COBBS HILL 2000
DREAMland Faces
INFEST 1992
PETE’S ROCK BAND
BUG JAR FEST 2001
WHITE STRIPES
Sun Ra
JOE TUNIS DAY TOUR
NOD
COLORBLIND JAMES
Dave Ripton
LIVE AT THE LITTLE CD
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART
MOONDOG
PETE’S ROCK BAND
Pete’s Rock Band played only a few gigs and recorded oe casstee for Cheryl Lauro’s Godiva Records. Arpad Sekeres did the production. Pete LaBonne played guitar and sang, Bruce Eaton played bass and Paul Dodd played drums.
Here is the title song from Godiva Records cassette, “Antique Revolt by Pete’s Rock Band.” Recorded by Arpad Sekeres in 1992
WHITE STRIPES – 10th ANNUAL BUG JAR FEST, HIGHLAND BOWL ROCHESTER, NEW YORK AUGUST 12, 2001
SUN RA
Sometime after Sun Ra died in 1993 we saw Marshal Allen’s Arkestra at Milestones, that place on the corner of East and Chestnut that keeps changing hands. It was sad without the maestro and that is the last word I ever would have used to describe a Sun Ra performance. Maybe I was still in mourning.
Marshall Allen, at 96!, has kept the band together with three former members and I read an intriguing review of their newest recording. I ordered the vinyl and the first side is amazing. “Swirling,” the lp title, is apt. The new arrangements of three familiar Sun Ra songs don’t tear the roof off like Sun Ra would have but they do get the room swirling.
Peggi and I saw Sun Ra on five occasions. There is so much info online now I was able to track down the exact dates.
November 11, 1979 Soundscape NYC
I had a few Sun Ra albums at the time but other than the Art Ensemble at the Eastman I had never seen anything as theatrically immersive. In costume the band paraded around the fifth floor loft space in Manhattan’s West 50s while chanting, dancing and playing their instruments. The show didn’t start until after midnight and the sun was coming up when we left. My brother, Mark, who was living on West 43rd with Charlie Coco, came along with us. The show was released on cd, “Live from Soundscape.”
August 11, 1986 Red Creek Rochester, NY
Sun Ra was traveling with three drummers and they couldn’t possibly fit on the stage so one set up on the floor. The violinist, Billy Bang, was in the band and two of the horn players staged a theatrical, circus-like, wrestling match with their horns as they circled each other on the dance floor. I hung on to the ticket. Someone recently posted a recording of this show on YouTube.
I bought two lps, “Outer Reach Intensity-Energy (Stars That Shine Darkly, Vol. 2)” and “Hiroshima” from the band after the show. Both were in a white liner sleeves without covers. The label was blank on one side of each lp. They were five bucks a piece and I got Sun Ra to sign the the white label side of each.
The albums I bought did not sound like the Arkestra and only later did I learn they both featured live tracks from the Sun Ra All Stars European tour, a sensational line-up with Don Cherry, Clifford Jarvis, Lester Bowie, Don Moye, Philly Joe Jones, Richard Davis and Archie Shepp along with Marshall Allen, John Gilmore and Sun Ra!
September 5, 1987 Village Gate NYC
The Village Gate was no bigger than Red Creek in Rochester so this was an intimate show. It was Labor Day weekend and my brother Mark was having his wedding rehearsal dinner at the Chinese place near their apartment on 96th. I spotted a listing in the Village Voice for this show and we headed downtown after dinner. The band played two long sets and sounded better than ever.
July 25, 1991 Jazzberry’s Rochester, NY
Sun Ra had had a stroke and had to helped on to the stage but once seated he and the band launched into an extended drum/percussion improvisation. We were sitting maybe six feet from the band. Sun Ra could only use one hand and I remember him soloing during that first song with set kit sound on a Yamaha keyboard. The band sounded great “The Theme of the Stargazers,” “Second Stop is Jupiter” and “We Travel the Spaceways.”
October 18, 1991 Jazzberry’s Rochester, NY
Sun Ra had regained the use of both hands and the band, Marshall Allen, John Gilmore, and June Tyson with Buster Smith on drums, sounded as good as ever.
I am a fan. I have “The Magic City” on 8-track. Marshall Allen is also huge Sun Ra fan. If you only had one Sun Ra lp you could not beat his hand picked collection of Sun Ra tunes, Marshall Allen Presents “In The Orbit Of Ra.”
