(part 231) MAKING SILVER NAIL

Ping ponging, or collectively reducing the number of tracks into a single track, allowed me to build recordings that far outnumbered the 4 original tracks available to me on the TEAC recorder I was using.

Because of this, I was able to create such things as Silver Nail, or the da da da da song, as I called it, back when I was making the recording.

It has layers of multiple tracks, that were added over time, to create depth and dimension to the production.

The song was written about my thoughts and feelings toward life at the time, as well as the past, and how the hopelessness of repetitive problems plagued me.

The lyric content is dark and forceful, while the da da da da vocal parts attempt to lend an opposite pollyannaish accent. This was purposeful and hopefully lends itself to the sense of dichotomy.

Because my life was not improving at all when I did these songs, there are direct links to my thoughts and feelings written into them, in 1985.

As mentioned, Carol was not a fan, musically, of what I was doing there. She had heard much of my work over the years, and far preferred my more melodic and sensuous songs.

Because of this, I was not given the support from her I might have enjoyed had she been in love with the songs I was writing and recording in her apartment. As you might well imagine, this tended to create tension.

Just outside my door was a hall where a telephone was placed. It had a fifty foot cord on it, so it didn't need to sit just outside the door where I was working. Nonetheless Carol kept putting it there no matter how many times I asked her not to.

I explained that the phone ringing, when I was working on something, ruined whatever it was I was doing, because the ringing got recorded too.

Things like this caused no end to my difficulty in the creation of this material, and caused me to get angry at her on many occasions, again making things more difficult.

Perhaps if she'd read these lyrics, and understood how much this meant to me, she could have lent herself a little more to the recording of these songs, but that never happened.


...SILVER NAIL...

CITY LIGHTS
THE RAINY STREET
LONELY NIGHT
NO ONE TO MEET
TAKE A RIDE
TO NOWHERE'S DOOR
SHOOT SOME PAIN
YOU FINALLY SCORE

DA DA DA DA DA DA

WHITE LINE MIRROR
BROKEN GLASS
GOT TO GET
SOME SPEED UP FAST
NEON BLINKING
ON YOUR FACE
SCREW THESE RULES
IT'S DEATH'S OWN PACE

DA DA DA DA DA DA

BLACK AND BURNED
BENT TO ROLL
LIKE DICE YOU THROW
YOUR GODDAMNED SOUL
AGAINST THE ODDS
OF DESTINY
YA LAUGH AT WHERE
YOU'LL NEVER BE

DA DA DA DA DA DA

NOW YOU SEE
THE SHINING LIGHT
RAINY STREETS
THE BLACKENED NIGHT
SCARLET TEAR
A SILVER NAIL
RUSHING PEACE
A LIFE SO FRAIL

DA DA DA DA DA DA

Bobby Jameson 1985

(part 230) ANALOG RECORDING AND HISS

Me at Carol Paulus's apartment 1985

In L.A., in 1985, I was engulfed in the writing, playing, singing, and recording of half a dozen, or more, new songs.

I'd taken over Carol's den and made it into a mini recording studio, as well as my bedroom. It was more like a prison cell with instruments and speakers than anything else.

I would lay down a guitar track first, in most cases, with each new song, and then begin the tedious job of adding other instrumentation and my vocals. The bass and drums were played, by me, on a keyboard with various voices, as they're called, or instruments built into the keyboard.

Learning to keep track of everything at once, drove me crazy at first, but improved as I kept at it. When I'd overdub something, because I was working with analog equipment, I'd pick up a lot of tape hiss from the recording heads.

I had to EQ it out of every track I added to keep the recordings as clean as possible, and not let that build up. It wasn't like I had real good equipment, so hard work and patience proved invaluable over time.

On Voodoo Blues, which was a basic Bo Diddley beat, I used a tremolo effect on the electric rhythm guitar parts. The maracas, or shakers, were actually a bottle of vitamin pills I used for that effect.

On the lead guitar parts, I used a Rockman effects box, which could also be used for various reverb, distortion, and echo effects.

For those who haven't worked with analog, or don't know what I'm talking about, I'll try to explain.

In analog tape recording you literally have a piece of magnetic recording tape running across, what are called recording heads on the tape recorder, which cause noise or hiss on the recording.

Initially that's not too much to worry about, but as you add more tracks, overdubs, you begin to re-record the initial noise, or hiss, picked up from the previous tracks recorded.

You can use Dolby to knock the hiss down, but it squashes a lot of the good sound you may want to keep, so I don't use it. That is why I had to EQ, or equalize, each separate track with a piece of equipment called an equalizer.

It was imperative to do this on some songs more than others, to ensure in the final outcome that I didn't end up with recordings that had enormous amounts of hiss on them.

Once I added a new track to the recording, I had to make sure it was OK, because I could not go back later and fix it. It became part of the overall recording as I went along. I only had four tracks, so I had to keep combining tracks to create room for another overdub track.

