20 Feet From Stardust

From the outside I'm no different than any other kid on the junior high school bus heading home. Books with papers coming out this side and that side on my brown corduroy lap, tired eyes staring out the window. But in my mind I was playing out a scene. It wasn't a school bus at all, it was a tour bus, and I was David Bowie. Thousands of fans were waiting for my arrival in the arena. I was praying my mother wasn't home as I was dropped off at the top of my street. I imagined them checking the guitars and amps while the fans grew restless. I opened the front door and shouted "mom?" No answer, Thank god. I got out my mic stand, placed it in front of the mirror next to the turntable and shined a reading light to where I knew I'd be "performing". I lowered the needle on side two of Young Americans, cranked up the Marantz stereo and Jenson Speakers and ran upstairs. Knowing the intro sax solo was about a full minute I had my grand entrance well timed. Making my way downstairs, careful to not arrive too soon or too late, I stepped into the light and the show began. I was him and it was hot. Crooning "Somebody Up there Likes Me" while looking to different parts of the crowd, the music was loud enough where you'd have to scream to be heard. I'd perform the rest of side two culminating with "Fame". I'd collapse on the sofa, sweating and out of breathe. I've never had a real performance as exciting as those living room Bowie shows.  

And that's what I realized in the last couple days, since he shockingly died. He brought more sheer excitement than any other source in my life. Whenever a sentence started with "David Bowie" it always ended with my heart beating faster with anticipation. Always and every time for as long as I can remember. So when my wife grabbed my arm in the middle of the night as I went to get our crying newborn and said "David Bowie..." well, you know the rest.

What kind of fan am I? The kind that bought his album the second the store got it in on his birthday, 2 days before...

On Paul Simon's most recent album he sings "there could never be a father who loved his daughter as much as I love you". That's how I feel about David Bowie. I know, now more than ever, how many people out there deeply loved this man, but I don't feel their love-I only feel mine and no one could ever have loved him more than me. Seeing all of the Ziggy Stardust images as a remembrance only supports this. Ziggy Stardust was a character he played for a year.  Ziggy Stardust died a long time ago. David Jones aka David Bowie is who died. And I have been at a loss for words, until now.

LOW had just come out when I drew this at 12. 
I'm surprised to see I wrote "but you can't change time" 
instead of "but i can't trace time", the correct lyric.

He's A Faggot, You're Probably a Faggot Too
I don't remember I time I didn't know the name David Bowe - it seems like it was before I knew my own name. I was well aware there was David Bowie and then there was everyone else. In elementary school I was picked on for liking "that fag" and told "you're probably a faggot too". I looked at their ugly local faces and heard their stupidity and knew I was on the cool side of the line. "Young Americans" had just come out and I knew every word. I looked at the cover for days, months. I already knew Hunky Dory and Ziggy Stardust. Again, I was still in ele-fucking-mentary school. "Look how nervous he is" my older brother said to me while we watched him on the Dick Cavette Show. "He keeps playing with his cane". Of course he wasn't nervous. He was speeding his ass off on cocaine. I was sooo tired. My eyes barely could stay open. I was 11 and in my pajamas. I just watched the coolest dude in the world.

"Isn't That Me?"-1974 "Ain't That Just Like Me?"-2016
"I'm glad that you're older than me, makes me feel important and free". I'd sing this to myself as I walked down the street as a young teen. I always dug people older than me. So did he. He got me and I got him. And we didn't even know each other. How could that be? "David Live" was the result of fun meeting funky. Rock meeting soul. Holy shit, how is it possible that it was recorded live a couple miles away from my turntable? The pics of him inside the double live album from The Tower Theater showed someone different from anyone else in an otherwise average environment. It wasn't glam, no gloss or anything. More like white, soulful and sweaty. This time he seemed to be portraying an exhausted human being. Best live album I ever heard. That and Wing's "Rock Show". Check out "When You Rock and Roll With Me". Jesus.


I was 11 when I drew this rendition of 
the David Live album cover.

I Want To Live
Yes, my brother turned me onto the cream of the crop: Hunky, Ziggy, Aladdin, Diamond Dogs. But when he moved on, musically and physically (college and Fleetwood Mac") I got swallowed up in a strange world of bisexual-tinged insanity. The Man Who Sold The World, Images 67-70 and the darkest and deepest of them all perhaps Space Oddity. Oddity to me is the acoustic Man Who Sold The World. The most human of all his albums in my opinion. In it, I felt his skin, smelled his hair. I was in his room and he told me a lot of fucked up things. I was scared but wanted to hear more and more. On the cover and back cover it looks like he has freckles or something. Like he's a real human being. That always stood out to me. This is no Ziggy. This is a real alien-dude we're hanging with.
"I want to live". Check out the way those words are written on the liner notes. The sentences get smaller and smaller until they just say "live". Again, not light toe tapping music. I believe the years I spent with this album (as well as Man Who Sold The World) made me feel like I had a friend noon else knew.

