TomFlannery.com

We all have our own ways of coping with the dying spasms of democracy. Yet another Trumpian buffoon has taken the reigns of a major power. So as Boris Johnson and his hideous mane tramp across Britain making dumbness great again, I’ve given up on the future completely and retreated into the past, diving into my childhood memories via music. With the help of my new Spotify account of course.

It’s all there. Every teen-era memory I can conjure up has a soundtrack accompanying it….and I’ve been pulling them up one at a time and smiling and longing for a time when our national IQ prevented such things like a viciously cruel fascist racist mentally deranged narcissist being elected dog-catcher, much less President of the United States. And having such a thing inspire other nations who think….”wow, if the US can do it imagine the fucking idiot we could put up.” But whatever, we’re here now and completely doomed and I don’t even pretend that we’re going to be able to redeem ourselves in the eyes of our children…..who will have to clean up the mess we’ve left them, assuming the planet doesn’t simply die from supreme neglect before they get old enough to vote, or be taken over by rampaging Nazis in khakis carrying tiki torches. Our kids are gonna toss all of us into decrepit nursing homes and never visit us, which is what we deserve.

So it was the mid 80s……and it was the summer. Beer and girls and bon-fires and boom boxes, 4 of the greatest things in the universe. On magical weekend nights they’d all converge and time seemed to stand still. We laughed and sang and cried and thought things were gonna be like this forever….friends and warm summer nights and music and the water from the creek rolling by….promising eternal youth. And at the end of the night we’d break into groups….finding our way home….always on foot. Giddy from the beer, holding hands….with the free one clutching the boom box as we danced our way down  the street that curved like an S past the police station and the projects, singing John Cafferty’s Tough All Over….over and over again. We’d have to stop dancing and rewind the tape…..and then we’d be off again. Another 3 minutes plus of pure bliss. There was nothing special about that night….it was like 100 others…..except the memory is tied to that particular song. It’s a good song…..not groundbreaking…..but a solid bar-band song with a great chorus…..and I’ll forever be grateful that it exists because without it those special nights might have disappeared into the ether. For those few hours….or those few minutes….I don’t think I ever felt more alive.

One more memory……and that was this kid from Philly. My sister Eileen came home with this tape one day (I have no idea how she heard about him….but her tastes were impeccable so it was worth stealing). Tommy Conwell and the Young Rumblers. Walking on Water. It was a cassette. An independent release. This kid and his band were tearing up the Philly area….and she and her friend traveled out there one weekend night and caught his live set, which had become legendary. Climbing on tables…..the works. All word of mouth. She said the shows were Springsteenesque in their intensity. Word was that Conwell was gonna be the next big thing. He then released an absolutely killer song called “I’m Not Your Man” and those of us who were there on the ground floor felt superior to everybody else, smug in knowing what was coming next. Major labels came calling and all the attention apparently fucked with Conwell’s head…..and his second major release tanked (despite a brilliant song called “I’m Seventeen”) after 100 different industry types convinced him that he needed co-writers and a famous producer and famous guest stars and that he needed to get rid of his band and work with studio pros, and not to do what he had been doing which was strapping on his guitar and fronting a killer band of friends, and killing crowds with catchy songs and manic energy…and that was pretty much that.

He recorded another record that the label refused to release….and he was dropped. Conwell got a job as a teacher and eventually settled in to work for his Dad’s fencing company. These days he’s still haunting Philly bars….his 80s golden locks replaced by…well…nothing. A trucker’s hat covers his bald head….but word is that he ain’t mailing it in. He goes all out. He’s one of the great what-ifs that I know of. I wish him nothing but the best.

Hell, for all I know he may not have any regrets. But maybe I do. I remember how his music made me feel. And you probably missed it. The world would have been better if you didn’t.

In a bit..

–tf

I’ve always been a few years behind the times. I clung to my albums and tapes when others were buying CDs. When Itunes started taking over the world…..I jealously guarded my countless CDs and resisted (which of course I had owned on vinyl already and had to re-purchase…I’m still pissed at this record company scam but whatever…). When I finally succumbed (when CDs were topping out close to $20) to downloading music, everybody started to  jump on the streaming bandwagon. My current Ipod has about 30,000 songs on it…..and I treat it like a piece of fine china because they don’t make the Ipod classic anymore. So once it craps out (one already did….my current one I found used a few years ago), an entire life of music goes with it. My kids look at me the way I might side-eye a guy at the beach blasting 8-tracks. A hopeless relic.

