TomFlannery.com

Good things come to those who wait. That’s what they say anyway. I figured I’ve waited long enough. Pete Townshend has been my muse….my inspiration….my alternate universe persona…since I was a teenager. When the 80s kicked off I was a painfully shy and insecure 98 pound guilt-ridden Irish Catholic with bad skin and even worse hair. Even my dreams were boring because I didn’t know any better. I had 3 older sisters. All of them were way more popular then me, so on the weekends they’d be socializing and I’d be home, rifling through their record collections, which very helpfully were combined because they all shared the same bedroom.

It was here I first noticed the records. “Who’s Next” and “Quadrophenia” and “Tommy” and “Who By Numbers” and “Who Are You” and Townshend’s solo album “Empty Glass”. I devoured them all. I had all the time in the world back then….not being burdened with anything resembling popularity. I had a record player under my bed…a penny taped on the arm so the needle would dig deeper into the grooves and decrease the skips. I also had a mirror, and it was in this reflection that I noticed that I was a natural left handed guitar player. I could wind-mill like a motherfucker….although my scissor kicks sometimes drew rebukes from my mother one floor below. They would rattle the dishes in the kitchen.

In 1979 eleven Who fans were trampled to death at a concert in Cincinnati. A week after that show my older brother and my sister’s had tickets to see them in Philadelphia. My Mom was appalled. But they made all sorts of “we’ll be careful” promises and went anyway and survived. I watched from the sidelines in worried fascination. This was serious shit. The stakes were high in rock and roll, and the more I dug into Townshend’s songs, the more I realized that he was right here, inside my head, and when he ran out of things to say his Les Paul filled in the parts where I’d normally just stutter and make a fool of myself.

This was my band. Nobody came close.

But Moon was dead….and the 1982 “farewell” tour was an impossible ticket for a 16 year old with no job. So that was that. Or so I thought.

Of course it’s been the longest farewell in the history of rock and roll. In 1982 they had been together 17 years. They said it was over. It’s 34 years later now. Bassist John Entwistle is dead…gone out like a rock star with a nose full of coke and a bed full of hookers…..but Townshend and Daltrey have soldiered on, blasting through the old hits during various tours in the 2000s and 2010s….each of which I passed up, for various reasons. Scheduling conflicts, lack of tickets, lack of money. A hatred of large outdoor stadium concerts…nothing more than blatant money grabs.

My friend Joe “Wiggy” Wegleski called me last year. He didn’t ask. He told. “They’re coming to Newark in October. I got you a ticket…so fuck off you’re coming with us.”

Then Daltrey got meningitis. Shows were cancelled. So much for that. But then, another call from Wiggy. “Show is rescheduled for March 19, so fuck you you’re still coming.”

And so it came to pass. Me and Wiggy and Chris Hludzik and Lenny Mecca and Wiggy’s sister Jackie were on our way to Newark to see my idols….the greatest rock and roll band in the world. Townshend was 70 years old. Daltrey is 72. I’m not going to tell you how old I am…but if you’ve been paying attention you can figure it out. I was the only Who virgin among us. We arrived early….found a spot at a nearby bar for $5 PBR pints….met a guy from Scotland dressed like Jimmy the Mod from the “Quadrophenia” booklet. I said…”you’re a long way from home” and he looked at me like I was disturbed and said….”well it’s the ‘oo innit it?”

(Before I get into show details I’ll get the Irish luck portion of the show out of the way. At concerts assholes are everywhere. By process of elimination…..there has to be the biggest asshole. The drunkest, most drugged, most sociopathic guy who wanders into an empty seat he’s not supposed to be in and nearly starts a war. If that guy is a moth…I am his flame. It never fails. He was right behind my right ear…screaming non-sequiturs like somebody with Tourette syndrome…..until I finally turned around and got into a “shut the fuck up….what do you say to me?…fuck you….go fuck yourself” back and forth argument with him that was about to get physical….and then Wiggy….who had seen this coming….arrived like the cavalry with a very large black security guard and gave him instructions to “get this fucking guy out of here.” The rest of the section endorsed these instructions with a hearty cheer….and the guy was removed….but not before trying to blame the entire episode on me. I sat there looking virginal, like the Irish choir boy I am…..and that was that. Chalk one up for the good guys.)

So how was the show? Roger sounded great. Pete is nowhere near the high flying acrobat he once was….staying glued to the floor, but his windmills were undiminished and he looked energized and engaged….no small feat when you’re playing “Baba O’Riley” for the 1000th time. High points for me were a blazing and unexpected “I Can See For Miles” and a sublime version of “Bargain”, perhaps my favorite Townshend song of all. They closed with “Won’t Get Fooled Again”, climaxing with a Daltrey scream that nearly stopped the heart. If this is their last gasp….and it’s hard not to think so, they weren’t getting cheated. Pete added an unexpected coda to the song….drummer Zak Starkey holding on for dear life trying to follow…..and finally brought it to a close with a final swing of his arm. He thanked us all…and we all fell into the chilly Jersey night, ears ringing and, for some of us, dreams fulfilled.