Staying Alive In Berlin
In 1977 it seems everyone either sang very high, Bee Gee's, or very "Low". While I tried to get my brother into the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack ("I don't like how high their voices are") I found myself very disappointed in my very own purchase of Bowie's latest. For a 12 year-old suburban kid such as me, it wasn't immediately obvious what this drugged out artist was sending me from Berlin, Germany. The first song had no vocals. The 2nd one was almost catchy then over before it began. WTF. I was getting really bummed when "Sound and Vision" came on. Instantly lovable. I didn't know who the chick was but man, she sounded great. Then Bowie comes in with yet another very low octave and barely audible vocal. Within a month I loved the whole album. Eventually it would become one of my favorite albums ever. As usual Bowie was teaching me to expand my mind and ears. He was on a path and I was along for the ride. That only happens when someone's in it for the art not the money. Of course, he was making more money than most musicians already. But cashing in would come a few years later.

20 Feet From Stardust
"Playbill" hahahaha" my Junior High friend blurted and laughed when he saw my "The Elephant Man" playbill after school in my bedroom. He thought it was a riff off of "Playboy". This is how different I was from my age group. The fact that I grew up tagging along with my parents and seeing films for older people, going to shows in NY, sitting in fancy restaurants made me one of those "14 going on 40" kinda kids. Playbill as you probably know is a theatre leaflet. This one was signed by Mr. Bowie personally. My parents took me to see him perform live as the Elephant Man and afterward my copy of the Playbill was brought back to his dressing room, signed and returned to me. I never took it too seriously, suspecting it was someone else who signed it. But I'm sure it was him in retrospect. Sitting literally 15 feet, center in front of him in nothing but a loincloth saying "sometimes I think my head is so big is because it is so full of dreams" was fucking intense.I told everyone in school. I don't think they cared as much as I did. After school I continued to work on perfecting my stage performances in front of an audience of one when I was probably supposed to be doing some kind of sports thing.

The Super Man Who Fell To Mortal Philadelphia
Back when it was the Ritz 3 movie theater and years before I should've seen a movie with an R rating, my parents would take me with them to see all kinds of art-films, indie-films, foreign films. I wish they hadn't because it gave me information I was nowhere near ready for. The Tin Drum? Really? There is one exception though and that was the friggin' miracle that David Bowie was starring in a movie. I first read about it (*see next section) when I opened the paper to see a huge full page ad with his face and planet earth in the distance. before and after that page were normal-people movies, dull who-cares movies. I'm sure many people out there didn't really care that he was in a film, but the fans were mesmerized. My dad took me to see it at the Ritz. Before the movie started they were playing his music. I'll never forget the sound. So good, so warm and dry. I had listened to the Ziggy album night and day for a couple years by that point but I never flipped the record. I was so in love with side 1, I guess it never occurred to me. Maybe I was scared it wouldn't be as good. It was, of course. Maybe even better. So when "Starman" came tumbling out of the theater speakers with those juicy, punchy, dry snare and tom-toms (that fill is sooo British isn't it?) I was all "ooooh, yes, yes, yes". Lights went down after a song or two and my heart started beating faster. But where was he? And where was I and...and...kaboom. Orange, blond-haired Bowie straight off the LOW album cover on the usually stuffy, boring screen. Some drunk fat dude is garbling something. And then we see a really, really old lady. So human. Both of them, but not you-know-who. I started understanding juxtaposition that day. Over the next few weeks reviews were written (favorable mostly), the ads started getting a little smaller. Then really small. But they always caught my eye like a laser-beam. Eventually it played at the Plymouth Meeting Mall, seconds from my house. My dad and I saw it again. The sex scenes were weird but by now I was used to watching weird and inappropriate things with my parents.

From my scrapbook. I'd cut out anything with his name, for years.

*Daily, obsessively, I would speed-scan newspapers, magazines and books for the letters D or B. At some point I also started looking for the key letters the other way around: B and D. One was David's initials of course, the other Bob Dylan's. But never at the same time was I obsessed with the both of my idols. It was like a Superman/Clark Kent thing. One or the other. My brain couldn't have both simultaneously. Dylan was soil, earth, the Village. Bowie, another world. Anywhere but here. So it'd be Bowie from September to January, Dylan from February to Spring and back and forth. It's still the same.


