Thursday June 28th, 2001 @ 8:51 PM
WARNING: SARCASM TO FOLLOW. IF YOU ARE OVERLY SENSITIVE, DO NOT READ.
In reverse order of abrasiveness.
10. The Peter Pumper. This is the guy who recognizes you at the urinal and wants to shake hands. I know it is a natural reaction when spotting a performer, but good grief, how am I to hit the target with some guy pumping my hand like he was jacking up a truck. The last time this happened I had to reach my right hand across my body to take his hand and he was so vigorous that it turned me toward him and I peed on the porcelain and it splattered on both of our pant legs. There’s just something unappealing about having a guy take his hand off his ding-a-ling-a-ling and extend it to you. These guys are super-extraverted by nature and therefore grin all over the place and squeeze very hard and won’t let go. My unattended equipment looks like one of those little boppin’ dogs in the rear window of a low-rider. To make matters worse, I never was any good with my left hand. Damn!
9. Dumb and Dumber. I’m sure you’ve heard ingratiating speakers at seminars make this statement: “There are no dumb questions.” Where on earth have they been? There are questions so damned dumb they would embarrass a man beating his head against a wall. Furthermore, we hear them every week at the bandstand. If I had to ask somebody a question as stupid as we hear, I’d at least go whisper it in a back alley, but no–these people ask loud and proud right in front of the home crowd.
In Colorado this past April, two ladies came up to Miss Blues while she was deeply and passionately singing one of her slow blues, and began waving to get her attention. Now if you’ve seen Miss Blues perform, you realize that the intensity and drama of her performance is spellbinding and it seems almost sacrilegious to interrupt her. When she did not respond to their handwaving, they reached out and grabbed her arms and tried to pull her out onto the floor. Now Miss Blues is a big ol’ collard-green-eatin’ country gal and when her feet are planted, the left tackle of the Baltimore Ravens isn’t going to budge her. She was gracious. But seeing she wouldn’t come off the stage they started asking, “Can you sing Mustang Sally? Come on, can you? Come on, you can do it. Don’t you know the words? We’ll help you, come on…” If God Almighty were a street musician He’d have snuffed them both out like altar candles after a service. I know Jason wanted to shoot them in the face with a Blunderbuss filled with machine shop shavings.
Here’s one I heard recently: “Hey, you guys know any Joan Jett?”
I hear this one too often and it just amazes me: “Are you guys the band?” No, idiot boy, we’re astronauts from the space shuttle, isn’t this Edwards Air Force Base?
How about this one: “Are you guys any good?” I feel like blubbering and crying, “Oh my gosh, you found us out, pleeeease don’t tell anyone.”
My personal favorite: “Is that a harmonica you’re playin’ there?” I want to say something like: “Oh, no! This is a duplicate set of Jimmy Carter’s teeth…”
Our BDS all-time favorite came a few years ago in Idaho at a Biker rally which must have been attended only by Bikers who ran Harleys over each other’s heads. The guy stood in front of us for fifteen minutes scratching himself, and then spit some tobacco, shook his head, and said these infamous words: “Hee Haw, huh?” Now I defy you to answer that question intelligently. What on earth was he asking? Chuck, Jason, and I still use that one when someone stupid approaches the bandstand.
8. Somebody’s Relative. “My nephew plays in a band called the Honky Tonk Frogs. They’re killer, man. My nephew plays the guitar like nobody you ever heard. They opened for the Swamp Whores over in Ditchwater last year and tore the place apart…”
So why are they telling me this? What am I supposed to say? All I can think of is: “No shit.”
I guess the name of this game is implication/inference. O.K., let’s see, since you have some of the same bloodlines as your nephew, and he is “killer” enough to open for the Swamp Whores, who, even though I never heard of them, must be great because you are assuming I have heard of them–so by some circuitous reasoning, I should conclude that either you are somebody, or that you know what you are talking about. Correct?
Here’s a hint when talking to any band performing on a given night. Talk about them. Not only do they not want to hear about your nephew’s band, they hate your nephew’s band, and they hate your nephew, and they wish the curse of the mummy on your whole damned family.
Think of it this way, what if you just finished baking your friend a cake. Your own private recipe. You hand whipped the eggs and used imported French Vanilla from Paris, and decorated the frosting with the silhouettes of Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Rogers in formal attire. You set it down in front of your friend because you hope to make him happy, and what does he say? “You know, my Aunt Mable makes a real cake. There ain’t nothin’ like it this side of the Big Snapper River…”
Think about it, wouldn’t you want to shoot the bastard?
7. Hearing Aids. These are the people who make a dramatic point of putting their fingers in their ears to let you know how loud the music is. If you don’t notice right away, they will walk in front of the band or out the door–fingers in ears, eyes rolled back, and a stiff, indignant backbone forming an exclamation point of effrontery. If you see this display, glance just above Jason’s head and you will see some bubbles connected to a cartoon balloon displaying a string of profanity that would blister a Rhinoceros hide.
Electrically amplified music will always be too loud for somebody. Club owners who order a band to turn down when one of these Hearing Aids whines and pouts, demonstrates disregard for his true live music patrons. Any high quality band who has been around the block, has a reason for playing at their chosen volume. Ours is that we need dramatic dynamic range. We like to build up the volume and then drop back to a whisper, and give the audience a roller coaster ride of dynamics. Some bands are power bands whose music doesn’t work unless it is loud. Others, like Chris Duarte, are virtuosos who demand that you concentrate on their performance and not on playing grabass and chatting about Thursday night’s bridge tournament.