The entire ride home we recited entire scenes from “Spinal Tap”. It’s what grown up rock and roll fans do when they want to feel like kids again.

They also listen to The Who. And always will.

In a bit..

–tf

I was out and about with my wife and daughters on Saturday when a friend sent me this pic. It’s so charming I sent it to a few friends. Bret Alexander was one of them. He posted it on his Facebook page with the comment “I could write 10,000 words on this.”

I was sorta thinking the same thing. And then I remembered that both Bret and I probably write about music as much as we try to create our own. Bret’s excellent posts have recently been picked up and are shared via an NEPA online magazine as well. So I said….”let’s both  write about it….and compare.” And Bret, as cool as the other side of the pillow as usual, said….”I’m in”.

And so here we are. Sitting around on St. Patrick’s Day looking at a picture of Keith Richards playing his guitar for an adorable little boy. Undoubtedly both with big goofy grins on our faces.

Where do you even start? Imagine being able to stare at Mt. Rushmore from the vantage point of the tip of Lincoln’s nose.It’s a bit like that. Only more intense. Because….well….Keith.

Can you grow old gracefully in rock and roll? The rules were set in backrooms by person or persons unknown from the start. Probably someone who watched a dangerously gorgeous Elvis Presley on Ed Sullivan and notated to himself….”it must always be this way.” And then Elvis killed himself slowly by letting everybody down, and even worse, got fat and ugly in the process, and 40 became to rock and roll what 65 is to the rest of us. To quote Woody…”so long, it’s been good to know ya…”

Even Mick Jagger snarled that there was no way he’d be singing “Satisfaction” when he was 40 years old. The Who broke up in 1982 but I have tickets to see them this Saturday night in New Jersey.

So yea, these these things happen because rock and roll was kick-started by rebellion….by kids who never fit in….kids with big noses and bad acne and a raging list of neuroses. Kids nobody knew what to do with. Kids who were painfully insecure but wanted to make a big noise. Kids who are, in polite society, called “fucked up”.

Mick Jagger and Pete Townshend and Keith Richards really don’t know how to do anything else. Playing in a band with Angus Young is more dangerous than working at a Bronx convenient store, yet there he still is, dressed very much like the age of the blond boy in our picture….having what looks to be a either a grand mal seizure or mimicking a kid having a fit at the mall because his mother just said “no” to him…on the floor of the stage during “Let There Be Rock” because that’s all Angus Young was built to do.

After you write your memoir and appear in a few really bad movies…the mansion on the hill gets pretty boring. So you come back down the mountain and plug in and play. Paul McCartney is one of the richest men in the world, worth well over a billion dollars. Last October found him on a stage in Columbus, Ohio playing for over 3 hours. He’s 73 years old. I find that wonderful. Not everyone does.

The old blues guys had no such age stigma. They just played until the devil came for them. And that’s what Keith Richards is going to do. He made up his own rules as he went along. Then when he broke them he didn’t have to answer to anybody but himself. And Keef is nothing if not infinitely forgiving.

The little boy is looking at a man. He’s real. Swiss blood transfusions and snorted paternal ashes notwithstanding, Keith Richards took the tools of the blues and started to tinker with them….and one night he woke up in the middle of the night with the riff to “Satisfaction” in his head. He reached for his guitar and played it into a tape recorder. The next morning he heard it. About a minute of the riff….and the rest of the tape filled with his snoring. In such small scenes foundations crack, and thus set the stage for the walls to come tumblin’ down.

Keith Richards changed the world. And the little boy can sense it. He’s thinking, “other men are not like this. They don’t rock polka-dot shirts and head scarves with ringlets and skull rings…this guy is dangerous…..and (sounding vaguely Jaggeresque) I like it.”

I remember my moment. Thirty years ago. Playing guitars at a friend’s house. He gave me the secret.

“No….just take the low E string off”.

“What”?

“Just the 5 strings. Tune the A string like this….and the high E to this….there….see?”

“He takes the string off?”

“Yea….watch…”

Until that point “Brown Sugar” sounded like Bach to me. In 5 minutes I could play it. I now understood why Keith’s left hand index finger looked like a hook. But the pain that day was exquisite.

“Start Me Up”. “Happy”. “Can’t Always Get What You Want”. “All Down the Line”. “Honky Tonk Women”. “Tumbling Dice”. “Before They Make Me Run”. “Monkey Man”. “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”. “Rocks Off”. “Shouldn’t Take It So Hard”. What did I leave out?

This was blues we could call our own.

To me this kid looks like a future badass. He’s gonna get a guitar from Santa and barricade himself and his Ipod in his bedroom and when he comes out it’s gonna be slung low and the girls are gonna go out of their way to stroll past his house in an attempt to catch his eye.

Jon Landau once wrote that “I have seen rock and roll’s future and his name is Bruce Springsteen.” Fair enough. But that was then, and this is now.