Peace On Earth, Can It Be?

What's better than the old folks finally seeing that us kids know talent when we see it? Bowie certainly held his own (um, if not more?) next to Bing Crosby. Our beautiful alien wasn't all that different than the regular old-time crooner was he? I'd like to say I enjoyed every second of Crosby's Christmas special but the house phone rang every 5 seconds from friends to tell me he was on. It was like the Bowie-hotline that night.

I Could Make It All Worthwhile 
When the radio station announced they'd be playing a brand new single from his new album at 1pm the next day, I didn't forget it. When the next day (pun?) came I was in Science Class. When the clock was at 12:58 I raised my hand to go to the bathroom. With my walkman well hidden I ran to the boys room, found an empty stall pressed the earphones to my ears as hard as I could. I didn't want any to seep out. "I catch a paper boy, but things don't really change".  This was his reward to all of us who learned a new way to listen to music through his Berlin/Eno trilogy:  the easy to digest and instantly lovable "Let's Dance" album. We graduated together.

I started my own bands, wrote my own songs and eventually signed to the same label he made all his classic albums for, RCA. 

What makes me the saddest is knowing I'll never hear the words "David Bowie" again and wonder what he has up his sleeve this time. Maybe more than anything, I'll say this to him: thanks for making being a guy as cool and sexy and liberating as being a girl. 

Scot Sax
January 21 2016

Maybe Dylan Had To, But I Didn't!

Time and time again, especially in my early years of songwriting and performing, it was suggested to me to do the following things to some of my (usually too high-pitched) songs:
1. Try it in a lower key
2. Try it faster
3. Try it slower
4. Make it a shuffle beat
5. Try it without drums or maybe do it just on an acoustic guitar

My blood would start heating up and my head would start spinning with defiance. I know what I'm doing. This stuff comes out of me flawless. I'm not changing a thing and once it's recorded the first time, whether it's a demo or finished product, that's it, as-is.

Oy.

I needed to get over myself, huh?

Not until the last 10 years or so and very recently have I been reminded of how wrong I was. With the release of The Beatles Anthology we all heard alternative versions of song after song after song. They tried them a million ways till they were just right. As amazing as the other versions were, they kept working-kept digging.

On the release last month of Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" and Blonde On Blonde era bootlegs, I cannot believe my ears. Even the stream of conscious genius that is Bob Dylan, was worked on and worked on and re-worked. Check out "Just Like A Woman"! It wasn't born as a chill, acoustic, low-key raspy-voiced, hush, mid-tempo lullaby, it was a romp-stomp ho-down of psychedelic bluesy haze! Like a lot of his other tracks, but at some point they realized this song was bigger than those.
How did they know that wasn't "where it was at"? They kept working, that's how.

Children, don't do what I have done. Don't pat yourself on the back till the work is done. And even then, let someone else do the patting.

Now, re-work that song.

Scot Sax
November 29 2015

J.C. Dobbs, $27 and A Car Full of Croissants

I remember the African-American gentleman (bar-back?) lurking around the "dressing room" and always somewhere in the background doing who-knows-what. What was his name again?
I remember Mo behind the bar and her white-ish blonde bangs and warm, weathered smile. 
I remember Sheamus, the big bearded guy at the door. Sometimes he seemed like a teddy bear, sometimes not.

I remember playing shows, then getting high (really high), laughing and watching other bands and drinking some more, all to come crashing down by the harsh sobering bright light of Cathy James' (booker/owner/mgr?) office upstairs while she explained why we only made $27. 
"17 people, 10 guests, only 2 paid...". Her voice would start to sound like one long blurry word that meant nothing. My head was always in my dream. A place where reality didn't have much impact. If it did I would have quit then and there and not have gone on to see a couple fragments of that dream come true.

I remember getting home around 2:38am and feeling the room spin as I prayed I wouldn't get sick. My ears filled with constant high-pitched ringing.

My dad had opened a french restaurant in Allentown in my early 20's, the height of my Dobb's days, and I agreed, for some reason, to pick-up the baked goods from a baker in Center City and drive them to Allentown in time for the morning rush. 

