All along the Navajo Trail burnouts stub their toes on garbage pails
Ambulance Blues
Frankly, I was wondering which Neil would turn up. Would it be grumpy Neil? Would he decide to sing the whole first side of one of his lesser-known albums? Would his voice be up to it? So, when he opened with Ambulance Blues, I was relieved, I immediately forget the hassle to find parking, the draconian security check (apparently my backpack was too big and not the right shape),and the maze -like journey to get a beer because: ………
Ambulance Blues, a relatively obscure track from the “On the Beach” album is one of my favourite Neil songs never mind that it is almost 10 verses long , doesn’t really have a chorus, just alternating verses with different chord structures and he then follows it with “Cow Girl in The Sand” and he continues that way all night the old and the new and the sometimes forgotten and when he hits the chorus of Harvest Moon the guy beside me who knows all the words to every song and also likes to play air guitar, he joins in and so does his partner/girl friend who sings harmony along with the rest of the crowd and just then a yellow moon rises above the trees, no big birds flying but still…. and I’m thinking Neil has super powers and later when he hits the opening riff of My, My, Hey, Hey, I’m transported back to Pine Knob Michigan 1978 and Star Wars has been released the year before so Neil’s roadies are dressed as Ewoks and there are two giant speakers on each side of the stage and when the roadies are finished and the stage is empty, there is silence, then we hear the opening chords of Sugar Mountain and Neil’s voice and we can’t tell where it is coming from until there is movement on top of one of the giant speakers and yes it’s Neil shaking off a blanket and how he got down from there I don’t know but here he is now many year’s later and he hasn’t lost the magic and I know that this is a run on sentence because Copilot keeps telling me but I’m thinking and I know it’s a tad puerile but I’m thinking “bugger off Copilot, stop bothering me, I can work it out myself and AI and all that other crap we don’t need will never write anything close to what Neil can write”
Old man lying by the side of the road With the lorries rolling by Blue moon sinking from the weight of the load And the buildings scrape the sky Cold wind ripping down the alley at dawn And the morning paper flies Dead man lying by the side of the road With the daylight in his eyes
When I first heard this song (“Don’t let it Bring you Down”), I thought : “What’s with the ‘lorries’ , Neil? I mean you’re a Canadian, living in California, should they not be ‘trucks’?”
A side note: The word ‘lorry’ is a word used in Britain and it comes from the verb “to lurry”, meaning “to pull or drag”.
On reflection:
Of course, if he used “trucks”, it wouldn’t scan, but he could have sang “big trucks rolling by”. However, as we all know, Neil is a poet and the answer lies in his ear, not for music but for the music in language.
Consider the letter ‘L’, it appears in every line of the verse: “old, lying/ lorries, rolling/blue, load/ buildings/ cold, alley/ flies/ lying/ daylight”.
Consider the letter ‘O’ as in assonance, look at its role in the first three lines: “old, road/ lorries, rolling/ moon, load”; its repetition in lines 5, 6, 7: “cold, down/ morning/road”.
Consider the inversion, how the “lor” in ” lorries” becomes the “rol” in “rolling”.
No, “trucks” would just not hack it.
Phew! Glad to get that out of my system, otherwise, after a few pints I might start regaling my wife and two daughters with these insights and have to watch them getting that “beam me up Scotty look in their eyes”.
Photo (by Marie Feeney): Neil and Paul McCartney at Desert Trip 2016.
Taking on Open Link over at dverse. (This is not a poem obviously, but it is about poetry so I hope it fits!)
A Personal Note: Jonathan Shallowpond, editor of Vapid Magazine, here, I’ll get right to the point. My wife kicked me out. Said she was tired of supporting me. Told me to go get a job. I told her that I had a job, that I was editor of Vapid Magazine. She said ‘I mean one that pays f***ing money.” So here I am living in my parents’ basement, sleeping on a camp bed. My dad’s okay with it but my mother keeps giving me that “you should have done medicine or law” look. It’s not too bad except the basement doubles as a rehearsal space for my dad’s band which consists of my dad, Johnny Shallowpond Senior on guitar and vocals, his friend Slim on bass and his friend Jake on drums. They rehearse twice a week in the afternoon which means I have to put my headphones on while I’m writing but they play so loud that it’s impossible to concentrate. I’m not sure what they are rehearsing for because they don’t do gigs, I guess they are just jammin’. Their name changes every couple of months. They started off as The Liver Spots , then it was The Good, the Bad and the Varicose. Currently it’s Johnny Statin and The Beta Blockers and they keep playing the same song which they wrote to the tune of the Doors’ song, ‘Riders on the Storm’. It’s called “Geezer in the Pool”. It goes like this (my dad shouts out chord changes between the lines):
Geezer in the pool EM! A! Geezer in the pool EM! A! He’s got his swim trunks on C! D! He’s got his swim trunks on EM! A! Like a flag without a pole A fish without a shoal Geezer in the pool. EM! A!
