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Mulholland Dancer

Will you dance for me, if I play the music just right for you?

I must have forgotten how you liked it, the music. Before I saw you, before you had me, it must have been nearly perfect, else how could you have been drawn to it? That summer I made the patterns, and the rhythms. It was a trance, those hot nights, and I was in it.

You danced for me then. How did you do that thing, that look where you are shy and suggestive at the same time, innocent and nasty? All the gyrations and shimmies, the little halter, the bare brown skin, but it was that look that took me. Later you said you were a belly dancer, and maybe you were, but you would never give me a private show. You said it was too nasty. Only tramps do that, or a woman for her husband. It was the only thing you wouldn’t do, and it became the only thing I wanted.

That first night you gave me your phone number, and I had it in my pocket for months, and I still can’t say why I didn’t call. I waited until it was too late, the moment was long past, the scribbled note a dead leaf in my jacket pocket, flaked and crumbled. I could squint and read the number, but you were gone from me, and, to be honest, I was afraid, the way I am when it matters.

You wouldn’t remember me. You’d found a boyfriend. You didn’t want me to call. The number you gave me was fake, a way of getting rid of me.

How many times in these reminiscences can I get away with saying I was young and stupid? I think I’m pretty smart, but when did that begin? Surely sometime after you happened, precious dancer. I was young, but you were younger, and wiser. The second time I saw you dancing, I couldn’t believe my luck. But it wasn’t luck at all, was it, sweetheart? You simply came back and got me. Sent your girlfriend home with the car and told me I had to drive you, somewhere way the hell down Mulholland Highway, out into the Valley.

I made the music. You made the magic. I can see your storm of black hair flying as you spun, later spreading on the sheet. It wasn’t rock’n’roll sex, there was no cocaine or absinthe, no leather. You were kind of new at it, but you gave yourself so sweetly that I almost cried, and you really did cry, and we tried it many times that night, and many nights that summer.

The whole thing collapsed of course. My fault. Young and stupid. Your mother may have been right: if you pursue, you are a tramp. A piece of ass. Sorry, babe. I am so, so sorry.

I’d give anything if you would dance for me, one last time.

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Flat Up Against the Wall, 2005

I am having a hard time getting back in the groove.

I guess I don’t want to get back in the stinking groove. I had a great weekend, with lots of high-speed driving on the California coast, more intellectual stimulation than I have experienced in years, lemon sorbet served inside a hollowed-out lemon – I was even smuggled into a hotel room without registering, and I stayed there for three days, and got away with it. Fuck The Man! (No, girls, I am not The Man.)

I was completely disconnected from the internet. I couldn’t check my email or read any blogs or post anything. Oh, I could have found an internet cafe in the university town I was in, but I was busy having fun. So imagine my surprise when I return to find that most of my otherwise genius readers don’t think they can write song lyrics! What the fuck?

When the Protest Song idea first occured to me, it was because I thought everyone was mad as hell and not willing to take it any more. MPH complained that there weren’t any good, rollicking countercultural change-the-world type of songs for his generation (whichever one that is) to rally ’round, and from the comments he got, I thought writing a protest song for the 21st century was an explosion ready to happen. Thus The revision99 Protest Song UnContest.

But will you look at yourselves?

  • “…i’m not sure i’m talented enough to put it into song…” (Alex)
  • “…Damn, this blog has a lot of homework…” (Digitalicat)
  • “…I’m not promising anything…” (Adreeyin)
  • “…This is too much work…” (Steph)
  • “…I suck at writing lyrics…” (L of Random_Speak)

What a bunch of weak sisters! You are writers, people! Take a peek at this example of “songwriting” from the 1960’s, and tell me you are intimidated:

The Eve of Destruction, by P.F. Sloane

The eastern world, it is explodin’.
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill, but not for votin’
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’
And even the Jordan River has bodies floatin’

But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Don’t you understand what I’m tryin’ to say
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feelin’ today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save, with the world in a grave
Take a look around you boy
It’s bound to scare you boy

And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Yeah, my blood’s so mad feels like coagulatin’
I’m sitting here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist  the truth, it knows no regulation.
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’

And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
You may leave here for 4 days in space
But when you return, it’s the same old place
The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don’t leave a trace
Hate your next-door neighbor, but don’t forget to say grace
And… tell me over and over and over and over again, my friend
You don’t believe
We’re on the eve
Of destruction
Mm, no no, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Is anyone intimidated by this drivel? There should be a protest song protesting this song!! Yet – and you’ll have to trust me on this, because as The Oldest Blogger I know this to be true – that stupid song was played on the radio all over this country every hour, 24 hours a day for three months during 1965.

