Sunday, November 8, 2009

Cover of the Week 53 and Some Words About Losing Someone

I’m going to start off this week by putting the cover song right at the top, to save you from scrolling down if you don’t feel like reading a book.

"Waters of March" (Portuguese: "Águas de Março")mp3


I’m not sure if writing all this that follows here is appropriate. And I almost feel the need to apologize to anyone else close to the subject. But I am an expressive person by nature, and writing is one way for me to deal with life. However, I cringe at the thought of this being a confessional diary and overly personal. I have this conflict about keeping such things private. Maybe the Internet turned me into an exhibitionist (I already was a voyeur of sorts). But I feel there is a need for people to understand that we just lost a great man.

My song this week is "Waters of March" (Portuguese: "Águas de Março") by Antonio Carlos “Tom” Jobim. It is a standard from the bossa nova songbook. It has long been one of my favorite songs, which I wrote about at allmusic.com about eight or nine years ago. The melancholy litany and cascade of Zen-like images cuts to the essence and cycle of life and death. March, of course, is the beginning of autumn in Brazil and the southern hemisphere, so it has an even more melancholy tone in Portuguese. Jobim also wrote the English translation, though. I know I have some readers in Brazil. If any of you are good singers and have good recording equipment, I can post this without vocals and you can send me some .wav files of you singing the Portuguese version and I will do a remix and post it.

I was going through some of my Uncle Vince’s CDs and noticed he had one by Susannah McCorkle, who sang one of the definitive English language versions of Jobim’s pop masterpiece. I dedicate the song to him.

I have a new charity suggestion -- and again at the bottom of the post. It was a cause Vince felt strongly about. I request that all regular followers donate to. That would be one of the most positive things we could wrest from all of this. I thank you in advance. I also post a video of a beautiful song my brother, Paul, wrote in the wake of this tragedy.

*****

My life has been a source of amusement for friends, but more in a "Look, the cat's on fire and running through the convent" type of amusing.


-- My Uncle Vince


I am devastated.

Our 63 year-old uncle, my mother’s brother and only sibling, was murdered in his home in Miami on October 16, 2009. His name was Vince. He was single, gay, and lived alone with his beloved dog, Gracie. It would be revealed five days later that the killer was the 20 year-old son of Vince’s house cleaner. My uncle had known James A. probably since the boy was five years old. The kid had lost his father, whom I gather was not much to write home about when he was alive. What I understand, is that Vince had been trying to help the kid out a bit, give him odd jobs, make some introductions, and, most recently, writing him a letter of recommendation. James did not show up for the appointed time to pick up that letter. No one knows what happened after that, other than James has admitted that he stabbed Vince repeatedly. Then he took his credit cards and went on the kind of spending spree only a numb teenager is capable of, and did so after committing a murder.

None of this was immediately known, though. It took a few days for it all to come out. I know now what the kid has said, but no one is buying it, especially the police. In his desperation, he is adding another level of tawdriness to a depressing tragedy.

Friday evening, October 16, 2009, I received an email from Vince’s close friend in Miami, Vincent T., who had been Vince’s business partner in an import business for Asian antiques and home furnishings. He told me to call him. I called and left him a message. At about 7:30 or 7:45 as my kids were getting ready for bed, Vincent T. called me back.

“Billy, I’m on my way over to your uncle’s house. Something has happened.”

“OK,” I said, tentatively, looking up at my wife, at the top of the stairs with our young son. She looked in my face and saw something wrong.

Vincent continued, “It’s a crime scene. His friend, Jane, was supposed to meet him for dinner and when he didn’t call back all day, she drove over, late in the afternoon.”

In the 1980s, my uncle had been mugged in New York when he lived in the city. The assailant used the butt of a gun to strike him across the face. It busted his nose badly. He needed plastic surgery. He lost his big Italian nose, gladly. It was his excuse to get a nose job.

But he vowed after that horrible event never to get himself into another situation of vulnerability again, if he could help it. But this is what I thought of when his friend, Vincent, called me; a mugging, some injury or something. I mouthed “crime scene” to my wife, shaking my head.

“I’m on way over there now, Billy. I will call when I get there and let you know more,” Vincent said.

But then, shockingly, he continued. “Your Uncle Vince is dead, Billy.”

I am sure I gasped. I did not see it coming. It came so fast. “What?”

“Yes. I don’t know what happened,” he went on. “I...I will call you as soon as I know something.”

My knees buckled. I had not felt this feint or nauseous in years. I felt like it was an actual, physical blow. I slid down the wall to the steps. Laura shuffled the kids out of view. She peeked back, hand over mouth. “Oh my God, what happened?”

Then the emotions swept over me. I was shaking, breathing hard, then the waves came higher, knocking me. And I started to sob.

*****



Frank and Vinny, Kew Gardens, circa 1949. Check out those kids in the background. It is like the Bowery Boys or something.


My uncle was a huge influence in my life. He was my godfather, yes, but he was largely absent until I was an adolescent. He suffered, in the closet, as a teenager in Kew Gardens, Queens and Garden City South, New York. His mother’s family had come from Turin, and a father who was a second-generation Sicilian. That man, the guy who I knew as my grandfather, worked his way up through the civil service after serving in World War II, from garbage man, to the level of Deputy Chief of Sanitation for the Five Boroughs of N.Y.C. He was a softy, a sweetheart, the perfect Italian grandfather who would teach us swimming, growing tomatoes, how to play poker, and the joy of "The Honeymooners" reruns. But that was not the guy my uncle remembered. Vince remembered a guy who did not understand him and whom he did not understand. His memories were more painful than that, but it is not my place to speak to the memories of others.