That’s it, that’s all they’ve got. They just keep repeating the same verse and then occasionally my dad tries a guitar solo and they all break down in hysterics. . But, you know, we share a few beers after and have a chat so it can be a nice break from my work bringing vapidity to the world.
There’s one thing that puzzles me a bit though. Every now and then, my dad sits me down and says: “You know, son, your mother and I are not getting any younger” I mean. What’s with that?
in the chilly hours and minutes of uncertainty
a violent hash smoker shook a chocolate machine
sunshine came softly through my window,
thrown like a star in my vast sleep
I opened my eyes to take a peek.
Yes, I could have tripped out easy
forever to fly, wind velocity nil
but I decided to stay.
(Donovan Phillips Leitch
Superman and Green Lantern
ain’t got nothing on you)
This is a found poem using lines from 5 Donovan songs: Catch the Wind, Sunny Goodge Street, Sunshine Superman, Hurdy Gurdy Man and Mellow Yellow. I’m sure you can figure out which line came from where, but just a note on the second line:
“a violent hash smoker shook a chocolate machine”.
This line is from Sunny Goodge Street and is my favorite Donovan line because of its inherent music –violent, smoker, shook, chocolate, all those o’s, that recurring ‘k’ and the internal rhyme between hash and mash. Say it out loud a couple of times and it will stick in your head!
Sunny Goodge Street appears on Donovan’s second album “Fairytale” and , according to Wikipedia, it “foreshadows the jazzy feel and descriptions of life in urban London that Donovan would continue to explore over the next two years”. There are a few covers out there (Judy Collins and Tom Northcroft), but they are little too earnest and none match the sludgy stoned feel of the original. The recording of the song is almost perfect, except for Harold McNair’s flute solo in the middle which nearly derails the whole thing. Take a listen:
And your gravity fails and negativity don’t pull you through….Bob Dylan
Know your gym……Slim Volume
Gravity, Don’t Fail Me Now
two geezers pink and steaming towelling down after a shower discussing gravity how it is not fixed how it decreases with distance from the earth’s core how, if one was to climb to the top of Everest, since weight is the product of mass and gravity one would weigh less at the top of Everest and Slim’s thinking this is one fucking erudite conversation and he wants a piece of it so he points out that one would regain that weight on returning to sea level and one of the geezers replies yeah but you’d probably burn 10,000 calories climbing up and down the fucking mountain and a nearby jock encased in breathable fabric says shit, I’d burn that in 40 minutes on the rowing machine and Slim fires back wryly keep telling yourself that and the locker room erupts in laughter and in that moment basking in the unbearable lightness of banter Slim defies gravity and levitates above the bacterial swamp that is the locker room floor.
“A man who is tired of the gym, is a man who has been to the gym”. Slim Volume
Two Bros
Two bros on a mat one on his back hands clasped behind his head legs bicycling like a capsized fly; the other, the one with the green hair and the tattoos of a religious nature is grunting weights . Fly bro, it appears, is having girlfriend problems and is experiencing some kind of vague existential crisis, green hair bro listens carefully to his tale of woe and after some reflection says: It’s life, man, stop trying to understand it, no one can and then, as if startled by his own profundity, he repeats: no one can. Out of the mouths of bros….
in the background a bearded jock in a tight black T shirt his muscles packed with powdered whey his eyes a steroid yellow is down on his hunkers knees akimbo moving sideways across the floor like a slow motion crab across packed sand at evening.
