typeshow

a rare american 2nd act by tim byrnes

Winsome, Lose Some Blues

     Hello friends, hello strangers. Been a weird week. Someone rounded up almost all my alleycats (as well as a few housecats that must have unfortunately been in the alley at the time) last week, including a mamacat w/4 week old kittens that idiot me tried, unsuccessfully, to wean on 2% milk and an eyedropper. Id been feeding some of these cats for like 5 years. Speedy Firbank, gone. Suzie Jacuzzi and Seabiscuit Smith, gone. The list goes on. And on and on and on. Even I had to admit it was getting overwhelming. Before this purge I was feeding roughly (well, actually gently and lovingly, but you know what I mean) 25 to 30 cats a day and frankly it was beginning to take a toll financially and emotionally. Not to mention pissing my neighbors off, but sometimes that was a perk.

    So I've been days now conflicted between the understandable sadness of the sudden loss, which I'm sure hasn't really even hit me yet, but that numbness, cresting toward that inevitable crying jag, and a sense of relief due to the lessened resposibility. So, of course, w/that comes the guilt. And guilt needs comforting, which often requires a story. Here's what I've been telling myself and, I swear to you, it's all true.

    About 3 months ago I was working at the store when a woman came in to get gas. She asked me if we had an animal control officer in town because there was a stray dog on the highway a mile or two outside of town. I directed her to the Town Hall across the street where I figured they could help her. As is often the case, the customer and I conversed. Turned out she worked for Animal Control in Lamar, a 'big' city (think Mt. Pilot) about 100something miles West of here. So I told her the story of my hundred cats and the attendant stress etc. and she told me that working w/a local vet and access to a  Federal grant she might be able to help me. She paid for her coffe, gave me a 'God bless you for taking care of the animals' and was off. 

     I thought that was it, but lo and behold, about a month ago she came in and said she was ',,,still working on it' and blessed me again, so this time I gave her the coffee. So, it is my opinion, and one  I think is currently holding me together, that she got her grant and swept my alley while I was at work or elsewhere away. My defense of this opinion is that  for one, I have found no bodies, neither on the highway or choked in the alley on antifreeze. Also the sheer number of cats that have vanished suggests a highly efficient crew of trained professionals who would be likely to have more respect for the animals than, say, the crew of hooligans my landlord would've undoubtably hired to do the job.

    I can see it now, six guys w/nine teeth between 'em running up and down the alley bangin' pots and pans, trying to get them cats in that Hefty bag, while Speedy bites 'em on the ankles and Buckethead (oh, man Buckethead's gone) climbs the skinny one like a tree, stares him dead in the eye and croons like Bugs Bunny "Oh, do you mean it?"

    That's what I think happened, anyway. What I'm keeping in my heart right now is that I loved them and took care of them everyday, the best I could while they were here and that I will miss them terribly and that that sucks but there's nothing I can do but write to you and move on.

     In the meantime, another family two blocks down moved away and abandoned a large female b&w Italian racing cat who hopped thru my window 2 days ago. I've named her Maserati Fettuccini (or Mauser for short), so the tradition continues.

2 1/2 weeks and counting until the Tension Envelope reunion. More to come...............


tb

posted by: timbyrnes at 18:18 | link | comments (1) |

We Gotta Smoke Us: A Speedy Firbank Tale of Envelopia

     (I'm sitting at the Library computer w/Speedy Firbank in my lap 'cause he apparently has something to say. Now, before you think I've gone Catholic in my dodderage, let me explain that Speedy Firbank is a 5 year old tomcat whp lives in my alley and, though he will tell you drunkenly and at high volume that he most certainly does NOT look like Garfield, he actually kinda does. If Garfield were one of Sgt. Fury's Howlin' Commandoes, maybe. Constantly nursing torn up ears and paws due to alleyfights and beleagured by a nagging eye infection that I think comes from the drinking keeps my boy from appearing in YOUR Sunday funnies, but here he is in mine. And, no, I don't know where he learned to type. Now let's get this done, people are starting to stare. .............................................. tb)


     Like Ian the Hunt croaked into the sonymic back in the '70s, rock and roll's a loser's game. But who doesn't love a lovable loser? Who among us has never stepped on the rake of destiny and got smacked flat pussed into the hard cold reality that one cannot win. Idealism's a great distraction, much like commerce, governance and religion, my time in the alley's taught me that you'll know what's real when it hits you and, in all likelihood, one is apt to be run down by someone else's fantasy that, through one's own personal interpretation of said fantasy, becomes real as shit and usually tastes as bad.

