Shouting Street

I forgot I promised I would post my dream from last night up here. Not my idea but here goes.

Myself, my brother, his wife, a good friend and someone I knew in elementary school are all at a Beck concert in Baltimore of all places. Our seating is purportedly a luxury box, however its more like classroom seating. We’re looking at the concert from a large balcony that looks like a lecture hall and is behind glass and far away. Between the glass and the stage is a typical looking stadium filled with people. The music is muffled.

At one point I get up to go to the bathroom and cannot find it. I am also looking for a vendor so I can buy Becks new biography which is as big as a dictionary. I finally find the bathroom, it is in an elevator. I don’t actually go in or anything, just look at it for a while.

Once the concert is over everyone leaves but Me, Jen and the friend from elementary school, Misha. We don’t have a ride back to Wilmington. Eventually Misha gets us one. Some friend of hers and her are in the front seat while Jen and I are in the back. Misha isn’t thrilled about giving us a ride but the guy is. We get to Wilmington and drop Misha off and the guy is going to take us home. We end up driving through a really bad neighborhood and up on a bridge.

Once in the bridge is when the dream hits Alligators with snorkels mode (My dreams get bizarre pretty often, alligators with snorkels and stuff.)

Anyway once we’re on the bridge it is suddenly Japan in the 40’s. I kind of oscillate back and forth between an old Japanese man and myself. We are to make a great show of surrendering to Hirohito by prostrating ourself on the bridge. I have issues with this because when I lay out my medals I cannot get them straight. There are hundreds of people on this bridge and only I cannot get my medals straight, and somehow I am nervous about Hirohito AND the fact that it is a lousy neighborhood over the bridge and I might get mugged.

Anyhoo Hirohito finally comes up to me, gripes a bit about my medals not being straight and then says to his flunkie ‘Fire him but don’t kill him’.

And then the Alarm goes off.

Alligators with Snorkels.

I don’t even particularly like Beck.

I promise I will set aside and really write about Harry Chapin and what he means to me. I have to go to sleep real soon, but I just wanted to toss this up because it was on my mind.

All my Lifes a Circle
Sunrise and Sundown
The moon rolls through the night time
Till the day break comes around

All my lifes a Circle
But I can’t tell you why
The seasons spinning around again
The Years keep rolling by

Just a short post, but something I wanted to share.

I was playing around on my guitar for a couple of hours last night. Just strumming chords and trying different progressions and sequences and such. After a while I touched on something I liked, played it through a couple of times and realized it was familiar. I played it through a few more times trying to recognize it. Eventually I got it. It was the major riff from ‘I’m Free’ by the Who. Now I imagine this doesn’t sound like much but I just think its awesome that I stumbled upon this. For no other reason that I basically just did the same thing that Pete Townshed did back in 68 or 69 when he was writing Tommy. Just playing around with my guitar and finding something I liked. Made me almost feel like a guitar player.

Anyway, it was pretty cool.

On a more domestic note, I made Chili from a pretty interesting recipe tonight. Came out great. I didn’t like it as much as my Veggie chili but it was a big hit with everyone so I guess I will stick with it

As I am writing this I am in the process of ripping a new CD to my hard drive. Its called ‘Legends of the Lost and Found’ by Harry Chapin.Having it on Cd is something that makes me happy on so many levels it is hard to describe.

I’ve had the album on tape three times. Each time it has gotten worn down to a nub. I’ve had copies I made that are now equally worn down to a nub. Most of my music listening equipment is not particularly conducive to tapes anymore. So to finally have this cd is pretty special. I ordered it directly off the Harry Chapin foundation’s website. I have no idea if it is an exclusive or something that will be seeing wide release soon. Would be nice if it got wide release. It really is a wonderful album. It is the kind of album that has songs I haven’t heard in years but still think about. There aren’t many albums I can say that about.