Comprehend this if you can: 
I'm 20-something, I'd pass out by around 3am on Friday nights with cotton-mouth and that siren-like drone in my head from the amps and drums and have to wake up early (but almost always late of course), drive downtown from my parent's house in Plymouth Meeting (30 minutes from Philadelphia) pick up about 10 huge boxes of fresh-from-the-oven croissants, put them in his Subaru and drive them (over an hour past Plymouth Meeting) to Allentown. 
On the way the following may or may not have happened at different times: 
I'd pull over to "shut my eyes" for a "few minutes" only to wake up an hour or so later, mega-late to the restaurant. Hungry and hungover, I'd reach back while I drove to grab a croissant or 2. Or 3. 
Or 5 and a half. I didn't know which kind i grabbed until I shoved it in my mouth, lovingly.
The car was filled with the undeniable intoxicating aroma of fresh cherry, apple and chocolate croissants. 
Still warm. 
My dad was furious with me. Furious. I was late and with only 75% of the merchandise.

I hear "J.C. Dobbs" and I smell it before I see it. It smelled like the 3rd chapter of a rock and roll biography. Mine. And I'm sure, many others. 

Dobbs reminds me of whiskey. Too much whiskey, too many nights. It was fun (the drinking) but it ate up a lot of minutes and seconds I wouldn't mind back. 

J.C. Dobbs didn't just close as I've just been told, it closed along time ago. It closed when Cathy left. It closed way before they added "legendary" to the name. Talk about "jumping the shark".
It closed when it still was J.C. Dobbs, the place everyone loved to hate and vice versa. But before it closed, it gave me and my many fellow bandmates over the years our "Cavern". It in fact was our "Cavern".

"And you know that can't be bad..."

Scot Sax

Post Script:

Top 5 memories:
1. Seeing and hearing a live band in a small club for the FIRST time when my dad brought me there as a 12 year-       old. All jammed up together on that deep but small stage. My favorite kind.
2. Finally packing the place with Wanderlust, after years of playing to an empty to half-filled room. 
    (We got signed via that show to RCA Records)
3. Seeing Velvet Crush blast 9 million watts of rock and roll there one night, shortly before Wanderlust was formed.
4. Partying and hangin' with my bro and sister-in-law, my constants at all my gigs, in the dressing room.
5. Dennis Rambo, Joey Jones, Mark Getten, Jim Cavanaugh and Rob Bonfiglio

Mime Kampf

I guess what I fear most is not so much death but having to pee right before. The thought of spending eternity not being able to get up and go to the bathroom is unthinkable.

Last week I met a mime who was who was really good with words.
Why don't you change careers? I asked him. He just made an overly sad, hopeless face back and shrugged.
I'd say I could read his mind but even in there, mime’s mime.
What made him so good with words was his use of them. Not using any makes him the best wordsmith I know. Plus, he's the only one I know that doesn't put his foot in his mouth. Unless of course that's what the gig calls for.

Like, do you pee as you die? Or just have to hold it in till you meet the God of your chosen faith and ask where the bathroom is?

I joined one of those ancestry sites last month and found out I have a great-great aunt that is holding a grudge with me. Turns out she told her cousin that if anyone on her side of the family marries into-well-I'm a little blurry on the rest but I seem to be the unborn child of her generation that she pre-resented.

Foodporn? Ok, let’s do this.

Start un-dressing and hopefully we’ll cumquat together.

I don't mind foodporn as long as it's two consenting adults doing the forking.

Some People Aren't Talking To Other People

You know it and I know it. You may be one of the people I'm not talking to. I may be one of the people someone isn't talking to that I don't know isn't talking to me. But for the most part all of us have someone we're not talking to.
That moment in time when we try and figure out if someone isn't talking to us is not an enjoyable one.

In some cases it is clear that not only is there a purposeful disconnect going on presently but for eternity as well. If the parties involved see no future cross-paths, by chance or by plan, they are saying in essence "I choose to never see you or speak to you forever and ever".
That is something that strikes me as about as intense as it gets. Maybe more.

And this is where the "box" comes into play. As in "thinking outside the box". But switching "thinking" with "living". To my eyes, some live in the box and some outside.
To "live in the box" is to live by methods and rules designed by people.
Note: we don't know these people.
To "live outside the box" is to break party lines and not abide by walls or guidelines at any given moment.

If you live outside the box you might say to yourself "I don't talk to that person but I think I'll call them". If you live inside the box it's "I don't talk to that person so i won't (or can't) call them".
There's certainly a lot more leg room living outside the box. Not a lot of wiggle room inside. But for some, the box provides lifelong sanity, even if it makes them miserable.

There are those people we don't talk to anymore that we simply realized it's for the better. Lives moved on, personalities changed, and there's just so much time in the day. That's neither in or outside the box. That's not a "I'm not talking to them" thing. Though sometimes we wonder.

If I was an insider of the box I'd end this with a clever summary like:
Inside or outside, we are all in this together.
But as an outsider I'll end with:
I'm hungry.