"Stand Alone"

On my way into work this morning I was treated to "Stand Alone" by Bob Marley & The Wailers, a true bachelor manifesto. A celebration of man freed from the snares of depleting feminine entanglement yet haunted nonetheless by the "missing-half," "Stand Alone" can be found on the two-disk Trojan Records collection Bob Marley & The Wailers: Trenchtown Rock (Anthology '69 - '78). I found a used copy of this about ten years ago. It is one of the best purchases I have ever made.

Stand Alone

There you are, cryin' again/But your loveliness won't cover your shame/There you are, you're takin' true love/And while you're takin' true love, you given the blame 

(How could I ...) Could I be so wrong/To think that we could get along?/Days I wasted with you, child/If I count there'll be a million or two 

Now I stand alone through the memories/That haunts me, that haunt/Yeah, and I walk alone through the rhapsodies/That taunts me, that taunts me, me

There you are, cryin' again/But your loveline-ness won't cover your shame/There you are, you're takin' true love/And while you're takin' true love, given the blame

(How could I ...) How could I be so wrong/To think that we could get along?/Days I wasted with you, child/If I count there'll be a million or two 

Now I stand alone through the memories/That haunts me, that haunts (... me)/And I walk alone through the rhapsodies/That taunts me, that taunts me

Now, there you are, cryin' again/But your loveline-ness won't cover your sham-ame, hey/There you are, you're takin' true lo-love/While you're takin' true lo-love, given the blame

(How could I ...) How could I ...

Steady Rollin' Blues: The Blues Of Memphis Slim

I'm going to try to be more disciplined about posting music that, in the spirit of "Trenchtown Rock" -- "One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain."

When I'm not at work or sleeping, I'm listening to music. The other day I heard Memphis Slim's "Big Legged Woman." The song can be found on his Steady Rollin' Blues: The Blues Of Memphis Slim (1963) album, a cassette tape of which I purchased from the music vendor's kiosk in Manhattan's Union Square.

I was newly divorced and exploring the blues. This guy, a nice guy, an aging Hippie, sold good-quality tapes -- I don't think he had vinyl or compact disks -- of jazz and the blues. I learned a lot by frequenting his kiosk in the park during my lunch hour.

"Sweet Root Man" is also a track which appears on Steady Rollin' Blues. Very distinctive. In my youth I was of course aware of the double entendre; now it strikes me as so powerful that it nearly blots out everything else about the song.

Anyway, in my twenties I was entranced by Steady Rollin' Blues. All the organ work is incredible. The album has an amazing amount of sonic space that it occupies considering how spare the arrangements are -- just Memphis Slim singing along with the piano or the organ.

"Zimbabwe"

On a warm slightly overcast morning I can proclaim -- hopefully -- that a nasty foot injury I've been struggling with since Mother's Day -- two months! -- is behind me. I completed a slow jog of a four-mile baseline course, and I experienced no difficulty, other than a painful lower-calf issue I'm dealing with on the other leg.

Finishing up the run Bob Marley & the Wailers' "Zimbabwe" shuffled on the iPod. The second cut off Survival (1979), that timeless sonic manifesto of Pan-Africanism, it has always been my favorite Marley song. I was reminded of the importance of having some Bob Marley & the Wailers on the playlist.

Working While Asleep + Bob Desper's New Sounds

Today, rain in the morning and back to work. It was a scrumptious ride on the train out to SeaTac. Quiet and cool without being cold, I slept a sound sleep from the International District all the way to somewhere beyond Rainier Beach.

Monday evening is the time slot on this blog that I devote to a contemplation of work. What I want to mention tonight is the enchanting experience I had this afternoon of working while I slept. I kid you not.

Right before the noon hour I was asked by the office manager to accompany her to Seattle to run some errands. I readily complied. It's always nice to vacate the premises and get on the road for a spell. Basically she needed a passenger in the local's minivan so she could access the HOV lanes and also someone who would sit in the driver's seat -- the van parked in a loading zone -- while she dropped off a check at the main post office across from Benaroya Hall.

With that out of the way we drove to the local's old location, the one we vacated at the end of March to move out to SeaTac, to inspect a break-in attempt and deal with some exposed bolts jutting out of the concrete at the building's entrance. Our chores completed, we stopped off for a luncheon special at a Chinatown restaurant.

And that's what created the condition necessary for me to be blanked out -- in a semi-comatose state -- while at the same time diligently sitting at my desk and performing my work; in this case, cleaning (pulling staples and post-it notes) and putting in chronological order correspondence and notes that make up the contents of old grievance files. It could have been the egg drop soup. Maybe it was the chow mein noodles. But what I do know is that I'm not used to eating very much food at lunch. Usually it's just a piece of fruit or two and a protein bar. So today the huge quantity of food delivered -- chow mein, soup, fried rice, fried shrimp, hot tea, several glasses of ice water -- most of which I consumed -- really threw me for a loop.

