TomFlannery.com

Today is my 44th birthday. I noticed more pain than usual getting out of bed this morning. More gray in the beard. More shuffling.  More thinking and less doing. More planning and less following through. More expecting the worst and getting it. More blind without my glasses. Need the Ipod volume up even louder to get a good buzz. Money disappears quicker. My kids sucker me into things and they don’t even have to try anymore. I just want to give them whatever they want. Maybe it’s because I adore quiet. Or maybe I love my kids so much I can’t stand to see them not smiling. When you get old a pretty smile from pretty little girls is worth 1000 miles.

I make up my mind really fast now. It’s just that I keep changing it once I make it up. I don’t think this is the same as being indecisive. I think it’s just getting old. I have 5 siblings, and I always seemed to be way younger than all of them. All of a sudden I’ve caught up. How did this happen? When my Dad was my age Nixon was President. I remember Nixon being President. When I was in high school it was considered cool to listen to Bryan Adams and LeBron James was not born yet. The world has gone mad. Everything is too loud and too crowded and too expensive. It pays to be young, assuming you’ve got some sort of freakish talent. Otherwise, being young is sorta like being old without the aches and pains. It’s a day to day struggle…..stay above water….stay under the covers as long as possible….stay indoors unless you want to get mugged by a polar bear in desperate search of ice……stay hydrated…..stay employed until somebody in Mumbai gets paid 1/10th your salary to do twice as much work…..stay out of airports unless you have days to kill, and turn on red, except here. If all else fails you can still wear your Chuck Taylor’s. They never go out of style, although they double in price every 10 years or so.

My hair hurts. That’s when you know you’re getting old. My idea of exercise is to get the mail. I dream all the time but wake up and can’t recall the details. Athletes and musicians I used to hang on my wall when I was a kid are dead now. I can remember not having remote control. The first remote control I did get had a wire. I used to listen to the radio. How sad is that?

High school classmates are grandparents. My daughter is about the same age as the Iraq War. I still wear clothes that are older than both of my kid’s combined. Most people my age have been married multiple times. I can still remember when people used to send letters in the mail. The kind with a stamp. I can recite the dialogue to “Jaws”. The dark circles under my eyes are so pronounced that yesterday my daughter asked me if I was wearing eye-liner. That’s a bit freaky.

So I’m 44. Old perhaps. But lucky to have loved ones who look so close.

In a bit…

–tf

Just back from a weekend visit.

Cooperstown makes you feel like a kid again. It reminds you that baseball is still a great game despite the many attempts recent idiots have made to fuck it up. And it reminds you that any game that pays such reverence to it’s own past is worth giving 2nd and 3rd and 10th chances too. The needle hanging out of Barry Bonds’ and Mark McGwire’s ass cannot diminish the sensation of walking into the hall and coming face to face with the locker of Honus Wagner, or the bat Babe Ruth used to hit his 60th home run in 1927  (The Babe swung a telephone pole….and Wagner’s glove was not much bigger than his hand).

The lifesize statue of Buck O’Neil on the first floor? Being able to sit inside Hank Aaron’s locker? Seeing how capable Ty Cobb’s spikes are this many years later of giving off huge hints of menace? And all this for less than $15 with your AAA discount. There’s no bigger bargain in sports. And the small, quaint, lovely village of Cooperstown is the perfect place for all this. If the museum were in the heart of Manhattan, or some other such mega-metropolis, I’d find it difficult to give a shit. But Cooperstown? It just fits.

That doesn’t mean that the village hasn’t gone a bit nuts, however. Tacky t-shirt shops litter every few paces…all selling the same things at the same silly prices. Greasy, overpriced food (and more ice cream parlors per square mile than anyplace I’ve ever seen). Dumpy hotels and motels gouging the visiter, albeit with a smile. No parking. Surly full-time residents who’ve clearly had it up to here with obnoxious crews of 12 year old Little Leaguers on field trips. But all forgivable surely. Better to be annoyed than ignored when it’s time to make up the town budget.

The hall itself is not overwhelming. It’s actually smaller than I anticipated. And remarkably unpretentious. They use technology, but it’s not overwhelming. To walk into the room with the plaques on the wall is as simple as it gets. The greatest names in the game. Laid out evenly. By induction year. It’s like being in church.

