The Visions - Cigarette

Speaking of cigarettes. 

MONEY (1962) by the Beatles with Pete Best

I haven't heard many Beatles tracks with Pete Best in the band. I've looked, but I've never made a science of it. This cut is from the Decca auditions, and I think it's a very successful track. It shows what I've said all along: the Beatles were a damn good bar-band at this time. 

But of course, at least three of them had big ambitions, and John had huge pretensions. Being big-time in the bar-band business brought in small crowds and little money. The real money was in big selling records, with band members holding the publishing rights, and big venue shows. So that's where the Beatles steered their course. I usually say that they "sold out," but in my kinder moments I don't think that's exactly fair. Maybe they were just confident. They were, after all, very good for a bar-band. They looked for people who could help them, and got rid of someone who they thought would hold them back. A little on the cold side, but if the Beatles were not a cold-hearted, self-interested bunch of guys, they'd have stayed together until death overtook them. That would have been the smart thing to do. 

"Money," a perfect song choice for this lot. 

Pete Best here is unspectacular but inoffensive. He's not as bad as a lot of people make him out to be. He just wasn't in the mold of what the Beatles wanted to become. Which was a very polished Moon-Spoon-June, Tin Pan Alley, Brill Building act that appealed to all age groups. Pete probably had more fun with his own band after he left, excuse me, was kicked out. 

Cigarettes

There was a time when almost all of the adults smoked cigarettes. “Smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em,” was more than just a catchy saying. It was a way of life. That was the World War II generation, and you could say that during that nerve-jangling episode in world history there were more reasons to smoke than there are usually. The young adults of the time were self-medicating to an extent. The depression was just ending, and between that and the war there were tons of good reasons to be nervous and worried. Not just at the tip of the spear, either, not just the combat troops, but all throughout the rest of the military and into the population of most of the world. They developed the habits of drinking at every opportunity and smoking as close to constantly as they could manage. After the war, it was tough to stop, and most of them didn’t see any good reason to even try stoping anyway.

Many of us had family doctors who had served in the wartime military. My own doctor was one of the unlucky few who had actually treated combat casualties and been relatively close to the front. He was a steady kind of fellow that no one would say was the nervous type. He had picked up the smoking and drinking habits, though. He had a big ash tray on the desk in his office and he didn’t mind smoking while he was treating patients. He had a bottle of scotch in the drawer, too, and in between office appointments he would take a little nip. He left the rocks glass on his desk. I’m sure that he’d occasionally pull out another glass and share a drink with a patient if the situation called for it. He knew which of his patients had been in the shit during the war. Give ‘em a drink, let’s smoke a butt, reminisce a little. He was a good doctor, not like some of them who couldn’t handle their liquor. I still have a mark on my shoulder that looks like a small tattoo of the islands of Japan, left by a botched tetanus shot from another doctor who had been taking a few too many nips that day. He jammed the needle straight into the bone. He’d been in the war himself.

Camels sold their product with the pitch, “not a cough in a carload!” See, now I wouldn’t have recommended that saying to them. As the Romans used to say, “the guilty flee, when no man pursueth.” Why bring up coughing yourself? I’m pretty sure that was a mistake.

Lots of the members of that generation paid the price for all of that self-medication. My old doctor included. He suffered a fatal heart attack at a relatively young age. Several of my uncles paid that price, too, or got the cancer or something. They were certainly a bad influence on us Baby Boomers, that “Greatest Generation.”

The first cigarettes that I smoked as a boy were rush jobs, and I don’t really remember them. They were Pell Mells that a cousin and I had stolen from my uncle. Whether I enjoyed them or not, I do not recall, but I was not discouraged, that much is certain.

The first cigarettes that I do remember smoking were non-filter Chesterfield Kings that my friend Jackie and I stole from his mom. She smoked those things by the carton, more than a pack a day, so she’d never realize it if four of them went missing. We took a book of matches and the four cigarettes and went to the big park on the river in our town. There was a hill rising above a nice path along the river that was covered in dense, old bushes. We knew a spot where you could climb the hill with some difficulty and come to a “fort,” as we called such things. It was an open space covered by the bushes with enough hard packed dirt for two or three boys to sit comfortably. Facing the river there was a gap in the foliage that provided a nice view of La Guardia Airport, right across Flushing Bay. We were twelve years old at the time, still in grammar school.

