Sunday, October 26, 2008

My Life in a Stolen Moment

Newcastle; British Isles. Damp dressing rooms in olde Shakespearean Theaters that echo of Dylan's "To Ramona," forty years ago. Tea Kettles and tea trays with Kenyan Brown and Earle Grey. Biscuits. Cheddar. A bowl of British apples and Cuban bananas. Sour coffee. Red Bull. Monitor speakers wheezing from the strain of ten thousand rock bands. Sound checks. Hotels. Motorways. M1. A1. Roundabouts. The cold. Around and around. The same damp that bled into the bones of Dickens and a million doss house veterans. Near Gateshead: The Angel of the North; A cast iron and rust red lady with wings a hundred feet high. I've been driving on the left with a six speed stick shift. Two gears don’t work. A thousand roundabouts. Listening to new Dylan Bootleg series. Takes me back to 1962 and my sister handing me a promo pamphlet: "My Life in a Stolen Moment," by Bob Dylan. She was in charge of hiring an "act" for her College prom and Dylan was being considered. I read the pamphlet (wish I still had it) in which Bob claims he ran away from home dozen times, and "was caught and brought back all but once." He was a carny roustabout, and the whole other line of charming malarkey he was spinning out. I bought it all. "Hire him!" I told my sister. Didn’t happen. And now in this bootleg package there's a photo of Bob at age fourteen or so, standing with a group of his Hibbing cronies - all duck tail hair and attitude. Bob is in the center, holding a Sears F-Hole acoustic guitar. The chubby faced poet-prince who would conquer the world and re-shape lyrical history. And just the other day my own "Anthology" was handed to me. Two discs and a nice big booklet and 37 songs old and new and in between…and I'm somewhere out there on that well trod minstrel dog and pony road, playing the same theaters that The Bard played forty years ago. And the job is still the same; bringing forth what must be brought forth, and rhyming it with whatever duende can be summoned. Ignoring the dull, boring, dreadful, pain of a whining world gone wrong. Drinking the tea from Kenya. Working in a new song or two; the newest being "We've Become the Bloody People We Came Here to Escape." And: "East of Woodstock, West of Viet Nam." Made it home after five weeks, Road Flu, Food poisoning, battered rental cars…two news songs and a half dozen purple guitar picks. Leave for Vancouver at four in the morning. A train toward Winnipeg and the rattle and the clatter of steel wheels and guitar strings. My life in a stolen moment.

5 comments:

Saddle Tramp said...

TR abroad . . . Always worth the wait, if only I could be as restrained. Your Anthology and Dylan's new bootleg along with many others are waiting for me at the Post Office. Regarding the new song. Yes! I wrote two years ago ;
" What if we have become the enemy we were once against. " The air has changed. The wind is blowing a different song and the masses march off like lemmings . . .
Meanwhile The Rennaisance Man and Travelling Minsrel brings it to us. TR, the Wind has it that the ghost of Bill Miner ( stagecoach and train robber ) haunts the tracks in Canada. It is widely held that he coined the phrase
" Hands Up ! " The San Quentin dungeons could not break him and Canadian prisons and others could not hold him. He is a master criminal so if you hear those words, just throw down your guitar, put èm up and give up the goods.
Train whistles across Canada . . .


-ST
Listening to a taste of Britain here with Andrew Loog Oldham on Sirius Disorder where satellite radio still offers a glimmer of hope and fading freedom. We are badly outnumbered, but one can still make a difference, in spite of as the railroad trainmaster used to tell me " that's a left-handed move for us " when I requested a special switch of cars. Careful over there Tom . . .

Nigel Smith said...

Tom

I was at your show at the Luminaire (you may have noticed me; tall bloke quite excited during Tonight We Ride). Wonderful stuff as always - new songs both great (I spent the first two years of my life in Nigeria ). My parents-in-law were at the Gateshead show and my best friend at Brighton. All impressed. Next time you head this way I might get on a plane to Belfast. Sounds incredible. Ya bastards!!!

editor said...

Eager to hear the new songs.

What's worse than becoming the bloody people we came here to escape is that we're trying to turn everybody else into the same bloody people we came here to escape.

editor said...

Off topic:

Hey Tom & ST — when you roll through LA, check out the new special exhibit at the Autry Museum. Bold Caballeros y Noble Bandidas — Mexican popular culture influenced by tales of social bandits and the Revolution. I'm planning a trip down there to see family and catch this — runs November through May 10.

http://www.autrynationalcenter.org/boldcaballeros/

Saddle Tramp said...

Editor . . .
Appreciate the heads up. I will try to get there when schedule allows. I am in L.A. area now but have to head North today. Having breakfast at Flo's Airport Café at the Chino Airport where they still let you park your rig. In the shadow of The Planes of Fame as well as those infamous prisons, both womens and childrens . . .
Enjoyed another great hike in your paradise of a state just a week ago after a delivery to Walla Walla, Washington. Hiked the Horsetail Falls to Triple Falls Trail along the Columbia River Gorge. Renews ones belief. Keeps me going.

Adiós from Flo's, one of the few remaining
holdouts of old America . . .


-ST