It ended before the dot com fuck up of the late 1990s. There was this bunch of grizzled desperate former local throbs running open mic night Saturdays at a bar off Carson Street. A shit hole.
Me too, I was a another travelling desperate jerk off who had nothing better to do than try pulling fame out of the sewer with a Ronco Pocket Fisherman. This hurt me. I was an outsider. An interloper. The rest of the show tune mavens knew each other since pre-Vietnam. All you had to do back then was conspire to dodge the draft at age nine to form life long, valuable platonic kinships. I didn't have that luxury. I grew up in a jerk water shit hole a hundred miles north. People were Quaker-like, compared to where the music was in slummy Pittsburgh. I had adjusting to do.
Your truly was a lucky shining star for being eligible for the draft, and didn't get called. Nothing works out better than that. Frankie was in the state side army through the war, Mikey was an illegal alien, so he got out of it all together, no fault, and naturally Lavoris had nothing to do with the military, no one was sore at her for any of it. There was a lot of grumbling, from the 1960s through the late 90s.
Here's where human relations with Sinsemelia Jones was a problem. He did close work in Cambodia, so even book learning didn't fully eradicate some deep recondite hostilities. He didn't hate people, like me, for not going. But the fact remained he had his singing career stalled gruesomely, while frivolous jerk offs stayed in their communes and played protest shit. Here's where two more or less comrades have to live with a sweating, viscous interpersonal grudge. I can be a diplomatic little motherfuck.
Social work. Assholes everywhere should be doing more of it. I spent a little extra time admiring his tripple humbucker famous person electric guitar, and aknowleged that my import copy of it was shit, shit compared to what he had. We both knew that, though. He appreciated what I was doing.
