Characters

I don't know why I thought of Danny Gatton this morning . Thinking of Danny made me think of Bruce Swaim .Going to "Club Soda" on a whim to visit Bruce when he happened to be playing with Danny was a surprise deal.Even then , when I drank alcohol,I rarely went out on my nights off. Bruce didn't seem like the kind of guy to play a character in Danny's act with the Fender guitar.On the other hand, he did play gigs with me that weren’t all jazz. I don't know , I can't remember all the gigs but I played and sang a lot of pop things . I would play and sing anything for people. It isn't that Danny was outlandish at all though it was hard to escape that "Elvis","Rockabilly",fifties thing he had with the guitar. Having Previty on stringed bass working so hard ,pulling the strings ,pounding , bullying the instrument to be heard at the volume of Danny’s electric guitar tricks added to the “Rocking”character of that band. Danny was unassuming the night I met him there ,introduced as a friend of Bruce Swaim's. Downing a few beers between the sets backstage,his ability and guitar tricks didn't really affect Dan's regular guy character off stage. He was small and quiet while when he played he became rather large , a monster . The loudness of his ax and the obvious control of the many facets of the Fender guitar made him stand out and become larger among the many guitarist of the world.In the little club where I met him , he was a little guy . It was his band but I was there to see Bruce ,a reliable tenor sax man who I called regularly to play with my bands.Dan and I hit it off right away. I don't know why. I have known quite a few recognizable musicians as regular people over the years. Maybe they want to be treated as regular people and they aren't approached by many people that way. My lack of respect might help.(haha). It's a dirty job but somebody has to do it .It might be something else , too , a kind of comradery , a brotherhood of experiences,or maybe I am just old.

I never saw Jimi Hendrix perform in front of an audience . I did play with Jimi in the recording studio a few times,"The Record Plant",where I rehearsed my own band many times, and met him from time to time in clubs we would frequent and sit in and play when we were in New York . Jimi also was quiet . He wasn't small as he was taller than I am , but he wasn't anything like the act he put on screwing his guitar and playing louder than anyone at the time. By the time I met Jimi he was already swinging with major hits , in fact , he well might have been on the other side of his great popularity that came before “Woodstock”. He wanted to play jazz, to play the blues , and not continue to do his act of tricks.I have no idea if he was able to get away from the exciting character he had invented on stage but that wasn't the person I knew and ,like Danny,it had nothing to do with our conversation or how we responded to one another.Our scene wasn't all "getting high" and groupies though that was a part of it . Part of it was improvising, yet another addiction to hand eye co-ordination.In this addiction , we became closer to past historic musicians. I can understand Bach playing the organ ,improvising till his sight became blurry . I am sure that the same synapse were excited in his brain as he played as were in us and as are excited by the use of cocaine. Playing can be an addiction . Knowing other addicts , perhaps a nod of knowledge , might be a part of making what might be unnatural ,more natural. There was a Spanish term , I think it was "Cokaliso",that illustrated that "nodding" knowledge between cocaine users.

Both these guys are gone now. They didn't do anything I didn't do,didn't feel any more pain or pleasure than I felt . No, I didn't play the guitar like them and didn't strive to the larger characters that ,in retrospective, they have become in their deaths.I don't think I could handle it any better than they did if I had continued in popular music or the character I was in my era of the sixties , the character of sex drugs and rock and roll.I think that even though both Jimi and Danny had achieved recognition as the characters that they invented with their guitars, they were also trying to escape the character that other people assumed they were in life. These characters had both an aspect of "freeing" them and enslaving them . It might have been these monstrous characters that drove both guys to their ultimate escapes. I don't think that Jimi intentionally intended to kill himself ,he was just having fun, but he was tortured by a character that he could not escape, a character that his audience insisted he had to continue.Danny , sadly,did that other number, a final number that unfortunately he shares with other suicides.

