Loser's Treason, Part I

This is a tough one. Of all of my songs this one comes the most deeply from personal experience. I have been dreading writing about it but here we are. I can't put if off any longer. 

Here goes...

After twelve years it could be said that I have a lot of friends in LA, yet not that many I that I feel could call for a ride to the airport, get help with something difficult like moving or just show up on their door unannounced.

In fact, I don't have any friends like that.

But I did once.

We'll call him “Earl”.

Earl was about ten years older than I and his background in life as well as music and music tastes were quite different than mine, but we found we had a similar sensibility about music art and just hanging out.

Earl was a recovering drug addict. That didn't bother me. He had been three years sober and seemed to have a solid handle on things. I had never had any direct experience with drug addiction or alcoholism, but I always considered myself a good judge of character and being blind to stereotypes.

Earl passed my tests, the one's that mattered.

He was funny, intelligent, good with people, responsible and a lot of fun. I just liked the guy. More than all that, he brought out good things in me.

Earl and I played in a band together which was essentially the house band for an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting place in Orange County. It was a horrible band from the start, but I had not played with any bands since I left New York and this seemed like a safe, low-key way of getting back into it. The band was aptly named “Loser Salute,” referring to the “L” one makes on the forehead.

When driving home from those AA gigs Earl and I would make the loser salute to each other from our respective cars as his lane split off to “The 5” and mine split to “The 101” as he went home to the Valley and I to Hollywood.

Earl was my social antithesis in many ways. Having grown up in LA and military bases around the world, he was outgoing, gregarious and streetwise. I was reserved and still relatively naïve from my idyllic childhood in rural Canandaigua.

Earl was good for me. He got me out and around. He showed me a side of LA I would not have ventured into on my own. We went to Taco joints were we were not only the only white guys in the place, but in the neighborhood. We went to bizarre places in the the Valley like C.I.A. (California Institute of Abnormal Arts), a sort of circus-museum/art gallery/music venue but there really is no describing the place.

Earl dragged me places: concerts, festivals, art... things, parties. Not the the wrap and production-related parties I normally went to; parties where there were poets, artists, writers and actors--even some I recognized.

He got me out and kept me from slipping into myself as I am still apt to do.

Earl could strike up a conversation with any stranger wherever he was; something that terrified me. We might be at a light next to a police car. Earl would roll down his window and start talking to the cops about whatever.

Once, a transvestite and his/her friend were standing on Santa Monica Boulevard, asthey tend to do. When Earl pulled up to a light, the non-cross-dressing friend said to Earl, pointing at the cross-dresser, “she likes you”.

Earl, without missing a beat, replied, “Ha! Yeah, she likes everybody.”

Walking down Sunset Boulevard, Earl and I saw a couple of plain-clothes cops ducking in doorways and looking left and right. It was obvious they were following someone 'on the sly'. Earl unabashedly walked up to one of the hiding cops.

“Hey man, anything we should be worried about?” Earl said.

The cop should his head and nervously waved Earl on. When we caught up to the prostitute that Earl figured they were shadowing, he nonchalantly said, “they're on to you baby.”

Life was always more interesting when I was around Earl. Someone should have been following him around with a camera. 

Even though he got me out of my comfort zone, I never felt in danger or like I'd wished I stayed home. He never got us into trouble and if he had, I have little doubt he could have charmed us out of it.

Eventually Earl and I quit “Loser Salute” and formed our own band.

“Squeedle,” as we called it, was an experimental project which often involved my writing and performing songs while Earl created ambient walls of noise using his guitar and effect pedals. Earl wrote some songs too. They weren't often my taste: sparse semi punk/folk tunes that sounded spoken more than sung, but they were still interesting and I apprecitaed them on an artistic level if not a visceral one. lt also kept me from having to be the front man all the time. Something I was still... am still... terrified of.

Earl also wrote lyrics for a tune of mine that I later replaced with my own words and melody. It's now called “Rain Don't Follow the Plow”.

Where we were the most different was instrumentally. Even though I was largely self taught on the bass guitar I had learned up right bass and piano from lessons and music theory from high school and college courses. I had played in youth symphonies, jazz bands and pit orchestras.

