Eight Feet Deep

Forgive me for being an old wistful fart here, but so-called “free” radio is just another relic of the past like 30-cent-per-gallon gasoline and riding your bicycle on endless summer days.

It’s gone beyond the days when, as described by John Prine, the “radio knows all my favorite tunes.” The radio has learned a boatload of favorite tunes. Few of those could I consider as my favorites.

I got fixated last night on the song generically known as “Fight the Power” by the Isley Brothers. I say generically because the Isley Bros. were in that strange tradition like soul brother James Brown that if something was good, it needed more than one part. Such as: “Fight the Power (Part I).”

“Fight the Power” belonged to that whole where music was music was music. It may have been R & B but it wasn’t classified as R & B. It wasn’t hip-hop because that wasn’t in the mainstream back in the 70s when that particular song came out. It might be more soul than rock. But it was rock music — where all comers ended up on Mr. Radidio back then. It’s an edgy song and even the remakes of it aren’t heard on probably 85 percent of radio stations today. That’s even with bleeping out the “shit” in the lyrics “with all this bullshit going down.”

It’s kind of sad you can’t turn to a classic rock station these days and hear classic rock, or whatever it was, but it was music we were tuned into it. I think about Stevie Wonder’s “Innervisions” album, which I probably played until it was worn out. I even used to make a joking reference to a song on that album when I lived in Waco that probably only a few would catch.

I’d say: “Waco, Texas, just like I pictured it. Skyscraper. Everything.” The line was paraphrasing an intro to the fantastically-edgy “Living for the City.” It is where the boy who’s born in Hardtime, Mississippi, comes to New York City and upon departing the bus says: “New York City, just like I pictured it. Skyscrapers. And everything.” You see, Waco only had one skyscraper and oh well, you had to be there.

I have visited my current home city enough after being gone seven years to realize the radio scene here has long been drab. It’s even worse than before. How much Creed can one person take? We also get radio signals from 90 miles away in Houston and they are more dreadful than before. Thank God that the evil talk radio station here still has a Cajun music program on Sunday mornings.

I guess the Internet and satellite is where one now has to go to find good music. That means, if you play you pay. The same happened to TV. That means the free ride is over. It’s too bad.

I can’t play my music
They say my music’s too loud
I kept talkin’ about it
I got the big run around
When I rolled with the punches
I got knocked on the ground
With all this bullshit going down

“The things you find rummaging around in people’s darkrooms.”

I was way off on who Deep Throat really was but so were a lot of the Washington “know-it-all” crowd.

The admission by The Washington Post today confirming the identity of the confidential source who helped bring down the Nixon administration was kind of anticlimactic in a way.

Speculation was rampant for years about just who was the person who fed Woodward and Bernstein the lowdown on Tricky Dick Nixon. Some bigshot Washington pundits thought Deep Throat was a well-known name such as Al “I’m in charge here” Haig, or even Henry Kissinger. To find out in the wake of a Vanity Fair story that it was a guy I had never heard of — a former top FBI official named Mark Felt — was a bit of a letdown.

I always secretly hoped it was Elvis Presley who was Deep Throat. To find that out would have set off one hell of a conspiracy theory that would just conjoin with existing conspiracy theories that The King really wasn’t dead in the first place and would result in a conspiracy theory deluxe on toast. How could Elvis possibly know all these secrets? Hey, just look at the picture man! How could Elvis possibly NOT know everything that went on under the leadership of Richard Milhous Nixon? You can see the bond between them. The photo above leaves one with the impression that aliens swooped in and took over Nixon’s brain, and all that he was able to say afterwards was: “Thankaverymuch.” Oh wait, that may have really happened.

Of course in this puritanical age in which we find ourselves today, it would have been a scream to find out that the real Deep Throat was Linda Lovelace, who of course was the original “Deep Throat.” And how would she know all Nixon’s secrets? I speculate, you decide.

So another enigma wrapped up in a mystery spoiled like a four-day old burrito! Thanks for nothing Vanity Fair!

Can your eyes play tricks on you? Define tricks. Okay, rather than verbally spar with myself let us assume we mean some wild pinball games can take place inside your brain that result in what you think you are seeing not necessarily being what you are actually seeing. You see?