BOOTSY
Peggi and I were right down front at the War Memorial for the Mothership Connection Tour in 1978. Anita Ward opened the show. Bootsy followed and stole the show! Parliament and Funkedelic played after that.
JOE+N DAY TOUR
NOD
COLORBLIND JAMES
See tribute page from when Chuck Cuminale aka Colorblind James died.
DAVE RIPTON
Dave Ripton sat in with Margaret Explosion many times in the early days. I played drums in the Ripton band for a while. I did this poster for a Halloween gig at the Bug Jar. Arpad and Cheryl released a cassette of Dave’s music and poetry in the early nineties. Here is one song from that project. Dave will live forever.
DOUG DUKE’S MUSIC ROOM
MARSHING BAND 2006
Listen to Song Number 3 by the Marshing Band 2006
LIVE AT THE LITTLE CD 2004
1. Brady Miller Trio “Qui Zas, Qui Zas, Qui Zas” (6:16)
2. The White Hots “Black Cat Bone” (4:15)
3. The White Hots “Why Don’t You Do Right?” (3:54)
4. Ben Gallina Trio “Windows” (9:53)
5. Margaret Explosion “Floating at the Bug Jar” (5:57)
6. Trio East “Stop-Start” (6:48)
7. Bob Sneider Duo “Benjamin” (4:26)
8. Bob Sneider Duo “My Funny Valentine” (3:50)
9. Diane Armesto Quartet “I Fall In Love Too Easily” (7:29)
10. Gene Bertoncini “Cavatina/The Shadow of Your Smile” (7:45)l
LINER NOTES: by Frank De Blase
Yessir, the Little Theatre Café; where time and calories are of no concern or consequence and where mellow is allreet.
Wish you could’ve been there. You shoulda seen me; the perfect two-tone, gabardine, patent leather personification of lonely and hopeful. Man, it was tres cool. I strolled in the joint rejected, dejected, determined to wallow in my woe over a cup of joe, to replace lost affection with confection. And dig the tunes.
Now, the cheesecake never bent to adjust its hose, nor did the brownies waltz around with bellies full of Ektachrome, but I knew them all well. We were pals. We had indulged in each other over the blood of the bean for many, many nights.
Nestled in the hip pocket of Rochester’s art house movie palace, the café hops and hums and buzzes nightly with the smart set’s witty back ’n’ forth and live jazz.
Jazz groups like those you now hold in your hot little hands serve as punctuation to each point you make, every mood you feel…even a little heartache.
You see, the red head beauty with the green eyes had just given me a one-way ticket on the adiós express leaving me with little ‘cept for a burning passion for music and dessert.
And besides the carnival monkey playing a calliope in my head, jazz has always been my soundtrack.In fact it’s yours too.
The subtle pangs of joy or righteous indignation or elation are jazz. Those lows so low they seem like numb-less highs are jazz. If it’s in the back of your mind working its way to the tip of your tongue, it’s jazz. It’s the way you walk, the way you talk. Now you know.
It’s taken me years to arrive at this, and when I finally did, I felt pretty damn smart. As well, every time I emerge from a movie, I feel somehow smarter. And I find myself (post cinematically, I suppose) wanting to prove it in the Little Theatre Café waxing – reflectively, esoterically while waving a hand that would have a cigarette in it if John Houston directed my life. Then again if he did, maybe the redhead wouldn’t have left. Or maybe she would have simply killed me instead. Perhaps he’d have me sipping espresso as opposed to my usual cup of java with enough sugar to stand a spoon in. I do know one thing…he’d have this music, sho’ ‘nuff. Bring a date, save room for dessert. Spin this disc in the meantime.
HARRY ABRAHAM
From 1969 to 1978 Harry Abraham ruled the airways with WHAM’s 50,000 powerful watts, You could listen to his show, “The Best of All Possible Worlds,” from Rochester to Indiana if you were heading n that direction as I was.
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART
Love your site – makes this former Rochesterian want to come back (not), but it’s still fun and I have fond memories. Saw your pictures of a Beefheart appearance and thought I would send this stuff along. Beefheart made a tour through Rochester in 1971, playing at RIT (Ry Cooder opening!). Attached is the flyer handed out plus one of the photos I took with my little camera. Maybe your readers will like it – I have other bad shots of good bands from that era if there’s interest. It served me well, I’m still doing it (www.kebya.com is my site). Take Care, Kevin Yatarola
Here’s my cassette recording of Captain Beefheart performing Low Yo Yo at Red Creek in Rochester, New York 1977.
