I posted over a month ago about how I wanted to stop blogging about my personal life, because doing so seemed to generate so much intrigue in my own day to day world.  I would go to places in my daily life and wonder if this barista or that person I saw on my walk had read my last blog post.  Blogging about Warren Zevon or the Rolling Stones seemed to help a lot with these thoughts and feelings of people watching me that I had to sort through on a regular basis.  It seemed to create a viable boundary to blog about books I've read or some such rather than blogging about my personal and inner life.  For the most part, I still want to refrain from blogging about personal matters, but I'll relent for this post, at least for now.

I'm still not going to that person's place of employment, as of this writing. I still have no plans to go there in the foreseeable future.  I invited that young woman to my comic book show around the end of October, she didn't come, and she didn't seem to have any desire to engage with me whenever I'd see her at her place of employment.  I don't want anyone, her or anyone else, to fling accusations around that I'm stalking her or otherwise behaving in a harassing or transgressive manner towards her.  No, I really don't.

The support group I joined says a sign that one has their shit more together on this front comes in the form of not "doing" for others what those others can do for themselves.  I see going into her place of employment and trying to come off as some good guy who just wants to try and work things out as "doing for her" too much.  Again, I'm not at all sure she'd even want me to do any of that "for her."

On the other hand, I read in a Doctor David Burns self-help book an item where he told of a female patient who just started going on dates with a man, but she said he was a bad kisser.  She told Doctor Burns that she liked many other things about him, but that this kind of thing could break it for her.  Doctor Burns suggested that, at the right time, she tactfully instruct this guy on how she'd like to be kissed.  

Okay. I told this young woman the name and location of that comics shop I sold books at last October, so she could contact the owners (during business hours, of course) and ask them about me, as they are friends of mine.  Some other people work there who don't know me, but if she asks for one of the actual (husband and wife) owners, and asks either of them about me, they should tell her anything she wants to know about how to get in touch with me.

I miss this young woman, and I still think about her all the time, and I don't think I ever did anything to mistreat her.  I just bailed on going to her place of employment because I wanted things to change between us.  I decided that, if trying to get closer to her did not seem to present itself as a viable option, then I could go the other way, and that I would get a kind of change that I might find surprisingly appealing.  I still don't think I'd find what I'm looking for if I go to her place of employment in the foreseeable future.

I know, I know, I used to go on this blog and DEMAND that this young woman reach out to me in some meaningful way, and she NEVER, EVER did.  But, most of those demands I made BEFORE I ever reached out to her by inviting her to my comics show.  As much as I care for this young woman, I will not stand for any one-sided deals between us.  If this person just does not have any desire to reciprocate my expression of my feelings for her, for reasons that may run the gamut of her having no feelings for me to express, to reasons I might find far more frustrating than that if I really knew about them, then so be it.

I saw Darrell McCall on Memorial Day weekend at Arkey Blue's Silver Dollar in Bandera in 2019.  I saw Doug Kershaw at the Sagebrush Inn last night (February 26th, 2022) in Austin.  Darrell McCall was seventy-eight or seventy-nine years old when I saw him.  I pooped out towards the end of his first set (I guess he did a second set), while Doug Kershaw headlined an evening of three acts with a forty-five minutes set that consisted of about eight songs and quite a bit of Doug's stage banter with the audience.  I'm glad I got to see both these guys, because, Darrell McCall was in his late seventies when I saw him in 2019, and Doug is EIGHTY-SIX as of this writing.

Darrell wore me out, like I said, but not before he did everything such as his own material, "It's the Water," "Tennessee," and I guess "Down the Road of Daddy's Dreams" is his as well, to Merle Haggard, and Johnny Paycheck (he grew up with Johnny in Ohio), and Willie Nelson.  Arkey's Silver Dollar provided a great venue to see him.  Located in the basement of a property on the main drag in Bandera, the dance hall's been Arkey's since at least the '70's.  One can see Arkey do a short set with his band when they book no one else on Saturday nights.  On the night I saw Darrell McCall, Justin Trevino played bass and did a customary fifteen minute opening segment before Darrell came on and played for what must have been an additional hour and ten minutes of the set before I bailed.  

Two very capable acts opened for Doug last night: Kathryn Legendre and Jesse Daniel.  They had Doug in the middle slot on the original bill, but Jesse took the middle and did an hour and half set.  Doug opened with his most familiar song, "Diggy Diggy Lo," and followed up with other familiar tunes such as "Louisiana Saturday Night," "Jambalaya," and "Louisiana Man."  Doug played fiddle on a few, played a little guitar on one, and accordion on another.  I had to get closer to hear his stage banter.  The most noteworthy thing he said came when he talked about how Cajun people used to bear some shame at being Cajun.  The variety of the material and the short length of the set kept the feeling of sameness from creeping into the music they played, which my friend Jason complained about when he ran sound for a Cajun band at the Continental Club some years back.

One may listen to an episode of Cocaine and Rhinestones to get an idea about Doug Kershaw's legacy in Country Music.  The episode appears in the first season of that podcast and goes into the legacy of Doug's brother Rusty as well.  I don't know Darrell McCall's status as a performer these days, but he lives on a ranch outside of Brady, TX, and one could count on him touring the state on a regular basis before all of this mess started.  Me, I'm glad I got to see Doug last night, and as of this writing, I don't feel COVID sick from hanging out in that club last night.

