Dunno. Talk about Horns Of The Dilemma! Remeber the last Convention I saw you? And we sat at the dinner table with Scotty and his gang? He told that racist joke to everyone’s delight? I was done with him there! But the Excel issues never got resolved - the tuning finger block was manufactured too tight - the fingers were jammed, couldn’t EVER tune. They rubbed against each other with a compression that prevented the springs from ‘returning’ the fingers back to original pitch
.

And all this after the initial 2.5 yrs of suffering with this guitar. Now, the builder won’t honor a refund on this lemon. The steel world should know this.

Me? I’ll survive. I’ve still got this S-10 Emmons. If you’ve heard the Where I Come From cd of ours, every lick was done on the old thing. Every nuance. And when the new one comes out next Winter, the same applies.

I couldn’t put the Excel on the steel market because of its state - but Scotty could and did, alas.

The answer was to send it back to Fujii, get the refund (which you guys put up!) and have him rebuild the finger block. Buddy

3/11/10

THE  GERMAN HOUSE

315 GREGORY ST.

ROCHESTER ,  NY 585 325 4088

3/12/10

THE WESTCOTT THEATER

524 WESTCOTT ST.

SYRACUSE,  NY  315 299  8886

3/13/10

RIDGEFIELD PLAYHOUSE

80 EAST RIDGE AVE

RIDGEFIELD, CT  (203) 438-5795

3/14/10

UKRANIAN AMERICAN

CULTURAL CENTER

60 NORTH JEFFERSON RD.

WHIPPANY, NJ

Here it is in pic below getting cleaned up down in his basement in Ohio, before Seagal’s boys picked it up, two winters ago. I remember when Dan built that in his basement, I was baby sitting for them at the time! Albert played it for 20 years before he passed on.
Albert played at the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival, Dan and I were bartenders backstage, he poured em, I stocked em. (I was 16 I think). Dan was building guitars then, approached Albert and said I want to make a custom Flying V for you. He also made a custom Strat for Jerry too, I met Gar when he picked it up in St. Helena CA. That too was an interesting vacation, back in 72. Pic of it below. My oh my….
Well, today was Buddy Cage day around here! Thanks for making it a great day Buddy, I am going to listen to “Where I Come From” some more…
Always, Mark

Within minutes, he had that pony nuzzling up to him. Strange, mysterious to us but true.

THEN, we went overseas for the GD’s Europe 72 tour to open for them. The culmination was 4 days at the Lyceum theater in London. Everybody was having a ball, a celebration of our time together, sort of a milestone at that - conquering a foreign crowd and all. Backstage, there were some problems: seems like some irate Brit kids, four or five tough guys were creating a ruckus in the alley behind the stage. At certain loading docks, there are these sliding doors, they were hung on thick wire cables, steel rollers on these immense, steel doors. There were fashioned to slide sideways. Balanced, sort of… These doors were about 4 feet wide, impregnable but when banged on, they made a helluva noise! These street fucks were protesting their banishment by beating on them while the Dead were in the middle of their performance.

I was sitting on a stairway just to the left of the stage and was privy to the disturbance. Jackson jumped right into the problem, yelling through the door that if they didn’t ‘quit it’, there would be trouble. Well - so what, they must have thought - one crew guy, four of them and these HUGE fucking doors!!

Jackson stretched out his arms as if to measure the possibility of accessing these punks. His wingspan was just about the right size. He bent slightly at the knees, gripped the edges of the door and heaved! Up, and off the tracks, came that monster door. He carried the piece of steel sideways about two feet!!

The punks outside were frozen, watching this superhuman display from the other side of the door - they were speechless. Apoplexy? It might have occurred to one or two of them that given this incredible thing had just happened and now, there was nothing separating (protecting) them from the Beast who lifted this massive piece of metal! Duh…

Rex took stock of their hopeless position, stepped out into the alley and beat the living shit out of 3 of ‘em. The rest of the Lyceum security jumped into the slaughter and finished off these peckerwoods. Jackson just turned back around to the stage, sort of brushing his hands together as one would when a chore has been completed. Unforgettable…

I think I remember him almost cracking a smile.