As you might imagine, this kept me on my toes, and tense as hell, while engaged in the effort of recording. Any outside distraction would cause me to lose sight of what I was doing, or worse yet, get recorded onto tape as I tried to overdub.

These kinds of distractions were: telephones ringing in the middle of recording, airplanes, dogs barking, someone bursting through the door, or knocking on it, etc.

Voodoo Blues was fortunately a purposely noisy recording with high-end noise, like the maracas, which could join in with unwanted sounds, such as hiss.

Again it was a blues song, and once more, deterred Carol from any real support for what I was doing.

(part 229) BECAUSE I WANTED TO DREAM

Dreaming was the motivator as well as the killer. Dreaming dreams was what I did. Seeing myself where I believed I was supposed to be, no matter where I was at the time. I have talked about this before, and the redundancy of the subject is purposeful.

I envisioned the things necessary to achieve the goal, which in this case was to write and record new songs. Not songs aimed at commercialism, but songs I wanted to work on for personal reasons, outside of other's opinions or likes and dislikes.

I had to have a tape deck, an amp, a keyboard with multiple voices, an electric and an acoustic guitar, an equalizer, speakers, an effects box, microphone, recording tape, and last, but not least, a place to work when I wanted, which turned out to be at Carol Paulus's apartment.

I set out to get these things by loan or by gift, it didn't matter to me which it was. I didn't have to own the stuff, I just needed to be able to use it for as long as it took to accomplish the end result.

Piece by piece, I accumulated each of the items needed for my project. I was obsessed with the goal, and pursued it as a last ditch effort to fulfill a need inside me.

My quick smile, my staged look, each little detail, was geared to facilitate the progress of the plan. I would get what I wanted, and pursue my own self-interests with abandon. Everything and everybody was fair game at that point I believed.

In my mind I had to do it...I had to have a goal...a place to head for... I needed the discipline of concentrating on the work.

I would write it, engineer it, play it, and sing it. The entirety of it rested on me alone. I did not want anyone to work on it or help me. It was deeply personal in a way that I had not known before.

It was to be a private endeavor, one that I would make all the decisions about, right or wrong. A work done on basic equipment with my whole attention given to it, rather than in a studio with others and all the confusion that accompanied that.

I was too volatile, too emotional, to work with anybody. I didn't want input or debate about how to do it, or when. I didn't want to try and figure out which song somebody else thought would be better than another.

I had worked alone before in the past, but not like this, not with this kind of mindset and desperation to feed off of.

I set parameters that were conducive to me rather than to someone else. I would work all night, if I felt like it, or not at all.

I planned to eat and sleep with it, envelope myself in it, give myself to it, and most of all, I told myself, "I don't even care if anyone likes it."

That last point was total freedom for me, because I did not need to get approval for it. I could do it simply because I wanted to. It was one of the only times I can remember not trying to record a hit.

The first thing I decided to work on was a song called Life Of Crime, about an incident where I seriously thought about holding up an armored car because I was sick of being broke all the time.

I wrote it in a notebook on the hood of my car while waiting for my clothes to dry at a laundromat on Sunset Blvd. I'd watched a Brink's truck picking up money at a market across the street.

Carol did not like blues, and would frown every time I'd play them. Because of this I purposely chose a blues songs to start with. It was my way of claiming my own territory within the confines of her apartment.

(part 228) MY TROUBLED MIND

Hollywood California, it even sounds romantic when you say it. My whole life had been about the town, the place, the concept.

The dream machine, a place where childhood obsessions of stardom and fame were acceptable, even preferable. That magical place known all around the world as Hollywood, city of stars.

I had always been one of those wide eyed children with a vision. Had always thought of myself as part of the mystique. It was my home as far back as I could remember.

I'd gone to grade school in Laurel Canyon in the 50's, before we went to Arizona. The Wonderland Ave. School at the corner of Lookout Mountain Dr. and Wonderland Ave.

I had always felt the pull of electricity from the city below at Sunset Blvd. and Crescent Heights, where Googy's and Schwab's drugstore were.

I loved the town in a way I cannot put into words. It was just as much a part of me as breathing, and when I wasn't there I always knew I would be...eventually.

* * *

I drove south for a long time, down 101 to L.A. I plotted in my head a story to tell to someone, anyone, about why I needed to be there. Carol Paulus? Lois Johnston? Someone I hadn't met yet?

I would find a way, a place, like I always had. One more time, one more try, one more run in that town...my town...my world.

I don't remember with any accuracy where I landed at first, but I know that I did find a way and a place to put myself. I had learned long ago to conform to the needs of others to get what I wanted.

I was a human chameleon, always changing colors to fit into my current surroundings, while privately planning my next move.

Wherever I landed was immaterial, in many ways, to me. The fact that I knew I could sleep there and go there, was the point.

