I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
February 09, 2008 - 2:09 a.m.
One of these days I'll start updating earlier. Not today though. It is all part of my procrastination. I love writing Wise Madness but it is always hard for me to get started.
I just counted: I've ripped 90 of my CDS. That's just about 9% of the total. We'll see how long I can stay motived enough to rip CDs continuously whenever I'm near the computer.
More importantly I've made progress organizing my physical CDS. I have good places to store about 922 CDS. The rest will have to go in boxes. What I've done is clear out all of that space for CDs by individual musicians and I'll put all the compilations, tribute CDS, soundtracks, bootlegs and oddities in the boxes. I might not have the room for that but I'll try. I want to be able to find any CD at a moment's notice. Right now there are a few important ones that are completely misplaced. I can't find my Red Molly CDs or my Jonathan Coulton Thing A Weeek boxed set. I'm sure they'll show up.
I went to the Knick game tonight. They played the defending champion San Antonio Spurs. The Knicks built up a 16 point lead, it might have even hit 18 points. They blew it of course. The Spurs tied it up with 0.4 seconds to go in the game then won easily in overtime.
Right now I'm itching pretty bad despite the fact that I haven't had peanut butter. On Marti's advice I'm going to try and go two weeks without it and see how I feel then. It has only been two days so far.
Many of you know me through my interest in music so I'm going to continue telling my musical history.
For about 11 years after I started seeing Renaissance they were the only band I stalked. Every show I went to I went with Carey. We'd always get to the shows early and made some friends with the rest of the front of the line crowd. There was Good Jay, Bad Jay, Linda. Linda and I would almost always be the first two people on the line. Nobody else would join us for half an hour but that was OK because part of the reason we got there early was to socialize with each other. If for any reason one of us couldn't get there early the other would save a seat anyway so it wasn't like we were competing for the best seats.
I'd see other musicians, Dave Van Ronk in particular, but I'd generally go to those shows alone and I felt funny about going alone back then. I also went to shows with Lauren. I took her to see Dave Van Ronk despite the fact that she wasn't a folkie. She said he was cool. Everyone that I ever took to see Dave said that. I went to my only Arena show with Lauren, we saw Emerson, Lake, and Powell. Palmer did join them on that tour. Despite my scorn for Arena shows I loved it. If they weren't so expensive I might go to more. I probably averaged about two non-Renaissance concerts a year and I'd see Renaissance about four times a year. A far cry from my musical schedule now. What I did do was listen to the radio and buy lots of albums. I'd buy rock, folk, blues, and classical. I tried to fill in the gaps in my collection. I'd listen to music just about ever day.
The next step in my musical development was discovering the Roches in 1988. They were guests on Pete Fornatale's show, Mixed Bag which was on WNEW back then. I loved them and when I heard they were giving a free show at the UN I asked Carey if he wanted to go. I was sort of surprised but happy that he said yes. We saw them once and were hooked. They said they were playing at Town Hall in a few weeks and we droves straight there to pick up tickets for the show. After that we saw them wherever they played in the area.
Then in 1989 the floodgates opened. I would check the NY Times radio listings every day looking for classical pieces that I didn't want to miss. One day I saw that Dave Van Ronk was playing the Greenwich Village Folk Festival that was broadcast on WFUV. I turned it on and one of the first acts I heard was Christine Lavin. That was it, I became a fan of Christine's and the radio station. I put it on my presets and haven't removed it since. By an amazing coincidence Carey listened to the same show and we checked and saw the Christine was playing in a few weeks and we bought tickets to the show. Once we saw her live we knew we had a new artist to stalk. We went to Tower Records and bought all her old CDs.
Now that I had FUV to listen to I was discovering lots of new artists. I also discovered people who opened for the acts I was stalking. One of these was disappear fear who opened for either Annie Haslam or Renaissance. The first few times I went to see them after that it was with Carey. Then one night they played a late show at the Rodeo Bar and Carey didn't want to go so I went by myself. I'm so glad I did. Before I went in I ran into some cool people outside the bar and started talking to them. It turned out they were the band Valentine Smith who I knew from listening to Vin Scelsa's show. They were playing after disappear fear and I stayed to hear them. They blew me away musically and I had a crush on their violinist. The first but not the last female fiddler I had a thing for. I got on their mailing list and went to see them at Cafe Sine. That was another turning point. I discovered a place that for the price of a soft drink I could sit and listen to music all night. I started going there on weekend nights when I had nothing else to do. On one of those nights I walked in and heard a singer with a powerful and moving voice singing really songs with brilliant lyrics. It was Ruth Gerson. I had another musician to stalk. So now I was going down to the East Village regularly to hear Ruth and Valentine Smith. Through Ruth I discovered the Sidewalk Cafe, another place I could sit and hear music for the price of coke. By now I had lost all my inhibitions about going out by myself and started doing it regularly.
One night at Sine Ruth came up to me and asked, "You're a fan aren't you?" She had seen me around and most of the other people attending her shows were her friends. I was the first person she won over purely on her talent. Well OK it wasn't purely her talent as she was and is as hot as all hell but it wasn't going to say that to her. After that we started talking whenever I went to see her. We became friends. She was the first musician that I ever talked to at a show and she came up to me, not the other way around. I really am naturally shy.
In those days before I was online my main source for shows was the Village Voice. I'd read all the ads every week looking for shows to go to. I'd look for people I discovered on WFUV or on Vin's show or Pete Fornatale's. One year I saw an ad for the Greenwich Village Folk Festival! To make it even better it was free! Of course I went. For the most part the Festival was run like the emerging artist showcase at FRFF. Each act would do two or three songs and the next act would come on. It would go on like that till the headliner at the end of the evening. The average act there was better than the emerging artists at FRFF. I would sit there and take notes on each act then see the ones I liked again. Two of the acts I discovered there were the Story and Dave's True Story. DTS was a local act that played in the area quite often and they became another band that I stalked. I slowly became friends with them especially the singer Kelly Flint. I'm still friends with her as my regular readers know.
Now the Story hit it much bigger. They led me to discover Summerstage and the concerts at the Brooklyn Bandshell. I actually saw them at both venues on the same day. They were the opener at Summerstage then they went to play in Brooklyn that evening and I followed them. I missed the second half of the headliner to do so, I think it was Sarah McGlachlan.
The opener at the Bandshell was Golden Carillo, a band I had heard on WFUV. I immediately fell in love with them. They were another local act that played in the area often. So by then I was seeing Ruth Gerson, Dave's True Story, Golden Carillo, and Valentine Smith whenever they played. They played in venues that for the most part had no or only a small cover charge so it wasn't a major success. As they were tiny venues and I went to so many shows they all got to know me. This is the era when I started to become the person that so many of you first knew me as.
So now we are in the mid-nineties and without making a conscious effort to do so I had become a live music junkie. I'll pick up the story here tomorrow.
I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.
Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
Wise Madness is Now In Session - May 28, 2018
The NFL and the First Amendment - May 27, 2018
On The Road Again - May 26, 2018
Oliver the Three-Eyed Crow - May 25, 2018
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Horvendile February 09, 2008
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