And Rock And Roll
Laundry this morning. You know, go into the bedroom, pull out one of the clothes hampers, start with the white, take it downstairs, feed the coins and get started. What's the fuss? I should have done it last week, if only because half the people in the building were either out of the building or doing everything, anything but laundry. Or do people do laundry before, during and after Christmas? Another rocket start today this Saturday, doing my laundry after breakfast.
I sent an email to Razor who's address I got from MRW, another old friend from the underground comix days, now living in North Dakota. I figured it was cold in North Dakota. The moniker was given because he's from Arkansas, as in the University of Arizona Razorbacks, rather than a blade. The idea is nice, hollow ground balanced steel, but the reality is another matter. Better the Razorbacks, better for Razor, better for us.
Anyway I received a long email in return, one part of which apologized for any treatment he gave me during his alcoholic salad days. One memory of Razor, a not altogether happy memory, was trading him $5 for Mother Earth's first album at a time when he was broke. You don't screw your friends out of something that was important to the both of you for $5, a slice of bad karma I've carried since. (I think I also screwed him out of the second Mother Earth album for another $5 some time later, but what the hell, the door was open and I knew the territory.) So we cleared the air. Any apologies owed were owed from me. (And, besides, I've still got the albums.)
I hadn't thought of that, exactly. "I've still got the albums." If he comes through San Francisco, if I ever get to North Dakota, I need to offer them back. I knew R. Powell St. John when he lived here in San Francisco, he and Tracy Nelson were the founders of Mother Earth. That first album was recorded in Texas with Michael Bloomfield playing guitar on the Memphis Slim Mother Earth title cut (he was listed on the back of the album under the pseudonym MaKal Blumfeld), Mark Naftalin was on keyboards and another San Francisco friend, Henry Carr, was their manager. So I wanted the album and I was willing to screw Razor out of his copy on a night when Razor needed the money. High finance. Shit, it's mine, I'll keep it. Payback on the next turn of the karmic wheel can't last more than a few months. Or years. Or lifetimes.
Are we drifting?
Sure, why not. I put Mother Earth on the turntable, something else I haven't played in a million years. R. Powell St. John wrote and performed three songs on the album: The Marvel Group, Living With The Animals and The Kingdom of Heaven (Is Within You), any one of which should have hit the charts, not to mention the stuff by Tracy Nelson. Hit my charts, anyway. Such is life and rock and roll. Art and life and rock and roll.
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