"Blowin' the Blues Away"

Gold Among the Silver
I woke up early this morning--I can't sleep late anymore since they've started construction on this god-damn hotel two long blocks away from me though it sounds like it's in the room with me. The noise of that construction begins promptly at 7:30 so there's no sleepin' after that--the noise is atrocious and it seems archaic to me in this the 21st century when the most powerful engines in the world run in almost silence, with the exception of compressed-air driven destructive tools like jackhammers--oh, I complain too much--it's progress and progress is noisy and destructive and that's all there is to it--case closed--anyway, so I woke up cranky, a little morbid, whiny, you know, like the disgruntled wolf I naturally am. I needed relief. A relief beyond the relief of coffee and orange juice, which I need every morning just to get my eyelids unstuck.

So I woke up early this morning in a disturbed state, eyes glued shut, pried open by coffee and orange juice--and I moped around the apartment like a caged wolf, the noise of the construction jiving louder and louder--"Up your peace with this!" it was thundering, then finger-flashing adding, "I'm gonna get worse 'fore I get better"--I respond with whimpering, "I know; it's like being in a prison of noise; I know, I concede to prepare for your continuance, oh Mighty Chaotic Prince." I figure I've got to serve at least a year's sentence of this punishing noise, which, as my little Junco Partner taught me, "ain't no time."

He said "Six months___that ain't no sentence/
One year___that ain't no time/
I got friends__ seems they were born up in Angola/
They're doin' nine right on up to ninety-nine."

["Junco Partner" as sung by Little James Wayne from his LP From Texas to New Orleans.]

And, yes, friends, you gotta be tough to survive Angola, which is still running so privately democratically to this day in the great state of Lawsbanana, or Louisiana as you educated fools know it. [Excuse my throwing some "Groovie Boy" language at you--"Laws-bah-nanah" being the way Louisiana was pronounced by the Groovie Boy, the afternoon drive-time deejay at KWKH in Shreveport, Lawbanana, back in the "white" glorious 1950s when the Groovie One was black. Lawsbanana was Louisiana. Alabanana was Alabama. Get it? Fi-fo-fanna-banana.]

So as I was prowling the walls of my den early this morning coffee-ed up and jitterbugging against the outside noise, I out-of-thin-air spotted a CD I had not heard in a host of years; it just popped out at me from within a stack of about 500 CDs I have sitting beside my Mac computer. It was the CD issue of a 1959 Blue Note LP called Blowin' the Blues Away and featuring the Horace Silver Quintet and Trio, an album put together out of three different '59 recording sessions. What led me further to this CD was noticing Blue Mitchell's name on it--this was Horace's longest-running quintet--with Blue on trumpet, Junior Cook on tenor, and the trio, Horace on piano, Gene Taylor on bass, and the master drummer Louis Hayes on the tubs. Wow, I hadn't heard Blue Mitchell in years, that's for sure, so I put the damn thing in the CD tray (damn that sounds funny--I'm used to "putting them on the turntable"--"stackin' the changer"--hey, there's one for you hi-fi fans) and gave it a listen. And lo and behold, a blessed miracle, from the first tune on, "Blowin' the Blues Away," I was captured by that sound again, captured by that inevitable sound, that inimitable sound of Horace Silver comping and chomping away at his signature pianistic-percussive romp while these genius sidemen musicians give motion and energy to the whole panorama of Horace's Afro-Americo-tanged innermost blues expression, and, by God, folks, it worked again as it did before the last time I let it grab me and it soared me out of the dumps and into the realm of satisfaction, a satisfaction that even started even enjoyin' the noise. Praise the Lard and the Pig, from whom all blessings flow.

You know that's what kept jazz exploding, yes, its being foundated in the blues; it was the anti-improvisationalists who filtered the blues out of jazz, who filtered the "blackness" out of jazz, you heard me; jazz became routine, predictable, written down, assumed, and taken for granted; same as classical music had already become--remember, white folks and some black folks consider the blues "the Devil's music" and so do I and so has the blues all these years, every true blues man knowing, just like white European composers knew it, too (see Tartini's The Devil's Trill and Stravinsky's L'histoire du soldat), that if you wanted to be the best in your field you had to meet the Devil down at the famous Crossroads--Percy Mayfield called it "Dirty Work at the Crossroads"--where you sold your soul for the ability to master your instrument and thereby master your music and song, and the mastery of the blues included the eventual mastery of jazz, r and b, and certainly white rock & roll, which the Brits drained the blues out of with their lily-white versions of American originals, like their disgusting cover of the great Larry Williams's "Slow Down"--God, that music out of Houston, Texas, back in those days of Larry, and Paul "Hucklebuck" Williams, and Johnny "Guitar" Watson, and Gatemouth Brown, and Albert Collins, and Johnny Acea, and Ivory Joe Hunter, and Lightnin' Hopkins, and Buster Brown ("Fanny Mae" one of the good ole good one blues), and Little James Wayne, and Herman Parker, Jr.

