Me and My Big Inability to Respond

OK this is getting bad.

My sick has not gone anywhere except deeper into my chest. I ran across my own personal Freedom Road (the street I cross everyday from my job to my car) and as I walked past the bus stop I was coughing pretty damned hard. This blind guy who waits for the bus just about everyday between 5:15 and 5:20 said “You sound pretty bad.”

Great. The blind have taken pity on me.

It’s not so bad. He seems to be doing pretty well for himself. He’s got a mighty fine Daredevil stick there. And hey, who knows what exciting, fast-paced corporate job that bus whisks him to every day? The guy wears bulky clothes in the fall/winter, but I’ve seen him in a t-shirt in the warmer weather. He’s pretty ripped so I better not even sound like I’m making fun of him.

Plus he’s got that stick.

Thanks and much love to a few people who don’t know me but have reached out through a series of circumstances to get CDs by my old band, The Not So Great You Know What’s. As usual, it takes me forever to get off my ass and do something – even if it’s simple like put a CD in an envelope and send it to Cali, Oregon and VT. At least two of these inquirers were nice and did not give up on me and when they got their records they wrote nice e-mail responses.

Thanks to them. I’ve been sick and a little blue. Not that my life is misery, but every little thing in the plus column helps these days.

One of the e-mailers asked the following question:

“So what happened to the Ambersons?”

You know what’s funny, I couldn’t really answer him. Anybody who has ever written me e-mails or letters (or reads this blog) knows that I don’t have a problem being honest if I think I know something. Even if I’m wrong, I’m not afraid to throw some sort of answer out there in order to begin to investigate it further, or get some feedback from others.

Now I have a distinct advantage (or so I thought) because I’ve kept a journal (pretty active one) since 1989 (the whole idea went back to my first grade teacher Mrs. Wilson, but I’ve been keeping it regularly since 1989)…

What was I saying?

Oh yeah, so I thought ‘Welp, you don’t remember why something happened ed, you wrote it down, presumably so you could find it later. Now is later so find it.’

This is like Journal Book Twenty Fucking Three (the official Title) p.3578. Journal 23 covers July 1999-November 1999 so it’s a pretty big book. The entry is as follows:

--------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------ - - - - - - - --------
Sunday August 29 So It Goes

Sonia came by my place today to quit the band. I made it very easy for her. We still ended up having a long talk. I’m not going to go into detail about all her reasons – but I will say why this was a good decision. Look, there has always been something in this band that has turned off as many people as it excited. The schizophrenia between two very different lead sings with very different personalities (getting different-er all the time) and the all-over-the-map approach to songwriting I’ve taken along with the songs and input on each others’ songs from five other members has hurt us as much as helped us. Listen to our two records. Whatever their merits they sound like, well…samplers. That is sort of mostly my fault. I wanted to make records that were like my favorite album in high school – The White Album. It sounds stupider every time I say it. And our shows were even more confused with different styles of songs springing up out of nowhere and that’s when we were sober enough to pull off the different styles of music. It was exciting to do that for a long time but some of the shows had no structure at all.

I’m sad. I don’t want to just make a list of reasons and say “Here’s why we can’t or shouldn’t be a band anymore.” But I’m not happy in the band anymore, and I probably haven’t been happy for awhile. Ultimately I think Sonia did me a favor. I couldn’t leave the band if I had the guts to because of my commitment to Jerry (who I hope is cool about all the money I owe him). I think Sonia did Billy a favor because he wanted out or at least wasn’t happy with the prospect of having to do more or any work. He’s got a good girl and ready to get on with his life. In fact that was sort of confirmed when I talked to Bill. He said he hadn’t been happy in the band for some time but he was afraid if he did quit he’d disappoint the others and we wouldn’t go on. He’s right too. Bill was an important part of the Ambersons. We all were. One gone – NO GO ON!

Poor Kimberly Jo I think took it the hardest. She cried. She’s got such a good heart. She went to all those shows and took all those pictures.

I had to tell Devin and Joe in front of John and Christine. I ran into them on the street right after I called Bill.

Yeah that was comfortable.

I am no good at keeping shit inside. If I have something to tell someone I try to tell them. Devin’s response: “Really?”