We’ve noticed one thing over the years, the more famous you are, or the more money you make the club, the less you are told to turn down. The Hearing Aid ilk should not be in an electric amplification venue. They should go down to the coffeehouse and listen to Savah Wail and the Mousetones play mandolins and sing about cosmos connections. We are a band whose stock in trade is to kick your butt, not tickle your fancy.
I see some of these sissy listeners resort to making their children stick their fingers in their ears and stand before the stage glowering at us. I pretend to be very concerned about their child. I say, “Is something wrong with your child’s ears? I notice that out of six hundred people at this concert, she is the only one whose ears hurt. Is it congenital, or did she have an accident?”
My kind of fan is the one who builds a camp of booze bottles, cigarettes, dollar bills, and camera film, right in front of the main speakers. They get high on the blast and when you give them the thumbs up, they scream back, “Damn right!”
6. Give Me Liberty or Give Me Breath. I have a keen sense of smell. I’m not sure this is a blessing. Any given bar has bags of Nacho Cheese chips, varieties of cigarettes, pickled eggs, and enough alcohol to fuel a dragster for a blazing quarter mile. Put all these ingredients into the human mouth over a four to six hour period without brushing, and you have the makings of Al Capp’s “Skonk Works.” Unfortunately, the glut is often mixed with effervescent liquids like Coke, 7-Up, and Club soda, so as it brews in turgid fermentation in the stomach, it is repeatedly burped up into the little reservoir of nicotine that sits at the top of the esophagus.
Now most people who are out and about, realize this, and chomp on breath mints or at least keep their distance, but of course there are those who come on like a happy hound dog and unwittingly try to melt the skin off my face. I tried to solve this problem by carrying gum or mints with me to gigs and offering them to the offenders. Ironically, their answer is usually: “Naaaaahhhhh, never use the stuff, I got some Copenhagan, wanna pinch?”
5. Hey Mr. Tambourine man. I’m the tambourine man in our band and although it looks easy, playing it poorly can mess up the whole groove and feel of a song. That’s why I don’t let drunk girls play it. Guys never ask. Sober women never ask. Only drunk girls. Sometimes they just grab the tambourine and start shaking it. If I try to take it back they will run and giggle and play it even louder. Most of them have the natural rhythm of a Gooney bird landing. Unbelievably, if this happens the entire audience will quit listening to the band, or watching us, and will focus on the twit as though she was twirling a fire baton. Seeing this, she will start to undulate and make sexy faces between inane giggles.
She hasn’t a clue that if murder were legal all four of us would pull out machine pistols and turn her into Swiss cheese. These are the same girls who grab my harmonicas in venues without a stage, and start blowing chords, in the wrong key of course, and pretend like they are Big Mamma Thornton. If they knew how nasty harmonicas are, they’d projectile vomit, but instead they gleefully turn themselves into a court jester at the expense of the band and the true fans–who incidentally, would also like to kill them.
These are Dr. Spock kids. No one ever gave them a good spanking or made them behave. Their disrespect for the band is outrageous. Would they go into a car repair and run around with the mechanic’s wrenches? I’d like to have Miss Blues slap the crap out of them and then hold them still while I gave them a good dose of Castor Oil like in the old days. Whoever raised these girls should be made to watch films of their behavior at a community meeting and then placed in the town stocks with dunce hats and signs that say “Shame on You.”
4. Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire. If I’m going to be lied to, I want it done well and with a measure of intelligence and imagination. I loathe a poor and pathetic liar who makes it obvious. Not only does he offend me with his dishonesty but insults me by assuming that I’m stupid enough to actually believe his dose of steaming horseshit.
The other day I was told that a guy used to catch the band in San Francisco back in the late eighties and that he and I went out partying together. What? Does he think I wouldn’t know if I partied with his sorry ass? Blinddog Smokin’ was formed in 1993 and we have never played in San Francisco.
The worst guys are those who claim they ran sound for The Grateful Dead and the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, God, Jesus, and Holy Ghost. Truth is they couldn’t run sound for Mrs. Buttmore’s Kindergarten pat-a-cake party.
Didn’t these guys have mothers or fathers who told them they were full of shit? How can you get to be an adult of any age and not be slapped silly for prevarication this crude? And they should be slapped, mind you. Not by their momma, but by a five hundred pound Gorilla with knuckles like boxcar couplings.
Recently I’ve begun a new tactic: retorting with a worse lie. “Oh really, your father played a private concert for Queen Elizabeth? Wow! My only claim to fame is being the illegitimate son of Janis Joplin, she and my dad were drinking Southern Comfort together at a Speakeasy during the Great Depression, it was a hangout for famous guys, you know: Elvis, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Marilyn Manson, people like that. Anyway Janis had this premonition about overdosing and begged my dad to plant a seed in her that night to give her like, immortality, you know, and they did it standing up in the men’s room because my dad had this trick-knee from the war and had to stay on his feet like a horse, you know, and he never saw her again. After she died, the police brought me in a basket to my Dad who made prosthetics in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and he knew by my raspy voice and trick knee that I was his son all right…”
Maybe the rhyme is correct, we should set these guys pants on fire. How embarrassing for them to be so ignorant. There are women in this category too, you’ve heard them: “I was raped by this alien…,”
3. Pedestal Peddlers. A true fan is one who sincerely understands, appreciates, and values, the particular music of a given band. Anyone else will eventually drop by the wayside. The worst fans are those who bring a pedestal with them and determine that one or all of us in the band is going to stand on it. These are the people who seem too good to be true and indeed they are. In my case, they fall in love with my stage persona, which if you know me well, is not anything like the private me. They ooh and aah and dispense great praise of the most maudlin variety. They claim to have somehow known me forever, etc., etc., blah, blah, blither…
I used to think I must really be somebody to inspire that kind of devotion and scrutiny from fans who a few months previous were total strangers. But, I learned, not once, but time and time again, that people who make me stand on a pedestal will kick it out from under me just as soon as I disappoint them. And disappoint them I will.
