"Masked Ball" Jocelyn Pook-Flood

This afternoon against my better judgement I took a stroll down to MoMA simply because I haven't been there in quite some time. I despise going on the weekends because it is crowded and there are always bratty kids running around and tons of Eurotrash tourists practicing their own art which they are quite adept at, getting in the way and being rude. It never ceases to amaze me how terrible it is on the weekends and how rude people are, standing in front of you, talking on the phone, taking pictures with huge Hubble Space Telescope-like lenses and flashes...

But this afternoon it was different, all the above was there but I was presently surprised at the performance art in the main space, a work by Marina Abramovic. Marina is widely known as one of the founders of the genre and some of her past expositions involved her putting herself into a coma and Rhythm 0, from Wikipedia:

Abramović had placed upon a table 72 objects that people were allowed to use (a sign informed them) in any way that they chose. Some of these were objects that could give pleasure, while others could be wielded to inflict pain, or to harm her. Among them were scissors, a knife, a whip, and, most notoriously, a gun and a single bullet. For six hours the artist allowed the audience members to manipulate her body and actions. “The experience I learned was that…if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed.” ... “I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.

This time around she is sitting at a table staring, she is there from the time the museum opens until closing and she remains basically motionless the entire time. Anyone can sit down and stare back at her if they chose so. When one gets up to leave she lowers her head until the next person assumes the seat and she looks up, the blinking of her eyes the only movement.

While all this is going on there is music in the background, I am not sure if it is Jocelyn Pook but the eeriness of the sounds and the circumstances reminds me of one of her most popular songs which was used in a popular film released years ago. I won't mention the film, in doing so I would change your opinion of what you are reading here and the work described above. Nonetheless the scene in that film is just as creepy and unsettling as what I witnessed today, I couldn't imagine how strange it would be to be there when the museum was basically empty, but I plan to find out this week early in the morning on a weekday.

As for this song Miss Pook took a fragment of an Orthodox Liturgy and played it backwards, then added Romanian chants over it on another track. The feeling derived from it is unique to say the least. It is walking into a pitch black room and hearing a noise, its someone dressed up as Hitler with a clown mask on watering the lawn or a baby talking with a man's voice. You don't know what it is exactly but something just doesn't make sense. Musicians have been doing this for years, check out Arvo Part or Stockhausen, arranging music in a way totally foreign to our ears, especially for Americans.

That is the reason why Indian or Asian music is so strange, it runs on a different meter, tonal scale and tempo. Whether it is Blues, Rock, Soul, Reggae...whatever they all fit into a very small spectrum of music, music we have heard since birth. Like Abramovic's performance today, Pooks work steps outside the realm of the everyday, out of the banal and into a world most people are not familiar with. Whether you think it is over intellectual bullshit or the Mona Lisa and Symphony No. 5 of the modern world you can't argue that it hits something somewhere and some place you have never been touched.

Often I take flak from people in regards to my musical tastes and knowledge because in appearance I stick to a limited catalogue of genres and schools. They say that I should open up my experiences and dive into others, meaning: I should listen to the music they like. Then when I ask them about Pook or Stockhausen they give me that look like the dog does when it catches you and your other half in between the sheets. Come back and explain to me the Spatialization and Electroacoustic theories of music and maybe I'll start giving Pink a little more time on my iPod, though probably not because she is shit.

"Agua De Beber" Astrud Gilberto-The Astrud Gilberto Album

Astrud Gilberto was born in Bahai, Brasil to a Brasilian mother and (curiously) a German father. I say curiously because it is widely known that many escaped Nazis landed in this part of the world after the Second World War. And while nothing could erase the damage they did to the world, the horror and sheer misery they created, we can take as an act of contrition the fact that because of them there are insanely attractive Latin women walking around the beaches of South America with blue eyes and jet black hair. If you mention Brasil to any American man that is without question the first thing he will think of and rightly so. Preconceived notions and stereotypes exist for a reason and I can tell the men out there that everything they are thinking is true. Everything.

