Journal #3




"WHO'S THAT A-CALLIN'?"
FINGERS AND SUNSHINE! GOT ROOM FOR A TENT?"
"I'LL MAKE ROOM!!"

They were musician friends of mine from Bloomington!!! So, I stayed until Wednesday of that week, Busking the the parking lot, getting the lowdown from Kaliko and Grey Goose, the Eyes and Ears of the band in the parking lot, helping the aluminum can recycling crew (I still have the tee-shirt they gave me - Cosmic Recyclers...), seeing "what condition THE CONDITION was in..." I saw why I always told folks, "I like the band, but I'm NOT a deadhead...Wednesday morning, I returned to Madison, then took off for Minneapolis, where a ticket I'd purchased in advance for Greyhound was good for a month after June 23. By the time I got to the twin cities, the nation was suffering a severe drought/heat wave. Proverbial 98 degrees in the shade! That morning, as the bus approached Minneapolis, I decided to get out my music note-book, and simply block out some rhythm patterns, measure by measure, in 4/4 time. Looking for combinations that would reflection my natural phrase/speech patterns, that could be heard as a single unit in the time it took someone to walk by the Busker for FREEDOM...as I changed to a local bus that would take me to the U of M campus in St. Paul, the first simple phrase that fit the notation came to mind...I looked ahead and saw a sign for a campus plaza. I would only discover later that I'd not crossed the bridge over the Mississippi yet. But I rushed off the bus, found a bench to sit upon, took out notepad and guitar, and started writing...By the afternoon, I had three verses of Folk song Americana, some of it reflecting my experiences hitch-hiking to and from Alpine valley that week. The resulting song, Far Too Long, Now, didn't get recorded until 1993, five years after it was written. I like to tell people the chorus must have been floating in the air above Bobby's (the DYL-stir, AKA "the kid from Hibbing") sand Box..."we've been blowin' in the Wind, Far TOO long, now..." jes' kinda 'appen'd, bubba. It wasn't like I thought, hey this'd be cool...it really felt to me like that sentiment needed to be expressed in the late eighties by SOMEONE, and it turned out to be me... (The visit to Dinkytown also gave me deeper appreciation of Dylan's Positively Fourth Street" song. There is a Fourth Street in Dinkytown, as well as Greenwich Village in NYC. The song applies well to the cliquishness in both places...) I returned to Bloomington over that weekend. Since my ticket for Atlanta on Greyhound was good for thirty days, I spent three weeks in Bloomington. An opportunity arose to go to Richard Fish's HomeGrown Studios and record some songs, including Shadows of Fame. The session was a very direct "Brill Building" (NYC) approach. Live to two track, mix it right down. Alchemy of Hope popped into my head as an apt name for the collection. HOPE? Some people tell me its an illusion, the verbal equvalent of a computer virus...(as in just takes up time to think about, eating up "storage" space, but has no utility...). I've learned to reply with a true oxymoron, being as I sometimes enjoy BEING, intentionally foolish: "Can't help it, myself? I'm HOPELESSLY OPTIMISTIC...ALCHEMY? here's the Oxford Dictionary of World Religions Definition. (Time for spiritual transformation. When, out of some mistaken notion that we need to change the world outside our "door" or "window", we bang our head upon the "metaphorical "wall" Then we discover there's still one thing we can change - ourself...a higher mountain than Everest, a deeper ocean than the Marianas Trench in the Pacific.) I knew my Atlanta host for about eight years before he invited me to the place where they got all them Peachtree streets...I call him Doo-WOP Man cuz he's got hundreds of Doo-WOP song 45rpm singles he's collected. He can tell you many things about each group, too. I had a so, so attitude toward the genre until he deepened my appreciation. Doo-Wop MAN loaned me the money to make my first serious studio recording back in 1981, so I'm perpetually indebted to his service - that's the way I see it. On of the first things we did upon my arrival in July 1988 was go to a park not to far from Jimmy Carter's Presidential Library Center. The city of Atlanta, hoping to avoid any kind of 1968-Chicago-Democratic-Convention debacle, gave the park's use to a Rainbow Family traveling Kitchen Bus crew, who set up their kitchen and the city provided sanitary facilities (portosans...). Doo-Wop Man thought we'd have something interesting happen. Little did I know...Who should I spy within a few minutes of arrival, but (Dylan) David Whitaker! The first time out of California - he was traveling with a Rainbow Family contingent. So I shouted his name, and he called mine back. Immediately, I remembered the Shadows of FAME song. I reminded him of me reading it to him in