4:27

4:27 a.m.

I’m awake

Don’t know why, but I am

And I hear the shots

They’re more like pops, like cap guns so I know they’re not too close

They crack off in rapid succession like Black Cats, firecrackers on the 4^th of July

But it’s not the 4^th of July

Or New Year’s Eve for that matter

The guns pop off on those nights too around here so I am not unfamiliar with the sound

I suppose it’s ‘possible’ that these are firecrackers

If one wants to be an optimist…

But they way they pop off

Four or five, then a pause

A string of five or six right back

I know they’re not

Anyone else within earshot knows they’re not

Then it’s quiet again

As quiet as 4:27 a.m.  usually is

Maybe a lone car going down the street,

Sometimes the fire truck, siren off but all the strobes cutting the night

Brilliant white and the danger of red

Or a train rolling through to places unknown

As the relative silence surrounds me again

I wonder how we came to be like this

We gather in parks, on streets and parking lots

We gather with placards and shout into cameras and camera phones

“Black lives matter!”

“Women’s lives matter!”

“Police lives matter!”

“ALL LIVES MATTER!!!”

But this isn’t the way we treat each other

This is NOT the way we treat each other

No one wants to see our young men dying

Not at the hands of the police

Not in foreign lands in wars where they may or may not even understand “why” we are there

With guns drawn and trying to force our beliefs and ideas on people who don’t want them

Not at the hands of other angry young people who have come to believe in a warped sense of justice

Wear the wrong color and get punched

Punch me, I stab you

Stab me, I shoot you,

Eye for an eye, body for a body

And they’re still counting bodies every night on the news

All the things Marvin Gaye sang about on “What’s Going On”

No one wants to see the innocent hurt and killed

Men, women, children

Walking home from the store, driving home from the soccer game, playing in the front yard

Minding their own business and living their own life

But somehow those places become right place at the wrong time

Catching bullets meant for others

Or people running from police crashing stolen cars through yards and over sidewalks

And down roads headed the wrong way

No mother wants to think their child is capable of these things

“Not my child. My child was a good person…”

I like to think we would all like to believe that of each other

But here we are

Back to the Old West and frontier justice at the end of a gun

For the gun has the final word

But guns still don’t kill people

Any more than knives, chainsaws, cars or baseball bats

The problem is still with the people who use of these things for bad purposes

We’ve lost respect for each other somewhere

De-humanized each other

And until that changes

It doesn’t matter how many people march

It doesn’t matter how many people chant the slogans

And carry signs and all of that shit

It’s 4:27 a.m. on Meadowbrook

I think I’m safe in within my walls

 


David = Stardust 


 

Like Freddie, Mick and Lou et al

The sentence handed down

That get us all in the end

A deadline somewhere on the horizon

A train has left the station at an unknown speed

And it will arrive - sooner than later



Sooner than later it catches us all

The people on posters and in magazines

The people we put in frames by TVs

And thousands of strangers littering the papers each day



A sigh, a stiff drink or three

Put on stiff upper lip

Back to work, get on with the business

What else can you do?

Create as long as you can 

Today, maybe the next day

A train is looming in the back of your mind



But the show goes on

The show must go on



And when the time has come

And the train has left 

Only your shell remaining on this side of life

The fans will pause and offer prayers and thanks

They'll reprise and review you

And say the things that get said at such times

"Icon","Legend", "Genius"



Then the show goes on

The show always goes on



But you've left a mark

YOUR mark

Major Tom, Diamond Dogs

Blue Jean, Tin Machine

Young Americans, Thin White Duke

"Heroes", Heathen, Pretty Things, Young Dudes

The Jean Genies, Cracked Actor, Aladdin Sane

And Ziggy

Finally a Blackstar

Future Legend, living legend no longer



And the show goes on without you

And the show goes on

                 And on

                    And on

                       And on

                          And on

                             And on

My Confession

This is my confession -

It's so easy to hide away
It's so easy to stay at arm's length
Too easy to say I don't care
But even though I say I don't care
I want your approval
I want to be acknowledged
I want recognition and praise
I need these things!
I desperately need physical contact
I want someone to listen when  I finally open up
To tell me everything is okay
On those days I'm at the end of the rope
To take the lead when I falter
To challenge and call 'bullshit' when needed
I need someone to be understanding