There’s a new film out with Jeff Bridges - I’m debating whether I can handle it or not. Seems like he’s dressed up à la, Waylon! Oh dear…
So, (and I don’t want to pre-judge) I may step in and check it out, Mickey. I wouldn’t go see “Ray”, nor would I pay for “Titanic” to see some Hollywood drivel. Wouldn’t go see the Johnny Cash exploitation either.

I felt I had skin in the game with all these guys since I’d worked with some of them and had grandparents ON the Titanic, etc. I knew Cash, worked on his tv show at the Ryman in 70, met him several times with Nashville insiders (Big Jim Webb, 6’5” steeler with Del Reeves). Hated the film angle. I’ll have to blog a piece on the Cash Show, Family/cast dinner we had before the actual taping at another time! “Have the frog’s legs, Son!” The night Buddy developed two heads…

After all, they never even came close to the real reasons he wrote his stuff – “Ballad Of Ira Hayes”, and all the songs that came in about the underdog in America, the suffering, the injustice. Would they have a fucking clue as to why he recorded a Nine Inch Nails’ song? Or care? Not hardly…

Worshipped Brother Ray – couldn’t bear to see an actor portray the junkie-genius and try to get away with it, blatantly vying for an Oscar before the ink was dry on his contract.

But Waylon – that’s a whole ‘nuther deal.

When I was working for you in 67, part of 68 – I had morphed into a neo-hippie! The transformation was achieved entirely through the love of music. I swore at the time, this would be my last gig as a sidemen. I’d done ALL the yeoman work, been a good student, a dependable soldier as a Mustang. But I was reaching for another goal – a broader place to play a wider range of music styles. Rock, pop, R&B…

The Beatles had affected me tremendously, the Stones, Led Zep. The Who, Big Brother, the Grateful Dead, Donovan, Steppenwolf – DYLAN!!! Crazy shit was going down. Then, I met Charmaine at Ann Dunn’s Matador club while the Mustangs were working there as pretty much the house band. And Char changed my life! She was the Magic Carpet Ride to take me through the Looking Glass to the Other Side. And I was deeply in love with her.

One day – Waylon Jennings came to town to play a week’s stint at the Horseshoe (Tavern), two of his band guys came to see me at the Edison Hotel the night we were both playing. They were seeking pot. They had asked around at the Shoe, who in town they might approach about finding some weed and were told that well, there is this ONE hippie we know (who might have some dope!) and they were directed to the Edison…Enter Me.

I always came to work early. And there were those southern-hippie-types a-waitin’ – smilin’, grinning. Waylon’s drummer, Richie Albright and his bass player, Jimmie Gray. They broached the subject of grass and I highballed it with a quick call to Charmaine. Yeah, we could hook up after our respective shows tonight and get stoned! I was single at the time and free as the breeze. I dropped by the Matador and whisked Char away to the Holiday Inn on the Lakeshore. We commenced to par-TAY!

In those days, it was kinda like a Zap Comix cartoon, Furry Freak Bros., Mr. Natural reenactment: Is it better to have dope than food? The classic conundrum. These boneheads would argue the point ad nauseum…coming to the conclusion that with Fat Freddy, they were fucked either way. If you spent the household bread on dope, you got high AND got subsequently hungry, needing FOOD!!

I remember the interior of Richie & Jimmie’s room at the H.I. – the standard H.I. twin double layout with BLUE CURTAINS! The curtains were significant. As we smoked and got higher & higher, we cracked funnies till dawn. Char brought a lot of weed and the guys bought the large amount we didn’t smoke. As morning crept up, the curtains got bluer and bluer! Quite remarkably so, enhanced by the marijuana (a C+ at best) till they veritably glowed, became 3 dimensional, then FOUR dimensional – then 5, then 6 and so on. These were 4 pretty nice people sharing those joints for 4 hours or so. And when we had to split, we headed for the elevator.

