Author: jboor

This song is about the 19th-Century British classicist and translator Benjamin Jowett, but mainly in the way in which spanish moss is about a branch.

Jowett’s students, allegedly, wrote a verse about him, which is useful for pronouncing his last name:

My name is Benjamin Jowett
And if it is knowledge I know it.
I teach at Balliol College,
And what I don’t know isn’t knowledge.

I’ve taken this and run with it, to see where it would go — without, I’m afraid, much regard for the old guy’s legacy. I hope he doesn’t mind.

My song includes a few true things about Jowett — he had a thing for Florence Nightingale; he was considered heretical as Anglican clergymen go. But the better part is bunkum, or the gratuitous projection of the author’s personal ennui onto the defenseless corpse of an Oxford Don. If you are doing a report on Benjamin Jowett for school, move along.

But the pronunciation of Benjamin Jowett’s last name — it must be admitted and certainly stands to reason and ought not to be the subject of rational doubt — is one of the things that a person might know. And now you know it. So there.

I've been cleaning my room. Here are two odd tracks found dribbling into oblivion like pebbles down a long hill of sand displaced by an excavator.

(1) "Chicken Hush," recorded live at Big Star Bar in Houston about ten years ago. When I found this recording I did not recognize the tune; it sounds different when you aren't playing it. I'm disoriented by the way the pickup and amplification are presenting the different ranges on the guitar; and it's changed quite a bit since then.

(2) "First Letter to Brian Brock." After hearing the piano album "Correspondence" by Vladimir Martynov and George Pelecis, I wanted to do something similar on guitar. So I wrote a "letter" to a guitarist friend. He still hasn't written back.

Just in time (I hope) for irrelevance, here’s a video by Sally Foster, featuring the Fogline Musicians Guild, commissioned by Sonoma County, etc.

Three PSAs by the Fogline Musicians’ Guild are now live on the old-fashioned FM radio at KTDE Gualala and KGUA Gualala.

And we are daily embiggening the radius of our effluence. Today Gualala, tomorrow Fort Bragg; maybe even Guerneville. No one is safe from highway safety. Two of the founding members of the FMG will even be interviewed on KGUA 88.3 this Wednesday December 9 at 0900.

Here are some songs for your online listening pleasure:

Don’t Cross the Line (Rudy/Boor)

Use the Turnouts (Boor)

Hang Up and Drive (Foster)

Please Don’t Tailgate (Foster/Boor)

These are all part of a project that I accidentally started with my neighbors Scott Foster and Susan Rudy, plus the fine musicians I’ve met through their mediation.

The Fogline Musicians Guild are:

Scott Foster (vocals, guitar, writing, ability to get people to do things)
Susan Rudy (vocals, writing)
Demetra Markis (vocals, professionalism)
Mark Ogren (trombone, timbre, timber … TIMBRE!!!)
Dan Schoenfeld (button accordion, wine)
Dan Patchin (bass, good vibes)
Jerm Boor (vocals, writing, mandolin, occasionally helpful arm-waving, engineering)

This lovely photo of the Fogline Musicians Guild is the work of Sally Foster. Not pictured: Demetra Markis, George Washington, an Albatross, et. al.

Here’s a song about ayahuasca, and (another) one about George Washington.

I wasn’t sure if the ayahuasca one would offend people who are into ayahuasca, so I sent this draft to my friend Jason, who is into ayahuasca like it’s going out of style. He liked it (the song), and so I’ve authorized him to represent all ayahuasca users in my imagination.

I didn’t send the George Washington song to anyone because, as far as I know, there is not a movement afoot to employ George Washington as a means of psychic healing … or is there?

Cheers.

1: rough take of an allegedly humorous song about Jesse James. This one is a hit with the bursting outdoor crowds at the Fort Ross Store, who especially like the audience participation element, which is not represented on the recording, which has so far produced a sentence groaning under a multitude of subordinate clauses, so why not add another and then interrupt the expected punctuation? Anna Kolouthia, where have you been? I’m sure you can figure it out and sing along at home, folks.

Jesse James:

2: demo of the vocal part of the first installment of Road Safety Jingles by the Stillwater Cove Live Musical Conspiracy, or whatever it winds up being called. This is only the beginning.

Use the Turnouts:

Here are the official, hysterically accurate lyrics of “Jesse James”

Well, the Outlaws of old,
They were famous, they were bold.
And they all obtained the famousest of fame.
But the famousest of names
In the Outlaw Hall of Fame
Was the famous name of a guy by the name
Of Jesse James.

