Bobby Jameson

Come Sit With Me

2012-02-14T15:52:00.000-08:00

Come sit with me...Tell me which of your parents committed suicide...
Which brother, sister, or other, killed themselves
out of sadness, disappointment, or rage...

Show me your scars and I will show you mine...
Tell me your dream and I will tell you mine.....

Which of your family went insane...
lived in that dark place where there are no doors unlocked,
no windows without wire grates.....

Come sit with me...and we will bleed together, cry together, laugh together...
The two us, shedding blood in the moonlight, kissing each other's tears...
wiping away the stain of life...so ruthless, so cunning, so sour...

Let us greet a new day, and stand together against the scoffers...
Those who would love us today, but will betray us tomorrow...

Come sit with me...show me your wounds suffered along the way...
Show me the graves of your dead lovers and broken promises...
Walk with me in the moonlight.....

I come to you not as King, but as a leper...
not as a prophet, but a liar...
I have triumphed over peace through chaos...
and bludgeoned my way here...

Come sit with me...let us talk honestly and openly to one another...

Bobby Jameson Feb 14, 2012

(part 270) THE GUITAR...

2012-02-09T17:24:00.000-08:00

Trying to explain, for the purpose of clearly conveying an accurate picture, is tedious, but at the same time important. The psychology of it has never been understood, possibly because I have not made it understandable. I spent twenty-two years actively pursuing music from the standpoint of becoming successful in the music industry as a writer/performer. I then spent twenty-two years actively trying not to do that.

This is important in regard to what my life had been, and what it became. I am aware that some people have the capacity to keep active musically while they pursue other things, I am not one of them. I had invested my entire self in music, and the pursuit of becoming a successful artist, writer, and recording artist within the context of doing it for a living.

When I finally called it quits in 1985, I did not simply move on and continue doing music as a hobby. For me, it was impossible to do that. Playing and writing was not a hobby. It was an all out pursuit of something far more specific, which was becoming a success. When I concluded in 1985 that it was over, I meant it, in the deepest sense of the true meaning of those words. I had faced the fact that I had failed, and that I'd given it all I had to offer. So when I left L.A. I left with that mindset.

I eventually sold the guitar, pictured above, to a local music store. It was one of the last remnants of my previous life, other than a few tapes I'd managed to carry with me when I left L.A. I sold it in 1992, I believe, as a final gesture of my complete withdrawal from my previously chosen endeavor. Right or wrong it was what happened. It was in some ways similar to a carpenter selling his tools after deciding to retire. Some would retire and keep their tools, some would not. I fell into the latter group. I did not want to have them there to remind me of the past.

As I have been writing here of late, sometimes with redundancy, and purposeful repetitiveness, I am attempting to draw a clear distinction between the two very different life styles I lived over a forty-four year span of time. It is easy for some to say, or think about, what they would have done in my position, but it is irrelevant to the facts of what my own experience was and is.

I set about to unwind myself from my own self-ordained goal in life, because I had failed at it. Whether you agree, or disagree with my conclusion, is again irrelevant to the facts of history. It is of more importance, in my opinion, to understand what and why I did what I did, rather than to debate whether my doing it was the correct thing to do or not. It may well have not been the right thing, but nonetheless it is what I did.

The store happened by chance, because my mother was getting rid of it, so I stepped in. The gun business, again, was by chance. A momentary decision that turned into a business that ended in disaster. My study of the law was a desperation move that was induced by the disaster of the gun business. All of these things just happened because I was there and I needed to do something, and these are the things I did.

When I started doing yard work in the mobile-home park in San Luis, it was again done out of desperation, and not from a quest to do physical labor because it was good for my health. Only occasionally did I think about music and the music business. But my experience in the past made me wary of even picking up an instrument, for fear I would end up pursuing my old dream, and be once again immersed in the mind altering obsession of chasing success at all costs.

For some it will be impossible to get this fact straight. They will say what normal drinkers say to alcoholics, "Well don't drink so much, take it easy and just have a few drinks!" The trouble with this is obvious, because an alcoholic cannot stop with a few drinks, they have to keep going, even though it is obviously destructive for them. My obsession with music, and the business of music, was like that and I knew it. I knew that if I screwed with it, I would eventually create something that would lead me back to my old obsession, which had nearly killed me, and had certainly disrupted my life in general, if not altogether destroying it.

(part 269) I JUST DID WHAT I HAD TO DO

2012-02-07T16:56:00.000-08:00

From 1985 until 2007 I tried to find a new direction for my life. I forced myself away from the driving mechanism of the dream machine of music, because it had been the catalyst for so much of my misery and disappointment. I could not play music and simultaneously do something else, I didn't know how. For me it had always been the music that had been my engine. Writing it, recording it, and presenting it so people could hear it was intricately and deeply wound into the entire process for me. I was either all in or all out, and there was no middle ground. Whether or not this was a failure on my part is a good question, but none the less it was a fact in my reality.

I did find something else to put my mind to work on, but regrettably, I also encountered the systematic demise and destruction of that which I was doing. I found it mattered not what I was doing, but that it was me doing it that seemed to be the problem. I now know that some of my choices back then as to what I devoted my time to, were questionable, such as the gun business. The fact that it led to trouble is not much of a mystery, but the fact that I could not, did not, or would not perceive this back then is, or maybe not.

Probably I just didn't care, because at the time I actually felt, if not completely believed, that my life was basically over, and had been since the day I left L.A. in 1985. Somewhere, deep down inside, I had given up my dream and knew it. So the reality then, for me, crazy or not, was basically "fuck it!" And that view rings more than just true, looking back at it now. It was a wholesale attitude of, "I don't really give a shit about anything anymore."

The fact that I got into the gun business was on a whim in the beginning, and never something I thought about succeeding at. It developed on its own and drove itself on the simple fact of supply and demand. I had found, by chance, stupidity, or bad luck, something people wanted, and I became a supplier. But it was a business scrutinized by numerous entities, something I had never understood until I found myself knee deep in shit. By the time I understood it clearly, I was already in hot water and was being pushed into a corner by forces I was unqualified to thwart.

Out of desperation I turned to studying the law simply because I didn't have the money to pay for a lawyer. I chose the law-library as a last ditch effort to rectify my own self-made dilemma. In the beginning, my mind rejected the difficulty of the law-books with a resounding, "You gotta be kidding!" But on the day I nearly gave up in frustration, one simple thought persuaded me to keep going, and that was, "If it's hard for you to understand Bob, it's probably hard for them to understand as well."

I remember this thought quite clearly, and it became the basis on which I strove to master the drab and mundane collection of words and meanings called the law. I learned to read foot-notes, the most tedious of all that is written on those endless pages of muck. Those little, ill-defined notes led me to a wealth of understanding that served as the bedrock for my self-education on the subject. I learned how to find things in the law that are so hidden that any reasonable person would simply shun them to preserve their own sanity.

I dedicated myself with a vengeance to reading, remembering, and understanding what was written in those books. I spent more time than any of my foes defining the laws and regulations used by them, in an attempt to entrap me, and or imprison me. In the long run I succeeded, because their use, or misuse, of the law, failed. It was a lesson and a new dimension of thinking for me. A lesson in hard work, dedication, and discipline, something I'd rejected as a child, long ago, in school.

But even though I was successful on the one hand, I was wiped out on the other by the circumstances and losses that came about from being run out of business. All that I had built was destroyed in the defense of the builder. Each and every plus had deteriorated into a heap of minuses, piled on the endless rock-pile of my life, and it is with this in mind that I remind the reader, that what I did then in San Luis Obispo to restart my life was less by choice than by an instinct for survival.

Keep in mind that there was no way in hell I wanted to become a handy-man in a mobile home park on the Central Coast of CA., or that I wanted to subject myself to working so hard that it made me ill. But back then these choices did not exist for me at all. I just did what I had to do, because there wasn't anything else to do...

(part 268) ANOTHER LIFE FROM ANOTHER TIME

2012-02-06T17:15:00.000-08:00

I had become a complete loner, staying to myself as much as possible. I knew that making myself useful, by working, had secured for me, to some extent, a place amongst people who otherwise didn't want me around. They disapproved of my looks, the long hair, and thought of me as an outsider in their midst. So it was the work I did for them that made it somewhat easier for me to co-exist in this environment.

For the most part I did not see myself as an artist anymore, although I would still write an occasional song or poem. But somewhere down deep inside me the real desire of creativity continued to pump away as usual. At times, I would allow myself to think that someday I would wake from this bad dream, and by some unforeseen miracle, rise again out of the ashes of my life.

I always dismissed this notion though, fearing it would cause me to reject even further, the reality of the life I was living, and make it harder to cope with than it already was. I had learned, by sheer force of will, to accept my lot, for the most part, and just do what was in front of me, no matter how objectionable it was.

Working in a mobile home park, amongst mostly older homes, was a learning process that taught me much about how to deal with things I would otherwise have no interest in. Solving problems and keeping the cost down, became a talent I honed for years. Where otherwise people would have to lay out a lot of money, I was able, in many cases, to do it for far less, by learning to understand how old mobile homes deteriorated over time, and how to deal with them. It was this, more than anything, that kept me working year after year.

With the same mind that had once learned to write, perform, record and engineer a session by myself in a bedroom on micky mouse equipment, I now figured out how to repair old dilapidated mobile homes for nickels and dimes. With the same intensity as before, I crashed head long into each new endeavor I encountered, no matter how mundane it was. I took pride in what I did and would always explain the problem, and its solution, to everyone I worked for. If it was something I couldn't do, I told them they had better get it done by someone, or the problem would get worse and cost more later.

As long as I kept busy, I had little time to spend on the past. I would turn away from it over and over again, avoiding it like a pit of quick-sand. I could not afford the luxury of thinking about Bobby Jameson the singer/songwriter anymore. I trained myself to see me as a guy who worked hard for a living, doing jobs of all kinds for people. I had become a regular person for the most part.

The years kept stacking up, one on top of the other. They turned into a decade, and then nearly another. It was a long way and a long time since I'd left Los Angeles in 1985, and the past had been pushed into the background. It sat there, like an old trunk, locked away in the attic of my mind. In a way I was grateful that I had learned to leave it alone, because it was full of too many bad memories and disappointments. I always knew it was there, but I let it be for the most part, regarding it as another life from another time.

From 1997 until 2002, I pushed on and on in a pointless line to nowhere. There was nothing new, other than some problem with work, and nothing exciting about my life whatsoever. I didn't go anywhere or meet people. I had no girlfriend or hobbies, I just worked, ate, and slept. I bought a small keyboard that I played, but other than that I just existed from day to day in some sort of hardcore exercise in futility.

I stayed clean and sober, and I fought through the headaches which plagued me day and night. My sleep patterns were erratic, because of the pain, and my disposition would always be subject to the effects of that reality. At times I'd lose hope altogether, but would ultimately force myself to go on, in hopes that I would someday get better.

It was a dismal reality, and felt more like a punishment than a life. It seemed to become a contest to see how much I could endure. I'd question deeply whether there really was a god, and say to myself, "If there is, he must hate my guts!" Day after day I would look for something to keep me going, and year after year I would say, "What's the point?"

(part 267) FROM GUNS TO WEED WHACKERS

2012-02-03T17:54:00.000-08:00

From 1987 to 1991 I devoted my attention to the store and the firearms business. I did well at it, and thought my life had finally begun to make some sense. I worked and I made headway. I could pay my bills and look ahead with some conviction that I would prosper. I had all but forgotten about music and the music business as I pushed ever deeper into the realm of buy and sell living.

I became well known at gun shows in multiple states, and traveled by motor home throughout the west. I pulled a trailer with a Harley Davidson on it. I had a pocket full of credit cards and cash, and felt free to pick up and go anywhere at anytime, day or night. This period ended abruptly in Reno, Nevada, where I was surrounded at gun point by numerous Federal agents from the ATF and Marshall's Service in a sting operation alleging illegal firearms sales.

For the next few years I studied Federal Criminal Law and Constitutional Law at the courthouse law-library in San Luis Obispo. Day and night, for a few years, I read law books to aid in my quest to be done with the entire mess, which I ultimately succeeded in doing.

Once again I was broke, and without any irons in the fire. I had lost everything and possessed nothing but a used car. I moved into a mobile home park in San Luis Obispo where my mother had purchased an old home that needed a lot of attention. It was depressing as hell, but was at least a roof over my head.

Without a job, or any other prospects, I had to come to grips with the situation as it existed, as opposed to what I thought should exist. I had to make some money to live, but no one was offering the likes of me a single thing. I began doing yard work at my mother's place, and a neighbor asked if I'd do some for her. I agreed, and for $6 an hour I began to do chores for people in the park. This was to become my job for the next twelve years of my life.

In 1997, while digging up a neighbor's old bermuda lawn, I noticed something happening to my body. At first I believed it was nothing more than a reaction to hard work in a 100 degree heat wave, but later found it to be something far more debilitating.

After a year of repeated visits to doctors and emergency rooms, I began to get daily headaches that literally progressed to the point of complete despair. Finding no help, and faced with the prospect of becoming a total invalid, I regrouped internally, and made up my mind that dying while working was better than a slow helpless decay into darkness. With that as a premise, I went back to work and fought my way forward for the next ten years.

I worked, and worked hard, as if to say, "This may kill me, but at least I will die standing up!" As a side issue to this activity, the headaches got worse and worse, and at times caused me to become highly volatile and aggressive in my responses to those around me. There was no way to gauge how the work would effect me on any given day, or how much the effect would alter my coping skills.

Part of the problem was who I had to deal with, or whom I worked for. Many of the people were rude and cheap, always wanting more, and to pay as little as possible for it. I did a good job, and wanted fair pay for it, so at times this became a source of complete frustration. To be talked down to, while working hard, was off limits, a point I made vividly clear to anyone and everyone.

I saw myself differently than the way I was perceived by those I worked for. I knew who I was, but they didn't. To them I was no more than a nobody doing odd jobs for them, and they treated me as no more than that. It was hard to take, at times, to say the least, and I lost more than one job as a result of trying to defend my integrity, which many thought I did not possess.

As the years tumbled by, I only occasionally thought about who I had once been, and what I had spent much of my life doing. I had no instruments to play, or equipment of any kind. I possessed only an old cassette tape of some of my songs and recordings. I only told a couple of people what I used to do, but other than that it was an unknown fact by most who knew me.

As I worked, I would sometimes break into song as a way to entertain myself and pass the time. People would react oddly to my doing this, because it would come out of nowhere, and it struck them as strange. Undaunted, if I just felt like singing, I would carry on as if it were no big deal, and enjoy the confused look on their faces.

HE'S THE CLOWN

2012-01-24T08:14:00.000-08:00

WHO'S THAT MAN
BEHIND THE FACE
OUTTA TIME
OUTTA PLACE
HE'S THE CLOWN
THAT NO ONE KNOWS
WATCH HIM AS HE
COMES AND GOES

IS THAT LAUGHING
CATCH HIM CRYING
AIN'T NO LIFE
JUST SOMEONE DYING
HE'S THE CLOWN
THAT NO ONE KNOWS
WATCH HIM AS HE
COMES AND GOES

STARS AND KISSES
IN HIS HAND
WRAPPED IN PAPER
RUBBER BAND
OLD AND TATTERED
BROWNED BY SUN
JUST A CLOWN
HE AIN'T NO ONE

WHO'S THAT SHUFFLING
DOWN THE STREET
WITH BROKEN DREAMS
AND BROKEN FEET
HE'S THE CLOWN
THAT NO ONE KNOWS
WATCH HIM AS HE
COMES AND GOES

Bobby Jameson Jan 24, 2012
8:07 am

(part 266) YAY, NAY, AND THE UNDECIDED...

2011-12-19T18:52:00.000-08:00

As I try to continue writing this blog, I find myself coming face to face with my own reluctance. Not because there isn't more to the story, there is, but because my experience with writing here has become jaded. Over the years, since I first started in November of 2007, I have lost faith that anything I write here makes a difference. It certainly has made little difference in my life.

Nothing has changed or improved whatsoever. I still live the same way I did before writing a single word. I would imagine that if there are any differences I have derived from this experience it would have to be that I have placed myself squarely in the middle of a target for little or no benefit.

I know there are a few people who are glad I have written this, but that does not get to the heart of my own discomfort in having done so. I am struck by the fact that in telling my own story there is not much to be gained from the doing of it, other than to say, "Well there it is!" The truth is, that it is different when thought about than it is when actually undertaking it as an action over time.

When I first had the story in front of me, as a thing not yet done, there was a motivation that occurred in the doing of it, which replenished itself, simply by knowing there was more to say about it. Now that I have said most of it, and experienced the response to it, that motivation has collapsed into a feeling of, "Who cares?" That feeling or thought is admittedly my own, but is real for me as a question.

Rather, in some cases, too many perhaps, than look at the story of Bobby Jameson as a real person discussing real events, this has degenerated, to some degree, into a comic book character who does nothing but complain, encounters negative circumstance after negative circumstance, and always seems to make stupid choices in the face of wonderful opportunities. If you think I am wrong I would suggest you pay closer attention to many of the comments posted here in the last few years.

Interest is one thing, but interest in a subject purely for the sake of disagreeing, and/or belittling it, because your mind is already made up, is as useless a proposition as I can possibly imagine. It starts to feel like 24-hr cable news, where the yays and nays exist as sides, predetermined to agree and disagree on cue, with nothing ever changing as a result. We have the "we like Bobby," the, "we don't like Bobby," and the undecided. A clown show judged prematurely by prerequisite beliefs and supposed moral standards, which supersede the facts by default.

TO THIS VERY DAY

2011-12-13T19:01:00.000-08:00

TURPENTINE MEADOWS
SALISBURY DAY
LEFT AT THE CROSSROADS
WITH NOTHING TO SAY
WHO CAN I TURN TO
WHAT CAN I DO
ALL I REMEMBER
ARE MOMENTS WITH YOU

COBBLESTONE DREAMS
OF YESTERDAY'S HEART
LIKE VINCENT ALONE
IN A ROOM FULL OF ART
BRUSH STROKES OF FEELINGS
COLOR THE PAST
THE FIRST TIME I SAW YOU
WOULD BE THE LAST

IF I'D EVER KNOWN
ON THE DAY THAT WE MET
THAT I WOULD NOT SEE YOU
AGAIN BUT REGRET
EACH MOMENT WITHOUT YOU
TO THIS VERY DAY
I HAVE LOVED YOU MORE DEEPLY
THAN MY WORDS CAN SAY

Bobby Jameson Dec, 2011

(part 265) THE STORE...1987 AND BEYOND

2011-12-01T16:35:00.000-08:00

Me in the store

By 1987 I had saved about $5,000 to go back to L.A. This was accomplished by filing for unemployment, as a result of having worked for Pacific Freight in Southern CA. a couple of years earlier, selling tools on the telephone. I filed for it in 85 and saved most of it. I then had a decision to make that would alter the direction of my life again.

I recall being in Santa Maria with my brother Bill, another small town about forty miles south of where we lived. I had taken him with me to the Harley Davidson dealership to look at a Sportster. I told Bill that I had enough money to buy the bike or go back to L.A. for another shot at the music business.

"Whatta ya think?" I asked.

He said, "If I were you I'd buy the bike Bob, because if you go back to L.A. it might kill you!"

I stared at him and then laughed. "Yeah, I know what you mean," I replied, "I think you're right!"

The outcome was that I bought the bike and stayed in the Five Cities area of Central CA. It was a decision that once again changed things. I was clean and sober, and though I had encountered many obstacles and difficulties in Grover City, CA., I had been free from the meat-grinder of the music business. I knew that if I went back to L.A. it was going to be more of the same, or at least that is what I believed, so I opted to pass on it.

In 1987 my mother owned and ran an antique store, something she'd done a lot of in her life. It was called "The Browse Around," and was located in Grover City on the main drag. It sold a lot of different kinds of things, such as jewelry, art, knick-knacks and collectibles of various kinds, and antiques. I started finding things to put into the store to sell and worked there as a salesman.

Eventually I took over the entire business when my mother decided to take a break from it. Rather than just closing it down altogether I told her I'd run it and pay her for things she left in it when they sold. She was happy to do it, because it meant she didn't have to pack it all up and put it in storage. The store quickly took on a new personality, and was frowned on by local law enforcement, but in reality The Browse Around became an immediate hit in the area because a lot of the locals liked the way I ran the place.

My brother Bill, me in the back, and my mother in the store

I began selling things like electronics, tools, motorcycle leathers, knives, and continued with the jewelry, antiques, collectibles, and art. Eventually I started selling firearms, and became a Federally licensed gun dealer, much to the dismay of the various police departments in the area. To some extent it was me pushing back against a community that had gone out of its way to rid itself of my presence, but at the same time it was me searching for a new identity.

I had always known, at least in my own mind, who I was, or who I thought I was, but my move to the Central Coast of California had left me in a quandary about that subject, so I kept trying to re-identify myself in some new capacity. Harley Davidson motorcycles, guns, and knives were part of that search to find a new version of myself, one that I could commit to. The Browse Around, and it's distinctive personality and merchandise became, for me, the way I chose to interpret myself at the time.

In part, it was that I'd been condemned as an outlaw before I really was one, so my response was to become the outlaw I'd been portrayed as, with an in-your-face decision to accept the judgement and wear it with pride. Not only did I consciously choose this route, I made the decision to shove it down the throat of any and all who objected to it, which initially was the city council, the police, and various citizens.

I am not trying to convince you that what I did was a good thing or a bad thing. It is just what I did with my life at the time. I can always look back at my decisions and question them, and I do, but I cannot change them. The best I can hope for is to attempt to explain them and report what happened in the past.

SPECIAL INSERT POST..from Oct 27, 2011 by McClaughry's Blog

2011-10-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

This is a post which relates directly to things I've written on my blog about Camarillo State Hospital and my experience there in the 70's...click on Camarillo State Hospital in red.

(part 264) MODERATORS OF DECENCY AND PROGRESS

2011-10-20T17:25:00.000-07:00

In 1987 I was no longer The person I had been in L.A., London, New York City, or even Nashville. Almost no one on the central coast knew anything about my past in the music business. That shield was gone, and I was, for the first time since 1963, just another person in a town of run of the mill persons. I became acutely aware of what it is like to be average. Whereas once I had been a somebody of sorts I was now just a full-fledged nobody, and if you think I'm overstating it, you ought to try it sometime.

The average-joe syndrome is a mighty leveler in small-town USA. My past had been riddled with small-town thinking from back in my Arizona days, when I was scoffed at by friends for believing I had something to give to the world of music. In Grover City, CA., I was reunited, in spades, with the any-town USA sledge hammer of nationalistic yahooism and religious zealotry as it was spoon fed to me with a shovel.

It would be difficult at best for some to understand the absolute shock to the system that this was, unless they were clear on where my past had actually taken me. But for those who insist that I was always a nobody, they, I'm sure, will frame what I am talking about here as no more than me being forced to grow up and admit the truth to myself.

The history of a person, any person, is their history. It cannot be altered simply because others don't want to believe it. Collectively, people can rob a person of that history publicly to some degree, but the reality is, a person's history will always belong to them. The altering, and/or rewriting of an individual's experiences, is a technique devised and used by some to steal a person's identity and recreate that person in an image preferable to the thieves.

Threats of physical violence and incarceration, along with collective community shunning of a group or individual, are techniques designed for the purpose of ridding and/or controlling a different group or individual by those who fancy themselves in authority over others. This is what I encountered, and still do, on the central coast of California. It is a tactic of dismissing and rebuking those looked down on, or disagreed with, and a practice as old as the country itself. It has been used repeatedly, since our inception, to relegate some into obscurity, for the benefit of others. It is our history as a nation, and cannot be altered as our history, by simply sugar coating it, lying about it, dismissing it, or rewriting it.

I am who I am, not because I say so, but because of what my life experiences have been in reality. I endeavor to put forth the facts as they actually exist, irrespective of what they paint, good or bad, as a portrait of the human person known as Bobby Jameson. It matters not a whit to me, whether some are bothered by what I say here, because what I say here is my attempt to be as forthcoming as I possibly can. No one is completely clean or completely unclean. No one escapes the truth, whatever it is, in the long run. We are all subject to failures and successes in our lifetimes.

My encounters with human beings are my encounters, not yours. My decisions and consequences are mine whether you like them, believe them, or agree with them. What I did, and do, has nothing to do with you, other than I am here sharing it with you. For individuals to become so involved with my work here that it causes them to make contact with me and demean or threaten me is exemplary as a model of what I'm talking about.

In short, I am saying that there are people in this country who will use any and all means to make their little communities splendid, but only splendid for the chosen ones, and it is the chosen ones who decide that they are chosen. They proclaim their own righteousness, while having little, and abuse the system to their own benefit. What I say here is going on all over the country, as well as the rest of the world. People, fed up with the authoritarian ass-whipping handed out by the so-called moderators of decency and progress. There is nothing decent or progressive about it, and the tide is shifting...

(part 263) WITH PREJUDICE

2011-10-17T18:35:00.000-07:00

Writing about myself and the things that I did and the reactions to them by others, are at times painful to expose in public. But having embarked on this part of my story, after much reluctance, I find myself having to provide details that I would just as soon not give you, but for the fact that they are specific to the choices I made because of them.

Much of what happened to me was brought on by what I myself did or didn't do at any given time. It is obvious that many of my choices and actions caused me difficulty, that goes without saying, but on the other hand I was confronted by the reactions of many around me, which at times bordered on overt harassment.

As I tried to portray in the previous post, the overkill was palpable, and placed me in a flee or fight dilemma that had to be reconciled one way or another. Strangely, my decision was to stay and fight back as hard as I could, I assume because I was tired of leaving places when things got truly difficult. I became, for lack of a better description, a Jessie James/Billy The Kid like character who knew I was guilty of some things, but never as guilty as those around me tried to make out.

I was represented by a public defender, Kevin McReynolds, at trial, and convicted of a misdemeanor. Following that, I borrowed money to mount an appeal to overturn the conviction. During that process, I became aware that my attorney, James Murphy, was involved in a back room decision with the prosecutor, David Pomeroy, to shut out the possibility of an appeal with prejudice. That simply means he made a deal with the prosecutor, without my knowledge or permission, to kill my right to appeal forever. Upon learning of this, I stormed into my attorney's office and confronted him on the issue, which he sheepishly admitted he had no right to do.

So this was the atmosphere I was faced with. An outsider trying to deal with insiders who all knew each other. I was the odd man out and expendable from every angle by all concerned. The fly in the ointment became the fact that I was not only aware of what was going on, but told each of them to their face that I knew, while continuing to stand my ground. Later, I made friends with the primary police officer involved. He apologized to me in a Circle-K parking-lot, from his squad car window, saying he regretted being part of it.

I fulfilled each obligation placed on me as a result of this episode, until completed. At that point, I both publicly and frequently voiced my opinion about what I thought of each of the parties involved: the Grover City Court, the attorneys, the jury, and the judge. I knew that I'd lost in part, but in the long run had won over some of my harshest adversaries.

