Bars of Music...

I'm trying to break the habit of silence. For the last say three years or so I've lived in deep silence, I pretty well had to for the wife. Any noise at all and she'd lose her focus, get confused, and being confused get frightened, and the fright would often turn to anger. It wasn't her fault, but it wasn't easy on me, not at all. Still though, the silent times have shown me just how much of my life was and is tied to music, triggered by music, stored in music.

Now that I'm trying to reclaim my life, reformat my life of course there's music involved, like I said, I have so many of my emotions, so much of my history tagged to this tune or the other. What I realized is that where music makes a great marker for a life, sort of an emo-gps kind of thing it can also become a cage for your life, every song you've ever heard trying to drag you back to see the world, feel the world, as you did when the song was imprinted with a certain frame of reference. Music can be a cage just as easily as a storage locker, you really do need to be careful in that way.

After mulling this thought over from a variety of angles while working on a pint of cheap whiskey I've decided that about the only way to make sure I don't get locked in, one way or another, is to compel the feelings from the tunes into words. I free write to Hearts of Space fairly regularly, let music new to me instigate emotions on a sort of random play shuffle if you will, but I've never really tried the same technique on music that has a history for me. What follows is a ramble through 'Nos generated by a couple of recent play-lists… I suppose it would fall somewhere between emo-exhibitionism and a cyber confession. But what the hell, why not.

For a Fistful of Dollars _____Ennio Morricone : The rhythm, the whistle, this is the music from the land of my father, this music carries the courage of that land, those peoples. It was a lonely land, really… open range, horses, cattle… I've always felt compelled to the idea I had to live up to that land, had to build into myself the strength to live on a whistle, and little more, no matter where or how I lived...

Stray Cat Strut _____Stray Cats: Ah, now this one? This one is so juvenile, this one is Saturday night cool, out prowling for some pussy… lay a smile on the sister, watch her eyes, watch her stance, put it between the lines where she can read it if she wants… hey babe, yea, it's a gonna be long night, what say we help each other forget just how dark it really is? Oh? Well, that's up to you sweetheart… I'm game for just about anything once.

King of the Road _____Roger Miller: *chuckle* Where you usually found yourself the morning after… yea, she was good fun and a decent lay and no, nobody worried about it when the moon set before dawn, but… yea. Soon enough reality kicks you in the ass, and you wind up cataloging what you have to work with between now and when the sun sets again. Being as how I was a vagabond child, one of those the hinky people looked down on, the kind Dicken's would have called a street urchin I kind of adopted this as likely to be my fate, after all, no way THEY were going to let me be part of THEIR world.

Land Down Under _____Men at Work: Yea, self fulfilling prophecies fully illustrated and animated by MaryJane herself. Traveling in a fried out combi… head full of zombie… ok, I suspect some good hash bedded down in good old seedy Mexican qualifies… been there, done that, dreamed a lot of sweet dreams while the miles rumbled by… a lot of my best ideas came out of those dreams, sometimes from the dream, sometimes from the shadow it cast. You have to know how to harvest your dreams for pot to do you any good.

The Israelites _____Desmond Dekker & The Aces: Yup, you harvest your dreams, and then you figure out what the fuck, they're just dreams, no one gives a damn. So you shake 'em off, grin at the day, shoot down some java and head out the door because dreams or no dreams you got earn a living… swing a hammer, drive a tractor, jam some gears for the man… this one calls to mind those first jobs, when I changed jobs every three months just to keep the boredom at bay. Learned a lot in those days… you can learn half of any trade in ninety days. The other half might take a lifetime, but you can get the first half down in 90 days.

