Hey everyone,
Well, it’s 6:30 and still pitch black outside. Seasons change and time moves on. It seems like an eternity but this is only the 51st time I’ve encountered the season known as fall. That doesn’t seem like too many when you think of seasons. It feels like they come around so fast but yet they really don’t. Slow and steady wins the race I guess; unless of course your opponent is fast and steady.
I’ve been trying to straighten out my cd collection the last few days. It’s more work than I really wanted to put into it at this point. Some years back I got a wild hair and thought wouldn’t it be great if I got some of those portable cd holders and got rid of all these cd cases. It sounded good at the time. But now, well I’m finding I miss the visual aspect of music as much as anything. I like to be able to see what I’m listening to. Unfortunately, you need a magnifying glass to see the art work on cd’s.
I’m also pulling out all my albums from the basement. It will be good to have them in the land of the living again. Now there’s art work I can see and feel and smell (ah the moldy basement) to me that is just as important as listening to the music. I miss the days when records were art. I realize that strictly limits my time frame of music enjoyment but what can I say, I do miss it.
I remember holding that Grand Funk Railroad album- Phoenix- in my hands for the first time. My first album; it had been 45’s up ‘til then. (One good thing about cds is they don’t melt in the back seat of the car when you go on family vacation. Let It Be does not sound good after 4 hours in the back window of a car in July in 1972. But I must admit melted vinyl looks cool and it was fun watching the needle bounce all over the place)
I still remember that trip to Indiana (or I remember a montage of trips to Indiana every summer for a few years straight). It was the summer I began to want to learn how to play the guitar. My cousin Kevin was always singing some weird but funny song I had never heard on Illinois radio (back in the days when every city didn’t have the same play list) something about a Dead Skunk in the middle of the road. I didn’t hear that song again until I bought the album as a cut out for under a buck (brand new albums were only $4 bucks at Kmart back then). I was probably the only 13 year old to own a Loudon Wainwright the III album for a hundred miles around.
I still listen to Loudon, even though he was basically a one hit wonder, the rest of his music doesn’t play well on the radio, to many brains and not enough beat. I saw him perform at the Country Music Hall of fame not to long before it flooded. It was really good to see him live. The added bonus for me was getting to see a guy named David Mansfield play several different stringed instruments. I’ve been a fan of his since he was in the Alpha Band with t-bone Burnett and Steven Soles. It was during the time they were all in Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Review. Since then he’s been in Bruce Hornsby and the range and done a lot of soundtrack work. They are all in their sixties now and I still felt like a 12 year old kid in their presence, getting autograph’s and telling them how much their music meant to me.
Sometime after I found Loudon Wainwright III I was introduced to the music of Larry Norman and that completed the desire to learn to play the guitar. The album was Only visiting this planet – and the song that really grabbed me was Why Don’t you look into Jesus. – Sippin’ whiskey from a paper cup drown your sorrows till you can’t stand up, take a look at what you done to yourself Why don’t you put the bottle back on the shelf. Yellow fingers from your cigarettes your hands are shaking while your body sweats – Why don’t you look into Jesus He’s got the answers.
Five years later I would sing that song in front of my entire high school of about 2500 people. Back then I didn’t even know what the questions were and I thought I had the answers. It’s been down hill on the fame scale ever since. I guess I was fighting an up hill battle. Fact is: I hardly ever pick up a guitar any more. I still write from time to time but for the most part lyrics have turned to novels and novels just sit in the back of my head waiting to come out on the page. Surviving is sometimes a full time job and it doesn’t leave room for much else.
I’m wasting too much time rambling today so I will leave you with the lyrics to a Larry Norman song that I have probably sent out before but it is the most meaningful of any of his songs, at least for me where I’m at these days:
When you first begin your journey you're not sure of who you are And the lessons that you're learning, they don't seem to take you far. And you just can't keep from stumbling, though you try so hard to stand, And the truth can be so humbling when it's just beyond your hand.
As though youth were my invention, as though love lay undefined To stay free was my intention, to stay young and unconfined. And so I held my pride above you. Oh yes, what a fool was I, Holding back those words I love you and letting out that word good-bye.
I was wrong to let you go. I was a child and I did not know
about the love that we both could have given.
And now you've gone so far away. I hope I'll see you again some day but if I don't,
I hope I'll see you in heaven.
I was foolish in my younger days to think they'd never end.
Life confused me with it's changing ways and I could not comprehend
All the meaning in those moments, now lost like foot prints in the sand.
And I'm standing here remembering but It's so hard to understand.
I've been sitting in this garden in the middle of my days
And my memories fade and harden as the years they slip away.
I’ve been looking in this mirror at the age around my eyes
Time is such an earnest laborer, precision is his neighbor.
Lay my body in the ground but let my spirit touch the sky.
I was wrong to let you go. I was a child and I did not know
about the love that we both could have given.
And now you've gone so far away. I hope I'll see you again some day
but if I don't, I hope I'll see you in heaven.
Grace and peace,
Brad
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