I need to be understood
Not judged -
Just understood


Help nurture the scared little boy underneath all the bluster
Understand the disappointment of the misfit kid
Out in the sticks, solitary
Starry eyed dreamer

Innocence and youth lost a little bit early
Just too goddamned smart for my own good
Book smart, street stupid
Looking for the place you fit in
Never feeling like you fit in
Westerberg, you're singing to me
Longing, wanting, aching to be
"I just might lose it - I just might use it"

Notes from a class reunion:

 

Conversation:

10 years: Tell everyone how great you are, how much money you make and how happy you are

20 years:  Tell everyone how you’ve bounced back after the layoff / divorce / rehab / all of the above

30 years:  Tell everyone how much happier you are with the second spouse and how great mixed family gets along

Comments:

10 years: Damn, they got fat!

20 years: Damn, they got old!

30 years: Damn, they still look good!

Drinking:

10 years: Party til ya puke

20 years: Only a couple, I don’t bounce back like I used to

30 years: I can’t, it messes up my meds

Male fashion:

10 years: suit and tie

20 years: slacks and golf shirt

30 years: jeans and ‘best’ Hawaiian shirt

Most Overheard Comment:

10 year: “Yeah I remember you! We had____ class with ol’ Mrs….”

20 year: “Didn’t we have a class together?”

30 years: “No, I don’t remember – are you sure you’re at the right reunion? This is the Class of…”

ALL:  “Whatever happened to old ____? Do you still talk to them? How come they never come to these things?”

TOP ALBUMS [04/2015]

I was asked/ordered/threatened to name my top albums - when asked about how many, I was told about 150 is sufficient. So since I had to do tis list anyway, here's my top 150 albums in as close to an order as I could get. Remember these are MY favorites, not my most essential or anything like that.