In his dream, the ocean is always on the right which means he’s heading south to San Francisco or Santa Barbara or Los Angeles or San Diego, saints and angels; and his hair is blond even though it isn’t and his companion’s hair is blond and his friends in the back seat their hair is blond too and all that blond hair is blowing in the breeze and there are surfers bobbing on the ocean waiting for a wave and a group is singing three-part harmony on the radio, it could be the Mamas and the Papas it could be Crosby Stills and Nash it could be The Eagles it could be The Beach Boys and the band members in the bands he’s dreaming of have names like Dewey, Don, Randy, Jackson names that arrived by railroad, by wagon train and there is the feeling in his head of youth and endless possibilities something waiting down the road and in the dream he knows that he won’t arrive he will always be on the way and not arriving is the trick and not arriving is the best part the best part by far.
This is in part inspired by a prompt over on dverse;
“Krisis: Poetry at the Crossroads. Rooted in the Greek word krisis, meaning a pivotal decision point, we seek poems that explore moments of transformation, choice, and change.
Sometimes a song lyric doesn’t look good on paper, so I’ll start with the song.
Here’s a sample of the lyric
The sun beats down like judgement on the armour-plated road I just called out God and the Devil and neither of them showed, and there’s a sour smell of whiskey sweat on the air-conditioned air sometimes I think I care too much and sometimes I just don’t care……
and it’s not where you’re going it’s what you left behind there aint’ a colour out there that could describe my state of mind
That’s John Mitchell on vocals, guitar and that’s his daughter Nikki on drums and background vocals. It’s part of a CD we made together, a little while back , (Crossing Lines , The Mitchell Feeney Project). I wrote the lyrics and John did everything else! It’s a dark lyric, I guess. Around the time I wrote it, a close friend of mine had recently died and also I was listening to a lot of Tom Waits and The Eagles. So it kind of morphed into a lyric, then with John’s input and some revisions it became ” The Road”!
I’m a big fan of Lucinda Williams but I have to admit when I saw the title of this album and read the song list, I had doubts. How would Lucinda’s world weary Louisiana drawl work on Beatles’ songs like “Can’t Buy Me Love”, “Let It Be”?
Well, the answer is that it mostly works well, particularly on the John Lennon tracks like “Don’t Let Me Down”, “Rain”, “Yer Blues” and “I’m So Tired”. The latter is, for me, the standout track. If you want “angst”, if you want “world weary’, look no further! I can still remember as a teenager, hearing the following quatrain for the first time and laughing out loud.
I’m so tired, I’m feeling so upset
Although I’m so tired, I’ll have another cigarette
And curse Sir Walter Raleigh
He was such a stupid get!
Note Lucinda’s drawl coming through on “Rawleigh”
For a somewhat pedantic discussion about the word “get”, see below.
A few words about the band, because Lucinda Williams always hires a good band. She’s got Doug Pettibone and Marc Ford on guitars, David Sutton on bass, Butch Norton on drums, Richard Causon on Hammond B3 organ and Siobhan Kennedy on backing vocals and they have studied the originals in detail. Check out Pettibone’s solo on “Something”, which is an almost note for note copy of the original and why change genius! And Butch Norton channels Ringo…serve the song, serve the song!
I can’t get enough of this album!
A Somewhat Pedantic NoteOn The word “get”
Some websites write it as “stupid git”, but the album liner notes show it as “stupid get” which obviously rhymes better but also it would be more likely that Lennon being from Liverpool would use the Irish (and also Scottish) pronunciation ‘get’ rather than ‘git’ which is more common in the south of England. By the way, Wiktionary suggests that ‘get’ is related to the word ‘beget’, whereas I think it is more likely that it comes from the gaelic word ‘geit’ meaning ‘fright’ or ‘terror’. The meaning has since morphed into meaning something close to ‘jerk’.
A song that came out of a trip to Caye Caulker……This is a video of a live performance of a song I wrote with my friend John Mitchell. I wrote the lyrics and John did the rest, the hard part! That’s John and his band down in Olympic Village (Vancouver). I was in charge of taking the video (no self-respecting musician would let me near a stage and with good reason) and as you can see Martin Scorsese has nothing to worry about! Listen on headphones, this was recorded on an iphone! John and the band sound great.
Here’s the lyric:
The Note
Earl sailed up the Belize coast In his brand new custom built boat With the mother of all hangovers No water and a note
And now he’s sitting drinking In an ocean-side tourist bar Trying to get a jump on happiness In the hour before happy hour
Chorus: And the note read: Our love has lost its flavor There’s no point in hanging on No Doctor Phil, no savior We’re done, Yes, we are done.