But Rio is so much more than that and I loved every second I spent there. Whether it was eating dinner along the glorious pool at the Copacabana Palace sipping Caipirinhas between bites of steak wrestled by gauchos while ten foot swells crashed on the beach or walking along Rua Maria Quiteria under the cool shade of tree lined streets dodging eleven year old boys pick pocket attempts the city is entrancing. In The River of January you will find awe inspiring views both natural and man made, it houses amazing examples of modernist architecture including one of my favorite buildings in the world, The Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum.

The building like everything else in Rio is a complete fantasy, a structure from another world inhabited by creatures alien to my own eyes. In the favelas frightfully cruel, poor, violent creatures killing each other for fractions of Reals while a mile away six foot bodies, tanned and toned, glisten on the beach with a stitch of clothes on; the women also wear very little and are in great physical condition. The sea rivals in ferocity any break in the world including Hawaii and Northern California, Ipanema literally meaning bad water in Portuguese.

While laying on the western side of Rua Farme in Leblon everyday I contemplated the surreal quality of such mellow bossa nova music in a land of constant turmoil. In the states such music is usually confined to elevators and cheezy middle aged men's bachelor pads, a terrible disservice for these grooves. For all the good in the world us Americans provide we have a penchant for taking constructs of beauty and turning them into our own proverbial strip malls and Branson Missouri-s.

When I want to truly chill and feel the sun from the little latitudes on my skin, the gentle caress of a fragile hand running over my speedos and aquamarine rollers crashing into white froth on the beach I can always count on Astrud putting me in the proper frame of mind, in particular this song. I don't speak Portuguese and without looking up the lyrics I have no idea what the hell she is truly singing about. Just to be sure she wasn't crooning about mass castration of all males named John I looked it up.

AGUA DE BEBER (DRINKING WATER)
Your love is rain, my heart the flower.
I need your love or I will die.
My very life is in your power,
will I wither and fade or blossom in the sky.
Drinking Water,
give the flower water to drink.
Drinking Water,
give the flower water to drink.
The rain can fall on distant deserts,
the rain can fall upon the sea.
The rain can fall upon the flowers.
Since the rain has to fall, let it fall on me.
Drinking Water
Drinking Water
Drinking Water
Drinking Water
I'll never see another springtime,
I'll never feel the summer sun
unless you're there to share that springtime
and like the rain and the flower our hearts are one.
Drinking Water
give the flower water to drink.
Drinking Water
give the flower water to drink.

His love is drinking water, the sun is drinking water and those seventh and extended chords in a medium tempo provide me with all the tabular hydration I could ever need. It is an oil change for the soul, the sludge drained out and resupplied with clear liquors leave my mind in waves like the art deco sidewalks that run along the ocean. Laying at the roof pool of the Caesar Park Hotel for the first time I heard this song piped in through the speakers while I drank pure sugar Coca-Cola and watched a woman slowly climb out of the pool against a light azure sky and reach for one of their purple and orange towels.

I still use one of their towels every time I trek down to the beach and I still have the picture in my mind of a severely browned woman laying next to me on it talking in a language I could barely understand with Astrud smoothly slinking through the ether off in the background. Sadly, I am always awakened on that very same towel by the screeching Northeast accent of some white trash extra from The Jersey Shore yelling at her juiced up boyfriend who by the way is wearing eyeliner and is fresh from a wax with every piece of Ed Hardy apparel known to man in his possession, the lifeguards are whistling at someone who is up to his waist in water while a hyper blond teenager is breaking my balls because she can't see my beach badge until I look to my left and see a three hundred pound woman in jeans and sneakers hacking down a butt and stubbing it out in the sand. In such instances the iPod comes out and I am thrown back to a world that could never be imagined inside an elevator nor manufactured in China and sold in a strip mall. I am back in Brasil where all my fantasies came true, more so those that were not carnal in nature, for those are terribly fleeting in comparison to all the other senses heightened in that resplendent land.

