and the recordings caught the ear of former Replacements manager Peter Jesperson, who ran Medium Cool Records in Minnesota. Medium Cool released D.J.’s Front Porch in 1994, the same year that Mr. Jarvis moved to Nashville.

“The careening ‘Good On Paper’ and the wistful ‘Back of Beyond’ sound like lost gems that were left off (the Rolling Stones’) Let It Bleed,” wrote Bob Cannon of Entertainment Weekly in a review of D.J.’s Front Porch. “Jarvis seems to spit out these evocative country-soul tunes effortlessly, indicating that Front Porch is built to last.”

For Mr. Jarvis, Nashville offered an opportunity to collaborate with like-minded, left-of-center talents such as Tim Carroll, Amy Rigby, Steve Allen, Joy Lynn White and Dave Coleman. Music City was also a place for him to settle into healthier routines.

“Los Angeles was a fast track, and I was the one driving the car,” he told The Tennessean in 2000. “I’m the eternal optimist. I feel there’s a place for my songs in Nashville.”

One of those songs, a co-write with Williams called “Still I Long For Your Kiss,” wound up in a movie soundtrack and was recorded by Williams on her breakthrough Car Wheels On A Gravel Road album.

He also placed songs on albums by Carroll, White, Greg Trooper, Pinmonkey, Peter Case and others. Mr. Jarvis’ music was a mash of rock, country, R&B and blues, distilled into what is now often called “Americana.” As a staff songwriter for Lieber and Stoller, he scored no major radio hits, but his songs and guitar work were key elements in a street-level movement that offered a creatively compelling alternative to the more sanitized sounds coming from Music Row.

That movement was synthesized on a Bloodshot Records compilation called Nashville: The Other Side of the Alley, an album that featured Mr. Jarvis’ “Cocktail Napkin” alongside cuts from artists including Carroll, Paul Burch, Phil Lee and Jason & The Scorchers.

“D.J. was amazing in his guitar playing and in his whole spirit,” said Buddy Miller, who once hired Mr. Jarvis to engineer a recording even though Mr. Jarvis had no engineering experience. “He didn’t know what buttons to press, but he learned fast and we could show him all that. The important thing when you’re recording is to have people there who bring comfort and a good feeling to the room. He was just the best guy to be around.”

In Nashville, Mr. Jarvis recorded solo albums Far From Perfect (1998), Combo Platter (1999), Certified Miracle (2001) and Delicious (2003). Each album found Mr. Jarvis combining hard-won knowledge with his signature soulful wit.

“It takes a worried man to sing a worried song/ Had no idea I’d be singing for so long,” he wrote on “Spread My Soul Too Thin,” from 2003’s Delicious. On Certified Miracle’s “Broke Not Busted” Mr. Jarvis sang, “I might not be what you bargained for/ I’m a discount bin, not a money drawer.”

In 2007, Mr. Jarvis — who by then had moved back to Los Angeles — was inducted into the Oregon Music Hall of Fame. That same year, he was diagnosed with colon cancer. He endured multiple surgeries and round of chemotherapy, and in March of 2009 he entered hospice care.

Music remained a constant through his final days. Friend Billy Block said Mr. Jarvis offered a bed-ridden but note-perfect version of the Ben E King hit “Stand By Me” last Thursday, and Rosie Flores said he entertained her last week by picking out a song on a banjo.

As news of Mr. Jarvis’ death spread today, friends emailed memories to Web site guest books. They wrote of songs shared on stages and in backyards, beers shared at the old Sherlock Holmes Pub, and of the kindnesses that Mr. Jarvis bestowed upon friends. They remarked on the music that lives on, and of the peculiar grace that passed with the musician.

Thanks to everyone for their cards and letters, wishes etc, it's really helped to know of all that good will, especially through some of the darker moments.

Special thanks to Art for setting up the medical relief fund, and to everyone that's donating.

The address is:

http://hiddenlovemedicalrelief.com/

There's a series of concerts planned at McCabes: May 1-2-3...

I'm still trying to get my head around the possibility of performing in April. I sang for the first time yesterday: my voice sounded clear for the first time in YEARS.

I haven't had the ability to blog here for some reason, so I'm glad to be breaking the ice again. I can't get into a daily thing now, but's it's great to hear from all of you in the comments, you can carry the ball, OK?

Talk to you all soon, I hope, thanks, take care

PC

16) It's a good thing we ain't on the ninety first floor- cupid's cubicle & icebox free. Spent the morning casting gems at Shakespeare & walking green like a wayward child- I'm isolated in noise, distracted by the (no) drama- in love with nothing, that is, a vision of me, peaceful, strong and towering. Afraid of this, collecting tinctures & soft words to spread- this headache music for distracted lambs.

17) Connected in the weary ways & twisted too, like a country boy in trouble, but far & far, over Alamain trusted by deceitists, governed by blue clouds, and crushed in general by scotch work misdemeanors. Call me keen at sobbing, a spin merchant of my own gale, word mischief & battered by misconnects, in the wary weeze of simulacrum, soledad.

18) In the beach side room with the pom girl/ the flag used me for a blanket/ the myriad overhead & the poverty within/ the pseudo cowboy's voice on the sound system/ onions & garlic. Smooth &long creamy & rolls compliant. The radio drone the palm frond rustle. The dinner bell. The time like a razor wound. The end of the good life was a long time ago. A fish jumps a mile outside, it's a marlin, a young fish, an impossible force. Garlic & onions. Celery.

19) It's been a week now of automatic doors, stale odours, trains & plains, skytoppers, faces in front & waters in back. Anxiety balances on a nail, the whole dark brick night set to topple & scream, collapsed to room size & a bare ceiling bulb, but I'm protected by the power of prayer.

20) My mind wanders & some nights never comes home. The heat shuts down & the bodies go cold. Stadiums are no place for pearl divers fog lamps. Gasoline flows in the gutter, sandwiches go on strike. Paralyzed faces & fingers on fruit loops, piles of dollars on airplane wings giggle & shout, court the teens, bless the frozen bones, the rising pleas, the toxic touch of a foreign prince, O suffer these tears, your quagmire & coolant required.

21) It hurt but now it's over: the lights on plasticine/ skin stretched on wires, flood lights & heats trained on powder puffs midgets & trance doctors. The train pulled out & it was the whole world disappearing across the universe & I get on board. A Kodak moment/ before & after the Grail. El Destructo/ fleas in a corporeal sunset & sacrifice to the god the trophies were passed to the front & tossed into the hole, right before we all jumped.

22) The only thing I tried to steal was a picture of myself. Said goodbye to the countryside, also to the village, the town & the city, and heard NADA in reply. Feverish, thirsty. A bit anxious. Awaiting my beverage. No sign of green, no foretaste of April. And I'm in my Autumn? I'm looking forward to another Summer, hopefully not fatal.

Soon Derek and I were bound North again, with a hitch hiker in the back seat, and this time we took the road to Mexicali.

We dropped our passenger off in Calexico and made for the coast, turning North again on the 5, the 405, and the 101.

Back to San Francisco. It was a long drive and Derek was too tired to make it, so we switched places and I drove, though I had no drivers license, no eyeglasses anymore, hadn't driven for years, and the world was a blur. Derek sort of forced it: he was getting bugged. The conclusion of the trip hadn't agreed with his sense of adventure, or maybe he'd just hoped for a different outcome. We'd never found the two girls we were looking for, Derek's lawyer friend, and whatever number he'd been planning to run on me, well, I wasn't buying.

We got back to the city with me at the wheel, after dark. We went straight to his McCallister Street pad and crashed, after dealing with some difficulties and his flipped out building manager, Stapleton. Stapleton was a middleaged man who lived alone with 2 big dogs that he'd put out in the yard. The dogs had fleas and now so did we, after being back for all of a half hour, the fleas had taken over. Derek went to complain, but Stapleton wasn't too concerned. He was alone, drinking from a quart of beer, and playing boogie woogie on an out of tune upright piano, with snapshots of topless dancers taped all over it. Derek said the dancers were his daughters. Anyhow, mites or not we crashed, Derek in his room, and me on the box springs parked in the living room.

The trip out and the trip back were so different. Something changed when we met the diver.The gears of the summer shifted and my streetsinger's freedom started fitting me a little tighter than it had before. It's not that all of a sudden I got more serious, but it was something like that.

I wasn't any less free.

First thing next day we drove to the wharf and found Johnny and Burt, who were working together, playing with the case out on Beach Street. They seemed to be getting along fine, and were maybe a trifle aloof from me. I'd hear about it from both of them later. I jumped right in and started playing while Derek hung around for awhile, then split.

My friends didn't get along. Johnny chafed with Burt and Derek. But it was back to the long traipsing rolls across the city, guitars in hand, searching for a suitable site to sing a set. Back to the fork on the inside coat pocket, always willing to meet a meal halfway. Once more knocking out the long sets over and under the traffic noise, banging on the boxes 'til the strings broke and our fingers bled, while tourists tossed silver the winos tried to snatch.

Summer ended and the Winter began to edge in. One day's morning on the streets of North Beach the newspapers announced that Dylan would tour again, with The Band. How did I ever miss that show? I'm at the the empty intersection of Broadway and Columbus at dawn, bent over reading the papers headlines in its box. Black magic loogies dot the sidewalk. Shut down strip clubs go nearly transparent in the weak daylight, City Lights Books still asleep over there, tucked in. This honky tonk beauty beneath Heaven and concrete clouds: off to the East, a descent to the bay, North a view to the blue peaceful tyranny of Alcatraz.

Back to nights on Broadway's corner, though the crowds were flying away, thinning. I'd be shivering in my sleeping bag alone in my brokedown abandoned school bus, up in the cold morning, sun riding over the black bay, cormorants and gulls over Johnny's listing ark and his gutted microbus, amid weeds, brush, trash and stirred out fire sites.

His Cuban guru pal Cordova was due into town. 'Dova had been a hair dresser to Battista, in the presidents mansion, in Havana, during the days before the revolution. He was given the opportunity to split for the STATES when the government fell. Castro was on TV everyday ripping up contracts with corporate america: 'No Deal,' but 'dova saw the writing on the walls and even tho' he said he dug the new, he flew while he had the chance.

He must'a been a kid when that happened. He'd survived for years in the States, first in Dallas, where he'd met Danny, then on the particular psychedelic beaches of Hawaii, where the two of them took off to when Danny's court case for flag desecration went full on. They'd both taken a lot of LSD and Cordova now seemed to be getting his clothes at a Guru Supply Shop, as he was affecting a swami-like appearance, with white robes, sandals, and extremely long hair and a beard. 'Hey, cool it, baby, it's just a style' he'd say, but he was putting it on.

He had lots of memorable sayings. One of my favorites was 'Freedom's what you CAN do,' that one makes a lot of sense. He'd go on about 'woman's lip,' he thought that was real funny, and he had a routine about Jesus and the Devil, where the Devil kept making offers and the Lord kept saying 'No Deal.' That was Cordoba's position to society, he wasn't gonna make a deal either, he was firmly and proudly planted on the outside, a first class and total outlaw.

I wanted to put some fresh strings on the Yamaki Deluxe, as I was scheduled to play my first 'real,' indoor gig that night: I was supposed to sing at Gulliver's, the bar down the steps on the corner of Grant Avenue and Columbus, in North Beach. My name was written on the chalkboard by the clubs front door: Saturday 8pm, Folk and Blues, with Clifford Gifford. It was official.

So I had the guitar out of it's case and i was wiping it down with a cloth I'd found, and putting on a new set of Black Diamond Strings, and stretchin' 'em, so when Johnny handed me the joint he and Cordova had just lit up, I didn't think much of it, but dragged deep and held it in my lips while I tightened the tuner, and listened with half of one ear as they talked about this batch of pot that Cordova had guarded as it grew, when he worked for the Brotherhood Of Eternal Love over on Maui.

Soon time stopped as we entered Eternity, which looked a lot like our junkyard, but was a strange and alien place, a million miles away.

Too High. Airplane Trouble. There was no line and I was way over it. As usual during periods of 'high anxiety,' I found refuge in my guitar. I hung onto that guitar the way a drowning sailor clings to a piece of burning wreckage. How many times had Danny and I sung those songs in mystifying and terrible states of over-intoxication? Many.

It wasn't that the songs were expression: they were a routine, and a rendezvous. A move we put on, an edge at parties. We used to talk about 'the act,' (but not without a sense of farce.) Always the monkey beat on buzzing steel string guitars, with eye contact, stoned synchronized sound, tight but rough.

My mouth was dry, my body was a house, my head was the tower and I was sitting crosslegged, hypnotized by lights and shadows. A deep sensation of being stranded mixed with a strong doubt about whether or not I had just peed my pants. The California blue sky, the freeway whoosh as I said farewell to my friends and spacewalked out to hitch a ride into the city, the golden sun pouring it's red liquid metal all over my vulnerable flesh.

I stuck my thumb out and the first car stopped.

The passerby on the street were lit from within. The neon from the strip clubs blinked and traffic added to the whirl. From all directions on a Saturday Night, the shine of lights on buffed metal, and the drums of action on Broadway. something for everybody. A lot of nothin' much for anybody just hovering around.

My voice on automatic, the songs playing me, I'm a lighthouse with a tiny stairway within, where I stand, watching through my eyes and working the levers.

The bartender keeps telling me to turn down, and I'm not even using a microphone.

And X are giants. Super rock. The songs: I never get tired of em...

For various reasons I'm too beat to go on. That's the latest. Go see 'em if you get the chance.

Talk to you soon.

I've never been here before, and my eyes are peeled. I love the flat grassy fields into the distance, the cities stacked like boxes set out for the trashman, the radio show with the old man who'd been to school with Jimmy Carter: 'And now for the rest of the story.' And over us all like a cathedral dome: the big blue infinite nothingness shining in the brightest light imaginable.

Nobody knows where we are, but we're out here straight up in the sun, taking our place with the American workforce, a rock and roll trio on its way to a club engagement, and only seven hundred miles to go. To be out here navigating our way through the workaday world, past the high schools with their flags flying over the outskirts, past the post office, and the wherehouses with their teamsters and the gas stations, cars lined up and the diners with the behatted truckdrivers guzzling coffee and shoveling pancakes, smoking cigarettes, eating pie and talking on the phones provided at the booths, and when a stranger walks in, a roomful of cat hats turns. Which gives a shiver of excitement, along my arms a tingle, the feeling of being a man, and of belonging to this land like an ant to his hill, like a cell in the sea, like a tiny runner in the might of history.

America, home of Rock and Roll, jitterbug dances, hot rods and surfing safari's, 24 hour diners and search and destroy missions. Nonsense on the radio, people talking the national trash, 'I think we understand each other,' threats under our breath, fuck yous, 'don't- you-EVER-come-in-here-when-we're-counting-the-money!' motherfuckers, and God this place is a big and lonely bag of shit on a Saturday night. Walking home alone through empty little burbia's, trying to hitch a ride and the only one's who'll pick you up are drunk and murderous. America we bag thee on tour, 'the first absolutely independent band to tour the country without a record contract,' we are enlisted in your numbers, we're making history now, just like the rest of this whole damn country.

The driver has accelerated past the truck on our right, we're in the opposing lane, when over the hill comes another 18 wheeler, bearing down on us, horn blasting like a mad elephant: NNNHHH! NNNHHH!

Everybody screams, there's nowhere to go but straight across the oncoming semi's nose to the safety of the grass on the other side.

Panic, speed, a roar, then silence. I'm in back and I can't see, then it doesn't matter: we're still living!

The radio emerges out of the chaos: 'and the other students name was....... Paul Harvey, and now you know the Rest Of The Story,' someone shuts the dry voice off, click, and we're back on he road.

I'm an American, but I hardly know it. A pilgrim, but that won't become obvious for another 25 years. The band is the Nerves, and our saving grace is that we're completely out of touch with reality. The drummer wants to play a gig on the moon. The guitarist only wants superstardom, but gets scared in front of 10 people. And the bass player is nuts too, thats me, I'm mad for just hanging with these knuckleheads. Not to mention being clinically psychotic for long stretches of my teenage years. Well, thats all better now. Playing in a band has done wonders for my problems. Not to mention the speed and drink, that's helping a bit too, to keep the moods in line and the anxiety at bay.

I feel fine.

'Purdy Little Luh-uhv-song.' On the radio a bunch of cowboys with big hats, I'd seen their picture somewhere, playing flute like a bunch of sissy's: ha! But I liked it.

'Black Betty' Blam-De Lam!' we all loved that one. And Don't Fear The Reaper, too. 'Dream's' that was a pretty one, we all dug her voice and the droning changes, over the long, superlong drives and we'd stopped talking and were just daydreaming in love with the fields, and the telephone lines, and the birds on the wire. Voiceless longing, buried alive, crossing America on the adventure of our lives, on our way to Chicago, already a footnote in rock and roll history, and I'm about to fall in love with a stranger, just for kicks, and all on the promise of summertime, in the land called America, 3 quarters of the way through the twentieth century.

'I ain't that good yet. I don't carry myself yet the way that Big Joe Williams, Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Lightnin' Hopkins have carried themselves. I hope to be able to someday, but they're older people. I sometimes am able to do it, but it happens, when it happens, unconsciously. You see, in time, with these older singers, music was a tool- a way to live more, a way to make themselves feel better at certain points. As for me, I can make myself feel better some times, but at other times it;'s still hard to go to sleep at night.'

After 31 years of touring, I've got friends in every town. Many of them have had children since I met them, and some of the children have grown up, scattered out on their own, and I see them out around the country too. "My Dad turned me on to your records when I was three,' they say, and I'm always glad to meet them, even though it makes me feel old.

Saying all this makes me feel old. Wow, it's been a long story. On some level I'm still 15, trying to write my first song, amazed whenever something happens. And maybe I've become like the people I idealized back then, the bluesmen and the poets.

My heros in 1969: Lightnin' Hopkins and Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt and Dave Van Ronk. Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsburg. Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. I also loved the work of Fred Neil, The Incredible String Band, Memphis Slim, and Bert Jansch. I dug William Burroughs and William Blake. Cecil Taylor and Miles Davis. I read Marshall McCluhan before I dropped out of 10th grade. I was too smart for my own good.

I was very opinionated. Still am. I loved the Beatles, Creedence, and the Stones. Led Zeppelins first. But Zep lost me on their second record. I thought they'd slipped. I liked Lennon's first, but thought his Imagine wasn't well written. Randy Newmans first two blew my mind but Sail Away was too obvious, redundant, hacklike. I gave away my copy. The Doors first two seemed strong but the third was an obvious slip.

I'm not trying to brag. I know the world doesn't agree with me about these things. I also know I have to have strong opinions to even do what I do: write my songs and play them solo, for people around the world. I'm just trying to figure out why I can go on tour and still play to such a select (read: small) audience in so many places. Why am I hidden under a bushel? Seems like we should be able to get some more people into this.

Is it something I said? Maybe it's my deodorant...

It's better over in Europe. And the shows here do well wherever there's a strong local promoter that has educated the audience. But if it's just my name in a weekly newspaper strip ad, the usual turnout is 30-50 people. The general audience in most places doesn't seem to know me. I struggle to get my head straight around this. Folk singers like Lucy Kaplansky do quite well, Greg Brown has a huge following (built up from his days on Prarie Home companion.) Chris Smither sells places out. But the general folk audience doesn't really know me, or is just beginning to. Maybe this is because of my origins as a rock singer.

And the rock audience that has come up doesnt really know me either. I haven't been covered in Spin, Mojo, or many other of the magazines that communicate with that base, and I'm not getting played on the radio either, outside of a few specialty shows. So there are great pockets out there where I have fans, and great gigs, buts its not spread across the board. Yet.

I keep plugging, and I feel like my writing keeps getting better. My earliest recordings with the Nerves have just become popular for the first time, after 31 years. A three disc tribute album of my songs covered by other artists was released to rave reviews. I've been nominated for three Grammy awards, the most recent last year.

But in Dallas I played for 30 people. In Boston, 40 people came to the show. In New York, I'm basically unknown, after all this time. In Atlanta, Los Angeles, London, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Toronto, San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, the shows do well... But nobody except old friends come to see me in Buffalo.

I don't know why.

Robert Johnson went platinum in the 90's but up until then they had only sold about 15, 000 copies of his first. Ginsberg has sold many copies of Howl, but his other books were much less known. He performed at McCabes, just like me, and he'd had tons of press, was an icon, a known master for years. But, a poet.

The Plimsouls played to packed house that thought 'Sorry' was called 'Party.'

Blues singers and beat poets. You gotta have a gimmick, that's what he told me. Hmmm....

Enough about me.

Bye, Odetta...

There's a songclass next Monday in Dallas.

Check the Tours section for details.

Can't help musing on Michael Bannister's life and death, and how our lives intersected.

The old tales are interesting, but GONE! Their only value is to help focus us on the present in a fresh way. It's giving me a few ideas:

1) The Gift Of Death: death around us forces us to value NOW, the PRESENT, which is all we've really got. Far from being blood thirsty, maybe 'God' in his infinite wisdom, has ordained death, as a Necessity for human life, to make it much more profound and alive!

Another gift of death around us is that it sometimes allows us to see life a new, almost as if through a sudden and brief parting of a cloud cover, or fog. Our true location in relation to our fellows is glimpsed, for a moment, enabling us to fix our course.

For example, Mike seemed to have no sense of the many friends who cared, of the way his music and life had positively affected people. Tell you the truth, I didn't know it either. I've just seen it in the last few days.

Of course, its a terrible tragedy that allows us to see this, but its a dark day that doesn't have some good in it.

I want to go on a bit about music 40 years ago this week: The Beatles album, and a couple other '68 favorites, and then some commentary on Let It Bleed, this week in '69.

And finally, some thoughts on FOLK music... an important and relevant topic TODAY! Believe it or not. But first I gotta get outta here for a few.

Best wishes to all of you....

Michael had just moved back to Arizona after a few months visit back to LA this summer. I saw him several times out here, and on one occasion met his son Story, and visited with them both for awhile. His death is a great tragedy for the people he's left behind, that's for sure. I can hardly believe the news, yet I know it's true. My prayers are with you, and your family, Mike. You'll be missed.

He was like a brother to me, with all that can entail.

See you later, man.

'I've been a fan of Mike Scott and the Waterboys for 20 years, so I was thrilled when he agreed to contribute to I Shot a Man in Reno. He was, as you'd expect, a fascinating source and offered up some genuinely thought-provoking insights and views into death and the way it filters into his music. Not all of it made its way into the final version of the book, so here is an edited transcript of our chat. Enjoy! And please let me know your thoughts....'

Are you always aware when death crops up in your writing?

“Love That Kills”, “I’ll Meet You In Heaven Again” – those two definitely. “Spirit”, perhaps, this idea that the soul continues to live after the body’s death. I find it impossible to think about death without also thinking about the continuation of the soul. All the death songs that I’ve covered, like “Death Is Not The End”, “Soon As I Get Home”, “Meet Me At the Station”, they all have this quality, they all talk about what happens afterwards.

Is the purpose to provide comfort to the listener?

Comfort is one of their purposes, I suppose, although that’s never been the turn on for me. I remember when I first heard “Soon As I Get Home” on the original record by Thomas Whitfield and his congregation it had a profound effect on me – it touched me in a very deep place, and I think that place is the part of me that does live on after death; the song touches that eternal part. That’s the power of it. It’s a much bigger thing than comfort, these songs impact more directly and more powerfully than that. They are like confirmation, because they touch the part of me that knows there is continuation after death. It’s not a question any more. You see, I have a disagreement with the common concept of death. I’ve always felt, since I was a little boy, that in the words of Dylan, death is not the end. And so all my songs that deal with death or the songs I cover all focus on this idea. That’s what it’s about for me. It’s a battle of ideas. I disagree with the idea that death is 'the final curtain' and all that bollocks. I don’t believe it, and I sing songs that contest that idea. And I enjoy doing it, putting those songs into people’s mind and knowing that they have to think about it, that I’m presenting an idea that may be counter to the one that they hold.

When did this belief start impacting upon your writing?

The first time I ever became conscious that that was what I was interested in was when I found the song “Meet Me At The Station” on an ancient gospel record. I rearranged it, wrote some new lyrics, because I believed this idea that there was a continuation. My cover of Dylan’s “Death Is Not The End” precedes that, but that was more just because I liked the song. With “Meet Me At the Station” something else came into play, this almost crusading thing: I’m going to fight this lie with these songs.

“I’ll Meet You In Heaven Again” seems like a continuation on that theme.

Yes, it was influenced by the gospel songs I was listening to; it’s very close, thematically, to “Meet Me At The Station”. It’s my development of that idea into my own song.

“I’ve Lived Here Before”, meanwhile, is a reincarnation song. Are you a firm believer?

I don’t know! Nobody has disproved it, and I’ve had odd recognitions of places that I can’t explain, which is behind the song. I would subscribe to it, but I don’t specifically remember any past lives. I’m not going to tell you I was the Queen of Sheba or anything. It’s just a feeling I get in specific places, the West of Ireland mostly. Feeling familiar with a place you’ve never been before.

The other song you mention, “Love That Kills”, seems to me a more complex song.

It was written several years earlier and it’s a song I haven’t thought about for a long time. The company didn’t like it. It was one of the casualties of my deliberations with Nigel Grainge at Ensign records: with “Red Army Blues” I won; with “Love That Kills”, I lost. He didn’t like either of them, or “Old England”! It’s amazing isn’t it? With “Love That Kills” I was reading a lot of esoteric literature, it was my first awakening of that. I’d been thinking about these concepts for a long time: who are we, why are we here, what is life all about? And then in 1983 I discovered there were lots of non-Christian books written about this very topic. This was a great awakening for me. People like Dion Fortune. “Love That Kills” came out of that. I was at my mother’s house in Ayr when I wrote it on the piano, and it was just my thoughts on death being a love that kills, not a bad thing.

Who does death well? I know you’re a big Dylan fan….

I find it so hard to listen to his records because of the worldview. I love his records, I love the sound of them and the playing, but I just can’t deal with his worldview on his latest record [Modern Times]. I listened to it once and I can’t listen to it again. I find it such a dry…. I feel shrivelled after listening to it. I can’t go there with ya Bob! The great one is Brel’s “My Death”, which Bowie did a magnificent cover of. That’s a wonderful song – it’s an old heaven or hell thing. It deals with the increasing knowledge that our time is short. Of course, “Seasons in the Sun” is from a Jacques Brel song, but the Terry Jacks version is a very mawkish rewriting. The Fortunes did a version 6 years before – they had a near-hit. I know because my Mum bought the record and I’ve still got it! It was a much better lyrical translation, much less mawkish.

Should popular music be dealing with these big themes?

music is a broad church. There are very serious artists, and some not so, there is space for everything. It depends what you do with it. If it’s purely observational, if you’re just placing it there for all to see, then I think that’s OK. But if you make it sexy or get off on it or glamourise it then I don’t think that’s OK. Music has an influence and an affect, just like books and films. My life has been changed by music, it happens all the time.

Have you ever written a song specifically about someone who has died?

No, I don’t think I have. People always think “Is She Conscious?” is about Princess Diana, and there are elements of that, but it’s not only about that. The last few lines lead us very graphically to that Princess Diana conclusion, but it’s not about death at all, it isn’t to do with ‘is she conscious after death?’ or anything like that. It’s more like, what on earth was her consciousness like when she was alive and going through the things she did? What is it like to be her or someone like that?

So you’ve not been moved to commemorate somebody in song?