(part 262) HOW FAR WERE THEY WILLING TO GO

2011-10-12T21:15:00.000-07:00

In posting the mercy church section 261, I thought it a good example of an attitude exhibited by some in this community. For me, it is a stark reminder of the ever-growing and cumulative effect of evangelical christianity being woven into the fabric of the social, business, and governmental environment of San Luis Obispo County.

Almost immediately after posting this, I was besieged by members of other local christian churches saying that mercy church is a cult, to which I responded, "No shit!" But to me it is like the pot calling the kettle a cult, much like the Baptist pastor saying that Mormonism is a cult.

This is about people who have chosen a belief system that in their mind allows, if not demands, that they judge anything and everything by their own personal take on acceptability and unacceptability according to their church and its doctrine. It is this kind of logic, or lack thereof, that creates a hostile atmosphere for those whose names are not present on the evangelical rosters of local officialdom.

For all of the time I have lived on the central coast, from 1985 until now, I have rarely felt like I belonged here or was welcome here. It has been more like standing firm against the enemy than enjoying my life in paradise. In 1987, I was surrounded at gunpoint in the middle of Grand Ave. in Grover City by six police cars. To the onlooker it appeared that the local cops had snagged a major criminal in broad daylight on the streets of their fair city. In truth I was stopped and jailed for the misdemeanor crime of indecent exposure within the confines of my own house, which I was later convicted of by a jury of my so-called peers, and where my mother, who was a key witness, was not allowed to testify in my behalf.

The line drawn in the sand by this event is more than an indication of the "in your face" willingness by the locals to make use of all that they had at their disposal, to clarify their will in the minds of undesirables such as myself. Rather than "put me in my place," this event signaled to me the necessity for careful calculation in appraising exactly what I was up against.

I was warned repeatedly, at my home, by uniformed officers, that their desire was to see me put in CMC, a major California prison located in San Luis Obispo. This was not a vague threat, it was said to me directly in the driveway of my home after I refused to move out of my house at their request. In furtherance of their overt harassment, they took to parking a police car out in front of my house on multiple occasions. When I finally had had it with their blatant attempts to intimidate me, I called the police station and angrily demanded that they come over and arrest me, or "move that fucking police car away from my house!" It was a game of who's gonna blink first.

CMC The California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo, CA.

I knew I was in a war of wills, but I also knew they had nothing they could charge me with. If they wanted to arrest me for yelling at them on the phone, so be it. If they wanted to make something up, go ahead. It was a standoff of sorts, and they knew it. They learned that I was not going to buckle, no matter what they did. To get rid of me was going to take an invention of a crime, and the question became, "Just how far were they willing to go?"

CANVAS OF OUR DREAMS

2011-10-11T15:52:00.000-07:00

I painted with Vincent beneath the moaning
windmill on the Dutch plain...

We drank wine and feasted on fresh bread
and sweet cheese...

We colored the sky in brilliant blue and
scrolled white clouds across the canvas
of our dreams...

We laughed and spoke of
nights in Paris...

Bobby Jameson Oct 11, 2011

(part 261 ) MERCY CHURCH SAN LUIS OBISPO

2011-10-03T15:34:00.000-07:00

click to enlarge

This is some local christian zealotry from San Luis Obispo, which pervades this entire area. It has become normalized in a way that I find particularly worrisome. Below is one author's take on this church in SLO where I live.

It is his discussion of what had been said about the G12 model, and the possible cult-like abuses that may or may not be occurring in G12 churches.

It is the author's outline of what he called a positive experience visiting Mercy Church , a G12 church in San Luis Obispo. http://www.wholereason.com/2009/07/g12-churches-cults-or-discipleship-with-a-plan-part-iii.html

In this part, He, the author, discusses the G12 model in detail, as to the various roles and stages that a person can progress through in the G12 system.

Most of what he has documented below is from The Ladder of Success, written by G12 founder Cesar Castellanos.

As you will see, the G12 model is a complex, well-developed and thoughtful model on how to create and reproduce mature believers.

At the highest level, there are four main progressive phases:

Win - win someone to Christ
Consolidate - help the new convert solidify their decision and join a cell group
Disciple - help an attendee develop into a mature follower of Christ
Send - help the Disciple become a Leader and Discipler of others

A. The progress and stages of the person across the G12 process

Newborn - a person who attends the Sunday meeting, an event, or a cell group, and asks Christ into their life (that is, they have completed Phase 1: Win)
Cell Member - as the first part of the Consolidation phase (Phase 2),a Consolidator follows up with new converts, and supports them in starting their new life, which includes getting them into the fellowship of a cell group.
Cell Leader - during a member’s first year, they are encouraged to take the next step in Consolidation, which includes attending a weekend retreat, and following that, participating in the School of Leaders, which prepares them to be spiritual mentors and cell group facilitators. Half way through the School, they can facilitate a cell group.
Consolidator - once you are a cell leader, you have the opportunity to get trained as a Consolidator, who follows up with new converts, helping them, befriending them, and getting them to join a cell group on a regular basis. This requires some low-level pastoral skills, including kindness, patience, and persistence, as well as the ability to answer basic doctrinal questions. This step is not required as part of the progression, and can be done any time between becoming a Cell Leader and becoming a G12 Leader.
Disciple - when a person is ready to move from being a Cell Leader to a part of the G12 Vision (reaching the lost through the ‘Government of 12′), they become someone’s Disciple. This entails completing the School of Leaders and committing to be one of a G12 Leader’s “12″. I have a feeling that, once you start the SOL and become a Cell Leader, the pressure or influence to continue on to being a G12 Disciple (“finishing what you started”) may be present, and perhaps formidable.

G12 Leader - Being a G12 Disciple means that you have bought into the G12 Vision, and so, having so committed, you are probably irreversibly on the path to not only being discipled, but beginning the process of gathering your own 12 Disciples. Once you are 2/3 through the School of Ministry (the next phase of schooling), you are prepared to start selecting your 12. This may take time, and is not a ‘choose all at once’ process. You start with a couple and take your time learning to love, serve, and care for your 12.

144 Teacher - Once your 12 Disciples have 12 of their own Disciples, you have 144 people under you following Jesus with all of their hearts – or that’s the idea. NOW, you can attend the School of Teachers, and learn to do things like Visioneering, Pastoring, and leading many of the program’s retreats like the Encounter weekends.
Before I move on to the G12 Process and Training, some observations about the above roles.

Cell Member - I, the author, suspect that many people could just stay at this level, attending cell group and Sunday church, and never enter into the ‘Vision.’ My, the author, understanding is that the content for the Cell Group Bible studies is NOT indoctrination into the G12 system, but plain old bible studies, and there may be plenty of freedom in what these groups study. The Ladder of Success suggests one of Castellano’s books, but also mentions that you could use the week’s Sunday sermon (also not G12 oriented, but just plain bible teaching), or any other thing that interests your ‘homogenous’ group. More on that later. A synonym to help us understand ‘homogenous’ might be ‘affinity’ group. Members with similar interests or demographics.

Disciple - at this point, you are still part of a small group, and perhaps leading one. And you are attending the School. And perhaps meeting with your G12 Leader’s Leader. And attending Sunday church. And maybe even volunteering in one of the Church’s “Departments” (child care, worship, etc.). That could be VERY time consuming. As one critic wrote (letusreason.org)The G12 system has numerous strict standards. In order to be part of the vision, you are expected to be dedicated, attend your cell group once a week, go to retreats, go out to evangelize, go the Sunday morning service and also attend special meetings with your leader’s leader. Each week is surrounded by these church things to do, as your social activities are contained within your cell group. Your week is taken up with these meetings to attend as they make you a more serious disciple.

G12 Leader - As I, the author, mentioned above if you become a Disciple, you have bought into the vision, and are pretty much committing to becoming at least a G12 Disciple. You don’t have to go on to become a 144 Teacher, even if your 12 Disciples all get their own 12 (thereby getting you the 144 ‘downlines’ required as part of the 144 Teacher requirement). However, if one of your 12 goes on to become a G12, and then a 144, I suspect that they might no longer be one of your 12, but a Pastor in their own right, and so you would have to find a new Disciple. That’s my, the author, guess, anyway.

144 Teacher – the main advantage here is that you are now equipped to teach the critical events that move people along the pathway that you have trod – Encounters, Post-Encounters, Schools of Leaders and Ministry. Basically, they have created the self-duplicating unit. I suspect that somewhere along the line between G12 Leader and 144 Teacher, you have to go into ministry full time. But I’m, the author, not sure.

So, no real problems yet, except that such a highly structured program should make you nervous if you have any experience with highly organized spiritual organizations, including cults like Scientology.

Even the scary ‘Consolidator’ is a clearly necessary role – traditionally, we just call it someone to ‘follow up’ with a new believer. Instead of saying we are becoming somone’s “Disciple,” we could just say that we are setting up a formal mentoring program and finding a mentor.

What gives all of these things some scariness is that we, the author, know that behind all of this structure is not just the desire to help people become the best they can be, but the desire to have them adopt the G12 Vision. And what happens if you don’t want to do that?

(part 260) MY PLACE ON THE PLANET

2011-10-01T20:55:00.000-07:00

Welcome or not, I was here and here to stay, but back in 1985 I didn't know that, in fact I had no plans to stick around. In my mind it was always a temporary situation, something I would change when I could manage it. So for the first year, I just stood my ground and carved out a place for myself amongst the locals who questioned my presence as if I were a leper in their midst. I hard-assed my way through their cliques with all the subtlety of a street fight in progress.

In the five-cities and surrounding area of San Luis Obispo County, the main theme was "We belong here and you don't." It was never vague, it was never subtle, it was always overt. It was the prevailing force that sought to eliminate anyone it collectively didn't approve of by making them feel unwanted and afraid.

The majority of locals I encountered used religion, community position, and life style, as battering rams to enforce their selections. In their way of looking at things I had nothing to offer. That was their conclusion from the beginning, and still is today in 2011. I was not, and am not, seen as a musician or artist in their midst. I was, and am, looked upon as a low life undesirable.

Because I left L.A. as a failure, in my own mind, I did not come to the Central Coast to continue my pursuit of music. To the contrary, I came here with that buried in a deep dark hole that I was tired of looking in. Back in L.A. I was Bobby Jameson, but when I got here I was simply nobody, nobody at all.

It doesn't matter what one may think about what I should have done back then, because this is the story of what I did, not what I should have done. It is difficult to write about facts when the facts, in hindsight, seem questionable at best. But still, the fact is that I approached San Luis Obispo County from the beginning as a complete and utter loser. My demeanor was more that of an outlaw reject than someone who had worked and studied in the music industry for over twenty years.

I was broke, jobless, and homeless, other than having a mother and brother in the area who chose to take me in. I had no prospects or plan for the future other than to keep breathing and survive until I made my move. My only success, as I have stated, was that I was sober and clean for nine years, so that is what I focussed on.

Because I had nowhere I was supposed to be, I spent my time going to a lot of twelve step meetings in the area, both day and night. That became my destination and purpose, to show up, and without that I would have stayed isolated and alone. It gave me a place to voice my opinion and talk about staying clean and sober through hard times. This became the crux of anything worthwhile that I may have added to this area in the twenty-seven years I have lived here.

I have returned to the subject of my arrival on the central coast of California in 1985 as a response to the email I received from Tom Leatherwood a few weeks ago, who is a local resident from Paso Robles, about 30 minutes from me. His email makes clear what I was faced with when I first came here, an attitude of "Let me tell you how it's gonna be, Boy," an attitude I rejected with all the conviction of "Doc Holiday." It was made crystal clear to me back then that I was unacceptable, and as you can plainly see it hasn't changed a lick.

I am not down on christianity, I am down on anyone who uses it as a sledge hammer against others who do not share those beliefs or agree with them, and/or the book they acquired their beliefs from. For those who believe that the bible is God's Word, I say, "Not to me it isn't." I have actually read the bible, from cover to cover, something I have found that many who claim to believe in it have not actually done. They seem more than willing to take some so-called authority's word for what is contained therein, a dangerous practice.

In my mind, I do not need anyone to translate it or tell me its meaning. It is a book written by men and touted to be the inspired word of God Himself, something I thoroughly reject. God doesn't write books, men do. I am not godless, nor am I a christian, or anything else, but I am committed to fight tyranny no matter what form it comes in. The use of the bible and its contents and prophecies is speculative at best, and a tool of control, fear, and punishment at its worst, the end result being the return of Christ and the utter annihilation of all disbelievers.

Somewhere on the central coast of California is a guy named Bobby Jameson, a guy who learned from experience that those who choose to believe blindly in anything are destined to live as hypocrites and bullies amongst others who truly seek out solutions to life's many pitfalls and temptations. The closed mind, and practice of overt judgement, issued forth by Tom Leatherwood and those like him, have been the corner stone of racism, gender discrimination, and social bullying throughout history. When some choose to follow an ideology based on theology, they cease to think for themselves and are nothing more than a mob demanding that their way is the only way.

I am here on the coast of California in San Luis Obispo as me. I am not here to listen to, or take direction from anyone, regarding what I do, or what I should or shouldn't say about anything. I am sixty-six years old, have thirty-five years of sobriety, and have learned the hard way to survive anything and everything. I have paid my dues in spades, and put no man above me, no matter who or what they claim to represent. I am Bobby Jameson and I earned my place on the planet.

LEGAL UPDATE...COLOR HIM IN

2011-09-22T15:48:00.000-07:00

In the last couple of weeks there has been a battle raging over the illegal posting of my 1967 Verve album Color Him In on itunes music store for download sales. This was done without my knowledge or permission by another UK company.

I am pleased to say, as of now, that I have received notification that the album will be removed from itunes. This is a big victory in my battle over the rights to my work.

from: Nicola Saunders
Subject: Re: color him in album by Jameson
Date: September 22, 2011 2:22:00 AM PDT
To: Bobby Jameson

Dear Mr Jameson,

Further to the correspondence below, I can confirm Color Him In will be removed from iTunes on 27th September 2011. This process takes 5 business days and cannot be done immediately, but please be assured that the process of removing this album has commenced and will be completed as soon as possible.

Please let me know if there is anything else you need.

Kind regards

Nicola

(part 259) JUST LIKE EASY RIDER

2011-09-15T14:07:00.000-07:00

Me, Dj, and my brother Bill 1983...click photo to enlarge

In 1985, wherever I went on the central coast, I'd see little christian fish symbols plastered on car bumpers, windows, walls, everything. It was something that got my attention because I'd never seen so many little ads for christianity in my life. It was a form of shouting, "Hey, I'm a believer!" but in my world it did not mean that those broadcasting the message were peaceful, loving, or fair. To the contrary it was an alert to people like me to "stay on your toes."

Not too long after arriving here, I was sitting in a coffee shop in Arroyo Grande with a young girl friend of mine. A couple of tables away were three big guys eyeing me like a piece of rotten meat. I heard one of them say, "If I ever caught my daughter with someone like that I'd get my deer rifle and fix him!" I stared at them for a long time, making it clear I could hear what had been said and that I didn't give a shit about their opinion. It was like a scene out of "Easy Rider."

I found it necessary back then to stay alert at all times, wherever I went, knowing that this kind of thinking was aimed at me on a daily basis throughout the area. I had no allies or friends to speak of, except a few others I'd met at meetings who were looked down on the same way I was. To them it had become routine, almost normal, but to me it was cause to counter anyone who showed that kind of hostility toward me, and show it they did.

I was always ready to fight, both verbally and physically. I would not back down, fearing if I did it would bring even more of that crap my way. I had to take a stand or I could not have survived here. In most cases it was always a guy who'd grown accustomed to intimidating people with his size. The other versions were those who used their supposed standing in the community. In each case, it was guys who were used to people taking their shit and following their orders, something I refused to do even once.

More than a couple of times I went at it in public with these yahoos, turning the air black with verbal counter assaults. Unprepared by-standers watched in silence with their mouths open as I went after these jerks in grocery stores, coffee shops, or wherever the need presented itself. I never started it, other than to just show up, but I was perfectly suited to finish it.

The more they pushed on me, the more I stood up to them. Where once I had wanted to leave the area, I became determined not to be driven out. In 12 step meetings those who had once felt out of place and alone now began seeking me out as a refuge from the entrenched belittlers at large. I befriended the friendless and protected the unwanted. I made it clear that if you went after one of them I would publicly take your ass apart verbally, which in all reality was not that hard to do.

When you're wrong you're wrong, and these guys were dead wrong. They glorified themselves by demeaning the week and unwanted. Even though I could have spared myself a shit-load of trouble, it was impossible to sit by quietly and watch this garbage continue. The things that were said, and those who were saying them, were an affront to everything I'd read in the book Alcoholics Anonymous.

So this is the way it started for me in San Luis Obispo County and the Five Cities area back in 1985--a wake-up call for sure. An L.A. reject trying to find my place in the world, a world completely different from the one I'd left behind, a world where I was not welcomed or wanted.

(part 258) IF I WERE A CARPENTER

2011-09-13T13:47:00.001-07:00

Don't know the exact date of this picture, but it is roughly what I looked like when I got to the central coast from L.A.

Back in 1985, if you looked like this you were pegged as a dope fiend and a criminal by those who were claiming the moral high ground. It was their way of enforcing a caste system for their own benefit.

As far as AA was concerned, I was a drug addict, and they didn't want drug addicts in their meetings, even though some of them had probably used drugs themselves, usually prescribed by doctors. It was the same phony bull-shit I'd run into early on in the program in Southern California, and it was rampant in this new setting.

Older alcoholics were telling dual addicted younger people that AA would not work for them because they were drug addicts.

It was this kind of nonsense that caused me, almost immediately, to break my own rule of, "Keep your mouth shut, Bob!" It was not only impossible for me to let this crap go unchallenged, but imperative, as I saw it, to speak up and defy it.

Something else I heard, and still do, was also hard for me to leave alone. People who said, "Hi, my name is so-in-so, and I'm an alcoholic, and I want to thank my higher power, who I call Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, for my sobriety."

One of the great things about AA is it doesn't require anybody to believe in a specific God, philosophy, or religion. This was particularly important to me when I was a newcomer for obvious reasons.

These blatant references to Jesus that I heard from some, were not followed up with "This is just my personal belief, and not a requirement for sobriety or membership in AA." People who were new, and possibly scared to death, were hearing what sounded like a Christian message at meetings. I was unable to sit by quietly and let this stand without pointing out that AA was not a Christian organization, and that maybe God wasn't a Christian either...Again you can readily see that I was making friends all over.

Within a relatively short time, many in the area became aware that I was here, and that I was not a newcomer, but had nine years of sobriety. They also found out that I had a mouth and was not afraid to use it against the established point of view.

Those who had had to endure the purist's iron-clad grip on local meetings for years, were surprised by my knowledge of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as amused by my verbal assaults on the arrogant self-appointed local leaders.

Along with my mouth, I had the added problem of drawing the specific attention of women in meetings, many of whom were married, which proved to be troublesome. The fact that I stood out like a sore thumb appearance-wise, and had little or no fear of who I pissed off once I got rolling, was what I referred to earlier when I said, "It's a nice place to look at, but a hard place to live, if your name is Bobby Jameson."

This was absolutely true in my case. If I'd been a plumber or carpenter, and had stayed in my place, it would have been just dandy, but being me, and coming from where I'd come from, my own history put an end to any chance of that. There was no way, short of tying me up and gagging me, to have made this transition smoothly. I went from totally unknown to infamous in less than two months.

When I got to the central coast, I believed in my mind that I had left L.A. a failure, with one exception, I had stayed clean and sober for nine years. Not the "everything is wonderful" kind, but the rock bottom "don't get loaded no matter what happens" kind.

My one self-perceived non-failure was what I carried with me like a six-gun into every single twelve-step meeting in the area. A no-holds-barred attitude of "this really works, even for a lowlife like me." That was what I had to offer anyone who wanted it. That was the foundation for starting life over in the five cities area of the central coast of California.

(part 257) GET A LOAD OF THIS GUY

2011-09-12T15:38:00.000-07:00

This picture, with "Jesus is coming back" in the window, is representative of this area...click to enlarge

Although San Luis Obispo County is rather a nice area to look at, it is a whole different thing to try living there when your name is Bobby Jameson.

It is, in fact, an old ranching community, for the most part, made up of a lot of people who migrated from the central valley of California, from places like Fresno and Bakersfield.

A lot of stout Christianity, agriculture, and military people, just to mention a few of its attractions. Trying to fit me into this backdrop from hell, is exactly what I was faced with the moment I arrived in 1985.

My mother lived in a place called Grover City, if you can believe it, which sounded to me like East Of Eden starring James Dean. It is a small community in between a number of other small towns, known as the Five Cities.

Pismo Beach, Shell Beach, Grover City, Arroyo Grande, and Oceano, a mish-mosh of agriculture, beach towns, and Christian zealot good-ol boys. I fit in about as well as a black guy moving into a Ku Klux Klan stronghold.

I looked like I came from Hollywood. I did not look like I belonged in the Five Cities area. As soon as I hit the street, I was eye-balled to death by the locals, who did not try whatsoever to hide their disenchantment with me.

It was, "Watch your ass, Jameson," from the moment I arrived. Every street fighting instinct I had went on red alert from the first day. You know, like finding yourself in the bad part of town all of a sudden.

I felt like I was in hell as I drove around the area trying to get my bearings. Whereas L.A. offered endless opportunities for everything, this place offered nothing but the evil eye. The vibrations felt like concrete, a thick heavy feeling of, "We got our eye on you, boy!"

I knew I had to establish myself as a member of AA, and find the local meetings, but Jesus Christ, this place was scary. I truly didn't believe I could take it, but knew I had nowhere else to go, so I stayed, "a day at a time," literally.

For a long while, I would go out and sit in my car in the evening, because I felt so out of place and lost. I would try and coax myself into going back to L.A., but in the end would stay for one more day, and then one more, and one more...

My sense of longing for something familiar dogged me for a long time, and the feeling of being a fish out of water would rule my life for years to come. But in the meantime, I would have to make do with my new surroundings and seek out what good I could find.

I drove by a few of the local AA meeting places and sat in my car afraid to go in. From outside I could see a lot of cowboy hats and big bodies, indicating to me that I was gonna fit in here like a fart in a diving helmet.

Finally after a week or so, I made myself go into a meeting in Arroyo Grande called the Firehouse group, because it was held in the fire station. It was bigger than the others so I thought I could lose myself in the back of the room.

"Now don't say anything, Bob, just keep your mouth shut and sit down and shut up," I said to myself, "don't do anything to draw any attention."

I slipped in the door and stood there quietly for a moment, looking around for an empty chair, finding one a couple rows up. I made my way toward it, but as soon as I did, heads began to turn around and eye-ball me.

"Aw shit!" I thought, as I watched one head after another turn in my direction. Smiles crept over their faces as they nudged the person next to them, saying, "Get a load of this guy."

WALDEN POND

2011-09-10T17:32:00.000-07:00

I walked on the water at Walden Pond
with Bob Dylan, Henry David Thoreau,
and Jesus Christ.
In the bright autumn sun
we crossed from one shore
to the other.
Looking up,
I saw the sky laced
with fragments of clouds
sewn into the splendor
of the day.
"Hey, Henry!" I yelled,
"Now I know why you
love this place so much!"
He turned to smile broadly
but said nothing.
"How come we couldn't
always do this?" I asked.
"You always could!" said Jesus,
"You just didn't believe it."
"Yeah, it took me awhile
to get the hang of it," said Dylan,
"but now it's easy."

Bobby Jameson September 10, 2011

(part 256) I WILL FIGHT YOU TILL THE DAY I DIE

2011-09-08T14:45:00.000-07:00

There are those who will wonder why I give attention to people like Tom Weatherwood. It is simply this. People like Tom live in a world where they have learned to justify their version of acceptability through a twisted belief in Christian Fundamentalism, something this entire country is beginning to be forced into coping with. Tom lives no more than a few miles from me, and is a carbon copy of the kind of crap-head I have had to deal with since the first day I arrived in San Luis Obispo County in 1985.

This is not about me whining or my music being good or bad, this is about people like Tom, who think they are called by God to clean house. The United States Of America is faced with exactly the same twisted mentality exhibited by this moron in his email to me from out of the blue. It occurred to me that the depth of his distaste is centered on the fact that, in his mind, I am plainly not the kind of person he wants in his area, particularly if you draw public attention the way I do.

I can accept that I am not Jesus Christ or Bob Dylan, but it is telling that he refers to me in that way. His belief about what he thinks I think about myself reeks of something conjured up by so-called church elders from hell. His self-serving "holier than thou" take on me is his own creation adopted after, in his own words, a year of thinking, reading, listening, and discussing me with others. Why anyone would bother to invest so much time in someone they despise is mental illness at it's finest.

Tom is a successful central coast resident, and he exemplifies, unfortunately, what this area is like. He is part of the local "good ol boy" establishment and resents, in the deepest way possible, the presence of one Bobby Jameson, or anyone like me, scumming up his picture perfect God-like vision of San luis Obispo County, a place, which at times, acts like the deep south in the 50's and 60's. This area is crawling with Christian fundamentalists, pawning themselves off as solid citizens determined to cleanse and clarify life on the central coast and the "Garden Of Eden."

Tom Leatherwood and all those like him are on a crusade to determine what's right for everyone. They are the Rick Perry, Sarah Palin, Glen Beck pricks of the central coast. They are self-ordained assholes with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other. They are called by their so-called ministries to do God's work wherever and whenever they decide it is appropriate. It would appear that currently I am on their hit list, but this is not the first time for me.

You, the reader, can decide for yourself whether what I say here is real or fanciful thinking, but I in my fortress of bad behavior and endless complaining already know the answer...which is, "I will fight you till the day I die!"

I have loosened up comments so more can get their opinion in....even if it is to say how much you hate me and my pathetic mega whining.....