The magic of the stage and its smoky, red, flood lights, and the power of amplification, and the passion of an evening, can lionize even the most meager of musicians. We seem to be bigger somehow, bold and undaunted. Some people need heroes and heartthrobs. Unfortunately, we are all just relatively small pieces of meat walking around this earth for a few years trying like hell to overcome our appetites, strike a little mark, and make sense of it all before we return to dust and hope for the resurrection.
I happen to be a very boring guy off the stage. I spend my time reading and writing and planting a few petunias and going to the cheap movies with my wife. I don’t party or go out at all. I don’t drink or do drugs. I eat health food and work out at a local gym. I don’t listen to music, I like peace and quiet. My idea of a vacation is to build an addition on my deck.
I get grumpy when I’m hungry, and grouchy when I’m tired. I’m horribly unpunctual and too often lazy. My method of high rolling is putting twenty bucks in a savings account. I get in sarcastic moods, and I’m cynical. I tend to be reclusive and can be rude to annoying salesmen and Mormon missionaries. And, these are the faults to which I will admit. I don’t know exactly what my wife sees in me. She makes more money than I do and is much nicer.
If you look too closely at anyone’s life, you will be disappointed. Especially an artist. I choose to admire the performance and not the performer. I admire the shoe and not the cobbler, the building and not the architect, the poem and not the poet. We come as close to purity in our creations or labors as we’ll ever come, or so say I. I wish that fans wouldn’t bring a pedestal to the gig. Just hunker down and let the music take you somewhere. That’s all I have to offer you in reality. I’m a teller of tales, whether by note or word.
2. The Sheepdog. Herd me into a corner, that’s what they do. Then I’m trapped. I feel like crying. Sometimes a little whimper escapes me. Prayer doesn’t work. God probably thinks its funny. These people are really good at spotting me in hiding places. None of us in the band hang out in corners anymore because of the sheepdogs, but we still get caught sitting on the stage.
This just happened to Jason. A middle-aged woman appeared suddenly and pinned Jason with a knee on each side of him. She then put her arms around him and talked to him nose to nose. I was sitting with some fans twenty feet away and started laughing. “Jason is hating life,” I told them. “He is in an absolute state of panic. Watch carefully because when she makes the smallest mistake, he’ll break for daylight and strap on his guitar.”
This lady then kissed him on the cheek. Jason doesn’t display public affection and became visibly uncomfortable. I was looking for Chuck so he could laugh too.
“May I kiss you on the lips,” she pleaded with him. He was looking around for someone to rescue him or to give him a reason to be abrupt. Of course, Chuck and I would never rescue him because we enjoy laughing so much. Don’t feel too bad, though, Jason not only doesn’t rescue us, he sends sheepdogs in our direction so he can laugh.
It is a game we all play called: point the Sheepdog. Roland didn’t catch on for the longest time and was easy prey for about a year. We never could trap Andy, he was the best at evasion.
When she puckered up, Jason jumped up and desperately strapped on his guitar. Of course the lady was offended, which is one of the qualities of sheepdogs. They have an inordinate need for attention and affection and are highly emotional and usually drunk. They are always on the verge of being offended if you act disinterested in them. Often the scene ends with them calling one of us a stuck-up-arrogant-son-of-a-bitch, and saying “So you think you’re too good for us common folk, huh?”
We have become adept at staying on the move during breaks. If you watch me on break, you’ll notice that I’m always using the old side-long-glance like a deer, alert for the sheepdog. I’ve become really good at pretending to not see them as I talk to other people and continually keep my back to them no matter where they go. Sometimes the only thing I can do is run away. But they are skilled at herding, they have years of practice. If I do get herded into a corner, I’ve learned to direct the conversation like this:
Sheepdog: My uncle plays the harmonica really good, you should hear him, he can play the beer barrel polka and yodel at the same time…
Me: Are you kidding me! Roland has a relative who can do the same thing. I’ll bet you’re related somehow. Hell, Roland can yodel like Roy Rogers, I’ll go get him, maybe he’ll do it for you if you keep after him long enough.
Sheedogs can be any age, race, or sex. They have these things in common: They are socially unacceptable. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have had to learn the art of herding people into corners in order to hold a conversation. They are emotional black holes. You can’t fill them no matter how much attention you pay. They are desperate. They have absolutely nothing to say of interest to anyone older than two years. They won’t shut up. They won’t go away. They are as boring as Alan Greenspan’s wardrobe, and they are volatile. You will know when you have encountered one because they will be standing between you and any escape route and because you will feel the increasing urge to commit suicide.
1. A Bitch in Time Saves Nine. People who bitch at me for my Tales Told Well are my number one peeve for the year 2001. These people love to be offended. I lose from ten to thirty subscribers after every TTW offering I send out. Pieces like this one knock off at least thirty. Feelgood pieces lose the fewest. I don’t mind. The list still grows anyway. Unsubscribing keeps the list groomed and healthy. But I wonder why they have to send me nasty sermons on the way out. It seems they want to save all the rest of you from my corrupted mind. If they can convince me of my writing sins, they surmise, maybe I will repent and start writing the way they would write if they had hundreds of subscribers. Of course they don’t have any subscribers because they are small-minded and self-righteous.
I write first and foremost because I’m a writer. A writer writes like a fish swims and a bird flies, they have to, and they love to. I choose the subjects I do because you readers are fans to one degree or another of Blinddog Smokin’ and my intent is to let you in behind the scenes and inside our heads, our lives, and our music. I write the way I do because that is who I am.