"Don't Throw Your Love On Me So Strong" Mike Bloomfield-Don't Say That I Ain't Your Man

I am not going to begin by telling you about this person. I will say that he is the greatest blues guitar player who ever lived, hands down.

And this song embodies the everything the blues was meant to be: Smoky, Desperate and Devout. It is a scotch going down the back of your throat followed by a drag of an unfiltered Lucky. It is that black man in a red suit and a white fedora sitting at the bar shaking his head slowly with a 1978 black Cadillac Eldorado parked outside, a Gibson Hollow Body, fluorescent lights reflecting off of a rain soaked street at three in the morning, huge vibrato, minor pentatonic scales with a side of chromatic thrown in for good measure and it is NOT any type of distortion. This song is the pinnacle of the guitar-voice trade offs and an example for all those would be bluesmen of perfect phrasing, however it cannot be done better than this.

Buy the song now and give it a listen.

Eleven minutes and five seconds later I can tell you about this backwoods slave descendant from Mississippi....if that was who the man was. Rather, Mike Bloomfield was born in 1943 in Chicago to wealthy Jewish parents. He was a skinny white boy with curly hair and confidence problems. He was also the man who took Dylan electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, the lead in Mitch Ryder's hit "Devil With the Blues Dress" and a session musician for a myriad of songs from the late sixties and early seventies. Chances are if you hear a song from that time period the man behind the lead guitar was Mike.

I was introduced to Bloomfield by an aged English professor who smoked too much weed, drank too many shots and lived a little too fast. However he saw Dylan in the Village when his name was still Robert, Miles downstairs before the Vanguard sold out, The Allman Brothers when they still had Duane and Reed before he became an iconoclastic idol; he had over five thousand records and could play every song contained within them. Many drunk, high nights I'd pass out up on the bench of the bar at six in the morning with all the skin on my right thumb missing from playing and a dead squirrel in the back of my throat. And from those nights I learned a lot about music and what was the real deal. Reed over Dylan, Bloomfield over Clapton...his thoughts on music ran in direct contrast to most everything I had held dear but when he invested the time to explain it all nothing was more clear. Though he was an adept teacher and a shaman of the blues when I asked him to teach me how to play like Mike he lowered his eyes straight faced and told me it was impossible.

Mike Bloomfield died at age 37 in circumstances that were never known. Towards the end of his life he was a heroin addict and the most productive notes he put out were used for cheap 70's Porn. In short, he lived by the blues and died by the blues, that is the way all the greats expire. Nonetheless there is eleven minutes and five seconds worth of his life that was not spent on the floor of a gritty bathroom, jonesing and shivering, in reality there was a lot more and while worth listening to I still haven't tired of this perfection.

"You've Got to Hurt Before You Heal" Bobby Blue Bland-Live on Beale Street

One rainy night a few months ago in a foul mood after a date gone awry I strolled into Terra Blues down on Bleeker Street in the Village. I don't know what I was looking for but it wasn't the first thing I saw when walking in the door, a six foot five transvestite. It was actually quite attractive to be honest and I sat down at the bar in the back while a fast boogaloo blues number was performed on stage by Saron Crenshaw, still hoping that the lonely woman dancing by herself would not ask for my help. I started thinking about that old line Never turn down a woman's offer to dance...never. "Did it apply to trannies?" "I don't want to be impolite" "Well hopefully she won't ask". My mind raced.

Thankfully she never asked and found an older, lonelier gentleman as the song ended, when Saron slowed it down a bit and began the slow intro to this beautiful R&B number. The scene was pretty perfect, one man on stage singing his guts out, a dark room, rainy night and two people slow dancing enjoying themselves, somehow sharing a moment. It worked wonders for my own mental state at the time, jaded, pissed and misanthropic about the world, brought me back into the fold. Sometimes life can be funny like, sometimes seeing a tranny in the Village where they belong and always have been can put your mind at ease. With the corruption of SoHo and Meatpacking it is nice to know that there are still some freaks running around New York because that is what New York is all about. That Statue of Liberty sitting slightly to the southeast of this rock wasn't just asking for immigrants from other lands but also those that don't just quite fit in their own. All the better when they dig great music.

