RBH Podcasts Skewed by Evil

The tech wizards at The House of Sound are apparently unable to solve the problem of my podcasts being shortened to an hour following each show. One theory is that a hacker may be involved--a vendetta-weirdo lashing out at HOS and RBH?

I know some people who might want to destroy my show, but they don't have hacking skills. They don't really have any skills at all...

Ha!

It's just four hours to the kickoff of tonight's Oregon/UCLA tussle in Eugene. I wonder if I'll watch it? Oh, might as well. Even though I should be working on a book or cleaning my pad.

Several good things brewing on the fringe, several not so good. We'll play it as it lays, I guess.

TS

Akeem Ayers a Game Changer

If Oregon can neutralize this guy (#10), the Ducks win tomorrow night. If not, I give UCLA a shot because Akeem Ayers is the best linebacker/defender in the PAC.

The pic shows Ayers intercepting Nate Costa in the end zone last year. Point blank, this play is usually a knock down. They're mere feet apart. Somehow Ayers caught the ball. Stunning.

Alas, it was UCLA's only TD, and Oregon won the game.


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Mercenary Song

Start 'em young and sing along.


Mercenary Song

by Steve Earle

[G] Me and old Bill there we both come from Georgia
Met Hank down in [D] New Mexico [G]
We're [G] bound for Durango to join Pancho Villa
We hear that he's [D] paying in [G] gold

I guess a man's got to do what he's best at
Ain't found nothing better so far
Been called mercenaries and men with no country
Just soldiers in search of a war

CHORUS

We're [C] bound for the border
We're [G] soldiers of fortune
We'll [D] fight for no country
But we'll [G] die for good pay
[C] Under the flag of the [G] greenback dollar
Or the peso down [D] Mexico [G] way

When this way is over, I might go back to Georgia
And settle down quiet somewhere
I'll most likely pack up and head south for Chile
Hear tell there's some trouble down there

REPEAT CHORUS TWICE

Questionably Real

How do you like my new header panorama?

The perfect metaphor for Round Bend Press--questionably real, desolate, and despoiled by technology.

Yep...

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Lonnie Johnson

Number one on the play list for Sunday's Round Bend Hour, I plan to play selections from the Complete Folkways Recordings of Lonnie Johnson, whose writing often transcended the usual cliched emotions of blues lyrics. Here he flirts with misogyny.

Men, if you single, pray to God you stay that way
Men, if you single, pray to God you stay that way
'Cause women don't want a good man, only
To pass the time away.

And,

You can give a woman plenty diamonds
you can dress her from her head on down
You can give a woman plenty diamonds,
You can dress her from her head on down
She tell everybody she got a fool,
It's the talk of the town.

I'd call it honesty, rather than misogyny. Just an opinion.

See and listen here.


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Mixed Bag

(Left) Chris Pilon

Yesterday was a recovery day. Sunday's Round Bend Hour was a tribute to a friend who passed away in March and, honestly, the job of trying to talk about my friendship with Roger was difficult. Given I've had more trouble finding my "radio voice" than I anticipated before starting this gig, the show was arduous for a couple of reasons.

Still, I think parts of the show went well. I liked my intro for the most part, and my closing comments. In between, I had the usual array of didn't-see-it-coming moments, as when for some reason I'm unqualified to understand, the CD decks (2) in studio stopped playing, inexplicably, after every track. So I had to reset the damnable things after each tune. A hassle, and the first time in five shows that this has happened. And to top it off, I didn't figure out the problem until I was well into the program. Thus, my selection of cello compositions went underplayed as I fiddled about and went automatic with iTunes set to play:

James Brown. Give me a break. The most overrated act in the history of pop music!

I'm afraid the learning curve is sagging somewhat. Oh, well...

One nice occurrence during the show: Chris Pilon, a friend and stormwatcher living in Houston, listened in. He called during the show. Unfortunately I couldn't patch him into the broadcast because we aren't set up in studio to do that just yet. Chris said he was relaxing with a sore back, thinking about the old days with Roger, sipping wine and eating vicodin. Perfect.

