It was the tail-end of the Seventies and the Eighties were trying to figure out how to redeem themselves from Disco. There was a newly energized spirit of greed that was palpable. The Sixties were a quaint myth and any good ideas from that era had been jettisoned as everyone banged heads, all trying to become landlords. A lot of people were doing a lot of cocaine and yes Virginia, there was a direct connection between investment brokers and Peruvian marching powder.
It was a time in which one might bump into a former high-school buddy toting a briefcase and trying to sell you a mutual fund, a pyramid scheme, a sketchy stock or a time-share in Cancun. If you weren't interested in any of that, he might suggest to you that you could benefit from Astral Travel, Eckankar or Scientology. People were taking up the game of Backgammon, again.
I was in my early twenties and after a thirty month marriage, I was somewhere in the middle of the long Twentieth Century Canadian three year wait to get a finalized divorce. I had been employed as a cook, a chef, a gas-fitter and a banker. At the time I speak of, I was conducting a second bout of gas-fitting. There were no jobs available in that trade, so I made my own company. Lone Star Gas.
Innocent of any business training, I had studied university level fundamentals of accounting while training as a bank manager. The name I chose for my gas business was already taken, so I didn't register it as a limited company. Besides, I had already designed and printed the all cards. One of those cards is on the wall of the Old Absinthe House in New Orleans. I started out at a steady pace and was soon busier than I wanted because I was competitively priced and as reliable as a Saint Bernard.
My accounting skills led to me doing an analysis of my business, which clearly showed me that I made far more money in far less time by working for other people. This revelation was discouraging. I sang a lot on my jobs, sometimes in Spanish. One rich old man in West Vancouver came to my truck as I was leaving a job one afternoon and said he had been listening to my shanties all day and thought I was in the wrong business.
I found a French restaurant one evening on lower Lonsdale after a particularly exhausting long day. I was attired in sulphured cutting-oil stained coveralls and my hands were deeply stained with pulverized lead pipe-joint compound. I parked my Toyota truck and tentatively approached the door. There were white linen tablecloths and a small vases of fresh flowers on each candle-lit table. A blackboard outside boasted of the chef’s baked rabbit, which he called, Lapin Chasseur.
Gingerly, I opened the door. Several people looked up and wrinkled their noses at my tired, hungry ass. A waiter, whom I will never forget, jetted across the carpet like an Exocet missile, took me by the elbow and waist in a firm but friendly manner and guided me to a little table right in the centre of a dozen romantic couples. His manner made me feel as welcome as I would have in my grandmother’s Beaumont, Texas kitchen.
Immediately, the rabbit, a Caesar salad and a bottle of wine was ordered. The bunny was clay-baked and covered with a thin but substantial sauce of mushrooms, red wine and savoury herbs. Home-baked baguette, creamery butter and a bottle of Rosé d'Anjou rounded out the meal. I was famished and I left every plate glistening clean and the bottle empty. The after dinner coffee was exceptional and I was cognizant of what constituted good coffee.
During the meal I heard some enchanting music that unexpectedly touched me bone deep. I asked my waiter to tell me the title and he later brought me a hand-written note which he placed discreetly on my table. It read, “Concierto de Aranjuez -Joachin Rodrigo.” I came back to that restaurant, Le Parisienne, so many times that I struck a deal with the chef. For a fixed monthly fee, I took supper there seven days a week. I discovered Debussy, Sibelius and Chopin at those meals.
While culling the rabbit population of the Fraser Valley and draining the wine casks of Anjou, I got a mini-education in classical music. I weighed about one hundred and eighty pounds and I would have described my body style as sassified rather than fat. I had a girlfriend and she joined me there on many occasions. Eventually the eatery closed and I found new quarters at a German restaurant only a block away.
It was called the Jägerhof and while dining there I discovered Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart and Hayden. I also discover that what we call “chicken-fried steak” in Texas is called a schnitzel in Germany. The Austro-Hungarian gravy is far better however, in my opinion. Teutonic heiß-saurer Kartoffelsalat mit Speck und Rotkohl mit Äpfeln are also superior to their anemic Central Texas cousins, hash browns and cold potato salad.
With my newly growing appreciation for the finer things in life, I tried to abandon draft beer and no longer called in at the beer hall I had frequented before. It was situated a few blocks from the Burrard Indian Reserve in North Vancouver, just East of Lonsdale Avenue on Second Street. The clientele were of three main persuasions: Native people of the Squamish Tribe, biker gangs and Danes.
