The Thrill that comes with Spring, When Anything can Happen

(It only happens when I dance with you)

Some days she sounded so beautiful.  Even she was amazed.

The Xmas was unusually warm, the flowers started blooming out of season.

But there were days when he imagined that she could sing anything into existence.

He imagined that she would be a perfect ingenue (she had that in her voice) and that she probably was miscast when she was on the stage with him.  Any guy 30-15 younger than he was would have been acceptably matched with her.

He kept himself up nights, worried, jealous, doubting why she would even care about staying with him.  Touring, let alone sharing his bed.

One night he had a dream, it was something familiar. It was him looking into her eyes.  And he knew that it was him being the leading man.  He saw himself as the leading man in her life.  It all worked.

Born With A Broken Heart/Bad Rhythm

This song begins playing in the background:

"Born with a Broken Heart" by David Wax Museum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9zhaqp4l7k

Her:
Quick, what is this song in?

Him:
What do you mean??

Her:
Here, clap!  I don't understand the rhythm.

Him:
Okay.  Um (he tries and keeps messing up)

The drummer comes by. 

Him:
Can you tell me . . .

He claps exactly.  It's a standard clap.

At this point the song is going fast & furiously. 

Him:
Oh, it's a simple . . .

Drummer:
No actually, it's a trick.  Because there is ANOTHER clap happening at the same time on top of it, because it is layered.  (claps again)

Her:
(laughing)  I knew it wasn't because I'm rhythmically challenged.

Him and Drummer:
No, you still are.

They all laugh.


===
Here's the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9zhaqp4l7k

The lyrics & chords for guitar, if you are interested.  But you should really use a uke.
https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/t/the_david_wax_museum/born_with_a_broken_heart_crd.htm

Yo! Mr.Fantasy!!

When she was driving, she had the empty ring box on the dashboard.  Keeping her company.

She could've asked him.  She was young and fearless and even loved him at one point.  The calm kind of love, not grabby or lustful or fighting for supremacy all the time love. A quiet love, a thought that she could happily get lost with him whenever and wherever he led her.  And she felt he felt the same way.

And maybe they would've had a shinier few years in between.  Filled up his house with friends and laughter.  Dinner parties and singing.  A bit like the old days, but better and richer, the longer they stayed together.

He made her laugh.  And vice versa.

Maybe they could've laughed together.

There comes a clear moment in your life when you see the difference between your fantasy and what real life brings you. "You can't grow peaches on a cherry tree"

And that's when the truck behind her came to her attention.

Looking Out His Dining Room Window

He asked for a back rub.

She was hesitant, but she gave him one. 

He leaned forward and she sat behind.

The late autumn light was gentle, golden and then rosy, as it set across the marshes behind his house.

He began to cry.

She could feel it through his thin ribcage.

He had always been on the skinny side, but now he seemed only made of bones. And lies.

His back seemed like the surface of a delicately designed drum; each sob reverberated.

She let him cry it out slowly.

Hiding it from her.

Finally letting go, and for too long.

She would remember that for the rest of her life.

She let him cry too long before putting her arms around him.

She loved him too. From the beginning, from the legend, from the arrogant man she could never master. And the clever adversary.  Her partner on stage.

Happily ever now.

She stroked his hair. Thin and balding. 

Like the reeds in the marshes outside the window.

As they held each other, they remembered everything.

And through the night, they did not let go.

Chasing That Old Dragon Down

He woke up, hungover, staring at his windshield. Which was covered, on closer inspection, by throw up.

He had vaguely remembered the night before, standing over his engine, banging on it with a wrench, literally.  The gig last night was terrible, lonely on stage, lonely in the audience. A gay bar, where nobody even showed interest in him.

He missed her.

She had an uncanny knack for giggling when confronted by signs of trouble.  They had been driving through a downgraded hurricane. Endless rain, bad visibility, hydroplaning. And then a flat tire. They stood by the side of the road, laughing at the lack of a doughnut, of a spare tire.  As if they were at a comedy fest.

Last night, he was depressed, drunk, and unable to escape in his broken car. Unable to figure it out. He seemed to remember having the door open and the transition into a more secure space by closing the door. It may or may not have been at the same moment of the man who got sick.  Mercifully, that moment was part of the black out.

