10,855. RUDIMENTS, pt. 333

RUDIMENTS, pt. 333

Making Cars

I won't belabor all this

because the aspects of my

life that impinged on the

motorcycle scene were

mine and mine alone, but

the latter-day reflections

on it still startle. Mostly

I don't know how I did it

and survived. Breakneck

speed, idiot antics, and my

sidekick Al. (Cohol). Now

it's all just an afterlife and

I feel like one of Custer's

men who somehow got

away. Or even Custer

himself, though I never

had red hair. Whatever it

was, through me, it was all

vivid and and real. Authentic.

-

See, that's a laugh line.

Custer used to always line

his men up and lead them

in formation to battle, etc.,

and even in battle, while

having the trumpeter and

whatever band-thing they

may have had along play

'Garry Owen,' an old 

Scottish drinking song,

actually, which he'd adopted

as his regimental marching 

tune. I could never understand

any of that in old musical

terms  -  fife and drums,

maybe a trumpet. Acoustic

guitar? I'm not sure they

did those things?

-

Back in the early 1960's, 

as all that folk music stuff 

was coming through those

Greenwich Village pass-the-hat

places, the Gaslight, the Kettle

o' Fish, Cafe Wha and the rest,

a lot of the same poeple we'd

hear of later were together then,

as nobodies, all doing the same

junk  -  Dave Van Ronk, John

Sebastian, Hugh Romney (as

'Wavey Gravey'), Bill Cosby,

Tiny Tim, Bob Dylan, Tim

Hardin, Harry Belafonte, 

Richie Havens, Phil Ochs,

the eventual Peter, Paul, and 

Mary people, etc., etc. Most 

of them had their concocted 

street stories, their new or 

falsified names, their little 

schtiks, their own repertoires, 

etc. Most of all them, in 

one degree or another, by 

1966 had made it. One of 

those guys (the subject here

of this little tale) was Fred Neil.

He was a busy guy, almost as
straight as they come, and did 
eventually cash in a little when 
his 'song' became the theme song
 for 'Midnight Cowboy,' the film.
(Everybody's talkin' at me, I don't 
hear a word they're saying...').
He sang folk songs, like the  
rest, yes, - and they  all shared

the same song-chest of old

tunes they'd draw from, adding

a claim of their own authenticity

to the hard-scrabble misery songs

of the old, black bluesman and

spiritual and slave songs. It

was always striking me as

pretty funny when I'd hear one

of these guys with an otherwise

fairly impeccable, white-boy

lineage, maybe even Jewish,

rolling over to one of those

old black-talk, garbled tongue

accents for their authenticity in

pulling over a 'borrowed' song.

Yeah, sure. The only one, really,

who never did this was Dave

Van Ronk  -  at least he had

some principles. Just sit and 

listen, for instance, to Fred Neil

singing 'Walk Me Out In the

Morning Dew, My Honey....'

It's hilarious, and if it never

occurred to him that it was

ridiculous when he sang it,

(he's dead now, poor old Fred),

it's even funnier. His version is 

pretty pathetic  -  listen to it as

he verbally dots every 'i' and

pronounces every final syllable

and clicks the proper 't' off each

time. Just like any old black guy

would have down back in Turkey

Holler, Georgia or wherever,

picking and strutting while 

sitting on old Hiram's porch. (It's
funny too, because in the Midnight
Cowboy song, he clearly dropped
the 't'). The chumps in the Grateful 

Dead, on their earliest album, 

1966 or whatever, they tried 

their hand at it too  -  believe 

me, it's much better. At least 

it's got life and some jammin'  

-  instead of Fred Neil's

schoolboy properness. And

they weren't no Southern blues

cats either; they were the

'house band' for the 'Frisco

Hells Angels, and before 

that they were 'The Warlocks!'

Go figure authenticity and

then come and tell me 

about it. Like with the 

Angels at Altamont, in 

service somehow to the 

Rolling Stones, in the middle

of some fag song a dude gets

killed. Yeah; that's authentic.

