Tosh's Journal: September 7 (Homage to Buddy Holly, Jacques Vaché, & Edi...

TOSH'S JOURNAL

September 7

"I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty… But I am too busy thinking about myself." I don't have a lot of knowledge about the world that's out there, but I do know myself, and at the end of the day, that is all I could offer you. Now, whatever that is good or not, is totally up to you. I can only offer what I know, which is not much. I feel like I'm 250 years old, and man does my eyes feel heavy. All I know is that I'm a man of excellent taste, and "good taste is the worst vice ever invented." To stand out in the world is like asking someone to cut your throat. It's not a nice world out there. In fact, it's a jungle. And I wish I can inform you that I'm Tarzan, but I'm more like George of the Jungle.

I feel the time is marching on, and I'm afraid that I will remain in the dustbin of history, which means ignored, and my writing is lost somewhere in the Central Los Angeles Library. I wake up with the greatest dread, knowing that I'm facing at least 12 or 13 hours of failure. "You know the horrible life of the alarm clock – it's a monster that has always appalled me because of the number of things its eyes project, and the way that good fellow stares at me when I enter a room." I feel time mocks me, and I know when my birthday just passed, people were thinking, "there he goes…"

Not long ago I purchased a six albums (on vinyl) box set of Buddy Holly's music. America has produced many talented people, but none is more important than Buddy Holly. He was a figure that was a modernist, specifically with his take on music-making as well as appearance. The heavy dark rim glasses, with the beautiful suits and sweaters that he wore, it had a profound effect on me, because I had trouble seeing without my glasses. His imperfections became a symbol of perfectionism. He turned the negative into the positive, why that boy was a magician as well as a superb musician. His death, to this day, is precisely what I can't take in. I cannot possibly understand why he went in that dinky airplane in a storm to get somewhere early, so he can do his laundry before the next show. Dandyism is a lifestyle, but it can also lead one to an early death. Yet, there can't possibly be a God, to let go such a brilliant talent. He tested against the elements and lost. I obviously don't have his genius, but I do have the expertise to lose, in a major and significant way.

"Hot water is my native element. I was in it as a baby, and I have never seemed to get out of it ever since." I'm not worthy of living in a world that makes such enormous demands on my ability to create chaos that is my poetry. "Poetry is the deification of reality," and I feel like I'm standing against a wind machine, that is blowing me towards another direction, that I care not to go. "ART does not exist - So it is useless to talk about it - but! people go on being artists - because it's like that and no way else - Well - so what?"

I never got over the death of Buddy Holly and especially Jacques Vaché. Two poets who I feel didn't finish their work. At this point and time, I have outlived both for many years. Holly was quoted in saying that "Death is very often referred to as a good career move." Perhaps he's right, but I feel I was left by the side of the road, and I don't have a compass to tell me what direction I should go to. The art is to wander. "I'm not trying to stump anybody… it's the beauty of the language that I'm interested in." - Buddy Holly.

The Sunday Series: Sunday April 19, 2015

Sunday April 19, 2015

The only holiday I like is Record Store Day.  Like "Read a Book" day, it is the one holiday where you can surrender your passion to a common cause - which is to keep the local record store open in your neighborhood.  If you don't have a record store in your neighborhood, then that means you live in a place that has no importance whatsoever.  People are fed many ways.  I think most people would consider a 7/11 or Trader Joe's as an essential business to live nearby.  I, on the other hand, would prefer a record store than a shop full of food.  You eat, but then what?  Music has a lasting presence in one's life, and therefore I feel it is much important than a good meat department.

There are those who complain loudly about the negative aspects of Record Store Day, which is hysterical, because there are none.   To stand in line in hopes of getting that specific piece of vinyl that is being released that very day is part of the pleasure as well as the disappointments in not obtaining the sacred item you're in line for.  One wonders while standing there, if there is a possibility of not getting that specific record.  Of course it is, because perhaps the store forgot to order that product, or due to its limited edition status, so there were not enough copies to go around. So yes, I was disappointed when I didn't get the Serge Gainsbourg collection of his soundtrack work - but it was a sense of failure with a great deal of anticipation and adventure attached to it.

I must say it was a shock to me that I found four copies of the "Charlie Feathers" 10" album of his King recordings in the bin.  Originally issued on 7" 45rpm and 78rpm format. This collection is a must if one has even the slightest interest in rockabilly music.  The guitar work of Jerry Huffman is like a series of switchblade cuts on one's body.  When I put the needle on this record, I hear human misery.  So yes, music to me is like putting a mirror in front of my face - it has to represent the inner and deeper feelings in my soul.  Food just keeps me going till the next meal, but music like Feathers, keeps me fed on a spiritual/sexual plane that can't be denied.  Rockabilly music is all fucking, violent death, cheap liquor, and desires being mis-placed at the wrong place and time.  Satan's favorite music.  And one is dying just to taste the bottle that Satan had his diseased mouth over. After playing these four songs, I feel like spitting the blood out of my mouth.

On the same trip to the record store, I found another great 10" album by Chris Barber and his jazz band.  The album is called "Jazz Sacred and Secular."  Barber is a British trombone player, and is one of the key players in the Soho London music scene of the 1950s.  He was famous for having Lonnie Donegan in his band, who later became the figurehead that in a certain fashion, started the British Invasion in the early 1960s.  Shuffle genius and architect to the do-it-yourself type of music, he made a major presence on a lot of British musicians.   The beauty of this recording is that it is like listening to a well-received long distance call.  Although from the UK, it reached out to New Orleans.   Chris Barber actually spent time in New Orleans, and that one visit had a profound effect on his whole life.  This 10" disk is a combination tribute to Duke Ellington as well as the New Orleans life.  The mood is happy, but of course, it has traces of deep sadness.  Music unlike food serves on different levels. If you taste food and it's too bitter or sweet, one may choose to spit it out.  Music, on the other hand, is a texture that one craves for - due to its emotional responses within the grooves of the record.   Barber's version of "Black and Tan Fantasie" is originally from Harlem, but here it is placed in Soho, London.   Even the British spelling of Fantasy gives this recording a sense of being placed out of the storefront window, looking in, and just absorbing the goods in the store although you're outside.   The sense of location changes, but nevertheless they are real places - and each place has a vision or a history.   Even if it is made-up, it is still real, because what you're hearing is a place that is imagined or desired for.

A bad day is a world without a turntable and a good pair of headphones.  I live in a very dangerous world - although it is in my imagination, I have the music to back-up that landscape of desire.