At that time…of morning…on that very given day, there was a convention at the hotel. Not unusual. We stopped on EVERY goddamned floor to pick up more and more people. Slowest elevator any of us had ever been on. And the PEOPLE!? They were SO FUCKING STRAIGHT!!! Slacks, short-sleeve golf shirt’s, argyll socks, loafers – a complete 180° from us 4 freaks. And of course, we started to laugh. And laugh. AND LAUGH till we were falling over these creeps in the elevator.

And when the elevator finally reached the lobby, the doors opened to reveal the source of STRAIGHTNESS rampant in the hotel. It was the USGA. Golfers. Thousands of ‘em!!! It was probably the Canadian Open Golf Championship or such – and they looked at us like we were well, from another Planet.

Which, of course – we were…

A week later, I got a post card from the Waylon bus saying, “Busted At Bridge”. [Actually, at that time, they were traveling in a Cadillac limo w/a trailer for gear] Ever since that time, Ole Hoss used to view me suspiciously every time we hooked up. Like I was about to get HIM busted. Fair enough.

When old Waylon dying, I was in Nashville recording, got hold of Richie and offered my help and can I drop over to see him. Richie said, “Buddy, thanks but Ole Hoss doesn’t want anybody to see him the way he is…”

Ah, man – what a gyp! The songs he gave us, the licks, the reactionary politics. I miss him.

Saturday, November 21, 2009
My Heart’s Starting to Bother Me Now (A New Base-Line Condition)
Recently I’ve been reading two things: Kerouac and a book called Obedience to Authority, and both have me thinking about fear. Fear of what others think. A fear we put in ourselves, constant, a worm bore into the brain, put in the ear with our own hands.

Obedience to Authority is about a study that was done in the fifties or sixties that tested the extent to which ordinary people will follow the orders of a superior, even in the presence of a moral dilemma, of inflicting pain on a fellow man. They used an actor and the guise of a fake study on learning in which the teacher (the mark) shocked the learner (the actor) with electric shocks at each wrong answer. But the trick was, the shocks, ever increasing in power, were fake. The learner only pretended to be in pain. The plan was to see how many people continued on with worse and worse and worse shocks, go against their own feelings and the begs of the victim (fake). It was scary and depressing to see the ratios. How many people went through with it, hurt another person, a screaming in pain person sometimes complaining of heart condition always pleading to be let out. Only because a man in a lab coat with imagined power said so. This man had no real authority. He only represented a higher order, a system, a man above. For this they threw themselves out, their humanity, their compassion. Sweating, protesting, still they went on, barely prodded by monotone phrases like “there is no permanent tissue damage.” But the ones, the few that stood up, stopped and refused to go on, I was so proud of them. A swelling in the lungs.

Jack Kerouac is a man, a poet, a writer. I read his Book of Sketches, a kind of journal of writings, a transcription of the pads he kept in his pocket over the course of several years describing scenes and moments, and it felt like writing class. I sat with it close to my face unblinking, shocked at the constant command, the honesty, thinking I wanted to soak it in, physically into my pores, the talent, the honesty, the vocabulary, the rhythm, I wanted to have that for myself. I’ve never felt more in my life after putting down a book that I knew the man who wrote it. I know his loves, his lusts, his paranoias, his surroundings, his nineteen-fifties, his cities, his equal compassions and hatreds for the Common Man. Just a journal but it held exactly the reason to write- to talk about the world, document, list what you see, try to find an order to it, say what you think of it, leave a message for after you’re dead, to say I was here, I was angry, I loved, I was here.