In death they are larger as they sometimes were in life when they played . The guitar can be so loud , so threatening , a tool , a prop for the stage . Once , a long time ago , as I played the guitar on stage ,I saw a man approaching my girl across the dance floor . I walked across and through the dancers , still playing with the band . The guitar chord stretching to my amp across the dance floor as I played , I had to shout at the same time ,"Leave her alone!" ,which startled the other guy . We had a few words and he left . While I was still playing the set , he came back with a cop . I came down from the stand to speak with them and found that he was accusing of "assault" with a deadly weapon. The character I was on stage with my guitar in hand was like a character on the screen coming down into the dark movie seats. When I told the cop my side of the story, he laughed,dismissed the imagined assault,and told the other guy to leave.Each moment has a reality from different perspectives.Sometimes an objective point of view can clarify what is real and what is not, sometimes it can never be clarified.

Furthermore

Brian Williams asked a direct question of the new,phony PR front man for BP but he was completely unresponsive ,speaking much as our Congressmen and Senators have as they come under indictment.Our American character as flag waving,card carrying("You vill show me da papers") policemen of the world had better repair home before there is no home.The fact is that Obama has done nothing but help big business screw America into an oily future just as the Republicans did for the last twelve years or more. 1996 was the last democratic hurrah , then came the ditto heads and now , the impostors , phony Democrats.Why bother to vote anymore?The terrorist aren't the enemy , we are ! Circle the wagons and start defending this country ,not Afghanistan , Iraq , Saudi Arabia, or Israel .The number one invasion spot should be the shores of the District of Columbia .A new Constitutional Convention , over forty years late,should be formed .Get rid of all the current representatives. As a country , we have to stop waving flags ,throwing sound bites around ,throwing parties ( the big fireworks display around the corner ), and work on repairing the intrinsic political problems of capitalism.Capitalism across the globe does not care about the idea of Democracy at all and neither do our congressmen ,senators, or president.

..and this guy did nothing ..

Number one , regulate the banking industry and Wall Street as it was after the Great Depression.If the boat is filling up ,stop the water coming in! Two week ago , regulate the cut off valve , the protection against spills by the companies drilling off the coast . Stop the oil coming in! British Petroleum is working toward raking in the oil, not stopping the flow.Allowing the company to take care of the problem is unacceptable.There is no reason to believe that big capitalist business has any concerns other than bringing in more money. Does the sentence "Tobacco does not cause cancer" ring a bell ? Our elected officials are not acting in the interest of their constituency but responding to big money across the line , the party line , the state line , and the lines that separate the countries of the world . At least with Bush we knew that he , as a Republican , was in support of big business and less regulation . With the current Democratic administration we had a smoke screen of promises ,none of which have come to fruition. The identity of the Democratic party as the party of the people , the little people , is proving to be a sham .Where Bush had the Gaul to say that questioning the policies of his administration was treasonous , Obama has a position of political correctness that quiets dissent . It somehow reminds me once again of the emperor thinking he is dressed to the nines but actually he has been fooled naked and his people are afraid to tell him for fear of reprisals . March of 2009 I brought up the subject in another context ("Trippin")yet the theme has raised it's ugly head again this year.A President has to do something and stop talking about doing something . Somewhere the studies , the experiments, and the theories have to give way to deeds .


This guy has done absolutely nothing . It started with not regulating banking and Wall Street when he came into office . What he did do was exactly what Bush did and threw another 850 billion dollars at banking and Wall Street . The health bill was a diversion of no consequence . The resulting bill is a watered down fantasy that nobody understands . That failure supposedly took most of last year to conclude. The current oil crisis in the Gulf is yet another example of inactivity. The government has done nothing ! No regulation has been changed to insure that the same problem won't reoccur on any of the 3500 oil rigs in the Gulf or proposed to be erected in new territories on the East Coast . Relying upon the fox to fix the problem in the hen house doesn't make sense . Why should America rely upon British Petroleum to correct the current catastrophe ? Collecting the oil has been the first priority of BP instead of stopping the flow . The actual flow is much greater than original estimates or later or still later reported .



