WALKING THE DONKEYS HOME

the road

Woke up in the morning, looked out the window and saw white spots on the ground. Went to the door, opened it and saw sleet all over the ground, rocks wet, rhododendron leaves hanging down covered with ice. The Cosmos was telling me the trip is off to Charlotte to see Daniel Biggins' band, The Seduction, play at the Milestone with three other bands, a CD release party. I knew the ice would not be a factor from the place I was scheduled to meet Daniel in Cherry Lane, though between here and the meeting point would be more ice than I care to address. Driving home at 4am in unknown conditions, more than likely worse, convinced me this is not a good time to go. The Cosmos knows. Much as I'd love to be there at this moment, a few hours into the show, it's not a problem. The future is open. I'll hear the band again. This coming week I'll find Daniel to buy some copies of the band's new self-produced CD from him. I already know it will be a good one. I wanted to hear the other bands too, Viajando, in particular. The two bands play together fairly often. Maybe I'll get to see them with DSR (Dirty South Revolutionaries), who, by the way, are playing in Atlanta this weekend, a Charlotte band. My feeling about the Cosmos shutting me out of this event tells me another show is coming up soon even more to my liking. Since my first show at the Milestone, I've been wanting to go back. I like the vibe there. I like the people there. My mother saw a video of Daniel's band last week I put up on facebook. She wrote in comments: "Did you get out of there alive?" I wrote her back, "They are wonderful, friendly people, nobody gets hurt" The people I'm among in there give me a good feeling about the future. I see the people in the bands artists. They explore new compositions of their own. Talented songwriters among them as well as guitar players and drummers. I see talent galore. And I hear talent. They rock the way I like it.   

dsr

Looking out the window at the weather, I saw the donkeys in their new meadow, heads hanging down, the precipitation sticking to their backs, walking to a sheltered place. They looked so forlorn I decided carrot time would be the best time to put my new hypothesis to the test, walk them from one fence to the other, leading them. I went to the gate with carrots. They were visibly glad to see me. I stepped inside and gave them each a carrot, relaxed, tuning in to them. Jenny stepped through the opening. Jack stood beside the gate and wouldn't move. OK. I followed Jenny and Jack stepped around to the opening and joined us where Jenny was making the decision not to step onto the road looking like ice with a small stream of water was running down the road. I walked by Jenny and around the car, Jack following me and Jenny following Jack. I walked them by the house and to the gate into the meadow. Jack walked in behind me. Jenny found some fresh hay on the ground beside the fence where I roll hay bales down the hill. She followed the trail of hay up to the side of the road, found nothing there of interest. I picked up some hay to carry into the meadow and she followed me through the gate. Nothing big deal about it. We went for a walk. I wanted to keep this sojourn as volunteer on their parts as possible. I never directed either one. I walked from gate to gate and they followed entirely of their own volition. I feel like they will learn the walk from gate to gate better by walking it out of curiosity than being directed. To them, this side of the fence is my world. They see me in it every day. I'm glad they found a chance to check it out relaxed, following their curiosity, Walking them to the other gate in summer would be another matter. We would need to make the walk before the jewelweed gets past seedlings. The donkeys love jewelweed. I give them each a jewelweed plant in summer for dessert when carrots are gone. They would not pass the jewelweed patch until it was all eaten.  

jack and jenny wait for me to help them find their way home

Another bridge for another time. I don't believe we'd get very far in summer volunteer walking. It could happen, but Jenny has a curious eye and a will of her own. They don't eat only grass. I see what they eat from what grows up where I spread their biscuits for fertilizer. They appear to like daisies. Jenny's name before she became Donkey Jen was Daisy. I was inclined to go on calling her Daisy. I don't like to change a pet's name. Talking with Justin about it, he said, "I'm gonna call her Jenny. You can call her anything you like. She'll always be Jenny to me." I was good with calling them by what they are. Male donkeys are Jacks and female donkeys are Jennys. They're probably the most common donkey names. Good. I didn't want to call them cool made up names like Jellyroll and Tulip. Jack and Jenny are good names. Little Richard sang her song. Jack is a name I associate with a friend of my parents when I was a kid. Jack and DeLouris. I loved Jack and DeLouris. I wanted to know them grown up, but Jack died of cancer before I could know him as an adult. DeLouris is gone too. DeLouris was Billy Graham's first cousin and would not allow it to be mentioned. My mother thought it was the coolest thing there ever was, but DeLouris did not. I mentioned it to her once and she said we're not going to talk about that. Jack and DeLouris took me to see Elvis Presley's first movie, Love Me Tender, 1956, seventh grade. It was billed, "Mr Rock n roll in the story he was born to play!" To a teenage kid getting caught up in the new stars of pop culture, it was gloriously sentimental. Elvis died at the end, sob, sob. And then he came back in Hollywood swimming pool movies surrounded by babes in bathing suits and high heels. He died and came back in a martyr's heaven. The name Jack has its own happy association. I don't think about the other Jack when I'm with Donkey Jack, same as I don't think about Little Richard with Jenny. They're just name associations. 

