America and a broad...learning to grow through Rock and Roll

I've been swearing for years that I would write this evil screed and promising myself even longer that I never would. For good or for ill, here it goes...To put it to print gives it life of another kind...here there be tigers...

I didn't like the United States or Americans and I made no bones about it. I felt, as many of my generation did, that American considered itself the police force of the world and the big brother to poor, peace loving, misguided Canada. I had no interest in seeing the polluted, venal streets more than I already had. So when a job offer came over the phone to join a band from New York, I was floored and hesitated, if only for a moment.
I am a writer. A dyed in the wool wordsmith for as long as I can remeber but there are times when even I, one who knows what it is he was meant to do, have held my nuts in my hand and jumped from complacent bluffs. The water is fine if you can take the fall. To that end, I picked up my first bass when I was seventeen. Casting off the sins of my fathers for sins of my very own.
And music has a way of twisting you, getting inside you, like a drug but like no other. If you have the guts enough to splay yourself , on stage, with nothing more to hide behind than a thin piece of wood and a couple of string, then you will be rewarded. Your reward is a lifetime of want and second guessing but those who know it wouldn't have it any other way. I wanted to tour with a professional band and for my sins I was given the chance.

A love song for the bungled and botched...

They tell you, "never get off the boat, never get off the boat. Fuckin' tigers, never get off the boat." And there are tigers but what they don't tell you is that the tigers are half fun...

There are a few out there who got off the boat and achieved something. Something real and substantial that will have an impact on the way a lifetime is seen. For good or ill, the results are clear and their deeds are sung from mountaintops and bar stools across the world. Jesus was such a man. So was Sonny Barger and the NASA scientist who invented the internet fuck machine. If you claim to be the son of god and have yourself nailed to a roof support, what is it to me? Maybe you want to wear a patch on your back and go war whooping around the bay area scaring the shit out draft dodgers and stomping Harvey Milk supporters, who am I to tell you that you can't. Or maybe you want to invent something that will twist us into completely asocial gobs of flesh that writhe and twist in the dark with pieces of skylab strapped onto our balls and fuck pornstars on a glowing electric fantasy. But who am I to deny your vision?
Because there remains us, the rest of us. Ordinary folks who take poisoned aspirin and fall down stairwells at four in the afternoon. People who drive fast down late night roads in the middle of a snowstorm with nothing more to worry about than getting caught and not falling in love.
I got off the boat once, briefly. Maybe I never did get back on it. And the tiger was right there, waiting for me, mouth agape. And I danced, oh how I danced in it's mouth. But it's not for everybody. Some will never know the pleasures and deformities a life of depravity has afforded me. Some prefer to stay in their state rooms and watch the coast go by, swearing they saw a tiger just off the shore line, never smelling it's hot gin soaked on a Saturday night breath or feeling it's teeth inching ever closer to their throats, not knowing whether to run or surrender to the feeling of it all.
Funny thing is, once I realized I would never be eaten, wouldn't be ripped to shreds, I began to look for something else, some new kind of fear and it brought me right back to where I began. Waiting in line to fall down my own flight of stairs and feeling alright with it. After all, wasn't there somebody already at the bottom of the stairs before me? Maybe not waiting for me but waiting nonetheless?
If there's one thing I have figured out it's that fate has a way of stepping in and pushing you where you are meant to go. Whether you are aware of it or not. And then fate disappears until you slip off the rails again. It's a hell of a ride but worth the price of admission if you can get a good seat...

Strange rumblings from the Thermos grille...