I checked out Exile On Main Street: a season in hell with the Rolling Stones, by Robert Greenfield,  and Life, by Keith Richards from the public library for a spot reread on both.  Both books spend a great deal of time picking apart and debunking significant elements and sections of Up And Down With the Rolling Stones, by Tony Sanchez.  Keith points out that a British tabloid reporter served as ghostwriter for the Sanchez book, and seeing as how "Spanish Tony" strikes one as the type that always needs the money, that would explain why Keith and Greenfield devote so much space trying to set the record straight.  

Greenfield tells Spanish Tony's version of individual incidents, such as a car crash with the locals that Sanchez and Keith got into that led to trouble, and checks them with other tellings.  Greenfield has trained journalist credentials, and uses them to parse out some version of events that seem most credible to him in his telling of the Exile On Main Street days, plus the times preceding the recording of that album, and the times that followed.  Keith just flat out says that stuff such as the story in the Sanchez book that tells of Keith's wife, Anita Pallenberg, getting gang raped in a Jamaican jail cell, or the story about how Keith went to Switzerland to get a whole blood transfusion to kick heroin; Keith just says both of those stories are not true.

Both books try to tell of the process of making some memorable rock and roll and pop music. Greenfield tells of how the recording of Exile... would unfold on a day to day basis amidst all of  the chaos of personalities such as Gram Parsons drifting in and out of the nonstop hard party scene at Keith's villa in the south of France.  Keith gives the reader an insider's take on the writing of so many songs, from the story of how their early manager locked Keith and Mick Jagger in a kitchen all night one night in, say 1964 (?), in order to force them to come up with original material, to the whole lightening-in-a-bottle joy behind creating so many of the Stone's best songs once Keith found that he and Mick really had a gift for it.

Both books go into the many troubles with the law that Keith Richards had, and Keith goes into great detail about the nature of his various addictions, and his "secret" for the reason why heroin killed Gram Parsons at the age of twenty-six, but why he lived to tell all of his stories.  Keith does leave it to the reader to figure out why he seemed to have so many hotel rooms and apartment rooms catch on fire in the 70's when he, and others such as his wife, their friends, and his young son, are in them.  He tosses off these incidents in a by- the-way manner, and one has to paint a mental picture of him and his wife and their buddies, in a room together, it's late, and, oh, someone nods out on heroin, lit cigarette in hand, and 'poof,' just another Rolling Stone legend.  

I checked out I'll Sleep When I'm Dead, compiled and edited by Crystal Zevon, from the Austin Pubic Library on the Hoopla App.  I read it a few years ago.  What struck me about the book the first time around had to do with Warren's friends taking stock of his life after his passing in 2003.  One or two of them concluded that this one time in his life, when he wrote "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner" with a friend he met on his travels, represented the happiest time in his life.  Warren Zevon had a serious drinking problem from his teenage years, and later came drugs such as the prescription opioid Darvon, but he eventually got sober, but this assessment that this one sweet spot of a time in his life represented his happiest of times seems sad.

I have three Zevon records in one form or another.  Of the two "Best of..." albums I have, I recommend Genius.  Genius came out near the end of Warren's life, and shows the listener that the muse never really left him, because the later songs hold up just as well as the earlier songs.  Highlights include early classic, "Carmelita,"  "Detox Mansion," from the '80's, "Boom Boom Mancini." and "Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead," along with the more well-known stuff such as "Poor Poor Pitiful Me," "Lawyers Guns and Money,"  and "Werewolves of London."  Warren Zevon's darkest lyric writing finds its place here in songs such as "The French Inhaler," "Excitable Boy," and "Play It All Night Long."  How Dark? Well, the line from "Werewolves..." that goes, "You'd better stay away from him/ he'll rip your lungs out Jim/ Ha! I'd like to meet his tailor," shows the lighter side of Zevon's lyric writing in comparison.

The early '80's live album, Stand In the Fire, had critics hailing it as one of the best live rock and roll albums ever made when it first came out.  David Letterman, a supporter of Zevon in the '90's and early 2000's, said he told Warren pretty much the same thing about Stand In the Fire, and Warren replied that he didn't remember anything about recording those live shows.  Stand In the Fire holds up as a great live album, especially when one considers that so many major artists would later dub in vocal and instrument parts of so many "live" albums of the era ( The Rolling Stones' Get Yer Ya Ya's Out), and that others would just out and out put crowd noise on an obvious studio track (Waylon and Willie's "Good Hearted Woman").  Stand In the Fire puts the listener right there, front row, for a great show in comparison.

Enjoy Every Sandwich, a tribute album made soon after Warren Zevon's passing put out by his son, Jordan and Jorge Calderon, shows the regard major artists such a Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Pete Yorn of Radiohead had for Zevon.  Other contributers include longtime friends and supporters Don Henley, Jackson Browne, and Bonnie Raitt, Zevon collaborator Jorge Calderon, and Billy Bob Thornton.  Highlights of Enjoy Every Sandwich include a tough guy reading of "Werewolves of London" by Adam Sandler (it totally works), and "Studebaker" by son Jordan.  I bought my copy in the dollar bin at a local record store a couple of weeks ago.

Warren Zevon certainly had an eventful life, if not the most successful of careers.  His alcohol and drug use turned the aspects of his personality that made him seemed arrogant and superior acting into a full-on raging drunk who waved guns around and raged at the women in his life during altercations.  I just tried to look up any testimony from the book that said whether Warren Zevon actually assaulted anyone, man or woman, but the book on the Hoopla App has no index, so it's hard to look that kind of thing up quickly.  I'm glad Warren Zevon found a measure of peace in his later years, all the while never really losing that acerbic edge his friends go on and on about in the above-mentioned biography.  And as a fan, I can really take heart in the fact that Warren Zevon remained a viable creative force-a force that survived the booze and drugs and escapades- right up until the end.