elvis the pelvis

It felt good this morning to walk the donkeys back to their home meadow after a night out. The precipitation set me in motion, wanting them in their home meadow before much more of the ice was on the ground. I wanted to get them to their shelter, knowing they were uneasy, especially after sleeping outside their den all night. Gone camping. They were safe and Jack knew where they were. I imagine they slept wherever he slept. It turned out to be a good experience for all concerned. I felt like the whole experience was for the three of us to share. I didn't go nuts and scare them out of their wits. They walked to the other gate, I thought it would be a good time to introduce them to the meadow the other side of the creek, and a whole lot easier than trying to get them back to the gate they came out of while they were in full exploration mode. Gave them an acre to run in and memories for Jack. This morning they were ready to go home. I took it for a success in how my philosophy plays out in the world. I felt a twinge of alarm when I saw Jenny walk by and Jack close behind her. There would be no turning them around. I put the hay down and entered their flow. It's the three of us out for a walk, not me in charge. I know better than to think I can take charge of a donkey. I relaxed into their flow. They went to the other gate out of curiosity. I've a confidence now that were they to get out and wander someplace before I know they're gone, I'll be able to walk them home simply by joining them on their walkabout. No need to round them up with a switch and holler and cuss, get in there you jackass bitch. About the time somebody talks to Jenny in such manner, she will be alienated from that moment on. Jenny is a proud woman. I'm happy with my relationship with the donkeys. Jenny has a brilliant mind and her own will. I like both characteristics in her. I want to allow her her own mind. The journey worked out successfully both ways allowing Jenny her curiosity, joining her in it, flowing with donkey mind instead of against it.  

donkeys at home

*

THANKFUL FOR LITTLE RICHARD

I went to YouTube to find a video of Little Richard singing Jenny Jenny. Found several and watched three, shaking my head, cracking up, loving it, jamming to Little Richard again. It took me back to high school years listening to Little Richard on 45s, buying the new one as it came out as quick as I could get it. Jenny Jenny was one of his rockers I liked a lot. It was 1957 punk. In that time, I could have had only Little Richard records and been satisfied. I listened to the other music because it was there, but Little Richard satisfied my soul. Seeing him today, fifty-eight years later, half a century, I have a donkey named Jenny and sometimes say to her, Jenny Jenny Jenny, hearing Little Richard in my head. His songs are tattooed on the inside of my skull. Seeing Little Richard perform in 1968 was not quite the same as Little Richard in 1958. In the ten years between, he'd left rock n roll, threw a big diamond ring in a river and went to preaching. Later, he went back to rock n roll, fell in with cocaine and a Sixties rock star lifestyle until it wore him out. He left rock n roll and went back to preaching. I think it was in my second winter in the mountains I saw in the Winston-Salem Journal that Little Richard would be preaching at Winston-Salem State College. Of course, I drove to the city to hear this. I never had a chance to see Little Richard perform his music, and here was a chance to see the other side of Little Richard, the preacher. He was good, had stage charisma to the max. He walked back and forth along the edge of the stage, dressed in black, looking like a black leopard pacing back and forth behind cage bars. He didn't do emotional religion. He talked rationally, a man who thought about things. 

little richard

He was down on rock n roll, saying it was of the devil, that he was serving the devil when he was playing rock n roll. I didn't fall for that one, but I wasn't there to agree or disagree, only to see Little Richard preach. I felt like he made a little over-much of it. I saw a man with a pendulum swing inside that went from one extreme to the other and back again. He was sincere in what he was saying. A few years later, I was at somebody's house and Oprah or something like that was on, Little Richard the guest. He was complaining about not getting enough royalties for his songs, having been ripped off in the original contract. He was talking about being the king of rock n roll. His face was stretched so tight from face-lifts I was thinking you could play drums on his face. I don't care that he lobotomized himself with cocaine, bounces back and forth between extremes in his private life, and comes across on tv like he's nuts. The first concert video I watched a few minutes ago was in b&w. He totally gets into the music. He was singing, standing at the piano pounding it with both hands, facing the audience, bouncing up and down, his face behind the mic, hopping up and down. I thought this a marvelous demonstration of multi-tasking; bobbing up and down, pounding a piano with both hands, standing up, singing into a mic, attention on an audience of several thousand. I felt a mild awe at his performance. I saw Prince in one of his amazing performances. It was rock n roll in the raw. I saw Billy Idol with his band Generation X. I saw punk rock, the match that started the fire. I saw Joe Strummer of the Clash, Richard Hell, Perry Ferrell. I saw that Little Richard sounds as good today as he did then. 

little richard

Rock n roll has moved on in new directions since the 1950s, though it has not moved beyond Little Richard. It's like he's the North Star of rock. I was thinking, while he was singing Jenny Jenny, I'd like to hear a punk band cover it, a band like NOFX. Johnny Winter came to mind singing, I was raised on rock. Rock n roll started when I was 13, just ready for some music of my own. I went on YouTube to a concert called Little Richard and Friends--Legends in Concert. I think this might have been 1968, a big concert in London. It started with Little Richard playing several songs, then Bill Haley and the Comets played Rock Around The Clock, Jerry Lee Lewis playing Hound Dog and Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On, and an extended Chuck Berry concert. Soon after it started, I saw it was forty-one minutes, thinking I'd listen to one or two Little Richard songs and go on. Little Richard kept me listening, then Jerry Lee kept me watching, then Bill Haley totally held my attention, more Little Richard, and then Chuck Berry sang several songs. These were the people who pulled me into rock n roll in my early teens. I watched all of it. I remember when  Bob Dylan took up rock n roll and it became rock. The English sound happened and the rock n roll that went before suddenly became oldies. Now, oldies is 80s and 90s rock. Sixties rock lives in today's heavy metal. Punk continues. Punk started approximately 1975 and has been going ever since. The first twenty-five years, punk was only played on college stations. Commercial stations were afraid of it. Then it became "mainstream," commercial radio. 