The Danes joked and sang Scandinavian shanties while watching people bust chairs across each others teeth. There was a stabbing or broken bottle incident at least every few days. I was thought to be a Dane by the Natives and known to be a Swedish Cherokee by the Danes. You could buy anything your imagination desired in the back parking lot. Anything. They called it the Saint Alice Hotel.
One afternoon, I put on my best obsidian-black cowboy shirt with rose-red piping and mother-of-pearl snaps and decided I would go have some civilized, cultured refreshment. I would be attending my new girlfriend’s birthday dinner that evening. Instead of going to the tawdry St. Alice Hotel Pub, I steered myself into its adjoining cocktail lounge, The Cockatoo. It had red leather booths instead of faded purple beer-stained terry-cloth upholstered lion-tamer chairs.
I settled into a booth and ordered Barbadian amber rum straight. I was busy sipping on it when I was joined by a big old Squamish Band gentleman. We got to talking and I told him about my work, my girl-friend, my brief marriage and such topics. He became unduly fascinated with and fixated on my shirt, although it was hopelessly too small for his bulk. Another patron kept playing Back On The Chain Gang by the Pretenders on the jukebox.
Chrissie Hynde crooned, “I found a picture of you, oh oh oh oh
What hijacked my world that night
To a place in the past
We've been cast out of? Oh oh oh oh
Now we're back in the fight
We're back on the train
Oh, back on the chain gang...”
As we conversed, I mentioned that I played a guitar and sang on occasion and that I was planning on bringing my guitar to my girlfriend's place because I would be meeting some of her siblings and her father for the very first time. I also had a present to give her. It was a new jean jacket with her Chinese name, Beautiful Coral, (美珊Mei San) hand embroidered in Chinese characters on the back in scarlet thread which took me a few months to stitch.
The old Native fellow turned the talk back to my black shirt at every opportunity. I remembered desperately desiring a fleece-lined jean jacket I had seen hanging in the window of an Army Navy Store in Beaumont, Texas one time when I was twelve. I was obsessed even though I could see it was five sizes too big. I had to have it or the world would have to explain to me my why not.
Chrissie Hynde cried, “A circumstance beyond our control, oh oh oh oh
The phone, the TV and the news of the world
Got in the house like a pigeon from hell, oh oh oh oh
Threw sand in our eyes and descended like flies
Put us back on the train
Oh, back on the chain gang...”
After a few more shots of rum, I traded that shirt right off my Cherokee-Swedish back for two decks of Players Navy Cut cigarettes. The old man was ecstatic and put it on immediately with the snaps undone. The sleeves came to just past his elbows. He was so pleased with our trade, that as he fingered the pearl snaps, he told me that he was a personal friend of the manager of the Saint Alice Hotel and that if I wanted, he would speak with the man that very afternoon and set it up for me to play a show with my guitar in the beer hall. If they liked me, he intimated, it could evolve into not only a steady paying gig but I might also be discovered and be making hit records in no time.
When they were reading us the story about Jack and the magic beans in Kindergarten, I chose to believe it true, down to this day. I thought about groping around in spider infested crawl spaces and sweating in attics full of fibre-glass. I thought about bloodied, grease-smeared knuckles and sheet-metal lacerations. I thought about lugging water tanks and furnaces up and down rotten basement stairs. I thought about too much month at the end of the money and I made up my mind.
Chrissie Hynde wailed, “The powers that be
That force us to live like we do
Bring me to my knees
When I see what they've done to you
But I'll die as I stand here today
Knowing that deep in my heart
They'll fall to ruin one day
For making us part...”
I left The Cockatoo and drove home to get another shirt, practice some guitar picking and grab my guitar case. My next stop was over to my girlfriend's East Vancouver house where I was met at the door by her and her younger sister. I explained that at long last I had stumbled onto my big breakthrough chance in the music business. I gave the gift jacket and then apologized for having to miss the dinner and the party. The girls looked like they were somewhat sad but very relieved as they expected some negative drama from their father, who had no time for anyone non-Chinese.
The shirt man had instructed me to come at eight o clock p. m. precisely and said that the owner wouldn't be on site until an hour or so later. He told me to just take the stage and get started playing. He himself couldn't attend but he promised to catch my act at a later date. I ran through a bunch of songs in my mind and decided on a first and a last song. The rest would fill themselves in.
My palms were sweating as I parked my truck at seven fifty-five p. m. and marched in with my case. I cut a quick path through the boisterous crowd and kept along the West wall well away from the snooker tables. The Danes were sitting in the East side and none of them saw me come in. As I neared the stage, through the dense smoke and hellish noise, I could see and hear that there was a four piece band already busy playing a set.