I bring this up because of something I saw — yes I actually saw it — while driving back from the beach this afternoon. I was cruising on this road that is pretty much flat Gulf coastal marsh. That is why I was astonished to see this very red, 100,000-ton deadweight, double hull, petroleum tanker ship appear before my very eyes.

The ship, The Eagle Phoenix, was traveling and appeared as if it was going to run into the highway. But how could that be? On the left hand side of the road was Keith Lake, a sort of back bay and on the right was the ship channel running from the Gulf of Mexico to Port Arthur and on up the river to Beaumont. But I only saw this huge ship that looked like it was going to ram Texas 87, which already has a long interrupted section along the beach because of a hurricane more than 20 years ago.

Strangely enough this momentary cross-communication between my brain and my vision wasn’t frightening. I say that because a huge tanker running aground onto a highway somewhere would probably be rather dreadful. With my experience in journalism, I can easily predict that such an occurrence would make worldwide news. I guess I just knew it couldn’t happen, or hoped it wouldn’t happen, and instead just let the awe take me away like mental Calgon.

Of course, as I rounded the curve I could see the ship was just churning down the channel and I could almost picture a collection of multinational merchant seaman singing in about 10 different languages: “Rolling, rolling, rolling on the river.”

Once I did drive astern (hey, I learned ‘astern’ in the Navy), I just laughed and looked awestruck at the big tanker. I then realized for the umpteenth time that it’s funny what your brain can do to you. Well, I’m sure for some people it’s not very funny. As a matter of fact, I remember a couple of times when it wasn’t all that hilarious for me either what my brain was doing.

I made it home though. The whole ship experience was one of the more interesting parts of my afternoon. I was a little disappointed with the beach because hardly anyone ever goes where I go. That’s because the beach is just off the highway that once went to Galveston but now runs nowhere because of the hurricane. But today a lot of people were on the beach. Well, it’s Memorial Day, what was I thinking? I also saw some kind of dead four-foot fish that was at the road leading to the beach that was pretty gross. I mean, it didn’t ruin my day but I have had better outings there.

I don’t know where The Eagle Phoenix is tonight but I hope the crew is having a good trip. Hopefully, those who take the helm of the tanker won’t have problems with their eyes playing tricks on them. Despite being somewhat funny when it happens, it can create some serious difficulties both ashore and offshore.

What a tough break for the U.S. Naval Academy graduates. All they have gone through during the past four years and they have this freakish downpour of hats over that part of Maryland on their graduation day!

Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas. The movie.

The song Waylon Jennings sang back in the 70s about “Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas” might not be the best premise for a movie. But considering how Hollywood has gone into considerable retread mode, it seems like any idea not relatively fresh might work as the new blockbuster.

I am certain what passes for screenwriters these days could transform something stellar out of the whole concept of getting back “to the basics of life.” (Is Ned Beatty still alive? If so, maybe we can see a new ‘Deliverance.’) For that matter, some screenwriter on autopilot could probably make a major motion picture out of the crappy photo above I took back on a mild January day in Luckenbach.

Is the motion picture industry, and the television industry for that matter, afraid of coming up with some film that might not be a rehash of a 70s television show like “The Dukes of Hazard” or some rehash of a movie such as “The Longest Yard?”

Why things have gone to seed so badly, television is having to rely on REALITY. Yikes. You remember the old saying: Reality is for those people who can’t handle drugs? Reality, for Christ sakes! People are competing against each other to see how obnoxious their realities really are and it really sucks.

With the fixation that everything past is better than present, I think I am going to go back and re-read all of my old books. Maybe I’ll finally tackle that 700-page Merck surgical manual I bought at a flea market. I think it was written when good health care consisted of being bled by leeches. Who knows, maybe medicine will go retro and we can go to doctors for the price of a good hen.

Certainly there is nothing wrong with the past. I happen to like reading about it. It’s called history. And we all know the gems of literature and performance arts from bygone days. But, come on, we’ve seen cinematic remakes of just about every 1970s television show. That’s not to mention the dreadful period of time when movies were being made to fit the name of some song like “When a Man Loves a Woman” or “Pretty Woman.”

So here’s to the past. May it make somebody stinking rich and leave the rest of us wondering where the creative types go bowling these days.