Monday, April 23, 2012

go for it

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Imagine this billboard size.


Monday: 
Tom Waits, Frank's Wild Years
Los Lobos, Live at the Fillmore
Freddy Fender & Tommy McLain, Slippin' & Slidin'
Doug Sahm's Tex Mex Trip, Groover's Paradise
Johnny Thunders, Hurt Me

If you want to go
where the rainbows end
you'll have to say goodbye
all our dreams come true
baby up ahead
and it's out where your memories lie

- from Tom Waits' "Yesterday is Here"

I gotta say one, two, three more things 
Before I move on
-from Los Lobos' "Good Morning Aztlan"

This would seem a thinly veiled goodbye to the old job, part of a tiptoe-into-an-uncertain future post, but really "Yesterday is Here" was just stuck in my head after walking to dog this morning.  I was singing that line as "If you wanna go where the young people go" which didn't really make sense; young people places are not where old Porpkie Hat McGravel's songs tend to take you.

Image from here
I'm more on Freddy Fender's wavelength anyway. Everything is  groovy, A-OK as they like to say in the crossword. They just like to get vowels together.

My friend Melissa asked me on Facebook whether I knew about when Freddy Fender was arrested in Baton Rouge, and well, I'm thrilled that I've become the guy of whom one might pose such a question. My info was wrong. I thought Jimmie Davis pardoned him but it was Edwin Edwards. Mel's going down to the courthouse to find out. She's an archivist so she'll get it right.  I passed onto her an album of Freddy Fender performing at the Louisiana State Prison at Angola that I picked up for a quarter in a thrift store in Mamou. I've never listened to it, and Eugene Chadbourne hated it, saying "Like the prison it is named after, this album is not worth visiting."

First day on the job, it was pointed out that I was wearing an orange shirt, carrying around my iPad with an orange cover, and drinking from an orange water bottle. Maybe tomorrow I'll just go for it and dress all in pink like Freddy Fender.


Freddy Fender, "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights/Vaya Con Dios"

Edited to add: Johnny Thunders RIP 21 years ago. While he was a monster of a rock guitarist when someone could prop him up against the strings, there is something uniquely vulnerable about his quiet songs.


Johnny Thunders, "Too Much Too Soon"

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