I see rock and roll’s future here. And he’s staring into the eyes of Keith Richards. And Keith is staring back. And, without a word…..just music….the torch is passed.

That’s my take on it anyway….

In a bit..

–tf

We love what we love for reasons we can’t always articulate. People. Dogs. Architecture. Changing seasons. Books. Lager. Drugs. Naps. Netflix. An endless supply of benzodiazepines. Warm blankets. A fireplace. Central air. The view of the ocean from a rich person’s balcony. The corner table. Mashed potatoes. Swedish Fish.

I could go on and on, and I’m tempted to actually because it’s kinda fun….but you get it. There are little fragments of our often hectic lives that reach out and nuzzle on our necks and slow down our breathing. They can crystallize that glorious moment at the end of a working day when we toss all our 9-5 shit on the table….and collapse in a happy heap on the couch….determined to never rise again.

We hate what we hate too. We can’t often articulate why we dislike something so intensely, but to the regret of our species, we always seem willing to give it the old college try. Ask me why I adore the autumn leaves….and I’ll go around and around in endless poetic circles that mean something to me but will probably leave you wishing you never brought up the subject in the first place. But mention the words “Donald Trump”….and I’m likely to go off on a rant that, whether you agree with me or not, would definitively not be filled with soaring, Lincolnesque rhetoric. It might also involve spittle. My verbal take-downs of this fascist, fear mongering racist neanderthal have not been my finest moments as a human being. See? I just did it again. It’s hard to be a saint in the city.

In my daily life, I’m much more likely to hear about Donald Trump than the beauty of the fall. ‘Tis a pity that. “The world’s lousy” Ty Cobb once said. Too much Trump and too little leaves. This is why.

What I’m leading up to is music. I lead up to things differently than most people I know, but bear with me.

When I feel that the world’s lousy…..when the amount of stupid I ingest on a daily basis begins to feel like an overdose….when I’m down….music lifts me up. Every time.

The sense of camaraderie is like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. You meet once…that’s all it takes. Some of these people I see every week. Some of them I see maybe once a year. Either way, we always seem to pick up where we left off. There’s nothing at all awkward about the passage of time. Once you’re in, you’re in. Once you play “Magic Bus” or “The Weight” with somebody, they leave the keys under the mat for you.

L to R Joe DelRosso, Jim Barrett, Bryan Banks, Joe Wegleski

When musicians gather, the conversation is relentless and articulate and beer-soaked and sometimes doesn’t even require words. A glance across the stage at the guitarist who just nailed the solo….or a spin around at the drummer who is making the hairs on the back of your neck stand at attention. The unexpected harmony vocal falling down on your head like a soft summer rain. Watch when musicians gather at open mics and fall into impromptu jams. They are always smiling. It’s why the call it “playing”. Nobody “works” music. Well….some do I suspect. The ones I’m subjected to when my kids take over the car radio. But the people who sit in boardrooms and auto-tune voices for public consumption are one day going to grow old and sit in a confessional with a copy of “Live at Leeds” and beg forgiveness from a Priest whose life was transformed the night he saw the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. Trust me. I know these things.

I played music with friends on Wednesday and Thursday this week and it made my week less lousy. Can you do better than that?

Can I articulate why? Well….I tried and that’s all I can do. I’ll say this as well. On our way to play music, we’re all listening to it. While preparing to play…we sing along to the jukebox. I’ve had times where during the intermissions musicians gathered outside in the parking lot with acoustic guitars for a quick play (perhaps a pull on the peace pipe here and there….but that’s what friends are for). When the gig is over, what happens? The jukebox is fired up immediately. And when the gear is all packed up and we’re heading home…..we’re singing along to the car stereo. There’s no thought process to any of these things. Our brains are wired this way. It’s like blinking. Or hating Trump.

And so to my brothers and sisters who fight the good fight with guitars and drums and keys and harps and the beauty and wonder of the human voice…..Wiggy and Jim and James and David and Joe and Joe and Joe and Luke and Mark and Bret and Edward and Bryan and Asialena and PJ and Chuck and Martin and Maggie and Jack and JP and John and Rob and Rob and Johnny and Tiff and Father Paul and Ronnie and Fran and Mark and Lenny and Gary and George and Chris and how many others……I say “thank you sir, can I have another…”

In a bit..

–tf

Really people. Calling it the “republican clown car” is seriously offensive to clowns. So stop it. I’ve known guys who were clowns. Not the creepy Gacey-type clowns…just regular kids birthday party clowns trying to make a few extra bucks on the weekends, with smiles and balloons and rubber noses and the big red feet. Charming really. This assault on their good name should not stand. We’re better than this, dammit!