IF JESUS IS YOUR SAVIOR

2011-09-07T17:42:00.000-07:00

MY NAME IS
JESUS DYLAN
AND BOY I
MAKE YOU MAD
AND ALL THIS TIME
I THOUGHT
YOU WERE
THE FRIEND
I NEVER HAD
YOU SAY YOU KEEP
YOUR COUNCIL
AND ARE CHRISTIAN
IN YOUR MIND
BUT YOU KEEP
SPYIN ON ME AND
WASTIN ALL
YOUR TIME
I THINK YOU ARE
A STALKER
I THINK YOU
ARE CONFUSED
MY NAME IS REALLY
BOB CHRIST
AND MAN
AM I AMUSED
IF JESUS IS
YOUR SAVIOR
AND YOUR LIFE IS
WORKING WELL
THEN WHY ARE YOU
DOWN HERE WITH ME
BECAUSE I LIVE
IN HELL

Bobby Jameson September 7, 2011

More Emails From Tom Leatherwood On Facebook Tonight

2011-09-07T00:34:00.001-07:00

PauLa Servetti
he wrote: Tom Leatherwood

why do you buy into this morons BS? He's a loser of the first degree. His own worst enemy. And a no talent loser whose wasted his life mooning about his bad luck. His music sucks. Always did.
You seem like a woman with some class.....this guy is the king of the narcissist. Total loser. Using FB to bemoan the largest pity party imaginable.....im sick of hearing it.
Like · · Share · Delete
Vicky PauLa and Andrew like this.
Bobby Jameson This fuckin guy is gone over the line.......
2 hours ago · Like · 2 people

Vicky Damn!!! He has...he's gone waaaaaaaaaaaaay over the line!! What an imbecile he is!!
2 hours ago · Unlike · 1 person
Bobby Jameson Yeah Vicky...this is demented bullcrap....
2 hours ago · Like · 1 person

Vicky Exactly!!
2 hours ago · Unlike · 1 person

David Well, I'm totally confused.
2 hours ago · Unlike · 2 people

Andrew demented bs from demented person.
2 hours ago · Unlike · 3 people
Bobby Jameson Emailing me with this crap is one thing, but emailing Paula is going too far.....
2 hours ago · Like · 3 people

Richard I kinda feel sorry for Tom Peckerwood. He's obviously a miserable and angry nut job.
2 hours ago · Like · 1 person

Wil He has a very serious complex about you, Bobby. Did you beat him up in grade school and take his lunch?
2 hours ago · Like · 4 people

Chris I will run a background on him, where is he located?
2 hours ago · Unlike · 1 person
Bobby Jameson He's on fb and he is not far from me in Paso Robles, CA.....about 25 minutes from here.....sounds like he's trippin Chris......
2 hours ago · Like · 1 person

Nick Think it's more about him wanting Paula than hating Bobby...
2 hours ago · Like

Chris I will check back, my cuz told me to watch jimmy kimmel tonight, yeah he needs to be checked out, i will let you know if he has a record
2 hours ago · Unlike · 1 person
Bobby Jameson OK...thanks Chris....
2 hours ago · Like · 1 person

David Book him Danno.
2 hours ago · Unlike · 3 people
Bobby Jameson IF I could get a hold of him I'd book em in the mouth!
2 hours ago · Like

David Best to let Chris and I take you out to dinner Bobby.
Alibi's you know.
2 hours ago · Unlike · 3 people
Bobby Jameson sounds casual........Ha!
2 hours ago · Like

David Nope. Formal. So put on some socks. LOL
2 hours ago · Unlike · 1 person

DeeDee Honey, you wouldn't beat up a mentally challenged person, would you? We love you, Bobby. It's sticks and stones, buddy.
2 hours ago · Unlike · 1 person
Bobby Jameson Maybe...maybe he's loaded.....and he lives about 20 minutes from me.....and he's not mentally challenged...he's just full of shit.....
2 hours ago · Like · 2 people
Bobby Jameson But I get your point DeeDee...thanks.......
2 hours ago · Like · 3 people

DeeDee Tom is showing you who the loser really is, and you didn't even have to say anything. I love it when people prove their stupidity.
2 hours ago · Unlike · 3 people
Bobby Jameson Another very good point........OK I'll just slap him a little.....
2 hours ago · Like · 1 person

David Is that his real name, or just a FB name?
2 hours ago · Unlike · 1 person
Bobby Jameson His real name is Tom Leatherwood....he is a real person who started this shit earlier in the day.....I have asked people who know him and me to intervene.....we'll see....
2 hours ago · Like
Bobby Jameson I don't even know the guy!
2 hours ago · Like · 3 people

PauLa Servetti me neither
2 hours ago · Unlike · 2 people

DeeDee Bobby, he sounds to me like he's jealous and not getting enough attention.
2 hours ago · Unlike · 3 people
Bobby Jameson Right!
2 hours ago · Like · 1 person

DeeDee Let's see, there is a word for that...oh yeah, pathetic.
2 hours ago · Unlike · 2 people
Bobby Jameson That's the word DeeDee............
about an hour ago · Like · 1 person

Barbara No one knows this Tom guy...everyone knows you Bobby!!! 'Nuff said!
about an hour ago · Unlike · 3 people
Bobby Jameson Thanks Barbara!
about an hour ago · Like · 2 people
Bobby Jameson I'm easing back into a humorous state of mind.........
about an hour ago · Like · 3 people

DeeDee I think we just met the "Lonesome Loser", buddy;-)
about an hour ago · Unlike · 3 people

Barbara LOL! Good one DD!
about an hour ago · Unlike · 2 people

Phil ‎"And a no talent loser whose wasted his life mooning about his bad luck" Are you mooning again? seems the only ass is this dude, he is pissed cause he plays bass in the church choir!
51 minutes ago · Unlike · 1 person

ANOTHER WONDERFUL COMMENT BY A FAN ON FACEBOOK

2011-09-06T14:16:00.001-07:00

14 hours agoTom Leatherwood
Being on the internet is a waste of time for you. MUch less facebook. Ive seen some sniveling whining morons in my life but you take the cake. Ive listened to your whining, read your internet crap and all i have to say is that you get narcissist of the world award. Youve spent your life whining about all the fame and money your "talent" couldnt provide and im sick of it. Face reality. You didnt have it. You just didnt HAVE it. Get it through your head. THATS WHY IT DIDN'T HAPPEN FOR YOU. NO ONE TOOK YOUR IDEAS AND MADE THEM PAY OFF! Anymore then you could. Facebook isnt a place for whining and boo hooing about all the fame you couldnt create, that you didnt deserve. Get a life. While you can. IF you can. Its doubtful.
Stop the pity party. It sickening to listen to. Ive been watching and listening to your crap the last year and tried to be christian in my thoughts. Ive kept my council and talked to people that profess to know you and have finally hit the wall. Get OVER yourself.
Your NOT Jesus Christ, and your NOT Bob Dylan and nobody gives a shiit. And believe it or not, this advice comes to you in all sincerity.
Your a human being and your Gods child. Start acting like it.
Good luck.

44 minutes agoBobby Jameson
Well you punk ass mother fucker....anytime shit head...any fucking time you want......Bobby

30 minutes agoTom Leatherwood
Spoken like a true phsycopath. And then what? Your going to beat me up? For telling you what your friends won't? And what will that change? It's about GROWING UP "Bobby". "punk ass mo fo"? Shithead? I havent heard those since about 1960? What you got from me was good advice, what you do with it is your business. Adios

29 minutes agoBobby Jameson
You are an arrogant fake Christian Tom...and yes I will kick the living shit out of you......I'm right down the hill asshole in SLO....

25 minutes agoTom Leatherwood
No, your not going to do anything. Get a handle on your anger...then get a grip on yourself...You don't know a thing about me. This is about you, not me pal. Your your own worst enemy...

23 minutes agoBobby Jameson
It's about you Tom.....but you are unaware of it....you don't know me either.....You think because you blather about christianity that you have some special right and duty to look down on me in judgement........
You ought to go to my profile on fb...because I have made you a star........

Tom Leatherwood
Not at all, I just got sick of having to see all of your self pity played out on Facebook.Thats not what its for. And Bobby? Nobody cares what you have on your profile ok? ok.

WINDS OF TIME

2011-09-02T11:48:00.000-07:00

Artist: Robert Watson
"Pasoga Roma"

TIME AND SPACE
CORDONED OFF
LIKE A
PRISON CAMP
SURVIVORS STAND
HOLLOW FACED
AND RIGID
PRAYING FOR
AN END
BUT FEAR
THEIR PRAYERS
FALL ON
DEAF EARS
AND COLD HEARTS...
THERE IS NO
RIGHT TO DIE
NO RIGHT
TO LIVE
EXCEPT WITHIN
THE CONFINES
OF THE CAMP
WHERE MISERY
DICTATES
EACH DAY
AND LONELY NIGHT...
TIME AND SPACE
WHERE SKELETONS
OF DREAMS
ARE ALL
THAT REMAIN
OF YOUTH
NOW LEFT
TO THE WINDS
OF TIME...

Bobby Jameson Sep 2 2011

(part 255) THE WAY YOU BROKE MY HEART

2011-08-16T19:35:00.000-07:00

I am not as lost as I am fed up and frustrated by my own life and putting it out in public like a rotting piece of meat swarmed over by flies. As I listen to Danny Whitten's "I Don't Want To Talk About It" I understand the dilemma of trying to live with an utterly broken heart. There is no way to communicate the basis of my remark to anyone who has not truly been impaled on that particular nail. Likewise, without the ability to communicate to others one remains shattered by all that shattered them to begin with.

There is no way to convey a broken heart other than to do what the broken-hearted do, which has always been unacceptable to most of the rest of the world. One is either soundly condemned for it, or given a pep-talk from hell masquerading as good-intentioned advice. I reject both versions completely.

What begins to become vividly apparent, after years of neglect, is that what the problem was in the past now stubbornly remains the problem today, and appears destined to be the same tomorrow. Even in making this remark here and now I can feel the reaction to it from the masses who have been brain-washed into believing that they must counter this kind of thinking at all costs.

It is the wholesale inability and downright refusal to admit to, and/or cope with, the lethality of a truly broken-hearted person, that ultimately leaves those suffering abandoned by the many, as a remedy-or-else solution. In 1972 I made a decision, on two separate occasions, to commit suicide after nine years of repeated dead-ends in the music business, decisions I still wish had been successful. The fact that this is really how I feel has and will be met with numerous forms of criticism, contempt, anger, and possible worry.

It is this reaction by people, to those who suffer, that ultimately drives the sufferer away to sort out their options alone. Those people, who I have the deepest possible contempt for, reside in the luxury of their judgement offering up suggestions to a burning man such as, "You ougtta throw some water on that," and then claiming that they have helped.

In my life I have witnessed the repeated small-talk antidote for everything, no matter how lethal or destructive it may be, or have been, to an individual or their family. When my father committed suicide in 1970, I received help in the form of, "Don't let it get you down," and nothing else. Currently in my quest to keep breathing I receive basically the same identical advice as I did then. For decades I have crawled along the curb, hovering slightly above total annihilation, only to look up occasionally at those frowning at my performance.

It is brought home in recent days by another offer to release some of my songs on a label without any money, except somewhere in the future, a future which in my experience has never come and never will. Another voice saying, "You can trust me!" I would think that anyone who knew anything about my past would be embarrassed to make such an offer at this point, but then I surmise that this person either doesn't know, or does, and believes that I should trust them anyway.

To me it's another low-ball moment. Another day to say, "No!" Another time to turn my back and shake my head and wonder why anyone thinks that I need to do this shit some more? Every problem I have is directly linked to trusting people in the music business, with disastrous results. I don't need, or care about, another record of my work being released with nothing in it for me except it being the latest version.

If I live long enough, maybe someday someone will actually offer me something to participate in the release of some of my work, but in all honesty I am not holding my breath. But in the meantime all I can do is to write about, "The way you broke my heart."

SIXTY-SIX

2011-08-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

SIXTY-SIX AND BROKEN
SIXTY-SIX ALONE
SIXTY-SIX AND COUNTIN
KICK ANOTHER STONE

THIRTY-THREE WAS HALF OF IT
THIRTY-THREE AHEAD
THIRTY-THREE IN MISERY
I SHOULD HAVE DIED INSTEAD

FORTY-FOUR IN DARKNESS
FORTY-FOUR IN PAIN
FORTY-FOUR AND PLENTY MORE
TO DRIVE MY MIND INSANE

FIFTY-FIVE AND STILL ALIVE
FIFTY-FIVE IN FEAR
FIFTY-FIVE I DID SURVIVE
I HOPE THE END IS NEAR

SIXTY-SIX OF WANDERING
SIXTY-SIX IN YEARS
SIXTY-SIX OF STACKING STICKS
AND COUNTING ALL THE TEARS

Bobby Jameson August 14, 2011

RECTANGLED INTO ROUND

2011-08-13T14:35:00.001-07:00

Artwork Joe Bonita

CRUSHED AGAINST
THE BURNING WALL
OF DREAMS THAT
SPUTTERED INTO STALL

FACTS LIKE RAZORS
CUT ME CLEAN
REALITY IS
FUCKING MEAN

DEAD LIKE DAYS
THAT SCREAM OUT NO
I HAVE NO FUCKING
PLACE TO GO

BUT GO I WILL
TO NOWHERE'S DOOR
A DOOR UNMARKED
TO EVERMORE

FACE TO FACE
WITH TONGUE TO EYES
SLOBBERED TEARS
THAT CRITICIZE

MY EVERY MOVE
MY EVERY WORD
MY EVERY SINGLE THING
I'VE HEARD

BROKEN BACKED
AND CORNERED BOUND
EACH SQUARE RECTANGLED
INTO ROUND

TRIANGLED FEAR
THAT OWNS THE SOUL
IS FUCKING HERE
OUT OF CONTROL

ZIPPERED FACES
GLEAMING SPIT
GNAWING MOMENTS
IN A FIT

WHAT IN GOD'S NAME
CAN I DO
TO GET THE FUCK
AWAY FROM YOU?

Bobby Jameson August 13, 2011

(part 254) FACTS ARE TERRIBLE THINGS...TO AN IDIOT

2011-08-11T17:06:00.000-07:00

Original Chris Ducey version 1965

Surrey version 1965

Joy version 1966

I came to the internet in 2007 and had to learn everything from scratch. I knew nothing about how it worked or how to use it, or how to use a computer for that matter. People were selling my work and not paying me so I decided to put all my albums on the internet for free where people could download them; The blog Echoes In The Wind helped me do that. My thinking was, it's better to give them away than to let some company who had no right to the albums sell them for profit.

There was a lot of information on the web regarding those records, and me, that was completely false, so I set about to correct what I could and add more facts to the mix. That's what I've been doing for four years. This blog was an attempt to write the history of a person, me, who had been involved in the music industry since 1963, and to create a factual account of that history. In doing this I unwittingly opened myself up to wide-spread criticism as well as praise.

In the recent post, A Comment From A Fan, I found myself in awe of the words and thinking used by that person in saying they are assisting in the illegal distribution of my album Songs Of Protest for free on the internet because it is not honored. This, they go on to state, is because, according to them, I somehow screwed over Chris Ducey and reworked his songs. As I wrote above, I already put all my albums on the internet for free, and as far as Chris Ducey goes, I have never met him nor have I ever heard his original version of Songs Of Protest. I purposely didn't listen to Ducey's songs in 1965 for fear of being influenced by his work. If you listen to my songs, which I wrote to Ducey's titles, you will notice that in many cases the songs have nothing to do with the titles. It is one of the most distinct facts of that album.

Unbeknownst to most people, Songs Of Protest And Anti Protest has been released at least five different times, under various titles and artist names since 1965. The first is the Surrey version from 65, the second is the Joy Records version in 1966 which was retitled Too Many Mornings by Bobby Jameson. The third and fourth versions came from the early 70's. One is a part Of A Vee-Jay Records boxed set,

(Disc 5 (HHF-6837, white label)
That's The Way The World Has Got To Be - Bobby Jamison/I'll Remember Them - Bobby Jamison/Girl From Vernon Mt - Bobby Jamison/I Got The Blues - Bobby Jamison/Saline - Bobby Jamison/That's The Way This World Has Got To Be - Bobby Jamison/With Pity, But It's To Late - Bobby Jamison/You Came, You Saw, But You Didn't Conquer Me - Bobby Jamison/Girl From The East - Bobby Jamison/Don't Come Looking - Bobby Jamison,

and the other version is on Crestview Records CRS-3066...Bobby Jameson: Bobby Jameson LP (1970), another Randy Wood/Betty Chiapetta label. The fifth version is the 2002 Rev-Ola Records reissue CD leased from Ace Records by Joe Foster, and distributed by Cherry Red Records UK. Since I wrote and recorded Songs Of Protest in 1965, I have made a grand total of $327 from all these versions.

One of the songs from Songs Of Protest, "Girl From The East," was recorded by The Leaves in 65 or 66, and was the b-side of their hit "Hey Joe." It also appears on their album of the same name, and another album of The Leaves as well. I have received nothing for this song and the use of it on any of The Leaves recordings.

LIKE A BULLWHIP

2011-07-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

As I sit here trying to write this I don't know whether to punch my computer or just break down. Today my mother, who is 92 years old, had to go and begin the process of signing up for SSI which in real terms is Federal Welfare. I, at 66, have no assets, no way to intervene financially and provide for her, other than to kick in the bulk of my own SSI check for rent, food, and etc, which I willingly do.

Somebody asked me the other day why my mother would have to sign up for SSI, "Doesn't she get Social Security?" Yes, but she was born in 1919 and falls into some odd group that gets nearly nothing, $304 a month. She had a small trust her father left her, but it has run out, so she has to go for SSI.

It is at times like these that I resent, in the deepest way possible, the realities that exist and have existed in my own life since I was a child. The endless financial strife and my inability to do anything about it. I have worked since I was 15 years old, that is a half a century, and have nothing to show for it other than a bunch of songs and recordings that have never provided any money at all.

I have endured, and still do, the endless nonsense of, "It's not the money, it's the music!" for 50 years now, as if being paid for my work is somehow out of the question. All I can say to that is, "Why don't you work for free for half a century and then let me know how you're doing?" The pompous nature of those who say this sort of thing, is like a slap across my face with a bullwhip.

I bring this up now, not for my own sake, but with bitter regard to the facts and realities I see unfolding for my mother. I cannot begin to tell you the respect I have for this women. Her strength of character and willingness to push on at 92, as if what she faces is yet but another day to do her best.

When I think of all the charlatans I have dealt with in the music business since 1963, and the abuse that has been dumped on me since I came to the internet in 2007, I wonder what in the hell I was thinking when I started all of this. As recently as the previous post, I have listened to an endless drone of criticism and garbage from people who have not, and could not survive what I lived through and continue to live with.

There are of course some who stand far above that crap, and for them I am eternally grateful, but to be here now, with no way to provide what is needed to make my mother's life comfortable and secure at 92, simply because I was systematically ripped off for every penny ever owed to me from any and all of my endeavors in this god-awful industry is more than I can stomach.

Even as I write these words, I already know that way too many will line up to tell me how lucky we are to get SSI, as if there were no other outcome we could wish for. There will be, as there always is, too many voices spewing pseudo positive rhetoric over the wound. But most of all, and branded into my flesh for eternity, will be the fact that nothing will change, and nothing I say will mean a goddamned thing in the long run.

A COMMENT FROM A FAN

2011-07-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

Maybe you suck, because you edit out things and are biased. I have commented on almost every post and you have not published one of them because I ask possibly hard reflective questions to yet another self centered aging, sick baby boomer. You are no different. You are a wanna be. You were a wanna be "blues man" a wanna be Cherokee, and now just washed up on the shore licking your sores. Pathetic. You publish the same womens comments over and over. Barely any guys get published on your b-log, only ones you have a 'warm spot in your heart' for..and that means, someone that will only say nice pitter patter to you. Wow, you show thinness of integrity. What you afraid of bobby-o? You got suckered, because you are a sucker. A white bred- hollywood illusion that had bad reception. yeah I know others that constantly squeel, "I'm being honest " yadda yadda yadda. YOu are just looking for sympathy crumbs and when someone takes the time to comment, you better damn well post them otherwise it shows you are thin-skinned. Just the fact you still smoke cigarettes shows you are a fraud. FUCK YOU BOBBY JAMISON - we are now in the process of distributing your fake LP through torrents that you ripped off the lyrics for by the real Ducey which you have not bothered to mention. You heard his tapes.you re-interpolated and that's why it was not honored. Ducey got screwed and you helped with the vaseline.
By •O•A•T•S•T•A•O•

This is an example of someone's idea of a worthy comment...they wonder why I won't post things like this......so here it is...you decide...

Me lighting up for you...

(part 253) LOST...IN ANOTHER WORLD

2011-07-24T18:12:00.000-07:00

On August 1, 1964 there was finally a face, a record, and a label, to go along with the massive hype that had gone on for two months. I'm So Lonely and I Wanna Love You had been hastily thrown together, along with two other songs, Okey Fanokey Baby and Meadow Green, in a single afternoon at a studio on Melrose Ave. in Hollywood, called Nashville West. They were engineered by Charlie Underwood. There was no band and no rehearsal, just a couple of pick-up musicians that Underwood rounded up at the last minute. You would think that after all the publicity Tony would have made sure that the record was carefully and thoughtfully created, but such was not the case.

It was almost an afterthought and treated more as a pesky detail that was finally being attended to. In my own defense, it was what I was allowed to do, or more exactly, what I was told to do. There had been little consideration given to preparing for a recording session. It was a last minute arrangement where Tony simply told me to sing some songs, and the four songs cut were the only finished songs I had. The recordings are more like demos than finished records.

Notwithstanding the built-in weaknesses of the record, I had done the best I could within the confines of where I found myself in 1964. At age 19 I had little if any power over what Alamo did. I was a kid being directed by the one person who'd put me on the map so to speak. There was no room for discussion with Tony other than to listen to him tell me why he was right. "Look what I've done so far!" he'd say, and it was hard to argue with him.

In L.A. the record was viewed with disdain by local radio who refused to play it, but in Detroit Michigan a DJ named Terry Knight, on CKLW radio, broke the single wide open and it raced up their charts. Similarly, Cleveland radio had the same results. I appeared on American Bandstand and other L.A. television shows like Ninth St. West and Lloyd Thaxton. I did a live performance at Ciro's, on The Strip, but L.A. radio wouldn't budge. I was played live shows in Michigan, Ohio, and Canada and opened for The Beach Boys, Jan And Dean, and Chubby Checker.

It was hard, maybe impossible back then, to do what I was doing and not believe that I was succeeding, because on stage in those cities where the record was a hit, I was. A distributor in Detroit once told me that after Dell Shannon's "Runaway," "I'm So Lonely" was the second biggest selling record in Detroit.

When The record took off in the mid-west, a number of major labels made Tony offers to turn it into a national hit, but he rejected all of them. In his mind, he was the next Colonel Tom Parker, the latest version of the "Big Time" operator. In Alamo's world no one could tell him what to do or how to do it. So as I said earlier, this was not only the beginning of Bobby Jameson but the end as well. It is impossible to know what might have happened had Tony been smart enough to join forces with others when the opportunity presented itself.

Not long after what I have described above, Tony went off into another world. He claimed he was being talked to by God and told what to do. After a particularly disturbing event in an office in Beverly Hills, I made the decision to leave him. Strange though it is, it was the Billboard ads that prompted Andrew Oldham to send me a letter saying, "If you ever come to England I'd like to work with you," an offer I'd rejected, but then followed up on. It seemed like a good place to go, because it was as far away from Tony Alamo as I could get.

The picture at the top of this post came out in in August of 1964 and was the ninth and final ad in Billboard Magazine. The picture below came out around December of 1964 in London only months later. It was another ad, for another record, on another label, in another country, and I was completely lost...in another world.

(part 3)
(part 2)
(part 1)

(part 252) FOR A KID NAMED BOBBY JAMESON

2011-07-16T22:50:00.000-07:00

Click picture to enlarge to the actual size.

And there was another one. And another, and another. They just kept coming, and just as before, there was no face, no record, or record label mentioned. The many questions raised by the preceding ads were left unanswered. The 2 page spread above was literally a billboard within Billboard Magazine. It said nothing at all while at the same time claimed an imaginary pay off within the near future.

When your goal in life is to become a recognized performer, as mine surely was in 1964, the mere fact that your name appears in print is a dangerous and addictive lure, and something I developed an immediate craving for at 19 years old. With no understanding of how things really worked, I was incapable of viewing this oddity outside of my own self-glorification and instant notoriety, which later proved a costly mistake.

The reaction by the industry to the 2 page ad was mixed. It was ridiculed by some and heralded by others, but in my mind it was all about me. I had by this time begun to morph into someone else. I was quickly abandoning the quiet unsure of myself kid I'd started out as, for a more self-assured and conceited version of the new Bobby Jameson. My singular goal of "stardom" was seemingly coming true, and I was completely unequipped to handle what was happening.

As if "The Star Of The Century" and "The World's Next Phenomenon" weren't outlandish enough, the 7th week topped them, by claiming I would soon be "The New King." Try to imagine what the mind of a 19 year old blossoming ego-maniac did with that picture. As you might have guessed, I bought into it hook, line, and sinker, as if it were my birthright, and to make matters worse Tony was constantly telling me it was true, which it was not. The reality back then was I wanted it to be true. I wanted it so badly that I deluded myself into believing it was.

Click picture to enlarge to the actual size.

The industry people in L.A. were by now beginning to find out that this so-called phenomenon was a local nobody, and that the Billboard ads were the brainchild of one Tony Alamo. Without much information about how Alamo was looked upon back then by those in the industry, it appears that he was disliked intensely before I ever met him. He was a hustler and had made unwelcomed waves by selling bootlegged oldies through the mail with a company he owned called Mr. Maestro Records, something I learned of after two armed Federal Postal agents showed up at his apartment to question him about mail fraud.

Be that as it may, Tony had my confidence back then, and probably no one could have persuaded me to question him while the ads kept running. In my view he was single handedly changing my life for what I thought was the better. He had pulled me out of the darkness of obscurity and pushed me onto the world stage, where I would be dissected under the bright lights of scrutiny. In short, he took me from nobody to somebody in a matter of weeks. He so altered my psyche, and I let him, that it became impossible to ever go back to who or where I once was.

End of part 2...to be continued. (part 1 below)

(part 251) THE BEGINNING AND END OF BOBBY JAMESON

2011-07-15T21:40:00.000-07:00

In case you are wondering why I am even bringing up the subject of these Billboard ads, I will explain. Just recently I became reacquainted with my old friend Ralph Molina from Crazy Horse, and one of the first questions he asked me was "Do you still have those Billboard ads that were run on you in the 60's?" I said I didn't, but it prompted me to go to Billboard's archives and dig them up. I thought it was interesting that after four decades Ralph still remembered and asked about them. Of course why wouldn't he, he was there, along with Danny Whitten, and Billy Talbot the day we saw the first one.

So what I am trying to write here is difficult, but I will try to examine the subject of the Billboard Magazine ad campaign run on me in 1964. Those 9 weeks of promotion changed my life forever, and in hindsight, were the catalyst for not only my beginning, but as well, my simultaneous downfall as a recording artist. The truth is, there was no way to live up to the hype.

One has to keep in mind that I am referencing a subject from over four decades ago, when the world as you know it now did not exist. This happened before The Byrds, before Dylan went electric, before all of what eventually occurred on the west-coast with folk-rock, pop-psyche, and the hippie movement's mark on music in the U.S. took place. It was a time of no cell phones, no computers, video tape, or any kind of instant access to anything. There were only a few channels on black and white television, and newspapers, magazines, radio, record players, and reel to reel tape recorders.