Now Jesse James was born
On a war-torn, forlorn morn
In the abject lonesome state of Mis-sou-ree,
Where, as might have been expected,
He was adversely affected
By the awful, gruesome things that he did see.

So, like, one time, for example,
They trampled on his Grample
And they tried to hang his Grammle from a tree.
And if you had seen his mamma,
That alone had been a trauma.
And he prob’ly could’ve used some therapee.

Now from such a horrid start, he
Went to swillin’ straight Bacardi,
And whene’er he was to parties, he was rude.
He gave everyone a hassle
By behaving like an asshole.
Jesse James was a real screwed up dude.

Screwed up dude.
Screwed up dude.
Jesse James was a real screwed up dude.
He probably had rabies
And he bullied little babies.
Jesse James was a real screwed up dude.

So he joined a group of haters
By the name of Quantrell’s Raiders.
They were famous mutilators in the land.
They just rode around horses,
Sore abusing all their forces,
Having fun and amputating people’s hands.

Oh, but what that war was over,
Jesse sat down to discover
What might be the skills and assets he’d accrued.
“Of such things you’ve not an ounce, sir,”
Said the local high school counselor,
“Jesse James, you’re a real screwed up dude.”

Screwed up dude.
Screwed up dude.
Jesse James was a real screwed up dude.
No, he couldn’t get a boot in,
‘Cept for lootin’ and for shootin’.
Jesse James was a real screwed up dude.

But there was this famous writer,
A professional benighter
And inciter of the feckless multitude.
He corrupted public mores
With exaggerated stories
Of the glories of this sorely screwed up dude.

You see, they had this strange obsession
With insolent transgression
Since their late bid for secession went to seed.
They desired a concrescence
Of their violated essence
Which they found in Jesse’s grim and lawless deeds.

So all the people gave him thanks
When he robbed their stupid banks
And abolished all the value they’d construed.
He was a pure instantiation
Of social alienation,
Better known as a truly screwed up dude.

Screwed up dude.
Screwed up dude.
Jesse James was a real screwed up dude.
Although he never did get busted,
He was awful maladjusted.
Jesse James was real screwed up dude.

Screwed up dude.
Screwed up dude.
Jesse James was a real screwed up dude.
He gave everyone a hassle
By behaving like an asshole.
Jesse James was real screwed up dude.

This is now a regular thing. I’m playing every Saturday, 5-8 pm, at the Fort Ross Store. Sometimes there will be others, too.

Look! Look! A new song. It is made of limericks, eleven of them in fact.

Like another song of mine, this one began with an intentional misreading of the letters of Herman Melville. It started out whimsical and only slightly introspective, but became more Lenten as it went on, perhaps because it was in fact Lent.

Here are the words:

Well he has but a mouthful of brains
Who has never been glad when it rains,
Who has never been cold
When the strains of the old
Pannikhida invade his refrains.

And he has but a thimble of grit
Who has never surrendered his wit
To the song of the loon
And the waves and the moon
And the shimmer that swims under it.

And his conscience is lazy and bad
Who has never supposed himself mad
And who gluey with wine
When the sun doesn’t shine
In the mornings has never been sad.

(mm-hmm hmm-hm-hm hm-hm-hm hmm)

There are songs about perfect intentions
Of which most are post-factum inventions.
They dangle their tropes
Like a puppeter’s ropes
As they angle for honorable mentions.

And he can’t see the woods for the trees
Who can squarely discern his disease
And can stake out his goal
In the terms of control
But can not bring his soul to her knees.

And he can’t see the trees for the wood
Who can plainly perceive his own good
But who waits for the rains
To produce all the gains
And he never shall do as he should.

(mm-hmm hmm-hm-hm hm-hm-hm hmm)

And his system is far too complete
Be it ever so clean and discrete
If he hides his travail
In a mystical veil
And he can’t find the way to his feet.

He has lost the best half of his mind
Who can never regard himself blind;
But he sets up his eye
On a pole in the sky,
Dropping answers on all he can find.

And his heart has seen seventeen hells
Who can not tell the wind from the swells
Til he fixes his sight
On some heavenly light
For his life is a long Dardanelles.

(mm-hmm hmm-hm-hm hm-hm-hm hmm)

And so after all that, here you are.
I’m surprised that you made it this far.
I might have rescinded
A song so long-winded,
But I like to play the guitar.

And there was an old poet called Boor
Whose limericks none could endure.
His metre was cloying.
His rhymes were annoying.
At least his intentions were pure.

In another hilarious and extremely professional misunderstanding, I am playing at Mendovine in Gualala this Friday, *NOT* at Gualala Hotel. I repeat: Mendovine, not Gualala Hotel. 7-10 pm. Friday November 15 2019.