Lotus. Fragrance. Bodhi

We were sitting in Allie's car smoking a joint. How cool: just played my first talent show and now I'm getting high for the first time. As it happens, I didn't get high (I suspect it's because I didn't do much inhaling), but I did feel elevated.

Our performance of Led Zeppelin's Tangerine wasn't very good. We were out of tune, my solo was alright, Allie's drumming was fine, the bass player (I can't remember his name, but he was missing a couple of fingers) was pretty good, and the other guitar player was kind of dopey and good looking. He handled the vocals, and by handled I mean made a mockery of. His delivery was strained and weak; his guitar playing slightly better. Doing a worse job at singing was Craig, the school's resident "musician", who was commissioned by the band to sing backup. The idea was to boost our credibility, but I thought it was a fucking joke ( I wasn't really a member of the band, just filling in; I was content with a passive role). During a rehearsal, he came up with the idea of  remaining offstage until it was time for him to sing. "And then I'll come out and the crowd will go nuts!", he said. The plan was put into effect, but the "crowd", for some reason, didn't work themselves into an ecstatic frenzy. This pleased me.

We passed the joint around. I barely knew these guys, but we had experienced something that was as close to transcendence as we were likely to get back then. I'm not sure I ever talked to them again.

Tangerine is one of Led Zeppelin's worst songs. What if we had been bold and attempted Kashmir?


Song of the day: Standing, by Townes Van Zandt.

Corn Husk Mountain Brew

It needs lyrics, but it's almost there. The song came to me over a few nights of feeling it out. I recorded two versions, the second of which is more refined. A near perfect take as concerns the guitar; the vocals are passable - flat a times, a dull delivery - but passable. I made up lyrics on the spot. I don't know what they mean.

There is a tempest within; today didn't let me rest or offer quarter. It sucks and I'm alone in it.

Calamity.

It will be worked through.


Song of the night:  Marry Me, by St. Vincent.

Alpha

I needed to hear one really good song tonight. On the way home from work, the radio had nothing for me (I very seldom utilize it for anything but sports and NPR). A wasteland of mediocrity; dull offerings as flaccid as an ancient cock polluted my ears, sapped my essence. Despite this, I stuck around. The radio is not central to my life, but it once was.

I remember being young and enchanted by it. I had a clock radio with a tiny speaker and often sat before it, utterly seduced, in the semi-dark of my room in the hours after dinner that were mine. I've always had a crisp recollection of hearing Kashmir for the first time. It may as well have been a transmission from a distant, golden galaxy. I am a traveler of both time and space, to be where I have been....

Without that radio, I would have been deprived of discovery and maybe the impulse to become a musician wouldn't have manifested so palpably. So, in the car, years later, I gave the radio a shot, perhaps hoping on some level to recapture something that can't be recaptured. It didn't seduce, thrill, or even mildly arouse. The landscape has changed and we know that nothing lasts.


And now I ready myself to fulfill the above-described need. Song of the night: Stars Of Track And Field, by Belle & Sebastian. It was my introduction to the group and I haven't heard a better song by them.

I feel cleansed.