Last night, as the new leader of the Republican party bragged about the size of his dick during yet another Presidential debate (add the actual CNN headline “Donald Trump defends the size of his penis” to the NeverThoughtIdSeeThat category) , I was playing a gig in Dickson City….warily watching the unsmiling man across the bar with the camouflage “Trump” cap as I sang “meet the new boss….he’s the same as the old boss…”. After all, it was an open mic night and the room was filled with hippie liberal commie guitar players. Like me. Mostly Bernie supporters who dream big about equality and not being led by a fascist….. quaint shit like that. I half expected the guy to start building a wall around the stage using Mexican money. It was a bit unnerving but he seemed nice enough and seemed to enjoy the music…which is all that matters. Music is never divisive. Music brings people together…which makes the fact that it’s the first thing schools cut when they wanna save pennies all the more perplexing. Personally I think a world with more guitars and less bombs would be a better place, and not just because guitars are cheaper (unless you ordered a custom Martin from the factory). But so be it. We shared a room and escaped to sing another day…..and remain freakishly liberal….and that’s the important part.

Apparently Marco Rubio…..that one who looks like a high school sophomore…. the one who reminds me of that kid who sits under the hoop at basketballs games and runs out and wipe the floor with a towel during timeouts, made a nudge- nudge wink-wink comment about the size of Trump’s hands. Or something. It’s hard to keep up with this stuff. Trump insists on calling him “Little Marco”…..which is driving the Rube crazy. So….you know….what would you do?

Reference the size of Trump’s willy, obviously. This is America boys and girls. Brave men and women have fought and died so that Republican challengers for the President of the United States can say “mine’s bigger than yours.”

It’s down to four now. Ted Cruz and John Kasich are the other two, for those counting at home. Cruz is so batshit crazy he makes Mel Gibson’s dad look like Dennis Kucinich. He can only be from Texas. With that “please punch me in the face” face and his creepy wife who thinks he’s Jesus reincarnated sent from the sky to make us all rapture-ready. His own daughter won’t even pretend to like him on the campaign trail. Hands down he’s the most hated man in the senate, which is really saying something when you think about it. His colleagues joke about killing him on the senate floor and getting away with it because nobody would dare convict them. Clearly this man is a bridge builder eh? Even fellow Texan Rick Perry….who is well acquainted with crazy….thinks Cruz needs to be medicated.

We all know guys like Ted Cruz in our lives. We call them “assholes” and “dicks”.

Kasich is the only person on the stage who acts like an adult during debates. That is…he doesn’t make penis jokes and he doesn’t shout over the others and doesn’t blame tough questions on the menstrual cycle of female debate moderators. Of course this makes him boring as fuck in the year of our Lord 2016 so he’s in dead last place. He’s the “moderate” of the bunch….a man who admits the climate change is real and doesn’t want to deport all the brown people. He also considers women little more than walking wombs….and his draconian anti-abortion stance sounds like something cooked up in between Salem witch trials. But whatever….in today’s Republican party Dick Nixon and Ronald Reagan look like Che Guevara in comparison, so Kasich is treated as a minor annoyance and nothing more.

And so that’s that. It has come to this. We’re out of ideas. America has turned into Shutter Island. Break out the psychoactive drugs and line up to enter the lighthouse. Your lobotomy awaits.

In a bit…

–tf

I lost my mother-in-law in today’s wee-wee hours. The news arrived at 3am. Like a thief, death is more comfortable working nights.

It was expected. She hung on longer than anybody thought she could. But she finally had enough and willed herself away. She did not die alone.

Her last week was spent in hospice care….a bi-polar existence of numbing ghastly amounts of pain….and a trained staff’s saintly reverence for injecting as much dignity as possible into an undignified process.

All those born so too must die…..a slightly more high-brow way of echoing Jim Morrison’s “no one here gets out alive” mantra. You’d think that would allow some type of rationalization…..some time of preparedness. And maybe it does….but when the news that you’ve been expecting for days does come through, you’re gutted nonetheless. Because love doesn’t do rationalizations. Love only knows I want you here with me…with us…forever. Love is indeed timeless, and that’s the part that brings the tears.

She accepted this awkward, quiet, Dunmore Irish kid into her family’s life from day one. Hers was a family that was nowhere near awkward or quiet….and figured if a Dunmore kid traveled all the way to Jessup (gotta remember…I chose a college because I could walk there…) to see a girl, he must really love her. And so they made an extra place setting at the table….marveled at the Irish appetite (“doesn’t he eat?”…..I used to love when they’d talk about me while I was at the table….”what’s the matter with him?”), and eventually just told me I no longer needed to knock to come in.  I was a member of two families now.

Over the years I remained the awkward, quiet, Dunmore Irish kid…….but I never went away. We were constants in each other’s lives. I certainly got major brownie points for helping out in the grandchild department…..having a role in presenting Alyssa and Kiera to their grandmother. Two gorgeous and fascinating girls who made her eyes twinkle and helped keep her forever young.

(So guys….if you buy the mother-in-law-as-shrew cliche jokes….you’re doing it wrong. If you don’t know what to say, don’t say anything. And when you have a child, present the baby to her and say “look what I brought you, Grandma”. All you gotta do after that is step back and be warmed by the smiles.)

