70s Post Script

I should have called the post “Music in the 70s” because I have a lot more to say. A lot happened then.

I mentioned that I love people separately and thought I should post an example.

I live in Benton Park. It’s a neighborhood that is becoming gentrified. It’s not as bad as Soulard. I can still afford to live here.

Every morning I explore the surrounding neighborhoods on my Roller Blades. There’s a lot of poverty still around here. There's also a lot of beautiful architecture.

Recently I was skating in an area a little south of me. I was at the eastern end of Chippewa where the character in “The Exorcist” lived. The area is almost blighted.

A frail old woman who must have been in her eighties was taking her rottweiler for his morning walk. The woman was almost running as the excited dog dragged her down the street. He was wearing a bow tie.

The 70s

My friends and I were born at an interesting time, at the end of the Baby Boom and the cusp of Generation X. I am a product of The Beatles and old Dylan. People just a little older than me are forever trapped in that era. People just a little younger than me will never get it.

My high school anthem was The Who’s Quadrophenia. Dominic and I wore trench coats with a male symbol on the back.

Everyone seems to remember the 70s as the worst time for music and popular culture in general. The airwaves were filled with Elton John’s plastic period and then disco. Everyone was doing cocaine which to my mind is the biggest self centered asshole state of mind there is. I should know, I had a little problem with it myself in the 80s. Rock and Roll was dominated with the corporate bloat of bands like Journey and Styx. Bands factored cocaine into their expenses when they toured. This eventually led to no brown M&Ms.

Underneath all of this was the most creative, diverse period music has ever been through. Miles Davis paving the way for The Mahavishnu Orchestra, Captain Beefheart, Roxy Music, Brian Eno, David Bowie, Sly Stone, Funkadelic, Gong, Leo Kotke, Cat Stevens, King Crimson, Mcdonald and Giles, Todd Rundgren’s best stuff, the Bonzo Dog Band, Roger Ruskin Spear, and I feel sorry for people who only know Jethro Tull by the album Aqualung. Most of these people inspired separate sub-genres that were terrible. Jazz Rock Fusion, Disco, the New Romantics, and New Age come to mind.

A side note about New Age music. My band “Delay Tactics” was courted both by Verve Records who was looking to start an ambient catalogue of their own and Windham Hill. Windham Hill was the big New Age label at the time. They suggested we tone it down. We had a suggestion for them. Here I sit still without a label. Oh well! If you don’t have an attitude when you’re young, you’re not taking advantage of your youth.

When Punk, followed by New Wave came around in the late 70s a lot of my friends were a puzzled. We were a little older than the adherents. I was so disillusioned by the dinosaur the industry had become, I reveled in the kick in the ass they were getting. It was funny watching all the knock-offs that came out as they tried to penetrate the market. You could feel the stress from our local Classic Rock station KSHE as they put the movement down. They never got it but of course by this time they were tools of the industry.

I remember my old girl friend Jill confessing to me she thought Devo was a comedy act. She had always been so open minded. She loved Captain Beefheart for crying out loud! We talked about what “Duty Now for the Future” actually meant. Even though a lot of the music was derivative of earlier 60s music, it was a reaction to the pompousness of the industry. It was a real revolution for people like me.

There were moments that were painful though. “Fuck Art, Let’s Dance!” and “Back to mono!” were necessary attitudes for the youngsters but it left a lot of cultural evolution lying in the dust. I had to just get over myself.

People individually are the most beautiful part of living. People together are a mob and should be feared and run away from. Witness two terms of this recent insanity, it’s not George’s fault, that’s who he is. It’s the fault of the majority, no matter how small, that voted him in. “We have met the enemy and he is us!”

Man I miss Walt Kelly.

70s pic of me serenading Lora. 80s pic is the back cover of the 2^nd Delay Tactics record. I have the cigarette. This pic was from a session with the photographer I’ve been talking about in the Monica posts.

Monica Update

I came home from the studio last night ready to crawl under a rock and die. As I was shutting down I checked my email and found the letter from Monica. I was afraid I’d done serious damage to our relationship with my entry about her.

I printed my retraction and braced myself for a confrontation on the phone. I never would have slept last night if I hadn’t.

Her tone put me at ease immediately. We had a great talk. I hadn’t spoken with her since the early 90s.

The only thing she was really upset about was the remark about Bad Company being racist. Not a remark I would have made flippantly. Where did I hear that?

