November 2006 Archives

At long last, I can stop worrying about giving away the Big Secret: my father's surprise seventieth birthday party is over.

The first irony of this whole thing is that Dad was a logistics officer in the Marines; his job, as he puts it, was to make sure the troops had the "bullets, beans, and band-aids" --the materials necessary to complete the mission. This experience is useful in a variety of ways. For one thing, it makes him a great traveling companion, because he's always got the hotel booked and the mileage figured out in advance, and it makes him an ideal planner for such events as Mom's surprise 60th birthday party, which he pulled off in 2001 by bringing dozens of Mom's friends and relatives to a beach house on Fripp Island, S.C.

Unfortunately, the perfect person to plan this surprise party was the one person who couldn't be in on the surprise. Instead, the task fell to Mom, ably assisted by my brother David and his wife Pam, both of whom have frightening organizational skills (well, frightening to me, anyway), and abetted by dozens of old friends and relatives who did their best to keep Dad in the dark (or at least keep him at the Duke/UNC tailgate for a few extra minutes on Saturday so the final prep could be made.) As anyone who knows them would expect, Pam had the garage decorated, full of tables, and loaded with food and drink, while Dave had a collection of old photos loaded to DVD and ready to display on the TV screen for anyone who wanted to see 70+ years of Cashwell history.

But there is a second irony here, and that second irony is that my mother is (and I say this with pure admiration) utterly and completely without guile. Mom is as open and straightforward a person as walks the earth, and it goes against every fiber of her being to deliberately conceal information of any sort, let alone conceal it from her loved ones. If she's got a medical procedure coming up, I can count on finding out the details--even the kind of grody ones--and if there's something bothering her, I'm bound to find out what it is, even if I'm the cause--actually, especially if I'm the cause. Heck, the only reason she doesn't email me the details of their checking account balance is that she usually doesn't know it--that's Dad's job.

The point, however, is that Mom is the last person in the world who should be put in charge of a surprise party--not because she can't do it, but because it's like asking Walt Whitman to write haikus, or Ethel Merman to sing lullabyes. Someone whose whole life is about being open and expansive is going to find secrecy and constraint restrictive at best, and downright maddening at worst. And sure enough, it was--maddening, I mean.

One of the first moves Mom made to pull this off was to set up a new email account of her own, recognizing that she couldn't discuss party business on the account she and Dad have shared for years. But even that, an email address that she knew about but Dad didn't, was like a stone of deceit in Mom's shoe of integrity, or maybe more like a pea under her mattress. Some six weeks in advance of the party, the mere existence of this email account was tormenting her.

And of course, when Mom is tormented, she has to tell someone--but she couldn't tell Dad. And that tormented her more, which made her want to tell Dad more, but she couldn't, and that tormented her more, etc., etc. The resulting feedback loop of guilt would be familiar to any Jewish mother, but watching a Jewish mother apply one to herself was somewhere between fascinating and horrifying--like watching a snake unhinge its jaw to eat something gargantuan and quite possibly inedible.

In short, when Dad finally made it home and discovered that his house and garage contained about eleventy-jillion people wishing him happy birthday a week early, it was more than a celebration of one man's seventieth birthday; it was a celebration of the return to normalcy for his marriage: a marriage that makes everyone in it and around it happier, and sometimes makes them behave in unusual ways in order to express their love. We wouldn't have it any other way.

But trust me on this, Dad: you'll be planning your own seventy-fifth.

9:38 PM

"I got lots of time...
But time was yesterday."
-- The John Santa Band, "Time"

There are novels, poems, lyrics galore about time--the inescapable fact of human existence, more insistent than gravity, more multifaceted than heat, more subtle than hunger--yet we discover, throughout our lives, that there are elements of time we did not know--or at least did not know until a particular moment of time.

This moment is one where I'm feeling somewhat adrift in time, if not absolutely unstuck. Carey Floyd is dead.

