(part 214) THE VOW

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

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..

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

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

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

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