They told me "D-you ain't campin'...after a year in the bush you is homeless"
I reflect on my street urchin days from time to time...maybe cos my retirement plan hasn't gotten much past 'I have a sleeping bag and can handle anything this mean ol' world can dish out,be-yotch.' And I had no small amount of fun in those days.whoo-whee.I do need to remember the daily trials and struggle lest I romanticize my self right back to the gutter,I suppose.But with sobriety,community and a dash of maturity I've been thriving,more or less.
My main skill sets were shoplifting and dumpster diving.I could also entertain,wether musically or just regaling you with adventure tales and feats of daring do enough to talk you out of my fair share of your booze or drug supply.Priorities,right? Then sometimes I would whip out my own supply of brandy or $50 bottle of pinot noir to keep the party rolling-or more likely save it to achieve my daily goal of passing out in seclusion.Depended on who I was rolling with,usually.I stole a few bottles of good liquor and wine nearly every single day for years.Only caught once.A few times I downed beers in the storeroom or inside the walk in cooler,apparently security was relatively lax those days.And that safeway dumpster paid off like a slot machine,lemme tell ya.
But enough about me,I wanted to tell a few tales about guitar Bob.
He was rude,tactless,disheveled and prone to sexist and racist wisecracks.But he knew some tunes and that beat-up cheap acoustic went everywhere he went which was anywhere you might care to name in this vast nation.He had an awful singing voice but would grind his way through blues,folk and 60's rock chestnuts for hours on end,his face grimacing and contorting wildly,truly a spectacle.We were pretty tight and I'd hitch around with him to shows or play music for tips until I got tired of his spiel and parted ways till the merry-go-round of street life put us back in mutual orbit.He could be counted on to buy a round and sometimes he'd come up with a bindle of speed and we would blast off and ruin songs until we lost our voices and damaged our fingers to the point that it might be wise to knock off the music for a while.the guy was a mental giant when it came to lyrics,he could reel off huge sections of Joe's Garage,Alice's Restaurant or any Grateful Dead song ad infinitum,often embellishing to take the crowd or surroundings into account.I'd play bongos,ashtrays,garbage cans,paint cans,harmonica or jaw harp and howl along.Fun times.I'll never forget a few of his originals,which in hindsight he he was less apt to have written than to have overheard, studdied and copped from some hobo jungle or post shakedown street blowout.
Here are a few of my favorites:
"this ol' man,he blew dough-pissed it through a corporate hole-
with a six-pack,heart attack,buy a bum a beer-these bums all hang out 'round here
this old man,he spare changed-all his life it's a cryin' shame-
with a six pack,heart attack,buy a bum a beer-these bums all hang out 'round here
this old man,he fought wars-he's NOT KILLING ANYMORE
with a six pack..."etc. and we would add verses and riff away as the occasion called for.
Or the always delightful 'spare some change?' which tended to send the tourists and more well shod hurrying away from our proximity rather than dropping coinage in the trusty guitar case or smelly hat,but what the heck,we loved freaking out the squares and didn't care much about money as long as we stayed loaded,which we certainly had a knack for.Shrug,whatever.
Spare some change...spare some chhhhhannngggge spare some change for the mentally insane
I think you'd take it a little bit hard,if I asked you for your bank of america card-
so won't you throw some change over here ?
yes, it's for beer-or it's for food -it's for whatever,if you got it,dude
change ain't no sin,so chuck some in,simply flip a coin over here
and he would play that sucker for half an hour,easily. there's more but I'm gonna wrap this episode up.Noni told me a while back he settled down and became a welder and he said hi.
I said tell him I got sober and that you could feed the world with my garbage dump.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GC2ubGjkiM]
The only constant is change.
My main skill sets were shoplifting and dumpster diving.I could also entertain,wether musically or just regaling you with adventure tales and feats of daring do enough to talk you out of my fair share of your booze or drug supply.Priorities,right? Then sometimes I would whip out my own supply of brandy or $50 bottle of pinot noir to keep the party rolling-or more likely save it to achieve my daily goal of passing out in seclusion.Depended on who I was rolling with,usually.I stole a few bottles of good liquor and wine nearly every single day for years.Only caught once.A few times I downed beers in the storeroom or inside the walk in cooler,apparently security was relatively lax those days.And that safeway dumpster paid off like a slot machine,lemme tell ya.
But enough about me,I wanted to tell a few tales about guitar Bob.
He was rude,tactless,disheveled and prone to sexist and racist wisecracks.But he knew some tunes and that beat-up cheap acoustic went everywhere he went which was anywhere you might care to name in this vast nation.He had an awful singing voice but would grind his way through blues,folk and 60's rock chestnuts for hours on end,his face grimacing and contorting wildly,truly a spectacle.We were pretty tight and I'd hitch around with him to shows or play music for tips until I got tired of his spiel and parted ways till the merry-go-round of street life put us back in mutual orbit.He could be counted on to buy a round and sometimes he'd come up with a bindle of speed and we would blast off and ruin songs until we lost our voices and damaged our fingers to the point that it might be wise to knock off the music for a while.the guy was a mental giant when it came to lyrics,he could reel off huge sections of Joe's Garage,Alice's Restaurant or any Grateful Dead song ad infinitum,often embellishing to take the crowd or surroundings into account.I'd play bongos,ashtrays,garbage cans,paint cans,harmonica or jaw harp and howl along.Fun times.I'll never forget a few of his originals,which in hindsight he he was less apt to have written than to have overheard, studdied and copped from some hobo jungle or post shakedown street blowout.
Here are a few of my favorites:
"this ol' man,he blew dough-pissed it through a corporate hole-
with a six-pack,heart attack,buy a bum a beer-these bums all hang out 'round here
this old man,he spare changed-all his life it's a cryin' shame-
with a six pack,heart attack,buy a bum a beer-these bums all hang out 'round here
this old man,he fought wars-he's NOT KILLING ANYMORE
with a six pack..."etc. and we would add verses and riff away as the occasion called for.
Or the always delightful 'spare some change?' which tended to send the tourists and more well shod hurrying away from our proximity rather than dropping coinage in the trusty guitar case or smelly hat,but what the heck,we loved freaking out the squares and didn't care much about money as long as we stayed loaded,which we certainly had a knack for.Shrug,whatever.
Spare some change...spare some chhhhhannngggge spare some change for the mentally insane
I think you'd take it a little bit hard,if I asked you for your bank of america card-
so won't you throw some change over here ?
yes, it's for beer-or it's for food -it's for whatever,if you got it,dude
change ain't no sin,so chuck some in,simply flip a coin over here
and he would play that sucker for half an hour,easily. there's more but I'm gonna wrap this episode up.Noni told me a while back he settled down and became a welder and he said hi.
I said tell him I got sober and that you could feed the world with my garbage dump.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GC2ubGjkiM]
The only constant is change.
