I Will Call Her 'Tomorrow'

There is a feral cat in the neighborhood who has taken a shine to me.  I can’t say precisely that this is a feral cat, but it is certainly of the neighborhood variety.  I would actually probably say that this is definitely someone’s pet.  And as far as taking a shine to me, that might not be factually accurate either – it certainly likes to be around my truck at night though.  “Taken a shine” is a funny expression, no?  I’m not sure what it means, if anything.

I feel like I have other things to concern myself with throughout the day, but I find that I’ve expended an exceptional amount of mental energy worrying about the well-being of said kitty when I’m not at home.  This is strange for me on many levels.  I don’t gush over strays.  I don’t worry about that which I cannot affect.  I don’t use the term "kitty". I don't even like cats!  I sure as hell have no desire to hold any dominion over such.  Every night, this ‘hood cat is here – under the tires, chillin’ on the bumper, bathing in the bed, sprawled across the hood ala Tawny Kitaen.  I’ve never seen this kitty anywhere other than intermingling with my truck.

What to do?

I surmised in the last few minutes that I should feed it raw meat, but only occasionally, right?  I don’t believe in having outdoor animals as pets but if I could convince a blood hungry cat to stick around outside that might not suck.  The thought behind being that if there is a seemingly wild animal outside of my house who has developed (through careful planning of course) an affinity for raw flesh then perchance I could reduce my financial home security commitment.  How incredibly awesome would it be to have an attack cat to dissuade the occasional miscreant passerby from profiling one’s crib?  And how embarrassing would it be for those with nefariously intentioned plots to have them foiled by a little kitty cat?

The previous is not the best or most creative idea I’ve ever had, but it is as workable as any solution that I can think of right now.  I developed a wicked allergy to cats since I had one last so I can’t be sure, but I think it’s a female – she has an arrogant, bitchy way.  For the last several days I’ve tried to think of clever names to call her, provided I accepted this into my life.  Allergies notwithstanding, Belle would never be able to co-exist with such an inferior species within the confines of the domicile – pseudo adoption is out of the question.  I don’t want the cat to think I don’t care though so tomorrow I will do…something.

She’s been around now for (9) days in a row, uninterrupted.  Tomorrow will be the tenth day.  If she’s here then, I will call her Tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Woody

Had the universe been large enough to contain his spirit, Woody Guthrie would have turned (100) years old today.  I often find myself wondering what he would think of what his beloved America has become.  In his life he was labeled a communist for his outspoken stance against the injustices that befell the migrant worker, his passion for ecological preservation, his disbelief in “big-business”.  He championed the working class, upon whose back this country was built and he was ostracized for having that voice.  He penned one of the most patriotic songs in the history of the United States, “This Land is Your Land” and still his character was often critically eviscerated as being anti-American.

He once said, “A folk song is what's wrong and how to fix it or it could be who's hungry and where their mouth is or  who's out of work and where the job is or  who's broke and where the money is or  who's carrying a gun and where the peace is.”

When was the last time you heard any talking heads, whether left or right leaning speak with as much clarity as that?  The hell of it is that, it’s not a “folk song” it’s happening everyday on the streets around us.  The words he sang and thought and spoke all those years ago are as relevant now as they were then, if not more so.  In too many ways we haven’t progressed – if anything, we’ve regressed.  We’ve become even more a nation of whores:  political, social, financial, power hungry whores. 

Woody’s was the voice of reason in his time.  He called it as he saw and pulled no punches for anyone.  He believed in unions because they protected the inherent rights of the working stiff.  He believed that someone who worked an honest day should get an honest day’s wage.  He believed that government should not dictate or regulate the volume with which he spoke in public about his disbelief in the government.  He believed in personal freedom and accountability, but also understood that a government of a free people had a responsibility to assist those same free people when their decisions went awry.  He looked to government to not give a hand-out but to repay him what he was due – only in equal measure to what he had given it. 

He gave a voice to a whole generation of people who might not have had a voice without him.  He tattooed upon our national psyche the horrors of the Great Depression and the dust bowl and the great California migration.  He was our living, breathing, vocal Tom Joad.  He spoke when no one else would about ideas that no one else had. He was a democrat – not the party, but the ideal.  He was a believer in the inclusive possibility that is the American dream and sought only to ensure that it was equally available to all.  He was repaid by being dismissed as a socialist agitator and a schizophrenic after he died.