The only thing I can compare it to -- working while asleep -- is driving long distances not fully conscious. You're aware -- you're hurtling down the road at a fast speed -- but you're not really there. You're someplace else. And when you finally snap to, not only are you relieved that you didn't crash, but you feel pleasantly refreshed.

And the nice part of working while sleeping, at least if you're sitting at a desk shuffling papers and not operating any machinery, there is very little risk of injury. So my advice is don't fight it. Don't jump up and rush to get a cup of coffee. Go with it. And I think you'll find, if your job is anything like mine -- one that you've done over and over and over again -- that you can literally do it in your sleep.

The past weekend's musical immersion started out on Saturday with Bob Marley & The Wailers' Babylon by Bus (1978) and then ended up on Sunday with Bob Desper's only full-length album, New Sounds (1974). Dubbed proto-downer folk, I heard a cut a couple years back on KEXP and liked it. Spooky but soulful. I finally got around to downloading it yesterday. It's good. This is track eight, "Time is Almost Over":

Rat Race

A moment this morning that perfectly captured the rat race. I was sitting in my customary seat on the light-rail train. I was facing an eastern window that looked out on the freeway. The train was traveling from Rainier Beach Station to Tukwila International Boulevard Station, and on that leg of the trip it parallels Interstate 5 for a stretch. The train was moving at the same speed as traffic on the freeway. One car would race ahead soon to be overtaken by another. Then the car that was passed would surge forward followed by a truck. It struck me, sitting there on a fast-moving commuter train at 8 AM on a Monday morning, that this is what makes the Western world go around -- the race to get to work. The rat race.

It reminded me of an article I read by Bret Schulte in the New York Times last July. The story, "For Pacific Islanders, Hopes and Troubles in Arkansas," talks about the large population of Marshall Islanders who live in Springdale, Arkansas and work in the Tyson poultry processing plants. The Marshallese, as Schulte explains, "puzzle over the American obsession with time." The kids can't make it to school on time and are absent a lot. So the principal of the local elementary school started giving alarm clocks to parents as presents.

The [Marshall] Islands and the United States have been intertwined since World War II. The United States has detonated at least 67 nuclear bombs in its 750,000-square-mile territory. The radioactive fallout rendered some islands uninhabitable. And United States military operations there are powered by American processed food, beloved by locals but blamed for the explosion in diabetes.

We nuke them. We poison them with our processed Western diet. Then as a gift we allow them to come to the North America without visas and work for minimum wage. What a bargain.

This past weekend I immersed myself in Rastaman Vibration (1976). I think it's a flawless album. The 2002 Deluxe Edition includes a second live disk, which is, I believe, the best live recording of Bob Marley & Wailers. Recorded on May 26, 1976, it was released separately in 2003 as Live at the Roxy, the Roxy being the famous Roxy Theatre on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. Live at the Roxy is itself two disks, the second includes a 24-minute version of Get Up, Stand Up / No More Trouble / War:

Hippies vs. Punks: "Rasta Don't Work for No CIA"

Ska and reggae bled the Hippies, whereas the relationship of Punks to ska and reggae was symbiotic and collaborative.

What I mean when I say that roots reggae bled the Hippies is that the people who had progressive, tolerant, egalitarian tendencies in the counter culture gravitated toward the Rastaman Vibration (1976) at same time that the Southern Man -- the rural redneck who had no problem bombing colored folk -- grew his hair long, started smoking dope and rocking hard in football stadiums.

An analogy from this week's news comes to mind. If a Bob Marley-type politician appeared today on the scene, the Democratic Party, just having been pushed in the direction of the Southern Man by Obama's proposal to limit Social Security -- a program that is the bedrock of the modern Democratic Party -- would quickly start to splinter. This is what happened to the Hippies during the critical period 1975 to 1979 that we have been exploring each Friday evening.

My father is case in point. A Beatles and Van Morrison man who also favored The Who and Led Zeppelin, he went roots reggae in the late 1970s. He turned the album covers for Exodus (1977) and Survival (1979) into his own personal works of art -- embellishing them, cutting them, etc. When he became drunk and/or stoned he would often assume a Jamaican Patois.

When I got out on my own I too listened to Bob Marley & the Wailers. One of my favorite records as a lower-division undergraduate was Babylon by Bus, the 1978 live double album that includes "Punky Reggae Party" (a song that establishes the connection between Punk and Rastafari):

Today the recordings of Bob Marley & the Wailers (Peter Tosh's solo work as well) remain a strong filial bond with my father; any newly released live recording that I come across I promptly burn a copy and mail it off to him.

We must not underestimate the Rasta role in the demise of the Hippies as a cultural vanguard.

Next week, the weapon that gave the Punks full-spectrum dominance -- 2 Tone ska.