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  • 27. I’ve Been Trying to Get a Message Through the Air to You

    6:00 p.m. Tower Cafe, The Police on the headphones.  That’s a bit contrived, though.  This whole set up is, beginning with that notation.  I have made the same notation on every journal entry for the last twenty years.  Every Tuesday evening I come here, sit alone with notebook, sketchbook, book book, and either draft what…

  • Deep Cuts: Ten Live Songs For Your Playlist

    Hard to believe but there was a time before YouTube – before cable television and home video for that matter.  We ate the music we were served and we liked it, said the crusty old curmudgeon.  Live albums were an opportunity to hear our favorite music in a new way, and they still are.  Here are some…

  • 26. This Is the First Song Off Our New Album

    The Seventies laid claim to some great live albums, never mind that many of them were created in a studio.  The Woodstock soundtrack kicked off the decade, which to me was roughly the equivalent of stone tablets directly from Mount Sinai.  By the time I clued into the whole thing Woodstock was celebrating its tenth…

  • 25. A Live Wire, Barely A Beginner

    Ricky Brent was my first friend in South Carolina.  My behind the house neighbor, a short path through the kudzu and dense loblolly pines, our friendship was inevitable.  He was a big boy, tall and heavy, with a drinker for a father and an Irish mother.  Once while trying on a gentleman persona I knocked…

  • 24. Thank You Driver For Getting Me Here

    When we moved to South Carolina I decided that I wanted to take the bus to school.  There was no particular need for this — my mother worked now, so she could always drop me off in the mornings, and my oldest sister was soon to get a driver’s license.  No, the only reason I…

  • Deep Cuts: Five Reasons Hendrix Is For Everyone

    Forty years ago the man made four records and then he died.  Since then he’s been suspended in amber, the wild man with the headband and the flaming guitar.  I like that version of Hendrix, but it’s terribly unfortunate that a man so complex has been reduced to a single cardboard cutout.  Jimi Hendrix was a gifted songwriter and musician who…

  • 23. Here Comes the Savage Day

    (Note: Period correct dialogue ahead.  You’ve been warned.) New Year’s Eve, 1979.  Time to move into the Eighties; time to live a Killing Joke song.  This was the first turn of a decade I was old enough to understand.  I was two years old on New Year’s Eve 1969.  Every memory that I owned was…

  • 22. Life Begins at the Hop

    One morning before home room the perky girls began tacking hand-lettered signs all over the school.  Two weeks from Friday we were invited to attend a sock hop in the school gym.  It sounded pretty old-timey to me, like something from Happy Days.  On the other hand, the girls seemed pretty excited about it, and where…

  • Answers to Google Searches

    Many people land here due to a search engine.  I assume most of them are looking for photos or music to download.  I always feel bad when I see that someone searched “Alice Cooper,” for example.  Sorry, buddy – there’s nothing here but a bunch of words. But occasionally I get traffic based on very…

  • 21. Who Are You?

    Money was tight for twelve-year-old me:  allowance, what I could get mowing lawns, that’s about it.  Used record stores didn’t exist, at least not in Spartanburg, and new records were expensive.  Enter the cutout bin.