Follow Me

My Former Charge

Not To Be Frozen By Indecision
It was 43 degrees and windy this morning when I woke up with the sun.
The mockingbirds were already attacking a piece of swiss cheese on the ground near my feet.
I drank my energy drink and it gave me the energy to want to busk by the Big Clock Spot, however, common sense prevailed after I envisioned painfully cold fingers fumbling for chords as people hurried by holding their pulling their coats tightly around them and holding their hats in place; and myself chasing my seed money down Royal Street.
I also envisioned one nice lady handing me 10 dollars and saying "I don't know how you can stand the cold!"
I am seriously planning to try to get to Tucson, Arizona.
What good is having the freedom to go where ever you want, if you don't exercise it?
I can't see spending an uncomfortable winter in Mobile, which is the busking equivalent of working in a chicken slaughterhouse for less than minimum wages, paid "under the table."
Arizona is a destination of choice for many people in the winter.
Unfortunately, I found this to include a swarm of tramps and bums, so much so that there was a beggar on all four corners of any given intersection of downtown Phoenix when I was there in 1999. I can only wonder at how the situation is now, after 13 years of economic decline.
I also wonder what measures the city has taken to deal with the "problem."
Will I get into town and hear the first cop that I encounter say something like "Not in this town, buddy. My suggestion is that you just keep on moving; because you're not gonna like it here; we'll make sure of that!"
I am planning a train hop on about November 20th, or next Monday.
Mobile can either send me away with a new guitar case, warm clothing, money in my pocket, or not, but I'm not going to use poverty as an excuse to stay around longer.
Friends In Tucson
I also have friends in Tucson. They might even let me crash at their place, and if history repeats, I will have worn out my welcome just about in time for the temperatures to have become unbearable, say late April...
They are named Jessie and Donna.
I have known

them since I was in college at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Mass., back in 1988.
I dropped out of that school in 1990, to work full time, intending to save up enough money to be able to return to school "in style" i.e. not living on Ramen Noodles.

The full time job eventually laid me off, allowing me to collect unemployment and basically stay in the apartment which I shared with 4 other guys and work on music all day, every day.

This was the realization of a goal which I had made, after reading "Unlimited Power," by Tony Robbins and applying the principles taught in that excellent work.

My goal was stated as "to be able to work on music all day, every day, and 'get paid to do it.'"

My Life Back Then...

This came to fruition, just as Tony said that it could.

I worked on rhythm guitar/vocals/drum machine programming mornings, starting at about 8 a.m. 

Then, I would add backup vocals, keyboard, bass guitar, recorder?, tambourine? in the afternoon; all of this fueled only by green tea. Then, at about 5 p.m., I would eat, take a shower, smoke a joint and then add the lead guitar as the final touch, finishing around 7 p.m.

Then, I would mix it down in Dolby stereo onto a cassette, which I would take for a ride in my Pinto which was equiped with a Pioneer Supertuner II AM/FM cassette player, Pioneer Speaker and about 350 watts worth of Sony amps.

I listened to the overall sound quality, flipping back and forth between the radio and my tape, noting the differences in sound balance between my music and "big-time professional, radio-worthy products." *nobody was telling me that I sounded like crap back then -funny what technology can do, just ask Lady Gaga...

Phish All Weekend

I also enjoyed stopping at a busy intersection when a group of college kids were standing around, rolling down my window, turning up my music and yelling "Hey, does anyone know what band this is; it's driving me crazy because I think I've heard it before?!?"

I would get responses which gave me ideas for which bands I should seek out and listen to; maybe because I could cover their music if I already sounded like them; or maybe just for inspiration.

Typically the response started with "I don't know...but, it sounds like:" and then I would hear things like "The Psychedelic Firs," "Brian Eno," "Robert Ellis Oral" and even "Is it the college station, because they're playing Phish all weekend?"

One guy insisted that my stuff was R.E.M., "from a basement tape," an assertion that he was willing to prove, having a copy of that work in his collection.

However, I broke away from the Robbins discipline with regards to the tenet of "Don't include any illegal activities as part of your strategy for success."

I was getting roughly half of my average weekly pay for being unemployed and I soon got the bright idea to start buying quarter pounds of pot, from a reliable source whom I knew, and supplement that 157 dollars per week with another 420 dollars from the proceeds.

This opened a whole "can of worms" which is beyond the scope of todays post (You know, someone knocking on the door what seemed like every 20 minutes; a large Jamaican man rushing through a doorway and snatching a brown paper bag which I was carrying, out of my grasp; perhaps thinking that it was the mother load, a bag which had two blank cassettes and a tiny "dimebag" of weed in it, and eventually having cops kick that same door in after one of my customers was busted with posession, the "D.S.S." was hence threatening to take her children out of her home and she agreed to turn in "a big dealer" in order to "save" her children...that kind of stuff).

The worst of it was probably being in the middle of recording a part when the knocking on the door came.

But, this was also the time that Jessie and Donna (remember them from about 1,000 words ago?) came into my life.

They loved their pot, and they had about a dozen friends who all loved their pot and were soon loving my pot with Jessie acting as a middle-man, reducing the frequency of knocks on my door.

I never returned to college...seven years, down the tubes!

Eventually Jessie and Donna and their daughter, Jennifer (shown above in a recent photo* moved to a tiny burg outside of Jacksonville, Florida and I eventually took them up on their offer to come visit them, under the encouragement that "Who knows, you might like it here and want to get a job and stay."

I liked it there, got a job, and stayed with them for almost 3 years, with the 50 dollars per week that I paid in rent (almost half of their mortgage) becoming an integral part of their economy, and the fact that I worked nights and both of them days, meant that I had the house to myself for most of the day.

In the afternoons, Jennifer (8-10 years old at the time) as that is her name, would come home from school, and I would function as a babysitter for a couple hours before I went off to my job, which saved them money on daycare expenses.

Jasmine

That house was where The Carcass Song, was written, and Jennifer is the little girl who disappears in the "macabre" version of that song.

She is 27 now and has her own daughter, Jasmine (6) as well as a husband, whom Donna described to me thus: "She married a redneck."

They are supposed to be visiting Jesse and Donna this month, and so I might get a chance to play my Jasmine for Jasmine.
"O.K."

I'm not sure if Howard fits into this equation, but I have told him of my intentions of moving on, and told him the prospective date of departure, to which he replied "OK."