I have some time to kill - it's quiet tonight -

I have certain themes running thru my head - Like everything I want from women to alcohol, I tend to be obsessive in my wanting them, like 65 inch TV's, a soft comfy chair to get plastered in, etc...

------------------------------

I'm thinking a lot tonight about getting the hell out of here again - Vegas whetted my appetite for travel - maybe going back and skipping the hotel and renting a car instead - let's see the world a bit before coming back to Tundra...

or what about somewhere else....what about Duluth....sitting on the Mississippi or just taking a tour of the great lakes - I just want to be somewhere else, even blowing $500 in a poker room, then being at my apt. right now.

------------------------------

I'm thinking I wanna drop 20 pounds...try to be good looking again for women, whatever...it's just a slight gut, but I bought a 12 pack of Tab and ate Subway for dinner tonight - and I'm holding out and not going for the candybar....LOL -

------------------------------

I'm thinking about music - how I wish I could write better songs, and how certain albums tickle parts of my memory I forget about a lot -

Billy Bragg and wilco reminds me of a piece of shit 76 Toyota with a gas leak - I'd be eating lots of candy, and working at a company called Metris - all the Union songs and songs vs. injustice probably kicked my ass a bit getting out of there.

Verbena's Into the Pink reminds me of another company - Everclear's Sparkle and Fade reminds me of an Apt. in New Brighton -

Kate Rusby's "10" reminds me of Tara, and Patty Griffin's "1000 Kisses" reminds me of Krista and driving back from North Dakota for our first "break"

A couple trad. Irish tunes off a trad. album from National Geographic reminds me of being miserable and depressed at my friend Dave's house. - Room Temperature Rumplemintz and Kurosawa Samurai films remind me of getting drunk in my band's practice space as an attempt to get out of that situation. I bought a TV that played DVD's, set it up, played on my laptop, and spent hours in that place trying as hard as possible to not be around those people anymore or in their house - Grateful doesn't begin to describe the feeling I had after that....Jesus....

I'd sit in there and put Louis Killen alubms (like the Rose in June) on, get plowed, play video games, improve my video Pinball and Freecell, and just generally be a hell of a lot happier. - Like a kid escaping an abusive stepfather by building a fort and never coming home except to eat and sleep - that's sorta what I was.

(word to the wise, if you ever find yourself hospitalized for suicidal tendancies, do NOT then move into the home of a friend who's sole purpose in life is to make you feel your problems are all caused by a lack of faith in God - esp. if his wife is a psycho who drives you nuts...esp. if he likes to talk to your other friends behind your back and use them to manipulate you ) -

and Neil Young's "Harvest Moon" reminds me of Peanut Butter M&M's - Mary Chapin Carpenter's "stones in the road" reminds me of sitting in my friend Erik's dorm room in College, borrowing his 286 and playing lemmings, links, and Red storm rising....games that worked on a floppy disk - LOL - Paul Simon's Graceland reminds of Minnesota in 1990, in a dorm room where Secular music was forbidden....THPPPPPBT

Counting Crows "August and Everything After" seems to be esp. logged into my brain in Chicago - we were playing a gig, and I was unhappy, went out to my car and sat in the parking lot and listened to it and lamented that our stuff was nowhere as good as that album (and neither has been the stuff they've done since, alas) -

but one of my fav's is Bruce Springsteen's "Ghost of Tom Joad" - It was 1996 - and I picked up the album and it reminded me of coffeeshops where I'd play open stages covering tunes on it. I had graduated from college, did radio, and left radio and gone into tech work - I was doing the lovely 8 bucks an hr job for a yr, went up to 12, and had recently made a move that would move me from $25000 to $40000 - I'd walk a two mile stretch of road between my apt. and 694 (Rice St. in St Paul for those who want to know) - and I'd listen to the stories, mostly true, and I slowly sorta revamped my politics in small bites - and I'd wonder what I had done to become so privileged and they hadn't. Little did I know $40000 don't exactly qualify as privileged really....LOL -

and I only have one memory of Michael Jackson's Thriller - my friend Steve won it at an 80's party - the same night I met one of the first girls who ever had anything resembling a crush on me....ah well - what did I know....she was cute though....but I wouldn't have been able to support her for yrs had we hooked up...LOL - He (my friend Steve) is also intertwined in early recordings of my first band called "After the Dawn" and is also the man who taught me how to play "Every Rose has it's Thorn"

I was about out of Radio when I heard Wilco's "Being There" and bought that album and was incredibly impressed with it, thus starting me on the path of a band that would become one of america's most vibrant and prolific acts, yrs. before they became world famous, so to speak.

I had found the Police in 1994, and was listening to them almost exclusively via cassette tape in San Diego when I went down for a mission's trip...they comforted me when I got chewed out for buying a switchblade in Tijuana. - and I tried to play guitar like Andy Summers meets Vincent Nguini - the guitarist all over Paul Simon's Graceland -

I'm not making many memories lately....not happy about that....

RB