Judy Roasting On An Open Fire
SFFILK (Not his real name) passes along a story about Mel Torme. It seems like Mr.Torme was eating a leisurely breakfast at a food court in Los Angeles, and a quartet appeared singing Christmas songs. They wound up performing “The Christmas Song” for co- author Torme…and the singers had no idea who he was. It is a good story, better told in the link.
According to the inerrant Wikipedia, Torme colloaborated with Robert Wells , until they had a falling out. One afternoon, on the hottest day of July in 1945, Mr.Torme went to visit Mr.Wells, and saw the first four lines of “The Christmas Song” (including “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose”). The lines were on a note pad, and the two agreed to beat the heat of summer by completing the song. Supposedly, Mr. Torme did not like the song very much. After three divorces, he probably didn’t see many of the royalties.
Mel Torme was the music director of the ill fated “Judy Garland Show” in the early sixties. He wrote a book about it… The Other Side of the Rainbow: With Judy Garland on the Dawn Patrol . The story is that Miss Garland would get blasted, call Mr. Torme in the middle of the night, and pour out her troubles. While the show did not last longer, there are some great youtube clips left over.
This is a repost. It is written like Stephen King.
Someday Soon
When a blogger can’t get a song out of his head, he should write about it. Find a youtube video of the song, both lipsynced in 1969, and repeated on later tv shows. When you have more media than message, you recycle the past. The singer probably has a book , which means interviews to sell the book. The song is Someday Soon, and the artist is Judy Collins.
PG first heard “Someday Soon” on WPLO-FM. There was a little black radio, which had AM, FM, and a few short wave bands. It ran on D size batteries, and was the first FM radio that PG owned. WPLO-FM was the hippie station, the first FM station to play rock music in Atlanta. “Someday Soon” was a shocker, with it’s lyric “damned old rodeo”. 1969 was a more innocent time.
Judith Marjorie Collins was the gf of Stephen Stills around that time. He wrote Suite Judy Blue Eyes about her. Mr. Stills was helping Ms. Collins with and album, and they heard “Someday Soon” on the radio. The song was written by Ian Tyson. The song was included on the album, and was somewhat of a hit. (Here are TV performances with Ian Tyson, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash.)
The Daily Beast article, written to promote the book, is Judy Collins’s New Book: Suicide, Alcoholism, Nude Photos, and More. Judy Collins has had an interesting life, sometimes in the sense of the Chinese curse. The eldest daughter of an abusive alcoholic, she became a severe drunk herself. Somehow, she came out of everything ok.
Along with alcoholism, suicide has been a problem. The son of Judy Collins, Chuck Taylor, took his life in 1992. He had struggled with depression and substance abuse. Judy attempted suicide when she was 14. This is roughly the same age as PG, when he heard that song where the lady says damned. Ms. Collins has worked to help others avoid taking their life.
One Judy Collins hit is “Chelsea Morning”, written by Joni Mitchell. Bill Clinton was inspired to name his daughter Chelsea. Unfortunately, Judy Collins and Joni Mitchell are not friends. Both women are known to have attitudes, so there is no telling what the problem is.
As for another famous sixties singer, with a J name, the DB article has this postscript. Editor’s Note: This interview incorrectly stated that Judy Collins had a “love affair” with singer Joan Baez. Today Judy Collins wrote the following in an email to correct the record: “Joan and I both agree that we wouldn’t mind it if people thought so—she has been very open about her sexuality too, and that’s where the lines might have crossed—but I wanted to get the facts straight anyway.”
Two Stories
Today’s production is two stories from 2008. PG walked down New Peachtree Road. This is Atlanta, where there are a couple of hundred roads named Peachtree. No one seems to mind that most of the peach farms are south of Macon. The peaches grow a lot better there. They fuzz comes in heavier, and the pits are pittier. One time Dagwood Bumstead asked why peaches have fuzz. His wife Blondie said, if they has arms they could shave. PG was walking down the road in the rain, with a freight train going down the tracks in a southern direction. This is forty percent of the ingredients for the perfect country and western song.
When PG was younger and drunker, there was a place on Clairmont Road called the watering hole. He would go there, drink beer, play pool, and have a good old time. As was the custom in such facilities, there was a jukebox. The patrons put money in the box and played the songs that they wanted to hear. A favorite was “you never even called me by my name” There is a little spoken part, where David Allan Coe talks about the perfect country and western song. This song must talk about rain, Momma, trains, trucks, prison, and gettin’ drunk.
New Peachtree Road has this gravel yard where the eighteen wheelers come and go. There was a big rig backing into place when PG walked by, and he may have heard the truck bump into a trailer. PG walked in the rain, between the train, and a big rig going bump against the trailer. The problem was, Momma’s gone, PG doesn’t get drunk, and prison is too much work. So much for the perfect country western song.