Haight-Ashbury the previous year, and told him I could now play the song for him. David invited me to join a few friends reclining on a mexican style woven wool blanket nearby. Then he said there's someone here I want you to meet. He shouted Hey Kerry! A middle aged fellow walked towards us. Definitely NOT an M.I.B. - Man IN BLACK...He was dressed in clean white tee-shirt, chinos, crew socks and clean, non scuffed tennis shoes. Shaved head. No beard. For some reason unbeknownst to me, I flashed on cartoonist - story writer Shel Silverstein. We both sat on the blanket. I took out my guitar and began the first verse of SHADOWS OF FAME. I'm going to list the pertinent lines of the song here, now: All the really deep pockets/call him strictly "small change" They said that no GOLDEN lockets/could ever be arranged But they had no lights in their sockets/and their hearts were estranged Little boys with big...rockets/and no KING, but hearts estranged You wouldn't find him way up on a stage/out in the bright lights He only dwells deep in the shadows of fame You couldn't find him, paid to fling a rage/Sweating in the night He never fell before the gun of one who took aim... The instant I finished the line ...he never fell before the gun of one who took aim...Kerry went ultra-hyper, and began writhing on the blanket next to me, space-speed rapping about "double agents..." Needless to say, I was un-nerved, stopped playing the song, and tried to ask him what's happening, man? He got up and walked away, instead. I stood up and walked toward a large oak tree nearby, then stood watching as Kerry walked up to my friend, DOO-WOP MAN, and they began a relatively calm chat...then Kerry calmly walked away. As my friend approached me, I asked him "Who is that guy?" Between the funny flash previously related that this guy was Shel Silverstein and what had just happened, I didn't recall that David HAD introduced the guy to me as Kerry. "Kerry Wendell Thornley," was the reply. "Why does that name `ring a bell'," I asked. "Haven't you read the "Illuminatus TRILOGY" (by Robert Anton Wilson, and Robert Shea)?" DOO-WOP MAN said. "Yes..." I responded, as it occured to me what was going on. "Well, one of the 3 books is dedicated to him." "Oh...THAT Kerry Thornley...so that's what it does to your head!" Then, my friend explained to me that, not knowing me at all, Kerry thought that I was talking about Lee Harvey Oswald, when I sang, "he never fell..." (Kerry and Lee were in Psychological Operations - Psy-Ops, in military "short-speak" - training at the same time, 1959). Actually, the "he" of the song is fictitious - you know the STANDARD LEGAL disclaimer: any resemblance between any character in this "work of fiction" and any person, living or DEAD, is purely co-incidental. Carefully understood, one shouldn't even assume that the "I" in a confessional style poem or song, is necessarily the author speaking. There is even such a thing as "prophetic singular"...DOO-WOP MAN assured him that, happily, he was mistaken, and that I was probably very confused by what had happened (I most certainly was!). I remained in Atlanta for four weeks. My host actually offered to let me share his 2 bedroom apartment, IF I found employment. My search proved unsuccessful. DOO-WOP MAN actually took it upon himself to drive me back to Bloomington, that August. But before I left Atlanta, he had shown me Li'l'Five Points (little 5...), the Bohemian/BOHO, quarter of HOT'lanta, such as it is. There wass a small pocket park there, near the intersection of Morland and Euclid. Various and sundry hippie dippies, and other sorts of whatch'a'm'call'ms hang out there. Near the end of my stay, I was playing there. As I got around to singing SHADOWS OF FAME, I noticed that Kerry Thornley was reclining on a nearby grassy strip within each shot. As I went into the same verse he'd heard the day (Dylan) Dave had introduced us, he perked up, leaned back on his elbows and listened intently. The song is nearly 15 minutes long ('s'gotta be...), and after 4 verses, Kerry might've wondered whether I was "going for the record-length epic ballad prize..." He stood up, reached into a woven net carry-all bag (made out of rainbow colored thread, I want you to know...), and pulled out a dollar bill. Then he walked over, and quietly grinning, dropped it in my guitar box. So, I would be able to leave Atlanta knowing the man wasn't still mistaken about who the "straw-man" in my song, or I, for that matter...was. I would have other encounters with both Kerry and (Dylan) David Whitaker. Stories of these will be forthcoming, on these Journal Pages... For a peek into the imagination of ole K.W.T., you can read his introduction to the Fifth Ed. of Principia Discordia (No, sorry to disappoint anyone, but I'm not the inspiration for the Right Reverend Jesse Sump!

This page posted January 21, 2000 CE