It could happen at any time, but I’m a funny case. I believe our human identities are only a small part of who we are. I believe that we are eternal beings; we come to earth and we have this human, physical, five sense experience, but it’s only a phase of who we really are. The idea of, ‘God, if only I’d said this to someone’ doesn’t affect me. Here’s the thing. My aunt Edna died recently. She was an English lady of a particular generation, a young person during WWII. I always felt that there was a certain chilliness between her and me, because I was the product of very different times and I had a much freer way of looking at things. We got on OK but there was this chilliness. Well, she died quite recently, and I remember thinking a lot about her as she died, and shortly afterwards every time I thought of her this chilliness was gone. I think she had shifted her focus from the limited perspective she had as an incarnate human being due to the times and circumstances she was born in, and she has returned to the wholeness of who she is. She has discarded those limitations. And now when I think of her, my thoughts travel to her and do not meet a barrier, they meet openness. I believe that when we die we meet each other without the restrictions placed upon us by our human guises and our own misconceptions

That’s a tricky thing to capture in a song!

It’s in “I’ll Meet You In Heaven Again”: ‘All the secrets we keep, all the words we don’t speak/Things that are hard to say between two men/Like the meeting of two rivers all will be delivered/When I meet you in heaven again.’ I caught it in that verse. And I knew it!

copyright - Graeme Thomson 2008.

He was last seen in Jerome, AZ and was driving a dodge van. He has not been in contact with any friends or family since around November 10 and we are very worried about him.

Michael, if you see this, please call.

The record sounds like Beefheart plays gospel, and it'll be out sometime in the near future. As soon as there's somewhere to hear it besides in my car, I'll let you know.

The tour: me and Crosby (Tyler, that is) left the morning after the election. It was great to be on the road and it felt like a paralyzing weight had been lifted off. People were in a high-stepping mood everywhere we went, especially the first few nights. San Luis Obispo and Sacremento were the first two stops and they went fantastic, great, enthusiastic audiences, good venues, just really good times. We had a day of in San Francisco, where we visited City Lights, then went across the streets and meet Jerry Cimino at The Beat Museum. Jerry's a swell guy, really knowledgeable on his Brat writers, and we hung out and talked with people in the shop for a while, including some college kids who interviewed me about what Beat means now.

The Monterey and Felton shows were a little more subdued but went well enough, and Crosby began really getting his thing down ib front of an audience. We did a live on-radio performance Sunday Morning on KPIG with Arden filling in for DJ 'Sleepy John' and they loved Cros, especially after hearing the wild impromptu performance of his 'Fugitive From The Law' backed by young SF string band Buxter Hoot'n. I rocked'em with a little 'Crooked Mile,' some 'Farewell To The Gold' and a few others and it was just a really good time.

The worst days of the tour were the airline travel days, both brutal 19 hour ordeals that moved us coast to coast. Each of these torture sessions began at 4am, and ended after midnight, and included airport shutdowns, huge long layovers etc... any driving day is easily more fun, since the planes are packed and induce claustraphobia, and theres pretty much zip of interest at the airports.

East coast was a gas, the highlights being the Peace Dale, RI house concert in the home of Dan and Liz Ferguson, which was sold out, a super gas, warm like a great Christmas Party, along with the show at Cambridges Passim a good one, and Porlan, Maines '1 Longfellow Square' a nice gig as well, swell venue, like an East Coast McCabes.

New York remains a freakout, the Lower East side untouched by the recession it seems, streets swarming with youthful party people (see Richard Price's recent novel 'Lush Life' for detail's.)

Unexpectedly ran into 'Million Miles Away' producer Jeff Eyrich, who flipped out over the Crosby record we gave him. Jeff is still a active, hard working musician, playing gigs in the city every night, and hitting the road hard with different acts, esp. one called 'Lipbone' ( I think he as saying, I need to get the word on this.)

Saw my son Josh, and we all stayed at his Brooklyn loft with his girlfirend Abby and their 4 cats. I met a painter named John and talked about songwriting one on one with him for a couple hours, before one of the shows... a lot of people at the New York shows had Nerves records (newly out on Alive/Naturalsound) that they wanted me to sign. Seems to be getting a great reception, wow, that only took thirty two years!

Speaking of vast vistas of time, February 7 is the date for the Peter Case 25th Anniversary show at McCabes.

and BTW, Badger and I are discussing the release of The Case Files album in early 2009.

Anyhow, the trip went by quickly, that was it for the fall tour, the winter tour starts next week in Texas, check out the Tour Listings off the home page.

I'm working on this damn book again, it just keeps growing, I can't seem to get the lid on it. Oh well...

Been reading Wyatt Masons 'Complete Rimbaud,' a great translation, very inspiring, read along with the Graham Robb bio from a few years back. Also, Technicians of The Sacred (ed. by Jerome Rothenberg,) Kafka's Zurau Aphorisms, The Unknown Poe, and the Gospel According To Matthew.

No movies lately, they seem to be sucking again.

Music, dig: Hacienda (garage band sounds like Beachboys,) The Buffalo Killers (midwest heavy rock produced by Black Keys singer.) Ron Franklin's 'City Lights' on Memphis International, is still on the TOP of my list, get into this guy before the whole world rolls over, ok. Order this record, and play it a lot, your life will improve! Ron's latest, on Alive, is great as well, but the MI one is the best place to start, IN MY OPINION.

Hey, why is Obama even dealing with the Clintons? Yipes, I don't like the looks of that. We'll see.

OK, 'nuff outta me, it's back to work.

Still mixing the DRW album. Packing for the road, goin' back on tour Wednesday. Moving out of the office me and David-o and Crosby worked in. People in town.

We all got millions of things to do. It could be an historic day. The start of something new? Maybe... we'll see.

Keep your fingers crossed.

Nov 7 2008 Sacramento, CA Swell Productions presents Peter Case w/special guest Crosby Tyler at The Beatnik 2421 17th St. Tickets $15, available at R5 Records (2500 16th St.) and online at www.inticketing.com

Nov 8 2008 7:00 PM Monterey, CA Monterey Live w/special guest Crosby Tyler EARLY SHOW!! www.montereylive.org

Nov 9 2008 Santa Cruz (Felton), CA w/special guest Crosby Tyler Don Quixote's 6275 Highway 9 Tickets: $13adv/$15dos www.donquixotesmusic.info 831-603-2294

Nov 11 2008 8:00 PM Portland, ME One Longfellow Square 181 State St Portland, ME 04101 207 239 1855 www.onelongfellowsquare.com

Nov 12 2008 8:00 PM Cambridge, MA Club Passim 47 Palmer St Cambridge, MA 02138 617 492 7679 www.clubpassim.org

Nov 13 2008 4:30 PM New York City, NY Songwriting Class!!!! Googie's Lounge@The Living Room 154 Ludlow St. NYC,NY 10002 www.livingroomny.com 212 533 7235 $75/per student ($120 if attending both days)includes ticket to either of the evenings'shows tickets available in advance beginning Oct.25 at www.ticketweb.com

Nov 13 2008 10:30 PM New York City, NY Googie's Lounge@The Living Room 154 Ludlow St. NYC,NY 10002 www.livingroomny.com 212 533 7235 seating is extremely limited!! tickets ($20)available in advance beginning Oct.25 at www.ticketweb.com

Nov 14 2008 10:30 PM New York City, NY Googie's Lounge@The Living Room 154 Ludlow St. NYC,NY 10002 www.livingroomny.com 212 533 7235 seating is extremely limited!! tickets ($20)available in advance beginning Oct.25 at www.ticketweb.com

Nov 14 2008 4:30 PM New York City, NY Songwriting Class!!!! Googie's Lounge@The Living Room 154 Ludlow St. NYC,NY 10002 www.livingroomny.com 212 533 7235 $75/per student ($120 if attending both days)includes ticket to either of the evenings'shows tickets available in advance beginning Oct.25 at www.ticketweb.com

Nov 15 2008 8:00 PM Peace Dale, RI Roots Hoot House Concerts contact Dan Ferguson at boudindan@cox.net

It really is. What's great about music is spiritual, and that can be on the cd, the mp3 or whatever. But somehow, there's more of that quality on vinyl.

King Of The Delta Blues Singers, 1 + 2, Willie And The Poorboys, Ike Turner and the Rhythm Kings' 'You Gotta Lose,', Paul Young singing 'Wherever I Lay My Hat,' The Band 'Whispering Pines.' Very refreshing. I like new stuff, but thats more expensive. You can collect old records on the cheap. Tell Tale Signs is 95 bucks, forget it. But I sure would like to hear it.

3 more days 'til the fuckin' election. Three years in the making. These long campaigns should be stopped, somehow. More time for lies does not equal democracy.

Got my fingers crossed for Obama. For all of us, actually.

The Dead Rock West album is nearly done, with guest appearances by John Doe, Exene, and Mark Olson. It's a rocker, Gospel meats Captain Beefheart, and I'm very proud of it.

The Streets Of Derry by Andy Irvine and Paul Brady is the saluted song this week... maybe it's on itunes. Check out the album.

Here comes November. Best wishes, gang.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBGkhPx529g&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ad8RVexRUoQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olplcsNuqyg

And don't forget this all time favorite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBk8t3C4yws

Of course, Palin is making him look better in retrospect. But, Stone pulled the punches (or buried the story completely) on domestic spying, tax cuts, the social security scam they were trying to pull, and the incompetant ignorance that became obvious during Hurricane Katrina.

How about the Rovian campaign tactics that undermined our democracy? Swift boating? Barely mentioned. Bush should be wiping his brow in relief. A movie like this could have been tough, instead it's merely a skit.

When was the last powerful Oliver Stone movie anyway? This movie should've caused boils, instead it played patsy. A waste of time and money.

That said, Josh Brolin does a heckuva job with what he's given, as do most of the actors. But it's the script (and the intention) that's the problem.

We are about to end the Bush era, and maybe elect the first African American president: a landmark, a huge coming into the future, a long time coming.

Meanwhile, fascism stirs its head in the US.

The stocks crashed.

Dylan released a brilliant collection.

The Nerves record was released, some of the music in the can for over 30 years.

Etc.

Interesting times?

The Nerves CD/LP is out this week, on Tuesday! On Alive/Naturalsound Records... I'll see if I can get a link up. 32 years in the making? Arghhh! ( I'm proud of it.)

The new Dylan is spending a lot of time on the turntable around here. The live version of Highwater Everywhere is astounding. As are many of the tracks: the bluesy Mississippi, the acoustic Most Of The Time, the majestic Born In Time. There's a beautiful live Ring Them Bells. And a number of songs I've never heard before.

I've already raved here about the Red River Shore.

The album is about now, somehow, has a very serious cast, runs deep, and is more enjoyable somehow, in my view, than Modern Times. A rare glimpse of BD's process as well. Dig it.

Anybody see Richard Hells Rimbaud review in the NYT Sunday?

Dodgers? Took care of The Phillies at home in Chavez Ravine... almost a brawl. Momentum shifting?

I'm taping today for an KCRW show about McCabes, to be broadcast Thanksgiving Day.

Have you heard The Buffalo Killers yet? I dig them, and Hacienda. both on Alive/ Naturalsound Records. Great young bands, I kid you not. Check out there videos, I guess is the way to go...

Obama. Obama.

ACORN pays workers for voter registrations. This often results in a few bad apples handing in phony names for the money. It's happened before, dead people end on the voter rolls.

BUT, this is VOTE REGISTRATION FRAUD, NOT VOTING FRAUD. There is no evidence at all that there is a plan by anybody to use these registered names to vote. This is being done by individual workers for the dough. In most cases like this the names are never used. Repeat: there is no evidence at all of a plan by anybody to commit VOTING FRAUD.

The fake names were discovered and turned in by ACORN in the first place. This is a phony story, being trumpeted by Lou Dobbs, Fox etc...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g72BuIvMbWY

'The Obama campaign, in an effort to combat increasingly negative attacks by the McCain camp, is launching an aggressive, multi-pronged effort to highlight McCain's involvement in the "Keating 5" savings-and-loan scandal:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Monday will launch a multimedia campaign to draw attention to the involvement of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the "Keating Five" savings-and-loan scandal of 1989-91, which blemished McCain's public image and set him on his course as a self-styled reformer.

Pushing back against what it calls McCain's "guilt-by-association" tactics, the Obama campaign is e-mailing millions of supporters a link to a website, KeatingEconomics.com, which will have a 13-minute documentary on the scandal beginning at noon Eastern time on Monday. The overnight e-mails urge recipients to pass the link on to friends.

The Obama campaign, including its surrogates appearing on radio and television, will argue that the deregulatory fervor that caused massive, cascading savings-and-loan collapses in the late '80s was pursued by McCain throughout his career, and helped cause the current credit crisis.'

Odetta was a revelation, I'd seen her before, but something about this performance (which happened to be delivered from a wheelchair) was particularly soulful and moving. She has what they call 'an ancient voice.'

Richard Thompson and band backed the 5 Blind Boys Of Alabama. I'd never heard Richard play such driving, rocking electric guitar as he did on these two songs. Usually he stays away from blues, but on the first of the Blind Boys numbers he was playing the riff from Rolling And Tumbling.

The Blind Boys were powerful, apocalyptic, still going really hard.

I played First Light to start the whole thing off, BTW. Then Michael Doucet and I dueted on Travellin' Light. I've always loved his shimmering fiddle groove, and here I am playing with him.

Los Lobos were great. Chrissie Hynde and her guitarist did two songs from the new Pretenders album. Steve Berlin commented to me as we watched her from the wings 'now thats a Rock Star' and he's right, she's got it in spades, the way she sounds, looks, walks, talks, the real thing, wow.

Jackson Browne played solo, Jennifer Warnes sang with her band, Richard T did a set, don't forget Van Dyke Parks who played accordian and MC'd. Magician Ricky J threw playing cards into a watermelon, The Ditty Bops sang, Loudon Wainright did a song with Richard, Peter Rowan sang his great Walls Of Time with Richard and the band, Bonnie Prince Billy and his guitarist played 3 beautiful songs, and Richards daughter Cammie sang with Richard and blew me away, she's serious, and has 'the Sound' in her voice, much the way her mother Linda does.

Eric Andersen came up out of the audience to join the mob on stage for a full cast encore of Hard Times, and This Land Is Your Land, which ended the nearly 5 hour program chaotically, with Van Dyke going of the front of the stage into the audience.

Anyways, thanks McCabes for 50 years, for being a beacon in Los Angeles, more than a guitar shop, more than a concert hall, even more than a community center.

I saw people I hadn't seen in years, straightened out some old scores, made some new friends...

Folks, this is an open discussion thread, so feel free to chat, just be kind to each other, ok? That's all I ask.

Hope to see some of you out there,

best Peter

Trying to get a million things together before I split, including the sign-ups for the new Songwriter's Workshops at McCabes in October.

I'm performing with Richard Thompson and a number of others at the McCabes 50th Anniversary Concert at UCLA in the first week of October.

I've OD'd on the election madness... c'mon Obama, just put it out there, you gotta make the case: it's not just 4 more years, its WORSE. much worse, at a time when it's change or fail.

Very sad about the passing of Jaime Cohen. He was a great and special guy, a creative force and supporter of many artists and musicians. I first met him in 1977, when he was working with Mark Mansfield and I came in to play guitar. He discovered Victoria Williams, and hooked her up with Van Dyke Parks... and sang on the latest Dark Bob record himself. He was a painter, and a million other things. Last time I saw him was at the SXSW the Plimsouls played a few years back. he came in the side door with me... bye, Jaime.

David Foster Wallace... a tragedy.

There's other things to report, maybe I can add to this later in the day... I gotta go deal with some JIVE now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c

How 'bout that one I keep raving about? 'Fearful Symmetry' by Northrup Frye? That's one for your songwriters.

The doors are open, it's cooling off. The Beefheart film was good, except for all the rock journalists. They spoke more than the players. The journalists were much more puffed up. Blah blah blah... I mean, Clinton Heylin actually was intersting for a sentence or two. But I dunno if he knew what he was saying, really.

Jef Morris Tepper, he knows what he's talking about. Gary Lucas. Eric Drew Feldman. Drumbo, even though he was filmed doing his interview in a tree, talking into a telephone. I guess that was supposed to be weird.

Trout Mask. Clear Spot. Bat Chain Puller. Ice Cream For Crow. There's some weird, or whatever you want to call it. One of the most completely original approaches in the history of music. (nothings COMPLETELY original, Beefheart leans on Blues and Free Jazz and maybe Shakespeare, Lear on the heath.)

Starting to get interested in touring again, here it comes, in a couple more weeks. Its been a great time for me to write songs and get my health together. My youngest kid turns 14 this week.

Wish this election would wrap up. Its agony, don't you think? McCain is a baldfaced liar. Not to mention Klondike. If you don't think so, check out the AP fact checking of the speech delivered Wednesday. What a load.

Beefheart, Robert Johnson, Charlie Parker, The Nerves! That's right, the Nerves: coming soon, on Alive/Naturalsound Records, their first full length. Hmmm... and my first, soon to be rereleased with a ton of new tracks, on Geffen.

(I almost said 'Soon to rereleased, under a ton of bricks!' This one was a long time comin'.)

Hmmm.... just rambling... and there's a draft of my book sitting out there on the piano, and I gotta read that, with a red pencil in my hand. Good night.

Sure is quiet around here.

Walking in, the first thing that hits you is how intimate the place is. It seems very small. We walked up and joined the crowd forming around the stage, and were pretty close.

Bob came on at 8:22 and was quite energetic. He stayed at the organ for the whole show, only leaving once in a while after songs to take a little tour of the stage, using that funny little bouncy traipsing walk of his, that he debuted in 'Masked And Anonymous.' The stage was simply lit, and the band was dressed in matching grey suits and black fedoras, which Bob dapperly stood out against, in his black tuxedo trousers with the white stripe, long coat, and his oversized Bolero hat.

I predicted before the show that he'd play Ballad Of A Thin Man, and Memphis Blues Again and he did. I don't know how rare that is, I don't look at the setlists, but it seemed appropriate given the socio-political dramas unfolding around the US right now. He was in good voice, for him, anyway. He played It Ain't Me Babe, and Trying To Get To Heaven as well as the other standards ( Rainy Day Women,HW 61, boogie style, Watchtower, Rolling Stone).

Sometimes his shows are wildly exciting (the last one I saw, 5 years ago) or soporific (opening for Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison at UCLA,) and other times it been like a trip to the museum, but there's something soothing, as well as bracing, about hearing Bob tonight.

It's the reminder, I guess, in a good number of those songs, of how long the world has been tipping above total chaos, and the space has Dylan created in the face of that, to be himself, to live free on his own terms (I'm not talking about stardom here, but the songs.) Albert King idea of the 'blues is to soothe' seemed to be the operative principle in this show.

The crowd was an age mix, half geezers and half under thirty. There were three 20 something girls in front of me, with their Dad, who looked about 40.

Two complaints, related.

The 'Bing Crosby' type material from Modern Times isn't working with this band.The rhythm guitar on that type of thing needs to be a big Gibson jazz guitar, or an archtop like Benny Green layed with Count Basie. That type of 'comping' doesn't work on electric tele, but comes off horribly stiff. It needs to be fluid, part of the rhythm section.

I miss Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton on guitars, and harmonies. That was the best band Bob ever carried. The possibilities were endless. The arrangements aren't as good with these new guitarists, they just aren't getting inside of it.

Tony Garnier and the drummer (who's name I need to get, after all this time) are wonderful. The drumming is big and powerful but swings...

Overall, it was fantastic, 'cause it was Dylan. The songs are brilliant, ring deep, deeper than anything else out there in the last 50 years. What a great artist!

She visits graves of poets, and thats okay, she is standing at the threshold of the invisible world, and trying to talk back... Blake and Rimbaud in a New Jersey, rock and roll accent. (BTW, the little paperback selection of Blake that PS edited is a great introduction to Blake's writing.)

Sam Shepherd makes an appearance, and he sure does have a nice way with a guitar, nothing too fancy, just a swingin' and authentic hillbilly feel.

She puts people in their place, gently at times (the scenes with Flea, and her then boyfriend Oliver Ray), dont fuck with her is the vibe I get, though she's peaceful, and funny, shes also serious as fuck.

The band sounds fantastic, especially on one of the tracks midway through, a song from Gung Ho, I think... just really rockin'.

This was a lot better than I thought it might be. I don't know, I just dug it. It's inspiring. I want to see it again, let me put it like that.

Once upon a time, Hollyway said 'the thing I like about Davido is he does what he wants. He surfs, he fights, he makes it with girls, he drinks, he doesn't give a shit what anybody says or thinks.'

You got a problem with that?

Eddie, also, in his own way, cares not for the reviews of man.

i don't care what you say, don't care what you think, don't care what you try to do about me.

The only one who ever cared was me, but most of the time, for various reasons, I didn't give a fuck either. I was at war with the world, and the whole gang followed. To make a million dollars?To rock the place. To see what would happen.

In the face of that, the songs were not flippant, or nonsense, or trying to be funny. There was humor, in Zero Hour, in some of the word's playfulness. But it wasn't the main event. The songs were desperate, on edge, driven, ecstatic.

Simple. Dumb? Maybe...

' I wish I had a way to tell you/ but I'm boxed in/ busting out/ its a long way back to Buffalo'

So the songs: 'some one to reach you! making up for lost time!' now!" everything's in exclamation points.

The plot thickened on the second one, but it was still exclamations : '3's 7's and 9's!' 'gotta find a magic touch', 'everywhere at once!' ... the oldest story, a million and shaky were a little more conversational.: things are falling apart, I'm a million miles away, that's the oldest story in he world', etc.

In '95 some of 'em still bore the stamp: 'you've got to get away!' 'we're gonna be late!' even 'It's a dangerous book!' 'must of got lost/ halfway home', may be more conversational, tho' its grief adds the point.

I felt trapped in he plimsouls song world, it was very difficult to write them, so many options seemed closed, if I wanted to remain in the style. I felt stymied, blocked, and do now. I need to find some keys to open this door in a big way, as i did when I wrote full service etc.

The inventiveness of other rock and roll songwriters was something I really looked up to. The Fleshtones, the Small Faces, the Stones... some of the work by Vanda and Young. Lou Reed and the Velvets... Not so much REM's words, but Beck I thought was great. Of course, Ray Davies, maybe the best of 'em all, the most constantly inventive. And Joe Strummer, a genius of the genre.

I wish I had a way to tell you a gimmick that could make you hear but living like this I've been buried alive everyday is like the end is near

boxed in/ or busting out? its a long way back to zero boxed in/ or bustin out? as long as i'm living & the lights are still on

You got a way about you and I got myself a lucky dime come with me/ we'll both run free they can chase us 'til the end of time

boxed in/ busting out? you can count the days I'm gone its a long way back to zero boxed in/ bustin out? there's a long way out of town as long as i'm living & the lights are still on

I don't need a destination Once you know you can't sit still keep running an' don't look back their pickin' up the beans that you spill

Beach Town Confidential

I borrowed Jill's Chevy/ said I'd be right back got down to the bay and saw my good man Jack Jack was beggin' lift up to the liquor store up on PCH : we drove down to mexico

Redondo Beach is a fine place to live three hours from the border/ Let me give you a lift when the waves are blown out there ain't nothin to do cept bangin on this guitar and smokin some bu

the federales jumped out and they jacked us all up they took our dope and money and they wanted to fuck down in tiajuana gary vanished from sight the ensenada police came and broke up the fight

three days later we were stragglin left Jill called the peelers and reported the theft Met some bettys on the jetty so we came back and danced once they saw the glory they went into a trance

I Dig What Yr Puttin Down I like what yr doin with that you aint got a clue but you know what to do a leopard skin coat and a rabbit fur hat/ a pearl handled gat/ louisville bat/

come a little closer let me see what you got

when yr old and grey and yr sorting it out.

the cops came in the window/ the gang kicked down the door Gonna have a good time and Friday on my mind...

its all gonna happen tonight: get laid, get paid, a big fight, it'll happen tonight: its all happening! it's all happening! get high, say bye...

I got a feelin' that somethings round the corner/ my numbers comin up/ gonna snap that losing streak... sure 'nuff.

The world according to John McCain is one in which America is triumphant at home and abroad thanks to the Bush legacy, rolling to victory internationally and mastering its domestic economic problems. If daily news, like reports of the 10 French soldiers killed by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and the U.S. government’s imminent nationalization of much of the American mortgage-lending industry, would seem to deny such a rosy scenario, then that only shows skeptics lack the courage that sustained McCain as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

There you have it encapsulated, the McCain campaign for president, an irrational mélange of patriotic swagger and blindness to reality that is proving disturbingly successful with uninformed voters. How else to explain the many millions of Americans who tell pollsters they prefer a continuation of Republican rule when so many of them are losing their homes to foreclosure and the nation is devastated by out-of-control military spending?

The economy is in a downward spiral, the national debt is at an all-time high, the dollar is an international disgrace and inflation in July had the steepest rise in 27 years, driven by oil prices fivefold higher than when George W. Bush invaded the nation with the world’s second-largest petroleum reserves.

While the oil-rich Mideast nations we protect refuse to fully open the oil spigots as payback for our military efforts, McCain celebrates Gen. David Petraeus as his No. 1 hero for “victory” in Iraq. Aside from the reality that victory there is now defined as returning to the level of stability provided by Saddam Hussein, who the Bush administration admits had nothing to do with the bin Laden-led terrorists, even that goal requires the cooperation of our former sworn enemies, Iran’s ayatollahs.

Presumably McCain envisions a more favorable outcome for Georgia, to which he would commit the unqualified support of the United States with his outrageously overreaching statement that “we are all Georgians.” If Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama had been in contact with the leader of a nation before and after that nation provoked a war, his campaign would be a shambles. Not so McCain, who is acting as if he is already the elected commander in chief ensconced in a reconstituted neoconservative-dominated White House. By contrast, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been reduced to a blustering bystander.

That military victory in Iraq and any other trouble spot is the key selling point of the McCain campaign is odd, because McCain’s credentials derive from participation in a war that resulted in the most ignominious defeat in U.S. history. How else to think of the loss of almost 59,000 Americans and 3.4 million Indochinese in a war that even McCain has long since not seriously tried to defend. Surely McCain accepted the notion that a Communist Party-run Vietnam was compatible with U.S. security interests when he, along with Sen. John Kerry, led the fight for U.S. recognition of Vietnam.

Wouldn’t it have been grand if McCain, who made his own pilgrimage of reconciliation to Hanoi, would have drawn the proper lesson from that sad chapter in American history—that victory isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be? Or, by extension, from the recent Olympic festivities in still-Red China, where Bush was photographed quite happily near portraits of the once-dreaded Chairman Mao, whom U.S. propaganda had long described, quite erroneously, as chief sponsor of the Vietnamese communists.

We are reminded of how brilliant Republican Richard Nixon was in rejecting the neoconservative addiction to the Cold War that McCain embraces when the late president traveled to Beijing to make peace with the man previously depicted as the bloodiest of communist dictators. It turns out that the various communist movements were nationalist above all else, and when we “lost” in Vietnam, the result was not attacks on the United States, but a war between China and Vietnam.

The lesson McCain should have learned is that the world is a complex place, that today’s enemies may be tomorrow’s negotiating partners—as Obama has at times dared to suggest—and that the neoconservative idea of a Pax Americana is a dangerous fantasy. And a costly one at that, not only in lost lives and blowback from the regions we destabilize, but also in the dollars that American taxpayers must waste.