Earl had played in punk and rock bands. His philosophy on playing guitar was never allowing your ability to rise above the bare minimum of what you need to play.

His punk philosophy often clashed with my quasi-virtuosic approach to playing and progressive rock, more-is-more sense of arranging, but there was always the feeling that together, our unlikely collaboration was something pretty unique and worthwhile.

“Squeedle” was at it's best when I was doing my thing; playing songs and accompanying myself on bass, while Earl was sitting on the floor sculpting sound with his guitar pedals, often with his guitar just sitting in his lap on it's stand, ringing and feeding back.

This noise making process something that Earl was really good at, almost a master.

“Squee” he called it.

I have hours and hours of recordings of Earl creating “squee”. While he was warming-up, fooling around and experimenting, I would roll tape without telling him. That's how we got his best stuff.

We played concerts as well. Due to Earl's social fearlessness and his social network of recovering drug addicts, the venues we played were interesting if not outright bizarre. We played some rather interesting private parties, and even stranger places like an inventor's convention, poetry readings, and—I shit you not—a retirement home called “Golden Years” for the birthday party of a ninety year old woman.

We were getting coffee at a funky little coffee shop in my neighborhood. Earl casually asked them to book our band. To my great surprise, the guy behind the counter said yes without so much as hearing a demo. Not only did they book us, we were instantly their Thursday night house band and they still hadn't heard a note. It should be noted that this was a free gig, but if you know LA, that's still incredible.

We played that gig for about two months until the owner, who also happened to be a recovering drug addict, fell off the wagon and crack smoked away his coffee shop.

We had often talked about making a Squeedle recording. “Let's make a record” Earl would always say when he showed up at my studio with his guitar. We had accumulated nearly enough material to fill a CD. About half of it was remixes of Earl's “Squee” recordings. I layered multiple tracks of squee and added beats, keyboards, effects and sometimes bass. It was some pretty cool stuff and quite unique.

I'm not going to post any links as I was only one half of the project, but suffice to say if one were curious enough, there are sample “Squeedle” recordings to be Googled out there.

Besides being in a band together Earl and I were always friends first. There wasn't a week that went by that we didn't hang out. A movie or some bizarre concert or art gallery—often one in the same. We would often be at each others' apartment for a home cooked dinner and watch a video. No matter what we did, we had fun, there was always lots of laughter.

Earl was also quite intelligent and well-read he had something interesting to say about nearly any subject. He was quite socialist in his views which was quite a ways to the left of mine but we didn't often talk politics. Earl's girlfriend, and eventually Audra after we met also came into the fold of our gatherings.

One year at Christmas Earl even went home with me to my folks house. He got to meet Jim, another great friend of mine. Both had heard me talk about the other so often it felt like the three of us had been buddies for years.

Musically, Squeedle was satisfying to a point, but I knew that I had to do other things. Other than his mastery of 'squee', Earl's basic skills on guitar were limiting for me; frustrating. He played the way he liked to but it didn't often fit with what I wanted to do. I loved the guy, but I could see the writing on the wall. He was never going to be a big part of my future in music.

I had always been honest about my intentions and feelings. Earl seemed to understand that our instrumental skill levels were oceans apart. He would often talk about the things I could do and the places I would go. He would brag of my bass playing abilities to anyone that he could... which was everyone.

I would brag about his genius with squee. 

At one point I was living with Audra and Earl with his girlfriend. When Audra and I got married in a simple and open elopement, besides the minister, Earl, as my best man, was the only one in attendance. He wore jeans, an untucked black shirt and a ratty straw cowboy hat.

After that I saw less of Earl. I was involved with other bands I was playing. More importantly, I had finally started working songs and recordings that would evolve into my album.

When I did see Earl, it wasn't quite the same as it was. He was having trouble with his girlfriend, he was having trouble at work.

I didn't realize he was slipping, or that he had already fallen. I wasn't paying attention. Maybe I just didn't want to.

Next week: Part II of Loser's Treason along with lyrics and a link to listen to the song.