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.