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART
an artist, a heartist
from FUTURE #3 010378 usa
by greg prevost and carl mack
is 11.77 interview
as we approached captain beefheart for an interview, he was remarking to a small gathering of fans seeking photos:
i wish i was an octopus, i really do though. i mean, could you imagine standing there octapied like that? no, i mean man, that’s beautiful, really…. i love dolphins, and octopuses.
we met the captain (don van vliet) in the parking lot, between concerts at the red creek inn here in rochester [new york, usa – t.t.] recently, during his north eastern tour. we recorded the following interview:
greg (photographing carl and the captain holding a ‘trout mask replica’ album, leaning against a white station wagon): have to stand back a bit further. – snap! – did it work?
carl: yeah.
i thought you said for us to stand back a bit further. i mean, that’s asking a bit too…. impossible…. but no, it is possible to go right through the car: i have done a lot of things like that. no, i mean, i have.
what is your favorite album that you recorded?
the one i just did. the name of it is ‘bat chain puller’, and i’m serious – and that isn’t for publicity reasons – and it is, man, it is góóóód! i got to hear every little note. i wrote every little note – of course, i always have – but i got every little note right on the tape.
do you write your music down?
i don’t write it down. well, i do write it down sometimes, but the way i write it most people can’t read it. like paintings. i actually do, like in ‘electricity’ (from ‘safe as milk’): the theremin fellow that played that was about 65, had a little pencil thin moustache, conservative suit, black, very, ummm… –
(in the background friends were whistling for their dog to stay out of the kitchen) – let him go. please let him go.
owner: in the kitchen? sure, let him go get something to eat. (returning to subject:)
no, what is it? bella lugosi – no: boris – ummm, bella lugosi: ‘tonight we fly’ (waving a pointed finger toward the sky). no, he looked like that, played a theremin and was an apprentice of dr. theramin [the russian inventor of that instrument – t.t.]. and i wrote it on a blackboard and he played it note for note. i mean, i wrote it advanced music – and he played it note for note. i am talking about shapes: he did it note for note, and he didn’t miss what i thought. i mean, he was fantastic.
were you originally a musician or a painter?
i was a sculptor, a child prodigy sculptor. when i was 13, i had a scholarship to europe from ‘nuitsence creamery’ (or so – editors), and then my folks moved me to muhabbi (or so – editors; what about: mojave? – t.t.) near the high desert, where they put the oriental people during world war two, which was real sick. so here i was in mojave, a marine base, no, an air force base; i mean, in order to keep my mind the way it is, they didn’t like my eyes you see, so i had to defend myself. i mean: i had to every day. five people at a time. i mean, all you can do when people jump you like that is punch your way out – i mean, who would want to punch out? but if you don’t punch, you get poked. and i never got poked.
that was terrible, leaving that art area in los angeles. i used to go to the park zoo, i knew all the animals, sculpted all the animals, they were all friends of mine, and that’s about what all i knew were animals, and then bóom!: here i am in mojave. my folks moved there, i couldn’t get away. i ran away many times. i never went to school in my whole life. if you want to be a different fish, you’ve got to jump out of the school.
what other bands do you listen to?
i don’t. i mean: i don’t. i have one that suits me just fine.
i’ll tell you who has been on this tour with me – and i wished he was here tonight. his name is sunnyland slim, a black blues pianist. the most fantastic. listen, i thought i had heard it all, but man, i hadn’t even begun. this fellow is a genius. there’s no doubt about it. i mean, this man is brilliant. brilliant. brilliant. i mean: brilliant. just a grand piano, and a drummer, and man he did ‘tin pan alley’ for me the other night and i was crying my eyes out. i almost fell off, in buffalo. i was standing there, and denny walley, our slide guitar player saved me, because i was falling backwards – like that, man (captain demonstrates) – and he saved me. i was falling down a hell of a flight of cement stairs. i mean he just took me. i swear i was off the ground, i think he did levitate me. i mean, i mean that. you’ve got to hear him, man.
the captain’s new drummer approaches:
and here is the percussionist, and his name is:
robert williams: robert williams.
and he is the best i have ever played with, and i have played with a lot of them. he is the best i’ve ever played with.
what label are you on now?
i wrote ‘lick your labels off, baby’, and i’m having a little trouble getting back on a label, because they know i believe in it. but we’re in negotiation with several companies: epic, capitol….