Thanks to the absurdly misdirected war on terrorism that McCain so enthusiastically supports, we spend more annually in inflation-adjusted dollars on the military than at any time since World War II, even more than during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Vote for McCain and forget about funding to solve the Social Security, Medicare and subprime mortgage disasters or for anything else that truly would make America stronger.

I was feeling just as broke as the ten commandments/ when the earth started shaking like wash on the line/ everything went wrong and it felt like Christmas/ When the power fails the poor will shine.

C'mon darlin' let's go downtown/ I'm all shook up and I can't sit down/ I can't read and I can't write/ but this town's a riot on a Saturday Night/ This Town's A Riot/ This Town...

There's people sick with hunger on the corner of Hope Street/ near a store sellin' x-rated wedding cake/ the Pope drove by and the bums got the bum's rush/ coyotes chased a horseback man in the lake.

The town ain't no cheap hotel/ there's no room to live or let/ this town's a riot it's a jumble/ it's a ride on a mumbo jumbo jet/ This Town's A Riot/ This Town...

Amazed by what you see on Main Street/ linin' up for the goof de jour/ This town's a riot its a jungle/ from the jailhouse steps to your own front door.

In a room with a view of channel two/ wonderin' how much the lottery pays/ watch the miracle workers cleanin' up the wreckage/ like you're waitin' on a month of judgement days.

C'mon darlin' let's go downtown/ I'm all shook up and I can't sit down/ I can't read and I can't write/ but this town's a riot on a Saturday Night/ This Town's A Riot/ This Town...

This Town's A Riot/ This Town...

McCain nearly cried on about 6 or so of his answers. He runs so damn HOT! That's his substitute for well considered answers: just up the emotional ante. This will work with many americans, but Woody G said that thing about 'you can't fool all of the people all of the time.' We'll see.

Obama sounded pretty good. Can a brilliant black man sound reasonable and beat an old white hothead military Republican?

Hmmm...

Record of the week. The 1921a's. Check out their myspace. Really good young band, part of the McCabes youth contingent. It's very cool (to listen google 'the 1921a's' and go to the myspace link.)

"Dylan? He's the best living American poet there is, man!" --Andrei Codrescu.

For the most part, critics and reviewers have always stigmatized Bob Dylan as a lousy poet, advising the public to buy his music instead. When his book Tarantula was published by Macmillan in 1971, the reaction was predictable, and has been ever since--keeping in league with what is expected from that failed-artist class bent on bashing the bards they secretly aspire to be, but can't, for lack of imagination.

That common thought restated for the millionth time, I'll take another unpopular stance: I have never felt a connection with Dylan's music, nor have I felt the urge to worship him like so many fanatics from so many different generations all over the world. Still, there is something about him that I feel is worth appreciating.

Growing up in Minnesota, then going to the U of M (and living under "the watchtower"), I studied the same books Dylan did. I know this because, back in those days at the University Library, you had to sign a slip of paper inside the back cover whenever you checked out a book. And in the books by Arthur Rimbaud, the mythic name of Zimmerman was always there, scrawled in the same ink in which passages were underlined in French as well as English.

Meanwhile, Dylan's popular songs were being played daily (as they are today) on KQ92, and were just as overplayed as the Beatles--because America loves repetition and rhyming just as much as it loves a parade of clichés. The measure of mainstream mediocrity has always been reflected in the most commercial music; ie., the bubble-gum aesthetics of Brittany and the Backstreet Boys, the pop poetics of country western, etc.

But back to those whose job it is to maintain the standard standards of a mass market thriving on lyrical lard: their jargonistic journalism seeks not literary genius, but rather simple rhythms to secretly pledge allegiance to, since we all go la la la in our heads when we walk down the street denying the silence of our minds. Reviewers rarely being poets, though, and hardly ever scholars, it's no surprise they're out of touch with the history of cutting-edge verse.

Robert Christgau was the worst. He reamed Dylan in a New York Times interview when Tarantula first came out, stating that the book "is not a literary event because Dylan is not a literary figure."1 But the thing is, Dylan would be more of a literary figure if Christgau hadn't set the stage for the book's critical reception--which a herd of poetically illiterate reviewers repeated the sentiments of for over thirty years, essentially echoing Christgau's final damning words: "it is a throwback. Buy his records."2

Plus, the publisher's dismissive introduction (in which the editor refuses to identify himself) didn't help Tarantula become recognized as an avant-garde work of postmodern poetics. By explaining that the editors "weren't quite sure what to make of the book--except money," then employing the disclaimer "This is Bob Dylan's first book... the way he wrote it,"3 it's no wonder readers had trouble understanding Dylan's innovation.

Blundering reviewers like Steve Collins then came along and confused Dylan's readership even more by poorly explaining the literary tradition the poetry sprang from:

Tarantula came about after poet Allen Ginsberg urged Dylan to read Maldoror by the Comte de Lautreamont (pseudonym of Isodore Lucien Ducasse) and A Season in Hell by Arthur Rimbaud, both of them nineteenth-century French surrealist poets and writers. Surrealism is a modern movement in art and literature in which an attempt is made to portray or interpret the workings of the artist's or writer's subconscious mind as manifested in dreams. It is characterized by an irrational, non-contextual arrangement of material. Some describe it as automatic writing, that is when a writer quickly puts his random thoughts on paper without organizing them, allowing interpretation on the basis of the writer's total creative output, whether for a day or a lifetime of effort. Others call it art that is anti-art.4

Thus, we now have tons of misinformation informing readers about what Dylan was trying to accomplish. For one thing, Rimbaud and Lautreamont were never "nineteenth-century surrealists," because they predated that movement by half a century (Hey Collins, look up André Breton, 1928, and see if there's a manifesto; Rimbaud and Lautreamont inspired the Symbolists, who in turn inspired the Surrealists, but they never belonged to anyone's club). Also, Surrealism may have been a Modernist movement, but it hasn't been a "modern movement" for sixty years. One can only conclude that Collins' malarkey about "irrational... arrangement of material" must've come from the same place he got that baloney about a "writer's total creative output" allowing for interpretation.

I am embarrassed for the reviewers of Dylan, who note his poetic influences but don't have the foresight to look into these connections. Sloppy research, though, is better than no research at all when it comes to reporters trying to understand the purpose of Dylan's poetics. After all, to fully perceive the fine web of music and meter strung throughout Tarantula, it takes a "seer"--a term Rimbaud used in defining the voyant: someone who approaches the ideal of the impossible through a systematic derangement of the senses--which Tarantula does in conscious dreamlike windings.5

Such perspectives on seeing are alien to most people who have never studied the poetics of Rimbaud, but such lyrical language techniques were definitely visible to the visionary Dylan. He practiced these techniques with a skill and ambition that rivaled Rimbaud's. In fact, no other poet in the Am Po scene has demonstrated such mastery in this department since Walt Whitman.

The evidence for this, however, isn't in the fact that I say so; it's in the assonance and alliteration which Dylan saw Rimbaud applying to his already super-imagistic verse, making it more musically dimensional than anything that came before--thus, putting an end to centuries of rhyming in France by slaughtering sonnets, killing quatrains, and foreshadowing the future of free verse.

Dylan, though, didn't just imitate Rimbaud's syllabic acrobatics; he observed how Rimbaud placed similar sounds together to create melodic waves, then did it himself in a way that is hauntingly reminiscent of Rimbaud's poetic prose. Note the repetition of "u" and "a" sounds in the Rimbaud excerpt below, followed by the same sounds in the Dylan excerpt following that. Also note the "c" and "g" combinations in Rimbaud, as compared to the "l" and "d" combinations in Dylan:

From Rimbaud's "Bottom"

Je fus, au pied du baldaquin supportant ses bijoux adores et ses chefs-d'œvre physiques, un gros ours aux gencives violettes et au poil chenu de chagrin, les yeux aux cristaux et aux argents des consoles.6

From Dylan's "Black Nite Crash"

aretha in the blues dunes--Pluto with the high crack laugh & rambling aretha--a menace to president as he was jokingly called--go--yea! & the seniority complex disowning you . . . Lear looking in the window dangerous & dragging a mountain.7

Language aside, this Dylan passage hardly represents an "irrational... arrangement of material;" it is part of a high-art symphony of allegoric metaphor, fertile with commentary on Civil Rights and twentieth-century politics through the ghosts of Kerouac and Shakespeare via Greek mythology. And any reviewer who can't see this is either ignorant or lazy, like those who fail to notice the same (but less pretentious) intention in Dylan that is automatically glorified in the canonized antics of James Joyce, a "crooner born with sweet wail of evoker, healing music, ay, and heart in hand of Shamrogueshire... googoos of the suckabolly in the rockabeddy... copiosity of wiseableness of the friarlayman in the pulpitbarrel... wideheaded boy!"8

"Inaccessibility" is expected from Joyce, but not Dylan, who chose his name for a reason that his sophomoric followers--who view rhyming clichés as poetry--refuse to acknowledge. The Tarantula's web is therefore labeled "jibberish," as demonstrated by a recent listing of the "Top Five Unintelligible Sentences From Books Written by Rock Stars" in Spin Magazine. Dylan made the top of the list with "Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns."9

It's ironic, of course, that those who claim Dylan is unintelligible assume that his words have no meaning, but it's pathetic that they fail to notice who the "garbage clowns" are. If such bumbling media-mongers juggling rubbish took a moment to consider that the poet might actually be a poet and have some insight into human nature, they might decode the metaphor.

Meanwhile, there's an undiscovered continent of sense to be made from the seemingly nonsensical pages of Tarantula. Because reviewers of music are not authorities on poetry, there's a whole poetic "novel" by Dylan here waiting to be praised for cryptic brilliance. So get past the music, Garbage Clowns, and read the book--but slowly, and out loud, pausing with reflection.

End Notes

1. Christgau, Robert. "Tarantula," Bob Dylan: A Retrospective, Craig McGregor, ed. William Morrow & Co., New York, 1972, p. 390. 2. Ibid., p. 394. 3. The Publisher. "Here Lies Tarantula," Tarantula, Bantam, New York, 1972, pp. v,vi,viii. 4. Collins, Steve. "Tarantula: Poems," Book Reviews, http://poeticvoices.com/0006BDylan.htm (accessed 2/19/2003), 2000. 5. For more on Rimbaud's visionary aesthetics and the impossible, see "Introduction," The Collected Poems of Georges Bataille, Dufour Editions, 1998 (2nd ed), pp. xii,xiii; or Bataille, Georges. "The Malady/Greatness of Rimbaud," translated by Emmanuelle Pourroy, Exquisite Corpse 7, http://www.corpse.org/issue_7/ critical_urgencies/batail.htm (accessed 2/21/2003), 2000. 6. Rimbaud, Arthur. "Bottom" (from Illuminations), Œuvres de Arthur Rimbaud, Mercure de France, Paris, 1952, p. 261. 7. Dylan, Bob. "Black Nite Crash," Tarantula, Bantam, New York, 1972, p. 76. 8. Joyce, James. Finnegan's Wake, Penguin, New York, 1976, p. 472. 9. Compiled by Dave Itzkoff et al. "Top Five Unintelligible Sentences From [sic] Books Written by Rock Stars," Spin, vol. 19, no. 4, April 2003, p. 86.

The media goes along with it all, the idiocy seems to appeal in some big way.

He's got to turn it around. It should be easy: what's he waiting for? I remember wondering when Gore was gonna 'turn up the heat' in 2000. Never happened...

C'mon Barack, time to kick some ass!

About halfway down the Page: a four-hour podcast bio of Mike Bloomfield. Listen in iTunes if you can. There's a ton of great things I'd never heard before, and I thought you might dig it.

Go ahead and post your random shots this week. I'm not on shuffle.

Been listening to Bloomfield, Skip James, and Buddy Holly.

...and Dave Pahoa, w/ Crosby Tyler!

Also, strange signs of climate change in the mountain, scary stuff.

Me and Tonio were writing songs, but spent most of the time talking about the death of older family members, and mortality in general. Sound like kicks? We had a few laughs, made up a sharp little satire of Karl Rove, Tonio told me of writing lyrics for Bacharach, including a song with Brian Wilson. I sat on the couch listening, and every once in a while grabbing the guitar, turning on the cassette blaster I'd brought, and making up a jam straight into it. Just for laughs.

The Nerves record will be out in November, it looks like. The Crosby Tyler cd that I produced is coming soon. I really hope you guys check it out.

Hoping to start on a Dead Rock West ep soon, and may record a blues album (me on piano!) with my friend Ron Franklin. Don't worry, this one will be 'Beyond The Blue Horizon.'

I'm writing and getting ready for a Deal Breakers gig at Safari Sams (the benefit for Chris Gaffney's family and Drac), playing with Dave Alvin, and The Hacienda Brothers (Chris's band.) The gig is Aug 31, and I want all the 310, 213, 323, and 818 fans to come on out! Its gonna be great, I'll be rocking on my songs, with an electric band.

Record Of The Week: Devil Got My Woman, by Skip James.

Book Of The Week: I'd Rather be The Devil, by Stephen Calt. A hardhitting bio about James.

This latest songclass I've been holding has been so much fun, just a great group. It's the kind of thing I"D like to go to! 'I taught you that, now yr teaching me back!'

Also: I hear that the unreleased Dylan song I've been raving to friends about, 'Girl On The Red River Shore,' is coming out in October on a Bootleg Series release called 'Tell Tale Signs.' It's one of the best songs I've heard since, I guess, Blind Willie McTell. Its's really great, I'm not kidding. It's a rewrite of the old Kingston Trio hit, just like 'Mctell' rewrites 'St. James Infirmary.' The most inspiring thing I've heard in a long, long time.

Thanks, Bob.

2) Walking Out On Love -The Nerves -One Way Ticket (coming soon on Alive/Naturalsound Records)

3) Satin Doll -Duke Ellington

4) Lo and Behold! -Bob Dylan -The Basement Tapes

5) Traveling Riverside Blues -Robert Johnson -King Of The Delta Blues Singers

6) King Harvest (Has Surely Come) - The Band -The Band

7) The Worst -The Rolling Stones -Voodoo Lounge

8) Louisiana Blues -Muddy Waters -The Best Of Muddy Waters

9) It's Too Funky In Here -James Brown -Star Time

10) Come All Ye -Fairport Convention -Liege and Leaf

'To be outside of society is a lot of responsibility. To be a sacred bum of art, a sacred bum of the earth, we can't stumble like some disconnected abstract telephone. We have to wire up, we have to look each other in the face, we have to let our numbers be known, we have to find our brothers and sisters, we have to strengthen our numbers, we have to rise up, and a new generation, they will rise up. Which way will they rise up? With an air of positivity? If we don't give it to them, every fucking thing will burn! We have got to give them something. We have got to give them some hope. We have got to give them some recognition, that they are alive, that they matter, that they're not just a bunch of mindless consumers. We have to give them love, we have to give them an example, we have to get clean, we have to get tough, we have to get ready, because if the revolution comes, man, we're going to be there and ready! AWAKE! AWAKE! Outside of society…

We the people, we must be a thorn in the side of the Bush administration...'

I found a tape labelled "plimsouls last trio show' and that one is cool, the trio sounds tight and rockin,' guitar 'ka-rangin' through that old Vox amp, but what's really amazing is the audience you can hear on the tape: really vocal, shouting out during songs,the whole place buzzin', kind of a call and answer thing goin' on. 1 track from that is on the Nerves cd (there's a track from each of us after the break up, doing Nerves songs).

The weirdest sensation was making an album out of tracks I played on 32 years ago. At that point I'd already had a career for several years as a street singer, and was starting a whole other life, driving on the electric bass. Years running around doin' that, writing songs, then the trio plimsouls, the Eddie plimsouls...all different eras of life and music.

It's just a long fuckin'story, and it all starts coming back when I hear the tapes. Tapes of rehearsals, song writing sessions I'd forgotten, even a tape I made of the band having a drunken fight in the van!

Not as long a story as Crosby Stills Nash and Young though. I saw the Deja Vu movie. I'm glad Neil made the living with war record, I don't agree with the critics on that one.

But it makes me think: I'm 54...how many years I got left, at best, before the 'meatball of life' comes down on me, wipes out my abilities? Even Dylan seemed to be suffering diminishment on his last one. Stills has trouble, it seems. Even Neil, you can see it.

Oh, Life, why?

I still got things I want to do. I better get busy!

Bush leaving USA and the next president with record 482 billion dollar debt. Just like his Dad and Big Ronnie. His Dad left that S&L crisis, taxpayers bailing out a bunch of fat cats on their bad loans, loans to their pals. The money went up in smoke, didn't it? But there were a bunch of millionaires who made out. They say you coulda bought every family in the U.S. Mercedes Benz with the money that went out the window on that one.

These guys are rackateers, crooks. White collar crims...should be in jail.

Instead, we pay their way, while they insult us, over and over. Thanks, Bush. And all the ones who supported him, in the face of the truth.

What are the odds of it happening again? In a few years will everyone forget? Like they did after Nixon?

Will Obama be a Carter, inheriting a bad situation, then have to wear it?

We'll see.

The late, great Arthur Lee, from 'Forever Changes' This record meant a lot to me in 1982, when it was the early in the wee hours record of choice at my pad for awhile. I've internalized it, so don't put it on much anymore, but I still dig it. 'If you want to count me, count me out'

2) Christmas In Jail -Leroy Carr

Piano bluesmaster, great singer, God, I love this guy's music, him and Scrapper, 'Jail On Christmas Day, again...' A blues star of his time, sold way more records than Robert Johnson back in the day. My fave is Mean Mistreater, when he tells the woman who's doing him in: 'I don't blame you, baby, I'd be the same way if I could.'

3) Dog Treat -Tom Waits

Story time. "You know what they're made of?' From Orphans and Brawlers. As time passes, Waits looms larger. So many wonderful songs, so many ridiculous raps.

4) Rolling The Blues -Curtis Jones

A piano rocker. From the "Lonesome Bedroom Blues' cd. I'm crazy about all this blues piano, it sends me.

5) Fleurette Africaine -Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington, piano, with Max Roach, drums, and Charlie Mingus, bass. Haunting theme, from 'Money Jungle.' Duke was the Jimi Hendrix of his time: a musician whose art was primarily tonal (not to say he didn't have a brilliant sense of melody and harmony, 'cause he was a musical genius). I dig the early Ellington Band the most.

6) Last Fair Deal Gone Down -Robert Johnson

Was this the B side of terraplane? One of the first 4 78 releases, anyhow.

7) Uncle Pen -Bill Monroe

All those fiddles, about the Uncle who turned him on to music. Ever hear 'Last Days On Earth' ? That's the one I'm groovin' on.

8) Flying High (In The Friendly Sky) -Marvin Gaye

Another record that meant so much to me way back there (that's what happens on the random select, I guess: its playing stuff I don't usually.) This one was a fave during the street years, 73-74 etc... Another '3am forever' track. I used to single this one out. Stoned late night refuge from mad, bad days. 'I go crazy when I can't find it...' 'Danger awaits me...'

9) Chicken Is Nice -Dave Van Ronk

I once saw Van Ronk play outdoors in the snow in Buffalo. Guess someone thought it would be warm enough in WNY in March. He nearly died of frostbite up there. This song (the whole album, actually) was on the record player everytime I turned around, at Duffett and Bannister's teenage hippie pad, summer of '69. I saw him play a bunch in the 80's and 90's, then shared a dressing room with him at a couple gigs. A really great funny warm outspoken guy.

10) Minstrel Boy - Joe Strummer and the Mescalaros

A late night song of choice NOW.

I mean, I'm on a computer right now, but I'm getting out of here!

Usually I despair in the L.A. summer: I'm off the road, teaching, dealing with daily life kinda things, and I lose myself in the grind. Then, the suns too bright, and everything else feel like a straightjacket: the radio with its diet-choice of 60's hits, far-left or far-right politics, news. baseball, or npr, which is a nice mild mannered, fashionable straight jacket, but a straightjacket, never the less. How much information do we need? Trouble in the usual hotspots around the world, conjectured on in detail, by professional voices. Enough of this and I can't tell you who I am anymore.

The grid is all about the upper ten percent conscious part of my brain. The reason I love music is that it's about the lower ninety. The upper 10 percent is where people are making the money, fighting the wars, hassling about the borders. The lower ninety is where William Blake, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Bob Kaufman hang out. (I say 'hang' present tense, cause there's no time and therefore no death there.)

I'm not on the road now, and I'm glad, but I also miss it. I'm writing, making stuff, generally doin' my thing in a way I never can when I'm on tour, BUT: I do miss performing, looking in people's eyes and singing, and I miss the way the music can sound new to me each night. I miss the gigging, but I also miss, strangely enough, the travelling, the isolation of the long trips, and the flavor of the places I love. In other words, I miss driving over mountains, seeing how everybodies living, talking to strangers, and I miss the sound of talk in places in Texas, for example, in South Austin, or in Crockett over in East Texas, or my friend's in San Antonio. I miss pulling into New York on Friday afternoon and fighting my way downtown for a gig on the Lower East Side. I miss getting a few hours sleep in a cheap hotel, then shoving off for someplace in Maryland that I've never been before.

In the 80's it was even more of a release to tour. I'd go out for a few months, and maybe talk to homebase once a week. There were no cell phones, no email, just the road, and the gigs.

I miss that because thats when the country tells me what's happening. It's a connection with reality. That's being 'off the grid' in a way that a lot of us people never experience anymore.

2) Oh Mary Don't You Weep -Mississippi John Hurt

3) Three Little Birds -Bob Marley and The Wailers

4) Man In The Hills -Burning Spear

5) Beautiful Grind - Amy Rigby

6) The Partisan -Leonard Cohen

7) Atlanta Moan -Barbecue Bob

8) Mercy Mercy -The Rolling Stones

9) Two Part Invention # 5 in Eb -JS Bach/ Glenn Gould

10) Mother Nature's Son -The Beatles

If you get a chance, go see 'Lou Reed's Berlin.' It's a film of LR's concert performance of that album last year. Julian Schnabel directed it, and it's very moving. Steve Hunter (who, BTW, guested on the Plimsouls Everywhere At Once LP) rocks the house down on guitar, Anthony ( of Anthony and The Johnsons) sings a duet with Lou, and the songs... I missed this album when it came out in 73, never heard it. Well, it's profound. 'Sad song, sad song...'

A great rock and roll concert movie, maybe Scorcese had better check it out.

In other news, the Nerves lp is back on track for release on Alive/Naturalsound. More on this soon.

Anybody out there remember that one?

No blogging from me, I've been engaged elsewhere, writing, doing the workshops, getting the Nerves record together, etc...

Obama, is he doing all right? Seems like the 'media slant' is on, similar to what happened to Gore. He's getting toned down, from without and within.

He's getting it from all sides. I'm gonna send him some dough.

It's cheaper than moving!

Been digging Tom Waits' 'Goin' Out West.' Y'all know that one?

Badger should enjoy it...

Hope yr good, talk to you soon,,,

2)Down Where The Drunkards Roll -Los Lobos One of my favorite Richard Thompson songs.

3) Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning -Blind Willie Johnson, prophet with a slide guitar.

4) Under Her Spell -Ron Franklin from his great Blue Shadows Falling cd

5)Peggy Sue Got Married -Buddy Holly from his Apartment Demos.

6) Can't Anybody Tell Me Blues -Walter Vinscon a crazed piano and guitar rocker from the '20s.

7) Devoted To You -Everly Brothers.

8) Daniel In The Lions Den North Carolina Cooper Boys, from the Goodbye, Babylon box. This collection was a revelation.

9) Million Miles, Bob Dylan, Time Out Of Mind Still my fave of the latter day albums, even through a couple of low spots.

10) Evening Blues. Dave Alvin, Blackjack David, man, I love this album.

Oldest Story in the World -- http://youtube.com/watch?v=711bJnf_goo

I Want You Back-- http://youtube.com/watch?v=OjYc227ED5U

Lost Time -- http://youtube.com/watch?v=g7iFf-xXJs8

Magic Touch -- http://youtube.com/watch?v=LV0k1NpIPJI

These are from a french half hour television program on the band, shot in '82 at the Central (now the Viper Room) on Sunset Strip in LA. I've never seen these clips before, but they seem to be some of the more atmospheric 'soulclips I've seen. Leave it to the french to get it right.

I've been slugging away at the book, songs, and talking about new music projects with Ron Franklin, David from the 'Souls, and a few others.

PMA, that's positive mental attitude, very important, folks.

ANT, that's automatic negative thoughts, very bad, watch out for the ANTS! (thanks, Denise, for passing this along)

I dig some weird new records: Creator by Santogold, A Millie by Lil Wayne. The sound of these is a fresh blast of insanity...

I just saw The Big Lewbowski for the first time: 'the dude abides.' I love that.

The Nerves project is on again, back from the dead, we master it quite soon, stay tuned...

The Great Gatsby, what a fuckin' book!

Richard Price's Lush Life is pretty great... did I already say that?

Beck's new one is cool, not as strong as Mutations, but what is?

Politics poops on as usual, though I'll be very glad if Obama gets in, and will move if he doesn't. Don't believe the jive, people, theres millions spent on bullshit, but the battle remains the same.

The best song I heard all year is 'The Red River Shore' by some motherfucker named Bob Dylan. It's supposed to be released soon, I hear... will any songwriter ever top what BD has done? Maybe for a minute or two, once in a while when lightning strikes!

Shakespeare, Dante, Blake, Keats...

Talk to you soon...

What can we do that hasn't been done before? Forget about it. 'With the clay from the earth, make a cup for your brothers and sisters to drink from.' -Antonio Machado

Miles Davis was a motherfucker, wouldn't you say?

Some say 'write what you know.' But in songs it seems better to write what you WANT to know.

Boring art is a crime against mankind, though maybe one of the lesser ones.

I'm gonna move to Fastmandu. Or Buffalo, whichever comes first.

Pagan-American holiday: Fourth Of July Weekend.

2) Keep A Knockin'- Little Richard The most fabulous of all Rock and Roll heros. LR used to live right around the corner here, on Virginia Street. I want to get Virginia Park renamed 'Penniman Park.'

3) Rocker - Charlie Parker with Strings. When I was 15 I rode the bus 20 miles to go to a library that had this record. I played there in the little booth, and while the strings aren't my favorite, Bird's horn horn is so soaring and free. Everytime he comes in the world comes alive.

4) Variation 21- Glenn Gould- J.S. Bach/Goldberg Variations- I love this so much. Minor key rumination, sounds like snowy fields of my hometown in winter, the temperature falling in the room, here. I listen to this in the same way I'd dig one of Elvis Costello's great ballads, for example.

5) Know Your Rights -The Clash The whole neighborhood always enjoys this one. 'Get off the streets!' Strummer's accent on this is weird, in his role as a fascist creep.

6) Silver Dagger -Joan Baez I've always loved this, from the first time heard it as a kid, when my sister brought it home from college during summer vacation. Love and murder in a beautiful clear voice.

7) Biennal -Ali Farke Toure One of my favorite guitars.

8) Goodbye Blues -Blind Willie Mctell I got everything he ever recorded, and play it a lot.

9) Pinetop -Dr. John I put on these solo DJ records pretty regular... some of it is very ornate, I like this harder stuff better, but I love all Dr John, and I dig his attitude.

10) Public Enemy # 1 -James Brown Preachin' 'Maybe I am.' Telling the kids about heroin. A powerful screaming ballad.