It's good to hear CD is wrapping up the feature he's been slaving over for the past couple of months. He plans to show it at the Blackbird Wine Shop in Northeast Portland the evening of November 10.

Follow his blog the next couple of weeks for more info. I'll post something here as well. I have to see the movie before he edits my cameo out, which I know he's planning to do because he can.

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In Memoriam

Today's Round Bend Hour is dedicated to the memory of Roger Blakely III.

Beethoven Cello Sonatas, performed by Daniel Mueller-Schott and Angela Hewitt.
Cello Sonata in F major Op 5 No. 1,
Cello Sonata in G minor, Op 5 No. 2
Cello Sonata in A major Op 69

Solo guitar, Paulo Bellinati (a felicidade)

Wagner
Mozart

Others, time permitting.


http://houseofsound.org at 2 p.m. Pacific


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Cover

The newest Round Bend Press publication.

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Cold Eye Anthology Ready

By nightfall, Cold Eye: A Generation of Voices should be up at http://lulu.com/. I'm happy to finally have finished this project (unless little problems emerge, which they usually do.) It was fifteen years in the making, and only became doable with the advent of POD.

Thanks lulu. Thanks all you genius web developers and imaginative folks out there who actually contribute something of value to society. (There is a school of thought that says POD sites are a menace to writing and publishing, a school run by Random House, Knopf and their ilk, along with their snooty clan of sycophants.)

Fuck them.

Cold Eye is a nice 70 page tribute to the writers, many of whom still live in Portland, whose work I published over thirty years ago in a small tabloid newspaper in Northwest Portland. It includes three interviews, with Katherine Dunn, Walt Curtis and James Bash, fourteen poems, and a short story by Mark Wilson.

I hope this book finds its way into the public consciousness some way. The writers were, many years ago, mostly young. They had talent and a real desire to say something of significance, and they took poetry very seriously. Their efforts ought to be recognized.

The above photo by Idaho photographer, Lee Santa, is on the book's cover.

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Cello Music, Sunday

Round Bend Hour this Sunday will be a special tribute program of classical music in memory of Roger Blakely III, a friend of mine who passed away in late March. Roger loved and played the cello, so expect a lot of cello sounds.

The RBH begins at 2 p.m. at http://houseofsound.org/,

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Cold Eye Anthology Nearly Ready

At left, KC Bacon in his gallery in Tacoma. Below, the artist's studio with canvases.

Speaking of which, I have finished a draft of Cold Eye, the anthology of 1978 Portland writing I've been contemplating for fifteen years now.

Just goes to show. Never give up on an idea, particularly a good one. In this modern era, when publishing is easier than a-b-c, this project became a natural. The book has fourteen fine poems in it, and great interviews with some of Portland's best writers, who were young at the time, but doing their part among Portland's vast community, even then, of writers.

K.C. wrote a fine intro for the book, as he helped shape it years ago and at one point thought about publishing it through his Irvington Press.

I'll put it up at http://lulu.com/ in a few days.

TS

George B. Moore

This is perhaps the finest poem that will appear in the Cold Eye anthology now under construction here in the teeming offices of Round Bend Press.

It is from George B. Moore. At the time of this submission, in 1978, Moore waited tables at Jake's Famous Crawfish Restaurant in Portland. He was a classy, mustachioed expert who carried himself with the grace only the best waiters can exhibit in the hectic atmosphere of a crowded restaurant.

George likely did very, very well for himself as a waiter. But he had greater ambition. The last I heard, Mr. Moore was working at Colorado State, in the English Department, dispensing his wise thoughts on poetics.

You'll understand how that came to be after reading this:


Poem from a Map, National Geographic Society 1962

Brazil stands dark
in the lettering of the Midwest,
as if somewhere out beyond the Amazon
there is corn
and fields of freshly cultivated earth
muddied rich with the tropic rains
and now anxious to produce.
The high plateau of the Mato Grosso
does not appear as vast and
unpopulated here,
it simply rises up out of the paper
already yellowed and antiquated
as each thin blue line.
The once true tributaries are now lies
not fabrications but good histories
that have changed.
Argentina is blue
and though the printer may never
have felt it, feels cold
and as easily European as assassination.
Now as then, her lines are not lies
but difficult rumors and reflections
of the truth.
We are going down to Rio
from the banana farms of Suriname,
by boat as far as Belem
and then by small plane, flying low
like scavengers over
the open arteries of the jungle.
The waterways are scars
we follow to the blade
and the source of steel
even when old and often vanished.
To sense the full flatness of our map
we plot with blind fingers
and run the risk of madness at the thought
of being lost, or those of strangulation
in these breathing interwoven spaces.
Soon, however, our skins begin to crawl
with the crowded populations
of the eastern coast.
We circumscribe the bad of Guanabara
and land. In long days
of transport our eyes have grown
to near the size of this huge
red Brazilian sun,
great orbs glazed in savage witness
and burned by the irons of memory:
The green, like a sea
the land hissing there is no softness here
only growth.

George B. Moore

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She's Funny that Way

I just typed up a draft of Mark Wilson's 1978 short short story "She's Funny That Way," which will appear in my Cold Eye anthology.

This is an odd story, full of wistful longing and humor, and it has a somewhat surprising twist at the end. It's a simple story on one hand, but it reverberates with a somewhat surreal dislocation as well.


She’s Funny that Way
By Mark Wilson

When I saw her I thought how she would look in blue. Her hair was so blond it was almost white. Enormous sky-blue eyes. She was wearing pants and dirty white tennis shoes. Taking long strides, she was climbing a short hill next to a white bungalow, Ohio Street, Lawrence, Kansas. It was spring.

That wasn’t the first time I saw her. The first time I was sitting in a window booth at the Rock Chalk Café. A beer joint in Lawrence, Kansas. Just off the campus of Kansas University. Kansas University sits astride a hill. In the whole of Eastern Kansas there are many hills. A few rivers. Lots of woods and fields. It’s rural.

It was a warm day in March. I first saw her through the plate glass window of the Rock Chalk Café. She wasn’t wearing any shoes that day. Her feet were dirty. I noticed she had no front teeth. She was smiling at me through the window. She stuck out her tongue. I was drinking a beer.

The next time I saw her it wasn’t her. I thought it was her. She came out of the Pam-Pam East all night coffee shop at Geary & Mason. I was sitting on the cab stand drinking coffee, waiting. She got in and she wanted to go out to Geary & Masonic. When she got in the interior of the cab filled with an animal essence. I smelled her. But it was a quiet animal. And sweet. That’s why I thought it was her. All the way out Geary I was thinking of something to say and when was the right moment. But I kept quiet and drove. When we got to the address I switched on the dome light, turned around and looked at her. The meter read $3.40. She had hair so blonde it was almost white. Enormous blue eyes. She wore several rings on long tapered fingers. She was wearing blue. All the way out Geary I had breathed in the quiet animal essence. It was sweet. I thought it was her. But when I looked at her in the cablight—although she appeared as Beauty Incarnate—it wasn’t her. She gave me a 5 and got out. She knew I thought it was her. But she knew she wasn’t her. And I was a cab driver. I started to sing the “cab driver blues,” which is a lot like the “busboy blues.” But I stopped and thought why should I?

I saw her once when I was riding my bike. I was cruising along Ohio Street, Lawrence, Kansas. She was sitting on the handle bars looking straight ahead. We had just come from Safeway where I’d bought her some Milk Duds. For a treat.

Now if it is possible, there are some occasions in life’s moment in which one may wish to spend Eternity.

That day—it was summer and the foliage was out and the world was green—riding a bike with a 6 year-old angel on the handle bars. This is where I wasn’t to spend Eternity.

From year to year I catch glimpses of her. Most times she doesn’t see me. She’s busy or tired or thinking. Riding the bus or passing along the street.

But I do remember seeing her at a barbecue. Her mother approached me. I was sitting on the steps wearing a crew-cut and a Mickey Mouse tee-shirt, drinking wine. I wasn’t wearing shoes that day. It was summer. My feet were dirty. Her mother, Delia, says to me, “Pinasco (that was my name then), are you in love with Toop?”
I says, “yes.”
Delia says, “you know you’ve got about 20 years on her.”
“Yes and they could put me in jail for it.”
Delia says, “they could put me in jail for being her mother.”
“She’s funny that way,” I says.