Really, how much effort would it take to scribble something that bad?

OK, you’re thinking “Hey, I’ve got a life, and my own blog. Why should I contribute lyrics that will only make Larry Jones rich and famous?” Fair enough. Here are the reasons:

  • I deserve wealth and fame.
  • I need a faster car.
  • It will be easy.
  • It will be fun.
  • You can make a difference!
  • You can leave a lasting legacy.

As an added inducement, I promise not to:

  • …subject you to ridicule
  • …ridicule you myself (as you know, I love you all)
  • …reveal your identity (if you don’t want me to)

So you can’t possibly lose. Everybody knows the music business is a pushover. Now you have a willing collaborator, and hey, let’s face it: In the end I will be doing most of the work, and you will be sitting back and taking the credit.

What are you waiting for? Don’t answer that! Here’s even more good news! You don’t have to write a whole song! That’s right, just send me your 21st Century Protest Song idea, in the form of a simple couplet or singable chorus, and I will somehow massage it into a song that’s guaranteed to be as good as The Eve of Destruction!

The first day of Summer is the deadline, so there’s just one more week to do this. Remember, there are no losers in The revision99 Protest Song UnContest. Only people who didn’t win. Member FDIC. Substantial penalty for early withdrawal. Details at this earlier post.

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Getting Back

A Few Items:

  1. I was out of town since Thursday, attending the college graduation of someone I have known since the day of her birth. I was cut off from all computers, so I haven’t written anything or read anything you may have written.
  2. I discovered that I really miss being on a college campus. I have almost no daily intellectual stimulation at my crummy job, whereas on campus, there’s tons of that.
  3. College kids today have little to no fashion sense, at least in Santa Cruz, California.
  4. If you think I am going to stop promoting the Protest Song UnContest, you’re wrong. I’m just too tired to do it tonight. But let me assure you the entries I have so far are stunning. The rest of you have a little more than a week to deadline. Don’t put it off, people. The punishment will be a protest song by me.
  5. As always, my weary heart overflows with love and bittersweet joy.
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Up Against the Wall, 2005

Announcing the revision99
Protest Song UnContest.

OK, first go and read this post at the blog referred to by its author as “The blog lovingly referred to as ‘Heightened Thoughts.'” The guy’s all fired up because there ain’t enough modern revolutionary music, given that we live in times that are approximately as shitty and hopeless as the 1960’s and ’70’s, when there were all kinds of protest songs that caused what we now wistfully remember as “the Revolution.”

Completely aside from the fact that there really was no revolution in this country after 1776, and discounting the truth that there is a fairly hefty library of current music protesting the state we find ourselves in, I’ll play along for a while.

Hey, kids, let’s put on a show!

Well, OK, let’s not put on a show. But how about if we write a song? Here’s is the comment, somewhat abridged, that I left in the comment section of Heightened Thoughts:

OK, all you angry people. Here’s a challenge, for you and for me: Write a protest song for the 21st century, and I will put it to music and record it and post it. (I’m talking about lyrics here. If you can play and sing, do this yourself.)

Post your lyrics on your blog (make sure you notify me), or MPH’s comment section (again, you’ll have to notify me), or email me. Look at my profile to get my email address.

  • Your song can be a joke, or it can be serious, and you retain all rights to the words no matter what I do with them.
  • Of course you get full credit for your contribution whenever and wherever the song appears.
  • If more than one of you tries this, I get to pick which one to record.
  • If you want to give me a melody, try Audioblogger, or post something on some server somewhere and send me the link.

I am a child of the sixties, a blast from your past, and I am not only angry, I am drug-addled. I warn you: If no one sends me anything or posts anything, I will do this myself. We don’t want that, do we?

So, what is pissing you off about the status quo?

