(part 235) L.A. NIGHTMARE

L.A. Nightmare was, and is, a summation of all that my life had been, and had become, as a result of my time in Hollywood pursuing a career in music.

It is not a great song by any means, but does bring into focus my feelings and thoughts in 1985 about how I perceived myself in relationship to L.A. and the music industry.

It is in many ways a position of resignation and anger, more than anything else, capturing the deeply troubled nature of what had happened and what had not happened.

For some, it is a deeply negative portrayal of loss and failure, that many have questioned as accurate or necessary. For me, it is a clarifying capsule of history crushed into a few minutes of my life.

Whether I was wronged as much as I have said, and believe that I was, is for others to debate. I know what I was like when I started in 1963, and what I had become by 1985.

The seven songs, known now as the Closet Recordings 1985, stand out in a unique way because they are the last recordings I made.

Their significance to me, looking back at my own history, over a quarter century later, places them in a particularly important square on the checker board of my past.

I have often wondered why these recordings were, and are, the last ones. This question will hopefully be answered in the continuing search through my own memory.

In the beginning, I was an excited kid whose vision of making records had catapulted him into the limelight in the 60's. Twenty some years later I was a forty year old has-been, who many had less than stellar opinions about.

But in the writing and recording of these seven songs, I had, in my way of thinking, captured, as best I could back then, a product that I had done all by myself at almost no cost, which stand out as at least adequate.

The ever rising costs of making records back then was proven to be more folly than reality, by my own efforts in managing to produce these recordings in a bedroom on basic equipment.

It was proof that making music and capturing it, by any means, was far more possible than what a bloated industry continually claimed as legitimate costs to produce recordings in a studio.

I was not only writing songs and recording them, I was saying, in my own limited way, that what had become acceptable, as far as costs, was in fact unacceptable nonsense conjured up by charlatans in positions of power.

In many ways I was proving to myself that I had learned the art of recording, and was proving it by creating this series. I had been in need of the test, as it were, and wanted to see if I could pass.

When I finally finished the project, I felt as though I had succeeded, but soon found that others either did not agree with that assessment, or were just flatly uninterested in me or my work.

Those who listened halfheartedly to the tape, had nothing but negative comments about the work, saying, "It's dated, and not commercial. No one's interested in this kind of music anymore, Bobby, sounds like you're stuck in the past."

After awhile I resigned myself to the fact that once again I failed at creating anything that anyone would ever consider valid.

I was torn between my own sense of failure and the conviction that those who I tried to get interested in the work were idiots, and incapable of hearing what I was doing or how I'd managed to do it.

As for recording at Carol Paulus's apartment, and her part in this particular undertaking, I recall vividly the day when the telephone had been placed directly outside the door to where I was hard at work.

In the middle of a take on one of the songs, it rang, and destroyed again what I was doing. On that occasion I flew into a rage and grabbed the telephone and threw it as hard as I could against a wall.

Carol's horrified reaction to my rage further infuriated me because it lacked completely any real concern for why I was upset, or for the work I was doing.

I'd spent five months on the project and was exhausted by then, and had had, one too many times, endured the ringing of the notorious telephone.

I did not hide my anger in any way at that point, and flatly accused her of not giving a shit about my work.

"Ya know Carol, if you gave a shit about what I was doing you wouldn't keep leaving the fucking phone right outside the door where I'm recording. It's got a Goddamn fifty foot cord on it, so why do you keep putting it here?" I yelled.

(part 234) FORCED TO PICK YOUR COTTON

Me, Carol Paulus, and Ringo Starr

Walking through the fire is exactly what I was doing, in 1985, in spades. On one hand I was dedicated, on a level close to obsession, to creating and finishing these songs, while on the other, I watched my life continue to spiral downward.

A prominent, if not the most prominent, factor in my life, was that I was nearly always somebody's house guest, as opposed to being situated in my own surroundings.

No matter how hard I worked, or how long I worked, I had never attained the wherewithal to retain and maintain even the most minimal of housing for myself. I was, for the most part, a live-in toy, for a whole lot of women.

Good or bad, my talent for making myself desirable to members of the opposite sex, was how I existed, for the most part, from 1964 to 1985. It was singularly one of the worst problems I had to reckon with.