By all accounts, he was the least judgmental human being who’s walked the earth and was generous almost to a fault.  He would give away his day’s pay to a starving family when his own children were hungry. He would offer his coat to a shivering hitchhiker and catch a cold on his way home.  He possessed an unequaled generosity of spirit, of openness.  He held a hunger to experience the world and the people of the world and he wrote, or painted, or sang about every single person he ever met in his life.  He retained the childlike wonder of the unknown that most of us lose too early in life.  He continued to embrace the known and the unknown even as he lay dying.  He had the exceptional gift to be just who was at all times.

Through the years, his politics faded into the background and less and less was said or written about his “radical” nature.   Rightfully so, his music has been brought into the light, given the credit and acclaim it deserves but rarely received during his life.   He only recorded (400) songs but left countless thousands of others for us to discover after his death.  Billy Bragg, Jeff Tweedy, Bruce Springsteen, and Tom Morello: these are just a few of the artists who have recorded and reintroduced Guthrie’s lyrical genius to the world.  His musical legacy is still very much alive today.

I have a print of a quote of his from an undocumented performance monologue hanging in my studio.  Every morning before I go to work, or go to play, or to mow the yard or to go do whatever it is that I’m off to do that day I read every word of the print:

            I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose, bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim, too ugly or too this or too that…songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.

            I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built…I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work. And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you.

            I could hire out to the other side, the big money side and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs.  To sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think that you’ve not got any sense at all.  But I decided a long time ago that I’d starve to death before I’d sing any such songs as that.  The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.

These words are supposedly about how he approached the craft of songwriting but they transcend that endeavor and speak volumes about his true character.  I am not a singer of songs. I don’t have the gifts that he had, but I understand what he was saying.  For me these words are a treatise on how to conduct oneself on the daily and they fully illuminate the kind, thoughtful, patriotic man that Woody was. 

I believe that reading his words every morning makes me a better man.

Happy Birthday Woody.  I hope you’ve found the peace in death, that you were always searching for in life.

“Left wing, right wing, chicken wing — it’s all the same

to me. I sing my songs wherever I can sing ’em.”

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie

14 July 1912 – 3 October 1967

This Stack of CDs

Last weekend I spent some long overdue time organizing my studio.  My workspace had become little more than a depository for the remains of the day; old receipts, junk mail, open paint jars – a real mess.  Sifting through this disaster I knocked over more than one stack of CDs that had been accumulating for well over a year probably.  Yes, I know CDs should be in cases, not stacks.  For the record, the cases are dutifully alphabetized in the racks and this works fine for finding what you want to listen to.  But when I’m done with and on to the next, the path of least resistance is to drop the used on a stack and look for a new.  You’re probably wondering why I even own CDs at this point in the digital music age and there is a simple if illogical explanation – I’m a liner notes kind of guy.  I need the multi-folded inserts to fiddle with while listening for the first time.  Experiencing new music for the first time is a near spiritual activity for me and having the liner notes in hand is a prerequisite for making that ritual what it is.  It’s fascinating for me to see who the band thanks, who played banjo on track (7) or shares a writing credit on the title track.  These are all very important bits of useless knowledge for a junkie such as I am.  I’m fine being possibly the only living soul who has to wait for the package of new music to arrive in the mail.  I’m not always comfortable in the instant gratification world in which we live and I think that the waiting is a large part of the joy of the music for me.  But I digress, before I’ve even started.

I’m taking some advice from an old friend with this one.  I can’t imagine you actually give a rats’ about what I’m listening to, but she convinced me that you might so here I am.  In case you missed them, here are the first, second and third previous similar installments.  Yes, a lot of those links are broken and yes I just linked you to my own blog (shameless self promotion).  I haven’t done, thought or seen anything terribly interesting in the last few days and I don’t foresee said on the horizon so this is as good as anything else to write about.  A writer much better than I, once told me to only write about that which you are most passionate.  That’s good advice and is apropos in this instance.  Speaking of good advice, I saw the best I’ve ever received on a t-shirt the other day: Show Some F&@%ing Passion!  That’s simply gold, no?  At any rate, this stack of CDs wasn’t going to jump back into their cases on their own so I dived in.  By dive in, I mean audibly examined them all again before shelving.  What you find below is what was at or near the top of the stack, in no particular order.  Enjoy.