He saw a pay phone and scrambled for a quarter, which in his car was impossibly difficult to discover.  He got her voicemail and begged her to show up at his house when he got home next Tuesday. Which was still an optimistic prediction.

The words of love and honesty that she always wanted came too. After the quarter dropped. Always too late.

She didn't show.  It was part of one of many times that she had stopped contact with him. One of his many lies or infidelities. He was gripped by a longing for company. And his mind kept going to her.  And he was willing to make up from whatever last fight they had had. 

I've always hated watching festivals

Not really.

The quiet, singer songwriters I love.

It's the mosh pits until 6 in the morning that I hate.

The awkwardness of the silence before we start, having to coordinate with too many people is just too hard.

Makes me miss the small stages.

One more night til the morning.

Weird choice for an opener, maybe it's his most uptempo ballad.

Sounds of the other, I'm getting ready.

Maybe they all have a vaguely religious tone. 

And he's off tempo. Sounds like he's running uphill, trying to catchup with the band. And running out of breath.

I'd rather be curled up in a motel room, after a warm shower.

How do the kids entertain themselves until 5am?

I just want to hide

Hide and steal sandwiches for the road trip tomorrow, he'll be grateful, but he won't steal any.

--

His version is more lively.

Festivals are the greatest thing.

People wouldn't come out just for 1/4 of a band they didn't like as teenagers.

"I've been losing you, one day at a time"

My simple rule: I never accept gigs where I am the most famous person on the bill. The numbers don't work in my favor.

But if I'm one of 3 kinda famous people, it's less of a burden. I have a strong & loyal fanbase, but they are small. Meaning that there are about 4 girls, depending where I am in the country, who will travel up to 300 miles to see me.

They are great for the random bar gigs, but frankly, I'd be fine if they didn't show to those. I don't mind having to stand on my own two feet. At these big festivals, they blend into the crowd (and generally do their own thing) its the new people, who want to shake my hand, bc their parents had my records. Or they know my name. And want a story. Which is fine too. I don't mind being people's story over brunch the next day or at the water cooler on Monday. 

I can't imagine having to be a new kid doing this now, all the competition to navigate.

I could never be that optimistic anymore. I have my patter, even in the conversations.

--

5000 people sitting in judgement of you.

Millions of gallons of beer (yuck) the color of pee, which will be turned into pee within the night

Maybe we should call the big venues the pee transformation centers.

Pee factories.

Ole factories.

Love Me After You've Stopped Liking Me

They were asked to write a wedding song for someone.  It was for a house concert for a woman (fan) who had gotten married at age 53.

They put it off until the last minute.

"I hope you keep loving me after you stop liking me.
"I hope you still like me after all the love is gone.
"The best part is that every morning, everything resets

She had been listening to Sondheim, which was always enough to throw him for a loop.  He wanted chorus and refrain, direct.  She wanted conversation, dialect, recessativo, and everything she wrote was a bridge.  Or worse, an art song.

"Marry Me a Little"
"How about a country house?"

"Don't go to bed angry, like the Bradys
"The first look in the morning you give me, should be a sleepy one
"We'll meet in dreams and
"Nah . . .
"Give it a rest.  Stop fighting when we are asleep.
"Keep loving me when I stop loving MYSELF!"
"Oooh-good one!!!"

And so they wrote their song.  Cobbled together.  He was writing the music, and she held back everytime she forgot how it was going.

There was no commitment to record it, beyond the living room recording made of the entire house concert.  The house fit about 30 people, it was tight, but cosy and sweet.

Years later, the bootleg tape became more famous than the recording they made for their 2nd album. It was silly and funny and serious and you could tell, cobbled together.  Fans thought it was such a delight to discover this, them true and enjoying each other in front of an audience.

It was exactly the kind of sound that would make their bootleg live albums so famous. After they had died, it was great to hear them more alive than they had ever intended to be heard.  The fan base was much bigger at the concerts. Their albums were well-crafted sounds of nothing.

Except . . . 

Hurt So Bad

She met Bobby Hart.