I was nearly always subject to the demands of whose home I was in. There was little freedom to be myself at any given moment, for fear of upsetting whomever was my benefactor.

This was a double-edged sword that I was constantly at odds with. "Thank you for having me, but I'm really fed up with having to be had."

Whether it was my hours, the type of music I was writing, or my frustrations at being hogtied by my own needs, these problems plagued me to the point of angry outbursts.

I felt like a beggar in the world. Always in distress because of conditions, and forced to live where I did not want to be, so I could accomplish what I wanted to do, which was to work.

The song, I Don't Beg Nobody, is an example of my need to voice my dissatisfaction with these arrangements, even though those arrangements allowed me a way to complain about them; another dichotomy.

The lyrics, and the feel of the song, are also aimed at the music and record business as a whole, and at the individuals from my past who I felt had sold me out for one reason or another.

"I may have been forced to pick your cotton, but I'll always be my own man." These are not lyrics from I Don't Beg Nobody, but they do sum up for me what the song represents as a statement.

Being a beggar of sorts was what I was, while at the same time demanding of myself not to see myself as one. The point, for me, was to remember that the conditions of my life existed in the way they did as a result of concrete consequences, not by choice.

To listen to others opinion about me, was to hear that it was all my own fault, and that others had merely tried to help me. My version was set forth in the lyrics and attitudes of the songs I was writing and recording at the time.



I DON'T BEG NOBODY

I'M NOT YOUR FOOL BABY
I'M THE KING
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
FOR NO DAMN THING
YOU AIN'T GOT THE MONEY
OR ENOUGH GOOD LOOKS
I'M AN OLD CATFISH
I DON'T BITE NO HOOKS

I DON'T BEG NOBODY
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
FOR NO DAMN THING

YOU DON'T PAY MY BILLS
YOU DIDN'T BUY MY CAR
YOU'RE A REAL GOOD LOOKER
AND A CANDY BAR
BUT I'M THE KING BEE BABY
AND I KNOW HOW TO STING
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
FOR NO DAMN THING

I DON'T BEG NOBODY
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
FOR NO DAMN THING

I'LL TREAT YOU GOOD
IF YOU'RE GOOD TO ME
BUT IF YOU START ACTING EVIL
I'LL SET YOU FREE
LISTEN TO ME WOMAN
CAUSE HERE'S WHAT'S TRUE
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
AND I WON'T BEG YOU

I DON'T BEG NOBODY
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
I DON'T BEG NOBODY
FOR NO DAMN THING

Bobby Jameson 1985

(part 233) WALK THROUGH THE FIRE

I was living at Carol's for one reason: I could work there, even with the drawbacks, better than any place else I could find.

The tape deck and amplifier I was using were hers, so because of that, working there made sense.

The electric guitar I played was borrowed, as was the Rockman Effects box. I owned the small Yamaha keyboard I used for the drums, bass, and organ, and the acoustic guitar and speakers were mine.

I scammed a $75 equalizer and a $14.95 Shure microphone as a gift from a lady named Lee, and the cassette deck was again Carol's, I believe.

Working on these songs, in 1985, kept me busy as well as crazy. I wouldn't eat enough, sleep enough, or treat myself like a human being, because being human was the last thing I felt like.

I resembled a machine more than a person. A machine dedicated to my precise programmed assignment, which was to write and record these songs.

Somewhere in my tortured psyche there was still the hope that, once accomplished, someone would say, "Hey these are really good."

I would lie to myself about this, saying, "I don't care," but in all honesty, that old need was still churning way down deep inside me, but enough of the "I don't give a fuck who likes these" was there to allow me to write and record what I wanted.

Once again, I penned a blues song that was descriptive of how I was at the time. It involved very real pieces of my failing life experience and the emotional turmoil I was in.

The two failed relationships, sober, that ended dismally, and two business arrangements, sober, that had also failed in the long run to change my life into something more reliable and predictable.

The anger, defeat, abandonment, and sheer lack of hope, became lyrically, the bedrock of the song "Movin To Hell." It was, and is, a dark, yet concrete, evaluation of my life then as well as now.

The blues for me was a workshop of the heart and soul. A single place where the bleak realities of struggle and defeat could be set to music and tempo, and allowed to fill the air with a message and plea for something better, a society, claimed out of love by many, but only truly understood by one's own walk through the fire.