I recorded a track yesterday, over in Hollywood, for the Chris Gaffney memorial tribute album. I sang Chris' 'Six Nights A Week' with a band that included Dave Alvin, and some of the Guilty Men. I look forward to hearing the final mix.

The doctor told me to straighten up and fly right.

Captain Beefheart, good lord: The Dust Blows Forward is a great set of his stuff. I especially dig 'Bat Chain Puller' Floppy Boot Stomp' 'Tropical Hotdog Night' and 'Owed To Alex,' all songs from the Shiny Beast album. Visionary, scary, Shaespearian, mad, vividly visual, built on the legacy of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and blues, and it rocks, but not in 4/4.

His paintings are inspiring too. I saw a show here in the mid 90's. Go see the website.

2) Far Away Eyes/ The Rolling Stones

3) How Soon Is Now?/ The Smiths

4) Airplane Blues/ Sleepy John Estes

5) Bend Down Low/ Bob Marley and the Wailers

6) Come On In My Kitchen (alternate take)/ Robert Johnson

7) Hurry Down Sunshine/ Leroy Carr

8) Jesus Is A Mighty Good Leader/ Skip James

9) You're Gonna Need My Help Someday/ Muddy Waters

10) Searchin' The Desert For The Blues/ Blind Willie McTell

Send in your Random 10 (they gotta be 'random' off yr tunelist)

thanks to RJ for this feature... see nightlight.com

Russell love for songs is infectious, inspiring the likes of me, people trying to write songs in a world that mostly couldn't care less. When I talk to Tom, everything I say starts sounding like a song lyric. He's always sayin' 'write that down.' Another friend, Bob Neuwirth, used to have that effect on me.He was always with you in thinkin' up an angle for a song.

People who dig songs deeply know how to listen to them. They listen to the soul and the detail of the song. They get what yr saying, and what it has to do with life. If you sing about a lonely night, or a long road, they get it 'cause they've spent some long lonely nights, and walked some nowhere roads they never thought would end.

I guess I'm tough, myself, on new songwriters of the highly lauded type: if I hear the songs and they sound callow, or shallow, grandstanding or hollow, that's it for me. If you're gonna be a songwriter, you need to have something to say. If you've got that, everything going to be OK. Without it, you're wasting everybodies precious time.

If you don't have anything to say, why don't you sing someone else's song, someone's who does? Maybe some of that magic will rub off on you. That's what I did when I started out, singing Robert Johnson, Elmore James, Bob Dylan and the Stones songs. I went along like that for a few years and I learned a lot about everything. If you want to be a singer you have to live a bit. You can't just go right out of high school, to college, to your office at INTEL and think you'll be able to steal the world away with a song. It just doesn't work like that.

My heros are poets and songwriters, from Dylan to RJ, Laura Nyro to Tom Waits, Frank O'Hara to Allen Ginsberg. Wallace Stevens to Francois Villion. Heaney, Walcott, Hemingway, Fitzgerald. Mark Twain. Melville. Do you know about Bob Kaufman? How about Joseph Roth? Chekov, Conrad, Flaubert?

Who's reading anymore? Read a fuckin' book, goddamn it!

Billie Holliday? Thelonius Monk? How about listening to anything that isn't mixed in stereo, played to a huge backbeat? Haven't you had enough of that yet? It's square!

The real rock and roll. The people who made their way in a hostile world and sang their songs for the sky, played facing the brick wall 'til it was time to go. They didn't just diddle around a little bit then post it on myspace.com and wonder about their chances. Promoting rubbish to people: what a disgrace!

What happened to telling a jive ass that it's all shuck? That died when the tribes vanished. Vampire movies, violent video games, stock car racing, hip hop top 40, there's a million ways to waste yr time now, and they're all expensive. Keep yr nose to the grindstone, pay them credit card bills for all that junk you don't need.

Its a death trap baby! Didn't Bruce yell that out a hundred years ago? We were supposed to run. Most of us fell down. It's time to start getting back up again.

Books are morphine, didn't Kafka say that?

Ron Wood's book: full of deny-a-logues, coverups. Good for a couple laughs, but WTF.

Steve Martin's: worth reading for performers who take it seriously, all two of you.

Suze Rotolo, for Dylan nuts, but she tells her own story with a lot of feeling and grace, inc. a mad tale about Corso and cigarettes.

Richard Price: read this, all writers, Lush Life, a murder on the Lower East Side, uncannily great dialogue, he's overheard everybody, everything, I saw things in here that were only whispered by psychos, how did he know? BTW, he was great on Bookworm, and sounds like Lenny Bruce.

Salmon Rushdie in person at the Writer's Guild, oops Carrie Fisher interviewed him, led it down continual trivial pursuits. I don't think I'll read his new book anytime soon. Hmmm.

Anybody heard Alejandro's new one? I want to hear that, but actually have been digging Monk on Blue Note (the 78's,) Coltrane's Afro-Brass, with Dolphy's horn section, and Billie Holliday, who is the original Frank Sinatra.

So much music, so many musicians. How many folk singers in their newsies? Thousands, millions? What do you guys make of the profusion, how are you dealing with it? I'm overwhelmed, give me Placido Domingo!

Uh oh: no gigs anytime soon! Help!

The gas prices are caused by speculators. How do you know? Because the Bush Administration just released a statement that the gas prices aren't caused by speculators. You should be hip to that by now, right?

Deregulation equals screwjob. Don't forget that.

A Million Miles Away is famous, not because it's my best song, but because it was the last song I've had that was PROMOTED TO RADIO. I know it was promoted because we paid for the promotion ourselves, out of our gig income. Hits cost money.

If you don't get it, read the book 'Hitmen.' That'll explain the whole thing to you. In fact it covers the years when the Plimsouls were making records, and a lot of the names in it are familiar to me, to say the least.

So the 12 inch 45 came out and exploded onto the radio. Other stations besides Barry's followed, and we had a radio hit. The gigs were setting records. We did five straight sold out shows at the Roxy. People were shouting at me out of cars, girls were showing up in the middle of the night at our homes, cruising our neighborhoods, fans were in the garden, knocking on the doors. We were working nearly non stop, up and down the state, show after packed show. We were opening some shows on Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom Tour, and the audiences were going nuts. And we were all completely out of our minds.

My ascent up the walls of success seemed to me like a sojourn behind enemy lines. The higher we went, the more out of place I felt. There was something heady and liberating about the crowds enthusiasm at the shows, and the respect shown us by fans and people in the business. Everyone started to assume we were headed for the top, into the rock and roll pantheon. We were compared to the Beatles and Stones, and on our good nights, it almost seemed to me like we could make it too.

But, the difference, I secretly knew (and sometimes admitted,) between us and those greats, was: those bands didn't have someone like me in their lineups, much less, in a leadership position. I knew who I was, where I came from, the lickings I'd taken, the compromises I'd made, and I didn't like it. I was a runner, and a secret fool. Maybe it wasn't such classified information. I'd learned to play music, but my judgement had caught up with me. I was disgusted with myself.

Some nights, alone in my pad, I soared through the early hours of the morning, drunk and stoned, working on songs. A feeling of exultation would come over me, as if all the pain and trouble I'd caused were forever in the past, and, now guided by my genius, combined with my personal power and innate capacity for good fortune, I could conquer the world. I felt warm, safe, protected, in the arms of the gods.

I'd pass out as the sun came up, and wake up a few hours later with a 'hang-beyond': my head would feel like a dirty glass bowl with fishes swimming around in the murk. I'd be shaking, sick, terrified.

Unable to even get back in bed and sleep it off. Stuck like a snail on the cosmic railroad track. Sweating, nauseous, and sometimes then the phone would ring and it would be a manager, or an interview, or people at the record company wondering why I'd missed the meeting over there.

Somehow I'd get through it, and make the next gig, to have the laugh of being with the band, then the joy of pouring my heart out on stage in front of mobs of people revelling in the fantasticness and excitement of our noise and soul. Then home again late, dreaming big dreams in the middle of the night, writing songs and throwing'em away, wishing I was on the other side of the universe.

Some of the gigs are great. Heroics behind enemy lines...

One night at the Starwood, Plimsouls top of the card in front of a 1000 peeps, 100 degrees... and my anxiety level is building towards the first set, for some reason, and before we go on I start really pouring down the screwdrivers. but it isn't working. Beers are lined up on my amp, for insurance, but it's not enough.

My shoes feel wet, loose, hard on my feet. My clothes all of a sudden don't fit. My hands are cold, the strings cut into my fingers, right to the bone. I'm up on the stairs above the stage, in the dark, looking out at the rowdy crowd, the place is going nuts, ready to blow, energy is climbing up my backbone, I have the butterflies, bad, like my guts are turning to water.

I want to run. Hit the alley. Drink beer with some winos out of a paper sack. But our manager, Danny is behind me there, on the landing. He knows I'm nervous, just says 'its gonna be great' I try to act like that helps. 'Yeah.' But half of me feels like I'm going to be executed, and the other half is trying to pretend that its all just good rockin fun.

Down the stairs and into the mouth of it. I feel weak, but am coming on bold. The crowd is cheering, Louie's behind his kit now, blam de blam, pish pish blop! Eddie's a piledriver, I'm fiddling with my dials. Someone's calling out our names, kids looking up, lit by the stagelights, boys and girls, the mc yells 'Plimmmmmsoooouls!' and we're off into the first song, the lights come up and I go blind with the freight train bearing down on me...

A massive surge of pure electricity courses up my solar plexus, I'm so high all of a sudden, my breath is short and fast, knees weak, shit I'm singing fucking flat! My mouth is kissing the mike ball, I can smell its filth, my mouth is dry, pitching up and the music is fast white noise... I'm huge now, the world has vanished in the white haze, my body is immense, a house, but I'm trapped, can't get free, a piece of lightning metal sculpture, I'm caught by the nose, by the balls, by my whole life, I turn and wheel back to the drummer, then jerk to the mic where I keep up my leg backward as I sing, still bursting with stage fright, I'm doing anything I can to elude the spell, wilful mistakes to break the predictability. I'm in hell, shaken, trying to rock my way through it.

WE play the tag on Shaky City, and go into the second song while the audience happily, insanely, roars: drums rolling, tom toms and maracas, and I'm trying to get some quick beer... we all kick it in.

'Smashing rocks in the burning sun' my mouth is open and a stream of red neon comes out. A loud voice is screaming at me from a few feet away, and I'm lost in a tunnel of brilliant light, alone at center stage, I can't see nobody, just this pitch I'm tossing in, Louie's drums are all that holds me, though.. and while the spotlight roves I see the faces at my feet, kids, friends, eyes and mouths, fists, they love it, but they're all caught like I am.

My strength's returning, my voice is a strip of wet black rubber... and I dissappear into it, sending it out, it's bouncing all over the very back of the room, now to the kids on the stairway. The fear flows away, and I'm left with the size, I'm King Kong on top of the Empire, with the girl in my fist and snapping at planes, now on stiff legs like Frankenstein, colliding with Eddie back at the amps, screaming at the top of my lungs off mic at Davido who just looks over and laughs at me, then walks away.... the crowd is boiling, surging back and forth, people look up, out of control and calm eyes, somebody I haven't seen for ten years is in the front row wearing shades and grinning up at me.

Elvis now, King Creole, its a laugh as Eddie solos... a roller coaster and we're riding it, slowly now, between songs, up at the top of the scaffold, about to drop.

Later, the room is a crowded subway train at rush hour. Everyones sloshes a drink, their arm around somebody, its a cocktail party and I'm the guest of honor, so I slip out, make down the hall, out the back and down the metal staircase, push through the exiting crowd in the lot, past the huge line of people waiting for the doors to open on our second show, but no one spies me as I cross the boulevard, enter the corner liquor store and score a quart of Micky's, then taking the green bottle out in a brown sack, I cross back over Santa Monica, and after a quick glance at the pre-show chaos, I traipse on past to the corner, a non descript building, an office something or other, where I cut in to an alley between it and the place behind, where several other dark forms are propped on the concrete, against the wall, hooded, working on bottles. I plop down, and unscrew my lid, the smell hits me first, like barf, but better... I take a deep drink.

Soon, I'm more relaxed, almost ready for the second, show, so I get up, nod a 'take it easy' to the guys and leg it back to the joint: now packed again, more packed than before, they got EVERYBODY in, I make up to the dressing room, now cleared out, 'where you been, man?' everybody yells at me, 'it's show time!' and this one set goes off crazier and smoother than ever.

Everybodies gone, I'm the the last to leave the dressing room. I'm going the same way I got there, sneaker power. With the ghetto blaster on my shoulder, the Miracles light the way.

What lonesome thoughts and dreams on this homeward roll? I can't say at all. Sad? I know, and angry, too, also a bit elevated from the night, but on the verge of weeping over whatever happened between me and who ever it was up there after the show. 'My Girl Is Gone,' 'Bad Girl,' 'The Love I Saw In You Was Just A Mirage'... somehow I walk right past my apartment building, and 'I'll Try Something New' is playing over and over again: Smokey knows. I'm walking aimlessly down Franklin Ave, by the brick on Cahuenga, in the tailights now, as I nearly fall down on a curb, the streets cobblestone, and for a second I forget where I am, I'm back in Buffalo, over by the train tracks, tears are in my eyes, I'm crying for Smokey, for me, for all my old friends, for all the ones who tried and went down... when a hood who's been following me comes up and pulls a knife, I can barely see through the blur, but I'm pissed, 'fuck off, motherfucker!' I wail at the top of what's left of my voice, and he vanishes, just like that.

I wake up on Saturday with an aching head. We're back at the Starwood tonight. I roll out of bed and put on some morning music.

He lived in one of those Hollywood pads where all the apartments circled a pool. We'd sit there around his kitchen table and start rockin'. Joey didn't play an instrument but he'd be singing choruses and horn parts: just making sounds sometimes to add to the general feeling. Chris and I would sing and play riffs or chords on our guitars. I was still using the Yamaki deluxe.

We'd work for hours without stopping, sometimes making up several songs in a session. We'd break at dinnertime, and I'd leave, driving crosstown to a gig or a rehearsal.

We knocked out a lot of songs and 'Now,' 'Lost Time,' 'Hush Hush,' were all recorded for the first Plimsouls Album. 'Hypnotized,' was the first song we wrote, and that went on our debut e.p. I loved writing like this and whenever the 'souls were back in town I'd go over. Sometimes it would be like a party, we'd buy beers and bottles of wine, or whiskey, get high, and keep writing. Sometimes we'd get too messed up and have to adjourn to the next day. But we just kept writing songs.

When we got one, we'd put it down on the ghetto blaster, and make a cassette I could take with me. Then I'd go learn it with the band.

Joey was a Jewish-American hipster from Brooklyn, a few years older than me and Chris, and he brought a lot of that old time songwriter vibe from that area with him. He was also sort of a Beat poet, and had a book of his poetry published while he lived in Denver. It was called 'In The Face Of All That's Apparent.' I liked that idea a lot, and the book is still on my bookshelf.

My songwriting heros (Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman, Gerry Goffin & Carol King, Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil, Lieber & Stoller, Lennon & McCartney, Jagger & Richards, Strummer & Jones, Holland/Dozier & Holland at Motown, as well as Issac Hayes & David Porter, who wrote so many of the Stax hits) proved that a sizeable majority of the best rock and roll songs were written by teams. I was glad to try writing with a 'team.'

You'd walk in with nothing and come out with a song that everybody'd rock too: it was a great feeling, when it worked. Sometimes the songs would crash, and we'd come out with nothing. We had some bad streaks after awhile, maybe because I was getting a little self conscious with all the attention being paid to the band. Every gig was bigger than the one before it. The EP had been a hit on local radio, especially a song I wrote on my own, called 'Zero Hour.'

Chris and I went out to see the Germs play a gig at the Starwood. The place was going nuts. Punks were climbing up the walls to the balcony and diving off head first, back into the crowd. We watched it from the back for a while, then got bored and split.

We drove to Barney's Beanery, a horrible bar and restaurant a mile or so up the road. We sat in a booth in the back and Chris ate dinner, while I drank a beer and scribbled lyrics on a scrap of paper. We talked about the words I was writing, and Chris kicked in some lines. I was remembering something from a long time back and the feeling was pouring into the song. I'd been having an affair with a girl I really thought a lot of, and that had just broken off. Something of my childhood was in it too. A lyric was taking shape based on all of this. We wrote the second verse, and a bridge, but still had no title or chorus.

We got out of the restaurant and drove the few blocks up to Joey's. He rang us in the front door of his building and met us outside his door. I went in and grabbed the cheap acoustic 12 string guitar I'd left behind the table, and came back out playing. The whole song came as I sang the lyrics. I played the guitar riffs between the lines, and the build up of the bridge. It was all coming in a rush. 'But what's the title, where's the chorus?' I told Joey I wasn't sure, but I had this line 'I'm a million miles away,' and he just jumped on that, and as I played the rising e minor to G figure, nailed the chorus, just like that, 'I'm A Million Miles Away' and I threw on the tag 'and there's nothing left to bring me back today,' Chris messed around with the arrangement a bit, and we had another one.

We taped it on cassette, adding it to the other two songs we'd done that day, and that was it. We forgot all about it for awhile.

The band was on the rise. The first album came out and sank, we had a tough tour, but on the day we returned we played a gig in Orange County, for thousands of screaming kids, at Knotts Berry Farm, and it was Plimsoulmania. Our manager wept that night. The tour had sucked so bad, but the homecoming was very sweet.

All the way home from the tour, rolling with Ron and the guys across the plains, through the deserts, I'd brooded and schemed on what I'd do when I got back. On return, I got us out of our Planet deal, going to see Richard Perry myself and just asking to be let out. He said fine. I knew we had to make a record of A Million Miles Away and get it out, that was gonna be the one that would break us. But not on Planet. They were too square. We might have to do it on our own.

The old manager quit, he wanted to stay with record production, and I wasn't going to let him produce the new one. We got another manager, a millionaire who didn't have a clue where we were coming from. Soon we had to fire him, and he was replaced by a mercedes driving sharpie who had taken another local band to a number one record nationally. I asked them about him, then didn't really listen to what they told me.

'You've got to keep an eye on him!' was the advice.

Davido had gotten in a brawl one night before some gigs, and broke his hand throwing a punch. We had to replace him, while it healed, with a fellow named Jeff Eyrich who had played in a band once with our producer/manager. I had been taking the band in to Richard Perry's studio to make a demo of 'A million' and when I asked him to come play, Jeff said 'Sure, and hey man, I've got some ideas about producing, I'd like to be able to have some input into the recording' and I said, 'great, you're the producer!'

I think it was mainly an attempt to keep him enthusiatic, and to have his services on bass for free that prompted this. He'd never produced a record before.

That demo hadn't worked out, the studio was having problems, and then I got us out of the deal with Richard, so we dropped it for the time. We had no money to speak of, and were stuck without a deal or even a demo to go on.

Then Jeff called with an idea. He knew a kid named Mikey who was working as a tape op and a gopher at a Hollywood recording studio. It was Mikey's job to clean up after sessions at night. He said we could maybe sneak in after a session, late at night, and record for a few hours, without anybody knowing.

Sounded good to me.

The plan was simple. Our roadies Dave The Rave and Wayndo would circle the block in the equipment van, while the band sat in the late night hamburger joint next door, watching the back of the studio, waiting for the outside light to go on. That would mean that the coast was clear, and we were to load our stuff in as fast as we could, then move the van out of the parking lot, so as not to attract attention.

We got there around midnight. It seemed to take forever. We sat nursing cokes and eating fries in the burger stand, and quietly cracking jokes, for an hour or so, watching the traffic go by, and waiting for the light to go on. We'd see the van with roadies go by every so often, and we'd crack up.

At nearly 2 in the morning we saw the light. We all went straight out the door, through the parking lot and into the studio next door. Mikey and Jeff were already in there, calibrating the the 24 track tape, and getting out mikes. Wane and Rave pulled up, and we all loaded the stuff in asap, and begain to set it up and get sounds.

The drums were miked and checked, the tele was cranking through my Vox AC 50, and Davido's bass was being taken directly into the recording console. The three of us layed down the basic instrumental tracks in just a few takes. We also recorded a track for the B-side, I'll Get Lucky.'

Working fast, I overdubbed Andrew William's Rickenbacker 12 string onto the track. We put Andrew on playing a casiotone, and Randy Kerber came in and played the piano harmony (a part that I'd come up with, but couldn't play that well) on I'll Get Lucky. I sang the leads on both songs, and Davido and the Williams Brothers sang their harmonies.

Eddie threw on the solo on Million (we'd never heard it before, and everyone in the studio cheered!), and his parts on Lucky and that was it.

At about an hour or so past dawn, Mikey started getting preoccupied with watching the parking lot in the tv monitor, and it was obvious he was getting nervous, so we hurriedly packed up and split.

The last thing Jeff did was put a false label on the tapebox, and placing it in the tape locker at the studio. We still had to come back and mix it.

If the studio owners found out, they'd kill us.

Part 2

If the studio owners found out, they'd kill us.

Or threaten to, which is what happened, but not until after the record was a hit.

We went back in the studio and finished dubbing and mixing it, and my old pal Greg Shaw agreed to put it out on his indie label Bomp, in collaboration with our label, Shaky City.

I'd pulled myself and my crew up and out of the pack. I got the hit the Plimsouls wanted and as a result we were offered deals by Warner Brothers Records and Geffen, and we elected to go with the smaller of the two, Geffen. It seemed like a good idea. We felt we had to go with someone, 'cause we were sure we couldn't do it on our own. The intensity was too much. So many weird people and offers besieged us after the record took off.

Everybody wanted a piece, starting with the music director at the big, hot, super happening, local radio station. He happened to live in Joey's building. We'd seen him around the place a lot. He and his wife would come out to the pool once in a while. Joey'd smoke a joint with the guy in the Jacuzzi every so often. I was never around for those sessions, it wasn't my thing. But Joey got to know him aa bit, so after we had the record mixed and printed up, we decided to give Barry a preview.

Joey talked to Barry and set it up for the next night at 7pm, in Joey's apartment. Joey made sure he had supplies ready: pot, pills, brandy, beer.... whatever Barry might want to get in the mood to listen.

We were waiting for the big moment, when Barry came to the door: mirror aviator shades, leather pants, long black hair, dressed in black. He was slurring his words already. We had a little of this and a bit of that, then positioned Barry in a chair at the center of the room between the stereo speakers. He was leaning back in his chair, with one booted foot touching the table.

We set the volume to Hollywood Bowl level and dropped the needle. Barry started nodding his head in time to the music, and rocking the chair a bit. As the record hit the chorus Barry made a smile, and said something no one could hear. We just all nodded back: 'Yeah!'

Barry was really getting into it. I was too, kind of excited to be listening through his ears. The record sounded great, and kept building and building.

Our man Barry was rocking harder now, sweating a bit and lolling his head. At the start of the solo he looked like an electric shock kit him, he was sort of writhing in the rocked -back chair, pushing farther and farther back, just diggin' the whole thing like crazy.

The solo was cranking, we were all rocking to it, Joey was playing air guitar, as was Barry, who seemed to be levitating in his chair.

The solo hits its peak at the end and his chair went completely over and dumped him on his back on the floor. He lay flat on the floor for the rest of the song 'til the record ended. We were all shouting 'Barry, are you OK?' and he just said 'Wow!'

Barry liked the record. He said the station would go on it immediately, and a few minutes later, got me in the corner and in a rambling way, told me we'd need to hire him on as a consultant. He could work it nationally.

I said sure, I'd think about it, we'd look into it.

What would you have done?

Check out this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgzn7VyoqEw&feature=related

I saw him play once, a gig I'll never forget, in the 80's at the Music Machine, with Bill Bateman from the Blasters on drums, Caesar and David from Los Lobos' on guitars ( along with JJ from the 88's) and John Doe on bass.

When Phreddie and I were on tour in 1986 we listened to his entire catalog on tape, as we drove to the gigs in Phred's pickup. One of the ideas that year was to ask Bo to produce my second album for Geffen, but alas, it never came to be.

Another Big One: Barack's nomination. I'm sure he's not going to save the world or the country, but I thinks it's great that he's running for the Democrats.

You can learn a lot about the power of peserverance from Hillary, too. Really a wild season.

We've patched it together for another day

Comments can still be left below, I believe...

Testing

Testing

and again with the testing

I pulled some lyrics out of an old notebook, lyrics I have to old blues songs, but I'm just messing around . Nothing in those sheaves of paper really lit me up. I watched a movie of Ray Charles and other piano greats, inclucing Professor Longhair, and Otis Spann, but I didn't couldn't play the piano today myself: my thumbs too messed up to play the piano guitar or type, so I'm hung up. It's killing me chronically, I don't know why and I gotta do something for it but I don't know what. Just doing this, and trying not to use it, is causing horrible shooting pains. I took four advils that didn't touch it, so there you go. Then I went back to the day's ramble.

This is what I do at home a lot of days , kinda hustling around waiting for the Big Phonecall, for LIghtning To Strike, I feel like a detective trying to solve a crime that hasn't happened yet.

Jeez it's hot around here. What's goin' on with the kids? Bills to pay stacked up. Phonecalls to answer. The Plimsouls? The Nerves? Call the Doctor?

WTF?

Zorba The Greek? Purgatorio? The Christopher Hitchins Story? Denise's Crawdaddy Columns. Howie Klein's downwithtyranny.com. Stride piano... Bach? My sister's are in Buffalo, moving everything out of the old house. Do I want this or that old thing?

On top of it all, I feel so old. Or part of me does, while the rest still feels like a dislocated teenager, the one who ran the streets in SF, chasing the songs all day everyday, out in traffic, in the wind, out doors 24 hours, 7 days, years on end. All that does something to you on a cellular level. Laughing out loud, as kids like to say...

Spoke to The Dark Bob on the phone for nearly and hour, catching up. I thanked him for filming at the McCabes show Saturday. He said that he may have neglected to turn the camera on when he was on stage filming me. We talked about Elvis (we always discuss Elvis) the show, my singing, which DB had many interesting comments about, saying there was almost a middle eastern sound in some of it. I wasn't exactly sure what he meant, we look at music very differently, but I appreciated the discussion, you know? He told me that Terry Allen said 'Say Hi to Biscuit Foot for me,' and that he was referring to yours truly. We talked about Walk Hard, The Simpsons, Bob and Bob his old group) The Stones film, and then I got into Kennedy and the Brother Book. I went on about that for 20 minutes, telling him about JFK's acid experience, etc... and the deep politics of the 60's. We talked about the Badger, and about the ill effects the internet has had on the music scene. (There have been some positive effects too, but we didn't talk about them today.)

I'm out of sorts a lot when I'm home, it's very difficult sometimes to get in touch with music. When I'm on tour I'm eating and breathing, sleeping music, but home I get cut off. That said, the road is good for playing but makes it nearly impossible to finish writing anything. It's always time to move on, and I do love that. And/but of course, on the other side, there are responsibilities here, joys too, many things to dig, people I care for, so much to do.

But, to write good songs you need time to question, and hear the answer in silence. It's best to be alone in a room, or in an empty house. Someplace where the arc of your imagination doesn't collide with distractions, someplace where you can stay in the trance, not get woken up by a fool phone call. Some place like....1963!

Unless, of course, on the other side, you're out in a world of chaos and controversey, seeing it clearly and taking it down. That can work, too... you'll get some songs out of that.