And the people standing ‘round him Have been on Caye Caulker far too long They‘re talking about Paradise spoilt And how it all went wrong
Well Earl knows that Paradise Is a very, very temporary thing And this little piece of heaven Feels like hell to him
Chorus: And the note read: Our love has lost its flavor There’s no point in hanging on No Doctor Phil, no savior We’re done, Yes, we are done.
And Earl can’t put a finger on it Why it all went up in smoke He’s feeling like a punch line In someone else’s joke
And he don’t believe in karma Instant, good or bad He’s drunk and lonely on the beach With a bucket full of sad
Chorus: And the note read: Our love has lost its flavor There’s no point in hanging on No Doctor Phil, no savior We’re done, Yes, we are done.
Proud purveyors of country music to the English public, English country music, that is: no wide open prairies no dogies that git along no bucking broncs no honky tonks no pick-up trucks; the occasional encounter with a fox, a badger, a stoat…. perhaps, but that’s as wild as it gets.
Why, you must all recall, “Round Here, All the Cows are Called Daisy”, the Hedgerows’ greatest hit, written by Mr. Ramble himself or Bert, as his friends call him. Bert collects all the royalties and the Hedgerows seem to be okay with that except for Eric, the bass player (why is it always the bass player?). “What’s up with him?” Bert often asks, “All he has to do is stand there hitting C”.
Bert’s not a man for rules, he has one rule and one rule only – no cheating songs, just not his style, he’s a happily married man. There are rumors though, sightings of Bert hanging around the backdoor of the rectory while Vicar Derek is conducting a service; glances exchanged with Derek’s wife, Cynthia, while passing in the street. Just rumors, his friends say, what could he do in the forty minutes it takes Derek to complete the service and shake hands at the door. Au contraire, Bert’s detractors say Plenty of time, Bert’s detractors say
for a man who has mastered the art of the three minute song.
I’m standing in the liquor store staring at a bottle of Pinot Grigio when Wild Thing by the Troggs comes on the store speakers and I’m thinking, to quote Leonard, that song is a shining artifact of the past and just as I’m thinking that one of the Troggs launches into a bizarre ocarina solo and I turn around to find myself face to face with a large blue and yellow parrot perched on the leather-gloved hand of a lady who has seen hippier times never at a loss for words, I say, “that’s a nice parrot” and the lady says “I have three more at home one of them is a real man-hater but this one here is my favowite he’s a vewy, vewy, vewy nice pawwot” she says, nuzzling the parrot, nose to beak the parrot inflates its technicolor plumage let’s out an almighty squawk and displays its full wing span and I’m thinking “Wow, there’s a ocarina solo in the middle of Wild Thing, who’s that on ocarina I think it’s the lead singer what was his name, Reg Presley, I think, yeah, that’s it Reg Presley.”
After the time bell rings and the barmen start stacking the chairs Guitar George packs his old guitar in his old guitar case and Honky Tonk Harry closes the lid of that pub piano and together, still in sync they leave to catch the last bus home to their adjacent council flats where their wives await in front of the television with pots of tea and plates of chocolate digestive biscuits and later still in sync they both reach for that last chocolate digestive biscuit one eye on their gently snoring wives before retiring to bed and dreams of New Orleans and the muddy Mississippi River.
Apologies to Mark Knopfler for using two of his characters from one of the greatest guitar songs of all time….The Sultans Of Swing,
I’m sitting in a café smoking a Gitane yes, I’m sitting in a café smoking a Gitane I’m reading Jean Paul Sartre and wondering who I am.
Existential boogie do that existential thing you can do it in your armchair summer, autumn, winter, spring.
If you’re looking for an answer don’t ask Albert Camus yes, if you’re looking for an answer don’t ask Albert Camus that dude’s been dead a long time he can’t tell you what to do
Existential boogie do that existential thing well you can do it in your armchair summer, autumn, winter, spring
And don’t talk to me about Immanuel Kant no, don’t talk to me about Immanuel Kant well I know that you want to but you can’t
Existential boogie do that existential thing you can do it in your armchair summer, autumn, winter, spring
And Rene Descartes said I think therefore I am yes, old Rene, he said I think therefore I am well, I call that a beginning I sure don’t call that a plan.