The songwriter is Steve Goodman. He gave a show at the Last Resort in Athens GA, that a friend of PG attended. Mr. Goodman tells a story about performing on a train, during a series of concerts supporting Hubert Humphrey. It seems like Mr. Goodman had to use the restroom on the train. Now, in those days, the trains did not use holding tanks, but just ejected the matter by the tracks as they rode by. Mr. Goodman was told, do not flush the commode while the train is in the station. Mr. Goodman forgot the instructions. Mr. Humphrey said ” I am going to give the people of this country what they deserve”, Mr. Goodman flushed the commode, and sprayed the crowd. PG is not sure if he believes this.
PG told the Steve Goodman story another time. A few weeks later, this comment was in the spam folder.
Great to see your blog post that invokes Arlo Guthrie’s version of Steve Goodman’s “City of New Orleans.” Goodman often doesn’t get his due. You might be interested in my 800-page biography, “Steve Goodman: Facing the Music.” The book delves deeply into the genesis and effects of “City of New Orleans,” and Arlo Guthrie is a key source among my 1,080 interviewees.
The book also delves deeply into “You Never Even Call Me by My Name.” John Prine and David Allan Coe were key interviewees, and the book debunks the notion, promulgated by Coe, that Coe had anything to do with triggering the famous last verse of the song.
Finally, the Humphrey story actually stems from Goodman campaigning for Sen. Edmund Muskie in Florida in early 1972.
You can find out more at my Internet site (below). Amazingly, the book’s first printing sold out in just eight months, all 5,000 copies, and a second printing of 5,000 is available now. It won a 2008 IPPY (Independent Publishers Association) silver medal for biography. If you’re not already familiar with the book, I hope you find it of interest. ‘Nuff said! http://www.clayeals.com
Back to empathy for a minute. The word always takes PG back to an auditorium in Clarkston GA in 1971. PG was in his first quarter at Dekalb College. Today,the institution is known as Georgia Perimeter College. One of the selling points of college has always been the outside speakers that were brought to campus. This day, the subject was abortion.
A note on set and setting is appropriate. In 1971, New York state had legalized the abortion procedure. Roe vs. Wade was in the pipeline that would lead to the Supreme Court. That ruling would not be issued for another fifteen months. In the meantime, abortion was illegal in 49 states, including Georgia. The debate about abortions was not as politicized as today. The nomenclature of choice and life had not entered the vocabulary.
The Vietnam war was still being fought, although with fewer Americans in combat. The withdrawal of US forces took most of the steam out of the anti war movement. The modern spectacle of a person supporting a war, while claiming to be pro life, did not happen.
PG walked into the auditorium and found a seat. The lady began her presentation. After a few minutes of talk…she said something about a woman who was artificially inseminated with masturbated semen… the house lights were dimmed. A black and white film of an abortion was shown. It was noted when the fetus went into the vacuum cleaner attachment. The house lights were brought back up. They should have remained dim, as the woman was not kind on the eyes.
The closing part of her presentation was a song she wrote. She sang acapella. The song was written out of empathy with the not to be born baby. The song was titled ” My mother My grave”. PG left the auditorium, and went to world history class.
Arlo Guthrie And Ralph Reed
PG is a slack writer. This does not mean that he writes about slack (a contradiction), but that he often has an idea for a post, and then never follows through. His desktop is cluttered with files, each containing the start of a post. The concept today is to take a few of these, write a bit about each, through some pictures in, and call it a day.The pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
The first snipoid is about Ralph Reed . Mr. Reed is a professional Christian, the youthful looking head of publicity groups. At one time he was the big dog at something called the Christian Coalition. He left that to start his own consulting company.
This was the first time Mr. Reed and PG became connected. There is an office space on Presidential Drive, just down the road from the round hotel. PG ran bluelines in this space, until circumstances moved him into a midtown workplace. After the blueprint company moved out, a company called Century Strategies moved into this space. Century Strategies was the consulting firm that Mr. Reed started after leaving the Christian Coalition. While PG does not know whether Mr. Reed actually used this office, it gives him a warm feeling to think that he has shared a commode with this celebrity.
Later, Ralph Reed caused another problem for PG. In 2006, Mr. Reed ran for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. He lost to Casey Cagle, whose shoelaces become untied. When the Republican Primary was held that year, PG felt obliged to help put an early stop to Mr. Reed’s elected ambitions.
The problem lies in the primary system. In Georgia, you must choose either Democrat or Republican, and in the inevitable runoff vote in the same party. To help Mr. Reed spend more time with his family, PG needed to vote Republican. There was a race on the Democratic side which was important.
Hank Johnson was running against Cynthia McKinney. While PG used to like Miss McKinney, after a while the joke grew old. She needed to retire. While Mr. Johnson won the runoff, PG would have liked to help. The bottom line is, Ralph Reed cost PG his last chance to vote against Cynthia McKinney.