Vinny (as he was known then -- he was Uncle Vinny to us) told me he had felt tormented at home. He joined the Navy and served in Vietnam. After his stint, he landed in San Francisco, got his degree, and spent the late 1960s/early-‘70s in one of that era’s counter-cultural center. He moved on to work in human relations in Hawaii and eventually back to New York. He moved to the East Village in about 1979, when I was 13 and just about old enough to start to be able to take the train into the city on my own. He quickly made an effort to become more of a presence in our lives. He had my brothers, sister, and me in for a trip around the city -- a horse & buggy ride around the park, a shopping trip to the new wave Fiorucci’s, burritos at Tortilla Flats on the west side, and hot dogs at Nathan’s in Time Square. He had always been the cool uncle, the young guy popping in for a holiday or summer visit every couple of years. But now, here he was in New York. I looked up to him and his glamorous life. I only had a subliminal understanding that he might be gay; it went unspoken. He had a good-looking younger “room mate” named Neil. Neil was shy. Vince was bold. Both were handsome and youthful. Neither of them was particularly effeminate, which is how gay guys were depicted on t.v. I have always been slow to realize such things. It was a gradual comprehension. It never seemed particularly important, even to a kid coming from the frighteningly homophobic suburbs of the Island. In fact, it even probably added to some pride I had in him being so “cool” and somewhat exotic.

I had no older siblings, so he was sort of an older brother to me. When Vince bought me gifts, they were so unbelievably thoughtful and spot-on, that I cherish them to this day. This is a trait I have discovered that he carried though his whole life and into all of his friendships. For my 14th birthday, he bought me three records that had just come out: Talking Heads Remain in Light, U2 Boy, and a 10’’ Nina Hagen record. No one had heard of the latter two. My friend, Danny and I stared at the U2 record for a while, thinking the band was called, “U2 Boy,” as in, “you too, boy.” He called one evening and told my mother he wanted to take me in to CBGB to go see the Dead Kennedys, on a school night. He wasn't familiar with, nor do I think he would for a second enjoy their music; I think he just liked shock value of the name and I’m sure wanted to get a rise out of my mother. When I moved to Massachusetts, I would take the train down for a weekend to stay with him. Early 1980s East Village was a very cool place to be visiting at ages 14-18. When I graduated high school, he got me one of the first sleek Walkman models. It was how I listened to music all the way through college.

One of the seminal moments of my life, though, came in the summer of 1986. This was a huge year for me. Later that autumn, we formed Buffalo Tom, and I met and fell in love with the woman that became my wife. But that prior June, I was looking at another summer of painting houses, smoking pot, and watching rented movies with my buddies -- admittedly not a bad existence. But Vince called me and told me he had a cushy job waiting for me in his office at Citicorp in Manhattan for $15/hour. Would I like it? I did not hesitate.

I called Danny, who had recently moved to New York from the Island, along with another friend who had played in bands with us in early high school, before I moved. “Hey,” I said, “my uncle offered me a job for the summer. Do you guys have any space for me?”

“Sure!” Danny said. “Come on down. We don’t have a huge place, but there’s plenty of space for you.”

When my uncle came to get me from the way-station of my grandparent’s house, I told him the address, 99th Street and Broadway. This was a borderline neighborhood back then. If he had any reaction, I don’t recall what it was. But when I lugged all my shit out of his trunk, he declined to help me move it up to the “apartment,” offering his hug and a “see ya in the office on Monday” sort of good-bye.

The sidewalk and the lobby of the building was a bustle of the Haitian, Indian, and Pakistani cab drivers who made up 99% of the inhabitants. There was a little sort of box-office kind of window with a dude behind it and a small old-fashioned elevator. When I got up to the door, my buddies welcomed me with smiles an open arms. They did not tell me that they lived in an S.R.O -- single-room-occupancy hotel called the Clinton Arms. And they had a single room. No bathroom. Not a studio with a kitchenette. No open-floor loft-style single room. They had a single room, right out of William Burroughs’ Junkie, which I ended up reading that summer. They had one bed, which they took turns with, the other guy taking the floor on alternate nights. It was like the “alternate side of the street parking regulations” that the radio guys would announce. But that place inspired me to write some lyrics, including the words to the Buffalo Tom song, "The Bus": "Went home and listened to Billie Holiday/Stared down to Broadway."

We would go out to bars and clubs every night -- King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut, Downtown Beirut (Huskers and Dead Boys on the juke), CBGB, Nightingales, the Ritz, the Cat Club, Billy’s Topless, wherever we could go being slightly underage. We would straggle back in at 4 a.m. to the smells of creole cooking and curry scents overpowering the whole place. I would crash on the filthy floor and get up at 8 to take the subway to midtown for the job by 9. I would awake in a hungover stupor, sickened by the ingested liquor, lack of sleep, and the overpowering smells of the place. I would make my way down the hall to the disgusting single bathroom shared by the whole floor. A giant roach died a long painful death that hot and sticky summer on the threshold of that bathroom. For over a month it lied on its back there, kicking its legs helplessly as we all walked over it. Just when I thought it had given in, it would kick feebly once again.

I could often barely make it to work, but I always did. Often, I had a Pepto Bismal bottle in a brown bag at my desk, sitting there in my clip-on tie and bad Macy’s permna-press pleated slacks trying to key data entry, results of employee surveys, in the early days of the desktop. I had no idea how to work on computers. I don’t even think I had even typed papers yet on a word processor. Needless to say, I was unqualified for the job, often requiring the programmer-consultant to come to the office to straighten out whatever I had done. I could see the knowing winks and looks at my uncle from the people in the office that could see right through the patronage. We didn’t tell anyone I was his nephew, so I am not sure what conclusions they had drawn. But he had leeway to hire someone to do this job and pay them “up to $15 an hour.” He had given me the chance at the full rate.

Near the end of my tenure there he took me out to dinner at one of the many Indian joints between 1st and 2nd Avenues down near his place.

“Can I tell you something?” he asked, not that would have any say in the matter. “Don’t ever work in an office. You can’t do it. It’s not you. You will never work in an office.”

“Um, OK,” I mumbled in my 20 year-old fashion.

“What do you want to do?” he asked. “...with your life?”

“I guess I want to finish college and... I dunno. I’m majoring in communications, studying literature as a minor...”

“No, I mean, what do you want to do, to be?”

I told him I wanted to play music.

