r.i.p., lux: when i die, don't you bury me at all, just nail my bones upon the wall, beneath these bones let these words be seen,

...here's the bloody gears of a boppin' machine (cramps' revision of ronnie dawson's rockin' bones).
this makes me so so so sad. is it true? he's "died" many times... i'm sad, tho i never met the cramps, only saw them perform (not sure how many times). but isn't that what used to make movie stars STARS??? they were not FRIENDS, they weren't like us, & i never deluded myself i'd get to know such stars. they were punk-rock royalty, beautiful monsters, vinyl fetishists, dadaists, preservers & purveyors of the best of american shlocky movie & musical midnight CULTure. historians. archivists! art used to manage them (they fired him; he can tell that story) but saw them at the movies a few yrs back & said, w/typical understatement, "lux & ivy still cut quite a figure." greg got snubbed, heck, screwed by them when he printed his interview w/them in the wrong mag. (he can tell that story.) but really, who expects nicety from such folks? they were above & below that. yrs ago, our old bassist robert ran a crazy mag out of vegas & he erased the tape he interviewed lux on, so he just made it up. it was one of the funniest things i ever read; wish i had a copy.
they were monstrous & magical & probably saved 1000s of outsider kids & people in general from committing suicide, just be BEING. (i know i felt less alien & horrible when i listened to the cramps & gazed at their alluring amazing mythical weird & wild visages & dreamed about being that cool & bad & knowing i never would & feeling transcended...) yet for their site, they picked this lovely pic, which is "tarzan & his mate"-old-hollywood glamorous. there was so much romance riding under the dark wild thrills of the cramps.
i guess i just wrote a lot. this whole thing ain't about me, but part of my youth just died, so that merits a bit of blabla, is what i think. :(
here's the report. be sure to watch the videos. my favorite interview's not yet on youtube: in it, lux, looking like boris karloff in drag, drops weird, gentle, spacy one-liners like jonathan winters. it made me wish i knew him. a real star has fallen.
http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/cramps-lux-interior-rip/

my friends the artists; on prodigies, perseverers, & poseurs; more blablabla

-> last night b & i went to a local coffee house to support friend david nigel lloyd as he performed, celebrating his new record "rivers, kings, & curses" being named in the top 15 celtic albums of '08. we walked in & there was his beautiful daughter ursula doing sound for her dad & his amazing wife gita sitting at one of the crowded tables, papermacheing this ENORMOUS HEAD for an upcoming festival!, & there was greg goodsell, slurping it all up like an enormous cat while he posted on his horror/sci-fi sites. we were yakking away, tho i tried to keep it down, watching david & thinking, in another duhhhh moment, sh*t, he is such a PICKER, & not a flashy, show-off one like some i've known, but a technical adept suffused w/heart.
-> i found myself continuously moved, so leaned over to lisa lobasso to state so, & she turned to me w/these tender tears in her big blues. my words would've been gratuitous at that pt; we already were too much like max cady, anyhow, me, b & greg, braying away while david played out his soul, so i shut up... looking at the lloyds in their various spots around the joint, i thought what a crappier place this bakersfield would be w/o them & people like them, & dang i wish there were more. i don't know jack about the role of the artist or really even what an artist IS (i mean, i have my opinions, but the heck do i KNOW??)... but i know it's them.
-> gita, the most remarkable painter/artist i've ever met, one time spooked me when i told her how talented she is. normally laid-back, she turned & looked at me very soberly: "it's NOT talent. it's yrs & yrs of hard work & study." and she went on to say how even offensive it is when people just presume she walked into this world w/the considerable ability that she now has: "oh, you're so LUCKY. i wish EYE could do that": - that kinda thing. in other words, talent is EFFORT, tenacity, altho, tho gita didn't say it, one must also have that flame, be it a smolder or inferno, that creativity & vision, that inspiration (as in "in the spirit"!) that makes the difference between a blake, a bukowski, a bizet & a... (no need to name names. every community has its poseurs).
-> there was a NYer article about types of genius, the born kind & the learned kind basically was what it boiled down to, so what gita was saying, i think, is the artist most often is that learning kind, the one who works, tries, perseveres, processes, sweats, bleeds, cries, realizes, adjusts & adapts, until the muses start to sing.
-> then david was calling me up to sing w/him on his "country" (yeah, what DOES that mean, anyhow??) tune "cúchulainn in bakersfield." it's been about 2 yrs since i'd last sung that w/him, when i did my tiny pt on his record, so ego said stay in your seat, but my gut said your friends the lloyds would like you to go do it, stupid, so go do it, so long story short, i did. david introduced me like i'm wanda jackson, which was very embarrassing, so i said, of COURSE i came up: you were stalling! or were you storytelling? "i was stallytelling," he quipped. we sang it & i don't know how well i did, that wasn't the important pt. the important pt was, i hope it made my friends & the audience happy. and now i need to go play the piano for a while.
www.davidnigellloyd.com and www.gitalloyd.com

