Mr. Dead-Centered, an old BarNone and plenty of, IF (I love music part 2)

Mr. Dead-Centered, an old BarNone and plenty of, IF (I love music part 2)
By Jon Slone






Easy question time…you ready?

Here we go.

Look at the picture above, which one do you think is the lead singer?

Yep…

The dude dead-center rockin’ the paisley shirt with the jean collar right?

That’s what I thought too…

Like, for twenty years!

Guess what?

I was wrong.


As a music-loving kid in the 1970’s, I, like every other inquisitive scavenger my age, stumbled upon this invaluable cache in my parents vast album collection. By cache, I mean the wonder band called, Bread. Within the four slices, what comprise this loaf of awesomeness is the chief song writer and lead singer, a man by the name of David Gates.


Hear me people who still rock a lunch box or a meal ticket…..this David Gates has the best falsetto voice on the planet bar none (Hey that was a yummy candy bar wasn’t it!)


















Just how good is Bread you ask?


The band, Fleetwood Mac garnered 17 top 20 hits inside of thirty years. Bread nabbed a whopping 10 in a career that spanned only 31 months. Imagine if Bread had stayed fresh for thirty or forty years?


If for some outlandish reason you are not familiar with their body of work, by all means, partake of these sumptuous bites straightaway:


Baby I’m A Want You
It don’t matter to me
Everything I own
Make it with you


And


Wait for it…


IF


You knew that was coming, didn’t you?


Ah,……….IF.

Just two little letters and a paltry two minutes and thirty-six seconds long and yet still, its unadulterated brilliance with regards to its overall angelic sound and ocean-deep lyrical content. (It’s pure poetry people)


Check out these words:


And when, my love, for life is running dry…
You’ll come, and pour, yourself, on me.


AWWWWWWWWW!

Are you frickin’ kiddin’ me?! This is the substance of baby’s farting in church and tiny tea-set parties and forlorn little puppies.


Jane Austin has this song on her iPod for cryin’ out loud!


This is what butterflies and rainbows and Amish people neck to!


A Krispy Kreme Buffet and a Coca Cola IV ain’t got nothin’ on this song!


If your first kiss or your first grass stain or your first Stretch Armstrong were magically pooled with all the glory days of recess’ gone by and millenniums’ spent trick-or-treating….if you could melt all of that down into a song and then sprinkle it atop your doughnut heart like it was snowy droplets of powdered sugar………those syrupy flakes of ear toffee would be the song, IF.


Put it to you this way, between the years of 11 and 22, I serenaded roughly 10 women with this buttery gem.

I closed the deal on all 10.


By closed, I mean we either dated or became boyfriend/girlfriend.


Little known fact: Women dig men who dig Bread enough to sing Bread to said women…..wait, what?


Let’s review:

David Gates = Angel
David’s voice = Angelic
The sound of the song, IF (instrumentation and all) = Heavenly
The words = Poetry


The mentioning of DG brings me back to the beginning of this post.


It was and still is a weird feeling to love and listen to a band for as long as I have and to furthermore, gape at the most famous picture of that band and to suppose you’ve locked in on the lead singer, only to find out, a buh-jillion years later, that you have instead been looking at the disgruntled and green-eyed guitar player, one by the name of Mr. James Griffin, the late Mr. Griffin I should add (Actually, for that matter, all but the lead singer have passed away now).


But getting back to the famous photo and my innocent blunder…..

Come on people, really?!


To those, ‘horrible, position-the-band-for-a-famous-album-cover-picture-people’ I offer this quote:


Don’t fall victim to classic blunders. The two most famous are, ‘never get involved in a land war in Asia’ and ‘never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line’….but only slightly less known is this, ‘never stick the lead singer behind a weird looking guitarist in a paisley shirt with a jean collar.’



Now go have fun storming the castle. And take your Bread with ya!


Jon



By the way, David Gates, for those that don’t know, is the one with the shortest haircut.

Pickles, ketchup, the works! (I love music part 1)

Pickles, ketchup, the works! (I love music part 1)
By Jon Slone





I love music.
I like music.
I dig music.
I’m down with music.


