(part 281) LOST TO HISTORY

So it had been the the reissue of Songs Of Protest as a cd, out of England, that had gotten me interested in the internet in the first place, otherwise I never would have started when I did. When I came I came with a vengeance. The reason being, Joe Foster had shined me on for five years and refused to make contact with me, even though he had released my work and refused to pay me for it. My attitude toward him had soured overtime because of it, so my anger was pretty much front and center when I showed up. I used to visit music forums on the internet where people talked about music and records. I remember coming across one by chance, and the topic was the Songs Of Protest cd, and Joe Foster was their guest. I joined as a new member and started putting in my two-cents worth about Rev-Ola and Joe, and it basically blew up in my face. This happened more than once. So out of frustration I finally turned to the blog where I could say what I wanted.

I had no plan. I just started at the beginning. I hadn't asked for the blog, it was part of Google. They used to give it to you automatically when you got an gmail account. It was just there. It used to pop up all the time. A big orange and white page that sat for months with nothing on it. So that day in November of 2007 I started writing. At first it was "The Life And Times Of Bobby Jameson," which still exists, but then I got this one and called it "Bobby Jameson." I talked about being a kid in Tucson with my brother Bill, and how we liked music and learned to play. I moved it right along and wrote about going to Hollywood as a wide eyed kid with no experience of street-life or the music business. I wrote about how I made my first record and left disillusioned, and then came back a year later and hit it big.

I never really thought anyone would pay attention to what I wrote on it, but I was wrong...they did. Overtime it grew into something I'd never envisioned. People read it and left comments, and the comments drove me crazy. I didn't know how to respond to them, so I responded to all of them, bad and good. I didn't know how to control them with settings, so they just kept coming in. At times it was like a barroom brawl on the blog. The anonymous commenters would egg me on and I'd fall for it over and over again. Many were lost over the years due to editing the entire blog, but some I removed for personal reasons. Things change, people change, and feelings change. Some of those who supported me years ago changed their minds about me. Got bored with of me! Got rid of me! It was a choice that was difficult for me to make, but I made it. I made it because reading some of those old comments, from years ago, brought back memories and feelings of better times. I began avoiding this blog and quit writing on it for years. I did that because so many of those comments were from two women I'd known in the 60's, who now despised each other. Every time I came here I'd see all those comments from them, and question whether what they said was real or just for show.

The luxury of yesterday's today may at times only be seen in our tomorrows. Things that were taken for granted at one time become incredibly important later on...after being lost to history. In my life I have witnessed this too many times, in too many ways. The soft tender voices become the crowd of naysayers and scoffers. The radiant armor tends to rust and tarnish in the dim dampness of neglect. I got here broken from the start, and freely admitted it. I had no allies or compatriots, no backers or friends, no money or power, other than my words and history. I was only as good as my last write, and always flawed. I came alone to do battle, not by choice so much, but by circumstance. I longed always for assistance I never found.

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BUILDINGS AND TOWERS...a lost post from 2009