I am more careful and considerate than it might appear. I read these things through with many people in mind and change them accordingly. I don’t purposely try to offend anyone. I hide the names of towns and people if I think it would cause embarrassment. I stay away from causing controversy for the most part, and try to mix in a little something for everybody. The subjects range from pathos to peeves and much in-between that defies category. I am honest and frank and the tales are all as true as I can remember them.
Still I get indignant reprimands after every mailing. I always answer every letter, good and bad. Is there anyone out there who can speak to the contrary? I don’t get paid to do this and yet it eats up an entire day when I undertake a writing. I get plenty of ego-gratification being on stage in the band. I continue these Tales because most of you get a lot of enjoyment and enlightenment from them. You tell me so and I am grateful.
I’ll end with a quote from a letter I received after my “Miss Peggy’s” piece: “I can no longer in good conscience continue to subscribe to Tales Told Well. I thought the content would be as refreshing and satisfying as your music, but all you talk about is yourself. Do you really think we care about what happened to you as a kid? Your ego is outrageous. You really think you are cute don’t you? With your ability to write you could contribute so much more with descriptions of your gigs, fans, venues, and other musicians you have met. All we hear about is Carl this and Carl that. Try being a bit more generous and altruistic in your writing and with your talent you may find that the world is more receptive…”
It goes on and on and gets worse. Gosh, I’m glad she unsubscribed before this piece. I wonder how the people who call me names and impute motives and attempt to tell me how to write get through this world at all. It must be a scary place for them. If my Tales Told Well are offensive to them, what must the reports of war and the poverty of third world countries be like when they read it? They must recoil at the literature promulgated by dictators. They must shiver at the lyrics of punk and rap artists. I’m just trying to have fun and give you something you can’t get anyplace else.
Carl
Posted by Carl
Thursday April 12th, 2001 @ 8:50 PM
Prologue:
It is my habit in the summertime to ride my bicycle about my hometown of Laramie, Wyoming, in a casual fashion, letting the sights conjure up memories. I imagine the voices and laughter of old neighbors now long dead. Laramie originated with Trappers, miners, lumberjacks, cowboys, and railroaders, hardly the makings of a blues haven–which of course, it is not. But the blues planted a seed in Laramie, once upon a time.
I often ride along the railroad tracks on First Street, and as I come to a certain house there, as I did a few summers ago, I enter a time warp as though gravity has increased and all sound fades into utter stillness. This particular time I was awakened from my trance by a ruddy “granola type” lady asking me rudely what I wanted.
“Oh nothing,” I replied. “I was just reminiscing about your house.”
“Did you live here? She asked suspiciously.
“No, it was once a restaurant. Not like any other restaurant in Laramie. I had some meaningful experiences in there many years ago.”
She scoffed at me, “Nothing like that ever happened. I know the history of this house, and you are mistaken. It was never a restaurant. Check the records at the courthouse.”
“But you’re wrong,” I said. “It was before you were born, I would guess.”
“Please go away,” she said. “I don’t like you being around here. My husband will be home any minute. Believe me, you have the wrong house, nothing like you’re saying ever happened here.”
The Pic-a-Rib:
I looked at the clock above the teacher’s head: 1:15 P.M., the funeral would take place in forty-five minutes. I hadn’t wanted to confront the principal for an excuse. He wasn’t an understanding man where I was concerned. I had skipped a lot of high school that year and this would seem like just another connivance. I decided instead to inform the teacher and slip out informally. But I hadn’t thought it through. To address the teacher at this point would mean stopping his lecture and having the focus of the class on my request. I decided to wait until the last minute, about 1:45, the cemetery being only blocks from the school.
I thought back to the first time that I’d seen her, so big and lovely and colorful, standing in her doorway, smiling through glossy red lipstick, and laughing. I was immediately attracted to her in the fashion of seeing a lioness or some other exotic creature. It was midnight and men were about her as they always were. I glanced down the long hallway behind her and could see silhouettes of people dancing in a large room with a jukebox.
Most of all I remember the smells. Her strong perfume mingling with the smell of barbecued ribs wafting out the front door into summer night air drenched in the aroma of blooming lilacs. The breath of the men added beer and whiskey and cigarettes to the eclectic bouquet, and through it all I could smell Wild Root Cream Oil in someone’s hair.
Her son Ricky had brought me to meet her. There was something about me she liked and she forgot the goings on about her and focused on me and smiled broadly. She took my hand after my introduction and pulled me down the hall. “Ricky,” she hollered at her son. “We got to fatten this poor boy up. Willie, get this skinny little thing some ribs.”
Willie was the cook and wore an apron over his white cotton tank. His beard was a series of disconnected cotton balls, and his head was cotton too. Eyes and Adam’s apple bulging, he spoke painfully slow in a deep voice: “Miss Peggy think everybody skinny.” He chuckled, which bobbed his Adam’s apple up and down.
Willie was a man of many past wives, two of which had shot him, one in the leg, one in the butt. A cigarette stuck to his lower lip and didn’t fall off when he spoke. I couldn’t imagine how his wives had hit him, as thin as he was. His apron was an abstract painting in barbecue sauce.
This was 1962, at the Pic-a-Rib Caf. Miss Peggy opened the doors in the late afternoon, although few patrons would show up until respectable bars and restaurants closed down for the night. She actually had no license to operate or sell food and liquor, but this was First Street along the railroad tracks. Black people lived here, and the white establishment gave them autonomy. Not out of respect, but from indifference.