In particular there are three songs that stood out for me on this album. The first is Old Folkie. Old Folkie is a song that Harry wrote for Pete Seeger. It is less a story song and more a tribute song for the great old musician. It talks about fighting for causes and keeping the faith. I don’t have any great attachment to Pete Seeger, and for me the song has never really been about it. For me it is simply about my Parents, a couple of old 60’s radicals still fighting the good fight and doing their best to live by their principles and make this a better world than the one they found. Its a pretty catchy tune too. I actually managed to get a copy of the song last year on a live album released as a part of the ‘encore collection’. That doesn’t take the edge of hearing the version I fell in love with though.

The second song is called ‘Stranger With the Melodies’. This song has been his most poignant song for me since I first heard it. It is the story of a lonely guy sitting in a hotel room listening to an old guy in another room play the same tune over and over again. When he finally asks the old dude to knock it off the old guy tells him a story of love and loss. Chapin has a lot of songs about love and loss and loneliness but this one stands out for me. I’m not really sure if I can describe why it resonates with me even more than ‘A better place to be’ or ‘I wanna learn a love song’ but it always has. The image of an old worn out guitar player trying to remember the magic he once captured just taps into my imagination in a pretty profound way. I think if I absolutely had to I would say that it hits me because I always found solace in music during my loneliest times.

The third song is Copper. This is a song about guilt and love. It is the story of a Cop on the take who has to teach a guy a lesson about paying his protection money in front of the Cop’s kid. It is a simple story about fatherhood and wanting a better life for our kids. There isn’t anything really deep about why I love the song. It speaks to me in that father and son sense that most guys can relate to. More than that it is just a upbeat fun story with a really good guitar lick.

I dearly love the rest of the songs on the album but it is those three that kept me praying for a CD release over the years.

I think I will write about why Chapin is so important soon, but for tonight thats enough.

Ok, so I have been pretty lazy about writing here lately. Some of that has to do with playing Wow, Guitar and just generally being worn out. Stress at work has led me to get over the day differently. Currently I;m writing this prior to going to work after having four days off. I will put some thoughts on all of that up tonight or tomorrow. For now I’m just feeling the least stressed out I have in a while so I thought I would post up and remind anyone who reads this that I do still intend on writing here.

I doubt I will ever be as prolific as my buddy The Monk is on his blog, but this is less a journal for me than it is just a collection of thoughts and things like that. I’m not good at letting it all hang out there like he is.

This is going to be a short entry simply because I have to get ready for work now. But let me just say that there is nothing like coming home with new music. Came back from Massachusetts with six new CD’s to listen to. Most of them burned from my brothers collection, but none the less. The current front runner for playing time is the Kaiser Chiefs Unemployment. This is some fabulous stuff. We also came back with XM radio that my brother gave me for my birthday rather generously. Now that is a service worth having!

Yeah, its all about music with me sometimes I admit. Anyhoo. Off to work and hey, who knows, maybe some good news.

Hope springs eternal.

I googled myself and found this old column I wrote when I was managing a comic book shop. I really liked it, so I’m reprinting it! Hah! Enjoy:

I have this wonderful book. My father gave it to me when I was very young. Old enough to read, but young enough to still have that childlike wonder that we sadly lose over time. It wasn’t published by Marvel or DC. It didn’t have glossy pages or a chromium cover. It didn’t feature any overly endowed women with large guns. Not once in the entire volume does the sound effect ’snikt’ appear. What it did contain was a 336 pages of adventure, comedy, courage, and tragedy. It was published by the Smithsonian and it was my introduction to comics.

According to the introduction the ‘Smithsonian Book of Comic Book Comics’ was published as a companion volume to their popular ‘Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics’. Of course, what was more important to me was that it said ‘Happy Birthday Jacob, Love, Dad’ on the first page. I remember opening it and looking for the Uncle Scrooge story that he promised was somewhere inside.

Scrooge, Donald, and the rest were there. But to my awe and surprise so was so much more. Inside were these incredible comics by guys named Joe Shuster, Jerry Siegel, Bob Kane, C.C. Beck, Jack Cole, Basil Wolverton, Walt Kelly, Sheldon Meyer, Will Eisner and more. At the time the names of the guys who created these characters that now assailed my senses didn’t mean a thing to me. What did mean something to my young imagination were the names Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, Plastic Man, Powerhouse Pepper, Pogo, The Red Tornado, and the Spirit.