From the moment I heard Patti Smith's first album, I was wanting to hear more. New Wave was the New York style of punk, and Punk in London was sending records over here. I listened to both. The English punk took hold of me in a don't-let-go kind of way. From all the kinds of music I have in the house to listen to, I tend to go to late 70s English punk when I want to rock. Joy Division, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Clash, Generation X, and out of Berlin, Nina Hagen, the Mother of Punk. Nina Hagen's bands on every album did it right. Punk started just as I was leaving the city for the mountains. Upon arriving in the mountains, I found the NPR FM station WFDD in Winston-Salem. From ten til midnight a college student dj, Didi Thornton, called herself DDT, played fresh new punk every night and I taped several of her shows. They put her off the air after a year or so. The people who contributed money to the station revolted against her. It was the same as adults shutting down the Fifties period of rock n roll, calling it communist, subversive, African therefore devil worshiping. It was the black influence in the music that drove the white grownups nuts. The other claims were smokescreens around the central issue: white kids were listening to nigger music. Dick Clark did his best to deflect interest to Italian pretty boys and doo-wop groups, and there came a time rock n roll was fading to the background. Then the English sound happened, the Dave Clark Five, Spencer Davis Group, Rolling Stones, and it's been on full blast ever since. Going into the last days before Thanksgiving, I have to say that I am grateful for rock n roll.   

little richard grown up

  

WAITING FOR THE RAIN TO CLEAR

the cars ~ I like the nightlife baybay

I'm happy today for Dale Jr fans, he won Daytona again. Since Dale Sr died on the track, aggression appeared to have gone out of Dale Jr. I remember seeing him push a teammate across the finish line to win by a few inches when he could have easily gone around him and come in first instead of third. For some years he seemed to focus more on points than winning, ending in the top 10 much of the time. I don't know him and don't keep up with driver lore. They're just names to me. I laugh when my friends I watch the race with rave about how much they wish Kurt Busch would wreck and how much they hate him. Once, for the fun in it, I asked why they hate him so much, they don't even know him. That set them off. He's my secret favorite driver. I don't tell them, because I don't want to hear it and don't want to inhibit their passion, which I assess has nothing to do with Kurt Busch. Three times I've seen him in the pack going between 150 and 200, on the inside lane, the guy behind him taps his back end, his car sets to wobbling, slides down below the yellow line, wobbles some more and he placed the car right back into the slot he left, which was not much longer than the length of his car. I've not seen anybody else do that once. He seems to be about the least liked driver on the track. I've heard he's an asshole to interviewers and they don't like him. What can I say? I don't care. I've learned all this after I started paying more attention to his driving than anybody else's. His driving impresses me. I've not seen anybody else pull out of a wobble so cleanly. Most often, in my viewing experience, the car ends up sideways with smoking tires and then it's on. One car knocks him this way, another car knocks him that way and he ends up with a mess of a car even duct tape can't fix.  

 

the cars ~ let the good times roll

 

In my early teens Little Richard entered the radio. Little Richard's rock n roll satisfied the kid so deeply it was not rebellion. I couldn't help it that my parents didn't like it and wouldn't let me play his music while they were in the house. I couldn't help it that I connected with his high energy music when I wasn't supposed to. It just worked out that way. I feel the same with my friends in relation to Kurt Busch. It's not like I care enough about the matter to argue with friends the merits of a driver they don't like. So what. It's pop tv. Why would I want to get worked up over that? Race drivers on tv are products just like Madonna and Lady Gaga. They signed the contract to be a product the rest of their lives. That's their business. I see the kids on American Idol and feel sad for them wanting so desperately to become a product. It's not that I want to deny them what they want, only that I don't want it for myself. It makes me shiver to think about wanting it. Now that the rich are the hot topic this year, I see pictures of billionaires in facebook memes. I particularly think of George Soros; the bags under his eyes tell sleepless nights to the point of liking them. Long, drawn, expressionless, empty face with lines making maps of endless worry. I don't want that for myself either. I don't want a face that looks dead this side of the grave. I see in their faces and eyes that Mammon is not a benevolent god. I don't want anyone to say of me, "He's money!" Once I heard said of Mrs whatever her name was Siemens of Roaring Gap Club, "She's money!" I thought, What a thing to be called. When people see me they see money? I hope not ever. I'd rather be known as The Jerk than Money. At least a jerk is human with a comic Steve Martin association.

