calling cllct

Why. Those unholy Oreaganomics get better and unrulier by the minute.

Straight from the lips of lapsed ordainment:

"We had to mortgage our soul to Satan to get it done & I know you'll like it  
(That's a promise right from the "source")."

What's not to like ? 

Late last week with the rain coming down heavy - the pavements along the Crow Road laced with black puddles - I hunched out through the spray of taxi cabs for rent in search of Jim Beam or an iced Jack watered down with Pepsi. My head was pounding.

Our house felt small. In need of a lick of paint. And the varnish was burning in my nostrils.

I fell through the saloon doors and bruised the rail along the bar. The ceiling was high. Pocked with little glass lanterns glowing like whiteheads on the brow of a passed out whore (Hubert might have observed). A trio of jazzmen were two fingers in to the last number of their set. The vocalist sat it out. A glass of stout on the table in front of her and her knees together, tidily.

An empty house. And the keyboard player refusing to let it needle him too much. The drummer laying on some syncopated flourishes with delicious irony.

I finished my first just as they wound it down for the eight o' clock wave of serious spenders. The lights did not go up or down any. A smattering of dry applause. Drowned by the splash of mixer straight into a tumbler two dripping raincoats along.

And that was their cue.

Milton Ager and Jack Yellen. Chasing rainbows. "Happy Days are Here Again".

It was a sterling snook of tumultous wonder, let me tell you. All that was missing was a pint size plastic uke.

If I had a kazoo I'd have whipped it out my pocket. As it was, I turned and clapped my hands together and caught the heel of one shoe on the trailing hem of my pants.

I would like to believe Oreaganomics might have enjoyed a warmer reception. An Acapulco ovation in the last resort. They are deserving of such. "Hand Turkey", as they promise, is the unreconstituted stuff of leg-end. A refusal to be stymied; blindsided; bluffed.

God bless them.


▼ OREAGANOMICS: GHOST TOWN GENERATION from the forthcoming "Hand Turkey" LP / CD (CLLCT) 2010 (US)

FOLLOW THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD ON AN EMPTY HOUSE RUSE