TomFlannery.com

Ever feel like that beer in the bottom of the glass that the drunk guy leaves on the bar when he finally staggers towards the door?

‘Tis an interesting feeling. And not one very conducive to creativity.

Could be worse I guess. Some dreg could slide by when nobody’s looking and drink me.

Sitting here very early in the AM listening to a Son Volt record and thinking about all the things I need to do and how much it’s going to cost and wondering where the money is going to come from. I’m pretty sure people owe me some money but I keep lousy books. And I wait for checks to come in the mail and they never do. Everybody wants to give me credit though. It’s like they’re trying to tell me something.

The words need to come. Without them, the lack of funds is irrelevant. And worrying about one invariably hurts the other.

Wrote a lyric yesterday called “The Hidden”. It needs a tune. Maybe today. Unless those Ed McMahon people show up with cameras and that giant cardboard check. Then all bets are off.

In a bit…

–tf

On a lyric binge. Guitar still feels like I’m holding a struggling animal, so I figure it’s time to catch up on some words. Word hungry. For me the words almost always come first anyway, so I’ve got two sorta-complete sets of lyrics. Thinking on a third now. After a while me and the guitar will learn to play nice again and hopefully I’ll have a few decent rock and roll songs to tend to.

Just picked up a copy of Joe Henry’s new record. I either love his stuff or hate it (some of his pointless jazz noodling drives me insane). He is obesely (is that a word?) talented though. We’ll see what the morrow brings. If all else fails, I grabbed the Supersucker’s latest as well, just so things wouldn’t be a total washout. In a world of mixed-up confusion, one can always rely on the Supersuckers.

And so….onward I suppose. Going back is way too much work.

In a bit…

–tf

Fussin’ and fightin’ with the guitar. Some days it won’t sound like it did the day before. Some days it feels like butter, and others the hot knife that cuts through it. Some days I want to caress it gently, and other days I want to do a Townshend on it. Most days I simply wish I played piano instead. More expressive maybe, unless you suck at it that is. Always that possibility.

I’m confused is what I am.

I know what kind of record I want to make, but some of the songs aren’t cooperating. A song is like a child. You can try to put some controls on it, but it’s gonna grow up and be what it wants to be.

So there. I feel lousy. Must call upon the ghost of Noel Gallagher.

In a bit…

–tf

Man…..that opens up all sorts of possibilities doesn’t it? Another mis-translated lyric….this one from a song by one of my favorite bands (The Hold Steady). I was hoping I got it wrong so I wouldn’t feel like I was stealing. And let’s just say I got it way wrong. So that’s pretty cool.

The Devil and Chuck Berry. Chuck is a bad man….by every definition and meaning and pronunciation of that word. So far I’ve got 7 verses written and I still don’t think it’s done. But it sure is fun.

In a bit…

–tf

Can it be? No more Oasis? Noel Gallagher has announced he’s quit the band. I saw it on the ticker at the bottom of the screen on CNN, during the Ted Kennedy memorial coverage. Odd place to find out that one of my favorite bands is no more…..but then we live in an odd world. Word must get out about such things.

Another punch-up between the Gallagher brothers apparently. No real news there….as they’ve been bashing each other’s skulls in for almost 20 years. They’ve managed to make the Davies brother’s look like Nick and Joe Jonas. But this time Liam apparently obliterated one of Noel’s guitars backstage. You don’t mess with a man’s guitars. That’s why I think this split is for real. Noel has quit the band at least 3 times previously, but never with the sight of a splintered Les Paul burned into his retinas. A ghastly sight that must be.

The man is 42, and just happens to be one of the greatest pop songwriters to ever draw breath. He’s been saddled with a drunken, boorish lout of a brother 6 years his junior, and truth be told has put up with Liam longer than most could or would have. Noel doesn’t need Oasis. Noel is Oasis, so I still look forward to his next batch of songs. I really don’t give a shite what name is on the cover. But it still takes some getting used to.

Ok, I’m used to it.

Good luck Noel. I’ll be waiting.

In a bit…

–tf

Autumn’s chill is in the air. Not sure how long it’ll last, but it feels good. The heat of summer drains me. The snap of the fall, along with promise of the explosion of the leaves, leaves me strangely energized. Or at least less slothful than usual.

And so it goes. Much planned today, and absolutely nothing accomplished. Life gets in the way when you wish to spend much of the day with a guitar and/or pen in your hand. Life particularly takes up more time if the guitar and/or pen aren’t paying very well. Or in my case, at all.

