I'm ovid. That's over covid. Let's make that a thing. Ovid. I feel so much better it's like I've gone through a metamorphosis OK two people got that one and I'm not even one of em.
Today I'm going to talk about my first crush and the only time I've ever gotten paid to make up a song.
Throat clearing
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Come on out
At least I think I'm ovid. I haven't tried to shout out three or four songs yet so I don't know if I'll start hacking up a spleen or two when I try. But let's find out shall we?
This is the good open mic in the basement bar of a local market and sandwich shop that I mentioned I was going to play a few weeks ago. I couldn't because I got sick.
Here's me last time I was at Common Market. As you can see, the old man's still got a stage move or two.
Also I have some news about a show I told you about last time, the NC Songwriters
Co-op "writers round" in Fuquay-Varina. For those of you not in North Carolina, Fuquay* is a small town between Kennebec and Holly Springs.
I've learned who the other two performers will be: Matthew Crowe and Gordon Gross. Crowe is a folk/americana/country singer-songwriter whose music you can hear at that link and you're gonna like it. I haven't found much info about Gross except that he's a luthier, so I'm guessing he knows a little something about music.
The three of us will take turns singing original songs. I've made a flyer that I'm going to be unleashing on social media soon.
I get top
billing because I made the flyer.
You can click on the image to get a bigger version, which you can download if you want to share it on Facebook, which would be awfully nice of you, especially if you're in North Carolina. Here are versions of it sized to be an
Instagram post and reel. Thanks for any shares, street team!
I love that songwriters circle format. One of the best shows I ever went to was one like that at Slim's in San Francisco with one of my heroes, Joe Ely, plus Guy Clark, Michelle Shocked and Allen Toussaint. This was before Shocked either went off the deep end into, or came clean about, some wild homophobia.
If you don't know Guy Clark, just notice how Ely, Lyle Lovett and
John Hiatt all defer to him in this episode of Austin City Limits.
If you don't recognize Toussaint's name, he was a New Orleans guy, and if you've heard
a record that came out of New Orleans from the late '50s on, he probably either produced it, played on it, wrote the song, or, often, all three. It used to be you could make people go "Oh, yeah!" by pointing out that he wrote Southern Nights, which Glen Campbell had a hit with, but hardly anybody remembers that anymore, which is good because most of what Toussaint did was much better than that, which is not really an insult to that record.
The Slim's show had a local radio DJ emceeing. She'd ask questions of the songwriters to get them talking before they played a song. There was one long, complex, well-thought-out question for Clark that he patiently listened to, then said "I dunno here's a song" and launched into it.
The show came to a premature end because of a power outage. But that was also what created one of the most memorable moments of my show-attending life. They got some flashlights out and gamely played on without amplification! I think they went around once, with Toussaint, a piano
player, playing something instrumental because he wouldn't have been heard above his instrument. A once in a lifetime thing, to hear people like that singing without a mic as an audience silently crowds the stage to hear better.
Then they said they were going to
stop because they didn't want to damage their voices trying to sing loud enough to be heard, and Clark suggested that since it had come to feel like a campfire, they should end by playing "Goodnight Irene" together.
They did, each taking a verse, and when it came
to Joe Ely, it became clear he didn't know the song. He faked his way through it, improvising, grinning sheepishly as Clark just roasted him for not knowing it.
My hero.
* It's a suburb of Raleigh.
Song of the Newsletter: (Them Pretty Boys Are All the Same But) Us Ugly Guys (Got Style)
This video makes me feel like I'm really a Triangle resident because it was shot at a place that no longer exists. Boy, those were the days when Raleigh was Raleigh I tell you what.
The place is the Berkeley Cafe, but don't worry, it's not dead. They're in the process of moving to a new location nearby. A Berkeley Cafe patron told me that the joint, opened in 1980, was named after Berkeley California, where I last lived. The person said the owner had passed through Berkeley and loved the
bohemian vibe of it.
Boy, those really were the days when Berkeley was Berkeley.
This song was a staple of The Smokejumpers set, and before that it was a staple of the Wankin' Teens set. The opening riff was written by Wankin' Wayne, later Just Plain Wayne and later than that Wayne Haught, who preceded me to North Carolina by a few years, moving to Asheville. He's also the one who gave me the name The King Teen.