“There ain’t much to being a ballplayer. If you’re a ballplayer.” Honus Wagner said that. Wagner was a bowlegged Pennsylvania coal miner with huge hands who just happened to be one of the greatest players who ever lived. So good as a shortstop it’s said the pebbles he scooped up with the ball arrived along with his throws to first base. There is nothing not ordinary about Wagner. A dirt poor kid from the wrong side of town, toiling in the dark for a chance to play a boy’s game. We look at him and say….”I could do that”. We can’t obviously. But Wagner, Cobb, Hornsby. They weren’t 7 feet tall. They weren’t 275 pounds. They stick out only on a ball field. What’s missing is that immense gulf between us and them, which is why there is so much pleasure even in typing the names. Today it’s different. These guys had to get jobs when the season was over. How great is that?

I’d love to go back. I spent a lot of time thinking of my Dad while I was there. He’s gone 3 months now. Feels like 3 years on some days, and 3 days on others. Time makes little sense. Pop took me to Cooperstown 30+ years ago. I wore my Cincinnati Reds cap…being a huge fan of the Johnny Bench/Pete Rose teams of the mid 70s. Dad was a huge Brooklyn Dodger fan. He told me of Jackie. Pee Wee. The Duke. Nights of listening to Red Barber on the radio. Days soaked in sunshine at Ebbet’s Field. My Dad’s uncle managed an apartment building where some of the players lived. He got Pop a ball signed by Dolph Camilli. For years Dad kept it in his underwear drawer. I don’t know where it is now. I need to look for it.

Today when someone asks my favorite team my answer is one that disbanded in the late 1950s (Los Angeles? Please…) I guess I abandoned the Reds when they started to lose. Right now I couldn’t name a single player on the team. But I can still reel off the Big Red Machine line-up. Bench. Perez. Morgan. Concepción. Foster. Geronimo. Charley Hustle. What great names. The envy of fiction writers.

Fathers and Sons. Pop, it was a cool trip. I wish you were there. But then again….you were.

Gonna get myself an obscenely overpriced throwback Pee Wee Reese jersey for my birthday. You’d love it.

In a bit..

–tf

I read all the time. I mean ALL the time. I take a book when I drive in case I get stuck in traffic.

This is all good, except sometimes I want to read and not think. I want the literary equivalent of eating potato chips in front of the TV.

For this, I choose to read about rock stars. Mostly dead ones, since live ones aren’t nearly as interesting. I don’t even have to like the music being dissected, as long as the person who made it was a dissolute, drug infested, drunken sex fiend. A sociopath with lots of money is always worth a few hours reading about.

So I was at the library yesterday and actually got 2 books. One on Led Zeppelin and one on Jim Morrison. Jimbo is endless fascinating of course, mostly because there are pockets of really stoned people out there who still consider him a “poet”. I do think the Doors made some great music, but nearly all of it was written by guitarist Robby Krieger and driven by organist Ray Manzarek. Morrison served mostly as an appetizer for young girls, with his low slung leather pants and brooding movie star looks. The problems started when Morrison started taking himself way too  seriously. He was treated like a “poet” because he called himself one…..which was the same reason the Who’s “Tommy” was treated as an “opera”. And Morrison was drunk 23 hours a day, which is part of the poet handbook.

I’m in no mood to argue the artistic merits of “Moonlight Drive”. Personally I think Krieger was a better lyricist, but Robby looked silly in leather pants and had really bad hair. What makes great reading is how much of an asshole Morrison was. He treated everybody like shit. He was physically abusive to women. He dissed his family. He secretly married one girl while living with another. He took every opportunity to crap on everyone else’s plate. And he was able to drive a spike through Oliver Stone’s head….’cause Ollie made one of the most over-the-top and pretentious rock movies ever about him. Which is really saying something. Val Kilmer played Morrison. It’s not a comedy. At least it’s not supposed to be. But I hadn’t laughed so hard since “Caddyshack”. Kilmer spends 2 hours with his eyes half closed and threatening to fall over. Nailed Morrison perfectly.