But that’s just routine grumpiness. I still manage to doodle daily in a handwritten journal, and try to fill in the cracks of time with assorted outlandish schemes destined to make me rich enough to live in the woods surrounded by a large moat and a stone wall.

Was thinking about the war today. Or the war’s actually. Anybody remember them? Men are still dying. It doesn’t make it less so because it’s reported on page ten and not page one. Blood is still red, flesh is still flesh, and dead is still dead. And more and more soldiers are coming home alive, but in pieces. Both physically and emotionally. And yet, it’s become so distant. Like background noise. The music they pipe into the supermarket….or the elevator.

Surely it’s not that people don’t care. It’s that people literally don’t remember. War loses it’s luster after a time….especially when there’s no defined finish line. And without the red white and blue shine (or sheen?), it begins to seem as close as a meteor.

I wish we could reach out and touch the sky. Maybe we’d allow them to come home then.

Maybe a song there.

In a bit…

–tf

Have a new song I need to demo today. Then I’ve got a few lyric ideas I’d like to try out. I’ll splatter the words on my legal pad and see if I can coerce some sort of meaning out of the jumble. Sometimes this means moving verses around, or switching lines from one side of the page to the other. For some reason I’m sure the head-shrinkers would have fun with, the lyrics for the bridges in my songs are almost always scrawled sideways on the page, which means when I’m recording demos I have to jerk my head to the right like a dog that hears a whistle in order to read them. After long batches of recording I look like something out of a George Romero movie.

But I do love it so. The process. The writing and the self-flagellating and the strumming and the picking and the aching fingers and the manic highs and lows and the ways that some songs stand up the next day and say “You like me! You really like me!” while others are sent alternately kicking and screaming or rather gratefully to the shredder, where nobody will ever be the wiser that I wrote such worthless piles of dung and actually considered them  worthy of the record button. ‘Tis a glorious thing, all of it.

Imagine if I actually got paid for this? The mind reels.

In a bit…

–tf

Ok, it took me way too long to figure this out, but NOFX are the greatest punk band ever….and Coaster is the greatest punk rock record ever….and Fat Mike is one of the greatest punk songwriters ever.

I’m a little slow, but I eventually get there.

I’m not sure why all this matters, but trust me. It does.

In a bit…

–tf

Have a lyric but no melody. I hope to have this resolved by the end of the day. One is not much good without the other, unless you are a poet or Yanni. I am neither, thank God.

Poetry to me is like paintings. Art-wise, I can’t tell the difference between what hangs in the ritzy museums and what hangs in the average hotel room. And reading a book of good poems and reading a book of bad poems seems a very similar experience. In fact, I avoid reading any poems whatsoever, especially the ones that don’t rhyme. If you’re going to write poems that don’t rhyme, you may as well just write obtuse prose and market it to college professors. They eat that shit up. And if you’re going to write poems that rhyme, why not add a melody and a screaming guitar? It sure is a lot more fun. And you’ll get more girls.

On the subject of not understanding, I could go on forever. But I’ll end with jazz. I’m tone deaf when it comes to jazz. I’m sure there’s such a thing as good jazz and very bad jazz, but…..and I know this is heresy and all that, but to me the lounge dudes at the Holiday Inn and Miles Davis all sound sorta the same. Out of tune, out of time, and totally stoned on something.

I also don’t understand why “Wednesday” is spelled the way it is. No wonder everybody is speaking Spanish these days. English doesn’t make any sense.

In a bit…

–tf

Trying to get comfortable so I can focus. Mind is wandering at the moment. Books of all sorts are piled high on my desk….waiting to be read or in some cases, re-read. Lyrics are sprawled all over nearby legal pads, also demanding attention. My guitar sits in it’s stand, smirking as usual. My Ipod now contains over 6000 songs, and in the wee wee hours I try to digest almost all of them. And all the while assorted deadlines loom, some self-imposed to be sure, but for me these are the worst kind. I’ll blow off anybody but myself. This is some sort of disorder that hasn’t been named yet. I wish there was a pill for it, but, alas, you need to name something before you can create a pill for it. The day I heard that my annoying propensity for bouncing my legs up and down is actually considered an official medical condition and not just the muscular ravings of an over-caffeinated insomniac, I found hope for all my assorted maladies. So who knows? Is the 21st century great or what?

Still and all, I’m amazed by the brain’s capacity to absorb all I throw at it. Maybe “absorb” isn’t the right word. That of course suggests it’s not entering in one hole and sneaking out another. Perhaps “accept” is more fitting. When acceptance stops, madness starts. That’s my theory anyway.

And so, back to my books and my legal pads and my guitars. But first a quick check to ensure the doors are locked…

In a bit..

–tf