Two of the prominent forces in the music industry in 1964, along with AM radio, were Billboard and Cashbox magazines, who reported weekly, on all things related to the music industry. Those two publications were on the top rung of reporting, world wide. They were the last word on what was happening, and was going to happen, in the business of management, A and R, music publishing, distribution, and the manufacturing and sale of records commercially. They were read by everyone involved in or interested in the music business, and were considered the bibles of the industry, with Billboard being the most prominent.

Because what I am saying here is factually accurate, it makes no difference what my opinion is, because facts are not controlled by opinion, they just are what they are, facts. In 1964, The Beatles dominated the world of music, and everyone else was playing catch-up. It was an atmosphere of mind-numbing searches for something or someone to compete with The Beatle's undisputed position.

With this as a rough framework, I will try to explain the abnormality of those 9 weeks of advertising run in both Billboard and Cashbox initially, but which concluded in Billboard only. For the sake of discussion, I was admittedly a nobody at the time, other than a 19 year old kid on the streets of Hollywood with a dream like many others. By chance, I met a person in a coffee shop, and for whatever reason, was picked by him to be the center piece of those ads.

I was initially presented to the world as "The Star Of The Century," by Tony Alamo. I had not been told, nor did I expect to see my name in the pages of anything, let alone in those two magazines on an afternoon in a coffee shop in Hollywood. It was then and there that I saw the ads for the first time, along with four friends, Danny Whitten, Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina, and Bruce Hinds.

You may think that I must have known about this, but you'd be wrong. Neither I, nor any of the friends I just mentioned, knew about it until we saw it together in the Carolina Pines coffee shop for the first time. I had no arrangement with Tony. If anything, we all considered him a big bullshitter until we saw the ads. The picture used for the first ad was probably snapped in the parking lot of that coffee shop weeks or months earlier without my knowledge of what it's ultimate use would be.

Within a short time, the 2nd ad ran, and then the 3rd. Within weeks people were talking about them saying, "Who the hell is Bobby Jameson, I've never heard of him?" They wanted to know why they couldn't see my face, and why anybody would run ads on someone no one had ever heard of, with no record or label. During the first 8 weeks of ads no record label or actual record was mentioned. It was not until the 9th week that my face, name of the record, and label were shown.

click on picture to enlarge

People were not only aware of what was happening in Billboard, but many were immediately put off by it because they saw it as too grandiose, too expensive and arrogant, which it surely was. But what they didn't know, was that there was no record label or record referred to because it hadn't been made yet. To this day I still don't know if Talamo, as a record label, even existed at the time the first ads were run. There was nothing more than a faceless name and no knowledge of who was behind it. The intrigue came from the fact that it kept happening week after week, so people waited, some reluctantly, to see if there would be another one.

End of part 1...to be continued

PICTURES OF DREAMS...BOBBY JAMESON Billboard Magazine 1964...

2011-07-13T14:42:00.000-07:00

These are most of the pictures from the 1964 Billboard Magazine ad campaign which ran for 9 weeks.

Click on pictures to enlarge

3/4 page ad

Full page ad

Third page of 3 page ad...other 2 below

2 pages of 3 page ad...3rd page above

3 page ad...4th page below

Page 4 of 4 page ad

9th and final week of ads...Full page with face and record made known

(part 250) MY OPINION

2011-07-10T17:06:00.000-07:00

photo by Schatzberg

I have not written the way I want to for a long time now, so that will change with this post. This will be unedited and unrestrained, so if my commas and thoughts fall short, so be it. I have spent too much time worrying about your approval. No one but a handful of people approve of my position and rhetoric, so knowing that as I do, there is no reason for me to be concerned about what I say here. This is the Bobby Jameson blog. It belongs to me and was started as a place to post facts, as I see them, know them, and have lived them. Your opinion is yours, mine is written here in these pages.

After four years of doing this, the one overriding fact is that nothing in my life has improved as a result of what I have done. This is a reality I have to contend with daily, you don't. When I came to the internet I had nothing. No friends, no lovers, no job, no health, and no money. With the exception of a very few individuals, I still have no friends, no lovers, no job, no health, and no money.

One would think that after all this time something would have improved, if not only slightly, but that is not the case. My main gripe is that way too many bullshit historians of music and record collectors, turned record sellers, thrive on inaccuracy and a deeply embedded sense of self-justification for what they do. Much of what is written is flat out wrong, and people who collect and/or sell records fail completely to understand that they are trading in the dreams and misery of those who created, what are now no more than collectable artifacts, used for amusement and/or profit.

There is no real understanding, by so-called music historians and collectors, that there are and were, real people involved in the creation of what is now merely written about, traded, and sold. The emotional detachment of many of these self-serving assholes is staggering, to say the least. They remind me of people who collect and discuss body-parts of dead soldiers, while their insipid eye for detail and fact is breathtaking.

The glorification of works, coupled with the shallow views and opinions by some, about those who created the works, has and does piss me off in a way that mere words fail to make clear. To elaborate on the failings of the human beings who gave their hearts and souls to create these works, so assholes can write about it and or collect and sell it, is pretty much repulsive to me. I for one, am a living breathing example of this shoddy practice, and stand alone as a vocal critic of this crap, which is justified only by those who practice it.

I have found, and reject entirely, the lame indulgence of those who talk about someone as a friend, but do nothing that a friend would do to be a friend; I find that this practice runs rampant throughout my entire experience on every part of what exists on the internet. The two bit soothsayers and slap you on the back phonies, personify the personality of music and friendship on the web, while in reality what goes on here is nothing more than a business and social whorehouse where some benefit on the backs of those who are harmed, cheated, and demoralized. As well, the zit-faced, low-ball punks, who pound out their criticisms on a keyboard in the safety of their bedrooms, is proof enough, that the truly useless have found a paradise to inhabit.

There is nothing good about the music business, and there is nothing good about the ever expanding profiteering of people's work who are not allowed to share in those profits and benefits. The smaller reissue labels, for the most part, are no more than the beginnings of another round of "fucking over" the artists, writers, and musicians who created the products being sold.

The glaring arrogance and compartmentalizing it takes, to do what is done, under the guise of legitimate business, by those who do it, is akin to human trafficking for profit. To heap, yet more misery on the backs of those already harmed, simply in the name of making available "good music" to those who want what is sold by these pricks, is now as common a practice as slavery was, prior to the American Civil War.

Whether you like me or agree with me at this point, is no longer of any importance whatsoever. I am taking back my right to have an opinion, which I somehow managed to lose track of in the last year or so...or as in the words of Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone "When you got nothin, you got nothin to lose."

AS LONG AS MY GOODBYE...

2011-07-07T23:57:00.000-07:00

BY MYSELF
I CAME TO YOU
TO YOU
I CAME ALONE
FROM DISTANT
TIMES AND
DISTANT LANDS
I CAME HERE
ON MY OWN....

NOHING CARRIED
ON MY BACK
POSSESSIONS
HAVE I NONE
ALONE I CAME
ALONE I'LL LEAVE
WHEN MY
LONG WALK
IS DONE

I THE WOLF
A FOREIGNER
ALWAYS ON
MY OWN
WANDER IN
A LITTLE WHILE
BUT ALWAYS
LEAVE ALONE

CRIMSON MOONS
AND CRYSTAL STARS
AGAINST BLACK
VELVET SKY
MY HELLO
WILL NEVER LAST
AS LONG
AS MY GOODBYE...

Bobby Jameson July 7, 2011

Historical List Of Released Records By Bobby Jameson...1963 to 1977

2011-06-20T13:08:00.000-07:00

This is the most extensive list yet compiled of records released on labels by Bobby Jameson from 1963 to 1977. Bobby James was the name used on Jameson's first record in 1963 Let's Surf/Take This Lollipop. This list provides a clear history of most, but not all, of Bobby Jameson's released records on vinyl.

With the exception of $200 for Songs Of Protest And Anti Protest by Chris Lucey aka Bobby Jameson in 1965, Bobby Jameson received no royalties from his work on any of these recordings or for writing any of the songs. All I Want Is My Baby/Each And Every Day were not written by him. He received no union money for playing on these sessions or for doing the vocals on these recordings from AFTRA or Local 47. He has never received any money from ASCAP, BMI, Sesac, Harry Fox, or any other performance collection agency in the world.

Bobby Jameson's first record under the name Bobby James. Jolum 1963 with Elliot Engber playing surf guitar

Take This Lollipop Jolum 1963...first record as Bobby James aka Bobby Jameson

I'm So Lonely Talamo 1964 American release

I'm So lonely London American 1964 UK....Decca

I Wanna Love You Talamo 1964 American release

I Wanna Love You London American 1964 UK...Decca

Okey Fanoky Baby Talamo 1964

Meadow Green Talamo 1964

All I Want Is My Baby Decca. Recorded with Mick Jagger and Andrew Oldham in London 1964 UK

Each And Every Day Decca 1964 UK

All I Want Is My Baby London 1965 American release

Each And Every Day London 1965 American release

Rolling Stones Works "All I Want Is My Baby/Each And Every Day" by Bobby Jameson Deram, Polydor date?

Walking Through The Sleepy City "All I Want Is My Baby/Each And Every Day" by Bobby Jameson. Rolling Stones Works. Various labels London, Japanese Parlaphone

Rum Pum Mum Num Brit 1965 UK

I Wanna Know Brit 1965 UK

The original Songs Of Protest And Anti Protest by Chris lucey aka Bobby Jameson on Surrey Records 1965

Too Many Mornings Joy Records 1966. Another version of Songs Of Protest by Chris Lucey retitled and using Bobby Jameson's name. Released in Europe and Canada

Girl From The East written by Bobby Jameson from Chris Lucey Songs Of Protest by The Leaves "Hey Joe" single and album 1966

Hey Joe album The Leaves Mira 1966 "Girl From The East" written by Bobby Jameson

The Leaves Are Happening Capitol records 1967 Sundazed Records "Girl From The East" written by Bobby Jameson

Reconsider Baby/Low Down Funky Blues Penthouse 1966 with Frank Zappa

B-side of Reconsider Baby and Roogalator 1966 Penthouse

Gotta Find My Roogalator Penthouse 1966 with Frank Zappa

Low Down Funky Blues Penthouse 1966

All Alone/Your Sweet Lovin Current Records 1966

Mondo Hollywood "Vietnam" movie and soundtrack 1967. Also released as a single with Metropolitan Man on Mira Records 1966

Verve label side 1 Color Him In 1967

Verve label side 2 Color Him In 1967

Places Times And The People 1967 single release from Color Him In

The New Age 1967 single from Color him In

Jamie 1967 Verve single from Color Him In

Right By My Side 1967 Verve single from Color Him In

Color Him In by Bobby Jameson 1967 Verve

Last released album by Bobby Jamesoon in 1969 GRT

Last released record "Stay With Me/Long Hard Road" by Robert Parker Jameson aka Bobby Jameson in 1977 on RCA

Saturn Rings Michele O'Malley ABC Records 1969 CD Fallout 2006

"Know Yourself" written by Bobby Jameson
"Would You Like to Go" written by Bobby Jameson
"White Linen" written by Bobby Jameson and Michele O'Malley

Saturn Rings, the one and only album by Michele (nee O’Malley), was released, ostensibly, to cut-out bins by ABC Records in 1969, the product of an ongoing, commercially-stalled dalliance with cult-figure producer/arranger/songwriter Curt Boettcher. O’Malley was a vocalist for the Ballroom, the pre-Millenium/Sagittarius project on Boettcher’s resume, and it seemed that Saturn Rings would be the sure-shot to get both the recognition they sought. The list of session players and studio magicians with their hands in this thing is fairly compelling, as well: witness Lowell George, pre-Little Feat; Elliot Ingber, Zappa/Beefheart collaborator; Bobby Notkoff, pre-Rockets and Neil Young sideman; Gordon Alexander (The Association); and Bobby Jameson (a.k.a. Chris Lucey, of Songs of Protest and Anti-Protest infamy). Said list in 2006 is as much a dream session for psych-pop heads as could be assembled, but in its proper moment, nobody knew.

Rastus "Steamin" GRT early 70's 2 songs co-written by Bobby Jameson

This album by Tony Sheridan, original lead singer of The Beatles, was recorded after the death of Elvis Presley in 1977 with the Elvis Presley band. It contains 3 songs written by Bobby Jameson. Growin Pains Of Time, I've Seen It All Before, and Good Ol Music (country rock n roll)

(part 246) ROCK BOTTOM DAYS

2011-03-31T21:02:00.000-07:00

As I drove north, I kept one eye on the road and the other in my rearview mirror. I watched as everything I knew or cared about faded from sight.

I could have stayed, I suppose, found another women who wanted me around, but I was not into it anymore. They wanted to be in love, me, I just needed a friend.

I'd spent twenty-two years being somebody's lover or house guest for the most part. Only briefly had I ever had my own place and the means to pay for it. So I didn't stay, I left, but the trouble was that where I was going now, to my mother's place, was essentially part of the same old cycle: I would be a guest in someone else's home.

I had nine years of sobriety, but that, too, had had a price. In AA I was looked upon as a failure by most, because I was always in turmoil. Forget the fact that I had not gotten loaded over it, I was not happy, so I was wrong according to the conventional wisdom.

The harshness of that perception had left me isolated for the most part, and forced me to go it alone in many ways. "Hell, I know I'm fucking nuts," I thought, "and don't fit in anywhere, but I found a way not to get loaded over it. Shit! I never felt good in my life anyway, except when getting high worked."

Somewhere deep inside I seemed to know that as bad as it was sober, it would be a catastrophe loaded. This was the thought I kept close to me, not whether I was doing it right according to someone else.

I had gone where most of them had not, and I knew it. I had walked and crawled through a shit load of bad times that they may have never imagined or experienced. I had done it loaded, and now I was doing it sober.

In my view there had always been a few who understood it because of their own experience in sobriety, but there were too few of them in any given place to make much of a difference. They, like me, were floaters. Always moving and hanging on to one more day without drugs or alcohol.

For us it was the rock bottom reality of sobriety. "Just don't get loaded over it...just don't quit," we'd say to ourselves. "Just give me a pack of cigarettes and a cup of coffee and I'll ride it out."

Rock bottom days! That's where I was in 1985 as I sped up the 101. Rock bottom reality had once again come and challenged my every thought, every action, and all of my emotions.

Like Billy The Kid, I had accumulated a bad reputation. A personality that few wanted around. It had become common knowledge that I was subject to negative outbursts about everything, and had little to say that was positive.

I didn't understand much of anything that day. There was no way to reason it out at that point. What I knew for sure was, it was as hard as it had ever been, and that the single difference was, I was going through all of it sober. This I understood.

Whether I was doing it right or wrong, was something out of a fairy tale. I had already concluded that I was wrong, that wasn't even worth debating anymore. "I'm not out here because I did it right," I thought, "I'm out here because I completely fucked it up."

THE END...........

(part 245) The Van Gogh Syndrome

2011-03-26T21:36:00.000-07:00

"Vincent" by William Jameson

I felt dead alright, dead, like a walking zombie, set in motion as some cosmic joke. Given a gift, and never allowed to experience anything but misery as a result of it.

I even had a name for it. The van Gogh syndrome, because Vincent had painted with his heart, his emotions. He'd thrown himself completely and utterly into his work, but had been rejected in spite of his commitment, shooting himself at thirty-seven. His last words were, "There shall never be an end to human misery."

I too felt rejected by the world, and felt my work had been rejected as well. So now I was rejecting myself, the creator of the work.

I had tried killing myself numerous times in the past, only to have failed, so I was not willing to test that path again. But inside I was as good as dead.

The excited kid with the big smile was nowhere to be found. The tough "live through it all to fight another day" individual had all but disappeared. What was left was a shell. A desperate remnant of what might have been.

The sadness, and sense of complete and total loss, was extravagantly heaped upon my psyche in those moments. All that I had ever known, or wanted, was abandoned on the hardwood floors of Carol's apartment as I headed out the door.

I was too exhausted to be angry, too broken to mount a counter attack against the tides of change. They swept over me a if I were not there.

That dismal day in 1985 seared its way into my soul, branding itself, and its destructiveness, on me forever. Like a life-threatening wound, turned to a scar, it remains with me to this day.

I don't remember whether I talked to Carol on the day I left, or not, but I know I didn't speak to anyone else, except my brother Bill.

Maybe it was because I was afraid that more misery would be inflicted on me if I asked for help and got none. That fear of further rejection caused me to close off the world and retreat into a self-protective cocoon.

The only other human beings I would deal with, at that point, would be my brother Bill and mother, and even that was something I found incalculable, as the next possible threat.

I drove through the streets of Hollywood, and onto the Sunset Strip, on my way out of town. I passed by each place where I had attempted suicide, each place where my body and mind had been maimed in the past.

It was around ten o-clock in the morning as I drove past each memory-soaked location. The bright sunlight beat into my sleepless eyes, causing added distress to my exhausted mind and body.

With each landmark I passed, came the flood of emotion-filled highlights of the event. The day, the reason, the weather, the street, the building, the drug, the tower, the year, all of it. It just kept playing in my head.

The history of Bobby Jameson was written on the streets and buildings of the town I was leaving. I had given myself to it in a way that is indescribable in words. I had been a part of it and it a part of me, for what seemed like forever.

I had gone to grade school in Laurel Canyon, and then left as a child, but vowed to return, which I did. Wherever I was, I was in L.A. in my head. I could always see it, feel it, want it. If I left I was coming back, if I was there I was home.

Bobby Jameson and Hollywood were not two things. Not a person and a place, not a mere town with a resident, they were one thing, a single unit.

They existed as a reflection of each other, like a mirror reflecting the image of the observer...the observer seeing himself not only in, but as the thing reflecting.

(part 244) ANOTHER CALL...ANOTHER TEAR...

2011-03-26T14:42:00.000-07:00

My brother Bill

I was torn in a way I had never known before. I felt like a fool who had finally awakened to the realization of my own twenty-year folly.

Where once I had been convinced I would succeed, I now felt awkward in the presence of my own past, uncomfortable in the gaze of my own eyes.

How could I have been this wrong for so long? How did I manage to deceive myself so many times? These questions battered me as I collected the last of my belongings.

I didn't want my tapes. I left them where they were, relics of the past that I would leave behind. They were no longer my work, no longer my hopes, they were no more than evidence of my failure.

I had nine years of sobriety, and my life was as fucked up as it had ever been. In the beginning, I had had great and wonderful expectations of a new life, but now, nine years later, I stood in the midst of the cold hard facts.

I was sober alright, but as miserable as I had ever been. Strangely, there was no desire to drink or use. For whatever reason, I was committed to sobriety, even now.

I marveled momentarily at this realization, marveled at my capacity to eat so much pain and disappointment and not get loaded.

What I was learning now was the hardest thing. It had taken nine years of sobriety to finally convince me to alter my path, but I had no path, other than that which I'd pursued my whole life, so the future appeared black before me.

I didn't know where I was going to go. There was no one anywhere I could ask. I had no money, just over a $100, and a used car.

As a last resort, and because I did not know what else to do, I decided the only person I could call was my mother. The bitterness of that in itself was enough to cause me to think of blowing my brains out.

For me, it implied complete and utter failure, the last chance saloon as it were. I hated that call more than any I had made or received in a very long time, but there was no one else.

I hadn't slept at all when I made the call. I remember well the sound of my brother Bill's voice answering.

"Hello!"

"Hi, Bill, it's me, Bob."

"Hey, bro," he answered, "how are you?"

"Not so hot," I said, "having a tough time out here."

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"Same old shit," I said, "Hey do you think it would be OK if I came up there for a few days?"

"Hey, mom," I heard him yell, "it's Bob on the phone. Is it OK if he comes up here?" He quickly returned to the phone, "Yeah, man, it's OK, you can come."

"OK," I said, "that's good. It'll just be for two or three days. Thanks, Bill."

"Yeah, sure," he replied, "When are you coming?"

"Today," I said, "Later today, if that's OK."

"Yeah," he said, "It's OK. I'll tell mom."

"OK," I said again, "I'll see you guys later today."

"Alright, man, I'll see you later," he said.

"OK! And thanks again, Bill. Goodbye."

"Goodbye, Bob."

I hung up the phone. I felt like I was dead.

(part 243) AND IT HAD TO BE TODAY

2011-03-25T17:36:00.000-07:00

It was no joke. I was pissed off and fed up. I hadn't gotten anything from Martin Cohen except more of the same old shit. It was, for whatever reason, the straw that finally broke the camel's back

I had learned in AA to look at my part in things, to see what I had done, or was doing, that caused my troubles. I had been practicing that for nine years, taking responsibility for my own actions. I was not perfect, but I was diligent. What I was running into, time and time again, was the lack of responsibility taken by others.

In AA people told me to let it go. That's all they ever said to me. Even when I had been wronged they'd say, "Let it go." Because I'd let it go repeatedly, I was now sitting in the results of that philosophy.

Others, it seemed, were allowed to commit their wrongs, and I was subject to accepting it, or at least that had been the lesson.

It had become a one sided arrangement from where I was standing. The bar I had to reach appeared a great deal higher than the one others set for themselves.

By 1985, I had painted myself into a corner where I could no longer live. I'd spent twenty-two years, drunk, loaded, and now clean and sober, letting others off the hook. If they owed me money I didn't force them to pay me. If there was a contract, I let them break it.

People made promises, but didn't keep them. They did things that caused me harm and then excused themselves through self-serving forms of exoneration. But when I fucked up, they gathered like a flock of vultures to condemn me for my shortcomings, of which there were many.

"OK!" I said out loud, "I'm an asshole! You win! I'll move my ass outta your apartment forever Carol, and you can make your fucking sponsor proud. I'll leave this Goddamn town, too, and the fucking music business forever."

I finally got it through my head. I was nobody! There wasn't any reason left to stay. There wasn't anyone who was gonna help me get this shit straightened out.

I made up my mind. I made my decision. I was done. It was finally over, I was finally through. In a split second, I knew for the first time in my life that giving up my dream was the only way I was ever going to have any peace in my life.

I had done my best for as long as I could, and had blown it. I had failed to achieve what I had set out to accomplish long ago.

"You can have it," I said, "You can have it all. You don't owe me a thing, and I don't owe you anymore either, none of you, I quit."

It was a declaration, and with it the umbilical cord that had held me for so long was cut. The feeding tube to my dreams was now gone.

I looked around what had been my studio and bedroom for months, and figured out what I would take with me, throwing it into plastic garbage bags destined for the trunk of my car. "I hope you'll be happy, Carol," I said to the walls, "but I don't think you're gonna like this."

I wondered who I would say goodbye to, but there wasn't a single person in the whole town I wanted to tell I was leaving. Not one person I would miss. Frankly, I didn't think anyone would care whether I left or not.

In AA, people had already blown me off and told me over and over to go get a job, as if I were nothing more than a fool living in a pipe dream. No one had ever bothered to find out anything about my past or what I had actually done for the last two decades.

So now I, too, was ready to capitulate, convinced as well, that my life was nothing more than a childish dream, which I would finally put away.

To accomplish this, though, I would have to leave L.A. and Hollywood. I would have to get away from the streets, the lights, the people, places, and things that had owned me for so long.

I had to cut it off clean and for good, like alcohol and drugs. I had to quit cold turkey and break the addiction. I had to do it today...

It was now or never, I reasoned. It had to be for real, and at that moment, it was the most real it had ever been in my life.

(part 242) THE CALL TO MARTIN COHEN

2011-03-24T17:43:00.000-07:00

I had run on empty before, but in 1985 I was completely out of gas. The wear and tear of twenty-two years of "keep on keeping on" had finally taken their ultimate toll.

Suicide attempts, record deals that never went anywhere, endless songs, no money, failure after failure, addiction and hopelessness, had finally won out over any resilience I may once have had.

I was sitting in the compound ruins of my life when I called Martin Cohen's office on the day I will never forget. Dialing his number was the direct result of having run into John Rhys.

It was that chance meeting that brought Martin Cohen's name up at all. It was John's success with Martin that gave me the idea to call.

The fact that Martin and Herbie Cohen still owed me $3700 dollars was a vague thought in my mind at the time. It was desperation at it's finest that led me to the slaughter.

"Martin! How are you?" I said uncomfortably.

"I'm fine," said Martin, "what can I do for you?"

"Well,"I said, "I ran into John Rhys the other day, and he told me that you were his lawyer in The Rose thing."

"Yes that's true," he replied.

"Well I told John I ought to call you, because I have been trying to get paid for stuff I did for years, and thought maybe you could help me get my money," I said.

"Money from who?" he asked.

"From everybody I ever made a record or wrote a song for," I said.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"ASCAP, BMI, record companies, publishers, everybody," I said.

"That's impossible," said Martin, "that can't happen."

"Well it happened to me Martin," I said, "It's still happening. I've never been paid in my life."

"I'm sorry Bobby, but that just doesn't happen," he said again.

"It does happen Martin," I replied, becoming more urgent, "I have never gotten a penny from anybody for any song I ever wrote or record I made."

"Listen, Bobby! That's just not the way it works in this business. What you're telling me just doesn't happen these days, there are too many ways to prevent it," he said.

"Martin!" I yelled, "Why do you keep saying that? I don't care how many things there are to prevent it. I have never been paid in my life."

"Look, Bobby," he said, "I don't want to sit here and argue with you about it. What you're telling me is an impossibility, so if there's nothing else you want to say, I don't think I can help you with your problem."

I stared at the receiver in my hand in disbelief, and then put it back to my ear. "Yeah Ok, Martin," I said, "I understand, sorry I bothered you."

"No bother at all, Bobby," said Martin, "Sorry I couldn't be more help."

"OK thanks. Thanks for taking my call," I said.

"You're welcome," he said, "have a good day."

I sat with the phone in my hand, listening to the dial tone. It sounded like an electric drill digging into my brain. My anger, and feelings of worthlessness, collided inside me like freight trains slamming into each other head on.

I wanted to drive to Martin's office and kick the shit out of him. "That fucking asshole!" I thought, "That can't happen! Yeah sure, Martin," I said out loud, "It can't happen except it did. It happened to me. Over and over and over. Fuck!" I screamed, "That fucking asshole and his brother are two of the pricks who did this kind of shit to me. Why the fuck did I ever call him? Why the fuck do I do this kind of shit to myself?"

My emotions spiraled out of control. I could not contain my reaction to Martin Cohen's arrogance on the telephone. "It can't happen! It can't happen! Fuck!" I screamed again.

My mind raced back to the day I'd tried to kill myself on St.Ives Dr. in the 70's at Gavin's house, because Martin and Herbie had cut me off, and now he had the balls to tell me it couldn't happen, when he had been one of the assholes that had done it to me.

Where the fuck was I supposed to go? What the fuck was I supposed to do? It seemed that everybody had an answer about me. No matter what part they played in it, I was always the problem.

No one ever looked at their part, just mine. Carol and that fucking telephone. Martin fucking Cohen and his asshole brother Herbie, my ex-girlfriend and her father, Dennis and George, Steve fucking Clark, Ken Handler, Randy Wood, Andrew Oldham, and Tony Alamo...