But then we sold our culture to the highest bidders back in the 70s--first thing to me horrible that happened was that Leo Fender sold Fender Guitars to CBS who then sold them to the Japanese--this including Harold Rhodes's wonderful Rhodes Electric Pianos--again old Leo Fender getting richer since he had bought Rhodes and it was Fender-Rhodes and then CBS got the electric piano that then ended up, yep, in Japan, and then, of course, Japan became the bosses of electronic keyboards (Yamaha, Korg, Roland--American genius--we invented the insides of these machines--produced in Tokyo and Osaka); and, don't forget, we sold all our recording industry to the Japanese, Sony in particular and we sold all our film archives to the Japanese, again Sony the major owner now of a lot of our old films...crap, here I go growling into thin air again. I've got to muzzle myself.

And, damn, there on Horaces blowin' my blues away was "Sister Sadie"--bop--da-da-da-da-da--da--da! And soon I was dusting off my other pieces of Silver and soon I was dancing about the room and getting some serious work done. The noise! Hell, I was makin' the noise now.

Another Cut on Blowin' the Blues Away Was "Baghdad Blues"
And, yes, again today there were tons of blues being wailed in old Baghdad, with US and Iraqi troops going about kicking in doors--oh shit, let's blow away a couple of towelhead families, and, yes, some of our combine policing forces managed to wipe out a couple of Sodr City families, oh hell, I forgot, we water down civilians deaths in this War (this phony war that is really killing human beings by the thousands), so I suppose we can say 10 Sodr City families were massacred today by patrolling squads of brigadiers (remember Georgie Porgie, our phony president, talking about his "brigades"--a part of his brilliant "surge" military stategy that will soon accomplish the mission God gave him back before 9/11 for the soon to be US Dependency of Iraq; after all, he is Commander and Chief of our Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines and now our National Guards--they are his to use as he so commands (wishes)--he's the boss and they're his henchmen; they are hoodwinked into being ready to die for him; they're military taught and in the military if you ain't Commander in Chief, then you ain't nothin' but cannon fodder, so keep your F-in' (oh yes they use foul language in the God's US Christian military--I was once called a fucking jackanape by a little guy sergeant from Okie-homa while I was stationed in the hillbilly hills of Ozark Missouri--I thought that was clever and laughed like a hyena when he called me that--"You fuckin' little asshole. Give me 20 god-damn pushups, you motherfucking sissy man. And, by God, if I don't see you in chapel this Sunday morning, I'll be god-damn if I don't put your college-boy ass on permanent KP, you sniveling piece arrogant middle-class crap"--no problem, like Junco Partner said, "That ain't no Dozens a real stepper can't rebutt."

Bush's feelings about US soldiers are the same he has for those soldiers in his fastly developing private army, the Blackwater private army of 20,000 trained soldiers of fortune; both the US Army and the Blackwater Army (you know it's subsidized by the Pentagon) volunteer soldiers are paid to put their asses on the line for the wishes of the Bossman, the head of the old Plantation, Mr. Georgie Porgie "Whitey" Bush and his Miss Pickles--oh my goodness gracious, look, Massah Bush is using Guantanamo terrerists and Mexican immigrants as his slaves--and, remember, following in the steps of his idol, Abraham "Ship 'Em to Liberia" Lincoln, Georgie will eventually send all his blacks back to Africa. Blackwater can escourt them overthere. [By the bye, Blackwater formed a "national security" company today, offering the same kinds of services the CIA and the FBI are currently involved in to both corporate and government firms (doesn't that sound like good ole National Socialism?); this company will include spying on American citizens and databanking all sorts of info on We the People, like files of our fingerprints, medical records, grade school-high school-college records, employment records, bank records, phone records--and, of course, hi-tech Internet spying, too! Can you imagine Blackwater breaking down your door and kidnapping you based on information they have gathered that intimates you're sending money to a terrerist organization--like the Saudi-Arabian government maybe--the Blackwater gang has that power now; they are a private arm of the government run by ex-CIA goons all led by a right-wing Christian nutjob and, of course, billionaire, which is why he has the privilege of putting together his own private army--Blackwater has an army of 20,000, folks, keep remembering, I kid you not.]