Banditos – The Refreshments

This song typifies much of the netherworld that was the mid-‘90s musical landscape – mindless, devoid of any true artistry, but catchy as hell.  Think Shawn Colvin, Oasis, Green Day.  Against that backdrop, this isn’t actually that bad.  There were good bands then but a lot harder to find.  I first stumbled into the Jayhawks in the mid-‘90s for instance and they remain a favorite.  Music, by and large had just become tired: verse, hook, chorus or for the especially audacious, verse, chorus, hook.  Regardless the formula, it was all quite catchy and little more.  I will say this though, I don’t recall the last time I heard a lyric quite as catchy and (sadly) true as, “everybody knows, that the world is full of stupid people”.  Sometimes, catchy is more than enough.

Shotgun Sally – Cats in Boots

Speaking of writing from a played formula! I probably should’ve saved these tools for the unavoidable hair metal blog I will feel compelled to write one day.  But since that blog will be about a thousand bands deep, here they are in this one.  If you remember anything about the late ‘80s – early ‘90s you remember that every time you kicked over a rock, some ass of a band like this jumped out from under.  This is the reason “grunge” happened – the ‘80s went too far and the opposite of, in the person of Kurt Cobain was about the only thing that could have righted the ship.  I have nostalgia for this though and all the other crappy bands I used to listen to.  Truthfully though, there is nothing to see here.  Let’s move along.

How Will I Know - Nicki Bluhm and The Gramblers

I preface what I’m about to say with the fact that I say this about 90% of the cover songs I ever hear, but this really might be the best cover ever.  How can you take a song that sucks as bad as this and make it not suck so?  The only way, in my opinion is to be Nicki Bluhm.  [Not hating on Whitney (R.I.P.) but she was never my bag.] This version of the song is one of the best things I’ve ever heard.  One of the comments on this page crystallizes how I feel about Bluhm, “She could sing the phone book and I’d listen.” I perused the vast catalogue of YouTube covers that these guys did for weeks before I ever realized they were an actual band.  The first song I ever heard was this little diamond, I Can’t Go For That.  Can you imagine being in that van?  I will live my whole life and possibly never know how cool it must be to be that cool. 

I’m only now really starting to discover who they are and it restores my lost faith in music.   The songs she did with her husband on Duets are exactly what you imagine them to be – soulful, organic, mesmerizing.  When you see them sing Always Come Back you see two people doing exactly what they want to be doing, saying exactly what they want to say and being exactly who they are.  That’s a rare thing at least in my experience.  She’s stunningly beautiful but fits no stereotype.  She’s got a crooked nose.  She has weird bangs and dark circles under her eyes.  She reminds me of Karen Carpenter.  Her voice is flawless – what a beautiful thing.

If that’s not enough for you, watch them make Loggins’ and Messina’s Danny’s Song their bitch. I’m sure at some point they will cover Chevy Van and the hostile takeover of my childhood memories will be complete. 

Deep Inside My Heart – Rock City Angels

It is with a bit of sadness that I share this song with you.  Bobby Durango, the lead singer recently passed away.  Even though I knew it was impossible, I always thought these guys would get their due.  He believed it too, right to the end so it seems.  They unfortunately fall into a category and that was probably their undoing.  These cats were so much more than a “glam” band.  These dudes were Memphis kids; dirty, hungry rock ‘n’ roll kids.  The first time I heard them I bought the cassette.  After I wore that one out, I bought another.  When the time came to buy a third one, music had switched to CD and these guys weren’t on the short list to be converted.  So there were a couple of years where these songs only existed in my reminiscence.  When the world finally caught up and RCA was available on CD I bought (4) copies thinking that it might not last.  I’ve still got (2) left in plastic in case I’m right. 

This is the band that was always playing at the bars we couldn’t get into after the rock shows when we were in high school, but we would see them prowling the alleys behind the Daisy and Rum Boogie.  One night before we had any idea who they were, my boys and I helped load their gear into the van after their set.  It doesn’t matter who they are when you are (16), right?  Young Man’s Blues is still a top (10) preferred album start to finish.  The music holds up to this day, first to last track.