the cars ~ you're just what I needed

We were able to watch a little bit of the race, maybe 43 laps, before the raincloud passed over Daytona and shut down the race. It was then several hours of waiting, watching America's Funniest Home Videos some, a golf game some, the Simpsons a very short some, one bobsled run, Justin working the remote. We saw the three Russians win the gold, silver, bronze in the men's cross-country ski event. The winner crossed the finish line and collapsed face-down in the ice-snow, whatever it was. It was a snow texture I'm not familiar with. I felt like collapsing from watching him ski uphill so much. I was thinking of what an intense meditation it was for the skiers. Mind does not have time or space for anything but the present moment, the thousandths of a second present moment. We entertained Vada, Vada entertained us. She's into the age now of exploring her independence, not long after potty-training. She feels like a big girl not wearing diapers. She wanted me to take some pictures of her making faces. I'd turn the video screen so she could see it and she made faces as into a mirror. I let Vada have the camera and showed her what button to push. She got a picture of the wall, one of the ceiling in the next room, the ceiling in the living room with a section of ceiling fan. I love it. Pure chance photographs. I could see she thought holding the camera in the direction of what you're taking a picture of and pushing the click button is what it amounted to. It's what she'd observed the million times she's had her picture taken. I didn't want to mess her up explaining something she wasn't ready for conceptually. Hooray for Vada, she took some pictures. I love it that the camera happened to be pointing upward. Pictures without interference of mind.

  

photo by vada, 2yr 9mo.

The drivers eventually started crawling into their cars, announcers with microphones in their faces, Danica Patrick in her dayglo green godaddy outfit nestling herself into the driver's seat, plugging and fastening, Jimmy Johnson upbeat and ready to race, cars rumbling to life, lining up behind the red pace car flashing white lights, tv talking heads excited after hours of not knowing what to talk about, showing a large part of last year's race at Daytona to pass the time. The cars ran in a pack three wide for a long time. It was getting late. The kids had to go to bed. Melvin's girl was with him and she needed to be back because of school in the morning. Justin needed to be up at six for a new job. Crystal and kids had to be up early. I was riding with Melvin, so we left with about a hundred laps to go. It wasn't long before I learned on facebook that Jr Earnhardt won. He is Justin's and Melvin's favorite driver. Justin had to miss the race last time Jr won. We've laughed that what it takes for Jr to win a race is for Justin to miss it. I wore my Dale Jr tshirt to send a little support mojo his way. It's not that I ever care who wins. I'm tickled for Dale Jr's fans, they love him so much. A lot of the time it seems to me it's a toss-up who wins, though I know it is a game of intensely involved strategies, the car holding together, staying out of wrecks. I've seen cars cross the finish line in wreck mode. One of my favorite aspects of the race is you never know who is going to win until the finish line is crossed. Somebody can be out ahead on the way to the finish line, blow a tire and come in twelfth.

 

vada

 

 

*

 

MY GENERATION: FLAT TOP CATS AND DUNGAREE DOLLS

 

 

 

As I look at my generation with a cold eye, I don't see anything worth crowing about except rock n roll. I remember in high school believing my generation was going to be "awesome," really believing it, even feeling a pride in my generation. We were the first white people to use the word "cool" outside jazz circles. There were so many black people in the early years of rock n roll from the rhythm n blues angle that I believed this was the end of racism. Then came the time of civil rights protesting that had an air of righteousness about it. The emergence of Bob Dylan in the early Sixties was even more evidence that my generation was extraordinary. We who listened to Bob Dylan in his early years became convinced right away that he stood somewhere beyond the others. Dylan has been the pop star of my lifetime like Frank Sinatra was for my parents' generation. I've seen both in concert. Sinatra was dynamic in his style and Dylan was dynamic in his style. Sinatra sang. Dylan sang, wrote the lyrics, composed the music, played guitar, hand-picked his band, tours with the band every year. Sinatra was an artist as a performer and actor, Dylan an artist all the way around. Dylan blew my mind then, he blows my mind now. Mr Tambourine Man never gets old, nor does Sinatra singing Watertown.

 

bob dylan

 

 

My generation, like the musicians of the Sixties "classic rock," then "underground," meaning you couldn't hear it anywhere on the radio, and the musicians of Punk, that also was not played on the radio except college stations, they went Pfitzzzz, shooting stars taken down by heroin. As was the case with the Be-bop jazz musicians the generation before, where the white kids picked up the word cool. I did jr hi and high school through the late Fifties. The music was my connection with the world outside home, school and church. Bill Haley convinced me my generation was cool, We're gonna rock around the clock tonight, we're gonna rock, rock, rock til the broad daylight, we're gonna rock, gonna rock around the clock tonight. The poetry of my youth. Well I saw uncle John with bald-headed Sally, he saw aunt Mary comin and he duck back in the alley. I didn't get it til many years later that Long Tall Sally was about masturbation. Long Tall Sally was uncle John's wiener. Busted. I knew Edie Sedgwick was the "you" in Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone a long time before I got it about Long Tall Sally. That was the time in my life when I knew all the words to all Little Richard's songs, Chuck Berry songs, Bill Haley's and Buddy Holly's, esp Rave On. They are still with me. Can't leave out Ronnie Hawkins' Mary Lou, perhaps my favorite song of the whole period. I can pull up the words of any of those songs at will, as well as many others, like Heartbreak Hotel. Fifties lyrics are the poetry in my head.  

