The Death of Music City (Part 1)

 

                    She played the roll of tangible amongst the tail of downtowns shake, rattle & roll another number blues. The scat that sat with my lingo, stirring & fishing for the lime that sat like a sunken treasure at the salty bottom of my bloody mary morning . I reached for another Marlboro Red. Weaving in & out of the parade of sunbeams blazing through the window as the high noon finally began to peek over Broadway & Granville. And when that beam is just right & the light edges the metallic, makeshift counter-cooler at the front of the bar, the entire joint glows. Like a map room of nuclear jazz & blinds all vision & dilates the top of my mind memory of mystical cataclysms inhaled atop the heavens of Tennessee.

           I draw the cigarette to my lips. She, always standing near on the other side of the bar, extends her arm with a gripping silver Zippo & fires me up. She saw it coming a mile away. Always with class that one.

           I took another sip. The tabasco lit up my insides while the room started to dim, as she walked over to the window & drew the blinds to an atmosphere of medium cool. And I sat watching the entire Broadway get set a blaze. And my haze became thick. And my lip started to quiver from the cries of my liver & the Cumberland River seemed so far away. But even closer tomorrow.

            I inhaled another drag & leant back in my stool & tried to get it together enough to get back to the page & properly print a swan song sung in the high-lonesome key of Nashville, Tennessee, where it's very own Broadway blazes & bops to the bluegrass & haggard songs of rambling.

            "Would ya like another drink there darlin'?" She drawled with DeKalb eyes smiling. She sounds innocent, but shes got a grin on her like she could kill you in your sleep & you wouldnt even know it. Like I said, always with class.

              I rubbed my eyes & the bridge of my nose, took a breath & shook my head, poetically from north to south. She gave me a wink.

              I remembered Nashville previously like a mothers hug that wont let you go when you got to. And thats on the good nights. But to me, any nights a good night in Nashville, Tennessee.

              And Im not sure if it was the drink talking, but right then & there I heard someone sing, as clear as a church bell, like he was perched atop my shoulder prophesizing directly to me,

 

"I was stumblin bumblin down the

the neon Music City sidewalks

with a junkie & a juicehead

who had problems of their own."

 

              And I started to smile. With the knowledge of complete debauchery at hand. The hand that shakes with the extension of a Jagerfinger pointed to the sky. And she came back with another bloody mary & a crisp-clean Lincoln.

              "Here darlin'," she said handing me the fin, "go play the juke." And went on to serve another patron. And my smile became brighter as I climbed down bar stool mountain & sashayed my way across the floor over to the wall hung neon box of music & fed it the 5 spot.

              I made my selections with a touch of southern hospitality & a thick blues jam of epic proportions. And of course, some Johnny Cash.

              And I raised my glass high up to the smokey stale sky & salute.

 

"Rest In Peace Johnny!"

"There WILL Be Peace In The Valley."

 

            And I think thats when the dream began.

           

            I awoke in the chilly north with my morning, latter than normal, tapping me with fever from the side of my skull, digging at my knuckles, naked with frost & it's digital kiss, slowly down my spine & ticking. Licking away, my dizzy sights of Wednesday delights with biting venom, fang-tooth appetizing flesh, peeling the skin of my wound under vicious mouths of hunger & I no longer needed to withdrawal.

            We kissed with morning breath but it could have been any midnight to remember. I lay on top of her trying to beat the clock in a frantic state of hung over rotten with my head greasy & tangled & the legacy, I strangled down to fitting corduroy nights of drinking bliss & the kiss that lingers awaitingly only 7 1/2 hours to the south.

            After working off my bar tab, I kissed her goodbye, gathered my momentum & capped my skull towards the Howard & road the rails of hustle bustle weekday yawns & late breaking headlines, shifting my attentions as the train stalled somewhere underground & the silence was sliced with a rumble in my gut & an invitation of madness. And thats when I swore I heard him singing again,

 

"Stuck with luck it kept me standin

just a step away from starving

& some talent that Id swore Id show

before I go back home"

 

             And just before I awoke, the train began its way, shufflin on down the line with just another hint of foreseen mayhem.

            

              I derailed at Grand Avenue with a slow Michigan march down toward the river & an 8-hour bridge to burn topped by a loathsome exercise to see me fit for a 4-day bender to be compared to any heavy battle of the glory days of youth.