when you changed to mercury records, your style was a little bit different from the previous albums on straight / bizarre…
‘trout mask replica’, ‘lick my decals off, baby’, ‘the spotlight kid’ and then ‘clear spot’ – the steps down, because i like people, i like to play, and i want them to play to me, with me – you see. and the point is that then i did an album for the group, because they weren’t making any money. they lent me their hands to do ‘trout mask replica’, ‘lick my decals off, baby’ – i didn’t want to do ‘clear spot’ at that time. i went down a little lower like that for the group and did ‘unconditionally guaranteed’. they left me after that, and left one with some monsters. i got these people who they could relate to, and then they gave me… –
robert williams: the shaft.
one, two, three, four, fíve days! and i gave them six yéars! they gave me five days with their audience, and with their fans as well as my fans. in europe, england, everywhere, holland, switzerland, germany, america – a tour, a big tour, and they gave me five days to get a group together to do my music. that’s what you get: ‘tonight we fly’ (once again pointing a finger toward the sky).
but thís group! i have looked for this group for twelve years! we all love animals, the whole group, complete consciousness, we know that the largest living mammal is the absent mind….
i’ve been getting these record negotiations out of the way, so i will be completely clear for publishing books and things like that. i mean, i really have a lot of novels, and a lot of poetry.
is any of that available now?
it will be. as soon as the end of this negotional things that’s on going. i have exhibits of paintings available now if you have a plane ticket. they’re back there (california – editors). i would like to do an exhibit in new york.
this concluded the interview with the captain. the band (captain – sax, lead vocal, harmonica; robert williams – percussion, drums; jeff morris tepper – guitar; denny walley – slide guitar; eric ‘black jewel kittaboo’ feldman – bass, keyboards, synthesizers) went on to do the 10:00 performance to a packed house. they played cuts from the new album and various classics from the captain’s earlier works. the band performed with amazing accuracy and enthusiasm along with the captain’s inimitable, charismatic personality.
LOUIS “MOONDOG” HARDIN
We were on the Amtrak train coming back from Manhattan with Sunday’s New York Times spread out and there was this stunning picture. Moondog had died. I had his “Sax For Pax” cd on the Refrigerator Millennium Hit Parade and even started the review with “I can’t believe Moondog is still with us.” So the idea of updating that review with his obit was very sad. Moondog stood out on the street at 54th and 6th from the late forties to the early seventies, dressed as a Viking, selling copies of his sheet music and poetry. A Manhattan friend of ours, Charlie Coco, took us over to see Moondog standing on the street in the early seventies.
Upstate Magazine, which used to be inside the Sunday edition of the Democrat & Chronicle, published an article about Moondog in 1970. I hung to it and transcribed it below.
The Moondog article is available here as a pdf.
Upstate Hermit, Manhattan Composer, Blind Viking Poet, He’s Moondog
by Steve Knowlton
Holding a spoonful of sugar poised over the coffee cup on the counter, Marcella looked up and said. “Two sugars and a little milk, right?”
Moondog sat in the booth at Lela’s Restaurant, exactly 60 steps down North Street in Owego from the cigar store where the New York bus stops. A smile flashed from under his immense beard and he answered, “Yes, that’s right.” Then, “See, she remembers. That’s Marcella. Her mother, Lela, owns this little place.”
The waitress brought the coffee over to the straight-backed wooden booth and put it down in front of the massive man looking like a Viking out of an old Kirk Douglas movie.
“I come here a lot,” said Moondog. “Particularly in the summertime when there’s not this problem with the snow. I sit and talk for hours and sometimes just listen to the old-timers come and go. Fascinating old people. Listen and talk Ñ until it’s time to go back.”
He felt for the cup and took a sip, stuffing large bunches of beard under his chin out of the way.
His left hand disappeared under his army blanket tunic into a leather pouch and produced a yellow plastic drinking straw with a flexible elbow. Moondog sipped the coffee and explained, “if I had a mustache cup … but I don’t and a straw is easier to carry around.”
Officially, Moondog’s name is Louis Hardin, born in Maryville, Kansas, in 1916, the son of an Episcopal minister. But under the layers of tattered Viking garb and the shaggy grey beard, Moondog is ageless, placeless, has no history you can connect with calendar or map.
Moondog picked his pen name from the memory of an old dog he once owned back in Missouri. It used to howl at the moon, naturally.
