An Apple A Day

This is about all I have been able to accomplish in Mobile. This is a song without words, just playing stuff on the guitar...although it should eventually be about Fiona Apple
Free Fiona Jam 
Some proposed lyrics are: "You need to let her go; because look at how pretty she is; you need to let her go, or she'll write an angry song about you; Let Fiona go; and give back her hashish!"
A Busker Looks At 50

Fiona and I were locked up at the same time!

Today's post, which I am doing on the eve of my 50th birthday; should be the result of the type of soul-searching which is appropriate on such an occasion.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time listening to interviews of and the music of Fiona Apple. I have promoted her to 4th on my all time list, behind The Grateful Dead, Elvis Costello, the Beatles and in front of Prince.
By kind of a bizarre coincidence, I came across a video of Elvis Costello doing a Fiona Apple song, called "I'll Know," how cosmic was that?? 

Let me see...

I woke up this morning when Howard stirred.

I have been going to sleep early enough lately (without staying up to busk) so that I can get up at the crack of dawn (when he automatically wakes up without need of an alarm clock) and accompany him on the first leg of his *prole: the stop at McDonalds for "the morning cup of coffee over the morning newspaper."

*The built in dictionary in Blogger said that this isn't a word, but I know it is, because it was in a Steven King book (and we all know that he never invents words) and so I looked it up; in means "mundane routine; nothing unusual or exciting," as I recall.
When the nightmare that you wake up to is worse than the one you were having...

I woke up and guzzled down an energy drink that had been laying beside my head; one that I had been tempted to guzzle down in the wee hours of the morning when I woke up parched. I instead ate a juicy apple and a couple of moisture-laden bananas and went back to sleep -something that I would not have been able to do, had I guzzled the energy drink; or even if I did manage to drift off, would have had nightmares about 13 homeless men surrounding me and making the "peace sign in front of the mouth" gesture for "Give me a cigarette!" or the nightmare that I have had about a dozen times where I am in a car which is rolling backwards down a hill in the dark, and, although I am pressing on the brake pedal as hard as I can -really getting my back into it- the car is accelerating and careening and I can only glimpse vague images in the rear-view mirror and I put my head back against the head rest because I am expecting to crash into something at any second.

I'll have to let Sigmund Freud sort that one out....

I walked along with Howard, debating upon whether or not to even spend the $1.10 on a cup of coffee. I was down to 15 dollars, after having 34 dollars after the Bayfest Music Festival ended on Sunday night.

note: The 45 days spent in jail, eating food which broke my skin out and made me reluctant to even appear in public; combined with the hiatus from playing, which caused my callouses to fall off, making it painful to play for more than 20 minutes at a time, initially, can be added to the list of things to blame for why I didn't make 175 dollars during the festival, like I had done last year.

Cathedral Park Studios

I then went to Cathedral Park and plugged in this computer, anxious to hear the recording that I had made the night before in the same park; after most of the bums had checked into the shelters and the rest had gone off somewhere because there were few people to beg from on the streets, and it was pretty quiet.

Recording Disappointing

I thought that it might have been an interesting recording; but it was another disappointment and an example of why; when doing a multi-track recording, it is important to follow some kind of strict form and not just "wing it" because, if you do then, with every track that you add to the first you must remember exactly where the first track deviated (because he was winging it) and then deviate right in sync with it, or the whole thing falls apart.

Listening to the recording I made; there were parts that repeated maybe twice in spots; 4 times in others; and then whole sections that came and went "out of nowhere" and each time, "the vocalist" was thrown off for a half a beat or so...long enough to stop your foot from tapping if it ever was...
I erased the whole thing, sure did. No more crappy music posted to this blog -a lesson that it has taken me almost 50 years to learn.

I wonder if my friends in London, the Lidgleys,  for example, are amongst the casualties that I lost after my ill-advised postings of the first music that I recorded on this laptop; recordings which I think caused some readers to jump ship, having lost interest in a street musician that sounded "that bad."

Or, It may be that the plot line of the blog is too stagnant; was what I did last night almost word for word what I did on, let's say March 22nd, 2007?

Maybe too eerily similar.

The Cryptic Note

These are things to think about, as I approach the half century mark...should I start to embellish the blog with tales of treachery and high Jinks that never really happened, like the strange, cryptic note that I found at my sleeping spot by the railroad tracks, along with a dollar and two cigarettes and a half a blunt...only it wasn't a normal blunt; it was laced with some kind of mind-controlling substance, and as I lay there, unable to move a couple guys who were dressed in Port Authority uniforms came and took my inert body and dragged me upon a ship; and now I am blogging from a little cafe in Guatemala
; having been able to escape my captors...for now, at least....

Should I mention that??

The cryptic note and the cigarettes and blunt and the dollar really happened; actually....but I think I may have been intended for someone who has or had been sleeping at that spot during my years absence. The note said: "Where are you?"