Harlem River Blues – Justin Townes Earle

Through a life long love of his father’s music, I was introduced to this young musician.  A few years ago at one of his shows, Steve Earle spoke about his son between songs. I didn’t pick up on it at the time but there apparently is a huge divide between these two – I didn’t understand until after listening to Justin for a while.  As it turns out, someone who I hold in high esteem…someone who in some ways I say is a role model for the youth of this world did something most (myself included) would think unforgivable – he walked out on his kid.  I don’t have any way to process or even to empathize with what JTE must have gone through and it pisses me off that I even have to wonder due in no small part to my connection with his father’s music.  This wound is laid open publicly on his latest album and maybe that is why it’s not a favorite.  I prefer his subtle acknowledgement of the tragedy that he perceived his life to be.  I prefer this song.  It was right before he famously made light of his estrangement from his father and just after he put himself in to get clean – some apples do not fall that far from the tree, eh? 

Regardless of what he feels about his pops, he can’t escape the musical genes he shares with him.  They both have a mournful tone, a certain longing for something or someone that even as skilled lyrically as they are that they can’t quite put a finger on, can’t quite put a face to.  They are both seekers and I can only assume, outside looking in, that this is part of their problem.  He looks like his mom in his countenance, but he is his father made over in a different genre musically. 

It’s the most jubilant song you will ever hear about someone’s own suicide.  As many times as I’ve listened, I can’t help but wonder if he is playing a part he thinks he should, or if this is what he was feeling that day he wrote it.  Either way it’s infectious.  Rockabilly through an NYC filter is about as original as you will find.  I love its timidity and its simultaneous bravado.  I love its contradiction – music versus lyric.  In many ways, he is a living breathing musical and intellectual dichotomy.  I dig that.

V – Golden Smog      

If there was a band that was more on my radar while I was in college, I’m not sure who it might have been.  This incarnation of the band included members of the Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, Wilco.  Anything Jeff Tweedy touched turned to gold at that time.  And Gary Louris has been a staple in my musical wanderings for years.   

This song was released a few years prior to my time in Stark Vegas but was still in near constant rotation for me, especially after that one shitty winter’s unraveling.  It reminds me of flaking out of studio and those never-ending afternoons that stretched into bottomless nights at The Dark Horse – shooting pool and live music on a low stage and hot bartenders.  This CD has lived near the top of the stack since.

Nowhere To Sleep – Chatham County Line

I stumbled across these guys at a music festival in Memphis six or seven years ago.  Not sure why they were there – the headliners were Nine Inch Nails and the New York Dolls – but I did enjoy their abbreviated set.  I forgot about them until one night I was driving past the Earl on my way home from work a few years later and heard this song spilling out into the EAV streets.  I’ve been hooked since.  There’s nothing else to say really.  This is pure Appalachian bluegrass played by a bunch of kids from North Carolina; no more, no less.  They are keeping their roots alive and that is a wonderfully awesome thing. “If I don’t get near some kindling, dear, somebody’s gonna find me dead.”  Epic.

When My Time Comes – Dawes

They’ve been billed as the second coming of the Laurel Canyon Sound.  Some say where Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and America left off, Dawes begins.  I’m not sure that I agree with that.  It seems to reduce them to a lot less than they are.  There certainly are similarities I guess – I do hear a faint haunting of Sister Golden Hair or Ventura Highway in some of their other work, but this is different.  It’s more cynical.  In spite of what appears to be a throw-back sound, it’s decidedly modern.  I see it as the best of both worlds – they’ve drawn from the strange emotional well that must be growing up in suburban Los Angeles and have spun it into a music that’s all their own.  They don’t owe it to anyone.

Lyrically, I don’t think I’ve encountered a band in the last (10) years that has matched them.  It’s contemplative and internal at the same time that it smacks you in the face with your own personal meditation.  It’s background music that forces itself into the foreground with measured subtlety. I’ve been listening to this CD on the way to and from work and I swear I don’t remember the drive in either direction for weeks now.  It’s a beginning to end album.  The individual songs are great but they are enhanced when played in the context of the one before and after.  To say that I’m taken with this music would be a gross understatement.

The interpretation of this song through the vehicle of Cool Hand Luke was genius but even that falls short of what the song truly means.  It’s not secret that I’ve identified more with Luke than probably any other fictional literary character.  And it might even be genius that they give Luke the freedom that he chased his whole life at the end of the video that he never found in print.  I think that is what I find so compelling about this particular song.  It’s a sad, woe is me type of thing for most of it until he realizes the futility of his angst.  The lyric I reference is the same throughout.  It’s not sung with a different inflection even, but you know when it changes for him if you are listening.  