By his own admission, he is a “hustler” Ñ panhandler Ñ in New York on 6th Avenue, usually in the middle Fifties. He peddles his poems and songs at ten cents a mimeographed sheet and uses all he can save up to travel back and forth to his hillside two miles or so from Candor, about 25 miles below Ithaca, eight miles from the bus stop outside the cigar store in Owego.
In 1956, after 13 years in New York, Moondog had $750 at at once and bought 40 acres on a hill a thousand miles from anywhere for what would be called a retreat if he had a good job and any money.
He and a neighbor who lives down the hill half a mile or so put up a one room sod and stone shack, “but somebody, I guess some of the kids before they got to know me, kept taking the sod out from between the stones and it got cold in the winter. And then, the mice could get in.”
So a few years later, about 1961, Moondog and another neighbor put up the foot by 16-foot cabin he now has. It’s insulated with tarpaper between the 2×4’s and heated with a wood stove that takes up about half the room.
A bed is built into one of the short walls and on the other end is a pile of tunics and leather Viking helmets and all the other junk that Moondog has collected since he came east for the last time 27 years ago.
The nearest road to Moondog’s place hasn’t been plowed- all winter, so there are several feet of snow on it and the best way to get to the cabin is the way Moondog does it Ñ on snowshoes.
When you make it through the drifts and get to the door, Moondog greets you warmly Ñ much warmer than the inside of the cabin Ñ and offers to take down the piece of cheesecloth over the single window so you can see your way around.
On a little wooden table near the bed is an old skillet. A fork lies in the middle of the pan, left over from Moondog’s last meal, whenever it was. A few empty and a few unopened cans are stacked and piled up together behind the frying pan.
At the front edge of the table a one foot square space has been cleared away and it’s here that he sits and writes his poetry, mostly coupletsÑiambic septameterÑand composes his music.
For Moondog, that one square foot is about it for work space because that’s all there is in the shack, and the inside of the 8 by 16 foot shack is about it for living space. When he’s in New York, he sleeps in doorways, sidewalks, anyplace that’s not occupied and is out of the elements.
”But it’s better now,” he says, “Last year a friend who owns a leather shop gave me a key and after the people leave at night, I can go in there and sleep on the floor.
“I do some composing there too, but it’s hard. After being out all day and then going inside where it’s so nice and warm, I get awfully sleepy,” he says, a little embarrassed.
For years he has sat there knocking out lyrics and music which is said to sound like early Donovan. Or rather, “since I was first you should say Donovan sounds like me,” says Moondog with a chuckle down under his beard.
But his real love is classical music. A melody line comes in on him “like an elusive butterfly and you have to write it down then or it’s almost impossible to retrieve it without its sounding strained.”
The melody “is the easy part,” he says. “Then comes the real nitty-gritty work of composing – “the hours and weeks of writing out the parts to the piece, for the percussions, woodwinds, brass, strings, because Moondog thinks real music( should be written for full orchestras, not two guitars, an electric bass and drums.
After the inspiration comes, Moondog jots down the melody line and works out the parts, using some thing like a thumbtack to poke little holes into cards, forming the Braille pattern that looks to the uninitiated like someone walked all over them in golf shoes.
Then comes the work of the reader and the copier – Moondog reads the notes out to a friend, the fingers of his rough lumberjack’s hands moving amazingly deftly along the cards. The copier takes it all down in standard musical notationÑthe language of the sighted.
Standing around the stove, or sitting in Lela’s or squatting on the sidewalk on 6th Avenue, Moondog win talk for hours on almost any subject you suggest, but history and his own brand of religion are his favorites.
The obvious question of why the Viking look starts a long story. When he was 16 and living in Hurley, Missouri, a dynamite cap exploded in his face and permanently blinded him.
“I thought that if the God my father preached about was good, He wouldn’t have let it happen to me. And if He was all-powerful, but had been looking the other way and not watching at the time, He would have restored my sight. But He did neither and I lost my faith.”
From there, Moondog wandered from Braille school to Braille school, reading, listening, thinking about things, eventually arriving at the Norse gods of the Vikings; Vikings of his own heritage.
There is a little stone monument outside the cabin on the hill outside Candor where he burns half a cigar as incense for the Norse god, Odin, and smokes the other half himself.
“I’m very conscious of my ethnic background,” he says, gripping a Viking spear which both proves his point and supplants a red-tipped cane. “And I think everyone else should be.
The appearance, the style are “a personal expression, a rebellion against the bourgeois uniform, as I call it, and a rebellion against my parents, I suppose, in that order.”