-

I was never one much for 

putting things on, and I think 

that had a lot to do with how 

and why I got muddled into 

these hardcore biker-boy days. 

Short of the Marines or somesuch, 

these guys had the grit and the 

determination at least to

screw things up  -  themselves

and the world around them  -  

just as they damn-well saw to

and pleased. I respected that; 

respected it the way I'd respect 

a voter who back then would 

have gone into a voting booth, 

pulled the curtain shut (the 

old kind of voting booth,

before the electronic BS they 

have today  -  with the old

levers and cranks and all)

  - whipped it out and pissed 

on old Johnson's or Nixon's 

name instead of voting for it. 

Any of those people, right up

to the present day; I'm not just 

picking on those two retarded 

political examples.

-

There were other bars too,

numerous. In NYCity most any

bar will wlelcome motorcycle 

guys  -  because they're usually

dumb and foolish enough to drop

a ton of change for a continued

service of some lousy beer. It's easy:

You just continue to flatter them, 

once they're in place, play up to

their 'manliness,' show certain

scriptural advances to your own

female body as the word slowly

made flesh, and, Hell! these guys

are set for the day and I'll have

another. Did you ever wonder

why someone otherwise bored

with life, these days, will drop 

down 23 grand and then probably

soon another 3 or 4 for 'imporvements'

and hop-ups, and then buy 'gear'

like they too were girls going out

of style? So can they race from

bar to bar on their old, clunker,

agriculturally-based pushrod

engine? I did, and I soon realized

you could walk to any bar you

wanted and sit there all day for

a lot cheaper than all that glory

and glamour had just cost you.

Of course, I'm a slob and have

always been  -  old boots and

second-hand clothes suit me 

fine. The first people I ever saw

with cell phones were 'Bikers.'

The first people, before that, that

I ever saw with 'Beepers' were 

'Bikers!' I never had neither and

never had anything special that

anyone needed to tell me that 

badly. If they did, they'd write

it on a board and throw it 

through my window. Biker

bars were mostly nothing
(biker bras were mostly nothing
too, but they were on girls),

but trouble because there was

always some sort of posturing

going on  -  if not about bikes

and riding, then about clothing 

or girlfriends. Let's call them

that anyway. Face it, most every

girl was a wandering event

waiting to happen  -  the biker

ethos attracted them like flies

to the Pope's crap. It was as

predictable as the second 

coming (no pun). So that bit 

of tension was always in the 

air, and if club matters or other 

competitions were added in 

and then the icing of alcohol

was poured on, well....goodbye

nurse and that's all he wrote.

Believe me, I've seen it most

all. I saw, one night in Hoboken,

a drunk asshole get the shit

beat out of him so badly that

people didn't know whether

to call an ambulance or the

morque. This was at the old

Cadillac Bar, next to the (also)

old Clam Broth House. 10 or

15 motorcycles out front,

piled and parked wherever.

It's about 114 degrees outside,

the place inside is noisy and

packed, filled with drunks, 

losers, losers' girlfriends, and

us. Way too long there; it's never 

good to stay in one place, with

the conditions I just described,

for more than maybe an hour 

and a half without again hitting

the road. (No, in motorcycle terms

I don't mean crashing, I mean

moving on to the next place).

You just keep moving on; we

used to call it 'recreational

drunk driving.' [riding]. Anyway,

we're standing outside with beers,

(you could still get away with that

then), guys are smoking and 

standing around, ogling or just

talking, and this poor schmuck,

and I mean that in every aspect

of the word, comes stumbling out,

almost drooling drunk, hardly

knowing what he was even doing,

and proceeds to, let's say, publicly

urinate  -  emergency conditions,

line inside, etc. He's so piteously

over the line that all he's doing

with his stumble and hose is

pissing on motorcycles. Just

pissing away. Here's a hint:

Don't ever do that.