1.       Revolver – The Beatles
2.       Rubber Soul – The Beatles
3.       Let It Bleed – The Rolling Stones
4.       Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin
5.       After Bathing At Baxter’s – Jefferson Airplane
6.       Panorama – The Cars
7.       The Cars – The Cars
8.       Rocks – Aerosmith
9.       Amorica – The Black Crowes
10.   For What I Don’t Become – Glossary
11.   Stay Positive – The Hold Steady
12.   Here’s To Shutting Up – Superchunk
13.   Stereo / Mono – Paul Westerberg
14.   Being There – Wilco
15.   John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band – John Lennon
16.   Stranger’s Almanac – Whiskeytown
17.   London Calling – The Clash
18.   Friday Night Is Killing Me – Bash & Pop
19.   Marquee Moon – Television
20.   Tones – Eric Johnson
21.   Burgers – Hot Tuna
22.   Highway 61 Revisited – Bob Dylan
23.   Sticky Fingers – The Rolling Stones
24.   Paranoid – Black Sabbath
25.   Led Zeppein III – Led Zeppelin
26.   Badmotorfinger – Soudgarden
27.   Love It To Life – Jesse Malin & the St. Mark’s Social
28.   Out of the Blue – Electric Light Orchestra
29.   Madman Across the Water – Elton John
30.   Toys In the Attic – Aerosmith
31.   Real Animal – Alejandro Escovedo
32.   The Better Angels Of Our Nature – Glossary
33.   Superstar Car Wash – The Goo Goo Dolls
34.   Shake It Up – The Cars
35.   Wish You Were Here – Pink Floyd
36.   Spring Session M – Missing Persons
37.   Zappa In New York – Frank Zappa
38.   Killer – Alice Cooper
39.   Blueprint – Rory Gallagher
40.   Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere – Neil Young with Crazy Horse
41.   The Basement Tapes – Bob Dylan and the Band
42.   The Doors – The Doors
43.   What’s Going On – Marvin Gaye
44.   Pleased To Meet Me – The Replacements
45.   Life’s Rich Pageant – R.E.M.
46.   More Fun In the New World – X
47.   Talk Is Cheap – Keith Richards
48.   A Hard Day’s Night – The Beatles
49.   Changesonebowie – David Bowie
50.   Rides Again – The James Gang
51.   Physical Graffiiti – Led Zeppelin
52.   A Night At the Opera – Queen
53.   Dark Side Of the Moon – Pink Floyd
54.   Teeth Dreams – The Hold Steady
55.   Oh Mercy – Bob Dylan
56.   Time – Electric Light Orchestra
57.   Learning To Crawl – The Pretenders
58.   So – Peter Gabriel
59.   The Best of B.T.O. – Bachman Turner Overdrive
60.   Who’s Next – The Who
61.   Beggar’s Banquet – The Rolling Stones
62.   The Rise and Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders From Mars – David Bowie
63.   Don’t Tell A Soul – The Replacements
64.   All Shook Down – The Replacements
65.   Sign O’ the Times – Prince
66.   Exile On Main Street – The Rolling Stones
67.   Izzy Stradlin & the Juju Hounds - Izzy Stradlin & the Juju Hounds
68.   Harvest – Neil Young
69.   Utopia - Utopia
70.   Live at the Whiskey A Go-Go On the Fabulous Sunset Strip – X
71.   Highway To Hell – AC/DC
72.   Back In Black – AC/DC
73.   One Size Fits All – Frank Zappa & the Mothers
74.   The Southern Harmony & Musical Companion – The Black Crowes
75.   Specter At the Feast – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club
76.   A Boy Named Goo – The Goo Goo Dolls
77.   Town & Country – The Rave Ups
78.   L.A. Woman – The Doors
79.   Blood On the Tracks – Bob Dylan
80.   A New World Record – Electric Light Orchestra
81.   Hunky Dory – David Bowie
82.   Get Happy! – Elvis Costello & the Attractions
83.   Walls And Bridges – john Lennon
84.   Imagine – John Lennon
85.   Pictures At Eleven – Robert Plant
86.   Carney – Leon Russell
87.   Don’t Say No – Billy Squier
88.   Sabbath Bloody Sabbath – Black Sabbath
89.   Fireball – Deep Purple
90.   The Royal Scam – Steely Dan
91.   Pendulum – Creedence Clearwater Revival
92.   Bloodletting – Concrete Blonde
93.   Gold – Ryan Adams
94.   Loose Salute - Michael Nesmith & the First National Band
95.   Magnetic South - Michael Nesmith & the First National Band
96.   Beattitude – Ric Ocasek
97.   Anodyne – Uncle Tupelo
98.   Boys And Girls – Alabama Shakes
99.   The Hurting – Tears For Fears
100.                        Dirt – Alice In Chains
101.                        Superunknown – Soundgarden
102.                        Here’s Where the Strings Come In – Superchunk
103.                        Abbey Road – The Beatles
104.                        American Beauty – The Grateful Dead
105.                        Déjà vu – Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
106.                        Sgt, Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – The Beatles
107.                        December’s Children [And Everybody’s] – The Rolling Stones
108.                        All the Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes – Pete Townshend
109.                        Darkness On the Edge Of Town – Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band
110.                        Night Moves – Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band
111.                        Ah Via Musicom – Eric Johnson
112.                        Black Moses – Isaac Hayes
113.                        Are You Experienced? – The Jimi Hendrix Experience
114.                        The Pretenders – The Pretenders
115.                        Raw Power – Iggy And the Stooges
116.                        Chasing After Ghosts… Living with Shadows – Hammock
117.                        Maybe Tomorrow the Will Sing For Us – Hammock
118.                        Sabotage – Black Sabbath
119.                        Out Of the Cradle – Lindsey Buckingham
120.                        Greatest Hits – Sly & the Family Stone
121.                        New York – Lou Reed
122.                        Rebel Yell – Billy Idol
123.                        Lone Justice – Lone Justice
124.                        State Of Our Union – The Long Ryders
125.                        John Barleycorn Must Die - Traffic
126.                        The Stranger – Billy Joel
127.                        The Georgia Satelites - The Georgia Satelites
128.                        Modern Times – Jefferson Starship
129.                        Alive! – Kiss
130.                        Second Helping – Lynyrd Skynyrd
131.                        Graceland – Paul Simon
132.                        Songs For Drella – Lou Reed & John Cale
133.                        Down On the Upside – Soundgarden
134.                        Green Thoughts – The Smithereens
135.                        Love Songs For the Hearing Impaired – Dan Baird
136.                        Ritual De Lo Habitual – Jane’s Addiction
137.                        Appetitie For Destruction – Guns N’ Roses
138.                        Reckoning – R.E.M.
139.                        Apostrophe – Frank Zappa
140.                        Over-Nite Sensation – Frank Zappa & the Mothers
141.                        Glass Houses – Billy Joel
142.                        Live Bullet – Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band
143.                        So What – Joe Walsh
144.                        Document – R.E.M.
145.                        14 Songs – Paul Westerberg
146.                        Every Picture Tells A Story – Rod Stewart
147.                        Viva Terlingua – Jerry Jeff Walker
148.                        Abraxas - Santana
149.                        The B-52s – The B-52s
150.                        Cosmo's Factory - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Rock 'N' Roll Ghost Blues