“Then play music. Don’t worry about money. Money will always come when you need it.”

With those simple words, spoken by an adult to a kid who already felt support in his family, I felt confident to do what I wanted to do, to not be forced into conservative and safe choices.

“Look at me,” he continued. “Here I am in some windowless office doing something I never wanted to do, trapped by rent, by safe choices.” He was then in his early-40s, the age I am now. He told me how it had taken him years to admit to himself that he had made compromises he now regretted. He had no kids, no one else to be responsible for to answer to, and yet he chose some middle-corporate path that sapped his soul, in a job that he had no passion for. It took him years to realize and admit to himself what he wanted to do. I asked him what that was. He told me he wanted to design furniture. He had always been artistic. And he was already making plans in the back of his head for the life switch that would eventually bring him to Miami, to buy a house, and to open up his own high-end home furnishings place on the Miracle Mile in Coral Gables. This lead to designing his own pieces, then a business and partnership that imported Asian antiques, and concurrent to a lot of this, an interior design/decorator business.

He also asked me, “do you want to get married and have kids?”

I hemmed and hawed and said, “nah.”

He asked why. I answered with vague assertions of my mythical independence and claims that I saw no need for adherence such convention. Bear in mind that I had probably gotten laid a total of five times at this point, and you have to take even that with a grain of salt; you know how guys exaggerate. And it was about two months before I met my one-day wife. But he kept asking, smiling, “why not,” insistently.

In an ill-considered attempt to end the interrogation, I blurted, “Well, how about you?”

“Me?” he asked, somewhat stunned.

“Yeah, you.” I knew that I had now put him on the spot and was putting myself in a position of awkwardness, potentially revealing that I did not know he was gay, something we had not spoken about.

“Well...I’m a different story,” he said, sheepishly. I had never seen him blush before nor did I ever see him do so afterward. He was not one to embarrass easily; he was the one to embarrass others, not the other way around. But I swear he blushed this time.

“What do you mean?” I insisted. I wanted him to just say it I guess. I really just wanted to steer it away from me. I was successful at that.

He just kept repeating, “well, I’m a totally different story.”

I relented, “I know, I know.”


*****


I went back and finished school. When Buff Tom passed through New York in our early days, he would stay out late and come see us at CBs or the Pyramid. He got a kick out of this, I could see. He was proud of me, even if he did not find much in our music.

He eventually moved to Miami. His relationship with Neil in NY ended. He had a brief rebound relationship in Florida, but after the 1990s, he stayed more or less single and unattached. He devoted himself to his business and to friends who were his family. He took care of my grandmother in her waning years, moving her into a house next door to his as she was increasingly seized by dementia, until her death in the early 2000s. We would visit when we could, but with my band, my marriage, and growing family, getting down from Boston was tough. And he didn’t get the chance to come up to Massachusetts much either. We talked a lot, though. At least a half-dozen times a year and for hours at a time. When email came along, we kept in touch that way as well.

I don’t know for certain, but the last time I saw him was probably in 2003, in Los Angeles. He was there opening a west coast branch of his import business, renting a small apartment, not as brilliantly cool as his mid-century-modern/Asian-influenced ranch in South Miami, but as cool as a Hollywood glorified-efficiency pad could be made. I came to town for the production of Mike O’Malley’s play, “Searching for Certainty,” for which I composed the score. Vince came down to the show and cast party and really enjoyed it. I had never seen him so enthusiastic for something I was part of. He really loved Mike and the friends of mine he met. He had a biting and sardonic sense of humor and he would always let you know what he was thinking. But he really dug the play.

When Vince was murdered, I tried to remember the last time I saw him. I think this was it. When I told Mike what had happened, he reminded me of the play by asking if it was the same uncle he had met. I am so thankful that he reminded me, as it hurts me enough that it seems to have been this long ago; it would feel far more acute if it had been as far back as my grandmother’s funeral. There had been a recent estrangement with him and some of our family -- not with me or my wife. But it seems now sort of like he became only a voice on the telephone from that point on. Though it had not felt like that before. The years just fall away so quickly.


*****

I spent the night Vince died, October 16, on the phone until the early morning hours -- detectives, friends of his, my family, the medical examiner’s office, and his lawyer, who informed me that I was the executor of his estate. I now had a to-do list to distract me from the shock and grief. I had no idea where to start; should I fly down now? Is there anything I need to do down there that I can not do here first? I started to feel guilty about not just hopping on the first plane. But what else could I do down there immediately? Luckily, Vincent T. was a friend who was helping me out immeasurably in those first days.

But the pain kept hitting me. The detached surreality only would last a few minutes before actual reality came swooping back. My uncle was dead. The detective told me it was definitive homicide. That made me think immediately that it was a stabbing; how many gun deaths would be immediately and clearly declared homicide, shutting the door on any possibility of suicide? (Anyway, he was not the suicide type). He was killed. He had struggled. We want the ones we love to die a peaceful death, in their sleep in their old age, or in the arms of their loved ones. He died at the hand and in the presence only of some pathetic loser who then took his credit cards and cash and went to Wendy’s, a bar, Best Buy (to buy a Playstation), KFC, etc.

So how do you process something like this? How is one supposed to react? Am I supposed to break down or stay steady and stoic for others? Lots of calls for days between the family members. What do I tell the kids? It is obscene: Murder. It is nothing new, and we live in a violent country, but you really don’t think something like this is going to happen to someone close to you. You just don’t.

Vince and I would invariably joke about aging. While he was aging gracefully, he was not going to go out without a fight. He stayed in top shape, ate extremely well, was never one who could drink, and smoked exactly one cigarette a day since he was young. But I would always tease him and he would give it right back. The thing that made him feel the oldest was watching me hit my 40s, his nephew and godson.

“Who’s gonna be around to take care of you when you’re too old” I would ask. “I’m going to have to put you in a home. Have you saved up enough money?”

“I am spending every dime,” he would reply. “You’re going to have to take me in.”

“You’re gonna have to live in the garage, then. Maybe the basement. And you’ll have to cook for us.”