Hopeless drunks are a pain to be around, and never seem quite as funny in person. This is why the surviving members of the Doors have spent the last 40 years sticking to the old “if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all” adage. Well, there’s the royalty checks too. Morrison may not have been the artistic driving force of the band, but he sure as shit became the reason the boys all subsequently became obscenely wealthy.

Morrison died in the bathtub too. At least that’s the story everyone is sticking to. A bit to close to Elvis dying on the ‘loo for me. But it sounds better than saying Morrison’s liver just exploded. He was 27 when he died, and looked like Keith Richards after a really bad night. Never has a rock star aged so much in so short a period of time.

I was trying to figure out when it is that all teens go through their Doors phase…..when my wife saw the book I was reading and said…”my boyfriend got me the Door’s Greatest Hits on cassette when I was 15″. That answered my question.

Morrison is buried in Paris. Some cemetery that used to be famous for planted poets. It’s infamous now for the Morrison groupies who come to shoot-up and drink and boink each other and draw all over his grave while reciting Kreiger’s lyrics thinking they’re spouting Morrison’s “poetry”, all working towards turning a place of supposed rest into backstage at the Whiskey a Go Go circa 1967.

But still. It’s fun to read about. And I haven’t even gotten to the Zeppelin book yet. I’d rather listen to Morrison’s drunken ramblings than be subjected to Page and Plant’s pillaging of old blues riffs. These two ought to be in jail for making millions off the backs of Robert Johnson and Willie Dixon. But they sure knew how to have a good time with broads. Plus as an added bonus when they got really bored they dabbled in the occult.  So at least I’ve got something else to look forward to when thinking is too hard.

In a bit…

–tf

Looking out my window. I see trees moving for a change. Not just standing there sweltering, but giving off what I think is called a “breeze”. I may have forgotten the exact word. Gallons of sweat dripping from the tip of your nose and making your glasses slip down your face can create such memory cramps. I hear we’re back to hell weather come friday, just in time for July 4th, which I despise because it reminds me that this heat shit is really just getting started. And fireworks that don’t light up the sky piss me off. You know, the kind teens hoard and cops allow anybody that doesn’t have a limb growing out of the middle of their head to sell in tents on the side of the road even though they’re blatantly illegal. All they do is go “boom”.  Nothing else. Anybody who gets a bang out of something that just goes “boom” is one of 2 things. Either 10 years old, or mentally retarded. Come 9:30pm on the 4th this place sounds like Sarajevo during the 90s. I asked a kid I saw last year what it is we were “celebrating”. “Independence” he said. “From what?” I said. “Germany” was his answer. I decided to let it go. He seemed annoyed that I was interrupting. He was in the process of searching for frogs so, as he so eloquently put it,  “I can put an M-80 up his ass”. Sometimes I’m not sure if Washington outlasted the Brits or if they just said “fuck it, these people are too dumb to govern” and pissed off back to England.

I’m just cranky is all. Insomnia makes sure I’m never alone, which is kinda annoying ’cause I enjoy solitude.

Fingertips built back up after hours of playing over the last few days. It’s the voice that needs to be reminded of where it’s supposed to go. It’s cracking in places it never used to crack before, which is kinda funny when I’m singing alone but mortifying if I have an audience. “Dad, was it supposed to sound like that?” When you hit a bum guitar note you can just say you’re playing jazz. Off-key voice? Harder to explain away….especially to an 8 year old used to listening to singers on the radio who stay on pitch courtesy of computers and desperate engineers. Give them a Gibson Jumbo and have them try out the middle eight of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” in front of my little girl. We’ll see how dead-on they are.

How’d I get there? I was just looking out the window. Lots of fences around here. The kind that make good neighbors. All of them white and 6 feet tall. I’d prefer something 3 times the size made of brick but it’s cost prohibitive. Grass is all brown but nobody really cares because everybody’s grass is brown except for the guy who stands in the middle of his yard with a hose all day, looking forlorn. I’d rather have brown grass.