I don't climb up on buildings or towers any more to rant, rave, and yell, or even scream about the things that bother me. I don't go to bars and get into fist-fights, or brawls, over anything. I don't go to people's houses and get into arguments with them. I don't take drugs or drink, and go through suicidal overdoses. I just come to my blog and yell instead. But even though I consider this a remarkable achievement for me, taking all that acting-out and transforming it into mere words, for the purpose of blowing off steam, there are still way too many who cannot see what I do as anything other than negative and extreme. What you may consider negative or extreme, I consider art. It is the ability to capsulize my frustrations into poems, stories, and writings, and post them on this site. This is therapy for me. To write what I feel and think when I want, because I want to. This blog is my digital tower and building. Everyday I climb up here and scream and yell, so I don't have to live with all of it penned up inside me, and end up like I did before. Be that as it may, some of you can find nothing better to do than to complain about my life-saving process, as if it were something you have decided you must do, based upon your opinion of what I say here. You would stifle the creative process, if I let you, under the guise of good taste and rationality according to your moral compass. At times, I feel as though this is a lost cause for me, but this morning I woke up early, and realized the importance of what I am doing here for myself. If I were to abandon this blog, because of someone's disapproval of what I say, or may say, then I would cut myself off from the very outlet I created for the very purpose some find objectionable. Writing is a freedom. To write, unedited, is an art I understand and use. Editing myself, my feelings, and thoughts, for anyone else's comfort will not occur here. If you don't understand this, don't come here and read what I write. I am serious about this. Don't come here to see if I have violated some absurd moral position you hold, because I either have, or will. This is not an internet discussion forum for being for or against anything, it is my blog. I am angry, so what? Are you so incredibly fragile that you cannot bear my anger? Don't come here! I am intense, so what? So what if I'm intense, why are you so threatened by intensity and anger? What happens to you when you read me? What great threat to you am I that my words cause you such consternation? I know who I am, and I accept who I am. I am that pissed off guy, Bobby Jameson, who hates the music business and all it stands for, and all that it doesn't protect. I come here to say that, over and over again, because it needs to be said by someone. If you work for the music business, what I say probably bothers you. Good, you need some bothering. If I make you uncomfortable, good, you probably need to be knocked out of your chicken-shit comfort zone. But when you bring your zone of comfort here, expecting it to be appreciated, you are living in a state of unrealistic demands that I have no plans to abide by, ever. I could limit comments made here by some if I chose to, but I don't. You can say whatever you want, but when you come here anonymously and complain, I reserve the right to treat you like the chicken-shit you are. If you want to take up an issue with me, be my guest, but why don't you get the courage to complain and tell me who the hell you are? There are so many anonymous comments, I am continually forced to try and figure out who's commenting at any given time. Why is it so important to you to say something, while at the same time concealing who it is saying it? There are people who say things I don't agree with, but at least they have the consideration of telling me who they are. I do not take the position that I am right, or the position I am wrong, I just take a position and post it here on my blog. I may come back later and think I was completely full of shit, but I leave it, because that's what I thought at the moment. If I were concerned about being right, or moral, or justified, or any of those pathetic kinds of positions, I would not come here at all, for fear of making a mistake. I am a mistake. My whole life has been a series of mistakes, and I own that fact. After all I have told you about me, you cannot possibly think that I believe what I did was justified, nor do I. It's just what I did at the time. I post it for public consumption. I post my own foolishness, so I don't have to live my own foolishness. I paint it into words. I did not punch anybody today, I just wrote about it. I did not attempt suicide today, I wrote about it. Why would some of you seek to quash my right of self expression, particularly, since that right, answers the dilemma of human beings, "What do I do with all this shit?" I write on line, which means, in this case, you can read my thoughts, because I am not hiding them. I have invited you into my mind, to some degree, and allowed you to be part of the constant hurricane that I live in. But to have to endure complaints about my thinking, simply because I let you in on it, has started to become counter productive, to say the least. It might help if you came here thinking, "Well let's go see what that crazy bastard Jameson is thinking today." My mental health is based on my ability to take bad actions and transform them into words, thereby freeing myself from the necessity of taking the bad action. Everything I do here is to free myself from the need to suppress my thoughts and feelings. I come here for the exact reason some of you complain about, which is to "get crazy." You ought to try it sometime, because from where I sit, some of you would greatly benefit from the therapy of writing about your feelings instead of hiding from them. In years past, I would sit and think about the things that were driving me crazy, and after awhile I'd run out of space to keep all those thoughts and feelings inside. Then they'd get transformed into actions, tragic actions. Now I think about the same things as I did then, but I have a place to put them; here. I have the Bobby Jameson blog, where I get to be Bobby Jameson all the time, because I am Bobby Jameson all the time. I will not give up this place where I can be myself for your comfort, praise, or dissatisfaction. Some of you demand things from me, which I do not possess, such as peace and happiness, and a better outlook on life. I will be 33 years clean and sober on the 1st of April, so what I have is I am alive and growing. I've come a long way from where I started, and I didn't get much help from human beings or god, so I am stuck with me, the one thing on this earth that I can count on. Not AA or NA, or a church, or the state, or federal government, just me, my 90-year-old mother, and mentally-ill brother, that's it! Oh yeah, and this blog...