And we’d go on like that almost every time we chatted. But at the end of the calls, I would turn more melancholy and tell my wife that I really was concerned for the long-term. He had very dear friends, but none were as young as I am. He had lost a lot of old friends as well. AIDS took a bunch of them. What if he made it, as his mother did, into his late 80s and developed dementia as well? I sure as hell was not planning on moving to Florida.

A violent premature death was nothing that I counted on. That brought deep and painful grief. Vince was a peaceful guy, full of love and compassion. He had a meditation room with a big old Buddha in his house, where he sat in silence every day. He had a sedate life with his young dog, Gracie, a small hound whom he loved immensely. He took almost no risks. He worked, had dinner and game night with friends, took in movies, and traveled. Years ago, he had a regular poker game with a bunch of old straight men (like I do). He served on an advisory board for an independent film festival. He read. We saw the same movies, liked the same books, shared some of the same music.

*****

The focus of the phone calls veered from the grief to trying to figure out who was capable of doing this. The detective told me it was probably someone he knew, since there were no signs of forced entry. I scrolled back into my memory. He had just finished an addition on his house, his dream master suite. I mean, he had just finished it only a couple of weeks prior. He had no time to enjoy it before this happened. I had just talked to him on his birthday, September 19. I remember him complaining about some contractor. In phone calls with Vincent T. I learned that there had been a supervisor for the general contractor whom Vince had a falling out with and requested be removed from the job. But Vincent T. told me that he highly doubted that the animosity had been to this level. It was a very easily handled situation. The supervisor was not a menacing sort, apparently.

But we could think of no one else aside from contractors who had access to the interior of the house. The detective talked all of this over with Vince’s friends, Jane and Vincent T. The only other conflict in his life recently had been an argument with his maid’s son, James. But he was thought to be harmless, if a bit of an oafish numbskull.

The cops were at the house all Friday night into Saturday morning. They took his computer and “a lot of evidence,” I was told. I had to talk to the medical examiner, to a funeral home, and -- this is something no one should ever have to deal with -- a biohazard cleaning company that specialize in crime scenes. Thankfully, I had Vincent T. there to let them in. All I had to do was talk to them and arrange payment.

I realized I had to attend to prior commitments. I was thankful for them. Saturday afternoon, I went and played a matinee set at the Middle East in Cambridge for a benefit show. Saturday night rolled around. We had tickets to go see Aretha Franklin downtown. My wife and I went out to Montien, a Thai place we love in the Theater District. I had a martini and sobbed off and on, through dinner. We had a giggly flamboyant Thai queen for a waitress. I just kept thinking of how Vince would get a kick out of him. As I said in one of the earlier blog posts, I didn’t expect Aretha to be so good. She was unreal. She played tons of soulful vamps and gospel numbers, torch ballads. I was in heaven. She started to heal me. She opened the night with one of Vince’s favorite songs, Jackie Wilson’s “Higher and Higher.” I remember him driving me around Miami with the song on repeat. Aretha helped bring me through. On Tuesday, I had a gig at the Brattle Theater. The two sets I had that weekend/week, plus the Aretha show -- and the Exile show we played a week later -- the music really helped deliver me through this all.

Then I flew to Miami Wednesday morning. I hate the nuts and bolts of travel as much as anyone. But I was too beaten down to feel the ordinary stress. This stayed true through an hour-long line at Budget rental, which had apparently just laid off most of their force. By the time I got to my car, I had no fight left in me to contest the assignment -- a fire-engine red (technically “Victory Red”) Chevy HHR. The juxtaposition of driving this ridiculous vehicle around sunny Miami to attend to such sober business was not lost on me. And so I was somewhat thankful when the little fucker got a flat on my way to the attorney’s office at 8:30 the next morning. First order of biz was to use his phone to call “roadside assistance.” They came to switch the tire -- 2 hours later. I had to get myself back to the airport to switch out the little fucker, which of course meant dealing with understaffed Budget again.

Before that privilege, however, I had to make the now-rescheduled appointment I had made at the office of the detective, which was on the outskirts of Greater Miami, in Doral. This is a city, like L.A. and Phoenix, that was designed almost exclusively around the automobile. So, here they have this police and justice campus, with television news vans stationed outside for “breaking news,” and they have about 20 public parking spots. I ended up parking in a strip mall across one of those shopping-plaza-fast-food highways that I have railed about in this space before.

I somehow made it across, life intact. What I thought was just going to be a cursory courtesy visit from the point of view of the detective, brusquely and bluntly became something else. I was seated in the sort of conference room you would expect. Detective L. brought in her partner. They offered me “cop coffee,” which they then congratulated me on my choice in refusing it.

“Well, we made an arrest,” she told me.

The results of the fingerprinting came back, dovetailing with the discovery of the maid’s last name. The detectives rushed over to her house, blowing off an appointment with the general contractor (they also had appointments set up with the pool service, the landscapers, etc. It was the latter crew who had rung the bell for Vince to move his car, got no answer, peeked in through one of the walls of glass, and saw the body, alerting the police.)

When the detectives rang the bell at the maid’s house, James answered, hands bandaged. His prints had come back from the scene. The prints had been on record for a recent small grand larceny/pot bust. The detectives were expecting to interview the maid.

James, though, talked right away, from what I understand. I don’t think he told them about the odd jobs he had been doing for Vince, or the letter of recommendation Vince had just written for him. What he told them was that my 63 year-old uncle made “unwanted advances” on him, this taking this down an all-too-easy path, a path where if there is a gay man who is murdered, it must have been because he was making advances on a younger man. As Vince's friend's reminded me, there was a reason Vince was single: he had idealistic and exacting standards that did not allow attraction to an oafish and “retarded looking” kid he has known since he was 5. Even if the kid looked like Enrigue Iglesias at his prime, Vince would not have gotten hustled by a kid he had known since childhood, the son of his longtime house cleaner, whom he cared a great deal for. James has desperately grasped a self-defense tact. In his version, 63 year-old and 165-pound Vince was overpowering 20 year-old, 220-pound James so he had to stab him to death. And then James didn’t feel the need to call police; he dragged the body to try and hide it, stole his wallet, and ran up charges on credit cards at Wendy’s and KFC.