Of course there is an alternative.

And so here I am…..a brand new Spotify junkie, supporting the very platform that pays me as a musician a poverty-inducing $0.006 for each stream. Yes, I’m an idiot. But I’m also an idiot with sudden access to 30 million songs…..and I’m having the time of my life. As I type these words I’ve been listening to the entire catalog of The Monkees for the last 5 hours. Yesterday I listened to an entire shift of 60s garage rock. The day before I binged on the new Who album and the latest from Jesse Malin, this after listening to California Dreamin’ about 47 times in a row (how beautiful and perfect is this song?). All of this costs me nothing…..for now. I get 3 months free and will eventually kick in $14.99 a month for the family plan…..which seems an absurdly low amount for all the songs in the world but I’m not gonna argue (No wonder they only pay me $0.006, just saying….).

So as I said…..I’m sitting here now, and at my fingertips is a virtual jukebox that would have to be the physical size of a 21st century luxury liner. And I’m getting all sad and sentimental because Davey Jones and Peter Tork are dead and feeling pissed off that I didn’t write (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone. And I’m realizing that Micky Dolenz has always been one of my favorite singers. And that Mike Nesmith wrote (and writes) great songs. And I’m saying to myself that if the Hollies are in the rock and roll hall of fame (as they should be), why aren’t the Monkees? Compare their songbooks and explain it to me….and don’t tell me they weren’t a real band, because neither was the Beach Boys. When guys like Glen Campbell and Hal Blaine are in the room, do you know what you do? You get out of the way and let them play. And if somebody writes you “Last Train to Clarksville”, you record it and smile about it for the next 50 years.

Ok, it’s been a slow day but still. This is what music does to you…y’all. And I cannot believe that I never knew that the song by the Association is called “Windy” and not “Wendy”. When the fuck did that happen? I’ve only been singing it wrong for 35 years.

I can’t wait to see what my brain conjures up tomorrow. And the day after. I might go all Laurel Canyon…..or dig deep into 70s power-pop…..or stand on a barstool to scream about how underrated the Cowsils were. I might just throw in the towel and say Motown is the greatest music in the history of the world. And I can pull up Suite: Judy Blue Eyes and once again wonder why Crosby Still and Nash even bothered to do anything after releasing that song because clearly there was no way they’d come even remotely close to topping it……they could just lay back on a big water bed covered with beautiful girls and Tony Montana-sized bowls of coke and say “top that one, motherfuckers.”

And by the way you do realize that neither Warren Zevon or John Prine or Los Lobos are in the rock and roll hall of fame either, right?

If I were them I wouldn’t want to join a club that didn’t admit the Monkees. So there.

Happy listening boys and girls…

In a bit..

–tf

It’s December…..that strange time between major holidays when everybody is giddy and excited and homicidal all at the same time. Hurry up and wait and eat and drink and be merry and make sure you don’t miss Charlie Brown or Rudolph or the Grinch. Things seem to pick up and slow down simultaneously….with a lot of Office Space-type jobs going into semi-hibernation. Companies won’t admit to this of course, but the give-a-shit meter is barely detectable from now until the new year in a lot of places. Office parties…..loads of folks taking time off…..good luck getting somebody on the phone until the year 2020.

I broke one of my cardinal rules and left the house on Black Friday. I had the day off so in a fit of madness I volunteered to accompany my wife to the mall. What I saw was absolute chaos everywhere……while my wife kept saying “my God….this is nothing. There is nobody here….” over and over. I could not understand it. Checkout lines reminded me of Disney World. Parking lots were obstacle courses…..traffic law and order had seemingly broken down. I was just waiting for somebody to throw themselves across the hood of our car to reach their destinations quicker. I’m not good at this. At all. My wife is a pro. Apparently on-line shopping has taken quite a bite out of the Black Friday foot traffic….which I would have no way of knowing since it was probably the first time I’ve ever been near a mall the day after Thanksgiving. So the 8 billion people I saw that day is apparently usually 80 billion. Just thinking about gives me a newfound respect for shopping warriors like my wife, who seem to float above the crowds while I manage to get in everyone’s way. But right when I’m almost ready to accept that these people aren’t nuts I read about the Black Friday brawl outside of Nashville that apparently started over an argument over a pair of Frozen 2 slippers. And the fear and loathing begins anew.

