ORBISON HAS A POSSE

Yesterday I was down at the beach catching up with fellow locals, many of which I've never run into anywhere else. Some surf, some never get in the water at all. Some live out of their car, some bus in from somewhere and then head out on that last bus run out of town, and some own their own home somewhere in the neighborhood. You know, all walks of life, and all that jazz. I don't know where they go when they leave, or where they live. It doesn't matter.

Roy Orbison on a go kart. That's right. King of the party.

One guy who is down there nearly every time I'm down there is Larry, known to many around here as "the guitar guy". Larry has been sitting on the same rock, or the bench directly across from it, for years. Decades. Playing fragments of his own songs, interspersed with breaks, sometimes listening to whatever game is on, with his transistor radio held up to his ear. When he is playing, I rarely interrupt him to exchange greetings, because Larry is a Christian, and his self penned songs are his missionary work, unintelligible as they often are. Hey, if that's his thing, who am I to interrupt? But yesterday, he stopped as I was walking by, After I apologized and said he didn't need to stop, he told me that it was okay, he was just playing "Ooby Dooby". Well, shit, I've known Larry for years and never heard him mention someone else's song. So I asked him who's version, expecting him to say Creedence's. He said "Roy Orbison's", and his tone said "of course". Oh yeah. Now I'm dumbfounded. Larry doesn't follow popular culture, or current events. What was he like when he first heard it? Was he around when it was released? He could be that old. All I know is that from here on, every time I hear the song, I'll think of Larry. And that's how that happens.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Listen:
Roy Orbison - Ooby Dooby mp3 at Ace Terrier (?)
Roy Orbison - Go, Go, Go mp3 at Rocky 52
Roy Orbison - Domino mp3 at Retrolicious
Roy Orbison - Coke commercial mp3 at The Podcast Place
Bonus:
Janis Martin - Ooby Dooby mp3 at Mp3 Rockabilly

FOR MELANIE

I ran into a song today, that reminded of something I've been needing to get off my chest since the summer before twelfth grade. Now that I have a platform, it is time to for me to introduce my first ever beach crush. I was never formally introduced to her. I'd see her at the beach, with her girlfriends, all summer long; while I hung out with a group of guys, most of us still too chickenshit to make a move. After the summer ended, she began her first year at my high school. There were only the slightest of encounters, but one became ritual for several weeks. I'd get home from school, and ride down to the beach. At about the same time every day, I'd start to leave, right about the time she would show up. We would look at each other and, sometimes mutter nervous "hello"s. Then, I'd take off, riding my bike home, eight blocks up the hill. After putting my bike away, I'd go out on the front lawn to water, because it was an excuse to be out on the lawn when she rode up the hill. Again, we'd make eye contact, and sometimes say "hello," from a lawn to street distance. And that was as far as it ever went. Even after I looked her last name up in the phone book, only to find that the closest address with her last name was a mile or so away. But, every time I hear "Surfer Girl," ever since way back then, I think of her. So, it's been a long time coming. Melanie McManus, or whatever your last name may be now, wherever you are, I am now professing the crush of my sixteen year old self.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Summer crush (slight return):
The Beach Boys - Surfer Girl mp3 at USHawaiians.com
Assorted other Beach Boys:
The Beach Boys - Feel Flows mp3 at Immerse Glassy water, in the late afternoon.
The Beach Boys - Do It Again (early version) mp3 at When You Awake Because it's an different version, kind of an oddball.
The Beach Boys - Ganz Allein (In My Room) mp3 at Aquarium Drunkard German version of "In My Room", but you probably figured that one out.
The Beach Boys - Karen mp3 at Career Records TV show theme song
The Beach Boys - The Letter (demo?) mp3 at Bedazzled Another oddball.

START THE COALS

What is typically seen as the last day of summer, is commonly know in these parts as the day before the day we get our beach back. Gone are the people from Arizona. Gone are the inexperienced surfers and boogie boarders crowding the line-ups. Gone are the long lines at Hodad's, blocking the entrance to Newport Farms. Gone are those who wear flip flops in the sand, blast boom boxes playing classic rock, and leave shit everywhere in their trail. I don't hate these people. I just hope the door does hit them on the way out.