All of them had had a part in it. All of them had fucked me over one way or another. I couldn't take it anymore. I was losing my fucking mind.

I had to get out of this town before I killed someone, before I killed myself...

(part 241) KILL ME ONCE AND KILL ME TWICE...

2011-03-23T16:47:00.000-07:00

The check was a vivid reminder of how deeply never getting paid for a single song had cut into my life. It was a bleeding gash in my psyche.

I was glad John Rhys got paid. I was miserable because Bobby Jameson never had. I was not part of that club in any way, and never had been.

No matter how many songs I wrote, or records I made, I'd never received a single dime in royalties from any record company, publisher, manager, or collection agency, such as BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, or Harry Fox Agency.

I was brutally aware of my lack of power in that capacity, and try as I may, and I tried a hundred times, I had not, and could not, get any of it straightened out.

My answer had always been to write another song, make another record, and hope that someday I would make it work. I had asked every person, in every new deal I'd been involved with for twenty years, to help me.

The truth was, nobody cared. They always said, "Let's hear what your new stuff sounds like, and if it's good, and you get a hit, then we can go back and straighten out your past, because then we'll have the leverage. So you gotta get a hit, Bobby."

I'd lived and died on that nonsense. I had watched my life and career disintegrate over two decades following that bullshit philosophy. The philosophy of future success, down the road happiness.

But now, the real facts were beating the crap out of me for the thousandth time. There had been no future happiness or cleaning up the past. The past was now present, and scrawled in blood on the walls of my future.

It was a circular hell I lived in. Whatever I had seen and done and managed to survive, was destined to reappear, at some point, to be relived again and again.

I could not convince anyone of any of this. No one gave a shit, they never had. No one knew what I was talking about, because no one but me had all of the facts and history.

People who knew me had no idea that I had ever done as many things in as many places as I had. They didn't know I went to England and recorded with Mick Jagger. They didn't know who Chris Lucey was, or that I was him, and they didn't care.

I was a multiple personality with multiple pasts, trying to pawn myself off as an individual, when in reality, I was a group of individuals splintered out of the life of someone called Bobby Jameson.

I was the only person in the world who knew all the parts in any cohesive way. I had not, and could not, make clear to anyone what this meant.

There were songs and records all over the place. There were starts and stops, and starts again, galore. It covered two continents, multiple countries, companies, and publishers, and had gone on for over two decades. But be that as it may, I had failed utterly to convey to anyone, at any time, the depth and complexity of the problem.

I had lived, and continued to live, in my own inability to stop the madness and get it straightened out. I stood at the crossroads of my life and knew it, as I sat alone in the dimming light at Carol's

All that I had done since 1963 was behind me, and what I would do now lay before me. I had no idea of what that would be or what it would mean.

I resolved in my mind to get Martin Cohen on the phone and see if I could get him to assist me in getting my money from ASCAP. I hadn't talked to him in years, and didn't have any idea if he would even speak to me, let alone agree to help me.

It had been Martin and his brother Herbie Cohen, in the 70's, who had been administering a publishing company of mine, and paying me a weekly salary.

I'd gotten into a beef with Herbie one night at the Troubador, which ended in a near fist fight, the end result being, I was cut off financially by the Cohen Brothers. Shortly thereafter, I attempted to kill myself by taking a masssive overdose of a hundred and twenty pills.

So this was the person, over a decade later, who I was now committed to asking for help.

(240) ME AND THE BOXES OF MY LIFE...

2011-03-22T17:43:00.000-07:00

My mind was going a million miles an hour. The check John Rhys had shown me was another deadly reminder of how completely broke I was and how dependent on others I had become.

He had gotten more money for publishing one song than I had received in my whole life for writing hundreds of songs.

I headed back to Carol's apartment to try and organize my thoughts and emotions into some sort of cohesive plan of action.

She'd said that I didn't have to leave immediately, that I had time to make other arrangements, so I was determined to use the time to figure out my next move.

As I drove, I stared out at the city around me, feeling the emotions of twenty years slamming me against the seat of my car.

I stared into the past, recalling the young boy who had come here with his guitar and dreams so many years ago. I felt his excitement and power, the sheer magic of his expectations.

But there was no magic now. Just a forty year old nobody with a used car and empty pockets, driving back to a place where he had been told he was no longer welcome. "The story of my life," I thought, "always leaving, never staying anywhere for very long."

I had repeated this so many times it had become my life style. Coming and going, from this place to that, with next to nothing to show for it in the end.

The only thing I had a lot of was songs that nobody wanted, records that nobody cared about or remembered, endless home recordings done in rooms where I labored unnoticed for too many years.

This was my legacy. Cardboard boxes of Bobby Jameson's life. Boxes with no home. Boxes of emotions, my emotions, trapped on paper and magnetic recording tape, sitting in silence and not welcome...anywhere.

I had become a derelict over time. A wandering hobo with my dreams in a box and no place to put us. I'd worn out my welcome in every single place, with every single person in twenty two years. Twenty two years had passed since I first walked into United Recorders on Sunset Blvd. and recorded Let's Surf in 1963.

I laughed at myself for remembering it, amused by the naive kid who sang his heart out back then. Back when it was all in front of me instead of behind me, chasing me...

This was my life. A bunch of spiral note books filled with words that nobody saw, melodies that no one ever heard or cared about. This was my life that day in 1985...This was it, as I drove back to Carol's alone.

I unlocked the door and called out. No answer, she was not there. I went in and stared at the tape recorder, still waiting to go to work, but there were no songs to record, no ideas burning to be noticed and captured on tape.

The amp, equalizer, and speakers sat like mutes, staring at me, waiting to be commanded into action, waiting to light and hum their way into activity, but no such command would come.

I dropped like a heap on the edge of the bed and stared at the floor. I lit a cigarette and watched the smoke curl upward into the dim light of the room where I'd worked so hard for months.

I glanced out to the hall and saw the telephone sitting there in a mass of twisted cord. I replayed the pictures of me throwing it against the wall out of frustration.

I broke down in tears, and watched while tiny puddles began to form on the floor next to my boots. I was alone and tired. Alone with my thoughts, feelings, and the nagging picture of that Goddamn fucking check of John's. Just me alone, with the boxes of my life.

(part 239) A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME

2011-03-21T21:25:00.000-07:00

The Rose

John Rhys

Carol's stern look of, "I'm gonna teach you a lesson," peered back at me from across the room. She had too much power over my life, and I knew it to the bone at that moment.

I was subject, at any given time, to the decisions of others, because of my living circumstances. I had next to nothing of my own, so those who I fed off of were in charge, one way or another. It seemed to always be their house and their stuff.

I thought about getting mad and fighting with her for position, and I probably would have prevailed had I done so, but inside I was tired. Inside I was losing the will to keep pushing back.

As I studied Carol's face, I remained silent, wordless, which was odd for me because I always had something to say, but not this time. There were no words at all. I looked down at the floor like a hurt child, and then walked away.

She called after me, "You don't have to leave today, you can have some time to make plans." I didn't respond to her words, I just left it where it was, like a dead piece of meat hanging on a hook.

My emotions raced. "Fight back, Bobby," I said to myself, "you know you can get her to change her mind."

I walked back to the room where Carol was and said, "There's something I gotta tell you, Carol. Don't worry, I'm not gonna try and convince you to change your mind, but there's something I gotta say."

She looked up at me from the couch and said, "OK, I'll listen."

"This is your place," I said, "and you can do whatever you want, but for you to listen to some broad in Alanon who never met me, and doesn't know shit about my life, or what I been through, and then follow her advice to throw me out, is about as fucked a thing as I have ever heard from you."

"Well she's my sponsor," said Carol, "and I have to follow her advice or what good is it to have a sponsor?"

"Yeah," I said, "well she may be your sponsor, but you picked a real asshole to take direction from. Did you bother to tell her why I threw the phone at the wall? Or did you just leave that part out so you could be the poor little innocent victim?"

"I told her I was afraid, because you scared me when you got so angry and broke the phone." she replied.

"Yeah," I said again, "but did you tell her how many times I asked you not to do it, because I was recording, and when the phone rings it ruins what I'm doing?"

"No, not exactly," she said, "I didn't put it that way."

"Well thanks a lot, Carol," I said, "Thanks for giving her a clear picture of what really happened."

"I was afraid," she said.

"Afraid of what?" I asked.

"I don't know, just afraid, you got so angry and I was scared."

"OK," I said, "I got it, you were afraid. You set it up by putting the phone there, and I finally got pissed off and threw it against the wall and it scared you."

"Yes!" she replied, "I was afraid."

"Well maybe if you didn't keep putting the phone there it wouldn't have happened, Carol?"

"Maybe not," she said, "but I still got scared, because you got so angry at me."

I left it at that and exited the room. I didn't want to keep going until I got her to change her mind. I didn't even know why. I just didn't want to do it anymore.

For the next few days I wandered around trying to figure out what to do with myself. I was in Hollywood and ran into John Rhys outside Hollywood Recorders. John had produced Rastus for GRT Records, and had invited me to Ohio in 1970.

"Hey, brother," he said, "How ya been, Bobby?"

"Not that good, John," I said, "just got thrown outta where I was living."

"Where was that?" he asked.

"Carol's place," I said, "I threw a telephone against the wall cause it rang when I was recording something. It happened too many times. Anyway, she got all tripped out and said I had to go."

"Man! I can't believe she'd ever throw you out. I thought she was madly in love with you," he said.

"Yeah, well I guess she didn't love me enough, John, because now I am pretty much homeless, and I'm out here trying to figure out what to do and where to go. How's it going with you?" I asked.

"Great man, I won my case."

"What case?" I asked.

"Well, you know I published the song The Rose, and it was in the movie, right?" he asked.

"No, John, I didn't know that." I said.

"Well I did, years ago, he said, "for a chick named Amanda, who wrote it, Amanda McBroom"

"Yeah, OK," I said.

"Well, when the movie was a hit, and money started coming in, I didn't get paid," he said, "somebody else was claiming to be the publisher. So my lawyer, Martin Cohen,"

"Mutt Cohen?" I interrupted, "Herbie's brother?"

"Yes!" said John, "Herbie Cohen's brother Martin sued Fox six years ago, and we finally won.

"Wow!, I said, "that's great, John, I'm really happy for you."

John, smiling like a Cheshire cat, pulled out the evidence of his victory, saying, "Check this out, brother."

It was a check to John for just shy of a quarter of a million dollars. I stared at it in fascination because of the amount. "Wow! I've never seen a check for that much money, John. Man, that is a real trip!"

I looked at John's smiling face and I remember my feelings as I realized the depth of his good fortune, which stood in stark contrast to the bleak realities of my own existence.

"That's great, John," I said again, "I know Martin. He used to administer a publishing company of mine with Herbie: Arizonz Music. I'll call him and see if he can get my money from ASCAP for me, they're in the same building."

"Yeah!" said John, "you should give em a call, definitely."

(part 238) GROW UP AND ACT LIKE A MAN

2011-03-12T21:20:00.000-08:00

Carol Paulus

I left the building, hurrying as I went, not wanting to encounter the police in the mood I was in. I knew if that happened it would be bad, worse than it already was.

I felt like shit. A combination of anger, disappointment, and confusion. How the fuck could I have money, but not be allowed to access it? It was like going to the bank and being told you couldn't withdraw your own funds.

Things never changed in my life that they didn't get worse. "I live in some cosmic joke," I thought to myself, "like a starving man allowed to look through the windows of restaurants, but not allowed to eat the food he saw."

It was driving me insane. I cursed my life and God, as I scurried along the sidewalk in the hot California sun. I felt conspicuous in the pounding brightness of afternoon, like a night walker suddenly caught in the glare of daylight.

"What could I do, who could I call, where do I start?" I wondered. This was my life. An unending series of desperate moments, piled on top of each other, like logs. Always another problem, rarely a solution.

I had no money to get a lawyer. I was just out here by myself, trying for the umpteenth time to cope with the latest pile of crap that fell on me.

I headed back to Carol's place off Olympic Blvd., just east of La Cienega. It was an older style California Spanish looking duplex, where she lived on the ground floor and the owner lived upstairs.

I found a place to park, and gathered up my pile of old records from the seat, fearing they would warp in the hot sun. I made my way inside, feeling like a man running from a crime scene. As the door closed behind me, I relaxed slightly, assured that I was safe for the moment.

Another crappy day for me, another shit outcome that favored my opponents. It was another lonely moment in a life of lonely moments. I looked around for Carol, to no avail, she was not there. Didn't know if I was glad or not about that. I was in need of talking, but had no one to talk to.

Later on, she showed up, and I began relaying my story about ASCAP and the fact there was money of mine, but that they wouldn't give it to me, and the part about the non-existent co-writer who was getting paid.

I blasted my way through the day's adventure in a flurry of angry rhetoric, but sensed that she was not in any way connecting with me. I finished abruptly and sought some sort of response from her.

Carol was a member of Alanon, a program for those affected by others, such as me, who were drunks and/or addicts. She had been to see her sponsor and had told her about me throwing the telephone against the wall, because it had rung while I was recording.

She informed me that her sponsor had suggested that I be asked to permanently vacate Carol's apartment. She had said, "What I needed, was to be tossed out in the street for my own good, and that maybe that would make me grow up and act like a man."

I stood in stunned silence, looking at Carol's face, waiting for the part where she said she would never do that, but it didn't come. It was just an empty deadness that filled the air. A place where words no longer existed in my favor. A moment in time that never ended...-

(part 237) ASCAP AND A BROKEN HEART

2011-03-10T18:04:00.000-08:00

There was no interest at all in what I had done in the past, or was doing in 1985. My endless frustration at continuing to try, was now reaching lethal proportions. In a final gesture to accomplish something of consequence, I gathered up as many records of mine as I could find, and set out for the offices of ASCAP.

They were located on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood, where I'd been before when I'd signed with them in the early 70's, so I knew exactly where to go. I got off the elevator and made my way inside where I told someone who I was and why I was there.

Within a short time, I was talking to various persons and showing them my identification, to prove I was who I said I was, and showing them a pile of records with my name on them. My point was that I had made all these records, but had never been paid a single penny for any of them.

I told them I knew there had to be some money, because some of the records had sold fairly well, and I was there to find out how much, and then to get paid whatever the amount might be. They all looked at each other in a confused way, as if I were the first person in history to have ever shown up in their office to make such a request.

Soon, another individual was put on the case and began looking through a computer for information about me, and sure enough there I was. He acknowledged that there was indeed money, but said he could not tell me how much. Confused, I pushed back and asked, "Well, it's my money so I have a right to know how much it is."

Again he refused to give me an amount, but said it was substantial. "Substantial...what does that mean? If you have money that belongs to me, I want it, I'm broke, I earned that money."

Once again he said he could not tell me how much it was, or give it to me. "Why not?" I asked, "it's mine."

"It shows that payments were made to the co-writer," he said.

"There is no co-writer," I said, I wrote that stuff by myself."

"Well that's not what it shows here," he said, "It shows payments being made to the co-writer."

"Well who's the co-writer, then, what's their name," I asked.

"Sorry," he said, "I can't tell you that either."

By this time, I was getting pissed off at the explanation I was getting from him. "You know," I said angrily, "I have fuckin had it with this bullshit! If you have money of mine, I ought to be able to get it right now."

"I'm sorry my friend," he said, "that's not how it works here."

"Well, how does it work here, man," I yelled, "How does it work? Seems to me it doesn't work at all. I tell you who I am, you say I got money, but you won't give it to me. You say there is a co-writer, which there isn't, but you won't tell me what their name is. Sounds like nothing fucking works, if you ask me."

"OK! Ok now! You can't come in here and start acting this way. This is a business office and we are here to insure that things get done fairly and accurately, so if you have a dispute, you need to get a lawyer and deal with this issue properly," he said.

"Properly!" I yelled, "No one has ever dealt with me properly in my life. All I do is get fucked around, over and over again. That's properly according to you and the rest of this Goddamned music business. You got my money and you won't give it to me and you tell me to get a lawyer, but I don't have the Goddamned money to get a lawyer, man, I am fucking broke!"

This guy's eyes were getting bigger and bigger, and the whole place was now aware of who I was and what was going on. Another person came out of an office to intervene, saying, "Mr. Jameson, the police have been called, so unless you want to be arrested, I suggest that you leave the premises now."

I looked at her face, wondering how in the hell I always ended- up at the ass-end of every single problem I encountered in this God-awful industry for all these years. I didn't know whether to scream at her or punch her out. I looked around at the faces staring at me like I was nothing more than a wild animal...Inside, my heart broke for the thousandth time, I hesitated for a moment, and then turned and walked out the door.

(part 236) THE MEADOW

2011-02-28T00:44:00.000-08:00

MY LIFE...
A PROMISE
OF EVERYTHING
WITH THE
EMPTINESS OF
NOTHING

DECADES PASSED
AND PILED UP LIKE
OLD TIMBER
IN A NEGLECTED
MEADOW
OUT BACK

OCCASIONALLY
SOMEONE
STOPPED BY
ACTING
INTERESTED
IN THE WOOD

THEY CAME
WITH THE
YEARS
AND I LISTENED
BUT THEY
JUST TALKED

THAT'S SOME
GOOD OLD
TIMBER THERE
THEY'D SAY...
EVER TRY TO
SELL IT...

USED TO
I'D REPLY...
DON'T ANYMORE
THOUGH...
NO ONE
WANTS TO PAY...

WHATTA YA WANT
FOR IT
THEY'D ASK...
NOTHING
I'D SAY
JUST TAKE IT

A WHILE AGO
I LOOKED
AND
THE OLD
TIMBERS WERE
STILL THERE

LIKE ME
THEY HAVE
LEARNED TO
BE AT HOME
OUT BACK
IN THE MEADOW...

Bobby Jameson Feb 28, 2011

(part 235) L.A. NIGHTMARE

2011-02-17T15:14:00.000-08:00

L.A. Nightmare was, and is, a summation of all that my life had been, and had become, as a result of my time in Hollywood pursuing a career in music.

It is not a great song by any means, but does bring into focus my feelings and thoughts in 1985 about how I perceived myself in relationship to L.A. and the music industry.

It is in many ways a position of resignation and anger, more than anything else, capturing the deeply troubled nature of what had happened and what had not happened.

For some, it is a deeply negative portrayal of loss and failure, that many have questioned as accurate or necessary. For me, it is a clarifying capsule of history crushed into a few minutes of my life.

Whether I was wronged as much as I have said, and believe that I was, is for others to debate. I know what I was like when I started in 1963, and what I had become by 1985.

The seven songs, known now as the Closet Recordings 1985, stand out in a unique way because they are the last recordings I made.

Their significance to me, looking back at my own history, over a quarter century later, places them in a particularly important square on the checker board of my past.

I have often wondered why these recordings were, and are, the last ones. This question will hopefully be answered in the continuing search through my own memory.

In the beginning, I was an excited kid whose vision of making records had catapulted him into the limelight in the 60's. Twenty some years later I was a forty year old has-been, who many had less than stellar opinions about.

But in the writing and recording of these seven songs, I had, in my way of thinking, captured, as best I could back then, a product that I had done all by myself at almost no cost, which stand out as at least adequate.

The ever rising costs of making records back then was proven to be more folly than reality, by my own efforts in managing to produce these recordings in a bedroom on basic equipment.

It was proof that making music and capturing it, by any means, was far more possible than what a bloated industry continually claimed as legitimate costs to produce recordings in a studio.

I was not only writing songs and recording them, I was saying, in my own limited way, that what had become acceptable, as far as costs, was in fact unacceptable nonsense conjured up by charlatans in positions of power.

In many ways I was proving to myself that I had learned the art of recording, and was proving it by creating this series. I had been in need of the test, as it were, and wanted to see if I could pass.

When I finally finished the project, I felt as though I had succeeded, but soon found that others either did not agree with that assessment, or were just flatly uninterested in me or my work.

Those who listened halfheartedly to the tape, had nothing but negative comments about the work, saying, "It's dated, and not commercial. No one's interested in this kind of music anymore, Bobby, sounds like you're stuck in the past."

After awhile I resigned myself to the fact that once again I failed at creating anything that anyone would ever consider valid.

I was torn between my own sense of failure and the conviction that those who I tried to get interested in the work were idiots, and incapable of hearing what I was doing or how I'd managed to do it.

As for recording at Carol Paulus's apartment, and her part in this particular undertaking, I recall vividly the day when the telephone had been placed directly outside the door to where I was hard at work.

In the middle of a take on one of the songs, it rang, and destroyed again what I was doing. On that occasion I flew into a rage and grabbed the telephone and threw it as hard as I could against a wall.

Carol's horrified reaction to my rage further infuriated me because it lacked completely any real concern for why I was upset, or for the work I was doing.

I'd spent five months on the project and was exhausted by then, and had had, one too many times, endured the ringing of the notorious telephone.

I did not hide my anger in any way at that point, and flatly accused her of not giving a shit about my work.

"Ya know Carol, if you gave a shit about what I was doing you wouldn't keep leaving the fucking phone right outside the door where I'm recording. It's got a Goddamn fifty foot cord on it, so why do you keep putting it here?" I yelled.

(part 234) FORCED TO PICK YOUR COTTON

2011-01-31T15:14:00.000-08:00

Me, Carol Paulus, and Ringo Starr

Walking through the fire is exactly what I was doing, in 1985, in spades. On one hand I was dedicated, on a level close to obsession, to creating and finishing these songs, while on the other, I watched my life continue to spiral downward.

A prominent, if not the most prominent, factor in my life, was that I was nearly always somebody's house guest, as opposed to being situated in my own surroundings.

No matter how hard I worked, or how long I worked, I had never attained the wherewithal to retain and maintain even the most minimal of housing for myself. I was, for the most part, a live-in toy, for a whole lot of women.

Good or bad, my talent for making myself desirable to members of the opposite sex, was how I existed, for the most part, from 1964 to 1985. It was singularly one of the worst problems I had to reckon with.

I was nearly always subject to the demands of whose home I was in. There was little freedom to be myself at any given moment, for fear of upsetting whomever was my benefactor.

This was a double-edged sword that I was constantly at odds with. "Thank you for having me, but I'm really fed up with having to be had."

Whether it was my hours, the type of music I was writing, or my frustrations at being hogtied by my own needs, these problems plagued me to the point of angry outbursts.

I felt like a beggar in the world. Always in distress because of conditions, and forced to live where I did not want to be, so I could accomplish what I wanted to do, which was to work.

The song, I Don't Beg Nobody, is an example of my need to voice my dissatisfaction with these arrangements, even though those arrangements allowed me a way to complain about them; another dichotomy.

The lyrics, and the feel of the song, are also aimed at the music and record business as a whole, and at the individuals from my past who I felt had sold me out for one reason or another.

"I may have been forced to pick your cotton, but I'll always be my own man." These are not lyrics from I Don't Beg Nobody, but they do sum up for me what the song represents as a statement.

Being a beggar of sorts was what I was, while at the same time demanding of myself not to see myself as one. The point, for me, was to remember that the conditions of my life existed in the way they did as a result of concrete consequences, not by choice.

To listen to others opinion about me, was to hear that it was all my own fault, and that others had merely tried to help me. My version was set forth in the lyrics and attitudes of the songs I was writing and recording at the time.

I DON'T BEG NOBODY

I'M NOT YOUR FOOL BABY
I'M THE KING
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
FOR NO DAMN THING
YOU AIN'T GOT THE MONEY
OR ENOUGH GOOD LOOKS
I'M AN OLD CATFISH
I DON'T BITE NO HOOKS

I DON'T BEG NOBODY
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
FOR NO DAMN THING

YOU DON'T PAY MY BILLS
YOU DIDN'T BUY MY CAR
YOU'RE A REAL GOOD LOOKER
AND A CANDY BAR
BUT I'M THE KING BEE BABY
AND I KNOW HOW TO STING
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
FOR NO DAMN THING

I DON'T BEG NOBODY
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
FOR NO DAMN THING

I'LL TREAT YOU GOOD
IF YOU'RE GOOD TO ME
BUT IF YOU START ACTING EVIL
I'LL SET YOU FREE
LISTEN TO ME WOMAN
CAUSE HERE'S WHAT'S TRUE
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
AND I WON'T BEG YOU

I DON'T BEG NOBODY
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
FOR NO DAMN THING

Bobby Jameson 1985

(part 233) WALK THROUGH THE FIRE

2011-01-25T16:32:00.000-08:00

I was living at Carol's for one reason: I could work there, even with the drawbacks, better than any place else I could find.

The tape deck and amplifier I was using were hers, so because of that, working there made sense.

The electric guitar I played was borrowed, as was the Rockman Effects box. I owned the small Yamaha keyboard I used for the drums, bass, and organ, and the acoustic guitar and speakers were mine.

I scammed a $75 equalizer and a $14.95 Shure microphone as a gift from a lady named Lee, and the cassette deck was again Carol's, I believe.

Working on these songs, in 1985, kept me busy as well as crazy. I wouldn't eat enough, sleep enough, or treat myself like a human being, because being human was the last thing I felt like.

I resembled a machine more than a person. A machine dedicated to my precise programmed assignment, which was to write and record these songs.

Somewhere in my tortured psyche there was still the hope that, once accomplished, someone would say, "Hey these are really good."

I would lie to myself about this, saying, "I don't care," but in all honesty, that old need was still churning way down deep inside me, but enough of the "I don't give a fuck who likes these" was there to allow me to write and record what I wanted.

Once again, I penned a blues song that was descriptive of how I was at the time. It involved very real pieces of my failing life experience and the emotional turmoil I was in.

The two failed relationships, sober, that ended dismally, and two business arrangements, sober, that had also failed in the long run to change my life into something more reliable and predictable.

The anger, defeat, abandonment, and sheer lack of hope, became lyrically, the bedrock of the song "Movin To Hell." It was, and is, a dark, yet concrete, evaluation of my life then as well as now.

The blues for me was a workshop of the heart and soul. A single place where the bleak realities of struggle and defeat could be set to music and tempo, and allowed to fill the air with a message and plea for something better, a society, claimed out of love by many, but only truly understood by one's own walk through the fire.

WOKE UP THIS MORNIN
WITH AILIN HEALTH
CALL ME A DOCTOR
GONNA KILL MYSELF
IT DON'T MATTER
AND I DON'T CARE
I'LL BE MOVIN TO HELL
IF THE BLUES AIN'T THERE

WORK SO HARD
CAN'T SAVE A DIME
SOME DAYS YOU DON'T
WANT TO GO ON TRYIN
IT DON'T MATTER
WHAT YOU DO
YOU CAN'T GET RID
OF THE GODDAMN BLUES

HAD YOU A WOMAN
NOW SHE'S GONE
SHE FINALLY LEFT YOU
WITH A HEART OF STONE
IT DON'T MATTER
WHAT YOU SAY
THOSE GODDAMN BLUES
THEY JUST WON'T GO AWAY

Bobby Jameson 1985

There are 2 versions of Movin To Hell. The first is an acoustic version. The second is an electric version which was cut at the same time in 1985. The edition of the distorted electric guitars adds to the force of the message of the lyrics for some, and will be a distraction for others. I like them both, and recorded them both for my own reasons.

