Hey Frankie Lee, remember when we saw Willie Nelson at Tramps back in the '90s and we smoked some grass and everybody was really rowdy and drunk and it was one of the best shows ever? That's the night we realized Willie was playing jazz guitar, his riffs like Charles Mingus bass solos played on a Spanish guitar.
And, Frankie, remember when we saw Gillian Welch and David Rawlings open for Whiskeytown in that tiny club in the East Village? And we couldn't believe how great they were? How amazing Rawlings' guitar playing was? What was that place called? I think I got drunk and mooned some people in the park afterwards.
And Mr. Poncho, remember when we (again) were smoking grass in my apartment in Fort Greene and Dewey was there and we were inventing the prototype of the Drift-o-tron and Dewey put on Gillian Welch's cover of "Hickory Wind" and it was the heaviest, most devastating thing ever? And Dewey kind of won the contest?
I started out younger
At most everything
All the riches and pleasures
What else could life bring
But now when I'm lonesome
I always pretend
That I'm gettin' the feel of
Hickory Wind
Anyway, I was thinking of olden, golden days. Later, Mr. Poncho and JP Mystery and Dewey and I all went to see Willie together. More jazz. No weed though. Yesterday I was was watching a video on my iPod of the last concert Elvis gave before he died. He was bloated and puffy, six weeks from death. In it he had an assistant handing him white scarves, which he would put around his neck to collect a little sweat, then fling into the screaming audience. Imagine where all those scarves are now. In grandma's attic. In somebody's ex-brother-in-law's sock drawer. All the years combine, they melt into a dream...
Hickory Wind - Gillian Welch
Elvis Presley Blues - Gillian Welch
Young & Innocent Days - The Kinks
Stella Blue - Willie Nelson
2 comments:
Yes, I sure do...the guy who shared his "grass" with us @ Tramps referred to the joint as "minister's dick", which (according to the guy) is what Willie calls them (joints, that is)...and the club where we saw Jim Lauderdale, Gillian/David & Whiskeytown was called Wetlands (my friend G always referred to it as "Sweatglands")...we left in the middle of Whiskeytown's set, unimpressed as I recall. I've seen Willie twice since then, once w/ Lyle Lovett & Shawn Colvin (Waylon made an appearance, leaning on a cane) and once opening for Bob at the local minor league park. Thanks, that was fun!
That Hickory Wind melts the heart and mind and memory complex into a multi-color swirl. I have a memory of an early launch of the drift-o-tron, with the three of us, parked in Middletown, listening to "Shangi-La" and pretty much not being able to keep all the sense-memory data from flowing in and out, flooding the whole apparatus. It's one big sonic Proust cookie.
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