The tears come easy now. Too easy. For me they’re mostly triggered by the tears of others. When my kids said goodbye for the last time….holding her hand and whispering their private messages into her ear. Her leg twitched. She knew her girls were there. Being a witness to a scene like this made my knees buckle…..and at the same time made me stronger. I can’t explain the paradox so I won’t try. But I saw some of her strength pass into my own girls….and I saw some of their strength pass into her. It was the meaning of blood…..the meaning of family. It’s why during dark nights of the soul…..blood is all you have left.

As for me…..I’d always announce myself as “your favorite son-in-law”. The fact that I was her only son-in-law didn’t faze me in the least. The last time I saw her was Saturday. She looked so peaceful. Like a doll. Clutching a stuffed animal. Pictures of her grandchildren spread across the top of the pillow. I sensed no pain. She was sleeping. All but the body had already moved on. When I left I knew it was the last time.

On my way out I stopped in the family room. I plucked a few notes out of the piano they have there. Searching for a melody that might make it easier. There wasn’t one.

The last room on the way out was a community kitchen. Sometimes patients will sit in there…in front of a TV. I saw a man reaching in vain for the coffee on the table next to him. He couldn’t get to it. Maybe he wasn’t supposed to. He could burn himself with it. But he wanted it. I stopped…..went in….and pushed the table closer to him so he could get it himself. He smiled. “Thank you” he said…..and then he gave me a thumbs-up. I returned it.

I made my way to the elevator with a big smile on my face.

Life finds a way.

Thank you Marion. For everything. I love you….and miss you.

–tf

If you want to make great music make sure you surround yourself with musicians who are better than you are.

Because you know what you don’t know. You know what you want to sound like but can’t. You may not brag about your shortcomings, but you sure as shit know what they are.

If you’re the best musician in the room…..your head is already hitting the ceiling.

When I write songs they don’t have notes in them that I can’t hit or guitar parts in them that I can’t play. On the surface that’s just common sense. But what if the song would be better if it contained a note I can’t hit or a lick I can’t play? And believe me….that’s a shit ton of notes.

Hmmm.

That’s where the cats who are better than you come in.

So somebody adds a killer harmony vocal and another dude nails a nasty little 5 note hook at the speed of sound…..and everybody thinks….”gee….what a great song.”

‘Cause that’s how it works. We “play” music….we don’t “work” it. And playing alone sucks unless you have multiple personality disorder….and even then it can get creepy.

The best songwriters in the world surround themselves with better musicians…..because if they didn’t they wouldn’t be the best songwriters in the world.

Our area is filled with great musicians. Name-dropping can be dick-ish so I won’t go there…but a part of me really really want to because I feel honored to be in the same room with these guys. Guys (and gals) who are good enough to play anywhere with anybody. I’m leery of anybody who looks like they’re working hard when they make music. The names I ain’t dropping might be working hard….but they never sweat..

I never think about the business side of music. Admirable self-denial I know…as my mail-box isn’t exactly overflowing with royalty checks. But still….it seems rather odd to make original music for 25 years without expecting some type of return on the investment. Even home gardeners get to look out the window and watch the fucking rutabagas grow. All I get is watching the un-sold CDs pile up in the basement. The last time I checked my mentally deranged cat shit in one of the boxes….which must mean something but I shudder to think of what that might be.

I might get discouraged for a few days. A few weeks even…..when I’m playing rusted guitar strings ‘cause I can’t afford the $5.75 for new ones. But eventually the sun rises….I get myself a new set of Earthwood light gauges from a soggy $10 bill left over from a paid bar tab….and I grab a notepad and pen and write another song. Not because I think this is gonna be the one that pays for the house that the bank is nice enough to let me live in for 30 years….but because writing songs is what I do. Just like the guy who grows rutabagas.

I feel very self-conscious performing. It doesn’t come naturally. I tell myself I’m going to do A, B, and C and I get onstage and mumble something (usually my name) and do X, Y, and Z and try not to get heart palpitations. If there comes an opportunity to take a genuine chance….I won’t because that’s how self-conscious performers perform. When writing I’m totally free…nothing is off the table….there are no rules. I ignore the basics of structure and phrasing and how many words are allowed to be jammed into a line (ask anyone…the answer is “lots”). I’ll attempt to go around the world with 3 chords…..and if I feel like navigating side roads maybe I’ll stick a capo on the third fret. I’m badass that way. I can do all of this, of course, because nobody is watching me at the kitchen table. If you feel self conscious when you’re alone you probably need pharmaceuticals.

Writing is solitary. When I’m asked to co-write a song…..I get all nervous….because I’m not alone anymore. So the only way I can do it is by dividing by 2. I’ll write the words and send them off for a tune….or I’ll take a finished lyric and add a tune to it. Either way I’m up for….and love being a part of. Sitting knee to knee with a co-writer freezes me. I can go in another room and write you a verse, or come up with a simple melody…but not if you are staring at me.

Music is life. And music shared is not having to live that life alone.

And really….how cool is that?

In a bit..

–tf

Strange days. Strange Christmas.

