"Come on, come on, let me show you where it's at," elbowed by, "I want to show you!" "...where it's at. All together: "The name..." X-rayed skeleton beat inside flesh of song: bum-bum-bum, bum. "... I like it like that."
Fade out. Climbing pitch mountain: "Doop-doo-doo, the greatest hits of the 60's and 70's... zoop-zoo-zoo... Oldies ninety-five point seven."
Wiggling, hulaing harmonica: "Wha-wha, wa-wa-wa-wa-wa." Broken, beautiful croon only some black singers can pull off: "Oh, girl." Then bouncing toward you: "I'd be in trouble if I left you know. Then he's just telling you. "Cuz I don't know where to look for love. I just don't know how."
Some voices cut through a speaker. Phil Phillips or Johnny Cash, among others, can hum through it. The right r & b song by a band whose name would look tasty neoned on the gate around a roller coaster... The Exciters... The Olympics... The Marvellettes... it's like strawberry ice cream melted in the speakers and seeped through the grate, it's fragrance climbs up to you, you lick your lips.
"You gut me huh like a guitar humming." Neil Diamond. Okay song, but with a pale hue, like it was recored in a space station, grown with brita pitcher water and 60 watt light, robots backing the man. Still, it's growing heavy like an erection swelling with deep blood. "Play it loud. Play it loud. Play it loud. My baby! Cracklin' Rosie bum, bum, bum." Yeah. It's a good song, but it has been the favorite Diamond radio cut of the last year or so. Played out. I would stick around for "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" or "Solitary Man," surely. Got to travel on.
Press in the "4" button. Jerk to ninety-one seven: The Mighty Ninety-One, broadcasting live from the campus of the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Science segment. A primitive flute beds a cottonball voice and there are caterpillars chomping crisp leaves, down at the microscopic size where a blade of grass could be a telephone pole, a yard could be a metropolis. I want music.
Press "1." The loneliest number. Eighty-eight nine, radio Milwaukee. Journalism spot. "Ding-ding-ding." A bell in a classroom.
"6." "... in a lo-ove so..." pulling on the vowels like you stretch dough for a pizza pie crust... "...ong." Marshall Tucker's flute, the signature of the artist. A heavy voice, pondering whether the radio has been lying to us. "Heard it in a lo-ove saw-ong. Heard it in a lo-ove song." The thesis, like three finger tips rapping in sequence on a hard table top: "Can't be wrong." Maybe it is a lie. I've often thought it was interesting that people talk so rarely of love in everyday conversation, but it's nearly all anybody sings about. Is it just for commercial appeal, romantic escape? Or is that what we find when we reach in deep enough to discover the place where song is born?
One oh six nine big buck country. "Well, I got friends in low places/ It's a family tradition/ I fell into a burning ring of fire." "That's todays big buck country. "Hi, I'm Richard Kessler of Kessler Diamonds."
"4": dreamy chimes, like from a crystal palace. I almost see the lips, alone, red, in a recording studio in some stranger's dream. "Don't mess with Bill." A posse of girls, young 1960's dark-skinned girls, mischievous, shrouded in smoke: "No, no, no, no." They're trying to warn me, to knock some sense into me. "Don't mess with Bill/ No, no, no, no." They're picking up momentum, then you see it isn't just girls behind the smoke. It's not even smoke, it's steam. And there's a fucking steam train coming at you, whaling, "Don't mess with Bill!" It has the effect of two paws smashed on piano keys.
Marty's got to be the one pulling the strings. This is how I realize it's Tuesday: Marty on the Blues Drive, the Marty Party. Saxophone bridge. It curls round and around like a shiny slide, plops you in a ball pit of primary colors. More Marvelletes, "Uptight" from Stevie Wonder, some scratchy 45 I never heard that rubs on me like a friendly house cat. Fuck yeah.
Baby raindrops dot my windshield. I flick a lever and they're wiped away.
Fade out. Climbing pitch mountain: "Doop-doo-doo, the greatest hits of the 60's and 70's... zoop-zoo-zoo... Oldies ninety-five point seven."
Wiggling, hulaing harmonica: "Wha-wha, wa-wa-wa-wa-wa." Broken, beautiful croon only some black singers can pull off: "Oh, girl." Then bouncing toward you: "I'd be in trouble if I left you know. Then he's just telling you. "Cuz I don't know where to look for love. I just don't know how."
Some voices cut through a speaker. Phil Phillips or Johnny Cash, among others, can hum through it. The right r & b song by a band whose name would look tasty neoned on the gate around a roller coaster... The Exciters... The Olympics... The Marvellettes... it's like strawberry ice cream melted in the speakers and seeped through the grate, it's fragrance climbs up to you, you lick your lips.
"You gut me huh like a guitar humming." Neil Diamond. Okay song, but with a pale hue, like it was recored in a space station, grown with brita pitcher water and 60 watt light, robots backing the man. Still, it's growing heavy like an erection swelling with deep blood. "Play it loud. Play it loud. Play it loud. My baby! Cracklin' Rosie bum, bum, bum." Yeah. It's a good song, but it has been the favorite Diamond radio cut of the last year or so. Played out. I would stick around for "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" or "Solitary Man," surely. Got to travel on.
Press in the "4" button. Jerk to ninety-one seven: The Mighty Ninety-One, broadcasting live from the campus of the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Science segment. A primitive flute beds a cottonball voice and there are caterpillars chomping crisp leaves, down at the microscopic size where a blade of grass could be a telephone pole, a yard could be a metropolis. I want music.
Press "1." The loneliest number. Eighty-eight nine, radio Milwaukee. Journalism spot. "Ding-ding-ding." A bell in a classroom.
"6." "... in a lo-ove so..." pulling on the vowels like you stretch dough for a pizza pie crust... "...ong." Marshall Tucker's flute, the signature of the artist. A heavy voice, pondering whether the radio has been lying to us. "Heard it in a lo-ove saw-ong. Heard it in a lo-ove song." The thesis, like three finger tips rapping in sequence on a hard table top: "Can't be wrong." Maybe it is a lie. I've often thought it was interesting that people talk so rarely of love in everyday conversation, but it's nearly all anybody sings about. Is it just for commercial appeal, romantic escape? Or is that what we find when we reach in deep enough to discover the place where song is born?
One oh six nine big buck country. "Well, I got friends in low places/ It's a family tradition/ I fell into a burning ring of fire." "That's todays big buck country. "Hi, I'm Richard Kessler of Kessler Diamonds."
"4": dreamy chimes, like from a crystal palace. I almost see the lips, alone, red, in a recording studio in some stranger's dream. "Don't mess with Bill." A posse of girls, young 1960's dark-skinned girls, mischievous, shrouded in smoke: "No, no, no, no." They're trying to warn me, to knock some sense into me. "Don't mess with Bill/ No, no, no, no." They're picking up momentum, then you see it isn't just girls behind the smoke. It's not even smoke, it's steam. And there's a fucking steam train coming at you, whaling, "Don't mess with Bill!" It has the effect of two paws smashed on piano keys.
Marty's got to be the one pulling the strings. This is how I realize it's Tuesday: Marty on the Blues Drive, the Marty Party. Saxophone bridge. It curls round and around like a shiny slide, plops you in a ball pit of primary colors. More Marvelletes, "Uptight" from Stevie Wonder, some scratchy 45 I never heard that rubs on me like a friendly house cat. Fuck yeah.
Baby raindrops dot my windshield. I flick a lever and they're wiped away.
1 comment:
took me somewhere with you; i wanted to stay longer.
Post a Comment