But I guess the freaks and the fringe have always had a monopoly on music and so much of it was born in this town. From Lou Reed to the Ramones there has always been a place in New York's heart for such people and have always treated them with the decency everyone deserves.

Bobby Blue Bland is not much of a freak and I'd imagine his momma from Rosemark, Tennenesse wouldn't think to kindly of her little boy associating with such kind. Rather Bobby was raised on Gospel and Choir music, the blues at times, when it wasn't so Goddamn sexual bless its heart. Eventually Mr. Bland would make his way through the ranks of Beale Street bands and find himself collaborating with B.B King on multiple albums. He was the first to cut such famous songs as "Turn on Your Lovelight" and "Further On Up the Road" and is a man Van Morrison counts as his biggest influence. His trademark falsetto voice and throat clearing grunts gained him entry to the Rock and Roll Hall of fame back in the early 90's well before they started letting such trash as ABBA into the hall.

That night watching an empty room sans two people dancing and myself at the bar with Saron hitting every note in a la Bobby Blue it wasn't just the scotch warming my soul. More so it was...

When you lose the one you love
You heart goes through changes
Especially when your sweet memories
Still hold their thrill
And just when you think
The pain is all gone
Don't fool yourself
'Cause here's the deal
That's the way love works
You've got to hurt before you heal
Oh, yes you have

Those southern boys have more clarity than a showroom Rolls windshield at times and the delivery removes any doubt just what exactly they are saying. For me it was enough not to miss that terribly attractive blond I left rather abruptly a short hour ago, in fact it was better than being out still shaking my head yes and agreeing with every foolish self absorbed word she uttered. It was much better. It was much better to be with people who were real, regardless of whether it was the struggling singer on stage or the sexually confused woman dancing with (well, soon to be) equally confused, lonely man. It was good to be alone and to not have to fake it anymore. Bobby never faked it, every time he's a-gonna give you just what you are looking for if you are smart enough to look for it in the first place. And if you are not, if you are looking for hours of listening to the words Hamptons, Page Six, Alligator Birkin, Mustique and Standard Grill over and over until you are about to throw up in your mouth I know a perfect blond who is just prime for the taking.

"The New Kid in Town" The Eagles-Live in Melborne

The Eagles, the definitive California band...with only one member being from California (Sacramento which we all know is not Cali), the remainder hailing from Detroit, Gilmer Texas and Wichita Kansas. I never really took to these boys, yea they had great harmonies, yea some catchy songs especially when Glen was living with Jackson Browne but for some reason they were vanilla, nothing special.

However the reason I write about this song is not because no one has never heard of "The New Kid in Town" even though it is not one of most popular. I write about this song because it, and the Eagles came to me when I really needed them most. It not only pulled me through a tough time but it solidified a group of people together and gave them something we will never forget. That is the power of music, how it cuts through the fecal matter we carry around on a daily basis and taps past the stanky excrement into our souls and the true people we are past the facades. Among that group all that ever has to be muttered is "The Eagles" and we all know what the point is, never has two words meant so much.

It was my first time out to sea for an extended period of time, I was leaving my most valuable possession at home, alone. She was lost and shaken, frightfully young, an animal taken from her native environment and placed in a strange town, strange state, strange coast and now the only thing she had to depend on was leaving for two full months. We were taking the carrier down to the Caribbean under the ruse of finding "Narco Terrorist" but in reality we were showing Chavez that we could make him a nervous man in a just a few days time. In reality the Admiral just wanted two months in the sun and port stops in St. Maarten and Antigua.