“You can judge the whole world on the sparkle that you think it lacks. 

            Yeah, you can stare into the abyss but it’s staring right back.”

Each time you hear it, it becomes less mournful and more hopeful.  By the time you get to the acapella chorus towards the end, you know that what seemed like a hopeless estimation of his life on the front end of the song has become an acknowledgement of that which he cannot change but that which will never hold him back again.   He’s found hope.  The final tones are victorious.  It’s a celebration of overcoming odds and a determination not to be the sad-sack bastard that had always allowed himself to be oppressed by the world in which he lived.  When My Time Comes transforms from a prediction of his empty death to a celebration of the possibility of his future life.   It’s a hymnal to never giving up on oneself.

That’s a deal that I can get behind.

The ridiculous is that the deeper I went into the stack, the fewer I put away.  I’m convinced that none of the CDs I own are in their cases right now. 

I’m okay with that.

Up The Country

I woke up this morning and felt an overwhelming desire to get the hell out of the city for a bit.  It hits me now and again that I should commune with nature, be among the flora and fauna or whatever.  One of the greatest things about Atlanta is that there are miles and miles of above average hiking, minutes from and even right in the city (thanks Jimmy Carter). Today was different for whatever reason.  Perhaps it was my inability to distinguish between the crack and report of the simultaneously sporadic, seemingly city-wide firework display and the randomly intermingled neighborhood gunfire last night.  I will say this for Atlantans, we are apparently a very patriotic bunch – I liken last night to the Shock and Awe campaign Bush launched against the Iraqis in the spring of ‘03.  It left me a might jumpy so to speak and I knew the standard hike along the ‘Hooch was not going to put me back on center.  Belle was inconsolable.  (We probably shouldn’t have taken her to that fireworks show at Centennial Park when she was a puppy.)   Regardless, I felt compelled to heed the call of that long forgotten (but oft-remembered) symbiotic symphony of Lynyrd Skynyrd and my truck tires on a gravel road.  So I set myself upon that quest, to go Up the Country, as it were. 

Not sure really where I intended to go when I left the house this morning.  I was listening to Uncle Tupelo so thought I might as well head up to Chickamauga.  The only true objective was to get out of the city and that certainly qualified, so up I-75 I went.  I got almost as far as Cartersville before getting distracted.  I had watched an Aerial America on Smithsonian recently and in it was a piece about the Etowah Indian Mounds, so I exited to see if I could find them. 

If you’re into the historical, as I am you would love it here.  The gentleman at the visitor center shared a wealth of knowledge about the Ocmulgee people who'd originally built these incredible mounds.  This was the first place I stopped after leaving Atlanta.  Though it couldn’t have been more than (50) miles from downtown, it felt light years away.  I was there early enough to be the only human being on the site and it was surreal.  Sitting atop Mound A, the big one, looking out onto the plaza below I could almost see back to those days.  I’ve always thought it would have been pretty bad-ass to be a Native American. I would have sucked at it of course – I don’t kill things, don’t have the best sense of direction and I suck at gardening. 

Baking there in the early morning sun, I couldn’t help but feel a little ashamed.  Where once stood an indigenous urban center of trade and art and ceremony now stands nothing.  The only evidence that they were ever here was the 63’-0” tall pile of dirt I was sitting on.  Not only did “we” strip them of their pride by forcing them off their land, we brought gifts of small pox and malaria.  We eradicated complete races of people to make this land “our” land.  If that wasn’t enough, we then dug up their sacred burial grounds and now charge admission to see what’s left.  Determined not to bring myself down with facts, I chose to remember what once was and honor that.  I chose to simply enjoy the world in which I live.

After another long conversation with Gary back at the museum, I left thinking what a kick-ass job he has.  Maybe I’ll do something like that when I’ve finished with the hustle. 

I was about to get back on the freeway to continue north when distraction #2 appeared in the form of Red Top Mountain.  I hiked all over that bad boy and never saw much of a mountain; exuberant hills, yes but nothing close to a mountain.   Good hiking here though along the shoreline of Lake Allatoona and up through the hills to the bluffs overlooking the lake – best hike of the day by far.