(part 232) PART OF MY HISTORY IN 1985

2011-01-22T17:45:00.000-08:00

It took me about five months to write and record seven songs and call them finished. During that period the collapse of my life continued on.

Each obstacle encountered, and there were many, were pushed aside. I had guaranteed to myself that the project would indeed be completed.

My hours were that of a musician, you know, work all night and sleep most of the day. In the pre-dawn silence I could concentrate better, and didn't have to worry about ringing telephones getting recorded accidently.

I kept going to AA and NA meetings, and at times would appear to be alright, but on other occasions it was obvious I was not doing so good.

I gave up believing that anybody in the program would understand what I was doing, or why, or approve of it, so I just kept at the business of writing and recording the songs for my own personal reasons.

It had become increasingly difficult to connect with people on anything other than a superficial level, so trying to do so was all but disregarded.

As usual, I drove my car a lot. It provided me with the time to be alone and think. Not necessarily a good thing, but it was what I did.

I'd see countless young, good looking young ladies walking the streets, offering themselves up for cash, and because I was lonely and isolated, I would too many times waste what little money I had on their company...

But for me, in the shape I was in emotionally, it was like an oasis in the desert. See it, pay for it, and then gulp it down, no questions asked. I didn't have to get their approval or make promises.

It was just a cut and dry momentary cure for the loneliness, and was always out there, like me, just out on the streets alone, night and day, wandering...looking.

Because of this experience I wrote a song called Buckets On The Blvd. Not a very good song, but a song none the less about the fact that it was there, good or bad.

It was a time in my life when I lacked any coherent explanation at all for my existence, so I narrowed everything down to making these recordings, not killing myself, and staying clean and sober.

I kept it very simple. I had to, because the damaging effects of all I had done to my body and mind, during the 60's and 70's, had finally blossomed forth into a full scale jungle of confusion and remorse which was running my life.

My focus was on what I knew how to do, because I didn't know what else to do. Write songs because I could, and create a framework to keep busy with the work of recording them, not much else.

Locked in the damage of twenty years of sex, drugs, and rock n roll, it was a mesmerizing maze of confusion, demoralization, and isolation, so I just hung on to what I knew.

There was no help from any quarter really, other than surface applications, to what appeared to be a bottomless pit of destruction, called my life, so I read the AA book a lot looking for answers.

I watched others recover and progress, while I stayed put, in the endless ruts of my own zig zagging path. I knew something was wrong with me that wasn't wrong with others, but had no idea of how to do anything about it.

I prayed, ranted, cried, screamed, begged God, and then cursed him for abandoning me. I pounded on the walls of hell and heaven alike, but found nothing in the way of help for what ailed me.

This, more than anything, kept me locked into doing what I was doing. It became the imperative. Just keep busy, Bobby, just work on the songs. Don't die, don't get loaded, just keep going...keep working...no matter what.

This song is a tidbit of garbage, captured on tape, and part of my history in 1985. For decades I was embarrassed to play this song for anyone, let alone make a video of it for public consumption.

The telling of this story, though, requires that the pieces be assembled in the right order, no matter how some of them may appear, or how they might make me appear.

(part 231) MAKING SILVER NAIL

2011-01-16T18:24:00.000-08:00

Ping ponging, or collectively reducing the number of tracks into a single track, allowed me to build recordings that far outnumbered the 4 original tracks available to me on the TEAC recorder I was using.

Because of this, I was able to create such things as Silver Nail, or the da da da da song, as I called it, back when I was making the recording.

It has layers of multiple tracks, that were added over time, to create depth and dimension to the production.

The song was written about my thoughts and feelings toward life at the time, as well as the past, and how the hopelessness of repetitive problems plagued me.

The lyric content is dark and forceful, while the da da da da vocal parts attempt to lend an opposite pollyannaish accent. This was purposeful and hopefully lends itself to the sense of dichotomy.

Because my life was not improving at all when I did these songs, there are direct links to my thoughts and feelings written into them, in 1985.

As mentioned, Carol was not a fan, musically, of what I was doing there. She had heard much of my work over the years, and far preferred my more melodic and sensuous songs.

Because of this, I was not given the support from her I might have enjoyed had she been in love with the songs I was writing and recording in her apartment. As you might well imagine, this tended to create tension.

Just outside my door was a hall where a telephone was placed. It had a fifty foot cord on it, so it didn't need to sit just outside the door where I was working. Nonetheless Carol kept putting it there no matter how many times I asked her not to.

I explained that the phone ringing, when I was working on something, ruined whatever it was I was doing, because the ringing got recorded too.

Things like this caused no end to my difficulty in the creation of this material, and caused me to get angry at her on many occasions, again making things more difficult.

Perhaps if she'd read these lyrics, and understood how much this meant to me, she could have lent herself a little more to the recording of these songs, but that never happened.

...SILVER NAIL...

CITY LIGHTS
THE RAINY STREET
LONELY NIGHT
NO ONE TO MEET
TAKE A RIDE
TO NOWHERE'S DOOR
SHOOT SOME PAIN
YOU FINALLY SCORE

DA DA DA DA DA DA

WHITE LINE MIRROR
BROKEN GLASS
GOT TO GET
SOME SPEED UP FAST
NEON BLINKING
ON YOUR FACE
SCREW THESE RULES
IT'S DEATH'S OWN PACE

DA DA DA DA DA DA

BLACK AND BURNED
BENT TO ROLL
LIKE DICE YOU THROW
YOUR GODDAMNED SOUL
AGAINST THE ODDS
OF DESTINY
YA LAUGH AT WHERE
YOU'LL NEVER BE

DA DA DA DA DA DA

NOW YOU SEE
THE SHINING LIGHT
RAINY STREETS
THE BLACKENED NIGHT
SCARLET TEAR
A SILVER NAIL
RUSHING PEACE
A LIFE SO FRAIL

DA DA DA DA DA DA

Bobby Jameson 1985

(part 230) ANALOG RECORDING AND HISS

2011-01-14T18:31:00.000-08:00

Me at Carol Paulus's apartment 1985

In L.A., in 1985, I was engulfed in the writing, playing, singing, and recording of half a dozen, or more, new songs.

I'd taken over Carol's den and made it into a mini recording studio, as well as my bedroom. It was more like a prison cell with instruments and speakers than anything else.

I would lay down a guitar track first, in most cases, with each new song, and then begin the tedious job of adding other instrumentation and my vocals. The bass and drums were played, by me, on a keyboard with various voices, as they're called, or instruments built into the keyboard.

Learning to keep track of everything at once, drove me crazy at first, but improved as I kept at it. When I'd overdub something, because I was working with analog equipment, I'd pick up a lot of tape hiss from the recording heads.

I had to EQ it out of every track I added to keep the recordings as clean as possible, and not let that build up. It wasn't like I had real good equipment, so hard work and patience proved invaluable over time.

On Voodoo Blues, which was a basic Bo Diddley beat, I used a tremolo effect on the electric rhythm guitar parts. The maracas, or shakers, were actually a bottle of vitamin pills I used for that effect.

On the lead guitar parts, I used a Rockman effects box, which could also be used for various reverb, distortion, and echo effects.

For those who haven't worked with analog, or don't know what I'm talking about, I'll try to explain.

In analog tape recording you literally have a piece of magnetic recording tape running across, what are called recording heads on the tape recorder, which cause noise or hiss on the recording.

Initially that's not too much to worry about, but as you add more tracks, overdubs, you begin to re-record the initial noise, or hiss, picked up from the previous tracks recorded.

You can use Dolby to knock the hiss down, but it squashes a lot of the good sound you may want to keep, so I don't use it. That is why I had to EQ, or equalize, each separate track with a piece of equipment called an equalizer.

It was imperative to do this on some songs more than others, to ensure in the final outcome that I didn't end up with recordings that had enormous amounts of hiss on them.

Once I added a new track to the recording, I had to make sure it was OK, because I could not go back later and fix it. It became part of the overall recording as I went along. I only had four tracks, so I had to keep combining tracks to create room for another overdub track.

As you might imagine, this kept me on my toes, and tense as hell, while engaged in the effort of recording. Any outside distraction would cause me to lose sight of what I was doing, or worse yet, get recorded onto tape as I tried to overdub.

These kinds of distractions were: telephones ringing in the middle of recording, airplanes, dogs barking, someone bursting through the door, or knocking on it, etc.

Voodoo Blues was fortunately a purposely noisy recording with high-end noise, like the maracas, which could join in with unwanted sounds, such as hiss.

Again it was a blues song, and once more, deterred Carol from any real support for what I was doing.

(part 229) BECAUSE I WANTED TO DREAM

2011-01-12T22:23:00.000-08:00

Dreaming was the motivator as well as the killer. Dreaming dreams was what I did. Seeing myself where I believed I was supposed to be, no matter where I was at the time. I have talked about this before, and the redundancy of the subject is purposeful.

I envisioned the things necessary to achieve the goal, which in this case was to write and record new songs. Not songs aimed at commercialism, but songs I wanted to work on for personal reasons, outside of other's opinions or likes and dislikes.

I had to have a tape deck, an amp, a keyboard with multiple voices, an electric and an acoustic guitar, an equalizer, speakers, an effects box, microphone, recording tape, and last, but not least, a place to work when I wanted, which turned out to be at Carol Paulus's apartment.

I set out to get these things by loan or by gift, it didn't matter to me which it was. I didn't have to own the stuff, I just needed to be able to use it for as long as it took to accomplish the end result.

Piece by piece, I accumulated each of the items needed for my project. I was obsessed with the goal, and pursued it as a last ditch effort to fulfill a need inside me.

My quick smile, my staged look, each little detail, was geared to facilitate the progress of the plan. I would get what I wanted, and pursue my own self-interests with abandon. Everything and everybody was fair game at that point I believed.

In my mind I had to do it...I had to have a goal...a place to head for... I needed the discipline of concentrating on the work.

I would write it, engineer it, play it, and sing it. The entirety of it rested on me alone. I did not want anyone to work on it or help me. It was deeply personal in a way that I had not known before.

It was to be a private endeavor, one that I would make all the decisions about, right or wrong. A work done on basic equipment with my whole attention given to it, rather than in a studio with others and all the confusion that accompanied that.

I was too volatile, too emotional, to work with anybody. I didn't want input or debate about how to do it, or when. I didn't want to try and figure out which song somebody else thought would be better than another.

I had worked alone before in the past, but not like this, not with this kind of mindset and desperation to feed off of.

I set parameters that were conducive to me rather than to someone else. I would work all night, if I felt like it, or not at all.

I planned to eat and sleep with it, envelope myself in it, give myself to it, and most of all, I told myself, "I don't even care if anyone likes it."

That last point was total freedom for me, because I did not need to get approval for it. I could do it simply because I wanted to. It was one of the only times I can remember not trying to record a hit.

The first thing I decided to work on was a song called Life Of Crime, about an incident where I seriously thought about holding up an armored car because I was sick of being broke all the time.

I wrote it in a notebook on the hood of my car while waiting for my clothes to dry at a laundromat on Sunset Blvd. I'd watched a Brink's truck picking up money at a market across the street.

Carol did not like blues, and would frown every time I'd play them. Because of this I purposely chose a blues songs to start with. It was my way of claiming my own territory within the confines of her apartment.

(part 228) MY TROUBLED MIND

2011-01-10T17:20:00.000-08:00

Hollywood California, it even sounds romantic when you say it. My whole life had been about the town, the place, the concept.

The dream machine, a place where childhood obsessions of stardom and fame were acceptable, even preferable. That magical place known all around the world as Hollywood, city of stars.

I had always been one of those wide eyed children with a vision. Had always thought of myself as part of the mystique. It was my home as far back as I could remember.

I'd gone to grade school in Laurel Canyon in the 50's, before we went to Arizona. The Wonderland Ave. School at the corner of Lookout Mountain Dr. and Wonderland Ave.

I had always felt the pull of electricity from the city below at Sunset Blvd. and Crescent Heights, where Googy's and Schwab's drugstore were.

I loved the town in a way I cannot put into words. It was just as much a part of me as breathing, and when I wasn't there I always knew I would be...eventually.

* * *

I drove south for a long time, down 101 to L.A. I plotted in my head a story to tell to someone, anyone, about why I needed to be there. Carol Paulus? Lois Johnston? Someone I hadn't met yet?

I would find a way, a place, like I always had. One more time, one more try, one more run in that town...my town...my world.

I don't remember with any accuracy where I landed at first, but I know that I did find a way and a place to put myself. I had learned long ago to conform to the needs of others to get what I wanted.

I was a human chameleon, always changing colors to fit into my current surroundings, while privately planning my next move.

Wherever I landed was immaterial, in many ways, to me. The fact that I knew I could sleep there and go there, was the point.

I would cultivate, as I always had, a series of places where I was welcomed, or allowed to enter and leave as I chose.

If a problem arose, and it always did, I would leave and go to one of the other places. It was just something I'd learned to do over the years.

I was a gigolo as much anything else. It had been that ability which had kept me going through thick and thin in this town.

To me it was no more than a tool I used to get by, to keep going. The point was always the music, the rest was just a means to an end.

I was callous as hell in a lot of ways, and this was one of those ways. Like a dope fiend or drunk, the whole point was to get what you needed, so I was like that.

I had a tape deck set up at Lois Johnston's for awhile, and Carol Paulus had a tape recorder at her place, so I used them. I had a lot of tapes at Carol's, a lot of years worth of work.

I'd listen to my own music and try and figure out why I had never been accepted. Try to learn by listening over and over, what the missing component was.

Ultimately I'd just get pissed off and frustrated, saying, "Those stupid assholes in the music business just never got it. It was there," I thought, "they just never heard it."

Every day I'd roam around trying to meet people to use, trying to expand my world into something that finally made sense, that worked. Women who wanted me around, and would buy me a microphone as a gift, or an amplifier, or a box of recording tape.

I was one big manipulating mass of self-need that thrived on the thought of accomplishing that which I had never accomplished, namely, to be recognized and accepted for my work. To finally be treated fairly by an industry and town that I'd poured most of my life into since 1963.

Somewhere in my troubled mind I was conjuring up, for the thousandth time, the outcome of a dream...my dream, one with a happy ending.

(part 227) CHILDREN WITH DREAMS

2011-01-05T14:56:00.000-08:00

For me, music had always been the way I'd defined myself in and to the world. The music was just something that happened inside me, even when I wasn't paying attention to it. It would create itself and then force me to listen to it.

Like an excited child running around the yard playing, it existed as a thing no matter what I did. The joining of the expression of music, to the business of music, was the bastardization of the process.

It had become mangled by the havoc wreaked on it by the devious nature of the music business and creation for profit and loss.

It had ceased to be an expression of itself and had become a slave to the fickle nature of a fool's choice of commercialism; "fuck the music if it don't sell!"

This god-awful crap hole had been my home, both drunk and sober, for over twenty years by 1984, and had beat me into a form of submission that I despised.

I had become addicted to the process of twisting creation into a designated design put forth by the whims of idiots, assholes, and Billboard's top 100.

I had succumbed to the belief that things like Grammy Awards represented the entire strata of music's value and true worth.

This diabolical self-inflicted blindness and deafness was in charge of my entire psyche where music was concerned, by this point. I could not detach the one from the other.

It was a sickness I had acquired as a teenager, and had, over time, honed into a razor sharp blade that I had finally plunged into my own heart and soul.

The very thing that had lifted me up into the heavens had now broken my wings and sent me hurling to the hard earth. It had cast me into darkness and had left me there alone.

That is where I was in 84, alone. Try as I might to engage anyone, such as DJ, I could not. She tried to get me to move up to Northern California and stay with her, but I could not.

I even drove up there to her place with the intention of staying, but after no more than a few hours burst into tears, saying, "I can't do it, I just don't know how anymore."

I put what little I had back into my car and drove away leaving her there to wonder at this strange person called- Bobby Jameson.

I stared at my eyes in the rearview mirror and cried for miles, unsure of where I was going and what I would do.

But true to my addictive nature I returned to Los Angeles, the world's capitol for the slaughter of children with dreams.

I did not know what to do or where I belonged. L.A. was all I knew. For me it had been my life as well as my death. For me it was home, even though I had no home there...It was the town.

(part 226) ANOTHER MOMENT

2011-01-02T18:00:00.000-08:00

artwork by Phil Bongiorno

I SHATTERED MYSELF
RUNNING AT
THE WALL
OF MY OWN
CONFLICT
HURLING MY SOUL
AGAINST THE WORLD

MY EAR DRUMS
BURSTING LIKE
TOY BALLOONS
PRICKED BY A PIN
BELLOWING
AT THE MADNESS
WHICH IS ME

I CREATE
FROM THE INSIDE
OF MY OWN DISASTER
WHIRLING
ON AND ON
IN A NEVER ENDING FIT
OF ANGLES AND LIGHT

ADDICTED
TO MY OWN PAIN
AS A MEANS
BY WHICH
TO SURVIVE IT
TO COEXIST
WITH MISERY

RUNNING
ON DEAD FEET
CRUSHED BONES
SLAPPING AGAINST
THE PAVEMENT
I ENDURE
THE PAIN

ENDURE
THE DARK
WITHOUT THE SUN
LIVE ON
AGAINST THE ODDS
BREATHE IN
ANOTHER STEP

STAY STRONG
IN THE COLD AIR
NEVER WITHER
REACH OUT
TO ANOTHER DAY
ANOTHER LIFE
ANOTHER MOMENT

Bobby Jameson Oct 24, 2009

(part 225) "JUST NOT RIGHT NOW."

2010-12-29T21:39:00.000-08:00

My mother, me, and Dj in Shell Beach California 1983-84

There were people who believed I was headed for a disaster, that being, of course, that I would get loaded. I worried that they might know something I didn't at that point.

I did not have enough time sober, back then, to dispute the possibility with much conviction. All I had was a stubborn streak a mile wide that refused to get drunk on any given day.

It helped that they thought I would, because I relished proving them wrong. I could just picture them running off at the mouth in a meeting, or at coffee, saying, "Well, did you hear about Bobby Jameson?"

Thinking about it convinced me more than ever not to give them the satisfaction of fulfilling their Goddamn prophecy.

It was my one great success, I believed. Bobby Jameson, sober and clean no matter what. Meaner than shit and angry at the world, I vowed I would die before I ever got loaded.

The Doc Holiday of AA and NA. I would not fold in the face of a crisis, any crisis. I took on all comers, and come they did.

The advice givers, the God freaks, the false prophets of a reason to slip, as they called it. I knew I was doing the best I could no matter what they said or thought. I knew that in my gut and in my heart.

I had found sobriety in the cesspool of my life, and it proved a far more reliable asset than the tinker-toy version they talked about.

I chalked it up to experience. My experience versus theirs. Mine was honed in hell; too many of them had been light weights, so recovery for them was easier, smoother, more appetizing.

Sobriety for Bobby Jameson was like reassembling a completely shattered individual...it was just gonna be that way...it was just gonna take more time...more work.

At times my opinion counted; when others saw their own failings with regards to someone they had sponsored or guided, they'd say quietly, "Send em to Bobby Jameson, he knows all about living sober through disaster."

That was about the only time I got credit for anything with most of them...when they needed me to tell the truth to someone they'd been feeding pablum to.

Otherwise I was just looked upon as someone who couldn't, or wouldn't, let go of my anger and resentments. I was the poster boy for who not to be like.

In 1983-84 I got involved with a girl from Northern California who stopped into a few Southern California meetings when visiting her father in L.A.

Her name was, DJ, and she was a good chick. She seemed undaunted by my moods and angry rhetoric about how sobriety was not going too good for me.

We used to go to Harley Davidson shops in various places and look at the bikes and buy t-shirts. I played her some of my music, and she would push me gently back toward it, telling me I had a gift.

"Yeah, well that gift is trying to kill me, so I don't know what to do with it," I told her,

"Well you just have to keep trying, Bobby, you are a talented human, and you can't escape it no matter where you run to."

I knew she was right, but I was not ready to entertain any more attempts to make use of it at that point, so I would nod my head and say, "Yeah, I know, and someday I'll start again and see what happens, just not right now."

(part 224) THE ROAD AHEAD

2010-12-18T17:20:00.000-08:00

It's not that the situation with Gary was so different from things that happen to other people, it was what it did to me personally that makes it stand out in my life.

I had already found it difficult to trust people, because each time I did, something bad usually resulted in the end.

Gary was just a guy I knew from the program. It never occurred to me that I had anything to fear from him.

But after what happened, I found myself even more wary, sizing up each person I encountered. Not in a positive way, but looking at that them as potential foes.

I moved out of the house in Culver City and once again took up the old practice of living here and there, but never anywhere for very long.

I spent God-awful amounts of time driving around in my car with no particular destination, just cruising the Southern California streets alone.

I would drop into xxx book stores and peep shows on a regular basis and sink ever lower on the scale of self worth and personal dignity.

My outlook on life had deteriorated into a self-imposed exile from the human race and any kind of normal routine.

It felt very reminiscent of my life loaded, not in the sense of what I did, but how I felt about it...in a word, bleak.

I stayed with the tool-selling job as long as I could, for money, but eventually quit out of frustration. I was good at the job, but a lot of what I sold was crap.

Because of this, I found it hard to lie to some farmer in Indiana about the quality of what I was trying to get him to buy. I had a phone name, Cole Parker, and a lot of those guys trusted me.

One day a man in the midwest said, "Well, Cole, do you think this is a good buy?" I knew it was garbage, so I told him, "No, it's junk, don't buy it." I knew then I was through selling tools.

I made jewelry, sold jewelry, painted houses occasionally, worked for contractors when I could, bought stuff and sold it. Whatever I could do I did at one time or another to keep going.

What I couldn't do was get and keep a regular job, or have a relationship that was stable with another human being.

My past, and all that went with it, would eventually explode inside me and wreak general havoc with any normal setting I might have been attempting to engage in.

This was as painful and confusing as anything I have ever had to deal with. There was no way to know when it would happen, just the knowledge that it would happen sooner rather than later.

Various people, mostly women, tried to fix me along the way, but without success. I was fighting my own demons and locked in a desperate battle to stay alive and sober.

The rock bottom nature of my dilemma was slowly, cruelly, and clearly making itself ever more known to me. The dream of a good life with things to be grateful for dimmed to a bare flicker.

I was an outcast among outcasts. A man alone in his own desperate quest for salvation. The future loomed ahead, promising, I feared, more of the same.

The recognition of that possibility, probably saved my life as well as my sobriety, because it forced me to accept, however grudgingly, that the best I might achieve was to simply survive each new calamity.

(part 223) WHAT HAPPENED GARY?

2010-12-17T00:15:00.000-08:00

Me in 1983

The aftermath of the attack in the kitchen left me feeling like Gary's prison "bitch." It took some doing for me to resolve it in my own mind. I'd met him through one of my sponsors in AA, Bobby E., and he was Gary's sponsor too.

Gary and I had known each other awhile, and we liked each other, so it was hard to make sense out of the episode. What had really happened? I didn't know for sure, but suspected, and still do, that he was getting loaded.

There is no way of knowing this, other than guessing about it, but it would explain, in part, the outrageous behavior that seemingly came out of nowhere. Anyway, it made sense to me at the time to incorporate the possibility that he was not clean.

I went and talked to Bobby E., who had once sponsored both of us, but was no longer my sponsor, and asked him if he knew what had happened and what was going on with Gary. He said he had heard about it, but didn't have all the details.

I laid it out for him, but got no real definitive answer from his feedback, other than Gary had been grappling with some problems of his own.

I told Bobby E., that I wanted to kill Gary because of what he had done to me. I said I had to set it straight in my own mind.

Bobby E., who came from the streets like me and Gary, understood my position and feelings, but asked if I was prepared to spend a long time in prison and ruin my own life over it.

He asked if I could live with the mental and emotional consequences of killing someone, even if they deserved it for doing what Gary had done to me. I told him I didn't know, but I would seriously think about it.

I left feeling the same way as I had before talking to Bobby E. My problem was that I felt ashamed that Gary bashed my head in and I had done nothing about it. I didn't try to defend myself. I had just taken it.

For me, this was a serious problem. It made me want to seek revenge by getting even, but getting even would put me in jeopardy of losing my freedom, and could possibly be something I couldn't live with, which could cause me to lose my sobriety, the only thing I had of real value.

I reasoned, and it took a couple of months, as I recall, that what had happened was not a fight, it had been an unwarranted assault with a deadly weapon. I was half asleep, partially dressed, in my own kitchen with a friend, I thought, when he went off and attacked me with a blunt instrument.

For me, this gave context to my difficulty in regards to the shame I felt for not fighting back at the time. This was extremely important, because it explained to me why I did not defend myself.

I further reasoned that Gary was in a world of shit himself and was going to have to cope with what he had done to me. Sometime later I ran into him at an NA meeting and got to ask him, "What happened Gary? What the fuck was that about?"

He looked me straight in the eye, half smiling, and said, "I don't know, I just went goofy."

I remember staring back at him, trying to think of some way to answer, but couldn't. It was the last time I ever saw him. A few years later I got an anonymous phone call and the person said, "I thought you'd want to know that Gary was found dead in his own bed, he bled to death internally."

To this day I still do not know what actually caused Gary to do what he did. When I heard he was dead I said, "OK, thanks for letting me know."

After that I thought, "What goes around comes around, and in Gary's case it killed him..." What I have recently come to believe is that Gary may have been using steroids, but again I have no way of knowing for sure.

(part 222) RUNNING ON EMPTY

2010-12-14T23:36:00.000-08:00

In 1982-83 I took to the streets and got a job selling tools and machinery on the telephone at a place called Pacific Freight, in the San Fernando Valley. I rented a bedroom in a guy's house in Culver City, who was a member of NA.

Each day I drug myself through my life, despising it. There was nothing to shoot for, no dreams, just make a few dollars, keep going, and stay sober.

I dropped into AA and NA meetings all over, mostly where I was unknown. I would stand in the back drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes and then leave.

I drove a lot, picking up hookers on the street. Relationships were out. Couldn't make any more commitments to human beings, they always expected too much, and I was tired of failing.

It was easier to admit I was incapable of living up to the standards set by others than try to do so and fail again. People looked down on me, but I knew they didn't have a clue as to what I was about.

"Why bother?" I thought to myself, "They'll just tell me to get off the pity pot, or verbalize some other quaint phrase from the program. No one's interested in the facts, so why bother tellin' em?"

Through thick and thin I maintained my sobriety, never wavering in the endless storms that kept on coming. It was like I finally realized the way it was gonna be. Exactly the way I didn't want it. I was just going to stay sober anyway...