 

 

 

The music of that time was so great to a teenage kid coming up on radio music parents listened to, none of it resonating with me, though some of it I liked. Peggy Lee was pretty cool. When rock n roll happened, I found my heartbeat. The music was rebellious, just the way I felt, though had to internalize it, which I did with the songs in my head and listening to stations on the radio that played the new music. Bought 45s and had the next thing to a tin can to listen to them on. Didn't matter. We didn't know about CDs and Bose then. Anything was better than nothing. My generation has made great leaps in sciences, fields we know nothing about, because interest in the field rarely extends beyond participants. The same applies to poetry, theater, fiction, film making. The greatest rock n roll band in the world is my generation, the Rolling Stones. Then, of course, there is the Who's My Generation, Peter Townshend who pointed a finger toward Meher Baba with the Who's album, Tommy. Perhaps the greatest discovery of my generation is recreational drugs right there alongside rock n roll. The drugs have taken their toll on my generation, though most survived, all the wiser for having been through something really dangerous and come out the other end. My generation has also been one of embarrassing conformity. We grew up believing television propaganda, like all generations since.

 

pete townsend

 

In college, nobody wanted to grow up and be like their parents. Thirty years later I went to a reunion and thought I was back then in a big room full of everybody's parents. It was disheartening, but I already knew it. I was surrounded by people who bought the package I rejected. I meant it when I said I didn't want to be like my parents. The laugh for me after thirty years of living outside group-think by intent and many of those years living with hillbillies, adopting their vision, it was disconcerting to find myself in the midst of lawyers, doctors, judges, and their dolled-up wives, putting on the dog for each other in suits that cost more than the pickup I was driving, suburbanites good at cocktail party chatter. Some winters before, I had carried a newborn calf through sixteen inches of snow to the barn to put it on some hay. Mother would not follow. I carried calf back to mother to let her smell it, carried it back to the barn, mother didn't follow. I took some hay bales to the spot on the snow the calf was born and made a nest for it, carried the calf back from the barn to place it on the only spot mother recognized it. Sixteen inches of snow. I didn't feel less than any of the judges around me and didn't feel better. We had very different experiences behind us and very different ideas of how we want to live our lives. They paid people to mow their lawns more money than I made.

 

 

My goal over the last thirty-eight years has been to live in the world, not of the world. It took several years to figure out what "the world" meant to my satisfaction. What I've come to is that the human mind is "the world." Creations of the mind constitute the world. Conformity is living of the world. Anti-conformity is living of the world. I'm not the only one of my generation who has stepped outside living of the world. We ask more of ourselves along the way through life than what channel is playing Cheers reruns. Maybe. That's a little high-sounding. Let's just say my generation has an awful lot of us who go our own way for our own reasons, checked out of the System consciously, however we individually interpret the System, uninterested in playing the climbing game, the status game, the money game. We leave that merry-go-round so we can have another ride of our preference, Ferris wheel, rollercoaster. In my case, I've rarely made over minimum wage, never wanted more, did not want to need to be an accountant just to live my life. I never wanted to live in a suburb where the houses are slight variations of each other and the mailbox out by the road needs to be housed in a brick structure because of kids bashing mailboxes on Saturday nights. I'd rather listen to the call of the crows, the tweet of the towhee, the buzzing sound chickadees make, the tree frogs, fiddle and banjo music, and conversation with my friends at the coffee shop in Sparta. Am in a place now where I want my life in first person instead of third person.   

the roan mountain hilltoppers

 

 

 

*

IT'S ONLY ROCK AND ROLL BUT I LIKE IT

Hearing the Psychedelic Furs. I've not listened to enough music lately. The Psychedelic Furs is a band that has satisfied my ear for a long time. Having 2 of their cds, often when I want to hear some music and don't know what, the Psychedelic Furs is the answer. I see they have a website and they're still touring. They played in Charlotte 5 nights ago. I'd have gone to that concert if I'd known about it ahead of time. That would have been a good one to drive a hundred miles to. They're grown up now, 2 decades after, but I imagine their musicianship is that much better and their performance of the music is too. I don't usually listen to music when I write, because the music takes me over completely and all I can do is listen. The reason I've not been listening to music much is it takes me over completely. Before I put on a Patti Smith album or Bob Dylan, Bryan Ferry, Jane's Addiction, The Clash, Generation X, Black Uhuru, Burning Spear, Angelique Kidjo, SE Rogie, Alternate Roots, Aerosmith, Skeeter & the Skidmarks, Ralph Stanley, Whitetop Mountain Band, to name a few that take me over unmercifully, allowing no wandering of mind, before I put them on I have to have enough time to listen to the album all the way through. SE Rogie coming to mind makes me want to hear him. Beautiful lilting palm wine music with acoustic guitar and singing from Sierra Leone.