It Can Be Love Enough

She loved Show Tunes.

Broadway, preferably from the 50's and 60's, but she knew everything.  Said it was part of Theater 101, whatever that meant.  She argued that since some of his old stuff was in the same category as Show Tunes ("Heck ,TV counts as a show!"), he should consider expanding his own repertoire.

He refused.

To rile him, one of her favorite songs was one of unbridled optimism.  There was a dark turn to it as well, for dramatic overtones. He could never tell if it was a way of her making fun of him or not.  HIs old music as junk food or bubblegum. Versus the vitamins he was playing now.  Blues, the Important Stuff. The stuff that he could barely get a mention of, the LONG profiles of him, focusing on a 3 year stint in his entire long (LONG) life.  What he had for breakfast when he was 25, and incidentally, high out of his mind.

He wished he had a way to tell all those young kids what it was like.  What FAME actually meant.  On the spectrum, his life was pretty good, not quite the evil tinge of Monica Lewinsky (although there were plenty of sexual indiscretions-some of which he probably should have been arrested for, most of which he regretted.  Of the ones he could remember clearly)

When she sang to him, she played with sounding miserable, slightly off-key, but not quite. She was best at comedic timing, which made her cartoon voice tolerable.  And the glory notes in the song, made her shine like the sun as she turned towards him.  Those were the moments when he got a glimmering of what his fans felt.

In those moments, he was her groupie.  Undying love.

"Sing Happy" from "Flora, the Red Menace"

Tomorrow He's A Turnip

After one of their fights, and after a few too many, he found himself in the lobby listening to her caterwauling in the empty theater.

She did it out of a passive-aggressive need to have her voice heard.  And he imagined, how she was already living in a future where she hated him for being gone.  Rather than an ugly present where he imagined she hated him for being present.

She wasn't enough of a drama queen to actually do it in front of an audience, and force everyone to watch her perform her pain.  He actually admired her for that.  For all the things about her that were the opposite of him.

People came up to him, trying to start a conversation.  But at the end of the evening, all his charm had worn off, and, he suspected, all his glamour.  The people who came up now were the groupies of the groupies, the boyfriends who wanted a broken memory. Of him, tired and old at the end of the night.  An emasculated dragon, a drunken defanged demon.  The joke about him being the only exception to their rule of fidelity.  ("My girlfriend wouldn't want him, except as a pity fuck")

He stood (or sat) guard outside the door, until she was done.  The stagehands had struck and she only had her headphones.  Next time he should bribe the stagehands to let her into the soundbooth after hours.  He'd rather Judy's voice was blasted in the room, and the poor girl would scream to drown her out.  It would be an easier ride home if she were the one who didn't have a voice, instead of him.  Sometimes silence was better.






"The Man That Got Away"

The Dearest Things I Know

That night, what would turn out to be their last night, in more ways than one, although neither of them could know it for sure, was beautiful.

He asked for a silly lullaby.  He hadn't heard her sing in 10 years. She hadn't sung in all that time, except when thinking about him. It sentimental evenings alone, when she was in love with anyone else who wasn't him.  Other drunks, other egotists, the ones she got tired of. Or woke up to, when the dream was over.

"All the things you are", he cued up.  Before she could say no. A whispersing, she approached the lyrics tenderly, like they would disappear like fog, like a ghost, like they might wake the both of them.

It always used to soften her, make her laugh. Better than sex. And he knew every honest compliment had hit home already. It was an old theater trick, pretend and then it's suddenly real,

He got her to say the lyrics, as if she meant them. And then she did.

And when she looked into his eyes, they both began to cry. At how much they had always treasured each other. For him, it was the regret of never proposing, for her, even with his complete absence for a decade, how she still loved him, every day.  Tears, simple, filling up her eyes until they spilled onto him, his rolling back along the crows feet of the map of his face.

She climbed into the hospital bed in the dining room during the bridge of the song. He opened his arms to her. She snuggled in, them kissing each other lightly on the cheeks. 

How they had meant everything to each other. Waiting around for perfection, the time on the road was their grand romance.

And now, they embraced at the end of their lives, a sudden rush of emotion.   Telling each other how much love still and always existed. 50 and 70, not a Romeo & juliet by any means.