The blacks made a living off white hypocrisy. Here was a city block containing the Pic-a-Rib, and next door a private dance hall called “The Everybody’s Club,” and then Myrtle’s Chicken Inn where shady ladies were said to be found. In the dead of the night they would come; white businessmen, frat boys, doctors and lawyers. A man could bring a mistress here and it was as though it didn’t count. First Street activity never officially happened. When gray appeared in the Eastern sky it began to erase the events of the wee hours and when the sun rose over the Laramie Mountains on a Sunday morning, it unveiled men arm in arm with their wives going to church, followed by sweet children in suits and dresses.
Over cookies and coffee in the church basement, no one ever mentioned that they’d seen each other on First Street. If Miss Peggy happened on to one of her patrons in the grocery store, no greeting was passed. Whites didn’t associate with blacks in those days. In a few years discrimination would erupt into vicious conflagration, but as my story unfolds black people were still just freed slaves living off the crumbs under the white folk’s tables.
Miss Peggy loved color. She wore bright yellow and purple. She liked glossy wigs and exotic eye shadow and lipstick cherry red. Most of all she liked perfume. Passing by her bedroom was an olfactory adventure. Colorful dispensers lined her dresser and reflected in the great mirror that dominated her intimate domain. Like costumed eunuchs in a queens court, they stood about on every flat surface, their shaped glass glowing in the lamp light, their ornate squeeze bulbs and stems glistening like tawdry jewels.
The tables where couples sat whispering and eating barbecue were candlelit. The jukebox had a blue light that glowed into the dark, painting its color into the halos around the candles. The shadows flickered on the walls, creating distorted profiles of clandestine lovers. It was where I first heard the blues.
I felt them calling me, because like the atmosphere in which I stood, blues were sensuous and passionate. Unlike white people’s music, blues were raw, visceral, and brutally honest. Instead of squeaky clean sounds like Pat Boone’s “April Love,” or Lawrence Welk’s bubble machine music, I was hearing the apocalyptic haunt of Little Walter’s harmonica in “I Just Want to Make Love to You.” Excitement rushed through my veins like a drug. I found myself in a nether world: exhilaration in slow motion–when nothing matters, and the past and future disappear, and every sense is focused on the moment, and the moment has nowhere to go.
Blues were my window to the black people’s spirit. Nothing was hidden, nothing taboo, nothing prevaricated. More than that, blues seemed to strip a human being of the prejudices and hypocrisies that contrived his conscience and soiled his soul.
That next Sunday in Saint Matthew’s Episcopal Church I studied not religion, but people. The building is a beautiful stone fortress towering over downtown Laramie with its majestic cross in the sky like a beacon declaring the righteousness of those within the stain glassed walls. No black people ever attended. I remember a poorly dressed hobo came one time and sat in the back pew and was immediately asked to leave. I guess the Episcopal god didn’t like a person without status.
I studied one man’s pious face and remembered it from the depth of a recent night when it was leering and profane. I pictured his arm around the black whore with whom he and his friends had been dancing. I began to see the church as a mighty rock decorating a manicured lawn, which when uprooted, reveals a colony of squirming white maggots.
But somehow, this duplicity was accepted and understood in those days. No one was trying to change it yet, black or white. The Pic-a-Rib Caf was a birthplace for me, of my alter ego: the performer. I loved it there because I could be who I wanted to be without schoolteacher’s reprimands, parental restrictions, society’s expectations, and the narrow moral confinement of the church. I danced with Ricky and Miss Peggy: loose and cool and uninhibited. It was an era of many dance crazes: the twist, the swim, the mashed potatoes, pony, continental, fly, Popeye, yo-yo, U.T., bop, jerk, Watutsi, locomotion, monkey, hully gully, hand jive, and a few more I’ve forgotten.
It was exhilarating. Until then I’d only learned to waltz and polka at the VASA lodge where ancient Swedish ladies baked pies and did the Bunny Hop to accordion music with their drunken old husbands. Miss Peggy had heavy breasts that jiggled to the music of the jukebox. Ricky had big feet and wore long pointed Italian shoes, which made it easy to watch his steps and learn the dances. One time we traveled to Denver to see James Brown, who was thirty-two years old and in his prime, but still playing to all-black audiences. I was dumbfounded. That a human being could move like he did was incredulous. I spent hours trying to “camel walk” and copy his marvelous repertoire of moves.
Those were languorous days and I thought in my provincial navet that nothing would change forever. But we were nearing the end of an age. The fifties had seemed so carefree and immature and the doo-wop music reflected the puerile self-indulgence of a post-war nation at play. The turbulence of the mid-sixties was boiling just beyond the horizon of my innocence.
The bellwether of those changes in my life occurred in the form of Miss Peggy’s sudden and untimely death. Undiagnosed sugar diabetes struck her down one night in her sleep. I awakened the same night with horrible cramps in my calves, a co-incidence to be sure, but none-the-less, I have ever after associated cramps with her dying.
There is much I haven’t said about what went on at the Pic-a-Rib and much more to which I wasn’t privy, but it left it’s mark on my life, and yours too in a small and indirect way. I would not be a blues man this day–but for that day, and Blinddog Smokin’ would not exist.
In my classroom the big hand on the clock ticked onto the nine–a quarter ’til two. The teacher’s voice droned on and I knew I must raise my hand. The other kids, bored into zombie land, would welcome any break in the monotony. They would stare at me and all would be deathly quiet as I asked permission to leave. I knew the teacher would make me explain. Everyone knew Ricky’s mom had died, but Ricky was black, and white people didn’t go to black people’s funerals.
Having learned to dance at the Pic-a-Rib, I found that only the few black girls we had at the high school could dance like I could. After dancing with them a few times and raising some eyebrows, some white girls would no longer dance with me. I remember one sneering this reply to my invitation: “What’s the matter, aren’t there any niggers to dance with?”
