BLACK IN THE GARDEN

This is the title of BLACK TRACTOR'S 2001 CD release. BLACK TRACTOR was Samoa on guitar, Mark Fairchild on guitar, Bob Bert on drums, Rob Kennedy on bass and me writing the songs and doing the vocals. We rehearsed for about 6 mos., never played a gig and recorded the CD in one session. Why should you care? You shouldn't. But every once in a while I have to remind myself that I used to rock. Rock band as art form can be a helluva lot of fun. It can also be a giant pain in your ass. I don't miss it that much.
   Last night (with free tickets from bassist Greg Hard) Shewho and I found ours selves on Hurd road heading, once again, for "Woodstock". BETHEL WOODS (the venue at the site) is a kind of Jurassic Park for musicians. And one of my favorite dinosaurs of all time, Willie Nelson was playing. Shewho had never been. The place looks like a cross between a Cabelas and a really nice rest stop on the Thruway. It's all stone and big timbers, and raised seam copper roofs, well done, but souless. Shewho said it reminded her of the San Diego Zoo. We immediately were pulled from the line for having glass bottled ice teas. OK. We chugged our teas and continued. I wanted to show Shewho the original '69 site. A gravel road skirted the top edge. I pointed to where the stage was and moved about 10 feet onto the lawn when a jeep pulled up to us. The uniformed security woman barked into her walki-talki- "Yeah, I got 'em". A chill ran down my spine. Guilty conscience I guess. Turns out you "can't walk on the site during a show". I hadn't been back in the garden for 10 minutes and had been chastised twice by security.
    It was great to see 81 year old Willie once again, but he basically phoned in the show. Who could blame the guy? Even during a "phone in" there were glimpses of his brilliant, loosey-goosey, guitar playing and smooth vocals. He ended the set with a gospel number- "Roll me up and smoke me when I die." Willie is still the man.

  I started the day with more lawyer struggle, trying to close on the shul. As I drove down to get to work on some new canvases at the shul studio I saw Carlito coming up the road. I needed to talk to him. When I waved him down, I hit the brakes. A gallon can of paint, I had on the passenger side, went flying, splashing beige paint all over the dash and rug. When I got home there was an email from Chuck. It was an idea he had for writing an article concerning "the garden and the skyscraper". Attached was an obscure story poem of a man who presents the idea that goes against the grain of the crowd- one of building an American skyscraper in the garden. The man escapes, but  another "medium height" man is decapitated in order to satiate the crowd's bloodlust. In the end his severed head gets stuck in the storm drain. Black in the garden.