#i have misplaced my music stand though so. sax will have to wait

[vagueconfusion]

anyways i work the next three nights bed time

[whendidyou-leaveheaven]

Like I like My Whiskey...

[a self indulgent stucky emotions short piece]

“I like my men like I like my whiskey,” Bucky says, a smile curving into the corner of his cheek like the curl of a wood whorl off of a bevel, that smile just a chip off the block, “aged and mellow.” His eyes are playful but private, quiet but lively.

“I can give ya aged but I don’t know about mellow, pal,” Steve says, closer to giggling than he ever is in any other circumstance. Bucky brings it out in him, that giddiness that smarts of his youth.

They’re both leaning on the polished but worn wood edge of the last bar in Brooklyn that survived the century and the nostalgia is rich. Steve has to resist running his hand over the old wood in pure affection. Old things evoke a kind of appreciation he can’t explain.

Bucky looks just like he did the day they made him ship out with that mahogany hair tucked behind his ears. He’s got a smile on his face that just won’t leave. Steve hasn’t seen him smile in weeks, but now they’re alone and tucked back into this small crevice of the city where time almost stands still and Steve...his heart feels like the last seventy years maybe didn’t happen. Maybe Bucky just pulled him up out of the alley and he’s never fought a war in his life. Everyone else is background noise. Everyone else is so young. They’re misplaced in time but the music is almost right. He’s been searching for the right jazz bar, anywhere that still has that feeling. He probably won’t ever find it again. Some things just don’t persevere. In fact most things don’t. Haven’t. But thank god he’s got one thing that does. He’s got Bucky now. Bucky is wearing some grey t-shirt and black jeans instead of a navy green military uniform but that face still fits the picture.

There’s a vintage piano piece playing and Bucky tips his face up listening. “Hey… I know this one,” he says. “C’mon cap’n, let’s dance.” He’s telling Steve, he ain’t asking.

Steve can’t remember what they were even talking about. Or why Bucky mentioned how he liked his men. His men being Steve? Steve must be his only man. After all, who the hell else could he be talking about?

They have to drink like fish, a whole school of them, to get drunk these days. Steve used to be the biggest lightweight on the entire planet. Bucky used to drink until he woke up smelling soaked to the bone in whiskey but now they both have to drink hard liquor like water to feel it at all. But they prepared for this earlier, (what do they call it these days ? Pre-gaming?) and they’re both a little drunk for once, god bless. Only Thor really got that, the superhuman resilience to alcohol bit, until Bucky came back. Bucky came back…

Steve is too involved in Bucky to worry about what anyone around them might think. It’s not a simple thing, to overcome the fear of prejudice. But no one in their right mind would try and beat him up now. It seemed hard at first and then after everything else he dealt with coming out of that ice, it seemed like nothing. It just didn’t matter. He had problems that were so much bigger than a look someone might cast his way. And Bucky was so much bigger than any pitiful little fear. Bucky, brave and smiling and waiting for him to get off his damn stool and dance with him… they’d never danced. He was a little drunk. Bucky was a little more drunk, perhaps. Bucky had asked all their girls to dance. Steve had always stood on the sidelines. Once upon a time he thought he wished those girls would have asked him. And then when they did, he realized it wasn’t really them he wanted to be asking. It only took a hundred years for him to wise up. What was a century anyway when this man was smiling at him like that, biting his lip? Still doing that thing. Still licking his bottom lip and holding it between his teeth with that look like he was thinking real hard about something. And his eyes were on Steve.

“Well come on!” Bucky urges. He’s not standing there for nothing.

Steve shakes his head but stops looking at his best friend and gets his butt up.

The room is small. It’s a little hole in the wall of a place but they still have live music sometimes and it’s enough, enough room to get by and to stand the test of time.

Steve takes a look around finally, out of curiosity, and they’re mostly alone. And if two men are dancing here in this tiny corner of New York no one really cares now. But him.

Bucky’s arm slides around Steve’s waist as soon as he gets close and it could just be a gag, just for fun. Even though Steve is feeling some way he hasn’t felt in years. In forever. It has been a long time since Bucky’s thrown an arm around him. Like this, or over his shoulder, and not when they were struggling to get across the battlefield, the only thing keeping them up being each other’s arms. This is something different, and also familiar. Steve is nearly taller now than Bucky but-

the music is slow, almost too slow to dance to. Bucky has to move in closer, he pulls Steve nearer until they are hip to hip. He seems more loose than usual, more carefree. But the more loose and carefree he becomes the more warm Steve feels, the more he can't stop. Can’t stop staring.

“I gotta tell ‘em. These lilly young studs just don’t do it for me.”