Apparently, the kid was always asking his poor mother for money and was getting in trouble -- no job, some community college. People I have spoken to have invariably used some form of “he looks retarded” to describe him. This is followed up by some form of, “but apparently he has some brains and might be kind of smart.” People that had met or known him said he has a hard time looking you in the eye, shaking hands, and seems kind of slow and detached. But Vince saw potential and wanted to try to help him as a favor to his house cleaner.

As with his helping me with a job when I was the same age as this kid, Vince offered his help to my siblings around that vulnerable age, a time in many peoples’ lives when they make life-altering decisions. He remembered his own struggles at that age and recognized this vulnerability. He searched for the potential in people. But he was black-or-white in every aspect in his life. He either saw it or did not. He either liked you or did not. He gave you a chance. If you fucked up, you heard about it. When this kid decided to blow off an appointment to pick up a letter of recommendation that Vince had gone on out on a limb and produced in order to help the kid get a job, I’m sure the kid heard about it. And somewhere during the next week, he made one of those life-altering decisions. It could have been made earlier or it could have been instantaneous, in the moment. He is charged now with second degree murder.


*****

I will probably write more next week about the time in Miami, but more importantly, the people who have helped me through all of this: my family and friends, Vincent T., Mike O., John, Jane, Sam... I just got back from a second trip. I will also keep on top of the trial, if it comes to that. In the meantime, I ask you to donate to this charity, from Human Rights Watch, which Vince cared deeply about:

http://www.hrw.org/en/middle-eastn-africa/iraq

Article in New York Magazine

A report on executions of homosexuals in Iraq

Paul Janovitz:

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Signed Exile books

We sold 30-something books at the Exile show last week. I can either return the balance (I ordered 50 to be safe), or I can send out signed copies. If anyone is interested, please email me at janovitz.bill@gmail.com. I am not sure how much they are to send, but I will figure $2.00. So let's say they will cost $12. You can send check or money order (or try cash). No bartering yak milk or shoe shines.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Cover of the Week 52

I guess it has been a year of these. Not quite, as I believe it counts a couple of bonuses. I don't believe I specified that I would only do it for a year, however. And while it has not always been easy to crank one out during some particular weeks, it has not been an unmanageable task and it has even provided a nice exercise for me on days/nights when I might otherwise just resign myself and surrender to the inertia of the easy chair. So I will keep it going indefinitely. But I do feel that the accomplishment of 52 in less than a full year ought to allow me a little slack moving forward. While I will try to stay on the weekly schedule, I might be OK with missing a week here and there, or posting more previously recorded live covers.

I got a call from Adam Duritz, of the Counting Crows -- one of the good/smart guys of the bands we toured with in the 1990s -- about an internet hub site he is starting and inviting me to bring this CotW project -- in some form -- over there at some point. It might be something different as well. Maybe I will just write over there. Maybe only one of these a month will be there. I don't know. We will see. But I am glad this baby managed to find all of you listening in and following along at home.

Back to a guy with his guitar for this week's cover. Some kids requested some Tom Petty in the request post down below (85 replies!) I have a funny relationship to the music of Petty. The Heartbreakers were one of those ubiquitous radio staples growing up. I remember going into the record store when I was in junior high and seeing a life-sized cut-out of Tom for Damn the Torpedoes. And I had a little red "Damn the Torpedoes" button/badge that they were handing out. I liked all of those songs back then. But I never felt compelled to buy the records. I had to be discerning with which records I bought with the money from my paper route. I still needed some cash for two slices of Sicilian and a small coke at DiRaimo's Pizza.

And then I totally lost interest in Petty as he and the Heartbreakers morphed into less-straightforward pop. I loved them as a lean, mean, garage jangle-pop, folk-rock band. Anything relating to Jeff Lynne sends me running in the other direction, including Traveling Wilburys. So I have not liked much of the Petty music that came after the early-80s. Not even Wildflowers does much for me. But I do like the Mudcrutch record quite a bit.

So here is one of the all-time great late-'70s/early-'80s radio hits. I have been covering this for as long as I can remember. I love playing it with the SessionAm boys acoustically as well. So here is a guy and his guitar.

I think I have to finally give up on singing in the key of D.

American Girl mp3

Monday, October 26, 2009

Cover of the Week 51

Sorry to lame out with another old recording. When I say it has been a rough week, you will have to trust me; I have had no worse and would not wish this one on my worst enemy. Plus it was sandwiched between (2) gigs that needed a bit of preparation (as opposed to the usual paint-by-numbers shows with which I am associated). So, I give you another glimpse at the Exile show we are doing tomorrow night. I think the version of this song will be slightly better tomorrow night. But if anyone is going to be ill-prepared, I am placing bets on the singer/guitarist/author.

By the way, here are some details:

From the House of Blues: Doors are at 6:30, with menu available for fine dining Set: 8:30 sharp. Reservations for the dining room - call concierge Nikki at 617-960-8376


Sweet Virginia mp3

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Show Tonight

I am playing a regular-length solo set at the Brattle Theater tonight supporting Session Americana. Then I will play a handful of songs with that fabulous band as well, all in a beautiful room for listening to acoustic music, and now with the benefit of beer/wine. Plus, it is early enough for you to get to bed at a reasonable time. I will be debuting some new songs as well as play a couple of the covers from my Cover of the Week project. Many tickets were still available as of last night. If you have never been to a SA show, you've been missing one of Boston's great musical experiences.

Session Americana w/Bill Janovitz

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Cover of the Week 50

I am jettisoning all irony for this particular post. Of course, when one does as much, he runs the risk of being trite.

Bad stuff happens in life, as we all know and have experienced. But when it does, it makes you realize that when everything seems overwhelming -- tasks, responsibilities, whatever -- the truly important components of life, are actually quite small and wholly manageable and essential; family, friends, health, a little money. And -- in a big way -- art and music.