I saw tons of tracks along the water’s edge but didn’t expect to see any wildlife in the middle of the day.  Much to my surprise and delight, I would soon be proven wrong.  Coming up out of a deep ravine I heard a rustle ahead along the trail.  I assumed it was squirrels and forgot about it.  As I reached the top of that climb I saw several deer and hurried to my pack to get the camera.  By the time I had the camera in hand, there were only (2) left – I guess I scared the others off (like I said, not a good Indian). 

These (2) were chill though.  I don’t think I have ever been that close to wildlife in the actual wild and I didn’t really know what to do.  They didn’t seem to be too concerned with me considering I had snapped about a thousand pictures in the previous (3) minutes.  I sat down on a rock so I could get my sketch book without spooking them.  I’m an architect – I felt a sketch was in order.  As I did, I said, “Hey ya’ll, what’s up?”  I accept the probable truth that what happened next happened only in my imagination, but I swear the older one said, “Just chillin’.  What’s up with you?” 

In somewhat of a state of shock that they hadn’t scurried off with the rest of the gang, I decided to just sit there and see what they would do.  It was amazing.  At one point I walked up to within (20) or so feet of them and they were completely unimpressed.  I watched them, followed them along the ridge as they picked around the leaves, grazing on the tall grass for at least an hour.  They groomed each other, grunted and snorted, stomped a hoof now and then.  After a while, I realized that they weren’t going anywhere and I started to feel like I was intruding on their perfect little world so I took the left split and they meandered to the right, back into that little valley. 

Walking out, I couldn’t help but be thankful for having been allowed that brief glimpse into their wild world.  It is beyond me, how a human being can look into those big eyes and squeeze a trigger and end their life. 

After this interlude, I had given up on the Chickamauga thing and turned the truck back toward the A.  Halfway home, I remembered that I had never been to Kennesaw Mountain and thought I might as well check that off my list while I was out and about.  Incredible amounts of history here, but a little too populated with soccer moms and bratty screaming children for me to fully enjoy.  More than once, as I struggled to the peak in the afternoon heat I had to resist tripping, pushing and / or otherwise incapacitating the hordes of suburbanite assholes that I found myself forced to share earth with.

Upon my arrival at the summit, I felt finally like it was worth it.  That was a tough climb for my old out of shape ass: probably should’ve been a morning hike.  Either way, the views of Atlanta from the peak are exceptional even with mid-summer smog.  The only negative being that there was not a zip-line down to the base as I’d convinced myself there might be in an effort to push myself to the top.

The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain started on 27 June, 1864, and was the first significant battle of Sherman’s assault on Atlanta.  The battle is recorded in history as a tactical defeat for the Union forces, but it did not prevent his ultimate victorious March to the Sea.  Over 5,000 United States citizens died in and among the trails I walked today.  The weight of that loss of humanity was not lost on me. 

At the farthest point up, just before one might start back down, there were (2) flags placed in the ground between a couple of rocks:  one was an American flag and the other was a P.O.W. flag.  I don’t typically swell up with American pride.  I have it: it’s just not in my nature to make a show of it.  And though I honor the troops in my own way, I don’t often consciously think about it.  Maybe it was that bitch of a hike and the heat or whatever, but when I saw those (2) flags dancing along the high breeze I was paralyzed.  I say a lot of things and think even more that I never say that would make most people think I hate this country.  I’m critical, yes.  But I love this country, and I don’t think that I have ever been more convinced of that fact than I was today sitting on top of that big rock watching those flags fly in silent tribute.  It was only then that I realized just how hallowed the ground upon which I rested was.

After that moment, the return hike was a breeze.

Today exceeded my expectations.  I don’t often take a day off and when I do I too often do nothing with it.  Today was an exception – I didn’t, for the first time in a long time, feel guilty about not being in the office.  And as it turns out, the world didn’t stop spinning because I was not there.  There’s a lesson here, right? 

I never found that gravel road I thought I was looking for, but I found a helluva lot more.  Today was a good day. 

My spirit is full.