It's one o'clock in the morning and the neighborhood around me is quiet even though it's Saturday night. Maybe because of the winter hours everyone thinks it's later. Sitting here with just the computer and one lonely lamp on it feels later but it also feels timeless. The train is rolling by out across Lancaster, one lonely air horn piercing the night. Sometimes that sound relaxes me so much - I lay in bed waiting for sleep to envelop me and I hear the trains and I try and figure out if they're going east [out of Fort Worth] or coming [west, in from Arlington]. Do you want to know how to tell? Maybe I'll tell you later - but it has nothing to do with the Doppler effect.

I've been sitting here for an hour and some change watching a movie on You Tube called Ghost Blues: The Rory Gallagher Story that I came across while looking at videos for Rory's song Calling Card [dedicated to a friend, not for me, though Lord knows I know that feeling! It ain't too funny when you'd rather die / Ain't no pleasure when that girl don't reply / To your lovesick letter that you wrote in tears / About feelin' so bad for a million years...]. 

He's not well known in the States. [He was much bigger in Europe]. He's Irish. People think of Gallagher as a "blues" player but his material runs the gamut of rock and roll. Sure that playing is based on the blues, but there's little bits of country, soul, folk and anything else you can think of except maybe Yes/Genesis/King Crimson Prog Rock. He plays awesome slide guitar - electric, acoustic and when he pulls out an old National Steel or Dobro, look out. Is he Mick Jagger or Robert Plant when it comes to singing? No. But he's got his own voice and style. And he throws in some harmonica here and there. He was considered for the Rolling Stones after Mick Taylor left although his brother pointed out in the film that it would probably have been a bad fit for Gallagher: he was a singer and a songwriter and liked being totally in charge. And he would not have put up with Mick and Keith's antics. He's probably one of those guys guitar players and people who like the stuff that was a bit off the Top 40 path know.

