8:38 a.m. - 2023-10-22
tree fallin'

There's a register of “known-spots” among urban subcultures, houses where the lease gets passed down through the scene whenever someone moves on. These cribs typically share a few traits: a laissez-faire (i.e. absentee/negligent) landlord, low-rent, and neighbors even less inclined to call the police than you are. They're like frat-houses, kinda, for people who never matriculate into adulthood proper...

That characterization certainly held for a majority of my dude-friends in our thirties, especially-so for the musicians. And the house in Hollywood hosting the party that evening was definitely a known-spot. Dilapidating gloriously behind a dense, untended tangle of foliage; it was a quirky bungalow constructed, to my builder's eye, no later than the mid-fifties. The residence occupied the rear corner of a large lot, and directly across from it sat another structure. This had been split into a single-car garage and a building-length room w/a densely fenestrated window-wall; but had served as a locksmith's shop in a previous life. I'd discover evidence of this while insulating the garage, a project undertaken to accommodate the revolving cast of ancillary roommates, and one I completed unawares that I'd be inking my own name in the guest-book but a scant year later, after Angela gave me the boot (again).

There were termites and exploding water pipes, the front room (where my guitar player lived) smelled like dirty socks, spilt beer and bongwater, and I pulled a dead, chihuahua-sized rat out of the kitchen wall once...but the place grew on you. It had the kind of character that appeals to a certain kind of character, and when you turned on the christmas lights in the courtyard and stoked the fire-pit; when a keg was freshly tapped and a crowd of friends gathered as still-more were parking, bumper-to-butt, in the yard...the joint could lay claim to a gritty magic. Because the spirit of the neighborhood itself was ever-tangible. The tranny hookers down on Santa Monica, shouting at tricks as they circled the block, the Armenian gangster next door yelling at his kids or his pit-bulls or being scolded in-kind by his wife; the thrum of expectantly idling weekend traffic, snaking through Hollywood and pressing, inbound, on highways from every direction...the ubiquitous keening of sirens and the sound of police helicopters, thump-thump-thumping like the combustible heartbeat of Los Angeles itself.

It was on one of those nights, at one of those parties, as things were gearing up and folks were tuning their guitars around the fire, that Foss poked his head through the patio entrance.

“Y’all got anything besides beer here? My friend Harry only drinks hard liquor.”

~ ~ ~

Every scene has a Foss, I think, and ours boasted a few; but Foss' commitment to the character was so complete that I named the role after him. What might this role entail, you ask? And how'd he play it?

Well...to say his manner was “studied” seems a disservice to the man's genuine likeability and natural talent, but aspects of Foss' mien certainly made plain his influences. His pork-pie hat was always tilted to the left, while a cigarette dangled ever-starboard at a complimentary angle, and his lackadaisical delivery belied the fact that his jokes always started on the “one” and landed neatly on the “three”... I was stoned at a party once, listening to him hold-forth, when it hit me: it's as if Foss had watched every early Tom Waits TV interview, multiple times, taking notes all the while. And like his presumptive role model, Foss-too had an encyclopedic knowledge of his influences. Dylan lyrics and Kerouac novels, Bukowski and Fante and Leonard Cohen...the scope of his focus was specific, but the depth of inquiry was exhaustive. My theory of Foss as a self-styled post-beatnik, living in a world full of hipsters and ravers and tattooed metal types, gained credence when I saw the floor-to-ceiling shelves of books and classic vinyl in his humble loft-apt.

The other key to being Foss, to immersing oneself completely in the role, involved maintaining an air of mystery. Vanishing for weeks before turning up at a keg party w/Harry Dean Stanton in-tow, for example. On another occasion I was informed that he'd left town to perform at Hunter S. Thompson's funeral (because of course he did), and planned to hop a freight train home from Colorado. Sometimes he'd just been “bumming around back East” I'd be told with a grin and a shrug from the man himself. And like so many personal details w/Foss, I never followed up. Perhaps I preferred the myth in-toto? He was the only one of us without a day job after all (at least not one he ever mentioned). Never flush, never destitute; the dude just seemed to Foss-by somehow...