This is a recycled post from two years ago. In the 2012 election, Mr. Reed tried to be a player. After it was over, there were harsh words for WMR. “At the National Press Club the day after the election, Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, criticized the Romney campaign and the Republican Party for “underperforming.” “We did our job,” said Reed. “But we can’t do the Republican Party’s job for them, and we can’t do the candidate’s job for him or her.”
The second part of this entertainment is about Arlo Guthrie . Last week was thanksgiving, which is connected to Mr. Guthrie. Unlike the turkey, or tofurkey, Mr. Guthrie has gone on to have a flourishing career. It seems probable that he will not come down with Huntington’s Disease, which claimed his father Woody Guthrie.
The video that goes with this text was the first time PG saw Arlo Guthrie. This was broadcast January 21, 1970. PG was an unhip fifteen year old, who had not heard Alice’s Restaurant, seen the movie, or been to Woodstock. He did see the Johnny Cash show this night, or at least the part where Arlo Guthrie did the motorcycle song.
To quote the digital facility PG is borrowing from: ” Born Arlo Davy Guthrie on July 10, 1947, in New York, NY; son of Woody (a folksinger) and Marjorie Mazia (a dancer; maiden name, Greenblatt) Guthrie; married Jacklyn Hyde, October 9, 1969; children: Abraham, Cathyalicia, Annie Hays, Sarah Lee.” Abraham and Sarah Lee play in Arlo’s touring band.
The Alice’s Restaurant Masacree is a part of Americana now. There are two bits of knowledge, that are as true as anything told to a Persian king. When trying to dispose of some garbage, and finding the city dump closed, Arlo found some litter by the roadside, and made a value judgment…One big pile of garbage is better than two little piles.
The second is about the draft, and the business of choosing people to fight our wars. There is a regulation today that says that Gays and Lesbians are not supposed to be soldiers and sailors. In the tale of the thanksgiving dinner, it was litterbugs. (There was also a draft, and a a different war. Lots of Americans were coming home in boxes.) The bottom line is, Mr. Guthrie is confused about not being considered moral enough to kill people, because he was a litterbug.
A few years into his career, Arlo Guthrie had a hit record called “City of New Orleans”. It was about a train, and said “Good Morning America”. “City of New Orleans” was written by Steve Goodman, who is no longer with us. Mr. Goodman also wrote the perfect country and western song .
PG heard a story about Steve Goodman. “The songwriter is Steve Goodman. He gave a show at the Last Resort in Athens GA, that a friend of PG attended. Mr. Goodman tells a story about performing on a train, during a series of concerts supporting Hubert Humphrey. It seems like Mr. Goodman had to use the restroom on the train. Now, in those days, the trains did not use holding tanks, but just ejected the matter by the tracks as they rode by. Mr. Goodman was told, do not flush the commode while the train is in the station. Mr. Goodman forgot the instructions. Mr. Humphrey said ” I am going to give the people of this country what they deserve”, Mr. Goodman flushed the commode, and sprayed the crowd. PG is not sure if he believes this, but it is a good story.” (A biographer of Mr. Goodman said that it was Edmund Muskie. He also says that David Allen Coe had nothing to do with the last verse of the perfect country and western song.)
As previously noted, this is a repost from two years ago. In that time, the policy against gay people serving in the military has been dismantled. The Ralph Reeds of the world are more upset about the concept of gay marriage, than by gay people killing Muslims. Vietnam is a peaceful country, and is enjoying economic good times. The draft is something old fogies remember. The current fashion is to support war by demanding a tax cut.
Arlo Guthrie continues to make music. His wife of 43 years, Jackie Guthrie, died Oct. 14, 2012. The Lenox Square theater was torn down to make way for a food court many years ago.
Turkey Dead Head
New Yorker has a long article this week, Deadhead The afterlife. It is about the tape archive of the Grateful Dead. There is no liberal media bias.
PG has known about the Dead since reading a Saturday Evening Post article about up and coming musical acts. This would have been in 67 or 68, when PG did not get it. There was a show in Piedmont Park in 1969, and a Veteran’s Day show at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium in 1971. A friend of PG, Hampton, went to the Auditorium show, and was born again. PG heard about every note of that show. Finally, in December 1973, PG saw the Grateful Dead at the Omni. It did not live up to expectations.
Here is something from a previous chamblee54 post. At page 213 , the Dead have just played the seminal concert at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium. The Auditorium was a sturdy old building, with a marble statue of Enrico Caruso in the lobby. Before the Fox was liberated from movie shows and the Civic Center civilized, the Auditorium was the only place in town to play. The bottom floor was horseshoe shaped, lit by naked light bulbs sticking out of the wall at a ninety degree angle. The base of these bulbs was blacked out to create an ersatz shade.
