Put your big toe in the milk of human kindess

Four and a half hour ride to New York today. Seven hours total car time.


This is what I listened to (with captions where warranted, or a select lyric, or a remembrance or whatever mood strikes me)

• 7:00 AM - Say my good byes..a little to early for the "good stuff" so I listen to local radio while I nurse my coffee...sports talk radio, oldies, mostly channel surfing...skipping all commercials and any horrifically scripted "banter" from any of those morning shows. The names are always a sure sign of future lameness to be heard...Dr. Johnny Fever, Venus Fly Trap, Bailey Quarters, oh, wait..nevermind

• 7:45..coffee's done, entering New Hampshire. You thought the Maine dj's were bad...now we're picking on all the "crazy" Boston morning shows. Time to hook up the ipod

This is what ensued....
(most of you will know some of these...some of you will know most of these..a few of you won't have a clue, but that's clearly your probem, not mine). If you don't know a song, please, please, search it out. Consider this my gift of music to you

Oh, and this is verified by my going through the playlists on my ipod that I selected while I'm typing this from room 5** in the Hampton Inn on Wolf Road in Albany NY

Here we go....I'll keep this up until I tire out

• Home At Last - Steely Dan (smart song by a smart band)
• Stitched Up - John Mayer (the only John Mayer song I have on my ipod...unless my youngest somehow slipped in the Curious George theme song)
• Take Five - Dave Brubeck (my kind of cool jazz..almost hypnotic)
• That's The Way I've Always Heard it Should Be - Carly Simon (dysfunctional family song at it's best.. "The children hate them for the things they're not...they hate themselves for what they are"...) strong stuff
• More Than This - Roxy Music (not my favorite Roxy music song on not my favorite Roxy music album, hey)
• The Way - Fastball (great "Alternative Pop" song from the late 90's - love the chorus...a great chorus makes for a great song...chorus kicks in at 1:11 if you don't want to wait for it)

Give it a listen...

• Positively 4th Street - Bob Dylan ("You've got a lot of nerve, to say you are my friend...")
• I Like to Sleep Late in the Morning - David Bromberg (Nice hangover song)
• Boom Boom - John Lee Hooker (boom boom boom boom)

         

• Temptation Eyes - The Grass Roots (looking through my my my my eyes)..the repeat is always a nice touch as well
• Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves - Cher (I'm a sucker for 70's pop..as this list will surely proove out)
• For You Blue - Beatles ("...because you're sweet an lovely girl, I love you") Don't you love a good George song?

          

• Little Martha - Allman Brothers (nice southern instrumental that makes me smile)
• Let Your Love Flow - Bellamy Brothers (not really brothers (I don't think), but do you need to be brothers to write a catchy song?)
• Rock The Boat - Hues Corporation ("Well I'd like to know where you got the notion"...) reference my comment four songs back

            

• Wishing You Were Here - Chicago w/ the Beach Boys singing harmony (During a recent walk I realized how much I like songs with horns in it...that's where the idea for this blog originated. I was going to call it "Horny Music"...bet that would have got a lot of hits)
• Tennesee Jed - Levon Helm (Love this. If I was in a band this is the kind of band I'd want to be in. If I wrote music, this is the kind of music I'd like to write. If I wasn't such a schmuck I would have travelled to Woodstock to see Levon Helm preform this at one of his legendary Midnight Rambles before he passed away. This is actually a Grateful Dead song, but Levon's version is the one for me. I couldn't have been in the Grateful Dead...I could have been in Levon's band. Did I mention I love this?

Here it is

I've listened to this three times while writing the blog

• Uneasy Rider - Charlie Daniels Band (clever as hell.."Well you may not know it but this man's a spy. He's an undercover agent for the FBI and he's been sent down here to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan"...)
• (Thursday) Here's Why I Did Not Go to Work Today - Harry Nilsson (This is great.."Thursday's surreptitiously unique" Who the hell uses the word "surreptitiously"...Harry Nillson, that's who. Genius.)

         

• Santeria - Sublime (Love the feel of this song, but God's honest truth, after hearing it a few hundred times, I can still not get the words right when I sing along to it...oh, and I do.)
• Treat Her Like Lady - Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose (you read that right...great pop song from the 70's) 
• Love is Like a Rock - Donnie Iris (You can't beat a nice guitar lick)

          

• Waterloo - Abba (I don't know how that one got in there)
• Badge - Cream (doing a George Harrison song. Classic)
• Take Five - Dave Brubeck ( repeat, but I listened to it again just the same)
• Israelites - Desmond Dekker (maybe the first reggae song that ever got radio airplay...if you like Bob Marley, try this on for size)
• Hocus Pocus - Focus (I'm sure I've referenced this before..as a matter of fact I know I have with a video link...cool freak out whistling song)

• The Wheel - Jerry Garcia ("...if the thunder don't get you then the lightning will"...)
• Midnight at the Oasis - Maria Muldaur (this one might make it on every playlist I create...could possibly be the most played song on my ipod)
• New England - Modern Lovers - ("I've seen old Israel's arid plains...it's magnificent, but so's Maine"...)
• Put Your Big Toe in the Milk Of Human Kindness - Elvis Costello ("but always so capricious, in the face of wonder we're suspicious, and though we came from frogs and fishes"...don't you love Elvis?)

