Omaha Rainbow : Issue 15
Everything gets boring, but everybody has to be somewhere. Most
people either admire perseverance or
wonder why the poor son of a bitch tries so hard. Actually becomes
more of a lifestyle than an effort anyway, I guess. You just do what
you do and try to have a good time and generally keep from being dead and
all the critics (when you are discovered finally, or before that, when
you become a cult figure and therefore a critic's darling) say oh my God,
you tried so hard, so long. It is generally believed you ain't going
to get out of this world alive anyway, so why not?
But the critics are important anyway. In the Rolling Stone I just bought, Chet Flippo talks about Mick Jagger calling him a star fucker in the club where they were recording, but then calling him the next day for a personal interview. The Rolling Stones recognise the import of Rolling Stone. How many young professional, record buying dildos buy the Rolling Stone to tell them what exactly is cool? Then on the other hand, strangely, critics can sometimes love somebody (Jim Talley for instance) and the Record Buying Dildos don't get the message. Which could go to prove that the RBD's either (l) don't pay as much attention as The Stones think ..... and actually Chet Flippo and the Rolling Stones are just square dancing or (2) it ain't only that the critics love you, but HOW the critics love you.
In other words, if the RBD's are disco dandies (which I guess a bunch
of them might be) and forty-seven million
critics write that Jim Talley cares about the common man, then they'll
just shuffle a little in their platform shoes,
smooth down their moustaches, and say, "Whaaaaat?????" But
if the critics on the other hand tell us how Mick has shirt or jumpsuit
or whatever open to his pubic hair (which Flippo does ...but to his credit,
he ain't too graphic) then the disco dandy will unbutton his own whatever
a little. In other words, the times have to be right.
So here's the artist waiting around to die and suddenly for some complex and generally non-understandable reason, it's His Time. The critics, keepers of the public pulse that they are (and truth-to-tell, waiters like everybody else) jump suddenly on the bandwagon and HIS TIME HAS COME!
Who is the artist to complain? Shit! Money, fame and groupies are better late than never.
Who I'm leading up to here is Townes Van Zandt who said on his first
album a long time ago that the whole thing has something to do with waiting
around to die. And boy, has he done some waiting. The folk-rock
craze was in full bloom when he made his first album with Mickey Newbury's
liner notes talking about Dylan and the Beatles.
He kept it up through the rise and fall of country rock. When Texas
country peaked, and he should have been on top (he's been around Austin
as long as Jerry Jeff Walker and that's from the middle 60's .....), he'd
lost his record
company. And through all that, he kept writing all those just about
perfect songs and making those just about perfect albums that didn't get
reviewed or sold or anything.
"Oh yeah," the critics would say (one actually said this
to me ... this is almost a direct quote ... in 1970 at Scholz's
Beer Garden back room in Austin before the Texas Chili Parlor and all that
was even a gleam in Willie Nelson's eye) "the smack freak."
Well, I don't know. I don't know Townes Van Zandt and I don't know if he is or was any kind of freak. I do know I've heard his songs and I own all his albums and smack don't have anything to do with it. I guess if you're strung-out in any kind of way, it can get in the way of successful record company relations, etc. But I ain't talking about business, here, I'm talking about good and bad and right and wrong and all that.
It would have been right for Townes Van Zandt to have made it seven
or eight years ago. Hell, I thought he was
going to. The first time I heard Bob Dylan in 1963 I knew immediately
he was there; same thing for Townes Van
Zandt in 1968 or so. But such was not the case.
All that is too complex and non-understandable. But right now, after the peak of Austin Country, Townes Van Zandt is garnering a kind of acclaim ... due to Emmylou Harris including "Poncho and Lefty" on her latest album. Playboy gave that one cut half its review .....(though it's a pretty strange review .....the reviewer loved the song, but freely admitted he didn't understand it ..... and it's not exactly the hardest song in the world to understand.....)
So now I'm thinking maybe Townes Van Zandt's time is at hand. I hope so.
I gave up a long time ago trying to make much sense out of anything,
anyway, but I'd like you all to know that I
dedicated (in part) my first novel to Townes Van Zandt and the perfect
darkness of his music .....and I played all them old records for anybody
who would listen and several who didn't.
But, of course, it don't make any difference. Townes Van Zandt
knew all the time and the rest is just gravy anyway.