     So, like the loud music said after Mott jumped the shark 'everything sucks', and some folks bought that and ran w/it. Into suicide or fame and all points in between until all the truly committed were eaither dead or organized into trying to really save the world (Hello, Geldof!), while the 2nd thru 22nd tier stole and modified their way into a commodity, until the cry of a wounded culture trying to trump the essential unfairness of day to day living, got filtered through the machine and wound up as 'this weekened only 20% of Sweatshop Bondage Pants in the Sid Vicious Shoppe at Sears.'

     True, an extremist fabrication, but you know what I mean.

     But some, a select few, ran w/it into stalled craetivity, shall we say. Strapped on electric guitars and DIDN'T listen to Malcolm McClaren, DIDN'T put on the uniform and most importantly (ultimately) DIDN'T give in to cynicism. Some, like my boy Byrnes here and the rock and roll summer camp he calls a band have kept that flicker of punkpossibility going in that little La Junta basement for almost 10 years now, and now the basement seems cramped and too damn distant form the rest of the world. Acknowledging this, I think, allowed the skinny guy's Universal Will To Become (oh, Vonnegut was right on the money, by the way. About EVERYTHING. You'd be surprised what cats know) to trigger events ACROSS THE FREAKING COUNTRY leading to this upcoming rock and roll Loserpalooza on April 4th.

     Anyway, this Envelope reunion thing the skinny guy's got cooking has got him trippin, 'yall like a 2 dollar bill, y'all. Seems the boy got himself into this fix where his new band has to open for his old band and the schmuck is wrestling w/yet another dilemma formed out of the thin air around his head (in his defense, he is rather tall) and it goes like this. He thinks both bands have to blow each other away! If I could speak English I'd grab him by that grey Clark Kent sweater and tell him...

"Yo, stupid, it's a shoestring rock and roll gig in the middle of freaking nowhere but more to the point it's an opportunity for you to make noise w/the most important people in yr life in front of the whole town that you've suddenly JUST realized is pretty freaking cool. IT'S A PARTY, PINHEAD! ENJOY!! '

    And besides, is there really a question of who's gonna smoke who? Flashback's fun, but I'm thinking even w/25 years off the clock, the minute you hook up w/Simmons and Neblung and a drummer to be named later, yr gonna turn into Tension Envelopes before their very eyes and no one's gonna be more surprised than y'all.  oH, AND BTW, rOB CAME UP W/A  (damn capslock!) new running order that actually makes sense. Flashback's gonna open, then Dan's kid's band Smile As It Dies and then Tension Envelopes. Tim finds this hysterical as once again Tension Envelopes follow a Metal band and apparently this fires those boys up.

    So, leave a backdoor open, willya? For a cat named Speedy Firbank, who just wants to party like it's 1979!.

posted by: timbyrnes at 19:37 | link | comments (8) |

Memories Can't Wait

     Tension Envelopes are a-comin' to town w/a drummer to be named later. That's right, we hit the 1st snag of this endeavor when the drummer (who agreed to do this 6 months ago) suddenly flaked and "can't make it.'  The reasons are personal so I can't elaborate but I'd like it on the record that it has nothing to do w/his being a Christian and my not. Neither does it have anything to do w/any hesitancy to play any of the material. So I guess what I'm saying is it wasn't my fault. However, in a rare flash of thinking ahead, I have had 3 other drummers in mind since the get go, so this problem's but a few phone calls away from being solved,

   I gotta tell ya, concert promotion's a lot tougher than concert a-playing, but really just as much fun. Since Carl and Rick and I hatched this hairbrained scheme I have had what can only be called negotiations w/the Chief of Police, the Mayor, the head of the Theater Board, various members of the town council and I did an interview w/the news editor of our local paper not to mention wrangling up amps, microphone stands, a 3rd act band, arranging transportation (OK, I asked Steve if I could borrow his truck but still.....) borrow camcorders and setting my new laptop (!!) up to copy DVDs and CDs of the event once it transpires.

    Not bad fer a punk rock slacker, eh? Y'now there are elements out there that decry my self-identification as a punk rocker and I've thought about it so much that yesterday, in the middle of the interview, I found myself in the pompous position of trying to explain punk rock like I would know, Here's what I came up w/as best as I can remember. The Demon Muglia actually gave me the hook when he typed that 'yr CD doesn't sound punk. And that's where the misconceptions start. To my feeble mind punk rock is not a sound it is a way. Like all art is not a thing, but a way. It's an attitude and like most attitudes can be briefly described by that which it is not: to me the punk rock ethic involves doing it yrself, be it homemade cassettes or renting a theater in yr town. I've also thought that punk meant believing what you sing, play, say and do. There's that 'don't worry about making any money' thing again.