We drank beers and tried to enjoy .38 Special. We went to Bill’s place and drank beers on the porch. Then we went to the Courthouse to eat food and drink beers. Then we went back to Bill’s place and blamed Trixie’s other dog (the ugly Daisy) for breaking up the band. Bill said “We were a band before that dog came around here!” Devin and I went to Annex to drink beers. He really wants to preserve the friendships. I believe him. But I do not want to find a way to save the band at this point. It is over in my mind. It was over the minute Sonia said she was thinking about leaving the band to me.

We’re not closing the door forever. We are not saying to anyone who would know or care (other than Alex cuz he made the latest record). I hate bands that announce their last gig, the last album the last track and come back in 4 ½ years.

Last Friday probably was our last gig. That’s all I’m saying.

In some way all six of us aren’t interested or capable of doing this anymore. Sonia wants to start a new, non-DeKalb related life, Bill and I do not agree with each others musical whatever tastes, ChrisB wants us to play a gig wearing powder blue tuxedoes and Old Dog thinks we just need to practice more. The relationships between all of us, for whatever reason aren’t as good as they were and that’s reason enough to quit. That’s the whole reason it worked on whatever level it worked in the first place. The six of us genuinely loved each other and couldn’t wait to hang out…in fact we didn’t have to wait to hang out because we were always hanging out. We were a six-headed monster that I’m sure a lot of people took a lot of pleasure at mocking. We didn’t care. We were really happy. It sounds so hackneyed but maybe it’s a tired saying cuz it’s true – that just can’t last. Now that we don’t need those relationships the way we used to, the band is sort of besides the point in many ways. It’s not like we need the band as a source of revenue. At the height of our monetary success we were able to break even on PA, gas, sticks, strings, most of the recordings and every once in awhile we could bail friends and Devin out of jail. Sadly, that’s the most $$ success I’ve ever had at anything. It isn’t like the fame or the reputation or the potential of the band is compelling us to stay together. We never followed up on the Metro. The story of this band – publicly - really ended a month after that show in June of 1996. I’d be lying to myself if I said otherwise. And why would I do that? But most of the time after that was worth it because we loved hanging out, succeeding together, and failing together. Devin, if it were up to him would keep the band together to revive those relationships at the price of whatever we should or should not be doing next because he loves everyone so much and partly because I don’t know why Devin does things.

Anyhow what the band had (or thought it had) is over. The friendship with those guys isn’t over in my mind. In the case of Billy, our friendship will go back to what it was before and probably will be better – because now we have more stories and hardly any bullshit. I am very happy for that. I love that little guy. I can’t see Sonia, Bill, Joe and Devin hanging out together all that much for one reason or another – BUT I’m sure we’ll all be in the same room again soon. Chris’ wedding is coming up. We’re also planning to get together for dinner somewhere just the six of us for a toast or something slightly less pathetic than the 72 Dolphins.

What more can I say? To be honest, and I don’t know why I shouldn’t be honest cuz WHO THE FUCK IS EVER GOING TO READ THIS, it doesn’t matter who did who to what or who feels what way now. It’s done and I need to think about what to do next. I wrote songs before I was in the Ambersons and I’ll keep doing afterwards to the chagrin of the world at large and amateur recording engineers everywhere who have to listen to me get this shit on tape. To be honest I JUST SAID THAT, but to be honest after almost five years in that band I feel ten years older and one year smarter.

That is not a good ratio.

We tried. The Magnificent Ambersons tried. We failed.

But what I’ll remember most is….
---------------- - - -- - -------------------------------------- - ---- -- --------- - -------------- --

…and that’s basically how the entry ended 7 years ago. No wonder I couldn’t tell the nice fellow the whole story when he asked the question. I couldn’t even tell it to myself right after it happened. Funny when life and our brains are like that. We think we understand ourselves, our lives the things big and little that happen to us…

But it’s hard, hard as hell to articulate them let alone archive them.

Anyhow, I sort of promised Mr. J.O. (not the Old Dog) a story about what happened to the band. I gave him the address to my blog. I thought the source was good. I didn’t mean to spew a sack of woe, if that’s what I did. His note made me happy the other day and for that I say

Thanks…

And thanks and God bless to all of my friends who’ve put up with this kind of shit for all these years. To quote my blessed Lord and Savior: “Your reward shall be great in Heaven”

Mostly because there better not be any pathetic blogs you have to read there!!!!

G’night