A written history of Bobby Jameson and his search through the past.
Working my way back through the jungle of drug addiction and booze. My family life as a kid was the breeding ground for addicts. No self worth, no help, and one chance to get out alive. Music was the horse I rode out on...and the music business was the horse I rode into hell. Pronounced dead twice from drug over doses, I lived to tell how the pursuit of fame is as deadly as any narcotic I have ever used.
TIME AND SPACE
CORDONED OFF
LIKE A
PRISON CAMP
SURVIVORS STAND
HOLLOW FACED
AND RIGID
PRAYING FOR
AN END
BUT FEAR
THEIR PRAYERS
FALL ON
DEAF EARS
AND COLD HEARTS...
THERE IS NO
RIGHT TO DIE
NO RIGHT
TO LIVE
EXCEPT WITHIN
THE CONFINES
OF THE CAMP
WHERE MISERY
DICTATES
EACH DAY
AND LONELY NIGHT...
TIME AND SPACE
WHERE SKELETONS
OF DREAMS
ARE ALL
THAT REMAIN
OF YOUTH
NOW LEFT
TO THE WINDS
OF TIME...
I am not as lost as I am fed up and frustrated by my own life and putting it out in public like a rotting piece of meat swarmed over by flies. As I listen to Danny Whitten's "I Don't Want To Talk About It" I understand the dilemma of trying to live with an utterly broken heart. There is no way to communicate the basis of my remark to anyone who has not truly been impaled on that particular nail. Likewise, without the ability to communicate to others one remains shattered by all that shattered them to begin with.
There is no way to convey a broken heart other than to do what the broken-hearted do, which has always been unacceptable to most of the rest of the world. One is either soundly condemned for it, or given a pep-talk from hell masquerading as good-intentioned advice. I reject both versions completely.
What begins to become vividly apparent, after years of neglect, is that what the problem was in the past now stubbornly remains the problem today, and appears destined to be the same tomorrow. Even in making this remark here and now I can feel the reaction to it from the masses who have been brain-washed into believing that they must counter this kind of thinking at all costs.
It is the wholesale inability and downright refusal to admit to, and/or cope with, the lethality of a truly broken-hearted person, that ultimately leaves those suffering abandoned by the many, as a remedy-or-else solution. In 1972 I made a decision, on two separate occasions, to commit suicide after nine years of repeated dead-ends in the music business, decisions I still wish had been successful. The fact that this is really how I feel has and will be met with numerous forms of criticism, contempt, anger, and possible worry.
It is this reaction by people, to those who suffer, that ultimately drives the sufferer away to sort out their options alone. Those people, who I have the deepest possible contempt for, reside in the luxury of their judgement offering up suggestions to a burning man such as, "You ougtta throw some water on that," and then claiming that they have helped.
In my life I have witnessed the repeated small-talk antidote for everything, no matter how lethal or destructive it may be, or have been, to an individual or their family. When my father committed suicide in 1970, I received help in the form of, "Don't let it get you down," and nothing else. Currently in my quest to keep breathing I receive basically the same identical advice as I did then. For decades I have crawled along the curb, hovering slightly above total annihilation, only to look up occasionally at those frowning at my performance.
It is brought home in recent days by another offer to release some of my songs on a label without any money, except somewhere in the future, a future which in my experience has never come and never will. Another voice saying, "You can trust me!" I would think that anyone who knew anything about my past would be embarrassed to make such an offer at this point, but then I surmise that this person either doesn't know, or does, and believes that I should trust them anyway.
To me it's another low-ball moment. Another day to say, "No!" Another time to turn my back and shake my head and wonder why anyone thinks that I need to do this shit some more? Every problem I have is directly linked to trusting people in the music business, with disastrous results. I don't need, or care about, another record of my work being released with nothing in it for me except it being the latest version.
If I live long enough, maybe someday someone will actually offer me something to participate in the release of some of my work, but in all honesty I am not holding my breath. But in the meantime all I can do is to write about, "The way you broke my heart."
I came to the internet in 2007 and had to learn everything from scratch. I knew nothing about how it worked or how to use it, or how to use a computer for that matter. People were selling my work and not paying me so I decided to put all my albums on the internet for free where people could download them; The blog Echoes In The Wind helped me do that. My thinking was, it's better to give them away than to let some company who had no right to the albums sell them for profit.
There was a lot of information on the web regarding those records, and me, that was completely false, so I set about to correct what I could and add more facts to the mix. That's what I've been doing for four years. This blog was an attempt to write the history of a person, me, who had been involved in the music industry since 1963, and to create a factual account of that history. In doing this I unwittingly opened myself up to wide-spread criticism as well as praise.