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(part 280) Social Media And The Blast From The Past

As I became more active on the internet in 2007 into 2008 I began receiving messages from women I'd known in the past, primarily the 60's. I did not know how to deal with their interest, because I hadn't given it any thought until it happened. I was busy doing what I was doing. Writing this blog and gathering up old music of mine and making videos so I could post them. When I left L.A. in 1985 I concluded that no one particularly cared, or remembered me, and if they did it was not with any fondness, so when I got these messages I was surprised by them.

I remember well my initial reactions. I was skeptical and less interested than one might think. My past was my past, and these ladies were part of it. Since my belief was that I had failed as a musician, singer/song writer, and everything else, I was cautious at best when confronted with what appeared to be positive interest in me by woman who I'd not seen or spoken with since the 60's and 80's. Each of them wanted to get reacquainted online, which I agreed to do. At first it was on myspace, where I'd created a profile to post music, photos, and excerpts from this blog. I also wrote poetry there and posted it. This was where I began to mix with people again after a 22 year absence from that process. These were people who knew of my past, to some degree, and had also been part of it, unlike the people in San Luis Obispo, who had no clue as to what it was I used to do.

I made one request when I began the process of reuniting with these old friends, and it was simply this. "Please don't bring any bullshit into my life, because I already have enough. In other words, I am busy as hell with what I'm doing and won't stop for you or anybody else. I had to do that for me, as a way of protecting the decision I'd made to work and accomplish specific goals. I was not here to meet old girlfriends, I was here to work. It was already hard as hell, and I didn't want anything or anybody screwing with my emotions, so I laid down the rule. All of them gave me their word that they did not want to cause any trouble, but just wanted to get reacquainted and stay in touch as friends.

One would have thought this a reasonable enough request for me to make at the time, and to accomplish, but it was not. When dealing with human beings you have to deal with their opinions, desires, history, etc., and this was surely the case with each of these women in the beginning. One of them, Georgiana, would argue with me a lot on myspace messages. She was opinionated, as was I, and not very willing to use a softer touch. After one too many encounters with her I just flat out said, "Well fuck it Georgiana! I'll just quit talking to you altogether, and then I won't have this problem anymore!"
"No no, don't do that Bobby," she said, "I don't want to lose track of you for another twenty years!" "Ok, but gimme a break with this shit, because I got enough to do without this kind of aggravation!"

My fear was that I would get into rehashing old crap with someone whose opinion I didn't necessarily agree with, and get off track with what I was doing. I was writing about the early 60's at that time, and Georgiana was interested in talking, or arguing, about things I had not gotten to yet in the history I was writing about on this blog. I had not known her in 1963, 64, or 65, so she had no sense of what it was I was doing. She was also writing a book, and had her own opinions of how to do that as well. All in all it had to be quelled, so I could concentrate on what I was doing, not what she, or anybody else, thought I was doing. It was a tough go back then to keep focused on my goal and learn how to do everything by doing it, like use a computer, make videos, upload music, etc. I was stressed out by all the on the job learning, so arguing with some chick I used to know wasn't helping.

Paula was a girl I'd known in 1966-67 when I was living with Carol in West Hollywood. She and I had had a flash romance, but it ended abruptly when I didn't give her my full attention at times. Carol provided a lot in the way of creature comforts back then, and Paula was, from what she told me more recently, more interested in love, which I admittedly was not. I was a selfish son of a bitch trying to become a star in 1966-67 and was concentrated on the making and releasing of the album "Color Him In." At the time, Carol had more to offer on the money side than did Paula, so I was not about to cut myself off from what Carol provided. Like I said, I was a selfish son of a bitch trying to become a star.