I truly believe in the healing, restorative, and even redemptive power of music. I, like many others, have at isolated times felt like it was one of the few things that make life worth living. I felt this clearly last night, when my wife and I went to go see Aretha Franklin on what was surely a great night for even the Queen of Soul. She went to church and brought the entire 3500-4000 of us with her as the congregation. Let it only be said that this particular weekend I really, really needed even just a mediocre night from Aretha. Just give me "Ain't No Way," please, Ms. Franklin. She gave us way more.

I also played an afternoon family-friendly benefit, "For Amie," at the Middle East Downstairs. It was put on by Brad Searles for his wife. Brad is the author of the excellent Bradley's Almanac blog. My kids were there, Drew O'Dougherty's kids were there, and Kristen Hersh's kids were there. Other friends came with their kids. It was beautiful.

I have some other shows coming up. The invitation-only guestlist is pretty much past capacity for the Exile on Main Street reading and performance 10/27 at the House of Blues Foundation Room. If you are on the list and can not attend, please be sure to let me know. If you really, really want to go and have not yet emailed me, please let me know and I will do what I can do to get you in.

Exile on Main St. is an essential rock & roll record, a holy work of art. It is about getting through it all, "wading through the waste stormy winter/And there's not a friend to help you through." Let thee be healed. By the way, as I write, it is snowing. In Oct-fucking-ober.

Let me tell you something else: As of this writing, tickets are still amazingly available for the Session Americana show 10/20 at the Brattle Theater in Harvard Sq. I will play a solo set (that ALONE should fill Madison Sq. Garden) and then sit in with S.A., who also alone should fill, let's say, Wembley. Together, there is probably no venue that should be able to accommodate the demand. So, here we have the Brattle Theater, one of the nation's treasures, in Harvard Sq., that is also a national treasure, despite it's battle against being an outdoor mall. And this, due to no small contribution from the Brattle and the sadly diminishing number of independent places like it. And you live here in Boston and have not yet bought a ticket? Come here, lemme slap you.

Dang, there goes all I said at the top about irony. Well, I made it to this paragraph. I am who I am.

Session Americana are truly one of Boston's great music experiences. I hope you have enjoyed them in the past and I hope you'll be on hand Tuesday, 10/20.

Get ye healed, and if there's one out there, may the Good Lord (be it He, She, We, It, or all or none of the above) shine a light on you.

From the other show that we read and performed from Exile, April 2005:

Shine a Light mp3

The whole show is available at Billjanovitz.com

Monday, October 12, 2009

Cover of the Week 49

This is for all of you who requested a Faces cover, though I don't believe anyone asked for this song. It is my favorite Faces ballad and, probably, my fave number overall from them. I am a sucker for the descending chord sequence; instant melancholy.

Autumn in New England is also instant melancholy. Just mix with Guiness and, voila! Especially when the Red Sox go down early. And, whew! Did they ever go down yesterday -- in monumentally epic gargantuan proportions (as my friend Mark responded, "that's an understatement.") The Sox, you see, are our last strand of summer, hope against the irrefutable scientific facts that are otherwise easily observable, the chill wind, the darkening sky, the explosive color of the foliage, and then the barren branches of the trees lining the lovely streets of Brookline and outer environs. But we hold on, for as long as it is baseball season, summer is not fully over. As Bart Giamatti (actor Paul's father) wrote,

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

It is a sentimental, perhaps even mawkish passage. But I love it. I am sure Robert Frost was more artful about it, but this just sums up a certain vantage point about the daily presence of baseball in the lives of its fans. It is read on the last Red Sox broadcast every year by Joe Castiglione.

I grew up a Mets fan until my family left New York when I was 16. My interest in sports in general had been waning and was in steep decline. I did not rediscover that love of baseball again until decades later. I woke up some time in the 1990s to discover that I had lived in the Boston area for another 10 years and found myself rooting for the Sox. I was no longer a New Yorker. When we got back from touring, Boston was home.

But a part of me feels like a castoff, a man without a home, and the New Yorker in me was sad to see Shea Stadium go. It has little to do with the actual structure and architecture of the place; it was really an ill-conceived and impersonal mid-1960s structure in the middle of vast parking lots. Nevertheless, it was the first place my father took me to see a game. And everyone remembers the first time they come up off a concourse to see the shockingly vivid green of an infield at a major league baseball stadium. And so it was for me at Shea, where the Beatles had played only a few years before. I talk a bit about this in an interview with Timothy Bracy that should be going up on L Magazine sometime today or so. Sorry to quote myself, but the discussion coincided and dovetailed with this post:

So, that's how I grew up. Kingman, Kranepool, McGraw, Cleon Jones, Rusty Staub, Tom Seaver, even Willy Mays, these are the names I grew up with. But my memory is so bad for sports. I have very little recollection of those games. But I remember going many times to Shea, and of course, the first time. I remember my father pointing out Mays' pink El Dorado in the lot. I got Ron Swoboda's and Lyndsey Nelson's autographs. Mr. Met, Banner Day, "Meet the Mets," "Kiner's Korner," "the one beer when you're having more than one," and losing while the Yankees were always winning. I recall being very young and thinking that fandom could be completely arbitrary, that I could therefore simply declare myself a fan of the Cowboys or, godforbid, the Yankees. I was just tossing such ideas around, but not committing. It was one of those life lessons when my wise father told me, basically, sure, I could. But that the character of a person is their loyalty, even loyalty to something as silly as sports teams. So if I wanted to be a fan of the Yankees, that was my choice (those words came hard for him, I am sure. He probably threw up in his mouth) but if I made that choice, he didn't want me changing my allegiances later on. No fair-weather fans in his house. It was not an outright ban on Yankee fandom; it was something much larger and more important.