Watching that movie today, I saw Willie Dixon playing with Spann, and it made me think of my time hanging with WD in the early 80's. I had a song on the piano he dug the groove to, and wanted to write words for. I went over to his place in Glendale, a little house where he lived (this was before the Led Zeppelin money came through.) He told me a lot of intersting things, and showed me an amazing musical trick as well, but we never finsihed the song.

The music was my track to Deja Blues but that lyric was never right, I needed Willies lyrics and I never got 'em all. I got some of 'em. Maybe I should try and pull it together now.

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I never got it together to go back to his house, when he was still alive! It's a great regret, one I still feel...

Oh well, at least I was there and had my eyes and ears opened.

There's something about life, a sense that seems to floats out of my reach 99 percent of the time. I can reach it sometimes when I'm playing, but so often it feels like its all drifting by me... washing away. The only sure cure I have for this sinking feeling is when I'm making music. Other things turn me on, but music is the deal. I'm never too far off when a guitar or piano is in my hands.

I'm not complaining. I go through a lot of changes, but I love what I do, and all that. I just want to do it mo' better.

I'm so sick of the political hype this year. Change sounds good, and we'll see what happens. I'll do whatever I can to work on some change around here. Change begins at home, and moves down yr front steps and into your neighborhood.

I gotta million ideas to put into play, just gotta get my hands on 'em. The day drifts bye and I knock out this kinda stuff. Time to get down on it.

So much to do, not that much time, a feeling of urgency, and the road hovering a week or so down the line, waiting to take me away again.

It's always a trip playin' in town, very different from being on the road. Maybe I should try and play like a stranger tonight, like LA's just another stop on the road. Could be the only way to give it the shot it needs.

I mean there's somethings beautiful about playin' for a home town crowd, too... on the other hand.

Paul Curreri is on the show tonight, and he's really good, people... I wouldn't kid you.

Hope to see you tonight... and if you're in Europe reading this: I'll see you in October!

This message deleted.

Thanks to Scott at EZ NET for the rescue job.

The show this weekend is at McCabes Concerts in Santa Monica, Saturday, 8 pm, I'm doing my thing with Paul Curreri opening.

See the show that wowed'em in Paris! Songs! Stories! Surprises!

I've been writing, working on part 2 of 'Passport.' Diggin' a stack of various old time records: hey, if it don't hiss, it just don't sound right.

Dig this article from the Philadelphia paper by Chris Hedges, I'm beginning to think along similar lines. What do you think Woody would say?

BTW, LA needs a new Ashgrove... I'd set it up but I need a few bucks. Considering the situation...

The Left Has Lost It's Way By Chris Hedges

This column was originally published by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The failure of the American left is a failure of nerve. It has been neutralized and rendered ineffectual as a political force because of its refusal to hold fast on core issues, from universal, single-payer, not-for-profit health care for all Americans, to the steadfast protection of workers’ rights, to an immediate withdrawal from the failed occupation of Iraq to a fight against a militarized economy that is hollowing the country out from the inside.

Let the politicians compromise. This is their job. It is not ours. If the left wants to regain influence in the nation’s political life, it must be willing to walk away from the Democratic Party, even if Barack Obama is the nominee, and back progressive, third-party candidates until the Democrats feel enough heat to adopt our agenda. We must be willing to say no. If not, we become slaves.

Political and social change, as the radical Christian right and the array of corporate-funded neocon think tanks have demonstrated, are created by the building of movements. This is a lesson American progressives have forgotten. The object of a movement is not to achieve political power at any price. It is to create pressure and mobilize citizens around core issues of justice. It is to force politicians and parties to respond to our demands. It is about rewarding, through support and votes, those who champion progressive ideals and punishing those who refuse. And the current Democratic Party, as any worker in a former manufacturing town in Pennsylvania can tell you, has betrayed us.

“The mistake of the former left-wingers, from Tom Hayden to Todd Gitlin, is that they want to be players in the Democratic Party and academia,” said John R. MacArthur, the publisher of Harper’s magazine, speaking of two prominent 1960s activists. “This is not what the left is supposed to be. The left is supposed to be outside the system. The attempt by the left to take control of the Democratic Party failed with [Eugene] McCarthy and George McGovern. The left, at that point, should have gone back to organizing, street protests, building labor unions, and the mobilization of grassroots activists. Instead, it went for respectability.”

The rise of a corporate state, and by that I mean a state that no longer works on behalf of its citizens but the corporations, is as much a part of the Democratic agenda as the Republican agenda. Sure, every four years Democratic candidates pay lip service to the old values of the party, but then they head off to Washington and do things such as ram NAFTA down our throats, throw 10 million people off welfare, and peddle health-care proposals acceptable to the HMOs, huge pharmaceutical giants, and for-profit health-care providers who are, after all, the very sources of our health-care crisis. What we as citizens need and work for in a corporate state is irrelevant.

The working class has every right to be, to steal a line from Obama, bitter with liberal elites. I am bitter. I have seen what the loss of manufacturing jobs and the death of the labor movement did to my relatives in the former mill towns in Maine. Their story is the story of tens of millions of Americans who can no longer find a job that supports a family and provides basic benefits. Human beings are not, despite what the well-heeled Democratic and Republican apologists for the free market tell you, commodities. They are not goods. They grieve, and suffer and feel despair. They raise children and struggle to maintain communities. The growing class divide is not understood, despite the glibness of many in the media, by complicated sets of statistics or the absurd, utopian faith in unregulated globalization and complicated trade deals. It is understood in the eyes of a man or woman who is no longer making enough money to live with dignity and hope.

“The other side has religion, and we need some,” said the Rev. Susan B. Thistlethwaite, president of Chicago Theological Seminary. “We need a more robust understanding of the role of religious values, values that prevent us from compromising the sanctity and dignity of human life. The left, because it is largely secular, did not do enough as the working class was finished off. And now the same thing is happening with the middle class. It is the loss of the left’s spiritual resources that has crippled the movement. The left forgot that nations, like individuals, have souls. Once you sell your soul, it is hard to get it back. History is not linear. History is about constant struggle. It is the struggle, if you come out of faith, which matters.”

The failure of the left is the failure of well-meaning people who kept compromising and compromising in the name of effectiveness and a few scraps of influence until they had neither. The condemnations progressives utter—about the abuse of working men and women, the rapacious cannibalization of the country by an unchecked arms industry, our disastrous foreign wars, and the collapse of basic services from education to welfare—are not backed by action. The left has been transformed into anguished apologists for corporate greed. They have become hypocrites.

“The loss of nerve by the left comes down to this lack of faith,” Thistlethwaite said. “Having a soul means there is coherence between our actions and our values. The left can no longer claim this coherence. It has no moral compass. It does not know right from wrong. It has, in its confusion, lost the capacity to make moral judgments.”

Hope, St. Augustine wrote, has two beautiful daughters. They are anger and courage. Anger at the way things are and the courage to see they do not remain the way they are. We stand at the verge of a massive economic dislocation, one forcing millions of families from their homes and into severe financial distress, one that threatens to rend the fabric of our society. If we do not become angry, if we do not muster within us the courage to challenge the corporate state that is destroying our nation, we will have squandered our credibility and integrity at the moment we need it most.

Chris Hedges is author of “I Don’t Believe in Atheists” and “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America.” This column was originally published by The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Ron's one of our favorite artists: watch the videos, buy the cd, folks. Ron's vids:

http://www.youtube.com/cooleygrand

Hope you enjoy these.

In other news, the Ashgrove gig on Saturday was a gas, even though Dave couldn't make it. He had to go help the Gaffneys with their arrangements for Chris's Funeral, down in Orange County. A very sad time for everybody that knew him.

The poetry workshop on Saturday was inspiring, with Jack Hirschman, Linda Albertino, Michael C Ford, and Mel Weisburd. I can't tell you now, but it was something else.

I've been diggin' the set 'Goodbye, Babylon,' that my friend Mike Minkey loaned me, all pre-war gospel recordings. It's big time great. Any of you heard that?

Don't forget, my McCabes show is on Saturday night at 8pm... there are still a few tickets left, they say, but going fast. Hope to see a lot of you there.

Talk to you again soon...

I knew he was sick, but I'm shocked that this happened so quickly.

A lot of people are going to really miss him. I know I will. He was an amazing guy, a great singer and songwriter, and just one of those people that I'd always be glad to see, whenever and wherever I ran into him.

Here's the obituary from the Orange County Register:

Thursday, April 17, 2008 O.C. music community remembers Chris Gaffney Obituary: The singer-songwriter, who died of liver cancer at 57, touched people with his songs and personality.

Chris Gaffney, the Orange County singer-songwriter whose country and roots rock-tinged music earned him a small but fervent following in barrooms and concert halls around the world, died Thursday after a brief battle with liver cancer. He was 57.

For years, Gaffney gigged constantly around Orange and Los Angeles counties, playing the Swallow's Inn in San Juan Capistrano with his band the Cold Hard Facts on a Saturday night, then moving up the highway to the Blue Café in Long Beach for a show on Sunday afternoon.

While he might not have found the fame his fans – including many fellow musicians – felt he deserved, in recent years, as part of the Hacienda Brothers band, Gaffney expanded his touring beyond Orange County, to cities around the nation and in Europe.

"In a lot of ways, he was the sort of guy who music critics dream of walking into a bar and finding their whole lives," said Jim Washburn, a former Register pop music critic who befriended Gaffney and say him play scores of shows. "Someone who's just there and is undiscovered and phenomenal.

"It gets kind of grating when the decades pass and he's still undiscovered, but that was also part of Chris' charm," Washburn said. "On any night, you could go into a bar in Orange County and see one of the best shows you'd ever seen in your life."

His knowledge of music was seemingly unlimited. Though he specialized in what today might be called alt-country or roots rock, he knew, loved or played everything from Duke Ellington to Louis Prima, Porter Waggoner to the Specials.

"I met him in the early '80s, in a bar, where he was in the band," said Julie Gaffney, with whom he would have celebrated 25 years of marriage next month. "He was the guy I knew I needed to be with all of my life – and all of his."

She said his music was what attracted fans to his shows, but his personality is what turned fans into friends.

"He was genuine, and he was also just a really funny guy, who could talk to anybody about anything," Gaffney said. "When he played and I was with him, he never even came and talked to me, because he always went out to talk to people at the show."

His music, like his personality, was the real deal: down to earth, honest, and grounded that part of America where hard-working people gathered to sing songs about life and share a beer or two.

"I think he does the country best," Julie Gaffney said. "The George Jones – I loved when he used to sing 'He Stopped Loving Her Today' – and the 'Cold, Hard Facts of Life' by Porter Waggoner.

Last year, in Nashville for a tribute to the late Waggoner, Gaffney sang that song on stage, alone with his acoustic guitar, she said. "And it brought down the house.

"You could tell that that was what he really liked to do – and he was lucky he got to do it."

His illness was diagnosed earlier this year, and the cancer attacked him aggressively. As news of his death filtered out into the world of those who knew him, friends – including fellow singer-songwriters Dave Alvin and Jim Lauderdale – started calling the house to express their condolences, Julie Gaffney said.

Walter Clevenger, whose band the Dairy Kings now includes former Cold Hart Facts' keyboard player Wyman Reese – says he spent Sundays at the Blue Café for a few years, soaking up the cheap Dixie beer and the inspiring Gaffney music week after week.

"It was pretty much a religious experience for me," Clevenger said.

Later, Gaffney played accordion on a few songs for one of Clevenger's albums, and he and the Dairy Kings returned the favor for a song Gaffney later recorded.

Fundraising efforts to help with his medical costs include a tribute CD with musicians such as Clevenger, Lauderdale and Rosie Flores covering Gaffney songs. A concert at Linda's Doll Hut in Anaheim was scheduled for April 27; details on its status now were not available Thursday night.

A Web site – www.helpgaff.com – also had been set up to help with expenses, and will continue to do so to help the Gaffney family medical and other bills, Washburn said.

Gaffney is also survived by Erika Gaffney, a daughter from a previous marriage. Services are pending, Julie Gaffney said, with a memorial to be planned to celebrate his life and music.

"We need to have something," she said. "There's going to be a lot of people who are going to want to come and say goodbye."

Contact the writer: 714-796-7787 or plarsen@ocregister.com

(This chapter has been returned to the shop)

For an interesting rejoinder to this, see:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marc-cooper/hillary-and-the-commies_b_97131.html

It seems nothing can stop this self-destruction now, until the Dems settle the nomination.

Meanwhile America cozies up to McCain, a very backward looking, dangerous advocate for continuing Bush's polices.

The Boss weighed in for Obama,,, think that'll help this time?

We'll see.

I've been up late, reading in the front room, everyone else asleep here. I've got the door open to help cool the place off. It's very quiet outside, reminding me of nights I used to spend in Hamburg as a teen, feeling like the only one awake in the whole damn town, riding on a bicycle on summer nights, tryin' to feel some sort of breeze, sometimes running into some friends on a cruise by the all night.

The nights are great for expansive thinking, and I got a momentary flash of freedom just now when I went out front in the dark, to get something from my car ( a cd set of old-time medicine show music from the 20's and 30's, 'Good For What Ails You.') It's cooler out there, deathly still, the sky seems dark, a cat almost made me jump when it broke out of the bushes and ran.

I stood out front and looked up the silent street towards Pico Boulevard, feeling the coolness on my bare legs and face. The traffic light shining red, two blocks away, hanging over the deserted intersection, tricks me. For a second again I could have been in my childhood home, on Lake Street, looking up towards Main.

A wave of anxiety left me, lifted off. I'm gonna get up tomorrow and get things done, man. First time I felt enthusiastic about that since I got back. I've been tired, not exactly tied in knots or anything, but this moment is a true relief.

I've got some things to try and do, even if they turn out to be impossible.The things we do are the life we lead, they go out from us in waves, good or bad, affecting everybody we come in contact with, just like theirs do us.

Oh, Lord, I do love the night, but I gotta be up in the morning. Catch you later...

Every weekend a new ecstatic response. Pavlovian drools.

Rock: It used to be counter culture, now it's not much more than what the man said: another 'Opiate of the People.'

Life IS about entertainment, consuming, multiple choice, right, folks?

Brand names... form over content.

Too bad the big beat is a lie, the same as television.

Why don't you paint a picture of someone you love?

I've watched the Scorcese/ STONES documentary Shine A Light, and the conclusion I came to is: if they want to save their band, Keith Charlie and RONNIE have got to fire Mick, and hire a new singer. Maybe Buddy Guy will take the job.

If he did, they'd immediately become the greatest band on earth. As it is, Mick's destroying the group and this movie is barely even watchable.

Granted, they seem very old for this now, and there's even something spooky about their look, but Jagger's performance has all the soul of a Richard Simmon's excercise video. It's a 2 hour Superbowl performance. Folks, rock and roll is not really just about endurance, its about 'an explosion in my soul' and sadly, this version of the Stones is a ghost ship.

The catalog is so great, but is rendered nearly meaningless. At one point late in the movie I realized' this is not the Stones. It's the same persons but they've lost the group's identity. President Clinton brings them on stage, for God's sake! Hillary and her mother are shown meeting them in the first few minutes. Give me a break!

The problem I had earlier with Elvis Costello's latter day work, what seemed to me to be the draining of meaning from his catalog, is now the Stones problem but A HUNDRED TIMES WORSE in their case. The material was written when they were living at full speed, still hungry, in the thick of their lives, and the poetry of their lyrics. The lyrics were the very best they could do, as was the music. Now they're older, but they haven't grown. They've shrunk, a fate worse than death for the artist.

Westerburg has the same problem.

You've gotta have something to say! You've got to live on the front edge of your life. You can't set the thing on automatic and ride in the back seat, no matter how frenetic you may still appear.

It's the same mistake our whole culture makes now, but that's an essay for another day.

The Stones haven't really made a strong album since 1977 and Some Girls. That one felt like they were still living it, and were standing behind what they sang. In the movie, Some Girls and especially 'Far Away Eyes' are destroyed by Jagger's hyperkinetic athletic delivery. It's as meaningless as a Tom Cruise performance, all surface excitement, and with a desert of inspiration within. Perfect Rock and Roll for our age, the celebration of the outer shell, at the head of a giant roomful of New York's privileged class.

Ronnie Wood is the one who holds it all together. He plays great, look great, and isn't lost in his own charisma the way the Glimmer Twins are. Keith plays pretty great, but he's not as exciting as Ron. Charlie Watts is solid.

The old film and video clips are the best part of the movie. Watts is poignant, so self effacing, and melancholy in his interviews.

Somewhere along the line these guys lost their way completely. Or shall I say, Jagger lost his way and the band was stuck with it. It's the wiggle ass thing: it just doesn't work anymore, but seems like a lot of meaningless running around. There's not one winning moment from Jagger in the whole concert. He's like a prancing android, a rock-bot, only less interesting.

Jack White is OK, but on ' Champagne & Reefer,' Buddy Guy steals the show, the second he opens his mouth and sings. It's a powerful sound, but with all the soul Jagger can't muster. I don't think it's just because of race, as Stephen Holden implied in The New York Times review of the movie. It's that Buddy Guy is really present in the moment, is comfortable in his skin, and has his feet on the ground. That's how I'd put it: he's present, and somehow, Jagger just isn't.

I've heard people say Jagger is a good harp player: well he doesn't show it anywhere here.

I'm not just a Mick Burner: I respect Jagger and Richards as one of the great songwriting teams ever. Aftermath, Exile, Beggers Banquet, Some Girls. 19th Nervous Breakdown. Jumpin' Jack Flash. These are some of my favorite songs ever. I love the Stones. But the Stones are gone.

1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.

2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."

3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.

4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose. He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."

5. The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.

6. He's one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a "second job" and skip their vacations.

7. Many of McCain's fellow Republican senators say he's too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.

9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his "spiritual guide," Rod Parsley, believes America's founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a "false religion." McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church "the Antichrist" and a "false cult."

10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0-- yes, zero-- from the League of Conservation Voters last year.

( I lifted this from Downwith tyranny,com thanks Howie)

26) No train line salve for the mendicant/ Britain. History of coughs. Tea work. In a tunnel, en masses. Chirps of the little men, trash coterie of distant loins, carpetbagged & beligerant. Same old ancient blue with corduroy earmuffs, news of the world & dream tissue. Years of this. No destination, only destinations. This years rubbish & trying 'to make something of value as you go along.' I'm wind last, unpaupered, ticketed, shoed, hatted. Vain glorius.

27) I can't find my way & it makes me feel ashamed. You're following me & I'm lost. RED CHORDS unplayed. Champagne melodies unsonged. Dead in the joints/ slow as stone scared as critters, a sick sad feeling like I want to quit, because I can't tell you nothin'. It's blowing like crazy, the trees are bent, & that's my name, my game is laid out & pinned down. I'm shot.

28) I'm shy & miss my chances, even when they're not chances at all. This explains my aversion to chinese hats, dancing naked in traffic, and sipping gutter water with a straw. Laughing mouths/ teeth broken/ on the gravel this is known as the 'Liar's Celebration,' the breakfast of campions. No love for no money' is the motto on main street. The poop decks closed to the select few, and if that doesn't smell like nog, the check in's the male. And all the rest.

29) Nerves of steel, they set up a smudge on the prettiest block of green. Black towers & clouds over the trees, at the end of the fields. The people bore up like pack rats, moved down to the seaside, inebriated on cheap twaddle & bowl foam, gargling fine wines. Nels poured his pants full of nuclear steam/ history erected itself/ and there were horses at the ends, taxis beyond, and a fool prince.

30) Glass wall of prayers/ flooded with sunshine/ images of the dogpark, the hoopii police & other sub zero fools. Tangles, motivations, leaping heros of the cantelope side of town. Bowler hats & torture- no effect on the children: invisible & even dogs DOGS can't hear the Gettysberg Address. I'm on a pole, twitching & thumbed over like my guts are on sale in a white goods store.

31) 5am the highway noise won't stop 'til the cities on fire. The ticking, every clock set to go off someday. One at a time. The days squeeze away & wiggle slippery. Wriggling with the savage strength of beasts: manta rays, snakes, or moose in the high beams. O Cambria what joyful nights of immigrants, O LA, what sorrows out of doors? O beach towns, what sun dried ignorance what water logged bleaknesses? O body what depths?

32) The days vanish, & all thats left of yesterday is the tight feeling in the bottom of my stomach. The vaults of skyline beg you to crawl over nails, through fire & bedclothes animated by (word obscured) dinosaurs, ghosts of the nautical realms. Corduroy & carbombs, territory, ice slides monotony, & we're back on the balls standard. It's hard to fly when yr winnowed, divided & otherwise baked into squares, our frequencies are spread on toast, claw farts, dismembership authority gravel headaches, all I want is to move forward, to love the others moving forward, off this linoleum drenched with tea & tears.

33) Sponge baths & oxygen tanks almost bear the wisdom & a team cheer in the rain, Methodist/ trance fingertip mythology. Brutal weighting of claustrophbia. Beatrice of the party flight, supper & sculked like a dagweed toon, prefigured, gloom ridden, pushed, trimmed by wing sliders & called to Boston, Santa Domingo, & points South.

34) Eyes like Cleopatra, arms of the Sphinx. Arms like Cleopatra, miles like Mohammed. Diamond sand cast like cannons on a drab civil door, I'm frayed, it's been too long, please don't make me suffer he said, but the boxers eyes & kindnesses of the flight control set me free, a little dog at 31, 000 feet, walking like Curly in the tomb.

35) They're turning the heat up under me again/ but I'm no junkie/ no drunk/ I pay as many of my bills as i can/ sure, I work on the road/ take care of a sick Mother too/ but I'm just tryin' to make my way/ nobody's gon' take care of me/ except you, Biggie.

36) Many the little sheepy-sheeps gazing contentedly on the sunlit fields, & the North Sea, grey & white capped & rolling off the end of the rolling hills. We could live here & be satisfied ourselves, in love, with what's left of each other and the world, as the sky blue clouds gather for a sea voyage. Dark lights on the water, & way out yonder a craft we wouldn't betray & we'd live in our dreams, giant.

37) I came here from Rumplestiltskin, when I asked for Saturn they brought me a side of rings. Toast is for the tollbreakers, she said, so I buttered up some screwdrivers and tightened up my twist foot. Up & down/ then gargle then fly: downtown lambkins leer at the lowdown & nobody badgers Copernicus. Magellen, though, is lost on the beltway, under war rings, wedding bells, sepulcher lingerie for the power knots, sceptres for the orgasmic faux police, & their balding children, etc...

38) Born liar I've found: I just won't call: the door could be locked or frozen, the fruits in the hamper are fresh or faded, your eyes are pretty, gimlets, razor cuts, love is a slash against a wall, even the daylight has been conned & bothered, twisted & turned for Babel-chuck. Born liars are made men, fliers in todays air-force.

39) The little things people say like 'yr mushrooms have sprung,' 'tedium is in the eyes of the beheader,' 'cut the wigwam,' driving me outwards. 'Cliffwork climbers tremble at barroom srategy, catacombs are a mans best fad' 'struggle on yr own, crash awake,' 'Giggle to yourself, rawhide,' all the while doors swing wide, trucks flap, calls meander like richman on Sunday, & the chorus unwinds & let's you have it on the nose. The mouth of eyes. The chin of suffrage. The knees of travel. The final minutes of light.

40). It was all a drama of which of the girls you and the A. was none of the, then you interrupted my phonecall from from A, waved all my comment, and huffed with me as I banished you from starving. Endless talk of the vampire. Now it's said... you lack understanding. Do I have to get you up in the morning? Turn you out of your bed? Help me.

41) The atmosphere was all salt. i sang about myself as sailors, doctors, and other adventurers nodded, filled, spilled and shot. Girls held the floor between immaculate teeth, spinning talismans of perceptible doubt. Salinas parted like a politician's haircut & the night thrilled on. Now I'm sleeping, deeply removed, pounding on the ceilings of heartbrake culled from a poison romance, valentined & loaded, true.

Lord help us... we may still be living in the era of his murder.

I believe the FBI killed him. The certainly wanted to, had the means, and many aspects of the evidence point to it.

King, then Kennedy in 1968.... how about all those 'lone gunman?' Do you buy that?

No point in arguing about it, 'cause there ain't no telling...

Anyhow, King was stopped, wasn't he? Right as he was getting into labor and Vietnam disputes.

'Violence is as American as apple pie.'

The running order of the show was to be The Dogs, The Nerves, and finally, Venus and the The Razorblades.

(This chapter removed for the time being)

(This chapter deleted)

We were set to move out that night: the deal was coming down all at once. We'd already sublet the whole building, packed all our stuff in a U-haul, hitched it up to the Ford wagon, and we were ready for LA.

The phone rang, and Connie called down: the landlord was on the warpath, and on his way over. Some of the new tenants were standing on the front sidewalk, or looking out their windows.

We had our guitars. amps, a few clothes, and the 4,900 records. As we pulled away from the little crowd on the curb I looked down to the corner of Folsom and Third, and thought I saw the man coming round the corner in a huff. We drove off, bought a tankful of gas at the all night 76 and headed south.

I rode in the back, drinking a six pack and watching the highway unroll... in the darkness of a dream my San Francisco years came to an end.

(This chapter returned to the warehouse)

The gigs with John Prine were great, it's always fun playing for his fans, who really know how to listen to a song. And it was great getting a chance to hear John sing live again, he really is one of the super greats, up on the Mount Rushmore of Songwriting.

He's that great. Sometimes greater, yes there's a case to be made!

Hello In There. Sam Stone. Paradise. Angel From Montgomery. Donald & Lydia. Six O Clock News. Lake Marie. Broken Bottle (Far From Me.) Dear Abby. The Accident. Leave The Light On. The Bottomless Lake. Fish And Whistle. The Oldest Baby In The World. Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness. Come Back To Us Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard. Sabu Visits The Twin Cities Alone. Wishing You The Best. Etc Etc Etc.

He's way, way up there in this songwriting thing.

One of the things he puts out is forgiveness, with a very sharp edge on it! Jesus with a dark side! He writes about people as well or better than those other songwriters. How about lines like : 'there was a space between Donald and all the things he said ?' Or the families' claustrophobic sense of comic terror in Bottomless Lake that is so familiar... it's life, and America, to boot. His advice: pack the Bible in the backseat, you never know if you'll be seeing your sweetheart again.

Some of his lines are so strange, but true. That's a mark of greatness. As is his generosity.

Go check out the Youtubes and if you do... listen to his performance of Clay Pigeons. It's a Blaze Foley song I saw him do on Friday. You should hear it. O if you don't have'em, go to itunes and get all those songs I just named.

My friend in Buffalo, John Sawers, remarks: 'It's a mystery. How does he do it? He plays all his songs with 3 chords, and all in the keys of G, C, and D...' The question is, its so simple seeming, and so profound. And funny.

He is better live now than I've seen him. ( well I don't know, that Cadillac solo tour in 84 was pretty great , too.) The songs are deeper, a bit slower, more feeling, harder hitting.

A lot to contemplate... John Prine.

Newcastle with Mr Wynn, wasn't so hot, but we had a nice visit, me and Steve and Robert Lloyd.

Thanks on the next leg, to Luc, Tim The Soundman ( Dutch singer/drummer,) and my friend in Paris, Karel.

Played to a smallish yet wildly enthusiastic crowd in Paris, and finally, the 'In The Woods' show in Utrecht, a great bunch of folks there, espescially new friends Kees (pronounced Case,) Bart and Eric Anderson, who showed up with his wife Inge and his daughter.

I rode trains, planes, and cars, wandered around in the middle of the night in strange cities and towns trying to find my way, met lots and lots of people, and had a generally great time.