I couldn’t raise my hand. The clock hand that had moved so slow up until now began to race to the top of the clock. I filled with anxiety. Emotion welled up like surging water. I loved this woman who had been so good to me and had released my inhibitions and my Caucasian cultural restraints. And then it was over. When the bell rung and I drudged down the hallway, crestfallen. I felt like Peter who denied Christ three times. I had forsaken my friend. Whatever grim tug I needed to complete this education in pathos, I received from the horror of my betrayal. Her life was left unrecognized and unhonored and I left myself unforgiven.
Weeks later I went to First Street and stared at the Pic-a-Rib. Already it was someone’s residence. Ricky had moved away to live with his aunt. It was as though it had never happened. Remember–that’s the way things were on First Street.
Epilogue:
From that day long ago until now, I have missed very few funerals of people I know. If it is at all possible for me to attend, I will go out of my way to do so. I even attend the funerals of my enemies. Anyone who has shaped me positively or negatively gets my salute. It hurts me when a life departs unrecognized. Of course in part every funeral is Miss Peggy’s where I should have been, but it never salves the betrayal. I hated the weakness in my character that allowed peer pressure and societal ignorance to dictate my judgement of a matter. I loathed the fear that I felt then and despise the fear I still feel in wondering how strong I really am.
All I can do is to let her live when I perform. For hers is my ability to feel rhythm, to let myself go, to ride the exhilaration like a winged horse, and most of all: to sing my blues, not to be cool, but because I was there–in 1962, at Miss Peggy’s after-hours Pic-a-Rib Caf.
They asked my name again: “Guftason, Gusterson, Guftuffson…” They settled on Flufftason because I had my hair in a fluffy pompadour at the time. This soon shortened to “Fluff” and that was the only name I was known by from then on in that house. Miss Peggy drug me around introducing me to people eating in her establishment, which was known as the Pic-a-Rib, “Look at this little white boy my Ricky brought home!” She’d exclaim and then would hug me hard, smothering me in bosoms. So fascinated was I by this flamboyant woman that I could only stare dumbly with an idiot’s smile.
One year later, in the summer of 1962, I ran away from home, taking with me a toothbrush, a sleeping bag and a football. After a month in the home of a neighbor kid whose parents were gone, I was evicted by their return and had no place to go. I ended up at the Pic-a-Rib.
Carl
Posted by Carl
Tuesday February 27th, 2001 @ 8:50 PM
The Van hurtled through the darkness, the headlights searching far ahead in a vain attempt to unveil the landscape. No moon cast its pale glow on the horizon; sagebrush soldiers stood their lonely watch in the cold. The glow of my wristwatch placed a green halo around my reflection in the windshield as I checked the time. I nudged the accelerator. I had an appointment to keep. An appointment with things ethereal–a rendezvous with glory. Not often in this life do we experience the exhilaration of real glory. I write not of personal triumph, nor accolade, nor vanity, but of volatile grandeur.
It was past midnight in the raw wilderness of southeast Utah–and the boys slept. Sleep on the road is akin to gas in a dentist chair. We are awake yet asleep, conscious but dreaming, and time passes in distortion with missing chunks for which one cannot account. No cars came against me. No sound entered the cab but the roll of eight pistons whose vibrations massaged my right knee through the console.
On such a night, things don’t appear–they loom. It is a stygian world of shadows, specters, and spells. I found myself in and out of great canyons and arroyos with no noticeable difference in how I perceived the great pall. Once I passed so close to a cliff without seeing or sensing its presence that its revelation came when the pure white shape of a mountain goat limned into my peripheral vision several feet in the air as though floating.
I projected myself mentally to a vantagepoint a thousand feet over the van and watched the tiny lights barely seeming to move in the gargantuan desert. Once I turned the lights out and the effect was so immediate and that I was relatively blind seeing only a few faint stars as though I’d been lifted into outer space.
I have learned that the mind must be kept busy at such a time. Yet if the thoughts are too vivid and encompassing, sleep can move in and out so subtlety I cannot tell where imagination and dream separate. God bless the man who thought up ridges along the edge of highways to snatch the drifter from his fate.
My thoughts became retrospective to the year previous. Many nights such as this had passed with one or the other of us at the wheel. It was a year of extremes. My mind became a kaleidoscope of memories: great gigs and bad, a changing of the guard at bass guitar, a hundred thousand miles of American geography, new music, new fans, new opportunities, a new wife–and even death. Some had listened to us for the last time. The town of Moab came and went and the night became empty again. I thought back to summer.
August. The sun boiled in the sky and refused to move along its course. The ground was flat, hard, and brown. We drove east in the bus losing ourselves in the great prairie that fell out of the mountains far to the west and continued through the Dakotas. We had contracted for a biker rally in a small Western town. Whenever we are virgin to an area, we anticipate the gig and usually with optimism. I imagined an Old West Dodge City, quaint yet rugged, and romantically preserved.
We drove right through the first time without even detecting its presence. The town had only one building of any note and several decaying shanties and a garage or two. The building was a bar not unlike something you might envision in a Sergio Leone spaghetti Western. Bleak and austere was this setting, post-apocalyptic perhaps. We saw no life at first as we peered from the door and stepped out into the heat. Then a train passed on the other side of the highway blowing its horn long and hard.
A woman came running out of the bar toward the train and pulled up her blouse, whereupon she shook her breasts to the delight of the engineer. He honked some more. It was then that I knew this would be one of those strange days. We looked at each other and formed a small skirmish line. It was a Twilight Zone moment.