Soon after that show, 1971 became 1972, the dead went to europe, and america set out to re elect the president. Mr. Nixon had such an odious name, his own re election committee did not utter it. Meanwhile, Jerry and the boys went to Europe, recorded an album, did not get arrested, and were introduced to an opiate called Persian White. The latter would dominate the life of the fabled Garcia in the years to come.
About a year before that Omni show, another friend, Clam, had a Buford Hiway apartment to himself for a couple of weeks, and a new stereo. He had a copy of “Europe 72″, a three record set of the Dead playing in Europe. This has degenerated to this:”A whole section of the vault housed the sixteen-track fourteen-inch reels from the Dead’s tour of Europe in 1972. Last year, the Dead released the entire tour: a seventy-three-disk boxed set containing all twenty-two concerts and more than seventy hours of music. It came in a small steamer trunk and cost four hundred and fifty dollars. A run of twelve thousand two hundred sold out in four days. It is a pinnacle of completism, by the standards of any genre, and even a diehard might find it a test of patience to work through twenty-one versions of “Sugar Magnolia.” I got bogged down somewhere around Luxembourg.”
The NY article is written by another longtime fan. “The first memory I have of the Grateful Dead is of a classmate in sixth grade telling me he’d gone to see them with his older sister. He reported that the band consisted of a bunch of hairy old guys in baggy clothes sitting on a stage eating spaghetti. It occurred to me later that he might have made this up, or that his sister had perhaps said something about “noodling… I’ve never found anything in the literature regarding spaghetti.”
The article spends time discussing a show at the Fox Theater November 30, 1980. By this time, PG had done the vagabond thing, gone home, and was working at Davison’s downtown. He was totally out of the deadhead thing. The band soldiered on through the eighties. Jerry’s drug issues got worse and worse, and in 1986 he went into a diabetic coma and almost died.
At some point after that, the band became a floating party. The deadheads would take over the parking lot at the omni when they played here, and the community was a welcome lunch hour break from reality. On Mardi Gras day in 1992, PG said happymardigras to a girl, and she gave him a string of beads. Somehow, PG got to see omni shows in 1990 and 1991, and his life was not changed.
The pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This was written like Arthur Clarke. The pictures have a thanksgiving theme. When November 1 is on thursday, turkey day is November 22. Forty nine years ago, John Kennedy went to Dallas, with unfortunate results. Millions of turkeys empathize.
“I used to work for a company that produced annual reports. One year, I was sent on this huge cross country trip to art direct a series of shots for a food processing mega-company, and one of the stops involved a turkey farm. Okay, so you have to understand that turkeys are extremely skittish birds. The slightest thing will set them off, so the farmer kept them in a large, basically dark barn just to keep them under some semblance of control. So we go in, and the photographer sets up the lights, which he gradually turned on so the birds (and me, for that matter) could get used to it. Everything’s going fine. We have the farmer in front of his (literally) hundreds of free-range turkeys. The photographer clicks off the shot… and in doing so sets off a flash he forgot he had triggered. Immediate chaos: birds running everywhere.At least a dozen fainted and died right on the spot. Farmer was none too happy.”
William S. Burroughs met his maker a while back. The hypocrisy accountants like to point out the moolah corporate amerika is making by picking the bones of his literary carcass. Those companies are mostly owned by Germans now. The profits are being loaned to Greece, at usurious rates that insure their poverty for the next millenia.
There are two Burroughs famous for writing. The other is Edgar Rice Burroughs, who wrote the Tarzan books. A hippie is someone who dresses like Tarzan, wears his hair like Jane, and smells like Cheetah. There is the Burroughs office equipment company, whose success fueled the decadent lifestyle of William Seward Burroughs.
Maybe The Cheetah is the place to be on this turkey day. In compliance with United States Code, Title 18, Section 2257, all models, actors, actresses and other persons that appear in any visual depiction of actual sexually explicit conduct, simulated sexual content or otherwise, displayed on our Website, were at least eighteen (18) years of age at the time such depictions were created. Records required to be maintained pursuant to United States Code, Title 18, Section 2257, are kept by the custodian of records at:thecheetah.com | Jack Braglia, VP, Operations | Cheetah Lounge | 887 Spring Street, NW | Atlanta, GA 30308.
Back to Willie Burroughs. The comments at his video give lie to the thought that intelligence is transmitted in a linear fashion. Like the humanoid who opined “William S. Burroughs was nearly jailed for obscenity for his words half a century ago. Now you can find his thanksgiving prayer on youtube, framed by Vevo artist Rhianna, pre-empted by a commercial for Ford Trucks. The revolution will be televised to sell Nike sneakers.” And whoever said that the occupation movement is really about consumerism run amok? “wow! buying stuff is almost as fun as creating something, but only requires the cognitive skills of a counting german shepherd. consumerism IS better than thinking.”