If music was a pet, I would hug it and squeeze it and stroke its bill and rub its pretty feathers and call it George.


Music courses through my body like blood and unanswered prayer requests.


I thank My Dad for the gift of music all the time. I love all genres of music…psychedelic, reggae, rustic, acoustic, folk, pop, acid jazz, smooth jazz, accapella, country, bluegrass, blues, delta blues, R&B, soul, swamp, gospel, punk, alternative, instrumental, grunge and lastly, that style where the artist has no aptitude or creative bent whatsoever and could no more trill his way out of a paper bag than he or she could fly to the moon. These melodic fakers force studio execs to decamp to their billion dollar recording bunkers and manufacture a counterfeit sound and a bogus skill-set just so the aforementioned mock-artisans can appear both, dope and fly. I think they call that genre, Bieber. But I’m not entirely sure…It may be, Milli something.

I love how music gives my soul goose-bumps, how it heals me at times, inspires me at others, ushers forth an occasional tear parade, teaches and guides me and much, much more.


Heck, forget Skippy and Lassie, I’m thinking that man’s real best friends are an iTunes account and an iPod with everything on it…..pickles, ketchup, the works!


Hear me plainly on this; the closest we’ll ever come to a time machine, this side of heaven, is music. Music has that uncanny capacity to transport us back, heart, head and soul, to the time where we first heard a particular song. Spectacular memories, both blissful and cheerless, cling to songs like dew surmounting an aureate pasture at daybreak. Thus, when we, many years removed, hear a certain tune, it literally and inexplicably unlocks that vivid recollection and we get violently driven back to chapter three of the story of our lives. One moment, you’re forty and your left knee hurts, the next, its 1982 and you’re twelve and your listening to your Mom’s records and drinking Tab.

And who was to blame for it all?

Well, I thought you would never ask……the guilty party was, Men at Work and a catchy number called, ‘Down Under.’


Music is crazy-incredible that way!


I hear, ‘Love will keep us together’ and all of the sudden, I’m five years old, standing in a kiddy pool at Kentucky Damn Village. I hear, ‘Love Shack’ and I’m eighteen and three quarters, working at Lexington Country Club on Old Paris Pike, cutting lemons into wedges and wagon wheels. Peradventure I was to happen upon a radio playing, ‘Lessons in Love,’ the next thing you know I’m carried off to the year 1987 and Don Lane’s Basketball camp. And every time Color me Badd’s, ‘I Adore Mi Amore’ clanks against the ear drums all at once I’m back in my 1984 Dodge Omni and headed to Natural Bridge in Slade Kentucky near the Red River Gorge. That was where I celebrated my twenty-first birthday. And Color Me Badd forces me, whether I like it or not, to relive that four day weekend every time I hear a specific four minute and forty-five second song of theirs.



Music is prevailing like I don’t know what, even to the point where it can save lives.


Almost all of us have been in church at least once where God inhabited the music portion of the service and something so remarkable happened that the impending sermon was totally redundant and unnecessary.


I could go on and on and continue to paint with broad strokes but I’d rather pack it in and talk about music on a much slighter scale. In other words, what it means to one person, me.


I love to dance to it, jog to it, chill to it, unwind to it, be stirred by it, be taught by it, purchase it, play it, collect it, quote it, converse about it, jump into it, be swept away by it, study it, jam it, rock it, memorize it and be in awe of it.


Something about music is a mystery…it shows us only part of its hand.


Just a thought: There is no marriage or copulating in heaven but there is choir rehearsal, all night jam sessions and drum sets sitting around……I’m just sayin.’


For now, I must proffer you a fond farewell, too much, ROYAL SCAM and not enough time.


P.S. In the next little bit (Upcoming posts) I’ll be talking about the five qualities that I look for in a song, my top twenty-five bands or solo artists of all time and new music that I’ve discovered in the last year or so. Also, I’ll be doing album reviews.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta locate our dog, Scooter and try to explain to him why I’m more partial to, Men at Work. (It’s because they don’t pee on our Berber carpet yo!)

Jon

This, your tenuous creation (The delicate process of creative writing)

This, your tenuous creation
(The delicate process of creative writing)
By Jon Slone









Someone once asked me what it felt like to write...to describe the actual process.
This was my reply in a poem.