Now it is torn down and something new is there. I can't imagine them considering -- as was seriously considered up until just a few years ago -- replacing Fenway Park. It is such a trip to bring grown friends of mine there for the first time, mostly visiting New Yorkers. Like Wrigley in Chicago, it is hallowed ground, a magical link to the past, an actual ballpark right in the middle of the city -- not some urban outpost relegated to the outskirts of a metropolis like Shea or even Yankee Stadium, never mind some godforesaken suburban NFL stadium like Gillette (which I have yet to visit and I have very little interest in doing so.)

No, Fenway has a real sense of place, of authenticity, of tradition. Like those football/soccer joints in England and Europe, there is a human charge to the place. I remember sitting in a pub in Chelsea while English fans filed past on their way to the game played in the same neighborhood their fathers did, on the same pitch. It's a similar feeling at the pubs around Fenway and Wrigley.

And, for all its faults, Shea held some history. And to merely replace it with some new place across the parking lot is only a surface improvement. I was sad to see it go, though I am not sure my Mets friends who saw no such disruption in their fandom feel the same way. But it is the same phenomenon of leaving a place -- a town, a college, whatever; those places from the past are colored in sepia washes of nostalgia that blur out the less pleasing edges and messy reality.

I'm pretty sure that's not exactly or solely what Hot Rod is singing about on "Love Lives Here." But he definitely is concentrating on the sense of place, a place that -- as Tom Waits sang on Cover of the Week 37 -- once "held laughter, once it held dreams," the same way that countless country songs from "Home for Sale" and "The Grand Tour" do.

There's always next year.


Love Lives Here mp3

Friday, October 2, 2009

Cover of the Week 48

I used to play "Rocket Man" during some solo acoustic sets in the early/mid-'90s. The only places I recall playing it are in the U.K. Specifically, I remember a set in Wales. I think this is because there might have been a recording of it. I was actually already starting the recording when it was requested in the below thread/post by one Billy Peregoy. So those of you who also requested Elton John might feel somewhat compelled to make a donation to charity as well, since I am unlikely to do another Elton song. But if I do, it would be "I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues," and my guess is that few of you want that to happen.

When Buffalo Tom was starting to really crank along, I relished the opportunity to play some completely solo shows on the side for die-hard fans. Playing solo is a completely different challenge from playing with the full rock trio. Musically, the advantages are that I get to mess with arrangements on the fly, without wondering if other players are with me. And I really get to change dynamics and use my voice more. But the disadvantages are that I can't hide behind walls of distortion and other players covering up possible warts. And while going out on a limb with arrangements usually yields rewarding and often surprising results, it can also result in awkward or tragic musical missteps. And while the dynamics allow for a more intimate listening experience, the range is much flatter than the dynamic peaks and dips of a band, so listeners can more easily get bored.

When I did strings of such shows, I became a lonesome troubadour -- Lonesome Billy. I loved the freedom of traveling alone, hopping on trains across the U.K. and Europe, mainly, or getting in my car to go play a show in Toronto (I played with Neko Case and Her Boyfriends up at the Horseshoe there), or down to the Fez in N.Y. Even better was when my wife traveled with me for a mini vacation, as I get morosely lonely quite easily. While that was usually inspirational for songwriting, it did not do me well in the short term.

When I played "Rocket Man," it was just a guy on stage with only a guitar accompanying. That was going to be the idea here, but I fear I might have ended up bringing it pretty close to the ideas on Sir Elton's original recording. I always thought of it as a more melancholy version of "Space Oddity," which I was always more scared by (my old review of the song here). I like Bernie Taupin's lyric here. It is fairly straightforward for the oblique lyricist. I guess being out there playing those shows on my own allowed me to identify with the rocket man burning out his fuse out there alone. Damn, it's lonely out in space!


Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time) mp3


Rocket Man (I Think It's Going to Be a Long, Long Time) Hi Fi .wav

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Requests for CoTW

Hey, let's get some requests posted in comments below. Remember the deal, a covered request gets you to contribute to a charity of your choice.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Yellowed Newspaper Clippings

From today's Boston Globe review of Jon Krakauer's new book about the Pat Tillman cover up: "On Aug. 6, 2001, our vacationing president was warned by the CIA for the 36th time in eight months that Osama bin Laden was determined to strike in the United States and that recent intelligence had suggested an attack might be imminent. There were at that moment, George W. Bush was told, 70 bin-Laden-related field investigations being conducted in the country. 'All right,’' our president told the CIA officer, 'you’ve covered your ass.'"

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Cover of the Week 47



Kay Hanley and Lori McKenna at Hot Stove Cool Music, January 2008, with me grinning appropriately for a part time man of rock. One of my favorite pictures. Oh yeah, please let me know who took it, so that I may give credit.



I am not yet convinced that Twitter is worth the hype. But it did facilitate this week's CoTW. More specifically, it led to me asking my friend and fellow Hot Stovie, Kay Hanley, to please sing on this rendition of one of the most beautiful songs in pop music history, Big Star's "Thirteen."
(In the early 2000s, I wrote about the song for allmusic.com; dig the dated reference to CD repeat buttons)

It's a drop-dead song and should be up there with "Yesterday" for most-covered pop songs. There have been a few notable versions, to be sure. And the world does not need mine. But I don't care. I don't even want to mess with it. I just want to sing and play it. So that's what I do here. But I do get the honor of having Kay sing with me. And what an unbelievably lovely voice she has.

Last week, I received a package from Amazon with the new Big Star box set, Keep an Eye on the Sky. I had not ordered it. I had no birthday recently. I could only think of one person that would send such an unexpected and unwarranted gift: Mike O'Malley. (See Mike's most recent turn at the end of this clip from the TV show, "Glee"):




Making friends relatively later in life is a rare treat and accomplishment. Rarer still is to form a bond with someone you start to count as one of your all-time best buds. But then again, it is rare to meet someone as big-hearted as Mike. He has this effect on almost everyone. By way of example, a friend of his told a story about this huge effort Mike made to be part of a personal event in the friend's life (those details do not matter here). The friend vowed to pay it back to Mike. And, semi-whimsically, the friend decided to throw a surprise party for Mike, just as a "thanks for being you" kind of fete. He started calling mutual friends. In a matter of a few days, people were canceling plans, booking flights back to L.A., finding babysitters on late notice, and offering homes in the Hollywood Hills, and to host. A bunch of actors showed up to read from one of Mike's plays (not many folks know Mike is an accomplished dramatist). He was gobsmacked. But he shouldn't have been; he has laid out enough good karma to pave his way to Nirvana no matter how he acts from here on out.