I always feel bad for this shopping thing. The folks working at the stores don’t want to be there (looking at them reminded me of an assortment of hostage videos)….and maybe if idiots like me didn’t go to their stores 8 seconds after Thanksgiving dinner is over they wouldn’t have to be. But then if I stay home and order online I know I’m fucking over a pile of warehouse workers being paid like shit and treated like slaves by Jeff Bezos, not to mention the men and women who have to work a slew of overtime to drop the useless garbage I just ordered on my porch within 24 hours…..most of which I’ll probably return anyway. I’m an asshole either way.

And then came word that we were all going to die in a winter storm that promised ice and snow and unicorns. Folks forgot about buying ugly sweaters and flocked to empty supermarkets for bread and milk and beer….determined to ride the thing out while watching “The Irishman” on Netflix. And so while it did manage to sleet for 12 hours in a row, which is no joke…..the multiple feet of snow promised…..well….most of us swept it away this morning with brooms. My daughter’s college cancelled classes and she kept sending me photos of the green lawn of her apartment complex with the letters “lol” attached. She was grateful for the reprieve, but a little confused about how a forecast could be so….well…wrong.

And so here we are. A few more weeks and then Christmas. And then another week until New Year’s. And then instant depression, because it really is the best time of the year despite the madness and chaos and the fake snow storms and the brawls over children’s slippers. I think people are just a little bit nicer for about 6 weeks. Dicks are less dickish, and the normally charming practically glow. Everybody wishes you a “Merry Christmas” despite Fox news saying this isn’t allowed anymore because…..well…..you know.

But come the first week of January all of this illusionary stuff hits a brick wall and everybody is back to normal…..miserable and broke ready to shank anybody that looks at them wrong before they have that first cup of coffee.

Happy Holidays everyone!

In a bit..

–tf

There’s something about music in the car. Especially when you’re alone. Dance like nobody’s watching for sure, but make sure to sing like you’re alone in the car!

The radio. The CD player. The auxiliary jack. It doesn’t matter. If music is at all a part of your life….as soon as you turn the key you’re searching for it.

I don’t have Satellite radio….so if I’m scanning the dial it’s usually for some classic rock…something to sing along with or drum on the steering wheel to. Mostly this is for short jaunts…..to and from work and the store…things like that. It can get a bit old when a station plays AC/DC and Pink Floyd every 6 minutes, but if I told you I turned off “Thunderstruck” or “Comfortably Numb” even one time in my entire life I’d be lying. (I will confess to throttling “Stairway to Heaven” and “Freebird” though…..and you’ll never convince me this makes me a bad person.)

What’s weird about “classic rock” stations is that when these bands filled with old fellas release new music, it never gets played because it’s not “classic” yet. To reach that pinnacle it would need to be played endlessly on the radio….which of course doesn’t happen anymore because the so-called “top-40” stations are seemingly allergic to anything that features electric guitars. So while I’ll continue to hear “Who Are You” 17 times a day on the radio, I’ll never once hear a new song from the Who’s upcoming new record. This type of thing makes sense in boardrooms and stockholder meetings, but it irritates the un-washed masses like me. But I digress…..which I’m wont to do when going on about music.

(Oh….another digression. My favorite DJs, the funniest, the most clever, the most likable. are generally the ones on the top 40 stations, which is REALLY irritating. So at times it can work in reverse……I’ll actually turn a station off when a song is played….and navigate back for the banter.)

