Jeff Calder's Vest

Every now and then, I get to thinking on whatever happened to all of my favorite rock tee shirts of yesteryear. My true love was a Swimming Pool Q's one that I wore until my (lack of) bra showed through.


And that was way before lingerie became outerware - a nifty trend I don't mind stealing from the younger set on occasion. Another was an Album 88 number, which I'm convinced was stolen - by whom I have no idea, or I'd go back and get the darn thing even 20 years later.

And then there was the Black Flag Tour In My Head one, which to this day never ceases to crack me up. Kinda like a Python line that floats through your brain during a mindnumbing corporate meet-a-thon.

THEM:
"We've got to redirect the paradigm to reflect our inculturation within the upcoming fiscal cycle."
ME:
"Crucifixion?" "No, I'm to be set free."

I kinda miss the little buggers. So I got to thinking about an old timey band from 'round here, The Swimming Pool Q's, and Lordy if they aren't still going at it like the whippersnappers they used to be. The Pool Q's even played, yet again, one of my favorite venues on the planet recently, The Windjammer on Isle of Palms, S.C.

That place is an entire short story in itself. It was a slow night at the Windjammer unless a pack of Navy enlisted guys commenced to beatin' the crap out of a bunch of bat-eared Citadel cadets, or "Knobs" as they were relentlessly taunted. Fortunately, such a show of drunken stupor was an inevitability at the Windjammer, before they closed the Charleston Naval Base at least. I'll never forget some smarty-alekky djs cracking on Navy wives just after Hurricane Hugo. Saying stuff like, "They're going to riot (Navy wives) 'cause their shipment of Twinkies can't get through."

Lordy how I diverge! Back to the concept at hand... I used to sigh and avert my eyes when I'd see one of Jeff Calder's fine, brocade vests turn up at a show. Why was I so shy then? Now that I've got some semblance of nerve about me, I went and morphed into a soccer mom, where it all gets yelled out on the field.

Oh, but there was that fleeting, danceable moment not so long ago when 2004 shifted to '05 with the sound of Pylon at the 40 Watt blaring me right up against where I always wanted to be.

The chronic late bloomer can be a bitterly romantic wench...

The Unbearable Lightness of Summertime

I am greedy for summertime. Even in the midst of the hottest, most humid Southern day, when all desire seems tangled in the lushness of a grove of overrun Palmetto trees and magnolias set alive with the whine of afternoon cicadas I bicycle slowly by on the way to visit with ghosts wandering the fiery batteries of Ft. Moultrie, I am consumed with the inevitable - summer will come to an end. There is nothing I can do about this.

And so I throw myself into another summer. Or wish to, rather, when waking every morning to any day promising to be a really hot one. I want to feel baked concrete on the soles of my feet as I moreorless fall from the lounge chair into a heavily chlorinated pool. I sniff Coppertone like it was glue, high from the beach-as-a-child memory surge it powers in my nostalgia-ridden head.

I wish I was a painter so that I could paint the drops that rise up in my head that once rose up on the aqua-striped Tom Collins glasses with the little frayed wicker cozies around the bottom portion my grandfather would present to the guests, remarkable only for their dullness, who invariably stopped by the beachhouse late afternoons all through June, circa 1968. The country was on fire; Isle of Palms was not.

So I steal gardenias to fill the house with Eau De Blanche (DuBois), and to place in Ava's braids, from untended bushes laden with blossoms along Volberg Street in the city, no longer at the beach. This has been a prime year for gardenias; ignored, lovely shrubs of blooms just beckoning to be plundered, just like the purple, not blue, hydrangeas I covet from people's yards who never seem to gather them for themselves. Why not me.

So much wickedness just waiting to rise to the surface in summer, all in a state of air-conditioned arrestedness. I loath air conditioning. It forces Southerners to do way too much, to multi-task for instance. Southerners should never be forced to multi-task. That's not in our blood. What is in our blood is a desire to exist under huge rotating fans outdoors on porches near oceans, with mere ice-ridden glasses to cool our heated tendencies. We are hot blooded people. If only we could live that way.