I am not a soothsaying wolf, however, folks. I am conjecturing, maybe lycophantically, and afterall, I am a fictional writer who is a writer of fiction, though to a fiction writer fiction is reality, yes, we will bomb Iran. Unka Dick proved by his statements in all the foreign countries he was in this week that he is an out-of-control tyrant without a "heart" or a "soul," a ruthless old temporary human--I mean he's gonna die soon--I predict that; yep, he's a drinkin' man besides having had about 20 heart attacks. Buddy Rich had several massive heart attacks and he kept playing the drums until cancer got his ass. See what I mean? Though, Jesus, I feel bad about using poor ole Buddy as a reference to Unka Dick--Buddy was a tyrant, but at least his tyranny gave us exciting, inspiring, and elevating good music, groove, and amazing virtuosic showmanship. Unka Dick on the other hand can't even kill an old pal even when he shoots him dead in the face with a shotgun--like Little Walter Jacobs threatened to do to his baby in that great old blues, Just Your Fool.

If you ever leave me/ for someone new/
I'm gonna buy me a shotgun/ shoot dead at you/
I ain't lyin'/ no used to jivin'/
I'm just your fool.

Winnie the Pooh Churchill
I have been wanting of late to slam down the late Brit fop-half-American, Winnie "the Loser" Churchill--the desire hitting me after I watched a PBS (our US Public BritishBroadcasting System) special on Winston the other evening and it amazed me how truly stupid this man was, how wishy-washy and totally self-centered this half-bred snob was, and yet how he got people to trust his leadership even though most of his military plans led to grave failures over and over from the time his privilege as the son of a Brit Peer got him involved in the military affairs of early 20th Century Britain on through until his Last Hurrah when in his sixties he became the WWII Wartime Prime Minister of England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Commonwealth, and the Empire of India and found himself foundering on the brink of Nazi takeover until he used his American blood as a hole card to sucker his American cousins into saving England once again just as we had done in WWI when we shipped arms to England on our protected cruise ships, like the Lusitania--remember the Lusitania?

But I can't bring myself to concentrate on Winnie long enough to picador him properly afore I apply the muleto downward into that hump at the back of his bully neck.

By the bye, you know the "Peace Sign"? Two fingers held up in the air followed by the utterance of "Peace...shhhhhhhhhh peaceful." Winnie started that. It was "V" for Victory--or dot-dot-dot-dash in Morse Code, standing for "V"-Victor, then transposed onto the four opening notes to Beethoven's 5th Symphony, that became--DOT-DOT-DOT-DASH! The hippies started using it to mock the old Vets and shit who used to come out and try and bash our filthy hippy heads in, hating our long hair, mine at one time hanging down to my ass, I swear, even though we kept mocking these fools with "Hey, creepos, Jesus had long hair and you worship his ass--here, worship this" and then you'd throw 'em the Peace Sign--which does contain the middle finger, remember--so ya see, the way the hippies used the V for Victory sign, the Peace Sign, was like flipping the bird at the War Hawks, the puff chested generals, and "search and destroy" FBI agents and agents provocateurs, and the local fat-bellied cops, and the Southern gentlemen racist clowns in their white sheets and hoods, looking for some helpless "kneegrows" to string up--or some Jew kids from that Jew York City to maybe seal up in a dirt dam on the old Pearl River--"Ain't that the same river we dunked Emmett Till in?" Hot damn it's fun when you can kill with impunity.

Killin'--we are killer animals. It's the meateater in us.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

And Speaking of Baghdad
Hey, it's as though someone at BuzzFlash has been reading The Daily Growler

In many ways, the road to Baghdad began symbolically at Little Rock Central High School, which was desegregated 50 years ago after armed federal intervention.

It was one of the milestones of the Civil Rights era -- and a sign to the white southern male that the era of plantation style entitlement was finally coming to an end. It's hard even, today, to realize that some people felt that they were closer to God and civilized standards because of the color of their skin. It's hard, because some people -- although not publicly proclaiming the belief -- still harbor it.

In fact, one could argue that the entire Bush Administration -- black window dressing like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice aside -- is about white male entitlement.

The mystery of what Bush and Cheney mean when they endlessly proclaim that GIs must die to accomplish the honor of "our mission" and achieve "victory" can be resolved with an understanding of white man's rules.

Bush and Cheney have offered us so many different "missions" for Iraq that they remind one of a toy terrier on speed.

But they have a different "mission" and definition of "victory" locked inside their heads, one that they dare not speak out loud. It's quite simple: the white man wins. For the white man to lose -- as the South did in the Civil War -- is to be shamefully dishonored.

Haven't we been babbling all along that that's what all this is; well certainly thegrowlingwolf has just recently written about this being the last stance of white male supremacy in this turning-brown country--and we've been sayin' all along that Capitalism works best when you have slave labor. The full editorial is from:

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorials/125