Combat Zone _____The Nylons: These guys? I just love their harmony, they're great at what they do. My dad didn't think much of the Beatles, but he would have appreciated their skill. Dad died so young, I was only twelve. I never really got to know him as an adult, I've had to piece together what kind of man he really was from fragments of memories, the anecdotes of those who did know him. Sadly, the more I've learned of him the more I realize how badly mismatched he and my mom really were. You couldn't lie to him, he'd see through it, he carried the gift of discernment. And mom had a secret, and secrets are first cousin to lies…

Big Iron _____Marty Robbins: One of Marty's very best ballads, all of the western mythos in one song. The Arizona ranger? Kind of like Clint's role in Hang 'Em High? Oh yea, fan that Colt, let the recoil bounce you target to target, don't waste the time to aim, just throw the bullet… your wrist knows what to do, if you don't get in your wrists' way the bad guys will all be dead and the world will be sunshine and rainbows again… yea, the western mythos so well sung, so well. Of course, mine isn't a Colt, but… it works exactly the same way.

Nashville Blues _____The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Teamster music, the clack of the mules, the click of the rails, riding the bounce over the great divide or riding the retro rockets through the turbulence to a soft landing… yea, I've always equated this music to having a cargo to deliver somewhere, some forgotten mining camp on top of the mountains or on Pandora 3 orbiting way, way out beyond Sirius. Haulin is haulin, the rest of it is just details.

Riders in the Sky _____The Sons Of The Pioneers: These guys my dad did know, and admired. He loved to sing, had a great voice with a couple of years of professional training. My dad started into the music industry, he was studying when he met my mom. But I'm pretty sure that the more he got to know the business the less he liked the people in that industry… and he took the Ricky Nelson option… he decided he'd rather drive a truck. Somehow I don't think my mom ever forgave him for that decision, she had a streak of the social climber's ambition to her… yea, the ghosts from that decision haunted his life, and hers, and ours… my dad was a true and genuine cowboy and he may have saved his soul from chasing the devil's heard for all eternity, but damn, he lived with a lot of hell on earth by way of paying for it.

Loreley _____Blackmore's Night : Ah, yesss… (sip of whiskey)… total change of pace… I can see her, eyes closed, smiling, hands over her head clapping to the rhythm, whirling bare breasted as she danced, the little bangles around her hips taking up the counterpoint rhythm… oyyy, oh yea. Sweet Alex. She loved to dance, and dancing loved her… the prudes and preachers can go fuck a billy goat by the full moon for all I care (poor billy goat), a lady who can move like that is art, and you don't cover up art like that… you savor it, feel it, let it have it's way with your dreams, and cherish the way it has… here's to the ladies who dance, here's to sweet Alex… Cheers! ('nos drains the last two ounces, tosses the bottle away…)

Self Portrait _____Blackmore's Night: Another one from Richie and Candice, one I don't recall Alex ever played… she burned so bright in those days, so bright… to bright to be an accident. I love the woman, and I'm so very sure that a few years before we met she'd looked at that self portrait, she'd looked and said no, this isn't me, this isn't love, it isn't, I'll not let this counterfeit destroy my joy… everything this song is? That is what she is not, to her will, by the strength of a good heart… no, she didn't go down, she fought and won victory noble, and in my eyes so very poignant, so few will dare such a fight… a good human, a good woman… may God bless and keep her and hers safe… yea, I do love her. I don't know the details of her story, but I don't need to. I know there's a story there to tell. What I saw doesn't happen by accident, it happens when a soul decides to make a stand against the darkness in our world. Shine on sweet sister, teach your children well… the world needs all of that light that can be found.

Cat People _____David Bowie: fire, that fire… David Bowie is such a master of the human condition. I don't love this song, but at times I lust after it… all the rage that has to be set somewhere to keep it harmless, lest the rage and the lust turn me away from the light… oh yea, I know enough about what makes people tick I'd make one hell of a master if I took to the realms of the inverted… I know this about myself, I know that the only way I'll keep my soul from chasing the devil's herd is by never forgetting that fact, never letting it grow on me, never surrendering to the rage, sinking to match the betrayals… it is part of why Alex is so important to me, her example… in so many more ways than one she's stood as my guardian angel.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly _____Ennio Morricone: I'd thought of using the Hugo Montenegro version, the AM hit, but no, it should be performed as Ennio wrote it. Here I find, feel, that fight between the light and the dark… the slash of the shadow, the press of the light, stroke and counterstroke where the field of battle is the soul of mankind… call me Don Quixote if you wish, I don't give a damn. I feel it, core deep, that fight that is every man and every woman's challenge, to defend their soul, keep it for their own…