Steve blinks and tries to sober himself. He’s been staring at Bucky’s face and not hearing what he's saying. “Yeah,” he says, breathing in deep and feeling Bucky’s chest touch his with the inhale. He can almost smell the cold water brine and the iron if he reaches for it; the way Buck used to smell at the end of a long day. After he came home from work.

His hand is on Bucky’s shoulder. Friendly and harmless but -

“You seem pretty mellow to me.”

“You’re just drunk.”

“I can’t get drunk.”

“If I can get drunk you can get drunk.”

“Yeah right, you’ve always been a lightweight. I can drink ten times as much as you.”

Steve gives him a look of pending protest but he ends up just shaking his head and saying nothing because Bucky is right. Bucky's had to carry him home practically any time they had ever gone out drinking. And Bucky looks so happy, for once, finally, he is smiling so much it’s all Steve can think about. “It’s nice to see you smile, Buck,” Steve says. It feels like a mistake instantly, because the smile leaves Bucky's face, like he’d just remembered where he was. Here in the twentieth century on the seedy side of Brooklyn and not in the smoky familiar proletariat bar of 1941.

“I mean, it makes me feel like everything's like it was,” Steve says. He wants to bring the smile back. But he doesn’t have to wait too long. Bucky’s smile returns naturally on its own as he watches Steve, but he’s grown quiet. And they are pressed close now. He feels Bucky’s arm tighten around his waist. He doesn’t even try not to press his hips to Steve’s. He holds them closer, body to body.

Steve moves his hand down Bucky’s right arm until their hands meet and he presses his hand into Bucky’s, feeling every finger between his own. Now it’s like they’re dancing. Slow dancing for real. The way you’re supposed to do it.

“Nothing’s like it was,” Bucky whispers. His mouth is close to Steve’s jaw . He leans forward so that his head is side by side with Steve's.

“Buck…”

“It’s alright.”

After a too-long silence with the sound of an old trombone and sax squealing into the dusky space and Bucky’s warmth gathering in his skin Steve moves back just so he can see Bucky’s face again. He makes his voice light and teasing. “You haven’t aged a day.” This has the desired effect. Bucky’s eyes crinkle at the corners and he smiles again. “I bet you say that to all the girls,” he jabs.

Steve lets himself laugh. A real laugh showing his teeth and letting himself feel it.

They dance like that for a while and Steve could stay that way forever if he wasn’t afraid Bucky would get bored of it. But he doesn’t sound bored when he finally speaks again. He sounds tired and a little fragile and like all the longing in the world has been hiding under his tongue this whole time and Steve somehow missed that. And he sounds like he trusts Steve, with it, with him. “Steve...”

Steve squeezes him tighter, probably too tight. “Yeah?”

“Let’s go home.”

[theloniousbach]

Fifty Years of Going to Shows, Pt. 1: The First Decade in Kansas City (mostly)

A photo of a flyer of Led Zeppelin’s 11/3/69 show at Memorial Hal in Kansas City, Kansas, showed up in my FB feed.  I was there; it was my second concert; and I was 14 years and 6 weeks old.  So the first one, Johnny Winter, was somewhere in the late summer or fall before then.  I declared the 9/4/19 Hot Tuna show as the 50th Anniversary but that’s not strictly accurate.  It will do just fine though.

It prompts this series of reminiscences of the magic of live music in my life.  That was the intoxicant (well, except for that Jefferson Airplane show in October 1970), but it still has been addictive.  But--and this is speaking as a Deadhead--seeing the show has always been more important than the party.  I’ve only recently taken to writing my souvenirs and even setlist curation came along later, thanks to the Dead.But I do have these memories and will indulge myself with a series of souvenirs.That Johnny Winter show got my hooked (blues, guitar solos on top of guitar solos, and loud).  Winter slid along the stage in a trance; I somehow even recall a purple velvet jacket setting off his long white hair.  Brother Edgar came out to play organ, including on an extended “Tobacco Road” that was part of the show in those days.  I would see Winter again a couple of times in KC, mostly with And, made up of Rick Derringer and other members of the McCoys.  Those were more rock’n’roll (hoochie koo, don’t you know) than deep blues but he was a hell of a player.  He was here in St. Louis just a few months before he died.  I considered going but didn’t and so missed closing that circle.

That Led Zeppelin show sucked.  It was short, they used borrowed equipment, and Bonham was drunk and knocked over a cymbal stand more than once.  

Somehow I wasn’t deterred.Memorial Hall--3500 seats maybe, also home to professional wrestling--was the primary venue for my very early days in the 1970s.  Show <5 was Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, including Eric Clapton.  That was my only time to see him and it was right at the time when he just wanted to be a member of a band.  So, he did do “Crossroads” as a showcase but he was restrained and tasty, dammit.  I wish I knew their repertoire and appreciated how those players were interchangeable on albums by Dave Mason, George Harrison, Joe Cocker, and again with Clapton including in Derek and the Dominoes.