In the recent post, A Comment From A Fan, I found myself in awe of the words and thinking used by that person in saying they are assisting in the illegal distribution of my album Songs Of Protest for free on the internet because it is not honored. This, they go on to state, is because, according to them, I somehow screwed over Chris Ducey and reworked his songs. As I wrote above, I already put all my albums on the internet for free, and as far as Chris Ducey goes, I have never met him nor have I ever heard his original version of Songs Of Protest. I purposely didn't listen to Ducey's songs in 1965 for fear of being influenced by his work. If you listen to my songs, which I wrote to Ducey's titles, you will notice that in many cases the songs have nothing to do with the titles. It is one of the most distinct facts of that album.
Unbeknownst to most people, Songs Of Protest And Anti Protest has been released at least five different times, under various titles and artist names since 1965. The first is the Surrey version from 65, the second is the Joy Records version in 1966 which was retitled Too Many Mornings by Bobby Jameson. The third and fourth versions came from the early 70's. One is a part Of A Vee-Jay Records boxed set,
(Disc 5 (HHF-6837, white label)
That's The Way The World Has Got To Be - Bobby Jamison/I'll Remember Them - Bobby Jamison/Girl From Vernon Mt - Bobby Jamison/I Got The Blues - Bobby Jamison/Saline - Bobby Jamison/That's The Way This World Has Got To Be - Bobby Jamison/With Pity, But It's To Late - Bobby Jamison/You Came, You Saw, But You Didn't Conquer Me - Bobby Jamison/Girl From The East - Bobby Jamison/Don't Come Looking - Bobby Jamison,
and the other version is on Crestview Records CRS-3066...Bobby Jameson: Bobby Jameson LP (1970), another Randy Wood/Betty Chiapetta label. The fifth version is the 2002 Rev-Ola Records reissue CD leased from Ace Records by Joe Foster, and distributed by Cherry Red Records UK. Since I wrote and recorded Songs Of Protest in 1965, I have made a grand total of $327 from all these versions.
One of the songs from Songs Of Protest, "Girl From The East," was recorded by The Leaves in 65 or 66, and was the b-side of their hit "Hey Joe." It also appears on their album of the same name, and another album of The Leaves as well. I have received nothing for this song and the use of it on any of The Leaves recordings.
As I sit here trying to write this I don't know whether to punch my computer or just break down. Today my mother, who is 92 years old, had to go and begin the process of signing up for SSI which in real terms is Federal Welfare. I, at 66, have no assets, no way to intervene financially and provide for her, other than to kick in the bulk of my own SSI check for rent, food, and etc, which I willingly do.
Somebody asked me the other day why my mother would have to sign up for SSI, "Doesn't she get Social Security?" Yes, but she was born in 1919 and falls into some odd group that gets nearly nothing, $304 a month. She had a small trust her father left her, but it has run out, so she has to go for SSI.
It is at times like these that I resent, in the deepest way possible, the realities that exist and have existed in my own life since I was a child. The endless financial strife and my inability to do anything about it. I have worked since I was 15 years old, that is a half a century, and have nothing to show for it other than a bunch of songs and recordings that have never provided any money at all.
I have endured, and still do, the endless nonsense of, "It's not the money, it's the music!" for 50 years now, as if being paid for my work is somehow out of the question. All I can say to that is, "Why don't you work for free for half a century and then let me know how you're doing?" The pompous nature of those who say this sort of thing, is like a slap across my face with a bullwhip.
I bring this up now, not for my own sake, but with bitter regard to the facts and realities I see unfolding for my mother. I cannot begin to tell you the respect I have for this women. Her strength of character and willingness to push on at 92, as if what she faces is yet but another day to do her best.
When I think of all the charlatans I have dealt with in the music business since 1963, and the abuse that has been dumped on me since I came to the internet in 2007, I wonder what in the hell I was thinking when I started all of this. As recently as the previous post, I have listened to an endless drone of criticism and garbage from people who have not, and could not survive what I lived through and continue to live with.
There are of course some who stand far above that crap, and for them I am eternally grateful, but to be here now, with no way to provide what is needed to make my mother's life comfortable and secure at 92, simply because I was systematically ripped off for every penny ever owed to me from any and all of my endeavors in this god-awful industry is more than I can stomach.
Even as I write these words, I already know that way too many will line up to tell me how lucky we are to get SSI, as if there were no other outcome we could wish for. There will be, as there always is, too many voices spewing pseudo positive rhetoric over the wound. But most of all, and branded into my flesh for eternity, will be the fact that nothing will change, and nothing I say will mean a goddamned thing in the long run.
