It's A Long Way To The Top If You Wanna Rock & Roll
12.24.06 (11:38 pm) [edit]"She comes in colors everywhere;
She combs her hair
She's like a rainbow
Coming, colors in the air
Oh, everywhere
She comes in colors"
- The Rolling Stones
"I long to see you in the morning light
I long to reach for you in the night
Stay, lady, stay, stay while the night is still ahead"
- Bob Dylan
"My kielbasa sausage has just got to perform."
- Tenacious D
Chicago Transit Authority making me smile tonight.
I have serious inspiration flowing through my veins. She puts it there. I can't be there, I'm not able to be everywhere, but I am VERY much here. Alive in the moment. A beautiful, inspiring, perceptive, funny, and unspeakably cool and knowing young lady is beaming light on me from miles away. I feel like Pete Townshend tonight - I CAN see for miles and miles when she's fully in my heart and mind. I like the view from here. The situation we face is not conducive to a relationship that can really develop, but I love her. In whatever way it is that I can from this place, I love her in ways I thought had escaped me.
My speakers are asking me if anybody really knows what time it is. Yeah, I do, motherfuckers. It's time to burn, to love, to rock and groove and live and laugh and dream. FUCK time. The little dance of electrons we call our universe provides us with all we need to soar. If only we grab ahold and escape from our bullshit.
My own bullshit is legion. Tonight I choose to point fingers and laugh at it. Hey, bullshit! EAT me, you big ol' pile o' poo! You ain't the boss of me! Nanananabooboofuckitypoo! Wheeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!
"When I'm with you, it doesn't matter where we are."
I'll start with 1AM. This morning. After the gig. More on that later.
Friday, while driving around wondering what was up with...uh...who was that again? Oh yeah, D. Whateva.
Anyway, while much more important things were happening inside me, I made my way to the bar I mentioned before and stood outside with an old friend who owns the place.
I told him I'd try to go back and check out the open mic night. He told me to get back with him on doing a solo gig there.
Saturday (well, 1AM this very Sunday), I was about done helping the band load up when I remembered my promise.
He's on the town square. Few people are left there, most of the business being down out on the main drag across town. i now teach across from him. The building I used to teach in on the square is gone, torn down a couple months ago. The flood of memories that brought on, seeing that empty space...formative years they were.
I had no idea just what I was in for, probably because this place has no right to EXIST in the town I grew up in and spent thirty years wanting to escape from.
Heaven. Or an approximation thereof. I think I know where Heaven's bar and stage are located. They've got good beer and their own PA.
I intended to do the few songs I can remember the words to without my lyric sheets. Later, I ran out to the car to get them, and I played for well over an hour. The first true solo gig I've done since summer of 2000.
What a long strange trip it's been.
I don't know what it's like every night there, but the late Saturday crowd of maybe 8 people had turned the place into some kind of left-wing hippie dream clinic. I was in shock. Grateful to be there. Kinda drunk.
I did a few normal things. Some Neil Young. Bang A Gong (which I've made my own by now.) A pretty crappy version of ELP's Lucky Man that stood in stark contrast to the excellent version I did in my solo spot at the band's gig.
Then things took a turn.
T asked if the guy who ran sound could come up and play trombone with me.
Trombone.
We did Lawyers Guns & Money first.
Nothing, I mean NOTHING could prepare me for the feeling of performing a Warren Zevon song with a trombone behind me.
Or for the beautiful reaction from my small but wonderful audience.
Somebody yelled for more Neil. I dropped my low E to D as the blonde woman down front (more on that soon) screamed for Cinnamon Girl. So I dropped both Es, and played Cinnamon Girl and The Loner.
With a trombone.
I'm gonna push it farther. "Stay in D."
When I finished the next song, I told them they'd just heard Get Behind The Mule by Tom Waits. They knew who he was. THAT alone, in the repressed bullshit Republican town of my youth...incredible.
I felt myself turning into what I see in Keneally's face when he plays for the kind of crowds I've been lucky enough to be in over a dozen times now. Mike has powers and skills far, far beyond mine, but what drew me to him in that heady fall of '98 was his humility, his sense of awe at there being an audience for what he does, his desire to give back the love he got from us.
It makes me almost cry tears of joy thinking back.