           

• I Got a Line on You - Spirit (One of the great opening riffs in popular music)
• New Coat of Paint - Tom Waits ("Let's put a new coat of paint on this lonesome old town"...doesn't get much better)
• Keep Me in Your Heart - Warren Zevon ("Shadows are falling and I'm running out of breath. Keep me in your heart for awhile". Not the last time I'll say this to anyone that will listen...play this at my funeral...please.)

I think those got me across the Mass pike into NY. Those plus a wheel gripping pit stop when the (Holy shit there is the biggest, fastest spider crawling up my hotel room wall...oh, he just disappeared behind a mirror...I'll be safe until I fall asleep and he crawls into my bed) morning sky turned midnight black, the rains opened up so much that cars either pulled over (which didn't seem safe) or slowed down to about 25mph (which also didn't feel safe). I was halfway between rest stops when the downpour came, so I pushed through about ten miles and then pulled into a rest stop and waited it out for a half hour. When I got back on the road there was a surreal feel for the next few miles...signs that all sorts of madness had occurred during the storm. I came across a dead cow in the passing lane of the turnpike...how it got there I haven't a clue...my guess is was peacefully chewing some cud out in a field when it got picked up by a funnel and was deposited a few miles away. Just up the road was a fifty foot pine tree split clean down the middle blazing in a fire to beat the band. Mayhem in Massachusetts.

Well, I got you to New York with me, now that's enough. If this list (christ, he wrote another list, didn't he?) gets you to listen to at least one of these songs that you didn't know or hadn't heard in ages, then I'll consider this a success. If you did, let me know which one...I'd love to know. 

Peace and love.

I hope the good guys win.

I Buried Paul

..actually I didn't.

Paul McCartney is still alive. As a matter of fact Paul turns 70 this week. You heard me, or actually, you read that right. 70.

This is the cover to this week's Time magazine.



70 is impressive. Think of some 70 year olds. How do they match up against Paul McCartney? There are some tortoises that don't live to be 70. Some of my favorite people are over 70...but they don't give two and a half hour concerts like Paul still does. If you lined up 70 Paul McCartneys you'd have a football field...including the end zones. 70 is the benchmark for mental retardation on an IQ test...keep that in mind if you ever take one. Thirty five states have speed limits of 70mph. My state is not one of them.

...but I digress.

Back to Sir Paul.

That reference of "I buried Paul" should be crystal clear to my friends over 40...understood by my friends over 30...and vaguely familiar to my friends over 20, if you had parents that are as cool as me. For the 20 year olds with uncool parents (and those of you that are older but have been buried under a rock for your entire existence), here's a very brief explanation of that reference.



In October 1969, a rumor spread through the world that Paul was dead. The story was based on "clues" that the Beatles put on their records and album sleeves, that Paul had been killed in a car accident in November 1966. He was replaced by a look a like who was handsomely rewarded if he would shed his former life and "become" Paul. Rumor has it, he did.

(By the way, there's no way you would know this, but I just walked into the kitchen and opted for another beer...this could start to get really good, or go horribly downhill...we'll see).

The "most famous clue" comes at the end of Strawberry Fields Forever. The Paul is dead freaks claim John is saying "I buried Paul"...What John is saying is actually "Cranberry Sauce", which , of course makes perfect sense.

Except that it makes no sense at all.

Oh wait, it was the Sixties. I guess it makes all the sense in the world.

All I can say is that those recreational drugs must have been wonderful things.

Enjoy this whole thing, then pay attention at 3:57 and you tell me what you think John says....and the first one of you that comes up with John is saying, "Pompatus of Pete" gets snubbed by me the next time I see you. And probably the time after that too.

There's about 112 million other clues that support the Paul is Dead hoax. Look them up on the internet...or ask Joe Duley, I'm pretty sure he knows them all. (Dining with the Duley's - WMPG 90.9 - Tuesdays at 7:30 PM...give them a listen...you'll thank me).

Paul was in my favorite band (no, not Wings). But he wasn't my favorite member of that band. Despite that, I've seen Paul twice, the last time at Fenway Park , and no one but Paul ever had 33 hits in Fenway Park in one night (cue the rimshot)



I've seen Ringo once. It was in the first iteration of his All Star band. I think it was some field in New Hampshire...I remember making a trail to park my car through grass so tall I couldn't see beyond the front of said car. It was reminiscent of a scene from Children of the Corn. Anyway.... It truly was an all star line up..Joe Walsh..Nils Lofgren...Dr. John...Billy Preston...Rick Danko...Levon Helm...Clarence Clemons.