Us Ugly Guys, as I
call it for space-saving reasons, is the only song I ever got paid to make up.
My first real job, meaning it was full-time and I got benefits and it was actually in a field I thought I might want to make a career out of, was as a copy editor at the old San
Francisco Examiner.
I never thought I'd be one of those guys who said things like "the old San Francisco Examiner." I say that because while there is a San Francisco Examiner today, it's a different paper than the one I worked for. The name has been sold a few
times.
When I got into the newspaper biz in the late '80s, there was still a whole generation of older folks still working who had been around when a big but not huge city like San Francisco might have a dozen legitimate daily newspapers. That number had been
reduced by closings and mergers to two before I got into the business — before I was potty-trained, even — but I had coworkers who would say things like "I covered that for the old San Francisco Call," or the San Francisco Bulletin, or the San Francisco Call-Bulletin, or so on.
Anyway. Now I'm one of those guys.
I was working on the late-night Style copydesk. That was Style as in lifestyle, not as in fashion. Just by chance, I sat in the first seat in the newsroom. When you came off the elevator, the first thing you'd
see would be the back of my head. I figured if a crazed shooter came in, I'd go first. I mean I thought about this every day. Every day.
On this late evening the person who came off the elevator was indeed a shooter. A great one. A photographer named Katy Raddatz. She
had just come back from shooting a rock concert at the Oakland Coliseum Arena, which is now known as something else who cares what.
I wish I could remember who it was she'd shot, but it was a male singer, or a band with a male singer. I was just about alone in
the newsroom, probably waiting to edit the review of this concert, so she stopped to talk. She was kind of raving about the show, and because I didn't really like this singer or band and I'm a stupid jerk who can't have an opinion without expressing it*, I said "I'm not really a fan."
And Katy kind of cocked her head at me and said "Yeah. He's so pretty though."
And this popped out of my mouth: "Well, Katy, them pretty boys are all the same but us ugly guys got style."
I don't know where it came from but as soon as I said it, I knew it was a song. I said I had to get back to work, but what I really had to do was write that phrase down so I wouldn't forget it, and then, since I was alone, I just made up the whole song, which took about 15 minutes.
That's 15 minutes on the clock. Wage theft — that is, corporations stealing wages from their employees by underpaying them, not paying them overtime, that sort of thing — is by far the biggest category of larceny in the United States. It's estimated at upwards of $50 billion a year, dwarfing the value
of goods and money stolen in non-white-collar robberies and burglaries.
But one night in the early '90s, I got a quarter of an hour's worth back for the people.
* I think I've gotten better about this
I have a few songs from back in the day that I still sing, and I often have to
rework some of the lyrics because there are a lot of references to things people don't do anymore, like writing letters and making phone calls. The last verse of this one used to go like this:
One day you'll be with a pretty boy
And it'll all be clear
You'll be yawnin, wonderin
Who'll take me away from
here
Well baby you know my number
And you know how to dial
Them pretty boys are all the same
But us ugly guys got style.
I had to change that
phone bit to:
Well baby you've heard the evidence
Here's the verdict in this trial
Other stuff
I know this is getting long but I promised to talk about my first crush.
You've already seen her picture. It was Sally Field.
But not the Sally Field of Norma Rae, the one in the flyer above and this newsletter's header. It
was the Sally Field of the Flying Nun.
Look. How. Adorable.
This would have been a lot more interesting, from a psychosexual standpoint, if I were Catholic. Or even
Christian. Five-year-old King didn't know or care what a nun was. He just thought Sister Batrille was cute af. He loved the way she struggled to keep her hat on when she was flying. I know it's called a wimple because I just looked it up. I still don't know or care much about nuns, though cute brunettes with a non-mainstream fashion sense? I'll cop to that.
I love that Sally Field as the Flying Nun was my first crush because it's just so goofy. It didn't stay with me. I think Sally Field's a great actor but I wouldn't call myself a Sally Field fan.
Unlike my second crush, Elizabeth Montgomery in Bewitched. Anyone who ever says a harsh word about Elizabeth Montgomery is going to have to fight me. I'm not a very good fighter but it's OK because nobody ever disses Sam — or more to the point, her cousin Serena.
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