We snuck in there to see the end of BB King’s set one night and wished we’d paid for the whole show.  This was pre-celebrity days, so it was a Black crowd and I have to think the show was better for it.

Memorial Hall is also where I sort of saw Jefferson Airplane, hampered by empty stomach excitement, Ripple, and brownies.  At the same time, though I felt very small and the music was very loud, it is the 10/24/70 set list that survives that is the one I remember.  So maybe I wasn’t as brownied as I thought.  The “We Can Be Together>Volunteers” opener was striking and “The Fat Angel” (Casady on a droning rhythm guitar) was hypnotic.  It was enough though to shift exclusively to booze and keep my head at shows.

I also recall a wonderful Dicky (well, actually, Richard for this tour) Betts show with a large band that did bluegrass and country (Vassar Clements was in the band, but I think there were some horns) as well as blues and rock and a gigantic “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.”

My one bit of the Dead early was seeing the New Riders of the Purple Sage with Loggins and Messina as a warm up act.  It was an actual date with an actual young woman and, though I saw her for a while more, I was a bit too transfixed by the music.  Misplaced priorities.  I saw Loggins and Messina another time in that venue and the horn section was particularly developed in making the tunes so unique.  A middle show along the lines of their live double album with the wonderfully jammed out “Vahevala” was perhaps elsewhere (I nominate Cowtown Ballroom of which I will say more shortly).

Bonnie Raitt with Jackson Browne was a good pairing, though she was better.  And there was  Poco still doing the core repertoire with that long jam tune that came from Messina and relied on Rusty Grantham pulling magic out of the pedal steel.

I did finally the Grateful Dead in that good old hall twice in 1972 and once in 1977, but there is at least one separate installment on that universe to come.

But what a place!

Cowtown Ballroom, an old skating rink, run by a veteran of Bill Graham’s operation was a slightly later haunt.  It stands  out for 11 pm Hot Tuna shows that went on and on.  That was my regular taste of San Francisco.  Loud, loud, loud and maybe too jammy.  That is, I sensed that between Jorma jamming on and Papa John Creach’s fiddle, poor Jack Casady had to play three dimensional chess to anticipate the note that would pull it altogether.  It was brilliant but not a powerful as him at full throttle.  Still I loved those shows for the promise of the possibilities

The other Cowtown act was the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in the classic “Uncle Charlie and His Dog Teddy” quintet, doing Kenny Loggins songs before he was Kenny Loggins, all sorts of roots music before that’s what we called it, and great versatility with some jaw dropping fiddle excursion and/or with other instruments from John McEuen.  Now their warm up act for 4 shows in 14 months was a comedian named Steve Martin who was really funny the first time and I wanted my friends to hear it the second time.  By the third time, it was stale.  By the fourth time, I started doing punch lines ahead of him first to my friends and then to a wider circle.  I was getting his laughs from 20-30 people just enough of the rest of the crowd to throw off the rhythm.

But, I’d go to lots of Cowtown shows: Badfinger (Beatle tinged, but not the Fabs themselves, and I’ve never seen any of them, not Macca nor even Ringo’s All Starr revue), the KC Symphony playing on the floor to reach a new audience.   Zappa twice--with Flo and Eddie in the band and Steely Dan on its first tour (Zappa was sneering) and the Waka Jawaka big horn section show--enough to convince me that he was quite a guitar player.

Freedom Palace was another venue for a while, bigger than Cowtown, maybe even than Memorial Hall.  It was certainly easier to spread out in.  I remember it for guitar shows, Johnny Winter And and Mountain.

Municipal Auditorium was the big venue of 12,000.  It was cavernous and sound wasn’t good in those days.  Stephen Stills on the tour that included a set with the Memphis Horns was a little clunky.  Neil Young supporting Harvest was better in the same space, but it wasn’t Crazy Horse.  Crosby and Nash were next door in the Orchestra Hall and they were magical with the same show as “Just Another Stoney Night.”  Crosby wisecracked (except there was a standard bit of interchangeable patter it turns out) and the acoustic guitars rang over glorious vocals on the key parts of that fabulous repertoire. I saw Crosby and Nash with Jeff Pevar in Pittsburgh courtesy of Ellen’s brother in the 1980s and that was pretty special.  

But I saw all 4 as part of that groundbreaking 1974 tour, one of the first big Bill Graham national tours.  Jesse Colin Young and then the Beach Boys opened fabulously.  The churning guitars from a dark stage hinting at a tune that I couldn’t quite place before Bam! lights on and it’s “Love the One You’re With” is as dramatic as anything I’ve seen.