On myspace Paula became my close friend. We talked a lot about Hollywood, old times, and what I was doing with the blog, trying to tell a story and make people aware of music they knew nothing about. She was supportive and easy to talk to. I didn't have any trouble with her until she got me involved in an argument, on myspace, with her ex husband, Chuck Negrone, and daughter. It was a preview of things to come, but at the time I didn't know that, so I weathered through it. Looking back on the incident now, it looms as a precise signal as to what I was in for with her, and the public persona bullshit of social media sites.

At the same approximate time, Sharon, also showed up from my past in a comment on the blog I think. She had been a Playboy Bunny and center fold, and I had had a flash relationship with her after Paula disappeared in 1967. I directed her to the myspace profile and she too became a friend. It would be fair to say I had no loyalty to any of these women back in the day, because as I said, and say again, my interest was in myself and what I was doing, not in falling in love. I cared, but only to the degree that it suited my own goals.

On myspace I introduced each of these women to each other, which at the time seemed to make sense. I had nothing to hide, I wasn't going steady with any of them, they were all people I'd once known and who now had reappeared in my life. It didn't occur to me that it would cause any problems, I mean, "Why would it?" It proved to be one of the dumbest things I ever did...

1967

2007

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Women I knew In The 60's

gail sloatman

carol paulus

paula servetti

nancy harwood

sharon rogers


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Then And Now

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Well it is 2014 and the end of June. When I began this blog it was in November of 2007 and a lot has gone on since I was here last. Currently my 95 year old mother is in the hospital having had a stroke as well as pneumonia, and my 70 year old schizophrenic brother Bill, had some sort of blackout/seizure and fell at his apartment, and could not get up. I had to call the police to get into his place and they found him sprawled out on his kitchen floor. I myself have been trying my damnedest to carry on and keep things afloat, but the load has been, to say the least, a heavy one to bare. The headaches I had when I started writing some seven years ago are still with me, and make all of this seem impossible to cope with, but a day at a time I muddle through.

I spent and hour or so today looking through some of what I wrote in the past and thought I might come here to convey a few new thoughts and feelings. There was never any doubt, when I started this blog, that what I might write here would change anything in my life much, which it hasn't. I got older, I'm still clean and sober, and I still feel as separated from the human race as I did when I began. I think if I hadn't had these headaches all the time I may well have done much better, but the limitations of 24-hr a day pain, for nearly sixteen years, allows little peace I have found.

As years have come and gone, so have the people. A few stay on but many more do not. It is excruciatingly painful to watch some, that I have truly cared for, begin to lose interest and move away, and then disappear altogether. But in part, it seems to be because of the physical limitations I am forced to exist with, to try and function with. If I could live my life as I chose to, instead of being chained to this rock, then I believe much would have been different. I spend each day trying, with all the power I can find, to get well. I never truly give up my belief that I can, and will, even though at times I have felt like throwing in the towel. Because I was able to get clean and sober, and stay that way for thirty-eight years, I have the model for eventual success with these goddamned headaches.

Then too, there is the fact that I am a pain in the ass, and hard to get along with at times. I do not shy away from this fact and freely admit to it. But again, for the most part, it is a direct result of always having to fight through headaches while trying to communicate with people. If I sound like nothing more than a whining weakling I apologize. But it has, and is, next to impossible to explain my actions without putting this fact squarely at the front of the line. I only hope that someday soon I can show up without this malady and people can judge for themselves the difference it makes, not in words, but in completely concrete terms and actions, as in transformation.

No one can ever know what is in my heart or my mind other than by my trying to convey that in words and/or some form of artistic endeavor. My experiences are what they are and my dreams still flash on the horizon. I only hope I get the chance, to be on the outside, the human being I am on the inside...and make some of those dreams come true. For those who have cared I thank you. For those who have left, or are leaving, I salute you, and for those who have found fault with me I understand completely.

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