(part 45) OLD DOGS LIKE ME

Me in 2007

No comment! Excellent! Either my last post was completely uninteresting or I said something of an unacceptable nature. It doesn't matter which. I'm not trying to win a popularity contest. I'm trying to tell a story. I'm not trying to win you over or get you to agree with me.

It occurs to me at times as I remember all this, that I spent the last 40 some years mostly blaming myself for everything that happened to me in the 60's. What I am learning as I go, is a lot of what transpired had nothing to do with me screwing up. Don't get me wrong. I do a whole lot to screw me up later.

My point here is, I always came up with the goods. I had the songs and I recorded them. How that was dealt with by record labels, music publishers, producers, and managers, was pretty much out of my hands. I was 19 and 20 years old at the time most of this took place. I had no power or control over anything except writing and singing the songs.

From 1964 through 1966 I wrote and/or recorded 7 or 8 singles and 2 albums. I'm So Lonely/I Wanna Love You, Okey Fanokey Baby/Meadow Green, All I Want Is My Baby/Each And Every Day, Rum Pum Mum Num/I Wanna Know, Please Mr. Mailman/I Wanna Know, the album Chris Lucey Songs Of Protest And Anti Protest, Vietnam/Metropolitan Man, Reconsider Baby/Low Down Funky Blues, Gotta Find My Roogalator/Low Down Funky Blues, All Alone/Your Sweet Lovin, and the album Jameson Color Him In. For all that I received $250 and a $650 BSA motorcycle. Both albums and 4 of the singles were written and recorded in less than a year's period. From the end of 1965 to the end of 1966.

Although I was using drugs and drinking neither of them had done what they later did to me, which was to completely and utterly destroy my life. From 1964 through 1966 I always showed up and did my work. What was done with that work was not under my control.

What is becoming clearer to me as I write is the basis for my later complete freak-out which started years earlier. That is what I'm relating in these pages. The growing frustration that occurred over a number of years culminating into a very different person than the one who started out writing songs and singing for the fun of it.

If you think I'm attempting to heap blame on others you're Goddamn right. As much as possible. But if you think I'm not willing to heap blame on myself as well you're wrong. I, in the long run will eat, by experience, every single disaster that is the history of Bobby Jameson/Chris Lucey. I have not escaped any of the blame and/or criticism that goes with being me. I have lived through all of this, and still do, for over 4 decades now.

You cannot know, other than me relating it to you, what it has been like, and what it is like to this day. I have nothing to show for my work other than the work itself. I live in poverty. I am not saying that for effect. I live, and have lived in poverty for a very long time. I have this computer, my first, because a bootleg record company (Fallout) sent me a $1,000 when they illegally released "Color Him In" about a year ago. Thank God they did. They are the only ones who have. I bought this computer with that money.

I sit at this keyboard breaking my ass and my head, learning how to use it, and trying to recall and articulate the facts as best I can. I am not interested in anything other than putting the facts forward, for the first time, about my side of my story. I have been asked what I expect to achieve or gain from doing this and I have answered. Nothing! Nothing at all, except to know in my own mind, that Bobby Jameson's version of Bobby Jameson's past history has finally been put somewhere.

A small bit of attention may be given to this story. A story that has been taken so far out of context that I could no longer sit by and accept what others have said about me. That is the world I live in. I am sure that I will never gain anything from what I have done or do here. Getting blamed for all that went on is now, unfortunately, second nature to me. Maybe you think that's why things go wrong in my life, because I expect them to. I accept that criticism. But old dogs like me find it hard to trust humans, because it is humans who cheat and beat on old dogs like me. I'm not interested in a better philosophy. I am interested in better people.



Metropolitan Man as performed by Bobby Jameson in "Mondo Hollywood"