Can just see the tips of cars as they drive by. They look like toys from here. Can’t hear anything ’cause I’ve got a John Gorka CD playing at a volume louder than a car driving down a busy street. And he’s singing mostly ballads. If I had Jason and the Scorchers on instead it might break windows.

Why are fences white? Why not magenta? How about green? Or brown, like the grass they keep people from looking at?

Songs are coming. I just know it.

In a bit…

–tf

It’s 9:3o at night and I’m finally able to step foot outside without feeling like I’m being cooked. No rain but at least the sun has pissed off for a few hours. This heat is unbearable to a football fan like myself. And it’s not even July yet. I wish I could take a pill and wake up in September.

I’m going to be playing a benefit show on July 9th. It’ll be made up mostly of cover tunes so I’ve been spending the last few days brushing up on the chord changes of 45 year old Beatle songs, which is great fun. The odd Who tune and Van Morrison vamp as well. I haven’t played much lately so my fingertips feel like they’re on fire. But the pain is exquisite. I’ve been bashing away so hard that my strings feel like worn rope. Time to break the bank and pick up some light gauges.

Odd sitting out here now. I live on a fairly busy street but now minutes go by with nothing. And with traffic lighter, speeds increase dramatically. It’s more like a racing strip when it gets dark actually. One time a guy with too much money, too much car, and too much cocaine lost control and drove into our backyard, obliterating much of our fencing in the process. I don’t expect such activity tonight……surely lightning won’t hit the same place twice no?…but I’ll try not to think of such things as I sit here and cars weave down the road doing more than double the speed limit. If the cops ever decided to pull out the radar gun the town would be back in the black in a week.

Been listening to the new Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers record “Mojo” a lot lately. The old dudes can still shake the walls. Some great songs. Most of them are driven by Mike Campbell’s sterling guitar playing. Petty is a lucky bastard. I wish I had a Mike Campbell. Things might have turned out differently. Petty would not be Tom Petty without Mike Campbell. Their’s is the most underrated partnership in rock history.

Just finished reading a book about the making of the Woodstock festival. Great fun. The concert itself seemed the least interesting part of the entire spectacle. Hippies may have dressed and smelled differently and had better taste in drugs than their elders, but they shared the same entrepreneurial greed. It’s been 40+ years now, and I’m not sure how I feel about the whole thing. Granted I was only 3 at the time, but just thinking about half a million people willingly sitting in their own shit for 3 days to be entertained by Country Joe McDonald and Melanie and Mountain and Grace Slick makes me feel sorta superior. I’m not sure this makes me a better person….but I may hold the Michael Lang’s of the world to a higher standard. I don’t know.

Funny too how many of the Woodstock acts are still out there wearing the same clothes. Richie Havens. Santana. The Jefferson Whatever They’re Legally Able to Call Themselves This Year. Outside of the ones who killed themselves, just about everybody who played a note at the festival is still pumping out the nostalgia. Interestingly enough, the ones who killed themselves are the only ones anybody still takes seriously. Something to be said for that, although I’m not sure what.

Well, I just got my cue to go inside. Some teen in Daddy’s car just drove up the road pumping out the rap music at a volume even I find offensive….which is hard to believe. Middle class white kids listening to rap music always depresses me and makes me feel old. Like Max Yasgur or something, only much less tolerant.

In a bit…

–tf

For reasons too byzantine to relate without sounding really really strange, I’ve spent much of the day listening to Prince’s 1987 “Sign ‘O’ the Times”….a sprawling mixture of pop, soul, funk, and hip-hop that serves as a reminder of how much better Prince is than just about anybody else when he decides to use his talents instead of taunting us with them. “Purple Rain” was of course his commercial peak, but Sign ‘O’ the Times”, which came 3 years later, is undeniably his artistic masterpiece, even if it sold only a fraction and has largely been forgotten.

It’s easy to focus on how weird Prince is instead of how disgustingly and indeed insanely talented the man is. Plays guitar like Hendrix. A peerless bandleader like James Brown. Can out-funk Rick James. Make women forget Marvin Gaye. Can dance Michael Jackson under the rug. A fearless innovator like Stevie Wonder. In the 80s Prince set the bar so high that when he was merely a little better than everybody else critics got mad at him and haven’t really forgiven him since. It took a recent sighting of him playing an incandescent solo on “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony (Prince made it in his first year of eligibility) to remind everyone that the guy was still around. Lurking. Who knows what he might do next. He’s still a freak.