I met Carey twenty-five years ago, when I was a freshman at UNC and he the proud owner of a freshly-minted Ph.D. at Duke. His professional field--radiological computer imaging--didn't overlap with my studies at the time (mainly creative writing and beer), but we did share an interest in rock and roll, and at the time he was playing bass for the John Santa Band. I knew both the JSB's keyboard player and its light man, Mike Beard, from high school, so I took in a few of its gigs, but I didn't get to know Carey until he turned up at one of our weekly Dungeons & Dragons sessions, where Mike served as our usual Dungeon Master. Throughout that fall and into the following years, Carey played alongside us, usually as a druid; I think the studied neutrality of the druid class appealed to him, and he was also fairly fond of wood. This last was clear to anyone who ever saw him caressing his beloved Fender Precision bass, a gorgeous instrument from which he had stripped all the finish, allowing the warm, sanded curves of the wood to stand naked.

I got to see that bass up close much more often starting in the spring of '82, when I was tapped to join the John Santa Band myself. I had been teaching myself piano for around a decade by that point, but I had certainly never played keyboards in a band before--I didn't even own a keyboard of my own. A quick trip to the Music Loft fixed the latter problem, but it didn't give me any more skill or experience, and the Santa Band's members had enough of both to make me feel mighty intimidated. No matter how incompetent I felt, though, Carey was there to offer a calming word or even a compliment, and his years of gigging helped make the stress of our shows seem less unpleasant. After all, nothing we were experiencing was as bad as the gig in Nashville where his old band had to play a seventeen-minute-plus version of Chicago's "Colour My World" during a slow-dance extravaganza of some sort; Carey swore that it went on so long that not only did he take a bass solo at one point, but they were actually preparing for a drum solo when the dance (and the song) mercifully came to an end.

Still, there were personality conflicts galore in the Santa Band, and because John was unquestionably in charge--the lead singer, the only writer, the owner of the band's van and public address system--new conflicts were sometimes created by his leadership. I recall in particular one Tuesday night gig at Pegasus, the Franklin Street club that briefly occupied the legendary Town Hall/Mad Hatter space that eventually became the Golden Dragon and Johnny T-Shirt; it was a gig we'd greatly looked forward to, since our only previous show there had been opening for Nantucket, but that night we were headlining. Unfortunately, our sound man, Tom Harned, didn't show. Mike, who had been picking Tom's brain about sound engineering for months, was nervously preparing to step in to cover for him, but none of us could figure out why a guy as reliable and steady as Tom would be absent in the first place. And then, about forty minutes before showtime, John suddenly mused aloud, "I wonder if I told him about tonight..."

Steam began coming out of everyone's ears, and John hastily retreated to the dressing room to phone Tom, but I found myself unable to do anything but laugh--it was just too stupid. Carey looked at me sharply, dark eyes flashing, and for a moment, I thought he was going to bite my head off.

"Keep that attitude," he said, and stormed off to bitch about John to someone else.

The Santa Band's demise came about partly because of Carey and me--a mercy killing, I think we'd have called it. He joined Lise Uyanik and the Mobile City Band, while I took my junior year abroad in Manchester. When I got back in June of 1984, however, he was ready with an offer to join a new ensemble, one which he hoped would sound something like Talking Heads.

I don't know that we ever managed that, but there's no question that my time in Terminal Mouse was the greatest creative flowering that I had in pop music, and I suspect it was Carey's as well. Instead of having one writer, T-Mouse had four, each of whom sang as well. Instead of one narrow slice of rock, we served up an entire bakery's worth: we could sound like Van Morrison one minute and Prince the next, with a detour through the English Beat, a stop at Janis Joplin, and a layover at XTC. It was just too much for one band, but it gave me the chance to perform my best songs--"Camouflage" and "400 Chemicals," for example--as well as Carey's.

