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Blues For Life Benefit - Torch Club's MySpace Blog |

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... of what actually matters. So we're down at the bar last night, doing the usual set plus some odd ones thrown in for variety. Tonight is a benefit show for a little five year old baby girl who's fighting for every day that she gets to stay on the planet, as she has Leukemia. Everybody's kicking in their tips, bartenders, servers, musicians, etc ...

Her Daddy is there, taking care of what needs to be taken care of, and talking to folks about his little girl and how she's doing. I don't know if I could do that if I knew I was going to lose my baby. In between songs he asks me if we can play Sam Stone by John Prine. I tell him the only two Prine songs I know well enough to play for people are Dear Abby and Angel from Montgomery.

"Well, that's just fine. We sing Angel from Montgomery together"

Jesus. We can all bitch about how we're under-appreciated, under-paid, don't have a Dusenburg, a mansion on the hill, four keys of blow, what-have-you, but ...

Anyway, we sang the song (one of my all-time favorites since I was a wee li'l bugger meself, ALL kinds of memories for me) He thanked us and said he sure wished his little girl could have been there. We talked outside for a bit about this, that, and the other thing.

Hmmmmmm ... What exactly am I trying to get across here? I'm not entirely sure. I guess that despite all the pains in the ass that go along with playing music on a microscopic scale in this here benighted backwater, sometimes the rewards are greater than can be had anywhere else, and the petty shit melts away. Just to be a conduit for music, and to share a moment, however brief, with someone is, even in circumstances as heart-breaking as this ... well, you kinda know what I'm trying to say.

So, to R......., thanks for the request, the song, the talk, and thanks for helping to remind me of the things I'm thankful for, and the real reasons music exists. I hope you sing with your little girl every time you get the chance.

So, yeah. Dug out the ol' Al Green boxed set (Yes bitches, be jealous!) from underneath Mom's truck seat the other day. It's been in there for three years, left over from a trip to Oregon. A little moldy, but still way better than finding two hunnert bucks in yesterday's pants.

Now, I'm a slavering junky for genius level lyrics; Mark Knopfler, Andrew Bird, Mingus (Faubus rules you with an iron fist), what-have-you, etc, etc, etc.

 But in the middle eight of "So You're Leaving", the Right Hon. Rev. Green and one other voice (prolly a Chalmers or a Rhodes, I dunno) come in simple two part harmony.

"Boo-boo-boo-boo-boo-boom-boo-b-boo."

Supply me with one single instance of music more sublimely glorious than the above-mentioned, and I will gladly buy you a hamburger Tuesday the next.

     "Of all our murky inventions, guilt is at once the most devious, the most comical, the most painful. Was it planted by the group pressure of the tribe to keep the potentially dangerous individual off balance? Is it set in the psychotissue, watered and cultivated by ductless glands? Is guilt the unconcious device by which man cries for attention in an unperceiving world, or can it be that the final human pleasure is pain? Whatever its origin, we scream like cats in copulation, wolf-bay at the moon, whip ourselves with the exquisite thorns of contempt, and generally have a hell of a good time at it."

Chapter 30, "A President Is Born", Page 185

From "Sweet Thursday" by John Steinbeck

 

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    "Max Lamb awoke to these words: "You need a legacy." He and Skink had bummed a ride in the back of a U-Haul truck. They were bucking down U.S. Highway One among two thousand cans of Campbell's broccoli cheese soup, which was being donated to hurricane victims by a Baptist church in Pascagoula, Mississippi. What the shipment lacked in variety it made up for in Christian goodwill."

Chapter 11, Page 112.

 From "Stormy Weather" by Carl Hiaasen

... to my Japanese car. I retired my '64 stepside about two years ago, and have been driving a Subaru since then. I had occasion to drive my folks' early eighties diesel Chivvy Blazer around town yesterday. Jeeeeeeeezus! It's like driving around a damn drunken air-craft carrier in a rough sea. Sways, creaks, grunts, no straight lines ... I liked it, it made me feel all patriotic and shit. Plus, I didn't hafta do yoga before I got in the damn thing. Weird.

So I dug out my Aretha Franklin casette for motivational dish-washing music. Damn!

I Never Loved a Man

Do Right Woman

Respect

Chain of Fools

Dr. Feel-good

Baby, I Love You

Since You've Been Gone

Spirit in the Dark

Natural Woman

Oh Me, Oh My

Rock Steady

When she was in her prime ... I defy you to name a better singer, writer or piano player. the E-pit-o-me of soul. Ain't nobody can touch 'Retha with a ten foot pole. Nobody.

So, the old lady made me go through the drive-thru @ Der Weinerschnitzel today. On a whim, I ordered what I thought was essentially a Mountain Dew slurpee. Turns out it was an ice cream float made with the Dew. Now, I'm not normally a junkie for that nuclear waste neon green sludge, but I'll be goddamned if that wasn't the best thing that I've put in my gullet for at least a coupla months. Kudos to the master race of fast fodder! All hail Der Weinerschnitzel! May their reign of greasy corndog-ism last for one thousand years!

Ahhhhhhhh...I grind you to dust under my iron heel. I am wroth. Feel the heat of my demonic gaze and tremble. Soil yourself at the sound of my approaching boots, cubicle ferret. Damn, I was on hold for days! Well worth the effort, tho. Dingalated finance weasels, try an' jack mssr. le-moi for a spurious late fee, eh? I chortle like as unto a cherub at your puny efforts. Satisfaction is mine, saith the gourd.

Studio time booked! Yayuh!