I didn’t realize the photographer that called me a wimpy white boy was Asian so it was an Asian girl at Faces that night after all.

I told Monica about my weird detour into skydiving and she told me about a crash she’d been in. She was flying over the Alps in a chartered plane with Deep Purple. She thought they hit serious turbulence when the plane started to pitch. Suddenly half the cabin was on fire. People were screaming until they hit some kind of plateau. All of a sudden everyone was silent. She said it took the police forever to get people off the plane.

She sent several photos including her home in L.A..

She was attacked by a couple of young gangbangers. I can’t remember what she called them but it explained the drugged state they were in. They crushed her ankles and knees as she pleaded with them not to shoot her. She had to have plastic knees surgically implanted. She was amazed by how far the technology has come in re constructive surgery.

We talked about music and she’s got me worked up about finishing my CD.

The photo was taken a year ago by the same photographer I’ve been talking about. This was after they put her legs back together.

A Retraction

A good friend of mine told me I should change the names in my stories to avoid hurting anyone. I haven’t written a lot of stories for that very reason. I wanted the facts to be accurate when I was gone.

I’m beginning to reconsider.

Monica wrote me and I got a lot of facts wrong. She was very upset and I don’t blame her.

The most important in my opinion was the band Bad Company. I said they were racist and didn’t treat her well. I don’t know why I thought she said that or where I heard it. She says they’re friends and great guys. They don’t deserve my characterization. She married Steve Price from the band and they’re still good friends.

The wimpy white boy remark came from a talented St. Louis photographer I’ve actually done a session with. She must have been at Faces that night and I must have just seen Monica talking to the Asian girl. I am sad that the photographer found me wimpy, I loved her work.

The remark about Jeff hiring me because I’d slept with Monica was a joke on Jeff’s part and I naively thought it was flattering to her and me.

Last but not least Monica is only 5’10”--- It must have been the pumps.

If I’d used made up names I never would’ve gotten the truth. I’ve been trying to find Monica for ages and now I have her phone #

I’m calling her now

The Apartment

Kim and I lived with Steve Martin in Soulard while she was pregnant. It was clear this was a bad arrangement. It was a 24hr a day parade of musicians in an out of the studio. Kim was used to a more stable, suburban environment. She’d sink into extreme bouts of depression concerning our new child’s environment.

My friend and skydiving buddy Tom told us we could move in down stairs from him. He had a 2 family flat even farther south in the city. Everything seemed to be falling into place.

We moved in, friends came to visit, and all was well with the world. Tom always had beer in the fridge for me. When I couldn’t pay rent he’d have me paint one of his rental properties or the trim around the top of our building.

My friend Nancy came to visit once and told me how happy she was that I was living the dream. Dream sounded a little funny coming from someone that was bragging about a dominatrix sexual experience she had just had on an elevator downtown. Man I miss her.

Dylan was born and I became a house husband. The two of us would hang out upstairs on Tom’s porch until Kim came home from work. Dylan even had his own miniature porch chair. Eventually Chloe was born.

One St. Patrick’s Day Kim and I were meeting friends of hers at West Port. As we were going in to The Train Wreck Saloon we got news someone had broken into our apartment. We went home immediately.

A pillow case was missing along with all my import CDs. All the fun electronics were missing as well as Kim’s jewelry. This included her wedding ring and her father’s high school ring. In retrospect I find it funny she was wearing the engagement ring that took a year and a half to pay off but not the inexpensive wedding ring.

Our home was robbed two more times after that and Kim said, “I’m moving back to the county.”

We lived in her folk’s rehabbed basement for a month. My spirits became very low.

While we were there Tom put in an alarm system. Kim agreed to move back if we could get a dog. We returned to find a large brass door knocker that read, “The Udells.”

Tom and I finished putting in the alarm system. We tripped something that had the apartment flooded with cops wielding guns.

Kim found a dog at the shelter that was one day from being destroyed. I had always wanted a dog named Fido. Fido must be the male spelling. The paperwork spelled it Pheideaux. Somehow this didn’t stick and she became Sheba.

Kim never liked the dog. It threw up a lot. We were in the apartment less than a year with her. We moved to the county where the dog almost immediately disappeared. Kim’s dad took the dog to some magical place where dogs ran free while I was away. Tom’s next door neighbors wanted her but she was nowhere to be found. I lost respect for both Kim and her father over this. I realized later they were capable of throwing away family members without conscience.

Pictured are Tom, Dylan rehearsing, and Dylan with Sheba. He still misses her.