s e rogie

The world has so much beautiful music in it, it's hopeless to want to hear it all. I've tried to hear it all, at least a general sampling, but it can't be done. I start listening to North African Rai and can't go on from there for a long time. Or start listening to Islamic sitar music from India. That's it. And then there is what happens when the Rolling Stones come on. I'm all ears. No matter what song by them, it has my full attention. On cd, the only Stones albums I have are the one live at very small clubs, Stripped, where they play almost unplugged greatest hits, blues songs, Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone, and their first album that has I'm a King Bee on it. I tend to like everything by the Stones. Their first album continues, after all the great ones like Black & Blue, Exile on Main St, to be the one I return to. Just now found a website that plays the entire album, youtube, so it is playing now as I write. Didn't intend to do that, but am in a Stones bluesy mood. Velvet Underground had a similar groove as early Stones. Stones went to the big auditorium sound, not hardly by choice. There was no auditorium on earth big enough not to sell out immediately for Stones tickets. I never saw a Stones concert. It seemed too much to me like going to Woodstock to go to a place so big the band is the size of vertical ants on the stage, like seeing them from a plane. I like to be able to see that it is human beings on the stage. I don't like to be so close that I see how dirty they are. Too close, they're just people, like us, not big stars, not a fantasy of what a rock star oughta be. It's just dirty, sweaty, stoned American and English young'uns looking to meet some chicks and make some money.

rolling stones

Jagger is singing I'm a King Bee. It takes me back to the Fifties, high school, hearing Slim Harpo singing it on the black stations in Kansas City and Wichita, stations I listened to as much as the white stations. That's where I heard Bo Diddley, Big Mama Thornton, Big Maybelle, Etta James, Jimmy Reed, Little Richard, Chuck Berry. Some of them were played on the white station, but when I listened to both, I heard the best of the new music twice as much. The white station would be where I'd hear Marty Robbins' Singin the Blues. Ray Charles singing Lonely Avenue was incredible. What'd I Say was stellar, like the Stones' Satisfaction a few years later. This Rolling Stones blues and r&b album takes me back to the music like this I heard on the black stations in the Fifties. That's where the music was played that I loved. Didn't have to listen to Paul Anka on that station. They played Mickey and Sylvia. Everything they played was something I wanted to hear. I'm hearing why the great blues guitar pickers, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry were impressed by what they heard when Keith Richards was making music with them. On the Stones concert video Martin Scorsese made, Shine A Light, Richards and Buddy Guy get to going on a guitar duet, whatever they call it when they play in perfect sync. They tore the place up. In an interview clip shown in the film, somebody was interviewing Richards and Ron Wood together. Asked which of them was the best guitar player, Richards said (I paraphrase), We're both just ordinary guitar players, but together, nobody can beat us.

dionysius and the satyr

 

 

I've let the Stones album play again, and again. It takes me to my very own foundation in music. The beginnings of rock n roll occurred with the Penguins' Earth Angel, the Coasters' Searchin, Bill Haley & the Comets' Shake Rattle and Roll, Little Richard's Tutti Frutti, Chuck Berry's Maybelline, Bo Diddley's Bo Diddley, Elvis's Heartbreak Hotel, Jerry Lee's Whole Lotta Shakin Goin On, then the whole body of work by Chuck Berry and Little Richard throughout my Jr Hi and High School, the years when a kid really needs his own music. I had the super good fortune to see both Alan Freed Rock N Roll Shows. I think the years were 58 and 59. They were fabulous for a high school kid who by then had a head totally involved in rock n roll. Rock n roll was my escape fantasy. At one of the shows, Fats Domino played his set and filled out the time of two players who'd missed the show, Jerry Lee one of them, Screamin Jay Hawkins the other, from probably being too drunk and whatever else. Buddy Holly and the Crickets, and the girl group I loved the very most, the Chantels, were there. I heard the Chantels sing their two hits, Maybe and Every Night, from twenty or so feet away in adoration. I was like a Catholic boy kneeling before statues of saints aching his heart out to be a real boy. Chuck Berry played at both the shows. After work, walking to the bus stop to go home from work the day of the second Rock N Roll Show, a gold 57 Cadillac with venetian blinds in the back window, mudflaps and a license tag that said, C BERRY, passed by so close I could have reached out and touched it if I'd seen it in time. Flipped me out. I had all his 45s to that date. The show was that night. Larry Williams fell off his upright piano attempting to dance on top of it drunk. I loved seeing Mickey and Sylvia sing Love Is Strange.

 

 

chuck berry

 

This music from the Rolling Stones' first album brought that period of music back to life for me. I was a hung-up Fifties lonely teenager listening to Dion and the Belmonts sing about it. Oh Susie Q, baby I love you. Ronnie Hawkins' Mary Lou I loved as much as any Little Richard song. Little Richard stood out for me way beyond everybody else. Bob Dylan took care of that zone for me next. I'm goin to tell you a story 'bout Mary Lou, she's the kind of a woman make a fool of you...She took the keys to my Cadillac car, she jumped in my kitty and she drove a-far. Learned many years later, his band, The Hawks, evolved into Dylan's band, The Band. I guess it's all right to call Elvis the king of rock and roll, but for that title, I'd have to go with Bo Diddley. I'd give it to Little Richard if he hadn't had so many facelifts. He's the undisputed queen of rock and roll. I say Bo Diddley because the Sixties bands leaned more toward the Little Richard and Chuck Berry sound, except the Velvet Underground that came after the Bo Diddley and the Buddy Holly sound. Punk that started in 75 went with the Bo Diddley and Buddy Holly sound funneled through the Velvet Underground. A very large portion of the rock ever since has been of the Bo Diddley sound, a tight, quick beat. His influence in rock is every bit as direct as Chuck Berrry's and Little Richard's. I had the good fortune to see Bo Diddley at Ziggy's ten or more years ago, when he was 74. He gave an all-out concert, and it was, indeed, Bo Diddley his very self. It was thrilling for me, loving his music my entire music-listening life, Bo Diddley playing all those songs that are standards in the jukebox of my mind. The Bo Diddley beat is in me as much as Carlos Santana's guitar. Ron Wood made a live album with Bo Diddley in concert at a small New York venue in 1988, Live At The Ritz, dynamite rock and roll.   