              My anticipation was growing fat. My eagerness, losing it's patience fast as my longing for the south grew out of my control. I began to work quickly. Fighting against the hours with nods & smiles & a couple of devil horns thrown in salute of the rock thatll knock me about & shout down my throat in a mighty ALLLL-RIGHT!! thatll carry me, spiritually unjust, until the magic of night fall & the welcome wagon of the west fully falls upon the cold & frost of Ashland Avenue & Irving Park Road.

               I kept spying on the clock. In the hours to pass I had come to realize that certain planes were to be touching down at O Hare International Airport & certain caricatures of debauchery were to be arriving in one of those planes from a 4 hour flight from Hollywood, California. And sure enough, Balls Wallace himself was to be ringing me as soon as he departed the terminal.

 

             This voyage I've been speaking of was to consist of myself, Balls Wallace The Dean Of Hollywood & of course Captain Amnesia Jones behind the wheel of the lovely Big Bathsheba Red. The invitation was for Nashville, Tennessee where a group of Los Angeles types were to be celebrating & saluting a little country soirée dubbed The Americana Music Festival & an anniversary passing of an Americana music hero, Gram Parsons. All tied into one lost weekend, in one lost city, in one lost memory.  

              Balls was to be arriving in the latter part of the afternoon so we can celebrate ourselves with some Chicago spirits before storming the pavement & an ol' familiar I65 trail blaze thatll drink us down the Babyface Highway into Indianapolis, Louisville, Kentucky & on down to a little eat em up joint called Roberts Western Wear where we would be taken care of by the Mother of Lower Broad. And around 4:30 pm, I got the call.

            " I got em damnit!!" The Captain yelled, "Everything is goin according to schedule. Meet up at headquarters at exactly 1700 hours. This is now officially a military operation!"

             "Yes sir!" I saluted over the wire & disconnected transmission. And I sidestepped ,

over to the mini fridge supplied by the company store & reached for me a cold gusto.

             "War has been declared." I shouted a raised bottle to the heavens. "God help us all." 

              And with that being said, I then proceeded to drink everything in sight for the next 96 hours straight.

 

 

 

"80 days out of the army

makin neither love or money

& my only set of clothes

are getting closer to the bone"

 

 

            My attire was a bit thin & my stank, rank with the abuse of cheap barrooms & tobacco & a sweetheart of a gal with an a*s, as The Double K would say, "just comfortably large enough to keep my balls off the bed".

            Leaning illegally against the doors of my evening Ms. Kimball who would derail me at Irving Park Road, where I marched it's terrain towards headquarters, spying ahead of me, the awesome sights of a professionally polished Big Bathsheba Red in all her 4 wheeled glory, shining like the rhinestones on Hank Williamss Nudie suite.

            "Ain't she purrty!" Quoted the Captain, "Just givin 'er the ol' spit shine so's she's the cleanest machine on the interstate. I'm thinkin' 'bout drivin er right through the God Damn Opry walls."

            "That's down right tasty there, Captain. She'd probably get banned for drivin over the footlights."

            "Well then f**k 'em then!" I heard a distance voice scowll.

            The voice, sounded familiar & seemed to carry all the way from California & I knew this dream was now officially a reality.

             He came strutting around the van with the swagger of the Sunset Strip. Balls Wallace. The Dean of Hollywood. Caressing a tall boy of Old Style beer & a look in his eyes that just might put us all behind the bars of a padded cell.

              "Lookin' mighty fit there cowboy." He projected toward me, giving me a once over & handing me a swig from his Style.

              "Nice for you to have noticed Mr. Wallace."

               I gripped his can & finished the rest of its content with a smile. Balls Wallace, decked to the nines in hip Melrose Ave. fashions inked up & down his arms. Black cowboy shirt with western white stitching around red roses rising around open wide lapels, like he was still in 90-degree weather. For it was, after all, his party. His organization. And better yet, his dollar. For his birthday lands fatefully on the same day that Gram Parsons drove down that "deadly Denver bend". So this is an annual event filled with the classiest madness ever assembled. Always trying to out do the past. And I had a deep-rooted, gut turning feel that this just might do us all in.

 

March on all ye soldiers.

March on.

 

 

 

"And the junkie placed an order

with a prophet on the corner

and told him of his soul

that hed been sellin for a song."

 

            As darkness descended upon our third floor HQ looking out at the mid-temperatures of Septembers North Center main drag, we burned one down from a baggie that will hopefully last us to Music City & back.

 

 

If we make it back.