I don't like iced cream in a bowl, I haven't since I was a boy. I remember eating a tin roof on a warm Sunday evening and splitting a tooth on one of the bastard peanuts. I've sworn off the traditional sundae ever since. For my money, the iced cream cone, store bought or home made, is one of natures few perfect delivery systems. You have the sweet taste treat, smothered in the toppings of your choice, all in an edible vessel. What more do you need?..
I know that there are places, in the deep south, where I would be beaten on the kidneys with a lead pipe 'till I pissed blood for a week, if I even uttered such heresy. Places like Savannah and Gainesville, where the de rigeur is mint juleps and all day sundaes that really do last all day. Places where men are ugly and mean and the women are tough and complacent. But we are not savages Gus, not us. If we want to eat salty frozen milk from a sugar frosted, dried up piece of rolled dough, then by god, I shouldn't risk physical violence for my wont to do so.
There are the old timey remedies, for curing nasty inflammations in the nether regions, that involve elevating dairy products to a position they were never meant to be. But are these, licentious yogurt hacks becoming the pariahs of the modern world? Absolutely not. Stick yogurt up your snatch and it's all primrose and peaches but ask for a double scoop waffle cone at the 31 flavours and it's " Fuck off, " from the acne ridden mid-pubescent girl serving it and run the gauntlet to your car, trying to avoid her boyfriend and his cronies who want to kick your teeth down your throat for being just too different...
We bought a new grille, the missus and I. 550,000 BTU's. I was assured by Clive, the heroin addled teen ager, who sold it to me, that if I was inclined to throw an entire pig, skin, hair and all on some manner of flame in the hope of eating at a decent hour, then this was the baby for me. And why not, eh? Who has time to wait for roast beast in this day and age? I have deadlines and things to do, my wife has the gardens of this palatial estate to maintain. And they need constant maintenance. 25 minutes is all the time we can spare to roast up the wild Russian boar and guinea hens that find there way into the leg wires and trip snares that surround the grounds of our house.
The neighbours don't care for our new grille. They claim the flame that erupts, at regular intervals, from the cremator 2000, is killing the vegetation. I feel for them, but boar fat and open flame is a powerful combination. Napalm has nothing on my grille when we hoist a fine fat black Russian boar up to it's waiting maw. Dianthus was just not designed to withstand the 350 degrees Kelvin that my grill throws. But there troubles are there own, Gus. Plants don't worry me. And as long as there complaining about the death of the verge, the less they are concerned about what's really going on around here...Hell, I might even run for office.

Doom and imminent failure on a saturday night...

Our house is about to be invaded by a gaggle of children, all under the age of ten. Truth be told, two of the eggs are ours but I can't help but think my sense of failure as a parent is about to be amplified...But hey, it's for a good cause afterall. Starving grandmothers from here to Lackawana have nought to fear from this point forward. My wife and I are on the job. Watching the offspring of the multidudes who would dance and gamble so that Sol and Doris Dimondehaben can have something other than Alpo and saltines by candle light. Years ago, we wouldn't raise money for the Dimondehabens and their ilk, we'd wrap them in oil skins and park them on the next ice floe that rolled into town...but oh momma can this really be the end?
It's a strange thing...being here, in this place, surrounded by children. Some my own. Not that long ago, I was playing three thousand seaters and waking up with Ms. Right-now, and now I am the god-damned Pater Familis...I find myself thinking back to those days of petit mort and low grade buggery. The days when god was the name for everyone that had the will to get in a van and eek out a living with four strings and an ego problem. Ho-ho!
It was cheeseburger wishes and miller high life dreams, greasy hair and drunken fumbling, after gin sodden nights of opening your chest in front of people who didn't honestly care whether you were live or a k-tel record player. Hoping, above hope, that someone human and warm might let you sniff her panties if you offer to meet her folks and wash their car in the morning...I went to bed with beauty queens and woke up with women so ugly it hurt my feelings.
Moms Mabley never had to worry about an ice floe, she worked Vegas well into her eighties. Scatman Crothers and Joe Louis were both well into their nineties before they decided to call it a day. Hell, Michael Douglas is one hundred and fifteen, if he's a day and he just had a second accident with that welsh tart...
But I digress, I ramble, no need to do that, not here eh? We were speaking of the life of a travelling rock god, not this geriatric weirdness. No worry of ice floes here. Not with youth and vitality crawiling from every crack of the room and pissing and moaning about who took what and why I'm mean and don't deserve to be among civilized folks. Secretly, I'm sure they are looking at arctic ocean currents and the tundra/water ratios. Trying to figure my size suit size in seal skin and how much ice it will require to hold me and my bass...Semper Ubi, Sub Ubi

A new hope?

And so, a new avenue opens to your humble narrator. I'm not certain what, if anything, will ever come of this but I feel I need to get the word out and why not share. Now, if I could only figure what the word is...