They would awake the next morning, more at peace with their past than they had ever been.

Ready for their new future.

Buffalo and Springfield

WPOM

He was a little late for everything until the time when he finally caught up with fate.  You only need the once.

The Greenwich Village Scene was over by the time he arrived.  Left to the tourists and businessmen in suits looking for the next Dylan or the next lay.  Beatlemania had left all the folkies and their empty passing-the-hats more cynical & thundercloud shadowed than the mushroom cloud.

The ride across the country landed them in LA a little late.

His first wife was beautiful.  And frankly, not interested in him.  He wasn’t very ambitious, except when it came to the ladies.  He went after what he wanted; trouble was, he never could tell when to stop.  Until he found his wife in bed with the Comic from the group.  And then with the Cute One.  And by the time she was interested in the Mysterious Cowboy, he had stopped trying.  Stopped trying, but hadn’t stopped caring.  He had been living off a steady diet of a new drink every night, a new woman every week, a new drug every month, and a new mansion every year (he kept it up for 2 years, so it amounted to 2 houses in the Hollywood Hills after crashing with his friend on living on his porch for 6 months.  Laurel Canyon days seemed like living in dog years. 1 year there was like 7 anywhere else.  Burn out was all too common.

The same for the second, who was more than happy to give into a man who seemed so happy to be in love.  One day she told him, Sometimes that’s the gift you give to another human. You let them play out their love on you.  Maybe it makes you a better person, maybe it encourages you to open up.  I never opened.  I’m sorry.

He was drunk permanently at that point.  When he thought about that period in his later life, his stomach would clench.  Same thing with taxes, he didn’t want to ever account for time he couldn’t recall.

In his later years, he dreamed of the feeling of being late.  Again and again, he was wandering the streets of a dream NYC, a village where the side streets ran in a circle, there were no corners.  When he went into buildings, there were only stairs and never any exits.

His dreams of California were similar, not the endless sunset highways which he thought of in his daydreams, but dark traffic nights.  He’d be blocked in, somehow. stuck against a building on one side and a cliff on the other and traffic both in front and in back of him.  Even if it were a convertible, he couldn’t climb out.

Meanwhile, all the other men in America that lived parallel yet alternate versions of his life dreamed of his one perfect moment of timing.  If only they had cut their teeth in Greenwich Village and then gone to LA and walked into the agent’s office on cue.  The right place at the right time.  They’d be superstars, with women falling all over them, as many drugs and drinks as you could handle.  More.  What was the difference between him and them?  Not much, they reasoned.  If only I had been at the right place at the right time.

Not even his own perfect timing, it was a lot of knocking on doors, 3 years in hat-passing clubs and 6 months of dish-washering.  And in the end, it was his friend’s lucky break.  a friend, or a friend of a friend.  A doppleganger.  “Hey, you’re the guy who’s supposed to look like me,”  they would echo when they found each other on 12th street.  They joked about performing as a duo, like brothers, who would insult each other.  It was an idea which would resurface with actual brothers

Of walking into the agent’s office, as if on cue, “Where can we get a cute young boy who can play guitar like that?  You, except handsomer.”

NOTES

6:09pm, 4/4/15, Sat

Listening to Mixed Bag

Brina/Brian Wilson

Life goes on and on/like your favorite song (Beautiful Day)

What ever happened?

On the island (with Zoe Deschanel)

(Like Kokomo-Hollywood, California, couch potato heaven, beer belly heaven

Dickie-Do, My Stomach Sticks out further than my Dickie Do)

Grabbed book: For What its Worth about Buffalo Springfield

(at the BOX Hotel, fancy!! Had seen it from the bridge the first times I visited the hood, and crossed the bridge, LOOKING at the neighborhood from a different perspective, going in the direction of the Lobster Claw)

Reading about black hearse going one way, and a white van going the other

UTurn in heavy traffic, they caught each other

4/5ths of Buffalo Springfield

Neil Young (Hollywood Indian) and Stephen Stills (impatient cowboy) best of NYC & Canada

Boy Next Door, COmic, Dark one who played with his back to the audience (druggie)

Richie Havens doing Dylan’s “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands”, starts out instrumental (“Sooner or later, love is gonna get ya”)

Cash Your Dreams Before They Slip Away

"Catch your dreams?"

