Oldies, Wolves, Chasing Rabbits and Chasing Shadows

Being a directionless ramble part exploratory and part explanatory.

After promoting myself to president of a non-existent country, and after declaring war on one that no longer technically exists, I think I'll indulge myself in a different way today.

September 1993

I’m standing on the deck of a restaurant in Atlanta, one whose name I can’t remember and one that like so many others, no longer exists to the best of my knowledge. It’s a clear, warm, breezy evening in late summer. The sky above is a deep azure, shading to a blaze of red, orange and gold on the horizon. I’ve got an ice cold beer, one of the best burgers I’ve ever had, and for the moment, not a care in the world. My attire is casual, to say the least. Faded jeans, my brother’s leather jacket, and a denim vest over it. With the jacket zipped, no one can tell that I’m not wearing a shirt, not that I suspect anyone at this particular establishment gives a shit. Since I’m outside anyway, I’ve unzipped it for a little ventilation. OK, so I ain't up to dress code. So what? Ain't like I gotta be at work tommorrow or anything. Damn, but I'm glad I tossed down the pick and shovel and got outta that "shit mine"! This is the life!

I put on my mirrorshades against the glare of the sun, as it sinks into the west, presumably on its way to Tir na-n Og, the land of the forever young. I’d probably fit in fine, as damn near everyone I know keeps asking me if I’m ever gonna grow up. My hand unconsciously creeps down to the knuckleduster in my pocket and I favor the world with an off-kilter, Cheshire cat grin. I don’t wanna grow up/cause if I did/I wouldn’t be a Toys-R-Us kid…

Whatever my own age, physical (almost twenty -six) or mental (Fourteen? Twelve?) I haven’t come here for things new and young, but rather for those old. This joint has a jukebox, you see. A jukebox featuring an incredible collection of “Oldies”. Damn, but how ever did I find this place? Karma? Who knows? Who cares? It’s fuckin’ great! Just enjoy it!

Gary “U.S.” Bonds’ “Quarter to Three" begins playing, and suddenly I’ve found a tiny patch of paradise, right here on earth. I take another long sip of beer, so cold that there are shards of ice floating in it, so cold that it makes my fillings hurt, and lean against the railing of the deck, putting my weight on both palms and gently nodding my head to the beat of the song.

A warm breeze creeps sinuously though the open front of my jacket, like a lover’s hands, caressing my chest and stomach and ruffling my hair (Getting a bit too long again, isn’t it, Mr. Bean? Ah, who gives a shit? It ain’t like I’ve gotta be at work tomorrow or anything, remember? -- Another Cheshire cat grin...), just as the raucous, almost-sleazy saxophone solo begins. The hair on the back of my neck rises, and I close my eyes and toss my head back. As that sax gently bites my ear and the breeze runs cocktease fingertips through the hair on my chest, goosebumps do “the wave” from one end of my body to the other. That wailing sax grabs me by both ears and shoves my head between its legs, just as Bonds’ raspy voice howls: “Just a little bit o’ soul now!”

Damn skippy, buddy. Just a little bit o’ soul. Sometimes I think that’s all I have left… Man! I haven’t been this horny since -- well hell, I can’t remember! I wonder if I still have ol’ so-and-so’s telephone number? Ah, shit! Wouldn’t matter anyway. She’s dating that asshole bartender now, remember? What about that hippie chick? Dude! Grow a brain! You ain’t seen her in nearly two years, and she’s probably on the road following the Grateful Dead or something.

The “horseflesh” on display here doesn’t make things any easier. These waitresses could put Hooters girls to shame. Say, what about that Hooters girl who fancied you? Ah, that’s right. She doesn’t work there anymore. I heave a sigh. I guess I’ll cross the “bangin’ bridge” when I get to it. Right now, though, Ive got a beer, a burger and my music. As the gut-rumbling drums of “Who Wrote the Book of Love?” (I dunno, but remind me to shank the bastard…) begin thudding away, I open my eyes and take a deep breath through my nose, indulging every one of my senses at once. The sight of the summer evening, the taste of rare beef and frosty beer, the smell of burgers, fries, beer, exhaust and perfume, the feel of denim, leather and breeze, and the sound of my music. Yeah, my music.

I’ve always enjoyed the “Oldies”, even though I was born long after the music scene had changed direction. My Dad had a good collection of the stuff: Elvis; Fats Domino; Chuck Berry; Jerry Lee Lewis; you name it, so one might say I “cut my teeth” on the music of the late fifties and early sixties. When I was a boy, I watched “Sha Na Na” as religiously as I did “Hee Haw”, and the taste I acquired for the stuff never left me, even during my metal and punk days. I developed a particular taste for the stuff back in ‘89, when I was trying to recover from a non-stop sequence of emotional blows. Life had become --paradoxically -- so damned empty and so damned complicated, that a long drive on a sunny afternoon with Fox 97 blaring on the car stereo -- or a Sunday night spent banging out rants and abominably bad fiction on an electric typewriter while the “Doo Wop Café” program played in the background soothed me in ways, and helped me maintain my often weak grip on my sanity. That music seemed to “Stand my Me” when it seemed that no one or nothing else would, and I‘m not the kind of man who forgets things of that sort.

My taste in music is -- and always has been -- fairly eclectic: Country, Metal, Punk, Seventies AOR stuff, Classical/neo-Romantic, Southern Boogie, Celtic, nineteenth century American music, Blues, some jazz, and for the last few years, the “alternative” (although it’s actually mainstream these days) music played on 99X. The oldies, though, occupy a special place in my heart.

