My pal Cameron Uganec of Lynn Valley hit 50 so i made a spoken-song-arts-and-crafts-thing / its not long because he suggests “brevity is key” so i tried to not ramble on as per usual – making a “Ramones-sized song”.
Sharing here so i remember the fun making this for a great pal including: my Mom’s heavy duty pinking shears; Dymo labeller; scribbling “lyric and chord” writing; and a pink insta-camera + mighty hat a’la Richard Brautigan (made in Utah), and a Royal Stewart tartan jacket.
Thanks for being a top-notch gent Cam (and always driving and getting coffee etc).
Just wrote a “song” (more of a sprechgesang) – working title: You, Me & the Algorithm (trying to figure out nuclear fission) for the album called “Poste Restante” (or maybe “General Delivery” so dont hafta explain.)
As usual, its Dylan-esque– not in its quality per se but rather because it has like 14 verses, 3 bridges and maybe a chorus, or maybe 13 of those. I’m not sure but either way, I’ve got to figure out how these chord progressions work :) ive got a G C E Am kinda F & D & Gdm (or is it 7th?).
Then i can perform on this lovely “stage” (which is where the now-deprecated pool oasis was before typhoon) for audience of the wild boar living in the bamboo forest and possibly Ichiro, and you if i can track down the tripod. Bring your own lawnchair. Hot water provided for tea.
Then again, might just get lost in the notebook or maybe transcribed and posted in the “old man punk” category of my web archive waiting on someone who knows all the chords to make all song-ish. Who’s to say?
I just write the lines about “Columbus BJ Honeycutt hams” plus something about Plato & Leonard laying it down &/or Zeus & Buddha on a Pan Am flight sharing pack of Salema. Isnt that enough? Whew.
Regarding recently deceased Robert Hunter, so much goodness and inspiration and an unreachable level.
I also feel if one passes without much pain, with most faculties intact, with family/pals at hand and over 72ish, that’s a solid exit. Hunter made 78. Even better with a legacy which will last centuries. My erstwhile doppelgänger member of GD collective as he was the one playing the role i play in my head.
Here’s the Warlocks of Tokyo singing Robert Hunter’s (and others’) songs. Some translated into Japanese. Ole Hunter didn’t like to change a syllable yet feel he’d dig hearing his loquacious poetry crossing language dogma.
Hunter was born Robert Burns and had a peripatetic childhood, including some time in a foster home. He took the surname of a stepfather. He had a flirtation, in the sixties, with Scientology and a problem, for a while, with speed. He was a seeker, a restless soul, an outsider. A friend of mine, on hearing of Hunter’s passing, told me that, in some ways, by his reckoning, Hunter had been dead all along. The man seemed to know something about death. After Garcia awoke from his coma, in 1986, Hunter had a new song for him, called “Black Muddy River.” Hunter, who rarely explained where his songs came from, told the writer Steve Silberman, in 1992, that the inspiration for it was his recurring dream of a “black, lusterless, slow-flowing Stygian river. . . . It’s vast and it’s hopeless. It’s death, with the absence of the soul. It’s my horror vision, and when I come out of that dream I do anything I can to counter it.” The lone Grateful Dead hit to come out of the post-coma period was a deceptively jaunty number, composed a half-decade earlier, called “Touch of Grey,” which Hunter worked up while suffering a wicked cocaine hangover. Hunter knew that cocaine was diabolical, and identified its arrival on the scene (around the time he wrote “Black Peter”) as the forbidden fruit to their Eden, but he didn’t always abstain. It may be that some of the wistful we-had-something-special-but-now-it’s-gone undertones of Hunter’s post-sixties songs—the golden-era stuff of “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty,” along with a slew of beloved songs the Dead never recorded in a studio, such as “Tennessee Jed,” “Brown-Eyed Women,” “Wharf Rat,” and “Ramble On Rose”—owe something to the regret that gnawed at Hunter over the effects of cocaine on the whole enterprise.
Rain Man The visionary wordsmith Robert Hunter takes to the stage. By John Donohue, The New Yorker, July 14, 2014
“One sunny afternoon in London, in 1970, Hunter wrote the words to three magical Grateful Dead songs, “To Lay Me Down,” “Ripple,” and “Brokedown Palace.” He is a lyricist with few equals, and, together with Jerry Garcia, he conjured up the majority of the Dead’s original songs.”