Rushing out on Christmas Eve for some last minute guy shopping….I pass a dude in a convertible. Top down. T-shirt. Shorts. The only thing keeping him warm was his hipster beard. I can only guess what he was blaring on his stereo, because all my windows were closed and my air-conditioner was on. On my radio was news of snow in Las Vegas. Ho ho ho.

Dinner with extended family that night. Nice restaurant. Things are going reasonable well. Nobody pulled a gun. About an hour in I notice a distinct breeze. Like I’m sitting on a sea-side patio. Patrons were requesting the air be turned on…and said air was blowing directly above my head…..onto the back of my neck and snaking its way down my spine. It was the first time all day I needed a jacket. It finally felt like Christmas. Then the bill came. It really felt like Christmas now.

It’s all over now. The big comedown is upon us. All that’s between us and more than 2 months of cold, dark depression and a really lousy Super Bowl half-time show is a set of New Year’s Eve declarations that will be forgotten as soon as the bowl games are over. Turn off the lights, the party is over. Drag the tree down the steps….or better yet just release it so it slides down the steps on its own. I threw out my back for 3 days dragging the thing up….so it can fend for itself as far as I’m concerned.

What’s ahead is the vast waste-land of 2016. A frozen-tundra of uncertainty that, if political polls are any indication, could very well lead us into a self-made catastrophe brought on by an excessive amount of Jesus, guns, hypocrisy, and stupid. It will also be my daughter’s first year in college, the cost of which I am unable to fathom without hyperventilating. Ho ho ho.

Last night I sat up really late….watching my Xmas present…..the DVD portion of Bruce Springsteen’s “The River” box set. A documentary about the making of the album and a complete 1980 concert. My daughter kept walking in saying…”how long is this?”…..not being familiar with Bruce’s 3+ hour, multi-encore extravaganzas. She does think that Bruce is “kinda hot for an old guy”, and asked me to get some tickets so we could go see him on this tour. To this I laughed….the same kind of laugh I emit when I consider her upcoming college tuition. From what I can tell the price tags are comparable.

Music is the soundtrack to my life. And no music reminds me of growing up more than Springsteen’s. As a teen I devoured his records….and The River….a sprawling double album (ah….the days of double albums…) of dark laments and bar-band rave-ups thrown together as if the two belonged together, which of course they do, was a milestone. It was the first record I’d heard that encompassed the drudgery of the work-week and the false hopes of the weekend. If was the kind of record that you had to dance to to keep from crying. Of course only weirdos like me think this way. Most just bought it because it contained “Hungry Heart”….a huge sounding single that became a concert singalong despite its subject matter (summed up nicely in its opening couplet) being as dark and depressing as anything ever heard on the radio. But still, there were some who listened to “Stolen Car” and “Wreck on the Highway” obsessively, and took from those 3 chord songs (simple…that was so important to those of us still fumbling for chords on the guitar..these songs were simple….so maybe there was a chance…) that maybe….if we thought real hard….we just could stop this rain.

All this is a long-winded way of saying that I probably got drunk to this record more than any other. It was the kind of record that could serve as the soundtrack to an outdoor party…..blaring from a boom-box near the bon-fire. Or could serve as a companion piece to a lonely dark night of the soul. A neat trick that.

I don’t get drunk these days. It’s too much work really. A few beers and my eyelids go into overdrive. I miss being young. I miss looking forward to nothing more than music and bon-fires and quarter kegs and dreams we didn’t know at the time that kids from NEPA mining towns weren’t allowed to have. “Is a dream a lie it it don’t come true, or is it something worse”. What difference does it make? Sucks either way.

And so enough of all that. The important thing is that everything doesn’t die…..and that’s a fact. The music lasts forever. And maybe….just maybe….that’s enough sometimes. Last night….as I sat up alone….for about 4 hours…it was indeed.

In a bit..

–tf

I have friends who live in Europe. Lately they’ve been asking me only one thing. “What the fuck is wrong with you people over there? What are you gonna propose next? Easy-bake ovens?”

I don’t have much of an answer really. I stutter and mumble and write sentences and then delete them…because they sound so inane. All I can do is assure my European friends that we’re not all racist nazi assholes. And then I turn on the TV and it’s wall to wall coverage of racist nazi assholes waving American flags….so I can’t really blame any outsider for thinking that our nation is in the middle of a long night of the long knives.

I used to think that the dangerous mainstream haters existed only in the past. My generation has been oh-so smug…knowing that Hitler and Stalin and Japanese internment camps and Joe McCarthy walked the earth before we were born. When we arrived our cleansed souls dealt with the most extreme fuckwits….banishing the true haters to the fringes of the Westboro Baptist Church and the trailer parks of the Klan Klaverns, where they provide comic relief. We might have to put up with the occasional Dick Cheney or Antonin Scalia, but even that was more like a cautionary tale. If we let our guard down long enough snakes could slither under the door. Clearly nobody ever takes the comic-book hate of these two fools seriously enough to become inspired. Unless you are…..you know….mentally disabled and stuff. Even Cheney’s own daughter thinks he’s an asshole. So we’re cool. Right?