WOKE UP THIS MORNIN
WITH AILIN HEALTH
CALL ME A DOCTOR
GONNA KILL MYSELF
IT DON'T MATTER
AND I DON'T CARE
I'LL BE MOVIN TO HELL
IF THE BLUES AIN'T THERE

WORK SO HARD
CAN'T SAVE A DIME
SOME DAYS YOU DON'T
WANT TO GO ON TRYIN
IT DON'T MATTER
WHAT YOU DO
YOU CAN'T GET RID
OF THE GODDAMN BLUES

HAD YOU A WOMAN
NOW SHE'S GONE
SHE FINALLY LEFT YOU
WITH A HEART OF STONE
IT DON'T MATTER
WHAT YOU SAY
THOSE GODDAMN BLUES
THEY JUST WON'T GO AWAY

Bobby Jameson 1985

There are 2 versions of Movin To Hell. The first is an acoustic version. The second is an electric version which was cut at the same time in 1985. The edition of the distorted electric guitars adds to the force of the message of the lyrics for some, and will be a distraction for others. I like them both, and recorded them both for my own reasons.

(part 232) PART OF MY HISTORY IN 1985

It took me about five months to write and record seven songs and call them finished. During that period the collapse of my life continued on.

Each obstacle encountered, and there were many, were pushed aside. I had guaranteed to myself that the project would indeed be completed.

My hours were that of a musician, you know, work all night and sleep most of the day. In the pre-dawn silence I could concentrate better, and didn't have to worry about ringing telephones getting recorded accidently.

I kept going to AA and NA meetings, and at times would appear to be alright, but on other occasions it was obvious I was not doing so good.

I gave up believing that anybody in the program would understand what I was doing, or why, or approve of it, so I just kept at the business of writing and recording the songs for my own personal reasons.

It had become increasingly difficult to connect with people on anything other than a superficial level, so trying to do so was all but disregarded.

As usual, I drove my car a lot. It provided me with the time to be alone and think. Not necessarily a good thing, but it was what I did.

I'd see countless young, good looking young ladies walking the streets, offering themselves up for cash, and because I was lonely and isolated, I would too many times waste what little money I had on their company...

But for me, in the shape I was in emotionally, it was like an oasis in the desert. See it, pay for it, and then gulp it down, no questions asked. I didn't have to get their approval or make promises.

It was just a cut and dry momentary cure for the loneliness, and was always out there, like me, just out on the streets alone, night and day, wandering...looking.

Because of this experience I wrote a song called Buckets On The Blvd. Not a very good song, but a song none the less about the fact that it was there, good or bad.

It was a time in my life when I lacked any coherent explanation at all for my existence, so I narrowed everything down to making these recordings, not killing myself, and staying clean and sober.

I kept it very simple. I had to, because the damaging effects of all I had done to my body and mind, during the 60's and 70's, had finally blossomed forth into a full scale jungle of confusion and remorse which was running my life.

My focus was on what I knew how to do, because I didn't know what else to do. Write songs because I could, and create a framework to keep busy with the work of recording them, not much else.

Locked in the damage of twenty years of sex, drugs, and rock n roll, it was a mesmerizing maze of confusion, demoralization, and isolation, so I just hung on to what I knew.

There was no help from any quarter really, other than surface applications, to what appeared to be a bottomless pit of destruction, called my life, so I read the AA book a lot looking for answers.

I watched others recover and progress, while I stayed put, in the endless ruts of my own zig zagging path. I knew something was wrong with me that wasn't wrong with others, but had no idea of how to do anything about it.

I prayed, ranted, cried, screamed, begged God, and then cursed him for abandoning me. I pounded on the walls of hell and heaven alike, but found nothing in the way of help for what ailed me.

This, more than anything, kept me locked into doing what I was doing. It became the imperative. Just keep busy, Bobby, just work on the songs. Don't die, don't get loaded, just keep going...keep working...no matter what.

This song is a tidbit of garbage, captured on tape, and part of my history in 1985. For decades I was embarrassed to play this song for anyone, let alone make a video of it for public consumption.

The telling of this story, though, requires that the pieces be assembled in the right order, no matter how some of them may appear, or how they might make me appear.

(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.