  • The religious right?
  • The lap-dog media?
  • The neocon hawks in D.C.?
  • Tom Delay?
  • Right-wing AM radio?
  • The rich getting richer?
  • Environmental destruction?
  • Governmental invasion of privacy and disregard for human rights?
  • Anti-stem cell research bullshit?
  • Abrogation of international treaties?
  • Institutional homophobia?
  • Corporate scandals?
  • Is there more???? Of course there’s more!!
  • Stolen elections?
  • Globalization?
  • Voter apathy?
  • Skinheads?
  • Longhairs?
  • Job outsourcing?
  • Drug laws?
  • Big fat smug politicians with lifetime paychecks and excellent health benefits fucking with your meager Social Security plan?
  • The pumps don’t work ’cause the vandals took the handles?

Write it down!!

Here’s your chance to express yourself. It would be good if it has verses and a memorable chorus that we can sing over and over and over and over and over and over while we are marching on Washington. Rhyming is welcome, but optional. Naturally there has to be an unreasonable and arbitrary cutoff date for song submissions…

…So let’s say you have to send your song BEFORE SUMMER STARTS. That will be sometime on June 21.

OK? Bring it.

Oh, before I forget. Get over to Kristi’s blog if you want to read about hot pickup truck sex with virgin schoolteachers.

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Maybe Someday

I need a break.

My previous post, Another Memorial, got me down and I still feel like shit. Many of the truths I believe are crappy, but I know that the world sux and I put it out of my mind and laugh and live my life. But after writing something like that I can’t forget it easily.

Making music has always been good therapy for me, so this past week I fired up my home recording system, which is basically just a PC with some special software on it, and recorded a song, just to get my mind free. I started from scratch, and I played and sang all the parts, except for the drums, which I sequenced. Extremely careful readers will know that this is a song I wrote a long time ago. I just thought it would be easier to (re)learn the recording process if I already knew the song.

It’s just an experiment, folks, but I have posted the project if you’d like to hear it. Just press”play” below.

Oh, yeah: The song is called Maybe Someday. Turns out it was good therapy, and it made me feel better.
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Another Memorial

We are powerful and brave.

We are angry, afraid and greedy. We always want more than we have. We are ingenious.

We have invented so many superb ways to show our strength, to assuage our fear, to give vent to our anger, to take what we want.

We will hit you with rocks. We will maim you with our sword and our battleaxe. We will blow holes in your soft flesh with our blunderbus, our musket, our carbine, our pistol, our machine gun, and the life will drain from your mortal body, while we take what we want from you, your family, your home.

We will blow up your buildings, your public places, your railroad tracks, your factories, your electrical generating facilities, your airports, your roads, the very houses you dwell in.

We will organize ourselves into huge armies, and these armies will be the grandest achievements, hundreds of thousands of us in uniforms, training, planning, arming. We will tell ourselves, and you, that we only want to protect ourselves. But in our fear, our anger, our greed and our hatred, we will move to dominate you, to subjugate you, to take your treasures.

Failing that, we will kill you. We will take you in our hands and we will blacken your mind, stop your heart, wring the blood out of you, and all your kind. We will scorch the earth you live on. It is within our power. It is within our hearts.

No one of us can remember when this started. We have always done this, even before we invented our excellent weapons. Every day we teach our children to be ready for this. The marching, the taking, the killing. We do this to our children.

There is no place on earth left to hide.

This is my memorial to all of them who died. To all who killed. To all who are dying and killing even right now, as I think these thoughts. I weep for you and myself, and all who will come after us to continue the carnage. Bring glory on us. Bring your wrath and your fire. Bring peace through devastation. Bring it to every town, to every street, to every home, and we shall have peace, and our heroes at last may rest.
**************************************************************
Joe Frank has made an eloquent audio statement on this subject.
You can listen to it by clicking here.

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Pigs and Pussies (Bang Bang, Part 3)

Shot down again.

My post Tuesday in which I imagined myself a misunderstood inner city almost-dropout stud muffin and Michelle Pfeiffer my earnest, misguided but highly desirable schoolmistress (yes, Mistress!) received some unexpected comments.