I travel without an I-Pod, so my ears are free for chance musical moments: amazing Malian music in Coventry, Elliot Murphy on the PA in Brussels ('Texas',) and new Willie Deville track in Paris taxi on radio in the middle of the night.

God, I love Paris. I want to live there for a while.

Speaking of Paris, read Flaubert paperback of 'Sentimental Education' throughout the trip: a great book: love story, history, satire...

Thats's the story, ended up in Buffalo dealing with elderly family nursing home situation... I now no longer have family in Buffalo, my Mom has moved West. End of an era, to say the least of it. Goodbye to my good friends Mark Winsick, John Sawers, Jim and Lynn. See you down the line, sooner than later, I'm hoping.

Read the other entry today for the rest of the story.

Gigging with Prine this weekend, then back in LA, new workshops, etc...

Thats the word, love, PC

2) I'm thinking about the butterflies, the money owed/ the time elapsed & the time to go/ anger in a face/ beetles and celler mold/ big plans not quite/ big enough to launch/ a rocket or a row boat? pursued across the ice flow/ tortured with telephones/ threatened with lunch lawyers long distance calls/ why should I care?

3) In the end it seems like nothing is enough. I should live my life more recklessly. I admire the avalanche victims, good work. At night the hallway by the elevator is lined with ladies in wheelchairs, talking trash. 'Are we on a boat?' 'When are we returning to Alaska?' 'Just walk me to the elevator, cousin, I won't implicate you...'

4) One life ain't long enough, especially the way I go. North Dakota: I takes my time, slow boats & low floats. I'm up in a balloon, running towards another mangler, windmill, wall of splat (beware the wall of splat!) My heart ain't big enough. Long story for my friends, too. The boy who married her twice. The won who quit & quit & finally made it. My friends, greying, still laughing. Meanwhile the cities change, records disappear, and the lights on the ground multiply: don't cry big guy.

5) A thousand carnal birds service the sky/ diminishing the landscape of frozen straw/ invisible monsters steel mouths snap shut on sight lines from the old age car park. Doctors & priests go smiling to battle over inheritance. The birds are white, others are black, not in this picture. A car winds the straight & narrow, and a large plastic lid is placed on all of them, by a giant stationed in the Crab Nebula.

6) I'm packed, but some kids snuck out of my hole, sat in hot rods, puked & came on blankets, floated the crowd & crowed like cowards. Don't you dare dangle your infusions of cross, your confusions of cost, your contusions & caught: crotchwise, you fingered me- far fetched and fucked & throw it over yr naked crates, swinging light balls, a tube for the twisted, knee & bring me some good news, word of mouth to mouth.

7) 'Her old man's in prison but he's cool with it.'

8) What kind of questions do you ask on a day like this? What's the message? I'm on a train, trying to stay awake. Green pastures, March winds, blue & cloudy skies, so far from home. Connections to make, retreat from engagement into head leaning? What town is this, anyway? 'I have arrived, only to leave again in the morning.'

9) The children are tiny & the wind is lost. The dance to trance & prance seaward, leeward, dodging elements of the spider cleave. I'm in pieces, almost midlife, as football players burst in & vomit, at a loss for air, tossed, enraged, seasoned, shrill. 'Open the window & let me dive' said Abraham. It was a long way to the lobby & he had to pee... Booth kept staring & stealing the moment, afraid to calm. The heaters chaw, the clocks claw, the night raw & chafed, the beach was pinned down, littered with bodes & the world war black.

10) Anyone can be a downhill racer/ it's all a matter of Faux-Puree: you grock the tinsels & taste the boom/ shovel your intestines into a fur lined ditch & howl for the border. Falling falling faces & feeds trawling for traces of generous needs/ scalding your forearms on the radio rot it's hot and a matter of knocks for knots. Give me your dangling weeds I'll give you your rules back.

11) It's a long story of minerals: diamonds of flesh, midnight armies and vegatable dawns moving in opposites, in a chalice of froth & bile. 'Froth & bile, bile & froth, turn your heard to the right and cough' 'Bile & froth, froth and bile, some got money & some got style.' Anyways, it's a long story. I'm made out of cannonballs & curly hairs, the nights remain vast, Summer crept away somehow, then the Winter & Spring. Days fell like cards on a line, years immolated. A yellowing tale? Some kind of classic? Yeah, crossing a bridge & a banjo.

12) I need help & get it. Over & over I'd fall then fly then free all of mine. Over the tundras, the clandestine filaments, primrose, pecked in ordure. Galivant, supreme monochrome, devious & sprouting, troubled & wry, amid soft downpours & other silkings of the nude, the neomeyer, the closure of the Clancy's modern, and spic & span as an old General.

13) Newcastle. My friend, I'm lonesome tonight in this cheap hotel, a room far from home, listening to the churchbells, counting their tones, bong, bong, bong, bong. The birds don't know if it's day or night. I wish I could sleep but ghosts do calisthenics by the bed. The previous tenant left his marks: used tea cups & towels, soap bar in the sink. There were only 20 at the show & they didn't love me, no shouts, no encore. But afterwards, everybody said 'You were great!'

14) Here it comes: 'O Death pass me over for another year.' A sick feeling in the bottom of my stomach,'where I live.' Previous obsessions were a six week bout with moral paranoia. I feel dead already, the fear of prostrate cancer got me to the doctor in the first place. 'Here it comes, hits me where I live & I'm dead already, lying in the dark, waiting for some sleep to come.'

15) Red blinking light/ exhausted sentinal's voice like a river/ a radio, a ribbon & a road. Help me, clownman. I'm delayed by a spastic ponce, dogs in devilment, crows. I'm mud, silting to the bottom. The bed remains. A board of raftdom, a rack, a vacation in Barbezonian splendour. Help me, Mickite, ok? I'm dyin' over here. I need a hit more than Queenie needs a jukebox dime.

16) It's a good thing we ain't on the ninety first floor- cupid's cubicle & icebox free. Spent the morning casting gems at Shakespeare & walking green like a wayward child- I'm isolated in noise, distracted by the (no) drama- in love with nothing, that is, a vision of me, peaceful, strong and towering. Afraid of this, collecting tinctures & soft words to spread- this headache music for distracted lambs.

17) Connected in the weary ways & twisted too, like a country boy in trouble, but far & far, over Alamain trusted by deceitists, governed by blue clouds, and crushed in general by scotch work misdemeanors. Call me keen at sobbing, a spin merchant of my own gale, word mischief & battered by misconnects, in the wary weeze of simulacrum, soledad.

18) In the beach side room with the pom girl/ the flag used me for a blanket/ the myriad overhead & the poverty within/ the pseudo cowboy's voice on the sound system/ onions & garlic. Smooth &long creamy & rolls compliant. The radio drone the palm frond rustle. The dinner bell. The time like a razor wound. The end of the good life was a long time ago. A fish jumps a mile outside, it's a marlin, a young fish, an impossible force. Garlic & onions. Celery.

19) It's been a week now of automatic doors, stale odours, trains & plains, skytoppers, faces in front & waters in back. Anxiety balances on a nail, the whole dark brick night set to topple & scream, collapsed to room size & a bare ceiling bulb, but I'm protected by the power of prayer, and by you, love.

20) My mind wanders & some nights never comes home. The heat shuts down & the bodies go cold. Stadiums are no place for pearl divers fog lamps. Gasoline flows in the gutter, sandwiches go on strike. Paralyzed faces & fingers on fruit loops, piles of dollars on airplane wings giggle & shout, court the teens, bless the frozen bones, the rising pleas, the toxic touch of a foreign prince, O suffer these tears, your quagmire & coolant required.

21) It hurt but now it's over: the lights on plasticine/ skin stretched on wires, flood lights & heats trained on powder puffs midgets & trance doctors. The train pulled out & it was the whole world disappearing across the universe & I get on board. A Kodak moment/ before & after the Grail. El Destructo/ fleas in a corporeal sunset & sacrifice to the god the trophies were passed to the front & tossed into the hole, right before we all jumped.

22) The only thing I tried to steal was a picture of myself. Said goodbye to the countryside, also to the village, the town & the city, and heard NADA in reply. Feverish, thirsty. A bit anxious. Awaiting my beverage. No sign of green, no foretaste of April. And I'm in my Autumn? I'm looking forward to another Summer, fatal.

23) Hoops billyroved my targrave steed & nestled plump round a tingloss window. Weather incensed & multicoloured poured over the sheep coats, the headdown grazers & anxious swallows & squirrels. Up again & rested as the sun falls, the river rolls, time drips & drops, I'm myself & who else? Recuperation is daily, we're all on a very short rope & it's nailed to our hearts. Books are comfort. A warm, well lit lonely & carpeted room, between the beds, on the floor, the drawers are breathing, friendly, the bath a casket, sleep a death & now I'm reborn clean, on another highway.

24) I was nailed to a stick & lifted above the crowd, a clown among clowns, an inflateable fool, nose glowing like a painful red pepper & cheeks rouged- the orchestra played & I was forced to dance: no one fired bullets at my feet- the stage was simply heated & I jumped: the ceiling ripped open by a magic hook on a chain, which was passed through my solar plexus & I was lifted out, to the great relief of all.

Feel free to use this comment space to communicate on relevant topics, etc.... have fun, all the best, PC

Buddy Miles, drummer, soul and blues singer, guitarist. 'Texas' by the Electric Flag.

Besides the touring, I've been working on songs for another fairly well known artist's project, and I'll let you know more about this if and when it pans out.

Gigs? Don Quixote's in Felton (near Santa Cruz) was a really good, very well attended, and on a Monday night, too... Monterey Live was also a much improved turnout from my last stop there, and I saw some old frineds there as well.

The virtual reality gig at Mike Nesmith's Videoranch was very interesting, and it was a gas to meet Mike, a songwriter and performer I'd long admired. I'm not sure I really got the hang of the virtual reality experience, it's strange playing to an audience that is and isn't 'there.' My thing is so much about being in contact with the audience, but I'm not sure seeing their typing while I'm trying to sing constitutes any true trade off of feeling or energy. Well, I'm sure that it doesn't.

I travelled to Memphis where I met pals Badger, Crosby Tyler, Greg Johnson, Michael Fricasso and a thousand others at the Folk Alliance conference. I played gigs, including one for the public at the Southern Folklore Center last Friday. The whole thing was great, eye opening, as I got to hear a bunch of songwriters that I really loved, that I'd never heard before.

3 am in room 1105, 25 musicians crammed into one hotel room, passing the guitar around, everybody singing a song. (I sang Travellin' Light with help from the violinist and her mandolin playing friend from San Francisco.) So many great writer's in there. Check out Ana Egge (country blues influenced songs, but very original, she's from Austin) Nels Andrews (dramatic tension songs of America, you really should check out Nels!) and Joel Plaskett, from Halifax, who sang I Love This Town, a song I may learn myself, and start singing (it's been a while since I met a songwriter whose songs I wanted to do) (at least since I saw Ron Franklin, who I wished coulda been at this thing, but he'd left Memphis for New York and Paris, I talked to him when I got in, but he was on the interstate North already, rushing off to catch a plane.) Anyhow, it was a good time, and I got to play for a lot of people who'd never seen me before, and catch up with my old friends, so I guess that's what it's all about.

Mountain Stage in Charleston, West Virginia was the next stop, where i recorded a live show with them, my eighth appearance on the show.

The trip wrapped up in Lexington, Ky. where I performed on The Woodsongs Old Time Radio Hour. This show can be heard and seen on Woodsongs.com

The tour of the UK and Europe begins next week. See the tour listings here at Petercase.com

Read Go Now by Richard Hell on the airplane.... remarkable, but I can't really recommend it, unless you're a student of writing. The sex scenes are straight out of penthouse letters, and don't get a passing grade. His second one is better.

Hey, you ever read On Being Blue by William Gass? It's about, among other things, the difficulties writers all face when writing about sex. It's tough, or maybe impossible to do well, that's Gass's view. It's one of the best books ever for writers though. Every word counts.

I can't stop listening to the Harry Smith Box, again... every track is so clear. This is good fuel when you're songwriting, for many reasons. The clarity is tops. Clear lines are fundamental.

Larry Norman died. I met him once, he was a very far out cat. God bless you Larry, thanks for the wild music and words...

Little Richard was great, it was a gas to see him looking so strong and actually sort of tough or stern, bad ass. He sounded great. Willie Mitchell was there and got an award.

Denise and I talked for awhile with Garth Hudson last night, that was fun. His point of view is like nobody else's. We talked about Buffalo musicans, his solo album, it was interesting to me, anyhow. He was riding around with another white bearded-dude ( actually, with my friend Glen Howard, one of the world's greatest record collectors) in a cherry '49 Hudson.

I was surprised by how powerful and dynamic etc... Kanye West was in person. I never liked his records so much, but he's fast, full of feeling. Daft Punk sounded great, reminded me of Funkadelic, Zapp.

Blues heroes Honeyboy Edwards and Pinetop Perkins got the Grammy for their album. That was pretty good to see.

Aretha was over the top. I've been mesmerized all over again lately by her Young Gifted and Black album, one of my faves since it came out. Beyonce and Tina Turner? Beyonce got nothin' on Tina tha a few years won't take care of. Tina's got personality, soul, strength, purchased the hard way at 2 thousand shows on the road with Ike, etc.

You know, I liked that Alicia Keys. I never got her before, but when Stevie Wonder sang the chorus of her tune, and then she did it, I wanted to keep hearing it. I got chills there, I admit.

Yoko walked by at one point!

And Herbie Hancock album of the year... we saw Herbie and Wayne Shorter play a couple weeks ago in concert...just everynote he plays is sounds so good. Herbie told the press: 'What's conservative about me? My clothes? My music is farther out than any of the other's nominated,' and he's right, it is. His record only sold 40,000 copies this year. Album of The Year. very interesting.

Outside of all that, our country looks like its in trouble, most of the things in our culture are just about surface excitement, falling flat, low standards.

That's my grammy report...

Some further comments:

Some friends were on the same plane back to Georgia with Little Richard, and he told them the reason why he looked so badass and stern was that he was very PERTURBED at John Fogarty singing a verse that he wasn't supposed to sing! he jumped in on Mr Penniman's part there, where he wasn't needed. I noticed that at the time, but thought they must've worked it out that way. No!

So even if you are the ALLTIME ORIGINAL KING OF ROCK AND ROLL, you can still go home from the Grammy's feeling like you got screwed. Kind of puts things in perspective. Like I said at a gig, Bono and Dylan took the losers circle a lot harder than me. Kanye West suffered his loss. That's life.

I want to thanks all the friends who called and wrote and otherwise expressed their support for me. Thanks, all! I really appreciate it.

Chris was a really good guy, and a lot of people will miss him.

At his memorial service, I learned a few things about him that I never knew, including the story of how and why he became the adventurer that he was, a wild tale that went back to his childhood, when his father left them, and he began roaming Nassau by night with another lad named Pippy. Then Chris's son Mason talked about how he and a friend went for a hike with Chris in Solvang Canyon, and even though it was flooded to their waists, they continued the hike. When they got back the friends mother exclaimed 'What have you done to my son?!'

Chris loved experiences on the edge, in nature, and he seeemed unafraid of life or death. He died doing what he loved, and he really lived to the fullest degree.

Nobody was going for Kucinich anyway, and now he's out of there. Was his failure because of his ideas, or his leadership qualities? Or maybe he was just too short for Americans to get behind? Could be all of those things, you never know around here.

Any of you see Viggo Mortensen's amazing perfomance in 'Eastern Promises?' What a great actor. I dig some of Cronenberg's work as well, especially 'Naked Lunch,' the best of any of the Beat related films.

Laura Nyro was such a hero, so I've been listening to her albums again. She was ahead of her time, and deeply soulful. She could really pick the covers, too. 'The Bell's,' do any of you know that one? She called that 'teenage heartbeat music,' songs like 'Up On The Roof,' 'I Met Him On A Sunday,' 'Jimmy Mack.' I grew up on this sound in a big way: doo-wop, r&b, early motown, Dionne Warwick, Spector, Scepter, etc... it's part of my musical DNA. I went ( with my pal Mark Winsick) and saw L.N. play in '69 I guess it was ( we were 14 and she must've been 20, or 21 years old) a solo show at Kleinhan's Music Hall in Buffalo, and she was a very powerful and dynamic performer. Like I said, a hero. Or maybe I was in love with her, I don't know. I was over at my office on Pico a few years back (when I had an office!) when the phone rang, I picked it up and it was Laura Nyro on the line, calling me. I nearly flipped. Someone had given her my number (it was Harvey Kubernick.) She had some questions about a record company I was working with at the time, and I did my best to help her, but I couldn't help gushing about how much she meant to me ... anyhow, she was one of the top greats in my book, and her music means a lot to me right now. Have you heard 'Lu?' 'Timer" The 'Christmas And The Beads Of Sweat' LP? With Alice Coltrane and Duane Allman in the band? How about 'Save The Country?'

We saw Honeyboy Edwards at Cozy's late Friday. It's always good to see this legend of the blues still doing his thing. 93 years old, yelling the blues, playing electric slide guitar.

Big gig next Friday at the Getty. I'm getting back in gear.

Found a suitcase with Plimsoul's tapes from the Whiskey, Halloween, in 1981. Hmmmm.... the tapes have been untouched for 27 years.

I remember that as being a good show. Have to give it a listen.

That's all I got, goodnight.

It sucks.

http://www.undermilkwood.net/prose_umw1.html

Kucinich: They console themselves on the myth that they do not have the votes, when all they have to do is tell the president, “We are not going to give you any more money.” This is a basic civics lesson. The bill is made, introduced, it goes into committee, it comes back out, it goes to the floor, you know, eventually it can be passed. I will tell you how a bill isn’t made. It is not introduced. It doesn’t get to the floor. Since appropriations bills begin in the House, by the Constitution we can tell the president we are not going to give him any more money. He ... has to use the money he has that is available to take a new direction that will result in ending the war. We can box the president in on this. If he fails, if he refuses to bring the troops home, then we turn to impeachment. It isn’t as though the president has the right to just keep the troops there. You can’t blame the president. The Congress has the right to fund the war or not to fund the war. Every time you fund the war, you vote to authorize it all over again. The showdown that needs to happen—and this is the way Vietnam ended—we basically told the president we would stop the funding. You don’t need a vote to do that. The president would be similarly faced with having to then go to the nations of the region and say, “We are going to leave,” and that is the only responsible course of action we can take, and the course of action I recommend anyway. So why should we have to force him to do that? Why don’t we just go to him and say, “Look, this is the plan: We want the troops brought home, and we are not going to give you any more money. We will support you if you take these steps. If you don’t, it will be very tough”? They are refusing to confront him. Considering the fact that the whole war is based on lies, what are we doing here? History may well look back at this time and ask why was American sleeping while their leaders were engaging in aggressive war? They are going to know there was one person who was awake. I call it for what it is: a war crime.

http://www.truthdig.com/interview/item/20080106_a_conversation_with_dennis_kucinich/

Pere Ubu were Goya-like soundscape sorcerers, mad weavers of industrial strength spellwork. They were a rockin' band plus a man on a synthesizer that sounded like the dream of a steam drill. Devo were mad scientists, out to destroy the world as we know it. The Dead Boys came to hang, and I met Stiv and Cheetah Chrome outside.... all of these bands were inspiring, and the only reason I can think of for the Rockin' Fame Hall to be located by Lake Erie.

The record shop in Cle was Hideo's Discodrome, run by a rocker named Johnny. They threw a super bash for us too. Then it was on up to Toronto, where we opened the first puck club in Tee-oh: the Crash and Burn. That was a mad scene attended by the entire rock scene of the city, including the B-Girls, The Viletones and the Diodes. That went on for a few days, then we made New York. We stayed at the Chelsea, played at Max's Kansas City, did an interview for New York Rocker, I had all my hair cut off at a place downtown... etc. Lot's of people turned out for the NYC show: Greg Shaw came out from LA, Phast Phreddie too, Miriam Linna of the Cramps was there, and a cast of thousands. We played the gig with Tommy from DC and his band, I think they were the Razz.

Its all just names now, a cascade of facts that mean nothing much. Stories to tell in bars to kids.

We had a week break in the middle of the tour, after we were fired from the DC gig. Paul went to New York on the train, while I drove (with Jack as a passenger) from Washington DC, to LA, making it in 2 and a half days (the fastest time I've ever heard of for that trip, especially with only one driver). Jack went home to his wife, and I visited a girl I knew and missed, ran up and down the Sunset Strip a couple times, then turned around and drove Jack and me back to Cincinnati in time to play on a gig with the Ramones at Bogart's. During this second jaunt the car caught fire, and the gas tank sprung a leak. Armed with a bar of soap to fix the leaking tank, and a case of transmission fluid to continually pour into the car, we finished out the tour with minimal repairs, going against the best advice of every mechanic who looked at the car.

In Denver on the way back, we stopped, and I called Deena. She picked me up and took me back to her apartment. I told her I need something for the drive, so she got on the phone with a pharmacist she knew and soon we drove across town. She scored a huge bottle of Amphetimine Sulfate , while I waited outside. This big jar she gave to me, containing hunderds of the buggers. We went back to her place and I took a shower, and had what seemed to be a heart attack, just terrible frightening pain in my chest that nearly knocked me out. I crawled out of the shower, clutching myself in agony, then after awhile it subsided, so I got up toweled off, got dressed, found Jack, and we went out and hit the road again. I didn't want to miss that first Ramones show for anything.

By the end of that run to Ohio, I was hallucinating, seeing thousands of little animals that looked like Armadillos running acorss the highway in front of the car. At one point , I was driving at night out in Colorado on the far edge of the Rockies. There wasn't another car in sight, and we were under the big old moon, it was clear for miles so I decided to turn the headlights off and enjoy the night. Jack was in the passenger seat making up a song (this was the night he wrote Paper Dolls,) while I was driving barefoot, and we were going up to maybe 110 miles per hour, when the police pulled us over. They checked us out, and then just gave us a warning: turn the lights on, slow down, and put on your shoes. Driving without shoes is a ticket in Colorado. Yes, sir. At another point I passed a cop car doing about 90 miles per hour. He just waved me into line. We musta just looked like white boy's on a tear, and they were letting us slide. Or maybe we had a certain kind of invisible karma going that week. Whatever it was, I didn't believe it either.

High hopes, wide open highway, a first road trip through the middle of the land, SD to Denver, then Chicago, Cleveland, Toronto, New York and Boston... the '77 tour was the first of it's kind, the original indie tour, but so what?

The story has been told enough times to last forever, but my real memories are mostly buried now. I know that all I wanted was to drink, take uppers, chase girls and see the country. I dug hearing the other bands music, and I was in love with songs but didn't have my writing down at all. And, estranged from myself, I had betrayed my muse.

Even so, I can tell you 'bout the party at Waxtrax in Denver, a kegger in the store and the whole Denver scene came out. We were up there a few days, and had a good time. Jim Nash at Waxtrax had a fantastic collection of Rockabilly 45's, and I was in love with that music: 'Flying Saucers Rock and Roll,' 'Red Hot,' 'Boppin' The Blues,' some I knew and a lot I didn't, revelations. Dave Edmunds 'get It' was just out. I read a book, Out Of His Head, about Phil Spector, as I stood drinking beer in the front of the store. It was a party there, and an education. One of the girls Deena put us up at her place. She seemed to have a lot goin on, knew a lot of high roller guys, and there were whispers about that, but I thought she was nice. Her friend Patty was a photographer, and had been to New York and done pictures of the Ramones, so she took our photos one day, including one of the pictures you still see of the band, us kneeling in the Waxtrax storefront wearing streetclothes, me hiding a beercan behind my leg.

Driving to Chicago we nearly died in a crash with a semi. I heard Paul Harvey for the first time, as he told an amazing story on the radio about Jimmy Carter. We stopped at truckstops along the way, where I pretended to lose my change in the machines and got free cigerettes. The sky was huge and blue, and the land was empty, nearly as empty as my heart.

I don't remember the Chicago gig, it's gone, and I don't care, but Mary Lee I've always wondered about. Never another word between us after '77, she moved, I was touring , and we lost track. We met in a club in downtown Chicago... we were dancing and laughing, and I never dance. It was all a big joke. I was wearing my Nerves suit, before the sweat from the tour ruined it, and she musta thought I was a bigwig of some sort, or maybe not: even with a suit on I was never presidential material, by any imaginative stretch. She took me to her apartment, and I was very, very drunk. We drank more, lots of Andre cheap champagne, woke up the next day late, and were both hungover. The curtains stayed closed. She played me records while I drank off last nights dregs. Brian Eno's 'Baby's On Fire, 'Iggy's 'Calling Sister Midnight', Petty's Breakdown. Cheap Trick's ' He's A Whore' and 'Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace'. David Bowie's 'Changes' and his song to Dylan. I'd never paid attention to any of it before. She was into 'Ramblin Gamblin Man' by Segar, I'd always loved that one, about the kid who left home at 13 to run with the carnival, she said she knew a guy who played on it. But then she added, she'd heard that half of the guitar players in Detroit claimed to be on it too. I guess she was the first girl I met who knew anything and everything about Rock. The Nerves were based out of Chicago quite a bit that summer and we got to know each pretty well. We were drinking a lot, I had to have it... She took me to meet her mom at one point, that was awkward for me: 'does this mean she's taking it more seriously than I am?' She let the other Nerves stay at her mom's empty Lakeshore highrise flat, and all in all we were in town for a couple three weeks over the summer, so we were pretty tight I guess, at least compared to anyone else I met that year. She showed me love, and I didn't know what to do with it, finally, or even how to act, I was a barbarian, on the run, dangerous to myself and everyone else, and all because I couldn't sit still, couldn't stand the way I felt.

Walking on the West Side with Mary Lee, up Walcott in the evening, and on to the main drag, amid the teeming sensations of the streets in Chicago: the Elevated, the residential duplex streets intersecting with the city thoroughfares, liquor stores and pizza parlours, people everywhere enjoying the summertime, and the early evening's amazing otherness, as if Chicago had commerce with the full shining daytime moon. Or maybe we were in love for a minute, and our sense of that was heightened by the fact the tour was gonna move on now, one more day and I'd be off and gone to Cleveland and the rest of it, returning God knows how or when, or what ever was going to happen.

Our last night in the Chicago area was with the Ramones at a joint called Night Gallery, quite a ways North of the city. Mary Lee drove me up there for sound check. When we walked into the empty club, the Ramones were on stage but they weren't playing. They had their instruments on and Johnny was yelling at Dee Dee: 'I want to see you moving tonight during the show! I don't care if you just jump up and down in one spot!.'

The Nerves and the Ramones were all in the dressingroom before the gig. A guy from the newspaper suggested... maybe the Nerves and the Ramones could all jam together. The room went silent, then Dee Dee answered for everybody: 'We don't know how to jam.'

That night we played with Jimmy Sons, the lead singer of legendary Chi-town garage band heros The Shadows Of Knight. He came up on the end of our set, and we backed him on Gloria, and for us, the ultimate honor, we got to play with him on 'Dark Side,' the obscure B-Side of SOK Gloria 45. The crowd went nuts, the place was packed out, then the Ramones got up and hit it, they were great, and sure enough, there wqs Dee Dee, jumping up and down in one place.

The band loaded out after the show, I said goodbye to Mary Lee and we got on the highway.