From his writing I feel a fearlessness. I don’t know if he displayed that in his real life- I know he traveled, he drugged, he drank, he divorced but also that he hated his life at times, became a slave to his image, his movement, became bitter with the times and fames, died of the drink. But while that means so much to me, it also means nothing. His writing life was not that. It was fearlessness. Never did I feel he held back. He talked about everything. He talked about his brother who died. His sister he disliked. He talked about wanting to be the greatest writer in the world. He talked about his disagreements. About when he thought a friend was wrong. They would all read it at some point, but still he talked. No censor. No fear. Everything he saw and felt. And I need that. I need that. I like style but I love honesty. His writing gave me, more than once, that feeling I search for. The ultimate jaw drop. The shocked eye-open. The Yes, Yes, Exactly, the something that so perfectly speaks to your heart, to your exact sensibilities, to what art can be and how it can shake you and affirm you and connect you to the person who made it in ways that are godly, soulful, impossible to replicate. I’ve gotten that from my favorite bands- Heresy by Nine Inch Nails, human screams used as an instrument while combining acoustic guitar with broken keyboards. The Great Destroyer, a song becomes an electronic cluster-crumble instrumental. Forty-Six and Two by Tool, the sound of that voice and that filter-up guitar sound as it comes back in. Bjork, buying the greatest hits after so many years of thinking about it, sitting on my bed pressing play and just being shocked and sad it had taken me so long but happy to have the short-lived honor of experiencing it for the first time, the reason I always wish I could erase my memory of an album I know too well, heard too many hundreds of times, wishing I could listen to it virgin-like. The very first and perfectly pitched still melodic effortless scream from Karen O the first time we saw the Yeah Yeah Yeahs live. Deftones, Elite, “When you’re ripe you’ll bleed out of control”, so heavy and filtered and wrenching. Portugal. The Man, a track name I can’t remember, possibly AKA M-80 Wolf, a song that sounds like Castlevania and 8-bit and southern and electronic and dark and smart and right. Muse, singing of the Apocalypse, being so falsetto calm and then suddenly Stockholm Syndrome hits. Creep by Stone Temple Pilots, the most perfect acoustic. Various moments of Radiohead and their paranoid androids, Pink Floyd and their walls and childhood fevers and numbness. Marilyn Manson when he couldn’t be stopped. Saul Williams singing U2 through Trent Reznor’s sound.

And movies. The long shots of Children of Men. Forrest Gump driven to punch by jealousy and protection. Edward Scissorhands driven to kill by the same. And books. Laughing at Fear and Loathing, smiling while reading but not a popcorn smile, not a sugar smile, a real one, a dark one. Opening House of Leaves by Danielewski and seeing what a book can be. Same for Atrocity Exhibition by Ballard. Perfect sentences of Denis Johnson in Jesus’ Son and his journalistic Seek. Simple sadness from Amy Hempel. Surreal degradation and depravity from Craig Clevenger. Jack Kerouac, of course, everything is poetry. A quote from On the Road before I even read it- the burn, burn, burn, and before that Scattered Poems and after that Sketches and just eyes open.

This is what I want. I want to leave behind fear, shake it from my fingers. I want to earn a living doing this but it would mean nothing without the other. I know I’ll probably never be one of the greats but I’ll be happy to be one of the goods trying to be one of the greats, not selling out, not giving in to the crush of the Franchise, the Pander. No hovering over keys, just saying it. No holding back for marketing. Never putting sales before anything, never becoming a cartoon, a joke, an embarrassment. I try not to be Elitist but I get honestly truly disgusted by what I see on the outside, when I read around other people outside my circle, my type, and I hear things like “Reading? Good for you!” like it’s impressive. The worst was a woman saying “I can’t stand reading,” such contempt in her voice, like “Books. Fuh.” and what I want to say is, “I appreciate your opinion but you’re the one who shit out two babies for a man you don’t even entertain the idea of marrying and actually laugh at when I bring it up. That is your life and you will die dumb.” Like Bill Hicks when he said a truck stop waitress asked him through gum, “Why you readin’? and he said “Wow, why? I never thought about why. I guess first and foremost so I don’t become a waitress in a truck stop.” And the only one who reads at work, excitedly bragging to me that she’s reading another one from The Five People You Meet in Heaven Guy, her need to impress me, sitting obviously in her car with it when I pull up and pointing to it like “see?” and this is the best of them on a scale of readers. The rest don’t have time. Don’t have time, yet “Did you catch the nine hour season finale of Dancing with Surgery Victims?” but this is also the reason to write, the signal, to find other people like me, share something with them, give them another shield for The Fight. And maybe this never works, maybe in person it will never be an honest, human connection. But if I can have one on paper at least that’s something, and it can only be had by fearlessness, an avalanche, the ability to say it all and mean it all, honesty, fearlessness, pride, and that’s what the poets and doctors are saying.