I left knowing, in that part of the brain we never listen to, that when I returned she would be gone. She would be there but never again look at me with those eyes again. I remember leaving her at the door, putting my gear in the car, running back up the stairs and saying goodbye again, and again and again.

We pulled into St. Maarten after about a month at sea. We rented a suite on the beach with a pool and a Tiki Bar. The first night I had Watch on the boat while all the boys enjoyed the sun, sand and strip clubs. I used the phone to have a long conversation with her that was dead, a struggle to find what to say because you knew you should say it but could never address the subject. It was lonely and as I laid in my narrow rack that night with my Wings of Gold hanging on the hook, the pressed dress whites longing over me I stared at the ceiling on the verge of tears until I passed out.

The next day I took the small boat to the beach and found all the boys by the pool, it was eleven in the morning and they were all hammered already. I went to the room and placed a call to an empty phone, walked down to the Tiki bar, the pool and the boys and dug in trying to let it all sweat out in the Caribbean sun. There was a skinny black girl tending bar, serving Rum Jumbie shots and flirting with everyone; there was a stack of concert DVDs under the TV, one of which was The Eagles Live in Melbourne. For the next four days the first disc of that concert was never shut off, not ever and this was the setlist:

"The Long Run" "New Kid in Town" "Wasted Time/Reprise" "Peaceful Easy Feeling" "I Can't Tell You Why" "One of These Nights" "One Day at a Time" "Lyin' Eyes" "The Boys of Summer" "In the City" "Already Gone" "Tequila Sunrise" "Love Will Keep Us Alive"
"No More Cloudy Days" "Hole in the World" "Take It to the Limit" "You Belong to the City" "Walk Away" "Sunset Grill"

I did some stupid things during that week, I swam across the mile and a half harbor drunk at midnight on a bet so I could feel like a man again, I bought a set of diamond earrings and a box of Cubans (don't smoke cigars), I played golf hammered in a button down, loafers and my uniform pants, I danced with the young black Kay behind the bar even though she reeked of body odor and was not attractive and roamed around the slums so drunk I was beggin to be robbed, lost thousands at the blackjack tables and worst of all called her every second I had trying to change her mind. The last day we drank until the last second expired to the Eagles and it was glorious. Everyone had a big time and even I was except for those few seconds when I wasn't drinking, smoking or wrastling with the boys, then she crept back in. On the way out I stole the DVD.

The next month contained sleepless nights and terrible depression, I lost twenty pounds and never ate. I jogged everyday in the hangar with a buddy who never tired at listening to me bitch and moan. I could never be alone and talked to every person I would see for extended periods of time to keep my mind occupied.

When we flew back to base all the wives were there dressed up like sluts (Standard Navy procedure), there were balloons and smiling faces, beer in the hangar and people clapping. I walked towards the hangar and saw her standing in the background shyly like she always was, dropped my bag and hugged her letting the shit fall from my mind. We arrived home, closed the door and just laid together for a while, we kissed and took our clothes off and didn't make love. A few days later she threw a surprise birthday party for me at a close friend's house and all the boys were there. She gave me a inflatable guitar signed in Sharpie: "Johnny one day it is going to be just you and me and the road. -Bruce Springsteen" She stayed for a few weeks and then took that long drive back to Cali, I went upstairs and cried, drank till I blacked out for two weeks and crashed a car. When she left she told me she'd be back.

I took a Navy jet out there to see her one week and stayed in her house and her bed, we laid around every night listening to the Pacific just out her window and smelled the salt air permeating the waving curtains. I played Torey with a great friend and when we finally left things between us were back to normal, she just needed some time.