Slap something down like a fist-full of mashed potatoes.
Then push it around like you were rearranging furniture.
Stop for a precious moment, step back and gaze upon it, this, your tenuous creation.
Then immediately stow, with everything in you, the urge to play basketball with it!


Look on with surgical eyes. But save one glance full of ripe aggrandizement.
Cut the cord and walk away.


Several good and restful hours later, come home to your prose.
Drink-in slowly, the fetching bits.
Notice the horrid lumps straight away!


Make haste to operate yet again!


More slaps!
Reconfigure those ink-stained end-tables!
Cut.
Draw lines through.
Drop in.
Snip.
Slash.
Couch together.

Dab the ink.
Take a drink.
Chase new ideas with new sneakers!

Quill over ink pool
Take the plunge!
Scissors.
Tape.
Scalpel.
Sponge!.
Must stop the bleeding!

Castigate!
Contemplate.
Confabulate.
Inoculate…

Rubbish and genius, shoulder to shoulder but for a fleeting moment!

Rinse and repeat for what seems like forever!




This, your tenuous creation.



Peace & a Pretzel!

Riggleberry Bloke And Other Silly Whatknots!

Riggleberry Bloke is a book that I wrote and illustrated. It took me 15 years to pen it and 10 more to get it published. I'll let the description of this here, tasty tome do the rest.



Riggleberry Bloke is a book for extremely young kids (ages 3 months old and up) as well as really Cob-webby and obsolete children (ages 67 up through Dracula years). And then everyone in between!
It’s a book teeming with consternated dogs, mustachioed women and a 3-day-old piece of toilet paper! Upon completion of this delectable tome, one stands to be well versed in the erudition of many other chief subjects, such as, but not limited to; maggots, cat throw-up, cyclops’, 8-track players and Death Star Space Station boxes!

One caveat, Some of the tattle-tales are terribly tall, some of the words are brobdingnagian, and some of the bed bugs do lacerate! That notwithstanding, this compendium of cantankerous claptrap is most assuredly more agreeable than eating all your vegetables or getting inoculated for no good reason! Its promethean gimcrackery meets the deep-end of the Drink! And its moniker is Riggleberry Bloke!


The book is 122 pages long and is comprised of 55 short and long poems. Some are, Pacific Oceans while other are merely, Puddles.



Here is one such Puddle:




Stormie Mol Bean


I know this girl
Named Stormie Mol Bean.

And she is the weirdest kid I’ve ever seen!

She flips her pillows
To cool her head.

And sleeps not on top
But under her bed!



The toys that she likes
The very, very best!

She puts them away
And plays with the rest.



She likes to tan
From a moving van.

And talks to her friends
But only through a fan.

She reads in the dark in her Mom’s frying pan.

And likes to drink soda pop hot from the can.



Chocolate chip cookies
She puts to her lips.

After she picks off the chocolate chips.



Her cats are named Hershal
And Piskers and Jim.

And twice every month
She gives them a trim.

She starts with Hershal
Then Jim
Then Piskers.

She clips all their claws
And she cuts off their whiskers!

What kinda girl
Has poor cats sheared?

I’m telling you now
This Stormie is weird!



Her room’s never dirty
And she doesn’t complain.

She eats orange peelings
And likes to drink rain.

She rides with her clothes
In the washing machine.

For this is the way
She likes to get clean.

Weird, weird, weird
Is that Stormie Mol Bean!



She sits at the T.V.
With Jim and Hershal.

And watches it only
When there’s a commercial.



She likes to leap
From her two-story deck.

With a bright red shower curtain tied around her neck.

She crashes every time
On the neighbor’s front lawn.

If Stormie has a brain
I don’t think it’s on!



She burps all the time
Each stronger in force.

Whenever she laughs
She sounds like a horse.

People like Stormie
I wouldn’t endorse.

And this is because
She’s weird, of course!

This Stormie Mol Bean,
Not to be mean,

Is surely the weirdest girl I’ve ever seen!

If she fell off the planet
There’s no way I’d miss her!

Well maybe a little
Seeing how she’s my sister.