Golfing with Alice Cooper

I had the good fortune to see (2) of my favorite acts from my aforementioned misspent youth recently, Alice Cooper and Iron Maiden.  For a myriad of reasons, I was never able to get my body in the same town as IM back in the day so this was def a ‘can’t miss’ show.  I must say that I was a little disappointed in the Maiden set list – is it too much to ask to see Powerslave live?  Apparently so, but they made up for it with Run to the Hills, Two Minutes to Midnight, Phantom of the Opera…now that I’m thinking about it, it wouldn’t have sucked if they would have played Charlotte the Harlot if they were going to dig that deep into the catalogue.  I guess you can’t expect a band that’s been active since 1975 to do it all in 2 ½ hours, but seriously, how do you not play Powerslave?  The show wasn’t quite as epic as the video link above but it was as epic for me.  I’ll get back to the show but first, I would be remiss if I didn’t get into the glorious spectacle that is the Heavy Metal Parking Lot.

I’ve tried to elucidate this sub-cultural phenomenon to people before and they look at me like I have (3) heads sprouting from my shoulders.  If you’re not an aficionado, I don’t suppose you would have any frame of reference for understanding.  And if you’re not well versed in what’s left of the scene, these words are probably falling on deaf ears and I’m okay with that.  I will try once more to make you understand. 

It’s like being at a college football game tailgate but we are all cheering for the same team and we are all the best of friends.  The same people who were at the hundreds of shows I saw in the ’80s are still there – you never forget, right?  The only difference is now they bring their kids.  Parents with kids, frisbee, grillin’, chillin’, nefarious unarticulated clouds of weed smoke, cops, corn hole, devil horn salutes to distant car stereos, future (and possibly current) serial killers, beers, burgers, fist pumps, shenanigans – my strange utopia.  Old and young, rich and poor communing united behind a shared love of the band, the music, the thing.

People who don’t fit in anywhere else in the world, fit in here.  That always has been and remains the allure of Heavy Metal – it gave kids who were pissed off at their parents, or their teachers or probation officer or whatever else a venue to come together and forget it all, to scream it out, to slam themselves into each other in acknowledgement of shared struggle.  20+ years later, why should it be different?  It’s not, really. The things that vex us are different from what they were then, but the day to day vexing is the same.  I submit that a Heavy Metal Parking Lot represents the best possible case scenario of what the human condition is capable of.  There is no judgment.  No one is better than the other.  No one is smarter than.  No one is more successful than the other. There is no ‘red’ or ‘blue’ political posturing.  I’m sure that I’ve slapped hands with, “bumped” into and / or head-butted dudes that vote the other way.  None of the trappings of modern society, popular culture matter here.  We come together in black t-shirts and faded jeans on gravel and asphalt parking lots to celebrate the one thing that we can all agree on – the music. 

That’s what it was for me when I was a kid and all of those memories flooded back and consumed me that Saturday night.  On the rare occasion that I’ve found myself in an adult version of those teenage lots, I’ve found myself transported to a place and time where nothing mattered except the music.  For years that was enough, and if I let myself be honest with myself it still is.  How else can I explain my morning mandatory Metallica?  That music bound, binds me still to a family, a strange dysfunctional one yes, but a family nevertheless – a family that would lay themselves down on train tracks without asking, knowing I would do the same.

Those parking lot scenes from my youth are as entwined into the fabric of the story of my life as much or more than almost anything I can recall.  Being a kid doesn’t come easy for some of us – growing up is even harder sometimes.  To abate this, we occasionally would gather by the thousands before a rock show to reassure each other that it was okay to be different.  Most of us grew up in small towns in the middle of nowhere.  We were agitated, completed disaffected, dangerously bored.  It’s where the weird kids you remember from high school went to not feel weird.  The lot was always as important as, if not more than, the show itself.  What no one could ever understand is that the music was / is only the vehicle through which we communicated – the only way possible for some.  That’s how some guys are and I was one of those guys as a teen.  The fact that I had hair down to my ass when I was a kid had nothing to do with the music – it had all to do with positioning myself in the only community that I ever felt accepted into until I moved to the EAV. The lot was a tribal affirmation of my worth.  Without this occasional reassuring, Mississippi would have swallowed me whole.    

There are few things that I’ve encountered in my life that warm my heart as much as seeing a (10) year old in full Alice Cooper makeup or a father showing his son how to properly tuck the thumb when making devil horns.  It gives me hope for the future of this country.  I could bounce around the reality and the supposed of what a Heavy Metal Parking Lot is as long as I could coax my fingers to move and you will probably never get it.  If you do, you do.  If you don’t, you never will. So be it.