A month later I flew out again and it was dead, the whole time there was a new kid in town and I had been pushed to the sidelines. I left her on the corner of Orange Avenue and drove to the base, it was the last time I ever saw her. We preflighted the jet and were ready to start it up until we found out we had no oxygen and had to wait for a new canister. Skipper and I sat on the tarmac of North Island looking towards Point Loma, he asked me if she and I had sex one last time. "No, it is over." He had three divorces under his belt and spent the next hour of waiting telling me about them and the self destruction that ensued every time in the most gentle tone I could ever imagine. He patted me on the back, we hopped in the jet and headed back to Florida.

After twenty seven years, with that NASNI ONE departure and wheels in the well, I finally became a man and left my innocence behind.

And with that The Eagles finally had meaning. It was two-fold, the glory of five days in a foreign country with your friends, each of which who were dealing with something in their personal lives (as it would come out years later) but just letting it all ride for the moment; it was lines such as

You're walking away and they're talking behind you
They will never forget you 'til somebody new comes along
Where you been lately? There's a new kid in town
Everybody loves him, don't they?
Now he's holding her, and you're still around

finally having meaning, not what you think or imagined they meant but what you experienced them as meaning; what you knew and felt they meant.

From those days on I always took that disc with me when I was on the road flying, on the carrier and in the middle of the Iraqi desert, it is in my DVD player in Manhattan constantly. When I was scared behind the boat at night it was always in my pocket, when we partied on foreign shores it was always with us and when we were miserable on the boat in a room with six groan men sharing the bottle of scotch we smuggled aboard all anyone ever had to say was "Man I just want some Eagles" and we all knew what he meant. He wanted the freedom of sun and rum, the release of earthly troubles and especially the liberation from women, we all wanted to be together feeling good one more time.

It is the crucible of pain that true friends are born and that week in St. Maarten my good friends became the type of friends I would want my wife to marry upon my death, the ones I could call in the middle of the night and ask for ten grand for a fake passport no questions asked, the ones whom I shared a level of connection rarely known to man and women, or man and woman.

I think of those days when I hear The Eagles, I think of that beautiful Southern California girl I left behind and the days we had on the beaches when we had that peaceful easy feeling until the new kid came to town. I think of how it could all be over in a New York minute and whether I am in the city or on the corner of Winslow Arizona that sometimes she can only be there for awhile but there will always be another tequila sunrise and a bunch of pretty maids in a row all waiting for me at that hotel California. But mostly I think about being born in the city and there is no one there to catch you when you fall, that is except for a bunch of boys and one DVD that caught me when I was hanging off the edge, they let the young man fall and out of the Phoenix of the desert a new man arose already gone.

"Private Number" William Bell and Judy Clay-Boy Meets Girl

Desert Island Discs is one of the longest running programs in the history of radio, it first aired on January 29th 1942 on the BBC. Guests are asked to chose eight song selections (originally gramophone records), they are also given The Complete Works of Shakespeare and The Bible as well as one other book of their choosing. At the completion of the show they are asked to narrow down their song choices to one particular work. The list of guests is staggering, as one would expect from a show that has been around for sixty-eight years.

The idea presents a whole host of questions and tough decisions, however I would have to have some Motown, in particular this song. I can think of no genre of music I can listen to over and over that never loses its luster. I can think of no genre of music that one can listen to and derive meaning from whether you are skipping down the street or shuffling around a corner with your head held low with the blues. It fits every emotion, every scene of life and lets you know where the real motherfucking living is...if you don't dig it you are dead.

Most younger listeners will recognize the bass line from "Private Number" which has been sampled by Rappin 4 Tay and METAFORM, but in its original clothes this track is so much tighter and more layered. After you let is simmer for a while check your Bang Olufsens out, run a finger across the grill and you'll find that sweet soul grease dripping, use it to slick your hair back before you head out...it's the only product you'll ever need for that beautiful shine.

I. Love. Every. Second. Of this song. I love these two voices merging like the big brackish waters of the south. I love the visualization. I love the story, the fact a man goes away for a while and upon his return can't get a hold of his woman, thinking the worst he asks the woman what the problem is, the listener figuring just another story of love lost until Big, Black, Beautiful Judy comes in with her North Carolina Gospel pipes and croons:

I'm sorry you couldn't call me
When you got home
But other fellows kept on calling
While you were gone

So I had the number changed
But I'm not acting strange
Welcome home
Baby, nothing's wrong---so I'm SINGING...