I woke up one morning in the house where I had a room, and stumbled half asleep into the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. "Hey Gary," I said to the guy who owned the house, "could you could ask you're friend next door to hold it down at three o-clock in the morning, he was......."

"Tell em yourself, Jameson, I'm not your fucking mother," he snapped.

"Aw shit, Gary, all I said was......"

"Don't fuck with me Jameson," he yelled, turning toward me with the top half of a blender in his hand. He'd been making his morning protein drink in it.

It was a heavy-duty restaurant version and was full of creamy liquid. He raised it up to shoulder level and swung it like a baseball bat at my face.

I remember the impact of it connecting with my eye as I stood in the kitchen still half asleep, dressed in a t-shirt and towel. It was like getting sucker punched with a hammer.

The metal bottom of the blender cut into my flesh and made contact with the bone around my eye socket. The blow nearly knocked me unconscious as I fell backwards. I crashed into the wall and fought to maintain my balance, not knowing what was coming next.

I looked at Gary's face, which was contorted in a way I'd never seen before. He looked like a madman standing before me with the now empty blender in his hand.

I felt the sticky liquid running down my face and looked down at my chest and waist. It looked like strawberry shortcake, blood and protein drink mixed together in a slimy mess.

I slid down the wall to the floor, realizing I was hurt bad and bleeding like a stuck pig from a gash around my eye. My head felt like I had been hit with a two by four.

I stared up at Gary's face. He seemed calmer, and showed signs of concern at the river of blood now pouring from the wound he had inflicted.

He set the blender on the counter and said, "Aw shit, man!"

"Damn Gary," I managed, "what the fuck is wrong with you?"

He didn't answer. He got a dish towel and handed it to me to sop up the blood. "Guess you gotta go to the hospital, man," he said, "looks pretty bad, I'll take you."

"Fuck you," I moaned, "I ain't going anywhere with you, man."

"Well then we gotta call an ambulance," he said, "and that'll just cost a lot of money."

I sat on the floor trying to gather my wits, knowing I was hurt bad and in need of a doctor. Calling an ambulance was bullshit I thought, so after a few minutes I said, "OK, help me the fuck up and we'll go."

He reached down and grabbed my outstretched hand and pulled me to my feet. My head was throbbing so bad I felt like I was going to pass out but managed to stay erect.

Stumbling into my bedroom I struggled to get into my levi's and boots, then yelled to Gary, "OK man, let's go do it."

I remember the feeling of riding in the car to the hospital with the guy who had literally just bashed my head in with a blunt instrument. "God," I thought, "my life just fuckin' sucks."

The doctor wanted to know how I got the wound, but I didn't tell him that the guy I was with hit me with a blender or he would have called the cops.

It would have been a felony assault charge with a deadly weapon, against Gary, and I wasn't into that kind of revenge, I had other ideas about how to handle it.

I had a brain concussion and a whole lotta stitches when I left the emergency room. I rode in silence with Gary on the way back to the house in Culver City. I knew I had to move at that point, so it just became another problem for me in a life filled with nothing but problems.

(part 221) THE MONSTER

2010-12-08T16:16:00.000-08:00

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”
- Hunter S Thompson

For me the monster was the music business and my involvement in it, or not, as the case may be. The continual up and down, as it related to making records and trying to do something with them, had finally done to me sober what it had done to me loaded.

It had trashed every dream and every desire I had ever had about being in the music business. I was broken inside like a clock. My main spring was damaged in a way that left me unwilling to reach out to anyone where music was concerned.

I didn't dare participate for fear of being sucked back into another attempt at success. The monster had kicked the shit out of me one too many times, and I saw clearly the wreckage of my life in bold technicolor terms.

Like a reluctant soldier, I admitted defeat and turned away from the battlefield of my dreams. I retreated, and wandered off into the land of isolation, the land of nobody.

I stopped talking about music and playing. I cursed my life and God for my abilities. I wished I had never written a single song or ever made a record, but mostly I cursed ever wanting to.

The young boy in Tucson, Arizona in the 50's, and his decision to be a star was now the cause of my despair rather than my salvation. I looked back in time at him, wishing in vain that he not follow his dream.

There was nothing and no one to turn to. No place of safety from the monster. It was out there lurking. It's minions were everywhere, spread out across the city.

A casual hello could lead to a conversation that once again might lure me into foolishness. A chance meeting in a coffee shop; the catalyst for further regret.

"I have to be careful from now on," I thought, "that little prick is still a child and doesn't know any better... even now."

I stayed here and there with different people from the program, but the sense of isolation was too deeply etched in my soul. I didn't believe anybody really understood or cared what had happened to me.

I tried a thousand times to explain to someone the damage that had been done, but their eyes always gave them away, always said clearly, "Get over it Bobby. Give yourself and everybody else a break, will you?"

I always left, I always had to. I could not do what they wanted, what they expected. I was trapped inside myself. I was in there, but no one could see me, hear me, or contact me.

I knew what was happening, but could not prevent it. Others saw my face and my body, and that's who they talked to, but way down inside that shell was me, screaming for help and finding none. Falling into myself like a collapsing building.

I stared out at life like a man in a cell. I kept to myself, occasionally making contact with the living for brief periods, only to retract again and lose myself in the dark aloneness of my existence.

(part 220) SWEET DREAMS

2010-12-06T13:05:00.000-08:00

click
(vinyan photo)

NOTHING SUBTLE
ABOUT THE COFFIN
LIKE REALITY
I LIVE IN...

ONLY AS DETRIMENT
REGARDS ITSELF
NOT TO BE THAT
WHICH IT IS

DOES THE LIE
OF REGARD
UTTER ITSELF
INTO MY EAR...

WHO I AM
IS NOT DECIDED
BY ME
BUT BY THOSE

WHO TEND TO THE MISERY
OF CONSCIOUSNESS
AND DRESS IN
WHITE SHOES...

THE PORTRAIT
OF ANOTHER
HUNG ON MY FACE
NAILED TO MY SOUL

HAND PICKED
DURING MOMENTS
IN THE GARDEN
OF DEATH

CARRIED HERE
BY CHILDREN
OF DECEIT
IN CHALKY HAND

AND DELIVERED
AS A NIGHTMARE
WRAPPED IN
SWEET DREAMS...

Bobby Jameson Dec 6, 2010

(part 219) TOO HIGH ON A DREAM

2010-11-29T13:51:00.000-08:00

The Legends Of Rock-N-Roll idea deteriorated over a period of months. Along the way, there were a number of meetings with the group in Century City before the complete demise of the project.

During these meetings there were times when it seemed the idea had been accepted at face value, and that the people I'd been talking to were going to make it happen.

My weakness back then was that I was broke. That's why I had to go begging for money. The fact that I had none, forced me to become involved with the people in Century City.

Originally I'd met John York at the recording sessions I'd done during the Dennis and George deal, when money hadn't been an issue.

Back then, I was able to pay for his work in the studio, but now with the Legend's thing, "me and no money" was the main threat to the success or failure of the entire project, because I couldn't even pay for the studio.

John and his family were barely getting by back then, and I didn't know about the financial status of Nicky Hopkins or Gene Clark.

Mostly I knew that musicians had always gotten screwed over, so even if they'd been part of some successful ventures in the past, it didn't mean they had any money now.

John York, Nicky Hopkins, and Gene Clark had all agreed to offer their services for free as a personal favor to me, so I wasn't about to hit them up for money to pay for the studio time too. The understanding was, that I would get the studio time and they would show up and record some songs with me.

With their participation guaranteed, you might well be able to imagine that there were going to be others who would want to play as well, simply because Nicky, Gene, and John were involved. It's a music thing. "Who's gonna be there? Oh yeah, OK I'll play."

I kept trying to convey to the Century City group the realities of the situation and why I needed money, but after awhile they seemed less and less capable of grasping the importance of what I was telling them.

They treated my need for studio time as a problem, instead of agreeing to resolve the issue. They repeatedly implied that it was some sort of shortcoming on my part.

I, on the other hand argued, that if I had the money to get started in the studio, I wouldn't even have bothered talking to them in the first place.

I complained that they were losing sight of who I'd lined up for the project. "This is a one time deal, man! You won't ever see this again," I yelled. They were completely unmoved.

Whether it was because they were unconvinced about the calibre of those involved, or something else, I will never know. But in the history of music, and in the lives of those who make the music, this will go down as one of the dumbest things I have ever had the displeasure of watching fail.

To think of an album, full of original music, with Nicky Hopkins, John York, Gene Clark and the others, including myself, who would have ultimately played on such a record, is in and of itself a colossal act of stupidity, because it didn't happen.

To realize it didn't get done, simply because I couldn't raise a small amount of money for studio time from a bunch of half wits, still boggles my mind today.

In my life I have seen more idiotic bullshit done and not done over money than I would have ever thought possible in the beginning.

The lost opportunities and failed realities which are consumed by the fires of greed and stupidity, and then shelved or lost by fools who piss on art for the sake of a dollar sign, still leaves me shaking my head today.

Years later, when I talked to other musicians about how this record almost happened in the early eighties, they shook their heads in disbelief that something so valuable got shit-canned over mere studio time and a lack of vision, particularly in the light of Hopkins and Clark's passing.

Ultimately I walked away from the fiasco, numbed in a way that still haunts me today. After living through so many failed records and soured deals, my bitterness toward fools, money, and greed reached epic proportions.

I took this defeat so hard that I quit trying to get anything going with anybody. Not because I didn't want to do things, but because the misery and pain caused by events like these was going to kill me if I didn't stop trying to tame the monster.

The going up too high on a dream was now not worth the seemingly predestined crash to earth that just kept repeating itself...

(part 218) LEGENDS OF ROCK N ROLL

2010-11-28T14:45:00.000-08:00

Gene Clark

Back in 1981 or 82, not sure which, I used to see Slim Whitman ads on TV all the time, and made fun of them until I realized that he'd sold ten million albums for ten bucks a whack because of those ads.

Slim Whitman was an old country singer that I was unfamiliar with, other than through the TV ads, but I soon learned to respect him and whoever thought up that advertising scheme.

"Man," I thought, "that's a hundred million dollars minus costs, and they can't be more than, what, ten million?" It was a staggering realization. So much so that I talked to John York about it at length.

I told him I was gonna try and find some people who would put up some front money, maybe three to five thousand, to get some studio time. All I needed from John was help in lining up some players who were willing to record a few songs for free initially.

"We can call it Bobby Jameson and the Legends Of Rock n Roll," I said. John agreed it was a good idea and promised he'd talk to Nicky Hopkins and Gene Clark about it. John had played with Gene in the second Byrds band.

I used my name, not because I thought I was that great, but because I didn't consider myself to be a rock n roll legend. But John, Nicky, and Gene Clark were, and so that's how that name came about: Bobby Jameson and The Legends Of Rock n Roll...

After circulating the idea around town, I was introduced to some people in Century City, who were in the TV advertising business, or so they claimed.

Century City is right next to Beverly Hills and consists of a lot of black glass high rise buildings full of supposedly well off, intelligent, and highly successful people.

I remember meeting with a women and maybe two other guys, at first, and they all appeared quite interested in the idea, particularly when I brought up the Slim Whitman numbers on units sold and the revenue they created through the simple TV adds.

Everybody was familiar with the Whitman ads, even if they didn't like them. They had all seen them, and had probably made fun of them, but they had not thought about how successful they were.

My rap was to get them to focus on how a small amount of start-up money could create a quality product, using name people, that could then be shopped around for further financing to complete a great album that would be sold on TV like Slim Whitman.

I told them I had Gene Clark from The Byrds, which I did, Nicky Hopkins, who'd played with The Stones, Jeff Beck and others, and had been on about a hundred number one records, which I did, and John York who'd played with Gene in the second Byrds Band, and myself.

I said I was the lead singer, and that between us all we had a ton of new and unpublished songs ready to record. I hyped it so hard even I was impressed. I told them we were lining up a drummer but didn't know exactly who it was at that time.

The whole idea was laid out for them on a silver platter, and all they had to do was come up with the initial money to get us into the studio and get three songs recorded and mixed down.

They asked me why we didn't pay for the recording ourselves and then let them hear it before they got involved. "Because we're all broke," I said, "if we had the money to do it, we'd do it. That's why I came to you guys."

I remember this little prick standing in front of me in his expensive office, eye-balling me through his thick glasses like I was a bug or something. "Well I don't know," he said, "you're gonna have to bring us something before we can make a decision about this."

"Do you understand the people I've got for this thing? Gene Clark of The Byrds, Nicky Hopkins, a fuckin legend, and John York of The Byrds?" I asked, now frustrated.

"Well yes, but you want money with no guarantee to us whether this proposal of yours..."

I cut him off! "Hey man," I said, "I have just given you something that is worth a fortune with well known people who are willing to do it, and you're jerking me off over bullshit."

"Well now wait a minute Mr. Jameson," he said, "I am simply proposing good business sense to you..."

I cut him off again. "What you are doing, you dumb shit, is letting something you couldn't put together in your lifetime slip through your fingers because you are too stupid and too cheap to understand what you have right in front of you."

The look on his face, and on the faces of the others in the room, were like portraits of dead people. I knew what was happening. I knew it like the back of my hand. It was more of that good business bullshit I'd heard too many times--where an unbelievable opportunity is right there, but the people looking at it are too arrogant and full of shit to just say,"Hell yes! Lets do it!"

(part 217) ME, JOHN YORK, AND NICKY HOPKINS

2010-11-20T14:54:00.000-08:00

Bobby Jameson

John York

Nicky Hopkins

In 1981 I felt as if I were back in the 70's. The only difference was that I was clean and sober. It was a big difference. Without that I would have surely gone on a bone chilling rampage following another complete collapse of my world.

I didn't know back then whether I was going to be able to stay sober through it all. I was faced with the prospect of homelessness and no job. So finding somewhere to put myself was a top priority in my daily thinking.

There always seemed to be a temporary fix, but it was pure drudgery having to constantly look for the next bed or couch. I can't even begin to remember all the places I ended up.

I recall clearly staying with Georgiana Steele at her grandmother's house in Glendale for around a month, and I will always be grateful to her for the time I was given there. But in all honesty I was too depressed to stay anywhere for very long.

I felt like an unfixable loser, and lived in my own dark world of isolation a lot of the time. Having to communicate with people for more than an hour or two was damn near impossible.

I'd become reacquainted with Georgiana through John York, who had been a member of the second Byrds band, as well as being one of the musicians who'd played on Outlaw, Ten Cent Call, and Barrooms during the Dennis Poulsen deal.

I'd become good friends with John and his wife Nadia, and stopped by their apartment a lot when I was out searching for a way to restart my ever crumbling life.

One afternoon I showed up there and John introduced me to Nicky Hopkins, who had played keyboards and piano on about a hundred number one records over the the years.

We sat around talking for awhile, and at some point I picked up John's old acoustic guitar from the couch and started messing with some chords I'd come up with.

Hopkins asked what I was playing and I said, "It's just a four chord blues riff I made up."

"Well I thought I'd heard every chord there was," he said, "but I haven't ever seen or heard what you're playing."

"It's just a B-7th configuration, finger wise, played in four different fret locations up and down the neck," I said,

"Never seen it done like that," said Hopkins,

"Yeah, well you don't change the fingering, just the fret position," I said, simulating what I was talking about on the neck of the guitar.

Nicky walked over and sat down at a keyboard in the middle of John's living room and asked, "Would you play that again Bobby?"

I went over to where Hopkins was seated and John picked up a bass guitar. I launched into playing the chords again and started singing the lyrics to the song I had written.

Nicky kept watching my fingers sliding up and down the neck of the guitar and shook his head.

"What's wrong?" I asked,

"Nothing," he said, "I've just never seen this progression before in my life, and the way it sounds. It's just totally different than anything I've ever heard."

I looked at John, who was smiling like a Cheshire Cat and shrugged my shoulders.

"Play it again," said Hopkins, "I have to learn this. I have to hear it again and again so I can get the right notes. Play it again Bobby, keep playing it until I get it. I can't believe I haven't ever heard this before."

For about three hours that afternoon my life made sense again. Me, John York, and Nicky Hopkins playing music together in John's living room, and loving every second of it.

Three creative souls surrounded by John's family with the sun pouring in the windows, picking, plunking, and thumping in an upstairs apartment in Hollywood, California.

(part 216) THE WALL OF TIME

2010-11-19T16:40:00.000-08:00

click

AFTERNOON
GALAXY
OF GREY...
CONTEMPLATING
HESITATING
WITH EACH
WORD...
THOUGHT...

FEELINGS OF
REMORSE
CARVED INTO
THE ROCKS OF
MY SOUL...
BLOWN THERE
BY THE WIND
LEFT THERE
BY CIRCUMSTANCE...

NOW I CAN
BREATHE
THE RUSTY AIR...
DRINK IN
THE SOLIITUDE
OF LONELY
HOURS...

A WATCHFUL EYE
A WAVING
HAND
A SHADOW
ON THE WALL
OF TIME
STRANDED
ON A
ROADSIDE CALLED
INFINITY...

Bobby Jameson Nov 19, 2010

(part 215) THE BURNING LADDER

2010-02-19T21:23:00.000-08:00

So in the end I was just standing there with a few dollars and nowhere to go. I was glad I had the money, but was pissed off that I had to sell everything to get it.

One more time I was to become a professional house guest of someone. One more time I was staring into the black regret of wondering why I didn't just go along to get along.

I could have done it. Hell probably no one would have known or cared except me, and that was the problem... being me, and knowing and caring.

On this go round the songs never even made it to a label. In the long run I never signed a contract with Dennis and George.

I said I would sign what we'd agreed to initially, but not the nearly one inch thick piece of shit Dennis had worked months on creating, with the help of so-called music lawyers. I told him he was a fool for listening to them, because all he'd done was create a stalemate in the end, in which we all lost out.

The one thing that had come from it was the music. The recordings in the end were further proof of where'd I'd been in this long voyage known as the music business.

From Tucson, Arizona in the 50's, Glendale, Ca, Hollywood, and London in the 60's, I had blazed, crashed, and sputtered my way through the 70's, and into the 80's. The fact that I was even alive was remarkable, not to mention the fact that I was clean and sober as well.

All in all there were things to herald as successful about the whole crusade, but it would take a long time to really understand that reality. I was packed full of experience that literally no one was interested in at that point. They wanted what I had, but they didn't want me with it.

They wanted me to be the way I was before I learned all that I had. They wanted a pliable, gullible kid who was moved by promises and the flashing of some green. But as desperate as I was, I was no longer that person.

I had grown up in many ways in spite of it all. I had gotten sober and watched my dreams get trashed again, but stayed clean anyway.

I had felt the friendly pats, only to have them turn into the hand that plunged a knife into my back. I had made promises and kept them, even though they caused the ultimate destruction of what I wanted.

I stayed with principle, and it had handed me two decisive defeats in a row. I was confused and angry and unsure of what to do next, other than merely survive as best I could. I wandered through AA meetings like a zombie in search of his life, putting one foot in front of the other a day at a time.

I would count those days like a prisoner in a cell, one after another just so I'd know that I had accomplished something, anything, anything at all.

Staying sober no matter what became my shield against the many who found nothing but fault with everything I did or said. I took on all comers and stood my ground telling them I was sober even though there seemed little reason to be.

I endured the endless criticism of "If you're not happy, what good is sobriety?" I told them to, "fuck off" on each occasion only to acquire a worse reputation than I already had.

I knew what they did not. That the likes of Bobby Jameson loaded was a far worse thing than they could imagine. Many of them were light weight users and abusers who had come to the program far less damaged than I.

They hadn't ever imagined or experienced the depths of rock bottom insanity that some had plunged to. Their voices were like the feathers of a Peacock, strutting around successful and proud, arrogant and unaware...

I would talk to them as if they were bratty children with too many toys. But when the shit hit the fan there would always be those who sought me out, knowing that I had hung on to the burning ladder and not let go.

They liked me around for that, but they wanted me out of the spotlight and in the wings, where they could call on me if I was needed... and the call always came....

(part 214) THE VOW

2010-02-07T16:40:00.000-08:00

I was determined to stay sober no matter what. I remember sitting in my house and being afraid to move. I was having visions of getting up and going to the bathroom and cutting my wrists.

I sat for hours and cried. I wanted out! I didn't want to try anymore. Trying had become the blueprint for another round of well almost, but not quite, so now what?

I cursed God, Science Of Mind, and AA. I had had my belly full of make believe recovery. I was not in recovery. I was in rock bottom survival mode.

Death seemed a reasonable solution at the time, but part of me was unwilling to travel that path, sheerly on the outside chance
I would fail, and feel like a bigger fool. I didn't want to die as much as I wanted to live in a life that didn't hurt so much.

I tried to reason that the previous year had been worthwhile, and that what I had really wanted, was for it, or something like it, to continue moving forward.

It was the juggernaut of constant collapse that was making me crazy. It was the end of the thing, not the thing itself. Too many, whom I knew, were situated in a way as to not have to deal with the issues of such basic survival day to day.

They were well above that line in their ongoing pursuit of a happy, joyous, and free life of sobriety. I, on the other hand was seemingly condemned to scrambling for my daily bread over and over again.

This was the cavernous separation between myself and those around me. I thought I might be better off on skid row rather than where I was. If I were around others, I thought, who were constantly up against it, I might not feel so worthless and out of place.

As I sat alone, grinding through my misery, I stumbled on a process of psychology that may have literally saved my life at the time.

Rather than entertaining thoughts of my own death, I proposed to entertain the demise of others. I'm sure this sounds completely irrational to most, but back then, it had the power to flip the coin, as it were, in my favor.

"Fuck em!" I thought, I was tired of killing myself because I'd tried to do the right thing. I had not been so wrong about my choices as to deserve punishment for making them.

OK! I was going down the tubes again, but not because I hadn't done my job, but because I'd refused to play the Goddamned game. I'd honored my word and fulfilled my obligation to write songs and get them recorded. I was paid to do that, and did it.

The real problem was the God forsaken music business mentality of little pricks in offices, trying to control what others created. I'd pissed off the controllers again, the money men.

I had always pissed them off, because they were ruthless little tyrants with no talent. They bought and sold people's work and dreams, and I had pissed them off again. I figured my wrath ought to be directed at them rather than at myself.

I looked back over my own history. I'd always come up with the goods. No matter what was going on, I'd always done my job. There was a laundry list of records to prove that point. But in every case I'd trusted someone who wasn't trustworthy.

It had been the basis for each successive failure in my life. Whether it was Tony Alamo, Andrew Oldham, Randy Wood, Steve Clark, or Dennis and George, there had always been that moment of trust, and the final realization that they were not trustworthy.

The problem was, that by the time I came to that realization, I was already standing in the ruins of another bad decision. They, the collective they had my work, while I was sent packing.

Without exception that had been the repetitive reality of my life from 1963 to 1981. I had nothing to show for my work other than the work itself, and the rights to that work had been claimed by others, or was involved in the process of being claimed by others.

This recognition, on that dismal day in 1981 was the beginning of my fight for ownership of, and payment for my work from 1964 forward. I had kept the rights to the RCA songs, and the songs and masters of the Dennis and George deal... so there was the beginning.

I vowed that I would not die until I made good on that promise. I vowed that one way or another I would own what I created, and that every penny owed to me would be paid.

I was going to clean up the wreckage of my past. Somehow... Someday... No matter how long it took, or how hard it was to accomplish.

(part 213) LOST IN LOSS... THE SECRET SONGS OF BOBBY JAMESON

2010-02-06T19:04:00.000-08:00

Blues So Bad 1980-81 demo

So once again I was faced with dealing with the negative outcome of what had started out as a positive venture. Namely, I had to again make a decision that would negatively affect my life for positive reasons.

Principle! I was hung up on principle. It had happened with the RCA deal, and it was happening again in 1981 with Dennis.

He'd spent far too much time talking to other lawyers, who'd convinced him that controlling my copyrights was the name of the game.

He had missed out on the part about find a label and make a record deal, or production deal, so you have an outlet for those copyrighted songs.

Without someplace to put the songs, they didn't amount to much of anything except in theory. Theory was just that. A bad case of the what ifs.

Music had to be worked. It had to be played, recorded by someone, and made public to one degree or another. Otherwise it was a secret, the last thing you wanted to have happen.

Well that is where we were. The secret songs of Bobby Jameson, of which there were already too many. I'd been writing songs for decades, but no one had heard most of them, so the songs were unknown and not in play.

It was the same problem over and over again. I hadn't gotten the songs out there. Other artists hadn't recorded them. We needed a record deal. We needed to release something. The songs needed play, needed to get known.

There was always that battle going on over owning and controlling the copyrights, instead of getting the songs worked. If I had had any brains, I would have spent more of my time playing them in public so the songs could get heard.

I too had made mistakes. I should have canned the idea of only writing songs instead of playing them in public. Because of that, I take some of the responsibility for what didn't get accomplished.

None the less, I was facing the loss of everything once again. My house would go, and everything I owned would end up being sold for survival money. Tape recorders, guitars, furniture, etc.

I knew too well what this would be like. I resented my life for never getting past go. It was always, "Things look good! Oh shit, it just turned to crap again." I was addicted to the process of endless loss and recovery, just to find myself lost in loss again.

I had tried diligently to break the trend, but found myself exasperated over the same carbon-copy outcome. My positive thoughts of the future had degenerated into to fear of the the future. Fear of being homeless for the umpteenth time.

I had a yard sale in my front yard, on Westmount Drive in West Hollywood. The little old frame house had been my home for nearly a year, and I had flourished there. Now it was to be the scene of my latest catastrophe.

People began arriving almost immediately. I was surprised at how quickly they came, and how many there were. They seemed willing to buy everything in the place.

My equipment disappeared instantly. Some lucky guy bought my 60's Telecaster for $250, and I still think about it to this day. My bed, towels, clothes, appliances, and furniture, gone within hours. By the end of the day I had $1800 and a used car.

I had five years of sobriety, and felt like a complete loser as I sat alone eyeballing the money I'd made from the sale. This is what it had come to. Less than two thousand dollars for a year's work.

One more time in my life, I was faced with the loss of everything I'd worked for. There was no one from AA or any place else, for that matter, who had offered to help.

No support, no nothing, just me. Just me! Staring at the floor and wondering, "Now what do I do?" A question I'd asked myself far too many times before. "Put one foot in front of the other, Bobby... one day at a time... survive... no matter what... don't get loaded... don't kill yourself!"

(part 212) NEVER SAY NEVER..

2010-02-03T20:26:00.000-08:00

1981 demo...You Oughtta Be Ashamed

I was never quite sure, as I have said, why Dennis did not spend more time trying to get a label to release the songs or do an album, instead of talking to other lawyers about manipulating me into giving him all my copyrights.

He ended up blowing the whole deal and secured nothing. His thinking had been squeezed through that music industry shit by lawyers, and he had become a different person than the one I set out to work with months before.