The scene of course got painted as a nihilistic hoedown (now THERE'S a name for a band) and, yes, many if not most bands bought into the whole 'everything sucks' vibe, and some of them made a pretty penny at it. Some nihilists also saved every flyer and magazine article they had so they could call them 'memoirs' and sell them to Rutgers University for a cool 50,000 Yankee Dollars some 30 years after appearing on an album cover w/the words 'Please Kill Me' scrawled across his chest. So yeah, there are shams in punk rock, hell the Pistols' whole charm, to me, was that they announced the sham while tearing through some of the most inspirational rock and roll I've heard to this day. Hate the game, not the player?

     No, sorry, Ima goin hate the player, because there is no game, only players. It's what the players do, or more importantly, let pass that DEFINES the game, whether it's punk rock, politics or yes, religion. So I can no more explain punk rock than any one of you out there can explain yr love of yr children. It just is. So get past the definitions and the false incomplete thought that everything sucks. Complete the thought: Everything sucks and I'm gonna fix it by.............................

     Memories of the Envelopes' original run are of course messing w/my head on a daily basis. I'm as proud of those songs as I am of anything and the friendships forged then and maintained now are the closest thing I've found in life to holiness, there's still the buzzards of my alcoholism circling the party, y'know. I'm not gonna drink over it, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't difficult to relive those days, whether listening to the CD or sitting on the couch w/my acoustic working up the old tunes, some not sung for 25 years, while Buster and Sarah look at me wondering what I'm so mad about.

     Really I'm still pretty mad about the same things, inequality, the lunacy of war, the inevitablity of mankind's destruction, my inability to love etc. Maybe now I've gained a little perspective (having most of what you own catch fire'll do that for a guy) and have learned a little patience (little being the key word) I've found that the  20something kid who wrote and screamed these songs screamed them because he felt, like many of us, powerless in the face of a deck that was stacked against the little guy from birth. He hated the fact that there's an American Nazi Party, hated the fact that even after 2000 years we still turn to the gun for problem solving and he hated the fact that people starve in a land of plenty.  The last 10 years I've been playing w/my friends in Flashback doing cover tunes so the only subversion I can muster there is through my guitar.  Flashback is a different kinda fun, and on April 4th I get to play the blues w/Flashback and revisit my loud and angry youth w/Tension Envelopes so I KNOW how lucky I am and I'm not complaining much.

   Sorry this is so scattered, but this morning, so am I.

peace and noise,
tb

posted by: timbyrnes at 18:01 | link | comments (4) |

Never Take Advice From Guitar Players

     If I were to give you one piece of advice it would be to learn how to play guitar (or bass, or drums, or sing, or keys or any comination of these) and form a band. With yr friends. And it don't matter who can play well or not at all or - heaven forbid - better than you all that matters is that you all like each other and whatever you play makes you smile if not laugh out loud. And don't worry about making any money @ it either 'cause let's face it, there's no money in rock and roll anymore unless yr built like a brick shithouse or can operate pitch correction software.

     And never do what anyone, no matter how hot or well intentioned, tell you what you should do. If there ideas are so great, let them form their own band. So just smile and nos when friends and family trot out these tired numbers:

     'You should play country music." (Or rock or rap or punk or opera or whatever it is yr clearly NOT about.)

     "You should turn down.' (Never, EVER, capitulate on this one>)

     'You should smile more onstage.'

      And yes, we know you can't hear the vocals and no, Mom, we don't know any nice songs!'

     Unless of course you do. What I'm getting at is if you can truly be true to yrself, what you think and feel, can scrape up something yr willing to share and can be halfway honest about it over 3 or 4 chords then, THAT music will bring you rewards greater than cash.

      And whatever you do, don't EVER play bass in a Stevie Ray Vaughan wannabe (Vaughanabee?) cover band just 'cause their working when all you really want to do in yr heart is play guitar like Robert Quine on crack. Believe me it will come to no good end and yes, I speak from experience.

tb

BONUS TRACK: The Manifesto

(This was the traditional Tension Envelope set opener circa 1979, to be screamed loudly into microphone over free form distortion jam in E)

             'Rock and roll is the people's music only in that any idiot can be taught to play 'Johnny B. Goode'

              Rule Number One: Some people will do anything for money! These people will not be Tension Envelopes!

              Rule Number Two: Some people will do anything to be on television! These people will not be Tension Envelopes!

              Rule Number Three: Don't take advice from guitar players!'



      Welcome to the new blog everybody! I hope to type more about the upcoming Envelopes reunion (and something about Flashback's 10th anniversary, my boys are getting the short end of the stick here) and maybe get back to actually figuring this life shit out rather than shouting down the same devil over and over again. See, I realize that I, too have wasted the last 3 years of my ministry, too. If you consider what you bring the world a ministry and why the hell now, y'know?

peace and noise,
tb

posted by: timbyrnes at 19:49 | link | comments (4) |