rock and roll musings by Tim Byrnes

Remains of the Days: A Vey Special Episode of punk rock blues

 Hello again friends. I'm so glad to see you. Sorry I've been gone for so long it's been a happening month. Regular readers may recall that my sister Tara and I had something of a falling out about a year and a half ago. I'm happy to say that we've since buried whatever hatchets we had and have spent the last month moving our Aunt Maura from her home here in Fowler, Colorado (population: 1200 saaaaaa-luuuuute!) to a nursing home. Maura requires dialysis 3 times a week and had been traveling 60 miles back and forth for almost a year, now she gets it done 'on site' so to speak. She's well, actually, eating better now that she has a staff and happy.

     So Tara and I have been packing 84 years of collected items into boxes; divvying furniture, appliances and knick knacks up between ex- husbands, landlords, neighbors and each other. All the while ignoring the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

     Maura's going to die.

     Not tonight, not even soon (I hope), but inevitably. And of course such thoughts of mortality wander off into thoughts of our own but we push all that back, like we do every day, and get on with the task at hand. Which is like a very localized arheological dig. One minute yr wrapping plates in newspaper. You open the next drawer and see it. A photo. A Xmas Card, a piece of costume jewelery or something that you haven't seen in 40 years but the minute you see it yr there. In that moment. A 6 year old, 7 year old boy and yr Aunt's a real tomato again; laughing loudly at a cookout in some 1960's backyard. And for that semisecond flash of rememberance yr Mother's not dead. Yr Father's not dead. Yr somehow safe in the confusion of youth, not threatened because ........... and that's where the feeling fades.

     My Aunt has a small 13 yr old Llapso-Apso (I probably spelled that wrong. I certainly can't pronounce it so I just call him an Apaloosa, which I probably also misspelled but yr gonna have to take my word on it that I can pronounce it) named Sammy Davis Jr. who I've inherited. Buster gets a brother while Mickey and Bleek get a scratching post. The poor guy's got like 2 teeth left and has been an old lady's dog his whole life. As luck would have it, my buddy Everett's place became available recently and while I probably can't really afford it. my landlord kinda pushed me to take it. I've been doing little repairs around the 'complex' lately and while I don't often have the whole rent, he never has to come looking for me to get what I do give him which apparently is not the case w/some if not most of the other tenants here.

     My landlord, Clarence is a 93 year old saint. The Sunset West Apartments, where I live, is basically the Ghetto of Fowler. Where all the poorest of the poor live. Where guys like me wind up when they leave their wives (saw Lynn at a softball game the other day, she says 'hi') and where kids just out of high school move in, party like it's 1999 for a few months and then move out in the middle of the night. So Clarence sees that I'm actually trying and cuts me a break for which I'm very thankful. The new place is an actual house. After 2 years of basements, friend's couches and my one room studio I'm really looking forward (and I mean that it more ways than one) to having seperate rooms for cooking, sleeping and eating. And the best part is IT HAS AN UPSTAIRS!! An attic really with a door out to the roof! I'm gonna give guitar lessons up there. At least that's the plan. Actually the best part is that it has a small, fenced yard so Buster and Sammy (I'm thinking of changing his name to Marilyn Manson to goof on the neighbors, whattaya think?) can run.

     Traded my car for a used computer and $100. Haven't seen the hundred yet but the computer was the 1st thing Ii moved into the new house. No net access yet, but soon. Been getting more hours at work and am looking into setting up an ebay store to help my sister get rid of some of our Aunts stuff. Might turn it into a cottage industry. Music's on the back burner for now but life itself is shaping up interestingly. New beginnings and all that crap.

    Stick around cause I'm gonna and maybe next time I'll actually write something about music instead of all this 'Oh, Christ, I'm just a cashier' nonsense.

Posted by: timbyrnes at 19:31 | link | comments (2)

Apropos of Nothing

     Been thinking too much lately. Maybe it's all the da Vinci Code debris lately, fallout from all the documentary televison I've been watching and the Christian Radio station that's always on at work. But I've been thinking about the whole god thing more than usual lately and find myself getting angrier and angrier at every talking head who states they 'know' the 'truth'.

     And I was kinda wondering why that was.

     I go to this Christian themed messageboard http://www.dorfsmith.com where they, among other things, sell CD compilations; some of which include a tune or two of mine. Don't ask me, I'm as befuddled as anyone but, hey, there you are. But the most fun thing for me is the messageboard itself where I play, almost literally, Devil's advocate amongst a really nice group of people I happen to disagree with.

     And then there's Christian Commentator.

     Old CC is one of those 'This is the way it is" type of Christians. Catholic actually and such a firm believer in his faith, or more to the point, the way he defines his faith, as to discount the faith of his fellow, Protestant, board members as not being true Christianity because their faith hadn't, as his Catholic faith had, sprung forth directly from the word of Jesus or some such nonsense. And while I kinda admire his certainty, I'd like to be able to feel that secure in a time like this, I also feel sorry for him because he's shut out all possibilitiy that he might be wrong and thus, to me, any opportunity to learn or grow.

     Again please direct all hatemail to timbyrnes@antimusic.net

     Which I think is kinda the goal of religion. To sell you a story that you'll stick to and in many cases, defend to the death, all the while sanctioned by States that live high off of our hogs while sending our children to die in defense of the story they sold you to stick to. I really see no sense in setting up an ideal that is unreachable byr design. And god is as designed as a 65 Chevy, just with fewer fins.

