Dear 45 Records room,

 

One more Interstate 5 story: just outside of Sacramento in a fast food joint, I got into a quick conversation with a couple of bikers from the Boozefighters Motorcycle Club, one of the oldest clubs around. They had just come back from the annual Fourth of July weekend gathering in Hollister, the site of the infamous 1947 riot which was the basis for the classic 1951 film The Wild One, starring Marlon Brando and Lee Marvin. (Marvin’s character "Chino" is said to have been based on Wino Willie, founder of the BFMC). But while we were talking I overheard this woman at a table behind me say “He's a goddamned freaking national treasure ... I heard he has, like, a closet filled with mason jars of urine.” Anyway?

 

Here is the song hopelessly stuck in my head, tormenting me as I drove over the Siskiyous Mountain Pass on our way to Ashland, Oregon. And as I drove all night, my hands wet on the wheel, I thought I heard a voice in my head. Oddly enough, at the 4310 ft. summit, around about half past four in the morning, I found myself inexplicably shifting gears ...

 

Anyway, it's pretty late, say hey to the straight edge records and the 200 or so BRMC records we have stacked in the 45 Records Room. One more thing-- give a little peace, love and understanding to the new Elvis Costello Box, and I’ll see you all Monday afternoon.

Dear 45s Record room,

 

I just finished driving due north to beautiful Vashon Island off the coast of Seattle; 1200 miles of dodging Highway Patrol speed traps, over-thinking routes and stuck in hyper caffeine overdrive listening to crazy-ass tirades from loony-right-wingnut talk radio. I suspect the elitist-socialist-coast-hugging-Hollywood-sissy-leftist-yoga flexing-public radio-wingnut they’re talking about is me, except I’m just a record geek on vacation driving a Ford mini-van with my wife and kid on that silvery ribbon of highway. By the way, gas wasn’t terribly overpriced anywhere on the road.

 

We spent a couple of days at the mouth of the Russian River just north of the Bay Area; insanely gorgeous and weirdly quiet. For most of us, spending a night in John’s cabin was probably a treat. Up there on the Russian River surrounded by big blue chunks, there is no noise, just pure unadulterated silence. I woke one morning very suspicious of silence. Is silence golden? Hell, I think silence is more often than not iron pyrite. Confucius said “Silence is the true friend that never betrays.” Well, I’m always a little dubious. In Buddhism silence and allowing the mind to become silent can help lead to spiritual enlightenment. Unfortunately I doubt I’ll ever know. My hearing is shot and if the high pitch ringing in my ears doesn’t drive me mad, all the noise I use to cover my tinnitus every single frigging day will. I’d like to blame someone other than myself for this predicament; it is the true blue American, Fourth of July, consecrated right to deny personal responsibility. Could I blame some of the 5000 different bands I did sound for in my years as a live engineer? I was raised in the Catholic Church-- maybe the blame should be directed at god? Then again, what’s that going to accomplish? I’m pretty sure by the sixth chapter of the first book in the bible god was ready to kill off everybody; I doubt my tinnitus could qualify as either a concern of the almighty or the act of a vengeful god ... too simple a scheme. However, according to talk radio rationale, I could and should blame Obama, Pelosi, or Letterman and Franken or a least my college education for all my problems.

 

Anyway, I’ll write you again later, don’t forget to feed the new psychedelic record box, and take out the thrash records, thanks. Oh, and send my regards to the pop vocals clutter. PS: here are a couple of pix from along the way and an old song. One more thing, according to the great mime Marcel Marceau, “Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.” I presume he wrote that down.

There are four major cemeteries in Paris, and each has their big name resident bringing tens of thousand of visitors each year. The largest cemetery is in the eastern part of Paris, Pere-Lachaise, and the biggest draw there is probably Jim Morrison, Isadora Duncan, Oscar Wilde and Chopin. In the north, the 18th arrondissement section of the city is Montmartre Cemetery where the great dancer Vaslav Nijinsky is buried and the "Beethoven of the Guitar" Fernando Sor. Passy Cemetery in the 16th arrondissement is where Claude Debussy is interred and, for you silent movie buffs, Pearl White, the star of The Perils of Pauline serial. And finally there is the Montparnasse Cemetery in the south. There you can find the graves of playwrights Samuel Beckett and Eugène Ionesco, Dadaists Man Ray and Tristan Tzara and probably the most visited and garlanded grave in all of Paris: Serge Gainsbourg. His grave site is forever covered in flowers, cigarettes, metro tickets, personal notes and odd little objects that derive their significance from his lyrics. Earlier this week we spent two nights in our favorite fleabag-Henry Miller-down and out kind of hotel around the corner from Montparnasse. I stopped by one morning in the snow, said hello to Serge, took a couple of pictures and had a very respectful snowball fight with my son. This may sound more macabre then intended, but there’s nothing like a cemetery blanketed in snow.

I’m back in Los Angeles and it’s sunny and warm. I’m overjoyed -- and somewhat warped, yes -- knowing that those are my dirty dishes in the sink and that’s my cat box that needs cleaning. I understand most of what I hear on television. And except for a dream that was apparently about the 1919 Flu pandemic (who knows where that came from?), the rediscovery of sleep in my own bed is just short of a mystical experience.

 

There were two things which surprised the holy hell out of me during my two weeks in Paris. First of all, how cheap it was for a doctor to make a house call on my behalf under the French healthcare system … yeah I think I’m dying, but who isn’t … Secondly, and truly the most unusual event, was that it actually snowed in the city of Paris for the first time in years. Its not everyday your six year old son can make a snowman in Luxembourg Gardens, or throw snowballs next to Serge Gainsbourg's grave, or make snow angels alongside Boulevard du Montparnasse. The morning after I flew out of Charles de Gaulle Airport it was 16 degrees Fahrenheit in Paris. I’m not sure what the temperature was here in LA but I walked down to Albertsons in my T-shirt.

Perhaps it is due to the holidays, possibly because we’re in Paris, but we seem to be constantly raising our wine goblets high, toasting to a helluva lot of people, places and things. Needless to say, we’ve also been drinking a lot of wine, very good wine. Inevitably during the course of a meal, especially a holiday meal, several choice bottles are opened, glasses refilled and then refilled again.

 

Three of the four residences of our French extended-faux-step-mock-families we’ve had the pleasure of dining with have a wine cellar of some sort. These people take their wine seriously; I’m not looking forward to going home to LA, opening my kitchen cupboard above the refrigerator and yanking down a bottle of Two Buck Chuck after all this. Sadly that’s all we’ll be able to afford after spending these few weeks living semi-large in France. These photos are from my quasi-once-removed-half brother-in-law’s newly built ‘bat cave,’ finished in April of 2007. His initial wine collection consisted of about 200 bottles; today he suspects that there are close to a 1000 bottles of wine and champagne stored down yonder under lock and key. That’s gold in that cave!

 

Anyway, here are, as far as I can figure, the top three toasts we’ve heard this Holiday season.

 

#3- Bonne Année (to the New Year)

#2- A la Santé (to health)

#1- Barack Obama

 

By the way, we have yet to toast Nicolas Sarkozy.

“Chin! Chin!”