So, maybe this has gone on long enough. Today is the day for eating too much, watching overpaid steroid fiends bash each other in the gut, and maybe go to the store for the first round of shopping. But don’t forget to remember…”The neo-liberal is about as liberal as Archie Bunker. They are doctrinaire, intolerant of dissent and essentially unable to think outside of the talking points they get at the Daily Pus and Mania Matters. impressionable. gullible and driven by a deep seated hatred of western civilization, nee Christianity. That may be why they identify with Muslims, Castro and every other species of arrogant ideologue and totalitarian. Neo-Liberalism is a dangerous auto-immune disease.” “Your literary style isn’t effective. It is needlessly flowery and pretentious. Bravo.”
Turn Turn Turn
Writers tackle is real. PG had several things he could write about. He was 380 pages into A Million Little Pieces, and had multiple mouthfuls to say. Multiple mouthfuls were featured on Honey Boo Boo. And of course, the matter involving David Petraeus, another General, at least two girfriends, a secret Libyan prison, and a shirtless FBI man. People were wondering how we kept up with things before twitter was invented. None of these subjects were terribly appetizing. The archive, once again, came to the rescue.
The word Ecclesiastes has always had a poetic tingle. It’s place in the Old Testament was between the poetry of Proverbs and the enticements of the Song of Soloman. Richard Brautigan counted the punctuation marks in Ecclesiastes, and found it without error. And yes, Ecclesiastes 3 was the lyrics for a top forty hit song.
Back to the dialog about war and peace. The only Tolstoy PG had read was a short story about a man called Ivan Ilyitch. It was so long ago that about all he remembers is that he read it. Still, war and peace are two constants of man’s existence. There had been a feature about this in The Aquarian Drunkard. AD is a blog written by a former Dunwoody resident who now exists in LA. The feature focused on Pete Seeger, and the song “Turn, Turn, Turn”.
TTT is taken almost verbatim from the book of Ecclesiastes. The only change that Mr. Seeger made, when he adapted the poem, was in the last line. “There is a time for peace, I swear its not too late”. TTT is about the dualities of life, and how there is a place for all these things. When PG was collecting rocks seven years ago, he kept thinking “ there is a time to gather stones together”.
Wikipedia notes that the adaptation was made “in the fifties”, which was both a time of war…both hot and cold… and a time of peace. It became a hit for the Byrds in the fall of 1965, as the escalation of the Vietnam war was in full bloom.
Pete Seeger is still alive, at the age of 92. PG first heard of him when he was on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. It was during Vietnam, and Mr. Seeger did a song…”Waist deep in the big muddy”… about how “The big fool said to push on, push on”. The CBS censors did not allow this the first time he was on, but eventually he did perform it. Many thought he was talking about Lyndon Johnson.
Two more items about Mr. Seeger, and it is time to push on. He used the stage name “Pete Bowers” as a young man to avoid making trouble for his father. And a band he played in, the Weavers, popularized a gullah spiritual, “Kumbaya”.
We are the flow, we are the ebb. We are the weaver, we are the web. This was written like H. P. Lovecraft. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. This is a repost.
Mick Jagger
There was a book at the Chamblee Library, Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger. The work is credited to a man named Christopher Anderson, who has a slew of best sellers to his credit. The copyright was issued to “Anderson Productions.”
When you write about Mickie, you have to post a few videos. One of the first to come up is “Waiting on a friend.” This was the first video that PG saw on MTV. One night in early 1982, PG rode his bike to an apartment on Buford Hiway to buy MDA. While he was there, a young companion of the salesman said hey watch this, music television. The video was a favorite that first winter of MTV, even though it wasn’t really that good.
Mick Jagger has been a part of many lives the last fifty years. The stones were conceded to be number two to the beatles, but stayed together longer. The era of rock concert as megaevent coincided with the reinvention of the stones, after the demise of Brian Jones. He did after all start the band. Mr. Jones had become too much of a druggie to be relied on, and was fired. The book says that Mr. Jones was drowned, by a construction worker.
Ok, we are three paragraphs in, and we have not discussed Mr. Jagger’s pecker. Most of the book is about this instrument of undetermined size. The book says Mick stuffed a sock in his pants before shows. Mick has screwed thousands of women, and more than a few men. Whether Mick is a top, or a bottom, is left to the imagination.
The phrase “fuck Mick Jagger” is seminal. One night, the B52s were playing at a toilet on Ponce De Leon Avenue called the Big Dipper. The venue was later torn down, the ground decontaminated, and an animal clinic built on it’s site. After the show, one of the girls (either Kate or Cindy, or maybe neither, since this story is possibly an urban legend) was hanging out in the parking lot. “Beulah” was running his mouth, as he liked to do, talking about his hero Mick Jagger. Finally, the B52girl had heard enough. “Fuck Mick Jagger, one day Mick Jagger will come see me.”