"Breathing Room," a slow funk-blues number, was the one that suggested the most about Carey's life; he and his wife, Beth, had met in high school and married not long after. Still, they maintained social lives that often lay parallel to one another; she was a relentless athlete, running and biking in her free time, while he filled his with music. Another song we rehearsed a few times was a complex ska number called "Pieces Into Falling," but we never really got it down--one regret I'll have to carry with me for the rest of my life. The tune of Carey's that I most enjoyed playing, however, was unquestionably "Another Altogether Too Early Alarm Clock Morning," which was known to everyone except its author as "Alarm." Not only did it provide me with a keyboard solo slot, but its sometimes snide, sometimes despairing lyric has provided an anthem for a lot of my late-night work ever since:

"You're going nine to five to work, but the hours at your job
Are getting longer all of the time
In a little early just to get that much ahead,
Staying out a little later to unwind..."
--Terminal Mouse, "Alarm"

And of course it was Carey who sparked the single most inspired thing Terminal Mouse ever did. One night as we were setting up for practice, I produced an unexpectedly growly noise with my synthesizer, prompting Carey to look up, raise an eyebrow, and comment "Ah--cows from Hell." We all broke up, then started arguing about what a song called "Cows from Hell" should sound like. I suggested a slow, rumbly home-on-the-range ballad, but Buck insisted it had to be a faster, punkier tune and thrashed out a riff on his guitar. Wendy didn't have an instrument in hand, but she screamed out "Where's the beef?" and something about yuppies. Eventually, we decided we were all right. Cobbling together my ballad, Buck's punk riff, a syncopated bridge crafted by Carey, and Wendy's bizarre cry--plus an improvised cows-vs.-yuppies narrative by yrs. truly--we wrote our seven-minute masterwork over the course of the evening and premiered "Cows from Hell" at our next show. It was the only group composition we ever managed, and it was by far our best-known and best-received song. If not for Carey's throwaway comment, it simply wouldn't have happened.

He didn't inspire me to start dating Kelly, but when I did, I felt fairly sure that I was doing the right thing because Carey immediately took a shine to her; by then I had learned to consider his wisdom when it came to judging character. His most admirable quality, in many ways, was his ability to cut through bullshit, and for someone with as much ability to be baffled by B.S. as I, his advice was often lifesaving. The fact that he served as a groomsman for my wedding suggested that I was doing the right thing--and the last twenty years attest to the accuracy of his assessment.

After T-Mouse disintegrated later in 1986--to this day, I'm not sure we ever actually broke up--I saw Carey less often, what with marriage, grad school, and other commitments. He was starting to have a little nerve trouble in his hands--a side effect of the diabetes he'd lived with since childhood--and he didn't always feel up to the rigors of a challenging bass run, or a longterm musical commitment. He took on a fairly relaxed gig playing with Sherman and the Sheetrockers, the latest blues-rock ensemble fronted by Sherman Tate, formerly of the Blazers, and my assistant manager at the Record Bar downtown. It kept Carey connected to the local music scene, but at that point, he was in his mid-thirties and starting to put more and more of himself into his work at Duke. He had less energy to spend on gaming and gigging, and we saw less of him. When Kelly and I moved to Fayetteville in 1991, we lost touch almost entirely.

During the Nineties, Kel and I were swallowed by parenthood, while Carey and Beth began a long struggle with the cancer that would eventually kill him. Other than a few pieces of mail, though, we didn't touch base. Over this past summer, however, Mike informed me that Carey's prognosis wasn't good, so Kelly and I made sure to pay him a visit the next time we came to Chapel Hill. By the time we got there--Friday, August 25th--the doctors had decided there was nothing more they could do for him; they'd sent him home, where Beth and hospice volunteers were taking care of him.

We met Beth in the front yard, hugged her, and even mustered a wistful laugh when she said, "Why did he have to get cancer? It was supposed to be the diabetes." Sure enough, when we got in to see Carey, though he was weak and exhausted, he was still dutifully checking his blood sugar on schedule. Whatever else happened, he wasn't going to let that old bastard insulin be his downfall. He drifted out once or twice during our visit, but for the most part, he was simply a dialed-down version of the man I remembered holding a Fender bass. He wasn't resigned, he wasn't regretful, he wasn't content--he was balanced. A druid to the end, perfectly aware that life is a temporary state--even one's own. After a time, we hugged him goodbye and made our way back home. He died on the following Monday. He was 52 years old.