The Way _____Fastball: This song arrived later in life, it isn't so very old, and it is a great work… for a time it seemed as if the boys were singing my hope … when I first heard this song Barb's health was failing, her sanity was leaving, the terror in her, the terror and the courage… yea, for a time I really thought if God were to be merciful what they were singing would be our fate… I can't listen to it without the shields, certainly not in public. It didn't happen that way, of course, I'm here to be writing about it. But if it had? I wouldn't have complained.

Call Me _____Blondie: Ego baby, oh yea, raw ego fed by her plea, her pride sacrificed to what you have to offer she can't get anywhere else…

Sultans of Swing _____Dire Straits: I suppose, I suppose this song appeals to me because it speaks to being different… they don't give a damn about any trumpet playing band… it ain't what they call rock and roll. This song was popular when disco was just starting to peak, when the culture was splitting into yet another fork in the road… I never liked disco. It felt so totally fake, just as plastic as could be.

I'm On Fire _____Bruce Springstien: My fave by the boss… not so very many ever try and craft a work that speaks to a man's heart. There's a good size chunk of the world doesn't even want to admit we have one. I don't know this, but I'm willing to bet there's not one women's libber out of any two dozen who would even listen to this song, it would be contradicting the foundations of their bigotries, the bottom base assumptions that let them split the world in half and live just like the lizard brain warmongers do in a simplistic world of us, and them…

You Only Live Twice _____Nancy Sinatra: the national anthem of every dreamer everywhere, and yes, I've been a dreamer all my life. Think I was maybe fourteen when this song started making sense to me… I started watching for that stranger who beckons you on…

The Boys Of Summer _____Don Henley: youth dies slow, youth dies hard, but it always dies. You can stay young, but you can't keep your youth.

The Wayward Wind _____Gogi Grant: I've always felt like my mom adopted this song as her lament for my father's choice to return to a simpler life in preference to the bright lights and the glamour of the music industry. He was doing session work, was making headway, had the voice to have done well through the fifties… I don't know, likely will never know, why he left. Something happened to him just like something happened to mom. So many things only known by the shape of the shadow they cast…

Unchained Melody _____Righteous Brothers: Do I even need to say anything about this one? I listen to it, and they're all there, all the good women who shared a night, a summer, a dream, a lifetime…

Hollywood Nocturne _____BrianSetzer: this is one of the most terrifying songs I've ever heard. This song is, in it's own way, every bit the equal of ghost riders, it is a song of damnation, that eternity in the lonely surrealism of self deception… hell can be so many different things, take so many forms… what bothers me is that I'm as likely to hear this song in my head walking into a church as into some strip joint where the eyes of so many glow with that dark red light Brian talks about… I fear that form of damnation, and have no idea what I should do to avoid it…

Love Is A Stranger _____Eurythmics: sing it Annie, maybe a few will hear what you're saying… maybe a few will survive for having heard, maybe a few will even save a few who didn't hear, or didn't understand…maybe… sing it Annie.

The Future _____Leonard Cohen: I've got to hand it to Master Cohen, he taught me as much about the conservative mind set with this song as say Alex taught me about the power of the erotic… what a master he is. When I first heard this song I didn't realize how long he'd been around, didn't realize he's a contemporary of Bob Dylan. If I could I'd play a prank on the Republicans I'd hi-jack their PA system at the next convention for just long enough to play the assembled delegates this song at the loudest volume the arena system could sustain… I'd pay money for the news footage of their faces when this totally destroyed their complacency and their hypocrisy as they realized that even if they don't know what it is that motivates them there are others who do understand…

Seven Bridges Road _____Eagles: just a change of pace song… a bit of rest in some good harmony and a pretty picture painted in words before the last track, the one that just lays it out to clear to ignore, all the bullshit, the hype and the hope…

FleshFailures/Sunshine _____Original Cast of Hair