The not knowing where his mother is, “somewhere in Missouri I think.” The brother who’s a doctor somewhere who never answered Moondog’s last letter three or four years ago. The note from his stepmother saying his father “is dead and buried.”
“They didn’t invite me to the funeral. Even in death, they wouldn’t forget the appearance.” Then, with a forced almost-laugh, “But you could say that even in death I wouldn’t forget the appearance,” spreading his arms to show you what he meant.
Does he belong in the East Village, surrounded by the hundreds of young people with similar backgrounds?
“Young people are often drawn to me,” he says, “but I’m not necessarily drawn to them. For example, I want nothing to do with anyone who takes drugs of any kind, even marijuana.” People high on grass “are very introspective and very contemplative, which is good,” he says, “but all they do is think. They can’t conquer mountains because the marijuana has killed the incentive, the drive.
“I can’t put up with anyone who doesn’t do anything,” he says.
People at the Columbia Records watched him out on the streets under their windows for years, Moondog says, and they got to know him, to know that he composes symphonic pieces along with the folk music and the poems.
Six months or so ago, Moondog got together with the Columbia and agreed to cut an album of Moondog music. The record of eight symphonic pieces made it to number 6 on the classical charts before Christmas and then fell off.
“But Lenny (Leonard Bernstein) preceded me down, so that’s good,” Moondog says, starting into long. personal feud with Bernstein starting 20 years or more ago when Moondog says Bernstein slighted him.
Money from the album sales hasn’t come in yet, he says. He got some at the beginning, but royalties are only given out twice a year and it isn’t time yet for the first check.
If any is forthcoming, and Moondog is hopeful but not overly optimistic about it, “I think I’d have some electricity put in the shack on the hill.
“Tending the stove is all right, but it’s awfully time-consuming when it’s really cold and I can’t really concentrate on my composing. An electric heater would be nice.”
Beyond that, if he really makes it big Ñ “I’ve got at least ten more albums full of music already written Ñ” Moondog would like to go to Europe. “I’ve always considered myself a ‘European in exile” he says although he’s never been to Europe. “I never had the money,” a little sadly.
Lela is working now and Marcella, bundled up for the snow, has left the restaurant.
She brings more coffee Ñ two sugar, a little milk Ñ over to the booth. In a minute, the oversize, cumbersome cash register rings up $1.10 for lunch from one of the old timers who hang out there, particularly in the wintertime.
“Hear that?” says Moondog, and his shaggy head cocks to one side. A smile from under the beard again and he says, “you don’t see cash registers like that anymore. Doesn’t it sound nice?” It’s about two feet high and is a dirty brown, isn’t it?”
Although he’s been sightless for almost 40 years, Moondog still thinks very much in visual terms and he starts talking about the prettiest girl he ever saw, just a few months before the accident Ñblonde hair, grey eyes, a complexion like ivory.
It’s about 4:30 and at 4:55 the bus leaves for New York, back to the hustling, the crowds, the sleeping in doorways. And a little money. Maybe word from the Columbia people that the album has taken another upswing for some unexplainable reason. Maybe by next week, Europe will he a little closer.
The right hand dips into another pouch hidden by the tunics and comes out with a quarter. “I think we should leave a little tip,” says Moondog and flips the coin onto the table.
The album, entitled Moondog” with a color picture of a gnarled old Viking on the cover is standing on top of the cash register. Lela smiles and tells Moondog that it’s there.
He smiles and thanks her and sure, he’ll be back pretty soon. It’s out into the blowing snow again, a leather sack under one arm, the spear in the other.
Twenty-two steps back up the street, he’s talking about the album again. “The only way I would agree to do it was to not let Columbia hear it before it was recorded,” Moondog says. “That doesn’t happen very much in this day and age.”
A few steps of silence, musing.
“Rare is the man who isn’t bought,” says Moondog. Forty six.
At fifty-two, “It’s the next doorway. Just a little shop: sells cigars and candy and like that. But they’ve got my record. The man who owns the store says he’s got in a whole shipment of the album. Look, see if they don’t.” They do.
Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty. Stop.
“No, don’t wait. The bus might be late. It was last time and the roads are getting bad I bet. You’d better he off.”
He’s standing there, the leather sack on the ground beside him. Ten dollars and twenty cents turned into a one-way ticket from Owego to New York City.
In the swirling snow and soft darkness folding in on him, he waits the spear in his right hand, one end on the ground. An engine rumbles.
“Is that the bus? No, just a truck. Never mind. It’ll be along any minute”