With regards to the life of this lowly book, please pray for it to do all that God wants for it to. Pray for me and for Stormie and for the boy that got too close to it's pages!

Shout out to all my Rabbit Room Buds...this one is for you Buck!


Peace & a Pretzel!

Go Cats!!!

JORTS, you were magnificent! Mr. Liggins, way to go my tenacious friend! B. Knight, two game winning shots in three games? As my two-year-old would say, "NICE!"

I'm so proud of this year's squad! I love my Kentucky Wildcats! Thank you Jesus for the two point win!


Just three more games guys! Whatta ya say, lets go win us an 8th championship!

GO CATS!!!


Peace & a Pretzel!

Smelt TheBud LongDrink's Flick-Perpendings (Translation: A Movie Review)

In Short: Limitless was the best movie I’ve seen in the last three years!



In Knot-so-short: A lot of writers can scrape up a great first act or opening. Like in the movie, “No Country for Old Men” where the guy finds a suitcase full of drug money. Now that’s a great opening! It’s actually a fantasy for most of us.
But, and especially as of late, most film makers can’t take that seminal start and expound upon it. As far as my movie viewing goes, I’ve seen tons of movies with rotten 2nd and 3rd acts.

Not Limitless!

It starts off with this wonderful notion of being able to take a pill which allows you to access all of your brain power instead of the usual 15 to 20 percent. Imagine a bedroom being dirty, dilapidated and demolished for nearly 35 years! And all of the sudden someone cleans it up for you in a matter of 30 seconds. Now, times that by a creative and fresh 100 percent and there you have the delightful beginnings of what is unlocked in the mind of this protagonist (Bradley Cooper).

The story is great and moves along swiftly. One of the many delights is watching the different levels of cupidity and egregiousness which saddles nearly all of this adept cast. There are also twists to go along with remarkable and razor-sharp dialogue.

Lastly, some cameras like actors and actresses. Some don’t. Bradley Cooper has a love affair with this camera lens. That is to say, this guy is a leading man for sure and for certain. Something that cannot be said for Walt Disney’s lame-duck of a movie, “Prince of Persia.” Staring Jake The-camera-hates-me Gyllenhaal.

Till next time, this is your host, Smelt TheBud LongDrink saying, “Go hug a stuntman!”


Peace and a Pretzel!

Ugly Biscuit

Ugly Biscuit
By Jon Slone








Remember when Mom made biscuits from scratch?
Look back if you will and imagine a batch.
Hot from the oven
Here came the meal-savers!
Ready to render all kinds of meal favors!

In biscuity bliss with the best of all breads.
We tucked away butter in our biscuity beds.
Those toasty-warm cushions were couches for jam.
And houses for steak and country-fried ham.
We killed them with gravy
We ate them with hashes.
We dipped’em and ripped’em and sprinkled their ashes.

We loved’em “as is.”
Even more so when wetter.
And nothing could sop up the yoke any better!

There on the plate
All fetching and done.
That is
Well,
All of the biscuits
‘Sep one!

Remember that odd looking bloke with the slumps?
That fat ugly biscuit with biscuity bumps.
Dorky and different and ready to collapse.
The last of its kind made from leftover scraps.

Remember that biscuit?
I do
For you see,
At times
I’ve felt like that biscuit was me!

A clumpy clay sculpture that someone discarded!
The last of the lot and not highly regarded!
There on a plate with all my pain itchin’.
Then that’s when Jesus shows up in the kitchen!

“This isn’t a test so there’s no way to flunk.”
“But listen,” He says
“I don’t make any junk!”
“You’re made in my image
A miracle refined.
You’re skillfully wonderfully a one of a kind!”
He goes on to say and to slay some more doubts.
That my “insides” look beautiful and so do my “outs”!

“When a sad thought lands.”
He says, “Just whisk it.”
“And remember I’ve never made an ugly biscuit!”

So when you feel left out and lumpy with strife.
Just remember these words from the Bread of life!
When it comes to biscuits that look a bit ill.
Your Mother may make some
But He never will!



This is a special poem that I wrote for my book, "Riggleberry Bloke and other silly whatknots"

Blessings!

Jon BigHElittleme Slone