"I Have often walked
Down this street before ... "

Technorati can be interesting ...

I just careened into this rant on Wild Man Fischer with a link to a rather poignant article about Wild Man Fischer as met up with briefly in a more recent year. Wild Man Fischer -- I've only heard his name, and hadn't known Zappa had recorded him. I readily confess I didn't really follow Zappa's career after that first ellpee. But all this fascination with what now has settled into a new genre called "outsider music" all seemed to come about back in that era when people were recording street musicians like Moondog. From coast-to-coast, even then, the truth was there were plenty of people like Wild Man Fischer and Moondog. There were also plenty of weatherbeaten accordionists on the downtown streets of LA playing with tin cups in front of them.

I'd heard of Moondog, even in LA, because I'd encountered a few emigres from New York. One, a jazz musician recently migrated from New York had recorded with him and had some reel to reel tapes. In 1965, jazz compared to the late 50's and early 60's, had nearly faded from sight in LA except for a few supper clubs and the last bastion of live jazz, Shelley's Manne Hole. And despite existing every night in that especially stubborn club, or even with Thelonious gracing the stage of the Hollywood Bowl, jazz wasn't nearly as big or omnipresent as it once was in the LA environs. So the jazz guy who had told me about Moondog the street musician had fallen back on playing guitar and vaudeville routines and was trying to get a paying gig at Disneyland. He'd sputter off in his beaten up old car and brave countless miles on the freeway for auditions there now and again and never did make the cut for the summer season shows that I know of. A few years later, in 1967 or so, another Moondog album was released. And a short time after that, Wild Man Fischer's, which I have never heard.

Then, Captain Beefheart's, which I first heard on the loudspeakers in a record store in Berkeley and they played it on request from a customer, and Beefheart was already kind of famous by then. I didn't know Captain Beefheart was that someone I had met once or twice. And my previous brush with him was quite limited. But as I knew the person who acted as major domo and manager for the Beefheart group, a person I brought into the mix myself, a trustworthy and eventempered sort who said he wanted a career in show business, I have an anecdote about Capt Beefheart.

The Captain and his wife Jan tried I think to escape what they saw as the madness that was Los Angeles music biz by moving far into the Northern Coastal reaches, where as the folk song aptly has it "North Coast, the wild coast, is lonely..." They'd moved farther North than that, even up past the Lost Coast, onto a little promentory, a squiggle on the coastal outline called Trinidad. They chose Trinidad because the place was said to remind them of Mendocino, but also mentioned was that (then, at least) it wasn't as expensive or exclusive as Mendocino. Well, things weren''t going well for them there. They were nearly starving by all reports as money or royalties weren't arriving as expected. And, truthfully, having a history of metro living, they were quite unsuited to the kind of planning needed to survive much less ease the rigors of rural coastal living. They hadn't so much as pulled in a stick of firewood for the cold rainy winter months and had they remained much longer, they in all likelihood may have soon fallen ill if not frozen to death.

So there might be some difficult characters in show biz, see? Anyway, the major domo/manager was as I said a pragmatic sort when dealing with odd or unusual behaviors and he played some sort of role in rescuing the couple from the inclement though scenic Trinidad. In his formative years, my friend, the domo, had been forced to take on the role of guiding adult in the family home as his own dad had for years suffered and deteriorated from myasthenia gravis, a nerve disorder. The major domo later went on to tour every body from Manhattan Transfer to Ry Cooder for the record company. He ended up with nearly a lifelong career in the music biz, managing tours for Beefheart, then managing the Beefheart group, then the Beefheart ensemble called Mallard. He had an office in London, at least a house or two in the Canyon, and (accustomed since childhood to the traipings of upper middle class wealth) wore fancy suede jackets. I heard he died a few years back from picking up a virus that attacked his heart muscle from some soil that was delivered for his organic garden.

Keep in mind here, too, that I think the good stories come from the past. I could boast that I encountered Ry Cooder back when he traveled nearly everywhere throughout Los Angeles wearing a colonial pith helmet. Now that might be seen as an odd behavior by some, but instead of inferring conclusions, just chalk it up to carefree accessorizing, won't you?

Instead of my telling you any thing about yesteryear's impulsive shopping spree in an army/navy surplus store, and what might have come of it, let me describe something that happened to a friend of mine yesterday. She returned with a report of a visit to an upscale boutique in the city. Renown for antique jewelry that holds its investment value, the store is designed to cater to the wealthy aesthetes who haven't the time to seek out their own collectibles. Filled with stunning objet with breath taking pricetags, the shop is so exclusive you have to ring a buzzer to gain access. While she was there, the UPS man rang in and arrived with some cartons. One of which inexplicably exploded as he set it on the glass showcase, spurting and spraying copious amounts of what looked like jets of black ink on the showcase, and all over the purple carpet, and the five thousand dollar silk footstools.

Now a real-life anecdote like that ... a writer should be able to do something with that.  ¶ 6/14/2005 01:29:00 PM