The show was incredible.  Alice didn’t disappoint and was up to his usual antics – the boa constrictor and top hat and cane, the onstage murder, the 20 foot animatronic Frankenstein – he even cut his head off in the guillotine and then sang I Love the Dead holding his own severed head.  It’s all so kitschy now, but it apparently scared the shit out of my parents’ generation.  Billion Dollar Babies, I’m Eighteen, Wicked Young Man.  He opened with Black Widow and closed with School’s Out.  As he left the stage, he whispered loudly into the mic, “You’re all sick things!”  Epic.

Intermission: when the head-bangers hit the head, buy a t-shirt, beer up and chain-smoke before the next set.  This is when emotions and tensions are at their highest and when if there is going to be a fight it usually pops.  If the first band does their job, they leave the crowd in a frenzied, maniacal state wanting more and this was definitely the case this night.  Having made a promise to myself to not get caught up this time, I discreetly did my thing, hurried back to the patch of grass we’d staked out and waited to have my mind blown by Iron Maiden.

It’s hard to explain what Iron Maiden is to me.  They were a different kind of band.  They were the thinking-man’s Heavy Metal, right?  They didn’t write songs about fast cars and strippers.  The first Maiden song I ever heard was Rime of the Ancient Mariner – an adaptation of the 18^th century English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic of the same name.  This was heavy in a way I had never known prior to and I loved it.  Still do.  When his contemporaries were crashing their Lamborghinis after leaving the “Riot” House, Bruce Dickinson was practicing to become a world-class fencer.  When his opening acts were cancelling shows to go to rehab, he was training to become a commercial pilot.  The songs he penned were epic in scale and content and his band-mates joined in with equally epic chord progressions, intricate beats and mind-numbing, thundering bass lines.  Steve Harris is the most adroit bass player in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.  Nicko McBrain has about a hundred drums and cymbals in his kit and he hits every single one on every song. The harmonic framework of Dave and Adrian’s blistering, progressive dueling guitars is the foreground against which the low end is pounded.  Put this all together and what you have is unbelievable, inimitable music.   Combine it with the band’s larger than life mascot ‘Eddie’ and trademark visual on a warm June night in the ATL and you have a perfect recipe for a face-melting of epic, if not biblical proportions.

I left the show stunned, as if I had been tazed.

The next morning, I woke up sore – like having been run over by a train sore.  I dragged myself out of bed anyway with an 8:00 tee time looming.  Driving around the block to the course I was dreading who they might pair me with. My local frowns on single play and I’ve never had good luck when I go there solo.  Much to my surprise I walked into the clubhouse to see another long-hair checking in at the counter.  I thought to myself, maybe he was at the show and we’ll have that to pass the time.  As expected, we were paired and I absently introduced myself walking to the cart.  “Pleased to meet you, name’s Alice.”  What?  That’s right, the planets had finally aligned, my karmic destiny was being fulfilled and my dream of golfing with Alice Cooper was about to become a historical fact!  I was a babbling idiot, I couldn’t stop talking, I was nervous as hell.  I’m a hack – AC is an actual skilled golfer.  He’s going to think I’m an asshole.  It’s a short course; you can hold your own with this guy even if he is the Prince of Darkness.

We did rock-paper-devil horns to see who teed off first and of course he won.  As he was lining up his first shot I struggled to get a grip on myself and was just settling into the realization of and starting to truly feel the gravity of the situation.  Keep it together brother; this holds all the promise of being the most exceptional Sunday morning of your life.  That’s when I heard and saw the unthinkable.  Right in the middle of his backswing, Maynard hops out of the cart and shouts, “Dude, I’ve got to piss!”  Seriously?  As I was about to berate him for this unforgivable gaff, I couldn’t help but notice how sharply he was dressed.  My (12) year old Dachshund was decked out in full-on old school golf attire, puffing a Cuban with one paw, balancing a half-empty scotch with the other.  “Really, man?  What’s with your friend?” Alice said in disgust, slamming his club into the tee-box turf.  

Son of a Bitch!  I’m dreaming.  It was all a figment of my well-documented over-active imagination.    This was certainly one of my better constructed delusions.  It was absolutely real.  As I stripped off the golf shirt and put my clubs back in the closet (yeah, that real) I was crushed.  A round of golf with Alice Cooper would have certainly been a high-water mark for this old head-banger. 

Alas, my slow train into dementia steams on.