Some years ago I began memorializing people with songs. It began accidentally, because Kelly's father loved to hear me play Elvis Costello's "American Without Tears" on their old piano. When Graham died, it just automatically became his song; to this day, neither Kelly nor I can hear it without thinking of him. A few years ago, one of my students died of cancer, and it was natural to give him Woodberry's school song, "Amici." But Carey has his fingers in so many songs--everything we ever played together, whether an original or a cover, one of his compositions or one of mine. "Ain't That Peculiar," "Save It for Later," "Clean Enough to Eat Off." He had those by right; I couldn't give one to him because they were already his.

But years ago, he'd surprised me when I'd asked him what his favorite band was. At the time, we were playing in the Santa Band, and I figured he'd name one of the bands we usually kicked around during practice--the Who, the Allman Brothers, Jethro Tull, maybe even Dire Straits--but he looked thoughtful for a second and said, with his usual air of considered certainty, "Little Feat." I knew the band--side three of Waiting for Columbus was basically the soundtrack of He's Not Here during my heavy beer-and-darts days--but I'd never known anyone else who considered their unique blend of blues, jazz, country, and rock his favorite.

Thinking of that, I knew that I'd be giving Carey a Little Feat song, and it didn't take me long to find the right one for him:

"I been warped by the rain, driven by the snow
I'm drunk and dirty, don't you know
But I'm still willin'"
--Little Feat, "Willin'"

I never knew anyone who weathered the storms of life as well as Carey Floyd. If his time here on earth is over, well, that's what happens; all songs come to an end. But the notes he played are still echoing, and every time I hear Lowell George sing "I been from Tucson to Tucumcari, Tehachapi to Tonapah," I'll hear Carey alongside him.

Always.

5:06 PM

Since you've all been waiting--all two of you--to learn the answers to last week's Random Music Quiz, I figure the least I can do is satisfy your curiosity. (Especially now that I've disabled the Comments function again--it was causing problems with posting new entries, so I'm afraid Tony Plutonium is going to have to start emailing me again.)

I think Tony's kicking himself about a few of these, but he did better than I did on his list. My buddy teep, meanwhile, didn't attempt many, but he batted a thousand when he stepped up to the plate. (For what it's worth, I would never have been able to tell you the lyrics to songs 8, 9, 16, 26, and 27 if they hadn't come up when I hit random play; on the other hand, I've actually performed #s 15, 18, 19, and 30 in public, and I've sung a lot of the others to myself.)

Here's the big list; if you want to know what's on what album, drop me a line, but Google may be faster.

1) We know what we're knowing
But we can't say what we've seen
And we're not little children
And we know what we want
--Talking Heads, "Road to Nowhere"

2) Wouldn't you like to feel like yourself after suffering so many years?
--The Roches, "The Largest Elizabeth in the World"

3) Well, you're well, you're welcome,
Well, you're welcome to come
--The Beach Boys, "You're Welcome"

4) Suck the marrow, drain my soul
Pay your dues and your debts
Pay your respects
--Dave Matthews Band, "Pay for What You Get" (

5) You realize that
Sometimes you have to be nice
Or there'll be hell to pay
--World Party, "Ain't Gonna Come Till I'm Ready"

6) She's flying in the face of fashion now
Seems to have a will of her own
--Julian Cope, "World Shut Your Mouth"

7) What a relief!
I feel like a soldier, look like a thief!
--The Clash, "Jimmy Jazz"

8) It's been pretty simple so far
Vacation in Athens is calling
--R.E.M., "Letter Never Sent"

9) She's open, waiting for more,
And I know he's only looking to score
And it is way too unhealthy
Often atypically but starved for attention before
--blink-182, "Mutt"

10) The brothers on the street, and everyone is scared a ya,
So how could ten Africans represent America?
--Spearhead, "Dream Team"

11) And you gotta have no illusions
Just keep going your way looking over your shoulder
--Joe Jackson, "Look Sharp!"