The book goes into excruciating detail about the stones story. Mick grew up middle class, and was close to his parents. He bit the end of his lip playing basketball, and sounded different. While going to the London School of Economics, he connected with Keith Richard, and found that they both liked Chuck Berry. The Glimmer Twins started to hang out together, and played a few gigs at a nightclub owned by Alexis Korner. (Mr. Korner opened for Humble Pie and Edgar Winter at the Atlanta Municipal Auditorium. He was ignored by the festive pot smoking crowd.)
At this time, Mick had been introduced to sex by the other boys at his school. The first time with a woman was when Mick was an orderly at Bexley Mental Hospital. A nurse “yanked him into the linen closet where, surrounded by sheets, mops, and bedpans, Mick lost his virginity standing up”.
At some point Brian Jones came into the picture. Mick moved into a flat with Brian and Keith, and lived in picturesque squalor. At some point Mick and Brian bumped gooberheads, which left Mick confused. It is not known whether the lads could afford drugs at this point.
The story goes on and on. There are ugly moments, pretty moments, good songs written, lots of drugs, lots of sex. As Mick said in “Shattered,” “sex and sex and sex and sex and sex and sex and sex.” A few begin to wonder if he is capable of a one on one relationship, but their opinions don’t count.
One afternoon in 1978, PG was driving a truck in Decatur. He worked for a lady who did sampling projects, which means giving out samples to consumers. The product this time was Playtex Plus deodorant tampons. The truck was the rag wagon. There was an announcement on the last am rock and roll station in Atlanta. The stones were going to play the Fox Theater, and tickets were on sale now. The signal of the am station faded out at this point, with a gospel station preacher blocking out the rock and roll announcement. PG did not hear the location of the ticket sales. It turns out the tickets went on sale at the box office of the Municipal Auditorium, which was two blocks away from the rental facility the rag wagon was being returned to that afternoon. Such is life.
In 1991, PG was walking to work and noticed an army of movie trucks. Mr. Jagger was appearing in a film, “Free Jack.” PG saw a scene filmed from his perch in the Healey Building, and stood behind a chair with the name “Mick Jagger” stenciled on. There were reports of a van rocking in Cabbagetown. On January 12, 1992, Georgia May Ayeesha Jagger was born.
Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger is not a bad book. It is easy to read, and does not skimp on slime. The phrase “cringe inducing” is used several times, which may be the result of a focus group. It is not worth $27.00, or $29.99 Canadian. The publisher is Simon&Schuster. The dalliance between Mr. Jagger and Carly Simon is dutifully noted. The spell check suggestions for Schuster are Schumpeter, Custer, and Chester.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This was written like David Foster Wallace.
Duane Allman And The Coricidin Bottle
Gregg Allman appeared on Live Talks LA, selling a book, My Cross to Bear. Yes, he was coherent. Mr.Allman says something about going through rehab seventeen times. No one argues disputes that he has had an interesting life.
The chat has a few parts left out. Dicky Betts and Cher are not mentioned. The title of “strangest dude I ever met” goes to Jai Johanny “Jaimoe” Johanson, aka the black guy in the group. Gregg says he used to listen to stuff by Roland Kirk.
The story of Duane Allman learning to play slide guitar is good. Duane was sick. Gregg came to see his brother, who was playing the guitar in a new way. It seems the doctor had given him some pills called Coricidin. You take the pills out of the glass bottle, soak the label off, and you have a guitar slider.
When PG was a kid, his uncle was a representative for the company that sold Coriciden. There were boxes of samples in the house, which all came in the glass bottle. PG had not heard that name for forty eight years. The spell check suggestion is Coincidence.
Not everyone at amazon was impressed by the book. “the book was so damged the binding and jacket were ripped that a did not read the book and will not buy an more nick malick.”
The visual multitasking element for this chat was pictures from The Library of Congress. There are two group shots, broken down into smaller images. One is a graduating class of a nursing school at Georgetown University. The photographer lists the date as between 1905 and 1945.
The other image is a line of people waiting to vote. The well dressed citizens are in Clarenden VA. The date is November 4, 1924. Several carry signs for the democratic presidential candidate, John W. Davis. He was nominated on the 103rd ballot of the democratic convention, and lost to Calvin Coolidge.
Page 43
There is an audio file available called Water Brothers. It is a benefit concert performed by David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Neil Young. After performing “Almost Cut My Hair”, Mr. Crosby starts to talk. “I’m going to sing the most positive song that I’ve written recently For a long time I didn’t write any positive songs, my friends used to puke when they saw me coming.” The song was Page 43.