The next year was bleak. She had gone to Paris to live with her dad. I was living in Lincoln, Nebraska. Delia was living there with her son, Elf. Delia was an anthropology grad student. I was working for an OEO poverty program. Oh, Delia!

I saw Toop again. She came over to America to visit her mom and brother. In Paris, her dad had given her a haircut. She was a year older and her hair had begun to turn brown.

We walked up to the campus, University of Nebraska. I gave her a piggy back ride, like I used to. We got an ice-cream cone. We walked back. It was summer. Trees hanging out over the street. She danced down the street throwing bouquets of light and laughter into the shadows. When we got to her house she ran inside. At the door she turned and looked at me. Right in the eye.

“See you, Pinasco,” she says.

I couldn’t say anything. I was paralyzed. I loved her. She was headed back to Paris the next day. Her front teeth had come in. She was beginning to have an identity. Soon boys would be coming around. She was gone.

After she left I went down and got my passport. I got a job working construction so I could save money. I would go to visit her in Paris!

But I never went. Instead I waited for her to return. I picked California to wait in. California is a good place to wait. There is a lot to do to pass the time. I passed time hitchhiking. Working, eating chop suey. I walked around some. I rode the bus up and down the length of the state. I hung out with some women. I slept a lot. I went to college. I wrote 2 books. I went over to Golden Gate Park stoned. I heard the Grateful Dead. I laughed at Woody Allen. I got drunk. I sold newspapers. I meditated. I got busted. I got rolled. I went swimming. I played pinball. I danced. I sang. I prayed. I paced the great floor of California. In a hotel room I listened to jazz on the radio. I waited.

After 7 years I’d forgotten all about her. I developed my career as a dishwasher. One day I saw her again. She was sitting in the café writing in a leather-bound book. She looked up and saw me. Right in the eye. Her eyes had become more a Mediterranean blue. I stopped. She didn’t. She couldn’t. She is a dancer.

Now we are sitting in her kitchen. Everything has become very quiet. We’re drinking champagne. You can’t know anyone until you love them. She is getting ready to leave again, tomorrow.

I look across the seascape of the champagne. She winks at me. Bon Voyage! Honey Child. Do you hear that bell? It’s still ringing for both of us, together someplace other, to be rivers.

__________________________________

Expect the anthology sometime next month.

TS

Patricia Barber

It's all about making discoveries. I started listening to Patricia Barber as I began preparing material for Round Bend Hour #2. What a revelation. I wasn't familiar with this Chicago-based jazz singer, but now that I've played her 1994 Cafe Blue disc a couple of times on the show I find her amazing.

This woman can turn an old, questionably interesting song like "Ode to Billy Joe" on its ear and actually make it sound substantive! What a remarkable achievement!

I played about 20 minutes of Barber yesterday, including the Ode.

She travels the world selling out shows. I'm just catching on.
So it goes.

BTW, she digs girls.


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Violent Sports

Except for a few rough spots, I thought my Round Bend Hour went fairly well yesterday. I tend to lose my flow of conversation, partly because I still have a microphone phobia, and partly because I ain't that good of a talker to begin with.

With that in mind, maybe this is a very odd thing for me to try to accomplish.

However, I feel there has been some improvement in my voice, phrasing, and tech expertise. Still a ways off, but hell, I love doing it.

If the folks at http://houseofsound.org/ will keep me on I'll plug away, always expecting to get better.

It is a blast.

Speaking of hard hits--I was really concerned when Oregon's Kenjon Barner went down in the game at Pullman Saturday. You hate seeing that kind of thing. But at the same time you know it happens, will happen, has happened. Football is violent. I equate it with the "sweet science," boxing. When the performance is right, it is a thing of beauty, like Ali dancing in the ring and throwing flurries, or like Barner before his injury, running an end around and picking up graceful yards.

I've seen two fights on television that ended in death. I watched as Emile Griffith killed Benny "Kid" Paret, and I watched three decades later when Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini killed Duk Koo Kim.

A sad, sad part of the game.


TS