It was not necessarily in Jack's singing or playing. He was in love with Connie, you could feel that, and he was turning his life around, that was a part of it too. Anyhow, the music caught my imagination, I saw the vision of something new that could happen, and pulled a Rockford, as we used to say back then.

Melodic catchiness, plus feeling, that was the reality factor: the average person (theoretically!) could get caught up in it. What they didn't have was great lines, but clear ones. There were no Dylanesque insights, no secret guide to life, no political consciousness, no mention of God, no psychology, very little poetry. But they were Poetry, and could stop a clock.

That first batch: those were the ones. Hangin' On The Telephone was one of 'em, but others topped it for feeling. It was a great outburst of creativity, the kind people like me are always looking for, even when we don't know it. It happens every now and then. Jack's explosion in '74 was definitely a case, the real thing.

By the time the band was together and on the road, that bird had flown. What was free flowing, and all potential, became codified, rigid, caught up in the rush of egos, the clusterfuck of group think. The sad thing is the Nerves never made the great album that we should of, in 75 before we kicked Pat out, when the thing was fresh, before we started wearing the suits, and acting like idiots.

While the rest of the band slept, I'd driven a thousand miles, feeling like one of those Ed 'Big Daddy' Roth monsters, as if I could explode right through the metal roof of the car, shredding it, with the wheel and a shiftter in my hand, looming over the highway, bug-eyed and screaming, with my foot buried in the gas: 'yee-haw!'

A song kept going through my head, taking shape, and I started calling it 'Rockabilly Moon.'

America was amazing. The cities looked haunted as you approached them across the plains. In the distance at dawn, Kansas City seemed like the ruins of an ancient civilization, decaying on the floor at the bottom of the ocean. I expected to be attacked at any minute by a Giant Squid, hidden lurking behind an abandoned Highway Interchange.

At the garage near Waco, I kicked back in the grass by the roadside and waited for the lone mechanic to replace our water pump. Jack and Paul wandered off. It was going to be awhile. The sky was blue and big beautiful clouds flew over. I was really happy, on the road, seeing the world, travelling with a band. I watched as a bread truck pulled over to the side of the road, about 30 feet in front of me. In it was a whole Mexican band of musicians, and some of their family members, quite packed in. They looked like they'd been on the road for a long time. In the passenger seat a boy played the accordian, and little children got out and ran around the grass. The men fixed a tire while everybody watched and drank beers, then the whole crew blasted off again.

We weren't on the road with any family, that's for sure. No one in my clan could of made this scene. And I'd gone on the road with nothing, just a spare T shirt and a tooth brush. I made no phonecalls home, wrote no letters, the only people I talked to were the band, and people I met at the clubs. I don't think anyone in my family even knew, or cared where I was, and I kind of liked it that way.

Jack and I couldn't agree on anything, or even get our guitars in tune, and now we were late. Jack sat on the bed wearing a three piece suit, smoking a Chesterfield, and holding a black Rickenbacker electric guitar up to his ear. I stood a couple of feet away, dressed in a similar suit and plunking on a wine-red hollow body Rick bass. Jack was high and lonesome. I was wired, had just driven my bandmates from Chicago to this eleven-dollar-a-night motel in San Antonio, in one long super powered shift at the wheel, and I wasn't in the mood for jive, but that was the only thing on the menu.

Sound check at Randy's Rodeo Hall had gone well. Tonight's show was to be the first punk rock show ever in San Antonio, and everybody at the hall was excited. I was excited too, especially to be in Texas for the first time.

We'd played the night before in Kileen, at the FT Hood Army base. After hanging out awhile, watching as the soldiers drunkenly and verbally assaulted the local girls and each other in the parking lot, we went and enjoyed some Chinese food at a one of the two joints on the drag, then drove over to the Six, where our whole entourage slept in the same room. The next morning we awoke to the manager pounding on our door, busting us on that one, and we elected to split before the cops showed up.

Now we were rangly, tangly, and late for the show.

The guitars sounded like crap, completely out of tune, with themselves and each other. Jack's chords were sour, and my bass notes just made it worse. Jack was frustrated, and blaming it on me. Paul, who had gone over to the club while we squabbled in the heat, slammed back in the door.

'C'mon you guys! We're late! The place is packed, and they're all waiting for us! Let's go!'

By the time we got to the club it was too late, it was too late. The Ramones had gotten tired of waiting, and gone on with the show without us. They rocked the place through a hoop, and left the stage after their set, pure pandemonium ruling the hall. Now the Nerves were to go on after the Ramones, and it looked like it could get ugly with the crowd. Someone had opened up the janitor's closet and armed the audience members with brooms, and mop handles. They were gonna let us have it.

In the big backstage area, as I enetered, i was surrounded by Joey, Dee Dee and Johnny: they were mad and got right up[ on me. 'It could' ve been a great show, man' said Joey from behind the shades.

They left and we were in trouble. We played our set, narrowly dodging the audiences weapons.

It was a tough club, Randy's Rodeo. I wasn't surprised when, later that year, I saw in the news that Sid Vicious got bloodied there. That's the kind of place it was.

It was a tough decision for me, whether to join the Nerves or not, but after walking around the city for weeks, tied in psychic knots, so abstracted I was in personal danger, crashing into walls, and nearly getting run down in the street, I went ahead and did it. I called Jack, we met up, took a quick stroll around the Embarcadero talking about how we were gonna be bigger stars than the Beatles, and that was it. I was on an exciting new stretch of road, with no real idea where it would lead.

What in hell was I thinking? It was a betrayal of everything I'd done since freeing myself from the troubles in Buffalo. I was joining with another self-declared leader, who wanted to take on the world, and it was at the exspense of everything I'd been working on. The Nerves weren't going to be playing blues, or Dylan and Guthrie songs, they had no Beat component to their vision, nothing psychedelic, and there were no messages about America, not a word about life on the street. They were essentially and basically a throwback, reactionary (even if we did all vote for Carter in '76.) But, I didn't have any sense of that, or who I was, or of what I'd done of any value, up to that time, or even of what I could do. My streetsingers freedom came hard: the streets dried up in the rain, every winter, and I was starving out there, not to mention, isolated. How was I gonna make it, indeed?

I threw in with Jack and the Nerves, in late '74. It took a while to get going, and I was still busking for a living.The other member at this point was guitarist Pat, a guy I already knew from the street music scene. It turned out he'd grown up in the same town as Jack, in Sitka, Alaska, though they'd come to SF seperately. On the street Pat was a classical guitarist. He stood out in North Beach, always walking in an extremely upright fashion, with his guitar case in one hand and his head back, sighting down his nose at everybody in the world. He gave the impression of being a snob, musically and socially, and also sort of a tough guy, but had a certain charisma too. He didn't seem to think much of what anybody was doing out there, but, I guess he liked me, and acted like my musical talents at times surprised him. I kind of looked up to him for awhile, as a serious musician with aspirations, like Jack, only different. We began spending a lot of time together, working on songs and jamming on streetcorners.

Jack convinced me to take up the bass to be in the band. I'd played bass in a couple of band lineups in Buffalo a few years before, so I said I'd give it a shot. I traded my red Rickenbacker electric for a Hofner violin bass he had. I paired up with Kit, the girl I'd met on Polk Street, and after crashing around for a spell, the two of us got an apartment in a Tenderloin tenement that cost us 90 dollars a month. The place was small, and the building was scary, a cockroach ridden hell hole of thieves and addicts. I got serious about the bass up there, learning lines off Beatles Stones and Motown records.

Paul was in town from New York, and saw Jack's ad up on the wall of Don Weir's Music City, on Colombus. Paul was 19, had never written a song , and could barely keep a beat on the drums, but he looked good, and Jack liked him right off, so he was in.

My first impression of Paul was that he was sharp, really abrasive, didn't seem to know too much about music or records, but he had a natural flair for songs in the style we were doing. Pat seemed to feel the same, so we were willing to give him a try. At least he played a simple drum kit, not one of those double bass drum, mountains-of-tom-tom sets that most drummers were hauling around and ruining music with in those days.

We began rehearsing in Pat's basement apartment on Gough Street.The neighbors did all right with it for awhile. We played Jack's Motownish 'I'm Still Mad,' and in the middle Pat played one of his guitar 'trademarks,' that Jack was always talking about. Wearing dark glasses and slightly leering while he played, with his amp on loud and the treble all the way up, Pat stomped the floor with one foot as he repeated a rhythmic melody figure on the low strings that was so catchy, explosive and exciting that I nearly had to stop playing.

We really became a band that day, even though I had to be held back from punching Paul in the nose during one of the breaks, after some nasty aside or other had set me off. I was allergic to him. I felt that he was bringing out the worst in me, and in this incident, my anger scared me, for the first time in my life.

Somehow, messin' around on the phone, Paul booked a gig, a weeks engagement at a vacation spot, quite a ways North of the city, called the Cobb Mountain Lodge. They were to feed us, give us a cabin to sleep in and pay us a few bucks, for 2 sets a night of rock and roll entertainment in their bar.

On Friday, Jack and Paul drove up in Connie's car with some of our gear. Pat and Kit and I took the bus, our guitars and amps stowed underneath, and the journey seemed to meander all over the mountains for hours, up and down backroads bewteen remote stops. We finally arrived in the town, which seemed to be one block long. We sat on the sidewalk in front of the bus depot waiting, with our instruments and amps in a pile, enduring the stares of the passing townspeople, until Jack finally showed up in the car, to carry us up to the lodge.

Paul was in our cabin, tremendously excited, the gig was gonna be great. We'd start Saturday night at 9 O'Clock.. The club owner had given Paul a bullhorn to use, as well as some posters to put up, and we were supposed to go out and spread the good news , and let all the people on Cobb Mountain know about the big show. Pat refused to go, now even getting out of bed Saturday morning, but Paul, Jack, and I jumped to it, driving around all day, visiting various 'fun' spots of the area, haranguing crowds of vacationers and passerby over the bullhorn: 'Big Show Tonight! The Nerves at Cobb Mountain Lodge! 9 O Clock! Come One and All!' We'd hop out of the car and run back to hand out free passes to teenage girls we'd see loitering about in town, and the girl's'd look at us, the flyers, the car, the bullhorn and each other, and tell us they were coming, for sure.

It's gonna be fantastic, we all said. Even if half the people come who said they would, the place'll be packed, and we'll rock the house down.

Up at the lodge Saturday night at 8:45, our gear was all set up at one end of the dance floor, amps on standby, ready to go, red drums tuned and polished, shining in the floodlights, but the three of us were out front, looking up and down the road. The club was dead empty, and there was not a car in sight. We went back in and the bartender was leaning at the end of the counter, reading a magazine. The juke box was playing something horrible by Jefferson Starship. Not one customer! 9 O Clock: nobody.

The barman fronted us some drinks, and we hung about sullenly sipping, and after about 100 years the door opened up and a whole gang of people came in. It must of been at least a carload... we were nearly ecststic.

They settled in around the bar, and in a few minutes we cooly headed down to the other end, picked up our guitars and got ready.

We started off with a couple of Jack's, then I sang 'When You Find Out,' from there it was 'I'm Still Mad' and 'Howlin' For My Baby'... just as we were going into 'Hanging On The Telephone,' playing to the empty dance floor and the drinkers at the other end of the hall, the bartender walked to our end of the room, drying his hands on a towel which he then draped over his shoulder. Grabbing a big glass door he then pulled it shut on us, cutting us off from the rest of the hall, and blocking the full impact of our noise from bothering the paying customers. Then he walked back to the bar.

I can't remember now if we got fired or quit, but we didn't last the whole week up there.

We went back to the city, and on the first night back I had the Hothouse Madman dream.

Part 2 'Hothouse Madman' I'm cutting class from Hamburg High, skippin' out on school, so I go across the street and into a little record store there on the corner, and start looking through the bin for singles. I come to one that really catches my eye. It's in a very colorful sleeve, and in wild type the cover reads "'Hothouse Madman' by the Sargents." I want to hear the record, but John Lennon is a few feet away, going through records in another one of the bins, and when he sees me with the Sargents record, he flips out and comes over saying' I don't want you to listen to that record.' I say 'Well, I want to hear it.' Lennon says 'Don't listen to that record!' and he tries to take it from me. I resist, and take it over to the counter and the clerk plays it through the store. It's incredible, an amazing, blaring-red bright rock and roll song, and I love it!

I wake up and jump out of bed, immediately pick up my guitar and learn it, writing the lyrics from the dream down in a pad, right there on the couch. The chords to the song include some I've never played before, and they sounds great. The chorus jumps up to a falsetto on 'HOT-house Madman, hothouse madman.' I play a guitar solo in the middle of the song, rockin on the low strings. It's the rockin'est song I've ever written, if it can truthfully be be said that I wrote it. I'm not sure, I just know I dig it.

I play it there in front room of the pad, making Kit listen over and over. She seems to be going for it, and I'm excited and kind of amazed at the nature of the song, and it's dreamy inspiration. The music is simple, original, seamless, and rocks like crazy. The words are strange, but I feel like I understand them.

'In the dark I'm waiting, near the break of day, crouching in the bushes, when they come my way.'

I play it for the Nerves later in the day, after rehearsal over at Pat's. The tune and the chords is going over, but everybody's having trouble with the words. It freaks 'em out. Hothouse madman? What's that supposed to mean?

It was always hard to get the Nerves to play my songs. I had to get'em by Jack, and he was tough, he'd tear em apart. He liked to edit'em down, and in the process disembowel 'em if you weren't careful. He was especially hard on stories, even ruining some of his own. Chopping mercilessly, all in the service of a mad minimalism that almost worked. He had songs where the first verse repeated three times and that was it. Paul ratified everything Jack said, as a sort of right hand man.. So it was a gauntlet for tunes, and I wanted nothing in the world more than to perform my tunes with the band, but they were rarely allowed through. 'When You Find Out' was in. They found it undeniable, I guess, a powerful melody and poignant lyrics over far out chords, including a B flat in A minor, and a major/minor oscillation. Jack worked that one over for hours, alone and obsessed down at the end of the rehearsal room, trying to pry the chords apart, prove that it was somehow put together wrong, but it was tight and finally he gave up, and the band learned it.

On one of the road trips up the state I must have been preassuring him about it, and he told me that if I rewrote the lyrics to 'Hothouse', we'd do it, and I said okay, great, and as soon as we got back to Hollywood, I went up into my fourth floor digs on Wilton and started in on the rewrite.

I set up to work on the kitchen table, with a portable typewriter, a bottle of beer, a stack of paper, some notebooks and my guitar. Starting in July 1977, every night I'd take another crack at Hothouse, knocking off more lyrics to fit the melody, and the hang-up was always the same: the chorus. Nothing seemed to work there, at least not as well as the original. Compared to 'Hothouse Madman,' everything else seemed weak, awkward, contrived. Each day as the sun went down I'd sit at the table and try again, there by the open window of summer, listening to the sound of my next door neighbors The Screamers having one massive punk rock bash after another, but I tho' I was tempted, I was also still kind of too shy to make the party scene, so I just hung in there up in my room, and kept writing.

I wrote and wrote, banging away, and never seemed to get any closer to finding a new lyric for the tune.. After a while, I started writing other songs to break the boredom. Hothouse was dead stuck, but One Way Ticket just poured out. Everyday Things I wrote on a break from the serious task at hand. I made up nonsense songs, limericks, rock and roll story songs, blues: I was finally getting my writing together without even realizing it. The act of constantly trying to tailor words in rhythm to the melody of 'Hothouse' was so difficult as to be impossible, but it was great excercise. After going through that for a few months I felt I could write anything. Anything that is, except a new lyric to 'Hothouse Madman.'

( BTW, the music to 'Echo Wars, ' the leadoff track of my first solo record on Geffen, is based on 'Hothouse Madman.' T-Bone Burnett wrote the lyrics.)

'Hillary sounded silly trying to paint Obama as a poetic dreamer and herself as a prodigious doer. “Dr. King’s dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act,” she said. Did any living Democrat ever imagine that any other living Democrat would try to win a presidential primary in New Hampshire by comparing herself to L.B.J.?'

I can't believe we're not hearing more about this quote from Hillary.

After being in Buffalo for a week: God, I love Glenn Gould... and Bach.

Hamburg, New York... Lackawanna, New York. It's so much darker there, making it harder to SEE. The comparison between Buffalo and Los Angeles is no joke, its shocking. It was painful for me to make that journey the first time, and I had 4 years in San Francisco as a buffer... Buffalo is backwards in many ways, but it's soulful, too. L.A. is not part of America, it's an island attached to America, floating in the sky. Buffalo is the ground game. Trains tuned to the sixth chord. Electronic sign at the Greek restaurant advertising 'SALKON DINNER.' All night restaurants, bars everywhere...

They played Janiva Magness on the radio there, that was cool.

Here comes the Iowa thingie... I like Kucinich and Edwards, and the new guy, Obama. Maybe his heart's in the right place. Politics is not a pretty picture, is it?

We need help.

Help.

And here I am between the elderly and the teenagers. Everybodies got a job to do.

Didn't hear any music, didn't see any movies... just the peeps. Banged the old piano a little, that was about it for that type of thing.

I'm ready to go now, and yeah I enjoy resolutions. We write 'em down and stick 'em in the tree.

I can't say much more now except thanks to all our friends for the good words here, and all the best to you this new year.

Gotta quit reading, like Kafka says, it's a drug, I got work to do. Gotta try and get out more, well I did see the Gene Taylor Blues Band (aka the Phil-less Blasters) last night at Cozy's. They rocked the house. Mississippi Heavy Water Blues? Barbecue Bob? Dave asked me if I recognized it. It was great, but I didn't. Came home and dug the record, and heard BB in a whole new way.

Read a book about Mike Bloomfield, always one of my musical heros. Any of you ever read his 'Me and Big Joe?' If you ever see it, check it out, a great tale.

Great Bloomfield tracks:

1) Texas by The Electric Flag, also the sweet, sweet 'Easy Rider' on the same LP.

2) Got A Mind To Give Up Living, Work Song, East West on the Butterfield East West record.

3) The first Butterfield LP : Our Love Is Drifting, Mellow Down Easy... sheesh!

4) His work with Sleepy John and Big Joe Williams on Delmark.

5) Everybody loves his electric guitar on Highway 61 Revisited.

6) Check out Youtube, the Flag at Monterey.

Anyhow, some more travel coming up...then back for the new classes in January. Listings are a week or so back, here on the blog.

Movie of the week: 'Pickpocket' by Robert Bresson (1960) . The basis and inspiration for 'Taxi Driver.' A film about a guy in his room. A great one.

Gotta go, Merry Merry...

Or something like that.

It's late December, 1973 in San Francisco, and I'm down at Market and Powell wearing my ragged winter hand- me-downs, looking for a place to set my case amidst another streaming current, the xmas shoppers pushing and stomping their way to the next shop, to the next item on their list, past the ringing salvation army trio, and the finger pointing psycho preacher at the cable car turn around.

' You! Will! Burrrrrnnnnn!' he screams looking right at me... I look away and keep walking... recoil at his threat... same to you, pal, fuck off!

Its cold, wet, not raining anymore, but it was pouring an hour ago. Seems like it's getting dark and the day's just begun. I'm alone, got 25 cents left from yesterday's busk session... don't know where Johnny's been lately, haven't seen him since he took off to Hayward with Nicole last week. Bert's been scarce lately as well, he's been somewhere with his swedish girl, and I don't know how he's making it.

I'm broke, hungry, and 19 years old. Something will turn up. I turn right up Powell and walk as fast as I can up to Union Square, set down my case at the entrance to the square, on the corner, and start singing and playing Sleepy John Estes', 'Broke and Hungry', bangin' the snaky riff over and over on my Yamaki deluxe.

A few people toss quarters as they hurry past, and two wino's, sitting on a wall farther back in the park, look up, do a slow double take, then start ambling my way. They've been sharing a bottle of Night Train Express wine, or something, but it's all gone now. (Night Train's beautiful label, of the locamotive blazing down a midnight rail!) They look like they'd be glad to get their hands on a quarter or two.

My fingers are cramped from pressing down the metal strings in the cold, the case is open and bare, the couple of quarters I've made so far could buy me a pork bun over in Chinatown, so I'm considering quitting and making the long trudge through the Stockton tunnel over to North Beach, when here comes John.

John's an old time hippie from up in the Haight, I know him from around town, he's been here since the '67 boom. John has long dirty blonde hair, big ragged side burns, is wearing a black stove pipe hat on his head, also wears an old fashioned long coat with tails against the chill, ragged jeans with piebald patches, and big worn out work boots. He's hauling a trumpet case, tho', and I've always thought of him as a guitar player.

We greet each other in the gloom of the fading afternoon. 'Hey Peter... what's goin' on, man? how you doin' out here? Where's Johnny? You feel like sittin' in?' He glances in my empty case and gets the picture...

'Today should be a great day out here, man... let's team up, go down to the turn around, we'll be shovelling it in down there.'

I'm glad to have a partner today, so I pick up and we work our way through the crowd, back down the couple of blocks, to the red bricks at Market.

'Look, Peter... here's the thing out here: you can't play what you want to hear. You gotta play the song you hate the most. Name a song you hate, one you really can't stand.' I pause for a second and he says 'you hate Alley Cat, don't you? Most guys hate that one.'

I think of the cornball Al Hirt standard: 'yeah, I can't stand that.'

'Good' he says. 'Play along with me, and watch this.'

We start playing the cloying and cheesy Al Hirt hit, John taking the lead clumsily on the trumpet, me doing my best to back it with the proper orchestral chords.

We haven't been at it for 15 seconds when a passing women shopper throws a handful of change in the box. A man doubles back and puts a dollar bill in the case. A small crowd starts to gather. Some tourists take our picture, then come forward and put a twenty in the case. John stops blowing horn for a second, and reaches the sawbuck out of there and into his pocket for safe keeping.

We make 33 dollars in the first 15 minutes.

'The secret, man, is, you gotta play the song you hate the most. That's the one that makes the money. Let's keep playing Alley Cat. You gotta keep goin', past where you're sick to death of it. Just keep goin'. Trust me.'

I believe him, and we keep playing. And playing. And playing. 'til I think I'm gonna lose my mind, that my fingers are gonna freeze and break...but the money is FLYING in to our case.

It's the best session for the money I think I've ever seen out here.

We play 'til the traffic dies, until this, the second-to-last-shopping-day-before-christmas is over, and when we finally pack up, we each pocket a nearly a hundred bucks, by far the best day I've ever had busking.

We run into Johnny just as we're closing up shop, he's back in the city, he's come down here looking for me, and he plays ten minutes or so of Alley Cat with us, so he can make some dough too, and then we pack it up, and catch the N Judah streetcar up to the Haight , getting off after the tunnel, across from John's Carl Street pad. We decide to celebrate for a while, first stopping at a liquor store, to get some supplies.

Once we get to John's we all go into his little music room at the front of the house, sit around the piano with the little christmas tree on top, and for the rest of the night, we sing the songs we love.

PART 2

So Johnny and Eric split for Hawaii, while Bert took off for Stockholm with his Swedish love interest, leaving me at the end of my big year, pretty much on my own again. I had enough money to get started with a weeks rent, so I moved into the Entella Hotel, on Colombus Avenue, in North Beach., on Christmas day, 1973.

This bottom line residence hotel was a big step up for me. I'd been sleeping on sofa's, floors, in the junkyard, outside on the beach, in the back of cars, at the dollar movie theater in the day, after walking around all night. I'd even tried the shelter on Fillmore one night, but that was a little too strict and I split.

It was so great having my own room. All I owned was a guitar, the clothes I had on, a pen and a notebook. But I was able to leave the guitar in there on the bed, and go out for a walk up the street and not have to carry it, and that felt like some kind of a luxury breakthrough.. I'd been carrying that thing every waking hour for months, and I was tired of it.

I wandered North Beach for an hour, up to City Lights, which was dark, then around, finally over to the Garcia Vega, where I picked up a Green Lantern comic book and a can of beer, then went back to my room.

The Entella was dingy, bare lightbulbs swinging from cords in the rooms and halls, but it felt great to go to my lucky numbered door, go in, lock it, then lay on the bed and gaze out the window at the Doggie Diner sign across the street. It was a giant weiner pup, up on it's hind legs, and at night it looked frightful, but I loved looking out there anyway.

I was a professional musician in a big US city, supporting myself by my nightclub appearances, my new thing. I was gonna get off the street scene. My club gig every night, open mic at the Coffee Gallery, would pay me two pints of dark beer and an opportunity to pass the hat, which usually netted two and a half bucks, enough for a slice or two at the pizzaria on the corner. That was what I was gonna be surviving on.

All of my dreams were coming true.

My new busking pal Jimmy came over, we'd just met, and we smoked together for awhile, then got up to head down to the club. I had on my shades and my jacket, grabbed my guitar, and we were just about to step out into the hall, when the mirror seemed to leap off it place on the dresser top, swan dive to the floor, and break into a thousand pieces. I never touched it. Furniture suicide.

The noise scared me, the wreckage surprised me, and I was bent over, hypnotized, staring into my own reflection in the shards on the floor. Jimmy grabbed my shoulder and pulled me up roughly.

'Don't stare in that, man, that's a thousand years of bad luck!'

But it was too late.

Right then of course, there was a knock on the door... It was the guy from the front desk.

'There's a phone call for you, Case.' I thought that's what he said...

(Merry Christmas everybody!)

http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=23871

My apologies to anyone who is disappointed or otherwise put out by this. I was really looking forward to the last five as well, as the pre Christmas house concert and Santa Cruz gigs have become a tradition for us... Hopefully we can make up those dates sometime in the near future.

Hot on the heels of this news, the last show of the Texas/ OKC run was cancelled by the management of the Blue Door due to the ice storm in Oklahoma. I was on my way North of Dallas when I heard about this and wheeled the car around, Rockford style, and headed to DFW, where I was lucky enough to get a seat on the next plane home.

And all of a sudden, that was it for the 2007 tour. Mixed in with difficult family news was the phonecall from James at Yep Roc telling me I'd been nominated for a Grammy award... wonderful news at a tough time. My thanks go out to all of my friends for the emails and calls, thanks everybody, I appreciate it!

The show in Austin was a blast. We had a nice crowd, with a number of songwriters and leading lights of the Austin music scene in attendence, including Ray Wiley Hubbard (people kept mistaking us for each other!) Hayes Carll, Michael Fracasso, Jody Denburg, Kent Benjamin, and a whole cast of other friendly boys and girls... Gurf and Romi opened the show and sounded great. Gurf and I jammed on beatles and blues at the end... it was a really fun night.

Other shows I particularly enjoyed lately include The Anchorage show for Whistling Swan (always a gas to go up to Alaska), this Friday's show at Casbeer's in San Antonio (great to see my old friend Cam King at this show, who drove over from Fredicksburg) (also, a carfull of folks who'd been at The Austin show and came to San Antonio for another round!), and Dallas and Bend Studios, (a wonderful singer songwriter series, at last, in that town).

I picked up Joe Ely's book 'Bonfire Of Roadmaps,' and have been avidly reading it whenever possible. It's great writing, maybe the best he's ever done, it's so powerful: funny, harrowing, inspiring, and will make you laugh and cry. It's different from, but on par with 'Bound For Glory', 'On The Road' and 'Chronicles'. I've always put Joe way up on the music and musicians scale.... ever since I first heard 'Boxcars' in 1977. ( Matt Groening, at that time a clerk at Licorice Pizza Records on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, turned me on to Joe one night in the store). Ely is a giant, this proves it again. I'll have more to say about this soon. Buy it... read it.