Look around again It’s the same old circle
You see,it’s got to be It says right here on page 43
That you should grab a hold of it Else you’ll find It’s passed you by
Rainbows all around Can you find the silver and gold?
It’ll make you old The river can be hot or cold
And you should dive right into ‘It Else you’ll find It’s passed you by
Pass it ’round one more time I think I’ll have a swallow of wine
Life is fine Even with the ups and downs
And you should have a sip of it Else you’ll find It’s passed you by
These lyrics are courtesy of Lyrics007. The page is sponsored by McDonald’s Dollar Menu University.
Snopes has a piece about Page 43, sponsored by KIA and Maytag. It seems that some people think the song title refers to a page in the Old Testament. PG thinks it was chosen because it rhymes with “got to be.” There was a spot in the song for those three beats.
To pad out this post a bit, a visit to page 43 of the Old Testament will be made. The Bible used was given to PG by his parents on his birthday in 1962. It was published by The World Publishing Company, 2231 West 110 Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio.
Page 43 is verses 4 through 36 of Genesis 41. “4 And the cows that were ugly and gaunt ate up the seven sleek, fat cows. Then Pharaoh woke up.” The Pharoh had a dream that troubled him. A wise man was consulted, who told of seven years of famine to come. A portion of the crops, from the prosperous years, was to be held in reserve, for the years of famine. “36 This food should be held in reserve for the country, to be used during the seven years of famine that will come upon Egypt, so that the country may not be ruined by the famine.”
There is one part of the song that PG has doubts about. The third part is about drinking. Those gifted with moderation can swim in this river. Others need to get to the shore before they drown. There is a time to enjoy your life, and there is also a time to lay off the jug. If you don’t keep a portion of your good harvest in reserve, life will run over you while it is passing you by.
This was written like Kurt Vonnegut.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Mack The Knife Is Going To Take It
The second day of the backyard office project is a work in progress. The afternoon session was not as groovy as the first time. The bugs are hungrier, and the wi fi connection went out a couple of times. The front porch has a roof and concrete floor, and is closer to the router. While the ambiance of working in the back yard is greater, wifi reception may prove to be the deciding factor.
There is a story at the Daily Beast this morning, The Long, Strange U-Turn of Twisted Sister’s ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It’. It seems that Dee Snider’s makeup went gooey over VPOTUS wannabe Paul Ryan using the Twisted Sister song, “We’re not going to take it”.
A public statement was made: “I emphatically denounce Paul Ryan’s use of my band Twisted Sister’s song, ‘We’re Not Gonna Take It,’ in any capacity.There is almost nothing he stands for that I agree with—except the use of P90X.” Mr. Ryan’s string pullers knew they were whipped, and issued their own statement: “We’re not gonna play it anymore.”
The smart people in wingnut land are busy this week, trying to pull Todd Akin’s foot out of his mouth. Questions about why legitimate rape is any sillier a concept than just war have gone unanswered.
WNGTI has a twisted history. When it *came out*, it was so revolutionary that Tipper Gore denounced it in the Senate. Soon, it began to be the background sound in commercials. The Daily Beast notes: “No ad, however, rivals the most bizarre commercial to use the song: A 2007 spot for Yaz birth control. A perky chorus of women sings about how they’re not going to take the uncomfortable symptoms of old birth-control pills, and are opting for Yaz instead. “ There is no word on whether Catholic employee insurance would pay for Yaz.
Politicians have long used rocknroll to fire up crowds. When Bill Clinton spoke at the CNN center in 1992, the song was “Twist and Shout”. If the walls of the oval office could sing, that would be their song.
In 2010, Karen Handel paid $93,000 to facilitate an appearance by Sarah Palin. The theme music for that event was “We’re not going to take it.” After the speeches, the song was played over, and over, and over. A week later, Ms. Handel lost the runoff.
Dee Snider is not the rebel he used to be. The video embedded here shows thinning hair, and much less makeup. His tweets show that he is not totally gone establishment. @deesnider Did I mention how great it is to see my grandkids again? We miss @tweetjesse and his family so much! #heavymetalgrandpa @deesnider In West Hollywood in search of perfect leather officers cap for outfit on #HollistonTV. Cool reception at gay leather shop. #whatamiwood?
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
This was written like William Gibson.
Richards
A comment at a recent post mentioned “Jenning’s Rose Room, a classic poor white juke and dance hall … where Trader Joes now sits.” PG had been in that building when it was called Richards, and knew stories. Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
There is no telling what the original use of the building at 931 Monroe Drive was. It was across the street from Grady Stadium, and adjacent to Piedmont Park. The railroad tracks that became the beltline ran behind it. The parking lot was primitive, with a marquee sign built at some point. (PG drove by that sign several nights and saw that Lynyrd Skynyrd was playing. Somehow, he did not make it inside.)
