Talk About Running

The lifestyle of a musician that is performing as well as spending time writing and recording is a bit counter-current to the rest of society and one of the biggest benefits, especially in a city like Los Angeles with it's horrendous traffic, is being able to drive the roads in relative solitude; however the drawback comes in the form of physical exercise. I have been here in the San Fernando Valley about a month now and the weather here is special, special in the way that someone has forgotten to close the door to a room sized kiln when you are happily set up working just a few feet from the portal to the inferno, it must be the way an iron smelter feels as he wrestles with molten steel in crucibles and the forms that he or she intends to fill. To lighten the mood that oppressive heat tends to induce I keep shouting to the non-existent baker or potter "SHUT THE DAM DOOR WOULD YA!"

Over near the coast its not so bad and the pacific breeze tends to lift away some of the sweat that beads up on the skin but here in the enormous valley the stagnant prevails. I wait for the cool of the evening but with so much concrete and asphalt there is not much respite until the wee hours of the morning when it all stars over again. I mean the sweating is as much cooling action as it is purification of the skin and glands so maybe I don't need to run since I am working in an oven set at 110 degrees but it would be nice to think about the possibility of walking on pavement in shoes and not feeling like a melting crayon subjected to hot-plate coloring.

Maybe tomorrow it will break or might I break an egg on the sidewalk and watch it fry? For now no running just glistening in the kiln.

Hummingbird Wars

There is safety in the screening of window, cover of darkness and ridiculously small area it takes to have an arial dog-fight when you are a hummingbird. I am an imbedded correspondent coming to you from the front lines of a skirmish at the Western side of the San Fernando Valley here in Southern California. Gathering material from the front lines is simple enough indeed armed with a cool beverage, swim trunks, computer and a good book I can leisurely ponder the maneuverings of the little buggers as they chirp and flutter around like Star Wars Tie Fighters. Today's battle is over a red plastic flower that holds the nectar of the gods. Like a religious warlord there is one who stands guard over the siphon of sugar like an Oracle at Delphi carefully hidden behind a shrub in wait for the next kamikaze wave to come attempt a tasting of the forbidden. Swift retribution is dealt out on the daring, although no contact is ever made between the birds the fear is enough to keep away and try, try again.

From what I have been gathering about my current place in life is that the melee once known as the "record industry" is very much like the combat I just described. The red plastic feeder is the airplay and charts that track them the warlord protectors are the critics and deep pockets that either stub off the creative but weak or fund the good looking and popular acts that promise the most sugar. Hollywood is the patio and music is the air through which they fly actively pursuing a more creative means to reach the goal, a red plastic flower.

First Days Forever Amazing

Wednesday morning 1am August the 25th I became a Californian once again. My Dodge Caravan surviving the journey west until I reached my destination. Having passed through Herndon, Norfolk and Richmond Virginia I headed west towards Denver Colorado and points beyond. All along the my route heading west my mantra for me and my caravan was "I am resigned to live where my car breaks down" having loaded it up with tools and guitars, soldering-irons and spare parts and almost all of my earthy possessions I had loaded myself for bear. Last night as I was driving home from a drink with some of my friends from the last time around I pulled onto the 101 and drove up Cahuenga Pass my temperature gauge pinned on HOT! and suddenly I was in the throws of my mantra being actualized its a strange feeling not be be panicked by situation such as that. I reached down and turned the heat on full blast, hazard button depressed, blinker to the right and slowed to a crawl hoping I could find a station open to remedy my heat issue. Opening the radiator is not a smart idea when the engine is hot but with the right precautions (and no fluid in it) its not very hot so I opened it and poured a whole gallon of green stuff in and headed home with an even temperature and clear lanes on the over-sized highways. So here I live!