Prince music is not generally the sound booming out of my car speakers. Indeed, when I picked up my daughter tonight with “Housequake” playing so loud that the parked car was still moving, she seemed appalled. She then said it sounded like “Michael Jackson really really drunk”, which I thought was pretty cool. She then told me she never heard of Prince. Not cool. I tried to get her into it….but when she asked how old he was and I told her (52), she groaned and said listening to someone that old was “really really creepy”. Frankly, after a few minutes I think she was sorta digging it but would never let on because that would be really really creepy.

Music is the ultimate gift that keeps on giving. You can never reach the bottom of the well. A lifetime is not nearly enough to sample the treasures out there, no matter how big your Ipod is. I largely missed this record the first time around because music was a diversion at the time. Now it’s air…..and I’m determined to gulp all the good stuff I can before I’m poisoned to death by the radio. No more putting things in neat little boxes. There’s a record store in Houston that refuses to segregate records by “style”. It simply throws everything in one huge alphabetical lump, with Prince and the Pixies and Pavarotti and Planxty all within an arms length of each other. It seems such a simple concept. It’s all music. Tying yourself down to one sub-section is like wearing the same clothes everyday. Eventually, you’re gonna start to attract attention for the wrong reasons.

Anyway, I’m rambling a bit now. But you get the idea. Give Peace a Chance and all that, you know? Try something a bit different. Turn down that side-street even if you’re not sure where it’s gonna take you. With a good soundtrack at our fingertips, we’ll always find our way home again.

In a bit…

–tf

Love can break your heart. But music can rip the heart out of your chest and leave it lying on the ground just out of reach, where you can still seeing it bouncing around like a decapitated chicken. It’s very much a one on one thing. There’s a handful of artists I always wait on….expecting to be uplifted and to approach something as close to spiritual healing as an aging agnostic can handle. That may be asking a bit much of some guys bashing away on guitars and singing songs about girls. But if in my eyes you’ve reached a certain plateau, failure is not an option. I don’t just expect to be lightly entertained by these people. I want my life changed.

Martin Sexton is one who must deliver. To hear his solo verion of “Purple Rain” is one of those monents that gets stamped behind the eyes. If Prince were white and weighed about 100 more pounds and sported some double v-neck sideburns, he’d be Martin Sexton and wouldn’t have to wear his high heeled boots anymore. He might get laid way less, but he might learn how to live and love by bus. And be less of a weirdo.

Anyway, it’s late and I can’t sleep, which is becoming increasingly normal. I should stop now before I start sounding even more incoherent.

In a bit..

–tf

Moving around lots lately. Lots of nights alone in hotel rooms and mornings surrounded by desperate looking airport junkies dragging bags way too big to fit in the overhead compartments.

Writing whenever possible, and what’s possible is never enough. Listening and reading just about anything I can get my shaky hands on. Everything from Buddy and Julie Miller to Jason and the Scorchers and the Jim Carroll Band. “People Who Died”…one of the all-time great rock and roll songs that manages to rock your balls off and totally creep you out at the same time. When you’re spending lots of time alone songs like “People Who Died” are damn near indispensible. They’re like intravenous caffeine injections and when you sing along to them with your Ipod on people generally stay out of your way.

In the Jim Carroll vein, for reasons known to insomniacs only I sat up until 3:30 am last night watching Leonardo DiCaprio portray a drooling junkie in “The Basketball Diaries” and didn’t turn it off until it was over. Like most New York City artists who can afford to live in Manhattan, Carroll was a bit of a pretentious wanker but was smart enough to make a decent living being a heroin addict and Rimbaud wannabe….no small feat in a town swarming with both. But he had that little bit of Keith Richards in him that made junk seem fashionable….plus he screwed Patti Smith, which in NYC buys you a lifetime of credibility. So he gets to write a book about jabbing himself with needles and knocking over old ladies for drug money….and gets the Hollywood treatment to boot. “People Who Died” said in 4 minutes what the movie tried to say in 110, which is sorta why rock will always be cooler than celluloid. If you don’t believe me imagine “Tommy” without the songs.