The acceptance I felt from this small group of people was almost overwhelming. I thanked them after each song for their applause. I felt it was entirely unwarranted, but after enough of it, I knew I was doing what I am here to do - give back the love.
The road towards finding confidence and my own space musically has been long and full of weirdness and pain. It goes on. But last night, with the love I feel for Abby as my engine, I was picked up and carried farther down that road by these kind and exceptional people.
I came into music the way most do, simply for a love of music in and of itself. I spent a long time being very insular and not giving two shits about who heard it or how it connected to the real world. That was necessary as a means to find my voice (which I'm still doing, and I think that's true even of the Keneallys in this world, the process does not end) and those formative years as some kind of art snob prick were vital.
But in the past year and a half, I've learned to connect music with my own life experience. And I've begun to understand what it means to not only have an audience, but an audience that appreciates you. You feed from that, and you learn to give back.
That's the reason to be a musician. Not the shit I was thinking of sitting alone in my room learning Geddy Lee's bass parts.
They let me cut loose, and I only really hinted at what I want to achieve with this little solo thing, because I'm so far removed from where I was when I started it in late '98 and wasn't sure what I could get away with. But they were willing to buy the ticket and take the ride, so I rode.
I dug through my lyric sheets.
"I'm gonna do a little spoken word piece for you kind people. This is another Tom Waits thing."
What's he building in there?
What the hell is he building
In there?
He has subscriptions to those
Magazines... He never
Waves when he goes by
He's hiding something from
The rest of us... He's all
To himself... I think I know
Why... He took down the
Tire swing from the Peppertree
He has no children of his
Own you see... He has no dog
And he has no friends and
His lawn is dying... and
What about all those packages
He sends. What's he building in there?
With that hook light
On the stairs. What's he building
In there... I'll tell you one thing
He's not building a playhouse for
The children
What's he building
In there?
Now what's that sound from under the door?
He's pounding nails into a
Hardwood floor... and I
Swear to god I heard someone
Moaning low... and I keep
Seeing the blue light of a
T.V. show...
He has a router
And a table saw... and you
Won't believe what Mr. Sticha saw
There's poison underneath the sink
Of course... But there's also
Enough formaldehyde to choke
A horse... What's he building
In there. What the hell is he
Building in there? I heard he
Has an ex-wife in some place
Called Mayors Income, Tennessee
And he used to have a
consulting business in Indonesia...
but what is he building in there?
What the hell is building in there?
He has no friends
But he gets a lot of mail
I'll bet he spent a little
Time in jail...
I heard he was up on the
Roof last night
Signaling with a flashlight
And what's that tune he's
Always whistling...
What's he building in there?
What's he building in there?
We have a right to know...
It KILLED.
T had introduced me very kindly, remembering the few bass lessons I'd given him in his old photography studio, and the gig we did in 1999 for Rock The Vote. I've mentioned it before - probably the most pure expression of what I want to be as a solo performer as I've ever done before last night.
So I whipped out one I'd done there. A guitar/vocal arrangment of Pink Floyd's Pigs (Three Different Ones).
Freedom. God, I'm feeling such freedom up here...
They were singing along. THEY WERE SINGING ALONG.
The blonde yelled out at me when I was done. "I love you!"
"Oh yeah? Then let's FUCK."
I've waited years to use that line...
"I will if you play me the right song!"
Let it not be said that Dougie is not up for a challenge.
I dived for my lyric sheets and made a show of trying frantically to find her the right song. Dear God, the right song! It must be in here! Must...find...right song..so...fucking may...commence...SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOCK!!! !!!
Work the crowd, man. Work that crowd. I'm learning how.
So I sang her one of the best things George Harrison ever wrote, from my favorite Beatle album.
My brain split in two down a rough edge as I tried to make this woman happy while the woman I actually love suddenly came back to me, her face before me as I sang...
Something in the way she moves attracts me like no other lover...
It wasn't the right song. SHITFUCKY!
But when I got done, I got a nice reward.
My pay for the night consisted of a free Newcastle, a free Woodchuck Amber Cider, and three glorious tastes of more heaven.
She kissed me.
I loved the look in her eyes when she leaned into me. Very pretty blonde, maybe around my age or a bit younger, thick-rimmed granny glasses. I like that kind of hippie geek-girl vibe.
