Showdown at Sunup in Slate Hill

Set the mood: Enjoy Music From The Big Pink while you read this true story. Find lyrics to this landmark album at...

http://theband.hiof.no/albums/music_from_big_pink.html

What really goes on is so unlike what’s depicted in televised programs that sordid testimonies almost bear telling just for contrast’s sake. Popular telecasts stay as clean and work as clockwork well as crime dramas, during which problems are solved and suffering minimized to a mere hour. Such programs get aired gratuitously in batches and instill impatience and misapprehensions. Real roads lead to dragged out dangers and unanticipated complications. Adventures resemble a surreal Luis Buñuel film that glorifies shock and signifies that sainthood is unattainable through anything you choose to do, practically the opposite of those countless cowboy morality tales preferred by blue hairs where Marshall Dillon kept order with a six shooter and rancher McCain managed to murder someone in self defense every episode. In both cases guns got top billing: Gunsmoke, Rifleman. Gunslingers get famous. Angels usually remain nameless and saints stay obscure. Doesn't bother me; I'm not alone, you see. Fiction serves agendas. Even true stories mix fact and fantasy because they must include occurrences both imagined and witnessed. First hand accounts leave countless reasonable doubts. Better collect your own evidence and tuck it into your bandolier.

Could never have written this story at the time, despite efforts to do so as an exercise in insomnia on a mid-20th Century Smith Corona in a common room, when homeowner from whom I rented was quick to point out angrily that's why she divorced her husband. She might be better off that way. Grateful Ms. Moses wasn't brandishing her Smith & Wesson and saying nothing, but words hurt, too, if not kill. Where is all the understanding? Her problems can't be that demanding. Can talk about it now, but didn't know then how to write layered paragraphs poisoned with multiple notions. Even if your memory serves you well, and there's nothing more to tell, decades heap reflections upon isolated incidents until they become legendary. The farther back you reach, the more disbelievers to whom you preach. Myths are a long time coming but outlive participants perpetually.

About 8 months after having experienced a Hendrix concert among longhaired locals, after Monterey Pop but long before others were aware of group's first US tour and Jimi's great but not yet guitar god status, volunteered to take a freak acquaintance to visit hippie friends in Pennsylvania. Somehow cosmically both occurrences were tribally intertwined but unable to offer explicit explanation. Seemed as safe as milk compared to platters of Captain Beefheart and Janis Joplin we spun that night. Somebody used to stand by turntables to restore Motown or Top 40 since drunk slackers easily got confused and dazed without a beat they could bounce to. Any Pink Floyd? Had seen The Doors in concert the previous summer. Jim Morrison ate the wild fruit; they'd later prosecute him purportedly for being too frisky but really for referencing outlawed substances, which included anything that impeded you from making them richer and opened doors to your perceiving it quicker. History should note how mind altering substances were supplanted soon after by work enhancing stimulants.  Nobody at that gathering appreciated avant garde departures or was much interested in a loaded trip with someone just as likely to be busted for carrying as looking like Jesus.

Despite my relative youth, wheel of friends thought of me as the guy to get favors done, or some sort of "designated driver", a phrase that hadn't yet been coined, since I was then operating a taxi until barroom closing bell when not playing in an obscure rock band that didn’t have a name, just “the band”. We performed in church or house basements for blues buffs and others with nothing else to do for the spirit of it that stood in for true community. Yet isn't that how all things start? Our fun may have eventually turned into a profession, although none of us felt skilled enough at music craft, which admittedly takes more years of constant individual practice than we had amassed collectively or wanted to. Somehow just know you’ll never amount to anything, know you were just a con, especially after hearing jeers and seeing crushing talent. Yet many inept fools without a speck of encouragement become celebrities for just mimicking and persisting. In retrospect, venerable blues masters only perfected their regional style, not really invented genres. Predecessors were exposed to little outside their own neighborhoods. Nobody recalls who originated anything, only those who later took advantage. Real pioneers were always scarcer than frontiers. Did own best work from a basis of operations or established headquarters, whereas musicians have to produce from their skin wherever they find themselves. Bands assemble then break upon fickle impulse. Who goes narrowly straight, not wriggling to whatever twirls their free will? A flintlock's frizzen leaves a flash in its pan, that is, misfires, less often than relationships do. Unlike friends, modern firearms are remarkably reliable. Few earn fleeting renown; everyone suspects those who do compromised self in unspeakable ways to sign deals, as did Mississippi bluesman Robert Johnson at the crossroads down on Highway 61. Nobody knows what really transpires; nobody sees beyond objects in crosshairs.