 

 

ron wood and bo diddley

 

 

 

*

 

DYLAN: BOTH ENDS OF THE RAINBOW THE MOVIE

earthwork, woodlawn va

Earlier today I watched a documentary of Bob Dylan in the 80s, the years I paid him no mind. It was called Both Ends Of The Rainbow, 1978-1989. I didn't know anything about Dylan's music in that time. In the film I learned that I wasn't the only only one to lose interest in Dylan after his album Saved. I listened to first side and gave it to a "Christian." Dylan had a didactic streak from the start, part of what I liked about him in that time, as I'd recently come out of childhood and teens of didacticism with fundamentalist church. Then it was familiar, sounded like truth. Later, by the time he made that ridiculous album, Saved, I'd lost my attraction to the didactic. Dylan was bad to use the gospel convention of starting a song "You better...." You better, you oughta, you needta, you're supposed to. Up until Slow Train Coming I thought nothing could turn me away from Bob Dylan. It was like he spoke my mind. I didn't know it when I fell away as a fan, a huge portion of his fan base had lost their interest. Dylan was never cliched until he attempted gospel songs. I was surprised at how many albums went by before I started paying attention to him. Next album I bought was Oh Mercy to see what it was like, and that was after reading his book Chronicle, which told the story of recording the album. It's supposed to be one of his better ones. Maybe it is.

The film showed me why I paid Dylan no mind through the 80s. I don't have a problem with Dylan living his life, being who he is, writing the songs and performing them to his own satisfaction like a good artist. His imaginative lyrics went away. The film's perspective was guided by a guy who wrote a biography of Dylan and some others connected with magazines like Rolling Stone. They were saying after he ran off his fan base he had lost his identity as to what kind of music he played. The 80s were disco time, another aspect of the 80s I ignored. Punk came on in 1975 and I started listening to punk that year. It was fresh and new, the next thing. The post-Sixties time of Bon Jovi, Ted Nugent, and religion rock bored me. Corporate music, sequels to the Sixties sound. Dylan was looking like he was growing old ungraciously. In the film they said he had a hard time finding the music to bring his audience back. Nothing he made through the 80s brought anybody back. They were saying his albums during that time didn't even figure in the top 50. He appeared to be attempting pop, which he'd never done before. He tried propping himself up with Mark Knopfler and Tom Petty. Then the Traveling Wilburys happened, bringing Dylan back to favor with much of his fans he'd run off. I never took to Traveling Wilburys. I was off in another world of music, punk and African I'd discovered on Afropop, an NPR show none of the stations I get play anymore.

Through the 80s I wanted to hear Patti Smith, Nina Hagen, the Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees, the Sex Pistols, Generation X, Joy Division, Psychedelic Furs, Lou Reed, Burning Spear, Peter Tosh. If Dylan was going to go into disco and post-Sixties sequels, he was going without me. I figured it was inevitable. Friends tend to grow apart over time as their experiences lead them in different directions, into different worlds of the mind. I figured it was all right to let Bob Dylan go. Once he'd satisfied me mightily. Little Richard too. Little Richard satisfied me totally in my teens; then he made By The Light Of The Silvery Moon and took up preaching. He threw a big diamond ring in a river. I saw Little Richard preach in Winston-Salem in 1977. He was ranting about the devil being behind rock and roll, that while he was singing he was with the devil. Then Jesus saved him. Dylan said the same things in his Jesus time, that rock and roll was of the devil. I suppose it's ok to come back to it when you need the money to live in the manner to which you've become accustomed. Maybe that brings Jesus back into it. Next thing I see Little Richard on tv as has-been rock n roll star complaining because he wasn't getting enough royalty money from his songs. Next he's at a music awards show excited out of his mind he won an award he indeed deserved. It appears in both cases the devil took a back seat to need for recognition and money.

The Dylan that pulled me all the way back was Time Out of Mind, then Love And Theft, Together Through Life, Modern Times, and now apex Dylan, Tempest. I'm back in his fan base as solid as in the early years. On a different level this time. The 80s were a freaky time. Politically, it was a reaction against the freedom of the Sixties. Dylan didn't go with punk, the new underground music not played on radio except at college FM stations. Punk carried on the artistic explorations of the Sixties period after auditorium guitar had been taken as far as it could go. Punk pulled rock back from overdone virtuosity to jamming. I was going to conjecture Dylan might have bypassed his 80s awkwardness turning to punk instead of pop. But that's not for me to say. He has to go with his own karma, his own vision, his own artistic sense. I had a feeling everything went out from under him when the Sixties, the context he came along in, went away replaced by corporate pop, which the folk music he came up in was a reaction against. I'm hearing Modern Times now. It sounds awfully good. It sounds Dylan. Not like early Dylan, but soul of Dylan. I wonder how much being a big pop star doing his own thing, going his own way, pulled him away from his own way into the pop formula that pays so well. It appears to me that's the issue. It disoriented him, he went through a time of diminished creativity, then pulled himself back onto his own track.  