I need to get back to Municipal Auditorium but let me stay outside for a lackluster Allman Brothers Band show with the Brothers and Sisters line up.  Dicky at least, possibly Gregg too seemed off and maybe Chuck Leavell hadn’t quite found his place.  But that was a hard time for that band.  Over at the football stadium, the Rolling Stones did not deploy the inflatable phallus for us in 1975 but they kicked it out hard following Chaka Khan and The Eagles as openers.  Jagger’s energy was amazing and Keef had that band, including Billy Preston on keys and at least Bobby Keys on sax, able to turn on a dime.

Okay, I had learned the Municipal Auditorium lesson and knew to sit on the floor as close as possible.  That worked on back to back nights for Stevie Wonder the first night for a heavy “Innervisions/Talking Book” set list with maybe some of “Fulfillingness First Finale” songs being road tested.  It was funky and loose for us hippies but the Motown professionalism was something to behold.  The next night was Weather Report for the first time, Jaco was there but more restrained than a later show at an old movie theater, The Midland.”  Opening for Weather Report was a Richard Thompson-less Airport Convention.  But Dave Swarbrick was leading the festivities and I mentioned this show to him when he was at Focal Point here in St. Louis with Martin Carthy.  It is both true that he barely remembered it but that, yes, it was weird.  I wish I paid more attention.

Besides Weather Report later at the Midland, I best remember there a strong strong Little Feat show building on the momentum of “Waiting for Columbus.”  I guess Lowell George was not that happy then, but that was one of my favorite eras for the band with a double jointed rhythm with guitars, keys, and George’s voice sailing over it all.  For both shows, I was sitting fairly high overlooking the banks of keyboards Joe Zawinul and then Billy Payne had deployed.  My favorite Weather Report era actually is with Alphonso Johnson rather than Jaco, so the earlier show at Municipal Auditorium suited me better.  Jaco’s flash was still unique and “Birdland” was catchy not an ear worm, but on the whole Wayne Shorter was given less and less space.  Still, Shorter and Zawinul together on “Badia” or even “In a Silent Way” leading into “Boogie Woogie Waltz” was a high point at both shows.

Since I’m fusioning, I liked Chick Corea’s Return to Forever tour in support of “Romantic Warrior.”  Though Stanley Clarke showcased “Bass Folk Song” mostly solo and the acoustic but bombastic “Romantic Warrior” grabbed me more than guitar, piano, synthesizer surges.

I saw two Headhunters shows from Herbie Hancock with lots of rhythmic fun/k and even pyrotechnics.  He couldn’t help but play beautiful Fender Rhodes.  But what I really liked was seeing the Mwandishi band at a proper jazz club with sit down dinner courtesy of a friend’s parents.  That band had all the fusion elements, rhythm and electronics, but there were three horns for Hancock to arrange and an acoustic piano so that he could work into and out of “Maiden Voyage.”  

One of my most favorite shows ever but obscure as can be was somewhat fusion-y, The Jerry Hahn Brotherhood playing to 100 people max in a funny little venue in a converted dry cleaner establishment near 39th and Main in Kansas City.  Hahn had played with Gary Burton after Larry Coryell but before Pat Metheny and had been at Monterey with John Handy.  He was playing a Les Paul in overalls and grew a beard.  Mel Graves, bass, and George Marsh, drums and who showed up with David Grisman in the 1990s, were also jazzers gone to seed.  Hahn was from Wichita and they hooked up with an organist/singer who played with Dave Mason and then the 1980s Crosby Stills and Nash named Mike Finigan.  He had been in a Lawrence, KS, band with Lane Tietgen who had a batch of countryish songs that nonetheless had both clever words and similar spaces for soloing.  I was captivated and saw them two nights in a row.  Only a few of us in the world ever saw them, but they were an amazing amalgam of sounds.

I had to leave town to see Bob Dylan, but see him I did by going over to St. Louis to see him on that stunning tour with The Band.  They’d settled into them opening and closing the first set together with a The Band interlude.  The second set was Dylan acoustic, the Band, and then a burning ending.  I recall that our show got “Desolation Row” in the slot that often went to “It’s All Right Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” so that was a treat.  But, the key songs from both of them were there.  I saw a 1979 show in Chicago courtesy of a friend there, a more sprawling set and band, plus more songs from albums I didn’t know as well.  I wasn’t drawn back into the Dylan universe then and really haven’t been back.  I did see a couple of Never Ending Tour shows--2004 and 2007 with Elvis Costello--but I am once again in the midst of passing on what could be my last chance to see such a seminal influence.

But I have my memories.  Dylan and others are part of this first decade of listening.  I never saw a Beatle or Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell or Van Morrison.  But I did get into this game when giants walked the earth.

So I have my memories.

Next, probably, more jazz and fusion in KC and Chicago; Focal Point and its predecessors; jam bands; separately, the Grateful Dead cosmos; and jazz recently.  Possibly, European Tradition Art Music (lobbying for this as more accurate than “classical” because only a small part of the tradition is Classical)