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04/02/2006: "now ...almost - the end of march 2006"

Last night john trudell came to town. He accompanied a film based on his life.
It’s was a powerful thing. When he took the stage afterwards, his stance was one of “intelligent coherency”. That was the crux. He fielded questions, all of which were mostly muddled in similar incoherency, a babble that must have been brought on by his proximity or the confusion of hearing the questioner’s own wordings crumble in mid air. He would bring the point back around in his patient way; back to his stance.

He was impossible not to embrace.
The murder of his family will forever be too severe to erase.
Music was the thing he seemed to count on most after it was all said and done.
I wanted to help him record more of his songs but got lost in the moment to ever make it known. I had met him briefly by accident 20 years ago at a pow wow in down town LA moments after we had just bought our new born baby a doll handmade by an indigenous fellow there. She still has it. But trudell has left the building again. Dang.
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The massacre of the brian harvey family is also unshakable.
This occurred on new year’s day 2006 and was barely represented in the news.
No follow up. Just some horrific details of the method of the murder and, eventually, news of an apprehension of the suspects. But it serves to raise the bar on man’s inhumanity to man at it’s most incoherent. It does not makes any sense in any way.
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Back in hollywood, when our daughter was almost 2 years old, a woman called ‘spock’ would baby sit on occasion. Spock managed some performers at that time, including lucinda williams, and that’s how we got to meet then. it was at a tiny sea food restaurant/bar there where me and lucinda hunched over the bar all night long after we both finished up our gigs there. And it was also the same night john convertino and i first played out as a duo, which we then continued for a year to come world wide.

Since paula brown had been playing bass in giant sand, and our marriage was then on the rocks, and since chris cacavas needed to work on his own band, it seemed that for the umpteenth time the line up was about to change. But this time I was ready to do something completely minimal. Something I could count on no matter what. I would go it alone if I had to, but asked john then if he wanted to give it a shot as a 2 piece.

I knew it was possible to pull off a 2 piece because of witnessing another 2 piece band that spock managed. They were doing it very well. They were called ‘house of freaks’
and that was brian harvey’s band.
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Next week I’ll be heading back to LA. I hardly ever go back there, but have been invited to be a guest at a weekly show that john doe hosts. I cannot refuse. His old band X were one of the very few that would come to tucson back in 1980. They were, and still are, my favorite band to see live. And billy zoom is the reason I play a gretsch guitar […and maybe neil young too.] But the drag is the same night I have to play LA, is the very same night lucinda is coming to tucson to play. Dang.

Anyhow, it is a strange and wonderful thing when you end up having conversations with sonic heroes you chose when you were young and so impressionable. Same with robert plant. There is a point during casual dialogue when it kicks in, like pavlov’s dog, that the sound of their voice triggers some crucial knee jerk hoo ha from so many years ago when you were ripe and in dyer need of such sonic deliverance.
Yeah, well, sometimes its fun being a human. Incoherent, but fun.

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Next month bob dylan is playing tucson too and only 6 blocks from our house.
His opening band is merle haggard. Last time I saw merle here was when he played outside at the dog track with the lonesome desert trains moaning through his set.
How can I not see that show. How many years can they have left in them?
Problem is that it’s the same day I should be leaving to make my gig in newcastle, england. with a day to rest first after the long travel. So I will take the plane a day later instead and show up the very day I am supposed to perform there, which is a very dangerous gamble these days for me.

Look what happened at that hamburg gig when I only traveled 8 hours the same day I had to play. This time it will be about 20 hours all in. but newcastle is my favorite town to play in england. Something happens there during the shows that always seems similar to a soccer match. The crowd explodes when you score a good song.
And there is always a ton of fiery dialogue from the crowd, which makes it all the more fantastic. They never say thanks there. They say “champion”.

Then 2 nights after that I will partake in a tribute to daniel johnston at the site of our london “gig of the year” back in 2001, the barbican. I met Daniel back in 1986, the year before we had our daughter patsy. paula and I went to Austin to see if we should move there.

It was too hot for us then, and none of our friends there had any air conditioning. Nor did my old van. But I remember going down to the mcdonalds, where daniel worked to talk with him. He seemed like a sweet kid then, and I loved his homemade cassette only release of ‘hi how are you?’ and I liked the idea that he could handle playing about 3 songs a night at his live shows and then had to make a run for it out the rear window of the venue. That made sense to me somehow. If you could nail the evening shut with just 3 songs, then all the better. But since that would be impossible to explain to a promoter, they would think you were 2 six packs short of a full case, it would seem a coherent way to exit. I have not spoken with him since though, but funnily enough was considered, many years ago, to produce a record for him on atlantic by the same fellow, yves beauvaix, who would oversee rainer’s tribute record, “the inner flame”, that was brought to him by robert plant. Whatever.

Anyway, the only other thing I remember about austin then besides daniel and the hellish heat, was stopping in the continental club on the way out of town. I forget why, but I only went in to the club for a minute. There was a band that just begun and no one else was in the place. Just me and them. I remember how great they sounded that night, the singer in the most torn up jeans ever with ratty blond dreads. But they had a wonderful guitar attack, loud and deadly. Anyhow, paula was still waiting out in the van, I had to leave, but I was held there for I don’t know how many songs. I get like that still when something grabs me like that and time becomes elastic. Anyhow, the band that night turned out to be soul asylum. Yip.

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