And I am a lucky guy to make such friends. I have mentioned many others here in this blog, people who have come along well after my mid-30s. I count this as perhaps the greatest benefits of my time in Buffalo Tom. We clearly reached many people, so it is almost like we have a head start in a relationship once we actually make acquaintances. Can you imagine what it is like to be a demigod like Dylan or McCartney walking the earth, doing good works? Only that we could touch the hem of their garments!

I guess I turned Mike on to this song years back, so he sent me the CD set. And so here I am this week, with the live version of the song in my head all week. The live version, by the way, is more acutely heart-wrenching somehow, with Chris Bell out of the group, and the strain of Chilton's vocals over the chatter of a small nightclub crowd. And with the song running through my brain, I look at one of my various screens and there is a "tweet" from Kay with the lines, "Won't you tell me what you're thinking of/Would you be an outlaw for my love." I'm all like, BAM, yo! I'll tell you what's on my mind, Kay! That song, that song! And you singing on it! And your hubby, USA Mike Eisenstein, playing the solo!

It was meant to be. Kay said yes, thank God. And the glory of technology, which offered its first glimmer of inspiration with that message on Twitter, continued to ratchet up with the sending-and-receiving-and-back-again of digital music files and home studio recordings. In a matter of two days, my humble dude-in-basement recording was brought to life by the sunny Cali (but melancholy in the Brian Wilson way) sounds of Boston ex-pats, my buddies, Kay and USA. Talk about your pros! Yikes.

Kay and Mike were mere kids when I first met them. And though we were also young, BT were starting to develop facial hair, at least, by then. But it was not until my involvement in the Hot Stove event, around 2001, that I got to know them well. I remember days around 1999 or 2000 on an Arlington (Massachusetts) playground with my then-baby daughter, playing Mr. Mom hanging out with Kay, Tanya Donelly, and our friend Kristen Hughes, all of us with out kids. Kay's and Tanya's daughters were born right around the same month as mine. We might still have a budding rock band or girl group.

Anyway, we miss you Kay and Mike and all the other friends who made the smart move for sun and work in L.A. Keep up the good vibrations!


Thirteen mp3

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Clams

Hey, someone asked me what a "clam" is, as referenced in my last post. Well, I assume more people don't know the term either. So, a clam is a mistake/bad note. Old music-dude terminology. See: Buddy Rich balling out his band on a bus.



"...while you clam all over this fucking joint....

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Cover of the Week 46 and Ticket Give-away

Here is a cover of the Stones' "Let it Loose," recorded at the Attic in Newton, Massachusetts 4.21.05. It was around the time or the release of my book on the subject of the album, Exile on Main St. for the 33 1/3 series by Continuum Books. So I did some readings from the book and played a bunch of Exile tunes, as well as some loosely related material -- originals and non-Stones covers. The show was a cooperative effort with Tim Huggins, who used to own Newtonville Books and was one of the founders of one of Boston's all-time great series, Earfull. These were mixed shows of author readings and musical performances at the tiny -- and long lost -- Kendall Cafe Pub in Cambridge. Tom Perrotta, Dennis Lehane, and one of the Farrelly brothers were all rubbing elbows at the bar one night. Those nights were a blast.

Well, I was honored to be invited by the kind folks at the Boston outpost House of Blues to do something like it at the Foundation Room at the H.O.B. on October 27. Check out the virtual tour; the room seems to fit the vibe of Exile, no? Well, we will play a good healthy set, I will do some readings, and I will sign some books.

Here's the thing: it is a private gig for members and Friends of the Foundation. But I get a bunch of tickets/guest slots to give away to friends/fans who want to come and check it out. If you would like to be added to the list, I think the best way to do this is email me at janovitz.bill@gmail.com to put in your request. I will take the first however many I am allowed. There should be plenty of room for those who would really like to come.

Also, the week before, October 20, I will be playing a solo acoustic set before the wondrous Session Americana at the Brattle Theater in Harvard Sq. I believe I will sit in with them for a song or two as well. No guest list spots for that one.

Here again is "Let it Loose," as performed by Crown Victoria: Matt Tahaney on bass/vocals; Phil Aiken on piano, organ and vocals; and Tom "Cal-eye-forn-ee Here I Come" Polce on drums and vocals. The clam near the end is all me. One of my favorite songs of all time.


Let it Loose mp3

Monday, September 14, 2009

Cover of the Week 45

I always loved when our friends in the band Fuzzy pulled out Neil Young's "Losing End" in their sets. What a great old song, and really cool when sung by Hilken Mancini and Chris Toppin -- two women's voices in place of Neil's and Danny Whitten's.

You'll have to forgive my version. It slips a bit out of tune almost from the get-go. But it was late night and I didn't notice until playback. I didn't want to do it over. And I was inspired to keep going after the end to slide into a Neil medley. So settle back. Send the kids off for bed. This is an epic. It's like an album side. Double shot.

When Tom Maginnis was a high school kid, his older brother and his buds would use code for going to smoke pot: "Wanna go listen to some Neil?" It comes in useful to this day. Not that I admit to using illicit drugs, never mind advocate...


The Losing End (When You're On) + mp3

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Public Radio Piece

I think I forgot to post this here, though I had posted it over at Facebook. It is a piece I wrote and narrated about my childhood friend Chris Campion for the "Here and Now" program produced by my poker buddy, Chris Ballman, for Boston's NPR news station, WBUR. Campy wrote a highly engaging memoir called Escape From Bellevue: A Dive Bar Odyssey, about his struggles with booze and other substances, while trying to get his band off the ground in the 1990s NYC alt rock world.