The protection of our shores is the job of our government but our government is being run by big business, corrupted beyond any one's understanding , including what might have been a junior Senator from Chicago that was elected on promises he has completely forgotten. Iraq and ruin , Afghanistan and heroin, paranoia and scare tactics , and don't forget foreign policy over the control and protection of our homeland are all the same policies that came into place in the Bush era , recognized as flawed but have become the Obama administrations policy.




Tonight the news shows an emotional Obama , angry , as if that means a damn.Like congress , he is doing nothing . The television stations , slanted by their various political views apparently have agreed to spin in the same direction down the toilet of lies . They are using spin words like "The blame game" to misdirect much as a magician . What is this saying , that no one should be blamed , that something should be done . It is saying that BP isn't responsible , that the government isn't responsible , that it's no ones fault . That isn't true . It is some one's fault . It is firmly on the backs of all those corrupted by big money and big lobbies. It is across party lines , the corruption is so deep that you can see the suits getting more expensive by the day on the newest Senators getting the benefits of air travel , health insurance, limousine services,body guard services , all being paid by "Uncle Sucker", that is tax payers . Incidentally , everyone pays taxes. You pay at the pump , you pay at the counter, you pay ,at the grocery store , and you pay in April. Everyone pays but not everyone collects. Welfare is a drop in the bucket , another diversion, as is pointing at the borders and saying it's the fault of illegal immigrants. We are all illegal immigrants here . If we start the guilt trip , it will never end . So the terrorist won , the war is over . America has compromised it's principals and has thrown in the towel . The actual winners are the big businesses taking advantage of a capitalist society self destructing.The corruption will not be stemmed any more than the oil though we have the technology to resolve both problems . We are willing to blame immigration, welfare, the idea of health care for our citizenry, and the voters of this country but not the elected officials who have sold us out . There was once a thing called the Guillotine that had terrible yet positive results against tyranny. Let us not forget that revolution doesn't have to wait for four years .


No, I am not going to the "Tea Party". Losing me is just the tip of an iceberg as I have found over the years and especially since accessing the Internet , I am not alone .


So , who should we name ?

Do da name Ruby Bagonia mean anything to you , Kingfish ? Uh oh,no more Kingfish . Da fish is dead ! He died of oil.



This is one yellow dog democrat that will not vote for that dog again . That dog don't hunt !


"The king is in the altogether , the altogether , the altogether ,He's altogether as naked as the day that he was born." ( a song from the Hans Christian Anderson movie )

Big Brother Riding the Gun

Trusting private enterprise to help the needy brings more corruption and the government seems to make the simplest items much more complicated. So what should we do ?We have just come through another era that will be looked back on as dirty with corruption. Last February instead of throwing billions of dollars to Wall Street and the banking industry , congress should have been re-regulating both Wall Street and US Banking the way that they were regulated after the crash of 1929 produced the great depression. The corruption and calamity that came from the greed of both industries is the cause of our continuing economic crisis. Needless to say , no regulations have come about. The lobby for Wall Street and Banks across this country is more powerful than the promises made by candidates running for office after they gain their position. The lobbies that represent the Lawyers, Doctors, and Insurance Companies also are beating down the would be "Health Reform" bill .It seems like the Democrats can't even bully their way through with their precarious majority.In my opinion this bill was a diversion from the fact that congress didn't really address the current problems of regulation but politically dropped the ball while stewing , arguing , and pretending to act in behalf of an American People who they do not and will not be representing as they continue to fumble till the next election which promises more of the same. Big business has stepped across party lines just as it has stepped across State lines across the globe.Big business doesn't care about "Democracy" and , in fact , has been actively working against the principals of democracy since the Council on Foreign Relations of 1921, the Bilderberg Group , started in 1954 , and the Trilateral Commission , in 1973,.The world could tumble toward the sun and big business would still be controlling congress and indifferent to any population of any country.This is the result of "Capitalism" come to fruition and unbridled in America . This is what the American Dream is , making money ,not democracy or the principals it was supposedly built upon when the population was much smaller.