Oh, and Ringo.

If you don't know those names, shame on you...but there's still hope. We live in the computer age. Google those names, check out the bands they were once in, then go to youtube and experience them old school (in a not so old school kind of way).


Or better yet, dust off that old record player, ask your big brother...or crazy uncle..or your Dad (only if he was cool, remember?) for some of their albums, drop the needle on the vinyl, sit back, and enjoy.

...don't mean to get to far off course, but trust me, this all ties together....the best..I mean all time best drop the needle on vinyl sit back and enjoy moment..is without a doubt track one side one (and for you kids, I know this all seems very quaint) of the White album. The song is Back in the USSR and the sound of that jet flying overhead before the song kicks in, and I do mean KICKS IN is the best thing ever. No lie. It's the truth.

Ok, let me push my glasses back up the bridge of my nose, adjust my pocket protector, and get back to finishing this thing off.

I guess seeing Paul twice vs. Ringo once is about the correct equation....unfortunately I didn't see John Lennon three times or George Harrison four. That would truly have been the correct ratio.

Enough of this rubbish. Paul McCartney is no more dead than Shirley Temple, Don Rickles, or Abe Vigoda.

   

...and that's a fact Jack.

Peace.

Starry Starry Night

Here's starry night by Van Gogh



Isn't that something? I saw this at the Yale Museum of Art quite a few years ago. It really is something else.

Just to prove I have no clue what I'm going to write about before I start, I was going to call this post "Where's all the white women at?"

That's from some movie that I don't even remember (someone google it for me and let me know), but for some reason it's been stuck in my mind for a couple of days. It makes me smile everytime. Juvenile, I know, but just the same, it makes me smile.

...nevermind, I just did. Blazing Saddles.

That's some good shi*t right there. (Look at me editing my own blogs, who am I worrying about offending? I'm going to post a blog sometime that is rife with curse words and all sorts of vulgar language and inappropriate behavior. I'll title that one "Mom, Don't read this one.")

So back to this blog...

I started thinking about this when I was mowing my lawn this morning. I was thinking how people (you know who you are) always say to me, after sharing an experience with them, "You'll have to blog about this", or "Am I going to read about this in your next blog?"...sorry , it don't work that way. Actually, it just sort of did, didn't it?

No, the way it works is I think about something that sticks with me for awhile...it might be a word, or a phrase, or a song, or a memory, or a smell..you get the picture. Usually that thing is just the jumping off point (Like Starry Night). I never know where it's going to come from. So asking me to write about something is like asking a magician to show you a trick, or asking a comedian to tell you or joke, or asking a caddie to wash your balls...well, maybe not that last one.

So then I started playing with some other ideas....

I was thinking of some sort of fictionalized story about an ancestor of mine, Sarah Wildes.

Sarah was hung for being a witch during the Salem witch trials back in 1692. This is true.

The fictionalization would not have been. Basically it would have been a litany of lies strung together to make a story. Not sure if fiction is really my strength or not, but I've dabbled in it with some success before.

Anyone remember these?

http://pompatusofpete.blogspot.com/2012/03/my-day-with-christopher-walken-part-one.html

and

http://pompatusofpete.blogspot.com/2012/04/my-day-with-christopher-walken-part-two.html

now that's fiction.

I also was thinking about the time I was in a car (and I've alluded to this one before) with two friends and we drove it under and 18 wheeler and got wedged underneath it...but I don't think my Mom is ready for that one yet either.

Then there are the reminiscing blogs that I revert to once in awhile. My youngest daughter turning ten this week got me thinking about that. But who wants to hear about watching the Carol Burnett show on Saturday nights while our parents were down at the Men's Club dance (Men's Club!)

...getting pulled on a skateboard while hanging on to a twenty foot rope tied to the back of your best friends bike...or even better, just by your best friend.

....being allowed to go to the A&W and ordering your meal by picking up the phone that was in your booth, connecting to their switchboard operator, then having the little orange light on the top of the phone come on until your order was done (man, that root beer that was served in those frosty mugs was the best)

....or how everyone had a speedometer (and an odometer) on their ten speeds and you would make up crazy things like seeing who could work up the best speed - usually starting at the top of some hill - then racing down said hill - and you'd have to stop pedaling when you got to THAT telephone pole - and you'd see who could go the farthest just by coasting - and when you'd almost come to a stop you'd start moving your handlebars back and forth trying to coax those extra inches out of your ride because winning meant everything back then.

Who wants to hear about those things? Me, that's who

...but that's for another time as well.

This blog was about Starry Night...or was it?

one more thing...

Starry, starry night.

Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer's day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.

Peace out.