Well…

This Trump fella. It’s certainly looking like he is going to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States. The more unhinged he and his rhetoric becomes, the more his poll number rise. In the beginning it was good for a laugh. Watch the goobers gather and hold anti-Obama signs filled with misspelled words and wildly inventive grammar. Watch the poor angry white people congregate to pledge to vote against their own interests because Jesus loves them best and doesn’t like the brown fella who never took anybody’s guns away but was gonna take their guns away anyway because…well….just because. Plus Hillary is a bitch.

And then I started hearing it. From people who could spell and didn’t have grammar issues and really had no reason to be angry. “Hey…that Trump…he speaks his mind doesn’t he?”

Um…well….ok. But I know lots of people who “speak their mind”. So do you. How many of them are fit to be the leader of the free world?

I mean….I like drinking with them and stuff, don’t get me wrong. They are entertaining and usually good for a few rounds at least. But the novelty wears off the first time somebody punches them in the face and you have to step in to keep them alive.

I have Republican friends. You probably do too. They are easy to spot these days. Half of them are squirming in acute embarrassment, and the other half are acting like rabid dogs who smell a fresh steak on the other side of a mine field. It’s an uneasy truce to say the least. Like Philadelphia Eagle fans dealing with Chip Kelly.

Watching the so-called “establishment” Republican candidates deal with Trump is like having a front row seat to the circus. All of them are navigating the 24-hour news cycle like infants holding in a huge shit. To their credit, some have mildly repudiated Trump’s latest nugget……banning all Muslims from entering the United States…although others, like Ted Cruz, just seem relieved that Trump didn’t suggest banning Cubans.

So yea….Trump wants to ban all Muslims from entering the United States. No word on how he plans on dealing with the Muslims already in the United States. Maybe he can trick them all into attending the Rose Bowl?

For those about to rock, I salute you. And for those who thought that this sort of knuckle-dragging went out with George Wallace and Bull Connor and Richard Nixon after half a bottle of scotch…..I ask that you visit Fox News on the web and randomly read through the user comments.

Make no mistake. The world is laughing at us. Sometimes it’s a guffaw and sometimes it’s one of those uneasy laughs that comes from a combination of absurdity and fear because the absurdity part seems lost on a lot of us. But the result is the same. A man who could very well become the next President of the United States just co-oped an idea from Adolf Hitler.

And in doing so got a bounce in the polls.

America. 2015.

Our generation can no longer afford to be smug.

In a bit..

–tf

I’ve been thinking a lot about music. Why I listen to what I listen to and write what I write and hate what I hate and don’t trust what I don’t trust.

And to quote my guru….”remembering distant memories and recalling other names…”

That first Beatles record. Records plural, actually. It was the Red and the Blue double albums. I was about 10 and must have been a very good boy because Santa left ’em both under the tree. That year I had a bad flu and Christmas morning found me lying on the couch, delirious with fever….alternating between chattering teeth and sweat-soaked blankets. You know the drill. Somehow I rose from the dead and put “Paperback Writer” on the living room stereo, and my fever broke.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Music could raise the dead. It was a lesson I’ve never forgotten.

There was something about those Brits though. Beatles. Stones. Kinks. Who. Faces. Glorious noise and great accents. If you didn’t have a cockney accent rock magazines banished you to 1 star oblivion. Like every other shot-and-a-beer teen I had my Rolling Stones phase (learned that 5 string open G tuning Keith used and felt like the cock of the walk) and my Led Zeppelin phase. By that time I’d heard the tale of blues-men selling their soul to the devil….and one look at Jimmy Page in “The Song Remains the Same” convinced me that he was probably the guy with the clip-board. Whip-thin, eyes heavily lidded…dressed like a Star-Trek villain…he looked preposterous. But you couldn’t take your eyes off him. He was such a force that nobody ever held him accountable for “Dazed and Confused”…..which is extraordinary when you think about it but…well….whatever. Robert Plant was the original Derek Smalls passing through the airport scanner with a vegetable down his pants…and nobody ever held him accountable for that either because there was no such thing as airport security in them days. Such were the strange days of the 1970s.

Strange Days indeed. I read that hilarious Jim Morrison book when I was in 8th grade and swallowed every word of it, even the part about him being part god, part misunderstood Rimbaud. I tried in vain to find one of those long, loose white shirts with the shoelace threaded through the neck…..although I drew the line at the leather pants…not willing to take punches in the face for my new flame. It wasn’t until I actually bought the album “American Prayer”, in which a drunken Lizard King recites what sounds like random pages from the dictionary that my love for the Doors passed from Morrison to how fucking good and unique his band was. Manzarek and Kreiger are the only reason I can still listen to the Doors now. Morrison reminds me too much of how fat Val Kilmer got. It’s depressing.