These are some of the greatest comic book characters of all-time and there I was sitting on my fathers lap reading their exploits. I gasped as Superman out ran a train, thrilled as Batman out smarted a criminal, marveled as Billy Batson yelled out Shazam for the first time. I laughed as a tiny Santa comes swaggering out of Uncle Scrooges fireplace. I cheered for the Spirit as he caught a crook who was trying to rob a bank.

Today the book has stood the test of time. Only now I know what a treasure trove it is. I know who Will Eisner is and all that he has accomplished and is accomplishing. I know what it is that Jerry and Joe did for me and so many others. Walt Kelly is more than just a guy with two first names. These are the guys who really started it all. If Will Eisner had become a dentist, I might be writing this article about some other hobby of mine. Or maybe I wouldn’t even be writing it. Who knows? Without Will Eisner I may never have developed the love of reading that I have. I may never had decided to study English in college to become a better writer. It’s never very productive to play ‘What if?’, but in this case I think it is important.

Comic readers today probably didn’t have the same introduction to comics that I did. I don’t think there are too many customers who come into my store that got there introduction to superheroes from the Spirit or Red Tornado. In this I am truly lucky. I suppose it is something like opening your eyes for the first time and seeing a Monet painting. It is hard for me to imagine a comic creator today topping what Will Eisner did 60 years ago, or coming up with a character that captures the collective imagination of people like Superman or Batman. It seems that today any attempt at telling a story of every youths dream to be big pales in comparison to what C.C. Beck did when he changed an orphan into Captain Marvel, the worlds mightiest mortal. Wouldn’t it be something if someone could though?

The book is a bit worn these days. It’s a bit beat up, and some of the pages are a little faded. There are tears in the dust jacket. All in all though, I wouldn’t sell it for a mint copy of Detective Comics #27. How many things in our life can we pick up, decades later and still get the feelings we did the first time we held it? This book was more than a simple birthday present. This book was a key that opened up the door to a world filled with vibrant characters and wonderful stories that still possess a part of me that I never gave up when I passed from childhood. It was also the key to powerful comics that are there when I want to read something less fanciful than the Justice League. I may be reading more books like Preacher, Transmetropolitan, and Blue Monday these days, but they can’t hold a candle to my beat up volume of four color, newsprint comics. For me, this book is everything comics should be. Someday when I have kids I will sit them on my lap and turn to page 200 and show them what Carl Barks was all about. People wonder why I will pass up watching TV and sit back and crack open the latest issue of Detective Comics. I’ll tell you what I tell them, “Because my dad gave me a book.” Thanks Dad.

Chains

The tree shakes as I walk past
A flock of birds flies out
Looking up they outline the day moon
A burst of manic freedom

Deep inside me I feel something stir
The radio screams Yalla Yalla
Come on come on
The wild inside me surges forth
I feel like sounding a barbaric yawp!

I remember the feelings
Of dewy grass beneath my feet
Of cool wet limestone cave walls
Of silty creeks beds
Of a mountain meadow baked to just the right temperature

For a moment I am free of the shackles
The feeling of Marley’s chains is gone
Civilization falls away
and my soul dances up to the clouds
Chasing the birds with abandon

Too soon the feeling passes
and I feel the concrete under my feet again
The weight of my cell phone settles back onto my hip
I can almost hear the chains snap back in place
Keeping me earthbound

But I can still feel it
A tiny spark
Down deep
Freedom
The Wild

I know it has been a while since I’ve posted. Honestly I haven’t done any writing in a few days. The past couple of weeks have been pretty busy and work has gotten very frustrating. So rather than writing I’ve been playing my guitar and doing stuff to just kind of veg out rather than exercising my grey matter. I’m hoping for a potential upswing at work for no better reason than things have got to break soon. I haven’t been reading a whole lot either. Don’t worry though I will be back on pace real soon.