I had thought I might stop in Vegas coming down from the heights of the Rockies and Vail, Colorado but once on the road I decided to push on through to the end of my road and as the previous paragraph illustrated it's a good thing that I did otherwise I'd be living there. I wasn't here more than 20 minutes after pulling in at 1am and being greeted by Abe Parker, (Wendy's son), that I was invited to join his band "Like Baboons" as guitarist and singer. We stayed up till 4am talking about songs and music theory and laying plans for the domination of the scene up here in "The Valley." Yesterday and today its been over 100 degrees here and my new room just like my van doesn't have A/C I guess it's my cross to bear this summer.

The Miraclest Milestone

Mondays what sort of things really happen on Mondays besides the return to the rattle and hum of those excess cells you've been carrying around in your brain all weekend for no good reason other than its what affords you your free time, that is unless you're in Vegas on a Monday. I left my bunker at the Downtowner motel and headed for the gold-rush of that casino with the big screen over the walkway thing (I'm a real stickler for names), and walked and walked and walked unbeknownst to me it was a good 4 miles to "the" strip we all know as "Vegas". Yeah I walked it in my Clarks slip ons and I had the friction wounds the next day to prove it, but did I care? of course not I was in Vegas and I was supposed to leave all that grumbling there and never tell you that I did that, but now I did so there! 

    Back to walking; once on the strip I started stopping into random casinos and playing video poker for the free beer slowly and increasingly inebriated-ly I made my way towards the tall ones (again the names thing) and once I did and had my fill of watching tourists gawk at the absurdity and excess of it all I asked a scantly clad hostess where one finds fun on a Monday "down the miracle mile" she said in that Hawaiian Tropic kind of pronunciation old men go weak in the knees over. Off I went not wanting to get too close to her spray tan and flammable hair. The destination was some sports bar called Cheerleaders for beer pong for which I arrived right on cue to jump in the next game with the servers and bartenders as they closed the place down. Me being the decidedly the contestant from the farthest away cause quite a stir when I preceded to school them all in a little game we call Beruit back there in New Jersey(at least when I learned). They were defenseless to my no look fade away from 10 feet. Sorry I am getting carried away, I played for too long and went home to sleep at a very unreasonable hour considering I had to be out by 11 am from the motel. Home safe I made my plans for the drive to LA that will carry my words on the next yarn.....

Viva Las Smegma

Its official! Vegas Sucks. Well ok the first time I was there it was a lot of fun but then again this time I was all to my lonesome, but again I am way ahead of myself. So I left Colorado at noon and decided I wasn't gonna stop till the city that "set my soul on fire" was attained by yours truly. I had had some contact with peoples that inhabit that fair city but when I hit town it was late and decided I would fend for myself partly out of the curiosity that perhaps I would actually stumble upon someone needing help on the floor of a casino and they would thank me profusely then tip me with a 10,000$ chip, didn't happen. But again I am ahead of the story.

    Like I said it was a long stretch on the road and my eyes were a but tired, it was so dark when the sun set that I had a hard time seeing the edge of the road and at 75 miles an hour I was almost out-driving my headlights which was scary but did I slow down..nope. Well moonless was the night and as I got closer to the time at which I had calculated I would be getting to Vegas I thought to myself "self the moon looks like it is going to rise nicely tonight" followed by "wow the moon sure is bright on the horizon".  It wasn't for a few minutes but I came too realize that that ain't no moon its the city slowly making an entrance as it were into my cognition. WOW very nifty it was.  So as I approached the steadily rising "moon" I was struck by the City that gonna set my heart on fire. 

    I pulled into the seedy part of town knowing full well the balance of comfort, safety and cost ignoring the first two right off the bat I found a greasy spoon with 35$ rooms. Let me offer you a word about 35$ rooms you get the strange and almost tangible feeling that unholy things have been carried out in the space you pay for. At-least the cheap places make no bones about it unlike the expensive ones that make sure you don't know what happened but non-the-less it did. (sorry that was gross) I decided after settling in and taking a shower that I would walk around at 11pm on a monday "what kind of trouble awaits" and this is where I shall leave you till the next installment which won't take as long as these two I promise!