I'd had friends in the past who would submerge, likewise, before resurfacing weeks later with this same sort of blinky indifference to time and responsibility, and based on those experiences I began to wonder: might Foss might be that rarest of narcotic unicorns, a functional heroin addict? I never shared this suspicion with anyone of course...because while it's relevant in the context of my first-person impression, it was never important re: the esteem in which I held his character. Because the key word was “functional”. I mean, how singular is the junkie who could show up any given Sunday and play six straight hours of (comically) competitive beach volleyball w/the rest of our crew?

~ ~ ~

It seems he'd cut together a video for one of Foss' new songs, and done a bang-up job in my estimation. McCarty's own knowledge of rock history is as encyclopedic as his “client's”; something he's put on display here with a barrage of clips from classic performers. And the result suits the tune (a straightforward barroom rocker) neatly. Interspersed with these are shots from one of McCarty's student films, which involved renting a pony and rolling tape as Foss led it along the streets of Echo Park, navigating a series of misadventures. These snapshots from that halcyon period, combined with the fact that Foss' voice is, in my memory, indelibly associated with barbeques and beach bonfires from the same era inform my admittedly-subjective appreciation of it all.

Which is to say: I'm not posting this as a music-rec. (Because if I were to begin writing about music per-se here; praising personal faves and elaborating at length on-topic, this jackrabbit would be digging redundant holes in the tunnel-ridden opinion-plains of the internet, instead of nibbling on the tender green blades of introspection we nurture here in our secret garden.) I shared this only to illustrate something in the lyric that spoke to me about where I'm at now with songwriting, written by someone w/whom I long-ago bonded over our mutual pursuit of the craft.

"Nostalgia ain't what it used to be" is a knockout line, a Yogi Berra-ism that hints at a more complicated truth and pulls the first verse into focus...while "I've only got the disease, not the poetry", speaks directly to my own struggles-with and doubts-about music. It also re-frames the chorus' tag-line as less of a strident assertion than desperate internal pep talk, delivered with an implicit question mark. I've been turning that chorus over in the back of my head for months now--'cause it's catchy and, to me, bittersweet.

Because I'm not a “rock and roll threat” anymore.

~ ~ ~

Well...I cleared space on my music desk recently, and have been casting guilty glances in that direction all week. It's “the thing” I choreographed that painstaking tap-dance around several entries back--this idea of recording again. Because the “new” record has been written, in-full, for going-on four years now.

Hence my return to long-form dithering here in our obscure digital backwater, seated at my “grown-up” work desk; a way to occupy the two creative time-windows I crack daily to air-out my stifling skull (once while caffeinated from 3-7AM...again when properly lubricated in the afternoon). Wash, rinse, repeat. Time that should really be spent in headphones, set before a microphone as the recording-light burns.

Other long-open projects fester: the outline for a script, a cable TV series pitch, and a completely unwarranted-but-flattering invitation to hang at a local gallery. Each of which I've been neglecting as well, despite the fact that they're all less-fraught with anxiety than the prospect of setting these tunes to tape. An anxiety that, for a project w/zero commercial incentive and an audience commensurate with my readership here, has proved paralyzing. Perhaps because it begs the question, “what's the point?”.

Creating art in a vacuum, for its own sake, is a curious undertaking...the existential implications of which become obvious at my age. Time grows more precious as the sands of the hourglass quicken, and you have to ask yourself if this is truly how you want to invest it, or if it's all some tragic compulsion you can't seem to shake. The hackneyed “If a tree falls in the woods...” koan seems appropriate here as well: since no one hears my music, does it have “meaning”? Or am I, in fact,“the tree”? Falling alone in the woods for the last 15 years? And my songwriting a sad attempt to make a sound?

~ ~ ~

Sounds like I'm putting it off, doesn't it? Moving over to the dusty ol' music desk and firing up Pro-Tools for the first time in five years? Sigh, fuck it--I'll hit “post” then, and see if my guitar's in tune...

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