I spent the summer of my 16th year devouring the Who and Pete Townshend…a love affair that has hit some black ice (“It’s Hard” anyone?) but has never died. “Quadrophenia” was my first Who record….and still remains an endless source of fascination all these years later, mostly because it reminds me of what it felt like to be a teenager, a topic which remains an endless source of fascination for a man rubbing up against the inner thigh of 50. Townshend was the first person who made me want to play the guitar….or at the very least stand in front of a mirror and pretend to play the guitar. Until such funding could be caged, however, a tennis racket would have to do. I never truly learned how to play “The Real Me” until a few years ago, but you’d never know it if you saw what I saw in that mirror all those years ago. Rock and roll never forgets, and neither do I.

One of the all time great rock songs is barely 2 minutes long and is about not knowing to say. “Can’t Explain” is sorta what all songwriters are up again. We have no idea why we feel this way…..but are forever attempt to articulate it anyway. If we can’t find the words we reach for the melody. And if that doesn’t quite do it we can always turn it up to 11 and hope for the best. When I was in college I heard this band called REM, and they took articulation to places it had never been before. I can still listen to “Sitting Still” and “Carnival of Sorts” and dance to their stuttering melodies and sing along to words that nobody really knows because they are utterly intelligible. But it didn’t matter. “Murmur” and “Reckoning” and “Chronic Town” changed lives. I know this because they changed mine. REM were as good a rock and roll band as our nation ever produced….and I shudder to think what synthesizers and the huge drum sound of the 80s would have done to my brain-stem without their musical antidote.

And then Cobain blew up the world with those 4 chords and all the pretenders grabbed their hair-spray and ran screaming from the room. Pretty heady stuff for a mixed up kid from a dead town who never believed a word of what all these strange people were saying about him.

He was listening to REM when he died. Trying to decipher rock and roll.

In a bit..

–tf

I’ve reached that age. It’s not a number, more like a feeling. It’s called “old”….and it creeps up on you. Things hurt you didn’t even know you had. The nights are shorter and the days are longer and the couch beckons the way a long-legged cheerleader sitting alone at the back of the bus used to. Most things you used to do you can’t do anymore. Those you can do….take a lot longer….and if they take too long you wonder why they were so fucking important in the first place. I’m way smarter than I used to be, but I don’t have the energy to mobilize my brain-power. In other words, I’m asleep by the time the 3rd quarter of Monday Night Football starts and need 2 days to recover if I stay out past midnight….which I rarely do of course, because I’m old.

But I sometimes do…and it’s because I still play music. Music is the only thing that makes an old person feel not so old. If it’s 1am and I’m singing “Won’t Get Fooled Again” in a smokey bar filled with empty chairs and a handful of people who know the words and aren’t shy about sharing…..I get a second wind that even drugs can’t touch, and I should know because….well….never mind. That was a long time ago….when I was young and stupid and happier than I am now but I was happier probably because I was stupid. Yea, that must have been it.

I spent the last few hours playing music with another old guy….whose identity I’ll protect because he probably doesn’t want you to know that he’s even older than me. We sat knee to knee and sang songs and tossed ideas back and forth and said “yea, that works”, or “no…that don’t move me” and tried to make things right with the world for 3 minutes at a time. We spoke of Levon Helm and eating pizza with Van Morrison and having Dylan peer over your shoulder and why it’s perfectly normal that the same guy who wrote “Jungleland” also wrote “Crush On You” and was proud of both……and we spoke of making movies and rum commercials and writing plays and having daughters and being blown away when others are as passionate about their craft as we are about ours…..which in turn means we give our shit away for free when we should probably ask for at least beer money….but no matter. It’s only rock and roll and we like it even though we’re broke as shit.

And then it was time to go home and feel old again because nothing this good lasts forever.

On my way home I had the music blaring so loud that I lost track of the fact that I was merging into a single lane construction zone….blowing past a yield sign and nearly getting flattened by a meth-fueled 18 wheeler in the process…piloted by a driver who clearly did not understand or much care that my muse was working overtime…and that singing along with Richard Manuel to “King Harvest” was way more important to me at the time than not being killed. At least that’s how I took the long, hideous blast of his wretched horn. Perhaps he meant something else by it, but I doubt it.

Probably an old bastard in the cab. Can’t you just spot them a mile away? I sang these lines tonight. “I don’t wanna grow old / rather run out of time…” and now I know why I wrote them in the first place.

And so it goes. The things that make me feel old work on me like a masseuse, so maybe the music gods try to even the odds a bit by granting me a few hours with a kindred spirit.

In a world gone mad we’re all keen to find a temporary oasis….and if you can bring your guitar with you so much the better. When the world comes crashing down I’d much rather be found playing a loud A chord than worrying about the ecumenical details….because any angels worth believing in would never turn their backs on a dude banging out an A chord. This I know to be true because I’ve been praying to Pete Townshend since I was 16 and the fucker always answers me.

I’ll keep chasing these shadows across the borderline, because it makes me feel less old. And that beats shit out of being old.

Thus endeth the lesson.

In a bit..

–tf