Where I left off was several months and miles ago...

So now here I am again like a whale resurfacing for air I come to Blogspot to full ya'll in and hopefully be more conscientious about this thing.  I was driving west on highway 70 out of the wondrously wooly wide open spaces of the western Colorado slope when I remembered wise words from my uncle John and pulled off in Grand Junction to buy a can of fix a flat and something else that I can't recall at the moment but I do remember that I was listening to the radio and the Del McCrory Band was being interviewed and playing some tunes one of which is my favorites by a British artist named Richard Thompson the song was '52 Vincent. The original is a very folksy tale of a motorbike, it's owner and a red head named Molly I won't spoil the end but its agoodun. Anyway it sticks in my mind because a bluegrass version of it makes sense but only a voice like Del could pull it through. This tangent serves two points; first its music and second I'm antsy at this point in my journey to get out to LA and see what my fortune holds. 

   The next roadside attraction was of course Green River which I doubt is the same city and state as I am sure there are a few, but see there's this CCR tune about Green River and I was hoping that the muse of serendipity would cue ti up on the radio as I drove quickly by, she didn't. Somewhere south of there I picked up the 15 which sends one down the road of no return if you have a gambling problem cause once your on 15 you don't want to stop until you hit the big lights.  Much to the dismay of some of my friends I didn't stop in any of the national parks of which in this particular sector of the country there are an abundance of (on the way back?). I am not sure as to the name of it but 15 passes through a range that I have definitely seen portrayed as a series of old 50's Chevy's with their grills point up to the sky it looks just like that minus the definition of car front ends. More like flying saucers laying one on the next as if they were knocked off kilter in an uproarious game of dominos where the aliens lost to the dinosaurs and then were eaten and the ships turned to stone but I digress. And might I add still very good at run on sentences, did I ever tell you about the time that.....

Sundays in Paonia Coloraado are awesome!

The day had been long on Saturday what with the miles covered and the subject-matter subjugation on a whole host of topics ranging from soaringly intellectual right down to the satisfaction of the gullet, i.e. Sunday I was tired. Aunt Suzanne and I ate a light breakfast strapped the bikes on her car and headed for the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, man what a sight. Driving up to the rim you'd never know that there would be such a gapping slash in the mantle of our earth. Having not yet seen the Grand Canyon I think this one might take the cake in a few regards, I believe that it is one of few canyon's whose sides are taller than the distance between the rims hence the name "Black" because the walls are almost always in shadow.
When we headed back to the compound we stopped in a couple places to see if the famed rocker/cowboy Joe Cocker was to be seen but no he wasn't. We did however find some great fruits and vegetables, the western slope of the Rockies and therefore Colorado are known for many wonderful varieties, which we promptly ate upon setting home. The next project was the window into the wall of the Art Shed/Studio which went rather quickly what with the promise of some nano-brewery beer from right there in Paonia down the street around the corner and bellied up to the plywood bar and mason jar glassed. Yes sir y bob I thinks its the fastest window I've ever put in. The brewery was small but they knew their craft pretty darn well and were brewing to my estimation the "greenest" beer you can find in the country.
Last event of the day was playing the open-mic at the local bar/pizza joint which advertised with a foldout sandwich board on the side walk. We got there about 8:00 and I ended up playing for a good hour they kept askin for another song, well we hung around and heard some of the other acts and before long the place cleared out and me and the owner were havin a jam session. Turns out he's a luthier that builds about 3 guitars a year and owns the bar on the side, or the other way around I'm not sure which is the side business, I had him take a look at my little lady (my guitar) to see how she was on the trip and she got the a-o-k. We bumbled home after the beers on top of beers sequence that the day had taken both of us enriched and floating from good people and libation abounding. I really did like Paonia and cannot wait to head back through when the time is right. That reminds me I do have a standing invitation to play at the pizza joint when I do roll back through so I guess that means I'm gonna.
I love Sundays in Colorado