For another month or two, there will be pleasant days and warm-enough water. And fewer people. Starting tomorrow, the day after Labor day, things return to normal (or normal for Ocean Beach anyways). The locals will still be here. The Guitar Man will still be on his rock playing the same crappy two chords that he's been playing for the past fifteen years. The guy that brings his iguana to the beach (whom he calls Elvis but everybody else refers to as "wishes it was a chick magnet") will still be here. John, the homeless guy in the wheel chair, will still be at the foot of Newport. Boston James may or may not return, depending on if they charge him with Jimbo's death (after the two had a drunken brawl). But there will be pleasant days and warm-enough water. Now, it's the locals turn to chill. And these three songs are about as chill as I get.

Jack Nitzsche - The Lonely Surfer Race mp3
The Sandals - (Theme from) The Endless Summer mp3
Santo and Johnny - Sleepwalk mp3

THIS JUST IN: It wasn't more than a couple hours after I posted the above blurb that I ran into a guy name Tim, who used to drink with Jimbo and Boston James down at the beach. I hadn't seen him for a couple years (since alcohol was banned at the beach), so I asked him if he had heard about Jimbo dying. He answered that he had, and then told me that Big Bill (known to the kids at the beach as "Mad Dog") was up the street, outside the liquor store (aka Newport Farms, which, despite it's name, sells only fermented produce). I asked if he was sure if it was Bill, because he disappeared a couple years ago. "I know," he said, "everybody thought Bill was dead. I did too." So, it was, of course, my civic duty to welcome Bill back from wherever he'd been. On my way home, I stopped by to see him. He'd been in and out of hospitals, and just recently kicked out of a convalescent home. He is now back on the street, and already dialed in to the comings and goings of that ol' gang of his. He had heard about Jimbo, and told me that Boston James, though not charged with Jimbo's death, is now banned from the streets of O.B.. So that's your local update. Jimbo's dead, Boston James is banned and Big Bill is back. And the water is still warm enough....

REQUIEM FOR RUTHIE

If you've spent time with any amount of regularity in a local bar (preferably one in your neighborhood that you don't have to drive to), and are fortunate enough to know the staff, you know that they can be like a second family. This is especially true if it's been your haunt for a long while. Bartenders can be surrogate parents, brothers, sisters, drill sergeants or shrinks. Sometimes they can be all in one night. And Ruthie, my favorite bartender of all time, often was.
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Ruthie wasn't the owner of Pacific Shores, but she might as well have been. She was a rarity among bartenders, one that was equally comfortable with the career barflies that held down stools during the day and "those damn kids" that came in at night. I kind of straddled the chronological line. I was lucky enough to have started drinking there before the deluge of hipsters. I still count as one of my happiest moments the time the surley day bartender Dave bought me a beer. (It meant nothing to him, but to me, I had fucking arrived.) I owe that to Ruthie. As long as I was okay with Ruthie, I was okay with Dave.
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Ruthie died earlier this year and there was a wake at the local Masonic Temple. There was no real eulogy. Instead the mic was passed as regulars related their favorite Ruthie stories. Most of them centered around her wit, her huge shrouded heart and her keenest of bullshit detectors.

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A couple visitor entries at an online guide to San Diego are indicative of the way she was seen by younger patrons:

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"The old lady bartender here is like Cruella DeVille minus the bank account. I swear she wakes up in the morning and has a bowl of cigerettes [sic] for breakfast. If she's working you better know what the fuck you want and you're best to not even smile at her. She will fuck your ass up! Seriously.. she can spot a smartass from 20 feet away. No shaninigans or you won't get a drink hipster!"

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"Ruthie, the bartender who bears a resemblance to Carla Tortelli, takes umbrage with every stranger that walks in, frequently describing them in her raspy voice as "this cocksucker over here" or "fuckin' assholes," and regularly refuses to serve people who she doesn't like the look of."

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Heart be still! She really was my type of people. Anti-fufu in all regards. I loved Ruthie and was smitten when, late one afternoon, I walked into the bar and she asked "Waddya want Tom, besides me?!" She was a good twenty years older than me, and, make no mistake, she was joking. But I still got the same feeling that I had the first time I experienced a reciprocated crush (and every time since). Even so, she really was too independent for male suitors even her own age, and probably thought of them as unneeded baggage. Besides, anyone her age would had a hard time keeping up with her. It was telling that she liked to go camping by herself.

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I loved everything about that tough-skinned, raspy-voiced, frizzy haired beauty.

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Everytime I hear "Here Comes a Regular" by the Replacements, I think of Pacific Shores. And everytime I think of the Shores, I think of Ruthie. I miss her. The world needs more people like Ruthie.

Now get the hell out.