*

VISIONS OF THE PAST

little richard 1956

Driving in the light fog tonight coming up the mountain on the gravel part of Brown Road, what we used to call the Pine Swamp Road, it became disorienting. The sides of the road were not clearly visible in the fog. Sometimes it seemed like a big space and no road, driving over barren ground. Up the hill toward the stop sign at Air Bellows Gap Road seemed about double the distance as otherwise. I knew to stay away from the right side of the road because it dropped off pretty steep. Hugged the left side of the road almost too close sometimes. It seemed so much longer than usual I began to wonder if I was really where I thought I was. I might have come home another way and be on Bullhead Road, but knew better. Once I found the stopsign it was like finding home after being lost.

Driving down the mountain earlier in the fog I found myself a bit disoriented going down Wolfe Road from Pine Swamp Road to Mahogany Rock Road. Turned there automatically. Recognized all the houses along the way. When I pulled up to the stop sign, a sign across the road looking at me in the fog said, Mahogany Rock Road. In my mind I was on my way to Tedder Road. What the? How did I get here? I looked to the left and saw the familiar new Camaro and knew this was the right place, but where was Tedder Road? Duh. Turn left,the other side of the Camaro, left again, like always. The fog changed everything.

Rain is wetting the ground after what some weather people call a drought. I tend to think of a drought as when the ground cracks. We're nowhere near that. The rain is a soft, quiet rain that soaks into the ground, refreshes the roots of everything growing. 55 degrees outside the end of September. Yellow leaves appearing in some of the trees and some rhododendron leaves turn yellow too, before falling to the ground to add nourishment to the tree's own roots, and the roots of others nearby. In a few weeks recarpeting the forest floor will begin in earnest.

Just before I started writing, I watched a 9 minute video by George Clinton with the Funkadelics performing Atomic Dog. "It's nothin but the dog in me." It was great music, but boy was it elemental, down to basics. That's what they do. I believe there's something incredible going on with that band. They've been at it since the 60s. George Clinton is a cool old man. He's somewhere around 70 now and still funkin up audiences everywhere he plays and every recording by Funkadelics and Parliament, the same band, just different names with different labels. I saw them play in Boone 6 or 7 years ago. It was a concert to behold. He performed the concert in his pajamas and his voluminous head of dreads was wrapped in a rag that came undone a little bit as the concert wore on. They're the masters of funk. Prince in there with them.

On YouTube I've found some film footage of Little Richard in 1956 singing Long Tall Sally, those songs from that time, Rip It Up, The Girl Can't Help It, Lucille. That's when I was listening to these songs on the radio and buying 45s to play on my little box 45 player. My parents drew the line at Little Richard. I couldn't help it. It really wasn't parent defiance. At the time, I felt like it was an unfortunate consequence of something I can't help but like a lot. They disliked it a lot. I could only play Little Richard in my room down low. When I was 14 he was playing at an auditorium downtown Kansas City. I knew how to get there by bus. I wanted to go really bad, but I'm not much of an adventurer into the unknown.

The city was full of teenage gangs and hoods and knives, etc. It was the time of James Dean, Rebel Without a Cause, Marlon Brando, On The Waterfront, Mamie VanDoren, ducktails that hoods had. Elvis imitated hood style with his duck tail. Collar turned up. Zip guns, bicycle chains. It was the time of Juvenile Delinquency. The Fonz isn't even close. I knew a little bit about what was going on in those ways and hesitated to enter the unknown of a sea of probably black kids just a couple years after integration. Racial tension was sky high. 1956. I didn't feel like playing target. Then, I believed there would be no trouble, and have believed it to this day, but was too young to be certain of it. I've learned by many experiences later that I've been able to go into racially charged atmospheres and do fine. I go in peace. It works. Turns out it's a martial arts principle.

I did get to see Little Richard preach. I'd been in the mountains about a year when he turned up at Winston-Salem State Auditorium. He was good. He prowled like a jungle cat, a black leopard, wearing a black suit, back and forth along the lip of the stage like one of those cats in a cage. He has a tremendous charisma. When I was looking at his early videos, I came upon one of him at the Grammy Awards show with David Johanson (New York Dolls early 70s) in 1988. Little Richard took off making a joke, "and the winner is...ME" and laughed at his silliness. He took off talking to the audience, you never give me any awards and I'm the architect of Rock and Roll. The audience jumped to their feet to applaud him. He ended calling himself the originator. He is. There's no two ways about it. The audience knew it. Everybody knows it. He sobered up and went to open the envelope, the winner is, and he bent over in giggles like he couldn't believe what he saw. He said, Me, and broke loose laughing.