Except for a handful of friends who share my taste for the stuff, I’m often asked questions to the effect of “How can you stand that stuff?’ How anybody can ask me that question in the age of the truly unmistakable -- Gangsta Rap and Nu Metal (hey, guys? There are keys other than E minor and tunings other than dropped D) -- is a mystery to me, but WTF? Why not take a stab at answering it?

I love the music for the fact that the lyrics are understandable. I love the music for the fact that it has a discernible melody. I love it because I have the stereotypical “Celtic temper”, and like me and the Celtic music I also deeply love, it can be plaintive one moment (Floyd Kramer’s “Last Date”) and raucous the next (Chuck Berry’s “Thirty Days”) while remaining part of a single, identifiable genre, even if the boundaries of the genre were set more by time than by style.

Last, but certainly not least, I love it for its simplicity. Simple chord progressions, simple lyrics, simple sentiments expressed. Perhaps I’m overly nostalgic at times, and I might even be accused of mentally constructing a world that never really existed , but I think the “Oldies” really are the musical expression of a simpler time. As a man who, like the times in which he lives, tends to be over-complex at times, I appreciate simplicity, whether in the form of a well-presented Japanese meal (“shibumi on a plate”, as I’m inclined to call it) or the simple lyrics of a tune like Dion and the Belmont’s “Runaround Sue”. “Ask any fool that she ever knew/Keep away from Runaround Sue!”

I’m not suggesting that fathers didn’t get into drunken punchouts with their sons during the span of the Eisenhower and Kennedy years, that boys didn’t drop out of school and end up robbing gas stations, or that girls didn’t get pregnant out of wedlock, or that there were no such things as drugs, gangs, and organized crime cartels, or that every family in the country led a “Leave it to Beaver” or “Father Knows Best” existence. I’m not that naïve (and I’m at least somewhat historically literate), so I don’t view the late fifties and early sixties as some kind of long-lost “Golden Age”.

All the nasty things that exist today existed then, from “Tijuana Bibles” to serial killers, and the Russians and their nuclear arsenal were every bit as much of a danger then as Al Qaeda is purported to be now. The difference, to my mind, is that the cockroaches tended to remain in the woodwork. If they dared leave it, they’d scatter when the lights were turned on. Given some of the details of my own life that I’ve revealed on this site, what I say next will probably seem the epitome of hypocrisy, so allow me the luxury of an explanatory digression.

Many of the things I write serve several purposes at once: They’re cathartic; they’re the result of my tendency to indulge the occasional confessional urge; they’re a way for me to take a step back and analyze my own feelings and behavior with a greater degree of objectivity than would otherwise be possible; they’re expression for its own sake; and they’re also cautionary tales, the words of a wolf who’s getting a bit grey in the muzzle to the “pups”.

“Don’t do what I did, because this is what might happen to you…” And, my admittedly romantic nature balanced by a heavy load of sometimes fatalistic realism, I know damned good and well that most of ‘em won’t listen any more than I did when I was their age. Every now and then, though, one does, and that makes the entire effort worthwhile. As they grow up, they’re more inclined to listen, anyway, and some of ‘em even swallow their pride enough to ask questions and advice. I myself have been snapped at by the older “wolves”, and have profited greatly thereby. Special thanks to two of the pack in particular, for baring their teeth at me and growling “You’re a wolf, asshole. Stop trying to be a dog.”

End digression.

In those simpler times, their was a greater tendency to say “Not on my watch!” and less of an inclination to excuse or justify damn-near everything. I don’t think a society can survive without some sort of moral compass, any more than can an individual. While imperfect, there was a “public morality” of sorts in those days, and the loss thereof has hurt us.

What I see in society and individuals today is an almost sociopathic hedonism, license disguised as liberty, utter disregard and disrespect for the sensibilities of others disguised as self-assertion. In a seeming paradox, the “Cult of the Individual” has emerged as a war on identity, both individual and national.

As a man who is still in the process of reassembling the scattered fragments of himself -- the result of warring on himself and seceding from himself time and time again, each part of his identity breaking into smaller and smaller chunks in an act of emotional balkanization, until only a cloud of infinitesimal and diffused particles remained -- I can say that had I not forgotten who (or what) I was in the first place, I wouldn’t have to undertake this exercise in self-repair.

What then, of a nation that forgets who and what it is? Can it be expected to fare any better? I’m inclined not to think so. In its own way, that music symbolizes a time at which the country knew who and what it was, when it stood for something, and when it could actually be called an individual.

Now let’s take a look at that young man on the outdoor deck of the restaurant, shall we? He doesn’t know - or has forgotten-- who and what he is. Just as some countries cease to be nations, that individual has ceased to be a man. He’s a still-coalescing collection of thoughts, emotions, urges, whims and opinion, “without form, and void…” Somewhere inside what’s left of his mind, he dimly understands that this music serves as an anchor, and a windbreak, keeping him from going completely adrift on the currents of existence, and keeping the “winds” as it were from disspating that still-coalescing collection of fragments entirely.

When I was younger, I heard a saying (probably Asian) to the effect of: “The restless mind is ever chasing one thing, ever fleeing another. Unable to realize that what it flees and what it pursues are within itself, It cannot hope to understand that they are one and the same”.

That punk/pup with the leather jacket, the brass knuckles in his pocket and the beer in his gut is still running and still chasing. In a very few short years, he’ll stop running. For now, he’s trying to figure out what part of himself he’s still chasing, and why he’s still looking outside himself. Eventually, one hopes he’ll stop chasing entirely.

But that’s a hell of a struggle for a wolf.

Well, it’s time to go. Here’s a quarter. Have a tune, on me.

Comments

[Slugg]

Music trivia of the day: The black guy in "Sha Na Na" is Denny Greene... who was a classmate in prep school. Scott, the burly white guy wearing the silver lame jump suit, was a year ahead of us. They were glee club graduates.