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The Replacements - Here Comes A Regular mp3 at The Swill Merchant

Spacemen and Song Poems

After browsing through the incredible, ofttimes oddball, Waxidermy site, I found myself wandering aimlessly all over the internet. Good luck following the long-winded tangents that follow. (It starts with a nutty song, passes through alien abducted artist, past a pot smoking ball-player and back to vintage rock n' roll roots.) If you want to skip to the MP3 links, they're at the bottom of the post.

It started at Waxidermy, where I found a few song-poems. For the uninitiated, song-poems are songs created around poems or lyrics that people would send in with a fee and in return receive a recording of their work made into a song by complete strangers, usually musicians trying to eek out a living making music by whatever means necessary.

The particular song-poem that wound me up was "Space Scene," a song so brilliantly naive that it might as well be performed verbatim on Saturday Night Live. Sample lyric: "I'm a spaceman, zippin' and-a zappin, here and there, dancin' my life away." (Even if you're not into oddball stuff, consider throwing your friend into a pool of confusion by sticking it in the middle of a mix CD.) This is where I should have stopped, but I didn't.

Next stop: The Spaceman of Ocean Beach. In searching for a generic spaceman picture to accompany the Space Scene link, I ran into a whole YouTube page dedicated to Clint Cary, better known as the Spaceman of Ocean Beach, and his friend Bob Oaks. Spaceman, a painter, came to Ocean Beach (in San Diego) in the early sixties. He claimed to have met aliens from a planet called Rillispore, and that they essentially gave him the responsibility of assigning seats for a mankind-saving journey back to their planet.

If you ever met Spaceman, you were likely to be assigned a mysterious number, given to ensure passage on the flight to Rillispore. XIB/2 was Spaceman's number, and others were doled out in numerical order. (XIB/1, in case you're wondering, was some higher power's number. Why a higher power would require a ride on a spaceship is anyone's guess.)

Bob Oaks, also in the clips, was one of his best friends, a jazz musician who lived his last 30-odd years in the big cottage on the north side of the OB pier. Oaks met Spaceman when, as a favor for a friend, he picked him up from the airport upon his first arrival. They remained close friends until Spaceman's death in 1993.

Oaks is credited with tempering the community's view of Spaceman, preventing him from being seen as a total crackpot. While Spaceman's life was at times disfunctional, and his stories literally unbelievable, he was smart, well spoken and harmless (at least in his later years).

If you've spent much time in O.B., the Spaceman/Oaks footage on YouTube should be considered required viewing as it provides some insight into the orgins of Ocean Beach's "anything goes" reputation. And taken as a whole, the clips paint a wonderful picture of friendship between two aging artistic eccentrics. (Here's another little blurb, from Citybeat's site.)

Next stop: Bill "Spaceman" Lee. Still needing an image of a spaceman, any spaceman, I happened upon a site for a documentary about Bill "Spaceman" Lee, a former Red Sox pitcher who was, in his day, the best known pothead in baseball. He's always been one of my favorite ball players. (I have a penchant for the oddballs, especially in baseball.) His observations about baseball, and life in general, went way beyond those of a normal ball player. At times insightful, often out there and almost always hilarious. The guy had brainy swagger.

"I think about the cosmic snowball theory. A few million years from now the sun will burn out and lose its gravitational pull. The earth will turn into a giant snowball and be hurled through space. When that happens it won't matter if I get this guy out." - Bill Lee

As it turns out, after being pretty much blackballed from the major leagues, Lee became a baseball mercenary, playing anywhere in any league that would hire him, including Russia and Cuba. You can view the trailer of the documentary here, read an interview here, and read more about him here. And don't miss the excellent quotes at Baseball Almanac.

SNAP! Shit, now I have one weird spaceman song, two unrelated spaceman sites and zero images. Again I search, this time for song poems...anything but spaceman. Now I end up on the American Song-Poem Music Archives, an exhaustivelly annotated overview of the genre.

Here comes the crafty seque back to MP3 blogs: The American Song-Poem Music Archives site is run by Phil Milstein, the same guy that does the highly recommended Probe is Turning-On the People. His latest post there (Session 157) is great, ten-plus downloads of songs that inspired early rock n' roll artists. Plus, there's keepers all over the site.

If you actually read all of that, my hat's off to you. Thanks for indulging me. I was just too stoked to find sites about two of my favorite square pegs to not go off.

Ralph Lowe's "Space Scene" at Waxidermy

Probe Is Turning-On the People

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(Photo above is the Ocean Beach version of Spaceman in the mid-sixties. I gave up on the generic image)