I would cultivate, as I always had, a series of places where I was welcomed, or allowed to enter and leave as I chose.

If a problem arose, and it always did, I would leave and go to one of the other places. It was just something I'd learned to do over the years.

I was a gigolo as much anything else. It had been that ability which had kept me going through thick and thin in this town.

To me it was no more than a tool I used to get by, to keep going. The point was always the music, the rest was just a means to an end.

I was callous as hell in a lot of ways, and this was one of those ways. Like a dope fiend or drunk, the whole point was to get what you needed, so I was like that.

I had a tape deck set up at Lois Johnston's for awhile, and Carol Paulus had a tape recorder at her place, so I used them. I had a lot of tapes at Carol's, a lot of years worth of work.

I'd listen to my own music and try and figure out why I had never been accepted. Try to learn by listening over and over, what the missing component was.

Ultimately I'd just get pissed off and frustrated, saying, "Those stupid assholes in the music business just never got it. It was there," I thought, "they just never heard it."

Every day I'd roam around trying to meet people to use, trying to expand my world into something that finally made sense, that worked. Women who wanted me around, and would buy me a microphone as a gift, or an amplifier, or a box of recording tape.

I was one big manipulating mass of self-need that thrived on the thought of accomplishing that which I had never accomplished, namely, to be recognized and accepted for my work. To finally be treated fairly by an industry and town that I'd poured most of my life into since 1963.

Somewhere in my troubled mind I was conjuring up, for the thousandth time, the outcome of a dream...my dream, one with a happy ending.

(part 227) CHILDREN WITH DREAMS

For me, music had always been the way I'd defined myself in and to the world. The music was just something that happened inside me, even when I wasn't paying attention to it. It would create itself and then force me to listen to it.

Like an excited child running around the yard playing, it existed as a thing no matter what I did. The joining of the expression of music, to the business of music, was the bastardization of the process.

It had become mangled by the havoc wreaked on it by the devious nature of the music business and creation for profit and loss.

It had ceased to be an expression of itself and had become a slave to the fickle nature of a fool's choice of commercialism; "fuck the music if it don't sell!"

This god-awful crap hole had been my home, both drunk and sober, for over twenty years by 1984, and had beat me into a form of submission that I despised.

I had become addicted to the process of twisting creation into a designated design put forth by the whims of idiots, assholes, and Billboard's top 100.

I had succumbed to the belief that things like Grammy Awards represented the entire strata of music's value and true worth.

This diabolical self-inflicted blindness and deafness was in charge of my entire psyche where music was concerned, by this point. I could not detach the one from the other.

It was a sickness I had acquired as a teenager, and had, over time, honed into a razor sharp blade that I had finally plunged into my own heart and soul.

The very thing that had lifted me up into the heavens had now broken my wings and sent me hurling to the hard earth. It had cast me into darkness and had left me there alone.

That is where I was in 84, alone. Try as I might to engage anyone, such as DJ, I could not. She tried to get me to move up to Northern California and stay with her, but I could not.

I even drove up there to her place with the intention of staying, but after no more than a few hours burst into tears, saying, "I can't do it, I just don't know how anymore."

I put what little I had back into my car and drove away leaving her there to wonder at this strange person called- Bobby Jameson.

I stared at my eyes in the rearview mirror and cried for miles, unsure of where I was going and what I would do.

But true to my addictive nature I returned to Los Angeles, the world's capitol for the slaughter of children with dreams.

I did not know what to do or where I belonged. L.A. was all I knew. For me it had been my life as well as my death. For me it was home, even though I had no home there...It was the town.

(part 226) ANOTHER MOMENT

artwork by Phil Bongiorno

I SHATTERED MYSELF
RUNNING AT
THE WALL
OF MY OWN
CONFLICT
HURLING MY SOUL
AGAINST THE WORLD

MY EAR DRUMS
BURSTING LIKE
TOY BALLOONS
PRICKED BY A PIN
BELLOWING
AT THE MADNESS
WHICH IS ME

I CREATE
FROM THE INSIDE
OF MY OWN DISASTER
WHIRLING
ON AND ON
IN A NEVER ENDING FIT
OF ANGLES AND LIGHT

ADDICTED
TO MY OWN PAIN
AS A MEANS
BY WHICH
TO SURVIVE IT
TO COEXIST
WITH MISERY

RUNNING
ON DEAD FEET
CRUSHED BONES
SLAPPING AGAINST
THE PAVEMENT
I ENDURE
THE PAIN

ENDURE
THE DARK
WITHOUT THE SUN
LIVE ON
AGAINST THE ODDS
BREATHE IN
ANOTHER STEP

STAY STRONG
IN THE COLD AIR
NEVER WITHER
REACH OUT
TO ANOTHER DAY
ANOTHER LIFE
ANOTHER MOMENT

Bobby Jameson Oct 24, 2009