Seeking literary hero to admire? Meet Robert Hunter, primary lyricist for the Grateful Dead, ergo:
Robert Hunter joined the Grateful Dead in the fall of 1967, when he arrived at a rehearsal just in time to write the first verse of the band’s classic “Dark Star.” Though he’d never play onstage, he became not only a genuine band member but its secret Ace in the hole. Though Bob Weir’s words for “The Other One” would endure, most of the band’s early verbal efforts would not; it was Hunter’s work that would elevate their songs from ditties to rich, complete stories set to song. Hunter had fallen into the Dead’s general scene in 1961 when he’d met Garcia in Palo Alto, and he’d played in several of Garcia’s early bluegrass bands. But he’d always thought of himself as a writer — probably a novelist — and it was only in 1967 that he fulfilled his personal destiny, and enriched the Dead’s. He’s gone on to write several books of poetry, and is currently at work on a novel.
Coarse carbon compresses to become the finest gems reflecting entire universes gracefully from within
Sapphires and rubies strong, rugged with a gleam channeled from promised lands we are the stories we share tales of love and freedom wrapped in mystery
The truth is only useful if it sets others free Have you ever wondered aloud how it feels to be fully empty?
Waiting thirteen minutes for a 2nd rate beer a Sunday afternoon In the empty bar the one with the pretentious name
trying to be too smooth but i’ll submit to comfort low-slung leather lounge glass table top reflection
C:
the menu has martinis but i am drinking beer this menu lists tapas but i am nowhere near not eating, just drinking and thinking somewhere far away from here
thinking on a San Francisco afternoon finding her walk-up brick and stone tiny room redwood walls and Chinese food
somewhere near the Embarcadero waiting for red-headed mystery who i ran from years before
leaving in a hurry and coming on too soon admitting that in retrospect you meant more than i let on
so i continue waiting vacantly sipping slowly and sitting low
the menu has martinis but i am drinking beer this menu is listing tapas but i am nowhere near hardly can guess where i’m strolling suppose i am going home
a lost afternoon for me belatedly exchanged for the broken heart i maybe gave you
like that foreign film where the subtitles might say i’m erred on a cloudy day by the well near the olive hill
but really now if you happened by i just want an afternoon of coffee and your tangled sheets
like times before i ventured drifting literal oceans away unsure if you even remember Salt Lake night in the Avenues
climbing oaks and sneaking into that mansion that’s for sale forever drinking port wine in the broken attic
or maybe you noticed me out here peeking through a curtain hoping to stumble like a coincidence holding crocuses like missed conceptions and faltered connections
the menu has martinis but i am drinking beer this menu is listing tapas but i am nowhere near
i am gone elsewhere somewhere far from you and here
They named his Ray born in Thunder bay back when still called something else
Tired hard in school Not that he was a fool He just didn’t care that much
But he won 2nd place In science class His volcano was almost best
Played Junior A But couldn’t go all the way Just glad he saved his teeth
He hitchhiked east half-way at least almost made it to Labrador
Though he dug the times left the Celts behind and took the rails far west
With a coffee mug and pawned guitar he rarely missed a fest
Crossed the prairies fast hit rockies at last and kept on rolling to the coast
Grew some grass for friends and than had to make amends when the poe-leece shook him down
3 months forced rest in suburban house he was ready to make a stand
He sat in front of trucks and sat some more in courts all for bearing witness to old trees fallin to ground
Now in these older days almost twice as wise and he learned the tools to change the world
B
Hes got to build a life to prove it can be done sharp enough to know to hang out with the flow and think how he’s gotta turn to make life fun he doesn’t forget that to make it great you can’t leave your clan behind ya gotta be nice to others help them from time to time
I get three fifty k
to just show up and play
been three weeks since i last scored
and yet i still don’t ask for more
V2
I don’t give a shit
if i even get a hit
cause my agent called me again today
and told the check clears either way
Chorus
Hot dogs and vodka
Wash it down with beer
smokies and caesers
i’ve never been so clear
Hot dogs and vodka
half dozen before each game
gimlets with hoagies
maybe thats why i’m so lame
V3
Sometimes I’ll admit
that i’ve done some crimes
stole a smokie from the cart
at granville street and vine …
Bridge 1
In fact, i’ve thiefed em
a couple dozen times
they hand it over
it just ain’t that hard
i load it with relish
and they ask for my two-nie
and by then and eating my napkin
and my lord i am running
i’m running, running, running …
V4
But it really don’t matter
if i get any fatter
i can still sweep the wreckage
from the coliseum aisles
V5
When they came out to scout me
they should’ve looked more closely
and discovered my true ambition
ahh the beers, … they steal all my affection
Bridge 2
Now here i toil
broke, sad and turmoiled
thinking of all the kids i let down
i sweep up your mess
and you can’t hardly guess
that i use to skate on that ice
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