12) Someone to love
Somebody new
Someone to love
Someone like you
--The Beatles, "Love Me Do"

13) Sane, sane, they're all insane
Fireman's blind, the conductor's lame
A Cincinnati jacket and a sad-luck dame
Hanging out the window with a bottle full of rain
--Tom Waits, "Clap Hands"

14) Every morning I would see her waiting at the stop
Sometimes she'd shop and she would show me what she'd bought
All the people stared as if we were both quite insane
Someday my name and hers are going to be the same
--The Hollies, "Bus Stop"

15) Out my window there's nothing where the city used to be
Phone line dead, the power gone, and there's nothing on TV
Can't understand what happened to all the plans I made
I turn on the radio and hear the signal fade
--Wall of Voodoo, "Tomorrow"

16) If I give you a quarter, will you give me a dime?
Tell my baby that she's so fine
Tell me what to say if you got a good line
Do the same for you, friend, another time
--Arrogance, "Barely Alive"

17) Pictures of your mama
Taken by your papa
A long time ago
--The Kinks, "Picture Book"

18) She says there's clouds in the sky
And when it rains we'll go outside
Although we're as smart and refined
As all the world's great books combined.
--The Balancing Act, "Red Umbrella"

19) Tour the world in a heavy metal band
But they run out of gas
The plane can never land
--They Might Be Giants, "Shoehorn with Teeth"

20) I was seeing the world through your eyes
There was not much left not to despise
It's a shame, but it's true
I started to feel things like you do
--Kirsty MacColl, "No Victim"

21) What's the matter with the crowd I'm seeing?
Don't you know that they're out of touch?
--Billy Joel, "It's Still Rock & Roll to Me"

22) I know a man ain't supposed to cry
But these tears I can't hold inside
Losing you would end my life you see
'Cause you mean that much to me
--Marvin Gaye, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine"

23) You're staying in, you don't go out
You're having such a perfect time
You make your bed and you lie in it
The time is precious, every minute
--Squeeze, "Love Circles"

24) Can't you see I'm all broke up inside?
Well, just you use your two x-ray eyes
--XTC, "That's Really Super, Supergirl"

25) You don't know what I'm going through
Would it help me if you really knew?
--The Pressure Boys, "Nothing to Say"

26) Good god, you said, is that the only thing you care about?
Splitting up the money and share it out
--Echo & the Bunnymen, "Never Stop"

27) Get up every morning at the sound of the bell
Get to work late and the boss man's giving you hell
Till you're out on the midnight run
Losing your heart to a beautiful one
And it feels right
--Bruce Springsteen, "Night"

28) Once I knew a girl who looked so much like Judy Garland
That people would stop and give her money
--Elvis Costello, "Jack of All Parades"

29) I'm living in the neon house
I'm living in avalanche road
I'm living in hangover city
--Shriekback, "Malaria"

30) _____, murmur to me
Deep inside my room tonight
You're the devil's fishbowl, honey
I undress before your light
Robyn Hitchcock, "Television"

11:10 PM

Yes, I'm enormously proud of the people of the United States just now. They have repudiated the excesses of the current administration and have set the country back on course.

Even if all we'd gotten out this was a Democratic House and 28 governors' mansions, we'd have taken an important step back from the brink. With Allen conceding and Webb taking the Democratic caucus's 51st seat in the Senate, we may even be in the process of moving toward something better.

Voters and polling-place volunteers, I salute you!



And so does Spearhead's Michael Franti!

7:31 PM

November brings cold winds, but a closer and closer approach to the January 2007 release date of Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash! Pre-order your copy now so as to enjoy PC's short story "The Snow Chaser" (based on Cash's "Field of Diamonds") plus Cash-inspired writings by Russell Rowland, Gayle Brandeis, Gretchen Moran Laskas and others, during the heart of the winter!

We're now less than 24 hours from the close of the polls here in Virginia, and my Election Day speech for all of you is this:

If you want more of the same, vote for the incumbents.

Me? I'm voting to send them all home. It is the least we can do for ourselves, our fellow citizens, our fighting men and women, and our American ideals.

“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Amen, Abe.