     How did the universe begin? I don't know. How was life created? I don't know. What's gonna happen to us after we die? I don't know. But religion does!! And it'll let you in on it!!! And for centuries, people with voids too vast to live with and too ill-defined to fill have run like sheep on fire to this call, that call, any snakeoil selling smooth talkin mamalook in a cheap suit and a big wig who knows! KNOWS!!!, Brothers and Sisters. The Truth! The Light! The Way!! Just send $29.99 to the First Church of the Shivering Dolphin.....

      OK, it's not all like that, but my argument that religion itself is based on that model. Not to dismiss all the truly good work done in the name of God, but I think good work can be done without invoking what, no matter what or you you call it, amounts to King Neptune as Father Figure. Why do we invent a creator and final judge who can't help but find us severley lacking because we made him so (pardon the expression) goddamned good?

    Patti Smith began one of the best records ever made (wondered when I'd get around to punk rock, huh?) w/the words "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine." I've since read interviews w/La Smith where she now recants and has made some kind of piece w/Jesus but explained that at the time she meant that she was willing to take responsibility for her sins. To own and maybe embrace her humanity flaws and all. Og course that extrapolation is mine and, as such, probably completely wrong, but that's how I felt about the line then. And still feel.

    My code of conduct is mine, and quite flexible. Harm no one and do what thou etc. and all. Problem is is who decides what harms someone? Religion likes to demonize ideas a lot and is quick to name sins. Like homosexuality and female reproductive rights to name two which immediately spring to mind. Whereas I think it's harmful to demonize someone for their natural state or to restrict personal liberty  in order to achieve an agenda.

     Religion, along w/Nationalism -and believe me that combination is potent, dangerous and at play today -  is a  man made contraption designed to make us feel less than whatever god we've drawn, but (and here's the dangerous part, kids) superior to the infidel! History if full of Holy Wars, but trust me, they're all just the same land grabbing, kill the inferior species mindset dressed up in fake rainments of something called sacred. Slap a god on yr platform and we shall overcome.

     So keep yr god. When my time comes I'll take whatever punishment that awaits like a man.

    

Posted by: timbyrnes at 21:06 | link | comments (8)

Stagger Lee Was Three Women

     It's my pleasure to give the 1st Annual Angus MacLeish* Courage of Yr Convictions Award to... (Drum roll, please. Thank you, Bleeker) the Dixie Chicks. As yr probably aware, back in 2003, singer Natalie Maines caught a whole load of static for stating onstage that George W. Bush made her feel "... ashamed to be from Texas."

    Now, in the grand scheme of mistakes and missteps this comment pales considerably when compared to, oh I don't know - let's say lying to the American people about weapons of mass destruction in order to invade a sovereign nation pre-emptively. Or illegal wiretapping. Or secret prisons where illegal torture alledgedly goes on.

    But in the same spirit that caused suppossedly thinking adults to pour champagne down gutters and rename French Fries Freedom Fries when France opposed war on principle, much of the American public responded to this relatively tame exercise in free speech by burning records, posting death threats against Maines on various internet sites and clogging talk radio w/political discourse along the lines of "strap the bitch to a bomb and send her to Iraq."

     Ashamed to be from Texas? It's crap like that that sometimes makes me ashamed to be human. Now in the immediate aftermath of this, Maines and the the Chicks backed off a little, mostly from shock. On the Larry King show last night Maines alluded to a group of protesters outside a show soon after where a mother held her daughter up and instructed her (the daughter) to scream 'Screw you!!!" at the Chicks.

     I'm guessing that's when Maines started formulating the lyrics to the 1st single from their new (#1, btw) record, the surprisingly ballsy 'I'm Not Ready to Make Nice'. In this song I hear the artists' spines, their courage and a potential for career suicide not seen since Sinead O'Connor tore up that picture of the Pope on 'Saturday Night Live' those many years ago.

     The name of this blog is Punk Rock Blues but I've been loathe to find any punk bands willing to risk this kind of fame/fortune over political convictions. I love the Anti-Flag but it's not the same thing really. The Dixie Chicks could very easily have apologized to their mainstream Country audience and really almost did. But somehow these 3 women found the nerve to say, if not fuck you, then at least a tidy fuck y'all to the portion of their Country audience that resides in that part of the Bible Belt that's missed a loop or 2.

     In the Time magazine interview, Maines restates her lack of confidence and respect for GWB and the decisions out Great Decider has been making over the last 6 years. That she will be dismissed and rebuffed (and possibly assassinated) by a large part of her audience has led her to rethink her band's marketing position. Sensing that the Country Music mainstream regards their female artists as little more than eye candy and certainly fluffy little numbers that aren't supposed to think and certainly not speak their minds (although Toby Keith's brand of drunken High School jock on steroids 'politics' are apparently A-OK. We are #1 after all), Maines has decided to distance herself from Country, going so far as to say that she never felt right portraying herself and band as 'Country'. Well, death threats have a way of making one re-examine a lot of things. As Emily Robison noted on Larry King, they weren't a political band then but they are now.

    As we should all be. Political, that is. In this time of fictional wars waged by fictional presidents**, we all have to decide what side we're on and what truly makes us ashamed.

* Angus MacLeish: original drummer of the Velvet Underground who quit the band in 1966 because they were too commercial.

** Please direct all hate mail to timbyrnes@antimusic.net

 

Posted by: timbyrnes at 18:04 | link | comments (7)