forry lives

-> the legendary (yes, legendary!) creator of famous monsters of filmland passed away today. 92 yrs young! he'd been sick for quite a spell, but i thought of him akin to bradbury: a fellow old in yrs, but ever-young & amazing in imagination, therein somehow eternal... his mag changed so much about pop culture, proffering "the monster" as what we resemble & desire since we (well, me, for one) feel misfitted, misunderstood, monstrous a bit or a lot: it was a bible that way. an ex, the blazers bassist dude, had scores of FMOF up in his bedroom closet, plastiqued & coveted like i have my mad mag cache, & he'd only let me glance at them, never touch...
-> we (not blazers dude, but me & b, me & greg) went to forry's ackermansion near griffith park many times in the early 00s. the house alone was aged & fabulous, near (heck, maybe in; i dunno) the hollywood hills, where the streets are so steep, narrow, & windy, you're sure you'll crash back into yourself on ascent. i imagine the vintage near art fein's place, which is only a stone's throw away: exclusive silent era.
-> he had maria -- the REAL maria! golden, forbidding, beautiful, from metropolis, his favorite movie -- looming before the giant picture window in his sunken living rm, which overlooked hollywood. god, that alone was impressive!! he had face masks of ALL the horror greats -- karloff, lugosi, chaney jr & sr, everyone! (he knew them all, too) -- & the place, opened to the public saturdays, teemed, moaned, groaned, creaked basement to ceiling w/the most amazing collection of horror/scifi movie memorabilia & reading you could ever in your life've seen in one place. you'd wind thru that house, agape, pinching yourself at how every wondrous site from every horror/scifi film ever was there! how could it be???
-> each time we'd go, & all gathered at end of tour in the living rm for forry's fireside chat, he'd use me while telling a story of a famous actor on a drunk who chased a "pretty girl" & i'd be flattered as heck, tho know it was only convenience that let me be the model. (really wish all the pix weren't buried on a disc someplace in this old haunted house...)
-> my friends gary & darrell, who along w/but distinct from greg goodsell are bakersfield's forrest j. ackerman, 4-5 yrs ago put out a drive in-cold war-vibed horror flick, "the creep." forry introduced it! by the time of their 2nd film, "silver angel vs. the death zombie," forry was too ill to do the intro. so guess who did it??? yours truly!!! yes, a lovely costume lady altered an old halloween dress &, in that, aided by G&D's soft lighting, i looked like a million bucks!! i could scarcely believe what i saw, actually... heard was another story. i cannot act w/no piano in front of me, not even by a toenail... but back to forry: greg goodsell will write more & better about him. i say rest in peace to someone who helped us all recognize & grow to love the monster w/in. "fangs for the memories," dr. acula.

pix from scott's tribute show

all photos from writer & local gadabout greg goodsell :)