Existential boogie do that existential thing you can do it in your armchair summer, autumn, winter, spring.
today I remembered limbo you can’t stand too far from the tracks
today I remembered limbo you can’t stand too far from the tracks
some days you’re moving forward some days you’re hanging back
Bob Dylan mentions Rimbaud Van Morrison does too
Bob Dylan, mentions Rimbaud Van Morrison does too
today I remembered limbo Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus
existential boogie do that existential thing
existential boogie do that existential thing
you can do it in your armchair summer, autumn, winter, spring
and if you’re looking for an answer don’t ask Albert Camus
if you’re looking for an answer don’t ask Albert Camus
that dude’s been dead a long time he can’t tell you what to do
existential boogie do that existential thing
existential boogie do that existential thing
well, you can do it in your armchair summer, autumn, winter, spring.
I was at a concert last night at the York Theatre on Commercial Drive in Vancouver . Walter Trout and his band were playing with David Gogo opening. Walter is a virtuoso electric blues guitarist, he’s played with pretty much everyone starting with Canned Heat and on through John Mayall. One of the best shows I’ve been to in a while, electric blues at its best. But not just blues, Walter is an excellent songwriter and his insights between songs into his professional and personal life were fascinating. Rock solid band too. Made me revisit the above effort at writing a blues song! If Walter is in your area , be sure to check him out!
Yes, our song “Willie’s Oasis” has been played on the radio, RTE Radio One (Ireland). The show is Country Time, host Brian Lally , and he has some very generous things to say about the song. Here’s the link.
an Arctic cold front Amazon trucks stuck down snow-packed side roads.
Christmas
Between Christmas and New Year
You review your blog stats, as one does, and you wonder why you you are using phrases like “as one does”, have you been watching too much Britbox?
Back to the blog stats, number of views is down from last year which was down from the year before. Your viewing numbers appear to have peaked in 2019. Why? In 2019 you had the pandemic of course and a perfect storm of subject matter – the pandemic, the Trump presidency, and climate change. Now you have said pretty much all you have to say about these subjects for the moment. But isn’t that the way of some blogs, they fade because they need a fresh angle. Also, you have gone back to letting poems marinate for a while to see where they are going, giving them some quiet time.
In the meantime you have been reading, and your top read for 2022 was “Our Country Friends” by Gary Shteyngart. You read the novel one chapter at a time, each chapter accompanied by a can of Yellow Dog Play Dead IPA. Why, because Gary’s prose is too good to rush. You also enjoyed “The Nineties” by Chuck Closterman and “April in Spain” by John Banville.
You listened to “Stolen Car” by Beth Orton, because of the lyric and the guitar figure that slithers through the song like a poisonous snake. You listened to El Camino by Elizabeth Cook because who else would rhyme “annull it” with “mullet”. You listened to “Under The Milky Way” by Church because of the expanse it conjures. You listened to “Jesus etc” by Puss N’Boots because it’s Norah Jones doing a Jeff Tweedy song.
You thought “Licorice Pizza” was the best movie of the year because of Bradley Cooper and everyone else in the movie.
And now as 2022 draws to a close, you are wondering why the hell you are writing in the second person singular.
Punam over at dverse asks us to “Write about your favourite drink (alcoholic/non-alcoholic), write about getting drunk, use drinking as a metaphor, in short: write a poem in a form of your choice with a drinking connection”. (Update: I omitted to link this to Punam’s prompt, so I am now linking it to Open Link Night at dverse)
Willie’s Oasis
Houses hunker in the heat Out on highway 82 The landscape sweats and saunters Billboards block the view And this is not New York City This is not Saginaw This a dry county, son This is Arkansas
And I need a pack of Pauli Girl I need a bottle of wine I’m heading for Willie’s Oasis Outside the county line
There’s a woman in line waiting Someone’s girlfriend, someone’s wife Says she wakes up every morning And asks:”Is this my life?” Beef jerky on the counter Pickles in a jar This is a dry county, son This is Arkansas
And I need a pack of Pauli Girl I need a bottle of wine I’m heading for Willie’s Oasis Outside the county line
Good ol’ boys are chugging out Storm clouds on the horizon The water looks like iced tea Birds are improvising And this is far from New York city Far from Saginaw This is Ashley County, son This is Arkansas
My friend John Mitchell turned the lyrics into the song above (that’s Ben Mink on violin, look him up!).
Stopdraggingthepanda 