In the totally imaginary persona that I assumed, I may have said some things that I myself in real life don’t actually believe. The short version would be along the lines of Oh, my God, Miss Pfeiffer, please don’t quit teaching and if you wear that little red dress you wore in The Fabulous Baker Boys I’ll do anything you ask, even memorize poetry that may or may not have been written by homosexuals. Or in other words, as far-fetched as it is, as remote the possibility, what I think when I look at Miss Pfeiffer is Hooeey, I want to roll around and get dirty with that!! Something like that. Doesn’t matter who she is, or that I have like, zero chance of even touching the hem of her granny gown, let alone unzipping her little red party dress.

The comments were split between…

  • Yowzah! This is a prime cut, wink wink, and
  • Memorizing poetry won’t work, you ignorant schlump.

The guys generally saw where I was going (or where I was coming from – I really cannot talk Street), and wanted to go there with me, damn the torpedoes. The women (I will never call you girls, because I respect you too much) said, with one exception* that my shallow approach would not work. I’m not sure if they meant it wouldn’t work on them, or it wouldn’t work with Miss Pfeiffer, or it just plain wouldn’t work with any woman, period. But the suggestion arose more than once that I knew it wouldn’t work, or at least I should have known.

So there it is again: All men are pigs, we only want one thing, we completely fail to understand women, and the one thing we want will be withheld from us because of our lack of understanding.

Are there exceptions? Sure, the ethereal Shelley’s and Byron’s who write the damned sensitive poems in the first place, and their spiritual descendants, the fevered fellows in the frayed turtlenecks who drink coffee in the Student Union (they smoked in my day, but I’m guessing that’s over now) and seem to dwell in that angst-ridden fantasy land where the higher sensibilities rule and Big Drama is the order of the day.

And I’m not even sure about those guys. They might be pigs, too. I know they have at least some of the qualifications.

So what is the answer to this Big Question? We have to get together, boys and girls. We have a programmed need for each other. We actually want to be in love with each other, I think. But, perhaps due to God’s grand sense of humor, the boys must forever keep guessing at the secret password, and the girls keep changing it (I can say girls here because I said boys, OK?) while wistfully seeking a man who understands, who is sensitive but still very strong, rich but not obsessed, sexual but only with them, rugged but soft… well, I’m not making a Great Expectations video here, but you know what I mean.

As always, my heart overflows with confusion and love.

* But Steph has made sort of a career of charmingly missing the point. She does it so well that she makes me think I’ve missed the point. Wait a minute. I have missed it, haven’t I?

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Dangerous Mind

If I were an inner city teen, I’d for sure be in a bad street gang.

The Blips or The Cruds, whatever, because that’s the only way you can survive on the street, you see what I’m saying? I’d shave my head and wear some baggy clothes, too, with a nine in my pants and a knife in my sock, just to be safe. If they put metal detectors in school, well, then I would just stop going to school, because school is for losers, and I’d rather hang with my boyz anyway.

I’d be one bad dude. Fuck with me, man, look out.

But if my teacher were Michelle Pfeiffer, I’d be good to her. No backtalk, no lip. I’d smack down any of the other guys in the class who gave her a hard time, too. She’d just be a good, honest chick tryin’ to make the world a better place for guys like me. Oh, sure, she’d be hopelessly wrong about her chances. I mean, homies don’t turn nobody in to the cops, man. You’re marked for death, no matter how stupid the reason, you go out like a man, man.

But when you have those soft pink lips like Miss Pfeiffer, it makes dudes like me want to study Shakespeare, man. You see what I’m saying? And when you’re all sincere like she is in her intentions of educating me so I can do something positive with my life, like get a good job in the United States Army or even MacDonald’s, well, I just wouldn’t be able to resist her, you know what I’m talking about?

Shit. You know what I mean. I would learn long division and memorize fag poems because I would know, like I could just smell it, that under that denim shirt and that bullshit granny dress she wears to school, she got this:

You see what I’m saying?

See below for answers to Friday’s GuitarMania quiz.
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Solos

OK, you lazy, lazy, unfeeling people.

I made my little compilation of guitar solos for you and almost none of you tried to guess the titles. Would it have been too much trouble to just make up a list of songs, any songs, and post them here in a comment? Well, now I can tell you the truth that there was a prize, and it was a brand new Pontiac 6, just like Oprah gives away at her show. But I’m sending it back, because no one cared enough to try to win it. Not only that, but maybe now there will be no GuitarMania 2, including some Yardbirds-era Clapton and the triple solo on the B-side of “Abbey Road.” How do you feel now? Not so smug, I’ll bet. (Note: None of this is directed at the beautiful and talented Laurie Kay Ransonette Anderson or the extremely kind and ethical Aydreeyin Oneiric.)

