My goddamn computer ate my column. Four hours of work down the toilet! Luckily, I prepare my Notes section in a different file. This will be short, but there are some pretty cool things in here. Next week, unless my computer acts up again (I’m blaming Trump), I will be back on track.
But before we get started, it’s time once again to plug one of my favorite bands of all-time— those crazy elementary school teachers who change into demonic rockers at night: No Small Children. Coming off of a successful run playing the title tune from the movie Ghostbusters II, they pluck another rocker out of the air and it’s a beaut! Lay back (if you can) and listen to what the percentage of us not tied to our iThings are hearing. I Feel Better!!!
This morning was cold and wet with a chill that went to the bone, the clouds threatening, the rain off and on but somehow consistent. I knew it would be. Yesterday, my friend John Hicks had posted a message that Buck Ormsby had died. No way, I thought, because I had had contact only a few days previous— just a note, but contact. When I approached Hicks, he said that he had found out from Ormsby’s son’s page. He sent me the link and there it was. We are sorry to report… and the words became a blur. While it hardly seemed possible, Buck was gone. Is gone, for none of us will hear from him again and that is truly a sad thing.
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I took a drive yesterday. I had been sitting in front of the computer screen too long and accomplishing little of anything at all and I needed a break. Usually when I hit the road I take music I need to hear for writing reasons but this time I needed time to myself. I grabbed one I had the urge to review by Town Mountain which when I pulled open the CD cover discovered was minus the disc. I had left it in my computer player at home. I have lost more than one disc that way. The other two were there though and I had heard neither all the way through for over a year: Lisa Parade‘s Finding Flora and Maxi Dunn‘s Edmund & Leo. I couldn’t wait.
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…but I could never pull it together. Of course, when I was young I thought I was a musician, piddling with the tonette in fourth grade, drafted into the junior high band in the fifth grade because they badly needed a bass drum player, playing drums in what could be called a jazz band then (though we were really not good enough to be called that), playing drums in the high school band and in a couple of rock bands and carrying it on through college. I loved music and was always around it but I was never really a musician.
I used to have over 10,000 record albums. That is really not that many when you really look at it. More than you could listen to fairly in a year, I suppose. Deep enough to impress vinyl junkies, too many to impress anyone sane. Way more than enough to make my life desolate when it came to relationships.
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The quote in the header is from Frank Secich‘s Circumstantial Evidence, a look back at a life which could easily have been one long stint at various penal institutions instead of sixties and seventies music venues. Secich (pronounced SESS-ich, by the way) admits in his book that he was on the cusp but never really made the leap, thanks to music and the people involved with it. One such person was Ray Chizmar, a musician and early idol to Secich who would always greet him with “What do you say, Ray?” to which Chizmar replied “Whatcha got in the bank, Frank?”
Bullseye Records of Canada