By this time I was more protective of the newly recorded masters than I had ever been. I did not leave them in the care of anyone. I kept them in my care, and as a result I have all the 24 track masters in my possession today.

As our relationship ground downward toward it's ultimate demise, I started readying myself for the dismal reality of facing once again being homeless and broke.

The bet was that Dennis and George could afford to wait me out, and that I would succumb to their demands eventually, because of money.

What they did not know, was that I was determined to go down with the ship and retain ownership of my work. That was the primary dispute: the songs I had written that had been part of the RCA deal.

In legal reality I owned all the songs and masters from that deal and was determined to keep them, which I did.

At one point Dennis showed me a type written page with the titles of 52 songs which he claimed to own in part. I told him "You can't copyright a title, Dennis, so you own a piece of paper with songs titles on it, not the songs."

He disagreed with me emphatically, but I explained that he had done nothing about the copyrights except write down the titles.

"They are listed in a contract you had drawn up by some asshole, Dennis, but I will not sign that contract, because it is different than our original agreement. The songs were written and copyrighted by me, and unless I sign your contract, and give you a percentage, you have nothing."

"You can't do that," he said, "we have a deal."

"Yeah," I said, "a deal where you and George try to get more out of me than was part of our original coversation."

Dennis looked at me as if someone had cut his legs out from under him. "Well wait a second," he stammered, "we have a..." I cut him off!

"We had an agreement that you and George would get a percentage of the publishing and masters, if I put up the music and the talent, and you and George put up the money. I will honor that agreement, but you won't. You want more than that, and I will not give it to you."

"Well I have legal rights in this matter," he said, "and I will..."

"What sue me? Go ahead, Dennis. You and George can sue me for the rights to my songs. That is something I'd love to see. You put up the money and I wrote and recorded the songs. What are you going to sue me over? It is you and George that are violating the basis of our original agreement, not me."

(part 211) THE ANATOMY OF CONVERSATION

2010-02-01T15:59:00.000-08:00

WORDS
LIKE BLOOD...
FLOWING THROUGH
THE ARTERY OF A
SENTENCE...
THE SOFT FLESHY
MEAT OF MEANING....
THE TISSUE...
THE GIST OF IT...
A MOVEMENT
IN TIME
CAPTURED ON
DIGITAL PAPER
IMMORTALIZED...
EXISTING IN
TIMELESSNESS
FOREVER....
WANDERING THE
UNIVERSE OF
WRITTEN WORDS
SEARCHING FOR
EYES
TO THROW ITSELF
INTO
A MIND TO
CONVEY ITSELF
TO....
WORDS...
THE ANATOMY
OF CONVERSATION
THE FRAMEWORK
OF THOUGHT
THE AFTER BIRTH
OF CONCEPT
BORN OUT OF
NEED TO
EXPRESS ITSELF
IN THE
ABSOLUTE
AND ABSTRACT
OF HUMAN
COMMUNICATION.........

Bobby Jameson Feb 1, 2010

(part 210) THE NEGATIVITY OF POSITIVE THINKING

2009-11-24T20:48:00.000-08:00

For both the RCA deal in the 70's, and the deal with Dennis and George in 1980, I was completely clean and sober. In both cases I was practicing positive thinking techniques prior to the deals becoming reality.

There will be those who say it was coincidental, and those who will say it was intrinsic to each of the deals occurring at all. In my opinion, I did something specific and got a specific result, up to a point.

I concentrated my efforts and my thinking into a chosen subject matter, and initially obtained a desired goal from that effort.

The sticking point in each case was the same. Demands on me by others, about what they would get, and how much I would give up so they could get it.

In both instances I encountered situations where I would have had to make choices I disagreed with personally in order to be successful and profitable.

The RCA deal hinged on my agreeing to be managed by a cocaine dealer from my past, who had become closely involved with Bob Summer, RCA's president, which I chose not to do, and so the deal fell apart.

In 1980 I was asked to give up rights to publishing to Dennis Poulsen, which again I chose not to do, and that deal also fell apart.

So here's my point in this post. Though positive thinking can create all kinds of wonderful outcomes, with those outcomes come the unanticipated, unforeseen problems that can destroy what it is that you created.

With each of those agreements I had the opportunity to decide something which would have insured a better financial outcome for me, but in each case it went against what I could live with comfortably.

My positive dreams had ultimately led me to negative consequences. I had to decide against my own financial interests, and do something that led to my own failure in each of the two instances, but which ultimately proved to be the larger success over the long haul.

Those who made possible my good fortune, to some degree, became the very ones who insured my failure through their persistent demands of control and greed.

I could have gone along, but on thinking it through, arrived at the point of a dilemma, and refused to bend to those demands simply for my own financial benefit.

For those who think in business terms only, I was told I made the wrong decision. Likewise, for those who think that positive thinking is the end all of rational behavior, I was questioned about my conclusions, and my ability to execute successfully there as well.

My opinion is this. You may be able to pray yourself into wealth and prosperity, but once there, you may well encounter unanticipated problems created by the very prosperity you achieve.

All along the way there will be new choices and challenges to resolve, and if one thinks only in terms of their own well being they will surely make decisions they will come to regret later. In some cases those decisions and regrets have the power to completely destroy life.

I am not against positive thinking, but I would say that believing in the positive, to the exclusion of all else, is a dangerous and narrow minded goal that leads to a closed mind, determined only to see what it chooses.

I have dealt for decades with the so-called positive thinking ranks in twelve step programs, and various spiritual philosophy oriented groups, and find one thing similar with each of them.

When challenged about what they believe, their answer is to dismiss the questioner, either on moral, philosophical, or intellectual grounds. This seems to be a way for some to comfortably exclude any disbeliever or challenger to their beliefs.

Their likewise determined goal of always ending up where they decide they have a right to be, short changes anyone and everyone who does not agree with them and their rigid conclusions.

Being obsessed about fulfilling your own desires does not allow one to see the legitimate needs of others. When you abandon the needy and the less fortunate simply to insure your own pleasant way of life, you are just another selfish individual refusing to lend a hand.

(can always make a living) SINGIN LOVE SONGS

Demo from 1980-81... I recorded a number of these using the technique of out of sync vocal tracks for effect.

(part 209) DEMOS AND CHOICES

2009-11-23T17:38:00.000-08:00

Love 1980-81 demo

When Ronald Reagan was elected president in 1980, Dennis and George were thrilled, which I responded to in the negative. I recall at the time that it concerned me, because the philosophical gorge between them and me became even more apparent.

This would later prove to be a major problem, in that Dennis and George's view of the world was at odds with mine. What was reasonable for them was unreasonable to me.

It is hard enough to come to terms with arrangements between human beings, but when you throw in religious and political differences, it just adds to the confusion.

Personally I liked Dennis a lot, and tried hard to compromise with him for a long while, but as time ticked by, month after month, it became increasingly apparent that continuing for a second year was going to be out of the question.

My worries about losing my entire income, and my house, were almost enough to get me to go along with Dennis's demands about the publishing rights to older songs of mine.

Through it all I stood my ground on that issue, knowing full well I was going pay for it in the end and be relegated once again to the world of financial chaos.

As usual, when I was concerned about things, I wrote songs and made demo recordings to keep myself busy, and my mind off the negativity that loomed ahead.

I did that a lot in 1980 in my little house in West Hollywood on Westmount Dr. Part of it was this. In the back of my mind I always believed I would someday write that one song that would do it for me.

One song that would give me the recognition and financial success that would keep me out of the up and down meat grinder I had lived in much of my life.

I was always sure it was the song I was writing at the time, which is why I wrote song after song. With each failed attempt at success, I was motivated to try again, and again, and again.

I was making $500 a week, but could see the writing on the wall ahead. If I wouldn't bend to the will of those paying me, I would be cut off, and once more relegated to the street, or a guest of an interested female.

It probably doesn't sound all that terrible to some, but believe me, when you live that way as much as I did, it gets real old. I just wanted a life that was stable for more than a year or so.

I knew if I gave in to Dennis on the RCA songs that I could have gotten at least another year or more out of the arrangement, but I couldn't make myself do it.

It wasn't like my ex-girlfriend and her family were making demands on me over the the song rights, it was more of a personal issue with me and my own personal honor.

I knew from experience what kind of corners were cut to facilitate people's goals, so I held fast to my conviction that what was right was right.

Because I was sober, I needed to know, by my own actions, that I was doing the right thing, even if nobody noticed or cared except me.

I had to have a standard to live up to when the music was the issue--without it I may have just thrown in the towel and gotten loaded.

I will never know, other than looking back on it now, whether choosing what I chose, was a major part of staying clean and sober through it all.

Afraid To Get Hurt Again 1980-81 demo

(part 208) DEALS ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN

2009-11-19T20:58:00.000-08:00

I argued for months with Dennis over the copyright issue concerning the earlier songs I had written before becoming involved with him and his partner George.

I told him that when we'd first decided to work together, the so called RCA recordings, and publishing rights to those songs, had not been brought up as an issue one way or the other.

His current approach, I reminded him, was based simply on his conversations with other attorneys who had convinced him to pursue this new line of thinking.

I offered to split my half of the rights with him, which would have amounted to a quarter of the overall value, but he was not interested in that, and persisted in his demand for half of the full copyright.

I told him again and again, that I did not own the full copyright, in my estimation, and was not going to stick it to the people who had once helped me. But no matter how I tried to explain it to him he maintained his position, saying I could do anything I wanted with those copyrights.

I agreed with him in theory, that this was probably the case, but I wasn't going to do it, because I believed it was wrong. I said they'd put up their money, which was a lot more than Dennis and George had invested, and that the songs and masters were, by default, co-owned by them, period.

Making matters worse, Dennis and George expected the musicians, who'd played on Barrooms, Ten Cent Call, and Outlaw, to rehearse with me for free, and get the band ready to perform live gigs, of which none existed at the time.

I tried to explain that these were union scale studio musicians, who were sought after by others, and could not be expected to work for free, anymore than Dennis and George would do legal work for free. If I couldn't pay them for their time, someone else would.

I said, "No one's gonna work for me for free. I've had that done to me too many times in the past, and I'm not going to do it to these guys. They are not amateur players looking to start a band in their neighborhood garage, they're studio musicians who got to where they are by years of hard work."

Dennis and George just didn't get it, but I finally got them to agree to pay each one of the musicians $50 a rehearsal, but they soon decided they didn't want to spend the money so it stopped.

I thought Dennis and George's time would be better put to use if they spent more of it trying to get a label to release the record, but they hadn't even started down that road.

Dennis in particular, was consumed with gaining as much control over copyrights, and producing a monstrosity of a contract for me to sign, than he was in securing a label to release the record.

I tried unsuccessfully to explain to him that all these parts had to work together or the whole thing would go nowhere.

In the end I began to fall back into my all too familiar territory of watching the latest deal fold under unnecessary demands and pressures, issued forth by lawyers entrenched in thinking that guaranteed failure over compromise.

Maybe Baby demo 1980-81

(part 207) LAWYERS, CONTRACTS, AND PUBLISHING

2009-11-15T15:49:00.000-08:00

Out of the four songs recorded, "The Sun Don't Shine In Barrooms" was another of the studio tracks. I was screwing around with the vocal, and just kind of fell into a straight country performance as a joke, but it worked so well we decided to pursue it seriously in the studio.

Rather than shy away from the strict country lean of the song, we followed it. With Dave Pearlman's excellent steel guitar playing as the guide, and Ben Benay's spot on Les Paul licks, the song started playing itself.

Aided by Colin Cameron's steady hand on bass, and Jim Ponder's drum work, the studio performance surprised us all. When I listened to the track playback I had no doubt as to the way the vocal should be done.

It hung together so well that it invited the vocal, as opposed to trying to figure out how to do it. It just said, "lay it down country like you mean it!" I overemphasized the twang, but again, when I heard the playback it sounded tight and natural.

Without planning any of this in the beginning, it became for me, a lesson in recording. Sometimes what happens naturally is better than your original plan, if you simply ride along with it.

"Barrooms" was exactly that, we just went along for the ride. Dennis, being somewhat of a country oriented person wearing a suit and tie, thought it was a hit record, and we all tended to agree with him.

It was not the direction we'd set out to achieve, but "Barrooms" and "Outlaw" set their own course, and for the most part we just went along on instinct.

It was then up to Dennis and George, in large part, to prove to themselves they could pick up the ball and run with it, something they were never able to do.

Wanting to be, and even believing you are, in the music/record business does not suffice for hard work toward that end. Dennis's problem was that he was a lawyer, and he thought like a lawyer.

Instead of pursuing a label so the record could be released, he concentrated on creating an iron clad contract for me to sign. He was a studier, so he went to other music attorneys, and asked them their opinions about what was important.

The end result was a contract that gave him and George control of all the songs I had written for the past two years, and all the songs I was going to write for the next five years.

This would have included the songs I'd written for the RCA recordings, which I said I couldn't do. Those songs were in RPJ Music, my company, and were partly owned by the family of my ex-girlfriend.

Dennis said he didn't care about my previous arrangements regarding the publishing of those earlier songs, and continued to pursue his plan to control the publishing rights.

I continued to refuse, because the man who had made their existence possible, to a great degree, as recordings, was now dead. His family had a right, in my opinion, to partial ownership of what had been created when I'd been involved with them.

As usual, my standing on some principle I believed in, led to the eventual demise of the entire deal. Dennis and George became convinced that controlling the publishing was what was important.

This of course was true, in one way, but was the catalyst, as it is in many cases, for the destruction of all else. it served to place Dennis and me at odds with each other, and led in time to the collapse of any further agreement after the one year expired.

When's It Gonna Be Tomorrow....Demo 1980-81

(part 206) THE STORY CONTINUES

2009-11-14T17:17:00.000-08:00

In 1980 I was able to reach a verbal agreement with Dennis and his law partner, George, with a written contract soon to follow.

As I wrote earlier, I was going to be paid $500 a week for a minimum of one year. The agreement allowed me to rent a small house in West Hollywood for $750 a month.

It was a lot of money for me to spend, but it was my new home, and I did a lot of work there writing songs and making demo recordings.

Initially I was quite pleased with my life, and began to allow myself the luxury of dreaming about new and positive possibilities for the future.

My nights were set aside for AA meetings, where once again I was viewed more favorably by various members, simply because I wasn't broke and miserable anymore.

"Everybody loves a winner," I thought, and I mused that my new supporters had not too long ago been my worst detractors. This was truly one of the more callous realities of my experience with Southern California 12 step programs in the 70's and 80's.

None the less, I did enjoy the freedom that a regular salary and home made possible, and once again I fell into the "Hey look at me, I'm successful" bullshit.

After a few months, Dennis and I decided, it would make sense for me to get a band together and go into the studio and cut some of the songs I'd been writing.

He and George were gung-ho on this idea, because they saw themselves as two hot-shot go-getters who believed they could and would conquer the world of music the same way others they read about had.

I did not try to quell their enthusiasm with horror stories about the music business. Their beliefs about the future, and the notion of guaranteed success, served my needs as well.

Once again, I contacted Ben Benay, and asked if he would be interested in putting together a band to do some studio recording with me. I told him everybody would get paid in whatever way he suggested, and that the money wouldn't be a problem.

Ben was excited that I contacted him, and agreed immediately to take on the project. He came up with Colin Cameron on bass, Jim Ponder on drums, Dave Pearlman on steel guitar, John York on backup vocals and guitar, Amy Philbin and her girls doing backup vocals, and himself on lead guitar, arrangements, and co-producer and arranger with me.

As usual, I made some demo tapes of my own at home, and then gave them to Ben so he could make up leed sheets for the players.

He also incorporated my lead guitar parts for the song "Outlaw" in the video below. There were four songs recorded in the studio in 1980, but there were many other songs that remain in only demo form to this day.

OUTLAW

(part 205) SHADOW HUNTER

2009-10-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

I WAIT LIKE A BEGGAR
AT THE DOOR OF THIEVES
HOPING FOR CRUMBS
FROM THEIR TABLE

A TABLE BUILT
WITH MY OWN HANDS...
FASHIONED FROM FINE WOOD
GATHERED IN MY YOUTH...

I STAND LIKE A PAUPER
NEXT TO THIER LIES
CONDEMNED BY RIDICULE
FOR MY MISERY

MISERY
I SUFFER
BY THE VERY ONES
WHO BARTER NOW

OVER THAT WHICH
THEY TOOK FROM ME...
PROFITING FROM IT
AS I STARVED

MY PATIENCE RUNNING THIN
I PLEDGE TO MYSELF
I WILL NOT DIE
UNTIL THEY SUFFER...

I WHO WAIT
LIKE A HUNGRY WOLF
FOR THEIR EXIT...
THEIR SWIFT DEMISE

I THE WOLF...
THE SHADOW HUNTER
WELL SUITED AGAINST
THEIR SOFT FLESH...

Bobby Jameson Oct, 1 2009

(part 204) THE CHASING WIND

2009-09-25T01:32:00.000-07:00

I WALK IN THE ZONE
BETWEEN HEAVEN
AND HELL
LIFE AND DEATH

I WANDER BENEATH
THE GREAT TIMBERS
OF CONSCIOUSNESS
LIKE AN ANT

SO VAST IS THE
UNIVERSE OF THOUGHT
SO ALIVE THE COLLECTIVE
HEAP OF EMOTIONS

THE PHYSICAL LIFE PAINFUL
THE THOUGHT OF NOT
ENDURING IT ANY LONGER
A DREAM OF FREEDOM

HANGING ON TO THREADS
OF PROMISES FROM
HUMAN LIPS
THAT SINK LIKE STONES

IN THE STILL WATERS
OF THE HEART
NEVER TO APPEAR AGAIN
AS IF NEVER UTTERED

ALL THAT IS LEFT
ARE THE RIPPLES
ON THE POND
AND THE CHASING WIND

AS IT WHISPERS
TO THE STARS
I AM HERE
I AM HERE

Bobby Jameson Sep 2009

(part 203) DENNIS AND GEORGE.....DUCEY AND LUCEY

2009-09-19T18:08:00.000-07:00

Once again, I set my thoughts into believing that a deal with Dennis and his partner George could, or more precisely, would come to pass, just as I had prior to the RCA deal.

I continued to paint the house I'd been working on by day, and focused on expecting something better, and going to AA meetings at night. Whenever the doubt would creep in, I would expel it immediately and replace it with a more positive thought.

I remember what it felt like when I got word that the new deal was a go. In the twinkling of an eye my life changed again. I finished up with the house painting, and silently vowed I'd never have to do it again because of being broke.

As I walked down the driveway toward the street, and away from that job, I felt a deep sense of freedom and joy for the first time in nearly two years.

It was near the end of 1979, and I was to be paid $500 a week to write songs and make demos of them, for a minimum of one year. I was ecstatic.

"I was going to get my own place again and be able to pay the rent. I was going to have a job doing what I loved, and I was going to feel good about myself, really good," I thought.

* * *

Back in the early 60's I'd been a smiley faced ball of fire before encountering the likes of Tony Alamo, Andrew Oldham, and Randy Wood.

After finishing my work on the Chris Lucey album, Songs Of Protest And Anti Protest, for a mere $200, I understood that people in the record and music business were completely untrustworthy, and would lie about anything and everything to get what they were after.

It appeared to me, at twenty years old, that I had stepped into a world of con-men who used flattery and dishonesty as tactics to accomplish stealing from the young and naive, of which I was certainly one.

My understanding, in 1965, led me to refuse to sign an agreement with Mira/Surrey, put forth after I'd done the work on the album.

Once I'd completed my assigned task on Songs Of Protest, the so called contractual agreement was presented to me in Randy Wood's office.

In that closed door session with me, Wood, and Somer, Wood's attorney, those two men set about to persuade me to sign the Somer-penned document. It was without any other person present to protect my interests.

It was me against the two of them, and I was twenty years old. In a spur of the moment maneuver, the half inch thick contract, which I'd never seen or even heard about until that moment, was produced out of the blue and I was told to sign it.

Feeling completely out gunned, I asked what I would get if I signed it? To that, Randy Wood exploded and told me, "I just let you make an entire album at my expense, using your own songs, you little son of a bitch, and now you want more?"

I remember thinking at that moment that he had taken the situation from, Bobby Jameson had helped him out of the jam he was in with the Ducey record, and turned it around to be, he'd now done me a favor.

I was confused and uncomfortable in the confines of Wood's office, and said I'd think about it, but doubted if I would sign it. As I tried to leave, Randy grabbed me and threw up against the wall.

He began screaming in my face that I was an ungrateful little prick and that he was trying to help me, but I was too stupid to know it and was trying to fuck him.

With his hands tightly grasping the front of my shirt, and his body pinning me against the wall, I stared into his contorted face while he yelled at me. I looked over at Abe Somer, for help, but he just stood there with a smirk on his face, holding the contract in his hand.

At that moment Randy seemed to realize what he was doing and released his grip on me saying, "Go ahead, get outta here. Get outta my sight."

Shaken, but relieved, I vacated Wood's office, and remember the scene as I opened the door and looked at the larger Mira/Surrey office space.

Everybody was stone cold silent and stared at their desks, the wall, or the floor. No one said shit to me. I was just there by myself looking for a face, a gesture, something.

I looked down the length of the room to Betty Chiapetta's office door, which was open. I waited for a moment, but nothing, absolutely nothing. I left alone, and everyone knew I had refused to sign a contract for Chris Lucey. They had heard everything.

* * *

In the deal with Dennis, I set it up so I received an ongoing salary for a year. It was a way of guaranteeing that I would not only get paid for my efforts, but that it would continue for a set amount of time.

I knew, through bitter experience that what I would be paid would have to be gotten up front, or as a salary arrangement, because trying to get anything after the fact was an empty promise that I'd heard too many times before.

(part 202) CURIOUS DAYS

2009-09-11T17:16:00.000-07:00

DREAM MACHINE
IN FLASHING SKY
TWIRLS INSIDE
MY EMERALD EYE
LIKE SPINNING GOLD
AGAINST THE SUN
THERE'S NOWHERE LEFT
FOR ME TO RUN

CONTINUITY
OF TIME
SPLIT LIKE ATOMS
WITH EACH RHYME
IN SENTENCES
OF BLURRING MIND
RELEASE ME LOVE
FOR LOVE IS BLIND

TANGENT'S SCRIBBLED
ON A WALL
NO ONE COMES
HERE AFTER ALL
I ALONE
HAVE READ EACH WORD
UNSPOKEN STILL
AND STILL UNHEARD

MAGNIFIED AGAINST
THE BLAZE
OF HOVERED HONED
AND GHOSTLY DAYS
WHERE LIGHT IS BORN
AGAINST THE BLACK
OF YESTERYEARS
AND LOOKING BACK

BACK INTO
THE REALM OF FATE
WHERE ANGELS SCREAM
AND BUZZARDS WAIT
TO EAT THE FLESH
OF CURIOUS DAYS
NOW LOST INSIDE
THE ENDLESS MAZE

Bobby Jameson Sep 11, 2009

(part 201) DENNIS AND GEORGE

2009-09-03T23:23:00.000-07:00

The lawyer's name was Dennis Poulsen, and he was an insurance attorney from Whittier, California. Carol Paulus had befriended him in Beverly Hills where he'd opened a perfume shop.

It seems that Dennis had read an article in Time Magazine about people getting into the music business and making a fortune without any prior experience. This was where he'd gotten the idea, and had decided to take a shot at it himself.

As you can imagine, Dennis looked like what you might think an attorney from Whittier would look like. He was well dressed in a suit and tie with short hair, was a conservative Republican, had little or no style, was young, late 30's, maybe 40, and had a business partner named George who liked to drink.

They were both married, and I guess they thought they were pretty hip, which they weren't. Maybe in Whittier, but not in Beverly Hills and West Hollywood.

The first time I met him was when he came to Carol's apartment. She was not there, so it was just me and Dennis. He was positive, intelligent, and friendly, and he reminded me of guys I'd met in bars on the west side on weekends.

They always seemed a bit too positive, and overly expectant that something was about to happen. They didn't know what exactly, but they were always ready for it, or so they thought.

When you've been on the street as long as I had, you kind of learn to read people fast, and that's how I read Dennis.

I took a good look at him when he came in, and decided almost immediately who I was dealing with. Because of this, I didn't want to spend a lot of time talking.

I didn't feel like this meeting was going to amount to much, so I took him into another room where my guitar was and said, "I'm gonna play you some songs, if you don't mind." Too much chit-chat and letting someone like this get comfortable was what I didn't want to do.

"Are these original songs, Bobby, that you wrote?" he asked.

"Yeah!" I answered, "Everything I'm gonna play for you is something I wrote, and they're all unpublished."

"OK," he said smiling, "lay it on me."

Lay it on him is exactly what I did. After my initial discomfort at playing live for an audience of one, who was a total stranger, I threw caution to the winds and settled into playing the songs.

As I hammered out one after another, I could see his interest growing. With each new tune he became more convinced that he'd stumbled across a good thing.

He had to be thinking that here is a guy who can play, sing, and write his own songs, and is good at it. And, he's got a lot of songs.

They just came pouring out of me like a human jukebox. I knew what was going on. I'd planned it that way. "Just beat the crap out of him with original songs,"I thought, "so many that his mind turns to mush. Make him know that he really saw and heard something special. Don't let him leave wondering. Make sure he is convinced of one thing: that Bobby Jameson can write, play, and sing."

After about 25 songs, I stopped, wiped off the sweat, and put my guitar down. I lit a cigarette and said, "Well there ya go, man. That's what I do and I did it for you," as I blew out a large cloud of smoke into the air.

I looked over at Dennis, who appeared a little unsure of what to say or do next, and said, "Well whatta ya think, man?"

Dennis finally gathered himself and confessed that I'd blown his mind, which seemed odd coming from him, because he looked so straight. I chuckled, and took another drag on my cigarette and waited for him to say something.

"How is it that you have so many good, better than good, songs, and can play them all as easily as you just did for me, and you are not signed to a record deal?" he asked.

"Don't know, Dennis," I said, "I guess I'm not that good or there are a lot of dumb shits in the music business, you tell me?"

"Well it's obvious you're good enough," he said, "so it must be the people in the business."

I looked at him and laughed, blowing smoke in the air again. "Yeah," I said smiling, "It must be the people in the business."

We sat there for a long time, and I listened to him tell me about who he was and what he wanted to do. At that point I was giving him my full attention, just as he'd done for me while I played him my songs.

We were worlds apart, but I could see that he was making a real effort to communicate his dream to me. I respected him for that, and his willingness to try and bridge the obvious gap between us. I began to believe he was actually serious about getting something going.

After quite a bit of talking, he asked me what I wanted in the way of money to get under way with some sort of an arrangement.

I had nothing to lose at that point so I threw out a number off the top of my head. "$500 a week," I said, "for a minimum of one year, and then we'll see how it goes from there."

I watched him closely for a response and saw no signs of balking. "Well that sounds reasonable," he said, "let me get together with with my partner, George, and go over some numbers.