1:19 AM

It's November! In less than two months, the January release of Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash will be upon us! Pre-order now to reserve your copy, featuring PC's short story "The Snow Chaser" (based on Cash's "Field of Diamonds") plus other Cash-inspired writings by Russell Rowland, Gayle Brandeis, Gretchen Moran Laskas and others!

I'm late to the meme party, as usual, but I figured I'd try it. Everyone's eligible except Kelly. I've put my computer's media player on "random" and I'm posting a snippet of lyric from the next 30 songs that come up.

Your task: figure out what each one is! Identify by artist and title, please. (I'll avoid using cover songs in case you can't tell whether I'm listening to the Temptations' "Just My Imagination" or the Stones' version.) Some are very well-known, while a couple are pretty darned obscure, even for people in my fortyish Tar Heel cohort.

And yes, Tony Plutonium, I'm turning on the comment function JUST FOR YOU! Yes, you can post your answers/guesses right here (click on the Comments button at the bottom of this post), where I can see them and congratulate you on your perspicacity (even if you're not Tony.)

Have fun!

--PC

1) We know what we're knowing
But we can't say what we've seen
And we're not little children
And we know what we want

2) Wouldn't you like to feel like yourself after suffering so many years?

3) Well, you're well, you're welcome,
Well, you're welcome to come

4) Suck the marrow, drain my soul
Pay your dues and your debts
Pay your respects

5) You realize that
Sometimes you have to be nice
Or there'll be hell to pay

6) She's flying in the face of fashion now
Seems to have a will of her own

7) What a relief!
I feel like a soldier, look like a thief!

8) It's been pretty simple so far
Vacation in Athens is calling

9) She's open, waiting for more,
And I know he's only looking to score
And it is way too unhealthy
Often atypically but starved for attention before

10) The brothers on the street, and everyone is scared a ya,
So how could ten Africans represent America?

11) And you gotta have no illusions
Just keep going your way looking over your shoulder

12) Someone to love
Somebody new
Someone to love
Someone like you

13) Sane, sane, they're all insane
Fireman's blind, the conductor's lame
A Cincinnati jacket and a sad-luck dame
Hanging out the window with a bottle full of rain

14) Every morning I would see her waiting at the stop
Sometimes she'd shop and she would show me what she'd bought
All the people stared as if we were both quite insane
Someday my name and hers are going to be the same

15) Out my window there's nothing where the city used to be
Phone line dead, the power gone, and there's nothing on TV
Can't understand what happened to all the plans I made
I turn on the radio and hear the signal fade

16) If I give you a quarter, will you give me a dime?
Tell my baby that she's so fine
Tell me what to say if you got a good line
Do the same for you, friend, another time

17) Pictures of your mama
Taken by your papa
A long time ago

18) She says there's clouds in the sky
And when it rains we'll go outside
Although we're as smart and refined
As all the world's great books combined.

19) Tour the world in a heavy metal band
But they run out of gas
The plane can never land

20) I was seeing the world through your eyes
There was not much left not to despise
It's a shame, but it's true
I started to feel things like you do

21) What's the matter with the crowd I'm seeing?
Don't you know that they're out of touch?

22) I know a man ain't supposed to cry
But these tears I can't hold inside
Losing you would end my life you see
'Cause you mean that much to me

23) You're staying in, you don't go out
You're having such a perfect time
You make your bed and you lie in it
The time is precious, every minute

24) Can't you see I'm all broke up inside?
Well, just you use your two x-ray eyes

25) You don't know what I'm going through
Would it help me if you really knew?

26) Good god, you said, is that the only thing you care about?
Splitting up the money and share it out

27) Get up every morning at the sound of the bell
Get to work late and the boss man's giving you hell
Till you're out on the midnight run
Losing your heart to a beautiful one
And it feels right

28) Once I knew a girl who looked so much like Judy Garland
That people would stop and give her money

29) I'm living in the neon house
I'm living in avalanche road
I'm living in hangover city

30) _____, murmur to me
Deep inside my room tonight
You're the devil's fishbowl, honey
I undress before your light

7:16 PM