The name painted on the bass drum was Siwash Rock Band. They were all aboriginal guys from the Squamish Reserve, a few blocks away. They appeared to range in age from the late teens to the mid-twenties. I stopped at the bar and asked for the manager. As it happened he was already in the building and I spoke with him. He looked at me like I was a two-headed rooster and told me that he had never heard of the fellow who sent me nor ever discussed any plans for me to perform. He indicated the band that was already busy, raised his eyebrows and turned away.
I ghosted to an empty table right up by the corner of the stage, I sat down, ordered a beer and leaned my guitar case against the wall. The boys in the band shot me some mighty hateful stares and launched into a Rolling Stones song which they did very well. They followed with some blues, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and such. The crowd was drinking heavy, talking loud and the tiny dance floor was deserted. The first set ended and the boys came to my table to sit. Tense moments ensued, to put it very mildly.
A few of guys bumped into my chair and my shoulder on their way to their own seats. I was asked who the fuck I thought I was and just what the fuck did I think I was doing? This was their turf and their gig. I was angry about missing my girlfriend's birthday and meeting her A Ba, about trading my best shirt to a silver tongued back-biting liar and about being a fool in general. I channelled all that rage into resolve. I decided that I wasn't moving until I played just like the old bastard had promised me and told all of them assembled of my intention.
The drummer snorted and said that if I ever played there, it wouldn't be that night or that week or that year. I ordered another beer and sat like a bag full of rusty sledge hammers. The Siwash boys had a few more beers and tried other tactics in a vain attempt to get me to leave.
They eventually rose to play their next set and their songbook went further into Grand Funk Railroad, Deep Purple, B. B. King and Steppenwolf. The din of the crowd increased and decreased according to the tunes. After a third set and quite a few draft beers, the fellows finished their performance. Immediately, a patron punched up Back On The Chain Gang.
Chrissie Hynde sang, “I found a picture of you, oh oh oh oh
Those were the happiest days of my life
Like a break in the battle was your part, oh oh oh oh
In the wretched life of a lonely heart
Now we're back on the train
Oh, back on the chain gang.”
Songwriter: Chrissie Hynde -Lyrics © BMG Rights Management
The musical warriors packed up their axes, abandoned their drum kit, amps and mikes in situ and sneered that I could go on now if I was that goddamned stubborn. I unpacked my Yamaki acoustic and walked on up to the black plywood stage. When the jukebox song ended, I tapped the mike and asked the crowd if they wanted me to play. I got disparate shouts of, “Bloody rights! Give her, dude!”, in reply.
As was my tradition, I opened with Neil Young's Old Man. The folks quieted down a little. Acoustic music will do that to a person. I tried out John Prine's Illegal Smile and Paradise next and a few people began singing along. I sang Willie Nelson's Whisky River. A native woman with righteous braids and a red cowboy shirt dragged her man upright and they danced a Texas two-step.
As I watched them dance, Commander Cody’s Truck Driving Man, Mama Hated Diesels, Home With The Armadillo and Looking At The World Through A Windshield, Neil Young’s Tell Me Why and For The Turnstiles, The Eagles’ Tequila Sunrise, Kris Kristofferson’s Bobby Magee, Charlie Daniel’s Long-Haired Country Boy and Michael Murphey’s Good Old Natural Habits and Doug Kershaw’s Diggy Lo, all slipped through my fingers and out of the speakers, like fresh boiled shrimp meat out of its shell.
The dance floor was soon packed solid and there was a lot of belly-rubbing and buckle-polishing going on. The feeling got into me and I found that I was able to take requests, which is not usually the case. Even if I didn't really know how to play the song in question, the swaying couples showed my hands what to do. The dancers up front all helped me out with call and response lyrics. The medicine was strong that night. It was better than church.
I closed out with Neil Young’s Cowgirl In The Sand. I heard lusty shouts of, “Bloody rights!” “Ye fucking haw!" "Give her shit, boy!" "Bobby Magee!”, as I turned off the mike.
Everyone shuffled off the dance floor and returned to their previous seats. A patron went to the jukebox, punched up Back On The Chain Gang and cranked it up.
The red shirt woman who had started the all the dancing, yelled across her beer as I was leaving, “Yoosh come back, eh boy?”
I never saw the brujo to whom I had traded my fancy black shirt nor the Siwash Rock Band again. I know they are all out there somewhere, maybe on this side of the veil and perhaps on the other side. Great Spirit bless them each and every one.
fin