Volume 8 – #6 – June 2005
It’s very hot in Texas, but I had a good time watching a television special on meteors in my air-conditioned house. If I wasn’t so busy playing all over the map, I would just kick back, lay back and let my mind wander from pleasant thought to pleasant thought. Everyone knows how I love to just kick back and lay back. That last sentence isn’t exactly true, but, actually, I have been kicking back a little too much with Stacie, the office cat. It’s just too tempting. She wants to play with her string and sit in her basket and run through her fun tube and climb on the shelves and knock stuff off the table. Anyway, my mind did wander a little as I was playing spaceship with Stacie the other day. I recalled once doing a performance with Spanky MacFarland (from the LITTLE RASCALS/OUR GANG fame) at a mall somewhere. We set up acoustically on some risers and he sat at a table and smiled while we played. We even learned the LITTLE RASCALS/OUR GANG theme song for the festivities. I think Spanky stood up and talked to the audience a while about the good life and then we played again. I also remembered meeting Alexis Korner on a couple of occasions in Austin around 1980 or 1981. He was very enthusiastic about our sound and seemed to understand exactly what we were doing, but I didn’t know anything about him. He was just a nice, happy chap from England who, I eventually learned, was considered the father of British blues and, in fact, discovered the Rolling Stones, among others. Brave Combo has been fortunate to receive the support of so many people with serious widespread influence. Anyway, Stacie decided I should feed her, so I poured out some cat food and drifted back to a Halloween gig I played with a band called Room at an indoor flea market around 1976. Among the entertainers was an old guy playing a big circus organ, a man with a whip, another man wearing a black bra dancing around in front of some local farmers and two 10-year-old boys struggling unhappily with a song they learned at school. “Billy” was behind a full drum kit, but he only played the snare and “Rusty” played trumpet. A 90-year-old woman, who came dressed as a skeleton/ghost, collapsed at one point in the evening. Everything stopped as paramedics carried her out. I think she died that night. And although it has a sad ending, my memory of this event is beautifully gritty, rich with texture and depth.
Speaking of wandering minds, I’ve been looking through stacks of books and magazines at my house and have some items to share with you. In the booklet, 23 MOST FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT LICE, I found these interesting tidbits. Did you know that lice only live about 48 hours and that head lice only live on your head and rarely leave your body, whereas body lice live in the seams of your blankets and sheets and only get on you to feed? A nit is a louse egg. That would make a good name for a play about, well, anything. Another booklet, 2001 SOUTHERN SUPERSTITIONS says that if mice cry loudly at night, there will be rain. It also says that if you accidentally put your clothes on inside out you will have good fortune and if you swallow the first forget-me-not of the season, you will get a new dress of the same color. An ad with a picture of a sleeping woman that appeared in DR. MILES 1934 WEATHER ALMANAC states that the woman of today keeps Dr. Miles’ Nervine in her medicine cabinet for prompt relief from nervousness, sleeplessness, crankiness, restlessness, worry, the blues, indigestion and headache. It seems that Dr. Miles also made a cactus compound for heart trouble. A book about the surrealist/photographer Man Ray says that he and Picasso became acquainted in Paris in the 1920s. A portrait of Picasso by Man Ray appeared in the July 22, 1922 issue of VANITY FAIR. The body plan of the earthworm is a tube within a tube, to quote a passage from the book, THE EARTHWORM by Alfred Wolfson. A brochure announcing an upcoming “Revelations Seminar” suggests that we should avoid the mark of the beast. And in the book, ANIMAL LIBERATION, Peter Singer asks, “When are experiments on animals justifiable?” Hmm, I experiment on Stacie all the time. It’s fun to see if she’s more interested in her fuzzy ball or the big sombrero. Beyond that, if it’s not for the animal’s benefit, I’m not open to much. Neither is Stacie.
Speaking of human intervention, Jane and I had to put our oldest dog, Cookie, to sleep recently. We’ve been talking about it for more than a year. It was very difficult and very, very sad for all involved. Cookie (a friend’s 3-year-old named her), a floppy-eared Beagle-mix, showed up in our neighborhood about 16 years ago. She had probably escaped from her original family’s backyard and, for some reason, decided to hang out on our corner. After three days of wondering where she belonged, the weather turned bad, it started to rain and I picked her up and put her in our back yard. And that’s where she lived for the rest of her life (to be exact, in the house, 95%, and in the yard, 5%), although her wanderlust never went away. She wanted to go, go, go, even up to the end. She thought the world was just a carefree, let’s-run-and-play, kind of place. She even learned how to climb over the fence, but we humans proved to be smarter and solved that dilemma. She was a sweet little girl. Everybody liked her. Boy, the stack of cremation boxes is getting pretty tall.
HOLIDAYS is moving along at the slowest rate possible, but it is moving along. We just don’t have the time to wrap it up. Everything’s finished, I think. Whatever, we will definitely have them in our hands, ready to put into your hands by the Blob’s Park show in August, which will be just a few days before Westfest. The CD will include extensive liner notes and exciting new photos. And the jacket will be stunning!
A TIME TO CELEBRATE. I was in a 7-11 store the other day and noticed a poster announcing the 40th Anniversary of The Slurpee. I distinctly remember when Slurpees arrived in Texarkana. One Sunday night, after church, we pre-teeners had a party at our youth director’s house and we all decided to walk to 7-11 and have a Slurpee. I preferred the pink one, but might have cola every now and then. To be honest, I didn’t like either very much, but it was fun to fill up the cup. I always felt just a little nauseated after finishing one. Viva la Slurpee!
CAT JOKE
Wife (opening a can of cat food): Here, Kitty Kitty!
Husband: How much we payin’ for that stuff?
Wife: About 59 cents a can.
Husband: Hell, that cat’s eatin’ better’n we are.
Wife: No, he’s not. That steak in your belly cost ten damn dollars.
Doesn’t it feel good to end on an up note with a chuckle. Okay boys and girls, let’s all line up and march in a circle until we get so sleepy we can march no further. At that point, we’ll all hitchhike to the lumberyard to buy the material to build our own beds. Please come out to see Brave (Determined) Combo, redefined and realigned. We’ll party near you soon. But for now, it’s sleep. Goodnight, Cookie.