Lotsa problems this Christmas, but lotsa blessings too. The way it always is.

I'll be back here soon, I hope.

One of the elders of the family is having a rough time, several of the youngers, too, are going through their things, and there's just a lot going on. Health stuff all over, close by, just one of those times... guitar players, too.

I'm rooting for Obama, let's see a change. Please, God, no Hillary! (Well, unless she's the only non republican alternative.) (Ron Paul might get my vote over HRC.) (I take it back, Kearin's right, Paul's a dope, though vocal against the war. Obama.)

That Dylan movie... hmmm... I liked Woody a lot, Jude too... but sheesh... it was all so obvious! The power of the original song versions in the soundtrack made mincemeat of most of the movie. 'Trouble In Mind' : Jesus! That IS powerful stuff.... Richie Havens is great... Woody doing 'Ship Comes In.' The celestial beauty of the actual 'I'll Keep It With Mine.'

I dig Dylan's movie (M& A) a lot more. This one would be a good one at the 99cent theater, though, on a bill with Performance. For all it's arty 'strangeness' it's not really that deeply moving, nor truly original, but, rather a bundling of conventional truths about Dylan's career.

The tours have been swell, I just can't go over it all at this point, still another leg to go. Alaska, Texas, Northern California.

It's all a bit much, some of those drives were insane. I still love the gigs though.

Anyhow.... it's top ten time. I think this year, instead of it being only music, cd's etc, lets open the top tens to EVERYTHING you've heard, read, seen, etc... this year. The top ten of whatever you're really digging.

Here's mine. Top Ten, 2007

1) Any and all of the Ron Franklin recordings. He's the guy who brings rock and roll, blues, the words, a sense of mystery, destiny, style... check him out... I have a feeling his best is yet to come, but 'City Lights' is the one you can find and it's a great place to start.

2) The Criterian Collection. Films on DVD. Godard, Truffaut, and a few hundred others. Paste this in and check it out.

http://www.criterion.com/asp/list.asp?sort=spine

3) John Doe's gig with me in Nashville. His song 'twin brothers.' Any JD gig.

4) Hendrix At Monterey, DVD.... the whole show. Killing Floor. Like A Rolling Stone. Etc...

5) 3:10 To Yuma... me and Badger saw it after the Winston Salem gig... best old school Western since The Unforgiven.

6) The Complete Blind Willie McTell cd's I made and took on the road.

7) Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black in 'Margot At The Wedding.' Hmmmm....

8) 'Bright Moments' Roland Kirk live in SF 1973. 2 cds...

9) 'When I Was Cool' A true story of Ginsberg, Burroughs, Corso by a student at the Naropa Institute. Hilarious, poignant..

10) Denise's stories over ar Crawdaddy.com (archived.)

also dug: The White Stripes first single on the new one, a book by Ted Hughes I'm reading, Joe Strummer: the movie and the book, he was something else, Paul Carreri's gig in Charlottesville. Christopher Hitchens presence on Charlie Rose, etc... (not his opinions, just his vibe!) Don't forget the John Train cd 'Mesopotamia Blues.' Alun Pigguns and The Quitters (Toronto super rockers!) and my old street singing buddy Bert Dieverts 'Taking Sam's Advice...' blues cd. Special mention: Mort Sahl at McCabe's. Oh yeah, Tim Gibbons and his boys rocked the house down that night in Hamilton... an heroic mad gig.

Whatever...

I'd like to put up a ten favorite places I saw list, ten magical moments, and a bottom 10, but I'm outta time, for now.

I gotta go... have at it. lovePC

Duane, get better, man... we're counting on you.

Uncle Eddie's coming, right?

Best to all of you, here at the blog. I'll try to post some new writing up here asap, before I go back out again. But I can't right now, too busy!

Talk to you soon...

He took John Lennon and Woody Guthrie's work to a whole other level, bridging an abyss, into this latest 'modern world.'

Julien Temple has broken the rock bio code with this one, and not a moment too soon, supplanting he usual 'expert-talking- heads-speaking-in-front-of-cd-racks' by getting the peop[le who knew him to sit and chat around campfires, in odd urban locations, and without being identidied by name, not once. These techniques help project the story into the viewers heart, as does the directors refusal to folow the usual rock-to-rehab script of the other ten thousand rock bios. Of course, Joe rejected that script too, and the idea that he died from an undetected 'heart anomaly' or whatever they call it... is pure denial. He drank and drugged like a madman until the end, and if I did that, I'd be dead already too.

Still, the whole tale is captivating, the movie is brilliant, it shows the dark side of Joe, not just the hero, and, like I said, it'll make you weep, but it's also inspiring, and like Joe, it raises the stakes in an increasingly inhuman and empty world.

BTW, Mick Jones was no slowpoke, either and he says some interesting things about the world today.

------------------------------------------------------

THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY (Tour News)

I saw a number of the blogmates out on the tour: Ackles was out in force, Mike Kanski made his presence felt at two different stops on the tour, and quite a number of others.

We visited with Tommy Ramone again in Nashville, as well as John Doe. In Toronto, had a wonderful shoe with Alun Pigguns and The Quitters, at the fabulous Dakota Club, on Ossington. I played my last ever show in Buffalo, I give up! It used to be a great place to play, but my hometown does NOT support my gigs, and I just can't take it anymore.

At the NYC gig, we had a good crowd at the Living Room, and I got to visit after the show with my friends Phast Phreddie, Lauren Agnelli, Dave Rave, and Steve Wynn. We all went out to some bar on Houston and yakked it up for hours. The Living Room show was taped for broadcast by XM satellite radio, and I did a number of other New York interviews, including WFDU, Dave Marshes Sirius show, and the Village Voice, for a feature on their website called 'Possibly Fourth Street.' I'll let you know when their interview and video of me busking on 8th Avenue and 48th Street goes up.

One of my favorite gigs of the tour was in Middletown, Conneticut: a sold out show on a Saturday night... and I had a great time playing for this crew, the room sounded great, it was a very fun one.

Boston sucked, as I had to play AGAIN across from the Red Sox in the Series. It ate into the attendence AGAIN. The club said : 'Come back in March, we'[ll get a good crowd for you. I said what if the Celtics are in the playoffs, and they said, don'yt worry, baseball is the big one, so, we'll see...

Charlotte, NC, the Evening Muse: one of my favorite joints, and we had a nice gig there.

The bouse concerts were a gas, especially one I played in the Philly area, with a great band called John Train, who have a swell record out called 'Mesopotamia Blues'. These guys remind me of Joe Ely's great 70's band, they really got it going on. They did a set, I did a set, then we jammed a third set... meet ups like this are one of the great things about touring, it was a lot of fun, and the audience seemed to be digging the off the cuff nature of it all.

Hamilton of course was a super gas, the gig at the Pepperjack was rugged but poignant. Hamilton reminds me of the best part of Buffalo in the 60's, a hard nosed steel town with great people and music happening late in the bars. Chris Houston was there, going on and on about EVERYTHING, one of the world's foremost wags, with an enclopedic and mad knowledge of rock and roll, politics, people, etc etc etc... Lou Molenaro's is set on making that place happen, and it is. Met guitar slinger Tim Gibbons at a late pub gig in a joint he was playin' called The Red Lion. His gig was great, and so was his rap, which I wrote down after leaving and maybe I'll share it with you soon, a classic 2AM rock and roll bar stool filibuster.

Hamilton's crazy, they were out front of the pub at closing, shooting off bottlerockets into the fog. This was a weeknight... sheesh! I love it there.

Albany, another tough town, torrents of rain, 28 people in the bar... including ol' Gibtone and his lady Susan, up from the south, on the road themselves. It was a slim sized crowd, but every single one of 'em was a musical expert of some sort, one guy a PHD, other guys asking questions about blues singers after the show, etc... Michael Eck had me on his WAMC radio show ( the npr outlet there.) he did a very thoughtful interview with me. I've known MIchael since my first solo tour in 1986.

The Chattanooga show was wild: a good crowd, younger than usual, enthusiastic. A girl standing in front of the stage to the right requested 'When You Find Out' so I borrowed a guitar and sang it for her, and the whole joint started singing along to it. They were big Nerves fans, and who knew? I got another request for 'One Way Ticket' and hey all sand to that too, as well 'Oldest Story.' They listened and reacted intensely to the new stuff too... so I was happy. Somebody requested 'Manana Champeen' so I played it, this someone turned out to be our friend here Mike Kanski. Good to see you, Mike...

The last show of the tour was the one in Nashville with John Doe and Jim Lauderdale, and the Basement, on 8th Ave S... my fave music city club. It was quite packed with peep, and I went on first and had a great time playin' for 'em. A great night to wrap things up on the tour, with the Yeps Rocs out in force, and many friends and fans. Oh yeah, ol' Beatle Bob was there doing the dance, always a good omen. He promised to come to my next gig, in his hometown, next week.

The next tour starts in Saint Louis at the Focal Point on Friday the 9th.

Talk to you soon.

Charlotte, Friday, the Evening Muse. One of my favorite places, some of my favorite people. Saturday, 40 Acres House Concert, in Chapel Hill.

Then drive, drive, drive, to the show in Conneticut. Details here on site, click on 'tours.'

Buffalo, Tuesday Night. Hamilton and Toronto, The Dakota, then driving, driving to Albany and Rhode Island.

3 days off: radio interviews in the big city, then drive to Buffalo, visiting family and friends.

Back to Boston, Oct 24, at the legendary Club Passim. Then, October 25, The Living Room in New York. House Concerts in Philly, Lewiston, and Cheseter, Va.

Then drive, drive drive to Chattanooga, Tn. and then the Basement in Nashville. The Americana Music Conference.

Ditch the car and fly, home.

Details under 'tours.'

Come see me. Tell your friends to come. Email distant relatives that you think may enjoy a concert. I'm out there again, and I'm gonna make it count.

Talk to you soon.

This is the time of year when the lollygaggers do their taxes. So here I am, piles of papers, receipts, etc... with a zillion other scraps and memories from last year. Old, old news, last October!

Just saw the first 'top ten records of the year.'

Anybody out there got 10 that are worth mentioning yet?

You ever see 'Band Apart' by Godard? ('Band Of Outsiders') With Anna Karina? That's a pretty good one too, if you liked Breathless. The scene where they do the Madison in the cafe?

How many of you out there can do the Madison?

Then I put the Lightnin' Hopkins 'rare performances' on while I did the tax tasks. Watchin' him is always a lesson. What a rocker... and the threads: sheesh! He knew how to wear a hat too.

So what are you doin' with yr life, Case?

Well, I'm playing music for people, on the road, that's a huge lot of travel and time, energy and focus.. I'm trying to write music, too, and other things as well. I hear voices saying 'why bother?' but I'm always trying to reach for something that mostly seems out of my grasp.It's a struggle: sometimes I listen to those voices, and other times I fly right by. Anyhow, I'm taking care of my responsibilities the best I can, and trying to use my gifts for good on a daily basis. Except, of course, when I'm not. So, I pray for help... and it seems like help is there, sometimes. I'm the kind of person who needs a lot of help. I know some of you know what I mean, and others don't. Oh well...

Some of you think it's OK to attack what inspires another person, and the principles that get them through life. Hell, I do it myself. I'm trying to give that up, now, because it's useless.

I got a big day tomorrow. What am I doing up?

Strangely, I sat up all night in a restaurant with Dee Dee Ramone, one summer night in Texas, 30 years ago... but I'm tired of being all excited about how old we all are, etc. I'm beginning to accept it. Middle-agers in on youtube saying they had a crush on the Plimsouls in high school. and they feel old. but that's cool 'cause it's an illusion, and we're all born on a one way street anyway.

So maybe I'm just a little farther down the road than you. You'll either make it here or not, but It's not so bad once you get used to it. There's plenty to do, that's for sure, and time goes by (ever more) quick(ly).

Read 'When I Was Cool' by Sam Kashner for humorous and insightful tales of the beats at Naropa. Corso, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Waldman, etc...

Me and Badger went to the late show of '3:10 to Yuma' after the gig in Winston-Salem. I dug it, but I love Westerns. It's a good one, though...

But the new Sean Penn film 'Into The Wild,' is not so good. Eddie Vedder's songs on the songtrack made it tough going for me. The instrumental music was beautiful, but that guy's voice and words, I just don't get it. It's like the opposite of music, to me. The acting is great though... and there's one powerful moment of dialogue, where he say's he's going to stay up there in Alaska until he kills his false self. It's not so much the dialogue, as the line of thought that's interesting. But I was thinking about that anyways, and this didn't add much to the mix. Oh well.

I've been digging the Kelly Joe Phelps record from last year... 'Tunesmith Retrofit.' I like his sound on the guitar and the tone of voice. There's something very warm and soulful in what he does here. Recommended.

On Ackle's recommendation, I'm reading 'Junky' by Bill Burroughs. It's pretty great, and, well yeah, a classic.

Just heard 'Powerman,' the old song by The Kinks. That's fantastic. Play it again.

Congrats to Corey Harris on his Macarthur Genius Award. Like the waiter at Jammin' Java said: ' Wow, I need one of those.'

The tour begins again in 10 days or so, in Charlotte, NC...

Gotta bolt. More soon.

I think DC, sheeesh! Well, check the tour listing here on the website, that's what I'm gonna do.

Open thread, come one and all, free speech without free blog speech means nothing. But treat each other with civility, that's all I ask.

Subjects? Whatever lights it up for you...

When will the war be stopped? Dems have caved... they need to cut the funding. That's the only way... to not spend another 200 billion dollars or whatever it will be, and lose thousands more lives by the next inaugaration.

Hillary's bad news, and her health care is jive: Dean had it right: Medicaid works perfectly and is run very efficiently: expand it to cover everybody, raise taxes on the super rich to do so. It's fair, and it;s right, it's doable now, people should demand it. When I tour over in Europe people can't believe the health care situation here!

My kids are into Neutral Milk Hotel's 'In An Aeroplane Over The Sea.' What a brilliant record! Very high level... don't know how I missed it, but it's great!

The Four Hundred Blows is tops on my all time movie list. The scene with the little children watching the puppet show? Wow... or the one in the paddy wagon, passing through the streets of Paris? Rent it, and see... heartbreaking, great.

I'm going to direct a movie. After I finish the book. And write my next album.

Okay it's off to South Carolina, Greenville for starts, me and the Badger hitting the path again: hope to see you, or hear from you.

Newcomers, welcome... to search the archives (they go back a couple years), chat, make waves... whatever. Just, buy my album! And if you can't buy it, listen to it. But why can't you buy it? You'll be supporting the continuing work, which is getting done at full speed ahead, on the glorious shoestrings of the underground. Tell your friends... come to the shows.

Catch you...

I was at the piano banging out the chords to 'Back In My Arms Again' over and over, playing it like a gospel song, when the door flew back and Rose and Sunshine rushed in. They were out of breath, and in a big hurry.

Rose stepped to the middle of the living room, and addressed everybody in the house:

'Danny and I are breaking up. I got a warning on the phone. He's on the way here right now, riding with the gang, coming from Jamestown. They'll be here in less than an hour. I need you guys' help.'

'Whatever you need, Rose' said Bray.

'What I need is to do is get the Harleys out of the garage and hide them in the woods. I bought them for Danny, and now he thinks they're his. I can't afford to lose them.We've got to get'em out of there before the gang gets here. There's bikes, engines, all kinds of parts, and I can't do it alone. I need you hippies to help...

We leapt to our feet and straight into it. Everyone broke into two teams. Most of us went with Sunshine, loading things into her van. Rose pulled up a Country Squire wagon and Jerry and I set to loading that up. We filled it up with engines, and fenders, frames, all sorts of junk, and then drove up the dirt road towards the mainroad, then, where the woods were thick, we'd walk the stuff in as far as we could, then hide it, covering chrome and metal with loose brush until it was invisible, then heading back for another load.

We hauled like stevedores on speed, by the time we were nearly done, everyone was getting off. The birds sang, clouds floated happily in the fall air, dogs barked, insects buzzed, but a strange distant hum was becoming audible. At first it sounded like a swarm of bees, but it was getting louder by the minute.

We were still dragging machinery out into the woods and hiding it beneath branches and leaaves. As we worked, the bumble of bees slowly turned into the hum of a low flying airplane, and the sound kept growing. The last of the choppers was hidden beneath the leaves, we were sweaty, very dirty, and my stomach twisted with the sick suck of dread. The sound of the approaching gang was a roar now, wailing through the trees, as we walked back to the house. It sounded like the entire Road Raiders gang were coming, and probably still a mile or so away.

Rose and Sunshine said thanks and walked quickly the couple doors up the road to their house. We all filed into our house and tried to prepare for Armeggedon, feigning relaxation as a group, going through the motions of normal dropout activities, as the mescaline continued to kick in.

Rose crashed the door open again, and nearly ran into our main room, standing before us with a rifle in each hand.

'You may need these,' she said.

Sunshine was behind her, holding boxes of ammunition. Rose handed the guns to Bray and then the two women bolted for the door. The engine roar was so loud we could hardly hear ourselves. The gang must've entered Idlewood, they'd be here in seconds.

'Put those in the upstairs shower,' Bray shouted to Jerry. ' Guns are the last thing we need to be waving around here.'

'Everybody should know guns and hippies don't mix,' he said with a laugh.

What we did know was that if the gang got wise that we were involved in this, and they figured we were stealing their bikes, they'd murder us like they did those cops, probably killing us slowly and painfully, out on the island.

These kind of thoughts really messed with the high.

Jer went to stash the firearms, and the rest of us tried to appear cool, huddled together by the piano in the living room.

The gang pulled through, and there must of been a hundred of 'em, riding in two columns, in full MC drag, and as loud as a 727 jet taking off. Through the window I watched 'em ride in on the dirt road, across the ramshackle bridge, and past the funky run down houses, motoring past our pad and stopping in front of Danny and Rose's place. The gang idled their bikes, Danny dismounted, and Rose came out of the house towards him.

She walked right up to him where he stood at the head of the gang, a few words I couln't hear were spoken, heads were nodding, and then Rose smacked Danny hard upside the head. It caught him by surprise, nearly knocked him over, as the gang watched silently. Rose is a big woman, and it had to have hurt, but Danny took it like a man, trying to grab her by the wrists and yelling at her. They were both shouting, having a gigantic and violent lovers quarrel in front of the whole Western New York Chapter of the Road Raiders. They went on and on, cuffing each other at intervals, but soon the spectators attention began to drift.

The Raiders shut down their engines and climbed off their rides. Everyone seemed embarassed, or amused, but nobody wanted to incur the Commandants wrath by just standing there watching, or worse, getting in the middle of things, so the members scattered in various directions, some walking to the bluffs that overlooked Lake Erie and the steelmills puffing in the distance, a few riding over to one of the other houses on the circle, where one of the guys had a pad..

And a large contingent of the bikers were curious, and paid an uninvited visit to the hippie house.

McCabe's was great fun, a sold out show, and me and Denise got to watch a full set of our favorite 'new' (?) artist, Ron Franklin. He rocked the house, playing new songs and songs from his albums, and we jammed with Carlos Guitarlos at the end... me on piano, Ron cranked up for a couple solos on the telecaster... The Dark Bob ffilmed the whole thing, hopefully we'll have a couple new videos up before I leave town again next week.

Anyhow, saw a bunch of good friends: Craig from Winslow CT. Studio, Kevin and Genise, Joe and Maria, Kirsten and Steve from Redeye... others, just a big time.

Listening: to McTell, while I read Michael Gray's bio 'Hand Me My Travellin Shoes.' It's a bit slow, maybe pedantic, BUT is worth it when finally the pieces start to come together, and you start to see the picture of Willie McTells life. Its powerful.

Also: Ron got me back thinking about the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. I'm listening to them like crazy, so beautiful and warm. There is somethng I get from them, also Van Ronk, early Dylan, The Kingston Trio, Lightnin' when I saw him live, Townes when he was at his best... and just folksingers fron the 60's in general, the good ones that I saw in person, like Cedric Smith. It's a warm thing... I try to bring it with me when I come. It's a question of passing it on.

Watched the 'Film About Jimi Hendrix.' Went and saw 'Two days In Paris' with Denise and Ron and Ron's friend. Have been reading 'Wretched Of The Earth,' Dante (introduction by Anthony Esolen (?) translator to to the Modern Library 'Inferno'.) (maybe not so hot!)

When I Was Cool.... anybody read that one? Ginsburg, Corso, Burroughs, up close, warts and all, at the Jack kerouac School.

Howie Klein calls Bushes messenger from the war: General Betray-us.

Art points out two new videos on Youtube. Somebody I don't know who, shot me at the SF show, doing Hendrix and A Million Miles Away.

The Clancy's are so great... so is the Liam Clancy solo record on Vanguard, if you can find it.

There's a free podcast of Liam you can download at the itunes store. More than worth it! He's great...

Jean-Pierre Melville: anybody see the Belmondo film that's been rereleased? I love that.

I'm back on tour in 8 days: yipes!

I'm gonna go pretend I'm sleeping...

I just wrote a whole rundown of the tour that was swallowed by the Ether (the 100th such cosmic rip job: when will I learn!) and It'll have to wait, I can't write it again now.

I was goin' on about the three packed shows in Atlanta on Sunday, among other things.

On the other hand, what the hell is the story in San Diego, anyway? Sheesh! Where were the peeps? Anyone with a clue, about how to get things going in that town, please contact me.

One highlight of the Georgia trip was a pilgrimage to William Samuel McTier's gravesite. The earthly remains of the great musician, known as Blind Willie McTell, are buried a little way off Highway 17, at the Mt Aldred Church, in Thomson, Georgia.

I have more to say, and I'll say it as soon as I can. Tell your friends about the record, and the shows, OK? Word of mouth is the new MTV. Black is the new pink. Death is the new retirement age. Anonymity is the new fame. It's all part of Reverse Marketing. Hope to see you soon!

C'mon out...

I just wrote a whole rundown of the tour that was swallowed by the Ether (the 100th such cosmic rip job: when will I learn!) and It'll have to wait, I can't write it again now.

I was goin' on about the three packed shows in Atlanta on Sunday, among other things.

On the other hand, what the hell is the story in San Diego, anyway? Sheesh! Where were the peeps? Anyone with a clue, about how to get things going in that town, please contact me.

One highlight of the Georgia trip was a pilgrimage to William Samuel McTier's gravesite. The earthly remains of the great musician, known as Blind Willie McTell, are buried a little way off Highway 17, at the Mt Aldred Church, in Thomson, Georgia.

I have more to say, and I'll say it as soon as I can. Tell your friends about the record, and the shows, OK? Word of mouth is the new MTV. Black is the new pink. Death is the new retirement age. Anonymity is the new fame. It's all part of Reverse Marketing. Hope to see you soon!

Manny and Eve, and their little daughter Janey lived across the dirt road from me and the other five inhabitants of the green hippy house in Idlewood. The Idlewood Estates was the name given to a seedy group of houses out on the edge of a woods, perched on a cliff above Lake Erie, about 15 miles South of Buffalo, New York.

The Eighteen Mile Creek empties into the lake on the south edge of Idlewoood, and there is a hard to reach island down amongst the tangled trees there, where the bodies of three undercover cops had washed up and been discovered a year or so before. Their murders had gone unsolved, but the police and the papers implied that they suspected members of Road Riders Motorcycle Club, who had been reported to have regularly used the remote island for a party spot.

Manny was the 'Commandant' off the Road Raiders MC, their dominating and militaristic leader. He was an ex-Marine, which is where he got the title, and the gang was his way of recreating the camraderie and excitement of his years in the service. Manny was big, fit, good looking, in a bike gang sorta way, with long brown hair that flowed from under his nazi helmet when he rode, and he cut a dashing outlaw figure as he roared by at speed on his Harley, sporting all all the usual accoutrements of the '1% biker: leather head to toe, 'colors,' a bandana, ear rings, bowie knife in a sheath, the whole pirate catastrophe.

I'd lived in the green house since the fall of '70, when me and Bray, Jerry, Eddie the Junkie, and the brothers Dork and Malcom had moved in together. Ours was an alliance of the most together of the street people in Hamburg. At first it was just the 6 of us splitting the $200 monthly rent, but by the darkest nights of the Buffalo winter the house was crowded with 16 or so residents: and none of the new guests had any bread.

We lived on rations of fresh steamed vegetables and brown rice, cooked once a day in huge old pots on the beat up gas range in the kitchen, and each night after dinner and the endless dishwashing, after the smoke and the jam sessions, people were sleeping everywhere, in every spare area of the house. Anyhow, I lost my room early on, which was the smallest one in the house anyway, to 'the people' when I went off for a few weeks on a hitch hiking trip.

By the time I got back, Helen moved in, without Roger this time, hell knows where he bugged off to. Helen, the quiet hipster, a hairdresser somedays, drifting the rest, in her fashionable brown suede fringe jacket and mocassins, caught out by the seasons and showing up at our door 'gimme shelter,' got the immediate approval from our whole crew.

Kathy from the next town over knew somebody and had moved in. I liked her a lot, thought she was pretty with her long black hair and big eyes, and extremely smart, smarter than anybody there, an older wiser woman at 18 years of age. She could take care of herself with the guys, too, was kind of tough, and I liked her a lot. Out of my past, my ex-9th grade girlfriend Lorraine moved in too, disdaining me, but sleeping with every other guy in the house. Through the winter we were all shut in together for days on end, and with so many big personalities, it was an intense gathering, sparks flying in the morning over the first pot of tea, and many times that year I thought I was losing my mind. The place was packed like a stick of psychosexual hippy dynamite and though our matches were usually soaking wet, every so often things caught on at the house, and it was great, but scary. Everybody was in bed with everybody else, one guy was turning into God, I was teaching myself honky tonk piano on the upright on the far wall of the living room, games of ping pong raged on the table in the middle of the room, and nobody had any idea what we were doing.

Across the dirt road and down a door, the Road Raider's first couple lived in domestic monster bliss: Manny's old lady Eve was a big and voluptuous six foot blonde, about 28, with a strong voice and clear, bright blue eyes. She was good looking, smooth talking or foul mouthed as the occasion demanded, could be suave, riotous, or righteous in turns, and was a powerful foil to Manny, as they rode together at the head of the gang, Eve high on the back of Manny's Harley. She seemed fearless, and indestructable to me, but what did I know?

Eve's best friend was a Native American woman known as Sunshine. We got to know Eve and Sunshine when they offered to let us use the laundry room at their house to wash and dry our clothes, in exchange for some duty at night watching M and E's 10 year old daughter, Janey. It seemed like a good deal. Laundry had been a huge ordeal, hitching into town with the dirty clothes wrapped in bedsheets, to the shopping center to use the laundomat, and it was exspensive too. Janey looked like an OK kid, so we said sure, it seemed like a deal.

It turned out that Janey was one of the rowdiest little 10 year old girls in the history of the planet, and she could be especially ill behaved when Jerry and I were on watch. I guess she sensed our youth and sympathy: we weren't all that much older, and she ran us right down.

Her parents would leave, go off on some biker business, and she'd blast off: running all around the house full tilt, jumping up and down on the beds and couch, screaming, breaking dishes 'by mistake' in the kitchen; 'OOOPs!' (smothered laughter, the tip off.) She grabbed my Gibson and ran to the top of the stairs, holding it out over the 10 foot well: 'I'll drop it!' 'No, Janey!, please...' I pleaded, but she let it go, CRACK!KERBLONG! I watched it bounce, as she laughed and watched my face.

She was difficult. There was a constant