If my trip will take any amount of time….the music must be planned. But sometimes even the best laid plan….you know. My car used to be filled with CDs. Everywhere. Front. Back. On the floors. Shoved in side-door compartments. I’ve lost dozens by forgetting to warn unsuspecting passengers what they were about to sit on (I can still hear that crunch sound that took out Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumors”). But there’s always more where that came from. Eventually they’d all lose their case…..which would trigger a free-for-all. I’d just grab anything and shove it in the player, the white-trash version of music on “shuffle”. I’d go from the Husker Du to a Kate Rusby record….oblivious to the stares of my perplexed passengers, who of course DON’T MATTER. The driver is the grand high exhaled mystic ruler of a car’s sound system.

These days I’ve largely jettisoned CDs for my trusty Ipod. It’s got about 25,000 songs on it, and when it finally blows up my life will be in complete shambles. It’s hard to believe that the act of downloading music and syncing it to an Ipod is now ancient technology, comparable to asking teens to use a rotary phone. The Spotify’s of the world have taken over (users oblivious that the service’s royalty rate of $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream is slowly eating itself..but whatever). But with my aux cord and legacy Ipod with the spinning wheel…I’ve got a 30 year music collection in the palm of my hand. With so many choices……I’m frequently paralyzed by indecision, sitting in my driveway trying to decide what makes sense to get me from point A to point B. Sometimes, knowing how long to trip will take, I’ll choose a playlist that lasts as long, so I know how close I am based on what song is playing, and how many are left. For years I’ve known that I can get to my daughter’s college in the time it takes to listen to Quadrophenia from start to finish.

On the dark side….if you think texting and driving is dangerous, try spinning your way from the Beach Boys to ZZ Top while navigating 4 lane rush hour traffic. Be safe out there kids.

The music is vital. Getting in the car without my Ipod is like getting in without my keys. Some days you need pure volume……others something quiet and introspective. Green Day to Glen Hansard. I’ll get into grooves where I become obsessed with a certain sound or a certain band. So nothing but Motown for a week….or Tragically Hip songs for a month. A new release by Jesse Malin might fill the car for days. For the last 2 days I’ve gone back and forth to work with my friend James Barrett’s new record called “The Price of Comfort”. It’s instinctive. The need for music. The need to sing along. Tomorrow might start something new. It might not. I won’t think about it. It will just happen.

This Thanksgiving, I can say that music is the only thing that has never let me down.

So pick your vessel. And sing along. You’ve earned it.

In a bit..

–tf

My dog is cooler than your dog. That’s pretty clear to me.

If you have a dog and don’t think he or she is cooler than my dog you probably don’t deserve a dog.

On the humanity scale, dogs are clearly number one….followed by an assortment of other animals and a few inanimate objects (like recliners and old boom-boxes). Human beings show up eventually…..somewhere in the 20s, unless they serve in Congress, in which they drop even lower.

Max is my dog. But of course he has many names. Maxwell. Mister P (figure it out). Sir Paddington. The list goes on and on. He’s a Shih Tzu, our 3rd of that breed in a row. Kiko was first, my best friend and confidante for over a dozen years. Irreplaceable. She was followed by Abbey, the most perfect living thing ever conjured up by Deity or Darwinism. Losing them both was like losing the rain.

Needless to say, Max had large paws to fill.

Max is our first boy dog….which was a bit of a learning curve. Even though we relieved him of his package early, he still humps himself to death at times on just about anything he can mount, his dog bed being his favorite partner. He also pees all over when he gets excited, which means that if you’ve visited my house in the last year or so he’s probably pissed all over your pant leg. Despite our best efforts, he continues to go outside first thing in the morning to pee, and then come back inside to take a dump on his pee-pad. At least he’s consistent, so we just roll with it. Outdoor potty training kept getting derailed by wind swept leaves, which distracted Max the same way a howitzer might distract a golfer. And he developed a strange liking for mulch, which he’d eat constantly and then vomit back up in a dark area of the house where we’d be sure not to see it before we stepped in it.