I don't believe our military should be fighting wars or creating wars ,especially wars initiated by a military machine that eats more than Haitians or even Americans.I saw that it will cost a million dollars a year for every American soldier in Afghanistan . Man, what are they feeding these guys , heroin? The character of the American soldier has changed tragically away from the good soldier of WWII.


Seeing our military on the ground in Haiti reminds me that we should have had more men on the ground in New Orleans and not in Iraq.I saw that story about the Israelis being set up as well as seeing that the Americans were holding back the flow of food and water for fear of violence.This seemed counter productive to me yet in character. Do they want to wait till the people starve and die and are quieted down by disease before they help ? It seems like the newscasters didn't have a bit of trouble getting in country and broadcasting for their sponsors.At least they dressed down a little for the gig to play their roles.The close ups of hungry children would be nicer to me if just one of the talking heads would stuff a sandwich or some candy in one of the crying kids mouths.

I am and have been against this military identity that has become America.We are "Big Brother", a character that was hated since George Orwell conceived it.Since 9/11 we have accepted the "Thought Police" as well as other ideas which are supposed to be protective devices for our society. You don't have to actually commit a crime but just talk about it ,think about it ,or write it down on paper and dissenting in a democracy became complicated affair during the Bush years . If our "Intelligence" can be so sensitive why didn't they pick up on what was really going on in the mid east before the attacks on the Trade Center Buildings or before the advent of the invasion of Iraq. I thought that the USSR was that "Big Brother" character till 1965 when I got a closer exposure to what Viet Nam was doing to our men as I worked a mere month at Travis AFB where men were returning as well as embarking to that costly "Police Action"in fear of imaginary "Dominoes" falling .We can develop a more benevolent "Big Brother" that doesn't have to threaten to gain respect but considering we are willing direct our military to fire on our own students who are practicing their right to dissent ,for instance Kent State, how can we think there is any control over the character or direction of our military much less the direction of the country.I will vote to break up all the monopolies in congress ,both democratic and republican in an effort to not allow either to do much because they both just screw up things all the more with their continuous lies to get into office and to maintain their seats and power. No more congress and president of the same party. Period.


My vote will still not change the fact that The Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission are still running the show and not the Congress of the American people.

Stop Pointing ,You Are Naked Too

Everybody is getting arrested . Everyone is pointing fingers. It looks like a football game and the guys are pointing at the other team,"They did it!" Everyone is innocent . Everybody wants to see somebody else blamed for all the things that have gone wrong , for all the injustice , for all the times the bad guy gets ahead in the world , and for all the people who don't deserve to be where ever they are in the imagination of the imaginary American People .

They are busting people for laughing at people .Today the people who run professional basketball fined the Washington Wizards players ten thousand dollars a piece for laughing at a man who was pretending he had guns ,pointing his fingers as if he were shooting them . The man pointing his fingers may or may not have had guns in his locker room , may or may not have had them loaded, may or may not have pointed one at a fellow player, may or may not..... The point is he has been ostracized on innuendo and gossip . The finger is pointed at him , a millionaire professional ball player ,overpaid , athletic entertainer .

The evening news has focused on the "Gate Crashers" , recognizable people who were able to get into a Whitehouse party . This has preoccupied the attention of serious newscasters, if that concept exist anymore . The idea is that there could have been an assassination . Suddenly there are other "Gate crashers" and other would be scenarios .What were they thinking ? The finger pointers seem to know what they were thinking . They were thinking that they would kill him ! Good grief ! George Orwell rolls over and sighs.

"The Thought Police " are here and they are us . Our paranoia has finally allowed us to self destruct . Someone in the rest of the world is pointing their finger at us . We , the American People ,are the overpaid , uninformed, people who don't deserve to be where ever we are in the imagination of those people pointing their fingers at us . Every one seems to be pointing a finger . They did it ! He did it ! She did it ! What if we all did it ? So fucking what ! We all did it ! We all have done it !

If we all did it why are we all so guilty ?