It was probably the first time that I inhaled, so it would have been the first time that I got the full effect. And the effect of a Chesterfield (filterless) King was considerable. We smoked our two cigarettes apiece and we compared notes. I remember thinking, wow, no wonder the adults smoke these things. I thought they were great.

In the fullness of time, I tried a lot of other things as well. I must confess that I liked almost everything that I tried, and that I added a few things to the list of my, what? Habits? Sure, habits, why not. For want of a better word, although not, certainly, in the medical sense. Only those devices that one uses to comfort oneself through the difficult passages in life, which for many of us came pretty much every day.

Speaking now, in February, 2018, it’s been about a year and a half since I smoked a cigarette. It’s not like I was a dedicated cigarette smoker all of my life, I wasn’t. I went strong through my late teens, but after that I was an on again, off again cigarette smoker, and always more like a few, nothing like a pack per day. During my fifties, I literally smoked three cigarettes per day. That was hard for people to believe, but it worked for me. I enjoyed those three cigarettes, one in the morning; one upon returning home from work; and one after dinner.

During my sixties, and owing to stresses that would crush coal into diamonds, my intake went up to six or seven cigarettes per day. If you are still young, dear reader, God bless you, but please believe me that there comes a time in our lives when the handwriting on the wall is not only clearly visible, but it is also bursting into flames and can be read from space. So, I quit. It was not that the stress in my life was reduced, quite the opposite was true. It was just that I came to realize that the well-being of others was involved, not just my own wants and needs. I was not worried about second-hand smoke, because I only smoked on my balcony, and with the doors closed. No, I realized that every year that I could add to my life would make someone else’s life easier. There was someone who would miss me after I was gone, and who’s life I could make easier by my assistance and companionship. In other words, I selfishly sought to extend my life, because I enjoy this feeling of being important to someone.

I can honestly say that I never crave a cigarette. I never look longingly at the cigarette display in the convenience stores. I do kind of miss them, though, because I did always enjoy smoking them. Okay, add them to the list of things that I miss. The list is as long as my arm by now, and the cigarettes are the least of it.

Cool Bangkok Vehicle Alert: Yamaha 250 cc Single

I rarely see one of these, so you couldn't say that it was a popular motorcycle in Thailand. I like their lines, though, and they sound great. This one's a beauty, isn't it? Nice colors, and well maintained. 

Gil Scott-Heron - The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Full Band Version)

Speaking of Gil Scott-Heron. 

This cut was originally part of an early LP by The Last Poets, but I think this version came later on as part of a Gil Scott-Heron solo release. 

Not being close to my records is probably no excuse. I could do some research on this here 'Net and figure it out for sure. But you know that I don't like research. Unless I'm getting paid, anyway. 

Stoned Out Of My Mind: Early 1970s Black And Puerto Rican Fashion

This is a nice cut from the early 1970s. I enjoyed songs like this one well enough, but I didn’t buy the records. I always run things like that through a racism-alert filter, but this one passes that test. I was buying plenty of records by black artists, Graham Central Station, Muscle Shoals records, Fatback Band, Stax/Volt/Enterprise, Charles Wright and the Watts 103^rd Street Rhythm Band, Hi Records, lots of Reggae, Fela and other African acts, and more, but just not any of this smooth, almost Doo-Wopie northern, urban Soul.

I did listen to it on the radio. That would have been “The Big RL,” WWRL, in New York City. I liked it, but I felt like groups like the Chi-Lites, with their matching outfits and smooth vocals, were out of date. Now of course that’s not a problem. All of it, and me included, we’re all out of date by now.

It’s a good cut, though. Great song; great production; entertaining premise. A couple of nice plays on words. And a great performance, the Chi-Lites were very good.

I can’t listen to this music without thinking of the clothing styles at the time. The clothing worn by young black hipsters, specifically. Not the platform shoes and multi-color everything, not what you might call Pimp Style. The young guys didn’t wear that stuff. It took money to dress like that. The young black men were clothes-conscious, but they preferred a simpler fashion of dress.

Low-top sneakers in many colors came out in the early 1970s. Purple; red; green. They were bright, too. They were popular with young black men, so I’m thinking that they must have been Converse. The black guys always preferred Converse to Keds. But then again, the first non-black or white sneakers that I ever remember were Keds. They were out already in the early 1960s. Not bright colors, just like olive green, earth tones, very subtle. Hard to look that up, probably.