My late "uncle Mike" was the one who introduced me to Rory Gallagher. I was deep in his vinyl closet looking for something different. Of course I loved guitar players, so he helped me find four or five albums he thought I should check out. I'm pretty sure Johnny Winter And...Live was one of those, maybe Steve Hillage and two seminal albums [for me]: Rory's Tattoo and Blueprint. I remember the moment I heard them. It's 1986 and I'm in my Dad's 85 Cutlass Supreme, headed down I-45 to Houston to see my high school buddy at college [he will remain nameless just because] and I had put those Rory albums on tape. I popped it in and the Blueprint side was up first. The first song, Walk On Hot Coals is a rip stompin' tale of three time losin': walking into a crooked poker game, lost my job, back out on the streets, betting on a winner at the track but the horse is doped. It shuffles along at a breakneck speed, Rory throwing out these amazing runs on the guitar and the keyboard guys [the late Lou Martin] trading off with them and the rhythm section just locked in right underneath them both. It charges along for about four and a half minutes then the band falls down vamping softly behind Gallagher as he throws off these lines - they're not blues lines or jazz lines or flash guitar lines [ala Jeff Beck] but something I'd never quite heard before - he does this for about a minute, then the band crashes back up to full volume and the keyboard guy solos out for a while then it crashes to a halt by reprising the opening lick. Seven minutes. That's all it took to hook me on this guy. I don't remember if I rewound the tape and played that song again or not. I like to think I did, but I don't know - for posterity, let's say I did. By the time I hit Houston I was hot on this guy - first music store I hit, I went looking for this guy's stuff, nothing to be found [maybe he was even out of print by that time] except an old Guitar Player magazine with an interview which I still have. It started a love that continues to this day.

Anyway, so I was watching this movie and besides learning about Rory Gallagher it made me miss my uncle all over again. I can't call him up tomorrow and ask where the hell he found out about Rory Gallagher. I don't know if he opened for one of those shows Michael went to or if it was a find in his "buying anything that wasn't on the radio that I saw". Great story on that - Michael bough ZZ Top's Tres Hombres when it came out, tried playing it at a party and got booted off the turntable for playing it. Three months later his best friend [maybe brother in law by that time but I don't think so], telling him about this great new song he's just heard and they need to check out this band. Then it comes on the radio - La Grange. "Bill, I have this album." "BULL SHIT, you do not!" "Bill, I tried playing this album for you guys and you told me to take it off." "Bull shit, you never played this." 'Great moment in history friends when Michael goes home and shows him the album. Good God I miss those guys. I still have the music, I still love the music but sometimes there's a sadness there that wasn't there before. I guess because I never thought about things like this. I seem to be a fixed point and everyone else is a train either coming or going, but we're all trains. Or maybe we're all passengers on the train. Some people there when you get on, some people you ride with a long time, some people you ride with a short time, some reach their destination and are lost to you.

It's a little after two o'clock now and Rory's playing me some blues.

Well its a winding highway, that never seems to end,
Well we all must travel, We'll not pass this way again,
Are you going my way, well won't you lend a hand,
Well it sounds like thunder, but it could be a hurricane,
Looks like Chain Lightnin', but its just my blues again,
Sure don't look inviting, when you see those clouds of rain,

I wish it were the morning, 'cause the night feels oh so long
With a windswept skyway, it don't look good my friend,
Tomorrow might be my day, who knows which way the wheel might turn,

So long baby, and Amen.










Oh - you want to know about the trains? If they're coming up out of Fort Worth there's fewer whistles before they get to a fairly loud volume.. They have to blow the horn for each crossing and there's tons more as you head east towards Arlington. Or if you're coming west from Arlington.

Thoughts On A Rock N Roll Ghost

Playing the Replacements Don't Tell A Soul for the first time in a long while. Pulled out the old vinyl that I used to sit in my room and contemplate. Almost 26 years later, it seems to be the watershed album for Paul Westerberg the songwriter but the plastic bag over the head of the band. Not to shrug off or discount the death rattle that All Shook Down ultimately is for the Replacements catalog. Far from it. it's an album that I still love though some consider it not worth the plastic used to press it. [If it turns out to be the Let It Be of the Beatles to a new Replacements album which becomes the band's Abbey Road. Lennon wanted Get Back/Let It Be to go out warts and all, "can we please stop pretending now?" but ultimately turned it over to Allen Klein and Phil Spector to do what the hell they wished with it and McCartney was outvoted three to one. And that's your Beatles minute. Where was I? Oh, yes if a new "Replacements" album should appear, does it fix the legacy of All Shook Down? Probably not for a lot of people.]

