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WHAT IS THIS?: A complete fabrication of what might have happened to one of Bob's best sidemen. Please enjoy. PURPOSE: There is between 10-50 Dylan song mentions (titles) inside the piece. Whomever guesses closest to the actual number and gives me the song titles wins. HINT: The clues range from obvious (full titles listed) to partial obscure lines from obscure songs. Good Luck! PRIZE: 3 shows off TheNeverEndingPool's archive list.
The Firing of Bucky Baxter A sideman’s Journal May 3, 1999 I awoke to Tony pounding on the door. My eye’s slits, that would have made a snake proud. I fixed on a few empty bottles, a deck of cards, spread out over the table that was full and overflowed. The pounding continued, not from the door, but my head. One more weekend in München and you’d found me vacant and numb. I fought the spins and removed myself from the tangled blue sheets. I still had my Spanish boots on. Hot damn! Those girls in West Germany knew how to make a night of me! Looking out the window I was thinkin’ bout one of the girls I’d left behind. So many towns, so many cities, but there’s always one, maybe two, that get ya. Someones once told me ‘Yesterday's gone but the past lives on’ ain’t that the truth! Anyway, that girl, she’s a tennis pro now, and love means nothing to her. I brought myself to the pisser, swallowed three or four Alieve and without looking at the clock knew it was time for sound-check. Shit! Didn’t we just play the last show of the tour? Then, I remembered this wasn’t so much a sound-check but the Boss wanting to try out a new song for the studio. Fuck! Couldn't’t he just wait until we got back to the states? Things Are Changed I think he’s calling it. Couldn't’t be further from the truth if you ask me. Hell, I’m still getting paid the same amount, drinking the same amount and playing the same damn songs! I mean really, can we possibly squeeze anymore life out of Maggie on her farm and Silvio without his gold? The guy’s got a billion songs and we’re playing about one-hundred of them for over a year and a half. Well, shit, at least it wasn’t another gig and I didn’t have to be introduced as the former mayor of Bluefield, West Virgina again! Na, a rehearsal can’t be that bad. Now that I think about it, the last time we rehearsed with the Boss we needed the Pope’s blessings of tranquility. And personally, that rehearsal didn’t do us much good. Yeah sure, the Pontiff clapped but he couldn’t hear if pistol shots rang out. So, I headed down to the venue. A dinky little dance hall on the outskirts of town. We must have played there two or three years ago. Or was it a day, I trully don’t know? One thing was for sure, the acoustics stunk. I stumbled in. Lit a Newport and looked for my gear. Yeah, I’ve been here before. The Boss wasn’t there yet (shocker), and the guys were noodling around the chord progressions of Rainyday for a warm-up. You could say it was like any other day except, Larry wasn’t playing guitar. He was playing an instrument that looked a lot like mine! I tilted my head and lent my ear a little further. Yeah, he’s playing pedal I said to myself. The tones a little more country-standard than mine, but a nice color about them. I looked over at David who had his cowboy hat pulled down further than usual, then, over at Tony and he just fed me dark eyes. Larry saw me staring at him, but he just nodded and kept on playing at first. I kept staring. Larry stopped and realized I was standing with my dick-in-my-hand waiting for answers, not his solo during the second chorus. He gave me a toothy-grinned greeting. My hello is with just once glance. I spill my ash near my boot. The feedback from Tony’s amp shook the stage, then came an awkward silence. I walked over toward Larry’s side and put out my Newport on his guitar case. Wondering what happened to Larry the guitar player? He went on to say, that he actually plays a lot of neat old instruments like... Like I could give a shit about that long-haired unibrow. So, I jump in and cut him off, just like the Boss did over every one of my goddamn solos. Tony sees that things have gone from bad to worse, and he steps in. But I don’t want to hear anything from Tony. The guys nothing but a back-stabbin' phony no real musician wants to be dealing with. Tony’s been giving the Boss a reach-around for the last eleven years. Why do you think he’s lasted so long? Tony put down his stand-up and tried to explain. Larry left the stage and Kemper pulled himself out from behind a bottle. Tony started talking but all I manage to hear was the kickdrum in my head and him saying something about trying something new. But there was too much of nothing in my head to make sense of the moment. But I do have this vivid picture of how big Garnier’s nose is when your face to face with him. It teeters on absurd. So, something new he says? Like Lay Down Your Weary Tune, or Idiot Wind new? or, lets put two pedal steel players on stage and just Hawaiian-Country the fuck out of the tunes new? Tony knew how difficult I could be so he just split with his rack-of-chesse and told me to talk with the Boss myself. Then it dawned on me....something new?....Larry on pedal?...talk to the Boss? Nobody talked to the Boss and if they did, they needed to play deaf and dumb to survive.Off the stage, a door down the hallway shut. I turned around, walked off the stage and peered down the hallway. Darkness was everywhere, it smelled like a tomb. I felt around for the lightswitch. And there, standing in the doorway, was the Boss. Everything just sort of flashed. Just quick snapshots of the last seven years. Steve Earle, introducing me. My first gig in Perth. The Orpheum Theater run in Minnesota. West Point. Woodstock. The Edge. Dubuque. Then it all came to a permanent stop! He held his out his cigarette and pointed. He mumbled something about his mother on the hill , then kinda squinted at me with those steel blues surrounded by a thousand wrinkles. I didn’t quite understand what he said but I knew my time it wasn’t long. Sure, I had my demons and bad hair-stylists over the years but shit man; I was responsible for making this old man’s music come alive again. It may not have been thin wild mercury but certainly, at the very least, some damn fine railroad gin.I wanted to fight for it, prove my worth, maybe even give him a few wedgies. I wanted tell him but could not get across. But like so many times before and like so many others…I just went blank. I lit another Newport, grabbed my shit, and left town by dawn. |