Ruby Tuesday, who could pin a name on you
(i.e. SHE could pin a name on YOU!)


FROM BOOK: Dylan “I look like Robert Frost, but I feel Like Billy the Kid”
Actual Line: I look like Robert ____

Que Sera Sera
"The future's not HOURS to see"
==
Just walk away Renee: sounded like it was sung in French, vague and running together
Left Bank as the name of the group
Renee
by Michael Brown
Monkees in Paris
the empty sidewalks on my/block are not the same
from deep inside the tears/I force to cry
If a foreigner heard this song, what would it sound like to them if they had to guess at the words?

Kinda Like Hot Pants

"Why did you leave me, that first time?"
"I don't know what you are talking about,"
"Yes, you do.  That VERY first concert you went to. You were dancing all up in my face, you were SO hot for me. And then you snuck into my room!"
"I did not!  What are you talking about?  It must've been another one of your groupies!"

He knew it was her.
She remembered that night and was hoping if she denied it enough times, he'd forget.
They had just had sex, Recreational, Fun, Post-Show Sex.  An 8 out of 10.
3 years on the road, together as an act, plus the 3 years before that.  Before.

She didn't want to tell him the reason she'd bailed. It seemed so silly now.

==
FLASHBACK to her 1st concert with him, her in the audience.
DANCING.  Wanting to strip for him right there on the floor!
Surprised at herself, and delighted at the same time.
After the show, she took a swig from a bottle she was carrying.  Spits it out into a plant in the hotel lobby.
Knocks on his door, "Room Service", she says in a forced deep tone.
He knows it's not Room Service.  Not from the hotel, anyway.

Opens the door, smiling at her, kindly but one eyebrow cocked.
She looks him in the eye and says, very carefully and deliberately.
"LET'S. FUCK."
He smiles and in a showy gracious manner, "Well, then, why don't you come in?"

She sighs with relief and walks 5 paces into the room, then stands awkwardly.
He wants to be a good host, offers her food from the fruit basket, offers her a boa (where did that come from?) an overpriced drink from the mini-bar.
"Can you give me a few minutes?  I have to see a man about a horse."
He grabs a paper and heads to the bathroom.

She's slightly dizzy and coming down from the dancing buzz.  Excited to be in his room, but now what? SEX?  Really?  She suddenly feels like the dog who chased the car and caught it.

Sits on the bed.  Unbuttons her blouse.  Takes it off. Nervous that her bra isn't fancy enough.  Wonders if she should take it off.  Tries to strike a VERY sexy pose.

Suddenly, she hears him farting and making other bathroom noises. Begins to smile, and then is overtaken by a giggling fit and falls to the floor.  She quickly sobers up and gets dressed.

By the time he's opening the door (echoes of the toilet flush still in the air/the toilet flush lingering beyond any good sense of timing) he opens the door to an empty room.

She's gone. He shrugs and eats the apple she left behind.

==
Next Monday, at her radio station, there's a Big Announcement.  They are bringing on a new DJ and it's up to her to show him the ropes. He starts next week.

Meanwhile, she tells a co-worker about how she tried to seduce "a boy" and couldn't go through with it.  But she wonders if that was her big chance.  "I was on the subway platform, and I realized that I will NEVER get that close to a perfect seduction again"

Her boss nudges her.  "You are gonna love me forever for this.  You'll never ask for a raise again,"

HE walks in to the boardroom. Long table.  SHE IS SHOCKED and tries to pretend.
HE ribs her, but she wont' take the bait. SCENE.

==
Lying in bed.
Really?  You want to know?
Because I could hear you farting in the bathroom.
But I KNOW how much you love it NOW!
They wrestle and giggle, he tries to get her under the covers.
==
She had been afraid that she would regret that night the rest of her life.








*Tango Patti Griffith

Oooh La La!

Do somethign we both know!
How am I supposed to read your mind?

But he did.