Abbey and Kiko were filled with self-confidence. They knew they were the shit, and didn’t feel the need to remind you every 6 seconds that they were in the room. Max, like most adolescent males, has paper-thin self-confidence, and thus craves love and attention, every minute of the day. So he bounces from room to room, chair to couch to bed, up and down the steps when the girls are home (and even if they’re not…..he likes to continuously check to make sure), demanding validation. He wants to give kisses. He wants to clutch one of his many toys in his mouth and have you chase him around the house. Endlessly. In a well worn loop from the living room….into the dining room….and then back again. And if you can’t catch up he’ll stop and wait for you. And where Abbey and Kiko would gladly cuddle in your lap for hours at at time, Max, who has the attention span of a piece of lint, keeps forgetting why he’s there, and must jump off and explore. In case he’s missing something. And he wants you to come with him.

In the mornings when I leave for work and leave him alone, he deflates instantly…..and will stare at me through the bottom windows of the front door, like a condemned prisoner who never got the expected call from the governor.

But all is forgiven when I arrive home in the evenings, when he greets me with so much love I feel his heart might burst.

And isn’t that what it’s all about? Our dogs….they demand nothing of us. They simply want to love. Theirs is a world of wonder….noises and toys and chasing leaves and finding the exact spot in the morning where the sun streams in and bathes the floor so they can lay there and feel its warmth. If only until it moves on. So they will too….to the next adventure. Always wanting to share it with you. With us. And when we’re down…..they can sense it. You cannot convince me otherwise. Which is why on normal nights I might feel Max nuzzling by my feet in the bed….but when my eyes are wide open with worry and my heart is beating out of my chest, I notice him making his way closer. Towards my heart.

In a bit..

–tf

Temps in the 60s yesterday, with kids walking around in shorts and tees, while I carried a jacket and sweater I didn’t need everywhere I went. Drove home from a trip to Easton with the window open the entire way. My daughter was sleeping in the backseat, but was awoken by the sudden blast of Live at Leeds on the car stereo. She informed me, perfectly deadpan (during “Young Man Blues”) that “Dad, this is really not good music to sleep to…” and I could not argue with her. (When the Who opened their own Rampart Studios in London the playback speakers in the control room were so loud it’s said they caused “projectile bleeding” from the ears, and were once measured to be the same number of decibels as the engines of Concorde at full throttle.)

It was in that spirit that I was rolling down a dark and mostly deserted 380, so while her complaint was justified, it’s not like I didn’t have my reasons. You simply cannot listen to Live at Leeds at anything other than ear-bleeding volume without feeling like a complete fraud. But being the good Dad I am, I turned it off and drove the rest of the way to the sound the wind and the wheels and gentle snoring, watching the stars and dodging the orange pylons that seem to appear like rogue deer on Pennsylvania interstates.

Today we awoke to ice, snow, and a 2 hour delay. My car was suddenly encased in a sarcophagus of winter. Young Man Blues indeed.

I’ve stopped looking at the weather forecast. One too many times of going from the air-conditioner to the ice-scraper wore me down. I talked myself out of cutting the grass on Sunday, and now I’m sprinkling rock-salt on my porch steps and using half a tank of gas to un-tomb my car. I let my dog out and as soon as he realized what the world had turned into he was back inside curled up in his bed, which he had conveniently maneuvered to the front of the fireplace. I’d like to tell him that he’d better get used to it but we both may may wake up tomorrow to golfing weather. So he goes his way and I go mine.

Onward we go…marching towards the holidays. Lights and trees and coming up with yet another iron-clad excuse to skip the office Xmas party. A few awkward dinners to get through as Uncle MAGA gets bombed on Coors Light and monopolizes the conversation with Fox News talking points. But that kinda stuff is so easily deflected this time of year. Good cheer and all that…..pretend the red cap was chosen for its Christmas color scheme and not its racist connotations, and keep distracting your hate-twisted kin with football so he’ll stop blaming illegal immigrants for why his dentures don’t fit anymore.

Soon it’ll be January 2, which is when the depression really sets in. Holidays are over….nothing to look forward to except unrelenting cold, the Patriots winning the Super Bowl again, and dead-souls standing in line to secretly return everything. And perhaps the realization that the gym membership you talked yourself into after half a 12 pack of PBR is gonna get as much use as the fruit cake you keep getting every year from the same weirdo. (It calls to mind the creepy person wearing a mask who for 50 years straight years would leave 3 red roses and a bottle of cognac on the grave of Edgar Allan Poe on his birthday, a tradition he or she started 100 years after Poe was already dead. I feel like this person was probably a huge fruit cake fan.)