They wore those bright sneakers with t-shirts that more or less matched. Very often, silk t-shirts that were sold in up-scale clothing stores that catered to the black population in Flushing, Queens. White t-shirts were very popular, and went with everything. They’d wear these with chinos, maybe black chinos as well and the kaki. Starched and pressed, if I recall.

Those fellows were the customers at a record store that I worked at around that time. We got along fine. Why shouldn’t we have? I know, I know. But recall the times. It’s worth pointing out.

In the Puerto Rican community of the early 1970s, the real style-leaders were hard core gangsters, and you had to go to Brooklyn or Manhattan to find them. I remember them, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever even seen photographs of the styles that they pioneered. They wore denim jackets, but they would steal furs from women on the subway, cut them up, and sew fur collars onto the denim jackets. That was a good look. They also were among the first to shop the vintage clothing stores for nice old pleated dress pants, very dressy. These guys were mostly thin, and the tight denim jacket with those baggy-ass pants was a great look. I copied that look myself before I moved to Los Angeles, and I made quite a splash when I got there. I never had a fur collar on my denims, though. What I did do was stitch small highlights of color into the collars and cuffs, so little that it was hard to see. Subtle, but killer. I liked that look.

I’m pretty sure that the PRs liked the colored sneakers, too. But they also liked to wear expensive, very conservative Oxfords. (Better in a fight!) I copped that look, too. Mine were Florsheim’s Oxford Weaves (brown).

See? This is what happens when you get to my age. Listen to a nice song on the YouTube, and all of a sudden, it’s taking you on a tour of memories in files that have not been reviewed in decades. I’ve seen a lot, and done a lot, and it’s nice to be reminded that I wasn’t always the quiet, rather dull man that you see before you. I was never cool, but I was hip there for a while.

My Fugue State Experience

I had a strange moment at the mall today. There was an item that I needed to return. Not like a pair of gloves or something, it was a licensed copy of Microsoft Office in the original box with the receipt. I will uncharacteristically refrain from telling you all of the details, but take my word for it, it had been rendered useless and uninstallable through no fault of my own. It turned into a big deal, unsurprisingly, and it ended up taking two almost two hours.

(To cut the suspense, they did eventually give me the money, about $100 in cash. They had clearly caused the problem, but even that is usually not enough in these cases. It was a testament to my powers as a near-hysteric who refuses to be pushed around.)

I have largely outgrown the frequently abrasive behavior of my younger days, but there are times when I can make very hard eyes and be very, very direct. It happens when I make a polite request for something that every system of honor and justice in the world would agree that I should be granted, but it is not granted. I find it disrespectful to be stonewalled and denied what is so clearly my due. Honestly, in any situations where the justice of it could go either way, I just smile and walk away. When my good nature is clearly being abused, however, I can be difficult.

The odd experience came late in this exchange, which by then was me vs. four mall people and one guy from Microsoft on the phone. I had exceeded my bullshit tolerance quota about half an hour previously. I was speaking across a desk to a mall woman who spoke remarkably good English, and I was explaining to her my theory of how the problem came about in the first place, a theory in which the mall looked particularly bad and had obviously broken the law. I was touching a nerve, because I could tell that she knew that I was right. In mid-accusation I glanced briefly to my left, and I saw something.

It was a Farang dwarf (Farang, a white European or American, or anyone who looks white). She was an adult woman, and although I was seated I was looking directly into her eyes at close range. She was wearing a traditional Bavarian dress like the ones worn by Octoberfest waitresses, rather colorful and ornate. She was very pretty, and her eyes were huge, like one of those big-eye paintings, and very sad. Her dark hair was in pig-tails.

I don’t think that there is a chance in the world that there was actually such a woman standing there looking at me in that way, at that time. Leaving the mall later on, I wondered if such a transient disconnection from reality was something that I should worry about, quickly deciding that it was not. That’s small potatoes in my scheme of things. Then I wondered about the symbolism of it, why would my vision take the form of a melancholy Bavarian dwarf waitress? This second question was as difficult as the first one was easy. I eventually gave up.

I’m chalking it up to just another day in the unsupervised disintegration of a slightly defective personality. Let the record show that I am not now, nor have I ever been, a danger to myself or others! I am just a curiously imperfect stich in the human tapestry, impossible to detect from afar, and not even easy to see from close up.

I should apologize for bothering you with such trivial matters.