Sep 7 2008

09-07-08 (08.09.07.odt) I was going to start this off by writing: “Imagine, if you can, the kind of energies available in a crowd of teen agers at a teen dance, just as the time arrives for the band to start playing . . .” but then I realize that this energetic situation's potentials is not an easy sense for me to try to describe. The drummer has his drums all ready to go; guitars are in tune with the piano, and I am totally out front and ready, willing, and raring to go. The other guys don't need to be told what key any of the songs I initiate, rapid fire, lickety split, I launch into one fast popular song after another until some tiny voice in my head wakes up to the fact that the other guys need to get 'recognized' too, and I leave off my wild entry song list to suggest guitar songs to my/the guitar player. But once that has been dealt with, and maybe a slow song or two to give our high school buds and budesses a chance to get some fresh squeezin, I am set to, and most often usually did, launch into another buncha screamin hollerin Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis, Everly Brothers, Ray Charles, Jimmy Reed, Elvis, or maybe a dozen other top name entertainers of the day's songs.

     Those were the best of times, as far as being on top of the music-making aspects of my life. I ensured practices were attended and parts and chord progressions were committed to memory, as well as what key each song was in. I lead for the bulk of those nights, along with the good guitar players' songs: Rumble, Rawhide, Walk Don't Run, Apache, Honky Tonk, and etcetera. When my only friend who ever became a rock star and got rich a decade later—John Cipollina of Quicksilver Messenger Service fame—was a part of my teenage band experience, he already had the uncontrollable urge to play his guitar as loud as he could get it to, irregardless of how it messed up the balances and blend of the whole band, and me in particular, who could not hear what I was singing and therefore could not sing with as good of a quality as I (in my mind's eye) insisted that I must be able to, I came up with an idea, which I proposed to John, that I make a box with guitar cord plug in holesa on either end and with volume pots inside that fed through a three footswitch setup in the top of the sheet-metal box I built and soldered the pots and plugins and switches in such a way as to keep his guitar volumn at approximately 2/3rds volumn, but could hit two of the switches to transfer his guitar signals to the full volumn pot for his guitar solos, but when it came time after his solos for me to sing the next few verses, I could hit those two switches with my foot under the piano and reduce his volumn to where I could hear myself sing; and he went along with this for the many months of that particular band configuration before he left to go off into his own musical forays and experiments and adventures that had him hob nobbing with the Byrds and Lovin Spoonful and those earliest new wave rock n blues n folk musicians that got the ball rolling on the wildness soon to follow as 1966 progresses along its timeline wherein tens of thousands of people had massive doses of that first batch of LSD25 that Owsly himself broadcast to the crowd on many occasions until he ran out of those giant horsecapsules, and started putting miniscule doses, by compare, drop by drop on paper.

     How can I explain or express that emotional rush that I had become addicted to? It is emotional and emotional stuff is pretty much off limits to the language of words. I could try to say it was: hot, bold, outrageous, awesome, just too much, cool, and with a bit of indefinable nasty thrown in for good measure. I screamed my singing and beat on my piano, while stomping my feet to the rhythm and rockin back n forth, trying to smile like I was having so much fun, but I am sure that I did a lot of scowling and howling along with the smiling and singing. I was somebody while I was doing these things. Everybody knew who I was. And I never considered the fact that a lot of those 'audience' types were probably thinking to themselves; Geez, what a maroon. The females were more polite about it, but wouldn't go so far as to ever put out—except one, but I was too chicken . . . Remember: I was just barely sixteen and seventeen when these sorts of imageries filled my bloated ego maniacal head to bursting; and I burst and blurtted out all those fast tunes, and a fair portion of the slower sons, as well. This expense of a lot of energy helped to bleed off the bloat, as it were, but never satiated the addiction for ever more of this energy field that I had had such major portions of effect upon creating and extracting from the overly testosteroned out and progesteroned out boys and girls by the hundreds who danced along and got very excited and excitable, and I'm sure: Got the chaperones more than just a little nervous, probably too often. These attempted descriptions of my memories from that age-of-innocense just before alcohol and sex and my descent into a more commercially-oriented nut case—and then my liberation from all further monetary inclusion in my day-to-day thinkings and doings and beings' worryings about it in 1966. Though I woked many more 'day' jobs over the time of my life after this realization about money and not wanting to let it rule my decision-making, I never again let it dominate my reasonings about necessities, priorities, and processes. Like I said in an earlier letter, I made the compromises and threw the stuff out that wasn't seeming being in my more better interests, which are most definitely based in the world of natural forces and not a bit of money needs be transacted for these natural truths, as depicted by the life of nature and the naturalnesses of its overall scheme of things, events, wise old tried and truisms, and etcetera.

     Imagine, if you can, even though I cannot seem to get very close to a coherant desvriptive passage as to the make up or what makes for this addiction that performers can so-easily acquire from audiences' mostly-feigned adulations, praises, and general enthusiastic acclaim of how they are feeling because (?) of my wildman rhythm n bluesy rockin an a rollin monkey-suited act up there in the spotlight. The hundreds and hundreds of hours of this exposure to such an abundent-though-abberant energy field as is how I can only refer to it as: It is an energy field, and a strong one at that! Very full of forcefulness and the hot emotionalisms of youth in their emotional throes. I fed on it, hungered for ever more of it, and threw away a normal life for it. Isn't that what addictions do? Unh-hunh . . .

     Moving to Oregon helped to break up the continuity of that addictions' rule over my life and decision-making; sawing up my hand pretty much finished off the process—except for that dobro dream I still cling to . . .

 It's a hot day and the flies are attacking my skin from all directions and making it itch and I must stop typing now and put on a shirt or go outside where it is cooler in the shady areas under trees and relax and have a smoke and think some more about how I can add words that mean anything about getting these ideas and imageries and their emotional connectivity to the behaviorings of my life, and what is the POINT? of this exercise? I really do not have more than the faintest of clue, really, except the growing body-of-experience and knowledge about the processes involved in the craft of writing, which instructs the novice to write what they, he or she feels and what they know about, and to just keep spilling your guts all over the page until you tire. Then: Go back and cut and paste and delete or re word. I apologize for my admittedly-lazy habit of not redoing these letters after the pen-edits, but my cheapskate Scot self is trying to conserve spendy ink, plus not-so-spendy paper. This yer dad here . ..