Yesterday I spent the afternoon (and evening!) playing some tunes in the beer garden at Pete’s Bar in Carnation, Washington (population 1823), and it was beautiful. The weather was perfect, the people were so nice and welcoming, the other singers were lovely, and the natural beauty of the area made my day out of the big city relaxing and fun.
I need to book a beer garden tour of small towns throughout the world.
SJ
The long way out is over here
Electricity pouring from the socket
Carbon monoxide kisses
An alarm wired to your front pocket
Come closer
Come closer
It’ll be ok
I’ll pour salt around your bed
To keep the nightmares away
From the roof I’ll keep watch all around
Until I don’t know night from day
Come closer
Come closer
It’ll be ok
I was holding on
Lord knows I held it in
But if you asked the stars
They’d say I should win
Come closer
Come closer
It’ll be ok
Lovers of live music, and lovers of Summer, we have a big treat for you, this Friday is Summer Solstice and we’re having a rock-and-roll party to celebrate the beginning of Summer and the longest daytime of the year at the White Rabbit in Fremont!
Friday June 21
White Rabbit
8PM
only $6!
See you there!
SJ
I’m either lazy, or too confident in my ability to remember the lyrics to my songs and I realised I have hardly any of them written down anywhere. I’ve decided to remedy this and get more of them up here on our site at https://www.sjatr.com/cats/lyrics
I have dozens of songs, and it might take me a little while, but if you check back you’ll probably see a few new songs posted per week.
More soon!
SJ
I was in the mood for some delicious Radiohead this morning:
The guitars and Thom’s voice are just too lovely together.
Enjoy!
SJ
The first album I ever bought was by The Doors. I was young, still in the single digits of years, and I needed a song to play over and over again, ‘The Unknown Soldier’ by The Doors. My mother had to drive me to the music store to get my own because my brother wouldn’t let me play his copy of it anymore.
I found ‘The Unknown Soldier’ on ‘The Doors 13’, it was a greatest hits collection, not a proper album but it was perfect for me to get a sample of what this band had been about. I listened to that tape over and over and over again. ‘Light My Fire’, ‘Love Me Two Times’, ‘Hello, I Love You’, ‘You’re Lost Little Girl’, they were all so exciting to my young impressionable mind.
The weird thing is, I never bought another Doors album again, I quickly branched off into other bands and albums and styles. I would listen to the Doors on the radio and still loved them, but I hadn’t purposefully pressed play on their music much more in my life since, especially in comparison to other music I love. But when I look back on my life and how much that record probably influenced some of it is clear and stark, and I am deeply grateful to the band that created it.
Ray Manzarek may not have been the front man of The Doors, but his keyboard defined so much of The Doors sound and feel that you could never imagine the band without him. A little online research about him will tell you a lot more about him than I can here, his accomplishments are impressive, I only have my personal gratitude to share. My path in music, living in Venice Beach, my love of rock-and-roll keyboard, and much more, may have all been shaped by that first record. I don’t know if the older generation of rock-and-roll performers know how much they mean to us, and how much we hate to see them go.
Thank you Ray Manzarek, R.I.P.
Love,
SJ
Good morning, fellow cosmonauts. Jimi and I are inviting you to tea:
SJ