They had a meeting of the minds arounf the 1950's.  She still liked her standards (stuff from the 1930's, he thought it was corny) He liked guitar power ballads, lots of stuff that he was uite versitile one, but wasn't conducive to singalongs.

They both adored the Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly.

They turned to face each other, in profile to the audience.  A surprise and a joke at the same time. (and an in-joke was born)  She liked to do a twang with her voice, he liked harmonies.



Wake Up Little Susie by the Everly Brothers

The Toughest Road I Know

The toughest road she knows does not have alcoholism on it.  Or denial. Or mental illness.

There is poverty  And a lack of audiences. And being sick on the road, and tired, and arriving in tiny bars with no audience or payments.  It contained the knowledge and probability of accidents.  It contained heart attacks and death (but ignored the possibility of suicides)

It included having a love that died young, or of alcohol or of a drug overdose, but it was all quickly and beautifully and dramatically done.  A Playboy-Clean version of passion, not Penthouse messy.

It included love, and losing love, and groupies and competition-both real and imagined.  It included being in the shadows. It included luggin all the equipment both in and out.  It included lots of tears.

It included everything that was in all the Hollywood movies and some of what was included in the music.  Little did she know that the lyrics and notes would turn and twist like the road before them.  Just when she thought she understood a song, or had internalized it and sung it a million times, a trapdoor would open and she'd be floating in space, the rug pulled out from under her (or whatever that quote is from PT's song)


She had no idea what she would actually be facing, how terrifying it was.  How much there was no controlling it.  And even though he had seen everything by age 42, there were STILL surprises in store for him.  The toughest road he knew was not even a beginning.


Someday Soon- Judy Collins

Cry For Something that Might've Bean

They were on 1-95 somewhere, munching on Ramen Noodles (dry) and cheese sticks, when it came on.  Even the DJ was making fun of poor Frank.

A disco version of some hit of his. He was trying to keep up (keep upright), while disco lights swirled around him.  You could picture him in the center of the dance floor, looking embarrassed.  The agent/adviser would be asking him to pose like Vinnie Barbarino in a minute.

"This is every singer's nightmare!"
"It's not so bad. You can hear the bones of the song," she had loved that phrase when she heard it and tried to work it into as many conversations as she could when trying to be Smart about music.

"Please.  When you see me, up on a stage, trying to update my music like that.  Just shoot me."

She refused to say the oath out loud and just nodded.  She had no idea how to tell him that that's exactly who he was.  A 45ish over-the-hill former semi-rock star, the least popular member of a 4 person band, the band she still had to explain to people.  And everyone still mistook him for Ringo. Popular for 2 years, and then HE was the guy who left first.  Little did he know that was as good as it would get.
And the act, last night, and then this afternoon, at bars, at rodeos and farm festivals, when she was only one of 5 people in the audience.  He was on stage, trying SO HARD, for jokes, for laughs, for attention.  She loved him in all his efforts, still smiled at every bad joke.  Tried to warm up the audience by making friends with them.  Tried to act as if she wasn't his intern from a different job.  Tried to act like an audience member.

But last night, he was Sinatra doing disco.

"The song does have great bones.  I should dig out his earlier recordings of it, "

But just as the DJ had been making fun of him before, he put on the recording from the 60's, a decade earlier.

"That's a guy who has just had a one night stand with a girl who he wants to marry in the morning.  He's trying to play it off, and he knows that she's much too free, or something like that.  But he wants her.  Wants the whole she-bang."

And then, his first recording, solemn, lots of strings.  Slowly, the strings taking to flight.  He'd rather say no, because you are driving him crazy.  He'd rather die a lonely old man than be just one of your followers.  And it's breaking his heart, because this is the ultimatum, he's laid his heart at your feet.  But he can walk offstage proud.  That's an actor!!"

At this monologue, she knew that he was being won over.  She loved the corny songs. The "Standards"  the Broadway show tunes.  And he did too, sometimes.  individually, not as a whole.  She imagined it was like segregation.  You professed to hate a whole race, except for a few exceptions-the people you knew.  And then, before you knew it, all your friends were black and you were happy.  The End.

Can I believe the magic of your size?

She had always heard he was big. 

Like with most musicians, it was all hype.