Etta, You Were Amazing

1938-2012

A True Legend

My wife introduced me to the music of Etta James, back in 2000. She always played Etta’s Live from San Francisco CD, in her car when we were out. Over the years I’ve heard a good deal of her catalog, mainly her later career, from 1980 onward… and it’s all amazing.

Etta had been suffering from myriad diseases over the last few years, including dementia (a heartbreak) and leukemia. She lost the struggle today, and is gone. We are the poorer for it.

This song is one Etta wrote back in 1968, and sang constantly thereafter. I’d Rather Be A Blind Girl is soulful, powerful, strong, weak, and everything Etta was. This version if from one of her many appearances at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1989. FYI – John Paul Jones played bass for her at the festival in 1974.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0yLCR-oLb0

Bonzo's Grave 9/24/2010. It's crazy that the gravestone looks so weathered.

Thirty years, Youdopia. That’s a long time. John Bonham died at the age of 32. That’s ten years younger than I am now.  If I had died ten years ago, I would have missed out on the best part of my life.

John Bonham was so good that he’s one of the very few rock drummers to be admired by the jazz community.  Led Zeppelin bootlegs frequent the playlists of Metallica and the Marsalis’, and many in between. It’s too bad he wasn’t able to reach deeper maturity, and maybe work through the dependency issues, like Jimmy Page did.

This page has a bunch of isolated drum tracks from the In Through The Out Door sessions. Take a listen, and realize how good he sounded.  R.I.P.  John Henry Bonham.

Well, Youdopia, I have been hard on Ol’ Doc lately. I haven’t read him, thought of him… I thought I even outgrew him for awhile.

That’s not true, though. I was mad. Mad at him for blowing his brains out. Well, I’m older and perhaps wiser, and I must say that I seem to lack a certain twinkle in the eye that came from aligning with the Gonzo. Who am I to judge? We all have that right to say, “enough”, I believe. Sorry, Doc. I was just mad. I still love you.

Warren Zevon is another one who has gone, but from mesothelioma, not lead. This clip has Warren and Hunter S Thompson hanging out in a hotel room with some bimbos (yeah, they are. Just look) and Benicio del Toro.

Warren was already dying, and Hunter was already counting down the days. There’s nothing profound about the video. I just found it and … pined.

I made a friend today. Her name (here in the floating world) is the Butterfly Temptress, and she’s sweet, funny, kind, and ill. She has stage 4 cervical cancer, and it’s travelled through her lymphatic system throughout her body… including her brain stem. Kiki spent some time online with her yesterday, picking out caskets. When Whitney’s school crisis came up, and we held a raffle to help raise funds, Butterfly Temptress donated money. She was fighting this, and in a financial crisis of her own (it costs a lot to die in America)… and yet she gave, and gave freely.

Now we’re raising money for her, and the wheel rolls on. The immanence of death makes the friendship process all the more intense and honest, because there isn’t time to fuck around. There’s no real point to this post, aside from the immediate and real.

So, ok.

The quill from a buzzard, blood writes the word.

I want to know am I the sky or the bird?

Hells boiling over, and heaven is full.

We’re chained to the world, and we all gotta pull.

(We’re all gonna be just dirt in the ground) – Tom Waits

It’s a wild life. I’m at least halfway through it, and I have yet to reach cruising speed. It’s amazing that we know we’re going to die, but we act like we’re not. The wise ones have always said to keep two things in the forefront of your mind at all times. First is an awareness of That, and second is your own death. Tick Tock.

I know I shall die. I don’t know what will, or will not happen to “me” when this body goes kaput, but it shall. George Carlin was, and he was not. Same with my grandma, and the same with us all. Moths to a flame.