So here are the songs, and the artists, and the guitarists who played the solos (if I know them):

  • Johnny B. Goode (intro) – Chuck Berry
  • Louie Louie – The Kingsmen
  • Hello Mary Lou – Ricky Nelson (James Burton)
  • You Really Got Me – The Kinks (Dave Davies)
  • Concrete and Clay – Uhit 4 Plus 2
  • Right Place, Wrong Time – Dr. John (probably Leo Nocentelli)
  • One of These Nights – Eagles (probably Joe Walsh)
  • Dixie Chicken – Little Feat (Lowell George and Paul Barrere)
  • I Saw the Light – Todd Rundgren (he played all the parts)
  • Redneck Friend – Jackson Brown (David Lindley)
  • Cinnamon Girl – Crazy Horse (Neil Young)
  • Johnny B. Goode (solo) – Chuck Berry
  • Cinnamon Girl (reprise) – Neil Young

Hey, it’s OK. Bloggers are geeks, right? Which means you were all stupefied from watching Star Wars, and unable to think about anything else. It was really just a scheduling conflict. I love ya, now get outta here.

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Jones In Love

I confess herewith to a not-so-secret lifelong love affair.


My Uncle Ralph, a truly magnificent Irish drunk, played the ukulele. If you could sing it, he could accompany you, and I made him play every chance I got. Sometimes when I was very young he would let me try to play his ukulele, but he was not a teacher and I couldn’t figure out how to make it work. He encouraged me, but he didn’t know what to say to make the instrument clear to me. In those interludes when I was holding the thing, the fun would stop, and I would get self-conscious in the deafening, expectant silence. Each time I would sheepishly hand it back to him, and the sing-along would resume.

So I made myself content to watch. I watched his fingers on the frets, moving around in some incomprehensible musical braille, while his other hand strummed and plucked. The strumming and plucking made more sense to me than the fingering. I could feel the rhythm, and I could move my own hand in time with it, but I knew from my few attempts that both hands had to work together, each doing an independent job at opposite ends of the instrument, or it would be no good.

For various reasons, the jam sessions with Uncle Ralph came to end when I was ten years old. Not long after that I went by myself to a matinee movie at the Paramount Theater in my little town in southern Minnesota. I sat alone in the dark under the starry ceiling of that old monument, and my future was revealed to me. The movie was “Rock Around the Clock.” Bill Haley and the Comets, and they weren’t playing ukuleles.

The music and the electricity was so powerful it was all I could think about for days. I even tried to build an electric guitar of my own. Actually I tried to get my dad to do it, but he wisely declined, realizing that, on the off chance that we succeeded, neither of us knew how to play it. For five years I dreamed of that movie, that sound, that excitement, and I asked my parents for a guitar at every gift-giving occasion.

When I was fifteen, I got my first guitar.

I started late, I guess, but I caught up fast, because I didn’t put the thing down for about two years. Before the first year was up I had started a band, my first of many kid bands. I learned by listening to records and copying what I heard. I had a turntable that could run as slow as 16 RPM, so I could slow down the difficult parts and work on them out of real time.

I played it until my fingers stung from pressing on the strings. After a few months my fingertips were hard and impervious to pain. I taught myself how to do most of the things I wanted to do. When I touched the instrument, put my hands on the neck and the strings, it cried, it moaned, it screamed and whispered. When you see guitar players making faces as they play, they are not putting on a show. They are feeling the music as it flows back and forth between the player and the instrument.

If you want to hear some of the playing that inspired me and made me fall in love and kept my heart a happy prisoner all these years, click on the guitar above, or just press “play” here:

A lot of what you will hear was culled from old vinyl, so don’t be judging the sound quality. Just dig the licks. These are guitar solos only, except for one vocal phrase I left in, and yes, I know it’s raw. Frankly, it was the violence that attracted me at first.

Who can name all the songs? (Hint: One of them is in there twice.)

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