It's a tough call for some people, I guess. Westerberg said that Slim Dunlap was ultimately the key to opening up this album, that Slim encouraged him not to hide the stuff that wasn't three chord rocker stuff. One can feel it right from the drop of the needle onto Talent Show. Is this the band that made Tim and Pleased To Meet Me? Well, yes and no. The voice is the same. Most of the names are the same. But the sound is different. Walls of guitars but mostly acoustic guitars this time. The 80's big drum sound sits fat and heavily reverbed in the middle. Where did the imagery of We'll Inherit the Earth ["Waterfalls of grain flow through our hands/ We're too weak to stand and too weak to stray /Big trees sway and the air is still/Lovers climb at the top of a hill and say..."] come from? The sad beauty of the two enders on each side, Achin' To Be/They're Blind and Rock 'N' Roll Ghost/Darlin' One. For me, Achin' To Be and They're Blind were important songs, surely describing me and some people I know/knew. Ultimately, this is what music is supposed to do - grab you by the heart and make you feel what's coming out of those speakers. Thump - thump - thump - thump "S-A-T-U-R, D-A-Y.... NIGHT!" Grabs you by the collar and pulls you up out of the chair and makes you forget for a second that it's the god damned Bay City Rollers. Those choppy Keef chords that start off Brown Sugar [or Start Me Up if you must...] grab those ears and you go whatthefuckwasthat????!???!!! right? The opening bars of any Motown track kick you in the ass and announce "we got thr groove going, get up and shake your rump!" And don't even mention James Brown ...

So side two gets a little louder than side one with Anywhere's Better Than Here, I'll Be You and I Won't but you're not going to confuse this with Sorry Ma... or Pleased To Meet Me [which incidentally contains two of the best Replacements songs and they're the slower ones: Skyway and Can't Hardly Wait].  But again, for me it's the haunting final two that just connect to me. Maybe it's because 1989 and 1990 were yo-yo years for me, the start of my real coming of age - girlfriends, break ups and a string of short lived jobs. Putting on a smile when I was really aching inside, yearning for someone to connect to or pining for someone who had rejected me. Drowning those things in a lot of beer and generally being young.

It was also a changing period for the music. Hair metal was dying off, killed by Guns N' Roses. The bands the record store guys liked - Smithereens, Long Ryders, Jason & the Scorchers - all got dropped. R.E.M. went to Warner Brothers. Grunge / underbite rock hadn't arrived yet, though some of those bands were starting to make a noise if one read deep into Rolling Stone or Musician magazine. I guess you could say I was growing up and the music I was getting into was a little more grown up - more mature than Motley Crue and Poison. I know some of you love those bands - I still love my Faster Pussycat but I was looking for something deeper than Nothin' But A Good Time, though there were always times when you just wanted to put something loud on and just vbang your head, shout along and make your ears bleed.

Flash back to me at my little desk, my flat screen monitor and the 1985 tech of my turntable and ancient but honorable Pioneer SX-737 receiver. Me and Mr. Shadow have traveled through the record, each side twice and we now I sit and try to find words to relate my feelings about this album are. But as always, I can spin a few good lines but you can't feel what's in my soul. I can tell you about alternately happy and sad nights driving around in many cars with a tape that was Don't Tell A Soul on one side and All Shook Down on the other and how it was the soundtrack to... and you'd get a glimpse, you'd see it in my eyes and you'd hear it in my voice but I could never give you that feeling. Am I a fool for trying? No, because this is what I'm passionate about.

25 years later, this is still a good album - solid. It rides the roller coaster of emotions and life and seems to be a record about coming to grips with "being an adult" or something like it. I still rate it solid four stars. It's still the slower, quieter, sadder sounding stuff that gets me right here [taps right on the center of the chest]. I mean, how can one argue with: 

She closes her mouth to speak and
Closes her eyes to see
Thought about an' only loved
She's achin' to be
Just like me