BABY BABY BABY youcanhavemy prI-I-I-I-Ivate number! The bass is running, the strings are screaming in their falsetto harmonies, Judy is standing before an old stainless square microphone in a pink prom dress while Billy Bell is looking tight, trim and tenacious in a slick black suit with every button undone on his shirt, a deep crimson rose in da button hole; the horns are polished up erect in the background Da Da Da Da Da Da...DaDaDa.

If they put this song on in a bar on a Saturday night no one would go home alone and they would all feel great about it the next day, not only would they feel great she'd spend the morning dancing around in nothing but his button down and him in her robe screaming the refrain at the top of their lungs, then slide breakfast off the table and let loose right there. If they put this song on at the UN Israel would be dancing with Iran, Mugabe would open up the palace to the oppressed and North Korea would finally wonder what the hell the big deal is about the 38th Parallel.

I would be on an island alone after finally figuring out how to power my iPod with flotsam washed up on the beach. Using the logs I've pieced together to resemble one of the Shirelles I'd be dancing my ass off under the stars, the monkeys would be watching from the trees in amazement at just how far they have come over the years; not at the speakers, the iPod or the strange, hairless, weak monkey they see before them but rather that soul inspiring Goddamn refrain from the Gods. Suddenly the monolith would disappear from the background, its work done as the human race has reached its zenith.

"Corpus Christi Bay" Robert Earl Keen Jr.-A Bigger Piece of Sky

I just returned from an almost four thousand mile adventure through this great United States including one twenty hour straight stint averaging 80 mph through Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Tennessee. And while there was 93 Octane running through the flat six the real fuel for the road is music, I don't feel sheepish saying that it was one hell of a playlist. I discovered some songs I never knew and others I have totally forgotten about, songs that, to my amazement, stayed on the edge of my consciousness.

My brother is six years my junior and because of this there were times where we never really hung out and raged, we always got along well but when I was twenty one he was fifteen and not staying out till eight every morning like I was. Our relationship was a product of our time in life and unlike some of my friend's brothers we just never were that close in a friendship kinda light. Today we are pretty close however he lives on the opposite coast and it is rare when we can get together. The relationship I was always thinking about is displayed perfectly in "Corpus Christi Bay" and after a few listens you'll know exactly what I am talking about.

Robert Earl Keen Jr. is a songwriter for the ages, his persona, story and lyrical craftsmanship will see to it that he is known well beyond his death. Maybe I think this because the lifestyle he writes about is one I have embraced over the years. As per this song I have gotten stoned along a sea wall, rolled a car drunk, had a tab at every bar in various areas of the United States and threw a bunch of my ex-wives's shit into the ocean in forgetting about her and what we had.

But it is more than that, and this song is more than the exploits of a rig worker on the southeast coast of Texas. It is the bond of two men growing older through the years, the cyclical nature of life and making the same mistakes over and over again. Most importantly it illustrates, for better or worse a time in my life in which I had great friends but always wished there was someone there connected to me via blood. Someone whom no matter how fucked up I eventually became would be there unquestioningly on my side. In these character's lives I see myself in both of their experiences and my brother as well. Maybe we should write our own song (he is a far superior guitar player than myself), maybe one of these days if we are not too old we can rage around for a year or two, I certainly hope so.

And the summation of Robert Earl Keen Junior's message is that it is never too late and you are never too old. Dig into his catalogue and the messages of his songs, whether you are nineteen or fifty nine it is never too late to head out into that world and find contentment. Whether that is in another person or the bottom of the glass is not any of our business, and that is the business of this country, a business that has spurned such great, open, full throttle song writers as old Bobby Keen.