Is this a continuation of "Original Sin" ? "Original sin" is a concept that has outlived it's use except for Bible thumping telemarketers.We are not guilty. We didn't do anything wrong by being born . The king ,once again ," ..is in the all together , he's all together as naked as the day that he was born ."
Stop pointing your finger at him , you are naked , too .

Capitalist Art Directing Culture

It has occurred to me that I used to have friends who listened to music . We all liked the "Waltz for Debby" live album from the Vanguard by Bill Evans when it came out . We were crazy about Coltrane and "Favorite Things" was nearly a pop tune to us but "Africa Brass " was just terrific . We didn't get high to listen to them or drink , we just liked it , we all liked it . Most of my friends in high school were older musicians but I did have some friends my own age and they also liked jazz . I do think that back then I clung to the first statement of the melody and the arrangement before I got deeper into the improvisation. As I became more involved with my own playing I appreciated the individual solos more as well as the way the individual player approached their solos . Eventually I had opened my ears to electronic music , music concrete , modern classical , and free jazz which seemed to come together around 1959 . Listening to music became like watching athletics in my mind . A fine player was indeed to be compared to an athlete except ,in my opinion , the ability to play and listen is more intellectually stimulating.

Working as sideman wasn't exactly the dream I had in mind yet I always improvised even on the straight gigs . Surprisingly enough , it was a jazz job that turned me off the stringed bass in the mid-sixties . While on the road I entertained myself town to town with a guitar I bought. I guess I was playing bossa nova songs and even performing them with the band I was traveling with occasionally in our shows. In Louis and Clarkston ,on the border of Idaho and Washington , we played a Moose Lodge for a month ,December to New Years Eve and during one afternoon I went to see "Hard Days Night" at a movie house and things started changing fast . In Dallas I had a month lay over after the gig at the hotel and I stayed with a girl I met , a waitress in the hotel who had all of Bob Dylan's recordings till 1965 or so.I wasn't really receptive to the Beatles or Dylan but after listening I began to think that I could sing and started writing lyrics ,still to entertain myself as I worked on the road . This departure from jazz was an important event and I wasn't the only person caught up in it . After leaving the group , totally drugged out in Louisville Kentucky , I stopped in Washington DC and , after a few months , headed for Austin . The jazz work I was expecting didn't materialize right away and again I was entertaining myself with my guitar between gigs .It was at this time that I met Jerry and Pete and we formed the basic vocal group that continued till 1968 . It was also at that time that I played the Austin Jazz Festival and one of the people I had to perform with was Fathead Newman. Fathead saw where music was going and was ahead of his time incorporating rock beats in his jazz vehicles much as Stanley Turrentine would be doing a few years later .This was fine for Fathead but I wasn't personally happy to play the stringed bass behind him in this style. I left Austin and dedicated myself to the folk rock scene adapting myself to the lead guitar position with the other rhythm guitar ,folk players , Jerry and Pete . Leaving jazz yet still improvising around the folk music with my guitar , the rock beat prevailing , I was happier playing the guitar than the stringed bass in the era.

While rock grew and became more and more complicated in production , the bass lines stayed a dance beat , sometimes simply the tonic rhythmically. Pop music had ups and downs with currently interesting venues that came and went . Jazz seemed to be going backward on the bottom , the bass line , which became a work horse not the creative independent line that came forth with Scott LaFaro with Bill Evans . Ron Carter had to hold down the changes for the illusive nature of Wayne Shorter's music with Miles Davis in the sixties and the walking bass was about all he could do with it . When Miles switched horses and went to a rock beat and found a greater popularity , jazz was advancing as rock but also staying the same like pop music .

Sometimes I hear music , guitar music , "head bangers" that seem to move through the changes like elephants just taking enormous steps without contrary motion . The power alone of the instruments carry the vehicle like a tank over the audience raising their arms and hands as if at a Hitler rally . Pop becomes something like a cult to join or be run over and excommunicated from society . Jazz was going a similar path in "Fusion" with the melodies so complicated as to make it impossible to improvise . The melody became the only thing to cling to and the individual solo was going by the way side .