She paid me some incredible compliments, and when she came to me with those lips, it was if she was saying, "This is all you're getting, but I am very happy to give it all I've got for you, because you made me feel good tonight."
Gawd, why did it take me so long to get to this point?
The first kiss was more of a shock than anything. I looked back into her eyes, and figured fuck it, I'm going back for seconds.
The second kiss shot fire through me, lit my entire molecular structure up like a fuckin' Christmas tree. You know that stupid cliche in all the songs about "lips like wine"? Well, some cliches are based in truth. And the intoxication was powerful.
Then I went to talk to T and try to work through in my head the feeling of kissing this woman I'd never met with the fact that I only got it to begin with because of somebody so much more important to me.
After ten minutes, I was ready to take off (holy fuckin' Jeezus, it;s almost 3AM) and I knew I was pushing my luck, but I wondered if three times would be a charm.
She was quite willing.
OK, she was drunk and so was I. Let's inject some fucking honesty into this.
I felt her lips on mine for hours afterwards, even when I awoke from what little sleep I got.
And wanted them to have been somebody else's.
But I'm in the moment, and thankful for what is happening to me and for me. I crave experience and depth of emotion. And I'm fucking getting it.
I had a five-way chili and water at Steak & Shake and made it back to my parents' at 4AM.
_______________________
A Bridge Over Troubled Watered-Down Beer
Friday night was weird. I had to work through a lot of things, a lot of feelings. I managed to be stood up by one woman, feel terrible guilt over another, and then be a rotten asshole to another, leading to more guilt, and very deserved guilt at that.
I drove around a lot. Went to our new second-favorite place to play, and had a plate of killer nachos and good beer, talking to the woman who runs the place, who loves the band and is a great lady who has gone through some SHIT in the last year. Crushed her collarbone in a car accident, watched her son become very sick and in need of constant hospital care, and nearly lost her bar because of Indiana's idiotic and inconsistent gambling laws.
She's kept herself strong. And she's got a mane of thick blonde hair that you could lose yourself in immediately.
More driving around, eventually to the bar from the above story for my initial meeting with T, and then to the bar where the band is playing in two weeks, owned by one of our biggest fans, who takes ads out in the paper proclaiming us the best band in the county.
I had a beer and witnessed an awesome and powerful display of UNBRIDLED KARAOKE WHITENESS. The absolute worst vocal performances in the history of the cosmos. You cannot possibly NOT take the extra time to sit there and marvel at the Lovecraftian horror for a while, just to catalog the experience, but you also can't stay for long, lest your brain be sucked out your ears and deposited into a glass of Miller Lite.
There's something freeing and liberating about pissing on an outside wall next to your car.
Eventually I found my way back to my parents', where I'd had no intention of spending the night. But my daughter was there, and I needed to go back.
I talked to my love while standing in the driveway. I was in oversensitive douchebag mode. But she playfully stuck a needle in my pretense-balloon and brought me back down to earth, and gave me another reason to love her. I went from terrible fear of losing her to laughing with her, very quickly.
When I awoke and saw that she texted me obscure Simon & Garfunkel lyrics later in the night, I nearly died and rose again. I bragged about you and your coolness to my band, honey. You are a wonder and a machine of awe-inspiration.
I also had to deal with my own stupidity later, but you've read the apology below. If you haven't, you'll see it under this post.
I've made a lot of internal progress in recent months, but it's still mostly been about ME. Taking better care of ME. I've not done good at taking care of others, unless it's Katie or something connected with the music.
I've been a real bag of shit to people who do not deserve it, and for that I have to atone.
I realize that while on one level I've done good at repairing past damage, a very bad part of me takes great pleasure in hurting people I care for if I percieve hostility on their end. And believe me, nobody is more hostile than myself once these things get started. I am a vicious cunt.
I have to change that. There is no need for that. I've barely even begun that process.
I'm hoping the spirit of my performance last night will invade my dealings with people closer to me, and I will learn more about giving back. Because I'm not worth a tin shit at that right now with certain people.
I'm out of energy to write more. I had a wonderful time with Katie, with the band, and both at once when she ran around like a nut, dancing to us for the hour she was there. That made my night. John Zorn's The Circle Maker is making my way towards bedtime. Nothing like good Jew jazz on a Christmas eve, eh?
Forward,
Dougie