Anyway, that’s the way it is. I’m going to try to check in more often. Got many songs in various forms, and always reaching for more. Sleep won’t come, so what else can a poor boy do?

In a bit…

–tf

Still writing. Jotting down lyrics whenever I get the chance. If an idea comes I’m reaching for the legal pad.

All songs in some way about my father. But that’s just to me. Looking from the outside, they could be about anything. Love gone wrong, yearning for what you can’t have. The usual staples of popular song. Trying to avoid the pitfalls of mawkishness, and I may be overcompensating, but better to bite than to kiss somebody’s ass. That’s my take on it anyway.

Got 7 songs now. Need 3 more, 10 being my magic number for a release. Nine seems like you just said “ah sod it all” and packed up the guitars ’cause you’d rather be doing something else. Eleven seems like you had some bit you weren’t sure of and just tacked it on to the end that hardly anybody ever gets to anyway. So, 3 more.

One song is 3 pages long with crazy rhymes and a fucked up meter, and of course it all makes perfect sense to me but will surely baffle everybody else, which is fine by me. If Dylan can make a career out of it surely I can rave on for 5 or 6 minutes playing musical word/mind games. It’s fun to peek inside and find things that make sense in a way that you never intended them to. That’s why 45 years on a song like “Visions of Johanna” is still forcing dudes to turn to pharmaceuticals. I knew a guy one time who knew all the lyrics to that song…and could sing the whole thing day or night. He was kinda creepy. Not sure where he is now. He must be dead.

Anyway, that’s the latest update for those of you interested in my shenanigans. My boys from “Slobberbone” are working on a new record this year, so all is not lost.

In a bit…

–tf

Traveling for a few days. That means taking to the not-so-friendly-skies, where for some reason I’m always treated like a shoe-bomber in-waiting. I travel alone with one bag and Ipod earphones jammed in my ears and a book held about 6 inches from my nose, the perfect way to let the yahoo sitting next to you that you don’t wish to communicate at all. Like most people I despise the entire process of going anywhere by plane, where people are instantly transformed into sheep lest some government contractor making $8 an hour decides to pull you into a side room and taser you all in the name of national security. So I suppose I may look a bit sinister. And since I’m a raging insomniac with horrible allergies the circles around my eyes are generally the color of anthracite coal dipped in blood. So maybe that has something with what was once called my “vaguely middle-eastern” look by this guy I used to know who lived on nothing but drugs, Miller Beer, and cornflakes. I do miss my old friends. I wonder if they’re still alive?

Sorry. Off on a bit of a tangent there I suppose. Last time I flew the East Coast got hit with a biblical blizzard and I was stranded for 3 days with not very much to do except complain and drink endless Diet-Cokes. I’m hoping to keep to more of a schedule this time. Actually, there are parts of hotel life that suit a shut-in like myself. I really like the multiple locks on the doors and the fact that nobody is yelling at me for not doing stuff. I like room service, especially when it’s on somebody else’s tab, although I do feel a bit pretentious when the guy comes up my cheeseburger and fries on the tray and lays it down on the room table like it’s something reverential. I’d be just as happy if he wrapped it up in a paper bag and tossed it to me like a football. I like how you can feel like some big shit executive and get a wake-up call even in the shittiest of hotels although for some reason I never take advantage ’cause there’s a perfectly decent alarm clock right next to the damn phone. I like that feeling of being done for the day and entering a room that’s all made up and being able to use about 14 towels to dry yourself just to spite them when they put up those “safe the environment by using dirty towels” signs. I like being able to make the room ice cold ’cause I love to sleep when those gargantuan (and garish) hotel bedspreads are put to good use. 

But the best part about leaving home is that feeling you get when your plane is preparing to touch down to bring you back….home. You just feel good….even if, when you really think about it, “home” isn’t all that great of a place really. But it’s not about the physical location. It’s where your loved ones are….and that can lift up a sad and mostly depressed place into one that can still make you smile.

Safe journeys. And get back home.

In a bit…

–tf