There are still great players but they have to work inside the character that is recognizable by a culture that has taken the easy route much like water going down stream .There are many songs that seem to call to people from the venue of the simplest or lowest common denominator.The advent of "Rap" music using primarily rhythmical undertones could be seen as another step backward toward the primitive entertainment of basic drums without melody at all but featuring poetry and sensationalism .



Many of my friends are gone , dead , or maybe I just lost touch with them . I don't know where they are at with it all any more . I do know that I still crave the improvisation, the independent line , the counterpoint of jazz. Unfortunately I don't think that this is supported by our current culture or where it is headed.I question intrinsically the idea of capitalism as a driving force to art , if there is art .I thought that there was art in Coltrane yet I still saw him as an entertainer grasping upon the ideas that he saw his audience responding to like "Favorite Things". Once I had an argument with Dizzy Gillespie about his choice of an electric bass player as opposed to a stringed bass player in his band . Diz had the patience to explain to me that he was merely trying to reach the greater audience . I admired Dizzy and I wanted him to remain in the crest of the wave as he had been in the late forties with Be Bop . Diz knew better and continued till he died ,surviving in his field , while not in the fore front , at least in the game . My characterization of Gillespie is now recognizable to me as people characterize me as someone recognizable to them ,though I may not be that person.Wasn't Miles striving to entertain and make a living in our system when he went to rock? The capitalist way has brought about an influx of singers and dancers who merely want to get their share of this market.



As music has grown to such a big business and even a contest we lose sight of the idea of art in favor of mob popularity. The idea of having a contest between Rembrandt and Van Gogh would seem funny yet we have come to the conclusion that we can have contest between songs ,singers ,dancers,players, musicians, and composers. I think that capitalism has corrupted art to the point of no return . If singers are judged by how good they sing the cliches of forty years ago , where is the art ? Popular phrasing is similar to what Ray Charles was doing in 1956 . So the masquerade is the art ? It would be different if we were recognizing interpretation but still it would only be comparing one painting to another . Is beauty in the eye of the beholder or not ? Is beauty in the ear of the beholder ?



Somewhere back there I was inspired by players , musicians , and composers who seemed different ,individually different . This difference is what is missing in our current format of capitalist art directing our culture . What we are witnessing is the effect of capitalism creating the same mold over and over again . The same movies are redone ,the same tunes are re-sung , and the same phrasing is overdone in the rush to success and the big pay off .

When I left the band in 1965 and ended up in Texas I had no work for a long time . I took a place on the Colorado River with two other guys . One of the guys was a drummer and professor at the U of Texas, Austin, Sticks Whipple. Sticks was also the fencing champion at the University. Usually he was a quiet kind of guy with a good sense of humor but one night he drank a bit at our "Castle" and got pretty arrogant at a party we had there. Another friend and me had put together what we called a "Color Organ" by attaching wires to each contact on an organ fingerboard . While it wasn't connected to sound , the front panel danced with the different colored lights inside the television type enclosure.Basically, as we played along with the music at the party , the lights rhythmically mesmerized the other drinking ,smoking people who happened to look in the direction of the organ set up.As I was playing I could see Sticks bragging uncharacteristically and goading another ,younger mathematics student into picking up the sword to have a mock battle with him , "the champion".He wouldn't let up , eventually poking the math guy with his sword till finally the other guy grabbed a sword and went at Sticks. There was no dancing ,dodging ,or maneuvering involved because as quick as a wink the math major attacked , cutting Sticks who was bleeding nicely from his forehead and bending the sword in the process,evidently over Stick's head .



The one thing about this fight that seems to ring true is that in a violent struggle even a champion can be defeated . The rules of fencing didn't come into play and ,without restraint , Sticks was lucky he didn't lose his life in the quickness and violence.The party went on after the short battle with sticks licking his wounds and making up with the other guy , realizing that he was the one who had pressed the comical issue and had brought it to a dramatic conclusion.