A dog appearing very much like a deterioration of Toto came sauntering out to greet us. He was a dirty dog. No, a filthy dog, and lethargic. He tried to yap and bark but they only came out as grunts. He wanted to jump up on us, but decided instead to sit and scratch awhile, drag his rump along in the dirt, then role over in the vain hope that one of us would scratch his mangy stomach. A couple of yokels emerged with grins sporting the remains of a shared bag of Beechnut. They took turned scratching the dog on our behalf and explained to us his name and status: “This here is Turd, we elected him the mayor of the town.
I know what you are thinking dear reader, that I’m lying like a schoolboy with his hand up Sally’s dress. If you so doubt, ask Jason, or Chuck, or Roland and look deep into their eyes and try to find even the hint of a fib. By God Almighty, the name of the mayor of this town was Turd.
We were lead to our stage, which was a gravel road baking in the sun. We were to play from four to eight. No shade, no breeze, no dance floor, no seats, no scenery–just gravel. Very hot gravel. We set up.
That’s when the flies emerged. Not a pesky little fellow here and there that we had to slap away, but Satan’s fly army. Thousands of them. Sticky ones. Icky ones, black ones and green. Tricky ones, sicky ones, big ones and mean. Horse flies that bit us and blind ones that hit us, and ones of mutation that sat there and hissed. Some that were flying and many that crawled and there in the midst of them, Blinddog sat pissed.
Why were these flies so awful I wondered. They climbed on each other and formed buzzing globs. We recoiled in the kind of horror one experiences with the great scavengers. These flies were like that: miniature buzzards seeking and signaling death. It was then that the mosquitoes joined the party.
Not normal mosquitoes, I surmised, that sneak in and land lightly, take their wee bit of blood and leave. No, these were insects with attitude. They chose to suck blood right between our eyes and I knew if they had fingers, they’d flip us off while they sucked. They wouldn’t quit either. They sucked until the weight caused them to fall off. Then they couldn’t fly. They’d just fall on the ground and waddle away. I know I’m lionizing the little bastards, but Chuck was so beleaguered with flies and mosquitoes that he seemed to lose it for a moment, his eyes went maniacal and his mouth was nothing but a snarl. That is when the stench arrived.
Not the normal, what one might call an odor, but the kind of pervasive and putrid stink that causes retching among those of weak stomach, house pets, and forest sprites. It occurred to us that the septic system from the building extended behind our position in the gravel and that it probably hadn’t been pumped in–well, maybe ever. Turd liked to roll in the weeds that grew above it. It was, I suspected, the breeding ground for the flies. At least we figured, things couldn’t get much worse. That is when they called us to chow.
A huge white rabbit bounded across the road in Utah and woke me from my trance. I chuckled out loud as I pictured the scene. I wondered if the insects had been as bad as my memory served them up. When I thought of the food, I decided my imagination hadn’t the capacity to outdo reality. The spread took place on a large table pulled out into the gravel. It contained a huge pot of Chili and plates of hamburgers and potato salad. There was some roast beef and many odds and ends. A close up view of the hamburgers gave the appearance of motion. Flies! The little orgies of flies that liked to cluster were clumped in the Chili and others in the potato salad. If you shooed or scraped flies off something, it just made room for the next squadron to land.
I pulled an old weather-beaten couch out into the gravel road. It had the obligatory spring sticking out and Turd immediately figured the seat was for him. After all, he was the mayor. I got a stick to poke Turd off the couch. He grabbed it and engaged me in tug of war. I gave up and just sat there on Jason’s amplifier brushing away flies and looking forlornly up at God as though He was actually going to send an angel into this place to rescue us. I could picture angels scattering out of God’s sight like so many darting hummingbirds to avoid this particular call to duty.
The biker rally consisted of some half a dozen bikes and a kid on a moped. They tried to compete with each other in a small corral, but most were too drunk to even ride in a straight line. The games lasted only minutes, then everyone lined up to see the band. The sun hadn’t seemed to move. There it was–up there turning the sky into bleached opacity. An audience of twenty stood behind the couch with one collective blank stare. We played a song. The stare didn’t change. I looked at my watch. Like the sun, it refused to move. It was then that I remembered we had a contract for two days. I looked at the Chuck, he had taken on the appearance of a war orphan.
Somewhere in the following eternity we agreed to let a biker sing a song with us for a hundred dollars. He sang. We should have charged more. His girlfriend wrote us a check. A drunken couple humped each other awkwardly on the couch. The spring was a problem. Turd was puking up the glut of hamburgers people had fed him because of the flies. He then proceeded to eat his vomit.
Despite the heat, we wore hats and long sleeves and neckerchiefs and gloves to fight off sunburn. I still burned. My nose looked like that of an Irishman on St. Patrick’s day. I hurt. I was hungry. Sweat ran done my entire body into my socks. When I tried to drink water, flies would crawl on my lips like I was an Ethiopian urchin. A lady did some kind of tribal dance behind the group, which didn’t correspond rhythmically to our music. The stench continued over us and through us and on us. Chuck’s drums were closest to the source of it and he seemed to be wilting: his unblinking eyes like bowls of oatmeal with a cherry in the middle of each.
I mumbled to Jason, “If someone drives by who knows us and sees us here in this godforsaken gravel, they are going to think Blinddog Smokin’ has fallen on hard times.”
“We have.” He muttered. All our communication had become either a mutter, or a mumble.
Somewhere in the following evening, as I was stood singing to about four people, none of whom were awake any longer, the female owner of the bar came out and announced a wet T-shirt contest. Perhaps things were looking up, we thought, until we saw the entries. Now what induces middle-aged women who have suckled small tribes of children to unveil their breasts to leering drunks while doing John Travolta disco, is beyond my comprehension. None of the girls, old or young, kept their T-shirts on, despite the fervency of our prayers. We sat forlornly on our equipment with our hands over our eyes like four “see no evil” Monkeys.
