Regular Joes

I believe its the year of the Regular Joe, who can be male or female. In my neighborhood, I've been noticing a nice trend - instead of a pack of 8 precious people who look  like they wouldn't talk to me if my hair was on fire, especially then, there are girls whose outfits are not quite perfect, men boisturously chatting, and like that. 

I'm also basing this thesis on the heat wave. Its been too hot to go out here so I'm doing numerous domestic routines, like listening to my cassette tapes and albums. Also cds. I got rid of two Lee Scratch Perry cds, but that has nothing to do with him being or not being a Regular Joe. Being a visionary and mentally interesting has exempted him from all theories for life. 

My albums, though....I just listened to a Grace Slick album. It was ok to hear once, but now I can get rid of it because I only have a certain number of pristine album slip covers, which of course I ordered from the collectors paradise, Bags Unlimited. She is singing.....about some various men. How cool they are, the fleeting nature of their beings, and oh their black eyes. Yeah I know those tiny black eyes. Like Andy Griffith in Face in the Crowd black eyes, cutting to the corner to check how their soulful seeming verbiage is working. 

Then on the album there is some extended jamming, better by far than most of the jamming I've been subjected to, but still jamming. Then she throws in, like, half a verse from "Go Ask Alice!" at the end to remind the live audience of a great song she wrote once. This is all because Grace Slick had to end up in Marin. Marin is not a place for regular Joes. Then she had to go to AA, but they were not bums or even probably sports bar alcoholics. They were French men playing covers of Robert Johnson songs, twitching their expression moodily. This was not a good way for Grace Slick wind up. I have never been welcome in Marin. I myself do not welcome Marin. This older gentleman in the park the other day, Sodu, reassured me that if I was in Big Sur or  Monterey or Marin for THREE MONTHS they would relax and be friendly, but I do not have that kind of TIME. 

So I am getting rid of the Grace Slick album, just throwing it out because I cannot sanction the use of an album slipcover on it and that's the only way I could donate it to a hapless trapped street vendor. Now next I put on a Loretta Lynn album. She had/has (dead yet?) a hellish life, due partly to the times and the good ole boys. But these Good Ole boys, though they drank and betrayed and promised and vanished and used everybody in sight at times, were still not French guys screwing up their face soulfully while they, yes, replicated a song by Robert Johnson, a late African American whose pain they all aspire to copy the tuneful part of. They were just assholes, or acting like assholes at the time. I am keeping that Loretta Lynn album.

Check out my new podcast, thanks to my audio partner David Hornbuckle:

Blowdryer86.podbean.com, Rob Shapiro and Jeff Dickinson are on it so far.