Looking Full-Bloom Cool

How long has it been since I thought that Rolling Stone Magazine was cool?  I haven’t considered the publication for a very long time.  I was twelve or so when I seem to remember I had a subscription to paper.  It must have been a gift from mom though, as I would never have spent hard earned lawn mowing money on paper when I could have bought more vinyl. 

I have a very clear memory of being that old and sitting in band practice in Pleasantvile New York, with my big tenor sax, (ironically sitting here now listening to Sonny Rollins.  Would that I’d stayed at it with that big piece of metal.) Up on the music stand, before the score for “When the Saints Go Marching In” is a copy of the Rolling Stone with Joe Strummer and Mick Jones staring at me, looking full-bloom cool.  And I can distinctly remember talking to them, trying to reassure them as if they could see me sitting there, that I was not just a kid in band practice.  I was, perhaps the only person in that room, who knew.  I was a Clash fan.  I was, despite all that was around me, someone they could talk to.

This morning I got a link to the Rolling Stone web site.  Not sure if I’ve ever visited this site before.  The link was to a newly found ‘lost’ track by the Kinks, that should have been released on “The Village Green Preservations Society” album, fifty years ago.  “Time Song” is like most of that album; aching, ironic clutching at something just out of reach.  “We go on, drifting on, dreaming dreams, telling lies, generally wasting our time.  Suddenly it’s too late, time has come and can’t wait, there’s no more time.”  The simple, unthreatening melody invites us to hop up on what proves to be a rather durable hammock and consider an elemental, melancholic truth.  Ray Davies was only twenty-four when he wrote the song.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/hear-the-kinks-previously-unreleased-song-from-1968-711548/

I played the song once or twice and wrote my friend back to say it was “heavy” at fifty-two-and-a-half.  He immediately wrote me back to remind me that I was only fifty-two-and-a-quarter!  And I laughed and thanked him generously for having returned to me three precious months of my time on earth. 

At fifty-two there’s more time.  Ray is seventy-four now and I can’t say if he has more or less time than me.  Poor Joe Strummer who, like Ray Davies looked and still looks irresistibly cool at twenty-four didn’t make it past fifty.  Sitting alone, far from home, making time, for time.  “When we were young and our bodies were strong we thought we’d sail into sunsets.  Now that we’re nearing the end of the line. Time has changed, time will heal, time will mend and conceal, in the end everything will be fine.”

Thursday 8/16/18