Inside, the toilet was out of order. I went around to the back of the building. Another guy was there with the same idea. He was peeing on a fluttering fly cluster and said it reminded him of the dodging balls that Yoda used in Luke Skywalker’s laser sword training. I guess I don’t have to explain that analogy any further do I? As I watched him train for a moment, I decided there was only a small disturbance in the Force.
It seemed like years passed before our final song the second night. We had hardly eaten, were covered with Mosquito bites and were sunburned and drained. Drunken people had been in our face so long, belching up the fermentation in their stomachs, that the stench of the septic system smelled better in comparison. We got our check and loaded up with sudden renewed energy. We didn’t stay one second longer than we had to.
As we pulled out of the parking lot, the train lady ran out and flashed her tits at us, and bounced them gaily. We had a long way to go home, but somehow it seemed like victory. Nothing could be worse than what we’d been through. When we got home, the checks bounced faster than the lady’s boobs: the check for playing and the check for the sit-in biker. We had done it for free.
The dense black of the eastern horizon in Utah allowed a dim glow to emerge on the seam between earth and sky. I had to hurry. My date with glory was nearing. Roland had quoted his father as saying one of life’s unique treasures was experiencing sunrise in Monument Valley. The minute Roland uttered those words I knew the route we would take to California. I remembered this fantastic landscape from old John Wayne movies, so as a kid I thought the entire Old West looked like Monument Valley.
Slowly the gray glow took on color. From pink to orange to red until it rimmed a butte in the color of blood. And it spread. It etched its existence along the far tabletop mountains while the Western sky remained black and ominous. My headlights still beamed into the dark while the boys slept unaware of the dawn.
Chuck awoke in the shotgun seat and was greeted with the first ray that broke out of the glow and shot straight up to the low strata of serrated clouds, which I could barely make out stretching across the sky like tendrils of smoke. The ray broke at a right angle upon the clouds and slowly reached across the sky and lightly tinted a path in pink until it reached a ridge of cliffs to the far west, down which it slowly lowered and illuminated resplendently against the raven dusk of the western horizon.
We reached a raw and wonderful section of earth called the Valley of the Gods. It contains sandstone sculptures in myriad shapes from curious pillars to great and peculiar towers. Nature’s artwork is crammed into the landscape leaving little room for animals or vegetation. I passed by as great beams from the east began to creep into the labyrinth giving scarlet loveliness to the shapes, which now cast long shadows into the dark maze.
The sun picked one particular butte behind which it brewed its morning mysteries. Let it be gorgeous, I prayed. The butte boiled in brilliant red before the curved rim of the sun crowned it royally and spilled its crimson power over the ridge and down into the arroyos which seemed to appear suddenly all about me. Morning mist lay in the bottoms, which lit up in maroon and pink pastels and served as a prism to paint the arroyo walls.
I found myself in a wondrous land. No one lived here. It was wild and broken and wrenched by mighty forces. Whatever my gaze lit upon was strange and unique. I couldn’t take it all in as fast as the sunrise began to paint it. Still dark in the West, the ribbons of clouds were now emblazoned in ever-changing color.
At a certain point, a sunrise is angled to use the entire atmosphere as a form of distorted magnification. The sun seems enormous as it crests the horizon and colors explode into the canyons and past the hills. With a providential arranging of clouds, and with the unrefined landscape, such splendor can be created, and when it happens it is magnificent.
The palette of the sun was replete with yellow and gold, pink and purple, orange and ochre. Glittering arrows shot skyward, breaking through the clouds to dance in the turquoise sky. The black in the west stubbornly lingered, but was shrinking into the horizon. Beams from the east were unveiling the western mountains, bathing their snowy slopes in gleaming pink. As I had promised, I honked the horn to awaken my passengers. No one awoke.
I first saw Monument Valley as the sun lifted its dazzling bulk over its chosen butte and splashed the entire world with gold. The monuments being ruddy lend themselves to such emblazoning. They are much larger natural sculptures than those in the Valley of the Gods and spread out majestically like marvelous cathedrals.
I beheld it all with deep pleasure and resented even my very breath as a detractor. I stopped the van along a small cliff and got out. It was perfectly quiet. Chuck stood at the edge and said nothing. At such a time, words are intrusions. I rousted Jason and he came tumbling out looking like an unmade bed, rubbing his eyes. He grunted a couple of times and went back into the recesses of the van. Roland never did emerge. The whole thing was his idea, but sleep can put upon a human being the stranglehold of an incubus. The sky was rapidly changing to just another bleak and cold winter day as I drove on through the great valley, but I pictured John Wayne and wagon trains and Indians lined up atop the mesas. It was wonderful.
Our musician’s life burgeons with opportunity. We can direct our paths to allow for the precious serendipities that escape the mundane and the inane. We can let our souls bask in the warm Mississippi River nights of Fall when the last of the fireflies do their dance of death and the crickets hurry to and fro escaping their coming winter fate. We can ride the mountain passes on a frozen midnight as the moon guides our way through the frigid mist. We can be in the stands with the rich retired folk of Scottsdale when the “boys of summer” throw the first pitch in Spring training. We can be in that rare juke joint when the doppelganger arises and chills our spine with the unreachable melody that exists that once and nevermore.
It is a life of extremes, like this story is a tale of extremes. One must treasure the good, the bad, and the ugly as all work together to form character. Such observation can make one rich, not in money perhaps, but in constitution. Flies and sunbeams, stink and glory, betrayal and epiphany–an eclectic pattern wisdom weaves. Without it, life’s fabric lacks its luster.
Posted by Carl