There was another nightclub building on the hill behind JRR. One night, PG went to see a jazz band there, accompanied by someone who lived in a nearby house. After seeing the band, PG was led to a horse stable behind the bar. The horses were not well maintained … you could see the ribs sticking out. There is a story of a goat getting loose from the stable, and being chased out of the jazz bar during happy hour.
Jennings Rose Room was before PG’s time. There is a story that some men had lunch there, and made a bet. The idea was to hit a golf ball from the JRR parking lot, and putt it into a hole at Piedmont Park. A biscuit was used as a tee. The first shot went across the street, onto the field at the stadium. Eventually, the ball was hit across Tenth Street, onto a green, and into the cup.
At some point, Jennings Rose Room closed. A gay club called Chuck’s Rathskeller was opened in that location. A rock and roll club or two did business there. Then Richards opened.
The first time PG was in the house was after a Johnny Winter concert at the Fox. There were rumors of visiting musicians dropping by Richards to play after their shows. Mr. Winter was only onstage for a couple of minutes after PG got there.
The most memorable trip to Richards was during the summer of 1973. The headliner was Rory Gallagher, who was ok but not spectacular. The opening act was Sopwith Camel, one of the forgotten bands of the seventies. They performed a novelty hit, “Hello Hello”. Someone in the audience liked it, and paid them to do it again. The band wound up doing “Hello Hello” five times, and said that was the most money they made on a show in a long time.
Average White Band was making the rounds that fall, and had a show at Richards. A lot of the audience was black, and they hit the dance floor in unison when “Pick up the Pieces” was played. Fellow Scotsman Alex Harvey was in town, and joined AWB to sing “I heard it through the grapevine”.
Muddy Waters played at Richards one night. The band did most of the playing, with Mr. Waters tossing in a few licks on bottleneck guitar. He might have sang a couple of times.
About this time, Iggy Pop played a few shows at Richards. One night, someone snuck up on him, and gave him a hug. It was Elton John, wearing a gorilla suit.
PG saw two more shows (that he can remember) at Richards. Soft Machine played in the winter of 1974. Larry Coryell played a show that summer, with the Mike Greene Band opening. PG got to talk to Mike Greene that night. The National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences ( who do the Grammy Awards) had a President named C. Michael Greene at one time. PG thinks this is the person he talked to that night, but cannot find confirmation.
Two friends of PG went, as their first date, to see Spirit at Richards. They were married a few years later. Towards the end of 1974, Richards was running out of steam. They advertised a New Years Eve show starring B.B. King, and sold high priced tickets. When the crowd showed up for the show, they found the doors locked. Richards had closed.
The next tenant for 931 Monroe Drive was going to be Cabaret After Dark, a gay club. There was a fire the night before the grand opening. The building was never used again. Eventually, a shopping center was built on the site.
UPDATE: Here is a article from the Great Speckled Bird about the Richards.
This is a repost, written like Gertrude Stein.
Jimmy Crack Corn
Q: What does “Jimmy crack corn” mean, and why does he not care?—Matt, Columbus, Ohio
PG was trolling “stupidquestion.net” when there was a convergence of stupidity. (The site does not exist in 2012.) All his life he had heard “Blue Tail Fly”, and been embarrassed. And there, in (pardon the expression) black and white, was someone who wondered the same thing.
It seems as though “Blue Tail Fly” started out as a minstrel song. For those who don’t know, minstrel shows were white people putting on black makeup, and imitating African Americans. Minstrelsy is not well thought of these days.
The story of BTF involves a slave named Jim. A fly bit the pony the old massa was riding, the pony was offended, and threw the old massa off. He was hurt landing, and died. Jim still has to crack corn, but he doesn’t care anymore, because old massa has gone away.
Dave Barry took a poll once to find out the stupidest song of all time. The overwhelming winner/loser was “MacArthur Park”. The combination of over the top show stopping, while singing about a cake left out in the rain, makes this ditty a duh classic.
In the spirit of corny convergence, the video is a karaoke version featuring Donna Summer . Miss Summer is a talented singer, who happened to connect with Giorgio Moroder. There are lots of singers who would have hit the big time if they had fronted those records, but Donna Summer hit the jackpot.
For a proper post, there needs to be a third stupid song. This is not about stupid bands, singing about being D U M B. Even though they totally don’t belong, there is a video of the Ramones included. PG saw the Ramones at the Agora Ballroom in 1983. This was after their prime, and before a homeless man caught the Ballroom on fire.
We still need a third stupid song, and PG wants to get this posted with as little research as possible. Just like some writer was once given twenty minutes to write a song, and he decided to do the worst song he could think of. The result was “Wild Thing”. PG used to have a 45 of someone who sounded like Bobby Kennedy singing “Wild Thing”.
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
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