These upcoming days can be a pleasant diversion that brings us together, or the family-dynamic version of Black Friday shopping, in which everybody in the line ahead of you deserves to die. So choose carefully. Your best bet is to shop on-line, listen to Live at Leeds and Elvis and Charlie Brown Christmas music, and eggnog yourself into the spirit of the season. Eventually….you’ll be able to roll down that window again.

So enjoy it while you got it folks. Play it loud if you can, unless the one and only thing more important than the music is sleeping in the back seat.

In a bit.

–tf

Had a wonderful lunch meeting today with Phil Mosley, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English & Comparative Literature at Penn State University.

We had an agenda……what Phil calls “historicizing anthracite”. But our inner Gaelic shone through, and over a few beers we wandered off into many semi-related areas as well. Life is so frenetic these days that I’d almost forgotten the simple pleasure of a grown-up conversation.

We started things off thusly….

How can one understand what he or she has become without extensive knowledge of where he or she has come from? There’s no such thing as a blank slate. We are who we are largely because of the environment we’re reared in. For better or worse. We inherit the inner workings of familial saints and sinners, and are largely left to our own devices in learning how to keep them apart so they don’t kill each other.

This is history you don’t get in the classroom. Schools don’t teach your history. Theirs is more like the revolutionary war on Monday, civil war until mid-week, then by Friday the bomb is falling on Japan and we’re all living happily ever after. In school I learned absolutely nothing about the ground underneath my own feet.

What triggers the effort?

Is it literature? Art? Music? Historians? Or maybe a stray remark at dinner about a box of letters in the attic?

Well…yes.

Often…the song travels fastest and furthest. Phil mentioned how Springsteen’s song “Youngstown” probably educated more people about the Ohio city’s role in our nation’s uneasy history than the collective works of 100 historians. My fascination with the history of wildfires began with the song “Cold Missouri Waters”, which told the devastating story of the Mann Gulch fire of 1949. For songwriters, the research triggers the song. For listeners, the song triggers the research. And so it goes….gloriously around and around.

My father told me stories…..of filling sacks with coal in the winter…..hanging around the sharp corners of the tracks, where sympathetic conductors would sometimes increase speed so that the coal would fall off the cars that were filled to the brim. I remember how a lone abandoned coal car sat atop a mountain of culm overlooking the road to his childhood home like a sentinel. I remember him telling me of covering the entrances to illegal mines with their family Christmas tree to keep the mine bosses off their scent.

All this put the hooks in me.

Do we embrace our own history? Or do we wish we could re-write it?

Ours is a place forged by immigrants fleeing unimaginable horrors, and thus willing to do the kinds of things we today might find….well…..unimaginable. To live half of their lives under the ground so that, just maybe, their kids might have it a little better. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers and great-great grandfathers had to fight for everything. Nothing was given to them. They fought, and sometimes died, attempting to blunt the cold edge of an industry that valued the mules they worked beside more than it valued them. It’s so easy to take for granted that little boys don’t have to work 60 hours anymore…..and that an 8 hour day is plenty, thank you very much.

They fought and died for these things. Right here. They powered the nation……they fought and won its wars. Local names. On local gravestones.

And for this….what?

Many are weary of the past…..more proud of “The Office” than being known as some backwards coal-cracker. More folks make jokes than give thanks.

But still…..there’s something about this place…..something about the coal region’s concept of home. It’s why so many travel great distances to and from work…..to stay. Why so many who strain at the leash to get out…..wind up coming back. And it’s why one of our largest tourist attractions is a place, Centralia, that literally is not there anymore.

Bitterness is easy. Sentiment is hard. We manage both.

I want to learn more. I want to read more books about this place. I want to hear more songs about this place. I want to sit over more beers and have these types of conversations again and again. I want to talk it out….and I want to pass on what I’ve learned to my kids so that they can pass it along to theirs.

For too long we’ve been holed up inside…..phones in our faces……screeching at each other with our thumbs. Our partisan outrage almost seems scripted by now. We’ve forgotten that we can disagree without being disagreeable.

In a bit..

–tf